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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7380-8.txt b/7380-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..baab9cc --- /dev/null +++ b/7380-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8793 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alone, by Norman Douglas + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alone + +Author: Norman Douglas + +Posting Date: June 16, 2013 [EBook #7380] +Release Date: January, 2005 +First Posted: April 22, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE *** + + + + +Produced by Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + +ALONE + +BY + +NORMAN DOUGLAS + +AUTHOR OF + +"SOUTH WIND," "THEY WENT," "TOGETHER," ETC. + + + + + + + +TO HIS FRIEND + +EDWARD HUTTON + +WHO PRINTED SOME OF THESE TRIVIALITIES + +IN THAT "ANGLO-ITALIAN REVIEW" + +WHICH DESERVED A BETTER FATE + + + + + + +CONTENTS + +INTRODUCTION + +MENTONE + +LEVANTO + +SIENA + +PISA + +VIAREGGIO (February) + +VIAREGGIO (May) + +ROME + +OLEVANO + +VALMONTONE + +SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO + +ROME + +SORIANO + +ALATRI + + +Introduction + +What ages ago it seems, that "Great War"! + +And what enthusiasts we were! What visionaries, to imagine that in such +an hour of emergency a man might discover himself to be fitted for some +work of national utility without that preliminary wire-pulling which was +essential in humdrum times of peace! How we lingered in long queues, and +stamped up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls, waiting, only +waiting, to be asked to do something for our country by any little +guttersnipe who happened to have been jockeyed into the requisite +position of authority! What innocents.... + +I have memories of several afternoons spent at a pleasant place near St. +James's Park station, whither I went in search of patriotic employment. +It was called, I think, Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau (or +something equally lucid and concise), and professed to find work for +everybody. Here, in a fixed number of rooms, sat an uncertain number of +chubby young gentlemen, all of whom seemed to be of military age, or +possibly below it; the Emergency Bureau was then plainly--for it may +have changed later on--a hastily improvised shelter for privileged +sucklings, a kind of nursery on advanced Montessori methods. Well, that +was not my concern. One must trust the Government to know its own +business. + +During my second or third visit to this hygienic and well-lighted +establishment I was introduced, most fortunately, into the sanctuary of +Mr. R----, whose name was familiar to me. Was he not his brother's +brother? He was. A real stroke of luck! + +Mr. R----, a pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as +I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous +tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant +who tries to look like daddy. What might he do for me? + +I explained. + +We had a short talk, during which various forms were conscientiously +filled up as to my qualifications, such as they were. Of course, there +was nothing doing just then; but one never knows, does one? Would I mind +calling again? + +Would I mind? I should think not. I should like nothing better. It did +one good to be in contact with this youthful optimist and listen to his +blithe and pleasing prattle; he was so hopeful, so philosophic, so +cheery; his whole nature seemed to exhale the golden words: "Never say +die." And no wonder. He ought to have been at the front, but some +guardian angel in the haute finance had dumped him into this soft and +safe job: it was enough to make anybody cheerful. One should be +cautious, none the less, how one criticises the action of the +authorities. May be they kept him at the Emergency Bureau for the +express purpose of infusing confidence, by his bright manner, into the +minds of despondent patriots like myself, and of keeping the flag flying +in a general way--a task for which he, a German Jew, was pre-eminently +fitted. + +Be that as it may, his consolatory tactics certainly succeeded in my +case, and I went home quite infected with his rosy cheeks and words. +Yet, on the occasion of my next visit a week or two later, there was +still nothing doing--not just then, though one never knows, does one? + +"Tried the War Office?" he added airily. + +I had. + +Who hadn't? + +The War Office was a nightmare in those early days. It resembled +Liverpool Street station on the evening of a rainless Bank Holiday. The +only clear memory I carried away--and even this may have been due to +some hallucination--was that of a voice shouting at me through the +rabble: "Can you fly?" Such was my confusion that I believe I answered +in the negative, thereby losing, probably, a lucrative billet as +Chaplain to the Forces or veterinary surgeon in the Church Lads' +Brigade. Things might have been different had my distinguished cousin +still been on the spot; I, too, might have been accommodated with a big +desk and small work after the manner of the genial Mr. R----. He died in +harness, unfortunately, soon after the outbreak of war. + +I said to my young friend: + +"Everybody tells one to try the War Office--I don't know why. Of course +I tried it. I wish I had a shilling for every hour I wasted in that +lunatic asylum." + +"Ah!" he replied. "I feel sure a good many men would like to be paid at +that rate. Anyhow, trust me. We'll fix you up, sooner or later. (He kept +his word.) Why not have a whack at the F.O., meanwhile?" + +"Because I have already had a whack at it." + +I then possessed, indeed, in reply to an application on my part, a +holograph of twelve pages in the elegant calligraphy of H.M. +Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the same gentleman who was +viciously attacked by the Pankhurst section for his supposed +pro-Germanism. It conveyed no grain of hope. Other Government +Departments, he opined, might well be depleted at this moment; the +Foreign Office was in exactly the reverse position. It overflowed with +diplomatic and consular officials returned, perforce, from belligerent +countries, and now in search of occupation. Was it not natural, was it +not right, to give the preference to them? One was really at a loss to +know what to do with all those people. He had tried, hitherto in vain, +to find some kind of job for his own brother. + +A straightforward, convincing statement. Acting on the hint, I visited +the Education Office, notoriously overstaffed since Tudor days; it might +now be emptier; clerical work might be obtained there in substitution of +some youngster who had been induced to join the colours. I poked my nose +into countless recesses, and finally unearthed my man. + +They were full up, said Mr. F----. + +Full up? + +Full up. + +Then, after some further conversation as to my capacities, he thought he +might find me employment as teacher of science in the country, to +replace somebody or other. + +The notion was distasteful to me. I am not averse to learning from the +young; I only once tried to teach them--at a ragged school, long since +pulled down, near Ladbroke Grove, where I soon discovered that my little +pupils knew a great deal more than I did, more, indeed, than was good +for body or soul. Still, this was a tangible, definite offer of +unremunerative but at the same time semi-pseudo-patriotic work, not to +be sneezed at. An idea occurred to me. + +"Supposing I stick it out and give satisfaction, shall I be able to +interchange later into this department? I am more fitted for office +duties. In fact, I have had a certain experience of them." + +"No chance of that," he replied. "It is the German system. Their +schoolmasters are sometimes taken to do administrative work at +head-quarters, and vice versâ. Our English rule is: Once a teacher, +always a teacher." + +Here was a deadlock. For in such matters as teaching, a man may put a +strain on himself for a certain length of time; he may even be a +success, up to a point. But if he lacks the temperamental gift of +holding classes, the results in the long run will not be fair to the +children, to say nothing of himself. With reluctance I rose to depart, +Mr. F---- adding, by way of letting me down gently: + +"Tried the War Office?" + +I had. + +If the War Office was too lively, this place was too slumberous by half. +A cobwebby, Rip-van-Winkle-ish atmosphere brooded about those passages +and chambers. One could not help thinking that a little "German system" +might work wonders here. And this is merely one of several similar sites +I explored, and endeavoured to exploit, for patriotic purposes; I am +here only jotting down a few of the more important of those that occur +to me. + +And, oh! for the brush of a Hogarth to depict the gallery of faces with +which I came in contact as I went along. They were all different, yet +all alike; different in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and +self-sufficiency, but plainly of the same parentage--British to the +backbone; British of the wrong kind, with a sprinkling of Welshmen, +Irishmen, and Jews. Not a Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of +complacent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous by their +absence; they were otherwise engaged, in the field, the colonies, the +engine-room. I can only remember one single exception to this rule, this +type; it was the head of the Censorship Department. + +For of course I offered my services there, climbing up that decent +red-carpeted stairway, and glad to find myself among respectable +surroundings after all the unseemly holes I had lately wallowed in. I +sent up a card which, to my surprise, caused me to be ushered forthwith +into the presence of the Chief, who may have heard of my existence from +some mutual friend. Here, at all events, was a man with a face worth +looking at, a man who had done notable things in his day. What a relief, +moreover, to be able to talk to a gentleman for a change! I wished I +could have had him to myself for five minutes; there were one or two +things one would have liked to learn from him. Unfortunately he was +surrounded, as such people are, by half a dozen of the characteristic +masks. For the rest, His ex-Excellency seemed to be ineffably bored with +his new functions. + +"What on earth brings you here?" he began in a fascinatingly +absent-minded style, as if he had known me all my life, and with an +inimitable nasal drawl. "This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten! I +cannot recommend it. Not your style at all, I should say." + +"But, my dear Sir F----, I am not applying for your job. Something +subordinate, I mean. Anything, anything." + +"What? Down there, cutting up newspapers at twenty-two shillings a week? +No, no. Let's have your address, and we will communicate with you when +we find something worth your while. By the way, have you tried the War +Office?" + +I had. + +And it stands to reason that I tried the Munitions more than once. + +It was my rare good fortune--luck pursued me on these patriotic +expeditions--to come face to face, at the Munitions, with the fons et +origo; the deputy fountain-head, that is to say; a very peculiar +private-secretary-in-chief for that department. He was a perpendicular, +iron-grey personality, if I remember rightly, who smelt of some +indifferent hair-wash and lost no time in giving you to understand that +he was preternaturally busy. + +Did I know anything about machinery? + +Nothing to speak of, I replied. As co-manager and proprietor of some +cotton mills employing several hundred hands for spinning and weaving, I +naturally learnt how to handle a fair number of machines--sufficiently +well, at all events, to start and stop them and tell the girls how to +avoid being scalped or having their arms torn out whenever I happened to +be passing that way. This life also gave me some experience, useful +perhaps at the Munitions, in dealing with factory-hands---- + +That was not the kind of machinery he meant. Did I know anything about +banking? + +Nothing at all. + +"You are like everybody else," he replied with a weary sigh, as much as +to say: How am I going to run the British Empire with a collection of +imbeciles like this? "We have several thousands of applicants like +yourself," he went on. "But I will put your name down. Come again." + +"You are very kind." + +"Do call again," he added, in his best private-secretary manner. + +I called again a couple of weeks later. It struck me, namely, that they +might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this +time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man +with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things--one who, +moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department +and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for +certain labours--once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and +anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was +one? + +"I called about a fortnight ago. You have my name down." + +"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have such thousands of applicants. I +remember you! A mechanic, aren't you?" + +"No. And you asked me if I understood banking, and I said I didn't." + +"What a pity. Now if you knew about banking----" + +Nothing, evidently, had been done about my application, nor, for that +matter, about those thousands of others. We were being played with. I +began to feel grumpy. It was a lovely afternoon, and I remembered, with +regret, that I had thrown over an engagement to go for a walk with a +friend at Wimbledon. About this hour, I calculated, we should be +strolling along Beverley Brook or through the glades of Coombe Woods +with sunshine filtering through the birches overhead; it would have been +more pleasant, and far more instructive, than wasting my time with a +hatchet-faced automaton like this. That comes, I thought, of being +patriotic. I observed: + +"Your department seems to require only bankers and mechanics. Would it +not be well to advertise the fact and save trouble and time to those +thousands of applicants who, you say, are in the same predicament as +myself? I came here to do national work of some general kind." + +"So I gather. And if you understood banking----" + +"If I did, I should be a banker at my time of life--don't you see?--and +lending money to you people, and giving you good advice, instead of +asking you for employment. Isn't that fairly obvious? As a matter of +fact, my acquaintance with banking is limited to a knowledge of how to +draw cheques, and even that useful accomplishment is fast fading from my +memory, under the stress of the times." + +Being a Welshman--so I presume, from his name--he condescended to smile +faintly, but not for long; his salary was too high. As for myself, I +refrained from saying a few harsher things I was minded to say; indeed, +I made myself so vastly agreeable, after my own private recipe, that he +was quite touched. He remarked: + +"I think I had better put your name down, although we have thousands of +applicants, you know. Call again, won't you?" + +For which I humbly thanked him, instead of saying, as I ought to have +done: + +"You go to blazes. The public is a pack of idiots to run after people +who merely keep them loitering about while they feather their own nests. +We are out to lick the Germans, and yours is not the way to do it." + +Did I understand banking? The full ineptitude of this conundrum only +dawned upon me by degrees. Manifestly, if I understood banking, I might +do some specialised kind of work for the Government. But in that case I +would not apply to the Munitions. Granted they wanted bankers. Well, +there was my friend M----, renowned in the City as a genius for banking; +he could have saved them untold thousands of pounds. They would have +none of him. They sent him into the trenches, where he was duly shot. + +How easy it is for a disappointed place-seeker to jibe and rail against +the powers that be, especially when he is not in full possession of the +data! For all I know, they may have discovered my friend M---- to be a +dangerous character, and have been only too glad to remove him out of +society without unnecessary fuss, in an outwardly honourable fashion, +with a view to saving his poor but respectable parents the humiliating +experience of a criminal trial and possible execution in the family. + +If I understood banking ... why did they want bankers at this +institution? Ah, it was not my business to probe into such mysteries of +administration. To my limited intelligence it would seem that the mere +fact of a man applying at the Munitions was primâ facie evidence that +banking was not one of his accomplishments. It seemed to me, +furthermore, that there was no end to such "ifs"--patriotic or +otherwise. If I were a woman, for instance, I would promptly aid the +cause by jumping into a nurse's outfit, telling improper stories to the +Tommies, and getting myself photographed for the Press every morning. +But I am only a man. If I were a high-class trumpeter, I could qualify +for a job in one of the Allied Armies or, failing that, on Judgment Day. +But I can only strum the piano. And if the moon were made of green +cheese, we might all try to get hold of a slice of it, mightn't we?... + +Such was my pigheadedness, my boyish zeal, my belief in human nature or +perverse sense of duty, that I actually broke my vow and returned to +that ridiculous establishment. Yes, I "called again," flattering myself +with the conjecture that, even if they had not yet obtained a requisite +amount of bankers and mechanics, and even if persons of my particular +aptitudes were still a drug in the market, there might nevertheless be +room, amid the ramifications and interstices of so great a department, +for a man or two who could help to count up or pack munitions, or, if +that proposal were hopelessly wide of the mark, for the services of +something even more recondite and exotic--an intelligent corpse-washer, +for instance, or half a dozen astrologers. I felt I could distinguish +myself, at a national crisis like this, in either capacity. Anyhow, it +was only one more afternoon wasted--one out of how many! + +This time I saw Mr. W----. Though I had never met him in the flesh, I +once enjoyed the privilege of perusing a manuscript from his pen--a +story about a girl in Kew Gardens. A nice-looking young Hebrew was Mr. +W----. He had made himself indispensable, somehow or other, to the +Minister, and would doubtless by this time have been pitchforked into +some permanent and prominent job, but for that unfortunate name of his, +with its strong Teutonic flavour. + +This, by the way, was about the eighth official of his tribe, and of his +age, I had come across in the course of my recent peregrinations. How +did they get there? Tell me, who can. Far be it from me to disparage the +race of Israel. I have gained the conviction--firm-fixed, now, as the +Polar Star--that the Hebrew is as good a man as the Christian. Yet one +would like to know their method, their technique, in this instance. How +was the thing done? How did they manage it, these young Jews, all +healthy-looking and of military age--how did they contrive to keep out +of the Army? Was there some secret society which protected them? Or were +they all so preposterously clever that the Old Country would straightway +evaporate into thin air unless they sat in some comfortable office, +while our own youngsters were being blown to pieces out yonder? + +Mr. W----, I regret to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the +Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence, +doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere +of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his manner +towards me was freezingly non-committal--worthy of the best Anglo-Saxon +traditions. + +Had I come a little earlier, he avowed, he might perhaps have been able +to squeeze me into one of his departments--thus spake this infant: "One +of my departments." As it was, he feared there was nothing doing; +nothing whatsoever; not just then. Tried the War Office? + +I had. + +I even visited, though only twice, an offshoot of that establishment in +Victoria Street near the Army and Navy Stores, where candidates for the +position of translator--quasi-confidential work and passable pay, five +pounds a week--were interviewed. On the second occasion, after waiting +in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters such as haunt +the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a board of reverend +elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but prolonged, as to my +qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic affair. Could I +decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their toughest one, I +said. No! It was merely a pro forma question; they had enough German +translators on the staff. So the interrogation went on. They were going +to make sure of their man, in whom, I must say, they took little +interest save when they learnt that he had passed a Civil Service +examination in Russian and another in International Law. At that +moment--though I may be mistaken--they seemed to prick up their ears. +Not long afterwards I was allowed to depart, with the assurance that I +might hear further. + +Their inquiries into my attainments and references must have given +satisfaction, for in the fulness of time a missive arrived to the effect +that, assuming me to be a competent Turkish scholar, they would be glad +to see me again with a view to a certain vacancy. + +Turkish--a language I had not mentioned to them, a language of which I +never possessed more than fifty words, every one of them forgotten long +years ago. + +"How very War Office," I thought. + +These good people were mixing up Turkish and Russian--a natural error, +when one comes to think of it, for, though the respective tongues might +not be absolutely identical, yet the countries themselves were +sufficiently close together to account for a little slip like this. + +Was it a slip? Who knows? It is so easy to criticise when one is not +fully informed about things. They may have suggested my acting as +Turkish translator for reasons of their own--reasons which I cannot +fathom, but which need not therefore be bad ones. Chagrined +office-hunters like myself are prone to be bitter. In an emergency of +this magnitude a citizen should hesitate before he finds fault with the +wisdom of those whom the nation has chosen to steer it through troubled +waters. No carping! You only hamper the Government. The general public +should learn to keep a civil tongue in its head. Theirs but to do and +die. + +None the less, it was about this time that I began to experience certain +moments of despondency, and occasionally let a whole day slip by without +endeavouring to be of use to The Cause--moments when, instead of asking +myself, "What have I done for my country?" I asked, "What has my country +done for me?"--moments when I envied the hotel night-porters, +taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling flowers in Piccadilly +Circus who had something more sensible to do than to bother their heads +about trying to be patriotic, and getting snubbed for their pains. Yet, +with characteristic infatuation for hopeless ventures, I persevered. +Another "whack" at the F.O. leading to another holograph, two more +whacks at the Censorship, interpreter jobs, hospital jobs, God knows +what--I persevered, and might for the next three years have been kicking +my heels, like any other patriot, in the corridor of some dingy +Government office at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-jumpers, +but for a God-sent little accident, the result of sheer boredom, which +counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean. + +Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment, than she had ever yet +been. For on the day prior to my departure I received a communication +from the Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose methods of work, it +was now apparent, were as expeditious as its own name was brief. That +hopeful Mr. R----, that bubbling young optimist who had so +conscientiously written down a number of my qualifications, such as they +were--he was keeping his promise after months, and months, and months. +Never say die. The dear little fellow! What job had he captured for me? + +An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages to commence at 17s. +6d. per week. + +H'm. + +The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but I like to think that +it included the free use of the lavatory, if there happened to be one on +the premises. + +So luck pursued me to the end, though it never quite caught me up. For +bags were packed, and tickets taken. And therefore: + +"What did you do in the Great War, grandpapa?" + +"I loafed, my boy." + +"That was naughty, grandpapa." + +"Naughty, but nice...." + + + + +ALONE + +Mentone + +Italiam petimus.... + +Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of +the trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, +and forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours. +What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and +friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic +fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot +from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me on these +shores, where life is spent in a round of trivialities. + +One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from Nice, at last found +himself at the door of "the inn." The inn.... Are there any inns left at +Mentone? + +À propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs. At the present +moment, twenty-two of the principal hotels and pensions of Mentone are +closed, because owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does not this +speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton enterprise? Where, in a German +town of 18,000 inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such establishments +in the hands of Frenchmen? + +The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either among the tombs of that +cemetery overhead, studying sepulchral inscriptions and drawing +deductions, from what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality +and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the relative number of +consumptives here interred. Sixty per cent, shall we say? Or else, in +the streets of the town, I catch myself endeavouring--hitherto without +success--to count up the number of grocers' shops. They are far in +excess of what is needful. Now, why? Well, your tailor or hatter or +hosier--he makes a certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he +does not sell them at every moment of the day. The other, quite apart +from small advantages to be gained owing to the ever-shifting prices of +his wares, is ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of +which he makes a small gain. The grocery business commends itself warmly +to the French genius for garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I +fancy, will you see butter more meticulously weighed than here. Buy a +ton of it, and they will replace on their counter a fragment of the +weight and size of a postage stamp, rather than let the balance descend +on your side. + +And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one ever again escape from +Mentone? It may well be colder in Italy, but anything is preferable to +this inane Riviera existence.... + +I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to discommend them, for the +simple reason that, if they have proved bad, I smile to think of other +men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good +ones--why, only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however, I +hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to +return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for withholding +the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite unpretentious place +of entertainment that well deserves its name--white blackbirds being +rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is excellent--it has a +cachet of its own; the wine more than merely good. And this is +surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped +down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor +though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the +palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to anything else, +as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine hereabouts +that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you adventure into +the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your +trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a good name for +these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black currant enters +largely into their composition, though not in sufficient quantity to +render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little problem for the +oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or climate or treatment +can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anything +drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, a stone's throw +eastwards, can boast of its San Biagio, Rossese, Latte, Dolceacqua and +other noble growths, the like of which are not to be found along the +whole length of the French Riviera? + +Having pastured the inner man, to his complete satisfaction, at the +hospitable Merle Blanc, our traveller will do well to pasture his eyes +on the plants in the Casino gardens. Whoever wants to see flowers and +trees on their best behaviour, must come to Monte Carlo, where the +spick-and-span Riviera note is at its highest development. Not a leaf is +out of place; they have evidently been groomed and tubbed and manicured +from the hour of their birth. And yet--is it possible? Lurking among all +this modern splendour of vegetation, as though ashamed to show their +faces, may be discerned a few lowly olive trees. Well may they skulk! +For these are the Todas and Veddahs, the aboriginals of Monte Carlo, who +peopled its sunny slopes in long-forgotten days of rustic life--once +lords of the soil, now pariahs. What are they doing here? And how comes +it that the eyesore has not yet been detected and uprooted by those +keen-sighted authorities that perform such wonders in making the visitor +feel at home, and hush up with miraculous dexterity everything in the +nature of a public scandal? + +In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial Riviera tale. There +was an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who +breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all +the better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily +at the tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought, +and therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea. +Not unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen--they +might have been Russian princes--pounced upon her and led her to that +underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial +attendance. He brushed aside her explanations. + +"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself. +But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has a +reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels----" + +"I tell you it was only aspirin." + +"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us +not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death." + +"Aspirin, I tell you----" + +"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force." + +The stomach-pump was produced. + +It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is +unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless +water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland +is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or +content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all +progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk +along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once in a +lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap Martin, if only in +memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who, he +asks--who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape St. +Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug villas +of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugénie), to say nothing of +that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures the country +for leagues around. + +On other occasions you may find your way towards evening up to Gorbio +and stay for supper, provided you do not mind being cheated. Or wander +further afield, over Sospel to Breil by the old path--note the lavender: +they make a passable perfume of it--or else to Moulinet (famous for bad +food and a mastodontic breed of mosquitoes) and thence along the +stream--note the bushes of wild box--and over a wooded ridge to the +breezy heights of Peira Cava, there to dream away the daylight under the +pines. These are summer rambles. At present the snow lies deep. + +One of my favourite excursions has been up the so-called Berceau, the +cradle-shaped hill which dominates Mentone on the east. I was there +to-day for a solitary luncheon, resting awhile in the timbered saddle +between the peaks. The summit is only about five minutes' walk from this +delectable grove, but its view inland is partially intercepted by a +higher ridge. From here, if you are in the mood, you may descend +eastward over the Italian frontier, crossing the stream which is spanned +lower down by the bridge of St. Louis, and find yourself at Mortola +Superiore (try the wine) and then at Mortola proper (try the wine). +Somewhere in this gulley was killed the last wolf of these regions; so a +grey-haired local Nimrod told me. He had wrought much mischief in his +time. That is to say, he was not killed, but accidentally +drowned--drowned in one of those artificial reservoirs which are +periodically filled and drawn off for irrigating the gardens lower down; +an ignoble death, for a wolf! A goat lay drowned beside him. The event, +he reckoned, must have taken place half a century ago. Since then, the +wolf has never been seen. + +This afternoon, however, I preferred to repose in that shady dell, while +a flock of goldcrests were investigating the branches overhead and two +buzzards cruised, in dreamy spirals, about the sunny sky of midday; to +repose; to indulge my genius and review the situation; to profit, in +short, by that sense of aloofness peculiar to such aerial spots, which +tempts the mind to set its house in order. What are we doing, in these +empty regions? Why not wander hence? That cursed traveller's gift of +sitting still; of remaining stationary, no matter where, until one is +actually pushed away! And yet, how enjoyable this land might be, were it +inhabited by any race save one whose thousand little meannesses, public +and private, are calculated to drain away a man's last ounce of +self-respect! Not many are the glad memories I shall carry from Mentone. +I can think of no more than two. + +There is my landlady, to begin with, who spies out every detail of my +daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a +peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will +correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some +jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an +example of our matutinal converse: + +"I fear, Monsieur, you omitted to put out the light in a certain place +last night. It was burning when I returned home." + +"Certainly not, Madame. I have been nicely brought up. I never visit +places at night. You ought to be familiar with my habits after all this +time." + +"True. Then it must have been some one else. Ah, these electricians' +bills!" + +Or this: + +"Monsieur, Monsieur! The English Consul called yesterday with his little +dog at about five o'clock. He waited in your room, but you never came +back." + +"Five o'clock? I was at the baths." + +"I have heard of that establishment. What do they charge for a hot +bath?" + +"Three francs----" + +"Bon Dieu!" + +"--if you take an abonnement. Otherwise, it may well be more." + +"And so you go there. Why then--why must you also wash in the morning +and splash water on my floor? It may have to be polished after your +departure. Would you mind asking the Consul, by the way, not to sit on +the bed? It weakens the springs." + +Or this: + +"Might I beg you, Monsieur, to tread more lightly on the carpet in your +room? I bought it only nine years ago, and it already shows signs of +wear." + +"Nine years--that old rag? It must have survived by a miracle." + +"I do not ask you to avoid using it. I only beg you will tread as +lightly as possible." + +"Carpets are meant to be worn out." + +"You would express yourself less forcibly, if you had to pay for them." + +"Let us say then: carpets are meant to be trodden on." + +"Lightly." + +"I am not a fairy, Madame." + +"I wish you were, Monsieur." + +Thrice already, in a burst of confidence, has she told me the story of +an egg--an egg which rankles in the memory. Some years ago, it seems, +she went to a certain shop (naming it)--a shop she has avoided ever +since--to buy an egg; and paid the full price--yes, the full price--of a +fresh egg. That particular egg was not fresh. So far from fresh was it, +that she experienced considerable difficulty in swallowing it. + +A memorable episode occurred about a fortnight ago. I was greeted +towards 8 a.m. with moanings in the passage, where Madame tottered +around, her entire head swathed in a bundle of nondescript woollen +wraps, out of which there peered one steely, vulturesque eye. She looked +more than ever like an animated fungus. + +Her teeth--her teeth! The pain was past enduring. The whole jaw, rather; +all the teeth at one and the same time; they were unaccountably loose +and felt, moreover, three inches longer than they ought to feel. Never +had she suffered such agony--never in all her life. What could it be? + +It was easy to diagnose periostitis, and prescribe tincture of iodine. + +"That will cost about a franc," she observed. + +"Very likely." + +"I think I'll wait." + +Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She would give anything +to obtain relief--anything! + +"Anything?" I inquired. "Then you had better have a morphia injection. I +have had numbers of them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish +like magic. There is my friend Dr. Théophile Fornari----" + +"I know all about him. He demands five francs a visit, even from poor +people like myself." + +"You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to come here and climb +your seventy-two stairs for much less than five francs." + +"I think I'll wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting money on food just now, and +that is a consolation." + +Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing complaint, and I would +have purchased a franc's worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth. +Not then. On the contrary, I grew positively low-spirited when, after +three more days, the lamentations began to diminish in volume. They were +sweet music to my ears, at the time. They are sweeter by far, in +retrospect. If only one could extract the same amount of innocent and +durable pleasure out of all other landladies!... + +My second joyful memory centres round another thing of beauty--a spiky +agave (miscalled aloe) of monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the +garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the growths of this kind +which I have admired in various lands; none can vaunt as proud and +harmonious a development as this one. You would say it had been cast in +some dull blue metal. The glaucous wonder stands by itself, a prodigy of +good style, more pleasing to the eye than all that painfully generated +tropicality of Mr. Hanbury's Mortola paradise. It is flawless. Vainly +have I teased my fancy, endeavouring to discover the slightest defect in +shape or hue. Firm-seated on the turf, in exultant pose, with a pallid +virginal bloom upon those mighty writhing leaves, this plant has drawn +me like a magnet, day after day, to drink deep draughts of contentment +from its exquisite lines. + +For the rest, the whole agave family thrives at Mentone; the ferox is +particularly well represented; one misses, among others, that delightful +medio-picta variety, of which I have noticed only a few indifferent +specimens. [1] It is the same with the yuccas; they flourish here, +though one kind, again, is conspicuous by its absence-- the Atkinsi +(some such name, for it is long since I planted my last yucca) with +drooping leaves of golden-purple. You will be surprised at the number of +agaves in flower here. The reason is, that they are liable to be moved +about for ornamental purposes when they want to be at rest; the plant, +more sensitive and fastidious than it looks, is outraged by this +forceful perambulation and, in an access of premature senility, or +suicidal mania, or sheer despair, gives birth to its only flower--herald +of death. The fatal climax could be delayed if gardeners, in +transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their old +accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But +your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an +amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him +for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile +one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for +instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering +underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques--there, where the steps +begin---- + +Almost.... + +And here my afternoon musings, up yonder, took on a more acrid +complexion. I remembered a recent talk with one of the teachers at the +local college who lamented that his pupils displayed a singular dullness +in their essays; never, in his long career at different schools, had he +met with boys more destitute of originality. What could be expected, we +both agreed? Mentone was of recent growth--the old settlement, Mentone +of Symonds, proclaims its existence only by a ceaseless and infernal +clanging of bells, rivalling Malta--no history, no character, no +tradition--a mushroom town inhabited by shopkeepers and hôteliers who +are there for the sole purpose of plucking foreigners: how should a +youngster's imagination be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless +modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes to these regions, now that +invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their climate? Decayed Muscovites, +Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in England, and their painted +women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling eyes, a Turk or two, Jews +and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, +Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that read like a +nightmare (see "List of Arrivals" in New York Herald)--the whole exotic +riff-raff enlivened and perfumed by a copious sprinkling of +horizontales. + +And I let my glance wander along that ancient Roman road which led from +Italy to Arles and can still be traced, here and there; I took in the +section from Genoa to Marseille, an enormous stretch of country, and +wondered: what has this coast ever produced in the way of thought or +action, of great men or great women? There is Doria at Genoa, and Gaby +Deslys at Marseille; that may well exhaust the list. Ah, and half-way +through, a couple of generals, born at Nice. It is really an instructive +phenomenon, and one that should appeal to students of Buckle--this +relative dearth of every form of human genius in one of the most +favoured regions of the globe. Here, for unexplained reasons, the +Italian loses his better qualities; so does the Frenchman. Are the +natives descended from those mysterious Ligurians? Their reputation was +none of the best; they were more prompt, says Crinagoras, in devising +evil than good. That Mentone man, to be sure, whose remains you may +study at Monaco and elsewhere, was a fine fellow, without a doubt. He +lived rather long ago. Even he, by the way, was a tourist on these +shores. And were the air of Mentone not unpropitious to the composition +of anything save a kind of literary omelette soufflée, one might like to +expatiate on Sergi's remarkable book, and devise thereto an incongruous +footnote dealing with the African origin of sundry Greek gods, and +another one referring to the extinction of these splendid races of men; +how they came to perish so utterly, and what might be said in favour of +that novel theory of the influence of an ice-age on the germplasm +producing mutations--new races which breed true ... enough! Let us +remain at the Riviera level. + +In the little museum under those cliffs by the sea, where the Grimaldi +caves are, I found myself lately together with a young French couple, +newly married. The little bride was vastly interested in the attendant's +explanations of the habits of those remote folk, but, as I could plainly +see, growing more and more distrustful of his statements as to what +happened all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. + +"And this, Messieurs, is the jaw-bone of a cave-bear--the competitor, +one might say, in the matter of lodging-houses, with the gentleman whose +anatomy we have just inspected. Here are bones of hippopotamus, and +rhinoceros, which he hunted with the weapons you saw. And the object on +which your arm is reposing, Madame, is the tooth of an elephant. Our +ancestor must have been pretty costaud to kill an elephant with a +stone." + +"Elephants?" she queried. "Did elephants scramble about these precipices +and ravines? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. He probably killed them down there," and his arm +swept over the blue Mediterranean, lying at our feet. "Do you mean to +say that elephants paddled across from Algiers in order to be +assassinated by your old skeleton? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. The Mediterranean did not exist in those days." + +The suggestion that this boundless sea should ever have been dry land, +and in the time of her own ancestors, was too much for the young lady. +She smiled politely, and soon I heard her whispering to her husband: + +"I had him there, eh? Quel farceur!" + +"Yes. You caught him nicely, I must say. But one must not be too hard on +these poor devils. They have got to earn their bread somehow." + +This will never do. + +Italiam petimus.... + + + + +Levanto + +I have loafed into Levanto, on the recommendation of an Irish friend +who, it would seem, had reasons of his own for sending me there. + +"Try Levanto," he said. "A little place below Genoa. Nice, kindly +people. And sunshine all the time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes! The food +is all right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us start that +subject----" + +We started it none the less, and at the end of the discussion he added: + +"You must go and see Mitchell there. I often stayed with him. Such a +good fellow! And very popular in the place. He built an aqueduct for the +peasants--that kind of man. Mind you look him up. He will be bitterly +disappointed if you don't call. So make a note of it, won't you? By the +way, he's dead. Died last year. I quite forgot." + +"Dead, is he? What a pity." + +"Yes; and what a nuisance. I promised to send him down some things by +the next man I came across. You would have been that man. I know you do +not carry much luggage, but you could have taken one or two trifles at +least. He wanted a respectable English telescope, I remember, to see the +stars with--a bit of an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too--devilish +fond of chutney, the old boy was; quite a gastro-maniac. What a +nuisance! Now he will be thinking I forgot all about it. And he needed a +clothes-press; I was on no account to forget that clothes-press. Rather +fussy about his trousers, he was. And a type-writer; just an ordinary +one. But I doubt whether you could have managed a type-writer." + +"Easily. And a bee-hive or two. You know how I like carrying little +parcels about for other people's friends. What a nuisance! Now I shall +have to travel with my bags half empty." + +"Don't blame me, my dear fellow. I did not tell him to die, did I?".... + +It must have been about midnight as the train steamed into Levanto +station. Snow was falling; you could hear the moan of the sea hard by; +an icy wind blew down from the mountains. + +Sunshine all the time! + +Everybody scurried off the platform. A venerable porter, after looking +in dubious fashion at my two handbags, declared he would return in a few +moments to transport them to the hotel, and therewith vanished round the +corner. The train moved on. Lamps were extinguished. Time passed. I +strode up and down in the semi-darkness, trying to keep warm and +determined, whatever happened, not to carry those wretched bags myself, +when suddenly a figure rose out of the gloom--a military figure of +youthful aspect and diminutive size, armed to the teeth. + +"A cold night," I ventured. + +"Do you know, Sir, that you are in the war-zone--the zona di difesa?" + +He began to fumble at his rifle in ominous fashion. + +Nice, kindly people! + +I said: + +"It is hard to die so young. And I particularly dislike the looks of +that bayonet, which is half a yard longer than it need be. But if you +want to shoot me, go ahead. Do it now. It is too cold to argue." + +"Your papers! Ha, a foreigner. Hotel Nazionale? Very good. To-morrow +morning you will report yourself to the captain of the carbineers. After +that, to the municipality. Thereupon you will take the afternoon train +to Spezia. When you have been examined by the police inspector at the +station you will be accompanied, if he sees fit, to head-quarters in +order that your passport may be investigated. From there you will +proceed to the Prefecture for certain other formalities which will be +explained to you. Perhaps--who knows?--they will allow you to return to +Levanto." + +"How can you expect me to remember all that?" Then I added: "You are a +Sicilian, I take it. And from Catania." + +He was rather surprised. Sicilians, because they learn good Italian at +their schools, think themselves indistinguishable from other men. + +Yes; he explained. He was from a certain place in the Catania part of +the country, on the slopes of Etna. + +I happened to know a good deal of that place from an old she-cook of +mine who was born there and never wearied of telling me about it. To his +still greater surprise, therefore, I proceeded to discourse learnedly +about that region, extolling its natural beauties and healthy climate, +reminding him that it was the birthplace of a man celebrated in +antiquity (was it Diodorus Siculus?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that +he would doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated a spot. + +Straightway his manner changed. There is nothing these folks love more +than to hear from foreign lips some praise of their native town or +village. He waxed communicative and even friendly; his eyes began to +sparkle with animation, and there we might have stood conversing till +sunrise had I not felt that glacial wind searching my garments, chilling +my humanity and arresting all generous impulses. Rather abruptly I bade +farewell to the cheery little reptile and snatched up my bags to go to +the hotel, which he said was only five minutes' walk from there. + +Things turned out exactly as he had predicted. Arrived at Spezia, +however, I found an unpleasant surprise awaiting me. The officer in +command, who was as civil as the majority of such be-medalled jackasses, +suggested that one single day would be quite sufficient for me to see +the sights of Levanto; I could then proceed to Pisa or anywhere else +outside his priceless "zone of defence." I pleaded vigorously for more +time. After all, we were allies, were we not? Finally, a sojourn of +seven days was granted for reasons of health. Only seven days: how +tiresome! From the paper which gave me this authorisation and contained +a full account of my personal appearance I learnt, among other less +flattering details, that my complexion was held to be "natural." It was +a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup. + +No butter for breakfast. + +The landlord, on being summoned, avowed that to serve crude butter on +his premises involved a flagrant breach of war-time regulations. The +condiment could not be used save for kitchen purposes, and then only on +certain days of the week; he was liable to heavy penalties if it became +known that one of his guests.... However, since he assumed me to be a +prudent person, he would undertake to supply a due allowance to-morrow +and thenceforward, though never in the public dining-room; never, never +in the dining-room! + +That is the charm of Italy, I said to myself. These folks are reasonable +and gifted with imagination. They make laws to shadow forth an ideal +state of things and to display their good intentions towards the +community at large; laws which have no sting for the exceptional type of +man who can evade them--the sage, the millionaire, and the "friend of +the family." Never in the dining-room. Why, of course not. Catch me +breakfasting in any dining-room. + +Was it possible? There, at luncheon in the dining-room, while devouring +those miserable macaroni made with war-time flour, I beheld an over-tall +young Florentine lieutenant shamelessly engulfing huge slices of what +looked uncommonly like genuine butter, a miniature mountain of which +stood on a platter before him, and overtopped all the other viands. I +could hardly believe my eyes. How about those regulations? Pointing to +this golden hillock, I inquired softly: + +"From the cow?" + +"From the cow." + +"Whom does one bribe?" + +He enjoyed a special dispensation, he declared--he need not bribe. +Returned from Albania with shattered health, he had been sent hither to +recuperate. He required not only butter, but meat on meatless days, as +well as a great deal of rest; he was badly run down.... And eggs, raw +eggs, drinking eggs; ten a day, he vows, is his minimum. Enviable +convalescent! + +The afternoon being clear and balmy, he took me for a walk, smoking +cigarettes innumerable. We wandered up to that old convent picturesquely +perched against the slope of the hill and down again, across the +rivulet, to the inevitable castle-ruin overhanging the sea. Like all +places along this shore, Levanto lies in a kind of amphitheatre, at a +spot where one or more streams, descending from the mountains, discharge +themselves into the sea. Many of these watercourses may in former times +have been larger and even navigable up to a point. Their flow is now +obstructed, their volume diminished. I daresay they have driven the sea +further out, with silt swept down from the uplands. The same thing has +struck me in England--at Lyme Regis, for instance, whose river was also +once navigable to small craft and at Seaton, about a mile up whose +stream stands that village--I forget its name--which was evidently the +old port of the district in pre-Seaton days. Local antiquarians will +have attacked these problems long ago. The sea may have receded. + +A glance from this castle-height at the panorama bathed in that mellow +sunshine made me regret more than ever the enforced brevity of my stay +at Levanto. Seven days, for reasons of health: only seven days! Those +mysterious glades opening into the hill-sides, the green patches of +culture interspersed with cypresses and pines, dainty villas nestling in +gardens, snow-covered mountains and blue sea--above all, the presence of +running water, dear to those who have lived in waterless lands--why, one +could spend a life-time in a place like this! + +The lieutenant spoke of Florence, his native city. He would be there +again before long, in order to present himself to the medical +authorities and be weighed and pounded for the hundredth time. He hoped +they would then let him stay there. He was tired to death of Levanto and +its solitude. How pleasant to bid farewell to this "melancholy" sea +which was supposed to be good for his complaints. He asked: + +"Do you know why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to +see that wonderful dome of theirs rising up from the plain?" + +"Why?" + +"Can't you guess?" + +"Let me see. It is sure to be something not quite proper. H'm.... The +tower of Giotto, for example, has certain asperities, angularities, +anfractuosities----" + +"You are no Englishman whatever!" he laughed. "Now try that joke on the +next Florentine you meet.... There was a German here," he went on, "who +loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all about him. He began +writing a book to prove that there was a different walk to be taken in +this neighbourhood for every single day of the year." + +"How German. And then?" + +"The war came. He cleared out. The natives were sorry. This whole coast +seems to be saturated with Teutons--of a respectable class, apparently. +They made themselves popular, they bought houses, drank wine, and joked +with the countrymen." + +"What do you make of them?" I inquired. + +"I am a Tuscan," he began (meaning: I am above race-prejudices; I can +view these things with olympic detachment). "I think the German says to +himself: we want a world-empire, like those damned English. How did they +get it? By piracy. Two can play at that game, though it may be a little +more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a +certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, +who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished +by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at +First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a +whole--well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is +our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the +ordinary native of the country is, if his own son happens to get +killed." + +"I know. That makes him very angry." + +"It makes him angry not with the Germans who are responsible for the +war, but with his own government which is responsible for conscripting +the boys. Ah, what a stupid subject of conversation! And how God would +laugh, if he had any sense of humour! Suppose we go down to the beach +and lie on the sand. I need rest: I am very dilapidated." + +"You look thin, I must say." + +"Typhoid, and malaria, and pleurisy--it is a respectable combination. +Thin? I am the merest framework, and so transparent that you can see +clean through my stomach. Perhaps you would rather not try? Count my +ribs, then." + +"Count your ribs? That, my dear Lieutenant, is an occupation for a rainy +afternoon. Judging by your length, there must be a good many of +them...." + +"We should be kind to our young soldiers," said the Major to whom I was +relating, after dinner, the story of our afternoon promenade. A burly +personage is the Major, with hooked nose and black moustache and +twinkling eyes--retired, now, from a service in the course of which he +has seen many parts of the world; a fluent raconteur, moreover, who +keeps us in fits of laughter with naughty stories and imitations of +local dialects. "We must be nice with them, and always offer them +cigarettes. What say you, Mr. Lieutenant?" + +"Yes, sir. Offer them cigarettes and everything else you possess. The +dear fellows! They seldom have the heart to refuse." + +"Seldom," echoes the judge. + +That is our party; the judge, major, lieutenant and myself. We dine +together and afterwards sit in that side room while the fat little host +bustles about, doing nearly all the work of the war-diminished +establishment himself. Presently the first two rise and indulge in a +lively game of cards, amid vigorous thumpings of the table and cursings +at the ways of Providence which always contrives to ruin the best hands. +I order another litre of wine. The lieutenant, to keep me company, +engulfs half a dozen eggs. He tells me about Albanian women. I tell him +about Indian women. We thrash the matter out, pursuing this or that +aspect into its remotest ramifications, and finally come to the +conclusion that I, at the earliest opportunity, must emigrate to +Albania, and he to India. + +As for the judge, he was born under the pale rays of Saturn. He has +attached himself to my heart. Never did I think to care so much about a +magistrate, and he a Genoese. + +There are some men, a few men, very few, about whom one craves to be +precise. Viewed through the mist of months, I behold a corpulent and +almost grotesque figure of thirty-five or thereabouts; blue-eyed, +fair-haired but nearly bald, clean-shaven, bespectacled. So purblind has +he grown with poring over contracts and precedents that his movements +are pathologically awkward--embryonic, one might say; his unwieldy +gestures and contortions remind one of a seal on shore. The eyes being +of small use, he must touch with his hands. Those hands are the most +distinctive feature of his person; they are full of expression; tenderly +groping hands, that hesitate and fumble in wistful fashion like the +feelers of some sensitive creature of night. There is trouble, too, in +that obese and sluggish body; trouble to which the unhealthy complexion +testifies. He may drink only milk, because wine, which he dearly +loves--"and such good wine, here at Levanto"--it always deranges the +action of some vital organ inside. + +The face is not unlike that of Thackeray. + +A man of keen understanding who can argue the legs off a cow when duly +roused, he seems far too good for a small place like this, where, by the +way, he is a newcomer. Maybe his infinite myopia condemns him to +relative seclusion and obscurity. He has a European grip of things; of +politics and literature and finance. Needless to say, I have discovered +his cloven hoof; I make it my business to discover such things; one may +(or may not) respect people for their virtues, one loves them only for +their faults. It is a singular tinge of mysticism and credulity which +runs through his nature. Can it be the commercial Genoese, the gambling +instinct? For he is an authority on stocks and shares, and a passionate +card-player into the bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand--they +are but two forms of the same speculative spirit. Think of the +Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-lovers! I have yet to meet a +full-blown agnostic who relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not +adventurous on such lines; he knows the odds against backing a winner in +heaven or earth. + +Often, listening to this lawyer's acute talk and watching his uncouth +but sympathetic face, I ask myself a question, a very obvious question +hereabouts: How could you cause him to swerve from the path of duty? How +predispose him in your favour? Sacks of gold would be unavailing: that +is certain. He would wave them aside, not in righteous Anglo-Saxon +indignation, but with a smile of tolerance at human weakness. To +simulate clerical leanings? He is too sharp; he would probably be vexed, +not at your attempt to deceive, but at the implication that you took him +for a fool. A good tip on the stock exchange? It might go a little way, +if artfully tendered. Perhaps an apt and unexpected quotation from the +pages of some obsolete jurist--the intellectual method of approach; for +there is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of +intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook. In any case, it +would be a desperate venture to override the conscience of such a man. +May I never have to try! + +His stern principles must often cause him suffering, needless suffering. +He is for ever at the mercy of some categorical imperative. This may be +the reason why I feel drawn to him. Such persons exercise a strange +attraction upon those who, convinced of the eternal fluidity of all +mundane affairs, and how that our most sacred institutions are merely +conventionalities of time and place, conform to only one rule of +life--to be guided by no principles whatever. They miss so much, those +others. They miss it so pathetically. One sees them staggering +gravewards under a load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle, +when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross? Is it pleasant? Is it pretty? + +He also has taken me for walks, but they are too slow and too short for +my taste. Every twenty yards or so he must stand still to "admire the +view"--that is, to puff and pant. + +"What it is," he then exclaims, "to be an old man in youth, through no +fault of one's own. How many are healthy, and yet vicious to the core!" + +I inquire: + +"Are you suggesting that there may be a connection between sound health +and what society, in its latest fit of peevish self-maceration, is +pleased to call viciousness?" + +"That is a captious question," he replies. "A man of my constitution, +unfit for pleasures of the body, is prone to judge severely. Let me try +to be fair. I will go so far as to say that to certain natures +self-indulgence appears to be necessary as--as sunshine to flowers." + +Self-indulgence, I thought. Heavily-fraught is that word; weighted with +meaning. The history of two thousand years of spiritual dyspepsia lies +embedded in its four syllables. Self-indulgence--it is what the ancients +blithely called "indulging one's genius." Self-indulgence! How debased +an expression, nowadays. What a text for a sermon on the mishaps of good +words and good things. How all the glad warmth and innocence have faded +out of the phrase. What a change has crept over us.... + +Glancing through a glass window not far from the hotel, I was fortunate +enough to espy a young girl seated in a sewing shop. She is decidedly +pretty and not altogether unaware of the fact, though still a child. We +have entered upon an elaborate, classical flirtation. With all the +artfulness of her years she is using me to practise on, as a dummy, for +future occasions when she shall have grown a little bigger and more +admired; she has already picked up one or two good notions. I pretend to +be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if she were grown up, and +profess to feel that she has really cast a charm--a state of affairs +which, if true, would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a point. +Impossible not to sense the joy which radiates from her smile and +person. That is all, so far. It is an orthodox entertainment, merely a +joke. God knows what might happen, under given circumstances. Some of a +man's most terrible experiences--volcanic cataclysms that ravaged the +landscape and left a trail of bitter ashes in their rear--were begun as +a joke. You can say so many things in a joking way, you can do so many +things in a joking way--especially in Northern countries, where it is +easy to joke unseen. + +Meanwhile, with Ninetta, I discourse sweet nothings in my choicest idiom +which has grown rather rusty in England. + +Italian is a flowery language whose rhetorical turns and phrases require +constant exercise to keep them in smooth working order. No; that is not +correct. It is not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are ever at +command. What one learns to forget in England is the simplicity to use +them; to utter, with an air of deep conviction, a string of what we +should call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your breath +away--the things you have to say because these folks are so enamoured of +rhetoric and will not be happy without it. + +An English girl of her social standing--I lay stress upon the standing, +for it prescribes the conduct--an English girl would never listen to +such outpourings with this obvious air of approbation; maybe she would +ask where you had been drinking; in every case, your chances would be +seriously diminished. She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system +which is fatal to success in this country. The affair, here, must be a +siege. It must move onward by those gradual and inevitable steps +ordained of old in the unwritten code of love; no lingering by the +wayside, no premature haste. It must march to its end with the measured +stateliness of a quadrille. Passion, well-restrained passion, should be +written on every line of your countenance. Otherwise you are liable to +be dubbed a savage. I know what it is to be called a "Scotch bear," and +only because I trembled too much, or too little--I forget which--on a +certain occasion. + +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 of sang-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 grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, [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." + +"A Scozzese. 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." + + + + +Siena + +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's Unknown 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 once escaped 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 a piazza! 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: + + Siena + Di 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 delectable amorino whose 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 their +bête 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. The Dictionary of National +Biography might 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.... + + + + +Pisa + +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 modern infâme. 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 a pis 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." Irritable was 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 them en route and "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 (February) + +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 of ripa: 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. This ripa is 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, and the 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. + +"And that little ridge of stone," says my companion, "--do you see it, +jutting into the fields down there? It has a queer name. We call it La +Sirena." + +La Sirena.... + +It is good to live in a land where such memories cling to old rocks. + +By what a chance has the name survived to haunt this inland crag, +defying geological changes, outlasting the generations of men, their +creeds and tongues and races! How it takes one back--back into hoary +antiquity, into another landscape altogether! One thinks of those Greek +mariners coasting past this promontory, and pouring libations to the +Siren into an ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now sows +his rice and turnips. + + Paganisme immortel, es-tu mort? On le dit. + Mais Pan, tout bas, s'en moque, et la Sirène en rit. + +They are still here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to +separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous +splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the +gods are kind. + +My Siren dwells at Corsanico. + + + + +Viareggio (May) + +Those Sirens! They have called me back, after nearly three months in +Florence, to that village on the hill-top. Nothing but smiles up there. + +And never was Corsanico more charming, all drenched in sunlight and +pranked out with fresh green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to +myself, I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away, and +there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet--can it be possible?--I am even +happier here. Seldom does the event surpass one's hopes. + +Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives already heavy-laden, +through patches of high-standing corn and beans, across the little +brook, past that familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the +canal, in full content. Another golden moment of life! Strong +exhalations rose up from the swampy soil, that teemed and steamed under +the hot breath of spring; the pond-like water, once so bare, was +smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh-plants and loud with the music +of love-sick frogs. Stars were reflected on its surface. + +Star-gazing, my Star? Would I were Heaven, to gaze on thee with many +eyes. + +Such was my mood, a Hellenic mood, a mood summed up in that one word +[Greek: tetelestai]--not to be taken, however, in the sense of "all's +over." Quite the reverse! Did Shelley ever walk in like humour along +this canal? I doubt it. He lacked the master-key. An evangelist of a +kind, he was streaked, for all his paganism, with the craze of +world-improvement. One day he escaped from his chains into those +mountains and there beheld a certain Witch--only to be called back to +mortality by a domestic and critic-bitten lady. He tried to translate +the Symposium. He never tried to live it.... + +I have now interposed a day of rest. + +My welcome in the villa situated in the street called after a certain +politician was that of the Prodigal Son. There was a look bordering on +affection in the landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once the +weather was warmer. She would now give me a cool room, instead of that +old one facing south. Those much-abused cement floors--they were not so +inconvenient, were they, at this season? The honey for breakfast? +Assuredly; the very same. And there was a tailor she had discovered in +the interval, cheaper and better than that other one, if anything +required attention. + +And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London landladies and London +charwomen--having suffered the torments of Hell, for more years than I +care to remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags and harpies +and drunken sluts--I am now rewarded by the services of something at the +other end of the human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good +dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life seems to be to save my +money and make me comfortable. "Don't get your shoes soled there!" she +told me two days ago. "That man is from Viareggio. I know a better +place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will +pay less and get better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she +forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known +my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have +known them at the end of a century.... + +My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally +efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the +familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair +and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave +me the impression of being in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I +used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods +enlivened with steely glints of humour--such were the feelings of those +who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. It would +be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or vulgar. Yet +she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She never dreams +that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high police +functionary and greatly in favour with his set--a most useful landlady, +in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself. + +On learning this fact, I made it my business to study her weaknesses and +soon discovered that she was fond of a particular brand of Chianti. A +flask of this vintage was promptly secured; then, dissatisfied with its +materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with a wreath of +violets and despatched it to her private apartment by the prettiest +child I could pick up in the street. That is the way to touch their +hearts. The offering was repeated at convenient intervals. + +A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one morning, about the +war. I found she shared the view common to many others, that this is an +"interested" war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines which +work against peace. There are so many persons "interested" in keeping up +the present state of affairs, people who now make more money than they +ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie. The soldier in the +field, the chief person concerned, is voiceless and of no account when +compared with this army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if +the war came to an end. They will fight like demons, to keep the fun +going. What else should they do? Their income is at stake. A man's heart +is in his purse. + +I asked: + +"Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war, how would you set about +it?" + +Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to her. + +"I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense. It makes things too +pleasant. It would bring the troops to their senses and cause them to +march home and say: Basta! We have had enough." + +"Don't you find the Germans a little prepotenti?" "Prepotenti: yes. By +all means let us break their heads. And then, caro Lei, let us learn to +imitate them...." + +That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine and myself in such +mellow mood that I would have shared my last crust with some shipwrecked +archduchess and almost forgiven mine enemies, though not until I had hit +them back--I strolled about the Cascine. They have done something to +make this place attractive; just then, at all events, the shortcomings +were unobserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot. +Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as +it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water; +and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the +surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of +hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not +remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in +an identical situation, and with far less sunshine for the landscape +gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town in Germany where, on +a plain as flat as a billiard table, they actually reared a mountain, +now covered with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens. To +think that I used to skate over the meadows where that mountain now +stands! + +There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the +usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake +of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious +epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play +is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision +and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of +the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of +old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of +consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which +leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name. +They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their +tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an +outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort. +Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat. + +Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de +Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew +strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all +these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half +of them ought to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about +with a ball. + +It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising +generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the +younger spectators and make him talk. But these better-class lads +cluster together at the approach of a stranger, and one does not want to +start a public discussion with half a dozen of them. My chance came from +another direction. It was half-time and a certain player limped out of +the field and sat down on the grass. I was beside him before his friends +had time to come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with perspiration. + +"Any damage?" + +Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other side had just caught him +with the full swing of his fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly. + +"Hardly fair play," I commented. + +"It was cleverly done." + +"Ah, well," I said, warming to my English character, "you may get harder +knocks in the trenches. I suppose you are nearly due?" + +Not for a year or so, he replied. And even then ... of course, he was +quite eligible as to physique ... it was really rather awkward ... but +as to serving in the army ... there were other jobs going. ... Was +anything more precious than life?... Could anything replace his life to +him?... To die at his age.... + +"It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point of view. But if +everybody thought like that, where would the Isonzo line be?" + +If everybody thought as he did, there would be no Isonzo line at all. +German influence in Italy--why not? They had been there before; it was +no dark page in Italian history. Was his own government so admirable +that one should regret its disappearance? A pack of knaves and +cutthroats. Patriotism--a phrase; auto-intoxication. They say one thing +and mean another. The English too. Yes, the English too. Purely +mercenary motives, for all their noble talk. + +It is always entertaining to see ourselves as others see us. I had the +presence of mind to interject some anti-British remark, which produced +the desired effect. + +"Now they howl about the sufferings of Belgium, because their money-bags +are threatened. They fight for poor Belgium. They did not fight for +France in 1870, or for Denmark or Poland or Armenia. Trade was not +threatened. There was no profit in view. Profit! And they won't even +supply us with coal----" + +Always that coal. + +It is clear as daylight. England has failed in her duty--her duty being +to supply everybody with coal, ships, money, cannons and anything else, +at the purchaser's valuation. + +He made a few more statements of this nature, and I think he enjoyed his +little fling at that, for him, relatively speaking, since the war began, +rara avis, a genuine Englishman (Teutonic construction); I certainly +relished it. Then I asked: + +"Where did you learn this? About Armenia, I mean, and Poland?" + +"From my father. He was University Professor and Deputy in Parliament. +One also picks up a little something at school. Don't you agree with +me?" + +"Not altogether. You seem to forget that a nation cannot indulge in +those freaks of humanitarianism which may possibly befit an individual. +A certain heroic dreamer told men to give all they had to the poor. You, +if you like, may adopt this idealistic attitude. You may do generous +actions such as your country cannot afford to do, since a nation which +abandons the line of expediency is on the high road to suicide. If I +have a bilious attack, by all means come and console me; if Poland has a +bilious attack, there is no reason why England should step in as +dry-nurse; there may be every reason, indeed, why England should stand +aloof. Now in Belgium, as you say, money is involved. Money, in this +national sense, means well-being; and well-being, in this national +sense, is one of the few things worth fighting for. However, I am only +throwing out one or two suggestions. On some other day, I would like to +discuss the matter with you point by point--some other day, that is, +when you are not playing football and have just a few clothes on. I am +now at a disadvantage. You could never get me to impugn your statements +courageously--not in that costume. It would be like haggling with Apollo +Belvedere. Why do you wear those baby things?" + +"We are all wearing them, this season." + +"So I perceive. How do you get into them?" + +"Very slowly." + +"Are they elastic?" + +"I wish they were.".... + +Four minutes' talk. It gave me an insight. He was an intellectualist. As +such, he admired brute force but refused to employ it. He was civilized. +Like many products of civilization, he was unaware of its blessings and +unconcerned in its fate. Is it not a feature peculiar to civilization +that it thinks of everything save war? That is why they are uprooted, +these flowerings, each in its turn. + +My father told me; often one hears that remark, even from adults. As if +a father could not be a fool like anybody else! That a child should have +hard-and-fast opinions--it is engaging. Children are egocentric. A +fellow of this size ought to be less positive. + +These refined youths are fastidious about their clothes. They would not +dream of buying a ready-made suit, however well-fitting. They are +content to take their opinions second-hand. Unlike ours, they are seldom +alone; they lack those stretches of solitude during which they might +wrestle with themselves and do a little thinking on their own account. +When not with their family, they are always among companions, being far +more sociable and fond of herding together than their English +representatives. They talk more; they think less; they seem to do each +other's thinking, which takes away all hesitation and gives them a +precocious air of maturity. If this decorative lad engages in some +profession like medicine or engineering there is hope for him, even as +others of his age rectify their perspective by contact with crude +facts--groceries and calicoes and carburettors and so forth. Otherwise, +his doom is sealed. He remains a doctrinaire. This country is full of +them. + +And then--the sterilizing influence of pavements. Even when summer comes +round, they all flock in a mass to some rowdy place like this Viareggio +or Ancona where, however pleasant the bathing, spiritual life is yet +shallower than at home. What says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.? "Their +country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in +nothing else does it differ from the life they live in town." + +He notices things, does Ramage; and might, indeed, have elaborated this +argument. The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for +the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him +from the pavement--no easy task--and he gasps like a fish out of water. +Squares and cafés--they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of +fellow-creatures--thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the +result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I +should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every +bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I +think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait +still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested +mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour--such things +require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid, +for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English +representatives. + +POSTSCRIPT.--The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an +objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly +and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all +the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead +of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain +legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I +observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new +ones, which flake away rapidly--exfoliate or crack, according to the +direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the +chisel. It may well be that Florentines of past centuries left the hewn +blocks in their shady caverns for a certain length of time, as do the +Parisians of to-day, in order to allow for the slow discharge and +evaporation of liquid; whereas now the material, saturated with +moisture, is torn from its damp and cool quarries and set in the blazing +sunshine. At the Bourse, for instance,--quite a modern structure--the +columns already begin to show fissures. [7] + +Amply content with Viareggio, because the Siren dwells so near, I stroll +forth. The town is awake. Hotels are open. Bathing is beginning. Summer +has dawned upon the land. + +I am not in the city mood, three months in Florence having abated my +interest in humanity. Past a line of booths and pensions I wander in the +direction of that pinery which year by year is creeping further into the +waves, and driving the sea back from its old shore. There is peace in +this green domain; all is hushed, and yet pervaded by the mysterious +melody of things that stir in May-time. Here are no sombre patches, as +under oak or beech; only a tremulous interlacing of light and shade. A +peculiarly attractive bole not far from the sea, gleaming rosy in the +sunshine, tempts me to recline at its foot. + +This insomnia, this fiend of the darkness--the only way to counteract +his mischief is by guile; by snatching a brief oblivion in the hours of +day, when the demon is far afield, tormenting pious Aethiopians at the +Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments of self-created night, +merged into the warm earth! The extreme quietude of my present room, +after Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this +restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsanico. But chiefly, +the dream--that recurrent dream. + +Everybody, I suppose, is subject to recurrent dreams of some kind. My +present one is of a painful or at least sad nature; it returns +approximately every three months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I +am in a distant town where I lived many years back, and where each stone +is familiar to me. I have come to look for a friend--one who, as a +matter of fact, died long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this +fact; once embarked on the dream-voyage, I hold him to be still alive. +Glad at the prospect of meeting my friend again, I traverse cheerfully +those well-known squares in the direction of his home.... Where is it, +that house; where has it gone? I cannot find it. Ages seem to pass while +I trample up and down, in ever-increasing harassment of mind, along +interminable rows of buildings and canals; that door, that +well-remembered door--vanished! All search is vain. I shall never meet +him: him whom I came so far to see. The dismal truth, once established, +fills me with an intensity of suffering such as only night-visions can +inspire. There is no reason for feeling so strongly; it is the way of +dreams! At this point I wake up, thoroughly exhausted, and say to +myself: "Why seek his house? Is he not dead?" + +This stupid nightmare leaves me unrefreshed next morning, and often +bears in its rear a trail of wistfulness which may endure a week. Only +within the last few years has it dared to invade my slumbers. Before +that period there was a series of other recurrent dreams. What will the +next be? For I mean to oust this particular incubus. The monster annoys +me, and even our mulish dream-consciousness can be taught to acquiesce +in a fact, after a sufficient lapse of time. + +There are dreams peculiar to every age of man. That celebrated one of +flying, for instance--it fades away with manhood. I once indulged in a +correspondence about it with a well-known psychologist, [8] and would +like to think, even now, that this dream is a reminiscence of leaping +habits in our tree-haunting days; a ghost of the dim past, therefore, +which revisits us at night when recent adjustments are cast aside and +man takes on the credulity and savagery of his remotest forefathers; a +ghost which comes in youth when these ancient etchings are easier to +decypher, being not yet overscored by fresh personal experiences. What +is human life but a never-ending palimpsest? + +So I pondered, when my musings under that pine tree were interrupted by +the arrival on the scene of a young snake. I cannot say with any degree +of truthfulness which of us two was more surprised at the encounter. I +picked him up, as I always do when they give me a chance, and began to +make myself agreeable to him. He had those pretty juvenile markings +which disappear with maturity. Snakes of this kind, when they become +full-sized, are nearly always of a uniform shade, generally black. And +when they are very, very old, they begin to grow ears and seek out +solitary places. What is the origin of this belief? I have come across +it all over the country. If you wish to go to any remote or inaccessible +spot, be sure some peasant will say: "Ah! There you find the serpent +with ears." + +These snakes are not easy to catch with the hand, living as they do +among stones and brushwood, and gliding off rapidly once their +suspicions are aroused. This one, I should say, was bent on some +youthful voyage of discovery or amorous exploit; he walked into the trap +from inexperience. As a rule, your best chance for securing them is when +they bask on the top of some bush or hedge in relative unconcern, +knowing they are hard to detect in such places. They climb into these +aerial situations after the lizards, which go there after the insects, +which go there after the flowers, which go there after the sunshine, +struggling upwards through the thick undergrowth. You must have a quick +eye and ready hand to grasp them by the tail ere they have time to lash +themselves round some stem where, once anchored, they will allow +themselves to be pulled in pieces rather than yield to your efforts. If +you fail to seize them, they trickle earthward through the tangle like a +thread of running water. + +He belonged to that common Italian kind which has no English +name--Germans call them Zornnatter, in allusion to their choleric +disposition. Most of them are quite ready to snap at the least +provocation; maybe they find it pays, as it does with other folks, to +assume the offensive and be first in the field, demanding your place in +the sun with an air of wrathful determination. Some of the big fellows +can draw blood with their teeth. Yet the jawbones are weak and one can +force them asunder without much difficulty; whereas the bite of a +full-grown emerald lizard, for instance, will provide quite a novel +sensation. The mouth closes on you like a steel trap, tightly +compressing the flesh and often refusing to relax its hold. In such +cases, try a puff of tobacco. It works! Two puffs will daze them; a +fragment of a cigar, laid in the mouth, stretches them out dead. And +this is the beast which, they say, will gulp down prussic acid as if it +were treacle. + +But snakes vary in temperament as we do, and some of these Zamenis +serpents are as gentle and amiable as their cousin the Aesculap snake. +My friend of this afternoon could not be induced to bite. Perhaps he was +naturally mild, perhaps drowsy from his winter sleep or ignorant of the +ways of the world; perhaps he had not yet shed his milk teeth. I am +disposed to think that he forgot about biting because I made a +favourable impression on him from the first. He crawled up my arm. It +was pleasantly warm, but a little too dark; soon he emerged again and +glanced around, relieved to discover that the world was still in its old +place. He was not clever at learning tricks. I tried to make him stand +on his head, but he refused to stiffen out. Snakes have not much sense +of humour. + +Lizards are far more companionable. During two consecutive summers I had +a close friendship with a wall-lizard who spent in my society certain of +his leisure moments--which were not many, for he always had an +astonishing number of other things on hand. He was a full-grown male, +bejewelled with blue spots. A fierce fighter was Alfonso (such was his +name), and conspicuous for a most impressive manner of stamping his +front foot when impatient. Concerning his other virtues I know little, +for I learnt no details of his private life save what I saw with my +eyes, and they were not always worthy of imitation. He was a polygamist, +or worse; obsessed, moreover, by a deplorable habit of biting off the +tails of his own or other people's children. He went even further. For +sometimes, without a word of warning, he would pounce upon some innocent +youngster and carry him in his powerful jaws far away, over the wall, +right out of my sight. What happened yonder I cannot guess. It was +probably a little old-fashioned cannibalism. + +Though my meals in those days were all out of doors, his attendance at +dinner-time was rather uncertain; I suspect he retired early in order to +spend the night, like other polygamists, in prayer and fasting. At the +hours of breakfast and luncheon--he knew them as well as I did--he was +generally free, and then quite monopolized my company, climbing up my +leg on to the table, eating out of my hand, sipping sugar-water out of +his own private bowl and, in fact, doing everything I suggested. I did +not suggest impossibilities. A friendship should never be strained to +breaking-point. Had I cared to risk such a calamity, I might have taught +him to play skittles.... + +For the rest, it is not very amusing to be either a lizard or a snake in +Italy. Lizards are caught in nooses and then tied by one leg and made to +run on the remaining three; or secured by a cord round the neck and +swung about in the air--mighty good sport, this; or deprived of their +tails and given to the baby or cat to play with; or dragged along at the +end of a string, like a reluctant pig that is led to market. There are +quite a number of ways of making lizards feel at home. + +With snakes the procedure is simple. They are killed; treated to that +self-same system to which they used to treat us in our arboreal days +when the glassy eye of the serpent, gleaming through the branches, will +have caused our fur to stand on end with horror. No beast provokes human +hatred like that old coiling serpent. Long and cruel must have been his +reign for the memory to have lingered--how many years? Let us say, in +order to be on the safe side, a million. Here, then, is another ghost of +the past, a daylight ghost. + +And look around you; the world is full of them. We live amid a legion of +ancestral terrors which creep from their limbo and peer in upon our +weaker moments, ready to make us their prey. A man whose wits are not +firmly rooted in earth, in warm friends and warm food, might well live a +life of ceaseless trepidation. Many do. They brood over their immortal +soul--a ghost. Others there are, whose dreams have altogether devoured +their realities. These live, for the most part, in asylums. + +There flits, along this very shore, a ghost of another kind--that of +Shelley. Maybe the spot where they burnt his body can still be pointed +out. I have forgotten all I ever read on that subject. An Italian +enthusiast, the librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence, +garnered certain information from ancient fishermen of Viareggio in +regard to this occurrence and set it down in a little book, a book with +white covers which I possessed during my Shelley period. They have +erected a memorial to the English poet in one of the public squares +here. The features of the bust do not strike me as remarkably etherial, +but the inscription is a good specimen of Italian adapted to lapidary +uses--it avoids those insipid verbal terminations which weaken the +language and sometimes render it almost ridiculous. + +Smollet lies yonder, at Livorno; and Ouida hard by, at Bagni di Lucca. +She died in one of these same featureless streets of Viareggio, alone, +half blind, and in poverty.... + +I know Suffolk, that ripe old county of hers, with its pink villages +nestling among drowsy elms and cornfields; I know their "Spread Eagles" +and "Angels" and "White Horses" and other taverns suggestive--sure sign +of antiquity--of zoological gardens; I know their goodly ale and old +brown sherries. Her birthplace, despite those venerable green mounds, is +comparatively dull--I would not care to live at Bury; give me Lavenham +or Melford or some place of that kind. While looking one day at the +house where she was born, I was sorely tempted to crave permission to +view the interior, but refrained; something of her own dislike of prying +and meddlesomeness came over me. Thence down to that commemorative +fountain among the drooping trees. The good animals for whose comfort it +was built would have had some difficulty in slaking their thirst just +then, its basin being chocked up with decayed leaves. + +We corresponded for a good while and I still possess her letters +somewhere; I see in memory that large and bold handwriting, often only +two words to a line, on the high-class slate-coloured paper. The sums +she spent on writing materials! It was one of her many ladylike traits. + +I tried to induce her to stay with me in South Italy. She made three +conditions: to be allowed to bring her dogs, to have a hot bath every +day, and two litres of cream. Everything could be managed except the +cream, which was unprocurable. Later on, while living in the Tyrolese +mountains, I renewed the invitation; that third condition could now be +fulfilled as easily as the other two. She was unwell, she replied, and +could not move out of the house, having been poisoned by a cook. So we +never met, though she wrote me much about herself and about +"Helianthus," which was printed after her death. In return, I dedicated +to her a book of short stories; they were published, thank God, under a +pseudonym, and eight copies were sold. + +She is now out of date. Why, yes. Those guardsmen who drenched their +beards in scent and breakfasted off caviare and chocolate and sparkling +Moselle--they certainly seem fantastic. They really were fantastic. They +did drench their beards in scent. The language and habits of these +martial heroes are authenticated in the records of their day; glance, +for instance, into back numbers of Punch. The fact is, we were all +rather ludicrous formerly. The characters of Dickens, to say nothing of +Cruikshank's pictures of them: can such beings ever have walked the +earth? + +If her novels are somewhat faded, the same cannot be said of her letters +and articles and critiques. To our rising generation of authors--the +youngsters, I mean; those who have not yet sold themselves to the +devil--I should say: read these things of Ouida's. Read them +attentively, not for their matter, which is always of interest, nor yet +for their vibrant and lucid style, which often rivals that of Huxley. +Read them for their tone, their temper; for that pervasive good +breeding, that shining honesty, that capacity of scorn. These are +qualities which our present age lacks, and needs; they are conspicuous +in Ouida. Abhorrence of meanness was her dominant trait. She was +intelligent, fearless; as ready to praise without stint as to voice the +warmest womanly indignation. She was courageous not only in matters of +literature; courageous, and how right! Is it not satisfactory to be +right, when others are wrong? How right about the Japanese, about +Feminism and Conscription and German brutalitarianism! How she puts her +finger on the spot when discussing Marion Crawford and D'Annunzio! Those +local politicians--how she hits them off! Hers was a sure touch. Do we +not all now agree with what she wrote at the time of Queen Victoria and +Joseph Chamberlain? When she remarks of Tolstoy, in an age which adored +him (I am quoting from memory), that "his morality and monogamy are +against nature and common sense," adding that he is dangerous, because +he is an "educated Christ"--out of date? When she says that the world is +ruled by two enemies of all beauty, commerce and militarism--out of +date? When she dismisses Oscar Wilde as a cabotin and yet thinks that +the law should not have meddled with him--is not that the man and the +situation in a nutshell? + +No wonder straightforward sentiments like these do not appeal to our age +of neutral tints and compromise, to our vegetarian world-reformers who +are as incapable of enthusiasm as they are of contempt, because their +blood-temperature is invariably two degrees below the normal. Ouida's +critical and social opinions are infernally out of date--quite +inconveniently modern, in fact. There is the milk of humanity in them, +glowing conviction and sincerity; they are written from a standpoint +altogether too European, too womanly, too personally-poignant for +present-day needs; and in a language, moreover, whose picturesque and +vigorous independence comes as a positive shock after the colourless +Grub-street brand of to-day. + +They come as a shock, these writings, because in the brief interval +since they were published our view of life and letters has shifted. A +swarm of mystics and pragmatists has replaced the lonely giants of +Ouida's era. It is an epoch of closed pores, of constriction. The novel +has changed. Pick up the average one and ask yourself whether this +crafty and malodorous sex-problem be not a deliberately commercial +speculation--a frenzied attempt to "sell" by scandalizing our +unscandalizable, because hermaphroditic, middle classes? Ouida was not +one of these professional hacks, but a personality of refined instincts +who wrote, when she cared to write at all, to please her equals; a +rationalistic anti-vulgarian; a woman of wide horizons who fought for +generous issues and despised all shams; the last, almost the last, of +lady-authors. What has such a genial creature in common with our anaemic +and woolly generation? "The Massarenes" may have faults, but how many of +our actual woman-scribes, for all their monkey-tricks of cleverness, +could have written it? The haunting charm of "In Maremma": why ask our +public to taste such stuff? You might as well invite a bilious +nut-fooder to a Lord Mayor's banquet. + +The mention of banquets reminds me that she was blamed for preferring +the society of duchesses and diplomats to that of the Florentine +literati, as if there were something reprehensible in Ouida's fondness +for decent food and amusing talk when she could have revelled in Ceylon +tea and dough-nuts and listened to babble concerning Quattro-Cento +glazes in any of the fifty squabbling art-coteries of that City of +Misunderstandings. It was one of her several failings, chiefest among +them being this: that she had no reverence for money. She was unable to +hoard--an unpardonable sin. Envied in prosperity, she was smugly pitied +in her distress. Such is the fate of those who stand apart from the +crowd, among a nation of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, after +being the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form--a slur on +society. True, she might have bettered her state by accepting a +lucrative proposal to write her autobiography, but she considered such +literature a "degrading form of vanity" and refused the offer. She +preferred to remain ladylike to the last, in this and other little +trifles--in her lack of humour, her redundancies, her love of expensive +clothes and genuinely humble people, of hot baths and latinisms and +flowers and pet dogs and sealing-wax. All through life she made no +attempt to hide her woman's nature, her preference for male over female +company; she was even guilty of saying that disease serves the world +better than war, because it kills more women than men. Out of date, with +a vengeance! + +There recurs to me a sentence in a printed letter written by a +celebrated novelist of the artificial school, a sentence I wish I could +forget, describing Ouida as "a little terrible and finally pathetic +grotesque." Does not a phrase like this reveal, even better than his own +romances, the essentially non-human fibre of the writer's mind? Whether +this derivative intellectualist spiderishly spinning his own plots and +phrases and calling Ouida a "grotesque"--whether this echo ever tried to +grasp the bearing of her essays on Shelley or Blind Guides or Alma +Veniesia or The Quality of Mercy--tried to sense her burning words of +pity for those that suffer, her hatred of hypocrisy and oppression and +betrayal of friendship, her so righteous pleadings, coined out of the +heart's red blood, for all that makes life worthy to be lived? He may +have tried. He never could succeed. He lacked the sympathy, the sex. He +lacked the sex. Ah, well--Schwamm drueber, as the Norwegians say. Ouida, +for all her femininity, was more than this feline and gelatinous New +Englander. + + + + +Rome + +The railway station at Rome has put on a new face. Blown to the winds is +that old dignity and sense of leisure. Bustle everywhere; soldiers in +line, officers strutting about; feverish scurryings for tickets. A young +baggage employé, who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the +inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep up the traditions +of former days. He was unruffled and polite; he told me, incidentally, +that he came from ----. That was odd, I said; I had often met persons +born at ----, and never yet encountered one who was not civil beyond the +common measure. His native place must be worthy of a visit. + +"It is," he replied. "There are also certain fountains...." + +That restaurant, for example--one of those few for which a man in olden +days of peace would desert his own tavern in the town--how changed! The +fare has deteriorated beyond recognition. Where are those succulent +joints and ragouts, the aromatic wine, the snow-white macaroni, the +cafe-au-lait with genuine butter and genuine honey? + +War-time! + +Conversed awhile with an Englishman at my side, who was gleefully +devouring lumps of a particular something which I would not have liked +to touch with tongs. + +"I don't care what I eat," he remarked. + +So it seemed. + +I don't care what I eat: what a confession to make! Is it not the same +as saying, I don't care whether I am dirty or clean? When others tell me +this, I regard it as a pose, or a poor joke. This person was manifestly +sincere in his profession of faith. He did not care what he ate. He +looked it. Were I afflicted with this peculiar ailment, this attenuated +form of coprophagia, I should try to keep the hideous secret to myself. +It is nothing to boast of. A man owes something to those traditions of +our race which has helped to raise us above the level of the brute. Good +taste in viands has been painfully acquired; it is a sacred trust. +Beware of gross feeders. They are a menace to their fellow-creatures. +Will they not act, on occasion, even as they feed? Assuredly they will. +Everybody acts as he feeds. + +Then lingered on the departure platform, comparing its tone with that of +similar places in England. A mournful little crowd is collected here. +Conscripts, untidy-looking fellows, are leaving--perhaps for ever. They +climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and +endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their +farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent. +The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation, +the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they +are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the +sisters and children, who give themselves away pretty freely. An +infectious thing, this shedding of tears. One little girl, loth to part +from that big brother, contrived by her wailing to break down the +reserve of the entire family.... + +It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Rome is mirthless. + +There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a sweet old lady +friend who said to me, in years gone by: + +"When next you go to Rome, please let me know if it is still raining +there." + +It was here that she celebrated her honeymoon--an event which must have +taken place in the 'sixties or thereabouts. She is dead now. So is her +husband, the prince of moralizers, the man who first taught me how +contemptible the human race may become. Doubtless he expired with some +edifying platitude on his lips and is deblatterating them at this very +moment in Heaven, where the folks may well be seasoned to that kind of +talk. + +Let us be charitable, now that he is gone! + +To have lived so long with a person of this incurable respectability +would have soured any ordinary woman's temper. Hers it refined; it made +her into something akin to an angel. He was her cross; she bore him +meekly and not, I like to think, without extracting a kind of sly, dry +fun out of the horrible creature. A past master in the art of gentle +domestic nagging, he made everybody miserable as long as he lived, and I +would give something for an official assurance that he is now miserable +himself. He was a worm; a good man in the worse sense of the word. It +was the contrast--the contrast between his gentle clothing and ungentle +heart, which moved my spleen. What a self-sufficient and inhuman brood +were the Victorians of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty; +a brood that has never yet been called by its proper name. Victorians? +Why, not altogether. The mischief has its roots further back. Addison, +for example, is a fair specimen. + +Why say unkind things about a dead man? He cannot answer back. + +Upon my word, I am rather glad to think he cannot. The last thing I ever +wish to hear again is that voice of his. And what a face: gorgonizing in +its assumption of virtue! Now the whole species is dying out, and none +too soon. Graft abstract principles of conduct upon natures devoid of +sympathy and you produce a monster; a sanctimonious fish; the coldest +beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affinities were with +Robespierre and Torquemada--both of them actuated by the purest +intentions and without a grain of self-interest: pillars of integrity. +What floods of tears would have been spared to mankind, had they only +been a little corrupt! How corrupt a person of principles? He lacks the +vulgar yet divine gift of imagination. + +That is what these Victorians lacked. They would never have subscribed +to this palpable truth: that justice is too good for some men, and not +good enough for the rest. They cultivated the Cato or Brutus tone; they +strove to be stern old Romans--Romans of the sour and imperfect +Republic; for the Empire, that golden blossom, was to them a period of +luxury and debauch. Nero--most reprehensible! It was not Nero, however, +but our complacent British reptiles, who filled the prisons with the +wailing of young children, and hanged a boy of thirteen for stealing a +spoon. I wish I had it here, that book which everybody ought to read, +that book by George Ives on the History of Penal Methods--it would help +me to say a few more polite things. The villainies of the virtuous: who +shall recount them? I can picture this vastly offensive old man acting +as judge on that occasion and then, his "duties towards society" +accomplished, being driven home in his brougham to thank Providence for +one of those succulent luncheons, the enjoyment of which he invariably +managed to ruin for every one except himself. + +God rest his soul, the unspeakable phenomenon! He ought to have +throttled himself at his mother's breast. Only a woman imbued with +ultra-terrestrial notions of humour could have tolerated such an +infliction. Anybody else would have poisoned him in the name of +Christian charity and common sense, and earned the gratitude of +generations yet unborn. + +Well, well! R.I.P.... + +On returning to Rome after a considerable absence--a year or so--a few +things have to be done for the sake of auld lang syne ere one may again +feel at home. Rites must be performed. I am to take my fill of memories +and conjure up certain bitter-sweet phantoms of the past. Meals must be +taken in definite restaurants; a certain church must be entered; a sip +of water taken from a fountain--from one, and one only (no easy task, +this, for most of the fountains of Rome are so constructed that, however +abundant their flow, a man may die of thirst ere obtaining a mouthful); +I must linger awhile at the very end, the dirty end, of the horrible Via +Principe Amedeo and, again, at a corner near the Portico d'Ottavia; +perambulate the Protestant cemetery, Monte Mario, and a few quite +uninteresting modern sites; the Acqua Acetosa, a stupid place, may on no +account be forgotten, nor yet that bridge on the Via Nomentana--not the +celebrated bridge but another one, miles away in the Campagna, the +dreariest of little bridges, in the dreariest of landscapes. Why? It has +been hallowed by the tread of certain feet. + +Thus, by a kind of sacred procedure, I immerge myself into those old +stones and recreate my peculiar Roman mood. It is rather ridiculous. +Tradition wills it. + +To-day came the turn of the Protestant cemetery. I have a view of this +place, taken about the 'seventies--I wish I could reproduce it here, to +show how this spot has been ruined. A woman who looks after the +enclosure was in a fairly communicative mood; we had a few minutes' +talk, among the tombs. What a jumble of names and nationalities, by the +way! What a mixed assemblage lies here, in this foreign earth! One would +like to write down all their names, shake them in a bag, pick out fifty +at random and compose their biographies. It would be a curious +cosmopolitan document. + +They have now a dog, the woman tells me, a ferocious dog who roams among +the tombs, since several brass plates have been wrenched off by +marauders. At night? I inquire. At night. At night.... Slowly, warily, I +introduce the subject of fiammelle. It is not a popular theme. No! She +has heard of such things, but never seen them; she never comes here at +night, God forbid! + +What are fiammelle? Little flames, will-o'-the-wisps which hover about +the graves at such hours, chiefly in the hot months or after autumn +rains. It is a well-authenticated apparition; the scientist Bessel saw +one; so did Casanova, here at Rome. He describes it as a pyramidal flame +raised about four feet from the ground which seemed to accompany him as +he walked along. He saw the same thing later, at Cesena near Bologna. +There was some correspondence on the subject (started by Dr. Herbert +Snow) in the Observer of December 1915 and January 1916. Many are the +graveyards I visited in this country and in others with a view to +"satisfying my curiosity," as old Ramage would say, on this point, and +all in vain. My usual luck! The fiammelle, on that particular evening, +were coy--they were never working. They are said to be frequently +observed at Scanno in the Abruzzi province, and the young secretary of +the municipality there, Mr. L. O., will tell you of our periodical +midnight visits to the local cemetery. Or go to Licenza and ask for my +intelligent friend the schoolmaster. What he does not know about +fiammelle is not worth knowing. Did he not, one night, have a veritable +fight with a legion of them which the wind blew from the graveyard into +his face? Did he not return home trembling all over and pale as +death?... + +Here reposes, among many old friends, the idealist Malwida von +Meysenbug; that sculptured medallion is sufficient to proclaim her +whereabouts to those who still remember her. It is good to pause awhile +and etheralize oneself in the neighbourhood of her dust. She lived a +quiet life in an old brown house, since rebuilt, that overlooks the +Coliseum, on whose comely ellipse and blood-stained history she loved to +pasture eyes and imagination. Often I walked thence with her, in those +sparkling mornings, up the Palatine hill, to stroll about the ilexes and +roses in view of the Forum, to listen to the blackbirds, or the siskins +in that pine tree. She was of the same type, the same ethical parentage, +as the late Mathilde Blind, a woman of benignant and refined enthusiasm, +full of charity to the poor and, in those later days, almost +shadowy--remote from earth. She had saturated herself with Rome, for +whose name she professed a tremulous affection untainted by worldly +considerations such as mine; she loved its "persistent spiritual life"; +it was her haven of rest. So, while her arm rested lightly on mine, we +wandered about those gardens, the saintly lady and myself; her mind +dwelling, maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure and the +part she came nigh to playing in the history of Europe, while mine was +lost in a maze of vulgar love-adventures, several of which came nigh to +making me play a part in the police-courts of Rome. + +What may have helped to cement our strange friendship was my +acquaintance, at that time, with the German metaphysicians. She must +have thought me a queer kind of Englishman to discuss with such +familiarity the tenets of these cloudy dreamers. Malwida loved them in a +bland and childlike fashion. She would take one of their dicta as a +starting-point--establish herself, so to speak, within this or that +nebular hypothesis--and argue thence in academic fashion for the sake of +intellectual exercise and the joy of seeing where, after a thousand +twists and turnings, you were finally deposited. A friend of ours--some +American--had lately published a Socratic dialogue entitled "The +Prison"; it formed a fruitful theme of conversation. [9] Nietzsche was +also then to the fore, and it pleases me to recollect that even in those +days I detected his blind spot; his horror of those English materialists +and biologists. I did not pause to consider why he hated them so +ardently; I merely noted, more in sorrow than in anger, this fact which +seemed to vitiate his whole outlook--as indeed it does. Now I know the +reason. Like all preacher-poets, he is anthropocentric. To his way of +thinking the human mind is so highly organized, so different from that +of beasts, that not all the proofs of ethnology and physiology would +ever induce him to accept the ape-ancestry of man. This monkey-business +is too irksome and humiliating to be true; he waives it aside, with a +sneer at the disgusting arguments of those Englishmen. + +That is what happens to men who think that "the spirit alone lives; the +life of the spirit alone is true life." A philosopher weighs the value +of evidence; he makes it his business, before discoursing of the origin +of human intellect, to learn a little something of its focus, the brain; +a little comparative anatomy. These men are not philosophers. +Metaphysicians are poets gone wrong. Schopenhauer invents a "genius of +the race"--there you have his cloven hoof, the pathetic fallacy, the +poet's heritage. There are things in Schopenhauer which make one blush +for philosophy. The day may dawn when this man will be read not for what +he says, but for how he says it; he being one of the few of his race who +can write in their own language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon +a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did. So I remember +one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks" +propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it, +wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation. [10] + +He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions +into the inane. + +And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who scorned honest work +and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his +borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the +spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it +was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk +most plausibly--art, music, society gossip--everything you please; +everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He +sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully +contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody, +like himself, found the world a good place to inhabit. That, I believe, +was the secret of his success. He had a divine intuition for discovering +the soft spots of his neighbours and utilizing the knowledge, in a frank +and gentlemanly fashion, for his own advantage. It was he who invented a +saying which I have since encountered more than once: "Never run after +an omnibus or a woman. There will be another one round in a minute." And +also this: "Never borrow from a man who really expects to be paid back. +You may lose a friend." + +What lady is he now living on? + +"A good-looking fellow like me--why should I work? Tell me that. +Especially with so many rich ladies in the world aching for somebody to +relieve them of their spare cash?" + +"The wealthy woman," he once told me, after I had begun to know him more +intimately, "is a great danger to society. She is so corruptible! People +make her spend money on all kinds of empty and even harmful projects. +Think of the mischief that is done, in politics alone, by the money of +these women. Think of all the religious fads that spring up and are kept +going in a state of prosperity because some woman or other has not been +instructed as to the proper use of her cheque-book. I foresee a positive +decline ahead of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We +must club together, we reasonable men, and put an end to the scandal. +These women need trimmers; an army of trimmers. I have done a good deal +of trimming in my day. Of course it involves some trouble and a close +degree of intimacy, now and then. But a sensible man will always know +where to draw the line." + +"Where do you draw it?" + +"At marriage." + +Whether he ever dared to tap the venerable Malwida for a loan? Likely +enough. He often played with her feelings in a delicate style, and his +astuteness in such matters was only surpassed by his shamelessness. He +was capable of borrowing a fiver from the Pope--or at least of +attempting the feat; of pocketing some hungry widow's last mite and +therewith purchasing a cigarette before her eyes. All these sums he took +as his due, by right of conquest. Whether he ever "stung" Malwida? I +should have liked to see the idealist's face when confronted in that +cheery off-hand manner with the question whether she happened to have +five hundred francs to spare. + +"No? Whatever does it matter, my dear Madame de Meysenbug? Perhaps I +shall be more fortunate another day. But pray don't put yourself out for +an extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending money--can't +live without it, can one?--and sometimes, though you might not believe +it, on quite worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like to take +you to see one day; the father was cut to pieces in some wretched +agricultural machine, the mother is dying in a hospital for consumption, +and the six little children, all shivering under one blanket--well, +never mind! One does what one can, in a small way. That was an +interesting lecture, wasn't it, on Friday? He made a fine point in what +he said about the relation of the Ego to the Cosmos. All the same, I +thought he was a little hard on Fichte. But then, you know, I always +felt a sort of tenderness for Fichte. And did you notice that the room +was absolutely packed? I doubt whether that would have been the case in +any other European capital. This must be the secret charm of Rome, don't +you think so? This is what draws one to the Eternal City and keeps one +here and makes one love the place in spite of a few trivial +annoyances--this sense of persistent spiritual life." + +The various sums derived from ladies were regarded merely as +adventitious income. I found out towards the end of our acquaintance, +when I really began to understand his "method," that he had a second +source of revenue, far smaller but luckily "fixed." It was drawn from +the other sex, from that endless procession of men passing through Rome +and intent upon its antiquities. Rome, he explained, was the very place +for him. + +"This is what keeps me here and makes me love the place in spite of a +few trivial annoyances--this persistent coming and going of tourists. +Everybody on the move, all the time! A man must be daft if he cannot +talk a little archaeology or something and make twenty new friends a +year among such a jolly crowd of people. They are so grateful for having +things explained to them. Another lot next year! And there are really +good fellows among them; fellows, mind you, with brains; fellows with +money. From each of those twenty he can borrow, say, ten pounds; what is +that to a rich stranger who comes here for a month or so with the +express purpose of getting rid of his money? Of course I am only talking +about the medium rich; one need never apply to the very rich--they are +always too poor. Well, that makes about two hundred a year. It's not +much, but, thank God, it's safe as a house and it supplements the +ladies. Women are so distressingly precarious, you know. You cannot +count on a woman unless you have her actually under your thumb. Under +your thumb, my boy; under your thumb. Don't ever forget it." + +I have never forgotten it. + +Where is he now? Is he dead? A gulf intervenes between that period and +this. What has become of him? You might as well ask me about his +contemporary, the Piccadilly goat. I have no idea what became of the +Piccadilly goat, though I know pretty well what would become of him, +were he alive at this moment. + +Mutton-chops. [11] + +Yet I can make a guess at what is happening to my red-haired friend. He +is not dead, but sleepeth. He is being lovingly tended, in a crapulous +old age, by one of the hundred ladies he victimized. He takes it as a +matter of course. I can hear him chuckling dreamily, as she smooths his +pillow for him. He will die in her arms unrepentant, and leave her to +pay for the funeral. + +"Work!" he once said. "To Hell with work. The man who talks to me about +work is my enemy." + +One sunny morning during this period there occurred a thunderous +explosion which shattered my windows and many others in Rome. A +gunpowder magazine had blown up, somewhere in the Campagna; the +concussion of air was so mighty that it broke glass, they said, even at +Frascati. + +We drove out later to view the site. It resembled a miniature volcano. + +There I left the party and wandered alone into one of those tortuous +stream-beds that intersect the plain, searching for a certain kind of +crystal which may be found in such places, washed out of the soil by +wintry torrents. I specialized in minerals in those days--minerals and +girls. Dangerous and unprofitable studies! Even at that tender age I +seem to have dimly discerned what I now know for certain: that dangerous +and unprofitable objects are alone worth pursuing. The taste for +minerals died out later, though I clung to it half-heartedly for a long +while, Dr. Johnston-Lavis, Professor Knop and others fanning the dying +embers. One day, all of a sudden, it was gone. I found myself riding +somewhere in Asiatic Turkey past a precipice streaked in alternate veins +of purest red and yellow jasper, with chalcedony in between: a discovery +which in former days would have made me half delirious with joy. It left +me cold. I did not even dismount to examine the site. "Farewell to +stones" I thought.... + +Often we lingered by the Fontana Trevi to watch the children disporting +themselves in the water and diving for pennies--a pretty scene which has +now been banished from the politer regions of Rome (the town has grown +painfully proper). There, at the foot of that weedy and vacuous and yet +charming old Neptune--how perfectly he suits his age!--there, if you +look, you will see certain gigantic leaves sculptured into the rock. I +once overheard a German she-tourist saying to her companion, as she +pointed to these things: "Ist doch sonderbar, wie das Wasser so die +Pflanzen versteinert." She thought they were natural plants petrified by +the water's action. + +What happened yesterday was equally surprising. We were sitting at the +Arch of Constantine and I was telling my friend about the Coliseum hard +by and how, not long ago, it was a thicket of trees and flowers, looking +less like a ruin than some wooded mountain. Now the Coliseum is surely +one of the most famous structures in the world. Even they who have never +been to the spot would recognize it from those myriad +reproductions--especially, one would think, an Italian. Nevertheless, +while thus discoursing, a man came up to us, a well-dressed man, who +politely inquired: + +"Could you tell me the name of this castello?" + +I am glad to think that some account of the rich and singular flora of +the Coliseum has been preserved by Deakin and Sebastiani, and possibly +by others. I could round their efforts by describing the fauna of the +Coliseum. The fauna of the Coliseum--especially after 11 p.m.--would +make a readable book; readable but hardly printable. + +These little local studies are not without charm. Somebody, one day, may +be induced to tell us about the fauna of Trafalgar Square. He should +begin with a description of the horse standing on three legs and gazing +inanely out of those human eyes after the fashion of its classic +prototype; then pass on to the lions beloved of our good Richard +Jefferies which look like puppy-dogs modelled in cotton-wool (why did +the sculptor not take a few lessons in lions from the sand-artist on +Yarmouth beach?), and conclude by dwelling as charitably as possible on +the human fauna--that droll little man, barely discernible, perched on +the summit of his lead pencil.... + +There was a slight earthquake at sunrise. I felt nothing.... + +And, appropriately enough, I encountered this afternoon M. M., that most +charming of persons, who, like Shelley and others, has discovered Italy +to be a "paradise of exiles." His friends may guess whom I mean when I +say that M. M. is connoisseur of earthquakes social and financial; his +existence has been punctuated by them to such an extent that he no +longer counts events from dates in the ordinary calendar, from birthdays +or Christmas or Easter, but from such and such a disaster affecting +himself. Each has left him seemingly more mellow than the last. Just +then, however, he was in pensive mood, his face all puckered into +wrinkles as he glanced upon the tawny flood rolling beneath that old +bridge. There he stood, leaning over the parapet, all by himself. He +turned his countenance aside on seeing me, to escape detection, but I +drew nigh none the less. + +"Go away," he said. "Don't disturb me just now. I am watching the little +fishes. Life is so complicated! Let us pray. I have begun a new novel +and a new love-affair." + +"God prosper both!" I replied, and began to move off. + +"Thanks. But supposing the publisher always objects to your choicest +paragraphs?" + +"I am not altogether surprised, if they are anything like what you once +read to me out of your unexpurgated 'House of the Seven Harlots.' Why +not try another firm? They might be more accommodating. Try mine." + +He shook his head dubiously. + +"They are all alike. It is with publishers as with wives: one always +wants somebody else's. And when you have them, where's the difference? +Ah, let us pray. These little fishes have none of our troubles." + +I inquired about the new romance. At first he refused to disclose +anything. Then he told me it was to be entitled "With Christ at +Harvard," and that it promised some rather novel situations. I shall +look forward to its appearance. + +What good things one could relate of M. M., but for the risk of +incurring his wrath! It is a thousand pities, I often tell him, that he +is still alive; I am yearning to write his biography, and cannot afford +to wait for his dissolution. + +"When I am dead," he always says. + +"By that time, my dear M., I shall be in the same fix myself." + +"Try to survive. You may find it worth your while, when you come to look +into my papers. You don't know half. And I may be taking that little +sleeping-draught of mine any one of these days...." [12] + +Mused long that night, and not without a certain envy, on the lot of M. +M. and other earthquake-connoisseurs--or rather on the lot of that true +philosopher, if he exists, who, far from being damaged by such +convulsions, distils therefrom subtle matter of mirth, I have only known +one single man--it happened to be a woman, an Austrian--who approached +this ideal of splendid isolation. She lived her own life, serenely +happy, refusing to acquiesce in the delusions and conventionalities of +the crowd; she had ceased to trouble herself about neighbours, save as a +source of quiet amusement; a state of affairs which had been brought +about by a succession of benevolent earthquakes that refined and +clarified her outlook. + +Such disasters, obviously, have their uses. They knock down obsolete +rubbish and enable a man to start building anew. The most sensitive +recluse cannot help being a member of society. As such, he unavoidably +gathers about him a host of mere acquaintances, good folks who waste his +time dulling the edge of his wit and infecting him with their orthodoxy. +Then comes the cataclysm. He loses, let us say, all his money, or makes +a third appearance in the divorce courts. He can then at last (so one of +them expressed it to me) "revise his visiting-list," an operation which +more than counterbalances any damage from earthquakes. For these same +good folks are vanished, the scandal having scattered them to the winds. +He begins to breathe again, and employ his hours to better purpose. If +he loses both money and reputation he must feel, I should think, as +though treading on air. The last fools gone! And no sage lacks friends. + +Consider well your neighbour, what an imbecile he is. Then ask yourself +whether it be worth while paying any attention to what he thinks of you. +Life is too short, and death the end of all things. Life must be lived, +not endured. Were the day twice as long as it is, a man might find it +diverting to probe down into that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try +to reach some common root of feeling other than those physiological +needs which we share with every beast of earth. Diverting; hardly +profitable. It would be like looking for a flea in a haystack, or a joke +in the Bible. They can perhaps be found; at the expense of how much +trouble! + +Therefore the sage will go his way, prepared to find himself growing +ever more out of sympathy with vulgar trends of opinion, for such is the +inevitable development of thoughtful and self-respecting minds. He +scorns to make proselytes among his fellows: they are not worth it. He +has better things to do. While others nurse their griefs, he nurses his +joy. He endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and to be +true to that self when found--a worthy and ample occupation for a +life-time. The happiness-of-the-greatest-number, of those who pasture on +delusions: what dreamer is responsible for this eunuchry? Mill, was it? +Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest number were not necessarily the +least-intelligent! As if their happiness were not necessarily +incompatible with that of the sage! Why foster it? He is a poor +philosopher, who cuts his own throat. Away with their ghosts; +de-spiritualize yourself; what you cannot find on earth is not worth +seeking. + +That charming M. M., I fear, will never compass this clarity of vision, +this perfect de-spiritualization and contempt of illusions. He will +never remain curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in +nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has inherited that all +too common taint of psychasthenia (miscalled neurasthenia); he +confesses, moreover,--like other men of strong carnal proclivities--to +certain immaterial needs and aspirations after "the beyond." Not one of +these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but has his Achilles heel: a +mental crotchet or physical imperfection to mar the worldly perspective. +Not one of them, at close of life, will sit beside some open window in +view of a fair landscape and call up memories of certain moments which +no cataclysms have taken from him; not one will lay them in the balance +and note how they outweigh, in their tiny grains of gold, the dross of +an age of other men's lives. Not one of them! They will be preoccupied, +for the most part, with unseasonable little concerns. Pleasant folk, +none the less. And sufficiently abundant in Italy. Altogether, the +Englishman here is as often an intenser being than the home product. +Alien surroundings awaken fresh and unexpected notes in his nature. His +fibres seem to lie more exposed; you have glimpses into the man's +anatomy. There is something hostile in this sunlight to the hazy or +spongy quality which saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the +sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will also meet with dull +persons; Rome is full of them, but, the type being easier to detect +among a foreign environment, there is still less difficulty in evading +them.... + +Thus I should have had no compunction, some nights ago, in making myself +highly objectionable to Mr. P. G. who has turned up here on some mission +connected with the war--so he says, and it may well be true; no +compunction whatever, had that gentleman been in his ordinary social +state. Mr. P. G., the acme of British propriety, inhabiting a house, a +mansion, on the breezy heights of north London, was on that occasion +decidedly drunk. "Indulging in a jag," he would probably have called it. +He tottered into a place where I happened to be sitting, having lost his +friends, he declared; and soon began pouring into my ear, after the +confidential manner of a drunkard, a flood of low talk, which if I +attempted to set it down here, would only result in my being treated to +the same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with his "choicest +paragraphs." It was highly instructive--the contrast between that +impeccable personality which he displays at home and his present state. +I wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a few shreds of +what he said--just a few shreds; they would have seen a new light on +dear daddy. + +In vino veritas. Ever avid of experimentum in some corpore vili and +determined to reach the bed-rock of his gross mentality, I plied him +vigorously with drink, and was rewarded. It was rich sport, unmasking +this Philistine and thanking God, meanwhile, that I was not like unto +him. We are all lost sheep; and none the worse for that. Yet whoso is +liable, however drunk, to make an exhibition of himself after the +peculiar fashion of Mr. P. G., should realize that there is something +fundamentally wrong with his character and take drastic measures of +reform--measures which would include, among others, a total abstention +from alcohol. Old Aristotle, long ago, laboured to define wherein +consisted the trait known as gentlemanliness; others will have puzzled +since his day, for we have bedaubed ourselves with so thick a coating of +manner and phrase that many a cad will pass for something better. Well, +here is the test. Unvarnish your man; make him drink, and listen. That +was my procedure with P. G. Esquire. I listened to his outpouring of +inanity and obscenity and, listening sympathetically, like some +compassionate family doctor, could not help asking myself: Is such a man +to be respected, even when sober? Be that as it may, he gave me to +understand why some folk are rightly afraid of exposing, under the +influence of drink, the bête humaine which lurks below their skin of +decency. His language would have terrified many people. Me it rejoiced. +I would not have missed that entertainment for worlds. He finally wanted +to have a fight, because I refused to accompany him to a certain place +of delights, the address of which--I might have given him a far better +one--had been scrawled on the back of a crumpled envelope by some +cabman. Unable to stand on his legs, what could he hope to do there? + + + + +Olevano + +I have loafed into Olevano. + +A thousand feet below my window, and far away, lies the gap between the +Alban and Volscian hills; veiled in mists, the Pontine marches extend +beyond, and further still--discernible only to the eye of faith--the +Tyrrhenian. + +The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable grace. It recalls +Etna, as viewed from Taormina. How the mountain cleaves to earth, how +reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line! +Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on its +lower slope. Standing out against the sky, they can be seen at all hours +of the day, whereas the dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on the green +plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades out of sight after midday. + +Hard by, on your right, are the craggy heights of Capranica. Tradition +has it that Michael Angelo was in exile up there, after doing something +rather risky. What had he done? He crucified his model, desirous, like a +true artist, to observe and reproduce faithfully in marble the muscular +contractions and facial agony of such a sufferer. To crucify a man: this +was going almost too far, even for the Pope of that period, who seems to +have been an unusually sensitive pontiff--or perhaps the victim was a +particular friend of his. However that may be, he waxed wroth and +banished the conscientious sculptor in disgrace to this lonely mountain +village, there to expiate his sins, for a day or two.... + +One sleeps badly here. Those nightingales--they are worse than the +tram-cars in town. They begin earlier. They make more noise. Surely +there is a time for everything? Will certain birds never learn to sing +at reasonable hours? + +A word as to these nightingales. One of them elects to warble, in +deplorably full-throated ease, immediately below my bedroom window. When +this particular fowl sets up its din at about 3.45 a.m. it is a +veritable explosion; an ear-rending, nerve-shattering explosion of +noise. I use that word "noise" deliberately. For it is not music--not +until your ears are grown accustomed to it. + +I know a little something about music, having studied the art with +considerable diligence for a number of years. Impossible to enumerate +all the composers and executants on various instruments, the conductors +and opera-singers and ballet-girls with whom I was on terms of +familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps I am the only person now +alive who has shaken hands with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with +Beethoven and heard his voice; all of which may appear when I come to +indite my musical memoirs. I have written a sonata in four movements, +opus 643, hitherto unpublished, and played the organ during divine +service to a crowded congregation. Furthermore I performed, not at my +own suggestion, his insipid Valse Caprice to the great Antoine +Rubinstein, who was kind enough to observe: "Yes, yes. Quite good. But I +rather doubt whether you could yet risk playing that in a concert." And +in the matter of sheer noise I am also something of an expert, having +once, as an infant prodigy, broken five notes in a single masterly +rendering of Liszt's polonaise in E Major--I think it is E +Major--whereupon my teacher, himself a pupil of Liszt, genially +remarked: "Now don't cry, and don't apologize. A polonaise like yours is +worth a piano." I set these things down with modest diffidence, solely +in order to establish my locus standi as a person who might be expected +to know the difference between sound and noise. As such, I have no +hesitation in saying that the first three bars of that nightingale +performance are, to sleeping ears, not music. They break upon the +stillness with the crash of Judgment Day. + +And every night the same scare. It causes me to start up, bathed in +sudden perspiration, out of my first, and best, and often only sleep, +with the familiar feeling that something awful is happening. Windows +seem to rattle, plaster drops from the ceiling--an earthquake? Lord, no. +Nothing so trivial. Nothing so brief. It is that blasted bird clearing +its throat for a five hours' entertainment. Let it not be supposed that +the song of these southerners bears any resemblance to that of an +English nightingale. I could stand a hatful of English nightingales in +my bedroom; they would lull me to sleep with their anaemic whispers. You +might as well compare the voice of an Italian costermonger, the crowing +of a cock, the braying of a local donkey, with their representatives in +the north--those thin trickles of sound, shadowy as the squeakings of +ghosts. Something will have to be done about those nightingales unless I +am to find my way into a sanatorium. For hardly is this bird started on +its work before five or six others begin to shout in emulation--a little +further off, I am glad to say, but still near enough to be inconvenient; +still near enough to be reached by a brick from this window----A brick. +Methinks I begin to see daylight.... + +Meanwhile one can snatch a little rest out of doors, in the afternoon. A +delectable path, for example, runs up behind the cemetery, bordered by +butterfly orchids and lithospermum and aristolochia and other plants +worthy of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with +views on either side. Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some +rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of +nightingales--soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole +among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of +some wryneck in the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet +time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen are all at the front. +I kicked up a partridge along this track two days ago. + +Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant but hard to see. They sit +close, relying on their protective colour. And it is the same with the +tree-creepers. I have heard Englishmen say there are no tree-creepers in +Italy. The olive groves are well stocked with them (there are numbers +even in the Borghese Gardens in Rome), but you must remain immovable as +a rock in order to see them; for they are yet shyer, more silent, more +fond of interposing the tree-trunk between yourself and them, than those +at home. Mouse-like in hue, in movement and voice--a strange case of +analogous variation.... + +As to this Scalambra, this mountain whose bleak grey summit overtops +everything near Olevano, I could soon bear the sight of it no longer. It +seemed to shut out the world; one must up and glance over the edge, to +see what is happening on the other side. I looked for a guide and +porter, for somebody more solid than Giulio, who is almost an infant; +none could be found. Men are growing scarce as the Dodo hereabouts, on +account of the war. So Giulio came, though he had never made the ascent. + +Now common sense, to say nothing of a glance at the map, would suggest +the proper method of approach: by the village of Serrano, the Saint +Michael hermitage, and so up. Scouting this plan, I attacked the +mountain about half-way between that village and Rojate. I cannot +recommend my route. It was wearisome to the last degree and absolutely +shadeless save for a small piece of jungle clothing a gulley, hung with +myriads of caterpillars and not worth mentioning as an incident in that +long walk. No excitement--not the faintest chance, so far as I could +see, of breaking one's neck, and uphill all the time over limestone. One +never seems to get any nearer. This Scalambra, I soon discovered, is one +of those artful mountains which defend their summits by thrusting out +escarpments with valleys in between; you are kept at arm's length, as it +were, by this arrangement of the rock, which is invisible at a distance. +And when at last you set foot on the real ridge and climb laboriously to +what seems to be the top--lo! there is another peak a little further +off, obviously a few feet higher. Up you go, only to discover a third, +perhaps a few inches higher still. Alpine climbers know these tricks. + +We reached the goal none the less and there lay, panting and gasping; +while an eagle, a solitary eagle with tattered wings, floated overhead +in the cloudless sky. + +The descent to Rojate under that blazing sun was bad enough. My flask +had been drained to the dregs long ago, and the Scalambra, true to its +limestone tradition, had not supplied even a drop of water. Arriving at +the village at about two in the afternoon, we found it deserted; +everybody enjoying their Sunday nap. Rojate is a dirty hole. The water +was plainly not to be trusted; it might contain typhoid germs, and I was +responsible for Giulio's health; wine would be safer, we agreed. There, +in a little shop near the church--a dark and cool place, the first shade +we had entered for many hours--we drank without ever growing less +thirsty. We felt like cinders, so hot, so porous, that the liquid seemed +not only to find its way into the legitimate receptacle but to be +obliged to percolate, by some occult process of capillarity, the +remotest regions of the body. As time went on, the inhabitants dropped +in after their slumbers and kept us company. We told our adventures, +drank to the health of the Allies one by one and several times over; and +it was not until we had risen to our feet and passed once more into the +sunshine of the square that we suddenly felt different from what we +thought we felt. + +The first indication was conveyed by Giulio, who called upon the +populace of Rojate, there assembled, to bear solemn witness to the fact +that I was his one and only friend, and that he would nevermore abandon +me--a sentiment in which I stoutly concurred. (A fellow-feeling makes us +wondrous blind.) Other symptoms followed. His hat, for example, which +had hitherto behaved in exemplary fashion, now refused to remain +steadily balanced on his head; it took some first-class gymnastics to +prevent it from falling to the ground. In fact, while I confined myself +to the minor part of Silenus--my native role--this youngster gave a +noteworthy representation of the Drunken Faun.... + +Now I see no harm in appreciating wine up to a certain point, and am +consoled to observe that Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., was of the same +way of thinking. He says so himself, and there is no reason for doubting +his word. He frankly admits, for instance, that he enjoys the stuff +called moscato "with great zest." He samples the Falernian vintage and +pronounces it to be "particularly good, and not degenerated." Arrived at +Cutro, he is not averse to reviving his spirits with "a pretty fair +modicum of wine." He also lets slip--significant detail--the fact that +Dr. Henderson was one of his friends, and that he travelled about with +him. You may judge a man by the company he keeps. Who was this Dr. +Henderson? He was the author of "The History of Ancient Wines." Old +Henderson, I should say, could be trusted to know something of local +vintages. + +And so far good. + +At Licenza, however, Ramage tells us that he "got glorious on the wine +of Horace's Sabine farm." I do not know what he means by this +expression, which seems to be purposely ambiguous; in any case, it does +not sound very nice. At another place, again, he and his entertainer +consumed some excellent liquor "in considerable quantity"--so he avows; +adding that "it was long past midnight ere we closed our bacchanalian +orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that he was happy to have +made my acquaintance." Note the lame and colourless close of that +sentence: he ended by stating. One always ends that way after +bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss over the escapade +with such disingenuous language. + +We can guess what really took place. It was something like what happened +at Rojate. Did not the curly-haired Giulio end by "stating" something to +the same effect? + +I cannot make up my mind whether to be pleased with this particular +trait in friend Ramage's character. For let it never be forgotten that +our traveller was a young man at the time. He says so himself, and there +is no reason for doubting his word. Was he acting as beseemed his years? + +I am not more straight-laced than many people, yet I confess it always +gives me a kind of twinge to see a young man yielding to intemperance of +any kind. There is something incongruous in the spectacle, if not +actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt to associate that +time of life with stern resolve. A young man, it appears to me, should +hold himself well in hand. Youth has so much to spare! Youth can afford +to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming ahead, it should be a +period of ideals, of self-restraint and self-discipline, of earnestness +of purpose. How well the Greek Anthology praises "Temperance, the nurse +of Youth!" The divine Plato lays it down that youngsters should not +touch wine at all, since it is not right to heap fire on fire. He adds +that older men like ourselves may indulge therein as an ally against the +austerity of their years--agreeing, therefore, with Theophrastus who +likewise recommends it for the "natural moroseness" of age. + +Observe in this connection what happened to Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., +at Trebisacce. Here was a poor old coastguard who had been taken +prisoner by the Corsairs thirty years earlier, carried to Algiers, and +afterwards ransomed. Having "nothing better to do" (says our author) "I +confess I furnished him with somewhat more wine than was exactly +consistent with propriety"; with so liberal a quantity, indeed, that the +coastguard became quite "obstreperous in his mirth"; whereupon Ramage +hops on his mule and leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young +fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And why? Because he has +"nothing better to do." [13] It is not remarkably edifying. True, he +afterwards makes a kind of apology for "causing my brother to sin by +over-indulgence...." + +But if we close our eyes to the fact that Ramage, when he gave way to +these excesses, was a young man and ought to have known better, what an +agreeable companion we find him! + +He never rails at anything. Had I been subjected to half the annoyances +he endured, my curses would have been loud and long. Under such +provocation, Ramage contents himself with reproving his tormentors in +rounded phrases of oratio obliqua which savour strongly of those Latin +classics he knew so well. What he says of the countryfolk is not only +polite but true, that their virtues are their own, while their vices +have been fostered by the abuses of tyranny. "Whatever fault one may +find with this people for their superstition and ignorance, there is a +loveableness in their character which I am not utilitarian enough in my +philosophy to resist." This comes of travelling off the beaten track and +with an open mind; it comes of direct contact. When one remembers that +he wrote in 1828 and was derived from a bigoted stock, his religious +tolerance is refreshing--astonishing. He studies the observances of the +poorer classes with sympathetic eye and finds that they are "pious to a +degree to which I am afraid we must grant that we have no pretensions." +That custom of suspending votive offerings in churches he does not think +"worthy of being altogether condemned or ridiculed. The feeling is the +same that induces us, on recovery from severe illness, to give thanks to +Almighty God, either publicly in church or privately in our closets." +How many Calvinists of to-day would write like this? + +We could do with more of these sensible and humane reflections, but +unfortunately he is generally too "pressed for time" to indulge in them. +That mania of hustling through the country.... + +One morning he finds himself at Foggia, with the intention of visiting +Mons Garganus. First of all he must "satisfy his curiosity" about Arpi; +it is ten miles there and back. Leaving Foggia for the second time he +proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and inspects not only this town, +but the site of old Sipontum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, +and later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promontory. About six +miles to the north are the presumable ruins of Merinum; he insists upon +going there, but the boatmen strike work; regretfully he returns to +Manfredonia, arriving at 11 p.m., and having covered on this day some +sixty or seventy miles. What does he do at Manfredonia? He sleeps for +three hours--and then a new hustle begins, in pitch darkness. + +Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he will visit the Siren +Islets. He crosses the ridge and descends to the sea on the other side, +to the so-called Scaricatojo--quite a respectable walk, as any one can +find out for himself. Hence he sails to the larger of the islets, climbs +to the summit and makes some excavations, in the course of which he +observes what I thought I was the first to discover--the substructures +of a noble Roman villa; he also scrambles into King Robert's tower. Then +to the next islet, and up it; then to the third, and up it. After that, +he is tempted to visit the headland of Minerva; he goes there, and +satisfies his curiosity. He must now hence to Capri. He sails across, +and after a little refreshment, walks to the so-called Villa of Jupiter +at the easterly apex of the island. He then rows round the southern +shore and is taken with the idea of a trip to Misenum, twenty miles or +so distant. Arrived there, he climbs to the summit of the cape and +lingers a while--it is pleasant to find him lingering--to examine +something or other. Then he "rushes" down to the boat and bids them row +to Pozzuoli, where he arrives (and no wonder) long after sunset. A good +day's hustle.... + +The ladies made a great impression on his sensitive mind; yet not even +they were allowed to interfere with his plans. At Strongoli the +"sparkling eyes of the younger sister" proved the most attractive object +in the place. He was strongly urged to remain a while and rest from his +fatigues. But no; there were many reasons why he should press forward. +He therefore presses forward. At another place, too, he was waited upon +by his entertainer's three daughters, the youngest of whom was one of +the most entrancing girls he had ever met with--in fact, it was well +that his time was limited, else "I verily believe I should have +committed all kinds of follies." That is Ramage. He parts from his host +with "unfeigned regret"--but--parts. His time is always limited. Bit for +that craze of pressing forward, what fun he could have had! + +Stroll to that grove of oaks crowning a hill-top above the Serpentaro +stream. It has often been described, often painted. It is a corner of +Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in the warm dusk of +southern twilight--when all those tiresome children are at last +asleep--it calls up suggestions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here is a +specimen of the landscape as it used to be. You may encounter during +your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved by their +inaccessibility from the invading axe. "Hands off the Oak!" cries an old +Greek poet. + +The Germans, realizing its picturesque value, bought this parcel of land +and saved the trees from destruction. It was well done. Within, they +have cut certain letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan +sanctity of the place--Germans will do these things; there is no +stopping them; it is part of their crudely expansive temperament--certain +letterings, among other and major horrors, anent the "Law of +the Ever-beautiful" (how truly Teutonic!)--lines, that is, signed by the +poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated 2 May, 1897. Scheffel was a kindly +and erudite old toper, who toped himself into Elysium via countless +quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things; the far-famed +Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit to the Hohentwiel mountain +in search of that golden-tinted natrolite mineral, which was duly found +(I specialized in zeolites during that period). + +Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in 1897? For I attended +his funeral, which took place in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, +a scraggy youth in those days, inherited not only the father's name but +his poetic mantle? Was it he who perpetrated those sententious lines? I +like to think so. That "law of the ever-beautiful" does not smack of the +old man, unless he was more disguised than usual, and having a little +fun with his pedantic countrymen.... + +Climb hence--it is not far--to the village of Civitella, now called +Bellegra, a prehistoric fastness with some traces of "cyclopean" +defences. Those ancients must have had cisterns; inconceivable that +springs should ever have issued from this limestone crag. You can see +the women of to-day fetching water from below, from a spot which I was +too lazy to investigate, where perhaps the soft tertiary rock leans upon +this impervious stuff and allows the liquid to escape into the open. An +unclean place is Bellegra, and loud, like all these Sabine villages, +with the confused crying of little children. That multiple wail of +misery will ring in your ear for days afterwards. They are more +neglected by their mothers than ever, since women now have all the men's +work in the fields to do. They are hungrier than ever, on account of the +war which has imposed real hardships on these agricultural folk; +hardships that seize them by the throat and make them sit down, with +folded hands, in dumb despair: so I have seen them. How many of these +unhappy babies will grow to maturity? + +Death-rate must anyhow be high hereabouts, for nothing is done in the +way of hygiene. In the company of one who knows, I perambulated the +cemetery of Olevano and was astonished at the frequency of tombstones +erected to the young. "Consumption," my friend told me. They scorn +prophylactics. I should not care to send growing children into these +villages, despite their "fine air." Here, at Bellegra, the air must be +fine indeed in winter; too fine for my taste. It lies high, exposed to +every blast of Heaven, and with noble views in all directions. + +Rest awhile, on your homeward march, at the small bridge near Olevano +where the road takes a turn. A few hundred yards up the glen on your +left is a fountain whose waters are renowned for their purity; the +bridge itself is not a favourite spot after sunset; it is haunted by a +most malignant spectre. That adds considerably, in my eyes, to the charm +of the place. Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower. +What recollections does that scent evoke! What hints of summer, after +rain! + +A venerable tree, old as the hills; that last syllable tells its +tale--you may read it in the Sanscrit. A man-loving tree; seldom one +sees an elder by itself, away from human habitations, in the jungle. I +have done so; but in that particular jungle, buried beneath the soil, +were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin to attach itself to the +works of man, to walls and buildings? And why? Does it derive peculiar +sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in +lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks +shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel +wondrously when the plant is set in exposed situations. + +The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use the berries to colour +the wine. A German writer, R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of +Leit-motif for one of his local novels. I met him once by accident, and +am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal and flabbily pompous old +man--straightway my opinion of his books, never very high, fell to zero, +and has there remained. He knew these regions well, and doubtless +sojourned at one time or another at yonder caravanserai-hotel, abandoned +of late, but then filled with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have +since been sacrificed to the war-god. Doubtless he drank wine with them +on that terrace overlooking the brown houses of Olevano, though I +question whether he then paid as much as they are now charging me; +doubtless he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies fronting +the landscape, though I question whether he derived more pleasure from +them than I do.... + +While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards to where, in the +Abruzzi region, the peaks are still shrouded in snow. + +How are they doing our there, at Scanno? Is that driving-road at last +finished? Can the "River Danube" still be heard flowing underground in +the little cave of Saint Martin? Are the thistles of violet and red and +blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as ever? [14] And those legions of +butterflies--do they still hover among the sunny patches in the narrow +vale leading to Mount Terrata? And Frattura, that strange place--what +has happened to Frattura? Built on a fracture, on the rubble of that +shattered mountain which produced the lake lower down, it has probably +crumbled away in the last earthquake. Well I remember Frattura! It was +where the wolf ate the donkey, and where we, in our turn, often +refreshed ourselves in the dim hovel of Ferdinando--never with greater +zest than on the hot downward march from Mount Genzana. Whether those +small purple gentians are still to be found on its summit? And the +emerald lizard on the lower slopes? Whether the eagles still breed on +the neighbouring Montagna di Preccia? They may well be tired of having +their nest plundered year after year. + +What foreigner has older and pleasanter memories of Scanno? I would like +to meet that man, and compare notes. + +And so, glancing over the hills from Bellegra, I sent my thoughts into +those Abruzzi mountains, and registered a vow to revisit Scanno--if only +in order to traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld lang +syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger in that moist nook by +the lake-side where stood the Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if +such it was, of the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly +dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one evening, I listened to +something that might have been said much sooner. Acque Vive.... + +I kept my vow. Our bill at Scanno for wine alone was 189 francs, and for +beer 92 francs; figures which look more formidable than they are and +which I cite only to prove that we--for of course I was not +alone--enjoyed ourselves fairly well during those eighteen days. By the +way, what does Baedeker mean by speaking of the "excellent wines" of +Scanno, where not a drop is grown? He might have said the same of +Aberdeen. + +The season was too late for the thistles, too late for the little +coppers and fritillaries and queens of Spain and commas and all the rest +of that fluttering tribe in the narrow vale leading to Terrata, though +wood-pigeons were still cooing there. Scanno has been spared by the +earthquake which laid low so many other places; it has prospered; +prospered too much for my taste, since those rich smoky tints, +especially of the vaulted interiors, are now disappearing under an +invasion of iron beams and white plaster. The golden duskiness of +Scanno, heightened as it was by the gleaming copper vessels borne on +every young girl's head, will soon be a thing of the past. Young trees +along the road-side--well-chosen trees: limes, maples, willows, elms, +chestnuts, ashes--are likewise doing well and promise pretty effects of +variegated foliage in a few years' time; so are the plantations of pines +in the higher regions of the Genzana. In this matter of afforestation, +Scanno continues its system of draconic severity. It is worth while, in +a country which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of goats on +the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water. The Sagittario stream +is hemmed in by a cunning device of stones contained within bags of +strong wire; it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from +Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you will find they have +been scientifically dammed by the administration, whereas the peasant, +when they overflow and ruin his crops, contents himself with damning +them in quite an amateurish fashion. Which reminds me that I picked up +during this visit, and have added to my collection, a new term of abuse +to be addressed to your father-in-law: Porcaccio d'un cagnaccio! Novel +effects, you perceive, obtained by a mere intensification of colour. + +As to Frattura--yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried to identify +Ferdinando's abode among all that debris. The old man himself escaped +the cataclysm, and now sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden +shanties erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio, of whom +more on p. 171, has died; his place is taken by a worthless vagabond. +Saint Domenico and his serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis +fanum), that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears the +problematical date of 600 A.D.--they are all in their former places. +Mount Velino still glitters over the landscape, for those who climb high +enough to see it. The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the +water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume, still carry those +immense loads of wood on their heads, though payment is considerably +higher than the three half-pence a day which it used to be. + +Enough of Scanno! + +Whoever wishes to leave the place on foot and by an unconventional +route, may go to Sora via Pescasseroli. Adventurous souls will scramble +over the Terrata massif, leaving the summit well on their right, and +descend on its further side; others may wander up the Valle dei Prati +and then, bending to the right along the so-called Via del Campo, mount +upwards past a thronged alp of sheep, over the watershed, and down +through charming valleys of beechen timber. A noble walk, and one that +compares favourably with many Abruzzi excursions. What deserts they +often are, these stretches of arid limestone, voiceless and waterless, +with the raven's croak for your only company! + +I am glad to have seen Pescasseroli, where we arrived at about 9 a.m. +For the rest, it is only one of many such places that have been brought +to a state of degradation by the earthquake, the present war, and +governmental neglect. Not an ounce of bread was procurable for money, or +even as a gift. The ordinary needs of life--cigars, matches, maccheroni +and so forth: there were none of them. An epidemic of the gapes, +infecting the entire race of local hens, had caused the disappearance of +every egg from the market. And all those other countless things which a +family requires for its maintenance--soap and cloth and earthenware and +kitchen utensils and oils--they have become rarities; the natives are +learning to subsist without them; relapsing into a kind of barbarism. So +they sit among the cracked tenements; resentful, or dumbly apathetic. + +"We have been forgotten," said one of them. + +The priests inculcate submission to the will of God. What else should +they teach? But men will outgrow these doctrines of patience when +suffering is too acute or too prolonged. "Anything is better than this," +they say. Thus it comes about that these ruined regions are a goodly +soil for the sowing of subversive opinions; the land reeks of +ill-digested socialism. + +We found a "restaurant" where we lunched off a tin of antediluvian +Spanish sardines, some mouldy sweet biscuits, and black wine. (A +distinction is made in these parts between black and red wine; the +former is the Apulian variety, the other from Sulmona.) During this +repast, we were treated to several bear-stories. For there are bears at +Pescasseroli, and nowhere else in Italy; even as there are chamois +nearby, between Opi and Villetta Barrea, among the crags of the +Camosciara, which perpetuates their name. One of those present assured +us that the bear is a good beast; he will eat a man, of course, but if +he meets a little boy, he contents himself with throwing stones at +him--just to teach him good manners. Certain old bears are as big as a +donkey. They have been seen driving into their cave a flock of +twenty-five sheep, like any shepherd. It is no rare thing to encounter +in the woods a bear with a goat slung over his shoulder; he must +breakfast, like anybody else. One of these gentlemen told us that the +bears, not long ago, were a source of considerable profit to the +peasantry round about. It was in this wise. Their numbers had been +reduced, it seems, to a single pair and the species was threatened with +extinction, when, somehow or other, this state of affairs became known +to the King who, alarmed at the disappearance from his realm of a +venerable and autochtonous quadruped, the largest European beast of +prey, conceived the happy idea of converting the whole region into a +Royal Preserve. On pain of death, no bear was to be molested or even +laughed at; any damage they might do would be compensated out of the +Royal Purse. + +For a week or so after this enactment, nothing was heard of the bears. +Then, one morning, the conscientious Minister of the Royal Household +presented himself at the palace, with a large sheaf of documents under +his arm. + +"What have we here?" inquired the King. + +"Attestations relating to the bears of Pescasseroli, Your Majesty. They +seem to be thriving." + +"Ah! That is nice of them. They are multiplying once more, thanks to Our +Royal protection. We thought they would." + +"Multiplying indeed, Sire. Here are testimonials, sworn before the local +syndic, showing that they have devoured 18 head of cattle and 43 sheep." + +"In that short time? Is it possible? Well, well! The damage must be +paid. And yet We never knew the bears could propagate so fast. Maybe our +Italian variety is peculiarly vigorous in such matters." + +"Seems so, Your Majesty. Very prolific." + +A week or so passed and, once more, His Excellency was announced. The +King observed: + +"You are not looking quite yourself this morning, my good Minister. +Would it be indiscreet to inquire the cause? No family or parliamentary +worries, We trust?" + +"Your Majesty is very kind! No. It is the bears of Pescasseroli. They +have eaten 75 head of cattle, 93 sheep, and 114 goats. Ah--and 18 +horses. Here are the claims for damages, notarially attested." + +"We must pay. But if only somebody could teach the dear creatures to +breed a little more reasonably!" + +"I cannot but think, Sire, that the peasants are abusing Your +Majesty's----" + +"May We never live to hear anything against Our faithful and +well-beloved Abruzzi folk!" + +Nearly a month elapsed before the Minister again presented himself. This +time he looked really haggard and careworn, and was bowed down under an +enormous bundle of papers. The King glanced up from that writing-desk +where, like all other sovereigns, he had been working steadily since +4.30 a.m., and at once remarked, with that sympathetic intuition for +which he is famous among crowned heads: + +"We think We know. The bears." + +Your Majesty is never wrong. They have devoured 126 cows and calves and +bullocks, 418 sheep and goats, 62 mules, 37 horses, and 96 donkeys. Also +55 shepherd dogs and 827 chickens. Here are the claims." + +"Dear, dear, dear. This will never do. If it is a question of going to +ruin, We prefer that it should be the bears rather than Ourselves. We +must withdraw Our Royal protection, after settling up these last items. +What say you, my good Minister?" + +"Your Majesty is always right. A private individual may indulge in the +pastime of breeding bears to the verge of personal bankruptcy. Ruling +sovereigns will be guided by juster and more complex considerations." + +And from that moment, added our gentlemanly informant, there began a +wonderful shrinkage in the numbers of the bears. Within a day or two, +they were again reduced to a single couple. + +Gladly would I have listened to more of these tales but, having by far +the worst of the day's walk still before us, we left the stricken +regions about midday and soon began an interminable ascent, all through +woods, to the shrine of Madonna di Tranquillo. Hereabouts is the +watershed, whence you may see, far below, the tower of Campoli Apennino. +That village was passed in due course, and Sora lay before us, after a +thirteen hours' march.... + +That same night in Sora--it may have been 2 a.m.--some demon drew nigh +to my bedside and whispered in my ear: "What are you doing here, at +Sora? Why not revisit Alatri? (I had been there already in June.) Just +another little promenade! Up, sluggard, while the night-air is cool!" + +I obeyed the summons and turned to rouse my slumbering companion, to +whom I announced my inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were +well worth listening to. + +Next evening found us at Alatri. + +Now whoever, after walking from Scanno over Pescasseroli to Sora in one +day, and on the next, in the blazing heat of early autumn, from Sora +over Isola Liri and Veroli to Alatri--touching in two days the soil of +three Italian provinces: Aquila, Caserta, and Rome--whoever, after doing +this, and inspecting the convent of Casamari en route, feels inclined +for a similar promenade on the third day: let him rest assured of my +profound respect. + +Calm, sunny days at Olevano. And tranquil nights, for some time past. + +The nightingale has been inspired to move a little up country, into +another bush. Its rivals have likewise retired further off, and their +melodramatic trills sound quite pleasant at this distance. + +So tin cans have their uses, even when empty. Certain building +operations may have been interrupted. I apologise, though I will not +promise not to repeat the offence. They can move their nests; I cannot +move this house. Bless their souls! I would not hurt a hair on their +dear little heads, but one must really have a few hours' sleep, somehow +or other. A single night's repose is more precious to me than a myriad +birds or quadrupeds or bipeds; my ideas on the sacred nature of sleep +being perfectly Oriental. That Black Hole of Calcutta was an infamous +business. And yet, while nowise approving the tyrant's action, I can +thoroughly understand his instructions on the subject of slumber. + +Not every one at Olevano is so callous. Waiting the other day at the +bifurcation of the roads for the arrival of the station motor-car--the +social event of the place--I noticed two children bringing up to a +bigger one the nest of a chaffinch, artfully frosted over with silver +lichen from some olive, and containing a naked brood which sprawled +pathetically within. Wasn't it pretty, they asked? + +"Very pretty," he replied. "Now you will take it straight back where you +found it. Go ahead. I am coming with you." And he marched them off. + +I am glad to put this incident on record. It is the second of its kind +which I have observed in this country, the first being when a fisherman +climbed up a bad piece of rock to replace a nest--idle undertaking--which +some boys had dislodged with stones. At a short distance from +the scene sat the mother-bird in pensive mood, her head cocked on one +side. What did she think of the benevolent enthusiast?... + +Olevano is said to have been discovered by the Germans. I am sceptical +on this point, having never yet found a place that was discovered by +them. An English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died here +all by himself; though doubtless, once on the spot, they did their best +to popularise and vulgarise it. In this matter, as in art or science or +every department of life, a German requires forerunners. He must follow +footsteps. He gleans; picks the brains of other people, profits by their +mistakes and improves on their ideas. + +I know nothing of the social history of Olevano--of its origin, so far +as foreigners are concerned. It is the easiest and the flimsiest thing +in the world to invent; there are so many analogies! + +The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army +officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across +the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate. +Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to +solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered +about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and +discovered that people there did not like being ordered about as they +should be; they seemed to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been +something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being the first "white man" +in the place gave him a kind of fondness for it. + +It was he, then, who discovered Olevano--Freddy Potter. We can see him +living alone, wiry and whiskered and cantankerous, glorying in his +solitude up to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a +fellow-countryman turns up--Mr. Augustus Browne of London. Mr. Browne is +a blameless personality who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an +equally blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a sportsman like +Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste for landscape painting, with +elaborate flowers and butterflies worked into the foreground. So they +live, each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours, importing +groceries from England, dressing for dinner, avoiding contact with the +"natives" and, of course, pretending to be unaware of one another's +existence. + +As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows stronger. The Major has +never forgiven that cockney for invading Olevano, his private domain, +while Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter, who +presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes those filthy cheroots +in public (this was years and years ago). Why is the fellow skulking +here, all by himself? Some hanky-panky with regimental money; every one +knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of right and wrong. +And Potter is not long in making up his mind that this civilian has +bolted to Olevano for reasons which will not bear investigation and is +living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed name. Browne! He +really might have picked out a better one, while he was about it. That +water-colour business--a blind, a red herring; the so-called lady +companion---- + +The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement the mutual conduct of two +compatriots. They are known, far and wide, as "the madmen" till some +bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not madmen at all, but +only homicides hiding from justice; whereupon contempt is changed to +grudging admiration. + +Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up and departs. The old +Major's delight at being once more alone is of short duration; he falls +ill and is entombed, his last days being embittered by the arrival of a +party of German tourists who declare they have "discovered" this +wonderful new spot, and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to +participate in its joys. + +They come, singly and in batches, and soon make Olevano uninhabitable to +men of the Potter and Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night, +sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street "as if they were +in their bedrooms," organise picnics in the woods, sketch old women +sitting in old doorways, start a Verschoenerungsverein and indulge in a +number of other antics which, from the local point of view, are held to +be either coarse or childish. The natives, after watching their doings +with critical interest, presently pronounce a verdict--a verdict to +which the brightest spirits of the place give their assent--a verdict +which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered. + +"Those Englishmen"--thus it runs--"were at least assassins. These people +are merely fools." + +POSTSCRIPT--One thing has occurred of late which would hardly have +happened were the Germans still in occupation of Olevano. At the central +piazza is a fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly, you +could rest and glance down upon the country lying below--upon a piece of +green landscape peering in upon the street. This little view was like a +window, it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now blocked it +up with an ugly house. The beauty of the site is gone. It is surprising +that local municipalities; however stupid, however corrupt, should not +be aware of the damage done to their own interests when they permit such +outrages. The Germans--were any of them still here--would doubtless have +interfered en masse and stopped the building. + +Something should be done about these reviewers. + +There has followed me hither a bundle of press notices of a recent book +of mine. They are favourable. I ought to be delighted. I happen to be +annoyed. + +What takes place in this absurd book? The three unities are preserved. A +respectable but rather drab individual, a bishop, whose tastes and moods +are fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader, arrives at a +new place and is described as being, among other things, peculiarly +sensitive on the subject of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to +the sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their purity, their +sacred mission on earth, their refining influence upon the race. His +friends call him old-fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman, +he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man, towards the end of the +book, watches how the truest woman in the place, the one whom he admires +more than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly throws her +legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises that he is "face to face +with an atrocious and carefully planned murder." Such, however, has been +the transformation of his mind during a twelve days' sojourn that he +understands the crime, he pardons it, he approves it. + +Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought about without a plot? +Yet many of these reviewers discover no such thing in the book. "It +possesses not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most +reputable of them. This annoys me. + +I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it +would be nearer the truth to say that it is nothing but plot from +beginning to end. How to make murder palatable to a bishop: that is the +plot. How? You must unconventionalise him, and instil into his mind the +seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is +right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the +critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the +book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon +finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are +assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in chapters 11, +19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious +happenings in the local law-court; the very externals--relaxing wind and +fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena--the jovial immoderation of +everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and +insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas. + +If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather +successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the +personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, +with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always +swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter, +where the critic might have found a résumé of my intentions and the key +to this plot--to wit, that a murder under those particular circumstances +is not only justifiable and commendable but--insignificant. Quite +insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and honest +folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one dirty +blackmailer more or less--what does it matter to anybody"? There are so +many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop--i.e. the +reader--here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little episode," +and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant events." He +was glad that the whole affair had remained in the background, so to +speak, of his local experiences. It seemed appropriate. In the +background: it seemed appropriate. That is the heart, the core, of the +plot. And that is why all those other happenings find themselves pushed +into the foreground. + +I know full well that this is not the way to write an orthodox English +novel. For if you hide your plot, how shall the critic be expected to +see it? You must serve it on a tray; you must (to vary the simile) hit +the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to superintend the +operation. That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can +then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head +and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of +Dostoievsky minus the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert or +Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a +condition to be labelled--a word, and a thing, which comes perilously +near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of +your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not +praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary +friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive? +It lives on the advertisements of publishers and--say those persons, +perhaps wisely--"if you ill-treat our authors, there's an end to our +custom." Commercialism.... + +Which applies far less to literary criticism than to other kinds. Of +most of the critics of music and art the best one can say is that there +are hearty fellows among them who, with the requisite training, might +one day become fit for their work. England is the home of the amateur in +matters intellectual, the specialist in things material. No bootmaker +would allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather about in a +jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes. The other commodity, being +less valuable than cowhide, may be entrusted to the hands of any +'prentice who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful +hieroglyphics. Criticism in England--snakes in Iceland. [15] + +All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary of St. Michael +above Serrone, that solitary white speck visible from afar on the upper +slopes of Mount Scalambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been +inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with the nightingales, +reaching my destination at the very moment when the sun peered over the +ridge of the mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the dewy shade +of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a wall at Serrone, talking to an +old woman who wore those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose, to +imitate coral. + +I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable and garrulous +anchorite who would share my breakfast. It is the ideal place for such a +life, and many are the mountain solitaries of this species I have known +in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There was he of Scanno--dead, I +doubt not, by this time--that simple-hearted venerable with whom I +whiled away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio, gazing over +the placid lake below, or up stream, at the dusky houses of Scanno +theatrically ranged against their hill-side. I became his friend, once +and for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had lost--his only +snuff-box; it lay at the edge of the path among thick shrubs, and he +could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many +strokes of luck! Once I found a purse-- + +The little structure here was barred and deserted. I had no company save +a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal +cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be +expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs--incurably +monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a +fondness for living in trios. This ménage à trois may have subtle +advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social +habits of the rook; it enables them to fight with more success against +their enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain +lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks. No one who has +watched the aerial antics of a triplet of carrion crows can deny them a +sense of fun. + +After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of nature I descended once +more through that ilex grove to Serrone. And now it began to grow +decidedly warm. The wide depression between this village and Olevano +used to be timbered and is still known as la selva or la foresta. Vines +now occupy the whole ground. If they had only left a few trees by the +wayside! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman who said he was on the +look-out for a hare. Always that hare! They might as well lie in wait +for the Great Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary informed me that he +had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at Rome. Hares at Ponte +Milvio! They reminded me of those partridges in Belgrave Square. In my +younger days there was not a general in the British army who had not (1) +shot partridges in Belgrave Square and (2) been the chosen lover of +Queen Isabella of Spain.... + +Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat. We sit under the +vine near the entrance of that decayed stronghold, while babies and hens +scramble about the exposed rock; he talks, as usual, about the war. He +can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is maimed for life; the +other has been killed outright, and it looks as if no amount of +ironmongery (medals, etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy +land is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hardships and +bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards are untilled, olives unpruned, +for lack of labourers. It will take years to bring the soil back into +its old state of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk +suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for something that +happens beyond their ken, something dim and distant--unintelligible to +them as that Libyan expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not +a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood, these men of +Latium.... + +Thence onward and upward, towards evening by that familiar path, for a +second farewell visit to Giulio's farm. It is a happy homestead, an +abode of peace, with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that +overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty bush of rosemary +stands at the door. The mother is within, cooking the evening meal for +her man and the elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of +daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already half asleep, +tired with a long day's playing in the sunshine. + +Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable cherub and the pickle of the +family. I can see at a glance that he has been up to mischief. Alberto +is incorrigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him any good. +He hammers nails into tables and into himself, he tumbles down from +trees, he throws stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and +saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens +about--disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and +fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big +station motor--pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar +across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish +naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me. +But a certain formality must be gone through; every time we meet there +is a moment of shy distrust, while the ice has to be broken afresh--he +must assure himself that I have not changed since our last encounter. +Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he curls up +comfortably on my knee and is soon fast asleep, all his little tragedies +forgotten. + +"It appears you like children," says the mother. + +"I like this one, because he is never out of trouble. He reminds me of +myself. I shall steal him one of these days, and carry him off to Rome. +From there we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track called +the Via Appia. It will require two of three years, for I mean to stop a +day, or perhaps a week, at every single tavern along the road. Then I +will write a book about it; a book to make myself laugh with, when I am +grown too old for walking." + +"Giulio is big enough." + +"I'll wait." + +No chance of undertaking such a trip in these times of war, when a +foreigner is liable to be arrested at every moment. Besides, how far +would one get, with Giulio? Nevermore to Brindisi! As far as Terracina; +possibly even to Formia. There, at Formia, we would remain for the rest +of our natural lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is +anything like what it used to be; there, at Formia, we would pitch our +tent, enacting every day, or perhaps twice a day, our celebrated +Faun-and-Silenus entertainment for the diversion of the populace. I have +not forgotten Giulio's besetting sin. How nearly he made me exceed the +measure of sobriety at Rojate!... + +Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the trees of the driving-road +fireflies are dancing; countrymen return in picturesque groups, with +mules and children, from their work far afield; that little owl, the +aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its plaintive +note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle. + +This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation for crime and +brigandage that the authorities at one time earnestly considered the +proposition of razing it to the ground. Then they changed their minds. +It seemed more convenient to have evil-doers all collected into one +place than scattered about the country. To judge by the brightness of +the lamps at this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently +spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination. + +And now the lights of Segni station are visible, down in the malarious +valley, where the train passes from Rome to Naples. Every night I have +beheld them from my window; every night they tinged my thoughts with a +soft sadness, driving them backwards, northwards--creating a link +between present and past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall +those four journeys along that road; four, out of at least a hundred; +only four, but in what rare company! + + + + +Valmontone + +Back to Valmontone. + +At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no +train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from +Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had +some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance +being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided +to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after +complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to groans +and almost tears; his waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was +not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his +bundle of hats for him? I objected so vigorously that he forthwith gave +up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I +also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan +blasphemies, [16] for which he was much obliged. Most of them were +unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained. +They seemed to make his burden lighter. + +Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this is rather a cheerless +country, poorly cultivated, and still bearing the traces of mediaeval +savagery and insecurity. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit down +here and let the centuries roll by, watching the tramp of Roman legions +and Papal mercenaries and all that succession of proud banners which +have floated down this ancient Via Labiena. + +That rock-like structure, visible in the morning hours from Olevano, is +a monstrous palace containing, among other things, a training school for +carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose interior has an unusual +shape, the usual smell, and a tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX. + +There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide views over the +surrounding country. It gives food for thought. What an ideal spot, one +says, for the populace to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days! +It is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do they prefer to +jostle each other in the narrow, squalid and stuffy lane lower down? One +would like to know the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was +told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-lighted. The +explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting +arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It +may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's +doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially +speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We +broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological +reason.... + +I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of this terrace, +looking at Artena near-by. It resembled, now, a cluster of brown grapes +clinging to the hillside. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and +sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction of my glance, +remarked gravely: + +"Artena." + +"Artena," I repeated. + +He extracted half a toscano cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began +to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to +smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with +flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were +encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who +rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about +Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to +smile at me rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation by +pointing to a different spot on the hills and observing: + +"Segni." + +"Segni," he agreed. + +His cigar had gone out, as toscanos are apt to do. He applied a match, +and suddenly remarked: + +"Velletri." + +"Velletri." + +We were not making much progress. A good many sites were visible from +here, and at this rate of enumeration the sun might well set on our +labours. + +"How about all those deserters?" I inquired. + +There was a fair number of them, he said. Young fellows from other +provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It +was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches +of land, and, above all, la tradizione. The tradition, he explained, of +that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were +nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man seldom deserts, +not because he would not like to do so, but because he has more +"judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by police. +A few murders had taken place; yes, just a few murders; one or two +stupid people who resented their demands for money or food-- + +He broke off with another weary smile. + +"You have had malaria," I suggested. + +"Often." + +The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face, but from the +peculiar manner.... + +They brought in a deserter that very afternoon. He lay groaning at the +bottom of a cab, having broken his leg in jumping down from somewhere. +The rest of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with carbineers. A +Sicilian, they said. The whole populace followed the vehicle uphill, +reverently, as though attending a funeral. "He is little," said a woman, +referring either to his size or his age. + +An hour later there was a discussion anent the episode in the +fashionable café of Valmontone. A citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly +a notary, put the case for United Italy, for intervention against +Germany, for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly deserters, +into a few phrases so clear, so convincing, that there was a general +burst of approval. Then another man said: + +"I hate those Sicilians; I have good personal reasons for hating them. +But no Sicilian fears death. If they are not brilliant soldiers, they +certainly make first-class assassins, which is only another branch of +the same business. This boy deserts not because he is afraid of death, +but because he still owes a debt. He feels he ought to do something to +repay his parents who nursed him when he was a child, and not be +sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards out yonder"--and he +pointed with his thumb, spitting contemptuously the while, in the +direction of Rome. + +Nobody had any comment to make on this speech. Not a word of protest was +raised. The man was entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and +might even have obtained his share of approval had the victim been a +native. He was only a Sicilian--an outsider. What is one to say of this +patriarchal, or parochial, attitude? The enlargement of Italy's +boundaries--Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so forth--is an ideal +that few Italians bother their heads about. They are not sufficiently +dense--not yet. [17] To found a world-empire like the British or Roman +calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has only to look at the +Germans, who have been trying to do so for some time past. That +collecting mania.... One single boy who collects postage stamps can +infect his whole school with the complaint, and make them all jealous of +his fine specimens. England has been collecting, for many centuries, +islands and suchlike; she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive +mania. She has infected others with the craze and cannot help incurring +their envy, seeing that they are now equally acquisitive, but less +fortunate. All the good specimens are gone! + +That Pergola tavern deserves its name, the courtyard being overhung with +green vines and swelling clusters of grapes. The host is a canny old +boy, up to any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had already taken +a fancy to me on my first visit, for I cured his daughter Vanda of a +raging toothache by the application of glycerine and carbolic acid. We +went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the soft tufa, from +whose darkest and chilliest recesses he drew forth a bottle of excellent +wine--it might have lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How thoughtful of +Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a stone's-throw of your +dining-table! Nobody need ice his wine at the Pergola. + +After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night and walked, +striving to resemble a rich English tourist who has lost his way, along +the lonely road to Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters +or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have got to say +for themselves. My usual luck! Not a deserter was in sight. + +Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old ladies, of what happened +to their little dog and of other matters trivial to the verge of +inanity, I may discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to +Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means the last. Meanwhile, +we proceed southwards. + + + + +Sant' Agata, Sorrento + +Siren-Land revisited.... + +A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village +of Torco--what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are +indubitably the salt of the earth--down that well-worn track to +Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, +the genius loci, has died in the interval; thence by boat to the lonely +beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the rock-doves at +the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where, for the sake of +old memories, I indulged in a bathe and then came across an object rare +in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian granite, relic of some +pagan temple and doubtless washed up here in a wintry gale; thence, for +a little light refreshment, to Nerano; thence to that ill-famed "House +of the Spirits" where my Siren-Land was begun in the company of one who +feared no spirits--victim, already, of this cursed war, but then a +laughter-loving child--and down to the bay and promontory of Ierate, +there to make the unwelcome discovery that certain hideous quarrying +operations on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the charm of +this once secluded site; thence laboriously upwards, past that line of +venerable goat-caves, to the summit of Mount San Costanzo. + +Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at my feet as of old, flooded +in sunshine. + +There is a small outdoor cistern here. Peering into its darkness through +an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; +out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, +sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled +through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid +cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the +gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to +an inordinate length--from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual +abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these +restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live +and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to +a few inches of land amid a desolation of black water. + +It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days ago while climbing in +the torrid hour of noon up that shadeless path where the vanilla-scented +orchids grow--the path which runs from Sant' Elia past the shattered +Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the hottest turning of the road, +sat a woman in great distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been +commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia. This beast was +suffering hellish torments from the heat and vainly endeavouring, with +frenzied grunts of despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth +under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman of shade lower +down. She said she knew about it, but the pig--the pig refused to move! +It had been engaged upon this hopeless occupation, without a moment's +respite, for an hour or more; nothing would induce it to proceed a step +further; it had plainly made up its mind to find shelter here from the +burning rays, or die. And of shelter there was none. + +What would not this pig (I now thought) have given to be transported +into the lizard's cool aquatic paradise; and the lizard, into that +scorching sunlight!... + +It was not to muse upon the miseries of the animal creation that I have +revisited these shores. I came to puzzle once more over the site of that +far-famed Athene temple which gave its name to the whole promontory. +Now, after again traversing the ground with infinite pleasure, I fail to +find any reason for changing what I wrote years ago in a certain +pamphlet which some scholar, glancing through these pages and anxious to +explore for himself a spot of such celebrity in ancient days, is so +little likely to see that he may not be sorry if I here recapitulate its +arguments. Others will be well advised to pass over what follows. + +Let me begin by saying that the temple, in every probability, stood at +the Punta Campanella facing Capri, the actual headland of the Sorrentine +peninsula, where--apart from every other kind of evidence--you may pick +up to this day small terra-cotta figures of Athene, made presumably to +be carried away as keepsakes by visitors to the shrine. + +Now for alternative suggestions. + +Strabo tells us that the temple was placed on the akron of the +promontory; that is, the summit of Mount San Costanzo where we are now +standing. (He elsewhere describes it as being "on the straits.") This +summit is nearly 500 metres above the sea-level, and here no antique +building seems ever to have been erected. No traces of old life are +visible save some fragments of Roman pottery which may have found their +way up in early Byzantine days, even as modern worshippers carry up the +ephemeral vessels popularly called "caccavelle" [18] and scatter them +about. With the exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble, no +materials of an early period have been incorporated into the masonry of +the little chapel or the walls of the fields below. It is incredible +that no vestige of a structure like the Athene temple should remain on a +spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards immunity from +depredations, owing to its isolated and exalted position. The +rock-surface around the summit has not undergone that artificial +levelling which an edifice of this importance would necessitate; the +terrace is of mediaeval construction, as can be seen by its supporting +walls. No doubt the venerable Christian sanctuary there has been +frequently repaired and modified; on the terrace-level to the south can +be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the slopes are +littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa, and old battuto floors. +But there is no trace of antique workmanship or material, nor has the +rocky path leading up to the shrine been demarcated with chisel-cuts in +the ancient fashion. The sister-summit of La Croce is equally +unproductive of classical relics. + +We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken. And why not? His +accounts of many parts of the Roman world are surprisingly accurate, +but, according to Professor Pais, "of Italy Strabo seems to have known +merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome, the road between Rome +and Naples and Pozzuoli, and the coast of Etruria between Rome and +Populonia." If so, he probably saw no more of the district than can be +seen from Naples. He attributes the foundation of this Athene temple to +Odysseus: statements of such a kind make one wonder whether the earlier +portions of his lost history were more critical than other old treatises +which have survived. + +So much for Strabo. + +Seduced by a modern name, which means nothing more or less than "a +temple"--strong evidence, surely--I was inclined to locate the Athene +shrine at a spot called Ierate (marked also as Ieranto on some maps, and +popularly pronounced Ghiérate the Greek aspirate still surviving) which +lies a mile or more eastwards of the Punta Campanella and faces south. +"Hieron," I thought: that settles it. You may guess I was not a little +proud of this discovery, particularly when it turned out that an ancient +building actually did stand there--on the southern slope, namely, of the +miniature peninsula which juts into Ierate bay. Here I found fragments +of antique bricks, tegulae bipedales, amphoras, pottery of the lustrous +Sorrentine ware--Surrentina bibis?--pavements of opus signinum, as well +as one large Roman paving flag of the type that is found on the road +between Termini and Punta Campanella. (How came this stone here? Did the +old road from Stabiae Athene temple go round the promontory and continue +as far as Ierate along the southern slope of San Costanzo hill? No road +could pass there now; deforestation has denuded the mountain-side of its +soil, laying bare the grey rock--a condition at which its mediaeval name +of Mons Canutarius already hints.) Well, a more careful examination of +the site has convinced me that I was wrong. No temple of this +magnificence can have stood here, but only a Roman villa--one of the +many pleasure-houses which dotted these shores under the Empire. + +So much for myself. + + +PEUTINGER'S CHART +Showing ancient road rounding the headland +and terminating at "Templum Minervae." + +None the less--and this is a really curious point--an inspection of +Peutinger's Tables seems to bear out my original theory of a temple at +Ierate. For the structure is therein marked not at the Punta Campanella +but, approximately, at Ierate itself, facing south, with the road from +Stabiae over Surrentum rounding the promontory and terminating at the +temple's threshold. Capri and the Punta Campanella are plainly drawn, +though not designated by name. Much as I should like my first +speculation to be proved correct on the evidence of this old chart of +A.D. 226, I fear both of us are mistaken. + +So much for Peutinger's Tables. + +Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the local topography. He +says that the "three-peaked rock" which Eratosthenes describes as +separating the gulfs of Cumae and Paestum (that is, of Naples and +Salerno) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not understand Beloch falling into +this error, for the old geographer uses the term skopelos, which is +never applied to a mountain of this size, but to cliffs projecting upon +the sea. Moreover, the landmark is there to this day. I have not the +slightest doubt that Eratosthenes meant the pinnacle of Ierate, which is +three-peaked in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous manner, +both when viewed from the sea and from the land (from the chapel of S. +M. della Neve, for instance). + +Now this projecting cliff of three peaks--they are called, respectively, +Montalto, Ierate, and Mortella; Ierate for short--is not the actual +boundary between the two gulfs; not by a mile or more. No; but from +certain points it might well be mistaken for it. The ancients had no +charts like ours, and the world in consequence presented itself +differently to their senses; even Strabo, says Bunbury, "was so ignorant +of the general form and configuration of the North African coast as to +have no clear conception of the great projection formed by the +Carthaginian territory and the deep bay to the east of it"; and, +coasting along the shore line, this triple-headed skopelos, behind which +lies the inlet of Ierate, might possibly be mistaken for the +turning-point into the gulf of Naples. So it looks when viewed from the +S.E. of Capri; so also from the Siren islets--a veritable headland. + +So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes. + +To sum up: Strabo is wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on +the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this +temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the +structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong +in identifying the skopelos trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San +Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the boundary +between the two gulfs. + +The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of +sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their +descriptions of its lofty site. So great a number of old writers concur +in this opinion--Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio, +Capaccio--that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these +men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple." +Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the +neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella." Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a +paper on this "Atene Siciliana" which I have not seen. The whole +question is discussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa +(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term akron may mean an +extremity or point projecting into the sea (a sense in which Homer used +it), and be applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella. + + + + +Rome + +Here we are. + +That mysterious nocturnal incident peculiar to Rome has already +occurred--sure sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens about +six times in the course of every year, during the hot season. You may +read about it in the next morning's paper which records how some young +man, often of good family and apparently in good health, was seen +behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at the hour of about 2 a.m.; +jumping, that is, in a state of Adamitic nudity, into some public +fountain. It goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the police, +run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a hospital, where his state +of mind is to be investigated. Will our rising generation, it gravely +adds, never learn the most elementary rules of decency? + +If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of these +establishments what has been the result of the medical examination, it +is because I will wager my last shirt that the invalid's health leaves +nothing to be desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this. He +is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses to come. He has +already passed half the night in agony, tossing on his couch during +those leaden hours when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town +he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be irremediable. But Rome +is the city of fountains. It is they who are responsible for this sad +lapse. Their sound is clear by day; after midnight, when the traffic has +died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears it through the window--hears it +perforce, since the streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot +close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more restless every +moment. He thinks.... That splash of waters! Those frigid wavelets and +cascades! How delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in +their bubbling wetness; he is parched with heat, and at this hour of the +night, he reflects, there will not be a soul abroad in the square. So he +hearkens to the seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that +familiar fountain; he remembers its moistened rim and basin all alive +with jolly turmoil; he sees the miniature cataracts tumbling down in +streaks of glad confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be +controlled. + +The thing must be done. + +Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly inquiring into his +state of mind.... + +I can sympathise with that state of mind, having often undergone the +same purgatory. My room at present happens to be fairly cool; it looks +north, and the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has not yet +tempted me to any breach of decorum. Night is quiet here, save for the +squeakings of some strange animals in the upper regions of the +neighbouring Pantheon; they squeak night and day, and one would take +them to be bats, were it not that bats are supposed to be on the wing +after sunset. There are no mosquitoes in Rome--none worth talking about. +It is well. For mosquitoes have a deplorable habit of indulging in a +second meal, an early breakfast, at about four a.m.--a habit more +destructive to slumber than that regular and legitimate banquet of +theirs. No mosquitoes, and few flies. It is well. + +It is more than merely well. For the mosquito, after all, when properly +fed, goes to bed like a gentleman and leaves you alone, whereas that +insatiable and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you to a +never-ending succession of anguished reflex movements. What a +malediction are those flies; how repulsive in life and in death: not to +be touched by human hands! Their every gesture is an obscenity, a +calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have watched them for +hours on end, and one of the most cherished projects of my life is to +assemble, in a kind of anthology, all the invectives that have been +hurled since the beginning of literature against this loathly dirt-born +insect, this living carrion, this blot on the Creator's reputation--and +thereto add a few of my own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly +under his protection. He says, among other things, that "like an honest +man, it is not ashamed to do in public what others only do in private." +I must say, if we all followed the fly's example in this aspect, life +would at last be worth living.... + +Morning sleep is out of the question, owing to the tram-cars whose +clangour, both here and in Florence, must be heard to be believed. They +are fast rendering these towns uninhabitable. Can folks who cherish a +nuisance of this magnitude compare themselves, in point of refinement, +with those old Hellenic colonists who banished all noises from their +city? Nevermore! Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and general +unseemliness? In order that a few bourgeois may be saved the trouble of +using their legs. And yet we actually pride ourselves on these +detestable things, as if they were inventions to our credit. "We made +them," we say. Did we? It is not we who make them. It is they who make +us, who give us our habits of mind and body, our very thoughts; it is +these mechanical monsters who control our fates and drive us along +whither they mean us to go. We are caught in their cog-wheels--in a +process as inevitable as the revolution of the planets. No use lamenting +a cosmic phenomenon! Were it otherwise, I should certainly mope myself +into a green melancholy over the fact, the most dismal fact on earth, +that brachycephalism is a Mendelian dominant. [19] No use lamenting. +True. + +But the sage will reserve to himself the right of cursing. Those morning +hours, therefore, when I would gladly sleep but for the tram-car +shrieking below, are devoted to the malediction of all modern progress, +wherein I include, with fine impartiality, every single advancement in +culture which happens to lie between my present state and that +comfortable cavern in whose shelter I soon see myself ensconced as of +yore, peacefully sucking somebody's marrow while my women, round the +corner, are collecting a handful of acorns for my dessert.... The +telephone, that diabolic invention! It might vex a man if his neighbour +possessed a telephone and he none; how would it be, if neither of them +had it? We can hardly realise, now, the blissful quietude of the +pre-telephone epoch. And the telegraph and the press! They have huddled +mankind together into undignified and unhygienic proximity; we seem to +be breathing each other's air. We know what everybody is doing, in every +corner of the earth; we are told what to think, and to say, and to do. +Your paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used to hammer out a few +solid opinions of his own on matters political and otherwise. He no +longer employs his brain for that purpose. He need only open his morning +paper and in it pours--the oracle of the press, that manufactory of +synthetic fustian, whose main object consists in accustoming humanity to +attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes him with opinions +ready made, overnight, by some Fleet Street hack at so much a column, +after a little talk with his fellows over a pint of bad beer at the +Press Club. He has been told what to say--yesterday, for instance, it +was some lurid balderdash about a steam-roller and how the Kaiser is to +be fed on dog biscuits at Saint Helena--he has been "doped" by the +editor, who gets the tip--and out he goes! unless he take it--from the +owner, who is waiting for a certain emolument from this or that caucus, +and trims his convictions to their taste. That is what the Press can do. +It vitiates our mundane values. It enables a gang to fool the country. +It cretinises the public mind. The time may come when no respectable +person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly. Newspaper reading +will become a secret vice. As such, I fear, its popularity is not likely +to wane. Having generated, by means of sundry trite reflections of this +nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast, I dress and step out of +doors to where, at a pleasant table, I can imbibe some coffee and make +my plans for loafing through the day. + +Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets. The Greeks, the Romans, +the Orientals knew better than to build wide roadways in a land of +sunshine. + +There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled "Napoli senza +sole"--Naples without sun. It gives instructions, they say (for I have +never seen it) how foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all +hours of the day; how they may reach any point of the town from another +without being forced to cross the squares, those dazzling patches of +sunlight. The feat could have been accomplished formerly even in Rome, +which was always less umbrageous than Naples. It is out of the question +nowadays. You must do as the Romans do--walk slowly and use the tram +whenever possible. + +That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which will take me direct +to the Milvian bridge, where I mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at +the restaurant across the water. Its proprietor is something of a +brigand; so am I, at a pinch. It is "honour among thieves," or "diamond +cut diamond." + +Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the glowing sands. But +the water is still cold; indeed, the Tiber is never too warm for me. If +you like it yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene +discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season, is of a kind to +tickle up a walrus. + +Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some other cause, there +is a singular variety of flesh-tints among the bathers here. I wish my +old friend Dr. Bowles could have seen it; we used to be deeply immersed, +both of us, in the question of the chromatophores, I observing their +freakish behaviour in the epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied +their action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little paper on +sunburn--a darker problem than it seems to be. [20] + +These men and boys do not grow uniformly sunburnt. They display so many +different colour-shades on their bodies that an artist would be +delighted with the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by reason +of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays, the tints diverge; the +reds, the scarcer group, traversing every gradation from pale rose to +the ruddiest of copper--not excluding that strange marbled complexion +concerning which I cannot make up my mind whether it be a beauty or a +defect; while the xanthous tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold +and apricot and café au lait to a duskiness approaching that of the +negro. At this season the skins are still white. Your artist must come +later--not later, however, than the end of August, for on the first of +September the bathing, be the weather never so warm, is officially, and +quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber water is declared to be "unhealthy" +after that date, and liable to give you fever; a relic of the days when +the true origin of malaria was unknown. + +A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that bathing has not yet +begun in earnest. No drowning accidents, up to the present. Later on +they come thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current and +vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to young swimmers; it grips +them in its tawny coils and holds them fast, often within a few yards of +friend or parent who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries +of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of that serpent-like +embrace. So it hurries him to destruction, only to be fished up later in +a state, as the newspapers will be careful to inform us, of "incipient +putrefaction." + +A murderous flood.... + +That hoary, trickling structure--that fountain which has forgotten to be +a fountain, so dreamily does the water ooze through obstructive mosses +and emerald growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet beards, +from its venerable lips--that fountain un-trimmed, harmonious, overhung +by ancient ilexes: where shall a more reposeful spot be found? Doubly +delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by the river-bank. For +the foliage of the oaks and sycamores is such that it creates a kind of +twilight, and all around lies the tranquillity of noon. Here, on the +encircling stone bench, you may idle through the sultry hours conversing +with some favourite disciple while the cows trample up to drink amid +moist gurglings and tail-swishings. They gaze at you with gentle eyes, +they blow their sweet breath upon your cheek, and move sedately onward. +The Villa Borghese can be hushed, at such times, in a kind of +enchantment. + +"You never told me why you come to Italy." + +"In order," I reply, "to enjoy places like this." + +"But listen. Surely you have fountains in your own country?" + +"None quite so golden-green." + +"Ah, it wants cleaning, doesn't it?" + +"Lord, no!" I say; but only to myself. One should never pass for an +imbecile, if one can help it. + +Aloud I remark:-- + +"Let me try to set forth, however droll it may sound, the point of view +of a certain class of people, supposing they exist, who might think that +this particular fountain ought never to be cleaned"--and there ensued a +discussion, lasting about half an hour, in the course of which I +elaborated, artfully and progressively, my own thesis, and forged, in +the teeth of some lively opposition, what struck me as a convincing +argument in favour of leaving the fountain alone. + +"Then that is why you come to Italy. On account of a certain fountain, +which ought never to be cleaned." + +"I said on account of places like this. And I ought to have added, on +account of moments such as these." + +"Are those your two reasons?" + +"Those are my two reasons." + +"Then you have thought about it before?" + +"Often." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"But listen. Surely it is sometimes two o'clock in the afternoon, in +your country?" + +"I used that word moment in a pregnant sense," I reply. "Pregnant: when +something is concealed or enclosed within. What is enclosed within this +moment? Our friendly conversation." + +"But listen. Surely folks can converse in your country?" + +"They can talk." + +"I begin to understand why you come here. It is that difference, which +is new to me, between conversing and talking. Is the difference worth +the long journey?" + +"Not to everybody, I daresay." + +"Why to you?" + +"Why to me? I must think about it." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"What is there to think about? You said you had thought about it +already.... Perhaps there are other reasons?" + +"There may be." + +"There may be?" + +"There must be. Are you satisfied?" + +"Ought I to be satisfied before I have learnt them?" + +"I find you rather fatiguing this afternoon. Did you hear about that +murder in Trastevere last night and how the police----" + +"But listen. Surely you can answer a simple question. Why do you come to +Italy...?" + +Why does one come here? + +A periodical visit to this country seems an ordinary and almost +automatic proceeding--a part of one's regular routine, as natural as +going to the barber or to church. Why seek for reasons? They are so hard +to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one +lurking in the background, a reason for a reason. + +The craving to be in contact with beauty and antiquity, the desire for +self-expression, for physical well-being under that drenching sunshine, +which while it lasts, one curses lustily; above all, the pleasure of +memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes; herein lies, methinks, the +secret; the reason for the reason. Reconstruction at a distance.... For +a haze of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space; a kindly haze +which obliterates the thousand fretting annoyances wherewith the +traveller's path in every country is bestrewn. He forgets them; forgets +that weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only its sporadic +islets--those moments of calm delight or fiercer joy which he would fain +hold fast for ever. He does not come here on account of a certain +fountain which ought never to be cleaned. [21] He comes for the sake of +its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise up later, out of some +November fog in another land. Italy is a delightful place to remember, +to think and talk about. And is it not the same with England? Let us go +there as a tourist--only as a tourist. How attractive one finds its +conveniences, and even its conventionalities, provided one knows, for an +absolute certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell among +them. + +What lovely things one could say about England, in Timbuktu! + +Rome is not only the most engaging capital in Europe, it is unusually +heterogeneous in regard to population. The average Parisian will assure +you that his family has lived in that town from time immemorial. It is +different here. There are few Romans discoverable in Rome, save across +the Tiber. Talk to whom you please, you will soon find that either he or +his parents are immigrants. The place is filled with hordes of +employees--many thousands of them, high and low, from every corner of +the provinces; the commoner sort, too, the waiters, carpenters, +plasterers, masons, painters, coachmen, all the railway folk--they are +hardly ever natives. Your Roman of the lower classes does not relish +labour. He can do a little amateurish shop-keeping, he is fairly good as +a cook, but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists in eating +and drinking. That is as it should be. It befits the tone of a +metropolis that outsiders shall do its work. That undercurrent of +asperity is less noticeable here than in many towns of the peninsula. +There is something of the grande dame in Rome, a flavour of old-world +courtesy. The inhabitants are better-mannered than the Parisians; a +workday crowd in Rome is as well-dressed as a Sunday crowd in Paris. And +over all hovers a gentle weariness. + +The city has undergone orgies of bloodshed and terror. Think only, +without going further back, of that pillage by the Spanish and German +soldiery under Bourbon; half a year's pandemonium. And all those other +mediaeval scourges, epidemics and floods and famines. That sirocco, the +worst of many Italian varieties: who shall calculate its debilitating +effect upon the stamina of the race? Up to quite a short time ago, +moreover, the population was malarious; older records reek of malaria; +that, assuredly, will leave its mark upon the inhabitants for years to +come. And the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that forbidden land +in whose embrace the city lies gasping, flame-encircled, like the +scorpion in the tale.... + +A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the mind's eye, is so +impressed with its "eternal" character that he cannot imagine this site +having ever been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it seems +inevitable that these walls must always have stood where now they +stand--must have risen, he suggests, out of the earth, unaided by human +hands. Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon a time; +somebody who lived under conditions quite different from those that +supervened. For who--not five thousand, but, say, five hundred years +ago--who would have thought of building a town on a spot like this? None +but a crazy despot, some moonstruck Oriental such as the world has +known, striving to impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No +facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of landscape, no +harbour, no defence against enemies, no drinking water, no mineral +wealth, no food-supplying hinterland, no navigable river--a dangerous +river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place--every drawback, or +nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled +into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and +poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so effectually, so +triumphantly that, were green pastures not needful to me as light and +air, I, for one, would nevermore stray beyond those ancient portals.... + +The country visits you here. It comes in the wake of that evening breeze +which creeps about with stealthy feet, winding its way into the most +secluded courtyards and sending a sudden shiver through the frail +bamboos that stand beside your dinner-table in some heated square. Then +the zephyr departs mysteriously as it came, and leaves behind a great +void--a torrid vacuum which is soon filled up by the honey-sweet +fragrance of hay and aromatic plants. Every night this balsamic breath +invades the town, filling its streets with ambrosial suggestions. It is +one of the charms of Rome at this particular season; quite a local +speciality, for the phenomenon could never occur if the surrounding +regions were covered with suburbs or tilth or woodland--were aught save +what they are: a desert whose vegetation of coarse herbage is in the act +of withering. The Campagna once definitely dried, this immaterial feast +is at an end. + +I am glad never to have discovered anyone, native or foreign, who has +been aware of the existence of this nocturnal emanation; glad because it +corroborates a theory of mine, to wit, that mankind is forgetting the +use of its nose; and not only of nose, but of eyes and ears and all +other natural appliances which help to capture and intensify the simple +joys of life. We all know the civilised, the industrial eye--how +atrophied, how small and formless and expressionless it has become. The +civilised nose, it would seem, degenerates in the other direction. Like +the cultured potato or pumpkin, it swells in size. The French are +civilised and, if we may judge by old engravings (what else are we to +take as guide, seeing that the skull affords some criterion as to shape +but not size of nose?) they certainly seem to accentuate this organ in +proportion as they neglect its use. Parisians, it strikes me, are +running to nose; they wax more rat-like every day. Here is a little +problem for anthropologists. There may be something, after all, in the +condition of Paris life which fosters the development of this peeky, +rodential countenance. Perfumery, and what it implies? There are +scent-shops galore in the fashionable boulevards, whereas I defy you to +show me a single stationer. Maupassant knew them fairly well, and one +thinks of that story of his:-- + +"Le parfum de Monsieur?" + +"La verveine...." [22] + +Speaking of the French, I climbed those ninety odd stairs the other day +to announce my arrival in Italy to my friend Mrs. N., who, being vastly +busy at that moment and on no account to be disturbed, least of all by a +male, sent word to say that I might wait on the terrace or in that +microscopic but well-equipped library of hers. I chose the latter, and +there browsed upon "Emaux et Camées" and the "Fleurs du Mal" which +happened, as was meet and proper, to lie beside each other. + +Strange reading, at this distance of time. These, I thought--these are +the things which used to give us something of a thrill. + +If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well be that we have +absorbed their spirit so thoroughly into our system that we forget +whence we drew it. They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one +cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery, his gift of being +quaint and yet lucid as a diamond; one pictures those crocodiles +fainting in the heat, and notes, too, whence the author of the "Sphinx" +drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so +much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for +external monotony. That trick--that full stop at the end of nearly every +fourth line--it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow +jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows +wearisome to the ear, and finally abhorrent. + +Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve +down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom. "Fuyez l'infini +que vous portez en vous"--a line which, in my friend's copy of the book, +had been marked on the margin with a derisive exclamation-point. (It +gave me food for thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to substance, +he contains too many nebulosities and abstractions for my taste; a +veritable mist of them, out of which emerges--what? The figure of one +woman. Reading these "Fleurs du Mal" we realise, not for the first time, +that there is something to be said in favour of libertinage for a poet. +We do not need Petrarca, much less the Love-Letters of a Violinist--no, +we do not need those Love-Letters at all--to prove that a master can +draw sweet strains from communion with one mistress, from a lute with +one string; a formidable array of songsters, on the other hand, will +demonstrate how much fuller and richer the melody grows when the +instrument is provided with the requisite five, the desirable fifty. +Monogamous habits have been many a bard's undoing. + +Twenty years' devotion to that stupid and spiteful old cat of a +semi-negress! They make one conscious of the gulf between the logic of +the emotions and that other one--that logic of the intellect which ought +to shape our actions. Here was Baudelaire, a man of ruthless +self-analysis. Did he never see himself as others saw him? Did he never +say: "You are making a fool of yourself"? + +Be sure he did. + +You are making a fool of yourself: are not those the words I ought to +have uttered when, standing in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo--the +sunny centre: so it had been inexorably arranged--I used to wait and +wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the slender shadow of +that obelisque which crawled reluctantly, like the finger of fate, over +the burning stones? + +And I crawled with it, more than content. + +Days of infatuation! + +I never pass that way now without thanking God for a misspent youth. Why +not make a fool of yourself? It is good fun while it lasts; it yields +mellow mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures, those +solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous? Where is the use of +experience, if it does not make you laugh? The Logic of the +Intellect--what next! If any one had treated me to such tomfoolery while +standing there, petrified into a pillar of fidelity in that creeping +shadow, I should have replied gravely: + +"The Logic of the Intellect, my dear Sir, is incompatible with +situations like mine. It was not invented for so stupendous a crisis. I +am waiting for my negress--can't you understand?--and she is already +seven minutes late...." + +A flaming morning, forestaste of things to come. + +I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital where things are +doing well, glancing down, towards midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one +looks into some torrid bear-pit. + +Broken columns glitter in the sunshine; the grass is already withered to +hay. Drenched in light and heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is +altogether devoid of life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in +a kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead. My experiences in the hospital +half an hour ago dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a more +morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular, it seems as if all the +mangy and decrepit cats of Rome had given themselves a rendezvous on +this classic soil; cats of every colour and every age--quite young ones +among them; all, one would say, at the last gasp of life. This pit, this +crater of flame, is their "Home for the Dying." Once down here, nothing +matters any more. They are safe at last from their old enemies, from +dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death, they move about in a +stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One +would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or +slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing +where one dies. + +There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated +tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the +mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a +moment. Nothing more. + +These cats have lost their all--their self-respect. Grace and ardour, +sleekness of coat and buoyancy of limbs are gone out of them. Tails are +knotted with hunger and neglect; bones protrude through the skin. So +they strew the ground in discomposed, un-catlike attitudes, while the +sun burns through their parched anatomy. Do they remember their +kittenish pranks, those moonlight ecstasies on housetops, that morsel +snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and borne through the crowded +traffic in a series of delirious leaps? Who can tell! They are not even +bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches. They are alive when they +ought to be dead. Nobody knows it better than they do. They are too ill, +too far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present degradation. +Nothing matters! What would Baudelaire, that friend of cats, have said +to this macabre exhibition? + +Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom of a kitten. The parent +takes no interest in the proceedings; she lies prone, her head on the +ground. Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead? Possibly. Her own +kitten? Who cares! Her neighbour, once white but now earth-coloured, +rises stiffly as though dubious whether the joints are still in working +order. What does she think of doing? It would seem she has formed no +plan. She walks up to the mother, peers intently into her face, then +sits apart on her haunches and begins gazing at the sun. Presently she +rises anew and proceeds five or six paces for no imaginable +reason--collapses; falls, quite abruptly, on her side. There she lies, +flat, like a playing-card. + +A sinister aimlessness pervades the actions of those that move at all. +The shadow of death is upon these creatures in the scorching sunshine. +They stare at columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at one +another, as though they had never seen such things before. They totter +about on tip-toe; they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is +one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is +convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind +of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for +herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a +face that bears the scars of a hundred fights. One eye has been lost in +some long-forgotten encounter. Now they walk over him, kittens and all, +and tread about his head, as if he were a hillock of earth, while his +claws twitch resentfully with rage or pain. Too ill to rise! + +Most of them are thus stretched out blankly, in a faint. Are they +suffering? Hungry or thirsty? [23] I believe they are past troubling +about such things. It is time to die. They know it.... + +"L'albergo dei gatti," says a cheery voice at my side--some countryman, +who has also discovered Trajan's Forum to be one of the sights of Rome. +"The cats' hotel. But," he adds, "I see no restaurant attached to it." + +That reminds me: luncheon-time. + +Via Flaminia--what a place for luncheon! True; but this is one of the +few restaurants in Rome where, nowadays, a man is not in danger of being +simultaneously robbed, starved, and poisoned. Things have come to a +pretty pass. This starvation-fare may suit a saint and turn his thoughts +heavenwards. Mine it turns in the other direction. Here, at all events, +the food is straightforward. Our hostess, a slow elderly woman, is +omnipresent; one realises that every dish has been submitted to her +personal inspection. A primeval creature; heaviness personified. She +moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock. The crack of doom +will not avail to accelerate that relentless deliberation. She reminds +me of a cousin of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who, when his +long curls once caught fire from being too near a candle, sleepily +remarked to a terrified wife: "I think you might try to blow it out." + +But where shall a man still find those edible maccheroni--those that +were made in the Golden Age out of pre-war-time flour? + +Such things are called trifles.... Give me the trifles of life, and keep +the rest. A man's health depends on trifles; and happiness on health. +Moreover, I have been yearning for them for the last five months. Hope +deferred maketh the heart sick.... There are none in Rome. Can they be +found anywhere else? + +Mrs. Nichol: she might know. She has the gift of knowing about things +one would never expect her to know. If only one could meet her by +accident in the street! For at such times she is gay and altogether at +your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors. To break upon her +seclusion at home is an undertaking reserved for great occasions. The +fact is, we are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of what she +describes as a tiresome life have taught her the value of masculine +frankness--ultra-masculine, I call it. She is too frank for subterfuge +of any kind. When at home, for instance, she is never "not at home." She +will always see you. She will not detain you long, if you happen to be +de trop. + +This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion--my health and +happiness.... Besides, I am her oldest friend in this part of the world; +was I not on the spot when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet +fathomed, to make Rome her domicile? Have I not more than once been +useful to her, nay, indispensable? I therefore climb, not without +trepidation, those ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old +palace, and presently find myself ushered into the familiar twilight. + +Nothing has changed since I was here some little time ago to announce my +arrival in Italy (solemn occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an +hour or so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being engaged +upon "house-accounts." This time, as I enter the studio, she is playing +cards with a pretty handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays +cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouthpiece which keeps +the smoke out of her olive-complexioned face and which she holds +firm-fixed between her teeth, in a corner of the mouth, after the perky +fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game, and at once begin to +feel de trop under a glance from those smouldering grey eyes. + +"It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death. Will you please +listen for half a minute? Then I will evaporate, and you can go on with +your ridiculous cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches. +Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable macaroni nowadays? +The old kind, I mean, made out of pre-war-time flour...." + +She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend the game, and asks +the girl in Italian: + +"What was the name of that place?" + +"That place----" + +"Oh, stupid! Where I stayed with Miranda last September. Where I tore my +skirt on the rock. Where I said something nice about the white +macaroni?" + +"Soriano in Cimino." + +"Soriano," echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke. "There is a tram +from here every morning. They can put you up." + +A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to this sultry and +self-centred being; I would like to wander with her through these rooms, +imbibing their strange Oriental spirit--not your vulgar Orient, but +something classic and remote; something that savours, for aught I know, +of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol, in one of her immature efforts at +self-realisation, spent a few years as the wife of a high French +official, ere marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol--another +unsuccessful venture. + +Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy there was yet an +earlier alliance of some kind)? A whim, a freak? Or did they plague her +into it? If so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their manly +persistence. She could grind any ordinary male to powder. And why has +she now flitted here, building herself this aerial bower above the old +roofs of Rome? Is she in search of happiness? I doubt whether she will +find it. She possesses that fatal craving--the craving for disinterested +affection, a source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom +affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but a luxury, and +therefore desirable above all else--desirable, and how seldom attained! + +The pause continues. I make a little movement, to attract notice. She +looks up, but only her eyes reply. + +"Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, "are you blind?" + +That is the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally absent-minded, she +always knows at a given moment exactly what she wants to do. And she +never wants to do more than one thing at a time. It is most unwomanly of +her. Any other person of her sex would have left a game of cards for the +sake of an attractive visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an +ordinary lady would have played cards, given complicated orders to +dressmakers and servants, and entertained half a dozen men at the same +time. Mrs. Nichol cannot do these things. That hand, that rather +sunburnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not moved from the +table. No, I am not blind. It is quite evident that she wants to play +cards; only that, and nothing more. + +I withdraw, stealthily. + +Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad terrace where +jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubs; there I pace up and down, admiring +the cupolas and towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the blue +background of distant hills. How much of its peculiar flavour a town +will draw--not from artistic monuments but from the mere character of +building materials! How many variations on one theme! This mellow Roman +travertine, for instance.... I call to mind those disconsolate places in +Cornwall with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and +dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic cheerfulness of +lava, those marble-towns that blind you with their glare, Eastern cities +of brightly tinted stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns, +wood-towns--how they differ in mood from one another!... Here I pace up +and down, rejoicing in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to +disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-cries that climb +to this hanging garden in confused waves of sound. Harsh at close +quarters, they weave themselves into a mirthful symphony up here. + +From that studio, too, comes a lively din--the laughter has begun again. +Mrs. Nichol is having a good time. It will be followed, I daresay, by a +period of acute depression. I shall probably be consulted with masonic +frankness about some little tragedy of the emotions which is no concern +of mine. She can be wondrously engaging at such times--like a child that +has got into trouble and takes you into its confidence. + +One of these days I must write a character-sketch of Mrs. Nichol. She +foreshadows a type--represents it, very possibly--a type which will grow +commoner from day to day. She dreams of a Republic of women, vestals or +otherwise, wherefrom all men are to be excluded unless they possess +qualifications of a rather unusual nature. I think she would like to +draft a set of rules and regulations for that community. She could be +trusted, I fancy, to make them sufficiently stringent. + +I think I understand, now, why a certain line in her copy of Baudelaire +was marked with that derisive exclamation-point on the margin: "Fuyez +l'infini que vous portez en vous." + +"Fuyez?" it seemed to say. "Why 'fuyez'?" + +Fulfil it! + + + + +Soriano + +Amid clouds of dust you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert +Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway--different +from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but +slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails +every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as +to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an +iridescent bubble suspended in the sky. + +This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the slope of an immense +old volcano and conveys at first glance a somewhat ragged and sombre +impression. It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni--they +atoned for everything. So exquisite were they that I forthwith vowed to +return to Soriano, for their sake alone, ere the year should end. (I +kept my vow.) The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and +unmistakably authentic, having been purchased in large quantities at the +outbreak of hostilities by the provident hostess, who must have +anticipated a rise in price, a deterioration in quality, or both, as the +result of war. + +How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their whereabouts? That is her affair. +I know not how she has managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect +such a variety of useful local information. I can only testify that on +her arrival in Rome she knew no more about the language and place than +the proverbial babe unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced +with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the words: "Try Mrs. +Nichol." And how many women, by the way, would have made a note of the +particular quality of those macaroni? One in a hundred? These are +temperamental matters.... + +We also--for of course I took a friend with me, a well-preserved old +gentleman of thirty-two, whose downward career from a brilliant youth +into hopeless mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with +philosophic unconcern--we also consumed a tender chicken, a salad +containing olive oil and not the usual motor-car lubricant, an omelette +made with genuine butter, and various other items which we enjoyed +prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for the seven lean years +just past but for seven--yea, seventy times seven--lean years to come. +So great a success was this open-air meal that my companion, a +case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess: + +"It seems one fares better in the province than at home. You could not +get such bread in Rome, not if you offered fifty francs a pound." + +As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but +grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly +sparkling--very young, but not altogether innocent. + +There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have +remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a +liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and +distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff +proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity +nowadays. + +It is a real shame--what is happening to Strega at this moment. It has +grown so popular that the country is flooded with imitations. There must +be fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees of goodness and +badness; I have met their travellers in the most unexpected places. They +reproduce the colour of Strega, its minty flavour --everything, in +short, except the essential: its peculiar strength of aroma and of +alcohol. They can afford to sell this poison at half the price of the +original, and your artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the +real product which he fills up, when empty, out of some hidden but +never-failing barrel of the fraudulent mixture round the corner, +charging you, of course, the full price of true Strega. If you complain, +he proudly points to the bottle, the cork, the label: all authentic! No +wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions, vow they will never +touch Strega again.... + +We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee, about this Strega +adulteration, during which I tried to make my friend comprehend how I +thought the grievance ought to be remedied. How? By an injunction. That +was the way to redress these wrongs. You obtain an injunction, I said, +such as the French Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers +of the Italian "Certosa," which was thereafter obliged to change its +name to "Val D'Emma." More than once I endeavoured to set forth, in +language intelligible to his understanding, what an injunction +signified; more than once I explained how well-advised the Strega +Company would be to take this course. + +In vain! + +He always missed my point. He always brought in some personal element, +whereas I, as usual, confined myself to general lines, to the principle +of the thing. Italians are sometimes unfathomably obtuse. + +"But what is an injunction?" he repeated. + +"If you were a little younger, there might be some hope for you. I would +then try to explain it again, for the fiftieth time. Instead of that, +what do you say to taking a nap?" + +"Ah! You have eaten too much." + +"Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of explaining things to +people who refuse to understand." + +"No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might freshen you up." + +"And perhaps inspire you with another subject of conversation." + +In the little hotel there were no rooms available just then wherein we +might have slumbered, and another apartment higher up the street +promising lively sport for which we were disinclined at that hour, we +moved laboriously into the chestnut woods overhead. Fine old timber, +part of that mysterious Ciminian forest which still covers a large +tract, from within whose ample shade one looks downhill towards the +distant Orte across a broiling stretch of country. There were golden +orioles here, calling to each other from the tree-tops. My friend, +having excavated himself a couch among the troublesome prickly seeds of +this plant, was soon snoring--another senile trait--snoring in a +rhythmical bass accompaniment to their song. I envied him. How some +people can sleep! It is a thing worth watching. They shut their eyes, +and forget to be awake. With a view to imitating his example, I wearied +myself trying to count up the number of orioles I had shot in my +bird-slaying days, and where it happened. Not more than half a dozen, +all told. They are hard to stalk, and hard to see. But of other +birds--how many! Forthwith an endless procession of massacred fowls +began to pass before my mind. One would fain live those ornithological +days over again, and taste the rapturous joy with which one killed that +first nutcracker in the mountain gulley; the first wall-creeper which +fluttered down from the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's +stint--victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the +reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed +Alpine jackdaw, that lanius meridionalis---- + +And all those slaughtered beasts--those chamois, first and foremost, +sedulously circumvented amid snowy crags. Where are now their horns, the +trophies? The passion for such sport died out slowly and for no clearly +ascertainable reason, as did, in its turn, the taste for art and +theatres and other things. Sheer satiety, a grain of pity, new +environments--they may all help to explain what was, in its essence, a +molecular change in the brain, driving one to explore new departments of +life. + +And now latterly, for some reason equally obscure, the natural history +fancy has revived after lying dormant so long. It may be those three +months spent on the pavements of Florence which incline one's thoughts +to the country and wild things. Social reasons too--a certain weariness +of humanity, and more than weariness; a desire to avoid contact with +creatures Who kill each other so gracelessly and in so doing--for the +killing alone would pass--invoke specially manufactured systems of +ethics and a benevolent God overhead. What has one in common with such +folk? + +That may be why I feel disposed to forget mankind and take rambles as of +yore; minded to shoulder a gun and climb trees and collect birds, and +begin, of course, a new series of "field notes." Those old jottings were +conscientiously done and registered sundry things of import to the +naturalist; were they accessible, I should be tempted to extract +therefrom a volume of solid zoological memories in preference to these +travel-pages that register nothing but the crosscurrents of a mind which +tries to see things as they are. For the pursuit brought one into +relations not only with interesting birds and beasts, but with men. + +There was Mr. H. of the Linnean Society, whose waxed moustache curled +round upon itself like an ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., +and a great collector of them. He collected, among other things, a rare +monograph belonging to me and dealing with the former distribution of +the beaver in Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing I +could do or say would induce him to disgorge it again; he had always +lent it to a friend, who was just on the point of returning it, etc. +etc. Bitterly grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into +communication with my friend Dr. Girtanner of St. Gallen, another +beaver--and marmot--specialist. It stimulated his love of Swiss zoology +to such an extent that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of +mine, J. J. Tschudi's "Schweizer Echsen," which I likewise never saw +again. What an innocent one was! Where is now the man who will induce me +to lend him such books? + +In those days I held a student's ticket at the South Kensington Museum, +an institution I enriched with specimens of rana graeca from near Lake +Stymphalus, and lizards from the Filfla rock, and toads from a volcanic +islet (toads, says Darwin, are not found on volcanic islets), and slugs +from places as far apart as Santorin and the Shetlands and Orkneys, +whither I went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua. The last +gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of Saima in Finland. Who ever +heard of seals living in sweet land-locked waters? This was one of my +happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend the Curator was +tempered by the fact that this particular specimen happened to be an +immature one, and did not display any pronounced race-characters. I have +early recollections of the rugged face and lovely Scotch accent of Tam +Edwards, the Banffshire naturalist; and much later ones of J. Young, +[24] who gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow +bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews) +of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I +gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged +partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen eggs. "Surely six +would have been enough," he said--a remark which struck me as rather +unreasonable, seeing that French partridges were not exactly as common +as linnets. He afterwards showed me his collection of birdskins, +dwelling lovingly, for reasons which I cannot remember, upon that of a +pin-tail duck. + +He it was who told me that no collector was worth his salt until he had +learnt to skin his own birds. Fired with enthusiasm, I took lessons in +taxidermy at the earliest possible opportunity--from a grimy old +naturalist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a man who +relieved birds of their jackets in dainty fashion with one hand, the +other having been amputated and replaced by an iron hook. During that +period of initiation into the gentle art, the billiard-room at "The +Weaste," Manchester, was converted every morning, for purposes of study, +into a dissecting-room, a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless +trunks and brains and gouged-out eyes of lapwings and other "easy" birds +(I had not yet reached the arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the +profession) lay about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was +ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers, lancets, +arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other paraphernalia of the +trade. The butler had to be furiously tipped. + +There were large grounds belonging to this estate, fields and woodlands +once green, then blackened with soot, and now cut up into allotments and +built over. Here, ever since men could remember--certainly since the +place had come into the possession of the never-to-be-forgotten Mr. +Edward T.--a kingfisher had dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial +origin which supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks and dace. +This kingfisher was one of the sights of the domain. Visitors were taken +to see it. The bird, though sometimes coy, was generally on view. +Nevertheless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher; to my infinite +annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying it. Nor did I even find its +nest, an additional source of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be +interested to know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties +(I have the exact date somewhere [25])--surely a noteworthy state of +affairs, so near the heart of a smoky town like Manchester. + +Later on I learnt to slay kingfishers--the first victim falling to my +gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings +of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are +so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their +habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; +once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, +now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones--the +grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous scramble of +all my life), the crested titmouse, the serin finch on the apple tree, +that first icterine warbler whose five eggs, blotched with purple and +quite unfamiliar at the time, gave me such a thrill of joy that I nearly +lost my foothold on the swerving alder branch---- + +At this point, my meditations were suddenly interrupted by a vigorous +grunt or snort; a snort that would have done credit to an enraged tapir. +My friend awoke, refreshed. He rubbed his eyes, and looked round. + +"I remember!" he began, sitting up. "I remember everything. Are you +feeling better? I hope so. Yes. Exactly. Where were we? An +injunction--what did you say?" + +At it again! + +"I said it was the drawback of old people that they never know when they +have had enough of an argument." + +"But what is an injunction?" + +"How many more times do you wish me to make that clear? Shall I begin +all over again? Have it your way! When you go into Court and ask the +judge to do something to prevent a man from doing something he wants to +do when you do not want him to do it. Like that, more or less." + +"So I gather. But I confess I do not see why a man should not do +something he wants to do just because you want him not to do it. You +might as well go into Court and ask the judge to do something to make a +man do something he does not want to do just because you want him to do +it." + +"Ah, but he must not, in this case. Good Lord, have I not explained that +a thousand times already? You always miss my point. It is illegal, don't +you understand? Illegal, illegal." + +"Anybody can say that. It would be a very natural thing to say, under +the circumstances. I should say it myself! Now just take my advice. You +go and tell your brother----" + +"My brother? It is not my brother. You are quite beside the point. Why +introduce this personal element? It is the Strega Company. Strega, a +liqueur. I am talking about a commercial concern obtaining an +injunction. Burroughs and Wellcome--they got injunctions on the same +grounds. I know a great deal of such things, though I don't talk about +them all day long as other people would, if they possessed half my +knowledge. A company, don't you see? An injunction. A liqueur. Please to +note that I am talking about a company, a company. Have I now made +myself clear, or how many more times----" + +"One would think he was at least your brother, from the way you take his +part. Let us say he is a friend, then; some never-to-be-mentioned friend +who is interested in a shady liqueur business and now wants to make a +judge do something to make a man do something----" + +"Wrong again! To prevent a man doing something----" + +"--Wants to do something to make a judge do something to prevent a man +doing something he wants to do because he does not want him to do it. Is +that right? Very well. You tell your friend that no Italian judge is +going to do dirty work of that kind for nothing." + +"Dirty work. God Almighty! I don't want any judge to do dirty work----" + +"No doubt, no doubt. I am quite convinced you don't. But your priceless +friend does. Come now! Why not be open about it?" + +"Open about what?" + +"It is positively humiliating for me to be treated like this, after all +the years we have known each other. I wish you would try to cultivate +the virtue of frankness. You are far too secretive. Something will +really have to be done about it." + +"A company, a company." + +"A company consists of a certain number of human beings. Why make +mysteries about one of them? It may happen to the best of mankind to be +mixed up----" + +"Mixed up----" + +"You are going to be disagreeable about my choice of words. Have it your +way! We all know you think you can talk better Italian than the Pope. My +own father, I was going to say, has been involved in some pretty dirty +work in the course of his professional career----" + +"No doubt, no doubt." + +"And please to note that he is as good a man as any brother of yours." + +"You always miss my point." + +"Now try to be truthful, for once in your life. Out with it!" + +"A liqueur." + +"Is that all? Sleep does not seem to have sharpened your wits to any +great extent." + +"I was not asleep. I was thinking about eggs. A company." + +"A company? You are waking up. Anything else?" + +"An injunction...." + +A distinguished writer some years ago started a crusade in favour of +pure English. He wished to counteract those influences which are forever +at work debasing the standard of language; whether, as he seemed to +think, that standard should be inalterably fixed, is yet another +question. For in literature as in conversation there is a "pure English" +for every moment of history; that of our childhood is different from +to-day's; and to adopt the tongue of the Bible or Shakespeare, because +it happens to be pure, looks like setting back the hands of the clock. +Men would surely be dull dogs if their phraseology, whether written or +spoken, were to remain stagnant and unchangeable. We think well of +Johnson's prose. Yet the respectable English of our own time will bear +comparison with his; it is more agile and less infected with Latinisms; +why go back to Johnson? Let us admire him as a landmark, and pass on! +Some literary periods may deserve to be called good, others bad; so be +it. Were there no bad ones, there would be no good ones, and I see no +reason why men should desire to live in a Golden Age of literature, save +in so far as that millennium might coincide with a Golden Age of living. +I doubt, in the first place, whether they would be even aware of their +privilege; secondly, every Golden Age grows fairer when viewed from a +distance. Besides, and as a general consideration, it strikes me that a +vast deal of mischief is involved in these arbitrary divisions of +literature into golden or other epochs; they incite men to admire some +mediocre writers and to disparage others, they pervert our natural +taste, and their origin is academic laziness. + +Certain it is that every language worthy of the name should be in a +state of perennial flux, ready and avid to assimilate new elements and +be battered about as we ourselves are--is there anything more charming +than a thoroughly defective verb?--fresh particles creeping into its +vocabulary from all quarters, while others are silently discarded. There +is a bar-sinister on the escutcheon of many a noble term, and if, in an +access of formalism, we refuse hospitality to some item of questionable +repute, our descendants may be deprived of a linguistic jewel. Is the +calamity worth risking when time, and time alone, can decide its worth? +Why not capture novelties while we may, since others are dying all the +year round; why not throw them into the crucible to take their chance +with the rest of us? An English word is no fossil to be locked up in a +cabinet, but a living thing, liable to the fate of all such things. +Glance back into Chaucer and note how they have thriven on their own +merits and not on professorial recommendations; thriven, or perished, or +put on new faces! + +I would make an exception to this rule. Foreign importations which do +not belong to us by right, idioms we have enticed from over the sea for +one reason or another, ought to remain, as it were, stereotyped. They +are respected guests and cannot decently be jostled in our crowd; let +them be jostled in their own; here, on British soil, they should be +allowed to retain that primal signification which, in default of a +corresponding English term, they were originally taken over to express. + +What prompts me to this exordium is the discovery that a few pages back, +with a blameworthy hankering after the picturesque, I have grossly +misused a foreign word. Those cats in Trajan's Forum at Rome are nowise +a "macabre exhibition"; they are not macabre in the least; they are sad, +or saddening. The charnel-house flavour is absent. + +My apologies to the French language, to the cats, and to the reader.... + +Now whoever wishes to see a truly macabre exhibition at Rome may visit +the Peruvian mummies in the Kircher Museum. It is characteristic of the +spirit in which guide-books are written that, while devoting long +paragraphs to some worthless picture of a hallucinated venerable, they +hardly utter a word about these most remarkable and gruesome objects. + +Those old Peruvians, like the Egyptians, had necrophilous leanings. They +cultivated an unwholesome passion for corpses, and called it religion. +Many museums contain such relics from the New World in various attitudes +of discomfort; frequently seated, as though trying to be at rest after +life's long journey. No two are alike; and all are horrible of aspect. +Some have been treated with balsam to preserve the softer parts; others +are shrivelled. Some are filled with chopped straw, like any stuffed +crocodile in a show; others contain precious coca-leaves and powdered +fragments of shell, which were doubtless placed there so that the +defunct might receive nourishment up to the time when his soul should +once more have rejoined the body. Every one knows, furthermore, that +these American ancients were fond of playing tricks with the shape of +the skull--a custom which was forbidden by the Synod of Lima in 1585 and +which Hippocrates describes as being practised among the inhabitants of +the Crimea. [26] It adds considerably to their ghastly appearance. + +One looks at them and asks oneself: what are they now, these gentle +Incas who loved the arts and music, these children of the Sun, whose +civic acquirements amazed their conquerors? They have contrived to +transform themselves into something quite unusual. Staring orbits and +mouths agape, colour-patches here and there, morsels of muscle and hair +attached to contorted limbs--they suggest a half-way house, a loathsome +link, between a living man and his skeleton; and not only a link between +them, but a grim caricature of both. Some have been coated with varnish. +They glisten infamously. Picture a decrepit and rather gaunt relative of +your own, writhing in a fit, stark naked, and varnished all over---- + +Different are these mummies from those of the tenaciously unimaginative +and routine-bound Egyptians. Theirs are dead as a door-nail; torpid +lumps, undistinguishable one from the other. Here we have a rare +phenomenon--life, and individuality, after death. They are more +noteworthy than the cowled and desiccated monks of Italy or Sicily, or +at least differently so; undraped, for the most part, though some of +them may be seen, mere skin-covered heads, peering with dismal coyness +out of a brown sack. And the jabbering teeth.... We dream as children of +night-terrors, of goblins and phantoms that start out of the gloom and +flit about with hideous grimaces. They are gone, while yet we shudder at +that momentary flash of grizzliness; intangibilities, whose image is not +easily detained. To see spectral visions embodied, and ghosts made +flesh, one should come here. Had the excruciating operation of embalming +been performed upon live men and women, their poses could hardly have +been more multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to +how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, +against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The +nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards +Auffassung, are perhaps some little Japanese wood-carvings whose +creators, labouring consciously, likewise overstepped the boundaries of +the grotesque and indulged in nightmarish effects of line similar to +those which the old Peruvians, all unconsciously, have achieved upon the +bodies of their dear friends and relatives.... + +Drive swiftly thence, if you are in the mood, as you should be, for +something at the other pole of feeling, to view that wonder, the +kneeling boy at the Museo delle Terme. Headless and armless though he +be, he displays as much vitality as the Peruvians; every inch of the +body is alive, and one may well marvel at the skill of the artist who, +during his interminable task of sculpture, held fast the model's +fleeting outline--so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that +every month, and every week, brings about new conditions of surface and +texture. A child of Niobe? Very likely. There is suffering also here, a +suffering different from theirs; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in +the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods a divine calm. +Here is the antidote to mummified Incas. + + + + +Alatri + +What brought me to Alatri? + +Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born +here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a +passable place, but as to Alatri---- + +"You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are +precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia." + +"Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other +citizens like yourself----" + +"It does indeed! I am the least of the sons of Alatri." + +"Then it must be worthy of a visit...." + +In the hottest hour of the afternoon they deposited me outside the city +gate at some new hotel--I forget its name--to which I promptly took an +unreasoning dislike. There was a fine view upon the mountains from the +window of the room assigned to me, but nothing could atone for that lack +of individuality which seemed to exhale from the establishment and its +proprietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher here. Half an +hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I +captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he +pleased. He took me to the Albergo della---- + +The Albergo della----is a shy and retiring hostelry, invisible as such +to the naked eye, since it bears no sign of being a place of public +entertainment at all. Here was individuality, and to spare. Mine host is +an improvement even upon him of the Pergola at Valmontone; a man after +my own heart, with merry eyes, drooping white moustache and a lordly +nose--a nose of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which must have +cost years of patient labour to bring to its present state of +blossoming. That nose! I felt as though I could dwell for ever beneath +its shadow. The fare, however, is not up to the standard of the +"Garibaldi" inn at Frosinone which I have just left. + +Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather a dull little place; I +am never likely to go there again, and have therefore no reason for +keeping to myself its "Garibaldi" hotel which leaves little to be +desired, even under these distressful war-conditions. It set me +thinking--thinking that there are not many townlets of this size in +rural England which can boast of inns comparable to the "Garibaldi" in +point of cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable +prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the +other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly +cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have +to walk across a cold room at night--refinement of torture--in order to +turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone +enough to condemn these establishments, one and all. + +Yes! And the beds; those frowsy, creaky, prehistoric wooden concerns, +always six or eight inches too short, whose mattresses have not been +turned round since they were made. What happens? You clamber into such a +receptacle and straightway roll downhill, down into its centre, into a +kind of river-bed where you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous +feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on +either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else +into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as +well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you +lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin. +Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is +fit for a Christian to sleep in.... + +The days are growing hot. + +A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the +convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the +afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to +myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for, +being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded +with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places, +where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious +official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation +here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well +established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a +bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly +that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the +place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a +lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery--he brings me +every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself. + +"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice." + +"I know. Did you tell him he might----?" + +"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his +mother." + +"Tell him again, to-morrow." + +It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude. + +In October--and we are now at midsummer--there occurred a little +adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this. + +I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the +still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending +journey northwards for which the passport was already viséd, when there +met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers. We +stared at one another. His face was familiar to me, though I knew not +where I had seen it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director of +the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman who had recently been to +Orvinio? I remembered. + +"The last time I was there," I said, "was about a month ago. I fancy we +had some conversation in the motor up from Mandela." + +"That is so. And now, however disagreeable it may be, I feel myself +obliged to perform a patriotic duty. This is war-time. I would ask you +to be so good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station." + +"Which is not far off," I replied. "There is one up the next street on +our right." + +We walked there, all four of us, without saying another word. "What have +I been doing?" I wondered. Then we climbed upstairs. + +Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stuffy room, sat a delegato or +commissario--I forget which--surrounded, despite the lateness of the +hour, by one or two subordinates. He was of middle age, and not +prepossessing. He looked as if he could make himself unpleasant, though +his face was not of that actively vicious--or actively stupid: the terms +are interconvertible--kind. While scanning his countenance, during those +few moments, sundry thoughts flitted through my mind. + +These then, I said to myself--these are the functionaries, whether +executive or administrative, whether Italian or English or Chinese, whom +a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of +them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is +certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying +their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws, +and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority +should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said +to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of +history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin +destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the +Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they +were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense +of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their +wonderful culture. They ought to have known better; they ought to have +rated morality at its true worth, since it was the profoundest Chinaman +himself who said that virtue is merely etiquette--or something to that +effect. + +I found myself studying the delegato's physiognomy. What could one do +with such a composite face? It is a question which often confronts me +when I see such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. How make it +more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? Shaving that +moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it would +forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard, +an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved +him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, on +account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one +of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets of +European royalties. + +He took down the names and addresses of all four of us, and it was then +that I missed my chance. I ought to have spoken first instead of +allowing this luscious director to begin as follows:-- + +"The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about a month ago. He admits +it himself and I can corroborate the fact, as I was there at the same +time. Orvinio is a small country place in the corner of Umbria. There is +a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote and very high--altissima! It is +called Mount Muretta and occupies a commanding situation. For reasons +which I will leave you, Signer Commissario, to investigate, this +gentleman climbed up that mountain and was observed, on the very summit, +making calculations and taking measurements with instruments." + +Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta? For an all-sufficient +reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from Etna +and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A bare +wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably the name) visible from +below and promising a lively scramble up the rock, was an additional +inducement. Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can +afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter of fact, proved +to be a mighty tame affair. There was yet another object to my trip. I +desired to verify a legend connected with this mountain, the tradition +of a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to whose former +existence the name of a certain old family, still surviving at Orvinio, +bears witness. "We are not really from Orvinio," these people will tell +you. "We are from the lost castle of the Muretta." (There is not a +vestige of a castle left. But I found one brick in the jungle which +covers, on the further side of the summit, a vast rock-slide dating, I +should say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the fastness +may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting Muretta. + +As to taking measurements--well, a man is naturally accused of a good +many things in the course of half a century. Nobody has yet gone so far +as to call me a mathematician. These "calculations and instruments" were +a local mirage; as pretty an instance of the mythopoeic faculty as one +could hope to find in our degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the +earth. [27] + +The official seemed to be impressed with the fact that my accuser was +director of a bank. He inquired what I had to say. + +This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on me rather suddenly. One +likes to have notice of such questions. Tell the truth? I am often +tempted to do so; it saves so much trouble! But truth-telling is a +matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the more one learns +to hold in check that unnatural propensity. (Mankind has a natural love +of the lie itself. Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one will +do well to take account of national psychology. An English functionary, +athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to +climb in war-time, without any object save that of exercising one's +limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and remote +mountain--Muretta happens to be neither the one nor the other--would +have seemed to an Italian an incredible proceeding. I thought it better +to assume the role of accuser in my turn: an Oriental trick. + +"This director," I said, "calls himself a patriot. What has he told us? +That while at Orvinio he knew a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to +make calculations with instruments. What does this admirable citizen do +with regard to such a suspicious character? He does nothing. Is there +not a barrack-full of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to +arrest such people? But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk +away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other +measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and +Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our English notion of +patriotism. I shall certainly make it my business to write and +congratulate the Banca d'Italia on possessing such a good Italian as +director. I shall also suggest that his talents would be more worthily +employed at the Banca--" (naming a notoriously pro-German establishment). + +A poor speech; but it gave me the satisfaction of seeing the fellow grow +purple with fury and so picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the +spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be done with him. The +delegato suggested that inasmuch as he had said his say and deposited +his address, he was at liberty to depart, whenever so disposed. + +They went--he and his friends. + +The other was looking serious--as serious as such a face could be made +to look. He must not be allowed to think, I decided, for once an +official begins to think he is liable to grow conscientious and +then--why, any disaster might happen, the least of them being that I +should remain in custody pending investigations. In how many more +countries was I going to be arrested for one crime or another? This joke +had lost its novelty a good many years ago. + +"A pernicious person," I began, "--you have but to look at him. And now +he has invited me here in order to make a patriotic impression on his +friends, those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since no +love is lost hereabouts between police and military). Such silly talk +about measurements! It should be nipped in the bud. Here you have an +intelligent young subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home with +me at my expense; we will go through all papers and search for +instruments and bring everything that savours of suspicion back to this +office, together with my passport which I never carry on my person. +This, meanwhile, is my carta di soggiorno." + +The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I thought of those +miserable three days' grace which were all that the French consulate had +accorded me. If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded in +Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin again. And to tell him of +this dilemma would make him more distrustful than ever. + +I went on hastily to admit that my request might not be regular, but how +natural! Were we not allies? Was it not my duty to clear myself of such +an imputation at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to that +end? I felt sure he could sympathise with the state of my mind, etc. +etc. + +Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of invention, lent wings to +my words, and while thinking all the time: You little vermin, what are +you doing here, in that chair, when you should be delving the earth or +breaking stones, as befits your kind? I tried to picture myself climbing +up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port +would have been more in my line. Calculations! It is all I can do to +control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I +like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments! If this +young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my +belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the +delegato, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they often +are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of your +body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently reasonable. +The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing whatever to +do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to evade military +service. + +We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his +polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of +the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather +dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala. + +"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be +surprised at my long absence." + +"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport." + +"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with +him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten +o'clock, or eleven, or midday." + +So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little +detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything +else. He did not even unfold it. + +"E stato un' equivoco," was all he condescended to say, still without a +smile. There had been a misunderstanding. + +The incident was closed. + +Things might have gone differently in the country. I would either have +been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of +carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century +while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the +civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet--an inquiry without +which no Latin dossier is complete. + +POSTSCRIPT.--Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many +of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever +come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a +street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in +their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not +tend to diminish? + +There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome; +fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those +inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things +remained in the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set by the +ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The natives spend their days +in rushing to Rome and back on business connected with law-suits, not a +quarter of which would have arisen but for the existence of the +carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Individually, these men are +nowise at fault. They desire nothing better than to be left in peace. +Seldom do they meddle with local concerns--far from it! They live in +sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the populace, like a colony +of monks. The institution is to blame. It is their duty, among other +things, to take down any charge which anybody may care to prefer against +his neighbour. That done, the machinery of the law is automatically set +in motion. Five minutes' talk among the village elders would have +settled many affairs which now degenerate into legal squabbles of twice +as many years; chronic family feuds are fostered; a man who, on +reflection, would find it more profitable to come to terms with his +opponent over a glass of wine, or even to square the old syndic with a +couple of hundred francs, sees himself obliged to try the same tactics +on a judge of the high court--which calls for a different technique. + +Altogether, the country is flagrantly over-policed. [28] It gives one a +queer sense of public security to see, at Rome for instance, every third +man you meet--an official, of course, of some kind--with a revolver +strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on the verge of +savagery in some cowboy settlement out West. Greek towns of about ten +thousand inhabitants, like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal +guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls. How can ten men +perform duties which, in Italy, would require ten times as many? Is it a +question of climate, or national character? A question, perhaps, of +common sense--of realising that local institutions often work with less +friction and less outlay than that system of governmental centralisation +of which the carbineers are an example. + +Meanwhile we are still at Alatri which, I am glad to discover, possesses +five gateways--five or even more. It is something of a relief to be away +from that Roman tradition of four. Military reasons originally, fixing +themselves at last into a kind of sacred tradition.... So it is, with +unimaginative races. Their pious sentimentalism crystallises into +inanimate objects. The English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral +strand, and the chimes of Big Ben, floating above that crowd of +many-hued Orientals, give to the white man a sense of homeliness and +racial solidarity. The French, more fluid and sensitive to the +incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial +buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition, +it pursues one with meaningless iteration from the burning sands of +Africa to Ultima Thule. Always those four gateways! + +For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is comparable to that green +space on the summit of the citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning, +to take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the vanity of human +wishes. The less you have seen of localities like Tiryns the more you +will be amazed at this impressive and mysterious fastness. That portal, +those blocks--what Titans fitted them into their places? Well, we have +now learnt a little something about those Titans and their methods. From +this point you can see the old Roman road that led into Alatri; it +climbs up the hill in straightforward fashion, intersecting the broad +modern "Via Romana"--a goat-track, nowadays.... + +These Alatri remains are wonderful--more so than many of the sites which +old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his +curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he +stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations +about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the +same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual? We certainly find him +"hurrying down" past Anagni near-by, of whose imposing citadel he again +says nothing whatever.... + +I am now, at the end of several months, beginning to know Ramage fairly +well. I hope to know him still better ere we part company, if ever we +do. It takes time, this interpretation, this process of grafting one +mind upon another. For he does not supply mere information. A fig for +information. That would be easy to digest. He supplies character, which +is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of +what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a +philosophy of life. + +And what is the dominating trait of this old Scotsman? The historical +sense. Ancient inscriptions interested him more than anything else. He +copied many of them during his trip; fifty, I should think; and it is no +small labour, as any one who has tried it can testify, to decipher these +half-obliterated records often placed in the most inconvenient +situations (he seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied himself +thus was to his credit in an age whose chief concern, as regards +antiquity, consisted in plundering works of art for ornamental purposes. +Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected +knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as +inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these +documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly +sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but +for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of +one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men +who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the +fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be +completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit. + +His equipment in the interpretation of these stones and of all else he +picked up in the way of lore and legend was of the proper kind. +Boundless curiosity, first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of +learning. He knew his classics--knew them so well that he could always +put his finger on those particular passages of theirs which bore upon a +point of interest. We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quotation +from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different thing remembering, and +collating, references in. Aelian or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And +wide awake, withal; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the kind to +swallow the tales of the then fashionable cicerone's. He has critical +dissertations on sites like Cannae and the Bandusian Fountain and +Caudine Forks; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence a +sepulchre containing some of those painted Greek vases for which the +place is famous, he promptly suspects it to be a "sepulchre prepared for +strangers," and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain where +they are "for more simple or less suspicious travellers." On the way to +Cape Leuca he passes certain mounds whose origin he believes to be +artificial and the work of a prehistoric race. I fancy his conjecture +has proved correct. On page 258, speaking of an Oscan inscription, he +mentions Mommsen, which shows that he kept himself up to date in such +researches.... + +Of course it would be impossible to feel any real fondness for Ramage +before one has discovered his failings and his limitations. Well, he +seems to have taken Pratilli seriously. I like this. A young fellow who, +in 1828, could have guessed Pratilli to have been the arch-forger he +was--such a young fellow would be a freak of learning. He says little of +the great writers of his age; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose +imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but not in the +present. The Hohenstauffen period does not attract him. He rides close +to the magnificent Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site; he +inspects the castle of Lucera and says never a word about Frederick II +or his Saracens. At Lecce, renowned for its baroque buildings, he finds +"nothing to interest a stranger, except, perhaps, the church of Santa +Croce, which is not a bad specimen of architectural design." True, the +beauty of baroque had not been discovered in his day. + +What pleases me less is that there occurs hardly any mention of wild +animals in these pages, and that he seems to enjoy natural scenery in +proportion as it reminds him of some passage in one of those poets whom +he is so fond of quoting. This love of poetic extracts and citations is +a mark of his period. It must have got the upper hand of him in course +of time, for we find, from the title-page of these "Nooks and Byways," +that he was the author of "Beautiful Thoughts from Greek authors; +Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian authors, etc."; [29] indeed, +the publication of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have +been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer a few more "Nooks and +By-ways" to all these Beautiful Thoughts! He must have been at home +again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were +gathered. If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains of +the south, instead of rushing through them like an express train. That +mania of "pressing forward"; that fatal gift of hustle.... + +His body flits hither and thither, but his mind remains observant, +assimilative. It is only on reading this book carefully that one +realises how full of information it is. Ay, he notices things, does +Ramage--non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time to look +around him. It is his charm. An intelligent interest in the facts of +daily life should be one of the equipments of the touring scholar, +seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift, +and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern +travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and +agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure +warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and +the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and +modern times and the fig-pecker bird--that bird you eat bones and all, +the focetola or beccafico (garden warbler). In fact, he has multifarious +interests and seems to have known several languages besides the +classics. He can hit off a thing neatly, as, when contrasting our +sepulchral epitaphs with those of olden days, he says that the key-note +of ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace; or "wherever we find a river in +this country (Calabria) we are sure to discover that it is a source of +danger and not of profit." He knew these southern torrents and +river-beds! He garners information about the Jewish and Albanian +colonies of South Italy; he studies Romaic "under one of the few Greeks +who survived the fatal siege of Missolonghi" and collects words of Greek +speech still surviving at Bova and Maratea (Maratea, by the way, has a +Phoenician smack; the Greeks must have arrived later on the scene, as +they did at Marathon itself). + +A shrewd book, indeed. Like many of his countrymen, he was specially +bent on economic and social questions; he is driven to the prophetic +conclusion, in 1828, that "the government rests on a very insecure +basis, and the great mass of the intelligence of the country would +gladly welcome a change." Religion and schooling are subjects near his +heart and, in order to obtain a first-hand knowledge of these things in +Italy, he enters upon a friendship, a kind of intellectual flirtation, +with the Jesuits. That is as it should be. Extremes can always respect +one another. The Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as he +from them.... + +I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to +me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always +finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial +matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was +personally acquainted with several men whose names I have +mentioned--Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano; +in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him +with profit. And even at an earlier time; for I once claimed to have +discovered the ruins of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets +(the Galli, opposite Positano)--now I find him forestalling me by nearly +a century. It is often thus, with archaeological discoveries. + +He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress Calypso which has +disappeared since his day, and would have sailed there but for the fact +that no boat was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who landed +here, found any prehistoric remains on the spot; I should doubt it. On +another Mediterranean island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the +relics of what would formerly have been described as the residence of +that second Homeric witch, Circe. [30] + +The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have already, of course, +discovered my ideal family at Alatri. Two ideal families.... + +One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that +luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow--that +verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with +fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with +wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich +philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in the +cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold of his two-roomed +abode, or wander about those tiny patches of culture, geometrically +disposed, where he guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots +of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of his misfortunes; +intuitive civility has taught him to avoid troubling a stranger with +personal concerns. + +The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are +hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their +offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left. + +"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can +only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach--nothing; not +milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him +for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now +there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children +dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others." + +I looked at him. + +"You sent him into the plains last summer?" I ventured. + +"To Cisterna. One must make a little money, or starve." + +"And you expect to keep your children alive if you send them to +Cisterna?" + +I was astonished that the local medicine man had not diagnosed malaria. +I undertook that if she would put him into the train when next I went to +Rome, I would have him overhauled by a competent physician and packed +home again with written instructions. (I kept my word, and the good +doctor Salatino of the Via Torino--a Calabrian who knows something about +malaria--wrote out a treatment for this neglected case, no part of +which, I fear, has been observed. Such is the fatalism of the +country-folk that if drugs and injections do not work like magic they +are quietly discarded. This youth may well have gone the way of "those +other two"--who, by the by, were also sent into the Pontine +Marshes--since you cannot reject your food for ever, and grow more +anaemic every day, without producing some such result.) + +Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy in the mother's heart +that I became quite embarrassed. She likened me, among other things, to +her favourite Saint. + +All comparisons being odious, I turned the conversation by asking: + +"And that last one?" + +"Here," she said, pushing open the door of the inner room. + +He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle of limbs, the +picture of radiant boyhood. + +"This one, I think, has never been to Cisterna." + +"No. He goes into the mountains with the woodcutters every morning an +hour before sunrise. It is up beyond Collepardo--seven hours' labour, +and seven hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he sleeps +like a log...." + +Children from these hill-places often accompany their parents into the +plains to work; more commonly they go in droves of any number under the +charge of some local man. They are part of that immense army of +hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands of Tuscany to the +very toe of Italy, into these low-lying regions, hardly an inch of which +is fever-free. I do not know even approximately the numbers of these +migratory swarms of all ages and both sexes; let us say, to be on the +safe side, a quarter of a million. They herd down there, in the broiling +heat of summer and autumn, under conditions which are not all that could +be desired. [31] Were they housed in marble palaces and served on +platters of gold, the risk would not be diminished by a hair. How many +return infected? I have no idea. It cannot be less than sixty per cent. +How many of these perish? Perhaps five per cent. A few thousand annual +deaths are not worth talking about. What concerns the country--and what +the country, indeed, has taken seriously in hand--is this impoverishment +of its best blood; this devitalising action of malaria upon unnumbered +multitudes of healthy men, women, and children who do not altogether +succumb to its attacks. + +I sometimes recognise them on the platform of Rome station--family +parties whom I have met in their country villages, now bound for +Maccarese or one of those infernal holes in the Campagna, there to earn +a little extra money with hay, or maize, or wheat, or tomatoes, or +whatever the particular crop may be. You chat with the parents; the +youngsters run up to you, all gleeful with the change of scene and the +joy of travelling by railway. I know what they will look like, when they +return to their mountains later on.... + +And so, discoursing of this and that, one rambles oneself into a +book.... + +Into half a book; for here--at Alatri, and now--midsummer, I mean to +terminate these non-serious memories and leave unrecorded the no less +insignificant events which followed up to the mornings in October, those +mornings when jackdaws came cawing past my window from the thickly +couched mists of the Borghese Gardens, and the matutinal tub began to +feel more chilly than was altogether pleasant. + +Half a book: I perceive it clearly. These pages might be rounded by +another hundred or two. The design is too large for one volume; it +reminds me of those tweed suits we used to buy long ago whose pattern +was so "loud" that it "took two men to show it off." Which proves how a +few months' self-beguilement by the wayside of a beaten track can become +the subject of disquisitions without end. Maybe the very aimlessness of +such loiterings conduces to a like method of narrative. Maybe the tone +of the time fosters a reminiscential and intimately personal mood, by +driving a man for refuge into the only place where peace can still be +found--into himself. What is the use of appealing in objective fashion +to the intelligence of a world gone crazy? Say your say. Go your way. +Let them rave! We shall all be pro-German again to-morrow. [32] + +Half a book: it strikes me, on reflection, as curiously appropriate. To +produce something incomplete and imperfect, a torso of a kind--is it not +symbolical of the moment? Is not this an age of torso's? We are +manufacturing them every hour by the score. How many good fellows are +now crawling about mutilated, converted into torso's? There is room for +a book on the same lines.... + +I glance through what has been written and detect therein an occasional +note of exacerbation and disharmony which amuses me, knowing, as I do, +its transitory nature. Dirty work, touching dirt. One cannot read for +three consecutive years of nothing but poison-gas and blood and +explosives without engendering a corresponding mood--a mood which +expresses itself in every one according to whether he thinks +individually or nationally; whether he cultivates an impartial +conscience or surrenders to that of the crowd. For the man and his race +are everlastingly tugging in different directions, and unreasoning +subservience to race-ideals has clouded many a bright intellect. How +many things a race can do which its component members, taken separately, +would blush to imitate! Our masses are now fighting for commercial +supremacy. The ideal may well be creditable to a nation. It is hardly +good enough for a gentleman. He reacts; he meditates a Gospel of Revolt +against these vulgarities; he catches himself saying, as he reads the +morning paper full of national-flag fetishism and sanguinary nonsense: +"One Beethoven symphony is a greater victory than the greatest of these, +and reasonable folks may live under any rule save that of a wind-fed +herd." + +It avails nothing. The day has dawned, the day of those who pull +downwards--stranglers of individualism. Can a man subscribe to the +aspirations of a mob and yet think well of himself? Can he be black and +white? He can be what he is, what most of us are: neutral tint. Look +around you: a haze of cant and catchwords. Such things are employed on +political platforms and by the Press as a kind of pepsine, to aid our +race-stomach in digesting certain heavy doses of irrationalism. The +individual stomach soon discovers their weakening effect.... + +Looking back upon these months of uneventful wanderings, I became aware +of a singular phenomenon. I find myself, for some obscure reason, always +returning to the same spot. I was nine times in Rome, twice in Florence +and Viareggio and Olevano and Anticoli and Alatri and Licenza and +Soriano, five times at Valmontone, thrice at Orvinio; and if I did not +go a second time to Scanno and other places, there may be a reason for +it. Why this perpetual revisiting? How many new and interesting sites +might have been explored during that period! Adventures and discoveries +might have fallen to my lot, and been duly noted down. As it is, nothing +happened, and nothing was noted down. I have only a diary of dates to go +upon, out of which, with the help of memory and imagination, have been +extracted these pages. For generally, delving down into memory, a man +can bring up at least one clear-cut fragment, something still fervid and +flashing, a remembered voice or glimpse of landscape which helps to +unveil the main features of a scenario already relegated to the +lumber-room. And this detail will unravel the next; the scattered +elements jostle each other into place, as in the final disentangling of +some complicated fugue. + +Such things will do for a skeleton. Imagination will kindly provide +flesh and blood, life, movement. Imagination--why not? One suppresses +much; why not add a little? Truth blends well with untruth, and phantasy +has been so sternly banned of late from travellers' tales that I am +growing tender-hearted towards the poor old dame; quite chivalrous, in +fact--especially on those rather frequent occasions when I find myself +unable to dispense with her services. + +Yes; truth blends well with untruth. It is one of the maladies of our +age, a sign of sheer nervousness, to profess a frenzied allegiance to +truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where +graver issues are at stake. We cannot lay claim to a truthful state of +mind. In this respect the eighteenth century, for all its foppery, was +ahead of ours. What is the basic note of Horace Walpole's iridescent +worldliness--what about veracity? How one yearns, nowadays, for that +spacious and playful outlook of his; or, better still, for some +altogether Golden Age where everybody is corrupt and delightful and has +nothing whatever to do, and does it well.... + +My second ideal family at Alatri lives along a side path which diverges +off the main road to Ferentino. They are peasant proprietors, more +wealthy and civilised than those others, but lacking their terrestrial +pathos. They live among their own vines and fruit-trees on the hillside. +The female parent, a massive matron, would certainly never send those +winsome children into the Pontine Marshes, not for a single day, not for +their weight in gold. The father is quite an uncommon creature. I look +at him and ask myself; where have I seen that face before, so classic +and sinewy and versatile? I have seen it on Greek vases, and among the +sailors of the Cyclades and on the Bosphorus. It is a non-Latin face, +with sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and crisply curling +beard; a legendary face. How came Odysseus to Alatri? + +Not far from this homestead where I have spent sundry pleasant hours +there is a fountain gushing out of a hollow. In olden days it would have +been hung with votive offerings to the nymphs, and rightly. One +appreciates this nature-cult in a dry land. I have worshipped at many +such shrines where the water bounds forth, a living joy, out of the +rocky cleft--unlike those sluggish springs of the North that ooze +regretfully upwards, as though ready to slink home again unless they +were kicked from behind, and then trickle along, with barely perceptible +movement, amid weeds and slime. + +Now this particular fountain (I think it is called acqua santa), while +nowise remarkable as regards natural beauty, is renowned for curing +every disease. It is not an ordinary rill; it has medicinal properties. +Hither those two little demons, the younger children, conducted me all +unsuspecting two days ago, desirous that I should taste the far-famed +spring. + +"Try it," they said. + +I refused at first, since water of every kind has a knack of disagreeing +with my weak digestion. As for them, they gulped down tumblers of it, +being manifestly inured to what I afterwards discovered to be its +catastrophic effects. + +"Look at us drinking it," they went on. "Ah, how good! Delicious! It is +like Fiuggi, only better." + +"Am I an invalid, to drink Fiuggi water?" + +"It is not quite the same as Fiuggi. (True. I was soon wishing it had +been.) How many men would pay dearly for your privilege! Never let it be +said that you went away thirsting from this blessed spot." + +"I am not thirsty just now. Not at all thirsty, thank you." + +"We have seen you drink without being thirsty. Just one glass," they +pleaded. "It will make you live a hundred years." + +"No. Let us talk about something else." + +"No? Then what shall we tell our mother? That we brought you here, and +that you were afraid of a little mouthful of acqua santa? We thought you +had more courage. We thought you could strangle a lion." + +"Something will happen," I said, as I drained that glass. + +Nothing happened for a few hours. + +Two days' rest is working wonders.... + +I profit by the occasion of this slight indisposition to glance +backwards--and forwards. + +I am here, at Alatri, on the 22 June: so much is beyond contestation. + +A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31: Palombara. Well I +remember the hot walk to Palombara! + +August 3: Mons Lucretilis, that classical mountain from whose summit I +gazed at the distant Velino which overtops like a crystal of amethyst +all the other peaks. This was during one of my two visits to Licenza. +Pleasant days at Licenza, duly noting in the house of Horace what I have +noted with Shelley and other bards, namely, that these fellows who sing +so blithely of the simple life yet contrive to possess extremely +commodious residences; pleasant days among those wooded glens, walking +almost every morning in the footsteps of old Ramage up the valley in +whose streamlet the willow-roots sway like branches of coral--aloft +under the wild walnuts to that bubbling fountain where I used to meet my +two friends, Arcadian goat-herds, aboriginal fauns of the thickets, who +told me, amid ribald laughter, a few personal experiences which nothing +would induce me to set down here. + +July 26: La Rocca. What happened at La Rocca? + +October 2: Florence. What happened at Florence? A good deal, during +those noteworthy twelve hours! + +Some memories have grown strangely nebulous; impossible to reconstruct, +for example, what went on during the days of drowsy discomfort at +Montecelio. A lethargy seems to have fallen on me; I lived in a dream +out of which there emerges nothing save the figure of the local +tobacconist, a ruddy type with the face of a Roman farmer, who took me +to booze with him, in broad patriarchal style, every night at a +different friend's house. Those nights at Montecelio! The mosquitoes! +The heat! Could this be the place which was famous in Pliny's day for +its grove of beeches? How I used to envy the old Montecelians their +climate! + +July 23: Saracinesca. What happened? I recollect the view over the +sweltering Campagna from the dizzy castle-ruin, in whose garden I see +myself nibbling a black cherry, the very last of the season, plucked +from a tree which grows beside the wall whereon I sat. That suffices: it +gives a key to the situation. I can now conjure up the gaunt and sombre +houses of this thick-clustering stronghold; the Rembrandtesque shadows, +the streets devoid of men, the picture of some martial hero in a +cavern-like recess where I sought shelter from the heat, a black +crucifix planted in the soil below the entrance of the village--my +picture of Saracinesca is complete, in outline. + +July 31: Subiaco. Precisely! A week later, then, I walk thirty-two +chilometres along the shadeless high road, an insane thing to do, to +Subiaco and back. There, in the restaurant Aniene, when all the +luncheon-guests have departed for their noonday nap, the cook of the +establishment, one of those glorious old Roman he-cooks, comes up to my +table. Did I like the boiled trout? + +Rather flabby, I reply. A little tasteless. Let him try, next time, some +white vinegar in the water and a bay-leaf or two. + +He pricks up his ears: we are gens du metier. I invite him to sit down +and inquire: how about a bottle of Cesanese, now that we are alone? An +excellent idea! And he, in his turn, will permit himself to offer me +certain strawberries from his own private store. + +"Strawberries?" I ask. "Who ever heard of strawberries in Central Italy +on the 31 July? Why, I devoured the last cherry a week ago, and it was +only alive because it grew above the clouds." + +These, he explains mysteriously, are special strawberries, brought down +from near the snow-line by a special goat-boy. They are not for the +guests, but "only for myself." Strawberries are always worth paying for; +they are mildly purging, they go well with the wine. And what a +wonderful scent they have! "You remind me of a certain Lucullo," I said, +"who was also nice about strawberries. In fact, he made a fine art of +eating and drinking." + +"Your Lucullo, we may take it, was a Roman?" + +"Romano di Roma." + +Thus conversing with this rare old ruffian, I forget my intention of +leaving a card on Saint Scolastica. She has waited for me so long. She +can wait a little longer.... + +August 9: Villa Lante. + +August 12: Ferento. What happened at Ferento? + +Now what happened at Ferento? Let me try to reconstruct that morning's +visit. + +I have clear memories of the walk from Viterbo--it would be eighteen +chilometres there and back, they told me. I had slept well in my quaint +little room with the water rushing under the window, and breakfasted in +receptive and responsive mood. I recall that trudge along the highway +and how I stepped across patches of sunlight from the shade of one +regularly planted tree into that of another. The twelfth of August.... +It set me thinking of heathery moorlands and grouse, and of those +legions of flies that settle on one's nose just as one pulls the +trigger. It all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road, +among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what +these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter +months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland +underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my ears--a wistful +intermezzo of Brahms. It seemed to spring out of the hot earth. Such a +natural song, elvishly coaxing! Would I ever play it again? Neither +that, nor any other. + +It turned my thoughts, as I went along, to Brahms and led me to +understand why no man, who cares only for his fellow-creatures, will +ever relish that music. It is an alien tongue, full of deeps and +rippling shallows uncomprehended of those who know nothing of lonely +places; full of thrills and silences such as are not encountered among +the habitations of men. It echoes the multitudinous voice of nature, and +distils the smiles and tears of things non-human. This man listened, all +alone; he overheard things to which other ears are deaf--things terrible +and sweet; the sigh of some wet Naiad by a reedy lake, the pleadings and +furies of the genii--of those that whisper in woodlands and caverns by +the sea, and ride wailing on thunder-laden clouds, and rock with ripe +laughter in sunny wildernesses. Brahms is the test. Whoso dreads +solitude will likewise dread his elemental humour. + +It kept me company, this melodious and endearing fairy, till where a +path, diverging to the right, led up to the ruins already visible. There +the ethereal comrade took flight, scared, maybe, because my senses took +on a grossly mundane complexion--it is a way they have, thank +God--became absorbed, that is, in the contemplation of certain +blackberries wherewith the hedge was loaded. I thought: the tons of +blackberries that fall to earth in Italy, unheeded! And not even a +Scotsman knows what blackberries are, until he has tasted these. I am no +gourmet of such wild things; I rather agree with Goethe when he says: +"How berries taste, you must ask children." But I can sympathise with +the predilections of others, having certain predilections of my own. + +Once, at a miserable place in North Ireland, region of bad whisky and +porter, they brought me at dinner some wine of which they knew +nothing--they had got it from a shipwreck or some local sale. I am +rather fond of hock. And this particular bottle bore on its label the +magic imprint of a falcon sitting on a hilltop. Connoisseurs will know +that falcon. They will understand how it came about that I remained in +the inn till the last bottle of nectar was cracked. What a shame to +leave a drop for anybody else! Once again, on a bicycle trip from Paris +to the Mediterranean, I came upon a broad, smiling meadow somewhere in +the Auvergne, thickly besprinkled with mushrooms. There was a village +hard by. In that village I remained till the meadow was close cropped. +Half a ton of mushrooms--gone. Some people are rather fond of mushrooms. +And that is the right spirit: to leave nothing but a tabula rasa for +those that come after. It hurt me to think that anybody else should have +a single one of those particular mushrooms. Let them find new ones, in +another field; not in mine. + +Now what would your amateur of blackberries do in Italy? From the fate +which nearly overtook me he might save himself by specialising; by +dividing the many local varieties into two main classes and devoting his +whole attention to one or the other; to the kind such as I found on +Elba--small and round and fragrant, of ruddy hue, and palpitating with +warm sunbeams; or to that other kind, those that grow in clearings of +the Apennines where the boughs droop to earth with the weight of their +portentous clusters--swarthy as night, huge in size, oval, and fraught +with chilly mountain dews. + +No true enthusiast, I feel sure, would ever be satisfied with such an +unfair division of labour--so one-sided an arrangement. He would curse +his folly for having specialised. While engaged upon one variety, he +would always be hankering after that other kind and thinking how much +better they were. What shall he do, then? Well, he might devote one year +to one species, the next to another, and so on. Or else--seeing that +every zone of altitude bears brambles at its season and that the +interval between the maturing of the extreme varieties is at least four +months--he might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical sense, +devouring blackberries of different flavour as he went along; he might +work his way upwards, boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle +drills an oak, and leaving a track of devastation in his rear--browsing +aloft from the sea-board, where brambles are black in June, through +tangled macchia and vine-clad slopes into the cooler acclivities of rock +and jungle--grazing ever upward to where, at close of September and in +the shadow of some lonely peak on which the white mantle of winter has +already fallen, he finds a few more berries struggling for warmth and +sunshine, and then, still higher up, just a few more--the last, the very +last, of their race--dwarfs of the mountains, earthward-creeping, and +frozen pink ere yet they have had time to ripen. Here, crammed to the +brim, he may retire to hibernate, curled up like a full-gorged bear and +ready to roll downhill with the melting snows and arrive at the +sea-coast in time to begin again. What a jolly life! How much better +than being Postmaster-General or Inspector of Nuisances! But such +enthusiasts are nowhere to be found. I wish they were; the world would +be a merrier place.... + +Here is the ruined town of Ferento, all alone on the arid brow of the +hill. Nothing human in sight. A charming spot it must have been in olden +times, when the country was more timbered; now all is bare--brown earth, +brown stones. Dutifully I inspect the ruins and, applying the method of +Zadig or something of that kind, conclude that Ferento, this particular +Ferento, was relatively unimportant and relatively modern, although so +fine a site may well have commended itself from early days as a +settlement. I pick up, namely, a piece of verde antico, a green marble +which came into vogue at a later period than many other coloured ones. +Ergo, Ferento was relatively modern as antiquities go; else this marble +would not occur there. I seek for coloured ones and find not the +smallest fragment; nothing but white. Ergo, the place was relatively +insignificant; else the reds and yellows would also be discoverable. I +observe incidentally--quite incidentally!--that the architecture +corroborates my theory; so do the guide-books, no doubt, if there are +any. Now I know, furthermore, the origin of that small slab of verde +antico which had puzzled me, mixed up, as it was, among the mosaics of +quite modern marbles in that church whither I had been conducted by a +local antiquarian to admire a certain fresco recently laid bare, and +some rather crude daubs by Romanelli. + +Out again, into the path that overlooks the steep ravine. Here I find, +resting in the shadow of the wall, an aged shepherd and his flock and a +shaggy, murderous-looking dog of the Campagna breed that shows his teeth +and growls incessantly, glaring at me as if I were a wolf. "Barone" is +the brute's name. I had intended to clamber down and see whether the +rock-surface bears any traces of human workmanship; the rock-surface, I +now decide, may take care of itself. It has waited for me so long. It +can wait a little longer. + +"Does that beast of yours eat Christians?" + +"He? He is a perfect capo di c----. That is his trick, to prevent people +from kicking him. They think he can bite." + +I produce half a cigar which he crushes up into his black clay pipe. + +"Yours is not a bad life." + +"One lives. But I had better times in Zurich." + +He had stayed there awhile, working in some factory. He praised its +food, its beer, its conveniences. + +Zurich: incongruous image! Straightway I was transported from this +harmonious desolation of Ferento; I lost sight of yonder clump of +withering thistles--thistles of recent growth; you could sit, you could +stand, in their shade--and found myself glancing over a leaden lake and +wandering about streets full of ill-dressed and ungracious folk; +escaping thence further afield, into featureless hills encrusted with +smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered under noisome +horse-chestnuts and Virginia creepers. How came they to hit upon the +ugliest tree, and the ugliest creeper, on earth? Infallible instinct! +Zurich: who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity? + +So this old man had been there. + +And I remembered an expression in a book recently written by a friend of +mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in +Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness"--some such phrase. +[33] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active +kind; it grips you by the throat and sits on your chest like a +nightmare. + +I looked at the old fellow. He was sound; he had escaped the contagion. +Those others, those many hundred thousand others in Switzerland and +America--they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead ordinariness of +that life among machines. Future generations will hardly recognise the +Italian race from our descriptions. A new type is being formed, cold and +loveless, with all the divinity drained out of them. + +Having a long walk before me and being due home for luncheon, I rose to +depart, and in so doing bestowed a vigorous kick upon Barone, in order +to test the truth of his master's theory. It worked. The glowering and +snarling ceased. He was a good dog--almost human. I think, with a few +more kicks, he might have grown quite friendly. + +Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its +starkness. A land without atmosphere, and deficient in every element of +the picturesque, whether of man or nature. Four harsh, dominant tones, +which never overlap or intermingle: blue sky, white snow, black +fir-woods, green fields, and, if you insist upon having a fifth, then +take--yes, take and keep--that theatrical pink Alpenglühen which is +turned on at fixed hours for the delectation of gaping tourists, like a +tap of strontium light or the display of electric fluid at Schaffhausen +Falls. + +"Did you observe the illumination of the Falls, sir, last night?" + +"How can one avoid seeing the beastly thing?" + +"Ah! Then we must add two francs to the bill." + +Many are the schools of art that have grown up in England and elsewhere +and flourished side by side, vying with one another to express the +protean graces of man, of architecture and domestic interior, of earth +and sky and sea. Where is the Swiss school? Where, in any public +gallery, will you find a masterpiece which triumphantly vindicates the +charm of Swiss scenery? You will, find it vindicated only on condensed +milk tins. These folks can write. My taste in lyrics may be peculiar, +but I used to love my Leuthold--I wish I had him here at this moment; +the bold strokes of Keller, the miniature work, the cameo-like touches, +of C. F. Meyer--they can write! They would doubtless paint, were there +anything to paint. Holbein: did the landscape of Switzerland seduce him? +And Boecklin? He fled out of its welter of raw materialism. Even his +Swiss landscapes are mediterraneanized. Boecklin---- + +And here, as the name formulated itself, that little sprite of Brahms, +that intermezzo, once more leapt to my side out of the parched fields. I +imagine it came less for my sake than for the companionship of Boecklin. +They were comrades in the spirit; they understood. What one had heard, +the other beheld--shapes of mystery, that peer out of forest gloom and +the blue hush of midday and out of glassy waters--shapes that shudder +and laugh. No doubt you may detect a difference between Boecklin's +creations and those of classic days; it is as if the light of his +dreamings had filtered through some medium, some stained-glass window in +a Gothic church which distorted their outlines and rendered them +somewhat more grotesque. It is the hand of time. The world has aged. Yet +the shapes are young; they do but change their clothes and follow the +fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal +can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the +serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway +region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the +greatest jest in the universe. At us.... + +That lake of Conterano--the accent is on the ante-penultima--it looked +appetising on the map, all alone out there. It attracted me strongly. I +pictured a placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered among +wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam of its calm waters. Lakes are +so rare in Italy. During the whole of this summer I saw only one other, +fringed with the common English reed--two, rather, lying side by side, +one turbid and the other clear, and filling up two of those curious +circular depressions in the limestone. I rode past them on the watershed +behind Cineto Romano. These were sweet water. Of sulphur lakelets I also +saw two. + +Sitting on a stone into which the coldness of midnight had entered +(Alatri lies at a good elevation) I awaited my companion in the dusk of +dawn. Soon enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-hour's +shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri, and listening to the +plash of the fountain, is one of those memories of the town which are +graven most clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the very spot +whereon I sat. + +We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin with, profiting by some +short cuts through chestnut woods; turned to the right, ever ascending, +behind that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical hill; +thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the halts by the way. A decayed +roadside chapel with faded frescoes--a shepherd who played us some +melodies on his pipe--those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime, +glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth--the gateway of a +farmhouse being repaired--a reservoir of water full of newts--a +fascinating old woman who told us something about something--the distant +view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion +for lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in June? The days are so endless! + +At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the lake at our feet, +simmering in the noonday beams--an everyday sheet of water, brown in +colour, with muddy banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within +miles; one of those lakes which, by their periodical rising and sinking, +give so much trouble that there is talk, equally periodical, of draining +them off altogether. This one, they say, shifts continually and +sometimes reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in its oozy +bed. + +Here are countless frogs, and fish--tench; also a boat that belongs to +the man who rents the fishing. A sad accident happened lately with his +boat. A party of youngsters came for an outing and two boys jumped into +the tub, rowed out, and capsized it with their pranks. They were both +drowned--a painful and piteous death--a death which I have tried, by +accident, and can nowise recommend. They fished them out later from +their slimy couch, and found that they had clasped one another so +tightly in their mortal agony that it was deemed impious ever to +unloosen that embrace. So they were laid to rest, locked in each other's +arms. + +While my companion told me these things we had plodded further and +further along this flat and inhospitable shore, and grown more and more +taciturn. We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the +onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the parching drought of +August. Things looked bad. The luncheon hour was long past, and our +spirits began to droop. All my mellowness took flight; I grew snappy and +monosyllabic. Was there no shade? + +Yonder ... that dusky patch against the mountain? Brushwood of some +kind, without a doubt. The place seemed to be unattainable, and yet, +after an inordinate outlay of energy, we had climbed across those torrid +meadows. It proved to be a hazel copse mysteriously dark within, +voiceless, and cool as a cavern. + +Be sure that he who planted these hazels on the bleak hillside was no +common son of earth, but some wise and inspired mortal. My blessings on +his head! May his shadow never grow less! Or, if that wish be already +past fulfilment, may he dwell in Elysium attended by a thousand +ministering angels, every one of them selected by himself; may he +rejoice in their caresses for evermore. Naught was amiss. All conspired +to make the occasion memorable. I look back upon our sojourn among those +verdant hazels and see that it was good--one of those moments which are +never granted knowingly by jealous fate. So dense was the leafage in the +greenest heart of the grove that not a shred of sunlight, not a particle +as large as a sixpence, could penetrate to earth. We were drowned in +shade; screened from the flaming world outside; secure--without a care. +We envied neither God nor man. + +I thought of certain of my fellow-creatures. I often think of them. What +were they now doing? Taking themselves seriously and rushing about, as +usual, haggard and careworn--like those sagacious ants that scurry +hither and thither, and stare into each other's faces with a kind of +desperate imbecility, when some sportive schoolboy has kicked their +ridiculous nest into the air and upset all their solemn little +calculations. + +As for ourselves, we took our ease. We ate and drank, we slumbered +awhile, then joked and frolicked for five hours on end, or possibly six. +[34] I kept no count of what was said nor how the time flew by. I only +know that when at last we emerged from our ambrosial shelter the muscles +of my stomach had grown sore from the strain of laughter, and Arcturus +was twinkling overhead. + +THE END + + +INDEX + +Abbadé, author +Abbadia San Salvatore +Abruzzi, limestone deserts +Acqua Acetosa, Rome +Acqua santa, mineral fountain, its appalling effects +Acque Vive, old Scanno +Addison, J. +Afforestation at Scanno +Agave, plant; dislikes change of scene +Alatri; its nameless tavern; citadel; ideal families at +Alban volcanoes +Alpenglühen, an abomination +Amiata, mountain +Anagni +Analphabetics, their charm +Anastasio, F. +Aniene, river +Anthology, Greek +Anticoli +Apennines, their general coloration +Argos +Aristotle +Arno river, its colour-moods +Artena +Athene (Minerva), promontory and temple +Attilio, a sagacious youngster + + +Bacon, misquoted +Baedeker, on wine of Scanno +Banca d'ltalia, its soi-disant director makes a fool of himself +"Barone," an almost human dog +Bathing in Tiber +Baudelaire, C. +Bears of Pescasseroli, rapid breeders +Beds in England, neolithic features of +Belgrave Square, its legendary partridges +Bellegra, village +Beloch, J. +Bennet, Dr. J. H. +Bentham, J. +Berceau, mountain +Bessel, F. W. +Betifuli, ancient Scanno +Bigio, marble +Birds, their conservative habits +Blackberries in Italy +Blasphemies, as a pick-me-up +Blind, Mathilde +Blue, basic note of Italian landscape +Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau, its lightning methods +Boecklin, A. +Borghese Gardens +Bournemouth +Bowles, Dr. R. +Brachycephalism, menace to humanity +Brahms, J., his inspiration +Breil +Brewster, H. B. +Buckle, H. T. +Building materials, of Florence, impart peculiar character to towns +Bunbury, E. H., quoted +Butter, French method of weighing, Italian regulations regarding + +Cacume, mountain +Calypso, her island +Cammaiore +Camosciara, mountain +Campagna of Rome +Campanella, headland +Campoli Apennino +Capaccio, G. C. +Cap Martin (Mentone), a vulgarized spot +Capasso, B. +Capranica +Capri +Carbineers, good men and questionable institution +Carrara +Carrion crows, relatively gay fowls +Casamari convent +Casanova, J. +Cascine Gardens +Cats in Rome, their distressful condition +Cement floors, a detestable invention +Cemetery of Mentone of Rome; Scanno; Olevano +Censorship Department, gratifying interview at +Cervesato, A. +Chamois +Chaucer +Children, good company neglected in war-time +China, fatal morality of pre-Tartar period +Ciminian forest +Cineto Romano +Circe, nymph +Cisterna, a death-trap +Civilization, its characteristic +Civitella +Coal-supply, a sore subject in Italy +Coliseum, flora and fauna of +Collepardo +Conscience, national versus individual +Consumption on Riviera; at Olevano +Conterano, lake +Corsanico +Corsi, F. +Crapolla, sea-cove +Crinagoras, poet +Critics, spleenfully criticized +Cro-Magnon racev Cross, futility of bearing a + +Darwin +Deakin, botanist +Dennis, G. +Deserters at Valmontone +Deslys, Gaby +Dewlessness, a peculiarity of Italian townsmen +Dialects of Italy +Dictionary of National Biography +Diodorus Siculus +Dohrn, Dr. A. +Donnorso, V. +Doria, A. +Dreams, recurrent; of flying +Drowning accidents +Drunkenness, not everybody's affair + +Eagles +Education Office, a "Sleepy Hollow" +Edwards, Tam, naturalist +Elba +Elder tree, a venerable growth +England, to be visited as a tourist +English language, should remain in flux +Englishmen, change in race-characters; contrasted with Italians; +influence of new surroundings on +Enthusiasm, unrewarded +Eratosthenes +Eugénie, Empress +Experience, its uses + +Faces, possibilities of improving +Ferentino +Ferento, ruined city +Filangieri, di Candida, R. +Flies, a curse +Florence, its river; Cascine Gardens; pavements; local blasphemies; +revisited +Fontanella, village +Food in war-time +Football worth watching +Fountains in Rome; responsible for shocking behaviour; in Villa Borghese +France, its one irremediable drawback +Frattura, village +Frosinone, "Garibaldi" hotel; visited by Ramage +Fumone +Functionaries, social parasites + + +Gambling instinct, correlated with religion +Gardeners, professional, imbeciles +Gargiulli, O. +Gautier, T. +Germans, at Mentone; at Levanto; save oaks of Olevano; must follow +footsteps +Ghosts, mankind surrounded by, in; away with them +Giannettasio, N. P.v Girtanner, Dr. A., beaver-specialist +Giulio, a young reprobate +Goethe, quoted +Golden Ages of literature +Gorbio +Grant Duff, M. E. +Greek words, surviving +Grimaldi caves, incident at +Grocery business, appeals to Frenchmen +Gross feeders, beware of +Grotta delle Palumbe +Guardie regie, official loafers +Gunther, Dr. A. + +H., Mr., an ardent book-lover +Hares in Italy +Hebrews of military age, their enviable immunity from conscription +Henderson, Dr., an old tippler +Heredity, speculations on +Hermits in Italy +Hippocrates +Hohentwiel, mountain +Homer +Horace +Housemaid, a noteworthy +Hutton, E. + +Ierate, locality +Imagination, needful to travel-literature, +Imperialism in Italy +Individual, contrasted with race +Insomnia +Intelligence, its two ingredients +Isola Liri +Italians, evolution of new type +Italy, reasons for visiting; over-policed +Ives, G. + +J. O. M., a memorable type +Jefferies, R. +Johnson, S. +Johnston-Lavis, H. J. +Jovana, meadow + +Keller, G. +Kew Gardens +King of Italy, protects bears +Kingfisher, a wary old one +Kneeling boy, statue +Knop, Professor + +Lachner, V. +Ladbroke Grove, its enlightened children +Landlady, of Mentone; the +London variety; she of Viareggio; of Florence +Lante, Villa +La Croce, mountain +La Rocca, village +Lawrence, D. H. +Laws, raison d'etre of Italian +Leuthold, H. +Levanto, arrival at; situation; company at hotel; the local magistrate; +stroll to Monterosso +Licenza +Ligurians, their bad character +Lizard, making a friend of; a disconsolate one +Love affairs, Italian, how to conduct +Lucian +Lucretilis, mountain +Lyme Regis + +Macaroni, war-time substitutes; the right kind +Maccarese, village +Machinery, cult of; depraves Italian character +Madonna della Neve, chapel +Madonna di Tranquillo, wayside shrine +Malaria +Mandela +Marbles +Mathew, Rev. +Maudsley, H. +Maupassant +Mazzella, S. +Megara +Mentone, recent transformation of; landscape; vegetation; produces dull +schoolboys; prehistoric man of +Merle blanc, a meritorious establishment +Metaphysicians, atrophied poets +Meyer, C. F. +Meysenbug, Malwida von +Michael Angelo; gets into trouble +Migration of labourers, annual +Mill, J. S. +Militarism, the modern infáme +Milvain Bridge +Mineralogy +Momio, village +Monogamous habits, bad for songsters +Mons Canutarius +Montalto, cliff +Monte-Carlo, its well-groomed flowers; lamentable episode at Casino +Montecelio +Monterosso +Mortella, cliff +Mortola, village +Mosquitoes in Rome +Moulinet +Mummies, Peruvian +Munitions Office, develops a craving for bankers +Mure of Caldwell, traveller +Muretta, mountain +Museum, Kircher; delle Terme +Music +Mythopoeic faculty, example of + +Neighbours, an over-rated class +Nerano +Newspaper reading, to be discouraged +Nice +Nietzsche, his blind spot +Nightingales, too much of a good thing; cease from troubling +Ninetta, an attractive maiden +Nose, degeneration of + +Odysseus at Alatri +Office-hunters, should respect their betters +Olevano, its nightingales; oak grove at; first English resident at +Opi, town +Ornithology +Orte, town +Orvinio +Ouida, her writings and character + +Paestum, roses of +Pais, Prof. E. +Palombaro +Pantheon +Patriotism, chilled +Pavements, life on +Peira Cava +Perfumes, react on physiognomy +Persico, G. B. +Pescasseroli; its bears +Peutinger Table +Philosophers, contradistinguished from metaphysicians +Piccadilly Goat +Pietrasanta +Pig, in distress +Pines, at Levanto; at Viareggio +Pisa in war-time +Plaster-casts, how to dispose of +Plato +Pliny +Pollius Felix +Pontine Marshes +Ponza island, megalithic ruin on +Portovenere, marble +Potter, Major Frederick, discovers Olevano +Pottery, index of national taste +Powder magazine, explosion of +Preccia, mountain +Prehistoric races, possible reasons for their extinction +Press, the daily, its disastrous functions +"Prison, The," a Socratic dialogue + +Race ideals, contrasted with individual +Ramage, Craufurd Tait, a centrifugal Scotsman, his book and umbrella; +mania for hurrying; other travels of; compared with Waterton; +on Italian country life; gets drunk; makes formal profession of +sobriety; +his tolerance; sensitive to female charms; still hustling; his +humanistic outlook; little failings; other publications; zest for +knowledge; at Licenza +Rat-hunts +Ravens, their conjugal fidelity +Reading, to be done with reverence +Recomone, inlet +Red colour, unfashionable in Italy; in favour with other races +Rhetoric, necessary to success in courtship +Rhodian marble +Ripa, a liquid poison +Rivers, Italian +Riviera, French, its inanity; typical visitors to; lack of native genius +Roccaraso +Rojate +Rolfe, Neville +Romanelli, painter +Romans and British, their world dominion; unimaginative people +Rome, changed aspect of railway station; protestant cemetery; explosion +near; its fountains; tramcar nuisance; shadelessness; disadvantages of +site; evening breeze; neglected cats; bad food; its building stone; +unpleasant experience at; dearth of apartments +Rubinstein, A. + +Sagittario, stream +Saint Domenico +Saint-Jacques, chemin de +Saint-Louis, bridge +Saint Martin, his cave +Saint Michael, hermitage +Salatino, Dr. +Salis-Marschlins, U. von +San Costanzo, mountain and chapel +San Remo +San Rossore +Sant' Egidio, hermitage +Sant' Elia, farm +Saracinesca, village +Scalambra, mountain +Scanno, cemetery at; memories of; revisited +Schadona pass +Scheffel, V. von +Schopenhauer; anticipates "recognition marks" +Scolastica, Saint +Seaton +Sebastiani, A. +Segni +Self-indulgence, a debased expression +Sergi, Prof. G. +Serpentaro, oak grove +Serpents, with ears; human hatred of +Serrano, village +Serravezza +Shelley, an evangelist; at Viareggio; recommends caverns to his readers, +but lives comfortably himself +Sicilians +Siena, in winter; a Florentine's opinion of +Sirena, survival of name +Siren islets (Galli); ruin on +Sirocco in Rome +Sitting still, the true traveller's gift +Sleep, its sacred nature +Smollett +Snakes +Snow, Dr. H. +Sora +Soracte, mountain +Soriano; its pleasant tavern +Sospel +Spezia +Spy-mania in Italy +Stabiae (Castellamare) +Statius +Strabo +Strega liqueur, horribly adulterated; how to stop the scandal +Subiaco, strawberries at +Sunburn, pretty effects of +Surrentum +Swinburne, H. +Switzerland, its manifold beauties +Symonds, J. A. + +Taxidermy, study of +Telephone, an abomination +Termini, village +Terrata, mountain +Theophrastus +Tiber +Tiryns, citadel +Torco, village +Trafalgar Square, its fauna +Trajan's Forum +Tramcars, an abomination +Tree-creeper, bird +Trevi Fountain +Trifles, importance of +Truth-telling, a matter of longitude; not in vogue to-day +Tuscan speech, its peculiar savour + +Urquehart, D. + +Valiante, Marquis +Valmontone; its upper terrace; capture of a deserter at, Pergola, tavern +Velino, mountain +Velletri +Venice +Ventimiglia, wine of +Verde antico, marble +Veroli +Via Appia; Flaminia; Labiena; Nomentana +Viareggio, an objectionable place; its Vittoria hotel; pine woods +Victorians, their perverse sense of duty +Villalago +Villetta Barrea +Viterbo +Voss, R. + +Wallace, A. R. +Walpole, Horace +War, the present, local opinions concerning; repercussion on thoughtful +non-combatants; effects on agriculture War Office, pandemonium; confuses +Turkish and Russian +Waterton, C., a freak +Whistling, denotes mental vacuity +White, colour, unpopular in South Italy +Will-o'-the-wisp +Wine, red and black +Wolf, at Mentone; at Frattura +Wryneck, bird + +Young, J. +Youth, should be temperate +Yucca, plant + +Zagarola +"Zone of defense," drawbacks of +Zurich, its attractions + +* * * * * * * * * * * + +1. There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to see it. + +2. Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be confounded +with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian marble of the +ancients. + +3. See North American Review, September, 1913. Ramage's Calabrian tour +of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky undertaking. The few +travellers who then penetrated into this country kept to the main roads +and never moved without a military escort. One of them actually hired a +brigand as a protection. + +4. Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle in the +stream-bed--mere disconnected pools to show where the river was, and +will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence. Grant Duff says +he has seen the Arno "blue." So have I: a hepatic blue. + +5. It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown Prince. + +6. He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died. + +7. I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method of the +Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older monuments +are in better condition than the new ones. We live and learn. + +8. The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters, "... I am +writing without due consideration of the interesting point. But this +possible explanation occurs to me: children are active motor machines, +always restless and moving when not asleep. When asleep, the motor +tendencies, being not quite passive, translate themselves into the +dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant or painful, according to +bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As the muscles are almost passive +in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming activity--into dreams of flying +when bodily states are pleasant, into falling down precipices, etc., +when they are out of sorts. This is quite a hasty reflection...." + +9. "The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams and Norgate, +1891.) + +10. Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your reference to +Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I thought I was the +first to fully point out. It is a most interesting anticipation. I do +not read German, but from what I have heard of his works he was the last +man I should have expected to make such an acute suggestion in Natural +History." + +11. Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions. + +12. Fecit! He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on the 4th +November, 1920. + +13. This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166, "I have +lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine." We learn from the +Dictionary of National Biography that he was born in 1803; he must +therefore have been twenty-five years old when he bemused the +coastguard. Only twenty-five; and already at this stage. We are further +told that he was tutor to somebody's son. Unhappy child! + +14. Not all of them are true thistles. Abbadé's Guide to the Abruzzi +(1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region. + +15. Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking +of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name--a love +intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of a good +word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my plot "rightly +filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better. + +16. Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making a +scientific collection of local imprecations--abusive, vituperative or +profane expletives; swear-words, in short--enriched with elaborate +commentary. I would gladly print this little study in folk-lore as an +appendix to the present volume, were it fit for publication. + +17. Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made +considerable progress in the peninsula. + +18. This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others have +garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here, and to their +list may be added that of the rock on which stood the villa of Pollius +Felix; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but used to be called +Petrapoli; pure Greek: Pollio's rock. There is still a mine of such +material to be exploited by all who care to study the vernacular. The +giant euphorbia, for instance, common on these hills, is locally known +as "totomaglie"; pure Greek again: tithymalos. + +19. Query: whether there be no connection between brachycephalism and +this modern deification of machinery? + +20. Robert L. Bowles, M.D. "Sunburn on the Alps" (Alpine Journal, +November, 1888) and "The Influence of Light on the Skin" (British +Journal of Dermatology, No. 105, Vol. 9). + +21. It has now been cleaned--with inevitable results. + +22. Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's diary. + +23. Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has +improved. Somebody now feeds them--which could hardly have been expected +during those stressful times of war, when bread barely sufficed for the +human population. They are also fewer in numbers. Their owners, I fancy, +can afford to keep them at home once more. + +24. This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious letter from +the old fellow. "The question you ask is one of great ornithological +importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I am absolutely +afraid to ask any questions in the British Museum, as they jump at an +idea and cut the ground from under the original man's feet. This I +regret to say is my experience. I have been asked what does it matter +who makes the discovery? I reply, 'Render unto Caesar, etc.' If you are +going to work it out, keep it dark. The British Museum have not the +necessary specimens--in this country I believe it is not known how the +change takes place. I tried some years ago to work it out with live +specimens, but failed because I could not get young birds. Now in answer +to your question, my belief is that the young bird moults into the +winter plumages direct and that this is changed into the full plumage in +spring either by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips of the +feathers. This is private because it is theoretical, and for your +private use to verify...." + +Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Günther wrote: "The skin differs in +nothing from that of Phoca foetida. In the skull I observe that the +nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in typical specimens from +the northern coasts. There is also a remarkable thinness of bone, a want +of osseous substance; but it is impossible to say whether this is due to +altered physical conditions or should be accounted for by the youth of +the specimen, or whether it is an individual peculiarity." + +25. Winter 1882-1883; possibly later. + +26. The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, seems to +have been the Caucasus. + +27. I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track the legend +to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed the +ordinary tourists' map of the district. + +28. Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions of the +guardie regie, which threaten to absorb the entire youth of Italy. At +this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing accommodation all +over the peninsula; in Rome alone, they say, apartments are needed for +10,000 practically homeless persons, and a mathematician may calculate +the number of houses required to contain them. How shall they ever be +built, if all the potential builders are loafing about in uniforms at +the public expense? + +29. Some of these Beautiful Thoughts went through more than one edition. + +30. From an old article: "I was pleased to observe on Ponza the relics +of a great pre-Roman civilization. Above the town, where the cemetery +now stands, is a likely site for a citadel, and on examining it from the +sea I noticed, sure enough, a few blocks of prehistoric structure of the +so-called Cyclopean type underneath a corner of the cemetery wall. There +is a portion in better preservation between the 'Baths of Pilate' and +the harbour, where a little path winds up from the sea. The blocks are +joined without mortar, and some of them are over a metre in length. This +megalithic wall may be taken to be contemporaneous with similar works of +defence found in various parts of Italy, but I believe its existence on +Ponza has not yet been recorded. Livy says that Volscians inhabited the +island till they were supplanted by the Romans, and a tradition +preserved by Strabo and Virgil locates here the palace of the +enchantress Circe, who transformed the companions of Ulysses into +bristly swine...." Some one may have anticipated me here again, as did +Salis-Marschlins in the eighteenth century with those roses of Passtum +whose disappearance Ramage, like every one else, laments--those roses +which I thought I was the first to re-discover. They grow on the spot in +considerable quantities, though one needs good eyes to see them. They +are not flourishing as of yore, being dwarfs not more than a few inches +in height. One which I carried away and kept three years in a pot and +six more in the earth grew to a length of about sixteen feet, and is +probably alive at this moment, I never saw a flower. + +31. For the abject condition of these slaves (such they are) see Chapter +VII of The Roman Campagna by Arnaldo Cervesato. + +32. Written in 1917. + +33. D.H. Lawrence: Twilight in Italy. + +34. The title Alone strikes me, on reflection, as rather an inapt one +for this volume. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alone + +Author: Norman Douglas + +Posting Date: June 16, 2013 [EBook #7380] +Release Date: January, 2005 +First Posted: April 22, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE *** + + + + +Produced by Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h2>ALONE</h2> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>NORMAN DOUGLAS</h2> + +<p class="ctr"> +<b>AUTHOR OF</b> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<b>"SOUTH WIND," "THEY WENT," "TOGETHER," ETC.</b> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<b>TO HIS FRIEND</b> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<b>EDWARD HUTTON</b> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<b>WHO PRINTED SOME OF THESE TRIVIALITIES</b> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<b>IN THAT "ANGLO-ITALIAN REVIEW"</b> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<b>WHICH DESERVED A BETTER FATE</b> +</p> + +<hr> + +<br><br><br><br> + +<p> +<b>CONTENTS</b> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#intro">INTRODUCTION</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#mentone">MENTONE</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#levanto">LEVANTO</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#siena">SIENA</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#pisa">PISA</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#viafeb">VIAREGGIO (<i>February</i>)</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#viamay">VIAREGGIO (<i>May</i>)</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#rome1">ROME</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#olevano">OLEVANO</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#valmontone">VALMONTONE</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#agata">SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#rome2">ROME</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#soriano">SORIANO</a> +</p> + +<p> +<a href="#alatri">ALATRI</a> +</p> + +<p> + +</p> + +<h3><a name="intro">Introduction</a></h3> + + +<p> +What ages ago it seems, that "Great War"! +</p> + +<p> +And what enthusiasts we were! What visionaries, to imagine that in such +an hour of emergency a man might discover himself to be fitted for some +work of national utility without that preliminary wire-pulling which was +essential in humdrum times of peace! How we lingered in long queues, and +stamped up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls, waiting, only +waiting, to be asked to do something for our country by any little +guttersnipe who happened to have been jockeyed into the requisite +position of authority! What innocents.... +</p> + +<p> +I have memories of several afternoons spent at a pleasant place near St. +James's Park station, whither I went in search of patriotic employment. +It was called, I think, Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau (or +something equally lucid and concise), and professed to find work for +everybody. Here, in a fixed number of rooms, sat an uncertain number of +chubby young gentlemen, all of whom seemed to be of military age, or +possibly below it; the Emergency Bureau was then plainly--for it may +have changed later on--a hastily improvised shelter for privileged +sucklings, a kind of nursery on advanced Montessori methods. Well, that +was not my concern. One must trust the Government to know its own +business. +</p> + +<p> +During my second or third visit to this hygienic and well-lighted +establishment I was introduced, most fortunately, into the sanctuary of +Mr. R----, whose name was familiar to me. Was he not his brother's +brother? He was. A real stroke of luck! +</p> + +<p> +Mr. R----, a pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as +I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous +tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant +who tries to look like daddy. What might he do for me? +</p> + +<p> +I explained. +</p> + +<p> +We had a short talk, during which various forms were conscientiously +filled up as to my qualifications, such as they were. Of course, there +was nothing doing just then; but one never knows, does one? Would I mind +calling again? +</p> + +<p> +Would I mind? I should think not. I should like nothing better. It did +one good to be in contact with this youthful optimist and listen to his +blithe and pleasing prattle; he was so hopeful, so philosophic, so +cheery; his whole nature seemed to exhale the golden words: "Never say +die." And no wonder. He ought to have been at the front, but some +guardian angel in the <i>haute finance</i> had dumped him into this soft +and safe job: it was enough to make anybody cheerful. One should be +cautious, none the less, how one criticises the action of the +authorities. May be they kept him at the Emergency Bureau for the +express purpose of infusing confidence, by his bright manner, into the +minds of despondent patriots like myself, and of keeping the flag flying +in a general way--a task for which he, a German Jew, was pre-eminently +fitted. +</p> + +<p> +Be that as it may, his consolatory tactics certainly succeeded in my +case, and I went home quite infected with his rosy cheeks and words. +Yet, on the occasion of my next visit a week or two later, there was +still nothing doing--not just then, though one never knows, does one? +</p> + +<p> +"Tried the War Office?" he added airily. +</p> + +<p> +I had. +</p> + +<p> +Who hadn't? +</p> + +<p> +The War Office was a nightmare in those early days. It resembled +Liverpool Street station on the evening of a rainless Bank Holiday. The +only clear memory I carried away--and even this may have been due to +some hallucination--was that of a voice shouting at me through the +rabble: "<i>Can you fly?</i>" Such was my confusion that I believe I +answered in the negative, thereby losing, probably, a lucrative billet +as Chaplain to the Forces or veterinary surgeon in the Church Lads' +Brigade. Things might have been different had my distinguished cousin +still been on the spot; I, too, might have been accommodated with a big +desk and small work after the manner of the genial Mr. R----. He died in +harness, unfortunately, soon after the outbreak of war. +</p> + +<p> +I said to my young friend: +</p> + +<p> +"Everybody tells one to try the War Office--I don't know why. Of course +I tried it. I wish I had a shilling for every hour I wasted in that +lunatic asylum." +</p> + +<p> +"Ah!" he replied. "I feel sure a good many men would like to be paid at +that rate. Anyhow, trust me. We'll fix you up, sooner or later. (He kept +his word.) Why not have a whack at the F.O., meanwhile?" +</p> + +<p> +"Because I have already had a whack at it." +</p> + +<p> +I then possessed, indeed, in reply to an application on my part, a +holograph of twelve pages in the elegant calligraphy of H.M. +Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the same gentleman who was +viciously attacked by the Pankhurst section for his supposed +pro-Germanism. It conveyed no grain of hope. Other Government +Departments, he opined, might well be depleted at this moment; the +Foreign Office was in exactly the reverse position. It overflowed with +diplomatic and consular officials returned, perforce, from belligerent +countries, and now in search of occupation. Was it not natural, was it +not right, to give the preference to them? One was really at a loss to +know what to do with all those people. He had tried, hitherto in vain, +to find some kind of job for his own brother. +</p> + +<p> +A straightforward, convincing statement. Acting on the hint, I visited +the Education Office, notoriously overstaffed since Tudor days; it might +now be emptier; clerical work might be obtained there in substitution of +some youngster who had been induced to join the colours. I poked my nose +into countless recesses, and finally unearthed my man. +</p> + +<p> +They were full up, said Mr. F----. +</p> + +<p> +Full up? +</p> + +<p> +Full up. +</p> + +<p> +Then, after some further conversation as to my capacities, he thought he +might find me employment as teacher of science in the country, to +replace somebody or other. +</p> + +<p> +The notion was distasteful to me. I am not averse to learning from the +young; I only once tried to teach them--at a ragged school, long since +pulled down, near Ladbroke Grove, where I soon discovered that my little +pupils knew a great deal more than I did, more, indeed, than was good +for body or soul. Still, this was a tangible, definite offer of +unremunerative but at the same time semi-pseudo-patriotic work, not to +be sneezed at. An idea occurred to me. +</p> + +<p> +"Supposing I stick it out and give satisfaction, shall I be able to +interchange later into this department? I am more fitted for office +duties. In fact, I have had a certain experience of them." +</p> + +<p> +"No chance of that," he replied. "It is the German system. Their +schoolmasters are sometimes taken to do administrative work at +head-quarters, and <i>vice versâ</i>. Our English rule is: Once a +teacher, always a teacher." +</p> + +<p> +Here was a deadlock. For in such matters as teaching, a man may put a +strain on himself for a certain length of time; he may even be a +success, up to a point. But if he lacks the temperamental gift of +holding classes, the results in the long run will not be fair to the +children, to say nothing of himself. With reluctance I rose to depart, +Mr. F---- adding, by way of letting me down gently: +</p> + +<p> +"Tried the War Office?" +</p> + +<p> +I had. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +If the War Office was too lively, this place was too slumberous by half. +A cobwebby, Rip-van-Winkle-ish atmosphere brooded about those passages +and chambers. One could not help thinking that a little "German system" +might work wonders here. And this is merely one of several similar sites +I explored, and endeavoured to exploit, for patriotic purposes; I am +here only jotting down a few of the more important of those that occur +to me. +</p> + +<p> +And, oh! for the brush of a Hogarth to depict the gallery of faces with +which I came in contact as I went along. They were all different, yet +all alike; different in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and +self-sufficiency, but plainly of the same parentage--British to the +backbone; British of the wrong kind, with a sprinkling of Welshmen, +Irishmen, and Jews. Not a Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of +complacent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous by their +absence; they were otherwise engaged, in the field, the colonies, the +engine-room. I can only remember one single exception to this rule, this +type; it was the head of the Censorship Department. +</p> + +<p> +For of course I offered my services there, climbing up that decent +red-carpeted stairway, and glad to find myself among respectable +surroundings after all the unseemly holes I had lately wallowed in. I +sent up a card which, to my surprise, caused me to be ushered forthwith +into the presence of the Chief, who may have heard of my existence from +some mutual friend. Here, at all events, was a man with a face worth +looking at, a man who had done notable things in his day. What a relief, +moreover, to be able to talk to a gentleman for a change! I wished I +could have had him to myself for five minutes; there were one or two +things one would have liked to learn from him. Unfortunately he was +surrounded, as such people are, by half a dozen of the characteristic +masks. For the rest, His ex-Excellency seemed to be ineffably bored with +his new functions. +</p> + +<p> +"What on earth brings you here?" he began in a fascinatingly +absent-minded style, as if he had known me all my life, and with an +inimitable nasal drawl. "This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten! I +cannot recommend it. Not your style at all, I should say." +</p> + +<p> +"But, my dear Sir F----, I am not applying for <i>your</i> job. +Something subordinate, I mean. Anything, anything." +</p> + +<p> +"What? Down there, cutting up newspapers at twenty-two shillings a week? +No, no. Let's have your address, and we will communicate with you when +we find something worth your while. By the way, have you tried the War +Office?" +</p> + +<p> +I had. +</p> + +<p> +And it stands to reason that I tried the Munitions more than once. +</p> + +<p> +It was my rare good fortune--luck pursued me on these patriotic +expeditions--to come face to face, at the Munitions, with the <i>fons et +origo</i>; the deputy fountain-head, that is to say; a very peculiar +private-secretary-in-chief for that department. He was a perpendicular, +iron-grey personality, if I remember rightly, who smelt of some +indifferent hair-wash and lost no time in giving you to understand that +he was preternaturally busy. +</p> + +<p> +Did I know anything about machinery? +</p> + +<p> +Nothing to speak of, I replied. As co-manager and proprietor of some +cotton mills employing several hundred hands for spinning and weaving, I +naturally learnt how to handle a fair number of machines--sufficiently +well, at all events, to start and stop them and tell the girls how to +avoid being scalped or having their arms torn out whenever I happened to +be passing that way. This life also gave me some experience, useful +perhaps at the Munitions, in dealing with factory-hands---- +</p> + +<p> +That was not the kind of machinery he meant. Did I know anything about +banking? +</p> + +<p> +Nothing at all. +</p> + +<p> +"You are like everybody else," he replied with a weary sigh, as much as +to say: How am I going to run the British Empire with a collection of +imbeciles like this? "We have several thousands of applicants like +yourself," he went on. "But I will put your name down. Come again." +</p> + +<p> +"You are very kind." +</p> + +<p> +"Do call again," he added, in his best private-secretary manner. +</p> + +<p> +I called again a couple of weeks later. It struck me, namely, that they +might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this +time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man +with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things--one who, +moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department +and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for +certain labours--once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and +anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was +one? +</p> + +<p> +"I called about a fortnight ago. You have my name down." +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have such thousands of applicants. I +remember you! A mechanic, aren't you?" +</p> + +<p> +"No. And you asked me if I understood banking, and I said I didn't." +</p> + +<p> +"What a pity. Now if you knew about banking----" +</p> + +<p> +Nothing, evidently, had been done about my application, nor, for that +matter, about those thousands of others. We were being played with. I +began to feel grumpy. It was a lovely afternoon, and I remembered, with +regret, that I had thrown over an engagement to go for a walk with a +friend at Wimbledon. About this hour, I calculated, we should be +strolling along Beverley Brook or through the glades of Coombe Woods +with sunshine filtering through the birches overhead; it would have been +more pleasant, and far more instructive, than wasting my time with a +hatchet-faced automaton like this. That comes, I thought, of being +patriotic. I observed: +</p> + +<p> +"Your department seems to require only bankers and mechanics. Would it +not be well to advertise the fact and save trouble and time to those +thousands of applicants who, you say, are in the same predicament as +myself? I came here to do national work of some general kind." +</p> + +<p> +"So I gather. And if you understood banking----" +</p> + +<p> +"If I did, I should be a banker at my time of life--don't you see?--and +lending money to you people, and giving you good advice, instead of +asking you for employment. Isn't that fairly obvious? As a matter of +fact, my acquaintance with banking is limited to a knowledge of how to +draw cheques, and even that useful accomplishment is fast fading from my +memory, under the stress of the times." +</p> + +<p> +Being a Welshman--so I presume, from his name--he condescended to smile +faintly, but not for long; his salary was too high. As for myself, I +refrained from saying a few harsher things I was minded to say; indeed, +I made myself so vastly agreeable, after my own private recipe, that he +was quite touched. He remarked: +</p> + +<p> +"I think I had better put your name down, although we have thousands of +applicants, you know. Call again, won't you?" +</p> + +<p> +For which I humbly thanked him, instead of saying, as I ought to have +done: +</p> + +<p> +"You go to blazes. The public is a pack of idiots to run after people +who merely keep them loitering about while they feather their own nests. +We are out to lick the Germans, and yours is not the way to do it." +</p> + +<p> +Did I understand banking? The full ineptitude of this conundrum only +dawned upon me by degrees. Manifestly, if I understood banking, I might +do some specialised kind of work for the Government. But in that case I +would not apply to the Munitions. Granted they wanted bankers. Well, +there was my friend M----, renowned in the City as a genius for banking; +he could have saved them untold thousands of pounds. They would have +none of him. They sent him into the trenches, where he was duly shot. +</p> + +<p> +How easy it is for a disappointed place-seeker to jibe and rail against +the powers that be, especially when he is not in full possession of the +data! For all I know, they may have discovered my friend M---- to be a +dangerous character, and have been only too glad to remove him out of +society without unnecessary fuss, in an outwardly honourable fashion, +with a view to saving his poor but respectable parents the humiliating +experience of a criminal trial and possible execution in the family. +</p> + +<p> +If I understood banking ... why did they want bankers at this +institution? Ah, it was not my business to probe into such mysteries of +administration. To my limited intelligence it would seem that the mere +fact of a man applying at the Munitions was <i>primâ facie</i> evidence +that banking was not one of his accomplishments. It seemed to me, +furthermore, that there was no end to such "ifs"--patriotic or +otherwise. If I were a woman, for instance, I would promptly aid the +cause by jumping into a nurse's outfit, telling improper stories to the +Tommies, and getting myself photographed for the Press every morning. +But I am only a man. If I were a high-class trumpeter, I could qualify +for a job in one of the Allied Armies or, failing that, on Judgment Day. +But I can only strum the piano. And if the moon were made of green +cheese, we might all try to get hold of a slice of it, mightn't we?... +</p> + +<p> +Such was my pigheadedness, my boyish zeal, my belief in human nature or +perverse sense of duty, that I actually broke my vow and returned to +that ridiculous establishment. Yes, I "called again," flattering myself +with the conjecture that, even if they had not yet obtained a requisite +amount of bankers and mechanics, and even if persons of my particular +aptitudes were still a drug in the market, there might nevertheless be +room, amid the ramifications and interstices of so great a department, +for a man or two who could help to count up or pack munitions, or, if +that proposal were hopelessly wide of the mark, for the services of +something even more recondite and exotic--an intelligent corpse-washer, +for instance, or half a dozen astrologers. I felt I could distinguish +myself, at a national crisis like this, in either capacity. Anyhow, it +was only one more afternoon wasted--one out of how many! +</p> + +<p> +This time I saw Mr. W----. Though I had never met him in the flesh, I +once enjoyed the privilege of perusing a manuscript from his pen--a +story about a girl in Kew Gardens. A nice-looking young Hebrew was Mr. +W----. He had made himself indispensable, somehow or other, to the +Minister, and would doubtless by this time have been pitchforked into +some permanent and prominent job, but for that unfortunate name of his, +with its strong Teutonic flavour. +</p> + +<p> +This, by the way, was about the eighth official of his tribe, and of his +age, I had come across in the course of my recent peregrinations. How +did they get there? Tell me, who can. Far be it from me to disparage the +race of Israel. I have gained the conviction--firm-fixed, now, as the +Polar Star--that the Hebrew is as good a man as the Christian. Yet one +would like to know their method, their technique, in this instance. How +was the thing done? How did they manage it, these young Jews, all +healthy-looking and of military age--how did they contrive to keep out +of the Army? Was there some secret society which protected them? Or were +they all so preposterously clever that the Old Country would straightway +evaporate into thin air unless they sat in some comfortable office, +while our own youngsters were being blown to pieces out yonder? +</p> + +<p> +Mr. W----, I regret to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the +Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence, +doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere +of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his manner +towards me was freezingly non-committal--worthy of the best Anglo-Saxon +traditions. +</p> + +<p> +Had I come a little earlier, he avowed, he might perhaps have been able +to squeeze me into one of his departments--thus spake this infant: "One +of my departments." As it was, he feared there was nothing doing; +nothing whatsoever; not just then. Tried the War Office? +</p> + +<p> +I had. +</p> + +<p> +I even visited, though only twice, an offshoot of that establishment in +Victoria Street near the Army and Navy Stores, where candidates for the +position of translator--quasi-confidential work and passable pay, five +pounds a week--were interviewed. On the second occasion, after waiting +in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters such as haunt +the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a board of reverend +elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but prolonged, as to my +qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic affair. Could I +decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their toughest one, I +said. No! It was merely a <i>pro forma</i> question; they had enough +German translators on the staff. So the interrogation went on. They were +going to make sure of their man, in whom, I must say, they took little +interest save when they learnt that he had passed a Civil Service +examination in Russian and another in International Law. At that +moment--though I may be mistaken--they seemed to prick up their ears. +Not long afterwards I was allowed to depart, with the assurance that I +might hear further. +</p> + +<p> +Their inquiries into my attainments and references must have given +satisfaction, for in the fulness of time a missive arrived to the effect +that, assuming me to be a competent Turkish scholar, they would be glad +to see me again with a view to a certain vacancy. +</p> + +<p> +Turkish--a language I had not mentioned to them, a language of which I +never possessed more than fifty words, every one of them forgotten long +years ago. +</p> + +<p> +"How very War Office," I thought. +</p> + +<p> +These good people were mixing up Turkish and Russian--a natural error, +when one comes to think of it, for, though the respective tongues might +not be absolutely identical, yet the countries themselves were +sufficiently close together to account for a little slip like this. +</p> + +<p> +Was it a slip? Who knows? It is so easy to criticise when one is not +fully informed about things. They may have suggested my acting as +Turkish translator for reasons of their own--reasons which I cannot +fathom, but which need not therefore be bad ones. Chagrined +office-hunters like myself are prone to be bitter. In an emergency of +this magnitude a citizen should hesitate before he finds fault with the +wisdom of those whom the nation has chosen to steer it through troubled +waters. No carping! You only hamper the Government. The general public +should learn to keep a civil tongue in its head. Theirs but to do and +die. +</p> + +<p> +None the less, it was about this time that I began to experience certain +moments of despondency, and occasionally let a whole day slip by without +endeavouring to be of use to The Cause--moments when, instead of asking +myself, "What have I done for my country?" I asked, "What has my country +done for me?"--moments when I envied the hotel night-porters, +taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling flowers in Piccadilly +Circus who had something more sensible to do than to bother their heads +about trying to be patriotic, and getting snubbed for their pains. Yet, +with characteristic infatuation for hopeless ventures, I persevered. +Another "whack" at the F.O. leading to another holograph, two more +whacks at the Censorship, interpreter jobs, hospital jobs, God knows +what--I persevered, and might for the next three years have been kicking +my heels, like any other patriot, in the corridor of some dingy +Government office at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-jumpers, +but for a God-sent little accident, the result of sheer boredom, which +counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean. +</p> + +<p> +Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment, than she had ever yet +been. For on the day prior to my departure I received a communication +from the Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose methods of work, it +was now apparent, were as expeditious as its own name was brief. That +hopeful Mr. R----, that bubbling young optimist who had so +conscientiously written down a number of my qualifications, such as they +were--he was keeping his promise after months, and months, and months. +Never say die. The dear little fellow! What job had he captured for me? +</p> + +<p> +An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages to commence at 17s. +6d. per week. +</p> + +<p> +H'm. +</p> + +<p> +The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but I like to think that +it included the free use of the lavatory, if there happened to be one on +the premises. +</p> + +<p> +So luck pursued me to the end, though it never quite caught me up. For +bags were packed, and tickets taken. And therefore: +</p> + +<p> +"What did <i>you</i> do in the Great War, grandpapa?" +</p> + +<p> +"I loafed, my boy." +</p> + +<p> +"That was naughty, grandpapa." +</p> + +<p> +"Naughty, but nice...." +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h2>ALONE</h2> + +<h3><a name="mentone">Mentone</a></h3> + +<p> +<i>Italiam petimus</i>.... +</p> + +<p> +Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of +the trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, +and forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours. +What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and +friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic +fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot +from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me on these +shores, where life is spent in a round of trivialities. +</p> + +<p> +One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from Nice, at last found +himself at the door of "the inn." <i>The</i> inn.... Are there any inns +left at Mentone? +</p> + +<p> +À propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs. At the present +moment, twenty-two of the principal hotels and pensions of Mentone are +closed, because owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does not this +speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton enterprise? Where, in a German +town of 18,000 inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such establishments +in the hands of Frenchmen? +</p> + +<p> +The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either among the tombs of that +cemetery overhead, studying sepulchral inscriptions and drawing +deductions, from what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality +and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the relative number of +consumptives here interred. Sixty per cent, shall we say? Or else, in +the streets of the town, I catch myself endeavouring--hitherto without +success--to count up the number of grocers' shops. They are far in +excess of what is needful. Now, why? Well, your tailor or hatter or +hosier--he makes a certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he +does not sell them at every moment of the day. The other, quite apart +from small advantages to be gained owing to the ever-shifting prices of +his wares, is ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of +which he makes a small gain. The grocery business commends itself warmly +to the French genius for garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I +fancy, will you see butter more meticulously weighed than here. Buy a +ton of it, and they will replace on their counter a fragment of the +weight and size of a postage stamp, rather than let the balance descend +on your side. +</p> + +<p> +And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one ever again escape from +Mentone? It may well be colder in Italy, but anything is preferable to +this inane Riviera existence.... +</p> + +<p> +I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to discommend them, for the +simple reason that, if they have proved bad, I smile to think of other +men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good +ones--why, only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however, I +hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to +return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for withholding +the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite unpretentious place +of entertainment that well deserves its name--white blackbirds being +rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is excellent--it has a +cachet of its own; the wine more than merely good. And this is +surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped +down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor +though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the +palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to anything else, +as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine hereabouts +that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you adventure into +the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your +trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a good name for +these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black currant enters +largely into their composition, though not in sufficient quantity to +render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little problem for the +oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or climate or treatment +can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anything +drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, a stone's throw +eastwards, can boast of its San Biagio, Rossese, Latte, Dolceacqua and +other noble growths, the like of which are not to be found along the +whole length of the French Riviera? +</p> + +<p> +Having pastured the inner man, to his complete satisfaction, at the +hospitable Merle Blanc, our traveller will do well to pasture his eyes +on the plants in the Casino gardens. Whoever wants to see flowers and +trees on their best behaviour, must come to Monte Carlo, where the +spick-and-span Riviera note is at its highest development. Not a leaf is +out of place; they have evidently been groomed and tubbed and manicured +from the hour of their birth. And yet--is it possible? Lurking among all +this modern splendour of vegetation, as though ashamed to show their +faces, may be discerned a few lowly olive trees. Well may they skulk! +For these are the Todas and Veddahs, the aboriginals of Monte Carlo, who +peopled its sunny slopes in long-forgotten days of rustic life--once +lords of the soil, now pariahs. What are they doing here? And how comes +it that the eyesore has not yet been detected and uprooted by those +keen-sighted authorities that perform such wonders in making the visitor +feel at home, and hush up with miraculous dexterity everything in the +nature of a public scandal? +</p> + +<p> +In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial Riviera tale. There +was an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who +breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all +the better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily +at the tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought, +and therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea. +Not unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen--they +might have been Russian princes--pounced upon her and led her to that +underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial +attendance. He brushed aside her explanations. +</p> + +<p> +"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself. +But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has a +reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels----" +</p> + +<p> +"I tell you it was only aspirin." +</p> + +<p> +"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us +not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death." +</p> + +<p> +"Aspirin, I tell you----" +</p> + +<p> +"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force." +</p> + +<p> +The stomach-pump was produced. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is +unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless +water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its +<i>Hinterland</i> is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the +main roads, or content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you +will soon find all progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one +really cannot walk along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth +while, once in a lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap +Martin, if only in memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew +therefrom. Who, he asks--who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at +the Cape St. Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with +smug villas of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugénie), to say +nothing of that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures +the country for leagues around. +</p> + +<p> +On other occasions you may find your way towards evening up to Gorbio +and stay for supper, provided you do not mind being cheated. Or wander +further afield, over Sospel to Breil by the old path--note the lavender: +they make a passable perfume of it--or else to Moulinet (famous for bad +food and a mastodontic breed of mosquitoes) and thence along the +stream--note the bushes of wild box--and over a wooded ridge to the +breezy heights of Peira Cava, there to dream away the daylight under the +pines. These are summer rambles. At present the snow lies deep. +</p> + +<p> +One of my favourite excursions has been up the so-called Berceau, the +cradle-shaped hill which dominates Mentone on the east. I was there +to-day for a solitary luncheon, resting awhile in the timbered saddle +between the peaks. The summit is only about five minutes' walk from this +delectable grove, but its view inland is partially intercepted by a +higher ridge. From here, if you are in the mood, you may descend +eastward over the Italian frontier, crossing the stream which is spanned +lower down by the bridge of St. Louis, and find yourself at Mortola +Superiore (try the wine) and then at Mortola proper (try the wine). +Somewhere in this gulley was killed the last wolf of these regions; so a +grey-haired local Nimrod told me. He had wrought much mischief in his +time. That is to say, he was not killed, but accidentally +drowned--drowned in one of those artificial reservoirs which are +periodically filled and drawn off for irrigating the gardens lower down; +an ignoble death, for a wolf! A goat lay drowned beside him. The event, +he reckoned, must have taken place half a century ago. Since then, the +wolf has never been seen. +</p> + +<p> +This afternoon, however, I preferred to repose in that shady dell, while +a flock of goldcrests were investigating the branches overhead and two +buzzards cruised, in dreamy spirals, about the sunny sky of midday; to +repose; to indulge my genius and review the situation; to profit, in +short, by that sense of aloofness peculiar to such aerial spots, which +tempts the mind to set its house in order. What are we doing, in these +empty regions? Why not wander hence? That cursed traveller's gift of +sitting still; of remaining stationary, no matter where, until one is +actually pushed away! And yet, how enjoyable this land might be, were it +inhabited by any race save one whose thousand little meannesses, public +and private, are calculated to drain away a man's last ounce of +self-respect! Not many are the glad memories I shall carry from Mentone. +I can think of no more than two. +</p> + +<p> +There is my landlady, to begin with, who spies out every detail of my +daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a +peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will +correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some +jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an +example of our matutinal converse: +</p> + +<p> +"I fear, Monsieur, you omitted to put out the light in a certain place +last night. It was burning when I returned home." +</p> + +<p> +"Certainly not, Madame. I have been nicely brought up. I never visit +places at night. You ought to be familiar with my habits after all this +time." +</p> + +<p> +"True. Then it must have been some one else. Ah, these electricians' +bills!" +</p> + +<p> +Or this: +</p> + +<p> +"Monsieur, Monsieur! The English Consul called yesterday with his little +dog at about five o'clock. He waited in your room, but you never came +back." +</p> + +<p> +"Five o'clock? I was at the baths." +</p> + +<p> +"I have heard of that establishment. What do they charge for a hot +bath?" +</p> + +<p> +"Three francs----" +</p> + +<p> +"<i>Bon Dieu!</i>" +</p> + +<p> +"--if you take an <i>abonnement</i>. Otherwise, it may well be more." +</p> + +<p> +"And so you go there. Why then--why must you also wash in the morning +and splash water on my floor? It may have to be polished after your +departure. Would you mind asking the Consul, by the way, not to sit on +the bed? It weakens the springs." +</p> + +<p> +Or this: +</p> + +<p> +"Might I beg you, Monsieur, to tread more lightly on the carpet in your +room? I bought it only nine years ago, and it already shows signs of +wear." +</p> + +<p> +"Nine years--that old rag? It must have survived by a miracle." +</p> + +<p> +"I do not ask you to avoid using it. I only beg you will tread as +lightly as possible." +</p> + +<p> +"Carpets are meant to be worn out." +</p> + +<p> +"You would express yourself less forcibly, if you had to pay for them." +</p> + +<p> +"Let us say then: carpets are meant to be trodden on." +</p> + +<p> +"Lightly." +</p> + +<p> +"I am not a fairy, Madame." +</p> + +<p> +"I wish you were, Monsieur." +</p> + +<p> +Thrice already, in a burst of confidence, has she told me the story of +an egg--an egg which rankles in the memory. Some years ago, it seems, +she went to a certain shop (naming it)--a shop she has avoided ever +since--to buy an egg; and paid the full price--yes, the full price--of a +fresh egg. That particular egg was not fresh. So far from fresh was it, +that she experienced considerable difficulty in swallowing it. +</p> + +<p> +A memorable episode occurred about a fortnight ago. I was greeted +towards 8 a.m. with moanings in the passage, where Madame tottered +around, her entire head swathed in a bundle of nondescript woollen +wraps, out of which there peered one steely, vulturesque eye. She looked +more than ever like an animated fungus. +</p> + +<p> +Her teeth--her teeth! The pain was past enduring. The whole jaw, rather; +all the teeth at one and the same time; they were unaccountably loose +and felt, moreover, three inches longer than they ought to feel. Never +had she suffered such agony--never in all her life. What could it be? +</p> + +<p> +It was easy to diagnose periostitis, and prescribe tincture of iodine. +</p> + +<p> +"That will cost about a franc," she observed. +</p> + +<p> +"Very likely." +</p> + +<p> +"I think I'll wait." +</p> + +<p> +Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She would give anything +to obtain relief--anything! +</p> + +<p> +"Anything?" I inquired. "Then you had better have a morphia injection. I +have had numbers of them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish +like magic. There is my friend Dr. Théophile Fornari----" +</p> + +<p> +"I know all about him. He demands five francs a visit, even from poor +people like myself." +</p> + +<p> +"You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to come here and climb +your seventy-two stairs for much less than five francs." +</p> + +<p> +"I think I'll wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting money on food just now, and +that is a consolation." +</p> + +<p> +Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing complaint, and I would +have purchased a franc's worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth. +Not then. On the contrary, I grew positively low-spirited when, after +three more days, the lamentations began to diminish in volume. They were +sweet music to my ears, at the time. They are sweeter by far, in +retrospect. If only one could extract the same amount of innocent and +durable pleasure out of all other landladies!... +</p> + +<p> +My second joyful memory centres round another thing of beauty--a spiky +agave (miscalled aloe) of monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the +garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the growths of this kind +which I have admired in various lands; none can vaunt as proud and +harmonious a development as this one. You would say it had been cast in +some dull blue metal. The glaucous wonder stands by itself, a prodigy of +good style, more pleasing to the eye than all that painfully generated +tropicality of Mr. Hanbury's Mortola paradise. It is flawless. Vainly +have I teased my fancy, endeavouring to discover the slightest defect in +shape or hue. Firm-seated on the turf, in exultant pose, with a pallid +virginal bloom upon those mighty writhing leaves, this plant has drawn +me like a magnet, day after day, to drink deep draughts of contentment +from its exquisite lines. +</p> + +<p> +For the rest, the whole agave family thrives at Mentone; the +<i>ferox</i> is particularly well represented; one misses, among others, +that delightful <i>medio-picta</i> variety, of which I have noticed only +a few indifferent specimens. [<a href="#1">1</a>] It is the same with the yuccas; they +flourish here, though one kind, again, is conspicuous by its absence-- +the <i>Atkinsi</i> (some such name, for it is long since I planted my +last yucca) with drooping leaves of golden-purple. You will be surprised +at the number of agaves in flower here. The reason is, that they are +liable to be moved about for ornamental purposes when they want to be at +rest; the plant, more sensitive and fastidious than it looks, is +outraged by this forceful perambulation and, in an access of premature +senility, or suicidal mania, or sheer despair, gives birth to its only +flower--herald of death. The fatal climax could be delayed if gardeners, +in transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their +old accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But +your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an +amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him +for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile +one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for +instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering +underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques--there, where the steps +begin---- +</p> + +<p> +Almost.... +</p> + +<p> +And here my afternoon musings, up yonder, took on a more acrid +complexion. I remembered a recent talk with one of the teachers at the +local college who lamented that his pupils displayed a singular dullness +in their essays; never, in his long career at different schools, had he +met with boys more destitute of originality. What could be expected, we +both agreed? Mentone was of recent growth--the old settlement, Mentone +of Symonds, proclaims its existence only by a ceaseless and infernal +clanging of bells, rivalling Malta--no history, no character, no +tradition--a mushroom town inhabited by shopkeepers and +<i>hôteliers</i> who are there for the sole purpose of plucking +foreigners: how should a youngster's imagination be nurtured in this +atmosphere of savourless modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes to +these regions, now that invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their +climate? Decayed Muscovites, Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in +England, and their painted women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling +eyes, a Turk or two, Jews and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, +flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros +with names that read like a nightmare (<i>see</i> "List of Arrivals" in +<i>New York Herald</i>)--the whole exotic riff-raff enlivened and +perfumed by a copious sprinkling of <i>horizontales</i>. +</p> + +<p> +And I let my glance wander along that ancient Roman road which led from +Italy to Arles and can still be traced, here and there; I took in the +section from Genoa to Marseille, an enormous stretch of country, and +wondered: what has this coast ever produced in the way of thought or +action, of great men or great women? There is Doria at Genoa, and Gaby +Deslys at Marseille; that may well exhaust the list. Ah, and half-way +through, a couple of generals, born at Nice. It is really an instructive +phenomenon, and one that should appeal to students of Buckle--this +relative dearth of every form of human genius in one of the most +favoured regions of the globe. Here, for unexplained reasons, the +Italian loses his better qualities; so does the Frenchman. Are the +natives descended from those mysterious Ligurians? Their reputation was +none of the best; they were more prompt, says Crinagoras, in devising +evil than good. That Mentone man, to be sure, whose remains you may +study at Monaco and elsewhere, was a fine fellow, without a doubt. He +lived rather long ago. Even he, by the way, was a tourist on these +shores. And were the air of Mentone not unpropitious to the composition +of anything save a kind of literary <i>omelette soufflée</i>, one might +like to expatiate on Sergi's remarkable book, and devise thereto an +incongruous footnote dealing with the African origin of sundry Greek +gods, and another one referring to the extinction of these splendid +races of men; how they came to perish so utterly, and what might be said +in favour of that novel theory of the influence of an ice-age on the +germplasm producing mutations--new races which breed true ... enough! +Let us remain at the Riviera level. +</p> + +<p> +In the little museum under those cliffs by the sea, where the Grimaldi +caves are, I found myself lately together with a young French couple, +newly married. The little bride was vastly interested in the attendant's +explanations of the habits of those remote folk, but, as I could plainly +see, growing more and more distrustful of his statements as to what +happened all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. +</p> + +<p> +"And this, Messieurs, is the jaw-bone of a cave-bear--the competitor, +one might say, in the matter of lodging-houses, with the gentleman whose +anatomy we have just inspected. Here are bones of hippopotamus, and +rhinoceros, which he hunted with the weapons you saw. And the object on +which your arm is reposing, Madame, is the tooth of an elephant. Our +ancestor must have been pretty <i>costaud</i> to kill an elephant with a +stone." +</p> + +<p> +"Elephants?" she queried. "Did elephants scramble about these precipices +and ravines? I should like to have seen that." +</p> + +<p> +"Pardon me, Madame. He probably killed them down there," and his arm +swept over the blue Mediterranean, lying at our feet. "Do you mean to +say that elephants paddled across from Algiers in order to be +assassinated by your old skeleton? I should like to have seen that." +</p> + +<p> +"Pardon me, Madame. The Mediterranean did not exist in those days." +</p> + +<p> +The suggestion that this boundless sea should ever have been dry land, +and in the time of her own ancestors, was too much for the young lady. +She smiled politely, and soon I heard her whispering to her husband: +</p> + +<p> +"I had him there, eh? <i>Quel farceur!</i>" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes. You caught him nicely, I must say. But one must not be too hard on +these poor devils. They have got to earn their bread somehow." +</p> + +<p> +This will never do. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Italiam petimus</i>.... +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="levanto">Levanto</a></h3> + +<p> +I have loafed into Levanto, on the recommendation of an Irish friend +who, it would seem, had reasons of his own for sending me there. +</p> + +<p> +"Try Levanto," he said. "A little place below Genoa. Nice, kindly +people. And sunshine all the time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes! The food +is all right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us start that +subject----" +</p> + +<p> +We started it none the less, and at the end of the discussion he added: +</p> + +<p> +"You must go and see Mitchell there. I often stayed with him. Such a +good fellow! And very popular in the place. He built an aqueduct for the +peasants--that kind of man. Mind you look him up. He will be bitterly +disappointed if you don't call. So make a note of it, won't you? By the +way, he's dead. Died last year. I quite forgot." +</p> + +<p> +"Dead, is he? What a pity." +</p> + +<p> +"Yes; and what a nuisance. I promised to send him down some things by +the next man I came across. You would have been that man. I know you do +not carry much luggage, but you could have taken one or two trifles at +least. He wanted a respectable English telescope, I remember, to see the +stars with--a bit of an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too--devilish +fond of chutney, the old boy was; quite a gastro-maniac. What a +nuisance! Now he will be thinking I forgot all about it. And he needed a +clothes-press; I was on no account to forget that clothes-press. Rather +fussy about his trousers, he was. And a type-writer; just an ordinary +one. But I doubt whether you could have managed a type-writer." +</p> + +<p> +"Easily. And a bee-hive or two. You know how I like carrying little +parcels about for other people's friends. What a nuisance! Now I shall +have to travel with my bags half empty." +</p> + +<p> +"Don't blame me, my dear fellow. I did not tell him to die, did I?".... +</p> + +<p> +It must have been about midnight as the train steamed into Levanto +station. Snow was falling; you could hear the moan of the sea hard by; +an icy wind blew down from the mountains. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Sunshine all the time!</i> +</p> + +<p> +Everybody scurried off the platform. A venerable porter, after looking +in dubious fashion at my two handbags, declared he would return in a few +moments to transport them to the hotel, and therewith vanished round the +corner. The train moved on. Lamps were extinguished. Time passed. I +strode up and down in the semi-darkness, trying to keep warm and +determined, whatever happened, not to carry those wretched bags myself, +when suddenly a figure rose out of the gloom--a military figure of +youthful aspect and diminutive size, armed to the teeth. +</p> + +<p> +"A cold night," I ventured. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you know, Sir, that you are in the war-zone--the <i>zona di +difesa</i>?" +</p> + +<p> +He began to fumble at his rifle in ominous fashion. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Nice, kindly people!</i> +</p> + +<p> +I said: +</p> + +<p> +"It is hard to die so young. And I particularly dislike the looks of +that bayonet, which is half a yard longer than it need be. But if you +want to shoot me, go ahead. Do it now. It is too cold to argue." +</p> + +<p> +"Your papers! Ha, a foreigner. Hotel Nazionale? Very good. To-morrow +morning you will report yourself to the captain of the carbineers. After +that, to the municipality. Thereupon you will take the afternoon train +to Spezia. When you have been examined by the police inspector at the +station you will be accompanied, if he sees fit, to head-quarters in +order that your passport may be investigated. From there you will +proceed to the Prefecture for certain other formalities which will be +explained to you. Perhaps--who knows?--they will allow you to return to +Levanto." +</p> + +<p> +"How can you expect me to remember all that?" Then I added: "You are a +Sicilian, I take it. And from Catania." +</p> + +<p> +He was rather surprised. Sicilians, because they learn good Italian at +their schools, think themselves indistinguishable from other men. +</p> + +<p> +Yes; he explained. He was from a certain place in the Catania part of +the country, on the slopes of Etna. +</p> + +<p> +I happened to know a good deal of that place from an old she-cook of +mine who was born there and never wearied of telling me about it. To his +still greater surprise, therefore, I proceeded to discourse learnedly +about that region, extolling its natural beauties and healthy climate, +reminding him that it was the birthplace of a man celebrated in +antiquity (was it Diodorus Siculus?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that +he would doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated a spot. +</p> + +<p> +Straightway his manner changed. There is nothing these folks love more +than to hear from foreign lips some praise of their native town or +village. He waxed communicative and even friendly; his eyes began to +sparkle with animation, and there we might have stood conversing till +sunrise had I not felt that glacial wind searching my garments, chilling +my humanity and arresting all generous impulses. Rather abruptly I bade +farewell to the cheery little reptile and snatched up my bags to go to +the hotel, which he said was only five minutes' walk from there. +</p> + +<p> +Things turned out exactly as he had predicted. Arrived at Spezia, +however, I found an unpleasant surprise awaiting me. The officer in +command, who was as civil as the majority of such be-medalled jackasses, +suggested that one single day would be quite sufficient for me to see +the sights of Levanto; I could then proceed to Pisa or anywhere else +outside his priceless "zone of defence." I pleaded vigorously for more +time. After all, we were allies, were we not? Finally, a sojourn of +seven days was granted <i>for reasons of health</i>. Only seven days: +how tiresome! From the paper which gave me this authorisation and +contained a full account of my personal appearance I learnt, among other +less flattering details, that my complexion was held to be "natural." It +was a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup. +</p> + +<p> +No butter for breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +The landlord, on being summoned, avowed that to serve crude butter on +his premises involved a flagrant breach of war-time regulations. The +condiment could not be used save for kitchen purposes, and then only on +certain days of the week; he was liable to heavy penalties if it became +known that one of his guests.... However, since he assumed me to be a +prudent person, he would undertake to supply a due allowance to-morrow +and thenceforward, though never in the public dining-room; never, never +in the dining-room! +</p> + +<p> +That is the charm of Italy, I said to myself. These folks are reasonable +and gifted with imagination. They make laws to shadow forth an ideal +state of things and to display their good intentions towards the +community at large; laws which have no sting for the exceptional type of +man who can evade them--the sage, the millionaire, and the "friend of +the family." Never in the dining-room. Why, of course not. Catch me +breakfasting in any dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +Was it possible? There, at luncheon in the dining-room, while devouring +those miserable macaroni made with war-time flour, I beheld an over-tall +young Florentine lieutenant shamelessly engulfing huge slices of what +looked uncommonly like genuine butter, a miniature mountain of which +stood on a platter before him, and overtopped all the other viands. I +could hardly believe my eyes. How about those regulations? Pointing to +this golden hillock, I inquired softly: +</p> + +<p> +"From the cow?" +</p> + +<p> +"From the cow." +</p> + +<p> +"Whom does one bribe?" +</p> + +<p> +He enjoyed a special dispensation, he declared--he need not bribe. +Returned from Albania with shattered health, he had been sent hither to +recuperate. He required not only butter, but meat on meatless days, as +well as a great deal of rest; he was badly run down.... And eggs, raw +eggs, drinking eggs; ten a day, he vows, is his minimum. Enviable +convalescent! +</p> + +<p> +The afternoon being clear and balmy, he took me for a walk, smoking +cigarettes innumerable. We wandered up to that old convent picturesquely +perched against the slope of the hill and down again, across the +rivulet, to the inevitable castle-ruin overhanging the sea. Like all +places along this shore, Levanto lies in a kind of amphitheatre, at a +spot where one or more streams, descending from the mountains, discharge +themselves into the sea. Many of these watercourses may in former times +have been larger and even navigable up to a point. Their flow is now +obstructed, their volume diminished. I daresay they have driven the sea +further out, with silt swept down from the uplands. The same thing has +struck me in England--at Lyme Regis, for instance, whose river was also +once navigable to small craft and at Seaton, about a mile up whose +stream stands that village--I forget its name--which was evidently the +old port of the district in pre-Seaton days. Local antiquarians will +have attacked these problems long ago. The sea may have receded. +</p> + +<p> +A glance from this castle-height at the panorama bathed in that mellow +sunshine made me regret more than ever the enforced brevity of my stay +at Levanto. Seven days, for reasons of health: only seven days! Those +mysterious glades opening into the hill-sides, the green patches of +culture interspersed with cypresses and pines, dainty villas nestling in +gardens, snow-covered mountains and blue sea--above all, the presence of +running water, dear to those who have lived in waterless lands--why, one +could spend a life-time in a place like this! +</p> + +<p> +The lieutenant spoke of Florence, his native city. He would be there +again before long, in order to present himself to the medical +authorities and be weighed and pounded for the hundredth time. He hoped +they would then let him stay there. He was tired to death of Levanto and +its solitude. How pleasant to bid farewell to this "melancholy" sea +which was supposed to be good for his complaints. He asked: +</p> + +<p> +"Do you know why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to +see that wonderful dome of theirs rising up from the plain?" +</p> + +<p> +"Why?" +</p> + +<p> +"Can't you guess?" +</p> + +<p> +"Let me see. It is sure to be something not quite proper. H'm.... The +tower of Giotto, for example, has certain asperities, angularities, +anfractuosities----" +</p> + +<p> +"You are no Englishman whatever!" he laughed. "Now try that joke on the +next Florentine you meet.... There was a German here," he went on, "who +loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all about him. He began +writing a book to prove that there was a different walk to be taken in +this neighbourhood for every single day of the year." +</p> + +<p> +"How German. And then?" +</p> + +<p> +"The war came. He cleared out. The natives were sorry. This whole coast +seems to be saturated with Teutons--of a respectable class, apparently. +They made themselves popular, they bought houses, drank wine, and joked +with the countrymen." +</p> + +<p> +"What do you make of them?" I inquired. +</p> + +<p> +"I am a Tuscan," he began (meaning: I am above race-prejudices; I can +view these things with olympic detachment). "I think the German says to +himself: we want a world-empire, like those damned English. How did they +get it? By piracy. Two can play at that game, though it may be a little +more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a +certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, +who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished +by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at +First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a +whole--well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is +our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the +ordinary native of the country is, if his own son happens to get +killed." +</p> + +<p> +"I know. That makes him very angry." +</p> + +<p> +"It makes him angry not with the Germans who are responsible for the +war, but with his own government which is responsible for conscripting +the boys. Ah, what a stupid subject of conversation! And how God would +laugh, if he had any sense of humour! Suppose we go down to the beach +and lie on the sand. I need rest: I am very dilapidated." +</p> + +<p> +"You look thin, I must say." +</p> + +<p> +"Typhoid, and malaria, and pleurisy--it is a respectable combination. +Thin? I am the merest framework, and so transparent that you can see +clean through my stomach. Perhaps you would rather not try? Count my +ribs, then." +</p> + +<p> +"Count your ribs? That, my dear Lieutenant, is an occupation for a rainy +afternoon. Judging by your length, there must be a good many of +them...." +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +"We should be kind to our young soldiers," said the Major to whom I was +relating, after dinner, the story of our afternoon promenade. A burly +personage is the Major, with hooked nose and black moustache and +twinkling eyes--retired, now, from a service in the course of which he +has seen many parts of the world; a fluent <i>raconteur</i>, moreover, +who keeps us in fits of laughter with naughty stories and imitations of +local dialects. "We must be nice with them, and always offer them +cigarettes. What say you, Mr. Lieutenant?" +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, sir. Offer them cigarettes and everything else you possess. The +dear fellows! They seldom have the heart to refuse." +</p> + +<p> +"Seldom," echoes the judge. +</p> + +<p> +That is our party; the judge, major, lieutenant and myself. We dine +together and afterwards sit in that side room while the fat little host +bustles about, doing nearly all the work of the war-diminished +establishment himself. Presently the first two rise and indulge in a +lively game of cards, amid vigorous thumpings of the table and cursings +at the ways of Providence which always contrives to ruin the best hands. +I order another litre of wine. The lieutenant, to keep me company, +engulfs half a dozen eggs. He tells me about Albanian women. I tell him +about Indian women. We thrash the matter out, pursuing this or that +aspect into its remotest ramifications, and finally come to the +conclusion that I, at the earliest opportunity, must emigrate to +Albania, and he to India. +</p> + +<p> +As for the judge, he was born under the pale rays of Saturn. He has +attached himself to my heart. Never did I think to care so much about a +magistrate, and he a Genoese. +</p> + +<p> +There are some men, a few men, very few, about whom one craves to be +precise. Viewed through the mist of months, I behold a corpulent and +almost grotesque figure of thirty-five or thereabouts; blue-eyed, +fair-haired but nearly bald, clean-shaven, bespectacled. So purblind has +he grown with poring over contracts and precedents that his movements +are pathologically awkward--embryonic, one might say; his unwieldy +gestures and contortions remind one of a seal on shore. The eyes being +of small use, he must touch with his hands. Those hands are the most +distinctive feature of his person; they are full of expression; tenderly +groping hands, that hesitate and fumble in wistful fashion like the +feelers of some sensitive creature of night. There is trouble, too, in +that obese and sluggish body; trouble to which the unhealthy complexion +testifies. He may drink only milk, because wine, which he dearly +loves--"and such good wine, here at Levanto"--it always deranges the +action of some vital organ inside. +</p> + +<p> +The face is not unlike that of Thackeray. +</p> + +<p> +A man of keen understanding who can argue the legs off a cow when duly +roused, he seems far too good for a small place like this, where, by the +way, he is a newcomer. Maybe his infinite myopia condemns him to +relative seclusion and obscurity. He has a European grip of things; of +politics and literature and finance. Needless to say, I have discovered +his cloven hoof; I make it my business to discover such things; one may +(or may not) respect people for their virtues, one loves them only for +their faults. It is a singular tinge of mysticism and credulity which +runs through his nature. Can it be the commercial Genoese, the gambling +instinct? For he is an authority on stocks and shares, and a passionate +card-player into the bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand--they +are but two forms of the same speculative spirit. Think of the +Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-lovers! I have yet to meet a +full-blown agnostic who relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not +adventurous on such lines; he knows the odds against backing a winner in +heaven or earth. +</p> + +<p> +Often, listening to this lawyer's acute talk and watching his uncouth +but sympathetic face, I ask myself a question, a very obvious question +hereabouts: How could you cause him to swerve from the path of duty? How +predispose him in your favour? Sacks of gold would be unavailing: that +is certain. He would wave them aside, not in righteous Anglo-Saxon +indignation, but with a smile of tolerance at human weakness. To +simulate clerical leanings? He is too sharp; he would probably be vexed, +not at your attempt to deceive, but at the implication that you took him +for a fool. A good tip on the stock exchange? It might go a little way, +if artfully tendered. Perhaps an apt and unexpected quotation from the +pages of some obsolete jurist--the intellectual method of approach; for +there is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of +intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook. In any case, it +would be a desperate venture to override the conscience of such a man. +May I never have to try! +</p> + +<p> +His stern principles must often cause him suffering, needless suffering. +He is for ever at the mercy of some categorical imperative. This may be +the reason why I feel drawn to him. Such persons exercise a strange +attraction upon those who, convinced of the eternal fluidity of all +mundane affairs, and how that our most sacred institutions are merely +conventionalities of time and place, conform to only one rule of +life--to be guided by no principles whatever. They miss so much, those +others. They miss it so pathetically. One sees them staggering +gravewards under a load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle, +when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross? Is it pleasant? Is it pretty? +</p> + +<p> +He also has taken me for walks, but they are too slow and too short for +my taste. Every twenty yards or so he must stand still to "admire the +view"--that is, to puff and pant. +</p> + +<p> +"What it is," he then exclaims, "to be an old man in youth, through no +fault of one's own. How many are healthy, and yet vicious to the core!" +</p> + +<p> +I inquire: +</p> + +<p> +"Are you suggesting that there may be a connection between sound health +and what society, in its latest fit of peevish self-maceration, is +pleased to call viciousness?" +</p> + +<p> +"That is a captious question," he replies. "A man of my constitution, +unfit for pleasures of the body, is prone to judge severely. Let me try +to be fair. I will go so far as to say that to certain natures +self-indulgence appears to be necessary as--as sunshine to flowers." +</p> + +<p> +Self-indulgence, I thought. Heavily-fraught is that word; weighted with +meaning. The history of two thousand years of spiritual dyspepsia lies +embedded in its four syllables. Self-indulgence--it is what the ancients +blithely called "indulging one's genius." Self-indulgence! How debased +an expression, nowadays. What a text for a sermon on the mishaps of good +words and good things. How all the glad warmth and innocence have faded +out of the phrase. What a change has crept over us.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Glancing through a glass window not far from the hotel, I was fortunate +enough to espy a young girl seated in a sewing shop. She is decidedly +pretty and not altogether unaware of the fact, though still a child. We +have entered upon an elaborate, classical flirtation. With all the +artfulness of her years she is using me to practise on, as a dummy, for +future occasions when she shall have grown a little bigger and more +admired; she has already picked up one or two good notions. I pretend to +be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if she were grown up, and +profess to feel that she has really cast a charm--a state of affairs +which, if true, would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a point. +Impossible not to sense the joy which radiates from her smile and +person. That is all, so far. It is an orthodox entertainment, merely a +joke. God knows what might happen, under given circumstances. Some of a +man's most terrible experiences--volcanic cataclysms that ravaged the +landscape and left a trail of bitter ashes in their rear--were begun as +a joke. You can say so many things in a joking way, you can do so many +things in a joking way--especially in Northern countries, where it is +easy to joke unseen. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, with Ninetta, I discourse sweet nothings in my choicest idiom +which has grown rather rusty in England. +</p> + +<p> +Italian is a flowery language whose rhetorical turns and phrases require +constant exercise to keep them in smooth working order. No; that is not +correct. It is not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are ever at +command. What one learns to forget in England is the simplicity to use +them; to utter, with an air of deep conviction, a string of what we +should call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your breath +away--the things you have to say because these folks are so enamoured of +rhetoric and will not be happy without it. +</p> + +<p> +An English girl of her social standing--I lay stress upon the standing, +for it prescribes the conduct--an English girl would never listen to +such outpourings with this obvious air of approbation; maybe she would +ask where you had been drinking; in every case, your chances would be +seriously diminished. She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system +which is fatal to success in this country. The affair, here, must be a +siege. It must move onward by those gradual and inevitable steps +ordained of old in the unwritten code of love; no lingering by the +wayside, no premature haste. It must march to its end with the measured +stateliness of a quadrille. Passion, well-restrained passion, should be +written on every line of your countenance. Otherwise you are liable to +be dubbed a savage. I know what it is to be called a "Scotch bear," and +only because I trembled too much, or too little--I forget which--on a +certain occasion. +</p> + +<p> +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 (<i>entre +nous</i>) 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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This is innocent coquetry and perhaps said to test my self-restraint, +which is equal to the occasion. An impatient admirer might exclaim---- +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, let us meet, then!" +</p> + +<p> +--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---- +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One does not ask for wash-hand basins of <i>sang-de-boeuf</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"Drop your job for the sake of a few days?" I inquired. "You'll get the +sack, my boy." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And so it was. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"You two--do you really understand each other?" +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"You will have to carry a basket of food." +</p> + +<p> +"Better than bricks which grow heavier every minute. Your basket, I +daresay, will be pretty light towards evening." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"Do you wonder," he added, "at my preferring to be with you?" +</p> + +<p> +"I wonder at my fortune, which gave me such a charming friend. I am not +always so lucky." +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"She is sorry they will not let you stay at Levanto." +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +She said yes. +</p> + +<p> +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 grey <i>bigio</i>, when the lordly black <i>portovenere</i>, [<a href="#2">2</a>] +with its golden streaks, was lying at their very doors.... +</p> + +<p> +The gods willed otherwise. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +"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.'" +</p> + +<p> +"Well?" +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +"Twelve thousand francs a day!" +</p> + +<p> +"And do you know who planted the trees? It was a Scotsman." +</p> + +<p> +"A <i>Scozzese</i>. What kind of animal is that?" +</p> + +<p> +"A person who thinks ahead." +</p> + +<p> +"Then my mother is a Scotsman." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"Have you no sweetheart, Attilio?" +</p> + +<p> +"Certainly I have. But it is not a man's affair. We are only children, +you understand--<i>siamo ancora piccoli</i>." +</p> + +<p> +"Did you ever give her a kiss?" +</p> + +<p> +"Never. Not a single one." +</p> + +<p> +I relight my pipe, and then inquire: +</p> + +<p> +"Why not give her a kiss?" +</p> + +<p> +"People would call me a disrespectful boy." +</p> + +<p> +"Nobody, surely, need be any the wiser?" +</p> + +<p> +"She is not like you and me." +</p> + +<p> +A pause.... +</p> + +<p> +"Not like us? How so?" +</p> + +<p> +"She would tell her sister." +</p> + +<p> +"What of it?" +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +Another pause.... +</p> + +<p> +"What would your mother say to you?" +</p> + +<p> +"She would say: 'You are the oldest male; you should conduct yourself +accordingly. What is this lack of judgment I hear about?'" +</p> + +<p> +"I begin to understand." +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="siena">Siena</a></h3> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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's <i>Unknown Tuscany</i>. 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.... +</p> + +<p> +Was this the same Siena from which we once <i>escaped to get cool</i>? +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 a <i>piazza</i>! 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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"Now really! One would think you had been born in this miserable hole. +You know what we Florentines say: +</p> + +<p class="ind"> + Siena<br> + Di tre cose è piena:<br> + Torri, campane,<br> + E figli di putane." +</p> + +<p> +"I admit that Siena is deficient in certain points," I replied. "That +wonderful dome of yours, for example--there is nothing like it here." +</p> + +<p> +"No, indeed. Ah, that cupola! Ah, Brunelleschi--<i>che genio!</i>" +</p> + +<p> +"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?" +</p> + +<p> +"Some enemy has been talking to you...." +</p> + +<p> +A little red-haired boy from Lucca, carrying for sale a trayful of those +detestable plaster-casts, then accosted me. +</p> + +<p> +Who bought such abominations, I inquired? +</p> + +<p> +Nobody. Business was bad. +</p> + +<p> +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 delectable <i>amorino</i> whose counterpart, the +sole survivor, was reserved for a better fate--being carried home and +presented as a gift to my chambermaid. +</p> + +<p> +She was polite enough to call it a beautiful work of art. +</p> + +<p> +I was polite enough not to contradict her. +</p> + +<p> +Both of us know better.... +</p> + +<p> +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!" +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +One grows attached to these "Nooks and By-ways." An honest book, richly +thoughtful, and abounding in kindly twinkles. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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 their +<i>bête noire</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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." +</p> + +<p> +"What is the matter? Who is he?" they asked. +</p> + +<p> +The muleteer explained that he was an Englishman, and "<i>that +immediately seemed to satisfy them</i>." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +His chief concern could not be better summed up than in the sub-title he +has chosen for this volume: <i>Wanderings in search of ancient remains +and modern superstitions</i>. 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." +</p> + +<p> +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." +</p> + +<p> +This sense of fateful hustle--this, and the umbrella--they impart quite +a peculiar flavour to his pages. +</p> + +<p> +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. The <i>Dictionary of National +Biography</i> might 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. +</p> + +<p> +So, for example, I had occasion not long ago to look up the account of +Charles Waterton the naturalist. [<a href="#3">3</a>] 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"? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A long sentence.... +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="pisa">Pisa</a></h3> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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 modern <i>infâme</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. [<a href="#4">4</a>] Yet with +every thunder-storm on yonder hills the colour-sprite leaps back into +the waters. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The first one I state rather tentatively, having hardly sufficient +material to go upon. It is this. <i>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> I cannot suggest a reason for +this. I have observed the fact--that is all. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The second observation I regard as axiomatic. It is this. <i>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.</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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." +</p> + +<p> +Is this what we find? I think so. +</p> + +<p> +Speculations.... +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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 a <i>pis aller</i>, 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 "<i>rats</i>." Then the pony was saddled, and I rode down for the +grand field day. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. [<a href="#5">5</a>] 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.".... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Neighbours once more! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +So we sat down to dinner on Bertolini's terrace, in the light of a full +moon. O---- ate nothing whatever. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"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----" +</p> + +<p> +"Something," I said, "is happening to that moon." +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +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." <i>Irritable</i> was a mild term for this particular +patient. His appetite, meanwhile, began to improve. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +And I had to "humour" him. +</p> + +<p> +"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: +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +This generally led to the production of a most ghastly smile, calculated +to convey an ingratiating impression. +</p> + +<p> +"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?" +</p> + +<p> +"Asparagus." +</p> + +<p> +"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 (<i>accellerando</i>) that when I send a prescription to be made up +at the Royal Pharmacy----" +</p> + +<p> +"He explained about that. He went to the other place because he wanted +to hurry up." +</p> + +<p> +"To hurry up? Tell him to hurry up and get to blazes. Oh, tell him----" +</p> + +<p> +"You'll curse yourself into another collapse, at this rate." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One day he suddenly announced: +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +"To England?" +</p> + +<p> +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 them <i>en route</i> and "give those people +Hell" for something or other. I tried to dissuade him, and all in vain. +Finally I said: +</p> + +<p> +"You'll die, if you travel by land in this heat." +</p> + +<p> +So he did. They carried him out of the train in the early days of June, +here at Pisa, feet first.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="viafeb">Viareggio (February)</a></h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 of <i>ripa</i>: 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. This +<i>ripa</i> is 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. [<a href="#6">6</a>] 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. +</p> + +<p> +"Rather an extreme measure," I suggested. +</p> + +<p> +"It is. Not that I love the saints. But I love the police still less." +</p> + +<p> +"Like every good Italian." +</p> + +<p> +"Like every good Italian...." +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"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, <i>and</i> the children, +only don't talk so much--they thought she was cured, but just hark at +her!--<i>va bene</i>, 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; <i>va bene, va bene, va bene</i>--" +</p> + +<p> +A sad little incident, under the pines.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +A fortnight has elapsed. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"And that little ridge of stone," says my companion, "--do you see it, +jutting into the fields down there? It has a queer name. We call it La +Sirena." +</p> + +<p> +La Sirena.... +</p> + +<p> +It is good to live in a land where such memories cling to old rocks. +</p> + +<p> +By what a chance has the name survived to haunt this inland crag, +defying geological changes, outlasting the generations of men, their +creeds and tongues and races! How it takes one back--back into hoary +antiquity, into another landscape altogether! One thinks of those Greek +mariners coasting past this promontory, and pouring libations to the +Siren into an ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now sows +his rice and turnips. +</p> + +<p class="ind"> + <i>Paganisme immortel, es-tu mort? On le dit.<br> + Mais Pan, tout bas, s'en moque, et la Sirène en rit.</i> +</p> + +<p> +They are still here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to +separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous +splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the +gods are kind. +</p> + +<p> +My Siren dwells at Corsanico. +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="viamay">Viareggio (May)</a></h3> + +<p> +Those Sirens! They have called me back, after nearly three months in +Florence, to that village on the hill-top. Nothing but smiles up there. +</p> + +<p> +And never was Corsanico more charming, all drenched in sunlight and +pranked out with fresh green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to +myself, I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away, and +there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet--can it be possible?--I am even +happier here. Seldom does the event surpass one's hopes. +</p> + +<p> +Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives already heavy-laden, +through patches of high-standing corn and beans, across the little +brook, past that familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the +canal, in full content. Another golden moment of life! Strong +exhalations rose up from the swampy soil, that teemed and steamed under +the hot breath of spring; the pond-like water, once so bare, was +smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh-plants and loud with the music +of love-sick frogs. Stars were reflected on its surface. +</p> + +<p> +Star-gazing, my Star? Would I were Heaven, to gaze on thee with many +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Such was my mood, a Hellenic mood, a mood summed up in that one word +[Greek: tetelestai]--not to be taken, however, in the sense of "all's +over." Quite the reverse! Did Shelley ever walk in like humour along +this canal? I doubt it. He lacked the master-key. An evangelist of a +kind, he was streaked, for all his paganism, with the craze of +world-improvement. One day he escaped from his chains into those +mountains and there beheld a certain Witch--only to be called back to +mortality by a domestic and critic-bitten lady. He tried to translate +the Symposium. He never tried to live it.... +</p> + +<p> +I have now interposed a day of rest. +</p> + +<p> +My welcome in the villa situated in the street called after a certain +politician was that of the Prodigal Son. There was a look bordering on +affection in the landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once the +weather was warmer. She would now give me a cool room, instead of that +old one facing south. Those much-abused cement floors--they were not so +inconvenient, were they, at this season? The honey for breakfast? +Assuredly; the very same. And there was a tailor she had discovered in +the interval, cheaper and better than that other one, if anything +required attention. +</p> + +<p> +And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London landladies and London +charwomen--having suffered the torments of Hell, for more years than I +care to remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags and harpies +and drunken sluts--I am now rewarded by the services of something at the +other end of the human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good +dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life seems to be to save my +money and make me comfortable. "Don't get your shoes soled there!" she +told me two days ago. "That man is from Viareggio. I know a better +place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will +pay less and get better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she +forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known +my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have +known them at the end of a century.... +</p> + +<p> +My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally +efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the +familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair +and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave +me the impression of being in the presence of a <i>grande dame</i>. +Such, I used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned +periods enlivened with steely glints of humour--such were the feelings +of those who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. +It would be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or +vulgar. Yet she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She +never dreams that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high +police functionary and greatly in favour with his set--a most useful +landlady, in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself. +</p> + +<p> +On learning this fact, I made it my business to study her weaknesses and +soon discovered that she was fond of a particular brand of Chianti. A +flask of this vintage was promptly secured; then, dissatisfied with its +materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with a wreath of +violets and despatched it to her private apartment by the prettiest +child I could pick up in the street. That is the way to touch their +hearts. The offering was repeated at convenient intervals. +</p> + +<p> +A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one morning, about the +war. I found she shared the view common to many others, that this is an +"interested" war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines which +work against peace. There are so many persons "interested" in keeping up +the present state of affairs, people who now make more money than they +ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie. The soldier in the +field, the chief person concerned, is voiceless and of no account when +compared with this army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if +the war came to an end. They will fight like demons, to keep the fun +going. What else should they do? Their income is at stake. A man's heart +is in his purse. +</p> + +<p> +I asked: +</p> + +<p> +"Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war, how would you set about +it?" +</p> + +<p> +Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to her. +</p> + +<p> +"I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense. It makes things too +pleasant. It would bring the troops to their senses and cause them to +march home and say: Basta! We have had enough." +</p> + +<p> +"Don't you find the Germans a little <i>prepotenti</i>?" +"<i>Prepotenti</i>: yes. By all means let us break their heads. And +then, <i>caro Lei</i>, let us learn to imitate them...." +</p> + +<p> +That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine and myself in such +mellow mood that I would have shared my last crust with some shipwrecked +archduchess and almost forgiven mine enemies, though not until I had hit +them back--I strolled about the Cascine. They have done something to +make this place attractive; just then, at all events, the shortcomings +were unobserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot. +Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as +it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water; +and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the +surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of +hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not +remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in +an identical situation, and with far less sunshine for the landscape +gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town in Germany where, on +a plain as flat as a billiard table, they actually reared a mountain, +now covered with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens. To +think that I used to skate over the meadows where that mountain now +stands! +</p> + +<p> +There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the +usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake +of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious +epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play +is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision +and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of +the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of +old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of +consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which +leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name. +They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their +tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an +outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort. +Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat. +</p> + +<p> +Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de +Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew +strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all +these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half +of them ought to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about +with a ball. +</p> + +<p> +It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising +generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the +younger spectators and make him talk. But these better-class lads +cluster together at the approach of a stranger, and one does not want to +start a public discussion with half a dozen of them. My chance came from +another direction. It was half-time and a certain player limped out of +the field and sat down on the grass. I was beside him before his friends +had time to come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with perspiration. +</p> + +<p> +"Any damage?" +</p> + +<p> +Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other side had just caught him +with the full swing of his fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly. +</p> + +<p> +"Hardly fair play," I commented. +</p> + +<p> +"It was cleverly done." +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, well," I said, warming to my English character, "you may get harder +knocks in the trenches. I suppose you are nearly due?" +</p> + +<p> +Not for a year or so, he replied. And even then ... of course, he was +quite eligible as to physique ... it was really rather awkward ... but +as to serving in the army ... there were other jobs going. ... Was +anything more precious than life?... Could anything replace his life to +him?... To die at his age.... +</p> + +<p> +"It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point of view. But if +everybody thought like that, where would the Isonzo line be?" +</p> + +<p> +If everybody thought as he did, there would be no Isonzo line at all. +German influence in Italy--why not? They had been there before; it was +no dark page in Italian history. Was his own government so admirable +that one should regret its disappearance? A pack of knaves and +cutthroats. Patriotism--a phrase; auto-intoxication. They say one thing +and mean another. The English too. Yes, the English too. Purely +mercenary motives, for all their noble talk. +</p> + +<p> +It is always entertaining to see ourselves as others see us. I had the +presence of mind to interject some anti-British remark, which produced +the desired effect. +</p> + +<p> +"Now they howl about the sufferings of Belgium, because their money-bags +are threatened. They fight for poor Belgium. They did not fight for +France in 1870, or for Denmark or Poland or Armenia. Trade was not +threatened. There was no profit in view. Profit! And they won't even +supply us with coal----" +</p> + +<p> +Always that coal. +</p> + +<p> +It is clear as daylight. England has failed in her duty--her duty being +to supply everybody with coal, ships, money, cannons and anything else, +at the purchaser's valuation. +</p> + +<p> +He made a few more statements of this nature, and I think he enjoyed his +little fling at that, for him, relatively speaking, since the war began, +<i>rara avis</i>, a genuine Englishman (Teutonic construction); I +certainly relished it. Then I asked: +</p> + +<p> +"Where did you learn this? About Armenia, I mean, and Poland?" +</p> + +<p> +"From my father. He was University Professor and Deputy in Parliament. +One also picks up a little something at school. Don't you agree with +me?" +</p> + +<p> +"Not altogether. You seem to forget that a nation cannot indulge in +those freaks of humanitarianism which may possibly befit an individual. +A certain heroic dreamer told men to give all they had to the poor. You, +if you like, may adopt this idealistic attitude. You may do generous +actions such as your country cannot afford to do, since a nation which +abandons the line of expediency is on the high road to suicide. If I +have a bilious attack, by all means come and console me; if Poland has a +bilious attack, there is no reason why England should step in as +dry-nurse; there may be every reason, indeed, why England should stand +aloof. Now in Belgium, as you say, money is involved. Money, in this +national sense, means well-being; and well-being, in this national +sense, is one of the few things worth fighting for. However, I am only +throwing out one or two suggestions. On some other day, I would like to +discuss the matter with you point by point--some other day, that is, +when you are not playing football and have just a few clothes on. I am +now at a disadvantage. You could never get me to impugn your statements +courageously--not in that costume. It would be like haggling with Apollo +Belvedere. Why do you wear those baby things?" +</p> + +<p> +"We are all wearing them, this season." +</p> + +<p> +"So I perceive. How do you get into them?" +</p> + +<p> +"Very slowly." +</p> + +<p> +"Are they elastic?" +</p> + +<p> +"I wish they were.".... +</p> + +<p> +Four minutes' talk. It gave me an insight. He was an intellectualist. As +such, he admired brute force but refused to employ it. He was civilized. +Like many products of civilization, he was unaware of its blessings and +unconcerned in its fate. Is it not a feature peculiar to civilization +that it thinks of everything save war? That is why they are uprooted, +these flowerings, each in its turn. +</p> + +<p> +My father told me; often one hears that remark, even from adults. As if +a father could not be a fool like anybody else! That a child should have +hard-and-fast opinions--it is engaging. Children are egocentric. A +fellow of this size ought to be less positive. +</p> + +<p> +These refined youths are fastidious about their clothes. They would not +dream of buying a ready-made suit, however well-fitting. They are +content to take their opinions second-hand. Unlike ours, they are seldom +alone; they lack those stretches of solitude during which they might +wrestle with themselves and do a little thinking on their own account. +When not with their family, they are always among companions, being far +more sociable and fond of herding together than their English +representatives. They talk more; they think less; they seem to do each +other's thinking, which takes away all hesitation and gives them a +precocious air of maturity. If this decorative lad engages in some +profession like medicine or engineering there is hope for him, even as +others of his age rectify their perspective by contact with crude +facts--groceries and calicoes and carburettors and so forth. Otherwise, +his doom is sealed. He remains a doctrinaire. This country is full of +them. +</p> + +<p> +And then--the sterilizing influence of pavements. Even when summer comes +round, they all flock in a mass to some rowdy place like this Viareggio +or Ancona where, however pleasant the bathing, spiritual life is yet +shallower than at home. What says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.? "Their +country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in +nothing else does it differ from the life they live in town." +</p> + +<p> +He notices things, does Ramage; and might, indeed, have elaborated this +argument. The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for +the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him +from the pavement--no easy task--and he gasps like a fish out of water. +Squares and cafés--they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of +fellow-creatures--thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the +result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I +should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every +bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I +think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait +still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested +mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour--such things +require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid, +for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English +representatives. +</p> + +<p> +POSTSCRIPT.--The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an +objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly +and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all +the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead +of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain +legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I +observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new +ones, which flake away rapidly--exfoliate or crack, according to the +direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the +chisel. It may well be that Florentines of past centuries left the hewn +blocks in their shady caverns for a certain length of time, as do the +Parisians of to-day, in order to allow for the slow discharge and +evaporation of liquid; whereas now the material, saturated with +moisture, is torn from its damp and cool quarries and set in the blazing +sunshine. At the Bourse, for instance,--quite a modern structure--the +columns already begin to show fissures. [<a href="#7">7</a>] +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Amply content with Viareggio, because the Siren dwells so near, I stroll +forth. The town is awake. Hotels are open. Bathing is beginning. Summer +has dawned upon the land. +</p> + +<p> +I am not in the city mood, three months in Florence having abated my +interest in humanity. Past a line of booths and pensions I wander in the +direction of that pinery which year by year is creeping further into the +waves, and driving the sea back from its old shore. There is peace in +this green domain; all is hushed, and yet pervaded by the mysterious +melody of things that stir in May-time. Here are no sombre patches, as +under oak or beech; only a tremulous interlacing of light and shade. A +peculiarly attractive bole not far from the sea, gleaming rosy in the +sunshine, tempts me to recline at its foot. +</p> + +<p> +This insomnia, this fiend of the darkness--the only way to counteract +his mischief is by guile; by snatching a brief oblivion in the hours of +day, when the demon is far afield, tormenting pious Aethiopians at the +Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments of self-created night, +merged into the warm earth! The extreme quietude of my present room, +after Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this +restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsanico. But chiefly, +the dream--that recurrent dream. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody, I suppose, is subject to recurrent dreams of some kind. My +present one is of a painful or at least sad nature; it returns +approximately every three months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I +am in a distant town where I lived many years back, and where each stone +is familiar to me. I have come to look for a friend--one who, as a +matter of fact, died long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this +fact; once embarked on the dream-voyage, I hold him to be still alive. +Glad at the prospect of meeting my friend again, I traverse cheerfully +those well-known squares in the direction of his home.... Where is it, +that house; where has it gone? I cannot find it. Ages seem to pass while +I trample up and down, in ever-increasing harassment of mind, along +interminable rows of buildings and canals; that door, that +well-remembered door--vanished! All search is vain. I shall never meet +him: him whom I came so far to see. The dismal truth, once established, +fills me with an intensity of suffering such as only night-visions can +inspire. There is no reason for feeling so strongly; it is the way of +dreams! At this point I wake up, thoroughly exhausted, and say to +myself: "Why seek his house? Is he not dead?" +</p> + +<p> +This stupid nightmare leaves me unrefreshed next morning, and often +bears in its rear a trail of wistfulness which may endure a week. Only +within the last few years has it dared to invade my slumbers. Before +that period there was a series of other recurrent dreams. What will the +next be? For I mean to oust this particular incubus. The monster annoys +me, and even our mulish dream-consciousness can be taught to acquiesce +in a fact, after a sufficient lapse of time. +</p> + +<p> +There are dreams peculiar to every age of man. That celebrated one of +flying, for instance--it fades away with manhood. I once indulged in a +correspondence about it with a well-known psychologist, [<a href="#8">8</a>] and would +like to think, even now, that this dream is a reminiscence of leaping +habits in our tree-haunting days; a ghost of the dim past, therefore, +which revisits us at night when recent adjustments are cast aside and +man takes on the credulity and savagery of his remotest forefathers; a +ghost which comes in youth when these ancient etchings are easier to +decypher, being not yet overscored by fresh personal experiences. What +is human life but a never-ending palimpsest? +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +So I pondered, when my musings under that pine tree were interrupted by +the arrival on the scene of a young snake. I cannot say with any degree +of truthfulness which of us two was more surprised at the encounter. I +picked him up, as I always do when they give me a chance, and began to +make myself agreeable to him. He had those pretty juvenile markings +which disappear with maturity. Snakes of this kind, when they become +full-sized, are nearly always of a uniform shade, generally black. And +when they are very, very old, they begin to <i>grow ears</i> and seek +out solitary places. What is the origin of this belief? I have come +across it all over the country. If you wish to go to any remote or +inaccessible spot, be sure some peasant will say: "Ah! There you find +the serpent with ears." +</p> + +<p> +These snakes are not easy to catch with the hand, living as they do +among stones and brushwood, and gliding off rapidly once their +suspicions are aroused. This one, I should say, was bent on some +youthful voyage of discovery or amorous exploit; he walked into the trap +from inexperience. As a rule, your best chance for securing them is when +they bask on the top of some bush or hedge in relative unconcern, +knowing they are hard to detect in such places. They climb into these +aerial situations after the lizards, which go there after the insects, +which go there after the flowers, which go there after the sunshine, +struggling upwards through the thick undergrowth. You must have a quick +eye and ready hand to grasp them by the tail ere they have time to lash +themselves round some stem where, once anchored, they will allow +themselves to be pulled in pieces rather than yield to your efforts. If +you fail to seize them, they trickle earthward through the tangle like a +thread of running water. +</p> + +<p> +He belonged to that common Italian kind which has no English +name--Germans call them <i>Zornnatter</i>, in allusion to their choleric +disposition. Most of them are quite ready to snap at the least +provocation; maybe they find it pays, as it does with other folks, to +assume the offensive and be first in the field, demanding your place in +the sun with an air of wrathful determination. Some of the big fellows +can draw blood with their teeth. Yet the jawbones are weak and one can +force them asunder without much difficulty; whereas the bite of a +full-grown emerald lizard, for instance, will provide quite a novel +sensation. The mouth closes on you like a steel trap, tightly +compressing the flesh and often refusing to relax its hold. In such +cases, try a puff of tobacco. It works! Two puffs will daze them; a +fragment of a cigar, laid in the mouth, stretches them out dead. And +this is the beast which, they say, will gulp down prussic acid as if it +were treacle. +</p> + +<p> +But snakes vary in temperament as we do, and some of these +<i>Zamenis</i> serpents are as gentle and amiable as their cousin the +Aesculap snake. My friend of this afternoon could not be induced to +bite. Perhaps he was naturally mild, perhaps drowsy from his winter +sleep or ignorant of the ways of the world; perhaps he had not yet shed +his milk teeth. I am disposed to think that he forgot about biting +because I made a favourable impression on him from the first. He crawled +up my arm. It was pleasantly warm, but a little too dark; soon he +emerged again and glanced around, relieved to discover that the world +was still in its old place. He was not clever at learning tricks. I +tried to make him stand on his head, but he refused to stiffen out. +Snakes have not much sense of humour. +</p> + +<p> +Lizards are far more companionable. During two consecutive summers I had +a close friendship with a wall-lizard who spent in my society certain of +his leisure moments--which were not many, for he always had an +astonishing number of other things on hand. He was a full-grown male, +bejewelled with blue spots. A fierce fighter was Alfonso (such was his +name), and conspicuous for a most impressive manner of stamping his +front foot when impatient. Concerning his other virtues I know little, +for I learnt no details of his private life save what I saw with my +eyes, and they were not always worthy of imitation. He was a polygamist, +or worse; obsessed, moreover, by a deplorable habit of biting off the +tails of his own or other people's children. He went even further. For +sometimes, without a word of warning, he would pounce upon some innocent +youngster and carry him in his powerful jaws far away, over the wall, +right out of my sight. What happened yonder I cannot guess. It was +probably a little old-fashioned cannibalism. +</p> + +<p> +Though my meals in those days were all out of doors, his attendance at +dinner-time was rather uncertain; I suspect he retired early in order to +spend the night, like other polygamists, in prayer and fasting. At the +hours of breakfast and luncheon--he knew them as well as I did--he was +generally free, and then quite monopolized my company, climbing up my +leg on to the table, eating out of my hand, sipping sugar-water out of +his own private bowl and, in fact, doing everything I suggested. I did +not suggest impossibilities. A friendship should never be strained to +breaking-point. Had I cared to risk such a calamity, I might have taught +him to play skittles.... +</p> + +<p> +For the rest, it is not very amusing to be either a lizard or a snake in +Italy. Lizards are caught in nooses and then tied by one leg and made to +run on the remaining three; or secured by a cord round the neck and +swung about in the air--mighty good sport, this; or deprived of their +tails and given to the baby or cat to play with; or dragged along at the +end of a string, like a reluctant pig that is led to market. There are +quite a number of ways of making lizards feel at home. +</p> + +<p> +With snakes the procedure is simple. They are killed; treated to that +self-same system to which they used to treat us in our arboreal days +when the glassy eye of the serpent, gleaming through the branches, will +have caused our fur to stand on end with horror. No beast provokes human +hatred like that old coiling serpent. Long and cruel must have been his +reign for the memory to have lingered--how many years? Let us say, in +order to be on the safe side, a million. Here, then, is another ghost of +the past, a daylight ghost. +</p> + +<p> +And look around you; the world is full of them. We live amid a legion of +ancestral terrors which creep from their limbo and peer in upon our +weaker moments, ready to make us their prey. A man whose wits are not +firmly rooted in earth, in warm friends and warm food, might well live a +life of ceaseless trepidation. Many do. They brood over their immortal +soul--a ghost. Others there are, whose dreams have altogether devoured +their realities. These live, for the most part, in asylums. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +There flits, along this very shore, a ghost of another kind--that of +Shelley. Maybe the spot where they burnt his body can still be pointed +out. I have forgotten all I ever read on that subject. An Italian +enthusiast, the librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence, +garnered certain information from ancient fishermen of Viareggio in +regard to this occurrence and set it down in a little book, a book with +white covers which I possessed during my Shelley period. They have +erected a memorial to the English poet in one of the public squares +here. The features of the bust do not strike me as remarkably etherial, +but the inscription is a good specimen of Italian adapted to lapidary +uses--it avoids those insipid verbal terminations which weaken the +language and sometimes render it almost ridiculous. +</p> + +<p> +Smollet lies yonder, at Livorno; and Ouida hard by, at Bagni di Lucca. +She died in one of these same featureless streets of Viareggio, alone, +half blind, and in poverty.... +</p> + +<p> +I know Suffolk, that ripe old county of hers, with its pink villages +nestling among drowsy elms and cornfields; I know their "Spread Eagles" +and "Angels" and "White Horses" and other taverns suggestive--sure sign +of antiquity--of zoological gardens; I know their goodly ale and old +brown sherries. Her birthplace, despite those venerable green mounds, is +comparatively dull--I would not care to live at Bury; give me Lavenham +or Melford or some place of that kind. While looking one day at the +house where she was born, I was sorely tempted to crave permission to +view the interior, but refrained; something of her own dislike of prying +and meddlesomeness came over me. Thence down to that commemorative +fountain among the drooping trees. The good animals for whose comfort it +was built would have had some difficulty in slaking their thirst just +then, its basin being chocked up with decayed leaves. +</p> + +<p> +We corresponded for a good while and I still possess her letters +somewhere; I see in memory that large and bold handwriting, often only +two words to a line, on the high-class slate-coloured paper. The sums +she spent on writing materials! It was one of her many ladylike traits. +</p> + +<p> +I tried to induce her to stay with me in South Italy. She made three +conditions: to be allowed to bring her dogs, to have a hot bath every +day, and two litres of cream. Everything could be managed except the +cream, which was unprocurable. Later on, while living in the Tyrolese +mountains, I renewed the invitation; that third condition could now be +fulfilled as easily as the other two. She was unwell, she replied, and +could not move out of the house, having been poisoned by a cook. So we +never met, though she wrote me much about herself and about +"Helianthus," which was printed after her death. In return, I dedicated +to her a book of short stories; they were published, thank God, under a +pseudonym, and eight copies were sold. +</p> + +<p> +She is now out of date. Why, yes. Those guardsmen who drenched their +beards in scent and breakfasted off caviare and chocolate and sparkling +Moselle--they certainly seem fantastic. They really were fantastic. +They did drench their beards in scent. The language and habits of these +martial heroes are authenticated in the records of their day; glance, +for instance, into back numbers of <i>Punch</i>. The fact is, we were +all rather ludicrous formerly. The characters of Dickens, to say nothing +of Cruikshank's pictures of them: can such beings ever have walked the +earth? +</p> + +<p> +If her novels are somewhat faded, the same cannot be said of her letters +and articles and critiques. To our rising generation of authors--the +youngsters, I mean; those who have not yet sold themselves to the +devil--I should say: read these things of Ouida's. Read them +attentively, not for their matter, which is always of interest, nor yet +for their vibrant and lucid style, which often rivals that of Huxley. +Read them for their tone, their temper; for that pervasive good +breeding, that shining honesty, that capacity of scorn. These are +qualities which our present age lacks, and needs; they are conspicuous +in Ouida. Abhorrence of meanness was her dominant trait. She was +intelligent, fearless; as ready to praise without stint as to voice the +warmest womanly indignation. She was courageous not only in matters of +literature; courageous, and how right! Is it not satisfactory to be +right, when others are wrong? How right about the Japanese, about +Feminism and Conscription and German brutalitarianism! How she puts her +finger on the spot when discussing Marion Crawford and D'Annunzio! Those +local politicians--how she hits them off! Hers was a sure touch. Do we +not all now agree with what she wrote at the time of Queen Victoria and +Joseph Chamberlain? When she remarks of Tolstoy, in an age which adored +him (I am quoting from memory), that "his morality and monogamy are +against nature and common sense," adding that he is dangerous, because +he is an "educated Christ"--out of date? When she says that the world is +ruled by two enemies of all beauty, commerce and militarism--out of +date? When she dismisses Oscar Wilde as a <i>cabotin</i> and yet thinks +that the law should not have meddled with him--is not that the man and +the situation in a nutshell? +</p> + +<p> +No wonder straightforward sentiments like these do not appeal to our age +of neutral tints and compromise, to our vegetarian world-reformers who +are as incapable of enthusiasm as they are of contempt, because their +blood-temperature is invariably two degrees below the normal. Ouida's +critical and social opinions are infernally out of date--quite +inconveniently modern, in fact. There is the milk of humanity in them, +glowing conviction and sincerity; they are written from a standpoint +altogether too European, too womanly, too personally-poignant for +present-day needs; and in a language, moreover, whose picturesque and +vigorous independence comes as a positive shock after the colourless +Grub-street brand of to-day. +</p> + +<p> +They come as a shock, these writings, because in the brief interval +since they were published our view of life and letters has shifted. A +swarm of mystics and pragmatists has replaced the lonely giants of +Ouida's era. It is an epoch of closed pores, of constriction. The novel +has changed. Pick up the average one and ask yourself whether this +crafty and malodorous sex-problem be not a deliberately commercial +speculation--a frenzied attempt to "sell" by scandalizing our +unscandalizable, because hermaphroditic, middle classes? Ouida was not +one of these professional hacks, but a personality of refined instincts +who wrote, when she cared to write at all, to please her equals; a +rationalistic anti-vulgarian; a woman of wide horizons who fought for +generous issues and despised all shams; the last, almost the last, of +lady-authors. What has such a genial creature in common with our anaemic +and woolly generation? "The Massarenes" may have faults, but how many of +our actual woman-scribes, for all their monkey-tricks of cleverness, +could have written it? The haunting charm of "In Maremma": why ask our +public to taste such stuff? You might as well invite a bilious +nut-fooder to a Lord Mayor's banquet. +</p> + +<p> +The mention of banquets reminds me that she was blamed for preferring +the society of duchesses and diplomats to that of the Florentine +<i>literati</i>, as if there were something reprehensible in Ouida's +fondness for decent food and amusing talk when she could have revelled +in Ceylon tea and dough-nuts and listened to babble concerning +Quattro-Cento glazes in any of the fifty squabbling art-coteries of that +City of Misunderstandings. It was one of her several failings, chiefest +among them being this: that she had no reverence for money. She was +unable to hoard--an unpardonable sin. Envied in prosperity, she was +smugly pitied in her distress. Such is the fate of those who stand apart +from the crowd, among a nation of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, +after being the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form--a slur on +society. True, she might have bettered her state by accepting a +lucrative proposal to write her autobiography, but she considered such +literature a "degrading form of vanity" and refused the offer. She +preferred to remain ladylike to the last, in this and other little +trifles--in her lack of humour, her redundancies, her love of expensive +clothes and genuinely humble people, of hot baths and latinisms and +flowers and pet dogs and sealing-wax. All through life she made no +attempt to hide her woman's nature, her preference for male over female +company; she was even guilty of saying that disease serves the world +better than war, because it kills more women than men. Out of date, with +a vengeance! +</p> + +<p> +There recurs to me a sentence in a printed letter written by a +celebrated novelist of the artificial school, a sentence I wish I could +forget, describing Ouida as "a little terrible and finally pathetic +grotesque." Does not a phrase like this reveal, even better than his own +romances, the essentially non-human fibre of the writer's mind? Whether +this derivative intellectualist spiderishly spinning his own plots and +phrases and calling Ouida a "grotesque"--whether this echo ever tried to +grasp the bearing of her essays on Shelley or Blind Guides or Alma +Veniesia or The Quality of Mercy--tried to sense her burning words of +pity for those that suffer, her hatred of hypocrisy and oppression and +betrayal of friendship, her so righteous pleadings, coined out of the +heart's red blood, for all that makes life worthy to be lived? He may +have tried. He never could succeed. He lacked the sympathy, the sex. He +lacked the sex. Ah, well--<i>Schwamm drueber</i>, as the Norwegians say. +Ouida, for all her femininity, was more than this feline and gelatinous +New Englander. +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="rome1">Rome</a></h3> + +<p> +The railway station at Rome has put on a new face. Blown to the winds +is that old dignity and sense of leisure. Bustle everywhere; soldiers in +line, officers strutting about; feverish scurryings for tickets. A young +baggage employé, who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the +inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep up the traditions +of former days. He was unruffled and polite; he told me, incidentally, +that he came from ----. That was odd, I said; I had often met persons +born at ----, and never yet encountered one who was not civil beyond the +common measure. His native place must be worthy of a visit. +</p> + +<p> +"It is," he replied. "There are also certain fountains...." +</p> + +<p> +That restaurant, for example--one of those few for which a man in olden +days of peace would desert his own tavern in the town--how changed! The +fare has deteriorated beyond recognition. Where are those succulent +joints and ragouts, the aromatic wine, the snow-white macaroni, the +cafe-au-lait with genuine butter and genuine honey? +</p> + +<p> +War-time! +</p> + +<p> +Conversed awhile with an Englishman at my side, who was gleefully +devouring lumps of a particular something which I would not have liked +to touch with tongs. +</p> + +<p> +"I don't care what I eat," he remarked. +</p> + +<p> +So it seemed. +</p> + +<p> +I don't care what I eat: what a confession to make! Is it not the same +as saying, I don't care whether I am dirty or clean? When others tell me +this, I regard it as a pose, or a poor joke. This person was manifestly +sincere in his profession of faith. He did not care what he ate. He +looked it. Were I afflicted with this peculiar ailment, this attenuated +form of <i>coprophagia</i>, I should try to keep the hideous secret to +myself. It is nothing to boast of. A man owes something to those +traditions of our race which has helped to raise us above the level of +the brute. Good taste in viands has been painfully acquired; it is a +sacred trust. Beware of gross feeders. They are a menace to their +fellow-creatures. Will they not act, on occasion, even as they feed? +Assuredly they will. Everybody acts as he feeds. +</p> + +<p> +Then lingered on the departure platform, comparing its tone with that of +similar places in England. A mournful little crowd is collected here. +Conscripts, untidy-looking fellows, are leaving--perhaps for ever. They +climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and +endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their +farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent. +The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation, +the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they +are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the +sisters and children, who give themselves away pretty freely. An +infectious thing, this shedding of tears. One little girl, loth to part +from that big brother, contrived by her wailing to break down the +reserve of the entire family.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Rome is mirthless. +</p> + +<p> +There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a sweet old lady +friend who said to me, in years gone by: +</p> + +<p> +"When next you go to Rome, please let me know if it is still raining +there." +</p> + +<p> +It was here that she celebrated her honeymoon--an event which must have +taken place in the 'sixties or thereabouts. She is dead now. So is her +husband, the prince of moralizers, the man who first taught me how +contemptible the human race may become. Doubtless he expired with some +edifying platitude on his lips and is <i>deblatterating</i> them at this +very moment in Heaven, where the folks may well be seasoned to that kind +of talk. +</p> + +<p> +Let us be charitable, now that he is gone! +</p> + +<p> +To have lived so long with a person of this incurable respectability +would have soured any ordinary woman's temper. Hers it refined; it made +her into something akin to an angel. He was her cross; she bore him +meekly and not, I like to think, without extracting a kind of sly, dry +fun out of the horrible creature. A past master in the art of gentle +domestic nagging, he made everybody miserable as long as he lived, and I +would give something for an official assurance that he is now miserable +himself. He was a worm; a good man in the worse sense of the word. It +was the contrast--the contrast between his gentle clothing and ungentle +heart, which moved my spleen. What a self-sufficient and inhuman brood +were the Victorians of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty; +a brood that has never yet been called by its proper name. Victorians? +Why, not altogether. The mischief has its roots further back. Addison, +for example, is a fair specimen. +</p> + +<p> +Why say unkind things about a dead man? He cannot answer back. +</p> + +<p> +Upon my word, I am rather glad to think he cannot. The last thing I ever +wish to hear again is that voice of his. And what a face: gorgonizing in +its assumption of virtue! Now the whole species is dying out, and none +too soon. Graft abstract principles of conduct upon natures devoid of +sympathy and you produce a monster; a sanctimonious fish; the coldest +beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affinities were with +Robespierre and Torquemada--both of them actuated by the purest +intentions and without a grain of self-interest: pillars of integrity. +What floods of tears would have been spared to mankind, had they only +been a little corrupt! How corrupt a person of principles? He lacks the +vulgar yet divine gift of imagination. +</p> + +<p> +That is what these Victorians lacked. They would never have subscribed +to this palpable truth: that justice is too good for some men, and not +good enough for the rest. They cultivated the Cato or Brutus tone; they +strove to be stern old Romans--Romans of the sour and imperfect +Republic; for the Empire, that golden blossom, was to them a period of +luxury and debauch. Nero--most reprehensible! It was not Nero, however, +but our complacent British reptiles, who filled the prisons with the +wailing of young children, and hanged a boy of thirteen for stealing a +spoon. I wish I had it here, that book which everybody ought to read, +that book by George Ives on the History of Penal Methods--it would help +me to say a few more polite things. The villainies of the virtuous: who +shall recount them? I can picture this vastly offensive old man acting +as judge on that occasion and then, his "duties towards society" +accomplished, being driven home in his brougham to thank Providence for +one of those succulent luncheons, the enjoyment of which he invariably +managed to ruin for every one except himself. +</p> + +<p> +God rest his soul, the unspeakable phenomenon! He ought to have +throttled himself at his mother's breast. Only a woman imbued with +ultra-terrestrial notions of humour could have tolerated such an +infliction. Anybody else would have poisoned him in the name of +Christian charity and common sense, and earned the gratitude of +generations yet unborn. +</p> + +<p> +Well, well! R.I.P.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +On returning to Rome after a considerable absence--a year or so--a few +things have to be done for the sake of auld lang syne ere one may again +feel at home. Rites must be performed. I am to take my fill of memories +and conjure up certain bitter-sweet phantoms of the past. Meals must be +taken in definite restaurants; a certain church must be entered; a sip +of water taken from a fountain--from one, and one only (no easy task, +this, for most of the fountains of Rome are so constructed that, however +abundant their flow, a man may die of thirst ere obtaining a mouthful); +I must linger awhile at the very end, the dirty end, of the horrible Via +Principe Amedeo and, again, at a corner near the Portico d'Ottavia; +perambulate the Protestant cemetery, Monte Mario, and a few quite +uninteresting modern sites; the Acqua Acetosa, a stupid place, may on no +account be forgotten, nor yet that bridge on the Via Nomentana--not the +celebrated bridge but another one, miles away in the Campagna, the +dreariest of little bridges, in the dreariest of landscapes. Why? It has +been hallowed by the tread of certain feet. +</p> + +<p> +Thus, by a kind of sacred procedure, I immerge myself into those old +stones and recreate my peculiar Roman mood. It is rather ridiculous. +Tradition wills it. +</p> + +<p> +To-day came the turn of the Protestant cemetery. I have a view of this +place, taken about the 'seventies--I wish I could reproduce it here, to +show how this spot has been ruined. A woman who looks after the +enclosure was in a fairly communicative mood; we had a few minutes' +talk, among the tombs. What a jumble of names and nationalities, by the +way! What a mixed assemblage lies here, in this foreign earth! One would +like to write down all their names, shake them in a bag, pick out fifty +at random and compose their biographies. It would be a curious +cosmopolitan document. +</p> + +<p> +They have now a dog, the woman tells me, a ferocious dog who roams among +the tombs, since several brass plates have been wrenched off by +marauders. At night? I inquire. At night. At night.... Slowly, warily, I +introduce the subject of <i>fiammelle</i>. It is not a popular theme. +No! She has heard of such things, but never seen them; she never comes +here at night, God forbid! +</p> + +<p> +What are <i>fiammelle</i>? Little flames, will-o'-the-wisps which hover +about the graves at such hours, chiefly in the hot months or after +autumn rains. It is a well-authenticated apparition; the scientist +Bessel saw one; so did Casanova, here at Rome. He describes it as a +pyramidal flame raised about four feet from the ground which seemed to +accompany him as he walked along. He saw the same thing later, at Cesena +near Bologna. There was some correspondence on the subject (started by +Dr. Herbert Snow) in the <i>Observer</i> of December 1915 and January +1916. Many are the graveyards I visited in this country and in others +with a view to "satisfying my curiosity," as old Ramage would say, on +this point, and all in vain. My usual luck! The <i>fiammelle</i>, on +that particular evening, were coy--they were never working. They are +said to be frequently observed at Scanno in the Abruzzi province, and +the young secretary of the municipality there, Mr. L. O., will tell you +of our periodical midnight visits to the local cemetery. Or go to +Licenza and ask for my intelligent friend the schoolmaster. What he does +not know about <i>fiammelle</i> is not worth knowing. Did he not, one +night, have a veritable fight with a legion of them which the wind blew +from the graveyard into his face? Did he not return home trembling all +over and pale as death?... +</p> + +<p> +Here reposes, among many old friends, the idealist Malwida von +Meysenbug; that sculptured medallion is sufficient to proclaim her +whereabouts to those who still remember her. It is good to pause awhile +and etheralize oneself in the neighbourhood of her dust. She lived a +quiet life in an old brown house, since rebuilt, that overlooks the +Coliseum, on whose comely ellipse and blood-stained history she loved to +pasture eyes and imagination. Often I walked thence with her, in those +sparkling mornings, up the Palatine hill, to stroll about the ilexes and +roses in view of the Forum, to listen to the blackbirds, or the siskins +in that pine tree. She was of the same type, the same ethical parentage, +as the late Mathilde Blind, a woman of benignant and refined enthusiasm, +full of charity to the poor and, in those later days, almost +shadowy--remote from earth. She had saturated herself with Rome, for +whose name she professed a tremulous affection untainted by worldly +considerations such as mine; she loved its "persistent spiritual life"; +it was her haven of rest. So, while her arm rested lightly on mine, we +wandered about those gardens, the saintly lady and myself; her mind +dwelling, maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure and the +part she came nigh to playing in the history of Europe, while mine was +lost in a maze of vulgar love-adventures, several of which came nigh to +making me play a part in the police-courts of Rome. +</p> + +<p> +What may have helped to cement our strange friendship was my +acquaintance, at that time, with the German metaphysicians. She must +have thought me a queer kind of Englishman to discuss with such +familiarity the tenets of these cloudy dreamers. Malwida loved them in a +bland and childlike fashion. She would take one of their dicta as a +starting-point--establish herself, so to speak, within this or that +nebular hypothesis--and argue thence in academic fashion for the sake of +intellectual exercise and the joy of seeing where, after a thousand +twists and turnings, you were finally deposited. A friend of ours--some +American--had lately published a Socratic dialogue entitled "The +Prison"; it formed a fruitful theme of conversation. [<a href="#9">9</a>] Nietzsche was +also then to the fore, and it pleases me to recollect that even in those +days I detected his blind spot; his horror of those English materialists +and biologists. I did not pause to consider why he hated them so +ardently; I merely noted, more in sorrow than in anger, this fact which +seemed to vitiate his whole outlook--as indeed it does. Now I know the +reason. Like all preacher-poets, he is anthropocentric. To his way of +thinking the human mind is so highly organized, so different from that +of beasts, that not all the proofs of ethnology and physiology would +ever induce him to accept the ape-ancestry of man. This monkey-business +is too irksome and humiliating to be true; he waives it aside, with a +sneer at the disgusting arguments of those Englishmen. +</p> + +<p> +That is what happens to men who think that "the spirit alone lives; the +life of the spirit alone is true life." A philosopher weighs the value +of evidence; he makes it his business, before discoursing of the origin +of human intellect, to learn a little something of its focus, the brain; +a little comparative anatomy. These men are not philosophers. +Metaphysicians are poets gone wrong. Schopenhauer invents a "genius of +the race"--there you have his cloven hoof, the pathetic fallacy, the +poet's heritage. There are things in Schopenhauer which make one blush +for philosophy. The day may dawn when this man will be read not for what +he says, but for how he says it; he being one of the few of his race who +can write in their own language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon +a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did. So I remember +one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks" +propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it, +wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation. [<a href="#10">10</a>] +</p> + +<p> +He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions +into the inane. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who scorned honest work +and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his +borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the +spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it +was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk +most plausibly--art, music, society gossip--everything you please; +everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He +sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully +contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody, +like himself, found the world a good place to inhabit. That, I believe, +was the secret of his success. He had a divine intuition for discovering +the soft spots of his neighbours and utilizing the knowledge, in a frank +and gentlemanly fashion, for his own advantage. It was he who invented a +saying which I have since encountered more than once: "Never run after +an omnibus or a woman. There will be another one round in a minute." And +also this: "Never borrow from a man who really expects to be paid back. +You may lose a friend." +</p> + +<p> +What lady is he now living on? +</p> + +<p> +"A good-looking fellow like me--why should I work? Tell me that. +Especially with so many rich ladies in the world aching for somebody to +relieve them of their spare cash?" +</p> + +<p> +"The wealthy woman," he once told me, after I had begun to know him more +intimately, "is a great danger to society. She is so corruptible! People +make her spend money on all kinds of empty and even harmful projects. +Think of the mischief that is done, in politics alone, by the money of +these women. Think of all the religious fads that spring up and are kept +going in a state of prosperity because some woman or other has not been +instructed as to the proper use of her cheque-book. I foresee a positive +decline ahead of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We +must club together, we reasonable men, and put an end to the scandal. +These women need <i>trimmers</i>; an army of trimmers. I have done a +good deal of trimming in my day. Of course it involves some trouble and +a close degree of intimacy, now and then. But a sensible man will always +know where to draw the line." +</p> + +<p> +"Where do you draw it?" +</p> + +<p> +"At marriage." +</p> + +<p> +Whether he ever dared to tap the venerable Malwida for a loan? Likely +enough. He often played with her feelings in a delicate style, and his +astuteness in such matters was only surpassed by his shamelessness. He +was capable of borrowing a fiver from the Pope--or at least of +attempting the feat; of pocketing some hungry widow's last mite and +therewith purchasing a cigarette before her eyes. All these sums he took +as his due, by right of conquest. Whether he ever "stung" Malwida? I +should have liked to see the idealist's face when confronted in that +cheery off-hand manner with the question whether she happened to have +five hundred francs to spare. +</p> + +<p> +"No? Whatever does it matter, my dear Madame de Meysenbug? Perhaps I +shall be more fortunate another day. But pray don't put yourself out for +an extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending money--can't +live without it, can one?--and sometimes, though you might not believe +it, on quite worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like to take +you to see one day; the father was cut to pieces in some wretched +agricultural machine, the mother is dying in a hospital for consumption, +and the six little children, all shivering under one blanket--well, +never mind! One does what one can, in a small way. That was an +interesting lecture, wasn't it, on Friday? He made a fine point in what +he said about the relation of the Ego to the Cosmos. All the same, I +thought he was a little hard on Fichte. But then, you know, I always +felt a sort of tenderness for Fichte. And did you notice that the room +was absolutely packed? I doubt whether that would have been the case in +any other European capital. This must be the secret charm of Rome, don't +you think so? This is what draws one to the Eternal City and keeps one +here and makes one love the place in spite of a few trivial +annoyances--this sense of persistent spiritual life." +</p> + +<p> +The various sums derived from ladies were regarded merely as +adventitious income. I found out towards the end of our acquaintance, +when I really began to understand his "method," that he had a second +source of revenue, far smaller but luckily "fixed." It was drawn from +the other sex, from that endless procession of men passing through Rome +and intent upon its antiquities. Rome, he explained, was the very place +for him. +</p> + +<p> +"This is what keeps me here and makes me love the place in spite of a +few trivial annoyances--this persistent coming and going of tourists. +Everybody on the move, all the time! A man must be daft if he cannot +talk a little archaeology or something and make twenty new friends a +year among such a jolly crowd of people. They are so grateful for having +things explained to them. Another lot next year! And there are really +good fellows among them; fellows, mind you, with brains; fellows with +money. From each of those twenty he can borrow, say, ten pounds; what is +that to a rich stranger who comes here for a month or so with the +express purpose of getting rid of his money? Of course I am only talking +about the medium rich; one need never apply to the very rich--they are +always too poor. Well, that makes about two hundred a year. It's not +much, but, thank God, it's safe as a house and it supplements the +ladies. Women are so distressingly precarious, you know. You cannot +count on a woman unless you have her actually under your thumb. Under +your thumb, my boy; <i>under your thumb</i>. Don't ever forget it." +</p> + +<p> +I have never forgotten it. +</p> + +<p> +Where is he now? Is he dead? A gulf intervenes between that period and +this. What has become of him? You might as well ask me about his +contemporary, the Piccadilly goat. I have no idea what became of the +Piccadilly goat, though I know pretty well what would become of him, +were he alive at this moment. +</p> + +<p> +Mutton-chops. [<a href="#11">11</a>] +</p> + +<p> +Yet I can make a guess at what is happening to my red-haired friend. He +is not dead, but sleepeth. He is being lovingly tended, in a crapulous +old age, by one of the hundred ladies he victimized. He takes it as a +matter of course. I can hear him chuckling dreamily, as she smooths his +pillow for him. He will die in her arms unrepentant, and leave her to +pay for the funeral. +</p> + +<p> +"Work!" he once said. "To Hell with work. The man who talks to me about +work is my enemy." +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +One sunny morning during this period there occurred a thunderous +explosion which shattered my windows and many others in Rome. A +gunpowder magazine had blown up, somewhere in the Campagna; the +concussion of air was so mighty that it broke glass, they said, even at +Frascati. +</p> + +<p> +We drove out later to view the site. It resembled a miniature volcano. +</p> + +<p> +There I left the party and wandered alone into one of those tortuous +stream-beds that intersect the plain, searching for a certain kind of +crystal which may be found in such places, washed out of the soil by +wintry torrents. I specialized in minerals in those days--minerals and +girls. Dangerous and unprofitable studies! Even at that tender age I +seem to have dimly discerned what I now know for certain: that dangerous +and unprofitable objects are alone worth pursuing. The taste for +minerals died out later, though I clung to it half-heartedly for a long +while, Dr. Johnston-Lavis, Professor Knop and others fanning the dying +embers. One day, all of a sudden, it was gone. I found myself riding +somewhere in Asiatic Turkey past a precipice streaked in alternate veins +of purest red and yellow jasper, with chalcedony in between: a discovery +which in former days would have made me half delirious with joy. It left +me cold. I did not even dismount to examine the site. "Farewell to +stones" I thought.... +</p> + +<p> +Often we lingered by the Fontana Trevi to watch the children disporting +themselves in the water and diving for pennies--a pretty scene which has +now been banished from the politer regions of Rome (the town has grown +painfully proper). There, at the foot of that weedy and vacuous and yet +charming old Neptune--how perfectly he suits his age!--there, if you +look, you will see certain gigantic leaves sculptured into the rock. I +once overheard a German she-tourist saying to her companion, as she +pointed to these things: "Ist doch sonderbar, wie das Wasser so die +Pflanzen versteinert." She thought they were natural plants petrified by +the water's action. +</p> + +<p> +What happened yesterday was equally surprising. We were sitting at the +Arch of Constantine and I was telling my friend about the Coliseum hard +by and how, not long ago, it was a thicket of trees and flowers, looking +less like a ruin than some wooded mountain. Now the Coliseum is surely +one of the most famous structures in the world. Even they who have never +been to the spot would recognize it from those myriad +reproductions--especially, one would think, an Italian. Nevertheless, +while thus discoursing, a man came up to us, a well-dressed man, who +politely inquired: +</p> + +<p> +"Could you tell me the name of this <i>castello</i>?" +</p> + +<p> +I am glad to think that some account of the rich and singular flora of +the Coliseum has been preserved by Deakin and Sebastiani, and possibly +by others. I could round their efforts by describing the fauna of the +Coliseum. The fauna of the Coliseum--especially after 11 p.m.--would +make a readable book; readable but hardly printable. +</p> + +<p> +These little local studies are not without charm. Somebody, one day, may +be induced to tell us about the fauna of Trafalgar Square. He should +begin with a description of the horse standing on three legs and gazing +inanely out of those human eyes after the fashion of its classic +prototype; then pass on to the lions beloved of our good Richard +Jefferies which look like puppy-dogs modelled in cotton-wool (why did +the sculptor not take a few lessons in lions from the sand-artist on +Yarmouth beach?), and conclude by dwelling as charitably as possible on +the human fauna--that droll little man, barely discernible, perched on +the summit of his lead pencil.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +There was a slight earthquake at sunrise. I felt nothing.... +</p> + +<p> +And, appropriately enough, I encountered this afternoon M. M., that most +charming of persons, who, like Shelley and others, has discovered Italy +to be a "paradise of exiles." His friends may guess whom I mean when I +say that M. M. is connoisseur of earthquakes social and financial; his +existence has been punctuated by them to such an extent that he no +longer counts events from dates in the ordinary calendar, from birthdays +or Christmas or Easter, but from such and such a disaster affecting +himself. Each has left him seemingly more mellow than the last. Just +then, however, he was in pensive mood, his face all puckered into +wrinkles as he glanced upon the tawny flood rolling beneath that old +bridge. There he stood, leaning over the parapet, all by himself. He +turned his countenance aside on seeing me, to escape detection, but I +drew nigh none the less. +</p> + +<p> +"Go away," he said. "Don't disturb me just now. I am watching the little +fishes. Life is so complicated! Let us pray. I have begun a new novel +and a new love-affair." +</p> + +<p> +"God prosper both!" I replied, and began to move off. +</p> + +<p> +"Thanks. But supposing the publisher always objects to your choicest +paragraphs?" +</p> + +<p> +"I am not altogether surprised, if they are anything like what you once +read to me out of your unexpurgated 'House of the Seven Harlots.' Why +not try another firm? They might be more accommodating. Try mine." +</p> + +<p> +He shook his head dubiously. +</p> + +<p> +"They are all alike. It is with publishers as with wives: one always +wants somebody else's. And when you have them, where's the difference? +Ah, let us pray. These little fishes have none of our troubles." +</p> + +<p> +I inquired about the new romance. At first he refused to disclose +anything. Then he told me it was to be entitled "With Christ at +Harvard," and that it promised some rather novel situations. I shall +look forward to its appearance. +</p> + +<p> +What good things one could relate of M. M., but for the risk of +incurring his wrath! It is a thousand pities, I often tell him, that he +is still alive; I am yearning to write his biography, and cannot afford +to wait for his dissolution. +</p> + +<p> +"When I am dead," he always says. +</p> + +<p> +"By that time, my dear M., I shall be in the same fix myself." +</p> + +<p> +"Try to survive. You may find it worth your while, when you come to look +into my papers. <i>You don't know half.</i> And I may be taking that +little sleeping-draught of mine any one of these days...." [<a href="#12">12</a>] +</p> + +<p> +Mused long that night, and not without a certain envy, on the lot of M. +M. and other earthquake-connoisseurs--or rather on the lot of that true +philosopher, if he exists, who, far from being damaged by such +convulsions, distils therefrom subtle matter of mirth, I have only known +one single man--it happened to be a woman, an Austrian--who approached +this ideal of splendid isolation. She lived her own life, serenely +happy, refusing to acquiesce in the delusions and conventionalities of +the crowd; she had ceased to trouble herself about neighbours, save as a +source of quiet amusement; a state of affairs which had been brought +about by a succession of benevolent earthquakes that refined and +clarified her outlook. +</p> + +<p> +Such disasters, obviously, have their uses. They knock down obsolete +rubbish and enable a man to start building anew. The most sensitive +recluse cannot help being a member of society. As such, he unavoidably +gathers about him a host of mere acquaintances, good folks who waste his +time dulling the edge of his wit and infecting him with their orthodoxy. +Then comes the cataclysm. He loses, let us say, all his money, or makes +a third appearance in the divorce courts. He can then at last (so one of +them expressed it to me) "revise his visiting-list," an operation which +more than counterbalances any damage from earthquakes. For these same +good folks are vanished, the scandal having scattered them to the winds. +He begins to breathe again, and employ his hours to better purpose. If +he loses both money and reputation he must feel, I should think, as +though treading on air. The last fools gone! And no sage lacks friends. +</p> + +<p> +Consider well your neighbour, what an imbecile he is. Then ask yourself +whether it be worth while paying any attention to what he thinks of you. +Life is too short, and death the end of all things. Life must be lived, +not endured. Were the day twice as long as it is, a man might find it +diverting to probe down into that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try +to reach some common root of feeling other than those physiological +needs which we share with every beast of earth. Diverting; hardly +profitable. It would be like looking for a flea in a haystack, or a joke +in the Bible. They can perhaps be found; at the expense of how much +trouble! +</p> + +<p> +Therefore the sage will go his way, prepared to find himself growing +ever more out of sympathy with vulgar trends of opinion, for such is the +inevitable development of thoughtful and self-respecting minds. He +scorns to make proselytes among his fellows: they are not worth it. He +has better things to do. While others nurse their griefs, he nurses his +joy. He endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and to be +true to that self when found--a worthy and ample occupation for a +life-time. The <i>happiness-of-the-greatest-number</i>, of those who +pasture on delusions: what dreamer is responsible for this eunuchry? +Mill, was it? Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest number were not +necessarily the least-intelligent! As if their happiness were not +necessarily incompatible with that of the sage! Why foster it? He is a +poor philosopher, who cuts his own throat. Away with their ghosts; +de-spiritualize yourself; what you cannot find on earth is not worth +seeking. +</p> + +<p> +That charming M. M., I fear, will never compass this clarity of vision, +this perfect de-spiritualization and contempt of illusions. He will +never remain curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in +nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has inherited that all +too common taint of psychasthenia (miscalled neurasthenia); he +confesses, moreover,--like other men of strong carnal proclivities--to +certain immaterial needs and aspirations after "the beyond." Not one of +these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but has his Achilles heel: a +mental crotchet or physical imperfection to mar the worldly perspective. +Not one of them, at close of life, will sit beside some open window in +view of a fair landscape and call up memories of certain moments which +no cataclysms have taken from him; not one will lay them in the balance +and note how they outweigh, in their tiny grains of gold, the dross of +an age of other men's lives. Not one of them! They will be preoccupied, +for the most part, with unseasonable little concerns. Pleasant folk, +none the less. And sufficiently abundant in Italy. Altogether, the +Englishman here is as often an intenser being than the home product. +Alien surroundings awaken fresh and unexpected notes in his nature. His +fibres seem to lie more exposed; you have glimpses into the man's +anatomy. There is something hostile in this sunlight to the hazy or +spongy quality which saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the +sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will also meet with dull +persons; Rome is full of them, but, the type being easier to detect +among a foreign environment, there is still less difficulty in evading +them.... +</p> + +<p> +Thus I should have had no compunction, some nights ago, in making myself +highly objectionable to Mr. P. G. who has turned up here on some mission +connected with the war--so he says, and it may well be true; no +compunction whatever, had that gentleman been in his ordinary social +state. Mr. P. G., the acme of British propriety, inhabiting a house, a +mansion, on the breezy heights of north London, was on that occasion +decidedly drunk. "Indulging in a jag," he would probably have called it. +He tottered into a place where I happened to be sitting, having lost his +friends, he declared; and soon began pouring into my ear, after the +confidential manner of a drunkard, a flood of low talk, which if I +attempted to set it down here, would only result in my being treated to +the same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with his "choicest +paragraphs." It was highly instructive--the contrast between that +impeccable personality which he displays at home and his present state. +I wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a few shreds of +what he said--just a few shreds; they would have seen a new light on +dear daddy. +</p> + +<p> +<i>In vino veritas.</i> Ever avid of <i>experimentum</i> in some +<i>corpore vili</i> and determined to reach the bed-rock of his gross +mentality, I plied him vigorously with drink, and was rewarded. It was +rich sport, unmasking this Philistine and thanking God, meanwhile, that +I was not like unto him. We are all lost sheep; and none the worse for +that. Yet whoso is liable, however drunk, to make an exhibition of +himself after the peculiar fashion of Mr. P. G., should realize that +there is something fundamentally wrong with his character and take +drastic measures of reform--measures which would include, among others, +a total abstention from alcohol. Old Aristotle, long ago, laboured to +define wherein consisted the trait known as gentlemanliness; others will +have puzzled since his day, for we have bedaubed ourselves with so thick +a coating of manner and phrase that many a cad will pass for something +better. Well, here is the test. Unvarnish your man; make him drink, and +listen. That was my procedure with P. G. Esquire. I listened to his +outpouring of inanity and obscenity and, listening sympathetically, like +some compassionate family doctor, could not help asking myself: Is such +a man to be respected, even when sober? Be that as it may, he gave me to +understand why some folk are rightly afraid of exposing, under the +influence of drink, the <i>bête humaine</i> which lurks below their skin +of decency. His language would have terrified many people. Me it +rejoiced. I would not have missed that entertainment for worlds. He +finally wanted to have a fight, because I refused to accompany him to a +certain place of delights, the address of which--I might have given him +a far better one--had been scrawled on the back of a crumpled envelope +by some cabman. Unable to stand on his legs, what could he hope to do +there? +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="olevano">Olevano</a></h3> + +<p> +I have loafed into Olevano. +</p> + +<p> +A thousand feet below my window, and far away, lies the gap between the +Alban and Volscian hills; veiled in mists, the Pontine marches extend +beyond, and further still--discernible only to the eye of faith--the +Tyrrhenian. +</p> + +<p> +The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable grace. It recalls +Etna, as viewed from Taormina. How the mountain cleaves to earth, how +reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line! +Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on its +lower slope. Standing out against the sky, they can be seen at all hours +of the day, whereas the dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on the green +plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades out of sight after midday. +</p> + +<p> +Hard by, on your right, are the craggy heights of Capranica. Tradition +has it that Michael Angelo was in exile up there, after doing something +rather risky. What had he done? He crucified his model, desirous, like a +true artist, to observe and reproduce faithfully in marble the muscular +contractions and facial agony of such a sufferer. To crucify a man: this +was going almost too far, even for the Pope of that period, who seems to +have been an unusually sensitive pontiff--or perhaps the victim was a +particular friend of his. However that may be, he waxed wroth and +banished the conscientious sculptor in disgrace to this lonely mountain +village, there to expiate his sins, for a day or two.... +</p> + +<p> +One sleeps badly here. Those nightingales--they are worse than the +tram-cars in town. They begin earlier. They make more noise. Surely +there is a time for everything? Will certain birds never learn to sing +at reasonable hours? +</p> + +<p> +A word as to these nightingales. One of them elects to warble, in +deplorably full-throated ease, immediately below my bedroom window. When +this particular fowl sets up its din at about 3.45 a.m. it is a +veritable explosion; an ear-rending, nerve-shattering explosion of +noise. I use that word "noise" deliberately. For it is not music--not +until your ears are grown accustomed to it. +</p> + +<p> +I know a little something about music, having studied the art with +considerable diligence for a number of years. Impossible to enumerate +all the composers and executants on various instruments, the conductors +and opera-singers and ballet-girls with whom I was on terms of +familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps I am the only person now +alive who has shaken hands with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with +Beethoven and heard his voice; all of which may appear when I come to +indite my musical memoirs. I have written a sonata in four movements, +opus 643, hitherto unpublished, and played the organ during divine +service to a crowded congregation. Furthermore I performed, not at my +own suggestion, his insipid Valse Caprice to the great Antoine +Rubinstein, who was kind enough to observe: "Yes, yes. Quite good. But I +rather doubt whether you could yet risk playing that in a concert." And +in the matter of sheer noise I am also something of an expert, having +once, as an infant prodigy, broken five notes in a single masterly +rendering of Liszt's polonaise in E Major--I think it is E +Major--whereupon my teacher, himself a pupil of Liszt, genially +remarked: "Now don't cry, and don't apologize. <i>A polonaise like yours +is worth a piano</i>." I set these things down with modest diffidence, +solely in order to establish my <i>locus standi</i> as a person who +might be expected to know the difference between sound and noise. As +such, I have no hesitation in saying that the first three bars of that +nightingale performance are, to sleeping ears, not music. They break +upon the stillness with the crash of Judgment Day. +</p> + +<p> +And every night the same scare. It causes me to start up, bathed in +sudden perspiration, out of my first, and best, and often only sleep, +with the familiar feeling that something awful is happening. Windows +seem to rattle, plaster drops from the ceiling--an earthquake? Lord, no. +Nothing so trivial. Nothing so brief. It is that blasted bird clearing +its throat for a five hours' entertainment. Let it not be supposed that +the song of these southerners bears any resemblance to that of an +English nightingale. I could stand a hatful of English nightingales in +my bedroom; they would lull me to sleep with their anaemic whispers. You +might as well compare the voice of an Italian costermonger, the crowing +of a cock, the braying of a local donkey, with their representatives in +the north--those thin trickles of sound, shadowy as the squeakings of +ghosts. Something will have to be done about those nightingales unless I +am to find my way into a sanatorium. For hardly is this bird started on +its work before five or six others begin to shout in emulation--a little +further off, I am glad to say, but still near enough to be inconvenient; +still near enough to be reached by a brick from this window----A brick. +Methinks I begin to see daylight.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Meanwhile one can snatch a little rest out of doors, in the afternoon. A +delectable path, for example, runs up behind the cemetery, bordered by +butterfly orchids and lithospermum and aristolochia and other plants +worthy of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with +views on either side. Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some +rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of +nightingales--soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole +among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of +some wryneck in the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet +time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen are all at the front. +I kicked up a partridge along this track two days ago. +</p> + +<p> +Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant but hard to see. They sit +close, relying on their protective colour. And it is the same with the +tree-creepers. I have heard Englishmen say there are no tree-creepers in +Italy. The olive groves are well stocked with them (there are numbers +even in the Borghese Gardens in Rome), but you must remain immovable as +a rock in order to see them; for they are yet shyer, more silent, more +fond of interposing the tree-trunk between yourself and them, than those +at home. Mouse-like in hue, in movement and voice--a strange case of +analogous variation.... +</p> + +<p> +As to this Scalambra, this mountain whose bleak grey summit overtops +everything near Olevano, I could soon bear the sight of it no longer. It +seemed to shut out the world; one must up and glance over the edge, to +see what is happening on the other side. I looked for a guide and +porter, for somebody more solid than Giulio, who is almost an infant; +none could be found. Men are growing scarce as the Dodo hereabouts, on +account of the war. So Giulio came, though he had never made the ascent. +</p> + +<p> +Now common sense, to say nothing of a glance at the map, would suggest +the proper method of approach: by the village of Serrano, the Saint +Michael hermitage, and so up. Scouting this plan, I attacked the +mountain about half-way between that village and Rojate. I cannot +recommend my route. It was wearisome to the last degree and absolutely +shadeless save for a small piece of jungle clothing a gulley, hung with +myriads of caterpillars and not worth mentioning as an incident in that +long walk. No excitement--not the faintest chance, so far as I could +see, of breaking one's neck, and uphill all the time over limestone. One +never seems to get any nearer. This Scalambra, I soon discovered, is one +of those artful mountains which defend their summits by thrusting out +escarpments with valleys in between; you are kept at arm's length, as it +were, by this arrangement of the rock, which is invisible at a distance. +And when at last you set foot on the real ridge and climb laboriously to +what seems to be the top--lo! there is another peak a little further +off, obviously a few feet higher. Up you go, only to discover a third, +perhaps a few inches higher still. Alpine climbers know these tricks. +</p> + +<p> +We reached the goal none the less and there lay, panting and gasping; +while an eagle, a solitary eagle with tattered wings, floated overhead +in the cloudless sky. +</p> + +<p> +The descent to Rojate under that blazing sun was bad enough. My flask +had been drained to the dregs long ago, and the Scalambra, true to its +limestone tradition, had not supplied even a drop of water. Arriving at +the village at about two in the afternoon, we found it deserted; +everybody enjoying their Sunday nap. Rojate is a dirty hole. The water +was plainly not to be trusted; it might contain typhoid germs, and I was +responsible for Giulio's health; wine would be safer, we agreed. There, +in a little shop near the church--a dark and cool place, the first shade +we had entered for many hours--we drank without ever growing less +thirsty. We felt like cinders, so hot, so porous, that the liquid seemed +not only to find its way into the legitimate receptacle but to be +obliged to percolate, by some occult process of capillarity, the +remotest regions of the body. As time went on, the inhabitants dropped +in after their slumbers and kept us company. We told our adventures, +drank to the health of the Allies one by one and several times over; and +it was not until we had risen to our feet and passed once more into the +sunshine of the square that we suddenly felt different from what we +thought we felt. +</p> + +<p> +The first indication was conveyed by Giulio, who called upon the +populace of Rojate, there assembled, to bear solemn witness to the fact +that I was his one and only friend, and that he would nevermore abandon +me--a sentiment in which I stoutly concurred. (A fellow-feeling makes us +wondrous blind.) Other symptoms followed. His hat, for example, which +had hitherto behaved in exemplary fashion, now refused to remain +steadily balanced on his head; it took some first-class gymnastics to +prevent it from falling to the ground. In fact, while I confined myself +to the minor part of Silenus--my native role--this youngster gave a +noteworthy representation of the Drunken Faun.... +</p> + +<p> +Now I see no harm in appreciating wine up to a certain point, and am +consoled to observe that Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., was of the same +way of thinking. He says so himself, and there is no reason for doubting +his word. He frankly admits, for instance, that he enjoys the stuff +called <i>moscato</i> "with great zest." He samples the Falernian +vintage and pronounces it to be "particularly good, and not +degenerated." Arrived at Cutro, he is not averse to reviving his spirits +with "a pretty fair modicum of wine." He also lets slip--significant +detail--the fact that Dr. Henderson was one of his friends, and that he +travelled about with him. You may judge a man by the company he keeps. +Who was this Dr. Henderson? He was the author of "The History of Ancient +Wines." Old Henderson, I should say, could be trusted to know something +of local vintages. +</p> + +<p> +And so far good. +</p> + +<p> +At Licenza, however, Ramage tells us that he "got glorious on the wine +of Horace's Sabine farm." I do not know what he means by this +expression, which seems to be purposely ambiguous; in any case, it does +not sound very nice. At another place, again, he and his entertainer +consumed some excellent liquor "in considerable quantity"--so he avows; +adding that "it was long past midnight ere we closed our bacchanalian +orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that he was happy to have +made my acquaintance." Note the lame and colourless close of that +sentence: he <i>ended by stating</i>. One always ends that way after +bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss over the escapade +with such disingenuous language. +</p> + +<p> +We can guess what really took place. It was something like what happened +at Rojate. Did not the curly-haired Giulio end by "stating" something to +the same effect? +</p> + +<p> +I cannot make up my mind whether to be pleased with this particular +trait in friend Ramage's character. For let it never be forgotten that +our traveller was a young man at the time. He says so himself, and there +is no reason for doubting his word. Was he acting as beseemed his years? +</p> + +<p> +I am not more straight-laced than many people, yet I confess it always +gives me a kind of twinge to see a young man yielding to intemperance of +any kind. There is something incongruous in the spectacle, if not +actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt to associate that +time of life with stern resolve. A young man, it appears to me, should +hold himself well in hand. Youth has so much to spare! Youth can afford +to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming ahead, it should be a +period of ideals, of self-restraint and self-discipline, of earnestness +of purpose. How well the Greek Anthology praises "Temperance, the nurse +of Youth!" The divine Plato lays it down that youngsters should not +touch wine at all, since it is not right to <i>heap fire on fire</i>. He +adds that older men like ourselves may indulge therein as an ally +against the austerity of their years--agreeing, therefore, with +Theophrastus who likewise recommends it for the "natural moroseness" of +age. +</p> + +<p> +Observe in this connection what happened to Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., +at Trebisacce. Here was a poor old coastguard who had been taken +prisoner by the Corsairs thirty years earlier, carried to Algiers, and +afterwards ransomed. Having "nothing better to do" (says our author) "I +confess I furnished him with somewhat more wine than was exactly +consistent with propriety"; with so liberal a quantity, indeed, that the +coastguard became quite "obstreperous in his mirth"; whereupon Ramage +hops on his mule and leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young +fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And why? Because he has +"nothing better to do." [<a href="#13">13</a>] It is not remarkably edifying. True, he +afterwards makes a kind of apology for "causing my brother to sin by +over-indulgence...." +</p> + +<p> +But if we close our eyes to the fact that Ramage, when he gave way to +these excesses, was a young man and ought to have known better, what an +agreeable companion we find him! +</p> + +<p> +He never rails at anything. Had I been subjected to half the annoyances +he endured, my curses would have been loud and long. Under such +provocation, Ramage contents himself with reproving his tormentors in +rounded phrases of <i>oratio obliqua</i> which savour strongly of those +Latin classics he knew so well. What he says of the countryfolk is not +only polite but true, that their virtues are their own, while their +vices have been fostered by the abuses of tyranny. "Whatever fault one +may find with this people for their superstition and ignorance, there is +a loveableness in their character which I am not utilitarian enough in +my philosophy to resist." This comes of travelling off the beaten track +and with an open mind; it comes of direct contact. When one remembers +that he wrote in 1828 and was derived from a bigoted stock, his +religious tolerance is refreshing--astonishing. He studies the +observances of the poorer classes with sympathetic eye and finds that +they are "pious to a degree to which I am afraid we must grant that we +have no pretensions." That custom of suspending votive offerings in +churches he does not think "worthy of being altogether condemned or +ridiculed. The feeling is the same that induces us, on recovery from +severe illness, to give thanks to Almighty God, either publicly in +church or privately in our closets." How many Calvinists of to-day would +write like this? +</p> + +<p> +We could do with more of these sensible and humane reflections, but +unfortunately he is generally too "pressed for time" to indulge in them. +That mania of hustling through the country.... +</p> + +<p> +One morning he finds himself at Foggia, with the intention of visiting +Mons Garganus. First of all he must "satisfy his curiosity" about Arpi; +it is ten miles there and back. Leaving Foggia for the second time he +proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and inspects not only this town, +but the site of old Sipontum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, +and later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promontory. About six +miles to the north are the presumable ruins of Merinum; he insists upon +going there, but the boatmen strike work; regretfully he returns to +Manfredonia, arriving at 11 p.m., and having covered on this day some +sixty or seventy miles. What does he do at Manfredonia? He sleeps for +<i>three hours</i>--and then a new hustle begins, in pitch darkness. +</p> + +<p> +Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he will visit the Siren +Islets. He crosses the ridge and descends to the sea on the other side, +to the so-called Scaricatojo--quite a respectable walk, as any one can +find out for himself. Hence he sails to the larger of the islets, climbs +to the summit and makes some excavations, in the course of which he +observes what I thought I was the first to discover--the substructures +of a noble Roman villa; he also scrambles into King Robert's tower. Then +to the next islet, and up it; then to the third, and up it. After that, +he is tempted to visit the headland of Minerva; he goes there, and +satisfies his curiosity. He must now hence to Capri. He sails across, +and after a little refreshment, walks to the so-called Villa of Jupiter +at the easterly apex of the island. He then rows round the southern +shore and is taken with the idea of a trip to Misenum, twenty miles or +so distant. Arrived there, he climbs to the summit of the cape and +lingers a while--it is pleasant to find him lingering--to examine +something or other. Then he "rushes" down to the boat and bids them row +to Pozzuoli, where he arrives (and no wonder) long after sunset. A good +day's hustle.... +</p> + +<p> +The ladies made a great impression on his sensitive mind; yet not even +they were allowed to interfere with his plans. At Strongoli the +"sparkling eyes of the younger sister" proved the most attractive object +in the place. He was strongly urged to remain a while and rest from his +fatigues. But no; there were many reasons why he should press forward. +He therefore presses forward. At another place, too, he was waited upon +by his entertainer's three daughters, the youngest of whom was one of +the most entrancing girls he had ever met with--in fact, it was well +that his time was limited, else "I verily believe I should have +committed all kinds of follies." That is Ramage. He parts from his host +with "unfeigned regret"--but--parts. His time is always limited. Bit for +that craze of pressing forward, what fun he could have had! +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Stroll to that grove of oaks crowning a hill-top above the Serpentaro +stream. It has often been described, often painted. It is a corner of +Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in the warm dusk of +southern twilight--when all those tiresome children are at last +asleep--it calls up suggestions of <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i>. +Here is a specimen of the landscape as it used to be. You may encounter +during your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved by their +inaccessibility from the invading axe. "Hands off the Oak!" cries an old +Greek poet. +</p> + +<p> +The Germans, realizing its picturesque value, bought this parcel of land +and saved the trees from destruction. It was well done. Within, they +have cut certain letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan +sanctity of the place--Germans will do these things; there is no +stopping them; it is part of their crudely expansive temperament--certain +letterings, among other and major horrors, anent the "Law +of the Ever-beautiful" (how truly Teutonic!)--lines, that is, signed +by the poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated 2 May, 1897. Scheffel +was a kindly and erudite old toper, who toped himself into Elysium +<i>via</i> countless quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things; +the far-famed Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit to the +Hohentwiel mountain in search of that golden-tinted natrolite mineral, +which was duly found (I specialized in zeolites during that period). +</p> + +<p> +Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in 1897? For I attended +his funeral, which took place in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, +a scraggy youth in those days, inherited not only the father's name but +his poetic mantle? Was it he who perpetrated those sententious lines? I +like to think so. That "law of the ever-beautiful" does not smack of the +old man, unless he was more disguised than usual, and having a little +fun with his pedantic countrymen.... +</p> + +<p> +Climb hence--it is not far--to the village of Civitella, now called +Bellegra, a prehistoric fastness with some traces of "cyclopean" +defences. Those ancients must have had cisterns; inconceivable that +springs should ever have issued from this limestone crag. You can see +the women of to-day fetching water from below, from a spot which I was +too lazy to investigate, where perhaps the soft tertiary rock leans upon +this impervious stuff and allows the liquid to escape into the open. An +unclean place is Bellegra, and loud, like all these Sabine villages, +with the confused crying of little children. That multiple wail of +misery will ring in your ear for days afterwards. They are more +neglected by their mothers than ever, since women now have all the men's +work in the fields to do. They are hungrier than ever, on account of the +war which has imposed real hardships on these agricultural folk; +hardships that seize them by the throat and make them sit down, with +folded hands, in dumb despair: so I have seen them. How many of these +unhappy babies will grow to maturity? +</p> + +<p> +Death-rate must anyhow be high hereabouts, for nothing is done in the +way of hygiene. In the company of one who knows, I perambulated the +cemetery of Olevano and was astonished at the frequency of tombstones +erected to the young. "Consumption," my friend told me. They scorn +prophylactics. I should not care to send growing children into these +villages, despite their "fine air." Here, at Bellegra, the air must be +fine indeed in winter; too fine for my taste. It lies high, exposed to +every blast of Heaven, and with noble views in all directions. +</p> + +<p> +Rest awhile, on your homeward march, at the small bridge near Olevano +where the road takes a turn. A few hundred yards up the glen on your +left is a fountain whose waters are renowned for their purity; the +bridge itself is not a favourite spot after sunset; it is haunted by a +most malignant spectre. That adds considerably, in my eyes, to the charm +of the place. Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower. +What recollections does that scent evoke! What hints of summer, after +rain! +</p> + +<p> +A venerable tree, old as the hills; that last syllable tells its +tale--you may read it in the Sanscrit. A man-loving tree; seldom one +sees an elder by itself, away from human habitations, in the jungle. I +have done so; but in that particular jungle, buried beneath the soil, +were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin to attach itself to the +works of man, to walls and buildings? And why? Does it derive peculiar +sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in +lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks +shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel +wondrously when the plant is set in exposed situations. +</p> + +<p> +The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use the berries to colour +the wine. A German writer, R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of +<i>Leit-motif</i> for one of his local novels. I met him once by +accident, and am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal and +flabbily pompous old man--straightway my opinion of his books, never +very high, fell to zero, and has there remained. He knew these regions +well, and doubtless sojourned at one time or another at yonder +caravanserai-hotel, abandoned of late, but then filled with a crowd of +noisy enthusiasts who have since been sacrificed to the war-god. +Doubtless he drank wine with them on that terrace overlooking the brown +houses of Olevano, though I question whether he then paid as much as +they are now charging me; doubtless he rejoiced to see that stately +array of white lilies fronting the landscape, though I question whether +he derived more pleasure from them than I do.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards to where, in the +Abruzzi region, the peaks are still shrouded in snow. +</p> + +<p> +How are they doing our there, at Scanno? Is that driving-road at last +finished? Can the "River Danube" still be heard flowing underground in +the little cave of Saint Martin? Are the thistles of violet and red and +blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as ever? [<a href="#14">14</a>] And those legions of +butterflies--do they still hover among the sunny patches in the narrow +vale leading to Mount Terrata? And Frattura, that strange place--what +has happened to Frattura? Built on a fracture, on the rubble of that +shattered mountain which produced the lake lower down, it has probably +crumbled away in the last earthquake. Well I remember Frattura! It was +where the wolf ate the donkey, and where we, in our turn, often +refreshed ourselves in the dim hovel of Ferdinando--never with greater +zest than on the hot downward march from Mount Genzana. Whether those +small purple gentians are still to be found on its summit? And the +emerald lizard on the lower slopes? Whether the eagles still breed on +the neighbouring Montagna di Preccia? They may well be tired of having +their nest plundered year after year. +</p> + +<p> +What foreigner has older and pleasanter memories of Scanno? I would like +to meet that man, and compare notes. +</p> + +<p> +And so, glancing over the hills from Bellegra, I sent my thoughts into +those Abruzzi mountains, and registered a vow to revisit Scanno--if only +in order to traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld lang +syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger in that moist nook by +the lake-side where stood the Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if +such it was, of the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly +dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one evening, I listened to +something that might have been said much sooner. <i>Acque Vive....</i> +</p> + +<p> +I kept my vow. Our bill at Scanno for wine alone was 189 francs, and for +beer 92 francs; figures which look more formidable than they are and +which I cite only to prove that we--for of course I was not +alone--enjoyed ourselves fairly well during those eighteen days. By the +way, what does Baedeker mean by speaking of the "excellent wines" of +Scanno, where not a drop is grown? He might have said the same of +Aberdeen. +</p> + +<p> +The season was too late for the thistles, too late for the little +coppers and fritillaries and queens of Spain and commas and all the rest +of that fluttering tribe in the narrow vale leading to Terrata, though +wood-pigeons were still cooing there. Scanno has been spared by the +earthquake which laid low so many other places; it has prospered; +prospered too much for my taste, since those rich smoky tints, +especially of the vaulted interiors, are now disappearing under an +invasion of iron beams and white plaster. The golden duskiness of +Scanno, heightened as it was by the gleaming copper vessels borne on +every young girl's head, will soon be a thing of the past. Young trees +along the road-side--well-chosen trees: limes, maples, willows, elms, +chestnuts, ashes--are likewise doing well and promise pretty effects of +variegated foliage in a few years' time; so are the plantations of pines +in the higher regions of the Genzana. In this matter of afforestation, +Scanno continues its system of draconic severity. It is worth while, in +a country which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of goats on +the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water. The Sagittario stream +is hemmed in by a cunning device of stones contained within bags of +strong wire; it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from +Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you will find they have +been scientifically dammed by the administration, whereas the peasant, +when they overflow and ruin his crops, contents himself with damning +them in quite an amateurish fashion. Which reminds me that I picked up +during this visit, and have added to my collection, a new term of abuse +to be addressed to your father-in-law: <i>Porcaccio d'un cagnaccio!</i> +Novel effects, you perceive, obtained by a mere intensification of +colour. +</p> + +<p> +As to Frattura--yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried to identify +Ferdinando's abode among all that debris. The old man himself escaped +the cataclysm, and now sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden +shanties erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio, of whom +more on p. 171, has died; his place is taken by a worthless vagabond. +Saint Domenico and his serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis +fanum), that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears the +problematical date of 600 A.D.--they are all in their former places. +Mount Velino still glitters over the landscape, for those who climb high +enough to see it. The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the +water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume, still carry those +immense loads of wood on their heads, though payment is considerably +higher than the three half-pence a day which it used to be. +</p> + +<p> +Enough of Scanno! +</p> + +<p> +Whoever wishes to leave the place on foot and by an unconventional +route, may go to Sora <i>via</i> Pescasseroli. Adventurous souls will +scramble over the Terrata <i>massif</i>, leaving the summit well on +their right, and descend on its further side; others may wander up the +Valle dei Prati and then, bending to the right along the so-called Via +del Campo, mount upwards past a thronged alp of sheep, over the +watershed, and down through charming valleys of beechen timber. A noble +walk, and one that compares favourably with many Abruzzi excursions. +What deserts they often are, these stretches of arid limestone, +voiceless and waterless, with the raven's croak for your only company! +</p> + +<p> +I am glad to have seen Pescasseroli, where we arrived at about 9 a.m. +For the rest, it is only one of many such places that have been brought +to a state of degradation by the earthquake, the present war, and +governmental neglect. Not an ounce of bread was procurable for money, or +even as a gift. The ordinary needs of life--cigars, matches, maccheroni +and so forth: there were none of them. An epidemic of the gapes, +infecting the entire race of local hens, had caused the disappearance of +every egg from the market. And all those other countless things which a +family requires for its maintenance--soap and cloth and earthenware and +kitchen utensils and oils--they have become rarities; the natives are +learning to subsist without them; relapsing into a kind of barbarism. So +they sit among the cracked tenements; resentful, or dumbly apathetic. +</p> + +<p> +"We have been forgotten," said one of them. +</p> + +<p> +The priests inculcate submission to the will of God. What else should +they teach? But men will outgrow these doctrines of patience when +suffering is too acute or too prolonged. "Anything is better than this," +they say. Thus it comes about that these ruined regions are a goodly +soil for the sowing of subversive opinions; the land reeks of +ill-digested socialism. +</p> + +<p> +We found a "restaurant" where we lunched off a tin of antediluvian +Spanish sardines, some mouldy sweet biscuits, and black wine. (A +distinction is made in these parts between black and red wine; the +former is the Apulian variety, the other from Sulmona.) During this +repast, we were treated to several bear-stories. For there are bears at +Pescasseroli, and nowhere else in Italy; even as there are chamois +nearby, between Opi and Villetta Barrea, among the crags of the +Camosciara, which perpetuates their name. One of those present assured +us that the bear is a good beast; he will eat a man, of course, but if +he meets a little boy, he contents himself with throwing stones at +him--just to teach him good manners. Certain old bears are as big as a +donkey. They have been seen driving into their cave a flock of +twenty-five sheep, like any shepherd. It is no rare thing to encounter +in the woods a bear with a goat slung over his shoulder; he must +breakfast, like anybody else. One of these gentlemen told us that the +bears, not long ago, were a source of considerable profit to the +peasantry round about. It was in this wise. Their numbers had been +reduced, it seems, to a single pair and the species was threatened with +extinction, when, somehow or other, this state of affairs became known +to the King who, alarmed at the disappearance from his realm of a +venerable and autochtonous quadruped, the largest European beast of +prey, conceived the happy idea of converting the whole region into a +Royal Preserve. On pain of death, no bear was to be molested or even +laughed at; any damage they might do would be compensated out of the +Royal Purse. +</p> + +<p> +For a week or so after this enactment, nothing was heard of the bears. +Then, one morning, the conscientious Minister of the Royal Household +presented himself at the palace, with a large sheaf of documents under +his arm. +</p> + +<p> +"What have we here?" inquired the King. +</p> + +<p> +"Attestations relating to the bears of Pescasseroli, Your Majesty. They +seem to be thriving." +</p> + +<p> +"Ah! That is nice of them. They are multiplying once more, thanks to Our +Royal protection. We thought they would." +</p> + +<p> +"Multiplying indeed, Sire. Here are testimonials, sworn before the local +syndic, showing that they have devoured 18 head of cattle and 43 sheep." +</p> + +<p> +"In that short time? Is it possible? Well, well! The damage must be +paid. And yet We never knew the bears could propagate so fast. Maybe our +Italian variety is peculiarly vigorous in such matters." +</p> + +<p> +"Seems so, Your Majesty. Very prolific." +</p> + +<p> +A week or so passed and, once more, His Excellency was announced. The +King observed: +</p> + +<p> +"You are not looking quite yourself this morning, my good Minister. +Would it be indiscreet to inquire the cause? No family or parliamentary +worries, We trust?" +</p> + +<p> +"Your Majesty is very kind! No. It is the bears of Pescasseroli. They +have eaten 75 head of cattle, 93 sheep, and 114 goats. Ah--and 18 +horses. Here are the claims for damages, notarially attested." +</p> + +<p> +"We must pay. But if only somebody could teach the dear creatures to +breed a little more reasonably!" +</p> + +<p> +"I cannot but think, Sire, that the peasants are abusing Your +Majesty's----" +</p> + +<p> +"May We never live to hear anything against Our faithful and +well-beloved Abruzzi folk!" +</p> + +<p> +Nearly a month elapsed before the Minister again presented himself. This +time he looked really haggard and careworn, and was bowed down under an +enormous bundle of papers. The King glanced up from that writing-desk +where, like all other sovereigns, he had been working steadily since +4.30 a.m., and at once remarked, with that sympathetic intuition for +which he is famous among crowned heads: +</p> + +<p> +"We think We know. The bears." +</p> + +<p> +Your Majesty is never wrong. They have devoured 126 cows and calves and +bullocks, 418 sheep and goats, 62 mules, 37 horses, and 96 donkeys. Also +55 shepherd dogs and 827 chickens. Here are the claims." +</p> + +<p> +"Dear, dear, dear. This will never do. If it is a question of going to +ruin, We prefer that it should be the bears rather than Ourselves. We +must withdraw Our Royal protection, after settling up these last items. +What say you, my good Minister?" +</p> + +<p> +"Your Majesty is always right. A private individual may indulge in the +pastime of breeding bears to the verge of personal bankruptcy. Ruling +sovereigns will be guided by juster and more complex considerations." +</p> + +<p> +And from that moment, added our gentlemanly informant, there began a +wonderful shrinkage in the numbers of the bears. Within a day or two, +they were again reduced to a single couple. +</p> + +<p> +Gladly would I have listened to more of these tales but, having by far +the worst of the day's walk still before us, we left the stricken +regions about midday and soon began an interminable ascent, all through +woods, to the shrine of Madonna di Tranquillo. Hereabouts is the +watershed, whence you may see, far below, the tower of Campoli Apennino. +That village was passed in due course, and Sora lay before us, after a +thirteen hours' march.... +</p> + +<p> +That same night in Sora--it may have been 2 a.m.--some demon drew nigh +to my bedside and whispered in my ear: "What are you doing here, at +Sora? Why not revisit Alatri? (I had been there already in June.) Just +another little promenade! Up, sluggard, while the night-air is cool!" +</p> + +<p> +I obeyed the summons and turned to rouse my slumbering companion, to +whom I announced my inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were +well worth listening to. +</p> + +<p> +Next evening found us at Alatri. +</p> + +<p> +Now whoever, after walking from Scanno over Pescasseroli to Sora in one +day, and on the next, in the blazing heat of early autumn, from Sora +over Isola Liri and Veroli to Alatri--touching in two days the soil of +three Italian provinces: Aquila, Caserta, and Rome--whoever, after doing +this, and inspecting the convent of Casamari <i>en route</i>, feels +inclined for a similar promenade on the third day: let him rest assured +of my profound respect. +</p> + +<p> +Calm, sunny days at Olevano. And tranquil nights, for some time past. +</p> + +<p> +The nightingale has been inspired to move a little up country, into +another bush. Its rivals have likewise retired further off, and their +melodramatic trills sound quite pleasant at this distance. +</p> + +<p> +So tin cans have their uses, even when empty. Certain building +operations may have been interrupted. I apologise, though I will not +promise not to repeat the offence. They can move their nests; I cannot +move this house. Bless their souls! I would not hurt a hair on their +dear little heads, but one must really have a few hours' sleep, somehow +or other. A single night's repose is more precious to me than a myriad +birds or quadrupeds or bipeds; my ideas on the sacred nature of sleep +being perfectly Oriental. That Black Hole of Calcutta was an infamous +business. And yet, while nowise approving the tyrant's action, I can +thoroughly understand his instructions on the subject of slumber. +</p> + +<p> +Not every one at Olevano is so callous. Waiting the other day at the +bifurcation of the roads for the arrival of the station motor-car--the +social event of the place--I noticed two children bringing up to a +bigger one the nest of a chaffinch, artfully frosted over with silver +lichen from some olive, and containing a naked brood which sprawled +pathetically within. Wasn't it pretty, they asked? +</p> + +<p> +"Very pretty," he replied. "Now you will take it straight back where you +found it. Go ahead. I am coming with you." And he marched them off. +</p> + +<p> +I am glad to put this incident on record. It is the second of its kind +which I have observed in this country, the first being when a fisherman +climbed up a bad piece of rock to replace a nest--idle undertaking--which +some boys had dislodged with stones. At a short distance from the scene +sat the mother-bird in pensive mood, her head cocked on one side. What +did she think of the benevolent enthusiast?... +</p> + +<p> +Olevano is said to have been discovered by the Germans. I am sceptical +on this point, having never yet found a place that was discovered by +them. An English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died here +all by himself; though doubtless, once on the spot, they did their best +to popularise and vulgarise it. In this matter, as in art or science or +every department of life, a German requires forerunners. He must follow +footsteps. He gleans; picks the brains of other people, profits by their +mistakes and improves on their ideas. +</p> + +<p> +I know nothing of the social history of Olevano--of its origin, so far +as foreigners are concerned. It is the easiest and the flimsiest thing +in the world to invent; there are so many analogies! +</p> + +<p> +The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army +officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across +the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate. +Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to +solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered +about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and +discovered that people there did not like being ordered about as they +should be; they seemed to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been +something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being the first "white man" +in the place gave him a kind of fondness for it. +</p> + +<p> +It was he, then, who discovered Olevano--Freddy Potter. We can see him +living alone, wiry and whiskered and cantankerous, glorying in his +solitude up to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a +fellow-countryman turns up--Mr. Augustus Browne of London. Mr. Browne is +a blameless personality who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an +equally blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a sportsman like +Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste for landscape painting, with +elaborate flowers and butterflies worked into the foreground. So they +live, each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours, importing +groceries from England, dressing for dinner, avoiding contact with the +"natives" and, of course, pretending to be unaware of one another's +existence. +</p> + +<p> +As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows stronger. The Major has +never forgiven that cockney for invading Olevano, his private domain, +while Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter, who +presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes those filthy cheroots +in public (this was years and years ago). Why is the fellow skulking +here, all by himself? Some hanky-panky with regimental money; every one +knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of right and wrong. +And Potter is not long in making up his mind that this civilian has +bolted to Olevano for reasons which will not bear investigation and is +living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed name. Browne! He +really might have picked out a better one, while he was about it. That +water-colour business--a blind, a red herring; the so-called lady +companion---- +</p> + +<p> +The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement the mutual conduct of two +compatriots. They are known, far and wide, as "the madmen" till some +bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not madmen at all, but +only homicides hiding from justice; whereupon contempt is changed to +grudging admiration. +</p> + +<p> +Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up and departs. The old +Major's delight at being once more alone is of short duration; he falls +ill and is entombed, his last days being embittered by the arrival of a +party of German tourists who declare they have "discovered" this +wonderful new spot, and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to +participate in its joys. +</p> + +<p> +They come, singly and in batches, and soon make Olevano uninhabitable to +men of the Potter and Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night, +sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street "as if they were +in their bedrooms," organise picnics in the woods, sketch old women +sitting in old doorways, start a <i>Verschoenerungsverein</i> and +indulge in a number of other antics which, from the local point of view, +are held to be either coarse or childish. The natives, after watching +their doings with critical interest, presently pronounce a verdict--a +verdict to which the brightest spirits of the place give their assent--a +verdict which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered. +</p> + +<p> +"Those Englishmen"--thus it runs--"were at least assassins. These people +are merely fools." +</p> + +<p> +POSTSCRIPT--One thing has occurred of late which would hardly have +happened were the Germans still in occupation of Olevano. At the central +piazza is a fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly, you +could rest and glance down upon the country lying below--upon a piece of +green landscape peering in upon the street. This little view was like a +window, it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now blocked it +up with an ugly house. The beauty of the site is gone. It is surprising +that local municipalities; however stupid, however corrupt, should not +be aware of the damage done to their own interests when they permit such +outrages. The Germans--were any of them still here--would doubtless have +interfered <i>en masse</i> and stopped the building. +</p> + +<p> +Something should be done about these reviewers. +</p> + +<p> +There has followed me hither a bundle of press notices of a recent book +of mine. They are favourable. I ought to be delighted. I happen to be +annoyed. +</p> + +<p> +What takes place in this absurd book? The three unities are preserved. A +respectable but rather drab individual, a bishop, whose tastes and moods +are fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader, arrives at a +new place and is described as being, among other things, peculiarly +sensitive on the subject of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to +the sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their purity, their +sacred mission on earth, their refining influence upon the race. His +friends call him old-fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman, +he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man, towards the end of the +book, watches how the truest woman in the place, the one whom he admires +more than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly throws her +legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises that he is "face to face +with an atrocious and carefully planned murder." Such, however, has been +the transformation of his mind during a twelve days' sojourn that he +understands the crime, he pardons it, he approves it. +</p> + +<p> +Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought about without a plot? +Yet many of these reviewers discover no such thing in the book. "It +possesses not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most +reputable of them. This annoys me. +</p> + +<p> +I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it +would be nearer the truth to say that it is nothing but plot from +beginning to end. How to make murder palatable to a bishop: that is the +plot. How? You must unconventionalise him, and instil into his mind the +seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is +right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the +critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the +book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon +finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are +assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in chapters 11, +19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious +happenings in the local law-court; the very externals--relaxing wind and +fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena--the jovial immoderation of +everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and +insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas. +</p> + +<p> +If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather +successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the +personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, +with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always +swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter, +where the critic might have found a <i>résumé</i> of my intentions and +the key to this plot--to wit, that a murder under those particular +circumstances is not only justifiable and commendable but--insignificant. +Quite insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and +honest folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one +dirty blackmailer more or less--what does it matter to anybody"? There +are so many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop--i.e. +the reader--here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little +episode," and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant +events." <i>He was glad that the whole affair had remained in the +background, so to speak, of his local experiences. It seemed +appropriate.</i> In the background: it seemed appropriate. That is +the heart, the core, of the plot. And that is why all those other +happenings find themselves pushed into the foreground. +</p> + +<p> +I know full well that this is not the way to write an orthodox English +novel. For if you hide your plot, how shall the critic be expected to +see it? You must serve it on a tray; you must (to vary the simile) hit +the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to superintend the +operation. That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can +then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head +and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of +Dostoievsky <i>minus</i> the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert +or Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a +condition to be labelled--a word, and a thing, which comes perilously +near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of +your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not +praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary +friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive? +It lives on the advertisements of publishers and--say those persons, +perhaps wisely--"if you ill-treat our authors, there's an end to our +custom." Commercialism.... +</p> + +<p> +Which applies far less to literary criticism than to other kinds. Of +most of the critics of music and art the best one can say is that there +are hearty fellows among them who, with the requisite training, might +one day become fit for their work. England is the home of the amateur in +matters intellectual, the specialist in things material. No bootmaker +would allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather about in a +jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes. The other commodity, being +less valuable than cowhide, may be entrusted to the hands of any +'prentice who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful +hieroglyphics. Criticism in England--snakes in Iceland. [<a href="#15">15</a>] +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary of St. Michael +above Serrone, that solitary white speck visible from afar on the upper +slopes of Mount Scalambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been +inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with the nightingales, +reaching my destination at the very moment when the sun peered over the +ridge of the mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the dewy shade +of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a wall at Serrone, talking to an +old woman who wore those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose, to +imitate coral. +</p> + +<p> +I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable and garrulous +anchorite who would share my breakfast. It is the ideal place for such a +life, and many are the mountain solitaries of this species I have known +in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There was he of Scanno--dead, I +doubt not, by this time--that simple-hearted venerable with whom I +whiled away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio, gazing over +the placid lake below, or up stream, at the dusky houses of Scanno +theatrically ranged against their hill-side. I became his friend, once +and for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had lost--his only +snuff-box; it lay at the edge of the path among thick shrubs, and he +could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many +strokes of luck! Once I found a purse-- +</p> + +<p> +The little structure here was barred and deserted. I had no company save +a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal +cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be +expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs--incurably +monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a +fondness for living in trios. This <i>ménage à trois</i> may have subtle +advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social +habits of the rook; it enables them to fight with more success against +their enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain +lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks. No one who has +watched the aerial antics of a triplet of carrion crows can deny them a +sense of fun. +</p> + +<p> +After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of nature I descended once +more through that ilex grove to Serrone. And now it began to grow +decidedly warm. The wide depression between this village and Olevano +used to be timbered and is still known as <i>la selva</i> or <i>la +foresta</i>. Vines now occupy the whole ground. If they had only left a +few trees by the wayside! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman who +said he was on the look-out for a hare. Always that hare! They might as +well lie in wait for the Great Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary +informed me that he had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at Rome. +Hares at Ponte Milvio! They reminded me of those partridges in Belgrave +Square. In my younger days there was not a general in the British army +who had not (1) shot partridges in Belgrave Square and (2) been the +chosen lover of Queen Isabella of Spain.... +</p> + +<p> +Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat. We sit under the +vine near the entrance of that decayed stronghold, while babies and hens +scramble about the exposed rock; he talks, as usual, about the war. He +can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is maimed for life; the +other has been killed outright, and it looks as if no amount of +ironmongery (medals, etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy +land is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hardships and +bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards are untilled, olives unpruned, +for lack of labourers. It will take years to bring the soil back into +its old state of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk +suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for something that +happens beyond their ken, something dim and distant--unintelligible to +them as that Libyan expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not +a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood, these men of +Latium.... +</p> + +<p> +Thence onward and upward, towards evening by that familiar path, for a +second farewell visit to Giulio's farm. It is a happy homestead, an +abode of peace, with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that +overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty bush of rosemary +stands at the door. The mother is within, cooking the evening meal for +her man and the elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of +daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already half asleep, +tired with a long day's playing in the sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable cherub and the pickle of the +family. I can see at a glance that he has been up to mischief. Alberto +is incorrigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him any good. +He hammers nails into tables and into himself, he tumbles down from +trees, he throws stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and +saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens +about--disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and +fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big +station motor--pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar +across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish +naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me. +But a certain formality must be gone through; every time we meet there +is a moment of shy distrust, while the ice has to be broken afresh--he +must assure himself that I have not changed since our last encounter. +Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he curls up +comfortably on my knee and is soon fast asleep, all his little tragedies +forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +"It appears you like children," says the mother. +</p> + +<p> +"I like this one, because he is never out of trouble. He reminds me of +myself. I shall steal him one of these days, and carry him off to Rome. +From there we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track called +the Via Appia. It will require two of three years, for I mean to stop a +day, or perhaps a week, at every single tavern along the road. Then I +will write a book about it; a book to make myself laugh with, when I am +grown too old for walking." +</p> + +<p> +"Giulio is big enough." +</p> + +<p> +"I'll wait." +</p> + +<p> +No chance of undertaking such a trip in these times of war, when a +foreigner is liable to be arrested at every moment. Besides, how far +would one get, with Giulio? Nevermore to Brindisi! As far as Terracina; +possibly even to Formia. There, at Formia, we would remain for the rest +of our natural lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is +anything like what it used to be; there, at Formia, we would pitch our +tent, enacting every day, or perhaps twice a day, our celebrated +Faun-and-Silenus entertainment for the diversion of the populace. I have +not forgotten Giulio's besetting sin. How nearly he made me exceed the +measure of sobriety at Rojate!... +</p> + +<p> +Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the trees of the driving-road +fireflies are dancing; countrymen return in picturesque groups, with +mules and children, from their work far afield; that little owl, the +aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its plaintive +note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle. +</p> + +<p> +This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation for crime and +brigandage that the authorities at one time earnestly considered the +proposition of razing it to the ground. Then they changed their minds. +It seemed more convenient to have evil-doers all collected into one +place than scattered about the country. To judge by the brightness of +the lamps at this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently +spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination. +</p> + +<p> +And now the lights of Segni station are visible, down in the malarious +valley, where the train passes from Rome to Naples. Every night I have +beheld them from my window; every night they tinged my thoughts with a +soft sadness, driving them backwards, northwards--creating a link +between present and past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall +those four journeys along that road; four, out of at least a hundred; +only four, but in what rare company! +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="valmontone">Valmontone</a></h3> + +<p> +Back to Valmontone. +</p> + +<p> +At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no +train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from +Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had +some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance +being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided +to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after +complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to groans +and almost tears; his waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was +not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his +bundle of hats for him? I objected so vigorously that he forthwith gave +up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I +also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan +blasphemies, [<a href="#16">16</a>] for which he was much obliged. Most of them were +unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained. +They seemed to make his burden lighter. +</p> + +<p> +Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this is rather a cheerless +country, poorly cultivated, and still bearing the traces of mediaeval +savagery and insecurity. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit down +here and let the centuries roll by, watching the tramp of Roman legions +and Papal mercenaries and all that succession of proud banners which +have floated down this ancient Via Labiena. +</p> + +<p> +That rock-like structure, visible in the morning hours from Olevano, is +a monstrous palace containing, among other things, a training school for +carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose interior has an unusual +shape, the usual smell, and a tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX. +</p> + +<p> +There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide views over the +surrounding country. It gives food for thought. What an ideal spot, one +says, for the populace to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days! +It is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do they prefer to +jostle each other in the narrow, squalid and stuffy lane lower down? One +would like to know the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was +told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-lighted. The +explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting +arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It +may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's +doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially +speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We +broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological +reason.... +</p> + +<p> +I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of this terrace, +looking at Artena near-by. It resembled, now, a cluster of brown grapes +clinging to the hillside. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and +sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction of my glance, +remarked gravely: +</p> + +<p> +"Artena." +</p> + +<p> +"Artena," I repeated. +</p> + +<p> +He extracted half a toscano cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began +to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to +smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with +flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were +encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who +rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about +Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to +smile at me rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation by +pointing to a different spot on the hills and observing: +</p> + +<p> +"Segni." +</p> + +<p> +"Segni," he agreed. +</p> + +<p> +His cigar had gone out, as toscanos are apt to do. He applied a match, +and suddenly remarked: +</p> + +<p> +"Velletri." +</p> + +<p> +"Velletri." +</p> + +<p> +We were not making much progress. A good many sites were visible from +here, and at this rate of enumeration the sun might well set on our +labours. +</p> + +<p> +"How about all those deserters?" I inquired. +</p> + +<p> +There was a fair number of them, he said. Young fellows from other +provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It +was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches +of land, and, above all, <i>la tradizione</i>. The tradition, he +explained, of that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The +deserters were nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man +seldom deserts, not because he would not like to do so, but because he +has more "judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by +police. A few murders had taken place; yes, just a few murders; one or +two stupid people who resented their demands for money or food-- +</p> + +<p> +He broke off with another weary smile. +</p> + +<p> +"You have had malaria," I suggested. +</p> + +<p> +"Often." +</p> + +<p> +The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face, but from the +peculiar manner.... +</p> + +<p> +They brought in a deserter that very afternoon. He lay groaning at the +bottom of a cab, having broken his leg in jumping down from somewhere. +The rest of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with carbineers. A +Sicilian, they said. The whole populace followed the vehicle uphill, +reverently, as though attending a funeral. "He is little," said a woman, +referring either to his size or his age. +</p> + +<p> +An hour later there was a discussion anent the episode in the +fashionable <i>café</i> of Valmontone. A citizen, a well-dressed man, +possibly a notary, put the case for United Italy, for intervention +against Germany, for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly +deserters, into a few phrases so clear, so convincing, that there was a +general burst of approval. Then another man said: +</p> + +<p> +"I hate those Sicilians; I have good personal reasons for hating them. +But no Sicilian fears death. If they are not brilliant soldiers, they +certainly make first-class assassins, which is only another branch of +the same business. This boy deserts not because he is afraid of death, +but because he still owes a debt. He feels he ought to do something to +repay his parents who nursed him when he was a child, and not be +sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards out yonder"--and he +pointed with his thumb, spitting contemptuously the while, in the +direction of Rome. +</p> + +<p> +Nobody had any comment to make on this speech. Not a word of protest was +raised. The man was entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and +might even have obtained his share of approval had the victim been a +native. He was only a Sicilian--an outsider. What is one to say of this +patriarchal, or parochial, attitude? The enlargement of Italy's +boundaries--Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so forth--is an ideal +that few Italians bother their heads about. They are not sufficiently +dense--<i>not yet</i>. [<a href="#17">17</a>] To found a world-empire like the British or +Roman calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has only to look +at the Germans, who have been trying to do so for some time past. That +collecting mania.... One single boy who collects postage stamps can +infect his whole school with the complaint, and make them all jealous of +his fine specimens. England has been collecting, for many centuries, +islands and suchlike; she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive +mania. She has infected others with the craze and cannot help incurring +their envy, seeing that they are now equally acquisitive, but less +fortunate. All the good specimens are gone! +</p> + +<p> +That <i>Pergola</i> tavern deserves its name, the courtyard being +overhung with green vines and swelling clusters of grapes. The host is a +canny old boy, up to any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had +already taken a fancy to me on my first visit, for I cured his daughter +Vanda of a raging toothache by the application of glycerine and carbolic +acid. We went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the soft +tufa, from whose darkest and chilliest recesses he drew forth a bottle +of excellent wine--it might have lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How +thoughtful of Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a +stone's-throw of your dining-table! Nobody need ice his wine at the +<i>Pergola</i>. +</p> + +<p> +After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night and walked, +striving to resemble a rich English tourist who has lost his way, along +the lonely road to Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters +or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have got to say +for themselves. My usual luck! Not a deserter was in sight. +</p> + +<p> +Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old ladies, of what happened +to their little dog and of other matters trivial to the verge of +inanity, I may discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to +Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means the last. Meanwhile, +we proceed southwards. +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="agata">Sant' Agata, Sorrento</a></h3> + +<p> +Siren-Land revisited.... +</p> + +<p> +A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village +of Torco--what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are +indubitably the salt of the earth--down that well-worn track to +Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, +the <i>genius loci</i>, has died in the interval; thence by boat to the +lonely beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the +rock-doves at the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where, +for the sake of old memories, I indulged in a bathe and then came across +an object rare in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian granite, +relic of some pagan temple and doubtless washed up here in a wintry +gale; thence, for a little light refreshment, to Nerano; thence to that +ill-famed "House of the Spirits" where my <i>Siren-Land</i> was begun in +the company of one who feared no spirits--victim, already, of this +cursed war, but then a laughter-loving child--and down to the bay and +promontory of Ierate, there to make the unwelcome discovery that certain +hideous quarrying operations on the neighbouring hill have utterly +ruined the charm of this once secluded site; thence laboriously upwards, +past that line of venerable goat-caves, to the summit of Mount San +Costanzo. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at my feet as of old, flooded +in sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +There is a small outdoor cistern here. Peering into its darkness through +an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; +out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, +sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled +through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid +cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the +gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to +an inordinate length--from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual +abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these +restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live +and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to +a few inches of land amid a desolation of black water. +</p> + +<p> +It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days ago while climbing in +the torrid hour of noon up that shadeless path where the vanilla-scented +orchids grow--the path which runs from Sant' Elia past the shattered +Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the hottest turning of the road, +sat a woman in great distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been +commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia. This beast was +suffering hellish torments from the heat and vainly endeavouring, with +frenzied grunts of despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth +under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman of shade lower +down. She said she knew about it, but the pig--the pig refused to move! +It had been engaged upon this hopeless occupation, without a moment's +respite, for an hour or more; nothing would induce it to proceed a step +further; it had plainly made up its mind to find shelter here from the +burning rays, or die. And of shelter there was none. +</p> + +<p> +What would not this pig (I now thought) have given to be transported +into the lizard's cool aquatic paradise; and the lizard, into that +scorching sunlight!... +</p> + +<p> +It was not to muse upon the miseries of the animal creation that I have +revisited these shores. I came to puzzle once more over the site of that +far-famed Athene temple which gave its name to the whole promontory. +Now, after again traversing the ground with infinite pleasure, I fail to +find any reason for changing what I wrote years ago in a certain +pamphlet which some scholar, glancing through these pages and anxious to +explore for himself a spot of such celebrity in ancient days, is so +little likely to see that he may not be sorry if I here recapitulate its +arguments. Others will be well advised to pass over what follows. +</p> + +<p> +Let me begin by saying that the temple, in every probability, stood at +the Punta Campanella facing Capri, the actual headland of the Sorrentine +peninsula, where--apart from every other kind of evidence--you may pick +up to this day small terra-cotta figures of Athene, made presumably to +be carried away as keepsakes by visitors to the shrine. +</p> + +<p> +Now for alternative suggestions. +</p> + +<p> +Strabo tells us that the temple was placed on the <i>akron</i> of the +promontory; that is, the summit of Mount San Costanzo where we are now +standing. (He elsewhere describes it as being "on the straits.") This +summit is nearly 500 metres above the sea-level, and here no antique +building seems ever to have been erected. No traces of old life are +visible save some fragments of Roman pottery which may have found their +way up in early Byzantine days, even as modern worshippers carry up the +ephemeral vessels popularly called "caccavelle" [<a href="#18">18</a>] and scatter them +about. With the exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble, no +materials of an early period have been incorporated into the masonry of +the little chapel or the walls of the fields below. It is incredible +that no vestige of a structure like the Athene temple should remain on a +spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards immunity from +depredations, owing to its isolated and exalted position. The +rock-surface around the summit has not undergone that artificial +levelling which an edifice of this importance would necessitate; the +terrace is of mediaeval construction, as can be seen by its supporting +walls. No doubt the venerable Christian sanctuary there has been +frequently repaired and modified; on the terrace-level to the south can +be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the slopes are +littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa, and old <i>battuto</i> +floors. But there is no trace of antique workmanship or material, nor +has the rocky path leading up to the shrine been demarcated with +chisel-cuts in the ancient fashion. The sister-summit of La Croce is +equally unproductive of classical relics. +</p> + +<p> +We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken. And why not? His +accounts of many parts of the Roman world are surprisingly accurate, +but, according to Professor Pais, "of Italy Strabo seems to have known +merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome, the road between Rome +and Naples and Pozzuoli, and the coast of Etruria between Rome and +Populonia." If so, he probably saw no more of the district than can be +seen from Naples. He attributes the foundation of this Athene temple to +Odysseus: statements of such a kind make one wonder whether the earlier +portions of his lost history were more critical than other old treatises +which have survived. +</p> + +<p> +So much for Strabo. +</p> + +<p> +Seduced by a modern name, which means nothing more or less than "a +temple"--strong evidence, surely--I was inclined to locate the Athene +shrine at a spot called Ierate (marked also as Ieranto on some maps, and +popularly pronounced <i>Ghiérate</i> the Greek aspirate still surviving) +which lies a mile or more eastwards of the Punta Campanella and faces +south. "<i>Hieron</i>," I thought: that settles it. You may guess I was +not a little proud of this discovery, particularly when it turned out +that an ancient building actually did stand there--on the southern +slope, namely, of the miniature peninsula which juts into Ierate bay. +Here I found fragments of antique bricks, <i>tegulae bipedales</i>, +amphoras, pottery of the lustrous Sorrentine ware--<i>Surrentina +bibis?</i>--pavements of <i>opus signinum</i>, as well as one large +Roman paving flag of the type that is found on the road between Termini +and Punta Campanella. (How came this stone here? Did the old road from +Stabiae Athene temple go round the promontory and continue as far as +Ierate along the southern slope of San Costanzo hill? No road could pass +there now; deforestation has denuded the mountain-side of its soil, +laying bare the grey rock--a condition at which its mediaeval name of +Mons Canutarius already hints.) Well, a more careful examination of the +site has convinced me that I was wrong. No temple of this magnificence +can have stood here, but only a Roman villa--one of the many +pleasure-houses which dotted these shores under the Empire. +</p> + +<p> +So much for myself. +</p> + +<br> +<b>PEUTINGER'S CHART</b> +<br> +Showing ancient road rounding the headland +<br> +and terminating at "Templum Minervae." +</p> + + +<p> +None the less--and this is a really curious point--an inspection of +Peutinger's Tables seems to bear out my original theory of a temple at +Ierate. For the structure is therein marked not at the Punta Campanella +but, approximately, at Ierate itself, facing south, with the road from +Stabiae over Surrentum rounding the promontory and terminating at the +temple's threshold. Capri and the Punta Campanella are plainly drawn, +though not designated by name. Much as I should like my first +speculation to be proved correct on the evidence of this old chart of +A.D. 226, I fear both of us are mistaken. +</p> + +<p> +So much for Peutinger's Tables. +</p> + +<p> +Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the local topography. He +says that the "three-peaked rock" which Eratosthenes describes as +separating the gulfs of Cumae and Paestum (that is, of Naples and +Salerno) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not understand Beloch falling into +this error, for the old geographer uses the term <i>skopelos</i>, which +is never applied to a mountain of this size, but to cliffs projecting +upon the sea. Moreover, <i>the landmark is there to this day</i>. I have +not the slightest doubt that Eratosthenes meant the pinnacle of Ierate, +which is three-peaked in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous +manner, both when viewed from the sea and from the land (from the chapel +of S. M. della Neve, for instance). +</p> + +<p> +Now this projecting cliff of three peaks--they are called, respectively, +Montalto, Ierate, and Mortella; Ierate for short--is not the actual +boundary between the two gulfs; not by a mile or more. No; but from +certain points it might well be mistaken for it. The ancients had no +charts like ours, and the world in consequence presented itself +differently to their senses; even Strabo, says Bunbury, "was so ignorant +of the general form and configuration of the North African coast as to +have no clear conception of the great projection formed by the +Carthaginian territory and the deep bay to the east of it"; and, +coasting along the shore line, this triple-headed <i>skopelos</i>, +behind which lies the inlet of Ierate, might possibly be mistaken for +the turning-point into the gulf of Naples. So it looks when viewed from +the S.E. of Capri; so also from the Siren islets--a veritable headland. +</p> + +<p> +So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes. +</p> + +<p> +To sum up: Strabo is wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on +the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this +temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the +structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong +in identifying the <i>skopelos trikoruphos</i> of Eratosthenes with +Mount San Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the +boundary between the two gulfs. +</p> + +<p> +The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of +sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their +descriptions of its lofty site. So great a number of old writers concur +in this opinion--Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio, +Capaccio--that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these +men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple." +Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the +neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella." Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a +paper on this "Atene Siciliana" which I have not seen. The whole +question is discussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa +(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term <i>akron</i> may +mean an extremity or point projecting into the sea (a sense in which +Homer used it), and be applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella. +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="rome2">Rome</a></h3> + +<p> +Here we are. +</p> + +<p> +That mysterious nocturnal incident peculiar to Rome has already +occurred--sure sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens about +six times in the course of every year, during the hot season. You may +read about it in the next morning's paper which records how some young +man, often of good family and apparently in good health, was seen +behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at the hour of about 2 a.m.; +jumping, that is, in a state of Adamitic nudity, into some public +fountain. It goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the police, +run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a hospital, where his state +of mind is to be investigated. Will our rising generation, it gravely +adds, never learn the most elementary rules of decency? +</p> + +<p> +If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of these +establishments what has been the result of the medical examination, it +is because I will wager my last shirt that the invalid's health leaves +nothing to be desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this. He +is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses to come. He has +already passed half the night in agony, tossing on his couch during +those leaden hours when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town +he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be irremediable. But Rome +is the city of fountains. It is they who are responsible for this sad +lapse. Their sound is clear by day; after midnight, when the traffic has +died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears it through the window--hears it +perforce, since the streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot +close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more restless every +moment. He thinks.... That splash of waters! Those frigid wavelets and +cascades! How delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in +their bubbling wetness; he is parched with heat, and at this hour of the +night, he reflects, there will not be a soul abroad in the square. So he +hearkens to the seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that +familiar fountain; he remembers its moistened rim and basin all alive +with jolly turmoil; he sees the miniature cataracts tumbling down in +streaks of glad confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be +controlled. +</p> + +<p> +The thing must be done. +</p> + +<p> +Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly inquiring into his +state of mind.... +</p> + +<p> +I can sympathise with that state of mind, having often undergone the +same purgatory. My room at present happens to be fairly cool; it looks + +north, and the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has not yet +tempted me to any breach of decorum. Night is quiet here, save for the +squeakings of some strange animals in the upper regions of the +neighbouring Pantheon; they squeak night and day, and one would take +them to be bats, were it not that bats are supposed to be on the wing +after sunset. There are no mosquitoes in Rome--none worth talking about. +It is well. For mosquitoes have a deplorable habit of indulging in a +second meal, an early breakfast, at about four a.m.--a habit more +destructive to slumber than that regular and legitimate banquet of +theirs. No mosquitoes, and few flies. It is well. +</p> + +<p> +It is more than merely well. For the mosquito, after all, when properly +fed, goes to bed like a gentleman and leaves you alone, whereas that +insatiable and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you to a +never-ending succession of anguished reflex movements. What a +malediction are those flies; how repulsive in life and in death: not to +be touched by human hands! Their every gesture is an obscenity, a +calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have watched them for +hours on end, and one of the most cherished projects of my life is to +assemble, in a kind of anthology, all the invectives that have been +hurled since the beginning of literature against this loathly dirt-born +insect, this living carrion, this blot on the Creator's reputation--and +thereto add a few of my own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly +under his protection. He says, among other things, that "like an honest +man, it is not ashamed to do in public what others only do in private." +I must say, if we all followed the fly's example in this aspect, life +would at last be worth living.... +</p> + +<p> +Morning sleep is out of the question, owing to the tram-cars whose +clangour, both here and in Florence, must be heard to be believed. They +are fast rendering these towns uninhabitable. Can folks who cherish a +nuisance of this magnitude compare themselves, in point of refinement, +with those old Hellenic colonists who banished all noises from their +city? Nevermore! Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and general +unseemliness? In order that a few bourgeois may be saved the trouble of +using their legs. And yet we actually pride ourselves on these +detestable things, as if they were inventions to our credit. "We made +them," we say. Did we? It is not we who make them. It is they who make +us, who give us our habits of mind and body, our very thoughts; it is +these mechanical monsters who control our fates and drive us along +whither they mean us to go. We are caught in their cog-wheels--in a +process as inevitable as the revolution of the planets. No use lamenting +a cosmic phenomenon! Were it otherwise, I should certainly mope myself +into a green melancholy over the fact, the most dismal fact on earth, +that brachycephalism is a Mendelian dominant. [<a href="#19">19</a>] No use lamenting. +True. +</p> + +<p> +But the sage will reserve to himself the right of cursing. Those morning +hours, therefore, when I would gladly sleep but for the tram-car +shrieking below, are devoted to the malediction of all modern progress, +wherein I include, with fine impartiality, every single advancement in +culture which happens to lie between my present state and that +comfortable cavern in whose shelter I soon see myself ensconced as of +yore, peacefully sucking somebody's marrow while my women, round the +corner, are collecting a handful of acorns for my dessert.... The +telephone, that diabolic invention! It might vex a man if his neighbour +possessed a telephone and he none; how would it be, if neither of them +had it? We can hardly realise, now, the blissful quietude of the +pre-telephone epoch. And the telegraph and the press! They have huddled +mankind together into undignified and unhygienic proximity; we seem to +be breathing each other's air. We know what everybody is doing, in every +corner of the earth; we are told what to think, and to say, and to do. +Your paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used to hammer out a few +solid opinions of his own on matters political and otherwise. He no +longer employs his brain for that purpose. He need only open his morning +paper and in it pours--the oracle of the press, that manufactory of +synthetic fustian, whose main object consists in accustoming humanity to +attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes him with opinions +ready made, overnight, by some Fleet Street hack at so much a column, +after a little talk with his fellows over a pint of bad beer at the +Press Club. He has been told what to say--yesterday, for instance, it +was some lurid balderdash about a steam-roller and how the Kaiser is to +be fed on dog biscuits at Saint Helena--he has been "doped" by the +editor, who gets the tip--and out he goes! unless he take it--from the +owner, who is waiting for a certain emolument from this or that caucus, +and trims his convictions to their taste. That is what the Press can do. +It vitiates our mundane values. It enables a gang to fool the country. +It cretinises the public mind. The time may come when no respectable +person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly. Newspaper reading +will become a secret vice. As such, I fear, its popularity is not likely +to wane. Having generated, by means of sundry trite reflections of this +nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast, I dress and step out of +doors to where, at a pleasant table, I can imbibe some coffee and make +my plans for loafing through the day. +</p> + +<p> +Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets. The Greeks, the Romans, +the Orientals knew better than to build wide roadways in a land of +sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled "Napoli senza +sole"--Naples without sun. It gives instructions, they say (for I have +never seen it) how foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all +hours of the day; how they may reach any point of the town from another +without being forced to cross the squares, those dazzling patches of +sunlight. The feat could have been accomplished formerly even in Rome, +which was always less umbrageous than Naples. It is out of the question +nowadays. You must do as the Romans do--walk slowly and use the tram +whenever possible. +</p> + +<p> +That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which will take me direct +to the Milvian bridge, where I mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at +the restaurant across the water. Its proprietor is something of a +brigand; so am I, at a pinch. It is "honour among thieves," or "diamond +cut diamond." +</p> + +<p> +Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the glowing sands. But +the water is still cold; indeed, the Tiber is never too warm for me. If +you like it yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene +discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season, is of a kind to +tickle up a walrus. +</p> + +<p> +Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some other cause, there +is a singular variety of flesh-tints among the bathers here. I wish my +old friend Dr. Bowles could have seen it; we used to be deeply immersed, +both of us, in the question of the chromatophores, I observing their +freakish behaviour in the epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied +their action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little paper on +sunburn--a darker problem than it seems to be. [<a href="#20">20</a>] +</p> + +<p> +These men and boys do not grow uniformly sunburnt. They display so many +different colour-shades on their bodies that an artist would be +delighted with the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by reason +of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays, the tints diverge; the +reds, the scarcer group, traversing every gradation from pale rose to +the ruddiest of copper--not excluding that strange marbled complexion +concerning which I cannot make up my mind whether it be a beauty or a +defect; while the xanthous tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold +and apricot and café au lait to a duskiness approaching that of the +negro. At this season the skins are still white. Your artist must come +later--not later, however, than the end of August, for on the first of +September the bathing, be the weather never so warm, is officially, and +quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber water is declared to be "unhealthy" +after that date, and liable to give you fever; a relic of the days when +the true origin of malaria was unknown. +</p> + +<p> +A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that bathing has not yet +begun in earnest. No drowning accidents, up to the present. Later on +they come thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current and +vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to young swimmers; it grips +them in its tawny coils and holds them fast, often within a few yards of +friend or parent who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries +of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of that serpent-like +embrace. So it hurries him to destruction, only to be fished up later in +a state, as the newspapers will be careful to inform us, of "incipient +putrefaction." +</p> + +<p> +A murderous flood.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +That hoary, trickling structure--that fountain which has forgotten to be +a fountain, so dreamily does the water ooze through obstructive mosses +and emerald growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet beards, +from its venerable lips--that fountain un-trimmed, harmonious, overhung +by ancient ilexes: where shall a more reposeful spot be found? Doubly +delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by the river-bank. For +the foliage of the oaks and sycamores is such that it creates a kind of +twilight, and all around lies the tranquillity of noon. Here, on the +encircling stone bench, you may idle through the sultry hours conversing +with some favourite disciple while the cows trample up to drink amid +moist gurglings and tail-swishings. They gaze at you with gentle eyes, +they blow their sweet breath upon your cheek, and move sedately onward. +The Villa Borghese can be hushed, at such times, in a kind of +enchantment. +</p> + +<p> +"You never told me why you come to Italy." +</p> + +<p> +"In order," I reply, "to enjoy places like this." +</p> + +<p> +"But listen. Surely you have fountains in your own country?" +</p> + +<p> +"None quite so golden-green." +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, it wants cleaning, doesn't it?" +</p> + +<p> +"Lord, no!" I say; but only to myself. One should never pass for an +imbecile, if one can help it. +</p> + +<p> +Aloud I remark:-- +</p> + +<p> +"Let me try to set forth, however droll it may sound, the point of view +of a certain class of people, supposing they exist, who might think that +this particular fountain ought never to be cleaned"--and there ensued a +discussion, lasting about half an hour, in the course of which I +elaborated, artfully and progressively, my own thesis, and forged, in +the teeth of some lively opposition, what struck me as a convincing +argument in favour of leaving the fountain alone. +</p> + +<p> +"Then that is why you come to Italy. On account of a certain fountain, +which ought never to be cleaned." +</p> + +<p> +"I said on account of places like this. And I ought to have added, on +account of moments such as these." +</p> + +<p> +"Are those your two reasons?" +</p> + +<p> +"Those are my two reasons." +</p> + +<p> +"Then you have thought about it before?" +</p> + +<p> +"Often." +</p> + +<p> +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. +</p> + +<p> +"But listen. Surely it is sometimes two o'clock in the afternoon, in +your country?" +</p> + +<p> +"I used that word moment in a pregnant sense," I reply. "Pregnant: when +something is concealed or enclosed within. What is enclosed within this +moment? Our friendly conversation." +</p> + +<p> +"But listen. Surely folks can converse in your country?" +</p> + +<p> +"They can talk." +</p> + +<p> +"I begin to understand why you come here. It is that difference, which +is new to me, between conversing and talking. Is the difference worth +the long journey?" +</p> + +<p> +"Not to everybody, I daresay." +</p> + +<p> +"Why to you?" +</p> + +<p> +"Why to me? I must think about it." +</p> + +<p> +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. +</p> + +<p> +"What is there to think about? You said you had thought about it +already.... Perhaps there are other reasons?" +</p> + +<p> +"There may be." +</p> + +<p> +"There may be?" +</p> + +<p> +"There must be. Are you satisfied?" +</p> + +<p> +"Ought I to be satisfied before I have learnt them?" +</p> + +<p> +"I find you rather fatiguing this afternoon. Did you hear about that +murder in Trastevere last night and how the police----" +</p> + +<p> +"But listen. Surely you can answer a simple question. Why do you come to +Italy...?" +</p> + +<p> +Why does one come here? +</p> + +<p> +A periodical visit to this country seems an ordinary and almost +automatic proceeding--a part of one's regular routine, as natural as +going to the barber or to church. Why seek for reasons? They are so hard +to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one +lurking in the background, a reason for a reason. +</p> + +<p> +The craving to be in contact with beauty and antiquity, the desire for +self-expression, for physical well-being under that drenching sunshine, +which while it lasts, one curses lustily; above all, the pleasure of +memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes; herein lies, methinks, the +secret; the reason for the reason. Reconstruction at a distance.... For +a haze of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space; a kindly haze +which obliterates the thousand fretting annoyances wherewith the +traveller's path in every country is bestrewn. He forgets them; forgets +that weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only its sporadic +islets--those moments of calm delight or fiercer joy which he would fain +hold fast for ever. He does not come here on account of a certain +fountain which ought never to be cleaned. [<a href="#21">21</a>] He comes for the sake of +its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise up later, out of some +November fog in another land. Italy is a delightful place to remember, +to think and talk about. And is it not the same with England? Let us go +there as a tourist--only as a tourist. How attractive one finds its +conveniences, and even its conventionalities, provided one knows, for an +absolute certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell among +them. +</p> + +<p> +What lovely things one could say about England, in Timbuktu! +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Rome is not only the most engaging capital in Europe, it is unusually +heterogeneous in regard to population. The average Parisian will assure +you that his family has lived in that town from time immemorial. It is +different here. There are few Romans discoverable in Rome, save across +the Tiber. Talk to whom you please, you will soon find that either he or +his parents are immigrants. The place is filled with hordes of +employees--many thousands of them, high and low, from every corner of +the provinces; the commoner sort, too, the waiters, carpenters, +plasterers, masons, painters, coachmen, all the railway folk--they are +hardly ever natives. Your Roman of the lower classes does not relish +labour. He can do a little amateurish shop-keeping, he is fairly good as +a cook, but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists in eating +and drinking. That is as it should be. It befits the tone of a +metropolis that outsiders shall do its work. That undercurrent of +asperity is less noticeable here than in many towns of the peninsula. +There is something of the <i>grande dame</i> in Rome, a flavour of +old-world courtesy. The inhabitants are better-mannered than the +Parisians; a workday crowd in Rome is as well-dressed as a Sunday crowd +in Paris. And over all hovers a gentle weariness. +</p> + +<p> +The city has undergone orgies of bloodshed and terror. Think only, +without going further back, of that pillage by the Spanish and German +soldiery under Bourbon; half a year's pandemonium. And all those other +mediaeval scourges, epidemics and floods and famines. That sirocco, the +worst of many Italian varieties: who shall calculate its debilitating +effect upon the stamina of the race? Up to quite a short time ago, +moreover, the population was malarious; older records reek of malaria; +that, assuredly, will leave its mark upon the inhabitants for years to +come. And the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that forbidden land +in whose embrace the city lies gasping, flame-encircled, like the +scorpion in the tale.... +</p> + +<p> +A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the mind's eye, is so +impressed with its "eternal" character that he cannot imagine this site +having ever been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it seems +inevitable that these walls must always have stood where now they +stand--must have risen, he suggests, out of the earth, unaided by human +hands. Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon a time; +somebody who lived under conditions quite different from those that +supervened. For who--not five thousand, but, say, five hundred years +ago--who would have thought of building a town on a spot like this? None +but a crazy despot, some moonstruck Oriental such as the world has +known, striving to impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No +facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of landscape, no +harbour, no defence against enemies, no drinking water, no mineral +wealth, no food-supplying hinterland, no navigable river--a dangerous +river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place--every drawback, or +nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled +into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and +poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so effectually, so +triumphantly that, were green pastures not needful to me as light and +air, I, for one, would nevermore stray beyond those ancient portals.... +</p> + +<p> +The country visits you here. It comes in the wake of that evening breeze +which creeps about with stealthy feet, winding its way into the most +secluded courtyards and sending a sudden shiver through the frail +bamboos that stand beside your dinner-table in some heated square. Then +the zephyr departs mysteriously as it came, and leaves behind a great +void--a torrid vacuum which is soon filled up by the honey-sweet +fragrance of hay and aromatic plants. Every night this balsamic breath +invades the town, filling its streets with ambrosial suggestions. It is +one of the charms of Rome at this particular season; quite a local +speciality, for the phenomenon could never occur if the surrounding +regions were covered with suburbs or tilth or woodland--were aught save +what they are: a desert whose vegetation of coarse herbage is in the act +of withering. The Campagna once definitely dried, this immaterial feast +is at an end. +</p> + +<p> +I am glad never to have discovered anyone, native or foreign, who has +been aware of the existence of this nocturnal emanation; glad because it +corroborates a theory of mine, to wit, that mankind is forgetting the +use of its nose; and not only of nose, but of eyes and ears and all +other natural appliances which help to capture and intensify the simple +joys of life. We all know the civilised, the industrial eye--how +atrophied, how small and formless and expressionless it has become. The +civilised nose, it would seem, degenerates in the other direction. Like +the cultured potato or pumpkin, it swells in size. The French are +civilised and, if we may judge by old engravings (what else are we to +take as guide, seeing that the skull affords some criterion as to shape +but not size of nose?) they certainly seem to accentuate this organ in +proportion as they neglect its use. Parisians, it strikes me, are +running to nose; they wax more rat-like every day. Here is a little +problem for anthropologists. There may be something, after all, in the +condition of Paris life which fosters the development of this peeky, +rodential countenance. Perfumery, and what it implies? There are +scent-shops galore in the fashionable boulevards, whereas I defy you to +show me a single stationer. Maupassant knew them fairly well, and one +thinks of that story of his:-- +</p> + +<p> +"Le parfum de Monsieur?" +</p> + +<p> +"La verveine...." [<a href="#22">22</a>] +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Speaking of the French, I climbed those ninety odd stairs the other day +to announce my arrival in Italy to my friend Mrs. N., who, being vastly +busy at that moment and on no account to be disturbed, least of all by a +male, sent word to say that I might wait on the terrace or in that +microscopic but well-equipped library of hers. I chose the latter, and +there browsed upon "Emaux et Camées" and the "Fleurs du Mal" which +happened, as was meet and proper, to lie beside each other. +</p> + +<p> +Strange reading, at this distance of time. These, I thought--these are +the things which used to give us something of a thrill. +</p> + +<p> +If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well be that we have +absorbed their spirit so thoroughly into our system that we forget +whence we drew it. They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one +cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery, his gift of being +quaint and yet lucid as a diamond; one pictures those crocodiles +fainting in the heat, and notes, too, whence the author of the "Sphinx" +drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so +much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for +external monotony. That trick--that full stop at the end of nearly every +fourth line--it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow +jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows +wearisome to the ear, and finally abhorrent. +</p> + +<p> +Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve +down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom. "Fuyez l'infini +que vous portez en vous"--a line which, in my friend's copy of the book, +had been marked on the margin with a derisive exclamation-point. (It +gave me food for thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to substance, +he contains too many nebulosities and abstractions for my taste; a +veritable mist of them, out of which emerges--what? The figure of one +woman. Reading these "Fleurs du Mal" we realise, not for the first time, +that there is something to be said in favour of libertinage for a poet. +We do not need Petrarca, much less the Love-Letters of a Violinist--no, +we do not need those Love-Letters at all--to prove that a master can +draw sweet strains from communion with one mistress, from a lute with +one string; a formidable array of songsters, on the other hand, will +demonstrate how much fuller and richer the melody grows when the +instrument is provided with the requisite five, the desirable fifty. +Monogamous habits have been many a bard's undoing. +</p> + +<p> +Twenty years' devotion to that stupid and spiteful old cat of a +semi-negress! They make one conscious of the gulf between the logic of +the emotions and that other one--that logic of the intellect which ought +to shape our actions. Here was Baudelaire, a man of ruthless +self-analysis. Did he never see himself as others saw him? Did he never +say: "You are making a fool of yourself"? +</p> + +<p> +Be sure he did. +</p> + +<p> +You are making a fool of yourself: are not those the words I ought to +have uttered when, standing in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo--the +sunny centre: so it had been inexorably arranged--I used to wait and +wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the slender shadow of +that obelisque which crawled reluctantly, like the finger of fate, over +the burning stones? +</p> + +<p> +And I crawled with it, more than content. +</p> + +<p> +Days of infatuation! +</p> + +<p> +I never pass that way now without thanking God for a misspent youth. Why +not make a fool of yourself? It is good fun while it lasts; it yields +mellow mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures, those +solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous? Where is the use of +experience, if it does not make you laugh? The Logic of the +Intellect--what next! If any one had treated me to such tomfoolery while +standing there, petrified into a pillar of fidelity in that creeping +shadow, I should have replied gravely: +</p> + +<p> +"The Logic of the Intellect, my dear Sir, is incompatible with +situations like mine. It was not invented for so stupendous a crisis. I +am waiting for my negress--can't you understand?--and she is already +seven minutes late...." +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +A flaming morning, forestaste of things to come. +</p> + +<p> +I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital where things are +doing well, glancing down, towards midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one +looks into some torrid bear-pit. +</p> + +<p> +Broken columns glitter in the sunshine; the grass is already withered to +hay. Drenched in light and heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is +altogether devoid of life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in +a kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead. My experiences in the hospital +half an hour ago dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a more +morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular, it seems as if all the +mangy and decrepit cats of Rome had given themselves a <i>rendezvous</i> +on this classic soil; cats of every colour and every age--quite young +ones among them; all, one would say, at the last gasp of life. This pit, +this crater of flame, is their "Home for the Dying." Once down here, +nothing matters any more. They are safe at last from their old enemies, +from dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death, they move about in +a stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One +would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or +slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing +where one dies. +</p> + +<p> +There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated +tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the +mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a +moment. Nothing more. +</p> + +<p> +These cats have lost their all--their self-respect. Grace and ardour, +sleekness of coat and buoyancy of limbs are gone out of them. Tails are +knotted with hunger and neglect; bones protrude through the skin. So +they strew the ground in discomposed, un-catlike attitudes, while the +sun burns through their parched anatomy. Do they remember their +kittenish pranks, those moonlight ecstasies on housetops, that morsel +snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and borne through the crowded +traffic in a series of delirious leaps? Who can tell! They are not even +bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches. They are alive when they +ought to be dead. Nobody knows it better than they do. They are too ill, +too far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present degradation. +Nothing matters! What would Baudelaire, that friend of cats, have said +to this macabre exhibition? +</p> + +<p> +Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom of a kitten. The parent +takes no interest in the proceedings; she lies prone, her head on the +ground. Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead? Possibly. Her own +kitten? Who cares! Her neighbour, once white but now earth-coloured, +rises stiffly as though dubious whether the joints are still in working +order. What does she think of doing? It would seem she has formed no +plan. She walks up to the mother, peers intently into her face, then +sits apart on her haunches and begins gazing at the sun. Presently she +rises anew and proceeds five or six paces for no imaginable +reason--collapses; falls, quite abruptly, on her side. There she lies, +flat, like a playing-card. +</p> + +<p> +A sinister aimlessness pervades the actions of those that move at all. +The shadow of death is upon these creatures in the scorching sunshine. +They stare at columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at one +another, as though they had never seen such things before. They totter +about on tip-toe; they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is +one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is +convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind +of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for +herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a +face that bears the scars of a hundred fights. One eye has been lost in +some long-forgotten encounter. Now they walk over him, kittens and all, +and tread about his head, as if he were a hillock of earth, while his +claws twitch resentfully with rage or pain. Too ill to rise! +</p> + +<p> +Most of them are thus stretched out blankly, in a faint. Are they +suffering? Hungry or thirsty? [<a href="#23">23</a>] I believe they are past troubling +about such things. It is time to die. They know it.... +</p> + +<p> +"<i>L'albergo dei gatti</i>," says a cheery voice at my side--some +countryman, who has also discovered Trajan's Forum to be one of the +sights of Rome. "The cats' hotel. But," he adds, "I see no restaurant +attached to it." +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +That reminds me: luncheon-time. +</p> + +<p> +Via Flaminia--what a place for luncheon! True; but this is one of the +few restaurants in Rome where, nowadays, a man is not in danger of being +simultaneously robbed, starved, and poisoned. Things have come to a +pretty pass. This starvation-fare may suit a saint and turn his thoughts +heavenwards. Mine it turns in the other direction. Here, at all events, +the food is straightforward. Our hostess, a slow elderly woman, is +omnipresent; one realises that every dish has been submitted to her +personal inspection. A primeval creature; heaviness personified. She +moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock. The crack of doom +will not avail to accelerate that relentless deliberation. She reminds +me of a cousin of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who, when his +long curls once caught fire from being too near a candle, sleepily +remarked to a terrified wife: "I think you might try to blow it out." +</p> + +<p> +But where shall a man still find those edible maccheroni--those that +were made in the Golden Age out of pre-war-time flour? +</p> + +<p> +Such things are called trifles.... Give me the trifles of life, and keep +the rest. A man's health depends on trifles; and happiness on health. +Moreover, I have been yearning for them for the last five months. Hope +deferred maketh the heart sick.... There are none in Rome. Can they be +found anywhere else? +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Nichol: she might know. She has the gift of knowing about things +one would never expect her to know. If only one could meet her by +accident in the street! For at such times she is gay and altogether at +your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors. To break upon her +seclusion at home is an undertaking reserved for great occasions. The +fact is, we are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of what she +describes as a tiresome life have taught her the value of masculine +frankness--ultra-masculine, I call it. She is too frank for subterfuge +of any kind. When at home, for instance, she is never "not at home." She +will always see you. She will not detain you long, if you happen to be +<i>de trop</i>. +</p> + +<p> +This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion--my health and +happiness.... Besides, I am her oldest friend in this part of the world; +was I not on the spot when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet +fathomed, to make Rome her domicile? Have I not more than once been +useful to her, nay, indispensable? I therefore climb, not without +trepidation, those ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old +palace, and presently find myself ushered into the familiar twilight. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing has changed since I was here some little time ago to announce my +arrival in Italy (solemn occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an +hour or so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being engaged +upon "house-accounts." This time, as I enter the studio, she is playing +cards with a pretty handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays +cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouthpiece which keeps +the smoke out of her olive-complexioned face and which she holds +firm-fixed between her teeth, in a corner of the mouth, after the perky +fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game, and at once begin to +feel <i>de trop</i> under a glance from those smouldering grey eyes. +</p> + +<p> +"It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death. Will you please +listen for half a minute? Then I will evaporate, and you can go on with +your ridiculous cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches. +Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable macaroni nowadays? +The old kind, I mean, made out of pre-war-time flour...." +</p> + +<p> +She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend the game, and asks +the girl in Italian: +</p> + +<p> +"What was the name of that place?" +</p> + +<p> +"That place----" +</p> + +<p> +"Oh, stupid! Where I stayed with Miranda last September. Where I tore my +skirt on the rock. Where I said something nice about the white +macaroni?" +</p> + +<p> +"Soriano in Cimino." +</p> + +<p> +"Soriano," echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke. "There is a tram +from here every morning. They can put you up." +</p> + +<p> +A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to this sultry and +self-centred being; I would like to wander with her through these rooms, +imbibing their strange Oriental spirit--not your vulgar Orient, but +something classic and remote; something that savours, for aught I know, +of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol, in one of her immature efforts at +self-realisation, spent a few years as the wife of a high French +official, ere marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol--another +unsuccessful venture. +</p> + +<p> +Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy there was yet an +earlier alliance of some kind)? A whim, a freak? Or did they plague her +into it? If so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their manly +persistence. She could grind any ordinary male to powder. And why has +she now flitted here, building herself this aerial bower above the old +roofs of Rome? Is she in search of happiness? I doubt whether she will +find it. She possesses that fatal craving--the craving for disinterested +affection, a source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom +affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but a luxury, and +therefore desirable above all else--desirable, and how seldom attained! +</p> + +<p> +The pause continues. I make a little movement, to attract notice. She +looks up, but only her eyes reply. +</p> + +<p> +"Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, "are you blind?" +</p> + +<p> +That is the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally absent-minded, she +always knows at a given moment exactly what she wants to do. And she +never wants to do more than one thing at a time. It is most unwomanly of +her. Any other person of her sex would have left a game of cards for the +sake of an attractive visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an +ordinary lady would have played cards, given complicated orders to +dressmakers and servants, and entertained half a dozen men at the same +time. Mrs. Nichol cannot do these things. That hand, that rather +sunburnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not moved from the +table. No, I am not blind. It is quite evident that she wants to play +cards; only that, and nothing more. +</p> + +<p> +I withdraw, stealthily. +</p> + +<p> +Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad terrace where +jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubs; there I pace up and down, admiring +the cupolas and towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the blue +background of distant hills. How much of its peculiar flavour a town +will draw--not from artistic monuments but from the mere character of +building materials! How many variations on one theme! This mellow Roman +travertine, for instance.... I call to mind those disconsolate places in +Cornwall with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and +dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic cheerfulness of +lava, those marble-towns that blind you with their glare, Eastern cities +of brightly tinted stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns, +wood-towns--how they differ in mood from one another!... Here I pace up +and down, rejoicing in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to +disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-cries that climb +to this hanging garden in confused waves of sound. Harsh at close +quarters, they weave themselves into a mirthful symphony up here. +</p> + +<p> +From that studio, too, comes a lively din--the laughter has begun again. +Mrs. Nichol is having a good time. It will be followed, I daresay, by a +period of acute depression. I shall probably be consulted with masonic +frankness about some little tragedy of the emotions which is no concern +of mine. She can be wondrously engaging at such times--like a child that +has got into trouble and takes you into its confidence. +</p> + +<p> +One of these days I must write a character-sketch of Mrs. Nichol. She +foreshadows a type--represents it, very possibly--a type which will grow +commoner from day to day. She dreams of a Republic of women, vestals or +otherwise, wherefrom all men are to be excluded unless they possess +qualifications of a rather unusual nature. I think she would like to +draft a set of rules and regulations for that community. She could be +trusted, I fancy, to make them sufficiently stringent. +</p> + +<p> +I think I understand, now, why a certain line in her copy of Baudelaire +was marked with that derisive exclamation-point on the margin: "Fuyez +l'infini que vous portez en vous." +</p> + +<p> +"Fuyez?" it seemed to say. "Why 'fuyez'?" +</p> + +<p> +Fulfil it! +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="soriano">Soriano</a></h3> + +<p> +Amid clouds of dust you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert +Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway--different +from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but +slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails +every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as +to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an +iridescent bubble suspended in the sky. +</p> + +<p> +This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the slope of an immense +old volcano and conveys at first glance a somewhat ragged and sombre +impression. It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni--they +atoned for everything. So exquisite were they that I forthwith vowed to +return to Soriano, for their sake alone, ere the year should end. (I +kept my vow.) The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and +unmistakably authentic, having been purchased in large quantities at the +outbreak of hostilities by the provident hostess, who must have +anticipated a rise in price, a deterioration in quality, or both, as the +result of war. +</p> + +<p> +How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their whereabouts? That is her affair. +I know not how she has managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect +such a variety of useful local information. I can only testify that on +her arrival in Rome she knew no more about the language and place than +the proverbial babe unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced +with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the words: "Try Mrs. +Nichol." And how many women, by the way, would have made a note of the +particular quality of those macaroni? One in a hundred? These are +temperamental matters.... +</p> + +<p> +We also--for of course I took a friend with me, a well-preserved old +gentleman of thirty-two, whose downward career from a brilliant youth +into hopeless mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with +philosophic unconcern--we also consumed a tender chicken, a salad +containing olive oil and not the usual motor-car lubricant, an omelette +made with genuine butter, and various other items which we enjoyed +prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for the seven lean years +just past but for seven--yea, seventy times seven--lean years to come. +So great a success was this open-air meal that my companion, a +case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess: +</p> + +<p> +"It seems one fares better in the province than at home. You could not +get such bread in Rome, not if you offered fifty francs a pound." +</p> + +<p> +As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but +grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly +sparkling--very young, but not altogether innocent. +</p> + +<p> +There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have +remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a +liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and +distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff +proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox <i>Strega</i>, likewise a rarity +nowadays. +</p> + +<p> +It is a real shame--what is happening to <i>Strega</i> at this moment. +It has grown so popular that the country is flooded with imitations. +There must be fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees of +goodness and badness; I have met their travellers in the most unexpected +places. They reproduce the colour of <i>Strega</i>, its minty flavour +--everything, in short, except the essential: its peculiar strength of +aroma and of alcohol. They can afford to sell this poison at half the +price of the original, and your artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle +or two of the real product which he fills up, when empty, out of some +hidden but never-failing barrel of the fraudulent mixture round the +corner, charging you, of course, the full price of true <i>Strega</i>. +If you complain, he proudly points to the bottle, the cork, the label: +all authentic! No wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions, vow +they will never touch <i>Strega</i> again.... +</p> + +<p> +We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee, about this <i>Strega</i> +adulteration, during which I tried to make my friend comprehend how I +thought the grievance ought to be remedied. How? By an injunction. That +was the way to redress these wrongs. You obtain an injunction, I said, +such as the French Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers +of the Italian "Certosa," which was thereafter obliged to change its +name to "Val D'Emma." More than once I endeavoured to set forth, in +language intelligible to his understanding, what an injunction +signified; more than once I explained how well-advised the <i>Strega</i> +Company would be to take this course. +</p> + +<p> +In vain! +</p> + +<p> +He always missed my point. He always brought in some personal element, +whereas I, as usual, confined myself to general lines, to the principle +of the thing. Italians are sometimes unfathomably obtuse. +</p> + +<p> +"But what is an injunction?" he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +"If you were a little younger, there might be some hope for you. I would +then try to explain it again, for the fiftieth time. Instead of that, +what do you say to taking a nap?" +</p> + +<p> +"Ah! You have eaten too much." +</p> + +<p> +"Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of explaining things to +people who refuse to understand." +</p> + +<p> +"No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might freshen you up." +</p> + +<p> +"And perhaps inspire you with another subject of conversation." +</p> + +<p> +In the little hotel there were no rooms available just then wherein we +might have slumbered, and another apartment higher up the street +promising lively sport for which we were disinclined at that hour, we +moved laboriously into the chestnut woods overhead. Fine old timber, +part of that mysterious Ciminian forest which still covers a large +tract, from within whose ample shade one looks downhill towards the +distant Orte across a broiling stretch of country. There were golden +orioles here, calling to each other from the tree-tops. My friend, +having excavated himself a couch among the troublesome prickly seeds of +this plant, was soon snoring--another senile trait--snoring in a +rhythmical bass accompaniment to their song. I envied him. How some +people can sleep! It is a thing worth watching. They shut their eyes, +and forget to be awake. With a view to imitating his example, I wearied +myself trying to count up the number of orioles I had shot in my +bird-slaying days, and where it happened. Not more than half a dozen, +all told. They are hard to stalk, and hard to see. But of other +birds--how many! Forthwith an endless procession of massacred fowls +began to pass before my mind. One would fain live those ornithological +days over again, and taste the rapturous joy with which one killed that +first nutcracker in the mountain gulley; the first wall-creeper which +fluttered down from the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's +stint--victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the +reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed +Alpine jackdaw, that <i>lanius meridionalis</i>---- +</p> + +<p> +And all those slaughtered beasts--those chamois, first and foremost, +sedulously circumvented amid snowy crags. Where are now their horns, the +trophies? The passion for such sport died out slowly and for no clearly +ascertainable reason, as did, in its turn, the taste for art and +theatres and other things. Sheer satiety, a grain of pity, new +environments--they may all help to explain what was, in its essence, a +molecular change in the brain, driving one to explore new departments of +life. +</p> + +<p> +And now latterly, for some reason equally obscure, the natural history +fancy has revived after lying dormant so long. It may be those three +months spent on the pavements of Florence which incline one's thoughts +to the country and wild things. Social reasons too--a certain weariness +of humanity, and more than weariness; a desire to avoid contact with +creatures Who kill each other so gracelessly and in so doing--for the +killing alone would pass--invoke specially manufactured systems of +ethics and a benevolent God overhead. What has one in common with such +folk? +</p> + +<p> +That may be why I feel disposed to forget mankind and take rambles as of +yore; minded to shoulder a gun and climb trees and collect birds, and + +begin, of course, a new series of "field notes." Those old jottings were +conscientiously done and registered sundry things of import to the +naturalist; were they accessible, I should be tempted to extract +therefrom a volume of solid zoological memories in preference to these +travel-pages that register nothing but the crosscurrents of a mind which +tries to see things as they are. For the pursuit brought one into +relations not only with interesting birds and beasts, but with men. +</p> + +<p> +There was Mr. H. of the Linnean Society, whose waxed moustache curled +round upon itself like an ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., +and a great collector of them. He collected, among other things, a rare +monograph belonging to me and dealing with the former distribution of +the beaver in Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing I +could do or say would induce him to disgorge it again; he had always +lent it to a friend, who was just on the point of returning it, etc. +etc. Bitterly grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into +communication with my friend Dr. Girtanner of St. Gallen, another +beaver--and marmot--specialist. It stimulated his love of Swiss zoology +to such an extent that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of +mine, J. J. Tschudi's "Schweizer Echsen," which I likewise never saw +again. What an innocent one was! Where is now the man who will induce +me to lend him such books? +</p> + +<p> +In those days I held a student's ticket at the South Kensington Museum, +an institution I enriched with specimens of <i>rana graeca</i> from near +Lake Stymphalus, and lizards from the Filfla rock, and toads from a +volcanic islet (toads, says Darwin, are not found on volcanic islets), +and slugs from places as far apart as Santorin and the Shetlands and +Orkneys, whither I went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua. The +last gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of Saima in Finland. Who +ever heard of seals living in sweet land-locked waters? This was one of +my happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend the Curator was +tempered by the fact that this particular specimen happened to be an +immature one, and did not display any pronounced race-characters. I +have early recollections of the rugged face and lovely Scotch accent of +Tam Edwards, the Banffshire naturalist; and much later ones of J. Young, +[<a href="#24">24</a>] who gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow +bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews) +of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I +gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged +partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen eggs. "Surely six +would have been enough," he said--a remark which struck me as rather +unreasonable, seeing that French partridges were not exactly as common +as linnets. He afterwards showed me his collection of birdskins, +dwelling lovingly, for reasons which I cannot remember, upon that of a +pin-tail duck. +</p> + + +<p> +He it was who told me that no collector was worth his salt until he had +learnt to skin his own birds. Fired with enthusiasm, I took lessons in +taxidermy at the earliest possible opportunity--from a grimy old +naturalist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a man who +relieved birds of their jackets in dainty fashion with one hand, the +other having been amputated and replaced by an iron hook. During that +period of initiation into the gentle art, the billiard-room at "The +Weaste," Manchester, was converted every morning, for purposes of study, +into a dissecting-room, a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless +trunks and brains and gouged-out eyes of lapwings and other "easy" birds +(I had not yet reached the arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the +profession) lay about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was +ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers, lancets, +arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other paraphernalia of the +trade. The butler had to be furiously tipped. +</p> + +<p> +There were large grounds belonging to this estate, fields and woodlands +once green, then blackened with soot, and now cut up into allotments and +built over. Here, ever since men could remember--certainly since the +place had come into the possession of the never-to-be-forgotten Mr. +Edward T.--a kingfisher had dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial +origin which supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks and dace. +This kingfisher was one of the sights of the domain. Visitors were taken +to see it. The bird, though sometimes coy, was generally on view. +Nevertheless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher; to my infinite +annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying it. Nor did I even find its +nest, an additional source of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be +interested to know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties +(I have the exact date somewhere [<a href="#25">25</a>])--surely a noteworthy state of +affairs, so near the heart of a smoky town like Manchester. +</p> + +<p> +Later on I learnt to slay kingfishers--the first victim falling to my +gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings +of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are +so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their +habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; +once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, +now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones--the +grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous scramble of +all my life), the crested titmouse, the serin finch on the apple tree, +that first icterine warbler whose five eggs, blotched with purple and +quite unfamiliar at the time, gave me such a thrill of joy that I nearly +lost my foothold on the swerving alder branch---- +</p> + +<p> +At this point, my meditations were suddenly interrupted by a vigorous +grunt or snort; a snort that would have done credit to an enraged tapir. +My friend awoke, refreshed. He rubbed his eyes, and looked round. +</p> + +<p> +"I remember!" he began, sitting up. "I remember everything. Are you +feeling better? I hope so. Yes. Exactly. Where were we? An +injunction--what did you say?" +</p> + +<p> +At it again! +</p> + +<p> +"I said it was the drawback of old people that they never know when they +have had enough of an argument." +</p> + +<p> +"But what is an injunction?" +</p> + +<p> +"How many more times do you wish me to make that clear? Shall I begin +all over again? Have it your way! When you go into Court and ask the +judge to do something to prevent a man from doing something he wants to +do when you do not want him to do it. Like that, more or less." +</p> + +<p> +"So I gather. But I confess I do not see why a man should not do +something he wants to do just because you want him not to do it. You +might as well go into Court and ask the judge to do something to make a +man do something he does not want to do just because you want him to do +it." +</p> + +<p> +"Ah, but he must not, in this case. Good Lord, have I not explained that +a thousand times already? You always miss my point. It is illegal, don't +you understand? Illegal, illegal." +</p> + +<p> +"Anybody can say that. It would be a very natural thing to say, under +the circumstances. I should say it myself! Now just take my advice. You +go and tell your brother----" +</p> + +<p> +"My brother? It is not my brother. You are quite beside the point. Why +introduce this personal element? It is the <i>Strega</i> Company. +<i>Strega</i>, a liqueur. I am talking about a commercial concern +obtaining an injunction. Burroughs and Wellcome--they got injunctions on +the same grounds. I know a great deal of such things, though I don't +talk about them all day long as other people would, if they possessed +half my knowledge. A company, don't you see? An injunction. A liqueur. +Please to note that I am talking about a company, a company. Have I now +made myself clear, or how many more times----" +</p> + +<p> +"One would think he was at least your brother, from the way you take his +part. Let us say he is a friend, then; some never-to-be-mentioned friend +who is interested in a shady liqueur business and now wants to make a +judge do something to make a man do something----" +</p> + +<p> +"Wrong again! To prevent a man doing something----" +</p> + +<p> +"--Wants to do something to make a judge do something to prevent a man +doing something he wants to do because he does not want him to do it. Is +that right? Very well. You tell your friend that no Italian judge is +going to do dirty work of that kind for nothing." +</p> + +<p> +"Dirty work. God Almighty! I don't want any judge to do dirty work----" +</p> + +<p> +"No doubt, no doubt. I am quite convinced you don't. But your priceless +friend does. Come now! Why not be open about it?" +</p> + +<p> +"Open about what?" +</p> + +<p> +"It is positively humiliating for me to be treated like this, after all +the years we have known each other. I wish you would try to cultivate +the virtue of frankness. You are far too secretive. Something will +really have to be done about it." +</p> + +<p> +"A company, a company." +</p> + +<p> +"A company consists of a certain number of human beings. Why make +mysteries about one of them? It may happen to the best of mankind to be +mixed up----" +</p> + +<p> +"Mixed up----" +</p> + +<p> +"You are going to be disagreeable about my choice of words. Have it your +way! We all know you think you can talk better Italian than the Pope. My +own father, I was going to say, has been involved in some pretty dirty +work in the course of his professional career----" +</p> + +<p> +"No doubt, no doubt." +</p> + +<p> +"And please to note that he is as good a man as any brother of yours." +</p> + +<p> +"You always miss my point." +</p> + +<p> +"Now try to be truthful, for once in your life. Out with it!" +</p> + +<p> +"A liqueur." +</p> + +<p> +"Is that all? Sleep does not seem to have sharpened your wits to any +great extent." +</p> + +<p> +"I was not asleep. I was thinking about eggs. A company." +</p> + +<p> +"A company? You are waking up. Anything else?" +</p> + +<p> +"An injunction...." +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +A distinguished writer some years ago started a crusade in favour of +pure English. He wished to counteract those influences which are forever +at work debasing the standard of language; whether, as he seemed to +think, that standard should be inalterably fixed, is yet another +question. For in literature as in conversation there is a "pure English" +for every moment of history; that of our childhood is different from +to-day's; and to adopt the tongue of the Bible or Shakespeare, because +it happens to be pure, looks like setting back the hands of the clock. +Men would surely be dull dogs if their phraseology, whether written or +spoken, were to remain stagnant and unchangeable. We think well of +Johnson's prose. Yet the respectable English of our own time will bear +comparison with his; it is more agile and less infected with Latinisms; +why go back to Johnson? Let us admire him as a landmark, and pass on! +Some literary periods may deserve to be called good, others bad; so be +it. Were there no bad ones, there would be no good ones, and I see no +reason why men should desire to live in a Golden Age of literature, save +in so far as that millennium might coincide with a Golden Age of living. +I doubt, in the first place, whether they would be even aware of their +privilege; secondly, every Golden Age grows fairer when viewed from a +distance. Besides, and as a general consideration, it strikes me that a +vast deal of mischief is involved in these arbitrary divisions of +literature into golden or other epochs; they incite men to admire some +mediocre writers and to disparage others, they pervert our natural +taste, and their origin is academic laziness. +</p> + +<p> +Certain it is that every language worthy of the name should be in a +state of perennial flux, ready and avid to assimilate new elements and +be battered about as we ourselves are--is there anything more charming +than a thoroughly defective verb?--fresh particles creeping into its +vocabulary from all quarters, while others are silently discarded. There +is a bar-sinister on the escutcheon of many a noble term, and if, in an +access of formalism, we refuse hospitality to some item of questionable +repute, our descendants may be deprived of a linguistic jewel. Is the +calamity worth risking when time, and time alone, can decide its worth? +Why not capture novelties while we may, since others are dying all the +year round; why not throw them into the crucible to take their chance +with the rest of us? An English word is no fossil to be locked up in a +cabinet, but a living thing, liable to the fate of all such things. +Glance back into Chaucer and note how they have thriven on their own +merits and not on professorial recommendations; thriven, or perished, or +put on new faces! +</p> + +<p> +I would make an exception to this rule. Foreign importations which do +not belong to us by right, idioms we have enticed from over the sea for +one reason or another, ought to remain, as it were, stereotyped. They +are respected guests and cannot decently be jostled in our crowd; let +them be jostled in their own; here, on British soil, they should be +allowed to retain that primal signification which, in default of a +corresponding English term, they were originally taken over to express. +</p> + +<p> +What prompts me to this exordium is the discovery that a few pages back, +with a blameworthy hankering after the picturesque, I have grossly +misused a foreign word. Those cats in Trajan's Forum at Rome are nowise +a "macabre exhibition"; they are not macabre in the least; they are sad, +or saddening. The charnel-house flavour is absent. +</p> + +<p> +My apologies to the French language, to the cats, and to the reader.... +</p> + +<p> +Now whoever wishes to see a truly macabre exhibition at Rome may visit +the Peruvian mummies in the Kircher Museum. It is characteristic of the +spirit in which guide-books are written that, while devoting long +paragraphs to some worthless picture of a hallucinated venerable, they +hardly utter a word about these most remarkable and gruesome objects. +</p> + +<p> +Those old Peruvians, like the Egyptians, had necrophilous leanings. They +cultivated an unwholesome passion for corpses, and called it religion. +Many museums contain such relics from the New World in various attitudes +of discomfort; frequently seated, as though trying to be at rest after +life's long journey. No two are alike; and all are horrible of aspect. +Some have been treated with balsam to preserve the softer parts; others +are shrivelled. Some are filled with chopped straw, like any stuffed +crocodile in a show; others contain precious coca-leaves and powdered +fragments of shell, which were doubtless placed there so that the +defunct might receive nourishment up to the time when his soul should +once more have rejoined the body. Every one knows, furthermore, that +these American ancients were fond of playing tricks with the shape of +the skull--a custom which was forbidden by the Synod of Lima in 1585 and +which Hippocrates describes as being practised among the inhabitants of +the Crimea. [<a href="#26">26</a>] It adds considerably to their ghastly appearance. +</p> + +<p> +One looks at them and asks oneself: what are they now, these gentle +Incas who loved the arts and music, these children of the Sun, whose +civic acquirements amazed their conquerors? They have contrived to +transform themselves into something quite unusual. Staring orbits and +mouths agape, colour-patches here and there, morsels of muscle and hair +attached to contorted limbs--they suggest a half-way house, a loathsome +link, between a living man and his skeleton; and not only a link between +them, but a grim caricature of both. Some have been coated with varnish. +They glisten infamously. Picture a decrepit and rather gaunt relative of +your own, writhing in a fit, stark naked, and varnished all over---- +</p> + +<p> +Different are these mummies from those of the tenaciously unimaginative +and routine-bound Egyptians. Theirs are dead as a door-nail; torpid +lumps, undistinguishable one from the other. Here we have a rare +phenomenon--life, and individuality, after death. They are more +noteworthy than the cowled and desiccated monks of Italy or Sicily, or +at least differently so; undraped, for the most part, though some of +them may be seen, mere skin-covered heads, peering with dismal coyness +out of a brown sack. And the jabbering teeth.... We dream as children of +night-terrors, of goblins and phantoms that start out of the gloom and +flit about with hideous grimaces. They are gone, while yet we shudder at +that momentary flash of grizzliness; intangibilities, whose image is not +easily detained. To see spectral visions embodied, and ghosts made +flesh, one should come here. Had the excruciating operation of embalming +been performed upon live men and women, their poses could hardly have +been more multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to +how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, +against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The +nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards +<i>Auffassung</i>, are perhaps some little Japanese wood-carvings whose +creators, labouring consciously, likewise overstepped the boundaries of +the grotesque and indulged in nightmarish effects of line similar to +those which the old Peruvians, all unconsciously, have achieved upon the +bodies of their dear friends and relatives.... +</p> + +<p> +Drive swiftly thence, if you are in the mood, as you should be, for +something at the other pole of feeling, to view that wonder, the +kneeling boy at the Museo delle Terme. Headless and armless though he +be, he displays as much vitality as the Peruvians; every inch of the +body is alive, and one may well marvel at the skill of the artist who, +during his interminable task of sculpture, held fast the model's +fleeting outline--so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that +every month, and every week, brings about new conditions of surface and +texture. A child of Niobe? Very likely. There is suffering also here, a +suffering different from theirs; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in +the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods a divine calm. +Here is the antidote to mummified Incas. +<br><br><br> +</p> + +<h3><a name="alatri">Alatri</a></h3> + +<p> +What brought me to Alatri? +</p> + +<p> +Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born +here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a +passable place, but as to Alatri---- +</p> + +<p> +"You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are +precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia." +</p> + +<p> +"Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other +citizens like yourself----" +</p> + +<p> +"It does indeed! I am the least of the sons of Alatri." +</p> + +<p> +"Then it must be worthy of a visit...." +</p> + +<p> +In the hottest hour of the afternoon they deposited me outside the city +gate at some new hotel--I forget its name--to which I promptly took an +unreasoning dislike. There was a fine view upon the mountains from the +window of the room assigned to me, but nothing could atone for that lack +of individuality which seemed to exhale from the establishment and its +proprietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher here. Half an +hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I +captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he +pleased. He took me to the <i>Albergo della</i>---- +</p> + +<p> +The <i>Albergo della</i>----is a shy and retiring hostelry, invisible as +such to the naked eye, since it bears no sign of being a place of public +entertainment at all. Here was individuality, and to spare. Mine host is +an improvement even upon him of the <i>Pergola</i> at Valmontone; a man +after my own heart, with merry eyes, drooping white moustache and a +lordly nose--a nose of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which +must have cost years of patient labour to bring to its present state of +blossoming. That nose! I felt as though I could dwell for ever beneath +its shadow. The fare, however, is not up to the standard of the +"Garibaldi" inn at Frosinone which I have just left. +</p> + +<p> +Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather a dull little place; I +am never likely to go there again, and have therefore no reason for +keeping to myself its "Garibaldi" hotel which leaves little to be +desired, even under these distressful war-conditions. It set me +thinking--thinking that there are not many townlets of this size in +rural England which can boast of inns comparable to the "Garibaldi" in +point of cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable +prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the +other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly +cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have +to walk across a cold room at night--refinement of torture--in order to +turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone +enough to condemn these establishments, one and all. +</p> + +<p> +Yes! And the beds; those frowsy, creaky, prehistoric wooden concerns, +always six or eight inches too short, whose mattresses have not been +turned round since they were made. What happens? You clamber into such a +receptacle and straightway roll downhill, down into its centre, into a +kind of river-bed where you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous +feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on +either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else +into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as +well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you +lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin. +Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is +fit for a Christian to sleep in.... +</p> + +<p> +The days are growing hot. +</p> + +<p> +A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the +convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the +afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to +myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for, +being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded +with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places, +where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious +official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation +here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well +established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a +bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly +that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the +place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a +lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery--he brings me +every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself. +</p> + +<p> +"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice." +</p> + +<p> +"I know. Did you tell him he might----?" +</p> + +<p> +"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his +mother." +</p> + +<p> +"Tell him again, to-morrow." +</p> + +<p> +It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +In October--and we are now at midsummer--there occurred a little +adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this. +</p> + +<p> +I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the +still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending +journey northwards for which the passport was already viséd, when there +met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers. We +stared at one another. His face was familiar to me, though I knew not +where I had seen it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director of +the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman who had recently been to +Orvinio? I remembered. +</p> + +<p> +"The last time I was there," I said, "was about a month ago. I fancy we +had some conversation in the motor up from Mandela." +</p> + +<p> +"That is so. And now, however disagreeable it may be, I feel myself +obliged to perform a patriotic duty. This is war-time. I would ask you +to be so good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station." +</p> + +<p> +"Which is not far off," I replied. "There is one up the next street on +our right." +</p> + +<p> +We walked there, all four of us, without saying another word. "What have +I been doing?" I wondered. Then we climbed upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stuffy room, sat a +<i>delegato</i> or <i>commissario</i>--I forget which--surrounded, +despite the lateness of the hour, by one or two subordinates. He was of +middle age, and not prepossessing. He looked as if he could make himself +unpleasant, though his face was not of that actively vicious--or +actively stupid: the terms are interconvertible--kind. While scanning +his countenance, during those few moments, sundry thoughts flitted +through my mind. +</p> + +<p> +These then, I said to myself--these are the functionaries, whether +executive or administrative, whether Italian or English or Chinese, whom +a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of +them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is +certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying +their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws, +and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority +should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said +to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of +history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin +destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the +Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they +were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense +of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their +wonderful culture. They ought to have known better; they ought to have +rated morality at its true worth, since it was the profoundest Chinaman +himself who said that virtue is merely etiquette--or something to that +effect. +</p> + +<p> +I found myself studying the <i>delegato's</i> physiognomy. What could +one do with such a composite face? It is a question which often +confronts me when I see such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. +How make it more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? +Shaving that moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it +would forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed +beard, an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have +improved him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, +on account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; +one of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets +of European royalties. +</p> + +<p> +He took down the names and addresses of all four of us, and it was then +that I missed my chance. I ought to have spoken first instead of +allowing this luscious director to begin as follows:-- +</p> + +<p> +"The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about a month ago. He admits +it himself and I can corroborate the fact, as I was there at the same +time. Orvinio is a small country place in the corner of Umbria. There is +a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote and very high--<i>altissima</i>! +It is called Mount Muretta and occupies a commanding situation. For +reasons which I will leave you, Signer Commissario, to investigate, this +gentleman climbed up that mountain and was observed, on the very summit, +making calculations and taking measurements with instruments." +</p> + +<p> +Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta? For an all-sufficient +reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from Etna +and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A bare +wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably the name) visible from +below and promising a lively scramble up the rock, was an additional +inducement. Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can +afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter of fact, proved +to be a mighty tame affair. There was yet another object to my trip. I +desired to verify a legend connected with this mountain, the tradition +of a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to whose former +existence the name of a certain old family, still surviving at Orvinio, +bears witness. "We are not really from Orvinio," these people will tell +you. "We are from the lost castle of the Muretta." (There is not a +vestige of a castle left. But I found one brick in the jungle which +covers, on the further side of the summit, a vast rock-slide dating, I +should say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the fastness +may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting Muretta. +</p> + +<p> +As to taking measurements--well, a man is naturally accused of a good +many things in the course of half a century. Nobody has yet gone so far +as to call me a mathematician. These "calculations and instruments" were +a local mirage; as pretty an instance of the mythopoeic faculty as one +could hope to find in our degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the +earth. [<a href="#27">27</a>] +</p> + +<p> +The official seemed to be impressed with the fact that my accuser was +director of a bank. He inquired what I had to say. +</p> + +<p> +This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on me rather suddenly. One +likes to have notice of such questions. Tell the truth? I am often +tempted to do so; it saves so much trouble! But truth-telling is a +matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the more one learns +to hold in check that unnatural propensity. (<i>Mankind has a natural +love of the lie itself.</i> Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that +one will do well to take account of national psychology. An English +functionary, athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of +affairs. But to climb in war-time, without any object save that of +exercising one's limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and +remote mountain--Muretta happens to be neither the one nor the +other--would have seemed to an Italian an incredible proceeding. I +thought it better to assume the role of accuser in my turn: an Oriental +trick. +</p> + +<p> +"This director," I said, "calls himself a patriot. What has he told us? +That while at Orvinio he knew a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to +make calculations with instruments. What does this admirable citizen do +with regard to such a suspicious character? He does nothing. Is there +not a barrack-full of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to +arrest such people? But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk +away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other +measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and +Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our English notion of +patriotism. I shall certainly make it my business to write and +congratulate the Banca d'Italia on possessing such a good Italian as +director. I shall also suggest that his talents would be more worthily +employed at the Banca--" (naming a notoriously pro-German establishment). +</p> + +<p> +A poor speech; but it gave me the satisfaction of seeing the fellow grow +purple with fury and so picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the +spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be done with him. The +<i>delegato</i> suggested that inasmuch as he had said his say and +deposited his address, he was at liberty to depart, whenever so +disposed. +</p> + +<p> +They went--he and his friends. +</p> + +<p> +The other was looking serious--as serious as such a face could be made +to look. He must not be allowed to think, I decided, for once an +official begins to think he is liable to grow conscientious and +then--why, any disaster might happen, the least of them being that I +should remain in custody pending investigations. In how many more +countries was I going to be arrested for one crime or another? This joke +had lost its novelty a good many years ago. +</p> + +<p> +"A pernicious person," I began, "--you have but to look at him. And now +he has invited me here in order to make a patriotic impression on his +friends, those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since no +love is lost hereabouts between police and military). Such silly talk +about measurements! It should be nipped in the bud. Here you have an +intelligent young subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home with +me at my expense; we will go through all papers and search for +instruments and bring everything that savours of suspicion back to this +office, together with my passport which I never carry on my person. +This, meanwhile, is my <i>carta di soggiorno</i>." +</p> + +<p> +The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I thought of those +miserable three days' grace which were all that the French consulate had +accorded me. If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded in +Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin again. And to tell him of +this dilemma would make him more distrustful than ever. +</p> + +<p> +I went on hastily to admit that my request might not be regular, but how +natural! Were we not allies? Was it not my duty to clear myself of such +an imputation at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to that + +end? I felt sure he could sympathise with the state of my mind, etc. +etc. +</p> + +<p> +Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of invention, lent wings to +my words, and while thinking all the time: You little vermin, what are +you doing here, in that chair, when you should be delving the earth or +breaking stones, as befits your kind? I tried to picture myself climbing +up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port +would have been more in my line. Calculations! It is all I can do to +control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I +like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments! If this +young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my +belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the +<i>delegato</i>, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they +often are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of +your body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently +reasonable. The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing +whatever to do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to +evade military service. +</p> + +<p> +We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his +polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of +the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather +dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala. +</p> + +<p> +"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be + +surprised at my long absence." +</p> + +<p> +"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport." +</p> + +<p> +"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with +him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten +o'clock, or eleven, or midday." +</p> + +<p> +So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little +detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything +else. He did not even unfold it. +</p> + +<p> +"<i>E stato un' equivoco</i>," was all he condescended to say, still +without a smile. There had been a misunderstanding. +</p> + +<p> +The incident was closed. +</p> + +<p> +Things might have gone differently in the country. I would either have +been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of +carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century +while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the +civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet--an inquiry without +which no Latin <i>dossier</i> is complete. +</p> + +<p> +POSTSCRIPT.--Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many +of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever +come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a +street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in +their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not +tend to diminish? +</p> + +<p> +There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome; +fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those +inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things +remained in the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set by the +ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The natives spend their days +in rushing to Rome and back on business connected with law-suits, not a +quarter of which would have arisen but for the existence of the +carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Individually, these men are +nowise at fault. They desire nothing better than to be left in peace. +Seldom do they meddle with local concerns--far from it! They live in +sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the populace, like a colony +of monks. The institution is to blame. It is their duty, among other +things, to take down any charge which anybody may care to prefer against +his neighbour. That done, the machinery of the law is automatically set +in motion. Five minutes' talk among the village elders would have +settled many affairs which now degenerate into legal squabbles of twice +as many years; chronic family feuds are fostered; a man who, on +reflection, would find it more profitable to come to terms with his +opponent over a glass of wine, or even to square the old syndic with a +couple of hundred francs, sees himself obliged to try the same tactics +on a judge of the high court--which calls for a different technique. +</p> + +<p> +Altogether, the country is flagrantly over-policed. [<a href="#28">28</a>] It gives one a +queer sense of public security to see, at Rome for instance, every third +man you meet--an official, of course, of some kind--with a revolver +strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on the verge of +savagery in some cowboy settlement out West. Greek towns of about ten +thousand inhabitants, like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal +guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls. How can ten men +perform duties which, in Italy, would require ten times as many? Is it a +question of climate, or national character? A question, perhaps, of +common sense--of realising that local institutions often work with less +friction and less outlay than that system of governmental centralisation +of which the carbineers are an example. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile we are still at Alatri which, I am glad to discover, possesses +five gateways--five or even more. It is something of a relief to be away +from that Roman tradition of four. Military reasons originally, fixing +themselves at last into a kind of sacred tradition.... So it is, with +unimaginative races. Their pious sentimentalism crystallises into +inanimate objects. The English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral +strand, and the chimes of Big Ben, floating above that crowd of +many-hued Orientals, give to the white man a sense of homeliness and +racial solidarity. The French, more fluid and sensitive to the +incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial +buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition, +it pursues one with meaningless iteration from the burning sands of +Africa to Ultima Thule. Always those four gateways! +</p> + +<p> +For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is comparable to that green +space on the summit of the citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning, + +to take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the vanity of human +wishes. The less you have seen of localities like Tiryns the more you +will be amazed at this impressive and mysterious fastness. That portal, +those blocks--what Titans fitted them into their places? Well, we have +now learnt a little something about those Titans and their methods. From +this point you can see the old Roman road that led into Alatri; it +climbs up the hill in straightforward fashion, intersecting the broad +modern "Via Romana"--a goat-track, nowadays.... +</p> + +<p> +These Alatri remains are wonderful--more so than many of the sites which +old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his +curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he +stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations +about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the +same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual? We certainly find him +"hurrying down" past Anagni near-by, of whose imposing citadel he again +says nothing whatever.... +</p> + +<p> +I am now, at the end of several months, beginning to know Ramage fairly +well. I hope to know him still better ere we part company, if ever we +do. It takes time, this interpretation, this process of grafting one +mind upon another. For he does not supply mere information. A fig for +information. That would be easy to digest. He supplies character, which +is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of +what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a +philosophy of life. +</p> + +<p> +And what is the dominating trait of this old Scotsman? The historical +sense. Ancient inscriptions interested him more than anything else. He +copied many of them during his trip; fifty, I should think; and it is no +small labour, as any one who has tried it can testify, to decipher these +half-obliterated records often placed in the most inconvenient +situations (he seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied himself +thus was to his credit in an age whose chief concern, as regards +antiquity, consisted in plundering works of art for ornamental purposes. +Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected +knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as +inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these +documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly +sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but +for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of +one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men +who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the +fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be +completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit. +</p> + +<p> +His equipment in the interpretation of these stones and of all else he +picked up in the way of lore and legend was of the proper kind. +Boundless curiosity, first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of +learning. He knew his classics--knew them so well that he could always +put his finger on those particular passages of theirs which bore upon a +point of interest. We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quotation +from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different thing remembering, and +collating, references in. Aelian or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And +wide awake, withal; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the kind to +swallow the tales of the then fashionable cicerone's. He has critical +dissertations on sites like Cannae and the Bandusian Fountain and Caudine +Forks; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence a sepulchre +containing some of those painted Greek vases for which the place is +famous, he promptly suspects it to be a "sepulchre prepared for +strangers," and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain where +they are "for more simple or less suspicious travellers." On the way to +Cape Leuca he passes certain mounds whose origin he believes to be +artificial and the work of a prehistoric race. I fancy his conjecture +has proved correct. On page 258, speaking of an Oscan inscription, he +mentions Mommsen, which shows that he kept himself up to date in such +researches.... +</p> + +<p> +Of course it would be impossible to feel any real fondness for Ramage +before one has discovered his failings and his limitations. Well, he +seems to have taken Pratilli seriously. I like this. A young fellow who, +in 1828, could have guessed Pratilli to have been the arch-forger he +was--such a young fellow would be a freak of learning. He says little of +the great writers of his age; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose +imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but not in the +present. The Hohenstauffen period does not attract him. He rides close +to the magnificent Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site; he +inspects the castle of Lucera and says never a word about Frederick II +or his Saracens. At Lecce, renowned for its baroque buildings, he finds +"nothing to interest a stranger, except, perhaps, the church of Santa +Croce, which is not a bad specimen of architectural design." True, the +beauty of baroque had not been discovered in his day. +</p> + +<p> +What pleases me less is that there occurs hardly any mention of wild +animals in these pages, and that he seems to enjoy natural scenery in +proportion as it reminds him of some passage in one of those poets whom +he is so fond of quoting. This love of poetic extracts and citations is +a mark of his period. It must have got the upper hand of him in course +of time, for we find, from the title-page of these "Nooks and Byways," +that he was the author of "Beautiful Thoughts from Greek authors; +Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian authors, etc."; [<a href="#29">29</a>] indeed, +the publication of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have +been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer a few more "Nooks and +By-ways" to all these Beautiful Thoughts! He must have been at home +again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were +gathered. If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains of +the south, instead of rushing through them like an express train. That +mania of "pressing forward"; that fatal gift of hustle.... +</p> + +<p> +His body flits hither and thither, but his mind remains observant, +assimilative. It is only on reading this book carefully that one +realises how full of information it is. Ay, he notices things, does +Ramage--non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time to look +around him. It is his charm. An intelligent interest in the facts of +daily life should be one of the equipments of the touring scholar, +seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift, +and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern +travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and +agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure +warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and +the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and +modern times and the fig-pecker bird--that bird you eat bones and all, +the <i>focetola</i> or <i>beccafico</i> (garden warbler). In fact, he +has multifarious interests and seems to have known several languages +besides the classics. He can hit off a thing neatly, as, when +contrasting our sepulchral epitaphs with those of olden days, he says +that the key-note of ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace; or "wherever we +find a river in this country (Calabria) we are sure to discover that it +is a source of danger and not of profit." He knew these southern +torrents and river-beds! He garners information about the Jewish and +Albanian colonies of South Italy; he studies Romaic "under one of the +few Greeks who survived the fatal siege of Missolonghi" and collects +words of Greek speech still surviving at Bova and Maratea (Maratea, by +the way, has a Phoenician smack; the Greeks must have arrived later on +the scene, as they did at Marathon itself). +</p> + +<p> +A shrewd book, indeed. Like many of his countrymen, he was specially +bent on economic and social questions; he is driven to the prophetic +conclusion, in 1828, that "the government rests on a very insecure +basis, and the great mass of the intelligence of the country would +gladly welcome a change." Religion and schooling are subjects near his +heart and, in order to obtain a first-hand knowledge of these things in +Italy, he enters upon a friendship, a kind of intellectual flirtation, +with the Jesuits. That is as it should be. Extremes can always respect +one another. The Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as he +from them.... +</p> + +<p> +I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to +me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always +finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial +matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was +personally acquainted with several men whose names I have +mentioned--Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano; +in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him +with profit. And even at an earlier time; for I once claimed to have +discovered the ruins of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets +(the Galli, opposite Positano)--now I find him forestalling me by nearly +a century. It is often thus, with archaeological discoveries. +</p> + +<p> +He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress Calypso which has +disappeared since his day, and would have sailed there but for the fact +that no boat was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who landed +here, found any prehistoric remains on the spot; I should doubt it. On +another Mediterranean island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the +relics of what would formerly have been described as the residence of +that second Homeric witch, Circe. [<a href="#30">30</a>] +</p> + +<p> +The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have already, of course, +discovered my ideal family at Alatri. Two ideal families.... +</p> + +<p> +One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that +luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow--that +verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with +fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with +wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich +philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in the +cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold of his two-roomed +abode, or wander about those tiny patches of culture, geometrically +disposed, where he guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots +of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of his misfortunes; +intuitive civility has taught him to avoid troubling a stranger with +personal concerns. +</p> + +<p> +The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are +hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their +offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left. +</p> + +<p> +"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can +only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach--nothing; not +milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him +for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now +there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children +dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others." +</p> + +<p> +I looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +"You sent him into the plains last summer?" I ventured. +</p> + +<p> +"To Cisterna. One must make a little money, or starve." +</p> + +<p> +"And you expect to keep your children alive if you send them to +Cisterna?" +</p> + +<p> +I was astonished that the local medicine man had not diagnosed malaria. +I undertook that if she would put him into the train when next I went to +Rome, I would have him overhauled by a competent physician and packed +home again with written instructions. (I kept my word, and the good +doctor Salatino of the Via Torino--a Calabrian who knows something about +malaria--wrote out a treatment for this neglected case, no part of +which, I fear, has been observed. Such is the fatalism of the +country-folk that if drugs and injections do not work like magic they +are quietly discarded. This youth may well have gone the way of "those +other two"--who, by the by, were also sent into the Pontine +Marshes--since you cannot reject your food for ever, and grow more +anaemic every day, without producing some such result.) +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy in the mother's heart +that I became quite embarrassed. She likened me, among other things, to +her favourite Saint. +</p> + +<p> +All comparisons being odious, I turned the conversation by asking: +</p> + +<p> +"And that last one?" +</p> + +<p> +"Here," she said, pushing open the door of the inner room. +</p> + +<p> +He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle of limbs, the +picture of radiant boyhood. +</p> + +<p> +"This one, I think, has never been to Cisterna." +</p> + +<p> +"No. He goes into the mountains with the woodcutters every morning an +hour before sunrise. It is up beyond Collepardo--seven hours' labour, +and seven hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he sleeps +like a log...." +</p> + +<p> +Children from these hill-places often accompany their parents into the +plains to work; more commonly they go in droves of any number under the +charge of some local man. They are part of that immense army of +hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands of Tuscany to the +very toe of Italy, into these low-lying regions, hardly an inch of which +is fever-free. I do not know even approximately the numbers of these +migratory swarms of all ages and both sexes; let us say, to be on the +safe side, a quarter of a million. They herd down there, in the broiling +heat of summer and autumn, under conditions which are not all that could +be desired. [<a href="#31">31</a>] Were they housed in marble palaces and served on +platters of gold, the risk would not be diminished by a hair. How many +return infected? I have no idea. It cannot be less than sixty per cent. +How many of these perish? Perhaps five per cent. A few thousand annual +deaths are not worth talking about. What concerns the country--and what +the country, indeed, has taken seriously in hand--is this impoverishment +of its best blood; this devitalising action of malaria upon unnumbered +multitudes of healthy men, women, and children who do not altogether +succumb to its attacks. +</p> + +<p> +I sometimes recognise them on the platform of Rome station--family +parties whom I have met in their country villages, now bound for +Maccarese or one of those infernal holes in the Campagna, there to earn +a little extra money with hay, or maize, or wheat, or tomatoes, or +whatever the particular crop may be. You chat with the parents; the +youngsters run up to you, all gleeful with the change of scene and the +joy of travelling by railway. I know what they will look like, when they +return to their mountains later on.... +</p> + +<p> +And so, discoursing of this and that, one rambles oneself into a +book.... +</p> + +<p> +Into half a book; for here--at Alatri, and now--midsummer, I mean to +terminate these non-serious memories and leave unrecorded the no less +insignificant events which followed up to the mornings in October, those +mornings when jackdaws came cawing past my window from the thickly +couched mists of the Borghese Gardens, and the matutinal tub began to +feel more chilly than was altogether pleasant. +</p> + +<p> +Half a book: I perceive it clearly. These pages might be rounded by +another hundred or two. The design is too large for one volume; it +reminds me of those tweed suits we used to buy long ago whose pattern +was so "loud" that it "took two men to show it off." Which proves how a +few months' self-beguilement by the wayside of a beaten track can become +the subject of disquisitions without end. Maybe the very aimlessness of +such loiterings conduces to a like method of narrative. Maybe the tone +of the time fosters a reminiscential and intimately personal mood, by +driving a man for refuge into the only place where peace can still be +found--into himself. What is the use of appealing in objective fashion +to the intelligence of a world gone crazy? Say your say. Go your way. +Let them rave! We shall all be pro-German again to-morrow. [<a href="#32">32</a>] +</p> + +<p> +Half a book: it strikes me, on reflection, as curiously appropriate. To +produce something incomplete and imperfect, a torso of a kind--is it not +symbolical of the moment? Is not this an age of torso's? We are +manufacturing them every hour by the score. How many good fellows are +now crawling about mutilated, converted into torso's? There is room for +a book on the same lines.... +</p> + +<p> +I glance through what has been written and detect therein an occasional +note of exacerbation and disharmony which amuses me, knowing, as I do, +its transitory nature. Dirty work, touching dirt. One cannot read for +three consecutive years of nothing but poison-gas and blood and +explosives without engendering a corresponding mood--a mood which +expresses itself in every one according to whether he thinks +individually or nationally; whether he cultivates an impartial +conscience or surrenders to that of the crowd. For the man and his race +are everlastingly tugging in different directions, and unreasoning +subservience to race-ideals has clouded many a bright intellect. How +many things a race can do which its component members, taken separately, +would blush to imitate! Our masses are now fighting for commercial +supremacy. The ideal may well be creditable to a nation. It is hardly +good enough for a gentleman. He reacts; he meditates a Gospel of Revolt +against these vulgarities; he catches himself saying, as he reads the +morning paper full of national-flag fetishism and sanguinary nonsense: +"One Beethoven symphony is a greater victory than the greatest of these, +and reasonable folks may live under any rule save that of a wind-fed +herd." +</p> + +<p> +It avails nothing. The day has dawned, the day of those who pull +downwards--stranglers of individualism. Can a man subscribe to the +aspirations of a mob and yet think well of himself? Can he be black and +white? He can be what he is, what most of us are: neutral tint. Look +around you: a haze of cant and catchwords. Such things are employed on +political platforms and by the Press as a kind of pepsine, to aid our +race-stomach in digesting certain heavy doses of irrationalism. The +individual stomach soon discovers their weakening effect.... +</p> + +<p> +Looking back upon these months of uneventful wanderings, I became aware +of a singular phenomenon. I find myself, for some obscure reason, always +returning to the same spot. I was nine times in Rome, twice in Florence +and Viareggio and Olevano and Anticoli and Alatri and Licenza and +Soriano, five times at Valmontone, thrice at Orvinio; and if I did not +go a second time to Scanno and other places, there may be a reason for +it. Why this perpetual revisiting? How many new and interesting sites +might have been explored during that period! Adventures and discoveries +might have fallen to my lot, and been duly noted down. As it is, nothing +happened, and nothing was noted down. I have only a diary of dates to go +upon, out of which, with the help of memory and imagination, have been +extracted these pages. For generally, delving down into memory, a man +can bring up at least one clear-cut fragment, something still fervid and +flashing, a remembered voice or glimpse of landscape which helps to +unveil the main features of a scenario already relegated to the +lumber-room. And this detail will unravel the next; the scattered +elements jostle each other into place, as in the final disentangling of +some complicated fugue. +</p> + +<p> +Such things will do for a skeleton. Imagination will kindly provide +flesh and blood, life, movement. Imagination--why not? One suppresses +much; why not add a little? Truth blends well with untruth, and phantasy +has been so sternly banned of late from travellers' tales that I am +growing tender-hearted towards the poor old dame; quite chivalrous, in +fact--especially on those rather frequent occasions when I find myself +unable to dispense with her services. +</p> + +<p> +Yes; truth blends well with untruth. It is one of the maladies of our +age, a sign of sheer nervousness, to profess a frenzied allegiance to +truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where +graver issues are at stake. We cannot lay claim to a truthful state of +mind. In this respect the eighteenth century, for all its foppery, was +ahead of ours. What is the basic note of Horace Walpole's iridescent +worldliness--what about veracity? How one yearns, nowadays, for that +spacious and playful outlook of his; or, better still, for some +altogether Golden Age where everybody is corrupt and delightful and has +nothing whatever to do, and does it well.... +</p> + +<p> +My second ideal family at Alatri lives along a side path which diverges +off the main road to Ferentino. They are peasant proprietors, more +wealthy and civilised than those others, but lacking their terrestrial +pathos. They live among their own vines and fruit-trees on the hillside. +The female parent, a massive matron, would certainly never send those +winsome children into the Pontine Marshes, not for a single day, not for +their weight in gold. The father is quite an uncommon creature. I look +at him and ask myself; where have I seen that face before, so classic +and sinewy and versatile? I have seen it on Greek vases, and among the +sailors of the Cyclades and on the Bosphorus. It is a non-Latin face, +with sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and crisply curling +beard; a legendary face. How came Odysseus to Alatri? +</p> + +<p> +Not far from this homestead where I have spent sundry pleasant hours +there is a fountain gushing out of a hollow. In olden days it would have +been hung with votive offerings to the nymphs, and rightly. One +appreciates this nature-cult in a dry land. I have worshipped at many +such shrines where the water bounds forth, a living joy, out of the +rocky cleft--unlike those sluggish springs of the North that ooze +regretfully upwards, as though ready to slink home again unless they +were kicked from behind, and then trickle along, with barely perceptible +movement, amid weeds and slime. +</p> + +<p> +Now this particular fountain (I think it is called <i>acqua santa</i>), +while nowise remarkable as regards natural beauty, is renowned for +curing every disease. It is not an ordinary rill; it has medicinal +properties. Hither those two little demons, the younger children, +conducted me all unsuspecting two days ago, desirous that I should taste +the far-famed spring. +</p> + +<p> +"Try it," they said. +</p> + +<p> +I refused at first, since water of every kind has a knack of disagreeing +with my weak digestion. As for them, they gulped down tumblers of it, +being manifestly inured to what I afterwards discovered to be its +catastrophic effects. +</p> + +<p> +"Look at us drinking it," they went on. "Ah, how good! Delicious! It is +like Fiuggi, only better." +</p> + +<p> +"Am I an invalid, to drink Fiuggi water?" +</p> + +<p> +"It is not quite the same as Fiuggi. (True. I was soon wishing it had +been.) How many men would pay dearly for your privilege! Never let it be +said that you went away thirsting from this blessed spot." +</p> + +<p> +"I am not thirsty just now. Not at all thirsty, thank you." +</p> + +<p> +"We have seen you drink without being thirsty. Just one glass," they +pleaded. "It will make you live a hundred years." +</p> + +<p> +"No. Let us talk about something else." +</p> + +<p> +"No? Then what shall we tell our mother? That we brought you here, and +that you were afraid of a little mouthful of acqua santa? We thought you +had more courage. We thought you could strangle a lion." +</p> + +<p> +"Something will happen," I said, as I drained that glass. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing happened for a few hours. +</p> + +<p> +Two days' rest is working wonders.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +I profit by the occasion of this slight indisposition to glance +backwards--and forwards. +</p> + +<p> +I am here, at Alatri, on the 22 June: so much is beyond contestation. +</p> + +<p> +A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31: Palombara. Well I +remember the hot walk to Palombara! +</p> + +<p> +August 3: Mons Lucretilis, that classical mountain from whose summit I +gazed at the distant Velino which overtops like a crystal of amethyst +all the other peaks. This was during one of my two visits to Licenza. +Pleasant days at Licenza, duly noting in the house of Horace what I have +noted with Shelley and other bards, namely, that these fellows who sing +so blithely of the simple life yet contrive to possess extremely +commodious residences; pleasant days among those wooded glens, walking +almost every morning in the footsteps of old Ramage up the valley in +whose streamlet the willow-roots sway like branches of coral--aloft +under the wild walnuts to that bubbling fountain where I used to meet my +two friends, Arcadian goat-herds, aboriginal fauns of the thickets, who +told me, amid ribald laughter, a few personal experiences which nothing +would induce me to set down here. +</p> + +<p> +July 26: La Rocca. What happened at La Rocca? +</p> + +<p> +October 2: Florence. What happened at Florence? A good deal, during +those noteworthy twelve hours! +</p> + +<p> +Some memories have grown strangely nebulous; impossible to reconstruct, +for example, what went on during the days of drowsy discomfort at +Montecelio. A lethargy seems to have fallen on me; I lived in a dream +out of which there emerges nothing save the figure of the local +tobacconist, a ruddy type with the face of a Roman farmer, who took me +to booze with him, in broad patriarchal style, every night at a +different friend's house. Those nights at Montecelio! The mosquitoes! +The heat! Could this be the place which was famous in Pliny's day for +its grove of <i>beeches</i>? How I used to envy the old Montecelians +their climate! +</p> + +<p> +July 23: Saracinesca. What happened? I recollect the view over the +sweltering Campagna from the dizzy castle-ruin, in whose garden I see +myself nibbling a black cherry, the very last of the season, plucked +from a tree which grows beside the wall whereon I sat. That suffices: it +gives a key to the situation. I can now conjure up the gaunt and sombre +houses of this thick-clustering stronghold; the Rembrandtesque shadows, +the streets devoid of men, the picture of some martial hero in a +cavern-like recess where I sought shelter from the heat, a black +crucifix planted in the soil below the entrance of the village--my +picture of Saracinesca is complete, in outline. +</p> + +<p> +July 31: Subiaco. Precisely! A week later, then, I walk thirty-two +chilometres along the shadeless high road, an insane thing to do, to +Subiaco and back. There, in the restaurant Aniene, when all the +luncheon-guests have departed for their noonday nap, the cook of the +establishment, one of those glorious old Roman he-cooks, comes up to my +table. Did I like the boiled trout? +</p> + +<p> +Rather flabby, I reply. A little tasteless. Let him try, next time, some +white vinegar in the water and a bay-leaf or two. +</p> + +<p> +He pricks up his ears: we are <i>gens du metier</i>. I invite him to sit +down and inquire: how about a bottle of Cesanese, now that we are alone? +An excellent idea! And he, in his turn, will permit himself to offer me +certain strawberries from his own private store. +</p> + +<p> +"Strawberries?" I ask. "Who ever heard of strawberries in Central Italy +on the 31 July? Why, I devoured the last cherry a week ago, and it was +only alive because it grew above the clouds." +</p> + +<p> +These, he explains mysteriously, are special strawberries, brought down +from near the snow-line by a special goat-boy. They are not for the +guests, but "only for myself." Strawberries are always worth paying for; +they are mildly purging, they go well with the wine. And what a +wonderful scent they have! + +"You remind me of a certain Lucullo," I said, "who was also nice about +strawberries. In fact, he made a fine art of eating and drinking." +</p> + +<p> +"Your Lucullo, we may take it, was a Roman?" +</p> + +<p> +"<i>Romano di Roma</i>." +</p> + +<p> +Thus conversing with this rare old ruffian, I forget my intention of +leaving a card on Saint Scolastica. She has waited for me so long. She +can wait a little longer.... +</p> + +<p> +August 9: Villa Lante. +</p> + +<p> +August 12: Ferento. What happened at Ferento? +</p> + +<p> +Now what happened at Ferento? Let me try to reconstruct that morning's +visit. +</p> + +<p> +I have clear memories of the walk from Viterbo--it would be eighteen +chilometres there and back, they told me. I had slept well in my quaint +little room with the water rushing under the window, and breakfasted in +receptive and responsive mood. I recall that trudge along the highway +and how I stepped across patches of sunlight from the shade of one +regularly planted tree into that of another. The twelfth of August.... +It set me thinking of heathery moorlands and grouse, and of those +legions of flies that settle on one's nose just as one pulls the +trigger. It all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road, +among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what +these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter +months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland +underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my ears--a wistful +intermezzo of Brahms. It seemed to spring out of the hot earth. Such a +natural song, elvishly coaxing! Would I ever play it again? Neither +that, nor any other. +</p> + +<p> +It turned my thoughts, as I went along, to Brahms and led me to +understand why no man, who cares only for his fellow-creatures, will +ever relish that music. It is an alien tongue, full of deeps and +rippling shallows uncomprehended of those who know nothing of lonely +places; full of thrills and silences such as are not encountered among +the habitations of men. It echoes the multitudinous voice of nature, and +distils the smiles and tears of things non-human. This man listened, all +alone; he overheard things to which other ears are deaf--things terrible +and sweet; the sigh of some wet Naiad by a reedy lake, the pleadings and +furies of the genii--of those that whisper in woodlands and caverns by +the sea, and ride wailing on thunder-laden clouds, and rock with ripe +laughter in sunny wildernesses. Brahms is the test. Whoso dreads +solitude will likewise dread his elemental humour. +</p> + +<p> +It kept me company, this melodious and endearing fairy, till where a +path, diverging to the right, led up to the ruins already visible. There +the ethereal comrade took flight, scared, maybe, because my senses took +on a grossly mundane complexion--it is a way they have, thank +God--became absorbed, that is, in the contemplation of certain +blackberries wherewith the hedge was loaded. I thought: the tons of +blackberries that fall to earth in Italy, unheeded! And not even a +Scotsman knows what blackberries are, until he has tasted these. I am no +gourmet of such wild things; I rather agree with Goethe when he says: +"How berries taste, you must ask children." But I can sympathise with +the predilections of others, having certain predilections of my own. +</p> + +<p> +Once, at a miserable place in North Ireland, region of bad whisky and +porter, they brought me at dinner some wine of which they knew +nothing--they had got it from a shipwreck or some local sale. I am +rather fond of hock. And this particular bottle bore on its label the +magic imprint of a falcon sitting on a hilltop. Connoisseurs will know +that falcon. They will understand how it came about that I remained in +the inn till the last bottle of nectar was cracked. What a shame to +leave a drop for anybody else! Once again, on a bicycle trip from Paris +to the Mediterranean, I came upon a broad, smiling meadow somewhere in +the Auvergne, thickly besprinkled with mushrooms. There was a village +hard by. In that village I remained till the meadow was close cropped. +Half a ton of mushrooms--gone. Some people are rather fond of mushrooms. +And that is the right spirit: to leave nothing but a <i>tabula rasa</i> +for those that come after. It hurt me to think that anybody else should +have a single one of those particular mushrooms. Let them find new ones, +in another field; not in mine. +</p> + +<p> +Now what would your amateur of blackberries do in Italy? From the fate +which nearly overtook me he might save himself by specialising; by +dividing the many local varieties into two main classes and devoting his +whole attention to one or the other; to the kind such as I found on +Elba--small and round and fragrant, of ruddy hue, and palpitating with +warm sunbeams; or to that other kind, those that grow in clearings of +the Apennines where the boughs droop to earth with the weight of their +portentous clusters--swarthy as night, huge in size, oval, and fraught +with chilly mountain dews. +</p> + +<p> +No true enthusiast, I feel sure, would ever be satisfied with such an +unfair division of labour--so one-sided an arrangement. He would curse +his folly for having specialised. While engaged upon one variety, he +would always be hankering after <i>that other kind</i> and thinking how +much better they were. What shall he do, then? Well, he might devote one +year to one species, the next to another, and so on. Or else--seeing +that every zone of altitude bears brambles at its season and that the +interval between the maturing of the extreme varieties is at least four +months--he might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical sense, +devouring blackberries of different flavour as he went along; he might +work his way upwards, boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle +drills an oak, and leaving a track of devastation in his rear--browsing +aloft from the sea-board, where brambles are black in June, through +tangled <i>macchia</i> and vine-clad slopes into the cooler acclivities +of rock and jungle--grazing ever upward to where, at close of September +and in the shadow of some lonely peak on which the white mantle of +winter has already fallen, he finds a few more berries struggling for +warmth and sunshine, and then, still higher up, just a few more--the +last, the very last, of their race--dwarfs of the mountains, +earthward-creeping, and frozen pink ere yet they have had time to ripen. +Here, crammed to the brim, he may retire to hibernate, curled up like a +full-gorged bear and ready to roll downhill with the melting snows and +arrive at the sea-coast in time to begin again. What a jolly life! How +much better than being Postmaster-General or Inspector of Nuisances! But +such enthusiasts are nowhere to be found. I wish they were; the world +would be a merrier place.... +</p> + +<p> +Here is the ruined town of Ferento, all alone on the arid brow of the +hill. Nothing human in sight. A charming spot it must have been in olden +times, when the country was more timbered; now all is bare--brown +earth, brown stones. Dutifully I inspect the ruins and, applying the +method of Zadig or something of that kind, conclude that Ferento, this +particular Ferento, was relatively unimportant and relatively modern, +although so fine a site may well have commended itself from early days +as a settlement. I pick up, namely, a piece of <i>verde antico</i>, a +green marble which came into vogue at a later period than many other +coloured ones. Ergo, Ferento was relatively modern as antiquities go; +else this marble would not occur there. I seek for coloured ones and +find not the smallest fragment; nothing but white. Ergo, the place was +relatively insignificant; else the reds and yellows would also be +discoverable. I observe incidentally--quite incidentally!--that the +architecture corroborates my theory; so do the guide-books, no doubt, if +there are any. Now I know, furthermore, the origin of that small slab of +<i>verde antico</i> which had puzzled me, mixed up, as it was, among the +mosaics of quite modern marbles in that church whither I had been +conducted by a local antiquarian to admire a certain fresco recently +laid bare, and some rather crude daubs by Romanelli. +</p> + +<p> +Out again, into the path that overlooks the steep ravine. Here I find, +resting in the shadow of the wall, an aged shepherd and his flock and a +shaggy, murderous-looking dog of the Campagna breed that shows his teeth +and growls incessantly, glaring at me as if I were a wolf. "Barone" is +the brute's name. I had intended to clamber down and see whether the +rock-surface bears any traces of human workmanship; the rock-surface, I +now decide, may take care of itself. It has waited for me so long. It +can wait a little longer. +</p> + +<p> +"Does that beast of yours eat Christians?" +</p> + +<p> +"He? He is a perfect <i>capo di c----</i>. That is his trick, to prevent +people from kicking him. They think he can bite." +</p> + +<p> +I produce half a cigar which he crushes up into his black clay pipe. +</p> + +<p> +"Yours is not a bad life." +</p> + +<p> +"One lives. But I had better times in Zurich." +</p> + +<p> +He had stayed there awhile, working in some factory. He praised its +food, its beer, its conveniences. +</p> + +<p> +Zurich: incongruous image! Straightway I was transported from this +harmonious desolation of Ferento; I lost sight of yonder clump of +withering thistles--thistles of recent growth; you could sit, you could +stand, in their shade--and found myself glancing over a leaden lake and +wandering about streets full of ill-dressed and ungracious folk; +escaping thence further afield, into featureless hills encrusted with +smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered under noisome +horse-chestnuts and Virginia creepers. How came they to hit upon the +ugliest tree, and the ugliest creeper, on earth? Infallible instinct! +Zurich: who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity? +</p> + +<p> +So this old man had been there. +</p> + +<p> +And I remembered an expression in a book recently written by a friend of +mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in +Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness"--some such phrase. +[<a href="#33">33</a>] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active +kind; it grips you by the throat and sits on your chest like a +nightmare. +</p> + +<p> +I looked at the old fellow. He was sound; he had escaped the contagion. +Those others, those many hundred thousand others in Switzerland and +America--they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead ordinariness of +that life among machines. Future generations will hardly recognise the +Italian race from our descriptions. A new type is being formed, cold and +loveless, with all the divinity drained out of them. +</p> + +<p> +Having a long walk before me and being due home for luncheon, I rose to +depart, and in so doing bestowed a vigorous kick upon Barone, in order +to test the truth of his master's theory. It worked. The glowering and +snarling ceased. He was a good dog--almost human. I think, with a few +more kicks, he might have grown quite friendly. +</p> + +<p> +Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its +starkness. A land without atmosphere, and deficient in every element of +the picturesque, whether of man or nature. Four harsh, dominant tones, +which never overlap or intermingle: blue sky, white snow, black +fir-woods, green fields, and, if you insist upon having a fifth, then +take--yes, take and keep--that theatrical pink Alpenglühen which is +turned on at fixed hours for the delectation of gaping tourists, like a +tap of strontium light or the display of electric fluid at Schaffhausen +Falls. +</p> + +<p> +"Did you observe the illumination of the Falls, sir, last night?" +</p> + +<p> +"How can one avoid seeing the beastly thing?" +</p> + +<p> +"Ah! Then we must add two francs to the bill." +</p> + +<p> +Many are the schools of art that have grown up in England and elsewhere +and flourished side by side, vying with one another to express the +protean graces of man, of architecture and domestic interior, of earth +and sky and sea. Where is the Swiss school? Where, in any public +gallery, will you find a masterpiece which triumphantly vindicates the +charm of Swiss scenery? You will, find it vindicated only on condensed +milk tins. These folks can write. My taste in lyrics may be peculiar, +but I used to love my Leuthold--I wish I had him here at this moment; +the bold strokes of Keller, the miniature work, the cameo-like touches, +of C. F. Meyer--they can write! They would doubtless paint, were there +anything to paint. Holbein: did the landscape of Switzerland seduce him? +And Boecklin? He fled out of its welter of raw materialism. Even his +Swiss landscapes are mediterraneanized. Boecklin---- +</p> + +<p> +And here, as the name formulated itself, that little sprite of Brahms, +that intermezzo, once more leapt to my side out of the parched fields. I +imagine it came less for my sake than for the companionship of Boecklin. +They were comrades in the spirit; they understood. What one had heard, +the other beheld--shapes of mystery, that peer out of forest gloom and +the blue hush of midday and out of glassy waters--shapes that shudder +and laugh. No doubt you may detect a difference between Boecklin's +creations and those of classic days; it is as if the light of his +dreamings had filtered through some medium, some stained-glass window in +a Gothic church which distorted their outlines and rendered them +somewhat more grotesque. It is the hand of time. The world has aged. Yet +the shapes are young; they do but change their clothes and follow the +fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal +can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the +serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway +region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the +greatest jest in the universe. At us.... +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +That lake of Conterano--the accent is on the ante-penultima--it looked +appetising on the map, all alone out there. It attracted me strongly. I +pictured a placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered among +wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam of its calm waters. Lakes are +so rare in Italy. During the whole of this summer I saw only one other, +fringed with the common English reed--two, rather, lying side by side, +one turbid and the other clear, and filling up two of those curious +circular depressions in the limestone. I rode past them on the watershed +behind Cineto Romano. These were sweet water. Of sulphur lakelets I also +saw two. +</p> + +<p> +Sitting on a stone into which the coldness of midnight had entered +(Alatri lies at a good elevation) I awaited my companion in the dusk of +dawn. Soon enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-hour's +shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri, and listening to the +plash of the fountain, is one of those memories of the town which are +graven most clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the very spot +whereon I sat. +</p> + +<p> +We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin with, profiting by some +short cuts through chestnut woods; turned to the right, ever ascending, +behind that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical hill; +thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the halts by the way. A decayed +roadside chapel with faded frescoes--a shepherd who played us some +melodies on his pipe--those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime, +glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth--the gateway of a +farmhouse being repaired--a reservoir of water full of newts--a +fascinating old woman who told us something about something--the distant +view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion +for lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in June? The days are so endless! +</p> + +<p> +At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the lake at our feet, +simmering in the noonday beams--an everyday sheet of water, brown in +colour, with muddy banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within +miles; one of those lakes which, by their periodical rising and sinking, +give so much trouble that there is talk, equally periodical, of draining +them off altogether. This one, they say, shifts continually and +sometimes reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in its oozy +bed. +</p> + +<p> +Here are countless frogs, and fish--tench; also a boat that belongs to +the man who rents the fishing. A sad accident happened lately with his +boat. A party of youngsters came for an outing and two boys jumped into +the tub, rowed out, and capsized it with their pranks. They were both +drowned--a painful and piteous death--a death which I have tried, by +accident, and can nowise recommend. They fished them out later from +their slimy couch, and found that they had clasped one another so +tightly in their mortal agony that it was deemed impious ever to +unloosen that embrace. So they were laid to rest, locked in each other's +arms. +</p> + +<p> +While my companion told me these things we had plodded further and +further along this flat and inhospitable shore, and grown more and more +taciturn. We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the +onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the parching drought of +August. Things looked bad. The luncheon hour was long past, and our +spirits began to droop. All my mellowness took flight; I grew snappy and +monosyllabic. Was there no shade? +</p> + +<p> +Yonder ... that dusky patch against the mountain? Brushwood of some +kind, without a doubt. The place seemed to be unattainable, and yet, +after an inordinate outlay of energy, we had climbed across those torrid +meadows. It proved to be a hazel copse mysteriously dark within, +voiceless, and cool as a cavern. +</p> + +<p> +Be sure that he who planted these hazels on the bleak hillside was no +common son of earth, but some wise and inspired mortal. My blessings on +his head! May his shadow never grow less! Or, if that wish be already +past fulfilment, may he dwell in Elysium attended by a thousand +ministering angels, every one of them selected by himself; may he +rejoice in their caresses for evermore. Naught was amiss. All conspired +to make the occasion memorable. I look back upon our sojourn among those +verdant hazels and see that it was good--one of those moments which are +never granted knowingly by jealous fate. So dense was the leafage in the +greenest heart of the grove that not a shred of sunlight, not a particle +as large as a sixpence, could penetrate to earth. We were drowned in +shade; screened from the flaming world outside; secure--without a care. +We envied neither God nor man. +</p> + +<p> +I thought of certain of my fellow-creatures. I often think of them. What +were they now doing? Taking themselves seriously and rushing about, as +usual, haggard and careworn--like those sagacious ants that scurry +hither and thither, and stare into each other's faces with a kind of +desperate imbecility, when some sportive schoolboy has kicked their +ridiculous nest into the air and upset all their solemn little +calculations. +</p> + +<p> +As for ourselves, we took our ease. We ate and drank, we slumbered +awhile, then joked and frolicked for five hours on end, or possibly six. +[<a href="#34">34</a>] I kept no count of what was said nor how the time flew by. I only +know that when at last we emerged from our ambrosial shelter the muscles +of my stomach had grown sore from the strain of laughter, and Arcturus +was twinkling overhead. +</p> + +<p> +THE END +</p> + +<p> + +</p> + +<p> + +INDEX +</p> + +<p> +Abbadé, author<br> +Abbadia San Salvatore<br> +Abruzzi, limestone deserts<br> +Acqua Acetosa, Rome<br> +Acqua santa, mineral fountain, its appalling effects<br> +Acque Vive, old Scanno<br> +Addison, J.<br> +Afforestation at Scanno<br> +Agave, plant; dislikes change of scene<br> +Alatri; its nameless tavern; citadel; ideal families at<br> +Alban volcanoes<br> +Alpenglühen, an abomination<br> +Amiata, mountain<br> +Anagni<br> +Analphabetics, their charm<br> +Anastasio, F.<br> +Aniene, river<br> +Anthology, Greek<br> +Anticoli<br> +Apennines, their general coloration<br> +Argos<br> +Aristotle<br> +Arno river, its colour-moods<br> +Artena<br> +Athene (Minerva), promontory and temple<br> +Attilio, a sagacious youngster<br> +</p> + +<p> +Bacon, <i>misquoted</i><br> +Baedeker, on wine of Scanno<br> +Banca d'ltalia, its <i>soi-disant</i> director makes a fool of himself<br> +"Barone," an almost human dog<br> +Bathing in Tiber<br> +Baudelaire, C.<br> +Bears of Pescasseroli, rapid breeders<br> +Beds in England, neolithic features of<br> +Belgrave Square, its legendary partridges<br> +Bellegra, village<br> +Beloch, J.<br> +Bennet, Dr. J. H.<br> +Bentham, J.<br> +Berceau, mountain<br> +Bessel, F. W.<br> +Betifuli, ancient Scanno<br> +Bigio, marble<br> +Birds, their conservative habits<br> +Blackberries in Italy<br> +Blasphemies, as a pick-me-up<br> +Blind, Mathilde<br> +Blue, basic note of Italian landscape<br> +Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau, its lightning methods<br> +Boecklin, A.<br> +Borghese Gardens<br> +Bournemouth<br> +Bowles, Dr. R.<br> +Brachycephalism, menace to humanity<br> +Brahms, J., his inspiration<br> +Breil<br> +Brewster, H. B.<br> +Buckle, H. T.<br> +Building materials, of Florence, impart peculiar character + to towns<br> +Bunbury, E. H., quoted<br> +Butter, French method of weighing, Italian regulations regarding +</p> + +<p> +Cacume, mountain<br> +Calypso, her island<br> +Cammaiore<br> +Camosciara, mountain<br> +Campagna of Rome<br> +Campanella, headland<br> +Campoli Apennino<br> +Capaccio, G. C.<br> +Cap Martin (Mentone), a vulgarized spot<br> +Capasso, B.<br> +Capranica<br> +Capri<br> +Carbineers, good men and questionable institution<br> +Carrara<br> +Carrion crows, relatively gay fowls<br> +Casamari convent<br> +Casanova, J.<br> +Cascine Gardens<br> +Cats in Rome, their distressful condition<br> +Cement floors, a detestable invention<br> +Cemetery of Mentone of Rome; Scanno; Olevano<br> +Censorship Department, gratifying interview at<br> +Cervesato, A.<br> +Chamois<br> +Chaucer<br> +Children, good company neglected in war-time<br> +China, fatal morality of pre-Tartar period<br> +Ciminian forest<br> +Cineto Romano<br> +Circe, nymph<br> +Cisterna, a death-trap<br> +Civilization, its characteristic<br> +Civitella<br> +Coal-supply, a sore subject in Italy<br> +Coliseum, flora and fauna of<br> +Collepardo<br> +Conscience, national versus individual<br> +Consumption on Riviera; at Olevano<br> +Conterano, lake<br> +Corsanico<br> +Corsi, F.<br> +Crapolla, sea-cove<br> +Crinagoras, poet<br> +Critics, spleenfully criticized<br> +Cro-Magnon racev +Cross, futility of bearing a +</p> + +<p> +Darwin<br> +Deakin, botanist<br> +Dennis, G.<br> +Deserters at Valmontone<br> +Deslys, Gaby<br> +Dewlessness, a peculiarity of Italian townsmen<br> +Dialects of Italy<br> +<i>Dictionary of National Biography</i><br> +Diodorus Siculus<br> +Dohrn, Dr. A.<br> +Donnorso, V.<br> +Doria, A.<br> +Dreams, recurrent; of flying<br> +Drowning accidents<br> +Drunkenness, not everybody's affair +</p> + +<p> +Eagles<br> +Education Office, a "Sleepy Hollow"<br> +Edwards, Tam, naturalist<br> +Elba<br> +Elder tree, a venerable growth<br> +England, to be visited as a tourist<br> +English language, should remain in flux<br> +Englishmen, change in race-characters; contrasted with Italians; + influence of new surroundings on<br> +Enthusiasm, unrewarded<br> +Eratosthenes<br> +Eugénie, Empress<br> +Experience, its uses +</p> + +<p> +Faces, possibilities of improving<br> +Ferentino<br> +Ferento, ruined city<br> +Filangieri, di Candida, R.<br> +Flies, a curse<br> +Florence, its river; Cascine Gardens; pavements; local blasphemies; + revisited<br> +Fontanella, village<br> +Food in war-time<br> +Football worth watching<br> +Fountains in Rome; responsible for shocking behaviour; in Villa Borghese<br> +France, its one irremediable drawback<br> +Frattura, village<br> +Frosinone, "Garibaldi" hotel; visited by Ramage<br> +Fumone<br> +Functionaries, social parasites<br> +</p> + +<p> +Gambling instinct, correlated with religion<br> +Gardeners, professional, imbeciles<br> +Gargiulli, O.<br> +Gautier, T.<br> +Germans, at Mentone; at Levanto; save oaks of Olevano; must follow + footsteps<br> +Ghosts, mankind surrounded by, in; away with them<br> +Giannettasio, N. P.v +Girtanner, Dr. A., beaver-specialist<br> +Giulio, a young reprobate<br> +Goethe, quoted<br> +Golden Ages of literature<br> +Gorbio<br> +Grant Duff, M. E.<br> +Greek words, surviving<br> +Grimaldi caves, incident at<br> +Grocery business, appeals to Frenchmen<br> +Gross feeders, beware of<br> +Grotta delle Palumbe<br> +Guardie regie, official loafers<br> +Gunther, Dr. A. +</p> + +<p> +H., Mr., an ardent book-lover<br> +Hares in Italy<br> +Hebrews of military age, their enviable immunity from conscription<br> +Henderson, Dr., an old tippler<br> +Heredity, speculations on<br> +Hermits in Italy<br> +Hippocrates<br> +Hohentwiel, mountain<br> +Homer<br> +Horace<br> +Housemaid, a noteworthy<br> +Hutton, E. +</p> + +<p> +Ierate, locality<br> +Imagination, needful to travel-literature,<br> +Imperialism in Italy<br> +Individual, contrasted with race<br> +Insomnia<br> +Intelligence, its two ingredients<br> +Isola Liri<br> +Italians, evolution of new type<br> +Italy, reasons for visiting; over-policed<br> +Ives, G. +</p> + +<p> +J. O. M., a memorable type<br> +Jefferies, R.<br> +Johnson, S.<br> +Johnston-Lavis, H. J.<br> +Jovana, meadow +</p> + +<p> +Keller, G.<br> +Kew Gardens<br> +King of Italy, protects bears<br> +Kingfisher, a wary old one<br> +Kneeling boy, statue<br> +Knop, Professor +</p> + +<p> +Lachner, V.<br> +Ladbroke Grove, its enlightened children<br> +Landlady, of Mentone; the<br> +London variety; she of Viareggio; of Florence<br> +Lante, Villa<br> +La Croce, mountain<br> +La Rocca, village<br> +Lawrence, D. H.<br> +Laws, raison d'etre of Italian<br> +Leuthold, H.<br> +Levanto, arrival at; situation; company at hotel; the local magistrate; + stroll to Monterosso<br> +Licenza<br> +Ligurians, their bad character<br> +Lizard, making a friend of; a disconsolate one<br> +Love affairs, Italian, how to conduct<br> +Lucian<br> +Lucretilis, mountain<br> +Lyme Regis +</p> + +<p> +Macaroni, war-time substitutes; the right kind<br> +Maccarese, village<br> +Machinery, cult of; depraves Italian character<br> +Madonna della Neve, chapel<br> +Madonna di Tranquillo, wayside shrine<br> +Malaria<br> +Mandela<br> +Marbles<br> +Mathew, Rev.<br> +Maudsley, H.<br> +Maupassant<br> +Mazzella, S.<br> +Megara<br> +Mentone, recent transformation of; landscape; vegetation; produces dull + schoolboys; prehistoric man of<br> +<i>Merle blanc</i>, a meritorious establishment<br> +Metaphysicians, atrophied poets<br> +Meyer, C. F.<br> +Meysenbug, Malwida von<br> +Michael Angelo; gets into trouble<br> +Migration of labourers, annual<br> +Mill, J. S.<br> +Militarism, the modern <i>infáme</i><br> +Milvain Bridge<br> +Mineralogy<br> +Momio, village<br> +Monogamous habits, bad for songsters<br> +Mons Canutarius<br> +Montalto, cliff<br> +Monte-Carlo, its well-groomed flowers; lamentable episode at Casino<br> +Montecelio<br> +Monterosso<br> +Mortella, cliff<br> +Mortola, village<br> +Mosquitoes in Rome<br> +Moulinet<br> +Mummies, Peruvian<br> +Munitions Office, develops a craving for bankers<br> +Mure of Caldwell, traveller<br> +Muretta, mountain<br> +Museum, Kircher; delle Terme<br> +Music<br> +Mythopoeic faculty, example of +</p> + +<p> +Neighbours, an over-rated class<br> +Nerano<br> +Newspaper reading, to be discouraged<br> +Nice<br> +Nietzsche, his blind spot<br> +Nightingales, too much of a good thing; cease from troubling<br> +Ninetta, an attractive maiden<br> +Nose, degeneration of +</p> + +<p> +Odysseus at Alatri<br> +Office-hunters, should respect their betters<br> +Olevano, its nightingales; oak grove at; first English resident at<br> +Opi, town<br> +Ornithology<br> +Orte, town<br> +Orvinio<br> +Ouida, her writings and character +</p> + +<p> +Paestum, roses of<br> +Pais, Prof. E.<br> +Palombaro<br> +Pantheon<br> +Patriotism, chilled<br> +Pavements, life on<br> +Peira Cava<br> +Perfumes, react on physiognomy<br> +Persico, G. B.<br> +Pescasseroli; its bears<br> +Peutinger Table<br> +Philosophers, contradistinguished from metaphysicians<br> +Piccadilly Goat<br> +Pietrasanta<br> +Pig, in distress<br> +Pines, at Levanto; at Viareggio<br> +Pisa in war-time<br> +Plaster-casts, how to dispose of<br> +Plato<br> +Pliny<br> +Pollius Felix<br> +Pontine Marshes<br> +Ponza island, megalithic ruin on<br> +<i>Portovenere</i>, marble<br> +Potter, Major Frederick, discovers Olevano<br> +Pottery, index of national taste<br> +Powder magazine, explosion of<br> +Preccia, mountain<br> +Prehistoric races, possible reasons for their extinction<br> +Press, the daily, its disastrous functions<br> +"Prison, The," a Socratic dialogue +</p> + +<p> +Race ideals, contrasted with individual<br> +Ramage, Craufurd Tait, a centrifugal Scotsman, his book and umbrella;<br> + mania for hurrying; other travels of; compared with Waterton;<br> + on Italian country life; gets drunk; makes formal profession of sobriety;<br> + his tolerance; sensitive to female charms; still hustling; his<br> + humanistic outlook; little failings; other publications; zest for<br> + knowledge; at Licenza<br> +Rat-hunts<br> +Ravens, their conjugal fidelity<br> +Reading, to be done with reverence<br> +Recomone, inlet<br> +Red colour, unfashionable in Italy; in favour with other races<br> +Rhetoric, necessary to success in courtship<br> +Rhodian marble<br> +<i>Ripa</i>, a liquid poison<br> +Rivers, Italian<br> +Riviera, French, its inanity; typical visitors to; lack of native genius<br> +Roccaraso<br> +Rojate<br> +Rolfe, Neville<br> +Romanelli, painter<br> +Romans and British, their world dominion; unimaginative people<br> +Rome, changed aspect of railway station; protestant cemetery; explosion<br> + near; its fountains; tramcar nuisance; shadelessness; disadvantages of<br> + site; evening breeze; neglected cats; bad food; its building stone;<br> + unpleasant experience at; dearth of apartments<br> +Rubinstein, A. +</p> + +<p> +Sagittario, stream<br> +Saint Domenico<br> +Saint-Jacques, chemin de<br> +Saint-Louis, bridge<br> +Saint Martin, his cave<br> +Saint Michael, hermitage<br> +Salatino, Dr.<br> +Salis-Marschlins, U. von<br> +San Costanzo, mountain and chapel<br> +San Remo<br> +San Rossore<br> +Sant' Egidio, hermitage<br> +Sant' Elia, farm<br> +Saracinesca, village<br> +Scalambra, mountain<br> +Scanno, cemetery at; memories of; revisited<br> +Schadona pass<br> +Scheffel, V. von<br> +Schopenhauer; anticipates "recognition marks"<br> +Scolastica, Saint<br> +Seaton<br> +Sebastiani, A.<br> +Segni<br> +Self-indulgence, a debased expression<br> +Sergi, Prof. G.<br> +Serpentaro, oak grove<br> +Serpents, with ears; human hatred of<br> +Serrano, village<br> +Serravezza<br> +Shelley, an evangelist; at Viareggio; recommends caverns to his readers, + but lives comfortably himself<br> +Sicilians<br> +Siena, in winter; a Florentine's opinion of<br> +Sirena, survival of name<br> +Siren islets (Galli); ruin on<br> +Sirocco in Rome<br> +Sitting still, the true traveller's gift<br> +Sleep, its sacred nature<br> +Smollett<br> +Snakes<br> +Snow, Dr. H.<br> +Sora<br> +Soracte, mountain<br> +Soriano; its pleasant tavern<br> +Sospel<br> +Spezia<br> +Spy-mania in Italy<br> +Stabiae (Castellamare)<br> +Statius<br> +Strabo<br> +Strega liqueur, horribly adulterated; how to stop the scandal<br> +Subiaco, strawberries at<br> +Sunburn, pretty effects of<br> +Surrentum<br> +Swinburne, H.<br> +Switzerland, its manifold beauties<br> +Symonds, J. A. +</p> + +<p> +Taxidermy, study of<br> +Telephone, an abomination<br> +Termini, village<br> +Terrata, mountain<br> +Theophrastus<br> +Tiber<br> +Tiryns, citadel<br> +Torco, village<br> +Trafalgar Square, its fauna<br> +Trajan's Forum<br> +Tramcars, an abomination<br> +Tree-creeper, bird<br> +Trevi Fountain<br> +Trifles, importance of<br> +Truth-telling, a matter of longitude; not in vogue to-day<br> +Tuscan speech, its peculiar savour +</p> + +<p> +Urquehart, D. +</p> + +<p> +Valiante, Marquis<br> +Valmontone; its upper terrace; capture of a deserter at, <i>Pergola</i>, tavern<br> +Velino, mountain<br> +Velletri<br> +Venice<br> +Ventimiglia, wine of<br> +<i>Verde antico</i>, marble<br> +Veroli<br> +Via Appia; Flaminia; Labiena; Nomentana<br> +Viareggio, an objectionable place; its Vittoria hotel; pine woods<br> +Victorians, their perverse sense of duty<br> +Villalago<br> +Villetta Barrea<br> +Viterbo<br> +Voss, R. +</p> + +<p> +Wallace, A. R.<br> +Walpole, Horace<br> +War, the present, local opinions concerning; repercussion on thoughtful<br> + non-combatants; effects on agriculture +War Office, pandemonium; confuses Turkish and Russian<br> +Waterton, C., a freak<br> +Whistling, denotes mental vacuity<br> +White, colour, unpopular in South Italy<br> +Will-o'-the-wisp<br> +Wine, red and black<br> +Wolf, at Mentone; at Frattura<br> +Wryneck, bird +</p> + +<p> +Young, J.<br> +Youth, should be temperate<br> +Yucca, plant +</p> + +<p> +Zagarola<br> +"Zone of defense," drawbacks of<br> +Zurich, its attractions +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +<a name="1">1.</a> There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to see +it. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="2">2.</a> Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be +confounded with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian marble +of the ancients. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="3">3.</a> See <i>North American Review</i>, September, 1913. +Ramage's Calabrian tour of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky +undertaking. The few travellers who then penetrated into this country +kept to the main roads and never moved without a military escort. One of +them actually <i>hired a brigand</i> as a protection. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="4">4.</a> Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle +in the stream-bed--mere disconnected pools to show where the river was, +and will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence. Grant Duff +says he has seen the Arno "blue." So have I: a hepatic blue. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="5">5.</a> It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown +Prince. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="6">6.</a> He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="7">7.</a> I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method +of the Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older +monuments are in better condition than the new ones. We live and learn. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="8">8.</a> The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters, +"... I am writing without due consideration of the interesting point. +But this possible explanation occurs to me: children are active motor +machines, always restless and moving when not asleep. When asleep, the +motor tendencies, being not quite passive, translate themselves into the +dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant or painful, according to +bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As the muscles are almost passive +in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming activity--into dreams of flying +when bodily states are pleasant, into falling down precipices, etc., +when they are out of sorts. This is quite a hasty reflection...." +</p> + +<p> +<a name="9">9.</a> "The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams and +Norgate, 1891.) +</p> + +<p> +<a name="10">10.</a> Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your +reference to Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I +thought I was the first to fully point out. It is a most interesting +anticipation. I do not read German, but from what I have heard of his +works he was the last man I should have expected to make such an acute +suggestion in Natural History." +</p> + +<p> +<a name="11">11.</a> Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="12">12.</a> <i>Fecit!</i> He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on +the 4th November, 1920. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="13">13.</a> This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166, "I +have lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine." We learn +from the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i> that he was born in +1803; he must therefore have been twenty-five years old when he bemused +the coastguard. Only twenty-five; and already at this stage. We are +further told that he was tutor to somebody's son. Unhappy child! +</p> + +<p> +<a name="14">14.</a> Not all of them are true thistles. Abbadé's <i>Guide to +the Abruzzi</i> (1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="15">15.</a> Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in +speaking of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that +name--a love intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for +misuse of a good word. I am consoled by the New York <i>Dial</i> calling +my plot "rightly filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="16">16.</a> Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making +a scientific collection of local imprecations--abusive, vituperative or +profane expletives; swear-words, in short--enriched with elaborate +commentary. I would gladly print this little study in folk-lore as an +appendix to the present volume, were it fit for publication. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="17">17.</a> Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made +considerable progress in the peninsula. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="18">18.</a> This is a survival of the Greek <i>kakkabos</i>. Gargiuli +and others have garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names +here, and to their list may be added that of the rock on which stood the +villa of Pollius Felix; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but used to +be called <i>Petrapoli</i>; pure Greek: Pollio's rock. There is still a +mine of such material to be exploited by all who care to study the +vernacular. The giant euphorbia, for instance, common on these hills, is +locally known as "totomaglie"; pure Greek again: <i>tithymalos</i>. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="19">19.</a> Query: whether there be no connection between +brachycephalism and this modern deification of machinery? +</p> + +<p> +<a name="20">20.</a> Robert L. Bowles, M.D. "Sunburn on the Alps" (<i>Alpine +Journal</i>, November, 1888) and "The Influence of Light on the Skin" +(<i>British Journal of Dermatology</i>, No. 105, Vol. 9). +</p> + +<p> +<a name="21">21.</a> It has now been cleaned--with inevitable results. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="22">22.</a> Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's +diary. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="23">23.</a> Since this was written (1917) the condition of these +beasts has improved. Somebody now feeds them--which could hardly have +been expected during those stressful times of war, when bread barely +sufficed for the human population. They are also fewer in numbers. Their +owners, I fancy, can afford to keep them at home once more. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="24">24.</a> This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious +letter from the old fellow. "The question you ask is one of great +ornithological importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I +am absolutely afraid to ask any questions in the British Museum, as they +jump at an idea and cut the ground from under the original man's feet. +This I regret to say is my experience. I have been asked what does it +matter who makes the discovery? I reply, 'Render unto Caesar, etc.' If +you are going to work it out, <i>keep it dark</i>. The British Museum +have not the necessary specimens--in this country I believe it is not +known how the change takes place. I tried some years ago to work it out +with live specimens, but failed because I could not get young birds. Now +in answer to your question, my belief is that the young bird moults into +the winter plumages direct and that this is changed into the full +plumage in spring either by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips +of the feathers. <i>This is private because it is theoretical</i>, and +for your private use to verify...." +</p> + +<p> +Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Günther wrote: "The skin differs in +nothing from that of Phoca foetida. In the skull I observe that the + +nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in typical specimens from +the northern coasts. There is also a remarkable thinness of bone, a want +of osseous substance; but it is impossible to say whether this is due to +altered physical conditions or should be accounted for by the youth of +the specimen, or whether it is an individual peculiarity." +</p> + +<p> +<a name="25">25.</a> Winter 1882-1883; possibly later. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="26">26.</a> The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, +seems to have been the Caucasus. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="27">27.</a> I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track +the legend to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed +the ordinary tourists' map of the district. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="28">28.</a> Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions +of the <i>guardie regie</i>, which threaten to absorb the entire youth +of Italy. At this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing +accommodation all over the peninsula; in Rome alone, they say, +apartments are needed for 10,000 practically homeless persons, and a +mathematician may calculate the number of houses required to contain +them. How shall they ever be built, if all the potential builders are +loafing about in uniforms at the public expense? +</p> + +<p> +<a name="29">29.</a> Some of these Beautiful Thoughts went through more than +one edition. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="30">30.</a> From an old article: "I was pleased to observe on Ponza +the relics of a great pre-Roman civilization. Above the town, where the +cemetery now stands, is a likely site for a citadel, and on examining it +from the sea I noticed, sure enough, a few blocks of prehistoric +structure of the so-called Cyclopean type underneath a corner of the +cemetery wall. There is a portion in better preservation between the +'Baths of Pilate' and the harbour, where a little path winds up from the +sea. The blocks are joined without mortar, and some of them are over a +metre in length. This megalithic wall may be taken to be contemporaneous +with similar works of defence found in various parts of Italy, but I +believe its existence on Ponza has not yet been recorded. Livy says that +Volscians inhabited the island till they were supplanted by the Romans, +and a tradition preserved by Strabo and Virgil locates here the palace +of the enchantress Circe, who transformed the companions of Ulysses into +bristly swine...." Some one may have anticipated me here again, as did +Salis-Marschlins in the eighteenth century with those roses of Passtum +whose disappearance Ramage, like every one else, laments--those roses +which I thought I was the first to re-discover. They grow on the spot in +considerable quantities, though one needs good eyes to see them. They +are not flourishing as of yore, being dwarfs not more than a few inches +in height. One which I carried away and kept three years in a pot and +six more in the earth grew to a length of about sixteen feet, and is +probably alive at this moment, I never saw a flower. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="31">31.</a> For the abject condition of these slaves (such they are) +see Chapter VII of <i>The Roman Campagna</i> by Arnaldo Cervesato. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="32">32.</a> Written in 1917. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="33">33.</a> D.H. Lawrence: <i>Twilight in Italy</i>. +</p> + +<p> +<a name="34">34.</a> The title <i>Alone</i> strikes me, on reflection, as +rather an inapt one for this volume. Let it stand! +</p> + +<hr> + +<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> +<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> +<BR> +<BR> +<BR> +<BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alone, by Norman Douglas + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE *** + +***** This file should be named 7380-h.htm or 7380-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/3/8/7380/ + +Produced by Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alone + +Author: Norman Douglas + +Posting Date: June 16, 2013 [EBook #7380] +Release Date: January, 2005 +First Posted: April 22, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE *** + + + + +Produced by Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + +ALONE + +BY + +NORMAN DOUGLAS + +AUTHOR OF + +"SOUTH WIND," "THEY WENT," "TOGETHER," ETC. + + + + + + + +TO HIS FRIEND + +EDWARD HUTTON + +WHO PRINTED SOME OF THESE TRIVIALITIES + +IN THAT "ANGLO-ITALIAN REVIEW" + +WHICH DESERVED A BETTER FATE + + + + + + +CONTENTS + +INTRODUCTION + +MENTONE + +LEVANTO + +SIENA + +PISA + +VIAREGGIO (February) + +VIAREGGIO (May) + +ROME + +OLEVANO + +VALMONTONE + +SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO + +ROME + +SORIANO + +ALATRI + + +Introduction + +What ages ago it seems, that "Great War"! + +And what enthusiasts we were! What visionaries, to imagine that in such +an hour of emergency a man might discover himself to be fitted for some +work of national utility without that preliminary wire-pulling which was +essential in humdrum times of peace! How we lingered in long queues, and +stamped up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls, waiting, only +waiting, to be asked to do something for our country by any little +guttersnipe who happened to have been jockeyed into the requisite +position of authority! What innocents.... + +I have memories of several afternoons spent at a pleasant place near St. +James's Park station, whither I went in search of patriotic employment. +It was called, I think, Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau (or +something equally lucid and concise), and professed to find work for +everybody. Here, in a fixed number of rooms, sat an uncertain number of +chubby young gentlemen, all of whom seemed to be of military age, or +possibly below it; the Emergency Bureau was then plainly--for it may +have changed later on--a hastily improvised shelter for privileged +sucklings, a kind of nursery on advanced Montessori methods. Well, that +was not my concern. One must trust the Government to know its own +business. + +During my second or third visit to this hygienic and well-lighted +establishment I was introduced, most fortunately, into the sanctuary of +Mr. R----, whose name was familiar to me. Was he not his brother's +brother? He was. A real stroke of luck! + +Mr. R----, a pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as +I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous +tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant +who tries to look like daddy. What might he do for me? + +I explained. + +We had a short talk, during which various forms were conscientiously +filled up as to my qualifications, such as they were. Of course, there +was nothing doing just then; but one never knows, does one? Would I mind +calling again? + +Would I mind? I should think not. I should like nothing better. It did +one good to be in contact with this youthful optimist and listen to his +blithe and pleasing prattle; he was so hopeful, so philosophic, so +cheery; his whole nature seemed to exhale the golden words: "Never say +die." And no wonder. He ought to have been at the front, but some +guardian angel in the haute finance had dumped him into this soft and +safe job: it was enough to make anybody cheerful. One should be +cautious, none the less, how one criticises the action of the +authorities. May be they kept him at the Emergency Bureau for the +express purpose of infusing confidence, by his bright manner, into the +minds of despondent patriots like myself, and of keeping the flag flying +in a general way--a task for which he, a German Jew, was pre-eminently +fitted. + +Be that as it may, his consolatory tactics certainly succeeded in my +case, and I went home quite infected with his rosy cheeks and words. +Yet, on the occasion of my next visit a week or two later, there was +still nothing doing--not just then, though one never knows, does one? + +"Tried the War Office?" he added airily. + +I had. + +Who hadn't? + +The War Office was a nightmare in those early days. It resembled +Liverpool Street station on the evening of a rainless Bank Holiday. The +only clear memory I carried away--and even this may have been due to +some hallucination--was that of a voice shouting at me through the +rabble: "Can you fly?" Such was my confusion that I believe I answered +in the negative, thereby losing, probably, a lucrative billet as +Chaplain to the Forces or veterinary surgeon in the Church Lads' +Brigade. Things might have been different had my distinguished cousin +still been on the spot; I, too, might have been accommodated with a big +desk and small work after the manner of the genial Mr. R----. He died in +harness, unfortunately, soon after the outbreak of war. + +I said to my young friend: + +"Everybody tells one to try the War Office--I don't know why. Of course +I tried it. I wish I had a shilling for every hour I wasted in that +lunatic asylum." + +"Ah!" he replied. "I feel sure a good many men would like to be paid at +that rate. Anyhow, trust me. We'll fix you up, sooner or later. (He kept +his word.) Why not have a whack at the F.O., meanwhile?" + +"Because I have already had a whack at it." + +I then possessed, indeed, in reply to an application on my part, a +holograph of twelve pages in the elegant calligraphy of H.M. +Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the same gentleman who was +viciously attacked by the Pankhurst section for his supposed +pro-Germanism. It conveyed no grain of hope. Other Government +Departments, he opined, might well be depleted at this moment; the +Foreign Office was in exactly the reverse position. It overflowed with +diplomatic and consular officials returned, perforce, from belligerent +countries, and now in search of occupation. Was it not natural, was it +not right, to give the preference to them? One was really at a loss to +know what to do with all those people. He had tried, hitherto in vain, +to find some kind of job for his own brother. + +A straightforward, convincing statement. Acting on the hint, I visited +the Education Office, notoriously overstaffed since Tudor days; it might +now be emptier; clerical work might be obtained there in substitution of +some youngster who had been induced to join the colours. I poked my nose +into countless recesses, and finally unearthed my man. + +They were full up, said Mr. F----. + +Full up? + +Full up. + +Then, after some further conversation as to my capacities, he thought he +might find me employment as teacher of science in the country, to +replace somebody or other. + +The notion was distasteful to me. I am not averse to learning from the +young; I only once tried to teach them--at a ragged school, long since +pulled down, near Ladbroke Grove, where I soon discovered that my little +pupils knew a great deal more than I did, more, indeed, than was good +for body or soul. Still, this was a tangible, definite offer of +unremunerative but at the same time semi-pseudo-patriotic work, not to +be sneezed at. An idea occurred to me. + +"Supposing I stick it out and give satisfaction, shall I be able to +interchange later into this department? I am more fitted for office +duties. In fact, I have had a certain experience of them." + +"No chance of that," he replied. "It is the German system. Their +schoolmasters are sometimes taken to do administrative work at +head-quarters, and vice versa. Our English rule is: Once a teacher, +always a teacher." + +Here was a deadlock. For in such matters as teaching, a man may put a +strain on himself for a certain length of time; he may even be a +success, up to a point. But if he lacks the temperamental gift of +holding classes, the results in the long run will not be fair to the +children, to say nothing of himself. With reluctance I rose to depart, +Mr. F---- adding, by way of letting me down gently: + +"Tried the War Office?" + +I had. + +If the War Office was too lively, this place was too slumberous by half. +A cobwebby, Rip-van-Winkle-ish atmosphere brooded about those passages +and chambers. One could not help thinking that a little "German system" +might work wonders here. And this is merely one of several similar sites +I explored, and endeavoured to exploit, for patriotic purposes; I am +here only jotting down a few of the more important of those that occur +to me. + +And, oh! for the brush of a Hogarth to depict the gallery of faces with +which I came in contact as I went along. They were all different, yet +all alike; different in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and +self-sufficiency, but plainly of the same parentage--British to the +backbone; British of the wrong kind, with a sprinkling of Welshmen, +Irishmen, and Jews. Not a Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of +complacent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous by their +absence; they were otherwise engaged, in the field, the colonies, the +engine-room. I can only remember one single exception to this rule, this +type; it was the head of the Censorship Department. + +For of course I offered my services there, climbing up that decent +red-carpeted stairway, and glad to find myself among respectable +surroundings after all the unseemly holes I had lately wallowed in. I +sent up a card which, to my surprise, caused me to be ushered forthwith +into the presence of the Chief, who may have heard of my existence from +some mutual friend. Here, at all events, was a man with a face worth +looking at, a man who had done notable things in his day. What a relief, +moreover, to be able to talk to a gentleman for a change! I wished I +could have had him to myself for five minutes; there were one or two +things one would have liked to learn from him. Unfortunately he was +surrounded, as such people are, by half a dozen of the characteristic +masks. For the rest, His ex-Excellency seemed to be ineffably bored with +his new functions. + +"What on earth brings you here?" he began in a fascinatingly +absent-minded style, as if he had known me all my life, and with an +inimitable nasal drawl. "This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten! I +cannot recommend it. Not your style at all, I should say." + +"But, my dear Sir F----, I am not applying for your job. Something +subordinate, I mean. Anything, anything." + +"What? Down there, cutting up newspapers at twenty-two shillings a week? +No, no. Let's have your address, and we will communicate with you when +we find something worth your while. By the way, have you tried the War +Office?" + +I had. + +And it stands to reason that I tried the Munitions more than once. + +It was my rare good fortune--luck pursued me on these patriotic +expeditions--to come face to face, at the Munitions, with the fons et +origo; the deputy fountain-head, that is to say; a very peculiar +private-secretary-in-chief for that department. He was a perpendicular, +iron-grey personality, if I remember rightly, who smelt of some +indifferent hair-wash and lost no time in giving you to understand that +he was preternaturally busy. + +Did I know anything about machinery? + +Nothing to speak of, I replied. As co-manager and proprietor of some +cotton mills employing several hundred hands for spinning and weaving, I +naturally learnt how to handle a fair number of machines--sufficiently +well, at all events, to start and stop them and tell the girls how to +avoid being scalped or having their arms torn out whenever I happened to +be passing that way. This life also gave me some experience, useful +perhaps at the Munitions, in dealing with factory-hands---- + +That was not the kind of machinery he meant. Did I know anything about +banking? + +Nothing at all. + +"You are like everybody else," he replied with a weary sigh, as much as +to say: How am I going to run the British Empire with a collection of +imbeciles like this? "We have several thousands of applicants like +yourself," he went on. "But I will put your name down. Come again." + +"You are very kind." + +"Do call again," he added, in his best private-secretary manner. + +I called again a couple of weeks later. It struck me, namely, that they +might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this +time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man +with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things--one who, +moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department +and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for +certain labours--once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and +anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was +one? + +"I called about a fortnight ago. You have my name down." + +"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have such thousands of applicants. I +remember you! A mechanic, aren't you?" + +"No. And you asked me if I understood banking, and I said I didn't." + +"What a pity. Now if you knew about banking----" + +Nothing, evidently, had been done about my application, nor, for that +matter, about those thousands of others. We were being played with. I +began to feel grumpy. It was a lovely afternoon, and I remembered, with +regret, that I had thrown over an engagement to go for a walk with a +friend at Wimbledon. About this hour, I calculated, we should be +strolling along Beverley Brook or through the glades of Coombe Woods +with sunshine filtering through the birches overhead; it would have been +more pleasant, and far more instructive, than wasting my time with a +hatchet-faced automaton like this. That comes, I thought, of being +patriotic. I observed: + +"Your department seems to require only bankers and mechanics. Would it +not be well to advertise the fact and save trouble and time to those +thousands of applicants who, you say, are in the same predicament as +myself? I came here to do national work of some general kind." + +"So I gather. And if you understood banking----" + +"If I did, I should be a banker at my time of life--don't you see?--and +lending money to you people, and giving you good advice, instead of +asking you for employment. Isn't that fairly obvious? As a matter of +fact, my acquaintance with banking is limited to a knowledge of how to +draw cheques, and even that useful accomplishment is fast fading from my +memory, under the stress of the times." + +Being a Welshman--so I presume, from his name--he condescended to smile +faintly, but not for long; his salary was too high. As for myself, I +refrained from saying a few harsher things I was minded to say; indeed, +I made myself so vastly agreeable, after my own private recipe, that he +was quite touched. He remarked: + +"I think I had better put your name down, although we have thousands of +applicants, you know. Call again, won't you?" + +For which I humbly thanked him, instead of saying, as I ought to have +done: + +"You go to blazes. The public is a pack of idiots to run after people +who merely keep them loitering about while they feather their own nests. +We are out to lick the Germans, and yours is not the way to do it." + +Did I understand banking? The full ineptitude of this conundrum only +dawned upon me by degrees. Manifestly, if I understood banking, I might +do some specialised kind of work for the Government. But in that case I +would not apply to the Munitions. Granted they wanted bankers. Well, +there was my friend M----, renowned in the City as a genius for banking; +he could have saved them untold thousands of pounds. They would have +none of him. They sent him into the trenches, where he was duly shot. + +How easy it is for a disappointed place-seeker to jibe and rail against +the powers that be, especially when he is not in full possession of the +data! For all I know, they may have discovered my friend M---- to be a +dangerous character, and have been only too glad to remove him out of +society without unnecessary fuss, in an outwardly honourable fashion, +with a view to saving his poor but respectable parents the humiliating +experience of a criminal trial and possible execution in the family. + +If I understood banking ... why did they want bankers at this +institution? Ah, it was not my business to probe into such mysteries of +administration. To my limited intelligence it would seem that the mere +fact of a man applying at the Munitions was prima facie evidence that +banking was not one of his accomplishments. It seemed to me, +furthermore, that there was no end to such "ifs"--patriotic or +otherwise. If I were a woman, for instance, I would promptly aid the +cause by jumping into a nurse's outfit, telling improper stories to the +Tommies, and getting myself photographed for the Press every morning. +But I am only a man. If I were a high-class trumpeter, I could qualify +for a job in one of the Allied Armies or, failing that, on Judgment Day. +But I can only strum the piano. And if the moon were made of green +cheese, we might all try to get hold of a slice of it, mightn't we?... + +Such was my pigheadedness, my boyish zeal, my belief in human nature or +perverse sense of duty, that I actually broke my vow and returned to +that ridiculous establishment. Yes, I "called again," flattering myself +with the conjecture that, even if they had not yet obtained a requisite +amount of bankers and mechanics, and even if persons of my particular +aptitudes were still a drug in the market, there might nevertheless be +room, amid the ramifications and interstices of so great a department, +for a man or two who could help to count up or pack munitions, or, if +that proposal were hopelessly wide of the mark, for the services of +something even more recondite and exotic--an intelligent corpse-washer, +for instance, or half a dozen astrologers. I felt I could distinguish +myself, at a national crisis like this, in either capacity. Anyhow, it +was only one more afternoon wasted--one out of how many! + +This time I saw Mr. W----. Though I had never met him in the flesh, I +once enjoyed the privilege of perusing a manuscript from his pen--a +story about a girl in Kew Gardens. A nice-looking young Hebrew was Mr. +W----. He had made himself indispensable, somehow or other, to the +Minister, and would doubtless by this time have been pitchforked into +some permanent and prominent job, but for that unfortunate name of his, +with its strong Teutonic flavour. + +This, by the way, was about the eighth official of his tribe, and of his +age, I had come across in the course of my recent peregrinations. How +did they get there? Tell me, who can. Far be it from me to disparage the +race of Israel. I have gained the conviction--firm-fixed, now, as the +Polar Star--that the Hebrew is as good a man as the Christian. Yet one +would like to know their method, their technique, in this instance. How +was the thing done? How did they manage it, these young Jews, all +healthy-looking and of military age--how did they contrive to keep out +of the Army? Was there some secret society which protected them? Or were +they all so preposterously clever that the Old Country would straightway +evaporate into thin air unless they sat in some comfortable office, +while our own youngsters were being blown to pieces out yonder? + +Mr. W----, I regret to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the +Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence, +doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere +of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his manner +towards me was freezingly non-committal--worthy of the best Anglo-Saxon +traditions. + +Had I come a little earlier, he avowed, he might perhaps have been able +to squeeze me into one of his departments--thus spake this infant: "One +of my departments." As it was, he feared there was nothing doing; +nothing whatsoever; not just then. Tried the War Office? + +I had. + +I even visited, though only twice, an offshoot of that establishment in +Victoria Street near the Army and Navy Stores, where candidates for the +position of translator--quasi-confidential work and passable pay, five +pounds a week--were interviewed. On the second occasion, after waiting +in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters such as haunt +the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a board of reverend +elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but prolonged, as to my +qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic affair. Could I +decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their toughest one, I +said. No! It was merely a pro forma question; they had enough German +translators on the staff. So the interrogation went on. They were going +to make sure of their man, in whom, I must say, they took little +interest save when they learnt that he had passed a Civil Service +examination in Russian and another in International Law. At that +moment--though I may be mistaken--they seemed to prick up their ears. +Not long afterwards I was allowed to depart, with the assurance that I +might hear further. + +Their inquiries into my attainments and references must have given +satisfaction, for in the fulness of time a missive arrived to the effect +that, assuming me to be a competent Turkish scholar, they would be glad +to see me again with a view to a certain vacancy. + +Turkish--a language I had not mentioned to them, a language of which I +never possessed more than fifty words, every one of them forgotten long +years ago. + +"How very War Office," I thought. + +These good people were mixing up Turkish and Russian--a natural error, +when one comes to think of it, for, though the respective tongues might +not be absolutely identical, yet the countries themselves were +sufficiently close together to account for a little slip like this. + +Was it a slip? Who knows? It is so easy to criticise when one is not +fully informed about things. They may have suggested my acting as +Turkish translator for reasons of their own--reasons which I cannot +fathom, but which need not therefore be bad ones. Chagrined +office-hunters like myself are prone to be bitter. In an emergency of +this magnitude a citizen should hesitate before he finds fault with the +wisdom of those whom the nation has chosen to steer it through troubled +waters. No carping! You only hamper the Government. The general public +should learn to keep a civil tongue in its head. Theirs but to do and +die. + +None the less, it was about this time that I began to experience certain +moments of despondency, and occasionally let a whole day slip by without +endeavouring to be of use to The Cause--moments when, instead of asking +myself, "What have I done for my country?" I asked, "What has my country +done for me?"--moments when I envied the hotel night-porters, +taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling flowers in Piccadilly +Circus who had something more sensible to do than to bother their heads +about trying to be patriotic, and getting snubbed for their pains. Yet, +with characteristic infatuation for hopeless ventures, I persevered. +Another "whack" at the F.O. leading to another holograph, two more +whacks at the Censorship, interpreter jobs, hospital jobs, God knows +what--I persevered, and might for the next three years have been kicking +my heels, like any other patriot, in the corridor of some dingy +Government office at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-jumpers, +but for a God-sent little accident, the result of sheer boredom, which +counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean. + +Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment, than she had ever yet +been. For on the day prior to my departure I received a communication +from the Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose methods of work, it +was now apparent, were as expeditious as its own name was brief. That +hopeful Mr. R----, that bubbling young optimist who had so +conscientiously written down a number of my qualifications, such as they +were--he was keeping his promise after months, and months, and months. +Never say die. The dear little fellow! What job had he captured for me? + +An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages to commence at 17s. +6d. per week. + +H'm. + +The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but I like to think that +it included the free use of the lavatory, if there happened to be one on +the premises. + +So luck pursued me to the end, though it never quite caught me up. For +bags were packed, and tickets taken. And therefore: + +"What did you do in the Great War, grandpapa?" + +"I loafed, my boy." + +"That was naughty, grandpapa." + +"Naughty, but nice...." + + + + +ALONE + +Mentone + +Italiam petimus.... + +Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of +the trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, +and forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours. +What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and +friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic +fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot +from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me on these +shores, where life is spent in a round of trivialities. + +One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from Nice, at last found +himself at the door of "the inn." The inn.... Are there any inns left at +Mentone? + +A propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs. At the present +moment, twenty-two of the principal hotels and pensions of Mentone are +closed, because owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does not this +speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton enterprise? Where, in a German +town of 18,000 inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such establishments +in the hands of Frenchmen? + +The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either among the tombs of that +cemetery overhead, studying sepulchral inscriptions and drawing +deductions, from what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality +and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the relative number of +consumptives here interred. Sixty per cent, shall we say? Or else, in +the streets of the town, I catch myself endeavouring--hitherto without +success--to count up the number of grocers' shops. They are far in +excess of what is needful. Now, why? Well, your tailor or hatter or +hosier--he makes a certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he +does not sell them at every moment of the day. The other, quite apart +from small advantages to be gained owing to the ever-shifting prices of +his wares, is ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of +which he makes a small gain. The grocery business commends itself warmly +to the French genius for garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I +fancy, will you see butter more meticulously weighed than here. Buy a +ton of it, and they will replace on their counter a fragment of the +weight and size of a postage stamp, rather than let the balance descend +on your side. + +And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one ever again escape from +Mentone? It may well be colder in Italy, but anything is preferable to +this inane Riviera existence.... + +I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to discommend them, for the +simple reason that, if they have proved bad, I smile to think of other +men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good +ones--why, only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however, I +hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to +return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for withholding +the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite unpretentious place +of entertainment that well deserves its name--white blackbirds being +rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is excellent--it has a +cachet of its own; the wine more than merely good. And this is +surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped +down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor +though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the +palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to anything else, +as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine hereabouts +that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you adventure into +the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your +trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a good name for +these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black currant enters +largely into their composition, though not in sufficient quantity to +render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little problem for the +oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or climate or treatment +can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anything +drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, a stone's throw +eastwards, can boast of its San Biagio, Rossese, Latte, Dolceacqua and +other noble growths, the like of which are not to be found along the +whole length of the French Riviera? + +Having pastured the inner man, to his complete satisfaction, at the +hospitable Merle Blanc, our traveller will do well to pasture his eyes +on the plants in the Casino gardens. Whoever wants to see flowers and +trees on their best behaviour, must come to Monte Carlo, where the +spick-and-span Riviera note is at its highest development. Not a leaf is +out of place; they have evidently been groomed and tubbed and manicured +from the hour of their birth. And yet--is it possible? Lurking among all +this modern splendour of vegetation, as though ashamed to show their +faces, may be discerned a few lowly olive trees. Well may they skulk! +For these are the Todas and Veddahs, the aboriginals of Monte Carlo, who +peopled its sunny slopes in long-forgotten days of rustic life--once +lords of the soil, now pariahs. What are they doing here? And how comes +it that the eyesore has not yet been detected and uprooted by those +keen-sighted authorities that perform such wonders in making the visitor +feel at home, and hush up with miraculous dexterity everything in the +nature of a public scandal? + +In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial Riviera tale. There +was an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who +breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all +the better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily +at the tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought, +and therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea. +Not unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen--they +might have been Russian princes--pounced upon her and led her to that +underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial +attendance. He brushed aside her explanations. + +"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself. +But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has a +reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels----" + +"I tell you it was only aspirin." + +"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us +not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death." + +"Aspirin, I tell you----" + +"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force." + +The stomach-pump was produced. + +It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is +unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless +water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland +is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or +content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all +progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk +along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once in a +lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap Martin, if only in +memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who, he +asks--who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape St. +Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug villas +of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugenie), to say nothing of +that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures the country +for leagues around. + +On other occasions you may find your way towards evening up to Gorbio +and stay for supper, provided you do not mind being cheated. Or wander +further afield, over Sospel to Breil by the old path--note the lavender: +they make a passable perfume of it--or else to Moulinet (famous for bad +food and a mastodontic breed of mosquitoes) and thence along the +stream--note the bushes of wild box--and over a wooded ridge to the +breezy heights of Peira Cava, there to dream away the daylight under the +pines. These are summer rambles. At present the snow lies deep. + +One of my favourite excursions has been up the so-called Berceau, the +cradle-shaped hill which dominates Mentone on the east. I was there +to-day for a solitary luncheon, resting awhile in the timbered saddle +between the peaks. The summit is only about five minutes' walk from this +delectable grove, but its view inland is partially intercepted by a +higher ridge. From here, if you are in the mood, you may descend +eastward over the Italian frontier, crossing the stream which is spanned +lower down by the bridge of St. Louis, and find yourself at Mortola +Superiore (try the wine) and then at Mortola proper (try the wine). +Somewhere in this gulley was killed the last wolf of these regions; so a +grey-haired local Nimrod told me. He had wrought much mischief in his +time. That is to say, he was not killed, but accidentally +drowned--drowned in one of those artificial reservoirs which are +periodically filled and drawn off for irrigating the gardens lower down; +an ignoble death, for a wolf! A goat lay drowned beside him. The event, +he reckoned, must have taken place half a century ago. Since then, the +wolf has never been seen. + +This afternoon, however, I preferred to repose in that shady dell, while +a flock of goldcrests were investigating the branches overhead and two +buzzards cruised, in dreamy spirals, about the sunny sky of midday; to +repose; to indulge my genius and review the situation; to profit, in +short, by that sense of aloofness peculiar to such aerial spots, which +tempts the mind to set its house in order. What are we doing, in these +empty regions? Why not wander hence? That cursed traveller's gift of +sitting still; of remaining stationary, no matter where, until one is +actually pushed away! And yet, how enjoyable this land might be, were it +inhabited by any race save one whose thousand little meannesses, public +and private, are calculated to drain away a man's last ounce of +self-respect! Not many are the glad memories I shall carry from Mentone. +I can think of no more than two. + +There is my landlady, to begin with, who spies out every detail of my +daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a +peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will +correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some +jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an +example of our matutinal converse: + +"I fear, Monsieur, you omitted to put out the light in a certain place +last night. It was burning when I returned home." + +"Certainly not, Madame. I have been nicely brought up. I never visit +places at night. You ought to be familiar with my habits after all this +time." + +"True. Then it must have been some one else. Ah, these electricians' +bills!" + +Or this: + +"Monsieur, Monsieur! The English Consul called yesterday with his little +dog at about five o'clock. He waited in your room, but you never came +back." + +"Five o'clock? I was at the baths." + +"I have heard of that establishment. What do they charge for a hot +bath?" + +"Three francs----" + +"Bon Dieu!" + +"--if you take an abonnement. Otherwise, it may well be more." + +"And so you go there. Why then--why must you also wash in the morning +and splash water on my floor? It may have to be polished after your +departure. Would you mind asking the Consul, by the way, not to sit on +the bed? It weakens the springs." + +Or this: + +"Might I beg you, Monsieur, to tread more lightly on the carpet in your +room? I bought it only nine years ago, and it already shows signs of +wear." + +"Nine years--that old rag? It must have survived by a miracle." + +"I do not ask you to avoid using it. I only beg you will tread as +lightly as possible." + +"Carpets are meant to be worn out." + +"You would express yourself less forcibly, if you had to pay for them." + +"Let us say then: carpets are meant to be trodden on." + +"Lightly." + +"I am not a fairy, Madame." + +"I wish you were, Monsieur." + +Thrice already, in a burst of confidence, has she told me the story of +an egg--an egg which rankles in the memory. Some years ago, it seems, +she went to a certain shop (naming it)--a shop she has avoided ever +since--to buy an egg; and paid the full price--yes, the full price--of a +fresh egg. That particular egg was not fresh. So far from fresh was it, +that she experienced considerable difficulty in swallowing it. + +A memorable episode occurred about a fortnight ago. I was greeted +towards 8 a.m. with moanings in the passage, where Madame tottered +around, her entire head swathed in a bundle of nondescript woollen +wraps, out of which there peered one steely, vulturesque eye. She looked +more than ever like an animated fungus. + +Her teeth--her teeth! The pain was past enduring. The whole jaw, rather; +all the teeth at one and the same time; they were unaccountably loose +and felt, moreover, three inches longer than they ought to feel. Never +had she suffered such agony--never in all her life. What could it be? + +It was easy to diagnose periostitis, and prescribe tincture of iodine. + +"That will cost about a franc," she observed. + +"Very likely." + +"I think I'll wait." + +Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She would give anything +to obtain relief--anything! + +"Anything?" I inquired. "Then you had better have a morphia injection. I +have had numbers of them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish +like magic. There is my friend Dr. Theophile Fornari----" + +"I know all about him. He demands five francs a visit, even from poor +people like myself." + +"You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to come here and climb +your seventy-two stairs for much less than five francs." + +"I think I'll wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting money on food just now, and +that is a consolation." + +Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing complaint, and I would +have purchased a franc's worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth. +Not then. On the contrary, I grew positively low-spirited when, after +three more days, the lamentations began to diminish in volume. They were +sweet music to my ears, at the time. They are sweeter by far, in +retrospect. If only one could extract the same amount of innocent and +durable pleasure out of all other landladies!... + +My second joyful memory centres round another thing of beauty--a spiky +agave (miscalled aloe) of monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the +garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the growths of this kind +which I have admired in various lands; none can vaunt as proud and +harmonious a development as this one. You would say it had been cast in +some dull blue metal. The glaucous wonder stands by itself, a prodigy of +good style, more pleasing to the eye than all that painfully generated +tropicality of Mr. Hanbury's Mortola paradise. It is flawless. Vainly +have I teased my fancy, endeavouring to discover the slightest defect in +shape or hue. Firm-seated on the turf, in exultant pose, with a pallid +virginal bloom upon those mighty writhing leaves, this plant has drawn +me like a magnet, day after day, to drink deep draughts of contentment +from its exquisite lines. + +For the rest, the whole agave family thrives at Mentone; the ferox is +particularly well represented; one misses, among others, that delightful +medio-picta variety, of which I have noticed only a few indifferent +specimens. [1] It is the same with the yuccas; they flourish here, +though one kind, again, is conspicuous by its absence-- the Atkinsi +(some such name, for it is long since I planted my last yucca) with +drooping leaves of golden-purple. You will be surprised at the number of +agaves in flower here. The reason is, that they are liable to be moved +about for ornamental purposes when they want to be at rest; the plant, +more sensitive and fastidious than it looks, is outraged by this +forceful perambulation and, in an access of premature senility, or +suicidal mania, or sheer despair, gives birth to its only flower--herald +of death. The fatal climax could be delayed if gardeners, in +transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their old +accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But +your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an +amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him +for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile +one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for +instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering +underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques--there, where the steps +begin---- + +Almost.... + +And here my afternoon musings, up yonder, took on a more acrid +complexion. I remembered a recent talk with one of the teachers at the +local college who lamented that his pupils displayed a singular dullness +in their essays; never, in his long career at different schools, had he +met with boys more destitute of originality. What could be expected, we +both agreed? Mentone was of recent growth--the old settlement, Mentone +of Symonds, proclaims its existence only by a ceaseless and infernal +clanging of bells, rivalling Malta--no history, no character, no +tradition--a mushroom town inhabited by shopkeepers and hoteliers who +are there for the sole purpose of plucking foreigners: how should a +youngster's imagination be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless +modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes to these regions, now that +invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their climate? Decayed Muscovites, +Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in England, and their painted +women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling eyes, a Turk or two, Jews +and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, +Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that read like a +nightmare (see "List of Arrivals" in New York Herald)--the whole exotic +riff-raff enlivened and perfumed by a copious sprinkling of +horizontales. + +And I let my glance wander along that ancient Roman road which led from +Italy to Arles and can still be traced, here and there; I took in the +section from Genoa to Marseille, an enormous stretch of country, and +wondered: what has this coast ever produced in the way of thought or +action, of great men or great women? There is Doria at Genoa, and Gaby +Deslys at Marseille; that may well exhaust the list. Ah, and half-way +through, a couple of generals, born at Nice. It is really an instructive +phenomenon, and one that should appeal to students of Buckle--this +relative dearth of every form of human genius in one of the most +favoured regions of the globe. Here, for unexplained reasons, the +Italian loses his better qualities; so does the Frenchman. Are the +natives descended from those mysterious Ligurians? Their reputation was +none of the best; they were more prompt, says Crinagoras, in devising +evil than good. That Mentone man, to be sure, whose remains you may +study at Monaco and elsewhere, was a fine fellow, without a doubt. He +lived rather long ago. Even he, by the way, was a tourist on these +shores. And were the air of Mentone not unpropitious to the composition +of anything save a kind of literary omelette soufflee, one might like to +expatiate on Sergi's remarkable book, and devise thereto an incongruous +footnote dealing with the African origin of sundry Greek gods, and +another one referring to the extinction of these splendid races of men; +how they came to perish so utterly, and what might be said in favour of +that novel theory of the influence of an ice-age on the germplasm +producing mutations--new races which breed true ... enough! Let us +remain at the Riviera level. + +In the little museum under those cliffs by the sea, where the Grimaldi +caves are, I found myself lately together with a young French couple, +newly married. The little bride was vastly interested in the attendant's +explanations of the habits of those remote folk, but, as I could plainly +see, growing more and more distrustful of his statements as to what +happened all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. + +"And this, Messieurs, is the jaw-bone of a cave-bear--the competitor, +one might say, in the matter of lodging-houses, with the gentleman whose +anatomy we have just inspected. Here are bones of hippopotamus, and +rhinoceros, which he hunted with the weapons you saw. And the object on +which your arm is reposing, Madame, is the tooth of an elephant. Our +ancestor must have been pretty costaud to kill an elephant with a +stone." + +"Elephants?" she queried. "Did elephants scramble about these precipices +and ravines? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. He probably killed them down there," and his arm +swept over the blue Mediterranean, lying at our feet. "Do you mean to +say that elephants paddled across from Algiers in order to be +assassinated by your old skeleton? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. The Mediterranean did not exist in those days." + +The suggestion that this boundless sea should ever have been dry land, +and in the time of her own ancestors, was too much for the young lady. +She smiled politely, and soon I heard her whispering to her husband: + +"I had him there, eh? Quel farceur!" + +"Yes. You caught him nicely, I must say. But one must not be too hard on +these poor devils. They have got to earn their bread somehow." + +This will never do. + +Italiam petimus.... + + + + +Levanto + +I have loafed into Levanto, on the recommendation of an Irish friend +who, it would seem, had reasons of his own for sending me there. + +"Try Levanto," he said. "A little place below Genoa. Nice, kindly +people. And sunshine all the time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes! The food +is all right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us start that +subject----" + +We started it none the less, and at the end of the discussion he added: + +"You must go and see Mitchell there. I often stayed with him. Such a +good fellow! And very popular in the place. He built an aqueduct for the +peasants--that kind of man. Mind you look him up. He will be bitterly +disappointed if you don't call. So make a note of it, won't you? By the +way, he's dead. Died last year. I quite forgot." + +"Dead, is he? What a pity." + +"Yes; and what a nuisance. I promised to send him down some things by +the next man I came across. You would have been that man. I know you do +not carry much luggage, but you could have taken one or two trifles at +least. He wanted a respectable English telescope, I remember, to see the +stars with--a bit of an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too--devilish +fond of chutney, the old boy was; quite a gastro-maniac. What a +nuisance! Now he will be thinking I forgot all about it. And he needed a +clothes-press; I was on no account to forget that clothes-press. Rather +fussy about his trousers, he was. And a type-writer; just an ordinary +one. But I doubt whether you could have managed a type-writer." + +"Easily. And a bee-hive or two. You know how I like carrying little +parcels about for other people's friends. What a nuisance! Now I shall +have to travel with my bags half empty." + +"Don't blame me, my dear fellow. I did not tell him to die, did I?".... + +It must have been about midnight as the train steamed into Levanto +station. Snow was falling; you could hear the moan of the sea hard by; +an icy wind blew down from the mountains. + +Sunshine all the time! + +Everybody scurried off the platform. A venerable porter, after looking +in dubious fashion at my two handbags, declared he would return in a few +moments to transport them to the hotel, and therewith vanished round the +corner. The train moved on. Lamps were extinguished. Time passed. I +strode up and down in the semi-darkness, trying to keep warm and +determined, whatever happened, not to carry those wretched bags myself, +when suddenly a figure rose out of the gloom--a military figure of +youthful aspect and diminutive size, armed to the teeth. + +"A cold night," I ventured. + +"Do you know, Sir, that you are in the war-zone--the zona di difesa?" + +He began to fumble at his rifle in ominous fashion. + +Nice, kindly people! + +I said: + +"It is hard to die so young. And I particularly dislike the looks of +that bayonet, which is half a yard longer than it need be. But if you +want to shoot me, go ahead. Do it now. It is too cold to argue." + +"Your papers! Ha, a foreigner. Hotel Nazionale? Very good. To-morrow +morning you will report yourself to the captain of the carbineers. After +that, to the municipality. Thereupon you will take the afternoon train +to Spezia. When you have been examined by the police inspector at the +station you will be accompanied, if he sees fit, to head-quarters in +order that your passport may be investigated. From there you will +proceed to the Prefecture for certain other formalities which will be +explained to you. Perhaps--who knows?--they will allow you to return to +Levanto." + +"How can you expect me to remember all that?" Then I added: "You are a +Sicilian, I take it. And from Catania." + +He was rather surprised. Sicilians, because they learn good Italian at +their schools, think themselves indistinguishable from other men. + +Yes; he explained. He was from a certain place in the Catania part of +the country, on the slopes of Etna. + +I happened to know a good deal of that place from an old she-cook of +mine who was born there and never wearied of telling me about it. To his +still greater surprise, therefore, I proceeded to discourse learnedly +about that region, extolling its natural beauties and healthy climate, +reminding him that it was the birthplace of a man celebrated in +antiquity (was it Diodorus Siculus?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that +he would doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated a spot. + +Straightway his manner changed. There is nothing these folks love more +than to hear from foreign lips some praise of their native town or +village. He waxed communicative and even friendly; his eyes began to +sparkle with animation, and there we might have stood conversing till +sunrise had I not felt that glacial wind searching my garments, chilling +my humanity and arresting all generous impulses. Rather abruptly I bade +farewell to the cheery little reptile and snatched up my bags to go to +the hotel, which he said was only five minutes' walk from there. + +Things turned out exactly as he had predicted. Arrived at Spezia, +however, I found an unpleasant surprise awaiting me. The officer in +command, who was as civil as the majority of such be-medalled jackasses, +suggested that one single day would be quite sufficient for me to see +the sights of Levanto; I could then proceed to Pisa or anywhere else +outside his priceless "zone of defence." I pleaded vigorously for more +time. After all, we were allies, were we not? Finally, a sojourn of +seven days was granted for reasons of health. Only seven days: how +tiresome! From the paper which gave me this authorisation and contained +a full account of my personal appearance I learnt, among other less +flattering details, that my complexion was held to be "natural." It was +a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup. + +No butter for breakfast. + +The landlord, on being summoned, avowed that to serve crude butter on +his premises involved a flagrant breach of war-time regulations. The +condiment could not be used save for kitchen purposes, and then only on +certain days of the week; he was liable to heavy penalties if it became +known that one of his guests.... However, since he assumed me to be a +prudent person, he would undertake to supply a due allowance to-morrow +and thenceforward, though never in the public dining-room; never, never +in the dining-room! + +That is the charm of Italy, I said to myself. These folks are reasonable +and gifted with imagination. They make laws to shadow forth an ideal +state of things and to display their good intentions towards the +community at large; laws which have no sting for the exceptional type of +man who can evade them--the sage, the millionaire, and the "friend of +the family." Never in the dining-room. Why, of course not. Catch me +breakfasting in any dining-room. + +Was it possible? There, at luncheon in the dining-room, while devouring +those miserable macaroni made with war-time flour, I beheld an over-tall +young Florentine lieutenant shamelessly engulfing huge slices of what +looked uncommonly like genuine butter, a miniature mountain of which +stood on a platter before him, and overtopped all the other viands. I +could hardly believe my eyes. How about those regulations? Pointing to +this golden hillock, I inquired softly: + +"From the cow?" + +"From the cow." + +"Whom does one bribe?" + +He enjoyed a special dispensation, he declared--he need not bribe. +Returned from Albania with shattered health, he had been sent hither to +recuperate. He required not only butter, but meat on meatless days, as +well as a great deal of rest; he was badly run down.... And eggs, raw +eggs, drinking eggs; ten a day, he vows, is his minimum. Enviable +convalescent! + +The afternoon being clear and balmy, he took me for a walk, smoking +cigarettes innumerable. We wandered up to that old convent picturesquely +perched against the slope of the hill and down again, across the +rivulet, to the inevitable castle-ruin overhanging the sea. Like all +places along this shore, Levanto lies in a kind of amphitheatre, at a +spot where one or more streams, descending from the mountains, discharge +themselves into the sea. Many of these watercourses may in former times +have been larger and even navigable up to a point. Their flow is now +obstructed, their volume diminished. I daresay they have driven the sea +further out, with silt swept down from the uplands. The same thing has +struck me in England--at Lyme Regis, for instance, whose river was also +once navigable to small craft and at Seaton, about a mile up whose +stream stands that village--I forget its name--which was evidently the +old port of the district in pre-Seaton days. Local antiquarians will +have attacked these problems long ago. The sea may have receded. + +A glance from this castle-height at the panorama bathed in that mellow +sunshine made me regret more than ever the enforced brevity of my stay +at Levanto. Seven days, for reasons of health: only seven days! Those +mysterious glades opening into the hill-sides, the green patches of +culture interspersed with cypresses and pines, dainty villas nestling in +gardens, snow-covered mountains and blue sea--above all, the presence of +running water, dear to those who have lived in waterless lands--why, one +could spend a life-time in a place like this! + +The lieutenant spoke of Florence, his native city. He would be there +again before long, in order to present himself to the medical +authorities and be weighed and pounded for the hundredth time. He hoped +they would then let him stay there. He was tired to death of Levanto and +its solitude. How pleasant to bid farewell to this "melancholy" sea +which was supposed to be good for his complaints. He asked: + +"Do you know why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to +see that wonderful dome of theirs rising up from the plain?" + +"Why?" + +"Can't you guess?" + +"Let me see. It is sure to be something not quite proper. H'm.... The +tower of Giotto, for example, has certain asperities, angularities, +anfractuosities----" + +"You are no Englishman whatever!" he laughed. "Now try that joke on the +next Florentine you meet.... There was a German here," he went on, "who +loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all about him. He began +writing a book to prove that there was a different walk to be taken in +this neighbourhood for every single day of the year." + +"How German. And then?" + +"The war came. He cleared out. The natives were sorry. This whole coast +seems to be saturated with Teutons--of a respectable class, apparently. +They made themselves popular, they bought houses, drank wine, and joked +with the countrymen." + +"What do you make of them?" I inquired. + +"I am a Tuscan," he began (meaning: I am above race-prejudices; I can +view these things with olympic detachment). "I think the German says to +himself: we want a world-empire, like those damned English. How did they +get it? By piracy. Two can play at that game, though it may be a little +more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a +certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, +who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished +by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at +First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a +whole--well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is +our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the +ordinary native of the country is, if his own son happens to get +killed." + +"I know. That makes him very angry." + +"It makes him angry not with the Germans who are responsible for the +war, but with his own government which is responsible for conscripting +the boys. Ah, what a stupid subject of conversation! And how God would +laugh, if he had any sense of humour! Suppose we go down to the beach +and lie on the sand. I need rest: I am very dilapidated." + +"You look thin, I must say." + +"Typhoid, and malaria, and pleurisy--it is a respectable combination. +Thin? I am the merest framework, and so transparent that you can see +clean through my stomach. Perhaps you would rather not try? Count my +ribs, then." + +"Count your ribs? That, my dear Lieutenant, is an occupation for a rainy +afternoon. Judging by your length, there must be a good many of +them...." + +"We should be kind to our young soldiers," said the Major to whom I was +relating, after dinner, the story of our afternoon promenade. A burly +personage is the Major, with hooked nose and black moustache and +twinkling eyes--retired, now, from a service in the course of which he +has seen many parts of the world; a fluent raconteur, moreover, who +keeps us in fits of laughter with naughty stories and imitations of +local dialects. "We must be nice with them, and always offer them +cigarettes. What say you, Mr. Lieutenant?" + +"Yes, sir. Offer them cigarettes and everything else you possess. The +dear fellows! They seldom have the heart to refuse." + +"Seldom," echoes the judge. + +That is our party; the judge, major, lieutenant and myself. We dine +together and afterwards sit in that side room while the fat little host +bustles about, doing nearly all the work of the war-diminished +establishment himself. Presently the first two rise and indulge in a +lively game of cards, amid vigorous thumpings of the table and cursings +at the ways of Providence which always contrives to ruin the best hands. +I order another litre of wine. The lieutenant, to keep me company, +engulfs half a dozen eggs. He tells me about Albanian women. I tell him +about Indian women. We thrash the matter out, pursuing this or that +aspect into its remotest ramifications, and finally come to the +conclusion that I, at the earliest opportunity, must emigrate to +Albania, and he to India. + +As for the judge, he was born under the pale rays of Saturn. He has +attached himself to my heart. Never did I think to care so much about a +magistrate, and he a Genoese. + +There are some men, a few men, very few, about whom one craves to be +precise. Viewed through the mist of months, I behold a corpulent and +almost grotesque figure of thirty-five or thereabouts; blue-eyed, +fair-haired but nearly bald, clean-shaven, bespectacled. So purblind has +he grown with poring over contracts and precedents that his movements +are pathologically awkward--embryonic, one might say; his unwieldy +gestures and contortions remind one of a seal on shore. The eyes being +of small use, he must touch with his hands. Those hands are the most +distinctive feature of his person; they are full of expression; tenderly +groping hands, that hesitate and fumble in wistful fashion like the +feelers of some sensitive creature of night. There is trouble, too, in +that obese and sluggish body; trouble to which the unhealthy complexion +testifies. He may drink only milk, because wine, which he dearly +loves--"and such good wine, here at Levanto"--it always deranges the +action of some vital organ inside. + +The face is not unlike that of Thackeray. + +A man of keen understanding who can argue the legs off a cow when duly +roused, he seems far too good for a small place like this, where, by the +way, he is a newcomer. Maybe his infinite myopia condemns him to +relative seclusion and obscurity. He has a European grip of things; of +politics and literature and finance. Needless to say, I have discovered +his cloven hoof; I make it my business to discover such things; one may +(or may not) respect people for their virtues, one loves them only for +their faults. It is a singular tinge of mysticism and credulity which +runs through his nature. Can it be the commercial Genoese, the gambling +instinct? For he is an authority on stocks and shares, and a passionate +card-player into the bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand--they +are but two forms of the same speculative spirit. Think of the +Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-lovers! I have yet to meet a +full-blown agnostic who relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not +adventurous on such lines; he knows the odds against backing a winner in +heaven or earth. + +Often, listening to this lawyer's acute talk and watching his uncouth +but sympathetic face, I ask myself a question, a very obvious question +hereabouts: How could you cause him to swerve from the path of duty? How +predispose him in your favour? Sacks of gold would be unavailing: that +is certain. He would wave them aside, not in righteous Anglo-Saxon +indignation, but with a smile of tolerance at human weakness. To +simulate clerical leanings? He is too sharp; he would probably be vexed, +not at your attempt to deceive, but at the implication that you took him +for a fool. A good tip on the stock exchange? It might go a little way, +if artfully tendered. Perhaps an apt and unexpected quotation from the +pages of some obsolete jurist--the intellectual method of approach; for +there is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of +intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook. In any case, it +would be a desperate venture to override the conscience of such a man. +May I never have to try! + +His stern principles must often cause him suffering, needless suffering. +He is for ever at the mercy of some categorical imperative. This may be +the reason why I feel drawn to him. Such persons exercise a strange +attraction upon those who, convinced of the eternal fluidity of all +mundane affairs, and how that our most sacred institutions are merely +conventionalities of time and place, conform to only one rule of +life--to be guided by no principles whatever. They miss so much, those +others. They miss it so pathetically. One sees them staggering +gravewards under a load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle, +when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross? Is it pleasant? Is it pretty? + +He also has taken me for walks, but they are too slow and too short for +my taste. Every twenty yards or so he must stand still to "admire the +view"--that is, to puff and pant. + +"What it is," he then exclaims, "to be an old man in youth, through no +fault of one's own. How many are healthy, and yet vicious to the core!" + +I inquire: + +"Are you suggesting that there may be a connection between sound health +and what society, in its latest fit of peevish self-maceration, is +pleased to call viciousness?" + +"That is a captious question," he replies. "A man of my constitution, +unfit for pleasures of the body, is prone to judge severely. Let me try +to be fair. I will go so far as to say that to certain natures +self-indulgence appears to be necessary as--as sunshine to flowers." + +Self-indulgence, I thought. Heavily-fraught is that word; weighted with +meaning. The history of two thousand years of spiritual dyspepsia lies +embedded in its four syllables. Self-indulgence--it is what the ancients +blithely called "indulging one's genius." Self-indulgence! How debased +an expression, nowadays. What a text for a sermon on the mishaps of good +words and good things. How all the glad warmth and innocence have faded +out of the phrase. What a change has crept over us.... + +Glancing through a glass window not far from the hotel, I was fortunate +enough to espy a young girl seated in a sewing shop. She is decidedly +pretty and not altogether unaware of the fact, though still a child. We +have entered upon an elaborate, classical flirtation. With all the +artfulness of her years she is using me to practise on, as a dummy, for +future occasions when she shall have grown a little bigger and more +admired; she has already picked up one or two good notions. I pretend to +be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if she were grown up, and +profess to feel that she has really cast a charm--a state of affairs +which, if true, would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a point. +Impossible not to sense the joy which radiates from her smile and +person. That is all, so far. It is an orthodox entertainment, merely a +joke. God knows what might happen, under given circumstances. Some of a +man's most terrible experiences--volcanic cataclysms that ravaged the +landscape and left a trail of bitter ashes in their rear--were begun as +a joke. You can say so many things in a joking way, you can do so many +things in a joking way--especially in Northern countries, where it is +easy to joke unseen. + +Meanwhile, with Ninetta, I discourse sweet nothings in my choicest idiom +which has grown rather rusty in England. + +Italian is a flowery language whose rhetorical turns and phrases require +constant exercise to keep them in smooth working order. No; that is not +correct. It is not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are ever at +command. What one learns to forget in England is the simplicity to use +them; to utter, with an air of deep conviction, a string of what we +should call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your breath +away--the things you have to say because these folks are so enamoured of +rhetoric and will not be happy without it. + +An English girl of her social standing--I lay stress upon the standing, +for it prescribes the conduct--an English girl would never listen to +such outpourings with this obvious air of approbation; maybe she would +ask where you had been drinking; in every case, your chances would be +seriously diminished. She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system +which is fatal to success in this country. The affair, here, must be a +siege. It must move onward by those gradual and inevitable steps +ordained of old in the unwritten code of love; no lingering by the +wayside, no premature haste. It must march to its end with the measured +stateliness of a quadrille. Passion, well-restrained passion, should be +written on every line of your countenance. Otherwise you are liable to +be dubbed a savage. I know what it is to be called a "Scotch bear," and +only because I trembled too much, or too little--I forget which--on a +certain occasion. + +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 of sang-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-Pyrenees 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 grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, [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." + +"A Scozzese. 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." + + + + +Siena + +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's Unknown 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 once escaped 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 a piazza! 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: + + Siena + Di tre cose e 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 Dantes, a nondescript lady with +brocade garments and a delectable amorino whose 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 their +bete 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. The Dictionary of National +Biography might 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.... + + + + +Pisa + +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 modern infame. 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 cafe-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 a pis 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." Irritable was 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 L10,000 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 them en route and "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 (February) + +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 of ripa: 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. This ripa is 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, and the 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. + +"And that little ridge of stone," says my companion, "--do you see it, +jutting into the fields down there? It has a queer name. We call it La +Sirena." + +La Sirena.... + +It is good to live in a land where such memories cling to old rocks. + +By what a chance has the name survived to haunt this inland crag, +defying geological changes, outlasting the generations of men, their +creeds and tongues and races! How it takes one back--back into hoary +antiquity, into another landscape altogether! One thinks of those Greek +mariners coasting past this promontory, and pouring libations to the +Siren into an ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now sows +his rice and turnips. + + Paganisme immortel, es-tu mort? On le dit. + Mais Pan, tout bas, s'en moque, et la Sirene en rit. + +They are still here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to +separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous +splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the +gods are kind. + +My Siren dwells at Corsanico. + + + + +Viareggio (May) + +Those Sirens! They have called me back, after nearly three months in +Florence, to that village on the hill-top. Nothing but smiles up there. + +And never was Corsanico more charming, all drenched in sunlight and +pranked out with fresh green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to +myself, I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away, and +there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet--can it be possible?--I am even +happier here. Seldom does the event surpass one's hopes. + +Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives already heavy-laden, +through patches of high-standing corn and beans, across the little +brook, past that familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the +canal, in full content. Another golden moment of life! Strong +exhalations rose up from the swampy soil, that teemed and steamed under +the hot breath of spring; the pond-like water, once so bare, was +smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh-plants and loud with the music +of love-sick frogs. Stars were reflected on its surface. + +Star-gazing, my Star? Would I were Heaven, to gaze on thee with many +eyes. + +Such was my mood, a Hellenic mood, a mood summed up in that one word +[Greek: tetelestai]--not to be taken, however, in the sense of "all's +over." Quite the reverse! Did Shelley ever walk in like humour along +this canal? I doubt it. He lacked the master-key. An evangelist of a +kind, he was streaked, for all his paganism, with the craze of +world-improvement. One day he escaped from his chains into those +mountains and there beheld a certain Witch--only to be called back to +mortality by a domestic and critic-bitten lady. He tried to translate +the Symposium. He never tried to live it.... + +I have now interposed a day of rest. + +My welcome in the villa situated in the street called after a certain +politician was that of the Prodigal Son. There was a look bordering on +affection in the landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once the +weather was warmer. She would now give me a cool room, instead of that +old one facing south. Those much-abused cement floors--they were not so +inconvenient, were they, at this season? The honey for breakfast? +Assuredly; the very same. And there was a tailor she had discovered in +the interval, cheaper and better than that other one, if anything +required attention. + +And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London landladies and London +charwomen--having suffered the torments of Hell, for more years than I +care to remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags and harpies +and drunken sluts--I am now rewarded by the services of something at the +other end of the human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good +dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life seems to be to save my +money and make me comfortable. "Don't get your shoes soled there!" she +told me two days ago. "That man is from Viareggio. I know a better +place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will +pay less and get better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she +forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known +my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have +known them at the end of a century.... + +My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally +efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the +familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair +and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave +me the impression of being in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I +used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods +enlivened with steely glints of humour--such were the feelings of those +who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. It would +be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or vulgar. Yet +she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She never dreams +that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high police +functionary and greatly in favour with his set--a most useful landlady, +in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself. + +On learning this fact, I made it my business to study her weaknesses and +soon discovered that she was fond of a particular brand of Chianti. A +flask of this vintage was promptly secured; then, dissatisfied with its +materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with a wreath of +violets and despatched it to her private apartment by the prettiest +child I could pick up in the street. That is the way to touch their +hearts. The offering was repeated at convenient intervals. + +A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one morning, about the +war. I found she shared the view common to many others, that this is an +"interested" war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines which +work against peace. There are so many persons "interested" in keeping up +the present state of affairs, people who now make more money than they +ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie. The soldier in the +field, the chief person concerned, is voiceless and of no account when +compared with this army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if +the war came to an end. They will fight like demons, to keep the fun +going. What else should they do? Their income is at stake. A man's heart +is in his purse. + +I asked: + +"Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war, how would you set about +it?" + +Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to her. + +"I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense. It makes things too +pleasant. It would bring the troops to their senses and cause them to +march home and say: Basta! We have had enough." + +"Don't you find the Germans a little prepotenti?" "Prepotenti: yes. By +all means let us break their heads. And then, caro Lei, let us learn to +imitate them...." + +That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine and myself in such +mellow mood that I would have shared my last crust with some shipwrecked +archduchess and almost forgiven mine enemies, though not until I had hit +them back--I strolled about the Cascine. They have done something to +make this place attractive; just then, at all events, the shortcomings +were unobserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot. +Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as +it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water; +and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the +surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of +hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not +remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in +an identical situation, and with far less sunshine for the landscape +gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town in Germany where, on +a plain as flat as a billiard table, they actually reared a mountain, +now covered with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens. To +think that I used to skate over the meadows where that mountain now +stands! + +There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the +usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake +of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious +epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play +is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision +and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of +the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of +old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of +consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which +leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name. +They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their +tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an +outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort. +Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat. + +Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de +Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew +strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all +these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half +of them ought to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about +with a ball. + +It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising +generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the +younger spectators and make him talk. But these better-class lads +cluster together at the approach of a stranger, and one does not want to +start a public discussion with half a dozen of them. My chance came from +another direction. It was half-time and a certain player limped out of +the field and sat down on the grass. I was beside him before his friends +had time to come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with perspiration. + +"Any damage?" + +Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other side had just caught him +with the full swing of his fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly. + +"Hardly fair play," I commented. + +"It was cleverly done." + +"Ah, well," I said, warming to my English character, "you may get harder +knocks in the trenches. I suppose you are nearly due?" + +Not for a year or so, he replied. And even then ... of course, he was +quite eligible as to physique ... it was really rather awkward ... but +as to serving in the army ... there were other jobs going. ... Was +anything more precious than life?... Could anything replace his life to +him?... To die at his age.... + +"It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point of view. But if +everybody thought like that, where would the Isonzo line be?" + +If everybody thought as he did, there would be no Isonzo line at all. +German influence in Italy--why not? They had been there before; it was +no dark page in Italian history. Was his own government so admirable +that one should regret its disappearance? A pack of knaves and +cutthroats. Patriotism--a phrase; auto-intoxication. They say one thing +and mean another. The English too. Yes, the English too. Purely +mercenary motives, for all their noble talk. + +It is always entertaining to see ourselves as others see us. I had the +presence of mind to interject some anti-British remark, which produced +the desired effect. + +"Now they howl about the sufferings of Belgium, because their money-bags +are threatened. They fight for poor Belgium. They did not fight for +France in 1870, or for Denmark or Poland or Armenia. Trade was not +threatened. There was no profit in view. Profit! And they won't even +supply us with coal----" + +Always that coal. + +It is clear as daylight. England has failed in her duty--her duty being +to supply everybody with coal, ships, money, cannons and anything else, +at the purchaser's valuation. + +He made a few more statements of this nature, and I think he enjoyed his +little fling at that, for him, relatively speaking, since the war began, +rara avis, a genuine Englishman (Teutonic construction); I certainly +relished it. Then I asked: + +"Where did you learn this? About Armenia, I mean, and Poland?" + +"From my father. He was University Professor and Deputy in Parliament. +One also picks up a little something at school. Don't you agree with +me?" + +"Not altogether. You seem to forget that a nation cannot indulge in +those freaks of humanitarianism which may possibly befit an individual. +A certain heroic dreamer told men to give all they had to the poor. You, +if you like, may adopt this idealistic attitude. You may do generous +actions such as your country cannot afford to do, since a nation which +abandons the line of expediency is on the high road to suicide. If I +have a bilious attack, by all means come and console me; if Poland has a +bilious attack, there is no reason why England should step in as +dry-nurse; there may be every reason, indeed, why England should stand +aloof. Now in Belgium, as you say, money is involved. Money, in this +national sense, means well-being; and well-being, in this national +sense, is one of the few things worth fighting for. However, I am only +throwing out one or two suggestions. On some other day, I would like to +discuss the matter with you point by point--some other day, that is, +when you are not playing football and have just a few clothes on. I am +now at a disadvantage. You could never get me to impugn your statements +courageously--not in that costume. It would be like haggling with Apollo +Belvedere. Why do you wear those baby things?" + +"We are all wearing them, this season." + +"So I perceive. How do you get into them?" + +"Very slowly." + +"Are they elastic?" + +"I wish they were.".... + +Four minutes' talk. It gave me an insight. He was an intellectualist. As +such, he admired brute force but refused to employ it. He was civilized. +Like many products of civilization, he was unaware of its blessings and +unconcerned in its fate. Is it not a feature peculiar to civilization +that it thinks of everything save war? That is why they are uprooted, +these flowerings, each in its turn. + +My father told me; often one hears that remark, even from adults. As if +a father could not be a fool like anybody else! That a child should have +hard-and-fast opinions--it is engaging. Children are egocentric. A +fellow of this size ought to be less positive. + +These refined youths are fastidious about their clothes. They would not +dream of buying a ready-made suit, however well-fitting. They are +content to take their opinions second-hand. Unlike ours, they are seldom +alone; they lack those stretches of solitude during which they might +wrestle with themselves and do a little thinking on their own account. +When not with their family, they are always among companions, being far +more sociable and fond of herding together than their English +representatives. They talk more; they think less; they seem to do each +other's thinking, which takes away all hesitation and gives them a +precocious air of maturity. If this decorative lad engages in some +profession like medicine or engineering there is hope for him, even as +others of his age rectify their perspective by contact with crude +facts--groceries and calicoes and carburettors and so forth. Otherwise, +his doom is sealed. He remains a doctrinaire. This country is full of +them. + +And then--the sterilizing influence of pavements. Even when summer comes +round, they all flock in a mass to some rowdy place like this Viareggio +or Ancona where, however pleasant the bathing, spiritual life is yet +shallower than at home. What says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.? "Their +country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in +nothing else does it differ from the life they live in town." + +He notices things, does Ramage; and might, indeed, have elaborated this +argument. The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for +the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him +from the pavement--no easy task--and he gasps like a fish out of water. +Squares and cafes--they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of +fellow-creatures--thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the +result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I +should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every +bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I +think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait +still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested +mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour--such things +require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid, +for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English +representatives. + +POSTSCRIPT.--The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an +objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly +and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all +the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead +of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain +legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I +observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new +ones, which flake away rapidly--exfoliate or crack, according to the +direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the +chisel. It may well be that Florentines of past centuries left the hewn +blocks in their shady caverns for a certain length of time, as do the +Parisians of to-day, in order to allow for the slow discharge and +evaporation of liquid; whereas now the material, saturated with +moisture, is torn from its damp and cool quarries and set in the blazing +sunshine. At the Bourse, for instance,--quite a modern structure--the +columns already begin to show fissures. [7] + +Amply content with Viareggio, because the Siren dwells so near, I stroll +forth. The town is awake. Hotels are open. Bathing is beginning. Summer +has dawned upon the land. + +I am not in the city mood, three months in Florence having abated my +interest in humanity. Past a line of booths and pensions I wander in the +direction of that pinery which year by year is creeping further into the +waves, and driving the sea back from its old shore. There is peace in +this green domain; all is hushed, and yet pervaded by the mysterious +melody of things that stir in May-time. Here are no sombre patches, as +under oak or beech; only a tremulous interlacing of light and shade. A +peculiarly attractive bole not far from the sea, gleaming rosy in the +sunshine, tempts me to recline at its foot. + +This insomnia, this fiend of the darkness--the only way to counteract +his mischief is by guile; by snatching a brief oblivion in the hours of +day, when the demon is far afield, tormenting pious Aethiopians at the +Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments of self-created night, +merged into the warm earth! The extreme quietude of my present room, +after Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this +restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsanico. But chiefly, +the dream--that recurrent dream. + +Everybody, I suppose, is subject to recurrent dreams of some kind. My +present one is of a painful or at least sad nature; it returns +approximately every three months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I +am in a distant town where I lived many years back, and where each stone +is familiar to me. I have come to look for a friend--one who, as a +matter of fact, died long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this +fact; once embarked on the dream-voyage, I hold him to be still alive. +Glad at the prospect of meeting my friend again, I traverse cheerfully +those well-known squares in the direction of his home.... Where is it, +that house; where has it gone? I cannot find it. Ages seem to pass while +I trample up and down, in ever-increasing harassment of mind, along +interminable rows of buildings and canals; that door, that +well-remembered door--vanished! All search is vain. I shall never meet +him: him whom I came so far to see. The dismal truth, once established, +fills me with an intensity of suffering such as only night-visions can +inspire. There is no reason for feeling so strongly; it is the way of +dreams! At this point I wake up, thoroughly exhausted, and say to +myself: "Why seek his house? Is he not dead?" + +This stupid nightmare leaves me unrefreshed next morning, and often +bears in its rear a trail of wistfulness which may endure a week. Only +within the last few years has it dared to invade my slumbers. Before +that period there was a series of other recurrent dreams. What will the +next be? For I mean to oust this particular incubus. The monster annoys +me, and even our mulish dream-consciousness can be taught to acquiesce +in a fact, after a sufficient lapse of time. + +There are dreams peculiar to every age of man. That celebrated one of +flying, for instance--it fades away with manhood. I once indulged in a +correspondence about it with a well-known psychologist, [8] and would +like to think, even now, that this dream is a reminiscence of leaping +habits in our tree-haunting days; a ghost of the dim past, therefore, +which revisits us at night when recent adjustments are cast aside and +man takes on the credulity and savagery of his remotest forefathers; a +ghost which comes in youth when these ancient etchings are easier to +decypher, being not yet overscored by fresh personal experiences. What +is human life but a never-ending palimpsest? + +So I pondered, when my musings under that pine tree were interrupted by +the arrival on the scene of a young snake. I cannot say with any degree +of truthfulness which of us two was more surprised at the encounter. I +picked him up, as I always do when they give me a chance, and began to +make myself agreeable to him. He had those pretty juvenile markings +which disappear with maturity. Snakes of this kind, when they become +full-sized, are nearly always of a uniform shade, generally black. And +when they are very, very old, they begin to grow ears and seek out +solitary places. What is the origin of this belief? I have come across +it all over the country. If you wish to go to any remote or inaccessible +spot, be sure some peasant will say: "Ah! There you find the serpent +with ears." + +These snakes are not easy to catch with the hand, living as they do +among stones and brushwood, and gliding off rapidly once their +suspicions are aroused. This one, I should say, was bent on some +youthful voyage of discovery or amorous exploit; he walked into the trap +from inexperience. As a rule, your best chance for securing them is when +they bask on the top of some bush or hedge in relative unconcern, +knowing they are hard to detect in such places. They climb into these +aerial situations after the lizards, which go there after the insects, +which go there after the flowers, which go there after the sunshine, +struggling upwards through the thick undergrowth. You must have a quick +eye and ready hand to grasp them by the tail ere they have time to lash +themselves round some stem where, once anchored, they will allow +themselves to be pulled in pieces rather than yield to your efforts. If +you fail to seize them, they trickle earthward through the tangle like a +thread of running water. + +He belonged to that common Italian kind which has no English +name--Germans call them Zornnatter, in allusion to their choleric +disposition. Most of them are quite ready to snap at the least +provocation; maybe they find it pays, as it does with other folks, to +assume the offensive and be first in the field, demanding your place in +the sun with an air of wrathful determination. Some of the big fellows +can draw blood with their teeth. Yet the jawbones are weak and one can +force them asunder without much difficulty; whereas the bite of a +full-grown emerald lizard, for instance, will provide quite a novel +sensation. The mouth closes on you like a steel trap, tightly +compressing the flesh and often refusing to relax its hold. In such +cases, try a puff of tobacco. It works! Two puffs will daze them; a +fragment of a cigar, laid in the mouth, stretches them out dead. And +this is the beast which, they say, will gulp down prussic acid as if it +were treacle. + +But snakes vary in temperament as we do, and some of these Zamenis +serpents are as gentle and amiable as their cousin the Aesculap snake. +My friend of this afternoon could not be induced to bite. Perhaps he was +naturally mild, perhaps drowsy from his winter sleep or ignorant of the +ways of the world; perhaps he had not yet shed his milk teeth. I am +disposed to think that he forgot about biting because I made a +favourable impression on him from the first. He crawled up my arm. It +was pleasantly warm, but a little too dark; soon he emerged again and +glanced around, relieved to discover that the world was still in its old +place. He was not clever at learning tricks. I tried to make him stand +on his head, but he refused to stiffen out. Snakes have not much sense +of humour. + +Lizards are far more companionable. During two consecutive summers I had +a close friendship with a wall-lizard who spent in my society certain of +his leisure moments--which were not many, for he always had an +astonishing number of other things on hand. He was a full-grown male, +bejewelled with blue spots. A fierce fighter was Alfonso (such was his +name), and conspicuous for a most impressive manner of stamping his +front foot when impatient. Concerning his other virtues I know little, +for I learnt no details of his private life save what I saw with my +eyes, and they were not always worthy of imitation. He was a polygamist, +or worse; obsessed, moreover, by a deplorable habit of biting off the +tails of his own or other people's children. He went even further. For +sometimes, without a word of warning, he would pounce upon some innocent +youngster and carry him in his powerful jaws far away, over the wall, +right out of my sight. What happened yonder I cannot guess. It was +probably a little old-fashioned cannibalism. + +Though my meals in those days were all out of doors, his attendance at +dinner-time was rather uncertain; I suspect he retired early in order to +spend the night, like other polygamists, in prayer and fasting. At the +hours of breakfast and luncheon--he knew them as well as I did--he was +generally free, and then quite monopolized my company, climbing up my +leg on to the table, eating out of my hand, sipping sugar-water out of +his own private bowl and, in fact, doing everything I suggested. I did +not suggest impossibilities. A friendship should never be strained to +breaking-point. Had I cared to risk such a calamity, I might have taught +him to play skittles.... + +For the rest, it is not very amusing to be either a lizard or a snake in +Italy. Lizards are caught in nooses and then tied by one leg and made to +run on the remaining three; or secured by a cord round the neck and +swung about in the air--mighty good sport, this; or deprived of their +tails and given to the baby or cat to play with; or dragged along at the +end of a string, like a reluctant pig that is led to market. There are +quite a number of ways of making lizards feel at home. + +With snakes the procedure is simple. They are killed; treated to that +self-same system to which they used to treat us in our arboreal days +when the glassy eye of the serpent, gleaming through the branches, will +have caused our fur to stand on end with horror. No beast provokes human +hatred like that old coiling serpent. Long and cruel must have been his +reign for the memory to have lingered--how many years? Let us say, in +order to be on the safe side, a million. Here, then, is another ghost of +the past, a daylight ghost. + +And look around you; the world is full of them. We live amid a legion of +ancestral terrors which creep from their limbo and peer in upon our +weaker moments, ready to make us their prey. A man whose wits are not +firmly rooted in earth, in warm friends and warm food, might well live a +life of ceaseless trepidation. Many do. They brood over their immortal +soul--a ghost. Others there are, whose dreams have altogether devoured +their realities. These live, for the most part, in asylums. + +There flits, along this very shore, a ghost of another kind--that of +Shelley. Maybe the spot where they burnt his body can still be pointed +out. I have forgotten all I ever read on that subject. An Italian +enthusiast, the librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence, +garnered certain information from ancient fishermen of Viareggio in +regard to this occurrence and set it down in a little book, a book with +white covers which I possessed during my Shelley period. They have +erected a memorial to the English poet in one of the public squares +here. The features of the bust do not strike me as remarkably etherial, +but the inscription is a good specimen of Italian adapted to lapidary +uses--it avoids those insipid verbal terminations which weaken the +language and sometimes render it almost ridiculous. + +Smollet lies yonder, at Livorno; and Ouida hard by, at Bagni di Lucca. +She died in one of these same featureless streets of Viareggio, alone, +half blind, and in poverty.... + +I know Suffolk, that ripe old county of hers, with its pink villages +nestling among drowsy elms and cornfields; I know their "Spread Eagles" +and "Angels" and "White Horses" and other taverns suggestive--sure sign +of antiquity--of zoological gardens; I know their goodly ale and old +brown sherries. Her birthplace, despite those venerable green mounds, is +comparatively dull--I would not care to live at Bury; give me Lavenham +or Melford or some place of that kind. While looking one day at the +house where she was born, I was sorely tempted to crave permission to +view the interior, but refrained; something of her own dislike of prying +and meddlesomeness came over me. Thence down to that commemorative +fountain among the drooping trees. The good animals for whose comfort it +was built would have had some difficulty in slaking their thirst just +then, its basin being chocked up with decayed leaves. + +We corresponded for a good while and I still possess her letters +somewhere; I see in memory that large and bold handwriting, often only +two words to a line, on the high-class slate-coloured paper. The sums +she spent on writing materials! It was one of her many ladylike traits. + +I tried to induce her to stay with me in South Italy. She made three +conditions: to be allowed to bring her dogs, to have a hot bath every +day, and two litres of cream. Everything could be managed except the +cream, which was unprocurable. Later on, while living in the Tyrolese +mountains, I renewed the invitation; that third condition could now be +fulfilled as easily as the other two. She was unwell, she replied, and +could not move out of the house, having been poisoned by a cook. So we +never met, though she wrote me much about herself and about +"Helianthus," which was printed after her death. In return, I dedicated +to her a book of short stories; they were published, thank God, under a +pseudonym, and eight copies were sold. + +She is now out of date. Why, yes. Those guardsmen who drenched their +beards in scent and breakfasted off caviare and chocolate and sparkling +Moselle--they certainly seem fantastic. They really were fantastic. They +did drench their beards in scent. The language and habits of these +martial heroes are authenticated in the records of their day; glance, +for instance, into back numbers of Punch. The fact is, we were all +rather ludicrous formerly. The characters of Dickens, to say nothing of +Cruikshank's pictures of them: can such beings ever have walked the +earth? + +If her novels are somewhat faded, the same cannot be said of her letters +and articles and critiques. To our rising generation of authors--the +youngsters, I mean; those who have not yet sold themselves to the +devil--I should say: read these things of Ouida's. Read them +attentively, not for their matter, which is always of interest, nor yet +for their vibrant and lucid style, which often rivals that of Huxley. +Read them for their tone, their temper; for that pervasive good +breeding, that shining honesty, that capacity of scorn. These are +qualities which our present age lacks, and needs; they are conspicuous +in Ouida. Abhorrence of meanness was her dominant trait. She was +intelligent, fearless; as ready to praise without stint as to voice the +warmest womanly indignation. She was courageous not only in matters of +literature; courageous, and how right! Is it not satisfactory to be +right, when others are wrong? How right about the Japanese, about +Feminism and Conscription and German brutalitarianism! How she puts her +finger on the spot when discussing Marion Crawford and D'Annunzio! Those +local politicians--how she hits them off! Hers was a sure touch. Do we +not all now agree with what she wrote at the time of Queen Victoria and +Joseph Chamberlain? When she remarks of Tolstoy, in an age which adored +him (I am quoting from memory), that "his morality and monogamy are +against nature and common sense," adding that he is dangerous, because +he is an "educated Christ"--out of date? When she says that the world is +ruled by two enemies of all beauty, commerce and militarism--out of +date? When she dismisses Oscar Wilde as a cabotin and yet thinks that +the law should not have meddled with him--is not that the man and the +situation in a nutshell? + +No wonder straightforward sentiments like these do not appeal to our age +of neutral tints and compromise, to our vegetarian world-reformers who +are as incapable of enthusiasm as they are of contempt, because their +blood-temperature is invariably two degrees below the normal. Ouida's +critical and social opinions are infernally out of date--quite +inconveniently modern, in fact. There is the milk of humanity in them, +glowing conviction and sincerity; they are written from a standpoint +altogether too European, too womanly, too personally-poignant for +present-day needs; and in a language, moreover, whose picturesque and +vigorous independence comes as a positive shock after the colourless +Grub-street brand of to-day. + +They come as a shock, these writings, because in the brief interval +since they were published our view of life and letters has shifted. A +swarm of mystics and pragmatists has replaced the lonely giants of +Ouida's era. It is an epoch of closed pores, of constriction. The novel +has changed. Pick up the average one and ask yourself whether this +crafty and malodorous sex-problem be not a deliberately commercial +speculation--a frenzied attempt to "sell" by scandalizing our +unscandalizable, because hermaphroditic, middle classes? Ouida was not +one of these professional hacks, but a personality of refined instincts +who wrote, when she cared to write at all, to please her equals; a +rationalistic anti-vulgarian; a woman of wide horizons who fought for +generous issues and despised all shams; the last, almost the last, of +lady-authors. What has such a genial creature in common with our anaemic +and woolly generation? "The Massarenes" may have faults, but how many of +our actual woman-scribes, for all their monkey-tricks of cleverness, +could have written it? The haunting charm of "In Maremma": why ask our +public to taste such stuff? You might as well invite a bilious +nut-fooder to a Lord Mayor's banquet. + +The mention of banquets reminds me that she was blamed for preferring +the society of duchesses and diplomats to that of the Florentine +literati, as if there were something reprehensible in Ouida's fondness +for decent food and amusing talk when she could have revelled in Ceylon +tea and dough-nuts and listened to babble concerning Quattro-Cento +glazes in any of the fifty squabbling art-coteries of that City of +Misunderstandings. It was one of her several failings, chiefest among +them being this: that she had no reverence for money. She was unable to +hoard--an unpardonable sin. Envied in prosperity, she was smugly pitied +in her distress. Such is the fate of those who stand apart from the +crowd, among a nation of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, after +being the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form--a slur on +society. True, she might have bettered her state by accepting a +lucrative proposal to write her autobiography, but she considered such +literature a "degrading form of vanity" and refused the offer. She +preferred to remain ladylike to the last, in this and other little +trifles--in her lack of humour, her redundancies, her love of expensive +clothes and genuinely humble people, of hot baths and latinisms and +flowers and pet dogs and sealing-wax. All through life she made no +attempt to hide her woman's nature, her preference for male over female +company; she was even guilty of saying that disease serves the world +better than war, because it kills more women than men. Out of date, with +a vengeance! + +There recurs to me a sentence in a printed letter written by a +celebrated novelist of the artificial school, a sentence I wish I could +forget, describing Ouida as "a little terrible and finally pathetic +grotesque." Does not a phrase like this reveal, even better than his own +romances, the essentially non-human fibre of the writer's mind? Whether +this derivative intellectualist spiderishly spinning his own plots and +phrases and calling Ouida a "grotesque"--whether this echo ever tried to +grasp the bearing of her essays on Shelley or Blind Guides or Alma +Veniesia or The Quality of Mercy--tried to sense her burning words of +pity for those that suffer, her hatred of hypocrisy and oppression and +betrayal of friendship, her so righteous pleadings, coined out of the +heart's red blood, for all that makes life worthy to be lived? He may +have tried. He never could succeed. He lacked the sympathy, the sex. He +lacked the sex. Ah, well--Schwamm drueber, as the Norwegians say. Ouida, +for all her femininity, was more than this feline and gelatinous New +Englander. + + + + +Rome + +The railway station at Rome has put on a new face. Blown to the winds is +that old dignity and sense of leisure. Bustle everywhere; soldiers in +line, officers strutting about; feverish scurryings for tickets. A young +baggage employe, who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the +inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep up the traditions +of former days. He was unruffled and polite; he told me, incidentally, +that he came from ----. That was odd, I said; I had often met persons +born at ----, and never yet encountered one who was not civil beyond the +common measure. His native place must be worthy of a visit. + +"It is," he replied. "There are also certain fountains...." + +That restaurant, for example--one of those few for which a man in olden +days of peace would desert his own tavern in the town--how changed! The +fare has deteriorated beyond recognition. Where are those succulent +joints and ragouts, the aromatic wine, the snow-white macaroni, the +cafe-au-lait with genuine butter and genuine honey? + +War-time! + +Conversed awhile with an Englishman at my side, who was gleefully +devouring lumps of a particular something which I would not have liked +to touch with tongs. + +"I don't care what I eat," he remarked. + +So it seemed. + +I don't care what I eat: what a confession to make! Is it not the same +as saying, I don't care whether I am dirty or clean? When others tell me +this, I regard it as a pose, or a poor joke. This person was manifestly +sincere in his profession of faith. He did not care what he ate. He +looked it. Were I afflicted with this peculiar ailment, this attenuated +form of coprophagia, I should try to keep the hideous secret to myself. +It is nothing to boast of. A man owes something to those traditions of +our race which has helped to raise us above the level of the brute. Good +taste in viands has been painfully acquired; it is a sacred trust. +Beware of gross feeders. They are a menace to their fellow-creatures. +Will they not act, on occasion, even as they feed? Assuredly they will. +Everybody acts as he feeds. + +Then lingered on the departure platform, comparing its tone with that of +similar places in England. A mournful little crowd is collected here. +Conscripts, untidy-looking fellows, are leaving--perhaps for ever. They +climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and +endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their +farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent. +The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation, +the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they +are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the +sisters and children, who give themselves away pretty freely. An +infectious thing, this shedding of tears. One little girl, loth to part +from that big brother, contrived by her wailing to break down the +reserve of the entire family.... + +It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Rome is mirthless. + +There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a sweet old lady +friend who said to me, in years gone by: + +"When next you go to Rome, please let me know if it is still raining +there." + +It was here that she celebrated her honeymoon--an event which must have +taken place in the 'sixties or thereabouts. She is dead now. So is her +husband, the prince of moralizers, the man who first taught me how +contemptible the human race may become. Doubtless he expired with some +edifying platitude on his lips and is deblatterating them at this very +moment in Heaven, where the folks may well be seasoned to that kind of +talk. + +Let us be charitable, now that he is gone! + +To have lived so long with a person of this incurable respectability +would have soured any ordinary woman's temper. Hers it refined; it made +her into something akin to an angel. He was her cross; she bore him +meekly and not, I like to think, without extracting a kind of sly, dry +fun out of the horrible creature. A past master in the art of gentle +domestic nagging, he made everybody miserable as long as he lived, and I +would give something for an official assurance that he is now miserable +himself. He was a worm; a good man in the worse sense of the word. It +was the contrast--the contrast between his gentle clothing and ungentle +heart, which moved my spleen. What a self-sufficient and inhuman brood +were the Victorians of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty; +a brood that has never yet been called by its proper name. Victorians? +Why, not altogether. The mischief has its roots further back. Addison, +for example, is a fair specimen. + +Why say unkind things about a dead man? He cannot answer back. + +Upon my word, I am rather glad to think he cannot. The last thing I ever +wish to hear again is that voice of his. And what a face: gorgonizing in +its assumption of virtue! Now the whole species is dying out, and none +too soon. Graft abstract principles of conduct upon natures devoid of +sympathy and you produce a monster; a sanctimonious fish; the coldest +beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affinities were with +Robespierre and Torquemada--both of them actuated by the purest +intentions and without a grain of self-interest: pillars of integrity. +What floods of tears would have been spared to mankind, had they only +been a little corrupt! How corrupt a person of principles? He lacks the +vulgar yet divine gift of imagination. + +That is what these Victorians lacked. They would never have subscribed +to this palpable truth: that justice is too good for some men, and not +good enough for the rest. They cultivated the Cato or Brutus tone; they +strove to be stern old Romans--Romans of the sour and imperfect +Republic; for the Empire, that golden blossom, was to them a period of +luxury and debauch. Nero--most reprehensible! It was not Nero, however, +but our complacent British reptiles, who filled the prisons with the +wailing of young children, and hanged a boy of thirteen for stealing a +spoon. I wish I had it here, that book which everybody ought to read, +that book by George Ives on the History of Penal Methods--it would help +me to say a few more polite things. The villainies of the virtuous: who +shall recount them? I can picture this vastly offensive old man acting +as judge on that occasion and then, his "duties towards society" +accomplished, being driven home in his brougham to thank Providence for +one of those succulent luncheons, the enjoyment of which he invariably +managed to ruin for every one except himself. + +God rest his soul, the unspeakable phenomenon! He ought to have +throttled himself at his mother's breast. Only a woman imbued with +ultra-terrestrial notions of humour could have tolerated such an +infliction. Anybody else would have poisoned him in the name of +Christian charity and common sense, and earned the gratitude of +generations yet unborn. + +Well, well! R.I.P.... + +On returning to Rome after a considerable absence--a year or so--a few +things have to be done for the sake of auld lang syne ere one may again +feel at home. Rites must be performed. I am to take my fill of memories +and conjure up certain bitter-sweet phantoms of the past. Meals must be +taken in definite restaurants; a certain church must be entered; a sip +of water taken from a fountain--from one, and one only (no easy task, +this, for most of the fountains of Rome are so constructed that, however +abundant their flow, a man may die of thirst ere obtaining a mouthful); +I must linger awhile at the very end, the dirty end, of the horrible Via +Principe Amedeo and, again, at a corner near the Portico d'Ottavia; +perambulate the Protestant cemetery, Monte Mario, and a few quite +uninteresting modern sites; the Acqua Acetosa, a stupid place, may on no +account be forgotten, nor yet that bridge on the Via Nomentana--not the +celebrated bridge but another one, miles away in the Campagna, the +dreariest of little bridges, in the dreariest of landscapes. Why? It has +been hallowed by the tread of certain feet. + +Thus, by a kind of sacred procedure, I immerge myself into those old +stones and recreate my peculiar Roman mood. It is rather ridiculous. +Tradition wills it. + +To-day came the turn of the Protestant cemetery. I have a view of this +place, taken about the 'seventies--I wish I could reproduce it here, to +show how this spot has been ruined. A woman who looks after the +enclosure was in a fairly communicative mood; we had a few minutes' +talk, among the tombs. What a jumble of names and nationalities, by the +way! What a mixed assemblage lies here, in this foreign earth! One would +like to write down all their names, shake them in a bag, pick out fifty +at random and compose their biographies. It would be a curious +cosmopolitan document. + +They have now a dog, the woman tells me, a ferocious dog who roams among +the tombs, since several brass plates have been wrenched off by +marauders. At night? I inquire. At night. At night.... Slowly, warily, I +introduce the subject of fiammelle. It is not a popular theme. No! She +has heard of such things, but never seen them; she never comes here at +night, God forbid! + +What are fiammelle? Little flames, will-o'-the-wisps which hover about +the graves at such hours, chiefly in the hot months or after autumn +rains. It is a well-authenticated apparition; the scientist Bessel saw +one; so did Casanova, here at Rome. He describes it as a pyramidal flame +raised about four feet from the ground which seemed to accompany him as +he walked along. He saw the same thing later, at Cesena near Bologna. +There was some correspondence on the subject (started by Dr. Herbert +Snow) in the Observer of December 1915 and January 1916. Many are the +graveyards I visited in this country and in others with a view to +"satisfying my curiosity," as old Ramage would say, on this point, and +all in vain. My usual luck! The fiammelle, on that particular evening, +were coy--they were never working. They are said to be frequently +observed at Scanno in the Abruzzi province, and the young secretary of +the municipality there, Mr. L. O., will tell you of our periodical +midnight visits to the local cemetery. Or go to Licenza and ask for my +intelligent friend the schoolmaster. What he does not know about +fiammelle is not worth knowing. Did he not, one night, have a veritable +fight with a legion of them which the wind blew from the graveyard into +his face? Did he not return home trembling all over and pale as +death?... + +Here reposes, among many old friends, the idealist Malwida von +Meysenbug; that sculptured medallion is sufficient to proclaim her +whereabouts to those who still remember her. It is good to pause awhile +and etheralize oneself in the neighbourhood of her dust. She lived a +quiet life in an old brown house, since rebuilt, that overlooks the +Coliseum, on whose comely ellipse and blood-stained history she loved to +pasture eyes and imagination. Often I walked thence with her, in those +sparkling mornings, up the Palatine hill, to stroll about the ilexes and +roses in view of the Forum, to listen to the blackbirds, or the siskins +in that pine tree. She was of the same type, the same ethical parentage, +as the late Mathilde Blind, a woman of benignant and refined enthusiasm, +full of charity to the poor and, in those later days, almost +shadowy--remote from earth. She had saturated herself with Rome, for +whose name she professed a tremulous affection untainted by worldly +considerations such as mine; she loved its "persistent spiritual life"; +it was her haven of rest. So, while her arm rested lightly on mine, we +wandered about those gardens, the saintly lady and myself; her mind +dwelling, maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure and the +part she came nigh to playing in the history of Europe, while mine was +lost in a maze of vulgar love-adventures, several of which came nigh to +making me play a part in the police-courts of Rome. + +What may have helped to cement our strange friendship was my +acquaintance, at that time, with the German metaphysicians. She must +have thought me a queer kind of Englishman to discuss with such +familiarity the tenets of these cloudy dreamers. Malwida loved them in a +bland and childlike fashion. She would take one of their dicta as a +starting-point--establish herself, so to speak, within this or that +nebular hypothesis--and argue thence in academic fashion for the sake of +intellectual exercise and the joy of seeing where, after a thousand +twists and turnings, you were finally deposited. A friend of ours--some +American--had lately published a Socratic dialogue entitled "The +Prison"; it formed a fruitful theme of conversation. [9] Nietzsche was +also then to the fore, and it pleases me to recollect that even in those +days I detected his blind spot; his horror of those English materialists +and biologists. I did not pause to consider why he hated them so +ardently; I merely noted, more in sorrow than in anger, this fact which +seemed to vitiate his whole outlook--as indeed it does. Now I know the +reason. Like all preacher-poets, he is anthropocentric. To his way of +thinking the human mind is so highly organized, so different from that +of beasts, that not all the proofs of ethnology and physiology would +ever induce him to accept the ape-ancestry of man. This monkey-business +is too irksome and humiliating to be true; he waives it aside, with a +sneer at the disgusting arguments of those Englishmen. + +That is what happens to men who think that "the spirit alone lives; the +life of the spirit alone is true life." A philosopher weighs the value +of evidence; he makes it his business, before discoursing of the origin +of human intellect, to learn a little something of its focus, the brain; +a little comparative anatomy. These men are not philosophers. +Metaphysicians are poets gone wrong. Schopenhauer invents a "genius of +the race"--there you have his cloven hoof, the pathetic fallacy, the +poet's heritage. There are things in Schopenhauer which make one blush +for philosophy. The day may dawn when this man will be read not for what +he says, but for how he says it; he being one of the few of his race who +can write in their own language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon +a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did. So I remember +one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks" +propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it, +wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation. [10] + +He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions +into the inane. + +And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who scorned honest work +and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his +borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the +spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it +was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk +most plausibly--art, music, society gossip--everything you please; +everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He +sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully +contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody, +like himself, found the world a good place to inhabit. That, I believe, +was the secret of his success. He had a divine intuition for discovering +the soft spots of his neighbours and utilizing the knowledge, in a frank +and gentlemanly fashion, for his own advantage. It was he who invented a +saying which I have since encountered more than once: "Never run after +an omnibus or a woman. There will be another one round in a minute." And +also this: "Never borrow from a man who really expects to be paid back. +You may lose a friend." + +What lady is he now living on? + +"A good-looking fellow like me--why should I work? Tell me that. +Especially with so many rich ladies in the world aching for somebody to +relieve them of their spare cash?" + +"The wealthy woman," he once told me, after I had begun to know him more +intimately, "is a great danger to society. She is so corruptible! People +make her spend money on all kinds of empty and even harmful projects. +Think of the mischief that is done, in politics alone, by the money of +these women. Think of all the religious fads that spring up and are kept +going in a state of prosperity because some woman or other has not been +instructed as to the proper use of her cheque-book. I foresee a positive +decline ahead of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We +must club together, we reasonable men, and put an end to the scandal. +These women need trimmers; an army of trimmers. I have done a good deal +of trimming in my day. Of course it involves some trouble and a close +degree of intimacy, now and then. But a sensible man will always know +where to draw the line." + +"Where do you draw it?" + +"At marriage." + +Whether he ever dared to tap the venerable Malwida for a loan? Likely +enough. He often played with her feelings in a delicate style, and his +astuteness in such matters was only surpassed by his shamelessness. He +was capable of borrowing a fiver from the Pope--or at least of +attempting the feat; of pocketing some hungry widow's last mite and +therewith purchasing a cigarette before her eyes. All these sums he took +as his due, by right of conquest. Whether he ever "stung" Malwida? I +should have liked to see the idealist's face when confronted in that +cheery off-hand manner with the question whether she happened to have +five hundred francs to spare. + +"No? Whatever does it matter, my dear Madame de Meysenbug? Perhaps I +shall be more fortunate another day. But pray don't put yourself out for +an extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending money--can't +live without it, can one?--and sometimes, though you might not believe +it, on quite worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like to take +you to see one day; the father was cut to pieces in some wretched +agricultural machine, the mother is dying in a hospital for consumption, +and the six little children, all shivering under one blanket--well, +never mind! One does what one can, in a small way. That was an +interesting lecture, wasn't it, on Friday? He made a fine point in what +he said about the relation of the Ego to the Cosmos. All the same, I +thought he was a little hard on Fichte. But then, you know, I always +felt a sort of tenderness for Fichte. And did you notice that the room +was absolutely packed? I doubt whether that would have been the case in +any other European capital. This must be the secret charm of Rome, don't +you think so? This is what draws one to the Eternal City and keeps one +here and makes one love the place in spite of a few trivial +annoyances--this sense of persistent spiritual life." + +The various sums derived from ladies were regarded merely as +adventitious income. I found out towards the end of our acquaintance, +when I really began to understand his "method," that he had a second +source of revenue, far smaller but luckily "fixed." It was drawn from +the other sex, from that endless procession of men passing through Rome +and intent upon its antiquities. Rome, he explained, was the very place +for him. + +"This is what keeps me here and makes me love the place in spite of a +few trivial annoyances--this persistent coming and going of tourists. +Everybody on the move, all the time! A man must be daft if he cannot +talk a little archaeology or something and make twenty new friends a +year among such a jolly crowd of people. They are so grateful for having +things explained to them. Another lot next year! And there are really +good fellows among them; fellows, mind you, with brains; fellows with +money. From each of those twenty he can borrow, say, ten pounds; what is +that to a rich stranger who comes here for a month or so with the +express purpose of getting rid of his money? Of course I am only talking +about the medium rich; one need never apply to the very rich--they are +always too poor. Well, that makes about two hundred a year. It's not +much, but, thank God, it's safe as a house and it supplements the +ladies. Women are so distressingly precarious, you know. You cannot +count on a woman unless you have her actually under your thumb. Under +your thumb, my boy; under your thumb. Don't ever forget it." + +I have never forgotten it. + +Where is he now? Is he dead? A gulf intervenes between that period and +this. What has become of him? You might as well ask me about his +contemporary, the Piccadilly goat. I have no idea what became of the +Piccadilly goat, though I know pretty well what would become of him, +were he alive at this moment. + +Mutton-chops. [11] + +Yet I can make a guess at what is happening to my red-haired friend. He +is not dead, but sleepeth. He is being lovingly tended, in a crapulous +old age, by one of the hundred ladies he victimized. He takes it as a +matter of course. I can hear him chuckling dreamily, as she smooths his +pillow for him. He will die in her arms unrepentant, and leave her to +pay for the funeral. + +"Work!" he once said. "To Hell with work. The man who talks to me about +work is my enemy." + +One sunny morning during this period there occurred a thunderous +explosion which shattered my windows and many others in Rome. A +gunpowder magazine had blown up, somewhere in the Campagna; the +concussion of air was so mighty that it broke glass, they said, even at +Frascati. + +We drove out later to view the site. It resembled a miniature volcano. + +There I left the party and wandered alone into one of those tortuous +stream-beds that intersect the plain, searching for a certain kind of +crystal which may be found in such places, washed out of the soil by +wintry torrents. I specialized in minerals in those days--minerals and +girls. Dangerous and unprofitable studies! Even at that tender age I +seem to have dimly discerned what I now know for certain: that dangerous +and unprofitable objects are alone worth pursuing. The taste for +minerals died out later, though I clung to it half-heartedly for a long +while, Dr. Johnston-Lavis, Professor Knop and others fanning the dying +embers. One day, all of a sudden, it was gone. I found myself riding +somewhere in Asiatic Turkey past a precipice streaked in alternate veins +of purest red and yellow jasper, with chalcedony in between: a discovery +which in former days would have made me half delirious with joy. It left +me cold. I did not even dismount to examine the site. "Farewell to +stones" I thought.... + +Often we lingered by the Fontana Trevi to watch the children disporting +themselves in the water and diving for pennies--a pretty scene which has +now been banished from the politer regions of Rome (the town has grown +painfully proper). There, at the foot of that weedy and vacuous and yet +charming old Neptune--how perfectly he suits his age!--there, if you +look, you will see certain gigantic leaves sculptured into the rock. I +once overheard a German she-tourist saying to her companion, as she +pointed to these things: "Ist doch sonderbar, wie das Wasser so die +Pflanzen versteinert." She thought they were natural plants petrified by +the water's action. + +What happened yesterday was equally surprising. We were sitting at the +Arch of Constantine and I was telling my friend about the Coliseum hard +by and how, not long ago, it was a thicket of trees and flowers, looking +less like a ruin than some wooded mountain. Now the Coliseum is surely +one of the most famous structures in the world. Even they who have never +been to the spot would recognize it from those myriad +reproductions--especially, one would think, an Italian. Nevertheless, +while thus discoursing, a man came up to us, a well-dressed man, who +politely inquired: + +"Could you tell me the name of this castello?" + +I am glad to think that some account of the rich and singular flora of +the Coliseum has been preserved by Deakin and Sebastiani, and possibly +by others. I could round their efforts by describing the fauna of the +Coliseum. The fauna of the Coliseum--especially after 11 p.m.--would +make a readable book; readable but hardly printable. + +These little local studies are not without charm. Somebody, one day, may +be induced to tell us about the fauna of Trafalgar Square. He should +begin with a description of the horse standing on three legs and gazing +inanely out of those human eyes after the fashion of its classic +prototype; then pass on to the lions beloved of our good Richard +Jefferies which look like puppy-dogs modelled in cotton-wool (why did +the sculptor not take a few lessons in lions from the sand-artist on +Yarmouth beach?), and conclude by dwelling as charitably as possible on +the human fauna--that droll little man, barely discernible, perched on +the summit of his lead pencil.... + +There was a slight earthquake at sunrise. I felt nothing.... + +And, appropriately enough, I encountered this afternoon M. M., that most +charming of persons, who, like Shelley and others, has discovered Italy +to be a "paradise of exiles." His friends may guess whom I mean when I +say that M. M. is connoisseur of earthquakes social and financial; his +existence has been punctuated by them to such an extent that he no +longer counts events from dates in the ordinary calendar, from birthdays +or Christmas or Easter, but from such and such a disaster affecting +himself. Each has left him seemingly more mellow than the last. Just +then, however, he was in pensive mood, his face all puckered into +wrinkles as he glanced upon the tawny flood rolling beneath that old +bridge. There he stood, leaning over the parapet, all by himself. He +turned his countenance aside on seeing me, to escape detection, but I +drew nigh none the less. + +"Go away," he said. "Don't disturb me just now. I am watching the little +fishes. Life is so complicated! Let us pray. I have begun a new novel +and a new love-affair." + +"God prosper both!" I replied, and began to move off. + +"Thanks. But supposing the publisher always objects to your choicest +paragraphs?" + +"I am not altogether surprised, if they are anything like what you once +read to me out of your unexpurgated 'House of the Seven Harlots.' Why +not try another firm? They might be more accommodating. Try mine." + +He shook his head dubiously. + +"They are all alike. It is with publishers as with wives: one always +wants somebody else's. And when you have them, where's the difference? +Ah, let us pray. These little fishes have none of our troubles." + +I inquired about the new romance. At first he refused to disclose +anything. Then he told me it was to be entitled "With Christ at +Harvard," and that it promised some rather novel situations. I shall +look forward to its appearance. + +What good things one could relate of M. M., but for the risk of +incurring his wrath! It is a thousand pities, I often tell him, that he +is still alive; I am yearning to write his biography, and cannot afford +to wait for his dissolution. + +"When I am dead," he always says. + +"By that time, my dear M., I shall be in the same fix myself." + +"Try to survive. You may find it worth your while, when you come to look +into my papers. You don't know half. And I may be taking that little +sleeping-draught of mine any one of these days...." [12] + +Mused long that night, and not without a certain envy, on the lot of M. +M. and other earthquake-connoisseurs--or rather on the lot of that true +philosopher, if he exists, who, far from being damaged by such +convulsions, distils therefrom subtle matter of mirth, I have only known +one single man--it happened to be a woman, an Austrian--who approached +this ideal of splendid isolation. She lived her own life, serenely +happy, refusing to acquiesce in the delusions and conventionalities of +the crowd; she had ceased to trouble herself about neighbours, save as a +source of quiet amusement; a state of affairs which had been brought +about by a succession of benevolent earthquakes that refined and +clarified her outlook. + +Such disasters, obviously, have their uses. They knock down obsolete +rubbish and enable a man to start building anew. The most sensitive +recluse cannot help being a member of society. As such, he unavoidably +gathers about him a host of mere acquaintances, good folks who waste his +time dulling the edge of his wit and infecting him with their orthodoxy. +Then comes the cataclysm. He loses, let us say, all his money, or makes +a third appearance in the divorce courts. He can then at last (so one of +them expressed it to me) "revise his visiting-list," an operation which +more than counterbalances any damage from earthquakes. For these same +good folks are vanished, the scandal having scattered them to the winds. +He begins to breathe again, and employ his hours to better purpose. If +he loses both money and reputation he must feel, I should think, as +though treading on air. The last fools gone! And no sage lacks friends. + +Consider well your neighbour, what an imbecile he is. Then ask yourself +whether it be worth while paying any attention to what he thinks of you. +Life is too short, and death the end of all things. Life must be lived, +not endured. Were the day twice as long as it is, a man might find it +diverting to probe down into that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try +to reach some common root of feeling other than those physiological +needs which we share with every beast of earth. Diverting; hardly +profitable. It would be like looking for a flea in a haystack, or a joke +in the Bible. They can perhaps be found; at the expense of how much +trouble! + +Therefore the sage will go his way, prepared to find himself growing +ever more out of sympathy with vulgar trends of opinion, for such is the +inevitable development of thoughtful and self-respecting minds. He +scorns to make proselytes among his fellows: they are not worth it. He +has better things to do. While others nurse their griefs, he nurses his +joy. He endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and to be +true to that self when found--a worthy and ample occupation for a +life-time. The happiness-of-the-greatest-number, of those who pasture on +delusions: what dreamer is responsible for this eunuchry? Mill, was it? +Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest number were not necessarily the +least-intelligent! As if their happiness were not necessarily +incompatible with that of the sage! Why foster it? He is a poor +philosopher, who cuts his own throat. Away with their ghosts; +de-spiritualize yourself; what you cannot find on earth is not worth +seeking. + +That charming M. M., I fear, will never compass this clarity of vision, +this perfect de-spiritualization and contempt of illusions. He will +never remain curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in +nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has inherited that all +too common taint of psychasthenia (miscalled neurasthenia); he +confesses, moreover,--like other men of strong carnal proclivities--to +certain immaterial needs and aspirations after "the beyond." Not one of +these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but has his Achilles heel: a +mental crotchet or physical imperfection to mar the worldly perspective. +Not one of them, at close of life, will sit beside some open window in +view of a fair landscape and call up memories of certain moments which +no cataclysms have taken from him; not one will lay them in the balance +and note how they outweigh, in their tiny grains of gold, the dross of +an age of other men's lives. Not one of them! They will be preoccupied, +for the most part, with unseasonable little concerns. Pleasant folk, +none the less. And sufficiently abundant in Italy. Altogether, the +Englishman here is as often an intenser being than the home product. +Alien surroundings awaken fresh and unexpected notes in his nature. His +fibres seem to lie more exposed; you have glimpses into the man's +anatomy. There is something hostile in this sunlight to the hazy or +spongy quality which saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the +sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will also meet with dull +persons; Rome is full of them, but, the type being easier to detect +among a foreign environment, there is still less difficulty in evading +them.... + +Thus I should have had no compunction, some nights ago, in making myself +highly objectionable to Mr. P. G. who has turned up here on some mission +connected with the war--so he says, and it may well be true; no +compunction whatever, had that gentleman been in his ordinary social +state. Mr. P. G., the acme of British propriety, inhabiting a house, a +mansion, on the breezy heights of north London, was on that occasion +decidedly drunk. "Indulging in a jag," he would probably have called it. +He tottered into a place where I happened to be sitting, having lost his +friends, he declared; and soon began pouring into my ear, after the +confidential manner of a drunkard, a flood of low talk, which if I +attempted to set it down here, would only result in my being treated to +the same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with his "choicest +paragraphs." It was highly instructive--the contrast between that +impeccable personality which he displays at home and his present state. +I wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a few shreds of +what he said--just a few shreds; they would have seen a new light on +dear daddy. + +In vino veritas. Ever avid of experimentum in some corpore vili and +determined to reach the bed-rock of his gross mentality, I plied him +vigorously with drink, and was rewarded. It was rich sport, unmasking +this Philistine and thanking God, meanwhile, that I was not like unto +him. We are all lost sheep; and none the worse for that. Yet whoso is +liable, however drunk, to make an exhibition of himself after the +peculiar fashion of Mr. P. G., should realize that there is something +fundamentally wrong with his character and take drastic measures of +reform--measures which would include, among others, a total abstention +from alcohol. Old Aristotle, long ago, laboured to define wherein +consisted the trait known as gentlemanliness; others will have puzzled +since his day, for we have bedaubed ourselves with so thick a coating of +manner and phrase that many a cad will pass for something better. Well, +here is the test. Unvarnish your man; make him drink, and listen. That +was my procedure with P. G. Esquire. I listened to his outpouring of +inanity and obscenity and, listening sympathetically, like some +compassionate family doctor, could not help asking myself: Is such a man +to be respected, even when sober? Be that as it may, he gave me to +understand why some folk are rightly afraid of exposing, under the +influence of drink, the bete humaine which lurks below their skin of +decency. His language would have terrified many people. Me it rejoiced. +I would not have missed that entertainment for worlds. He finally wanted +to have a fight, because I refused to accompany him to a certain place +of delights, the address of which--I might have given him a far better +one--had been scrawled on the back of a crumpled envelope by some +cabman. Unable to stand on his legs, what could he hope to do there? + + + + +Olevano + +I have loafed into Olevano. + +A thousand feet below my window, and far away, lies the gap between the +Alban and Volscian hills; veiled in mists, the Pontine marches extend +beyond, and further still--discernible only to the eye of faith--the +Tyrrhenian. + +The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable grace. It recalls +Etna, as viewed from Taormina. How the mountain cleaves to earth, how +reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line! +Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on its +lower slope. Standing out against the sky, they can be seen at all hours +of the day, whereas the dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on the green +plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades out of sight after midday. + +Hard by, on your right, are the craggy heights of Capranica. Tradition +has it that Michael Angelo was in exile up there, after doing something +rather risky. What had he done? He crucified his model, desirous, like a +true artist, to observe and reproduce faithfully in marble the muscular +contractions and facial agony of such a sufferer. To crucify a man: this +was going almost too far, even for the Pope of that period, who seems to +have been an unusually sensitive pontiff--or perhaps the victim was a +particular friend of his. However that may be, he waxed wroth and +banished the conscientious sculptor in disgrace to this lonely mountain +village, there to expiate his sins, for a day or two.... + +One sleeps badly here. Those nightingales--they are worse than the +tram-cars in town. They begin earlier. They make more noise. Surely +there is a time for everything? Will certain birds never learn to sing +at reasonable hours? + +A word as to these nightingales. One of them elects to warble, in +deplorably full-throated ease, immediately below my bedroom window. When +this particular fowl sets up its din at about 3.45 a.m. it is a +veritable explosion; an ear-rending, nerve-shattering explosion of +noise. I use that word "noise" deliberately. For it is not music--not +until your ears are grown accustomed to it. + +I know a little something about music, having studied the art with +considerable diligence for a number of years. Impossible to enumerate +all the composers and executants on various instruments, the conductors +and opera-singers and ballet-girls with whom I was on terms of +familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps I am the only person now +alive who has shaken hands with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with +Beethoven and heard his voice; all of which may appear when I come to +indite my musical memoirs. I have written a sonata in four movements, +opus 643, hitherto unpublished, and played the organ during divine +service to a crowded congregation. Furthermore I performed, not at my +own suggestion, his insipid Valse Caprice to the great Antoine +Rubinstein, who was kind enough to observe: "Yes, yes. Quite good. But I +rather doubt whether you could yet risk playing that in a concert." And +in the matter of sheer noise I am also something of an expert, having +once, as an infant prodigy, broken five notes in a single masterly +rendering of Liszt's polonaise in E Major--I think it is E +Major--whereupon my teacher, himself a pupil of Liszt, genially +remarked: "Now don't cry, and don't apologize. A polonaise like yours is +worth a piano." I set these things down with modest diffidence, solely +in order to establish my locus standi as a person who might be expected +to know the difference between sound and noise. As such, I have no +hesitation in saying that the first three bars of that nightingale +performance are, to sleeping ears, not music. They break upon the +stillness with the crash of Judgment Day. + +And every night the same scare. It causes me to start up, bathed in +sudden perspiration, out of my first, and best, and often only sleep, +with the familiar feeling that something awful is happening. Windows +seem to rattle, plaster drops from the ceiling--an earthquake? Lord, no. +Nothing so trivial. Nothing so brief. It is that blasted bird clearing +its throat for a five hours' entertainment. Let it not be supposed that +the song of these southerners bears any resemblance to that of an +English nightingale. I could stand a hatful of English nightingales in +my bedroom; they would lull me to sleep with their anaemic whispers. You +might as well compare the voice of an Italian costermonger, the crowing +of a cock, the braying of a local donkey, with their representatives in +the north--those thin trickles of sound, shadowy as the squeakings of +ghosts. Something will have to be done about those nightingales unless I +am to find my way into a sanatorium. For hardly is this bird started on +its work before five or six others begin to shout in emulation--a little +further off, I am glad to say, but still near enough to be inconvenient; +still near enough to be reached by a brick from this window----A brick. +Methinks I begin to see daylight.... + +Meanwhile one can snatch a little rest out of doors, in the afternoon. A +delectable path, for example, runs up behind the cemetery, bordered by +butterfly orchids and lithospermum and aristolochia and other plants +worthy of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with +views on either side. Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some +rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of +nightingales--soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole +among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of +some wryneck in the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet +time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen are all at the front. +I kicked up a partridge along this track two days ago. + +Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant but hard to see. They sit +close, relying on their protective colour. And it is the same with the +tree-creepers. I have heard Englishmen say there are no tree-creepers in +Italy. The olive groves are well stocked with them (there are numbers +even in the Borghese Gardens in Rome), but you must remain immovable as +a rock in order to see them; for they are yet shyer, more silent, more +fond of interposing the tree-trunk between yourself and them, than those +at home. Mouse-like in hue, in movement and voice--a strange case of +analogous variation.... + +As to this Scalambra, this mountain whose bleak grey summit overtops +everything near Olevano, I could soon bear the sight of it no longer. It +seemed to shut out the world; one must up and glance over the edge, to +see what is happening on the other side. I looked for a guide and +porter, for somebody more solid than Giulio, who is almost an infant; +none could be found. Men are growing scarce as the Dodo hereabouts, on +account of the war. So Giulio came, though he had never made the ascent. + +Now common sense, to say nothing of a glance at the map, would suggest +the proper method of approach: by the village of Serrano, the Saint +Michael hermitage, and so up. Scouting this plan, I attacked the +mountain about half-way between that village and Rojate. I cannot +recommend my route. It was wearisome to the last degree and absolutely +shadeless save for a small piece of jungle clothing a gulley, hung with +myriads of caterpillars and not worth mentioning as an incident in that +long walk. No excitement--not the faintest chance, so far as I could +see, of breaking one's neck, and uphill all the time over limestone. One +never seems to get any nearer. This Scalambra, I soon discovered, is one +of those artful mountains which defend their summits by thrusting out +escarpments with valleys in between; you are kept at arm's length, as it +were, by this arrangement of the rock, which is invisible at a distance. +And when at last you set foot on the real ridge and climb laboriously to +what seems to be the top--lo! there is another peak a little further +off, obviously a few feet higher. Up you go, only to discover a third, +perhaps a few inches higher still. Alpine climbers know these tricks. + +We reached the goal none the less and there lay, panting and gasping; +while an eagle, a solitary eagle with tattered wings, floated overhead +in the cloudless sky. + +The descent to Rojate under that blazing sun was bad enough. My flask +had been drained to the dregs long ago, and the Scalambra, true to its +limestone tradition, had not supplied even a drop of water. Arriving at +the village at about two in the afternoon, we found it deserted; +everybody enjoying their Sunday nap. Rojate is a dirty hole. The water +was plainly not to be trusted; it might contain typhoid germs, and I was +responsible for Giulio's health; wine would be safer, we agreed. There, +in a little shop near the church--a dark and cool place, the first shade +we had entered for many hours--we drank without ever growing less +thirsty. We felt like cinders, so hot, so porous, that the liquid seemed +not only to find its way into the legitimate receptacle but to be +obliged to percolate, by some occult process of capillarity, the +remotest regions of the body. As time went on, the inhabitants dropped +in after their slumbers and kept us company. We told our adventures, +drank to the health of the Allies one by one and several times over; and +it was not until we had risen to our feet and passed once more into the +sunshine of the square that we suddenly felt different from what we +thought we felt. + +The first indication was conveyed by Giulio, who called upon the +populace of Rojate, there assembled, to bear solemn witness to the fact +that I was his one and only friend, and that he would nevermore abandon +me--a sentiment in which I stoutly concurred. (A fellow-feeling makes us +wondrous blind.) Other symptoms followed. His hat, for example, which +had hitherto behaved in exemplary fashion, now refused to remain +steadily balanced on his head; it took some first-class gymnastics to +prevent it from falling to the ground. In fact, while I confined myself +to the minor part of Silenus--my native role--this youngster gave a +noteworthy representation of the Drunken Faun.... + +Now I see no harm in appreciating wine up to a certain point, and am +consoled to observe that Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., was of the same +way of thinking. He says so himself, and there is no reason for doubting +his word. He frankly admits, for instance, that he enjoys the stuff +called moscato "with great zest." He samples the Falernian vintage and +pronounces it to be "particularly good, and not degenerated." Arrived at +Cutro, he is not averse to reviving his spirits with "a pretty fair +modicum of wine." He also lets slip--significant detail--the fact that +Dr. Henderson was one of his friends, and that he travelled about with +him. You may judge a man by the company he keeps. Who was this Dr. +Henderson? He was the author of "The History of Ancient Wines." Old +Henderson, I should say, could be trusted to know something of local +vintages. + +And so far good. + +At Licenza, however, Ramage tells us that he "got glorious on the wine +of Horace's Sabine farm." I do not know what he means by this +expression, which seems to be purposely ambiguous; in any case, it does +not sound very nice. At another place, again, he and his entertainer +consumed some excellent liquor "in considerable quantity"--so he avows; +adding that "it was long past midnight ere we closed our bacchanalian +orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that he was happy to have +made my acquaintance." Note the lame and colourless close of that +sentence: he ended by stating. One always ends that way after +bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss over the escapade +with such disingenuous language. + +We can guess what really took place. It was something like what happened +at Rojate. Did not the curly-haired Giulio end by "stating" something to +the same effect? + +I cannot make up my mind whether to be pleased with this particular +trait in friend Ramage's character. For let it never be forgotten that +our traveller was a young man at the time. He says so himself, and there +is no reason for doubting his word. Was he acting as beseemed his years? + +I am not more straight-laced than many people, yet I confess it always +gives me a kind of twinge to see a young man yielding to intemperance of +any kind. There is something incongruous in the spectacle, if not +actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt to associate that +time of life with stern resolve. A young man, it appears to me, should +hold himself well in hand. Youth has so much to spare! Youth can afford +to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming ahead, it should be a +period of ideals, of self-restraint and self-discipline, of earnestness +of purpose. How well the Greek Anthology praises "Temperance, the nurse +of Youth!" The divine Plato lays it down that youngsters should not +touch wine at all, since it is not right to heap fire on fire. He adds +that older men like ourselves may indulge therein as an ally against the +austerity of their years--agreeing, therefore, with Theophrastus who +likewise recommends it for the "natural moroseness" of age. + +Observe in this connection what happened to Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., +at Trebisacce. Here was a poor old coastguard who had been taken +prisoner by the Corsairs thirty years earlier, carried to Algiers, and +afterwards ransomed. Having "nothing better to do" (says our author) "I +confess I furnished him with somewhat more wine than was exactly +consistent with propriety"; with so liberal a quantity, indeed, that the +coastguard became quite "obstreperous in his mirth"; whereupon Ramage +hops on his mule and leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young +fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And why? Because he has +"nothing better to do." [13] It is not remarkably edifying. True, he +afterwards makes a kind of apology for "causing my brother to sin by +over-indulgence...." + +But if we close our eyes to the fact that Ramage, when he gave way to +these excesses, was a young man and ought to have known better, what an +agreeable companion we find him! + +He never rails at anything. Had I been subjected to half the annoyances +he endured, my curses would have been loud and long. Under such +provocation, Ramage contents himself with reproving his tormentors in +rounded phrases of oratio obliqua which savour strongly of those Latin +classics he knew so well. What he says of the countryfolk is not only +polite but true, that their virtues are their own, while their vices +have been fostered by the abuses of tyranny. "Whatever fault one may +find with this people for their superstition and ignorance, there is a +loveableness in their character which I am not utilitarian enough in my +philosophy to resist." This comes of travelling off the beaten track and +with an open mind; it comes of direct contact. When one remembers that +he wrote in 1828 and was derived from a bigoted stock, his religious +tolerance is refreshing--astonishing. He studies the observances of the +poorer classes with sympathetic eye and finds that they are "pious to a +degree to which I am afraid we must grant that we have no pretensions." +That custom of suspending votive offerings in churches he does not think +"worthy of being altogether condemned or ridiculed. The feeling is the +same that induces us, on recovery from severe illness, to give thanks to +Almighty God, either publicly in church or privately in our closets." +How many Calvinists of to-day would write like this? + +We could do with more of these sensible and humane reflections, but +unfortunately he is generally too "pressed for time" to indulge in them. +That mania of hustling through the country.... + +One morning he finds himself at Foggia, with the intention of visiting +Mons Garganus. First of all he must "satisfy his curiosity" about Arpi; +it is ten miles there and back. Leaving Foggia for the second time he +proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and inspects not only this town, +but the site of old Sipontum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, +and later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promontory. About six +miles to the north are the presumable ruins of Merinum; he insists upon +going there, but the boatmen strike work; regretfully he returns to +Manfredonia, arriving at 11 p.m., and having covered on this day some +sixty or seventy miles. What does he do at Manfredonia? He sleeps for +three hours--and then a new hustle begins, in pitch darkness. + +Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he will visit the Siren +Islets. He crosses the ridge and descends to the sea on the other side, +to the so-called Scaricatojo--quite a respectable walk, as any one can +find out for himself. Hence he sails to the larger of the islets, climbs +to the summit and makes some excavations, in the course of which he +observes what I thought I was the first to discover--the substructures +of a noble Roman villa; he also scrambles into King Robert's tower. Then +to the next islet, and up it; then to the third, and up it. After that, +he is tempted to visit the headland of Minerva; he goes there, and +satisfies his curiosity. He must now hence to Capri. He sails across, +and after a little refreshment, walks to the so-called Villa of Jupiter +at the easterly apex of the island. He then rows round the southern +shore and is taken with the idea of a trip to Misenum, twenty miles or +so distant. Arrived there, he climbs to the summit of the cape and +lingers a while--it is pleasant to find him lingering--to examine +something or other. Then he "rushes" down to the boat and bids them row +to Pozzuoli, where he arrives (and no wonder) long after sunset. A good +day's hustle.... + +The ladies made a great impression on his sensitive mind; yet not even +they were allowed to interfere with his plans. At Strongoli the +"sparkling eyes of the younger sister" proved the most attractive object +in the place. He was strongly urged to remain a while and rest from his +fatigues. But no; there were many reasons why he should press forward. +He therefore presses forward. At another place, too, he was waited upon +by his entertainer's three daughters, the youngest of whom was one of +the most entrancing girls he had ever met with--in fact, it was well +that his time was limited, else "I verily believe I should have +committed all kinds of follies." That is Ramage. He parts from his host +with "unfeigned regret"--but--parts. His time is always limited. Bit for +that craze of pressing forward, what fun he could have had! + +Stroll to that grove of oaks crowning a hill-top above the Serpentaro +stream. It has often been described, often painted. It is a corner of +Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in the warm dusk of +southern twilight--when all those tiresome children are at last +asleep--it calls up suggestions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here is a +specimen of the landscape as it used to be. You may encounter during +your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved by their +inaccessibility from the invading axe. "Hands off the Oak!" cries an old +Greek poet. + +The Germans, realizing its picturesque value, bought this parcel of land +and saved the trees from destruction. It was well done. Within, they +have cut certain letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan +sanctity of the place--Germans will do these things; there is no +stopping them; it is part of their crudely expansive temperament--certain +letterings, among other and major horrors, anent the "Law of +the Ever-beautiful" (how truly Teutonic!)--lines, that is, signed by the +poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated 2 May, 1897. Scheffel was a kindly +and erudite old toper, who toped himself into Elysium via countless +quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things; the far-famed +Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit to the Hohentwiel mountain +in search of that golden-tinted natrolite mineral, which was duly found +(I specialized in zeolites during that period). + +Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in 1897? For I attended +his funeral, which took place in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, +a scraggy youth in those days, inherited not only the father's name but +his poetic mantle? Was it he who perpetrated those sententious lines? I +like to think so. That "law of the ever-beautiful" does not smack of the +old man, unless he was more disguised than usual, and having a little +fun with his pedantic countrymen.... + +Climb hence--it is not far--to the village of Civitella, now called +Bellegra, a prehistoric fastness with some traces of "cyclopean" +defences. Those ancients must have had cisterns; inconceivable that +springs should ever have issued from this limestone crag. You can see +the women of to-day fetching water from below, from a spot which I was +too lazy to investigate, where perhaps the soft tertiary rock leans upon +this impervious stuff and allows the liquid to escape into the open. An +unclean place is Bellegra, and loud, like all these Sabine villages, +with the confused crying of little children. That multiple wail of +misery will ring in your ear for days afterwards. They are more +neglected by their mothers than ever, since women now have all the men's +work in the fields to do. They are hungrier than ever, on account of the +war which has imposed real hardships on these agricultural folk; +hardships that seize them by the throat and make them sit down, with +folded hands, in dumb despair: so I have seen them. How many of these +unhappy babies will grow to maturity? + +Death-rate must anyhow be high hereabouts, for nothing is done in the +way of hygiene. In the company of one who knows, I perambulated the +cemetery of Olevano and was astonished at the frequency of tombstones +erected to the young. "Consumption," my friend told me. They scorn +prophylactics. I should not care to send growing children into these +villages, despite their "fine air." Here, at Bellegra, the air must be +fine indeed in winter; too fine for my taste. It lies high, exposed to +every blast of Heaven, and with noble views in all directions. + +Rest awhile, on your homeward march, at the small bridge near Olevano +where the road takes a turn. A few hundred yards up the glen on your +left is a fountain whose waters are renowned for their purity; the +bridge itself is not a favourite spot after sunset; it is haunted by a +most malignant spectre. That adds considerably, in my eyes, to the charm +of the place. Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower. +What recollections does that scent evoke! What hints of summer, after +rain! + +A venerable tree, old as the hills; that last syllable tells its +tale--you may read it in the Sanscrit. A man-loving tree; seldom one +sees an elder by itself, away from human habitations, in the jungle. I +have done so; but in that particular jungle, buried beneath the soil, +were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin to attach itself to the +works of man, to walls and buildings? And why? Does it derive peculiar +sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in +lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks +shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel +wondrously when the plant is set in exposed situations. + +The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use the berries to colour +the wine. A German writer, R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of +Leit-motif for one of his local novels. I met him once by accident, and +am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal and flabbily pompous old +man--straightway my opinion of his books, never very high, fell to zero, +and has there remained. He knew these regions well, and doubtless +sojourned at one time or another at yonder caravanserai-hotel, abandoned +of late, but then filled with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have +since been sacrificed to the war-god. Doubtless he drank wine with them +on that terrace overlooking the brown houses of Olevano, though I +question whether he then paid as much as they are now charging me; +doubtless he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies fronting +the landscape, though I question whether he derived more pleasure from +them than I do.... + +While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards to where, in the +Abruzzi region, the peaks are still shrouded in snow. + +How are they doing our there, at Scanno? Is that driving-road at last +finished? Can the "River Danube" still be heard flowing underground in +the little cave of Saint Martin? Are the thistles of violet and red and +blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as ever? [14] And those legions of +butterflies--do they still hover among the sunny patches in the narrow +vale leading to Mount Terrata? And Frattura, that strange place--what +has happened to Frattura? Built on a fracture, on the rubble of that +shattered mountain which produced the lake lower down, it has probably +crumbled away in the last earthquake. Well I remember Frattura! It was +where the wolf ate the donkey, and where we, in our turn, often +refreshed ourselves in the dim hovel of Ferdinando--never with greater +zest than on the hot downward march from Mount Genzana. Whether those +small purple gentians are still to be found on its summit? And the +emerald lizard on the lower slopes? Whether the eagles still breed on +the neighbouring Montagna di Preccia? They may well be tired of having +their nest plundered year after year. + +What foreigner has older and pleasanter memories of Scanno? I would like +to meet that man, and compare notes. + +And so, glancing over the hills from Bellegra, I sent my thoughts into +those Abruzzi mountains, and registered a vow to revisit Scanno--if only +in order to traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld lang +syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger in that moist nook by +the lake-side where stood the Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if +such it was, of the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly +dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one evening, I listened to +something that might have been said much sooner. Acque Vive.... + +I kept my vow. Our bill at Scanno for wine alone was 189 francs, and for +beer 92 francs; figures which look more formidable than they are and +which I cite only to prove that we--for of course I was not +alone--enjoyed ourselves fairly well during those eighteen days. By the +way, what does Baedeker mean by speaking of the "excellent wines" of +Scanno, where not a drop is grown? He might have said the same of +Aberdeen. + +The season was too late for the thistles, too late for the little +coppers and fritillaries and queens of Spain and commas and all the rest +of that fluttering tribe in the narrow vale leading to Terrata, though +wood-pigeons were still cooing there. Scanno has been spared by the +earthquake which laid low so many other places; it has prospered; +prospered too much for my taste, since those rich smoky tints, +especially of the vaulted interiors, are now disappearing under an +invasion of iron beams and white plaster. The golden duskiness of +Scanno, heightened as it was by the gleaming copper vessels borne on +every young girl's head, will soon be a thing of the past. Young trees +along the road-side--well-chosen trees: limes, maples, willows, elms, +chestnuts, ashes--are likewise doing well and promise pretty effects of +variegated foliage in a few years' time; so are the plantations of pines +in the higher regions of the Genzana. In this matter of afforestation, +Scanno continues its system of draconic severity. It is worth while, in +a country which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of goats on +the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water. The Sagittario stream +is hemmed in by a cunning device of stones contained within bags of +strong wire; it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from +Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you will find they have +been scientifically dammed by the administration, whereas the peasant, +when they overflow and ruin his crops, contents himself with damning +them in quite an amateurish fashion. Which reminds me that I picked up +during this visit, and have added to my collection, a new term of abuse +to be addressed to your father-in-law: Porcaccio d'un cagnaccio! Novel +effects, you perceive, obtained by a mere intensification of colour. + +As to Frattura--yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried to identify +Ferdinando's abode among all that debris. The old man himself escaped +the cataclysm, and now sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden +shanties erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio, of whom +more on p. 171, has died; his place is taken by a worthless vagabond. +Saint Domenico and his serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis +fanum), that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears the +problematical date of 600 A.D.--they are all in their former places. +Mount Velino still glitters over the landscape, for those who climb high +enough to see it. The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the +water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume, still carry those +immense loads of wood on their heads, though payment is considerably +higher than the three half-pence a day which it used to be. + +Enough of Scanno! + +Whoever wishes to leave the place on foot and by an unconventional +route, may go to Sora via Pescasseroli. Adventurous souls will scramble +over the Terrata massif, leaving the summit well on their right, and +descend on its further side; others may wander up the Valle dei Prati +and then, bending to the right along the so-called Via del Campo, mount +upwards past a thronged alp of sheep, over the watershed, and down +through charming valleys of beechen timber. A noble walk, and one that +compares favourably with many Abruzzi excursions. What deserts they +often are, these stretches of arid limestone, voiceless and waterless, +with the raven's croak for your only company! + +I am glad to have seen Pescasseroli, where we arrived at about 9 a.m. +For the rest, it is only one of many such places that have been brought +to a state of degradation by the earthquake, the present war, and +governmental neglect. Not an ounce of bread was procurable for money, or +even as a gift. The ordinary needs of life--cigars, matches, maccheroni +and so forth: there were none of them. An epidemic of the gapes, +infecting the entire race of local hens, had caused the disappearance of +every egg from the market. And all those other countless things which a +family requires for its maintenance--soap and cloth and earthenware and +kitchen utensils and oils--they have become rarities; the natives are +learning to subsist without them; relapsing into a kind of barbarism. So +they sit among the cracked tenements; resentful, or dumbly apathetic. + +"We have been forgotten," said one of them. + +The priests inculcate submission to the will of God. What else should +they teach? But men will outgrow these doctrines of patience when +suffering is too acute or too prolonged. "Anything is better than this," +they say. Thus it comes about that these ruined regions are a goodly +soil for the sowing of subversive opinions; the land reeks of +ill-digested socialism. + +We found a "restaurant" where we lunched off a tin of antediluvian +Spanish sardines, some mouldy sweet biscuits, and black wine. (A +distinction is made in these parts between black and red wine; the +former is the Apulian variety, the other from Sulmona.) During this +repast, we were treated to several bear-stories. For there are bears at +Pescasseroli, and nowhere else in Italy; even as there are chamois +nearby, between Opi and Villetta Barrea, among the crags of the +Camosciara, which perpetuates their name. One of those present assured +us that the bear is a good beast; he will eat a man, of course, but if +he meets a little boy, he contents himself with throwing stones at +him--just to teach him good manners. Certain old bears are as big as a +donkey. They have been seen driving into their cave a flock of +twenty-five sheep, like any shepherd. It is no rare thing to encounter +in the woods a bear with a goat slung over his shoulder; he must +breakfast, like anybody else. One of these gentlemen told us that the +bears, not long ago, were a source of considerable profit to the +peasantry round about. It was in this wise. Their numbers had been +reduced, it seems, to a single pair and the species was threatened with +extinction, when, somehow or other, this state of affairs became known +to the King who, alarmed at the disappearance from his realm of a +venerable and autochtonous quadruped, the largest European beast of +prey, conceived the happy idea of converting the whole region into a +Royal Preserve. On pain of death, no bear was to be molested or even +laughed at; any damage they might do would be compensated out of the +Royal Purse. + +For a week or so after this enactment, nothing was heard of the bears. +Then, one morning, the conscientious Minister of the Royal Household +presented himself at the palace, with a large sheaf of documents under +his arm. + +"What have we here?" inquired the King. + +"Attestations relating to the bears of Pescasseroli, Your Majesty. They +seem to be thriving." + +"Ah! That is nice of them. They are multiplying once more, thanks to Our +Royal protection. We thought they would." + +"Multiplying indeed, Sire. Here are testimonials, sworn before the local +syndic, showing that they have devoured 18 head of cattle and 43 sheep." + +"In that short time? Is it possible? Well, well! The damage must be +paid. And yet We never knew the bears could propagate so fast. Maybe our +Italian variety is peculiarly vigorous in such matters." + +"Seems so, Your Majesty. Very prolific." + +A week or so passed and, once more, His Excellency was announced. The +King observed: + +"You are not looking quite yourself this morning, my good Minister. +Would it be indiscreet to inquire the cause? No family or parliamentary +worries, We trust?" + +"Your Majesty is very kind! No. It is the bears of Pescasseroli. They +have eaten 75 head of cattle, 93 sheep, and 114 goats. Ah--and 18 +horses. Here are the claims for damages, notarially attested." + +"We must pay. But if only somebody could teach the dear creatures to +breed a little more reasonably!" + +"I cannot but think, Sire, that the peasants are abusing Your +Majesty's----" + +"May We never live to hear anything against Our faithful and +well-beloved Abruzzi folk!" + +Nearly a month elapsed before the Minister again presented himself. This +time he looked really haggard and careworn, and was bowed down under an +enormous bundle of papers. The King glanced up from that writing-desk +where, like all other sovereigns, he had been working steadily since +4.30 a.m., and at once remarked, with that sympathetic intuition for +which he is famous among crowned heads: + +"We think We know. The bears." + +Your Majesty is never wrong. They have devoured 126 cows and calves and +bullocks, 418 sheep and goats, 62 mules, 37 horses, and 96 donkeys. Also +55 shepherd dogs and 827 chickens. Here are the claims." + +"Dear, dear, dear. This will never do. If it is a question of going to +ruin, We prefer that it should be the bears rather than Ourselves. We +must withdraw Our Royal protection, after settling up these last items. +What say you, my good Minister?" + +"Your Majesty is always right. A private individual may indulge in the +pastime of breeding bears to the verge of personal bankruptcy. Ruling +sovereigns will be guided by juster and more complex considerations." + +And from that moment, added our gentlemanly informant, there began a +wonderful shrinkage in the numbers of the bears. Within a day or two, +they were again reduced to a single couple. + +Gladly would I have listened to more of these tales but, having by far +the worst of the day's walk still before us, we left the stricken +regions about midday and soon began an interminable ascent, all through +woods, to the shrine of Madonna di Tranquillo. Hereabouts is the +watershed, whence you may see, far below, the tower of Campoli Apennino. +That village was passed in due course, and Sora lay before us, after a +thirteen hours' march.... + +That same night in Sora--it may have been 2 a.m.--some demon drew nigh +to my bedside and whispered in my ear: "What are you doing here, at +Sora? Why not revisit Alatri? (I had been there already in June.) Just +another little promenade! Up, sluggard, while the night-air is cool!" + +I obeyed the summons and turned to rouse my slumbering companion, to +whom I announced my inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were +well worth listening to. + +Next evening found us at Alatri. + +Now whoever, after walking from Scanno over Pescasseroli to Sora in one +day, and on the next, in the blazing heat of early autumn, from Sora +over Isola Liri and Veroli to Alatri--touching in two days the soil of +three Italian provinces: Aquila, Caserta, and Rome--whoever, after doing +this, and inspecting the convent of Casamari en route, feels inclined +for a similar promenade on the third day: let him rest assured of my +profound respect. + +Calm, sunny days at Olevano. And tranquil nights, for some time past. + +The nightingale has been inspired to move a little up country, into +another bush. Its rivals have likewise retired further off, and their +melodramatic trills sound quite pleasant at this distance. + +So tin cans have their uses, even when empty. Certain building +operations may have been interrupted. I apologise, though I will not +promise not to repeat the offence. They can move their nests; I cannot +move this house. Bless their souls! I would not hurt a hair on their +dear little heads, but one must really have a few hours' sleep, somehow +or other. A single night's repose is more precious to me than a myriad +birds or quadrupeds or bipeds; my ideas on the sacred nature of sleep +being perfectly Oriental. That Black Hole of Calcutta was an infamous +business. And yet, while nowise approving the tyrant's action, I can +thoroughly understand his instructions on the subject of slumber. + +Not every one at Olevano is so callous. Waiting the other day at the +bifurcation of the roads for the arrival of the station motor-car--the +social event of the place--I noticed two children bringing up to a +bigger one the nest of a chaffinch, artfully frosted over with silver +lichen from some olive, and containing a naked brood which sprawled +pathetically within. Wasn't it pretty, they asked? + +"Very pretty," he replied. "Now you will take it straight back where you +found it. Go ahead. I am coming with you." And he marched them off. + +I am glad to put this incident on record. It is the second of its kind +which I have observed in this country, the first being when a fisherman +climbed up a bad piece of rock to replace a nest--idle undertaking--which +some boys had dislodged with stones. At a short distance from +the scene sat the mother-bird in pensive mood, her head cocked on one +side. What did she think of the benevolent enthusiast?... + +Olevano is said to have been discovered by the Germans. I am sceptical +on this point, having never yet found a place that was discovered by +them. An English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died here +all by himself; though doubtless, once on the spot, they did their best +to popularise and vulgarise it. In this matter, as in art or science or +every department of life, a German requires forerunners. He must follow +footsteps. He gleans; picks the brains of other people, profits by their +mistakes and improves on their ideas. + +I know nothing of the social history of Olevano--of its origin, so far +as foreigners are concerned. It is the easiest and the flimsiest thing +in the world to invent; there are so many analogies! + +The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army +officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across +the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate. +Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to +solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered +about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and +discovered that people there did not like being ordered about as they +should be; they seemed to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been +something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being the first "white man" +in the place gave him a kind of fondness for it. + +It was he, then, who discovered Olevano--Freddy Potter. We can see him +living alone, wiry and whiskered and cantankerous, glorying in his +solitude up to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a +fellow-countryman turns up--Mr. Augustus Browne of London. Mr. Browne is +a blameless personality who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an +equally blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a sportsman like +Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste for landscape painting, with +elaborate flowers and butterflies worked into the foreground. So they +live, each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours, importing +groceries from England, dressing for dinner, avoiding contact with the +"natives" and, of course, pretending to be unaware of one another's +existence. + +As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows stronger. The Major has +never forgiven that cockney for invading Olevano, his private domain, +while Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter, who +presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes those filthy cheroots +in public (this was years and years ago). Why is the fellow skulking +here, all by himself? Some hanky-panky with regimental money; every one +knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of right and wrong. +And Potter is not long in making up his mind that this civilian has +bolted to Olevano for reasons which will not bear investigation and is +living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed name. Browne! He +really might have picked out a better one, while he was about it. That +water-colour business--a blind, a red herring; the so-called lady +companion---- + +The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement the mutual conduct of two +compatriots. They are known, far and wide, as "the madmen" till some +bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not madmen at all, but +only homicides hiding from justice; whereupon contempt is changed to +grudging admiration. + +Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up and departs. The old +Major's delight at being once more alone is of short duration; he falls +ill and is entombed, his last days being embittered by the arrival of a +party of German tourists who declare they have "discovered" this +wonderful new spot, and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to +participate in its joys. + +They come, singly and in batches, and soon make Olevano uninhabitable to +men of the Potter and Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night, +sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street "as if they were +in their bedrooms," organise picnics in the woods, sketch old women +sitting in old doorways, start a Verschoenerungsverein and indulge in a +number of other antics which, from the local point of view, are held to +be either coarse or childish. The natives, after watching their doings +with critical interest, presently pronounce a verdict--a verdict to +which the brightest spirits of the place give their assent--a verdict +which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered. + +"Those Englishmen"--thus it runs--"were at least assassins. These people +are merely fools." + +POSTSCRIPT--One thing has occurred of late which would hardly have +happened were the Germans still in occupation of Olevano. At the central +piazza is a fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly, you +could rest and glance down upon the country lying below--upon a piece of +green landscape peering in upon the street. This little view was like a +window, it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now blocked it +up with an ugly house. The beauty of the site is gone. It is surprising +that local municipalities; however stupid, however corrupt, should not +be aware of the damage done to their own interests when they permit such +outrages. The Germans--were any of them still here--would doubtless have +interfered en masse and stopped the building. + +Something should be done about these reviewers. + +There has followed me hither a bundle of press notices of a recent book +of mine. They are favourable. I ought to be delighted. I happen to be +annoyed. + +What takes place in this absurd book? The three unities are preserved. A +respectable but rather drab individual, a bishop, whose tastes and moods +are fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader, arrives at a +new place and is described as being, among other things, peculiarly +sensitive on the subject of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to +the sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their purity, their +sacred mission on earth, their refining influence upon the race. His +friends call him old-fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman, +he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man, towards the end of the +book, watches how the truest woman in the place, the one whom he admires +more than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly throws her +legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises that he is "face to face +with an atrocious and carefully planned murder." Such, however, has been +the transformation of his mind during a twelve days' sojourn that he +understands the crime, he pardons it, he approves it. + +Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought about without a plot? +Yet many of these reviewers discover no such thing in the book. "It +possesses not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most +reputable of them. This annoys me. + +I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it +would be nearer the truth to say that it is nothing but plot from +beginning to end. How to make murder palatable to a bishop: that is the +plot. How? You must unconventionalise him, and instil into his mind the +seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is +right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the +critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the +book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon +finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are +assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in chapters 11, +19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious +happenings in the local law-court; the very externals--relaxing wind and +fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena--the jovial immoderation of +everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and +insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas. + +If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather +successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the +personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, +with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always +swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter, +where the critic might have found a resume of my intentions and the key +to this plot--to wit, that a murder under those particular circumstances +is not only justifiable and commendable but--insignificant. Quite +insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and honest +folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one dirty +blackmailer more or less--what does it matter to anybody"? There are so +many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop--i.e. the +reader--here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little episode," +and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant events." He +was glad that the whole affair had remained in the background, so to +speak, of his local experiences. It seemed appropriate. In the +background: it seemed appropriate. That is the heart, the core, of the +plot. And that is why all those other happenings find themselves pushed +into the foreground. + +I know full well that this is not the way to write an orthodox English +novel. For if you hide your plot, how shall the critic be expected to +see it? You must serve it on a tray; you must (to vary the simile) hit +the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to superintend the +operation. That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can +then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head +and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of +Dostoievsky minus the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert or +Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a +condition to be labelled--a word, and a thing, which comes perilously +near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of +your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not +praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary +friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive? +It lives on the advertisements of publishers and--say those persons, +perhaps wisely--"if you ill-treat our authors, there's an end to our +custom." Commercialism.... + +Which applies far less to literary criticism than to other kinds. Of +most of the critics of music and art the best one can say is that there +are hearty fellows among them who, with the requisite training, might +one day become fit for their work. England is the home of the amateur in +matters intellectual, the specialist in things material. No bootmaker +would allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather about in a +jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes. The other commodity, being +less valuable than cowhide, may be entrusted to the hands of any +'prentice who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful +hieroglyphics. Criticism in England--snakes in Iceland. [15] + +All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary of St. Michael +above Serrone, that solitary white speck visible from afar on the upper +slopes of Mount Scalambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been +inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with the nightingales, +reaching my destination at the very moment when the sun peered over the +ridge of the mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the dewy shade +of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a wall at Serrone, talking to an +old woman who wore those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose, to +imitate coral. + +I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable and garrulous +anchorite who would share my breakfast. It is the ideal place for such a +life, and many are the mountain solitaries of this species I have known +in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There was he of Scanno--dead, I +doubt not, by this time--that simple-hearted venerable with whom I +whiled away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio, gazing over +the placid lake below, or up stream, at the dusky houses of Scanno +theatrically ranged against their hill-side. I became his friend, once +and for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had lost--his only +snuff-box; it lay at the edge of the path among thick shrubs, and he +could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many +strokes of luck! Once I found a purse-- + +The little structure here was barred and deserted. I had no company save +a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal +cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be +expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs--incurably +monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a +fondness for living in trios. This menage a trois may have subtle +advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social +habits of the rook; it enables them to fight with more success against +their enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain +lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks. No one who has +watched the aerial antics of a triplet of carrion crows can deny them a +sense of fun. + +After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of nature I descended once +more through that ilex grove to Serrone. And now it began to grow +decidedly warm. The wide depression between this village and Olevano +used to be timbered and is still known as la selva or la foresta. Vines +now occupy the whole ground. If they had only left a few trees by the +wayside! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman who said he was on the +look-out for a hare. Always that hare! They might as well lie in wait +for the Great Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary informed me that he +had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at Rome. Hares at Ponte +Milvio! They reminded me of those partridges in Belgrave Square. In my +younger days there was not a general in the British army who had not (1) +shot partridges in Belgrave Square and (2) been the chosen lover of +Queen Isabella of Spain.... + +Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat. We sit under the +vine near the entrance of that decayed stronghold, while babies and hens +scramble about the exposed rock; he talks, as usual, about the war. He +can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is maimed for life; the +other has been killed outright, and it looks as if no amount of +ironmongery (medals, etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy +land is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hardships and +bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards are untilled, olives unpruned, +for lack of labourers. It will take years to bring the soil back into +its old state of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk +suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for something that +happens beyond their ken, something dim and distant--unintelligible to +them as that Libyan expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not +a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood, these men of +Latium.... + +Thence onward and upward, towards evening by that familiar path, for a +second farewell visit to Giulio's farm. It is a happy homestead, an +abode of peace, with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that +overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty bush of rosemary +stands at the door. The mother is within, cooking the evening meal for +her man and the elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of +daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already half asleep, +tired with a long day's playing in the sunshine. + +Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable cherub and the pickle of the +family. I can see at a glance that he has been up to mischief. Alberto +is incorrigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him any good. +He hammers nails into tables and into himself, he tumbles down from +trees, he throws stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and +saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens +about--disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and +fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big +station motor--pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar +across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish +naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me. +But a certain formality must be gone through; every time we meet there +is a moment of shy distrust, while the ice has to be broken afresh--he +must assure himself that I have not changed since our last encounter. +Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he curls up +comfortably on my knee and is soon fast asleep, all his little tragedies +forgotten. + +"It appears you like children," says the mother. + +"I like this one, because he is never out of trouble. He reminds me of +myself. I shall steal him one of these days, and carry him off to Rome. +From there we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track called +the Via Appia. It will require two of three years, for I mean to stop a +day, or perhaps a week, at every single tavern along the road. Then I +will write a book about it; a book to make myself laugh with, when I am +grown too old for walking." + +"Giulio is big enough." + +"I'll wait." + +No chance of undertaking such a trip in these times of war, when a +foreigner is liable to be arrested at every moment. Besides, how far +would one get, with Giulio? Nevermore to Brindisi! As far as Terracina; +possibly even to Formia. There, at Formia, we would remain for the rest +of our natural lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is +anything like what it used to be; there, at Formia, we would pitch our +tent, enacting every day, or perhaps twice a day, our celebrated +Faun-and-Silenus entertainment for the diversion of the populace. I have +not forgotten Giulio's besetting sin. How nearly he made me exceed the +measure of sobriety at Rojate!... + +Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the trees of the driving-road +fireflies are dancing; countrymen return in picturesque groups, with +mules and children, from their work far afield; that little owl, the +aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its plaintive +note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle. + +This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation for crime and +brigandage that the authorities at one time earnestly considered the +proposition of razing it to the ground. Then they changed their minds. +It seemed more convenient to have evil-doers all collected into one +place than scattered about the country. To judge by the brightness of +the lamps at this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently +spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination. + +And now the lights of Segni station are visible, down in the malarious +valley, where the train passes from Rome to Naples. Every night I have +beheld them from my window; every night they tinged my thoughts with a +soft sadness, driving them backwards, northwards--creating a link +between present and past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall +those four journeys along that road; four, out of at least a hundred; +only four, but in what rare company! + + + + +Valmontone + +Back to Valmontone. + +At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no +train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from +Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had +some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance +being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided +to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after +complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to groans +and almost tears; his waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was +not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his +bundle of hats for him? I objected so vigorously that he forthwith gave +up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I +also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan +blasphemies, [16] for which he was much obliged. Most of them were +unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained. +They seemed to make his burden lighter. + +Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this is rather a cheerless +country, poorly cultivated, and still bearing the traces of mediaeval +savagery and insecurity. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit down +here and let the centuries roll by, watching the tramp of Roman legions +and Papal mercenaries and all that succession of proud banners which +have floated down this ancient Via Labiena. + +That rock-like structure, visible in the morning hours from Olevano, is +a monstrous palace containing, among other things, a training school for +carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose interior has an unusual +shape, the usual smell, and a tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX. + +There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide views over the +surrounding country. It gives food for thought. What an ideal spot, one +says, for the populace to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days! +It is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do they prefer to +jostle each other in the narrow, squalid and stuffy lane lower down? One +would like to know the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was +told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-lighted. The +explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting +arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It +may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's +doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially +speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We +broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological +reason.... + +I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of this terrace, +looking at Artena near-by. It resembled, now, a cluster of brown grapes +clinging to the hillside. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and +sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction of my glance, +remarked gravely: + +"Artena." + +"Artena," I repeated. + +He extracted half a toscano cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began +to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to +smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with +flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were +encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who +rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about +Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to +smile at me rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation by +pointing to a different spot on the hills and observing: + +"Segni." + +"Segni," he agreed. + +His cigar had gone out, as toscanos are apt to do. He applied a match, +and suddenly remarked: + +"Velletri." + +"Velletri." + +We were not making much progress. A good many sites were visible from +here, and at this rate of enumeration the sun might well set on our +labours. + +"How about all those deserters?" I inquired. + +There was a fair number of them, he said. Young fellows from other +provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It +was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches +of land, and, above all, la tradizione. The tradition, he explained, of +that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were +nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man seldom deserts, +not because he would not like to do so, but because he has more +"judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by police. +A few murders had taken place; yes, just a few murders; one or two +stupid people who resented their demands for money or food-- + +He broke off with another weary smile. + +"You have had malaria," I suggested. + +"Often." + +The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face, but from the +peculiar manner.... + +They brought in a deserter that very afternoon. He lay groaning at the +bottom of a cab, having broken his leg in jumping down from somewhere. +The rest of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with carbineers. A +Sicilian, they said. The whole populace followed the vehicle uphill, +reverently, as though attending a funeral. "He is little," said a woman, +referring either to his size or his age. + +An hour later there was a discussion anent the episode in the +fashionable cafe of Valmontone. A citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly +a notary, put the case for United Italy, for intervention against +Germany, for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly deserters, +into a few phrases so clear, so convincing, that there was a general +burst of approval. Then another man said: + +"I hate those Sicilians; I have good personal reasons for hating them. +But no Sicilian fears death. If they are not brilliant soldiers, they +certainly make first-class assassins, which is only another branch of +the same business. This boy deserts not because he is afraid of death, +but because he still owes a debt. He feels he ought to do something to +repay his parents who nursed him when he was a child, and not be +sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards out yonder"--and he +pointed with his thumb, spitting contemptuously the while, in the +direction of Rome. + +Nobody had any comment to make on this speech. Not a word of protest was +raised. The man was entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and +might even have obtained his share of approval had the victim been a +native. He was only a Sicilian--an outsider. What is one to say of this +patriarchal, or parochial, attitude? The enlargement of Italy's +boundaries--Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so forth--is an ideal +that few Italians bother their heads about. They are not sufficiently +dense--not yet. [17] To found a world-empire like the British or Roman +calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has only to look at the +Germans, who have been trying to do so for some time past. That +collecting mania.... One single boy who collects postage stamps can +infect his whole school with the complaint, and make them all jealous of +his fine specimens. England has been collecting, for many centuries, +islands and suchlike; she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive +mania. She has infected others with the craze and cannot help incurring +their envy, seeing that they are now equally acquisitive, but less +fortunate. All the good specimens are gone! + +That Pergola tavern deserves its name, the courtyard being overhung with +green vines and swelling clusters of grapes. The host is a canny old +boy, up to any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had already taken +a fancy to me on my first visit, for I cured his daughter Vanda of a +raging toothache by the application of glycerine and carbolic acid. We +went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the soft tufa, from +whose darkest and chilliest recesses he drew forth a bottle of excellent +wine--it might have lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How thoughtful of +Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a stone's-throw of your +dining-table! Nobody need ice his wine at the Pergola. + +After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night and walked, +striving to resemble a rich English tourist who has lost his way, along +the lonely road to Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters +or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have got to say +for themselves. My usual luck! Not a deserter was in sight. + +Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old ladies, of what happened +to their little dog and of other matters trivial to the verge of +inanity, I may discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to +Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means the last. Meanwhile, +we proceed southwards. + + + + +Sant' Agata, Sorrento + +Siren-Land revisited.... + +A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village +of Torco--what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are +indubitably the salt of the earth--down that well-worn track to +Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, +the genius loci, has died in the interval; thence by boat to the lonely +beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the rock-doves at +the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where, for the sake of +old memories, I indulged in a bathe and then came across an object rare +in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian granite, relic of some +pagan temple and doubtless washed up here in a wintry gale; thence, for +a little light refreshment, to Nerano; thence to that ill-famed "House +of the Spirits" where my Siren-Land was begun in the company of one who +feared no spirits--victim, already, of this cursed war, but then a +laughter-loving child--and down to the bay and promontory of Ierate, +there to make the unwelcome discovery that certain hideous quarrying +operations on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the charm of +this once secluded site; thence laboriously upwards, past that line of +venerable goat-caves, to the summit of Mount San Costanzo. + +Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at my feet as of old, flooded +in sunshine. + +There is a small outdoor cistern here. Peering into its darkness through +an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; +out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, +sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled +through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid +cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the +gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to +an inordinate length--from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual +abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these +restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live +and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to +a few inches of land amid a desolation of black water. + +It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days ago while climbing in +the torrid hour of noon up that shadeless path where the vanilla-scented +orchids grow--the path which runs from Sant' Elia past the shattered +Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the hottest turning of the road, +sat a woman in great distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been +commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia. This beast was +suffering hellish torments from the heat and vainly endeavouring, with +frenzied grunts of despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth +under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman of shade lower +down. She said she knew about it, but the pig--the pig refused to move! +It had been engaged upon this hopeless occupation, without a moment's +respite, for an hour or more; nothing would induce it to proceed a step +further; it had plainly made up its mind to find shelter here from the +burning rays, or die. And of shelter there was none. + +What would not this pig (I now thought) have given to be transported +into the lizard's cool aquatic paradise; and the lizard, into that +scorching sunlight!... + +It was not to muse upon the miseries of the animal creation that I have +revisited these shores. I came to puzzle once more over the site of that +far-famed Athene temple which gave its name to the whole promontory. +Now, after again traversing the ground with infinite pleasure, I fail to +find any reason for changing what I wrote years ago in a certain +pamphlet which some scholar, glancing through these pages and anxious to +explore for himself a spot of such celebrity in ancient days, is so +little likely to see that he may not be sorry if I here recapitulate its +arguments. Others will be well advised to pass over what follows. + +Let me begin by saying that the temple, in every probability, stood at +the Punta Campanella facing Capri, the actual headland of the Sorrentine +peninsula, where--apart from every other kind of evidence--you may pick +up to this day small terra-cotta figures of Athene, made presumably to +be carried away as keepsakes by visitors to the shrine. + +Now for alternative suggestions. + +Strabo tells us that the temple was placed on the akron of the +promontory; that is, the summit of Mount San Costanzo where we are now +standing. (He elsewhere describes it as being "on the straits.") This +summit is nearly 500 metres above the sea-level, and here no antique +building seems ever to have been erected. No traces of old life are +visible save some fragments of Roman pottery which may have found their +way up in early Byzantine days, even as modern worshippers carry up the +ephemeral vessels popularly called "caccavelle" [18] and scatter them +about. With the exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble, no +materials of an early period have been incorporated into the masonry of +the little chapel or the walls of the fields below. It is incredible +that no vestige of a structure like the Athene temple should remain on a +spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards immunity from +depredations, owing to its isolated and exalted position. The +rock-surface around the summit has not undergone that artificial +levelling which an edifice of this importance would necessitate; the +terrace is of mediaeval construction, as can be seen by its supporting +walls. No doubt the venerable Christian sanctuary there has been +frequently repaired and modified; on the terrace-level to the south can +be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the slopes are +littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa, and old battuto floors. +But there is no trace of antique workmanship or material, nor has the +rocky path leading up to the shrine been demarcated with chisel-cuts in +the ancient fashion. The sister-summit of La Croce is equally +unproductive of classical relics. + +We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken. And why not? His +accounts of many parts of the Roman world are surprisingly accurate, +but, according to Professor Pais, "of Italy Strabo seems to have known +merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome, the road between Rome +and Naples and Pozzuoli, and the coast of Etruria between Rome and +Populonia." If so, he probably saw no more of the district than can be +seen from Naples. He attributes the foundation of this Athene temple to +Odysseus: statements of such a kind make one wonder whether the earlier +portions of his lost history were more critical than other old treatises +which have survived. + +So much for Strabo. + +Seduced by a modern name, which means nothing more or less than "a +temple"--strong evidence, surely--I was inclined to locate the Athene +shrine at a spot called Ierate (marked also as Ieranto on some maps, and +popularly pronounced Ghierate the Greek aspirate still surviving) which +lies a mile or more eastwards of the Punta Campanella and faces south. +"Hieron," I thought: that settles it. You may guess I was not a little +proud of this discovery, particularly when it turned out that an ancient +building actually did stand there--on the southern slope, namely, of the +miniature peninsula which juts into Ierate bay. Here I found fragments +of antique bricks, tegulae bipedales, amphoras, pottery of the lustrous +Sorrentine ware--Surrentina bibis?--pavements of opus signinum, as well +as one large Roman paving flag of the type that is found on the road +between Termini and Punta Campanella. (How came this stone here? Did the +old road from Stabiae Athene temple go round the promontory and continue +as far as Ierate along the southern slope of San Costanzo hill? No road +could pass there now; deforestation has denuded the mountain-side of its +soil, laying bare the grey rock--a condition at which its mediaeval name +of Mons Canutarius already hints.) Well, a more careful examination of +the site has convinced me that I was wrong. No temple of this +magnificence can have stood here, but only a Roman villa--one of the +many pleasure-houses which dotted these shores under the Empire. + +So much for myself. + + +PEUTINGER'S CHART +Showing ancient road rounding the headland +and terminating at "Templum Minervae." + +None the less--and this is a really curious point--an inspection of +Peutinger's Tables seems to bear out my original theory of a temple at +Ierate. For the structure is therein marked not at the Punta Campanella +but, approximately, at Ierate itself, facing south, with the road from +Stabiae over Surrentum rounding the promontory and terminating at the +temple's threshold. Capri and the Punta Campanella are plainly drawn, +though not designated by name. Much as I should like my first +speculation to be proved correct on the evidence of this old chart of +A.D. 226, I fear both of us are mistaken. + +So much for Peutinger's Tables. + +Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the local topography. He +says that the "three-peaked rock" which Eratosthenes describes as +separating the gulfs of Cumae and Paestum (that is, of Naples and +Salerno) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not understand Beloch falling into +this error, for the old geographer uses the term skopelos, which is +never applied to a mountain of this size, but to cliffs projecting upon +the sea. Moreover, the landmark is there to this day. I have not the +slightest doubt that Eratosthenes meant the pinnacle of Ierate, which is +three-peaked in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous manner, +both when viewed from the sea and from the land (from the chapel of S. +M. della Neve, for instance). + +Now this projecting cliff of three peaks--they are called, respectively, +Montalto, Ierate, and Mortella; Ierate for short--is not the actual +boundary between the two gulfs; not by a mile or more. No; but from +certain points it might well be mistaken for it. The ancients had no +charts like ours, and the world in consequence presented itself +differently to their senses; even Strabo, says Bunbury, "was so ignorant +of the general form and configuration of the North African coast as to +have no clear conception of the great projection formed by the +Carthaginian territory and the deep bay to the east of it"; and, +coasting along the shore line, this triple-headed skopelos, behind which +lies the inlet of Ierate, might possibly be mistaken for the +turning-point into the gulf of Naples. So it looks when viewed from the +S.E. of Capri; so also from the Siren islets--a veritable headland. + +So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes. + +To sum up: Strabo is wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on +the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this +temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the +structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong +in identifying the skopelos trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San +Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the boundary +between the two gulfs. + +The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of +sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their +descriptions of its lofty site. So great a number of old writers concur +in this opinion--Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio, +Capaccio--that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these +men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple." +Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the +neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella." Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a +paper on this "Atene Siciliana" which I have not seen. The whole +question is discussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa +(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term akron may mean an +extremity or point projecting into the sea (a sense in which Homer used +it), and be applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella. + + + + +Rome + +Here we are. + +That mysterious nocturnal incident peculiar to Rome has already +occurred--sure sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens about +six times in the course of every year, during the hot season. You may +read about it in the next morning's paper which records how some young +man, often of good family and apparently in good health, was seen +behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at the hour of about 2 a.m.; +jumping, that is, in a state of Adamitic nudity, into some public +fountain. It goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the police, +run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a hospital, where his state +of mind is to be investigated. Will our rising generation, it gravely +adds, never learn the most elementary rules of decency? + +If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of these +establishments what has been the result of the medical examination, it +is because I will wager my last shirt that the invalid's health leaves +nothing to be desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this. He +is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses to come. He has +already passed half the night in agony, tossing on his couch during +those leaden hours when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town +he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be irremediable. But Rome +is the city of fountains. It is they who are responsible for this sad +lapse. Their sound is clear by day; after midnight, when the traffic has +died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears it through the window--hears it +perforce, since the streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot +close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more restless every +moment. He thinks.... That splash of waters! Those frigid wavelets and +cascades! How delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in +their bubbling wetness; he is parched with heat, and at this hour of the +night, he reflects, there will not be a soul abroad in the square. So he +hearkens to the seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that +familiar fountain; he remembers its moistened rim and basin all alive +with jolly turmoil; he sees the miniature cataracts tumbling down in +streaks of glad confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be +controlled. + +The thing must be done. + +Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly inquiring into his +state of mind.... + +I can sympathise with that state of mind, having often undergone the +same purgatory. My room at present happens to be fairly cool; it looks +north, and the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has not yet +tempted me to any breach of decorum. Night is quiet here, save for the +squeakings of some strange animals in the upper regions of the +neighbouring Pantheon; they squeak night and day, and one would take +them to be bats, were it not that bats are supposed to be on the wing +after sunset. There are no mosquitoes in Rome--none worth talking about. +It is well. For mosquitoes have a deplorable habit of indulging in a +second meal, an early breakfast, at about four a.m.--a habit more +destructive to slumber than that regular and legitimate banquet of +theirs. No mosquitoes, and few flies. It is well. + +It is more than merely well. For the mosquito, after all, when properly +fed, goes to bed like a gentleman and leaves you alone, whereas that +insatiable and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you to a +never-ending succession of anguished reflex movements. What a +malediction are those flies; how repulsive in life and in death: not to +be touched by human hands! Their every gesture is an obscenity, a +calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have watched them for +hours on end, and one of the most cherished projects of my life is to +assemble, in a kind of anthology, all the invectives that have been +hurled since the beginning of literature against this loathly dirt-born +insect, this living carrion, this blot on the Creator's reputation--and +thereto add a few of my own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly +under his protection. He says, among other things, that "like an honest +man, it is not ashamed to do in public what others only do in private." +I must say, if we all followed the fly's example in this aspect, life +would at last be worth living.... + +Morning sleep is out of the question, owing to the tram-cars whose +clangour, both here and in Florence, must be heard to be believed. They +are fast rendering these towns uninhabitable. Can folks who cherish a +nuisance of this magnitude compare themselves, in point of refinement, +with those old Hellenic colonists who banished all noises from their +city? Nevermore! Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and general +unseemliness? In order that a few bourgeois may be saved the trouble of +using their legs. And yet we actually pride ourselves on these +detestable things, as if they were inventions to our credit. "We made +them," we say. Did we? It is not we who make them. It is they who make +us, who give us our habits of mind and body, our very thoughts; it is +these mechanical monsters who control our fates and drive us along +whither they mean us to go. We are caught in their cog-wheels--in a +process as inevitable as the revolution of the planets. No use lamenting +a cosmic phenomenon! Were it otherwise, I should certainly mope myself +into a green melancholy over the fact, the most dismal fact on earth, +that brachycephalism is a Mendelian dominant. [19] No use lamenting. +True. + +But the sage will reserve to himself the right of cursing. Those morning +hours, therefore, when I would gladly sleep but for the tram-car +shrieking below, are devoted to the malediction of all modern progress, +wherein I include, with fine impartiality, every single advancement in +culture which happens to lie between my present state and that +comfortable cavern in whose shelter I soon see myself ensconced as of +yore, peacefully sucking somebody's marrow while my women, round the +corner, are collecting a handful of acorns for my dessert.... The +telephone, that diabolic invention! It might vex a man if his neighbour +possessed a telephone and he none; how would it be, if neither of them +had it? We can hardly realise, now, the blissful quietude of the +pre-telephone epoch. And the telegraph and the press! They have huddled +mankind together into undignified and unhygienic proximity; we seem to +be breathing each other's air. We know what everybody is doing, in every +corner of the earth; we are told what to think, and to say, and to do. +Your paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used to hammer out a few +solid opinions of his own on matters political and otherwise. He no +longer employs his brain for that purpose. He need only open his morning +paper and in it pours--the oracle of the press, that manufactory of +synthetic fustian, whose main object consists in accustoming humanity to +attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes him with opinions +ready made, overnight, by some Fleet Street hack at so much a column, +after a little talk with his fellows over a pint of bad beer at the +Press Club. He has been told what to say--yesterday, for instance, it +was some lurid balderdash about a steam-roller and how the Kaiser is to +be fed on dog biscuits at Saint Helena--he has been "doped" by the +editor, who gets the tip--and out he goes! unless he take it--from the +owner, who is waiting for a certain emolument from this or that caucus, +and trims his convictions to their taste. That is what the Press can do. +It vitiates our mundane values. It enables a gang to fool the country. +It cretinises the public mind. The time may come when no respectable +person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly. Newspaper reading +will become a secret vice. As such, I fear, its popularity is not likely +to wane. Having generated, by means of sundry trite reflections of this +nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast, I dress and step out of +doors to where, at a pleasant table, I can imbibe some coffee and make +my plans for loafing through the day. + +Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets. The Greeks, the Romans, +the Orientals knew better than to build wide roadways in a land of +sunshine. + +There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled "Napoli senza +sole"--Naples without sun. It gives instructions, they say (for I have +never seen it) how foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all +hours of the day; how they may reach any point of the town from another +without being forced to cross the squares, those dazzling patches of +sunlight. The feat could have been accomplished formerly even in Rome, +which was always less umbrageous than Naples. It is out of the question +nowadays. You must do as the Romans do--walk slowly and use the tram +whenever possible. + +That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which will take me direct +to the Milvian bridge, where I mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at +the restaurant across the water. Its proprietor is something of a +brigand; so am I, at a pinch. It is "honour among thieves," or "diamond +cut diamond." + +Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the glowing sands. But +the water is still cold; indeed, the Tiber is never too warm for me. If +you like it yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene +discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season, is of a kind to +tickle up a walrus. + +Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some other cause, there +is a singular variety of flesh-tints among the bathers here. I wish my +old friend Dr. Bowles could have seen it; we used to be deeply immersed, +both of us, in the question of the chromatophores, I observing their +freakish behaviour in the epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied +their action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little paper on +sunburn--a darker problem than it seems to be. [20] + +These men and boys do not grow uniformly sunburnt. They display so many +different colour-shades on their bodies that an artist would be +delighted with the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by reason +of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays, the tints diverge; the +reds, the scarcer group, traversing every gradation from pale rose to +the ruddiest of copper--not excluding that strange marbled complexion +concerning which I cannot make up my mind whether it be a beauty or a +defect; while the xanthous tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold +and apricot and cafe au lait to a duskiness approaching that of the +negro. At this season the skins are still white. Your artist must come +later--not later, however, than the end of August, for on the first of +September the bathing, be the weather never so warm, is officially, and +quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber water is declared to be "unhealthy" +after that date, and liable to give you fever; a relic of the days when +the true origin of malaria was unknown. + +A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that bathing has not yet +begun in earnest. No drowning accidents, up to the present. Later on +they come thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current and +vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to young swimmers; it grips +them in its tawny coils and holds them fast, often within a few yards of +friend or parent who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries +of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of that serpent-like +embrace. So it hurries him to destruction, only to be fished up later in +a state, as the newspapers will be careful to inform us, of "incipient +putrefaction." + +A murderous flood.... + +That hoary, trickling structure--that fountain which has forgotten to be +a fountain, so dreamily does the water ooze through obstructive mosses +and emerald growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet beards, +from its venerable lips--that fountain un-trimmed, harmonious, overhung +by ancient ilexes: where shall a more reposeful spot be found? Doubly +delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by the river-bank. For +the foliage of the oaks and sycamores is such that it creates a kind of +twilight, and all around lies the tranquillity of noon. Here, on the +encircling stone bench, you may idle through the sultry hours conversing +with some favourite disciple while the cows trample up to drink amid +moist gurglings and tail-swishings. They gaze at you with gentle eyes, +they blow their sweet breath upon your cheek, and move sedately onward. +The Villa Borghese can be hushed, at such times, in a kind of +enchantment. + +"You never told me why you come to Italy." + +"In order," I reply, "to enjoy places like this." + +"But listen. Surely you have fountains in your own country?" + +"None quite so golden-green." + +"Ah, it wants cleaning, doesn't it?" + +"Lord, no!" I say; but only to myself. One should never pass for an +imbecile, if one can help it. + +Aloud I remark:-- + +"Let me try to set forth, however droll it may sound, the point of view +of a certain class of people, supposing they exist, who might think that +this particular fountain ought never to be cleaned"--and there ensued a +discussion, lasting about half an hour, in the course of which I +elaborated, artfully and progressively, my own thesis, and forged, in +the teeth of some lively opposition, what struck me as a convincing +argument in favour of leaving the fountain alone. + +"Then that is why you come to Italy. On account of a certain fountain, +which ought never to be cleaned." + +"I said on account of places like this. And I ought to have added, on +account of moments such as these." + +"Are those your two reasons?" + +"Those are my two reasons." + +"Then you have thought about it before?" + +"Often." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"But listen. Surely it is sometimes two o'clock in the afternoon, in +your country?" + +"I used that word moment in a pregnant sense," I reply. "Pregnant: when +something is concealed or enclosed within. What is enclosed within this +moment? Our friendly conversation." + +"But listen. Surely folks can converse in your country?" + +"They can talk." + +"I begin to understand why you come here. It is that difference, which +is new to me, between conversing and talking. Is the difference worth +the long journey?" + +"Not to everybody, I daresay." + +"Why to you?" + +"Why to me? I must think about it." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"What is there to think about? You said you had thought about it +already.... Perhaps there are other reasons?" + +"There may be." + +"There may be?" + +"There must be. Are you satisfied?" + +"Ought I to be satisfied before I have learnt them?" + +"I find you rather fatiguing this afternoon. Did you hear about that +murder in Trastevere last night and how the police----" + +"But listen. Surely you can answer a simple question. Why do you come to +Italy...?" + +Why does one come here? + +A periodical visit to this country seems an ordinary and almost +automatic proceeding--a part of one's regular routine, as natural as +going to the barber or to church. Why seek for reasons? They are so hard +to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one +lurking in the background, a reason for a reason. + +The craving to be in contact with beauty and antiquity, the desire for +self-expression, for physical well-being under that drenching sunshine, +which while it lasts, one curses lustily; above all, the pleasure of +memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes; herein lies, methinks, the +secret; the reason for the reason. Reconstruction at a distance.... For +a haze of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space; a kindly haze +which obliterates the thousand fretting annoyances wherewith the +traveller's path in every country is bestrewn. He forgets them; forgets +that weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only its sporadic +islets--those moments of calm delight or fiercer joy which he would fain +hold fast for ever. He does not come here on account of a certain +fountain which ought never to be cleaned. [21] He comes for the sake of +its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise up later, out of some +November fog in another land. Italy is a delightful place to remember, +to think and talk about. And is it not the same with England? Let us go +there as a tourist--only as a tourist. How attractive one finds its +conveniences, and even its conventionalities, provided one knows, for an +absolute certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell among +them. + +What lovely things one could say about England, in Timbuktu! + +Rome is not only the most engaging capital in Europe, it is unusually +heterogeneous in regard to population. The average Parisian will assure +you that his family has lived in that town from time immemorial. It is +different here. There are few Romans discoverable in Rome, save across +the Tiber. Talk to whom you please, you will soon find that either he or +his parents are immigrants. The place is filled with hordes of +employees--many thousands of them, high and low, from every corner of +the provinces; the commoner sort, too, the waiters, carpenters, +plasterers, masons, painters, coachmen, all the railway folk--they are +hardly ever natives. Your Roman of the lower classes does not relish +labour. He can do a little amateurish shop-keeping, he is fairly good as +a cook, but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists in eating +and drinking. That is as it should be. It befits the tone of a +metropolis that outsiders shall do its work. That undercurrent of +asperity is less noticeable here than in many towns of the peninsula. +There is something of the grande dame in Rome, a flavour of old-world +courtesy. The inhabitants are better-mannered than the Parisians; a +workday crowd in Rome is as well-dressed as a Sunday crowd in Paris. And +over all hovers a gentle weariness. + +The city has undergone orgies of bloodshed and terror. Think only, +without going further back, of that pillage by the Spanish and German +soldiery under Bourbon; half a year's pandemonium. And all those other +mediaeval scourges, epidemics and floods and famines. That sirocco, the +worst of many Italian varieties: who shall calculate its debilitating +effect upon the stamina of the race? Up to quite a short time ago, +moreover, the population was malarious; older records reek of malaria; +that, assuredly, will leave its mark upon the inhabitants for years to +come. And the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that forbidden land +in whose embrace the city lies gasping, flame-encircled, like the +scorpion in the tale.... + +A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the mind's eye, is so +impressed with its "eternal" character that he cannot imagine this site +having ever been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it seems +inevitable that these walls must always have stood where now they +stand--must have risen, he suggests, out of the earth, unaided by human +hands. Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon a time; +somebody who lived under conditions quite different from those that +supervened. For who--not five thousand, but, say, five hundred years +ago--who would have thought of building a town on a spot like this? None +but a crazy despot, some moonstruck Oriental such as the world has +known, striving to impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No +facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of landscape, no +harbour, no defence against enemies, no drinking water, no mineral +wealth, no food-supplying hinterland, no navigable river--a dangerous +river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place--every drawback, or +nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled +into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and +poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so effectually, so +triumphantly that, were green pastures not needful to me as light and +air, I, for one, would nevermore stray beyond those ancient portals.... + +The country visits you here. It comes in the wake of that evening breeze +which creeps about with stealthy feet, winding its way into the most +secluded courtyards and sending a sudden shiver through the frail +bamboos that stand beside your dinner-table in some heated square. Then +the zephyr departs mysteriously as it came, and leaves behind a great +void--a torrid vacuum which is soon filled up by the honey-sweet +fragrance of hay and aromatic plants. Every night this balsamic breath +invades the town, filling its streets with ambrosial suggestions. It is +one of the charms of Rome at this particular season; quite a local +speciality, for the phenomenon could never occur if the surrounding +regions were covered with suburbs or tilth or woodland--were aught save +what they are: a desert whose vegetation of coarse herbage is in the act +of withering. The Campagna once definitely dried, this immaterial feast +is at an end. + +I am glad never to have discovered anyone, native or foreign, who has +been aware of the existence of this nocturnal emanation; glad because it +corroborates a theory of mine, to wit, that mankind is forgetting the +use of its nose; and not only of nose, but of eyes and ears and all +other natural appliances which help to capture and intensify the simple +joys of life. We all know the civilised, the industrial eye--how +atrophied, how small and formless and expressionless it has become. The +civilised nose, it would seem, degenerates in the other direction. Like +the cultured potato or pumpkin, it swells in size. The French are +civilised and, if we may judge by old engravings (what else are we to +take as guide, seeing that the skull affords some criterion as to shape +but not size of nose?) they certainly seem to accentuate this organ in +proportion as they neglect its use. Parisians, it strikes me, are +running to nose; they wax more rat-like every day. Here is a little +problem for anthropologists. There may be something, after all, in the +condition of Paris life which fosters the development of this peeky, +rodential countenance. Perfumery, and what it implies? There are +scent-shops galore in the fashionable boulevards, whereas I defy you to +show me a single stationer. Maupassant knew them fairly well, and one +thinks of that story of his:-- + +"Le parfum de Monsieur?" + +"La verveine...." [22] + +Speaking of the French, I climbed those ninety odd stairs the other day +to announce my arrival in Italy to my friend Mrs. N., who, being vastly +busy at that moment and on no account to be disturbed, least of all by a +male, sent word to say that I might wait on the terrace or in that +microscopic but well-equipped library of hers. I chose the latter, and +there browsed upon "Emaux et Camees" and the "Fleurs du Mal" which +happened, as was meet and proper, to lie beside each other. + +Strange reading, at this distance of time. These, I thought--these are +the things which used to give us something of a thrill. + +If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well be that we have +absorbed their spirit so thoroughly into our system that we forget +whence we drew it. They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one +cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery, his gift of being +quaint and yet lucid as a diamond; one pictures those crocodiles +fainting in the heat, and notes, too, whence the author of the "Sphinx" +drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so +much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for +external monotony. That trick--that full stop at the end of nearly every +fourth line--it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow +jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows +wearisome to the ear, and finally abhorrent. + +Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve +down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom. "Fuyez l'infini +que vous portez en vous"--a line which, in my friend's copy of the book, +had been marked on the margin with a derisive exclamation-point. (It +gave me food for thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to substance, +he contains too many nebulosities and abstractions for my taste; a +veritable mist of them, out of which emerges--what? The figure of one +woman. Reading these "Fleurs du Mal" we realise, not for the first time, +that there is something to be said in favour of libertinage for a poet. +We do not need Petrarca, much less the Love-Letters of a Violinist--no, +we do not need those Love-Letters at all--to prove that a master can +draw sweet strains from communion with one mistress, from a lute with +one string; a formidable array of songsters, on the other hand, will +demonstrate how much fuller and richer the melody grows when the +instrument is provided with the requisite five, the desirable fifty. +Monogamous habits have been many a bard's undoing. + +Twenty years' devotion to that stupid and spiteful old cat of a +semi-negress! They make one conscious of the gulf between the logic of +the emotions and that other one--that logic of the intellect which ought +to shape our actions. Here was Baudelaire, a man of ruthless +self-analysis. Did he never see himself as others saw him? Did he never +say: "You are making a fool of yourself"? + +Be sure he did. + +You are making a fool of yourself: are not those the words I ought to +have uttered when, standing in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo--the +sunny centre: so it had been inexorably arranged--I used to wait and +wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the slender shadow of +that obelisque which crawled reluctantly, like the finger of fate, over +the burning stones? + +And I crawled with it, more than content. + +Days of infatuation! + +I never pass that way now without thanking God for a misspent youth. Why +not make a fool of yourself? It is good fun while it lasts; it yields +mellow mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures, those +solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous? Where is the use of +experience, if it does not make you laugh? The Logic of the +Intellect--what next! If any one had treated me to such tomfoolery while +standing there, petrified into a pillar of fidelity in that creeping +shadow, I should have replied gravely: + +"The Logic of the Intellect, my dear Sir, is incompatible with +situations like mine. It was not invented for so stupendous a crisis. I +am waiting for my negress--can't you understand?--and she is already +seven minutes late...." + +A flaming morning, forestaste of things to come. + +I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital where things are +doing well, glancing down, towards midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one +looks into some torrid bear-pit. + +Broken columns glitter in the sunshine; the grass is already withered to +hay. Drenched in light and heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is +altogether devoid of life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in +a kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead. My experiences in the hospital +half an hour ago dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a more +morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular, it seems as if all the +mangy and decrepit cats of Rome had given themselves a rendezvous on +this classic soil; cats of every colour and every age--quite young ones +among them; all, one would say, at the last gasp of life. This pit, this +crater of flame, is their "Home for the Dying." Once down here, nothing +matters any more. They are safe at last from their old enemies, from +dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death, they move about in a +stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One +would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or +slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing +where one dies. + +There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated +tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the +mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a +moment. Nothing more. + +These cats have lost their all--their self-respect. Grace and ardour, +sleekness of coat and buoyancy of limbs are gone out of them. Tails are +knotted with hunger and neglect; bones protrude through the skin. So +they strew the ground in discomposed, un-catlike attitudes, while the +sun burns through their parched anatomy. Do they remember their +kittenish pranks, those moonlight ecstasies on housetops, that morsel +snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and borne through the crowded +traffic in a series of delirious leaps? Who can tell! They are not even +bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches. They are alive when they +ought to be dead. Nobody knows it better than they do. They are too ill, +too far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present degradation. +Nothing matters! What would Baudelaire, that friend of cats, have said +to this macabre exhibition? + +Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom of a kitten. The parent +takes no interest in the proceedings; she lies prone, her head on the +ground. Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead? Possibly. Her own +kitten? Who cares! Her neighbour, once white but now earth-coloured, +rises stiffly as though dubious whether the joints are still in working +order. What does she think of doing? It would seem she has formed no +plan. She walks up to the mother, peers intently into her face, then +sits apart on her haunches and begins gazing at the sun. Presently she +rises anew and proceeds five or six paces for no imaginable +reason--collapses; falls, quite abruptly, on her side. There she lies, +flat, like a playing-card. + +A sinister aimlessness pervades the actions of those that move at all. +The shadow of death is upon these creatures in the scorching sunshine. +They stare at columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at one +another, as though they had never seen such things before. They totter +about on tip-toe; they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is +one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is +convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind +of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for +herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a +face that bears the scars of a hundred fights. One eye has been lost in +some long-forgotten encounter. Now they walk over him, kittens and all, +and tread about his head, as if he were a hillock of earth, while his +claws twitch resentfully with rage or pain. Too ill to rise! + +Most of them are thus stretched out blankly, in a faint. Are they +suffering? Hungry or thirsty? [23] I believe they are past troubling +about such things. It is time to die. They know it.... + +"L'albergo dei gatti," says a cheery voice at my side--some countryman, +who has also discovered Trajan's Forum to be one of the sights of Rome. +"The cats' hotel. But," he adds, "I see no restaurant attached to it." + +That reminds me: luncheon-time. + +Via Flaminia--what a place for luncheon! True; but this is one of the +few restaurants in Rome where, nowadays, a man is not in danger of being +simultaneously robbed, starved, and poisoned. Things have come to a +pretty pass. This starvation-fare may suit a saint and turn his thoughts +heavenwards. Mine it turns in the other direction. Here, at all events, +the food is straightforward. Our hostess, a slow elderly woman, is +omnipresent; one realises that every dish has been submitted to her +personal inspection. A primeval creature; heaviness personified. She +moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock. The crack of doom +will not avail to accelerate that relentless deliberation. She reminds +me of a cousin of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who, when his +long curls once caught fire from being too near a candle, sleepily +remarked to a terrified wife: "I think you might try to blow it out." + +But where shall a man still find those edible maccheroni--those that +were made in the Golden Age out of pre-war-time flour? + +Such things are called trifles.... Give me the trifles of life, and keep +the rest. A man's health depends on trifles; and happiness on health. +Moreover, I have been yearning for them for the last five months. Hope +deferred maketh the heart sick.... There are none in Rome. Can they be +found anywhere else? + +Mrs. Nichol: she might know. She has the gift of knowing about things +one would never expect her to know. If only one could meet her by +accident in the street! For at such times she is gay and altogether at +your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors. To break upon her +seclusion at home is an undertaking reserved for great occasions. The +fact is, we are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of what she +describes as a tiresome life have taught her the value of masculine +frankness--ultra-masculine, I call it. She is too frank for subterfuge +of any kind. When at home, for instance, she is never "not at home." She +will always see you. She will not detain you long, if you happen to be +de trop. + +This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion--my health and +happiness.... Besides, I am her oldest friend in this part of the world; +was I not on the spot when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet +fathomed, to make Rome her domicile? Have I not more than once been +useful to her, nay, indispensable? I therefore climb, not without +trepidation, those ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old +palace, and presently find myself ushered into the familiar twilight. + +Nothing has changed since I was here some little time ago to announce my +arrival in Italy (solemn occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an +hour or so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being engaged +upon "house-accounts." This time, as I enter the studio, she is playing +cards with a pretty handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays +cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouthpiece which keeps +the smoke out of her olive-complexioned face and which she holds +firm-fixed between her teeth, in a corner of the mouth, after the perky +fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game, and at once begin to +feel de trop under a glance from those smouldering grey eyes. + +"It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death. Will you please +listen for half a minute? Then I will evaporate, and you can go on with +your ridiculous cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches. +Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable macaroni nowadays? +The old kind, I mean, made out of pre-war-time flour...." + +She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend the game, and asks +the girl in Italian: + +"What was the name of that place?" + +"That place----" + +"Oh, stupid! Where I stayed with Miranda last September. Where I tore my +skirt on the rock. Where I said something nice about the white +macaroni?" + +"Soriano in Cimino." + +"Soriano," echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke. "There is a tram +from here every morning. They can put you up." + +A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to this sultry and +self-centred being; I would like to wander with her through these rooms, +imbibing their strange Oriental spirit--not your vulgar Orient, but +something classic and remote; something that savours, for aught I know, +of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol, in one of her immature efforts at +self-realisation, spent a few years as the wife of a high French +official, ere marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol--another +unsuccessful venture. + +Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy there was yet an +earlier alliance of some kind)? A whim, a freak? Or did they plague her +into it? If so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their manly +persistence. She could grind any ordinary male to powder. And why has +she now flitted here, building herself this aerial bower above the old +roofs of Rome? Is she in search of happiness? I doubt whether she will +find it. She possesses that fatal craving--the craving for disinterested +affection, a source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom +affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but a luxury, and +therefore desirable above all else--desirable, and how seldom attained! + +The pause continues. I make a little movement, to attract notice. She +looks up, but only her eyes reply. + +"Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, "are you blind?" + +That is the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally absent-minded, she +always knows at a given moment exactly what she wants to do. And she +never wants to do more than one thing at a time. It is most unwomanly of +her. Any other person of her sex would have left a game of cards for the +sake of an attractive visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an +ordinary lady would have played cards, given complicated orders to +dressmakers and servants, and entertained half a dozen men at the same +time. Mrs. Nichol cannot do these things. That hand, that rather +sunburnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not moved from the +table. No, I am not blind. It is quite evident that she wants to play +cards; only that, and nothing more. + +I withdraw, stealthily. + +Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad terrace where +jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubs; there I pace up and down, admiring +the cupolas and towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the blue +background of distant hills. How much of its peculiar flavour a town +will draw--not from artistic monuments but from the mere character of +building materials! How many variations on one theme! This mellow Roman +travertine, for instance.... I call to mind those disconsolate places in +Cornwall with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and +dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic cheerfulness of +lava, those marble-towns that blind you with their glare, Eastern cities +of brightly tinted stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns, +wood-towns--how they differ in mood from one another!... Here I pace up +and down, rejoicing in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to +disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-cries that climb +to this hanging garden in confused waves of sound. Harsh at close +quarters, they weave themselves into a mirthful symphony up here. + +From that studio, too, comes a lively din--the laughter has begun again. +Mrs. Nichol is having a good time. It will be followed, I daresay, by a +period of acute depression. I shall probably be consulted with masonic +frankness about some little tragedy of the emotions which is no concern +of mine. She can be wondrously engaging at such times--like a child that +has got into trouble and takes you into its confidence. + +One of these days I must write a character-sketch of Mrs. Nichol. She +foreshadows a type--represents it, very possibly--a type which will grow +commoner from day to day. She dreams of a Republic of women, vestals or +otherwise, wherefrom all men are to be excluded unless they possess +qualifications of a rather unusual nature. I think she would like to +draft a set of rules and regulations for that community. She could be +trusted, I fancy, to make them sufficiently stringent. + +I think I understand, now, why a certain line in her copy of Baudelaire +was marked with that derisive exclamation-point on the margin: "Fuyez +l'infini que vous portez en vous." + +"Fuyez?" it seemed to say. "Why 'fuyez'?" + +Fulfil it! + + + + +Soriano + +Amid clouds of dust you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert +Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway--different +from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but +slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails +every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as +to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an +iridescent bubble suspended in the sky. + +This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the slope of an immense +old volcano and conveys at first glance a somewhat ragged and sombre +impression. It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni--they +atoned for everything. So exquisite were they that I forthwith vowed to +return to Soriano, for their sake alone, ere the year should end. (I +kept my vow.) The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and +unmistakably authentic, having been purchased in large quantities at the +outbreak of hostilities by the provident hostess, who must have +anticipated a rise in price, a deterioration in quality, or both, as the +result of war. + +How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their whereabouts? That is her affair. +I know not how she has managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect +such a variety of useful local information. I can only testify that on +her arrival in Rome she knew no more about the language and place than +the proverbial babe unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced +with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the words: "Try Mrs. +Nichol." And how many women, by the way, would have made a note of the +particular quality of those macaroni? One in a hundred? These are +temperamental matters.... + +We also--for of course I took a friend with me, a well-preserved old +gentleman of thirty-two, whose downward career from a brilliant youth +into hopeless mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with +philosophic unconcern--we also consumed a tender chicken, a salad +containing olive oil and not the usual motor-car lubricant, an omelette +made with genuine butter, and various other items which we enjoyed +prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for the seven lean years +just past but for seven--yea, seventy times seven--lean years to come. +So great a success was this open-air meal that my companion, a +case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess: + +"It seems one fares better in the province than at home. You could not +get such bread in Rome, not if you offered fifty francs a pound." + +As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but +grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly +sparkling--very young, but not altogether innocent. + +There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have +remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a +liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and +distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff +proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity +nowadays. + +It is a real shame--what is happening to Strega at this moment. It has +grown so popular that the country is flooded with imitations. There must +be fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees of goodness and +badness; I have met their travellers in the most unexpected places. They +reproduce the colour of Strega, its minty flavour --everything, in +short, except the essential: its peculiar strength of aroma and of +alcohol. They can afford to sell this poison at half the price of the +original, and your artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the +real product which he fills up, when empty, out of some hidden but +never-failing barrel of the fraudulent mixture round the corner, +charging you, of course, the full price of true Strega. If you complain, +he proudly points to the bottle, the cork, the label: all authentic! No +wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions, vow they will never +touch Strega again.... + +We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee, about this Strega +adulteration, during which I tried to make my friend comprehend how I +thought the grievance ought to be remedied. How? By an injunction. That +was the way to redress these wrongs. You obtain an injunction, I said, +such as the French Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers +of the Italian "Certosa," which was thereafter obliged to change its +name to "Val D'Emma." More than once I endeavoured to set forth, in +language intelligible to his understanding, what an injunction +signified; more than once I explained how well-advised the Strega +Company would be to take this course. + +In vain! + +He always missed my point. He always brought in some personal element, +whereas I, as usual, confined myself to general lines, to the principle +of the thing. Italians are sometimes unfathomably obtuse. + +"But what is an injunction?" he repeated. + +"If you were a little younger, there might be some hope for you. I would +then try to explain it again, for the fiftieth time. Instead of that, +what do you say to taking a nap?" + +"Ah! You have eaten too much." + +"Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of explaining things to +people who refuse to understand." + +"No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might freshen you up." + +"And perhaps inspire you with another subject of conversation." + +In the little hotel there were no rooms available just then wherein we +might have slumbered, and another apartment higher up the street +promising lively sport for which we were disinclined at that hour, we +moved laboriously into the chestnut woods overhead. Fine old timber, +part of that mysterious Ciminian forest which still covers a large +tract, from within whose ample shade one looks downhill towards the +distant Orte across a broiling stretch of country. There were golden +orioles here, calling to each other from the tree-tops. My friend, +having excavated himself a couch among the troublesome prickly seeds of +this plant, was soon snoring--another senile trait--snoring in a +rhythmical bass accompaniment to their song. I envied him. How some +people can sleep! It is a thing worth watching. They shut their eyes, +and forget to be awake. With a view to imitating his example, I wearied +myself trying to count up the number of orioles I had shot in my +bird-slaying days, and where it happened. Not more than half a dozen, +all told. They are hard to stalk, and hard to see. But of other +birds--how many! Forthwith an endless procession of massacred fowls +began to pass before my mind. One would fain live those ornithological +days over again, and taste the rapturous joy with which one killed that +first nutcracker in the mountain gulley; the first wall-creeper which +fluttered down from the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's +stint--victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the +reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed +Alpine jackdaw, that lanius meridionalis---- + +And all those slaughtered beasts--those chamois, first and foremost, +sedulously circumvented amid snowy crags. Where are now their horns, the +trophies? The passion for such sport died out slowly and for no clearly +ascertainable reason, as did, in its turn, the taste for art and +theatres and other things. Sheer satiety, a grain of pity, new +environments--they may all help to explain what was, in its essence, a +molecular change in the brain, driving one to explore new departments of +life. + +And now latterly, for some reason equally obscure, the natural history +fancy has revived after lying dormant so long. It may be those three +months spent on the pavements of Florence which incline one's thoughts +to the country and wild things. Social reasons too--a certain weariness +of humanity, and more than weariness; a desire to avoid contact with +creatures Who kill each other so gracelessly and in so doing--for the +killing alone would pass--invoke specially manufactured systems of +ethics and a benevolent God overhead. What has one in common with such +folk? + +That may be why I feel disposed to forget mankind and take rambles as of +yore; minded to shoulder a gun and climb trees and collect birds, and +begin, of course, a new series of "field notes." Those old jottings were +conscientiously done and registered sundry things of import to the +naturalist; were they accessible, I should be tempted to extract +therefrom a volume of solid zoological memories in preference to these +travel-pages that register nothing but the crosscurrents of a mind which +tries to see things as they are. For the pursuit brought one into +relations not only with interesting birds and beasts, but with men. + +There was Mr. H. of the Linnean Society, whose waxed moustache curled +round upon itself like an ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., +and a great collector of them. He collected, among other things, a rare +monograph belonging to me and dealing with the former distribution of +the beaver in Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing I +could do or say would induce him to disgorge it again; he had always +lent it to a friend, who was just on the point of returning it, etc. +etc. Bitterly grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into +communication with my friend Dr. Girtanner of St. Gallen, another +beaver--and marmot--specialist. It stimulated his love of Swiss zoology +to such an extent that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of +mine, J. J. Tschudi's "Schweizer Echsen," which I likewise never saw +again. What an innocent one was! Where is now the man who will induce me +to lend him such books? + +In those days I held a student's ticket at the South Kensington Museum, +an institution I enriched with specimens of rana graeca from near Lake +Stymphalus, and lizards from the Filfla rock, and toads from a volcanic +islet (toads, says Darwin, are not found on volcanic islets), and slugs +from places as far apart as Santorin and the Shetlands and Orkneys, +whither I went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua. The last +gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of Saima in Finland. Who ever +heard of seals living in sweet land-locked waters? This was one of my +happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend the Curator was +tempered by the fact that this particular specimen happened to be an +immature one, and did not display any pronounced race-characters. I have +early recollections of the rugged face and lovely Scotch accent of Tam +Edwards, the Banffshire naturalist; and much later ones of J. Young, +[24] who gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow +bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews) +of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I +gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged +partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen eggs. "Surely six +would have been enough," he said--a remark which struck me as rather +unreasonable, seeing that French partridges were not exactly as common +as linnets. He afterwards showed me his collection of birdskins, +dwelling lovingly, for reasons which I cannot remember, upon that of a +pin-tail duck. + +He it was who told me that no collector was worth his salt until he had +learnt to skin his own birds. Fired with enthusiasm, I took lessons in +taxidermy at the earliest possible opportunity--from a grimy old +naturalist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a man who +relieved birds of their jackets in dainty fashion with one hand, the +other having been amputated and replaced by an iron hook. During that +period of initiation into the gentle art, the billiard-room at "The +Weaste," Manchester, was converted every morning, for purposes of study, +into a dissecting-room, a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless +trunks and brains and gouged-out eyes of lapwings and other "easy" birds +(I had not yet reached the arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the +profession) lay about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was +ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers, lancets, +arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other paraphernalia of the +trade. The butler had to be furiously tipped. + +There were large grounds belonging to this estate, fields and woodlands +once green, then blackened with soot, and now cut up into allotments and +built over. Here, ever since men could remember--certainly since the +place had come into the possession of the never-to-be-forgotten Mr. +Edward T.--a kingfisher had dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial +origin which supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks and dace. +This kingfisher was one of the sights of the domain. Visitors were taken +to see it. The bird, though sometimes coy, was generally on view. +Nevertheless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher; to my infinite +annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying it. Nor did I even find its +nest, an additional source of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be +interested to know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties +(I have the exact date somewhere [25])--surely a noteworthy state of +affairs, so near the heart of a smoky town like Manchester. + +Later on I learnt to slay kingfishers--the first victim falling to my +gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings +of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are +so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their +habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; +once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, +now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones--the +grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous scramble of +all my life), the crested titmouse, the serin finch on the apple tree, +that first icterine warbler whose five eggs, blotched with purple and +quite unfamiliar at the time, gave me such a thrill of joy that I nearly +lost my foothold on the swerving alder branch---- + +At this point, my meditations were suddenly interrupted by a vigorous +grunt or snort; a snort that would have done credit to an enraged tapir. +My friend awoke, refreshed. He rubbed his eyes, and looked round. + +"I remember!" he began, sitting up. "I remember everything. Are you +feeling better? I hope so. Yes. Exactly. Where were we? An +injunction--what did you say?" + +At it again! + +"I said it was the drawback of old people that they never know when they +have had enough of an argument." + +"But what is an injunction?" + +"How many more times do you wish me to make that clear? Shall I begin +all over again? Have it your way! When you go into Court and ask the +judge to do something to prevent a man from doing something he wants to +do when you do not want him to do it. Like that, more or less." + +"So I gather. But I confess I do not see why a man should not do +something he wants to do just because you want him not to do it. You +might as well go into Court and ask the judge to do something to make a +man do something he does not want to do just because you want him to do +it." + +"Ah, but he must not, in this case. Good Lord, have I not explained that +a thousand times already? You always miss my point. It is illegal, don't +you understand? Illegal, illegal." + +"Anybody can say that. It would be a very natural thing to say, under +the circumstances. I should say it myself! Now just take my advice. You +go and tell your brother----" + +"My brother? It is not my brother. You are quite beside the point. Why +introduce this personal element? It is the Strega Company. Strega, a +liqueur. I am talking about a commercial concern obtaining an +injunction. Burroughs and Wellcome--they got injunctions on the same +grounds. I know a great deal of such things, though I don't talk about +them all day long as other people would, if they possessed half my +knowledge. A company, don't you see? An injunction. A liqueur. Please to +note that I am talking about a company, a company. Have I now made +myself clear, or how many more times----" + +"One would think he was at least your brother, from the way you take his +part. Let us say he is a friend, then; some never-to-be-mentioned friend +who is interested in a shady liqueur business and now wants to make a +judge do something to make a man do something----" + +"Wrong again! To prevent a man doing something----" + +"--Wants to do something to make a judge do something to prevent a man +doing something he wants to do because he does not want him to do it. Is +that right? Very well. You tell your friend that no Italian judge is +going to do dirty work of that kind for nothing." + +"Dirty work. God Almighty! I don't want any judge to do dirty work----" + +"No doubt, no doubt. I am quite convinced you don't. But your priceless +friend does. Come now! Why not be open about it?" + +"Open about what?" + +"It is positively humiliating for me to be treated like this, after all +the years we have known each other. I wish you would try to cultivate +the virtue of frankness. You are far too secretive. Something will +really have to be done about it." + +"A company, a company." + +"A company consists of a certain number of human beings. Why make +mysteries about one of them? It may happen to the best of mankind to be +mixed up----" + +"Mixed up----" + +"You are going to be disagreeable about my choice of words. Have it your +way! We all know you think you can talk better Italian than the Pope. My +own father, I was going to say, has been involved in some pretty dirty +work in the course of his professional career----" + +"No doubt, no doubt." + +"And please to note that he is as good a man as any brother of yours." + +"You always miss my point." + +"Now try to be truthful, for once in your life. Out with it!" + +"A liqueur." + +"Is that all? Sleep does not seem to have sharpened your wits to any +great extent." + +"I was not asleep. I was thinking about eggs. A company." + +"A company? You are waking up. Anything else?" + +"An injunction...." + +A distinguished writer some years ago started a crusade in favour of +pure English. He wished to counteract those influences which are forever +at work debasing the standard of language; whether, as he seemed to +think, that standard should be inalterably fixed, is yet another +question. For in literature as in conversation there is a "pure English" +for every moment of history; that of our childhood is different from +to-day's; and to adopt the tongue of the Bible or Shakespeare, because +it happens to be pure, looks like setting back the hands of the clock. +Men would surely be dull dogs if their phraseology, whether written or +spoken, were to remain stagnant and unchangeable. We think well of +Johnson's prose. Yet the respectable English of our own time will bear +comparison with his; it is more agile and less infected with Latinisms; +why go back to Johnson? Let us admire him as a landmark, and pass on! +Some literary periods may deserve to be called good, others bad; so be +it. Were there no bad ones, there would be no good ones, and I see no +reason why men should desire to live in a Golden Age of literature, save +in so far as that millennium might coincide with a Golden Age of living. +I doubt, in the first place, whether they would be even aware of their +privilege; secondly, every Golden Age grows fairer when viewed from a +distance. Besides, and as a general consideration, it strikes me that a +vast deal of mischief is involved in these arbitrary divisions of +literature into golden or other epochs; they incite men to admire some +mediocre writers and to disparage others, they pervert our natural +taste, and their origin is academic laziness. + +Certain it is that every language worthy of the name should be in a +state of perennial flux, ready and avid to assimilate new elements and +be battered about as we ourselves are--is there anything more charming +than a thoroughly defective verb?--fresh particles creeping into its +vocabulary from all quarters, while others are silently discarded. There +is a bar-sinister on the escutcheon of many a noble term, and if, in an +access of formalism, we refuse hospitality to some item of questionable +repute, our descendants may be deprived of a linguistic jewel. Is the +calamity worth risking when time, and time alone, can decide its worth? +Why not capture novelties while we may, since others are dying all the +year round; why not throw them into the crucible to take their chance +with the rest of us? An English word is no fossil to be locked up in a +cabinet, but a living thing, liable to the fate of all such things. +Glance back into Chaucer and note how they have thriven on their own +merits and not on professorial recommendations; thriven, or perished, or +put on new faces! + +I would make an exception to this rule. Foreign importations which do +not belong to us by right, idioms we have enticed from over the sea for +one reason or another, ought to remain, as it were, stereotyped. They +are respected guests and cannot decently be jostled in our crowd; let +them be jostled in their own; here, on British soil, they should be +allowed to retain that primal signification which, in default of a +corresponding English term, they were originally taken over to express. + +What prompts me to this exordium is the discovery that a few pages back, +with a blameworthy hankering after the picturesque, I have grossly +misused a foreign word. Those cats in Trajan's Forum at Rome are nowise +a "macabre exhibition"; they are not macabre in the least; they are sad, +or saddening. The charnel-house flavour is absent. + +My apologies to the French language, to the cats, and to the reader.... + +Now whoever wishes to see a truly macabre exhibition at Rome may visit +the Peruvian mummies in the Kircher Museum. It is characteristic of the +spirit in which guide-books are written that, while devoting long +paragraphs to some worthless picture of a hallucinated venerable, they +hardly utter a word about these most remarkable and gruesome objects. + +Those old Peruvians, like the Egyptians, had necrophilous leanings. They +cultivated an unwholesome passion for corpses, and called it religion. +Many museums contain such relics from the New World in various attitudes +of discomfort; frequently seated, as though trying to be at rest after +life's long journey. No two are alike; and all are horrible of aspect. +Some have been treated with balsam to preserve the softer parts; others +are shrivelled. Some are filled with chopped straw, like any stuffed +crocodile in a show; others contain precious coca-leaves and powdered +fragments of shell, which were doubtless placed there so that the +defunct might receive nourishment up to the time when his soul should +once more have rejoined the body. Every one knows, furthermore, that +these American ancients were fond of playing tricks with the shape of +the skull--a custom which was forbidden by the Synod of Lima in 1585 and +which Hippocrates describes as being practised among the inhabitants of +the Crimea. [26] It adds considerably to their ghastly appearance. + +One looks at them and asks oneself: what are they now, these gentle +Incas who loved the arts and music, these children of the Sun, whose +civic acquirements amazed their conquerors? They have contrived to +transform themselves into something quite unusual. Staring orbits and +mouths agape, colour-patches here and there, morsels of muscle and hair +attached to contorted limbs--they suggest a half-way house, a loathsome +link, between a living man and his skeleton; and not only a link between +them, but a grim caricature of both. Some have been coated with varnish. +They glisten infamously. Picture a decrepit and rather gaunt relative of +your own, writhing in a fit, stark naked, and varnished all over---- + +Different are these mummies from those of the tenaciously unimaginative +and routine-bound Egyptians. Theirs are dead as a door-nail; torpid +lumps, undistinguishable one from the other. Here we have a rare +phenomenon--life, and individuality, after death. They are more +noteworthy than the cowled and desiccated monks of Italy or Sicily, or +at least differently so; undraped, for the most part, though some of +them may be seen, mere skin-covered heads, peering with dismal coyness +out of a brown sack. And the jabbering teeth.... We dream as children of +night-terrors, of goblins and phantoms that start out of the gloom and +flit about with hideous grimaces. They are gone, while yet we shudder at +that momentary flash of grizzliness; intangibilities, whose image is not +easily detained. To see spectral visions embodied, and ghosts made +flesh, one should come here. Had the excruciating operation of embalming +been performed upon live men and women, their poses could hardly have +been more multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to +how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, +against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The +nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards +Auffassung, are perhaps some little Japanese wood-carvings whose +creators, labouring consciously, likewise overstepped the boundaries of +the grotesque and indulged in nightmarish effects of line similar to +those which the old Peruvians, all unconsciously, have achieved upon the +bodies of their dear friends and relatives.... + +Drive swiftly thence, if you are in the mood, as you should be, for +something at the other pole of feeling, to view that wonder, the +kneeling boy at the Museo delle Terme. Headless and armless though he +be, he displays as much vitality as the Peruvians; every inch of the +body is alive, and one may well marvel at the skill of the artist who, +during his interminable task of sculpture, held fast the model's +fleeting outline--so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that +every month, and every week, brings about new conditions of surface and +texture. A child of Niobe? Very likely. There is suffering also here, a +suffering different from theirs; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in +the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods a divine calm. +Here is the antidote to mummified Incas. + + + + +Alatri + +What brought me to Alatri? + +Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born +here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a +passable place, but as to Alatri---- + +"You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are +precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia." + +"Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other +citizens like yourself----" + +"It does indeed! I am the least of the sons of Alatri." + +"Then it must be worthy of a visit...." + +In the hottest hour of the afternoon they deposited me outside the city +gate at some new hotel--I forget its name--to which I promptly took an +unreasoning dislike. There was a fine view upon the mountains from the +window of the room assigned to me, but nothing could atone for that lack +of individuality which seemed to exhale from the establishment and its +proprietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher here. Half an +hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I +captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he +pleased. He took me to the Albergo della---- + +The Albergo della----is a shy and retiring hostelry, invisible as such +to the naked eye, since it bears no sign of being a place of public +entertainment at all. Here was individuality, and to spare. Mine host is +an improvement even upon him of the Pergola at Valmontone; a man after +my own heart, with merry eyes, drooping white moustache and a lordly +nose--a nose of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which must have +cost years of patient labour to bring to its present state of +blossoming. That nose! I felt as though I could dwell for ever beneath +its shadow. The fare, however, is not up to the standard of the +"Garibaldi" inn at Frosinone which I have just left. + +Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather a dull little place; I +am never likely to go there again, and have therefore no reason for +keeping to myself its "Garibaldi" hotel which leaves little to be +desired, even under these distressful war-conditions. It set me +thinking--thinking that there are not many townlets of this size in +rural England which can boast of inns comparable to the "Garibaldi" in +point of cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable +prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the +other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly +cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have +to walk across a cold room at night--refinement of torture--in order to +turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone +enough to condemn these establishments, one and all. + +Yes! And the beds; those frowsy, creaky, prehistoric wooden concerns, +always six or eight inches too short, whose mattresses have not been +turned round since they were made. What happens? You clamber into such a +receptacle and straightway roll downhill, down into its centre, into a +kind of river-bed where you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous +feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on +either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else +into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as +well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you +lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin. +Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is +fit for a Christian to sleep in.... + +The days are growing hot. + +A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the +convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the +afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to +myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for, +being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded +with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places, +where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious +official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation +here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well +established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a +bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly +that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the +place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a +lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery--he brings me +every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself. + +"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice." + +"I know. Did you tell him he might----?" + +"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his +mother." + +"Tell him again, to-morrow." + +It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude. + +In October--and we are now at midsummer--there occurred a little +adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this. + +I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the +still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending +journey northwards for which the passport was already vised, when there +met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers. We +stared at one another. His face was familiar to me, though I knew not +where I had seen it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director of +the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman who had recently been to +Orvinio? I remembered. + +"The last time I was there," I said, "was about a month ago. I fancy we +had some conversation in the motor up from Mandela." + +"That is so. And now, however disagreeable it may be, I feel myself +obliged to perform a patriotic duty. This is war-time. I would ask you +to be so good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station." + +"Which is not far off," I replied. "There is one up the next street on +our right." + +We walked there, all four of us, without saying another word. "What have +I been doing?" I wondered. Then we climbed upstairs. + +Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stuffy room, sat a delegato or +commissario--I forget which--surrounded, despite the lateness of the +hour, by one or two subordinates. He was of middle age, and not +prepossessing. He looked as if he could make himself unpleasant, though +his face was not of that actively vicious--or actively stupid: the terms +are interconvertible--kind. While scanning his countenance, during those +few moments, sundry thoughts flitted through my mind. + +These then, I said to myself--these are the functionaries, whether +executive or administrative, whether Italian or English or Chinese, whom +a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of +them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is +certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying +their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws, +and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority +should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said +to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of +history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin +destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the +Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they +were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense +of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their +wonderful culture. They ought to have known better; they ought to have +rated morality at its true worth, since it was the profoundest Chinaman +himself who said that virtue is merely etiquette--or something to that +effect. + +I found myself studying the delegato's physiognomy. What could one do +with such a composite face? It is a question which often confronts me +when I see such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. How make it +more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? Shaving that +moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it would +forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard, +an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved +him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, on +account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one +of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets of +European royalties. + +He took down the names and addresses of all four of us, and it was then +that I missed my chance. I ought to have spoken first instead of +allowing this luscious director to begin as follows:-- + +"The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about a month ago. He admits +it himself and I can corroborate the fact, as I was there at the same +time. Orvinio is a small country place in the corner of Umbria. There is +a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote and very high--altissima! It is +called Mount Muretta and occupies a commanding situation. For reasons +which I will leave you, Signer Commissario, to investigate, this +gentleman climbed up that mountain and was observed, on the very summit, +making calculations and taking measurements with instruments." + +Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta? For an all-sufficient +reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from Etna +and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A bare +wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably the name) visible from +below and promising a lively scramble up the rock, was an additional +inducement. Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can +afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter of fact, proved +to be a mighty tame affair. There was yet another object to my trip. I +desired to verify a legend connected with this mountain, the tradition +of a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to whose former +existence the name of a certain old family, still surviving at Orvinio, +bears witness. "We are not really from Orvinio," these people will tell +you. "We are from the lost castle of the Muretta." (There is not a +vestige of a castle left. But I found one brick in the jungle which +covers, on the further side of the summit, a vast rock-slide dating, I +should say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the fastness +may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting Muretta. + +As to taking measurements--well, a man is naturally accused of a good +many things in the course of half a century. Nobody has yet gone so far +as to call me a mathematician. These "calculations and instruments" were +a local mirage; as pretty an instance of the mythopoeic faculty as one +could hope to find in our degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the +earth. [27] + +The official seemed to be impressed with the fact that my accuser was +director of a bank. He inquired what I had to say. + +This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on me rather suddenly. One +likes to have notice of such questions. Tell the truth? I am often +tempted to do so; it saves so much trouble! But truth-telling is a +matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the more one learns +to hold in check that unnatural propensity. (Mankind has a natural love +of the lie itself. Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one will +do well to take account of national psychology. An English functionary, +athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to +climb in war-time, without any object save that of exercising one's +limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and remote +mountain--Muretta happens to be neither the one nor the other--would +have seemed to an Italian an incredible proceeding. I thought it better +to assume the role of accuser in my turn: an Oriental trick. + +"This director," I said, "calls himself a patriot. What has he told us? +That while at Orvinio he knew a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to +make calculations with instruments. What does this admirable citizen do +with regard to such a suspicious character? He does nothing. Is there +not a barrack-full of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to +arrest such people? But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk +away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other +measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and +Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our English notion of +patriotism. I shall certainly make it my business to write and +congratulate the Banca d'Italia on possessing such a good Italian as +director. I shall also suggest that his talents would be more worthily +employed at the Banca--" (naming a notoriously pro-German establishment). + +A poor speech; but it gave me the satisfaction of seeing the fellow grow +purple with fury and so picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the +spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be done with him. The +delegato suggested that inasmuch as he had said his say and deposited +his address, he was at liberty to depart, whenever so disposed. + +They went--he and his friends. + +The other was looking serious--as serious as such a face could be made +to look. He must not be allowed to think, I decided, for once an +official begins to think he is liable to grow conscientious and +then--why, any disaster might happen, the least of them being that I +should remain in custody pending investigations. In how many more +countries was I going to be arrested for one crime or another? This joke +had lost its novelty a good many years ago. + +"A pernicious person," I began, "--you have but to look at him. And now +he has invited me here in order to make a patriotic impression on his +friends, those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since no +love is lost hereabouts between police and military). Such silly talk +about measurements! It should be nipped in the bud. Here you have an +intelligent young subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home with +me at my expense; we will go through all papers and search for +instruments and bring everything that savours of suspicion back to this +office, together with my passport which I never carry on my person. +This, meanwhile, is my carta di soggiorno." + +The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I thought of those +miserable three days' grace which were all that the French consulate had +accorded me. If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded in +Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin again. And to tell him of +this dilemma would make him more distrustful than ever. + +I went on hastily to admit that my request might not be regular, but how +natural! Were we not allies? Was it not my duty to clear myself of such +an imputation at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to that +end? I felt sure he could sympathise with the state of my mind, etc. +etc. + +Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of invention, lent wings to +my words, and while thinking all the time: You little vermin, what are +you doing here, in that chair, when you should be delving the earth or +breaking stones, as befits your kind? I tried to picture myself climbing +up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port +would have been more in my line. Calculations! It is all I can do to +control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I +like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments! If this +young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my +belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the +delegato, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they often +are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of your +body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently reasonable. +The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing whatever to +do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to evade military +service. + +We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his +polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of +the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather +dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala. + +"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be +surprised at my long absence." + +"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport." + +"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with +him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten +o'clock, or eleven, or midday." + +So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little +detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything +else. He did not even unfold it. + +"E stato un' equivoco," was all he condescended to say, still without a +smile. There had been a misunderstanding. + +The incident was closed. + +Things might have gone differently in the country. I would either have +been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of +carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century +while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the +civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet--an inquiry without +which no Latin dossier is complete. + +POSTSCRIPT.--Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many +of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever +come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a +street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in +their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not +tend to diminish? + +There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome; +fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those +inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things +remained in the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set by the +ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The natives spend their days +in rushing to Rome and back on business connected with law-suits, not a +quarter of which would have arisen but for the existence of the +carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Individually, these men are +nowise at fault. They desire nothing better than to be left in peace. +Seldom do they meddle with local concerns--far from it! They live in +sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the populace, like a colony +of monks. The institution is to blame. It is their duty, among other +things, to take down any charge which anybody may care to prefer against +his neighbour. That done, the machinery of the law is automatically set +in motion. Five minutes' talk among the village elders would have +settled many affairs which now degenerate into legal squabbles of twice +as many years; chronic family feuds are fostered; a man who, on +reflection, would find it more profitable to come to terms with his +opponent over a glass of wine, or even to square the old syndic with a +couple of hundred francs, sees himself obliged to try the same tactics +on a judge of the high court--which calls for a different technique. + +Altogether, the country is flagrantly over-policed. [28] It gives one a +queer sense of public security to see, at Rome for instance, every third +man you meet--an official, of course, of some kind--with a revolver +strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on the verge of +savagery in some cowboy settlement out West. Greek towns of about ten +thousand inhabitants, like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal +guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls. How can ten men +perform duties which, in Italy, would require ten times as many? Is it a +question of climate, or national character? A question, perhaps, of +common sense--of realising that local institutions often work with less +friction and less outlay than that system of governmental centralisation +of which the carbineers are an example. + +Meanwhile we are still at Alatri which, I am glad to discover, possesses +five gateways--five or even more. It is something of a relief to be away +from that Roman tradition of four. Military reasons originally, fixing +themselves at last into a kind of sacred tradition.... So it is, with +unimaginative races. Their pious sentimentalism crystallises into +inanimate objects. The English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral +strand, and the chimes of Big Ben, floating above that crowd of +many-hued Orientals, give to the white man a sense of homeliness and +racial solidarity. The French, more fluid and sensitive to the +incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial +buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition, +it pursues one with meaningless iteration from the burning sands of +Africa to Ultima Thule. Always those four gateways! + +For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is comparable to that green +space on the summit of the citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning, +to take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the vanity of human +wishes. The less you have seen of localities like Tiryns the more you +will be amazed at this impressive and mysterious fastness. That portal, +those blocks--what Titans fitted them into their places? Well, we have +now learnt a little something about those Titans and their methods. From +this point you can see the old Roman road that led into Alatri; it +climbs up the hill in straightforward fashion, intersecting the broad +modern "Via Romana"--a goat-track, nowadays.... + +These Alatri remains are wonderful--more so than many of the sites which +old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his +curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he +stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations +about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the +same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual? We certainly find him +"hurrying down" past Anagni near-by, of whose imposing citadel he again +says nothing whatever.... + +I am now, at the end of several months, beginning to know Ramage fairly +well. I hope to know him still better ere we part company, if ever we +do. It takes time, this interpretation, this process of grafting one +mind upon another. For he does not supply mere information. A fig for +information. That would be easy to digest. He supplies character, which +is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of +what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a +philosophy of life. + +And what is the dominating trait of this old Scotsman? The historical +sense. Ancient inscriptions interested him more than anything else. He +copied many of them during his trip; fifty, I should think; and it is no +small labour, as any one who has tried it can testify, to decipher these +half-obliterated records often placed in the most inconvenient +situations (he seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied himself +thus was to his credit in an age whose chief concern, as regards +antiquity, consisted in plundering works of art for ornamental purposes. +Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected +knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as +inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these +documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly +sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but +for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of +one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men +who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the +fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be +completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit. + +His equipment in the interpretation of these stones and of all else he +picked up in the way of lore and legend was of the proper kind. +Boundless curiosity, first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of +learning. He knew his classics--knew them so well that he could always +put his finger on those particular passages of theirs which bore upon a +point of interest. We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quotation +from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different thing remembering, and +collating, references in. Aelian or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And +wide awake, withal; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the kind to +swallow the tales of the then fashionable cicerone's. He has critical +dissertations on sites like Cannae and the Bandusian Fountain and +Caudine Forks; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence a +sepulchre containing some of those painted Greek vases for which the +place is famous, he promptly suspects it to be a "sepulchre prepared for +strangers," and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain where +they are "for more simple or less suspicious travellers." On the way to +Cape Leuca he passes certain mounds whose origin he believes to be +artificial and the work of a prehistoric race. I fancy his conjecture +has proved correct. On page 258, speaking of an Oscan inscription, he +mentions Mommsen, which shows that he kept himself up to date in such +researches.... + +Of course it would be impossible to feel any real fondness for Ramage +before one has discovered his failings and his limitations. Well, he +seems to have taken Pratilli seriously. I like this. A young fellow who, +in 1828, could have guessed Pratilli to have been the arch-forger he +was--such a young fellow would be a freak of learning. He says little of +the great writers of his age; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose +imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but not in the +present. The Hohenstauffen period does not attract him. He rides close +to the magnificent Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site; he +inspects the castle of Lucera and says never a word about Frederick II +or his Saracens. At Lecce, renowned for its baroque buildings, he finds +"nothing to interest a stranger, except, perhaps, the church of Santa +Croce, which is not a bad specimen of architectural design." True, the +beauty of baroque had not been discovered in his day. + +What pleases me less is that there occurs hardly any mention of wild +animals in these pages, and that he seems to enjoy natural scenery in +proportion as it reminds him of some passage in one of those poets whom +he is so fond of quoting. This love of poetic extracts and citations is +a mark of his period. It must have got the upper hand of him in course +of time, for we find, from the title-page of these "Nooks and Byways," +that he was the author of "Beautiful Thoughts from Greek authors; +Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian authors, etc."; [29] indeed, +the publication of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have +been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer a few more "Nooks and +By-ways" to all these Beautiful Thoughts! He must have been at home +again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were +gathered. If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains of +the south, instead of rushing through them like an express train. That +mania of "pressing forward"; that fatal gift of hustle.... + +His body flits hither and thither, but his mind remains observant, +assimilative. It is only on reading this book carefully that one +realises how full of information it is. Ay, he notices things, does +Ramage--non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time to look +around him. It is his charm. An intelligent interest in the facts of +daily life should be one of the equipments of the touring scholar, +seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift, +and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern +travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and +agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure +warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and +the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and +modern times and the fig-pecker bird--that bird you eat bones and all, +the focetola or beccafico (garden warbler). In fact, he has multifarious +interests and seems to have known several languages besides the +classics. He can hit off a thing neatly, as, when contrasting our +sepulchral epitaphs with those of olden days, he says that the key-note +of ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace; or "wherever we find a river in +this country (Calabria) we are sure to discover that it is a source of +danger and not of profit." He knew these southern torrents and +river-beds! He garners information about the Jewish and Albanian +colonies of South Italy; he studies Romaic "under one of the few Greeks +who survived the fatal siege of Missolonghi" and collects words of Greek +speech still surviving at Bova and Maratea (Maratea, by the way, has a +Phoenician smack; the Greeks must have arrived later on the scene, as +they did at Marathon itself). + +A shrewd book, indeed. Like many of his countrymen, he was specially +bent on economic and social questions; he is driven to the prophetic +conclusion, in 1828, that "the government rests on a very insecure +basis, and the great mass of the intelligence of the country would +gladly welcome a change." Religion and schooling are subjects near his +heart and, in order to obtain a first-hand knowledge of these things in +Italy, he enters upon a friendship, a kind of intellectual flirtation, +with the Jesuits. That is as it should be. Extremes can always respect +one another. The Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as he +from them.... + +I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to +me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always +finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial +matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was +personally acquainted with several men whose names I have +mentioned--Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano; +in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him +with profit. And even at an earlier time; for I once claimed to have +discovered the ruins of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets +(the Galli, opposite Positano)--now I find him forestalling me by nearly +a century. It is often thus, with archaeological discoveries. + +He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress Calypso which has +disappeared since his day, and would have sailed there but for the fact +that no boat was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who landed +here, found any prehistoric remains on the spot; I should doubt it. On +another Mediterranean island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the +relics of what would formerly have been described as the residence of +that second Homeric witch, Circe. [30] + +The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have already, of course, +discovered my ideal family at Alatri. Two ideal families.... + +One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that +luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow--that +verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with +fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with +wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich +philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in the +cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold of his two-roomed +abode, or wander about those tiny patches of culture, geometrically +disposed, where he guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots +of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of his misfortunes; +intuitive civility has taught him to avoid troubling a stranger with +personal concerns. + +The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are +hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their +offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left. + +"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can +only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach--nothing; not +milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him +for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now +there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children +dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others." + +I looked at him. + +"You sent him into the plains last summer?" I ventured. + +"To Cisterna. One must make a little money, or starve." + +"And you expect to keep your children alive if you send them to +Cisterna?" + +I was astonished that the local medicine man had not diagnosed malaria. +I undertook that if she would put him into the train when next I went to +Rome, I would have him overhauled by a competent physician and packed +home again with written instructions. (I kept my word, and the good +doctor Salatino of the Via Torino--a Calabrian who knows something about +malaria--wrote out a treatment for this neglected case, no part of +which, I fear, has been observed. Such is the fatalism of the +country-folk that if drugs and injections do not work like magic they +are quietly discarded. This youth may well have gone the way of "those +other two"--who, by the by, were also sent into the Pontine +Marshes--since you cannot reject your food for ever, and grow more +anaemic every day, without producing some such result.) + +Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy in the mother's heart +that I became quite embarrassed. She likened me, among other things, to +her favourite Saint. + +All comparisons being odious, I turned the conversation by asking: + +"And that last one?" + +"Here," she said, pushing open the door of the inner room. + +He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle of limbs, the +picture of radiant boyhood. + +"This one, I think, has never been to Cisterna." + +"No. He goes into the mountains with the woodcutters every morning an +hour before sunrise. It is up beyond Collepardo--seven hours' labour, +and seven hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he sleeps +like a log...." + +Children from these hill-places often accompany their parents into the +plains to work; more commonly they go in droves of any number under the +charge of some local man. They are part of that immense army of +hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands of Tuscany to the +very toe of Italy, into these low-lying regions, hardly an inch of which +is fever-free. I do not know even approximately the numbers of these +migratory swarms of all ages and both sexes; let us say, to be on the +safe side, a quarter of a million. They herd down there, in the broiling +heat of summer and autumn, under conditions which are not all that could +be desired. [31] Were they housed in marble palaces and served on +platters of gold, the risk would not be diminished by a hair. How many +return infected? I have no idea. It cannot be less than sixty per cent. +How many of these perish? Perhaps five per cent. A few thousand annual +deaths are not worth talking about. What concerns the country--and what +the country, indeed, has taken seriously in hand--is this impoverishment +of its best blood; this devitalising action of malaria upon unnumbered +multitudes of healthy men, women, and children who do not altogether +succumb to its attacks. + +I sometimes recognise them on the platform of Rome station--family +parties whom I have met in their country villages, now bound for +Maccarese or one of those infernal holes in the Campagna, there to earn +a little extra money with hay, or maize, or wheat, or tomatoes, or +whatever the particular crop may be. You chat with the parents; the +youngsters run up to you, all gleeful with the change of scene and the +joy of travelling by railway. I know what they will look like, when they +return to their mountains later on.... + +And so, discoursing of this and that, one rambles oneself into a +book.... + +Into half a book; for here--at Alatri, and now--midsummer, I mean to +terminate these non-serious memories and leave unrecorded the no less +insignificant events which followed up to the mornings in October, those +mornings when jackdaws came cawing past my window from the thickly +couched mists of the Borghese Gardens, and the matutinal tub began to +feel more chilly than was altogether pleasant. + +Half a book: I perceive it clearly. These pages might be rounded by +another hundred or two. The design is too large for one volume; it +reminds me of those tweed suits we used to buy long ago whose pattern +was so "loud" that it "took two men to show it off." Which proves how a +few months' self-beguilement by the wayside of a beaten track can become +the subject of disquisitions without end. Maybe the very aimlessness of +such loiterings conduces to a like method of narrative. Maybe the tone +of the time fosters a reminiscential and intimately personal mood, by +driving a man for refuge into the only place where peace can still be +found--into himself. What is the use of appealing in objective fashion +to the intelligence of a world gone crazy? Say your say. Go your way. +Let them rave! We shall all be pro-German again to-morrow. [32] + +Half a book: it strikes me, on reflection, as curiously appropriate. To +produce something incomplete and imperfect, a torso of a kind--is it not +symbolical of the moment? Is not this an age of torso's? We are +manufacturing them every hour by the score. How many good fellows are +now crawling about mutilated, converted into torso's? There is room for +a book on the same lines.... + +I glance through what has been written and detect therein an occasional +note of exacerbation and disharmony which amuses me, knowing, as I do, +its transitory nature. Dirty work, touching dirt. One cannot read for +three consecutive years of nothing but poison-gas and blood and +explosives without engendering a corresponding mood--a mood which +expresses itself in every one according to whether he thinks +individually or nationally; whether he cultivates an impartial +conscience or surrenders to that of the crowd. For the man and his race +are everlastingly tugging in different directions, and unreasoning +subservience to race-ideals has clouded many a bright intellect. How +many things a race can do which its component members, taken separately, +would blush to imitate! Our masses are now fighting for commercial +supremacy. The ideal may well be creditable to a nation. It is hardly +good enough for a gentleman. He reacts; he meditates a Gospel of Revolt +against these vulgarities; he catches himself saying, as he reads the +morning paper full of national-flag fetishism and sanguinary nonsense: +"One Beethoven symphony is a greater victory than the greatest of these, +and reasonable folks may live under any rule save that of a wind-fed +herd." + +It avails nothing. The day has dawned, the day of those who pull +downwards--stranglers of individualism. Can a man subscribe to the +aspirations of a mob and yet think well of himself? Can he be black and +white? He can be what he is, what most of us are: neutral tint. Look +around you: a haze of cant and catchwords. Such things are employed on +political platforms and by the Press as a kind of pepsine, to aid our +race-stomach in digesting certain heavy doses of irrationalism. The +individual stomach soon discovers their weakening effect.... + +Looking back upon these months of uneventful wanderings, I became aware +of a singular phenomenon. I find myself, for some obscure reason, always +returning to the same spot. I was nine times in Rome, twice in Florence +and Viareggio and Olevano and Anticoli and Alatri and Licenza and +Soriano, five times at Valmontone, thrice at Orvinio; and if I did not +go a second time to Scanno and other places, there may be a reason for +it. Why this perpetual revisiting? How many new and interesting sites +might have been explored during that period! Adventures and discoveries +might have fallen to my lot, and been duly noted down. As it is, nothing +happened, and nothing was noted down. I have only a diary of dates to go +upon, out of which, with the help of memory and imagination, have been +extracted these pages. For generally, delving down into memory, a man +can bring up at least one clear-cut fragment, something still fervid and +flashing, a remembered voice or glimpse of landscape which helps to +unveil the main features of a scenario already relegated to the +lumber-room. And this detail will unravel the next; the scattered +elements jostle each other into place, as in the final disentangling of +some complicated fugue. + +Such things will do for a skeleton. Imagination will kindly provide +flesh and blood, life, movement. Imagination--why not? One suppresses +much; why not add a little? Truth blends well with untruth, and phantasy +has been so sternly banned of late from travellers' tales that I am +growing tender-hearted towards the poor old dame; quite chivalrous, in +fact--especially on those rather frequent occasions when I find myself +unable to dispense with her services. + +Yes; truth blends well with untruth. It is one of the maladies of our +age, a sign of sheer nervousness, to profess a frenzied allegiance to +truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where +graver issues are at stake. We cannot lay claim to a truthful state of +mind. In this respect the eighteenth century, for all its foppery, was +ahead of ours. What is the basic note of Horace Walpole's iridescent +worldliness--what about veracity? How one yearns, nowadays, for that +spacious and playful outlook of his; or, better still, for some +altogether Golden Age where everybody is corrupt and delightful and has +nothing whatever to do, and does it well.... + +My second ideal family at Alatri lives along a side path which diverges +off the main road to Ferentino. They are peasant proprietors, more +wealthy and civilised than those others, but lacking their terrestrial +pathos. They live among their own vines and fruit-trees on the hillside. +The female parent, a massive matron, would certainly never send those +winsome children into the Pontine Marshes, not for a single day, not for +their weight in gold. The father is quite an uncommon creature. I look +at him and ask myself; where have I seen that face before, so classic +and sinewy and versatile? I have seen it on Greek vases, and among the +sailors of the Cyclades and on the Bosphorus. It is a non-Latin face, +with sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and crisply curling +beard; a legendary face. How came Odysseus to Alatri? + +Not far from this homestead where I have spent sundry pleasant hours +there is a fountain gushing out of a hollow. In olden days it would have +been hung with votive offerings to the nymphs, and rightly. One +appreciates this nature-cult in a dry land. I have worshipped at many +such shrines where the water bounds forth, a living joy, out of the +rocky cleft--unlike those sluggish springs of the North that ooze +regretfully upwards, as though ready to slink home again unless they +were kicked from behind, and then trickle along, with barely perceptible +movement, amid weeds and slime. + +Now this particular fountain (I think it is called acqua santa), while +nowise remarkable as regards natural beauty, is renowned for curing +every disease. It is not an ordinary rill; it has medicinal properties. +Hither those two little demons, the younger children, conducted me all +unsuspecting two days ago, desirous that I should taste the far-famed +spring. + +"Try it," they said. + +I refused at first, since water of every kind has a knack of disagreeing +with my weak digestion. As for them, they gulped down tumblers of it, +being manifestly inured to what I afterwards discovered to be its +catastrophic effects. + +"Look at us drinking it," they went on. "Ah, how good! Delicious! It is +like Fiuggi, only better." + +"Am I an invalid, to drink Fiuggi water?" + +"It is not quite the same as Fiuggi. (True. I was soon wishing it had +been.) How many men would pay dearly for your privilege! Never let it be +said that you went away thirsting from this blessed spot." + +"I am not thirsty just now. Not at all thirsty, thank you." + +"We have seen you drink without being thirsty. Just one glass," they +pleaded. "It will make you live a hundred years." + +"No. Let us talk about something else." + +"No? Then what shall we tell our mother? That we brought you here, and +that you were afraid of a little mouthful of acqua santa? We thought you +had more courage. We thought you could strangle a lion." + +"Something will happen," I said, as I drained that glass. + +Nothing happened for a few hours. + +Two days' rest is working wonders.... + +I profit by the occasion of this slight indisposition to glance +backwards--and forwards. + +I am here, at Alatri, on the 22 June: so much is beyond contestation. + +A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31: Palombara. Well I +remember the hot walk to Palombara! + +August 3: Mons Lucretilis, that classical mountain from whose summit I +gazed at the distant Velino which overtops like a crystal of amethyst +all the other peaks. This was during one of my two visits to Licenza. +Pleasant days at Licenza, duly noting in the house of Horace what I have +noted with Shelley and other bards, namely, that these fellows who sing +so blithely of the simple life yet contrive to possess extremely +commodious residences; pleasant days among those wooded glens, walking +almost every morning in the footsteps of old Ramage up the valley in +whose streamlet the willow-roots sway like branches of coral--aloft +under the wild walnuts to that bubbling fountain where I used to meet my +two friends, Arcadian goat-herds, aboriginal fauns of the thickets, who +told me, amid ribald laughter, a few personal experiences which nothing +would induce me to set down here. + +July 26: La Rocca. What happened at La Rocca? + +October 2: Florence. What happened at Florence? A good deal, during +those noteworthy twelve hours! + +Some memories have grown strangely nebulous; impossible to reconstruct, +for example, what went on during the days of drowsy discomfort at +Montecelio. A lethargy seems to have fallen on me; I lived in a dream +out of which there emerges nothing save the figure of the local +tobacconist, a ruddy type with the face of a Roman farmer, who took me +to booze with him, in broad patriarchal style, every night at a +different friend's house. Those nights at Montecelio! The mosquitoes! +The heat! Could this be the place which was famous in Pliny's day for +its grove of beeches? How I used to envy the old Montecelians their +climate! + +July 23: Saracinesca. What happened? I recollect the view over the +sweltering Campagna from the dizzy castle-ruin, in whose garden I see +myself nibbling a black cherry, the very last of the season, plucked +from a tree which grows beside the wall whereon I sat. That suffices: it +gives a key to the situation. I can now conjure up the gaunt and sombre +houses of this thick-clustering stronghold; the Rembrandtesque shadows, +the streets devoid of men, the picture of some martial hero in a +cavern-like recess where I sought shelter from the heat, a black +crucifix planted in the soil below the entrance of the village--my +picture of Saracinesca is complete, in outline. + +July 31: Subiaco. Precisely! A week later, then, I walk thirty-two +chilometres along the shadeless high road, an insane thing to do, to +Subiaco and back. There, in the restaurant Aniene, when all the +luncheon-guests have departed for their noonday nap, the cook of the +establishment, one of those glorious old Roman he-cooks, comes up to my +table. Did I like the boiled trout? + +Rather flabby, I reply. A little tasteless. Let him try, next time, some +white vinegar in the water and a bay-leaf or two. + +He pricks up his ears: we are gens du metier. I invite him to sit down +and inquire: how about a bottle of Cesanese, now that we are alone? An +excellent idea! And he, in his turn, will permit himself to offer me +certain strawberries from his own private store. + +"Strawberries?" I ask. "Who ever heard of strawberries in Central Italy +on the 31 July? Why, I devoured the last cherry a week ago, and it was +only alive because it grew above the clouds." + +These, he explains mysteriously, are special strawberries, brought down +from near the snow-line by a special goat-boy. They are not for the +guests, but "only for myself." Strawberries are always worth paying for; +they are mildly purging, they go well with the wine. And what a +wonderful scent they have! "You remind me of a certain Lucullo," I said, +"who was also nice about strawberries. In fact, he made a fine art of +eating and drinking." + +"Your Lucullo, we may take it, was a Roman?" + +"Romano di Roma." + +Thus conversing with this rare old ruffian, I forget my intention of +leaving a card on Saint Scolastica. She has waited for me so long. She +can wait a little longer.... + +August 9: Villa Lante. + +August 12: Ferento. What happened at Ferento? + +Now what happened at Ferento? Let me try to reconstruct that morning's +visit. + +I have clear memories of the walk from Viterbo--it would be eighteen +chilometres there and back, they told me. I had slept well in my quaint +little room with the water rushing under the window, and breakfasted in +receptive and responsive mood. I recall that trudge along the highway +and how I stepped across patches of sunlight from the shade of one +regularly planted tree into that of another. The twelfth of August.... +It set me thinking of heathery moorlands and grouse, and of those +legions of flies that settle on one's nose just as one pulls the +trigger. It all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road, +among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what +these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter +months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland +underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my ears--a wistful +intermezzo of Brahms. It seemed to spring out of the hot earth. Such a +natural song, elvishly coaxing! Would I ever play it again? Neither +that, nor any other. + +It turned my thoughts, as I went along, to Brahms and led me to +understand why no man, who cares only for his fellow-creatures, will +ever relish that music. It is an alien tongue, full of deeps and +rippling shallows uncomprehended of those who know nothing of lonely +places; full of thrills and silences such as are not encountered among +the habitations of men. It echoes the multitudinous voice of nature, and +distils the smiles and tears of things non-human. This man listened, all +alone; he overheard things to which other ears are deaf--things terrible +and sweet; the sigh of some wet Naiad by a reedy lake, the pleadings and +furies of the genii--of those that whisper in woodlands and caverns by +the sea, and ride wailing on thunder-laden clouds, and rock with ripe +laughter in sunny wildernesses. Brahms is the test. Whoso dreads +solitude will likewise dread his elemental humour. + +It kept me company, this melodious and endearing fairy, till where a +path, diverging to the right, led up to the ruins already visible. There +the ethereal comrade took flight, scared, maybe, because my senses took +on a grossly mundane complexion--it is a way they have, thank +God--became absorbed, that is, in the contemplation of certain +blackberries wherewith the hedge was loaded. I thought: the tons of +blackberries that fall to earth in Italy, unheeded! And not even a +Scotsman knows what blackberries are, until he has tasted these. I am no +gourmet of such wild things; I rather agree with Goethe when he says: +"How berries taste, you must ask children." But I can sympathise with +the predilections of others, having certain predilections of my own. + +Once, at a miserable place in North Ireland, region of bad whisky and +porter, they brought me at dinner some wine of which they knew +nothing--they had got it from a shipwreck or some local sale. I am +rather fond of hock. And this particular bottle bore on its label the +magic imprint of a falcon sitting on a hilltop. Connoisseurs will know +that falcon. They will understand how it came about that I remained in +the inn till the last bottle of nectar was cracked. What a shame to +leave a drop for anybody else! Once again, on a bicycle trip from Paris +to the Mediterranean, I came upon a broad, smiling meadow somewhere in +the Auvergne, thickly besprinkled with mushrooms. There was a village +hard by. In that village I remained till the meadow was close cropped. +Half a ton of mushrooms--gone. Some people are rather fond of mushrooms. +And that is the right spirit: to leave nothing but a tabula rasa for +those that come after. It hurt me to think that anybody else should have +a single one of those particular mushrooms. Let them find new ones, in +another field; not in mine. + +Now what would your amateur of blackberries do in Italy? From the fate +which nearly overtook me he might save himself by specialising; by +dividing the many local varieties into two main classes and devoting his +whole attention to one or the other; to the kind such as I found on +Elba--small and round and fragrant, of ruddy hue, and palpitating with +warm sunbeams; or to that other kind, those that grow in clearings of +the Apennines where the boughs droop to earth with the weight of their +portentous clusters--swarthy as night, huge in size, oval, and fraught +with chilly mountain dews. + +No true enthusiast, I feel sure, would ever be satisfied with such an +unfair division of labour--so one-sided an arrangement. He would curse +his folly for having specialised. While engaged upon one variety, he +would always be hankering after that other kind and thinking how much +better they were. What shall he do, then? Well, he might devote one year +to one species, the next to another, and so on. Or else--seeing that +every zone of altitude bears brambles at its season and that the +interval between the maturing of the extreme varieties is at least four +months--he might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical sense, +devouring blackberries of different flavour as he went along; he might +work his way upwards, boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle +drills an oak, and leaving a track of devastation in his rear--browsing +aloft from the sea-board, where brambles are black in June, through +tangled macchia and vine-clad slopes into the cooler acclivities of rock +and jungle--grazing ever upward to where, at close of September and in +the shadow of some lonely peak on which the white mantle of winter has +already fallen, he finds a few more berries struggling for warmth and +sunshine, and then, still higher up, just a few more--the last, the very +last, of their race--dwarfs of the mountains, earthward-creeping, and +frozen pink ere yet they have had time to ripen. Here, crammed to the +brim, he may retire to hibernate, curled up like a full-gorged bear and +ready to roll downhill with the melting snows and arrive at the +sea-coast in time to begin again. What a jolly life! How much better +than being Postmaster-General or Inspector of Nuisances! But such +enthusiasts are nowhere to be found. I wish they were; the world would +be a merrier place.... + +Here is the ruined town of Ferento, all alone on the arid brow of the +hill. Nothing human in sight. A charming spot it must have been in olden +times, when the country was more timbered; now all is bare--brown earth, +brown stones. Dutifully I inspect the ruins and, applying the method of +Zadig or something of that kind, conclude that Ferento, this particular +Ferento, was relatively unimportant and relatively modern, although so +fine a site may well have commended itself from early days as a +settlement. I pick up, namely, a piece of verde antico, a green marble +which came into vogue at a later period than many other coloured ones. +Ergo, Ferento was relatively modern as antiquities go; else this marble +would not occur there. I seek for coloured ones and find not the +smallest fragment; nothing but white. Ergo, the place was relatively +insignificant; else the reds and yellows would also be discoverable. I +observe incidentally--quite incidentally!--that the architecture +corroborates my theory; so do the guide-books, no doubt, if there are +any. Now I know, furthermore, the origin of that small slab of verde +antico which had puzzled me, mixed up, as it was, among the mosaics of +quite modern marbles in that church whither I had been conducted by a +local antiquarian to admire a certain fresco recently laid bare, and +some rather crude daubs by Romanelli. + +Out again, into the path that overlooks the steep ravine. Here I find, +resting in the shadow of the wall, an aged shepherd and his flock and a +shaggy, murderous-looking dog of the Campagna breed that shows his teeth +and growls incessantly, glaring at me as if I were a wolf. "Barone" is +the brute's name. I had intended to clamber down and see whether the +rock-surface bears any traces of human workmanship; the rock-surface, I +now decide, may take care of itself. It has waited for me so long. It +can wait a little longer. + +"Does that beast of yours eat Christians?" + +"He? He is a perfect capo di c----. That is his trick, to prevent people +from kicking him. They think he can bite." + +I produce half a cigar which he crushes up into his black clay pipe. + +"Yours is not a bad life." + +"One lives. But I had better times in Zurich." + +He had stayed there awhile, working in some factory. He praised its +food, its beer, its conveniences. + +Zurich: incongruous image! Straightway I was transported from this +harmonious desolation of Ferento; I lost sight of yonder clump of +withering thistles--thistles of recent growth; you could sit, you could +stand, in their shade--and found myself glancing over a leaden lake and +wandering about streets full of ill-dressed and ungracious folk; +escaping thence further afield, into featureless hills encrusted with +smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered under noisome +horse-chestnuts and Virginia creepers. How came they to hit upon the +ugliest tree, and the ugliest creeper, on earth? Infallible instinct! +Zurich: who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity? + +So this old man had been there. + +And I remembered an expression in a book recently written by a friend of +mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in +Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness"--some such phrase. +[33] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active +kind; it grips you by the throat and sits on your chest like a +nightmare. + +I looked at the old fellow. He was sound; he had escaped the contagion. +Those others, those many hundred thousand others in Switzerland and +America--they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead ordinariness of +that life among machines. Future generations will hardly recognise the +Italian race from our descriptions. A new type is being formed, cold and +loveless, with all the divinity drained out of them. + +Having a long walk before me and being due home for luncheon, I rose to +depart, and in so doing bestowed a vigorous kick upon Barone, in order +to test the truth of his master's theory. It worked. The glowering and +snarling ceased. He was a good dog--almost human. I think, with a few +more kicks, he might have grown quite friendly. + +Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its +starkness. A land without atmosphere, and deficient in every element of +the picturesque, whether of man or nature. Four harsh, dominant tones, +which never overlap or intermingle: blue sky, white snow, black +fir-woods, green fields, and, if you insist upon having a fifth, then +take--yes, take and keep--that theatrical pink Alpengluehen which is +turned on at fixed hours for the delectation of gaping tourists, like a +tap of strontium light or the display of electric fluid at Schaffhausen +Falls. + +"Did you observe the illumination of the Falls, sir, last night?" + +"How can one avoid seeing the beastly thing?" + +"Ah! Then we must add two francs to the bill." + +Many are the schools of art that have grown up in England and elsewhere +and flourished side by side, vying with one another to express the +protean graces of man, of architecture and domestic interior, of earth +and sky and sea. Where is the Swiss school? Where, in any public +gallery, will you find a masterpiece which triumphantly vindicates the +charm of Swiss scenery? You will, find it vindicated only on condensed +milk tins. These folks can write. My taste in lyrics may be peculiar, +but I used to love my Leuthold--I wish I had him here at this moment; +the bold strokes of Keller, the miniature work, the cameo-like touches, +of C. F. Meyer--they can write! They would doubtless paint, were there +anything to paint. Holbein: did the landscape of Switzerland seduce him? +And Boecklin? He fled out of its welter of raw materialism. Even his +Swiss landscapes are mediterraneanized. Boecklin---- + +And here, as the name formulated itself, that little sprite of Brahms, +that intermezzo, once more leapt to my side out of the parched fields. I +imagine it came less for my sake than for the companionship of Boecklin. +They were comrades in the spirit; they understood. What one had heard, +the other beheld--shapes of mystery, that peer out of forest gloom and +the blue hush of midday and out of glassy waters--shapes that shudder +and laugh. No doubt you may detect a difference between Boecklin's +creations and those of classic days; it is as if the light of his +dreamings had filtered through some medium, some stained-glass window in +a Gothic church which distorted their outlines and rendered them +somewhat more grotesque. It is the hand of time. The world has aged. Yet +the shapes are young; they do but change their clothes and follow the +fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal +can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the +serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway +region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the +greatest jest in the universe. At us.... + +That lake of Conterano--the accent is on the ante-penultima--it looked +appetising on the map, all alone out there. It attracted me strongly. I +pictured a placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered among +wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam of its calm waters. Lakes are +so rare in Italy. During the whole of this summer I saw only one other, +fringed with the common English reed--two, rather, lying side by side, +one turbid and the other clear, and filling up two of those curious +circular depressions in the limestone. I rode past them on the watershed +behind Cineto Romano. These were sweet water. Of sulphur lakelets I also +saw two. + +Sitting on a stone into which the coldness of midnight had entered +(Alatri lies at a good elevation) I awaited my companion in the dusk of +dawn. Soon enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-hour's +shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri, and listening to the +plash of the fountain, is one of those memories of the town which are +graven most clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the very spot +whereon I sat. + +We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin with, profiting by some +short cuts through chestnut woods; turned to the right, ever ascending, +behind that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical hill; +thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the halts by the way. A decayed +roadside chapel with faded frescoes--a shepherd who played us some +melodies on his pipe--those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime, +glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth--the gateway of a +farmhouse being repaired--a reservoir of water full of newts--a +fascinating old woman who told us something about something--the distant +view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion +for lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in June? The days are so endless! + +At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the lake at our feet, +simmering in the noonday beams--an everyday sheet of water, brown in +colour, with muddy banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within +miles; one of those lakes which, by their periodical rising and sinking, +give so much trouble that there is talk, equally periodical, of draining +them off altogether. This one, they say, shifts continually and +sometimes reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in its oozy +bed. + +Here are countless frogs, and fish--tench; also a boat that belongs to +the man who rents the fishing. A sad accident happened lately with his +boat. A party of youngsters came for an outing and two boys jumped into +the tub, rowed out, and capsized it with their pranks. They were both +drowned--a painful and piteous death--a death which I have tried, by +accident, and can nowise recommend. They fished them out later from +their slimy couch, and found that they had clasped one another so +tightly in their mortal agony that it was deemed impious ever to +unloosen that embrace. So they were laid to rest, locked in each other's +arms. + +While my companion told me these things we had plodded further and +further along this flat and inhospitable shore, and grown more and more +taciturn. We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the +onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the parching drought of +August. Things looked bad. The luncheon hour was long past, and our +spirits began to droop. All my mellowness took flight; I grew snappy and +monosyllabic. Was there no shade? + +Yonder ... that dusky patch against the mountain? Brushwood of some +kind, without a doubt. The place seemed to be unattainable, and yet, +after an inordinate outlay of energy, we had climbed across those torrid +meadows. It proved to be a hazel copse mysteriously dark within, +voiceless, and cool as a cavern. + +Be sure that he who planted these hazels on the bleak hillside was no +common son of earth, but some wise and inspired mortal. My blessings on +his head! May his shadow never grow less! Or, if that wish be already +past fulfilment, may he dwell in Elysium attended by a thousand +ministering angels, every one of them selected by himself; may he +rejoice in their caresses for evermore. Naught was amiss. All conspired +to make the occasion memorable. I look back upon our sojourn among those +verdant hazels and see that it was good--one of those moments which are +never granted knowingly by jealous fate. So dense was the leafage in the +greenest heart of the grove that not a shred of sunlight, not a particle +as large as a sixpence, could penetrate to earth. We were drowned in +shade; screened from the flaming world outside; secure--without a care. +We envied neither God nor man. + +I thought of certain of my fellow-creatures. I often think of them. What +were they now doing? Taking themselves seriously and rushing about, as +usual, haggard and careworn--like those sagacious ants that scurry +hither and thither, and stare into each other's faces with a kind of +desperate imbecility, when some sportive schoolboy has kicked their +ridiculous nest into the air and upset all their solemn little +calculations. + +As for ourselves, we took our ease. We ate and drank, we slumbered +awhile, then joked and frolicked for five hours on end, or possibly six. +[34] I kept no count of what was said nor how the time flew by. I only +know that when at last we emerged from our ambrosial shelter the muscles +of my stomach had grown sore from the strain of laughter, and Arcturus +was twinkling overhead. + +THE END + + +INDEX + +Abbade, author +Abbadia San Salvatore +Abruzzi, limestone deserts +Acqua Acetosa, Rome +Acqua santa, mineral fountain, its appalling effects +Acque Vive, old Scanno +Addison, J. +Afforestation at Scanno +Agave, plant; dislikes change of scene +Alatri; its nameless tavern; citadel; ideal families at +Alban volcanoes +Alpengluehen, an abomination +Amiata, mountain +Anagni +Analphabetics, their charm +Anastasio, F. +Aniene, river +Anthology, Greek +Anticoli +Apennines, their general coloration +Argos +Aristotle +Arno river, its colour-moods +Artena +Athene (Minerva), promontory and temple +Attilio, a sagacious youngster + + +Bacon, misquoted +Baedeker, on wine of Scanno +Banca d'ltalia, its soi-disant director makes a fool of himself +"Barone," an almost human dog +Bathing in Tiber +Baudelaire, C. +Bears of Pescasseroli, rapid breeders +Beds in England, neolithic features of +Belgrave Square, its legendary partridges +Bellegra, village +Beloch, J. +Bennet, Dr. J. H. +Bentham, J. +Berceau, mountain +Bessel, F. W. +Betifuli, ancient Scanno +Bigio, marble +Birds, their conservative habits +Blackberries in Italy +Blasphemies, as a pick-me-up +Blind, Mathilde +Blue, basic note of Italian landscape +Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau, its lightning methods +Boecklin, A. +Borghese Gardens +Bournemouth +Bowles, Dr. R. +Brachycephalism, menace to humanity +Brahms, J., his inspiration +Breil +Brewster, H. B. +Buckle, H. T. +Building materials, of Florence, impart peculiar character to towns +Bunbury, E. H., quoted +Butter, French method of weighing, Italian regulations regarding + +Cacume, mountain +Calypso, her island +Cammaiore +Camosciara, mountain +Campagna of Rome +Campanella, headland +Campoli Apennino +Capaccio, G. C. +Cap Martin (Mentone), a vulgarized spot +Capasso, B. +Capranica +Capri +Carbineers, good men and questionable institution +Carrara +Carrion crows, relatively gay fowls +Casamari convent +Casanova, J. +Cascine Gardens +Cats in Rome, their distressful condition +Cement floors, a detestable invention +Cemetery of Mentone of Rome; Scanno; Olevano +Censorship Department, gratifying interview at +Cervesato, A. +Chamois +Chaucer +Children, good company neglected in war-time +China, fatal morality of pre-Tartar period +Ciminian forest +Cineto Romano +Circe, nymph +Cisterna, a death-trap +Civilization, its characteristic +Civitella +Coal-supply, a sore subject in Italy +Coliseum, flora and fauna of +Collepardo +Conscience, national versus individual +Consumption on Riviera; at Olevano +Conterano, lake +Corsanico +Corsi, F. +Crapolla, sea-cove +Crinagoras, poet +Critics, spleenfully criticized +Cro-Magnon racev Cross, futility of bearing a + +Darwin +Deakin, botanist +Dennis, G. +Deserters at Valmontone +Deslys, Gaby +Dewlessness, a peculiarity of Italian townsmen +Dialects of Italy +Dictionary of National Biography +Diodorus Siculus +Dohrn, Dr. A. +Donnorso, V. +Doria, A. +Dreams, recurrent; of flying +Drowning accidents +Drunkenness, not everybody's affair + +Eagles +Education Office, a "Sleepy Hollow" +Edwards, Tam, naturalist +Elba +Elder tree, a venerable growth +England, to be visited as a tourist +English language, should remain in flux +Englishmen, change in race-characters; contrasted with Italians; +influence of new surroundings on +Enthusiasm, unrewarded +Eratosthenes +Eugenie, Empress +Experience, its uses + +Faces, possibilities of improving +Ferentino +Ferento, ruined city +Filangieri, di Candida, R. +Flies, a curse +Florence, its river; Cascine Gardens; pavements; local blasphemies; +revisited +Fontanella, village +Food in war-time +Football worth watching +Fountains in Rome; responsible for shocking behaviour; in Villa Borghese +France, its one irremediable drawback +Frattura, village +Frosinone, "Garibaldi" hotel; visited by Ramage +Fumone +Functionaries, social parasites + + +Gambling instinct, correlated with religion +Gardeners, professional, imbeciles +Gargiulli, O. +Gautier, T. +Germans, at Mentone; at Levanto; save oaks of Olevano; must follow +footsteps +Ghosts, mankind surrounded by, in; away with them +Giannettasio, N. P.v Girtanner, Dr. A., beaver-specialist +Giulio, a young reprobate +Goethe, quoted +Golden Ages of literature +Gorbio +Grant Duff, M. E. +Greek words, surviving +Grimaldi caves, incident at +Grocery business, appeals to Frenchmen +Gross feeders, beware of +Grotta delle Palumbe +Guardie regie, official loafers +Gunther, Dr. A. + +H., Mr., an ardent book-lover +Hares in Italy +Hebrews of military age, their enviable immunity from conscription +Henderson, Dr., an old tippler +Heredity, speculations on +Hermits in Italy +Hippocrates +Hohentwiel, mountain +Homer +Horace +Housemaid, a noteworthy +Hutton, E. + +Ierate, locality +Imagination, needful to travel-literature, +Imperialism in Italy +Individual, contrasted with race +Insomnia +Intelligence, its two ingredients +Isola Liri +Italians, evolution of new type +Italy, reasons for visiting; over-policed +Ives, G. + +J. O. M., a memorable type +Jefferies, R. +Johnson, S. +Johnston-Lavis, H. J. +Jovana, meadow + +Keller, G. +Kew Gardens +King of Italy, protects bears +Kingfisher, a wary old one +Kneeling boy, statue +Knop, Professor + +Lachner, V. +Ladbroke Grove, its enlightened children +Landlady, of Mentone; the +London variety; she of Viareggio; of Florence +Lante, Villa +La Croce, mountain +La Rocca, village +Lawrence, D. H. +Laws, raison d'etre of Italian +Leuthold, H. +Levanto, arrival at; situation; company at hotel; the local magistrate; +stroll to Monterosso +Licenza +Ligurians, their bad character +Lizard, making a friend of; a disconsolate one +Love affairs, Italian, how to conduct +Lucian +Lucretilis, mountain +Lyme Regis + +Macaroni, war-time substitutes; the right kind +Maccarese, village +Machinery, cult of; depraves Italian character +Madonna della Neve, chapel +Madonna di Tranquillo, wayside shrine +Malaria +Mandela +Marbles +Mathew, Rev. +Maudsley, H. +Maupassant +Mazzella, S. +Megara +Mentone, recent transformation of; landscape; vegetation; produces dull +schoolboys; prehistoric man of +Merle blanc, a meritorious establishment +Metaphysicians, atrophied poets +Meyer, C. F. +Meysenbug, Malwida von +Michael Angelo; gets into trouble +Migration of labourers, annual +Mill, J. S. +Militarism, the modern infame +Milvain Bridge +Mineralogy +Momio, village +Monogamous habits, bad for songsters +Mons Canutarius +Montalto, cliff +Monte-Carlo, its well-groomed flowers; lamentable episode at Casino +Montecelio +Monterosso +Mortella, cliff +Mortola, village +Mosquitoes in Rome +Moulinet +Mummies, Peruvian +Munitions Office, develops a craving for bankers +Mure of Caldwell, traveller +Muretta, mountain +Museum, Kircher; delle Terme +Music +Mythopoeic faculty, example of + +Neighbours, an over-rated class +Nerano +Newspaper reading, to be discouraged +Nice +Nietzsche, his blind spot +Nightingales, too much of a good thing; cease from troubling +Ninetta, an attractive maiden +Nose, degeneration of + +Odysseus at Alatri +Office-hunters, should respect their betters +Olevano, its nightingales; oak grove at; first English resident at +Opi, town +Ornithology +Orte, town +Orvinio +Ouida, her writings and character + +Paestum, roses of +Pais, Prof. E. +Palombaro +Pantheon +Patriotism, chilled +Pavements, life on +Peira Cava +Perfumes, react on physiognomy +Persico, G. B. +Pescasseroli; its bears +Peutinger Table +Philosophers, contradistinguished from metaphysicians +Piccadilly Goat +Pietrasanta +Pig, in distress +Pines, at Levanto; at Viareggio +Pisa in war-time +Plaster-casts, how to dispose of +Plato +Pliny +Pollius Felix +Pontine Marshes +Ponza island, megalithic ruin on +Portovenere, marble +Potter, Major Frederick, discovers Olevano +Pottery, index of national taste +Powder magazine, explosion of +Preccia, mountain +Prehistoric races, possible reasons for their extinction +Press, the daily, its disastrous functions +"Prison, The," a Socratic dialogue + +Race ideals, contrasted with individual +Ramage, Craufurd Tait, a centrifugal Scotsman, his book and umbrella; +mania for hurrying; other travels of; compared with Waterton; +on Italian country life; gets drunk; makes formal profession of +sobriety; +his tolerance; sensitive to female charms; still hustling; his +humanistic outlook; little failings; other publications; zest for +knowledge; at Licenza +Rat-hunts +Ravens, their conjugal fidelity +Reading, to be done with reverence +Recomone, inlet +Red colour, unfashionable in Italy; in favour with other races +Rhetoric, necessary to success in courtship +Rhodian marble +Ripa, a liquid poison +Rivers, Italian +Riviera, French, its inanity; typical visitors to; lack of native genius +Roccaraso +Rojate +Rolfe, Neville +Romanelli, painter +Romans and British, their world dominion; unimaginative people +Rome, changed aspect of railway station; protestant cemetery; explosion +near; its fountains; tramcar nuisance; shadelessness; disadvantages of +site; evening breeze; neglected cats; bad food; its building stone; +unpleasant experience at; dearth of apartments +Rubinstein, A. + +Sagittario, stream +Saint Domenico +Saint-Jacques, chemin de +Saint-Louis, bridge +Saint Martin, his cave +Saint Michael, hermitage +Salatino, Dr. +Salis-Marschlins, U. von +San Costanzo, mountain and chapel +San Remo +San Rossore +Sant' Egidio, hermitage +Sant' Elia, farm +Saracinesca, village +Scalambra, mountain +Scanno, cemetery at; memories of; revisited +Schadona pass +Scheffel, V. von +Schopenhauer; anticipates "recognition marks" +Scolastica, Saint +Seaton +Sebastiani, A. +Segni +Self-indulgence, a debased expression +Sergi, Prof. G. +Serpentaro, oak grove +Serpents, with ears; human hatred of +Serrano, village +Serravezza +Shelley, an evangelist; at Viareggio; recommends caverns to his readers, +but lives comfortably himself +Sicilians +Siena, in winter; a Florentine's opinion of +Sirena, survival of name +Siren islets (Galli); ruin on +Sirocco in Rome +Sitting still, the true traveller's gift +Sleep, its sacred nature +Smollett +Snakes +Snow, Dr. H. +Sora +Soracte, mountain +Soriano; its pleasant tavern +Sospel +Spezia +Spy-mania in Italy +Stabiae (Castellamare) +Statius +Strabo +Strega liqueur, horribly adulterated; how to stop the scandal +Subiaco, strawberries at +Sunburn, pretty effects of +Surrentum +Swinburne, H. +Switzerland, its manifold beauties +Symonds, J. A. + +Taxidermy, study of +Telephone, an abomination +Termini, village +Terrata, mountain +Theophrastus +Tiber +Tiryns, citadel +Torco, village +Trafalgar Square, its fauna +Trajan's Forum +Tramcars, an abomination +Tree-creeper, bird +Trevi Fountain +Trifles, importance of +Truth-telling, a matter of longitude; not in vogue to-day +Tuscan speech, its peculiar savour + +Urquehart, D. + +Valiante, Marquis +Valmontone; its upper terrace; capture of a deserter at, Pergola, tavern +Velino, mountain +Velletri +Venice +Ventimiglia, wine of +Verde antico, marble +Veroli +Via Appia; Flaminia; Labiena; Nomentana +Viareggio, an objectionable place; its Vittoria hotel; pine woods +Victorians, their perverse sense of duty +Villalago +Villetta Barrea +Viterbo +Voss, R. + +Wallace, A. R. +Walpole, Horace +War, the present, local opinions concerning; repercussion on thoughtful +non-combatants; effects on agriculture War Office, pandemonium; confuses +Turkish and Russian +Waterton, C., a freak +Whistling, denotes mental vacuity +White, colour, unpopular in South Italy +Will-o'-the-wisp +Wine, red and black +Wolf, at Mentone; at Frattura +Wryneck, bird + +Young, J. +Youth, should be temperate +Yucca, plant + +Zagarola +"Zone of defense," drawbacks of +Zurich, its attractions + +* * * * * * * * * * * + +1. There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to see it. + +2. Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be confounded +with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian marble of the +ancients. + +3. See North American Review, September, 1913. Ramage's Calabrian tour +of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky undertaking. The few +travellers who then penetrated into this country kept to the main roads +and never moved without a military escort. One of them actually hired a +brigand as a protection. + +4. Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle in the +stream-bed--mere disconnected pools to show where the river was, and +will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence. Grant Duff says +he has seen the Arno "blue." So have I: a hepatic blue. + +5. It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown Prince. + +6. He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died. + +7. I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method of the +Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older monuments +are in better condition than the new ones. We live and learn. + +8. The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters, "... I am +writing without due consideration of the interesting point. But this +possible explanation occurs to me: children are active motor machines, +always restless and moving when not asleep. When asleep, the motor +tendencies, being not quite passive, translate themselves into the +dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant or painful, according to +bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As the muscles are almost passive +in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming activity--into dreams of flying +when bodily states are pleasant, into falling down precipices, etc., +when they are out of sorts. This is quite a hasty reflection...." + +9. "The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams and Norgate, +1891.) + +10. Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your reference to +Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I thought I was the +first to fully point out. It is a most interesting anticipation. I do +not read German, but from what I have heard of his works he was the last +man I should have expected to make such an acute suggestion in Natural +History." + +11. Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions. + +12. Fecit! He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on the 4th +November, 1920. + +13. This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166, "I have +lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine." We learn from the +Dictionary of National Biography that he was born in 1803; he must +therefore have been twenty-five years old when he bemused the +coastguard. Only twenty-five; and already at this stage. We are further +told that he was tutor to somebody's son. Unhappy child! + +14. Not all of them are true thistles. Abbade's Guide to the Abruzzi +(1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region. + +15. Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking +of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name--a love +intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of a good +word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my plot "rightly +filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better. + +16. Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making a +scientific collection of local imprecations--abusive, vituperative or +profane expletives; swear-words, in short--enriched with elaborate +commentary. I would gladly print this little study in folk-lore as an +appendix to the present volume, were it fit for publication. + +17. Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made +considerable progress in the peninsula. + +18. This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others have +garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here, and to their +list may be added that of the rock on which stood the villa of Pollius +Felix; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but used to be called +Petrapoli; pure Greek: Pollio's rock. There is still a mine of such +material to be exploited by all who care to study the vernacular. The +giant euphorbia, for instance, common on these hills, is locally known +as "totomaglie"; pure Greek again: tithymalos. + +19. Query: whether there be no connection between brachycephalism and +this modern deification of machinery? + +20. Robert L. Bowles, M.D. "Sunburn on the Alps" (Alpine Journal, +November, 1888) and "The Influence of Light on the Skin" (British +Journal of Dermatology, No. 105, Vol. 9). + +21. It has now been cleaned--with inevitable results. + +22. Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's diary. + +23. Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has +improved. Somebody now feeds them--which could hardly have been expected +during those stressful times of war, when bread barely sufficed for the +human population. They are also fewer in numbers. Their owners, I fancy, +can afford to keep them at home once more. + +24. This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious letter from +the old fellow. "The question you ask is one of great ornithological +importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I am absolutely +afraid to ask any questions in the British Museum, as they jump at an +idea and cut the ground from under the original man's feet. This I +regret to say is my experience. I have been asked what does it matter +who makes the discovery? I reply, 'Render unto Caesar, etc.' If you are +going to work it out, keep it dark. The British Museum have not the +necessary specimens--in this country I believe it is not known how the +change takes place. I tried some years ago to work it out with live +specimens, but failed because I could not get young birds. Now in answer +to your question, my belief is that the young bird moults into the +winter plumages direct and that this is changed into the full plumage in +spring either by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips of the +feathers. This is private because it is theoretical, and for your +private use to verify...." + +Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Guenther wrote: "The skin differs in +nothing from that of Phoca foetida. In the skull I observe that the +nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in typical specimens from +the northern coasts. There is also a remarkable thinness of bone, a want +of osseous substance; but it is impossible to say whether this is due to +altered physical conditions or should be accounted for by the youth of +the specimen, or whether it is an individual peculiarity." + +25. Winter 1882-1883; possibly later. + +26. The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, seems to +have been the Caucasus. + +27. I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track the legend +to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed the +ordinary tourists' map of the district. + +28. Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions of the +guardie regie, which threaten to absorb the entire youth of Italy. At +this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing accommodation all +over the peninsula; in Rome alone, they say, apartments are needed for +10,000 practically homeless persons, and a mathematician may calculate +the number of houses required to contain them. How shall they ever be +built, if all the potential builders are loafing about in uniforms at +the public expense? + +29. Some of these Beautiful Thoughts went through more than one edition. + +30. From an old article: "I was pleased to observe on Ponza the relics +of a great pre-Roman civilization. Above the town, where the cemetery +now stands, is a likely site for a citadel, and on examining it from the +sea I noticed, sure enough, a few blocks of prehistoric structure of the +so-called Cyclopean type underneath a corner of the cemetery wall. There +is a portion in better preservation between the 'Baths of Pilate' and +the harbour, where a little path winds up from the sea. The blocks are +joined without mortar, and some of them are over a metre in length. This +megalithic wall may be taken to be contemporaneous with similar works of +defence found in various parts of Italy, but I believe its existence on +Ponza has not yet been recorded. Livy says that Volscians inhabited the +island till they were supplanted by the Romans, and a tradition +preserved by Strabo and Virgil locates here the palace of the +enchantress Circe, who transformed the companions of Ulysses into +bristly swine...." Some one may have anticipated me here again, as did +Salis-Marschlins in the eighteenth century with those roses of Passtum +whose disappearance Ramage, like every one else, laments--those roses +which I thought I was the first to re-discover. They grow on the spot in +considerable quantities, though one needs good eyes to see them. They +are not flourishing as of yore, being dwarfs not more than a few inches +in height. One which I carried away and kept three years in a pot and +six more in the earth grew to a length of about sixteen feet, and is +probably alive at this moment, I never saw a flower. + +31. For the abject condition of these slaves (such they are) see Chapter +VII of The Roman Campagna by Arnaldo Cervesato. + +32. Written in 1917. + +33. D.H. Lawrence: Twilight in Italy. + +34. The title Alone strikes me, on reflection, as rather an inapt one +for this volume. Let it stand! + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alone, by Norman Douglas + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE *** + +***** This file should be named 7380.txt or 7380.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/3/8/7380/ + +Produced by Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Alone + +Author: Norman Douglas + +Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7380] +[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALONE *** + + + + +Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + +ALONE + +BY + +NORMAN DOUGLAS + +AUTHOR OF + +"SOUTH WIND," "THEY WENT," "TOGETHER," ETC. + + + + + + + +TO HIS FRIEND + +EDWARD HUTTON + +WHO PRINTED SOME OF THESE TRIVIALITIES + +IN THAT "ANGLO-ITALIAN REVIEW" + +WHICH DESERVED A BETTER FATE + + + + + + +CONTENTS + +INTRODUCTION + +MENTONE + +LEVANTO + +SIENA + +PISA + +VIAREGGIO (February) + +VIAREGGIO (May) + +ROME + +OLEVANO + +VALMONTONE + +SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO + +ROME + +SORIANO + +ALATRI + + +Introduction + +What ages ago it seems, that "Great War"! + +And what enthusiasts we were! What visionaries, to imagine that in such +an hour of emergency a man might discover himself to be fitted for some +work of national utility without that preliminary wire-pulling which was +essential in humdrum times of peace! How we lingered in long queues, and +stamped up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls, waiting, only +waiting, to be asked to do something for our country by any little +guttersnipe who happened to have been jockeyed into the requisite +position of authority! What innocents.... + +I have memories of several afternoons spent at a pleasant place near St. +James's Park station, whither I went in search of patriotic employment. +It was called, I think, Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau (or +something equally lucid and concise), and professed to find work for +everybody. Here, in a fixed number of rooms, sat an uncertain number of +chubby young gentlemen, all of whom seemed to be of military age, or +possibly below it; the Emergency Bureau was then plainly--for it may +have changed later on--a hastily improvised shelter for privileged +sucklings, a kind of nursery on advanced Montessori methods. Well, that +was not my concern. One must trust the Government to know its own +business. + +During my second or third visit to this hygienic and well-lighted +establishment I was introduced, most fortunately, into the sanctuary of +Mr. R----, whose name was familiar to me. Was he not his brother's +brother? He was. A real stroke of luck! + +Mr. R----, a pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as +I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous +tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant +who tries to look like daddy. What might he do for me? + +I explained. + +We had a short talk, during which various forms were conscientiously +filled up as to my qualifications, such as they were. Of course, there +was nothing doing just then; but one never knows, does one? Would I mind +calling again? + +Would I mind? I should think not. I should like nothing better. It did +one good to be in contact with this youthful optimist and listen to his +blithe and pleasing prattle; he was so hopeful, so philosophic, so +cheery; his whole nature seemed to exhale the golden words: "Never say +die." And no wonder. He ought to have been at the front, but some +guardian angel in the haute finance had dumped him into this soft and +safe job: it was enough to make anybody cheerful. One should be +cautious, none the less, how one criticises the action of the +authorities. May be they kept him at the Emergency Bureau for the +express purpose of infusing confidence, by his bright manner, into the +minds of despondent patriots like myself, and of keeping the flag flying +in a general way--a task for which he, a German Jew, was pre-eminently +fitted. + +Be that as it may, his consolatory tactics certainly succeeded in my +case, and I went home quite infected with his rosy cheeks and words. +Yet, on the occasion of my next visit a week or two later, there was +still nothing doing--not just then, though one never knows, does one? + +"Tried the War Office?" he added airily. + +I had. + +Who hadn't? + +The War Office was a nightmare in those early days. It resembled +Liverpool Street station on the evening of a rainless Bank Holiday. The +only clear memory I carried away--and even this may have been due to +some hallucination--was that of a voice shouting at me through the +rabble: "Can you fly?" Such was my confusion that I believe I answered +in the negative, thereby losing, probably, a lucrative billet as +Chaplain to the Forces or veterinary surgeon in the Church Lads' +Brigade. Things might have been different had my distinguished cousin +still been on the spot; I, too, might have been accommodated with a big +desk and small work after the manner of the genial Mr. R----. He died in +harness, unfortunately, soon after the outbreak of war. + +I said to my young friend: + +"Everybody tells one to try the War Office--I don't know why. Of course +I tried it. I wish I had a shilling for every hour I wasted in that +lunatic asylum." + +"Ah!" he replied. "I feel sure a good many men would like to be paid at +that rate. Anyhow, trust me. We'll fix you up, sooner or later. (He kept +his word.) Why not have a whack at the F.O., meanwhile?" + +"Because I have already had a whack at it." + +I then possessed, indeed, in reply to an application on my part, a +holograph of twelve pages in the elegant calligraphy of H.M. +Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the same gentleman who was +viciously attacked by the Pankhurst section for his supposed +pro-Germanism. It conveyed no grain of hope. Other Government +Departments, he opined, might well be depleted at this moment; the +Foreign Office was in exactly the reverse position. It overflowed with +diplomatic and consular officials returned, perforce, from belligerent +countries, and now in search of occupation. Was it not natural, was it +not right, to give the preference to them? One was really at a loss to +know what to do with all those people. He had tried, hitherto in vain, +to find some kind of job for his own brother. + +A straightforward, convincing statement. Acting on the hint, I visited +the Education Office, notoriously overstaffed since Tudor days; it might +now be emptier; clerical work might be obtained there in substitution of +some youngster who had been induced to join the colours. I poked my nose +into countless recesses, and finally unearthed my man. + +They were full up, said Mr. F----. + +Full up? + +Full up. + +Then, after some further conversation as to my capacities, he thought he +might find me employment as teacher of science in the country, to +replace somebody or other. + +The notion was distasteful to me. I am not averse to learning from the +young; I only once tried to teach them--at a ragged school, long since +pulled down, near Ladbroke Grove, where I soon discovered that my little +pupils knew a great deal more than I did, more, indeed, than was good +for body or soul. Still, this was a tangible, definite offer of +unremunerative but at the same time semi-pseudo-patriotic work, not to +be sneezed at. An idea occurred to me. + +"Supposing I stick it out and give satisfaction, shall I be able to +interchange later into this department? I am more fitted for office +duties. In fact, I have had a certain experience of them." + +"No chance of that," he replied. "It is the German system. Their +schoolmasters are sometimes taken to do administrative work at +head-quarters, and vice versa. Our English rule is: Once a teacher, +always a teacher." + +Here was a deadlock. For in such matters as teaching, a man may put a +strain on himself for a certain length of time; he may even be a +success, up to a point. But if he lacks the temperamental gift of +holding classes, the results in the long run will not be fair to the +children, to say nothing of himself. With reluctance I rose to depart, +Mr. F---- adding, by way of letting me down gently: + +"Tried the War Office?" + +I had. + +If the War Office was too lively, this place was too slumberous by half. +A cobwebby, Rip-van-Winkle-ish atmosphere brooded about those passages +and chambers. One could not help thinking that a little "German system" +might work wonders here. And this is merely one of several similar sites +I explored, and endeavoured to exploit, for patriotic purposes; I am +here only jotting down a few of the more important of those that occur +to me. + +And, oh! for the brush of a Hogarth to depict the gallery of faces with +which I came in contact as I went along. They were all different, yet +all alike; different in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and +self-sufficiency, but plainly of the same parentage--British to the +backbone; British of the wrong kind, with a sprinkling of Welshmen, +Irishmen, and Jews. Not a Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of +complacent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous by their +absence; they were otherwise engaged, in the field, the colonies, the +engine-room. I can only remember one single exception to this rule, this +type; it was the head of the Censorship Department. + +For of course I offered my services there, climbing up that decent +red-carpeted stairway, and glad to find myself among respectable +surroundings after all the unseemly holes I had lately wallowed in. I +sent up a card which, to my surprise, caused me to be ushered forthwith +into the presence of the Chief, who may have heard of my existence from +some mutual friend. Here, at all events, was a man with a face worth +looking at, a man who had done notable things in his day. What a relief, +moreover, to be able to talk to a gentleman for a change! I wished I +could have had him to myself for five minutes; there were one or two +things one would have liked to learn from him. Unfortunately he was +surrounded, as such people are, by half a dozen of the characteristic +masks. For the rest, His ex-Excellency seemed to be ineffably bored with +his new functions. + +"What on earth brings you here?" he began in a fascinatingly +absent-minded style, as if he had known me all my life, and with an +inimitable nasal drawl. "This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten! I +cannot recommend it. Not your style at all, I should say." + +"But, my dear Sir F----, I am not applying for your job. Something +subordinate, I mean. Anything, anything." + +"What? Down there, cutting up newspapers at twenty-two shillings a week? +No, no. Let's have your address, and we will communicate with you when +we find something worth your while. By the way, have you tried the War +Office?" + +I had. + +And it stands to reason that I tried the Munitions more than once. + +It was my rare good fortune--luck pursued me on these patriotic +expeditions--to come face to face, at the Munitions, with the fons et +origo; the deputy fountain-head, that is to say; a very peculiar +private-secretary-in-chief for that department. He was a perpendicular, +iron-grey personality, if I remember rightly, who smelt of some +indifferent hair-wash and lost no time in giving you to understand that +he was preternaturally busy. + +Did I know anything about machinery? + +Nothing to speak of, I replied. As co-manager and proprietor of some +cotton mills employing several hundred hands for spinning and weaving, I +naturally learnt how to handle a fair number of machines--sufficiently +well, at all events, to start and stop them and tell the girls how to +avoid being scalped or having their arms torn out whenever I happened to +be passing that way. This life also gave me some experience, useful +perhaps at the Munitions, in dealing with factory-hands---- + +That was not the kind of machinery he meant. Did I know anything about +banking? + +Nothing at all. + +"You are like everybody else," he replied with a weary sigh, as much as +to say: How am I going to run the British Empire with a collection of +imbeciles like this? "We have several thousands of applicants like +yourself," he went on. "But I will put your name down. Come again." + +"You are very kind." + +"Do call again," he added, in his best private-secretary manner. + +I called again a couple of weeks later. It struck me, namely, that they +might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this +time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man +with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things--one who, +moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department +and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for +certain labours--once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and +anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was +one? + +"I called about a fortnight ago. You have my name down." + +"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have such thousands of applicants. I +remember you! A mechanic, aren't you?" + +"No. And you asked me if I understood banking, and I said I didn't." + +"What a pity. Now if you knew about banking----" + +Nothing, evidently, had been done about my application, nor, for that +matter, about those thousands of others. We were being played with. I +began to feel grumpy. It was a lovely afternoon, and I remembered, with +regret, that I had thrown over an engagement to go for a walk with a +friend at Wimbledon. About this hour, I calculated, we should be +strolling along Beverley Brook or through the glades of Coombe Woods +with sunshine filtering through the birches overhead; it would have been +more pleasant, and far more instructive, than wasting my time with a +hatchet-faced automaton like this. That comes, I thought, of being +patriotic. I observed: + +"Your department seems to require only bankers and mechanics. Would it +not be well to advertise the fact and save trouble and time to those +thousands of applicants who, you say, are in the same predicament as +myself? I came here to do national work of some general kind." + +"So I gather. And if you understood banking----" + +"If I did, I should be a banker at my time of life--don't you see?--and +lending money to you people, and giving you good advice, instead of +asking you for employment. Isn't that fairly obvious? As a matter of +fact, my acquaintance with banking is limited to a knowledge of how to +draw cheques, and even that useful accomplishment is fast fading from my +memory, under the stress of the times." + +Being a Welshman--so I presume, from his name--he condescended to smile +faintly, but not for long; his salary was too high. As for myself, I +refrained from saying a few harsher things I was minded to say; indeed, +I made myself so vastly agreeable, after my own private recipe, that he +was quite touched. He remarked: + +"I think I had better put your name down, although we have thousands of +applicants, you know. Call again, won't you?" + +For which I humbly thanked him, instead of saying, as I ought to have +done: + +"You go to blazes. The public is a pack of idiots to run after people +who merely keep them loitering about while they feather their own nests. +We are out to lick the Germans, and yours is not the way to do it." + +Did I understand banking? The full ineptitude of this conundrum only +dawned upon me by degrees. Manifestly, if I understood banking, I might +do some specialised kind of work for the Government. But in that case I +would not apply to the Munitions. Granted they wanted bankers. Well, +there was my friend M----, renowned in the City as a genius for banking; +he could have saved them untold thousands of pounds. They would have +none of him. They sent him into the trenches, where he was duly shot. + +How easy it is for a disappointed place-seeker to jibe and rail against +the powers that be, especially when he is not in full possession of the +data! For all I know, they may have discovered my friend M---- to be a +dangerous character, and have been only too glad to remove him out of +society without unnecessary fuss, in an outwardly honourable fashion, +with a view to saving his poor but respectable parents the humiliating +experience of a criminal trial and possible execution in the family. + +If I understood banking ... why did they want bankers at this +institution? Ah, it was not my business to probe into such mysteries of +administration. To my limited intelligence it would seem that the mere +fact of a man applying at the Munitions was prima facie evidence that +banking was not one of his accomplishments. It seemed to me, +furthermore, that there was no end to such "ifs"--patriotic or +otherwise. If I were a woman, for instance, I would promptly aid the +cause by jumping into a nurse's outfit, telling improper stories to the +Tommies, and getting myself photographed for the Press every morning. +But I am only a man. If I were a high-class trumpeter, I could qualify +for a job in one of the Allied Armies or, failing that, on Judgment Day. +But I can only strum the piano. And if the moon were made of green +cheese, we might all try to get hold of a slice of it, mightn't we?... + +Such was my pigheadedness, my boyish zeal, my belief in human nature or +perverse sense of duty, that I actually broke my vow and returned to +that ridiculous establishment. Yes, I "called again," flattering myself +with the conjecture that, even if they had not yet obtained a requisite +amount of bankers and mechanics, and even if persons of my particular +aptitudes were still a drug in the market, there might nevertheless be +room, amid the ramifications and interstices of so great a department, +for a man or two who could help to count up or pack munitions, or, if +that proposal were hopelessly wide of the mark, for the services of +something even more recondite and exotic--an intelligent corpse-washer, +for instance, or half a dozen astrologers. I felt I could distinguish +myself, at a national crisis like this, in either capacity. Anyhow, it +was only one more afternoon wasted--one out of how many! + +This time I saw Mr. W----. Though I had never met him in the flesh, I +once enjoyed the privilege of perusing a manuscript from his pen--a +story about a girl in Kew Gardens. A nice-looking young Hebrew was Mr. +W----. He had made himself indispensable, somehow or other, to the +Minister, and would doubtless by this time have been pitchforked into +some permanent and prominent job, but for that unfortunate name of his, +with its strong Teutonic flavour. + +This, by the way, was about the eighth official of his tribe, and of his +age, I had come across in the course of my recent peregrinations. How +did they get there? Tell me, who can. Far be it from me to disparage the +race of Israel. I have gained the conviction--firm-fixed, now, as the +Polar Star--that the Hebrew is as good a man as the Christian. Yet one +would like to know their method, their technique, in this instance. How +was the thing done? How did they manage it, these young Jews, all +healthy-looking and of military age--how did they contrive to keep out +of the Army? Was there some secret society which protected them? Or were +they all so preposterously clever that the Old Country would straightway +evaporate into thin air unless they sat in some comfortable office, +while our own youngsters were being blown to pieces out yonder? + +Mr. W----, I regret to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the +Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence, +doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere +of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his manner +towards me was freezingly non-committal--worthy of the best Anglo-Saxon +traditions. + +Had I come a little earlier, he avowed, he might perhaps have been able +to squeeze me into one of his departments--thus spake this infant: "One +of my departments." As it was, he feared there was nothing doing; +nothing whatsoever; not just then. Tried the War Office? + +I had. + +I even visited, though only twice, an offshoot of that establishment in +Victoria Street near the Army and Navy Stores, where candidates for the +position of translator--quasi-confidential work and passable pay, five +pounds a week--were interviewed. On the second occasion, after waiting +in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters such as haunt +the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a board of reverend +elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but prolonged, as to my +qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic affair. Could I +decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their toughest one, I +said. No! It was merely a pro forma question; they had enough German +translators on the staff. So the interrogation went on. They were going +to make sure of their man, in whom, I must say, they took little +interest save when they learnt that he had passed a Civil Service +examination in Russian and another in International Law. At that +moment--though I may be mistaken--they seemed to prick up their ears. +Not long afterwards I was allowed to depart, with the assurance that I +might hear further. + +Their inquiries into my attainments and references must have given +satisfaction, for in the fulness of time a missive arrived to the effect +that, assuming me to be a competent Turkish scholar, they would be glad +to see me again with a view to a certain vacancy. + +Turkish--a language I had not mentioned to them, a language of which I +never possessed more than fifty words, every one of them forgotten long +years ago. + +"How very War Office," I thought. + +These good people were mixing up Turkish and Russian--a natural error, +when one comes to think of it, for, though the respective tongues might +not be absolutely identical, yet the countries themselves were +sufficiently close together to account for a little slip like this. + +Was it a slip? Who knows? It is so easy to criticise when one is not +fully informed about things. They may have suggested my acting as +Turkish translator for reasons of their own--reasons which I cannot +fathom, but which need not therefore be bad ones. Chagrined +office-hunters like myself are prone to be bitter. In an emergency of +this magnitude a citizen should hesitate before he finds fault with the +wisdom of those whom the nation has chosen to steer it through troubled +waters. No carping! You only hamper the Government. The general public +should learn to keep a civil tongue in its head. Theirs but to do and +die. + +None the less, it was about this time that I began to experience certain +moments of despondency, and occasionally let a whole day slip by without +endeavouring to be of use to The Cause--moments when, instead of asking +myself, "What have I done for my country?" I asked, "What has my country +done for me?"--moments when I envied the hotel night-porters, +taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling flowers in Piccadilly +Circus who had something more sensible to do than to bother their heads +about trying to be patriotic, and getting snubbed for their pains. Yet, +with characteristic infatuation for hopeless ventures, I persevered. +Another "whack" at the F.O. leading to another holograph, two more +whacks at the Censorship, interpreter jobs, hospital jobs, God knows +what--I persevered, and might for the next three years have been kicking +my heels, like any other patriot, in the corridor of some dingy +Government office at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-jumpers, +but for a God-sent little accident, the result of sheer boredom, which +counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean. + +Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment, than she had ever yet +been. For on the day prior to my departure I received a communication +from the Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose methods of work, it +was now apparent, were as expeditious as its own name was brief. That +hopeful Mr. R----, that bubbling young optimist who had so +conscientiously written down a number of my qualifications, such as they +were--he was keeping his promise after months, and months, and months. +Never say die. The dear little fellow! What job had he captured for me? + +An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages to commence at 17s. +6d. per week. + +H'm. + +The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but I like to think that +it included the free use of the lavatory, if there happened to be one on +the premises. + +So luck pursued me to the end, though it never quite caught me up. For +bags were packed, and tickets taken. And therefore: + +"What did you do in the Great War, grandpapa?" + +"I loafed, my boy." + +"That was naughty, grandpapa." + +"Naughty, but nice...." + + + + +ALONE + +Mentone + +Italiam petimus.... + +Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of +the trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, +and forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours. +What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and +friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic +fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot +from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me on these +shores, where life is spent in a round of trivialities. + +One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from Nice, at last found +himself at the door of "the inn." The inn.... Are there any inns left at +Mentone? + +A propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs. At the present +moment, twenty-two of the principal hotels and pensions of Mentone are +closed, because owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does not this +speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton enterprise? Where, in a German +town of 18,000 inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such establishments +in the hands of Frenchmen? + +The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either among the tombs of that +cemetery overhead, studying sepulchral inscriptions and drawing +deductions, from what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality +and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the relative number of +consumptives here interred. Sixty per cent, shall we say? Or else, in +the streets of the town, I catch myself endeavouring--hitherto without +success--to count up the number of grocers' shops. They are far in +excess of what is needful. Now, why? Well, your tailor or hatter or +hosier--he makes a certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he +does not sell them at every moment of the day. The other, quite apart +from small advantages to be gained owing to the ever-shifting prices of +his wares, is ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of +which he makes a small gain. The grocery business commends itself warmly +to the French genius for garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I +fancy, will you see butter more meticulously weighed than here. Buy a +ton of it, and they will replace on their counter a fragment of the +weight and size of a postage stamp, rather than let the balance descend +on your side. + +And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one ever again escape from +Mentone? It may well be colder in Italy, but anything is preferable to +this inane Riviera existence.... + +I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to discommend them, for the +simple reason that, if they have proved bad, I smile to think of other +men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good +ones--why, only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however, I +hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to +return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for withholding +the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite unpretentious place +of entertainment that well deserves its name--white blackbirds being +rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is excellent--it has a +cachet of its own; the wine more than merely good. And this is +surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped +down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor +though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the +palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to anything else, +as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine hereabouts +that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you adventure into +the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your +trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a good name for +these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black currant enters +largely into their composition, though not in sufficient quantity to +render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little problem for the +oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or climate or treatment +can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anything +drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, a stone's throw +eastwards, can boast of its San Biagio, Rossese, Latte, Dolceacqua and +other noble growths, the like of which are not to be found along the +whole length of the French Riviera? + +Having pastured the inner man, to his complete satisfaction, at the +hospitable Merle Blanc, our traveller will do well to pasture his eyes +on the plants in the Casino gardens. Whoever wants to see flowers and +trees on their best behaviour, must come to Monte Carlo, where the +spick-and-span Riviera note is at its highest development. Not a leaf is +out of place; they have evidently been groomed and tubbed and manicured +from the hour of their birth. And yet--is it possible? Lurking among all +this modern splendour of vegetation, as though ashamed to show their +faces, may be discerned a few lowly olive trees. Well may they skulk! +For these are the Todas and Veddahs, the aboriginals of Monte Carlo, who +peopled its sunny slopes in long-forgotten days of rustic life--once +lords of the soil, now pariahs. What are they doing here? And how comes +it that the eyesore has not yet been detected and uprooted by those +keen-sighted authorities that perform such wonders in making the visitor +feel at home, and hush up with miraculous dexterity everything in the +nature of a public scandal? + +In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial Riviera tale. There +was an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who +breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all +the better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily +at the tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought, +and therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea. +Not unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen--they +might have been Russian princes--pounced upon her and led her to that +underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial +attendance. He brushed aside her explanations. + +"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself. +But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has a +reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels----" + +"I tell you it was only aspirin." + +"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us +not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death." + +"Aspirin, I tell you----" + +"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force." + +The stomach-pump was produced. + +It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is +unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless +water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland +is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or +content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all +progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk +along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once in a +lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap Martin, if only in +memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who, he +asks--who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape St. +Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug villas +of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugenie), to say nothing of +that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures the country +for leagues around. + +On other occasions you may find your way towards evening up to Gorbio +and stay for supper, provided you do not mind being cheated. Or wander +further afield, over Sospel to Breil by the old path--note the lavender: +they make a passable perfume of it--or else to Moulinet (famous for bad +food and a mastodontic breed of mosquitoes) and thence along the +stream--note the bushes of wild box--and over a wooded ridge to the +breezy heights of Peira Cava, there to dream away the daylight under the +pines. These are summer rambles. At present the snow lies deep. + +One of my favourite excursions has been up the so-called Berceau, the +cradle-shaped hill which dominates Mentone on the east. I was there +to-day for a solitary luncheon, resting awhile in the timbered saddle +between the peaks. The summit is only about five minutes' walk from this +delectable grove, but its view inland is partially intercepted by a +higher ridge. From here, if you are in the mood, you may descend +eastward over the Italian frontier, crossing the stream which is spanned +lower down by the bridge of St. Louis, and find yourself at Mortola +Superiore (try the wine) and then at Mortola proper (try the wine). +Somewhere in this gulley was killed the last wolf of these regions; so a +grey-haired local Nimrod told me. He had wrought much mischief in his +time. That is to say, he was not killed, but accidentally +drowned--drowned in one of those artificial reservoirs which are +periodically filled and drawn off for irrigating the gardens lower down; +an ignoble death, for a wolf! A goat lay drowned beside him. The event, +he reckoned, must have taken place half a century ago. Since then, the +wolf has never been seen. + +This afternoon, however, I preferred to repose in that shady dell, while +a flock of goldcrests were investigating the branches overhead and two +buzzards cruised, in dreamy spirals, about the sunny sky of midday; to +repose; to indulge my genius and review the situation; to profit, in +short, by that sense of aloofness peculiar to such aerial spots, which +tempts the mind to set its house in order. What are we doing, in these +empty regions? Why not wander hence? That cursed traveller's gift of +sitting still; of remaining stationary, no matter where, until one is +actually pushed away! And yet, how enjoyable this land might be, were it +inhabited by any race save one whose thousand little meannesses, public +and private, are calculated to drain away a man's last ounce of +self-respect! Not many are the glad memories I shall carry from Mentone. +I can think of no more than two. + +There is my landlady, to begin with, who spies out every detail of my +daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a +peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will +correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some +jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an +example of our matutinal converse: + +"I fear, Monsieur, you omitted to put out the light in a certain place +last night. It was burning when I returned home." + +"Certainly not, Madame. I have been nicely brought up. I never visit +places at night. You ought to be familiar with my habits after all this +time." + +"True. Then it must have been some one else. Ah, these electricians' +bills!" + +Or this: + +"Monsieur, Monsieur! The English Consul called yesterday with his little +dog at about five o'clock. He waited in your room, but you never came +back." + +"Five o'clock? I was at the baths." + +"I have heard of that establishment. What do they charge for a hot +bath?" + +"Three francs----" + +"Bon Dieu!" + +"--if you take an abonnement. Otherwise, it may well be more." + +"And so you go there. Why then--why must you also wash in the morning +and splash water on my floor? It may have to be polished after your +departure. Would you mind asking the Consul, by the way, not to sit on +the bed? It weakens the springs." + +Or this: + +"Might I beg you, Monsieur, to tread more lightly on the carpet in your +room? I bought it only nine years ago, and it already shows signs of +wear." + +"Nine years--that old rag? It must have survived by a miracle." + +"I do not ask you to avoid using it. I only beg you will tread as +lightly as possible." + +"Carpets are meant to be worn out." + +"You would express yourself less forcibly, if you had to pay for them." + +"Let us say then: carpets are meant to be trodden on." + +"Lightly." + +"I am not a fairy, Madame." + +"I wish you were, Monsieur." + +Thrice already, in a burst of confidence, has she told me the story of +an egg--an egg which rankles in the memory. Some years ago, it seems, +she went to a certain shop (naming it)--a shop she has avoided ever +since--to buy an egg; and paid the full price--yes, the full price--of a +fresh egg. That particular egg was not fresh. So far from fresh was it, +that she experienced considerable difficulty in swallowing it. + +A memorable episode occurred about a fortnight ago. I was greeted +towards 8 a.m. with moanings in the passage, where Madame tottered +around, her entire head swathed in a bundle of nondescript woollen +wraps, out of which there peered one steely, vulturesque eye. She looked +more than ever like an animated fungus. + +Her teeth--her teeth! The pain was past enduring. The whole jaw, rather; +all the teeth at one and the same time; they were unaccountably loose +and felt, moreover, three inches longer than they ought to feel. Never +had she suffered such agony--never in all her life. What could it be? + +It was easy to diagnose periostitis, and prescribe tincture of iodine. + +"That will cost about a franc," she observed. + +"Very likely." + +"I think I'll wait." + +Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She would give anything +to obtain relief--anything! + +"Anything?" I inquired. "Then you had better have a morphia injection. I +have had numbers of them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish +like magic. There is my friend Dr. Theophile Fornari----" + +"I know all about him. He demands five francs a visit, even from poor +people like myself." + +"You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to come here and climb +your seventy-two stairs for much less than five francs." + +"I think I'll wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting money on food just now, and +that is a consolation." + +Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing complaint, and I would +have purchased a franc's worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth. +Not then. On the contrary, I grew positively low-spirited when, after +three more days, the lamentations began to diminish in volume. They were +sweet music to my ears, at the time. They are sweeter by far, in +retrospect. If only one could extract the same amount of innocent and +durable pleasure out of all other landladies!... + +My second joyful memory centres round another thing of beauty--a spiky +agave (miscalled aloe) of monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the +garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the growths of this kind +which I have admired in various lands; none can vaunt as proud and +harmonious a development as this one. You would say it had been cast in +some dull blue metal. The glaucous wonder stands by itself, a prodigy of +good style, more pleasing to the eye than all that painfully generated +tropicality of Mr. Hanbury's Mortola paradise. It is flawless. Vainly +have I teased my fancy, endeavouring to discover the slightest defect in +shape or hue. Firm-seated on the turf, in exultant pose, with a pallid +virginal bloom upon those mighty writhing leaves, this plant has drawn +me like a magnet, day after day, to drink deep draughts of contentment +from its exquisite lines. + +For the rest, the whole agave family thrives at Mentone; the ferox is +particularly well represented; one misses, among others, that delightful +medio-picta variety, of which I have noticed only a few indifferent +specimens. [1] It is the same with the yuccas; they flourish here, +though one kind, again, is conspicuous by its absence-- the Atkinsi +(some such name, for it is long since I planted my last yucca) with +drooping leaves of golden-purple. You will be surprised at the number of +agaves in flower here. The reason is, that they are liable to be moved +about for ornamental purposes when they want to be at rest; the plant, +more sensitive and fastidious than it looks, is outraged by this +forceful perambulation and, in an access of premature senility, or +suicidal mania, or sheer despair, gives birth to its only flower--herald +of death. The fatal climax could be delayed if gardeners, in +transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their old +accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But +your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an +amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him +for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile +one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for +instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering +underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques--there, where the steps +begin---- + +Almost.... + +And here my afternoon musings, up yonder, took on a more acrid +complexion. I remembered a recent talk with one of the teachers at the +local college who lamented that his pupils displayed a singular dullness +in their essays; never, in his long career at different schools, had he +met with boys more destitute of originality. What could be expected, we +both agreed? Mentone was of recent growth--the old settlement, Mentone +of Symonds, proclaims its existence only by a ceaseless and infernal +clanging of bells, rivalling Malta--no history, no character, no +tradition--a mushroom town inhabited by shopkeepers and hoteliers who +are there for the sole purpose of plucking foreigners: how should a +youngster's imagination be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless +modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes to these regions, now that +invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their climate? Decayed Muscovites, +Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in England, and their painted +women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling eyes, a Turk or two, Jews +and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, +Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that read like a +nightmare (see "List of Arrivals" in New York Herald)--the whole exotic +riff-raff enlivened and perfumed by a copious sprinkling of +horizontales. + +And I let my glance wander along that ancient Roman road which led from +Italy to Arles and can still be traced, here and there; I took in the +section from Genoa to Marseille, an enormous stretch of country, and +wondered: what has this coast ever produced in the way of thought or +action, of great men or great women? There is Doria at Genoa, and Gaby +Deslys at Marseille; that may well exhaust the list. Ah, and half-way +through, a couple of generals, born at Nice. It is really an instructive +phenomenon, and one that should appeal to students of Buckle--this +relative dearth of every form of human genius in one of the most +favoured regions of the globe. Here, for unexplained reasons, the +Italian loses his better qualities; so does the Frenchman. Are the +natives descended from those mysterious Ligurians? Their reputation was +none of the best; they were more prompt, says Crinagoras, in devising +evil than good. That Mentone man, to be sure, whose remains you may +study at Monaco and elsewhere, was a fine fellow, without a doubt. He +lived rather long ago. Even he, by the way, was a tourist on these +shores. And were the air of Mentone not unpropitious to the composition +of anything save a kind of literary omelette soufflee, one might like to +expatiate on Sergi's remarkable book, and devise thereto an incongruous +footnote dealing with the African origin of sundry Greek gods, and +another one referring to the extinction of these splendid races of men; +how they came to perish so utterly, and what might be said in favour of +that novel theory of the influence of an ice-age on the germplasm +producing mutations--new races which breed true ... enough! Let us +remain at the Riviera level. + +In the little museum under those cliffs by the sea, where the Grimaldi +caves are, I found myself lately together with a young French couple, +newly married. The little bride was vastly interested in the attendant's +explanations of the habits of those remote folk, but, as I could plainly +see, growing more and more distrustful of his statements as to what +happened all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. + +"And this, Messieurs, is the jaw-bone of a cave-bear--the competitor, +one might say, in the matter of lodging-houses, with the gentleman whose +anatomy we have just inspected. Here are bones of hippopotamus, and +rhinoceros, which he hunted with the weapons you saw. And the object on +which your arm is reposing, Madame, is the tooth of an elephant. Our +ancestor must have been pretty costaud to kill an elephant with a +stone." + +"Elephants?" she queried. "Did elephants scramble about these precipices +and ravines? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. He probably killed them down there," and his arm +swept over the blue Mediterranean, lying at our feet. "Do you mean to +say that elephants paddled across from Algiers in order to be +assassinated by your old skeleton? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. The Mediterranean did not exist in those days." + +The suggestion that this boundless sea should ever have been dry land, +and in the time of her own ancestors, was too much for the young lady. +She smiled politely, and soon I heard her whispering to her husband: + +"I had him there, eh? Quel farceur!" + +"Yes. You caught him nicely, I must say. But one must not be too hard on +these poor devils. They have got to earn their bread somehow." + +This will never do. + +Italiam petimus.... + + + + +Levanto + +I have loafed into Levanto, on the recommendation of an Irish friend +who, it would seem, had reasons of his own for sending me there. + +"Try Levanto," he said. "A little place below Genoa. Nice, kindly +people. And sunshine all the time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes! The food +is all right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us start that +subject----" + +We started it none the less, and at the end of the discussion he added: + +"You must go and see Mitchell there. I often stayed with him. Such a +good fellow! And very popular in the place. He built an aqueduct for the +peasants--that kind of man. Mind you look him up. He will be bitterly +disappointed if you don't call. So make a note of it, won't you? By the +way, he's dead. Died last year. I quite forgot." + +"Dead, is he? What a pity." + +"Yes; and what a nuisance. I promised to send him down some things by +the next man I came across. You would have been that man. I know you do +not carry much luggage, but you could have taken one or two trifles at +least. He wanted a respectable English telescope, I remember, to see the +stars with--a bit of an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too--devilish +fond of chutney, the old boy was; quite a gastro-maniac. What a +nuisance! Now he will be thinking I forgot all about it. And he needed a +clothes-press; I was on no account to forget that clothes-press. Rather +fussy about his trousers, he was. And a type-writer; just an ordinary +one. But I doubt whether you could have managed a type-writer." + +"Easily. And a bee-hive or two. You know how I like carrying little +parcels about for other people's friends. What a nuisance! Now I shall +have to travel with my bags half empty." + +"Don't blame me, my dear fellow. I did not tell him to die, did I?".... + +It must have been about midnight as the train steamed into Levanto +station. Snow was falling; you could hear the moan of the sea hard by; +an icy wind blew down from the mountains. + +Sunshine all the time! + +Everybody scurried off the platform. A venerable porter, after looking +in dubious fashion at my two handbags, declared he would return in a few +moments to transport them to the hotel, and therewith vanished round the +corner. The train moved on. Lamps were extinguished. Time passed. I +strode up and down in the semi-darkness, trying to keep warm and +determined, whatever happened, not to carry those wretched bags myself, +when suddenly a figure rose out of the gloom--a military figure of +youthful aspect and diminutive size, armed to the teeth. + +"A cold night," I ventured. + +"Do you know, Sir, that you are in the war-zone--the zona di difesa?" + +He began to fumble at his rifle in ominous fashion. + +Nice, kindly people! + +I said: + +"It is hard to die so young. And I particularly dislike the looks of +that bayonet, which is half a yard longer than it need be. But if you +want to shoot me, go ahead. Do it now. It is too cold to argue." + +"Your papers! Ha, a foreigner. Hotel Nazionale? Very good. To-morrow +morning you will report yourself to the captain of the carbineers. After +that, to the municipality. Thereupon you will take the afternoon train +to Spezia. When you have been examined by the police inspector at the +station you will be accompanied, if he sees fit, to head-quarters in +order that your passport may be investigated. From there you will +proceed to the Prefecture for certain other formalities which will be +explained to you. Perhaps--who knows?--they will allow you to return to +Levanto." + +"How can you expect me to remember all that?" Then I added: "You are a +Sicilian, I take it. And from Catania." + +He was rather surprised. Sicilians, because they learn good Italian at +their schools, think themselves indistinguishable from other men. + +Yes; he explained. He was from a certain place in the Catania part of +the country, on the slopes of Etna. + +I happened to know a good deal of that place from an old she-cook of +mine who was born there and never wearied of telling me about it. To his +still greater surprise, therefore, I proceeded to discourse learnedly +about that region, extolling its natural beauties and healthy climate, +reminding him that it was the birthplace of a man celebrated in +antiquity (was it Diodorus Siculus?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that +he would doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated a spot. + +Straightway his manner changed. There is nothing these folks love more +than to hear from foreign lips some praise of their native town or +village. He waxed communicative and even friendly; his eyes began to +sparkle with animation, and there we might have stood conversing till +sunrise had I not felt that glacial wind searching my garments, chilling +my humanity and arresting all generous impulses. Rather abruptly I bade +farewell to the cheery little reptile and snatched up my bags to go to +the hotel, which he said was only five minutes' walk from there. + +Things turned out exactly as he had predicted. Arrived at Spezia, +however, I found an unpleasant surprise awaiting me. The officer in +command, who was as civil as the majority of such be-medalled jackasses, +suggested that one single day would be quite sufficient for me to see +the sights of Levanto; I could then proceed to Pisa or anywhere else +outside his priceless "zone of defence." I pleaded vigorously for more +time. After all, we were allies, were we not? Finally, a sojourn of +seven days was granted for reasons of health. Only seven days: how +tiresome! From the paper which gave me this authorisation and contained +a full account of my personal appearance I learnt, among other less +flattering details, that my complexion was held to be "natural." It was +a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup. + +No butter for breakfast. + +The landlord, on being summoned, avowed that to serve crude butter on +his premises involved a flagrant breach of war-time regulations. The +condiment could not be used save for kitchen purposes, and then only on +certain days of the week; he was liable to heavy penalties if it became +known that one of his guests.... However, since he assumed me to be a +prudent person, he would undertake to supply a due allowance to-morrow +and thenceforward, though never in the public dining-room; never, never +in the dining-room! + +That is the charm of Italy, I said to myself. These folks are reasonable +and gifted with imagination. They make laws to shadow forth an ideal +state of things and to display their good intentions towards the +community at large; laws which have no sting for the exceptional type of +man who can evade them--the sage, the millionaire, and the "friend of +the family." Never in the dining-room. Why, of course not. Catch me +breakfasting in any dining-room. + +Was it possible? There, at luncheon in the dining-room, while devouring +those miserable macaroni made with war-time flour, I beheld an over-tall +young Florentine lieutenant shamelessly engulfing huge slices of what +looked uncommonly like genuine butter, a miniature mountain of which +stood on a platter before him, and overtopped all the other viands. I +could hardly believe my eyes. How about those regulations? Pointing to +this golden hillock, I inquired softly: + +"From the cow?" + +"From the cow." + +"Whom does one bribe?" + +He enjoyed a special dispensation, he declared--he need not bribe. +Returned from Albania with shattered health, he had been sent hither to +recuperate. He required not only butter, but meat on meatless days, as +well as a great deal of rest; he was badly run down.... And eggs, raw +eggs, drinking eggs; ten a day, he vows, is his minimum. Enviable +convalescent! + +The afternoon being clear and balmy, he took me for a walk, smoking +cigarettes innumerable. We wandered up to that old convent picturesquely +perched against the slope of the hill and down again, across the +rivulet, to the inevitable castle-ruin overhanging the sea. Like all +places along this shore, Levanto lies in a kind of amphitheatre, at a +spot where one or more streams, descending from the mountains, discharge +themselves into the sea. Many of these watercourses may in former times +have been larger and even navigable up to a point. Their flow is now +obstructed, their volume diminished. I daresay they have driven the sea +further out, with silt swept down from the uplands. The same thing has +struck me in England--at Lyme Regis, for instance, whose river was also +once navigable to small craft and at Seaton, about a mile up whose +stream stands that village--I forget its name--which was evidently the +old port of the district in pre-Seaton days. Local antiquarians will +have attacked these problems long ago. The sea may have receded. + +A glance from this castle-height at the panorama bathed in that mellow +sunshine made me regret more than ever the enforced brevity of my stay +at Levanto. Seven days, for reasons of health: only seven days! Those +mysterious glades opening into the hill-sides, the green patches of +culture interspersed with cypresses and pines, dainty villas nestling in +gardens, snow-covered mountains and blue sea--above all, the presence of +running water, dear to those who have lived in waterless lands--why, one +could spend a life-time in a place like this! + +The lieutenant spoke of Florence, his native city. He would be there +again before long, in order to present himself to the medical +authorities and be weighed and pounded for the hundredth time. He hoped +they would then let him stay there. He was tired to death of Levanto and +its solitude. How pleasant to bid farewell to this "melancholy" sea +which was supposed to be good for his complaints. He asked: + +"Do you know why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to +see that wonderful dome of theirs rising up from the plain?" + +"Why?" + +"Can't you guess?" + +"Let me see. It is sure to be something not quite proper. H'm.... The +tower of Giotto, for example, has certain asperities, angularities, +anfractuosities----" + +"You are no Englishman whatever!" he laughed. "Now try that joke on the +next Florentine you meet.... There was a German here," he went on, "who +loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all about him. He began +writing a book to prove that there was a different walk to be taken in +this neighbourhood for every single day of the year." + +"How German. And then?" + +"The war came. He cleared out. The natives were sorry. This whole coast +seems to be saturated with Teutons--of a respectable class, apparently. +They made themselves popular, they bought houses, drank wine, and joked +with the countrymen." + +"What do you make of them?" I inquired. + +"I am a Tuscan," he began (meaning: I am above race-prejudices; I can +view these things with olympic detachment). "I think the German says to +himself: we want a world-empire, like those damned English. How did they +get it? By piracy. Two can play at that game, though it may be a little +more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a +certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, +who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished +by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at +First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a +whole--well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is +our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the +ordinary native of the country is, if his own son happens to get +killed." + +"I know. That makes him very angry." + +"It makes him angry not with the Germans who are responsible for the +war, but with his own government which is responsible for conscripting +the boys. Ah, what a stupid subject of conversation! And how God would +laugh, if he had any sense of humour! Suppose we go down to the beach +and lie on the sand. I need rest: I am very dilapidated." + +"You look thin, I must say." + +"Typhoid, and malaria, and pleurisy--it is a respectable combination. +Thin? I am the merest framework, and so transparent that you can see +clean through my stomach. Perhaps you would rather not try? Count my +ribs, then." + +"Count your ribs? That, my dear Lieutenant, is an occupation for a rainy +afternoon. Judging by your length, there must be a good many of +them...." + +"We should be kind to our young soldiers," said the Major to whom I was +relating, after dinner, the story of our afternoon promenade. A burly +personage is the Major, with hooked nose and black moustache and +twinkling eyes--retired, now, from a service in the course of which he +has seen many parts of the world; a fluent raconteur, moreover, who +keeps us in fits of laughter with naughty stories and imitations of +local dialects. "We must be nice with them, and always offer them +cigarettes. What say you, Mr. Lieutenant?" + +"Yes, sir. Offer them cigarettes and everything else you possess. The +dear fellows! They seldom have the heart to refuse." + +"Seldom," echoes the judge. + +That is our party; the judge, major, lieutenant and myself. We dine +together and afterwards sit in that side room while the fat little host +bustles about, doing nearly all the work of the war-diminished +establishment himself. Presently the first two rise and indulge in a +lively game of cards, amid vigorous thumpings of the table and cursings +at the ways of Providence which always contrives to ruin the best hands. +I order another litre of wine. The lieutenant, to keep me company, +engulfs half a dozen eggs. He tells me about Albanian women. I tell him +about Indian women. We thrash the matter out, pursuing this or that +aspect into its remotest ramifications, and finally come to the +conclusion that I, at the earliest opportunity, must emigrate to +Albania, and he to India. + +As for the judge, he was born under the pale rays of Saturn. He has +attached himself to my heart. Never did I think to care so much about a +magistrate, and he a Genoese. + +There are some men, a few men, very few, about whom one craves to be +precise. Viewed through the mist of months, I behold a corpulent and +almost grotesque figure of thirty-five or thereabouts; blue-eyed, +fair-haired but nearly bald, clean-shaven, bespectacled. So purblind has +he grown with poring over contracts and precedents that his movements +are pathologically awkward--embryonic, one might say; his unwieldy +gestures and contortions remind one of a seal on shore. The eyes being +of small use, he must touch with his hands. Those hands are the most +distinctive feature of his person; they are full of expression; tenderly +groping hands, that hesitate and fumble in wistful fashion like the +feelers of some sensitive creature of night. There is trouble, too, in +that obese and sluggish body; trouble to which the unhealthy complexion +testifies. He may drink only milk, because wine, which he dearly +loves--"and such good wine, here at Levanto"--it always deranges the +action of some vital organ inside. + +The face is not unlike that of Thackeray. + +A man of keen understanding who can argue the legs off a cow when duly +roused, he seems far too good for a small place like this, where, by the +way, he is a newcomer. Maybe his infinite myopia condemns him to +relative seclusion and obscurity. He has a European grip of things; of +politics and literature and finance. Needless to say, I have discovered +his cloven hoof; I make it my business to discover such things; one may +(or may not) respect people for their virtues, one loves them only for +their faults. It is a singular tinge of mysticism and credulity which +runs through his nature. Can it be the commercial Genoese, the gambling +instinct? For he is an authority on stocks and shares, and a passionate +card-player into the bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand +--they are but two forms of the same speculative spirit. Think of the +Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-lovers! I have yet to meet a +full-blown agnostic who relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not +adventurous on such lines; he knows the odds against backing a winner in +heaven or earth. + +Often, listening to this lawyer's acute talk and watching his uncouth +but sympathetic face, I ask myself a question, a very obvious question +hereabouts: How could you cause him to swerve from the path of duty? How +predispose him in your favour? Sacks of gold would be unavailing: that +is certain. He would wave them aside, not in righteous Anglo-Saxon +indignation, but with a smile of tolerance at human weakness. To +simulate clerical leanings? He is too sharp; he would probably be vexed, +not at your attempt to deceive, but at the implication that you took him +for a fool. A good tip on the stock exchange? It might go a little way, +if artfully tendered. Perhaps an apt and unexpected quotation from the +pages of some obsolete jurist--the intellectual method of approach; for +there is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of +intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook. In any case, it +would be a desperate venture to override the conscience of such a man. +May I never have to try! + +His stern principles must often cause him suffering, needless suffering. +He is for ever at the mercy of some categorical imperative. This may be +the reason why I feel drawn to him. Such persons exercise a strange +attraction upon those who, convinced of the eternal fluidity of all +mundane affairs, and how that our most sacred institutions are merely +conventionalities of time and place, conform to only one rule of +life--to be guided by no principles whatever. They miss so much, those +others. They miss it so pathetically. One sees them staggering +gravewards under a load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle, +when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross? Is it pleasant? Is it pretty? + +He also has taken me for walks, but they are too slow and too short for +my taste. Every twenty yards or so he must stand still to "admire the +view"--that is, to puff and pant. + +"What it is," he then exclaims, "to be an old man in youth, through no +fault of one's own. How many are healthy, and yet vicious to the core!" + +I inquire: + +"Are you suggesting that there may be a connection between sound health +and what society, in its latest fit of peevish self-maceration, is +pleased to call viciousness?" + +"That is a captious question," he replies. "A man of my constitution, +unfit for pleasures of the body, is prone to judge severely. Let me try +to be fair. I will go so far as to say that to certain natures +self-indulgence appears to be necessary as--as sunshine to flowers." + +Self-indulgence, I thought. Heavily-fraught is that word; weighted with +meaning. The history of two thousand years of spiritual dyspepsia lies +embedded in its four syllables. Self-indulgence--it is what the ancients +blithely called "indulging one's genius." Self-indulgence! How debased +an expression, nowadays. What a text for a sermon on the mishaps of good +words and good things. How all the glad warmth and innocence have faded +out of the phrase. What a change has crept over us.... + +Glancing through a glass window not far from the hotel, I was fortunate +enough to espy a young girl seated in a sewing shop. She is decidedly +pretty and not altogether unaware of the fact, though still a child. We +have entered upon an elaborate, classical flirtation. With all the +artfulness of her years she is using me to practise on, as a dummy, for +future occasions when she shall have grown a little bigger and more +admired; she has already picked up one or two good notions. I pretend to +be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if she were grown up, and +profess to feel that she has really cast a charm--a state of affairs +which, if true, would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a point. +Impossible not to sense the joy which radiates from her smile and +person. That is all, so far. It is an orthodox entertainment, merely a +joke. God knows what might happen, under given circumstances. Some of a +man's most terrible experiences--volcanic cataclysms that ravaged the +landscape and left a trail of bitter ashes in their rear--were begun as +a joke. You can say so many things in a joking way, you can do so many +things in a joking way--especially in Northern countries, where it is +easy to joke unseen. + +Meanwhile, with Ninetta, I discourse sweet nothings in my choicest idiom +which has grown rather rusty in England. + +Italian is a flowery language whose rhetorical turns and phrases require +constant exercise to keep them in smooth working order. No; that is not +correct. It is not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are ever at +command. What one learns to forget in England is the simplicity to use +them; to utter, with an air of deep conviction, a string of what we +should call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your breath +away--the things you have to say because these folks are so enamoured of +rhetoric and will not be happy without it. + +An English girl of her social standing--I lay stress upon the standing, +for it prescribes the conduct--an English girl would never listen to +such outpourings with this obvious air of approbation; maybe she would +ask where you had been drinking; in every case, your chances would be +seriously diminished. She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system +which is fatal to success in this country. The affair, here, must be a +siege. It must move onward by those gradual and inevitable steps +ordained of old in the unwritten code of love; no lingering by the +wayside, no premature haste. It must march to its end with the measured +stateliness of a quadrille. Passion, well-restrained passion, should be +written on every line of your countenance. Otherwise you are liable to +be dubbed a savage. I know what it is to be called a "Scotch bear," and +only because I trembled too much, or too little--I forget which--on a +certain occasion. + +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 of sang-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-Pyrenees 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 grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, [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." + +"A Scozzese. 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." + + + + +Siena + +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's Unknown 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 once escaped 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 a piazza! 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: + + Siena + Di tre cose e 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 Dantes, a nondescript lady with +brocade garments and a delectable amorino whose 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 their +bete 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. The Dictionary of National +Biography might 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.... + + + + +Pisa + +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 modern infame. 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 cafe-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 a pis 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." Irritable was 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 L10,000 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 them en route and "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 (February) + +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 of ripa: 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. This ripa is 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, and the 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. + +"And that little ridge of stone," says my companion, "--do you see it, +jutting into the fields down there? It has a queer name. We call it La +Sirena." + +La Sirena.... + +It is good to live in a land where such memories cling to old rocks. + +By what a chance has the name survived to haunt this inland crag, +defying geological changes, outlasting the generations of men, their +creeds and tongues and races! How it takes one back--back into hoary +antiquity, into another landscape altogether! One thinks of those Greek +mariners coasting past this promontory, and pouring libations to the +Siren into an ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now sows +his rice and turnips. + + Paganisme immortel, es-tu mort? On le dit. + Mais Pan, tout bas, s'en moque, et la Sirene en rit. + +They are still here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to +separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous +splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the +gods are kind. + +My Siren dwells at Corsanico. + + + + +Viareggio (May) + +Those Sirens! They have called me back, after nearly three months in +Florence, to that village on the hill-top. Nothing but smiles up there. + +And never was Corsanico more charming, all drenched in sunlight and +pranked out with fresh green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to +myself, I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away, and +there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet--can it be possible?--I am even +happier here. Seldom does the event surpass one's hopes. + +Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives already heavy-laden, +through patches of high-standing corn and beans, across the little +brook, past that familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the +canal, in full content. Another golden moment of life! Strong +exhalations rose up from the swampy soil, that teemed and steamed under +the hot breath of spring; the pond-like water, once so bare, was +smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh-plants and loud with the music +of love-sick frogs. Stars were reflected on its surface. + +Star-gazing, my Star? Would I were Heaven, to gaze on thee with many +eyes. + +Such was my mood, a Hellenic mood, a mood summed up in that one word +[Greek: tetelestai]--not to be taken, however, in the sense of "all's +over." Quite the reverse! Did Shelley ever walk in like humour along +this canal? I doubt it. He lacked the master-key. An evangelist of a +kind, he was streaked, for all his paganism, with the craze of +world-improvement. One day he escaped from his chains into those +mountains and there beheld a certain Witch--only to be called back to +mortality by a domestic and critic-bitten lady. He tried to translate +the Symposium. He never tried to live it.... + +I have now interposed a day of rest. + +My welcome in the villa situated in the street called after a certain +politician was that of the Prodigal Son. There was a look bordering on +affection in the landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once the +weather was warmer. She would now give me a cool room, instead of that +old one facing south. Those much-abused cement floors--they were not so +inconvenient, were they, at this season? The honey for breakfast? +Assuredly; the very same. And there was a tailor she had discovered in +the interval, cheaper and better than that other one, if anything +required attention. + +And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London landladies and London +charwomen--having suffered the torments of Hell, for more years than I +care to remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags and harpies +and drunken sluts--I am now rewarded by the services of something at the +other end of the human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good +dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life seems to be to save my +money and make me comfortable. "Don't get your shoes soled there!" she +told me two days ago. "That man is from Viareggio. I know a better +place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will +pay less and get better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she +forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known +my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have +known them at the end of a century.... + +My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally +efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the +familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair +and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave +me the impression of being in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I +used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods +enlivened with steely glints of humour--such were the feelings of those +who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. It would +be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or vulgar. Yet +she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She never dreams +that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high police +functionary and greatly in favour with his set--a most useful landlady, +in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself. + +On learning this fact, I made it my business to study her weaknesses and +soon discovered that she was fond of a particular brand of Chianti. A +flask of this vintage was promptly secured; then, dissatisfied with its +materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with a wreath of +violets and despatched it to her private apartment by the prettiest +child I could pick up in the street. That is the way to touch their +hearts. The offering was repeated at convenient intervals. + +A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one morning, about the +war. I found she shared the view common to many others, that this is an +"interested" war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines which +work against peace. There are so many persons "interested" in keeping up +the present state of affairs, people who now make more money than they +ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie. The soldier in the +field, the chief person concerned, is voiceless and of no account when +compared with this army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if +the war came to an end. They will fight like demons, to keep the fun +going. What else should they do? Their income is at stake. A man's heart +is in his purse. + +I asked: + +"Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war, how would you set about +it?" + +Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to her. + +"I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense. It makes things too +pleasant. It would bring the troops to their senses and cause them to +march home and say: Basta! We have had enough." + +"Don't you find the Germans a little prepotenti?" "Prepotenti: yes. By +all means let us break their heads. And then, caro Lei, let us learn to +imitate them...." + +That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine and myself in such +mellow mood that I would have shared my last crust with some shipwrecked +archduchess and almost forgiven mine enemies, though not until I had hit +them back--I strolled about the Cascine. They have done something to +make this place attractive; just then, at all events, the shortcomings +were unobserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot. +Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as +it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water; +and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the +surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of +hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not +remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in +an identical situation, and with far less sunshine for the landscape +gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town in Germany where, on +a plain as flat as a billiard table, they actually reared a mountain, +now covered with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens. To +think that I used to skate over the meadows where that mountain now +stands! + +There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the +usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake +of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious +epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play +is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision +and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of +the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of +old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of +consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which +leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name. +They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their +tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an +outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort. +Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat. + +Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de +Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew +strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all +these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half +of them ought to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about +with a ball. + +It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising +generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the +younger spectators and make him talk. But these better-class lads +cluster together at the approach of a stranger, and one does not want to +start a public discussion with half a dozen of them. My chance came from +another direction. It was half-time and a certain player limped out of +the field and sat down on the grass. I was beside him before his friends +had time to come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with perspiration. + +"Any damage?" + +Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other side had just caught him +with the full swing of his fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly. + +"Hardly fair play," I commented. + +"It was cleverly done." + +"Ah, well," I said, warming to my English character, "you may get harder +knocks in the trenches. I suppose you are nearly due?" + +Not for a year or so, he replied. And even then ... of course, he was +quite eligible as to physique ... it was really rather awkward ... but +as to serving in the army ... there were other jobs going. ... Was +anything more precious than life?... Could anything replace his life to +him?... To die at his age.... + +"It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point of view. But if +everybody thought like that, where would the Isonzo line be?" + +If everybody thought as he did, there would be no Isonzo line at all. +German influence in Italy--why not? They had been there before; it was +no dark page in Italian history. Was his own government so admirable +that one should regret its disappearance? A pack of knaves and +cutthroats. Patriotism--a phrase; auto-intoxication. They say one thing +and mean another. The English too. Yes, the English too. Purely +mercenary motives, for all their noble talk. + +It is always entertaining to see ourselves as others see us. I had the +presence of mind to interject some anti-British remark, which produced +the desired effect. + +"Now they howl about the sufferings of Belgium, because their money-bags +are threatened. They fight for poor Belgium. They did not fight for +France in 1870, or for Denmark or Poland or Armenia. Trade was not +threatened. There was no profit in view. Profit! And they won't even +supply us with coal----" + +Always that coal. + +It is clear as daylight. England has failed in her duty--her duty being +to supply everybody with coal, ships, money, cannons and anything else, +at the purchaser's valuation. + +He made a few more statements of this nature, and I think he enjoyed his +little fling at that, for him, relatively speaking, since the war began, +rara avis, a genuine Englishman (Teutonic construction); I certainly +relished it. Then I asked: + +"Where did you learn this? About Armenia, I mean, and Poland?" + +"From my father. He was University Professor and Deputy in Parliament. +One also picks up a little something at school. Don't you agree with +me?" + +"Not altogether. You seem to forget that a nation cannot indulge in +those freaks of humanitarianism which may possibly befit an individual. +A certain heroic dreamer told men to give all they had to the poor. You, +if you like, may adopt this idealistic attitude. You may do generous +actions such as your country cannot afford to do, since a nation which +abandons the line of expediency is on the high road to suicide. If I +have a bilious attack, by all means come and console me; if Poland has a +bilious attack, there is no reason why England should step in as +dry-nurse; there may be every reason, indeed, why England should stand +aloof. Now in Belgium, as you say, money is involved. Money, in this +national sense, means well-being; and well-being, in this national +sense, is one of the few things worth fighting for. However, I am only +throwing out one or two suggestions. On some other day, I would like to +discuss the matter with you point by point--some other day, that is, +when you are not playing football and have just a few clothes on. I am +now at a disadvantage. You could never get me to impugn your statements +courageously--not in that costume. It would be like haggling with Apollo +Belvedere. Why do you wear those baby things?" + +"We are all wearing them, this season." + +"So I perceive. How do you get into them?" + +"Very slowly." + +"Are they elastic?" + +"I wish they were.".... + +Four minutes' talk. It gave me an insight. He was an intellectualist. As +such, he admired brute force but refused to employ it. He was civilized. +Like many products of civilization, he was unaware of its blessings and +unconcerned in its fate. Is it not a feature peculiar to civilization +that it thinks of everything save war? That is why they are uprooted, +these flowerings, each in its turn. + +My father told me; often one hears that remark, even from adults. As if +a father could not be a fool like anybody else! That a child should have +hard-and-fast opinions--it is engaging. Children are egocentric. A +fellow of this size ought to be less positive. + +These refined youths are fastidious about their clothes. They would not +dream of buying a ready-made suit, however well-fitting. They are +content to take their opinions second-hand. Unlike ours, they are seldom +alone; they lack those stretches of solitude during which they might +wrestle with themselves and do a little thinking on their own account. +When not with their family, they are always among companions, being far +more sociable and fond of herding together than their English +representatives. They talk more; they think less; they seem to do each +other's thinking, which takes away all hesitation and gives them a +precocious air of maturity. If this decorative lad engages in some +profession like medicine or engineering there is hope for him, even as +others of his age rectify their perspective by contact with crude +facts--groceries and calicoes and carburettors and so forth. Otherwise, +his doom is sealed. He remains a doctrinaire. This country is full of +them. + +And then--the sterilizing influence of pavements. Even when summer comes +round, they all flock in a mass to some rowdy place like this Viareggio +or Ancona where, however pleasant the bathing, spiritual life is yet +shallower than at home. What says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.? "Their +country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in +nothing else does it differ from the life they live in town." + +He notices things, does Ramage; and might, indeed, have elaborated this +argument. The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for +the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him +from the pavement--no easy task--and he gasps like a fish out of water. +Squares and cafes--they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of +fellow-creatures--thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the +result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I +should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every +bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I +think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait +still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested +mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour--such things +require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid, +for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English +representatives. + +POSTSCRIPT.--The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an +objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly +and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all +the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead +of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain +legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I +observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new +ones, which flake away rapidly--exfoliate or crack, according to the +direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the +chisel. It may well be that Florentines of past centuries left the hewn +blocks in their shady caverns for a certain length of time, as do the +Parisians of to-day, in order to allow for the slow discharge and +evaporation of liquid; whereas now the material, saturated with +moisture, is torn from its damp and cool quarries and set in the blazing +sunshine. At the Bourse, for instance,--quite a modern structure--the +columns already begin to show fissures. [7] + +Amply content with Viareggio, because the Siren dwells so near, I stroll +forth. The town is awake. Hotels are open. Bathing is beginning. Summer +has dawned upon the land. + +I am not in the city mood, three months in Florence having abated my +interest in humanity. Past a line of booths and pensions I wander in the +direction of that pinery which year by year is creeping further into the +waves, and driving the sea back from its old shore. There is peace in +this green domain; all is hushed, and yet pervaded by the mysterious +melody of things that stir in May-time. Here are no sombre patches, as +under oak or beech; only a tremulous interlacing of light and shade. A +peculiarly attractive bole not far from the sea, gleaming rosy in the +sunshine, tempts me to recline at its foot. + +This insomnia, this fiend of the darkness--the only way to counteract +his mischief is by guile; by snatching a brief oblivion in the hours of +day, when the demon is far afield, tormenting pious Aethiopians at the +Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments of self-created night, +merged into the warm earth! The extreme quietude of my present room, +after Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this +restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsanico. But chiefly, +the dream--that recurrent dream. + +Everybody, I suppose, is subject to recurrent dreams of some kind. My +present one is of a painful or at least sad nature; it returns +approximately every three months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I +am in a distant town where I lived many years back, and where each stone +is familiar to me. I have come to look for a friend--one who, as a +matter of fact, died long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this +fact; once embarked on the dream-voyage, I hold him to be still alive. +Glad at the prospect of meeting my friend again, I traverse cheerfully +those well-known squares in the direction of his home.... Where is it, +that house; where has it gone? I cannot find it. Ages seem to pass while +I trample up and down, in ever-increasing harassment of mind, along +interminable rows of buildings and canals; that door, that +well-remembered door--vanished! All search is vain. I shall never meet +him: him whom I came so far to see. The dismal truth, once established, +fills me with an intensity of suffering such as only night-visions can +inspire. There is no reason for feeling so strongly; it is the way of +dreams! At this point I wake up, thoroughly exhausted, and say to +myself: "Why seek his house? Is he not dead?" + +This stupid nightmare leaves me unrefreshed next morning, and often +bears in its rear a trail of wistfulness which may endure a week. Only +within the last few years has it dared to invade my slumbers. Before +that period there was a series of other recurrent dreams. What will the +next be? For I mean to oust this particular incubus. The monster annoys +me, and even our mulish dream-consciousness can be taught to acquiesce +in a fact, after a sufficient lapse of time. + +There are dreams peculiar to every age of man. That celebrated one of +flying, for instance--it fades away with manhood. I once indulged in a +correspondence about it with a well-known psychologist, [8] and would +like to think, even now, that this dream is a reminiscence of leaping +habits in our tree-haunting days; a ghost of the dim past, therefore, +which revisits us at night when recent adjustments are cast aside and +man takes on the credulity and savagery of his remotest forefathers; a +ghost which comes in youth when these ancient etchings are easier to +decypher, being not yet overscored by fresh personal experiences. What +is human life but a never-ending palimpsest? + +So I pondered, when my musings under that pine tree were interrupted by +the arrival on the scene of a young snake. I cannot say with any degree +of truthfulness which of us two was more surprised at the encounter. I +picked him up, as I always do when they give me a chance, and began to +make myself agreeable to him. He had those pretty juvenile markings +which disappear with maturity. Snakes of this kind, when they become +full-sized, are nearly always of a uniform shade, generally black. And +when they are very, very old, they begin to grow ears and seek out +solitary places. What is the origin of this belief? I have come across +it all over the country. If you wish to go to any remote or inaccessible +spot, be sure some peasant will say: "Ah! There you find the serpent +with ears." + +These snakes are not easy to catch with the hand, living as they do +among stones and brushwood, and gliding off rapidly once their +suspicions are aroused. This one, I should say, was bent on some +youthful voyage of discovery or amorous exploit; he walked into the trap +from inexperience. As a rule, your best chance for securing them is when +they bask on the top of some bush or hedge in relative unconcern, +knowing they are hard to detect in such places. They climb into these +aerial situations after the lizards, which go there after the insects, +which go there after the flowers, which go there after the sunshine, +struggling upwards through the thick undergrowth. You must have a quick +eye and ready hand to grasp them by the tail ere they have time to lash +themselves round some stem where, once anchored, they will allow +themselves to be pulled in pieces rather than yield to your efforts. If +you fail to seize them, they trickle earthward through the tangle like a +thread of running water. + +He belonged to that common Italian kind which has no English +name--Germans call them Zornnatter, in allusion to their choleric +disposition. Most of them are quite ready to snap at the least +provocation; maybe they find it pays, as it does with other folks, to +assume the offensive and be first in the field, demanding your place in +the sun with an air of wrathful determination. Some of the big fellows +can draw blood with their teeth. Yet the jawbones are weak and one can +force them asunder without much difficulty; whereas the bite of a +full-grown emerald lizard, for instance, will provide quite a novel +sensation. The mouth closes on you like a steel trap, tightly +compressing the flesh and often refusing to relax its hold. In such +cases, try a puff of tobacco. It works! Two puffs will daze them; a +fragment of a cigar, laid in the mouth, stretches them out dead. And +this is the beast which, they say, will gulp down prussic acid as if it +were treacle. + +But snakes vary in temperament as we do, and some of these Zamenis +serpents are as gentle and amiable as their cousin the Aesculap snake. +My friend of this afternoon could not be induced to bite. Perhaps he was +naturally mild, perhaps drowsy from his winter sleep or ignorant of the +ways of the world; perhaps he had not yet shed his milk teeth. I am +disposed to think that he forgot about biting because I made a +favourable impression on him from the first. He crawled up my arm. It +was pleasantly warm, but a little too dark; soon he emerged again and +glanced around, relieved to discover that the world was still in its old +place. He was not clever at learning tricks. I tried to make him stand +on his head, but he refused to stiffen out. Snakes have not much sense +of humour. + +Lizards are far more companionable. During two consecutive summers I had +a close friendship with a wall-lizard who spent in my society certain of +his leisure moments--which were not many, for he always had an +astonishing number of other things on hand. He was a full-grown male, +bejewelled with blue spots. A fierce fighter was Alfonso (such was his +name), and conspicuous for a most impressive manner of stamping his +front foot when impatient. Concerning his other virtues I know little, +for I learnt no details of his private life save what I saw with my +eyes, and they were not always worthy of imitation. He was a polygamist, +or worse; obsessed, moreover, by a deplorable habit of biting off the +tails of his own or other people's children. He went even further. For +sometimes, without a word of warning, he would pounce upon some innocent +youngster and carry him in his powerful jaws far away, over the wall, +right out of my sight. What happened yonder I cannot guess. It was +probably a little old-fashioned cannibalism. + +Though my meals in those days were all out of doors, his attendance at +dinner-time was rather uncertain; I suspect he retired early in order to +spend the night, like other polygamists, in prayer and fasting. At the +hours of breakfast and luncheon--he knew them as well as I did--he was +generally free, and then quite monopolized my company, climbing up my +leg on to the table, eating out of my hand, sipping sugar-water out of +his own private bowl and, in fact, doing everything I suggested. I did +not suggest impossibilities. A friendship should never be strained to +breaking-point. Had I cared to risk such a calamity, I might have taught +him to play skittles.... + +For the rest, it is not very amusing to be either a lizard or a snake in +Italy. Lizards are caught in nooses and then tied by one leg and made to +run on the remaining three; or secured by a cord round the neck and +swung about in the air--mighty good sport, this; or deprived of their +tails and given to the baby or cat to play with; or dragged along at the +end of a string, like a reluctant pig that is led to market. There are +quite a number of ways of making lizards feel at home. + +With snakes the procedure is simple. They are killed; treated to that +self-same system to which they used to treat us in our arboreal days +when the glassy eye of the serpent, gleaming through the branches, will +have caused our fur to stand on end with horror. No beast provokes human +hatred like that old coiling serpent. Long and cruel must have been his +reign for the memory to have lingered--how many years? Let us say, in +order to be on the safe side, a million. Here, then, is another ghost of +the past, a daylight ghost. + +And look around you; the world is full of them. We live amid a legion of +ancestral terrors which creep from their limbo and peer in upon our +weaker moments, ready to make us their prey. A man whose wits are not +firmly rooted in earth, in warm friends and warm food, might well live a +life of ceaseless trepidation. Many do. They brood over their immortal +soul--a ghost. Others there are, whose dreams have altogether devoured +their realities. These live, for the most part, in asylums. + +There flits, along this very shore, a ghost of another kind--that of +Shelley. Maybe the spot where they burnt his body can still be pointed +out. I have forgotten all I ever read on that subject. An Italian +enthusiast, the librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence, +garnered certain information from ancient fishermen of Viareggio in +regard to this occurrence and set it down in a little book, a book with +white covers which I possessed during my Shelley period. They have +erected a memorial to the English poet in one of the public squares +here. The features of the bust do not strike me as remarkably etherial, +but the inscription is a good specimen of Italian adapted to lapidary +uses--it avoids those insipid verbal terminations which weaken the +language and sometimes render it almost ridiculous. + +Smollet lies yonder, at Livorno; and Ouida hard by, at Bagni di Lucca. +She died in one of these same featureless streets of Viareggio, alone, +half blind, and in poverty.... + +I know Suffolk, that ripe old county of hers, with its pink villages +nestling among drowsy elms and cornfields; I know their "Spread Eagles" +and "Angels" and "White Horses" and other taverns suggestive--sure sign +of antiquity--of zoological gardens; I know their goodly ale and old +brown sherries. Her birthplace, despite those venerable green mounds, is +comparatively dull--I would not care to live at Bury; give me Lavenham +or Melford or some place of that kind. While looking one day at the +house where she was born, I was sorely tempted to crave permission to +view the interior, but refrained; something of her own dislike of prying +and meddlesomeness came over me. Thence down to that commemorative +fountain among the drooping trees. The good animals for whose comfort it +was built would have had some difficulty in slaking their thirst just +then, its basin being chocked up with decayed leaves. + +We corresponded for a good while and I still possess her letters +somewhere; I see in memory that large and bold handwriting, often only +two words to a line, on the high-class slate-coloured paper. The sums +she spent on writing materials! It was one of her many ladylike traits. + +I tried to induce her to stay with me in South Italy. She made three +conditions: to be allowed to bring her dogs, to have a hot bath every +day, and two litres of cream. Everything could be managed except the +cream, which was unprocurable. Later on, while living in the Tyrolese +mountains, I renewed the invitation; that third condition could now be +fulfilled as easily as the other two. She was unwell, she replied, and +could not move out of the house, having been poisoned by a cook. So we +never met, though she wrote me much about herself and about +"Helianthus," which was printed after her death. In return, I dedicated +to her a book of short stories; they were published, thank God, under a +pseudonym, and eight copies were sold. + +She is now out of date. Why, yes. Those guardsmen who drenched their +beards in scent and breakfasted off caviare and chocolate and sparkling +Moselle--they certainly seem fantastic. They really were fantastic. They +did drench their beards in scent. The language and habits of these +martial heroes are authenticated in the records of their day; glance, +for instance, into back numbers of Punch. The fact is, we were all +rather ludicrous formerly. The characters of Dickens, to say nothing of +Cruikshank's pictures of them: can such beings ever have walked the +earth? + +If her novels are somewhat faded, the same cannot be said of her letters +and articles and critiques. To our rising generation of authors--the +youngsters, I mean; those who have not yet sold themselves to the +devil--I should say: read these things of Ouida's. Read them +attentively, not for their matter, which is always of interest, nor yet +for their vibrant and lucid style, which often rivals that of Huxley. +Read them for their tone, their temper; for that pervasive good +breeding, that shining honesty, that capacity of scorn. These are +qualities which our present age lacks, and needs; they are conspicuous +in Ouida. Abhorrence of meanness was her dominant trait. She was +intelligent, fearless; as ready to praise without stint as to voice the +warmest womanly indignation. She was courageous not only in matters of +literature; courageous, and how right! Is it not satisfactory to be +right, when others are wrong? How right about the Japanese, about +Feminism and Conscription and German brutalitarianism! How she puts her +finger on the spot when discussing Marion Crawford and D'Annunzio! Those +local politicians--how she hits them off! Hers was a sure touch. Do we +not all now agree with what she wrote at the time of Queen Victoria and +Joseph Chamberlain? When she remarks of Tolstoy, in an age which adored +him (I am quoting from memory), that "his morality and monogamy are +against nature and common sense," adding that he is dangerous, because +he is an "educated Christ"--out of date? When she says that the world is +ruled by two enemies of all beauty, commerce and militarism--out of +date? When she dismisses Oscar Wilde as a cabotin and yet thinks that +the law should not have meddled with him--is not that the man and the +situation in a nutshell? + +No wonder straightforward sentiments like these do not appeal to our age +of neutral tints and compromise, to our vegetarian world-reformers who +are as incapable of enthusiasm as they are of contempt, because their +blood-temperature is invariably two degrees below the normal. Ouida's +critical and social opinions are infernally out of date--quite +inconveniently modern, in fact. There is the milk of humanity in them, +glowing conviction and sincerity; they are written from a standpoint +altogether too European, too womanly, too personally-poignant for +present-day needs; and in a language, moreover, whose picturesque and +vigorous independence comes as a positive shock after the colourless +Grub-street brand of to-day. + +They come as a shock, these writings, because in the brief interval +since they were published our view of life and letters has shifted. A +swarm of mystics and pragmatists has replaced the lonely giants of +Ouida's era. It is an epoch of closed pores, of constriction. The novel +has changed. Pick up the average one and ask yourself whether this +crafty and malodorous sex-problem be not a deliberately commercial +speculation--a frenzied attempt to "sell" by scandalizing our +unscandalizable, because hermaphroditic, middle classes? Ouida was not +one of these professional hacks, but a personality of refined instincts +who wrote, when she cared to write at all, to please her equals; a +rationalistic anti-vulgarian; a woman of wide horizons who fought for +generous issues and despised all shams; the last, almost the last, of +lady-authors. What has such a genial creature in common with our anaemic +and woolly generation? "The Massarenes" may have faults, but how many of +our actual woman-scribes, for all their monkey-tricks of cleverness, +could have written it? The haunting charm of "In Maremma": why ask our +public to taste such stuff? You might as well invite a bilious +nut-fooder to a Lord Mayor's banquet. + +The mention of banquets reminds me that she was blamed for preferring +the society of duchesses and diplomats to that of the Florentine +literati, as if there were something reprehensible in Ouida's fondness +for decent food and amusing talk when she could have revelled in Ceylon +tea and dough-nuts and listened to babble concerning Quattro-Cento +glazes in any of the fifty squabbling art-coteries of that City of +Misunderstandings. It was one of her several failings, chiefest among +them being this: that she had no reverence for money. She was unable to +hoard--an unpardonable sin. Envied in prosperity, she was smugly pitied +in her distress. Such is the fate of those who stand apart from the +crowd, among a nation of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, after +being the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form--a slur on +society. True, she might have bettered her state by accepting a +lucrative proposal to write her autobiography, but she considered such +literature a "degrading form of vanity" and refused the offer. She +preferred to remain ladylike to the last, in this and other little +trifles--in her lack of humour, her redundancies, her love of expensive +clothes and genuinely humble people, of hot baths and latinisms and +flowers and pet dogs and sealing-wax. All through life she made no +attempt to hide her woman's nature, her preference for male over female +company; she was even guilty of saying that disease serves the world +better than war, because it kills more women than men. Out of date, with +a vengeance! + +There recurs to me a sentence in a printed letter written by a +celebrated novelist of the artificial school, a sentence I wish I could +forget, describing Ouida as "a little terrible and finally pathetic +grotesque." Does not a phrase like this reveal, even better than his own +romances, the essentially non-human fibre of the writer's mind? Whether +this derivative intellectualist spiderishly spinning his own plots and +phrases and calling Ouida a "grotesque"--whether this echo ever tried to +grasp the bearing of her essays on Shelley or Blind Guides or Alma +Veniesia or The Quality of Mercy--tried to sense her burning words of +pity for those that suffer, her hatred of hypocrisy and oppression and +betrayal of friendship, her so righteous pleadings, coined out of the +heart's red blood, for all that makes life worthy to be lived? He may +have tried. He never could succeed. He lacked the sympathy, the sex. He +lacked the sex. Ah, well--Schwamm drueber, as the Norwegians say. Ouida, +for all her femininity, was more than this feline and gelatinous New +Englander. + + + + +Rome + +The railway station at Rome has put on a new face. Blown to the winds is +that old dignity and sense of leisure. Bustle everywhere; soldiers in +line, officers strutting about; feverish scurryings for tickets. A young +baggage employe, who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the +inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep up the traditions +of former days. He was unruffled and polite; he told me, incidentally, +that he came from ----. That was odd, I said; I had often met persons +born at ----, and never yet encountered one who was not civil beyond the +common measure. His native place must be worthy of a visit. + +"It is," he replied. "There are also certain fountains...." + +That restaurant, for example--one of those few for which a man in olden +days of peace would desert his own tavern in the town--how changed! The +fare has deteriorated beyond recognition. Where are those succulent +joints and ragouts, the aromatic wine, the snow-white macaroni, the +cafe-au-lait with genuine butter and genuine honey? + +War-time! + +Conversed awhile with an Englishman at my side, who was gleefully +devouring lumps of a particular something which I would not have liked +to touch with tongs. + +"I don't care what I eat," he remarked. + +So it seemed. + +I don't care what I eat: what a confession to make! Is it not the same +as saying, I don't care whether I am dirty or clean? When others tell me +this, I regard it as a pose, or a poor joke. This person was manifestly +sincere in his profession of faith. He did not care what he ate. He +looked it. Were I afflicted with this peculiar ailment, this attenuated +form of coprophagia, I should try to keep the hideous secret to myself. +It is nothing to boast of. A man owes something to those traditions of +our race which has helped to raise us above the level of the brute. Good +taste in viands has been painfully acquired; it is a sacred trust. +Beware of gross feeders. They are a menace to their fellow-creatures. +Will they not act, on occasion, even as they feed? Assuredly they will. +Everybody acts as he feeds. + +Then lingered on the departure platform, comparing its tone with that of +similar places in England. A mournful little crowd is collected here. +Conscripts, untidy-looking fellows, are leaving--perhaps for ever. They +climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and +endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their +farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent. +The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation, +the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they +are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the +sisters and children, who give themselves away pretty freely. An +infectious thing, this shedding of tears. One little girl, loth to part +from that big brother, contrived by her wailing to break down the +reserve of the entire family.... + +It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Rome is mirthless. + +There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a sweet old lady +friend who said to me, in years gone by: + +"When next you go to Rome, please let me know if it is still raining +there." + +It was here that she celebrated her honeymoon--an event which must have +taken place in the 'sixties or thereabouts. She is dead now. So is her +husband, the prince of moralizers, the man who first taught me how +contemptible the human race may become. Doubtless he expired with some +edifying platitude on his lips and is deblatterating them at this very +moment in Heaven, where the folks may well be seasoned to that kind of +talk. + +Let us be charitable, now that he is gone! + +To have lived so long with a person of this incurable respectability +would have soured any ordinary woman's temper. Hers it refined; it made +her into something akin to an angel. He was her cross; she bore him +meekly and not, I like to think, without extracting a kind of sly, dry +fun out of the horrible creature. A past master in the art of gentle +domestic nagging, he made everybody miserable as long as he lived, and I +would give something for an official assurance that he is now miserable +himself. He was a worm; a good man in the worse sense of the word. It +was the contrast--the contrast between his gentle clothing and ungentle +heart, which moved my spleen. What a self-sufficient and inhuman brood +were the Victorians of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty; +a brood that has never yet been called by its proper name. Victorians? +Why, not altogether. The mischief has its roots further back. Addison, +for example, is a fair specimen. + +Why say unkind things about a dead man? He cannot answer back. + +Upon my word, I am rather glad to think he cannot. The last thing I ever +wish to hear again is that voice of his. And what a face: gorgonizing in +its assumption of virtue! Now the whole species is dying out, and none +too soon. Graft abstract principles of conduct upon natures devoid of +sympathy and you produce a monster; a sanctimonious fish; the coldest +beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affinities were with +Robespierre and Torquemada--both of them actuated by the purest +intentions and without a grain of self-interest: pillars of integrity. +What floods of tears would have been spared to mankind, had they only +been a little corrupt! How corrupt a person of principles? He lacks the +vulgar yet divine gift of imagination. + +That is what these Victorians lacked. They would never have subscribed +to this palpable truth: that justice is too good for some men, and not +good enough for the rest. They cultivated the Cato or Brutus tone; they +strove to be stern old Romans--Romans of the sour and imperfect +Republic; for the Empire, that golden blossom, was to them a period of +luxury and debauch. Nero--most reprehensible! It was not Nero, however, +but our complacent British reptiles, who filled the prisons with the +wailing of young children, and hanged a boy of thirteen for stealing a +spoon. I wish I had it here, that book which everybody ought to read, +that book by George Ives on the History of Penal Methods--it would help +me to say a few more polite things. The villainies of the virtuous: who +shall recount them? I can picture this vastly offensive old man acting +as judge on that occasion and then, his "duties towards society" +accomplished, being driven home in his brougham to thank Providence for +one of those succulent luncheons, the enjoyment of which he invariably +managed to ruin for every one except himself. + +God rest his soul, the unspeakable phenomenon! He ought to have +throttled himself at his mother's breast. Only a woman imbued with +ultra-terrestrial notions of humour could have tolerated such an +infliction. Anybody else would have poisoned him in the name of +Christian charity and common sense, and earned the gratitude of +generations yet unborn. + +Well, well! R.I.P.... + +On returning to Rome after a considerable absence--a year or so--a few +things have to be done for the sake of auld lang syne ere one may again +feel at home. Rites must be performed. I am to take my fill of memories +and conjure up certain bitter-sweet phantoms of the past. Meals must be +taken in definite restaurants; a certain church must be entered; a sip +of water taken from a fountain--from one, and one only (no easy task, +this, for most of the fountains of Rome are so constructed that, however +abundant their flow, a man may die of thirst ere obtaining a mouthful); +I must linger awhile at the very end, the dirty end, of the horrible Via +Principe Amedeo and, again, at a corner near the Portico d'Ottavia; +perambulate the Protestant cemetery, Monte Mario, and a few quite +uninteresting modern sites; the Acqua Acetosa, a stupid place, may on no +account be forgotten, nor yet that bridge on the Via Nomentana--not the +celebrated bridge but another one, miles away in the Campagna, the +dreariest of little bridges, in the dreariest of landscapes. Why? It has +been hallowed by the tread of certain feet. + +Thus, by a kind of sacred procedure, I immerge myself into those old +stones and recreate my peculiar Roman mood. It is rather ridiculous. +Tradition wills it. + +To-day came the turn of the Protestant cemetery. I have a view of this +place, taken about the 'seventies--I wish I could reproduce it here, to +show how this spot has been ruined. A woman who looks after the +enclosure was in a fairly communicative mood; we had a few minutes' +talk, among the tombs. What a jumble of names and nationalities, by the +way! What a mixed assemblage lies here, in this foreign earth! One would +like to write down all their names, shake them in a bag, pick out fifty +at random and compose their biographies. It would be a curious +cosmopolitan document. + +They have now a dog, the woman tells me, a ferocious dog who roams among +the tombs, since several brass plates have been wrenched off by +marauders. At night? I inquire. At night. At night.... Slowly, warily, I +introduce the subject of fiammelle. It is not a popular theme. No! She +has heard of such things, but never seen them; she never comes here at +night, God forbid! + +What are fiammelle? Little flames, will-o'-the-wisps which hover about +the graves at such hours, chiefly in the hot months or after autumn +rains. It is a well-authenticated apparition; the scientist Bessel saw +one; so did Casanova, here at Rome. He describes it as a pyramidal flame +raised about four feet from the ground which seemed to accompany him as +he walked along. He saw the same thing later, at Cesena near Bologna. +There was some correspondence on the subject (started by Dr. Herbert +Snow) in the Observer of December 1915 and January 1916. Many are the +graveyards I visited in this country and in others with a view to +"satisfying my curiosity," as old Ramage would say, on this point, and +all in vain. My usual luck! The fiammelle, on that particular evening, +were coy--they were never working. They are said to be frequently +observed at Scanno in the Abruzzi province, and the young secretary of +the municipality there, Mr. L. O., will tell you of our periodical +midnight visits to the local cemetery. Or go to Licenza and ask for my +intelligent friend the schoolmaster. What he does not know about +fiammelle is not worth knowing. Did he not, one night, have a veritable +fight with a legion of them which the wind blew from the graveyard into +his face? Did he not return home trembling all over and pale as +death?... + +Here reposes, among many old friends, the idealist Malwida von +Meysenbug; that sculptured medallion is sufficient to proclaim her +whereabouts to those who still remember her. It is good to pause awhile +and etheralize oneself in the neighbourhood of her dust. She lived a +quiet life in an old brown house, since rebuilt, that overlooks the +Coliseum, on whose comely ellipse and blood-stained history she loved to +pasture eyes and imagination. Often I walked thence with her, in those +sparkling mornings, up the Palatine hill, to stroll about the ilexes and +roses in view of the Forum, to listen to the blackbirds, or the siskins +in that pine tree. She was of the same type, the same ethical parentage, +as the late Mathilde Blind, a woman of benignant and refined enthusiasm, +full of charity to the poor and, in those later days, almost +shadowy--remote from earth. She had saturated herself with Rome, for +whose name she professed a tremulous affection untainted by worldly +considerations such as mine; she loved its "persistent spiritual life"; +it was her haven of rest. So, while her arm rested lightly on mine, we +wandered about those gardens, the saintly lady and myself; her mind +dwelling, maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure and the +part she came nigh to playing in the history of Europe, while mine was +lost in a maze of vulgar love-adventures, several of which came nigh to +making me play a part in the police-courts of Rome. + +What may have helped to cement our strange friendship was my +acquaintance, at that time, with the German metaphysicians. She must +have thought me a queer kind of Englishman to discuss with such +familiarity the tenets of these cloudy dreamers. Malwida loved them in a +bland and childlike fashion. She would take one of their dicta as a +starting-point--establish herself, so to speak, within this or that +nebular hypothesis--and argue thence in academic fashion for the sake of +intellectual exercise and the joy of seeing where, after a thousand +twists and turnings, you were finally deposited. A friend of ours--some +American--had lately published a Socratic dialogue entitled "The +Prison"; it formed a fruitful theme of conversation. [9] Nietzsche was +also then to the fore, and it pleases me to recollect that even in those +days I detected his blind spot; his horror of those English materialists +and biologists. I did not pause to consider why he hated them so +ardently; I merely noted, more in sorrow than in anger, this fact which +seemed to vitiate his whole outlook--as indeed it does. Now I know the +reason. Like all preacher-poets, he is anthropocentric. To his way of +thinking the human mind is so highly organized, so different from that +of beasts, that not all the proofs of ethnology and physiology would +ever induce him to accept the ape-ancestry of man. This monkey-business +is too irksome and humiliating to be true; he waives it aside, with a +sneer at the disgusting arguments of those Englishmen. + +That is what happens to men who think that "the spirit alone lives; the +life of the spirit alone is true life." A philosopher weighs the value +of evidence; he makes it his business, before discoursing of the origin +of human intellect, to learn a little something of its focus, the brain; +a little comparative anatomy. These men are not philosophers. +Metaphysicians are poets gone wrong. Schopenhauer invents a "genius of +the race"--there you have his cloven hoof, the pathetic fallacy, the +poet's heritage. There are things in Schopenhauer which make one blush +for philosophy. The day may dawn when this man will be read not for what +he says, but for how he says it; he being one of the few of his race who +can write in their own language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon +a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did. So I remember +one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks" +propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it, +wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation. [10] + +He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions +into the inane. + +And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who scorned honest work +and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his +borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the +spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it +was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk +most plausibly--art, music, society gossip--everything you please; +everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He +sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully +contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody, +like himself, found the world a good place to inhabit. That, I believe, +was the secret of his success. He had a divine intuition for discovering +the soft spots of his neighbours and utilizing the knowledge, in a frank +and gentlemanly fashion, for his own advantage. It was he who invented a +saying which I have since encountered more than once: "Never run after +an omnibus or a woman. There will be another one round in a minute." And +also this: "Never borrow from a man who really expects to be paid back. +You may lose a friend." + +What lady is he now living on? + +"A good-looking fellow like me--why should I work? Tell me that. +Especially with so many rich ladies in the world aching for somebody to +relieve them of their spare cash?" + +"The wealthy woman," he once told me, after I had begun to know him more +intimately, "is a great danger to society. She is so corruptible! People +make her spend money on all kinds of empty and even harmful projects. +Think of the mischief that is done, in politics alone, by the money of +these women. Think of all the religious fads that spring up and are kept +going in a state of prosperity because some woman or other has not been +instructed as to the proper use of her cheque-book. I foresee a positive +decline ahead of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We +must club together, we reasonable men, and put an end to the scandal. +These women need trimmers; an army of trimmers. I have done a good deal +of trimming in my day. Of course it involves some trouble and a close +degree of intimacy, now and then. But a sensible man will always know +where to draw the line." + +"Where do you draw it?" + +"At marriage." + +Whether he ever dared to tap the venerable Malwida for a loan? Likely +enough. He often played with her feelings in a delicate style, and his +astuteness in such matters was only surpassed by his shamelessness. He +was capable of borrowing a fiver from the Pope--or at least of +attempting the feat; of pocketing some hungry widow's last mite and +therewith purchasing a cigarette before her eyes. All these sums he took +as his due, by right of conquest. Whether he ever "stung" Malwida? I +should have liked to see the idealist's face when confronted in that +cheery off-hand manner with the question whether she happened to have +five hundred francs to spare. + +"No? Whatever does it matter, my dear Madame de Meysenbug? Perhaps I +shall be more fortunate another day. But pray don't put yourself out for +an extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending money--can't +live without it, can one?--and sometimes, though you might not believe +it, on quite worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like to take +you to see one day; the father was cut to pieces in some wretched +agricultural machine, the mother is dying in a hospital for consumption, +and the six little children, all shivering under one blanket--well, +never mind! One does what one can, in a small way. That was an +interesting lecture, wasn't it, on Friday? He made a fine point in what +he said about the relation of the Ego to the Cosmos. All the same, I +thought he was a little hard on Fichte. But then, you know, I always +felt a sort of tenderness for Fichte. And did you notice that the room +was absolutely packed? I doubt whether that would have been the case in +any other European capital. This must be the secret charm of Rome, don't +you think so? This is what draws one to the Eternal City and keeps one +here and makes one love the place in spite of a few trivial +annoyances--this sense of persistent spiritual life." + +The various sums derived from ladies were regarded merely as +adventitious income. I found out towards the end of our acquaintance, +when I really began to understand his "method," that he had a second +source of revenue, far smaller but luckily "fixed." It was drawn from +the other sex, from that endless procession of men passing through Rome +and intent upon its antiquities. Rome, he explained, was the very place +for him. + +"This is what keeps me here and makes me love the place in spite of a +few trivial annoyances--this persistent coming and going of tourists. +Everybody on the move, all the time! A man must be daft if he cannot +talk a little archaeology or something and make twenty new friends a +year among such a jolly crowd of people. They are so grateful for having +things explained to them. Another lot next year! And there are really +good fellows among them; fellows, mind you, with brains; fellows with +money. From each of those twenty he can borrow, say, ten pounds; what is +that to a rich stranger who comes here for a month or so with the +express purpose of getting rid of his money? Of course I am only talking +about the medium rich; one need never apply to the very rich--they are +always too poor. Well, that makes about two hundred a year. It's not +much, but, thank God, it's safe as a house and it supplements the +ladies. Women are so distressingly precarious, you know. You cannot +count on a woman unless you have her actually under your thumb. Under +your thumb, my boy; under your thumb. Don't ever forget it." + +I have never forgotten it. + +Where is he now? Is he dead? A gulf intervenes between that period and +this. What has become of him? You might as well ask me about his +contemporary, the Piccadilly goat. I have no idea what became of the +Piccadilly goat, though I know pretty well what would become of him, +were he alive at this moment. + +Mutton-chops. [11] + +Yet I can make a guess at what is happening to my red-haired friend. He +is not dead, but sleepeth. He is being lovingly tended, in a crapulous +old age, by one of the hundred ladies he victimized. He takes it as a +matter of course. I can hear him chuckling dreamily, as she smooths his +pillow for him. He will die in her arms unrepentant, and leave her to +pay for the funeral. + +"Work!" he once said. "To Hell with work. The man who talks to me about +work is my enemy." + +One sunny morning during this period there occurred a thunderous +explosion which shattered my windows and many others in Rome. A +gunpowder magazine had blown up, somewhere in the Campagna; the +concussion of air was so mighty that it broke glass, they said, even at +Frascati. + +We drove out later to view the site. It resembled a miniature volcano. + +There I left the party and wandered alone into one of those tortuous +stream-beds that intersect the plain, searching for a certain kind of +crystal which may be found in such places, washed out of the soil by +wintry torrents. I specialized in minerals in those days--minerals and +girls. Dangerous and unprofitable studies! Even at that tender age I +seem to have dimly discerned what I now know for certain: that dangerous +and unprofitable objects are alone worth pursuing. The taste for +minerals died out later, though I clung to it half-heartedly for a long +while, Dr. Johnston-Lavis, Professor Knop and others fanning the dying +embers. One day, all of a sudden, it was gone. I found myself riding +somewhere in Asiatic Turkey past a precipice streaked in alternate veins +of purest red and yellow jasper, with chalcedony in between: a discovery +which in former days would have made me half delirious with joy. It left +me cold. I did not even dismount to examine the site. "Farewell to +stones" I thought.... + +Often we lingered by the Fontana Trevi to watch the children disporting +themselves in the water and diving for pennies--a pretty scene which has +now been banished from the politer regions of Rome (the town has grown +painfully proper). There, at the foot of that weedy and vacuous and yet +charming old Neptune--how perfectly he suits his age!--there, if you +look, you will see certain gigantic leaves sculptured into the rock. I +once overheard a German she-tourist saying to her companion, as she +pointed to these things: "Ist doch sonderbar, wie das Wasser so die +Pflanzen versteinert." She thought they were natural plants petrified by +the water's action. + +What happened yesterday was equally surprising. We were sitting at the +Arch of Constantine and I was telling my friend about the Coliseum hard +by and how, not long ago, it was a thicket of trees and flowers, looking +less like a ruin than some wooded mountain. Now the Coliseum is surely +one of the most famous structures in the world. Even they who have never +been to the spot would recognize it from those myriad reproductions +--especially, one would think, an Italian. Nevertheless, while thus +discoursing, a man came up to us, a well-dressed man, who politely +inquired: + +"Could you tell me the name of this castello?" + +I am glad to think that some account of the rich and singular flora of +the Coliseum has been preserved by Deakin and Sebastiani, and possibly +by others. I could round their efforts by describing the fauna of the +Coliseum. The fauna of the Coliseum--especially after 11 p.m.--would +make a readable book; readable but hardly printable. + +These little local studies are not without charm. Somebody, one day, may +be induced to tell us about the fauna of Trafalgar Square. He should +begin with a description of the horse standing on three legs and gazing +inanely out of those human eyes after the fashion of its classic +prototype; then pass on to the lions beloved of our good Richard +Jefferies which look like puppy-dogs modelled in cotton-wool (why did +the sculptor not take a few lessons in lions from the sand-artist on +Yarmouth beach?), and conclude by dwelling as charitably as possible on +the human fauna--that droll little man, barely discernible, perched on +the summit of his lead pencil.... + +There was a slight earthquake at sunrise. I felt nothing.... + +And, appropriately enough, I encountered this afternoon M. M., that most +charming of persons, who, like Shelley and others, has discovered Italy +to be a "paradise of exiles." His friends may guess whom I mean when I +say that M. M. is connoisseur of earthquakes social and financial; his +existence has been punctuated by them to such an extent that he no +longer counts events from dates in the ordinary calendar, from birthdays +or Christmas or Easter, but from such and such a disaster affecting +himself. Each has left him seemingly more mellow than the last. Just +then, however, he was in pensive mood, his face all puckered into +wrinkles as he glanced upon the tawny flood rolling beneath that old +bridge. There he stood, leaning over the parapet, all by himself. He +turned his countenance aside on seeing me, to escape detection, but I +drew nigh none the less. + +"Go away," he said. "Don't disturb me just now. I am watching the little +fishes. Life is so complicated! Let us pray. I have begun a new novel +and a new love-affair." + +"God prosper both!" I replied, and began to move off. + +"Thanks. But supposing the publisher always objects to your choicest +paragraphs?" + +"I am not altogether surprised, if they are anything like what you once +read to me out of your unexpurgated 'House of the Seven Harlots.' Why +not try another firm? They might be more accommodating. Try mine." + +He shook his head dubiously. + +"They are all alike. It is with publishers as with wives: one always +wants somebody else's. And when you have them, where's the difference? +Ah, let us pray. These little fishes have none of our troubles." + +I inquired about the new romance. At first he refused to disclose +anything. Then he told me it was to be entitled "With Christ at +Harvard," and that it promised some rather novel situations. I shall +look forward to its appearance. + +What good things one could relate of M. M., but for the risk of +incurring his wrath! It is a thousand pities, I often tell him, that he +is still alive; I am yearning to write his biography, and cannot afford +to wait for his dissolution. + +"When I am dead," he always says. + +"By that time, my dear M., I shall be in the same fix myself." + +"Try to survive. You may find it worth your while, when you come to look +into my papers. You don't know half. And I may be taking that little +sleeping-draught of mine any one of these days...." [12] + +Mused long that night, and not without a certain envy, on the lot of M. +M. and other earthquake-connoisseurs--or rather on the lot of that true +philosopher, if he exists, who, far from being damaged by such +convulsions, distils therefrom subtle matter of mirth, I have only known +one single man--it happened to be a woman, an Austrian--who approached +this ideal of splendid isolation. She lived her own life, serenely +happy, refusing to acquiesce in the delusions and conventionalities of +the crowd; she had ceased to trouble herself about neighbours, save as a +source of quiet amusement; a state of affairs which had been brought +about by a succession of benevolent earthquakes that refined and +clarified her outlook. + +Such disasters, obviously, have their uses. They knock down obsolete +rubbish and enable a man to start building anew. The most sensitive +recluse cannot help being a member of society. As such, he unavoidably +gathers about him a host of mere acquaintances, good folks who waste his +time dulling the edge of his wit and infecting him with their orthodoxy. +Then comes the cataclysm. He loses, let us say, all his money, or makes +a third appearance in the divorce courts. He can then at last (so one of +them expressed it to me) "revise his visiting-list," an operation which +more than counterbalances any damage from earthquakes. For these same +good folks are vanished, the scandal having scattered them to the winds. +He begins to breathe again, and employ his hours to better purpose. If +he loses both money and reputation he must feel, I should think, as +though treading on air. The last fools gone! And no sage lacks friends. + +Consider well your neighbour, what an imbecile he is. Then ask yourself +whether it be worth while paying any attention to what he thinks of you. +Life is too short, and death the end of all things. Life must be lived, +not endured. Were the day twice as long as it is, a man might find it +diverting to probe down into that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try +to reach some common root of feeling other than those physiological +needs which we share with every beast of earth. Diverting; hardly +profitable. It would be like looking for a flea in a haystack, or a joke +in the Bible. They can perhaps be found; at the expense of how much +trouble! + +Therefore the sage will go his way, prepared to find himself growing +ever more out of sympathy with vulgar trends of opinion, for such is the +inevitable development of thoughtful and self-respecting minds. He +scorns to make proselytes among his fellows: they are not worth it. He +has better things to do. While others nurse their griefs, he nurses his +joy. He endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and to be +true to that self when found--a worthy and ample occupation for a +life-time. The happiness-of-the-greatest-number, of those who pasture on +delusions: what dreamer is responsible for this eunuchry? Mill, was it? +Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest number were not necessarily the +least-intelligent! As if their happiness were not necessarily +incompatible with that of the sage! Why foster it? He is a poor +philosopher, who cuts his own throat. Away with their ghosts; +de-spiritualize yourself; what you cannot find on earth is not worth +seeking. + +That charming M. M., I fear, will never compass this clarity of vision, +this perfect de-spiritualization and contempt of illusions. He will +never remain curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in +nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has inherited that all +too common taint of psychasthenia (miscalled neurasthenia); he +confesses, moreover,--like other men of strong carnal proclivities--to +certain immaterial needs and aspirations after "the beyond." Not one of +these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but has his Achilles heel: a +mental crotchet or physical imperfection to mar the worldly perspective. +Not one of them, at close of life, will sit beside some open window in +view of a fair landscape and call up memories of certain moments which +no cataclysms have taken from him; not one will lay them in the balance +and note how they outweigh, in their tiny grains of gold, the dross of +an age of other men's lives. Not one of them! They will be preoccupied, +for the most part, with unseasonable little concerns. Pleasant folk, +none the less. And sufficiently abundant in Italy. Altogether, the +Englishman here is as often an intenser being than the home product. +Alien surroundings awaken fresh and unexpected notes in his nature. His +fibres seem to lie more exposed; you have glimpses into the man's +anatomy. There is something hostile in this sunlight to the hazy or +spongy quality which saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the +sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will also meet with dull +persons; Rome is full of them, but, the type being easier to detect +among a foreign environment, there is still less difficulty in evading +them.... + +Thus I should have had no compunction, some nights ago, in making myself +highly objectionable to Mr. P. G. who has turned up here on some mission +connected with the war--so he says, and it may well be true; no +compunction whatever, had that gentleman been in his ordinary social +state. Mr. P. G., the acme of British propriety, inhabiting a house, a +mansion, on the breezy heights of north London, was on that occasion +decidedly drunk. "Indulging in a jag," he would probably have called it. +He tottered into a place where I happened to be sitting, having lost his +friends, he declared; and soon began pouring into my ear, after the +confidential manner of a drunkard, a flood of low talk, which if I +attempted to set it down here, would only result in my being treated to +the same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with his "choicest +paragraphs." It was highly instructive--the contrast between that +impeccable personality which he displays at home and his present state. +I wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a few shreds of +what he said--just a few shreds; they would have seen a new light on +dear daddy. + +In vino veritas. Ever avid of experimentum in some corpore vili and +determined to reach the bed-rock of his gross mentality, I plied him +vigorously with drink, and was rewarded. It was rich sport, unmasking +this Philistine and thanking God, meanwhile, that I was not like unto +him. We are all lost sheep; and none the worse for that. Yet whoso is +liable, however drunk, to make an exhibition of himself after the +peculiar fashion of Mr. P. G., should realize that there is something +fundamentally wrong with his character and take drastic measures of +reform--measures which would include, among others, a total abstention +from alcohol. Old Aristotle, long ago, laboured to define wherein +consisted the trait known as gentlemanliness; others will have puzzled +since his day, for we have bedaubed ourselves with so thick a coating of +manner and phrase that many a cad will pass for something better. Well, +here is the test. Unvarnish your man; make him drink, and listen. That +was my procedure with P. G. Esquire. I listened to his outpouring of +inanity and obscenity and, listening sympathetically, like some +compassionate family doctor, could not help asking myself: Is such a man +to be respected, even when sober? Be that as it may, he gave me to +understand why some folk are rightly afraid of exposing, under the +influence of drink, the bete humaine which lurks below their skin of +decency. His language would have terrified many people. Me it rejoiced. +I would not have missed that entertainment for worlds. He finally wanted +to have a fight, because I refused to accompany him to a certain place +of delights, the address of which--I might have given him a far better +one--had been scrawled on the back of a crumpled envelope by some +cabman. Unable to stand on his legs, what could he hope to do there? + + + + +Olevano + +I have loafed into Olevano. + +A thousand feet below my window, and far away, lies the gap between the +Alban and Volscian hills; veiled in mists, the Pontine marches extend +beyond, and further still--discernible only to the eye of faith--the +Tyrrhenian. + +The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable grace. It recalls +Etna, as viewed from Taormina. How the mountain cleaves to earth, how +reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line! +Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on its +lower slope. Standing out against the sky, they can be seen at all hours +of the day, whereas the dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on the green +plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades out of sight after midday. + +Hard by, on your right, are the craggy heights of Capranica. Tradition +has it that Michael Angelo was in exile up there, after doing something +rather risky. What had he done? He crucified his model, desirous, like a +true artist, to observe and reproduce faithfully in marble the muscular +contractions and facial agony of such a sufferer. To crucify a man: this +was going almost too far, even for the Pope of that period, who seems to +have been an unusually sensitive pontiff--or perhaps the victim was a +particular friend of his. However that may be, he waxed wroth and +banished the conscientious sculptor in disgrace to this lonely mountain +village, there to expiate his sins, for a day or two.... + +One sleeps badly here. Those nightingales--they are worse than the +tram-cars in town. They begin earlier. They make more noise. Surely +there is a time for everything? Will certain birds never learn to sing +at reasonable hours? + +A word as to these nightingales. One of them elects to warble, in +deplorably full-throated ease, immediately below my bedroom window. When +this particular fowl sets up its din at about 3.45 a.m. it is a +veritable explosion; an ear-rending, nerve-shattering explosion of +noise. I use that word "noise" deliberately. For it is not music--not +until your ears are grown accustomed to it. + +I know a little something about music, having studied the art with +considerable diligence for a number of years. Impossible to enumerate +all the composers and executants on various instruments, the conductors +and opera-singers and ballet-girls with whom I was on terms of +familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps I am the only person now +alive who has shaken hands with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with +Beethoven and heard his voice; all of which may appear when I come to +indite my musical memoirs. I have written a sonata in four movements, +opus 643, hitherto unpublished, and played the organ during divine +service to a crowded congregation. Furthermore I performed, not at my +own suggestion, his insipid Valse Caprice to the great Antoine +Rubinstein, who was kind enough to observe: "Yes, yes. Quite good. But I +rather doubt whether you could yet risk playing that in a concert." And +in the matter of sheer noise I am also something of an expert, having +once, as an infant prodigy, broken five notes in a single masterly +rendering of Liszt's polonaise in E Major--I think it is E +Major--whereupon my teacher, himself a pupil of Liszt, genially +remarked: "Now don't cry, and don't apologize. A polonaise like yours is +worth a piano." I set these things down with modest diffidence, solely +in order to establish my locus standi as a person who might be expected +to know the difference between sound and noise. As such, I have no +hesitation in saying that the first three bars of that nightingale +performance are, to sleeping ears, not music. They break upon the +stillness with the crash of Judgment Day. + +And every night the same scare. It causes me to start up, bathed in +sudden perspiration, out of my first, and best, and often only sleep, +with the familiar feeling that something awful is happening. Windows +seem to rattle, plaster drops from the ceiling--an earthquake? Lord, no. +Nothing so trivial. Nothing so brief. It is that blasted bird clearing +its throat for a five hours' entertainment. Let it not be supposed that +the song of these southerners bears any resemblance to that of an +English nightingale. I could stand a hatful of English nightingales in +my bedroom; they would lull me to sleep with their anaemic whispers. You +might as well compare the voice of an Italian costermonger, the crowing +of a cock, the braying of a local donkey, with their representatives in +the north--those thin trickles of sound, shadowy as the squeakings of +ghosts. Something will have to be done about those nightingales unless I +am to find my way into a sanatorium. For hardly is this bird started on +its work before five or six others begin to shout in emulation--a little +further off, I am glad to say, but still near enough to be inconvenient; +still near enough to be reached by a brick from this window----A brick. +Methinks I begin to see daylight.... + +Meanwhile one can snatch a little rest out of doors, in the afternoon. A +delectable path, for example, runs up behind the cemetery, bordered by +butterfly orchids and lithospermum and aristolochia and other plants +worthy of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with +views on either side. Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some +rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of +nightingales--soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole +among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of +some wryneck in the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet +time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen are all at the front. +I kicked up a partridge along this track two days ago. + +Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant but hard to see. They sit +close, relying on their protective colour. And it is the same with the +tree-creepers. I have heard Englishmen say there are no tree-creepers in +Italy. The olive groves are well stocked with them (there are numbers +even in the Borghese Gardens in Rome), but you must remain immovable as +a rock in order to see them; for they are yet shyer, more silent, more +fond of interposing the tree-trunk between yourself and them, than those +at home. Mouse-like in hue, in movement and voice--a strange case of +analogous variation.... + +As to this Scalambra, this mountain whose bleak grey summit overtops +everything near Olevano, I could soon bear the sight of it no longer. It +seemed to shut out the world; one must up and glance over the edge, to +see what is happening on the other side. I looked for a guide and +porter, for somebody more solid than Giulio, who is almost an infant; +none could be found. Men are growing scarce as the Dodo hereabouts, on +account of the war. So Giulio came, though he had never made the ascent. + +Now common sense, to say nothing of a glance at the map, would suggest +the proper method of approach: by the village of Serrano, the Saint +Michael hermitage, and so up. Scouting this plan, I attacked the +mountain about half-way between that village and Rojate. I cannot +recommend my route. It was wearisome to the last degree and absolutely +shadeless save for a small piece of jungle clothing a gulley, hung with +myriads of caterpillars and not worth mentioning as an incident in that +long walk. No excitement--not the faintest chance, so far as I could +see, of breaking one's neck, and uphill all the time over limestone. One +never seems to get any nearer. This Scalambra, I soon discovered, is one +of those artful mountains which defend their summits by thrusting out +escarpments with valleys in between; you are kept at arm's length, as it +were, by this arrangement of the rock, which is invisible at a distance. +And when at last you set foot on the real ridge and climb laboriously to +what seems to be the top--lo! there is another peak a little further +off, obviously a few feet higher. Up you go, only to discover a third, +perhaps a few inches higher still. Alpine climbers know these tricks. + +We reached the goal none the less and there lay, panting and gasping; +while an eagle, a solitary eagle with tattered wings, floated overhead +in the cloudless sky. + +The descent to Rojate under that blazing sun was bad enough. My flask +had been drained to the dregs long ago, and the Scalambra, true to its +limestone tradition, had not supplied even a drop of water. Arriving at +the village at about two in the afternoon, we found it deserted; +everybody enjoying their Sunday nap. Rojate is a dirty hole. The water +was plainly not to be trusted; it might contain typhoid germs, and I was +responsible for Giulio's health; wine would be safer, we agreed. There, +in a little shop near the church--a dark and cool place, the first shade +we had entered for many hours--we drank without ever growing less +thirsty. We felt like cinders, so hot, so porous, that the liquid seemed +not only to find its way into the legitimate receptacle but to be +obliged to percolate, by some occult process of capillarity, the +remotest regions of the body. As time went on, the inhabitants dropped +in after their slumbers and kept us company. We told our adventures, +drank to the health of the Allies one by one and several times over; and +it was not until we had risen to our feet and passed once more into the +sunshine of the square that we suddenly felt different from what we +thought we felt. + +The first indication was conveyed by Giulio, who called upon the +populace of Rojate, there assembled, to bear solemn witness to the fact +that I was his one and only friend, and that he would nevermore abandon +me--a sentiment in which I stoutly concurred. (A fellow-feeling makes us +wondrous blind.) Other symptoms followed. His hat, for example, which +had hitherto behaved in exemplary fashion, now refused to remain +steadily balanced on his head; it took some first-class gymnastics to +prevent it from falling to the ground. In fact, while I confined myself +to the minor part of Silenus--my native role--this youngster gave a +noteworthy representation of the Drunken Faun.... + +Now I see no harm in appreciating wine up to a certain point, and am +consoled to observe that Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., was of the same +way of thinking. He says so himself, and there is no reason for doubting +his word. He frankly admits, for instance, that he enjoys the stuff +called moscato "with great zest." He samples the Falernian vintage and +pronounces it to be "particularly good, and not degenerated." Arrived at +Cutro, he is not averse to reviving his spirits with "a pretty fair +modicum of wine." He also lets slip--significant detail--the fact that +Dr. Henderson was one of his friends, and that he travelled about with +him. You may judge a man by the company he keeps. Who was this Dr. +Henderson? He was the author of "The History of Ancient Wines." Old +Henderson, I should say, could be trusted to know something of local +vintages. + +And so far good. + +At Licenza, however, Ramage tells us that he "got glorious on the wine +of Horace's Sabine farm." I do not know what he means by this +expression, which seems to be purposely ambiguous; in any case, it does +not sound very nice. At another place, again, he and his entertainer +consumed some excellent liquor "in considerable quantity"--so he avows; +adding that "it was long past midnight ere we closed our bacchanalian +orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that he was happy to have +made my acquaintance." Note the lame and colourless close of that +sentence: he ended by stating. One always ends that way after +bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss over the escapade +with such disingenuous language. + +We can guess what really took place. It was something like what happened +at Rojate. Did not the curly-haired Giulio end by "stating" something to +the same effect? + +I cannot make up my mind whether to be pleased with this particular +trait in friend Ramage's character. For let it never be forgotten that +our traveller was a young man at the time. He says so himself, and there +is no reason for doubting his word. Was he acting as beseemed his years? + +I am not more straight-laced than many people, yet I confess it always +gives me a kind of twinge to see a young man yielding to intemperance of +any kind. There is something incongruous in the spectacle, if not +actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt to associate that +time of life with stern resolve. A young man, it appears to me, should +hold himself well in hand. Youth has so much to spare! Youth can afford +to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming ahead, it should be a +period of ideals, of self-restraint and self-discipline, of earnestness +of purpose. How well the Greek Anthology praises "Temperance, the nurse +of Youth!" The divine Plato lays it down that youngsters should not +touch wine at all, since it is not right to heap fire on fire. He adds +that older men like ourselves may indulge therein as an ally against the +austerity of their years--agreeing, therefore, with Theophrastus who +likewise recommends it for the "natural moroseness" of age. + +Observe in this connection what happened to Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., +at Trebisacce. Here was a poor old coastguard who had been taken +prisoner by the Corsairs thirty years earlier, carried to Algiers, and +afterwards ransomed. Having "nothing better to do" (says our author) "I +confess I furnished him with somewhat more wine than was exactly +consistent with propriety"; with so liberal a quantity, indeed, that the +coastguard became quite "obstreperous in his mirth"; whereupon Ramage +hops on his mule and leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young +fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And why? Because he has +"nothing better to do." [13] It is not remarkably edifying. True, he +afterwards makes a kind of apology for "causing my brother to sin by +over-indulgence...." + +But if we close our eyes to the fact that Ramage, when he gave way to +these excesses, was a young man and ought to have known better, what an +agreeable companion we find him! + +He never rails at anything. Had I been subjected to half the annoyances +he endured, my curses would have been loud and long. Under such +provocation, Ramage contents himself with reproving his tormentors in +rounded phrases of oratio obliqua which savour strongly of those Latin +classics he knew so well. What he says of the countryfolk is not only +polite but true, that their virtues are their own, while their vices +have been fostered by the abuses of tyranny. "Whatever fault one may +find with this people for their superstition and ignorance, there is a +loveableness in their character which I am not utilitarian enough in my +philosophy to resist." This comes of travelling off the beaten track and +with an open mind; it comes of direct contact. When one remembers that +he wrote in 1828 and was derived from a bigoted stock, his religious +tolerance is refreshing--astonishing. He studies the observances of the +poorer classes with sympathetic eye and finds that they are "pious to a +degree to which I am afraid we must grant that we have no pretensions." +That custom of suspending votive offerings in churches he does not think +"worthy of being altogether condemned or ridiculed. The feeling is the +same that induces us, on recovery from severe illness, to give thanks to +Almighty God, either publicly in church or privately in our closets." +How many Calvinists of to-day would write like this? + +We could do with more of these sensible and humane reflections, but +unfortunately he is generally too "pressed for time" to indulge in them. +That mania of hustling through the country.... + +One morning he finds himself at Foggia, with the intention of visiting +Mons Garganus. First of all he must "satisfy his curiosity" about Arpi; +it is ten miles there and back. Leaving Foggia for the second time he +proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and inspects not only this town, +but the site of old Sipontum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, +and later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promontory. About six +miles to the north are the presumable ruins of Merinum; he insists upon +going there, but the boatmen strike work; regretfully he returns to +Manfredonia, arriving at 11 p.m., and having covered on this day some +sixty or seventy miles. What does he do at Manfredonia? He sleeps for +three hours--and then a new hustle begins, in pitch darkness. + +Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he will visit the Siren +Islets. He crosses the ridge and descends to the sea on the other side, +to the so-called Scaricatojo--quite a respectable walk, as any one can +find out for himself. Hence he sails to the larger of the islets, climbs +to the summit and makes some excavations, in the course of which he +observes what I thought I was the first to discover--the substructures +of a noble Roman villa; he also scrambles into King Robert's tower. Then +to the next islet, and up it; then to the third, and up it. After that, +he is tempted to visit the headland of Minerva; he goes there, and +satisfies his curiosity. He must now hence to Capri. He sails across, +and after a little refreshment, walks to the so-called Villa of Jupiter +at the easterly apex of the island. He then rows round the southern +shore and is taken with the idea of a trip to Misenum, twenty miles or +so distant. Arrived there, he climbs to the summit of the cape and +lingers a while--it is pleasant to find him lingering--to examine +something or other. Then he "rushes" down to the boat and bids them row +to Pozzuoli, where he arrives (and no wonder) long after sunset. A good +day's hustle.... + +The ladies made a great impression on his sensitive mind; yet not even +they were allowed to interfere with his plans. At Strongoli the +"sparkling eyes of the younger sister" proved the most attractive object +in the place. He was strongly urged to remain a while and rest from his +fatigues. But no; there were many reasons why he should press forward. +He therefore presses forward. At another place, too, he was waited upon +by his entertainer's three daughters, the youngest of whom was one of +the most entrancing girls he had ever met with--in fact, it was well +that his time was limited, else "I verily believe I should have +committed all kinds of follies." That is Ramage. He parts from his host +with "unfeigned regret"--but--parts. His time is always limited. Bit for +that craze of pressing forward, what fun he could have had! + +Stroll to that grove of oaks crowning a hill-top above the Serpentaro +stream. It has often been described, often painted. It is a corner of +Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in the warm dusk of +southern twilight--when all those tiresome children are at last +asleep--it calls up suggestions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here is a +specimen of the landscape as it used to be. You may encounter during +your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved by their +inaccessibility from the invading axe. "Hands off the Oak!" cries an old +Greek poet. + +The Germans, realizing its picturesque value, bought this parcel of land +and saved the trees from destruction. It was well done. Within, they +have cut certain letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan +sanctity of the place--Germans will do these things; there is no +stopping them; it is part of their crudely expansive temperament +--certain letterings, among other and major horrors, anent the "Law of +the Ever-beautiful" (how truly Teutonic!)--lines, that is, signed by the +poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated 2 May, 1897. Scheffel was a kindly +and erudite old toper, who toped himself into Elysium via countless +quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things; the far-famed +Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit to the Hohentwiel mountain +in search of that golden-tinted natrolite mineral, which was duly found +(I specialized in zeolites during that period). + +Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in 1897? For I attended +his funeral, which took place in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, +a scraggy youth in those days, inherited not only the father's name but +his poetic mantle? Was it he who perpetrated those sententious lines? I +like to think so. That "law of the ever-beautiful" does not smack of the +old man, unless he was more disguised than usual, and having a little +fun with his pedantic countrymen.... + +Climb hence--it is not far--to the village of Civitella, now called +Bellegra, a prehistoric fastness with some traces of "cyclopean" +defences. Those ancients must have had cisterns; inconceivable that +springs should ever have issued from this limestone crag. You can see +the women of to-day fetching water from below, from a spot which I was +too lazy to investigate, where perhaps the soft tertiary rock leans upon +this impervious stuff and allows the liquid to escape into the open. An +unclean place is Bellegra, and loud, like all these Sabine villages, +with the confused crying of little children. That multiple wail of +misery will ring in your ear for days afterwards. They are more +neglected by their mothers than ever, since women now have all the men's +work in the fields to do. They are hungrier than ever, on account of the +war which has imposed real hardships on these agricultural folk; +hardships that seize them by the throat and make them sit down, with +folded hands, in dumb despair: so I have seen them. How many of these +unhappy babies will grow to maturity? + +Death-rate must anyhow be high hereabouts, for nothing is done in the +way of hygiene. In the company of one who knows, I perambulated the +cemetery of Olevano and was astonished at the frequency of tombstones +erected to the young. "Consumption," my friend told me. They scorn +prophylactics. I should not care to send growing children into these +villages, despite their "fine air." Here, at Bellegra, the air must be +fine indeed in winter; too fine for my taste. It lies high, exposed to +every blast of Heaven, and with noble views in all directions. + +Rest awhile, on your homeward march, at the small bridge near Olevano +where the road takes a turn. A few hundred yards up the glen on your +left is a fountain whose waters are renowned for their purity; the +bridge itself is not a favourite spot after sunset; it is haunted by a +most malignant spectre. That adds considerably, in my eyes, to the charm +of the place. Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower. +What recollections does that scent evoke! What hints of summer, after +rain! + +A venerable tree, old as the hills; that last syllable tells its +tale--you may read it in the Sanscrit. A man-loving tree; seldom one +sees an elder by itself, away from human habitations, in the jungle. I +have done so; but in that particular jungle, buried beneath the soil, +were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin to attach itself to the +works of man, to walls and buildings? And why? Does it derive peculiar +sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in +lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks +shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel +wondrously when the plant is set in exposed situations. + +The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use the berries to colour +the wine. A German writer, R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of +Leit-motif for one of his local novels. I met him once by accident, and +am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal and flabbily pompous old +man--straightway my opinion of his books, never very high, fell to zero, +and has there remained. He knew these regions well, and doubtless +sojourned at one time or another at yonder caravanserai-hotel, abandoned +of late, but then filled with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have +since been sacrificed to the war-god. Doubtless he drank wine with them +on that terrace overlooking the brown houses of Olevano, though I +question whether he then paid as much as they are now charging me; +doubtless he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies fronting +the landscape, though I question whether he derived more pleasure from +them than I do.... + +While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards to where, in the +Abruzzi region, the peaks are still shrouded in snow. + +How are they doing our there, at Scanno? Is that driving-road at last +finished? Can the "River Danube" still be heard flowing underground in +the little cave of Saint Martin? Are the thistles of violet and red and +blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as ever? [14] And those legions of +butterflies--do they still hover among the sunny patches in the narrow +vale leading to Mount Terrata? And Frattura, that strange place--what +has happened to Frattura? Built on a fracture, on the rubble of that +shattered mountain which produced the lake lower down, it has probably +crumbled away in the last earthquake. Well I remember Frattura! It was +where the wolf ate the donkey, and where we, in our turn, often +refreshed ourselves in the dim hovel of Ferdinando--never with greater +zest than on the hot downward march from Mount Genzana. Whether those +small purple gentians are still to be found on its summit? And the +emerald lizard on the lower slopes? Whether the eagles still breed on +the neighbouring Montagna di Preccia? They may well be tired of having +their nest plundered year after year. + +What foreigner has older and pleasanter memories of Scanno? I would like +to meet that man, and compare notes. + +And so, glancing over the hills from Bellegra, I sent my thoughts into +those Abruzzi mountains, and registered a vow to revisit Scanno--if only +in order to traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld lang +syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger in that moist nook by +the lake-side where stood the Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if +such it was, of the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly +dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one evening, I listened to +something that might have been said much sooner. Acque Vive.... + +I kept my vow. Our bill at Scanno for wine alone was 189 francs, and for +beer 92 francs; figures which look more formidable than they are and +which I cite only to prove that we--for of course I was not +alone--enjoyed ourselves fairly well during those eighteen days. By the +way, what does Baedeker mean by speaking of the "excellent wines" of +Scanno, where not a drop is grown? He might have said the same of +Aberdeen. + +The season was too late for the thistles, too late for the little +coppers and fritillaries and queens of Spain and commas and all the rest +of that fluttering tribe in the narrow vale leading to Terrata, though +wood-pigeons were still cooing there. Scanno has been spared by the +earthquake which laid low so many other places; it has prospered; +prospered too much for my taste, since those rich smoky tints, +especially of the vaulted interiors, are now disappearing under an +invasion of iron beams and white plaster. The golden duskiness of +Scanno, heightened as it was by the gleaming copper vessels borne on +every young girl's head, will soon be a thing of the past. Young trees +along the road-side--well-chosen trees: limes, maples, willows, elms, +chestnuts, ashes--are likewise doing well and promise pretty effects of +variegated foliage in a few years' time; so are the plantations of pines +in the higher regions of the Genzana. In this matter of afforestation, +Scanno continues its system of draconic severity. It is worth while, in +a country which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of goats on +the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water. The Sagittario stream +is hemmed in by a cunning device of stones contained within bags of +strong wire; it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from +Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you will find they have +been scientifically dammed by the administration, whereas the peasant, +when they overflow and ruin his crops, contents himself with damning +them in quite an amateurish fashion. Which reminds me that I picked up +during this visit, and have added to my collection, a new term of abuse +to be addressed to your father-in-law: Porcaccio d'un cagnaccio! Novel +effects, you perceive, obtained by a mere intensification of colour. + +As to Frattura--yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried to identify +Ferdinando's abode among all that debris. The old man himself escaped +the cataclysm, and now sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden +shanties erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio, of whom +more on p. 171, has died; his place is taken by a worthless vagabond. +Saint Domenico and his serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis +fanum), that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears the +problematical date of 600 A.D.--they are all in their former places. +Mount Velino still glitters over the landscape, for those who climb high +enough to see it. The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the +water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume, still carry those +immense loads of wood on their heads, though payment is considerably +higher than the three half-pence a day which it used to be. + +Enough of Scanno! + +Whoever wishes to leave the place on foot and by an unconventional +route, may go to Sora via Pescasseroli. Adventurous souls will scramble +over the Terrata massif, leaving the summit well on their right, and +descend on its further side; others may wander up the Valle dei Prati +and then, bending to the right along the so-called Via del Campo, mount +upwards past a thronged alp of sheep, over the watershed, and down +through charming valleys of beechen timber. A noble walk, and one that +compares favourably with many Abruzzi excursions. What deserts they +often are, these stretches of arid limestone, voiceless and waterless, +with the raven's croak for your only company! + +I am glad to have seen Pescasseroli, where we arrived at about 9 a.m. +For the rest, it is only one of many such places that have been brought +to a state of degradation by the earthquake, the present war, and +governmental neglect. Not an ounce of bread was procurable for money, or +even as a gift. The ordinary needs of life--cigars, matches, maccheroni +and so forth: there were none of them. An epidemic of the gapes, +infecting the entire race of local hens, had caused the disappearance of +every egg from the market. And all those other countless things which a +family requires for its maintenance--soap and cloth and earthenware and +kitchen utensils and oils--they have become rarities; the natives are +learning to subsist without them; relapsing into a kind of barbarism. So +they sit among the cracked tenements; resentful, or dumbly apathetic. + +"We have been forgotten," said one of them. + +The priests inculcate submission to the will of God. What else should +they teach? But men will outgrow these doctrines of patience when +suffering is too acute or too prolonged. "Anything is better than this," +they say. Thus it comes about that these ruined regions are a goodly +soil for the sowing of subversive opinions; the land reeks of +ill-digested socialism. + +We found a "restaurant" where we lunched off a tin of antediluvian +Spanish sardines, some mouldy sweet biscuits, and black wine. (A +distinction is made in these parts between black and red wine; the +former is the Apulian variety, the other from Sulmona.) During this +repast, we were treated to several bear-stories. For there are bears at +Pescasseroli, and nowhere else in Italy; even as there are chamois +nearby, between Opi and Villetta Barrea, among the crags of the +Camosciara, which perpetuates their name. One of those present assured +us that the bear is a good beast; he will eat a man, of course, but if +he meets a little boy, he contents himself with throwing stones at +him--just to teach him good manners. Certain old bears are as big as a +donkey. They have been seen driving into their cave a flock of +twenty-five sheep, like any shepherd. It is no rare thing to encounter +in the woods a bear with a goat slung over his shoulder; he must +breakfast, like anybody else. One of these gentlemen told us that the +bears, not long ago, were a source of considerable profit to the +peasantry round about. It was in this wise. Their numbers had been +reduced, it seems, to a single pair and the species was threatened with +extinction, when, somehow or other, this state of affairs became known +to the King who, alarmed at the disappearance from his realm of a +venerable and autochtonous quadruped, the largest European beast of +prey, conceived the happy idea of converting the whole region into a +Royal Preserve. On pain of death, no bear was to be molested or even +laughed at; any damage they might do would be compensated out of the +Royal Purse. + +For a week or so after this enactment, nothing was heard of the bears. +Then, one morning, the conscientious Minister of the Royal Household +presented himself at the palace, with a large sheaf of documents under +his arm. + +"What have we here?" inquired the King. + +"Attestations relating to the bears of Pescasseroli, Your Majesty. They +seem to be thriving." + +"Ah! That is nice of them. They are multiplying once more, thanks to Our +Royal protection. We thought they would." + +"Multiplying indeed, Sire. Here are testimonials, sworn before the local +syndic, showing that they have devoured 18 head of cattle and 43 sheep." + +"In that short time? Is it possible? Well, well! The damage must be +paid. And yet We never knew the bears could propagate so fast. Maybe our +Italian variety is peculiarly vigorous in such matters." + +"Seems so, Your Majesty. Very prolific." + +A week or so passed and, once more, His Excellency was announced. The +King observed: + +"You are not looking quite yourself this morning, my good Minister. +Would it be indiscreet to inquire the cause? No family or parliamentary +worries, We trust?" + +"Your Majesty is very kind! No. It is the bears of Pescasseroli. They +have eaten 75 head of cattle, 93 sheep, and 114 goats. Ah--and 18 +horses. Here are the claims for damages, notarially attested." + +"We must pay. But if only somebody could teach the dear creatures to +breed a little more reasonably!" + +"I cannot but think, Sire, that the peasants are abusing Your +Majesty's----" + +"May We never live to hear anything against Our faithful and +well-beloved Abruzzi folk!" + +Nearly a month elapsed before the Minister again presented himself. This +time he looked really haggard and careworn, and was bowed down under an +enormous bundle of papers. The King glanced up from that writing-desk +where, like all other sovereigns, he had been working steadily since +4.30 a.m., and at once remarked, with that sympathetic intuition for +which he is famous among crowned heads: + +"We think We know. The bears." + +Your Majesty is never wrong. They have devoured 126 cows and calves and +bullocks, 418 sheep and goats, 62 mules, 37 horses, and 96 donkeys. Also +55 shepherd dogs and 827 chickens. Here are the claims." + +"Dear, dear, dear. This will never do. If it is a question of going to +ruin, We prefer that it should be the bears rather than Ourselves. We +must withdraw Our Royal protection, after settling up these last items. +What say you, my good Minister?" + +"Your Majesty is always right. A private individual may indulge in the +pastime of breeding bears to the verge of personal bankruptcy. Ruling +sovereigns will be guided by juster and more complex considerations." + +And from that moment, added our gentlemanly informant, there began a +wonderful shrinkage in the numbers of the bears. Within a day or two, +they were again reduced to a single couple. + +Gladly would I have listened to more of these tales but, having by far +the worst of the day's walk still before us, we left the stricken +regions about midday and soon began an interminable ascent, all through +woods, to the shrine of Madonna di Tranquillo. Hereabouts is the +watershed, whence you may see, far below, the tower of Campoli Apennino. +That village was passed in due course, and Sora lay before us, after a +thirteen hours' march.... + +That same night in Sora--it may have been 2 a.m.--some demon drew nigh +to my bedside and whispered in my ear: "What are you doing here, at +Sora? Why not revisit Alatri? (I had been there already in June.) Just +another little promenade! Up, sluggard, while the night-air is cool!" + +I obeyed the summons and turned to rouse my slumbering companion, to +whom I announced my inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were +well worth listening to. + +Next evening found us at Alatri. + +Now whoever, after walking from Scanno over Pescasseroli to Sora in one +day, and on the next, in the blazing heat of early autumn, from Sora +over Isola Liri and Veroli to Alatri--touching in two days the soil of +three Italian provinces: Aquila, Caserta, and Rome--whoever, after doing +this, and inspecting the convent of Casamari en route, feels inclined +for a similar promenade on the third day: let him rest assured of my +profound respect. + +Calm, sunny days at Olevano. And tranquil nights, for some time past. + +The nightingale has been inspired to move a little up country, into +another bush. Its rivals have likewise retired further off, and their +melodramatic trills sound quite pleasant at this distance. + +So tin cans have their uses, even when empty. Certain building +operations may have been interrupted. I apologise, though I will not +promise not to repeat the offence. They can move their nests; I cannot +move this house. Bless their souls! I would not hurt a hair on their +dear little heads, but one must really have a few hours' sleep, somehow +or other. A single night's repose is more precious to me than a myriad +birds or quadrupeds or bipeds; my ideas on the sacred nature of sleep +being perfectly Oriental. That Black Hole of Calcutta was an infamous +business. And yet, while nowise approving the tyrant's action, I can +thoroughly understand his instructions on the subject of slumber. + +Not every one at Olevano is so callous. Waiting the other day at the +bifurcation of the roads for the arrival of the station motor-car--the +social event of the place--I noticed two children bringing up to a +bigger one the nest of a chaffinch, artfully frosted over with silver +lichen from some olive, and containing a naked brood which sprawled +pathetically within. Wasn't it pretty, they asked? + +"Very pretty," he replied. "Now you will take it straight back where you +found it. Go ahead. I am coming with you." And he marched them off. + +I am glad to put this incident on record. It is the second of its kind +which I have observed in this country, the first being when a fisherman +climbed up a bad piece of rock to replace a nest--idle undertaking-- +which some boys had dislodged with stones. At a short distance from +the scene sat the mother-bird in pensive mood, her head cocked on one +side. What did she think of the benevolent enthusiast?... + +Olevano is said to have been discovered by the Germans. I am sceptical +on this point, having never yet found a place that was discovered by +them. An English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died here +all by himself; though doubtless, once on the spot, they did their best +to popularise and vulgarise it. In this matter, as in art or science or +every department of life, a German requires forerunners. He must follow +footsteps. He gleans; picks the brains of other people, profits by their +mistakes and improves on their ideas. + +I know nothing of the social history of Olevano--of its origin, so far +as foreigners are concerned. It is the easiest and the flimsiest thing +in the world to invent; there are so many analogies! + +The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army +officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across +the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate. +Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to +solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered +about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and +discovered that people there did not like being ordered about as they +should be; they seemed to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been +something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being the first "white man" +in the place gave him a kind of fondness for it. + +It was he, then, who discovered Olevano--Freddy Potter. We can see him +living alone, wiry and whiskered and cantankerous, glorying in his +solitude up to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a +fellow-countryman turns up--Mr. Augustus Browne of London. Mr. Browne is +a blameless personality who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an +equally blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a sportsman like +Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste for landscape painting, with +elaborate flowers and butterflies worked into the foreground. So they +live, each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours, importing +groceries from England, dressing for dinner, avoiding contact with the +"natives" and, of course, pretending to be unaware of one another's +existence. + +As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows stronger. The Major has +never forgiven that cockney for invading Olevano, his private domain, +while Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter, who +presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes those filthy cheroots +in public (this was years and years ago). Why is the fellow skulking +here, all by himself? Some hanky-panky with regimental money; every one +knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of right and wrong. +And Potter is not long in making up his mind that this civilian has +bolted to Olevano for reasons which will not bear investigation and is +living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed name. Browne! He +really might have picked out a better one, while he was about it. That +water-colour business--a blind, a red herring; the so-called lady +companion---- + +The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement the mutual conduct of two +compatriots. They are known, far and wide, as "the madmen" till some +bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not madmen at all, but +only homicides hiding from justice; whereupon contempt is changed to +grudging admiration. + +Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up and departs. The old +Major's delight at being once more alone is of short duration; he falls +ill and is entombed, his last days being embittered by the arrival of a +party of German tourists who declare they have "discovered" this +wonderful new spot, and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to +participate in its joys. + +They come, singly and in batches, and soon make Olevano uninhabitable to +men of the Potter and Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night, +sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street "as if they were +in their bedrooms," organise picnics in the woods, sketch old women +sitting in old doorways, start a Verschoenerungsverein and indulge in a +number of other antics which, from the local point of view, are held to +be either coarse or childish. The natives, after watching their doings +with critical interest, presently pronounce a verdict--a verdict to +which the brightest spirits of the place give their assent--a verdict +which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered. + +"Those Englishmen"--thus it runs--"were at least assassins. These people +are merely fools." + +POSTSCRIPT--One thing has occurred of late which would hardly have +happened were the Germans still in occupation of Olevano. At the central +piazza is a fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly, you +could rest and glance down upon the country lying below--upon a piece of +green landscape peering in upon the street. This little view was like a +window, it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now blocked it +up with an ugly house. The beauty of the site is gone. It is surprising +that local municipalities; however stupid, however corrupt, should not +be aware of the damage done to their own interests when they permit such +outrages. The Germans--were any of them still here--would doubtless have +interfered en masse and stopped the building. + +Something should be done about these reviewers. + +There has followed me hither a bundle of press notices of a recent book +of mine. They are favourable. I ought to be delighted. I happen to be +annoyed. + +What takes place in this absurd book? The three unities are preserved. A +respectable but rather drab individual, a bishop, whose tastes and moods +are fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader, arrives at a +new place and is described as being, among other things, peculiarly +sensitive on the subject of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to +the sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their purity, their +sacred mission on earth, their refining influence upon the race. His +friends call him old-fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman, +he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man, towards the end of the +book, watches how the truest woman in the place, the one whom he admires +more than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly throws her +legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises that he is "face to face +with an atrocious and carefully planned murder." Such, however, has been +the transformation of his mind during a twelve days' sojourn that he +understands the crime, he pardons it, he approves it. + +Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought about without a plot? +Yet many of these reviewers discover no such thing in the book. "It +possesses not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most +reputable of them. This annoys me. + +I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it +would be nearer the truth to say that it is nothing but plot from +beginning to end. How to make murder palatable to a bishop: that is the +plot. How? You must unconventionalise him, and instil into his mind the +seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is +right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the +critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the +book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon +finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are +assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in chapters 11, +19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious +happenings in the local law-court; the very externals--relaxing wind and +fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena--the jovial immoderation of +everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and +insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas. + +If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather +successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the +personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, +with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always +swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter, +where the critic might have found a resume of my intentions and the key +to this plot--to wit, that a murder under those particular circumstances +is not only justifiable and commendable but--insignificant. Quite +insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and honest +folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one dirty +blackmailer more or less--what does it matter to anybody"? There are so +many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop--i.e. the +reader--here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little episode," +and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant events." He +was glad that the whole affair had remained in the background, so to +speak, of his local experiences. It seemed appropriate. In the +background: it seemed appropriate. That is the heart, the core, of the +plot. And that is why all those other happenings find themselves pushed +into the foreground. + +I know full well that this is not the way to write an orthodox English +novel. For if you hide your plot, how shall the critic be expected to +see it? You must serve it on a tray; you must (to vary the simile) hit +the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to superintend the +operation. That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can +then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head +and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of +Dostoievsky minus the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert or +Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a +condition to be labelled--a word, and a thing, which comes perilously +near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of +your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not +praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary +friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive? +It lives on the advertisements of publishers and--say those persons, +perhaps wisely--"if you ill-treat our authors, there's an end to our +custom." Commercialism.... + +Which applies far less to literary criticism than to other kinds. Of +most of the critics of music and art the best one can say is that there +are hearty fellows among them who, with the requisite training, might +one day become fit for their work. England is the home of the amateur in +matters intellectual, the specialist in things material. No bootmaker +would allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather about in a +jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes. The other commodity, being +less valuable than cowhide, may be entrusted to the hands of any +'prentice who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful +hieroglyphics. Criticism in England--snakes in Iceland. [15] + +All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary of St. Michael +above Serrone, that solitary white speck visible from afar on the upper +slopes of Mount Scalambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been +inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with the nightingales, +reaching my destination at the very moment when the sun peered over the +ridge of the mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the dewy shade +of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a wall at Serrone, talking to an +old woman who wore those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose, to +imitate coral. + +I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable and garrulous +anchorite who would share my breakfast. It is the ideal place for such a +life, and many are the mountain solitaries of this species I have known +in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There was he of Scanno--dead, I +doubt not, by this time--that simple-hearted venerable with whom I +whiled away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio, gazing over +the placid lake below, or up stream, at the dusky houses of Scanno +theatrically ranged against their hill-side. I became his friend, once +and for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had lost--his only +snuff-box; it lay at the edge of the path among thick shrubs, and he +could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many +strokes of luck! Once I found a purse-- + +The little structure here was barred and deserted. I had no company save +a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal +cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be +expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs--incurably +monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a +fondness for living in trios. This menage a trois may have subtle +advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social +habits of the rook; it enables them to fight with more success against +their enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain +lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks. No one who has +watched the aerial antics of a triplet of carrion crows can deny them a +sense of fun. + +After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of nature I descended once +more through that ilex grove to Serrone. And now it began to grow +decidedly warm. The wide depression between this village and Olevano +used to be timbered and is still known as la selva or la foresta. Vines +now occupy the whole ground. If they had only left a few trees by the +wayside! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman who said he was on the +look-out for a hare. Always that hare! They might as well lie in wait +for the Great Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary informed me that he +had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at Rome. Hares at Ponte +Milvio! They reminded me of those partridges in Belgrave Square. In my +younger days there was not a general in the British army who had not (1) +shot partridges in Belgrave Square and (2) been the chosen lover of +Queen Isabella of Spain.... + +Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat. We sit under the +vine near the entrance of that decayed stronghold, while babies and hens +scramble about the exposed rock; he talks, as usual, about the war. He +can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is maimed for life; the +other has been killed outright, and it looks as if no amount of +ironmongery (medals, etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy +land is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hardships and +bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards are untilled, olives unpruned, +for lack of labourers. It will take years to bring the soil back into +its old state of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk +suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for something that +happens beyond their ken, something dim and distant--unintelligible to +them as that Libyan expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not +a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood, these men of +Latium.... + +Thence onward and upward, towards evening by that familiar path, for a +second farewell visit to Giulio's farm. It is a happy homestead, an +abode of peace, with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that +overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty bush of rosemary +stands at the door. The mother is within, cooking the evening meal for +her man and the elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of +daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already half asleep, +tired with a long day's playing in the sunshine. + +Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable cherub and the pickle of the +family. I can see at a glance that he has been up to mischief. Alberto +is incorrigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him any good. +He hammers nails into tables and into himself, he tumbles down from +trees, he throws stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and +saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens +about--disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and +fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big +station motor--pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar +across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish +naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me. +But a certain formality must be gone through; every time we meet there +is a moment of shy distrust, while the ice has to be broken afresh--he +must assure himself that I have not changed since our last encounter. +Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he curls up +comfortably on my knee and is soon fast asleep, all his little tragedies +forgotten. + +"It appears you like children," says the mother. + +"I like this one, because he is never out of trouble. He reminds me of +myself. I shall steal him one of these days, and carry him off to Rome. +From there we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track called +the Via Appia. It will require two of three years, for I mean to stop a +day, or perhaps a week, at every single tavern along the road. Then I +will write a book about it; a book to make myself laugh with, when I am +grown too old for walking." + +"Giulio is big enough." + +"I'll wait." + +No chance of undertaking such a trip in these times of war, when a +foreigner is liable to be arrested at every moment. Besides, how far +would one get, with Giulio? Nevermore to Brindisi! As far as Terracina; +possibly even to Formia. There, at Formia, we would remain for the rest +of our natural lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is +anything like what it used to be; there, at Formia, we would pitch our +tent, enacting every day, or perhaps twice a day, our celebrated +Faun-and-Silenus entertainment for the diversion of the populace. I have +not forgotten Giulio's besetting sin. How nearly he made me exceed the +measure of sobriety at Rojate!... + +Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the trees of the driving-road +fireflies are dancing; countrymen return in picturesque groups, with +mules and children, from their work far afield; that little owl, the +aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its plaintive +note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle. + +This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation for crime and +brigandage that the authorities at one time earnestly considered the +proposition of razing it to the ground. Then they changed their minds. +It seemed more convenient to have evil-doers all collected into one +place than scattered about the country. To judge by the brightness of +the lamps at this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently +spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination. + +And now the lights of Segni station are visible, down in the malarious +valley, where the train passes from Rome to Naples. Every night I have +beheld them from my window; every night they tinged my thoughts with a +soft sadness, driving them backwards, northwards--creating a link +between present and past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall +those four journeys along that road; four, out of at least a hundred; +only four, but in what rare company! + + + + +Valmontone + +Back to Valmontone. + +At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no +train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from +Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had +some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance +being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided +to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after +complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to groans +and almost tears; his waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was +not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his +bundle of hats for him? I objected so vigorously that he forthwith gave +up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I +also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan +blasphemies, [16] for which he was much obliged. Most of them were +unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained. +They seemed to make his burden lighter. + +Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this is rather a cheerless +country, poorly cultivated, and still bearing the traces of mediaeval +savagery and insecurity. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit down +here and let the centuries roll by, watching the tramp of Roman legions +and Papal mercenaries and all that succession of proud banners which +have floated down this ancient Via Labiena. + +That rock-like structure, visible in the morning hours from Olevano, is +a monstrous palace containing, among other things, a training school for +carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose interior has an unusual +shape, the usual smell, and a tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX. + +There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide views over the +surrounding country. It gives food for thought. What an ideal spot, one +says, for the populace to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days! +It is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do they prefer to +jostle each other in the narrow, squalid and stuffy lane lower down? One +would like to know the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was +told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-lighted. The +explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting +arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It +may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's +doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially +speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We +broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological +reason.... + +I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of this terrace, +looking at Artena near-by. It resembled, now, a cluster of brown grapes +clinging to the hillside. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and +sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction of my glance, +remarked gravely: + +"Artena." + +"Artena," I repeated. + +He extracted half a toscano cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began +to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to +smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with +flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were +encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who +rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about +Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to +smile at me rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation by +pointing to a different spot on the hills and observing: + +"Segni." + +"Segni," he agreed. + +His cigar had gone out, as toscanos are apt to do. He applied a match, +and suddenly remarked: + +"Velletri." + +"Velletri." + +We were not making much progress. A good many sites were visible from +here, and at this rate of enumeration the sun might well set on our +labours. + +"How about all those deserters?" I inquired. + +There was a fair number of them, he said. Young fellows from other +provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It +was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches +of land, and, above all, la tradizione. The tradition, he explained, of +that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were +nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man seldom deserts, +not because he would not like to do so, but because he has more +"judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by police. +A few murders had taken place; yes, just a few murders; one or two +stupid people who resented their demands for money or food-- + +He broke off with another weary smile. + +"You have had malaria," I suggested. + +"Often." + +The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face, but from the +peculiar manner.... + +They brought in a deserter that very afternoon. He lay groaning at the +bottom of a cab, having broken his leg in jumping down from somewhere. +The rest of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with carbineers. A +Sicilian, they said. The whole populace followed the vehicle uphill, +reverently, as though attending a funeral. "He is little," said a woman, +referring either to his size or his age. + +An hour later there was a discussion anent the episode in the +fashionable cafe of Valmontone. A citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly +a notary, put the case for United Italy, for intervention against +Germany, for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly deserters, +into a few phrases so clear, so convincing, that there was a general +burst of approval. Then another man said: + +"I hate those Sicilians; I have good personal reasons for hating them. +But no Sicilian fears death. If they are not brilliant soldiers, they +certainly make first-class assassins, which is only another branch of +the same business. This boy deserts not because he is afraid of death, +but because he still owes a debt. He feels he ought to do something to +repay his parents who nursed him when he was a child, and not be +sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards out yonder"--and he +pointed with his thumb, spitting contemptuously the while, in the +direction of Rome. + +Nobody had any comment to make on this speech. Not a word of protest was +raised. The man was entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and +might even have obtained his share of approval had the victim been a +native. He was only a Sicilian--an outsider. What is one to say of this +patriarchal, or parochial, attitude? The enlargement of Italy's +boundaries--Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so forth--is an ideal +that few Italians bother their heads about. They are not sufficiently +dense--not yet. [17] To found a world-empire like the British or Roman +calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has only to look at the +Germans, who have been trying to do so for some time past. That +collecting mania.... One single boy who collects postage stamps can +infect his whole school with the complaint, and make them all jealous of +his fine specimens. England has been collecting, for many centuries, +islands and suchlike; she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive +mania. She has infected others with the craze and cannot help incurring +their envy, seeing that they are now equally acquisitive, but less +fortunate. All the good specimens are gone! + +That Pergola tavern deserves its name, the courtyard being overhung with +green vines and swelling clusters of grapes. The host is a canny old +boy, up to any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had already taken +a fancy to me on my first visit, for I cured his daughter Vanda of a +raging toothache by the application of glycerine and carbolic acid. We +went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the soft tufa, from +whose darkest and chilliest recesses he drew forth a bottle of excellent +wine--it might have lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How thoughtful of +Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a stone's-throw of your +dining-table! Nobody need ice his wine at the Pergola. + +After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night and walked, +striving to resemble a rich English tourist who has lost his way, along +the lonely road to Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters +or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have got to say +for themselves. My usual luck! Not a deserter was in sight. + +Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old ladies, of what happened +to their little dog and of other matters trivial to the verge of +inanity, I may discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to +Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means the last. Meanwhile, +we proceed southwards. + + + + +Sant' Agata, Sorrento + +Siren-Land revisited.... + +A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village +of Torco--what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are +indubitably the salt of the earth--down that well-worn track to +Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, +the genius loci, has died in the interval; thence by boat to the lonely +beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the rock-doves at +the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where, for the sake of +old memories, I indulged in a bathe and then came across an object rare +in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian granite, relic of some +pagan temple and doubtless washed up here in a wintry gale; thence, for +a little light refreshment, to Nerano; thence to that ill-famed "House +of the Spirits" where my Siren-Land was begun in the company of one who +feared no spirits--victim, already, of this cursed war, but then a +laughter-loving child--and down to the bay and promontory of Ierate, +there to make the unwelcome discovery that certain hideous quarrying +operations on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the charm of +this once secluded site; thence laboriously upwards, past that line of +venerable goat-caves, to the summit of Mount San Costanzo. + +Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at my feet as of old, flooded +in sunshine. + +There is a small outdoor cistern here. Peering into its darkness through +an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; +out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, +sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled +through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid +cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the +gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to +an inordinate length--from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual +abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these +restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live +and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to +a few inches of land amid a desolation of black water. + +It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days ago while climbing in +the torrid hour of noon up that shadeless path where the vanilla-scented +orchids grow--the path which runs from Sant' Elia past the shattered +Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the hottest turning of the road, +sat a woman in great distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been +commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia. This beast was +suffering hellish torments from the heat and vainly endeavouring, with +frenzied grunts of despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth +under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman of shade lower +down. She said she knew about it, but the pig--the pig refused to move! +It had been engaged upon this hopeless occupation, without a moment's +respite, for an hour or more; nothing would induce it to proceed a step +further; it had plainly made up its mind to find shelter here from the +burning rays, or die. And of shelter there was none. + +What would not this pig (I now thought) have given to be transported +into the lizard's cool aquatic paradise; and the lizard, into that +scorching sunlight!... + +It was not to muse upon the miseries of the animal creation that I have +revisited these shores. I came to puzzle once more over the site of that +far-famed Athene temple which gave its name to the whole promontory. +Now, after again traversing the ground with infinite pleasure, I fail to +find any reason for changing what I wrote years ago in a certain +pamphlet which some scholar, glancing through these pages and anxious to +explore for himself a spot of such celebrity in ancient days, is so +little likely to see that he may not be sorry if I here recapitulate its +arguments. Others will be well advised to pass over what follows. + +Let me begin by saying that the temple, in every probability, stood at +the Punta Campanella facing Capri, the actual headland of the Sorrentine +peninsula, where--apart from every other kind of evidence--you may pick +up to this day small terra-cotta figures of Athene, made presumably to +be carried away as keepsakes by visitors to the shrine. + +Now for alternative suggestions. + +Strabo tells us that the temple was placed on the akron of the +promontory; that is, the summit of Mount San Costanzo where we are now +standing. (He elsewhere describes it as being "on the straits.") This +summit is nearly 500 metres above the sea-level, and here no antique +building seems ever to have been erected. No traces of old life are +visible save some fragments of Roman pottery which may have found their +way up in early Byzantine days, even as modern worshippers carry up the +ephemeral vessels popularly called "caccavelle" [18] and scatter them +about. With the exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble, no +materials of an early period have been incorporated into the masonry of +the little chapel or the walls of the fields below. It is incredible +that no vestige of a structure like the Athene temple should remain on a +spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards immunity from +depredations, owing to its isolated and exalted position. The +rock-surface around the summit has not undergone that artificial +levelling which an edifice of this importance would necessitate; the +terrace is of mediaeval construction, as can be seen by its supporting +walls. No doubt the venerable Christian sanctuary there has been +frequently repaired and modified; on the terrace-level to the south can +be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the slopes are +littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa, and old battuto floors. +But there is no trace of antique workmanship or material, nor has the +rocky path leading up to the shrine been demarcated with chisel-cuts in +the ancient fashion. The sister-summit of La Croce is equally +unproductive of classical relics. + +We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken. And why not? His +accounts of many parts of the Roman world are surprisingly accurate, +but, according to Professor Pais, "of Italy Strabo seems to have known +merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome, the road between Rome +and Naples and Pozzuoli, and the coast of Etruria between Rome and +Populonia." If so, he probably saw no more of the district than can be +seen from Naples. He attributes the foundation of this Athene temple to +Odysseus: statements of such a kind make one wonder whether the earlier +portions of his lost history were more critical than other old treatises +which have survived. + +So much for Strabo. + +Seduced by a modern name, which means nothing more or less than "a +temple"--strong evidence, surely--I was inclined to locate the Athene +shrine at a spot called Ierate (marked also as Ieranto on some maps, and +popularly pronounced Ghierate the Greek aspirate still surviving) which +lies a mile or more eastwards of the Punta Campanella and faces south. +"Hieron," I thought: that settles it. You may guess I was not a little +proud of this discovery, particularly when it turned out that an ancient +building actually did stand there--on the southern slope, namely, of the +miniature peninsula which juts into Ierate bay. Here I found fragments +of antique bricks, tegulae bipedales, amphoras, pottery of the lustrous +Sorrentine ware--Surrentina bibis?--pavements of opus signinum, as well +as one large Roman paving flag of the type that is found on the road +between Termini and Punta Campanella. (How came this stone here? Did the +old road from Stabiae Athene temple go round the promontory and continue +as far as Ierate along the southern slope of San Costanzo hill? No road +could pass there now; deforestation has denuded the mountain-side of its +soil, laying bare the grey rock--a condition at which its mediaeval name +of Mons Canutarius already hints.) Well, a more careful examination of +the site has convinced me that I was wrong. No temple of this +magnificence can have stood here, but only a Roman villa--one of the +many pleasure-houses which dotted these shores under the Empire. + +So much for myself. + + +PEUTINGER'S CHART +Showing ancient road rounding the headland +and terminating at "Templum Minervae." + +None the less--and this is a really curious point--an inspection of +Peutinger's Tables seems to bear out my original theory of a temple at +Ierate. For the structure is therein marked not at the Punta Campanella +but, approximately, at Ierate itself, facing south, with the road from +Stabiae over Surrentum rounding the promontory and terminating at the +temple's threshold. Capri and the Punta Campanella are plainly drawn, +though not designated by name. Much as I should like my first +speculation to be proved correct on the evidence of this old chart of +A.D. 226, I fear both of us are mistaken. + +So much for Peutinger's Tables. + +Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the local topography. He +says that the "three-peaked rock" which Eratosthenes describes as +separating the gulfs of Cumae and Paestum (that is, of Naples and +Salerno) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not understand Beloch falling into +this error, for the old geographer uses the term skopelos, which is +never applied to a mountain of this size, but to cliffs projecting upon +the sea. Moreover, the landmark is there to this day. I have not the +slightest doubt that Eratosthenes meant the pinnacle of Ierate, which is +three-peaked in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous manner, +both when viewed from the sea and from the land (from the chapel of S. +M. della Neve, for instance). + +Now this projecting cliff of three peaks--they are called, respectively, +Montalto, Ierate, and Mortella; Ierate for short--is not the actual +boundary between the two gulfs; not by a mile or more. No; but from +certain points it might well be mistaken for it. The ancients had no +charts like ours, and the world in consequence presented itself +differently to their senses; even Strabo, says Bunbury, "was so ignorant +of the general form and configuration of the North African coast as to +have no clear conception of the great projection formed by the +Carthaginian territory and the deep bay to the east of it"; and, +coasting along the shore line, this triple-headed skopelos, behind which +lies the inlet of Ierate, might possibly be mistaken for the +turning-point into the gulf of Naples. So it looks when viewed from the +S.E. of Capri; so also from the Siren islets--a veritable headland. + +So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes. + +To sum up: Strabo is wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on +the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this +temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the +structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong +in identifying the skopelos trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San +Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the boundary +between the two gulfs. + +The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of +sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their +descriptions of its lofty site. So great a number of old writers concur +in this opinion--Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio, +Capaccio--that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these +men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple." +Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the +neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella." Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a +paper on this "Atene Siciliana" which I have not seen. The whole +question is discussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa +(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term akron may mean an +extremity or point projecting into the sea (a sense in which Homer used +it), and be applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella. + + + + +Rome + +Here we are. + +That mysterious nocturnal incident peculiar to Rome has already +occurred--sure sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens about +six times in the course of every year, during the hot season. You may +read about it in the next morning's paper which records how some young +man, often of good family and apparently in good health, was seen +behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at the hour of about 2 a.m.; +jumping, that is, in a state of Adamitic nudity, into some public +fountain. It goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the police, +run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a hospital, where his state +of mind is to be investigated. Will our rising generation, it gravely +adds, never learn the most elementary rules of decency? + +If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of these +establishments what has been the result of the medical examination, it +is because I will wager my last shirt that the invalid's health leaves +nothing to be desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this. He +is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses to come. He has +already passed half the night in agony, tossing on his couch during +those leaden hours when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town +he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be irremediable. But Rome +is the city of fountains. It is they who are responsible for this sad +lapse. Their sound is clear by day; after midnight, when the traffic has +died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears it through the window--hears it +perforce, since the streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot +close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more restless every +moment. He thinks.... That splash of waters! Those frigid wavelets and +cascades! How delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in +their bubbling wetness; he is parched with heat, and at this hour of the +night, he reflects, there will not be a soul abroad in the square. So he +hearkens to the seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that +familiar fountain; he remembers its moistened rim and basin all alive +with jolly turmoil; he sees the miniature cataracts tumbling down in +streaks of glad confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be +controlled. + +The thing must be done. + +Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly inquiring into his +state of mind.... + +I can sympathise with that state of mind, having often undergone the +same purgatory. My room at present happens to be fairly cool; it looks +north, and the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has not yet +tempted me to any breach of decorum. Night is quiet here, save for the +squeakings of some strange animals in the upper regions of the +neighbouring Pantheon; they squeak night and day, and one would take +them to be bats, were it not that bats are supposed to be on the wing +after sunset. There are no mosquitoes in Rome--none worth talking about. +It is well. For mosquitoes have a deplorable habit of indulging in a +second meal, an early breakfast, at about four a.m.--a habit more +destructive to slumber than that regular and legitimate banquet of +theirs. No mosquitoes, and few flies. It is well. + +It is more than merely well. For the mosquito, after all, when properly +fed, goes to bed like a gentleman and leaves you alone, whereas that +insatiable and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you to a +never-ending succession of anguished reflex movements. What a +malediction are those flies; how repulsive in life and in death: not to +be touched by human hands! Their every gesture is an obscenity, a +calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have watched them for +hours on end, and one of the most cherished projects of my life is to +assemble, in a kind of anthology, all the invectives that have been +hurled since the beginning of literature against this loathly dirt-born +insect, this living carrion, this blot on the Creator's reputation--and +thereto add a few of my own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly +under his protection. He says, among other things, that "like an honest +man, it is not ashamed to do in public what others only do in private." +I must say, if we all followed the fly's example in this aspect, life +would at last be worth living.... + +Morning sleep is out of the question, owing to the tram-cars whose +clangour, both here and in Florence, must be heard to be believed. They +are fast rendering these towns uninhabitable. Can folks who cherish a +nuisance of this magnitude compare themselves, in point of refinement, +with those old Hellenic colonists who banished all noises from their +city? Nevermore! Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and general +unseemliness? In order that a few bourgeois may be saved the trouble of +using their legs. And yet we actually pride ourselves on these +detestable things, as if they were inventions to our credit. "We made +them," we say. Did we? It is not we who make them. It is they who make +us, who give us our habits of mind and body, our very thoughts; it is +these mechanical monsters who control our fates and drive us along +whither they mean us to go. We are caught in their cog-wheels--in a +process as inevitable as the revolution of the planets. No use lamenting +a cosmic phenomenon! Were it otherwise, I should certainly mope myself +into a green melancholy over the fact, the most dismal fact on earth, +that brachycephalism is a Mendelian dominant. [19] No use lamenting. +True. + +But the sage will reserve to himself the right of cursing. Those morning +hours, therefore, when I would gladly sleep but for the tram-car +shrieking below, are devoted to the malediction of all modern progress, +wherein I include, with fine impartiality, every single advancement in +culture which happens to lie between my present state and that +comfortable cavern in whose shelter I soon see myself ensconced as of +yore, peacefully sucking somebody's marrow while my women, round the +corner, are collecting a handful of acorns for my dessert.... The +telephone, that diabolic invention! It might vex a man if his neighbour +possessed a telephone and he none; how would it be, if neither of them +had it? We can hardly realise, now, the blissful quietude of the +pre-telephone epoch. And the telegraph and the press! They have huddled +mankind together into undignified and unhygienic proximity; we seem to +be breathing each other's air. We know what everybody is doing, in every +corner of the earth; we are told what to think, and to say, and to do. +Your paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used to hammer out a few +solid opinions of his own on matters political and otherwise. He no +longer employs his brain for that purpose. He need only open his morning +paper and in it pours--the oracle of the press, that manufactory of +synthetic fustian, whose main object consists in accustoming humanity to +attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes him with opinions +ready made, overnight, by some Fleet Street hack at so much a column, +after a little talk with his fellows over a pint of bad beer at the +Press Club. He has been told what to say--yesterday, for instance, it +was some lurid balderdash about a steam-roller and how the Kaiser is to +be fed on dog biscuits at Saint Helena--he has been "doped" by the +editor, who gets the tip--and out he goes! unless he take it--from the +owner, who is waiting for a certain emolument from this or that caucus, +and trims his convictions to their taste. That is what the Press can do. +It vitiates our mundane values. It enables a gang to fool the country. +It cretinises the public mind. The time may come when no respectable +person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly. Newspaper reading +will become a secret vice. As such, I fear, its popularity is not likely +to wane. Having generated, by means of sundry trite reflections of this +nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast, I dress and step out of +doors to where, at a pleasant table, I can imbibe some coffee and make +my plans for loafing through the day. + +Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets. The Greeks, the Romans, +the Orientals knew better than to build wide roadways in a land of +sunshine. + +There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled "Napoli senza +sole"--Naples without sun. It gives instructions, they say (for I have +never seen it) how foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all +hours of the day; how they may reach any point of the town from another +without being forced to cross the squares, those dazzling patches of +sunlight. The feat could have been accomplished formerly even in Rome, +which was always less umbrageous than Naples. It is out of the question +nowadays. You must do as the Romans do--walk slowly and use the tram +whenever possible. + +That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which will take me direct +to the Milvian bridge, where I mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at +the restaurant across the water. Its proprietor is something of a +brigand; so am I, at a pinch. It is "honour among thieves," or "diamond +cut diamond." + +Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the glowing sands. But +the water is still cold; indeed, the Tiber is never too warm for me. If +you like it yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene +discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season, is of a kind to +tickle up a walrus. + +Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some other cause, there +is a singular variety of flesh-tints among the bathers here. I wish my +old friend Dr. Bowles could have seen it; we used to be deeply immersed, +both of us, in the question of the chromatophores, I observing their +freakish behaviour in the epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied +their action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little paper on +sunburn--a darker problem than it seems to be. [20] + +These men and boys do not grow uniformly sunburnt. They display so many +different colour-shades on their bodies that an artist would be +delighted with the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by reason +of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays, the tints diverge; the +reds, the scarcer group, traversing every gradation from pale rose to +the ruddiest of copper--not excluding that strange marbled complexion +concerning which I cannot make up my mind whether it be a beauty or a +defect; while the xanthous tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold +and apricot and cafe au lait to a duskiness approaching that of the +negro. At this season the skins are still white. Your artist must come +later--not later, however, than the end of August, for on the first of +September the bathing, be the weather never so warm, is officially, and +quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber water is declared to be "unhealthy" +after that date, and liable to give you fever; a relic of the days when +the true origin of malaria was unknown. + +A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that bathing has not yet +begun in earnest. No drowning accidents, up to the present. Later on +they come thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current and +vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to young swimmers; it grips +them in its tawny coils and holds them fast, often within a few yards of +friend or parent who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries +of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of that serpent-like +embrace. So it hurries him to destruction, only to be fished up later in +a state, as the newspapers will be careful to inform us, of "incipient +putrefaction." + +A murderous flood.... + +That hoary, trickling structure--that fountain which has forgotten to be +a fountain, so dreamily does the water ooze through obstructive mosses +and emerald growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet beards, +from its venerable lips--that fountain un-trimmed, harmonious, overhung +by ancient ilexes: where shall a more reposeful spot be found? Doubly +delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by the river-bank. For +the foliage of the oaks and sycamores is such that it creates a kind of +twilight, and all around lies the tranquillity of noon. Here, on the +encircling stone bench, you may idle through the sultry hours conversing +with some favourite disciple while the cows trample up to drink amid +moist gurglings and tail-swishings. They gaze at you with gentle eyes, +they blow their sweet breath upon your cheek, and move sedately onward. +The Villa Borghese can be hushed, at such times, in a kind of +enchantment. + +"You never told me why you come to Italy." + +"In order," I reply, "to enjoy places like this." + +"But listen. Surely you have fountains in your own country?" + +"None quite so golden-green." + +"Ah, it wants cleaning, doesn't it?" + +"Lord, no!" I say; but only to myself. One should never pass for an +imbecile, if one can help it. + +Aloud I remark:-- + +"Let me try to set forth, however droll it may sound, the point of view +of a certain class of people, supposing they exist, who might think that +this particular fountain ought never to be cleaned"--and there ensued a +discussion, lasting about half an hour, in the course of which I +elaborated, artfully and progressively, my own thesis, and forged, in +the teeth of some lively opposition, what struck me as a convincing +argument in favour of leaving the fountain alone. + +"Then that is why you come to Italy. On account of a certain fountain, +which ought never to be cleaned." + +"I said on account of places like this. And I ought to have added, on +account of moments such as these." + +"Are those your two reasons?" + +"Those are my two reasons." + +"Then you have thought about it before?" + +"Often." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"But listen. Surely it is sometimes two o'clock in the afternoon, in +your country?" + +"I used that word moment in a pregnant sense," I reply. "Pregnant: when +something is concealed or enclosed within. What is enclosed within this +moment? Our friendly conversation." + +"But listen. Surely folks can converse in your country?" + +"They can talk." + +"I begin to understand why you come here. It is that difference, which +is new to me, between conversing and talking. Is the difference worth +the long journey?" + +"Not to everybody, I daresay." + +"Why to you?" + +"Why to me? I must think about it." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"What is there to think about? You said you had thought about it +already.... Perhaps there are other reasons?" + +"There may be." + +"There may be?" + +"There must be. Are you satisfied?" + +"Ought I to be satisfied before I have learnt them?" + +"I find you rather fatiguing this afternoon. Did you hear about that +murder in Trastevere last night and how the police----" + +"But listen. Surely you can answer a simple question. Why do you come to +Italy...?" + +Why does one come here? + +A periodical visit to this country seems an ordinary and almost +automatic proceeding--a part of one's regular routine, as natural as +going to the barber or to church. Why seek for reasons? They are so hard +to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one +lurking in the background, a reason for a reason. + +The craving to be in contact with beauty and antiquity, the desire for +self-expression, for physical well-being under that drenching sunshine, +which while it lasts, one curses lustily; above all, the pleasure of +memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes; herein lies, methinks, the +secret; the reason for the reason. Reconstruction at a distance.... For +a haze of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space; a kindly haze +which obliterates the thousand fretting annoyances wherewith the +traveller's path in every country is bestrewn. He forgets them; forgets +that weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only its sporadic +islets--those moments of calm delight or fiercer joy which he would fain +hold fast for ever. He does not come here on account of a certain +fountain which ought never to be cleaned. [21] He comes for the sake of +its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise up later, out of some +November fog in another land. Italy is a delightful place to remember, +to think and talk about. And is it not the same with England? Let us go +there as a tourist--only as a tourist. How attractive one finds its +conveniences, and even its conventionalities, provided one knows, for an +absolute certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell among +them. + +What lovely things one could say about England, in Timbuktu! + +Rome is not only the most engaging capital in Europe, it is unusually +heterogeneous in regard to population. The average Parisian will assure +you that his family has lived in that town from time immemorial. It is +different here. There are few Romans discoverable in Rome, save across +the Tiber. Talk to whom you please, you will soon find that either he or +his parents are immigrants. The place is filled with hordes of +employees--many thousands of them, high and low, from every corner of +the provinces; the commoner sort, too, the waiters, carpenters, +plasterers, masons, painters, coachmen, all the railway folk--they are +hardly ever natives. Your Roman of the lower classes does not relish +labour. He can do a little amateurish shop-keeping, he is fairly good as +a cook, but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists in eating +and drinking. That is as it should be. It befits the tone of a +metropolis that outsiders shall do its work. That undercurrent of +asperity is less noticeable here than in many towns of the peninsula. +There is something of the grande dame in Rome, a flavour of old-world +courtesy. The inhabitants are better-mannered than the Parisians; a +workday crowd in Rome is as well-dressed as a Sunday crowd in Paris. And +over all hovers a gentle weariness. + +The city has undergone orgies of bloodshed and terror. Think only, +without going further back, of that pillage by the Spanish and German +soldiery under Bourbon; half a year's pandemonium. And all those other +mediaeval scourges, epidemics and floods and famines. That sirocco, the +worst of many Italian varieties: who shall calculate its debilitating +effect upon the stamina of the race? Up to quite a short time ago, +moreover, the population was malarious; older records reek of malaria; +that, assuredly, will leave its mark upon the inhabitants for years to +come. And the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that forbidden land +in whose embrace the city lies gasping, flame-encircled, like the +scorpion in the tale.... + +A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the mind's eye, is so +impressed with its "eternal" character that he cannot imagine this site +having ever been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it seems +inevitable that these walls must always have stood where now they +stand--must have risen, he suggests, out of the earth, unaided by human +hands. Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon a time; +somebody who lived under conditions quite different from those that +supervened. For who--not five thousand, but, say, five hundred years +ago--who would have thought of building a town on a spot like this? None +but a crazy despot, some moonstruck Oriental such as the world has +known, striving to impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No +facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of landscape, no +harbour, no defence against enemies, no drinking water, no mineral +wealth, no food-supplying hinterland, no navigable river--a dangerous +river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place--every drawback, or +nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled +into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and +poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so effectually, so +triumphantly that, were green pastures not needful to me as light and +air, I, for one, would nevermore stray beyond those ancient portals.... + +The country visits you here. It comes in the wake of that evening breeze +which creeps about with stealthy feet, winding its way into the most +secluded courtyards and sending a sudden shiver through the frail +bamboos that stand beside your dinner-table in some heated square. Then +the zephyr departs mysteriously as it came, and leaves behind a great +void--a torrid vacuum which is soon filled up by the honey-sweet +fragrance of hay and aromatic plants. Every night this balsamic breath +invades the town, filling its streets with ambrosial suggestions. It is +one of the charms of Rome at this particular season; quite a local +speciality, for the phenomenon could never occur if the surrounding +regions were covered with suburbs or tilth or woodland--were aught save +what they are: a desert whose vegetation of coarse herbage is in the act +of withering. The Campagna once definitely dried, this immaterial feast +is at an end. + +I am glad never to have discovered anyone, native or foreign, who has +been aware of the existence of this nocturnal emanation; glad because it +corroborates a theory of mine, to wit, that mankind is forgetting the +use of its nose; and not only of nose, but of eyes and ears and all +other natural appliances which help to capture and intensify the simple +joys of life. We all know the civilised, the industrial eye--how +atrophied, how small and formless and expressionless it has become. The +civilised nose, it would seem, degenerates in the other direction. Like +the cultured potato or pumpkin, it swells in size. The French are +civilised and, if we may judge by old engravings (what else are we to +take as guide, seeing that the skull affords some criterion as to shape +but not size of nose?) they certainly seem to accentuate this organ in +proportion as they neglect its use. Parisians, it strikes me, are +running to nose; they wax more rat-like every day. Here is a little +problem for anthropologists. There may be something, after all, in the +condition of Paris life which fosters the development of this peeky, +rodential countenance. Perfumery, and what it implies? There are +scent-shops galore in the fashionable boulevards, whereas I defy you to +show me a single stationer. Maupassant knew them fairly well, and one +thinks of that story of his:-- + +"Le parfum de Monsieur?" + +"La verveine...." [22] + +Speaking of the French, I climbed those ninety odd stairs the other day +to announce my arrival in Italy to my friend Mrs. N., who, being vastly +busy at that moment and on no account to be disturbed, least of all by a +male, sent word to say that I might wait on the terrace or in that +microscopic but well-equipped library of hers. I chose the latter, and +there browsed upon "Emaux et Camees" and the "Fleurs du Mal" which +happened, as was meet and proper, to lie beside each other. + +Strange reading, at this distance of time. These, I thought--these are +the things which used to give us something of a thrill. + +If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well be that we have +absorbed their spirit so thoroughly into our system that we forget +whence we drew it. They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one +cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery, his gift of being +quaint and yet lucid as a diamond; one pictures those crocodiles +fainting in the heat, and notes, too, whence the author of the "Sphinx" +drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so +much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for +external monotony. That trick--that full stop at the end of nearly every +fourth line--it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow +jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows +wearisome to the ear, and finally abhorrent. + +Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve +down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom. "Fuyez l'infini +que vous portez en vous"--a line which, in my friend's copy of the book, +had been marked on the margin with a derisive exclamation-point. (It +gave me food for thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to substance, +he contains too many nebulosities and abstractions for my taste; a +veritable mist of them, out of which emerges--what? The figure of one +woman. Reading these "Fleurs du Mal" we realise, not for the first time, +that there is something to be said in favour of libertinage for a poet. +We do not need Petrarca, much less the Love-Letters of a Violinist--no, +we do not need those Love-Letters at all--to prove that a master can +draw sweet strains from communion with one mistress, from a lute with +one string; a formidable array of songsters, on the other hand, will +demonstrate how much fuller and richer the melody grows when the +instrument is provided with the requisite five, the desirable fifty. +Monogamous habits have been many a bard's undoing. + +Twenty years' devotion to that stupid and spiteful old cat of a +semi-negress! They make one conscious of the gulf between the logic of +the emotions and that other one--that logic of the intellect which ought +to shape our actions. Here was Baudelaire, a man of ruthless +self-analysis. Did he never see himself as others saw him? Did he never +say: "You are making a fool of yourself"? + +Be sure he did. + +You are making a fool of yourself: are not those the words I ought to +have uttered when, standing in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo--the +sunny centre: so it had been inexorably arranged--I used to wait and +wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the slender shadow of +that obelisque which crawled reluctantly, like the finger of fate, over +the burning stones? + +And I crawled with it, more than content. + +Days of infatuation! + +I never pass that way now without thanking God for a misspent youth. Why +not make a fool of yourself? It is good fun while it lasts; it yields +mellow mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures, those +solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous? Where is the use of +experience, if it does not make you laugh? The Logic of the +Intellect--what next! If any one had treated me to such tomfoolery while +standing there, petrified into a pillar of fidelity in that creeping +shadow, I should have replied gravely: + +"The Logic of the Intellect, my dear Sir, is incompatible with +situations like mine. It was not invented for so stupendous a crisis. I +am waiting for my negress--can't you understand?--and she is already +seven minutes late...." + +A flaming morning, forestaste of things to come. + +I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital where things are +doing well, glancing down, towards midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one +looks into some torrid bear-pit. + +Broken columns glitter in the sunshine; the grass is already withered to +hay. Drenched in light and heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is +altogether devoid of life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in +a kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead. My experiences in the hospital +half an hour ago dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a more +morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular, it seems as if all the +mangy and decrepit cats of Rome had given themselves a rendezvous on +this classic soil; cats of every colour and every age--quite young ones +among them; all, one would say, at the last gasp of life. This pit, this +crater of flame, is their "Home for the Dying." Once down here, nothing +matters any more. They are safe at last from their old enemies, from +dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death, they move about in a +stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One +would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or +slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing +where one dies. + +There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated +tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the +mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a +moment. Nothing more. + +These cats have lost their all--their self-respect. Grace and ardour, +sleekness of coat and buoyancy of limbs are gone out of them. Tails are +knotted with hunger and neglect; bones protrude through the skin. So +they strew the ground in discomposed, un-catlike attitudes, while the +sun burns through their parched anatomy. Do they remember their +kittenish pranks, those moonlight ecstasies on housetops, that morsel +snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and borne through the crowded +traffic in a series of delirious leaps? Who can tell! They are not even +bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches. They are alive when they +ought to be dead. Nobody knows it better than they do. They are too ill, +too far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present degradation. +Nothing matters! What would Baudelaire, that friend of cats, have said +to this macabre exhibition? + +Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom of a kitten. The parent +takes no interest in the proceedings; she lies prone, her head on the +ground. Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead? Possibly. Her own +kitten? Who cares! Her neighbour, once white but now earth-coloured, +rises stiffly as though dubious whether the joints are still in working +order. What does she think of doing? It would seem she has formed no +plan. She walks up to the mother, peers intently into her face, then +sits apart on her haunches and begins gazing at the sun. Presently she +rises anew and proceeds five or six paces for no imaginable +reason--collapses; falls, quite abruptly, on her side. There she lies, +flat, like a playing-card. + +A sinister aimlessness pervades the actions of those that move at all. +The shadow of death is upon these creatures in the scorching sunshine. +They stare at columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at one +another, as though they had never seen such things before. They totter +about on tip-toe; they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is +one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is +convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind +of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for +herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a +face that bears the scars of a hundred fights. One eye has been lost in +some long-forgotten encounter. Now they walk over him, kittens and all, +and tread about his head, as if he were a hillock of earth, while his +claws twitch resentfully with rage or pain. Too ill to rise! + +Most of them are thus stretched out blankly, in a faint. Are they +suffering? Hungry or thirsty? [23] I believe they are past troubling +about such things. It is time to die. They know it.... + +"L'albergo dei gatti," says a cheery voice at my side--some countryman, +who has also discovered Trajan's Forum to be one of the sights of Rome. +"The cats' hotel. But," he adds, "I see no restaurant attached to it." + +That reminds me: luncheon-time. + +Via Flaminia--what a place for luncheon! True; but this is one of the +few restaurants in Rome where, nowadays, a man is not in danger of being +simultaneously robbed, starved, and poisoned. Things have come to a +pretty pass. This starvation-fare may suit a saint and turn his thoughts +heavenwards. Mine it turns in the other direction. Here, at all events, +the food is straightforward. Our hostess, a slow elderly woman, is +omnipresent; one realises that every dish has been submitted to her +personal inspection. A primeval creature; heaviness personified. She +moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock. The crack of doom +will not avail to accelerate that relentless deliberation. She reminds +me of a cousin of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who, when his +long curls once caught fire from being too near a candle, sleepily +remarked to a terrified wife: "I think you might try to blow it out." + +But where shall a man still find those edible maccheroni--those that +were made in the Golden Age out of pre-war-time flour? + +Such things are called trifles.... Give me the trifles of life, and keep +the rest. A man's health depends on trifles; and happiness on health. +Moreover, I have been yearning for them for the last five months. Hope +deferred maketh the heart sick.... There are none in Rome. Can they be +found anywhere else? + +Mrs. Nichol: she might know. She has the gift of knowing about things +one would never expect her to know. If only one could meet her by +accident in the street! For at such times she is gay and altogether at +your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors. To break upon her +seclusion at home is an undertaking reserved for great occasions. The +fact is, we are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of what she +describes as a tiresome life have taught her the value of masculine +frankness--ultra-masculine, I call it. She is too frank for subterfuge +of any kind. When at home, for instance, she is never "not at home." She +will always see you. She will not detain you long, if you happen to be +de trop. + +This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion--my health and +happiness.... Besides, I am her oldest friend in this part of the world; +was I not on the spot when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet +fathomed, to make Rome her domicile? Have I not more than once been +useful to her, nay, indispensable? I therefore climb, not without +trepidation, those ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old +palace, and presently find myself ushered into the familiar twilight. + +Nothing has changed since I was here some little time ago to announce my +arrival in Italy (solemn occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an +hour or so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being engaged +upon "house-accounts." This time, as I enter the studio, she is playing +cards with a pretty handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays +cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouthpiece which keeps +the smoke out of her olive-complexioned face and which she holds +firm-fixed between her teeth, in a corner of the mouth, after the perky +fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game, and at once begin to +feel de trop under a glance from those smouldering grey eyes. + +"It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death. Will you please +listen for half a minute? Then I will evaporate, and you can go on with +your ridiculous cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches. +Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable macaroni nowadays? +The old kind, I mean, made out of pre-war-time flour...." + +She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend the game, and asks +the girl in Italian: + +"What was the name of that place?" + +"That place----" + +"Oh, stupid! Where I stayed with Miranda last September. Where I tore my +skirt on the rock. Where I said something nice about the white +macaroni?" + +"Soriano in Cimino." + +"Soriano," echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke. "There is a tram +from here every morning. They can put you up." + +A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to this sultry and +self-centred being; I would like to wander with her through these rooms, +imbibing their strange Oriental spirit--not your vulgar Orient, but +something classic and remote; something that savours, for aught I know, +of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol, in one of her immature efforts at +self-realisation, spent a few years as the wife of a high French +official, ere marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol--another +unsuccessful venture. + +Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy there was yet an +earlier alliance of some kind)? A whim, a freak? Or did they plague her +into it? If so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their manly +persistence. She could grind any ordinary male to powder. And why has +she now flitted here, building herself this aerial bower above the old +roofs of Rome? Is she in search of happiness? I doubt whether she will +find it. She possesses that fatal craving--the craving for disinterested +affection, a source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom +affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but a luxury, and +therefore desirable above all else--desirable, and how seldom attained! + +The pause continues. I make a little movement, to attract notice. She +looks up, but only her eyes reply. + +"Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, "are you blind?" + +That is the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally absent-minded, she +always knows at a given moment exactly what she wants to do. And she +never wants to do more than one thing at a time. It is most unwomanly of +her. Any other person of her sex would have left a game of cards for the +sake of an attractive visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an +ordinary lady would have played cards, given complicated orders to +dressmakers and servants, and entertained half a dozen men at the same +time. Mrs. Nichol cannot do these things. That hand, that rather +sunburnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not moved from the +table. No, I am not blind. It is quite evident that she wants to play +cards; only that, and nothing more. + +I withdraw, stealthily. + +Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad terrace where +jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubs; there I pace up and down, admiring +the cupolas and towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the blue +background of distant hills. How much of its peculiar flavour a town +will draw--not from artistic monuments but from the mere character of +building materials! How many variations on one theme! This mellow Roman +travertine, for instance.... I call to mind those disconsolate places in +Cornwall with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and +dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic cheerfulness of +lava, those marble-towns that blind you with their glare, Eastern cities +of brightly tinted stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns, +wood-towns--how they differ in mood from one another!... Here I pace up +and down, rejoicing in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to +disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-cries that climb +to this hanging garden in confused waves of sound. Harsh at close +quarters, they weave themselves into a mirthful symphony up here. + +From that studio, too, comes a lively din--the laughter has begun again. +Mrs. Nichol is having a good time. It will be followed, I daresay, by a +period of acute depression. I shall probably be consulted with masonic +frankness about some little tragedy of the emotions which is no concern +of mine. She can be wondrously engaging at such times--like a child that +has got into trouble and takes you into its confidence. + +One of these days I must write a character-sketch of Mrs. Nichol. She +foreshadows a type--represents it, very possibly--a type which will grow +commoner from day to day. She dreams of a Republic of women, vestals or +otherwise, wherefrom all men are to be excluded unless they possess +qualifications of a rather unusual nature. I think she would like to +draft a set of rules and regulations for that community. She could be +trusted, I fancy, to make them sufficiently stringent. + +I think I understand, now, why a certain line in her copy of Baudelaire +was marked with that derisive exclamation-point on the margin: "Fuyez +l'infini que vous portez en vous." + +"Fuyez?" it seemed to say. "Why 'fuyez'?" + +Fulfil it! + + + + +Soriano + +Amid clouds of dust you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert +Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway--different +from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but +slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails +every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as +to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an +iridescent bubble suspended in the sky. + +This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the slope of an immense +old volcano and conveys at first glance a somewhat ragged and sombre +impression. It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni--they +atoned for everything. So exquisite were they that I forthwith vowed to +return to Soriano, for their sake alone, ere the year should end. (I +kept my vow.) The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and +unmistakably authentic, having been purchased in large quantities at the +outbreak of hostilities by the provident hostess, who must have +anticipated a rise in price, a deterioration in quality, or both, as the +result of war. + +How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their whereabouts? That is her affair. +I know not how she has managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect +such a variety of useful local information. I can only testify that on +her arrival in Rome she knew no more about the language and place than +the proverbial babe unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced +with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the words: "Try Mrs. +Nichol." And how many women, by the way, would have made a note of the +particular quality of those macaroni? One in a hundred? These are +temperamental matters.... + +We also--for of course I took a friend with me, a well-preserved old +gentleman of thirty-two, whose downward career from a brilliant youth +into hopeless mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with +philosophic unconcern--we also consumed a tender chicken, a salad +containing olive oil and not the usual motor-car lubricant, an omelette +made with genuine butter, and various other items which we enjoyed +prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for the seven lean years +just past but for seven--yea, seventy times seven--lean years to come. +So great a success was this open-air meal that my companion, a +case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess: + +"It seems one fares better in the province than at home. You could not +get such bread in Rome, not if you offered fifty francs a pound." + +As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but +grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly +sparkling--very young, but not altogether innocent. + +There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have +remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a +liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and +distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff +proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity +nowadays. + +It is a real shame--what is happening to Strega at this moment. It has +grown so popular that the country is flooded with imitations. There must +be fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees of goodness and +badness; I have met their travellers in the most unexpected places. They +reproduce the colour of Strega, its minty flavour --everything, in +short, except the essential: its peculiar strength of aroma and of +alcohol. They can afford to sell this poison at half the price of the +original, and your artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the +real product which he fills up, when empty, out of some hidden but +never-failing barrel of the fraudulent mixture round the corner, +charging you, of course, the full price of true Strega. If you complain, +he proudly points to the bottle, the cork, the label: all authentic! No +wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions, vow they will never +touch Strega again.... + +We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee, about this Strega +adulteration, during which I tried to make my friend comprehend how I +thought the grievance ought to be remedied. How? By an injunction. That +was the way to redress these wrongs. You obtain an injunction, I said, +such as the French Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers +of the Italian "Certosa," which was thereafter obliged to change its +name to "Val D'Emma." More than once I endeavoured to set forth, in +language intelligible to his understanding, what an injunction +signified; more than once I explained how well-advised the Strega +Company would be to take this course. + +In vain! + +He always missed my point. He always brought in some personal element, +whereas I, as usual, confined myself to general lines, to the principle +of the thing. Italians are sometimes unfathomably obtuse. + +"But what is an injunction?" he repeated. + +"If you were a little younger, there might be some hope for you. I would +then try to explain it again, for the fiftieth time. Instead of that, +what do you say to taking a nap?" + +"Ah! You have eaten too much." + +"Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of explaining things to +people who refuse to understand." + +"No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might freshen you up." + +"And perhaps inspire you with another subject of conversation." + +In the little hotel there were no rooms available just then wherein we +might have slumbered, and another apartment higher up the street +promising lively sport for which we were disinclined at that hour, we +moved laboriously into the chestnut woods overhead. Fine old timber, +part of that mysterious Ciminian forest which still covers a large +tract, from within whose ample shade one looks downhill towards the +distant Orte across a broiling stretch of country. There were golden +orioles here, calling to each other from the tree-tops. My friend, +having excavated himself a couch among the troublesome prickly seeds of +this plant, was soon snoring--another senile trait--snoring in a +rhythmical bass accompaniment to their song. I envied him. How some +people can sleep! It is a thing worth watching. They shut their eyes, +and forget to be awake. With a view to imitating his example, I wearied +myself trying to count up the number of orioles I had shot in my +bird-slaying days, and where it happened. Not more than half a dozen, +all told. They are hard to stalk, and hard to see. But of other +birds--how many! Forthwith an endless procession of massacred fowls +began to pass before my mind. One would fain live those ornithological +days over again, and taste the rapturous joy with which one killed that +first nutcracker in the mountain gulley; the first wall-creeper which +fluttered down from the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's +stint--victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the +reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed +Alpine jackdaw, that lanius meridionalis---- + +And all those slaughtered beasts--those chamois, first and foremost, +sedulously circumvented amid snowy crags. Where are now their horns, the +trophies? The passion for such sport died out slowly and for no clearly +ascertainable reason, as did, in its turn, the taste for art and +theatres and other things. Sheer satiety, a grain of pity, new +environments--they may all help to explain what was, in its essence, a +molecular change in the brain, driving one to explore new departments of +life. + +And now latterly, for some reason equally obscure, the natural history +fancy has revived after lying dormant so long. It may be those three +months spent on the pavements of Florence which incline one's thoughts +to the country and wild things. Social reasons too--a certain weariness +of humanity, and more than weariness; a desire to avoid contact with +creatures Who kill each other so gracelessly and in so doing--for the +killing alone would pass--invoke specially manufactured systems of +ethics and a benevolent God overhead. What has one in common with such +folk? + +That may be why I feel disposed to forget mankind and take rambles as of +yore; minded to shoulder a gun and climb trees and collect birds, and +begin, of course, a new series of "field notes." Those old jottings were +conscientiously done and registered sundry things of import to the +naturalist; were they accessible, I should be tempted to extract +therefrom a volume of solid zoological memories in preference to these +travel-pages that register nothing but the crosscurrents of a mind which +tries to see things as they are. For the pursuit brought one into +relations not only with interesting birds and beasts, but with men. + +There was Mr. H. of the Linnean Society, whose waxed moustache curled +round upon itself like an ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., +and a great collector of them. He collected, among other things, a rare +monograph belonging to me and dealing with the former distribution of +the beaver in Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing I +could do or say would induce him to disgorge it again; he had always +lent it to a friend, who was just on the point of returning it, etc. +etc. Bitterly grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into +communication with my friend Dr. Girtanner of St. Gallen, another +beaver--and marmot--specialist. It stimulated his love of Swiss zoology +to such an extent that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of +mine, J. J. Tschudi's "Schweizer Echsen," which I likewise never saw +again. What an innocent one was! Where is now the man who will induce me +to lend him such books? + +In those days I held a student's ticket at the South Kensington Museum, +an institution I enriched with specimens of rana graeca from near Lake +Stymphalus, and lizards from the Filfla rock, and toads from a volcanic +islet (toads, says Darwin, are not found on volcanic islets), and slugs +from places as far apart as Santorin and the Shetlands and Orkneys, +whither I went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua. The last +gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of Saima in Finland. Who ever +heard of seals living in sweet land-locked waters? This was one of my +happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend the Curator was +tempered by the fact that this particular specimen happened to be an +immature one, and did not display any pronounced race-characters. I have +early recollections of the rugged face and lovely Scotch accent of Tam +Edwards, the Banffshire naturalist; and much later ones of J. Young, +[24] who gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow +bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews) +of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I +gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged +partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen eggs. "Surely six +would have been enough," he said--a remark which struck me as rather +unreasonable, seeing that French partridges were not exactly as common +as linnets. He afterwards showed me his collection of birdskins, +dwelling lovingly, for reasons which I cannot remember, upon that of a +pin-tail duck. + +He it was who told me that no collector was worth his salt until he had +learnt to skin his own birds. Fired with enthusiasm, I took lessons in +taxidermy at the earliest possible opportunity--from a grimy old +naturalist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a man who +relieved birds of their jackets in dainty fashion with one hand, the +other having been amputated and replaced by an iron hook. During that +period of initiation into the gentle art, the billiard-room at "The +Weaste," Manchester, was converted every morning, for purposes of study, +into a dissecting-room, a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless +trunks and brains and gouged-out eyes of lapwings and other "easy" birds +(I had not yet reached the arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the +profession) lay about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was +ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers, lancets, +arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other paraphernalia of the +trade. The butler had to be furiously tipped. + +There were large grounds belonging to this estate, fields and woodlands +once green, then blackened with soot, and now cut up into allotments and +built over. Here, ever since men could remember--certainly since the +place had come into the possession of the never-to-be-forgotten Mr. +Edward T.--a kingfisher had dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial +origin which supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks and dace. +This kingfisher was one of the sights of the domain. Visitors were taken +to see it. The bird, though sometimes coy, was generally on view. +Nevertheless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher; to my infinite +annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying it. Nor did I even find its +nest, an additional source of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be +interested to know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties +(I have the exact date somewhere [25])--surely a noteworthy state of +affairs, so near the heart of a smoky town like Manchester. + +Later on I learnt to slay kingfishers--the first victim falling to my +gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings +of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are +so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their +habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; +once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, +now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones--the +grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous scramble of +all my life), the crested titmouse, the serin finch on the apple tree, +that first icterine warbler whose five eggs, blotched with purple and +quite unfamiliar at the time, gave me such a thrill of joy that I nearly +lost my foothold on the swerving alder branch---- + +At this point, my meditations were suddenly interrupted by a vigorous +grunt or snort; a snort that would have done credit to an enraged tapir. +My friend awoke, refreshed. He rubbed his eyes, and looked round. + +"I remember!" he began, sitting up. "I remember everything. Are you +feeling better? I hope so. Yes. Exactly. Where were we? An +injunction--what did you say?" + +At it again! + +"I said it was the drawback of old people that they never know when they +have had enough of an argument." + +"But what is an injunction?" + +"How many more times do you wish me to make that clear? Shall I begin +all over again? Have it your way! When you go into Court and ask the +judge to do something to prevent a man from doing something he wants to +do when you do not want him to do it. Like that, more or less." + +"So I gather. But I confess I do not see why a man should not do +something he wants to do just because you want him not to do it. You +might as well go into Court and ask the judge to do something to make a +man do something he does not want to do just because you want him to do +it." + +"Ah, but he must not, in this case. Good Lord, have I not explained that +a thousand times already? You always miss my point. It is illegal, don't +you understand? Illegal, illegal." + +"Anybody can say that. It would be a very natural thing to say, under +the circumstances. I should say it myself! Now just take my advice. You +go and tell your brother----" + +"My brother? It is not my brother. You are quite beside the point. Why +introduce this personal element? It is the Strega Company. Strega, a +liqueur. I am talking about a commercial concern obtaining an +injunction. Burroughs and Wellcome--they got injunctions on the same +grounds. I know a great deal of such things, though I don't talk about +them all day long as other people would, if they possessed half my +knowledge. A company, don't you see? An injunction. A liqueur. Please to +note that I am talking about a company, a company. Have I now made +myself clear, or how many more times----" + +"One would think he was at least your brother, from the way you take his +part. Let us say he is a friend, then; some never-to-be-mentioned friend +who is interested in a shady liqueur business and now wants to make a +judge do something to make a man do something----" + +"Wrong again! To prevent a man doing something----" + +"--Wants to do something to make a judge do something to prevent a man +doing something he wants to do because he does not want him to do it. Is +that right? Very well. You tell your friend that no Italian judge is +going to do dirty work of that kind for nothing." + +"Dirty work. God Almighty! I don't want any judge to do dirty work----" + +"No doubt, no doubt. I am quite convinced you don't. But your priceless +friend does. Come now! Why not be open about it?" + +"Open about what?" + +"It is positively humiliating for me to be treated like this, after all +the years we have known each other. I wish you would try to cultivate +the virtue of frankness. You are far too secretive. Something will +really have to be done about it." + +"A company, a company." + +"A company consists of a certain number of human beings. Why make +mysteries about one of them? It may happen to the best of mankind to be +mixed up----" + +"Mixed up----" + +"You are going to be disagreeable about my choice of words. Have it your +way! We all know you think you can talk better Italian than the Pope. My +own father, I was going to say, has been involved in some pretty dirty +work in the course of his professional career----" + +"No doubt, no doubt." + +"And please to note that he is as good a man as any brother of yours." + +"You always miss my point." + +"Now try to be truthful, for once in your life. Out with it!" + +"A liqueur." + +"Is that all? Sleep does not seem to have sharpened your wits to any +great extent." + +"I was not asleep. I was thinking about eggs. A company." + +"A company? You are waking up. Anything else?" + +"An injunction...." + +A distinguished writer some years ago started a crusade in favour of +pure English. He wished to counteract those influences which are forever +at work debasing the standard of language; whether, as he seemed to +think, that standard should be inalterably fixed, is yet another +question. For in literature as in conversation there is a "pure English" +for every moment of history; that of our childhood is different from +to-day's; and to adopt the tongue of the Bible or Shakespeare, because +it happens to be pure, looks like setting back the hands of the clock. +Men would surely be dull dogs if their phraseology, whether written or +spoken, were to remain stagnant and unchangeable. We think well of +Johnson's prose. Yet the respectable English of our own time will bear +comparison with his; it is more agile and less infected with Latinisms; +why go back to Johnson? Let us admire him as a landmark, and pass on! +Some literary periods may deserve to be called good, others bad; so be +it. Were there no bad ones, there would be no good ones, and I see no +reason why men should desire to live in a Golden Age of literature, save +in so far as that millennium might coincide with a Golden Age of living. +I doubt, in the first place, whether they would be even aware of their +privilege; secondly, every Golden Age grows fairer when viewed from a +distance. Besides, and as a general consideration, it strikes me that a +vast deal of mischief is involved in these arbitrary divisions of +literature into golden or other epochs; they incite men to admire some +mediocre writers and to disparage others, they pervert our natural +taste, and their origin is academic laziness. + +Certain it is that every language worthy of the name should be in a +state of perennial flux, ready and avid to assimilate new elements and +be battered about as we ourselves are--is there anything more charming +than a thoroughly defective verb?--fresh particles creeping into its +vocabulary from all quarters, while others are silently discarded. There +is a bar-sinister on the escutcheon of many a noble term, and if, in an +access of formalism, we refuse hospitality to some item of questionable +repute, our descendants may be deprived of a linguistic jewel. Is the +calamity worth risking when time, and time alone, can decide its worth? +Why not capture novelties while we may, since others are dying all the +year round; why not throw them into the crucible to take their chance +with the rest of us? An English word is no fossil to be locked up in a +cabinet, but a living thing, liable to the fate of all such things. +Glance back into Chaucer and note how they have thriven on their own +merits and not on professorial recommendations; thriven, or perished, or +put on new faces! + +I would make an exception to this rule. Foreign importations which do +not belong to us by right, idioms we have enticed from over the sea for +one reason or another, ought to remain, as it were, stereotyped. They +are respected guests and cannot decently be jostled in our crowd; let +them be jostled in their own; here, on British soil, they should be +allowed to retain that primal signification which, in default of a +corresponding English term, they were originally taken over to express. + +What prompts me to this exordium is the discovery that a few pages back, +with a blameworthy hankering after the picturesque, I have grossly +misused a foreign word. Those cats in Trajan's Forum at Rome are nowise +a "macabre exhibition"; they are not macabre in the least; they are sad, +or saddening. The charnel-house flavour is absent. + +My apologies to the French language, to the cats, and to the reader.... + +Now whoever wishes to see a truly macabre exhibition at Rome may visit +the Peruvian mummies in the Kircher Museum. It is characteristic of the +spirit in which guide-books are written that, while devoting long +paragraphs to some worthless picture of a hallucinated venerable, they +hardly utter a word about these most remarkable and gruesome objects. + +Those old Peruvians, like the Egyptians, had necrophilous leanings. They +cultivated an unwholesome passion for corpses, and called it religion. +Many museums contain such relics from the New World in various attitudes +of discomfort; frequently seated, as though trying to be at rest after +life's long journey. No two are alike; and all are horrible of aspect. +Some have been treated with balsam to preserve the softer parts; others +are shrivelled. Some are filled with chopped straw, like any stuffed +crocodile in a show; others contain precious coca-leaves and powdered +fragments of shell, which were doubtless placed there so that the +defunct might receive nourishment up to the time when his soul should +once more have rejoined the body. Every one knows, furthermore, that +these American ancients were fond of playing tricks with the shape of +the skull--a custom which was forbidden by the Synod of Lima in 1585 and +which Hippocrates describes as being practised among the inhabitants of +the Crimea. [26] It adds considerably to their ghastly appearance. + +One looks at them and asks oneself: what are they now, these gentle +Incas who loved the arts and music, these children of the Sun, whose +civic acquirements amazed their conquerors? They have contrived to +transform themselves into something quite unusual. Staring orbits and +mouths agape, colour-patches here and there, morsels of muscle and hair +attached to contorted limbs--they suggest a half-way house, a loathsome +link, between a living man and his skeleton; and not only a link between +them, but a grim caricature of both. Some have been coated with varnish. +They glisten infamously. Picture a decrepit and rather gaunt relative of +your own, writhing in a fit, stark naked, and varnished all over---- + +Different are these mummies from those of the tenaciously unimaginative +and routine-bound Egyptians. Theirs are dead as a door-nail; torpid +lumps, undistinguishable one from the other. Here we have a rare +phenomenon--life, and individuality, after death. They are more +noteworthy than the cowled and desiccated monks of Italy or Sicily, or +at least differently so; undraped, for the most part, though some of +them may be seen, mere skin-covered heads, peering with dismal coyness +out of a brown sack. And the jabbering teeth.... We dream as children of +night-terrors, of goblins and phantoms that start out of the gloom and +flit about with hideous grimaces. They are gone, while yet we shudder at +that momentary flash of grizzliness; intangibilities, whose image is not +easily detained. To see spectral visions embodied, and ghosts made +flesh, one should come here. Had the excruciating operation of embalming +been performed upon live men and women, their poses could hardly have +been more multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to +how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, +against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The +nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards +Auffassung, are perhaps some little Japanese wood-carvings whose +creators, labouring consciously, likewise overstepped the boundaries of +the grotesque and indulged in nightmarish effects of line similar to +those which the old Peruvians, all unconsciously, have achieved upon the +bodies of their dear friends and relatives.... + +Drive swiftly thence, if you are in the mood, as you should be, for +something at the other pole of feeling, to view that wonder, the +kneeling boy at the Museo delle Terme. Headless and armless though he +be, he displays as much vitality as the Peruvians; every inch of the +body is alive, and one may well marvel at the skill of the artist who, +during his interminable task of sculpture, held fast the model's +fleeting outline--so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that +every month, and every week, brings about new conditions of surface and +texture. A child of Niobe? Very likely. There is suffering also here, a +suffering different from theirs; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in +the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods a divine calm. +Here is the antidote to mummified Incas. + + + + +Alatri + +What brought me to Alatri? + +Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born +here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a +passable place, but as to Alatri---- + +"You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are +precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia." + +"Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other +citizens like yourself----" + +"It does indeed! I am the least of the sons of Alatri." + +"Then it must be worthy of a visit...." + +In the hottest hour of the afternoon they deposited me outside the city +gate at some new hotel--I forget its name--to which I promptly took an +unreasoning dislike. There was a fine view upon the mountains from the +window of the room assigned to me, but nothing could atone for that lack +of individuality which seemed to exhale from the establishment and its +proprietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher here. Half an +hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I +captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he +pleased. He took me to the Albergo della---- + +The Albergo della----is a shy and retiring hostelry, invisible as such +to the naked eye, since it bears no sign of being a place of public +entertainment at all. Here was individuality, and to spare. Mine host is +an improvement even upon him of the Pergola at Valmontone; a man after +my own heart, with merry eyes, drooping white moustache and a lordly +nose--a nose of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which must have +cost years of patient labour to bring to its present state of +blossoming. That nose! I felt as though I could dwell for ever beneath +its shadow. The fare, however, is not up to the standard of the +"Garibaldi" inn at Frosinone which I have just left. + +Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather a dull little place; I +am never likely to go there again, and have therefore no reason for +keeping to myself its "Garibaldi" hotel which leaves little to be +desired, even under these distressful war-conditions. It set me +thinking--thinking that there are not many townlets of this size in +rural England which can boast of inns comparable to the "Garibaldi" in +point of cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable +prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the +other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly +cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have +to walk across a cold room at night--refinement of torture--in order to +turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone +enough to condemn these establishments, one and all. + +Yes! And the beds; those frowsy, creaky, prehistoric wooden concerns, +always six or eight inches too short, whose mattresses have not been +turned round since they were made. What happens? You clamber into such a +receptacle and straightway roll downhill, down into its centre, into a +kind of river-bed where you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous +feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on +either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else +into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as +well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you +lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin. +Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is +fit for a Christian to sleep in.... + +The days are growing hot. + +A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the +convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the +afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to +myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for, +being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded +with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places, +where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious +official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation +here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well +established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a +bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly +that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the +place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a +lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery--he brings me +every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself. + +"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice." + +"I know. Did you tell him he might----?" + +"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his +mother." + +"Tell him again, to-morrow." + +It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude. + +In October--and we are now at midsummer--there occurred a little +adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this. + +I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the +still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending +journey northwards for which the passport was already vised, when there +met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers. We +stared at one another. His face was familiar to me, though I knew not +where I had seen it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director of +the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman who had recently been to +Orvinio? I remembered. + +"The last time I was there," I said, "was about a month ago. I fancy we +had some conversation in the motor up from Mandela." + +"That is so. And now, however disagreeable it may be, I feel myself +obliged to perform a patriotic duty. This is war-time. I would ask you +to be so good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station." + +"Which is not far off," I replied. "There is one up the next street on +our right." + +We walked there, all four of us, without saying another word. "What have +I been doing?" I wondered. Then we climbed upstairs. + +Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stuffy room, sat a delegato or +commissario--I forget which--surrounded, despite the lateness of the +hour, by one or two subordinates. He was of middle age, and not +prepossessing. He looked as if he could make himself unpleasant, though +his face was not of that actively vicious--or actively stupid: the terms +are interconvertible--kind. While scanning his countenance, during those +few moments, sundry thoughts flitted through my mind. + +These then, I said to myself--these are the functionaries, whether +executive or administrative, whether Italian or English or Chinese, whom +a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of +them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is +certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying +their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws, +and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority +should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said +to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of +history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin +destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the +Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they +were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense +of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their +wonderful culture. They ought to have known better; they ought to have +rated morality at its true worth, since it was the profoundest Chinaman +himself who said that virtue is merely etiquette--or something to that +effect. + +I found myself studying the delegato's physiognomy. What could one do +with such a composite face? It is a question which often confronts me +when I see such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. How make it +more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? Shaving that +moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it would +forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard, +an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved +him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, on +account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one +of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets of +European royalties. + +He took down the names and addresses of all four of us, and it was then +that I missed my chance. I ought to have spoken first instead of +allowing this luscious director to begin as follows:-- + +"The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about a month ago. He admits +it himself and I can corroborate the fact, as I was there at the same +time. Orvinio is a small country place in the corner of Umbria. There is +a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote and very high--altissima! It is +called Mount Muretta and occupies a commanding situation. For reasons +which I will leave you, Signer Commissario, to investigate, this +gentleman climbed up that mountain and was observed, on the very summit, +making calculations and taking measurements with instruments." + +Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta? For an all-sufficient +reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from Etna +and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A bare +wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably the name) visible from +below and promising a lively scramble up the rock, was an additional +inducement. Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can +afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter of fact, proved +to be a mighty tame affair. There was yet another object to my trip. I +desired to verify a legend connected with this mountain, the tradition +of a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to whose former +existence the name of a certain old family, still surviving at Orvinio, +bears witness. "We are not really from Orvinio," these people will tell +you. "We are from the lost castle of the Muretta." (There is not a +vestige of a castle left. But I found one brick in the jungle which +covers, on the further side of the summit, a vast rock-slide dating, I +should say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the fastness +may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting Muretta. + +As to taking measurements--well, a man is naturally accused of a good +many things in the course of half a century. Nobody has yet gone so far +as to call me a mathematician. These "calculations and instruments" were +a local mirage; as pretty an instance of the mythopoeic faculty as one +could hope to find in our degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the +earth. [27] + +The official seemed to be impressed with the fact that my accuser was +director of a bank. He inquired what I had to say. + +This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on me rather suddenly. One +likes to have notice of such questions. Tell the truth? I am often +tempted to do so; it saves so much trouble! But truth-telling is a +matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the more one learns +to hold in check that unnatural propensity. (Mankind has a natural love +of the lie itself. Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one will +do well to take account of national psychology. An English functionary, +athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to +climb in war-time, without any object save that of exercising one's +limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and remote +mountain--Muretta happens to be neither the one nor the other--would +have seemed to an Italian an incredible proceeding. I thought it better +to assume the role of accuser in my turn: an Oriental trick. + +"This director," I said, "calls himself a patriot. What has he told us? +That while at Orvinio he knew a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to +make calculations with instruments. What does this admirable citizen do +with regard to such a suspicious character? He does nothing. Is there +not a barrack-full of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to +arrest such people? But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk +away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other +measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and +Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our English notion of +patriotism. I shall certainly make it my business to write and +congratulate the Banca d'Italia on possessing such a good Italian as +director. I shall also suggest that his talents would be more worthily +employed at the Banca--"(naming a notoriously pro-German establishment). + +A poor speech; but it gave me the satisfaction of seeing the fellow grow +purple with fury and so picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the +spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be done with him. The +delegato suggested that inasmuch as he had said his say and deposited +his address, he was at liberty to depart, whenever so disposed. + +They went--he and his friends. + +The other was looking serious--as serious as such a face could be made +to look. He must not be allowed to think, I decided, for once an +official begins to think he is liable to grow conscientious and +then--why, any disaster might happen, the least of them being that I +should remain in custody pending investigations. In how many more +countries was I going to be arrested for one crime or another? This joke +had lost its novelty a good many years ago. + +"A pernicious person," I began, "--you have but to look at him. And now +he has invited me here in order to make a patriotic impression on his +friends, those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since no +love is lost hereabouts between police and military). Such silly talk +about measurements! It should be nipped in the bud. Here you have an +intelligent young subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home with +me at my expense; we will go through all papers and search for +instruments and bring everything that savours of suspicion back to this +office, together with my passport which I never carry on my person. +This, meanwhile, is my carta di soggiorno." + +The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I thought of those +miserable three days' grace which were all that the French consulate had +accorded me. If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded in +Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin again. And to tell him of +this dilemma would make him more distrustful than ever. + +I went on hastily to admit that my request might not be regular, but how +natural! Were we not allies? Was it not my duty to clear myself of such +an imputation at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to that +end? I felt sure he could sympathise with the state of my mind, etc. +etc. + +Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of invention, lent wings to +my words, and while thinking all the time: You little vermin, what are +you doing here, in that chair, when you should be delving the earth or +breaking stones, as befits your kind? I tried to picture myself climbing +up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port +would have been more in my line. Calculations! It is all I can do to +control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I +like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments! If this +young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my +belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the +delegato, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they often +are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of your +body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently reasonable. +The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing whatever to +do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to evade military +service. + +We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his +polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of +the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather +dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala. + +"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be +surprised at my long absence." + +"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport." + +"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with +him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten +o'clock, or eleven, or midday." + +So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little +detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything +else. He did not even unfold it. + +"E stato un' equivoco," was all he condescended to say, still without a +smile. There had been a misunderstanding. + +The incident was closed. + +Things might have gone differently in the country. I would either have +been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of +carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century +while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the +civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet--an inquiry without +which no Latin dossier is complete. + +POSTSCRIPT.--Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many +of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever +come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a +street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in +their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not +tend to diminish? + +There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome; +fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those +inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things +remained in the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set by the +ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The natives spend their days +in rushing to Rome and back on business connected with law-suits, not a +quarter of which would have arisen but for the existence of the +carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Individually, these men are +nowise at fault. They desire nothing better than to be left in peace. +Seldom do they meddle with local concerns--far from it! They live in +sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the populace, like a colony +of monks. The institution is to blame. It is their duty, among other +things, to take down any charge which anybody may care to prefer against +his neighbour. That done, the machinery of the law is automatically set +in motion. Five minutes' talk among the village elders would have +settled many affairs which now degenerate into legal squabbles of twice +as many years; chronic family feuds are fostered; a man who, on +reflection, would find it more profitable to come to terms with his +opponent over a glass of wine, or even to square the old syndic with a +couple of hundred francs, sees himself obliged to try the same tactics +on a judge of the high court--which calls for a different technique. + +Altogether, the country is flagrantly over-policed. [28] It gives one a +queer sense of public security to see, at Rome for instance, every third +man you meet--an official, of course, of some kind--with a revolver +strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on the verge of +savagery in some cowboy settlement out West. Greek towns of about ten +thousand inhabitants, like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal +guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls. How can ten men +perform duties which, in Italy, would require ten times as many? Is it a +question of climate, or national character? A question, perhaps, of +common sense--of realising that local institutions often work with less +friction and less outlay than that system of governmental centralisation +of which the carbineers are an example. + +Meanwhile we are still at Alatri which, I am glad to discover, possesses +five gateways--five or even more. It is something of a relief to be away +from that Roman tradition of four. Military reasons originally, fixing +themselves at last into a kind of sacred tradition.... So it is, with +unimaginative races. Their pious sentimentalism crystallises into +inanimate objects. The English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral +strand, and the chimes of Big Ben, floating above that crowd of +many-hued Orientals, give to the white man a sense of homeliness and +racial solidarity. The French, more fluid and sensitive to the +incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial +buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition, +it pursues one with meaningless iteration from the burning sands of +Africa to Ultima Thule. Always those four gateways! + +For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is comparable to that green +space on the summit of the citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning, +to take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the vanity of human +wishes. The less you have seen of localities like Tiryns the more you +will be amazed at this impressive and mysterious fastness. That portal, +those blocks--what Titans fitted them into their places? Well, we have +now learnt a little something about those Titans and their methods. From +this point you can see the old Roman road that led into Alatri; it +climbs up the hill in straightforward fashion, intersecting the broad +modern "Via Romana"--a goat-track, nowadays.... + +These Alatri remains are wonderful--more so than many of the sites which +old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his +curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he +stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations +about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the +same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual? We certainly find him +"hurrying down" past Anagni near-by, of whose imposing citadel he again +says nothing whatever.... + +I am now, at the end of several months, beginning to know Ramage fairly +well. I hope to know him still better ere we part company, if ever we +do. It takes time, this interpretation, this process of grafting one +mind upon another. For he does not supply mere information. A fig for +information. That would be easy to digest. He supplies character, which +is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of +what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a +philosophy of life. + +And what is the dominating trait of this old Scotsman? The historical +sense. Ancient inscriptions interested him more than anything else. He +copied many of them during his trip; fifty, I should think; and it is no +small labour, as any one who has tried it can testify, to decipher these +half-obliterated records often placed in the most inconvenient +situations (he seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied himself +thus was to his credit in an age whose chief concern, as regards +antiquity, consisted in plundering works of art for ornamental purposes. +Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected +knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as +inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these +documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly +sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but +for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of +one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men +who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the +fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be +completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit. + +His equipment in the interpretation of these stones and of all else he +picked up in the way of lore and legend was of the proper kind. +Boundless curiosity, first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of +learning. He knew his classics--knew them so well that he could always +put his finger on those particular passages of theirs which bore upon a +point of interest. We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quotation +from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different thing remembering, and +collating, references in. Aelian or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And +wide awake, withal; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the kind to +swallow the tales of the then fashionable cicerone's. He has critical +dissertations on sites like Cannae and the Bandusian Fountain and +Caudine Forks; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence a +sepulchre containing some of those painted Greek vases for which the +place is famous, he promptly suspects it to be a "sepulchre prepared for +strangers," and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain where +they are "for more simple or less suspicious travellers." On the way to +Cape Leuca he passes certain mounds whose origin he believes to be +artificial and the work of a prehistoric race. I fancy his conjecture +has proved correct. On page 258, speaking of an Oscan inscription, he +mentions Mommsen, which shows that he kept himself up to date in such +researches.... + +Of course it would be impossible to feel any real fondness for Ramage +before one has discovered his failings and his limitations. Well, he +seems to have taken Pratilli seriously. I like this. A young fellow who, +in 1828, could have guessed Pratilli to have been the arch-forger he +was--such a young fellow would be a freak of learning. He says little of +the great writers of his age; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose +imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but not in the +present. The Hohenstauffen period does not attract him. He rides close +to the magnificent Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site; he +inspects the castle of Lucera and says never a word about Frederick II +or his Saracens. At Lecce, renowned for its baroque buildings, he finds +"nothing to interest a stranger, except, perhaps, the church of Santa +Croce, which is not a bad specimen of architectural design." True, the +beauty of baroque had not been discovered in his day. + +What pleases me less is that there occurs hardly any mention of wild +animals in these pages, and that he seems to enjoy natural scenery in +proportion as it reminds him of some passage in one of those poets whom +he is so fond of quoting. This love of poetic extracts and citations is +a mark of his period. It must have got the upper hand of him in course +of time, for we find, from the title-page of these "Nooks and Byways," +that he was the author of "Beautiful Thoughts from Greek authors; +Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian authors, etc."; [29] indeed, +the publication of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have +been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer a few more "Nooks and +By-ways" to all these Beautiful Thoughts! He must have been at home +again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were +gathered. If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains of +the south, instead of rushing through them like an express train. That +mania of "pressing forward"; that fatal gift of hustle.... + +His body flits hither and thither, but his mind remains observant, +assimilative. It is only on reading this book carefully that one +realises how full of information it is. Ay, he notices things, does +Ramage--non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time to look +around him. It is his charm. An intelligent interest in the facts of +daily life should be one of the equipments of the touring scholar, +seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift, +and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern +travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and +agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure +warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and +the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and +modern times and the fig-pecker bird--that bird you eat bones and all, +the focetola or beccafico (garden warbler). In fact, he has multifarious +interests and seems to have known several languages besides the +classics. He can hit off a thing neatly, as, when contrasting our +sepulchral epitaphs with those of olden days, he says that the key-note +of ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace; or "wherever we find a river in +this country (Calabria) we are sure to discover that it is a source of +danger and not of profit." He knew these southern torrents and +river-beds! He garners information about the Jewish and Albanian +colonies of South Italy; he studies Romaic "under one of the few Greeks +who survived the fatal siege of Missolonghi" and collects words of Greek +speech still surviving at Bova and Maratea (Maratea, by the way, has a +Phoenician smack; the Greeks must have arrived later on the scene, as +they did at Marathon itself). + +A shrewd book, indeed. Like many of his countrymen, he was specially +bent on economic and social questions; he is driven to the prophetic +conclusion, in 1828, that "the government rests on a very insecure +basis, and the great mass of the intelligence of the country would +gladly welcome a change." Religion and schooling are subjects near his +heart and, in order to obtain a first-hand knowledge of these things in +Italy, he enters upon a friendship, a kind of intellectual flirtation, +with the Jesuits. That is as it should be. Extremes can always respect +one another. The Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as he +from them.... + +I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to +me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always +finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial +matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was +personally acquainted with several men whose names I have +mentioned--Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano; +in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him +with profit. And even at an earlier time; for I once claimed to have +discovered the ruins of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets +(the Galli, opposite Positano)--now I find him forestalling me by nearly +a century. It is often thus, with archaeological discoveries. + +He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress Calypso which has +disappeared since his day, and would have sailed there but for the fact +that no boat was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who landed +here, found any prehistoric remains on the spot; I should doubt it. On +another Mediterranean island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the +relics of what would formerly have been described as the residence of +that second Homeric witch, Circe. [30] + +The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have already, of course, +discovered my ideal family at Alatri. Two ideal families.... + +One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that +luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow--that +verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with +fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with +wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich +philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in the +cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold of his two-roomed +abode, or wander about those tiny patches of culture, geometrically +disposed, where he guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots +of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of his misfortunes; +intuitive civility has taught him to avoid troubling a stranger with +personal concerns. + +The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are +hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their +offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left. + +"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can +only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach--nothing; not +milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him +for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now +there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children +dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others." + +I looked at him. + +"You sent him into the plains last summer?" I ventured. + +"To Cisterna. One must make a little money, or starve." + +"And you expect to keep your children alive if you send them to +Cisterna?" + +I was astonished that the local medicine man had not diagnosed malaria. +I undertook that if she would put him into the train when next I went to +Rome, I would have him overhauled by a competent physician and packed +home again with written instructions. (I kept my word, and the good +doctor Salatino of the Via Torino--a Calabrian who knows something about +malaria--wrote out a treatment for this neglected case, no part of +which, I fear, has been observed. Such is the fatalism of the +country-folk that if drugs and injections do not work like magic they +are quietly discarded. This youth may well have gone the way of "those +other two"--who, by the by, were also sent into the Pontine +Marshes--since you cannot reject your food for ever, and grow more +anaemic every day, without producing some such result.) + +Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy in the mother's heart +that I became quite embarrassed. She likened me, among other things, to +her favourite Saint. + +All comparisons being odious, I turned the conversation by asking: + +"And that last one?" + +"Here," she said, pushing open the door of the inner room. + +He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle of limbs, the +picture of radiant boyhood. + +"This one, I think, has never been to Cisterna." + +"No. He goes into the mountains with the woodcutters every morning an +hour before sunrise. It is up beyond Collepardo--seven hours' labour, +and seven hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he sleeps +like a log...." + +Children from these hill-places often accompany their parents into the +plains to work; more commonly they go in droves of any number under the +charge of some local man. They are part of that immense army of +hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands of Tuscany to the +very toe of Italy, into these low-lying regions, hardly an inch of which +is fever-free. I do not know even approximately the numbers of these +migratory swarms of all ages and both sexes; let us say, to be on the +safe side, a quarter of a million. They herd down there, in the broiling +heat of summer and autumn, under conditions which are not all that could +be desired. [31] Were they housed in marble palaces and served on +platters of gold, the risk would not be diminished by a hair. How many +return infected? I have no idea. It cannot be less than sixty per cent. +How many of these perish? Perhaps five per cent. A few thousand annual +deaths are not worth talking about. What concerns the country--and what +the country, indeed, has taken seriously in hand--is this impoverishment +of its best blood; this devitalising action of malaria upon unnumbered +multitudes of healthy men, women, and children who do not altogether +succumb to its attacks. + +I sometimes recognise them on the platform of Rome station--family +parties whom I have met in their country villages, now bound for +Maccarese or one of those infernal holes in the Campagna, there to earn +a little extra money with hay, or maize, or wheat, or tomatoes, or +whatever the particular crop may be. You chat with the parents; the +youngsters run up to you, all gleeful with the change of scene and the +joy of travelling by railway. I know what they will look like, when they +return to their mountains later on.... + +And so, discoursing of this and that, one rambles oneself into a +book.... + +Into half a book; for here--at Alatri, and now--midsummer, I mean to +terminate these non-serious memories and leave unrecorded the no less +insignificant events which followed up to the mornings in October, those +mornings when jackdaws came cawing past my window from the thickly +couched mists of the Borghese Gardens, and the matutinal tub began to +feel more chilly than was altogether pleasant. + +Half a book: I perceive it clearly. These pages might be rounded by +another hundred or two. The design is too large for one volume; it +reminds me of those tweed suits we used to buy long ago whose pattern +was so "loud" that it "took two men to show it off." Which proves how a +few months' self-beguilement by the wayside of a beaten track can become +the subject of disquisitions without end. Maybe the very aimlessness of +such loiterings conduces to a like method of narrative. Maybe the tone +of the time fosters a reminiscential and intimately personal mood, by +driving a man for refuge into the only place where peace can still be +found--into himself. What is the use of appealing in objective fashion +to the intelligence of a world gone crazy? Say your say. Go your way. +Let them rave! We shall all be pro-German again to-morrow. [32] + +Half a book: it strikes me, on reflection, as curiously appropriate. To +produce something incomplete and imperfect, a torso of a kind--is it not +symbolical of the moment? Is not this an age of torso's? We are +manufacturing them every hour by the score. How many good fellows are +now crawling about mutilated, converted into torso's? There is room for +a book on the same lines.... + +I glance through what has been written and detect therein an occasional +note of exacerbation and disharmony which amuses me, knowing, as I do, +its transitory nature. Dirty work, touching dirt. One cannot read for +three consecutive years of nothing but poison-gas and blood and +explosives without engendering a corresponding mood--a mood which +expresses itself in every one according to whether he thinks +individually or nationally; whether he cultivates an impartial +conscience or surrenders to that of the crowd. For the man and his race +are everlastingly tugging in different directions, and unreasoning +subservience to race-ideals has clouded many a bright intellect. How +many things a race can do which its component members, taken separately, +would blush to imitate! Our masses are now fighting for commercial +supremacy. The ideal may well be creditable to a nation. It is hardly +good enough for a gentleman. He reacts; he meditates a Gospel of Revolt +against these vulgarities; he catches himself saying, as he reads the +morning paper full of national-flag fetishism and sanguinary nonsense: +"One Beethoven symphony is a greater victory than the greatest of these, +and reasonable folks may live under any rule save that of a wind-fed +herd." + +It avails nothing. The day has dawned, the day of those who pull +downwards--stranglers of individualism. Can a man subscribe to the +aspirations of a mob and yet think well of himself? Can he be black and +white? He can be what he is, what most of us are: neutral tint. Look +around you: a haze of cant and catchwords. Such things are employed on +political platforms and by the Press as a kind of pepsine, to aid our +race-stomach in digesting certain heavy doses of irrationalism. The +individual stomach soon discovers their weakening effect.... + +Looking back upon these months of uneventful wanderings, I became aware +of a singular phenomenon. I find myself, for some obscure reason, always +returning to the same spot. I was nine times in Rome, twice in Florence +and Viareggio and Olevano and Anticoli and Alatri and Licenza and +Soriano, five times at Valmontone, thrice at Orvinio; and if I did not +go a second time to Scanno and other places, there may be a reason for +it. Why this perpetual revisiting? How many new and interesting sites +might have been explored during that period! Adventures and discoveries +might have fallen to my lot, and been duly noted down. As it is, nothing +happened, and nothing was noted down. I have only a diary of dates to go +upon, out of which, with the help of memory and imagination, have been +extracted these pages. For generally, delving down into memory, a man +can bring up at least one clear-cut fragment, something still fervid and +flashing, a remembered voice or glimpse of landscape which helps to +unveil the main features of a scenario already relegated to the +lumber-room. And this detail will unravel the next; the scattered +elements jostle each other into place, as in the final disentangling of +some complicated fugue. + +Such things will do for a skeleton. Imagination will kindly provide +flesh and blood, life, movement. Imagination--why not? One suppresses +much; why not add a little? Truth blends well with untruth, and phantasy +has been so sternly banned of late from travellers' tales that I am +growing tender-hearted towards the poor old dame; quite chivalrous, in +fact--especially on those rather frequent occasions when I find myself +unable to dispense with her services. + +Yes; truth blends well with untruth. It is one of the maladies of our +age, a sign of sheer nervousness, to profess a frenzied allegiance to +truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where +graver issues are at stake. We cannot lay claim to a truthful state of +mind. In this respect the eighteenth century, for all its foppery, was +ahead of ours. What is the basic note of Horace Walpole's iridescent +worldliness--what about veracity? How one yearns, nowadays, for that +spacious and playful outlook of his; or, better still, for some +altogether Golden Age where everybody is corrupt and delightful and has +nothing whatever to do, and does it well.... + +My second ideal family at Alatri lives along a side path which diverges +off the main road to Ferentino. They are peasant proprietors, more +wealthy and civilised than those others, but lacking their terrestrial +pathos. They live among their own vines and fruit-trees on the hillside. +The female parent, a massive matron, would certainly never send those +winsome children into the Pontine Marshes, not for a single day, not for +their weight in gold. The father is quite an uncommon creature. I look +at him and ask myself; where have I seen that face before, so classic +and sinewy and versatile? I have seen it on Greek vases, and among the +sailors of the Cyclades and on the Bosphorus. It is a non-Latin face, +with sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and crisply curling +beard; a legendary face. How came Odysseus to Alatri? + +Not far from this homestead where I have spent sundry pleasant hours +there is a fountain gushing out of a hollow. In olden days it would have +been hung with votive offerings to the nymphs, and rightly. One +appreciates this nature-cult in a dry land. I have worshipped at many +such shrines where the water bounds forth, a living joy, out of the +rocky cleft--unlike those sluggish springs of the North that ooze +regretfully upwards, as though ready to slink home again unless they +were kicked from behind, and then trickle along, with barely perceptible +movement, amid weeds and slime. + +Now this particular fountain (I think it is called acqua santa), while +nowise remarkable as regards natural beauty, is renowned for curing +every disease. It is not an ordinary rill; it has medicinal properties. +Hither those two little demons, the younger children, conducted me all +unsuspecting two days ago, desirous that I should taste the far-famed +spring. + +"Try it," they said. + +I refused at first, since water of every kind has a knack of disagreeing +with my weak digestion. As for them, they gulped down tumblers of it, +being manifestly inured to what I afterwards discovered to be its +catastrophic effects. + +"Look at us drinking it," they went on. "Ah, how good! Delicious! It is +like Fiuggi, only better." + +"Am I an invalid, to drink Fiuggi water?" + +"It is not quite the same as Fiuggi. (True. I was soon wishing it had +been.) How many men would pay dearly for your privilege! Never let it be +said that you went away thirsting from this blessed spot." + +"I am not thirsty just now. Not at all thirsty, thank you." + +"We have seen you drink without being thirsty. Just one glass," they +pleaded. "It will make you live a hundred years." + +"No. Let us talk about something else." + +"No? Then what shall we tell our mother? That we brought you here, and +that you were afraid of a little mouthful of acqua santa? We thought you +had more courage. We thought you could strangle a lion." + +"Something will happen," I said, as I drained that glass. + +Nothing happened for a few hours. + +Two days' rest is working wonders.... + +I profit by the occasion of this slight indisposition to glance +backwards--and forwards. + +I am here, at Alatri, on the 22 June: so much is beyond contestation. + +A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31: Palombara. Well I +remember the hot walk to Palombara! + +August 3: Mons Lucretilis, that classical mountain from whose summit I +gazed at the distant Velino which overtops like a crystal of amethyst +all the other peaks. This was during one of my two visits to Licenza. +Pleasant days at Licenza, duly noting in the house of Horace what I have +noted with Shelley and other bards, namely, that these fellows who sing +so blithely of the simple life yet contrive to possess extremely +commodious residences; pleasant days among those wooded glens, walking +almost every morning in the footsteps of old Ramage up the valley in +whose streamlet the willow-roots sway like branches of coral--aloft +under the wild walnuts to that bubbling fountain where I used to meet my +two friends, Arcadian goat-herds, aboriginal fauns of the thickets, who +told me, amid ribald laughter, a few personal experiences which nothing +would induce me to set down here. + +July 26: La Rocca. What happened at La Rocca? + +October 2: Florence. What happened at Florence? A good deal, during +those noteworthy twelve hours! + +Some memories have grown strangely nebulous; impossible to reconstruct, +for example, what went on during the days of drowsy discomfort at +Montecelio. A lethargy seems to have fallen on me; I lived in a dream +out of which there emerges nothing save the figure of the local +tobacconist, a ruddy type with the face of a Roman farmer, who took me +to booze with him, in broad patriarchal style, every night at a +different friend's house. Those nights at Montecelio! The mosquitoes! +The heat! Could this be the place which was famous in Pliny's day for +its grove of beeches? How I used to envy the old Montecelians their +climate! + +July 23: Saracinesca. What happened? I recollect the view over the +sweltering Campagna from the dizzy castle-ruin, in whose garden I see +myself nibbling a black cherry, the very last of the season, plucked +from a tree which grows beside the wall whereon I sat. That suffices: it +gives a key to the situation. I can now conjure up the gaunt and sombre +houses of this thick-clustering stronghold; the Rembrandtesque shadows, +the streets devoid of men, the picture of some martial hero in a +cavern-like recess where I sought shelter from the heat, a black +crucifix planted in the soil below the entrance of the village--my +picture of Saracinesca is complete, in outline. + +July 31: Subiaco. Precisely! A week later, then, I walk thirty-two +chilometres along the shadeless high road, an insane thing to do, to +Subiaco and back. There, in the restaurant Aniene, when all the +luncheon-guests have departed for their noonday nap, the cook of the +establishment, one of those glorious old Roman he-cooks, comes up to my +table. Did I like the boiled trout? + +Rather flabby, I reply. A little tasteless. Let him try, next time, some +white vinegar in the water and a bay-leaf or two. + +He pricks up his ears: we are gens du metier. I invite him to sit down +and inquire: how about a bottle of Cesanese, now that we are alone? An +excellent idea! And he, in his turn, will permit himself to offer me +certain strawberries from his own private store. + +"Strawberries?" I ask. "Who ever heard of strawberries in Central Italy +on the 31 July? Why, I devoured the last cherry a week ago, and it was +only alive because it grew above the clouds." + +These, he explains mysteriously, are special strawberries, brought down +from near the snow-line by a special goat-boy. They are not for the +guests, but "only for myself." Strawberries are always worth paying for; +they are mildly purging, they go well with the wine. And what a +wonderful scent they have! "You remind me of a certain Lucullo," I said, +"who was also nice about strawberries. In fact, he made a fine art of +eating and drinking." + +"Your Lucullo, we may take it, was a Roman?" + +"Romano di Roma." + +Thus conversing with this rare old ruffian, I forget my intention of +leaving a card on Saint Scolastica. She has waited for me so long. She +can wait a little longer.... + +August 9: Villa Lante. + +August 12: Ferento. What happened at Ferento? + +Now what happened at Ferento? Let me try to reconstruct that morning's +visit. + +I have clear memories of the walk from Viterbo--it would be eighteen +chilometres there and back, they told me. I had slept well in my quaint +little room with the water rushing under the window, and breakfasted in +receptive and responsive mood. I recall that trudge along the highway +and how I stepped across patches of sunlight from the shade of one +regularly planted tree into that of another. The twelfth of August.... +It set me thinking of heathery moorlands and grouse, and of those +legions of flies that settle on one's nose just as one pulls the +trigger. It all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road, +among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what +these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter +months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland +underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my ears--a wistful +intermezzo of Brahms. It seemed to spring out of the hot earth. Such a +natural song, elvishly coaxing! Would I ever play it again? Neither +that, nor any other. + +It turned my thoughts, as I went along, to Brahms and led me to +understand why no man, who cares only for his fellow-creatures, will +ever relish that music. It is an alien tongue, full of deeps and +rippling shallows uncomprehended of those who know nothing of lonely +places; full of thrills and silences such as are not encountered among +the habitations of men. It echoes the multitudinous voice of nature, and +distils the smiles and tears of things non-human. This man listened, all +alone; he overheard things to which other ears are deaf--things terrible +and sweet; the sigh of some wet Naiad by a reedy lake, the pleadings and +furies of the genii--of those that whisper in woodlands and caverns by +the sea, and ride wailing on thunder-laden clouds, and rock with ripe +laughter in sunny wildernesses. Brahms is the test. Whoso dreads +solitude will likewise dread his elemental humour. + +It kept me company, this melodious and endearing fairy, till where a +path, diverging to the right, led up to the ruins already visible. There +the ethereal comrade took flight, scared, maybe, because my senses took +on a grossly mundane complexion--it is a way they have, thank +God--became absorbed, that is, in the contemplation of certain +blackberries wherewith the hedge was loaded. I thought: the tons of +blackberries that fall to earth in Italy, unheeded! And not even a +Scotsman knows what blackberries are, until he has tasted these. I am no +gourmet of such wild things; I rather agree with Goethe when he says: +"How berries taste, you must ask children." But I can sympathise with +the predilections of others, having certain predilections of my own. + +Once, at a miserable place in North Ireland, region of bad whisky and +porter, they brought me at dinner some wine of which they knew +nothing--they had got it from a shipwreck or some local sale. I am +rather fond of hock. And this particular bottle bore on its label the +magic imprint of a falcon sitting on a hilltop. Connoisseurs will know +that falcon. They will understand how it came about that I remained in +the inn till the last bottle of nectar was cracked. What a shame to +leave a drop for anybody else! Once again, on a bicycle trip from Paris +to the Mediterranean, I came upon a broad, smiling meadow somewhere in +the Auvergne, thickly besprinkled with mushrooms. There was a village +hard by. In that village I remained till the meadow was close cropped. +Half a ton of mushrooms--gone. Some people are rather fond of mushrooms. +And that is the right spirit: to leave nothing but a tabula rasa for +those that come after. It hurt me to think that anybody else should have +a single one of those particular mushrooms. Let them find new ones, in +another field; not in mine. + +Now what would your amateur of blackberries do in Italy? From the fate +which nearly overtook me he might save himself by specialising; by +dividing the many local varieties into two main classes and devoting his +whole attention to one or the other; to the kind such as I found on +Elba--small and round and fragrant, of ruddy hue, and palpitating with +warm sunbeams; or to that other kind, those that grow in clearings of +the Apennines where the boughs droop to earth with the weight of their +portentous clusters--swarthy as night, huge in size, oval, and fraught +with chilly mountain dews. + +No true enthusiast, I feel sure, would ever be satisfied with such an +unfair division of labour--so one-sided an arrangement. He would curse +his folly for having specialised. While engaged upon one variety, he +would always be hankering after that other kind and thinking how much +better they were. What shall he do, then? Well, he might devote one year +to one species, the next to another, and so on. Or else--seeing that +every zone of altitude bears brambles at its season and that the +interval between the maturing of the extreme varieties is at least four +months--he might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical sense, +devouring blackberries of different flavour as he went along; he might +work his way upwards, boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle +drills an oak, and leaving a track of devastation in his rear--browsing +aloft from the sea-board, where brambles are black in June, through +tangled macchia and vine-clad slopes into the cooler acclivities of rock +and jungle--grazing ever upward to where, at close of September and in +the shadow of some lonely peak on which the white mantle of winter has +already fallen, he finds a few more berries struggling for warmth and +sunshine, and then, still higher up, just a few more--the last, the very +last, of their race--dwarfs of the mountains, earthward-creeping, and +frozen pink ere yet they have had time to ripen. Here, crammed to the +brim, he may retire to hibernate, curled up like a full-gorged bear and +ready to roll downhill with the melting snows and arrive at the +sea-coast in time to begin again. What a jolly life! How much better +than being Postmaster-General or Inspector of Nuisances! But such +enthusiasts are nowhere to be found. I wish they were; the world would +be a merrier place.... + +Here is the ruined town of Ferento, all alone on the arid brow of the +hill. Nothing human in sight. A charming spot it must have been in olden +times, when the country was more timbered; now all is bare--brown earth, +brown stones. Dutifully I inspect the ruins and, applying the method of +Zadig or something of that kind, conclude that Ferento, this particular +Ferento, was relatively unimportant and relatively modern, although so +fine a site may well have commended itself from early days as a +settlement. I pick up, namely, a piece of verde antico, a green marble +which came into vogue at a later period than many other coloured ones. +Ergo, Ferento was relatively modern as antiquities go; else this marble +would not occur there. I seek for coloured ones and find not the +smallest fragment; nothing but white. Ergo, the place was relatively +insignificant; else the reds and yellows would also be discoverable. I +observe incidentally--quite incidentally!--that the architecture +corroborates my theory; so do the guide-books, no doubt, if there are +any. Now I know, furthermore, the origin of that small slab of verde +antico which had puzzled me, mixed up, as it was, among the mosaics of +quite modern marbles in that church whither I had been conducted by a +local antiquarian to admire a certain fresco recently laid bare, and +some rather crude daubs by Romanelli. + +Out again, into the path that overlooks the steep ravine. Here I find, +resting in the shadow of the wall, an aged shepherd and his flock and a +shaggy, murderous-looking dog of the Campagna breed that shows his teeth +and growls incessantly, glaring at me as if I were a wolf. "Barone" is +the brute's name. I had intended to clamber down and see whether the +rock-surface bears any traces of human workmanship; the rock-surface, I +now decide, may take care of itself. It has waited for me so long. It +can wait a little longer. + +"Does that beast of yours eat Christians?" + +"He? He is a perfect capo di c----. That is his trick, to prevent people +from kicking him. They think he can bite." + +I produce half a cigar which he crushes up into his black clay pipe. + +"Yours is not a bad life." + +"One lives. But I had better times in Zurich." + +He had stayed there awhile, working in some factory. He praised its +food, its beer, its conveniences. + +Zurich: incongruous image! Straightway I was transported from this +harmonious desolation of Ferento; I lost sight of yonder clump of +withering thistles--thistles of recent growth; you could sit, you could +stand, in their shade--and found myself glancing over a leaden lake and +wandering about streets full of ill-dressed and ungracious folk; +escaping thence further afield, into featureless hills encrusted with +smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered under noisome +horse-chestnuts and Virginia creepers. How came they to hit upon the +ugliest tree, and the ugliest creeper, on earth? Infallible instinct! +Zurich: who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity? + +So this old man had been there. + +And I remembered an expression in a book recently written by a friend of +mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in +Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness"--some such phrase. +[33] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active +kind; it grips you by the throat and sits on your chest like a +nightmare. + +I looked at the old fellow. He was sound; he had escaped the contagion. +Those others, those many hundred thousand others in Switzerland and +America--they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead ordinariness of +that life among machines. Future generations will hardly recognise the +Italian race from our descriptions. A new type is being formed, cold and +loveless, with all the divinity drained out of them. + +Having a long walk before me and being due home for luncheon, I rose to +depart, and in so doing bestowed a vigorous kick upon Barone, in order +to test the truth of his master's theory. It worked. The glowering and +snarling ceased. He was a good dog--almost human. I think, with a few +more kicks, he might have grown quite friendly. + +Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its +starkness. A land without atmosphere, and deficient in every element of +the picturesque, whether of man or nature. Four harsh, dominant tones, +which never overlap or intermingle: blue sky, white snow, black +fir-woods, green fields, and, if you insist upon having a fifth, then +take--yes, take and keep--that theatrical pink Alpengluehen which is +turned on at fixed hours for the delectation of gaping tourists, like a +tap of strontium light or the display of electric fluid at Schaffhausen +Falls. + +"Did you observe the illumination of the Falls, sir, last night?" + +"How can one avoid seeing the beastly thing?" + +"Ah! Then we must add two francs to the bill." + +Many are the schools of art that have grown up in England and elsewhere +and flourished side by side, vying with one another to express the +protean graces of man, of architecture and domestic interior, of earth +and sky and sea. Where is the Swiss school? Where, in any public +gallery, will you find a masterpiece which triumphantly vindicates the +charm of Swiss scenery? You will, find it vindicated only on condensed +milk tins. These folks can write. My taste in lyrics may be peculiar, +but I used to love my Leuthold--I wish I had him here at this moment; +the bold strokes of Keller, the miniature work, the cameo-like touches, +of C. F. Meyer--they can write! They would doubtless paint, were there +anything to paint. Holbein: did the landscape of Switzerland seduce him? +And Boecklin? He fled out of its welter of raw materialism. Even his +Swiss landscapes are mediterraneanized. Boecklin---- + +And here, as the name formulated itself, that little sprite of Brahms, +that intermezzo, once more leapt to my side out of the parched fields. I +imagine it came less for my sake than for the companionship of Boecklin. +They were comrades in the spirit; they understood. What one had heard, +the other beheld--shapes of mystery, that peer out of forest gloom and +the blue hush of midday and out of glassy waters--shapes that shudder +and laugh. No doubt you may detect a difference between Boecklin's +creations and those of classic days; it is as if the light of his +dreamings had filtered through some medium, some stained-glass window in +a Gothic church which distorted their outlines and rendered them +somewhat more grotesque. It is the hand of time. The world has aged. Yet +the shapes are young; they do but change their clothes and follow the +fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal +can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the +serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway +region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the +greatest jest in the universe. At us.... + +That lake of Conterano--the accent is on the ante-penultima--it looked +appetising on the map, all alone out there. It attracted me strongly. I +pictured a placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered among +wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam of its calm waters. Lakes are +so rare in Italy. During the whole of this summer I saw only one other, +fringed with the common English reed--two, rather, lying side by side, +one turbid and the other clear, and filling up two of those curious +circular depressions in the limestone. I rode past them on the watershed +behind Cineto Romano. These were sweet water. Of sulphur lakelets I also +saw two. + +Sitting on a stone into which the coldness of midnight had entered +(Alatri lies at a good elevation) I awaited my companion in the dusk of +dawn. Soon enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-hour's +shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri, and listening to the +plash of the fountain, is one of those memories of the town which are +graven most clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the very spot +whereon I sat. + +We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin with, profiting by some +short cuts through chestnut woods; turned to the right, ever ascending, +behind that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical hill; +thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the halts by the way. A decayed +roadside chapel with faded frescoes--a shepherd who played us some +melodies on his pipe--those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime, +glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth--the gateway of a +farmhouse being repaired--a reservoir of water full of newts--a +fascinating old woman who told us something about something--the distant +view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion +for lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in June? The days are so endless! + +At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the lake at our feet, +simmering in the noonday beams--an everyday sheet of water, brown in +colour, with muddy banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within +miles; one of those lakes which, by their periodical rising and sinking, +give so much trouble that there is talk, equally periodical, of draining +them off altogether. This one, they say, shifts continually and +sometimes reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in its oozy +bed. + +Here are countless frogs, and fish--tench; also a boat that belongs to +the man who rents the fishing. A sad accident happened lately with his +boat. A party of youngsters came for an outing and two boys jumped into +the tub, rowed out, and capsized it with their pranks. They were both +drowned--a painful and piteous death--a death which I have tried, by +accident, and can nowise recommend. They fished them out later from +their slimy couch, and found that they had clasped one another so +tightly in their mortal agony that it was deemed impious ever to +unloosen that embrace. So they were laid to rest, locked in each other's +arms. + +While my companion told me these things we had plodded further and +further along this flat and inhospitable shore, and grown more and more +taciturn. We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the +onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the parching drought of +August. Things looked bad. The luncheon hour was long past, and our +spirits began to droop. All my mellowness took flight; I grew snappy and +monosyllabic. Was there no shade? + +Yonder ... that dusky patch against the mountain? Brushwood of some +kind, without a doubt. The place seemed to be unattainable, and yet, +after an inordinate outlay of energy, we had climbed across those torrid +meadows. It proved to be a hazel copse mysteriously dark within, +voiceless, and cool as a cavern. + +Be sure that he who planted these hazels on the bleak hillside was no +common son of earth, but some wise and inspired mortal. My blessings on +his head! May his shadow never grow less! Or, if that wish be already +past fulfilment, may he dwell in Elysium attended by a thousand +ministering angels, every one of them selected by himself; may he +rejoice in their caresses for evermore. Naught was amiss. All conspired +to make the occasion memorable. I look back upon our sojourn among those +verdant hazels and see that it was good--one of those moments which are +never granted knowingly by jealous fate. So dense was the leafage in the +greenest heart of the grove that not a shred of sunlight, not a particle +as large as a sixpence, could penetrate to earth. We were drowned in +shade; screened from the flaming world outside; secure--without a care. +We envied neither God nor man. + +I thought of certain of my fellow-creatures. I often think of them. What +were they now doing? Taking themselves seriously and rushing about, as +usual, haggard and careworn--like those sagacious ants that scurry +hither and thither, and stare into each other's faces with a kind of +desperate imbecility, when some sportive schoolboy has kicked their +ridiculous nest into the air and upset all their solemn little +calculations. + +As for ourselves, we took our ease. We ate and drank, we slumbered +awhile, then joked and frolicked for five hours on end, or possibly six. +[34] I kept no count of what was said nor how the time flew by. I only +know that when at last we emerged from our ambrosial shelter the muscles +of my stomach had grown sore from the strain of laughter, and Arcturus +was twinkling overhead. + +THE END + + +INDEX + +Abbade, author +Abbadia San Salvatore +Abruzzi, limestone deserts +Acqua Acetosa, Rome +Acqua santa, mineral fountain, its appalling effects +Acque Vive, old Scanno +Addison, J. +Afforestation at Scanno +Agave, plant; dislikes change of scene +Alatri; its nameless tavern; citadel; ideal families at +Alban volcanoes +Alpengluehen, an abomination +Amiata, mountain +Anagni +Analphabetics, their charm +Anastasio, F. +Aniene, river +Anthology, Greek +Anticoli +Apennines, their general coloration +Argos +Aristotle +Arno river, its colour-moods +Artena +Athene (Minerva), promontory and temple +Attilio, a sagacious youngster + + +Bacon, misquoted +Baedeker, on wine of Scanno +Banca d'ltalia, its soi-disant director makes a fool of himself +"Barone," an almost human dog +Bathing in Tiber +Baudelaire, C. +Bears of Pescasseroli, rapid breeders +Beds in England, neolithic features of +Belgrave Square, its legendary partridges +Bellegra, village +Beloch, J. +Bennet, Dr. J. H. +Bentham, J. +Berceau, mountain +Bessel, F. W. +Betifuli, ancient Scanno +Bigio, marble +Birds, their conservative habits +Blackberries in Italy +Blasphemies, as a pick-me-up +Blind, Mathilde +Blue, basic note of Italian landscape +Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau, its lightning methods +Boecklin, A. +Borghese Gardens +Bournemouth +Bowles, Dr. R. +Brachycephalism, menace to humanity +Brahms, J., his inspiration +Breil +Brewster, H. B. +Buckle, H. T. +Building materials, of Florence, impart peculiar character to towns +Bunbury, E. H., quoted +Butter, French method of weighing, Italian regulations regarding + +Cacume, mountain +Calypso, her island +Cammaiore +Camosciara, mountain +Campagna of Rome +Campanella, headland +Campoli Apennino +Capaccio, G. C. +Cap Martin (Mentone), a vulgarized spot +Capasso, B. +Capranica +Capri +Carbineers, good men and questionable institution +Carrara +Carrion crows, relatively gay fowls +Casamari convent +Casanova, J. +Cascine Gardens +Cats in Rome, their distressful condition +Cement floors, a detestable invention +Cemetery of Mentone of Rome; Scanno; Olevano +Censorship Department, gratifying interview at +Cervesato, A. +Chamois +Chaucer +Children, good company neglected in war-time +China, fatal morality of pre-Tartar period +Ciminian forest +Cineto Romano +Circe, nymph +Cisterna, a death-trap +Civilization, its characteristic +Civitella +Coal-supply, a sore subject in Italy +Coliseum, flora and fauna of +Collepardo +Conscience, national versus individual +Consumption on Riviera; at Olevano +Conterano, lake +Corsanico +Corsi, F. +Crapolla, sea-cove +Crinagoras, poet +Critics, spleenfully criticized +Cro-Magnon racev Cross, futility of bearing a + +Darwin +Deakin, botanist +Dennis, G. +Deserters at Valmontone +Deslys, Gaby +Dewlessness, a peculiarity of Italian townsmen +Dialects of Italy +Dictionary of National Biography +Diodorus Siculus +Dohrn, Dr. A. +Donnorso, V. +Doria, A. +Dreams, recurrent; of flying +Drowning accidents +Drunkenness, not everybody's affair + +Eagles +Education Office, a "Sleepy Hollow" +Edwards, Tam, naturalist +Elba +Elder tree, a venerable growth +England, to be visited as a tourist +English language, should remain in flux +Englishmen, change in race-characters; contrasted with Italians; +influence of new surroundings on +Enthusiasm, unrewarded +Eratosthenes +Eugenie, Empress +Experience, its uses + +Faces, possibilities of improving +Ferentino +Ferento, ruined city +Filangieri, di Candida, R. +Flies, a curse +Florence, its river; Cascine Gardens; pavements; local blasphemies; +revisited +Fontanella, village +Food in war-time +Football worth watching +Fountains in Rome; responsible for shocking behaviour; in Villa Borghese +France, its one irremediable drawback +Frattura, village +Frosinone, "Garibaldi" hotel; visited by Ramage +Fumone +Functionaries, social parasites + + +Gambling instinct, correlated with religion +Gardeners, professional, imbeciles +Gargiulli, O. +Gautier, T. +Germans, at Mentone; at Levanto; save oaks of Olevano; must follow +footsteps +Ghosts, mankind surrounded by, in; away with them +Giannettasio, N. P.v Girtanner, Dr. A., beaver-specialist +Giulio, a young reprobate +Goethe, quoted +Golden Ages of literature +Gorbio +Grant Duff, M. E. +Greek words, surviving +Grimaldi caves, incident at +Grocery business, appeals to Frenchmen +Gross feeders, beware of +Grotta delle Palumbe +Guardie regie, official loafers +Gunther, Dr. A. + +H., Mr., an ardent book-lover +Hares in Italy +Hebrews of military age, their enviable immunity from conscription +Henderson, Dr., an old tippler +Heredity, speculations on +Hermits in Italy +Hippocrates +Hohentwiel, mountain +Homer +Horace +Housemaid, a noteworthy +Hutton, E. + +Ierate, locality +Imagination, needful to travel-literature, +Imperialism in Italy +Individual, contrasted with race +Insomnia +Intelligence, its two ingredients +Isola Liri +Italians, evolution of new type +Italy, reasons for visiting; over-policed +Ives, G. + +J. O. M., a memorable type +Jefferies, R. +Johnson, S. +Johnston-Lavis, H. J. +Jovana, meadow + +Keller, G. +Kew Gardens +King of Italy, protects bears +Kingfisher, a wary old one +Kneeling boy, statue +Knop, Professor + +Lachner, V. +Ladbroke Grove, its enlightened children +Landlady, of Mentone; the +London variety; she of Viareggio; of Florence +Lante, Villa +La Croce, mountain +La Rocca, village +Lawrence, D. H. +Laws, raison d'etre of Italian +Leuthold, H. +Levanto, arrival at; situation; company at hotel; the local magistrate; +stroll to Monterosso +Licenza +Ligurians, their bad character +Lizard, making a friend of; a disconsolate one +Love affairs, Italian, how to conduct +Lucian +Lucretilis, mountain +Lyme Regis + +Macaroni, war-time substitutes; the right kind +Maccarese, village +Machinery, cult of; depraves Italian character +Madonna della Neve, chapel +Madonna di Tranquillo, wayside shrine +Malaria +Mandela +Marbles +Mathew, Rev. +Maudsley, H. +Maupassant +Mazzella, S. +Megara +Mentone, recent transformation of; landscape; vegetation; produces dull +schoolboys; prehistoric man of +Merle blanc, a meritorious establishment +Metaphysicians, atrophied poets +Meyer, C. F. +Meysenbug, Malwida von +Michael Angelo; gets into trouble +Migration of labourers, annual +Mill, J. S. +Militarism, the modern infame +Milvain Bridge +Mineralogy +Momio, village +Monogamous habits, bad for songsters +Mons Canutarius +Montalto, cliff +Monte-Carlo, its well-groomed flowers; lamentable episode at Casino +Montecelio +Monterosso +Mortella, cliff +Mortola, village +Mosquitoes in Rome +Moulinet +Mummies, Peruvian +Munitions Office, develops a craving for bankers +Mure of Caldwell, traveller +Muretta, mountain +Museum, Kircher; delle Terme +Music +Mythopoeic faculty, example of + +Neighbours, an over-rated class +Nerano +Newspaper reading, to be discouraged +Nice +Nietzsche, his blind spot +Nightingales, too much of a good thing; cease from troubling +Ninetta, an attractive maiden +Nose, degeneration of + +Odysseus at Alatri +Office-hunters, should respect their betters +Olevano, its nightingales; oak grove at; first English resident at +Opi, town +Ornithology +Orte, town +Orvinio +Ouida, her writings and character + +Paestum, roses of +Pais, Prof. E. +Palombaro +Pantheon +Patriotism, chilled +Pavements, life on +Peira Cava +Perfumes, react on physiognomy +Persico, G. B. +Pescasseroli; its bears +Peutinger Table +Philosophers, contradistinguished from metaphysicians +Piccadilly Goat +Pietrasanta +Pig, in distress +Pines, at Levanto; at Viareggio +Pisa in war-time +Plaster-casts, how to dispose of +Plato +Pliny +Pollius Felix +Pontine Marshes +Ponza island, megalithic ruin on +Portovenere, marble +Potter, Major Frederick, discovers Olevano +Pottery, index of national taste +Powder magazine, explosion of +Preccia, mountain +Prehistoric races, possible reasons for their extinction +Press, the daily, its disastrous functions +"Prison, The," a Socratic dialogue + +Race ideals, contrasted with individual +Ramage, Craufurd Tait, a centrifugal Scotsman, his book and umbrella; +mania for hurrying; other travels of; compared with Waterton; +on Italian country life; gets drunk; makes formal profession of +sobriety; +his tolerance; sensitive to female charms; still hustling; his +humanistic outlook; little failings; other publications; zest for +knowledge; at Licenza +Rat-hunts +Ravens, their conjugal fidelity +Reading, to be done with reverence +Recomone, inlet +Red colour, unfashionable in Italy; in favour with other races +Rhetoric, necessary to success in courtship +Rhodian marble +Ripa, a liquid poison +Rivers, Italian +Riviera, French, its inanity; typical visitors to; lack of native genius +Roccaraso +Rojate +Rolfe, Neville +Romanelli, painter +Romans and British, their world dominion; unimaginative people +Rome, changed aspect of railway station; protestant cemetery; explosion +near; its fountains; tramcar nuisance; shadelessness; disadvantages of +site; evening breeze; neglected cats; bad food; its building stone; +unpleasant experience at; dearth of apartments +Rubinstein, A. + +Sagittario, stream +Saint Domenico +Saint-Jacques, chemin de +Saint-Louis, bridge +Saint Martin, his cave +Saint Michael, hermitage +Salatino, Dr. +Salis-Marschlins, U. von +San Costanzo, mountain and chapel +San Remo +San Rossore +Sant' Egidio, hermitage +Sant' Elia, farm +Saracinesca, village +Scalambra, mountain +Scanno, cemetery at; memories of; revisited +Schadona pass +Scheffel, V. von +Schopenhauer; anticipates "recognition marks" +Scolastica, Saint +Seaton +Sebastiani, A. +Segni +Self-indulgence, a debased expression +Sergi, Prof. G. +Serpentaro, oak grove +Serpents, with ears; human hatred of +Serrano, village +Serravezza +Shelley, an evangelist; at Viareggio; recommends caverns to his readers, +but lives comfortably himself +Sicilians +Siena, in winter; a Florentine's opinion of +Sirena, survival of name +Siren islets (Galli); ruin on +Sirocco in Rome +Sitting still, the true traveller's gift +Sleep, its sacred nature +Smollett +Snakes +Snow, Dr. H. +Sora +Soracte, mountain +Soriano; its pleasant tavern +Sospel +Spezia +Spy-mania in Italy +Stabiae (Castellamare) +Statius +Strabo +Strega liqueur, horribly adulterated; how to stop the scandal +Subiaco, strawberries at +Sunburn, pretty effects of +Surrentum +Swinburne, H. +Switzerland, its manifold beauties +Symonds, J. A. + +Taxidermy, study of +Telephone, an abomination +Termini, village +Terrata, mountain +Theophrastus +Tiber +Tiryns, citadel +Torco, village +Trafalgar Square, its fauna +Trajan's Forum +Tramcars, an abomination +Tree-creeper, bird +Trevi Fountain +Trifles, importance of +Truth-telling, a matter of longitude; not in vogue to-day +Tuscan speech, its peculiar savour + +Urquehart, D. + +Valiante, Marquis +Valmontone; its upper terrace; capture of a deserter at, Pergola, tavern +Velino, mountain +Velletri +Venice +Ventimiglia, wine of +Verde antico, marble +Veroli +Via Appia; Flaminia; Labiena; Nomentana +Viareggio, an objectionable place; its Vittoria hotel; pine woods +Victorians, their perverse sense of duty +Villalago +Villetta Barrea +Viterbo +Voss, R. + +Wallace, A. R. +Walpole, Horace +War, the present, local opinions concerning; repercussion on thoughtful +non-combatants; effects on agriculture War Office, pandemonium; confuses +Turkish and Russian +Waterton, C., a freak +Whistling, denotes mental vacuity +White, colour, unpopular in South Italy +Will-o'-the-wisp +Wine, red and black +Wolf, at Mentone; at Frattura +Wryneck, bird + +Young, J. +Youth, should be temperate +Yucca, plant + +Zagarola +"Zone of defense," drawbacks of +Zurich, its attractions + +* * * * * * * * * * * + +1. There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to see it. + +2. Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be confounded +with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian marble of the +ancients. + +3. See North American Review, September, 1913. Ramage's Calabrian tour +of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky undertaking. The few +travellers who then penetrated into this country kept to the main roads +and never moved without a military escort. One of them actually hired a +brigand as a protection. + +4. Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle in the +stream-bed--mere disconnected pools to show where the river was, and +will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence. Grant Duff says +he has seen the Arno "blue." So have I: a hepatic blue. + +5. It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown Prince. + +6. He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died. + +7. I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method of the +Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older monuments +are in better condition than the new ones. We live and learn. + +8. The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters, "... I am +writing without due consideration of the interesting point. But this +possible explanation occurs to me: children are active motor machines, +always restless and moving when not asleep. When asleep, the motor +tendencies, being not quite passive, translate themselves into the +dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant or painful, according to +bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As the muscles are almost passive +in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming activity--into dreams of flying +when bodily states are pleasant, into falling down precipices, etc., +when they are out of sorts. This is quite a hasty reflection...." + +9. "The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams and Norgate, +1891.) + +10. Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your reference to +Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I thought I was the +first to fully point out. It is a most interesting anticipation. I do +not read German, but from what I have heard of his works he was the last +man I should have expected to make such an acute suggestion in Natural +History." + +11. Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions. + +12. Fecit! He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on the 4th +November, 1920. + +13. This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166, "I have +lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine." We learn from the +Dictionary of National Biography that he was born in 1803; he must +therefore have been twenty-five years old when he bemused the +coastguard. Only twenty-five; and already at this stage. We are further +told that he was tutor to somebody's son. Unhappy child! + +14. Not all of them are true thistles. Abbade's Guide to the Abruzzi +(1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region. + +15. Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking +of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name--a love +intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of a good +word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my plot "rightly +filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better. + +16. Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making a +scientific collection of local imprecations--abusive, vituperative or +profane expletives; swear-words, in short--enriched with elaborate +commentary. I would gladly print this little study in folk-lore as an +appendix to the present volume, were it fit for publication. + +17. Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made +considerable progress in the peninsula. + +18. This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others have +garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here, and to their +list may be added that of the rock on which stood the villa of Pollius +Felix; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but used to be called +Petrapoli; pure Greek: Pollio's rock. There is still a mine of such +material to be exploited by all who care to study the vernacular. The +giant euphorbia, for instance, common on these hills, is locally known +as "totomaglie"; pure Greek again: tithymalos. + +19. Query: whether there be no connection between brachycephalism and +this modern deification of machinery? + +20. Robert L. Bowles, M.D. "Sunburn on the Alps" (Alpine Journal, +November, 1888) and "The Influence of Light on the Skin" (British +Journal of Dermatology, No. 105, Vol. 9). + +21. It has now been cleaned--with inevitable results. + +22. Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's diary. + +23. Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has +improved. Somebody now feeds them--which could hardly have been expected +during those stressful times of war, when bread barely sufficed for the +human population. They are also fewer in numbers. Their owners, I fancy, +can afford to keep them at home once more. + +24. This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious letter from +the old fellow. "The question you ask is one of great ornithological +importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I am absolutely +afraid to ask any questions in the British Museum, as they jump at an +idea and cut the ground from under the original man's feet. This I +regret to say is my experience. I have been asked what does it matter +who makes the discovery? I reply, 'Render unto Caesar, etc.' If you are +going to work it out, keep it dark. The British Museum have not the +necessary specimens--in this country I believe it is not known how the +change takes place. I tried some years ago to work it out with live +specimens, but failed because I could not get young birds. Now in answer +to your question, my belief is that the young bird moults into the +winter plumages direct and that this is changed into the full plumage in +spring either by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips of the +feathers. This is private because it is theoretical, and for your +private use to verify...." + +Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Guenther wrote: "The skin differs in +nothing from that of Phoca foetida. In the skull I observe that the +nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in typical specimens from +the northern coasts. There is also a remarkable thinness of bone, a want +of osseous substance; but it is impossible to say whether this is due to +altered physical conditions or should be accounted for by the youth of +the specimen, or whether it is an individual peculiarity." + +25. Winter 1882-1883; possibly later. + +26. The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, seems to +have been the Caucasus. + +27. I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track the legend +to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed the +ordinary tourists' map of the district. + +28. Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions of the +guardie regie, which threaten to absorb the entire youth of Italy. At +this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing accommodation all +over the peninsula; in Rome alone, they say, apartments are needed for +10,000 practically homeless persons, and a mathematician may calculate +the number of houses required to contain them. How shall they ever be +built, if all the potential builders are loafing about in uniforms at +the public expense? + +29. Some of these Beautiful Thoughts went through more than one edition. + +30. From an old article: "I was pleased to observe on Ponza the relics +of a great pre-Roman civilization. Above the town, where the cemetery +now stands, is a likely site for a citadel, and on examining it from the +sea I noticed, sure enough, a few blocks of prehistoric structure of the +so-called Cyclopean type underneath a corner of the cemetery wall. There +is a portion in better preservation between the 'Baths of Pilate' and +the harbour, where a little path winds up from the sea. The blocks are +joined without mortar, and some of them are over a metre in length. This +megalithic wall may be taken to be contemporaneous with similar works of +defence found in various parts of Italy, but I believe its existence on +Ponza has not yet been recorded. Livy says that Volscians inhabited the +island till they were supplanted by the Romans, and a tradition +preserved by Strabo and Virgil locates here the palace of the +enchantress Circe, who transformed the companions of Ulysses into +bristly swine...." Some one may have anticipated me here again, as did +Salis-Marschlins in the eighteenth century with those roses of Passtum +whose disappearance Ramage, like every one else, laments--those roses +which I thought I was the first to re-discover. They grow on the spot in +considerable quantities, though one needs good eyes to see them. They +are not flourishing as of yore, being dwarfs not more than a few inches +in height. One which I carried away and kept three years in a pot and +six more in the earth grew to a length of about sixteen feet, and is +probably alive at this moment, I never saw a flower. + +31. For the abject condition of these slaves (such they are) see Chapter +VII of The Roman Campagna by Arnaldo Cervesato. + +32. Written in 1917. + +33. D.H. Lawrence: Twilight in Italy. + +34. The title Alone strikes me, on reflection, as rather an inapt one +for this volume. Let it stand! + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALONE *** + +This file should be named 7alon10.txt or 7alon10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7alon11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7alon10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Alone + +Author: Norman Douglas + +Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7380] +[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALONE *** + + + + +Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + +ALONE + +BY + +NORMAN DOUGLAS + +AUTHOR OF + +"SOUTH WIND," "THEY WENT," "TOGETHER," ETC. + + + + + + + +TO HIS FRIEND + +EDWARD HUTTON + +WHO PRINTED SOME OF THESE TRIVIALITIES + +IN THAT "ANGLO-ITALIAN REVIEW" + +WHICH DESERVED A BETTER FATE + + + + + + +CONTENTS + +INTRODUCTION + +MENTONE + +LEVANTO + +SIENA + +PISA + +VIAREGGIO (February) + +VIAREGGIO (May) + +ROME + +OLEVANO + +VALMONTONE + +SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO + +ROME + +SORIANO + +ALATRI + + +Introduction + +What ages ago it seems, that "Great War"! + +And what enthusiasts we were! What visionaries, to imagine that in such +an hour of emergency a man might discover himself to be fitted for some +work of national utility without that preliminary wire-pulling which was +essential in humdrum times of peace! How we lingered in long queues, and +stamped up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls, waiting, only +waiting, to be asked to do something for our country by any little +guttersnipe who happened to have been jockeyed into the requisite +position of authority! What innocents.... + +I have memories of several afternoons spent at a pleasant place near St. +James's Park station, whither I went in search of patriotic employment. +It was called, I think, Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau (or +something equally lucid and concise), and professed to find work for +everybody. Here, in a fixed number of rooms, sat an uncertain number of +chubby young gentlemen, all of whom seemed to be of military age, or +possibly below it; the Emergency Bureau was then plainly--for it may +have changed later on--a hastily improvised shelter for privileged +sucklings, a kind of nursery on advanced Montessori methods. Well, that +was not my concern. One must trust the Government to know its own +business. + +During my second or third visit to this hygienic and well-lighted +establishment I was introduced, most fortunately, into the sanctuary of +Mr. R----, whose name was familiar to me. Was he not his brother's +brother? He was. A real stroke of luck! + +Mr. R----, a pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as +I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous +tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant +who tries to look like daddy. What might he do for me? + +I explained. + +We had a short talk, during which various forms were conscientiously +filled up as to my qualifications, such as they were. Of course, there +was nothing doing just then; but one never knows, does one? Would I mind +calling again? + +Would I mind? I should think not. I should like nothing better. It did +one good to be in contact with this youthful optimist and listen to his +blithe and pleasing prattle; he was so hopeful, so philosophic, so +cheery; his whole nature seemed to exhale the golden words: "Never say +die." And no wonder. He ought to have been at the front, but some +guardian angel in the haute finance had dumped him into this soft and +safe job: it was enough to make anybody cheerful. One should be +cautious, none the less, how one criticises the action of the +authorities. May be they kept him at the Emergency Bureau for the +express purpose of infusing confidence, by his bright manner, into the +minds of despondent patriots like myself, and of keeping the flag flying +in a general way--a task for which he, a German Jew, was pre-eminently +fitted. + +Be that as it may, his consolatory tactics certainly succeeded in my +case, and I went home quite infected with his rosy cheeks and words. +Yet, on the occasion of my next visit a week or two later, there was +still nothing doing--not just then, though one never knows, does one? + +"Tried the War Office?" he added airily. + +I had. + +Who hadn't? + +The War Office was a nightmare in those early days. It resembled +Liverpool Street station on the evening of a rainless Bank Holiday. The +only clear memory I carried away--and even this may have been due to +some hallucination--was that of a voice shouting at me through the +rabble: "Can you fly?" Such was my confusion that I believe I answered +in the negative, thereby losing, probably, a lucrative billet as +Chaplain to the Forces or veterinary surgeon in the Church Lads' +Brigade. Things might have been different had my distinguished cousin +still been on the spot; I, too, might have been accommodated with a big +desk and small work after the manner of the genial Mr. R----. He died in +harness, unfortunately, soon after the outbreak of war. + +I said to my young friend: + +"Everybody tells one to try the War Office--I don't know why. Of course +I tried it. I wish I had a shilling for every hour I wasted in that +lunatic asylum." + +"Ah!" he replied. "I feel sure a good many men would like to be paid at +that rate. Anyhow, trust me. We'll fix you up, sooner or later. (He kept +his word.) Why not have a whack at the F.O., meanwhile?" + +"Because I have already had a whack at it." + +I then possessed, indeed, in reply to an application on my part, a +holograph of twelve pages in the elegant calligraphy of H.M. +Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the same gentleman who was +viciously attacked by the Pankhurst section for his supposed +pro-Germanism. It conveyed no grain of hope. Other Government +Departments, he opined, might well be depleted at this moment; the +Foreign Office was in exactly the reverse position. It overflowed with +diplomatic and consular officials returned, perforce, from belligerent +countries, and now in search of occupation. Was it not natural, was it +not right, to give the preference to them? One was really at a loss to +know what to do with all those people. He had tried, hitherto in vain, +to find some kind of job for his own brother. + +A straightforward, convincing statement. Acting on the hint, I visited +the Education Office, notoriously overstaffed since Tudor days; it might +now be emptier; clerical work might be obtained there in substitution of +some youngster who had been induced to join the colours. I poked my nose +into countless recesses, and finally unearthed my man. + +They were full up, said Mr. F----. + +Full up? + +Full up. + +Then, after some further conversation as to my capacities, he thought he +might find me employment as teacher of science in the country, to +replace somebody or other. + +The notion was distasteful to me. I am not averse to learning from the +young; I only once tried to teach them--at a ragged school, long since +pulled down, near Ladbroke Grove, where I soon discovered that my little +pupils knew a great deal more than I did, more, indeed, than was good +for body or soul. Still, this was a tangible, definite offer of +unremunerative but at the same time semi-pseudo-patriotic work, not to +be sneezed at. An idea occurred to me. + +"Supposing I stick it out and give satisfaction, shall I be able to +interchange later into this department? I am more fitted for office +duties. In fact, I have had a certain experience of them." + +"No chance of that," he replied. "It is the German system. Their +schoolmasters are sometimes taken to do administrative work at +head-quarters, and vice versâ. Our English rule is: Once a teacher, +always a teacher." + +Here was a deadlock. For in such matters as teaching, a man may put a +strain on himself for a certain length of time; he may even be a +success, up to a point. But if he lacks the temperamental gift of +holding classes, the results in the long run will not be fair to the +children, to say nothing of himself. With reluctance I rose to depart, +Mr. F---- adding, by way of letting me down gently: + +"Tried the War Office?" + +I had. + +If the War Office was too lively, this place was too slumberous by half. +A cobwebby, Rip-van-Winkle-ish atmosphere brooded about those passages +and chambers. One could not help thinking that a little "German system" +might work wonders here. And this is merely one of several similar sites +I explored, and endeavoured to exploit, for patriotic purposes; I am +here only jotting down a few of the more important of those that occur +to me. + +And, oh! for the brush of a Hogarth to depict the gallery of faces with +which I came in contact as I went along. They were all different, yet +all alike; different in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and +self-sufficiency, but plainly of the same parentage--British to the +backbone; British of the wrong kind, with a sprinkling of Welshmen, +Irishmen, and Jews. Not a Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of +complacent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous by their +absence; they were otherwise engaged, in the field, the colonies, the +engine-room. I can only remember one single exception to this rule, this +type; it was the head of the Censorship Department. + +For of course I offered my services there, climbing up that decent +red-carpeted stairway, and glad to find myself among respectable +surroundings after all the unseemly holes I had lately wallowed in. I +sent up a card which, to my surprise, caused me to be ushered forthwith +into the presence of the Chief, who may have heard of my existence from +some mutual friend. Here, at all events, was a man with a face worth +looking at, a man who had done notable things in his day. What a relief, +moreover, to be able to talk to a gentleman for a change! I wished I +could have had him to myself for five minutes; there were one or two +things one would have liked to learn from him. Unfortunately he was +surrounded, as such people are, by half a dozen of the characteristic +masks. For the rest, His ex-Excellency seemed to be ineffably bored with +his new functions. + +"What on earth brings you here?" he began in a fascinatingly +absent-minded style, as if he had known me all my life, and with an +inimitable nasal drawl. "This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten! I +cannot recommend it. Not your style at all, I should say." + +"But, my dear Sir F----, I am not applying for your job. Something +subordinate, I mean. Anything, anything." + +"What? Down there, cutting up newspapers at twenty-two shillings a week? +No, no. Let's have your address, and we will communicate with you when +we find something worth your while. By the way, have you tried the War +Office?" + +I had. + +And it stands to reason that I tried the Munitions more than once. + +It was my rare good fortune--luck pursued me on these patriotic +expeditions--to come face to face, at the Munitions, with the fons et +origo; the deputy fountain-head, that is to say; a very peculiar +private-secretary-in-chief for that department. He was a perpendicular, +iron-grey personality, if I remember rightly, who smelt of some +indifferent hair-wash and lost no time in giving you to understand that +he was preternaturally busy. + +Did I know anything about machinery? + +Nothing to speak of, I replied. As co-manager and proprietor of some +cotton mills employing several hundred hands for spinning and weaving, I +naturally learnt how to handle a fair number of machines--sufficiently +well, at all events, to start and stop them and tell the girls how to +avoid being scalped or having their arms torn out whenever I happened to +be passing that way. This life also gave me some experience, useful +perhaps at the Munitions, in dealing with factory-hands---- + +That was not the kind of machinery he meant. Did I know anything about +banking? + +Nothing at all. + +"You are like everybody else," he replied with a weary sigh, as much as +to say: How am I going to run the British Empire with a collection of +imbeciles like this? "We have several thousands of applicants like +yourself," he went on. "But I will put your name down. Come again." + +"You are very kind." + +"Do call again," he added, in his best private-secretary manner. + +I called again a couple of weeks later. It struck me, namely, that they +might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this +time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man +with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things--one who, +moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department +and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for +certain labours--once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and +anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was +one? + +"I called about a fortnight ago. You have my name down." + +"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have such thousands of applicants. I +remember you! A mechanic, aren't you?" + +"No. And you asked me if I understood banking, and I said I didn't." + +"What a pity. Now if you knew about banking----" + +Nothing, evidently, had been done about my application, nor, for that +matter, about those thousands of others. We were being played with. I +began to feel grumpy. It was a lovely afternoon, and I remembered, with +regret, that I had thrown over an engagement to go for a walk with a +friend at Wimbledon. About this hour, I calculated, we should be +strolling along Beverley Brook or through the glades of Coombe Woods +with sunshine filtering through the birches overhead; it would have been +more pleasant, and far more instructive, than wasting my time with a +hatchet-faced automaton like this. That comes, I thought, of being +patriotic. I observed: + +"Your department seems to require only bankers and mechanics. Would it +not be well to advertise the fact and save trouble and time to those +thousands of applicants who, you say, are in the same predicament as +myself? I came here to do national work of some general kind." + +"So I gather. And if you understood banking----" + +"If I did, I should be a banker at my time of life--don't you see?--and +lending money to you people, and giving you good advice, instead of +asking you for employment. Isn't that fairly obvious? As a matter of +fact, my acquaintance with banking is limited to a knowledge of how to +draw cheques, and even that useful accomplishment is fast fading from my +memory, under the stress of the times." + +Being a Welshman--so I presume, from his name--he condescended to smile +faintly, but not for long; his salary was too high. As for myself, I +refrained from saying a few harsher things I was minded to say; indeed, +I made myself so vastly agreeable, after my own private recipe, that he +was quite touched. He remarked: + +"I think I had better put your name down, although we have thousands of +applicants, you know. Call again, won't you?" + +For which I humbly thanked him, instead of saying, as I ought to have +done: + +"You go to blazes. The public is a pack of idiots to run after people +who merely keep them loitering about while they feather their own nests. +We are out to lick the Germans, and yours is not the way to do it." + +Did I understand banking? The full ineptitude of this conundrum only +dawned upon me by degrees. Manifestly, if I understood banking, I might +do some specialised kind of work for the Government. But in that case I +would not apply to the Munitions. Granted they wanted bankers. Well, +there was my friend M----, renowned in the City as a genius for banking; +he could have saved them untold thousands of pounds. They would have +none of him. They sent him into the trenches, where he was duly shot. + +How easy it is for a disappointed place-seeker to jibe and rail against +the powers that be, especially when he is not in full possession of the +data! For all I know, they may have discovered my friend M---- to be a +dangerous character, and have been only too glad to remove him out of +society without unnecessary fuss, in an outwardly honourable fashion, +with a view to saving his poor but respectable parents the humiliating +experience of a criminal trial and possible execution in the family. + +If I understood banking ... why did they want bankers at this +institution? Ah, it was not my business to probe into such mysteries of +administration. To my limited intelligence it would seem that the mere +fact of a man applying at the Munitions was primâ facie evidence that +banking was not one of his accomplishments. It seemed to me, +furthermore, that there was no end to such "ifs"--patriotic or +otherwise. If I were a woman, for instance, I would promptly aid the +cause by jumping into a nurse's outfit, telling improper stories to the +Tommies, and getting myself photographed for the Press every morning. +But I am only a man. If I were a high-class trumpeter, I could qualify +for a job in one of the Allied Armies or, failing that, on Judgment Day. +But I can only strum the piano. And if the moon were made of green +cheese, we might all try to get hold of a slice of it, mightn't we?... + +Such was my pigheadedness, my boyish zeal, my belief in human nature or +perverse sense of duty, that I actually broke my vow and returned to +that ridiculous establishment. Yes, I "called again," flattering myself +with the conjecture that, even if they had not yet obtained a requisite +amount of bankers and mechanics, and even if persons of my particular +aptitudes were still a drug in the market, there might nevertheless be +room, amid the ramifications and interstices of so great a department, +for a man or two who could help to count up or pack munitions, or, if +that proposal were hopelessly wide of the mark, for the services of +something even more recondite and exotic--an intelligent corpse-washer, +for instance, or half a dozen astrologers. I felt I could distinguish +myself, at a national crisis like this, in either capacity. Anyhow, it +was only one more afternoon wasted--one out of how many! + +This time I saw Mr. W----. Though I had never met him in the flesh, I +once enjoyed the privilege of perusing a manuscript from his pen--a +story about a girl in Kew Gardens. A nice-looking young Hebrew was Mr. +W----. He had made himself indispensable, somehow or other, to the +Minister, and would doubtless by this time have been pitchforked into +some permanent and prominent job, but for that unfortunate name of his, +with its strong Teutonic flavour. + +This, by the way, was about the eighth official of his tribe, and of his +age, I had come across in the course of my recent peregrinations. How +did they get there? Tell me, who can. Far be it from me to disparage the +race of Israel. I have gained the conviction--firm-fixed, now, as the +Polar Star--that the Hebrew is as good a man as the Christian. Yet one +would like to know their method, their technique, in this instance. How +was the thing done? How did they manage it, these young Jews, all +healthy-looking and of military age--how did they contrive to keep out +of the Army? Was there some secret society which protected them? Or were +they all so preposterously clever that the Old Country would straightway +evaporate into thin air unless they sat in some comfortable office, +while our own youngsters were being blown to pieces out yonder? + +Mr. W----, I regret to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the +Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence, +doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere +of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his manner +towards me was freezingly non-committal--worthy of the best Anglo-Saxon +traditions. + +Had I come a little earlier, he avowed, he might perhaps have been able +to squeeze me into one of his departments--thus spake this infant: "One +of my departments." As it was, he feared there was nothing doing; +nothing whatsoever; not just then. Tried the War Office? + +I had. + +I even visited, though only twice, an offshoot of that establishment in +Victoria Street near the Army and Navy Stores, where candidates for the +position of translator--quasi-confidential work and passable pay, five +pounds a week--were interviewed. On the second occasion, after waiting +in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters such as haunt +the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a board of reverend +elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but prolonged, as to my +qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic affair. Could I +decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their toughest one, I +said. No! It was merely a pro forma question; they had enough German +translators on the staff. So the interrogation went on. They were going +to make sure of their man, in whom, I must say, they took little +interest save when they learnt that he had passed a Civil Service +examination in Russian and another in International Law. At that +moment--though I may be mistaken--they seemed to prick up their ears. +Not long afterwards I was allowed to depart, with the assurance that I +might hear further. + +Their inquiries into my attainments and references must have given +satisfaction, for in the fulness of time a missive arrived to the effect +that, assuming me to be a competent Turkish scholar, they would be glad +to see me again with a view to a certain vacancy. + +Turkish--a language I had not mentioned to them, a language of which I +never possessed more than fifty words, every one of them forgotten long +years ago. + +"How very War Office," I thought. + +These good people were mixing up Turkish and Russian--a natural error, +when one comes to think of it, for, though the respective tongues might +not be absolutely identical, yet the countries themselves were +sufficiently close together to account for a little slip like this. + +Was it a slip? Who knows? It is so easy to criticise when one is not +fully informed about things. They may have suggested my acting as +Turkish translator for reasons of their own--reasons which I cannot +fathom, but which need not therefore be bad ones. Chagrined +office-hunters like myself are prone to be bitter. In an emergency of +this magnitude a citizen should hesitate before he finds fault with the +wisdom of those whom the nation has chosen to steer it through troubled +waters. No carping! You only hamper the Government. The general public +should learn to keep a civil tongue in its head. Theirs but to do and +die. + +None the less, it was about this time that I began to experience certain +moments of despondency, and occasionally let a whole day slip by without +endeavouring to be of use to The Cause--moments when, instead of asking +myself, "What have I done for my country?" I asked, "What has my country +done for me?"--moments when I envied the hotel night-porters, +taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling flowers in Piccadilly +Circus who had something more sensible to do than to bother their heads +about trying to be patriotic, and getting snubbed for their pains. Yet, +with characteristic infatuation for hopeless ventures, I persevered. +Another "whack" at the F.O. leading to another holograph, two more +whacks at the Censorship, interpreter jobs, hospital jobs, God knows +what--I persevered, and might for the next three years have been kicking +my heels, like any other patriot, in the corridor of some dingy +Government office at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-jumpers, +but for a God-sent little accident, the result of sheer boredom, which +counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean. + +Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment, than she had ever yet +been. For on the day prior to my departure I received a communication +from the Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose methods of work, it +was now apparent, were as expeditious as its own name was brief. That +hopeful Mr. R----, that bubbling young optimist who had so +conscientiously written down a number of my qualifications, such as they +were--he was keeping his promise after months, and months, and months. +Never say die. The dear little fellow! What job had he captured for me? + +An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages to commence at 17s. +6d. per week. + +H'm. + +The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but I like to think that +it included the free use of the lavatory, if there happened to be one on +the premises. + +So luck pursued me to the end, though it never quite caught me up. For +bags were packed, and tickets taken. And therefore: + +"What did you do in the Great War, grandpapa?" + +"I loafed, my boy." + +"That was naughty, grandpapa." + +"Naughty, but nice...." + + + + +ALONE + +Mentone + +Italiam petimus.... + +Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of +the trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, +and forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours. +What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and +friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic +fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot +from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me on these +shores, where life is spent in a round of trivialities. + +One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from Nice, at last found +himself at the door of "the inn." The inn.... Are there any inns left at +Mentone? + +À propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs. At the present +moment, twenty-two of the principal hotels and pensions of Mentone are +closed, because owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does not this +speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton enterprise? Where, in a German +town of 18,000 inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such establishments +in the hands of Frenchmen? + +The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either among the tombs of that +cemetery overhead, studying sepulchral inscriptions and drawing +deductions, from what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality +and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the relative number of +consumptives here interred. Sixty per cent, shall we say? Or else, in +the streets of the town, I catch myself endeavouring--hitherto without +success--to count up the number of grocers' shops. They are far in +excess of what is needful. Now, why? Well, your tailor or hatter or +hosier--he makes a certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he +does not sell them at every moment of the day. The other, quite apart +from small advantages to be gained owing to the ever-shifting prices of +his wares, is ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of +which he makes a small gain. The grocery business commends itself warmly +to the French genius for garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I +fancy, will you see butter more meticulously weighed than here. Buy a +ton of it, and they will replace on their counter a fragment of the +weight and size of a postage stamp, rather than let the balance descend +on your side. + +And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one ever again escape from +Mentone? It may well be colder in Italy, but anything is preferable to +this inane Riviera existence.... + +I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to discommend them, for the +simple reason that, if they have proved bad, I smile to think of other +men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good +ones--why, only a fool would reveal their whereabouts. Since, however, I +hope so to order my remaining days of life as never to be obliged to +return to these gimcrack regions, there is no inducement for withholding +the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte Carlo, a quite unpretentious place +of entertainment that well deserves its name--white blackbirds being +rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is excellent--it has a +cachet of its own; the wine more than merely good. And this is +surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped +down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor +though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the +palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to anything else, +as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine hereabouts +that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you adventure into +the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your +trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a good name for +these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black currant enters +largely into their composition, though not in sufficient quantity to +render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little problem for the +oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or climate or treatment +can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anything +drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, a stone's throw +eastwards, can boast of its San Biagio, Rossese, Latte, Dolceacqua and +other noble growths, the like of which are not to be found along the +whole length of the French Riviera? + +Having pastured the inner man, to his complete satisfaction, at the +hospitable Merle Blanc, our traveller will do well to pasture his eyes +on the plants in the Casino gardens. Whoever wants to see flowers and +trees on their best behaviour, must come to Monte Carlo, where the +spick-and-span Riviera note is at its highest development. Not a leaf is +out of place; they have evidently been groomed and tubbed and manicured +from the hour of their birth. And yet--is it possible? Lurking among all +this modern splendour of vegetation, as though ashamed to show their +faces, may be discerned a few lowly olive trees. Well may they skulk! +For these are the Todas and Veddahs, the aboriginals of Monte Carlo, who +peopled its sunny slopes in long-forgotten days of rustic life--once +lords of the soil, now pariahs. What are they doing here? And how comes +it that the eyesore has not yet been detected and uprooted by those +keen-sighted authorities that perform such wonders in making the visitor +feel at home, and hush up with miraculous dexterity everything in the +nature of a public scandal? + +In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial Riviera tale. There +was an Englishwoman here, one of those indestructible modern ladies who +breakfast off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel all +the better for it, and who, one day, found herself losing rather heavily +at the tables. "Another aspirin is going to turn my luck," she thought, +and therewith swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the panacea. +Not unobserved, however; for straightway two elegant gentlemen--they +might have been Russian princes--pounced upon her and led her to that +underground operating-room where a kindly physician is in perennial +attendance. He brushed aside her explanations. + +"It would be a thousand pities for so charming a lady to poison herself. +But since you wish to take that step, why choose the Casino which has a +reputation to keep up? Are there not hotels----" + +"I tell you it was only aspirin." + +"Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale! Now, Madam, let us +not lose a moment! It is a question of life and death." + +"Aspirin, I tell you----" + +"Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged to employ force." + +The stomach-pump was produced. + +It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is +unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless +water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland +is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or +content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all +progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk +along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once in a +lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap Martin, if only in +memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who, he +asks--who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape St. +Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug villas +of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugénie), to say nothing of +that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures the country +for leagues around. + +On other occasions you may find your way towards evening up to Gorbio +and stay for supper, provided you do not mind being cheated. Or wander +further afield, over Sospel to Breil by the old path--note the lavender: +they make a passable perfume of it--or else to Moulinet (famous for bad +food and a mastodontic breed of mosquitoes) and thence along the +stream--note the bushes of wild box--and over a wooded ridge to the +breezy heights of Peira Cava, there to dream away the daylight under the +pines. These are summer rambles. At present the snow lies deep. + +One of my favourite excursions has been up the so-called Berceau, the +cradle-shaped hill which dominates Mentone on the east. I was there +to-day for a solitary luncheon, resting awhile in the timbered saddle +between the peaks. The summit is only about five minutes' walk from this +delectable grove, but its view inland is partially intercepted by a +higher ridge. From here, if you are in the mood, you may descend +eastward over the Italian frontier, crossing the stream which is spanned +lower down by the bridge of St. Louis, and find yourself at Mortola +Superiore (try the wine) and then at Mortola proper (try the wine). +Somewhere in this gulley was killed the last wolf of these regions; so a +grey-haired local Nimrod told me. He had wrought much mischief in his +time. That is to say, he was not killed, but accidentally +drowned--drowned in one of those artificial reservoirs which are +periodically filled and drawn off for irrigating the gardens lower down; +an ignoble death, for a wolf! A goat lay drowned beside him. The event, +he reckoned, must have taken place half a century ago. Since then, the +wolf has never been seen. + +This afternoon, however, I preferred to repose in that shady dell, while +a flock of goldcrests were investigating the branches overhead and two +buzzards cruised, in dreamy spirals, about the sunny sky of midday; to +repose; to indulge my genius and review the situation; to profit, in +short, by that sense of aloofness peculiar to such aerial spots, which +tempts the mind to set its house in order. What are we doing, in these +empty regions? Why not wander hence? That cursed traveller's gift of +sitting still; of remaining stationary, no matter where, until one is +actually pushed away! And yet, how enjoyable this land might be, were it +inhabited by any race save one whose thousand little meannesses, public +and private, are calculated to drain away a man's last ounce of +self-respect! Not many are the glad memories I shall carry from Mentone. +I can think of no more than two. + +There is my landlady, to begin with, who spies out every detail of my +daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a +peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will +correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some +jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an +example of our matutinal converse: + +"I fear, Monsieur, you omitted to put out the light in a certain place +last night. It was burning when I returned home." + +"Certainly not, Madame. I have been nicely brought up. I never visit +places at night. You ought to be familiar with my habits after all this +time." + +"True. Then it must have been some one else. Ah, these electricians' +bills!" + +Or this: + +"Monsieur, Monsieur! The English Consul called yesterday with his little +dog at about five o'clock. He waited in your room, but you never came +back." + +"Five o'clock? I was at the baths." + +"I have heard of that establishment. What do they charge for a hot +bath?" + +"Three francs----" + +"Bon Dieu!" + +"--if you take an abonnement. Otherwise, it may well be more." + +"And so you go there. Why then--why must you also wash in the morning +and splash water on my floor? It may have to be polished after your +departure. Would you mind asking the Consul, by the way, not to sit on +the bed? It weakens the springs." + +Or this: + +"Might I beg you, Monsieur, to tread more lightly on the carpet in your +room? I bought it only nine years ago, and it already shows signs of +wear." + +"Nine years--that old rag? It must have survived by a miracle." + +"I do not ask you to avoid using it. I only beg you will tread as +lightly as possible." + +"Carpets are meant to be worn out." + +"You would express yourself less forcibly, if you had to pay for them." + +"Let us say then: carpets are meant to be trodden on." + +"Lightly." + +"I am not a fairy, Madame." + +"I wish you were, Monsieur." + +Thrice already, in a burst of confidence, has she told me the story of +an egg--an egg which rankles in the memory. Some years ago, it seems, +she went to a certain shop (naming it)--a shop she has avoided ever +since--to buy an egg; and paid the full price--yes, the full price--of a +fresh egg. That particular egg was not fresh. So far from fresh was it, +that she experienced considerable difficulty in swallowing it. + +A memorable episode occurred about a fortnight ago. I was greeted +towards 8 a.m. with moanings in the passage, where Madame tottered +around, her entire head swathed in a bundle of nondescript woollen +wraps, out of which there peered one steely, vulturesque eye. She looked +more than ever like an animated fungus. + +Her teeth--her teeth! The pain was past enduring. The whole jaw, rather; +all the teeth at one and the same time; they were unaccountably loose +and felt, moreover, three inches longer than they ought to feel. Never +had she suffered such agony--never in all her life. What could it be? + +It was easy to diagnose periostitis, and prescribe tincture of iodine. + +"That will cost about a franc," she observed. + +"Very likely." + +"I think I'll wait." + +Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She would give anything +to obtain relief--anything! + +"Anything?" I inquired. "Then you had better have a morphia injection. I +have had numbers of them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish +like magic. There is my friend Dr. Théophile Fornari----" + +"I know all about him. He demands five francs a visit, even from poor +people like myself." + +"You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to come here and climb +your seventy-two stairs for much less than five francs." + +"I think I'll wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting money on food just now, and +that is a consolation." + +Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing complaint, and I would +have purchased a franc's worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth. +Not then. On the contrary, I grew positively low-spirited when, after +three more days, the lamentations began to diminish in volume. They were +sweet music to my ears, at the time. They are sweeter by far, in +retrospect. If only one could extract the same amount of innocent and +durable pleasure out of all other landladies!... + +My second joyful memory centres round another thing of beauty--a spiky +agave (miscalled aloe) of monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the +garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the growths of this kind +which I have admired in various lands; none can vaunt as proud and +harmonious a development as this one. You would say it had been cast in +some dull blue metal. The glaucous wonder stands by itself, a prodigy of +good style, more pleasing to the eye than all that painfully generated +tropicality of Mr. Hanbury's Mortola paradise. It is flawless. Vainly +have I teased my fancy, endeavouring to discover the slightest defect in +shape or hue. Firm-seated on the turf, in exultant pose, with a pallid +virginal bloom upon those mighty writhing leaves, this plant has drawn +me like a magnet, day after day, to drink deep draughts of contentment +from its exquisite lines. + +For the rest, the whole agave family thrives at Mentone; the ferox is +particularly well represented; one misses, among others, that delightful +medio-picta variety, of which I have noticed only a few indifferent +specimens. [1] It is the same with the yuccas; they flourish here, +though one kind, again, is conspicuous by its absence-- the Atkinsi +(some such name, for it is long since I planted my last yucca) with +drooping leaves of golden-purple. You will be surprised at the number of +agaves in flower here. The reason is, that they are liable to be moved +about for ornamental purposes when they want to be at rest; the plant, +more sensitive and fastidious than it looks, is outraged by this +forceful perambulation and, in an access of premature senility, or +suicidal mania, or sheer despair, gives birth to its only flower--herald +of death. The fatal climax could be delayed if gardeners, in +transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their old +accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But +your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an +amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him +for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile +one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for +instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering +underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques--there, where the steps +begin---- + +Almost.... + +And here my afternoon musings, up yonder, took on a more acrid +complexion. I remembered a recent talk with one of the teachers at the +local college who lamented that his pupils displayed a singular dullness +in their essays; never, in his long career at different schools, had he +met with boys more destitute of originality. What could be expected, we +both agreed? Mentone was of recent growth--the old settlement, Mentone +of Symonds, proclaims its existence only by a ceaseless and infernal +clanging of bells, rivalling Malta--no history, no character, no +tradition--a mushroom town inhabited by shopkeepers and hôteliers who +are there for the sole purpose of plucking foreigners: how should a +youngster's imagination be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless +modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes to these regions, now that +invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their climate? Decayed Muscovites, +Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in England, and their painted +women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling eyes, a Turk or two, Jews +and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, +Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that read like a +nightmare (see "List of Arrivals" in New York Herald)--the whole exotic +riff-raff enlivened and perfumed by a copious sprinkling of +horizontales. + +And I let my glance wander along that ancient Roman road which led from +Italy to Arles and can still be traced, here and there; I took in the +section from Genoa to Marseille, an enormous stretch of country, and +wondered: what has this coast ever produced in the way of thought or +action, of great men or great women? There is Doria at Genoa, and Gaby +Deslys at Marseille; that may well exhaust the list. Ah, and half-way +through, a couple of generals, born at Nice. It is really an instructive +phenomenon, and one that should appeal to students of Buckle--this +relative dearth of every form of human genius in one of the most +favoured regions of the globe. Here, for unexplained reasons, the +Italian loses his better qualities; so does the Frenchman. Are the +natives descended from those mysterious Ligurians? Their reputation was +none of the best; they were more prompt, says Crinagoras, in devising +evil than good. That Mentone man, to be sure, whose remains you may +study at Monaco and elsewhere, was a fine fellow, without a doubt. He +lived rather long ago. Even he, by the way, was a tourist on these +shores. And were the air of Mentone not unpropitious to the composition +of anything save a kind of literary omelette soufflée, one might like to +expatiate on Sergi's remarkable book, and devise thereto an incongruous +footnote dealing with the African origin of sundry Greek gods, and +another one referring to the extinction of these splendid races of men; +how they came to perish so utterly, and what might be said in favour of +that novel theory of the influence of an ice-age on the germplasm +producing mutations--new races which breed true ... enough! Let us +remain at the Riviera level. + +In the little museum under those cliffs by the sea, where the Grimaldi +caves are, I found myself lately together with a young French couple, +newly married. The little bride was vastly interested in the attendant's +explanations of the habits of those remote folk, but, as I could plainly +see, growing more and more distrustful of his statements as to what +happened all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. + +"And this, Messieurs, is the jaw-bone of a cave-bear--the competitor, +one might say, in the matter of lodging-houses, with the gentleman whose +anatomy we have just inspected. Here are bones of hippopotamus, and +rhinoceros, which he hunted with the weapons you saw. And the object on +which your arm is reposing, Madame, is the tooth of an elephant. Our +ancestor must have been pretty costaud to kill an elephant with a +stone." + +"Elephants?" she queried. "Did elephants scramble about these precipices +and ravines? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. He probably killed them down there," and his arm +swept over the blue Mediterranean, lying at our feet. "Do you mean to +say that elephants paddled across from Algiers in order to be +assassinated by your old skeleton? I should like to have seen that." + +"Pardon me, Madame. The Mediterranean did not exist in those days." + +The suggestion that this boundless sea should ever have been dry land, +and in the time of her own ancestors, was too much for the young lady. +She smiled politely, and soon I heard her whispering to her husband: + +"I had him there, eh? Quel farceur!" + +"Yes. You caught him nicely, I must say. But one must not be too hard on +these poor devils. They have got to earn their bread somehow." + +This will never do. + +Italiam petimus.... + + + + +Levanto + +I have loafed into Levanto, on the recommendation of an Irish friend +who, it would seem, had reasons of his own for sending me there. + +"Try Levanto," he said. "A little place below Genoa. Nice, kindly +people. And sunshine all the time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes! The food +is all right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us start that +subject----" + +We started it none the less, and at the end of the discussion he added: + +"You must go and see Mitchell there. I often stayed with him. Such a +good fellow! And very popular in the place. He built an aqueduct for the +peasants--that kind of man. Mind you look him up. He will be bitterly +disappointed if you don't call. So make a note of it, won't you? By the +way, he's dead. Died last year. I quite forgot." + +"Dead, is he? What a pity." + +"Yes; and what a nuisance. I promised to send him down some things by +the next man I came across. You would have been that man. I know you do +not carry much luggage, but you could have taken one or two trifles at +least. He wanted a respectable English telescope, I remember, to see the +stars with--a bit of an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too--devilish +fond of chutney, the old boy was; quite a gastro-maniac. What a +nuisance! Now he will be thinking I forgot all about it. And he needed a +clothes-press; I was on no account to forget that clothes-press. Rather +fussy about his trousers, he was. And a type-writer; just an ordinary +one. But I doubt whether you could have managed a type-writer." + +"Easily. And a bee-hive or two. You know how I like carrying little +parcels about for other people's friends. What a nuisance! Now I shall +have to travel with my bags half empty." + +"Don't blame me, my dear fellow. I did not tell him to die, did I?".... + +It must have been about midnight as the train steamed into Levanto +station. Snow was falling; you could hear the moan of the sea hard by; +an icy wind blew down from the mountains. + +Sunshine all the time! + +Everybody scurried off the platform. A venerable porter, after looking +in dubious fashion at my two handbags, declared he would return in a few +moments to transport them to the hotel, and therewith vanished round the +corner. The train moved on. Lamps were extinguished. Time passed. I +strode up and down in the semi-darkness, trying to keep warm and +determined, whatever happened, not to carry those wretched bags myself, +when suddenly a figure rose out of the gloom--a military figure of +youthful aspect and diminutive size, armed to the teeth. + +"A cold night," I ventured. + +"Do you know, Sir, that you are in the war-zone--the zona di difesa?" + +He began to fumble at his rifle in ominous fashion. + +Nice, kindly people! + +I said: + +"It is hard to die so young. And I particularly dislike the looks of +that bayonet, which is half a yard longer than it need be. But if you +want to shoot me, go ahead. Do it now. It is too cold to argue." + +"Your papers! Ha, a foreigner. Hotel Nazionale? Very good. To-morrow +morning you will report yourself to the captain of the carbineers. After +that, to the municipality. Thereupon you will take the afternoon train +to Spezia. When you have been examined by the police inspector at the +station you will be accompanied, if he sees fit, to head-quarters in +order that your passport may be investigated. From there you will +proceed to the Prefecture for certain other formalities which will be +explained to you. Perhaps--who knows?--they will allow you to return to +Levanto." + +"How can you expect me to remember all that?" Then I added: "You are a +Sicilian, I take it. And from Catania." + +He was rather surprised. Sicilians, because they learn good Italian at +their schools, think themselves indistinguishable from other men. + +Yes; he explained. He was from a certain place in the Catania part of +the country, on the slopes of Etna. + +I happened to know a good deal of that place from an old she-cook of +mine who was born there and never wearied of telling me about it. To his +still greater surprise, therefore, I proceeded to discourse learnedly +about that region, extolling its natural beauties and healthy climate, +reminding him that it was the birthplace of a man celebrated in +antiquity (was it Diodorus Siculus?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that +he would doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated a spot. + +Straightway his manner changed. There is nothing these folks love more +than to hear from foreign lips some praise of their native town or +village. He waxed communicative and even friendly; his eyes began to +sparkle with animation, and there we might have stood conversing till +sunrise had I not felt that glacial wind searching my garments, chilling +my humanity and arresting all generous impulses. Rather abruptly I bade +farewell to the cheery little reptile and snatched up my bags to go to +the hotel, which he said was only five minutes' walk from there. + +Things turned out exactly as he had predicted. Arrived at Spezia, +however, I found an unpleasant surprise awaiting me. The officer in +command, who was as civil as the majority of such be-medalled jackasses, +suggested that one single day would be quite sufficient for me to see +the sights of Levanto; I could then proceed to Pisa or anywhere else +outside his priceless "zone of defence." I pleaded vigorously for more +time. After all, we were allies, were we not? Finally, a sojourn of +seven days was granted for reasons of health. Only seven days: how +tiresome! From the paper which gave me this authorisation and contained +a full account of my personal appearance I learnt, among other less +flattering details, that my complexion was held to be "natural." It was +a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup. + +No butter for breakfast. + +The landlord, on being summoned, avowed that to serve crude butter on +his premises involved a flagrant breach of war-time regulations. The +condiment could not be used save for kitchen purposes, and then only on +certain days of the week; he was liable to heavy penalties if it became +known that one of his guests.... However, since he assumed me to be a +prudent person, he would undertake to supply a due allowance to-morrow +and thenceforward, though never in the public dining-room; never, never +in the dining-room! + +That is the charm of Italy, I said to myself. These folks are reasonable +and gifted with imagination. They make laws to shadow forth an ideal +state of things and to display their good intentions towards the +community at large; laws which have no sting for the exceptional type of +man who can evade them--the sage, the millionaire, and the "friend of +the family." Never in the dining-room. Why, of course not. Catch me +breakfasting in any dining-room. + +Was it possible? There, at luncheon in the dining-room, while devouring +those miserable macaroni made with war-time flour, I beheld an over-tall +young Florentine lieutenant shamelessly engulfing huge slices of what +looked uncommonly like genuine butter, a miniature mountain of which +stood on a platter before him, and overtopped all the other viands. I +could hardly believe my eyes. How about those regulations? Pointing to +this golden hillock, I inquired softly: + +"From the cow?" + +"From the cow." + +"Whom does one bribe?" + +He enjoyed a special dispensation, he declared--he need not bribe. +Returned from Albania with shattered health, he had been sent hither to +recuperate. He required not only butter, but meat on meatless days, as +well as a great deal of rest; he was badly run down.... And eggs, raw +eggs, drinking eggs; ten a day, he vows, is his minimum. Enviable +convalescent! + +The afternoon being clear and balmy, he took me for a walk, smoking +cigarettes innumerable. We wandered up to that old convent picturesquely +perched against the slope of the hill and down again, across the +rivulet, to the inevitable castle-ruin overhanging the sea. Like all +places along this shore, Levanto lies in a kind of amphitheatre, at a +spot where one or more streams, descending from the mountains, discharge +themselves into the sea. Many of these watercourses may in former times +have been larger and even navigable up to a point. Their flow is now +obstructed, their volume diminished. I daresay they have driven the sea +further out, with silt swept down from the uplands. The same thing has +struck me in England--at Lyme Regis, for instance, whose river was also +once navigable to small craft and at Seaton, about a mile up whose +stream stands that village--I forget its name--which was evidently the +old port of the district in pre-Seaton days. Local antiquarians will +have attacked these problems long ago. The sea may have receded. + +A glance from this castle-height at the panorama bathed in that mellow +sunshine made me regret more than ever the enforced brevity of my stay +at Levanto. Seven days, for reasons of health: only seven days! Those +mysterious glades opening into the hill-sides, the green patches of +culture interspersed with cypresses and pines, dainty villas nestling in +gardens, snow-covered mountains and blue sea--above all, the presence of +running water, dear to those who have lived in waterless lands--why, one +could spend a life-time in a place like this! + +The lieutenant spoke of Florence, his native city. He would be there +again before long, in order to present himself to the medical +authorities and be weighed and pounded for the hundredth time. He hoped +they would then let him stay there. He was tired to death of Levanto and +its solitude. How pleasant to bid farewell to this "melancholy" sea +which was supposed to be good for his complaints. He asked: + +"Do you know why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to +see that wonderful dome of theirs rising up from the plain?" + +"Why?" + +"Can't you guess?" + +"Let me see. It is sure to be something not quite proper. H'm.... The +tower of Giotto, for example, has certain asperities, angularities, +anfractuosities----" + +"You are no Englishman whatever!" he laughed. "Now try that joke on the +next Florentine you meet.... There was a German here," he went on, "who +loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all about him. He began +writing a book to prove that there was a different walk to be taken in +this neighbourhood for every single day of the year." + +"How German. And then?" + +"The war came. He cleared out. The natives were sorry. This whole coast +seems to be saturated with Teutons--of a respectable class, apparently. +They made themselves popular, they bought houses, drank wine, and joked +with the countrymen." + +"What do you make of them?" I inquired. + +"I am a Tuscan," he began (meaning: I am above race-prejudices; I can +view these things with olympic detachment). "I think the German says to +himself: we want a world-empire, like those damned English. How did they +get it? By piracy. Two can play at that game, though it may be a little +more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a +certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, +who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished +by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at +First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a +whole--well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is +our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the +ordinary native of the country is, if his own son happens to get +killed." + +"I know. That makes him very angry." + +"It makes him angry not with the Germans who are responsible for the +war, but with his own government which is responsible for conscripting +the boys. Ah, what a stupid subject of conversation! And how God would +laugh, if he had any sense of humour! Suppose we go down to the beach +and lie on the sand. I need rest: I am very dilapidated." + +"You look thin, I must say." + +"Typhoid, and malaria, and pleurisy--it is a respectable combination. +Thin? I am the merest framework, and so transparent that you can see +clean through my stomach. Perhaps you would rather not try? Count my +ribs, then." + +"Count your ribs? That, my dear Lieutenant, is an occupation for a rainy +afternoon. Judging by your length, there must be a good many of +them...." + +"We should be kind to our young soldiers," said the Major to whom I was +relating, after dinner, the story of our afternoon promenade. A burly +personage is the Major, with hooked nose and black moustache and +twinkling eyes--retired, now, from a service in the course of which he +has seen many parts of the world; a fluent raconteur, moreover, who +keeps us in fits of laughter with naughty stories and imitations of +local dialects. "We must be nice with them, and always offer them +cigarettes. What say you, Mr. Lieutenant?" + +"Yes, sir. Offer them cigarettes and everything else you possess. The +dear fellows! They seldom have the heart to refuse." + +"Seldom," echoes the judge. + +That is our party; the judge, major, lieutenant and myself. We dine +together and afterwards sit in that side room while the fat little host +bustles about, doing nearly all the work of the war-diminished +establishment himself. Presently the first two rise and indulge in a +lively game of cards, amid vigorous thumpings of the table and cursings +at the ways of Providence which always contrives to ruin the best hands. +I order another litre of wine. The lieutenant, to keep me company, +engulfs half a dozen eggs. He tells me about Albanian women. I tell him +about Indian women. We thrash the matter out, pursuing this or that +aspect into its remotest ramifications, and finally come to the +conclusion that I, at the earliest opportunity, must emigrate to +Albania, and he to India. + +As for the judge, he was born under the pale rays of Saturn. He has +attached himself to my heart. Never did I think to care so much about a +magistrate, and he a Genoese. + +There are some men, a few men, very few, about whom one craves to be +precise. Viewed through the mist of months, I behold a corpulent and +almost grotesque figure of thirty-five or thereabouts; blue-eyed, +fair-haired but nearly bald, clean-shaven, bespectacled. So purblind has +he grown with poring over contracts and precedents that his movements +are pathologically awkward--embryonic, one might say; his unwieldy +gestures and contortions remind one of a seal on shore. The eyes being +of small use, he must touch with his hands. Those hands are the most +distinctive feature of his person; they are full of expression; tenderly +groping hands, that hesitate and fumble in wistful fashion like the +feelers of some sensitive creature of night. There is trouble, too, in +that obese and sluggish body; trouble to which the unhealthy complexion +testifies. He may drink only milk, because wine, which he dearly +loves--"and such good wine, here at Levanto"--it always deranges the +action of some vital organ inside. + +The face is not unlike that of Thackeray. + +A man of keen understanding who can argue the legs off a cow when duly +roused, he seems far too good for a small place like this, where, by the +way, he is a newcomer. Maybe his infinite myopia condemns him to +relative seclusion and obscurity. He has a European grip of things; of +politics and literature and finance. Needless to say, I have discovered +his cloven hoof; I make it my business to discover such things; one may +(or may not) respect people for their virtues, one loves them only for +their faults. It is a singular tinge of mysticism and credulity which +runs through his nature. Can it be the commercial Genoese, the gambling +instinct? For he is an authority on stocks and shares, and a passionate +card-player into the bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand +--they are but two forms of the same speculative spirit. Think of the +Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-lovers! I have yet to meet a +full-blown agnostic who relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not +adventurous on such lines; he knows the odds against backing a winner in +heaven or earth. + +Often, listening to this lawyer's acute talk and watching his uncouth +but sympathetic face, I ask myself a question, a very obvious question +hereabouts: How could you cause him to swerve from the path of duty? How +predispose him in your favour? Sacks of gold would be unavailing: that +is certain. He would wave them aside, not in righteous Anglo-Saxon +indignation, but with a smile of tolerance at human weakness. To +simulate clerical leanings? He is too sharp; he would probably be vexed, +not at your attempt to deceive, but at the implication that you took him +for a fool. A good tip on the stock exchange? It might go a little way, +if artfully tendered. Perhaps an apt and unexpected quotation from the +pages of some obsolete jurist--the intellectual method of approach; for +there is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of +intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook. In any case, it +would be a desperate venture to override the conscience of such a man. +May I never have to try! + +His stern principles must often cause him suffering, needless suffering. +He is for ever at the mercy of some categorical imperative. This may be +the reason why I feel drawn to him. Such persons exercise a strange +attraction upon those who, convinced of the eternal fluidity of all +mundane affairs, and how that our most sacred institutions are merely +conventionalities of time and place, conform to only one rule of +life--to be guided by no principles whatever. They miss so much, those +others. They miss it so pathetically. One sees them staggering +gravewards under a load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle, +when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross? Is it pleasant? Is it pretty? + +He also has taken me for walks, but they are too slow and too short for +my taste. Every twenty yards or so he must stand still to "admire the +view"--that is, to puff and pant. + +"What it is," he then exclaims, "to be an old man in youth, through no +fault of one's own. How many are healthy, and yet vicious to the core!" + +I inquire: + +"Are you suggesting that there may be a connection between sound health +and what society, in its latest fit of peevish self-maceration, is +pleased to call viciousness?" + +"That is a captious question," he replies. "A man of my constitution, +unfit for pleasures of the body, is prone to judge severely. Let me try +to be fair. I will go so far as to say that to certain natures +self-indulgence appears to be necessary as--as sunshine to flowers." + +Self-indulgence, I thought. Heavily-fraught is that word; weighted with +meaning. The history of two thousand years of spiritual dyspepsia lies +embedded in its four syllables. Self-indulgence--it is what the ancients +blithely called "indulging one's genius." Self-indulgence! How debased +an expression, nowadays. What a text for a sermon on the mishaps of good +words and good things. How all the glad warmth and innocence have faded +out of the phrase. What a change has crept over us.... + +Glancing through a glass window not far from the hotel, I was fortunate +enough to espy a young girl seated in a sewing shop. She is decidedly +pretty and not altogether unaware of the fact, though still a child. We +have entered upon an elaborate, classical flirtation. With all the +artfulness of her years she is using me to practise on, as a dummy, for +future occasions when she shall have grown a little bigger and more +admired; she has already picked up one or two good notions. I pretend to +be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if she were grown up, and +profess to feel that she has really cast a charm--a state of affairs +which, if true, would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a point. +Impossible not to sense the joy which radiates from her smile and +person. That is all, so far. It is an orthodox entertainment, merely a +joke. God knows what might happen, under given circumstances. Some of a +man's most terrible experiences--volcanic cataclysms that ravaged the +landscape and left a trail of bitter ashes in their rear--were begun as +a joke. You can say so many things in a joking way, you can do so many +things in a joking way--especially in Northern countries, where it is +easy to joke unseen. + +Meanwhile, with Ninetta, I discourse sweet nothings in my choicest idiom +which has grown rather rusty in England. + +Italian is a flowery language whose rhetorical turns and phrases require +constant exercise to keep them in smooth working order. No; that is not +correct. It is not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are ever at +command. What one learns to forget in England is the simplicity to use +them; to utter, with an air of deep conviction, a string of what we +should call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your breath +away--the things you have to say because these folks are so enamoured of +rhetoric and will not be happy without it. + +An English girl of her social standing--I lay stress upon the standing, +for it prescribes the conduct--an English girl would never listen to +such outpourings with this obvious air of approbation; maybe she would +ask where you had been drinking; in every case, your chances would be +seriously diminished. She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system +which is fatal to success in this country. The affair, here, must be a +siege. It must move onward by those gradual and inevitable steps +ordained of old in the unwritten code of love; no lingering by the +wayside, no premature haste. It must march to its end with the measured +stateliness of a quadrille. Passion, well-restrained passion, should be +written on every line of your countenance. Otherwise you are liable to +be dubbed a savage. I know what it is to be called a "Scotch bear," and +only because I trembled too much, or too little--I forget which--on a +certain occasion. + +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 of sang-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 grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, [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." + +"A Scozzese. 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." + + + + +Siena + +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's Unknown 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 once escaped 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 a piazza! 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: + + Siena + Di 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 delectable amorino whose 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 their +bête 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. The Dictionary of National +Biography might 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.... + + + + +Pisa + +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 modern infâme. 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 a pis 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." Irritable was 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 them en route and "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 (February) + +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 of ripa: 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. This ripa is 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, and the 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. + +"And that little ridge of stone," says my companion, "--do you see it, +jutting into the fields down there? It has a queer name. We call it La +Sirena." + +La Sirena.... + +It is good to live in a land where such memories cling to old rocks. + +By what a chance has the name survived to haunt this inland crag, +defying geological changes, outlasting the generations of men, their +creeds and tongues and races! How it takes one back--back into hoary +antiquity, into another landscape altogether! One thinks of those Greek +mariners coasting past this promontory, and pouring libations to the +Siren into an ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now sows +his rice and turnips. + + Paganisme immortel, es-tu mort? On le dit. + Mais Pan, tout bas, s'en moque, et la Sirène en rit. + +They are still here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to +separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous +splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the +gods are kind. + +My Siren dwells at Corsanico. + + + + +Viareggio (May) + +Those Sirens! They have called me back, after nearly three months in +Florence, to that village on the hill-top. Nothing but smiles up there. + +And never was Corsanico more charming, all drenched in sunlight and +pranked out with fresh green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to +myself, I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away, and +there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet--can it be possible?--I am even +happier here. Seldom does the event surpass one's hopes. + +Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives already heavy-laden, +through patches of high-standing corn and beans, across the little +brook, past that familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the +canal, in full content. Another golden moment of life! Strong +exhalations rose up from the swampy soil, that teemed and steamed under +the hot breath of spring; the pond-like water, once so bare, was +smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh-plants and loud with the music +of love-sick frogs. Stars were reflected on its surface. + +Star-gazing, my Star? Would I were Heaven, to gaze on thee with many +eyes. + +Such was my mood, a Hellenic mood, a mood summed up in that one word +[Greek: tetelestai]--not to be taken, however, in the sense of "all's +over." Quite the reverse! Did Shelley ever walk in like humour along +this canal? I doubt it. He lacked the master-key. An evangelist of a +kind, he was streaked, for all his paganism, with the craze of +world-improvement. One day he escaped from his chains into those +mountains and there beheld a certain Witch--only to be called back to +mortality by a domestic and critic-bitten lady. He tried to translate +the Symposium. He never tried to live it.... + +I have now interposed a day of rest. + +My welcome in the villa situated in the street called after a certain +politician was that of the Prodigal Son. There was a look bordering on +affection in the landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once the +weather was warmer. She would now give me a cool room, instead of that +old one facing south. Those much-abused cement floors--they were not so +inconvenient, were they, at this season? The honey for breakfast? +Assuredly; the very same. And there was a tailor she had discovered in +the interval, cheaper and better than that other one, if anything +required attention. + +And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London landladies and London +charwomen--having suffered the torments of Hell, for more years than I +care to remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags and harpies +and drunken sluts--I am now rewarded by the services of something at the +other end of the human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good +dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life seems to be to save my +money and make me comfortable. "Don't get your shoes soled there!" she +told me two days ago. "That man is from Viareggio. I know a better +place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will +pay less and get better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she +forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known +my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have +known them at the end of a century.... + +My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally +efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the +familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair +and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave +me the impression of being in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I +used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods +enlivened with steely glints of humour--such were the feelings of those +who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. It would +be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or vulgar. Yet +she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She never dreams +that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high police +functionary and greatly in favour with his set--a most useful landlady, +in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself. + +On learning this fact, I made it my business to study her weaknesses and +soon discovered that she was fond of a particular brand of Chianti. A +flask of this vintage was promptly secured; then, dissatisfied with its +materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with a wreath of +violets and despatched it to her private apartment by the prettiest +child I could pick up in the street. That is the way to touch their +hearts. The offering was repeated at convenient intervals. + +A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one morning, about the +war. I found she shared the view common to many others, that this is an +"interested" war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines which +work against peace. There are so many persons "interested" in keeping up +the present state of affairs, people who now make more money than they +ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie. The soldier in the +field, the chief person concerned, is voiceless and of no account when +compared with this army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if +the war came to an end. They will fight like demons, to keep the fun +going. What else should they do? Their income is at stake. A man's heart +is in his purse. + +I asked: + +"Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war, how would you set about +it?" + +Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to her. + +"I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense. It makes things too +pleasant. It would bring the troops to their senses and cause them to +march home and say: Basta! We have had enough." + +"Don't you find the Germans a little prepotenti?" "Prepotenti: yes. By +all means let us break their heads. And then, caro Lei, let us learn to +imitate them...." + +That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine and myself in such +mellow mood that I would have shared my last crust with some shipwrecked +archduchess and almost forgiven mine enemies, though not until I had hit +them back--I strolled about the Cascine. They have done something to +make this place attractive; just then, at all events, the shortcomings +were unobserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot. +Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as +it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water; +and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the +surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of +hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not +remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in +an identical situation, and with far less sunshine for the landscape +gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town in Germany where, on +a plain as flat as a billiard table, they actually reared a mountain, +now covered with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens. To +think that I used to skate over the meadows where that mountain now +stands! + +There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the +usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake +of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious +epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play +is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision +and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of +the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of +old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of +consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which +leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name. +They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their +tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an +outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort. +Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat. + +Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de +Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew +strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all +these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half +of them ought to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about +with a ball. + +It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising +generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the +younger spectators and make him talk. But these better-class lads +cluster together at the approach of a stranger, and one does not want to +start a public discussion with half a dozen of them. My chance came from +another direction. It was half-time and a certain player limped out of +the field and sat down on the grass. I was beside him before his friends +had time to come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with perspiration. + +"Any damage?" + +Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other side had just caught him +with the full swing of his fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly. + +"Hardly fair play," I commented. + +"It was cleverly done." + +"Ah, well," I said, warming to my English character, "you may get harder +knocks in the trenches. I suppose you are nearly due?" + +Not for a year or so, he replied. And even then ... of course, he was +quite eligible as to physique ... it was really rather awkward ... but +as to serving in the army ... there were other jobs going. ... Was +anything more precious than life?... Could anything replace his life to +him?... To die at his age.... + +"It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point of view. But if +everybody thought like that, where would the Isonzo line be?" + +If everybody thought as he did, there would be no Isonzo line at all. +German influence in Italy--why not? They had been there before; it was +no dark page in Italian history. Was his own government so admirable +that one should regret its disappearance? A pack of knaves and +cutthroats. Patriotism--a phrase; auto-intoxication. They say one thing +and mean another. The English too. Yes, the English too. Purely +mercenary motives, for all their noble talk. + +It is always entertaining to see ourselves as others see us. I had the +presence of mind to interject some anti-British remark, which produced +the desired effect. + +"Now they howl about the sufferings of Belgium, because their money-bags +are threatened. They fight for poor Belgium. They did not fight for +France in 1870, or for Denmark or Poland or Armenia. Trade was not +threatened. There was no profit in view. Profit! And they won't even +supply us with coal----" + +Always that coal. + +It is clear as daylight. England has failed in her duty--her duty being +to supply everybody with coal, ships, money, cannons and anything else, +at the purchaser's valuation. + +He made a few more statements of this nature, and I think he enjoyed his +little fling at that, for him, relatively speaking, since the war began, +rara avis, a genuine Englishman (Teutonic construction); I certainly +relished it. Then I asked: + +"Where did you learn this? About Armenia, I mean, and Poland?" + +"From my father. He was University Professor and Deputy in Parliament. +One also picks up a little something at school. Don't you agree with +me?" + +"Not altogether. You seem to forget that a nation cannot indulge in +those freaks of humanitarianism which may possibly befit an individual. +A certain heroic dreamer told men to give all they had to the poor. You, +if you like, may adopt this idealistic attitude. You may do generous +actions such as your country cannot afford to do, since a nation which +abandons the line of expediency is on the high road to suicide. If I +have a bilious attack, by all means come and console me; if Poland has a +bilious attack, there is no reason why England should step in as +dry-nurse; there may be every reason, indeed, why England should stand +aloof. Now in Belgium, as you say, money is involved. Money, in this +national sense, means well-being; and well-being, in this national +sense, is one of the few things worth fighting for. However, I am only +throwing out one or two suggestions. On some other day, I would like to +discuss the matter with you point by point--some other day, that is, +when you are not playing football and have just a few clothes on. I am +now at a disadvantage. You could never get me to impugn your statements +courageously--not in that costume. It would be like haggling with Apollo +Belvedere. Why do you wear those baby things?" + +"We are all wearing them, this season." + +"So I perceive. How do you get into them?" + +"Very slowly." + +"Are they elastic?" + +"I wish they were.".... + +Four minutes' talk. It gave me an insight. He was an intellectualist. As +such, he admired brute force but refused to employ it. He was civilized. +Like many products of civilization, he was unaware of its blessings and +unconcerned in its fate. Is it not a feature peculiar to civilization +that it thinks of everything save war? That is why they are uprooted, +these flowerings, each in its turn. + +My father told me; often one hears that remark, even from adults. As if +a father could not be a fool like anybody else! That a child should have +hard-and-fast opinions--it is engaging. Children are egocentric. A +fellow of this size ought to be less positive. + +These refined youths are fastidious about their clothes. They would not +dream of buying a ready-made suit, however well-fitting. They are +content to take their opinions second-hand. Unlike ours, they are seldom +alone; they lack those stretches of solitude during which they might +wrestle with themselves and do a little thinking on their own account. +When not with their family, they are always among companions, being far +more sociable and fond of herding together than their English +representatives. They talk more; they think less; they seem to do each +other's thinking, which takes away all hesitation and gives them a +precocious air of maturity. If this decorative lad engages in some +profession like medicine or engineering there is hope for him, even as +others of his age rectify their perspective by contact with crude +facts--groceries and calicoes and carburettors and so forth. Otherwise, +his doom is sealed. He remains a doctrinaire. This country is full of +them. + +And then--the sterilizing influence of pavements. Even when summer comes +round, they all flock in a mass to some rowdy place like this Viareggio +or Ancona where, however pleasant the bathing, spiritual life is yet +shallower than at home. What says Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.? "Their +country life consists merely in breathing a different air, though in +nothing else does it differ from the life they live in town." + +He notices things, does Ramage; and might, indeed, have elaborated this +argument. The average Italian townsman seems to have lost all sense for +the beauty of rural existence; he is incurious about it; dislodge him +from the pavement--no easy task--and he gasps like a fish out of water. +Squares and cafés--they stimulate his fancy; the doings and opinions of +fellow-creatures--thence alone he derives inspiration. What is the +result? A considerable surface polish, but also another quality which I +should call dewlessness. Often glittering like a diamond, he is every +bit as dewless. His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I +think, from contempt or nescience of nature; you will notice the trait +still more at Venice, whose inhabitants seldom forsake their congested +mud-flat. Depth of character and ideality and humour--such things +require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These citizens are arid, +for lack of dew; unquestionably more so than their English +representatives. + +POSTSCRIPT.--The pavements of Florence, by the way, have an +objectionable quality. Their stone is too soft. They wear down rapidly +and an army of masons is employed in levelling them straight again all +the year round. And yet they sometimes use this very sandstone, instead +of marble, for mural inscriptions. How long are these expected to remain +legible? They employ the same material for their buildings, and I +observe that the older monuments last, on the whole, better than the new +ones, which flake away rapidly--exfoliate or crack, according to the +direction from which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the +chisel. It may well be that Florentines of past centuries left the hewn +blocks in their shady caverns for a certain length of time, as do the +Parisians of to-day, in order to allow for the slow discharge and +evaporation of liquid; whereas now the material, saturated with +moisture, is torn from its damp and cool quarries and set in the blazing +sunshine. At the Bourse, for instance,--quite a modern structure--the +columns already begin to show fissures. [7] + +Amply content with Viareggio, because the Siren dwells so near, I stroll +forth. The town is awake. Hotels are open. Bathing is beginning. Summer +has dawned upon the land. + +I am not in the city mood, three months in Florence having abated my +interest in humanity. Past a line of booths and pensions I wander in the +direction of that pinery which year by year is creeping further into the +waves, and driving the sea back from its old shore. There is peace in +this green domain; all is hushed, and yet pervaded by the mysterious +melody of things that stir in May-time. Here are no sombre patches, as +under oak or beech; only a tremulous interlacing of light and shade. A +peculiarly attractive bole not far from the sea, gleaming rosy in the +sunshine, tempts me to recline at its foot. + +This insomnia, this fiend of the darkness--the only way to counteract +his mischief is by guile; by snatching a brief oblivion in the hours of +day, when the demon is far afield, tormenting pious Aethiopians at the +Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments of self-created night, +merged into the warm earth! The extreme quietude of my present room, +after Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this +restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsanico. But chiefly, +the dream--that recurrent dream. + +Everybody, I suppose, is subject to recurrent dreams of some kind. My +present one is of a painful or at least sad nature; it returns +approximately every three months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I +am in a distant town where I lived many years back, and where each stone +is familiar to me. I have come to look for a friend--one who, as a +matter of fact, died long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this +fact; once embarked on the dream-voyage, I hold him to be still alive. +Glad at the prospect of meeting my friend again, I traverse cheerfully +those well-known squares in the direction of his home.... Where is it, +that house; where has it gone? I cannot find it. Ages seem to pass while +I trample up and down, in ever-increasing harassment of mind, along +interminable rows of buildings and canals; that door, that +well-remembered door--vanished! All search is vain. I shall never meet +him: him whom I came so far to see. The dismal truth, once established, +fills me with an intensity of suffering such as only night-visions can +inspire. There is no reason for feeling so strongly; it is the way of +dreams! At this point I wake up, thoroughly exhausted, and say to +myself: "Why seek his house? Is he not dead?" + +This stupid nightmare leaves me unrefreshed next morning, and often +bears in its rear a trail of wistfulness which may endure a week. Only +within the last few years has it dared to invade my slumbers. Before +that period there was a series of other recurrent dreams. What will the +next be? For I mean to oust this particular incubus. The monster annoys +me, and even our mulish dream-consciousness can be taught to acquiesce +in a fact, after a sufficient lapse of time. + +There are dreams peculiar to every age of man. That celebrated one of +flying, for instance--it fades away with manhood. I once indulged in a +correspondence about it with a well-known psychologist, [8] and would +like to think, even now, that this dream is a reminiscence of leaping +habits in our tree-haunting days; a ghost of the dim past, therefore, +which revisits us at night when recent adjustments are cast aside and +man takes on the credulity and savagery of his remotest forefathers; a +ghost which comes in youth when these ancient etchings are easier to +decypher, being not yet overscored by fresh personal experiences. What +is human life but a never-ending palimpsest? + +So I pondered, when my musings under that pine tree were interrupted by +the arrival on the scene of a young snake. I cannot say with any degree +of truthfulness which of us two was more surprised at the encounter. I +picked him up, as I always do when they give me a chance, and began to +make myself agreeable to him. He had those pretty juvenile markings +which disappear with maturity. Snakes of this kind, when they become +full-sized, are nearly always of a uniform shade, generally black. And +when they are very, very old, they begin to grow ears and seek out +solitary places. What is the origin of this belief? I have come across +it all over the country. If you wish to go to any remote or inaccessible +spot, be sure some peasant will say: "Ah! There you find the serpent +with ears." + +These snakes are not easy to catch with the hand, living as they do +among stones and brushwood, and gliding off rapidly once their +suspicions are aroused. This one, I should say, was bent on some +youthful voyage of discovery or amorous exploit; he walked into the trap +from inexperience. As a rule, your best chance for securing them is when +they bask on the top of some bush or hedge in relative unconcern, +knowing they are hard to detect in such places. They climb into these +aerial situations after the lizards, which go there after the insects, +which go there after the flowers, which go there after the sunshine, +struggling upwards through the thick undergrowth. You must have a quick +eye and ready hand to grasp them by the tail ere they have time to lash +themselves round some stem where, once anchored, they will allow +themselves to be pulled in pieces rather than yield to your efforts. If +you fail to seize them, they trickle earthward through the tangle like a +thread of running water. + +He belonged to that common Italian kind which has no English +name--Germans call them Zornnatter, in allusion to their choleric +disposition. Most of them are quite ready to snap at the least +provocation; maybe they find it pays, as it does with other folks, to +assume the offensive and be first in the field, demanding your place in +the sun with an air of wrathful determination. Some of the big fellows +can draw blood with their teeth. Yet the jawbones are weak and one can +force them asunder without much difficulty; whereas the bite of a +full-grown emerald lizard, for instance, will provide quite a novel +sensation. The mouth closes on you like a steel trap, tightly +compressing the flesh and often refusing to relax its hold. In such +cases, try a puff of tobacco. It works! Two puffs will daze them; a +fragment of a cigar, laid in the mouth, stretches them out dead. And +this is the beast which, they say, will gulp down prussic acid as if it +were treacle. + +But snakes vary in temperament as we do, and some of these Zamenis +serpents are as gentle and amiable as their cousin the Aesculap snake. +My friend of this afternoon could not be induced to bite. Perhaps he was +naturally mild, perhaps drowsy from his winter sleep or ignorant of the +ways of the world; perhaps he had not yet shed his milk teeth. I am +disposed to think that he forgot about biting because I made a +favourable impression on him from the first. He crawled up my arm. It +was pleasantly warm, but a little too dark; soon he emerged again and +glanced around, relieved to discover that the world was still in its old +place. He was not clever at learning tricks. I tried to make him stand +on his head, but he refused to stiffen out. Snakes have not much sense +of humour. + +Lizards are far more companionable. During two consecutive summers I had +a close friendship with a wall-lizard who spent in my society certain of +his leisure moments--which were not many, for he always had an +astonishing number of other things on hand. He was a full-grown male, +bejewelled with blue spots. A fierce fighter was Alfonso (such was his +name), and conspicuous for a most impressive manner of stamping his +front foot when impatient. Concerning his other virtues I know little, +for I learnt no details of his private life save what I saw with my +eyes, and they were not always worthy of imitation. He was a polygamist, +or worse; obsessed, moreover, by a deplorable habit of biting off the +tails of his own or other people's children. He went even further. For +sometimes, without a word of warning, he would pounce upon some innocent +youngster and carry him in his powerful jaws far away, over the wall, +right out of my sight. What happened yonder I cannot guess. It was +probably a little old-fashioned cannibalism. + +Though my meals in those days were all out of doors, his attendance at +dinner-time was rather uncertain; I suspect he retired early in order to +spend the night, like other polygamists, in prayer and fasting. At the +hours of breakfast and luncheon--he knew them as well as I did--he was +generally free, and then quite monopolized my company, climbing up my +leg on to the table, eating out of my hand, sipping sugar-water out of +his own private bowl and, in fact, doing everything I suggested. I did +not suggest impossibilities. A friendship should never be strained to +breaking-point. Had I cared to risk such a calamity, I might have taught +him to play skittles.... + +For the rest, it is not very amusing to be either a lizard or a snake in +Italy. Lizards are caught in nooses and then tied by one leg and made to +run on the remaining three; or secured by a cord round the neck and +swung about in the air--mighty good sport, this; or deprived of their +tails and given to the baby or cat to play with; or dragged along at the +end of a string, like a reluctant pig that is led to market. There are +quite a number of ways of making lizards feel at home. + +With snakes the procedure is simple. They are killed; treated to that +self-same system to which they used to treat us in our arboreal days +when the glassy eye of the serpent, gleaming through the branches, will +have caused our fur to stand on end with horror. No beast provokes human +hatred like that old coiling serpent. Long and cruel must have been his +reign for the memory to have lingered--how many years? Let us say, in +order to be on the safe side, a million. Here, then, is another ghost of +the past, a daylight ghost. + +And look around you; the world is full of them. We live amid a legion of +ancestral terrors which creep from their limbo and peer in upon our +weaker moments, ready to make us their prey. A man whose wits are not +firmly rooted in earth, in warm friends and warm food, might well live a +life of ceaseless trepidation. Many do. They brood over their immortal +soul--a ghost. Others there are, whose dreams have altogether devoured +their realities. These live, for the most part, in asylums. + +There flits, along this very shore, a ghost of another kind--that of +Shelley. Maybe the spot where they burnt his body can still be pointed +out. I have forgotten all I ever read on that subject. An Italian +enthusiast, the librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence, +garnered certain information from ancient fishermen of Viareggio in +regard to this occurrence and set it down in a little book, a book with +white covers which I possessed during my Shelley period. They have +erected a memorial to the English poet in one of the public squares +here. The features of the bust do not strike me as remarkably etherial, +but the inscription is a good specimen of Italian adapted to lapidary +uses--it avoids those insipid verbal terminations which weaken the +language and sometimes render it almost ridiculous. + +Smollet lies yonder, at Livorno; and Ouida hard by, at Bagni di Lucca. +She died in one of these same featureless streets of Viareggio, alone, +half blind, and in poverty.... + +I know Suffolk, that ripe old county of hers, with its pink villages +nestling among drowsy elms and cornfields; I know their "Spread Eagles" +and "Angels" and "White Horses" and other taverns suggestive--sure sign +of antiquity--of zoological gardens; I know their goodly ale and old +brown sherries. Her birthplace, despite those venerable green mounds, is +comparatively dull--I would not care to live at Bury; give me Lavenham +or Melford or some place of that kind. While looking one day at the +house where she was born, I was sorely tempted to crave permission to +view the interior, but refrained; something of her own dislike of prying +and meddlesomeness came over me. Thence down to that commemorative +fountain among the drooping trees. The good animals for whose comfort it +was built would have had some difficulty in slaking their thirst just +then, its basin being chocked up with decayed leaves. + +We corresponded for a good while and I still possess her letters +somewhere; I see in memory that large and bold handwriting, often only +two words to a line, on the high-class slate-coloured paper. The sums +she spent on writing materials! It was one of her many ladylike traits. + +I tried to induce her to stay with me in South Italy. She made three +conditions: to be allowed to bring her dogs, to have a hot bath every +day, and two litres of cream. Everything could be managed except the +cream, which was unprocurable. Later on, while living in the Tyrolese +mountains, I renewed the invitation; that third condition could now be +fulfilled as easily as the other two. She was unwell, she replied, and +could not move out of the house, having been poisoned by a cook. So we +never met, though she wrote me much about herself and about +"Helianthus," which was printed after her death. In return, I dedicated +to her a book of short stories; they were published, thank God, under a +pseudonym, and eight copies were sold. + +She is now out of date. Why, yes. Those guardsmen who drenched their +beards in scent and breakfasted off caviare and chocolate and sparkling +Moselle--they certainly seem fantastic. They really were fantastic. They +did drench their beards in scent. The language and habits of these +martial heroes are authenticated in the records of their day; glance, +for instance, into back numbers of Punch. The fact is, we were all +rather ludicrous formerly. The characters of Dickens, to say nothing of +Cruikshank's pictures of them: can such beings ever have walked the +earth? + +If her novels are somewhat faded, the same cannot be said of her letters +and articles and critiques. To our rising generation of authors--the +youngsters, I mean; those who have not yet sold themselves to the +devil--I should say: read these things of Ouida's. Read them +attentively, not for their matter, which is always of interest, nor yet +for their vibrant and lucid style, which often rivals that of Huxley. +Read them for their tone, their temper; for that pervasive good +breeding, that shining honesty, that capacity of scorn. These are +qualities which our present age lacks, and needs; they are conspicuous +in Ouida. Abhorrence of meanness was her dominant trait. She was +intelligent, fearless; as ready to praise without stint as to voice the +warmest womanly indignation. She was courageous not only in matters of +literature; courageous, and how right! Is it not satisfactory to be +right, when others are wrong? How right about the Japanese, about +Feminism and Conscription and German brutalitarianism! How she puts her +finger on the spot when discussing Marion Crawford and D'Annunzio! Those +local politicians--how she hits them off! Hers was a sure touch. Do we +not all now agree with what she wrote at the time of Queen Victoria and +Joseph Chamberlain? When she remarks of Tolstoy, in an age which adored +him (I am quoting from memory), that "his morality and monogamy are +against nature and common sense," adding that he is dangerous, because +he is an "educated Christ"--out of date? When she says that the world is +ruled by two enemies of all beauty, commerce and militarism--out of +date? When she dismisses Oscar Wilde as a cabotin and yet thinks that +the law should not have meddled with him--is not that the man and the +situation in a nutshell? + +No wonder straightforward sentiments like these do not appeal to our age +of neutral tints and compromise, to our vegetarian world-reformers who +are as incapable of enthusiasm as they are of contempt, because their +blood-temperature is invariably two degrees below the normal. Ouida's +critical and social opinions are infernally out of date--quite +inconveniently modern, in fact. There is the milk of humanity in them, +glowing conviction and sincerity; they are written from a standpoint +altogether too European, too womanly, too personally-poignant for +present-day needs; and in a language, moreover, whose picturesque and +vigorous independence comes as a positive shock after the colourless +Grub-street brand of to-day. + +They come as a shock, these writings, because in the brief interval +since they were published our view of life and letters has shifted. A +swarm of mystics and pragmatists has replaced the lonely giants of +Ouida's era. It is an epoch of closed pores, of constriction. The novel +has changed. Pick up the average one and ask yourself whether this +crafty and malodorous sex-problem be not a deliberately commercial +speculation--a frenzied attempt to "sell" by scandalizing our +unscandalizable, because hermaphroditic, middle classes? Ouida was not +one of these professional hacks, but a personality of refined instincts +who wrote, when she cared to write at all, to please her equals; a +rationalistic anti-vulgarian; a woman of wide horizons who fought for +generous issues and despised all shams; the last, almost the last, of +lady-authors. What has such a genial creature in common with our anaemic +and woolly generation? "The Massarenes" may have faults, but how many of +our actual woman-scribes, for all their monkey-tricks of cleverness, +could have written it? The haunting charm of "In Maremma": why ask our +public to taste such stuff? You might as well invite a bilious +nut-fooder to a Lord Mayor's banquet. + +The mention of banquets reminds me that she was blamed for preferring +the society of duchesses and diplomats to that of the Florentine +literati, as if there were something reprehensible in Ouida's fondness +for decent food and amusing talk when she could have revelled in Ceylon +tea and dough-nuts and listened to babble concerning Quattro-Cento +glazes in any of the fifty squabbling art-coteries of that City of +Misunderstandings. It was one of her several failings, chiefest among +them being this: that she had no reverence for money. She was unable to +hoard--an unpardonable sin. Envied in prosperity, she was smugly pitied +in her distress. Such is the fate of those who stand apart from the +crowd, among a nation of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, after +being the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form--a slur on +society. True, she might have bettered her state by accepting a +lucrative proposal to write her autobiography, but she considered such +literature a "degrading form of vanity" and refused the offer. She +preferred to remain ladylike to the last, in this and other little +trifles--in her lack of humour, her redundancies, her love of expensive +clothes and genuinely humble people, of hot baths and latinisms and +flowers and pet dogs and sealing-wax. All through life she made no +attempt to hide her woman's nature, her preference for male over female +company; she was even guilty of saying that disease serves the world +better than war, because it kills more women than men. Out of date, with +a vengeance! + +There recurs to me a sentence in a printed letter written by a +celebrated novelist of the artificial school, a sentence I wish I could +forget, describing Ouida as "a little terrible and finally pathetic +grotesque." Does not a phrase like this reveal, even better than his own +romances, the essentially non-human fibre of the writer's mind? Whether +this derivative intellectualist spiderishly spinning his own plots and +phrases and calling Ouida a "grotesque"--whether this echo ever tried to +grasp the bearing of her essays on Shelley or Blind Guides or Alma +Veniesia or The Quality of Mercy--tried to sense her burning words of +pity for those that suffer, her hatred of hypocrisy and oppression and +betrayal of friendship, her so righteous pleadings, coined out of the +heart's red blood, for all that makes life worthy to be lived? He may +have tried. He never could succeed. He lacked the sympathy, the sex. He +lacked the sex. Ah, well--Schwamm drueber, as the Norwegians say. Ouida, +for all her femininity, was more than this feline and gelatinous New +Englander. + + + + +Rome + +The railway station at Rome has put on a new face. Blown to the winds is +that old dignity and sense of leisure. Bustle everywhere; soldiers in +line, officers strutting about; feverish scurryings for tickets. A young +baggage employé, who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the +inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep up the traditions +of former days. He was unruffled and polite; he told me, incidentally, +that he came from ----. That was odd, I said; I had often met persons +born at ----, and never yet encountered one who was not civil beyond the +common measure. His native place must be worthy of a visit. + +"It is," he replied. "There are also certain fountains...." + +That restaurant, for example--one of those few for which a man in olden +days of peace would desert his own tavern in the town--how changed! The +fare has deteriorated beyond recognition. Where are those succulent +joints and ragouts, the aromatic wine, the snow-white macaroni, the +cafe-au-lait with genuine butter and genuine honey? + +War-time! + +Conversed awhile with an Englishman at my side, who was gleefully +devouring lumps of a particular something which I would not have liked +to touch with tongs. + +"I don't care what I eat," he remarked. + +So it seemed. + +I don't care what I eat: what a confession to make! Is it not the same +as saying, I don't care whether I am dirty or clean? When others tell me +this, I regard it as a pose, or a poor joke. This person was manifestly +sincere in his profession of faith. He did not care what he ate. He +looked it. Were I afflicted with this peculiar ailment, this attenuated +form of coprophagia, I should try to keep the hideous secret to myself. +It is nothing to boast of. A man owes something to those traditions of +our race which has helped to raise us above the level of the brute. Good +taste in viands has been painfully acquired; it is a sacred trust. +Beware of gross feeders. They are a menace to their fellow-creatures. +Will they not act, on occasion, even as they feed? Assuredly they will. +Everybody acts as he feeds. + +Then lingered on the departure platform, comparing its tone with that of +similar places in England. A mournful little crowd is collected here. +Conscripts, untidy-looking fellows, are leaving--perhaps for ever. They +climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and +endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their +farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent. +The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation, +the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they +are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the +sisters and children, who give themselves away pretty freely. An +infectious thing, this shedding of tears. One little girl, loth to part +from that big brother, contrived by her wailing to break down the +reserve of the entire family.... + +It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Rome is mirthless. + +There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a sweet old lady +friend who said to me, in years gone by: + +"When next you go to Rome, please let me know if it is still raining +there." + +It was here that she celebrated her honeymoon--an event which must have +taken place in the 'sixties or thereabouts. She is dead now. So is her +husband, the prince of moralizers, the man who first taught me how +contemptible the human race may become. Doubtless he expired with some +edifying platitude on his lips and is deblatterating them at this very +moment in Heaven, where the folks may well be seasoned to that kind of +talk. + +Let us be charitable, now that he is gone! + +To have lived so long with a person of this incurable respectability +would have soured any ordinary woman's temper. Hers it refined; it made +her into something akin to an angel. He was her cross; she bore him +meekly and not, I like to think, without extracting a kind of sly, dry +fun out of the horrible creature. A past master in the art of gentle +domestic nagging, he made everybody miserable as long as he lived, and I +would give something for an official assurance that he is now miserable +himself. He was a worm; a good man in the worse sense of the word. It +was the contrast--the contrast between his gentle clothing and ungentle +heart, which moved my spleen. What a self-sufficient and inhuman brood +were the Victorians of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty; +a brood that has never yet been called by its proper name. Victorians? +Why, not altogether. The mischief has its roots further back. Addison, +for example, is a fair specimen. + +Why say unkind things about a dead man? He cannot answer back. + +Upon my word, I am rather glad to think he cannot. The last thing I ever +wish to hear again is that voice of his. And what a face: gorgonizing in +its assumption of virtue! Now the whole species is dying out, and none +too soon. Graft abstract principles of conduct upon natures devoid of +sympathy and you produce a monster; a sanctimonious fish; the coldest +beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affinities were with +Robespierre and Torquemada--both of them actuated by the purest +intentions and without a grain of self-interest: pillars of integrity. +What floods of tears would have been spared to mankind, had they only +been a little corrupt! How corrupt a person of principles? He lacks the +vulgar yet divine gift of imagination. + +That is what these Victorians lacked. They would never have subscribed +to this palpable truth: that justice is too good for some men, and not +good enough for the rest. They cultivated the Cato or Brutus tone; they +strove to be stern old Romans--Romans of the sour and imperfect +Republic; for the Empire, that golden blossom, was to them a period of +luxury and debauch. Nero--most reprehensible! It was not Nero, however, +but our complacent British reptiles, who filled the prisons with the +wailing of young children, and hanged a boy of thirteen for stealing a +spoon. I wish I had it here, that book which everybody ought to read, +that book by George Ives on the History of Penal Methods--it would help +me to say a few more polite things. The villainies of the virtuous: who +shall recount them? I can picture this vastly offensive old man acting +as judge on that occasion and then, his "duties towards society" +accomplished, being driven home in his brougham to thank Providence for +one of those succulent luncheons, the enjoyment of which he invariably +managed to ruin for every one except himself. + +God rest his soul, the unspeakable phenomenon! He ought to have +throttled himself at his mother's breast. Only a woman imbued with +ultra-terrestrial notions of humour could have tolerated such an +infliction. Anybody else would have poisoned him in the name of +Christian charity and common sense, and earned the gratitude of +generations yet unborn. + +Well, well! R.I.P.... + +On returning to Rome after a considerable absence--a year or so--a few +things have to be done for the sake of auld lang syne ere one may again +feel at home. Rites must be performed. I am to take my fill of memories +and conjure up certain bitter-sweet phantoms of the past. Meals must be +taken in definite restaurants; a certain church must be entered; a sip +of water taken from a fountain--from one, and one only (no easy task, +this, for most of the fountains of Rome are so constructed that, however +abundant their flow, a man may die of thirst ere obtaining a mouthful); +I must linger awhile at the very end, the dirty end, of the horrible Via +Principe Amedeo and, again, at a corner near the Portico d'Ottavia; +perambulate the Protestant cemetery, Monte Mario, and a few quite +uninteresting modern sites; the Acqua Acetosa, a stupid place, may on no +account be forgotten, nor yet that bridge on the Via Nomentana--not the +celebrated bridge but another one, miles away in the Campagna, the +dreariest of little bridges, in the dreariest of landscapes. Why? It has +been hallowed by the tread of certain feet. + +Thus, by a kind of sacred procedure, I immerge myself into those old +stones and recreate my peculiar Roman mood. It is rather ridiculous. +Tradition wills it. + +To-day came the turn of the Protestant cemetery. I have a view of this +place, taken about the 'seventies--I wish I could reproduce it here, to +show how this spot has been ruined. A woman who looks after the +enclosure was in a fairly communicative mood; we had a few minutes' +talk, among the tombs. What a jumble of names and nationalities, by the +way! What a mixed assemblage lies here, in this foreign earth! One would +like to write down all their names, shake them in a bag, pick out fifty +at random and compose their biographies. It would be a curious +cosmopolitan document. + +They have now a dog, the woman tells me, a ferocious dog who roams among +the tombs, since several brass plates have been wrenched off by +marauders. At night? I inquire. At night. At night.... Slowly, warily, I +introduce the subject of fiammelle. It is not a popular theme. No! She +has heard of such things, but never seen them; she never comes here at +night, God forbid! + +What are fiammelle? Little flames, will-o'-the-wisps which hover about +the graves at such hours, chiefly in the hot months or after autumn +rains. It is a well-authenticated apparition; the scientist Bessel saw +one; so did Casanova, here at Rome. He describes it as a pyramidal flame +raised about four feet from the ground which seemed to accompany him as +he walked along. He saw the same thing later, at Cesena near Bologna. +There was some correspondence on the subject (started by Dr. Herbert +Snow) in the Observer of December 1915 and January 1916. Many are the +graveyards I visited in this country and in others with a view to +"satisfying my curiosity," as old Ramage would say, on this point, and +all in vain. My usual luck! The fiammelle, on that particular evening, +were coy--they were never working. They are said to be frequently +observed at Scanno in the Abruzzi province, and the young secretary of +the municipality there, Mr. L. O., will tell you of our periodical +midnight visits to the local cemetery. Or go to Licenza and ask for my +intelligent friend the schoolmaster. What he does not know about +fiammelle is not worth knowing. Did he not, one night, have a veritable +fight with a legion of them which the wind blew from the graveyard into +his face? Did he not return home trembling all over and pale as +death?... + +Here reposes, among many old friends, the idealist Malwida von +Meysenbug; that sculptured medallion is sufficient to proclaim her +whereabouts to those who still remember her. It is good to pause awhile +and etheralize oneself in the neighbourhood of her dust. She lived a +quiet life in an old brown house, since rebuilt, that overlooks the +Coliseum, on whose comely ellipse and blood-stained history she loved to +pasture eyes and imagination. Often I walked thence with her, in those +sparkling mornings, up the Palatine hill, to stroll about the ilexes and +roses in view of the Forum, to listen to the blackbirds, or the siskins +in that pine tree. She was of the same type, the same ethical parentage, +as the late Mathilde Blind, a woman of benignant and refined enthusiasm, +full of charity to the poor and, in those later days, almost +shadowy--remote from earth. She had saturated herself with Rome, for +whose name she professed a tremulous affection untainted by worldly +considerations such as mine; she loved its "persistent spiritual life"; +it was her haven of rest. So, while her arm rested lightly on mine, we +wandered about those gardens, the saintly lady and myself; her mind +dwelling, maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure and the +part she came nigh to playing in the history of Europe, while mine was +lost in a maze of vulgar love-adventures, several of which came nigh to +making me play a part in the police-courts of Rome. + +What may have helped to cement our strange friendship was my +acquaintance, at that time, with the German metaphysicians. She must +have thought me a queer kind of Englishman to discuss with such +familiarity the tenets of these cloudy dreamers. Malwida loved them in a +bland and childlike fashion. She would take one of their dicta as a +starting-point--establish herself, so to speak, within this or that +nebular hypothesis--and argue thence in academic fashion for the sake of +intellectual exercise and the joy of seeing where, after a thousand +twists and turnings, you were finally deposited. A friend of ours--some +American--had lately published a Socratic dialogue entitled "The +Prison"; it formed a fruitful theme of conversation. [9] Nietzsche was +also then to the fore, and it pleases me to recollect that even in those +days I detected his blind spot; his horror of those English materialists +and biologists. I did not pause to consider why he hated them so +ardently; I merely noted, more in sorrow than in anger, this fact which +seemed to vitiate his whole outlook--as indeed it does. Now I know the +reason. Like all preacher-poets, he is anthropocentric. To his way of +thinking the human mind is so highly organized, so different from that +of beasts, that not all the proofs of ethnology and physiology would +ever induce him to accept the ape-ancestry of man. This monkey-business +is too irksome and humiliating to be true; he waives it aside, with a +sneer at the disgusting arguments of those Englishmen. + +That is what happens to men who think that "the spirit alone lives; the +life of the spirit alone is true life." A philosopher weighs the value +of evidence; he makes it his business, before discoursing of the origin +of human intellect, to learn a little something of its focus, the brain; +a little comparative anatomy. These men are not philosophers. +Metaphysicians are poets gone wrong. Schopenhauer invents a "genius of +the race"--there you have his cloven hoof, the pathetic fallacy, the +poet's heritage. There are things in Schopenhauer which make one blush +for philosophy. The day may dawn when this man will be read not for what +he says, but for how he says it; he being one of the few of his race who +can write in their own language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon +a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did. So I remember +one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks" +propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it, +wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation. [10] + +He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions +into the inane. + +And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who scorned honest work +and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his +borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the +spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it +was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk +most plausibly--art, music, society gossip--everything you please; +everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He +sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully +contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody, +like himself, found the world a good place to inhabit. That, I believe, +was the secret of his success. He had a divine intuition for discovering +the soft spots of his neighbours and utilizing the knowledge, in a frank +and gentlemanly fashion, for his own advantage. It was he who invented a +saying which I have since encountered more than once: "Never run after +an omnibus or a woman. There will be another one round in a minute." And +also this: "Never borrow from a man who really expects to be paid back. +You may lose a friend." + +What lady is he now living on? + +"A good-looking fellow like me--why should I work? Tell me that. +Especially with so many rich ladies in the world aching for somebody to +relieve them of their spare cash?" + +"The wealthy woman," he once told me, after I had begun to know him more +intimately, "is a great danger to society. She is so corruptible! People +make her spend money on all kinds of empty and even harmful projects. +Think of the mischief that is done, in politics alone, by the money of +these women. Think of all the religious fads that spring up and are kept +going in a state of prosperity because some woman or other has not been +instructed as to the proper use of her cheque-book. I foresee a positive +decline ahead of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We +must club together, we reasonable men, and put an end to the scandal. +These women need trimmers; an army of trimmers. I have done a good deal +of trimming in my day. Of course it involves some trouble and a close +degree of intimacy, now and then. But a sensible man will always know +where to draw the line." + +"Where do you draw it?" + +"At marriage." + +Whether he ever dared to tap the venerable Malwida for a loan? Likely +enough. He often played with her feelings in a delicate style, and his +astuteness in such matters was only surpassed by his shamelessness. He +was capable of borrowing a fiver from the Pope--or at least of +attempting the feat; of pocketing some hungry widow's last mite and +therewith purchasing a cigarette before her eyes. All these sums he took +as his due, by right of conquest. Whether he ever "stung" Malwida? I +should have liked to see the idealist's face when confronted in that +cheery off-hand manner with the question whether she happened to have +five hundred francs to spare. + +"No? Whatever does it matter, my dear Madame de Meysenbug? Perhaps I +shall be more fortunate another day. But pray don't put yourself out for +an extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending money--can't +live without it, can one?--and sometimes, though you might not believe +it, on quite worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like to take +you to see one day; the father was cut to pieces in some wretched +agricultural machine, the mother is dying in a hospital for consumption, +and the six little children, all shivering under one blanket--well, +never mind! One does what one can, in a small way. That was an +interesting lecture, wasn't it, on Friday? He made a fine point in what +he said about the relation of the Ego to the Cosmos. All the same, I +thought he was a little hard on Fichte. But then, you know, I always +felt a sort of tenderness for Fichte. And did you notice that the room +was absolutely packed? I doubt whether that would have been the case in +any other European capital. This must be the secret charm of Rome, don't +you think so? This is what draws one to the Eternal City and keeps one +here and makes one love the place in spite of a few trivial +annoyances--this sense of persistent spiritual life." + +The various sums derived from ladies were regarded merely as +adventitious income. I found out towards the end of our acquaintance, +when I really began to understand his "method," that he had a second +source of revenue, far smaller but luckily "fixed." It was drawn from +the other sex, from that endless procession of men passing through Rome +and intent upon its antiquities. Rome, he explained, was the very place +for him. + +"This is what keeps me here and makes me love the place in spite of a +few trivial annoyances--this persistent coming and going of tourists. +Everybody on the move, all the time! A man must be daft if he cannot +talk a little archaeology or something and make twenty new friends a +year among such a jolly crowd of people. They are so grateful for having +things explained to them. Another lot next year! And there are really +good fellows among them; fellows, mind you, with brains; fellows with +money. From each of those twenty he can borrow, say, ten pounds; what is +that to a rich stranger who comes here for a month or so with the +express purpose of getting rid of his money? Of course I am only talking +about the medium rich; one need never apply to the very rich--they are +always too poor. Well, that makes about two hundred a year. It's not +much, but, thank God, it's safe as a house and it supplements the +ladies. Women are so distressingly precarious, you know. You cannot +count on a woman unless you have her actually under your thumb. Under +your thumb, my boy; under your thumb. Don't ever forget it." + +I have never forgotten it. + +Where is he now? Is he dead? A gulf intervenes between that period and +this. What has become of him? You might as well ask me about his +contemporary, the Piccadilly goat. I have no idea what became of the +Piccadilly goat, though I know pretty well what would become of him, +were he alive at this moment. + +Mutton-chops. [11] + +Yet I can make a guess at what is happening to my red-haired friend. He +is not dead, but sleepeth. He is being lovingly tended, in a crapulous +old age, by one of the hundred ladies he victimized. He takes it as a +matter of course. I can hear him chuckling dreamily, as she smooths his +pillow for him. He will die in her arms unrepentant, and leave her to +pay for the funeral. + +"Work!" he once said. "To Hell with work. The man who talks to me about +work is my enemy." + +One sunny morning during this period there occurred a thunderous +explosion which shattered my windows and many others in Rome. A +gunpowder magazine had blown up, somewhere in the Campagna; the +concussion of air was so mighty that it broke glass, they said, even at +Frascati. + +We drove out later to view the site. It resembled a miniature volcano. + +There I left the party and wandered alone into one of those tortuous +stream-beds that intersect the plain, searching for a certain kind of +crystal which may be found in such places, washed out of the soil by +wintry torrents. I specialized in minerals in those days--minerals and +girls. Dangerous and unprofitable studies! Even at that tender age I +seem to have dimly discerned what I now know for certain: that dangerous +and unprofitable objects are alone worth pursuing. The taste for +minerals died out later, though I clung to it half-heartedly for a long +while, Dr. Johnston-Lavis, Professor Knop and others fanning the dying +embers. One day, all of a sudden, it was gone. I found myself riding +somewhere in Asiatic Turkey past a precipice streaked in alternate veins +of purest red and yellow jasper, with chalcedony in between: a discovery +which in former days would have made me half delirious with joy. It left +me cold. I did not even dismount to examine the site. "Farewell to +stones" I thought.... + +Often we lingered by the Fontana Trevi to watch the children disporting +themselves in the water and diving for pennies--a pretty scene which has +now been banished from the politer regions of Rome (the town has grown +painfully proper). There, at the foot of that weedy and vacuous and yet +charming old Neptune--how perfectly he suits his age!--there, if you +look, you will see certain gigantic leaves sculptured into the rock. I +once overheard a German she-tourist saying to her companion, as she +pointed to these things: "Ist doch sonderbar, wie das Wasser so die +Pflanzen versteinert." She thought they were natural plants petrified by +the water's action. + +What happened yesterday was equally surprising. We were sitting at the +Arch of Constantine and I was telling my friend about the Coliseum hard +by and how, not long ago, it was a thicket of trees and flowers, looking +less like a ruin than some wooded mountain. Now the Coliseum is surely +one of the most famous structures in the world. Even they who have never +been to the spot would recognize it from those myriad reproductions +--especially, one would think, an Italian. Nevertheless, while thus +discoursing, a man came up to us, a well-dressed man, who politely +inquired: + +"Could you tell me the name of this castello?" + +I am glad to think that some account of the rich and singular flora of +the Coliseum has been preserved by Deakin and Sebastiani, and possibly +by others. I could round their efforts by describing the fauna of the +Coliseum. The fauna of the Coliseum--especially after 11 p.m.--would +make a readable book; readable but hardly printable. + +These little local studies are not without charm. Somebody, one day, may +be induced to tell us about the fauna of Trafalgar Square. He should +begin with a description of the horse standing on three legs and gazing +inanely out of those human eyes after the fashion of its classic +prototype; then pass on to the lions beloved of our good Richard +Jefferies which look like puppy-dogs modelled in cotton-wool (why did +the sculptor not take a few lessons in lions from the sand-artist on +Yarmouth beach?), and conclude by dwelling as charitably as possible on +the human fauna--that droll little man, barely discernible, perched on +the summit of his lead pencil.... + +There was a slight earthquake at sunrise. I felt nothing.... + +And, appropriately enough, I encountered this afternoon M. M., that most +charming of persons, who, like Shelley and others, has discovered Italy +to be a "paradise of exiles." His friends may guess whom I mean when I +say that M. M. is connoisseur of earthquakes social and financial; his +existence has been punctuated by them to such an extent that he no +longer counts events from dates in the ordinary calendar, from birthdays +or Christmas or Easter, but from such and such a disaster affecting +himself. Each has left him seemingly more mellow than the last. Just +then, however, he was in pensive mood, his face all puckered into +wrinkles as he glanced upon the tawny flood rolling beneath that old +bridge. There he stood, leaning over the parapet, all by himself. He +turned his countenance aside on seeing me, to escape detection, but I +drew nigh none the less. + +"Go away," he said. "Don't disturb me just now. I am watching the little +fishes. Life is so complicated! Let us pray. I have begun a new novel +and a new love-affair." + +"God prosper both!" I replied, and began to move off. + +"Thanks. But supposing the publisher always objects to your choicest +paragraphs?" + +"I am not altogether surprised, if they are anything like what you once +read to me out of your unexpurgated 'House of the Seven Harlots.' Why +not try another firm? They might be more accommodating. Try mine." + +He shook his head dubiously. + +"They are all alike. It is with publishers as with wives: one always +wants somebody else's. And when you have them, where's the difference? +Ah, let us pray. These little fishes have none of our troubles." + +I inquired about the new romance. At first he refused to disclose +anything. Then he told me it was to be entitled "With Christ at +Harvard," and that it promised some rather novel situations. I shall +look forward to its appearance. + +What good things one could relate of M. M., but for the risk of +incurring his wrath! It is a thousand pities, I often tell him, that he +is still alive; I am yearning to write his biography, and cannot afford +to wait for his dissolution. + +"When I am dead," he always says. + +"By that time, my dear M., I shall be in the same fix myself." + +"Try to survive. You may find it worth your while, when you come to look +into my papers. You don't know half. And I may be taking that little +sleeping-draught of mine any one of these days...." [12] + +Mused long that night, and not without a certain envy, on the lot of M. +M. and other earthquake-connoisseurs--or rather on the lot of that true +philosopher, if he exists, who, far from being damaged by such +convulsions, distils therefrom subtle matter of mirth, I have only known +one single man--it happened to be a woman, an Austrian--who approached +this ideal of splendid isolation. She lived her own life, serenely +happy, refusing to acquiesce in the delusions and conventionalities of +the crowd; she had ceased to trouble herself about neighbours, save as a +source of quiet amusement; a state of affairs which had been brought +about by a succession of benevolent earthquakes that refined and +clarified her outlook. + +Such disasters, obviously, have their uses. They knock down obsolete +rubbish and enable a man to start building anew. The most sensitive +recluse cannot help being a member of society. As such, he unavoidably +gathers about him a host of mere acquaintances, good folks who waste his +time dulling the edge of his wit and infecting him with their orthodoxy. +Then comes the cataclysm. He loses, let us say, all his money, or makes +a third appearance in the divorce courts. He can then at last (so one of +them expressed it to me) "revise his visiting-list," an operation which +more than counterbalances any damage from earthquakes. For these same +good folks are vanished, the scandal having scattered them to the winds. +He begins to breathe again, and employ his hours to better purpose. If +he loses both money and reputation he must feel, I should think, as +though treading on air. The last fools gone! And no sage lacks friends. + +Consider well your neighbour, what an imbecile he is. Then ask yourself +whether it be worth while paying any attention to what he thinks of you. +Life is too short, and death the end of all things. Life must be lived, +not endured. Were the day twice as long as it is, a man might find it +diverting to probe down into that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try +to reach some common root of feeling other than those physiological +needs which we share with every beast of earth. Diverting; hardly +profitable. It would be like looking for a flea in a haystack, or a joke +in the Bible. They can perhaps be found; at the expense of how much +trouble! + +Therefore the sage will go his way, prepared to find himself growing +ever more out of sympathy with vulgar trends of opinion, for such is the +inevitable development of thoughtful and self-respecting minds. He +scorns to make proselytes among his fellows: they are not worth it. He +has better things to do. While others nurse their griefs, he nurses his +joy. He endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and to be +true to that self when found--a worthy and ample occupation for a +life-time. The happiness-of-the-greatest-number, of those who pasture on +delusions: what dreamer is responsible for this eunuchry? Mill, was it? +Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest number were not necessarily the +least-intelligent! As if their happiness were not necessarily +incompatible with that of the sage! Why foster it? He is a poor +philosopher, who cuts his own throat. Away with their ghosts; +de-spiritualize yourself; what you cannot find on earth is not worth +seeking. + +That charming M. M., I fear, will never compass this clarity of vision, +this perfect de-spiritualization and contempt of illusions. He will +never remain curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in +nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has inherited that all +too common taint of psychasthenia (miscalled neurasthenia); he +confesses, moreover,--like other men of strong carnal proclivities--to +certain immaterial needs and aspirations after "the beyond." Not one of +these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but has his Achilles heel: a +mental crotchet or physical imperfection to mar the worldly perspective. +Not one of them, at close of life, will sit beside some open window in +view of a fair landscape and call up memories of certain moments which +no cataclysms have taken from him; not one will lay them in the balance +and note how they outweigh, in their tiny grains of gold, the dross of +an age of other men's lives. Not one of them! They will be preoccupied, +for the most part, with unseasonable little concerns. Pleasant folk, +none the less. And sufficiently abundant in Italy. Altogether, the +Englishman here is as often an intenser being than the home product. +Alien surroundings awaken fresh and unexpected notes in his nature. His +fibres seem to lie more exposed; you have glimpses into the man's +anatomy. There is something hostile in this sunlight to the hazy or +spongy quality which saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the +sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will also meet with dull +persons; Rome is full of them, but, the type being easier to detect +among a foreign environment, there is still less difficulty in evading +them.... + +Thus I should have had no compunction, some nights ago, in making myself +highly objectionable to Mr. P. G. who has turned up here on some mission +connected with the war--so he says, and it may well be true; no +compunction whatever, had that gentleman been in his ordinary social +state. Mr. P. G., the acme of British propriety, inhabiting a house, a +mansion, on the breezy heights of north London, was on that occasion +decidedly drunk. "Indulging in a jag," he would probably have called it. +He tottered into a place where I happened to be sitting, having lost his +friends, he declared; and soon began pouring into my ear, after the +confidential manner of a drunkard, a flood of low talk, which if I +attempted to set it down here, would only result in my being treated to +the same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with his "choicest +paragraphs." It was highly instructive--the contrast between that +impeccable personality which he displays at home and his present state. +I wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a few shreds of +what he said--just a few shreds; they would have seen a new light on +dear daddy. + +In vino veritas. Ever avid of experimentum in some corpore vili and +determined to reach the bed-rock of his gross mentality, I plied him +vigorously with drink, and was rewarded. It was rich sport, unmasking +this Philistine and thanking God, meanwhile, that I was not like unto +him. We are all lost sheep; and none the worse for that. Yet whoso is +liable, however drunk, to make an exhibition of himself after the +peculiar fashion of Mr. P. G., should realize that there is something +fundamentally wrong with his character and take drastic measures of +reform--measures which would include, among others, a total abstention +from alcohol. Old Aristotle, long ago, laboured to define wherein +consisted the trait known as gentlemanliness; others will have puzzled +since his day, for we have bedaubed ourselves with so thick a coating of +manner and phrase that many a cad will pass for something better. Well, +here is the test. Unvarnish your man; make him drink, and listen. That +was my procedure with P. G. Esquire. I listened to his outpouring of +inanity and obscenity and, listening sympathetically, like some +compassionate family doctor, could not help asking myself: Is such a man +to be respected, even when sober? Be that as it may, he gave me to +understand why some folk are rightly afraid of exposing, under the +influence of drink, the bête humaine which lurks below their skin of +decency. His language would have terrified many people. Me it rejoiced. +I would not have missed that entertainment for worlds. He finally wanted +to have a fight, because I refused to accompany him to a certain place +of delights, the address of which--I might have given him a far better +one--had been scrawled on the back of a crumpled envelope by some +cabman. Unable to stand on his legs, what could he hope to do there? + + + + +Olevano + +I have loafed into Olevano. + +A thousand feet below my window, and far away, lies the gap between the +Alban and Volscian hills; veiled in mists, the Pontine marches extend +beyond, and further still--discernible only to the eye of faith--the +Tyrrhenian. + +The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable grace. It recalls +Etna, as viewed from Taormina. How the mountain cleaves to earth, how +reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line! +Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on its +lower slope. Standing out against the sky, they can be seen at all hours +of the day, whereas the dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on the green +plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades out of sight after midday. + +Hard by, on your right, are the craggy heights of Capranica. Tradition +has it that Michael Angelo was in exile up there, after doing something +rather risky. What had he done? He crucified his model, desirous, like a +true artist, to observe and reproduce faithfully in marble the muscular +contractions and facial agony of such a sufferer. To crucify a man: this +was going almost too far, even for the Pope of that period, who seems to +have been an unusually sensitive pontiff--or perhaps the victim was a +particular friend of his. However that may be, he waxed wroth and +banished the conscientious sculptor in disgrace to this lonely mountain +village, there to expiate his sins, for a day or two.... + +One sleeps badly here. Those nightingales--they are worse than the +tram-cars in town. They begin earlier. They make more noise. Surely +there is a time for everything? Will certain birds never learn to sing +at reasonable hours? + +A word as to these nightingales. One of them elects to warble, in +deplorably full-throated ease, immediately below my bedroom window. When +this particular fowl sets up its din at about 3.45 a.m. it is a +veritable explosion; an ear-rending, nerve-shattering explosion of +noise. I use that word "noise" deliberately. For it is not music--not +until your ears are grown accustomed to it. + +I know a little something about music, having studied the art with +considerable diligence for a number of years. Impossible to enumerate +all the composers and executants on various instruments, the conductors +and opera-singers and ballet-girls with whom I was on terms of +familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps I am the only person now +alive who has shaken hands with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with +Beethoven and heard his voice; all of which may appear when I come to +indite my musical memoirs. I have written a sonata in four movements, +opus 643, hitherto unpublished, and played the organ during divine +service to a crowded congregation. Furthermore I performed, not at my +own suggestion, his insipid Valse Caprice to the great Antoine +Rubinstein, who was kind enough to observe: "Yes, yes. Quite good. But I +rather doubt whether you could yet risk playing that in a concert." And +in the matter of sheer noise I am also something of an expert, having +once, as an infant prodigy, broken five notes in a single masterly +rendering of Liszt's polonaise in E Major--I think it is E +Major--whereupon my teacher, himself a pupil of Liszt, genially +remarked: "Now don't cry, and don't apologize. A polonaise like yours is +worth a piano." I set these things down with modest diffidence, solely +in order to establish my locus standi as a person who might be expected +to know the difference between sound and noise. As such, I have no +hesitation in saying that the first three bars of that nightingale +performance are, to sleeping ears, not music. They break upon the +stillness with the crash of Judgment Day. + +And every night the same scare. It causes me to start up, bathed in +sudden perspiration, out of my first, and best, and often only sleep, +with the familiar feeling that something awful is happening. Windows +seem to rattle, plaster drops from the ceiling--an earthquake? Lord, no. +Nothing so trivial. Nothing so brief. It is that blasted bird clearing +its throat for a five hours' entertainment. Let it not be supposed that +the song of these southerners bears any resemblance to that of an +English nightingale. I could stand a hatful of English nightingales in +my bedroom; they would lull me to sleep with their anaemic whispers. You +might as well compare the voice of an Italian costermonger, the crowing +of a cock, the braying of a local donkey, with their representatives in +the north--those thin trickles of sound, shadowy as the squeakings of +ghosts. Something will have to be done about those nightingales unless I +am to find my way into a sanatorium. For hardly is this bird started on +its work before five or six others begin to shout in emulation--a little +further off, I am glad to say, but still near enough to be inconvenient; +still near enough to be reached by a brick from this window----A brick. +Methinks I begin to see daylight.... + +Meanwhile one can snatch a little rest out of doors, in the afternoon. A +delectable path, for example, runs up behind the cemetery, bordered by +butterfly orchids and lithospermum and aristolochia and other plants +worthy of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with +views on either side. Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some +rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of +nightingales--soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole +among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of +some wryneck in the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet +time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen are all at the front. +I kicked up a partridge along this track two days ago. + +Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant but hard to see. They sit +close, relying on their protective colour. And it is the same with the +tree-creepers. I have heard Englishmen say there are no tree-creepers in +Italy. The olive groves are well stocked with them (there are numbers +even in the Borghese Gardens in Rome), but you must remain immovable as +a rock in order to see them; for they are yet shyer, more silent, more +fond of interposing the tree-trunk between yourself and them, than those +at home. Mouse-like in hue, in movement and voice--a strange case of +analogous variation.... + +As to this Scalambra, this mountain whose bleak grey summit overtops +everything near Olevano, I could soon bear the sight of it no longer. It +seemed to shut out the world; one must up and glance over the edge, to +see what is happening on the other side. I looked for a guide and +porter, for somebody more solid than Giulio, who is almost an infant; +none could be found. Men are growing scarce as the Dodo hereabouts, on +account of the war. So Giulio came, though he had never made the ascent. + +Now common sense, to say nothing of a glance at the map, would suggest +the proper method of approach: by the village of Serrano, the Saint +Michael hermitage, and so up. Scouting this plan, I attacked the +mountain about half-way between that village and Rojate. I cannot +recommend my route. It was wearisome to the last degree and absolutely +shadeless save for a small piece of jungle clothing a gulley, hung with +myriads of caterpillars and not worth mentioning as an incident in that +long walk. No excitement--not the faintest chance, so far as I could +see, of breaking one's neck, and uphill all the time over limestone. One +never seems to get any nearer. This Scalambra, I soon discovered, is one +of those artful mountains which defend their summits by thrusting out +escarpments with valleys in between; you are kept at arm's length, as it +were, by this arrangement of the rock, which is invisible at a distance. +And when at last you set foot on the real ridge and climb laboriously to +what seems to be the top--lo! there is another peak a little further +off, obviously a few feet higher. Up you go, only to discover a third, +perhaps a few inches higher still. Alpine climbers know these tricks. + +We reached the goal none the less and there lay, panting and gasping; +while an eagle, a solitary eagle with tattered wings, floated overhead +in the cloudless sky. + +The descent to Rojate under that blazing sun was bad enough. My flask +had been drained to the dregs long ago, and the Scalambra, true to its +limestone tradition, had not supplied even a drop of water. Arriving at +the village at about two in the afternoon, we found it deserted; +everybody enjoying their Sunday nap. Rojate is a dirty hole. The water +was plainly not to be trusted; it might contain typhoid germs, and I was +responsible for Giulio's health; wine would be safer, we agreed. There, +in a little shop near the church--a dark and cool place, the first shade +we had entered for many hours--we drank without ever growing less +thirsty. We felt like cinders, so hot, so porous, that the liquid seemed +not only to find its way into the legitimate receptacle but to be +obliged to percolate, by some occult process of capillarity, the +remotest regions of the body. As time went on, the inhabitants dropped +in after their slumbers and kept us company. We told our adventures, +drank to the health of the Allies one by one and several times over; and +it was not until we had risen to our feet and passed once more into the +sunshine of the square that we suddenly felt different from what we +thought we felt. + +The first indication was conveyed by Giulio, who called upon the +populace of Rojate, there assembled, to bear solemn witness to the fact +that I was his one and only friend, and that he would nevermore abandon +me--a sentiment in which I stoutly concurred. (A fellow-feeling makes us +wondrous blind.) Other symptoms followed. His hat, for example, which +had hitherto behaved in exemplary fashion, now refused to remain +steadily balanced on his head; it took some first-class gymnastics to +prevent it from falling to the ground. In fact, while I confined myself +to the minor part of Silenus--my native role--this youngster gave a +noteworthy representation of the Drunken Faun.... + +Now I see no harm in appreciating wine up to a certain point, and am +consoled to observe that Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., was of the same +way of thinking. He says so himself, and there is no reason for doubting +his word. He frankly admits, for instance, that he enjoys the stuff +called moscato "with great zest." He samples the Falernian vintage and +pronounces it to be "particularly good, and not degenerated." Arrived at +Cutro, he is not averse to reviving his spirits with "a pretty fair +modicum of wine." He also lets slip--significant detail--the fact that +Dr. Henderson was one of his friends, and that he travelled about with +him. You may judge a man by the company he keeps. Who was this Dr. +Henderson? He was the author of "The History of Ancient Wines." Old +Henderson, I should say, could be trusted to know something of local +vintages. + +And so far good. + +At Licenza, however, Ramage tells us that he "got glorious on the wine +of Horace's Sabine farm." I do not know what he means by this +expression, which seems to be purposely ambiguous; in any case, it does +not sound very nice. At another place, again, he and his entertainer +consumed some excellent liquor "in considerable quantity"--so he avows; +adding that "it was long past midnight ere we closed our bacchanalian +orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that he was happy to have +made my acquaintance." Note the lame and colourless close of that +sentence: he ended by stating. One always ends that way after +bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss over the escapade +with such disingenuous language. + +We can guess what really took place. It was something like what happened +at Rojate. Did not the curly-haired Giulio end by "stating" something to +the same effect? + +I cannot make up my mind whether to be pleased with this particular +trait in friend Ramage's character. For let it never be forgotten that +our traveller was a young man at the time. He says so himself, and there +is no reason for doubting his word. Was he acting as beseemed his years? + +I am not more straight-laced than many people, yet I confess it always +gives me a kind of twinge to see a young man yielding to intemperance of +any kind. There is something incongruous in the spectacle, if not +actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt to associate that +time of life with stern resolve. A young man, it appears to me, should +hold himself well in hand. Youth has so much to spare! Youth can afford +to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming ahead, it should be a +period of ideals, of self-restraint and self-discipline, of earnestness +of purpose. How well the Greek Anthology praises "Temperance, the nurse +of Youth!" The divine Plato lays it down that youngsters should not +touch wine at all, since it is not right to heap fire on fire. He adds +that older men like ourselves may indulge therein as an ally against the +austerity of their years--agreeing, therefore, with Theophrastus who +likewise recommends it for the "natural moroseness" of age. + +Observe in this connection what happened to Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., +at Trebisacce. Here was a poor old coastguard who had been taken +prisoner by the Corsairs thirty years earlier, carried to Algiers, and +afterwards ransomed. Having "nothing better to do" (says our author) "I +confess I furnished him with somewhat more wine than was exactly +consistent with propriety"; with so liberal a quantity, indeed, that the +coastguard became quite "obstreperous in his mirth"; whereupon Ramage +hops on his mule and leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young +fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And why? Because he has +"nothing better to do." [13] It is not remarkably edifying. True, he +afterwards makes a kind of apology for "causing my brother to sin by +over-indulgence...." + +But if we close our eyes to the fact that Ramage, when he gave way to +these excesses, was a young man and ought to have known better, what an +agreeable companion we find him! + +He never rails at anything. Had I been subjected to half the annoyances +he endured, my curses would have been loud and long. Under such +provocation, Ramage contents himself with reproving his tormentors in +rounded phrases of oratio obliqua which savour strongly of those Latin +classics he knew so well. What he says of the countryfolk is not only +polite but true, that their virtues are their own, while their vices +have been fostered by the abuses of tyranny. "Whatever fault one may +find with this people for their superstition and ignorance, there is a +loveableness in their character which I am not utilitarian enough in my +philosophy to resist." This comes of travelling off the beaten track and +with an open mind; it comes of direct contact. When one remembers that +he wrote in 1828 and was derived from a bigoted stock, his religious +tolerance is refreshing--astonishing. He studies the observances of the +poorer classes with sympathetic eye and finds that they are "pious to a +degree to which I am afraid we must grant that we have no pretensions." +That custom of suspending votive offerings in churches he does not think +"worthy of being altogether condemned or ridiculed. The feeling is the +same that induces us, on recovery from severe illness, to give thanks to +Almighty God, either publicly in church or privately in our closets." +How many Calvinists of to-day would write like this? + +We could do with more of these sensible and humane reflections, but +unfortunately he is generally too "pressed for time" to indulge in them. +That mania of hustling through the country.... + +One morning he finds himself at Foggia, with the intention of visiting +Mons Garganus. First of all he must "satisfy his curiosity" about Arpi; +it is ten miles there and back. Leaving Foggia for the second time he +proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and inspects not only this town, +but the site of old Sipontum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, +and later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promontory. About six +miles to the north are the presumable ruins of Merinum; he insists upon +going there, but the boatmen strike work; regretfully he returns to +Manfredonia, arriving at 11 p.m., and having covered on this day some +sixty or seventy miles. What does he do at Manfredonia? He sleeps for +three hours--and then a new hustle begins, in pitch darkness. + +Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he will visit the Siren +Islets. He crosses the ridge and descends to the sea on the other side, +to the so-called Scaricatojo--quite a respectable walk, as any one can +find out for himself. Hence he sails to the larger of the islets, climbs +to the summit and makes some excavations, in the course of which he +observes what I thought I was the first to discover--the substructures +of a noble Roman villa; he also scrambles into King Robert's tower. Then +to the next islet, and up it; then to the third, and up it. After that, +he is tempted to visit the headland of Minerva; he goes there, and +satisfies his curiosity. He must now hence to Capri. He sails across, +and after a little refreshment, walks to the so-called Villa of Jupiter +at the easterly apex of the island. He then rows round the southern +shore and is taken with the idea of a trip to Misenum, twenty miles or +so distant. Arrived there, he climbs to the summit of the cape and +lingers a while--it is pleasant to find him lingering--to examine +something or other. Then he "rushes" down to the boat and bids them row +to Pozzuoli, where he arrives (and no wonder) long after sunset. A good +day's hustle.... + +The ladies made a great impression on his sensitive mind; yet not even +they were allowed to interfere with his plans. At Strongoli the +"sparkling eyes of the younger sister" proved the most attractive object +in the place. He was strongly urged to remain a while and rest from his +fatigues. But no; there were many reasons why he should press forward. +He therefore presses forward. At another place, too, he was waited upon +by his entertainer's three daughters, the youngest of whom was one of +the most entrancing girls he had ever met with--in fact, it was well +that his time was limited, else "I verily believe I should have +committed all kinds of follies." That is Ramage. He parts from his host +with "unfeigned regret"--but--parts. His time is always limited. Bit for +that craze of pressing forward, what fun he could have had! + +Stroll to that grove of oaks crowning a hill-top above the Serpentaro +stream. It has often been described, often painted. It is a corner of +Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in the warm dusk of +southern twilight--when all those tiresome children are at last +asleep--it calls up suggestions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here is a +specimen of the landscape as it used to be. You may encounter during +your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved by their +inaccessibility from the invading axe. "Hands off the Oak!" cries an old +Greek poet. + +The Germans, realizing its picturesque value, bought this parcel of land +and saved the trees from destruction. It was well done. Within, they +have cut certain letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan +sanctity of the place--Germans will do these things; there is no +stopping them; it is part of their crudely expansive temperament +--certain letterings, among other and major horrors, anent the "Law of +the Ever-beautiful" (how truly Teutonic!)--lines, that is, signed by the +poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated 2 May, 1897. Scheffel was a kindly +and erudite old toper, who toped himself into Elysium via countless +quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things; the far-famed +Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit to the Hohentwiel mountain +in search of that golden-tinted natrolite mineral, which was duly found +(I specialized in zeolites during that period). + +Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in 1897? For I attended +his funeral, which took place in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, +a scraggy youth in those days, inherited not only the father's name but +his poetic mantle? Was it he who perpetrated those sententious lines? I +like to think so. That "law of the ever-beautiful" does not smack of the +old man, unless he was more disguised than usual, and having a little +fun with his pedantic countrymen.... + +Climb hence--it is not far--to the village of Civitella, now called +Bellegra, a prehistoric fastness with some traces of "cyclopean" +defences. Those ancients must have had cisterns; inconceivable that +springs should ever have issued from this limestone crag. You can see +the women of to-day fetching water from below, from a spot which I was +too lazy to investigate, where perhaps the soft tertiary rock leans upon +this impervious stuff and allows the liquid to escape into the open. An +unclean place is Bellegra, and loud, like all these Sabine villages, +with the confused crying of little children. That multiple wail of +misery will ring in your ear for days afterwards. They are more +neglected by their mothers than ever, since women now have all the men's +work in the fields to do. They are hungrier than ever, on account of the +war which has imposed real hardships on these agricultural folk; +hardships that seize them by the throat and make them sit down, with +folded hands, in dumb despair: so I have seen them. How many of these +unhappy babies will grow to maturity? + +Death-rate must anyhow be high hereabouts, for nothing is done in the +way of hygiene. In the company of one who knows, I perambulated the +cemetery of Olevano and was astonished at the frequency of tombstones +erected to the young. "Consumption," my friend told me. They scorn +prophylactics. I should not care to send growing children into these +villages, despite their "fine air." Here, at Bellegra, the air must be +fine indeed in winter; too fine for my taste. It lies high, exposed to +every blast of Heaven, and with noble views in all directions. + +Rest awhile, on your homeward march, at the small bridge near Olevano +where the road takes a turn. A few hundred yards up the glen on your +left is a fountain whose waters are renowned for their purity; the +bridge itself is not a favourite spot after sunset; it is haunted by a +most malignant spectre. That adds considerably, in my eyes, to the charm +of the place. Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower. +What recollections does that scent evoke! What hints of summer, after +rain! + +A venerable tree, old as the hills; that last syllable tells its +tale--you may read it in the Sanscrit. A man-loving tree; seldom one +sees an elder by itself, away from human habitations, in the jungle. I +have done so; but in that particular jungle, buried beneath the soil, +were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin to attach itself to the +works of man, to walls and buildings? And why? Does it derive peculiar +sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in +lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks +shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel +wondrously when the plant is set in exposed situations. + +The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use the berries to colour +the wine. A German writer, R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of +Leit-motif for one of his local novels. I met him once by accident, and +am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal and flabbily pompous old +man--straightway my opinion of his books, never very high, fell to zero, +and has there remained. He knew these regions well, and doubtless +sojourned at one time or another at yonder caravanserai-hotel, abandoned +of late, but then filled with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have +since been sacrificed to the war-god. Doubtless he drank wine with them +on that terrace overlooking the brown houses of Olevano, though I +question whether he then paid as much as they are now charging me; +doubtless he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies fronting +the landscape, though I question whether he derived more pleasure from +them than I do.... + +While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards to where, in the +Abruzzi region, the peaks are still shrouded in snow. + +How are they doing our there, at Scanno? Is that driving-road at last +finished? Can the "River Danube" still be heard flowing underground in +the little cave of Saint Martin? Are the thistles of violet and red and +blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as ever? [14] And those legions of +butterflies--do they still hover among the sunny patches in the narrow +vale leading to Mount Terrata? And Frattura, that strange place--what +has happened to Frattura? Built on a fracture, on the rubble of that +shattered mountain which produced the lake lower down, it has probably +crumbled away in the last earthquake. Well I remember Frattura! It was +where the wolf ate the donkey, and where we, in our turn, often +refreshed ourselves in the dim hovel of Ferdinando--never with greater +zest than on the hot downward march from Mount Genzana. Whether those +small purple gentians are still to be found on its summit? And the +emerald lizard on the lower slopes? Whether the eagles still breed on +the neighbouring Montagna di Preccia? They may well be tired of having +their nest plundered year after year. + +What foreigner has older and pleasanter memories of Scanno? I would like +to meet that man, and compare notes. + +And so, glancing over the hills from Bellegra, I sent my thoughts into +those Abruzzi mountains, and registered a vow to revisit Scanno--if only +in order to traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld lang +syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger in that moist nook by +the lake-side where stood the Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if +such it was, of the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly +dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one evening, I listened to +something that might have been said much sooner. Acque Vive.... + +I kept my vow. Our bill at Scanno for wine alone was 189 francs, and for +beer 92 francs; figures which look more formidable than they are and +which I cite only to prove that we--for of course I was not +alone--enjoyed ourselves fairly well during those eighteen days. By the +way, what does Baedeker mean by speaking of the "excellent wines" of +Scanno, where not a drop is grown? He might have said the same of +Aberdeen. + +The season was too late for the thistles, too late for the little +coppers and fritillaries and queens of Spain and commas and all the rest +of that fluttering tribe in the narrow vale leading to Terrata, though +wood-pigeons were still cooing there. Scanno has been spared by the +earthquake which laid low so many other places; it has prospered; +prospered too much for my taste, since those rich smoky tints, +especially of the vaulted interiors, are now disappearing under an +invasion of iron beams and white plaster. The golden duskiness of +Scanno, heightened as it was by the gleaming copper vessels borne on +every young girl's head, will soon be a thing of the past. Young trees +along the road-side--well-chosen trees: limes, maples, willows, elms, +chestnuts, ashes--are likewise doing well and promise pretty effects of +variegated foliage in a few years' time; so are the plantations of pines +in the higher regions of the Genzana. In this matter of afforestation, +Scanno continues its system of draconic severity. It is worth while, in +a country which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of goats on +the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water. The Sagittario stream +is hemmed in by a cunning device of stones contained within bags of +strong wire; it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from +Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you will find they have +been scientifically dammed by the administration, whereas the peasant, +when they overflow and ruin his crops, contents himself with damning +them in quite an amateurish fashion. Which reminds me that I picked up +during this visit, and have added to my collection, a new term of abuse +to be addressed to your father-in-law: Porcaccio d'un cagnaccio! Novel +effects, you perceive, obtained by a mere intensification of colour. + +As to Frattura--yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried to identify +Ferdinando's abode among all that debris. The old man himself escaped +the cataclysm, and now sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden +shanties erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio, of whom +more on p. 171, has died; his place is taken by a worthless vagabond. +Saint Domenico and his serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis +fanum), that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears the +problematical date of 600 A.D.--they are all in their former places. +Mount Velino still glitters over the landscape, for those who climb high +enough to see it. The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the +water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume, still carry those +immense loads of wood on their heads, though payment is considerably +higher than the three half-pence a day which it used to be. + +Enough of Scanno! + +Whoever wishes to leave the place on foot and by an unconventional +route, may go to Sora via Pescasseroli. Adventurous souls will scramble +over the Terrata massif, leaving the summit well on their right, and +descend on its further side; others may wander up the Valle dei Prati +and then, bending to the right along the so-called Via del Campo, mount +upwards past a thronged alp of sheep, over the watershed, and down +through charming valleys of beechen timber. A noble walk, and one that +compares favourably with many Abruzzi excursions. What deserts they +often are, these stretches of arid limestone, voiceless and waterless, +with the raven's croak for your only company! + +I am glad to have seen Pescasseroli, where we arrived at about 9 a.m. +For the rest, it is only one of many such places that have been brought +to a state of degradation by the earthquake, the present war, and +governmental neglect. Not an ounce of bread was procurable for money, or +even as a gift. The ordinary needs of life--cigars, matches, maccheroni +and so forth: there were none of them. An epidemic of the gapes, +infecting the entire race of local hens, had caused the disappearance of +every egg from the market. And all those other countless things which a +family requires for its maintenance--soap and cloth and earthenware and +kitchen utensils and oils--they have become rarities; the natives are +learning to subsist without them; relapsing into a kind of barbarism. So +they sit among the cracked tenements; resentful, or dumbly apathetic. + +"We have been forgotten," said one of them. + +The priests inculcate submission to the will of God. What else should +they teach? But men will outgrow these doctrines of patience when +suffering is too acute or too prolonged. "Anything is better than this," +they say. Thus it comes about that these ruined regions are a goodly +soil for the sowing of subversive opinions; the land reeks of +ill-digested socialism. + +We found a "restaurant" where we lunched off a tin of antediluvian +Spanish sardines, some mouldy sweet biscuits, and black wine. (A +distinction is made in these parts between black and red wine; the +former is the Apulian variety, the other from Sulmona.) During this +repast, we were treated to several bear-stories. For there are bears at +Pescasseroli, and nowhere else in Italy; even as there are chamois +nearby, between Opi and Villetta Barrea, among the crags of the +Camosciara, which perpetuates their name. One of those present assured +us that the bear is a good beast; he will eat a man, of course, but if +he meets a little boy, he contents himself with throwing stones at +him--just to teach him good manners. Certain old bears are as big as a +donkey. They have been seen driving into their cave a flock of +twenty-five sheep, like any shepherd. It is no rare thing to encounter +in the woods a bear with a goat slung over his shoulder; he must +breakfast, like anybody else. One of these gentlemen told us that the +bears, not long ago, were a source of considerable profit to the +peasantry round about. It was in this wise. Their numbers had been +reduced, it seems, to a single pair and the species was threatened with +extinction, when, somehow or other, this state of affairs became known +to the King who, alarmed at the disappearance from his realm of a +venerable and autochtonous quadruped, the largest European beast of +prey, conceived the happy idea of converting the whole region into a +Royal Preserve. On pain of death, no bear was to be molested or even +laughed at; any damage they might do would be compensated out of the +Royal Purse. + +For a week or so after this enactment, nothing was heard of the bears. +Then, one morning, the conscientious Minister of the Royal Household +presented himself at the palace, with a large sheaf of documents under +his arm. + +"What have we here?" inquired the King. + +"Attestations relating to the bears of Pescasseroli, Your Majesty. They +seem to be thriving." + +"Ah! That is nice of them. They are multiplying once more, thanks to Our +Royal protection. We thought they would." + +"Multiplying indeed, Sire. Here are testimonials, sworn before the local +syndic, showing that they have devoured 18 head of cattle and 43 sheep." + +"In that short time? Is it possible? Well, well! The damage must be +paid. And yet We never knew the bears could propagate so fast. Maybe our +Italian variety is peculiarly vigorous in such matters." + +"Seems so, Your Majesty. Very prolific." + +A week or so passed and, once more, His Excellency was announced. The +King observed: + +"You are not looking quite yourself this morning, my good Minister. +Would it be indiscreet to inquire the cause? No family or parliamentary +worries, We trust?" + +"Your Majesty is very kind! No. It is the bears of Pescasseroli. They +have eaten 75 head of cattle, 93 sheep, and 114 goats. Ah--and 18 +horses. Here are the claims for damages, notarially attested." + +"We must pay. But if only somebody could teach the dear creatures to +breed a little more reasonably!" + +"I cannot but think, Sire, that the peasants are abusing Your +Majesty's----" + +"May We never live to hear anything against Our faithful and +well-beloved Abruzzi folk!" + +Nearly a month elapsed before the Minister again presented himself. This +time he looked really haggard and careworn, and was bowed down under an +enormous bundle of papers. The King glanced up from that writing-desk +where, like all other sovereigns, he had been working steadily since +4.30 a.m., and at once remarked, with that sympathetic intuition for +which he is famous among crowned heads: + +"We think We know. The bears." + +Your Majesty is never wrong. They have devoured 126 cows and calves and +bullocks, 418 sheep and goats, 62 mules, 37 horses, and 96 donkeys. Also +55 shepherd dogs and 827 chickens. Here are the claims." + +"Dear, dear, dear. This will never do. If it is a question of going to +ruin, We prefer that it should be the bears rather than Ourselves. We +must withdraw Our Royal protection, after settling up these last items. +What say you, my good Minister?" + +"Your Majesty is always right. A private individual may indulge in the +pastime of breeding bears to the verge of personal bankruptcy. Ruling +sovereigns will be guided by juster and more complex considerations." + +And from that moment, added our gentlemanly informant, there began a +wonderful shrinkage in the numbers of the bears. Within a day or two, +they were again reduced to a single couple. + +Gladly would I have listened to more of these tales but, having by far +the worst of the day's walk still before us, we left the stricken +regions about midday and soon began an interminable ascent, all through +woods, to the shrine of Madonna di Tranquillo. Hereabouts is the +watershed, whence you may see, far below, the tower of Campoli Apennino. +That village was passed in due course, and Sora lay before us, after a +thirteen hours' march.... + +That same night in Sora--it may have been 2 a.m.--some demon drew nigh +to my bedside and whispered in my ear: "What are you doing here, at +Sora? Why not revisit Alatri? (I had been there already in June.) Just +another little promenade! Up, sluggard, while the night-air is cool!" + +I obeyed the summons and turned to rouse my slumbering companion, to +whom I announced my inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were +well worth listening to. + +Next evening found us at Alatri. + +Now whoever, after walking from Scanno over Pescasseroli to Sora in one +day, and on the next, in the blazing heat of early autumn, from Sora +over Isola Liri and Veroli to Alatri--touching in two days the soil of +three Italian provinces: Aquila, Caserta, and Rome--whoever, after doing +this, and inspecting the convent of Casamari en route, feels inclined +for a similar promenade on the third day: let him rest assured of my +profound respect. + +Calm, sunny days at Olevano. And tranquil nights, for some time past. + +The nightingale has been inspired to move a little up country, into +another bush. Its rivals have likewise retired further off, and their +melodramatic trills sound quite pleasant at this distance. + +So tin cans have their uses, even when empty. Certain building +operations may have been interrupted. I apologise, though I will not +promise not to repeat the offence. They can move their nests; I cannot +move this house. Bless their souls! I would not hurt a hair on their +dear little heads, but one must really have a few hours' sleep, somehow +or other. A single night's repose is more precious to me than a myriad +birds or quadrupeds or bipeds; my ideas on the sacred nature of sleep +being perfectly Oriental. That Black Hole of Calcutta was an infamous +business. And yet, while nowise approving the tyrant's action, I can +thoroughly understand his instructions on the subject of slumber. + +Not every one at Olevano is so callous. Waiting the other day at the +bifurcation of the roads for the arrival of the station motor-car--the +social event of the place--I noticed two children bringing up to a +bigger one the nest of a chaffinch, artfully frosted over with silver +lichen from some olive, and containing a naked brood which sprawled +pathetically within. Wasn't it pretty, they asked? + +"Very pretty," he replied. "Now you will take it straight back where you +found it. Go ahead. I am coming with you." And he marched them off. + +I am glad to put this incident on record. It is the second of its kind +which I have observed in this country, the first being when a fisherman +climbed up a bad piece of rock to replace a nest--idle undertaking-- +which some boys had dislodged with stones. At a short distance from +the scene sat the mother-bird in pensive mood, her head cocked on one +side. What did she think of the benevolent enthusiast?... + +Olevano is said to have been discovered by the Germans. I am sceptical +on this point, having never yet found a place that was discovered by +them. An English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died here +all by himself; though doubtless, once on the spot, they did their best +to popularise and vulgarise it. In this matter, as in art or science or +every department of life, a German requires forerunners. He must follow +footsteps. He gleans; picks the brains of other people, profits by their +mistakes and improves on their ideas. + +I know nothing of the social history of Olevano--of its origin, so far +as foreigners are concerned. It is the easiest and the flimsiest thing +in the world to invent; there are so many analogies! + +The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army +officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across +the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate. +Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to +solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered +about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and +discovered that people there did not like being ordered about as they +should be; they seemed to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been +something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being the first "white man" +in the place gave him a kind of fondness for it. + +It was he, then, who discovered Olevano--Freddy Potter. We can see him +living alone, wiry and whiskered and cantankerous, glorying in his +solitude up to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a +fellow-countryman turns up--Mr. Augustus Browne of London. Mr. Browne is +a blameless personality who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an +equally blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a sportsman like +Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste for landscape painting, with +elaborate flowers and butterflies worked into the foreground. So they +live, each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours, importing +groceries from England, dressing for dinner, avoiding contact with the +"natives" and, of course, pretending to be unaware of one another's +existence. + +As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows stronger. The Major has +never forgiven that cockney for invading Olevano, his private domain, +while Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter, who +presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes those filthy cheroots +in public (this was years and years ago). Why is the fellow skulking +here, all by himself? Some hanky-panky with regimental money; every one +knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of right and wrong. +And Potter is not long in making up his mind that this civilian has +bolted to Olevano for reasons which will not bear investigation and is +living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed name. Browne! He +really might have picked out a better one, while he was about it. That +water-colour business--a blind, a red herring; the so-called lady +companion---- + +The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement the mutual conduct of two +compatriots. They are known, far and wide, as "the madmen" till some +bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not madmen at all, but +only homicides hiding from justice; whereupon contempt is changed to +grudging admiration. + +Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up and departs. The old +Major's delight at being once more alone is of short duration; he falls +ill and is entombed, his last days being embittered by the arrival of a +party of German tourists who declare they have "discovered" this +wonderful new spot, and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to +participate in its joys. + +They come, singly and in batches, and soon make Olevano uninhabitable to +men of the Potter and Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night, +sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street "as if they were +in their bedrooms," organise picnics in the woods, sketch old women +sitting in old doorways, start a Verschoenerungsverein and indulge in a +number of other antics which, from the local point of view, are held to +be either coarse or childish. The natives, after watching their doings +with critical interest, presently pronounce a verdict--a verdict to +which the brightest spirits of the place give their assent--a verdict +which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered. + +"Those Englishmen"--thus it runs--"were at least assassins. These people +are merely fools." + +POSTSCRIPT--One thing has occurred of late which would hardly have +happened were the Germans still in occupation of Olevano. At the central +piazza is a fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly, you +could rest and glance down upon the country lying below--upon a piece of +green landscape peering in upon the street. This little view was like a +window, it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now blocked it +up with an ugly house. The beauty of the site is gone. It is surprising +that local municipalities; however stupid, however corrupt, should not +be aware of the damage done to their own interests when they permit such +outrages. The Germans--were any of them still here--would doubtless have +interfered en masse and stopped the building. + +Something should be done about these reviewers. + +There has followed me hither a bundle of press notices of a recent book +of mine. They are favourable. I ought to be delighted. I happen to be +annoyed. + +What takes place in this absurd book? The three unities are preserved. A +respectable but rather drab individual, a bishop, whose tastes and moods +are fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader, arrives at a +new place and is described as being, among other things, peculiarly +sensitive on the subject of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to +the sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their purity, their +sacred mission on earth, their refining influence upon the race. His +friends call him old-fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman, +he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man, towards the end of the +book, watches how the truest woman in the place, the one whom he admires +more than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly throws her +legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises that he is "face to face +with an atrocious and carefully planned murder." Such, however, has been +the transformation of his mind during a twelve days' sojourn that he +understands the crime, he pardons it, he approves it. + +Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought about without a plot? +Yet many of these reviewers discover no such thing in the book. "It +possesses not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most +reputable of them. This annoys me. + +I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it +would be nearer the truth to say that it is nothing but plot from +beginning to end. How to make murder palatable to a bishop: that is the +plot. How? You must unconventionalise him, and instil into his mind the +seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is +right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the +critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the +book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon +finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are +assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in chapters 11, +19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious +happenings in the local law-court; the very externals--relaxing wind and +fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena--the jovial immoderation of +everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and +insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas. + +If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather +successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the +personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, +with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always +swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter, +where the critic might have found a résumé of my intentions and the key +to this plot--to wit, that a murder under those particular circumstances +is not only justifiable and commendable but--insignificant. Quite +insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and honest +folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one dirty +blackmailer more or less--what does it matter to anybody"? There are so +many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop--i.e. the +reader--here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little episode," +and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant events." He +was glad that the whole affair had remained in the background, so to +speak, of his local experiences. It seemed appropriate. In the +background: it seemed appropriate. That is the heart, the core, of the +plot. And that is why all those other happenings find themselves pushed +into the foreground. + +I know full well that this is not the way to write an orthodox English +novel. For if you hide your plot, how shall the critic be expected to +see it? You must serve it on a tray; you must (to vary the simile) hit +the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to superintend the +operation. That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can +then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head +and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of +Dostoievsky minus the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert or +Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a +condition to be labelled--a word, and a thing, which comes perilously +near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of +your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not +praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary +friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive? +It lives on the advertisements of publishers and--say those persons, +perhaps wisely--"if you ill-treat our authors, there's an end to our +custom." Commercialism.... + +Which applies far less to literary criticism than to other kinds. Of +most of the critics of music and art the best one can say is that there +are hearty fellows among them who, with the requisite training, might +one day become fit for their work. England is the home of the amateur in +matters intellectual, the specialist in things material. No bootmaker +would allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather about in a +jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes. The other commodity, being +less valuable than cowhide, may be entrusted to the hands of any +'prentice who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful +hieroglyphics. Criticism in England--snakes in Iceland. [15] + +All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary of St. Michael +above Serrone, that solitary white speck visible from afar on the upper +slopes of Mount Scalambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been +inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with the nightingales, +reaching my destination at the very moment when the sun peered over the +ridge of the mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the dewy shade +of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a wall at Serrone, talking to an +old woman who wore those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose, to +imitate coral. + +I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable and garrulous +anchorite who would share my breakfast. It is the ideal place for such a +life, and many are the mountain solitaries of this species I have known +in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There was he of Scanno--dead, I +doubt not, by this time--that simple-hearted venerable with whom I +whiled away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio, gazing over +the placid lake below, or up stream, at the dusky houses of Scanno +theatrically ranged against their hill-side. I became his friend, once +and for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had lost--his only +snuff-box; it lay at the edge of the path among thick shrubs, and he +could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many +strokes of luck! Once I found a purse-- + +The little structure here was barred and deserted. I had no company save +a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal +cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be +expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs--incurably +monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a +fondness for living in trios. This ménage à trois may have subtle +advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social +habits of the rook; it enables them to fight with more success against +their enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain +lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks. No one who has +watched the aerial antics of a triplet of carrion crows can deny them a +sense of fun. + +After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of nature I descended once +more through that ilex grove to Serrone. And now it began to grow +decidedly warm. The wide depression between this village and Olevano +used to be timbered and is still known as la selva or la foresta. Vines +now occupy the whole ground. If they had only left a few trees by the +wayside! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman who said he was on the +look-out for a hare. Always that hare! They might as well lie in wait +for the Great Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary informed me that he +had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at Rome. Hares at Ponte +Milvio! They reminded me of those partridges in Belgrave Square. In my +younger days there was not a general in the British army who had not (1) +shot partridges in Belgrave Square and (2) been the chosen lover of +Queen Isabella of Spain.... + +Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat. We sit under the +vine near the entrance of that decayed stronghold, while babies and hens +scramble about the exposed rock; he talks, as usual, about the war. He +can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is maimed for life; the +other has been killed outright, and it looks as if no amount of +ironmongery (medals, etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy +land is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hardships and +bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards are untilled, olives unpruned, +for lack of labourers. It will take years to bring the soil back into +its old state of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk +suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for something that +happens beyond their ken, something dim and distant--unintelligible to +them as that Libyan expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not +a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood, these men of +Latium.... + +Thence onward and upward, towards evening by that familiar path, for a +second farewell visit to Giulio's farm. It is a happy homestead, an +abode of peace, with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that +overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty bush of rosemary +stands at the door. The mother is within, cooking the evening meal for +her man and the elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of +daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already half asleep, +tired with a long day's playing in the sunshine. + +Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable cherub and the pickle of the +family. I can see at a glance that he has been up to mischief. Alberto +is incorrigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him any good. +He hammers nails into tables and into himself, he tumbles down from +trees, he throws stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and +saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens +about--disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and +fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big +station motor--pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar +across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish +naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me. +But a certain formality must be gone through; every time we meet there +is a moment of shy distrust, while the ice has to be broken afresh--he +must assure himself that I have not changed since our last encounter. +Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he curls up +comfortably on my knee and is soon fast asleep, all his little tragedies +forgotten. + +"It appears you like children," says the mother. + +"I like this one, because he is never out of trouble. He reminds me of +myself. I shall steal him one of these days, and carry him off to Rome. +From there we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track called +the Via Appia. It will require two of three years, for I mean to stop a +day, or perhaps a week, at every single tavern along the road. Then I +will write a book about it; a book to make myself laugh with, when I am +grown too old for walking." + +"Giulio is big enough." + +"I'll wait." + +No chance of undertaking such a trip in these times of war, when a +foreigner is liable to be arrested at every moment. Besides, how far +would one get, with Giulio? Nevermore to Brindisi! As far as Terracina; +possibly even to Formia. There, at Formia, we would remain for the rest +of our natural lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is +anything like what it used to be; there, at Formia, we would pitch our +tent, enacting every day, or perhaps twice a day, our celebrated +Faun-and-Silenus entertainment for the diversion of the populace. I have +not forgotten Giulio's besetting sin. How nearly he made me exceed the +measure of sobriety at Rojate!... + +Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the trees of the driving-road +fireflies are dancing; countrymen return in picturesque groups, with +mules and children, from their work far afield; that little owl, the +aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its plaintive +note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle. + +This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation for crime and +brigandage that the authorities at one time earnestly considered the +proposition of razing it to the ground. Then they changed their minds. +It seemed more convenient to have evil-doers all collected into one +place than scattered about the country. To judge by the brightness of +the lamps at this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently +spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination. + +And now the lights of Segni station are visible, down in the malarious +valley, where the train passes from Rome to Naples. Every night I have +beheld them from my window; every night they tinged my thoughts with a +soft sadness, driving them backwards, northwards--creating a link +between present and past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall +those four journeys along that road; four, out of at least a hundred; +only four, but in what rare company! + + + + +Valmontone + +Back to Valmontone. + +At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no +train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from +Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had +some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance +being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided +to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after +complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to groans +and almost tears; his waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was +not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his +bundle of hats for him? I objected so vigorously that he forthwith gave +up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I +also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan +blasphemies, [16] for which he was much obliged. Most of them were +unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained. +They seemed to make his burden lighter. + +Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this is rather a cheerless +country, poorly cultivated, and still bearing the traces of mediaeval +savagery and insecurity. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit down +here and let the centuries roll by, watching the tramp of Roman legions +and Papal mercenaries and all that succession of proud banners which +have floated down this ancient Via Labiena. + +That rock-like structure, visible in the morning hours from Olevano, is +a monstrous palace containing, among other things, a training school for +carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose interior has an unusual +shape, the usual smell, and a tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX. + +There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide views over the +surrounding country. It gives food for thought. What an ideal spot, one +says, for the populace to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days! +It is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do they prefer to +jostle each other in the narrow, squalid and stuffy lane lower down? One +would like to know the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was +told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-lighted. The +explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting +arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It +may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's +doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially +speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We +broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological +reason.... + +I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of this terrace, +looking at Artena near-by. It resembled, now, a cluster of brown grapes +clinging to the hillside. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and +sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction of my glance, +remarked gravely: + +"Artena." + +"Artena," I repeated. + +He extracted half a toscano cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began +to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to +smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with +flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were +encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who +rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about +Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to +smile at me rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation by +pointing to a different spot on the hills and observing: + +"Segni." + +"Segni," he agreed. + +His cigar had gone out, as toscanos are apt to do. He applied a match, +and suddenly remarked: + +"Velletri." + +"Velletri." + +We were not making much progress. A good many sites were visible from +here, and at this rate of enumeration the sun might well set on our +labours. + +"How about all those deserters?" I inquired. + +There was a fair number of them, he said. Young fellows from other +provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It +was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches +of land, and, above all, la tradizione. The tradition, he explained, of +that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were +nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man seldom deserts, +not because he would not like to do so, but because he has more +"judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by police. +A few murders had taken place; yes, just a few murders; one or two +stupid people who resented their demands for money or food-- + +He broke off with another weary smile. + +"You have had malaria," I suggested. + +"Often." + +The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face, but from the +peculiar manner.... + +They brought in a deserter that very afternoon. He lay groaning at the +bottom of a cab, having broken his leg in jumping down from somewhere. +The rest of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with carbineers. A +Sicilian, they said. The whole populace followed the vehicle uphill, +reverently, as though attending a funeral. "He is little," said a woman, +referring either to his size or his age. + +An hour later there was a discussion anent the episode in the +fashionable café of Valmontone. A citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly +a notary, put the case for United Italy, for intervention against +Germany, for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly deserters, +into a few phrases so clear, so convincing, that there was a general +burst of approval. Then another man said: + +"I hate those Sicilians; I have good personal reasons for hating them. +But no Sicilian fears death. If they are not brilliant soldiers, they +certainly make first-class assassins, which is only another branch of +the same business. This boy deserts not because he is afraid of death, +but because he still owes a debt. He feels he ought to do something to +repay his parents who nursed him when he was a child, and not be +sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards out yonder"--and he +pointed with his thumb, spitting contemptuously the while, in the +direction of Rome. + +Nobody had any comment to make on this speech. Not a word of protest was +raised. The man was entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and +might even have obtained his share of approval had the victim been a +native. He was only a Sicilian--an outsider. What is one to say of this +patriarchal, or parochial, attitude? The enlargement of Italy's +boundaries--Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so forth--is an ideal +that few Italians bother their heads about. They are not sufficiently +dense--not yet. [17] To found a world-empire like the British or Roman +calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has only to look at the +Germans, who have been trying to do so for some time past. That +collecting mania.... One single boy who collects postage stamps can +infect his whole school with the complaint, and make them all jealous of +his fine specimens. England has been collecting, for many centuries, +islands and suchlike; she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive +mania. She has infected others with the craze and cannot help incurring +their envy, seeing that they are now equally acquisitive, but less +fortunate. All the good specimens are gone! + +That Pergola tavern deserves its name, the courtyard being overhung with +green vines and swelling clusters of grapes. The host is a canny old +boy, up to any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had already taken +a fancy to me on my first visit, for I cured his daughter Vanda of a +raging toothache by the application of glycerine and carbolic acid. We +went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the soft tufa, from +whose darkest and chilliest recesses he drew forth a bottle of excellent +wine--it might have lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How thoughtful of +Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a stone's-throw of your +dining-table! Nobody need ice his wine at the Pergola. + +After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night and walked, +striving to resemble a rich English tourist who has lost his way, along +the lonely road to Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters +or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have got to say +for themselves. My usual luck! Not a deserter was in sight. + +Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old ladies, of what happened +to their little dog and of other matters trivial to the verge of +inanity, I may discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to +Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means the last. Meanwhile, +we proceed southwards. + + + + +Sant' Agata, Sorrento + +Siren-Land revisited.... + +A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village +of Torco--what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are +indubitably the salt of the earth--down that well-worn track to +Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, +the genius loci, has died in the interval; thence by boat to the lonely +beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the rock-doves at +the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where, for the sake of +old memories, I indulged in a bathe and then came across an object rare +in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian granite, relic of some +pagan temple and doubtless washed up here in a wintry gale; thence, for +a little light refreshment, to Nerano; thence to that ill-famed "House +of the Spirits" where my Siren-Land was begun in the company of one who +feared no spirits--victim, already, of this cursed war, but then a +laughter-loving child--and down to the bay and promontory of Ierate, +there to make the unwelcome discovery that certain hideous quarrying +operations on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the charm of +this once secluded site; thence laboriously upwards, past that line of +venerable goat-caves, to the summit of Mount San Costanzo. + +Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at my feet as of old, flooded +in sunshine. + +There is a small outdoor cistern here. Peering into its darkness through +an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; +out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, +sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled +through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid +cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the +gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to +an inordinate length--from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual +abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these +restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live +and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to +a few inches of land amid a desolation of black water. + +It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days ago while climbing in +the torrid hour of noon up that shadeless path where the vanilla-scented +orchids grow--the path which runs from Sant' Elia past the shattered +Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the hottest turning of the road, +sat a woman in great distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been +commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia. This beast was +suffering hellish torments from the heat and vainly endeavouring, with +frenzied grunts of despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth +under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman of shade lower +down. She said she knew about it, but the pig--the pig refused to move! +It had been engaged upon this hopeless occupation, without a moment's +respite, for an hour or more; nothing would induce it to proceed a step +further; it had plainly made up its mind to find shelter here from the +burning rays, or die. And of shelter there was none. + +What would not this pig (I now thought) have given to be transported +into the lizard's cool aquatic paradise; and the lizard, into that +scorching sunlight!... + +It was not to muse upon the miseries of the animal creation that I have +revisited these shores. I came to puzzle once more over the site of that +far-famed Athene temple which gave its name to the whole promontory. +Now, after again traversing the ground with infinite pleasure, I fail to +find any reason for changing what I wrote years ago in a certain +pamphlet which some scholar, glancing through these pages and anxious to +explore for himself a spot of such celebrity in ancient days, is so +little likely to see that he may not be sorry if I here recapitulate its +arguments. Others will be well advised to pass over what follows. + +Let me begin by saying that the temple, in every probability, stood at +the Punta Campanella facing Capri, the actual headland of the Sorrentine +peninsula, where--apart from every other kind of evidence--you may pick +up to this day small terra-cotta figures of Athene, made presumably to +be carried away as keepsakes by visitors to the shrine. + +Now for alternative suggestions. + +Strabo tells us that the temple was placed on the akron of the +promontory; that is, the summit of Mount San Costanzo where we are now +standing. (He elsewhere describes it as being "on the straits.") This +summit is nearly 500 metres above the sea-level, and here no antique +building seems ever to have been erected. No traces of old life are +visible save some fragments of Roman pottery which may have found their +way up in early Byzantine days, even as modern worshippers carry up the +ephemeral vessels popularly called "caccavelle" [18] and scatter them +about. With the exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble, no +materials of an early period have been incorporated into the masonry of +the little chapel or the walls of the fields below. It is incredible +that no vestige of a structure like the Athene temple should remain on a +spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards immunity from +depredations, owing to its isolated and exalted position. The +rock-surface around the summit has not undergone that artificial +levelling which an edifice of this importance would necessitate; the +terrace is of mediaeval construction, as can be seen by its supporting +walls. No doubt the venerable Christian sanctuary there has been +frequently repaired and modified; on the terrace-level to the south can +be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the slopes are +littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa, and old battuto floors. +But there is no trace of antique workmanship or material, nor has the +rocky path leading up to the shrine been demarcated with chisel-cuts in +the ancient fashion. The sister-summit of La Croce is equally +unproductive of classical relics. + +We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken. And why not? His +accounts of many parts of the Roman world are surprisingly accurate, +but, according to Professor Pais, "of Italy Strabo seems to have known +merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome, the road between Rome +and Naples and Pozzuoli, and the coast of Etruria between Rome and +Populonia." If so, he probably saw no more of the district than can be +seen from Naples. He attributes the foundation of this Athene temple to +Odysseus: statements of such a kind make one wonder whether the earlier +portions of his lost history were more critical than other old treatises +which have survived. + +So much for Strabo. + +Seduced by a modern name, which means nothing more or less than "a +temple"--strong evidence, surely--I was inclined to locate the Athene +shrine at a spot called Ierate (marked also as Ieranto on some maps, and +popularly pronounced Ghiérate the Greek aspirate still surviving) which +lies a mile or more eastwards of the Punta Campanella and faces south. +"Hieron," I thought: that settles it. You may guess I was not a little +proud of this discovery, particularly when it turned out that an ancient +building actually did stand there--on the southern slope, namely, of the +miniature peninsula which juts into Ierate bay. Here I found fragments +of antique bricks, tegulae bipedales, amphoras, pottery of the lustrous +Sorrentine ware--Surrentina bibis?--pavements of opus signinum, as well +as one large Roman paving flag of the type that is found on the road +between Termini and Punta Campanella. (How came this stone here? Did the +old road from Stabiae Athene temple go round the promontory and continue +as far as Ierate along the southern slope of San Costanzo hill? No road +could pass there now; deforestation has denuded the mountain-side of its +soil, laying bare the grey rock--a condition at which its mediaeval name +of Mons Canutarius already hints.) Well, a more careful examination of +the site has convinced me that I was wrong. No temple of this +magnificence can have stood here, but only a Roman villa--one of the +many pleasure-houses which dotted these shores under the Empire. + +So much for myself. + + +PEUTINGER'S CHART +Showing ancient road rounding the headland +and terminating at "Templum Minervae." + +None the less--and this is a really curious point--an inspection of +Peutinger's Tables seems to bear out my original theory of a temple at +Ierate. For the structure is therein marked not at the Punta Campanella +but, approximately, at Ierate itself, facing south, with the road from +Stabiae over Surrentum rounding the promontory and terminating at the +temple's threshold. Capri and the Punta Campanella are plainly drawn, +though not designated by name. Much as I should like my first +speculation to be proved correct on the evidence of this old chart of +A.D. 226, I fear both of us are mistaken. + +So much for Peutinger's Tables. + +Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the local topography. He +says that the "three-peaked rock" which Eratosthenes describes as +separating the gulfs of Cumae and Paestum (that is, of Naples and +Salerno) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not understand Beloch falling into +this error, for the old geographer uses the term skopelos, which is +never applied to a mountain of this size, but to cliffs projecting upon +the sea. Moreover, the landmark is there to this day. I have not the +slightest doubt that Eratosthenes meant the pinnacle of Ierate, which is +three-peaked in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous manner, +both when viewed from the sea and from the land (from the chapel of S. +M. della Neve, for instance). + +Now this projecting cliff of three peaks--they are called, respectively, +Montalto, Ierate, and Mortella; Ierate for short--is not the actual +boundary between the two gulfs; not by a mile or more. No; but from +certain points it might well be mistaken for it. The ancients had no +charts like ours, and the world in consequence presented itself +differently to their senses; even Strabo, says Bunbury, "was so ignorant +of the general form and configuration of the North African coast as to +have no clear conception of the great projection formed by the +Carthaginian territory and the deep bay to the east of it"; and, +coasting along the shore line, this triple-headed skopelos, behind which +lies the inlet of Ierate, might possibly be mistaken for the +turning-point into the gulf of Naples. So it looks when viewed from the +S.E. of Capri; so also from the Siren islets--a veritable headland. + +So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes. + +To sum up: Strabo is wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on +the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this +temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the +structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong +in identifying the skopelos trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San +Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the boundary +between the two gulfs. + +The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of +sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their +descriptions of its lofty site. So great a number of old writers concur +in this opinion--Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio, +Capaccio--that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these +men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple." +Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the +neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella." Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a +paper on this "Atene Siciliana" which I have not seen. The whole +question is discussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa +(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term akron may mean an +extremity or point projecting into the sea (a sense in which Homer used +it), and be applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella. + + + + +Rome + +Here we are. + +That mysterious nocturnal incident peculiar to Rome has already +occurred--sure sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens about +six times in the course of every year, during the hot season. You may +read about it in the next morning's paper which records how some young +man, often of good family and apparently in good health, was seen +behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at the hour of about 2 a.m.; +jumping, that is, in a state of Adamitic nudity, into some public +fountain. It goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the police, +run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a hospital, where his state +of mind is to be investigated. Will our rising generation, it gravely +adds, never learn the most elementary rules of decency? + +If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of these +establishments what has been the result of the medical examination, it +is because I will wager my last shirt that the invalid's health leaves +nothing to be desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this. He +is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses to come. He has +already passed half the night in agony, tossing on his couch during +those leaden hours when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town +he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be irremediable. But Rome +is the city of fountains. It is they who are responsible for this sad +lapse. Their sound is clear by day; after midnight, when the traffic has +died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears it through the window--hears it +perforce, since the streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot +close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more restless every +moment. He thinks.... That splash of waters! Those frigid wavelets and +cascades! How delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in +their bubbling wetness; he is parched with heat, and at this hour of the +night, he reflects, there will not be a soul abroad in the square. So he +hearkens to the seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that +familiar fountain; he remembers its moistened rim and basin all alive +with jolly turmoil; he sees the miniature cataracts tumbling down in +streaks of glad confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be +controlled. + +The thing must be done. + +Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly inquiring into his +state of mind.... + +I can sympathise with that state of mind, having often undergone the +same purgatory. My room at present happens to be fairly cool; it looks +north, and the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has not yet +tempted me to any breach of decorum. Night is quiet here, save for the +squeakings of some strange animals in the upper regions of the +neighbouring Pantheon; they squeak night and day, and one would take +them to be bats, were it not that bats are supposed to be on the wing +after sunset. There are no mosquitoes in Rome--none worth talking about. +It is well. For mosquitoes have a deplorable habit of indulging in a +second meal, an early breakfast, at about four a.m.--a habit more +destructive to slumber than that regular and legitimate banquet of +theirs. No mosquitoes, and few flies. It is well. + +It is more than merely well. For the mosquito, after all, when properly +fed, goes to bed like a gentleman and leaves you alone, whereas that +insatiable and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you to a +never-ending succession of anguished reflex movements. What a +malediction are those flies; how repulsive in life and in death: not to +be touched by human hands! Their every gesture is an obscenity, a +calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have watched them for +hours on end, and one of the most cherished projects of my life is to +assemble, in a kind of anthology, all the invectives that have been +hurled since the beginning of literature against this loathly dirt-born +insect, this living carrion, this blot on the Creator's reputation--and +thereto add a few of my own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly +under his protection. He says, among other things, that "like an honest +man, it is not ashamed to do in public what others only do in private." +I must say, if we all followed the fly's example in this aspect, life +would at last be worth living.... + +Morning sleep is out of the question, owing to the tram-cars whose +clangour, both here and in Florence, must be heard to be believed. They +are fast rendering these towns uninhabitable. Can folks who cherish a +nuisance of this magnitude compare themselves, in point of refinement, +with those old Hellenic colonists who banished all noises from their +city? Nevermore! Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and general +unseemliness? In order that a few bourgeois may be saved the trouble of +using their legs. And yet we actually pride ourselves on these +detestable things, as if they were inventions to our credit. "We made +them," we say. Did we? It is not we who make them. It is they who make +us, who give us our habits of mind and body, our very thoughts; it is +these mechanical monsters who control our fates and drive us along +whither they mean us to go. We are caught in their cog-wheels--in a +process as inevitable as the revolution of the planets. No use lamenting +a cosmic phenomenon! Were it otherwise, I should certainly mope myself +into a green melancholy over the fact, the most dismal fact on earth, +that brachycephalism is a Mendelian dominant. [19] No use lamenting. +True. + +But the sage will reserve to himself the right of cursing. Those morning +hours, therefore, when I would gladly sleep but for the tram-car +shrieking below, are devoted to the malediction of all modern progress, +wherein I include, with fine impartiality, every single advancement in +culture which happens to lie between my present state and that +comfortable cavern in whose shelter I soon see myself ensconced as of +yore, peacefully sucking somebody's marrow while my women, round the +corner, are collecting a handful of acorns for my dessert.... The +telephone, that diabolic invention! It might vex a man if his neighbour +possessed a telephone and he none; how would it be, if neither of them +had it? We can hardly realise, now, the blissful quietude of the +pre-telephone epoch. And the telegraph and the press! They have huddled +mankind together into undignified and unhygienic proximity; we seem to +be breathing each other's air. We know what everybody is doing, in every +corner of the earth; we are told what to think, and to say, and to do. +Your paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used to hammer out a few +solid opinions of his own on matters political and otherwise. He no +longer employs his brain for that purpose. He need only open his morning +paper and in it pours--the oracle of the press, that manufactory of +synthetic fustian, whose main object consists in accustoming humanity to +attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes him with opinions +ready made, overnight, by some Fleet Street hack at so much a column, +after a little talk with his fellows over a pint of bad beer at the +Press Club. He has been told what to say--yesterday, for instance, it +was some lurid balderdash about a steam-roller and how the Kaiser is to +be fed on dog biscuits at Saint Helena--he has been "doped" by the +editor, who gets the tip--and out he goes! unless he take it--from the +owner, who is waiting for a certain emolument from this or that caucus, +and trims his convictions to their taste. That is what the Press can do. +It vitiates our mundane values. It enables a gang to fool the country. +It cretinises the public mind. The time may come when no respectable +person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly. Newspaper reading +will become a secret vice. As such, I fear, its popularity is not likely +to wane. Having generated, by means of sundry trite reflections of this +nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast, I dress and step out of +doors to where, at a pleasant table, I can imbibe some coffee and make +my plans for loafing through the day. + +Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets. The Greeks, the Romans, +the Orientals knew better than to build wide roadways in a land of +sunshine. + +There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled "Napoli senza +sole"--Naples without sun. It gives instructions, they say (for I have +never seen it) how foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all +hours of the day; how they may reach any point of the town from another +without being forced to cross the squares, those dazzling patches of +sunlight. The feat could have been accomplished formerly even in Rome, +which was always less umbrageous than Naples. It is out of the question +nowadays. You must do as the Romans do--walk slowly and use the tram +whenever possible. + +That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which will take me direct +to the Milvian bridge, where I mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at +the restaurant across the water. Its proprietor is something of a +brigand; so am I, at a pinch. It is "honour among thieves," or "diamond +cut diamond." + +Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the glowing sands. But +the water is still cold; indeed, the Tiber is never too warm for me. If +you like it yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene +discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season, is of a kind to +tickle up a walrus. + +Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some other cause, there +is a singular variety of flesh-tints among the bathers here. I wish my +old friend Dr. Bowles could have seen it; we used to be deeply immersed, +both of us, in the question of the chromatophores, I observing their +freakish behaviour in the epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied +their action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little paper on +sunburn--a darker problem than it seems to be. [20] + +These men and boys do not grow uniformly sunburnt. They display so many +different colour-shades on their bodies that an artist would be +delighted with the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by reason +of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays, the tints diverge; the +reds, the scarcer group, traversing every gradation from pale rose to +the ruddiest of copper--not excluding that strange marbled complexion +concerning which I cannot make up my mind whether it be a beauty or a +defect; while the xanthous tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold +and apricot and café au lait to a duskiness approaching that of the +negro. At this season the skins are still white. Your artist must come +later--not later, however, than the end of August, for on the first of +September the bathing, be the weather never so warm, is officially, and +quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber water is declared to be "unhealthy" +after that date, and liable to give you fever; a relic of the days when +the true origin of malaria was unknown. + +A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that bathing has not yet +begun in earnest. No drowning accidents, up to the present. Later on +they come thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current and +vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to young swimmers; it grips +them in its tawny coils and holds them fast, often within a few yards of +friend or parent who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries +of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of that serpent-like +embrace. So it hurries him to destruction, only to be fished up later in +a state, as the newspapers will be careful to inform us, of "incipient +putrefaction." + +A murderous flood.... + +That hoary, trickling structure--that fountain which has forgotten to be +a fountain, so dreamily does the water ooze through obstructive mosses +and emerald growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet beards, +from its venerable lips--that fountain un-trimmed, harmonious, overhung +by ancient ilexes: where shall a more reposeful spot be found? Doubly +delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by the river-bank. For +the foliage of the oaks and sycamores is such that it creates a kind of +twilight, and all around lies the tranquillity of noon. Here, on the +encircling stone bench, you may idle through the sultry hours conversing +with some favourite disciple while the cows trample up to drink amid +moist gurglings and tail-swishings. They gaze at you with gentle eyes, +they blow their sweet breath upon your cheek, and move sedately onward. +The Villa Borghese can be hushed, at such times, in a kind of +enchantment. + +"You never told me why you come to Italy." + +"In order," I reply, "to enjoy places like this." + +"But listen. Surely you have fountains in your own country?" + +"None quite so golden-green." + +"Ah, it wants cleaning, doesn't it?" + +"Lord, no!" I say; but only to myself. One should never pass for an +imbecile, if one can help it. + +Aloud I remark:-- + +"Let me try to set forth, however droll it may sound, the point of view +of a certain class of people, supposing they exist, who might think that +this particular fountain ought never to be cleaned"--and there ensued a +discussion, lasting about half an hour, in the course of which I +elaborated, artfully and progressively, my own thesis, and forged, in +the teeth of some lively opposition, what struck me as a convincing +argument in favour of leaving the fountain alone. + +"Then that is why you come to Italy. On account of a certain fountain, +which ought never to be cleaned." + +"I said on account of places like this. And I ought to have added, on +account of moments such as these." + +"Are those your two reasons?" + +"Those are my two reasons." + +"Then you have thought about it before?" + +"Often." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"But listen. Surely it is sometimes two o'clock in the afternoon, in +your country?" + +"I used that word moment in a pregnant sense," I reply. "Pregnant: when +something is concealed or enclosed within. What is enclosed within this +moment? Our friendly conversation." + +"But listen. Surely folks can converse in your country?" + +"They can talk." + +"I begin to understand why you come here. It is that difference, which +is new to me, between conversing and talking. Is the difference worth +the long journey?" + +"Not to everybody, I daresay." + +"Why to you?" + +"Why to me? I must think about it." + +One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it. + +"What is there to think about? You said you had thought about it +already.... Perhaps there are other reasons?" + +"There may be." + +"There may be?" + +"There must be. Are you satisfied?" + +"Ought I to be satisfied before I have learnt them?" + +"I find you rather fatiguing this afternoon. Did you hear about that +murder in Trastevere last night and how the police----" + +"But listen. Surely you can answer a simple question. Why do you come to +Italy...?" + +Why does one come here? + +A periodical visit to this country seems an ordinary and almost +automatic proceeding--a part of one's regular routine, as natural as +going to the barber or to church. Why seek for reasons? They are so hard +to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one +lurking in the background, a reason for a reason. + +The craving to be in contact with beauty and antiquity, the desire for +self-expression, for physical well-being under that drenching sunshine, +which while it lasts, one curses lustily; above all, the pleasure of +memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes; herein lies, methinks, the +secret; the reason for the reason. Reconstruction at a distance.... For +a haze of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space; a kindly haze +which obliterates the thousand fretting annoyances wherewith the +traveller's path in every country is bestrewn. He forgets them; forgets +that weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only its sporadic +islets--those moments of calm delight or fiercer joy which he would fain +hold fast for ever. He does not come here on account of a certain +fountain which ought never to be cleaned. [21] He comes for the sake of +its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise up later, out of some +November fog in another land. Italy is a delightful place to remember, +to think and talk about. And is it not the same with England? Let us go +there as a tourist--only as a tourist. How attractive one finds its +conveniences, and even its conventionalities, provided one knows, for an +absolute certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell among +them. + +What lovely things one could say about England, in Timbuktu! + +Rome is not only the most engaging capital in Europe, it is unusually +heterogeneous in regard to population. The average Parisian will assure +you that his family has lived in that town from time immemorial. It is +different here. There are few Romans discoverable in Rome, save across +the Tiber. Talk to whom you please, you will soon find that either he or +his parents are immigrants. The place is filled with hordes of +employees--many thousands of them, high and low, from every corner of +the provinces; the commoner sort, too, the waiters, carpenters, +plasterers, masons, painters, coachmen, all the railway folk--they are +hardly ever natives. Your Roman of the lower classes does not relish +labour. He can do a little amateurish shop-keeping, he is fairly good as +a cook, but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists in eating +and drinking. That is as it should be. It befits the tone of a +metropolis that outsiders shall do its work. That undercurrent of +asperity is less noticeable here than in many towns of the peninsula. +There is something of the grande dame in Rome, a flavour of old-world +courtesy. The inhabitants are better-mannered than the Parisians; a +workday crowd in Rome is as well-dressed as a Sunday crowd in Paris. And +over all hovers a gentle weariness. + +The city has undergone orgies of bloodshed and terror. Think only, +without going further back, of that pillage by the Spanish and German +soldiery under Bourbon; half a year's pandemonium. And all those other +mediaeval scourges, epidemics and floods and famines. That sirocco, the +worst of many Italian varieties: who shall calculate its debilitating +effect upon the stamina of the race? Up to quite a short time ago, +moreover, the population was malarious; older records reek of malaria; +that, assuredly, will leave its mark upon the inhabitants for years to +come. And the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that forbidden land +in whose embrace the city lies gasping, flame-encircled, like the +scorpion in the tale.... + +A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the mind's eye, is so +impressed with its "eternal" character that he cannot imagine this site +having ever been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it seems +inevitable that these walls must always have stood where now they +stand--must have risen, he suggests, out of the earth, unaided by human +hands. Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon a time; +somebody who lived under conditions quite different from those that +supervened. For who--not five thousand, but, say, five hundred years +ago--who would have thought of building a town on a spot like this? None +but a crazy despot, some moonstruck Oriental such as the world has +known, striving to impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No +facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of landscape, no +harbour, no defence against enemies, no drinking water, no mineral +wealth, no food-supplying hinterland, no navigable river--a dangerous +river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place--every drawback, or +nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled +into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and +poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so effectually, so +triumphantly that, were green pastures not needful to me as light and +air, I, for one, would nevermore stray beyond those ancient portals.... + +The country visits you here. It comes in the wake of that evening breeze +which creeps about with stealthy feet, winding its way into the most +secluded courtyards and sending a sudden shiver through the frail +bamboos that stand beside your dinner-table in some heated square. Then +the zephyr departs mysteriously as it came, and leaves behind a great +void--a torrid vacuum which is soon filled up by the honey-sweet +fragrance of hay and aromatic plants. Every night this balsamic breath +invades the town, filling its streets with ambrosial suggestions. It is +one of the charms of Rome at this particular season; quite a local +speciality, for the phenomenon could never occur if the surrounding +regions were covered with suburbs or tilth or woodland--were aught save +what they are: a desert whose vegetation of coarse herbage is in the act +of withering. The Campagna once definitely dried, this immaterial feast +is at an end. + +I am glad never to have discovered anyone, native or foreign, who has +been aware of the existence of this nocturnal emanation; glad because it +corroborates a theory of mine, to wit, that mankind is forgetting the +use of its nose; and not only of nose, but of eyes and ears and all +other natural appliances which help to capture and intensify the simple +joys of life. We all know the civilised, the industrial eye--how +atrophied, how small and formless and expressionless it has become. The +civilised nose, it would seem, degenerates in the other direction. Like +the cultured potato or pumpkin, it swells in size. The French are +civilised and, if we may judge by old engravings (what else are we to +take as guide, seeing that the skull affords some criterion as to shape +but not size of nose?) they certainly seem to accentuate this organ in +proportion as they neglect its use. Parisians, it strikes me, are +running to nose; they wax more rat-like every day. Here is a little +problem for anthropologists. There may be something, after all, in the +condition of Paris life which fosters the development of this peeky, +rodential countenance. Perfumery, and what it implies? There are +scent-shops galore in the fashionable boulevards, whereas I defy you to +show me a single stationer. Maupassant knew them fairly well, and one +thinks of that story of his:-- + +"Le parfum de Monsieur?" + +"La verveine...." [22] + +Speaking of the French, I climbed those ninety odd stairs the other day +to announce my arrival in Italy to my friend Mrs. N., who, being vastly +busy at that moment and on no account to be disturbed, least of all by a +male, sent word to say that I might wait on the terrace or in that +microscopic but well-equipped library of hers. I chose the latter, and +there browsed upon "Emaux et Camées" and the "Fleurs du Mal" which +happened, as was meet and proper, to lie beside each other. + +Strange reading, at this distance of time. These, I thought--these are +the things which used to give us something of a thrill. + +If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well be that we have +absorbed their spirit so thoroughly into our system that we forget +whence we drew it. They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one +cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery, his gift of being +quaint and yet lucid as a diamond; one pictures those crocodiles +fainting in the heat, and notes, too, whence the author of the "Sphinx" +drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so +much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for +external monotony. That trick--that full stop at the end of nearly every +fourth line--it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow +jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows +wearisome to the ear, and finally abhorrent. + +Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve +down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom. "Fuyez l'infini +que vous portez en vous"--a line which, in my friend's copy of the book, +had been marked on the margin with a derisive exclamation-point. (It +gave me food for thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to substance, +he contains too many nebulosities and abstractions for my taste; a +veritable mist of them, out of which emerges--what? The figure of one +woman. Reading these "Fleurs du Mal" we realise, not for the first time, +that there is something to be said in favour of libertinage for a poet. +We do not need Petrarca, much less the Love-Letters of a Violinist--no, +we do not need those Love-Letters at all--to prove that a master can +draw sweet strains from communion with one mistress, from a lute with +one string; a formidable array of songsters, on the other hand, will +demonstrate how much fuller and richer the melody grows when the +instrument is provided with the requisite five, the desirable fifty. +Monogamous habits have been many a bard's undoing. + +Twenty years' devotion to that stupid and spiteful old cat of a +semi-negress! They make one conscious of the gulf between the logic of +the emotions and that other one--that logic of the intellect which ought +to shape our actions. Here was Baudelaire, a man of ruthless +self-analysis. Did he never see himself as others saw him? Did he never +say: "You are making a fool of yourself"? + +Be sure he did. + +You are making a fool of yourself: are not those the words I ought to +have uttered when, standing in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo--the +sunny centre: so it had been inexorably arranged--I used to wait and +wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the slender shadow of +that obelisque which crawled reluctantly, like the finger of fate, over +the burning stones? + +And I crawled with it, more than content. + +Days of infatuation! + +I never pass that way now without thanking God for a misspent youth. Why +not make a fool of yourself? It is good fun while it lasts; it yields +mellow mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures, those +solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous? Where is the use of +experience, if it does not make you laugh? The Logic of the +Intellect--what next! If any one had treated me to such tomfoolery while +standing there, petrified into a pillar of fidelity in that creeping +shadow, I should have replied gravely: + +"The Logic of the Intellect, my dear Sir, is incompatible with +situations like mine. It was not invented for so stupendous a crisis. I +am waiting for my negress--can't you understand?--and she is already +seven minutes late...." + +A flaming morning, forestaste of things to come. + +I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital where things are +doing well, glancing down, towards midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one +looks into some torrid bear-pit. + +Broken columns glitter in the sunshine; the grass is already withered to +hay. Drenched in light and heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is +altogether devoid of life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in +a kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead. My experiences in the hospital +half an hour ago dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a more +morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular, it seems as if all the +mangy and decrepit cats of Rome had given themselves a rendezvous on +this classic soil; cats of every colour and every age--quite young ones +among them; all, one would say, at the last gasp of life. This pit, this +crater of flame, is their "Home for the Dying." Once down here, nothing +matters any more. They are safe at last from their old enemies, from +dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death, they move about in a +stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One +would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or +slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing +where one dies. + +There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated +tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the +mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a +moment. Nothing more. + +These cats have lost their all--their self-respect. Grace and ardour, +sleekness of coat and buoyancy of limbs are gone out of them. Tails are +knotted with hunger and neglect; bones protrude through the skin. So +they strew the ground in discomposed, un-catlike attitudes, while the +sun burns through their parched anatomy. Do they remember their +kittenish pranks, those moonlight ecstasies on housetops, that morsel +snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and borne through the crowded +traffic in a series of delirious leaps? Who can tell! They are not even +bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches. They are alive when they +ought to be dead. Nobody knows it better than they do. They are too ill, +too far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present degradation. +Nothing matters! What would Baudelaire, that friend of cats, have said +to this macabre exhibition? + +Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom of a kitten. The parent +takes no interest in the proceedings; she lies prone, her head on the +ground. Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead? Possibly. Her own +kitten? Who cares! Her neighbour, once white but now earth-coloured, +rises stiffly as though dubious whether the joints are still in working +order. What does she think of doing? It would seem she has formed no +plan. She walks up to the mother, peers intently into her face, then +sits apart on her haunches and begins gazing at the sun. Presently she +rises anew and proceeds five or six paces for no imaginable +reason--collapses; falls, quite abruptly, on her side. There she lies, +flat, like a playing-card. + +A sinister aimlessness pervades the actions of those that move at all. +The shadow of death is upon these creatures in the scorching sunshine. +They stare at columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at one +another, as though they had never seen such things before. They totter +about on tip-toe; they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is +one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is +convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind +of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for +herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a +face that bears the scars of a hundred fights. One eye has been lost in +some long-forgotten encounter. Now they walk over him, kittens and all, +and tread about his head, as if he were a hillock of earth, while his +claws twitch resentfully with rage or pain. Too ill to rise! + +Most of them are thus stretched out blankly, in a faint. Are they +suffering? Hungry or thirsty? [23] I believe they are past troubling +about such things. It is time to die. They know it.... + +"L'albergo dei gatti," says a cheery voice at my side--some countryman, +who has also discovered Trajan's Forum to be one of the sights of Rome. +"The cats' hotel. But," he adds, "I see no restaurant attached to it." + +That reminds me: luncheon-time. + +Via Flaminia--what a place for luncheon! True; but this is one of the +few restaurants in Rome where, nowadays, a man is not in danger of being +simultaneously robbed, starved, and poisoned. Things have come to a +pretty pass. This starvation-fare may suit a saint and turn his thoughts +heavenwards. Mine it turns in the other direction. Here, at all events, +the food is straightforward. Our hostess, a slow elderly woman, is +omnipresent; one realises that every dish has been submitted to her +personal inspection. A primeval creature; heaviness personified. She +moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock. The crack of doom +will not avail to accelerate that relentless deliberation. She reminds +me of a cousin of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who, when his +long curls once caught fire from being too near a candle, sleepily +remarked to a terrified wife: "I think you might try to blow it out." + +But where shall a man still find those edible maccheroni--those that +were made in the Golden Age out of pre-war-time flour? + +Such things are called trifles.... Give me the trifles of life, and keep +the rest. A man's health depends on trifles; and happiness on health. +Moreover, I have been yearning for them for the last five months. Hope +deferred maketh the heart sick.... There are none in Rome. Can they be +found anywhere else? + +Mrs. Nichol: she might know. She has the gift of knowing about things +one would never expect her to know. If only one could meet her by +accident in the street! For at such times she is gay and altogether at +your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors. To break upon her +seclusion at home is an undertaking reserved for great occasions. The +fact is, we are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of what she +describes as a tiresome life have taught her the value of masculine +frankness--ultra-masculine, I call it. She is too frank for subterfuge +of any kind. When at home, for instance, she is never "not at home." She +will always see you. She will not detain you long, if you happen to be +de trop. + +This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion--my health and +happiness.... Besides, I am her oldest friend in this part of the world; +was I not on the spot when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet +fathomed, to make Rome her domicile? Have I not more than once been +useful to her, nay, indispensable? I therefore climb, not without +trepidation, those ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old +palace, and presently find myself ushered into the familiar twilight. + +Nothing has changed since I was here some little time ago to announce my +arrival in Italy (solemn occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an +hour or so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being engaged +upon "house-accounts." This time, as I enter the studio, she is playing +cards with a pretty handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays +cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouthpiece which keeps +the smoke out of her olive-complexioned face and which she holds +firm-fixed between her teeth, in a corner of the mouth, after the perky +fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game, and at once begin to +feel de trop under a glance from those smouldering grey eyes. + +"It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death. Will you please +listen for half a minute? Then I will evaporate, and you can go on with +your ridiculous cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches. +Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable macaroni nowadays? +The old kind, I mean, made out of pre-war-time flour...." + +She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend the game, and asks +the girl in Italian: + +"What was the name of that place?" + +"That place----" + +"Oh, stupid! Where I stayed with Miranda last September. Where I tore my +skirt on the rock. Where I said something nice about the white +macaroni?" + +"Soriano in Cimino." + +"Soriano," echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke. "There is a tram +from here every morning. They can put you up." + +A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to this sultry and +self-centred being; I would like to wander with her through these rooms, +imbibing their strange Oriental spirit--not your vulgar Orient, but +something classic and remote; something that savours, for aught I know, +of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol, in one of her immature efforts at +self-realisation, spent a few years as the wife of a high French +official, ere marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol--another +unsuccessful venture. + +Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy there was yet an +earlier alliance of some kind)? A whim, a freak? Or did they plague her +into it? If so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their manly +persistence. She could grind any ordinary male to powder. And why has +she now flitted here, building herself this aerial bower above the old +roofs of Rome? Is she in search of happiness? I doubt whether she will +find it. She possesses that fatal craving--the craving for disinterested +affection, a source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom +affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but a luxury, and +therefore desirable above all else--desirable, and how seldom attained! + +The pause continues. I make a little movement, to attract notice. She +looks up, but only her eyes reply. + +"Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, "are you blind?" + +That is the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally absent-minded, she +always knows at a given moment exactly what she wants to do. And she +never wants to do more than one thing at a time. It is most unwomanly of +her. Any other person of her sex would have left a game of cards for the +sake of an attractive visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an +ordinary lady would have played cards, given complicated orders to +dressmakers and servants, and entertained half a dozen men at the same +time. Mrs. Nichol cannot do these things. That hand, that rather +sunburnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not moved from the +table. No, I am not blind. It is quite evident that she wants to play +cards; only that, and nothing more. + +I withdraw, stealthily. + +Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad terrace where +jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubs; there I pace up and down, admiring +the cupolas and towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the blue +background of distant hills. How much of its peculiar flavour a town +will draw--not from artistic monuments but from the mere character of +building materials! How many variations on one theme! This mellow Roman +travertine, for instance.... I call to mind those disconsolate places in +Cornwall with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and +dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic cheerfulness of +lava, those marble-towns that blind you with their glare, Eastern cities +of brightly tinted stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns, +wood-towns--how they differ in mood from one another!... Here I pace up +and down, rejoicing in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to +disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-cries that climb +to this hanging garden in confused waves of sound. Harsh at close +quarters, they weave themselves into a mirthful symphony up here. + +From that studio, too, comes a lively din--the laughter has begun again. +Mrs. Nichol is having a good time. It will be followed, I daresay, by a +period of acute depression. I shall probably be consulted with masonic +frankness about some little tragedy of the emotions which is no concern +of mine. She can be wondrously engaging at such times--like a child that +has got into trouble and takes you into its confidence. + +One of these days I must write a character-sketch of Mrs. Nichol. She +foreshadows a type--represents it, very possibly--a type which will grow +commoner from day to day. She dreams of a Republic of women, vestals or +otherwise, wherefrom all men are to be excluded unless they possess +qualifications of a rather unusual nature. I think she would like to +draft a set of rules and regulations for that community. She could be +trusted, I fancy, to make them sufficiently stringent. + +I think I understand, now, why a certain line in her copy of Baudelaire +was marked with that derisive exclamation-point on the margin: "Fuyez +l'infini que vous portez en vous." + +"Fuyez?" it seemed to say. "Why 'fuyez'?" + +Fulfil it! + + + + +Soriano + +Amid clouds of dust you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert +Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway--different +from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but +slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails +every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as +to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an +iridescent bubble suspended in the sky. + +This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the slope of an immense +old volcano and conveys at first glance a somewhat ragged and sombre +impression. It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni--they +atoned for everything. So exquisite were they that I forthwith vowed to +return to Soriano, for their sake alone, ere the year should end. (I +kept my vow.) The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and +unmistakably authentic, having been purchased in large quantities at the +outbreak of hostilities by the provident hostess, who must have +anticipated a rise in price, a deterioration in quality, or both, as the +result of war. + +How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their whereabouts? That is her affair. +I know not how she has managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect +such a variety of useful local information. I can only testify that on +her arrival in Rome she knew no more about the language and place than +the proverbial babe unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced +with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the words: "Try Mrs. +Nichol." And how many women, by the way, would have made a note of the +particular quality of those macaroni? One in a hundred? These are +temperamental matters.... + +We also--for of course I took a friend with me, a well-preserved old +gentleman of thirty-two, whose downward career from a brilliant youth +into hopeless mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with +philosophic unconcern--we also consumed a tender chicken, a salad +containing olive oil and not the usual motor-car lubricant, an omelette +made with genuine butter, and various other items which we enjoyed +prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for the seven lean years +just past but for seven--yea, seventy times seven--lean years to come. +So great a success was this open-air meal that my companion, a +case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess: + +"It seems one fares better in the province than at home. You could not +get such bread in Rome, not if you offered fifty francs a pound." + +As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but +grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly +sparkling--very young, but not altogether innocent. + +There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have +remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a +liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and +distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff +proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity +nowadays. + +It is a real shame--what is happening to Strega at this moment. It has +grown so popular that the country is flooded with imitations. There must +be fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees of goodness and +badness; I have met their travellers in the most unexpected places. They +reproduce the colour of Strega, its minty flavour --everything, in +short, except the essential: its peculiar strength of aroma and of +alcohol. They can afford to sell this poison at half the price of the +original, and your artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the +real product which he fills up, when empty, out of some hidden but +never-failing barrel of the fraudulent mixture round the corner, +charging you, of course, the full price of true Strega. If you complain, +he proudly points to the bottle, the cork, the label: all authentic! No +wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions, vow they will never +touch Strega again.... + +We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee, about this Strega +adulteration, during which I tried to make my friend comprehend how I +thought the grievance ought to be remedied. How? By an injunction. That +was the way to redress these wrongs. You obtain an injunction, I said, +such as the French Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers +of the Italian "Certosa," which was thereafter obliged to change its +name to "Val D'Emma." More than once I endeavoured to set forth, in +language intelligible to his understanding, what an injunction +signified; more than once I explained how well-advised the Strega +Company would be to take this course. + +In vain! + +He always missed my point. He always brought in some personal element, +whereas I, as usual, confined myself to general lines, to the principle +of the thing. Italians are sometimes unfathomably obtuse. + +"But what is an injunction?" he repeated. + +"If you were a little younger, there might be some hope for you. I would +then try to explain it again, for the fiftieth time. Instead of that, +what do you say to taking a nap?" + +"Ah! You have eaten too much." + +"Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of explaining things to +people who refuse to understand." + +"No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might freshen you up." + +"And perhaps inspire you with another subject of conversation." + +In the little hotel there were no rooms available just then wherein we +might have slumbered, and another apartment higher up the street +promising lively sport for which we were disinclined at that hour, we +moved laboriously into the chestnut woods overhead. Fine old timber, +part of that mysterious Ciminian forest which still covers a large +tract, from within whose ample shade one looks downhill towards the +distant Orte across a broiling stretch of country. There were golden +orioles here, calling to each other from the tree-tops. My friend, +having excavated himself a couch among the troublesome prickly seeds of +this plant, was soon snoring--another senile trait--snoring in a +rhythmical bass accompaniment to their song. I envied him. How some +people can sleep! It is a thing worth watching. They shut their eyes, +and forget to be awake. With a view to imitating his example, I wearied +myself trying to count up the number of orioles I had shot in my +bird-slaying days, and where it happened. Not more than half a dozen, +all told. They are hard to stalk, and hard to see. But of other +birds--how many! Forthwith an endless procession of massacred fowls +began to pass before my mind. One would fain live those ornithological +days over again, and taste the rapturous joy with which one killed that +first nutcracker in the mountain gulley; the first wall-creeper which +fluttered down from the precipice hung with icicles; the Temminck's +stint--victim of a lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the +reservoir; the ruff, the grey-headed green woodpecker, the yellow-billed +Alpine jackdaw, that lanius meridionalis---- + +And all those slaughtered beasts--those chamois, first and foremost, +sedulously circumvented amid snowy crags. Where are now their horns, the +trophies? The passion for such sport died out slowly and for no clearly +ascertainable reason, as did, in its turn, the taste for art and +theatres and other things. Sheer satiety, a grain of pity, new +environments--they may all help to explain what was, in its essence, a +molecular change in the brain, driving one to explore new departments of +life. + +And now latterly, for some reason equally obscure, the natural history +fancy has revived after lying dormant so long. It may be those three +months spent on the pavements of Florence which incline one's thoughts +to the country and wild things. Social reasons too--a certain weariness +of humanity, and more than weariness; a desire to avoid contact with +creatures Who kill each other so gracelessly and in so doing--for the +killing alone would pass--invoke specially manufactured systems of +ethics and a benevolent God overhead. What has one in common with such +folk? + +That may be why I feel disposed to forget mankind and take rambles as of +yore; minded to shoulder a gun and climb trees and collect birds, and +begin, of course, a new series of "field notes." Those old jottings were +conscientiously done and registered sundry things of import to the +naturalist; were they accessible, I should be tempted to extract +therefrom a volume of solid zoological memories in preference to these +travel-pages that register nothing but the crosscurrents of a mind which +tries to see things as they are. For the pursuit brought one into +relations not only with interesting birds and beasts, but with men. + +There was Mr. H. of the Linnean Society, whose waxed moustache curled +round upon itself like an ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., +and a great collector of them. He collected, among other things, a rare +monograph belonging to me and dealing with the former distribution of +the beaver in Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing I +could do or say would induce him to disgorge it again; he had always +lent it to a friend, who was just on the point of returning it, etc. +etc. Bitterly grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into +communication with my friend Dr. Girtanner of St. Gallen, another +beaver--and marmot--specialist. It stimulated his love of Swiss zoology +to such an extent that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of +mine, J. J. Tschudi's "Schweizer Echsen," which I likewise never saw +again. What an innocent one was! Where is now the man who will induce me +to lend him such books? + +In those days I held a student's ticket at the South Kensington Museum, +an institution I enriched with specimens of rana graeca from near Lake +Stymphalus, and lizards from the Filfla rock, and toads from a volcanic +islet (toads, says Darwin, are not found on volcanic islets), and slugs +from places as far apart as Santorin and the Shetlands and Orkneys, +whither I went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua. The last +gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of Saima in Finland. Who ever +heard of seals living in sweet land-locked waters? This was one of my +happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend the Curator was +tempered by the fact that this particular specimen happened to be an +immature one, and did not display any pronounced race-characters. I have +early recollections of the rugged face and lovely Scotch accent of Tam +Edwards, the Banffshire naturalist; and much later ones of J. Young, +[24] who gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow +bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews) +of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I +gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged +partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen eggs. "Surely six +would have been enough," he said--a remark which struck me as rather +unreasonable, seeing that French partridges were not exactly as common +as linnets. He afterwards showed me his collection of birdskins, +dwelling lovingly, for reasons which I cannot remember, upon that of a +pin-tail duck. + +He it was who told me that no collector was worth his salt until he had +learnt to skin his own birds. Fired with enthusiasm, I took lessons in +taxidermy at the earliest possible opportunity--from a grimy old +naturalist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a man who +relieved birds of their jackets in dainty fashion with one hand, the +other having been amputated and replaced by an iron hook. During that +period of initiation into the gentle art, the billiard-room at "The +Weaste," Manchester, was converted every morning, for purposes of study, +into a dissecting-room, a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless +trunks and brains and gouged-out eyes of lapwings and other "easy" birds +(I had not yet reached the arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the +profession) lay about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was +ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers, lancets, +arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other paraphernalia of the +trade. The butler had to be furiously tipped. + +There were large grounds belonging to this estate, fields and woodlands +once green, then blackened with soot, and now cut up into allotments and +built over. Here, ever since men could remember--certainly since the +place had come into the possession of the never-to-be-forgotten Mr. +Edward T.--a kingfisher had dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial +origin which supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks and dace. +This kingfisher was one of the sights of the domain. Visitors were taken +to see it. The bird, though sometimes coy, was generally on view. +Nevertheless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher; to my infinite +annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying it. Nor did I even find its +nest, an additional source of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be +interested to know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties +(I have the exact date somewhere [25])--surely a noteworthy state of +affairs, so near the heart of a smoky town like Manchester. + +Later on I learnt to slay kingfishers--the first victim falling to my +gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings +of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are +so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their +habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; +once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, +now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones--the +grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous scramble of +all my life), the crested titmouse, the serin finch on the apple tree, +that first icterine warbler whose five eggs, blotched with purple and +quite unfamiliar at the time, gave me such a thrill of joy that I nearly +lost my foothold on the swerving alder branch---- + +At this point, my meditations were suddenly interrupted by a vigorous +grunt or snort; a snort that would have done credit to an enraged tapir. +My friend awoke, refreshed. He rubbed his eyes, and looked round. + +"I remember!" he began, sitting up. "I remember everything. Are you +feeling better? I hope so. Yes. Exactly. Where were we? An +injunction--what did you say?" + +At it again! + +"I said it was the drawback of old people that they never know when they +have had enough of an argument." + +"But what is an injunction?" + +"How many more times do you wish me to make that clear? Shall I begin +all over again? Have it your way! When you go into Court and ask the +judge to do something to prevent a man from doing something he wants to +do when you do not want him to do it. Like that, more or less." + +"So I gather. But I confess I do not see why a man should not do +something he wants to do just because you want him not to do it. You +might as well go into Court and ask the judge to do something to make a +man do something he does not want to do just because you want him to do +it." + +"Ah, but he must not, in this case. Good Lord, have I not explained that +a thousand times already? You always miss my point. It is illegal, don't +you understand? Illegal, illegal." + +"Anybody can say that. It would be a very natural thing to say, under +the circumstances. I should say it myself! Now just take my advice. You +go and tell your brother----" + +"My brother? It is not my brother. You are quite beside the point. Why +introduce this personal element? It is the Strega Company. Strega, a +liqueur. I am talking about a commercial concern obtaining an +injunction. Burroughs and Wellcome--they got injunctions on the same +grounds. I know a great deal of such things, though I don't talk about +them all day long as other people would, if they possessed half my +knowledge. A company, don't you see? An injunction. A liqueur. Please to +note that I am talking about a company, a company. Have I now made +myself clear, or how many more times----" + +"One would think he was at least your brother, from the way you take his +part. Let us say he is a friend, then; some never-to-be-mentioned friend +who is interested in a shady liqueur business and now wants to make a +judge do something to make a man do something----" + +"Wrong again! To prevent a man doing something----" + +"--Wants to do something to make a judge do something to prevent a man +doing something he wants to do because he does not want him to do it. Is +that right? Very well. You tell your friend that no Italian judge is +going to do dirty work of that kind for nothing." + +"Dirty work. God Almighty! I don't want any judge to do dirty work----" + +"No doubt, no doubt. I am quite convinced you don't. But your priceless +friend does. Come now! Why not be open about it?" + +"Open about what?" + +"It is positively humiliating for me to be treated like this, after all +the years we have known each other. I wish you would try to cultivate +the virtue of frankness. You are far too secretive. Something will +really have to be done about it." + +"A company, a company." + +"A company consists of a certain number of human beings. Why make +mysteries about one of them? It may happen to the best of mankind to be +mixed up----" + +"Mixed up----" + +"You are going to be disagreeable about my choice of words. Have it your +way! We all know you think you can talk better Italian than the Pope. My +own father, I was going to say, has been involved in some pretty dirty +work in the course of his professional career----" + +"No doubt, no doubt." + +"And please to note that he is as good a man as any brother of yours." + +"You always miss my point." + +"Now try to be truthful, for once in your life. Out with it!" + +"A liqueur." + +"Is that all? Sleep does not seem to have sharpened your wits to any +great extent." + +"I was not asleep. I was thinking about eggs. A company." + +"A company? You are waking up. Anything else?" + +"An injunction...." + +A distinguished writer some years ago started a crusade in favour of +pure English. He wished to counteract those influences which are forever +at work debasing the standard of language; whether, as he seemed to +think, that standard should be inalterably fixed, is yet another +question. For in literature as in conversation there is a "pure English" +for every moment of history; that of our childhood is different from +to-day's; and to adopt the tongue of the Bible or Shakespeare, because +it happens to be pure, looks like setting back the hands of the clock. +Men would surely be dull dogs if their phraseology, whether written or +spoken, were to remain stagnant and unchangeable. We think well of +Johnson's prose. Yet the respectable English of our own time will bear +comparison with his; it is more agile and less infected with Latinisms; +why go back to Johnson? Let us admire him as a landmark, and pass on! +Some literary periods may deserve to be called good, others bad; so be +it. Were there no bad ones, there would be no good ones, and I see no +reason why men should desire to live in a Golden Age of literature, save +in so far as that millennium might coincide with a Golden Age of living. +I doubt, in the first place, whether they would be even aware of their +privilege; secondly, every Golden Age grows fairer when viewed from a +distance. Besides, and as a general consideration, it strikes me that a +vast deal of mischief is involved in these arbitrary divisions of +literature into golden or other epochs; they incite men to admire some +mediocre writers and to disparage others, they pervert our natural +taste, and their origin is academic laziness. + +Certain it is that every language worthy of the name should be in a +state of perennial flux, ready and avid to assimilate new elements and +be battered about as we ourselves are--is there anything more charming +than a thoroughly defective verb?--fresh particles creeping into its +vocabulary from all quarters, while others are silently discarded. There +is a bar-sinister on the escutcheon of many a noble term, and if, in an +access of formalism, we refuse hospitality to some item of questionable +repute, our descendants may be deprived of a linguistic jewel. Is the +calamity worth risking when time, and time alone, can decide its worth? +Why not capture novelties while we may, since others are dying all the +year round; why not throw them into the crucible to take their chance +with the rest of us? An English word is no fossil to be locked up in a +cabinet, but a living thing, liable to the fate of all such things. +Glance back into Chaucer and note how they have thriven on their own +merits and not on professorial recommendations; thriven, or perished, or +put on new faces! + +I would make an exception to this rule. Foreign importations which do +not belong to us by right, idioms we have enticed from over the sea for +one reason or another, ought to remain, as it were, stereotyped. They +are respected guests and cannot decently be jostled in our crowd; let +them be jostled in their own; here, on British soil, they should be +allowed to retain that primal signification which, in default of a +corresponding English term, they were originally taken over to express. + +What prompts me to this exordium is the discovery that a few pages back, +with a blameworthy hankering after the picturesque, I have grossly +misused a foreign word. Those cats in Trajan's Forum at Rome are nowise +a "macabre exhibition"; they are not macabre in the least; they are sad, +or saddening. The charnel-house flavour is absent. + +My apologies to the French language, to the cats, and to the reader.... + +Now whoever wishes to see a truly macabre exhibition at Rome may visit +the Peruvian mummies in the Kircher Museum. It is characteristic of the +spirit in which guide-books are written that, while devoting long +paragraphs to some worthless picture of a hallucinated venerable, they +hardly utter a word about these most remarkable and gruesome objects. + +Those old Peruvians, like the Egyptians, had necrophilous leanings. They +cultivated an unwholesome passion for corpses, and called it religion. +Many museums contain such relics from the New World in various attitudes +of discomfort; frequently seated, as though trying to be at rest after +life's long journey. No two are alike; and all are horrible of aspect. +Some have been treated with balsam to preserve the softer parts; others +are shrivelled. Some are filled with chopped straw, like any stuffed +crocodile in a show; others contain precious coca-leaves and powdered +fragments of shell, which were doubtless placed there so that the +defunct might receive nourishment up to the time when his soul should +once more have rejoined the body. Every one knows, furthermore, that +these American ancients were fond of playing tricks with the shape of +the skull--a custom which was forbidden by the Synod of Lima in 1585 and +which Hippocrates describes as being practised among the inhabitants of +the Crimea. [26] It adds considerably to their ghastly appearance. + +One looks at them and asks oneself: what are they now, these gentle +Incas who loved the arts and music, these children of the Sun, whose +civic acquirements amazed their conquerors? They have contrived to +transform themselves into something quite unusual. Staring orbits and +mouths agape, colour-patches here and there, morsels of muscle and hair +attached to contorted limbs--they suggest a half-way house, a loathsome +link, between a living man and his skeleton; and not only a link between +them, but a grim caricature of both. Some have been coated with varnish. +They glisten infamously. Picture a decrepit and rather gaunt relative of +your own, writhing in a fit, stark naked, and varnished all over---- + +Different are these mummies from those of the tenaciously unimaginative +and routine-bound Egyptians. Theirs are dead as a door-nail; torpid +lumps, undistinguishable one from the other. Here we have a rare +phenomenon--life, and individuality, after death. They are more +noteworthy than the cowled and desiccated monks of Italy or Sicily, or +at least differently so; undraped, for the most part, though some of +them may be seen, mere skin-covered heads, peering with dismal coyness +out of a brown sack. And the jabbering teeth.... We dream as children of +night-terrors, of goblins and phantoms that start out of the gloom and +flit about with hideous grimaces. They are gone, while yet we shudder at +that momentary flash of grizzliness; intangibilities, whose image is not +easily detained. To see spectral visions embodied, and ghosts made +flesh, one should come here. Had the excruciating operation of embalming +been performed upon live men and women, their poses could hardly have +been more multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to +how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, +against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The +nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards +Auffassung, are perhaps some little Japanese wood-carvings whose +creators, labouring consciously, likewise overstepped the boundaries of +the grotesque and indulged in nightmarish effects of line similar to +those which the old Peruvians, all unconsciously, have achieved upon the +bodies of their dear friends and relatives.... + +Drive swiftly thence, if you are in the mood, as you should be, for +something at the other pole of feeling, to view that wonder, the +kneeling boy at the Museo delle Terme. Headless and armless though he +be, he displays as much vitality as the Peruvians; every inch of the +body is alive, and one may well marvel at the skill of the artist who, +during his interminable task of sculpture, held fast the model's +fleeting outline--so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that +every month, and every week, brings about new conditions of surface and +texture. A child of Niobe? Very likely. There is suffering also here, a +suffering different from theirs; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in +the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods a divine calm. +Here is the antidote to mummified Incas. + + + + +Alatri + +What brought me to Alatri? + +Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born +here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a +passable place, but as to Alatri---- + +"You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are +precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia." + +"Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other +citizens like yourself----" + +"It does indeed! I am the least of the sons of Alatri." + +"Then it must be worthy of a visit...." + +In the hottest hour of the afternoon they deposited me outside the city +gate at some new hotel--I forget its name--to which I promptly took an +unreasoning dislike. There was a fine view upon the mountains from the +window of the room assigned to me, but nothing could atone for that lack +of individuality which seemed to exhale from the establishment and its +proprietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher here. Half an +hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I +captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he +pleased. He took me to the Albergo della---- + +The Albergo della----is a shy and retiring hostelry, invisible as such +to the naked eye, since it bears no sign of being a place of public +entertainment at all. Here was individuality, and to spare. Mine host is +an improvement even upon him of the Pergola at Valmontone; a man after +my own heart, with merry eyes, drooping white moustache and a lordly +nose--a nose of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which must have +cost years of patient labour to bring to its present state of +blossoming. That nose! I felt as though I could dwell for ever beneath +its shadow. The fare, however, is not up to the standard of the +"Garibaldi" inn at Frosinone which I have just left. + +Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather a dull little place; I +am never likely to go there again, and have therefore no reason for +keeping to myself its "Garibaldi" hotel which leaves little to be +desired, even under these distressful war-conditions. It set me +thinking--thinking that there are not many townlets of this size in +rural England which can boast of inns comparable to the "Garibaldi" in +point of cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable +prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the +other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly +cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have +to walk across a cold room at night--refinement of torture--in order to +turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone +enough to condemn these establishments, one and all. + +Yes! And the beds; those frowsy, creaky, prehistoric wooden concerns, +always six or eight inches too short, whose mattresses have not been +turned round since they were made. What happens? You clamber into such a +receptacle and straightway roll downhill, down into its centre, into a +kind of river-bed where you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous +feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on +either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else +into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as +well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you +lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin. +Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is +fit for a Christian to sleep in.... + +The days are growing hot. + +A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the +convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the +afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to +myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for, +being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded +with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places, +where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious +official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation +here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well +established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a +bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly +that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the +place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a +lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery--he brings me +every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself. + +"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice." + +"I know. Did you tell him he might----?" + +"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his +mother." + +"Tell him again, to-morrow." + +It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude. + +In October--and we are now at midsummer--there occurred a little +adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this. + +I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the +still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending +journey northwards for which the passport was already viséd, when there +met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers. We +stared at one another. His face was familiar to me, though I knew not +where I had seen it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director of +the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman who had recently been to +Orvinio? I remembered. + +"The last time I was there," I said, "was about a month ago. I fancy we +had some conversation in the motor up from Mandela." + +"That is so. And now, however disagreeable it may be, I feel myself +obliged to perform a patriotic duty. This is war-time. I would ask you +to be so good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station." + +"Which is not far off," I replied. "There is one up the next street on +our right." + +We walked there, all four of us, without saying another word. "What have +I been doing?" I wondered. Then we climbed upstairs. + +Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stuffy room, sat a delegato or +commissario--I forget which--surrounded, despite the lateness of the +hour, by one or two subordinates. He was of middle age, and not +prepossessing. He looked as if he could make himself unpleasant, though +his face was not of that actively vicious--or actively stupid: the terms +are interconvertible--kind. While scanning his countenance, during those +few moments, sundry thoughts flitted through my mind. + +These then, I said to myself--these are the functionaries, whether +executive or administrative, whether Italian or English or Chinese, whom +a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of +them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is +certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying +their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws, +and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority +should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said +to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of +history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin +destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the +Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they +were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense +of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their +wonderful culture. They ought to have known better; they ought to have +rated morality at its true worth, since it was the profoundest Chinaman +himself who said that virtue is merely etiquette--or something to that +effect. + +I found myself studying the delegato's physiognomy. What could one do +with such a composite face? It is a question which often confronts me +when I see such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. How make it +more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? Shaving that +moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it would +forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard, +an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved +him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, on +account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one +of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets of +European royalties. + +He took down the names and addresses of all four of us, and it was then +that I missed my chance. I ought to have spoken first instead of +allowing this luscious director to begin as follows:-- + +"The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about a month ago. He admits +it himself and I can corroborate the fact, as I was there at the same +time. Orvinio is a small country place in the corner of Umbria. There is +a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote and very high--altissima! It is +called Mount Muretta and occupies a commanding situation. For reasons +which I will leave you, Signer Commissario, to investigate, this +gentleman climbed up that mountain and was observed, on the very summit, +making calculations and taking measurements with instruments." + +Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta? For an all-sufficient +reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from Etna +and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A bare +wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably the name) visible from +below and promising a lively scramble up the rock, was an additional +inducement. Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can +afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter of fact, proved +to be a mighty tame affair. There was yet another object to my trip. I +desired to verify a legend connected with this mountain, the tradition +of a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to whose former +existence the name of a certain old family, still surviving at Orvinio, +bears witness. "We are not really from Orvinio," these people will tell +you. "We are from the lost castle of the Muretta." (There is not a +vestige of a castle left. But I found one brick in the jungle which +covers, on the further side of the summit, a vast rock-slide dating, I +should say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the fastness +may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting Muretta. + +As to taking measurements--well, a man is naturally accused of a good +many things in the course of half a century. Nobody has yet gone so far +as to call me a mathematician. These "calculations and instruments" were +a local mirage; as pretty an instance of the mythopoeic faculty as one +could hope to find in our degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the +earth. [27] + +The official seemed to be impressed with the fact that my accuser was +director of a bank. He inquired what I had to say. + +This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on me rather suddenly. One +likes to have notice of such questions. Tell the truth? I am often +tempted to do so; it saves so much trouble! But truth-telling is a +matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the more one learns +to hold in check that unnatural propensity. (Mankind has a natural love +of the lie itself. Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one will +do well to take account of national psychology. An English functionary, +athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to +climb in war-time, without any object save that of exercising one's +limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and remote +mountain--Muretta happens to be neither the one nor the other--would +have seemed to an Italian an incredible proceeding. I thought it better +to assume the role of accuser in my turn: an Oriental trick. + +"This director," I said, "calls himself a patriot. What has he told us? +That while at Orvinio he knew a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to +make calculations with instruments. What does this admirable citizen do +with regard to such a suspicious character? He does nothing. Is there +not a barrack-full of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to +arrest such people? But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk +away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other +measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and +Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our English notion of +patriotism. I shall certainly make it my business to write and +congratulate the Banca d'Italia on possessing such a good Italian as +director. I shall also suggest that his talents would be more worthily +employed at the Banca--"(naming a notoriously pro-German establishment). + +A poor speech; but it gave me the satisfaction of seeing the fellow grow +purple with fury and so picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the +spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be done with him. The +delegato suggested that inasmuch as he had said his say and deposited +his address, he was at liberty to depart, whenever so disposed. + +They went--he and his friends. + +The other was looking serious--as serious as such a face could be made +to look. He must not be allowed to think, I decided, for once an +official begins to think he is liable to grow conscientious and +then--why, any disaster might happen, the least of them being that I +should remain in custody pending investigations. In how many more +countries was I going to be arrested for one crime or another? This joke +had lost its novelty a good many years ago. + +"A pernicious person," I began, "--you have but to look at him. And now +he has invited me here in order to make a patriotic impression on his +friends, those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since no +love is lost hereabouts between police and military). Such silly talk +about measurements! It should be nipped in the bud. Here you have an +intelligent young subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home with +me at my expense; we will go through all papers and search for +instruments and bring everything that savours of suspicion back to this +office, together with my passport which I never carry on my person. +This, meanwhile, is my carta di soggiorno." + +The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I thought of those +miserable three days' grace which were all that the French consulate had +accorded me. If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded in +Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin again. And to tell him of +this dilemma would make him more distrustful than ever. + +I went on hastily to admit that my request might not be regular, but how +natural! Were we not allies? Was it not my duty to clear myself of such +an imputation at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to that +end? I felt sure he could sympathise with the state of my mind, etc. +etc. + +Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of invention, lent wings to +my words, and while thinking all the time: You little vermin, what are +you doing here, in that chair, when you should be delving the earth or +breaking stones, as befits your kind? I tried to picture myself climbing +up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port +would have been more in my line. Calculations! It is all I can do to +control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I +like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments! If this +young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my +belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the +delegato, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they often +are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of your +body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently reasonable. +The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing whatever to +do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to evade military +service. + +We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his +polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of +the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather +dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala. + +"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be +surprised at my long absence." + +"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport." + +"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with +him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten +o'clock, or eleven, or midday." + +So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little +detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything +else. He did not even unfold it. + +"E stato un' equivoco," was all he condescended to say, still without a +smile. There had been a misunderstanding. + +The incident was closed. + +Things might have gone differently in the country. I would either have +been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of +carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century +while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the +civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet--an inquiry without +which no Latin dossier is complete. + +POSTSCRIPT.--Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many +of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever +come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a +street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in +their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not +tend to diminish? + +There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome; +fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those +inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things +remained in the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set by the +ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The natives spend their days +in rushing to Rome and back on business connected with law-suits, not a +quarter of which would have arisen but for the existence of the +carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Individually, these men are +nowise at fault. They desire nothing better than to be left in peace. +Seldom do they meddle with local concerns--far from it! They live in +sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the populace, like a colony +of monks. The institution is to blame. It is their duty, among other +things, to take down any charge which anybody may care to prefer against +his neighbour. That done, the machinery of the law is automatically set +in motion. Five minutes' talk among the village elders would have +settled many affairs which now degenerate into legal squabbles of twice +as many years; chronic family feuds are fostered; a man who, on +reflection, would find it more profitable to come to terms with his +opponent over a glass of wine, or even to square the old syndic with a +couple of hundred francs, sees himself obliged to try the same tactics +on a judge of the high court--which calls for a different technique. + +Altogether, the country is flagrantly over-policed. [28] It gives one a +queer sense of public security to see, at Rome for instance, every third +man you meet--an official, of course, of some kind--with a revolver +strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on the verge of +savagery in some cowboy settlement out West. Greek towns of about ten +thousand inhabitants, like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal +guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls. How can ten men +perform duties which, in Italy, would require ten times as many? Is it a +question of climate, or national character? A question, perhaps, of +common sense--of realising that local institutions often work with less +friction and less outlay than that system of governmental centralisation +of which the carbineers are an example. + +Meanwhile we are still at Alatri which, I am glad to discover, possesses +five gateways--five or even more. It is something of a relief to be away +from that Roman tradition of four. Military reasons originally, fixing +themselves at last into a kind of sacred tradition.... So it is, with +unimaginative races. Their pious sentimentalism crystallises into +inanimate objects. The English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral +strand, and the chimes of Big Ben, floating above that crowd of +many-hued Orientals, give to the white man a sense of homeliness and +racial solidarity. The French, more fluid and sensitive to the +incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial +buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition, +it pursues one with meaningless iteration from the burning sands of +Africa to Ultima Thule. Always those four gateways! + +For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is comparable to that green +space on the summit of the citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning, +to take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the vanity of human +wishes. The less you have seen of localities like Tiryns the more you +will be amazed at this impressive and mysterious fastness. That portal, +those blocks--what Titans fitted them into their places? Well, we have +now learnt a little something about those Titans and their methods. From +this point you can see the old Roman road that led into Alatri; it +climbs up the hill in straightforward fashion, intersecting the broad +modern "Via Romana"--a goat-track, nowadays.... + +These Alatri remains are wonderful--more so than many of the sites which +old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his +curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he +stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations +about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the +same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual? We certainly find him +"hurrying down" past Anagni near-by, of whose imposing citadel he again +says nothing whatever.... + +I am now, at the end of several months, beginning to know Ramage fairly +well. I hope to know him still better ere we part company, if ever we +do. It takes time, this interpretation, this process of grafting one +mind upon another. For he does not supply mere information. A fig for +information. That would be easy to digest. He supplies character, which +is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of +what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a +philosophy of life. + +And what is the dominating trait of this old Scotsman? The historical +sense. Ancient inscriptions interested him more than anything else. He +copied many of them during his trip; fifty, I should think; and it is no +small labour, as any one who has tried it can testify, to decipher these +half-obliterated records often placed in the most inconvenient +situations (he seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied himself +thus was to his credit in an age whose chief concern, as regards +antiquity, consisted in plundering works of art for ornamental purposes. +Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected +knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as +inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these +documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly +sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but +for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of +one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men +who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the +fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be +completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit. + +His equipment in the interpretation of these stones and of all else he +picked up in the way of lore and legend was of the proper kind. +Boundless curiosity, first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of +learning. He knew his classics--knew them so well that he could always +put his finger on those particular passages of theirs which bore upon a +point of interest. We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quotation +from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different thing remembering, and +collating, references in. Aelian or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And +wide awake, withal; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the kind to +swallow the tales of the then fashionable cicerone's. He has critical +dissertations on sites like Cannae and the Bandusian Fountain and +Caudine Forks; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence a +sepulchre containing some of those painted Greek vases for which the +place is famous, he promptly suspects it to be a "sepulchre prepared for +strangers," and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain where +they are "for more simple or less suspicious travellers." On the way to +Cape Leuca he passes certain mounds whose origin he believes to be +artificial and the work of a prehistoric race. I fancy his conjecture +has proved correct. On page 258, speaking of an Oscan inscription, he +mentions Mommsen, which shows that he kept himself up to date in such +researches.... + +Of course it would be impossible to feel any real fondness for Ramage +before one has discovered his failings and his limitations. Well, he +seems to have taken Pratilli seriously. I like this. A young fellow who, +in 1828, could have guessed Pratilli to have been the arch-forger he +was--such a young fellow would be a freak of learning. He says little of +the great writers of his age; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose +imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but not in the +present. The Hohenstauffen period does not attract him. He rides close +to the magnificent Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site; he +inspects the castle of Lucera and says never a word about Frederick II +or his Saracens. At Lecce, renowned for its baroque buildings, he finds +"nothing to interest a stranger, except, perhaps, the church of Santa +Croce, which is not a bad specimen of architectural design." True, the +beauty of baroque had not been discovered in his day. + +What pleases me less is that there occurs hardly any mention of wild +animals in these pages, and that he seems to enjoy natural scenery in +proportion as it reminds him of some passage in one of those poets whom +he is so fond of quoting. This love of poetic extracts and citations is +a mark of his period. It must have got the upper hand of him in course +of time, for we find, from the title-page of these "Nooks and Byways," +that he was the author of "Beautiful Thoughts from Greek authors; +Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian authors, etc."; [29] indeed, +the publication of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have +been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer a few more "Nooks and +By-ways" to all these Beautiful Thoughts! He must have been at home +again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were +gathered. If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains of +the south, instead of rushing through them like an express train. That +mania of "pressing forward"; that fatal gift of hustle.... + +His body flits hither and thither, but his mind remains observant, +assimilative. It is only on reading this book carefully that one +realises how full of information it is. Ay, he notices things, does +Ramage--non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time to look +around him. It is his charm. An intelligent interest in the facts of +daily life should be one of the equipments of the touring scholar, +seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift, +and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern +travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and +agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure +warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and +the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and +modern times and the fig-pecker bird--that bird you eat bones and all, +the focetola or beccafico (garden warbler). In fact, he has multifarious +interests and seems to have known several languages besides the +classics. He can hit off a thing neatly, as, when contrasting our +sepulchral epitaphs with those of olden days, he says that the key-note +of ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace; or "wherever we find a river in +this country (Calabria) we are sure to discover that it is a source of +danger and not of profit." He knew these southern torrents and +river-beds! He garners information about the Jewish and Albanian +colonies of South Italy; he studies Romaic "under one of the few Greeks +who survived the fatal siege of Missolonghi" and collects words of Greek +speech still surviving at Bova and Maratea (Maratea, by the way, has a +Phoenician smack; the Greeks must have arrived later on the scene, as +they did at Marathon itself). + +A shrewd book, indeed. Like many of his countrymen, he was specially +bent on economic and social questions; he is driven to the prophetic +conclusion, in 1828, that "the government rests on a very insecure +basis, and the great mass of the intelligence of the country would +gladly welcome a change." Religion and schooling are subjects near his +heart and, in order to obtain a first-hand knowledge of these things in +Italy, he enters upon a friendship, a kind of intellectual flirtation, +with the Jesuits. That is as it should be. Extremes can always respect +one another. The Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as he +from them.... + +I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to +me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always +finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial +matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was +personally acquainted with several men whose names I have +mentioned--Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano; +in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him +with profit. And even at an earlier time; for I once claimed to have +discovered the ruins of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets +(the Galli, opposite Positano)--now I find him forestalling me by nearly +a century. It is often thus, with archaeological discoveries. + +He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress Calypso which has +disappeared since his day, and would have sailed there but for the fact +that no boat was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who landed +here, found any prehistoric remains on the spot; I should doubt it. On +another Mediterranean island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the +relics of what would formerly have been described as the residence of +that second Homeric witch, Circe. [30] + +The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have already, of course, +discovered my ideal family at Alatri. Two ideal families.... + +One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that +luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow--that +verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with +fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with +wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich +philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in the +cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold of his two-roomed +abode, or wander about those tiny patches of culture, geometrically +disposed, where he guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots +of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of his misfortunes; +intuitive civility has taught him to avoid troubling a stranger with +personal concerns. + +The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are +hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their +offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left. + +"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can +only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach--nothing; not +milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him +for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now +there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children +dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others." + +I looked at him. + +"You sent him into the plains last summer?" I ventured. + +"To Cisterna. One must make a little money, or starve." + +"And you expect to keep your children alive if you send them to +Cisterna?" + +I was astonished that the local medicine man had not diagnosed malaria. +I undertook that if she would put him into the train when next I went to +Rome, I would have him overhauled by a competent physician and packed +home again with written instructions. (I kept my word, and the good +doctor Salatino of the Via Torino--a Calabrian who knows something about +malaria--wrote out a treatment for this neglected case, no part of +which, I fear, has been observed. Such is the fatalism of the +country-folk that if drugs and injections do not work like magic they +are quietly discarded. This youth may well have gone the way of "those +other two"--who, by the by, were also sent into the Pontine +Marshes--since you cannot reject your food for ever, and grow more +anaemic every day, without producing some such result.) + +Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy in the mother's heart +that I became quite embarrassed. She likened me, among other things, to +her favourite Saint. + +All comparisons being odious, I turned the conversation by asking: + +"And that last one?" + +"Here," she said, pushing open the door of the inner room. + +He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle of limbs, the +picture of radiant boyhood. + +"This one, I think, has never been to Cisterna." + +"No. He goes into the mountains with the woodcutters every morning an +hour before sunrise. It is up beyond Collepardo--seven hours' labour, +and seven hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he sleeps +like a log...." + +Children from these hill-places often accompany their parents into the +plains to work; more commonly they go in droves of any number under the +charge of some local man. They are part of that immense army of +hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands of Tuscany to the +very toe of Italy, into these low-lying regions, hardly an inch of which +is fever-free. I do not know even approximately the numbers of these +migratory swarms of all ages and both sexes; let us say, to be on the +safe side, a quarter of a million. They herd down there, in the broiling +heat of summer and autumn, under conditions which are not all that could +be desired. [31] Were they housed in marble palaces and served on +platters of gold, the risk would not be diminished by a hair. How many +return infected? I have no idea. It cannot be less than sixty per cent. +How many of these perish? Perhaps five per cent. A few thousand annual +deaths are not worth talking about. What concerns the country--and what +the country, indeed, has taken seriously in hand--is this impoverishment +of its best blood; this devitalising action of malaria upon unnumbered +multitudes of healthy men, women, and children who do not altogether +succumb to its attacks. + +I sometimes recognise them on the platform of Rome station--family +parties whom I have met in their country villages, now bound for +Maccarese or one of those infernal holes in the Campagna, there to earn +a little extra money with hay, or maize, or wheat, or tomatoes, or +whatever the particular crop may be. You chat with the parents; the +youngsters run up to you, all gleeful with the change of scene and the +joy of travelling by railway. I know what they will look like, when they +return to their mountains later on.... + +And so, discoursing of this and that, one rambles oneself into a +book.... + +Into half a book; for here--at Alatri, and now--midsummer, I mean to +terminate these non-serious memories and leave unrecorded the no less +insignificant events which followed up to the mornings in October, those +mornings when jackdaws came cawing past my window from the thickly +couched mists of the Borghese Gardens, and the matutinal tub began to +feel more chilly than was altogether pleasant. + +Half a book: I perceive it clearly. These pages might be rounded by +another hundred or two. The design is too large for one volume; it +reminds me of those tweed suits we used to buy long ago whose pattern +was so "loud" that it "took two men to show it off." Which proves how a +few months' self-beguilement by the wayside of a beaten track can become +the subject of disquisitions without end. Maybe the very aimlessness of +such loiterings conduces to a like method of narrative. Maybe the tone +of the time fosters a reminiscential and intimately personal mood, by +driving a man for refuge into the only place where peace can still be +found--into himself. What is the use of appealing in objective fashion +to the intelligence of a world gone crazy? Say your say. Go your way. +Let them rave! We shall all be pro-German again to-morrow. [32] + +Half a book: it strikes me, on reflection, as curiously appropriate. To +produce something incomplete and imperfect, a torso of a kind--is it not +symbolical of the moment? Is not this an age of torso's? We are +manufacturing them every hour by the score. How many good fellows are +now crawling about mutilated, converted into torso's? There is room for +a book on the same lines.... + +I glance through what has been written and detect therein an occasional +note of exacerbation and disharmony which amuses me, knowing, as I do, +its transitory nature. Dirty work, touching dirt. One cannot read for +three consecutive years of nothing but poison-gas and blood and +explosives without engendering a corresponding mood--a mood which +expresses itself in every one according to whether he thinks +individually or nationally; whether he cultivates an impartial +conscience or surrenders to that of the crowd. For the man and his race +are everlastingly tugging in different directions, and unreasoning +subservience to race-ideals has clouded many a bright intellect. How +many things a race can do which its component members, taken separately, +would blush to imitate! Our masses are now fighting for commercial +supremacy. The ideal may well be creditable to a nation. It is hardly +good enough for a gentleman. He reacts; he meditates a Gospel of Revolt +against these vulgarities; he catches himself saying, as he reads the +morning paper full of national-flag fetishism and sanguinary nonsense: +"One Beethoven symphony is a greater victory than the greatest of these, +and reasonable folks may live under any rule save that of a wind-fed +herd." + +It avails nothing. The day has dawned, the day of those who pull +downwards--stranglers of individualism. Can a man subscribe to the +aspirations of a mob and yet think well of himself? Can he be black and +white? He can be what he is, what most of us are: neutral tint. Look +around you: a haze of cant and catchwords. Such things are employed on +political platforms and by the Press as a kind of pepsine, to aid our +race-stomach in digesting certain heavy doses of irrationalism. The +individual stomach soon discovers their weakening effect.... + +Looking back upon these months of uneventful wanderings, I became aware +of a singular phenomenon. I find myself, for some obscure reason, always +returning to the same spot. I was nine times in Rome, twice in Florence +and Viareggio and Olevano and Anticoli and Alatri and Licenza and +Soriano, five times at Valmontone, thrice at Orvinio; and if I did not +go a second time to Scanno and other places, there may be a reason for +it. Why this perpetual revisiting? How many new and interesting sites +might have been explored during that period! Adventures and discoveries +might have fallen to my lot, and been duly noted down. As it is, nothing +happened, and nothing was noted down. I have only a diary of dates to go +upon, out of which, with the help of memory and imagination, have been +extracted these pages. For generally, delving down into memory, a man +can bring up at least one clear-cut fragment, something still fervid and +flashing, a remembered voice or glimpse of landscape which helps to +unveil the main features of a scenario already relegated to the +lumber-room. And this detail will unravel the next; the scattered +elements jostle each other into place, as in the final disentangling of +some complicated fugue. + +Such things will do for a skeleton. Imagination will kindly provide +flesh and blood, life, movement. Imagination--why not? One suppresses +much; why not add a little? Truth blends well with untruth, and phantasy +has been so sternly banned of late from travellers' tales that I am +growing tender-hearted towards the poor old dame; quite chivalrous, in +fact--especially on those rather frequent occasions when I find myself +unable to dispense with her services. + +Yes; truth blends well with untruth. It is one of the maladies of our +age, a sign of sheer nervousness, to profess a frenzied allegiance to +truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where +graver issues are at stake. We cannot lay claim to a truthful state of +mind. In this respect the eighteenth century, for all its foppery, was +ahead of ours. What is the basic note of Horace Walpole's iridescent +worldliness--what about veracity? How one yearns, nowadays, for that +spacious and playful outlook of his; or, better still, for some +altogether Golden Age where everybody is corrupt and delightful and has +nothing whatever to do, and does it well.... + +My second ideal family at Alatri lives along a side path which diverges +off the main road to Ferentino. They are peasant proprietors, more +wealthy and civilised than those others, but lacking their terrestrial +pathos. They live among their own vines and fruit-trees on the hillside. +The female parent, a massive matron, would certainly never send those +winsome children into the Pontine Marshes, not for a single day, not for +their weight in gold. The father is quite an uncommon creature. I look +at him and ask myself; where have I seen that face before, so classic +and sinewy and versatile? I have seen it on Greek vases, and among the +sailors of the Cyclades and on the Bosphorus. It is a non-Latin face, +with sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and crisply curling +beard; a legendary face. How came Odysseus to Alatri? + +Not far from this homestead where I have spent sundry pleasant hours +there is a fountain gushing out of a hollow. In olden days it would have +been hung with votive offerings to the nymphs, and rightly. One +appreciates this nature-cult in a dry land. I have worshipped at many +such shrines where the water bounds forth, a living joy, out of the +rocky cleft--unlike those sluggish springs of the North that ooze +regretfully upwards, as though ready to slink home again unless they +were kicked from behind, and then trickle along, with barely perceptible +movement, amid weeds and slime. + +Now this particular fountain (I think it is called acqua santa), while +nowise remarkable as regards natural beauty, is renowned for curing +every disease. It is not an ordinary rill; it has medicinal properties. +Hither those two little demons, the younger children, conducted me all +unsuspecting two days ago, desirous that I should taste the far-famed +spring. + +"Try it," they said. + +I refused at first, since water of every kind has a knack of disagreeing +with my weak digestion. As for them, they gulped down tumblers of it, +being manifestly inured to what I afterwards discovered to be its +catastrophic effects. + +"Look at us drinking it," they went on. "Ah, how good! Delicious! It is +like Fiuggi, only better." + +"Am I an invalid, to drink Fiuggi water?" + +"It is not quite the same as Fiuggi. (True. I was soon wishing it had +been.) How many men would pay dearly for your privilege! Never let it be +said that you went away thirsting from this blessed spot." + +"I am not thirsty just now. Not at all thirsty, thank you." + +"We have seen you drink without being thirsty. Just one glass," they +pleaded. "It will make you live a hundred years." + +"No. Let us talk about something else." + +"No? Then what shall we tell our mother? That we brought you here, and +that you were afraid of a little mouthful of acqua santa? We thought you +had more courage. We thought you could strangle a lion." + +"Something will happen," I said, as I drained that glass. + +Nothing happened for a few hours. + +Two days' rest is working wonders.... + +I profit by the occasion of this slight indisposition to glance +backwards--and forwards. + +I am here, at Alatri, on the 22 June: so much is beyond contestation. + +A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31: Palombara. Well I +remember the hot walk to Palombara! + +August 3: Mons Lucretilis, that classical mountain from whose summit I +gazed at the distant Velino which overtops like a crystal of amethyst +all the other peaks. This was during one of my two visits to Licenza. +Pleasant days at Licenza, duly noting in the house of Horace what I have +noted with Shelley and other bards, namely, that these fellows who sing +so blithely of the simple life yet contrive to possess extremely +commodious residences; pleasant days among those wooded glens, walking +almost every morning in the footsteps of old Ramage up the valley in +whose streamlet the willow-roots sway like branches of coral--aloft +under the wild walnuts to that bubbling fountain where I used to meet my +two friends, Arcadian goat-herds, aboriginal fauns of the thickets, who +told me, amid ribald laughter, a few personal experiences which nothing +would induce me to set down here. + +July 26: La Rocca. What happened at La Rocca? + +October 2: Florence. What happened at Florence? A good deal, during +those noteworthy twelve hours! + +Some memories have grown strangely nebulous; impossible to reconstruct, +for example, what went on during the days of drowsy discomfort at +Montecelio. A lethargy seems to have fallen on me; I lived in a dream +out of which there emerges nothing save the figure of the local +tobacconist, a ruddy type with the face of a Roman farmer, who took me +to booze with him, in broad patriarchal style, every night at a +different friend's house. Those nights at Montecelio! The mosquitoes! +The heat! Could this be the place which was famous in Pliny's day for +its grove of beeches? How I used to envy the old Montecelians their +climate! + +July 23: Saracinesca. What happened? I recollect the view over the +sweltering Campagna from the dizzy castle-ruin, in whose garden I see +myself nibbling a black cherry, the very last of the season, plucked +from a tree which grows beside the wall whereon I sat. That suffices: it +gives a key to the situation. I can now conjure up the gaunt and sombre +houses of this thick-clustering stronghold; the Rembrandtesque shadows, +the streets devoid of men, the picture of some martial hero in a +cavern-like recess where I sought shelter from the heat, a black +crucifix planted in the soil below the entrance of the village--my +picture of Saracinesca is complete, in outline. + +July 31: Subiaco. Precisely! A week later, then, I walk thirty-two +chilometres along the shadeless high road, an insane thing to do, to +Subiaco and back. There, in the restaurant Aniene, when all the +luncheon-guests have departed for their noonday nap, the cook of the +establishment, one of those glorious old Roman he-cooks, comes up to my +table. Did I like the boiled trout? + +Rather flabby, I reply. A little tasteless. Let him try, next time, some +white vinegar in the water and a bay-leaf or two. + +He pricks up his ears: we are gens du metier. I invite him to sit down +and inquire: how about a bottle of Cesanese, now that we are alone? An +excellent idea! And he, in his turn, will permit himself to offer me +certain strawberries from his own private store. + +"Strawberries?" I ask. "Who ever heard of strawberries in Central Italy +on the 31 July? Why, I devoured the last cherry a week ago, and it was +only alive because it grew above the clouds." + +These, he explains mysteriously, are special strawberries, brought down +from near the snow-line by a special goat-boy. They are not for the +guests, but "only for myself." Strawberries are always worth paying for; +they are mildly purging, they go well with the wine. And what a +wonderful scent they have! "You remind me of a certain Lucullo," I said, +"who was also nice about strawberries. In fact, he made a fine art of +eating and drinking." + +"Your Lucullo, we may take it, was a Roman?" + +"Romano di Roma." + +Thus conversing with this rare old ruffian, I forget my intention of +leaving a card on Saint Scolastica. She has waited for me so long. She +can wait a little longer.... + +August 9: Villa Lante. + +August 12: Ferento. What happened at Ferento? + +Now what happened at Ferento? Let me try to reconstruct that morning's +visit. + +I have clear memories of the walk from Viterbo--it would be eighteen +chilometres there and back, they told me. I had slept well in my quaint +little room with the water rushing under the window, and breakfasted in +receptive and responsive mood. I recall that trudge along the highway +and how I stepped across patches of sunlight from the shade of one +regularly planted tree into that of another. The twelfth of August.... +It set me thinking of heathery moorlands and grouse, and of those +legions of flies that settle on one's nose just as one pulls the +trigger. It all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road, +among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what +these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter +months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland +underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my ears--a wistful +intermezzo of Brahms. It seemed to spring out of the hot earth. Such a +natural song, elvishly coaxing! Would I ever play it again? Neither +that, nor any other. + +It turned my thoughts, as I went along, to Brahms and led me to +understand why no man, who cares only for his fellow-creatures, will +ever relish that music. It is an alien tongue, full of deeps and +rippling shallows uncomprehended of those who know nothing of lonely +places; full of thrills and silences such as are not encountered among +the habitations of men. It echoes the multitudinous voice of nature, and +distils the smiles and tears of things non-human. This man listened, all +alone; he overheard things to which other ears are deaf--things terrible +and sweet; the sigh of some wet Naiad by a reedy lake, the pleadings and +furies of the genii--of those that whisper in woodlands and caverns by +the sea, and ride wailing on thunder-laden clouds, and rock with ripe +laughter in sunny wildernesses. Brahms is the test. Whoso dreads +solitude will likewise dread his elemental humour. + +It kept me company, this melodious and endearing fairy, till where a +path, diverging to the right, led up to the ruins already visible. There +the ethereal comrade took flight, scared, maybe, because my senses took +on a grossly mundane complexion--it is a way they have, thank +God--became absorbed, that is, in the contemplation of certain +blackberries wherewith the hedge was loaded. I thought: the tons of +blackberries that fall to earth in Italy, unheeded! And not even a +Scotsman knows what blackberries are, until he has tasted these. I am no +gourmet of such wild things; I rather agree with Goethe when he says: +"How berries taste, you must ask children." But I can sympathise with +the predilections of others, having certain predilections of my own. + +Once, at a miserable place in North Ireland, region of bad whisky and +porter, they brought me at dinner some wine of which they knew +nothing--they had got it from a shipwreck or some local sale. I am +rather fond of hock. And this particular bottle bore on its label the +magic imprint of a falcon sitting on a hilltop. Connoisseurs will know +that falcon. They will understand how it came about that I remained in +the inn till the last bottle of nectar was cracked. What a shame to +leave a drop for anybody else! Once again, on a bicycle trip from Paris +to the Mediterranean, I came upon a broad, smiling meadow somewhere in +the Auvergne, thickly besprinkled with mushrooms. There was a village +hard by. In that village I remained till the meadow was close cropped. +Half a ton of mushrooms--gone. Some people are rather fond of mushrooms. +And that is the right spirit: to leave nothing but a tabula rasa for +those that come after. It hurt me to think that anybody else should have +a single one of those particular mushrooms. Let them find new ones, in +another field; not in mine. + +Now what would your amateur of blackberries do in Italy? From the fate +which nearly overtook me he might save himself by specialising; by +dividing the many local varieties into two main classes and devoting his +whole attention to one or the other; to the kind such as I found on +Elba--small and round and fragrant, of ruddy hue, and palpitating with +warm sunbeams; or to that other kind, those that grow in clearings of +the Apennines where the boughs droop to earth with the weight of their +portentous clusters--swarthy as night, huge in size, oval, and fraught +with chilly mountain dews. + +No true enthusiast, I feel sure, would ever be satisfied with such an +unfair division of labour--so one-sided an arrangement. He would curse +his folly for having specialised. While engaged upon one variety, he +would always be hankering after that other kind and thinking how much +better they were. What shall he do, then? Well, he might devote one year +to one species, the next to another, and so on. Or else--seeing that +every zone of altitude bears brambles at its season and that the +interval between the maturing of the extreme varieties is at least four +months--he might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical sense, +devouring blackberries of different flavour as he went along; he might +work his way upwards, boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle +drills an oak, and leaving a track of devastation in his rear--browsing +aloft from the sea-board, where brambles are black in June, through +tangled macchia and vine-clad slopes into the cooler acclivities of rock +and jungle--grazing ever upward to where, at close of September and in +the shadow of some lonely peak on which the white mantle of winter has +already fallen, he finds a few more berries struggling for warmth and +sunshine, and then, still higher up, just a few more--the last, the very +last, of their race--dwarfs of the mountains, earthward-creeping, and +frozen pink ere yet they have had time to ripen. Here, crammed to the +brim, he may retire to hibernate, curled up like a full-gorged bear and +ready to roll downhill with the melting snows and arrive at the +sea-coast in time to begin again. What a jolly life! How much better +than being Postmaster-General or Inspector of Nuisances! But such +enthusiasts are nowhere to be found. I wish they were; the world would +be a merrier place.... + +Here is the ruined town of Ferento, all alone on the arid brow of the +hill. Nothing human in sight. A charming spot it must have been in olden +times, when the country was more timbered; now all is bare--brown earth, +brown stones. Dutifully I inspect the ruins and, applying the method of +Zadig or something of that kind, conclude that Ferento, this particular +Ferento, was relatively unimportant and relatively modern, although so +fine a site may well have commended itself from early days as a +settlement. I pick up, namely, a piece of verde antico, a green marble +which came into vogue at a later period than many other coloured ones. +Ergo, Ferento was relatively modern as antiquities go; else this marble +would not occur there. I seek for coloured ones and find not the +smallest fragment; nothing but white. Ergo, the place was relatively +insignificant; else the reds and yellows would also be discoverable. I +observe incidentally--quite incidentally!--that the architecture +corroborates my theory; so do the guide-books, no doubt, if there are +any. Now I know, furthermore, the origin of that small slab of verde +antico which had puzzled me, mixed up, as it was, among the mosaics of +quite modern marbles in that church whither I had been conducted by a +local antiquarian to admire a certain fresco recently laid bare, and +some rather crude daubs by Romanelli. + +Out again, into the path that overlooks the steep ravine. Here I find, +resting in the shadow of the wall, an aged shepherd and his flock and a +shaggy, murderous-looking dog of the Campagna breed that shows his teeth +and growls incessantly, glaring at me as if I were a wolf. "Barone" is +the brute's name. I had intended to clamber down and see whether the +rock-surface bears any traces of human workmanship; the rock-surface, I +now decide, may take care of itself. It has waited for me so long. It +can wait a little longer. + +"Does that beast of yours eat Christians?" + +"He? He is a perfect capo di c----. That is his trick, to prevent people +from kicking him. They think he can bite." + +I produce half a cigar which he crushes up into his black clay pipe. + +"Yours is not a bad life." + +"One lives. But I had better times in Zurich." + +He had stayed there awhile, working in some factory. He praised its +food, its beer, its conveniences. + +Zurich: incongruous image! Straightway I was transported from this +harmonious desolation of Ferento; I lost sight of yonder clump of +withering thistles--thistles of recent growth; you could sit, you could +stand, in their shade--and found myself glancing over a leaden lake and +wandering about streets full of ill-dressed and ungracious folk; +escaping thence further afield, into featureless hills encrusted with +smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered under noisome +horse-chestnuts and Virginia creepers. How came they to hit upon the +ugliest tree, and the ugliest creeper, on earth? Infallible instinct! +Zurich: who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity? + +So this old man had been there. + +And I remembered an expression in a book recently written by a friend of +mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in +Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness"--some such phrase. +[33] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active +kind; it grips you by the throat and sits on your chest like a +nightmare. + +I looked at the old fellow. He was sound; he had escaped the contagion. +Those others, those many hundred thousand others in Switzerland and +America--they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead ordinariness of +that life among machines. Future generations will hardly recognise the +Italian race from our descriptions. A new type is being formed, cold and +loveless, with all the divinity drained out of them. + +Having a long walk before me and being due home for luncheon, I rose to +depart, and in so doing bestowed a vigorous kick upon Barone, in order +to test the truth of his master's theory. It worked. The glowering and +snarling ceased. He was a good dog--almost human. I think, with a few +more kicks, he might have grown quite friendly. + +Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its +starkness. A land without atmosphere, and deficient in every element of +the picturesque, whether of man or nature. Four harsh, dominant tones, +which never overlap or intermingle: blue sky, white snow, black +fir-woods, green fields, and, if you insist upon having a fifth, then +take--yes, take and keep--that theatrical pink Alpenglühen which is +turned on at fixed hours for the delectation of gaping tourists, like a +tap of strontium light or the display of electric fluid at Schaffhausen +Falls. + +"Did you observe the illumination of the Falls, sir, last night?" + +"How can one avoid seeing the beastly thing?" + +"Ah! Then we must add two francs to the bill." + +Many are the schools of art that have grown up in England and elsewhere +and flourished side by side, vying with one another to express the +protean graces of man, of architecture and domestic interior, of earth +and sky and sea. Where is the Swiss school? Where, in any public +gallery, will you find a masterpiece which triumphantly vindicates the +charm of Swiss scenery? You will, find it vindicated only on condensed +milk tins. These folks can write. My taste in lyrics may be peculiar, +but I used to love my Leuthold--I wish I had him here at this moment; +the bold strokes of Keller, the miniature work, the cameo-like touches, +of C. F. Meyer--they can write! They would doubtless paint, were there +anything to paint. Holbein: did the landscape of Switzerland seduce him? +And Boecklin? He fled out of its welter of raw materialism. Even his +Swiss landscapes are mediterraneanized. Boecklin---- + +And here, as the name formulated itself, that little sprite of Brahms, +that intermezzo, once more leapt to my side out of the parched fields. I +imagine it came less for my sake than for the companionship of Boecklin. +They were comrades in the spirit; they understood. What one had heard, +the other beheld--shapes of mystery, that peer out of forest gloom and +the blue hush of midday and out of glassy waters--shapes that shudder +and laugh. No doubt you may detect a difference between Boecklin's +creations and those of classic days; it is as if the light of his +dreamings had filtered through some medium, some stained-glass window in +a Gothic church which distorted their outlines and rendered them +somewhat more grotesque. It is the hand of time. The world has aged. Yet +the shapes are young; they do but change their clothes and follow the +fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal +can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the +serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway +region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the +greatest jest in the universe. At us.... + +That lake of Conterano--the accent is on the ante-penultima--it looked +appetising on the map, all alone out there. It attracted me strongly. I +pictured a placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered among +wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam of its calm waters. Lakes are +so rare in Italy. During the whole of this summer I saw only one other, +fringed with the common English reed--two, rather, lying side by side, +one turbid and the other clear, and filling up two of those curious +circular depressions in the limestone. I rode past them on the watershed +behind Cineto Romano. These were sweet water. Of sulphur lakelets I also +saw two. + +Sitting on a stone into which the coldness of midnight had entered +(Alatri lies at a good elevation) I awaited my companion in the dusk of +dawn. Soon enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-hour's +shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri, and listening to the +plash of the fountain, is one of those memories of the town which are +graven most clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the very spot +whereon I sat. + +We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin with, profiting by some +short cuts through chestnut woods; turned to the right, ever ascending, +behind that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical hill; +thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the halts by the way. A decayed +roadside chapel with faded frescoes--a shepherd who played us some +melodies on his pipe--those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime, +glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth--the gateway of a +farmhouse being repaired--a reservoir of water full of newts--a +fascinating old woman who told us something about something--the distant +view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion +for lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in June? The days are so endless! + +At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the lake at our feet, +simmering in the noonday beams--an everyday sheet of water, brown in +colour, with muddy banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within +miles; one of those lakes which, by their periodical rising and sinking, +give so much trouble that there is talk, equally periodical, of draining +them off altogether. This one, they say, shifts continually and +sometimes reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in its oozy +bed. + +Here are countless frogs, and fish--tench; also a boat that belongs to +the man who rents the fishing. A sad accident happened lately with his +boat. A party of youngsters came for an outing and two boys jumped into +the tub, rowed out, and capsized it with their pranks. They were both +drowned--a painful and piteous death--a death which I have tried, by +accident, and can nowise recommend. They fished them out later from +their slimy couch, and found that they had clasped one another so +tightly in their mortal agony that it was deemed impious ever to +unloosen that embrace. So they were laid to rest, locked in each other's +arms. + +While my companion told me these things we had plodded further and +further along this flat and inhospitable shore, and grown more and more +taciturn. We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the +onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the parching drought of +August. Things looked bad. The luncheon hour was long past, and our +spirits began to droop. All my mellowness took flight; I grew snappy and +monosyllabic. Was there no shade? + +Yonder ... that dusky patch against the mountain? Brushwood of some +kind, without a doubt. The place seemed to be unattainable, and yet, +after an inordinate outlay of energy, we had climbed across those torrid +meadows. It proved to be a hazel copse mysteriously dark within, +voiceless, and cool as a cavern. + +Be sure that he who planted these hazels on the bleak hillside was no +common son of earth, but some wise and inspired mortal. My blessings on +his head! May his shadow never grow less! Or, if that wish be already +past fulfilment, may he dwell in Elysium attended by a thousand +ministering angels, every one of them selected by himself; may he +rejoice in their caresses for evermore. Naught was amiss. All conspired +to make the occasion memorable. I look back upon our sojourn among those +verdant hazels and see that it was good--one of those moments which are +never granted knowingly by jealous fate. So dense was the leafage in the +greenest heart of the grove that not a shred of sunlight, not a particle +as large as a sixpence, could penetrate to earth. We were drowned in +shade; screened from the flaming world outside; secure--without a care. +We envied neither God nor man. + +I thought of certain of my fellow-creatures. I often think of them. What +were they now doing? Taking themselves seriously and rushing about, as +usual, haggard and careworn--like those sagacious ants that scurry +hither and thither, and stare into each other's faces with a kind of +desperate imbecility, when some sportive schoolboy has kicked their +ridiculous nest into the air and upset all their solemn little +calculations. + +As for ourselves, we took our ease. We ate and drank, we slumbered +awhile, then joked and frolicked for five hours on end, or possibly six. +[34] I kept no count of what was said nor how the time flew by. I only +know that when at last we emerged from our ambrosial shelter the muscles +of my stomach had grown sore from the strain of laughter, and Arcturus +was twinkling overhead. + +THE END + + +INDEX + +Abbadé, author +Abbadia San Salvatore +Abruzzi, limestone deserts +Acqua Acetosa, Rome +Acqua santa, mineral fountain, its appalling effects +Acque Vive, old Scanno +Addison, J. +Afforestation at Scanno +Agave, plant; dislikes change of scene +Alatri; its nameless tavern; citadel; ideal families at +Alban volcanoes +Alpenglühen, an abomination +Amiata, mountain +Anagni +Analphabetics, their charm +Anastasio, F. +Aniene, river +Anthology, Greek +Anticoli +Apennines, their general coloration +Argos +Aristotle +Arno river, its colour-moods +Artena +Athene (Minerva), promontory and temple +Attilio, a sagacious youngster + + +Bacon, misquoted +Baedeker, on wine of Scanno +Banca d'ltalia, its soi-disant director makes a fool of himself +"Barone," an almost human dog +Bathing in Tiber +Baudelaire, C. +Bears of Pescasseroli, rapid breeders +Beds in England, neolithic features of +Belgrave Square, its legendary partridges +Bellegra, village +Beloch, J. +Bennet, Dr. J. H. +Bentham, J. +Berceau, mountain +Bessel, F. W. +Betifuli, ancient Scanno +Bigio, marble +Birds, their conservative habits +Blackberries in Italy +Blasphemies, as a pick-me-up +Blind, Mathilde +Blue, basic note of Italian landscape +Board of Trade Labour Emergency Bureau, its lightning methods +Boecklin, A. +Borghese Gardens +Bournemouth +Bowles, Dr. R. +Brachycephalism, menace to humanity +Brahms, J., his inspiration +Breil +Brewster, H. B. +Buckle, H. T. +Building materials, of Florence, impart peculiar character to towns +Bunbury, E. H., quoted +Butter, French method of weighing, Italian regulations regarding + +Cacume, mountain +Calypso, her island +Cammaiore +Camosciara, mountain +Campagna of Rome +Campanella, headland +Campoli Apennino +Capaccio, G. C. +Cap Martin (Mentone), a vulgarized spot +Capasso, B. +Capranica +Capri +Carbineers, good men and questionable institution +Carrara +Carrion crows, relatively gay fowls +Casamari convent +Casanova, J. +Cascine Gardens +Cats in Rome, their distressful condition +Cement floors, a detestable invention +Cemetery of Mentone of Rome; Scanno; Olevano +Censorship Department, gratifying interview at +Cervesato, A. +Chamois +Chaucer +Children, good company neglected in war-time +China, fatal morality of pre-Tartar period +Ciminian forest +Cineto Romano +Circe, nymph +Cisterna, a death-trap +Civilization, its characteristic +Civitella +Coal-supply, a sore subject in Italy +Coliseum, flora and fauna of +Collepardo +Conscience, national versus individual +Consumption on Riviera; at Olevano +Conterano, lake +Corsanico +Corsi, F. +Crapolla, sea-cove +Crinagoras, poet +Critics, spleenfully criticized +Cro-Magnon racev Cross, futility of bearing a + +Darwin +Deakin, botanist +Dennis, G. +Deserters at Valmontone +Deslys, Gaby +Dewlessness, a peculiarity of Italian townsmen +Dialects of Italy +Dictionary of National Biography +Diodorus Siculus +Dohrn, Dr. A. +Donnorso, V. +Doria, A. +Dreams, recurrent; of flying +Drowning accidents +Drunkenness, not everybody's affair + +Eagles +Education Office, a "Sleepy Hollow" +Edwards, Tam, naturalist +Elba +Elder tree, a venerable growth +England, to be visited as a tourist +English language, should remain in flux +Englishmen, change in race-characters; contrasted with Italians; +influence of new surroundings on +Enthusiasm, unrewarded +Eratosthenes +Eugénie, Empress +Experience, its uses + +Faces, possibilities of improving +Ferentino +Ferento, ruined city +Filangieri, di Candida, R. +Flies, a curse +Florence, its river; Cascine Gardens; pavements; local blasphemies; +revisited +Fontanella, village +Food in war-time +Football worth watching +Fountains in Rome; responsible for shocking behaviour; in Villa Borghese +France, its one irremediable drawback +Frattura, village +Frosinone, "Garibaldi" hotel; visited by Ramage +Fumone +Functionaries, social parasites + + +Gambling instinct, correlated with religion +Gardeners, professional, imbeciles +Gargiulli, O. +Gautier, T. +Germans, at Mentone; at Levanto; save oaks of Olevano; must follow +footsteps +Ghosts, mankind surrounded by, in; away with them +Giannettasio, N. P.v Girtanner, Dr. A., beaver-specialist +Giulio, a young reprobate +Goethe, quoted +Golden Ages of literature +Gorbio +Grant Duff, M. E. +Greek words, surviving +Grimaldi caves, incident at +Grocery business, appeals to Frenchmen +Gross feeders, beware of +Grotta delle Palumbe +Guardie regie, official loafers +Gunther, Dr. A. + +H., Mr., an ardent book-lover +Hares in Italy +Hebrews of military age, their enviable immunity from conscription +Henderson, Dr., an old tippler +Heredity, speculations on +Hermits in Italy +Hippocrates +Hohentwiel, mountain +Homer +Horace +Housemaid, a noteworthy +Hutton, E. + +Ierate, locality +Imagination, needful to travel-literature, +Imperialism in Italy +Individual, contrasted with race +Insomnia +Intelligence, its two ingredients +Isola Liri +Italians, evolution of new type +Italy, reasons for visiting; over-policed +Ives, G. + +J. O. M., a memorable type +Jefferies, R. +Johnson, S. +Johnston-Lavis, H. J. +Jovana, meadow + +Keller, G. +Kew Gardens +King of Italy, protects bears +Kingfisher, a wary old one +Kneeling boy, statue +Knop, Professor + +Lachner, V. +Ladbroke Grove, its enlightened children +Landlady, of Mentone; the +London variety; she of Viareggio; of Florence +Lante, Villa +La Croce, mountain +La Rocca, village +Lawrence, D. H. +Laws, raison d'etre of Italian +Leuthold, H. +Levanto, arrival at; situation; company at hotel; the local magistrate; +stroll to Monterosso +Licenza +Ligurians, their bad character +Lizard, making a friend of; a disconsolate one +Love affairs, Italian, how to conduct +Lucian +Lucretilis, mountain +Lyme Regis + +Macaroni, war-time substitutes; the right kind +Maccarese, village +Machinery, cult of; depraves Italian character +Madonna della Neve, chapel +Madonna di Tranquillo, wayside shrine +Malaria +Mandela +Marbles +Mathew, Rev. +Maudsley, H. +Maupassant +Mazzella, S. +Megara +Mentone, recent transformation of; landscape; vegetation; produces dull +schoolboys; prehistoric man of +Merle blanc, a meritorious establishment +Metaphysicians, atrophied poets +Meyer, C. F. +Meysenbug, Malwida von +Michael Angelo; gets into trouble +Migration of labourers, annual +Mill, J. S. +Militarism, the modern infáme +Milvain Bridge +Mineralogy +Momio, village +Monogamous habits, bad for songsters +Mons Canutarius +Montalto, cliff +Monte-Carlo, its well-groomed flowers; lamentable episode at Casino +Montecelio +Monterosso +Mortella, cliff +Mortola, village +Mosquitoes in Rome +Moulinet +Mummies, Peruvian +Munitions Office, develops a craving for bankers +Mure of Caldwell, traveller +Muretta, mountain +Museum, Kircher; delle Terme +Music +Mythopoeic faculty, example of + +Neighbours, an over-rated class +Nerano +Newspaper reading, to be discouraged +Nice +Nietzsche, his blind spot +Nightingales, too much of a good thing; cease from troubling +Ninetta, an attractive maiden +Nose, degeneration of + +Odysseus at Alatri +Office-hunters, should respect their betters +Olevano, its nightingales; oak grove at; first English resident at +Opi, town +Ornithology +Orte, town +Orvinio +Ouida, her writings and character + +Paestum, roses of +Pais, Prof. E. +Palombaro +Pantheon +Patriotism, chilled +Pavements, life on +Peira Cava +Perfumes, react on physiognomy +Persico, G. B. +Pescasseroli; its bears +Peutinger Table +Philosophers, contradistinguished from metaphysicians +Piccadilly Goat +Pietrasanta +Pig, in distress +Pines, at Levanto; at Viareggio +Pisa in war-time +Plaster-casts, how to dispose of +Plato +Pliny +Pollius Felix +Pontine Marshes +Ponza island, megalithic ruin on +Portovenere, marble +Potter, Major Frederick, discovers Olevano +Pottery, index of national taste +Powder magazine, explosion of +Preccia, mountain +Prehistoric races, possible reasons for their extinction +Press, the daily, its disastrous functions +"Prison, The," a Socratic dialogue + +Race ideals, contrasted with individual +Ramage, Craufurd Tait, a centrifugal Scotsman, his book and umbrella; +mania for hurrying; other travels of; compared with Waterton; +on Italian country life; gets drunk; makes formal profession of +sobriety; +his tolerance; sensitive to female charms; still hustling; his +humanistic outlook; little failings; other publications; zest for +knowledge; at Licenza +Rat-hunts +Ravens, their conjugal fidelity +Reading, to be done with reverence +Recomone, inlet +Red colour, unfashionable in Italy; in favour with other races +Rhetoric, necessary to success in courtship +Rhodian marble +Ripa, a liquid poison +Rivers, Italian +Riviera, French, its inanity; typical visitors to; lack of native genius +Roccaraso +Rojate +Rolfe, Neville +Romanelli, painter +Romans and British, their world dominion; unimaginative people +Rome, changed aspect of railway station; protestant cemetery; explosion +near; its fountains; tramcar nuisance; shadelessness; disadvantages of +site; evening breeze; neglected cats; bad food; its building stone; +unpleasant experience at; dearth of apartments +Rubinstein, A. + +Sagittario, stream +Saint Domenico +Saint-Jacques, chemin de +Saint-Louis, bridge +Saint Martin, his cave +Saint Michael, hermitage +Salatino, Dr. +Salis-Marschlins, U. von +San Costanzo, mountain and chapel +San Remo +San Rossore +Sant' Egidio, hermitage +Sant' Elia, farm +Saracinesca, village +Scalambra, mountain +Scanno, cemetery at; memories of; revisited +Schadona pass +Scheffel, V. von +Schopenhauer; anticipates "recognition marks" +Scolastica, Saint +Seaton +Sebastiani, A. +Segni +Self-indulgence, a debased expression +Sergi, Prof. G. +Serpentaro, oak grove +Serpents, with ears; human hatred of +Serrano, village +Serravezza +Shelley, an evangelist; at Viareggio; recommends caverns to his readers, +but lives comfortably himself +Sicilians +Siena, in winter; a Florentine's opinion of +Sirena, survival of name +Siren islets (Galli); ruin on +Sirocco in Rome +Sitting still, the true traveller's gift +Sleep, its sacred nature +Smollett +Snakes +Snow, Dr. H. +Sora +Soracte, mountain +Soriano; its pleasant tavern +Sospel +Spezia +Spy-mania in Italy +Stabiae (Castellamare) +Statius +Strabo +Strega liqueur, horribly adulterated; how to stop the scandal +Subiaco, strawberries at +Sunburn, pretty effects of +Surrentum +Swinburne, H. +Switzerland, its manifold beauties +Symonds, J. A. + +Taxidermy, study of +Telephone, an abomination +Termini, village +Terrata, mountain +Theophrastus +Tiber +Tiryns, citadel +Torco, village +Trafalgar Square, its fauna +Trajan's Forum +Tramcars, an abomination +Tree-creeper, bird +Trevi Fountain +Trifles, importance of +Truth-telling, a matter of longitude; not in vogue to-day +Tuscan speech, its peculiar savour + +Urquehart, D. + +Valiante, Marquis +Valmontone; its upper terrace; capture of a deserter at, Pergola, tavern +Velino, mountain +Velletri +Venice +Ventimiglia, wine of +Verde antico, marble +Veroli +Via Appia; Flaminia; Labiena; Nomentana +Viareggio, an objectionable place; its Vittoria hotel; pine woods +Victorians, their perverse sense of duty +Villalago +Villetta Barrea +Viterbo +Voss, R. + +Wallace, A. R. +Walpole, Horace +War, the present, local opinions concerning; repercussion on thoughtful +non-combatants; effects on agriculture War Office, pandemonium; confuses +Turkish and Russian +Waterton, C., a freak +Whistling, denotes mental vacuity +White, colour, unpopular in South Italy +Will-o'-the-wisp +Wine, red and black +Wolf, at Mentone; at Frattura +Wryneck, bird + +Young, J. +Youth, should be temperate +Yucca, plant + +Zagarola +"Zone of defense," drawbacks of +Zurich, its attractions + +* * * * * * * * * * * + +1. There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to see it. + +2. Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be confounded +with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian marble of the +ancients. + +3. See North American Review, September, 1913. Ramage's Calabrian tour +of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky undertaking. The few +travellers who then penetrated into this country kept to the main roads +and never moved without a military escort. One of them actually hired a +brigand as a protection. + +4. Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle in the +stream-bed--mere disconnected pools to show where the river was, and +will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence. Grant Duff says +he has seen the Arno "blue." So have I: a hepatic blue. + +5. It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown Prince. + +6. He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died. + +7. I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method of the +Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older monuments +are in better condition than the new ones. We live and learn. + +8. The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters, "... I am +writing without due consideration of the interesting point. But this +possible explanation occurs to me: children are active motor machines, +always restless and moving when not asleep. When asleep, the motor +tendencies, being not quite passive, translate themselves into the +dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant or painful, according to +bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As the muscles are almost passive +in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming activity--into dreams of flying +when bodily states are pleasant, into falling down precipices, etc., +when they are out of sorts. This is quite a hasty reflection...." + +9. "The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams and Norgate, +1891.) + +10. Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your reference to +Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I thought I was the +first to fully point out. It is a most interesting anticipation. I do +not read German, but from what I have heard of his works he was the last +man I should have expected to make such an acute suggestion in Natural +History." + +11. Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions. + +12. Fecit! He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on the 4th +November, 1920. + +13. This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166, "I have +lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine." We learn from the +Dictionary of National Biography that he was born in 1803; he must +therefore have been twenty-five years old when he bemused the +coastguard. Only twenty-five; and already at this stage. We are further +told that he was tutor to somebody's son. Unhappy child! + +14. Not all of them are true thistles. Abbadé's Guide to the Abruzzi +(1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region. + +15. Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking +of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name--a love +intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of a good +word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my plot "rightly +filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better. + +16. Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making a +scientific collection of local imprecations--abusive, vituperative or +profane expletives; swear-words, in short--enriched with elaborate +commentary. I would gladly print this little study in folk-lore as an +appendix to the present volume, were it fit for publication. + +17. Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made +considerable progress in the peninsula. + +18. This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others have +garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here, and to their +list may be added that of the rock on which stood the villa of Pollius +Felix; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but used to be called +Petrapoli; pure Greek: Pollio's rock. There is still a mine of such +material to be exploited by all who care to study the vernacular. The +giant euphorbia, for instance, common on these hills, is locally known +as "totomaglie"; pure Greek again: tithymalos. + +19. Query: whether there be no connection between brachycephalism and +this modern deification of machinery? + +20. Robert L. Bowles, M.D. "Sunburn on the Alps" (Alpine Journal, +November, 1888) and "The Influence of Light on the Skin" (British +Journal of Dermatology, No. 105, Vol. 9). + +21. It has now been cleaned--with inevitable results. + +22. Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's diary. + +23. Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has +improved. Somebody now feeds them--which could hardly have been expected +during those stressful times of war, when bread barely sufficed for the +human population. They are also fewer in numbers. Their owners, I fancy, +can afford to keep them at home once more. + +24. This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious letter from +the old fellow. "The question you ask is one of great ornithological +importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I am absolutely +afraid to ask any questions in the British Museum, as they jump at an +idea and cut the ground from under the original man's feet. This I +regret to say is my experience. I have been asked what does it matter +who makes the discovery? I reply, 'Render unto Caesar, etc.' If you are +going to work it out, keep it dark. The British Museum have not the +necessary specimens--in this country I believe it is not known how the +change takes place. I tried some years ago to work it out with live +specimens, but failed because I could not get young birds. Now in answer +to your question, my belief is that the young bird moults into the +winter plumages direct and that this is changed into the full plumage in +spring either by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips of the +feathers. This is private because it is theoretical, and for your +private use to verify...." + +Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Günther wrote: "The skin differs in +nothing from that of Phoca foetida. In the skull I observe that the +nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in typical specimens from +the northern coasts. There is also a remarkable thinness of bone, a want +of osseous substance; but it is impossible to say whether this is due to +altered physical conditions or should be accounted for by the youth of +the specimen, or whether it is an individual peculiarity." + +25. Winter 1882-1883; possibly later. + +26. The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, seems to +have been the Caucasus. + +27. I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track the legend +to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed the +ordinary tourists' map of the district. + +28. Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions of the +guardie regie, which threaten to absorb the entire youth of Italy. At +this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing accommodation all +over the peninsula; in Rome alone, they say, apartments are needed for +10,000 practically homeless persons, and a mathematician may calculate +the number of houses required to contain them. How shall they ever be +built, if all the potential builders are loafing about in uniforms at +the public expense? + +29. Some of these Beautiful Thoughts went through more than one edition. + +30. From an old article: "I was pleased to observe on Ponza the relics +of a great pre-Roman civilization. Above the town, where the cemetery +now stands, is a likely site for a citadel, and on examining it from the +sea I noticed, sure enough, a few blocks of prehistoric structure of the +so-called Cyclopean type underneath a corner of the cemetery wall. There +is a portion in better preservation between the 'Baths of Pilate' and +the harbour, where a little path winds up from the sea. The blocks are +joined without mortar, and some of them are over a metre in length. This +megalithic wall may be taken to be contemporaneous with similar works of +defence found in various parts of Italy, but I believe its existence on +Ponza has not yet been recorded. Livy says that Volscians inhabited the +island till they were supplanted by the Romans, and a tradition +preserved by Strabo and Virgil locates here the palace of the +enchantress Circe, who transformed the companions of Ulysses into +bristly swine...." Some one may have anticipated me here again, as did +Salis-Marschlins in the eighteenth century with those roses of Passtum +whose disappearance Ramage, like every one else, laments--those roses +which I thought I was the first to re-discover. They grow on the spot in +considerable quantities, though one needs good eyes to see them. They +are not flourishing as of yore, being dwarfs not more than a few inches +in height. One which I carried away and kept three years in a pot and +six more in the earth grew to a length of about sixteen feet, and is +probably alive at this moment, I never saw a flower. + +31. For the abject condition of these slaves (such they are) see Chapter +VII of The Roman Campagna by Arnaldo Cervesato. + +32. Written in 1917. + +33. D.H. Lawrence: Twilight in Italy. + +34. The title Alone strikes me, on reflection, as rather an inapt one +for this volume. Let it stand! + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALONE *** + +This file should be named 8alon10.txt or 8alon10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8alon11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8alon10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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