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.
