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.
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