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.
