It seems to be a peculiarity of
the local soil to produce hardly a leaf of salad or cabbage. Potatoes
are plainly regarded as an exotic - they are the size of English peas,
and make me think of Ruskin's letter to those old ladies describing the
asparagus somewhere in Tuscany. And all this to the waiter's undisguised
astonishment.
"The gentleman is rich enough to pay for meat. Why trouble about this
kind of food?"...
And yet - a change is at hand. These southern regions are waking up from
their slumber of ages. Already some of Italy's acutest thinkers and most
brilliant politicians are drawn from these long-neglected shores. For we
must rid ourselves of that incubus of "immutable race characters": think
only of our Anglo-Saxon race! What has the Englishman of to-day in
common with that rather lovable fop, drunkard and bully who would faint
with ecstasy over Byron's Parisina after pistolling his best friend
in a duel about a wench or a lap-dog? Such differences as exist between
races of men, exist only at a given moment.
And what, I sometimes ask myself - what is now the distinguishing feature
between these southern men and ourselves? Briefly this, I think. In
mundane matters, where the personal equation dominates, their judgment
is apt to be turbid and perverse; but as one rises into questions of
pure intelligence, it becomes serenely impartial. We, on the other hand,
who are pre-eminently clear-sighted in worldly concerns of law and
government and in all subsidiary branches of mentality, cannot bring
ourselves to reason dispassionately on non-practical subjects. "L'esprit
aussi a sa pudeur," says Remy de Gourmont. Well, this pudeur de
l'esprit, discouraged among the highest classes in England, is the
hall-mark of respectability hereabouts. A very real difference, at this
particular moment. . . .
There is an end of philosophizing.
They have ousted me from my pleasant quarters, the landlady's son and
daughter-in-law having returned unexpectedly and claiming their
apartments. I have taken refuge in a hotel. My peace is gone; my days in
Taranto are numbered.
Loath to depart, I linger by the beach of the Ionian Sea beyond the new
town. It is littered with shells and holothurians, with antique tesserae
of blue glass and marble fragments, with white mosaic pavements and
potteries of every age, from the glossy Greco-Roman ware whose
delicately embossed shell devices are emblematic of this sea-girt city,
down to the grosser products of yesterday. Of marbles I have found
cipollino, pavonazzetto, giallo and rosso antico, but no harder
materials such as porphyry or serpentine. This, and the fact that the
mosaics are pure white, suggests that the houses here must have dated,
at latest, from Augustan times.
[Footnote: Nor is there any of the fashionable verde antico, and
this points in the same direction. Corsi says nothing as to the date of
its introduction, and I have not read the treatise of Silenziario, but
my own observations lead me to think that the lapis atracius can
hardly have been known under Tiberius. Not so those hard ones: they
imported wholesale by his predecessor Augustus, who was anxious to be
known as a scorner of luxury (a favourite pose with monarchs), yet spent
incalculable sums on ornamental stones both for public and private ends.
One is struck by a certain waste of material; either the expense was
deliberately disregarded or finer methods of working the stones were not
yet in vogue. A revolution in the technique of stone-cutting must have
set in soon after his death, for thenceforward we find the most
intractable rocks cut into slices thin as card-board: too thin for
pavements, and presumably for encrusting walls and colonnades. The
Augustans, unable to produce these effects naturally, attempted
imitation-stones, and with wonderful success. I have a fragment of their
plaster postiche copying the close-grained Egyptian granite; the oily
lustre of the quartz is so fresh and the peculiar structure of the rock,
with its mica scintillations, so admirably rendered as to deceive, after
two thousand years, the eye of a trained mineralogist.]
Here I sit, on the tepid shingle, listening to the plash of the waves
and watching the sun as it sinks over the western mountains that are
veiled in mists during the full daylight, but loom up, at this sunset
hour, as from a fabulous world of gold. Yonder lies the Calabrian Sila
forest, the brigands' country. I will attack it by way of Rossano, and
thence wander, past Longobucco, across the whole region. It may be well,
after all, to come again into contact with streams and woodlands, after
this drenching of classical associations and formal civic life!
Near me stands a shore-battery which used to be called "Batteria
Chianca." It was here they found, some twenty years ago, a fine marble
head described as a Venus, and now preserved in the local museum. I
observe that this fort has lately been re-christened "Batteria Archyta."
Can this be due to a burst of patriotism for the Greek warrior-sage who
ruled Taranto, or is it a subtle device to mislead the foreign spy?
Here, too, are kilns where they burn the blue clay into tiles and vases.
I time a small boy at work shaping the former. His average output is
five tiles in four minutes, including the carrying to and fro of the
moist clay; his wages about a shilling a day. But if you wish to see the
manufacture of more complicated potteries, you must go to the unclean
quarter beyond the railway station. Once there, you will not soon weary
of that potter's wheel and the fair shapes that blossom forth under its
enchanted touch. This ware of Taranto is sent by sea to many parts of
south Italy, and you may see picturesque groups of it, here and there,
at the street corners.
