Were reclaiming the
waste places of earth, and procreating, and fighting - as befits their
horned anatomy.
XVI
REPOSING AT CASTROVILLARI
I remember asking my friend the Roman deputy of whom I have already
spoken, and whom I regard as a fountain of wisdom on matters Italian,
how it came about that the railway stations in his country were apt to
be so far distant from the towns they serve. Rocca Bernarda, I was
saying, lies 33 kilometres from its station; and even some of the
largest towns in the kingdom are inconveniently and unnecessarily remote
from the line.
"True," he replied. "Very true! Inconveniently . . . but perhaps not
unnecessarily. . . ." He nodded his head, as he often does, when
revolving some deep problem in his mind.
"Well, sir?"
"Inasmuch as everything has its reasons, be they geographical,
sociological, or otherwise . . ." and he mused again. "Let me tell you
what I think as regards our respective English and Italian points of
view," he said at last. "And to begin with - a few generalities! We may
hold that success in modern life consists in correctly appreciating the
principles which underlie our experiences - in what may be called the
scientific attitude towards things in general. Now, do the English
cultivate this attitude? Not sufficiently. They are in the stage of
those mediaeval scholars who contentedly alleged separate primary causes
for each phenomenon, instead of seeking, by the investigation of
secondary ones, for the inevitable interdependence of the whole. In
other words, they do not subordinate facts; they co-ordinate them. Your
politicians and all your public men are guided by impulse - by
expediency, as they prefer to call it; they are empirical; they never
attempt to codify their conduct; they despise it as theorizing. What
happens? This old-fashioned hand-to-mouth system of theirs invariably
breaks down here and there. And then f Then they trust to some divine
interposition, some accident, to put things to rights again. The success
of the English is largely built up on such accidents - on the mistakes of
other people. Provi dence has favoured them so far, on the whole; but
one day it may leave them in the lurch, as it did the anti-scientific
Russians in their war with the Japanese. One day other people will
forget to make these pleasant mistakes."
He paused, and I forbore to interrupt his eloquence.
"To come now to the practical application - to this particular instance.
Tell me, does your English system testify to any constructive
forethought? In London, I am assured, the railway companies have built
stations at enormous expense in the very heart of the town. What will be
the consequence of this hand-to-mouth policy? This, that in fifty years
such structures will have become obsolete - stranded in slums at the back
of new quarters yet undreamed of. New depots will have to be built.
Whereas in Italy the now distant city will in fifty years have grown to
reach its station and, in another half-century, will have encircled it.
Thanks to our sagacity, the station will then be in its proper place, in
the centre of the town. Our progeny will be grateful; and that again,
you will admit, is a worthy aim for our politicians. Besides, what would
happen to our coachmen if nobody needed their services on arriving at
his destination? The poor men must not be allowed to starve! Cold head
and warm heart, you know; humanitarian considerations cannot be thrust
aside by a community that prides itself on being truly civilized. I
trust I have made myself intelligible?"
"You always do. But why should I incommode myself to please your
progeny, or even my own? And I don't like the kind of warm heart that
subordinates my concerns to those of a cab-driver. You don't altogether
convince me, dear sir."
"To speak frankly, I sometimes don't convince myself. My own country
station, for example, is curiously remote from the city, and it is
annoying on wintry nights to drive through six miles of level mud when
you are anxious to reach home and dinner; so much so that, in my
egoistical moments, I would have been glad if our administration had
adopted the more specious British method. But come now! You cannot raise
that objection against the terminus at Rome."
"Not that one. But I can raise two others. The platforms are
inconveniently arranged, and a traveller will often find it impossible
to wash his hands and face there; as to hot water - - "
"Granting a certain deplorable disposition of the lines - why on earth,
pray, should a man cleanse himself at the station when there are
countless hotels and lodging-houses in the city? O you English originals!"
"And supposing," I urged, "he is in a hurry to catch another train going
south, to Naples or Palermo?"
"There I have you, my illustrious friend! Nobody travels south of Rome."
Nobody travels south of Rome. . . .
Often have I thought upon those words.
This conversation was forcibly recalled to my mind by the fact that it
took our creaky old diligence two and a half hours (one of the horses
had been bought the day before, for six pounds) to drive from the
station of Castrovillari to the entrance of the town, where we were
delayed another twenty minutes, while the octroi zealots searched
through every bag and parcel on the post-waggon.
Many people have said bad things about this place. But my once
unpleasant impressions of it have been effaced by my reception at its
new and decent little hostelry. What a change after the sordid filth of
Rossano! Castrovillari, to be sure, has no background of hoary eld to
atone for such deficiencies. It was only built the other day, by the
Normans; or by the Romans, who called it Aprustum; or possibly by the
Greeks, who founded their Abystron on this particular site for the same
reasons that commended it in yet earlier times to certain bronze and
stone age primitives, whose weapons you may study in the British Museum
and elsewhere.
