Me They
Delighted; To The Other Guests, More Familiar With Them And Their
Talk, They Must Have Been A Serious Nuisance.
But I should have
liked to see the civilian who dared to manifest his disapproval of
these fine old warriors.
They sat interminably, evidently having no idea how otherwise to
pass the evening. In the matter of public amusements Catanzaro is
not progressive; I only once saw an announcement of a theatrical
performance, and it did not smack of modern enterprise. On the
dining-room table one evening lay a little printed bill, which made
known that a dramatic company was then in the town. Their
entertainment consisted of two parts, the first entitled: "The Death
of Agolante and the Madness of Count Orlando"; the second: "A
Delightful Comedy, the Devil's Castle with Pulcinella as the
Timorous Soldier." In addition were promised "new duets and
Neapolitan songs." The theatre would comfortably seat three hundred
persons, and the performance would be given twice, at half-past
eighteen and half-past twenty-one o'clock. It was unpardonable in me
that I did not seek out the Teatro delle Varieta; I might easily
have been in my seat (with thirty, more likely than three hundred,
other spectators) by half-past twenty-one. But the night was
forbidding; a cold rain fell heavily. Moreover, just as I had
thought that it was perhaps worth while to run the risk of another
illness - one cannot see the Madness of Count Orlando every day -
there came into the room a peddler laden with some fifty volumes of
fiction and a fine assortment of combs and shirt-studs. The books
tempted me; I looked them through. Most, of course, were
translations from the vulgarest French feuilletonistes; the
Italian reader of novels, whether in newspaper or volume, knows, as
a rule, nothing but this imported rubbish. However, a real Italian
work was discoverable, and, together with the unfriendly sky, it
kept me at home. I am sorry now, as for many another omission on my
wanderings, when lack of energy or a passing mood of dullness has
caused me to miss what would be so pleasant in the retrospect.
I spent an hour one evening at the principal cafe, where a pianist
of great pretensions and small achievement made rather painful
music. Watching and listening to the company (all men, of course,
though the Oriental system regarding women is not so strict at
Catanzaro as elsewhere in the south), I could not but fall into a
comparison of this scene with any similar gathering of middle-class
English folk. The contrast was very greatly in favour of the
Italians. One has had the same thought a hundred times in the same
circumstances, but it is worth dwelling upon. Among these
representative men, young and old, of Catanzaro, the tone of
conversation was incomparably better than that which would rule in a
cluster of English provincials met to enjoy their evening leisure.
They did, in fact, converse - a word rarely applicable to English
talk under such conditions; mere personal gossip was the exception;
they exchanged genuine thoughts, reasoned lucidly on the surface of
abstract subjects.
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