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V

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SWx

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ALONE

'(

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

OLD CALABRIA

FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND

SIREN-LAND

LONDON STREET GAMES

SOUTH WIND

THEY WENT

ALONE

BY

NORMAN DOUGLAS

author op
"south wind," "they went," etc.

c

NEW YORK

ROBERT M. McBRIDE <S* COMPANY

1922

THE NSW TOBK

PUBLIC LIBBABT

3Z9033B

ASTOfi. UMOX AND

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

B 1946 L

Printed in Great Britain at
TAg Maytflowtr Prttt, Plymouth, William Brendon & Son, Ltd.

TO HIS FRIEND

EDWARD HUTTON

WHO PRINTED SOME OF THESE TRIVIALITIES

a

IN THAT

ANGLO-ITALIAN REVIEW

>>

WHICH DESERVED A BETTER FATE

•5Xe5»

• -fi

CONTENTS

PAGB

Introduction i

Mentone 17

Levanto 31

Siena . 58

Pisa 70

Viareggio (February) 85

ViAREGGio (May) 94

Rome 118

Olevano 141

Valmontone 176

Sant 'Agata, Sorrento 182

Rome 190

Soriano 215

Alatri 232

Introduction

WHAT ages ago it seems, that " Great
War " !

And what enthusiasts we were ! What
visionaries, to imagine that in such an hour of emer-
gency a man might discover himself to be fitted for
some work of national utility without that preliminary
wire-pulling which was essential in himidrum times of
peace ! How we lingered in long queues, and stamped
up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls,
waiting, only waiting, to be asked to do something
for our country by any little guttersnipe who happened
to have been jockeyed into the requisite position of
authority ! What innocents . . .

I have memories of several afternoons spent at a
pleasant place near St. James's Park station, whither
I went in search of patriotic employment. It was
called, I think. Board of Trade Labour Emergency
Bureau (or something equally lucid and concise), and
professed to find work for everybody. Here, in a fixed
number of rooms, sat an imcertain number of chubby
young gentlemen, all of whom seemed to be of military
age, or possibly below it ; the Emergency Bureau was
then plainly — ^for it may have changed later on — a
hastily improvised shelter for privileged sucklings, a
kind of nursery on advanced Montessori methods.
Well, that was not my concern. One must trust the
Government to know its own business.

B

2 ALONE

During my second or third visit to this hygienic and
well-lighted establishment I was introduced, most

fortunately, into the sanctuary of Mr. R , whose

name was familiar to me. Was he not his brother's
brother ? He was. A real stroke of luck !

Mr. R , a pink little thing, laid down the pen

he had snatched up as I entered the room, and began
gazing at me quizzically through enormous tortoise-
shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious
infant who tries to look like daddy. What might he
do for me ?

I explained.

We had a short talk, during which various forms
were conscientiously filled up as to my qiialifications,
such as they were. Of course, there was nothing
doing just then ; but one never knows, does one ?
Would I mind calling again ?

Would I mind ? I should think not. I should like
nothing better. It did one good to be in contact with
this youthful optimist and Usten to his blithe and
pleasing prattle ; he was so hopeful, so philosophic,
so cheery ; his whole nature seemed to exhale the
golden words : " Never say die." And no wonder.
He ought to have been at the front, but some guardian
angel in the haute finance had dumped him into this
soft and safe job : it was enough to make anybody
cheerful. One should be cautious, none the less, how
one criticises the action of the authorities. Maybe
they kept him at the Emergency Bureau for the express
purpose of infusing confidence, by his bright manner,
into the minds of despondent patriots like myself, and
of keeping the flag flying in a general way — ^a task for
which he, a German Jew, was pre-eminently fitted.

Be that as it may, his consolatory tactics certainly

INTRODUCTION 3

succeeded in my case, and I went home quite infected
with his rosy cheeks and words. Yet, on the occasion
of my next visit a week or two later, there was still
nothing doing — ^not just then, though one never knows,
does one ?

" Tried the War Office ? " he added airily.

I had.

Who hadn't ?

The War Office was a nightmare in those early days.
It resembled Liverpool Street station on the evening
of a rainless Bank Holiday. The only clear memory
I carried away — ^and even this may have been due to
some hallucination — was that of a voice shouting at me
through the rabble : " Can you fly?^' Such was my
confusion that I believe I answered in the negative,
thereby losing, probably, a lucrative billet as Chaplain
to the Forces or veterinary surgeon in the Church
Lads' Brigade. Things might have been different had
my distinguished cousin still been on the spot ; I, too,
might have been accommodated with a big desk and

small work after the manner of the genial Mr. R .

He died in harness, unfortunately, soon after the out-
break of war.

I said to my young friend :

" Everybody tells one to try the War Office — I don't
know why. Of course I tried it. I wish I had a
shilling for every hour I wasted in that lunatic asylum:"

" Ah ! " he replied. *^ I feel sure a good many men
would like to be paid at that rate. Anyhow, trust me.
We'll fix you up, sooner or later. (He kept his word.)
Why not have a whack at the F.O., meanwhile ? "

" Because I have already had a whack at it."

I then possessed, indeed, in reply to an application

4 ALONE

on my part, a holograph of twelve pages in the elegant
calligraphy of H.M. Under-Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, the same gentleman who was viciously
attacked by the Pankhurst section for his assumed pro-
Germanism. It conveyed no grain of hope. Other
Government Departments, he opined, might well be
depleted at this moment ; the Foreign Office was in
exactly the reverse position. It overflowed with
diplomatic and consular officials returned, perforce,
from belligerent countries, and now in search of occu-
pation. Was it not natural, was it not right, to give
the preference to them ? One was really at a loss to
know what to do with all those people. He had tried,
hitherto in vain, to find some kind of job for his own
brother.

A straightforward, convincing statement. Acting
on the hint, I visited the Education Office, notoriously
overstaffed since Tudor days ; it might now be
emptier ; clerical work might be obtained there in
substitution of some youngster who had been induced
to join the colours. I poked my nose into countless
recesses, and finally unearthed my man.

They were full up, said Mr. F .

Full up ?

Full up.

Then, after some further conversation as to my
capacities, he thought he might find me employment
as teacher of science in the country, to replace some-
body or other.

The notion was distasteful to me. I am not averse
to learning from the young ; I only once tried to
teach them — ^at a ragged school, long since pulled
down, near Ladbroke Grove, ^here I soon discovered
that my little pupils knew a great deal more than I

INTRODUCTION 5

did, more, indeed, than was good for body or soul.
Still, this was a tangible, definite offer of unremunera-
tive but at the same time semi-pseudo-patriotic
work, not to be sneezed at. An idea occurred to me.

'^ Supposing I stick it out and give satisfaction, shall
I be able to interchange later into this department ?
I am more fitted for ofiice duties. In fact, I have had
a certain experience of them."

" No chance of that," he replied. " It is the German
system. Their schoolmasters are sometimes taken to
do administrative work at head-quarters, and vice
versd. Our English rule is : Once a teacher, always
a teacher."

Here was a deadlock. For in such matters as teach-
ing, a man may put a strain on himself for a certain
length of time ; he may even be a success, up to a
point. But if he lacks the temperamental gift of
holding classes, the results in the long run will not be
fair to the children, to say nothing of himself. With

reluctance I rose to depart, Mr. F adding, by way

of letting me down gently :

" Tried the War Office ? "

I had.

If the War Office was too lively, this place was too
slumberous by half. A cobwebby, Rip-van-Winkle-ish
atmosphere brooded about those passages and cham-
bers. One could not help thinking that a little
" German system " might work wonders here. And
this is merely one of several similar sites I explored,
and endeavoured to exploit, for patriotic purposes ; I
am here only jotting down a few of the more important
of those that occur to me.

And, oh ! for the brush of a Hogarth to depict the

6 ALONE

gallery of faces with which I came in contact as I went
along. They were all different, yet all alike ; different
in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and self-suffi-
ciency, but plainly of the same parentage — ^British to
the backbone ; British of the wrong kind, with a
sprinkling of Welshmen, Irishmen, and Jews. Not a
Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of com*-
placent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous
by their absence ; they were otherwise engaged, in the
field, the colonies, the engine-room. I can only re-
member one single exception to this rule, this type ;
it was the head of the Censorship Department.

For of course I offered my services there, climbing
up that decent red-carpeted stairway, and glad to find
myself among respectable surroimdings after all the
unseemly holes I had lately wallowed in. I sent up a
card which, to my surprise, caused me to be ushered
forthwith into the presence of the Chief, who may
have heard of my existence from some mutual friend.
Here, at all events, was a man with a face worth
looking at, a man who had done notable things in his
day. What a relief, moreover, to be able to talk to a
gentleman for a change ! I wished I could have had
him to myself for five minutes ; there were one or
two things one would have liked to learn from him.
Unfortunately he was surrounded, as such people are,
by half a dozen of the characteristic masks. For the
rest. His ex-Excellency seemed to be ineffably bored
with his new functions.

" What on earth brings you here ? " he began in a
fascinatingly absent-minded style, as if he had known
me all my life, and with an inimitable nasal drawl.
" This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten ! I cannot
recommend it. Not your style at all, I should say."

INTRODUCTION 7

" But, my dear Sir F , I am not applying for

your job. Something subordinate, I mean. Anything,
anything."

" What ? Down there, cutting up newspapers at
twenty-two shillings a week ? No, no. Let's have
your address, and we will commimicate with you when
we find something worth your while. By the way,
have you tried the War Oflice ? '*

I had.

And it stands to reason that I tried the Munitions
more than once.

It was my rare good fortune — luck pursued me on
these patriotic expeditions — to come face to face, at
the Munitions, with Xhtjons et origo ; the deputy
fountain-head, that is to say ; a very peculiar private-
secretary-in-chief for that department. He was a
perpendicular, iron-grey personality, if I remember
righdy, who smelt of some indifferent hair-wash and
lost no time in giving you to understand that he was
pretematurally busy.

Did I know anjrthing about machinery ?

Nothing to speak of, I replied. As co-manager and
proprietor of some cotton mills employing several
hundred hands for spinning and weaving, I naturally
learnt how to handle a fair number of machines —
sufficiently well, at all events, to start and stop them
and tell the girls how to avoid being scalped or having
their arms torn out whenever I happened to be passing
that way. This life also gave me some experience,
useful perhaps at the Munitions, in dealing with
factory-hands

That was not the kind of machinery he meant. Did
I know anything about banking ?

i u ri U- g i_iiL *j

8 ALONE

Nothing at all.

" You are like everybody else," he replied with a
weary sigh, as much as to say : How am I going to
run the British Empire with a collection of imbeciles
like this ? " We have several thousands of applicants
like yourself," he went on. " But I will put your
name down. Come again."

" You are very kind."

" Do call again," he added, in his best private-
secretary manner.

I called again a couple of weeks later. It struck me,
namely, that they might have acquired a sufficient
stock of bankers and mechanics by this time, and be
able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school
man with a fairish knowledge of the world and some
other things — one who, moreover, had himself served
in a cranky and fussy Government Department and,
though working in another sphere, had been thanked
officially for certain labours — once by the Admiralty,
twice by the Board of Trade ; and anyway, hang it !
one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was
one ?

" I called about a fortnight ago. You have my
name down."

" Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have such thou-
sands of applicants. I remember you ! A mechanic,
aren't you ? "

" No. And you asked me i£ I understood banking,
and I said I didn't."

" What a pity. Now if you knew about banking "

Nothing, evidently, had been done about my appli-
cation, nor, for that matter, about those thousands of
others. We were being played with. I began to feel
grumpy. It was a lovely afternoon, and I remembered.

INTRODUCTION 9

with regret, that I had thrown over an engagement to
go for a walk with a friend at Wimbledon. About this
hour, I calculated, we should be strolling along
Beverley Brook or through the glades of Coombe
Woods with sunshine filtering through the birches
overhead ; it would have been more pleasant, and far
more instructive, than wasting my time with a hatchet-
faced automaton like this. That comes, I thought, of
being patriotic. I observed :

" Your department seems to require only bankers
and mechanics. Would it not be well to advertise the
fact and save trouble and time to those thousands of
applicants who, you say, are in the same predicament
as myself ? I came here to do national work of some
general kind."

" So I gather. And if you understood banking '*

" If I did, I should be a banker at my time of life
— don't you see ? — and lending money to you people,
and giving you good advice, instead of asking you for
employment. Isn't that fairly obvious ? As a matter
of fact, my acquaintance with banking is limited to a
knowledge of how to draw cheques, and even that
useful accomplishment is fast fading from my memory,
under the stress of the times."

Being a Welshman — so I presimie, from his name —
he condescended to smile faintly, but not for long ;
his salary was too high. As fbr myself, I refrained from
saying a few harsher things I was minded to say ;
indeed, I made myself so vastly agreeable, after my
own private recipe, that he was quite touched. He
remarked :

" I think I had better put your name down, although
we have thousands of applicants, you know. Call
again, won't you ? "

lo ALONE

For which I humbly thanked him^ instead of saying,
as I ought to have done :

" You go to blazes. The public is a pack of idiots
to nm after people who merely keep them loitering
about while they feather their own nests. We are out
«, Uck Ae cinin,. ^d y«^ is not Ae way «>
do it."

Did I understand banking ? The full ineptitude of
this conundrum only dawned upon me by degrees.
Manifestly, if I understood banking, I might do some
specialised kind of work for the Government. But in
that case I would not apply to the Mimitions. Granted
they wanted bankers. Well, there was my friend

M , renowned in the City as a genius for banking ;

he could have saved them untold thousands of pounds.
They would have none of him. They sent him into
the trenches, where he was duly shot.

How easy it is for a disappointed place-seeker to
jibe and rail against the powers that be, especially
when he is not in full possession of the data ! For all

I know, they may have discovered my friend M

to be a dangerous character, and have been only too
glad to remove him out of society without imnecessary
fuss, in an outwardly honourable fashion, with a view
to saving his poor but respectable parents the humilia-
ting experience of a criminal trial and possible execution
in the family.

If I understood banking . . . why did they want
bankers at this institution ? Ah, it was not my
business to probe into such mysteries of administra-
tion. To my limited intelligence it would seem that
the mere fact of a man applying at the Munitions was
prima facie evidence that banking was not one of his
accomplishments. It seemed to me, furthermore, that

INTRODUCTION ii

there was no end to such " ifs " — ^patriotic or other-
wise. If I were a woman, for instance, I would
promptly aid the cause by jumping into a nurse's
outfit, telling improper stories to the Tommies, and
getting myself photographed for the Press every morn-
ing. But I am only a man. If I were a high-class
trumpeter, I could qualify for a job in one of the
Allied Armies or, failing that, on Judgment Day.
But I can only stnmi the piano. And if the moon
were made of green cheese, we might all try to get
hold of a slice of it, mightn't we ? . . .

Such was my pigheadedness, my boyish zeal, my
belief in human nature or perverse sense of duty, that
I actually broke my vow and returned to that ridiculous
establishment. Yes, I " called again," flattering myself
with the conjecture that, even if they had not yet
obtained a requisite amount of bankers and mechanics,
and even if persons of my particular aptitudes were
still a drug in the market, there might nevertheless be
room, amid the ramifications and interstices of so great
a department, for a man or two who could help to
count up or pack munitions, or, if that proposal were
hopelessly wide of the mark, for the services of some-
thing even more recondite and exotic — ^an intelligent
corpse-washer, for instance, or half a dozen astrologers.
I felt I could distinguish myself, at a national crisis
like this, in either capacity. Anyhow, it was only
one more afternoon wasted — one out of how
many !

This time I saw Mr. W . Though I had never

met him in the flesh, I once enjoyed the privilege of
perusing a manuscript from his pen — a story about a
girl in Kew Gardens. A nice-looking young Hebrew
was Mr. W . He had made himself indispensable.

14 ALONE

" How very War Office/' I thought.

These good people were mixing up Turkish and
Russian — z natural error, when one comes to think of
it, for, though the respective tongues might not be
absolutely identical, yet the coimtries themselves were
sufficiently close together to account for a little slip
like this.

Was it a slip ? Who knows ? It is so easy to criticise
when one is not fully informed about things. They
may have suggested my acting as Turkish translator
for reasons of their own — reasons which I cannot
fathom, but which need not therefore be bad ones.
Chagrined office-hunters like myself are prone to be
bitter. In an emergency of this magnitude a citizen
should hesitate before he finds fault with the wisdom
of those whom the nation has chosen to steer it through
troubled waters. No carping ! You only hamper the
Government. The general public should learn to keep
a civil tongue in its head. Theirs but to do and die.

None the less, it was about this time that I began
to experience certain moments of despondency, and
occasionally let a whole day slip by without endeavour-
ing to be of use to The Cause — ^moments when,
instead of asking myself, " What have I done for my
country ? " I asked, " What has my country done for
me ? " — ^moments when I envied the hotel night-
porters, taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling
flowers in Piccadilly Circus who had something more
sensible to do than to bother their heads about trying
to be patriotic, and getting snubbed for their pains.
Yet, with characteristic infatuation for hopeless ven-
tures, I persevered. Another " whack " at the P.O.,
leading to another holograph, two more whacks at the
Censorship, interpreter jobs, hospital jobs, God knows

INTRODUCTION 15

what — I persevered, and might for the next three
years have been kicking my heels, Uke any other
patriot, in the corridor of some dingy Government
oflSce at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-
jumpers, but for a God-sent Uttle accident, the result
of sheer boredom, which coimselled a trip to the sunny
Mediterranean.

Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment,
than she had ever yet been. For on the day prior to
my departure I received a commimication from the
Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose methods of
work, it was now apparent, were as expeditious as its

own name was brief. That hopeful Mr. R , that

bubbling yoimg optimist who had so conscientiously
written down a number of my qualifications, such as
they were — ^he was keeping his promise after months,
and months, and months. Never say die. The dear
little fellow ! What job had he captured for me ?

An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages
to commence at 175. 6d. per week.

H'm.

The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but
I like to think that it included the free use of the
lavatory, if there happened to be one on the premises.

So luck pursued me to the end, though it never
quite caught me up. For bags were packed, and
tickets taken. And therefore :

" What did you do in the Great War, grandpapa ? "

" I loafed, my boy.^^

" That was naughty, grandpapa."

" Naughty, but nice. ..."

ALONE

Mentone

Italiam petimus . . . .

DISCOVERED, in a local library — a genuine
old maid's library : full of the trashiest
novels — ^those two volumes of sketches by
J. A. Symonds, and forthwith set to comparing the
Mentone of his day with that of ours. What a trans-
formation ! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet
and friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have
converted the idyllic fishing village into — something
different. So vanishes another fair spot from earth.
And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me
on these shores, where life is spent in a round of
trivialities.

One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from
Nice, at last found himself at the door of " the inn."
The inn. . . . Are there any inns left at Mentone ?

A propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs.
At the present moment, twenty-two of the principal
hotels and pensions of Mentone are closed, because
owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does
not this speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton
enterprise ? Where, in a German town of 18,000
inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such establish-
ments in the hands of Frenchmen ?

The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either
c 17

i8 ALONE

among the tombs of diat cemetery overhead, studying
sepulchral inscriptions and drawing deductions, from
what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality
and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the
relative number of consumptives here interred. Sixty
per cent, shall we say ? Or else, in the streets of the
town, I catch myself endeavouring — thitherto without
success — ^to coimt up the number of grocers' shops.
They are far in excess of what is needful. Now, why ?
Well, your tailor or hatter or hosier — ^he makes a
certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he
does not sell them at every moment of the day. The
other, quite apart from small advantages to be gained
owing to the ever-shifting prices of his wares, is
ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of
which he makes a small gain. The grocery business
commends itself warmly to the French genius for
garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I fancy,
will you see butter more meticulously weighed than
here. Buy a ton of it, and they will replace on their
counter a fragment of the weight and size of a postage
stamp, rather than let the balance descend on your
^de.

And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one
ever again escape from Mentone ? It may well be
colder in Italy, but anything is preferable to this inane
Riviera existence. . . .

I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to
discommend them, for the simple reason that, if they
have proved bad, I smile to think of other men being
poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the
good ones — ^why, only a fool would reveal their where-
abouts. Since, however, I hope so to order my
remaining days of life as never to be obliged to return

MENTONE 19

to these gimcrack regions , there is no inducement for
withholding the name of the Merle Blanc at Monte
Carlo, a quite unpretentious place of entertainment
thajt well deserves its name — ^white blackbirds being
rather scarcer here than elsewhere. The food is ex-
cellent — ^it has a cachet of its own ; the wine more
than merely good. And this is surprising, for the local
mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped down
in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the
poor though sometimes aromatic product of the Var)
are not gratifying to the palalte. One imbibes them,
none the less, in preference to anything else, as it is a
peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine
hereabouts that the more you pay for it, the worse it
tastes. If you adventure into the Olympic spheres of
Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your trust
in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a
good name for these finer vintages, seeing that the
harmless black currant enters largely into their com-
position, though not in sufiicient quantity to render
them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little
problem for the cenophilist. What difference of soil
or exposure or climate or treatment can explain the
fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anjrthing
drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, a
stone's throw eastwards, can boast of its San Biagio,
Rossese, Latte, Dolceacqua and other noble growths,
the like of which are not to be found along the whole
length of the French Riviera ?

Having pastured the inner man, to his complete
satisfaction, at the hospitable Merle Blanc, our traveller
will dp well to pasturtf his eyes on the plants in the
Casino gardens. Whoever wants to see flowers and
trees on their best behaviour, must come to Monte

20 ALONE

Carlo, where the spick-and-span Riviera note is at its
highest development. Not a leaf is out of place ; they
have evidently been groomed and tubbed and mani-
cured from the hour of their birth. And yet — ^is it
possible ? Lurking among all this modem splendour
of vegetation, as though ashamed to show their faces,
may be discerned a few lowly olive trees. Well may
they skulk ! For these are the Todas and Veddahs,
the aboriginals of Monte Carlo, who peopled its simny
slopes in long-forgotten days of rustic life — once lords
of the soil, now pariahs. What are they doing here ?
And how comes it diat the eyesore has not yet been
detected and uprooted by those keen-sighted authori-
ties that perform such wonders in making the visitor
feel at home, and hush up with miraculous dexterity
everything in the nature of a public scandal ?

In exemplification whereof, let me tell a trivial
Riviera tale. There was an Englishwoman here, one
of those indestructible modem ladies who breakfast
off an ether cocktail and half a dozen aspirins and feel
all the better for it, and who, one day, foimd herself
losing rather heavily at the tables. " Another aspirin
is going to turn my luck,** she thought, and therewith
swallowed surreptitiously her last tabloid of the
panacea. Not imobserved, however ; for straightway
two elegant gentlemen — ^they might have been Russian
princes — ^pounced upon her and led her to that under-
groimd operating-room where a kindly physician is in
perennial attendance. He brushed aside her ex-
planations.

" It would be a thousand pities for so charming a
lady to poison herself. But since you wish to take
that step, why choose the Casino which has a reputa-
tion to keep up ? Are there not hotels "

MENTONE 21

" I tell you it was only aspirin."

" Alas, we are sufficiently familiar with that tale !
Now, Madam, let us not lose a moment ! It is a ques-
tion of life and death."

" Aspirin, I tell you "

" Kindly submit, or the three of us will be obliged
to employ force."

The stomach-pump was produced.

It is the drawback of all sea-side places that half
the landscape is unavailable for purposes of human
locomotion, being covered by useless water. Mentone
is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinter-
land is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep
to the main roads, or content yourself with short but
pleasant strolls, you will soon find all progress barred
by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot
walk along the esplanade all day long, though it is
worth while, once in a lifetime, continuing that
promenade as far as*Cap Martin, if only in memory of
the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who,
he asks — ^who can resist the influence of Greek ideas
at the Cape St. Martin ? Anybody can, nowadays.
The place is encrusted with smug villas of parvenus
(wherein we include the Empress Eugenie), to say
nothing of that preposterous hotel at the very point,
which disfigures the country for leagues around.

On other occasions you may find your way towards
evening up to Gorbio and stay for supper, provided
you do not mind being cheated. Or wander further
afield, over Sospel to Breil by the old path — ^note the

22 ALONE

lavender : they make a passable perfume of it — or
else to Moulinet (famous for bad food and a masto-
dontic breed of mosquitoes) and thence along the
stream — ^note the bushes of wild box — and over a
wooded ridge to the breezy heights of Peira Cava,
there to dream away the daylight under the pines.
These are summer rambles. At present the snow
lies deep.

One of my favourite excursions has been up the
so-called Berceau, the cradle-shaped hill which domin-
ates Mentone on the east. I was there to-day for a
solitary luncheon, resting awhile in the timbered
saddle between the peaks. The summit is only about
five minutes' walk from this delectable grove, but its
view inland is partially intercepted by a higher ridge.
From here, if you are in the mood, you may descend
eastward over the Italian frontier, crossing die stream
which is spanned lower down by the bridge of St.
Louis, and find yourself at Mortola Superiore (try the
wine) and then at Mortola proper (try the wine).
Somewhere in this gulley was killed the last wolf of
these regions ; so a grey-haired local Nimrod told me.
He had wrought much mischief in his time. That is
to say, he was not killed, but accidentally drowned —
drowned in one of those artificial reservoirs which are
periodically filled and drawn off for irrigating the
gardens lower down ; an ignoble death, for a wolf 1
A goat lay drowned beside him. The event, he
reckoned, must have taken place half a century ago.
Since then, the wolf has never been seen.

This afternoon, however, I preferred to repose in
that shady dell, while a flock of goldcrests were in-
vestigating the branches overhead and two buzzards
cruised, in dreamy spirals, about the sunny sky of

\-

MENTONE 23

midday ; to repose ; to indulge my genius and review
the situation ; to profit, in short, by that sense of
aloofness peculiar to such aerial spots, which tempts
the mind to set its house in order. What are we doing,
in these empty regions ? Why not wander hence ?
That cursed traveller's gift of sitting still ; of remain-
ing stationary, no matter where, until one is actually
pushed away ! And yet, how enjoyable this land might
be, were it inhabited by any race save one whose
thousand little meannesses, public and private, are
calculated to drain away a man's last oimce of self-
respect ! Not many are the glad memories I shall
carry from Mentone. I can think of no more than
two.

There is my landlady, to begin with, who spies out
every detail of my daily life ; of decent birth and
richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a peevish
penuriousness which no amoimt of plain speaking on
my part will correct. Never a day passes that she
does not permit herself some jocular observation anent
my spendthrift habits. The following is an example
of our matutinal converse :

" I fear. Monsieur, you omitted to put out the light
in a certain place last night. It was burning when I
returned home."

" Certainly not, Madame. I have been nicely
brought up. I never visit places at night. You ought
o be familiar with my habits after all this time."

" True. Then it must have been some one else.
Ah, these electricians' bills ! "

Or this :

" Monsieur, Monsieur ! The EngUsh Consul called
yesterday with his little dog at about five o'clock. He
waited in your room, but you never came back."

24 ALONE

" Five o'clock ? I was at the baths."

" I have heard of that establishment. What do they
charge for a hot bath ? "

" Three francs "

" Bon Dieu ! "

" — ^if you take an abannement. Otherwise, it may
well be more."

" And so you go there. Why then — ^why must you
also wash in the morning and splash water on my
floor ? It may have to be polished after your depar-
ture. Would you mind asking the Consul, by the way,
not to sit on the bed ? It weakens the springs."

Or this:

" Might I beg you, Monsieur, to tread more lightly
on the carpet in your room ? I bought it only nine
years ago, and it already shows signs of wear."

" Nine years — ^that old rag ? It must have survived
by a miracle."

" I do not ask you to avoid using it. I only beg
you will tread as lightly as possible."

" Carpets are meant to be worn out."

" You would express yourself less forcibly, if you
had to pay for them."

" Let us say then : carpets are meant to be trodden

on.

" Lightly.''

** I am not a fairy, Madame."

" I wish you were. Monsieur."

Thrice already, in a burst of confidence, has she
told me the story of an egg — ^an egg which rankles in
the memory. Some years ago, it seems, she went to
a certain shop (naming it)-— a shop she has avoided
ever since — ^to buy an egg ; and paid the full price —
yes, the full price — of a fresh egg. That particular

MENTONE 25

egg was not fresh. So far from fresh was it, that she
experienced considerable difficulty in swallowing it.

A memorable episode occurred about a fortnight
ago. I was greeted at about 8 a.m. with moanings in
the passage, where Madame tottered about, her entire
head swathed in a bundle of nondescript woollen
wraps, out of which there peered one steely, vul-
turesque eye. She looked more than ever like an
animated fungus.

Her teeth — ^her teeth ! The pain was past enduring.
The whole jaw, rather ; all the teeth at one and the
same time ; they were unaccountably loose and felt,
moreover, three inches longer than they ought to feel.
Never had she suffered such agony — ^never in all her
life. What could it be ?

It was easy to diagnose periostitis, and prescribe
tincture of iodine.

" That will cost about a franc," she observed.

" Very likely."

" I think rU wait."

Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She
would give anything to obtain relief — ^anything !

** Anything ? " I inquired. " Then you had better
have a morphia injection. I have had numbers of
them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish like
magic. There is my friend Dr. Theophile Fomari "

' ' I know all about him. He demands five francs a
visit, even from poor people like myself."

" You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to
come here and climb your seventy-two stairs for much
less than five francs."

" I think rU wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting
money on food just now, and that is a consolation."

Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing

26 ALONE

complaint, and I would have purchased a franc's
worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth. Not
then. On the contrary, I grew positively low-spirited
when, after three more days, the lamentations began
to diminish in volume. They were sweet music to
my ears, at the time. They are sweeter by far, in
retrospect. If only one could extract the same amount
of innocent and durable pleasure out of all other
landladies ! . . .

My second joyful memory centres round another
thing of beauty — ^a spiky agave (miscalled aloe) of
monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the
garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the
growths of this kind which I have admired in various
lands ; none can vaimt as proud and harmonious a
development as this one. You would say it had been
cast in some dull blue metal. The glaucous wonder
stands by itself, a prodigy of good style, more pleasing
to the eye than all that painfully generated tropicality of
Mr. Hanbury's Mortola paradise. It is flawless. Vainly
have I teased my fancy, endeavouring to discover the
slightest defect in shape or hue. Firm-seated on the
turf, ill exultant pose, with a pallid virginal bloom
upon those mighty writhing leaves, this plant has
drawn me like a magnet, day after day, to drink deep
draughts of contentment from its exquisite lines.

For the rest, the whole agave family thrives at Men-
tone ; the ferox is particularly well represented ; one
misses, among others, that delightful tnedio-picta variety,
of which I have noticed only a few indifferent specimens.*
It is the same with the yuccas ; they flourish here,
though one kind, again, is conspicuous by its absence —

* There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to
see it.

MENTONE 27

the Alkinsi (some such name, for it is long since I
planted my last yucca) with drooping leaves of golden-
purple. You will be surprised at the number of
agaves in flower here. The reason is, that they are
liable to be moved about for ornamental purposes
when they want to be at rest ; the plant, more sensitive
and fastidious than it looks, is outraged by this forceful
perambulation and, in an access of premature senility,
or suicidal mania, or sheer despair, gives birth to its
only flower — ^herald of death. The fatal climax could
be delayed if gardeners, in transplanting, would
at least take the trouble to set them in their old
accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are
concerned. But your professional gardener knows
everything ; it is useless for an amateur to offer him
advice ; worse than useless, of coiu^e, to ask him for
it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might
almost reconcile one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.
... I recall a comely plant, for instance, seven feet
high at the end of June, though now slumbering
underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques — ^there,
where the steps begin

Almost. . . .

And here my afternoon musings, up yonder, took
on a more acrid complexion. I remembered a recent
talk with one of the teachers at the local college who
lamented that his pupils displayed a singular dullness
in their essays ; never, in his long career at different
schools, had he met with boys more destitute of
originality. What could be expected, we both
agreed ? Mentone was of recent growth — ^the old
settlement, Mentone of Symonds, proclaims its exist-
ence only by a ceaseless ^nd infernal clanging of bells,
rivalling Malta — ^no history, no character, no tradition

28 ALONE

— 3. mushroom town inhabited by shopkeepers and
hoteliers who are there for the sole purpose of pluck-
ing foreigners : how should a youngster's imagination
be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless modem-
ism ? Then I asked myself : who comes to these
regions, now that invalids have learnt the drawbacks
of their climate ? Decayed Muscovites, Englishmen
such as you will vainly seek in England, and their
painted women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling
eyes, a Turk or two, Jews and cosmopolitan sharks
and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, Peru-
vian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that
read like a nightmare {see " List of Arrivals " in New
York Herald)— the whole exotic riff-raff enlivened and
perfumed by a copious sprinkling of horizontales.

And I let my glance wander along that ancient
Roman road which led from Italy to Aries and can
still be traced, here and there ; I took in the section
from Genoa to Marseille, an enormous stretch of
country, and wondered : what has this coast ever
produced in the way of thought or action, of great
men or great women ? There is Doria at Genoa, and
Gaby Deslys at Marseille ; that may well exhaust the
list. Ah, and half way through, a couple of generals,
bom at Nice. It is really an instructive phenomenon,
and one that should appeal to students of Buckle —
this relative dearth of every form of human genius in
one of the most favoured regions of the globe. Here,
for unexplained reasons, the Italian loses his better
qualities ; so does the Frenchman. Are the natives
descended from those mysterious Ligurians ? Their
reputation was none of the best ; they were more
prompt, says Crinagoras, in devising evil than good.
That Mentone man, to be sure, whose remains you

MENTONE 29

may study at Monaco and elsewhere, was a fine fellow,
without a doubt. He lived rather long ago. Even he,
by the way, was a tourist on these shores. And were
the air of Mentone not unpropitious to the com-
position of anything save a kind of literary omelette
souffldey one might like to expatiate on Sergi's remark-
able book, and devise thereto an incongruous footnote
dealing with the African origin of sundry Greek gods,
and another one referring to the extinction of these
splendid races of men ; how they came to perish so
utterly, and what might be said in favour of that
novel theory of the influence of an ice-age on the germ-
plasm producing mutations — ^new races which breed
true . . . enough 1 Let us remain at the Riviera level.

In the little museum under those cliffs by the sea,
where the Grimaldi caves are, I found myself lately
together with a yoimg French couple, newly married.
The little bride was vastly interested in the attendant's
explanations of the habits of those remote folk, but,
as I could plainly see, growing more and more dis-
trustful of his statements as to what happened all those
hundreds of thouisands of years ago.

** And this, Messieurs, is the jaw-bone of a cave-
bear — ^the competitor, one might say, in the matter of
lodging-houses, with the gentleman whose anatomy
we have just inspected. Here are bones of hippo-
potamus, and rhinoceros, which he himted with the
weapons you saw. And the object on which your arm
is reposing, Madame, is the tooth of an elephant. Our
ancestor must have been pretty costaud to kill an
elephant with a stone.'*

" Elephants ? " she queried. " Did elephants
scramble about these precipices and ravines ? I
should like to have seen that."

30 ALONE

" Pardon me, Madame. He probably killed them
down there," and his arm swept over the blue Medi-
terranean, lying at our feet.

*' Do you mean to say that elephants paddled across
from Algiers in order to be assassinated by your old
skeleton ? I should like to have seen that."

" Pardon me, Madame. The Mediterranean did
not exist in those days."

The suggestion that this boundless sea should ever
have been dry land, and in the time of her own
ancestors, was too much for the yoimg lady. She
smiled politely, and soon I heard her whispering to
her husband :

" I had him there, eh ? Quel farceur ! "

" Yes. You caught him nicely, I must say. But
one must not be too hard on these poor devils. They
have got to earn their bread somehow."

This will never do.

Italtam j^etimus. . . .

Levanto

I HAVE loafed into Levanto, on the recommen-
dation of an Irish friend who, it would seem,
had reasons of his own for sending me there.

" Try Levanto," he said. " A little place below
Genoa.* Nice, kindly people. And sunshine all the
time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes ! The food is all
right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us
start that subject "

We started it none the less, and at the end of the
discussion he added :

" You must go and see Mitchell there. 1 often
stayed with him. Such a good fellow ! And very
popular in the place. He built an aqueduct for the
peasants — ^that kind of man. Mind you look him up.
He will be bitterly disappointed if you don't call. So
make a note of it, won't you ? By the way, he's dead.
Died last year. I quite forgot."

"Dead, is he? What a pity."

" Yes ; and what a nuisance. I promised to send
him down some things by the next man I came across.
You would have been that man. I know you do not
carry much luggage, but you could have taken one or
two trifles at least. He wanted a respectable English
telescope, I remember, to see the stars with — ^a bit of
an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too — devilish
fond of chutney, the old boy was ; quite a gastro-
maniac. What a nuisance ! Now he will be thinking

31

32 ALONE

I forgot all about it. And he needed a clothes-press ;
I was on no account to forget that clothes-press.
Rather fussy about his trousers, he was. And a type-
writer ; just an ordinary one. But I doubt whether
you could have managed a type-writer."

" Easily. And a bee-hive or two. You know how
I like carrying little parcels about for other people's
friends. What a nuisance 1 Now I shall have to travel
with my bags half empty."

" Don't blame me, my dear fellow. I did not tell
him to die, did I ? " . . .

It must have been about midnight as the train
steamed into Levanto station. Snow was falling ; you
could hear the moan of the sea hard by ; an icy wind
blew down from the moimtains.

Sunshine all the time !

Everybody scurried off the platform. A venerable
porter, after looking in dubious fashion at my two
handbags, declared he would return in a few moments
to transport them to the hotel, and therewith vanished
round the comer. The train moved on. Lamps were
extinguished. Time passed, I strode up and down
in the semi-darkness, trying to keep warm and deter-
mined, whatever happened, not to carry those wretched
bags myself, when suddenly a figure rose out of the
gloom — a military figure of youthful aspect and
diminutive size, armed to the teeth.

" A cold night," I ventured.

" Do you know. Sir, that you are in the war-zone —
the zona di difesa ? "

He began to fumble at his rifle in ominous fashion.

Nice^ kindly people !

I said :

"It is hard to die so young. And 1 particularly

LEVANTO 33

dislike the looks of that bayonet, which is half a yard
longer than it need be. But if you want to shoot me,
go ahead. Do it now. It is too cold to argue."

" Your papers ! Ha, a foreigner. Hotel Nazionale ?
Very good. To-morrow morning you will report your-
self to the captain of the carbineers. After that, to the
municipality. Thereupon you will take the afternoon
train to Spezia. When you have been examined by
the police inspector at the station you will be accom-
panied, if he sees fit, to head-quarters in order that
your passport may be investigated. From there you
will proceed to the Prefecture for certain other for-
malities which will be explained to you. Perhaps —
who knows ? — ^they will allow you to return to
Levanto."

" How can you expect me to remember all that ? "
Then I added : " You are a Sicilian, I take it. And
from Catania."

He was rather surprised. Sicilians, because they
learn good Italian at their schools, think themselves
indistinguishable from other men.

Yes ; he explained. He was from a certain place in
the Catania part of the country, on the slopes of Etna.

I happened to know a good deal of that place from
an old she-cook of mine who was bom there and never
wearied of telling me about it. To his still greater
surprise, therefore, I proceeded to discourse learnedly
about that region, extolling its natural beauties and
healthy climate, reminding him that it was the birth-
place of a man celebrated in antiquity (was it Diodorus
Siculus ?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that he would
doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated a
spot.
, Straightway his manner changed. There is nothing

34 ALONE

these folks love more than to hear from foreign lips
some praise of their native town or village. He waxed
communicative and even friendly ; his eyes began to
sparkle with animation, and there we /night have stood
conversing till simrise had I not felt that glacial wind
searching my garments, chilling my humanity and
arresting all generous impulses. Rather abruptly I
bade farewell to the cheery little reptile and snatched
up my bags to go to the hotel, which he said was only
five minutes' walk from there.

Things turned out exactly as he had predicted.
Arrived at Spezia, however, I found an impleasant
surprise awaiting me. The officer in command, who
was as civil as the majority of such be-medalled
jackasses, suggested that one single day would be quite
sufficient for me to see the sights of Levanto ; I could
then proceed to Pisa or anywhere else outside his
priceless " zone of defence." I pleaded vigorously
for more time. After all, we were allies, were we not ?
Finally, a sojourn of seven days was granted /or reasons
of health. Only seven days : how tiresome ! From
the paper which gave me this authorisation and con-
tained a full account of my personal appearance I
learnt, among other less flattering details, that my
complexion was held to be " natural." It was a drop
of sweetness in the bitter cup.

No butter for breakfast.

The landlord, on being summoned, avowed that to
serve crude butter on his premises involved a flagrant
breach of war-time regulations. The condiment could

LEVANTO 35

not be used save for kitchen purposes, and then only
on certain days of the week ; he was liable to heavy
penalties if it became known that one of his guests
• . . However, since he assumed me to be a prudent
person, he would undertake to supply a due allowance
to-morrow and thenceforward, diough never in the
public dining-room ; never, never in the dining-
room !

That is the charm of Italy, I said to myself. These
folks are reasonable and gifted with imagination. They
make laws to shadow forth an ideal state of things and
to display their good intentions towards the com-
munity at large ; laws which have no sting for the
exceptional type of man who can evade them — ^the
sage, the millionaire, and the " friend of the family.**
Never in the dim*ng-room. Why, of course not.
Catch me breakfasting in any dining-room.

Was it possible ? There, at luncheon in the dining-
room, while devouring those miserable macaroni made
with war-time flour, I beheld an over-tall young
Florentine lieutenant shamelessly engulfing huge slices
of what looked uncommonly like genuine butter, a
miniature mountain of which stood on a platter before
him, and overtopped all the other viands. I could
hardly believe my eyes. How about those regulations ?
Pointing to this golden hillock, 1 inquired softly :

" From the cow ? "

" From the cow."

" Whom does one bribe ? "

He enjoyed a special dispensation, he declared — ^he
need not bribe. Returned from Albania with shattered
health, he had been sent hither to recuperate. He
required not only butter, but meat on meatless days,
as well as a great deal of rest ; he was badly run

36 ALONE

down. . . . And eggs, raw eggs, drinking eggs ; ten
a day, he vows, is his minimum. Enviable convalescent !

The afternoon being clear and balmy, he took me
for a walk, smoking cigarettes innimierable. We
wandered up to that old convent picturesquely perched
against the slope of the hill and down again, across
the rivulet, to the inevitable castle-ruin overhanging
the sea. Like all places along this shore, Levanto lies
in a kind of amphitheatre, at a spot where one or more
streams, descending from the mountains, discharge
themselves into the sea. Many of these watercourses
may in former times have been larger and even navi-
gable up to a point. Their flow is now obstructed,
their volume diminished. I daresay they have driven
the sea further out, with silt swept down from the
uplands. The same thing has struck me in England —
at Lyme Regis, for instance, whose river was also once
navigable to small craft and at Seaton, about a mile
up whose stream stands that village — I forget its name
— ^which was evidently the old port of the district in
pre-Seaton days. Local antiquarians will have attacked
these problems long ago. The sea may have receded.

A glance from this castle-height at the panorama
bathed in that mellow simshine made me regret more
than ever the enforced brevity of my stay at Levari to.
Seven days, for reasons of health : only seven days !
Those mysterious glades opening into the hill-sides,
the green patches of culture interspersed with cypresses
and pines, dainty villas nestling in gardens, snow-
covered moimtains and blue sea — ^above all, the
presence of running water, dear to those who have
lived in waterless lands — ^why, one could spend a
life-time in a place like this !

The lieutenant spoke of Florence, his native city.

LEVANTO 37

He would be there again before long, in order to
present himself to the medical authorities and be
weighed and pounded for the hundredth time. He
hoped they would then let him stay there. He was
tired to death of Levanto and its solitude. How
pleasant fo bid farewell to this " melancholy " sea
which was supposed to be good for his complaints.
He asked :

" Do you know why Florentines, coming home from
abroad, always rejoice to see that wonderful dome of
theirs rising up from the plain ? "
Why?"

Can't you guess ? ''

Let me see. It is sure to be something not quite
proper. H'm. . . . The tower of Giotto, for example,
has certain asperities, angularities, anfractuosities "

" You are no Englishman whatever ! " he laughed.
" Now try that joke on the next Florentine you meet.
. . . There was a German here,'* he went on, " who
loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all
about him. He began writing a book to prove that
there was a different walk to be taken in this neigh-
bourhood for every single day of the year."

" How German. And then ? "

" The war came. He cleared out. The natives
were sorry. This whole coast seems to be saturated
with Teutons — of a respectable class, apparently.
They made themselves popular, they bought houses,
drai^^ wine, and joked with the coimtrymen."

" What do you make of them ? " I inquired.

" I am a Tuscan," he began (meaning : I am above
race-prejudices ; I can view these things with Olympic
detachment). " I think the German says to himself :
we want a world-empire, like those damned English.

38 ALONE

How did they get it ? By piracy. Two can play at
that game, though it may be a little more difficult
now" than formerly. Of course," he added, " we have
a certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here ; the
kind of man, I mean, who stands aside in fervent prayer
while his daughter is being ravished by the Bulgars,
and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt
at First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But
Italians as a whole — ^well, we are lovers of violent and
disreputable methods ; it is our heritage from mediaeval
times. The only thing that annoys the ordinary native
of the country is, if his own son happens to get killed."

I know. That makes him very angry."

It makes him angry not with the Germans who
are responsible for the war, but with his own govern-
ment which is responsible for conscripting the boys.
Ah, what a stupid subject of conversation ! And how
God would laugh, if he had any sense of humour !
Suppose we go down to the beach and lie on the sand;
I need rest : I am very dilapidated."

You look thin, I must say."

Typhoid, and malaria, and pleurisy — ^it is a re-
spectable combination. Thin ? I am the merest
framework, and so transparent that you can see clean
through my stomach. Perhaps you would rather not
try ? Count my ribs, then."

" Count your ribs ? That, my dear Lieutenant, is '
an occupation for a rainy afternoon. Judging by your
length, there must be a good many of them. ..."

it

" We should be kind to our young soldiers," said the

LEVANTO 39

Major to whom I was relating, after dinner, the story
of our afternoon promenade. A burly personage is
the Major, with hooked nose and black moustache and
twinkling eyes — ^retired, now, from a service in the
course of which he has seen many parts of the world ;
a fluent raconteur^ moreover, who keeps us in fits of
laughter with naughty stories and imitations of local
dialects. " We must be nice with them, and always
offer them cigarettes. What say you, Mr. Lieu-
tenant ? "

" Yes, sir. Offer them cigarettes and everything else
you possess. The dear fellows ! They seldom have
the heart to refuse."

" Seldom," echoes the judge.

That is our party ; the judge, major, lieutenant
and myself. We dine together and afterwards sit in
that side room while the fat little host bustles about,
doing nearly all the work of the war-diminished
establishment himself. Presently the first two rise
and indulge in a lively game of cards, amid vigorous
thumpings of the table and cursings at the ways of
Providence which always contrives to ruin the best
hands. I order another litre of wine. The lieutenant,
to keep me company, engulfs half a dozen eggs. He
tells me about Albanian women. I tell him about
Indian women. We thrash the matter out, pursuing
this or that aspect into its remotest ramifications, and
finally come to the conclusion that I, at the earliest
opportimity, must emigrate to Albania, and he to
India.

As for the judge, he was bom under the pale rays
of Saturn. He has attached himself to my heart.
Never did I think to care so much about a magistrate,
and he a Genoese.

40 ALONE

There are some men, a few men, very few, about
whom one craves to be precise. Viewed through the
mist of months, I behold a corpulent and almost
grotesque figure of thirty-five or thereabouts ; blue-
eyed, fair-haired but nearly bald, clean-shaven, be-
spectacled. So purblind has he grown with poring
over contracts and precedents that his movements are
pathologically awkward — embryonic, one might say ;
his unwieldy gestures and contortions remind one of
a seal on shore. The eyes being of small use, he must
touch with his hands. Those hands are the most
distinctive feature of his person ; they are full of ex-
pression ; tenderly groping hands, that hesitate and
fumble in wistful fashion like the feelers of some
sensitive creature of night. There is trouble, too, in
that obese and sluggish body ; trouble to which the
unhealthy complexion testifies. He may drink only
milk, because wine, which he dearly loves — ^^ and such
good wine, here at Levants " — it always deranges the
action of some vital organ inside.

The face is not unlike that of Thackeray.

A man of keen understanding who can argue the
legs off a cow when duly roused, he seems far too good
for a small place like this, where, by the way, he is a
newcomer. Maybe his infinite myopia condemns him
to relative seclusion and obscurity. He has a European
grip of things ; of politics and literature and finance.
Needless to say, I have discovered his cloven hoof ;
I make it my business to discover such things ; one
may (or may not) respect people for their virtues, one
loves them only for their faults. It is a singular tinge
of mysticism and credulity which runs through his
nature. Can it be the commercial Genoese, the
gambling instinct ? For he is an authority on stocks

LEVANTO 41

and shares, and a passionate card-player into the
bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand —
they are but two forms of the same speculative spirit.
Think of the Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-
lovers ! I have yet to meet a full-blown agnostic who
relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not adven-
turous on such lines ; he knows the odd^ against
backing a winner in heaven or earth.

Often, listening to this lawyer's acute talk and
watching his uncouth but sympathetic face, I ask
myself a question, a very obvious question hereabouts :
How could you cause him to swerve from the path of
duty ? How predispose him in your favour ? Sacks
of gold would be unavailing : that is certain. He would
wave them aside, not in righteous Anglo-Saxon in-
dignation, but with a smile of tolerance at human
weakness. To simulate clerical leanings ? He is too
sharp ; he would probably be vexed, not at your
attempt to deceive, but at the implication that you
took him for a fool. A good tip on the stock exchange ?
It might go a little way, if artfully tendered. Perhaps
an apt and unexpected quotation from the pages of
some obsolete jurist — ^the intellectual method of
approach ; for there is a kinship, a kind of free-
masonry, between all persons of intelligence, however
antagonistic their moral outlook. In any case, it
would be a desperate venture to override the con-
science of such a man. May I never have to try !

His stem principles must often cause him suffering,
needless suffering. He is for ever at the mercy of
some categorical imperative. This may be the reason
why I feel drawn to him. Such persons exercise a
strange attraction upon those who, convinced of the
eternal fluidity of all mundane affairs, and how that

42 ALONE

our most sacred institutions are merely conventionali-
ties of time and place^ conform to only one rule of
life — ^to be guided by no principles whatever. They
miss so much, those others. They miss it so patheti-
cally. One sees them staggering gravewards under a
load of self-imposed burdens. A lamentable spectacle,
when one thinks of it. Why bear a cross ? Is it
pleasant ? Is it pretty ?

He also has taken me for walks, but they are too
slow and too short for my taste. Every twenty yards
or so he must stand still to " admire the view " — that
is, to puff and pant.

" What it is," he then exclaims, " to be an old man
in youth, through no fault of one's own. How many
are healthy, and yet vicious to the core ! "

I inquire:

" Are you suggesting that there may be a connec-
tion between soimd health and what society, in its
latest fit of peevish self-maceration, is pleased to call
viciousness ? "

" That is a captious question," he replies. " A man
of my constitution, unfit for pleasures of the body, is
prone to judge severely. Let me try to be fair. I will
go so far as to say that to certain natures self-
indulgence appears to be necessary as — ^as sunshine to
flowers."

Self-indulgence, I thought. Heavily-fraught is that
word ; weighted with meaning. The history of two
thousand years of spiritual dyspepsia lies embedded
in its four syllables. Self-indulgence — ^it is what the
ancients blithely called " indulging one's genius."
Self-indulgence ! How debased an expression, nowa-
days. What a text for a sermon on the mishaps of
good words and good things. How all the glad warmth

LEVANTO 43

and innocence have faded out of the phrase. What a
change has crept over us . . .

Glancing through a glass window not far from the
hotel, I was fortimate enough to espy a young girl
seated in a sewing shop. She is decidedly pretty and
not altogether unaware of the fact, though still a child.
We have entered upon an elaborate, classical flirtation.
With all the artfulness of her years she is using me
to practise on, as a dummy, for future occasions when
she shall have grown a little bigger and more admired ;
she has already picked up one or two good notions.
I pretend to be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if
she were grown up, and profess to feel that she has
really cast a charm — a state of affairs which, if true,
would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a
point. Impossible not to sense the joy which radiates
from her smile and person. That is all, so far. It is
an orthodox entertaiiunent, merely a joke. God knows
what might happen, under given circumstances. Some
of a man's most terrible experiences — ^volcanic cata-
clysms that ravaged the landscape and left a trail of
bitter ashes in their rear — were begun as a joke. You
can say so many things in a joking way, you can do so
many things in a joking way — especially in Northern
countries, where it is easy to joke unseen.

Meanwhile, with Ninetta, I discourse sweet nothings
in my choicest idiom which has grown rather rusty in
England.

Italian is a flowery language whose rhetorical turns
and phrases require constant exercise to keep them in

44 ALONE

smooth working order. No ; that is not correct. It
is not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are
ever at command. What one learns to forget in
England is the simplicity to use them ; to utter, with
an air of deep conviction, a string of what we should
call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your
breath away — ^the things you have to say because these
folks are so enamoured of rhetoric and will not be
happy without it.

An English girl of her social standing — I lay stress
upon the standing, for it prescribes the conduct — ^an
English girl would never listen to such outpourings
with this obvious air of approbation ; maybe she
would ask where you had been drinking ; in every
case, your chances would be seriously diminished.
She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system
which is fatal to success in this country. The affair,
here, must be a siege. It must move onward by those
gradual and inevitable steps ordained of old in the
unwritten code of love ; no lingering by the wayside,
no premature haste. It must march to its end with
the measured stateliness of a quadrille. Passion, well-
restrained passion, should be written on every line of
your countenance. Otherwise you are liable to be
dubbed a savage. I know what it is to be called a
" Scotch bear," and only because I trembled too much,
or too little — 1 forget which — on a certain occasion.

I have heard those skilled in amatory matters say
that the novice will do well to confine his attentions
to young girls, avoiding married women or widows.
They, the older ones, are a bad school — ^too prone to
pardon infractions of the code, too indulgent towards
foreigners and males in general. The girls are not so
easily pleased ; in fact {entre nous) they are often the

LEVANTO 45

devil to propitiate. There is something remorseless
about them. They put you on your mettle. They
keep you dangling. Quick-witted and accustomed to
all the niceties of love-badinage, they listen to every
word you have to say, pondering its possibly veiled
signification. Thus far and no further, they seem to
imply. Yet each hour brings you nearer the goal, if —
if you obey the code. Weigh well your conduct during
the preliminary stage; remember you are dealing
with a professional in the finer shades of meaning.
Presumption, awkwardness, imprudence : these are
the three cardinal sins, and the greatest of these is
imprudence. Be humble, but prepared.

Her best time for conversation, Ninetta teUs me, is
after luncheon, when she is generally alone for a little
while. At that hour therefore I appear with a shirt
or something that requires a button — ^would she
mind ? The hotel people are so dreadfully under-
staffed just now — this war ! — and one really cannot
live without shirts, can one ? Would she mind very
much ? Or perhaps in the evening ... is she more
free in the evening ?

Alas, no ; never in the evenings ; never for a single
moment ; never save on religious festivals, one of
which, she suddenly remembers, will take place in a
week or so.

This is innocent coquetry and perhaps said to test
my self-restraint, which is equal to the occasion. An
impatient admirer might exclaim

" Ah, let us meet, then ! "

— Slanguage which would be permissible after four
meetings, and appropriate after six ; not after two.
With submissive delicacy I reply hoping that the
moon may shine brightly, that she may have all the

46 ALONE

joy she deserves and give her friends all the pleasure
they desire. One of theta, assuredly, would be pained
in his heart not to see her on that evening. Coiild she
guess who it is P Let her try to discover him to-
night, when she is just closing her eyes to sleep, all

alone, and thinking about things

There I leave it, for the present. Unless a miracle
occurs, I fear I will have quitted Levanto before that
festival comes round. True, they have played the
fool with me — ^how often ! Yet, such is my interest
in religious ceremonies, that 1 am frankly annoyed at
the prospect of missing that evening.

One would like to be able to stroll about the beach
with her, or up to the old castle, instead of sitting in
that formal little shop. Such enterprises are im-
possible. To be seen together for five minutes in any
public place might injure her reputation. It is the
drawback of her sex, in this country. I am sorry.
For though she hides it as best she can, striving to
impress me with the immensity of her worldly experi-
ences, there is an unsophisticated freshness in her
outlook. The surface has not been scored over.

So it is, with the young. From them you may learn

what their elders, having forgotten it, can nevermore

teach you. New horizons unroll themselves ; you are

^ adii^ untrodden ground. Talk to a simple creature,

mer or fisherman — well, there is always that touch

common humanity, that sense of eternal needs, to

hion a link of conversation. From a professional —

i'yer, doctor, engineer — ^you may pick up some

LEVANTO 47

pungent trifle which yields food for thought ; it is
never amiss to hearken to a specialist. But the ordi-
nary man of the street, the ordinary man or woman
of society, of the world— what can they tell you about
art or music or life or religion, about tailors and golf
and exhaust-pipes and furniture — ^what on earth can
they tell you that you have not heard already ? A
mere grinding-out of commonplaces ! How often one
has covered the same field ! They cannot even put
their knowledge, such as it is, into an attractive shape
or play variations on the theme ; it is patter ; they
have said the same thing, in the same language, for
years and years ; you have listened to the same thing
from other lips, in the same language, for years and
years. How one knows it all beforehand — every note
in that barrel-organ of echoes ! One leaves them
feeling like an old, old man, vowing one will never
again submit to such a process of demoralization, and
understanding, better than ever, the justification of
monarchies and tyrannies : these creatures are bom
to act and think and believe as others tell them. You
may be drawn to one or the other, detecting an un-
usual kindliness of nature or some endearing trick ;
for the most part, one studies them with a kind of
medical interest. How comes it that this man, re-
spectably equipped by birth, has grown so warped
and atrophied, an animated bimdle of deficiencies ?

Life is the cause — ^life, the onward march of years.
It has a cramping effect ; it closes the pores, intensify-
ing one line of activity at the expense of all the others ;
often enough it encrusts the individual with a kind of
shell, a veneer of something akin to hypocrisy. Your
ordinary adult is an egoist in matters of the affections ;
a specialist in his own insignificant pursuit ; a dull

48 ALONE

dog. Dimly aware of these defects, he confines him-
self to generalities or, grown confidential, tells you of
his little fads, his little love-affairs — such ordinary
ones I Like those millions of his fellows, he has been
transformed into a screw, a bolt, a nut, in the machine.
He is standardised.

A man who has tried to remain a mere citizen of
the world and refused to squeeze himself into the
narrow methods and aspirations of any epoch or
country, will discover that children correspond un-
consciously to his multifarious interests. They are
not standardised. They are more generous in their
appreciations, more sensitive to pure ideas, more
impersonal. Their curiosity is disinterested. The
stock may be rudimentary, but the outlook is spacious ;
it is the passionless outlook of the sage. A child is
ready to embrace the imiverse. And, unlike adults,
he is never afraid to face his own limitations. How
refreshing to converse with folks who have no bile to
vent, no axe to grind, no prejudices to air ; who are
pagans to the core ; who, uninitiated into the false
value of externals, never fail to size you up from a
more spiritual point of view than do their elders ; who
are not oozing politics and sexuality, nor afHicted with
some stupid ailment or other which prevents them
doing this and that. To be in contact with ph^ical
health — it would alone suffice to render their society
a dear delight, quite apart from the fact that if you
are wise and humble you may tiptoe yourself, by
indies, into fairyland.

LEVANTO 49

That scarlet sash of hers set me thinking — thinking
of the comparative rarity of the colour red as an in-
gredient of the Italian panorama. The natives seem
to avoid it in their clothing, save among certain
costumes of the centre and south. You see little red
in the internal decorations of the houses — ^in their wall-
papers, the coloured tiles imderfoot, the tapestries,
table-services and carpets, though a certain fondness
for pink is manifest, and not only in Levanto. There
is a gulf between pink and red.

It is essentially a land of blue and its derivatives —
cool, intellectual tints. The azure sea follows you far
inland with its gleams. Look landwards from the
water — ^purple Apennines are ever in sight. And up
yonder, among the hills, you will rarely escape from
celestial hues.

Speaking of these mountains in a general way, they
are bare masses whose coloration trembles between
misty blue and mauve according to distance, light, and
hour of day. As building-stone, the rock imparts a
grey-blue tint to the walls. The very flowers are
blue ; it is a peculiarity of limestone formation,
hitherto imexplained, to foster blooms of this colour.
Those olive-coloured slopes are of a glaucous tone.

Or wander through the streets of any town and
examine the pottery whether ancient or modem — sure
index of national taste. Greens galore, and blues and
bilious yellows ; seldom will you see warmer shades.
And if you do, it is probably Oriental or Siculo-
Arabic work, or their imitations.

One does not ask for wash-hand basins of sang-de-
boeuf. One wonders, merely, whether this avoidance
of sanguine tints in the works of man be an instinctive
paraphrase of surrounding nature, or due to some

£

50 ALONE

cause lying deep down in the roots of Italian tempera-
ment. I am aware that the materials for producing
crimson are not common in the peninsula. If they
liked the colour, the materials would be forth-
coming.

The Spaniards, a different race, sombre and sensuous,
are not averse to red. Nor are the Greeks. Russians
have a veritable cult of it ; their word for " beautiful "
means red. It is therefore not a matter of climate.

In Italy, those rare splashes of scarlet — ^the flaming
horse-cloths of Florence, a ruddy sail that flecks the
sea, some procession of ruby-tinted priests — ^they come
as a shock, a shock of delight. Cross the Mediter-
ranean, and you will find emotional hues predomi-
nating ; the land is aglow with red, the very shadows
suffused with it. Or go further east. . . .

Meanwhile, Attilio hovers discreetly near the hotel-
entrance, ready to convey me to Jericho. He is a
small mason-boy to whom I contrived to be useful in
the matter of an armful of obstreperous bricks which
refused to remain balanced on his shoulder. Forth-
with, learning that I was a stranger imfamiliar with
Levanto, he conceived the project of abandoning his
regular work and becoming my guide, philosopher and
friend.

" Drop your job for the sake of a few days ? *^ I
inquired. " You'll get the sack, my boy."

Not so, he thought. He was far too serviceable to
those people. They would welcome him with open
arms whenever — ^if ever — ^he cared to return to them.

LEVANTO 51

Was not the mason-in-chief a cousin of his ? Every-
thing could be arranged, without a doubt.

And so it was.

He knows the country ; every nook of the hills and
sea-shore. A pleasanter companion could not be
found ; observant and tranquil, tinged with a gravity
beyond his years — a gravity due to certain family
troubles — ^and with uncommon sweetness of disposi-
tion. He has evidently been brought up with sisters.

We went one day up the valley to a village, I forget
its name, that sits on a hill-top above the spot where
two streams linite ; the last part of the way is a steep
climb imder olives. Here we suddenly took leave of
spring and encountered a bank of wintry snow. It
forced us to take refuge in the shop of a tobacconist
who provided some liquid and other refreshment.
Would I might meet him again, that genial person :
I never shall ! We conversed in English, a language
he had acquired in the course of many peregrinations
about the globe (he used to be a seaman), and great
was Attilio's astonishment on hearing a man whom
he knew from infancy now talking to me in words
absolutely incomprehensible. He asked :

" You two — do you really imderstand each other ? "

On our homeward march he pointed to some spot,
barely discernible, among the hills on our left. That
was where he lived. His mother would be honoured
to see me. We might walk on to Monterosso after-
wards. Couldn't I manage it ?

To be sure I could. And the very next day. But
the place seemed a long way off and the country
absolutely wild. I said :

" You will have to carry a basket of food.'*

" Better than bricks which grow heavier every

52 ALONE

minute. Your basket, I daresay, will be pretty light
towards evening."

The name of his natal village, a mere hamlet, has
slipped my memory. I only know that we moved at
daybreak up the valley behind Levanto and presently
turned to our right past a small mill of some kind ;
olives, then chestnuts, accompanied the path which
grew steeper every moment and was soon ankle-deep
in slush from the melted snow. This was his daily
walk, he explained. An hour and a half down, in the
chill twilight of dawn ; two hours' trudge home,
always up hill, dead tired, through mud and mire, in
pitch darkness, often with snow and rain.

" Do you wonder," he added, " at my preferring
to be with you ? "

" I wonder at my fortune, which gave me such a
charming friend. I am not always so lucky."

" Luck — ^it is the devil. We have had no news from
my father in America for two years. No remittances
ever come from him. He may be dead, for all we
know. Our land lies half untilled ; we cannot pay
for the hire of day labourers. We live from hand to
mouth ; my mother is not strong ; I earn what I can ;
one of my sisters is obliged to work at Levanto.
Think what that means, for us ! Perhaps that is why
you call me thoughtful. I am the oldest male in the
family ; I must conduct myself accordingly. Every-
thing depends on me. It is enough to make anyone
thoughtful. My mother will tell you about it."

She doubtless did, though I gleaned not so much
as the drift of her speech. The mortal has yet to be
bom who can master all the dialects of Italy ; this one
seemed to bear the same relation to the Tuscan tongue
which that of the Basses-Pyrenees bears to French —

LEVANTO 53

it was practically another language. Listening to her,
I caught glimpses, now and then, of familiar Mediter-
ranean sounds ; like lamps shining through a fog,
they were quickly swallowed up in the murk. Unlike
her offspring, she had never been to school. That
accounted for it. A gentle woman, frail in health and
manifestly wise ; the look of the house, of the children,
bore witness to her sagacity. Understanding me as
little as I understood her, our conversation finally
lapsed into a series of smiles, which Attilio interpreted
as best he could. She insisted upon producing some
apples and a bottle of wine, and I was interested to
notice that she poured out to her various male off-
spring, down to the tiniest tot, but drank not a drop
herself, nor gave any to her big daughters.

" She is sorry they will not let you stay at Levanto."

" Carrara lies just beyond the war-zone. I want to
visit the marble-mines when the weather grows a little
warmer, and perhaps write something about them.
Ask her whether you can join me there for a week or
so, if I send the money. Make her say yes.**

She said yes.

With a companion like this, to reflect my moods
and act as buffer between myself and the world, I felt
I could do anything. Already I saw myself exploring
those regions, interviewing directors as to methods of
work and output, poking my nose into municipal
archives and libraries to learn the history of those
various quarries of marble, plain and coloured ;
tracking the footsteps of Michael Angelo at Seravezza
and Pietrasanta and re-discovering that old road of his
and the inscription he left on the rock ; speculating
why the Romans, who ransacked the furthermost
comers of the earth for tinted stones, knew so little

54 ALONE

of the treasures here buried ; why the Florentines
were long content to use that grey bigiOy when the
lordly black portavenere^ with its golden streaks, was
lying at their very doors. . . .

The gods willed otherwise.

Then, leaving that hospitable dame, we strolled
forth along a winding road — a good road, once more —
ever upwards, imder the bare chestnuts. At last the
watershed was reached and we began a zig-zag descent
towards the harbour of Monterosso, meeting not a
soul by the way. Snow lay on these uplands ; it
began to fall softly. As the luncheon hour had arrived
we took refuge in a small hut of stone and there
opened the heavy basket which gave forth all that
heart could desire — ^among other things, a large fiasco
of strong white wine which we drank to the dregs.
It made us both delightfully tipsy. So passed an hour
of glad confidences in that abandoned shelter with the
snowflakes drifting in upon us — one of those hours
that sweeten life and compensate for months of dreary
harassment.

A long descent, past some church or convent famous
as a place of pilgrimage, led to the strand of Monte-
rosso where the waves were sparkling in tepid sunshine.
Then up again, by a steep incline, to a signal station
perched high above the sea. Attilio wished to salute
a soldier-relative working here. I remained discreetly
in the background ; it would never do for a foreigner
to be seen prying into Marconi establishments in this
confounded " zone of defense." Another hour by
meandering woodland paths brought us to where,

* Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be con-
founded with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian
marble of the ancients.

LEVANTO 55

from the summit of a hill, we looked down upon
Levanto, smiling merrily in its conch-shaped basin. . . .

All this cloudless afternoon we conversed in a
flowery dell under the pine trees, with the blue sea
at our feet. It was a different climate from yesterday ;
so warm, so balmy. Impossible to conceive of snow !
I thought I had definitely bidden farewell to winter.

Trains, an endless succession of trains, were rum-
bling through the bowels of the mountain underneath,
many of them filled with French soldiers bound for
Salonika. They have been going southward ever since
my arrival at Levanto.

Attilio was more pensive than usual ; the prospect
of returning to his bricks was plainly irksome. Why
not join for a change, I suggested, one of yonder
timber-felling parties ? He knew all about it. The
pay was too poor. They are cutting the pines all
along this coast and dragging them to the water, where
they are sawn into planks and despatched to the
battle-front. It seemed a pity to Attilio ; at this rate,
he thought, there would soon be none left, and how
then would we be able to linger in the shade and take
our pleasure on some future day ?

** Have, no fear of that,** I said. " And yet — ^would
you believe it ? Many years ago these hills, as far as
you can see to right and left and behind, were bare
like the inside of your hand. Then somebody looked
at the landscape and said : ^ What a shame to make
so little use of these hundreds of miles of waste soil.
Let us try an experiment with a new kind of pine tree

S6 ALONE

which I think will prosper among the rocks. One of
these days people may be glad of them/ "

" Well ? "

" You see what has happened. Right up to Genoa,
and down below Levanto — ^nothing but pines. You
Italians ought to be grateful to that man. The value
of the timber which is now being felled along this
stretch of coast cannot be less than a thousand francs
an hour. That is what you would have to pay, if you
wanted to buy it. Twelve thousand francs a day ;
perhaps twice as much."

" Twelve thousand francs a day ! "

" And do you know who planted the trees ? It was
a Scotsman."

" A Scozzese. What kind of animal is that ? "

" A person who thinks ahead."

" Then my mother is a Scotsman."

I glanced from the sea into his face ; there was
something of the same calm depth in both, the same
sunny composure. What is it, this limpid state of the
mind ? What do we call this alloy of profundity and
frankness ? We call it intelligence. I would like to
meet that man or woman who can make Attilio say
something foolish. He does not know what it is to
feel shy. Serenely objective, he discards those subter-
fuges which are the usual safeguard of youth or in-
experience — ^the evasions, reservations and prevarica-
tions that defend the shallow, the weak, the self-
conscious. His candour rises above them. He feels
instinctively that these things are pitfalls.

" Have you no sweetheart, Attilio ? "

" Certainly I have. But it is not a man's affair.
We are only children, you understand — siamo ancora

ii

LEVANTO 57

" Did you ever give her a kiss ? "

" Never. Not a single one."

I relight my pipe, and then inquire :

" Why not give her a kiss ? "

" People would call me a disrespectful boy."
Nobody, surely, need be any the wiser ? "
She is not like you and me."

A pause. . . .

"Not like us? How so?"

" She would tell her sister."

" What of it ? "

" The sister would tell her mother, who would say
unpleasant things to mine. And perhaps to other
folks. Then the fat would be in the fire. And that
is why."

Another pause. ...

" What would your mother say to you ? "

** She would say : * You are the oldest male ; you
should conduct yourself accordingly. What is this
lack of judgment I hear about ? "

** I begin to understand."

Siena

DRIVEN from the Paradise of Levanto, I
landed not on earth but — ^with one jump —
in Hell. The Turks figure forth a Hell of
ice and snow ; this is my present abode ; its name
is Siena. Every one knows that this town lies on a
hill, on three hills ; the inference that it would be
cold in January was fairly obvious ; how cold, nobody
could have guessed. The sun is invisible. Streets
are deep in snow. Icicles hang from the windows.
Worst of all, the hotels are unheated. Those English,
you know, — ^they refuse to supply us with coal. . . .

Could this be the city where I was once nearly
roasted to death ? It is an effort to recall that glisten-
ing month of the Palio festival, a month I spent at a
genuine pension for a set purpose, namely, to write a
study on the habits of " The Pension-cats of Europe "
— ^those legions of elderly English spinsters who lead
crepuscular lives in continental boarding-houses. I
tore it up, I remember ; it was unfair. These ladies
have a perfect right to do as they please and, for that
matter, are not nearly as ridiculous as many married
couples that live outside boarding-houses. But when
Siena grew intolerable — a stark, ill-provisioned place ;
you will look in vain for a respectable grocer or
butcher ; the wine leaves much to be desired ; indeed,
it has all the drawbacks of Florence and none of its
advantages — why, then we fled into Mr. Edward

58

SIENA 59

Hutton*s Unknoum Tuscany. There, at Abbadia San
Salvatore (though the summit of Mount Amiata did
not come up to expectation) we at last felt cool again,
wandering amid venerable chestnuts and wondrously
tinted volcanic blocks, mountain-fragments, full of
miniature glens and moisture and fernery — b, green
twilight, a landscape made for fairies. • . .

Was this the same Siena from which we once escaped
to get cool ? Muffled up to the ears, with three waist-
coats on, I move in and out of doors, endeavouring
to discover whether there be any appreciable differ-
ence in temperature between the external air and that
of my bedroom. There cannot be much to choose
between them. They say I am the only foreigner now
in Siena. That, at least, is a distinction, a record.
Furthermore, no matches, not even of the sulphur
variety, were procurable in any of the shops for the
space of three days ; that also, I imagine, cannot
yet have occurred within the memory of living
man.

While stamping round the great Square yesterday
to keep my feet warm, a Florentine addressed me ; a
commercial gentleman, it would seem. He dis-
approved of this square — ^it was not regular in shape,
it was not even level. What a piazza ! Such was
his patriotism that he actually went on to say un-
friendly things about the tower. Who ever thought
of building a tower at the bottom of a hill ? It was
good enough, he dared say, for Siena. Oh, yes ;
doubtless it satisfied their artistic notions, such as
they were.

This tower being one of my favourites, I felt called
upon to imdertake its defence. Recollecting all I had
ever heard or read to its credit, citing authorities

6o ALCmE

neither of us had ever dreamt of — ^improvising lustily,

in short, as I warmed to my work — I concluded by

proving it to be one of the seven wonders of the

world. He said :

" Now really ! One would think you had been bom

in this miserable hole. You know what we Florentines

say:

Siena

Di tre cose h piena :

Torri, campane,

E figU di putane."

^^ I admit that Siena is deficient in certain points,"
I replied. " That wonderful dome of yours, for
example — ^there is nothing like it here."

" No, indeed. Ah, that cupola ! Ah, Brunelleschi
— che gemo ! "

" I perceive you are a true Florentine. Could you
perhaps tell me why Florentines, coming home from
abroad, always rejoice to see it rising out of the
plain ? "

" Some enemy has been talking to you. . . ."

A little red-haired boy from Lucca, carrying fo
sale a trayful of those detestable plaster-casts, then
accosted me.

Whp bought such abominations, I inquired ?

Nobody. Business was bad.

Bad ? I could well believe it. Having for the first
time in my life nothing better to do, I did my duty.
I purchased the entire collection of these horrors, on
the understanding that he should forthwith convey
them in my presence to the desolate public garden,
where they were set up, one after the other, on the
edge of a bench and shattered to fragments with our
snow-balls. Thus perished, not without laughter and

SIENA 6i

in a gooa cause » three archangels, two Dantes, a non-
descript lady with brocade garments and a delectable
amorino whose counterpart, the sole survivor, was
reserved for a better fate — ^being carried home and
presented as a gift to my chambermaid.

She was polite enough to call it a beautiful work
of art.

I was polite enough not to contradict her.

Both of us know better. . . .

This young girl has no illusions (few Tuscans have)
and yet a great charm. Her lover is at the front. There
is little for her to do, the hotel being practically empty.
There is nothing whatever for me to do, in these
Arctic latitudes. Bored to death, both of us, we con-
fabulate together huddled in shawls and greatcoats,
each holding a charcoal pan to keep the fingers from
being frostbitten. I say to myself : " You vdll never
find a maidservant of this type in Rome, so sprightly
of tongue, distinguished in manner and spotless in
person — ^never ! "

The same with her words. The phrases trip out
of her mouth, immaculate, each in full dress. Seldom
does she make an original remark, but she says ordi-
nary things in a tone of intense conviction and invests
them vdth an appetizing savour. Wherein lies that
peculiar salt of Tuscan speech ? In its emphasis, its
air of finality. They are emphatic, rather than pro-
found. Their deepest utterances, if you look below
the surface, are generally found to be variants of one
of those ancestral saws or proverbs wherev^rith the
country is saturated. Theirs is a crusted charm.
A hard and glittering sanity, a kind of ageless
enamel, is what confronts us in their temperament.

There are not many deviations from this Tuscan

62 ALONE

standard. Close by, in Umbria, you will find a
softer type.

One can be passably warm in bed. Here I lie for
long, long hours, endeavouring to generate the spark
of energy which will propel me from this inhospitable
mountain. Here I lie and study an old travel-book.
I mean to press it to the last drop.

One seldom presses books out, nowadays. The
mania for scraps of one kind or another, the general
cheapening of printed matter, seem to have dulled that
faculty and given us a scattered state of mind. We
browse dispersedly, in goatish fashion, instead of
nibbling down to tihie root like that more conscientious
quadruped whose name, if I mentioned it, would
degrade the metaphor. Devouring so much, so hastily,
so irreverentially, how shall a man establish close con-
tact with the mind of him who writes, and impregnate
himself with his peculiar outlook to such an extent as
to be able to take on, if only momentarily, a colouring
different from his own ? It is a task requiring sub-
missiveness and leisure.

And yet, what could be more interesting than really
to observe things and men from the angle of another
individual, to install oneself within his mentality and
make it one's habitation ? To sit in his bones — what
glimpses of unexplored regions ! Were a man to
know what his fellow truly thinks ; could he feel in
his own body those impulses which drive the other
to his idiomatic acts and words — ^what an insight he
would gain ! Morally, it might well amount to " tout

SIENA 63

oomprendre, c'est ne rien pardonner " ; but who
troubles about pardoning or condemning ? Intellec-
tually, it would be a feast. Thus immersed into an
alien personaUty, a man would feel as though he lived
two lives y and possessed two characters at the same
time. One's own life, prolonged to an age, could
never afford such unexpected revelations.

The thing can be done, up to a point, with patient
humility ; for everybody writes himself down more or
less, though not everybody is worth the trouble of
deciphering.

I purpose to apply this method ; to squeeze the
juice, the life-blood, out of what some would call a
rather dry Scotch traveller. I read his book in England
for the first time two years ago, and have brought it
here with a view to further dissection. Would I had
known of its existence five years earlier ! Strange to
say, despite my deplorable bookishness (vide Press)
this was not the case ; I could never ascertain either
the author's name or the title of his volume, though I
had heard about him, rather vaguely, long before that
time. It was Dr. Dohm of the Naples Aquarium who
said to me in those days :

" Going to the South ? Whatever you do, don't
forget to read that book by an old Scotch clergyman.
He ran all over the country with a top-hat and an
umbrella, copying inscriptions. He was just your
style : perfectly crazy."

Flattered at the notion of being likened to a Scottish
divine, I made all kinds of inquiries — ^in vain. I
abandoned hope of unearthing the top-hatted anti-
quarian and had indeed concluded him to be a myth,
when a friend supplied me with what may be absurdly
familiar to less bookish people : " The Nooks and

64 ALONE

By-ways of Italy." By Craiifurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.
Liverpool, 1868.

A glance sufficed to prove that this Ramage belonged
to the brotherhood of David Urqnhart, Mure of Cald-
well, and the rest of them. Where are they gone, those
candid inquirers, so full of gentlemanly curiosity, so
informative and yet shrewdly human ; so practical —
think of Urquhart's Turkish Baths — ^though stuffed
with whimsicality and abstractions ? Where is the
spirit that gave them birth ?

One grows attached to these " Nooks and By-ways.'*
An honest book, richly thoughtful, and abounding in
kindly twinkles.

Now, regarding the top-hat. I find no mention of
it in these letters. For letters they are ; letters ex-
tracted from a diary which was written on his return
from Italy in 1828 from " very full notes made from
day to day during my journey." 1828 : that date is
important. It was in 1828, therefore, when the events
occurred which he relates, and he allowed an interval
of forty years to elapse ere making them public.

The umbrella on the other hand is always cropping
up. It pervades the volume like a Leitmotif. It is
" a most invaluable article " for protecting the head
against the sun's rays ; so constantly is it used that
kfter a single month's wear we find it already in " a
sad state of dilapidation." Still, he clings to it. As
a defence against brigands it might prove useful, and
on one occasion, indeed, he seizes it in his hand
" prepared to show fight." This happened, be it
remembered, in 1828. Vainly one conjectures what
the mountain folk of South Italy thought of such a
phenomenon. Even now, if they saw you carrying an

SIENA 65

umbrella about in the simshine, they would cross
themselves and perhaps pray for your recovery —
perhaps not. Yet Ramage was not mad at all. He
was only more individualistic and centrifugal than
many people. Having formed by bitter experience a
sensible theory — ^to wit, that simstroke is unpleasant
and can be avoided by the use of an umbrella — ^he is
not above putting it into practice. Let others think
and do as they please !

For the rest, his general appearance was quite in
keeping. How delightful he must have looked ! Why
have we no such types nowadays ? Wearing a " white
merino frock-coat, nankeen trowsers, a large-brimmed
straw hat, and white shoes,*' he must have been a
fairly conspicuous object in the landscape. That hat
alone will have alarmed the peasantry who to this day
and hour wear nothing but felt on their heads. And
note the predominance of the colour white in his
attire ; it was popular, at that period, with English
travellers. Such men, however, were unknown in
most of the regions which Ramage explored. The
colour must have inspired feelings akin to awe in the
minds of the natives, for white is their hSte noire.
They have a rooted aversion from it and never employ
it in their clothing, because it suggests to their fancy
the idea of bloodlessness — of anaemia and death. If
you want to make one of them ill over his dinner,
wear a white waistcoat.

Accordingly, it is not surprising that he sometimes
finds himself " an object of curiosity." An English
Vice-Consul, at one place, was " quite alarmed at my
appearance." Elsewhere he meets a band of peasant-
women who "took fright at my appearance and
scampered off in the utmost confusion." And what

66 ALONE

happened at Taranto ? By the time of his arrival in
that town his clothes were already in such a state that
" they would scarcely fit an Irish beggar," Umbrella
in hand — he is careful to apprise us of this detail —
and soaked moreover from head to foot after an
immersion in the river Tara, he entered the public
square, which was full of inhabitants, and soon found
himself the centre of a large crowd. Looking, he says,
like a drowned rat, his appearance caused '^ great
amazement."

" What is the matter ? Who is he ? " they asked.

The muleteer explained that he was an Englishman,
and ^* that immediately seemed to satisfy them.**

Of course it did. People in those times were pre-
pared for anything on the part of an Englishman, who
was a far more self-assertive and self-confident creature
than nowadays.

Thus arrayed in snowy hue, like the lilies of the field,
he perambulates during the hot season the wildest
parts of South Italy, strangely unprejudiced, heedless
of bugs and brigands — a real danger in 1828 : did he
not find the large place Rossano actually blocked by
them ? — sleeping in stables and execrable inns, view-
ing sites of antiquity and natural beauty, interrogating
everybody about everything and, in general, " satisfy-
ing his curiosity." That curiosity took a great deal to
satisfy. It is a positive relief to come upon a sentence
in this book, a sentence imique, which betrays a re-
laxing or waning of this terrible curiosity. " It requires
a strong mania for antiquities to persevere examining
such remains as Alife furnishes, and I was soon
satisfied with what I had seen." Nor did he climb
to the summit of Mount Vulture, as he would have
done if the view had not been obscured by a haze.

SIENA 67

His chief concern could not be better summed up
than in the sub-title he has chosen for this volimie :
Wanderings in search of ancient remains and modem
superstitions. To any one who knows the country it
appears astonishing how much he contrived to see,
and in how brief a space of time. He accomplished
wonders. For it was no mean task he had proposed
to himself, namely, " to visit every spot in Itdy which
classic writers had rendered famous."

To visit every spot — ^what a Gargantuan under-
taking ! None but a quite young man could have
conceived such a project, and even Ramage, with all
his good health and zest, might have spent half a life-
time over the business but for his habit of breathless
hustle, which leaves the reader panting behind. He
is always on the move. He reminds one of Mr. Phineas
Fogg in that old tale. The moment he has " satisfied
his curiosity " there is no holding him ; off he goes ;
the smiles of the girls whom he adores, the entreaties
of some gentle scholar who fain would keep him as
guest for the night — ^they are vain ; he is tired to
death, but " time is precious " and he " tears himself
away from his intelligent host " and scampers into
the wilderness once more, as if the Furies were at his
heels. He thinks nothing of rushing from Catanzaro
to Cotrone, from Manduria to Brindisi, in a single
day — ^at a time when there was hardly a respectable
road in the country. Up to the final paragraph of the
book he is " hurrying " because time is " fast running
out."

This sense of fateful hustle — ^this, and the lunbrella
— ^they impart quite a peculiar flavour to his pages.

One would like to learn more about so lovable a
type — for such he was, unquestionably ; one would

68 ALONE

like to know, above all things, why his descriptions of
other parts of Italy have never been printed. Was the
enterprise interrupted by his death ? He tells us that
the diaries of his tours through the central and northern
regions were written ; that he visited " every cele-
brated spot in Umbria and Etruria " and wandered
" as far as the valley of the Po." Where are these
notes ? Those on Etruria, especially, would make
good reading at this distance of time, when even
Dennis has acquired an old-world aroma. The
Dictionary of National Biography might tell us some-
thing about him, but that handy little volume is not
here ; moreover, it has a knack of telling you every-
thing about people save what you ought to know.

So, for example, I had occasion not long ago to look
up the account of Charles Waterton the naturalist.*
He did good work in his line, but nothing is more
peculiar to the man than his waywardness. It was
impossible for him to do anything after the manner
of other folks. In all his words and actions he was a
freak, a curiosity, the prince of eccentrics. Yet this,
the essence of the man, the fundamental trait of his
character which shines out of every page of his writing
and every detail of his daily life — ^this, the feature by
which he was known to his fellows and ought to be
known to posterity — ^it is intelligible from that accoimt
only if you read between the lines. Is that the way
to write " biography " ?

Fortimately he has written himself down ; so has
Ramage ; and it is instructive to compare the wayside

• See North American Review^ September, 1913. Ramage's
Calabrian tour of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky under-
taking. The few travellers who then penetrated into this country
kept to the main roads and never moved without a military escort.
One of them actually hired a brigand as a protection.

SIENA 69

reflections of these two contemporaries as they rove
about the ruins of Italy ; the first, ardent Catholic,
his horizon close-bounded by what the good fathers
of Stonyhurst had seen fit to teach him ; the other,
less complacent, all alive indeed with Calvinistic dis-
putatiousness and ready to embark upon bold specu-
lations anent the origin of heathen gods and their
modem representatives in the Church of Rome ;
amiable scholars and gentlemen, both of them ; yet
neither venturing to draw those plain conclusions
which the " classic remains of paganism " would have
forced upon anybody else — upon anybody, that is,
who lacked their initial warp, whose mind had not
been twisted in youth or divided, rather, into water-
tight compartments.
A long sentence. . • .

Tisa

A FTER a glacial journey— those English ! They
^A will not even give us coal for steam-heating —
I arrived here. It is warmer, appreciably
warmer. Yet I leave to-morrow or next day. The
streets of the town, the distant beach of San Rossore
and its pine trees — ^they are fraught with sad
memories ; memories of an autumn month in the
early nineties. A city of ghosts. . . .

The old hotel has put on a new face ; freshly
decorated, it wears none the less a poverty-stricken
ir. My dinner was bad and insufficient. One grows
sick of those vile maccheroni made with war-time
flour. The place is full of rigid officers taking them-
selves seriously. Odd, how a uniform can fill a
simpleton with self-importance. What does Bacon
say ? I forget. Something apposite — something about
the connection between military costumes and vanity.
For the worst of this career is that it is liable to trans-
form even a sensible man into a fool. I never see
these sinister-clanking marionettes without feelings of
distrust. They are the outward symbol of an atavistic
striving : the modem infdme. We have been dying
for some time past from over-legislation. Now we
are caught in the noose. A bureaucracy is bad
enough. A bureaucracy can at least be bribed.
Militarism dries up even that little fount of the

imagination.

70

PISA 71

Another twenty years of this, and we may be living
in caves again ; they came near it, at the end of the
Thirty Years' War, Such a cataclysm as ours may
account for the extinction of the great Cro-Magnon
civilization — as fine a race, physically, as hte yet
appeared on earth ; they too may have been afflicted
with the plague of nationalism, unless, as is quite
likely, that horrid work was accomplished by a microbe
of some kind. . . .

In the hour of evening, under a wintry sky amid
whose darkly massed vapours a young moon is peering
down upon this maddened world, I wander alone
through deserted roadways towards that old solitary
brick-tower. Here I stand, and watch the Amo
rolling its sullen waves. In Pisa, at such an hour, the
Amo is the emblem of Despair. Swollen with melted
snow from the mountains, it has gnawed its miserable
clay banks and now creeps along, leaden and inert,
half-solid, like a torrent of liquid mud — ^irresolute
whether to be earth or water ; whether to stagnate
here for ever at my feet, or crawl onward yet another
sluggish league into the sea. So may Lethe look, or
Styx : the nightmare of a flood.

There is dreary monotony in all Italian rivers, once
they have reached the plain. They are livelier in their
upper reaches. At Florence — ^where those citron-
tinted houses are mirrored in the stream — ^you may
study the Arno in all its ever-changing moods. Seldom
is its colour quite the same. The hue of caf6-au-lait
in full spate, it shifts at other times between apple-
green and jade, between celadon and chrysolite and
eau-de-Nil. In the weariness of summer the tints are
prone to fade altogether out of the waves. They grow
bleached, devitalized ; they are spent, withering

72 ALONE

away like grass that has lain in the sun.* Yet with
every thunder-storm on yonder hills the colour-sprite
leaps back into the waters.

Your Florentine of the humbler sort loves to dawdle
along the bank on a bright afternoon, watching the
play of the river and drawing a kind of philosophic
contentment out of its cool aquatic humours. Pre-
sently he reaches that bridge — ^the jewellers' bridge.
He thinks he must buy a ring. Be sure the stone will
reflect his Arno in one of its moods. I will wager he
selects a translucent chrysoprase set in silver, a cheap
and stubborn gem whose frigidly uncompromising
hue appeals in mysterious fashion to his own tem-
perament.

Whoever suffers from insomnia will find himself
puzzling at night over questions which have no par-
ticular concern for him at other times. And one
seems to be more wide awake, during those moments,
than by day. Yet the promptings of the brain, which
then appear so lucid, so novel and convincing, will
seldom bear examination in the light of the sun. To
test the truth of this, one has only to jot down one's
thoughts at the time, and peruse them after break-
fast. How trite they read, those brilliant imaginings I

For reasons which I cannot fathom, I pondered last
night upon the subject of heredity ; a subject that had

* Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle in
the stream-bed — mere disconnected pools to show where the river
w^, and will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence.
Grant DufF says he has seen th^ Arno " bhie/* So have I : pi
hepatic blue,

PISA 73

a certain fascination for me in my biological days.
The lacunae of science ! We "weigh the distant stars
and count up their ingredients. Yet here is a pheno-
menon which lies under our very hand and to which
is devoted the most passionate study : what have we
learnt of its laws ? Be that as it may, there occurred
to me last night a new idea. It consisted in putting
together two facts which have struck me separately on
many occasions, but never conjointly. Taken together,
I said to myself, and granted that both are correct,
they may help to elucidate a dark problem of national
psychology.

The first one I state rather tentatively, having
hardly sufficient material to go upon. It is this. You
will find it more common in Italy than in England for
the male offspring of a family to resemble the father and
the female the mother. I cannot suggest a reason for
this. I have observed the fact — ^that is all.

Let me say, in parenthesis, that it is well to confine
oneself to adults in such researches. Childhood and
youth is a period of changing lights and half-tones
and temperamental interplay. Characteristics of body
and mind are held, as it were, in solution. We think
a child takes after its mother because of this or that
feature. If we wait for twenty-five years, we see the
true state of affairs ; the hair has grown dark like the
father's, the nose, the most telling item of the face,
has also approximated to his type, likewise the
character — in fact the offspring is clearly built on
paternal lines. And vice- versa. To study children
for these purposes would be waste of time.

The second observation I regard as axiomatic. It
is this. You zvill nowhere find an adult offspring which
reproduces in any marked degree the physical features of

74 ALONE

one parent displaying in any marked degree the mental
features of the other. That man whose external build
and complexion is entirely modelled upon that of his
hard materialistic father and who yet possesses all the
artistic idealism of his maternal parent — such creatures
do not exist in nature, though you may encounter
them as often as you please in the pages of novelists.

Let me insert another parenthesis to observe that
I am speaking of the broad mass, the average, in a
general way. For it stands to reason that the of&pring
may be vaguely intermediate between two parents,
may resemble one or both in certain particulars and
not in others, may hark back to ancestral types or bear
no appreciable likeness to any one discoverable. It is
a theme admitting of endless combinations and per-
mutations. Or again, in reference to the first pro-
position, it would be easy for any traveller in this
country to point out, for example, a woman who
portrays the qualities of her father in the clearest
manner. I know a dozen such cases. Hundreds of
them would not make them otherwise than what I
think they are — ^rarer here than in England.

Granting that both these propositions are correct,
what should we expect to find ? That in Italy the
male type of character and temperament is more con-
stant, more intimately associated with the male tjrpe
of feature ; and the same with the female. In other
words, that the categories into which their men and
women fall are fewer and more clearly defined, by
reason of the fact that their mental and moral sex-
characteristics are more closely correlated with their
physical sex-characteristics. That the Englishman on
the other hand, male or female, does not fall so easily
into categories ; he is complex and difficult to " place,"

PISA 75

the psychok>gical sex-boundaries being more hazily
demarcated. There is iridescence and ambiguity here,
whereas Italians of either sex, once the rainbow period
of youth is over, are relatively unambiguous ; easily
" placed."

Is this what we find ? I think so.

Speculations. • . .

I never pass through Pisa without calling to mind
certain rat-hunts in company with J. O. M., who was
carried out of the train at this very station, dead,
because he refused to follow my advice. He was my
neighbour at one time ; he lived near the river Mole
in relative seclusion ; coursing rats with Dandie
Dinmonts was the only form of exercise which en-
tailed no strain on his weakened constitution. How
he loved it I

This O was a man of mystery and violence, who

threw himself into every kind of human activity with
super-human, Satanic, zest ; traveller, sportsman,
financier, mining expert, lover of wine and women,
of books and prints ; one of the founders, I believe,
of the Rhodesia Company ; faultlessly dressed, in-
fernally rich and, when he chose — ^which was fairly
often — ^phenomenally brutal. Neither manner nor
face were winning. He was swarthy almost to black-
ness, quite un-English in looks, with rather long hair,
a most menacing moustache and the fiercest eyes
imaginable ^ a king of the gipsies, so far as features
went. Something sinister hung about his personality.
A predatory type, unquestionably ; never so happy

76 ALONE

as when pitting his wits or strength against others,
tracking down this or that — ^by choice, living creatures.
He had taken life by the throat, and excesses of various
kinds having shattered his frame, there was an end,
for the time being, of deer-stalking and tigers ; it was
a tame period of rat-hunts with those terriers whose
murderous energies were a pis alter ^ yielding a sort of
vicarious pleasure. The neighbourhood was de-
populated of such beasts, purchased at fancy prices ;
when a sujSicient quantity (say, half a hundred) had
been collected together, I used to receive a telegram
containing the single word " rats.^* Then the pony
was saddled, and I rode down for the grand field
day.

We once gave the hugest of these destroyed rodents,
I remember, to an amiable old sow, a friend of the
family. What was she going to do ? She ate it, as
you would eat a pear. She engulfed the corpse
methodically, beginning at the head, working her way
through breast and entrails while her chops dripped
with gore, and ending with the tail, which gave some
little trouble to masticate, on account of its length
and tenuity. Altogether, decidedly good sport. . . .

Then O disappeared from my ken. Years went

by. Improving health, in the course of time, tempted
him back into his former habits ; he built himself a
shooting lodge in the Alps. We were neighbours
again, having no ridge worth mentioning save the
Schadona pass between us. I joined him once or
twice — chamois, instead of rats. This place was con-
structed on a pretentious scale, and he must have paid
fantastic simis for the transport of material to that
remote region (you could watch the chamois from the
very windows) and for the rights over all the country

PISA 77

round about.* O told me that the superstitious

Catholic peasants raised every kind of difficulty and
objection to his life there ; it was a regular conspiracy.
I suggested a more friendly demeanour, especially
towards their priests. That was not his way. He
merely said : " 111 be even with them. Mark my
words." . . .

There followed another long interval, during which
he vanished completely. Then, one April afternoon
on the Posilipo, a sailor climbed up with a note from
him. The Consul-General said I lived here. If so,
would I come to Bertolini's hotel at once ? He was
seriously ill.

Neighbours once more!

I left then and there, and was appalled at the change
in him. His skin was drawn tight as parchment over
a face the colour of earth, there was no flesh on his
hands, the voice was gone, though fire still gleamed
viciously in the hollows of his eyes. That raven-black
hair was streaked with grey and longer than ever,
which gave him an incongruously devout appearance.
He had taken pitiful pains to look fresh and appetizing.

So we sat down to dinner on BertoKni's terrace, in
the light of a full moon. O ate nothing whatever.

He arrived from Egypt some time ago, on his way
to England. The doctor had forbidden further travel-
ling or any other exertion on account of various
internal complications ; among other things, his heart,
he told me, was as large as a child's head.

" I hope you can stand this food," he whispered, or
rather croaked. " For God's sake, order anything you
fancy. As for me, I can't even eat like you people.

* It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown
Prince.

78 ALONE

Asses' milk is what I get, and slops. Done for, this
time. I'm a dying man ; anybody can see that. A
dying man "

" Something," I said, " is happening to that
moon."

It was in eclipse. Half the bright surface had been

ominously obscured since we took our seats. O

scowled at the satellite, and went on :

" But I won't be carried out of this dirty hole
(Bertolini's) — ^not feet first. Would you mind my
gasping another day or two at your place ? Rolf e has
told me about it."

We moved him, with infinite trouble. The journey
woke his dormant capacities for invective. He cursed
at the way they jolted him about ; he cursed himself
into a collapse that day, and we thought it was all over.
Then he rallied, and became more abusive than before.
Nothing was right. Stairs being forbidden, the whole
lower floor of the house was placed at his disposal ;
the establishment was dislocated, convulsed ; and
still he swore. He swore at me for the better part of
a week ; at the servants, and even at the good doctor
Malbranc, who came every morning in a specially
hired steam-launch to make that examination which
always ended in his saying to me : '^ You must humour
him. Heart-patients are apt to be irritable." Irritable
was a mild term for this particular patient. His
appetite, meanwhile, began to improve.

It was soon evident that my cook had not the
common sense to prepare his invalid dishes ; . a second
one was engaged. Then, my gardener and sailor-boy
being manifest idiots, it became necessary to procure
an extra porter to fetch the numberless odd things he
needed from town every day, and every hour of the

PISA 79

day, I wrote to the messenger people to send the
most capable lad on their books ; we would engage
him by the week, at twice his ordinary pay. He
arrived ; a limp and lean nonentity, with a face like
a boiled codfish.

This miserable youth promptly became the object

of O 's bitterest execration. I soon learnt to dread

those conferences, those terrific scenes which I was

forced to witness in my capacity of interpreter. O

revelled in them with exceeding gusto. He used to
gird his loins for the effort of vituperation ; I think
he regarded the performance as a legitimate kind of
exercise — ^his last remaining one. As soon as the boy
returned from town and presented himself with his

purchases, O would glare at him for two or three

minutes with such virulence, such concentration of
hatred and loathing, such a blaze of malignity in his
black eyes, that one fully expected to see the victim
wither away ; all this in dead silence. Then he
would address me in his usual whisper, quite calmly,
as though referring to the weather :

" Would you mind telling that double-distilled
abortion that if he goes on making such a face I shall
have to shoot him. Tell him, will you ; there's a
good fellow."

And I had to " humour " him.

" The gentleman " — I would say — " begs you will
try to assume another expression of countenance," or
words to that effect ; whereto he would tearfully
reply something about the will of God and the
workmanship of his father and mother, honest
folks, both of them. I was then obliged to add
gravely :

" You had better try, all the same, or he may shoot

It

80 ALONE

you. He has a revolver in his pocket, and a shooting
licence from your government."

This generally led to the production of a most
ghastly smile, calculated to convey an ingratiating
impression.

" Look at him,*' O would continue. "He is

almost too good to be shot. And now let's see. What
does he call these things ? Ask him, will you ? *'
Asparagus."

Tell him that when I order asparagus I mean
asparagus and not walking-sticks. Tell him that if
he brings me such objects again, I'll ram the whole
bundle up — down his throat. What does he expect
me to do with them, eh ? You might ask him, will
you ? And, God ! what's this ? Tell him {accelle-
rando) that when I send a prescription to be made up
at the Royal Pharmacy "

" He explained about that. He went to the other
place because he wanted to hurry up."

" To hurry up ? Tell him to hurry up and get to
blazes. Oh, tell him "

" You'll curse yourself into another collapse, at
this rate."

To the doctor's intense surprise, he lingered on ;
he actually grew stronger. Although never seeming
to gain an ounce in weight, he could eat a formidable
breakfast and used to insist, to my horror and shame,
in importing his own wine, which he accused my
German maid Bertha of drinking on the sly. Callers
cheered him up — Rolfe the Consul, Dr. Dohrn of the
Aquarium, and old Marquis Valiante, that perfect
botanist — all of them dead now ! After a month and
a half of painful experiences, we at last learnt to handle
him. The household machinery worked smoothly.

PISA 8i

A final and excruciating interview ended in the dis-
missal of the errand-boy, and I personally selected
another one — 3, pretty little rascal to whom he took a
great fancy, over-tipping him scandalously. He
needed absolute rest ; he got it ; and I think was
fairly happy or at least tranquil (when not writhing in
agony) at the end of that period. I can still see him
in the sunny garden, his clothes hanging about an
emaciated body — 3, skeleton in a deck-chair, a death's
head among the roses. Humiliated in this inactivity,
he used to lie dumb for long hours, watching the
butterflies or gazing wistfully towards those distant
southern mountains which I proposed to visit later in
the season. Once a spark of that old throttling in-
stinct flared up. It was when a kestrel dashed over-
head, bearing in its talons a captured lizard whose tail
fluttered in the air : the poor beast never made a

faster journey in its life. " Ha ! " said O . " That's

sport."

At other times he related, always in that hoarse
whisper, anecdotes of his life, a life of reckless adven-
ture, of fortunes made and fortunes lost ; or spoke of
his old passion for art and books. He seemed to have
known, at one time or another, every artist and con-
noisseur on either side of the Atlantic ; he told me it
had cost about £10,000 to acquire his unique knowledge
and taste in the matter of mezzotints, and that he was
concerned about the fate of his " Daphnis and Chloe "
collection which contained, he said, a copy of every
edition in every language — ^all except the unique
Elizabethan version in the Huth library (now British
Museum). I happened to have one of the few modem
reprints of that stupid and ungainly book : would he
accept it ? Not likely ! He was after originab.

82 ALONE

One day he suddenly announced :

" I am leaving you my small library of erotic litera-
ture, five or six himdred pieces, worth a couple of
thousand, I should say. Some wonderful old French
stuff, and as many Rops as you like, and Persian and
Chinese things — I can see you gloating over them !
Don't thank me. And now I'm off to England."

" To England ? "

The doctor peremptorily forbade the journey ; if
he must go, let him wait another couple of weeks and

gain some more strength. But O was obdurate ;

Cyed up, I imaginefwith the prospect of movement
and of causing some little trouble at home. As the
weather had grown unusually hot, I booked at his own
suggestion a luxurious cabin on a home-boimd liner
and engaged a valet for the journey. On my handing
him the tickets, he said he had just changed his mind ;
he would travel overland ; there were some copper
mines in Etruria of which he was director ; he meant
to have a look at them en route and ^* give those people
Hell " for something or other. I tried to dissuade
him, and all in vain. Finally I said :

" You'll die, if you travel by land in this heat."

So he did. They carried him out of the train
in the early days of Jime, here at Pisa, feet
first. • • •

I never learnt the fate of that library of erotic
literature. But his will contained one singular pro-
vision : the body was to be cremated and its ashes
scattered among the hills of his Alpine property. This
was his idea of " being even " with the superstitious
peasantry, who would thenceforward never have
ventiu-ed out of doors after dark, for fear of encounter-
ing his ghost. He would harass them eternally I It

PISA 83

was no bad notion of revenge. A sandy-haired gentle-
man came from Austria to Italy to convey this handful
of potential horrors to the mountains, but the customs
officials at Ala refused to allow it to enter the country
and it ultimately came to rest in England.
Another queer thing happened. Since his arrival

from Egypt, O had never been able to make up his

mind to pay any of his innumerable bills ; the creditors,
aware of the man's wealth and position, not pressing
for a settlement. I rather think that this procrastina-
tion, this reluctance to disburse ready money, is a
symptom of his particular state of ill-health ; I have
observed it with several heart-patients (and others as
well) ; however that may be, it became a source of
real vexation to me, for hardly was the news of his
death made public before I began to be deluged with
outstanding accoimts from every quarter — ^trades-
people, hotel keepers, professional men, etc. I finally
sent the docimients with a pressing note to his repre-
sentatives 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

84 ALONE

per cent, had anticipated that eventuality by demand-
ing 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

Febrtmry

VIAREGGIO, dead at this season, is a rowdy
place in summer ; not rowdy, however, after
the fashion of Margate. There is a sugges-
tive 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 Traste-
vere : 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 modem town built on a plain of mud
and sand, a town of heartrending monotony, the
least picturesque of all cities in the peninsula, the

85

86 ALONE

least Italian. It has not even a central piazza ! You
may conjure up visions of Holland and detect some-
thing 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 sxmuner weeks and live on the
proceeds for the rest of the year. There is no com-
merce 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 ofiicial 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-

f

VIAREGGIO 87

or-other who owns the house. Although convulsed
with grief, both of them, at the moment of my arrival
— z 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-hall 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
sufiiciently 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 comer.

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 — z
veritable Proteus ! I know it well, though its father
and mother would be hard to identify. It was bom
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.

88 ALONE

Ischia — ^have contributed their share to its composi-
tion ; Tiber-water is the one and constant ingredient.
This ripa is exported by the ton to wine-less centres
like Genoa and there drunk under any name you
please. A few butts have doubtless been dropped
overboard at Viareggio for the poisoning of its ten
thousand summer visitors.

Quite a. jolly crowd of folk assembles here every
evening. There is, of course, the ubiquitous retired
major ; also some amusing gentlemen who run up
and down between this place and Lucca on mysterious
errands connected, I fancy, with oil ; as well as a
dissipated young marquis sent hither from Rimini by
that ridiculously old-fashioned father to expiate his
sins— his gambling debts, his multifarious and costly
love-adventures, and the manslaughter of a carpenter
whom he ran over in his car.* My favourite is a fat
creature with a glorious fleshy face, the face of some
Neronian parveiui — a memorable face, full of the
brutal prosperity of Trimalchio's Banquet. He told
me, yesterday, a long story about a local saint in one
of their villages — 2l saint of yesterday who, curing
diseases and performing various other miracles, began
to think himself, as their manner is, God Almighty,
or something to that effect. The police shot him as a
revolutionary, because he had gathered a few ad-
herents.

" Rather an extreme measure," I suggested.

" It is. Not that I love the saints. But I love the
police still less."

" Like every good Italian."

" Like every good Italian. ..."

News from Attilio. He cannot come. Both mother

* He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died.

VIAREGGIO 89

and sister are ill. He delayed writing in the hopes
of their getting better ; he wanted to join me, but
they are always " auguale " — ^the same ; in short, he
must stay at home, as appears from the following
plaintive and rather puzzling postcard, the address of
which I had providentially written myself :

Caro G, N. Dorcola ho ricevuto la sua cara lettera
e son cozi contento da sentire le sue notizzie io non
posso venire perche mia madre e amalata e mia sorella
Enrica era tardato ascrivere perche mi credevo che
tesano mellio ma invece sono sempre auguale perche
volevo venire ci mando dici mille baci e una setta
dimano addio al Signior D. Dor.

But for the fact that, counting on a fortnight's trip
to Carrara, I have asked for certain printed matter to
be forwarded here from England, I would jump into
the next train for anjrwhere.

Running along the sea on either side of Viareggio
is a noble forest of stone pines where the wind is
scarce felt, though you may hear it sighing overhead
among the crowns. This is the place for a promenade
at all hours of the day. Children climb the trunks
to fetch down a few remaining cones or break off dried
branches as fuel. A sportsman told me that several
of them lose their lives every year at this adventure.
What was he doing here, with a gun ? Waiting for a
hare, he said. They always wait for hares. There
are none !

Then a poor thin woman, dressed in black and
gathering the prickly stalks of gorse for firewood, began

90 ALONE

to converse with me, reasonably enough at first. All
of a sudden her language changed into a burning
torrent of insanity, with wild gesticulations. She was
the Queen of the country, she avowed, the rightful
Queen, and they had robbed her of all her children,
every one of them, and all her jewels. I agreed — ^what
else could one do ? Being in the combustible stage, she
went over the argument again and again, her eyes
fiercely flashing. Nothing could stop the flow of her
words. I was right glad when another woman came
to my rescue and pushed her along, as you would a
calf, saying:

" You go home now, it's getting dark, run along ! —
yes, yes ! you're the Queen right enough — she was in
the asylum. Sir, for three months and then they let
her out, the fools — of course you are, everybody knows
that ! But you really mustn't annoy tlus gentleman
any more — ^her husband and son were both killed in
the war, that's what started it — ^we'll fetch them to-
morrow at the palace, all those things, aiu/ the children,
only don't talk so much — ^they thought she was cured,
but just hark at her ! — va hensy it's all yours, only get
along — she'll be back there in a day or two, won't
she ? — ^really, you are chattering' much too much, for
a Queen ; va hene^ va henSy va bene "

A sad little incident, under the pines. • • .

A fortnight has elapsed.

I refuse to budge from Viareggio, having discovered
the village of Corsanico on the heights yonder and, in
that village, a family altogether to my liking. How

VIAREGGIO 91

one stumbles upon delightful folks ! Set me down in
furthest Cathay and I will undertake to find, soon
afterwards, some person with whom I am quite
prepared to spend the remaining years of life.

The driving-road to Corsanico is a never-ending
affair. Deep in mire, it meanders perversely about the
plain ; meanders more than ever, but of necessity,
once the foot of the hills is reached. I soon gave it
up in favour of the steam-tram to Canmiaiore which
deposits you at a station whose name I forget, whence
you may ascend to Corsanico through a village called,
I think, Momio. That route, also, was promptly
abandoned when the path along the canal was revealed
to me. This waterway runs in an almost straight line
from Viareggio to the base of that particular hill on
whose summit lies my village. It is a monotonous
walk at this season ; the rich marsh vegetation slumbers
in the ooze underground, waiting for a breath of
summer. At last you cross that big road and strike
the limestone rock.

Here is no intermediate ^ region, no undulating
ground, between the upland and the plain. They
converge abruptly upon each other, as might have
been expected, seeing that these hills used to be the
old sea-board and this green level, in olden days, the
Mediterranean. Three different tracks, leading steeply
upward through olives and pines and chestnuts from
where the canal ends, will bring you to Corsanico. I
know them all. I could find my way in darkest
midnight.

Days have passed ; days of delight. I climb up in
the morning and descend at nightfall, my mind well
stored with recollections of pleasant talk and smiling
faces. A large place, this Corsanico, straggling about

92 ALONE

the hill-top with scattered farms and gardens ; to
reach the tobacconist — ^near whose house, by the way,
you obtain an unexpected glimpse into the valley of
Cammaiore — ^is something of an excursion. As a rule
we repose, after luncheon, on a certain wooded knoll.
We are high up ; seven or eight hundred feet above
the canal. The blue Tyrrhenian is dotted with
steamers and sailing boats, and yonder lies Viareggio
in its belt of forest ; far away, to the left, you discern
the tower of Pisa. A placid lake between the two,
wood-engirdled, is now famous as being the spot
selected by the great Maestro Puccini to spend a
summer month in much-advertised seclusion. I am
learning the name of every locality in the plain, of
every peak among the moimtains at our back.

" And that little ridge of stone," says my com-
panion, " — do you see it, jutting into the fields down
there ? It has a queer name. We call it La Sirena."

La Sirena. . . .

It is good to live in a land where such memories
cling to old rocks.

By what a chance has the name survived to haunt
this inland crag, defying geological changes, outlasting
the generations of men, their creeds and tongues and
races ! How it takes one back — ^back into hoary
antiquity, into another landscape altogether ! One
thinks of those Greek mariners coasting past this pro-
montory, and pouring libations to the Siren into an
ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now
sows his rice and turnips.

Paganisme immortelj es-tu mart ? On le dit.
Mais Party tout baSy s*en moquey et la Sirine en rit.

They are still here, both sea and Siren ; they have

VIAREGGIO 93

only agreed to separate for a while. The ocean shines
out yonder in all its luminous splendour of old. And
the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the
gods are kind.
My Siren dwelb at Corsanico.

Viareggio

May

THOSE Sirens ! They have called me back,
after nearly three months in Florence, to
that village on the hill-top. Nothing but
smiles up there.

And never was Corsanico more charming, all
drenched in sunlight and pranked out with fresh
green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to myself,
I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away,
and there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet — can it be
possible ? — I am even happier here. Seldom does the
event surpass one's hopes.

Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives
already heavy-laden, through patches of high-standing
com and beans, across the little brook, past that
familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the
canal, in full content. Another golden moment of
life ! Strong exhalations rose up from the swampy
soil, that teemed and steamed under the hot breath
of spring ; the pond-like water, once so bare, was
smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh-plants and
loud with the music of love-sick frogs. Stars were
reflected on its surface.

Star-gazing, my Star ? Would I were Heaven, to
gaze on thee with many eyes.

Such was my mood, a Hellenic mood, a mood
summed up in that one word TereXarroi — ^not to be

94

VIAREGGIO 95

taken, however, in the sense of " all's over." Quite
the reverse ! Did Shelley ever walk in like humour
along this canal ? I doubt it. He lacked the master-
key. An evangelist of a kind, he was streaked, for all
his paganism, with the craze of world-improvement.
One day he escaped from his chains into those moun-
tains and there beheld a certain Witch — only to be
called back to mortality by a domestic and critic-bitten
lady. He tried to translate the Symposium. He never
tried to live it. . . .

I have now interposed a day of rest.

My welcome in the villa situated in the street
called after a certain politician was that of the Prodigal
Son. There was a look bordering on affection in the
landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once
the weather was warmer. She would now give me a
cool room, instead of that old one facing south. Those
much-abused cement floors — ^they were not so incon-
venient, were they, at this season ? The honey for
breakfast ? Assuredly ; the very same. And there
was a tailor she had discovered in the interval, cheaper
and better than that other one, if anything required
attention.

And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London
landladies and London charwomen — Shaving suffered
the torments of Hell, for more years than I care to
remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags
and harpies and drunken sluts — I am now rewarded
by the services of something at the other end of the
human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good

r

96 ALONE

dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life
seems to be to save my money and make me comfort-
able. " Don't get your shoes soled there ! " she told
me two days ago. " That man is from Viareggio. I
know a better place. Let me see to it. I will say they
are my husband's, and you will pay less and get
better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she
forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days
had already known my habits better than one of those
London sharks and furies would have known them at
the end of a century. . . .

My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I
have just left. Equally efficient, she represented quite
a different type. She was not of the familiar kind, but
rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair
and an upright carriage. She never mothered me ;
she conversed, and gave me the impression of being
in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I used to say
to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods
enlivened with steely glints of humoiu: — such were the
feelings of those who conversed with Madame de
Maintenon ; such and not otherwise. It would be
difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or
vulgar. Yet she must have been a naughty little girl
not long ago. She never dreams that I know what I
do know : that she is mistress of a high police func-
tionary and greatly in favour with his set — z most
useful landlady, in short, for a virtuous young bachelor
like myself.

On learning this fact, I made it my business to study
her weaknesses and soon discovered that she was fond
of a particular brand of Chianti. A flask of this
vintage was promptly secured ; then, dissatisfied with
its materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with

VIAREGGIO 97

a wreath of violets and despatched it to her private
apartment by the prettiest child 1 could pick up in
the street. That is the way to touch their hearts
The offering was repeated at convenient intervals.

A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one
morning, about the war. I found she shared the view
common to many others, that this is an " interested "
war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines
which work against peace. There are so many persons
** interested ** in keeping up the present state of
affairs, people who now make more money than they
ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie.
The soldier in the field, the chief person concerned, is
voiceless and of no account when compared with this
army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if
the war came to an end. They will fight like demons,
to keep the fun going. What else should they do ?
Their income is at stake. A man's heart is in his
purse.

I asked :

" Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war,
how would you set about it ? "

Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to
her.

" I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense.
It makes things too pleasant. It would bring the
troops to their senses and cause them to march home
and say : Basta ! We have had enough."

" Don't you find the Germans a little prepotenti? "

" Prepotenti : yes. By all means let us break their
heads. And then, caro Leiy let us learn to imitate
them. . . ."

That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine
and myself in such mellow mood that I would have

H

98 ALONE

shared my last crust with some shipwrecked arch-
duchess and ahnost forgiven mine enemies, though
not until I had hit them back — I strolled about the
Cascine. They have done something to make this
place attractive ; just then, at all events, the short-
comings were imobserved amid the burst of green
things overhead and imderfoot. Originally it must
have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as
it does, in a dead level along the Amo. Yet there is
earth and water ; and a good deal can be donef with
such materials to diversify the surface. More might
have been accomplished here. For in the matter of
hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the
Cascine are not remarkable. One calls to mind what
has been attained at Kew Gardens in an identical
situation, and with far less sunshine for the landscape
gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town
in Germany where, on a plain as flat as a billiard
table, they actually reared a mountain, now covered
with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens.
To think that I used to skate over the meadows where
that mountain now stands !

There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that
afternoon ; nothing but the usual football. The
pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake of
sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred
opprobrious epithets are hurled at his head in the
course of a single game, and play is often suspended
while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision
and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse
interpretation, of the rules. And whoever wishes to
know whence those plastic artists of old Florence drew
their inspiration need only come here. Figures of
consummate grace and strength, and clothed more-

VIAREGGIO 99

over in a costmne which leaves little to the imagination.
Those shorts fully deserve their name. They are
shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by
their tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze
themselves into such an outfit or, that feat accom-
plished, play in it with any sense of comfort. Play
they do, and furiously, despite the heat.

Watching the game and mindful of that morning's
discourse with Madame de Maintenon, a sudden wave
of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew
strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation.
What were all these young fellows doing here ? Big
chaps of eighteen and twenty ! Half of them ought
to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about
with a ball.

It would have been instructive to learn the true
ideas of the rising generation in regard to the political
outlook ; to single out one of the younger spectators
and make him talk. But these better-class lads cluster
together at the approach of a stranger, and one does
not want to start a public discussion with half a
dozen of them. My chance came from another
direction. It was half-time and a certain player
limped out of the field and sat down on the grass.
I .was beside him before his friends had time to
come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with
perspiration.

" Any damage ? ''

Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other
side had just caught him with the full swing of his
fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly.

" Hardly fair play," I commented.

" It was cleverly done."

" Ah, well," I said, warming to my English cha-

loo ALONE

racter, '^ you may get harder knocks in the trenches.
I suppose you are nearly due ? "

Not for a year or so , he replied. And even then
... of coiurse, he was quite eligible as to physique
... it was really rather awkward . . . but as to
serving in the army • . . there were other jobs going.
• . • Was anything more precious than life ? . . .
Could anything replace his life to him ? ... To die
at his age. . . .

" It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point
of view. But if everybody thought like that, where
would the Isonzo line be ? "

If everybody thought as he did, there would be no
Isonzo line at all. German influence in Italy — ^why
not ? They had been there before ; it was no dark
page in Italian history. Was his own government so
admirable that one should regret its disappearance ?
A pack of knaves and cutthroats. Patriotism — z
phrase ; auto-intoxication. They say one thing and
mean another. The English too. Yes, the English
too. Purely mercenary motives, for all their noble
talk.

It is always entertaining to see ourselves as others
see us. I had the presence of mind to interject some
anti-British remark, which produced the desired effect

" Now they howl about the sufferings of Belgium,
because their money-bags are threatened. They fight
for poor Belgium. They did not fight for France in
1870, or for Denmark or Poland or Armenia. Trade
was not threatened. There was no profit in view.
Profit ! And they won*t even supply us with coal **

Always that coal.

It is clear as daylight. England has failed in her
duty — ^her duty being to supply everybody with coal,

VIAREGGIO loi

ships, money, cannons and anything else, at the
purchaser's valuation.

He made a few more statements of this nature, and
I think he enjoyed his little fling at that, for him,
relatively speaJking, since the war began, rara aviSy a
genuine Englishman (Teutonic construction) ; I cer-
tainly relished it. Then I asked :

" Where did you learn this ? About Armenia, I
mean, and Poland ? *'

" From my father. He was University Professor
and Deputy in Parliament. One also picks up a little
something at school. Don't you agree with me ? "

" Not altogether. You seem to forget that a nation
cannot indulge in those freaks of humanitarianism
which may possibly befit an individual. A certain
heroic dreamer told men to give all they had to the
poor. You, if you like^ may adopt this idealistic
attitude. You may do generous actions such as your
country cannot afford to do, since a nation which
abandons the line of expediency is on the high road
to suicide. If I have a bilious attack, by all means
come and console me ; if Poland has a bilious attack,
there is no reason why England should step in as dry-
nurse ; there may be every reason, indeed, why
England should stand aloof. Now in Belgium, as you
say, money is involved. Money, in this national sense,
means well-being ; and well-being, in this national
sense, is one of the few things worth fighting for.
However, I am only throwing out one or two sugges-
tions. On some other day, I would like to discuss the
matter with you point by point — some other day, that
is, when you are not playing football and have just a
few clothes on. I am now at a disadvantage. You
could never get me to impugn your statements courage-

I02 ALONE

ously — ^not in that costume. It would be like haggling
with Apollo Belvedere. Why do you wear those baby
things ? "

" We are all wearing them, this season."

" So I perceive. How do you get into them ? *'

" Very slowly.''

" Are they elastic ? "

" I wish they were." . . .

Four minutes' talk. It gave me an insight. He was
an intellectualist. As such, he admired brute force
but refused to employ it. He was civilised. Like
many products of civilization, he was unaware of its
blessings and unconcerned in its fate. Is it not a
feature peculiar to civilisation that it thinks of every-
thing save war ? That is why they are uprooted, these
flowerings, each in its turn.

My father told me ; often one hears that remark,
even from adults. As if a father could not be a fool
like anybody else ! That a child should have hard-
and-fast opinions — ^it is engaging. Children are ego-
centric. A fellow of this size ought to be less positive.

These refined youths are fastidious about their
clothes. They would not dream of buying a ready-
made suit, however well-fitting. They are content to
take their opinions second-hand. Unlike ours, they
are seldom alone ; they lack those stretches of solitude
during which they might wrestle with themselves and
do a little thinking on their own account. When not
with their family, they are always among companions,
being far more sociable and fond of herding together
than their English representatives. They talk more ;
they think less ; they seem to do each other's thinking,
which takes away all hesitation and gives them a pre-
cocious air of maturity. If this decorative lad engages

VIAREGGIO 103

in some profession like medicine or engineering there
is hope for him, even as others of his age rectify their
perspective by contact with crude facts — groceries and
calicoes and carburettors and so forth. Otherwise, his
doom is sealed. He remains a doctrinaire. This
country is full of them.

And then — ^the sterilizing influence of pavements.
Even when summer comes round, they all flock in a
mass to some rowdy place like this Viareggio or Ancona
where, however pleasant the bathing, spiritual life is
yet shallower than at home. What says Craufurd Tait
Ramage, LL.D. ? " Their country life consists
merely in breathing a different air, though in nothing
else does it differ from the life they live in town."

He notices things, does Ramage ; and might, indeed,
have elaborated this argument. The average Italian
townsman seems to have lost all sense for the beauty
of rural existence ; he is incurious about it ; dislodge
him from the pavement — ^no easy task — ^and he gasps
like a fish out of water. Squares and caf6s — ^they
stimulate his fancy ; the doings and opinions of fellow-
creatures — ^thence alone he derives inspiration. What
is the result ? A considerable surface polish, but also
another quality which I should call dewlessness. Often
glittering like a diamond, he is every bit as dewless.
His materialistic and supercilious outlook results, I
think, from contempt or nescience of nature ; you will
notice the trait still more at Venice, whose inhabitants
seldom forsake their congested mud-flat. Depth of
character and ideality and himiour — such things
require a rustic landscape for their nurture. These
citizens are arid, for lack of dew ; unquestionably
more so than their English representatives.

Postscript. — ^The pavements of Florence, by the

I04 ALONE

way, have an objectionable quality. Their stone is too
soft. They wear down rapidly and an army of masons
is employed in levelling them straight again all the
year roimd. And yet they sometimes use this very
sandstone, instead of marble, for mural inscriptions.
How long are these expected to remain legible ? They
employ the same material for their buildings, and I
observe that the older monimxents last, on the whole,
better than the new ones, which flake away rapidly —
exfoliate or crack, according to the direction from
which the grain of the rock has been attacked by the
chisel. It may well be that Florentines of past cen-
turies left the hewn blocks in their shady caverns for
a certain length of time, as do the Parisians of to-day,
in order to allow for the slow discharge and evapora-
tion of liquid ; whereas now the material, saturated
with moisture, is torn from its damp and cool quarries
and set in the blazing sunshine. At the Bourse, for
instance, — quite a modem structure — ^the colmnns
already begin to show fissures.*

Amply content with Viareggio, because the Siren
dwells so near, I stroll forth. The town is awake.
Hotels are open. Bathing is beginning. Summer has
dawned upon the land.

I am not in the city mood, three months in Florence
having abated my interest in humanity. Past a line

* I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method
of the Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older
monuments are in better condition than the new ones. We live
and learn.

VIAREGGIO 105

of booths and pensions I wander in the direction of
that pinery which year by year is creeping further into
the waves, and driving the sea back from its old shore.
There is peace in this green domain ; all is hushed,
and yet pervaded by the mysterious melody of things
that stir in May-time. Here are no sombre patches,
as imder oak or beech ; only a tremulous interlacing
of light and shade. A peculiarly attractive bole not
far from the sea, gleaming rosy in the sunshine, tempts
me to recline at its foot.

This insomnia, this fiend pf the darkness — ^the only
way to coimteract his mischief is by guile ; by snatch-
ing a brief oblivion in the hours of day, when the
demon is far afield, tormenting pious ^Ethiopians at
the Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments
of self-created night, merged into the warm earth !
The extreme quietude of my present room, after
Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this
restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsa-
nico. But, chiefly, the dream — ^that recurrent dream.

Everybody, I suppose, is subject to recurrent dreams
of some kind. My present one is of a painful or at
least sad nature ; it returns approximately every three
months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I am
in a distant town where I lived many years back, and
where each stone is familiar to me. I have come to
look for a friend — one who, as a matter of fact, died
long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this fact ;
once embarked on the dream-voyage, I hold him to
be still alive. Glad at the prospect of meeting my
friend again, I traverse cheerftdly those well-known
squares in the direction of his home. . . . Where is
it, that house ; where has it gone ? I cannot find it.
Ages seem to pass while I trample up and down, in

io6 ALONE

ever-increasing harassment of mind, along intermin-
able rows of buildings and canals ; that door, that
well-remembered door — ^vanished ! All search is vain.
I shall never meet him : him whom I came so far to
see. The dismal truth, once established, fills me with
an intensity of suffering such as only night-visions can
inspire. There is no reason for feeling so strongly ;
it is the way of dreams 1 At this point I wake up,
thoroughly exhausted, and say to myself : ^^ Why seek
his house ? Is he not dead ? "

This stupid nightmare leaves me unrefreshed next
mormng, and often beaiB in its rear a trail of wistfiil-
ness which may endure a week. Only within the last
few years has it dared to invade my slumbers. Before
that period there was a series of other recurrent
dreams. What will the next be ? For I mean to oust
this particular incubus. The monster annoys me, and
even our mulish dream-consciousness can be taught
to acquiesce in a fact, after a sufficient lapse of time.

There are dreams peculiar to every age of man.
That celebrated one of flying, for instance — ^it fades
away with manhood. I once indulged in a correspon-
dence about it with a well-known psychologist,* and
would like to think, even now, that this dream is a

* The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters,
" ... I am writing without due consideration of the interesting
point. But this possible explanation occurs to me : children are
active motor machines, always restless and moving when not asleep.
When asleep, the motor tendencies, being not quite passive, trans-
late themselves into the dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant
or painful, according to bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As
the muscles are almost passive in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming
activity — ^into dreams of flying when bodily states are pleasant, into
falling down precipices, etc., when they are out of sort9, Thi$ i^
quite a hasty reflection. . , ,"

VIAREGGIO 107

reminiscence of leaping habits in our tree-haunting
days ; a ghost of the dim pa^t, therefore, which re-
visits us at night when recent adjustments are cast
aside and man takes on the credulity and savagery of
his remotest forefathers ; a ghost which comes in
youth when these ancient etchings are easier to de-
cypher, being not yet overscored by fresh personal
experiences. What is human life but a never-ending
palimpsest ?

So I pondered, when my musings under that pine
tree were interrupted by the arrival on the scene of a
young snake. I cannot say with any degree of truth-
fulness which of us two was more surprised at the
encoimter. I picked him up, as I always do when
they give me a chance, and began to make myself agree-
able to him. He liad those pretty juvenile markings
which disappear with maturity. Snakes of this kind,
when they become full-sized, are nearly always of a
imiform shade, generally black. And when they are
very, very old, diey begin to grow ears and seek out
solitary places. What is the origin of this belief ? I
have come across it all over the country. If you wish
to go to any remote or inaccessible spot, be sure some
peasant will say : " Ah ! There you find the serpent
with ears."

These snakes are not easy to catch with the hand,
living as they do among stones and brushwood, and
gliding off rapidly once their suspicions are aroused.
This one, I should say, was bent on some youthful
voyage of discovery or amorous exploit ; he walked

io8 ALONE

into the trap from inexperience. As a rule, your best
chance for securing them is when they bask on the
top of some bush or hedge in relative unconcern,
knowing they are hard to detect in such places. They
climb into these aerial situations after the lizards,
which go there after the insects, which go there after
the flowers, which go there after the sunshine,
struggling upwards through the thick undergrowth.
You must have a quick eye and ready hand to grasp
them by the tail ere they have time to lash themselves
round some stem where, once anchored, they will
allow themselves to be pulled in pieces rather than
yield to your efforts. If you fail to seize them, they
trickle earthward through the tangle like a thread of
running water.

He belonged to that common Italian kind which has
no English name — Germans call them Zomnatter^ in
allusion to their choleric disposition. Most of them
are quite ready to snap at the least provocation ; maybe
they find it pays, as it does with other folks, to assimie
the offensive and be first in the field, demanding your
place in the sun with an air of wrathful determination.
Some of the big fellows can draw blood with their
teeth. Yet the jawbones are weak and one can force
them asunder without much difficulty ; whereas the
bite of a full-grown emerald lizard, for instance, will
provide quite a novel sensation. The mouth closes
on you like a steel trap, tightly compressing the flesh
and often refusing to relax its hold. In such cases,
try a puff of tobacco. It works ! Two puffs will daze
them ; a fragment of a cigar, laid in the mouth,
stretches them out dead. And this is the beast which,
they say, will gulp down prussic acid as if it were
treacle.

VIAREGGIO 109

But snakes vary in temperament as we do, and
some of these Zamenis serpents are as gentle and
amiable as their cousin the Aesculap snake. My
friend of this afternoon could not be induced to bite.
Perhaps he was naturally mild, perhaps drowsy from
his winter sleep or ignorant of the ways of the world ;
perhaps he had not yet shed his milk teeth. I am
disposed to think that he forgot about biting because
I made a favourable impression on him from the first.
He crawled up my arm. It was pleasantly warm, but
a little too dark ; soon he emerged again and glanced
around, relieved to discover that the world was still
in its old place. He was not clever at learning tricks.
I tried to make him stand on his head, but he
refused to stiffen out. Snakes have not much sense
of humour.

Lizards are far more companionable. During two
consecutive summers I had a close friendship with a
wall-lizard who spent in my society certain of his
leisure moments — ^which were not many, for he always
had an astonishing mmiber of other things on hand.
He was a full-grown male, bejewelled with blue spots.
A fierce fighter was Alfonso (such was his name), and
conspicuous for a most impressive manner of stamp-
ing his front foot when impatient. Concerning his
other virtues I know little, for I learnt no details of
his private life save what I saw with my eyes, and
they were not always worthy of imitation. He was a
polygamist, or worse ; obsessed, moreover, by a de-
plorable habit of biting off the tails of his own or other
people's children. He went even further. For
sometimes, without a word of warning, he would
poimce upon some innocent youngster and carry him
in his powerful jaws far away, over the wall, right out

no ALONE

of my sight. What Tiappened yonder I cannot guess.
It was probably a little old-fashioned cannibalism.

Though my meals in those days were all out of
doors, his attendance at dinner-time was rather un-
certain ; I suspect he retired early in order to spend
the nighty like other polyganoiists, in prayer and fasting.
At the hours of breakfast and luncheon — ^he knew
them as well as I did — ^he was generally free, and then
quite monopolised my company, climbing up my leg
on to the table, eating out of my hand, sipping sugar-
water out of his own private bowl and, in fact, doing
everything I suggested. I did not suggest impossi-
bilities. A friendship should never be strained to
breaking-point. Had I cared to risk such a calamity,
I might have taught him to play skittles. . • .

For the rest, it is not very amusing to be either a
lizard or a snake in Italy. Lizards are caught in
nooses and then tied by one leg and made to run on
the remaining three ; or secured by a cord round the
neck and swung about in the air — ^mighty good sport,
this ; or deprived of their tails and given to the baby
or cat to play with ; or dragged along at the end of
a string, like a reluctant pig that is led to market.
There are quite a number of ways of making lizards
feel at home.

With snakes the procedure is simple. They are
killed ; treated to that self-same system to ivhich they
used to treat us in our arboreal days when the glassy
eye of the serpent, gleaming through the branches,
will have caused our fur to stand on end with horror.
No beast provokes hiunan hatred like that old coiling
serpent. Long and cruel must have been his reign
for the memory to have lingered — ^how many years ?
Let us say, in order to be on the safe side, a million.

VIAREGGIO III

Here, then, is another ghost of the past, a daylight
ghost.

And look around you ; the world is full of them.
We live amid a legion of ancestral terrors which creep
from their limbo and peer in upon our weaker
moments, ready to make us their prey. A man whose
wits are not firmly rooted in earth, in warm friends
and warm food, might well live a life of ceaseless
trepidation. Many do. They brood over their
immortal soul — 3, ghost. Others there are, whose
dreams have altogether devoured their realities. These
live, for the most part, in asylums.

There flits, along this very shore, a ghost of another
kind — ^that of Shelley. Maybe the spot where they
burnt his body can still be pointed out. I have for-
gotten all I ever read on that subject. An Italian
enthusiast, the librarian of the Laurentian Library in
Florence, garnered certain information from anient
fishermen of Viareggio in regard to this occurrence
and set it down in a little book, a book with white
covers which I possessed during my Shelley period.
They have erected a memorial to the English poet in
one of the public squares here. The features of the
bust do not strike me as remarkably etherial, but the
inscription is a good specimen of Italian adapted to
lapidary uses — ^it avoids those insipid verbal termina-
tions which weaken the language and sometimes render
it almost ridiculous.

SmoUet lies yonder, at Livomo ; and Ouida hard
by, at Bagni di Lucca. She died in one of these same

112 ALONE

featureless streets of Viareggio, alone , half blind , and
in poverty. ...

I know Suffolk, that ripe old county of hers, with
its pink villages nestling among drowsy elms and corn-
fields ; I know their " Spread Eagles " and " Angels **
and " White Horses *' and other taverns suggestive —
sure sign of antiquity — of zoological gardens ; I know
their goodly ale and old brown sherries. Her birth-
place, despite those venerable green mounds, is
comparatively dull — I would not care to live at Bury ;
give me Lavenham or Melford or some place of that
kind. While looking one day at the house where she
was bom, I was sorely tempted to crave permission to
view the interior, but refrained ; something of her
own dislike of prying and meddlesomeness came over
me. Thence down to that commemorative fountain
among the drooping trees. The good animals for
whose comfort it was built would have had some diffi-
culty in slaking their thirst just then, its basin being
chocked up with decayed leaves.

We corresponded for a good while and I still possess
her letters somewhere ; I see in memory that large
and, bold handwriting, often only two words to a line,
on the high-class slate-coloured paper. The sums she
spent on writing materials ! It was one of heif many
ladylike traits.

I tried to induce her to stay with me in South Italy.
She made three conditions : to be allowed to bring
her dogs, to have a hot bath every day, and two litres
of cream. Everything could be managed except the
cream, which was unprocurable. Later on, while
living in the Tyrolese mountains, I renewed the in-
vitation ; that third condition could now be fulfilled
as easily as the other two. She was unwell, she

VIAREGGIO 113

rq>lied, and could not move out of the house, having
been poisoned by a cook. So we never met, though
she wrote me much about herself and about " Heli-
anthus," which was printed after her death? In return,
I dedicated to her a book of short stories ; they were
published, thank God, under a pseudonym, and eight
copies were sold.

She is now out of date. Why, yes. Those guards-
men who drenched their beards in scent and break-
fasted off caviare and chocolate and sparkling Moselle
— ^they certainly seem fantastic. They really were
fantastic. They did drench their beards in scent.
The language and habits of these martial heroes are
authenticated in the records of their day ; glance, for
instance, into back niunbers of Punch. The fact is,
we were all rather ludicrous formerly. The characters
of Dickens, to say nothing of Cruikshank's pictures of
them : can such beings ever have walked the earth ?

If her novels are somewhat faded, the same cannot
be said of her letters and articles and critiques. To
our rising generation of authors — ^the youngsters, I
mean ; those who have not yet sold themselves to the
devil — I should say : read these things of Ouida's.
Read them attentively, not for their matter, which is
always of interest, nor yet for their vibrant and lucid
style, which often rivals that of Huxley. Read them
for their tone, their temper ; for that pervasive good
breeding, that shining honesty, that capacity of scorn.
These are qualities which our present age lacks, and
needs ; they are conspicuous in Ouida. Abhorrence
of meanness was her dominant trait. She was intelli*
gent, fearless ; as ready to praise without stint as to
voice the warmest womanly indignation. She was
courageous not only in matters of literature ; courage-

114 ALONE

0U8, and how right ! Is it not satisfactory to be right,
when others are wrong ? How right about the
Japanese, about Feminism and Conscription and
German brutalitarianism ! How she puts her finger
on the spot when discussing Marion Crawford and
D'Annunzio ! Those local politicians — ^how she hits
them off! Hers was a sure touch. Do we not all
now agree with what she wrote at the time of Queen
Victoria and Joseph Chamberlain ? When she re-
marks of Tolstoy, in an age which adored him (I am
quoting from memory), that '^ his morality and mono-
gamy are against nature and common sense," adding
that he is dangerous, because he is an " educated
Christ " — out of date ? When she says that the world
is ruled by two enemies of all beauty, commerce and
militarism — out of date ? When she dismisses Oscar
Wilde as a cabotin and yet thinks that the law should
not have meddled with him — ^is not that the man and
the situation in a nutshell ?

No wonder straightforward sentiments like these
do not appeal to our age of neutral tints and com-
promise, to our vegetarian world-reformers who are as
incapable of enthusiasm as they are of contempt,
because their blood-temperature is invariably two
degrees below the normal. Ouida's critical and social
opinions are infernally out of date — quite inconveni-
ently modem, in fact. There is the milk of hunanity
in them, glowing conviction and sincerity ; they are
written from a standpoint altogether too European,
too womanly, too personally-poignant for present-day
needs ; and in a language, moreover, whose picturesque
and vigorous independence comes as a positive shock
after the colourless Grub-street brand of to-day.

They come as a shock, these writings, because in the

VIAREGGIO 115

brief interval since they were published our view of
life and letters has shifted. A swarm of mystics and
pragmatists has replaced the lonely giants of Ouida^s
era. It is an epoch of closed pores, of constriction.
The novel has changed. Pick up the average one and
ask yourself whether this crafty and malodorous sex-
problem be not a deliberately commercial speculation
— 3, frenzied attempt to " sell " by scandalising our
unscandalisable, because hermaphroditic, middle
classes ? Ouida was not one of these professional
hacks, but a personality of refined instincts who wrote,
when she cared to write at all, to please her equals ;
a rationalistic anti-vulgarian ; a woman of wide
horizons who fought for generous issues and despised
all shams ; the last, almost the last, of lady-authors.
What has such a genial creature in common with our
anaemic and woolly generation ? " The Massarenes *'
may have faults, but how many of our actual woman-
scribes, for all their monkey-tricks of cleverness, could
have written it ? The haunting charm of "In
Maremma " : why ask our public to taste such stuff ?
You might as well invite a bilious nut-fooder to a
Lord Mayor's banquet.

The mention of banquets reminds me that she
was blamed for preferring the society of duchesses
and diplomats to that of the Florentine literati^ as if
there were something reprehensible in Ouida's fond-
ness for decent food and amusing talk when she could
have revelled in Ceylon tea and dough-nuts and
listened to babble concerning Quattro-Cento glazes in
any of the fifty squabbling art-coteries of that City of
Misunderstandings. It was one of her several failings,
chiefest among them being this : that she had no
reverence for money. She was imable to hoard — an

ii6 ALONE

unpardonable sin. Envied in prosperity, she was
smugly pitied in her distress. Such is the fate of
those who stand apart from the crowd, among a nation
of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, after being
the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form — 3, slur
on society. True, she might have bettered her state
by accepting a lucrative proposal to write her auto-
biography, but she considered such literature a " de-
grading form of vanity " and refused the offer. She
preferred to remain ladylike to the last, in this and
other little trifles — ^in her lack of humour, her redun-
dancies, her love of expensive clothes and genuinely
humble people, of hot baths and latinisms and flowers
and pet dogs and sealing-wax. All through life she
made no attempt to hide her woman's nature, her
preference for male over female company ; she was
even guilty of saying that disease serves the world
better than war, because it kills more women than
men. Out of date, with a vengeance !

There recurs to me a sentence in a printed letter
written by a celebrated novelist of the artificial school,
a sentence I wish I could forget, describing Ouida as
" a little terrible and finally pathetic grotesque." Does
not a phrase like this reveal, even better than his own
romances, the essentially non-human fibre of the
writer's mind ? Whether this derivative intellectualist,
spiderishly spinning his own plots and phrases and
calling Ouida a grotesque — ^whether this echo ever
tried to grasp the bearing of her essays on Shelley or
Blind Guides or Alma Veniesia or The Quality of
Mercy — ^tried to sense her burning words of pity for
those that suffer, her hatred of hypocrisy and oppres-
sion and betrayal of friendship, her so righteous
pleadings, coined out of the heart's red blood, for all

VIAREGGIO 117

that makes life worthy to be lived ? He may have
tried. He never could succeed. He lacked the
sympathy, the sex. He lacked the sex. Ah, well —
Schwamm drueber^ as the Norwegians say. Ouida, for
all her femininity, was more of a man than this feline
and gelatinous New Englander.

^me

THE railway station at Rome has put on a new
face. Blown to the winds is that old dignity
and sense of leisure. Bustle everywhere ;
soldiers in line, officers strutting about ; feverish
scurryings for tickets. A young baggage employ6,
who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the
inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep
up the traditions of former days. He was unruffled
and polite ; he told me, incidentally, that he came

from That was odd, I said ; I had often met

persons bom at , and never yet encountered one

who was not civil beyond the common measure. His
native place must be worthy of a visit.

" It is," he replied. " There are also certain
fountains. ..."

That restaurant, for example — one of those few for
which a man in olden days of peace would desert his
own tavern in the town — ^how changed ! The fare has
deteriorated beyond recognition. Where are those
succulent joints and ragoiits, the aromatic wine, the
snow-white macaroni, the caf6-au-lait with genuine
butter and genuine honey ?

War-time !

Conversed awhile with an Englishman at my side,
who was gleefully devouring lumps of a particular
something which I would not have liked to touch
with tongs.

ii8

ROME 119

" I don*t care what I eat," he remarked.

So it seemed.

I don't care what I eat : what a confession to make !
Is it not the same as saying, I don't care whether I
am dirty or clean ? When others tell me this, I regard
it as a pose, or a poor joke. This person was mani-
festly sincere in his profession of faith. He did not
care what he ate. He looked it. Were I afflicted with
this peculiar ailment, this attenuated form of copro-
phagiay I should try to keep the hideous secret to
myself. It is nothing to boast of. A man owes
something to those traditions of our race which have
helped to raise us above the level of the brute. Good
taste in viands has been painfully acquired ; it is a
sacred trust. Beware of gross feeders. They are a
menace to their fellow-creatures. Will they not act,
on occasion, even as they feed ? Assuredly they will.
Everybody acts as he feeds.

Then lingered on the departure platform, comparing
its tone with that of similar places in England. A
mournful little crowd is collected here. Conscripts,
imtidy-looking fellows, are leaving — ^perhaps for ever.
They climb into those tightly-packed carriages, loaded
down with parcels and endless recommendations.
Some of the groups are cheerful over their farewells,
though the English note of deliberate jocularity is
absent. The older people are resigned ; in the
features of the middle generation, the parents, you
may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate ; they
are the potential mourners. The weeping note pre-
dominates among the sisters and children, who give
themselves away pretty freely. An infectious thing,
this shedding of tears. One little girl, loth to
part from that big brother, contrived by her

I20 ALONE

wailing to break down the reserve of the entire
family. • . .

It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Rome
is mirthless.

There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a
sweet old lady friend who said to me, in years gone by :

" When next you go to Rome, please let me know
if it is still raining there."

It was here that she celebrated her honeymoon — an
event which must have taken place in the 'sixties or
thereabouts. She is dead now. So is her husband,
the prince of moralizers, the man who first taught me
how contemptible the hiunan race may become.
Doubtless he expired with some edifying platitude on
his lips and is deblatterating them at this very moment
in Heaven, where the folks may well be seasoned to
that kind of talk.

Let us be charitable, now that he is gone !

To have lived so long with a person of his incurable
respectability would have soured any ordinary woman's
temper. Hers it refined ; it made her into something
akin to an angel. He was her cross ; she bore him
meekly and not, I like to think, without extracting a
kind of sly, dry fun out of the horrible creature. A
past master in the art of genteel domestic nagging, he
made everybody miserable as long as he lived, and I
would give something for an ofiicial assurance that he
is now miserable himself. He was a worm ; a good
man in the worst sense of the word. It was the con-
trast — ^the contrast between his gentle clothing and

ROME 121

ungentle heart, which moved my spleen. What a
self-sufficiient and inhuman brood were the Victorians
of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty ;
a brood that has never yet been called by its proper
name. Victorians ? Why, not altogether. The mis-
chief has its roots further back. Addison, for example,
is a fair specimen.

Why say unkind things about a dead man ? He
cannot answer back.

Upon my word, I am rather glad to think he cannot.
The last thing I ever wish to hear again is that voice
of his. And what a face : gorgonising in its assump-
tion of virtue ! Now the whole species is d3ring out,
and none too soon. Graft abstract principles of
conduct upon natures devoid of sympathy and you
produce a monster ; a sanctimonious fish ; the coldest
beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affini-
ties were with Robespierre and Torquemada — ^both of
them actuated by the purest intentions and without a
grain of self-interest : pillars of integrity. What floods
of tears would have been spared to mankind, had they
only been a little corrupt ! How corrupt a person of
principles ? He lacks the vulgar yet divine gift of
imagination.

That is what these Victorians lacked. They would
never have subscribed to this palpable truth : that
justice is too good for some men, and not good enough
for the rest. They cultivated the Cato or Brutus
tone ; they strove to be stem old Romans — Romans
of the sour and imperfect Republic ; for the Empire,
that golden blossom, was to them a period of luxury
and debauch. Nero — ^most reprehensible ! It was not
Nero, however, but our complacent British reptiles,
who filled the prisons with the wailing of yoimg

122 ALONE

children, and hanged a boy of thirteen for stealing a
spoon. I wish I had it here, that book which every-
body ought to read, that book by Geotge Ives on the
History of Penal Methods — ^it woiild help me to say
a few more polite things. The villainies of the vir-
tuous : who shall recount them ? I can picture this
vastly offensive old man acting as judge on that
occasion and then, his ^^ duties towards society "
accomplished, being driven home in his brougham
to thank Providence for one of those succulent
luncheons, the enjoyment of which he invariably
managed to ruin for every one except himself.

God rest his soul, the unspeakable phenomenon !
He ought to have throttled himself at his mother's
breast. Only a woman imbued with \iltra-terrestrial
notions of humour could have tolerated such an in-
fliction. Anybody else would have poisoned him in
the name of Christian charity and common sense, and
earned the gratitude of generations yet imbora.

Well, well! R.I.P. . . .

On returning to Rome after a considerable absence
— a year or so — a few things have to be done for the
sake of auld lang syne ere one may again feel at home.
Rites must be performed. I am to take my fill of
memories and conjure up certain bitter-sweet phan-
toms of the past. Meals must be taken in definite
restaurants ; a certain church must be entered ; a sip
of water taken frdm a fountain — ^from one, and one
only (no easy task, this, for most of the foxmtains of
Rome are so constructed that, however abundant their

ROME 123

flow, a man may die of thirst ere obtaining a mouth-
ful) ; 1 must linger awhile at the very end, the dirty
end, of the horrible Via Principe Amedeo and, again,
at a comer near the Portico d'Ottavia ; perambulate
the Protestant cemetery, Monte Mario, and a few quite
uninteresting modem sites ; the Acqua Acetosa, a
stupid place, may on no account be forgotten, nor yet
that bridge on the Via Nomentana — ^not the celebrated
bridge but another one, miles away in the Campagna,
the dreariest of little bridges, in the dreariest of land-
scapes. Why ? It has been hallowed by the tread of
certain feet.

Thus, by a kind of sacred procedure, I immerge
myself into those old stones and recreate my peculiar
Roman mood. It is rather ridiculous. Tradition
wills it.

To-day came the turn of the Protestant cemetery,
I have a view of this place, taken about the 'seventies
— I wish I could reproduce it here, to show how this
spot has been ruined. A woman who looks after the
enclosure was in a fairly communicative mood ; we
had a few minutes' talk, among the tombs. What a
jumble of names and nationalities, by the way ! What
a mixed assemblage lies here, in this foreign earth !
One would like to write down all their names, shake
them in a bag, pick out fifty at random and compose
their biographies. It would be a curious cosmopolitan
dociunent.

They have now a dog, the woman tells me, a ferocious
dog who roams among the tombs, since several brass
plates have been wrenched off by marauders. At
night ? I inquire. At night. At night . . . Slowly,
warily, I introduce the subject of fiammelle. It is not
a popular theme. No ! She has heard of such things,

124 ALONE

but never seen them ; she never comes here at night,
God forbid !

What 3TC fiammelle ? Little flames, will-o'-the-wisps
which hover about the graves at such hours, chiefly in
the hot months or after autumn rains. It is a well-
authenticated apparition ; the scientist Bessel saw one ;
so did Casanova, here at Rome. He describes it as a
pyramidal flame raised about four feet from the
groimd which seemed to accompany him as he walked
along. He saw the same thing later, at Cesena near
Bologna. There was some correspondence on the
subject (started by Dr. Herbert Snow) in the Observer
of December 1915 and January 1916. Many are the
graveyards I visited in this coimtry and in others
with a view to "satisfying my curiosity," as old
Ramage woiild say, on this point, and all in vain. My
usual luck ! The fiammelle y on that particular evening,
were coy — ^they were never working. They are said
to be frequently observed at Scanno in the Abruzzi
province, and the young secretary of the miuiicipality
there, Mr. L. O., will tell you of our periodical mid-
night visits to the local cemetery. Or go to Licenza
and ask for my intelUgent friend the schoolmaster.
What he does not know about fiammelle is not worth
knowing. Did he not, one night, have a veritable fight
with a legion of them which the wind blew from the
graveyard into his face? Did he not return home
trembling all over and pale as death ? . . .

Here reposes, among many old friends, the idealist
Malwida von Meysenbug ; that sculptured medallion
is suflicient to proclaim her whereabouts to those who
still remember her. It is good to pause awhile and
etherialise oneself in the neighbourhood of her dust.
She lived a quiet life in an old brown house, since

ROME 125

rebuilt, that overlooks the Coliseum, on whose comely
ellipse and blood-stained history she loved to pasture
eyes and imagination. Often I walked thence with her,
on those sparkling mornings, up the Palatine hill, to
stroll about the ilexes and roses in view of the Forum,
to listen to the blackbirds, or the siskins in that pine
tree. She was of the same type, the same ethical
parentage, as the late Mathilde Blind, a woman of
benignant and refined enthusiasm, full of charity to
the poor and, in those later days, almost shadowy —
remote from earth. She had saturated herself with
Rome for whose name she professed a tremulous
affection untainted by worldly considerations such as
mine ; she loved its " persistent spiritual life " ; it
was her haven of rest. So, while her arm rested
lightly on mine, we wandered about those gardens,
the saintly lady and myself; her mind dwelling,
maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure
and the part she came nigh to playing in the history
of Europe, while mine was lost in a maze of vulgar
love-adventures, several of which came nigh to making
me play a part in the police-courts of Rome.

What may have helped to cement our strange friend-
ship was my acquaintance, at that time, with the
German metaphysicians. She must have thought me
a queer kind of Englishman to discuss with such
familiarity the tenets of these cloudy dreamers. Mal-
wida loved them in a blanii and childlike fashion. She
would take one of their dicta as a starting-point —
establish herself, so .to speak, within this or that
nebular hypothesis — ^and argue thence in academic
fashion for the sake of intellectual exercise and the
joy of seeing where, after a thousand twists and
turnings, you were finally deposited. A friend of ours

126 ALONE

— some American — ^had lately published a Socratic
dialogue entitled " The Prison " ; it formed a fruitful
theme of conversation.* Nietzsche was also then to
the fore, and it pleases me to recollect that even in
those days I detected his blind spot ; his horror of
those English materialists and biologists. I did not
pause to consider why he hated them so ardently ;
I merely noted, more in sorrow than in anger, this
fact which seemed to vitiate his whole outlook — as
indeed it does. Now I know the reason. Like all
preacher-poets, he is anthropocentric. To his way of
thinking the hxmian mind is so highly organised, so
different from that of beasts, that not all the proofs of
ethnology and physiology would ever induce him to
accept the ape-ancestry of man. This monkey-
business is too irksome and humiliating to be true ;
he waives it aside, with a sneer at the disgusting argu-
ments of those Englishmen.

That is what happens to men who think that " the
spirit alone lives ; the life of the spirit alone is true
life." A philosopher weighs the value of evidence ;
he makes it his business, before discoursing of the
origin of human intellect, to learn a little something
of its focus, the brain ; a little comparative anatomy.
These men are not philosophers. Metaphysicians are
poets gone wrong. Schopenhauer invents a " genius
of the race " — ^there you have his cloven hoof, the
pathetic fallacy, the poet's heritage. There are things
in Schopenhauer which make one blush for philosophy.
The day may dawn when this man will be read not
for what he says, but for how he says it ; he being
one of the few of his race who can write in their own

• " The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams
and Norgate, 1891).

ROME 127

language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon a
good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he
did. So I remember one passage wherein he adum-
brates the theory of " Recognition Marks " propounded
later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention
to it, wrote that he thought it a most interesting
anticipation.*

He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during
one of his excursions into the inane.

And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who
scorned honest work and yet contrived to dress so
well ? Everyone liked him, despite his borrowing
propensities. He was so infemaUy pleasant, and
always on the spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture ;
it was more than varnish ; it was a veneer, a patina,
an enamel : weather-proof stuff. He could talk most
plausibly — art, music, society gossip — everything you
please ; everything except scandal. No bitter word
was known to pass his lips. He sympathised with all
our little weaknesses ; he was too blissfully contented
to think ill of others ; he took it for granted that
everybody, like himself, foimd the world a good place
to inhabit. That, I believe, was the secret of his
success. He had a divine intuition for discovering the

* Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. " Many thanks for your
reference to Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which
I thought I was the first to fully point out. It is a most interesting
anticipation. I do not read German, but from what I have heard
of his works he was the last man I should have expected to make
such an acute suggestion in Natural History.'*

laS ALONE

soft spots of his neighbours and utilising the know-
ledge, in a frank and gentlemanly fashion, for his own
advantage. It was he who invented a saying which I
have since encountered more than once : *^ Never run
after an omnibus or a woman. There will be another
one round in a minute." And also this : " Never
borrow from a man who really expects to be paid
back. You may lose a friend."

What lady is he now living on ?

" A good-looking fellow like me — ^why should I
work ? Tell me that. Especially with so many rich
ladies in the world aching for somebody to relieve
them of their spare cash ? "

" The wealthy woman," he once told me, after I had
begun to know him more intimately, '^ is a great danger
to society. She is so corruptible 1 People make her
spend money on all kinds of empty and even harmful
projects. Think of the mischief that is done, in
politics alone, by the money of these women. Think
of all the religious fads that spring up and are kept
going in a state of prosperity because some woman or
other has not been instructed as to the proper use of
her cheque-book. I foresee a positive decline ahead
of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We
must club together, we reasonable men, and put an
end to the scandal. These women need trimmers ;
an army of trimmers. I have done a good deal of
trimming in my day. Of course it involves some
trouble and a close degree of intimacy, now and then.
But a sensible man will always know where to draw
the line."

" Where do you draw it ? "

" At marriage."

Whether he ever dared to tap the venerable Malwida

ROME 129

for a loan ? Likely enough. He often played with her
feelings in a delicate style, and his astuteness in such
matters was only surpassed by his shamelessness. He
was capable of borrowing a fiver from the Pope — or at
least of attempting the feat ; of pocketing some hungry
widow's last mite and therewith purchasing a cigarette
before her eyes. All these sums he took as his due,
by right of conquest. Whether he ever " stung "
Malwida ? I should have liked to see the idealist's
face when confronted in that cheery off-hand manner
with the question whether she happened to have five
himdred francs to spare.

" No ? Whatever does it matter, my dear Madame
de Meysenbug ? Perhaps I shall be more fortunate
another day. But pray don't put yourself out for an
extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending
money — can't live without it, can one ? — and some-
times, though you might not believe it, on quite
worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like
to take you to see one day ; the father was cut to
pieces in some wretched agricultural machine, the
mother is dying in a hospital for consimiption, and the
six little children, all shivering under one blanket —
well, never mind ! One does what one can, in a small
way. That was an interesting lecture, wasn't it, on
Friday ? He made a fine point in what he said about
the relation of the Ego to the Cosmos. All the same,
I thought he was a little hard on Fichte. But then,
you know, I always felt a sort of tenderness for Fichte.
And did you notice that the room was absolutely
packed } 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

130 ALONE

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 foimd out towards
the end of our acquaintance, when I really began to
imderstand 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 pro-
cession 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 I A man must be daft if
he cannot talk a little archeology 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 I
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 talk-
ing about the mediimi rich ; one need never apply to
the very rich— -they are always too poor. Well, that
makes about two htmdred 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 coimt on a woman unless you have
her actually imder your thumb. Under your thiraib,
my boy ; under your thumb. Don't ever forget it."

ROME 131

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 contempo-
rary, the Piccadilly goat. 1 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.*

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 himdred 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 tmrepentant, and leave her to pay for
the fimeral.

" Work 1 " 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 thimderous explosion which shattered my windows
and many others in Rome. A gunpowder magazine
had blown up, somewhere in the Campagna ; the con-
cussion 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

* Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions.

132 ALONE

found in such places, washed out of the soil by wintry
torrents. I specialised in minerals in those days —
minerals and girls. Dangerous and unprofitable
studies 1 Even at that tender age I seem to have dimly
discerned what I now know for certain : that dangerous
and improfitable 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
foimd 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 dismoimt 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 — z 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 :
" 1st 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,

ROME 133

looking less tike a ruin than some wooded mountain.
Now die Coliseum is surely one of the most famous
structures in the world. Even they who have never
been to the spot would recognise 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 castelh ? "
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. I
could round their efforts by describing the faima of
the Coliseum. The fauna of the Coliseum — especially
after 11 p.m. — ^would make a readable book ; readable,
but hardly printable.

These little local studies are not without charm.
Somebody, one day, may be induced to tell us about
the faima of Trafalgar Square. He should begin with
a description of the horse standing on three legs and
gazing inanely out of those human eyes after the
fashion of its classic prototype ; then pass on to the
lions beloved of our good Richard Jefferies which look
like puppy-dogs modelled in cotton-wool (why did the
sculptor not take a few lessons in lions from the sand-
artist on Yarmouth beach ?), and conclude by dwelling
as charitably as possible on the himian fauna — ^that
droll little man, barely discernible, perched on the
summit of his lead pencil. • • •

There was a slight earthquake at sunrise. I felt
nothing. . . .

134 ALONE

And, appropriately enough, I encountered this after-
noon M. M., that most charming of persons, who, like
Shelley and others, has discovered Italy to be a
** paradise of exiles/' His friends may guess whom
I mean when I say that M. M. is connoisseur of earth-
quakes social and financial ; his existence has been
pimctuated by them to such an extent that he no
loiter counts events from dates in the ordinary
calendar, from birthdays or Christmas or Easter, but
from such and such a disaster affecting himself. Each
has left him seemingly more mellow than the last.
Just then, however, he was in pensive mood, his face
all puckered into wrinkles as he glanced upon the
tawny flood rolling beneath that old bridge. There
he stood, leanii^ over the parapet, all by himself.
He turned his coimtenance aside on seeing me, to
escape detection, but I drew high none the less.

" Go away," he said. " Don't disturb me just now.
I am watching the little fishes. Life is so compUcated !
Let us pray. I have begun a new novel and a new
love-affair."

" God prosper both ! " I replied, and began to move
off.

" Thanks. But supposing the publisher always
objects to your choicest paragraphs ? "

" I am not altogether surprised, if they are any-
thing like what you once read to me out of your im-
expurgated * House of the Seven Harlots.' Why not
try another firm ? They might be more accommo-
dating. Try mine."

He shook his head dubiously.

" They are all alike. It is with publishers as with
wives : one always wants somebody else's. And when
you have them, where's the difference ? Ah, let

ROME 135

us pray. These little fishes have none of our
troubles."

I inquired about the new romance. At first he
refused to disclose anything. Then he told me it was
to be entitled " With Christ at Harvard," and that it
promised some rather novel situations. I shall look
forward to its appearance.

What good things one could relate of M. M., but
for the risk of incurring his wrath ! It is a thousand
pities, I often tell him, that he is still alive ; I am
yearning to write his biography, and cannot afford to
wait for his dissolution.

" When I ?un dead," he always says.

" By that time, my dear M., I shall be in the same
fix myself."

" Try to survive. You may find it worth your
while, when you come to look into my papers. You
donH know half. And I may be taking that
Uttle sleeping-draught of mine any one ot these
days.* ..."

Mused long that night, and not without a certain
envy, on the lot of M. M. and other earthquake-
connoisseurs — or rather on the lot of that true philo-
sopher, if he exists, who, far from being damaged by
such convulsions, distils therefrom subtle matter of
mirth. I have only known one single man — it happened
to be a woman, an Austrian — ^who approached this
ideal of splendid isolation. She lived her own life,
serenely happy, refusing to acquiesce in the delusions
and conventionalities of the crowd ; she had ceased
to trouble herself about neighbours, save as a source
of quiet amusement ; a state of affairs which had been

* Fecit ! He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on the
4th November, 1920.

136 ALONE

brought about by a succession of benevolent earth-
quakes that refined and clarified her outlook.

Such disasters, obviously, have their uses. They
knock down obsolete rubbish and enable a man to
start building anew. The most sensitive recluse cannot
help being a member of society. As such, he unavoid-
ably gathers about him a host of mere acquaintances,
good folks who waste his time, dulling the edge of his
wit and infecting him with their orthodoxy. Then
comes the cataclysm. He loses, let us say, all his
money, or makes a third appearance in the divorce
coiirts. He can then at last (so one of them expressed
it to me) " revise his visiting-list," an operation which
more than counter-balances any damage from earth-
quakes. For these same good folks are vanished, the
scandal having scattered them to the winds. He
begins to breathe again, and employ his hours to better
purpose. If he loses both money and reputation he
must feel, I should think, as though treading on air.
The last fools gone ! And no sage lacks friends.

Consider well your neighbour, what an imbecile he
is. Then ask yourself whether it be worth while
paying any attention to what he thinks of you. Life
is too short, and death the end of all things. Life must
be lived, not endured. Were the day twice as long as
it is, a man might find it diverting to probe down into
that unsatisfactory fellow-creature and try to reach
some common root of feeling other than those physio-
logical needs which we share with every beast of earth.
Diverting ; hardly profitable. It would be like look-
ing for a flea in a haystack, or a joke in the Bible.
They can perhaps be found ; at the expense of how
much trouble I

Therefore the sage will go his way, prepared to find

ROME 137

himself growing ever more out of sympathy with
vulgar trends of opinion, for such is the inevitable
development of thoughtful and self-respecting minds.
He scorns to make proselytes among his fellows : they
are not worth it. He has better things to do. While
others nurse their griefs, he nurses his joy. He
endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and
to be true to that self when found — a worthy and
ample occupation for a Hfe-time. The happiness-of^
ihe-greatesUnumbery of those who pasture on delusions :
what dreamer is responsible for this eunuchry ? Mill,
was it ? Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest-
nimiber were not necessarily the least-intelligent 1 As
if their happiness were not necessarily incompatible
with that of the sage ! Why foster it ? He is a poor
philosopher, who cuts his own throat. Away with
their ghosts ; de-spiritualise yourself ; what you
cannot find on earth is not worth seeking.

That charming M. M., I fear, will never compass
this clarity of vision, this perfect de-spiritualisation
and contempt of illusions. He will never remain
curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in
nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has
inherited that all too common taint of psychasthenia
(miscalled neurasthenia) ; he confesses, moreover, —
like other men of strong carnal proclivities — ^to certain
inmiaterial needs and aspirations after ^^ the beyond."
Not one of these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but
has his Achilles heel : a mental crotchet or physical
imperfection to mar the worldly perspective. Not one
of them, at close of life, will sit beside some open
window in view of a fair landscape and call up
memories of certain moments which no cataclysms have
taken from him ; not one will lay them in the balance

138 ALONE

and note how they outweigh, in their tiny grains of
gold, the dross of an age of other men's Uves. Not
one of them I They will be preoccupied, for the most
part, with unseasonable little concerns. Pleasant folk,
none the less. And sufficiently abundant in Italy.
Altogether, the Englishman here is often an intenser
being than the home product. Alien surroimdings
awaken fresh and luiexpected notes in his natiu-e.
His fibres seem to lie more exposed ; you have glimpses
into the man's anatomy. There is something hostile
in this sunlight to the hazy or spongy quality which
saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the
sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will
also meet with dull persons ; Rome is full of them,
but, the type being easier to detect amoi^ a foreign
environment, there is still less difficulty in evading
them. • • .

Thus I should have had no compunction, some
nights ago, in making myself highly objectionable to
Mr. P. G. who has turned up here on some mission
connected with the war — so he says, and it may well
be true ; no compunction whatever, had that gentle-
man been in his ordinary social state. Mr. P. G., the
acme of British propriety, inhabiting a house, a man-
sion, on the breezy heights of north London, was on
that occasion decidedly drunk. " Indulging in a jag,"
he would probably have called it. He tottered into a
place where I happened to be sitting, having lost his
friends, he declared ; and soon began pouring into
my ear, after the confidential manner of a drunkard,
a flood of low talk which, if I attempted to set it down
here, would only result in my being treated to the
same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with
his " choicest paragraphs." It was highly instructive

ROME 139

— the contrast between that impeccable personality
which he displays at home and his present state. I
wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a
few shreds of what he said — just a few shreds ; they
would have seen a new light on dear daddy.

In vino Veritas. Ever avid of experimenttmi in some
corpore viU and determined to reach the bed-rock of
his gross mentality, I plied him vigorously with drink,
and was rewarded. It was rich sport, unmasking this
Philistine and thanking God, meanwhile, that I was
not Uke unto him. We are all lost sheep ; and none
the worse for that. Yet whoso is liable, however
drunk, to make an exhibition of himself after the
peculiar fashion of Mr. P. G., should realise that
there is something fundamentally wrong with his
character and take drastic measures of reform —
measures which would 'include, among others, a total
abstention from alcohol. Old Aristotle, long ago,
laboured to define wherein consisted the trait known
as gentlemanliness ; others will have puzzled since his
day, for we have bedaubed ourselves with so thick a
coating of manner and phrase that many a cad will
pass for something better. Well, here is the test.
Unvamish your man ; make him drink, and listen.
That was my procedure with P. G. Esquire. I listened
to his outpouring of inanity and obscenity and, listen-
ing sympathetically, like some compassionate family
doctor, could not help asking myself : Is such a man
to be respected, even when sober ? Be that as it may,
he gave me to imderstand why some folk are rightly
afraid of exposing, irnder the influence of drink, the
hite humaine which lurks below their skin of decency.
His language would have terrified many people. Me
it rejoiced. I would not have missed that entertain-

140 ALONE

ment for worlds. He finally wanted to have a fight,
because I refused to accompany him to a certain place
of delights, the address of which — I might have given
him a far better one — ^had been scrawled on the back
of a crumpled envelope by some cabman. Unable to
stand on his legs, what could he hope to do there ?

Olevano

I HAVE loafed into Olevano,
A thousand feet below my window, and far
away, lies the gap between the Alban and
Volscian hills ; veiled in mists, the Pontine marshes
extend beyond, and further still — discernible only to
the eye of faith — ^the Tyrrhenian,

The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable
grace. It recalls Etna, as viewed from Taormina,
How the moimtain cleaves to earth, how reluctantly
it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble
line ! Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are
firmly planted on its lower slope. Standing out against
the sky, they can be seen at all hours of the day,
whereas that dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on
the green plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades
out of sight after midday.

Hard by, on your right, are the craggy heights of
Capranica. Tradition has it that Michael Angelo was
in exile up there, after doing something rather risky.
What had he done ? He crucified his model, desirous,
like a true artist, to observe and reproduce faithfully
in marble the muscular contractions and facial agony
of such a sufferer. To crucify a man : this was going
almost too far, even for the Pope of that period, who
seems to have been an unusually sensitive pontiff — or
perhaps the victim was a particular friend of his. How-
ever that may be, he waxed wroth and banished the con-

141

142 ALONE

scientious sculptor in disgrace to this lonely mountain
village, there to expiate his sins, for a day or two. . . •

One sleeps badly here. Those nightingales — ^they
are worse than the tram-cars in town. They begin
earlier. They make more noise. Surely there is a
time for everything ? Will certain birds never learn
to sing at reasonable hours ?

A word as to these nightingales. One of them elects
to warble, in deplorably full-throated ease, immediately
below my bedroom window. When this particular
fowl sets up its din at about 345 a.m. it is a veritable
explosion; an ear-rending, nerve-shattering explosion of
noise. I use that word "noise "deliberately. For it is not
music — ^not imtil your ears are grown accustomed to it.

I know a little something about music, having studied
the art with- considerable diligence for a mmiber of
years. Impossible to enumerate all the composers and
executants on various instruments, the conductors and
opera-singers and ballet-girls with whom I was on
terms of familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps
I am the only person now alive who has shaken hands
with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with Beethoven
and heard his voice ; all of which may appear when I
come to indite my musical memoirs. I have written
a sonata in four movements, opus 643, hitherto un-
published, and played the organ during divine service
to a crowded congregation. Furthermore I performed,
not at my own suggestion, his insipid Valse Caprice to
the great Antoine Rubinstein, who was kind enough
to observe : " Yes, yes. Quite good. But I rather
doubt whether you could yet risk playing that in a
concert." And in the matter of sheer noise I am also
something of an expert, having once, as an infant
prodigy, broken five notes in a single masterly render-

OLEVANO 143

ing ot Liszt's polonaise in E Major — I think it is
E Major — ^whereupon my teacher, himself a pupil of
Liszt, genially remarked : " Now don't cry, and don't
apologize, A polonaise like yours is worth a piano ^
I set these things down with modest diffidence, solely
in order to establish my locus standi as a person who
might be expected to know the difference between
sound and noise. As such, I have no hesitation in
saying that the first three bars of that nightingale per-
formance are, to sleeping ears, not music. They break
upon the stillness with the crash of Judgment Day.

And every night the same scare. It causes me to
start up, bathed in sudden perspiration, out of my
first, and best, and often only sleep, with the familiar
feeling that something awful is happening. Windows
seem to rattle, plaster drops from the ceiling — an
earthquake ? Lord, no. Nothing so trivial. Nothing
so brief It is that blasted bird clearing its throat for
a five hours' entertainment. Let it not be supposed
that the song of these southerners bears any resem-
blance to that of an English nightingale. I could
stand a hatful of English nightingales in my bedroom ;
they would lull me to sleep with their anaemic whispers.
You might as well compare the voice of an Italian
costermonger, the crowing of a cock, the braying of a
local donkey, with their representatives in the north —
those thin trickles of sound, shadowy as the squeak-
ings of ghosts. Something will have to be done about
those nightingales unless I am to find my way into a
sanatoriimi. For hardly is this bird started on its
work before five or six others begin to shout in emula-
tion — 2l little further off, I am glad to say, but still
near, enough to be inconvenient ; still near enough to
be reached by a brick from this window

144 ALONE

A hndk. Methinks I begin to see daylight. . . •

Meanwhile one can snatch a little rest out of doors, .
in the afternoon. A delectable path, for example, runs
up behind the cemetery, bordered by butterfly orchids
and lithospermium and aristolochia and other plants
worthy of better names ; it winds aloft, under shady
chestnuts, with views on either side. Here one can
sit and smoke and converse with some rare country-
man passing by ; here one can dream, forgetful of
nightingales — soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note
of the oriole among the green branches overhead and
the piping, agreeably remote, of some wryneck in
the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet
time, for the first time in their lives ; sportsmen are
all at the front. I kicked up a partridge along this
track two days ago.

Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant but hard
to see. They sit close, relying on their protective
colour. And it is the same with the tree-creepers. I
have heard Englishmen say there are no tree-creepers
in Italy. The olive groves are well stocked with them
(there are numbers even in the Borghese Gardens in
Rome), but you must remain immovable as a rock in
order to see them ; for they are yet shyer, more silent,
more fond of interposing the tree-trunk between your-
self and them, than those at home. Mouse-like in
hue, in movement and voice — a strange case of
analogous variation. . . .

As to this Scalambra, this mountain whose bleak
grey summit overtops everything near Olevano, I could

OLEVANO 145

soon bear the sight of it no longer. It seemed to shut
out the world ; one must up and glance over the edge,
to see what is happening on the other side. I looked
for a guide and porter, for somebody more solid than
Giulio, who is almost an infant ; none could be found.
Men are growing scarce as the Dodo hereabouts, on
account of the war. So Giulio came, though he had
never made the ascent.

Now common sense, to say nothing of a glance at the
map, would suggest the proper method of approach :
by the village of Serrano, the Saint Michael hermitage,
and so up. Scouting this plan, I attacked the moun-
tain about half-way between that village and Rojate.
I cannot recommend my route. It was wearisome to
the last degree and absolutely shadeless save for a
small piece of jungle clothing a guUey, hung with
myriads of caterpillars and not worth mentioning as
an incident in that long walk. No excitement — ^not
the faintest chance, so far as I could see, of breaking
one's neck, and uphill all the time over limestone. One
never seems to get any nearer. This Scalambra, I soon
discovered, is one of those artful mountains which
defend their summits by thrusting out escarpments
with valleys in between ; you are kept at arm's length,
as it were, by this arrangement of the rock, which is
invisible at a distance. And when at last you set foot
on the real ridge and climb laboriously to what seems
to be the top — ^lo ! there is another peak a little further
off, obviously a few feet higher. Up you go, only to
discover a third, perhaps a few inches higher still.
Alpine climbers know these tricks.

We reached the goal none the less and there lay,
panting and gasping ; while an eagle, a solitary eagle with
tattered wings, floated overhead in the cloudless sky.

146 ALONE

The descent to Rojate under that blazing sun was
bad enough. My flask had been drained to the dregs
long ago, and the Scalambra, true to its limestone
tradition, had not supplied even a drop of water.
Arriving at the village at about two in the afternoon,
we found it deserted ; everybody enjoying their
Sunday nap. Rojate is a dirty hole. The water was
plainly not to be trusted ; it might contain typhoid
germs, and I was responsible for Giulio's health ; wine
would be safer, we agreed. There, in a little shop
near the church — a dark and cool place, the first shade
we had entered for many hours — ^we drank without
ever growing less thirsty. We felt like cinders, so hot,
so porous, that the liquid seemed not only to find its
way into the legitimate receptacle but to be obliged to
percolate, by some occult process of capillarity, the
remotest regions of the body. As time went on, the
inhabitants dropped in after their slumbers and kept
us company. We told our adventures, drank to the
health of the Allies one by one and several times over ;
and it was not until we had risen to our feet and
passed once more into the sunshine of the square that
we suddenly felt different from what we thought we felt.

The first indication was conveyed by Giulio, who
called upon the populace of Rojate, there assembled,
to bear solemn witness to the fact that I was his one
and only friend, and that he would nevermore abandon
me — ^ sentiment in which I stoutly concurred. (A
fellow-feeling makes us wondrous blind.) Other
symptoms followed. His hat, for example, which had
hitherto behaved in exemplary fashion, now refused
to remain steadily balanced on his head ; it took some
first-class gymnastics to prevent it from falling to the
ground. In fact, while I confined myself to the minor

OLEVANO 147

part of Silenus — ^my native role — ^this youngster gave
a noteworthy representation of the Drunken Faun. . . .

Now I see no harm in appreciating wine up to a
certain point, and am consoled to observe that Craufurd
Tait Ramage, LL.D., was of the same way of thinking/
He says so himself, and there is no reason for doubting
his word. He frankly admits, for instance, that he
enjoys the stuff called moscato " with great zest." He
samples the Falemian vintage and pronounces it to be
" particularly good, and not degenerated/' Arrived
at Cutro, he is not averse to reviving his spirits
with " a pretty fair modicum of wine," He also lets
slip — significant detail — ^the fact that Dr, Henderson
was one of his friends, and that he travelled about with
him. You may judge a man by the company he keeps.
Who was this Dr. Henderson ? He was " the author
of The History of Ancient Wines." Old Henderson,
I should say, could be trusted to know something of
local vintages.

And so far good.

At Licenza, however, Ramage tells us that he " got
glorious on the wine of Horace's Sabine farm." I do
not know what he means by this expression, which
seems to be purposely ambiguous ; in any case, it does
not sound very nice. At another place, again, he and
his entertainer consumed some excellent liquor " in
considerable quantity " — so he avows ; adding that
" it was long past midnight ere we closed our baccha-
nalian orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that
he was happy to have made my acquaintance." Note
the lame and colourless close of that sentence : he
ended by statitig. One always ends that way after
bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss
over the escapade with such disingenuous language.

148 ALONE

We can guess what really took place. It was something
like what happened at Rojate. Did not the curly-
haired Giulio end by " stating " something to the
same effect?

I cannot make up my mind whether to be pleased
with this particular trait in friend Ramage's character.
For let it never be forgotten that our traveller was a
yoimg man at the time. He says so himself, and there
is no reason for doubting his word. Was he acting
as beseemed his years ?

I am not more straight-laced than many people, yet
I confess it always gives me a kind of twinge to see a
young man yielding to intemperance of any kind.
There is something incongruous in the spectacle, if
not actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt
to associate that time of life with stem resolve. A
young man, it appears to me, should hold himself well
in h^id. Youth has so much to spare ! Youth can
afford to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming
ahead, it should be a period of ideals, of self-restraint
and self-discipline, of earnestness of purpose. How
well the Greek Anthology praises " Temperance, the
nurse of Youth ! " The divine Plato lays it down that
youngsters should not touch wine at all, since it is not
right to heap fire on fire. He adds that older men like
ourselves may indulge therein as an ally against the
austerity of their years — ^agreeing, therefore, with
Theophrastus who likewise reconunends it for the
" natural moroseness " of age.

Observe in this connection what happened to
Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., at Trebisacce. Here
was a poor old coastguard who had been taken prisoner
by the Corsairs thirty years earlier, carried to Algiers,
and afterwards ransomed. Having " nothing better

OLEVANO 149

to do " (says our author) " I confess I furnished him
with somewhat more wine than was exactly consistent
with propriety " ; with so liberal a quantity, indeed,
that the coastguard became quite " obstreperous in his
mirth " ; whereupon Ramage hops on his mule and
leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young
fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And
why ? Because he has " nothing better to do.'** It
is not remarkably edifying. True, he afterwards makes
a kind of apology for " causing my brother to sin by
over-indulgence.'* ...

But if we close our eyes to the fact that Ramage,
when he gave way to these excesses, was a young man
and ought to have known better, what an agreeable
companion we find him !

He never rails at anything. Had I been subjected
to half the annoyances he endured, my curses would
have been loud and long. Under such provocation,
Ramage contents himself with reproving his tormentors
in rounded phrases of oratio ohUqua which savour
strongly of those Latin classics he knew so well. What
he says of the countryfolk is not only polite but true,
that their virtues are their own, while their vices have
been fostered by the abuses of t5nranny. " Whatever
fault one may find with this people for their super-
stition and ignorance, there is a loveableness in their
character which I am not utilitarian enough in my
philosophy to resist.'* This comes of travelling off

* This is the same gentleman who infonns us, on page 166,
" I have lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine."
We learn from the Dictionary of National Biography that he was
bom in 1803 ; he must therefore have been twenty-five years old
when he bemused the coastguard. Only twenty-five ; and already
at this stage. We are further told that he was tutor to somebody's
son. Unhappy child 1

I50 ALONE

the beaten track and with an open mind ; it comes of
direct contact. When one remembers that he wrote
in 1828 and was derived from a bigoted stock, his
religious tolerance is refreshing — astonishing. He
studies the observances of the poorer classes with
sympathetic eye and finds that they are ^^ pious to a
degree to which I am afraid we must grant that we
have no pretensions." That custom of suspending
votive offerings in churches he does not think " worthy
of being altogether condemned or ridiculed. The
feeling is the same that induces us, on recovery from
severe illness, to give thanks to Almighty Grod, either
publicly in church or privately in our closets." How
many Calvinists of to-day would write like this ?

We could do with more of these sensible and humane
reflections, but unfortunately he is generally too
" pressed for time " to indulge in them. That mania
of hustling through the coimtry ....

One morning he finds himself at Foggia, with the
intention of visiting Mons Garganus. First of all he
must " satisfy his curiosity " about Arpi ; it is ten
miles there and back. Leaving Foggia for the second
time he proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and
inspects not only this town, but the site of old Sipon-
tum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, and
later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promon-
tory. About six miles to the north are the presxmiable
ruins of Merimmi ; he insists upon going there, but
the boatmen strike work ; regretfully he returns to
Manfredonia, arriving at 11 p.m., and having covered
on this day some sixty or seventy miles. What does
he do at Manfredonia ? He sleeps for three hours —
and then a new hustle begins, in pitch darkness.

Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he

OLEVANO 151

will visit the Siren Islets. He crosses the ridge and
descends to the sea on the other side, to the so-called
Scaricatojo — quite a respectable walk, as any one can
find out for himself. Hence he sails to the larger of
the islets, climbs to the summit and makes some
excavations, in the course of which he observes what
I thought I was the first to discover — ^the substructures
of a noble Roman villa ; he also scrambles into King
Robert's tower. Then to the next islet, and up it ;
then to the third, and up it. After that, he is tempted
to visit the headland of Minerva ; he goes there, and
satisfies his curiosity. He must now hence to Capri.
He sails across, and after a little refreshment, walks
to the so-called Villa of Jupiter at the easterly apex of
the island. He then rows round the southern shore
and is taken with the idea of a trip to Misenum,
twenty miles or so distant. Arrived there, he climbs
to the sununit of the cape and Ungers a while-it is
pleasant to find him lingering — ^to examine something
or other. Then he " rushes " down to the boat and
bids them row to Pozzuoli, where he arrives (and no
wonder) long after sunset. A good day's hustle. . . .
The ladies made a great impression on his sensitive
mind ; yet not even they were allowed to interfere
with his plans. At Strongoli the " sparkling eyes of
the younger sister " proved the most attractive object
in the place. He was strongly urged to remain a while
and rest from his fatigues. But no ; there were many
reasons why he should press forward. He therefore
presses forward. At another place, too, he was waited
upon by his entertainer's three daughters, the youngest
of whom was one of the most entrancing girls he had
ever met with — ^in fact, it was well that his time was
limited, else " I verily believe I should have com-

152 ALONE

mitted all kinds of follies." That is Ramage. He
parts from his host with " unfeigned regret " — ^but —
parts. His time is always limited. But for that craze
of pressing forward, what fun he could have had !

Stroll to that grove of oaks crowning a hill-top above
the Serpentaro stream. It has often been described,
often painted. It is a comer of Latium in perfect
preservation ; a glamorous place ; in the warm dusk
of southern twilight — ^when all those tiresome children
are at last asleep — ^it calls up suggestions of A Mid--
summer Night* s Dream. Here is a specimen of the
landscape as it used to be. You may encounter durii^
yoiu: wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved
by their inaccessibility from the invading axe. " Hands
off the Oak ! " cries an old Greek poet.

The Germans, realising its picturesque value, bought
this parcel of land and saved the trees from destruc-
tion. It was well done. Within, they have cut certain
letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan
sanctity of the place — Germans will do these things ;
there is no stopping them ; it is part of their crudely
expansive temperament — certain letterings, among
other and major horrors, anent the " Law of the
Ever-beautiful " (how truly Teutonic !) — Klines, that is,
signed by the poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated
2 May, 1897. Scheffel was a kindly and erudite old
toper, who toped himself into Elysium via countless
quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things ; the
far-famed Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit
to the Hohentwiel mountain in search of that golden-

OLEVANO 153

tinted natrolite mineral, which was duly found (I
specialised in zeolites during that period).

Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in
1897 ? For I attended his funeral, which took place
in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, a scraggy
youth in those days, inherited not only the father's
name but his poetic mantle ? Was it he who perpe-
trated those sententious lines ? I like to think so.
That " law of the ever-beautiful " does not smack of
the old man, unless he was more disguised than usual,
and having a little fun with his pedantic countrymen. . . .

Climb hence — ^it is not far — ^to the village of Civi-
tella, now called Bellegra, a prehistoric fastness with
some traces of " cyclopean " defences. Those ancients
must have had cisterns ; inconceivable that springs
should ever have issued from this limestone crag.
You can see the women of to-day fetching water from
below, from a spot which I was too lazy to investigate,
where perhaps the soft tertiary rock leans upon this
impervious stuff and allows the liquid to escape into
the open. An unclean place is Bellegra, and loud,
like all these Sabine villages, with the confused crying
of little children. That multiple wail of misery will
ring in your ear for days afterwards. They are more
neglected by their mothers than ever, since women
now have all the men's work in the fields to do. They
are hungrier than ever, on account of the war which
has imposed real hardships on these agricultural folk ;
hardships that seize them by the throat and make them
sit down, with folded hands, in dumb despair : so I
have seen them. How many of these unhappy babies
will grow to maturity ?

Death-rate must anyhow be high hereabouts, for
nothing is done in the way of hygiene. In the com-

1 54 ALONE

pany of one who knows, I perambulated the cemetery
of Olevano and was astonished at the frequency of
tombstones erected to the young. " Consumption,"
my friend told me. They scorn prophylactics. I
should not care to send growing children into these
villages, despite their " fine air." Here, at Bellegra,
the air must be fine indeed in winter ; too fine for
my taste. It lies high, exposed to every blast of
Heaven, and with noble views in all directions.

Rest awhile, on your homeward march, at the small
bridge near Olevano where the road takes a turn. A
few hundred yards up the glen on your left is a foun-
tain whose waters are renowned for their purity ; the
bridge itself is not a favourite spot after simset ; it is
haunted by a most maUgnant spectre. That adds con-
siderably, in my eyes, to the charm of the place.
Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower.
What recollections does that scent evoke ! What hints
of summer, after rain I

A venerable tree, old as the hills ; that last syllable
tells its tale — ^you may read it in the Sanscrit. A man-
loving tree ; seldom one sees an elder by itself, away
from human habitations, in the jungle. I have done
so ; but in that particular jungle, buried beneath the
soil, were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin
to attach itself to the works of man, to walls and
buildings ? And why ? Does it derive peculiar
sustenance from the lime of the masonry ? I think
not, for it grows in lands where lime is rare, and in
the shadow of log-huts. It seeks shelter from the
wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel won-
drously when the plant is set in exposed situations.

The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use
the berries to colour the wine. A German writer,

OLEVANO 155

R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of Leit-motif
for one of his local novels, I met him once by accident,
and am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal
and flabbily pompous old man — straightway my opinion
of his books, never very high, fell to zero, and has
there remained. He knew these regions well, and
doubtless sojourned at one time or another at yonder
caravanserai-hotel, abandoned of late, but then filled
with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have since been
sacrificed to the war-god. Doubtless he drank wine
with them on that terrace overlooking the brown
houses of Olevano, though I question whether he then
paid as much as they are now charging me ; doubtless
he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies
fronting the landscape, though I question whether he
derived more pleasure from them than I do. . . .

While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards
to where, in the Abruzzi region, the peaks are still
shrouded in snow.

How are they doing out there, at Scanno ? Is that
driving-road at last finished ? Can the ** River
Danube " still be heard flowing underground in the
little cave of Saint Martin ? Are the thistles of violet
and red and blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as
ever ?* And those legions of butterflies — do they still
hover among the sunny patches in the narrow vale
leading to Mount Terrata ? And Frattura, that
strange place — ^what has happened to Frattura ? Built

* Not all of them are true thistles. Abbade's Guide to the
Abruzzi (1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region.

156 ALONE

on a fracture, on the rubble of that shattered moun-
tain which produced the lake lower down, it has
probably crumbled away in the last earthquake. Well
I remember Frattura I It was where the wolf ate the
donkey, and where we, in our turn, often refreshed
ourselves in the dim hovel of Ferdinando — ^never with
greater zest than on the hot downward march from
Mount Genzana. Whether those small purple gen-
tians are still to be found on its summit ? And the
emerald lizard on the lower slopes ? Whether the
eagles still breed on the neighbouring Montagna di
Preccia ? They may well be tired of having their nest
plundered year after year.

What foreigner has older and pleasanter memories
of Scanno ? I would like to meet that man, and
compare notes.

And so, glancing over the hills from Bellegra, I sent
my thoughts into those Abruzzi mountains, and regis-
tered a vow to revisit Scanno — ^if only in order to
traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld
lang syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger
in that moist nook by the lake-side where stood the
Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if such it was, of
the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly
dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one even-
ing, I listened to something that might have been said
much sooner. Acque Vive. • . •

I kept my vow. Our bill at Scanno for wine alone
was 189 francs, and for beer 92 francs ; figures which
look more formidable than they are and which I cite
only to prove that we — ^for of course I was not alone —
enjoyed ourselves fairly well during those eighteen
days. By the way, what does Baedeker mean by speak-
ing of the " excellent wines " of Scanno, where not a

OLEVANO 157

drop is grown ? He might have said the same of
Aberdeen.

The season was too late for the thistles, too late for
the little coppers and fritillaries and queens of Spain
and commas and all the rest of that fluttering tribe in
the narrow vale leading to Terrata, though wood-
pigeons were still cooing there. Scanno has been
spared by the earthquake which laid low so many
other places ; it has prospered ; prospered too much
for my taste, since those rich smoky tints, especially
of the vaulted interiors, are now disappearing under
an invasion of iron beams and white plaster. The
golden duskiness of Scanno, heightened as it was by
the gleaming copper vessels borne on every young
girl's head, will soon be a thing of the past. Young
trees along the road-side— well-chosen trees : limes,
maples, willows, elms, chestnuts, ashes — are likewise
doing well and promise pretty effects of variegated
foliage in a few years' time ; so are the plantations of
pines in the higher regions of the Genzana. In this
matter of afforestation, Scanno continues its system of
draconic severity. It is worth while, in a country
which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of
goats on the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water.
The Sagittario stream is hemmed in by a cunning
device of stones contained within bags of strong wire ;
it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from
Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you
will find they have been scientifically dammed by the
administration, whereas the peasant, when they over-
flow and ruin his crops, contents himself with damning
them in quite an amateurish fashion. Which reminds
me that I picked up during this visit, and have added
to my collection, a new term of abuse to be addressed

iS8 ALONE

to your father-in-law : Porcaccio d^tm cagnaccio !
Novel elSiects, you perceive, obtained by a mere
intensification of colour.

As to Frattura — ^yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried
to identify Ferdinando's abode among all that debris.
The old man himself escaped the cataclysm, and now
sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden shanties
erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio,
of whom more on p. 171, has died ; his place is taken
by a worthless vagabond. Saint Domenico and his
serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis fanum),
that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears
the problematical date of 600 a.d. — ^they are all in their
former places. Mount Velino still glitters over the
landscape, for those who climb high enough to see it.
The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the
water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume,
still carry those immense loads of wood on their heads,
though payment is considerably higher than the three
half-pence a day which it used to be.

Enough of Scanno !

Whoever wishes to leave the place on foot and by
an unconventional route, may go to Sora via Pescas-
seroli. Adventurous souls will scramble over the
Terrata massif j leaving the summit well on their right,
and descend on its further side ; others may wander
up the Valle dei Prati and then, bending to the right
along the so-called Via del Campo, mount upwards
past a thronged alp of sheep, over the watershed, and
down through charming vallejrs of beechen timber. A
noble walk, and one that compares favourably with
many Abruzzi excursions. What deserts they often
are, these stretches of arid limestone, voiceless and
waterless, with the raven's croak for your only company !

OLEVANO 159

I am glad to have seen Pescasseroli, where we
arrived at about 9 a.m. For the rest, it is only one of
many such places that have been brought to a state of
degradation by the earthquake, the present war, and
governmental neglect. Not an ounce of bread was
procurable for money, or even as a gift. The ordinary
needs of life — cigars, matches, maccheroni and so
forth : there were none of them. An epidemic of the
gapes, infecting the entire race of local hens, had
caused the disappearance of every egg from the
market. And all those other countless diings which
a family requires for its maintenance — soap and cloth
and earthenware and kitchen utensils and oils — ^they
have become rarities ; the natives are learning to
subsist without them ; relapsing into a kind of bar-
barism. So they sit among the cracked tenements ;
resentful, or dumbly apathetic.

" We have been forgotten," said one of them.

The priests inculcate submission to the will of God.
What else should they teach ? But men will outgrow
these doctrines of patience when suffering is too acute
or too prolonged. " Anything is better than this,'*
they say. So it comes about that these ruined regions
are a goodly soil for the sowing of subversive opinions;
the land reeks of ill-digested socialism.

We found a " restaurant *' where we lunched off a
tin of antediluvian Spanish sardines, some mouldy
sweet biscuits, and black wine. (A distinction is made
in these parts between black and red wine ; the former
is the Apulian variety, the other from Sulmona.)
During this repast, we were treated to several bear-
stories. For there are bears at Pescasseroli, and no-
where else in Italy ; even as there are chamois near
by, between Opi and Villetta Barrea, among the crags

i6o ALONE

of the Camosciara, which perpetuates their name.
One of those present assured us that the bear is a
good beast ; he will eat a man, of course, but if he
meets a little boy, he contents himself with throwing
stones at him — just to teach him good manners.
Certain old bears are as big as a donkey. They have
been seen driving into their cave a flock of twenty-
five sheep, like any shepherd. It is no rare thing to
encounter in the woods a bear with a goat slung over
his shoulder ; he must breakfast, like anybody else.
One of these gentlemen told us that the bears, not long
ago, were a source of considerable profit to the peasantry
round about. It was in this wise. Their numbers
had been reduced, it seems, to a single pair and the
species was threatened with extinction, when, some-
how or other, this state of affairs became known to the
King who, alarmed at the disappearance from his
realm of a venerable and autochtonous quadruped, the
largest European beast of prey, conceived the happy
idea of converting the whole region into a Royal
Preserve. On pain of death, no bear was to be molested
or even laughed at ; any damage they might do would
be compensated out of the Royal Purse.

For a week or so after this enactment, nothing was
heard of the bears. Then, one morning, the con-
scientious Minister of the Royal Household presented
himself at the palace, with a large sheaf of documents
under his arm.

" What have We here ? " inquired the King.

" Attestations relating to the bears of Pescasseroli,
Your Majesty. They seem to be thriving.''

" Ah ! That is nice of them. They are multiply-
ing once more, thanks to Our Royal protection. We
thought they would."

OLEVANO i6i

" Multiplying indeed, Sire. Here are testimonials,
sworn before the local syndic, showing that they have
devoured i8 head of cattle and 43 sheep."

" In that short time ? Is it possible ? Well, well !
The damage must be paid. And yet We never knew
that bears could propagate so fast. Maybe our Italian
variety is peculiarly vigorous in such matters."

" Seems so. Your Majesty. Very prolific."

A week or so passed and, once more. His Excellency
was announced. The King observed :

" You are not looking quite yourself this morning,
my good Minister. Would it be indiscreet to inquire the
cause ? No family or parliamentary worries. We trust ? "

" Your Majesty is very kind ! No. It is the bears
of Pescasseroli. They have eaten 75 head of cattle,
93 sheep, and 114 goats. Ah — ^and 18 horses. Here
are the claims for damages, notarially attested."

" We must pay. But if only somebody could teach
the dear creatures to breed a little more reasonably 1 "

" I cannot but think. Sire, that the peasants are
abusing Your Majesty's "

" May We never live to hear anything against Our
faithful and well-beloved Abruzzi folk ! "

Nearly a month elapsed before the Minister again
presented himself. This time he looked really haggard
and careworn, and was bowed down under an enor-
mous bimdle of papers. The King glanced up from
that writing-desk where, like all other sovereigns, he
had been working steadily since 4.30 a.m., and at once
remarked, with that sympathetic intuition for which
he is famous among crowned heads :

" We think We know. The bears."

" Your Majesty is never wrong. They have de-
voured 126 cows and calves and bullocks, 418 sheep

M

i62 ALONE

and goatSy 62 mules, 37 horses, and 96 donkeys. Also 55
shepherd dogs and 827 chickens. Here are the claims."

^^ Dear, dear, dear. This will never do. If it is a
question of going to ruin. We prefer that it should
be the bears rather than Ourselves. We must with-
draw Our Royal protection, after settling up these last
items. What say you, my good Minister ? "

" Your Majesty is always right. A private individual
may indulge in the pastime of breeding bears to the
verge of personal bankruptcy. Ruling sovereigns will
be guided by juster and more complex considerations."

And from that moment, added our gentlemanly in-
formant, there began a wonderful shrinkage in the
numbers of the bears. Within a day or two, they
were again reduced to a single couple.

Gladly would I have listened to more of these tales
but, having by far the worst of the day^s walk still
before us, we left the stricken regions about midday
and soon began an interminable ascent, all through
woods, to the shrine of Madonna di Tranquillo. Here-
abouts is the watershed, whence you may see, far
below, the tower of Campoli Apennino. That village
was passed in due course, and Sora lay before us, after
a thirteen hours' march. • . .

That same night in Sora — ^it may have been 2 a.m.
— some demon drew nigh to my bedside and whispered
in my ear : " What are you doing here, at Sora ?
Why not revisit Alatri ? (I had been there already in
June.) Just another little promenade ! Up, sluggard,
while the night-air is cool ! "

I obeyed the sununons and turned to rouse my
slumbering companion, to whom I announced my
inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were well
worth listening to.

OLEVANO 163

Next evening found us at Alatri.

Now whoever, after walking from Scanno over
Pescasseroli to Sora in one day, and on the next, in
the blazing heat of early autumn, from Sora over Isola
Liri and Veroli to Alatri — ^touching in two days the
soil of three Italian provinces : Aquila, Caserta, and
Rome — ^whoever, after doing this, and inspecting the
convent of Casamari en routes feels inclined for a
similar promenade on the third day : let him rest
assured of my profound respect.

Calm, sunny days at Olevano. And tranquil nights,
for some time past.

The nightingale has been inspired to move a little
up country, into another bush. Its rivals have like-
wise retired further off, and their melodramatic trills
sound quite pleasant at this distance.

So tin cans have their uses, even when empty.
Certain building operations may have been inter-
rupted. I apologise, though I will not promise not
to repeat the offence. They can move their nests ;
I cannot move this house. Bless their souls ! I would
not hurt a hair on their dear little heads, but one must
really have a few hours' sleep, somehow or other. A
single night's repose is more precious to me than a
myriad birds or quadrupeds or bipeds ; my ideas on
the sacred nature of sleep being perfectly Oriental.
That Black Hole of Calcutta was an infamous business.
And yet, while nowise approving the tyrant's action,
I can thoroughly understand his instructions on the
subject of slumber.

1 64 ALONE

Not every one at Olevano is so callous. Waiting
the other ckiy at the bifurcation of the roads for the
arrival of the station motor-car — ^the social event of
the place — I noticed two children bringing up to a
bigger one the nest of a chaffinch, artfully frosted over
with silver lichen from some olive, and containing a
naked brood which sprawled pathetically within.
Wasn't it pretty, they asked ?

" Very pretty," he replied. " Now you will take it
straight back where you found it. Go ahead. I am
coming with you." And he marched them off.

I am glad to put this incident on record. It is the
second of its kind which I have observed in this
country, the first being when a fisherman climbed up
a bad piece of rock to replace a nest — ^idle undertaking
— ^which some boys had dislodged with stones. At a
short distance from the scene sat the mother-bird in
pensive mood, her head cocked on one side. What
did she think of the benevolent enthusiast ? . . .

Olevano is said to have been discovered by the
Germans. I am sceptical on this point, having never
yet found a place that was discovered by them. An
English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died
here all by himself; though doubtless, once on the
spot, they did their best to popularise and vulgarise
it. In this matter, as in art or science or every depart*
ment of life, a German requires forerunners. He must
follow footsteps. He gleans ; picks the brains of
other people, profits by their mistakes and improves
on their ideas.

I know nothing of the social history of Olevano — of
its origin, so far as foreigners are concemed. It is the
easiest and the flimsiest thing in the world to invent ;
there are so many analogies !

OLEVANO i6s

The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired
Anglo-Indian army officer with unblemished record,
Major Frederick Potter. He came across the place on
a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent
climate. Passable food. You could pick up a wood-
cock or two. He was accustomed to solitude anyhow,
all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered
about the world. He had tried England for a couple
of years and discovered that people there did not like
being ordered about as they should be ; they seemed
to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been
something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being
the first " white man " in the place gave him a kind
of fondness for it.

It was he, then, who discovered Olevano — Freddy
Potter. We can see him living alone, wiry and whis-
kered and cantankerous, glorying in his solitude up
to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a
fellow-countryman turns up — ^Mr. Augustus Browne
of London. Mr. Browne is a blameless personality
who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an equally
blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a
sportsman like Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste
for landscape painting, with elaborate flowers and
butterflies worked into the foreground. So they live,
each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours,
importing groceries from England, dressing for dinner,
avoiding contact with the " natives " and, of course,
pretending to be unaware of one another^s existence.

As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows
stronger. The Major has never forgiven that cockney
for invading Olevano, his private domain, while
Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter,
who presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes

i66 ALONE

those filthy cheroots in public (this was years and years
ago). Why is the fellow skulking here, all by himself ?
Some hanky-panky with regimental money ; every one
knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of
right and wrong. And Potter is not long in making
up his mind that this civilian has bolted to Olevano
for reasons which will not bear investigation and is
living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed
name. Browne ! He really might have picked out a
better one, while he was about it. That water-colour
business — z blind, a red herring ; the so-called lady
companion

The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement
the mutual conduct of two compatriots. They are
known, far and wide, as " the madmen " till some
bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not
madmen at aU. but only homicides hiding from
justice ; whereupon contempt is changed to grudging
admiration.

Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up
and departs. The old Major's delight at being once
more alone is of short duration ; he falls ill and is
entombed, his last days being embittered by the
arrival of a party of German tourists who declare
they have " discovered " this wonderful new spot,
and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to
participate in its joys.

They come, singly and in batches, and soon make
Olevano uninhabitable to men of the Potter and
Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night,
sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street
" as if they were in their bedrooms," organise picnics
in the woods, sketch old women sitting in old door-
ways, start a Verschoenerungsverein and indulge in a

OLEVANO 167

number of other antics which, from the local poin
of view, are held to be either coarse or childish. The
natives, after watching their doings with critical interest,
presently pronounce a verdict — sl verdict to which the
brightest spirits of the place give their assent — a
verdict which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered.

" Those Englishmen '* — ^thus it runs — ^^ were at
least assassins. These people are merely fools."

PosTCRiPT — One thing has occurred of late which
would hardly have happened were the Germans still
in occupation of Olevano. At the central piazza is a
fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly,
you could rest and glance down upon the country
lying below — ^upon a piece of green landscape peering
in upon the street. This little view was like a window ,
it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now
blocked it up with an ugly house. The beauty of the
site is gone. It is surprising that local municipalities;
however stupid, however corrupt, should not be aware
of the damage done to their own interests when they
permit such outrages. The Germans — ^were any of
them still here — ^would doubtless have interfered en
masse and stopped the building.

Something should be done about these reviewers.

There has followed me hither a bundle of press
notices of a recent book of mine. They are favourable.
I ought to be delighted. I happen to be annoyed.

What takes place in this absurd book ? The three
unities are preserved. A respectable but rather drab
individual^ a bishop, who$e tastes and moods are

i68 ALONE

fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader,
arrives at a new place and is described as being,
among other things, peculiarly sensitive on the subject
of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to the
sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their
purity, their sacred mission on earth, their refining
influence upon the race. His friends call him old-
fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman,
he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man,
towards the end of the book, watches how the truest
woman in the place, the one whom he admires more
than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly
throws her legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises
that he is '^ face to face with an atrocious and carefully
planned murder." Such, however, has been the
transformation of his mind during a twelve days'
sojourn that he understands the crime, he pardons it,
he approves it.

Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought
about without a plot ? Yet many of these reviewers
discover no such thing in the book. ^' It possesses
not the faintest shadow of a plot,'' says one of the most
reputable of them. This annoys me.

I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In
regard to this one, it would be nearer the truth to say
that it is nothing but plot from beginning to end. How
to make murder palatable to a bishop : that is the
plot. How ? You must unconventionalise him, and
instil into his mind the seeds of doubt and revolt.
You must shatter his old notions of what is right. It
is the only way to achieve this result, and I would
defy the critic to point to a single incident or character
or conversation in the book which does not further
the object in view. The good bishop soon finds

OLEVANO 169

himself among new influences ; his sensations, his
intellect, are assailed from within and without. Figures
such as those in chapters 11, 19 and 35 ; the endless
dialogue in the boat ; the even more tedious happen-
ings in the local law-court ; the very externals —
relaxing wind and fantastic landscape and volcanic
phenomena— the jovial immoderation of everything and
everybody: they foster a sense of violence and insecurity;
they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas*

If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you
have hidden it rather successfully. I have certainly
done my best to hide it. For although the personalities
of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically,
with ominous insistence, from the first chapter on-
wards, they are always swallowed up again. The
reason is given in the penultimate chapter, where the
critic might have found a rdsume of my intentions and
the key to this plot — ^to wit, that a murder und4r those
particular circumstances is not only justifiable and
commendable but — ^insignificant. Quite insignificant !
Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and
honest folk are being destroyed every day ; nobody
cares tuppence ; " one dirty blackmailer more or
less — ^what does it matter to anybody " ? There are
so many more interesting things on earth. That is
why the bishop — ^i.e. the reader — ^here discovers the
crime to be a " contemptible little episode," and
decides to " relegate it into the category of unim-
portant events." He was glad that the whole affair
had remained in the background^ so to speak^ of his local
experiences. It seemed appropriate. In the background :
it seemed appropriate. That is the heart, the core, of
the plot. And that is why all those other happenings
find themselves pushed into the foreground.

I70 ALONE

I know full well that this is not the way to write an
orthodox English novel. For if you hide your plot,
how shall the critic be expected to see it ? You must
serve it on a tray ; you must (to vary the simile) hit
the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to
superintend the operation. That is the way to rejoice
the cockles of his heart. He can then compare you
to tome one else who has also hit the nail on the head
and with whose writings he happens to be familiar.
You have a flavour of Dostoievsky minus the Dickens
taint ; you remind him of Flaubert or Walter Scott or
somebody equally obscure ; in short, you are in a
condition to be labelled — z word, and a thing, which
comes perilously near to libelling. If, to this de-
scription, he adds a short summary of your effort, he
has done his duty. What more can he do ? He must
not praise overmuch, for that might displease some
of his own literary friends. He must not blame
overmuch, else how shall his paper survive ? It lives
on the advertisements of publishers and — say those
persons, perhaps wisely — ^^ if you ill-treat our authors,
there's an end to our custom." Conunercialism . . . .

Which applies far less to literary criticism than to
other kinds. Of most of the critics of music and art
the best one can say is that there are hearty fellows
among them who, with the requisite training, might
one day become fit for their work. England is the
home of the amateur in matters intellectual, the
specialist in things material. No bootmaker would
allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather
about in a jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes.
The other commodity, being less valuable than cow-
hide, may be entrusted to the hands of any prentice
who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful

OLEVANO 171

hieroglyphics. Criticism in England — snakes in Ice-
land.*

All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary
of St. Michael above Serrone, that solitary white speck
visible from afar on the upper slopes of Mount Scal-
ambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been
inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with
the nightingales, reaching my destination at the very
moment when the sun peered over the ridge of the
mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the
dewy shade of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a
wall at Serrone, talking to an old woman who wore
those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose,
to imitate coral.

I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable
and garrulous anchorite who would share my break-
fast. It is the ideal place for such a life, and many
are the mountain solitaries of this species I have
known in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There
was he of Scanno— dead, I doubt not, by this time —
that simple-hearted venerable with whom I whiled
away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio,
gazing over the placid lake below, or up stream, at
the dusky houses of Scanno theatrically ranged
against their hill-side. I became his friend, once and
for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had

* Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking
of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name — a
love intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of
a good word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my
plot " rightly filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better.

172 ALONE

lost — ^his only snuff-box ; it lay at the edge of the
path among thick shrabs, and he coiild hardly believe
his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many
strokes of luck ! Once I found a purse —

The little structure here was barred and deserted.
I had no company save a couple of ravens who, after
assuring themselves, with that infernal cunning of
theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as
could be expected of such solemn fowls. They are
always in pairs — ^incurably monogamous ; whereas
the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a fond-
ness for living in trios. This mAtage d trots may
have subtle advantages and seems to be a step in the
direction of the truly social habits of the rook ; it
enables them to fight with more success against their
enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain
lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks.
No one who has watched the aerial antics of a triplet
of carrion crows can deny them a sense of fun.

After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of
nature I descended once more through that ilex grove
to Serrone. And now it began to grow decidedly
warm. The wide depression between this village and
Olevano used to be timbered and is still known as
la selva or la foresta. Vines now occupy the whole
groimd. If they had only left a few trees by the way-
side ! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman
who said he was on the look-out for a hare. Always
that hare ! They might as well lie in wait for the Great
Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary informed me
that he had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at
Rome. Hares at Ponte Milvio ! They reminded me
of those partridges in Belgrave Square. In my yoimger
days there was not a general in the British army who

OLEVANO 173

had not (i) shot partridges in Belgrave Square and
(2) been the chosen lover of Queen Isabella of Spain. . . .

Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat.
We sit under the vine near the entrance of that decayed
stronghold, while babies and hens scramble about the
exposed rock ; he talks, as usual, about the war. He
can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is
maimed for life ; the other has been killed outright,
and it looks as if no amount of ironmongery (medals,
etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy land
is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hard-
ships and bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards
are imtilled, olives unpruned, for lack of labourers. It
will take years to bring the soil back into its old state
of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk
suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for
something that happens beyond their ken, something
dim and distant — ^unintelligible to them as that Libyan
expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not
a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood,
these men of Latium ....

Thence onward and upward, towards evening, by
that familiar path, for a second farewell visit to Giulio's
farm. It is a happy homestead, an abode of peace,
with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that
overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty
bush of rosemary stands at the door. The mother is
within, cooking the evening meal for her man and the
elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of
daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already
half asleep, tired out with a long day's playing in the
sunshine.

Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable chierub
and the pickle of the family. I can see at a glance

174 ALONE

that he has been up to mischief. Alberto is incor-
rigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him
any good. He hammers nails into tables and into
himself, he tumbles down from trees, he throws
stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and
saws ; he breaks things and loses things, and chases
the hens about — disobeys all the time. Every day
there is some fresh disaster and fresh chastisement.
Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big
station motor — ^pulled out from the wheels in the
nick of time ; that scar across his forehead will remain
for life, a memento of childish naughtiness. Alberto
understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me.
But a certain formality must be gone through ; every
time we meet there is a moment of shy distrust, while
the ice has to be broken afresh — ^he must assure him-
self that I have not changed since our last encounter.
Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he
curls up comfortably on my knee and is soon fast
asleep, all his little tragedies forgotten.

It appears you like children," says the mother.
I like this one, because he is never out of trouble.
He reminds me of myself. I shall steal him one of
these days, and carry him off to Rome. From there
we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track
called the Via Appia. It will require two or three
years, for I mean to stop a day, or perhaps a week,
at every single tavern along the road. Then I will
write a book about it ; a book to make myself laugh
with, when I am grown too old for walking."

" Giulio is big enough."

" rU wait."

No chance of undertaking such a trip in these
times of war, when a foreigner is liable to be arrested

OLEVANO 175

at every moment. Besides, how far would one get,
with Giulio ? Nevermore to Brindisi ! As far as
Terradna ; possibly even to Formia. There, at
Formia, we would remain for the rest of our natural
lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is any-
thing like what it used to be ; there, at Formia, we
would pitch our tent, enacting every day, or perhaps
twice a day, our celebrated Faun-and-Silenus enter-
tainment for the diversion of the populace. I have
not forgotten Giulio^s besetting sin. How nearly he
made me exceed the measure of sobriety at Rojate !

Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the
trees of the driving-road fireflies are dancing ; country-
men return in picturesque groups, with mules and
children, from their work far afield ; that little owl, the
aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its
plaintive note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle.

This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation
for crime and brigandage that the authorities at one
time earnestly considered the proposition of razing
it to the ground. Then they changed their minds.
It seemed more convenient to have the evil-doers all
collected into one place than scattered about the
country. To judge by the brightness of the lamps at
this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently
spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination.

And now the lights of Segni station are visible,
down in the malarious valley, where the train passes
from Rome to Naples. Every night I have beheld
them from my window ; every night they tinged my
thoughts with a soft sadness, driving them backwards,
northwards — creating a link between present and
past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall
those four journeys along that road ; four, out of at
least a himdred ; only four, but in what rare company !

Valmontone

BACK to Valmontone.
At ZagarolOy where you touch the Rome-
Naples line, I fotmd there was no train to this
place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats
from Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same
predicament ; he also had some business to transact
at Valmontone. How get there ? No conveyance
being procurable on account of some local fair or
festival, we decided to walk. A tiresome march, in
the glow of morning. The hatter, after complaining
more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to
groans and almost tears ; his waxed moustache began
to droop ; he vowed he was not accustomed to this
kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his
btmdle of hats for him ? I objected so vigorously
that he forthwith gave up all hope. But I allowed
him to rest now and then by the wayside. I also
offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest
Tuscan blasphemies,"* for which he was much obliged.
Most of them were unfamiliar to him. He had been
brought up by his mother, he explained. They
seemed to make his burden lighter.

* Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making
a scientific collection of local imprecations — ^abusive, vituperative
or profane expletives ; swear-words, in short — enriched with
elaborate commentary. I would gladly print this little study in
folk-lore as an appendix to the present volume, were it fit for
publication.

176

VALMONTONE 177

Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this
is rather a cheerless country, poorly cultivated, and
still bearing the traces of mediaeval savagery and in-
security. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit
down here and let the centuries roll by, watching the
tramp of Roman legions and Papal mercenaries and
all that succession of proud banners which have
floated down this ancient Via Labiena.

That rock-like structure, visible in the morning
hours from Olevano, is a monstrous palace con-
taining, among other things, a training school for
carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose
interior has an imusual shape, the usual smell, and a
tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX.

There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide
views over the surroimding coimtry. It gives food for
thought. What an ideal spot, one says, for the populace
to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days ! It
is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do
they prefer to jostle each other in the narrow, squalid
and stuffy lane lower down ? One would like to know
the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was
told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-
lighted. The explanation is not wholly convincing,
for they have the lighting arrangements in their own
hands, and could easily sdffbrd the outlay. It may be
that they like to remain close to the shops and to
each others' doors for conversational purposes, since
it is a fact that, socially speaking, the more restricted
the area, the more expansive one grows. We broaden
out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A
psychological reason. . . .

I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of
this terrace, looking at Artena near by. It resembled,

N

178 ALONE

now, a cluster of brown grapes clinging to the hill-
side. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and
sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction
of my glance, remarked gravely :

" Artena."

" Artena,'* I repeated.

He extracted half a toscana cigar from his waistcoat
pocket, and began to smoke with great gusto. A man
of means, I concluded, to be able to smoke at this hour
of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed,
with flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy
trousers. His feet were encased in rough riding-
boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who rode
his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of
interest about Artena ? Presumably not. He said
never another word, but continued to smile at me
rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation
by pointing to a different spot on the hills and
observing :

" Segni.''

" Segni," he agreed.

His cigar had gone out, as toscanas are apt to do.
He applied a match, and suddenly remarked :

'' Velletri.**

" Velletri."

We were not making much progress. A good many
sites were visible from here, and at this rate of enumera-
tion the sim might well set on our labours.

" How about all those deserters ? " I inquired.

There was a fair number of them, he said. Yoimg
fellows from other provinces who find their way
hither acrosst'country, God knows how. It was a good
soil for deserters — brushwood, deep gullies, lonely
stretches of land and, above all, la tradizione. The

VALMONTONE 179

tradition, he explained, of that ill-famed forest of
Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were nearly
all children — ^the latest conscripts; a grown man
seldom deserts, not because he would not like to do so,
but because he has more " judgment " and can weigh
the risks. The roads were patrolled by police. A
few murders had taken place ; yes, just a few murders ;
one or two stupid people who resented their demands
for money or food

He broke off with another weary smile.

" You have had malaria," I suggested.

" Often."

The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face,
but from the peculiar manner. . . .

They brought in a deserter that very afternoon.
He lay groaning at the bottom of a cab, having broken
his leg in jumping down from somewhere. The rest
of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with
carbineers. A Sicilian, they said. The whole populace
followed the vehicle uphill, reverently, as though
attending a funeral. " He is little," said a woman,
referring either to his size or his age.

An hour later there was a discussion anent the
episode in the fashionable caji of Valmontone. A
citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly a notary, put the
case for United Italy, for intervention against Germany,
for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly
deserters, into a few phrases so clear, so convincing,
that there was a general burst of approval. Then
another man said :

" I hate those Sicilians ; I have good personal
reasons for hating them. But no Sicilian fears death.
If they are not brilliant soldiers, they certainly make
first-class assassins, which is only another branch of

i8o ALONE

the same business. This boy deserts not because he
is afraid of death, but because he still owes a debt.
He feels he ought to do something to repay his parents
who nursed him when he was a child, and not be
sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards
out yonder " — ^and he pointed with his thumb, spitting
contemptuously the while, in the direction of Rome.

Nobody had any comment to make on this speech.
Not a word of protest was raised. The man was
entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and might
even have obtained his share of approval had the
victim been a native. He was only a Sicilian — ^an
outsider. What is one to say of this patriarchal, or
parochial, attitude ? The enlargement of Italy's
boundaries — ^Albania, Cjrrenaica, Asia Minor and so
forth — ^is an ideal that few Italians bother their heads
about. They are not sufficiently dense — not yet J*
To foimd a world-empire like the British or Roman
calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has
only to look at the Germans, who have been trying to
do so for some time past. That collecting mania. . . •
One single boy who collects postage stamps can infect
his whole school with the complaint, and make them
all jealous of his fine specimens. England has been
collecting, for many centuries, islands and suchlike ;
she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive mania.
She has infected others with the craze and cannot help
incurring their envy, seeing that they are now equally
acquisitive, but less fortunate. All the good specimens
are gone I

That Pergola tavern deserves its name, the court-
yard being overhimg with green vines and swelling

* Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made
considerable progress in the peninsula.

VALMONTONE i8i

clusters of grapes. The host is a canny old boy, up to
any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had
already taken a fancy to me on my first visit, for I
cured his daughter Vanda of a raging toothache by
the application of glycerine and carbolic acid. We
went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the
soft tufa, from whose darkest and chilliest recesses he
drew forth a bottle of excellent wine — ^it might have
lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How thoughtful of
Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a
stone's throw of your dining-table ! Nobody need
ice his wine at the Pergola.

After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night
and walked, striving to resemble a rich English
tourist who has lost his way, along the lonely road to
Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters
or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have
got to say for themselves. My usual luck ! Not a
deserter was in sight.

Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old
ladies, of what happened to their little dog and of
other matters trivial to the verge of inanity, I may
discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to
Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means
the last. Meanwhile, we proceed southwards.

Sanf tAgata^ Sorrento

SIREN-LAND revisited. . . .
A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild
youngster from the village of Torco-nvhat
joy to listen to analphabetics for a change : they are
indubitably the salt of the earth — down that well-
worn track to CrapoUa, only to learn that my friend
Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, the genius hdj has
died in the interval ; thence by boat to the lonely
beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that
the rock-doves at the Grotto delle Palumbe are now
all extirpated) where, for the sake of old memories, I
indulged in a bathe and then came across an object
rare in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian
granite, relic of some pagan temple and doubtless
washed up here in a wintry gale ; thence, for a litde
light refreshment, to Nerano ; thence to that ill-
famed '^ House of the Spirits " where my Siren-Land
was begun in the company of one who feared no
spirits — ^victim, already, of this cursed war, but then
a laughter-loving child — and down to the bay and
promontory of lerate, there to make the tmweloome
discovery that certain hideous quarrying operations
on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the
charm of this once secluded site ; thence laboriously
upwards, past that line of venerable goat-caves, to

the summit of Mount San Costanzo.

182

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 183

Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at
my feet as of old, flooded in sunshine.

There is a small out-door cistern here. Peering
into its darkness through an aperture in the roof, I
noticed that there was water at the bottom ; out of
the water projected a stone ; on the stone, a prisoner
for life, sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable.
It must have tumbled through the chink, during some
scuffle with a companion, into this humid cell, swum
for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding ^on
the gnats which live in such places. I observed that
its tail had grown to an inordinate length — ^from disuse,
very likely ; from lack of the usual abrasion against
shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of
these restless and light-loving creatures, never again
to see the sun ; to live and die down here, all alone
in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to a few inches
of land amid a desolation of black water.

It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days
ago while climbing in the torrid hour of noon up that
shadeless path where the vanilla-scented orchids
grow — ^the path which runs from Sant* Elia past the
shattered Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the
hottest turning of the road, sat a woman in great
distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been
commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia.
This beast was suiFering hellish torments from the
heat and vainly endeavouring, with frenzied grunts of
despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth
under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman
of shade lower down. She said she knew about it,
but the pig — ^the pig refused to move ! It had been
engaged upon this hopeless occupation, without a
jmoment's respite, for an hour or more ; nothing

Sanf t.4gata^ Sorrento

SIREX-L.\XD rc^^tcd. ...

A delightful stroll, \rsterJ i

TOungstcr from the \'illage -:'..r

joy to listen to analphabtiics for a . u !-

indubitably the salt of the earth _ _rour.i

worn track to Cntpolla, only to !■ r^.^son for

Garibaldi, the ancient fishcnnan. n pamphlet

died in the inter^'al ; thence b\ :;:L?e pages

beach of Recomone (sadly notin ^,(^t of such

the rock -doves at the Grotto d< \ to see that

all extirpated) where, for the sa s arguments.

indulged in a bathe and then <. \\ hat follows.

rare in these regions, a fngn. rle, in every

granite, relic of some pagan i -onella facing

washed up here in a wintry gm ■ me peninsula,

light refreshment, to Nerano i\-idence — ^you

u-

.85

ive some
;\e found
as modem
s popularly
t. With the
iclic marble,
I incorporated
ii- the walls of
no vestige of a
aid remain on a
uated as regards
to its isolated and
.iround the siunmit
levelling which an
,J necessitate ; the
.ion, as can be seen
doubt the venerable
. en frequently repaired
-level to the south can
1 earlier chapel, and the
II bric^, Sorrentine tufa,
here is no trace of antique
nor has the rocky path
■en demarcated with chisel-
Ion. The sister-summit of
>roductive of classical relics.

Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others

\atioiis among the place-names here,

id that of the rock on which stood the

s now known as Funta Calcarella, but

; pure Greek : Pollio's rock. There is

J to he exploited by all who care to study

nt euphorbia, for instance, common on

vn as " totomaglie " ; pure Greek again ;

i84 ALONE

would induce it to proceed a step further ; it had
plainly made up its mind to find shelter here from
the burning rays, or die. And of shelter there was
none.

What would not this pig (I now thought) have
given to be transported into the lizard's cool aquatic
paradise ; and ^e lizard, into that scorching sun-
light ! . . . .

It was not to muse upon the miseries of the animal
creation that I have revisited these shores. I came
to puzzle once more over the site of that far-famed
Athene temple which gave its name to the whole
promontory. Now, after again traversing the ground
with infinite pleasure, I fail to find any reason for
changing what I wrote years ago in a certain pamphlet
which some scholar, glancing through these pages
aftd anxious to explore for himself a spot of such
celebrity in ancient days, is so little likely to see that
he may not be sorry if I here recapitulate its arguments.
Others will be well advised to pass over what follows.

Let me begin by saying that the temple, in every
probability, stood at the Punta Campanella facing
Capri, the actual headland of the Sorrentine peninsula,
where — apart from every other kind of evidence — ^you
may pick up to this day small terra-cotta figures of
Athene, made presumably to be carried away as
keepsakes by visitors to the shrine.

Now for alternative suggestions.

Strabo tells us that the temple was placed on the
akron of the promontory ; that is, the summit of
Mount San Costanzo where we are now standing.
(He elsewhere describes it as being " on the straits.")
This siunmit is nearly 500 metres above sea-level,
and here no antique building seems ever to have been

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 185

erected. No traces of old life are visible save some
fragments of Roman pottery which may have found
their way up in early Byzantine days, even as modem
worshippers carry up the ephemeral vessels popularly
called " caccavelle "* and scatter them about. With the
exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble,
no materials of an early period have been incorporated
into the masonry of the little chapel or the walls of
the fields below. It is incredible that no vestige of a
structure like the Athene temple should remain on a
spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards
immunity from depredations, owing to its isolated and
exalted position. The rock-surface around the simunit
has not undergone that artificial levelling which an
edifice of this importance would necessitate ; the
terrace is of mediaeval construction, as can be seen
by its supporting walls. No doubt the venerable
Christian sanctuary here has been frequently repaired
and modified ; on the terrace-level to the south can
be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the
slopes are littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa,
and old hattuto floors. But there is no trace of antique
workmanship or material, nor has the rocky path
leading up to the shrine been demarcated with chisel-
cuts in tibe ancient fashion. The sister-summit of
La Croce is equally unproductive of classical relics.

* This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others
have garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here,
and to their list may be added that of the rock on which stood the
villa of Pollius Felix ; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but
used to be called PetrapoK ; pure Greek : Pollio's rock. There is
still a mine of such material to be exploited by all who care to study
the vernacular. The giant euphorbia, for instance, common on
these hills, is locally known as ** totomaglie " ; pure Greek again :
tithytnalos.

iS6 ALONE

We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken.
And why not ? His accounts of many parts of the
Roman world are surprisingly accurate, but, according
to Professor Pais, ** of Italy Strabo seems to have known
merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome,
the road between Rome and Naples and Pozzuoli, and
the coast of Etruria between Rome and Populonia."
If so, he probably saw no more of the district than
can be seen from Naples. He attributes the founda-
tion of this Athene temple to Odysseus : statements
of such a kind make one wonder whether the earlier
portions of his lost history were more critical than
other old treatises which have survived.
So much for Strabo.

Seduced by a modem name, which means nothing
more or less than " a temple " — strong evidence,
surely — I was inclined to locate the Athene shrine at
a spot called lerate (marked also as leranto on some
maps, and popularly pronounced GhUrate : the Greek
aspirate still surviving) which lies a mile or more
eastwards of the Punta Campanella and faces south.
" Hieron^^ I thought : that settles it. You may
guess I was not a little proud of this discovery, par-
ticularly when it turned out that an ancient building
actually did stand there — on the southern slope, namely,
of the miniature peninsula which juts into lerate bay.
Here I found fragments of antique bricks, teguUe
bipedaleSj amphoras, pottery of the lustrous Sorrentine
ware — Surrentina bibis ? — ^pavements of opus stgninumy
as well as one large Roman paving flag of the type that
is found on the road between Termini and Punta
Campanella. (How came this stone here ? Did the
old road from Stabiae to the Athene temple go round
the promontory and continue as far as lerate along the,

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 187

southern slope of San Costanzo hill ? No road could
pass there now ; deforestation has denuded the
moimtain-side of its soil, laying bare the grey rock —
a condition at which its mediaeval name of Mons
Canutarius already hints.) Well, a more careful ex-
amination of the site has convinced me that I was
wrong. No temple of this magnificence can have
stood here, but only a Roman villa — one of the many
pleasure-houses which dotted these shores imder the
Empire.

So much for myself.

None the less — ^and this is a really curious point —

t^oCQli-^

Socfei^^

PEUTINGER'S CHART

Showing ancient road rounding the headland and terminating

at **Templum Minervae."

an inspection of Peutinger*s Tables seems to bear out
my original theory of a temple at lerate. For the
structure is therein marked not at the Punta Cam-
panella but, approximately, at lerate itself, facing
south, with the road from Stabiae over Surrentum
rounding the promontory and terminating at the
temple's threshold. Capri and the Punta Campanella
are plainly drawn, though not designated by name.
Much as I should like my first speculation to be

i88 ALONE

proved correct on the evidence of this old chart of
A.D. 226, 1 fear both of us are mistaken.

So much for Peutii^er's Tables.

Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the
local topography. He says that the ** three-peaked
rock " which Eratosthenes describes as separatii^ the
gulfs of Cums and Paestum (that is, of Naples and
Salemo) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not under-
stand Beloch falling into this error, for the old geo-
grapher uses the term skopehs^ which is never applied
to a mountain of this size, but to cliSs projecting
upon the sea. Moreover, the landmark is there to this
day. I have not the slightest doubt that Eratosthenes
meant the pinnacle of lerate, which is three-peaked
in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous
manner, both when viewed from the sea and from the
land (from the chapel of S. M. della Neve, for instance).

Now this projecting cliflF of three peaks — they are
called, respectively, Montalto, lerate, and Mortella ;
lerate for short — ^is not the actual boundary between
the two gulfs ; not by a mile or more. No ; but
from certain points it might well be mistaken for it.
The ancients had no charts like ours, and the world
in consequence presented itself differently to their
senses ; even Strabo, says Bunbury, ** was so ignorant
of the general form and configuration of the North
African coast as to have no clear conception of the
great projection formed by the Carthaginian territory
and the deep bay to the east of it " ; and, coasting
along the shore line, this triple-headed skopehs^ be-
hind which lies the inlet of lerate, might possibly be
mistaken for the turning-point into the gulf of Naples.
So it looks when viewed from the S.E. of Capri;
so also from the Siren islets — a veritable headland.

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 189

So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes.

To sum up : Strabo is wrong in saying that the
temple of Athene stood on the sununit of Mount San
Costanzo ; I was wrong in thinking that this temple
lay at lerate ; Peutinger*s Chart is wrong in figuring
the structure on the south side of the Sorrentine
peninsula ; Beloch is wrong in identifying the skopelos
trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San Costanzo ;
Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the
boundary between the two gulfs.

The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella,
whose crag is of sufficient altitude to justify Roman
poets like Statins in their descriptions of its lofty site.
So great a number of old writers concur in this opinion
— ^DonnorsOy Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anas-
tasio, Capaccio — ^that their testimony would alone be
overwhelming, had these men been a little more
careful as to what they called a " temple." Capasso,
the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it
" in the neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella."
Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a paper on this " Atene
Siciliana " which I have not seen. The whole question
is disdussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa
(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term
akron may mean an extremity or point projecting into
the sea (a sense in which Homer used it), and be
applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella.

l^me

HERE we are.
That mysterious nocturnal incident pecu-
liar to Rome has already occurred — sure
sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens
about six times in the course of every year, during
the hot season. You may read about it in the next
morning's paper which records how some young man,
often of good family and apparently in good health,
was seen behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at
the hour of about 2 a.m. ; jtmiping, that is, in a state
of Adamitic nudity, into some public fountain. It
goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the
police, run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a
hospital, where his state of mind is to be investigated.
Will our rising generation, it gravely adds, never
learn the most elementary rules of decency ?

If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of
these establishments what has been the result of the
medical examination, it is because I will wager my
last shirt that the invalid's health leaves nothing to be
desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this.
He is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses
to come. He has already passed half the night in
agony, tossing on his couch during those leaden hours
when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town
he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be

irremediable. But Rome is the city of fountains. It

190

ROME 191

is they who are responsible for this sad lapse. Their
sound is clear by day ; after midnight, when the
traffic has died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears
it through the window — Shears it perforce, since the
streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot
close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more
restless every moment. He thinks^ . . . That splash
of waters ! Those frigid wavelets and cascades ! How
delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in
their bubbling wetness ; he is parched with heat, and
at this hour of the night, he reflects, there will not be
a soul abroad in the square. So he hearkens to the
seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that
familiar fountain ; he remembers its moistened rim
and basin all alive with jolly turmoil ; he sees the
miniature cataracts timibling down in streaks of glad
confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be
controlled.

The thing must be done.

Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly
inquiring into his state of mind. . . .

I can sympathise with that state of mind, having
often xmdergone the same purgatory. My room at
present happens to be fairly cool ; it looks north, and
the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has
not yet tempted me to any breach of decorum. Night
is quiet here, save for the squeakings of some strange
animals in the upper regions of the neighbouring
Pantheon ; they squeak night and day, and one would
take them to be bats, were it not that bats are supposed
to be on the wing after simset. There are no mosqui-
toes in Rome — none worth talking about. It is well.
For mosquitoes have a deplorable habit of indulging
in a second meal, an early breakfast, at about four a.m.

192 ALONE

— a habit more destructive to slumber than that regular
and legitimate banquet of theirs. No mosquitoes, and
few flies. It is well.

It is more than merely well. For the mosquito,
after all, when properly fed, goes to bed like a gentle-
man and leaves you alone, whereas that insatiable
and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you
to a never-ending succession of anguished rdlex
movements. What a malediction are those flies ; how
repulsive in life vid in death : not to be touched by
human hands ! Their every gesture is an obscenity,
a calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have
watched them for hours on end, and one of the most
cherished projects of my life is to assemble, in a kind
of anthology, all the invectives that have been hurled
since the beginning of literature against this loathly
dirt-bom insect, this living carrion, this blot on the
Creator's reputation — ^and thereto add a few of my
own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly under
his protection. He says, among other things, that
** like an honest man, it is not ashamed to do in public
what others only do in private.'' I must say, if we all
followed the fly's example in this respect, life would
at last be worth living. . . .

Morning sleep is out of the question, owing to the
tram-cars whose clangour, both here and in Florence,
must be heard to be believed. They are fast rendering
these towns iminhabitable. Can folks who cherish a
nuisance of this magnitude compare themselves, in
point of refinement, with those old Hellenic colonists
who banished all noises from their city ? Nevermore !
Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and
general imseemliness ? In order that a few bourgeois
may be saved the trouble of using their legs. And yet

ROME 193

we actually pride ourselves on these detestable things,
as if they were inventions to our credit. " We made
them," we say. Did we ? It is not we who make
them. It is they who make us, who give us pur habits
of, mind and body, our very thoughts ; it is these
mechanical monsters who control our fates and drive
us along whither they mean us to go. We are caught
in their cog-wheels — ^in a process as inevitable as the
revolution of the planets. No use lamenting a cosmic
phenomenon ! Were it otherwise, I should certainly
mope myself into a green melancholy over the fact,
the most dismal fact on earth, that brachycephalism is
a Mendelian dominant.* No use lamenting. True.
But the sage will reserve to himself the right of cursing.
Those morning hours, therefore, when I would
gladly sleep but for the tram-car shrieking below, are
devoted to the malediction of all modem progress,
wherein I include, with fine impartiality, every single
advancement in culture which happens to lie between
my present state and that comfortable cavern in whose
shelter I soon see myself esconced as of yore, peace-
fully sucking somebody's marrow while my women,
round the corner, are collecting a handful of acorns
for my dessert. . . . The telephone, that diabolic in-
vention ! It might vex a man if his neighbour
possessed a telephone and he none ; how would it
be, if neither of them had it ? We can hardly realise,
now, the blissful quietude of the pre-telephone epoch.
And the telegraph and the press ! They have huddled
mankind together into undignified and unhygienic
proximity ; we seem to be breathing each other's air.
We know what everybody is doing, in every comer of

* Query : whether there be no connection between brachy-
cephalism and this modern deification of machinery ?

194 ALONE

the earth ; we are told what to think, and to say, and
to do. Your paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used
to hammer out a few solid opinions of his own on
matters political and otherwise. He no longer employs
his brain for that purpose. He need only open his
morning paper and in it pours — ^the oracle of the
press, that manufactory of synthetic fustian, whose
main object consists in accustoming hiunanity to
attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes
him with opinions ready made, overnight, by some
Fleet Street hack at so much a column, after a little
talk with his fellows over a pint of bad beer at the
Press Club. He has been told what to say — ^yesterday,
for instance, it was some lurid balderdash about a
steam-roller and how the Kaiser is to be fed on dog
biscuits at Saint Helena — ^he has been " doped " by
the editor, who gets his tip — and out he goes ! xmless
he takes it — ^from the owner, who is waiting for a
certain emolument from this or that caucus, and trims
his convictions to their taste. That is what the press
can do. It vitiates our mundane values. It enables
a gang to fool the country. It cretinises the public
mind. The time may come when no respectable
person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly.
Newspaper reading will become a secret vice. As such,
I fear, its popularity is not likely to wane.

Having generated, by means of sundry trite reflec-
tions of this nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast,
I dress and step out of doors to where, at a pleasant
table, I can imbibe some coffee and make my plans
for loafing through the day.

ROME 195

Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets.
The Greeks, the Romans, the Orientals knew better
than to build wide roadways in a land of sunshine.

There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled
" Napoli senza sole '* — ^Naples without sun. It gives
instructions, they say (for I have never seen it) how
foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all
hours of the day ; how they may reach any point of
the town from another without being forced to cross
the squares, those dazzling patches of sunlight. The
feat could have been accomplished formerly even in
Rome, which was always less lunbrageous than Naples.
It is out of the question nowadays. You must do as
the Romans do — ^walk slowly and use the tram when-
ever possible.

That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which
will take me direct to the Milvian bridge, where I
mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at the restaurant
across the water. Its proprietor is something of a
brigand ; so am I, at a pinch. It is ^* honour among
thieves," or " diamond cut diamond."

Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the
glowing sands. But the water is still cold ; indeed,
the Tiber is never too warm for me. If you like it
yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene
discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season,
is of a kind to tickle up a walrus.

Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some
other cause, there is a singular variety of flesh-tints
among the bathers here. I wish my old friend Dr.
Bowles could have seen it ; we used to be deeply
immersed, both of us, in the question of the chromato-
phores, I observing their freakish behaviour in the
epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied their

196 ALONE

action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little
paper on sunburn — z darker problem than it seems
to be.*

These men and boys do not grow uniformly sun-
burnt. They display so many different colour-shades
on their bodies that an artist would be delighted with
the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by
reason of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays,
the tints diverge ; the reds, the scarcer group, tra-
versing every gradation from pale rose to the ruddiest
of copper — ^not excluding that strange marbled com-
plexion concerning which I cannot make up my mind
whether it be a beauty or a defect ; while the xanthous
tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold and
apricot and caf6 au lait to a duskiness approaching
that of the negro. At this season the skins are still
white. Your artist must come later — ^not later, how-
ever, than the end of August, for on the first of
September the bathing, be the weather never so warm,
is officially, and quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber
water is declared to be " unhealthy " after that date,
and liable to give you fever ; a relic of the days when
the true origin of malaria was unknown.

A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that
bathing has not yet begun in earnest. No drowning
accidents, up to the present. Later on they come
thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current
and vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to young
swimmers ; it grips them in its tawny coils and holds
them fast, often within a few yards of friend or parent
who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries

* Robert L. Bowles, M.D. " Sunburn on the Alps " {Alpine
Journal^ November, 1888) and " The Influence of Light on the
Skin " (British Journal of Dermatology ^ No. 105, Vol. 9).

ROME 197

of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of
that serpent-like embrace. So it hurries him to de-
struction, only to be fished up later in a state, as the
newspapers will be careful to inform us, of " incipient
putrefaction."

A murderous flood. . . .

That hoary, trickling structure — ^that fountain which
has forgotten to be a fountain, so dreamily does the
water ooze through obstructive mosses and emerald
growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet
beards, from its venerable lips — ^that foxmtain un-
trinuned, harmonious, overhimg by ancient ilexes :
where shall a more reposeful spot be found ? Doubly
delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by
the river-bank. For the foliage of the oaks is such that
it creates a kind of twilight, and all around lies the
tranquillity of noon. Here, on the encircling stone
bench, you may idle through the sultry hours con-
versing with some favourite disciple while the cows
trample up to drink amid moist gurglings and tail-
swishings. They gaze at you with gentle eyes, they
blow their sweet breath upon your cheek, and move
sedately onward. The Villa Borghese can be hushed,
at such times, in a kind of enchantment.
" You never told me why you come to Italy."
" In order," I reply, " to enjoy places like this."
" But listen. Surely you have fountains in your
own country ? "
" None quite so golden-green."
" Ah, it wants cleaning, doesn't it ? "

198 ALONE

" Lord» no ! " I say ; but only to myself. One
should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it.

Aloud I remark : —

" Let me try to set forth, however droll it may
sound, the point of view of a certain class of people,
supposing they exist, who might think that this par-
ticular fountain ought never to be cleaned " — ^and there
ensued a discussion, lasting about half an hour, in the
course of which I elaborated, artfully and progressively,
my own thesis, and forged, in the teeth of some lively
opposition, what struck me as a convincing argument
in favour of leaving the fountain alone.

" Then that is why you come to Italy. On account
of a certain fountain, which ought never to be
cleaned."

^^ I said on account of places like this. And I ought
to have added, on account of moments such as these."

" Are those your two reasons ? "

" Those are my two reasons."

" Then you have thought about it before ? "

" Often."

One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can
help it.

" But listen. Surely it is sometimes two o'clock in
the afternoon, in your country ? "

'' I used that word moment in a pregnant sense," I
reply. " Pregnant : when something is concealed or
enclosed within. What is enclosed within this
moment ? Our friendly conversation."

" But listen. Surely folks can converse in your
country ? "

" They can talk."

" I begin to understand why you come here. It is
that difference, which is new to me, between con-

it
it

it
it
n

ROME 199

versing and talking. Is the difference worth the long
journey ? "

Not to everybody, I daresay."

Why to you ? "

Why to me ? I must think about it."

One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can
help it.

" What is there to think about ? You said you had
thought about it already. . . • Perhaps there are other
reasons ? "

" There may be."

" There may be ? "
There must be. Are you satisfied ? "
Ought I to be satisfied before I have learnt them ? "
I find you rather fatiguing this afternoon. Did
you hear about that murder in Trastevere last night
and how the police "

" But listen. Surely you can answer a simple ques-
tion. Why do you come to Italy. . . .? "

Why does one come here ?

A periodical visit to this country seems an ordinary
and almost automatic proceeding — a part of one's
regular routine, as natural as going to the barber or
to church. Why seek for reasons ? They are so hard
to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo ! there
is another one lurking in the background, a reason
for a reason.

The craving to be in contact with beauty and
antiquity, the desire for self-expression, for physical
well-being under that drenching sunshine which, while
it lasts, one curses lustily ; above all, the pleasure of
memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes ;
herein lies, methinks, the secret ; the reason for the
reason. Reconstruction at a distance. • . . For a haze

200 ALONE

of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space ; a
kindly haze which obliterates the thousand fretting
annoyances wherewith the traveller's path in every
country is bestrewn. He forgets them ; forgets that
weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only
its sporadic islets — ^those moments of calm delight or
fiercer joy which he would fain hold fast for ever.
He does not come here on account of a certain fountain
which ought never to be cleaned.* He comes for the
sake of its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise
up later, out of some November fog in another land.
Italy is a delightful place to remember, to think and
talk about. And is it not the same with England ?
Let us go there as a tourist — only as a tourist. How
attractive one finds its conveniences, and even its
conventionalities, provided one knows, for an absolute
certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell
among them.

What lovely things one could say about England, in
Timbuktu !

Rome is not only the most engaging capital in
Europe, it is unusually heterogeneous in regard to
population. The average Parisian will assure you that
his family has lived in that town from time imme-
morial. It is different here. There are few Romans
discoverable in Rome, save across the Tiber. Talk to
whom you please, you will soon find that either he or
his parents are immigrants. The place is filled with
hordes of employees — ^many thousands of them, high

* It has now been cleaned — ^with inevitable results.

ROME 20I

and low, from every comer of the provinces ; the
commoner sort, too, the waiters, carpenters, plasterers,
masons, painters, coachmen, all the railway folk — ^they
are hardly ever natives. Your Roman of the lower
classes does not relish labour. He can do a little
amateurish shop-keeping, he is fairly good as a cook,
but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists
in eating and drinking. That is as it should be. It
befits the tone of a metropolis that outsiders shall do
its work. That under-current of asperity is less notice-
able here than in many towns of the peninsula. There
is something of the grande dame in Rome, a flavour
of old-world courtesy. The inhabitants are better-
mannered than the Parisians ; a workday crowd in
Rome is as well-dressed as a Sundays crowd in Paris.
And over all hovers a gentle weariness.

The city has undergone orgies of bloodshed and
terror. Think only, without going further back, of
that pillage by the Spanish and German soldiery under
Bourbon ; half a year's pandemonium. And all those
other mediaeval scourges, epidemics and floods and
famines. That sirocco, the worst of many Italian
varieties : who shall calculate its debilitating effect
upon the stamina of the race ? Up to quite a short time
ago, moreover, the population was malarious ; older
records reek of malaria ; that, assuredly, will leave its
mark upon the inhabitants for years to come. And
the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that for-
bidden land in whose embrace the city lies gasping,
flame-encircled, like the scorpion in the tale. • . •

A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the
mind's eye, is so impressed with its " eternal "
character that he cannot imagine this site having ever
been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it

202 ALONE

seems inevitable that these walls must always have
stood where now they stand — ^must have risen, he
suggests, out of the earth, imaided by human hands.
Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon
a time ; somebody who lived under conditions quite
different from those that supervened. For who — ^not
five thousand, but, say, five hundred years ago — ^who
would have thought of building a town on a spot like
this ? None but a crazy despot, some moonstruck
Oriental such as the world has known, striving to
impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No
facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of
landscape, no harbour, no defence against enemies, no
drinking water, no mineral wealth, no food-supplying
hinterland, no navigable river — a dangerous river,
indeed, a perpetual menace to the place — every draw-
back, or nearly so, which a town may conceivably
possess, and all of them huddled into a fatally un-
healthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire
and poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so
effectually, so triumphantly that, were green pastuicb
not needful to me as light and air, I, for one, woula
nevermore stray beyond those ancient portals. . . .

The country visits you here. It comes in the wake
of that evening breeze which creeps about with
stealthy feet, winding its way into the most secluded
courtyards and sending a sudden shiver through the
frail bamboos that stand beside your dinner-table in
some heated square. Then the zephyr departs mysteri-
ously as it came, and leaves behind a great void — ^a
torrid vacuum which is soon filled up by the honey-
sweet fragrance of hay and aromatic platits. Every night
this balsamic breath invades the town, filling its streets
with ambrosial suggestions. It is one of the charms

ROME 203

of Rome at this particular season ; quite a local
speciality, for the phenomenon could never occur if
the surrounding regions were covered with suburbs or
tilth or woodland — ^were aught save what they are : a
desert whose vegetation of coarse herbage is in the act
of withering. The Campagna once definitely dried,
this inunaterial feast is at an end.

I am glad never to have discovered anyone, native
or foreign, who has been aware of the existence of this
nocturnal emanation ; glad because it corroborates a
theory of mine, to wit, that mankind is forgetting the
use of its nose ; and not only of nose, but of eyes and
ears and all other natural appliances which help to
capture and intensify the simple joys of life. We all
know the civilised, the industrial eye — ^how atrophied,
how small and formless and expressionless it has
become. The civilised nose, it would seem, degene-
rates in the other direction. Like the cultured potato
or pumpkin, it swells in size. The French are civilised
and, if we may judge by old engravings (what else are
we to take as guide, seeing that the skull affords some
criterion as to shape but not size of nose ?) they
certainly seem to accentuate this organ in proportion
as they neglect its use. Parisians, it strikes me, are
running to nose ; they wax more rat-like every day.
Here is a little problem for anthropologists. There
may be something, after all, in the condition of Paris
life which fosters the development of this peeky,
rodential countenance. Perfumery, and what it im-
plies ? There are scent-shops galore in the fashionable
boulevards, whereas I defy you to show me a single
stationer. Maupassant knew them fairly well, and one
thinks of that story of his : —

" Le parfum de Monsieur ? "

204 ALONE

" La verveine. . . . "•

Speaking of the French, I climbed those ninety odd
stairs the other day to announce my arrival in Italy
to my friend Mrs. N., who, being vastly busy at that
moment and on no account to be disturbed, least of
all by a male, sent word to say that I might wait
on the terrace or in that microscopic but well-equipped
library of hers. I chose the latter, and there browsed
upon " Emaux et Cam6es " and the " Fleurs du
Mai " which happened, as was meet and proper, to
lie beside each other.

Strange reading, at this distance of time. These, I
thought — ^these are the things which used to give us
something of a thrill.

If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well
be that we have absorbed their spirit so thoroughly
into our system that we forget whence we drew it.
They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one
cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery,
his gift of being quaint and yet lucid as a diamond ;
one pictures those crocodiles fainting in the heat, and
notes, too, whence the author of the " Sphinx " drew
his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse
is not so much easy as facile. And not all the grace
of internals can atone for external monotony. That
trick — ^that full stop at the end of nearly every fourth
line — it impairs the charm of the music and renders
its flow jerky ; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated

* Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's
diary.

ROME 205

blow, it grows wearisome to the ear, and finally
abhorrent.

Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated.
He can also delve down to deeps which the other
never essayed to fathom. " Fuyez I'infini que vous
portez en vous " — z line which, in my friend's copy
of the book, had been marked on the margin with a
derisive exclamation-point. (It gave me food for
thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to sub-
stance, he contains too many nebulosities and abstrac-
tions for my taste ; a veritable mist of them, out of
which emerges — ^what ? The figure of one woman.
Reading these " Fleurs du Mai " we realise, not for
the first time, that there is something to be said in
favour of libertinage for a poet. We do not need
Petrarca, much less the Love-Letters of a Violinist —
no, we do not need those Love-Letters at all — ^to prove
that a master can draw sweet strains from communion
with one mistress, from a lute with one string ; a
formidable array of songsters, on the other hand, will
demonstrate how much fuller and richer the melody
grows when the instrument is provided with the
requisite five, the desirable fifty. Monogamous habits
have been many a bard's undoing.

Twenty years' devotion to that stupid and spiteful
old cat of a semi-negress ! They make one conscious
of the gulf between the logic of the emotions and that
other one — ^that logic of the intellect which ought to
shape our actions. Here was Baudelaire, a man of
ruthless self-analysis. Did he never see himself as
others saw him } Did he never say : " You are
making a fool of yourself " ?

Be sure he did.

You are making a fool of yourself : are not those

2o6 ALONE

the words I ought to have uttered when, standing in
the centre of the Piazza del Popolo — ^the sunny centre :
so it had been inexorably arranged — I used to wait and
wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the
slender shadow of that obelisque which crawled re-
luctantly, like the finger of fate, over the burning
stones ?

And I crawled with it, more than content.

Days of infatuation !

I never pass that way now without thanking God
for a misspent youth. Why not make a fool of your-
self ? It is good fun while it lasts ; it yields mellow
mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures,
those solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous ?
Where is the use of experience, if it does not make
you laugh ? The Logic of the Intellect — ^what next !
If any one had treated me to such tomfoolery while
standing there, petrified into a pillar of fidelity in that
creeping shadow, I should have replied gravely :

" The Logic of the Intellect, my dear Sir, is incom-
patible with situations like mine. It was not invented
for so stupendous a crisis. I am waiting for my
negress — can't you understand ? — ^and she is already
seven minutes late. ..."

A flaming morning, foretaste of things to come.

I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital
where things are doing well, glancing down, towards
midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one looks into some
torrid bear-pit.

Broken columns glitter in the sunshine ; the grass

ROME 207

is already withered to hay. Drenched in light and
heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is altogether devoid of
life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in a
kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead.

My experiences in the hospital half an hour ago
dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a
more morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular,
it seems as if all the mangy and decrepit cats of Rome
had given themselves a rendezvous on this classic soil ;
cats of every colour and every age — quite young ones
among them ; all, one would say, at the last gasp of
life. This pit, this crater of flame, is their " Home for
the Dying." Once down here, nothing matters any
more. They are safe at last from their old enemies,
from dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death,
they move about in a stupid and dazed manner.
Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One would
think they preferred to expire in the shade of some
pillar or slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all
the same. It matters nothing where one dies.

There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten
desiccated tortoiseshell ; its eyes are closed and a red
tongue hangs out of the mouth. I drop a small
pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a
moment. Nothing more.

These cats have lost their all — ^their self-respect.
Grace and ardour, sleekness of coat and buoyancy of
limb are gone out of them. Tails are knotted with
hunger and neglect ; bones protrude through the
skin. So they strew the ground in discomposed, un-
catlike attitudes, while the sun bums through their
parched anatomy. Do they remember their kittenish
pranks, those moonlit ecstasies on housetops, that
morsel snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and

2o8 ALONE

borne through the crowded traffic in a series of
delirious leaps ? Who can tell ! They are not even
bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches.
They are alive when they ought to be dead. Nobody
knows it better than they do. They are too ill, too
far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present
degradation. Nothing matters ! What would Baude-
laire, that friend of cats, have said to this macabre
exhibition ?

Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom
of a kitten. The parent takes no interest in the pro-
ceedings ; she lies prone, her head on the ground.
Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead ? Possibly.
Her own kitten ? Who cares ! Her neighbour, once
white but now earth-coloured, rises stiffly as though
dubious whether the joints are still in working order.
What does she think of doing ? It would seem she
has formed no plan. She walks up to the mother,
peers intently into her face, then sits apart on her
haunches and begins gazing at the sun. Presently
she rises anew and proceeds five or six paces for no
imaginable reason — collapses ; falls, quite abruptly,
on her side. There she lies, flat, like a playing-card.

A sinister aimlessness pervades the actions of those
that move at all. The shadow of death is upon these
creatures in the scorching sunshine. They stare at
columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at
one another, as though they had never seen such
things before. They totter about on tip-toe ; they
yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is one,
stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp ;
another is convulsed with nervous twitchings ; another
scratches the earth in a kind of mechanical trance.
One would say she was preparing a grave for herself.

ROME 209

The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl
and a face that bears the scars of a hundred fights.
One eye has been lost in some long-forgotten en
counter. Now they walk over him, kittens and all,
and tread about his head, as if he were a hillock of
earth, while his claws twitch resentfully with rage or
pain. Too ill to rise !

Most of them are thus stretched out blankly, in a
faint. Are they suflfering ? Hungry or thirsty ?* I
believe they are past troubling about such things.
It is time to die. They know it. . . .

" Ualbergo deigattij* says a cheery voice at my side
— some countr5rman, who has also discovered Trajan's
Forum to be one of the sights of Rome. " The cats*
hotel. But," he adds, " I see no restaurant attached

to it."

That reminds me : luncheon-time.

Via Flaminia — ^what a place for luncheon ! True ;
but this is one of the few restaurants in Rome where,
nowadays, a man is not in danger of being simul-
taneously robbed, starved, and poisoned. Things
have come to a pretty pass. This starvation-fare may
suit a saint and turn his thoughts heavenwards. Mine
it turns in the other direction. Here, at all events,
the food is straightforward. Our hostess, a slow

* Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has
improved. Somebody now feeds them — ^which could hardly have
been expected during those stressful times of war, when bread
barely sufficed for the human population. They are also fewer in
numbers. Their owners, I fancy, can afford to keep them at home
once more.

210 ALONE

elderly woman, is omnipresent ; one realises that
every dish has been submitted to her personal in-
spection. A primeval creature ; heaviness personified.
She moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock.
The crack of doom will not avail to accelerate that
relentless deliberation. She reminds me of a cousin
of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who,
when his long curls once caught fire from being too
near a candle, sleepUy renuirked to a terrified wife :
" I think you might try to blow it out."

But where shall a man still find those edible mac-
cheroni — ^those that were made in the Gk>lden Age out
of pre-war-time flour ?

Such things are called trifles. . . . Give me the
trifles of life, and keep the rest. A man's health
depends on trifles ; and happiness on health. More-
over, I have been yearning for them for the last five
months. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. . . .
There are none in Rome. Can they be found anywhere
else ?

Mrs. Nichol : she might know. She has the gift of
knowing about things one would never expect her to
know. If only one could meet her by accident in the
street ! For at such times she is gay and altogether
at your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors.
To break upon her seclusion at home is an imder-
taking reserved for great occasions. The fact is, we
are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of
what she describes as a tiresome life have taught her
the value of masculine frankness — ^ultra-masculine, I
call it. She is too frank for subterfuge of any kind.
When at home, for instance, she is never " not at
home." She will always see you. She will not detain
you long, if you happen to be de trop.

ROME 211

This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion — ^my
health and happiness. . • . Besides, I am her oldest
friend in this part of the world ; was I not on the spot
when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet
fathomed, to make Rome her domicile ? Have I not
more than once been useful to her, nay, indispensable ?
I therefore climb, not without trepidation, those
ninety-three stairs to the very sununit of the old palace,
and presently find myself ushered into the familiar
twilight.

Nothing has changed since I was here some little
time ago to aimounce my arrival in Italy (solemn
occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an hour or
so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being
engaged upon " house-accoimts." This time, as I
enter the studio, she is playing cards with a pretty
handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays
cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouth-
piece which keeps the smoke out of her olive-com-
plexioned face and which she holds firm-fixed between
her teeth, in a comer of the mouth, after the perky
fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game,
and at once begin to feel de trap imder a glance from
those smouldering grey eyes.

" It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death.
Will you please listen for half a minute ? Then I will
evaporate, and you can go on with your ridiculous
cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches.
Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable
macaroni nowadays ? The old kind, I mean, made out
of pre-war-time flour. . . ."

She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend
the game, and asks the girl in Italian :

" What was the name of that place ? "

212 ALONE

" That place "

" Oh, stupid ! Where I stayed with Miranda last
September. Where I tore my skirt on the rock. Where
I said somethii^ nice about the white macaroni ? "

" Soriano in Cimino."

** Soriano/' echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke.
" There is a tram from here every morning. They can
put you up."

A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to
this sultry and self-centred being ; I would like to
wander with her through these rooms, imbibing their
strange Oriental spirit — ^not your vulgar Orient, but
something classic and remote ; something that savours,
for aught I know, of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol,
in one of her immature efforts at self-realisation, spent
a few years as the wife of a high French official, ere
marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol-^other
imsuccessful venture.

Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy
there was yet an earlier alliance of some kind) ? A
whim, a freak ? Or did they plague her into it ? If
so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their
manly persistence. She could grind any ordinary
male to powder. And why has she now flitted here,
building herself this aerial bower above the old roofs
of Rome ? Is she in search of happiness ? I doubt
whether she will find it. She possesses that fatal
craving — the craving for disinterested aifection, a
source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom
affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but
a luxury, and therefore desirable above all else —
desirable, and how seldom attained !

The pause continues. I make a little movement, to
attract notice. She looks up, but only her eyes reply.

ROME 213

" Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, " are
you blind ? "

That is the drawback of Mrs, Nichol. Phenomenally
absent-minded, she always knows at a given moment
exactly what she wants to do. And she never wants
to do more than one thing at a time. It is most un-
womanly of her. Any other person of her sex would
have left a game of cards for the sake of an attractive
visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an ordinary
lady would have played cards, given complicated
orders to dressmakers and servants, and entertained
half a dozen men at the same time. Mrs. Nichol
cannot do these things. That hand, that rather sun-
burnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not
moved from the table. No, I am not blind. It is
quite evident that she wants to play cards ; only that,
and nothing more.

I withdraw, stealthily.

Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad
terrace where jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubs i
there I pace up and down, admiring the cupolas and
towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the
blue background of distant hills. How much of its
peculiar flavour a town will draw — ^not from artistic
monuments but from the mere character of building
materials ! How many variations on one theme !
This mellow Roman travertine, for instance. . • . I
call to mind those disconsolate places in Cornwall
with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and
dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic
cheerfulness of lava, those marble-towns that blind
you with their glare. Eastern cities of brightly-tinted
stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns,
wood-towns — ^how they differ in mood from one

214 ALONE

another 1 . . • . Here I pace up and down, rejoicing
in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to
disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-
cries that climb to this hanging garden in confused
waves of soimd. Harsh at close quarters, they weave
themselves into a mirthful symphony up here.

From that studio, too, comes a lively din — ^the
laughter has begun again. Mrs. Nichol is having a
good time. It will be followed, I daresay, by a period
of acute depression. I shall probably be consulted
with masonic frankness about some little tragedy of
the emotions which is no concern of mine. She can
be wondrously engaging at such times — ^like a child
that has got into trouble and takes you into its con-
fidence.

One of these days I must write a character-sketch of
Mrs. Nichol. She foreshadows a type — ^represents it,
very possibly— a type which will grow commoner
from day to day. She dreams of a Republic of women,
vestals or otherwise, wherefrom all men are to be
excluded xmless they possess qualifications of a rather
imusual nature. I think she would like to draft a set
of rules and regulations for that community. She
could be trusted, I fancy, to make them sufficiently
stringent.

I think I understand, now, why a certain line in her
copy of Baudelaire was marked with that derisive
exclamation-point on the margin : " Fuyez I'infini que
vous portez en vous."

" Fuyez ? " it seemed to say. " Why ' fuyez ' ? "

Fulfil it !

Soriano

AMID clouds of dust you are whirled to
Soriano, through the desert Campagna and
past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tram-
way — different from that miserable Olevano affair
which, being narrow gauge, can go but slowly and
even then has a frolicsome habit of jiunping off the
rails every few days. From afar you look back upon
the city ; it lies so low as to be invisible ; over its
site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an iridescent
bubble suspended in the sky.

This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the
slope of an immense old volcano and conveys at first
glance a somewhat ragged and sombre impression.
It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni
— ^they atoned for everything. So exqwsite were they
that I forthwith vowed to return to Soriano, for their
sake alone, ere the year should end. (I kept my vow.)
The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and un-
mistakably authentic, having been purchased in large
quantities at the outbreak of hostilities by the provident
hostess, who must have anticipated a rise in price, a
deterioration in quality, or both, as the result of war.

How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their where-
abouts ? That is her affair. I know not how she has
managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect such a
variety of useful local information. I can only testify

that on her arrival in Rome she knew no more about

215

2i6 ALONE

the language and place than the proverbial babe
unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced
with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the
words : " Try Mrs. Nichol." And how many women,
by the way, would have made a note of the particular
quality of those macaroni ? One in a hundred ? These
are temperamental matters ....

We also — ^for of course I took a friend with me, a
well-preserved old gentleman of thirty-two, whose
downward career from a brilliant youth into hopeless
mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with
philosophic imconcem — ^we also consumed a tender
chicken, a salad containing olive oil and not the usual
motor-car lubricant, an omelette made with genuine
butter, and various other items which we enjoyed
prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for
the seven lean years just. past but for seven — ^yea,
seventy times seven — ^lean years to come. So great a
success was this open-air meal that my companion, a
case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess :

** It seems one fares better in the province than at
home. You could not get such bread in Rome, not
if you offered fifty francs a poimd."

As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by
this time, but grown fairly intimate with the wine, a
rosy muscatel, faintly splu'kling — ^very young, but not
altogether innocent.

There were flies, however, and dogs, and children.
yfe ought to have remained indoors. Thither we
retired for coffee and cigars and a liqueur, of the last
of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and
distrusts all liqueurs ; it is one of his many senile
traits. The stuff proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox
Strega, likewise a rarity nowadays.

SORIANO 217

It is a real shame — ^what is happening to Strega at
this moment. It has gro^vn so popular that the
country is flooded with imitations. There must be
fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees
of goodness and badness ; I have met their travellers
in the most unexpected places. They reproduce the
colour of Strega^ its minty flavour — everything, in
short, except the essential : its peculiar strength of
aroma and of alcohol. They can afford to sell this
poison at half the price of the original, and your
artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the
real product which he fills up, when empty, out of
some hidden but never-failing barrel of the fraudulent
mixture round the comer, charging you, of course, the
full price of true Strega. If you complain, he proudly
points to the bottle, the cork, the label : all authentic !
No wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions,
vow they will never touch Strega again ....

We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee,
about this Strega adulteration, during which I tried
to make my friend comprehend how I thought the
grievance ought to be remedied. How ? By an
injunction. That was the way to redress these wrongs.
You obtain an injunction, I said, such as the French
Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers
of the Italian " Certosa," which was thereafter obliged
to change its name to " Val D'Emma." More than
once I endeavoured to set forth, in language in-
telligible to his understanding, what an injunction
signified ; more than once \ explained how well-advised
the Strega Company would be to take this course.

In vain !

He always missed my point. He always brought in
some personal element, whereas I, as usual, confined

it
it

2i8 ALONE

myself to general lines, to the principle of the thing.
Italians are sometimes imfathomably obtuse.
But what is an injimction ? " he repeated.
If you were a little younger, there might be some
hope for you. I would then try to explain it again,
for the fiftieth time. Instead of that, what do you say
to taking a nap ? "

" Ah ! You have eaten too much."

** Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of
explaining things to people who refuse to imderstand."

" No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might
freshen you up."

" And perhaps inspire you with another subject of
conversation."

In the little hotel there were no rooms available
just then wherein we might have slimibered, and
another apartment higher up the street promising
lively sport for which we were disinclined at that
hour, we moved laboriously into the chestnut woods
overhead. Fine old timber^ part of that mysterious
Ciminian forest which still covers a large tract, from
within whose ample shade one looks downhill towards
the distant Orte across a broiling stretch of country.
There were golden orioles here, calling to each other
from the tree-tops. My friend, having excavated
himself a couch among the troublesome prickly seeds
of this plant, was soon snoring — ^another senile trait —
snoring in a rhythmical bass accompaniment to their
song. I envied him. How some people can sleep I
It is a thing worth watching. They shut their eyes,
and forget to be awake.

SORIANO 219

With a view to imitating his example, I wearied
myself trying to count up the nimiber of orioles I
had shot in my bird-slaying days, and where it
happened. Not more than half a dozen, all told. They
are hard to stalk, and hard to see. But of other birds —
how many ! Forthwith an endless procession of
massacred fowls began to pass before my mind. One
would fain live those ornithological days over again,
and taste the rapturous joy with which one killed that
first nutcracker in the mountain guUey ; the first wall-
creeper which fluttered down from the precipice hung
with icicles ; the Temminck's stint — ^victim of a
lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the
reservoir ; the ruff, the grey-headed green wood-
pecker, the yellow-billed Alpine jackdaw, that lanius
meridionalis.

And all those slaughtered beasts — ^those chamois,
first and foremost, sedulously circumvented amid
snowy crags. Where are now their Jioms, the trophies ?

The passion for such sport died out slowly and for
no clearly ascertainable reason, as did, in its turn, the
taste for art and theatres and other things. Sheer
satiety, a grain of pity, new environments — ^they may
all help to explain what was, in its essence, a mole-
cular change in the brain, driving one to explore new
departments of life.

And now latterly, for some reason equally obscure,
the natural history fancy has revived after lying
dormant so long. It may be those three months spent
on the pavements of Florence which incline one's
thoughts to the country and wild things. Social
reasons too — a certain weariness of himianity, and more
than weariness ; a desire to avoid contact with creatures
who kill each other so gracelessly and in so doing —

220 ALONE

for the killing alone would pass — ^invoke spedally-
manufactured systems of ethics and a benevolent God
overhead. What has one in common with such folk ?

That may be why I feel disposed to forget mankind
and take rambles as of yore ; minded to shoulder a
gun and climb trees and coUect birds, and begin, of
course, a new series of " field notes." Those old
jottings were conscientiously done and registered
sundry things of import to the naturalist ; were they
accessible, I should be tempted to extract therefrom
a voliune of solid zoological memories in preference to
these travel-pages that register nothing but the cross-
currents of a mind, which tries to see things as they
are. For the pursuit brought one into relations not
only with interesting birds and beasts, but with men.

There was Mr. H. of the Liimean Society, whose
waxed moustache curled roimd upon itself like an
ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., and
a great collector of them. He collected, among other
things, a rare monograph belonging to me and deal-
ing with the former distribution of the beaver in
Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing
I could do or say would induce him to disgorge it
again ; he had always lent it to a friend, who was
just on the point of returning it, etc. etc. Bitterly
grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into
communication witJi my friend Dr. Girtanner of St.
Gallen, another beaver — ^and marmot — specialist. It
stimulated his love of Swiss zoology to such an extent
that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of
mine, J. J. Tschudi's " Schweizer Echsen," which I
likewise never saw again. What an innocent one was !
Where is now the man who will induce me to lend
him such books?

SORIANO 221

In those days I held a student's ticket at the South
Kensington Museum, an institution I enriched with
specimens of tana grceca from near Lake Stymphalus,
and lizards from the Filfia rock, and toads from a
volcanic islet (toads, says Darwin, are not foimd on
volcanic islets), and slugs from places as far apart as
Santorin and the Shetlands and Orkneys, whither I
went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua.
The last gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of
Saima in Finland. Who ever heard of seals living in
sweet land-locked waters ? This was one of my
happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend
the Curator was tempered by the fact that this par-
ticular specimen happened to be an immature one, and
did not display any pronounced race-characters.

I have early recollections of the rugged face and
lovely Scotch accent of Tam Edwards, the Banffshire
naturalist ; and much later ones of J. Young,* who gave
me a circumstantial account of how he found the first
snow bimting's nest in Sutherlandshire ; I recall the Rev.
Mathew (? Mathews) of Gumley, an ardent Leicester-
shire ornithologist, whose friendship I gained at a
tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged

* This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious letter
from the old fellow. " The question you ask is one of great ornitho-
logical importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I
am absolutely afraid to ask any questions hx the. British Museum,
as they jump at an idea and cut the ground from under the original
man's feet. This I regret to say is my experience. I have been
asked what does it matter who makes the discovery ? I reply,
' Render unto Cassar, etc' If you are going to work it out, keep it
dark. The British Museum have not the necessary specimens —
in this country I believe it is not known how the change takes place.
I tried some years ago to work it out with live specimens, but failed
because I could not get yota^ birds. Now in answer to your ques-
tion, my belief is that the young bird moults into the winter plumages

ii_

ZZ2 ALONE

partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen
eggs. '* Surely six would have been enough/' he said
— a remai^ which struck me as rather unreasonable ,
seeing that French partridges were not exactly as
common as linnets. He afterwards showed me his
collection of birdskins, dwelling lovingly, for reasons
which I cannot remember, upon that of a pin-tail duck.
He it was who told me that no collector was worth
his salt until he had leamt to skin his own birds. Fired
with enthusiasm, I took lessons in taxidermy at the
earliest possible opportunity — ^from a grimy old natu-
ralist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a
man who relieved birds of their jackets in dainty
fashion with one hand, the other having been ampu-
tated and replaced by an iron hook. During that
period of initiation into the gentle art, the billiard-room
at " The Weaste," Manchester, was converted every
morning, for purposes of study, into a dissecting-room,
a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless
trunks and brains and gouged-out eyes of lapwings
and other " easy " birds (I had not yet reached the
arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the profession) lay
about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was

direct and that this is changed into the full plumage in spring either
by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips of the feathers. This
is private because it is theoretical^ and for your private use to
verify. ..."

Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Giinther wrote : " The
skin differs in nothing from that of Phoca fcetida. In the skull I
observe that the nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in
typical specimens from the northern coasts. There is also a remark-
able thinness of bone, a want of osseous substance ; but it is impos-
sible to say whether this is due to altered physical conditions or
should be accounted for by the youth of the specimen, or whether
it is an individual peculiarity."

SORIANO 223

ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers,
lancets, arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other
paraphernalia of the trade. The butler had to be
furiously tipped.

There were large grounds belonging to this estate,
fields and woodlands once green, then blackened with
soot, and now cut up into allotments and built over.
Here, ever since men could remember — certainly since
the place had come into the possession of the never-
to-be-forgotten Mr. Edward T. — z kingfisher had
dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial origin which
supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks
and dace. This kingfisher was one of the sights of
the domain. Visitors were taken to see it. The bird,
though sometimes coy, was generally on view. Never-
theless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher ; to
my infinite annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying
it. Nor did I even find its nest, an additional source
of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be interested to
know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties
(I have the exact date somewhere*) — surely a note-
worthy state of affairs, so near the heart of a smoky
town like Manchester.

Later on I learnt to slay kingfishers — ^the first victim
falling to my gun on a day of rain, as it darted across
a field to avoid the windings of a brook. I also became
a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are so con-
servative ! They are at your mercy, if you care to
study their habits. The golden-crested wren builds a
nest which is almost invisible ; once you have mastered
the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, now, for
all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer
ones — ^the grey shrike, that buzzard on the cliff (the

• Winter 1882-1883 ; possibly later.

148 ALONE

We can guess what really took place. It was something
like what happened at Rojate. Did not the curly-
haired Giulio end by " stating " something to the
same effect?

I cannot make up my mind whether to be pleased
with this particular trait in friend Ramage's character.
For let it never be forgotten that our traveller was a
young man at the time. He says so himself, and there
is no reason for doubting his word. Was he acting
as beseemed his years ?

I am not more straight-laced than many people, yet
I confess it always gives me a kind of twinge to see a
young man yielding to intemperance of any kind.
There is something incongruous in the spectacle, if
not actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt
to associate that time of life with stem resolve. A
young man, it appears to me, should hold himself well
in hand. Youth has so much to spare ! Youth can
afford to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming
ahead, it should be a period of ideals, of self-restraint
and self-discipline, of earnestness of purpose. How
well the Greek Anthology praises " Temperance, the
nurse of Youth ! " The divine Plato lays it down that
youngsters should not touch wine at all, since it is not
right to heap fire on fire. He adds that older men like
ourselves may indulge therein as an ally against the
austerity of their years — agreeing, therefore, with
Theophrastus who likewise recommends it for the
" natural moroseness '* of age.

Observe in this connection what happened to
Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D., at Trebisacce. Here
was a poor old coastguard who had been taken prisoner
by the Corsairs thirty years earlier, carried to Algiers,
and afterwards ransomed. Having " nothing better

OLEVANO 149

to do " (says our author) " I confess I furnished him
with somewhat more wine than was exactly consistent
with propriety " ; with so liberal a quantity, indeed,
that the coastguard became quite " obstreperous in his
mirth " ; whereupon Ramage hops on his mule and
leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young
fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And
why ? Because he has " nothing better to do."* It
is not remarkably edifying. True, he afterwards makes
a kind of apology for " causing my brother to sin by
over-indulgence." ...

But if we close our eyes to the fact that Ramage,
when he gave way to these excesses, was a young man
and ought to have known better, what an agreeable
companion we find him !

He never rails at anything. Had I been subjected
to half the annoyances he endured, my curses would
have been loud and long. Under such provocation,
Ramage contents himself with reproving his tormentors
in rounded phrases of oratio ohUqua which savour
strongly of those Latin classics he knew so well. What
he says of the countryfolk is not only polite but true,
that their virtues are their own, while their vices have
been fostered by the abuses of tyranny. " Whatever
fault one may find with this people for their super-
stition and ignorance, there is a loveableness in their
character which I am not utilitarian enough in my
philosophy to resist." This comes of travelling off

* This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166,
" I have lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine."
We learn from the Dictionary of National Biography that he was
born in 1803 ; he must therefore have been twenty-five years old
when he bemused the coastguard. Only twenty-five ; and already
at this stage. We are further told that he was tutor to somebody's
son. Unhappy child I

I50 ALONE

the beaten track and with an open mind ; it comes of
direct contact. When one remembers that he wrote
in 1828 and was derived from a bigoted stock, his
religious tolerance is refreshing — astonishing. He
studies the observances of the poorer classes with
sympathetic eye and finds that they are ** pious to a
degree to which I am afraid we must grant that we
have no pretensions." That custom of suspending
votive offerings in churches he does not think " worthy
of being altogether condemned or ridiculed. The
feeling is the same that induces us, on recovery from
severe illness, to give thanks to Almighty God, either
publicly in church or privately in our closets." How
many Calvinists of to-day would write like this ?

We could do with more of these sensible and hiunane
reflections, but unfortunately he is generally too
" pressed for time " to indulge in them. That mania
of hustling through the country ....

One morning he finds himself at Foggia, with the
intention of visiting Mons Garganus. First of all he
must " satisfy his curiosity " about Arpi ; it is ten
miles there and back. Leaving Foggia for the second
time he proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and
inspects not only this town, but the site of old Sipon-
tum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, and
later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promon-
tory. About six miles to the north are the presumable
ruins of Merinum ; he insists upon going there, but
the boatmen strike work ; regretfully he returns to
Manfredonia, arriving at 11 p.m., and having covered
on this day some sixty or seventy miles. What does
he do at Manfredonia ? He sleeps for three hours —
and then a new hustle begins, in pitch darkness.

Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he

OLEVANO 151

will visit the Siren Islets. He crosses the ridge and
descends to the sea on the other side, to the so-called
Scaricatojo — quite a respectable walk, as any one can
find out for himself. Hence he sails to the larger of
the islets, climbs to the summit and makes some
excavations, in the course of which he observes what
I thought I was the first to discover — ^the substructures
of a noble Roman villa ; he also scrambles into King
Robert's tower. Then to the next islet, and up it ;
then to the third, and up it. After that, he is tempted
to visit the headland of Minerva ; he goes there, and
satisfies his curiosity. He must now hence to Capri.
He sails across, and after a little refreshment, walks
to the so-called Villa of Jupiter at the easterly apex of
the island. He then rows round the southern shore
and is taken with the idea of a trip to Misenum,
twenty miles or so distant. Arrived there, he climbs
to the summit of the cape and lingers a while — ^it is
pleasant to find him fingering— to examine something
or other. Then he " rushes ** down to the boat and
bids them row to Pozzuoli, where he arrives (and no
wonder) long after sunset. A good day's hustle. . . .
The ladies made a great impression on his sensitive
mind ; yet not even they were allowed to interfere
with his plans. At Strongoli the " sparkling eyes of
the younger sister " proved the most attractive object
in the place. He was strongly urged to remain a while
and rest from his fatigues. But no ; there were many
reasons why he should press forward. He therefore
presses forward. At another place, too, he was waited
upon by his entertainer's three daughters, the youngest
of whom was one of the most entrancing girls he had
ever met with — ^in fact, it was well that his time was
limited, else " I verily believe I should have com-

152 ALONE

mitted all kinds of follies." That is Ramage. He
parts from his host with " unfeigned regret " — ^but —
parts. His time is always limited. But for that craze
of pressing forward, what fun he could have had !

Stroll to that grove of oaks crowning a hill-top above
the Serpentaro stream. It has often been described,
often painted. It is a comer of Latium in perfect
preservation ; a glamorous place ; in the warm dusk
of southern twilight — ^when all those tiresome children
are at last asleep — ^it calls up suggestions of A Mid-
summer Nighfs Dream. Here is a specimen of the
landscape as it used to be. You may encounter during
your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved
by their inaccessibility from the invading axe. " Hands
off the Oak ! " cries an old Greek poet.

The Germans, realising its picturesque value, bought
this parcel of land and saved the trees from destruc-
tion. It was well done. Within, they have cut certain
letterings upon the rock which violate the sylvan
sanctity of the place — Germans will do these things ;
there is no stopping them ; it is part of their crudely
expansive temperament — certain letterings, among
other and major horrors, anent the " Law of the
Ever-beautiful " (how truly Teutonic !) — Klines, that is,
signed by the poet Victor von Scheffel, and dated
2 May, 1897. Scheffel was a kindly and erudite old
toper, who toped himself into Elysium via countless
quarts of Affenthaler. I used to read his things ; the
far-famed Ekkehardt furnishing an occasion for a visit
to the Hohentwiel mountain in search of that golden-

OLEVANO 153

tinted natrolite mineral, which was duly found (I
specialised in zeolites during that period).

Now what was Scheffel doing at this Serpentaro in
1897 ? For I attended his funeral, which took place
in the 'eighties. Can it be that his son, a scraggy
youth in those days, inherited not only the father's
name but his poetic mantle ? Was it he who perpe-
trated those sententious lines ? I like to think so.
That " law of the ever-beautiful " does not smack of
the old man, unless he was more disguised than usual,
and having a little fun with his pedantic countrymen. . . .

Climb hence — ^it is not far — ^to the village of Civi-
tella, now called Bellegra, a prehistoric fastness with
some traces of " cyclopean " defences. Those ancients
must have had cisterns ; inconceivable that springs
should ever have issued from this limestone crag.
You can see the women of to-day fetching water from
below, from a spot which I was too lazy to investigate,
where perhaps the soft tertiary rock leans upon this
impervious stuff and allows the liquid to escape into
the open. An unclean place is Bellegra, and loud,
like all these Sabine villages, with the confused crying
of little children. That multiple wail of ihisery will
ring in your ear for days afterwards. They are more
neglected by their mothers than ever, since women
now have all the men's work in the fields to do. They
are hungrier than ever, on account of the war which
has imposed real hardships on these agricultural folk ;
hardships that seize them by the throat and make them
sit down, with folded hands, in dumb despair : so I
have seen them. How many of these unhappy babies
will grow to maturity ?

Death-rate must anyhow be high hereabouts, for
nothing is done in the way of hygiene. In the com-

154 ALONE

pany of one who knows, I perambulated the cemetery
of Olevano and was astonished at the frequency of
tombstones erected to the young. " Consumption,"
my friend told me. They scorn prophylactics. I
should not care to send growing children into these
villages, despite their " fine air." Here, at Bellegra,
the air must be fine indeed in winter ; too fine for
my taste. It lies high, exposed to every blast of
Heaven, and with noble views in all directions.

Rest awhile, on your homeward march, at the small
bridge near Olevano where the road takes a turn. A
few hundred yards up the glen on your left is a foun-
tain whose waters are renowned for their purity ; the
bridge itself is not a favourite spot after sunset ; it is
haunted by a most malignant spectre. That adds con-
siderably, in my eyes, to the charm of the place.
Besides, here stands an elder tree now in full flower.
What recollections does that scent evoke ! What hints
of simuner, after rain !

A venerable tree, old as the hills ; that last syllable
tells its tale — ^you may read it in the Sanscrit. A man-
loving tree ; seldom one sees an elder by itself, away
from human habitations, in the jungle. I have done
so ; but in that particular jxmgle, buried beneath the
soil, were the ruins of old houses. When did it begin
to attach itself to the works of man, to walls and
buildings ? And why ? Does it derive peculiar
sustenance from the lime of the masonry ? I think
not, for it grows in lands where lime is rare, and in
the shadow of log-huts. It seeks shelter from the
wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel won-
drously when the plant is set in exposed situations.

The Sabine mountains are full of elders. They use
the berries to colour the wine. A German writer.

OLEVANO 155

R. Voss, wove their fragrance into a kind of Leit-motif
for one of his local novels. I met him once by accident,
and am not anxious to meet him again. A sacerdotal
and flabbily pompous old man — straightway my opinion
of his books, never very high, fell to zero, and has
there remained. He knew these regions well, and
doubtless sojourned at one time or another at yonder
caravanserai-hotel, abandoned of late, but then filled
with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have since been
sacrificed to the war-god. Doubtless he drank wine
with them on that terrace overlooking the brown
houses of Olevano, though I question whether he then
paid as much as they are now charging me ; doubtless
he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies
fronting the landscape, though I question whether he
derived more pleasure from them than I do. . . .

While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards
to where, in the Abruzzi region, the peaks are still
shrouded in snow.

How are they doing out there, at Scanno ? Is that
driving-road at last finished ? Can the " River
Danube *' still be heard flowing underground in the
little cave of Saint Martin ? Are the thistles of violet
and red and blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as
ever ?* And those legions of butterflies — do they still
hover among the sunny patches in the narrow vale
leading to Mount Terrata ? And Frattura, that
strange place — ^what has happened to Frattura ? Built

* Not all of them are tnie thistles. Abbade's Guide to the
Abruzzi (1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region.

146 ALONE

The descent to Rojate under that blazing sun was
bad enough. My flask had been drained to the dregs
long ago, and the Scalambra, true to its limestone
tradition, had not supplied even a drop of water.
Arriving at the village at about two in the afternoon,
we found it deserted ; everybody enjoying their
Sunday nap. Rojate is a dirty hole. The water was
plainly not to be trusted ; it might contain typhoid
germs, and I was responsible for Giulio's health ; wine
would be safer, we agreed. There, in a little shop
near the church-— a dark and cool place, the first shade
we had entered for many hours — ^we drank without
ever growing less thirsty. We felt like cinders, so hot,
so porous, that the liquid seemed not only to find its
way into the legitimate receptacle but to be obliged to
percolate, by some occult process of capillarity, the
remotest regions of the body. As time went on, the
inhabitants dropped in after their slumbers and kept
us company. We told our adventures, drank to the
health of the Allies one by one and several times over ;
and it was not until we had risen to our feet and
passed once more into the sunshine of the square that
we suddenly felt different from what we thought we felt.

The first indication was conveyed by Giulio, who
called upon the populace of Rojate, there assembled,
to bear solemn witness to the fact that I was his one
and only friend, and that he would nevermore abandon
me — 3, sentiment in which I stoutly concurred. (A
fellow-feeling makes us wondrous blind.) Other
symptoms followed. His hat, for example, which had
hitherto behaved in exemplary fashion, now refused
to remain steadily balanced on his head ; it took some
first-class gymnastics to prevent it from falling to the
ground. In fact, while I confined myself to the minor

OLEVANO 147

part of Silenus — ^my native role — ^this youngster gave
a noteworthy representation of the Drunken Faun. . . .

Now I see no harm in appreciating wine up to a
certain point, and am consoled to observe that Craufurd
Tait Ramage, LL.D., was of the same way of thinking/
He says so himself, and there is no reason for doubting
his word. He frankly admits, for instance, that he
enjoys the stuff called moscato " with great zest." He
samples the Falemian vintage and pronounces it to be
" particularly good, and not degenerated." Arrived
at Cutro, he is not averse to reviving his spirits
with " a pretty fair modicum of wine." He also lets
slip — significant detail — ^the fact that Dr. Henderson
was one of his friends, and that he travelled about with
him. You may judge a man by the company he keeps.
Who was this Dr. Henderson ? He was " the author
of The History of Ancient Wines." Old Henderson,
I should say, could be trusted to know something of
local vintages.

And so far good.

At Licenza, however, Ramage tells us that he " got
glorious on the wine of Horace's Sabine farm." I do
not know what he means by this expression, which
seems to be purposely ambiguous ; in any case, it does
not sound very nice. At another place, again, he and
his entertainer consumed some excellent liquor '^ in
considerable quantity " — so he avows ; adding that
" it was long past midnight ere we closed our baccha-
nalian orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that
he was happy to have made my acquaintance." Note
the lame and colourless close of that sentence : he
ended by stating. One always ends that way after
bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss
over the escapade with such disingenuous language.

iS8 ALONE

to your father-in-law : Parcacdo (Tun cagnacdo !
Novel effects, you perceive, obtained by a mere
intensification of colour.

As to Frattura — ^yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried
to identify Ferdinando's abode among all that debris.
The old man himself escaped the cataclysm, and now
sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden shanties
erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio,
of whom more on p. 171, has died ; his place is taken
by a worthless vagabond. Saint Domenico and his
serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis fanum),
that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears
the problematical date of 600 a.d. — ^they are all in their
former places. Mount Velino still glitters over the
landscape, for those who climb high enough to see it.
The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the
water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume,
still carry those immense loads of wood on their heads,
though payment is considerably higher than the three
half-pence a day which it used to be.

Enough of Scanno !

Whoever wishes to leave the place on foot and by
an unconventional route, may go to Bora via Pescas-
seroli. Adventurous souls will scramble over the
Terrata massif y leaving the siunmit well on their right,
and descend on its further side ; others may wander
up the Valle dei Prati and then, bending to the right
along the so-called Via del Campo, mount upwards
past a thronged alp of sheep, over the watershed, and
down through charming valleys of beechen timber. A
noble walk, and one that compares favourably with
many Abruzzi excursions. What deserts they often
are, these stretches of arid limestone, voiceless and
waterless, with the raven's croak for your only company !

OLEVANO 159

I am glad to have seen Pescasseroli, where we
arrived at about 9 a.m. For the rest, it is only one of
many such places that have been brought to a state of
degradation by the earthquake, the present war, and
governmental neglect. Not an ounce of bread was
procurable for money, or even as a gift. The ordinary
needs of life — cigars, matches, maccheroni and so
forth : there were none of them. An epidemic of the
gapes, infecting the entire race of local hens, had
caused the disappearance of every egg from the
market. And all those other countless things which
a family requires for its maintenance — soap and cloth
and earthenware and kitchen utensils and oils — ^they
have become rarities ; the natives are learning to
subsist without them ; relapsing into a kind of bar-
barism. So they sit among the cracked tenements ;
resentful, or dumbly apathetic.

" We have been forgotten," said one of them.

The priests inculcate submission to the will of God.
What else should they teach ? But men will outgrow
these doctrines of patience when suffering is too acute
or too prolonged. " Anything is better than this,"
they say. So it comes about that these ruined regions
are a goodly soil for the sowing of subversive opinions;
the land reeks of ill-digested socialism.

We found a " restaurant " where we lunched off a
tin of antediluvian Spanish sardines, some mouldy
sweet biscuits, and black wine. (A distinction is made
in these parts between black and red wine ; the former
is the Apulian variety, the other from Sulmona.)
During this repast, we were treated to several bear-
stories. For there are bears at Pescasseroli, and no-
where else in Italy ; even as there are chamois near
by, between Opi and Villetta Barrea, among the crags

i6o ALONE

of the Camosciara, which perpetuates their name.
One of those present assured us that the bear is a
good beast ; he will eat a man, of course, but if he
meets a little boy, he contents himself with throwing
stones at him — just to teach him good manners.
Certain old bears are as big as a donkey. They have
been seen driving into their cave a flock of twenty-
five sheep, like any shepherd. It is no rare thing to
encounter in the woods a bear with a goat slung over
his shoulder ; he must breakfast, like anybody else.
One of these gentlemen told us that the bears, not long
ago, were a source of considerable profit to the peasantry
roimd about. It was in this wise. Their numbers
had been reduced, it seems, to a single pair and the
species was threatened with extinction, when, some-
how or other, this state of affaii3 became known to the
King who, alarmed at the disappearance from his
realm of a venerable and autochtonous quadruped, the
largest European beast of prey, conceived the happy
idea of converting the whole region into a Royal
Preserve. On pain of death, no bear was to be molested
or even laughed at ; any damage they might do would
be compensated out of the Royal Purse.

For a week or so after this enactment, nothing was
heard of the bears. Then, one morning, the con-
scientious Minister of the Royal Household presented
himself at the palace, with a large sheaf of documents
under his arm.

** What have We here ? " inquired the King.

" Attestations relating to the bears of Pescasseroli,
Your Majesty. They seem to be thriving."

" Ah ! That is nice of them. They are multiply-
ing once more, thanks to Our Royal protection. We
thought they would."

OLEVANO i6i

" Multiplying indeed, Sire. Here are testimonials,
sworn before the local syndic, showing that they have
devoured i8 head of cattle and 43 sheep."

" In that short time ? Is it possible ? Well, well !
The damage must be paid. And yet We never knew
that bears could propagate so fast. Maybe our Italian
variety is peculiarly vigorous in such matters."

" Seems so. Your Majesty. Very prolific."

A week or so passed and, once more. His Excellency
was announced. The King observed :

" You are not looking quite yourself this morning,
my good Minister. Would it be indiscreet to inquire the
cause ? No family or parliamentary worries. We trust ? "

" Your Majesty is very kind ! No. It is the bears
of Pescasseroli. They have eaten 75 head of cattle,
93 sheep, and 114 goats. Ah — and 18 horses. Here
are the claims for damages, notarially attested."

" We must pay. But if only somebody could teach
the dear creatures to breed a little more reasonably ! "

" I cannot but think. Sire, that the peasants are
abusing Your Majesty's "

" May We never live to hear anything against Our
faithful and well-beloved Abruzzi folk ! "

Nearly a month elapsed before the Minister again
presented himself. This time he looked really haggard
and careworn, and was bowed down under an enor-
mous bundle of papers. The King glanced up from
that writing-desk where, like all other sovereigns, he
had been working steadily since 4.30 a.m., and at once
remarked, with that sympathetic intuition for which
he is famous among crowned heads :

" We think We know. The bears."

" Your Majesty is never wrong. They have de-
voured 126 cows and calves and bullocks, 418 sheep

M

i62 ALONE

and goats, 6z mules, 37 horses, and 96 donkeys. Also 55
shepherd dogs and 827 chickens. Here are the claims."

" Dear, dear, dear. This wiU never do. If it is a
question of going to ruin. We prefer that it should
be the bears rather than Ourselves. We must with-
draw Our Royal protection, after settling up these last
items. What say you, my good Minister ? "

" Your Majesty is always right. A private individual
may indulge in the pastime of breeding bears to the
verge of personal bankruptcy. Ruling sovereigns will
be guided by juster and more complex considerations."

And from that moment, added our gentlemanly in-
formant, there began a wonderful shrinkage in the
nimibers of the bears. Within a day or two, they
were again reduced to a single couple.

Gladly would I have listened to more of these tales
but, having by far the worst of the day*s walk still
before us, we left the stricken regions about midday
and soon began an interminable ascent, all through
woods, to the shrine of Madonna di Tranquillo. Here-
abouts is the watershed, whence you may see, far
below, the tower of Campoli Apennino. That village
was passed in due course, and Sora lay before us, after
a thirteen hours' march. . . .

That same night in Sora — ^it may have been 2 a.m.
— some demon drew nigh to my bedside and whispered
in my ear : " What are you doing here, at Sora ?
Why not revisit Alatri ? (I had been there already in
June.) Just another little promenade ! Up, sluggard,
while the night-air is cool ! "

I obeyed the summons and turned to rouse my
slimibering companion, to whom I announced my
inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were well
worth listening to.

OLEVANO 163

Next evening found us at Alatri.

Now whoever, after walking from Scanno over
Pescasseroli to Sora in one day, and on the next, in
the blazing heat of early autumn, from Sora over Isola
Liri and Veroli to Alatri — ^touching in two days the
soil of three Italian provinces : Aquila, Caserta, and
Rome — ^whoever, after doing this, and inspecting the
convent of Casamari en routey feels inclined for a
similar promenade on the third day : let him rest
assured of my profound respect.

Calm, sunny days at Olevano. And tranquil nights,
for some time past.

The nightingale has been inspired to move a little
up country, into another bush. Its rivals have like-
wise retired further off, and their melodramatic trills
sound quite pleasant at this distance.

So tin cans have their uses, even when empty.
Certain building operations may have been inter-
rupted. I apologise, though I will not promise not
to repeat the offence. They can move their nests ;
I cannot move this house. Bless their souls ! I would
not hurt a hair on their dear little heads, but one must
really have a few hours' sleep, somehow or other. A
single night's repose is more precious to me than a
myriad birds or quadrupeds or bipeds ; my ideas on
the sacred nature of sleep being perfectly Oriental.
That Black Hole of Calcutta was an infamous business.
And yet, while nowise approving the tyrant's action,
I can thoroughly understand his instructions on the
subject of slumber.

i64 ALONE

Not every one at Olevano is so callous. Waiting
the other day at the bifurcation of the roads for the
arrival of the station motor-car — ^the social event of
the place — I noticed two children bringing up to a
bigger one the nest of a chaffinch, artfully frosted over
with silver lichen from some olive, and containing a
naked brood which sprawled pathetically within.
Wasn^t it pretty, they asked ?

" Very pretty,** he replied. " Now you will take it
straight back where you found it. Go ahead. I am
coming with you." And he marched them off.

I am glad to put this incident on record. It is the
second of its kind which I have observed in this
country, the first being when a fisherman climbed up
a bad piece of rock to replace a nest — ^idle undertaking
— ^which some boys had dislodged with stones. At a
short distance from the scene sat the mother-bird in
pensive mood, her head cocked on one side. What
did she think of the benevolent enthusiast ? . . .

Olevano is said to have been discovered by the
Germans. I am sceptical on this point, having never
yet found a place that was discovered by them. An
English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died
here all by himself; though doubtless, once on the
spot, they did their best to popularise and vulgarise
it. In this matter, as in art or science or every depart-
ment of life, a German requires forerunners. He must
follow footsteps. He gleans ; picks the brains of
other people, profits by their mistakes and improves
on their ideas.

I know nothing of the social history of Olevano — of
its origin, so far as foreigners are concerned. It is the
easiest and the flimsiest thing in the world to invent ;
there are so many analogies !

OLEVANO 165

The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired
Anglo-Indian army officer with unblemished record,
Major Frederick Potter. He came across the place on
a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent
climate. Passable food. You could pick up a wood-
cock or two. He was accustomed to solitude anyhow,
all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered
about the world. He had tried England for a couple
of years and discovered that people there did not like
being ordered about as they should be ; they seemed
to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been
something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being
the first " white man " in the place gave him a kind
of fondness for it.

It was he, then, who discovered Olevano — Freddy
Potter. We can see him living alone, wiry and whis-
kered and cantankerous, glorjring in his solitude up
to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a
fellow-countryman turns up — ^Mr. Augustus Browne
of London. Mr. Browne is a blameless personality
who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an equally
blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a
sportsman like Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste
for landscape painting, with elaborate flowers and
butterflies worked into the foreground. So they live,
each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours,
importing groceries from England, dressing for dinner,
avoiding contact with the " natives " and, of course,
pretending to be unaware of one another's existence.

As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows
stronger. The Major has never forgiven that cockney
for invading Olevano, his private domain, while
Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter,
who presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes

i66 ALONE

those filthy cheroots in public (this was years and years
ago). Why is the fellow skulking here, all by himself ?
Some hanky-panky with regimental money ; every one
knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of
right and wrong. And Potter is not long in making
up his mind that this civilian has bolted to Olevano
for reasons which will not bear investigation and is
living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed
name. Browne ! He really might have picked out a
better one, while he was about it. That water-colour
business — a blind, a red herring ; the so-called lady
companion

The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement
the mutual conduct of two compatriots. They are
known, far and wide, as " the madmen " till some
bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not
madmen at all, but only homicides hiding from
justice ; whereupon contempt is changed to grudging
admiration.

Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up
and departs. The old Major's delight at being once
more alone is of short duration ; he falls ill and is
entombed, his last days being embittered by the
arrival of a party of German tourists who declare
they have " discovered " this wonderful new spot,
and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to
participate in its joys.

They come, singly and in batches, and soon make
Olevano uninhabitable to men of the Potter and
Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night,
sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street
" as if they were in their bedrooms," organise picnics
in the woods, sketch old women sitting in old door-
ways, start a Verschoenerungsverein and indulge in a

OLEVANO 167

number of other antics which, from the local poin
of view, are held to be either coarse or childish. The
natives, after watching their doings with critical interest,
presently pronounce a verdict — a verdict to which the
brightest spirits of the place give their assent — a
verdict which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered.

" Those Englishmen " — ^thus it runs — ^* were at
least assassins. These people are merely fools."

PosTCRiPT — One thing has occurred of late which
would hardly have happened were the Germans still
in occupation of Olevano. At the central piazza is a
fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly,
you could rest and glance down upon the country
lying below — upon a piece of green landscape peering
in upon the street. This little view was like a window ,
it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now
blocked it up with an ugly house. The beauty of the
site is gone. It is surprising that local municipalities;
however stupid, however corrupt, should not be aware
of the damage done to their own interests when they
permit such outrages. The Germans — ^were any of
them still here — ^would doubtless have interfered en
masse and stopped the building.

Something should be done about these reviewers.

There has followed me hither a bimdle of press
notices of a recent book of mine. They are favourable.
I ought to be delighted. I happen to be annoyed.

WhsLt takes place in this absurd book ? The three
unities are preserved. A respectable but rather drab
individual, a bishop, who$e tastes and moods are

i68 ALONE

fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader,
arrives at a new place and is described as being,
among other things, peculiarly sensitive on the subject
of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to the
sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their
purity, their sacred mission on earth, their refining
influence upon the race. His friends call him old-
fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman,
he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man,
towards the end of the book, watches how the truest
woman in the place, the one whom he admires more
than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly
throws her legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises
that he is ^^ face to face with an atrocious and carefully
planned miu'der." Such, however, has been the
transformation of his mind during a twelve days'
sojourn that he understands the crime, he pardons it,
he approves it.

Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought
about without a plot ? Yet many of these reviewers
discover no such thing in the book. ** It possesses
not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most
reputable of them. This annoys me.

I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In
regard to this one, it would be nearer the truth to say
that it is nothing but plot from beginning to end. How
to make murder palatable to a bishop : that is the
plot. How ? You must unconventionalise him, and
instil into his mind the seeds of doubt and revolt.
You must shatter his old notions of what is right. It
is the only way to achieve this result, and I would
defy the critic to point to a single incident or character
or conversation in the book which does not further
the object in view. The good bishop soon finds

OLEVANO 169

himself among new influences ; his sensations, his
intellect, are assailed from within and without. Figures
such as those in chapters 11, 19 and 35 ; the endless
dialogue in the boat ; the even more tedious happen-
ings in the local law-court ; the very externals —
relaxing wind and fantastic landscape and volcanic
phenomena — ^the jovial immoderation of everything and
everybody: they foster a sense of violence and insecurity;
they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas.

If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you
have hidden it rather successfully. I have certainly
done my best to hide it. For although the personalities
of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically,
with ominous insistence, from the first chapter on-
wards, they are always swallowed up again. The
reason is given in the penultimate chapter, where the
critic might have found a rdsumd of my intentions and
the key to this plot — ^to wit, that a murder und^r those
particular circumstances is not only justifiable and
commendable but — ^insignificant. Quite insignificant !
Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and
honest folk are being destroyed every day ; nobody
cares tuppence ; " one dirty blackmailer more or
less — ^what does it matter to anybody " ? There are
so many more interesting things on earth. That is
why the bishop — ^i.e. the reader — ^here discovers the
crime to be a " contemptible little episode," and
decides to ** relegate it into the category of unim-
portant events." He was glad that the whole affair
had remained in the backgroundy so to speaks of his local
experiences. It seemed appropriate. In the background :
it seemed appropriate. That is the heart, the core, of
the plot. And that is why all those other happenings
find themselves pushed into the foreground.

I70 ALONE

I know full well that this is not the way to write an
orthodox English novel. For if you hide your plot,
how shall the critic be expected to see it ? You must
serve it on a tray ; you must (to vary the simile) hit
the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to
superintend the operation. That is the way to rejoice
the cockles of his heart. He can then compare you
to tome one else who has also hit the nail on the head
and with whose writings he happens to be familiar.
You have a flavour of Dostoievsky minus the Dickens
taint ; you remind him of Flaubert or Walter Scott or
somebody equally obscure ; in short, you are in a
condition to be labelled — z word, and a thing, which
comes perilously near to libelling. If, to this de-
scription, he adds a short summary of your effort, he
has done his duty. What more can he do ? He must
not praise overmuch, for that might displease some
of his own literary friends. He must not blame
overmuch, else how shall his paper survive ? It lives
on the advertisements of publishers and — say those
persons, perhaps wisely — ^^ if you ill-treat our authors,
there's an end to our custom." Commercialism. . . .

Which applies far less to literary criticism than to
other kinds. Of most of the critics of music and art
the best one can say is that there are hearty fellows
among them who, with the requisite training, might
one day become fit for their work. England is the
home of the amateur in matters intellectual, the
specialist in things material. No bootmaker would
allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather
about in a jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes.
The other conmiodity, being less valuable than cow-
hide, may be entrusted to the hands of any prentice
who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful

OLEVANO 171

hieroglyphics. Criticism in England — snakes in Ice-
land.*

All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary
of St. Michael above Serrone, that solitary white speck
visible from afar on the upper slopes of Mount Scal-
ambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been
inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with
the nightingales, reaching my destination at the very
moment when the sun peered over the ridge of the
mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the
dewy shade of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a
wall at Serrone, talking to an old woman who wore
those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose,
to imitate coral.

I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable
and garrulous anchorite who would share my break-
fast. It is the ideal place for such a life, and many
are the mountain solitaries of this species I have
known in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There
was he of Scanno — dead, I doubt not, by this time —
that simple-hearted venerable with whom I whiled
away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio,
gazing over the placid lake below, or up stream, at
the dusky houses of Scanno theatrically ranged
against their hill-side. I became his friend, once and
for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had

* Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking
of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name — z
love intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of
a good word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my
plot " rightly filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better.

172 ALONE

lost — ^his only snuff-box ; it lay at the edge of the
path among thick shrubs, and he could hardly believe
his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many
strokes of luck ! Once I found a purse —

The little structure here was barred and deserted.
I had no company save a couple of ravens who, after
assuring themselves, with that infernal cunning of
theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as
could be expected of such solenm fowls. They are
always in pairs — ^incurably monogamous ; whereas
the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a fond-
ness for Uving in trios. This tfuhiage d trots may
have subtle advantages and seems to be a step in the
direction of the truly social habits of the rook ; it
enables them to fight with more success against their
enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain
lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks.
No one who has watched the aerial antics of a triplet
of carrion crows can deny them a sense of fun.

After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of
nature I descended once more through that ilex grove
to Serrone. And now it began to grow decidedly
warm. The wide depression between this village and
Olevano used to be timbered and is still known as
la selva or la foresta. Vines now occupy the whole
ground. If they had only left a few trees by the way-
side ! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman
who said he was on the look-out for a hare. Always
that hare ! They might as well lie in wait for the Great
Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary informed me
that he had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at
Rome. Hares at Ponte Milvio ! They reminded me
of those partridges in Belgrave Square. In my younger
days there was not a general in the British army who

OLEVANO 173

had not (i) shot partridges in Belgrave Square and
(2) been the chosen lover of Queen Isabella of Spain. . . .

Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat.
We sit under the vine near the entrance of that decayed
stronghold, while babies and hens scramble about the
exposed rock ; he talks, as usual, about the war. He
can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is
maimed for life ; the other has been killed outright,
and it looks as if no amount of ironmongery (medals,
etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy land
is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hard-
ships and bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards
are untilled, olives unpruned, for lack of labourers. It
will take years to bring the soil back into its old state
of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk
suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for
something that happens beyond their ken, something
dim and distant — ^unintelligible to them as that Libyan
expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not
a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood,
these men of Latiimi ....

Thence onward and upward, towards evening, by
that familiar path, for a second farewell visit to Giulio's
farm. It is a happy homestead, an abode of peace,
with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that
overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty
bush of rosemary stands at the door. The mother is
within, cooking the evening meal for her man and the
elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of
daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already
half asleep, tired out with a long day's playing in the
sunshine.

Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable ch<srub
and the pickle of the family. I can see at a glance

174 ALONE

that he has been up to mischief. Alberto is incor-
rigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him
any good. He hammers nails into tables and into
himself, he timibles down from trees, he throws
stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and
saws ; he breaks things and loses things, and chases
the hens about — disobeys all the time. Every day
there is some fresh disaster and fresh chastisement.
Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big
station motor — ^pulled out from the wheels in the
nick of time ; that scar across his forehead will remain
for life, a memento of childish naughtiness. Alberto
understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me.
But a certain formality must be gone through ; every
time we meet there is a moment of shy distrust, while
the ice has to be broken afresh — ^he must assure him-
self that I have not changed since our last encounter.
Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he
curls up comfortably on my knee and is soon fast
asleep, all his little tragedies forgotten.

" It appears you like children," says the mother.

" I like this one, because he is never out of trouble.
He reminds me of myself. I shall steal him one of
these days, and carry him off to Rome. From there
we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track
called the Via Appia. It will require two or three
years, for I mean to stop a day, or perhaps a week,
at every single tavern along the road. Then I will
write a book about it ; a book to make myself laugh
with, when I am grown too old for walking."

" Giulio is big enough."

" rU wait."

No chance of undertaking such a trip in these
times of war, when a foreigner is liable to be arrested

OLEVANO 175

at every moment. Besides, how far would one get,
with Giulio ? Nevermore to Brindisi ! As far as
Terracina ; possibly even to Formia. There, at
Formia, we would remain for the rest of our natural
lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is any-
thing like what it used to be ; there, at Formia, we
would pitch our tent, enacting every day, or perhaps
twice a day, our celebrated Faun-and-Silenus enter-
tainment for the diversion of the populace. I have
not forgotten Giulio 's besetting sin. How nearly he
made me exceed the measure of sobriety at Rojate !

Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the
trees of the driving-road fireflies are dancing ; country-
men return in picturesque groups, with mules and
children, from their work far afield ; that little owl, the
aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its
plaintive note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle.

This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation
for crime and brigandage that the authorities at one
time earnestly considered the proposition of razing
it to the ground. Then they changed their minds.
It seemed more convenient to have the evil-doers all
collected into one place than scattered about the
country. To judge by the brightness of the lamps at
this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently
spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination.

And now the lights of Segni station are visible,
down in the malarious valley, where the train passes
from Rome to Naples. Every night I have beheld
them from my window ; every night they tinged my
thoughts with a soft sadness, driving them backwards,
northwards — creating a link between present and
past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall
those four journeys along that road ; four, out of at
least a hundred ; only four, but in what rare company !

Vaimontone

BACK to Vaimontone.
At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-
Naples line, I found there was no train to this
place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats
from Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same
predicament ; he also had some business to transact
at Vaimontone. How get there ? No conveyance
being procurable on account of some local fair or
festival, we decided to walk. A tiresome march, in
the glow of morning. The hatter, after complaining
more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to
groans and almost tears ; his waxed moustache began
to droop ; he vowed he was not accustomed to this
kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his
btmdle of hats for him ? I objected so vigorously
that he forthwith gave up all hope. But I allowed
him to rest now and then by the wayside. I also
offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest
Tuscan blasphemies,'*'' for which he was much obliged.
Most of them were unfamiliar to him. He had been
brought up by his mother, he explained. They
seemed to make his burden lighter.

* Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making
a scientific collection of local imprecations — ^abusive, vituperative
or profane expletives ; swear-words, in short — enriched with
elaborate conmientary. I would gladly print this little study in
folk-lore as an appendix to the present volume, were it fit for
publication.

176

VALMONTONE 177

Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this
is rather a cheerless country, poorly cultivated, and
still bearing the traces of mediaeval savagery and in-
security. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit
down here and let the centuries roll by, watching the
tramp of Roman legions and Papal mercenaries and
all that succession of proud banners which have
floated down this ancient Via Labiena.

That rock-like structure, visible in the morning
hours from Olevano, is a monstrous palace con-
taining, among other things, a training school for
carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose
interior has an imusual shape, the usual smell, and a
tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX.

There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide
views over the surrounding country. It gives food for
thought. What an ideal spot, one says, for the populace
to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days ! It
is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do
they prefer to jostle each other in the narrow, squalid
and stuffy lane lower down ? One would like to know
the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was
told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-
lighted. The explanation is not wholly convincing,
for they have the lighting arrangements in their own
hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It may be
that they like to remain close to the shops and to
each others' doors for conversational purposes, since
it is a fact that, socially speaking, the more restricted
the area, the more expansive one grows. We broaden
out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A
psychological reason. . . .

I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of
this terrace, looking at Artena near by. It resembled,

N

178 ALONE

now, a cluster of brown grapes clinging to the hill-
side. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and
saUow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction
of my glance, remarked gravely :

" Artena."

" Artena," I repeated.

He extracted half a toscana cigar from his waistcoat
pocket, and began to smoke with great gusto. A man
of means, I concluded, to be able to smoke at this hour
of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed,
with flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy
trousers. His feet were encased in rough riding-
boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who rode
his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of
interest about Artena ? Presimiably not. He said
never another word, but continued to smile at me
rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation
by pointing to a different spot on the hills and
observing :

" Segni."

" Segni," he agreed.

His cigar had gone out, as toscanas are apt to do.
He applied a match, and suddenly remarked :

" Velletri."

" Velletri."

We were not making much progress. A good many
sites were visible from here, and at this rate of enumera-
tion the sun might well set on our labours.

" How about all those deserters ? " I inquired.

There was a fair number of them, he said. Young
fellows from other provinces who find their way
hither acrossfcountry, God knows how. It was a good
soil for deserters — brushwood, deep gullies, lonely
stretches of land and, above all, la tradizione. The

VALMONTONE 179

tradition, he explained, of that ill-famed forest of
Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were nearly
all children — ^the latest conscripts; a grown man
seldom deserts, not because he would not like to do so,
but because he has more " judgment " and can weigh
the risks. The roads were patrolled by police. A
few murders had taken place ; yes, just a few murders ;
one or two stupid people who resented their demands
for money or food

He broke off with another weary smile.

" You have had malaria," I suggested.

" Often.''

The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face,
but from the peculiar manner. . . .

They brought in a deserter that very afternoon.
He lay groaning at the bottom of a cab, having broken
his leg in jumping down from somewhere. The rest
of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with
carbineers. A Sicilian, they said. The whole populace
followed the vehicle uphill, reverently, as though
attending a funeral. " He is little," said a woman,
referring either to his size or his age.

An hour later there was a discussion anent the
episode in the fashionable cafi of Valmontone. A
citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly a notary, put the
case for United Italy, for intervention against Germany,
for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly
deserters, into a few phrases so clear, so convincing,
that there was a general burst of approval. Then
another man said :

"I hate those Sicilians ; I have good personal
reasons for hating them. But no Sicilian fears death.
If they are not brilliant soldiers, they certainly make
first-class assassins, which is only another branch of

i8o ALONE

the same business. This boy deserts not because he
is afraid of death, but because he still owes a debt.
He feels he ought to do something to repay his parents
who nursed him when he was a child, and not be
sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards
out yonder " — ^and he pointed with his thumb, spitting
contemptuously the while, in the direction of Rome.

Nobody had any comment to make on this speech.
Not a word of protest was raised. The man was
entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and might
even have obtained his share of approval had the
victim been a native. He was only a Sicilian — ^an
outsider. What is one to say of this patriarchal, or
parochial, attitude ? The enlargement of Italy's
boundaries — ^Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so
forth — is an ideal that few Italians bother their heads
about. They are not sufficiently dense — not yet.^
To foimd a world-empire like the British or Roman
calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has
only to look at the Germans, who have been trying to
do so for some time past. That collecting mania . . . .
One single boy who collects postage stamps can infect
his whole school with the complaint, and make them
all jealous of his fine specimens. England has been
collecting, for many centuries, islands and suchlike ;
she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive mania.
She has infected others with the craze and cannot help
incurring their envy, seeing that they are now equally
acquisitive, but less fortimate. All the good specimens
are gone !

That Pergola tavern deserves its name, the court-
yard being overhung with green vines and swelling

* Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made
considerable progress in the peninsula.

VALMONTONE i8i

clusters of grapes. The host is a canny old boy, up to
any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had
already taken a fancy to me on my first visit, for I
cured his daughter Vanda of a raging toothache by
the application of glycerine and carbolic acid. We
went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the
soft tufa, from whose darkest and chilliest recesses he
drew forth a bottle of excellent wine — ^it might have
lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How thoughtful of
Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a
stone's throw of your dining-table ! Nobody need
ice his wine at the Pergola.

After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night
and walked, striving to resemble a rich English
tourist who has lost his way, along the lonely road to
Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters
or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have
got to say for themselves. My usual luck ! Not a
deserter was in sight.

Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old
ladies, of what happened to their little dog and of
other matters trivial to the verge of inanity, I may
discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to
Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means
the last. Meanwhile, we proceed southwards.

Sanf ^gata^ Sorrento

SIREN-LAND revisited. . . .
A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild
youngster from the village of Torco — ^what
joy to listen to analphabetics for a change : they are
indubitably the salt of the earth — down that well-
worn track to CrapoUa, only to learn that my friend
Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, the genius lociy has
died in the interval ; thence by boat to the lonely
beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that
the rock-doves at the Grotto delle Palumbe are now
all extirpated) where, for the sake of old memories, I
indulged in a bathe and then came across an object
rare in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian
granite, relic of some pagan temple and doubtless
washed up here in a wintry gale ; thence, for a little
light refreshment, to Nerano ; thence to that ill-
famed " House of the Spirits '' where my Siren-Land
was begim in the company of one who feared no
spirits — ^victim, already, of this cursed war, but then
a laughter-loving child — ^and down to the bay and
promontory of lerate, there to make the tmwelcome
discovery that certain hideous quarryii^ operations
on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the
charm of this once secluded site ; thence laboriously
upwards, past that line of venerable goat-caves, to

the summit of Mount San Costanzo. I

182 I

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 183

Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at
my feet as of old, flooded in sunshine.

There is a small out-door cistern here. Peering
into its darkness through an aperture in the roof, I
noticed that there was water at the bottom ; out of
the water projected a stone ; on the stone, a prisoner
for life, sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable.
It must have tumbled through the chink, during some
scuffle with a companion, into this humid cell, swum
for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding v^on
the gnats which live in such places. I observed that
its tail had grown to an inordinate length — ^from disuse,
very likely ; from lack of the usual abrasion against
shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of
these restless and light-loving creatures, never again
to see the sun ; to live and die down here, all alone
in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to a few inches
of land amid a desolation of black water.

It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days
ago while climbing in the torrid hour of noon up that
shadeless path where the vanilla-scented orchids
grow — ^the path which nms from Sant* Elia past the
shattered Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the
hottest turning of the road, sat a woman in great
distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been
commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia.
This beast was suffering hellish torments from the
heat and vainly endeavouring, with frenzied grunts of
despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth
under a thinly clothed myrtle bush. I told the woman
of shade lower down. She said she knew about it,
but the pig — ^the pig refused to move ! It had been
engaged upon this hopeless occupation, without a
;moment's respite, for an hour or more ; nothing

i84 ALONE

would induce it to proceed a step further; it had
plainly made up its mind to find shelter here from
the burning rays, or die. And of shelter there was
none.

What would not this pig (I now thought) have
given to be transported into the lizard's cool aquatic
paradise ; and the lizard, into that scorching sun-
light ! . . . .

It was not to muse upon the miseries of the animal
creation that I have revisited these shores. I came
to puzzle once more over the site of that far-famed
Athene temple which gave its name to the whole
promontory. Now, after again traversing the ground
with infinite pleasure, I fail to find any reason for
changing what I wrote years ago in a certain pamphlet
which some scholar, glancing through these pages
aftd anxious to explore for himself a spot of such
celebrity in ancient days, is so little likely to see that
he may not be sorry if I here recapitulate its arguments.
Others will be well advised to pass over what follows.

Let me begin by saying that the temple, in every
probability, stood at the Punta Campanella facing
Capri, the actual headland of the Sorrentine peninsula,
where — apart from every other kind of evidence — you
may pick up to this day small terra-cotta figures of
Athene, made presumably to be carried away as
keepsakes by visitors to the shrine.

Now for alternative suggestions.

Strabo tells us that the temple was placed on the
akron of the promontory ; that is, the simmiit of
Moimt San Costanzo where we are now standing.
(He elsewhere describes it as being " on the straits.")
This summit is nearly 500 metres above sea-level,
and here no antique building seems ever to have been

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 185

erected. No traces of old life are visible save some
fragments of Roman pottery which may have foimd
their way up in early Byzantine days, even as modem
worshippers carry up the ephemeral vessels popularly
called ** caccavelle "* and scatter them about. With the
exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble,
no materials of an early period have been incorporated
into the masonry of the little chapel or the walls of
the fields below. It is incredible that no vestige of a
structure like the Athene temple* should remain on a
spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards
immunity from depredations, owing to its isolated and
exalted position. The rock-surface around the summit
has not undergone that artificial levelling which an
edifice of this importance would necessitate ; the
terrace is of mediaeval construction, as can be seen
by its supporting walls. No doubt the venerable
Christian sanctuary here has been frequently repaired
and modified ; on the terrace-level to the south can
be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the
slopes are littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa,
and old hattuto floors. But there is no trace of antique
workmanship or material, nor has the rocky path
leading up to the shrine been demarcated with chisel-
cuts in the ancient fashion. The sister-summit of
La Croce is equally unproductive of classical relics.

* This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others
have garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here,
and to their list may be added that of the rock on which stood the
villa of Pollius Felix ; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but
used to be called PetrapoU ; pure Greek : PoUio's rock. There is
still a mine of such material to be exploited by all who care to study
the vernacular. The giant euphorbia, for instance, common on
these hills, is locally known as '' totomaglie " ; pure Greek again :
tithymalos.

i86 ALONE

We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken.
And why not ? His accounts of many parts of the
Roman world are surprisingly accurate, but, according
to Professor Pais, '^ of Italy Strabo seems to have known
merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome,
the road between Rome and Naples and Pozzuoli, and
the coast of Etruria between Rome and Populonia/*
If so, he probably saw no more of the district than
can be seen from Naples. He attributes the foimda-
tion of this Athene temple to Odysseus : statements
of such a kind make one wonder whether the earlier
portions of his lost history were more critical than
other old treatises which have survived.

So much for Strabo.

Seduced by a modem name, which means nothing
more or less than " a temple " — strong evidence,
surely — I was inclined to locate the Athene shrine at
a spot called lerate (marked also as leranto on some
maps, and popularly pronounced GhHrate : the Greek
aspirate still surviving) which Ues a mile or more
eastwards of the Punta Campanella and faces south.
" HieroHy^ I thought : that settles it. You may
guess I was not a little proud of this discovery, par-
ticularly when it turned out that an ancient building
actually did stand there — on the southern slope, namely,
of the miniature peninsula which juts into lerate bay.
Here I found fragments of antique bricks, teguUe
hipedaleSy amphoras, pottery of the lustrous Sorrentine
ware — Surrentina hibis ? — ^pavements of opus stgmnuMy
as well as one large Roman paving flag of the type that
is found on the road between Termini and Punta
Campanella. (How came this stone here ? Did the
old road from Stabiae to the Athene temple go roimd
the promontory and continue as far as lerate along the.

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 187

southern slope of San Costanzo hill ? No road could
pass there now ; deforestation has denuded the
mountain-side of its soil, laying bare the grey rock —
a condition at which its mediaeval name of Mons
Canutarius already hints.) Well, a more careful ex-
amination of the site has convinced me that I was
wrong. No temple of this magnificence can have
stood here, but only a Roman villa — one of the many
pleasure-houses which dotted these shores under the
Empire.

So much for myself.

None the less — ^and this is a really curious point —

^'c/ccTta'

Sa^eirao

PEUTINGER'S CHART

Showing ancient road rounding the headland and terminating

at ** Tern plum Minervae."

an inspection of Peutinger's Tables seems to bear out
my original theory of a temple at lerate. For the
structure is therein marked not at the Punta Cam-
panella but, approximately, at lerate itself, facing
south, with the road from Stabiae over Surrentum
rounding the promontory and terminating at the
temple's threshold. Capri and the Punta Campanella
are plainly drawn, though not designated by name.
Much as I should like my first speculation to be

i88 ALONE

proved correct on the evidence of this old chart of
A.D. 2269 1 fear both of us are mistaken.

So much for Peutinger*s Tables.

Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the
local topography. He says that the " three-peaked
rock " which Eratosthenes describes as separating the
gulfs of Cumas and Paestum (that is, of Naples and
Salerno) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not under-
stand Beloch falling into this error, for the old geo-
grapher uses the term skopelos, which is never applied
to a moimtain of this size, but to cliffs projecting
upon the sea. Moreover, the landmark is there to this
day. I have not the slightest doubt that Eratosthenes
meant the pinnacle of lerate, which is three-peaked
in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous
manner, both when viewed from the sea and from the
land (from the chapel of S. M. della Neve, for instance).

Now this projecting cliff of three peaks — ^they are
called, respectively, Montalto, lerate, and Mortella ;
lerate for short — ^is not the actual boundary between
the two gulfs ; not by a mile or more. No ; but
from certain points it might well be mistaken for it.
The ancients had no charts like ours, and the world
in consequence presented itself differently to their
senses ; even Strabo, says Bunbury, " was so ignorant
of the general form and configuration of the North
African coast as to have no clear conception of the
grea]t projection formed by the Carthaginian territory
and the deep bay to the east of it '* ; and, coasting
along the shore line, this triple-headed skopelos^ be-
hind which lies the inlet of lerate, might possibly be
mistaken for the turning-point into the gulf of Naples.
So it looks when viewed from the S.E. of Capri;
so also from the Siren islets — a veritable headland.

SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO 189

So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes.

To sum up : Strabo is wrong in saying that the
temple of Athene stood on the summit of Mount San
Costanzo ; I was wrong in thinking that this temple
lay at lerate ; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring
the structure on the south side of the Sorrentine
peninsula ; Beloch is wrong in identifying the skopelos
trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San Costanzo ;
Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the
boimdary between the two gulfs.

The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella,
whose crag is of sufficient altitude to justify Roman
poets like Statins in their descriptions of its lofty site.
So great a number of old writers concur in this opinion
— ^Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anas-
tasio, Capaccio — ^that their testimony would alone be
overwhelming, had these men been a little more
careful as to what they called a " temple." Capasso,
the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it
" in the neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella."
Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a paper on this " Atene
Siciliana " which 1 have not seen. The whole question
is discfussed in Filangieri*s recent history of Massa
(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo 's term
akron may mean an extremity or point projecting into
the sea (a sense in which Homer used it), and be
applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella.

^me

HERE we are.
That mysterious nocturnal incident pecu-
liar to Rome has already occurred — sure
sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens
about six times in the course of every year, during
the hot season. You may read about it in the next
morning's paper which records how some yoimg man,
often of good family and apparently in good health,
was seen behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at
the hour of about 2 a.m. ; jumping, that is, in a state
of Adamitic nudity, into some public foimtain. It
goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the
police, run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a
hospital, where his state of mind is to be investigated.
Will our rising generation, it gravely adds, never
learn the most elementary rules of decency ?

If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of
these establishments what has been the result of the
medical examination, it is because I will wager my
last shirt that the invalid's health leaves nothing to be
desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this.
He is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses
to come. He has already passed half the night in
agony, tossing on his couch during those leaden hours
when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town
he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be

irremediable. But Rome is the city of fountains. It

190

ROME 191

is they who are responsible for this sad lapse. Their
sound is clear by day ; after midnight, when the
traffic has died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears
it through the window — Shears it perforce, since the
streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot
close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more
restless every moment. He thinks^ . . . That splash
of waters ! Those frigid wavelets and cascades ! How
delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in
their bubbling wetness ; he is parched with heat, and
at this hour of the night, he reflects, there will not be
a soul abroad in the square. So he hearkens to the
seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that
familiar fountain ; he remembers its moistened rim
and basin all alive with jolly turmoil ; he sees the
miniature cataracts tumbling down in streaks of glad
confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be
controlled.

The thing must be done.

Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly
inquiring into his state of mind. . . .

I can sympathise with that state of mind, having
often imdergone the same purgatory. My room at
present happens to be fairly cool ; it looks north, and
the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has
not yet tempted me to any breach of decorum. Night
is quiet here, save for the squeakings of some strange
animals in the upper regions of the neighbouring
Pantheon ; they squeak night and day, and one would
take them to be bats, were it not that bats are supposed
to be on the wing after sunset. There are no mosqui-
toes in Rome — none worth talking about. It is well.
For mosquitoes have a deplorable habit of indulging
in a second meal, an early breakfast, at about four a.m.

192 ALONE

— a habit more destructive to slumber than that regular
and legitimate banquet of theirs. No mosquitoes, and
few flies. It is well.

It is more than merely well. For the mosquito,
after all, when properly fed, goes to bed like a gentle-
man and leaves you alone, whereas that insatiable
and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you
to a never-ending succession of anguished reflex
movements. What a malediction are those flies ; how
repulsive in life smd in death : not to be touched by
human hands ! Their every gesture is an obscenity,
a calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have
watched them for hours on end, and one of the most
cherished projects of my life is to assemble, in a kind
of anthology, all the invectives that have been hurled
since the beginning of literature against this loathly
dirt-bom insect, this living carrion, this blot on the
Creator's reputation — ^and thereto add a few of my
own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly imder
his protection. He says, among other things, that
** like an honest man, it is not ashamed to do in public
what others only do in private." I must say, if we all
followed the fly's example in this respect, life would
at last be worth living. . . .

Morning sleep is out of the question, owing to the
tram-cars whose clangour, both here and in Florence,
must be heard to be believed. They are fast rendering
these towns uninhabitable. Can folks who cherish a
nuisance of this magnitude compare themselves, in
point of refinement, with those old Hellenic colonists
who banished all noises from their city ? Nevermore !
Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and
general unseemliness ? In order that a few bourgeois
may be saved the trouble of using their legs. And yet

ROME 193

we actually pride ourselves on these detestable things,
as if they were inventions to our credit. " We made
them," we say. Did we ? It is not we who make
them. It is they who make us, who give us pur habits
of, mind and body, our very thoughts ; it is these
mechanical monsters who control our fates and drive
us along whither they mean us to go. We are caught
in their cog-wheels — ^in a process as inevitable as the
revolution of the planets. No yse lamenting a cosmic
phenomenon ! Were it otherwise, I should certainly
mope myself into a green melancholy over the fact,
the most dismal fact on earth, that brachycephalism is
a Mendelian dominant.* No use lamenting. True.
But the sage will reserve to himself the right of cursing.
Those morning hours, therefore, when I would
gladly sleep but for the tram-car shrieking below, are
devoted to the malediction of all modem progress,
wherein I include, with fine impartiality, every single
advancement in culture which happens to lie between
my present state and that comfortable cavern in whose
shelter I soon see myself esconced as of yore, peace-
fully sucking somebody's marrow while my women,
round the comer, are collecting a handful of acorns
for my dessert. . . . The telephone, that diabolic in-
vention ! It might vex a man if his neighbour
possessed a telephone and he none ; how would it
be, if neither of them had it ? We can hardly realise,
now, the blissful quietude of the pre-telephone epoch.
And the telegraph and the press ! They have huddled
mankind together into undignified and unhygienic
proximity ; we seem to be breathing each other's air.
We know what everybody is doing, in every comer of

• Query : whether there be no connection between brach)^-
cephalism and this modern deification of machinery ?
o

\

194 ALONE

the earth ; we are told what to think, and to say, and
to do. Your paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used
to hanuner out a few solid opinions of his own on
matters political and otherwise. He no longer employs
his brain for that purpose. He need only open his
morning paper and in it pours — ^the oracle of the
press, that manufactory of synthetic fustian, whose
main object consists in accustoming humanity to
attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes
him with opinions ready made, overnight, by some
Fleet Street hack at so much a coliunn, after a little
talk with his fellows over a pint of bad beer at the
Press Club. He has been told what to say — ^yesterday,
for instance, it was some lurid balderdash about a
steam-roller and how the Kaiser is to be fed on dog
biscuits at Saint Helena — ^he has been " doped " by
the editor, who gets his tip — ^and out he goes ! unless
he takes it — ^from the owner, who is waiting for a
certain emolument from this or that caucus, and trims
his convictions to their taste. That is what the press
can do. It vitiates our mundane values. It enables
a gang to fool the coimtry. It cretinises the public
mind. The time may come when no respectable
person will be seen touching a daily, save on the sly.
Newspaper reading will become a secret vice. As such,
I fear, its popularity is not likely to wane.

Having generated, by means of simdry trite reflec-
tions of this nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast,
I dress and step out of doors to where, at a pleasant
table, I can imbibe some coffee and make my plans
for loafing through the day.

I* ■ *^

ROME 19s

Hot, these morning hours. Shadeless the streets.
The Greeks, the Romans, the Orientals knew better
than to build wide roadways in a land of sunshine.

There exists an old book or pamphlet entitled
" Napoli senza sole " — ^Naples without sun. It gives
instructions, they say (for I have never seen it) how
foot passengers may keep for ever in the shade at all
hours of the day ; how they may reach any point of
the town from another without being forced to cross
the squares, those dazzling patches of sunlight. The
feat could have been accomplished formerly even in
Rome, which was always less umbrageous than Naples.
It is out of the question nowadays. You must do as
the Romans do — ^walk slowly and use the tram when-
ever possible.

That is what I purpose to do. There is a line which
will take me direct to the Milvian bridge, where I
mean to have a bathe, and then a lunch at the restaurant
across the water. Its proprietor is something of a
brigand ; so am I, at a pinch. It is " honour among
thieves," or " diamond cut diamond."

Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the
glowing sands. But the water is still cold ; indeed,
the Tiber is never too warm for me. If you like it
yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene
discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season,
is of a kind to tickle up a walrus.

Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some
other cause, there is a singular variety of flesh-tints
among the bathers here. I wish my old friend Dr.
Bowles could have seen it ; we used to be deeply
immersed, both of us, in the question of the chromato-
phores, I observing their freakish behaviour in the
epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied their

196 ALONE

action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little
paper on sunburn — a darker problem than it seems
to be .♦

These men and boys do not grow uniformly sun-
burnt. They display so many different colour-shades
on their bodies that an artist would be delighted with
the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by
reason of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays,
the tints diverge ; the reds, the scarcer group, tra-
versing every gradation from pale rose to the ruddiest
of copper — ^not excluding that strange marbled com-
plexion concerning which I cannot make up my mind
whether it be a beauty or a defect ; while the xanthous
tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold and
apricot and caf6 au lait to a duskiness approaching
that of the negro. At this season the skins are still
white. Your artist must come later — ^not later, how-
ever, than the end of August, for on the first of
September the bathing, be the weather never so warm,
is officially, and quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber
water is declared to be *' unhealthy " after that date,
and liable to give you fever ; a relic of the days when
the true origin of malaria was unknown.

A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that
bathing has not yet begun in earnest. No drowning
accidents, up to the present. Later on they come
thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current
and vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to yoimg
swimmers ; it grips them in its tawny coils and holds
them fast, often within a few yards of friend or parent
who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries

• Robert L. Bowles, M.D. " Sunburn on the Alps " (Alpine
Journal^ November, 1888) and " The Influence of Light on the
Skin " (British Journal of Dermatology, No. 105, Vol, 9).

ROME 197

of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of
that serpent-like embrace. So it hurries him to de-
struction, only to be fished up later in a state, as the
newspapers will be careful to inform us, of " indpient
putrefaction."

A murderous flood. . . .

That hoary, trickling structure — ^that fountain which
has forgotten to be a fountain, so dreamily does the
water ooze through obstructive mosses and emerald
growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet
beards, from its venerable lips — ^that fountain un-
trimmed, harmonious, overhimg by ancient ilexes :
where shall a more reposeful spot be foimd ? Doubly
delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by
the river-bank. For the foliage of the oaks is such that
it creates a kind of twilight, and all around lies the
tranquillity of noon. Here, on the encircling stone
bench, you may idle through the sultry hours con-
versing with some favourite disciple while the cows
trample up to drink amid moist gurglings and tail-
swishings. They gaze at you with gentle eyes, they
blow their sweet breath upon your cheek, and move
sedately onward. The Villa Borghese can be hushed,
at such times, in a kind of enchantment.
" You never told me why you come to Italy.'*
** In order," I reply, " to enjoy places like this."
** But listen. Surely you have fountains in your
own country ? "
" None quite so golden-green."
" Ah, it wants cleaning, doesn't it ? "

198 ALONE

" Lord, no ! " I say ; but only to myself. One
should never pass for an imbecile, if one can help it.

Aloud I remark : —

" Let me try to set forth, however droll it may
soimdy the point of view of a certain class of people,
supposing they exist, who might think that this par-
ticular foimtain ought never to be cleaned " — ^and there
ensued a discussion, lasting about half an hour, in the
course of which I elaborated, artfully and progressively,
my own thesis, and forged, in the teeth of some lively
opposition, what struck me as a convincing argument
in favour of leaving the foimtain alone.

" Then that is why you come to Italy. On account
of a certain foimtain, which ought never to be
cleaned."

*' I said on account of places like this. And I ought
to have added, on account of moments such as these."

" Are those your two reasons ? "

" Those are my two reasons."

" Then you have thought about it before ? "

" Often."

One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can
help it.

'' But listen. Surely it is sometimes two o'clock in
the afternoon, in your country ? "

'* I used that word moment in a pregnant sense," I
reply. " Pregnant : when something is concealed or
enclosed within. What is enclosed within this
moment ? Our friendly conversation."

" But listen. Surely folks can converse in your
country ? "

" They can talk."

" I begin to understand why you come here. It is
that difference, which is new to me, between con-

ROME 199

versing and talking. Is the difference worth the long
journey ? ''

Not to everybody, I daresay."

Why to you ? "

Why to me ? I must think about it."

One should never pass for an imbecile, if one can
help it.

" What is there to think about ? You said you had
thought about it already. . . . Perhaps there are other
reasons ? "

There may be."
There may be ? "

" There must be. Are you satisfied ? "

" Ought I to be satisfied before I have learnt them ? "

^* I find you rather fatiguing this afternoon. Did
you hear about that murder in Trastevere last night
and how the police "

" But listen. Surely you can answer a simple ques-
tion. Why do you come to Italy. . . .? "

Why does one come here ?

A periodical visit to this country seems an ordinary
and almost automatic proceeding — z part of one*s
regular routine, as natural as going to the barber or
to church. Why seek for reasons ? They are so hard
to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo ! there
is another one lurking in the background, a reason
for a reason.

The craving to be in contact with beauty and
antiquity, the desire for self-expression, for physical
well-being under that drenching sunshine which, while
it lasts, one curses lustily ; above all, the pleasure of
memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes ;
herein lies, methinks, the secret ; the reason for the
reason. Reconstruction at a distance. . . . For a haze

200 ALONE

of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space ; a
kindly haze which obliterates the thousand fretting
annoyances wherewith the traveller's path in every
country is bestrewn. He forgets them ; forgets that
weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only
its sporadic islets — ^those moments of calm delight or
fiercer joy which he would fain hold fast for ever.
He does not come here on account of a certain fountain
which ought never to be cleaned.* He comes for the
sake of its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise
up later, out of some November fog in another land.
Italy is a delightful place to remember, to think and
talk about. And is it not the same with England ?
Let us go there as a tourist — only as a tourist. How
attractive one finds its conveniences, and even its
conventionalities, provided one knows, for an absolute
certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell
among them.

What lovely things one could say about England, in
Timbuktu !

Rome is not only the most engaging capital in
Europe, it is unusually heterogeneous in regard to
population. The average Parisian will assure you that
his family has lived in that town from time imme-
morial. It is different here. There are few Romans
discoverable in Rome, save across the Tiber. Talk to
whom you please, you will soon find that either he or
his parents are immigrants. The place is filled with
hordes of employees — ^many thousands of them, high

* It has now been cleaned — ^with inevitable results.

ROME 201

and low, from every comer of the provinces ; the
commoner sort, too, the waiters, carpenters, plasterers,
masons, painters, coachmen, all the railway folk — ^they
are hardly ever natives. Your Roman of the lower
classes does not relish labour. He can do a little
amateurish shop-keeping, he is fairly good as a cook,
but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists
in eating and drinking. That is as it should be. It
befits the tone of a metropolis that outsiders shall do
its work. That under-current of asperity is less notice-
able here than in many towns of the peninsula. There
is something of the grande dame in Rome, a flavour
of old-world courtesy. The inhabitants are better-
mannered than the Parisians ; a workday crowd in
Rome is as well-dressed as a SundajA crowd in Paris.
And over all hovers a gentle weariness.

The city has undergone orgies of bloodshed and
terror. Think only, without going further back, of
that pillage by the Spanish and German soldiery under
Bourbon ; half a year's pandemonium. And all those
other mediaeval scourges, epidemics and floods and
famines. That sirocco, the worst of many Italian
varieties : who shall calculate its debilitating effect
upon the stamina of the race ? Up to quite a short time
ago, moreover, the population was malarious ; older
records reek of malaria ; that, assuredly, will leave its
mark upon the inhabitants for years to come. And
the scorching Campagna beyond the walls, that for-
bidden land in whose embrace the city lies gasping,
flame-encircled, like the scorpion in the tale. . . .

A well-known scholar, surveying Rome with the
mind's eye, is so impressed with its " eternal "
character that he cannot imagine this site having ever
been occupied otherwise than by a city. To him it

202 ALONE

seems inevitable that these walls must always have
stood where now they stand — ^must have risen, he
suggests, out of the earth, unaided by human hands.
Yet somebody laid the foundation-stones, once upon
a time ; somebody who lived under conditions quite
different from those that supervened. For who — ^not
five thousand, but, say, five hundred years ago — who
would have thought of building a town on a spot like
this ? None but a crazy despot, some moonstruck
Oriental such as the world has known, striving to
impress his dreams upon a recalcitrant nature. No
facilities for trade or commerce, no scenic beauty of
landscape, no harbour, no defence against enemies, no
drinking water, no mineral wealth, no food-supplying
hinterland, no navigable river — a dangerous river,
indeed, a perpetual menace to the place — every draw-
back, or nearly so, which a town may conceivably
possess, and all of them huddled into a fatally im-
healthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire
and poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so
effectually, so triumphantly that, were green pastuicb
not needful to me as light and air, I, for one, woula
nevermore stray beyond those ancient portals. . . .

The country visits you here. It comes in the wake
of that evening breeze which creeps about with
stealthy feet, winding its way into the most secluded
courtyards and sending a sudden shiver through the
frail bamboos that stand beside your dinner-table in
some heated square. Then the zephyr departs mysteri-
ously as it came, and leaves behind a great void — ^a
torrid vacuum which is soon filled up by the honey-
sweet fragrance of hay and aromatic plants . Every night
this balsamic breath invades the town, filling its streets
with ambrosial suggestions. It is one of the charms

ROME 203

of Rome at this particular season ; quite a local
speciality, for the phenomenon could never occur if
the surrounding regions were covered with suburbs or
tilth or woodland — ^were aught save what they are : a
desert whose vegetation of coarse herbage is in the act
of withering. The Campagna once definitely dried,
this immaterial feast is at an end.

I am glad never to have discovered anyone, native
or foreign, who has been aware of the existence of this
nocturnal emanation ; glad because it corroborates a
theory of mine, to wit, that mankind is forgetting the
use of its nose ; and not only of nose, but of eyes and
ears and all other natural appliances which help to
capture and intensify the simple joys of life. We all
know the civilised, the industrial eye — ^how atrophied,
how small and formless and expressionless it has
become. The civilised nose, it would seem, degene-
rates in the other direction. Like the cultured potato
or pumpkin, it swells in size. The French are civilised
and, if we may judge by old engravings (what else are
we to take as guide, seeing that the skull affords some
criterion as to shape but not size of nose ?) they
certainly seem to accentuate this organ in proportion
as they neglect its use. Parisians, it strikes me, are
running to nose ; they wax more rat-like every day.
Here is a little problem for anthropologists. There
may be something, after all, in the condition of Paris
life which fosters the development of this peeky,
rodential countenance. Perfumery, and what it im-
plies ? There are scent-shops galore in the fashionable
boulevards, whereas I defy you to show me a single
stationer. Maupassant knew them fairly well, and one
thinks of that story of his : —

" Le parfum de Monsieur ? "

204 ALONE

" La verveinc. . . . "•

Speaking of the French, I climbed those ninety odd
stairs the other day to announce my arrival in Italy
to my friend Mrs. N., who, being vastly busy at that
moment and on no account to be disturbed, least of
all by a male, sent word to say that I might wait
on the terrace or in that microscopic but well-equipped
library of hers. I chose the latter, and there browsed
upon " Emaux et Camdes " and the " Fleurs du
Mai " which happened, as was meet and proper, to
lie beside each other.

Strange reading, at this distance of time. These, I
thought — ^these are the things which used to give us
something of a thrill.

If they no longer provide that sensation, it may well
be that we have absorbed their spirit so thoroughly
into our system that we forget whence we drew it.
They have become part of ourselves. Even now, one
cannot help admiring Gautier's precision of imagery,
his gift of being quaint and yet lucid as a diamond ;
one pictures those crocodiles fainting in the heat, and
notes, too, whence the author of the " Sphinx " drew
his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse
is not so much easy as facile. And not all the grace
of internals can atone for external monotony. That
trick — ^that full stop at the end of nearly every fourth
line — ^it impairs the charm of the music and renders
its flow jerky ; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated

* MaupasBant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's
diary.

ROME 205

blow, it grows wearisome to the ear, and finally
abhorrent.

Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated.
He can also delve down to deeps which the other
never essayed to fathom. " Fuyez Tinfini que vous
portez en vous " — 3, line which, in my friend's copy
of the book, had been marked on the margin with a
derisive exclamation-point. (It gave me food for
thought, that exclamation-point.) But, as to sub-
stance, he contains too many nebulosities and abstrac-
tions for my taste ; a veritable mist of them, out of
which emerges — ^what ? The figure of one woman.
Reading these " Fleurs du Mai '' we realise, not for
the first time, that there is something to be said in
favour of libertinage for a poet. We do not need
Petrarca, much less the Love-Letters of a Violinist —
no, we do not need those Love-Letters at all — ^to prove
that a master can draw sweet strains from communion
with one mistress, from a lute with one string ; a
formidable array of songsters, on the other hand, will
demonstrate how much fuller and richer the melody
grows when the instrument is provided with the
requisite five, the desirable fifty. Monogamous habits
have been many a bard's undoing.

Twenty years' devotion to that stupid and spiteful
old cat of a semi-negress ! They make one conscious
of the gulf between the logic of the emotions and that
other one — ^that logic of the intellect which ought to
shape our actions. Here was Baudelaire, a man of
ruthless self-analysis. Did he never see himself as
others saw him ? Did he never say : " You are
making a fool of yourself " ?

Be sure he did.

You are making a fool of yourself : are not those

2o6 ALONE

the words I ought to have uttered when, standing in
the centre of the Piazza del Popolo — ^the sunny centre :
so it had been inexorably arranged — I used to wait and
wait, with eyes glued to the clock hard by, in the
slender shadow of that obelisque which crawled re-
luctantly, like the finger of fate, over the burning
stones ?

And I crawled with it, more than content.

Days of infatuation !

I never pass that way now without thanking God
for a misspent youth. Why not make a fool of your-
self ? It is good fun while it lasts ; it yields mellow
mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures,
those solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous ?
Where is the use of experience, if it does not make
you laugh ? The Logic of the Intellect — ^what next !
If any one had treated me to such tomfoolery while
standing there, petrified into a pillar of fidelity in that
creeping shadow, I should have replied gravely :

" The Logic of the Intellect, my dear Sir, is incom-
patible with situations like mine. It was not invented
for so stupendous a crisis. I am waiting for my
negress— can't you understand ?— and she is akeady
seven minutes late. ..."

A flaming morning, foretaste of things to come.

I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital
where things are doing well, glancing down, towards
midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one looks into some
torrid bear-pit.

Broken columns glitter in the sunshine ; the grass

ROME 207

is already withered to hay. Drenched in light and
heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is altogether devoid of
life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in a
kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead.

My experiences in the hospital half an hour ago
dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a
more morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular,
it seems as if all the mangy and decrepit cats of Rome
had given themselves a rendezvous on this classic soil ;
cats of every colour and every age — quite young ones
among them ; all, one would say, at the last gasp of
life. This pit, this crater of flame, is their " Home for
the Dying." Once down here, nothing matters any
more. They are safe at last from their old enemies,
from dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death,
they move about in a stupid and dazed manner.
Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One would
think they preferred to expire in the shade of some
pillar or slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all
the same. It matters nothing where one dies.

There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten
desiccated tortoiseshell ; its eyes are closed and a red
tongue hangs out of the mouth. I drop a small
pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a
moment. Nothing more.

These cats have lost their all — ^their self-respect.
Grace and ardour, sleekness of coat and buoyancy of
limb are gone out of them. Tails are knotted with
hunger and neglect ; bones protrude through the
skin. So they strew the ground in discomposed, un-
catlike attitudes, while the sun bums through their
parched anatomy. Do they remember their kittenish
pranks, those moonlit ecstasies on housetops, that
morsel snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and

2o8 ALONE

borne through the crowded tndBBc in a series of
delirious leaps ? Who can tell ! They are not even
bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches.
They are alive when they ought to be dead. Nobody
knows it better than they do. They are too ill, too
far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present
degradation. Nothing matters 1 What would Baude-
laire, that friend of cats, have said to this macabre
exhibition ?

Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom
of a kitten. The parent takes no interest in the pro-
ceedings ; she lies prone, her head on the ground.
Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead ? Possibly.
Her own kitten ? \^o cares ! Her neighbour, once
white but now earth-coloured, rises stiffly as though
dubious whether the joints are still in working order.
What does she think of doing ? It would seem she
has formed no plan. She walks up to the mother,
peers intently into her face, then sits apart on her
haunches and begins gazing at the sun. Presently
she rises anew and proceeds five or six paces for no
imaginable reason — collapses ; falls, quite abruptly,
on her side. There she lies, flat, like a playing-card.

A sinister aimlessness pervades the actions of those
that move at all. The shadow of death is upon these
creatures in the scorching sunshine. They stare at
columns of polished granite, at a piece of weed, at
one another, as though they had never seen such
things before. They totter about on tip-toe ; they
yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is one,
stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp ;
another is convulsed with nervous twitchings ; another
scratches the earth in a kind of mechanical trance.
One would say she was preparing a grave for herself.

ROME 209

The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl
and a face that bears the scars of a hundred fights.
One eye has been lost in some long-forgotten en
counter. Now they walk over him, kittens and all,
and tread about his head, as if he were a hillock of
earth, while his claws twitch resentfully with rage or
pain. Too ill to rise !

Most of them are thus stretched out blankly, in a
faint. Are they suffering ? Hungry or thirsty ?• I
believe they are past troubling about such things.
It is time to die. They know it. . • .

" Valbergo deigatiij^ says a cheery voice at my side
— some countryman, who has also discovered Trajan's
Forum to be one of the sights of Rome. " The cats*
hotel. But," he adds, " I see no restaurant attached
to it."

That reminds me : luncheon- time.

Via Flaminia — ^what a place for luncheon ! True ;
but this is one of the few restaurants in Rome where,
nowadays, a man is not in danger of being simul-
taneously robbed, starved, and poisoned. Things
have come to a pretty pass. This starvation-fare may
suit a saint and turn his thoughts heavenwards. Mine
it turns in the other direction. Here, at all events,
the food is straightforward. Our hostess, a slow

* Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has
improved. Somebody now feeds them — ^which could hardly have
been expected during those stressful times of war, when bread
barely sufficed for the human population. They are also fewer in
numbers. Their owners, I fancy, can afford to keep them at home
once more.

210 ALONE

elderly woman, is omnipresent ; one realises that
every dish has been submitted to her personal in-
spection. A primeval creature ; heaviness personified.
She moves in fateful fashion, like the hand of a clock.
The crack of doom will not avail to accelerate that
relentless deliberation. She reminds me of a cousin
of mine famous for his imperturbable calm who,
when his long curk once caught fire from being too
near a candle, sleepily remarked to a terrified wife :
" I think you might try to blow it out."

But where shdl a man still find those edible mac-
cheroni — ^those that were made in the Grolden Age out
of pre-war-time flour ?

Such things are called trifles. . . . Give me the
trifles of life, and keep the rest. A man's health
depends on trifles ; and happiness on health. More-
over, I have been yearning for them for the last five
months. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. • . .
There are none in Rome. Can they be found anywhere
else ?

Mrs. Nichol : she might know. She has the gift of
knowing about things one would never expect her to
know. If only one could meet her by accident in the
street 1 For at such times she is gay and altogether
at your disposal. She is up to any sport, out of doors.
To break upon her seclusion at home is an under-
taking reserved for great occasions. The fact is, we
are rather afraid of Mrs. Nichol. The incidents of
what she describes as a tiresome life have taught her
the value of masculine frankness — ^ultra-masculine, I
call it. She is too frank for subterfuge of any kind.
When at home, for instance, she is never " not at
home." She will always see you. She will not detain
you long, if you happen to be de trop^

ROME 211

This, I persuade myself, is a great occasion — ^my
health and happiness. • . . Besides, I am her oldest
friend in this part of the world ; was I not on the spot
when she elected, for reasons which nobody has yet
fathomed, to make Rome her domicile ? Have I not
more than once been useful to her, nay, indispensable ?
I therefore climb, not without trepidation, those
ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old palace,
and presently find myself ushered into the familiar
twilight.

Nothing has changed since I was here some little
time ago to announce my arrival in Italy (solemn
occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an hour or
so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being
engaged upon ** house-accounts." This time, as I
enter the studio, she is playing cards with a pretty
handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays
cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouth-
piece which keeps the smoke out of her olive-com-
plexioned face and which she holds firm-fixed between
her teeth, in a comer of the mouth, after the perky
fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game,
and at once begin to feel de trop under a glance from
those smouldering grey eyes.

*^ It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death.
Will you please listen for half a minute ? Then I will
evaporate, and you can go on with your ridiculous
cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches.
Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable
macaroni nowadays ? The old kind, I mean, made out
of pre-war-time flour. . . ."

She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend
the game, and asks the girl in Italian :

" What was the name of that place ? '*

212 ALONE

" That place "

" Oh, stupid ! Where I stayed with Miranda last
September. Where I tore my skirt on the rock. Where
I said something nice about the white macaroni ? "

" Soriano in Cimino."

'^ Soriano/' echoes the mistress in a cloud of smoke.
" There is a tram from here every morning. They can
put you up."

A pause follows. I would like to linger and talk to
this sultry and self-centred being ; I would like to
wander with her through these rooms, imbibing their
strange Oriental spirit — ^not your vulgar Orient, but
something classic and remote ; something that savours,
for aught I know, of Indo-China, where Mrs. Nichol,
in one of her immature efforts at self-realisation, spent
a few years as the wife of a high French official, ere
marrying, that is, the late lamented Nichol— another
unsuccessful venture.

Now why did she marry all these people (for I fancy
there was yet an earlier alliance of some kind) ? A
whim, a freak ? Or did they plague her into it ? If
so, I suspect they lived and died to repent their
manly persistence. She could grind any ordinary
male to powder. And why has she now flitted here,
building herself this aerial bower above the old roofs
of Rome ? Is she in seatrch of happiness ? I doubt
whether she will find it. She possesses that fatal
craving — ^the craving for disinterested affection, a
source of heartache to the perfect egoist for whom
affection of this particular kind is not a necessity but
a luxury, and therefore desirable above all else —
desirable, and how seldom attained !

The pause continues. I make a little movement, to
attract notice. She looks up, but only her eyes reply.

ROME 213

" Now, my good fellow," they seem to say, " are
you blind ? "

That is the drawback of Mrs. Nichol. Phenomenally
absent-minded, she always knows at a given moment
exactly what she wants to do. And she never wants
to do more than one thing at a time. It is most im-
womanly of her. Any other person of her sex would
have left a game of cards for the sake of an attractive
visitor like myself. Or, for that matter, an ordinary
lady would have played cards, given complicated
orders to dressmakers and servants, and entertained
half a dozen men at the same time. Mrs. Nichol
cannot do these things. That hand, that rather sun-
burnt little hand without a single ring on it, has not
moved from the table. No, I am not blind. It is
quite evident that she wants to play cards ; only that,
and nothing more.

I withdraw, stealthily.

Not downstairs. I go to linger awhile on the broad
terrace where jessamine grows in Gargantuan tubsi
there I pace up and down, admiring the cupolas and
towers of Rome that gleam orange-tawny against the
blue background of distant hills. How much of its
peculiar flavour a town will draw — ^not from artistic
monuments but from the mere character of building
materiak I How many variations on one theme !
This mellow Roman travertine, for instance. ... I
call to mind those disconsolate places in Cornwall
with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and
dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic
cheerfulness of lava, those marble-towns that blind
you with their glare. Eastern cities of brightly-tinted
stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns,
wood-towns — ^how they differ in mood from one

214 ALONE

another ! . . . . Here I pace up and down, rejoicing
in the spacious sunlit prospect, and endeavouring to
disentangle from one another the multitudinous street-
cries that climb to this hanging garden in confused
waves of sound. Harsh at dose quarters, they weave
themselves into a mirthful symphony up here.

From that studio, too, comes a lively din — ^the
laughter has begun again. Mrs. Nichol is havii^ a
good time. It will be followed, I daresay, by a period
of acute depression. I shall probably be consulted
with masonic frankness about some litde tragedy of
the emotions which is no concern of mine. She can
be wondrously engaging at such times — ^like a child
that has got into trouble and takes you into its con-
fidence.

One of these days I must write a character-sketch of
Mrs. Nichol. She foreshadows a type — ^represents it,
very possibly — z type which will grow commoner
from day to day. She dreams of a Republic of women,
vestals or otherwise, wherefrom all men are to be
excluded unless they possess qualifications of a rather
unusual nature. I think she would like to draft a set
of rules and regulations for that commimity. She
could be trusted, I fancy, to make them sufficiently
stringent.

I think I understand, now, why a certain line in her
copy of Baudelaire was marked with that derisive
exclamation-point on the margin : " Fuyez Tinfini que
vous portez en vous."

" Fuyez ? " it seemed to say. " Why ' fiiyez ' ? "

Fulfil it !

Soriano

AMID clouds of dust you are whirled to
Soriano, through the desert Campagna and
past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tram-
way — different from that miserable Olevano affair
which, being narrow gauge, can go but slowly and
even then has a frolicsome habit of jtmiping off the
rails every few days. From afar you look back upon
the city ; it lies so low as to be invisible ; over its
site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an iridescent
bubble suspended in the sky.

This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the
slope of an immense old volcano and conveys at first
glance a somewhat ragged and sombre impression.
It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni
— ^they atoned for everything. So exquisite were they
that I forthwith vowed to return to Soriano, for their
sake alone, ere the year should end. (I kept my vow.)
The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and un-
mistakably authentic, having been purchased in large
quantities at the outbreak of hostilities by the provident
hostess, who must have anticipated a rise in price, a
deterioration in quality, or both, as the result of war.

How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their where-
abouts ? That is her affair. I know not how she has
managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect such a
variety of useful local information. I can only testify

that on her arrival in Rome she knew no more about

215

2i6 ALONE

the language and place than the proverbial babe
unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced
with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the
words : " Try Mrs. Nichol." And how many women,
by the way, would have made a note of the particular
quality of those macaroni ? One in a himdred ? These
are temperamental matters. . . •

We also — ^for of course I took a friend with me, a
well-preserved old gentleman of thirty-two, whose
downward career from a brilliant youth into hopeless
mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with
philosophic unconcern — ^we also constmied a tender
chicken, a salad containing olive oil and not the usual
motor-car lubricant, an omelette made with genuine
butter, and various other items which we enjoyed
prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for
the seven lean years just. past but for seven — ^yea,
seventy times seven — ^lean years to come. So great a
success was this open-air meal that my companion, a
case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess :

^' It seems one fares better in the province than at
home. You could not get such bread in Rome, not
if you offered fifty francs a pound."

As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by
this time, but grown fairly intimate with the wine, a
rosy muscatel, faintly sp^kling — ^very yoimg, but not
altogether innocent.

There were flies, however, and dogs, and children.
]We ought to have remained indoors. Thither we
retired for coffee and cigars and a liqueur, of the last
of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and
distrusts all liqueurs ; it is one of his many senile
traits. The stuflF proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox
Strega^ likewise a rarity nowadays.

SORIANO 217

It is a real shame — ^what is happening to Strega at
this moment. It has grown so popular that the
country is flooded with imitations. There must be
fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees
of goodness and badness ; I have met their travellers
in the most unexpected places. They reproduce the
colour of Strega^ its minty flavour — everything, in
short, except the essential : its peculiar strength of
aroma and of alcohol. They can afford to sell this
poison at half the price of the original, and your
artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the
real product which he fills up, when empty, out of
some hidden but never-failing barrel of the fraudulent
mixture round the comer, charging you, of course, the
full price of true Strega. If you complain, he proudly
points to the bottle, the cork, the label : all authentic !
No wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions,
vow they will never touch Strega again ....

We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee,
about this Strega adulteration, during which I tried
to make my friend comprehend how I thought the
grievance ought to be remedied. How ? By an
injunction. That was the way to redress these wrongs.
You obtain an injunction, I said, such as the French
Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers
of the Italian " Certosa," which was thereafter obliged
to change its name to " Val D'Emma." More than
once I endeavoured to set forth, in language in-
telligible to his understanding, what an injimction
signified ; more than once \ explained how well-advised
the Strega Company would be to take this course.

In vain !

He always missed my point. He always brought in
some personal element, whereas I, as usual, confined

2i8 ALONE

myself to general lines, to the principle of the thing.
Italians are sometimes unfathomably obtuse.

" But what is an injunction ? " he repeated.

" If you were a litde yoimger, there might be some
hope for you. I would then try to explain it again,
for the fiftieth time. Instead of that, what do you say
to taking a nap ? "

" Ah ! You have eaten too much."

'^ Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of
explaining things to people who refuse to understand."

" No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might
freshen you up."

** And perhaps inspire you with another subject of
conversation."

In the little hotel there were no rooms available
just then wherein we might have slumbered, and
another apartment higher up the street promising
lively sport for which we were disinclined at that
hour, we moved laboriously into the chestnut woods
overhead. Fine old timber^ part of that mysterious
Ciminian forest which still covers a large tract, from
within whose ample shade one looks downhill towards
the distant Orte across a broiling stretch of country.
There were golden orioles here, calling to each other
from the tree-tops. My friend, having excavated
himself a couch among the troublesome prickly seeds
of this plant, was soon snoring — ^another senile trait —
snoring in a rhythmical bass accompaniment to their
song. I envied him. How some people can sleep !
It is a thing worth watching. They shut their eyes,
and forget to be awake.

SORIANO 219

With a view to imitating his example, I wearied
myself trying to count up the nimiber of orioles I
had shot in my bird-slaying days, and where it
happened . Not more than half a dozen, all told. They
are hard to stalk, and hard to see. But of other birds —
how many ! Forthwith an endless procession of
massacred fowls began to pass before my mind. One
would fain live those ornithological days over again,
and taste the rapturous joy with which one killed that
first nutcracker in the mountain guUey ; the first wall-
creeper which fluttered down from the precipice hung
with icicles ; the Temminck's stint — ^victim of a
lucky shot, late in the evening, on the banks of the
reservoir ; the ruff, the grey-headed green wood-
pecker, the yellow-billed Alpine jackdaw, that lanitis
meridianalis.

And all those slaughtered beasts — ^those chamois,
first and foremost, sedulously circumvented amid
snowy crags. Where are now their Jioms, the trophies ?

The passion for such sport died out slowly and for
no clearly ascertainable reason, as did, in its turn, the
taste for art and theatres and other things. Sheer
satiety, a grain of pity, new environments — ^they may
all help to explain what was, in its essence, a mole-
cular change in the brain, driving one to explore new
departments of life.

And now latterly, for some reason equally obscure,
the natural history fancy has revived after lying
dormant so long. It may be those three months spent
on the pavements of Florence which incline one*s
thoughts to the country and wild things. Social
reasons too — a certain weariness of htmianity, and more
than weariness ; a desire to avoid contact with creatures
who kill each other so gracelessly and in so doing —

220 ALONE

for the killing alone would pass — ^invoke specially-
manufactured systems of ethics and a benevolent God
overhead. What has one in common with such folk ?

That may be why I feel disposed to forget mankind
and take rambles as of yore ; minded to shoulder a
gun and climb trees and collect birds, and begin, of
course, a new series of " field notes." Those old
jottings were conscientiously done and registered
sundry things of import to the naturalist ; were they
accessible, I should be tempted to extract therefrom
a voltmie of solid zoological memories in preference to
these travel-pages that register nothing but the cross-
currents of a mind which tries to see things as they
are. For the pursuit brought one into relations not
only with interesting birds and beasts, but with men.

There was Mr. H. of the Linnean Society, whose
waxed moustache curled round upon itself like an
ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., and
a great collector of them. He collected, among other
things, a rare monograph belonging to me and deal-
ing with the former distribution of the beaver in
Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing
I could do or say would induce him to disgorge it
again ; he had always lent it to a friend, who was
just on the point of returning it, etc. etc. Bitterly
grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into
communication with my friend Dr. Girtanner of St.
Gallen, another beaver — and marmot — specialist. It
stimulated his love of Swiss zoology to such an extent
that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of
mine, J. J. Tschudi's " Schweizer Echsen," which I
likewise never saw again. What an innocent one was !
Where is now the man who will induce me to lend
him such books ?

.- .-•- JA.- __.

..J

SORIANO 221

In those days I held a student's ticket at the South
Kensington Museum, an institution I enriched with
specimens of tana grceca from near Lake St5rmphalus,
and lizards from the Filfla rock, and toads from a
volcanic islet (toads, says Darwin, are not found on
volcanic islets), and slugs from places as far apart as
Santorin and the Shetlands and Orkneys, whither I
went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua.
The last gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of
Saima in Finland. Who ever heard of seals living in
sweet land-locked waters ? This was one of my
happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend
the Curator was tempered by the fact that this par-
ticular specimen happened to be an immature one, and
did not display any pronoimced race-characters.

I have early recollections of the rugged face and
lovely Scotch accent of Tam Edwards, the Banffshire
naturalist ; and much later ones of J. Yoimg,* who gave
me a circumstantial account of how he foimd the first
snow bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire ; I recall the Rev.
Mathew (? Mathews) of Gumley, an ardent Leicester-
shire ornithologist, whose friendship I gained at a
tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged

* This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious letter
from the old fellow. " The question you ask is one of great ornitho-
logical importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I
am absolutely afraid to ask any questions ih the. British Museum,
as they jump at an idea and cut the ground from under the original
man's feet. This I regret to say is my experience. I have been
asked what does it matter who makes the discovery ? I reply,
* Render unto Cassar, etc' If you are going to work it out, keep it
dark. The British Museum have not the necessary specimens —
in this country I believe it is not known how the change takes place.
I tried some years ago to work it out with live specimens, but failed
because I could not get young birds. Now in answer to your ques-
tion, my belief is that the young bird moults into the winter plumages

MZ ALONE

partridgei from which I took every one of the thirteen
eggs. " Surely six would have been enough/* he said
— a remark which struck me as rather imreasonable,
seeing that French partridges were not exactly as
common as linnets. He afterwards showed me his
collection of birdskins, dwelling lovingly, for reasons
which I cannot remember, upon that of a pin-tail duck.
He it was who told me that no collector was worth
his salt until he had learnt to skin his own birds. Fired
with enthusiasm, I took lessons in taxidermy at the
earliest possible opportimity — ^from a grimy old natu-
ralist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a
man who relieved birds of their jackets in dainty
fashion with one hand, the other having been ampu-
tated and replaced by an iron hook. During that
period of initiation into the gentle art, the billiard-room
at " The Weaste," Manchester, was converted every
morning, for purposes of study, into a dissecting-room,
a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless
trunks and brains and gouged-out eyes of lapwings
and other " easy ** birds (I had not yet reached the
arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the profession) lay
about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was

direct and that this is changed into the full plumage in spring either
by a spring moult or by a shedding of the tips of the feathers. This
is private because it is theoretical, and for your private use to
verify. . . ."

Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Giinther wrote : " The
skin differs in nothing from that of Phoca foetida. In the skull I
observe that the nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in
typical specimens from the northern coasts. There is also a remark-
able thinness of bone, a want of osseous substance ; but it is impos-
sible to say whether this is due to altered physical conditions or
should be accounted for by the youth of the specimen, or whether
it is an individual peculiarity."

SORIANO 223

ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers,
lancets, arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other
paraphernalia of the trade. The butler had to be
furiously tipped.

There were large grounds belonging to this estate,
fields and woodlands once green, then blackened with
soot, and now cut up into allotments and built over.
Here, ever since men could remember — certainly since
the place had come into the possession of the never-
to-be-forgotten Mr. Edward T. — a kingfisher had
dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial origin which
supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks
and dace. This kingfisher was one of the sights of
the domain. Visitors were taken to see it. The bird,
though sometimes coy, was generally on view. Never-
theless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher ; to
my infinite annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying
it. Nor did I even find its nest, an additional source
of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be interested to
know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties
(I have the exact date somewhere*) — surely a note-
worthy state of affairs, so near the heart of a smoky
town like Manchester.

Later on I learnt to slay kingfishers — the first victim
falling to my gun on a day of rain, as it darted across
a field to avoid the windings of a brook. I also became
a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are so con-
servative ! They are at your mercy, if you care to
study their habits. The golden-crested wren builds a
nest which is almost invisible ; once you have mastered
the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, now, for
all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer
ones — ^the grey shrike, that buzzard on the cliff (the

• Winter 1882-1883 ; possibly later.

224 ALONE

most perilous scramble of all my life), the crested tit-
mouse, the serin finch on the apple tree, that first
icterine warbler whose five eggs, blotched with purple
and quite unfamiliar at the time, gave me such a thrill
of joy that I nearly lost my foothold on the swerving
alder branch

At this point, my meditations were suddenly inter-
rupted by a vigorous grunt or snort ; a snort that
would have done credit to an enraged tapir. My
friend awoke, refreshed. He rubbed his eyes, and
looked round.

" I remember ! " he began, sitting up. " I remember
everything. Are you feeling better ? I hope so. Yes.
Exactly. Where were we ? An injunction — ^what did
you say ? "

At it again !

" I said it was the drawback of old people that they
never know when they have had enough of an argu-

ment."

'^ But what is an injunction ? "

" How many more times do you wish me to make
that clear ? Shall I begin all over again ? Have it
your way ! When you go into Court and ask the judge
to do something to prevent a man from doing some-
thing he wants to do when you do not want him to
do it. Like that, more or less."

" So I gather. But I confess I do not see why a
man should not do something he wants to do just
because you want him not to do it. You might as
well go into Court and ask the judge to do something
to make a man do something he does not want to do
just because you want him to do it."

" Ah, but he must not, in this case. Good Lord,
have I not explained that a thousand times already ?

SORIANO Z25

You always miss my point. It is illegal, don't you
understand ? Illegal, illegal."

" Anybody can say that. It would be a very natural
thing to say, under the circumstances. I should say
it myself ! Now just take my advice. You go and
tell your brother "

" My brother ? It is not my brother. You are
quite beside the point. Why introduce this personal
element ? It is the Strega Company. Strega ^ a
liqueur. I am talking about a commercial concern
obtaining an injimction. Burroughs and Wellcome —
they got injunctions on the same grounds. I know a
great deal of silch things, though I don't talk about
them all day long as other people would, if they
possessed half my knowledge. A company, don't you
see ? An injunction. A liqueur. Please to note that
I am talking about a company, a company. Have
I now made myself clear, or how many more
times "

" One would think he was at least your brother,
from the way you take his part. Let us say he is a
friend, then ; some never-to-be-mentioned friend who
is interested in a shady liqueur business and now
wants to make a judge do something to make a man
do something "

" Wrong again ! To prevent a man doing some-
thing "

" — ^Wants to do something to make a judge do
something to prevent a man doing something he wants
to do because he does not want him to do it. Is that
right ? Very well. You tell your friend that no
Italian judge is going to do dirty work of that kind
for nothing."

Q

226 ALONE

" Dirty work. God Almighty ! I don't want any
judge to do dirty work "

*^ No doubt, no doubt. I am quite convinced you
don't. But your priceless friend does. Come now !
Why not be open about it ? "

" Open about what ? "

^' It is positively humiliating for me to be treated
like this, after all the years we have known each other.
I wish you would try to cultivate the virtue of frank-
ness. You are far too secretive. Something will really
have to be done about it."

" A company, a company."

** A company consists of a certain nimiber of human
beings. Why make mysteries about one of them ?
It may happen to the best of mankind to be mixed
up "

It ii>r:^^^ 99

Mixed up-

You are going to be disagreeable about my choice
of words. Have it your way ! We all know you think
you can talk better Italian than the Pope. My own
father, I was going to say, has been involved in some
pretty dirty work in the course of his professional

career "

" No doubt, no doubt."

^' And please to note that he is as good a man as
any brother of yours."

" You always miss my point."

" Now try to be truthful, for once in your life.
Out with it 1 "

" A liqueur."

^^ Is that all ? Sleep does not seem to have sharpened
your wits to any great extent."

^^ I was not asleep. I was thinking about eggs. A
company."

SORIANO 227

" A company ? You are waking up. Anything

else ?

" An injunction

yy

A distinguished writer some years ago started a
crusade in favour of pure English. He wished to
counteract those influences which are forever at work
debasing the standard of language ; whether, as he
seemed to think, that standard should be inalterably
fixed, is yet another question. For in literature as in
conversation there is a " pure English " for every
moment of history ; that of our childhood is different
from to-day's ; and to adopt the tongue of the Bible
or Shakespeare, because it happens to be pure, looks
like setting back the hands of the clock. Men would
surely be dull dogs if their phraseology, whether
written or spoken, were to remain stagnant and un-
changeable. We think well of Johnson's prose. Yet
the respectable English of our own time will bear
comparison with his ; it is more agile and less in-
fected with Latinisms ; why go back to Johnson ?
Let us admire him as a landmark, and pass on I Some
literary periods may deserve to be called good, others
bad ; so be it. Were there no bad ones, there would
be no good ones, and I see no reason why men should
desire to live iii a Golden Age of literature, save in so
far as that millenniimi might coincide with a Golden
Age of living. I doubt, in the first place, whether they
would be even aware of their privilege ; secondly,
every Golden Age grows fairer when viewed from a
distance. Besides, and as a general consideration, it

2a8 ALONE

strikes me that a vast deal of mischief is involved in
these arbitrary divisions of literature into golden or
other epochs ; they incite men to admire some mediocre
writers and to disparage others, they pervert our
natural taste, and their origin is academic laziness.

Certain it is that every language worthy of the name
should be in a state of perennial flux, ready and avid
to assimilate new elements and be battered about as
we ourselves are — ^is there anything more charming
than a thoroughly defective verb ? — afresh particles
creeping into its vocabulary from all quarters, while
others are silently discarded. There is a bar-sinister
on the escutcheon of many a noble term, and if, in an
access of formalism, we refuse hospitality to some
item of questionable repute, our descendants may be
deprived of a linguistic jewel. Is the calamity worth
risking when time, and time alone, can decide its
worth ? Why not capture novelties while we may,
since others are dying all the year round ; why not
throw them into the crucible to take their chance with
the rest of us ? An English word is no fossil to be
locked up in a cabinet, but a living thing, liable to
the fate of all such things. Glance back into Chaucer
and note how they have thriven on their own merits
and not on professorial recommendations ; thriven,
or perished, or put on new faces I

I would make an exception to this rule. Foreign
importations which do not belong to us by right,
idioms we have enticed from over the sea for one
reason or another, ought to remain, as it were, stereo-
typed. They are respected guests and caimot decently
be jostled in our crowd ; let them be jostled in their
own ; here, on British soil, they should be allowed
to retain that primal signification which, in default of

k

SORIANO 229

a corresponding EngUsh term, they were originaUy
taken over to express.

What prompts me to this exordium is the discovery
that a few pages back, with a blameworthy hankering
after the picturesque, I have grossly misused a foreign
word. Those cats in Trajan's Forum at Rome are
nowise a " macabre exhibition " ; they are not
macabre in the least ; they are sad, or saddening.
The charnel-house flavour is absent.

My apologies to the French language, to the cats,
and to the reader. • . .

Now whoever wishes to see a truly macabre exhibi-
tion at Rome may visit the Peruvian mummies in the
Kircher Museiun. It is characteristic of the spirit in
which guide-books are written that, while devoting
long paragraphs to some worthless picture of a halluci-
nated venerable, they hardly utter a word about these
most remarkable and gruesome objects.

Those old Peruvians, like the Egyptians, had
necrophilous leanings. They cultivated an unwhole-
some passion for corpses, and called it religion. Many
museums contain such relics from the New World in
various attitudes of discomfort ; frequently seated, as
though trying to be at rest after life's long journey.
No two are alike ; and all are horrible of aspect. Some
have been treated with balsam to preserve the softer
parts ; others are shrivelled. Some are filled with
chopped straw, like any stuffed crocodile in a show ;
others contain precious coca-leaves and powdered
fragments of shell, which were doubtless placed there
so that the defunct might receive nourishment up to
the time when his soul should once more have rejoined
the body. Every one knows, furthermore, that these
American ancients were fond of playing tricks with

230 ALONE

the shape of the skull — a custom which was forbidden
by the Synod of Lima in 1585 and which Hippocrates
describes as being practised among the inhabitants of
the Crimea.* It adds considerably to their ghastly
appearance.

One looks at them and asks oneself : what are they
now, these gentle Incas who loved the arts and music,
these children of the Sun, whose civic acquirements
amazed their conquerors ? They have contrived to
transform themselves into something quite unusual.
Staring orbits and mouths agape, colour-patches here
and there, morsels of muscle and hair attached to con-
torted limbs — ^they suggest a half-way house, a loath-
some link, between a living man and his skeleton ;
and not only a link between them, but a grim caricature
of both. Some have been coated with varnish. They
glisten infamously. Picture a decrepit and rather
gaimt relative of your own, writhing in a fit, stark
naked, and varnished all over

Different are these mimunies from those of the
tenaciously unimaginative and routine-bound Egyp-
tians. Theirs are dead as a door-nail ; torpid lumps,
undistinguishable one from the other. Here we have
a rare phenomenon — ^life, and individuality, after death.
They are more noteworthy than the cowled and desic-
cated monks of Italy or Sicily, or at least differently
so ; undraped, for the most part, though some of them
may be seen, mere skin-covered heads, peering with
dismal coyness out of a brown sack. And the jabbering
teeth. . . . We dream as children of night-terrors, of
goblins and phantoms that start out of tibe gloom and
flit about with hideous grimaces. They are gone,

* The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, seems
to have been the Caucasus.

SORIANO 231

while yet we shudder at that momentary flash of
grizzliness ; intangibilities, whose image is not easily
detained. To see spectral visions embodied, and
ghosts made flesh, one should come here. Had the
excruciating operation of embalming been performed
upon live men and women, their poses could hardly
have been more multifariously agonised ; and an
aesthete may speculate as to how far such objects
offend, in expression of blank misery and horror,
against the canons of what is held to be artistically
desirable. The nearest approach to them in human
craftsmanship, and as regards Auffassungy are perhaps
some little Japanese wood-carvings whose creators,
labouring consciously, likewise overstepped the boun-
daries of the grotesque and indulged in nightmarish
effects of line similar to those which the old Peruvians,
all unconsciously, have achieved upon the bodies of
their dear friends and relatives. . . .

Drive swiftly thence, if you are in the mood, as
you should be, for something at the other pole of
feeling, to view that wonder, the kneeling boy at the
Museo delle Terme. Headless and armless though he
be, he displays as much vitality as the Peruvians ; every
inch of the body is alive, and one may well marvel. at
the skill of the artist who, during his interminable task
of sculpture, held fast the model's fleeting outline —
so fleeting, at that particular age of life, that every
month, and every week, brings about new conditions
of surface and texture. A child of Niobe ? Very
likely. There is suffering also here, a suffering different
from theirs ; struck by the Sun-God's arrow, he is in
the act of sinking to earth. Over this tension broods
a divine calm. Here is the antidote to mimunified
Incas.

^latri

WHAT brought me to Alatri ?
Memories of a conversation, by Tiber
banks, with Fausto, who was bom here
and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome
was quite a passable pkce, but as to Alatri

" You never saw such walls in all your life. They
are not walls. They are precipices. And our water
is colder than the Acqua Marcia."

'^ Walls and water say little to me. But if the town
produces other citizens like yourself "

'' It does indeed ! I am the least of the sons of
Alatri."

" Then it must be worthy of a visit. ..."

In the hottest hour of the afternoon they deposited
me outside the city gate at some new hotel — I forget
its name — ^to which I promptly took an unreasoning
dislike. There was a fine view upon the moimtains
from the window of the room assigned to me, but
nothing could atone for that lack of individuality which
seemed to exhale from the establishment and its pro-
prietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher
here. Half an hour was as much as I could endure.
Issuing forth despite the heat, I captured a young
fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he
pleased. He took me to the Albergo della

The Albergo della is a shy and retiring hostelry,

invisible as such to the naked eye, since it bears

232

ALATRI 233

no sign of being a place of public entertainment at all.
Here was individualityy and to spare. Mine host is an
improvement even upon him of the Pergola at Val-
montone ; a man after my own heart, with merry eyes,
drooping white moustache and a lordly nose — a nose
of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which must
have cost years of patient labour to bring to its present
state of blossoming. That nose I I felt as though I
could dwell for ever beneath its shadow. The fare,
however, is not up to the standard of the " Garibaldi "
inn at Frosinone which I have just left.

Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather
a dull little place ; I am never likely to go there again,
and have therefore no reason for keeping to myself its
" Garibaldi " hotel which leaves little to be desired,
even under these distressful war-conditions. It set
me thinking — ^thinking that there are not many town-
lets of this size in rural England which can boast of
inns comparable to the " Garibaldi " in point of
cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food,
reasonable prices. Not many ; perhaps very few.
One remembers a fair number of the other kind, how-
ever ; that kind where the fare is monotonous and
badly cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient,
and where you have to walk across a cold room at
night — refinement of torture — ^in order to turn out the
electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone
enough to condemn these establishments, one and all.

Yes ! And the beds ; those frowsy, creaky, pre-
historic wooden concerns, always six or eight inches
too short, whose mattresses have not been turned round
since they were made. What happens ? You clamber
into such a receptacle and straightway roll downhill,
down into its centre, into a kind of river-bed where

234 ALONE

you remain fixed fast, while that* monstrous feather-
abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises
up on either side of your head and engulfs eyes and
nose and everything else into its folds. No escape !
You are strangled, smothered ; you might as well have
gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid con-
trivance you lie for eight long hours, clapped down
like a corpse in its coffin. Every single bed in rural
England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is fit
for a Christian to sleep in. . . .

The days are growing hot.

A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls
and attached to the convent on the neighbouring hill
is a pleasant spot to while away the afternoon hours.
You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to
myself ; a state of affairs which is not without its
disadvantages, for, being the only foreigner here, one
is naturally watched and regarded with suspicion. And
it would be even worse in less civilised places, where
one could count for certain on trouble with some
conscientious official. So one remains on the beaten
track, although my reputation here as non-Austrian
(nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well
established since that memorable debate, in the local
caf6, with a bootmaker who, having spent three years
in America, testified publicly that I spoke English
almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the
place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his
father, a lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for
forgery — ^he brings me every day with the morning's
paper the latest gossip concerning myself.

" Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer
malice."

" I know. Did you tell him he might ? "

ALATRI 235

" I did. He was very angry. I also told him the
remark you made about his mother."

" Tell him again, to-morrow."

It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only
half rude.

In October — and we are now at midsummer — there
occurred a little adventure which shows the risks one
may run at a time like this.

I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven
at night along the still crowded Corso and thinking,
as I went along, of my impending journey northwards
for which the passport was already vis6d, when there
met me a florid individual accompanied by two military
officers. We stared at one another. His face was
familiar to me, though I knew not where I had seen
it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director
of the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman
who had recently been to Orvinio ? I remembered.

" The last time I was there," I said, " was about a
month ago. I fancy we had some conversation in the
motor up from Mandela."

" That is so. And now, however disagreeable it
may be, I feel myself obliged to perform a patriotic
duty. This is war-time. I would ask you to be so
good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station."

'^ Which is not far off," I replied. " There is one
up the next street on our right."

We walked there, all four of us, without saying
another word. " What have I been doing ? " I
wondered. Then we climbed upstairs. i

236 ALONE

Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stufiy room,
sat a delegato or comndssario — I forget whidi — sur-
rounded , despite the lateness of the hour, by one or
two subordinates. He was of middle age, and not
prepossessing. He looked as if he could make himself
unpleasant, though his face was not of that actively
vicious — or actively stupid : the terms are inter-
convertible — kind. While scanning his countenance,
during those few moments, sundry thoughts flitted
through my mind.

These then, I said to myself — ^these are the function-
aries, whether executive or administrative, whether
Italian or English or Chinese, whom a man is supposed
to respect. Who are they ? God knows. Nine-tenths
of them are in a place where they have no business to
be : so much is certain. And what are they doing,
these swarms of parasites ? Justifying their salaries
by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-
laws, and making themselves objectionable all round.
Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty,
even as the first military duty is said to be the reverse
of it. We catch ourselves talking of the " lesson of
history." Why not take that lesson to heart ? Rever-
ence of the mandarin destroyed the fair life of old
China, which was overturned by the Tartars not
because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but
because they were the opposite : too moral, too law-
abiding, too strong in their sense of right. They paid
for their virtue with the extinction of their wonderful
culture. They ought to have known better ; they
ought to have rated morality at its true worth, since
it was the profoundest Chinaman himself who said
that virtue is merely etiquette — or something to that
eflFect.

ALATRI 237

I found myself studying the delegato^s physiognomy.
What could one do with such a composite face ? It
is a question which often confronts me when I see
such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. How
make it more presentable, more imposing ? By what
alterations ? Shaving that moustache ? No ; his
countenance could not carry the loss ; it would forfeit
what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed
beard, an eye-glass ? Possibly. Another trimming of
the hair might have improved him, but, on the whole,
it was a face difficult to manipulate, on account of its
inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features ;
one of those faces which give so much trouble to the
barbers and valets of European royalties.

He took down the names and addresses of all four
of us, and it was then that I missed my chance. I
ought to have spoken first instead of allowing this
luscious director to begin as follows : —

" The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about
a month ago. He admits it himself and I can corrobo-
rate the fact, as I was there at the same time. Orvinio
is a small country place in the corner of Umbria.
There is a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote
and very high — altissima ! It is called Mount Muretta
and occupies a conamanding situation. For reasons
which I will leave you, Signor Conmiissario, to in-
vestigate, this gentleman climbed up that mountain
and was observed, on the very summit, making
calculations and taking measurements with instru-

ments."

Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta ?
For an all-sufficient reason : it was a mountain.
There, is no eminence in the land, from Etna and the
Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A

238 ALONE

bare wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably
the name) visible from below and promising a Uvely
scramble up the rock, was an additional inducement.
Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can
afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter
of fact, proved to be a mighty tame affair. There was
yet another object to my trip. I desired to verify a
legend connected with this mountain, the tradition of
a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to
whose former existence the name of a certain old
family, still surviving at Orvinio, bears witness. " We
are not really from Orvinio,*' these people will tell
you. " We are from the lost castle of the Muretta."
(There is not a vestige of a castle left. But I found
one brick in the jungle which covers, on the further
side of the simunit, a vast rock-slide dating, I should
say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the
fastness may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting
Muretta.

As to taking measurements — ^well, a man is naturally
accused of a good many things in the course of half a
century. Nobody has yet gone so far as to call me a
mathematician. These *^ calculations and instruments"
were a local mirage ; as pretty an instance of the
mythopoeic faculty as one could hope to find in our
degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the earth.*

The official seemed to be impressed with the fact
that my accuser was director of a bank. He inquired
what I had to say.

This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on
me rather suddenly. One Ukes to have notice of such

* I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track the
legend to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed
the ordinary tourists' map of the district.

ALATRI 239

questions. Tell the truth ? I am often tempted to do
so ; it saves so much trouble ! But truth-telling is a
matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the
more one learns to hold in check that unnatural pro-
pensity. {Mankind has a natural love of the lie itself.
Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one
will do well to take account of national psychology.
An English functionary, athlete or mountaineer, might
have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to climb in
war-time, without any object save that of exercising
one's limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high
and remote mountain — ^Muretta happens to be neither
the one nor the other — ^would have seemed to an
Italian an incredible proceeding. I thought it better
to assiune the rdle of accuser in my turn : an Oriental
trick.

" This director," I said, " calls himself a patriot.
What has he told us ? That while at Orvinio he knew
a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to make
calculations with instruments. What does this admir-
able citizen do with regard to such a suspicious
character ? He does nothing. Is there not a barrack-
ful of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to
arrest such people ? But our patriotic gentleman
allows the spy to walk away, to climb fifty other
mountains and take five thousand other measurements,
all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin
and Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our
English notion of patriotism. I shall certainly make
it my business to write and congratulate the Banca
d'ltalia on possessing such a good Italian as director.
I shall also suggest that his talents would be more

worthily employed at the Banca " (naming a

notoriously pro-German establishment).

240 ALONE

A poor speech ; but it gave me the satisfaction of
seeing the fellow grow purple with fury and so
picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the
spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be
done with him. The delegato suggested that inasmuch
as he had said his say and deposited his address, he
was at liberty to depart, whenever so disposed.

They went — ^he and his friends.

The other was looking serious — as serious as such
a face could be made to look. He must not be allowed
to think, I decided, for once an official begins to think
he is liable to grow conscientious and then — why, any
disaster might happen, the least of them being that I
should remain in custody pending investigations. In
how many more countries was I going to be arrested
for one crime or another ? This joke had lost its
novelty a good many years ago.

" A pernicious person," I b^an, " — ^you have but
to look at him. And now he has invited me here in
order to make a patriotic impression on his friends,
those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since
no love is lost hereabouts between police and military).
Such silly talk about measurements ! It should be
nipped in the bud. Here you have an intelligent young
subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home
with me at my expense ; we will go through all papers
and search for instruments and bring everything that
savours of suspicion back to this office, together with
my passport which I never carry on my person. This,
meanwhile, is my carta di soggiomo.**

The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I
thought of those miserable three days' grace which
were all that the French consulate had accorded me.
If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded

ALATRI 241

in Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin
again. And to tell him of this dilemma would make
him more distrustful than ever,

I went on hastily to admit that my request might
not be regular, but how natural ! Were we not allies ?
Was it not my duty to clear myself of such an imputa-
tion at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to
that end ? I felt sure he could sympathise with the
state of my mind, etc. etc.

Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of
invention, lent wings to my words, and while thinking
all the time : You little vermin, what are you doing
here, in that chair, when you should be delving the
earth or breaking stones, as befits your kind ? I tried
to picture myself climbing up Muretta with a theo-
dolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port
would have been more in my line. Calculations ! It
is all I can do to control my weekly washing bill, and
even for that simple operation I like to have a quiet
half hour in a room by myself. Instruments ! If this
young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an
astrolabe among my belongings, let them hang me
from the ramparts at daybreak I And the dehgatOy
listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they
often are, if you can throw not only your whole soul,
but a good part of your body, into the performance.
He found the idea sufficiently reasonable. The sub-
ordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing
whatever to do ; like all of his kind, he was only in
that office to evade military service.

We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I
insisted, despite his polite remonstrances, on turning
everything upside down. We made hay of the apart-
ment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than

242 ALONE

some rather dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent
Marsala.

" And now I must reaUy be going," he said. " Half-
past one 1 He will be surprised at my long absence."

''I am coming with you. I promised him the passport."

" Don't dream of it 1 To-morrow, to-morrow. You
will have no trouble with him. You can bring the
passport, but he will not look at it. Yes ; ten o'clock,
or eleven, or midday."

So it happened. The passport was waived aside by
the official, a little detail which, I must say, struck me
as more remarkable than anything else. He did not
even unfold it.

^* E stato urC equivocOy^ was all he condescended to
say, still without a smile. There had been a mis-
understanding.

The incident was closed.

Things might have gone differently in the country.
I would either have been marched to the capital
under the escort of a regiment of carbineers, or kept
confined in some rural barracks for half a century
while the authorities were making the necessary re-
searches into the civil status of my grandmother's
favourite poet — ^an inquiry without which no Latin
dossier i$ complete.

PosTSCWPT. — ^Why are there so many carbineers
at Orvinio ? And how many of these myriad public
guardians scattered all over the coimtry ever come
into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck
to witness a street accident ? And would the tax-
payer not profit by a reduction in their numbers ?
And whether legal proceedings of every kind would
not tend to diminish ?

There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants

ALATRI 243

not far from Rome ; fifteen carbineers are quartered
there. Before they came, those inevitable little troubles
were settled by the local mayor ; things remained in
the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set
by the ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The
natives spend their days in rushing to Rome and back
on business connected with law-suits, not a quarter of
which would have arisen but for the existence of
the carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Indi-
vidually, these men are nowise at fault. They desire
nothing better than to be left in peace. Seldom do
they meddle with local concerns — ^far from it ! They
live in sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the
populace, like a colony of monks. The institution is
to blame. It is their duty, among other things, to
take down any charge which anybody may care to
prefer against his neighbour. That done, the machinery
of the law is automatically set in motion. Five minutes'
talk among the village elders would have settled many
affairs which now degenerate into legal squabbles of
twice as many years ; chronic family feuds are fos-
tered ; a man who, on reflection, would find it more
profitable to come to terms with his opponent over a
glass of wine, or even to square the old syndic with a
couple of hundred francs, sees himself obliged to try
the same tactics on a judge of the high court — ^which
calls for a different technique.
Altogether, the country is flagrantly over-policed.*

* Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions
of the guardie regie, which threaten to absorb the entire youth of
Italy. At this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing
accommodation all over the peninsula ; in Rome alone, they say,
apartments are needed for 10,000 practically homeless persons, and
a mathematician may calculate the number of houses required to
contain them. How shall they ever be built, if all the potential
builders are loafing about in uniforms at the public expense ?

244 ALONE

It gives one a queer sense of public security to see, at
Rome for instance, every third man you meet — ^an
official, of course, of some kind — with a revolver
strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on
the verge of savs^ery in some cowboy settlement out
West. Greek towns of about ten thousand inhabitants,
like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal
guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls.
How can ten men perform duties which, in Italy,
would require ten times as many ? Is it a question of
climate, or national character ? A question, perhaps,
of conunon sense — of realising that local institutions
often work with less friction and less outlay than that
system of governmental centralisation of which the
carbineers are an example.

Meanwhile we are still at Alatri which, I am glad
to discover, possesses five gateways — ^five or even more.
It is something of a relief to be away from that Roman
tradition of four. Military reasons originally, fixing
themselves at last into a kind of sacred tradition. . . .
So it is, with unimaginative races. Their pious senti-
mentalism crystallises into inanimate objects. The
English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral
Strand, and the chinies of Big Ben, floating above that
crowd of many-hued Orientals, give to the white man
a sense of homeliness and racial solidarity. The
French, more fluid and sensitive to the incongruous,
have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial
buildings, not without success. As to this particular

ALATRI 245

Roman tradition, it pursues one with meaningless
iteration from the burning sands of Africa to Ultima
Thule. Always those four gateways !

For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is com-
parable to that green space on the summit of the
citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning, to
take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the
vanity of human wishes. The less you have seen of
localities like Tiryns the more you will be amazed at
this impressive and mysterious fastness. That portal,
those blocks — ^what Titans fitted them into their
places ? Well, we have now learnt a little something
about those Titans and their methods. From this
point you can see the old Roman road that led into
Alatri ; it climbs up the hill in straightforward fashion,
intersecting the broad modern " Via Romana ** — a
goat-track, nowadays. ...

These Alatri remains are wonderful — ^more so than-
many of the sites which old Ramage so diligently ex-
plored. Why did he fail to " satisfy his curiosity " in
regard to them ? He utters not a word about Alatri.
Yet he stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and
makes some good observations about the place ; he
stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the
same. Was he more " pressed for time " than usual ?
We certainly find him " hurrying down " past Anagni
near by, of whose imposing citadel he again says
nothing whatever. . . .

I am now, at the end of several months, beginning
to know Ramage fairly well. I hope to know him still
better ere we part company, if ever we do. It takes
time, this interpenetration, this process of grafting
one mind upon another. For he does not supply mere
information. A fig for information. That would be

246 ALONE

easy to digest. He supplies character, which is
tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up
to my test of what such literature should be. It
reveals a personality. It contains a philosophy of life.

And what is the dominating trait of this old Scots-
man ? The historical sense. Ancient inscriptions
interested him more than anything else. He copied
many of them during his trip ; fifty, I should think ;
and it is no small labour, as any one who has tried it
can testify, to decipher these Imlf-obliterated records
often placed in the most inconvenient situations (he
seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied
himself thus was to his credit in an age whose chief
concern, as regards antiquity, consisted in plundering
works of art for ornamental purposes. Ramage did
not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers ; he col-
lected knowledge of hiunanity and its institutions,
such knowledge as inscriptions reveal. It is good to
hear him discoursing upon these docimients in stone,
these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly senti-
mental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust
fashion, but for the light they throw upon the living
world of his day. Speaking of one of them he says :
"It is when we come across names connected with
men who have acted an^ illustrious part in the world's
history, that the fatigues of such a journey as I have
undertaken are felt to be completely repaid." That is
the humanist's spirit.

His equipment in the interpretation of these stones
and of all else he picked up in the way of lore and
legend was of the proper kind. Boundless curiosity,
first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of
learning. He knew his classics — ^knew them so well
that he could always put his finger on those particular

ALATRI 247

passages of theirs which bore upon a point of interest.
We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quota-
tion from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different
thing remembering, and collating, references in JElism
or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And wide awake,
withal ; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the
kind to swallow the tales of the then fashionable
cicerone's. He has critical dissertations on sites like
Cannse and the Bandusian Foimtain and Caudine
Forks ; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence
a sepulchre containing some of those painted Greek
vases for which the place is famous, he promptly
suspects it to be a " sepulchre prepared for strangers,"
and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain
where they are " for more simple or less suspicious
travellers." On the way to Cape Leuca he passes
certain mounds whose origin he believes to be artificial
and the work of a prehistoric race. I fancy his con-
jecture has proved correct. On page 258, speaking of
an Oscan inscription, he mentions Mommsen, which
shows that he kept himself up to date in such re-
searches. . . .

Of course it would be impossible to feel any real
fondness for Ramage before one has discovered his
failings and his limitations. Well, he seems to have
taken Pratilli seriously. I like this. A young fellow
who, in 1828, could have guessed Pratilli to have been
the arch-forger he was — such a young fellow would be
a freak of learning. He says little of the great writers
of his age ; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose
imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but
not in the present. The Hohenstauffen period does
not attract him. He rides close to the magnificent
Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site ; he inspects

248 ALONE

the castle of Lucera and says never a word about
Frederick II or his Saracens. At Lecce, renowned for
its baroque buildings, he finds *^ nothing to interest a
stranger, except, perhaps, the church of Santa Croce,
which is not a bad specimen of architectural design."
True, the beauty of baroque had not been discovered
in his day.

What pleases me less is that there occurs hardly any
mention of wild animals in these pages, and that he
seems to enjoy natural scenery in proportion as it
reminds him of some passage in one of those poets
whom he is so fond of quoting. This love of poetic
extracts and citations is a mark of his period. It must
have got the upper hand of him in course of time, for
we find, from the title-page of these " Nooks and By-
ways," that he was the author of ^^ Beautiful Thoughts
from Greek authors ; Beautiful Thoughts from French
and Italian authors, etc."* ; indeed, the publication
of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have
been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer
a few more " Nooks and By-ways " to all these
Beautiful Thoughts ! He must have been at home
again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the
poetic flowers were gathered. If only he had lingered
longer among the classic remains of the south, instead
of rushing through them like an express train. That
mania of " pressing forward " ; that fatal gift of
hustle. . . •

His body flits hither and thither, but his mind
remains observant, assimilative. It is only on reading
this book carefully that one realises how full of infor-
mation it is. Ay, he notices things, does Ramage —

* Some of these Beautiful Thoughts went through more than one
edition.

ALATRI 249

non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time
to look around him. It is his charm. An intelligent
interest in the facts of daily life should be one of the
equipments of the touring scholar, seeing that the
present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that
gift, and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness
of many modem travellers. He can talk of sausages
and silkworms, and forestry and agriculture and sheep-
grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure warts
and manufacture manna ; he knows about the evil eye
and witches and the fata morgana and the tarantula
spider, about figs in ancient and modern times and the
fig-pecker bird — ^that bird you eat bones and all, the
focetola or beccafico (garden warbler). In fact, he has
multifarious interests and seems to have known several
languages besides the classics. He can hit off a thing
neatly, as, when contrasting our sepulchral epitaphs
with those of olden days, he says that the key-note of
ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace ; or " wherever we
find a river in this country (Calabria) we are sure to
discover that it is a soin-ce of danger and not of profit."
He knew these southern torrents and river-beds ! He
gamers information about the Jewish and Albanian
colonies of South Italy ; he studies Romaic " under
one of the few Greeks who survived the fatal siege of
Missolonghi " and collects words of Greek speech still
surviving at Bova and Maratea (Maratea, by the way,
has a Phoenician smack ; the Greeks must have arrived
later on the scene, as they did at Marathon itself).

A shrewd book, indeed. Like many of his country-
men, he was specially bent on economic and social
questions ; he is driven to the prophetic conclusion,
in 1828, that " the government rests on a very insecure
basis, and the great mass of the intelligence of the

2SO ALONE

country would gladly welcome a change." Religion
and schooling are subjects near his heart and, in order
to obtain a first-hand knowledge of these things in
Italy, he enters upon a friendship, a kind of intellectual
flirtation, with the Jesuits. That is as it should be.
Extremes can always respect one another. The
Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as
he from them. • . .

I wish I had encoimtered this book earlier. It
would have been useful to me when writing my own
pages on the country it describes. I am always finding
myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in
trivial matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an
Italian breakfast. He was personally acquainted with
several men whose names I have mentioned — Capialbi,
Zicari, Masci ; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano ;
in fact, there are numberless points on which I could
have quoted him with profit. And even at an earlier
time ; for I once claimed to have discovered the ruins
of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets
(the Galli, opposite Positano) — ^now I find him fore-
stalling me by nearly a century. It is often thus, with
archaeological discoveries.

He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress
Calypso which has disappeared since his day, and
would have sailed there but for the fact that no boat
was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who
landed here, found any prehistoric remains on the
spot ; I should doubt it. On another Mediterranean
island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the relics of
what would formerly have been described as the
residence of that second Homeric witch, Circe.*

* From an old article : '* I was pleased to observe on Ponza the
relics of a great pre-Roman civilization. Above the tovm, where the

ALATRI 251

it

The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have
already, of course, discovered my ideal family at Alatri.
Two ideal families. . . .

One of them dwells in what ought to be called the
Conca d'Oro," that luxuriant tract of land beyond
the monastery where the waters flow — ^that verdant
dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill,
with fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is
a market-gardener with wife and children, a humble
serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich philosophy of

cemetery now stands, is a likely site for a citadel, and on examining
it from the sea I noticed, sure enough, a few blocks of prehistoric
structure of the so-called Cyclopean type underneath a corner of
the cemetery wall. There is a portion in better preservation between
the ' Baths of Pilate ' and the harbour, where a little path winds up
from the sea. The blocks are joined without mortar, and some o
them are over a metre in length. This megalithic wall may be taken
to be contemporaneous with similar works of defence found in
various parts of Italy, but I believe its existence on Ponza has not
yet been recorded. Livy says that Volscians inhabited the island
till they were supplanted by the Romans, and a tradition preserved
by Strabo and Virgil locates here the palace of the enchantress
Circe, who transformed the companions of Ulysses into bristly
swine. . . ." Some one may have anticipated me here again, as
did Salis-Marschlins in the eighteenth century with those roses x)f
Paestum whose disappearance Ramage, like every one else, laments
— ^those roses which I thought I was the first to re-discover. They
grow on the spot in considerable quantities, though one needs good
eyes to see them. They are not flourishing as of yore, being dwarfs
not more than a few inches in height. One which I carried away
and kept three years in a pot and six more in the earth grew to a
length of about sixteen feet, and is probably alive at this moment.
I never sawjt flower.

252 ALONE

earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in
the cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold
of his two-roomed abode, or wander about those tiny
patches of culture, geometrically disposed, where he
guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots
of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of
his misfortunes ; intuitive civility has taught him to
avoid troubling a stranger with personal concerns.

The mother is more communicative ; she suffers
more acutely. They are hopelessly poor, she tells me,
and in debt ; unlucky, moreover, in their oflEspring.
Two boys have already died. There are only two left.

** And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown
too ill to work. He can only mope about the place.
Nothing stays in his stomach — ^nothing ; not milk, not
an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor
treated him for stomach trouble ; so did he of Frosi-
none. It has done no good. Now there is no more
money for doctors. It is hard to see your children
dying before your eyes. Look at him ! Just like those
two others."

I looked at him.

^^ You sent him into the plains last summer ? "
I ventured.

^* To Cistema. One must make a little money, or

starve."

" And you expect to keep your children alive if you
send them to Cistema ? "

I was astonished that the local medicine man had
not diagnosed malaria. I undertook that if she would
put him into the train when next I went to Rome, I
would have him overhauled by a competent physician
and packed home again with written instructions.
(I kept my word, and the good doctor Salatino of the

ALATRI 253

Via Torino — a Calabrian who knows something about
malaria — ^wrote out a treatment for this neglected case,
no part of which, I fear, has been observed. Such is
the fatalism of the country-folk that if drugs and
injections do not work like magic they are quietly dis-
carded. This youth may well have gone the way of
** those bther two '* — ^who, by the by, were also sent
into the Pontine Marshes — since you cannot reject
your food for ever, and grow more anaemic every day,
without producing some such result.)

Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy
in the mother's heart that I became quite embarrassed.
She likened me, among other things, to her favourite
Saint.

All comparisons being odious, I turned the con-
versation by asking :

" And that last one ? "

" Here," she said, pushing open the door of the
inner room.

He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle
of limbs, the picture of radiant boyhood.

This one, I think, has never been to Cistema."
No. He goes into the mountains with the wood-
cutters every morning an hour before sunrise. It is
up beyond CoUepardo — seven hours' labour, and seven
hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he
sleeps like a log. ..."

Children from these hill-places often accompany
their parents into the plains to work ; more conmionly,
they go in droves of any number under the charge of
some local man. They are part of that immense army
of hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands
of Tuscany to the very toe of Italy, into these low-
lying regions, hardly an inch of which is fever-free.

a

256 ALONE

I glance through what has been written and detect
therein an occasional note of exacerbation and dis-
harmony which amuses me, knowing, as I do, its
transitory nature. Dirty work, touching dirt. One
cannot read for three consecutive years of nothing
but poison-gas and blood and explosives without
engendering a corresponding mood — a mood which
expresses itself in every one according to whether he
thinks individually or nationally ; whether he culti-
vates an impartial conscience or surrenders to that of
the crowd. For the man and his race are everlastingly
tugging in di£Ferent directions, and unreasoning sub-
servience to race-ideals has clouded many a bright
intellect. How many things a race can do which its
component members, taken separately, would blush
to imitate ! Our masses are now fighting for commer-
cial supremacy. The ideal may well be creditable to a
nation. It is hardly good enough for a gentleman. He
reacts ; he meditates a Gospel of Revolt against these
vulgarities ; he catches himself saying, as he reads
the morning paper full of national-flag fetishism and
sanguinary nonsense : " One Beethoven symphony is
a greater victory than the greatest of these, and reason-
able folks may live under any rule save that of a
wind-fed herd."

It avails nothing. The day has dawned, the day of
those who pull downwards — stranglers of individualism.
Can a man subscribe to the aspirations of a mob and
yet think well of himself? Can he be black and
white ? He can be what he is, what most of us are :
neutral tint. Look aroimd you : a haze of cant and
catchwords. Such things are employed on political
platforms and by the press as a kind of pepsine, to aid
our race-stomach in digesting certain heavy doses of

ALATRI 257

irrationalism. The individual stomach soon discovers
their weakening effect. . . .

Looking back upon these months of uneventful
wanderings, I become aware of a singular phenomenon.
I find myself, for some obscure reason, always return-
ing to the same spot. I was nine times in Rome,
twice in Florence and Viareggio and Olevano and
Anticoli and Alatri and Licenza and Soriano, five
times at Valmontone, thrice at Orvinio ; and if I did
not go a second time to Scanno and other places, there
may be a reason for it. Why this perpetual revisiting ?
How many new and interesting sites might have been
explored during that period ! Adventures and dis-
coveries might have fallen to my lot, and been duly
noted down. As it is, nothing happened, and nothing
was noted down. I have only a diary of dates to go
upon, out of which, with the help of memory and
imagination, have been extracted these pages. For
generally, delving down into memory, a man can bring
up at least one clear-cut fragment, something still
fervid and flashing, a remembered voice or glimpse of
landscape which helps to unveil the main features of
a scenario already relegated to the lumber-room. And
this detail will unravel the next ; the scattered elements
jostle each other into place, as in the final disentangling
of some complicated fugue.

Such things will do for a skeleton. Imagination
will kindly provide flesh and blood, life, movement.
Imagination — ^why not ? One suppresses much ; why
not add a little ? Truth blends well with imtruth, and
phantasy has been so sternly banned of late from
travellers' tales that I am growing tender-hearted
towards the poor old dame ; quite chivalrous, in fact
— especially on those rather frequent occasions

258 ALONE

when I find myself unable to dispense with her
services.

Yes ; truth blends well with untruth. It is one of
the maladies of our age, a sign of sheer nervousness,
to profess a frenzied allegiance to tmth in imimportant
matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver
issues are at stake. We cannot lay claim to a truthful
state of mind. In this respect the eighteenth century,
for all its foppery, was ahead of ours. What is the
basic note of Horace Walpole's iridescent worldliness
— what but veracity ? How one yearns, nowadays,
for that spacious and playful outlook of his ; or, better
still, for some altogether Golden Age where everybody
is cormpt and deUghtful and has nothing whatever to
do, and does it well. . . .

My second ideal family at Alatri lives along a side
path which diverges off the main road to Ferentino.
They are peasant proprietors, more wealthy and
civilised than those others, but lacking their terres-
trial pathos. They live among their own vines and
fruit-trees on the hillside. The female parent, a
massive matron, would certainly never send those
winsome children into the Pontine Marshes, not for a
single day, not for their weight in gold. The father
is quite an uncommon creature. I look at him and
ask myself: where have I seen that face before, so
classic and sinewy and versatile ? I have seen it on
Greek vases, and among the sailors of the Cyclades
and on the Bosphorus. It is a non-Latin face, with
sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and

ALATRI 259

crisply curling beard ; a legendary face. How came
Odysseus to Alatri ?

Not far from this homestead where I have spent
sundry pleasant hours there is a fountain gushing out
of a hollow. In olden days it would have been hung
with votive offerings to the nymphs, and rightly. One
appreciates this nature-cult in a dry land. I have
worshipped at many such shrines where the water
bounds forth, a living joy, out of the rocky cleft —
unlike those sluggish springs of the North that ooze
regretfully upwards, as though ready to slink home
again unless they were kicked from behind, and then
trickle along, with barely perceptible movement, amid
weeds and slime.

Now this particular fountain (I think it is called
acqua santa\ while nowise remarkable as regards
natural beauty, is renowned for curing every disease.
It is not an ordinary rill ; it has medicinal properties.
Hither those two little demons, the younger children,
conducted me all unsuspecting two days ago, desirous
that I should taste the far-famed spring.

" Try it," they said.

I refused at first, since water of every kind has a
knack of disagreeing with my weak digestion. As for
them, they gulped down tumblers of it, being mani-
festly inured to what I afterwards discovered to be its
catastrophic effects.

" Look at us drinking it," they went on. " Ah, how
good ! Delicious ! It is like Fiuggi, only better."

" Am I an invalid, to drink Fiuggi water ? "

" It is not quite the same as Fiuggi. (True. 1 was
soon wishing it had been.) How many men would
pay dearly for your privilege ! Never let it be said
that you went away thirsting from this blessed spot."

26o ALONE

" 1 am
lUL you/*

I am not thirsty just now. Not at all thirsty,
thank you.

We have seen you drink without being thirsty.
Just one glass/' they pleaded. " It will make you
live a hundred years."

" No. Let us talk about something else."

" No ? Then what shall we tell our mother ? That
we brought you here, and that you were afraid of a
little mouthfiil of acqua santa ? We thought you had
more courage. We thought you could strangle a lion."

** Something will happen," I said, as I drained that
glass.

Nothing happened for a few hours.

Two days' rest is working wonders. . . .

I profit by the occasion of this slight indisposition
to glance backwards — ^and forwards.

I am here, at Alatri, on the 22 June : so much is
beyond contestation.

A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31 :
Palombara. Well I remember the hot walk to Palom-
bara!

August 3 : Mons Lucretilis, that classical mountain
from whose siunmit I gazed at the distant Velino
which overtops like a crystal of amethyst all the other
peaks. This was during one of my two visits to
Licenza. Pleasant days at Licenza, duly noting in the
house of Horace what I have noted with Shelley and
other bards, namely, that these fellows who sing so
blithely of the simple life yet contrive to possess
extremely commodious residences ; pleasant days

ALATRI 261

among those wooded glens, walking almost every
morning in the footsteps of old Ramage up the valley
in whose streamlet the willow-roots sway like branches
of coral — ^aloft under the wild walnuts to that bubbling
fountain where I used to meet my two friends, Arcadian
goat-herds, aboriginal faxms of the thickets, who told
me, amid ribald laughter, a few personal experiences
which nothing would induce me to set down here.

July 26 : La Rocca. What happened at La Rocca ?

October 2 : Florence. What happened at Florence }
A good deal, during those noteworthy twelve hours !

Some memories have grown strangely nebulous ;
impossible to reconstruct, for example, what went on
during the days of drowsy discomfort at Montecelio.
A lethargy seems to have fallen on me ; I lived in a
dream out of which there emerges nothing save the
figure of the local tobacconist, a ruddy type with the
face of a Roman farmer, who took me to booze with
him, in broad patriarchal style, every night at a
different friend *s house. Those nights at Montecelio !
The mosquitoes ! The heat ! Could this be the place
which was famous in Pliny's day for its grove of
beeches? How I used to envy the old Montecelians
their climate !

July 23 : Saracinesca. What happened ? I recollect
the view over the sweltering Campagna from the dizzy
castle-ruin, in whose garden I see myself nibbling a
black cherry, the very last of the season, plucked from
a tree which grows beside the wall whereon I sat.
That suffices : it gives a key to the situation. I can
now conjure up the gaunt and sombre houses of this
thick-clustering stronghold ; the Rembrandtesque
shadows, the streets devoid of men, the picture of
some martial hero in a cavern-like recess where I

262 ALONE

sought shelter from the heat, a black crucifix planted
in the soil below the entrance of the village — my
picture of Saracinesca is complete, in outline.

July 31 : Subiaco. Precisely ! A week later, then,
I walk thirty-two chilometres along the shadeless high
road, an insane thing to do, to Subiaco and back.
There, in the restaurant Aniene, when all the luncheon-
guests have departed for their noonday nap, the cook
of the establishment, one of those glorious old Roman
he-cooks, comes up to my table. Did I like the boiled
trout?

Rather white and flabby, I reply. A little tasteless.
Let him try, next time, some white vinegar in the
water and a bay-leaf or two.

He pricks up his ears : we are gens du metier. I
invite him to sit down and inquire : how about a
bottle of Cesanese, now that we are alone ? An ex-
cellent idea ! And he, in his turn, will permit himself
to offer me certain strawberries from his own private
store.

" Strawberries ? " I ask. " Who ever heard of
strawberries in Central Italy on the 31 July ? Why,
I devoured the last cherry a week ago, and it was only
alive because it grew above the clouds."

These, he explains mysteriously, are special straw-
berries, brought down from near the snow-line by a
special goat-boy. They are not for the guests, but
" only for myself." Strawberries are always worth
paying for ; they are mildly purging, they go well with
the wine. And what a wonderful scent they have !

" You remind me of a certain Lucullo," I said, " who
was also nice about strawberries. In fact, he made a
fine art of eating and drinking."

" Your Lucullo, we may take it, was a Roman ? "

J I ' ■ ""

ALATRI 263

" Romano di Roma.^^

Thus conversing with this rare old rufEan, I forget
my intention of leaving a card on Saint Scolastica.
She has waited for me so long. She can wait a little
longer. . . .

August 9 : Villa Lante.

August 12 : Ferento. What happened at Ferento ?

Now what happened at Ferento } Let me try to
reconstruct that morning's visit.

I have clear memories of the walk from Viterbo — ^it
would be eighteen chilometres there and back, they
told me. I had slept well in my quaint little room
with the water rushing under the window, and break-
fasted in receptive and responsive mood. I recall that
trudge along the highway and how I stepped across
patches of sunlight from the shade of one regularly
planted tree into that of another. The twelfth of
August. ... It set me thinking of heathery moor-
lands and grouse, and of those legions of flies that
settle on one's nose just as one pulls the trigger. It
all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road,
among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in
a muse as to what these boreal flies might do with
themselves during the long winter months while all
the old women of the place are knitting Shetland
underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my
ears — a wistful intermezzo of Brahms. It seemed to
spring out of the hot earth. Such a natural song,
elvishly coaxing ! Would I ever play it again ? Neither
that, nor any other.

264 ALONE

It turned my thoughts, as I went along, to Brahms
and led me to understand why no man, who cares only
for his fellow-creatures, will ever relish that music.
It is an alien tongue, full of deeps and rippling shallovi^
uncomprehended of those who know nodiing of lonely
places ; full of thrills and silences such as are not
encountered among the habitations of men. It echoes
the multitudinous voice of nature, and distils the smiles
and tears of things non-human. This man listened,
all alone ; he overheard things to which other ears
are deaf — ^things terrible and sweet ; the sigh of some
wet Naiad by a reedy lake, the pleadings and furies
of the genii — of those that whisper in woodlands and
caverns by the sea, and ride wailing on thxmder-laden
clouds, and rock with ripe laughter in sunny wilder-
nesses. Brahms is the test. Whoso dreads solitude
will likewise dread his elemental hiunour.

It kept me company, this melodious and endearing
fairy, tUl where a path, diverging to the right, led up
to the ruins already visible. There the ethereal com-
rade took flight, scared, maybe, because my senses
took on a grossly mundane complexion — ^it is a way
they have, thank God — ^became absorbed, that is, in
the contemplation of certain blackberries wherewith
the hedge was loaded. I thought : the tons of black-
berries that fall to earth in Italy, unheeded ! And not
even a Scotsman knows what blackberries are, until
he has tasted these. I am no gourmet of such wild
things ; I rather agree with Goethe when he says :
" How berries taste, you must ask children." But I
can sympathise with the predilections of others, having
certain predilections of my own.

Once, at a miserable place in North Ireland, region
of bad whisky and porter, they brought me at dinner

ALATRI 265

some wine of which they knew nothing — ^they had got
it from a shipwreck or some local sale. I am rather
fond of hock. And this particular bottle bore on its
label the magic imprint of a falcon sitting on a hill-
top. Connoisseurs will know that falcon. They will
understand how it came about that I remained in the
inn till the last bottle of nectar was cracked. What a
shame to leave a drop for anybodj' else ! Once again,
on a bicycle trip from Paris to the Mediterranean, I
came upon a broad, smiling meadow somewhere in
the Auvergne, thickly besprinkled with mushrooms.
There was a village hard by. In that village I remained
till the meadow was cropped close. Half a ton of
mushrooms — ^gone. Some people are rather fond of
mushrooms. And that is the right spirit : to leave
nothing but a tabula rasa for those that come after.
It hurt me to think that anybody else should have a
single one of those particular mushrooms. Let them
find new ones, in another field ; not in mine.

Now what would your amateur of blackberries do
in Italy ? From the fate which nearly overtook me
he might save himself by specialising ; by dividing
the many local varieties into two main classes and
devoting his whole attention to one or the other ; to
the kind such as I foimd on Elba — small and round
and fragrant, of ruddy hue, and palpitating with warm
sunbeams ; or to that other kind, those that grow in
clearings of the Apennines where the boughs droop
to earth with the weight of their portentous clusters —
swarthy as night, huge in size, oval, and fraught with
chilly mountain dews.

No true enthusiast, I feel sure, would ever be
satisfied with such an unfair division of labour — so
O0f-sid?d gn arrangement. He would curse his folly

266 ALONE

for having specialised. While engaged upon one
variety, he would always be hankering after that other
kind and thinking how much better they were. What
shall he do, then ? Well, he might devote one year
to one species, the next to another, and so on. Or
else — seeing that every zone of altitude bears brambles
at its season and that tihie interval between the maturing
of the extreme varieties is at least four months — ^he
might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical
sense, devouring blackberries of different flavour as
he went along ; he might work his way upwards,
boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle
drills an oak, and leaving a track of devastation in his
rear — ^browsing aloft from the sea-board, where
brambles are black in June, through tangled macchia
and vine-clad slopes into the cooler acclivities of rock
and jungle — grazing ever upward to where, at close
of September and in the shadow of some lonely peak
on which the white mantle of winter has already
fallen, he finds a few more berries struggling for
warmth and sunshine, and then, still higher up, just
a few more — ^the last, the very last, of their race —
dwarfs of the mountains, esuthward-creeping, and
frozen pink ere yet they have had time to ripen.
Here, crammed to the brim, he may retire to hiber-
nate, curled up like a full-gorged bear and ready to
roll downhill with the melting snows and arrive at the
sea-coast in time to begin again. What a jolly life !
How much better than being Postmaster- General
or Inspector of Nuisances ! But such enthusiasts are
nowhere to be found. I wish they were ; the world
would be a merrier place. . . .

Here is the ruined town of Ferento, all alone on
the arid^brow of the hill. Nothing human in sight.

ALATRI 267

A charming spot it must have been in olden times,
when the country was more timbered ; now all is bare
— ^brown earth, brown stones. Dutifully I inspect the
ruins and, applying the method of Zadig or something
of that kind, conclude that Ferento, this particular
Ferento, was relatively unimportant and relatively
modem, although so fine a site may well have com-
mended itself from early days as a settlement. I pick
up, namely, a piece of verde antico^ a green marble
which came into vogue at a later period thaii many
other coloured ones. Ergo, Ferento was relatively
modem as antiquities go ; else this marble would not
occur there. I seek for coloured ones and find not the
smallest fragment ; nothing but white. Ergo, the
place was relatively insignificant ; else the reds and
yellows would also be discoverable. I observe inci-
dentally — quite incidentally ! — ^that the architecture
corroborates my theory ; so do the guide-books, no
doubt, if there are any. Now I know, furthermore,
the origin of that small slab of verde antico which had
puzzled me, mixed up, as it was, among the mosaics
of quite modem marbles in that church whither I had
been conducted by a local antiquarian to admire a
certain fresco recently laid bare, and some rather
crude daubs by Romanelli.

Out again, into the path that overlooks the steep
ravine. Here I find, resting in the shadow of the wall, an
aged shepherd and his flock and a shaggy, murderous-
looking dog of the Campagna breed that shows
his teeth and growls incessantly, glaring at me as if I
were a wolf. " Barone " is the brute's name. I had
intended to clamber down and see whether the rock-
surface bears any traces of hvunan workmanship ; the
rock-surface, I now decide, may take care of itself. It

268 ALONE

has waited for me so long. It can wait a little
longer.

" Does that beast of yours eat Christians ? "

" He ? He is a perfect capo di c . That is his

trick, to prevent people from kicking him. They think
he can bite."

I produce half a cigar which he crushes up into his
black clay pipe.

" Yours is not a bad life."

" One lives. But I had better times in Zurich."

He had stayed there awhile, working in some factory.
He praised its food, its beer, its conveniences.

Zurich : incongruous image ! Straightway I was
transported from this harmonious desolation of
Ferento ; I lost sight of yonder clump of withering
thistles — ^thistles of decent growth ; you could sit, you
could stand, in their shade — and found myself glancing
over a leaden lake and wandering about streets full of
ill-dressed and ungracious folk ; escaping thence
further afield, into featureless hills encrusted with
smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered
under noisome horse-chestnuts and Virginia creepers.
How came they to hit upon the ugliest tree, and the
ugliest creeper, on earth ? Infallible instinct ! Zurich :
who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity ?

So this old man had been there.

And I remembered an expression in a book recently
Written by a friend of mine who, oddly enough, had
encoimtered some of these very Italians in Zurich.
He talks of its " horrible dead ordinariness " — some
such phrase.* It is apt. Zurich : fearsome town !
Its ugliness is of the active kind ; it grips you by the
throat and sits on your chest like a nightmare.

. * D, H. Lawrence ; TmUght in Italy,

ALATRI 269

I looked at the old fellow. He was sound ; he had
escaped the contagion. Those others, those many
hundred thousand others in Switzerland and America
— ^they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead
ordinariness of that life among ntiachines. Future
generations will hardly recognise the Italian race from
our descriptions. A new type is being formed, cold
and loveless, with all the divinity drained out of them.

Having a long walk before me and being due home
for luncheon, I rose to depart, and in so doing be-
stowed a vigorous kick upon Barone, in order to test
the truth of his master's theory. It worked. The
glowering and snarling ceased. He was a good dog —
almost human. I think, with a few more kicks, he
might have grown quite friendly.

Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued
me, in all its starkness. A land without atmosphere,
and deficient in every element of the picturesque,
whether of man or nature. Four harsh, dominant
tones, which never overlap or intermingle : blue sky,
white snow, black fir-woods, green fields, and, if you
insist upon having a fifth, then take — ^yes, take and
keep — ^that theatrical pink Alpengliihen which is turned
on at fixed hours for the delectation of gaping tourists,
like a tap of^strontium light or the display of electric
fluid at Schaffhausen Falls.

" Did you observe the illumination of the Falls, sir,
last night ? ''

" How can one avoid seeing the beastly thing ? "

" Ah ! Then we must add two francs to the bill.'*

Many are the schools of art that have grown up in
England and elsewhere and flourished side by side,
vying with one another to express the protean graces
of man, of architecture and domestic interior, of earth

270 ALONE

and sky and sea. Where is the Swiss school ? Where,
in any public gallery, will you find a masterpiece which
triumphantly vindicates the charm of Swiss scenery ?
You will find it vindicated only on condensed milk
tins. These folks can write. My taste in lyrics may
be peculiar, but I used to love my Leuthold — I wish
I had him here at this moment ; the bold strokes of
Keller, the miniature work, the cameo-like touches,
of C. F. Meyer — they can write ! They would doubt-
less paint, were there anything to paint. Holbein :
did the landscape of Switzerland seduce him ? And
Boecklin ? He fled out of its welter of raw materialism.

Boecklin

And here, as the name formulated itself, that little
sprite of Brahms, that intermezzo, once more leapt to
my side out of the parched fields. I imagine it came
less for my sake than for the companionship of Boecklin.
They were comrades in the spirit ; they understood.
What one had heard, the other beheld — shapes of
mystery, that peer out of forest gloom and the blue
hush of midday and out of glassy waters — shapes that
shudder and laugh. No doubt you may detect a
difference between Boecklin 's creations and those of
classic days ; it is as if the light of his dreamings had
filtered through some medium, some stained-glass
window in a Gothic church which distorted their out-
lines and rendered them somewhat more grotesque.
It is the hand of time. The world has aged. Yet the
shapes are young ; they do but change their clothes
and follow the fashion in externals. They laugh
as of old. How they laugh ! No mortal can laugh
so heartily. No mortal has such good cause.
Theirs is not the serene mirth of Olympian spheres ;
it sounds demoniac, from the midway region. What

ALATRI 271

are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters ? At the
greatest jest in the universe. At us. . . .

That lake of Conterano — ^the accent is on the ante-
penultima — it looked appetising on the map, all alone
out there. It attracted me strongly. I pictured a
placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered
among wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam
of its calm waters. Lakep are so rare in Italy. During
the whole of this summer I saw only one other, fringed
with the common English reed — ^two, rather, lying
side by side, one turbid and the other clear, and filling
up two of those curious circular depressions in the
lime-stone. I rode past them on the watershed behind
Cineto Romano. These were sweet water. Of sulphur
lakelets I also saw two.

Sitting on a stone into which the coldness of mid-
night had entered (Alatri lies at a good elevation) I
awaited my companion in the dusk of dawn. Soon
enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-
hour's shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri,
and listening to the plash of the fountain, is one of
those memories of the town which are graven most
clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the
very spot whereon I sat.

We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin
with, profiting by some short cuts through chestnut
woods ; turned to the right, ever ascending, behind
that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical
hill ; thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the
halts by the way. A decayed roadside chapel with

272 ALONE

faded frescoes — z shepherd who played us some
melodies on his pipe — ^those wondrous red lilies, now
in their prime, glowing like lamps among the dark
green undergrowth — ^the gateway of a farmhouse being
repaired — a reservoir of water full of newts — a, fasci-
nating old woman who told us something about
something — ^the distant view upon the singular peak
of Moimt Cacume, they all gave us occasion for
lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in Jime ? The
days are so endless !

At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the
lake at our feet, simmering in the noonday beams — ^an
everyday sheet of water, brown in colour, with muddy
banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within
miles ; one of those lakes which, by their periodical
rising and sinking, give so much trouble that there is
talk, equally periodical, of draining them off altogether.
This one, they say, shifts continually and sometimes
reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in
its oozy bed.

Here are countless frogs, and fish — ^tench ; also a
boat that belongs to the man who rents the fishing.
A sad accident happened lately with this boat. A party
of youngsters came for an outing and two boys jumped
into the tub, rowed out, and capsized it with their
pranks. They were both drowned — a painful and
piteous death — a death which I have tried, by accident,
and can nowise recommend. They fished them out
later from their slimy couch, and found that they had
clasped one another so tightly in their mortal agony
that it was deemed impious ever to unloosen that
embrace. So they were laid to rest, locked in each
other's arms.

While my companion told me these things we had

ALATRI 273

plodded further and further along this flat and in-
hospitable shore, and grown more and more taciturn.
We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the
onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the
parching drought of August. Things looked bad.
The luncheon hour was long past, and our spirits
began to droop. All my mellowness took flight ; I
grew snappy and monosyllabic. Was there no shade ?

Yonder . . . that dusky patch against the moun-
tain ? Brushwood of some kind, without a doubt.
The place seemed to be unattainable, and yet, after
an inordinate outlay of energy, we had climbed across
those torrid meadows. It proved to be a hazel copse,
mysteriously dark within, voiceless, and cool as a
cavern.

Be sure that he who planted these hazels on the
bleak hillside was no common son of earth, but some
wise and inspired mortal. My blessings on his head !
May his shadow never grow less ! Or, if that wish
be already past fulfilment, may he dwell in Elysium
attended by a thousand ministering angels, every one
of them selected by himself ; may he rejoice in their
caresses for evermore. Naught was amiss. All con-
spired to make the occasion memorable. I look back
upon our sojourn among those verdant hazels and see
that it was good — one of those moments which are
never granted knowingly by jealous fate. So dense
was the leafage in the greenest heart of the grove that
not a shred of sunlight, not a particle as large as a
sixpence, could penetrate to earth. We were drowned
in shade ; screened from the flaming world outside ;
secure — without a care. We envied neither God
nor man.

I thought of certain of my fellow-creatures. I often

274 ALONE

think of them. What were they now doing ? Taking
themselves seriously and rushing about, as usual,
haggard and careworn — ^like those sagacious ants that
scurry hither and thither, and stare into each others'
faces with a kind of desperate imbecility, when some
sportive schoolboy has kicked their ridiculous nest into
the air and upset all their solemn little calculations.

As for ourselves, we took our ease. We ate and
drank, we sliunbered awhile, then joked and frolicked
for five hours on end, or possibly six.* I kept no
count of what was said nor how the time flew by. I
only know that when at last we emerged from our
ambrosial shelter the muscles of my stomach had
grown sore from the strain of laughter, and Arcturus
was twinkling overhead.

* The title Ahne strikes me, on reflection, as rather an inapt
one for this volume. Let it stand I

THE END

INDEX

Abbad^, author, 155

Abbadia San Salvatore, 59

Abmzzi, limestone deserts, 158

Acqua Acetosa, Rome, 123

Acqua santa, mineral fountain, its
appalling effects, 259

Acque Vive, old Scanno, 156

Addison, J., 121

Afforestation at Scanno, 157

Agave, plant, 26 ; dislikes change
of scene, 27

Alatri, 162, 163, 260, 271 ; its
nameless tavern, 233 ; citadel,
245 ; ideal families at, 251, 258

Alban volcanoes, 141

Alpengltlhen, an abomination, 269

Amiata, mountain, 59

.Anagni, 245

Analphabetics, their charm, 182

Anastasio, F., 189

Aniene, river, 195

Anthology, Greek, 148

Anticoli, 257

Apennines, their general colora-
tion, 49

Argos, 244

Aristotle, 139

Amo river, its colour-moods, 71

Artena, 175, 177

Athene (Minerva), promontory and
temple, 151, 184-189

Attilio, a sagacious youngster, 50-
57,88

Bacon, misquoted, 239

Baedeker, on wine of Scanno, 156

Banca d' Italia, its soi-disant director

makes a fool of himself, 235-240
" Barone," an almost human dog,

267, 269
Bathing in Tiber, 195
Baudelaire, C, 205, 208, 211, 214
Bears of Pescasseroli, rapid

breeders, 160-162
Beds in England, neolithic features

of, 233
Belgrave Square, its legendary

partridges, 172

Bellegra, village, 153--155

Beloch, J., 188, 189

Bennet, Dr. J. H,, 17

Bentham, J., 137

Berceau, mountain, 22

Bessel, F. W., 124

Betifuli, ancient Scaimo, 156

Bigio, marble, 54

Birds, their conservative habits, 223

Blackberries in Italy, 264 seq.

Blasphemies, as a pick-me-up, 176

Blind, Mathilde, 125

Blue, basic note of Italian land-
scape, 49

Board of Trade Labour Emergency
Bureau, its lightning metiiods,

i-3> 15
Boecklin, A., 270

Borghese Gardens, 144, 197, 255

Bournemouth, 85

Bowles, Dr. R., 195, 196

Brachycephalism, menace to
humanity, 193

Brahms, J., his inspiration, 263,
264, 270

Breil, 21

Brewster, H. B., 126

Buckle, H. T., 28

Building materials, of Florence,
104 ; impart peculiar character
to towns, 213

Bunbury, E. H., quoted, 188

Butter, French method of weighing,
18 ; Italian regulations regard-
ing, 34-35

Cacume, mountain, 272
Calypso, her island, 250
Cammaiore, 91, 92
Camosciara, mountain, 160
Campagna of Rome, 201, 203, 215
Campanella, headland, 184-189
Campoli Apennino, 162
Capaccio, G. C, 189
Cap Martin (Mentone), a vulgarized

spot, 21
Capasso, B., 189
Capranica, 141

75

2^t

ALONE

Capri, 151, 184. 187, 188

Carbineen, good men and question-
able institation, 243, 244

Carrara, 53

Carrion crows, relatively gay fowls,
172

Casamari convent, 163

Casanova, J., 124

Cascine Gardens, 98 seq.

Cats in Rome, their distressful
condition, 207 seq, ; 229

Cement floors, a detestable inven-
tion, 87

Cemetery of Mentone, 18 ; of
Rome, 123 ; Scanno, 124 ;
Olevano, 154

Censorship Di^artment, gratifying
interview at, 6

Cervesato, A., 254

Chamois, 159

Chancer, 228

Children, good company, 46-48;
neglected in war-time, 153

China, fatal morality of pre-
Tartar period, 236

rifnint^w forest, 218

Cineto Romano, 271

Circe, nymph, 250

Cisterna, a death-trap, 252, 253

Civilization, its characteristic, 102

Civitella, 153

Coal-supply, a sore subject in
Italy, 58, 70, 100

Coliseum, flora and fauna of, 153

CoUepardo, 253

Conscience, national versus in-
dividual, 256

Consumption on Riviera, 18 ; at
Olevano, 154

Conterano, U&e, 271-274

Corsanico, 90-94

Corsi, F., 54

Crapolla, sea-cove, 182

Crinagoras, poet, 28

Critics, spleenfully criticized, 170

Cro-Magnon race, 81

Cross, futility of bearing a, 42

Darwin, 221

Deakin, botanist, 133

Dennis, G., 68

Deserters at Valmcntone, 1 79-1 81

Deslys, Gaby, 28

Dewlessness, a peculiarity of Italian

townsmen, 103
Dialects of Italy, 52
Dictionary of National Biography,

68, 149
Piodorus Siculus, 33

Dohm, Dr. A., 63, 80

Donnorso, V., 189

Doria, A., 28

Dreams, recurrent, 105 ; of flying,

106
Drowning accidents, 196, 272
Drunkenness, not everybody's

affair, 139

Eagles, 145, 156

Education Office, a *' Sleepy Hol-
low," 4-5

Edwards, Tam, naturalist, 221

Elba, 265

Elder tree, a venerable growth, 154

England, to be visited as a tourist,
200

English language, should remain in
flux, 227-228

Englishmen, change in race-
characters, 66; contrasted with
Italians, 74 ; influence of new
surroundings on, 138

Enthusiasm, unrewarded, 1-15

Eratosthenes, 188, 189

Eugenie, Empress, 21

Experience, its uses, 206

Faces* possibilities of improving,

237
Ferentino, 245, 258, 271

Ferento, ruined city, 263-268

Filangieri, di Candida, R., 189

Flies, a curse, 192

Florence, its river, 71 ; Cascine
Gardens, 93 ; pavements, 103,
219 ; local blasphemies, 176 ;
revisited, 261

FontaneUa, village, 183

Food in war-time, 70, 209

Football worth watching, 98 seq.

Fountains in Rome, 122 ; responsi-
ble for shocking behaviour, 190 ;
in Villa Borghese, 197, 200

France, its one irremediable draw-
back, 23

Frattura, village, 155, 156, 158

Frosinone, " Garibaldi " hotel, 233 ;
visited by Ramage, 245

Fumone, 271

Functionaries, social parasites, 236

Gambling instinct, correlated with

religion, 41
Gardeners, professional, imbeciles,

27
Gargiulli, O.. 185
Gautier, T., 204
Genzana, mountain, 156, 157

INDEX

277

Germans, at Mentone, 17 ; at
Levanto, 37 ; save oaks of
Olevano, 152 ; must follow foot-
steps, 164

Ghosts, mankind surrounded by,
III ; away with them, 137

Giannettasio, N. P., 189

Girtanner, Dr. A., beaver-specialist,
220

Giulio, a young reprobate, 145, 146,

148, ^73-175
Goethe, quoted, 264

Golden Ages of literature, 228 seq.

Gorbio, 21

Grant Duff, M. E., 72

Greek words, surviving, 185

Grimaldi caves, incident at, 29-30

Grocery business, appeals to

Frenchmen, 18

Gross feeders, beware of, 119

Grotta delle Palumbe, 182

Guardie regie, official loafers, 243

Gtlnther, Dr. A., 222

H., Mr., an ardent book-lover, 220

Hares in Italy, 89, 172

Hebrews of military age, their
enviable immunity from con-
scription, 12

Henderson, Dr., an old tippler, 147

Heredity, speculations on, 72-75

Hermits in Italy, 171

Hippocrates, 230

Hohentwiel, mountain, 152

Homer, 189

Horace, 260

Housemaid, a noteworthy, 61

Hutton, £., 59

lerate, locality, 182, 186, 187, 188,
189

Imagination, needful to travel-
literature, 257

Imperialism in Italy, 180

Individual, contrasted with race,
loi, 256

Insomnia, 72, 105

Intelligence, its two ingredients, 56

Isola Liri, 163

Italians, evolution of new type, 269

Italy, reasons for visiting, 199 ;
over-policed, 243

Ives, G., 122

J. O. M., a memorable type, 75-84
Jefferies, R., 133
Johnson, S., 227
Johnston-Lavis, H. J., 132
Jovana, meadow, 158

Keller, G., 270

Kew Gardens, 98

King of Italy, protects bears, x6o-

162
Kingfisher, a wary old one, 223
Kneeling boy, statue, 231
Knop, Ftofessor, 132

Lachner, V., 142

Ladbroke Grove, its enlightened
children, 4

Landlady, of Mentone, 23-26 ; the
London variety, 95 ; she of
Viareggio, 86, 95 ; of Florence,

96,97
Lante, Villa, 263

La Croce, mountain, 185

La Rocca, village, 261

Lawrence, D. H., 268

Laws, raisan d'itre of Italian, 35

Leuthold, H., 270

Levanto, arrival at, 31-33 ; situa-
tion, 36 ; company at hotel, 39
seq. ; the local magistrate, 40 ;
stroll to Monterosso, 51

licenza, 124, 147, 257, 260

Ligurians, their bad character, 28

Lizard, making a friend of, 109 ; a
disconsolate one,' 183

Love affairs, Italian, how to con-
duct, 44-45

Lucian, 192

LucretUis, mountain, 260 .

Lyme Regis, 36

Macaroni, war-time substitutes, 70,
87, 210 ; the right kind, 215

Maccarese, village, 254

Machinery, cult of, 193 ; depraves
Italian character, 269

Madonna della Neve, chapel, 188

Madonna di Tranquillo, wayside
shrine, 162

Malaria, 179, 196, 201, 252-254

Mandela, 235

Marbles, 54, 185, 267

Mathew, Rev., 221-222

Maudsley, H., 106

Maupassant, 203, 204

Mazzella, S., 189

Megara, 244

Mentone, recent transformation of,
17, 27 ; landscape, 21 seq, ;
vegetation, 26-27 » produces dull
schoolboys, 27 ; prehistoric man
of, 28-30

Merle blanc, a meritorious establish-
ment, 19

278

ALONE

Metaphysidans, atrophied poets,

125, 126
Meyer, C. F., 270
Meysenbag, Malwida von, 124 seq.
Biichael Angelo, 53 ; gets into

trouble, 151
lligxation of laboarerB, annual, 254
m J. S., 137

Militarism, the modem infdme, 70
Milvian Bridge, 172, 195
Bfineralogy, 132
Momio, village, 91
Monogamous habits, bad for song-
sters, 205
Mons Canutarius, 189
Montalto, clifi, 188
Monte-Carlo, its well-groomed

flowers, 20; lamentable episode

at Casino, Ufid.
Montecelio, 261
Monterosso, 51, 54
Mortella, clifi, x88
Mortola, village, 22, 26
Mosquitoes in Rome, 191
Moulinet, 22

Mummies, Peruvian, 229-231
Munitions Office, develops a craving

for bankers, 7-10
Mure of Caldwdl, traveller, 64
Muretta, mountain, 237, 238
Museum, Kircher, 229 ; deUe Terme

231
Music, 142
M3rthopoetic faculty, example of, 238

Neighbours, an over-rated class, 136

Nerano, 182

Newspaper reading, to be dis-
couraged, 194

Nice, 28

Nietzsche, his blind spot, 126

Nightingales, too much of a good
thing, 142, 143 ; cease from
troubling, 163

Ninetta, an attractive maiden, 43-46

Nose, degeneration of, 203

Odysseus at Alatri, 259
Office-hunters, should respect their

betters, 10, 14
Olevano, its nightingales, 143, 163 ;

oak grove at, 153 ; first English

resident at, 165
Opi, town, 159
Ornithology, 219-224
Orte, town, 218
Orvinio, 235-239
Ouida, her writings and character

111-117

Paestum, roses of, 251

Pais, Prof. £., 186, 189

Palombaro, 260

Pantheon, 191

Patriotism, chilled, 14

Pavements, life on, 103

Peira Cava, 22

Perfumes, react on phy^ognomy,

203
Persico, O. B., 189
Pescasseroli, 158, 159 ; its bears,

160 seq,
Peutinger Table, 187-189
Philosophers, contradistinguished

from metaphysicians, 126
Piccadilly Goat, 131
Pietrasanta, 53
Pig, in distress, 183
Pines, at Levanto, 56 ; at Viareggio,

89. 105
Pisa in war-time, 70, 71
Plaster-casts, how to dispose of, 60
Plato, X48
Pliny, 261
Poiaus Felix, 185
Pontine Marshes, 141, 253
Ponza island, megalithic ruin on,

250
Partovenere, marble, 54
Potter, Major Frederick, discovers

Olevano, 165 seq.
Pottery, index of national taste, 49
Powder magazine, explosion of, 131
Preccia, mountain, 156
Prehistoric races, possible reasons

for their extinction, 29, 71
Press, the daily, its disastrous

functions, 194
" Prison, The," a Socratic dialogue^

X26

Race ideals, contrasted with in-
dividual, loi, 256

Ramage, Craufurd Tait, a centri-
fugal Scotsman^ his book and
umbrella, 64 ; mania for hurry-
ing, 67, 150 seq, ; other travds
of, 68 ; compsured with Water-
ton, 69 ; on Italian country life,
103 ; gets drunk, 147 ; makes
formal profession of sobriety,
149 note ; his tolerance, 150 ;
sensitive to female charms, 151 ;
still hustling, 245 ; his humanistic
outlook, 246 ; little failings, 247
seq. ; other publications, 248 ;
zest for knowledge, 249 ; at
Licenza, 261

Rat-hunts, 75

INDEX

279

Ravens, their conjugal fidelity, 172

Reading, to be done with reverence,
62

Recomone, inlet, 182

Red colour, unfashionable in Italy,
49 ; in favour with other races,
50

Rhetoric, necessary to success in
courtship, 44

Rhodian marble, 54

Ripa, a liquid poison, 87

Rivers, Italian, 71, 249

Riviera, French, its inanity, x8. 23 ;
typical visitors to, 28 ; lack of
native genius, 28, 29

Roccaraso, 156

Rojate, 145, 146, 148, 175

Rolfe, Neville, 78, 80

Romanelli, painter, 267

Romans and British, their world-
dominion, 180 ; unimaginative
people, 244

Rome, dianged aspect of railway
station, xi8 ; protestant ceme-
tery, 123 ; explosion near, 131 ;
its fountains, 190 ; tramcar
nuisance, 192 ; shadelessness,
195 ; disadvantages of site, 201 ;
evening breeze, 203 ; neglected
cats, 207 ; bad food, 209 ; its
building stone, 213 ; unpleasant
experience at, 235 seq. ; dearth
of apartments, 243

Rubinstein, A., 142

Sagittario, stream, 157

Saint Domenico, 158

Saint- Jacques, chemin de, 27

Saint-Louis, bridge, 22

Saint Martin, his cave, 155

Saint Michael, hermitage, 145, 171

Salatino, Dr., 252

Salis-Marschlins, U. von, 251

San Costanzo, mountain and chapel,

182, 184, 185, 188, 189
San Remo, 26
San Rossore, 70

Sant' Egidio, hermitage, 158, 171
Sant' Elia, farm, 183
Saradnesca, village, 261
Scalambra, mountsdn, 144 seq., 171
Scanno, cemetery at, 124 ;

memories of, 155 ; revisited, 156
Schadona pass, 76
Scheffel, V. von, 152, 153
Schopenhauer, 126 ; anticipates

" recognition marks," 127
Scolastica, Saint, 263
Seaton, 36

Sebastiani, A., 133

Segni, 175, 177

Self-indulgence, a debased expres-
sion, 42

Sergi, Prof. G., 42

Serpentaro, oak grove, 152, 153

Serpents, with ears, 107 ; human
hatred of, no

Serrano, village, 145, 171, 172

Serravezza, 53

Shelley, an evangelist, 95 ; at
Viareggio, in ; reconunends
caverns to his readers, but lives
comfortably himself, 260

Sicilians, 33, 179

Siena, in winter, 58 ; a Florentine's
opinion of, 59

Sirena, survival of name, 92

Siren islets (Galli), 151, 188 ; ruin
on, 250

Sirocco in Rome, 20X

Sitting still, the true traveller's

gift, 19
Sleep, its sacred nature, 163
Smollett, III
Snakes, 107 seq.
Snow, Dr. H., 124
Sora, 158, Z62
Soracte, mountain, 215
Soriano, 212 ; its pleadant tavern,

215, 216
Sospel, 21
Spezia, 34

Spy-mania in Italy, 234-242
Stabiae (Castellamare), 186, 187
Statins, 189

Strabo, 184, 186, 188, 189
Strega liqueur, horribly adulterated,

217 ; how to stop the scandal,

224
Subiaco, strawberries at, 262
Sunburn, pretty effects of, 196
Surrentum, 187
Swinburne, H., 250
Switzerland, its manifold beauties,

269 seq,
Symonds, J. A., 17, 21, 27

Taxidermy, study of, 222
Telephone, an abomination, 193
Termini, village, 186
Terrata, mountain, 155, 157, 168
Theophrastus, 148

Tiber, I95-I97

Tiryns, citadel, 245

Torco, village, 182

Trafalgar Square, its fauna, 133

Trajan's Forum, 206 seq,, 229

Tramcars, an abomination, 192

28o

ALONE

Tree-creeper, bird, 144
Trevi Fountain, 132
Trifles, importance of, 210
Tmth-telling, a matter of longitude,

239 ; not in vogue to-day, 258
Tuscan speech, its peculiar savour,

61

Urquehart, D., 64

Valiante, Biarquis, 80
Valmontone, 141, 233 ; its upper

terrace, 177 ; capture of a

deserter at, 179 ; Pergola tavern,

181
Velino, mountain, 158, 260
Velletri, 141, 178, 179
Venice, 103

Ventimiglia, wine of, 19
Verds aniico, marble, 267
Veroli, 163
Via Appia, 174 ; Flaminia, 209 ;

Labiena, 177 ; Nomentana, 123
Viareggio, an objectionable place,

85 seq, ; its Vittoria hotel, 87,

88 ; pine woods, 90, 105
Victorians, their perverse sense of

duty, 121
Villalago, 158
Villetta Banrea, 159

Viterbo, 263
Voss, R., 155

Wallace, A. R., 127

Walpole, Horace, 258

War, the present, local opinions
coDcenung, 37, 97, 100, 179 ;
repercussion on thoughtful non-
combatants, 219, 220, 255—259 ;
effects on agriciUture, 153, 173

War Office, pandemonium, 3 ; con-
fuses Turkish and Russian, 13

Waterton, C, a freak, 68

Whistling, denotes mental vacuity,
86

White, colour, unpopular in South
Italy, 65

Will-o'-the-wisp, 124

Wine, red and black, 160

Wolf, at Mentone, 22 ; at Frattura,

156
Wryneck, bird, 144

Young, J. 221

Youth, &ould be temperate, 148

Yucca, plant, 26

Zagarola, 178

" Zone of defense," drawbacks of,

32-34. 54
Zurich,, its attractions, 268

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