29 chapters
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29 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
Italy—about which so much has been written—political, geographical, social, pontifical, poetical—Italy is my theme. But not the Italy of popes and priests and controversies, of civic struggles and new kingdoms, nor the Italy of tourists or guide-books, of fame and fashion, nor even the Italy of art and artists. The folk about whom my gossip shall be are folk who, living or dead, have made the best part of Italy these many years gone by. They are those who, unwittingly, inherit most of the poetry
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Genoa.
Genoa.
Spring returns. In northern lands, where much work is done and living is hard, our skies are yet grey and the winds blow keen while the earth is hard with the late frosts. Yet almond blossoms bloom sweetly in scant little gardens or beside the bleak walls of town houses, and spring begins to bud even in the lands where spring’s struggle is the longest, and as I watch her oncoming and rejoice in her tender-toned early flowers, I must needs remember the home where her life is the fairest and merri
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Martedì Grasso. Shrove Tuesday.
Martedì Grasso. Shrove Tuesday.
Of all the festas we used to have—glorious days when the sun might shine as fiercely as it liked and we were only the better pleased, since it was a sin to work outright, but only a venial fault to keep one’s shops open a little, and to forget about going to mass—of all those most comfortable saints and Virgins, how few, alas! have they left us now! One can count the strict day off one’s fingers. ‘ Per Bacco , ’tis a disgrace truly,’ mutter the old men and women who have been wont to consider a
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La Fioraja. The Flower Girl.
La Fioraja. The Flower Girl.
Sunshine is full on this picture even as it first climbs the horizon of our memory: full on the shifting Mediterranean, that is bluer for its presence, full on the white walls of new houses, on the yellow shutters of old palaces inland, strong amid fleeting clouds that are the whiter for its power, fitful on these girl-faces, that shine the merrier for its sake. Because the wind has blown cold from the mountains these three days past—the sharp Tramontana that sweeps down the northward valleys to
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La Festa delle Palme.
La Festa delle Palme.
There are no consistencies to uphold in Italy, no conventionalities to overcome, and festa-making revels in true glory among the pleasure-loving natures, that are soft and fiery, mad and merry, all at one time. No fickle chances disturb the course of fasts and feasts; the Roman Church holds her sway above all else, self-sufficient and serene; and the people have learnt to love the old days and seasons by this time, and are nothing loth to lend their aid to the pageant. Yet even were her children
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Holy Week and Easter Feasts. I Sepolcri.
Holy Week and Easter Feasts. I Sepolcri.
The Palms are blessed and done with, fasting has begun, for even the first week-days of the Settimana Santa are ‘ giorni magri ,’ though few folks pretend to practise any self-denial until the last three days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday pass without much ado. The preacher-monks harangue congregations in churches, upon highways and market-places, pouring forth strange prognostications and fiery words, often of the most grotesque. But the Frati predicatori are as nothing in the eye
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La Fantesca. The Servant Wench.
La Fantesca. The Servant Wench.
The sky is dull and sad to-day, and so the Mediterranean is grey. Even where the low-lying horizon clouds have parted a little to let through a far-away memory of sunlight, it is only a whiter grey light that outlines the margin of water and sky, and where the sea’s surface is broken into ripples by the softest of stirring breezes, the harmonies of shadows and relief are still in faint and faded colour-scales. It is a scirocco. Dull and sleepy vapours rest on the mountains around and creep down
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Il Negoziante. The Shopman.
Il Negoziante. The Shopman.
Carnival has been and gone, Lent is over and Easter festivals, with sunny smile, have opened the gate to Spring. Upon the country that spreads around our goodly Riviera city, the flush of almond blossoms still lies rosily, to fade soon into the paler tones of pear and apple and cherry bloom. The trees are budding, to help with their faint green for contrast, but the green that is fullest at this time lies over the fresh, brown earth, where spring crops have come to life and are growing fast in t
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La Pettinatrice. The Hairdresser.
La Pettinatrice. The Hairdresser.
Marrina has her hands full to-day; for though it is quite too hot for early May—so hot that the first whiteness and crispness of a pezzotto is gone before the week is out—there is to be a ball to-night, and a ball in the sad old halls of the deserted Royal Palace; the king is coming to Genoa—the king and the people’s favourite, our much-loved Princess Margherita. Even the sparing Genoese do not grudge a little money to be brightest and happiest on such an occasion. The people and the shops are g
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Fisher-Folk.
Fisher-Folk.
When the high road of the eastern Riviera has left the town behind a space, and has even travelled clear of the last palaces without the walls of the city of marbles—when it has crossed that tongue of Albaro’s Hill that divides the waves, and, having left sea behind in Genoa’s Bay, comes back to more sea that laps freely upon a free and rocky coast—when it has coiled closely round corners and skirted precipices for many a mile—it comes, on its way, across a little town where the hills rise abrup
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Santa Margherita.
Santa Margherita.
Santa Margherita is one of the many little towns which have gradually grown up along the eastern Riviera, gathering themselves together around the country palace of some signore , which, first, had been built alone upon the shore, or springing up where, for convenience sake, a little fishing hamlet had been set in creek or bay, until now the whole of the coast line from Genoa to La Spezia is studded thickly with the white walls and glistening roofs of human habitations. The little place has had
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The Lace Weaver.
The Lace Weaver.
On the hill with crest that is fringed with stone pines, above Santa Margherita’s town and harbour, Lucrezia’s grey cottage stands, with thatched roof, among the trees. Olives are around her dwelling, for it stands on the nether slopes, where the fir’s fragrance from above scarce reaches; their fine branches and crooked stems rest traced upon the sky, and into their grey tones fig-trees bring brighter green for contrast, though brightest of all are the vines that twine beneath. The blue-grey smo
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Il Manente. The Husbandman.
Il Manente. The Husbandman.
At Camogli, where the stone-pines adorn the cliff’s edge, and burthen even the fresh sea-breeze with their strange and heavy sweetness—at Camogli, that is built beside the waves, and that has the quaint harbour where fishers dwell, there are many new houses for gentlefolk to live in, and one or two old ones for old families to whom they belong; and these well-worn palaces stand on their own lands, beside their own fig-trees, and beneath pines of their own planting. Such things are at Camogli, an
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La Donna di Casa. The Country Housekeeper.
La Donna di Casa. The Country Housekeeper.
Portofino’s bay lies calmly blue beneath a morning sky: the sun shines, and its glamour is set upon dainty ripples of restless sea, where the Mediterranean sways and washes without a quiet harbour. The Villa C—— stands to westward, with face set seaward toward Sestri’s opposite shore, and terrace built inward over the bay. It was a fortified castle once upon a time, long ago, when battles were fought along the coast, and Genoa was a great maritime power; the castle’s battlements are there still,
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Bathing Time.
Bathing Time.
The blue Mediterranean with warm and buoyant waters laps and breaks around Italy’s peninsula, and Italy’s people are none the less fond of their fair and treacherous sea than we of our greyer and more boisterous Atlantic, even though theirs leaves them no passage northward into other lands, nor binds them about with her waves. Long ago, even so long ago as in the time of the first great Romans of the Republic, Italians loved the shores of their land, and would flock thither from the middle count
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The Mountains.
The Mountains.
Where the winding chain of the Apennines stretches upward from the sea, crossing and recrossing the land with so many and such strange devices that from off the height of one of the mountains themselves there seems scarce room for a space of level plain, wedged in between ridges or sunk in clefts of hills, are the fair valleys of North Italy. Away from the blue sea and its blinding beauty, and from the leaden heat of the shores, they hold a fresh and free life of their own. Heavy night dews ther
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At the Chestnut Harvest.
At the Chestnut Harvest.
As October days draw nigh to their end there is festival in the cottages of North Italy. Walking at evening among her mountains and passing through her homely villages, a red light of wood fire comes streaming upon you from open cabin doors and from between the chinks of clumsy window-shutters, and noisy sounds of revelry fall around. For this is the season when the chestnuts are ripe, and the peasants are making merry by dark, for the work they have had during the hours of day, and they are gla
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Under the Cherry Trees. The Bridal.
Under the Cherry Trees. The Bridal.
Summer sunshine lies gladly upon the green hill-sides of la Valle Calda . It moves in broken light over the warm green of broad-leaved chestnut trees that daintily sweep the turf with their branches, it quivers across the stream’s passing wave, or rests in a sheet of silver upon the still pools of the slowly flowing river. Flowers bloom gayer and breathe forth a stronger scent for its goodly radiance, summer fruits ripen the sooner. For these are June days, that I call to mind, as I think of la
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The Parish Priest.
The Parish Priest.
It is the day of the Corpus Domini. As though to herald in the sun, bells began to ring this morning from every church throughout the valley. For this is a great feast. It does not belong more to San Matteo than to San Luca, nor can even la Madonna claim it for a special honour: it is the property of every village, of every saint, and of every parish. That little church niched in among the chestnuts has, therefore, just as good a right to sound her peal in the grey hours of the morning as has an
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The Priest’s Serving Maid.
The Priest’s Serving Maid.
The little footpath that, amid pear and cherry trees, and vine-trelissed ‘ pergola ,’ runs up alongside of the church, leads to the threshold of the prevosto’s house. The establishment does not boast many rooms, and these are rough and poorly built, with great bare rafters, whitewashed walls and deep embrasured windows. The walls are ill-plastered, so that, when the weather has been hot and the rains heavy, spiders and scorpions can creep from out the cracks; the doors are cumbrous and unsightly
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Il Signor Cappellano.
Il Signor Cappellano.
The Signor Prevosto is parish priest, and yet he is little more than a peasant. The Signor Cappellano is under-priest, and he is just nothing more than a peasant. ‘ Abbiate pazienza ,’ his own parishioners would say if they were excusing his deficiencies to you! What would you have? San Matteo is not a large parish; though its hamlets lie far from one another, and it takes a long while on a weary way to bear the Sacrament to the sick, or even to offer homely advice to marriageable girl or ill-us
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Sweeping the Church.
Sweeping the Church.
Bells ring in the great Festa of San Giovanni Battista, and chosen girls of the village are busy with their preparations within the church, preparations both for the funzione and for the procession. San Giovanni Battista is the patron saint, and hence it is that his day is held in higher honour here than even in the other villages around. It is evening, and the vigil of the feast. All the afternoon, wearisome chimes have been sounding overhead, rippling along in a joyous, careless fashion, with
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The Village Sempstress.
The Village Sempstress.
When the road leaves the church to steer for the valley’s narrower end and to follow the river’s course, it leads, before half a mile is gone, into the midst of a little hamlet that is one of San Matteo’s prettiest parasites. And there stands a cottage that has always been a marked feature in the neighbourhood. It is the house of Marrina, the village sempstress. When the day’s heat has abated, and the shadows begin to deepen, and the breezes to blow more freshly, let us, with the villagers, gath
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The Village Damsel.
The Village Damsel.
For a time holidays are over. Until the festival of the Madonna is due, after the dog days, there is no rigorous necessity for laziness. San Giovanni is past, and the most particular feasts of the early summer. Work is again the order of the day, with only the less important interval of Sunday to make a little breathing space—breathing space that will scarcely seem necessary from such pleasurable labour, perhaps, for all the peasants of the Northern Apennines think it indispensable even though t
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The Village Swain.
The Village Swain.
Ask Nettina what she thinks of him: pretty, proud Nettina, who can tread so stately a measure at the village fête , and can throw so scornful a glance at the man who has been too frivolous for her well-ordered mind! Well, maybe she is a bad one to choose for a fair opinion, for whether he please her or no she will toss her head, and answer you only with a gruff ‘ Cosa me ne fasso? ’ which, being interpreted from our dialect, means, What is he to me? So, better than that, ask our village pet, our
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The Love-letter.
The Love-letter.
There are three of the village girls who are prettier than its other girls. One of them is red-haired and buxom, with pink cheeks and white arms—she is the most admired by townsfolk: village folk have another taste. Nettina, from the walnut-grove, carries the palm with them—she has a figure that is grand in its every line, and when she dances on the green on a festa night, she does not bound and frolic with uncurbed merriment, but moves stately through the ring, and has no mind for any foolish j
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La Cresima. The Confirmation Day.
La Cresima. The Confirmation Day.
The cherries are over; neither large, black nor small bright ones are on the trees now, and the wood-strawberries were forgotten long ago. The grapes begin to flush purple-red over their pale green skins: soon they will be ready for the vintage. But the grapes are not havoc for the village children, and if it were not for many another kind of fruit that grows on trees, and can, happily, not be made into wine, it would be a weary time till the walnut harvest came round! Heaven be praised, there a
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In Villeggiatura. Town Folk in the Country.
In Villeggiatura. Town Folk in the Country.
La Signora Pareto lives in town—Via degl’Uffiziali, No. 4. She lives at the top of 149 steps, on the sixth floor of a very new and very pink house in the most recent suburbs of the city. It takes such a long time and, when one has only one maid-servant, and is blessed with six children, time is a precious thing—it takes such a long time and, for a lady of la Signora Pareto’s goodly proportions, it takes so many more long breaths than she can, in wisdom, spare to get up those said hundred and for
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Il Corpus Domini. The Procession.
Il Corpus Domini. The Procession.
A June day’s dawn breaks white over the land, and in its wake comes the sun, glorious to shine where dew-drops have lain cool through the short summer night. They lie still on plucked flowers and herbage in the town market of S. Domenico, though the sun rose half an hour ago, and they lie thicker on soft green turf and gently stirring blossoms, beneath the breezy chestnut woods of Apennine or Riviera mountains. And the fair fine weather gladdens many a heart to-day, for it is the feast of the Co
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