THE sky, “stripped to its depths by the awakening North,” is of that
peculiarly limpid clearness which only the _tramontana_ brings with it;
the sun’s rays, penetrating with their full force through the pure, dry
atmosphere, are as warm and genial as those of Eastertide. Yet it is
mid-winter, and we are going to witness a thoroughly winter occupation;
the making of the olive-oil in a villa at a little distance out of
Florence.
Leaving the tram at the foot of the hill, we climb for about
three-quarters of an hour through vineyards in which the fresh green
of the springing wheat contrasts hopefully with the knotted, bare
vine branches. The slopes around us are clothed with olives, whose
grey-green is thrown into relief by the austere rows of cypresses in
the distance, and the spreading tops of the pine-trees on the further
hills.
At last, on a ridge between two valleys, we sight the square
twelfth-century tower of the villa in question; the remainder of the
building dates from the fourteenth century. The heavy grating of the
lower windows, the picturesque archway leading to the square, paved
courtyard, the little garden on one side, with its olive-tree bending
over the grey wall towards the road below—all breathe an almost
cloistered quietness. _Parva domus magna quies_,[6] runs the legend
sculptured in black letters on grey marble over the house door.
Nothing clashes in this villa. The present proprietor, with his
antiquarian and artistic tastes, and his love of Latin inscriptions,
has produced a rare welding of past with present. On one side of the
entrance gate, for instance (whose columns, be it noticed, are crowned
with two bombs, probably French, from Elba), another inscription,
unearthed during the excavation of some Roman villa, offers rest to
those who are justly indignant at the world’s perfidy:
jovi hospitali
sacrum
o quisquis es dummodo honestus
si forte
pessimos fugis propinquos
inimicorum
solitaria succedens domo
quiesce.[7]
The same pessimistic note is struck by a third inscription over the
archway before mentioned. There we find, writ large, the following
Elban motto:
Amici, nemici;
Parenti, serpenti;
Cugini, assassini;
Fratelli, coltelli.[8]
We owe it to the owner to add that, like most people who rail against
mankind in general, he is very tender-hearted to mankind in particular.
Passing from the brilliancy of the outer air, we stumble through a
low doorway, over which, on the usual grey marble, stands printed
_Frantoio_ (crushing-house), and find ourselves in the hot, heavy
atmosphere of the oil-making room. We distinguish a low, broad archway
dividing the room into two parts, and at the further end a small
twinkling light; while nearer the entrance a lamp, swung from the roof,
enables us, after a little practice, to make out the objects around us.
The whole place is pervaded by a grey steam, sweetish yet piquant, of
the peculiar odour of the undried olive.
So great is the heat that the peasants are working without coats, and
we, too, are glad enough to lay aside our winter wraps. Looming white
through the steam, the first object that attracts our attention is the
ox that patiently turns the great stone crushing wheel. Round and round
he goes, triturating the dead oak leaves that make his path soft, while
the olives, continually poured into the circular concavity in which
the wheel moves, are quickly reduced, stone and all, to a dark-looking
pulp. The whiteness of the steam and of the ox, the creature’s lustrous
eyes as they catch the light, the dark olives pouring into the trough,
the peasants dimly visible, make up a scene likely to remain impressed
for a long while on the memory.
As soon as the crushing process is over and the ox led back to his
stall, a number of flat, circular baskets are brought, made of
rope-work, and open above and below. The lower openings having been
closed for the moment, by drawing a rope, the baskets are filled with
the pulp and piled one above another in the press. Now begins the
second part of the operation, which costs the peasants a considerable
amount of exertion.
We had noticed, near the archway, a tall pole, with a rope round it,
pierced by a crosspiece, and turning on a swivel. This rope having
been wound round the beam that works the press, and again round
another upright on the further side of the press, four peasants set to
work at the crossbar. Again and again is the press-bar drawn to the
further upright, let go, and drawn back again, while the oil flows
in an invisible stream through the pipe that leads to its destined
receptacle, which is concealed under the floor beneath a trap-door.
Every now and then the men stop and sit down on stones or on a heap
of unused baskets to mop the perspiration which streams from them in
that warm sweet atmosphere. It was during one of these pauses that they
drew my attention to the advantages of the system on which they were
working. In other villas, they said, the press-beam was wound towards
the peasants, and sometimes broke under the pressure and injured them;
but their _padrone_ had invented a method of winding it away from them,
thus freeing them from all danger in case of a breakage.
Meanwhile, at the further end of the room, by the dim yellow light
of the twinkling lamp we had already noticed, another man is busy
shovelling a rich dark-brown substance into bins against the wall. This
is the so-called _sansa_, the olive pulp from which the oil has been
expressed. “It goes down to Galluzzo (the township at the foot of the
hill),” said the man, in answer to my enquiries. “There they treat it
with sulphuric acid, and get machine-oil out of it.”
At last the pulp in the network baskets is pressed dry, the press is
unscrewed, the fresh _sansa_ shaken out ready to be shovelled into the
bins, and the various utensils that have been used plunged into the
boiling water of the cauldron that steams in one corner of the room.
The trap-door is now raised, and the oil carried across the yard to
another room, the walls of which are lined with huge red terra-cotta
vessels kept carefully closed. Into one of these the oil is poured
and left to settle, _sansa_ being heaped well up round the vessel to
maintain a high temperature within. When the oil is finally poured off
it is of a lovely golden colour, as clear and transparent as water. But
it is not destined to reach the public in this Arcadian state. Scarcely
has it left the hands of the peasants, before it is manipulated and
adulterated to such an extent that even in Florence pure olive oil is
almost unobtainable. Cotton oil, colza oil, etc., are mixed with it,
rendering it absolutely hurtful to the consumer. The Italian government
has offered prizes for the discovery of a method of exposing the
adulteration. At present no more certain way has been found than that
of Professor Bechi, a well-known Italian chemist. He treats the oil in
question with nitrate of silver, and judges of the adulteration by the
resulting coloration.
And now, business being over for this week, we are free to go and sup
with our peasant acquaintances. Crossing a second courtyard, round
which stand houses and stables for the donkeys and oxen (Italians
do not work with horses), we pass under a second archway and enter
our friend Ciuffi’s picturesque kitchen. The rough, uneven stone
floor, that looks as though it might have been washed last year,
the stout nondescript table, the chairs loaded up with every kind
of extraneous matter, the picture of the Madonna with the tiny lamp
burning before it, the rows of gaudy crockery over the sink, the cat
purring contentedly in the chimney-corner—all these are illuminated,
harmonized, almost glorified, by the caressing light of the huge
wood fire, whose flames dance and crackle under the great projecting
chimney. And beside the fire sits Ciuffi’s youngest daughter Armida,
a girl of that fair, refined type that occasionally asserts itself
startlingly among these black-haired, swarthy-complexioned peasants.
She is sitting holding the frying-pan over the fire, but the menial
occupation is forgotten as we watch the delicate poise of the head and
stretch of the arm, the exquisite Greek profile, the lustrous dark eyes
gazing dreamily into the fire, the fair wavy hair coiled into a knot
at the back, and the soft pink of the common little cotton kerchief,
which, tied with the point under the chin, is thrown up by the dark
dress, and sets off the spring of the graceful neck.
And when, the rough white cloth being spread in the visitor’s honour,
the family cluster round the mediæval oil-lamp that makes a little
ruddy blot in the darkness beyond, we are more than ever struck at the
wonderful ease and good-breeding displayed in word and movement by
these peasants who do the hardest work and live the roughest of lives.
The women especially have something indescribably lady-like about them,
as they sit eating contentedly, perhaps without any plate, or pass from
one to another one of the pocket-knives which are the only cutting
implements on the table; or, it may be, question “my man,” as to the
length of time that will be needed on the morrow to gather in the
olives from a certain part of the _podere_. The more one has to do with
these Tuscan peasants the more constrained does one feel to adopt the
cant phrase, and call them emphatically Nature’s aristocracy.