GENOA.
From Monte Carlo to Genoa by rail in a hurricane doesn’t sound anything
very tremendous, unless you happen to know that the rail runs for almost
the entire distance at the extreme foot of the Maritime Alps, on the
uttermost verge of the coast; so close, in fact, to the sea, that in
many places if you dropped your hat out of the window it would fall into
the ocean. To walk along the line would turn many people unaccustomed to
exercise upon the tight-rope giddy, for, as well as running along the
beach, it occasionally takes the outside edge of precipices, against
which the deep waters of the Mediterranean are dashing themselves in
their mad fury at not being able to get at the train and swallow it up.
Under ordinary circumstances the journey, which takes ten hours by the
‘omnibus’ train, is romantic. Taken as we took it, with a hurricane
spending its full force on the coast, it was absolutely thrilling. Over
and over again our trim little engine, as it toiled up cliffs and crept
cautiously over massive rocks, was nearly blown to a full stop, and the
way in which the whole train rocked from side to side made several of
the passengers sea-sick. Our guard told us that he had never made such a
journey in all his experience; and, after we had left the Italian
frontier at Ventimiglia, and had passed San Remo, it began to look as
though we should have to let discretion be the better part of valour,
and pull up until the storm, which came rushing down the mountains and
lashing the sea to fury, had abated. Over and over again the seas dashed
up, and flung a great volume of water and small pebbles against the
carriage windows. It was a question whether further on the sea would not
have made the line unsafe, or perhaps washed it away altogether. But at
every station we got the signal that it was all right at present, and
that we could come on; and so on we went, recompensed for all our doubts
and delays by the grand sight which the storm-swept coast and seething
sea presented to our anxious and yet delighted gaze.
It was nearly eleven o’clock at night when we reached Genoa. We had
taken eleven hours to perform a journey of about 112 miles, and all that
time we had had nothing to eat. There was no buffet all along the line
after Ventimiglia until we reached Savona, and then it was past nine
o’clock. We grew so desperately hungry about six o’clock that when the
train stopped for a few minutes we rushed out into the rain and the
hurricane and requisitioned supplies of a small wine-shed by the
roadside. All we could get was some dry bread, and some mysterious
slices of something, which we were assured was ‘carne,’ or meat. The
word isn’t appetizing, and, hungry as we were, we couldn’t tackle the
food. It was so strongly impregnated with garlic that after we had given
it to a dog our carriage retained the odour, and for days afterwards our
clothes reeked of the pungent esculent. In despair we fell back upon the
dry bread, and when we had eaten that we tried to remember what people
did on rafts, and we unpacked our portmanteaus and looked out our boots,
and wondered whether patent leather or ordinary walking boots would be
the easier of digestion. So ravenous did we become that we sent on a
telegram from one of the stations to the hotel at Genoa ordering
beefsteaks to be ready for us the instant we arrived, and when at
midnight the omnibus deposited us at the Grand Hotel we didn’t stop to
wash or take off our overcoats or look at our rooms, but rushed into the
_salle-à-manger_ and fell on our knees to the head waiter and begged
that, ready or not, our beefsteaks ordered by telegram might be brought
to us; and when they came we fell upon them with savage glee and short,
sharp cries of joy, and the manager and the waiters and the porters came
crowding in to watch the extraordinary spectacle. I think they fancied
we were mad or cannibals, or that we had escaped from a penal settlement
and had not tasted food for months.
Genova la Superba, Genoa the Proud, has indeed something to be proud of.
She is proud of her port, of her people, of her palaces, and of her
prosperity. Her people, high and low, rich and poor, are brave,
independent, and public spirited, and her nobility stands at the head of
the nobility of the world for deeds of good citizenship and benevolence.
From the days of Christopher Columbus, who, when Genoa was stricken with
the plague, wrote to his bankers to give half his fortune to the poor,
to the present year of grace, when the Duchess Ferrari-Galliera spends
hundreds of thousands of pounds on colleges and hospitals and model
dwellings for the poor, the rich and the titled of Genoa have been
world-famous for their deeds of noble charity.
Genoa itself is a stately city; seen from the sea, with its villa and
palace-crowned amphitheatre of hills, it is superb. It has whole streets
of marble palaces, full of wonders for the eye of the connoisseur to
feast upon; and beyond its ancient grandeurs and its modern
magnificences, its heart pulses with the vigorous, healthy blood of
modern progress and prosperity.
Genoa delighted me from the moment I set my foot in it and began to take
its measure. I liked its busy port, with thousands of bronzed,
red-bonneted porters hard at work upon the huge quays, crowded with
merchandise. I liked its blue houses and its pink houses, its yellow and
green houses, and its houses painted all over with pictures of lovely
ladies. I liked the Municipal Palace, in which I was shown Paganini’s
very own fiddle, and several letters written by Christopher Columbus
with his very own hand, and I liked its Campo Santo, or cemetery, which
is one of the wonders of Italy.
Imagine a glorious garden rising in terraces--a garden all aglow with
red and white roses and fragrant with blossom--imagine this garden
surrounded with noble open galleries lined with magnificent white marble
monuments, and all shut in by great sunny green hills, which stand
around it like sentinels guarding the silent and sacred camp of the
dead. Imagine all this, then put above the roses and the blossoms and
the fragrant trees, and the yellow immortelles and the green wreaths and
the glorious marble statuary, a blue sky and a bright sun, and you have
a faint idea of ‘Genoa’s Holy Field.’
But you cannot imagine the monuments and the memorial statuary. You must
see them to understand them, because they are so utterly unlike anything
we have in our cold, prosaic land. In long marble galleries, open to the
air and the sun, the monuments at first give the cemetery the appearance
of an art exhibition. You fancy you have wandered into a sculpture
gallery by mistake; but the wreaths of flowers with broad silk sashes
attached, the swinging lamps, and the memorial tablets undeceive you.
Each monument has, as it were, an arch of the gallery to itself, and is
placed against the back wall. The figures are rarely allegorical. A man
in his habit as he lived stands life-size in white marble above his own
tomb. A little girl in a short frock, with her lap full of flowers,
seems dancing on the column that records her death. Over another
beautiful tomb is a family group, life-size. The father is dying. He
lies on his deathbed, and the sculptor has realized every detail of
drapery. The wife kneels by the bedside, some of her daughters
supporting her. The old mother sits in an easy-chair, her eyes raised to
heaven, her lips seeming almost to move in prayer. On the other side of
the bed the eldest son stands up and supports one of the daughters, who
has utterly broken down. It is a marvellous piece of work. It is the
‘Last Adieu’ realized in marble. It is naturalism and it is art. It is
realistic, and so perfect in detail that you would recognise any of that
group of mourners if you met them in the street.
One turns from the group, and near it is a dear old lady standing alone
above her own tomb. She is wrinkled, and wears a big cap and a woollen
shawl over her shoulders. No kindred are near her, but she is sincerely
mourned, for she was the friend of the poor. In her hand she holds the
bread she was in the habit of distributing to them. She is a dear
old-fashioned old soul--a typical English ‘granny’ of the Christmas
number--and her puckered, smiling face seems to make one at home in the
cemetery directly.
Some of the groups are more imaginative. A magnificent vault is faced
with a black-and-gold gate. On the steps leading to it a lad and his
sister kneel and gaze heavenward. They are watching their mother being
carried up into heaven by the angels. The whole scene is reproduced in
sculpture, and so exquisitely is it done that the dead woman and the
angels actually seem to be floating upward towards the skies.
Over another tomb, where a husband and wife lie buried together, this
old couple sit in two armchairs, holding each the other’s hand. On
another a man lies dead on his bed, and the young wife reverently raises
the sheet and gazes for the last time upon his face. Over another tomb
is the statue of the man who lies within. On the steps of the tomb
stands his wife, and she holds their little girl in her arms, and lifts
her up as though to kiss the dead papa. The door of another vault is
represented as half open. The husband lies dead inside. The wife knocks
at the door and listens for her dear one’s voice to call her in.
There are hundreds and hundreds of these beautiful groups in the Campo
Santo. What makes them the more extraordinary to the English traveller
is that the living and the dead are all habited in modern everyday
costume, and no detail is spared to make the groups and the single
figures triumphs of realism. One remarkable piece of sculpture I have
omitted to mention. It is over the tomb of a beautiful Italian lady who
died a short time ago. Her bed is represented with a perfection of
detail. The lace on the pillows is perfect. The lady is dead, but the
angel has come to fetch her. The angel takes the dead lady’s hand, and
the lady gets out of bed to go with the angel to heaven. This is the
moment depicted by the sculptor. The lady sits on the edge of the bed,
and the angel points upwards in the direction they are to travel
together.
All this is very beautiful, but its intense realism may jar on some. It
did on me after a time. I felt that something of the sublimity of death
was taken away in the process, and I turned with a little sigh of relief
to some of the humbler graves which dotted the sunny garden of fragrant
roses that lay so bright and beautiful under the blue Italian sky.
Walking in the streets of Genoa one afternoon I met a nice-looking,
stout, middle-aged lady in the most wonderful bonnet I ever saw in my
life. I was so attracted by the bonnet, which was of the Leviathan
order, that I did not notice anything else at first, but presently I saw
that she was bowing in answer to many salutes. Then I knew she was a
public celebrity, and I inquired who she was. ‘That,’ said my companion,
a Genoese, ‘is the daughter of Garibaldi!’
The daughter of Garibaldi is a great favourite in Genoa. She has married
a gentleman in the army, but people don’t trouble to remember his name.
He is always spoken of as the gentleman who is the husband of the
daughter of Garibaldi.
The daughter of Garibaldi is the proud and happy mother of twelve sons.
If they are as good as their grandfather, the lady deserves well of her
country.
On the same afternoon that I met the daughter of Garibaldi I also met an
old gray-haired gentleman and lady trotting quietly along the Via Roma.
My Genoese friend pointed them out to me, and told me their story.
Twenty years ago a rich Englishman and his wife came to Italy with a
foreign courier. In Genoa the gentleman was taken ill and died. He was
buried in the town, and his wife stayed on at the hotel. After a time
she married the courier, and from that day to this they have lived in
Genoa--going in the summer to a villa on the Lake of Como which they
purchased. Neither has ever set foot in England for twenty years.
I saw many things in Genoa which most people see, and which are
doubtless fully described in the guide-books; but I saw something also
of which the guide-books make no mention. I have mentioned the great
public spirit of the Genoese nobility. There is in Genoa a beautiful
building on the heights overlooking the sea, which is called the Hotel
of the Poor. This was founded and endowed by a Genoese marquis. Here
respectable workmen, when they are past work, can come and end their
days in perfect peace. Another nobleman, when it was proposed to move
the University to Padua for lack of room, instantly gave up his
magnificent palace to the town, saying, ‘This is henceforward your
University.’ But all deeds of this sort are put into the shade by the
princely charities of the Duke and Duchess of Ferrari-Galliera. The
Duke, shortly before his death, gave one million pounds sterling towards
the building of the new port. The Duchess, continuing his good work, has
founded noble charities which are almost unique of their kind. One of
them has such direct bearing on the great question of the day--the
housing of the poor--that I cannot resist the temptation to give the
reader a few particulars.
First let me say that the Ferrari-Galliera fortune is estimated at ten
million pounds, and then you will understand how the Opera Pia, or pious
works of this noble family, are carried out on such a gigantic scale. I
had been told a great deal in Genoa about the Duchess’s scheme for
housing the working classes in model lodging-houses, and so, obtaining
proper credentials, I called upon the Duchess’s agent, and he most
courteously had me personally conducted over the new working class
dwellings. Built in blocks, somewhat on the Peabody system, these
dwellings are perfect in every detail. The tenant must be a genuine
working man, of good character. In the Duchess’s model lodging-house,
for the accommodation of himself and family, he has five rooms--five
lofty, big rooms: a sitting-room, three bedrooms, and a kitchen, fitted
up with a capital range and every requisite. Besides these there are
cupboard room and a larder. These rooms have all tiled floors, and the
walls are painted or whitewashed. The rent is _eight francs a month_,
and this includes all necessary repairs, which are done by a staff of
workmen attached to the central office. Every month every room is
inspected, and the slightest damage instantly repaired.
My visit to the dwellings was quite unexpected. I drove straight from
the office to one of the blocks, and took the inhabitants unawares, so
that what I saw must be taken as a fair specimen of the general
condition of the tenements. I knocked at a door, was admitted, and made
my inspection, much to the astonishment of the children, who wondered
why the ‘strange man’ should come prying into their kitchen and walking
into their bedrooms. I inspected four blocks, and took a suite on each
floor, and everywhere I found the most perfect cleanliness and the
greatest comfort. The women were mostly the wives of working men earning
from twenty to twenty-five francs a week, but their homes were perfect
pictures of neatness and order. The floors were swept and garnished, and
the kitchens were little models of tidiness. One good soul was horrified
when I asked to see the bedroom. The bed wasn’t made, she explained, and
she was afraid I should think she was a careless housewife. As I went
over these homes of the Genoese working classes, I could not help
thinking of some that I knew at home. What would some hard-working
Englishmen and their wives give to get such ‘model lodgings’ as these,
and how gladly would they pay double and treble the rent that the lucky
Genoese pay for such accommodation!
As I came out of the block I had a look round the big courtyard in the
centre. At one end I found a large public washhouse; at the other end
baths fitted up for the inhabitants, and also on the premises I found
for their accommodation a bakehouse, in which the frugal wives who make
their own bread have it baked free of charge. And what could you wish
for more?
The Duchess has founded also, for the education of the poor children of
Genoa, a free college. To all who attend it breakfast is given, and also
a mid-day meal. Each boy is for one year ‘under observation.’ If his
conduct is good, he has a right to stay on and receive a liberal
education. If his conduct is bad, he is struck off the school list. A
poor boy who is industrious and shows any talent can even choose a
profession, and be specially educated free for that profession until the
age of seventeen. Young Genoa has certainly a chance to distinguish
itself in the future.
But the Duchess’s crowning work is the grandest of all her charities.
She has already built and endowed two hospitals--one for children and
one for incurables; the third, which was to be a general hospital, was
not yet opened, but by the courtesy of the Duchess’s agent I was
conducted over the whole building and everything was explained to me. As
the hospital is undoubtedly one of the finest and most complete in the
world, I must tell you something about it.
But first let me tell you the sad story which is bound up for ever with
it--a story which the Duchess herself has handed down to posterity by
having it inscribed upon a marble tablet in the grand entrance-hall.
This tablet states that the building of the hospital has been delayed
for four years, ‘owing to the treachery of my agent. General So-and-So.’
The Duchess names her treacherous agent, who was her own cousin, and so
brands him for all time to come. His treachery was this: He decamped
with £800,000, the money paid to his credit by the Duchess for the
building of the hospital. Poor old gentleman! He is eighty years of age
now, and he is said to have hidden himself from the world in a
monastery, there to expiate his fault. They say that the money did him
no good--that he is poor. That he took it to save from shame the son he
idolized--the son who was leading a life of extravagance, and who had
involved himself in such a way that the poor old General had to use the
Duchess’s money to save him. Whatever the truth may be, the General used
the money, and his treachery is ‘writ large’ upon the walls of the
magnificent hospital, the building of which his unhappy act delayed for
four long years.
The hospital itself stands in a magnificent position above the sea, and
is the perfection of every modern principle. It is so perfect and so
full of marvellous appliances and inventions that one feels, in walking
about it, that it is one of Jules Verne’s ideas. The glorious halls and
corridors, the massive marble pillars, the splendid marble staircases,
indicate wealth, but the perfection of the sanitary and scientific
arrangements tells of long years of anxious thought and study and
research. So perfectly is this marvellous hospital built that, in the
event of plague or cholera breaking out to such an extent as to infect
the building, the whole of the inside of the hospital can be removed and
another hospital will still be left standing as complete as the other.
To accomplish this the hospital is being built double, with a space
between the walls.
It would not interest the general reader for me to go into technical
details of the wonderful arrangements for the patients, and the
magnificent system of baths built on the premises, which includes every
kind and variety; but the general reader will understand the value of a
tramway system over the entire basement for the conveyance of stores,
linen, provision stores, officials, patients, etc.; and the advantage of
pure air conveyed straight from the adjacent mountains through
underground tubes, and distributed all over the building. This palatial
hospital looks on to the sea and on to the mountains, and, in order to
isolate it and give the inmates gardens and terraces and glorious views,
the Duchess has purchased a whole street of houses in the neighbourhood
and demolished them, that nothing shall detract from the perfect
sanitation of her glorious gift to the city of Genoa.
Genova la Superba! Genoa the Proud! Proud indeed, and with good reason,
with such a city, such citizens, and such nobles! In what other town in
Europe can you find, as here, a whole street of palaces given up by
their owners to the people?