OF ITALIAN MEN AND MANNERS
Italian politics have ever been a game of intrigue, and of the
exploiting of personal ambition. It was so in the days of the Popes; it
is so in these days of premiers. The pilots of the ships of state have
never had a more perilous passage to navigate than when manoeuvring in
the waters of Italian politics.
There is great and jealous rivalry between the cities of Italy. The
Roman hates the Piedmontese and the Neapolitan and the Bolognese, and
they all hate the Roman,--capital though Rome is of Church and State.
[Illustration: ITALY In The XVIII Century]
The Evolution of Nationality has ever been an interesting subject to the
stranger in a strange land. When the national spirit at last arose Italy
had reached modern times and become modern instead of mediæval. National
character is born of environment, but nationalism is born only of
unassailable unity, a thorough absorbing of a love of country. The
inhabitant of Rouen, the ancient Norman capital, is first, last and all
the time a Norman, but he is also French; and the dweller in Rome or
Milan is as much an Italian as the Neapolitan, though one and all
jealously put the Campagna, Piedmont, or the Kingdom of Naples before
the Italian boot as a geographical division. Sometimes the same idea is
carried into politics, but not often. Political warfare in Italy is
mostly confined to the unquenchable prejudices existing between the
Quirinal and the Vatican, a sort of _inter urban_ warfare, which has
very little of the aspect of an international question, except as some
new-come diplomat disturbs the existing order of things. The Italian has
a fondness for the Frenchman, and the French nation. At least the
Italian politician has, or professes to have, when he says to his
constituency: "I wish always for happy peaceful relations with France
... but I don't forget Magenta and Solferino."
The Italians of the north are the emigrating Italians, and make one of
the best classes of labourers, when transplanted to a foreign soil. The
steamship recruiting agents placard every little background village of
Tuscany and Lombardy with the attractions of New York, Chicago, New
Orleans and Buenos Ayres, and a hundred or so _lire_ paid into the
agent's coffers does the rest.
Calabria and Sicily are less productive. The sunny Sicilian always wants
to take his gaudily-painted farm cart with him, and as there is no
economic place for such a useless thing in America, he contents himself
with a twenty-hour sea voyage to Tunisia where he can easily get back
home again with his cart, if he doesn't like it.
Every Italian peasant, man, woman and child, knows America. You may not
pass the night at Barberino di Mugello, may not stop for a glass of wine
at the _Osteria_ on the Futa Pass, or for a repast at some classically
named _borgo_ on the Voie Æmilia but that you will set up longings in
the heart of the natives who stand around in shoals and gaze at your
automobile.
They all have relatives in America, in New York, New Orleans or Cripple
Creek, or perhaps Brazil or the Argentine, and, since money comes
regularly once or twice a year, and since thousands of touring Americans
climb about the rocks at Capri or drive fire-spouting automobiles up
through the Casentino, they know the new world as a land of dollars, and
dream of the day when they will be able to pick them up in the streets
paved with gold. That is a fairy-tale of America that still lives in
Italy.
[Illustration: Barberino di Mugello]
Besides emigrating to foreign lands, the Italian peasant moves about his
own country to an astonishing extent, often working in the country in
summer, and in the towns the rest of the time as a labourer, or artisan.
The typical Italian of the poorer class is of course the peasant of the
countryside, for it is a notable fact that the labourer of the cities is
as likely to be of one nationality as another. Different sections of
Italy have each their distinct classes of country folk. There are
landowners, tenants, others who work their land on shares, mere
labourers and again simple farming folk who hire others to aid them in
their work.
The _braccianti_, or farm labourers, are worthy fellows and seemingly as
intelligent workers as their class elsewhere. In Calabria they are
probably less accomplished than in the region of the great areas of
worked land in central Italy and the valley of the Po.
The _mezzadria_ system of working land on shares is found all over
Italy. On a certain prearranged basis of working, the landlord and
tenant divide the produce of the farm. There are, accordingly, no
starving Italians, a living seemingly being assured the worker in the
soil. In Ireland where it is rental pure and simple, and foreclosure and
eviction if the rent is not promptly paid, the reverse is the case.
Landlordism of even the paternal kind--if there is such a thing--is
bad, but co-operation between landlord and tenant seems to work well in
Italy. It probably would elsewhere.
The average Italian small farm, or _podere_, worked only by the family,
is a very unambitious affair, but it produces a livelihood. The house is
nothing of the vine-clad Kent or Surrey order, and the principal
apartment is the kitchen. One or two bedrooms complete its appointments,
with a stone terrace in front of the door as it sits cosily backed up
against some pleasant hillside.
There are few gimcracks and dust-harbouring rubbish within, and what
simple furniture there is is clean--above all the bed-linen. The stable
is a building apart, and there is usually some sort of an out-house
devoted to wine-pressing and the like.
A kitchen garden and an orchard are near by, and farther afield the
larger area of workable land. A thousand or twelve hundred lire a year
of ready money passing through the hands of the head of the family will
keep father, mother and two children going, besides which there is the
"living," the major part of the eatables and drinkables coming off the
property itself.
The Italians are as cleanly in their mode of life as the people of any
other nation in similar walks. Let us not be prejudiced against the
Italian, but make some allowance for surrounding conditions. In the
twelfth century in Italy the grossness and uncleanliness were
incredible, and the manners laid down for behaviour at table make us
thankful that we have forks, pocket-handkerchiefs, soap and other
blessings! But then, where were we in the twelfth century!
No branch of Italian farming is carried on on a very magnificent scale.
In America the harvests are worked with mechanical reapers; in England
it is done with sickle and flail or out of date patterns of American
machines, but in Italy the peasant still works with the agricultural
implements of Bible times, and works as hard to raise and harvest one
bushel of wheat as a Kansas farmer does to grow, harvest and market six.
The American farmer has become a financier; the Italian is still in the
bread-winning stage. Five hundred labourers in Dakota, of all
nationalities under the sun, be it remarked, on the Dalrymple farm, cut
more wheat than any five thousand peasants in Europe. The peasant of
Europe is chiefly in the stage of begging the Lord for his daily bread,
but as soon as he gets out west in America, he buys store things,
automatic pianos and automobile buggies. No wonder he emigrates!
The Italian peasant doesn't live so badly as many think, though true it
is that meat is rare enough on his table. He eats something more than a
greasy rag and an olive, as the well-fed Briton would have us believe;
and something more than macaroni, as the American fondly thinks. For one
thing, he has his eternal _minestra_, a good, thick soup of many things
which Anglo-Saxons would hardly know how to turn into as wholesome and
nourishing a broth; meat of any kind, always what the French call _pate
d'Italie_, and herbs of the field. The macaroni, the olives, the cheese
and the wine--always the wine--come after. Not bad that; considerably
better than corned beef and pie, and far, far better than boiled mutton
and cauliflower as a steady diet! Britons and Americans should wake up
and learn something about gastronomy.
The general expenses of middle-class domestic town life in Italy are
lower than in most other countries, and the necessities for outlay are
smaller. The Italian, even comfortably off in the working class, is less
inclined to spend money on luxurious trivialities than most of us. He
prefers to save or invest his surplus. One takes central Italy as
typical because, if it is not the most prosperous, considered from an
industrial point of view, it is still the region endowed with the
greatest natural wealth. By this is meant that the conditions of life
are there the easiest and most comfortable.
A middle class town family with an income of six or seven thousand lire
spends very little on rent to begin with; pretence based upon the size
of the front door knob cuts no figure in the Italian code of pride. This
family will live in a flat, not in a _villini_ as separate town houses
are called. One sixth of the family income will go for rent, and though
the apartment may be bare and grim and lack actual luxury it will
possess amplitude, ten or twelve rooms, and be near the centre of the
town. This applies in the smaller cities of from twenty to fifty
thousand inhabitants. With very little modification the same will apply
in Rome or Naples, and, with perhaps none at all, at Florence.
The all important servant question would seem to be more easily solved
in Italy than elsewhere, but it is commonly the custom to treat Italian
servants as one of the family--so far as certain intimacies and
affections go--though, perhaps this of itself has some unanticipated
objections. The Italian servants have the reputation of becoming like
feudal retainers; that is, they "stay on the job," and from eight to
twenty-five lire a month pays their wages. In reality they become almost
personal or body servants, for in few Italian cities, and certainly not
in Italian towns, are they obliged to occupy themselves with the
slogging work of the London slavey, or the New York chore-woman. An
Italian servant, be she young or old, however, has a seeming disregard
for a uniform or badge of servitude, and is often rather sloppy in
appearance. She is, for that, all the more picturesque since, if untidy,
she is not apt to be loathsomely dirty in her apparel or her manner of
working.
[Illustration: A Chianti Seller]
The Italian of all ranks is content with two meals a day, as indeed we
all ought to be. The continental morning coffee and roll, or more likely
a sweet cake, is universal here, though sometimes the roll is omitted.
Lunch is comparatively a light meal, and dinner at six or seven is
simply an amplified lunch. The chianti of Tuscany is the usual wine
drunk at all meals, or a substitute for it less good, though all red
wine in Italy seems to be good, cheap and pure. Adulteration is
apparently too costly a process. Wine and biscuits take the place of
afternoon tea--and with advantage. The wine commonly used _en
famille_ is seldom bought at more than 1.50 lira the flagon of two and a
half litres, and can be had for half that price. Sugar and salt are
heavily taxed, and though that may be a small matter with regard to salt
it is something of an item with sugar.
Wood is almost entirely the fuel for cooking and heating, and the latter
is very inefficient coming often from simple braziers or _scaldini_
filled with embers and set about where they are supposed to do the most
good. If one does not expire from the cold before the last spark has
departed from the already dying embers when they are brought in, he
orders another and keeps it warm by enveloping it as much as possible
with his person. Italian heating arrangements are certainly more
economical than those in Britain, but are even less efficient, as most
of the caloric value of wood and coal goes up the chimney with the
smoke. The American system of steam heat--on the "_chauffage centrale_"
plan--will some day strike Europe, and then the householder will buy his
heat on the water, gas and electric light plan. Till then southern
Europe will freeze in winter.
In Rome and Florence it is a very difficult proceeding to be able to
control enough heat--by any means whatever--to properly warm an
apartment in winter. If the apartment has no chimney, and many haven't
in the living rooms, one perforce falls back again on the classic
_scaldini_ placed in the middle of the room and fired up with charcoal.
Then you huddle around it like Indians in a wigwam and, if you don't
take a short route into eternity by asphyxiation, your extremities
ultimately begin to warm up; when they begin to get chilly again you
recommence the firing up. This is more than difficult; it is
inconvenient and annoying.
The manners and customs of the Italians of the great cities differ
greatly from those of the towns and villages, and those of the Romans
differ greatly from those of the inhabitants of Milan, Turin or Genoa.
The Roman, for instance, hates rain--and he has his share of it too--and
accordingly is more often seen with an umbrella than without one.
Brigands are supposedly the only Italians who don't own an umbrella,
though why the distinction is so apparent a mere dweller beyond the
frontier cannot answer.
In Rome, in Naples, and in all the cities and large towns of Italy, the
population rises early, but they don't get down to business as speedily
as they might. The Italian has not, however, a prejudice against new
ideas, and the Italian cities and large towns are certainly very much
up-to-date. Italians are at heart democrats, and rank and title have
little effect upon them.
The Italian government still gives scant consideration to savings banks,
but legalizes, authorizes and sometimes backs up lotteries. At all times
it controls them. This is one of the inconsistencies of the tunes played
by the political machine in modern Italy. Anglo-Saxons may bribe and
graft; but they do not countenance lotteries, which are the greatest
thieving institutions ever invented by the ingenuity of man, in that
they _do_ rob the _poor_. It is the _poor_ almost entirely who support
them. The rich have bridge, baccarat, Monte Carlo and the Stock
Exchange.
It may be bad for the public, this legalized gambling, but all gambling
is bad, and certainly state-controlled lotteries are no worse than
licensed or unlicensed pool-rooms and bucket shops, winked-at
dice-throwing in bar rooms, or crap games on every corner.
The Italian administration received the enormous total of 74,400,000
lire for lottery tickets in 1906, and of this sum 35,000,000 lire were
returned in prizes, and 6,500,000 went for expenses. A fine net profit
of 33,000,000 lire, all of which, save what stuck to the fingers of the
bureaucracy in passing through, went to reduce taxation which would
otherwise be levied.
The Italian plays the lottery with the enthusiastic excitement of a too
shallow and too confident brain.
Various combinations of figures seem possible of success to the Italian
who at the weekend puts some bauble in pawn with the hope that something
will come his way. After the drawing, before the Sunday dawns, he is
quite another person, considerably less confident of anything to happen
in the future, and as downcast as a sunny Italian can be.
This passion for drawing lots is something born in him; even if
lotteries were not legalized, he would still play _lotto_ in secret, for
in enthusiasm for games of chance, he rivals the Spaniard.
But Italy is not the country of illiterates that the stranger
presupposes. Campania is the province where one finds the largest number
of lettered, and Basilicate the least.
Military service begins and is compulsory for all male Italians at the
age of twenty. It lasts for nineteen years, of which three only are in
active service. The next five or six in the reserve, the next three or
four in the Militia and the next seven in the "territorial" Militia, or
landguard.
Conscription also applies to the naval service for the term of twelve
years.
The military element, which one meets all over Italy, is astonishingly
resplendent in colours and plentiful in numbers. At most, among
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of officers of all ranks, there can hardly
be more than a few score of privates. It is either this or the officers
keep continually on the move in order to create an illusion of numbers!
Class distinctions, in all military grades, and in all lands, are very
marked, but in Italy the obeisance of a private before the slightest
loose end of gold braid is very marked. The Italian private doesn't seem
to mark distinctions among the official world beyond the sight of gold
braid. A steamboat captain, or a hall porter in some palatial hotel
would quite stun him.
The Italian gendarmes are a picturesque and resplendent detail of every
gathering of folk in city, town or village. On a _festa_ they shine more
grandly than at other times, and the privilege of being arrested by such
a gorgeous policeman must be accounted as something of a social
distinction. The holding up of an automobilist by one of these gentry
is an affair which is regulated with as much pomp and circumstance as
the crowning of a king. The writer knows!!
Just how far the Italian's criminal instincts are more developed than
those of other races and climes has no place here, but is it not fair to
suppose that the half a million of Italians--mostly of the lower
classes--who form a part of the population of cosmopolitan New York are
of a baser instinct than any half million living together on the
peninsula? Probably they are; the Italian on his native shore does not
strike us as a very villainous individual.
But he is usually a lively person; there is nothing calm and sedentary
about him; though he has neither the grace of the Gascon, the joy of the
Kelt, or the pretence of the Provençal, he does not seem wicked or
criminal, and those who habitually carry dirks and daggers and play in
Black Hand dramas live for the most part across the seas.
The Italian secret societies are supposed hot beds of crime, and many of
them certainly exist, though they do not practise their rites in the
full limelight of publicity as they do in America.
The Neapolitan Camarra is the best organized of all the Italian secret
societies. It is divided, military-like, into companies, and is
recruited, also in military fashion, to make up for those who have died
or been "replaced."
The origin of secret societies will probably never be known. Italy was
badly prepared to gather the fruits to be derived from the French
Revolution, and it is possible that then the activity of the Carbonari,
Italy's most popular secret society, began. The Mafia is more ancient
and has a direct ancestry for nearly a thousand years.
A hundred and twenty-five years ago the seed of secret dissatisfaction
had already been spread for years through Italy. The names of the
societies were many. Some of them were called the Protectori
Republicani, the Adelfi, the Spilla Nera, the Fortezza, the Speranza,
the Fratelli, and a dozen other names. On the surface the code of the
Carbonari reads fairly enough, but there is nothing to show that any
attempt was made to stamp out perhaps the most generally honoured of the
traditions of Naples--that of homicide.
The long political blight of the centuries, the curse of feudalism, the
rottenness of ignorance and superstition, had eaten out nearly every
vestige of political and self-respecting spirit. After the restoration
of the Bourbons the influences of the secret societies in Southern Italy
were manifested by the large increase of murders.