CHIANTI AND MACARONI
_A Chapter for Travellers by Road or Rail_
The hotels of Italy are dear or not, according to whether one patronizes
a certain class of establishment. At Trouville, at Aix-les-Bains in
France, at Cernobbio in the Italian Lake region, or on the Quai
Parthenope at Naples, there is little difference in price or quality,
and the cuisine is always French.
The automobilist who demands garage accommodation as well will not
always find it in the big city hotel in Italy. He may patronize the F.
I. A. T. Garages in Rome, Naples, Genoa, Milan, Florence, Venice, Turin
and Padua and find the best of accommodation and fair prices. For a
demonstration of this he may compare what he gets and what he pays for
it at Pisa--where a F. I. A. T. garage is wanting--and note the
difference.
The real Italian hotel, outside the great centres, has less of a
clientèle of snobs and _malades imaginaires_ than one finds in
France--in the Pyrenees or on the Riviera, or in Switzerland among the
Alps, and accordingly there is always accommodation to be found that is
in a class between the resplendent gold-lace and silver-gilt
establishments of the resorts and working-men's lodging houses. True
there is the same class of establishment existing in the smaller cities
in France, but the small towns of France are not yet as much "travelled"
by strangers as are those of Italy, and hence the difference to be
remarked.
The real Italian hotels, not the tourist establishments, will cater for
one at about one half the price demanded by even the second order of
tourist hotels, and the Italian landlord shows no disrespect towards a
client who would know his price beforehand--and he will usually make it
favourable at the first demand, for fear you will "shop around" and
finally go elsewhere.
[Illustration: A Wayside Trattoria]
The automobile here, as everywhere, tends to elevate prices, but much
depends on the individual attitude of the traveller. A convincing air of
independence and knowledge on the part of the automobilist, _as he
arrives_, will speedily put him en rapport with the Italian landlord.
Look as wise as possible and always ask the price beforehand--even
while your motor is still chugging away. That never fails to bring
things to a just and proper relation.
It is at Florence, and in the environs of Naples, of all the great
tourist centres, that one finds the best fare at the most favourable
prices, but certainly at Rome and Venice, in the great hotels, it is far
less attractive and a great deal dearer, delightful though it may be to
sojourn in a palace of other days.
The Italian wayside inns, or _trattoria_, are not all bad; neither are
they all good. The average is better than it has usually been given the
credit of being, and the automobile is doing much here, as in France,
towards a general improvement. A dozen automobiles, with a score or more
of people aboard, may come and go in a day to a little inn in some
picturesque framing on a main road, say that between Siena and Rome via
Orvieto, or to Finale Marina or Varazze in Liguria, to one carriage and
pair with two persons and a driver. Accordingly, this means increased
prosperity for the inn-holder, and he would be a dull wit indeed if he
didn't see it. He does see it in France, with a very clear vision; in
Italy, with a point of view very little dimmed; in Switzerland, when the
governmental authorities will let him; and in England, when the country
boniface comes anywhere near to being the intelligent person that his
continental compeer finds himself. This is truth, plain, unvarnished
truth, just as the writer has found it. Others may have their own ideas
about the subject, but this is the record of one man's experiences, and
presumably of some others.
The chief disadvantages of the hotel of the small Italian town are its
often crowded and incomplete accessories, and its proximity to a stable
of braying donkeys, bellowing cows, or an industrious blacksmith who
begins before sun-up to pound out the same metallic ring that his
confrères do all over the world. There is nothing especially Italian
about a blacksmith's shop in Italy. All blacksmith interiors are the
same whether painted by "Old Crome," Eastman Johnson or Jean François
Millet.
The idiosyncrasies of the inns of the small Italian towns do not
necessarily preclude their offering good wholesome fare to the
traveller, and this in spite of the fact that not every one likes his
salad with garlic in liberal doses or his macaroni smothered in oil.
Each, however, is better than steak smothered in onions or potatoes
fried in lard; any "hygienist" will tell you that.
The trouble with most foreigners in Italy, when they begin to talk about
the rancid oil and other strange tasting native products, is that they
have not previously known the real thing. Olive oil, real olive oil,
tastes like--well, like olive oil. The other kinds, those we are mostly
used to elsewhere, taste like cotton seed or peanut oil, which is
probably what they are. One need not blame the Italian for this, though
when he himself eats of it, or gives it you to eat, it is the genuine
article. You may eat it or not, according as you may like it or not, but
the Italian isn't trying to poison you or work off anything on your
stomach half so bad as the rancid bacon one sometimes gets in Germany or
the kippers of two seasons ago that appear all over England in the small
towns.
As before intimated, the chief trouble with the small hotels in Italy is
their deficiencies, but the Touring Club Italiano in Italy, like the
Touring Club de France in France, is doing heroic work in educating the
country inn-keeper. Why should not some similar institution do the same
thing in England and America? How many American country hotels, in towns
of three or five thousand people, in say Georgia or Missouri, would get
up, for the chance traveller who dropped in on them unexpectedly, a
satisfactory meal? Not many, the writer fancies.
There is, all over Europe, a desire on the part of the small or large
hotel keeper to furnish meals out of hours, and often at no increase in
price. The automobilist appreciates this, and has come to learn in Italy
that the old Italian proverb "_chi tardi arriva mal alloggia_" is
entirely a myth of the guide books of a couple of generations ago. A
cold bird, a dish of macaroni, a salad and a flask of wine will try no
inn-keeper's capabilities, even with no notice beforehand. The Italian
would seemingly prefer to serve meals in this fashion than at the
_tavola rotonda_, which is the Italian's way of referring to a _table
d'hôte_. If you have doubts as to your Italian Boniface treating you
right as to price (after you have eaten of his fare) arrange things
beforehand a _prezzo fisso_ and you will be safe.
As for wine, the cheapest is often as good as the best in the small
towns, and is commonly included in the _prezzo fisso_, or should be.
It's for you to see that you get it on that basis of reckoning.
The _padrona_ of an Italian country inn is very democratic; he believes
in equality and fraternity, and whether you come in a sixty-horse
Mercédès or on donkey-back he sits you down in a room with a mixed crew
of his countrymen and pays no more attention to you than if you were one
of them. That is, he doesn't exploit you as does the Swiss, he doesn't
overcharge you, and he doesn't try to tempt your palate with poor
imitation of the bacon and eggs of old England, or the tenderloins of
America. He gives you simply the fare of the country and lets it go at
that.
Of Italian inns, it may be truly said the day has passed when the
traveller wished he was a horse in order that he might eat their food;
oats being good everywhere.
The fare of the great Italian cities, at least that of the hotels
frequented by tourists, has very little that is _national_ about it. To
find these one has to go elsewhere, to the small Italian hotels in the
large towns, along with the priests and the soldiers, or keep to the
byways.
The _polenta_, or corn-meal bread, and the _companatico_, sardines,
anchovies or herrings which are worked over into a paste and spread on
it butter-wise, is everywhere found, and it is good. No _osteria_ or
_trattoria_ by the roadside, but will give you this on short order if
you do not seek anything more substantial. The _minestra_, or cabbage
soup--it may not be cabbage at all, but it looks it--a sort of "_omnium
gatherum_" soup--is warming and filling. _Polenta_, _companatico_,
_minestra_ and a salad, with _fromaggio_ to wind up with, and red wine
to drink, ought not to cost more than a lira, or a lira and a half at
the most wherever found. You won't want to continue the same fare for
dinner the same day, perhaps, but it works well for luncheon.
Pay no charges for attendance. No one does anyway, but tourists of
convention. Let the _buono mano_ to the waiter who serves you be the
sole largess that you distribute, save to the man-of-all-work who brings
you water for the thirsty maw of your automobile, or to the amiable,
sunshiny individual who lugs your baggage up and down to and from your
room. This is quite enough, heaven knows, according to our democratic
ideas. At any rate, pay only those who serve you, in Italy, as
elsewhere, and don't merely tip to impress the waiter with your
importance. He won't see it that way.
The Italian _albergo_, or hotel of the small town, is apt to be poorly
and meanly furnished, even in what may be called "public rooms," though,
indeed, there are frequently no public rooms in many more or less
pretentious Italian inns. If there ever is a salon or reception room it
is furnished scantily with a rough, uncomfortable sofa covered with a
gunny sack, a small square of fibre carpeting (if indeed it has any
covering whatever to its chilly tile or stone floor), and a few rush
covered chairs. Usually there is no chimney, but there is always a
stuffy lambrequined curtain at each window, almost obliterating any rays
of light which may filter feebly through. In general the average
reception room of any Italian albergo (except those great joint-stock
affairs of the large cities which adopt the word hotel) is an
uncomfortable and unwholesome apartment. One regrets to say this but it
is so.
Beds in Italian hotels are often "queer," but they are surprisingly and
comfortably clean, considering their antiquity. Every one who has
observed the Italian in his home, in Italy or in some stranger land,
even in a crowded New York tenement, knows that the Italian sets great
store by his sleeping arrangements and their proper care. It is an
ever-to-be-praised and emulated fact that the common people of
continental Europe are more frequently "luxurious" with regard to their
beds and bed linen than is commonly supposed. They may eat off of an
oilcloth (which by some vague conjecture they call "American cloth")
covered table, may dip their fingers deep in the _polenta_ and throw
bones on the tile or brick floor to the dogs and cats edging about their
feet, but the _draps_ of their beds are real, rough old linen, not the
ninety-nine-cent-store kind of the complete house-furnishing
establishments.
The tiled floor of the average Italian house, and of the kitchens and
dining room of many an Italian inn, is the ever at hand receptacle of
much refuse food that elsewhere is relegated to the garbage barrel.
Between meals, and bright and early in the morning, everything is
flushed out with as generous a supply of water as is used by the Dutch
_housvrou_ in washing down the front steps. Result: the microbes don't
rest behind, as they do on our own carpeted dining rooms, a despicable
custom which is "growing" with the hotel keepers of England and America.
Another idol shattered!
What you don't find in the small Italian hotels are baths, nor in many
large ones either. When you do find a _baignoir_ in Europe (except those
of the very latest fashion) it is a poor, shallow affair with a plug
that pulls up to let the water out, but with no means of getting it in
except to pour it in from buckets. This is a fault, sure enough, and
it's not the American's idea of a bath tub at all, though it seems to
suit well enough the Englishman en tour.
France is, undoubtedly, the land of good cooks _par excellence_, but the
Italian of all ranks is more of a gourmet than he is usually accounted.
There may be some of his tribe that live on bread and cheese, but if he
isn't outrageously poor he usually eats well, devotes much time to the
preparing and cooking of his meals, and considerably more to the eating
of them. The Italian's cooking utensils are many and varied and above
all picturesque, and his table ware invariably well conditioned and
cleanly. Let this opinion (one man's only, again let it be remembered)
be recorded as a protest against the universally condemned _dirty_
Italian, who _supposedly_ eats cats and dogs, as the Chinaman
_supposedly_ eats rats and mice. We are not above reproach ourselves; we
eat mushrooms, frog legs and some other things besides which are
certainly not cleanly or healthful.
More than one Italian inn owes its present day prosperity to the travel
by road which frequently stops before its doors. Twenty-five years ago,
indeed much less, the _vetturino_ deposited his load of sentimental
travellers, accompanied perhaps by a courier, at many a miserable
wayside _osteria_, which fell far short of what it should be. To-day
this has all changed for the better.
Tourists of all nationalities and all ranks make Italy their playground
to-day, as indeed they have for generations. There is no diminution in
their numbers. English minor dignitaries of the church jostle Pa and Ma
and the girls from the Far West, and Germans, fiercely and wondrously
clad, peer around corners and across lagoons with field glasses of a
size and power suited to a Polar Expedition. Everybody is "doing"
everything, as though their very lives depended upon their absorbing as
much as possible of local colour, and that as speedily as possible. It
will all be down in the bill, and they mean to have what they are paying
for. This is one phase of Italian travel that is unlovely, but it is the
phase that one sees in the great tourist hotels and in the chief tourist
cities, not elsewhere.
To best know Italian fare as also Italian manners and customs, one must
avoid the restaurants and trattoria asterisked by Baedeker and search
others out for himself; they will most likely be as good, much cheaper,
more characteristic of the country and one will not be eternally
pestered to eat beefsteak, ham and saurkraut, or to drink _paleale_ or
whiskey. Instead, he will get macaroni in all shapes and sizes, and
tomato sauce and cheese over everything, to say nothing of rice,
artichokes and onions now and again, and oil, of the olive brand, in
nearly every _plat_. If you don't like these things, of course, there is
no need going where they are. Stick to the beefsteak and _paleale_ then!
Romantic, sentimental Italy is disappearing, the Italians are becoming
practical and matter of fact; it is only those with memories of
Browning, Byron, Shelley, Leopold Robert and Boeklin that would have
Italy sentimental anyway.
Maximilien Mission, a Protestant refugee from France in 1688, had
something to say of the inns at Venice, which is interesting reading
to-day. He says:--"There are some good inns at Venice; the 'Louvre,' the
'White Lyon,' the 'Arms of France;' the first entertains you for eight
livres (lire) per day, the other two somewhat cheaper, but you must
always remember to bargain for everything that you have. A gondola costs
something less than a livre (lire) an hour, or for a superior looking
craft seven or eight livres a day."
This is about the price of the Venetian water craft when hired to-day,
two centuries and more after. The hotel prices too are about what one
pays to-day in the smaller inns of the cities and in those of the towns.
All over Italy, even on the shores of the Bay of Naples, crowded as they
are with tourists of all nationalities and all ranks, one finds isolated
little Italian inns, backed up against a hillside or crowning some rocky
promontory, where one may live in peace and plenitude for six or seven
francs a day. And one is not condemned to eating only the national
macaroni either. Frankly, the Neapolitan restaurateur often scruples as
much to put macaroni before his stranger guests as does the Bavarian
inn-keeper to offer sausage at each repast. Some of us regret that this
is so, but since macaroni in some form or other can always be had in
Italy, and sausages in Germany, for the asking, no great inconvenience
is caused.
Macaroni is the national dish of Italy, and very good it is too, though
by no means does one have to live off it as many suppose.
Notwithstanding, macaroni goes with Italy, as do crackers with cheese.
There are more shapes and sizes of macaroni than there are beggars in
Naples.
The long, hollow pipe stem, known as Neapolitan, and the vermicelli,
which isn't hollow, but is as long as a shoe string, are the leading
varieties. Tiny grains, stars, letters of the alphabet and extraordinary
animals that never came out of any ark are also fashioned out of the
same _pasta_, or again you get it in sheets as big as a good sized
handkerchief, or in piping of a diameter of an inch, or more.
The Romans kneaded their flour by means of a stone cylinder called a
_maccaro_. The name macaroni is supposed to have been derived from this
origin.
Naples is the centre of the macaroni industry, but it is made all over
the world. That made in Brooklyn would be as good as that made in Naples
if it was made of Russian wheat instead of that from Dakota. As it is
now made it is decidedly inferior to the Italian variety. By contrast,
that made in Tunis is as good as the Naples variety. Russian wheat
again!
A macaroni factory looks, from the outside, like a place devoted to
making rope. Inside it feels like an inferno. It doesn't pay to get too
well acquainted with the process of making macaroni.
The flour paste is run out of little tubes, or rolled out by big
rollers, or cut out by little dies, thus taking its desired forms. The
long, stringy macaroni is taken outside and hung up to dry like clothes
on a line, except that it is hung on poles. The workmen are lightly and
innocently clad, and the workshops themselves are kept at as high a
temperature as the stoke-room of a liner. Whether this is really
necessary or not, the writer does not know, but he feels sure that some
genius will, some day, evolve a process which will do away with hand
labour in the making of macaroni. It will be mixed by machinery, baked
by electricity and loaded up on cars and steamships by the same power.
The street macaroni merchants of Naples sell the long ropy kind to all
comers, and at a very small price one can get a "filling" meal. You get
it served on a dish, but without knives, forks or chop sticks. You eat
it with your fingers and your mouth.
The meat is tough in Italy, often enough. There is no doubt about that.
But it is usually a great deal better than it is given credit for being.
The day is past, if it ever existed, when the Anglo-Saxon traveller was
forced to quit Italy "because he could not live without good meat." This
was the classic complaint of the innocents abroad of other days, whether
they hailed from Kensington or Kalamazoo. They should never have left
those superlatively excellent places. The food and Mazzini were the
sole topics of travel talk once, but to-day it is more a question of
whether one can get his railway connection at some hitherto unheard of
little junction, or whether the road via this river valley or that
mountain pass is as good as the main road. These are the things that
really matter to the traveller, not whether he has got to sleep in a
four poster in a bedroom with a tile or marble floor, or eat macaroni
and ravioli when he might have--if he were at home--his beloved "ham"
and blood-red beefsteaks.
The Italian waiter is usually a sunny, confiding person, something after
the style of the negro, and, like his dark-skinned brother, often
incompetent beyond a certain point. You like him for what he is though,
almost as good a thing in his line as the French garçon, in that he is
obliging and a great deal better than the mutton-chopped, bewhiskered
nonentity who shuffles about behind your chair in England with his
expectant palm forever outstretched.
The Italian _camerière_, or waiter, takes a pride in his profession--as
far as he knows it, and quite loses sight of its commercial
possibilities in the technicalities of his craft, and his seeming desire
only to please. _Subito momento_ is his ever ready phrase, though often
it seems as though he might have replied _never_.
Seated in some roadside or seashore _trattoria_ one pounds on the bare
table for the _camerière_, orders another "Torino," pays his reckoning
and is off again. Nothing extraordinarily amusing has happened the
while, but the mere lolling about on a terrace of a café overlooking the
lapping Mediterranean waves at one's feet is one of the things that one
comes to Italy for, and one is content for the nonce never to recur to
palazzos, villas, cathedrals, or picture galleries. There have been too
many travellers in past times--and they exist to-day--who do not seek to
fill the gaps between a round of churches and art galleries, save to
rush back to some palace hotel and eat the same kind of a dinner that
they would in London, Paris or New York--a little worse cooked and
served to be sure. It's the country and its people that impress one most
in a land not his own. Why do so many omit these "attractions?"
The _buona mano_ is everywhere in evidence in Italy, but the Italian
himself seems to understand how to handle the question better than
strangers. The Italian guest at a hotel is fairly lavish with the
quantity of his tips, but each is minute, and for a small service he
pays a small fee. We who like to impress the waiter--for we all do,
though we fancy we don't--will often pay as much to a waiter for
bringing us a drink as the price of the drink. Not so the Italian; and
that's the difference.
Ten per cent, on the bill at a hotel is always a lavish fee, and five
would be ample, though now and again the head waiter may look askance at
his share. Follow the Italian's own system then, give everybody who
serves you something, however little, and give to those only, and then
their little jealousies between each other will take the odium off
you--if you really care what a waiter thinks about you anyway, which of
course you shouldn't.
These little disbursements are everywhere present in Italy. One pays a
franc to enter a museum, a picture gallery or a great library, and one
tips his cabman as he does elsewhere, and a dozen francs spent in riding
about on Venetian gondolas for a day incurs the implied liability for
another two francs as well.