ITALIAN BEGGARS--A NEGLECTED GRAVE--THE BLUE-GUM TREE AND
MALARIA--PERUGIA--ETRUSCAN TOMBS.
If, by a stroke of this pen, I could banish every beggar from Italy,
I should hesitate to do so. They may deserve the punishment. But they
are amusing rascals. Life here would be duller without them. The
other day when a span of tired horses were dragging me up Vesuvius,
three men sprang out of the ground in front of the carriage. I do not
know how else to explain their sudden appearance. They were beggars
of the musical variety. One carried a fiddle, the second a mandolin,
the third a guitar. Bowing to me, they formed a line on my right and
marched up the mountain, Indian file, playing as they went. I was just
then trying to realize in imagination the terrible splendor of the
eruption that had caused the flow of lava fifty feet deep, through
which the carriage-road was cut. These three fellows with their
lively Neapolitan airs disturbed me greatly. But the absurdity of the
situation soon overcame my resentment. I laughed heartily and permitted
them to escort me about a mile before dismissing them with a few soldi.
We parted friends, and they proceeded to levy tribute on the carriage
behind me. It takes philosophy to extract amusement out of these
seeming pests. But happy is the man who can do it, for Southern Italy
swarms with them.
At Baiæ where we were taking a bad lunch at a wretched little inn, four
women entered the room, and, without asking our leave, began to dance
the tarantella. They were probably the wife of the landlord and three
servants. Their dancing was a fitting accompaniment to the lunch they
had provided for us. One of the women strummed a tambourine as big as
an old-fashioned kitchen sieve. This supplied the only music, except
that the other three kept time with castanets. They made a horrible
din, and, being ill-favored and shabbily dressed, were anything but
pleasant companions, as they flirted their skirts almost in our
faces. But after a few minutes we found them with all their faults
more interesting than the lunch, and made them a present altogether
too large for their deserts. This was a serious mistake, for they all
rushed off and speedily returned, with bouquets, coral jewelry, and
antiquities that must have been at least forty-eight hours old. All
these they wanted us to buy at exorbitant prices. Our refusal to do
so angered the whole party. This, of course, put an end to the fun.
So I settled the tavern score hastily and we returned to Naples. But
the incident, unsatisfactorily as it terminated, remains to-day the
pleasantest memory of a visit to ruins that were not worth seeing.
On my visit to the Blue Grotto at Capri, it required the utmost
obstinancy to refuse the demand of my boatman for a two-franc piece.
He wanted me to throw it into the water, and see him dive and bring it
up from the bottom. If I had accepted his offer, he would have whisked
off his coat and shirt (if he had one), and gone down fifty feet for
the piece, and recovered it for himself without fail. But I was anxious
to get back to the steamer which was waiting for us, and resolutely
declined to be amused at that price. At Sorrento, the hotel guests
standing out on the balconies overlooking the sea were constantly
importuned for “pennies” by boys in the boats below. When the money was
thrown down, the little fellows would watch its course through the air,
and, the moment it struck the water, they would dive into the pellucid
depths and in a flash reappear with it, holding it aloft between
thumb and finger. These are but a few out of the hundred methods in
which money is extracted from you, under the pretense of some service
rendered or amusement supplied. And still I say that it pays to humor
all these people to a moderate extent. And, furthermore, I would not
refuse a very modest coin to the ragged but picturesque creature who
stands at every church-door and lies in wait for me at every bit of
rising ground. He does not pretend to give any equivalent for the money
received. He is a beggar pure and simple. He has been begging for
thirty, forty, or fifty years. In all that time he imagines that he has
acquired “rights,” and I confess I almost feel ashamed of myself when I
drop my insignificant alms into his dirty hand.
“Shelley?” asked the man in charge of the Protestant Cemetery at Rome,
when we appeared at the gate, one beautiful afternoon in May. It is
the only English word except “Keats” that he can pronounce correctly.
Three years before the same man put the same question to us. We again
answered “Yes.” For, with many others of the English-speaking race, we
took a sad pleasure in visiting the graves of those two most gifted
and unhappy beings. Shelley’s heart alone rests in the cypress-shaded
inclosure, which is now full of graves. The rest of his body, we
remember, was reduced to ashes on a funeral-pyre, in the presence of
Byron and some others, at that spot on the shore of Spezzia Bay where
the drowned poet had been cast up by the waves. As this is an age of
monuments to neglected genius, I was curious to see if anything had
been done for Shelley by his ardent admirers since 1883. No! there is
the old small stone flat on the earth, looking moldier than ever. The
inscription “_Cor Cordium_” is filled in with dirt. A weed, looking
like burdock, grows rankly about the grave. There is not a flower near
it, unless one should count in a withered and blackened rose which
some pitying soul had thrown down on the center of the dingy marble
slab. This may have been lying there for two or three months. I dare
say fragments of it will be found there a year hence, unless the wind
blows them away. For it is evident that Shelley’s tombstone is never
swept and cleaned except by the elements. Trelawney, the life-long
friend and stanch defender of the poet, rests beside him. He died at
the age of eighty-eight, and Shelley at thirty. In standing beside
these two graves, equally destitute of human care, one pays a tribute
to friendship as well as to genius.
Another old man--Severn--sleeps alongside of young Keats. Their graves,
situated in a free and wind-swept place, outside of the stuffed
cemetery, are well cared for. The same good people who put up the
exquisite portrait of Keats in _alto-rilievo_ against the wall of
the portal and erected the tombstone in memory of Severn, doubtless
provided for proper attention to the graves. The wall near by is
thick with climbing roses. Daisies, buttercups, and some flowers not
so familiar to us, star the lush grass on every side. A trim hedge
incloses the two who, in death, as in life, were not divided. Keats
sleeps under the shadow of a laurel-tree, which has grown much in the
last three years, and still supplies leaves in abundance to be plucked
and pressed as souvenirs. As we stood there and watched the sharp
shadow of the venerable pyramid of Cestius slowly creeping toward us,
the spell was broken by the harsh voice of a man at my elbow. “What a
shame,” he said, “that such an epitaph should be allowed to stand above
a grave!” I turned and saw an Englishman. He referred, of course, to
the bitterness of the inscription, alluding to the savage criticisms
which, doubtless, hastened the death of the consumptive, broken-hearted
Keats. The Englishman thought it was high time to erase this memorial
of a by-gone literary feud. “True,” I replied, “the epitaph does
seem out of place now, when the position of Keats among the English
immortals is assured. But, after all, should it not be kept there as a
warning to future critics? It should teach them to be more tolerant of
young authors, with their new and daring styles.” The other man could
not accept that view of the case. I did not care to discuss it. So we
touched hats and parted.
It is not easy to find out the exact sanitary value of the eucalyptus,
or blue-gum tree. Americans who inhabit malarial districts, and are
waiting for Italy to test the tree thoroughly before planting it in
their own grounds, will be sorry to learn that a blight has fallen on
a great many promising groves of the eucalyptus in this country. At
most of the railway-stations in South Italy the trees are withered,
if not yet dead. Their leaves are yellow and curled up, and have only
a faint resinous smell. Many of the trees, whose leaves are still
green and balmy, are stunted. They do not grow here with the rapidity
and vigor of the eucalyptus in Australia. The trouble is less with
the climate than the soil, for I observed at some stations every sign
of health in some trees. A specimen would show robustness in every
leaf, and fill the air with its peculiar odor, while another one not
two hundred feet away would be drooping and scentless. In those few
places where the tree has done justice to itself, as one may say, men
speak well of it. They regard it as a preventive, to some extent, of
malarial fever; they ought to know. The good fathers at the Abbey of
Tre Fontaine, near Rome, have the highest opinion of the eucalyptus.
It is an undoubted fact that the very free planting of the tree in and
about the abbey-grounds has made them habitable. It takes kindly to
that particular locality. The monks have mastered the art of raising
it to perfection. They have a vast nursery where it is grown by the
hundreds of thousands, and sold cheaply. The trees which I had noticed
at so many railway-stations all came from Tre Fontaine. The monks make
a handsome revenue out of this product. It would not be quite fair to
say that their interests prejudice them in its favor, though one could
hardly expect them to underrate something the cultivation of which is
so gainful for them. To sum up the matter, according to my present
light, I should say that where the eucalyptus can be made to thrive it
is a check on malaria.
The old town, Perugia, is well worth visiting on many accounts.
Traveling by rail from Rome to Florence, one sees large clusters of
houses perched high on the hill-side. They are crowned with campaniles
and domes, surrounded by high walls, and provoke one’s curiosity to
make their closer acquaintance. But on consulting his guide-book, the
tourist finds that these elevated settlements contain few objects of
interest, better examples of which can be found elsewhere. He also
learns, which is as much to the purpose, that they have no good hotels.
Now, Perugia is very old, very quaint, full of venerable historical
associations, a center of Etruscan tombs, and other antiquities,
seventeen hundred feet above the sea, and has a first-class hotel. This
modern structure, the “Grand,” occupies the highest ground of the town,
and commands a magnificent view of the Umbrian Valley. East, south,
and west I survey all the details of a landscape of variety and beauty
unsurpassed. It is intersected by the Tiber and some smaller rivers,
which flash in the morning sun. Many villages are visible as brown
patches, among them Assisi, famous as the birthplace of St. Francis.
Mountains bound the view on all sides. Some of them are still tipped
with snow, and their summits would easily be mistaken for clouds if
these were not scurrying past in the south wind. As I write a haze
is beginning to blot out the more distant villages. A heated term is
threatening. But Americans are not to be frightened by that. Only I
wish the roads were not so white and dusty.
This country is a vast cemetery. No one can say how many races were
buried here before the Etruscans passed away in their turn and left the
ground honey-combed with their tombs. When one sinks a well or digs a
cellar for a house, he is apt to strike his spade against a rock, which
gives back a hollow sound. It is the roof of an Etruscan burial-vault.
From this subterranean chamber the air has been excluded for more than
two thousand years. I am told that strange things are sometimes seen in
the tombs at the moment when they are opened, and then vanish forever.
They say that glimpses are caught of old Etruscan lords and ladies
sitting at banquets, and that these disappear the instant the outer air
touches them. When the finder proceeds to open and examine the tomb, he
discovers nothing but a heap of dust in place of the vision that had
startled him. These are obviously fables, for the most part. Though I
believe it is true that an Etruscan knight, in full armor, collapsed
to dusty nothingness in precisely this way when his tomb was invaded a
few years ago. We have been to see the Sepulchre of the Volumnii, about
five miles below Perugia, and found it and its contents very strange
and interesting. It is supposed to date back to the third century B.
C. A descent of some thirty steps leads down to it from the road-side.
First, a chamber, about twenty-five feet square, is entered, and from
this smaller apartments branch to right and left. The sepulchre is
hewn out of the tufa-rock. It is very damp and cold. Heads of Medusa,
dolphins, and serpents are carved with much skill on the top and sides
of this tomb. All around stand small stone urns, each one bearing in
_alto-rilievo_ the representation of a fight. One man is always killing
another, unless the scene is varied by the sacrifice of a bound and
helpless woman or child on an altar. The covers of these urns are
higher works of art. They are surmounted with recumbent figures of men
and women. These are dressed in the costume of their age and sex, and
each has in his or her hand a bowl for tears. Lifting off a cover, I
find inside the urn about a hatful of ashes. I run my fingers through
this mass and feel fragments of burned bones. But I am rudely stirring
up all that remains of some gallant warrior or some haughty beauty,
and withdraw my hand with a sense of remorse. A great many personal
ornaments of exceeding richness and grace have been taken from these
receptacles, and are separately exhibited by the custodian. But if one
wishes to realize the full extent of the arts and sciences familiar to
the old Etruscans, he should inspect the splendid collection in the
University Museum at Perugia.