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VAGARIES
By AXEL MUNTHE
AUTHOR OF 'LETTERS FROM A MOURNING CITY'
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1898
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
He who has written these pages is no author; his life belongs to
reality, and does not leave him any peace for indulging in fiction, and,
besides, he has for nearly twenty years limited his best thoughts and
efforts to that special authorship which has for its only public
apothecaries. He thought it very easy and refreshing to write this
little book. The only difficulty about it has been to find a title, for
it turned out that, when confronted with this problem, neither the
writer nor any of the friends he consulted could say what stuff it was
that the book was made of--was it essays, stories, or what? Essays is
much too important a word for me to use, and stories it certainly is
not, for I cannot remember having ever tried to invent anything.
Besides, isn't it so that in a story something always happens--and here,
as a rule, very little seems to me to happen. I do not know, but can it
be that it is life itself which "happens" in these pages, life as seen
by an individual who can but try to be as the Immortal Gods created him,
since conventionality long ago has given up in despair all hope of
licking him into shape?
Now I want to tell you what made me publish this book--what made me
write it cannot interest you. One day I found sitting in my
consulting-room a young lady with a huge parcel on her knee. I asked her
what I could do for her, and she began by telling me a long tale of woe
about herself. She said that nothing interested her, nothing amused
her, she was bored to death by everything and everybody. She could get
anything she wished to have, she could go anywhere she liked, but she
did not wish for anything, she did not want to go anywhere.
Her life was passed in idle luxury, useless to herself and to everybody
else, said she. Her parents had ended by dragging her from one physician
to another: one had prescribed Egypt, where they had spent the whole
winter; another Cannes, where they had bought a big villa; a third India
and Japan, which they had visited in their fine yacht. "But you are the
only doctor who has done me any good," she said. "I have felt more
happiness during this past week than I have done for years. I owe it to
you, and I have come to thank you for it." She began rapidly to unfasten
her parcel, and I stared at her in amazement while she produced from it
one big doll after another, and quite unceremoniously placed them in a
row on my writing-table amongst all my books and papers. There were
twelve dolls in all, and you never saw such dolls. Some of them were
dressed in well-fitting tailor-made jackets and skirts; some were
evidently off for a yachting trip in blue serge suits and sailor hats;
some wore smart silk dresses covered with lace and frills, and hats
trimmed with huge ostrich feathers; and some looked as if they had only
just returned from the Queen's Drawing-room.
I am accustomed to have queer people in my consulting-room, and I
thought I noticed something glistening in her eyes. "You see, Doctor,"
said she with uncertain voice, "I never thought I could be of any good
to anybody. I used to send money to charities at home, but all I did
was to write out a cheque, and I cannot say I ever felt the slightest
satisfaction in doing it. The other day I happened to come across that
article about Toys in an old _Blackwood's Magazine_,[1] and since then I
have been working from morning till evening to dress up all these dolls
for the poor children you spoke about. I have done it all by myself, and
I have felt so strangely happy the whole time."
And I, who had forgotten all about this little escapade from the toil of
my everyday life, I looked at the sweet face smiling through the tears,
I looked at the long row of dolls who stared approvingly at me from
among all my medical paraphernalia on the writing-table. And for the
first and last time in my life did I feel the ineffable joy of literary
triumph, for the first and last time in my life did I feel that mystic
power of being able to move others.
A smart carriage was waiting for her at the door, but we sent it away,
and I put the kind donor and some of her dolls in a cab, and I remember
we went to see Petruccio. I could see by her shyness that it was the
first time she had entered the home of the poor. She gave each child a
magnificent doll, and she blushed with delight when she saw the little
sisters' beaming faces and heard the poor mother's "God bless you!"
Hardly had a week passed before she brought me another dozen of dolls,
and twelve more sick and destitute children forgot all about their
misery. At Christmas I got up a big festa at the Jardin-des-Plantes
quarter, where most of the poor Italians live, and the Christmas-tree
was loaded with dolls of all sizes and descriptions. She went on
bringing me more and more dolls, and there came a time when I did not
know what to do with them, for I had more dolls than patients. Every
chair and table in my rooms was occupied by a doll, and people asked me
to show them "the dear children," and when I told them I was a bachelor
and had not got any they would not believe me. To tell you the truth,
when spring came I sent the lady to St. Moritz for change of air. I have
never seen her since, but should she come across this book she may know
that it was she and her dolls who decided its publication, and it is in
her honour I have given the Toy article the first place.
There is nothing like success. Some time ago I received a letter from a
man I do not know, who wrote me that he was the mayor of a large town.
He said that after having read a little paper called "For those who love
Music"[2] he had revoked the order which forbade organ-grinders to play
in the streets of his town, and had told his children always to give the
old man a penny, for "perhaps it is Don Gaetano!" I admit I was
immensely flattered by this, and in honour of the kind mayor I have
placed his paper second.
But is this to be the end of my literary fame, or will any other
laurel-leaf mark some hitherto unpublished page of this volume? What
about "Blackcock-shooting"? Will ever an English mother write to me that
she is teaching her son that he can grow up every inch a man without
having ever killed a half-tame pheasant or a grouse, or stealthily crept
up to murder a beautiful stag?
I have not heard from the Germans in Capri yet, but when that letter
comes I believe my literary ambition will have reached its zenith, and
that I shall relapse into silence again.
Rome, _Spring_ 1898.
[Footnote 1: "Toys, from the Paris Horizon" was published in _Blackwood_
several years ago.]
[Footnote 2: This article was printed in _Murray's Magazine_ several
years ago.]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Toys 1
For those who love Music 24
Political Agitations in Capri 44
Menagerie 78
Italy in Paris 102
Blackcock-shooting 125
To ---- 158
Monsieur Alfredo 169
Mont Blanc, King of the Mountains 192
Raffaella 206
The Dogs in Capri, an interior 224
Zoology 253
Hypochondria 262
La Madonna del Buon Cammino 280
VAGARIES
TOYS
FROM THE PARIS HORIZON
In Paris the New Year is awakened by the laughter of children, the dawn
of its first day glows in rosy joy on small round cheeks, and lit up by
the light from children's sparkling eyes, the curtain rises upon the
fairy world of toys.
This world of toys is a faithful miniature of our own, the same
perpetual evolution, the same struggle for existence, goes on there as
here. Types rise and vanish just as with us; the strongest and
best-fitted individuals survive, defying time, whilst the weaker and
less gifted are supplanted and die out.
To the former, for instance, belongs the doll, whose individual type
centuries may have modified, but whose idea is eternal, whose soul lives
on with the imperishable youth of the gods. The doll is thousands of
years old; it has been found in the graves of little Roman children, and
the archaeologists of coming generations will find it amongst the remains
of our culture. The children of Pompeii and Herculaneum used to trundle
hoops just as you and I did when we were small, and who knows whether
the rocking-horse on which we rode as boys is not a lineal descendant of
that proud charger into whose wooden flanks the children of Francis I.
dug their heels. The drum is also inaccessible to the variation of time;
through centuries it has beaten the Christmas and New Year's day's
reveille in the nursery to the battles of the tin-soldiers, and it will
continue to beat as long as there are boys' arms to wield the
drum-sticks and grown-up people's tympanums to be deafened. The
tin-soldier views the future with calm; he will not lay down his arms
until the day of the general disarmament, and we are still a long way
from universal peace. Neither will the toy-sword disappear; it is the
nursery-symbol of the ineradicable vice of our race, the lust for
fighting. Foolscap-crowned and bell-ringing harlequins will also defy
time; they will exist in the toy-world as long as there are fools in our
world. Gold-laced knights with big swords at their sides, curly-locked
princesses with satin shoes on dainty feet, stalwart musketeers with top
boots and big moustachios--all are types which still hold their own
pretty well. The Japanese doll is as yet young, but a brilliant future
lies before her.
Amongst the toy-people who are gradually diminishing may be mentioned
monks, hobgoblins, and kings--an evil omen for the matter of that. I
don't wish to make any one uneasy, but it is a fact that the demand for
kings has considerably decreased of late--my studies in toy-anthropology
do not allow me the slightest doubt on this subject. It is not for me to
try to explain the cause of this serious phenomenon--I understand well
that this topic is a painful one, and shall not persist.
Hobgoblins--who in our world are growing more and more ill at ease since
the locomotives began to pant through the forests, and who have sought
and found a refuge in the toy-world, in picture-books, and
fairy-tales--they begin to decrease, even they; they do not leap any
longer with the same wild energy when they are let loose out of their
boxes, and they do not know how to inspire the same terrifying respect
as before. They are doomed to die; a few generations more and wet-nurses
and nursery-maids will be studying physics, and then there will be an
end to hobgoblins and Jack-in-the-boxes! For my part I shall regret
them.
Our social life expresses itself even through toys, and the rising
generation writes the history of its civilisation in the children's
books. Our age is the age of scientific inquiry, and its sons have no
time for dreams; the generation which is growing up moves in a world of
thought totally different from ours. Nowadays Tom Thumb is left to take
care of himself in the trackless forest, and poor Robinson Crusoe, with
whom we kept such faithful company, is feeling more and more lonely on
his desert island with our common friend Friday and the patient goat
whose neck we so often patted in our dreams. Nowadays boy-thoughts
travel with Phileas Fogg _Round the World in Eighty Days_, or undertake
fearlessly a journey to the moon with carefully calculated pace of I
don't know how many miles in a second, and their knapsacks stuffed with
physical science. Nowadays a little future Edison sits meditating in
his nursery laboratory, trying to stun a fly beneath the bell of a
little air-pump, or he communicates with his little sister by means of a
lilliputian telephone--when we only knew how to besiege toy-fortresses
with pop-guns and arrange tin-soldiers' battles, limiting our scientific
inquiries to that bloodless vivisection which consisted in ripping up
the stomachs of all our dolls and pulling to pieces everything we came
across to find out what was inside. These scientific toys were almost
unknown some ten years ago,--these _jouets scientifiques_ which now rank
so high in toy-shops, and offer perhaps the greatest attraction for the
children of the present. _The tranquillity of parents and the education
of children_ is the device on these toys--yes, there is no doubt that
the children's instruction has been thought of, but their imagination,
what is to become of that, now that even Christmas presents give
lessons in chemistry and physics? And all this artificially increased
modern thirst for knowledge, does it not destroy the germ of romance
which was implanted in the child's mind? does it not drive away that
rosy poetry of dreamland which is the morning glow of the awakening
thought? Maybe I am wrong, but it sometimes seems to me that there is
less laughter in the nurseries now than before, that the children's
faces are growing more earnest. And if I am to be quite frank I must
confess that I fight rather shy of these modern toys, and have never
bought any of them for my little friends.
The same claim for reality which has brought forward these scientific
toys is also shown in the multitude of political characters one comes
across in the toy-world--Bismarck, with his bloodshot eyes and three
tufts of hair; the "Zulu," the "Boer," etc. etc. The famous Tonquin
treasures have not yet been brought to light, but we have long ago made
acquaintance with the Tonquinese and his long nose like Mons. Jules
Ferry; and the recent trouble in the Balkan states resulted in last
year's novelty, _le cri de Bulgare_.[3]
Do not, however, imagine that the _role_ of politics in the toy-world is
limited to this--it is far more extensive, far more important. I now
mean to dwell on this question for a moment or two, and wish to say a
few words concerning _the political agitations of the toy-world_.
The political agitations of the toy-world--a weighty, and hitherto
rather neglected topic--are like the swell, following the political
storms which agitate our own world. The horizon which here opens before
the eyes of the observer is, however, too vast to be framed in this
small paper. I therefore propose to limit the subject to _the French
toy-politics after l'annee terrible_ (1870-71).
The war between Germany and France is over long ago, but the toy-world
still resounds with the echo of the clash of arms of 1870; fighting
still continues with unabated ardour in the lilliputian world, where the
Bismarcks and the Moltkes of the German toy-manufactories each Christmas
fight new battles with _l'Article de Paris_.
Victorious by virtue of their cheapness, the Germans advance. From the
Black Forest descend every Christmas hordes of wooden oxen, sheep,
horses, and dogs to measure themselves against the wares of the
wood-carvers of the Vosges (_St. Claude, etc. etc._). From Hamburg,
Nuremburg, and Berlin emigrate every winter thousands of dolls to
dispute the favour of the buyers with their French colleagues, and every
Christmas dense squadrons of spike-helmeted Prussian tin-soldiers cross
the Rhine to invade the toy-shops and nurseries of France. The struggle
is unequal, the competition too great. Siebenburgen and Tyrol furnish at
will a complete chemist's shop, a plentifully-supplied grocery store, or
a well-stocked farm with crops and implements, cows, sheep, and goats
grazing on the verdant pasture, for three francs fifty centimes. Hamburg
at the same moderate price offers a doll irreproachable to the
superficial observer, a doll with glass eyes, curly hair, and one change
of clothes, whilst the little Parisienne has already spent double that
sum on her toilet alone, and therefore cannot condescend to be yours for
less than half a louis d'or. Nuremburg mobilises a whole regiment of
tin-soldiers, baggage waggons, and artillery (Krupp model), included,
at the same price for which the toy-arsenals of Marais set on foot one
single battalion of "Chasseurs d'Afrique."
The situation is gloomy--the French toys retire all along the line.
But France will never be annihilated! And if the depths of a French
tin-soldier's soul were sounded, there would be found under the surface
of reserve exacted by discipline, the same glorious dreams of revenge
which inspired the volunteers raised by Gambetta from out of the earth.
The French tin-soldier looks towards the east; he knows that he is still
powerless to stop the invasion of the German toy-hordes--he is bound by
Article 4 in the Frankfort treaty of peace, but he bides his time.[4]
And Revenge is near. This time also the signal for rising has been given
from Belleville, by a Gambetta of the toy-world. Some years ago a poor
workman at Belleville got a sudden idea, an idea that since then has
engendered an army which would realise the dream of eternal peace, and
keep in check the assembled troops of all Europe were it a question of
number alone. He sets on foot 5,000,000 soldiers a year. The origin of
these soldiers is humble, but so was Napoleon's. They spring from old
sardine boxes. Thrown away on the dust-heap, the sardine box is saved
from annihilation by the dust-man, who sells it to a rag-merchant in
Belleville or Buttes Chaumont, who in his turn disposes of it to a
specialist, who prepares it for the manufactories. The warriors are cut
out of the bottom of the box. The lid and sides are used for making
guns, railway-carriages, bicycles, etc. etc. All this may seem to you
very unimportant at first sight, but there is now in Belleville a large
manufactory founded on this idea of utilising old sardine boxes, which
occupies no less than two hundred workmen and produces every year over
two milliards of tin toys. I went there the other day, and no one
suspecting that I was a political correspondent, I was admitted without
difficulty to view the gigantic arsenal and its 5,000,000 warriors. The
poor workman out of whose head the fully-armed tin-soldiers
sprung--_via_ the sardine box--is now a rich man, and, what is more, an
eager and keen-sighted patriot, who in his sphere has deserved well of
his country. After retreating for years the French tin-soldiers once
more advance; the German spiked-helmets retire every Christmas from the
conquered positions in French nurseries, and maybe the time is not far
off when the tricolour shall wave over the toy-shops of Berlin--a small
revanche _en attendant_ the great one.
Many years have elapsed since the enemy placed his heel upon the neck of
fallen France, but still to-day Paris is the metropolis of human
culture. Competition has led the Article de Paris to a commercial Sedan,
and from a financial point of view _le jouet Parisien_ no longer belongs
to the great powers of the toy-world. But the Paris doll will never
admit the superiority of her German rival; she bears the stamp of
nobility on her brow, and she means to rule the doll-world as before by
right of her undisputed rank and her artistic refinement. It surely
needs very little human knowledge to distinguish her at once, the
graceful Parisienne with her _fin sourire_ and her expressive eyes, from
one of the dull beauties of Nuremburg or Hamburg, who, by the
stereotyped grin on her carmine lips, and the staring, vacant eyes,
immediately reveals her Teutonic origin. Should any hesitation be
possible a glance at her feet will suffice--the Parisienne's foot is
small and dainty, and she is always shod with a certain coquetry, whilst
the daughter of Germany is characteristically careless of her
_chaussure--tout comme chez nous_, for the matter of that. As for the
rest of her wardrobe--to leave the anthropological side of the
question--Germany, in spite of her war indemnity of five milliards, is
incapable of producing a tasteful doll-toilet; the delicate fingers of a
Paris grisette are required for this. It is therefore considered the
proper thing among German dolls of fashion to import their dresses from
some doll-Worth in Paris. I can even tell you in parenthesis that the
really distinguished German dolls not only send to Paris for their
dresses but also for their heads. The German doll manufacturers,
incapable themselves of producing pretty and expressive doll faces, buy
their dolls' heads by retail from the porcelain factories of Montreux
and St. Maurice, where they are modelled by first-rate artists, such as
a Carrier-Belleuse and others.
Up till now I have confined myself to the upper classes of doll society,
but even amongst the well-to-do middle-class dolls of ten to fifteen
francs apiece, the difference between German and French is palpable at
first sight. The further one descends into the lower regions of society,
in the doll _bourgeoisie_, the less clear becomes the national type. I
will undertake, however, to recognise my French friend even amongst
dolls of five francs apiece. To determine the nationality of a one-franc
doll, it is necessary to possess great preliminary knowledge and much
natural aptitude. For the benefit of future explorers in these still
obscure regions of anthropology I may here point out an important item
in the necessary physical examination--the doll must be shaken. If there
is a rattling inside she is probably French, for the Paris grisettes who
make these dolls have a habit of putting some pebbles inside them,
which, I am told, tends to develop the taste for vivisection amongst the
rising generation.
Lower down in the series where the transition type of Darwin is found,
where the doll is without either arms or legs, and where every trace of
soul has died out from her impassive wooden face, stamped with the same
passion-free calm which characterises the marble folk of antiquity, or
where an unconscious smile alone glides over the rudimentary features
into which the wax has hardened, where the nose is nothing but a
prophetic outline, and where the black eyes are still shaded by the
chaotic darkness out of which the first doll rose--there all national
distinctions cease, there the embryo doll lives her life of Arcadian
simplicity, undisturbed by all political agitations in the land which
gave her birth; the doll _a treize sous_ does not emigrate, maybe from
patriotic motives, maybe from lack of initiative.[5] Her role in life is
humble; she belongs to the despised. Her place in the large toy-shops
is in a dark corner behind the other dolls, who stretch forth their
jointed arms towards better-to-do purchasers, and with gleaming glass
eyes and laughing lips appropriate the admiring glances of all the
customers. But far away in the deserted streets of the suburbs, where
the whole toy-shop consists of a portable table and the public of a
crowd of ragged urchins,--there the doll _a treize sous_ reigns supreme.
By the flickering light of the lantern illuminating the modest
fairy-world which Christmas and the New Year display to the children of
the poor, there the despised doll becomes beautiful as a queen and is
surrounded by her whole court of admirers.
And I myself am one of her admirers. Not one of the fashionable beauties
of the Magasin du Louvre has ever made my heart beat one whit the
faster; not one of the charming coquettes of the Bon Marche has
succeeded in catching me in the net of her blond tresses; but I admit
the tender sympathy with which my eyes rest upon the coarse features of
the doll _a treize sous_. Every one to his taste--I think she is
handsome; I cannot help it. And we have often met; chance leads me
frequently across her path. But fancy if it were not chance! fancy if
instead it was my undeclared affection which so often guided my steps to
these places where I knew I should meet my sweetheart! fancy if I were
falling in love at last! At all events I haven't said anything to her,
nor has she ever said a word to me either of encouragement or rebuff.
But, as I said before, we often meet at the houses of mutual friends,
and sometimes, especially at Christmas and New Year, have we come
together there. My visit does not impress them very much, but what
happiness does not the doll spread around her! Realising my subordinate
role I willingly bow before the superior social talents of my companion,
and silently in a corner by myself I enjoy her success. I don't know how
she manages it, but she has hardly crossed the threshold before it seems
to grow brighter inside the dark garret where live the children of
destitution. The light radiates from the sparkling eyes of the little
ones, glimmers in a faint smile on the pale cheek of the sick brother,
and falls like a halo round the bald head of the doll. The little fellow
crawling on the floor suddenly ceases his sobbing; he forgets that he is
hungry, forgets that he is cold, and with radiant joy he stretches out
his arms to welcome the unexpected guest. And later at night, when it is
time for me to go away, when the children of the rich have danced
themselves tired round the Christmas tree, when the soldier's bugle has
sounded in the boys' nursery, and when the little girls' smart dolls
have been put to sleep each in their dainty bed--then little sister up
in the garret tenderly wraps mother's ragged shawl round her beloved
doll, for the night is cold and the doll has nothing on; and so they
fall asleep side by side together, the pauper doll and her grateful
little admirer.
Despised and ridiculed by us grown-up people, whose eyes have been led
astray by the modern demand for realism, it is nevertheless a fact that
the doll _a treize sous_ in the freshness of her primitive naivete
approaches nearer the ideal than the costly beauties of the Louvre and
Bon Marche, who have reached the highest summit of refinement. We
grown-up people have lost the faculty of understanding this from the
moment we lost the simplicity of our childhood, but our teacher in this,
as in many other things, is the little chap who still crawls about on
the floor. Put a smart doll of fashion side by side with a simple pauper
doll whose shape is as yet barely human, and you will see that the
child usually stretches out his arms towards the latter. It sounds like
a paradox, but it is a fact that you can easily verify for yourself;
these cheap toys are, as a rule, preferred even by the children of the
rich--that is to say, so long as they are real children and unconscious
of the value of money. Later on, when they have acquired this knowledge,
they are driven out from the Eden of childhood, their eyes are opened to
the nakedness of the pauper doll, and what I have just said ceases to be
true.
But the "political agitations"--what has become of them? Far away from
all political storms and quarrels, my thoughts have fled to the garret
idyll of the pauper doll; I have tried to sketch her as she has so often
revealed herself to me; I have lifted a corner of the veil of unmerited
oblivion which conceals her humble existence, there where she lives to
bring joy to those whom the world rears to sorrow. I have done so as a
tribute of gratitude for the pure joy which she has so often given me
also, although I am myself too old to play with dolls. But, thank God, I
am not too old to look on!
The doll is not old, and old age will never touch her--she will never
grow old; she dies young, even as the hero, beloved of the gods. She
dies young, and the first few weeks of the New Year have hardly passed
away before she wends her way to the strange Elysian fields, where all
that survives of broken toys sleeps under the shade of withered
Christmas trees.
[Footnote 3: An uncanny little invention which, manipulated by hundreds
of street boys, ran all along the Boulevards during the first week of
the New Year. It is about the size of a thimble and costs four sous. As
the Eastern question still commands the attention of Europe, we shall
probably be favoured with it again this winter. To be correct, I must
here state that this attractive toy is also offered for sale under the
name of _Le dernier soupir de la Belle Mere_.]
[Footnote 4: The German toys pay, since 1871, the ridiculous duty of
sixty francs per hundred kilo.]
[Footnote 5: The doll _a treize sous_ is a characteristic Parisian type;
she belongs to the family of _poupards_ and is usually made of
papier-mache or wood. After the making of the head the creative power of
the artist comes to a sudden stand-still; the rest of the body is only a
sketch and loses itself in an oblong chaos.]
FOR THOSE WHO LOVE MUSIC
I had engaged him by the year. Twice a week he came and went through his
whole repertoire, and lately, out of sympathy for me, he would play the
Miserere of the _Trovatore_, which was his show piece, twice over. He
stood there in the middle of the street looking steadfastly up at my
windows while he played, and when he had finished he would take off his
hat with a "Addio Signor!"
It is well known that the barrel-organ, like the violin, gets a fuller
and more sympathetic tone the older it is. The old artist had an
excellent instrument, not of the modern noisy type which imitates a
whole orchestra with flutes and bells and beats of drums, but a
melancholy old-fashioned barrel-organ which knew how to lend a dreamy
mystery to the gayest allegretto, and in whose proudest tempo di Marcia
there sounded an unmistakable undertone of resignation. And in the
tenderer pieces of the repertoire, where the melody, muffled and
staggering like a cracked old human voice, groped its way amongst the
rusty pipes of the treble, then there was a trembling in the bass like
suppressed sobs. Now and then the voice of the tired organ failed it
completely, and then the old man would resignedly turn the handle during
some bars of rest more touching in their eloquent silence than any
music.
True, the instrument was itself very expressive, but the old man had
surely his share in the sensation of melancholy which came over me
whenever I heard his music. He had his beat in the poor quarter behind
the Jardin des Plantes, and many times during my solitary rambles up
there had I stopped and taken my place among the scanty audience of
ragged street boys which surrounded him.
We made acquaintance one misty dark autumn day. I sat on a bench under
the fading trees, which in vain had tried to deck the gloomy square with
a little summer, and now hopelessly suffered their leaves to fall; and,
like a melancholy accompaniment to my dreamy thoughts, the old
barrel-organ in the slum close by coughed out the aria from the last act
of the Traviata: "Addio del passato bei sogni ridenti!"
I startled as the music stopped. The old man had gone through his whole
repertoire, and after a despairing inspection of his audience he
resignedly tucked the monkey under his cloak and prepared to depart. I
have always liked barrel-organs, and I have a sufficiently correct ear
to distinguish good music from bad; so I went up and thanked him and
asked him to play a little longer, unless he was too tired in the arm. I
am afraid he was not spoiled by praise, for he looked at me with a sad,
incredulous expression which pained me, and with an almost shy
hesitation he asked me if it was any special piece I wished to hear. I
left the choice to the old man. After a mysterious manipulation with
some screws under the organ, which was answered from its depths by a
half-smothered groan, he began slowly and with a certain solemnity to
turn the handle, and with a friendly glance at me, he said, "_Questo e
per gli amici_."[6]
It was a tune I had not heard him play before, but I knew well the sweet
old melody, and half aloud I searched my memory for the words of perhaps
the finest folk-song of Naples:
"Fenestra che luciva e mo non luce
Segn' e ca Nenna mia stace malata
S' affaccia la sorella e me lo dice:
Nennella toja e morta e s' e aterrata
Chiagneva sempe ca dormeva sola,
Mo dorme in distinta compagnia."
He looked at me with a shy interest while he played, and when he had
finished he bared his gray head; I also raised my hat, and thus our
acquaintance was made.
It was not difficult to see that times were hard--the old man's clothes
were doubtful, and the pallor of poverty lay over his withered features,
where I read the story of a long life of failure. He came from the
mountains around Monte Cassino, so he informed me, but where the monkey
hailed from I never quite got to know.
Thus we met from time to time during my rambles in the poor quarters.
Had I a moment to spare I stopped for a while to listen to a tune or
two, as I saw that it gratified the old man, and since I always carried
a lump of sugar in my pocket for any dog acquaintance I might possibly
meet, I soon made friends with the monkey also. The relations between
the little monkey and her impresario were unusually cordial, and this
notwithstanding that she had completely failed to fulfil the
expectations which had been founded upon her--she had never been able to
learn a single trick, the old man told me. Thus all attempts at
education had long ago been abandoned, and she sat there huddled
together on her barrel-organ and did nothing at all. Her face was sad,
like that of most animals, and her thoughts were far away. But now and
then she woke up from her dreams, and her eyes could then take a
suspicious, almost malignant expression, as they lit upon some of the
street boys who crowded round her tribune and tried to pull her tail,
which stuck out from her little gold-laced garibaldi. To me she was
always very amiable; confidently she laid her wrinkled hand in mine and
absently she accepted the little attentions I was able to offer her. She
was very fond of sweetmeats, and burnt almonds were, in her opinion,
the most delectable thing in the world.
Since the old man had once recognised his musical friend on a balcony of
the Hotel de l'Avenir, he often came and played under my windows. Later
on he became engaged, as already said, to come regularly and play twice
a week,--it may, perhaps, appear superfluous for one who was studying
medicine, but the old man's terms were so small, and you know I have
always been so fond of music. Besides it was the only recreation at
hand--I was working hard in the Hotel de l'Avenir, for I was to take my
degree in the spring.
So passed the autumn, and the hard time came. The rich tried on the new
winter fashions, and the poor shivered with the cold. It became more and
more difficult for well-gloved hands to leave the warm muff or the
fur-lined coat to take out a copper for the beggar, and more and more
desperate became the struggle for bread amongst the problematical
existences of the street. Before hopelessly-closed windows small
half-frozen artistes gave concerts in the courtyards; unnoticed
resounded the most telling pieces of the repertoire about _La bella
Napoli_ and _Santa Lucia_, while stiffened fingers twanged the
mandoline, and the little sister, shivering with cold, banged the
tambourine. In vain the old street-singer sang with hoarse pathos the
song about _La Gloire_ and _La Patrie_, and in vain my friend played
that piece _per gli amici_--thicker and thicker fell the snowflakes over
the humbly-bared heads, and scarcer and scarcer fell the coppers into
the outstretched hats.
Now and then I came across my friend, and we always had, as before, a
kind word for one another. He was now wrapped up in an old Abruzzi
cloak, and I noticed that the greater the cold became the faster did he
turn the handle to keep himself warm; and towards December the Miserere
itself was performed in allegretto.
The monkey had now become civilian, and wrapped up her little thin body
in a long ulster such as Englishmen wear; but she was fearfully cold
notwithstanding, and, forgetful of all etiquette, more and more often
she jumped from the barrel-organ and crept in under the old man's cloak.
And while they were suffering out there in the cold I sat at home in my
cosy, warm room, and instead of helping them, I forgot all about them,
more and more taken up as I was with my coming examination, with no
thought but for myself. And then one day I suddenly left my lodgings and
removed to the Hotel Dieu to take the place of a comrade, and weeks
passed before I put my foot out of the hospital.
I remember it so well, it was the very New Year's Day we met each other
again. I was crossing the Place de Notre Dame, mass was just over, and
the people were streaming out of the old cathedral. As usual, a row of
beggars was standing before the door, imploring the charity of the
churchgoers. The severe winter had increased their number, and besides
the usual beggars, cripples and blind, who were always by the church
porch, reciting in loud voices the history of their misery, there stood
a silent rank of Poverty's accidental recruits--poor fellows whose daily
bread had been buried under the snow, and whose pride the cold had at
last benumbed. At the farther end, and at some distance from the others,
an old man stood with bent head and outstretched hat, and with painful
surprise I recognised my friend in his threadbare old coat without the
Abruzzi cloak, without the barrel-organ, without the monkey. My first
impulse was to go up to him, but an uneasy feeling of I do not know
what held me back; I felt that I blushed and I did not move from my
place. Every now and then a passer-by stopped for a moment and made as
if to search his pocket, but I did not see a single copper fall into the
old man's hat. The place became gradually deserted, and one beggar after
another trotted off with his little earnings. At last a child came out
of the church, led by a gentleman in mourning; the child pointed towards
the old man, and then ran up to him and laid a silver coin in his hat.
The old man humbly bowed his head in thanks, and even I, with my
unfortunate absent-mindedness, was very nearly thanking the little donor
also, so pleased was I. My friend carefully wrapped up the precious gift
in an old pocket-handkerchief, and stooping forward, as if still
carrying the barrel-organ on his back, he walked off.
I happened to be quite free that morning, and, thinking that a little
walk before luncheon could do me no harm after the hospital air, I
followed him at a short distance across the Seine. Once or twice I
nearly caught him up, and all but tapped him on the shoulder, with a
"Buon giorno, Don Gaetano!" Yet, without exactly knowing why, I drew
back at the last moment and let him get a few paces ahead of me again.
An icy wind blew straight against us, and I drew my fur cloak closer
round me. But just then it suddenly struck me to ask myself why, after
all, it was I who owned such a warm and comfortable fur cloak, whilst
the old man who tramped along in front of me had only a threadbare old
coat? And why was it for me that luncheon was waiting, and not for him?
Why should I have a good blazing fire burning in my cosy room, while the
old man had to wander about the streets the whole day long to find his
food, and in the evening go home to his miserable garret and,
unprotected against the cold of the winter night, prepare for the next
day's struggle for bread?
And it suddenly dawned upon me why I had blushed when I saw him at Notre
Dame, and why I could not make up my mind to go and speak to him--I felt
ashamed before this old man, I felt ashamed at life's unmerited
generosity to me and its severity to him. I felt as if I had taken
something from him which I ought to restore to him; and I began to
wonder whether it might be the fur coat. But I got no further in my
meditations, for the old man stopped and looked in at a shop window. We
had just crossed the Place Maubert and turned into the Boulevard St.
Germain; the boulevard was full of people, so that, without being
noticed, I could approach him quite close. He was standing before an
elegant confectioner's shop, and to my surprise he entered without
hesitation. I took up my position before the shop window, alongside some
shivering street arabs who stood there, absorbed in the contemplation of
the unattainable delicacies within, and I watched the old man carefully
untie his pocket-handkerchief and lay the little girl's gift upon the
counter. I had hardly time to draw back before he came out with a red
paper bag of sweets in his hand, and with rapid steps he started off in
the direction of the Jardin des Plantes.
I was very much astonished at what I had seen, and my curiosity made me
follow him. He slackened his pace at one of the little slums behind
Hopital de la Pitie, and I saw him disappear into a dirty old house. I
waited outside a minute or two, and then I groped my way through the
pitch-dark entrance, climbed up a filthy staircase, and found a door
slightly ajar. An icy, dark room, in the middle three ragged little
children crouched together around a half-extinct brazier, in the corner
the only furniture in the room--a clean iron bedstead, with crucifix and
rosary hung on the wall above it, and by the window an image of the
Madonna adorned with gaudy paper flowers; I was in Italy, in my poor,
exiled Italy. And in the purest Tuscan the eldest sister informed me
that Don Gaetano lived in the garret. I went up there and knocked, but
no one answered, so I opened the door myself. The room was brightly lit
up by a blazing fire. With his back towards the door, Don Gaetano was on
his knees before the stove busy heating a little saucepan over the fire,
beside him on the floor lay an old mattress with the well-known Abruzzi
cloak thrown over it, and close by, spread out on a newspaper, were
various delicacies--an orange, walnuts, and raisins, and there also was
the red paper bag. Don Gaetano dropped a lump of sugar into the
saucepan, stirred it with a stick, and in a persuasive voice I heard
him say, "_Che bella roba, che bella roba, quanto e buono questa latte
con lo zucchero! Non piange anima mia, adesso siamo pronti!_"[7]
A slight rustling was heard beneath the Abruzzi cloak, and a black
little hand was stretched out towards the red paper bag.
"_Primo il latte, primo il latte_," admonished the old man. "_Non
importa, piglia tu una_,"[8] he repented, and took a big burnt almond
out of the paper bag; the little hand disappeared, and a crunching was
heard under the cloak. Don Gaetano poured the warm milk in a saucer, and
then he carefully lifted up a corner of the cloak. There lay the poor
little monkey with heaving breast and eyes glowing with fever. Her face
had become so small, and her complexion was ashy gray. The old man took
her on his knees, and tenderly as a mother he poured some spoonfuls of
the warm milk into her mouth. She looked with indifferent eyes towards
the delicacies on the table, and absently she let her fingers pass
through her master's beard. She was so tired that she could hardly hold
her head up, and now and then she coughed so that her thin little body
trembled, and she pressed both her hands to her temples. Don Gaetano
shook his head sadly, and carefully laid the little invalid back under
the cloak.
A feeble blush spread over the old man's face as he caught sight of me.
I told him that I had happened to be passing by just as he was entering
his house, and that I took the liberty of following him upstairs in
order to bid him good-morning and to give him my new address, in the
hope that he would come and play to me as before. I involuntarily looked
round for the barrel-organ as I spoke, and Don Gaetano, who understood,
informed me that he no longer played the organ--he sang. I glanced at
the precious pile of wood beside the fireplace, at the new blanket that
hung before the window to keep out the draught, at the delicacies on the
newspaper--and I also understood.
The monkey had been ill three weeks--_la febbre_, explained the old man.
We knelt one at each side of the bed, and the sick animal looked at me
with her mute prayer for help. Her nose was hot, as it is with sick
children and dogs, her face wrinkled like that of an old, old woman, and
her eyes had got quite a human expression. Her breathing was so short,
and we could hear how it rattled in her throat. The diagnosis was not
difficult--she had consumption. Now and again she stretched out her thin
arms as if she implored us to help her, and Don Gaetano thought that she
did so because she wished to be bled.[9] I would willingly have given
in in this case, although opposed in principle to this treatment, if I
had thought it possible that any benefit could have been derived from
it; but I knew only too well how unlikely this was, and I tried my best
to make Don Gaetano understand it. Unhappily I did not know myself what
there was to be done. I had at that time a friend amongst the keepers of
the monkey-house in the Jardin des Plantes, and the same night he came
with me to have a look at her; he said that there was nothing to be
done, and that there was no hope. And he was right. For one week more
the fire blazed in Don Gaetano's garret, then it was left to go out, and
it became cold and dark as before in the old man's home.
True, he got his barrel-organ out from the pawn-shop, and now and then a
copper did fall into his hat also. He did not die of starvation, and
that was about all he asked of life.
So the spring came and I left Paris; and God knows what has become of
Don Gaetano.
If you happen to hear a melancholy old barrel-organ in the courtyard, go
to the window and give a penny to the poor errant musician--perhaps it
is Don Gaetano! If you find that his organ disturbs you, try if you like
it better by making him stand a little farther off, but don't send him
away with harshness! He has to hear so many hard words as it is; why
should not we then be a little kind to him--we who love music?
[Footnote 6: "This is for friends."]
[Footnote 7: "What nice things, what nice things, how good this milk
with sugar is! Don't cry, my darling, it is ready now!"]
[Footnote 8: "The milk first, the milk first--never mind, take one."]
[Footnote 9: The lower classes in Italy still use bleeding for all kinds
of diseases, and this treatment is also extended to animals. I knew a
monkey in Naples who was bled twice.]
POLITICAL AGITATIONS IN CAPRI
Don't be alarmed--they are not going to disturb the peace of Europe.
Alas! there are spots even on the sun, and neither is "the loveliest
pearl in Naples' crown" altogether faultless.
Croaking ravens swarm around the ruins where thousand-year-old memories
lie slumbering, dirty dwarf hands fumble amidst the remains of fallen
giants' vanished splendour, barbarians pull to pieces the mosaic floors
on which the feet of emperors trod. Night-capped and blue-stockinged
Prose startles the Idyll which lies there dreaming with half-closed
eyes, grinning fauns push aside the vines which hide from view the cool
grotto where the nymph of the legend bathes her graceful limbs.
Capri is sick, Capri is infested with parasites even as the old lion.
Capri is full of--yes, but in politics one has to be careful; I say
nothing, read the article to the end, and you will see what it is that
Capri is full of.
Amidst the ruins of Tiberius's Villa you sit on high, gazing out over
the sea. Absently your eye follows a white sail in the distance; it is a
little peaceful fishing-boat quietly sailing home. And your thoughts
wander far, far away. Here, in his marble-shining palace, stood once
upon a time the ruler of the world; he gazed out over the sea, he also,
but his eye was not as fearless as yours, for he dreaded the avenger of
his victims in every approaching boat; and when the bay was dark he
would still linger up there and, trembling, seek to read his doom in the
stars which studded the vault of heaven. No crimes could help him any
longer to forgetfulness of himself; no vice could any more benumb the
torture of his soul; within his rock-built citadel the sombre emperor
suffered torments far greater than any he had ever inflicted on his
victims; his heart had long since bled to death under his purple toga,
but his soul lived on in its titanic sorrow. The spot whereon you lie is
named _Il Salto di Tiberio_. From here he hurled his victims into the
sea, and there below men were rowing about in boats in order to crush to
death with their oars those who were still struggling with the waves.
Bend over the precipice and see the foaming surge--old fishermen have
told me that sometimes when the moon goes under a cloud and all is dark,
the waves breaking over the rocks beneath seem tinged with blood.