Just Heaven! for what wise reasons hast thou ordered it that
beggary and urbanity, which are at such variance in other
countries, should find a way to be at unity in this?--STERNE.
A rich American, with a kind heart and a lively sense of humour, was
heard to remark as he crossed the Italian frontier, _en route_ for
Switzerland: “_Now_, if there be any one in the length and breadth of
Italy who has not yet begged from me, this is his time to come forward.”
It was a genial invitation, betokening that tolerance of mind rarely
found in the travelling Saxon, who is fortified against beggars, as
against many other foreign institutions, by a petition-proof armour of
finely welded principle and prejudice. He disapproves of mendicancy
in general. He believes--or he says he believes--that you wrong and
degrade your fellow men by giving them money. He has the assurance
of his guide-book that the corps of ragged veterans who mount guard
over every church door in Rome are unworthy of alms, being themselves
capitalists on no ignoble scale. His irritation, when sore beset, is
natural and pardonable. His arguments are not easily answered. He can
be vaguely statistical,--real figures are hard to come by in Italy,--he
can be earnestly philosophical, he can quote Mr. Augustus Hare. In the
end, he leaves you perplexed in spirit and dull of heart, with sixpence
saved in your pocket, and the memory of pinched old faces--which do
not look at all like the faces of capitalists at home--spoiling your
appetite for dinner.
This may be right, but it is a melancholy attitude to adopt in a land
where beggary is an ancient and not dishonourable profession. All
art, all legend, all tradition, tell for the beggar. The splendid
background against which he stands gives colour and dignity to his
part. We see him sheltered by St. Julian,--ah, beautiful young beggar
of the Pitti!--fed by St. Elizabeth, clothed by St. Martin, warmed by
the fagots which St. Francesca Romano gathered for him in the wintry
woods. What heavenly blessings have followed the charity shown to
his needs! What evils have followed thick and fast where he has been
rejected! I remember these things when I meet his piteous face and
outstretched palm to-day. It is true that the Italian beggar almost
always takes a courteous, or even an impatient denial in wonderfully
good part; but, should he feel disposed to be malevolent, I am not
one to be indifferent to his malevolence. I do not like to hear a
shaken old voice wish that I may die unshriven. There are too many
possibilities involved.
So sang a withered Sibyl energetical,
And banned the ungiving door with lips prophetical.
Mr. Henry James is of the opinion (and one envies him his ability to
hold it) that “the sum of Italian misery is, on the whole, less than
the sum of the Italian knowledge of life. That people should thank you,
with a smile of enchanting sweetness, for the gift of twopence is a
proof certainly of an extreme and constant destitution; but--keeping in
mind the sweetness--it is also a proof of a fortunate ability not to be
depressed by circumstances.” This is a comforting faith to foster, and
more credible than the theory of secreted wealth within the beggar’s
pouch. It takes a great many pennies to build up a substantial fortune,
and the competition in mendicancy is too keen to permit of the profits
being large. The business, like other roads to fortune, is “not what
it once was.” A particularly good post, long held and undisputed, an
imposingly venerable and patriarchal appearance, a total absence of
legs or arms,--these things may lead to modest competency; but these
things are rare equipments. My belief in the affluence of beggars, a
belief I was cherishing carefully for the sake of my own peace of mind,
received a rude shock when I beheld a crippled old woman, whose post
was in the Piazza S. Claudio, tucked into a doorway one cold December
midnight, her idle crutches lying on her knees. If she had had a
comfortable or even an uncomfortable home to go to, why should she have
stayed to shiver and freeze in the deserted Roman streets?
The latitude extended by the Italian Church to beggars, the patronage
shown them, never ceases to vex the tourist mind. An American cannot
reconcile himself to marching up the church steps between two rows
of mendicants, each provided with a chair, a little _scaldino_, and
a tin cup, in which a penny rattles lustily. There is nothing casual
about the appearance of these freeholders. They make no pretence--as
do beggars at home--of sudden emergency or frustrated hopes. They are
following their daily avocation,--the only one for which they are
equipped,--and following it in a spirit of acute and healthy rivalry.
To give to one and not to all is to arouse such a clamorous wail that
it seems, on the whole, less stony-hearted to refuse altogether. Once
inside the sacred walls, we find a small and well-selected body of
practitioners hovering around the portals, waiting to exact their
tiny toll when we are ready to depart. “Exact” is not too strong a
word to use, for I have had a lame but comely young woman, dressed in
decent black, with a black veil framing her expressive face, hold the
door of the Aracœli firmly barred with one arm, while she swept the
other toward me in a gesture so fine, so full of mingled entreaty and
command, that it was worth double the fee she asked. Occasionally--not
often--an intrepid beggar steals around during Mass, and, touching each
member of the congregation on the shoulder, gently implores an alms.
This is a practice frowned upon as a rule, save in Sicily, where a
“plentiful poverty” doth so abide that no device for moving compassion
can be too rigidly condemned. I have been present at a high Mass in
Palermo, when a ragged woman with a baby in her arms moved slowly
after the sacristan, who was taking up the offertory collection, and
took up a second collection of her own, quite as though she were an
authorized official. It was a scandalous sight to Western eyes,--in our
well-ordered churches at home such a proceeding would be as impossible
as a trapeze performance in the aisle,--but what depths of friendly
tolerance it displayed, what gentle, if inert, compassion for the
beggar’s desperate needs!
For in Italy, as in Spain, there is no gulf set between the rich and
poor. What these lands lack in practical philanthropy is atoned for
by a sweet and universal friendliness of demeanour, and by a prompt
recognition of rights. It would be hard to find in England or in
America such tattered rags, such gaunt faces and hungry eyes; but
it would be impossible to find in Italy or in Spain a church where
rags are relegated to some inconspicuous and appropriate background.
The Roman beggar jostles--but jostles urbanely--the Roman prince;
the noblest and the lowliest kneel side by side in the Cathedral of
Seville. I have heard much all my life about the spirit of equality,
and I have listened to fluent sermons, designed to prove that
Christians, impelled by supernatural grace, love this equality with
especial fervour; but I have never seen its practical workings, save in
the churches of southern Europe. There tired mothers hush their babies
to sleep, and wan children play at ease in their Father’s house. There
I have been privileged to stand for hours, during long and beautiful
services, because the only available chairs had been appropriated by
forlorn creatures who would not have been permitted to intrude into the
guarded pews at home.
It has been always thus. We have the evidence of writers who give it
with reluctant sincerity; of Borrow, for example, who firmly believed
he hated many things for which he had a natural and visible affinity.
“To the honour of Spain be it spoken,” he writes in “The Bible in
Spain,” “that it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is
never insulted nor looked upon with contempt. Even at an inn the poor
man is never spurned from the door, and, if not harboured, is at least
dismissed with fair words, and consigned to the mercies of God and His
Mother.”
The more ribald Nash, writing centuries earlier, finds no words too
warm in which to praise the charities of Catholic Rome. “The bravest
Ladies, in gownes of beaten gold, washing pilgrims’ and poor soldiours’
feete.... This I must say to the shame of us English; if good workes
may merit Heaven, they doe them, we talk about them.”
The Roman ladies “doe them” still; not so picturesquely as they did
three hundred years ago, but in the same noble and delicate spirit.
Their means and their methods are far below the means and methods of
charitable organizations in England and America. They cannot find work
where there is no work to be done. They cannot lift the hopeless burden
of want which is the inevitable portion of the Italian poor. They can
at best give only the scanty loaf which keeps starvation from the door.
They cannot educate the children, nor make the swarming populace of
Rome “self-respecting,” by which we mean self-supporting. But they can
and do respect the poverty they alleviate. Their mental attitude is
simpler than ours. They know well that it is never the wretchedly poor
who “fear fate and cheat nature,” and they see, with more equanimity
than we can muster, the ever recurring tragedy of birth. The hope, so
dear to our Western hearts, of ultimately raising the whole standard of
humanity shines very dimly on their horizon; but if they plan less for
the race, they draw closer to the individual. They would probably, if
questioned, say frankly with Sir Thomas Browne: “I give no alms only to
satisfy the hunger of my Brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the Will
and Command of my God.” And if the “Religio Medici” be somewhat out
of date,--superseded, we are told, by a finer altruism which rejects
the system of reward,--we may still remember Mr. Pater’s half rueful
admission that it was all “pure profit” to its holder.
When Charles Lamb lamented, with innate perversity, the decay of
beggars, he merely withdrew his mind from actualities,--which always
annoyed him,--and set it to contemplate those more agreeable figures
which were not suffering under the disadvantage of existence. It was
the beggar of romance, of the ballads, of the countryside, of the merry
old songs, whose departure he professed to regret. The outcast of the
London streets could not have been--even in Lamb’s time--a desirable
feature. To-day we find him the most depressing object in the civilized
world; and the fact that he is what is called, in the language of
the philanthropist, “unworthy,” makes him no whit more cheerful of
contemplation. The ragged creature who rushes out of the darkness to
cover the wheel of your hansom with his tattered sleeve manages to
convey to your mind a sense of degraded wretchedness, calculated
to lessen the happiness of living. His figure haunts you miserably,
when you want to forget him and be light of heart. By his side, the
venerable, white-bearded old humbugs who lift the leather curtains
of Roman and Venetian churches stand forth as cheerful embodiments
of self-respecting mendicancy. They, at least, are no pariahs, but
recognized features of the social system. They are the Lord’s poor,
whose prayers are fertile in blessings. It is kind to drop a coin
into the outstretched hand, and to run the risk--not so appalling as
we seem to think--of its being unworthily bestowed. “Rake not into
the bowels of unwelcome truth to save a half-penny;” but remember,
rather, the ever-ready alms of Dr. Johnson, who pitied most those who
were least deserving of compassion. Little doubt that he was often
imposed upon. The fallen women went on their way, sinning as before.
The “old struggler” probably spent his hard-earned shilling for gin.
The sick beggar whom he carried on his back should by rights have been
languishing in the poorhouse. But the human quality of his kindness
made it a vital force, incapable of waste. It warmed sad hearts in his
unhappy time, as it warms our sad hearts now. Like the human kindness
of St. Martin, it still remains--a priceless heritage--to enrich us
poor beggars in sentiment to-day.
And this reminds me to ask--without hope of answer--if the blessed St.
Martin can be held responsible for the number of beggars in Tours? The
town is not pinched and hunger-bitten like the sombre old cities of
Italy, but possesses rather an air of comfort and gracious prosperity.
It is in the heart of a province where cruel poverty is unknown,
and where “thrift and success present themselves as matters of good
taste.” Yet we cannot walk half an hour in Tours without meeting a
number of highly respectable beggars, engrossed in their professional
duties. They do not sin against the harmony of their surroundings by
any revolting demonstration of raggedness or penury. On the contrary,
they are always neat and decent; and on Sundays have an aspect of such
unobtrusive well-being that one would never suspect them of mendicancy.
When a clean, comfortably dressed old gentleman, with a broad straw
hat, and a rosebud in his buttonhole, crosses the street to affably
ask an alms, I own I am surprised, until I remember St. Martin, who,
fifteen hundred years ago, shared his mantle with the beggar shivering
by the way. It was at Amiens that the incident occurred, but the
soldier saint became in time the apostle and bishop of Tours; wherefore
it is in Tours, and not in Amiens, that beggars do plentifully abound
to-day; it is in Tours, and not in Amiens, that the charming old tale
moves us to sympathy with their not very obvious needs. They are an
inheritance bequeathed us by the saint. They are in strict accord with
the traditions of the place. I am told that giving sous to old men at
church doors is not a practical form of benevolence; but neither was it
practical to cut a military cloak in two. Something must be allowed to
impulse, something to the generous unreason of humanity.
And, after all, it is not begging, but only the beggar who has
forfeited favour with the elect. We are begged from on an arrogantly
large scale all our lives, and we are at liberty to beg from others.
It may be wrong to give ten cents to a legless man at a street corner;
but it is right, and even praiseworthy, to send ten tickets for some
dismal entertainment to our dearest friend, who must either purchase
the dreaded things or harass her friends in turn. If we go to church,
we are confronted by a system of begging so complicated and so resolute
that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side. Mr. John
Richard Green, the historian, was wont to maintain that the begging
friar of the pre-reform period, “who at any rate had the honesty to
sing for his supper, and preach a merry sermon from the portable pulpit
he carried round,” had been far outstripped by a “finer mendicant,” the
begging rector of to-day. A hospital nurse once told me that she was
often too tired to go to church--when free--on Sundays. “But it doesn’t
matter whether I go or not,” she said with serious simplicity, “because
in our church we have the envelope system.” When asked what the system
was which thus lifted church-going from the number of Christian
obligations, she explained that envelopes marked with each Sunday’s
date were distributed to the congregation, and duly returned with a
quarter inclosed. When she stayed at home, she sent the envelope to
represent her. The collecting of the quarters being the pivotal feature
of the Sunday’s service, her duty was fulfilled.
With this, and many similar recollections in my mind, I own I am
disposed to think leniently of Italy’s church-door mendicants. How
moderate their demands, how disproportionate their gratitude, how
numberless their disappointments, how unfailing their courtesy! I
can push back a leather curtain for myself, I can ring a sacristan’s
bell. But the patriarch who relieves me of these duties has some
dim, mysterious right to stand in my way,--a right I cannot fathom,
but will not pretend to dispute. He is, after all, a less insistent
beggar than are the official guardians of galleries and museums, who
relieve the unutterable weariness of their idle days by following
me from room to room with exasperating explanations, until I pay
them to go away. I have heard tourists protest harshly against the
ever-recurring obligation of giving pennies to the old men who, in
Venice, draw their gondolas to shore, and push them out again. They
say--what is perfectly true--that it is an extortion to be compelled
to pay for unasked and unnecessary services, and they generally add
something about not minding the money. It is the principle of the
thing to which they are opposed. But these picturesque accessories of
Venetian life are, for the most part, worn-out gondoliers, whose days
of activity are over, and who are saved from starvation, only by the
semblance of service they perform. Their successors connive at their
pretence of usefulness, knowing that some day they, too, must drop
their oars, and stand patiently waiting, hook in hand, for the chance
coin that is so grudgingly bestowed. That it should be begrudged--even
on principle--seems strange to those whose love for Venice precludes
the possibility of fault-finding. The graybeards sunning themselves on
the marble steps are as much a part of the beautiful city as are the
gondoliers silhouetted against the sky, or the brown boys paddling in
the water. Such old age is meagre, but not wholly forlorn. A little
food keeps body and soul together, and life yields sweetness to the
end. “It takes a great deal to make a successful American,” confesses
Mr. James; “but to make a happy Venetian takes only a handful of
quick sensibility.... Not the misery of Italians, but the way they
elude their misery, is what pleases the sentimental tourist, who is
gratified by the sight of a beautiful race that lives by the aid of its
imagination.”