Vignettes
A Miniature Journal of Whim and Sentiment
By Hubert Crackanthorpe
John Lane
The Bodley Head
London and New York
1896
_The pursuit of experience is the refuge of the unimaginative._
[Sidenote: CONTENTS]
CONTENTS
PAGE
_At Villeneuve-lès-Avignon_ 1
_Ascension day at Arles_ 6
_Spring in Béarn_ 9
_In the long grass_ 10
_Pau_ 11
_Castelsarrasin_ 13
_In the Basque country_ 15
_In the Landes_ 16
_Cette_ 18
_On Chelsea Embankment_ 19
_Pleasant Court_ 20
_The five sister pansies_ 23
_Our Lady of the Lane_ 24
_On the coast of Calvados_ 26
_In Normandy_ 27
_Paris in October_ 28
_La Côte d’Or from the train_ 29
_Lausanne_ 29
_Old Marseilles at Midday_ 30
_Monte Carlo_ 32
_At the Certosa di Val d’Ema_ 33
_Morning at Castello_ 36
_In the Campo Santo at Perugia_ 37
_Naples in November_:—
_Late afternoon in the Strada del Chiaja_ 39
_From Posilipo_ 39
_In the Strada del Porto_ 40
_Moonlight_ 41
_At the Theatre Manzoni_ 42
_Pompeii_ 45
_In the Bay of Salerno_ 46
_Seville Dancing girls_ 47
_Sunrise_ 49
_Off Cape Trafalgar_ 50
_Rêverie_ 51
_In Richmond Park_ 52
_New Year’s Eve_ 53
_In St. James’ Park_ 55
_In the Strand_ 55
_Sunday afternoon_ 56
_Rêverie_ 57
_Enfantillage_ 62
Vignettes
[Sidenote: AT VILLENEUVE-LÈS AVIGNON
April 23]
On the roof of the ruined church we lay, basking amid the hot, powdery
heather; the cinder-coloured roofs of the town flattened out beneath
us—a ragged patch of dead, decayed colour, burnt, as it seemed, out of
the rank, luscious green of the Rhône valley. Overhead, a thick, blue
sky hung heavy, and away and away, into the steamy haze of midday heat,
filtered the Tarascon road, a streak of dazzling white. To the east, the
sun was beating on the sandy slopes; to the west, the old Papal palace,
like a great, grey, sleeping beast, lifted its long, bare back above the
roofs of Avignon.
The lizards scurried from cranny to cranny across the crumbling wall.
Below, in the cloister, a cat was curled by a black stack of brushwood.
The little _place_ stood empty, and stillness seemed to have fallen over
all things.
The warmth lulled one to a delicious torpor. I was thinking of the
bustling Regent Street pavement, of the rumble of Piccadilly, of
newsboys yelling special editions in the Strand, drowsily conjuring up
these and other commonplace contrasts.
Then Jeanne-Marie Latou began to speak. She sat between us, with her
legs hunched under her coarse, colourless skirt, and some stray wisps of
hair looking dingily yellow against the clean white of her _coiffe_. As
she talked, her brown skin puckered oddly about her tiny, shrunken eyes,
and her hands—browned also and squat—clasped themselves around her
knees. It was not often that Jeanne-Marie Latou spoke French; her
vocabulary was quite simple and limited, and every now and then, with an
impatient shake of her head, she would break out into _patois_.
She was telling us of her nephew in Tunis—“_Un pays où on ne voit que
des sauvages_”—and of the sweetheart he had left behind at Barbentane;
repeating by heart, one after another, his queer, bald, little
letters—how he had been kicked by his horse (he was a _spahi_; “_zouave
à cheval_” she called it), and had been sick ten days in the hospital;
and how, without telling anyone, she had scraped together a hundred sous
to send out to him. Somehow, irresistibly, while she chattered, I seemed
to see that soldier nephew of hers—broad and straight and bronzed, his
fez stuck jauntily on the back of his head, noisily _noçant avec des
camarades_ with those hundred sous, which old Tante Latou had sent out
to him.
By-and-bye, she related her journey to Valence, in the time when she had
worked as a cherry-packer for Madame Charbonnier in the Rue
Joseph-Vernet, insisting with comical, energetic wrinklings of her
forehead on her contempt for the _jargon de l’Ardèche_.... She had been
to Marseilles, too, last year—that was a great journey—eighteen of them
had gone from Villeneuve, “_femmes et filles et trois garçons, dans un
train ‘ambulant’—quatre francs et douze sous, aller et retour ....
Marseilles, vous savez_,” Jeanne-Marie Latou reiterated, “_c’est quelque
chose ... c’est quelque chose ... c’est quelque chose ... enfin, c’est
la plus jolie ville que j’ai trouvée_.”
Afterwards, starting to recall bygone times, she described the breaking
up of the _Chartreuse_ in _quatre-vingt douze_, and the selling of the
whole building by auction in the little _place_, there, below us (not
for money—no one in the _pays_ had any money in those days—but for
_assignats_), and, Jeanne-Marie Latou explained, “_Ceux qui avaient peur
n’en prenaient pas, et ceux qui n’avaient pas peur en prenaient_.” And
her father, who had been a stone-worker, over there at Les Angles, had
bid _douze cents francs d’assignats_ for the house where the
_supérieure_ had lived—_douze cents francs d’assignats_ which no one had
ever asked him to pay. There Jeanne-Marie Latou had always
lived—seventy-seven years, it was now, as near as she could
remember—she, and her husband who had been dead these twenty-three
years. She could remember the time when the frescoes on the cloister
walls were bright and beautiful, and no grass grew between the flags.
Yes, she had seen all the other houses pass from family to family; there
were six of them now who had the right to use the old church as a barn,
“_ma foi, elle est bien grande, l’église_,” Jeanne-Marie Latou
concluded, smiling knowingly at us, “_Mais, quand même, ils se chicanent
toujours._”...
And with that, she rose slowly and bid us good-bye, and wished us good
health, toddling grotesquely away down the steps.
After she had gone, we stayed a long while up on the hot roof, watching
the dark shadows creep from under the broken bridge across the rippling
Rhône, as it swept past towards the sea. And I wondered more drowsily
than ever concerning old Jeanne-Marie Latou, and her soldier nephew,
with the _spahis_, away over there in Tunis, and that great journey of
hers to Marseilles—eighteen of them from the dead little town below,
“_femmes et filles et trois garçons, dans un train ‘ambulant’—quatre
francs et douze sous, aller et retour_.”
[Sidenote: ASCENSION DAY AT ARLES]
The population pours out from mass, flooding every crooked
street—rubicund peasants in starched Sunday blouses; olive-skinned,
Greek-featured _Arlésiennes_ in quaint, lace head-dresses; strutting
_petits messieurs en chapeau rond_ and tight-fitting _complets_;
shouting shoals of boys; zouaves, indolent and superb, in flowing red
knickerbockers, white spats, and jauntily-poised fez.
A bleating of lambs, plaintive, incessant and dirge-like, fills the
_Place du Forum_; heaped over the gravel they lie, their legs tied under
their bellies, and their skinny necks helplessly outstretched: and
beyond, the great, green umbrellas of a regiment of wrinkled
beldams—fruit-sellers encamped in rows before their baskets.... A
strange complication of odours—of cheese, of fish and of flowers—floats
in the air: at every alley-corner some auctioneer stands
posted—shouting, perspiring vendors of knives, pocket-books,
glass-cutters, chromo-lithographs, cement, songs, _sabots_. An old
top-hatted Jew nasally vaunts a wine-testing fluid, and tells horrible
and interminable tales of vintages manufactured from decayed dates, from
vinegar and sugar, or from plaster-of-Paris; a travelling pedicure
operates on the box-seat of a gorgeously-painted van, to the
accompaniment of a big drum and clashing cymbals; the inevitable strong
man defiantly challenges the crowd to split a flag-stone across his
bare, hirsute chest; and a blind-folded fortune-telling wench chaunts
with mechanical shamelessness the young men’s amorous indiscretions.
Outside the town, the boulevard is gay with the glitter of pedlars’
wares, and flapping, gaudy stuffs, red, green and yellow and blue;
travelling showmen are bustling with final preparations, hammering
together their skeleton booths, or unfolding gaunt rolls of battered
canvas; the steam-orchestra of a _Grand Musée fin de siècle_ bellows
from its rows of brass-mouthed trumpets a deafening, wheezy tune; and
everywhere, beneath the tunnel of pale green plane-trees, a thick,
drifting tide of men and women.
[Sidenote: SPRING IN BÉARN
May 1]
Of a sudden it seems to have come—the poplars fluttering their golden
green; the fruit-trees tricked out in fête-day frocks of frail
snow-white; the hoary oaks uncurling their baby leaves; and the lanes
all littered with golden broom....
The blue flax sways like a sensitive sea; the violets peep from amid the
moss; beneath every hedgerow the primroses cluster; and the rivulets
tinkle their shrill, glad songs....
Dense levies of orchises empurple the meadows, where the butterflies
hasten their wavering flight; the sunlight breathes through the
pale-leafed woods; and the air is sweet with the scent of the spring,
and loud with the humming of wings....
* * * * *
It lasts but a week—a fleeting mood of dainty gaiety; a quick discarding
of the brown shabbiness of winter for a smiling array of white and gold,
fresh-green, and turquoise-blue....
And then, it has flitted, and through the long, parched months
relentlessly blazes the summer sun.
[Sidenote: IN THE LONG GRASS
May 13]
A mysterious, impenetrable jungle of green stems, quivering with the
play of a myriad baby shadows. A close crowd of flowers—naïve-faced,
white-cheeked daisies; buttercups, glistening gold; dandelions like
ragged medallions; stubbly bearded thistles; sleek-stalked orchises,
white, and mauve, and purple; corpulent, heavy-leafed clover, and skinny
ragged robin. And, topping them all, the languidly nodding heads of a
thousand seeded grasses, and the dishevelled crests of the red
sorrel....
A ceaseless humming of wings—deep-toned and solemn, cheerily bustling,
high-pitched and idle....
Hidden in the green-stemmed jungle, a world of creatures silently
busy—hurrying ants; heavy, gray cockchafers, drowsily lumbering; tiny,
red spiders, fidgeting from blade to blade; grasshoppers, with their
great sensitive eyes, humanly expressive; shiny, black beasts, wriggling
their scuttling bodies; fierce-looking flying things, their vivid red
bodies, now poised motionless, now darting capriciously to and fro.
One after another they come for a peep at me. A pair of blue-bottles,
chasing one another, dash past; a furry bee chaunts lustily as he
bustles from flower to flower; and dark, evil-looking flies hover,
hanging their long, sneaking legs....
[Sidenote: PAU
May 14]
I went there again to-day; but I did not see her. It is a year now since
I met her, sitting alone before her basket, in a corner of the deserted
square. Her face was tanned deep russet, and wrinkled to a tragic
listlessness; she had eyebrows white as clean linen, and full-veined,
tremulous hands. When I first spoke to her, I did not know that she was
blind. She pulled some handkerchiefs from her basket, and offered them
to me in a quavering, far-away voice, explaining that she had hemmed
them herself; for she had been brought up as a _couturière_. I asked her
how long she had been blind:—
“It is forty-eight years since I saw anything, _monsieur_. When I was
young I had a great trouble.... For eighteen months I wept, and when I
went back to work, my eyes were worn out, and I could see no more.... It
is forty-eight years now, _monsieur_, since I saw anything....
_Heureusement, il n’y en a plus pour longtemps ... ce sera bientôt
fini...._”
She spoke simply, and with quiet dignity; though I could see that she
was crying a little, as she fingered her handkerchiefs with her
full-veined, tremulous hands.
[Sidenote: CASTELSARRASIN
May 17]
From afar off, high against the sky, we could see the ragged line of its
roofs, like an ancient, tattered crest along the back of a precipitous,
inaccessible-looking hill.
To reach it we waded the Luys de France, with the water swishing under
our horses’ bellies, and climbed a mule-track, tight-paved with cobbles,
waywardly winding beneath the contorted limbs of leafy, Spanish
chestnuts. The track led us around the outside of the village, close
under the shadow of its houses—discoloured-yellow and musty-white,
fissured and bestained, battered and starved, till everywhere their
bones protruded, bulging, bursting beams.
Low, sloping roofs, moss-grown, the colour of old gold, over-lapped the
walls, like huge, ill-fitting caps; shading row upon row of wooden
balconies, filled with a decrepid multitude of things, which, it seemed,
could never have been new—broken earthenware pots; rickety rush-bottomed
chairs; strips of old linen; worn-out bass brooms; stacks of dead
branches....
Two geese, a yellow dog, and a little black pig had the village street
all to themselves. The clock on the tower of the whitewashed church
pointed half-past ten, though the twilight had not yet come. And our
horses’ hoofs clattered, almost brutally, past the dank-smelling,
mud-floored rooms, and the cracked, worm-eaten shutters, wearily moaning
with the dull fatigue of stiff-jointed old age.
Toiling up the hill, on the other side, we met a crooked old woman,
barefooted, clad in a single frayed shirt, carrying a truss of sainfoin
on her head.
“_Adechats_,” she mumbled mechanically, and toiled on barefooted up the
stony path, steadying the truss of sainfoin with both hands....
[Sidenote: IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY
May 23]
All day an intense impression of lusty sunlight, of quivering
golden-green ... a long, white road that dazzles, between its rustling
dark-green walls; blue brawling rivers; swelling upland meadows,
flower-thronged, luscious with tall, cool grass; the shepherd’s
thin-toned pipe; the ragged flocks, blocking the road, cropping at the
hedge-rows as they hurry on towards the mountains; the slow, straining
teams of jangling mules—wine-carriers coming from Spain; through dank,
cobbled village streets, where the pigs pant their bellies in the
roadway, and the sandal-makers flatten the hemp before their doors; and
then, out again into the lusty sunlight, along the straight, powdery
road that dazzles ahead interminably towards a mysterious, hazy horizon,
where the land melts into the sky....
And, at last, the cool evening scents; soft shadows stealing beneath the
still, silent oaks; and, all at once, a sight of the great
snow-mountains, vague, phantasmagoric, like a mirage in the sky; and of
the hills, all indigo, rippling towards a pale sunset of liquid gold.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: IN THE LANDES
May 27]
Since sunrise I had been travelling—along the straight-stretching roads,
white with summer sand, interminably striped by the shadows of the
poplars; across the great, parched plain, where, all the day’s length,
the heat dances over the waste land, and the cattle bells float their
far-away tinkling; through the desolate villages, empty but for the
beldames, hunched in the doorways, pulling the flax with horny,
tremulous fingers; and on towards the desolate silence of the flowerless
pine-forests....
And there the night fell. The sun went down unseen; a dim flickering
ruddled the host of tree trunks; and the darkness started to drift
through the forest. The road grew narrow as a footpath, and the mare
slackening her pace, uneasily strained her white neck ahead.
Out of the darkness a figure sprang beside me. A shout rang out—words of
an uncouth _patois_ that I did not understand. And the mare, terrified,
galloped forward, snorting, and swerving from side to side....
And a strange, superstitious fear crept over me—a dreamy dread of the
future; a helpless presentiment of evil days to come; a sense, too, of
the ruthless nullity of life, of the futile deception of effort, of
bitter revolt against the extinction of death, a yearning after faith in
a vague survival beyond....
And the words of the old proverb returned to me mockingly:—
“The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear with hearing.”
[Sidenote: CETTE
June 5, Midday]
A pure stretch of sky; a flat sweep of sea; cobalt-blue, rich and
opaque, pervading all things. In the harbour, battered, blue-painted
barges, their decks loaded with oranges; bargemen in blue blouses,
asleep across the glaring pavement; and along the quay, indefinitely, as
far as the eye can reach, row upon row of barrels, repeating from their
up-turned ends the same stifling note of colour.... The sea licks the
jetty wall, lazily, rhythmically: everywhere a sensation of listless
oppression, of lifeless torpor....
[Sidenote: ON CHELSEA EMBANKMENT
June 26]
I have sat there, and seen the winter days finish their short-spanned
lives, and all the globes of light, crimson, emerald, and pallid yellow,
start, one by one, out of the russet fog that creeps up the river.
But I like the place best on these hot summer nights, when the sky hangs
thick with stifled colour, and the stars shine small and shyly, for then
the pulse of the city is hushed, and the scales of the water flicker
golden and oily under the watching regiment of lamps. The bridge clasps
its gaunt arms tight from bank to bank, and the shuffle of a retreating
figure sounds loud and alone in the quiet....
There, if you wait long enough, you may hear the long wail of the siren,
that seems to tell of the anguish of London, till a train hurries to
throttle its dying note, roaring and rushing, thundering and blazing
through the night, tossing its white crest of smoke, charging across the
bridge, into the dark country beyond....
[Sidenote: PLEASANT COURT
June 28]
It is known only to the inhabitants of the quarter. To find it, you must
penetrate a winding passage, wedged between high walls of dismal brick.
Turn to the right by the blue-lettered advertisement of Kop’s Ale, and
again to the left through the two posts, and you come to Pleasant-court.
And when you are there, you can go no farther; for at the far end there
is no way out.
There are thirteen houses in Pleasant-court—seven on the one side, and
six on the other. They are alike, every one; low-walled as country
cottages; built of blackish brick, with a six-foot plot before each, and
slate roofs that glimmer wanly on the wet, winter mornings.
But winter is not the season to see Pleasant-court at its best. The
drain-sluice is always getting choked, so that pools of mud and brown
water loiter near the rickety fence that flanks each six-foot enclosure;
and, at Christmas-time, “most everyone is a bit out,” and young Hyams in
the Walworth-road stacks half his back shop with furniture from
Pleasant-court; and all day long the children of the lodger at No. 5
never stop squalling with chapped faces, and the “Lowser’s” wife makes
much commotion at nights, threatening to “settle” her husband, and
sending her four children to clatter about the pavement.
In the summer, however, everyone smartens up, and by the time that
sultry June days have come, Pleasant-court attempts a rural air. On the
left-hand side a jaded creeper pushes its grimy greenery under the
windows; some of the grass plots grow quite bushy with tough, wizened
stalks; and the geranium pots at No. 7 strike flaming specks of
vermilion.
Last March the “Lowser” and his wife and his four children moved over to
Southwark; the lodger at No. 5 is in work again; and now the quiet of
seclusion is restored to Pleasant-court.
The children sprawl the afternoon through on the hot alley floor; Mrs.
Hodgkiss hangs her washing to bulge and flap across the court, like a
line of white banners; and on the airless evenings, the women, limp,
with their straggling hair, and loose, bedraggled skirts, lean their
bare, fleshy elbows over the fence, lingering to gossip before they go
to dinner.
And on Saturday nights, the inhabitants of Pleasant-court troop out to
join the rumble and the rattle of the Walworth-road, and to swell the
life that shuffles down its pavement, past the flaring naphtha lights,
the stall-keepers bawling in the gutter, and every shop ablaze with
gross jets of gas.
[Sidenote: THE FIVE SISTER PANSIES
August 19]
These are their names—Carlotta, Lubella, Belinda, Aminta, Clarissa. By
the old bowling-green they stand, a little pompously perhaps, with a
slight superfluity of dignity, conscious of their own full, comely
contours—a courtly group of rotund dames. Heavy Carlotta, the eldest,
lover of blatant luxury, overblown, middle-aged, in her gown of rich
magenta, all embroidered with tawdry gilt; Lubella, wearing portly
velvet of dark purple, sensual, indolent, insolent as an empress of old,
gleaming her thin, yellow eye; insignificant Belinda, bedecked in silly,
sentimental mauve, all for dallying with the facile gossip of
galanterie, gushing, giggling, gullible; unsophisticated Aminta, with
tresses of flaming gold, amiable and obvious as a common stage heroine;
and Clarissa, the youngest, slyly smirking the while, above her frock of
milk-white innocence.
[Sidenote: OUR LADY OF THE LANE
Sept. 17]
Whenever the London sun touches the small, dusky shops with a jumble of
begrimed colour—the old gold and scarlet of hanging meat; the metallic
green of mature cabbages; the wavering russet of piled potatoes; the
sharp white of fly-bills, pasted all awry—then the moment to see her is
come. You will find her, bareheaded and touzled; her dingy, peaked shawl
hanging down her back, and in front the bellying expanse of her soiled
apron; blocking the pavement; established by her own corner of the Lane,
all littered with the cries of children, and the fitful throbbing of the
asphalte beneath the hollow hammering of hoofs.
She carries always a baby by her breast; her bare forearms are as bulky
as any man’s; in her eyes is a froward scowl; and, when she laughs, it
is with a harsh, strident gaiety. But she never fails to wear her
squalid portliness with a robust and defiant dignity, that makes her
figure definitely symbolic of Cockney maternity.
[Sidenote: ON THE COAST OF CALVADOS
Sept. 26]
The leaden sea plashed her indolent rhythm: all along the lonely shore
the orchards stood motionless, sombre, metallic-looking in the lifeless,
thunder-charged air; and amid a rugged flare of smoky flame, the sun
went down in the West.
A baby breeze rustled past, fleeing before the distant storm: then, all
grew still again, while, across the horizon, a quiet rift broke,
revealing a long, lurid line of fantastic coast—mysterious, desolate
valleys, and ragged towering cliffs.
The leaden sea plashed her indolent rhythm; and the bleak bulk of a
steamer, pitching in the offing, moved like a beast in distress.
And once again, fresh and cool, carrying the scent of the storm, the
breeze came fleeing, trailing an inky stain over the sea; and across the
West there defiled a vague squadron of gigantic pillars of rain.
The parched trees swayed their boughs, uneasily whispering; and, of a
sudden, wrapping all things in a dense shroud of dark-grey mist,
clattered the ponderous rain.
And overhead, on, through the growing night, the white, jagged flashes
of lightning, and the frenzied flight of the screaming wind, and the
dull booming of thunder told of the great, distant battle of the clouds.
[Sidenote: IN NORMANDY
Sept. 30]
A mauve sky, all subtle; a discreet rusticity, daintily modern,
femininely delicate; a whole finikin arrangement of trim trees, of
rectangular orchards, of tiny, spruce houses, tall-roofed and
pink-faced, with white shutters demurely closed. Here and there a prim
farmyard; a squat church-spire; and bloused peasants jogging behind
rotund white horses, along a straight and gleaming road. In all the
landscape no trace of the slovenly profusion of the picturesque; but
rather a distinguished reticence of detail, fresh, coquettish, almost
dapper.
[Sidenote: PARIS IN OCTOBER
October 4]
Paris in October—all white and a-glitter under a cold, sparkling sky,
and the trees of the boulevards trembling their frail, russet leaves;
garish, petulant Paris; complacently content with her sauntering crowds,
her monotonous arrangements in pink and white and blue; ever busied with
her own publicity, her tiresome, obvious vice, and her parochial
modernity coquetting with cosmopolitanism....
[Sidenote: LA CÔTE D’OR FROM THE TRAIN
October 6]
Strips of ruddy earth: poplars flecked with gold, and vineyards with
autumn red; the dark, sleek Saône; and beyond, the pale green plain,
spacious and smooth, stretching away and away towards the blue haze that
wraps the Côte d’Or, hesitating and soft as the lines of a woman’s body.
The sun sets, trailing a wash of pale, watery gold; torn, inky clouds
spatter the sky; sombre shadows fill the acacia-groves; and on, on,
pounds the train, untiring, rhythmically throbbing.
[Sidenote: LAUSANNE
October 7]
“_Tout paysage est un état d’âme._”
Often must Amiel, who lived his life on the shores of this great lake,
have brooded over her moods. Deep-blue, she lies plunged in silent
meditation; wrapped in the opal-tinted mists of evening, she dreams the
vague, glad dreams of fancy; now she smiles, she laughs even, as little
ripples, all gilded by the sun-rays, trip across her surface; she has
her grey days of gloom, and her dark days of despair: she has also her
_jours de fête_, and her _jours de grande toilette_, under a sky
heavy-loaded with blue: often, in the moonlight, she lies white,
tranquil, statuesque, like a beautiful, sleeping woman: at times her
humour is bewilderingly capricious; the fleeting, furious rages of a
spoilt child sweep across her; or, ink-coloured, she sulks during long
hours, sullenly wrathful.
[Sidenote: OLD MARSEILLES AT MIDDAY
October 10]
Up every staircase-street—dark crevasses, pinched between tall, peeling
cliffs; along the quay, flaunting, tattered, brawling colours, sweating
and swarming with noisy life—negroes, Chinamen, Arabs, Lascars,
Italians, Greeks—the angry hum of a thousand tongues and the clatter of
straining mules.... At midday, when all the smooth stone pavement lies
bathed in lusty sunshine, you may feel the pulse of old Marseilles
quicken to fever-heat its turbulent throbbing....
Across the sea, polished as a pool of molten metal, the Southern sun
strews his golden highway; the frail forest of masts stiffens, congealed
like a fine etched pattern; side by side lie the herds of steamers,
silent, drowsy, vermilion-bellied beasts; and over there, to the left,
high above the city, the slim silhouette of Notre-Dame de la Garde shows
a glimmer of dusky gilt....
Oh! for the crude crowd of blatant hues and the flood of fierce vitality
that belong to old Marseilles at midday!
[Sidenote: MONTE CARLO
October 15]
High, beneath the lofty dome of sullen sky, like a great white globe of
electric light, the full moon hangs; beyond the bay, the twinkling
lights of Monaco are dropping long golden tears into the sea: no breath
of breeze to sway the black drooping palms; only the full, solemn phrase
of Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” slowly recurring to linger in the still, grave
air of the night....
The moonbeams spangle with silver the twin minarets of the temple of
Chance; and stately officials swing back its portals to meet the silent
tide of worshippers that ceaselessly ebbs and flows, blackening the
broad flight of marble steps.
Within, through the great marble vestibule, where the shuffle of feet
rings hollow, they hurry to huddle around the bright green shrines of
the goddess, to await, with tense, yellow faces, the unflagging tide of
her relentless caprices.
[Sidenote: AT THE CERTOSA DI VAL D’EMA
October 20]
I sat on the terrace of the old palace, waiting for the coming of the
rain-clouds. The sunshine was gone, and with it the city’s witty
sparkle; the sirocco’s breath puffed warm and moist; and Florence, all
ruddled and sullen, lay chaunting her ponderous notes of bronze.
Below, knee-deep in the yellow, straggling stream, a fisherman swayed
his net, slowly straining the supple framework; and while I watched him,
of a sudden, a fitful longing to see the place again laid hold of me—to
see it, just as it had been last year, on that mellow September
afternoon, all garnished with soft light, all fragrant with coquettish
simplicity and pleasant, prosperous peace. And soon, as the sky
darkened, and the rain-clouds—a sombre, swelling herd—gathered above the
cypresses of San Miniato, I seemed to hear the organ’s stately roll, and
to perceive, through the obscurity of the half-darkened chapel, a
crowding circle of white-robed figures. The chaunt of the church bells
beat the air: all else seemed stilled—love and the quickening joy of
life—and with a sort of childish inconsequence, bred perhaps of the
curious, literary habit, I fell to envying them a little—those tall,
white-robed fathers—their miniature rows of monkish gardens, and their
solitary pacings beneath the pale-lemon cloisters....
So I started to go there, rattling through the dust in the face of the
coming storm. By the roadside, the grey olives matched the sky; all
around, the vines hung delicately dying, drooping in tired curves their
fragile garlands of pallid-gold leaves; and here and there peeped specks
of scarlet, like lingering traces of some bygone _fête_.
But, before we had climbed the hill, the rain came—a deliberate prelude
of monstrous drops; and a veil, as of grey gauze, blurred the
white-faced villas peopling the hill-sides, and changed the cypresses to
dim, spiky sentinels....
It was Brother Agostino who came to the gate, greeting me, so I fancied,
with a quick smile of recognition; then, before the groups of noisy
village youths and raffish, Florentine cabmen, who encumbered the
corridor, his features dropped back to the patient vacancy of habitual
fatigue.
Over the tiled floor of the cloister-court rattled the dance of the
rain; the great well, over-grown with rank grass, wore a forlorn,
decrepit air; and a musty scent, as of approaching decay, floated over
the vast garden.
In the chapel, a band of blatant Americans joined us, listening
complacently to Brother Agostino’s perfunctory explanations concerning
the frescoes, the stained-glass windows, the exquisite tomb of the
monastery’s founder.
And the place seemed all changed: its fine distinction was gone: the old
Certosa exposed to the hurried gaze of every passing tourist; and
stern-faced Brother Agostino, footsore and weary, degraded to the _rôle_
of a common, obsequious guide.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MORNING AT CASTELLO
October 30]
The morning’s breath tastes cool and clean. The distant hills seem yet
asleep, tranquil and dark—a long, low, wavering wall. Above the plain
floats a lingering, pearly film, and the air grows busy with a vague
rumour of awakening life—the rumble of wheels, the cracking of whips,
the plaintive whistling of far-off trains....
On its way to Florence the early train swings by; hordes of
brown-skinned, barefooted children sprawl noisily along all the street;
the men lean idly watching the ceaseless tale of lean _barrocci_,
lumbering, jolting over the crooked flags; and before every open doorway
the women group their chairs, to sit at their straw-plaiting the long
day through....
Beyond, across the dusty-green of countless olives, you can see the
glittering roofs of Florence, the _Duomo’s_ burly dome, and the pale
outline of Giotto’s tower; but it is rather the sense of old-world
slowness, the continual accumulation of friendly, trivial incident, that
makes the intimate charm of this suburban street....
[Sidenote: IN THE CAMPO SANTO AT PERUGIA
November 1]
The young moon hangs amid a steely sky; the land, empty and darkening,
rolls like a billowing sea towards the Western orange glow; and high
behind us the tall hill lifts Perugia’s ragged silhouette.
Down the steep road they came—grave _bourgeois_; bands of brown-faced
youths, chewing thin cigars; aged peasant-women, with faded, wrinkled
eyes; chattering country-girls, gaudy handkerchiefs around their hair;
toddling children; uncouth men from the mountains, sullenly wrapped in
fur-trimmed cloaks, while, posted in rows on either side, the crippled
beggars offer their dusty hats, and whine for charity in the Virgin’s
name.
Before the red gate of the Campo Santo the crowd surges; within, every
alley is black with the press of people. It is the day of the dead. To
visit the dead all the town is come.
... The pale specks of a myriad, tiny lamps; the glow of garlands
against the crowding slabs of snow-white marble, that mark the
children’s graves; the glitter of every small, spruce mortuary chapel;
and the glad scent of freshly-scattered flowers....
Death loses its squalor; and becomes something demure, sociable, almost
gay....
[Sidenote: NAPLES IN NOVEMBER
_Late afternoon in the Strada del Chiaja_
November 9]
Up the squalid, ill-paved street, lumber the great landaus—an
interminable, toiling stream, carrying home from the _corso_ the morose,
sallow-faced ladies of the Neapolitan nobility, and crushing on either
side the hedge of gaping hobbledehoys that line the niggardly pavement.
[Sidenote: _From Posilipo_
Nov. 12]
Heaped beneath us all Naples, white and motionless in the silent blaze
of the midday sun; circling the bay, still and smooth and blue as the
sky above, a misty line of white villages; dark, velvety shadows draping
the hills; on the horizon, rising abruptly, Capri’s notched
silhouette—_tout semble suer la beauté—la bonne et franche beauté
criarde des pays chauds européens_.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _In the Strada del Porto_
Nov. 12]
A strip of treacherous pavement slimy with garbage; the wan flicker of
foul lanterns, vaguely revealing the black shapes of sail-like awnings
above a network of mysterious masts; and the sodden, continuous uproar
of a reeking crowd—hawkers of fruit, of fish, of assorted
cigar-ends—fiercely clamouring together in the darkness....
By-and-bye, through the obscurity, peers the glossy vermilion of piled
capsicums, the scarlet sparkle of bleeding pomegranates, and the hard
flashing of scattered, silvery sardines. Here and there, behind a
chestnut-brazier that shoots long, licking tongues of ruddy flame, the
vacant, battered countenance of some aged crone; or amid a frenzied
cracking of whips the clattering passage of a team of trembling mules,
straining at a lean-shafted, high-wheeled cart, passing across the
street, to disappear, engulfed in cavernous blackness, beneath a noisome
archway. Bands of sailors jostle their way down the alley, rudely
rebuffing the obscene advances of slatternly women; the night grows
airless and stifling, under the dingy stars that speckle the black strip
of sky overhead; and the street comes to possess a satanic fascination,
almost epic in its intensity....
[Sidenote: _Moonlight_
Nov. 29]
The long line of lamps casts countless, trembling pillars of dusky gold
into the sea: the night is full of stifled light—a pale, quivering
suffusion of mysterious blue. The Castello d’Oro floats, black as ink,
like a shapeless hulk; across the empty sky a solitary, ghostly cloud
lies sleeping; somewhere, beyond the bay, the moonlight is dancing; and
the rhythm of the sleek, rolling waves drowsily, lazily, rises and
falls.
A boy and a girl lean together, watching the waves: some mandolines
start a faint twanging; the distant rattle of a cab—then all is quiet;
and the glow above Vesuvius, sullenly pulsing, alone breaks in upon the
delicate serenity of the night....
[Sidenote: _At the Theatre Manzoni_
Nov. 26]
I have been to many first-nights there, for I have found a certain
childish charm in the small, shabby, blue-and-white theatre, the tiers
of minute boxes, close-packed with faces, the noisy Neapolitan pit, and
the inevitable row of callow critics, sucking their pencil-stumps, each
with his hat tight-jammed behind his head.
But especially there lingers in my mind the memory of a certain brief,
mediæval drama, where a little flaxen-haired lady, wearing a low-cut
dress of arsenic-green satin, passionately implored mercy of a
curly-pated knight in a shirt of maroon-coloured velvet, for a great
wrong she had done him. She wept piteously, poor little creature,
tearing tremulously at her fluffy locks, and on her knees appealing to
us all to help her. But the little knight kept his wooden gaze
obdurately averted from her, till, exhausted, she sank dying on to a
gilt-legged couch.
The actors were only marionettes. The little lady was somewhat obviously
painted, and the little knight stood a trifle stiffly, as if suffering
slightly from stage-fright. But the pit sat the scene out in breathless
silence, and the row of callow critics sucked their pencil-stumps with
renewed vigour, and jammed their hats tighter behind their heads. For in
some curious, inexplicable way the thing was quite moving—he was so
brutal, the little curly-pated knight in his shirt of maroon-coloured
velvet; and she, poor, sobbing, little flaxen-haired lady, pleaded so
desperately....
Once before, in my childhood, through a half-closed door, I saw a girl
plead with that same tense fragility. She, too, had flaxen hair, and
wore a low-necked dress of green satin; and he, the man, stood stiffly,
turning his gaze away from her, obdurately. And each scene, as I now
compose them, seems to contain a kindred underlying element of grotesque
unreality.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: POMPEII
Nov. 28]
It was an old mill. There were white columns of peeling plaster flanking
the granary, and stacks of frowsy brushwood blocking the door. Part of
it had fallen away; tall, rank grass grew between the rottening rafters
of the roof; and remnants of battered frescoes, that had once adorned
the walls of the upper rooms, were now spread bare to sun and wind and
rain. And the meal-troughs were full of blossoming wild-flowers. Beside
the mill stood a small, square Moorish house, roofed with lava, scowling
with dirt; and beside the house, guarding a public well, was a gaunt
crane of mouldering wood. Across the sleekly rippling mill-stream a
ragged peasant family were ranged the length of a strip of powdery
soil—the father, the mother, two sons, four daughters, and a toddling
child—and beyond them stretched the great dead-grey expanse of roofless
walls—the sun-dried corpse of the ruined Roman town. In the twilight the
sea lay towards Capri the colour of yellow mud; and Vesuvius, turning a
vague, velvety black, was trickling his smoky breath towards the bay.
There was a great immobility in the air—an immobility that seemed born
of long ages: and, somehow, more than the ruined town itself—defaced by
German tourists and uniformed guides—this corner of the country supplied
a bitter sense of shortness of life, the impassive sloth of time....
[Sidenote: IN THE BAY OF SALERNO
Nov. 30]
To gaze across the black sweep of sea, out into the mystery of the
night; to hear the restless waves slowly sighing through the darkness,
as they beat the rocks a thousand feet beneath; to love a little so,
with quiet pressure of hands, and listlessly to ponder on strange
meanings of life and love and death.
And so, amid a still serenity of dreamy sadness, to forget the mad
turmoil of passion, to grow indifferent to all desire, and to wait,
while the heart fills full of grave gratitude towards an unknown God.
And then, once more, to understand how life is but a little thing, and
love but a passionate illusion, and to envy the sea her sighing in the
days when the end shall have come.
[Sidenote: SEVILLE DANCING GIRLS
December 10]
The entertainment draws to its close, for it is past four in the
morning. In the hall, several of the oil-lamps have already sputtered
out; the rest are burning with dull, blear-eyed weariness. A score of
unshaven Spaniards, close muffled in _capas_ and lowering _sombreros_,
sprawl in limp attitudes over the empty benches, and the circle of gaudy
women that fill the stage sit listless, pasty-faced, somnolent.
And then, for the last time, the frenzy passes. The guitars start their
sudden, bitter twanging, and the women their wild, rhythmical beating of
hands.
Amid volleys of harsh, frenzied plaudits la Manolita dances, swaying her
soft, girlish frame with a tense, exasperated restraint; supple as a
serpent; coyly, subtly lascivious; languidly curling and uncurling her
bare white arms.
Out in the cold night air, as I hasten home through the narrow, sleeping
streets, her soft, girlish frame still sways before my eyes, to the
bitter twanging of guitars.
[Sidenote: SUNRISE]
To ride alone beneath the stars, through the long indefinite hours of
the night; to climb the slumbering mountain-hulks; to hear the dull roar
of the river, toiling unwearied through the darkness below; to break,
with a sudden clattering of hoofs, the gloomy stillness of distant
village-streets, and on through the twilight that precedes the dawn, to
journey, without flagging, high up against the sky, across a desolate,
limitless plain.
To scout the future; to unlearn the past; and to brood vaguely, as the
night broods....
To elude desire; to disdain the thrill of hate; to forget the long
aching of love, and to commune, in tender serenity, with the grave-eyed
Spirit of Rest.
And then, while the night slinks away across the hills, to push on
towards the sunrise; to watch the marshalling of ruddy heralds across
the East, and at last to meet the Great God’s dazzling glory, bursting
in splendour across the empty land.
[Sidenote: OFF CAPE TRAFALGAR
December 18]
We paced the bridge together, chatting till his watch should be done.
The dim, uneasy outline of the steamer’s bows loomed before us; now and
again we could feel her pulse quicken, her sinews tighten, as, like a
living thing, she flinched from each lashing of the waves.
He was telling me tales of the yellow fever at Rio de Janeiro, of the
crowd of vessels lying in the harbour without a soul on board, of six
weeks he had spent in the hospital there, where twelve hundred
fever-stricken creatures lay packed on the floor of a single ward, and
the doctors dared only shout to the patients from behind a railed
gangway.
And, while he still talked, up from the East crept the first flicker of
the dawn, revealing flocks of ruddy-sailed smacks tossing off the
Spanish shore; then, slowly, the throng of black billows turned to
reddish-green, and across the sky, from behind the African coast, poured
a deep, blood-red stain. The mirage rose, lifting into space the low
line of black hills, and the growing glow set a carpet of cloud ablaze,
till it hung, stretched across the sky, like a vast awning of beaten,
burnished copper.
[Sidenote: RÊVERIE
December 25]
I dreamed of an age grown strangely picturesque—of the rich enfeebled by
monotonous ease; of the shivering poor clamouring nightly for justice;
of a helpless democracy, vast revolt of the ill-informed; of priests
striving to be rational; of sentimental moralists protecting iniquity;
of middle-class princes; of sybaritic saints; of complacent and pompous
politicians; of doctors hurrying the degeneration of the race; of
artists discarding possibilities for limitations; of pressmen befooling
a pretentious public; of critics refining upon the ’busman’s methods; of
inhabitants of Camberwell chattering of culture.
And I dreamed of this great, dreamy London of ours; of her myriad
fleeting moods; of the charm of her portentous provinciality; and I
awoke all a-glad and hungering for life....
[Sidenote: IN RICHMOND PARK]
In the wan, lingering light of the winter afternoon, the park stood all
deserted; sluggishly drowsing, so it seemed, with its spacious distances
muffled in greyness; colourless, fabulous, blurred. One by one, through
the damp, misty air, loomed the tall, stark, lifeless, elms. Overhead
there lowered a turbid sky, heavy-charged with an unclean yellow. And,
amid the ruddy patches of dank and rottening bracken, the little mare
picked her way noiselessly. The rumour of life seemed hushed; there was
only the vague, listless rhythm of the creaking saddle....
The daylight faded; a shroud of ghostly mist enveloped the earth, and up
from the vaporous distance crept slowly the evening darkness....
[Sidenote: NEW YEAR’S EVE
December 31]
It was New Year’s eve. The old, old scene. A London night; a heavy-brown
atmosphere splashed with liquid, golden lights; the bustling
market-place of sin; a silent crowd of black figures drifting over a
wet, flickering pavement.
The slow, grave notes from a church tower took command of the night. The
last one faded: the old year had slipped by. And then a woman laughed—a
strident, level laugh; and there swept through all the crowd a mad,
feverish tremor. The women ran one to the other, kissing, wildly
welcoming the New Year in; and the men, shouting thickly, snatched at
them as they ran. And the cabmen touted eagerly for fares.
Across the road, by a corner, a street missionary stood on a chair—an
undersized, poorly clad man, with a wizened, bearded face.
... “Repent ... repent ... and save your souls to-night from the eternal
torments of hell-fire.”
The women jostled him, pelted him with foul gibes; and one—a young
girl—broke into a peal of hysterical laughter.
And I mused wonderingly on the ugliness of sin.
[Sidenote: IN ST. JAMES’S PARK
January 15]
A sullen glow throbs overhead: golden will-o’-wisps are threading their
shadowy groupings of gaunt-limbed trees; and the dull, distant rumour of
feverish London waits on the still, night air. The lights of Hyde Park
corner blaze like some monster, gilded constellation, shaming the dingy
stars; and across the East there flares a sky-sign—a gaudy, crimson
arabesque.
And all the air hangs draped in the mysterious, sumptuous splendour of a
murky London night....
[Sidenote: IN THE STRAND
January 27]
The city disgorges.
All along the Strand, down the great, ebbing tide, the omnibuses, a
congested press of gaudy craft, drift westwards, jostling and jamming
their tall, loaded decks, with a clanking of chains, a rumble of
lumbering wheels, a thudding of quick-loosed brakes, a humming of
hammering hoofs....
The empty hansoms slink silently past; the street hawkers—a long row of
dingy figures—line the pavement edge; troops of frenzied newsboys dart
yelling through the traffic; and here and there a sullen-faced woman
struggles to stem the tide of men.
Somewhere, behind Pall Mall, unheeded the sun has set: the sky is
powdered with crimson dust; one by one the shops gleam out, blazing
their windows of burnished glass; the twilight throbs with a ceaseless
shuffle of hurrying feet; and over all things hovers the spirit of
London’s grim unrest.
[Sidenote: SUNDAY AFTERNOON
February 20]
It was a little street, shabbily symmetrical—a double row of
insignificant, dingy-brick houses. Muffled in the dusk of the fading
winter afternoon, it seemed sunk in squalid, listless slumber. In the
distance a church-bell was tolling its joyless mechanical Sunday tale.
A man stood in the roadway, droning the words of a hymn-tune. He was old
and decayed and sluttish: he wore an ancient, baggy frock-coat, and,
through the cracks in his boots, you could see the red flesh of his
feet. His gait was starved and timid: the touch of the air was very
bitter. And when he had finished his singing, he remained gazing up at
the rows of lifeless windows, with a look of dull expectancy in his
bloodshot, watery eyes.
[Sidenote: RÊVERIE
April 15]
The English Midlands, sluggishly effluent, a massy profusion of
well-upholstered undulations; Normandy, coquettish, almost dapper, in
its discreet rusticity, its finikin spruceness, its distinguished
reticence of detail; the plains of Lombardy in midsummer, all glutted
with luscious vegetation; Switzerland, tricked out in cheap
sentimentality, in a catchpenny crudity of tone; Andalucia, savagely
harsh, with its bitter, exasperated colouring....