a point in the smooth high road, Giovanni pauses to rest his
burden upon a wall.]
La Donna di Casa.
The Country Housekeeper.
Portofino’s bay lies calmly blue beneath a morning sky: the sun shines,
and its glamour is set upon dainty ripples of restless sea, where the
Mediterranean sways and washes without a quiet harbour. The Villa C——
stands to westward, with face set seaward toward Sestri’s opposite
shore, and terrace built inward over the bay. It was a fortified castle
once upon a time, long ago, when battles were fought along the coast,
and Genoa was a great maritime power; the castle’s battlements are
there still, built down into the rock that lies sunk in the waves;
around their base aloes and sweet thyme cling to barren soil, and upon
their crown a modern dwelling-house has grown into shape, with windows
that see the water a hundred feet below, and a patch of terrace-garden
growing upon scant mould, between the old walls of the fortifications.
A goodly fig-tree finds room spite of scant space, and spreads wide
boughs into the castle’s very windows, with fresh big leaves upon them,
and luscious fruit thick between; the gate is to the hinder side,
looking inland, and, when you find its mouth in the hill-side among
the olives, dank and rugged stone steps will lead you within the house,
and through the house out again on to that terrace upon the battlements
that is sea-framed.
Here lived Teresa years ago when the Villa C—— belonged to an old
Genoese _marchese_ of lone life and bachelor ways, and Teresa is the
country housekeeper. Her master is her pride, her pet, and her slave;
she scorns the _negoziante_ class who can grow rich in a trice, and buy
a title, too, since the year 1848! She would tell lies, white or black,
for an old family’s honour; day and night her simple soul schemes
to uphold, amid poverty, the traditions of a race for whom she has
lived alone these twenty years; the coronet of the house of C—— is the
fairest of all in her eyes, and there is no place, though ruined, like
Portofino Castle and Portofino Bay.
And here Teresa is right. Leaning upon the fortification’s old wall
before the front windows—that wall that holds the terrace I have told
of, looking around on this sun-lit summer morning that I call to mind,
scarce anyone would grumble at Teresa’s verdict. To westward Genoa
is hid from sight because of many rocks and promontories that seek
the waves, and are pine-fringed and clad with olives; towards the
sun-rising a near point—the other of the harbour’s arms, of which our
Castle’s pedestal is one—hides neighbouring clefts of the shore, but
further on a space, the bays seem to sweep inland with larger curves,
and from the point of Portofino Cape many creeks, big and little, go
together at last to make the one great gulf that curves round again
to Chiavari and Sestri, lying opposite. The blue waves sway softly to
and fro with the sun’s glitter on their bosoms; the sky is pale and
calm in the heat; white sails and yellow mark the horizon and link
sea and sky in the nearer foreground; round shapes of hills along the
coast lie languidly to right and left, for the coming heat has sent
a white mist before it. This is all looking seaward; from beneath
the fig-tree or from off the hindermost wall of battlement you might
see that gentle slopes or steeps are around, to girdle the bay—that
vineyards and rich cultivations adorn them, that olive and fruit trees
shade their sides, that green turf springs near the water, and aloes
and house-leeks upon the rocks. And Portofino’s tiny town lies around
the head of Portofino’s harbour; this also you can see from off the
battlements of Villa C——, can even hear the sound of children’s voices
from off the stone-paved piazza—fisher-children, who play around the
beach and the little pier—or the harsher tones of women calling and
men in argument. Where the land heaves inward and the slopes climb up
into hills, chestnut trees grow in place of olives and aloes, and the
turf is more mossy beneath them, for streams flow there, on whose brink
ferns and the maiden-hair flourish. Looking across the tranquil blue
bay, to the hill and cliff over against us, other villas stand up on
the green background—where other old families live or have lived with
other country housekeepers. And of these our Teresa is strangest and
best of all. Watch her now, with Maso the fisher, as she stands in the
shadow of the Castle wall, with face set towards that inland aspect
that is green with luxuriant vegetation. No silk gown, white apron and
sober cap are here the badges of responsible service. Though Teresa’s
power be absolute and her position in the household invulnerable, she
has rough work to do and wears no stockings to her feet, while her
gown is but of homespun linen, her plaited, grey locks are uncovered,
and no collar shields a throat that is open to the sun within an amber
kerchief. But it is in her strange, strong face that she wears all the
dignity of her office. Seamed though it be with gathering years and the
labour of life, individuality is set in its every wrinkle, and power
in the massive chin, swelling nostrils and heavy brow, while in the
keen, black eyes youth’s fire is not yet quenched. Maso is afraid as he
stands, leaning with curly, dark head against a cherry tree, for ‘And
you think you can pass off your nasty tunny fish on me,’ screams the
tall, old woman! ‘And you would like to get _soldi_ from the _marchese_
for what you can’t sell elsewhere, I don’t doubt! Go to, ill-educated
man that you are! Sardines for the master’s dinner I will have, if
you fish for them even at this hour!’ And Teresa’s palms are poised
defiantly on her broad hips, her tall and powerful frame sways with
agitation. Maso laughs, but his laughter is timorous, and quickly he
turns to run lightly down the hill with the scorned contents of his
basket. ‘Yes, yes; you may well run, for back again you need to be in a
quarter of an hour, mind you!’ calls the housekeeper in his wake. ‘It
is a little fast day, and the _marchese_ eats _magro_, and requires
the fish! Truly it seems impossible,’ continues she, using this
favourite ejaculation as she comes slowly up again, and round the outer
battlements to the brick-paved kitchen! Its deep-set windows look down
the castle wall, and down the steep rock into the sea; the sunlight
streams through them to flicker the rough floor over, and noting this,
that tells the time of day, ‘Up, and quick, you lazy wench!’ calls
Teresa sharply to the gaunt help-woman who slaves at her orders. ‘The
_Signor padrone_ will be home presently, and no breakfast cooked, and
that linen yet to wring out! Come, lend me a hand!’ So the shirts of
the marquis being hung out to dry on the castle turret, in company with
sundry sheets and aprons, the crumpled-featured woman falls to fanning
the charcoal fire with a feather screen, whilst Teresa chops fine herbs
for the master’s daily omelette. ‘Here he is now,’ mutters she half
crossly, as a heavy footfall climbs the stone stair, and, bustling
into the forecourt that is open to the terrace by an archway, she
begins to set out two-pronged forks and blunt knives on a coarse linen
tablecloth for the meal. The _marchese_ always eats in this middle
court, whence he can see his pots of carnation and sweet geranium-leaf
on the terrace, and get a glimpse of the sea behind the leaves of the
fig-tree across the arch; but the housekeeper oftentimes scolds at him
for not using the _salotto_ in preference, which is dark and dirtily
furnished; here, in the hall, the coarse oaken table and carved oak
press stand alone with a few rush-seated chairs on the brick floor, and
are nowise adequate, in Teresa’s eyes, to her master’s high lineage.
He comes slowly, he is a man of somewhat sad countenance—dark, and
pale, and fat. He wears a limp, long frock-coat now, but soon changes
it for a many-coloured dressing-gown, while keeping the flower-worked
smoking-cap still that Nina, his pretty niece, made for him last New
Year. ‘I have fairly hunger,’ says he somewhat glumly to the old woman,
glancing at the scarce-spread table. ‘So much the better,’ replies
this one; ‘_vossignoria_ will eat with the keener appetite!’ ‘It is
near to eleven,’ murmurs he again, but would not venture closer than
this towards a reproof to the all-powerful _donna di casa_. Teresa
condescends to no reply; but, when she has placed the white-wine flask
beside plate and knife and fork, and has retired into the kitchen to
put the omelette on the fire, some sense of justice, perhaps, compels
her to deal sharp words again to the drudge, and this is the only
effect of the _padrone’s_ mild displeasure! But the omelette is good,
and the _funghi_ are better than yesterday’s, so when the _marchese_
has eaten a mouthful he is content to obey Teresa’s summons on the
terrace that he may see a white-sailed schooner pass across the
offing well in sight. ‘There will be ugly weather to-night,’ remarks
the woman. ‘No, I think not,’ replies he, thinking of an unfinished
tumbler of Monferrato. ‘_Vossignoria_ is not always right, however!
It is not the fishers who will make so sure of fine weather because
the sun shines in heaven and the sea is blue! Wait and see if they
moor not their boats high on the beach before evening!’ ‘May be,’ says
the _marchese_ mildly, and returns to his breakfast, while Teresa,
approaching that other turret over the harbour, sends a cry out of
good lungs to the fisherman coiling ropes in a boat below. It is Maso,
who has not sent the fish. His answer comes travelling up through the
olive trees, betwixt and above whose boughs the jewel-blue water lies
cool in the heat, and deeper-coloured where a rim of midday shadow
is around each brown old boat. ‘We have taken a “sea-serpent!”’ calls
Maso again, and Teresa hastens within with this piece of news, for the
capture of these dog-fish is an event, even if the sight of a shark
or a monster cuttle-fish be a matter of yet more thrilling interest
because of rarer occurrence. ‘What will _Vossignoria_ take for dinner?’
asks the housekeeper when the tale has been told. And after a moment’s
pause for the reply that well she knows the _marchese_ dares not give,
‘You have a miserable portion of sardines,’ continues the autocrat,
having been through this daily mockery of humility, ‘the half of a
boiled fowl—which well the priests allow on a half-fast day, having
but the health you have—two potatoes, and a filled tomato with a fry to
finish.’ ‘_Benissimo!_’ says the _marchese_, as he has said every day
these twelve years, and then he knows he has ordered his dinner.
[Illustration: THE MARQUIS AND HIS HOUSEKEEPER.]
It is evening and—in the boat that has lain gently swaying in the
harbour all day, beneath a pink awning—the _marchese_ takes his nightly
row. The dolphins, whence Portofino has its name, sport around the
prow, but soon they gather in companies, and sink safely low beneath
the sea’s surface, for Teresa was right after all, and there is a storm
brewing behind the sunset. The _marchese_ comes within doors with the
clothes that hung a-drying, for the rain-drops begin to fall. The boats
are moored high, the waves gather white crests over the darkening blue.
Even in Portofino’s land-locked harbour that is the safest on all the
coast, the waters that were as smooth as glass begin to swell a little
with the rush of the sea from without; they are blue still from far,
and green from off a boat’s prow, but they are duller beneath the
grouping clouds than they were in the searching sunlight. Teresa does
not mind, for did she not prophesy that bad weather was blowing up?
Bathing Time.
The blue Mediterranean with warm and buoyant waters laps and breaks
around Italy’s peninsula, and Italy’s people are none the less fond
of their fair and treacherous sea than we of our greyer and more
boisterous Atlantic, even though theirs leaves them no passage
northward into other lands, nor binds them about with her waves.
Long ago, even so long ago as in the time of the first great Romans
of the Republic, Italians loved the shores of their land, and would
flock thither from the middle countries to breathe the stronger, if
not always fresher, sea-breeze, and to rest and revel in the clear
waters of ebbing waves. Many fashions have changed since then, but
that one still holds good. From inland towns people fly to the smooth
beach, or the rocky, of their sea’s landmark when hot August days are
heavy; scarce a family even of the hindermost nobility—and in Italy,
as is well known, this nobility is only the country’s gentry—but has
some kind of dwelling, good or bad, upon some portion of the shore.
Even seaport town people seek the mountains less readily than some
village on the coast which they have seen all their lives, for, though
briny breezes from off these inland waters can never be invigorating
as those that travel across the Atlantic, Italians have none the
less fond a belief both in them and in the soft waves wherein they
delight to plunge. And of all the sea-loving people of the south
the people of Genoa are best at the sport. Crowds seek the Lido at
Venice, bathing-houses are built into the waves, music plays and fine
water-costumes are there displayed. The rich and pleasure-loving of
all nations ply this summer pastime busily at Nice, but none of them
know the sea as do they of the quieter Riviera haunts; none of them can
leap from sharp rocks to cut the green surface, none can dive and swim,
and brave risks of dolphin and cuttle-fish, sometimes even of sharks,
as can the dwellers on the rocky coast where no smooth sands help the
timid ones.
All along the coast on Genoa’s either side habitations crowd the
earth; palaces, time-worn and soiled or new and gaudy, for the rich;
tall and thin and straight houses with small rooms and many storeys
for the class of the _negozianti_ and _artisti_; everybody must do
the ‘Season of the Baths’ somehow. Quarto, Quinto, Nervi, Bogliasco,
not to speak of Albaro nearer town, and then Sori, Recco, and best of
all, Camogli, where the stone pines grow in a fringe along the hill’s
ridge—everywhere there are houses in flats, with apartments to let;
everywhere cottages stand beside palaces or behind _stabilimenti_,
so that all classes should have room equally. The proprietors of
villa Franchi, villa Crosa, villa Gropallo, and many more, come in
elegant summer attire or in economical costumes, to recruit ‘_in
villeggiatura_’ and to bathe and dive and swim in waters that lap the
beach of their own domains. _La signora Friuli_, who has many children,
and whose husband is in the _Pasta_ trade, comes from the fifth storey
of a house in the narrow town street to wear out her own old clothes
and to send the children shoeless on to the beach of Camogli, whence
one and all dip in the mild blue sea. A terraced hill rises behind
Camogli’s picturesque harbour, with its fisher-huts; the hill is
cultivated with wheat patches and little potato fields, for it belongs
to the old palace that stands below, whose walls, once fresco-painted,
are now so weather-stained. But the cultivation is of a desultory
nature, and the olives are its best harvest, of which the small,
sturdy trees stand over the terraces with gnarled trunks and twisted
branches. Following the path that leads up to the flat of a ridge, you
can reach pine-plantations, where dark and widely-spreading trees stand
in the soft earth on the cliffs’ edge and on the side also where inland
scenery comes in sight, with church-steeples and houses dotted over
a valley’s expanse. The faint, heavy perfume of tropical vegetation
hangs around, pine-dust lies thick and slippery on the ground, paths
wind about, laurel bushes grow beside them, and, though the western
slope look towards mountains, the hill’s crest rests over against the
sea again. Waves lap far below, where cloven rocks and smooth rocks and
peaked rocks are sunk in the sand for ramparts; waves swell gently for
miles in front, more waves of clouds seem to be in the sky, and fishing
smacks sway on the sea’s surface; brown sails and white sails lie
against the cloud’s background, and the broken coast-line winds back
to where Genoa halts, like a fancy city, between mist and sunshine.
This is Camogli, where many a man and woman and lad and lass and child
has rejoiced in the _stagione dei Bagni_. And yet Camogli is not the
fashionable one among Riviera bathing-places, and we must turn to the
sun-setting side of the Riviera capital for a glimpse of the life that
is August life indeed to the professional pleasure-hunter.
A railway has been open for some time now along the eastern Riviera:
it has marred the perfection of some fair spots, but it has its
conveniences, and it cannot spoil far afield. But in the days that I
best remember there was no railroad to eastward, and the _Ponente_
shore had thus an advantage over the other in civilization’s eyes.
There was a _strada ferrata_ to Nice some time ago, a _strada ferrata_
that some people wondered was ever made: the _vetturini_, whose trade
is marred for instance, and the diligence proprietors, who can no
longer count on crowding their vehicles with dust-smothered passengers,
or the traveller, who has money to pay for a post-chaise, and can
spare time to loiter along the road at his pleasure, enjoying the
full fragrance of its loveliness, and providing food for extortion to
the innkeepers. The trains never run regularly—some part of the road
is always out of repair—you travel in fear of being plunged into the
sea, and the carriage route is altogether spoilt. Yet it is a step in
civilization. ‘What would you have?’ says the ever obsequious guard to
whom one confides one’s wrongs at having been five hours longer on the
road than the guide-book stated. ‘Did we go faster, you would be now in
the sea: the road is not safe. Patience!’ the invariable ejaculation of
an Italian when others but himself are complaining.
To anyone who knows the Cornice from Genoa to Nice the name of Pegli
will not be totally strange. It is, or rather used to be, a little
fishing village; used to be, for of late years there has been built in
the midst of it a grand Stabilimento, whither the town’s inhabitants
flock during the months of July and August for the sea-bathing.
In summer it is a fashionable place; many of Genoa’s nobles divide
their summer between Pegli and some inland foreign baths, whilst the
_bourgeoise_ class seek their holiday first in quiet mountainous parts
of Italy known best to themselves, but do not fail to return for _i
Bagni_ when the rich have left things cheaper. In winter Pegli is
utterly desolate, excepting for some few foreigners, mostly English,
who try to make themselves comfortable in the huge marble halls of the
Stabilimento, built only for coolness, in the delusion that they are
safer from bronchitis because they see the sun and know it is Italy,
than they would be, snug and warm, in English homes.
[Illustration: FLIRTATION AT PEGLI.]
Pegli stands straggling along the beach of a sunny bay, almost within
the Gulf of Genoa. The village itself is not pretty, but around it
on the sea shore, with gardens sloping down into the very waves, and
stone loggias and terraces whose feet stand in the water, above it
on the hill-side, girt about with woods and vineyards, stand many a
grand old palace or cool and pleasant villa. True, there are here, as
everywhere else, in Northern Italy, queer examples of modern Italian
architecture, in thin, tall houses, painted over with every crude
tint of scarlet, orange, blue, and violet, bearing staring frescoes
of horses and water-nymphs, and balconies out of perspective. But
these defective edifices, though many in number, cannot utterly spoil
the place. Though dusty the highway and breathless the summer days,
the idle, hazy hours are happy that one may spend in the villas or
bathing-houses of Pegli. In the Stabilimento for ten francs a day
you have (according to the maître d’hôtel) every luxury which human
craving may desire. A cool, marble-floored, furnitureless room, with
goblin-bedizened ceiling and mosquito-curtained bed, an ample billiard
room, an elegant ‘salon,’ a vast dining-room, every convenience for
sea or freshwater bathing, even a ball-room, in which to flirt once a
week with any one of the pale dark-eyed ladies who invite you to that
pastime. Nor is the ball-room the only meet place for this exercise;
there is a balcony—two, nay three balconies—and a large marble terrace
that you can pace in the cool night air, gently smoking your cigarette
in company with an attractive Milanese, Piedmontese, or Tuscan
countess. Rising in the morning at five, or even before, you stroll
down lightly clad to the shore, where the little waves are washing
lazily up and down on the shelving beach, cool and limpid in the dewy
dawn; you cross the soft small strip of shingle and parched, wrinkled
sand—it is only a strip, for we have no tide—you secure one of those
quaint little tents built out into the water and you adorn yourself for
the great event of the day. Then issuing forth freely into the soothing
water, you meet all the lovely ladies whom you saw last night at _table
d’hôte_, in every variety of fascinating attire. Some are dressed as
nymphs, some wear the most elaborately embroidered flannel garments,
some have broad-brimmed Leghorn hats, but these are they who fear the
spoiling of their complexions, and are few in number. Out of this mass
of insinuating loveliness you choose the one to you most sympathetic,
you ask her if she swims (but of course she swims, since she is
Italian, or at worst Italian by education and customs), you engage her
for the morning as you would for a dance, you conduct her out to sea
and does she need any assistance you offer it. You talk, you laugh,
the hour passes, and you bring her safely to shore. You make your way
back to your apartment, return to your couch and smoke. You read the
paper, you drink coffee, then you dress, play billiards, and attempt
breakfast. You yawn, doze, but not again see the fair water-nymph
until dinner at five P.M., when she reappears in other guise, as the
perfumed, powdered, languid, and _bien coiffée_ lady of fashion. After
dinner everyone saunters forth to the woods and gardens. Those who
can, go in pairs, those who cannot in dreary solos or triplets. It is
still hot, but not beyond endurance. The Pallavicini Gardens close by
are wonderful; waterworks are there, artificial lakes, grottos with
stalactites, Chinese pagodas, Swiss châlets, and English farmhouses,
besides arbours, into which the confiding stranger strolls innocently,
to be drenched unawares from a secret stream, and whence he darts, less
confidingly, only to be met by four or five more conflicting streams on
some deceptive bridge or turret. There are many more cunning devices
besides, and beyond all—or rather not to be marred by them all—is the
subtly seductive beauty of Southern nature: the luxuriant vegetation,
the waveless dreamy sea, the tender rose-tinted sky, the trickle of
many a tiny rivulet, the hot, pale air rich with harmonious scents of
orange blossom, rose, and magnolia; and then later on, when the hours
have sped into darkness, the whisper of rising night-breezes amid the
foliage, the flittering of fire-flies, the shooting of stars, the hush
of waves on the shelving shore below, when the water is gently moved by
the touch of the wind. Night grows, everyone goes home. The terraces
of hotels and palaces are peopled with gracefully-reclining ladies
who smoke cigarettes and flirt fans, with obsequious and attentive
cavaliers, flattering and self-conscious; with fat dowagers, wearied
and sleepy, who yet will not for the life of them retire to leave the
field open to younger and fairer rivals. The cool hours wear away—the
only hours in which one lives in summer—a short while of sleep, and
the early morning is back again with its delicious water duties and the
lazy hours that follow on till night.
Part Two
_In the Apennines_
The Mountains.