Viareggio, dead at this season, is a rowdy place in summer; not rowdy,
however, after the fashion of Margate. There is a suggestive difference
between the two. The upper classes in both towns are of course
irreproachable in externals--it is their uniformity of behaviour
throughout the world which makes them so uninteresting from a
spectacular point of view. A place does not receive its tone from them
(save possibly Bournemouth) but from their inferiors; and here, in this
matter of public decorum, the comparison is to the credit of Italy. It
is beside the point to say that the one lies relatively remote, while
the other is convenient for cheap trips from a capital. Set Viareggio
down at the very gate of Rome and fill it with the scum of Trastevere:
the difference would still be there. It might be more noisy than
Margate. It would certainly be less blatant.
As for myself, I hate Viareggio at all seasons, and nothing would have
brought me here but the prospect of visiting the neighbouring Carrara
mines with Attilio to whom I have written, enclosing a postcard for
reply.
For this is a modern town built on a plain of mud and sand, a town of
heartrending monotony, the least picturesque of all cities in the
peninsula, the least Italian. It has not even a central piazza! You may
conjure up visions of Holland and detect something of an old-world
aroma, if you stroll about the canal and harbour where sails are now
flapping furiously in the north wind; you may look up to the
snow-covered peaks and imagine yourself in Switzerland, and then thank
God you are not there; of Italy I perceive little or nothing. The people
are birds of prey; a shallow and rapacious brood who fleece visitors
during those summer weeks and live on the proceeds for the rest of the
year. There is no commerce to liven them up and make them smilingly
polite; no historical tradition to give them self-respect; no
agriculture worth mentioning (the soil is too poor)--in other words, no
peasantry to replenish the gaps in city life and infuse an element of
decency and depth. An inordinate amount of singing and whistling goes on
all day long. Is it not a sign of empty-headedness? I would like the
opinion of schoolmasters on this point, whether, among the children
committed to their charge, the habitual whistlers be not the dullest of
wit.
And so five days have passed. A pension proving uninhabitable, and most
of the better-class hotels being closed for the winter, I threw myself
upon the mercy of an octroi official who stood guarding a forlorn gate
somewhere in the wilderness. He has sent me to a villa bearing the name
of a certain lady and situated in a street called after a certain
politician. He has done well.
A kindlier dame than my hostess could nowhere be found. She hails from
the province of the Marche and has no high opinion of this town, where
she only lives on account of her husband, a retired something-or-other
who owns the house. Although convulsed with grief, both of them, at the
moment of my arrival--a favourite kitten had just been run over--they at
once set about making me comfortable in a room with exposure due south.
The flooring is of cement: the usual Viareggio custom. Bricks are cold,
stone is cold, tiles are cold; but cement! It freezes your marrow
through double carpets. For meals I go to the "Assassino" or the
Vittoria hotel; the fare is better at the first, the company at the
other....
The large dining-room at the "Vittoria" is not in use just now. We take
our meals in two smaller rooms adjoining each other, one of which leads
into the kitchen where privileged guests may talk secrets with the cook
and poke their noses into saucepans. At a table by herself sits the
little signorina who controls the establishment, wide awake, pale of
complexion, slightly hump-backed, close-fisted as the devil though
sufficiently vulnerable to a bluff masculine protest. Our waiter is
noteworthy in his line. He is that exceptional being, an Italian snob;
he can talk of nothing but dukes and princes, Bourbons by choice,
because he once served at a banquet given by some tuppenny Parma
royalties round the corner.
The food would be endurable, save for those vile war-time maccheroni.
The wine is of doubtful origin. Doubtful, at least, to the uninitiated
who smacks his lips and wonders vaguely where he has tasted the stuff
before. The concoction has so many flavours--a veritable Proteus! I know
it well, though its father and mother would be hard to identify. It was
born on the banks of the Tiber and goes by the name of ripa: ask any
Roman. Certain cheap and heady products of the south--Sicily, Sardinia,
Naples, Apulia, Ischia--have contributed their share to its composition;
Tiber-water is the one and constant ingredient. This ripa is exported by
the ton to wine-less centres like Genoa and there drunk under any name
you please. A few butts have doubtless been dropped overboard at
Viareggio for the poisoning of its ten thousand summer visitors.
Quite a jolly crowd of folk assembles here every evening. There is, of
course, the ubiquitous retired major; also some amusing gentlemen who
run up and down between this place and Lucca on mysterious errands
connected, I fancy, with oil; as well as a dissipated young marquis sent
hither from Rimini by the ridiculously old-fashioned father to expiate
his sins--his gambling debts, his multifarious and costly
love-adventures, and the manslaughter of a carpenter whom he ran over in
his car. [6] My favourite is a fat creature with a glorious fleshy face,
the face of some Neronian parvenu--a memorable face, full of the brutal
prosperity of Trimalchio's Banquet. He told me, yesterday, a long story
about a local saint in one of their villages--a saint of yesterday who,
curing diseases and performing various other miracles, began to think
himself, as their manner is, God Almighty, or something to that effect.
The police shot him as a revolutionary, because he had gathered a few
adherents.
"Rather an extreme measure," I suggested.
"It is. Not that I love the saints. But I love the police still less."
"Like every good Italian."
"Like every good Italian...."
News from Attilio. He cannot come. Both mother and sister are ill. He
delayed writing in the hopes of their getting better; he wanted to join
me, but they are always "auguale"--the same; in short, he must stay at
home, as appears from the following plaintive and rather puzzling
postcard, the address of which I had providentially written myself:
Caro G. N. Dorcola ho ricevuto la sua cara lettera e son cozi contento
da sentire le sue notizzie io non posso venire perche mia madre e
amalata e mia sorella Enrica era tardato ascirvere perche mi credevo che
tesano mellio ma invece sono sempre auguale perche volevo venire ci
mando dici mille baci e una setta dimano addio al Signior D. Dor.
But for the fact that, counting on a fortnight's trip to Carrara, I have
asked for certain printed matter to be forwarded here from England, I
would jump into the next train for anywhere.
Running along the sea on either side of Viareggio is a noble forest of
stone pines where the wind is scarce felt, though you may hear it
sighing overhead among the crowns. This is the place for a promenade at
all hours of the day. Children climb the trunks to fetch down a few
remaining cones or break off dried branches as fuel. A sportsman told me
that several of them lose their lives every year at this adventure. What
was he doing here, with a gun? Waiting for a hare, he said. They always
wait for hares. There are none!
Then a poor thin woman, dressed in black and gathering the prickly
stalks of gorse for firewood, began to converse with me, reasonably
enough at first. All of a sudden her language changed into a burning
torrent of insanity, with wild gesticulations. She was the Queen of the
country, she avowed, the rightful Queen, and they had robbed her of all
her children, every one of them, and all her jewels. I agreed--what else
could one do? Being in the combustible stage, she went over the argument
again and again, her eyes fiercely flashing. Nothing could stop the flow
of her words. I was right glad when another woman came to my rescue and
pushed her along, as you would a calf, saying:
"You go home now, it's getting dark, run along!--yes, yes! you're the
Queen right enough--she was in the asylum, Sir, for three months and
then they let her out, the fools--of course you are, everybody knows
that! But you really mustn't annoy this gentleman any more--her husband
and son were both killed in the war, that's what started it--we'll fetch
them tomorrow at the palace, all those things, and the children, only
don't talk so much--they thought she was cured, but just hark at
her!--va bene, it's all yours, only get along--she'll be back there in a
day or two, won't she?--really, you are chattering much too much, for a
Queen; va bene, va bene, va bene--"
A sad little incident, under the pines....
A fortnight has elapsed.
I refuse to budge from Viareggio, having discovered the village of
Corsanico on the heights yonder and, in that village, a family
altogether to my liking. How one stumbles upon delightful folks! Set me
down in furthest Cathay and I will undertake to find, soon afterwards,
some person with whom I am quite prepared to spend the remaining years
of life.
The driving-road to Corsanico is a never-ending affair. Deep in mire, it
meanders perversely about the plain; meanders more than ever, but of
necessity, once the foot of the hills is reached. I soon gave it up in
favour of the steam-tram to Cammaiore which deposits you at a station
whose name I forget, whence you may ascend to Corsanico through a
village called, I think, Momio. That route, also, was promptly abandoned
when the path along the canal was revealed to me. This waterway runs in
an almost straight line from Viareggio to the base of that particular
hill on whose summit lies my village. It is a monotonous walk at this
season; the rich marsh vegetation slumbers in the ooze underground,
waiting for a breath of summer. At last you cross that big road and
strike the limestone rock.
Here is no intermediate region, no undulating ground, between the upland
and the plain. They converge abruptly upon each other, as might have
been expected, seeing that these hills used to be the old sea-board and
this green level, in olden days, the Mediterranean. Three different
tracks, leading steeply upward through olives and pines and chestnuts
from where the canal ends, will bring you to Corsanico. I know them all.
I could find my way in darkest midnight.
Days have passed; days of delight. I climb up in the morning and descend
at nightfall, my mind well stored with recollections of pleasant talk
and smiling faces. A large place, this Corsanico, straggling about the
hill-top with scattered farms and gardens; to reach the
tobacconist--near whose house, by the way, you obtain an unexpected
glimpse into the valley of Cammaiore--is something of an excursion. As a
rule we repose, after luncheon, on a certain wooded knoll. We are high
up; seven or eight hundred feet above the canal. The blue Tyrrhenian is
dotted with steamers and sailing boats, and yonder lies Viareggio in its
belt of forest; far away, to the left, you discern the tower of Pisa. A
placid lake between the two, wood-engirdled, is now famous as being the
spot selected by the great Maestro Puccini to spend a summer month in
much-advertised seclusion. I am learning the name of every locality in
the plain, of every peak among the mountains at our back.
"And that little ridge of stone," says my companion, "--do you see it,
jutting into the fields down there? It has a queer name. We call it La
Sirena."
La Sirena....
It is good to live in a land where such memories cling to old rocks.
By what a chance has the name survived to haunt this inland crag,
defying geological changes, outlasting the generations of men, their
creeds and tongues and races! How it takes one back--back into hoary
antiquity, into another landscape altogether! One thinks of those Greek
mariners coasting past this promontory, and pouring libations to the
Siren into an ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now sows
his rice and turnips.
Paganisme immortel, es-tu mort? On le dit.
Mais Pan, tout bas, s'en moque, et la Sirène en rit.
They are still here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to
separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous
splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the
gods are kind.
My Siren dwells at Corsanico.