THE first impressions of such a place as ALBARO, the suburb of Genoa,
where I am now, as my American friends would say, ‘located,’ can hardly
fail, I should imagine, to be mournful and disappointing. It requires a
little time and use to overcome the feeling of depression consequent, at
first, on so much ruin and neglect. Novelty, pleasant to most people, is
particularly delightful, I think, to me. I am not easily dispirited when
I have the means of pursuing my own fancies and occupations; and I
believe I have some natural aptitude for accommodating myself to
circumstances. But, as yet, I stroll about here, in all the holes and
corners of the neighbourhood, in a perpetual state of forlorn surprise;
and returning to my villa: the Villa Bagnerello (it sounds romantic, but
Signor Bagnerello is a butcher hard by): have sufficient occupation in
pondering over my new experiences, and comparing them, very much to my
own amusement, with my expectations, until I wander out again.
The Villa Bagnerello: or the Pink Jail, a far more expressive name for
the mansion: is in one of the most splendid situations imaginable. The
noble bay of Genoa, with the deep blue Mediterranean, lies stretched out
near at hand; monstrous old desolate houses and palaces are dotted all
about; lofty hills, with their tops often hidden in the clouds, and with
strong forts perched high up on their craggy sides, are close upon the
left; and in front, stretching from the walls of the house, down to a
ruined chapel which stands upon the bold and picturesque rocks on the
sea-shore, are green vineyards, where you may wander all day long in
partial shade, through interminable vistas of grapes, trained on a rough
trellis-work across the narrow paths.
This sequestered spot is approached by lanes so very narrow, that when we
arrived at the Custom-house, we found the people here had _taken the
measure_ of the narrowest among them, and were waiting to apply it to the
carriage; which ceremony was gravely performed in the street, while we
all stood by in breathless suspense. It was found to be a very tight
fit, but just a possibility, and no more—as I am reminded every day, by
the sight of various large holes which it punched in the walls on either
side as it came along. We are more fortunate, I am told, than an old
lady, who took a house in these parts not long ago, and who stuck fast in
_her_ carriage in a lane; and as it was impossible to open one of the
doors, she was obliged to submit to the indignity of being hauled through
one of the little front windows, like a harlequin.
When you have got through these narrow lanes, you come to an archway,
imperfectly stopped up by a rusty old gate—my gate. The rusty old gate
has a bell to correspond, which you ring as long as you like, and which
nobody answers, as it has no connection whatever with the house. But
there is a rusty old knocker, too—very loose, so that it slides round
when you touch it—and if you learn the trick of it, and knock long
enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier comes, and gives you
admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, all wild and weedy,
from which the vineyard opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a
cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous
room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls: not unlike a great
Methodist chapel. This is the _sala_. It has five windows and five
doors, and is decorated with pictures which would gladden the heart of
one of those picture-cleaners in London who hang up, as a sign, a picture
divided, like death and the lady, at the top of the old ballad: which
always leaves you in a state of uncertainty whether the ingenious
professor has cleaned one half, or dirtied the other. The furniture of
this _sala_ is a sort of red brocade. All the chairs are immovable, and
the sofa weighs several tons.
On the same floor, and opening out of this same chamber, are dining-room,
drawing-room, and divers bedrooms: each with a multiplicity of doors and
windows. Up-stairs are divers other gaunt chambers, and a kitchen; and
down-stairs is another kitchen, which, with all sorts of strange
contrivances for burning charcoal, looks like an alchemical laboratory.
There are also some half-dozen small sitting-rooms, where the servants in
this hot July, may escape from the heat of the fire, and where the brave
Courier plays all sorts of musical instruments of his own manufacture,
all the evening long. A mighty old, wandering, ghostly, echoing, grim,
bare house it is, as ever I beheld or thought of.
There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from the drawing-room;
and under this terrace, and forming one side of the little garden, is
what used to be the stable. It is now a cow-house, and has three cows in
it, so that we get new milk by the bucketful. There is no pasturage
near, and they never go out, but are constantly lying down, and
surfeiting themselves with vine-leaves—perfect Italian cows enjoying the
_dolce far’ niente_ all day long. They are presided over, and slept
with, by an old man named Antonio, and his son; two burnt-sienna natives
with naked legs and feet, who wear, each, a shirt, a pair of trousers,
and a red sash, with a relic, or some sacred charm like the bonbon off a
twelfth-cake, hanging round the neck. The old man is very anxious to
convert me to the Catholic faith, and exhorts me frequently. We sit upon
a stone by the door, sometimes in the evening, like Robinson Crusoe and
Friday reversed; and he generally relates, towards my conversion, an
abridgment of the History of Saint Peter—chiefly, I believe, from the
unspeakable delight he has in his imitation of the cock.
The view, as I have said, is charming; but in the day you must keep the
lattice-blinds close shut, or the sun would drive you mad; and when the
sun goes down you must shut up all the windows, or the mosquitoes would
tempt you to commit suicide. So at this time of the year, you don’t see
much of the prospect within doors. As for the flies, you don’t mind
them. Nor the fleas, whose size is prodigious, and whose name is Legion,
and who populate the coach-house to that extent that I daily expect to
see the carriage going off bodily, drawn by myriads of industrious fleas
in harness. The rats are kept away, quite comfortably, by scores of lean
cats, who roam about the garden for that purpose. The lizards, of
course, nobody cares for; they play in the sun, and don’t bite. The
little scorpions are merely curious. The beetles are rather late, and
have not appeared yet. The frogs are company. There is a preserve of
them in the grounds of the next villa; and after nightfall, one would
think that scores upon scores of women in pattens were going up and down
a wet stone pavement without a moment’s cessation. That is exactly the
noise they make.
The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful sea-shore, was
dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint John the Baptist. I believe there
is a legend that Saint John’s bones were received there, with various
solemnities, when they were first brought to Genoa; for Genoa possesses
them to this day. When there is any uncommon tempest at sea, they are
brought out and exhibited to the raging weather, which they never fail to
calm. In consequence of this connection of Saint John with the city,
great numbers of the common people are christened Giovanni Baptista,
which latter name is pronounced in the Genoese patois ‘Batcheetcha,’ like
a sneeze. To hear everybody calling everybody else Batcheetcha, on a
Sunday, or festa-day, when there are crowds in the streets, is not a
little singular and amusing to a stranger.
The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, whose walls
(outside walls, I mean) are profusely painted with all sorts of subjects,
grim and holy. But time and the sea-air have nearly obliterated them;
and they look like the entrance to Vauxhall Gardens on a sunny day. The
court-yards of these houses are overgrown with grass and weeds; all sorts
of hideous patches cover the bases of the statues, as if they were
afflicted with a cutaneous disorder; the outer gates are rusty; and the
iron bars outside the lower windows are all tumbling down. Firewood is
kept in halls where costly treasures might be heaped up, mountains high;
waterfalls are dry and choked; fountains, too dull to play, and too lazy
to work, have just enough recollection of their identity, in their sleep,
to make the neighbourhood damp; and the sirocco wind is often blowing
over all these things for days together, like a gigantic oven out for a
holiday.
Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the _Virgin’s mother_,
when the young men of the neighbourhood, having worn green wreaths of the
vine in some procession or other, bathed in them, by scores. It looked
very odd and pretty. Though I am bound to confess (not knowing of the
festa at that time), that I thought, and was quite satisfied, they wore
them as horses do—to keep the flies off.
Soon afterwards, there was another festa-day, in honour of St. Nazaro.
One of the Albaro young men brought two large bouquets soon after
breakfast, and coming up-stairs into the great _sala_, presented them
himself. This was a polite way of begging for a contribution towards the
expenses of some music in the Saint’s honour, so we gave him whatever it
may have been, and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six
o’clock in the evening we went to the church—close at hand—a very gaudy
place, hung all over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from
the altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets
here, simply a long white veil—the ‘mezzero;’ and it was the most gauzy,
ethereal-looking audience I ever saw. The young women are not generally
pretty, but they walk remarkably well, and in their personal carriage and
the management of their veils, display much innate grace and elegance.
There were some men present: not very many: and a few of these were
kneeling about the aisles, while everybody else tumbled over them.
Innumerable tapers were burning in the church; the bits of silver and tin
about the saints (especially in the Virgin’s necklace) sparkled
brilliantly; the priests were seated about the chief altar; the organ
played away, lustily, and a full band did the like; while a conductor, in
a little gallery opposite to the band, hammered away on the desk before
him, with a scroll; and a tenor, without any voice, sang. The band
played one way, the organ played another, the singer went a third, and
the unfortunate conductor banged and banged, and flourished his scroll on
some principle of his own: apparently well satisfied with the whole
performance. I never did hear such a discordant din. The heat was
intense all the time.
The men, in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on their shoulders
(they never put them on), were playing bowls, and buying sweetmeats,
immediately outside the church. When half-a-dozen of them finished a
game, they came into the aisle, crossed themselves with the holy water,
knelt on one knee for an instant, and walked off again to play another
game at bowls. They are remarkably expert at this diversion, and will
play in the stony lanes and streets, and on the most uneven and
disastrous ground for such a purpose, with as much nicety as on a
billiard-table. But the most favourite game is the national one of Mora,
which they pursue with surprising ardour, and at which they will stake
everything they possess. It is a destructive kind of gambling, requiring
no accessories but the ten fingers, which are always—I intend no pun—at
hand. Two men play together. One calls a number—say the extreme one,
ten. He marks what portion of it he pleases by throwing out three, or
four, or five fingers; and his adversary has, in the same instant, at
hazard, and without seeing his hand, to throw out as many fingers, as
will make the exact balance. Their eyes and hands become so used to
this, and act with such astonishing rapidity, that an uninitiated
bystander would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to follow the
progress of the game. The initiated, however, of whom there is always an
eager group looking on, devour it with the most intense avidity; and as
they are always ready to champion one side or the other in case of a
dispute, and are frequently divided in their partisanship, it is often a
very noisy proceeding. It is never the quietest game in the world; for
the numbers are always called in a loud sharp voice, and follow as close
upon each other as they can be counted. On a holiday evening, standing
at a window, or walking in a garden, or passing through the streets, or
sauntering in any quiet place about the town, you will hear this game in
progress in a score of wine-shops at once; and looking over any vineyard
walk, or turning almost any corner, will come upon a knot of players in
full cry. It is observable that most men have a propensity to throw out
some particular number oftener than another; and the vigilance with which
two sharp-eyed players will mutually endeavour to detect this weakness,
and adapt their game to it, is very curious and entertaining. The effect
is greatly heightened by the universal suddenness and vehemence of
gesture; two men playing for half a farthing with an intensity as
all-absorbing as if the stake were life.
Hard by here is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging to some member of the
Brignole family, but just now hired by a school of Jesuits for their
summer quarters. I walked into its dismantled precincts the other
evening about sunset, and couldn’t help pacing up and down for a little
time, drowsily taking in the aspect of the place: which is repeated
hereabouts in all directions.
I loitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two sides of a weedy,
grass-grown court-yard, whereof the house formed a third side, and a low
terrace-walk, overlooking the garden and the neighbouring hills, the
fourth. I don’t believe there was an uncracked stone in the whole
pavement. In the centre was a melancholy statue, so piebald in its
decay, that it looked exactly as if it had been covered with
sticking-plaster, and afterwards powdered. The stables, coach-houses,
offices, were all empty, all ruinous, all utterly deserted.
Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their latches;
windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, and was lying about
in clods; fowls and cats had so taken possession of the out-buildings,
that I couldn’t help thinking of the fairy tales, and eyeing them with
suspicion, as transformed retainers, waiting to be changed back again.
One old Tom in particular: a scraggy brute, with a hungry green eye (a
poor relation, in reality, I am inclined to think): came prowling round
and round me, as if he half believed, for the moment, that I might be the
hero come to marry the lady, and set all to-rights; but discovering his
mistake, he suddenly gave a grim snarl, and walked away with such a
tremendous tail, that he couldn’t get into the little hole where he
lived, but was obliged to wait outside, until his indignation and his
tail had gone down together.
In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be, in this colonnade, some
Englishmen had been living, like grubs in a nut; but the Jesuits had
given them notice to go, and they had gone, and _that_ was shut up too.
The house: a wandering, echoing, thundering barrack of a place, with the
lower windows barred up, as usual, was wide open at the door: and I have
no doubt I might have gone in, and gone to bed, and gone dead, and nobody
a bit the wiser. Only one suite of rooms on an upper floor was tenanted;
and from one of these, the voice of a young-lady vocalist, practising
bravura lustily, came flaunting out upon the silent evening.
I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and quaint, with
avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and water in stone
basins; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy, straggling, under grown
or over grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of slabby, clammy,
creeping, and uncomfortable life. There was nothing bright in the whole
scene but a firefly—one solitary firefly—showing against the dark bushes
like the last little speck of the departed Glory of the house; and even
it went flitting up and down at sudden angles, and leaving a place with a
jerk, and describing an irregular circle, and returning to the same place
with a twitch that startled one: as if it were looking for the rest of
the Glory, and wondering (Heaven knows it might!) what had become of it.
* * * * *
In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and shadows of my dismal
entering reverie gradually resolved themselves into familiar forms and
substances; and I already began to think that when the time should come,
a year hence, for closing the long holiday and turning back to England, I
might part from Genoa with anything but a glad heart.
It is a place that ‘grows upon you’ every day. There seems to be always
something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and
by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is,
when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn up again,
under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the
strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean,
magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every
turn.
They who would know how beautiful the country immediately surrounding
Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) to the top of Monte Faccio, or,
at least, ride round the city walls: a feat more easily performed. No
prospect can be more diversified and lovely than the changing views of
the harbour, and the valleys of the two rivers, the Polcevera and the
Bizagno, from the heights along which the strongly fortified walls are
carried, like the great wall of China in little. In not the least
picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair specimen of a real Genoese
tavern, where the visitor may derive good entertainment from real Genoese
dishes, such as Tagliarini; Ravioli; German sausages, strong of garlic,
sliced and eaten with fresh green figs; cocks’ combs and sheep-kidneys,
chopped up with mutton chops and liver; small pieces of some unknown part
of a calf, twisted into small shreds, fried, and served up in a great
dish like white-bait; and other curiosities of that kind. They often get
wine at these suburban Trattorie, from France and Spain and Portugal,
which is brought over by small captains in little trading-vessels. They
buy it at so much a bottle, without asking what it is, or caring to
remember if anybody tells them, and usually divide it into two heaps; of
which they label one Champagne, and the other Madeira. The various
opposite flavours, qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are
comprised under these two general heads is quite extraordinary. The most
limited range is probably from cool Gruel up to old Marsala, and down
again to apple Tea.
The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare can
well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to live and walk
about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind of well, or
breathing-place. The houses are immensely high, painted in all sorts of
colours, and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of
repair. They are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses
in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris. There are few
street doors; the entrance halls are, for the most part, looked upon as
public property; and any moderately enterprising scavenger might make a
fine fortune by now and then clearing them out. As it is impossible for
coaches to penetrate into these streets, there are sedan chairs, gilded
and otherwise, for hire in divers places. A great many private chairs
are also kept among the nobility and gentry; and at night these are
trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers of great
lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon a frame. The sedans and
lanthorns are the legitimate successors of the long strings of patient
and much-abused mules, that go jingling their little bells through these
confined streets all day long. They follow them, as regularly as the
stars the sun.
When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and the
Strada Balbi! or how the former looked one summer day, when I first saw
it underneath the brightest and most intensely blue of summer skies:
which its narrow perspective of immense mansions, reduced to a tapering
and most precious strip of brightness, looking down upon the heavy shade
below! A brightness not too common, even in July and August, to be well
esteemed: for, if the Truth must out, there were not eight blue skies in
as many midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when,
looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of deep
and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds and haze enough to
make an Englishman grumble in his own climate.
The endless details of these rich Palaces: the walls of some of them,
within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great, heavy, stone
balconies, one above another, and tier over tier: with here and there,
one larger than the rest, towering high up—a huge marble platform; the
doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows, immense public
staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary,
dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers: among which the eye wanders again,
and again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by another—the terrace
gardens between house and house, with green arches of the vine, and
groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty,
thirty, forty feet above the street—the painted halls, mouldering, and
blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still shining out in
beautiful colours and voluptuous designs, where the walls are dry—the
faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding wreaths, and crowns,
and flying upward, and downward, and standing in niches, and here and
there looking fainter and more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast with
some fresh little Cupids, who on a more recently decorated portion of the
front, are stretching out what seems to be the semblance of a blanket,
but is, indeed, a sun-dial—the steep, steep, up-hill streets of small
palaces (but very large palaces for all that), with marble terraces
looking down into close by-ways—the magnificent and innumerable Churches;
and the rapid passage from a street of stately edifices, into a maze of
the vilest squalor, steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with
half-naked children and whole worlds of dirty people—make up, altogether,
such a scene of wonder: so lively, and yet so dead: so noisy, and yet so
quiet: so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering: so wide awake, and yet
so fast asleep: that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk
on, and on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering phantasmagoria,
with all the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain and all the
pleasure of an extravagant reality!
The different uses to which some of these Palaces are applied, all at
once, is characteristic. For instance, the English Banker (my excellent
and hospitable friend) has his office in a good-sized Palazzo in the
Strada Nuova. In the hall (every inch of which is elaborately painted,
but which is as dirty as a police-station in London), a hook-nosed
Saracen’s Head with an immense quantity of black hair (there is a man
attached to it) sells walking-sticks. On the other side of the doorway,
a lady with a showy handkerchief for head-dress (wife to the Saracen’s
Head, I believe) sells articles of her own knitting; and sometimes
flowers. A little further in, two or three blind men occasionally beg.
Sometimes, they are visited by a man without legs, on a little go-cart,
but who has such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and such a respectable,
well-conditioned body, that he looks as if he had sunk into the ground up
to his middle, or had come, but partially, up a flight of cellar-steps to
speak to somebody. A little further in, a few men, perhaps, lie asleep
in the middle of the day; or they may be chairmen waiting for their
absent freight. If so, they have brought their chairs in with them, and
there _they_ stand also. On the left of the hall is a little room: a
hatter’s shop. On the first floor, is the English bank. On the first
floor also, is a whole house, and a good large residence too. Heaven
knows what there may be above that; but when you are there, you have only
just begun to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down-stairs again, thinking
of this; and passing out at a great crazy door in the back of the hall,
instead of turning the other way, to get into the street again; it bangs
behind you, making the dismallest and most lonesome echoes, and you stand
in a yard (the yard of the same house) which seems to have been unvisited
by human foot, for a hundred years. Not a sound disturbs its repose.
Not a head, thrust out of any of the grim, dark, jealous windows, within
sight, makes the weeds in the cracked pavement faint of heart, by
suggesting the possibility of there being hands to grub them up.
Opposite to you, is a giant figure carved in stone, reclining, with an
urn, upon a lofty piece of artificial rockwork; and out of the urn,
dangles the fag end of a leaden pipe, which, once upon a time, poured a
small torrent down the rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant are not
drier than this channel is now. He seems to have given his urn, which is
nearly upside down, a final tilt; and after crying, like a sepulchral
child, ‘All gone!’ to have lapsed into a stony silence.
In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great size
notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very dirty: quite
undrained, if my nose be at all reliable: and emit a peculiar fragrance,
like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets.
Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would seem to have been a
lack of room in the City, for new houses are thrust in everywhere.
Wherever it has been possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a crack
or corner, in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in the wall of a
church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort, there you are
sure to find some kind of habitation: looking as if it had grown there,
like a fungus. Against the Government House, against the old Senate
House, round about any large building, little shops stick so close, like
parasite vermin to the great carcase. And for all this, look where you
may: up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere: there are irregular
houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their
neighbours, crippling themselves or their friends by some means or other,
until one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the way, and you can’t
see any further.
One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is down by the
landing-wharf: though it may be, that its being associated with a great
deal of rottenness on the evening of our arrival, has stamped it deeper
in my mind. Here, again, the houses are very high, and are of an
infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have (as most of the houses
have) something hanging out of a great many windows, and wafting its
frowsy fragrance on the breeze. Sometimes, it is a curtain; sometimes,
it is a carpet; sometimes, it is a bed; sometimes, a whole line-full of
clothes; but there is almost always something. Before the basement of
these houses, is an arcade over the pavement: very massive, dark, and
low, like an old crypt. The stone, or plaster, of which it is made, has
turned quite black; and against every one of these black piles, all sorts
of filth and garbage seem to accumulate spontaneously. Beneath some of
the arches, the sellers of macaroni and polenta establish their stalls,
which are by no means inviting. The offal of a fish-market, near at
hand—that is to say, of a back lane, where people sit upon the ground and
on various old bulk-heads and sheds, and sell fish when they have any to
dispose of—and of a vegetable market, constructed on the same
principle—are contributed to the decoration of this quarter; and as all
the mercantile business is transacted here, and it is crowded all day, it
has a very decided flavour about it. The Porto Franco, or Free Port
(where goods brought in from foreign countries pay no duty until they are
sold and taken out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is down here
also; and two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the gate to
search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and Ladies. For,
Sanctity as well as Beauty has been known to yield to the temptation of
smuggling, and in the same way: that is to say, by concealing the
smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its dress. So Sanctity and
Beauty may, by no means, enter.
The streets of Genoa would be all the better for the importation of a few
Priests of prepossessing appearance. Every fourth or fifth man in the
streets is a Priest or a Monk; and there is pretty sure to be at least
one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or outside every hackney carriage on
the neighbouring roads. I have no knowledge, elsewhere, of more
repulsive countenances than are to be found among these gentry. If
Nature’s handwriting be at all legible, greater varieties of sloth,
deceit, and intellectual torpor, could hardly be observed among any class
of men in the world.
MR. PEPYS once heard a clergyman assert in his sermon, in illustration of
his respect for the Priestly office, that if he could meet a Priest and
angel together, he would salute the Priest first. I am rather of the
opinion of PETRARCH, who, when his pupil BOCCACCIO wrote to him in great
tribulation, that he had been visited and admonished for his writings by
a Carthusian Friar who claimed to be a messenger immediately commissioned
by Heaven for that purpose, replied, that for his own part, he would take
the liberty of testing the reality of the commission by personal
observation of the Messenger’s face, eyes, forehead, behaviour, and
discourse. I cannot but believe myself, from similar observation, that
many unaccredited celestial messengers may be seen skulking through the
streets of Genoa, or droning away their lives in other Italian towns.
Perhaps the Cappuccíni, though not a learned body, are, as an order, the
best friends of the people. They seem to mingle with them more
immediately, as their counsellors and comforters; and to go among them
more, when they are sick; and to pry less than some other orders, into
the secrets of families, for the purpose of establishing a baleful
ascendency over their weaker members; and to be influenced by a less
fierce desire to make converts, and once made, to let them go to ruin,
soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse dress, in all parts of
the town at all times, and begging in the markets early in the morning.
The Jesuits too, muster strong in the streets, and go slinking
noiselessly about, in pairs, like black cats.
In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades congregate. There is a
street of jewellers, and there is a row of booksellers; but even down in
places where nobody ever can, or ever could, penetrate in a carriage,
there are mighty old palaces shut in among the gloomiest and closest
walls, and almost shut out from the sun. Very few of the tradesmen have
any idea of setting forth their goods, or disposing them for show. If
you, a stranger, want to buy anything, you usually look round the shop
till you see it; then clutch it, if it be within reach, and inquire how
much. Everything is sold at the most unlikely place. If you want
coffee, you go to a sweetmeat shop; and if you want meat, you will
probably find it behind an old checked curtain, down half-a-dozen steps,
in some sequestered nook as hard to find as if the commodity were poison,
and Genoa’s law were death to any that uttered it.
Most of the apothecaries’ shops are great lounging-places. Here, grave
men with sticks, sit down in the shade for hours together, passing a
meagre Genoa paper from hand to hand, and talking, drowsily and
sparingly, about the News. Two or three of these are poor physicians,
ready to proclaim themselves on an emergency, and tear off with any
messenger who may arrive. You may know them by the way in which they
stretch their necks to listen, when you enter; and by the sigh with which
they fall back again into their dull corners, on finding that you only
want medicine. Few people lounge in the barbers’ shops; though they are
very numerous, as hardly any man shaves himself. But the apothecary’s
has its group of loungers, who sit back among the bottles, with their
hands folded over the tops of their sticks. So still and quiet, that
either you don’t see them in the darkened shop, or mistake them—as I did
one ghostly man in bottle-green, one day, with a hat like a stopper—for
Horse Medicine.
* * * * *
On a summer evening the Genoese are as fond of putting themselves, as
their ancestors were of putting houses, in every available inch of space
in and about the town. In all the lanes and alleys, and up every little
ascent, and on every dwarf wall, and on every flight of steps, they
cluster like bees. Meanwhile (and especially on festa-days) the bells of
the churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound,
but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a
sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This
performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes
hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle
louder than every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to
be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking up into the
steeples, and seeing (and hearing) these young Christians thus engaged,
one might very naturally mistake them for the Enemy.
Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numerous. All the shops were
shut up, twice within a week, for these holidays; and one night, all the
houses in the neighbourhood of a particular church were illuminated,
while the church itself was lighted, outside, with torches; and a grove
of blazing links was erected, in an open space outside one of the city
gates. This part of the ceremony is prettier and more singular a little
way in the country, where you can trace the illuminated cottages all the
way up a steep hill-side; and where you pass festoons of tapers, wasting
away in the starlight night, before some lonely little house upon the
road.
On these days, they always dress the church of the saint in whose honour
the festa is holden, very gaily. Gold-embroidered festoons of different
colours, hang from the arches; the altar furniture is set forth; and
sometimes, even the lofty pillars are swathed from top to bottom in
tight-fitting draperies. The cathedral is dedicated to St. Lorenzo. On
St. Lorenzo’s day, we went into it, just as the sun was setting.
Although these decorations are usually in very indifferent taste, the
effect, just then, was very superb indeed. For the whole building was
dressed in red; and the sinking sun, streaming in, through a great red
curtain in the chief doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own. When
the sun went down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, except for a
few twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and some small dangling
silver lamps, it was very mysterious and effective. But, sitting in any
of the churches towards evening, is like a mild dose of opium.
[Picture: Italian Romance]
With the money collected at a festa, they usually pay for the dressing of
the church, and for the hiring of the band, and for the tapers. If there
be any left (which seldom happens, I believe), the souls in Purgatory get
the benefit of it. They are also supposed to have the benefit of the
exertions of certain small boys, who shake money-boxes before some
mysterious little buildings like rural turnpikes, which (usually shut up
close) fly open on Red-letter days, and disclose an image and some
flowers inside.
Just without the city gate, on the Albara road, is a small house, with an
altar in it, and a stationary money-box: also for the benefit of the
souls in Purgatory. Still further to stimulate the charitable, there is
a monstrous painting on the plaster, on either side of the grated door,
representing a select party of souls, frying. One of them has a grey
moustache, and an elaborate head of grey hair: as if he had been taken
out of a hairdresser’s window and cast into the furnace. There he is: a
most grotesque and hideously comic old soul: for ever blistering in the
real sun, and melting in the mimic fire, for the gratification and
improvement (and the contributions) of the poor Genoese.
They are not a very joyous people, and are seldom seen to dance on their
holidays: the staple places of entertainment among the women, being the
churches and the public walks. They are very good-tempered, obliging,
and industrious. Industry has not made them clean, for their habitations
are extremely filthy, and their usual occupation on a fine Sunday
morning, is to sit at their doors, hunting in each other’s heads. But
their dwellings are so close and confined that if those parts of the city
had been beaten down by Massena in the time of the terrible Blockade, it
would have at least occasioned one public benefit among many misfortunes.
The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are so constantly washing
clothes, in the public tanks, and in every stream and ditch, that one
cannot help wondering, in the midst of all this dirt, who wears them when
they are clean. The custom is to lay the wet linen which is being
operated upon, on a smooth stone, and hammer away at it, with a flat
wooden mallet. This they do, as furiously as if they were revenging
themselves on dress in general for being connected with the Fall of
Mankind.
It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank at these times,
or on another flat stone, an unfortunate baby, tightly swathed up, arms
and legs and all, in an enormous quantity of wrapper, so that it is
unable to move a toe or finger. This custom (which we often see
represented in old pictures) is universal among the common people. A
child is left anywhere without the possibility of crawling away, or is
accidentally knocked off a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or is hung up to
a hook now and then, and left dangling like a doll at an English
rag-shop, without the least inconvenience to anybody.
I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in the little country
church of San Martino, a couple of miles from the city, while a baptism
took place. I saw the priest, and an attendant with a large taper, and a
man, and a woman, and some others; but I had no more idea, until the
ceremony was all over, that it was a baptism, or that the curious little
stiff instrument, that was passed from one to another, in the course of
the ceremony, by the handle—like a short poker—was a child, than I had
that it was my own christening. I borrowed the child afterwards, for a
minute or two (it was lying across the font then), and found it very red
in the face but perfectly quiet, and not to be bent on any terms. The
number of cripples in the streets, soon ceased to surprise me.
There are plenty of Saints’ and Virgin’s Shrines, of course; generally at
the corners of streets. The favourite memento to the Faithful, about
Genoa, is a painting, representing a peasant on his knees, with a spade
and some other agricultural implements beside him; and the Madonna, with
the Infant Saviour in her arms, appearing to him in a cloud. This is the
legend of the Madonna della Guardia: a chapel on a mountain within a few
miles, which is in high repute. It seems that this peasant lived all
alone by himself, tilling some land atop of the mountain, where, being a
devout man, he daily said his prayers to the Virgin in the open air; for
his hut was a very poor one. Upon a certain day, the Virgin appeared to
him, as in the picture, and said, ‘Why do you pray in the open air, and
without a priest?’ The peasant explained because there was neither
priest nor church at hand—a very uncommon complaint indeed in Italy. ‘I
should wish, then,’ said the Celestial Visitor, ‘to have a chapel built
here, in which the prayers of the Faithful may be offered up.’ ‘But,
Santissima Madonna,’ said the peasant, ‘I am a poor man; and chapels
cannot be built without money. They must be supported, too, Santissima;
for to have a chapel and not support it liberally, is a wickedness—a
deadly sin.’ This sentiment gave great satisfaction to the visitor.
‘Go!’ said she. ‘There is such a village in the valley on the left, and
such another village in the valley on the right, and such another village
elsewhere, that will gladly contribute to the building of a chapel. Go
to them! Relate what you have seen; and do not doubt that sufficient
money will be forthcoming to erect my chapel, or that it will,
afterwards, be handsomely maintained.’ All of which (miraculously)
turned out to be quite true. And in proof of this prediction and
revelation, there is the chapel of the Madonna della Guardia, rich and
flourishing at this day.
The splendour and variety of the Genoese churches, can hardly be
exaggerated. The church of the Annunciata especially: built, like many
of the others, at the cost of one noble family, and now in slow progress
of repair: from the outer door to the utmost height of the high cupola,
is so elaborately painted and set in gold, that it looks (as SIMOND
describes it, in his charming book on Italy) like a great enamelled
snuff-box. Most of the richer churches contain some beautiful pictures,
or other embellishments of great price, almost universally set, side by
side, with sprawling effigies of maudlin monks, and the veriest trash and
tinsel ever seen.
It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of the popular mind,
and pocket, to the souls in Purgatory, but there is very little
tenderness for the _bodies_ of the dead here. For the very poor, there
are, immediately outside one angle of the walls, and behind a jutting
point of the fortification, near the sea, certain common pits—one for
every day in the year—which all remain closed up, until the turn of each
comes for its daily reception of dead bodies. Among the troops in the
town, there are usually some Swiss: more or less. When any of these die,
they are buried out of a fund maintained by such of their countrymen as
are resident in Genoa. Their providing coffins for these men is matter
of great astonishment to the authorities.
Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent splashing down of
dead people in so many wells, is bad. It surrounds Death with revolting
associations, that insensibly become connected with those whom Death is
approaching. Indifference and avoidance are the natural result; and all
the softening influences of the great sorrow are harshly disturbed.
There is a ceremony when an old Cavaliére or the like, expires, of
erecting a pile of benches in the cathedral, to represent his bier;
covering them over with a pall of black velvet; putting his hat and sword
on the top; making a little square of seats about the whole; and sending
out formal invitations to his friends and acquaintances to come and sit
there, and hear Mass: which is performed at the principal Altar,
decorated with an infinity of candles for that purpose.
When the better kind of people die, or are at the point of death, their
nearest relations generally walk off: retiring into the country for a
little change, and leaving the body to be disposed of, without any
superintendence from them. The procession is usually formed, and the
coffin borne, and the funeral conducted, by a body of persons called a
Confratérnita, who, as a kind of voluntary penance, undertake to perform
these offices, in regular rotation, for the dead; but who, mingling
something of pride with their humility, are dressed in a loose garment
covering their whole person, and wear a hood concealing the face; with
breathing-holes and apertures for the eyes. The effect of this costume
is very ghastly: especially in the case of a certain Blue Confratérnita
belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of them, are very ugly
customers, and who look—suddenly encountered in their pious ministration
in the streets—as if they were Ghoules or Demons, bearing off the body
for themselves.
Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse attendant on many
Italian customs, of being recognised as a means of establishing a current
account with Heaven, on which to draw, too easily, for future bad
actions, or as an expiation for past misdeeds, it must be admitted to be
a good one, and a practical one, and one involving unquestionably good
works. A voluntary service like this, is surely better than the imposed
penance (not at all an infrequent one) of giving so many licks to such
and such a stone in the pavement of the cathedral; or than a vow to the
Madonna to wear nothing but blue for a year or two. This is supposed to
give great delight above; blue being (as is well known) the Madonna’s
favourite colour. Women who have devoted themselves to this act of
Faith, are very commonly seen walking in the streets.
There are three theatres in the city, besides an old one now rarely
opened. The most important—the Carlo Felice: the opera-house of Genoa—is
a very splendid, commodious, and beautiful theatre. A company of
comedians were acting there, when we arrived: and soon after their
departure, a second-rate opera company came. The great season is not
until the carnival time—in the spring. Nothing impressed me, so much, in
my visits here (which were pretty numerous) as the uncommonly hard and
cruel character of the audience, who resent the slightest defect, take
nothing good-humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an
opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as little as the actors.
But, as there is nothing else of a public nature at which they are
allowed to express the least disapprobation, perhaps they are resolved to
make the most of this opportunity.
There are a great number of Piedmontese officers too, who are allowed the
privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for next to nothing:
gratuitous, or cheap accommodation for these gentlemen being insisted on,
by the Governor, in all public or semi-public entertainments. They are
lofty critics in consequence, and infinitely more exacting than if they
made the unhappy manager’s fortune.
The TEATRO DIURNO, or Day Theatre, is a covered stage in the open air,
where the performances take place by daylight, in the cool of the
afternoon; commencing at four or five o’clock, and lasting, some three
hours. It is curious, sitting among the audience, to have a fine view of
the neighbouring hills and houses, and to see the neighbours at their
windows looking on, and to hear the bells of the churches and convents
ringing at most complete cross-purposes with the scene. Beyond this, and
the novelty of seeing a play in the fresh pleasant air, with the
darkening evening closing in, there is nothing very exciting or
characteristic in the performances. The actors are indifferent; and
though they sometimes represent one of Goldoni’s comedies, the staple of
the Drama is French. Anything like nationality is dangerous to despotic
governments, and Jesuit-beleaguered kings.
The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti—a famous company from Milan—is,
without any exception, the drollest exhibition I ever beheld in my life.
I never saw anything so exquisitely ridiculous. They _look_ between four
and five feet high, but are really much smaller; for when a musician in
the orchestra happens to put his hat on the stage, it becomes alarmingly
gigantic, and almost blots out an actor. They usually play a comedy, and
a ballet. The comic man in the comedy I saw one summer night, is a
waiter in an hotel. There never was such a locomotive actor, since the
world began. Great pains are taken with him. He has extra joints in his
legs: and a practical eye, with which he winks at the pit, in a manner
that is absolutely insupportable to a stranger, but which the initiated
audience, mainly composed of the common people, receive (so they do
everything else) quite as a matter of course, and as if he were a man.
His spirits are prodigious. He continually shakes his legs, and winks
his eye. And there is a heavy father with grey hair, who sits down on
the regular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his daughter in the
regular conventional way, who is tremendous. No one would suppose it
possible that anything short of a real man could be so tedious. It is
the triumph of art.
In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away with the Bride, in the very hour of
her nuptials, He brings her to his cave, and tries to soothe her. They
sit down on a sofa (the regular sofa! in the regular place, O. P. Second
Entrance!) and a procession of musicians enters; one creature playing a
drum, and knocking himself off his legs at every blow. These failing to
delight her, dancers appear. Four first; then two; _the_ two; the
flesh-coloured two. The way in which they dance; the height to which
they spring; the impossible and inhuman extent to which they pirouette;
the revelation of their preposterous legs; the coming down with a pause,
on the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it; the
gentleman’s retiring up, when it is the lady’s turn; and the lady’s
retiring up, when it is the gentleman’s turn; the final passion of a
pas-de-deux; and the going off with a bound!—I shall never see a real
ballet, with a composed countenance again.
I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play called ‘St.
Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.’ It began by the disclosure of
Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at St.
Helena; to whom his valet entered with this obscure announcement:
‘Sir Yew ud se on Low?’ (the _ow_, as in cow).
Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals!) was a perfect
mammoth of a man, to Napoleon; hideously ugly, with a monstrously
disproportionate face, and a great clump for the lower-jaw, to express
his tyrannical and obdurate nature. He began his system of persecution,
by calling his prisoner ‘General Buonaparte;’ to which the latter
replied, with the deepest tragedy, ‘Sir Yew ud se on Low, call me not
thus. Repeat that phrase and leave me! I am Napoleon, Emperor of
France!’ Sir Yew ud se on, nothing daunted, proceeded to entertain him
with an ordinance of the British Government, regulating the state he
should preserve, and the furniture of his rooms: and limiting his
attendants to four or five persons. ‘Four or five for _me_!’ said
Napoleon. ‘Me! One hundred thousand men were lately at my sole command;
and this English officer talks of four or five for _me_!’ Throughout the
piece, Napoleon (who talked very like the real Napoleon, and was, for
ever, having small soliloquies by himself) was very bitter on ‘these
English officers,’ and ‘these English soldiers;’ to the great
satisfaction of the audience, who were perfectly delighted to have Low
bullied; and who, whenever Low said ‘General Buonaparte’ (which he always
did: always receiving the same correction), quite execrated him. It
would be hard to say why; for Italians have little cause to sympathise
with Napoleon, Heaven knows.
There was no plot at all, except that a French officer, disguised as an
Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape; and being discovered, but
not before Napoleon had magnanimously refused to steal his freedom, was
immediately ordered off by Low to be hanged. In two very long speeches,
which Low made memorable, by winding up with ‘Yas!’—to show that he was
English—which brought down thunders of applause. Napoleon was so
affected by this catastrophe, that he fainted away on the spot, and was
carried out by two other puppets. Judging from what followed, it would
appear that he never recovered the shock; for the next act showed him, in
a clean shirt, in his bed (curtains crimson and white), where a lady,
prematurely dressed in mourning, brought two little children, who kneeled
down by the bedside, while he made a decent end; the last word on his
lips being ‘Vatterlo.’
It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte’s boots were so wonderfully
beyond control, and did such marvellous things of their own accord:
doubling themselves up, and getting under tables, and dangling in the
air, and sometimes skating away with him, out of all human knowledge,
when he was in full speech—mischances which were not rendered the less
absurd, by a settled melancholy depicted in his face. To put an end to
one conference with Low, he had to go to a table, and read a book: when
it was the finest spectacle I ever beheld, to see his body bending over
the volume, like a boot-jack, and his sentimental eyes glaring
obstinately into the pit. He was prodigiously good, in bed, with an
immense collar to his shirt, and his little hands outside the coverlet.
So was Dr. Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like
Mawworm’s, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered
about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in the air. He
was almost as good as Low, though the latter was great at all times—a
decided brute and villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. Low was
especially fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the valet say,
‘The Emperor is dead!’ he pulled out his watch, and wound up the piece
(not the watch) by exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, ‘Ha! ha!
Eleven minutes to six! The General dead! and the spy hanged!’ This
brought the curtain down, triumphantly.
* * * * *
There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a lovelier
residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fishponds, whither
we removed as soon as our three months’ tenancy of the Pink Jail at
Albaro had ceased and determined.
It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof from the town:
surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own, adorned with statues, vases,
fountains, marble basins, terraces, walks of orange-trees and
lemon-trees, groves of roses and camellias. All its apartments are
beautiful in their proportions and decorations; but the great hall, some
fifty feet in height, with three large windows at the end, overlooking
the whole town of Genoa, the harbour, and the neighbouring sea, affords
one of the most fascinating and delightful prospects in the world. Any
house more cheerful and habitable than the great rooms are, within, it
would be difficult to conceive; and certainly nothing more delicious than
the scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be imagined. It is
more like an enchanted place in an Eastern story than a grave and sober
lodging.
How you may wander on, from room to room, and never tire of the wild
fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright in their fresh colouring as
if they had been painted yesterday; or how one floor, or even the great
hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a spacious promenade; or how
there are corridors and bed-chambers above, which we never use and rarely
visit, and scarcely know the way through; or how there is a view of a
perfectly different character on each of the four sides of the building;
matters little. But that prospect from the hall is like a vision to me.
I go back to it, in fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred times
a day; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents from the
garden rising up about me, in a perfect dream of happiness.
There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many churches,
monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the sunny sky; and down below
me, just where the roofs begin, a solitary convent parapet, fashioned
like a gallery, with an iron across at the end, where sometimes early in
the morning, I have seen a little group of dark-veiled nuns gliding
sorrowfully to and fro, and stopping now and then to peep down upon the
waking world in which they have no part. Old Monte Faccio, brightest of
hills in good weather, but sulkiest when storms are coming on, is here,
upon the left. The Fort within the walls (the good King built it to
command the town, and beat the houses of the Genoese about their ears, in
case they should be discontented) commands that height upon the right.
The broad sea lies beyond, in front there; and that line of coast,
beginning by the light-house, and tapering away, a mere speck in the rosy
distance, is the beautiful coast road that leads to Nice. The garden
near at hand, among the roofs and houses: all red with roses and fresh
with little fountains: is the Acqua Sola—a public promenade, where the
military band plays gaily, and the white veils cluster thick, and the
Genoese nobility ride round, and round, and round, in state-clothes and
coaches at least, if not in absolute wisdom. Within a stone’s-throw, as
it seems, the audience of the Day Theatre sit: their faces turned this
way. But as the stage is hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledge of
the cause, to see their faces changed so suddenly from earnestness to
laughter; and odder still, to hear the rounds upon rounds of applause,
rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain falls. But, being
Sunday night, they act their best and most attractive play. And now, the
sun is going down, in such magnificent array of red, and green, and
golden light, as neither pen nor pencil could depict; and to the ringing
of the vesper bells, darkness sets in at once, without a twilight. Then,
lights begin to shine in Genoa, and on the country road; and the
revolving lanthorn out at sea there, flashing, for an instant, on this
palace front and portico, illuminates it as if there were a bright moon
bursting from behind a cloud; then, merges it in deep obscurity. And
this, so far as I know, is the only reason why the Genoese avoid it after
dark, and think it haunted.
My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come; but nothing worse,
I will engage. The same Ghost will occasionally sail away, as I did one
pleasant autumn evening, into the bright prospect, and sniff the morning
air at Marseilles.
The corpulent hairdresser was still sitting in his slippers outside his
shop-door there, but the twirling ladies in the window, with the natural
inconstancy of their sex, had ceased to twirl, and were languishing,
stock still, with their beautiful faces addressed to blind corners of the
establishment, where it was impossible for admirers to penetrate.
The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run of eighteen hours, and
we were going to run back again by the Cornice road from Nice: not being
satisfied to have seen only the outsides of the beautiful towns that rise
in picturesque white clusters from among the olive woods, and rocks, and
hills, upon the margin of the Sea.
The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight o’clock, was very
small, and so crowded with goods that there was scarcely room to move;
neither was there anything to cat on board, except bread; nor to drink,
except coffee. But being due at Nice at about eight or so in the
morning, this was of no consequence; so when we began to wink at the
bright stars, in involuntary acknowledgment of their winking at us, we
turned into our berths, in a crowded, but cool little cabin, and slept
soundly till morning.
The Boat, being as dull and dogged a little boat as ever was built, it
was within an hour of noon when we turned into Nice Harbour, where we
very little expected anything but breakfast. But we were laden with
wool. Wool must not remain in the Custom-house at Marseilles more than
twelve months at a stretch, without paying duty. It is the custom to
make fictitious removals of unsold wool to evade this law; to take it
somewhere when the twelve months are nearly out; bring it straight back
again; and warehouse it, as a new cargo, for nearly twelve months longer.
This wool of ours, had come originally from some place in the East. It
was recognised as Eastern produce, the moment we entered the harbour.
Accordingly, the gay little Sunday boats, full of holiday people, which
had come off to greet us, were warned away by the authorities; we were
declared in quarantine; and a great flag was solemnly run up to the
mast-head on the wharf, to make it known to all the town.
It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved, unwashed, undressed,
unfed, and could hardly enjoy the absurdity of lying blistering in a lazy
harbour, with the town looking on from a respectful distance, all manner
of whiskered men in cocked hats discussing our fate at a remote
guard-house, with gestures (we looked very hard at them through
telescopes) expressive of a week’s detention at least: and nothing
whatever the matter all the time. But even in this crisis the brave
Courier achieved a triumph. He telegraphed somebody (_I_ saw nobody)
either naturally connected with the hotel, or put _en rapport_ with the
establishment for that occasion only. The telegraph was answered, and in
half an hour or less, there came a loud shout from the guard-house. The
captain was wanted. Everybody helped the captain into his boat.
Everybody got his luggage, and said we were going. The captain rowed
away, and disappeared behind a little jutting corner of the
Galley-slaves’ Prison: and presently came back with something, very
sulkily. The brave Courier met him at the side, and received the
something as its rightful owner. It was a wicker basket, folded in a
linen cloth; and in it were two great bottles of wine, a roast fowl, some
salt fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf of bread, a dozen or so of
peaches, and a few other trifles. When we had selected our own
breakfast, the brave Courier invited a chosen party to partake of these
refreshments, and assured them that they need not be deterred by motives
of delicacy, as he would order a second basket to be furnished at their
expense. Which he did—no one knew how—and by-and-by, the captain being
again summoned, again sulkily returned with another something; over which
my popular attendant presided as before: carving with a clasp-knife, his
own personal property, something smaller than a Roman sword.
The whole party on board were made merry by these unexpected supplies;
but none more so than a loquacious little Frenchman, who got drunk in
five minutes, and a sturdy Cappuccíno Friar, who had taken everybody’s
fancy mightily, and was one of the best friars in the world, I verily
believe.
He had a free, open countenance; and a rich brown, flowing beard; and was
a remarkably handsome man, of about fifty. He had come up to us, early
in the morning, and inquired whether we were sure to be at Nice by
eleven; saying that he particularly wanted to know, because if we reached
it by that time he would have to perform Mass, and must deal with the
consecrated wafer, fasting; whereas, if there were no chance of his being
in time, he would immediately breakfast. He made this communication,
under the idea that the brave Courier was the captain; and indeed he
looked much more like it than anybody else on board. Being assured that
we should arrive in good time, he fasted, and talked, fasting, to
everybody, with the most charming good humour; answering jokes at the
expense of friars, with other jokes at the expense of laymen, and saying
that, friar as he was, he would engage to take up the two strongest men
on board, one after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along the
deck. Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he could have done
it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in the Cappuccíno
dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly that can well be.
All this had given great delight to the loquacious Frenchman, who
gradually patronised the Friar very much, and seemed to commiserate him
as one who might have been born a Frenchman himself, but for an
unfortunate destiny. Although his patronage was such as a mouse might
bestow upon a lion, he had a vast opinion of its condescension; and in
the warmth of that sentiment, occasionally rose on tiptoe, to slap the
Friar on the back.
When the baskets arrived: it being then too late for Mass: the Friar went
to work bravely: eating prodigiously of the cold meat and bread, drinking
deep draughts of the wine, smoking cigars, taking snuff, sustaining an
uninterrupted conversation with all hands, and occasionally running to
the boat’s side and hailing somebody on shore with the intelligence that
we _must_ be got out of this quarantine somehow or other, as he had to
take part in a great religious procession in the afternoon. After this,
he would come back, laughing lustily from pure good humour: while the
Frenchman wrinkled his small face into ten thousand creases, and said how
droll it was, and what a brave boy was that Friar! At length the heat of
the sun without, and the wine within, made the Frenchman sleepy. So, in
the noontide of his patronage of his gigantic protégé, he lay down among
the wool, and began to snore.
It was four o’clock before we were released; and the Frenchman, dirty and
woolly, and snuffy, was still sleeping when the Friar went ashore. As
soon as we were free, we all hurried away, to wash and dress, that we
might make a decent appearance at the procession; and I saw no more of
the Frenchman until we took up our station in the main street to see it
pass, when he squeezed himself into a front place, elaborately renovated;
threw back his little coat, to show a broad-barred velvet waistcoat,
sprinkled all over with stars; then adjusted himself and his cane so as
utterly to bewilder and transfix the Friar, when he should appear.
The procession was a very long one, and included an immense number of
people divided into small parties; each party chanting nasally, on its
own account, without reference to any other, and producing a most dismal
result. There were angels, crosses, Virgins carried on flat boards
surrounded by Cupids, crowns, saints, missals, infantry, tapers, monks,
nuns, relics, dignitaries of the church in green hats, walking under
crimson parasols: and, here and there, a species of sacred street-lamp
hoisted on a pole. We looked out anxiously for the Cappuccíni, and
presently their brown robes and corded girdles were seen coming on, in a
body.
I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea that when the Friar
saw him in the broad-barred waistcoat, he would mentally exclaim, ‘Is
that my Patron! _That_ distinguished man!’ and would be covered with
confusion. Ah! never was the Frenchman so deceived. As our friend the
Cappuccíno advanced, with folded arms, he looked straight into the visage
of the little Frenchman, with a bland, serene, composed abstraction, not
to be described. There was not the faintest trace of recognition or
amusement on his features; not the smallest consciousness of bread and
meat, wine, snuff, or cigars. ‘C’est lui-même,’ I heard the little
Frenchman say, in some doubt. Oh yes, it was himself. It was not his
brother or his nephew, very like him. It was he. He walked in great
state: being one of the Superiors of the Order: and looked his part to
admiration. There never was anything so perfect of its kind as the
contemplative way in which he allowed his placid gaze to rest on us, his
late companions, as if he had never seen us in his life and didn’t see us
then. The Frenchman, quite humbled, took off his hat at last, but the
Friar still passed on, with the same imperturbable serenity; and the
broad-barred waistcoat, fading into the crowd, was seen no more.
The procession wound up with a discharge of musketry that shook all the
windows in the town. Next afternoon we started for Genoa, by the famed
Cornice road.
The half-French, half-Italian Vetturíno, who undertook, with his little
rattling carriage and pair, to convey us thither in three days, was a
careless, good-looking fellow, whose light-heartedness and singing
propensities knew no bounds as long as we went on smoothly. So long, he
had a word and a smile, and a flick of his whip, for all the peasant
girls, and odds and ends of the Sonnambula for all the echoes. So long,
he went jingling through every little village, with bells on his horses
and rings in his ears: a very meteor of gallantry and cheerfulness. But,
it was highly characteristic to see him under a slight reverse of
circumstances, when, in one part of the journey, we came to a narrow
place where a waggon had broken down and stopped up the road. His hands
were twined in his hair immediately, as if a combination of all the
direst accidents in life had suddenly fallen on his devoted head. He
swore in French, prayed in Italian, and went up and down, beating his
feet on the ground in a very ecstasy of despair. There were various
carters and mule-drivers assembled round the broken waggon, and at last
some man of an original turn of mind, proposed that a general and joint
effort should be made to get things to-rights again, and clear the way—an
idea which I verily believe would never have presented itself to our
friend, though we had remained there until now. It was done at no great
cost of labour; but at every pause in the doing, his hands were wound in
his hair again, as if there were no ray of hope to lighten his misery.
The moment he was on his box once more, and clattering briskly down hill,
he returned to the Sonnambula and the peasant girls, as if it were not in
the power of misfortune to depress him.
Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and villages on this beautiful
road, disappears when they are entered, for many of them are very
miserable. The streets are narrow, dark, and dirty; the inhabitants lean
and squalid; and the withered old women, with their wiry grey hair
twisted up into a knot on the top of the head, like a pad to carry loads
on, are so intensely ugly, both along the Riviera, and in Genoa, too,
that, seen straggling about in dim doorways with their spindles, or
crooning together in by-corners, they are like a population of
Witches—except that they certainly are not to be suspected of brooms or
any other instrument of cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in
common use to hold wine, and hung out in the sun in all directions, by
any means ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very bloated
pigs, with their heads and legs cut off, dangling upside-down by their
own tails.
These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however: nestling, with
their clustering roofs and towers, among trees on steep hill-sides, or
built upon the brink of noble bays: are charming. The vegetation is,
everywhere, luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palm-tree makes a novel
feature in the novel scenery. In one town, San Remo—a most extraordinary
place, built on gloomy open arches, so that one might ramble underneath
the whole town—there are pretty terrace gardens; in other towns, there is
the clang of shipwrights’ hammers, and the building of small vessels on
the beach. In some of the broad bays, the fleets of Europe might ride at
anchor. In every case, each little group of houses presents, in the
distance, some enchanting confusion of picturesque and fanciful shapes.
The road itself—now high above the glittering sea, which breaks against
the foot of the precipice: now turning inland to sweep the shore of a
bay: now crossing the stony bed of a mountain stream: now low down on the
beach: now winding among riven rocks of many forms and colours: now
chequered by a solitary ruined tower, one of a chain of towers built, in
old time, to protect the coast from the invasions of the Barbary
Corsairs—presents new beauties every moment. When its own striking
scenery is passed, and it trails on through a long line of suburb, lying
on the flat sea-shore, to Genoa, then, the changing glimpses of that
noble city and its harbour, awaken a new source of interest; freshened by
every huge, unwieldy, half-inhabited old house in its outskirts: and
coming to its climax when the city gate is reached, and all Genoa with
its beautiful harbour, and neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the
view.