At the Croce di Malta, where we stopped--the Odessa, we heard,
was atrociously bad--we met a somewhat depressed countryman, whose
familiarity with place and people was indicated by several little
traits. He rebuked the waiter for the salad oil, and was speedily
supplied with better; he remonstrated about the wine, and a superior
“cru” was served the day following. The book of the arrivals, too, was
brought to him each day as he sat down to table, and he grunted out,
I remember, in no very complimentary fashion as he read our names,
“Nobodies.”
My Garibaldian friend had gone over to Massa, so that I found myself
alone with this gentleman on the night of my arrival; for, when the
company of the _table-d’hôte_ withdrew, he and I were discovered, as the
stage-people say, seated opposite to each other at the fire.
It blew hard without; the sea beat loudly on the shingly shore, and
even sent some drifts of spray against the windows; while within doors
a cheerful wood-fire blazed on the ample hearth, and the low-ceilinged
room did not look a whit the worse that it suggested snugness instead
of splendour. I had got my cup of coffee and my cognac on a little table
beside me; and while I filled the bowl of my pipe, I bethought me how
cheap and come-at-able are often the materials of our comfort, if one
had but the prudence which ignores all display. My companion, apparently
otherwise occupied in thought, sat gazing moodily at the fire, and to
all seeming unaware of my presence.
“Will my smoking annoy you, sir?” asked I, as I was ready to begin.
“No,” said he, without looking up. “I’d like to know where one could go
to live nowadays if it did.”
“Very true,” said I; “the practice is almost universal”
“So is child-murder, so is profane swearing, so is wearing a beard, and
poisoning by strychnine.”
I was somewhat struck by his enumeration of modern atrocities, and I
said, in a tone intended to invite converse, “You are no admirer, then,
of what some are fain to call progress?”
He started, and, turning a fierce sharp glance on me, said, “I’d rather
you’d touch me with that hot poker there, sir, than hurl that hateful
word at my ears. If there’s a thing I hate the most, it’s what cant--a
vile modern slang--calls ‘Progress.’ You’re just in the spot at this
moment to mark one of its high successes. Do you know Spezia?” “Not in
the least; never was here before.” “Well, sir, I have known it, I’ll not
stop to count how many years; but I knew it when that spot yonder, where
you see that vile tall chimney, with its tail of murky smoke, was a
beautiful little villa, all overgrown with fig and olive trees. Where
you perceive that red glare--the flame of a smelting furnace--there was
an orangery. I ought to know the spot well. There, where a summerhouse
stood, on that rocky point, they have got a crane and a windlass. Now,
turn to this other side. The road you saw to-day, crossed with four
main lines, cut up, almost impassable between mud, rubbish, and fallen
timber, with swampy excavations on one side and brick-fields on the
other, led--ay, and not four years ago--along the margin of the sea,
with a forest of chestnuts on the other side, two lines of acacias
forming a shade along it, so that in the mid-day of an Italian July you
might walk it in delicious shadow. In the Gulf itself the whole scene
was mirrored, and not a headland, nor rock, nor cliff, that was not
pictured below. It was, in a word, a little paradise; nor were the
people all unworthy of their lovely birthplace. They were a quiet,
civil, obliging, simple-minded set--if not inviting strangers to settle
amongst them, never rude or repelling to them; equitable in dealings,
and strange to all disturbance or outrage. What they are now is no more
easy to say than what a rivulet is when a torrent has carried away its
banks and swept its bed. Two thousand navvies, the outsweepings of jails
and the galleys, have come down to the works; a horde of contractors,
sub-contractors, with the several staffs of clerks, inspectors, and
suchlike, have settled on the spot, ravaging its beauty, uprooting its
repose, vulgarising its simple rusticity, and converting the very gem
of the Mediterranean into a dreary swamp--a vast amphitheatre, where
liberated felons, robbing contractors, foul miasma, centrifugal pumps,
and tertian fevers, fight all day for the mastery. And for what?--for
what? To fill the pockets of knavish ministers and thieving
officials--to make an arsenal that will never be finished, for a fleet
that will never be built.” My companion, it is needless to say, was no
optimist; but the strange point was, that while he was unsparing of his
censure on Cavour and the “Piedmontese party,” he was no apologist for
the old state of things in Italy. So far from it, that he launched out
freely in attack of Papal bigotry, superstition, and corruption, and
freely corroborated our own Premier’s assertions, by calling the Pope’s
the “worst government in Europe.” In fact, he showed very clearly that
the smaller states of Italy were well or ill administered in the direct
ratio that they admitted or rejected Papal interference,--Modena being
the worst, and Tuscany the best of them.
Though he certainly knew his subject so far as details went--for he not
merely knew Italy well in its several provinces, but he understood the
characters and tempers of the leading Italians--yet, with all this, I
could not help asking him, If he was not satisfied with the old Italy,
and yet did not like the new, what he did wish for?
“I have my theory on that subject, sir,” said he; “nor am I the less
enamoured of it that I never yet met the man I could induce to adopt
it.”
“It is no worse than the fate of all discoverers, I suppose,” said I;
“Columbus saw land two whole days before his followers.”
“Columbus was a humbug, sir, and no more discovered America than you
did.”
I was so afraid of a digression here that I stammered out a partial
concurrence, and asked for some account of his project for Italy.
“I’d unite her to Greece, sir. These people, with the exception of a
small circle around Rome, are not Latins--they are Greeks. I’d bring
them back to the parent stock, who are the only people in Europe with
craft and subtlety to rule them. Take my word for it, sir, they’d not
cheat the ‘Hellenes’ as they do the French and the English; and as the
only true way to reform a nation is to make vice unprofitable, I’d unite
them to a race that could outrogue and outwit them on every hand. What
is it, I ask you, makes of the sluggish, indolent, careless Irishman,
the prudent, hard-working, prosperous fellow you see him in the States?
Simply the fact, that the craft by which he outwitted John Bull no
longer serves him. The Yankee is too shrewd to be jockeyed by it, and
Paddy must use his hands instead of his head. The same would happen with
the Italian. Give him a Greek master, and you’ll see what he’ll become.”
“But the Greeks, after all,” said I, “do not present such a splendid
example of order and prosperity. They are little better than brigands.”
“And don’t you see why?” broke he in. “Have you ever looked into a
gambling-house when the company had no ‘pigeon,’ and were obliged to
play against each other. They have lost all decency--all the semblance
of good manners and decorum. Whatever little politeness they had put
on to impose upon the outsider was gone, and there they were in all the
naked atrocity of their bad natures. It is thus you see the Greeks. You
have dropped in upon them unfairly; you have invaded a privacy they had
hoped might be respected. Give them a nation to cheat, however; let
the pigeon be introduced, and you’ll not see a better bred and a more
courtly people in Europe.”
That they had great social qualities he proceeded to show from a number
of examples. They were, in fact, in the world of long ago what the
French are to our own day, and there was no reason to suppose that
the race had lost its old characteristics. According to my companion’s
theory, Force had only its brief interval of domination anywhere; the
superior intelligence was sure to gain the upper hand at last; and
we, in our opposition to this law, were supply retarding an inevitable
tendency of nature--protracting the fulfilment of what we could not
prevent.
I got him back from these speculations to speak of himself, and he told
me some experiences which will, perhaps, account for the displeasure
with which he regards the changed fortunes of Spezia. I shall give
his narrative as nearly as I can in his own words, and in a chapter to
itself.