THE WRITING OF MY BOOKS: PART II
IN 1906 I was busy writing two books into which a good deal of history
came, _Carthage and Tunis, the Old and New Gates of the Orient_, and
_The Secrets of the Vatican_, the former of which I published at the end
of that year, and the latter at the beginning of the following year.
We were hovering between Italy in the winter, and Tenby in the summer,
and taking uncommonly little out of our rent at 32 Addison Mansions.
I had always been mightily interested in Carthage. I hated Carthage
being beaten by Rome, partly, perhaps, because history has invested the
career of Hannibal and the fall of Carthage with such undying romance.
When we were in Sicily in 1906 we suddenly made up our minds to go to
Tunis, of which Carthage is practically a suburb, just as when we were
at Vancouver we suddenly made up our minds to take a trip to Japan.
Carthage is disappointing to those who wish to see Punic remains. Of the
mighty walls described by Polybius, there remains hardly one stone upon
another. Its impregnable naval harbour and arsenal have dried up into
mere ponds—in fact, there is nothing Punic about it, except subterranean
tombs, which you can only reach by being lowered in a basket, and the
gorgeous coffins and ornaments which came out of them, and are preserved
in the museum of the White Fathers.
But of Roman Carthage there are plenty of remains—an amphitheatre, and a
theatre, and mighty underground cisterns, and the foundations of immense
churches. In that amphitheatre a most interesting lot of saints were
martyred, St. Perpetua herself among them.
No ruins have been discovered connected with the career of St.
Augustine, the Carthaginian to whom the White Fathers attach so much
more importance than to Hannibal or Hamilcar; and all memories of Dido
have hopelessly disappeared. Any remains that there might have been of
the citadel so desperately defended against Scipio, have been
obliterated by the erection of a cathedral on the site, the consummation
of the life-work of Cardinal Lavigerie. That there is not one human
being for a congregation, except the White Fathers in the monastery,
does not appear to signify at all. The cathedral is there, just on the
spot where you want to forget it most, and think of the tremendous human
tragedy to which that hill is sacred.
I loved wandering about the site of Carthage, ruminating upon history; I
found the study of the saints of Carthage fascinating, and gave a good
deal of my book to them when I came to write about Carthage, in which I
also gave translations of the very extensive passages which Virgil
devotes to it, without apparently having possessed any antiquarian
knowledge at all upon the subject.
History is very ironical here. You sometimes meet wandering, or encamped
about the site of Carthage, Berbers, lineal descendants of the
aborigines dispossessed by Dido and her Phœnicians when they founded
Carthage, who lasted as a race to see Phœnician Carthage perish, and the
Christian and Roman Carthage, which rose upon its ashes, perish likewise
before the invading Arabs, and the Arabs, after temporary subjugation by
this or the other invader, finally conquered by the French. Their
language, too, has survived, though it was in danger of extinction till
French scholars made its preservation and study a hobby.
It must not be forgotten that when Carthage came to life again she had
her revenge on Rome, for the Vandal King of Carthage captured Rome, and
carries its empress in chains to Carthage, with the Table of the
Shewbread, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Seven-branched Candlestick
captured by Titus—trophies to which the Romans had ever since attached
superstitious importance.
In the last half of 1906 and the spring of 1907 I was unusually busy. We
spent the summer for the fourth year in succession at Tenby. Eustache de
Lorey was there with me collaborating in _Queer Things about Persia_. I
planned the outline of the book; I suggested subjects for the chapters;
I extracted some of them by cross-examination; I wrote down others when
he was in an anecdotal vein. And some he wrote in French, and we
translated them together. Had he been able to accumulate a book in
English unaided, there was no reason why he should not have written it
all himself. His careful, slightly foreign English was very effective.
But I may take this credit to myself, that the book would never have
been conceived without me, and even had it been conceived, it would
neither have been begun, nor, having been begun, would it have been
finished, without my professional industry. I enjoyed writing it very
much indeed. De Lorey was such a delightful companion, and I learnt so
much about Persia by writing a book on it. This sounds like a paradox,
but it is a universal truth.
Simultaneously I was engaged on finishing my own book on Carthage and
Tunis. In this book I had to rely almost entirely on French materials,
because the two main sources of information are the official
publications of the French authorities, and commercial firms interested
in the exploitation of Tunis, and the publications of the White Fathers
out at Carthage, about its site and its remains.
I was also finishing a book upon which I had been at work for some
years—_The Secrets of the Vatican_, in which I enjoyed the assistance of
his Eminence the Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster, in the chapter
which dealt with the Church crisis in France.
When I went to ask him to help me, he asked me what I was going to call
my book. I replied, _The Secrets of the Vatican_. He said, “Doesn’t it
sound rather——”—instead of giving me the word, he gave a sniff. I shall
never forget that sniff—it expressed the whole situation. I hastened to
explain that the Secrets were all archæological secrets, and he handed
me the materials for my chapter.
Some time before this, he had asked our mutual friend, Cortesi, Reuter’s
agent at Rome, to tell me a story of the Pope, in connection with my
_Sicily, the New Winter Resort_. Cardinal Bourne had taken a tour in
Sicily, using my _Sicily_ as his guide. When he got back to Rome, he
showed an anecdote in the book to the Pope. The anecdote was about
Cardinal Newman, who had told me an extraordinary experience he had had
in Sicily. It was at Castrogiovanni, where he lay for some weeks between
life and death, suffering from a fever, which was the result of his
being totally robbed of sleep by fleas when he was making a tour round
Etna. The greatest affliction with which he had to contend was the
incessant ringing of church bells—Castrogiovanni, the Enna of Ceres and
Proserpine, has more churches for its size than any city in Sicily. Poor
Newman’s only chance of sleep, which meant life to him, was to keep his
head under the bedclothes in that semi-tropical climate. The inhabitants
went about aghast, saying that he had a devil. The Pope thought the idea
of the future Prince of the Church (Protestant though he was then)
having a devil, was ludicrously funny, and laughed till his sides ached,
like an ordinary man. When Newman did recover from the fever, and was on
his way from Sicily to Sardinia in a fruit boat, he wrote his famous
hymn, “Lead, kindly light.”
_The Secrets of the Vatican_ formed one half of a book which I began as
a commission from Eveleigh Nash some years before. The numerous changes
in non-papal Rome, and the important excavations of its pagan monuments,
which were announced, but postponed and postponed, made me despair of
ever getting the book finished, and finally I decided to publish the
part which related to the Vatican in a volume by itself. This, after
going through three editions, has been, for further publication, divided
into two parts. The personal matter about the present Pope, and the
information about the ceremonies which relate to the election,
coronation, death and burial of a Pope, and about the composition of his
court, are still published by Hurst & Blackett, with certain additional
information on the subject, under the title of _The Pope at Home_, while
the part which relates to the history, architecture and collections of
the Vatican, is now published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., under the
title of _How to See the Vatican_.
_The Secrets of the Vatican_ was published in 1907, a few months before
we began our memorable expedition to Egypt, which has played such an
important part in my writings ever since.
Having to study economy in our travels, we determined to break the
journey to Egypt in Italy, and with that idea went to Lake Como in the
last days of July 1907.
Anything more beautiful than Lago di Como in August it is difficult to
conceive. All the way up its west side the lake is fringed with crimson
oleanders in full blossom. Though the days are cloudless, and the nights
encrusted with stars, by perfect summer weather, there are no
mosquitoes. It is a land of peaches, and of old villas with gardens,
which look as if they had come down from the ancient Romans, with their
vases and pavilions and terraces and broad flights of steps leading down
into the clear water of the lake—this is the lake from Arconati to
Cadenabbia.
Here we spent a month under the acacia and tulip trees, revelling in
fruit and flowers, before we went south to Como City; and east to
Sermione, in the reedy shallows of Lago di Garda, dominated by the
castle of the Scaligers, which loses not one ray of sunshine from
sunrise to sunset; to storied Mantua in its marches; to Verona, half
ancient Roman, half Gothic, and wholly romantic, and to Venice the
matchless.
Venice is a stone city conjured up from the sea. In the city proper
there is no more earth than you might have in roof-gardens. There are no
horses, no motors. You seem to be living on the roof of the sea. The
palaces, which rise from the water in such unending succession, were
mostly built in the Middle Ages, when Venice had the sea-trade of the
world. The finest of them line the Grand Canal from side to side for a
mile from its mouth, and at its mouth are the most beautiful buildings
in Europe, which have been standing there three and four and five
hundred years at the head of the stately flight of steps where the world
once came to the feet of Venice—St. Mark’s, the Doge’s Palace, and the
Library, surrounding that Piazetta of smooth white flagstones. You feel
that they are too beautiful to be true, that they must be the airy
fabric of a vision, which will presently pass away, and leave not a
wrack behind.
I never go to Venice without wondering why I can live away from it. Yet
I have never published my tribute to it, except in periodicals, and in
the pages about it which come into my _How to See Italy_.
I have to say the same of Florence, to which we moved from Venice on our
progress through Italy to Egypt. Like Venice, I have visited it many
times, and I find Florence one of the most inspiring cities in the
world. The Venetian, unless he be a guide or a gondolier, is silent to
foreigners; he takes no account of them; there are few foreigners living
in Venice. But in Florence there are five thousand foreigners, who talk
about the glories of Florence every day, and all the inhabitants seem to
be children of the Medici Florence, who think that every foreigner’s
mind should be in the Florence of the Middle Ages. You talk pictures or
history all day long.
From Florence we went on to Rome and Naples, where we were to take ship
for Egypt. Of Rome I have written much in _How to See Italy_, as well as
in _The Secrets of the Vatican_, which contained the fruit of years of
study. I have also published in periodicals enough to fill another book
about the parts which belong to the kingdom of Italy, as the Vatican
belongs to the Papacy. To Rome I go back regularly. About Rome I intend
to publish a book like _How to See Italy_, and _Sicily, the New Winter
Resort_, combined, to make use of my street by street study of the
Eternal City. I know Rome far better than London. Rome has always
appealed to my historical enthusiasm, in the one point where Florence
leaves me cold, for Florence was, as it were, at the back of the door
while kingdoms were being carved out of the unformed mass of Europe
during the Middle Ages, while Rome gave the world laws, language and
civilisation, collated from the wisdom of the ancient world.
Naples itself is not an inviting town, but it slopes up from one of the
most beautiful bays in the world, and it is rich in outstanding
objects—Capri in front, Vesuvius on the left, the hill of Posilippo on
the right, and the three great castles, St. Elmo, del Ovo and Nuovo,
which make the points of a vast triangle from the sea to the
mountain-top, while in the centre is the rock of Parthenope, now called
the Falcon’s Peak, the site of Palæpolis, the old city, which came
before Neapolis, the new city.
The outskirts of Naples are of the highest interest, for on the south
side the disinterred ruins of Pompeii and Herculanæum lie under their
destroyer, Vesuvius, the most interesting volcano in the world; and on
the other are Cumæ, the first settlement of the Greeks in the virgin
lands of Italy, which was their America; and all the volcanic phenomena,
which furnished Roman mythology with the details of its Hades.
Pompeii is of undying interest to me, especially since the new custom
has come in of leaving any fresh treasures which are discovered, _in
situ_. There is no place where, if you study it in conjunction with the
collections in the museum of Naples, you can so easily picture the life
of the Greeks and Romans as at Pompeii. I have many times thought of
writing upon Pompeii.
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