CHAPTER II
OF ITALIAN MEN AND MANNERS
ITALIAN politics have ever been a game of intrigue, and of the exploiting of personal ambition. It was so in the days of the Popes; it is so in these days of premiers. The pilots of the ships of state have never had a more perilous passage to navigate than when manœuvring in the waters of Italian politics.
There is great and jealous rivalry between the cities of Italy. The Roman hates the Piedmontese and the Neapolitan and the Bolognese, and they all hate the Roman, – capital though Rome is of Church and State.
The Evolution of Nationality has ever been an interesting subject to the stranger in a strange land. When the national spirit at last arose Italy had reached modern times and become modern instead of mediæval. National character is born of environment, but nationalism is born only of unassailable unity, a thorough absorbing of a love of country. The inhabitant of Rouen, the ancient Norman capital, is first, last and all the time a Norman, but he is also French; and the dweller in Rome or Milan is as much an Italian as the Neapolitan, though one and all jealously put the Campagna, Piedmont, or the Kingdom of Naples before the Italian boot as a geographical division. Sometimes the same idea is carried into politics, but not often. Political warfare in Italy is mostly confined to the unquenchable prejudices existing between the Quirinal and the Vatican, a sort of inter urban warfare, which has very little of the aspect of an international question, except as some new-come diplomat disturbs the existing order of things. The Italian has a fondness for the Frenchman, and the French nation. At least the Italian politician has, or professes to have, when he says to his constituency: “I wish always for happy peaceful relations with France … but I don’t forget Magenta and Solferino.”
The Italians of the north are the emigrating Italians, and make one of the best classes of labourers, when transplanted to a foreign soil. The steamship recruiting agents placard every little background village of Tuscany and Lombardy with the attractions of New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Buenos Ayres, and a hundred or so lire paid into the agent’s coffers does the rest.
Calabria and Sicily are less productive. The sunny Sicilian always wants to take his gaudily-painted farm cart with him, and as there is no economic place for such a useless thing in America, he contents himself with a twenty-hour sea voyage to Tunisia where he can easily get back home again with his cart, if he doesn’t like it.
Every Italian peasant, man, woman and child, knows America. You may not pass the night at Barberino di Mugello, may not stop for a glass of wine at the Osteria on the Futa Pass, or for a repast at some classically named borgo on the Voie Æmilia but that you will set up longings in the heart of the natives who stand around in shoals and gaze at your automobile.
They all have relatives in America, in New York, New Orleans or Cripple Creek, or perhaps Brazil or the Argentine, and, since money comes regularly once or twice a year, and since thousands of touring Americans climb about the rocks at Capri or drive fire-spouting automobiles up through the Casentino, they know the new world as a land of dollars, and dream of the day when they will be able to pick them up in the streets paved with gold. That is a fairy-tale of America that still lives in Italy.
Besides emigrating to foreign lands, the Italian peasant moves about his own country to an astonishing extent, often working in the country in summer, and in the towns the rest of the time as a labourer, or artisan. The typical Italian of the poorer class is of course the peasant of the countryside, for it is a notable fact that the labourer of the cities is as likely to be of one nationality as another. Different sections of Italy have each their distinct classes of country folk. There are landowners, tenants, others who work their land on shares, mere labourers and again simple farming folk who hire others to aid them in their work.
The braccianti, or farm labourers, are worthy fellows and seemingly as intelligent workers as their class elsewhere. In Calabria they are probably less accomplished than in the region of the great areas of worked land in central Italy and the valley of the Po.
The mezzadria system of working land on shares is found all over Italy. On a certain prearranged basis of working, the landlord and tenant divide the produce of the farm. There are, accordingly, no starving Italians, a living seemingly being assured the worker in the soil. In Ireland where it is rental pure and simple, and foreclosure and eviction if the rent is not promptly paid, the reverse is the case. Landlordism of even the paternal kind – if there is such a thing – is bad, but co-operation between landlord and tenant seems to work well in Italy. It probably would elsewhere.
The average Italian small farm, or podere, worked only by the family, is a very unambitious affair, but it produces a livelihood. The house is nothing of the vine-clad Kent or Surrey order, and the principal apartment is the kitchen. One or two bedrooms complete its appointments, with a stone terrace in front of the door as it sits cosily backed up against some pleasant hillside.
There are few gimcracks and dust-harbouring rubbish within, and what simple furniture there is is clean – above all the bed-linen. The stable is a building apart, and there is usually some sort of an out-house devoted to wine-pressing and the like.
A kitchen garden and an orchard are near by, and farther afield the larger area of workable land. A thousand or twelve hundred lire a year of ready money passing through the hands of the head of the family will keep father, mother and two children going, besides which there is the “living,” the major part of the eatables and drinkables coming off the property itself.
The Italians are as cleanly in their mode of life as the people of any other nation in similar walks. Let us not be prejudiced against the Italian, but make some allowance for surrounding conditions. In the twelfth century in Italy the grossness and uncleanliness were incredible, and the manners laid down for behaviour at table make us thankful that we have forks, pocket-handkerchiefs, soap and other blessings! But then, where were we in the twelfth century!
No branch of Italian farming is carried on on a very magnificent scale. In America the harvests are worked with mechanical reapers; in England it is done with sickle and flail or out of date patterns of American machines, but in Italy the peasant still works with the agricultural implements of Bible times, and works as hard to raise and harvest one bushel of wheat as a Kansas farmer does to grow, harvest and market six. The American farmer has become a financier; the Italian is still in the bread-winning stage. Five hundred labourers in Dakota, of all nationalities under the sun, be it remarked, on the Dalrymple farm, cut more wheat than any five thousand peasants in Europe. The peasant of Europe is chiefly in the stage of begging the Lord for his daily bread, but as soon as he gets out west in America, he buys store things, automatic pianos and automobile buggies. No wonder he emigrates!
The Italian peasant doesn’t live so badly as many think, though true it is that meat is rare enough on his table. He eats something more than a greasy rag and an olive, as the well-fed Briton would have us believe; and something more than macaroni, as the American fondly thinks. For one thing, he has his eternal minestra, a good, thick soup of many things which Anglo-Saxons would hardly know how to turn into as wholesome and nourishing a broth; meat of any kind, always what the French call pate d’Italie, and herbs of the field. The macaroni, the olives, the cheese and the wine – always the wine – come after. Not bad that; considerably better than corned beef and pie, and far, far better than boiled mutton and cauliflower as a steady diet! Britons and Americans should wake up and learn something about gastronomy.
The general expenses of middle-class domestic town life in Italy are lower than in most other countries, and the necessities for outlay are smaller. The Italian, even comfortably off in the working class, is less inclined to spend money on luxurious trivialities than most of us. He prefers to save or invest his surplus. One takes central Italy as typical because, if it is not the most prosperous, considered from an industrial point of view, it is still the region endowed with the greatest natural wealth. By this is meant that the conditions of life are there the easiest and most comfortable.
A middle class town family with an income of six or seven thousand lire spends very little on rent to begin with; pretence based upon the size of the front door knob cuts no figure in the Italian code of pride. This family will live in a flat, not in a villini as separate town houses are called. One sixth of the family income will go for rent, and though the apartment may be bare and grim and lack actual luxury it will possess amplitude, ten or twelve rooms, and be near the centre of the town. This applies in the smaller cities of from twenty to fifty thousand inhabitants. With very little modification the same will apply in Rome or Naples, and, with perhaps none at all, at Florence.
The all important servant question would seem to be more easily solved in Italy than elsewhere, but it is commonly the custom to treat Italian servants as one of the family – so far as certain intimacies and affections go – though, perhaps this of itself has some unanticipated objections. The Italian servants have the reputation of becoming like feudal retainers; that is, they “stay on the job,” and from eight to twenty-five lire a month pays their wages. In reality they become almost personal or body servants, for in few Italian cities, and certainly not in Italian towns, are they obliged to occupy themselves with the slogging work of the London slavey, or the New York chore-woman. An Italian servant, be she young or old, however, has a seeming disregard for a uniform or badge of servitude, and is often rather sloppy in appearance. She is, for that, all the more picturesque since, if untidy, she is not apt to be loathsomely dirty in her apparel or her manner of working.
The Italian of all ranks is content with two meals a day, as indeed we all ought to be. The continental morning coffee and roll, or more likely a sweet cake, is universal here, though sometimes the roll is omitted. Lunch is comparatively a light meal, and dinner at six or seven is simply an amplified lunch. The chianti of Tuscany is the usual wine drunk at all meals, or a substitute for it less good, though all red wine in Italy seems to be good, cheap and pure. Adulteration is apparently too costly a process. Wine and biscuits take the place of afternoon tea – and with advantage. The wine commonly used en famille is seldom bought at more than 1.50 lira the flagon of two and a half litres, and can be had for half that price. Sugar and salt are heavily taxed, and though that may be a small matter with regard to salt it is something of an item with sugar.
Wood is almost entirely the fuel for cooking and heating, and the latter is very inefficient coming often from simple braziers or scaldini filled with embers and set about where they are supposed to do the most good. If one does not expire from the cold before the last spark has departed from the already dying embers when they are brought in, he orders another and keeps it warm by enveloping it as much as possible with his person. Italian heating arrangements are certainly more economical than those in Britain, but are even less efficient, as most of the caloric value of wood and coal goes up the chimney with the smoke. The American system of steam heat – on the “chauffage centrale” plan – will some day strike Europe, and then the householder will buy his heat on the water, gas and electric light plan. Till then southern Europe will freeze in winter.
In Rome and Florence it is a very difficult proceeding to be able to control enough heat – by any means whatever – to properly warm an apartment in winter. If the apartment has no chimney, and many haven’t in the living rooms, one perforce falls back again on the classic scaldini placed in the middle of the room and fired up with charcoal. Then you huddle around it like Indians in a wigwam and, if you don’t take a short route into eternity by asphyxiation, your extremities ultimately begin to warm up; when they begin to get chilly again you recommence the firing up. This is more than difficult; it is inconvenient and annoying.
The manners and customs of the Italians of the great cities differ greatly from those of the towns and villages, and those of the Romans differ greatly from those of the inhabitants of Milan, Turin or Genoa. The Roman, for instance, hates rain – and he has his share of it too – and accordingly is more often seen with an umbrella than without one. Brigands are supposedly the only Italians who don’t own an umbrella, though why the distinction is so apparent a mere dweller beyond the frontier cannot answer.
In Rome, in Naples, and in all the cities and large towns of Italy, the population rises early, but they don’t get down to business as speedily as they might. The Italian has not, however, a prejudice against new ideas, and the Italian cities and large towns are certainly very much up-to-date. Italians are at heart democrats, and rank and title have little effect upon them.
The Italian government still gives scant consideration to savings banks, but legalizes, authorizes and sometimes backs up lotteries. At all times it controls them. This is one of the inconsistencies of the tunes played by the political machine in modern Italy. Anglo-Saxons may bribe and graft; but they do not countenance lotteries, which are the greatest thieving institutions ever invented by the ingenuity of man, in that they do rob the poor. It is the poor almost entirely who support them. The rich have bridge, baccarat, Monte Carlo and the Stock Exchange.
It may be bad for the public, this legalized gambling, but all gambling is bad, and certainly state-controlled lotteries are no worse than licensed or unlicensed pool-rooms and bucket shops, winked-at dice-throwing in bar rooms, or crap games on every corner.
The Italian administration received the enormous total of 74,400,000 lire for lottery tickets in 1906, and of this sum 35,000,000 lire were returned in prizes, and 6,500,000 went for expenses. A fine net profit of 33,000,000 lire, all of which, save what stuck to the fingers of the bureaucracy in passing through, went to reduce taxation which would otherwise be levied.
The Italian plays the lottery with the enthusiastic excitement of a too shallow and too confident brain.
Various combinations of figures seem possible of success to the Italian who at the weekend puts some bauble in pawn with the hope that something will come his way. After the drawing, before the Sunday dawns, he is quite another person, considerably less confident of anything to happen in the future, and as downcast as a sunny Italian can be.
This passion for drawing lots is something born in him; even if lotteries were not legalized, he would still play lotto in secret, for in enthusiasm for games of chance, he rivals the Spaniard.
But Italy is not the country of illiterates that the stranger presupposes. Campania is the province where one finds the largest number of lettered, and Basilicate the least.
Military service begins and is compulsory for all male Italians at the age of twenty. It lasts for nineteen years, of which three only are in active service. The next five or six in the reserve, the next three or four in the Militia and the next seven in the “territorial” Militia, or landguard.
Conscription also applies to the naval service for the term of twelve years.
The military element, which one meets all over Italy, is astonishingly resplendent in colours and plentiful in numbers. At most, among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of officers of all ranks, there can hardly be more than a few score of privates. It is either this or the officers keep continually on the move in order to create an illusion of numbers!
Class distinctions, in all military grades, and in all lands, are very marked, but in Italy the obeisance of a private before the slightest loose end of gold braid is very marked. The Italian private doesn’t seem to mark distinctions among the official world beyond the sight of gold braid. A steamboat captain, or a hall porter in some palatial hotel would quite stun him.
The Italian gendarmes are a picturesque and resplendent detail of every gathering of folk in city, town or village. On a festa they shine more grandly than at other times, and the privilege of being arrested by such a gorgeous policeman must be accounted as something of a social distinction. The holding up of an automobilist by one of these gentry is an affair which is regulated with as much pomp and circumstance as the crowning of a king. The writer knows!!
Just how far the Italian’s criminal instincts are more developed than those of other races and climes has no place here, but is it not fair to suppose that the half a million of Italians – mostly of the lower classes – who form a part of the population of cosmopolitan New York are of a baser instinct than any half million living together on the peninsula? Probably they are; the Italian on his native shore does not strike us as a very villainous individual.
But he is usually a lively person; there is nothing calm and sedentary about him; though he has neither the grace of the Gascon, the joy of the Kelt, or the pretence of the Provençal, he does not seem wicked or criminal, and those who habitually carry dirks and daggers and play in Black Hand dramas live for the most part across the seas.
The Italian secret societies are supposed hot beds of crime, and many of them certainly exist, though they do not practise their rites in the full limelight of publicity as they do in America.
The Neapolitan Camarra is the best organized of all the Italian secret societies. It is divided, military-like, into companies, and is recruited, also in military fashion, to make up for those who have died or been “replaced.”
The origin of secret societies will probably never be known. Italy was badly prepared to gather the fruits to be derived from the French Revolution, and it is possible that then the activity of the Carbonari, Italy’s most popular secret society, began. The Mafia is more ancient and has a direct ancestry for nearly a thousand years.
A hundred and twenty-five years ago the seed of secret dissatisfaction had already been spread for years through Italy. The names of the societies were many. Some of them were called the Protectori Republicani, the Adelfi, the Spilla Nera, the Fortezza, the Speranza, the Fratelli, and a dozen other names. On the surface the code of the Carbonari reads fairly enough, but there is nothing to show that any attempt was made to stamp out perhaps the most generally honoured of the traditions of Naples – that of homicide.
The long political blight of the centuries, the curse of feudalism, the rottenness of ignorance and superstition, had eaten out nearly every vestige of political and self-respecting spirit. After the restoration of the Bourbons the influences of the secret societies in Southern Italy were manifested by the large increase of murders.
CHAPTER III
CHIANTI AND MACARONIA
Chapter for Travellers by Road or Rail
THE hotels of Italy are dear or not, according to whether one patronizes a certain class of establishment. At Trouville, at Aix-les-Bains in France, at Cernobbio in the Italian Lake region, or on the Quai Parthenope at Naples, there is little difference in price or quality, and the cuisine is always French.
The automobilist who demands garage accommodation as well will not always find it in the big city hotel in Italy. He may patronize the F. I. A. T. Garages in Rome, Naples, Genoa, Milan, Florence, Venice, Turin and Padua and find the best of accommodation and fair prices. For a demonstration of this he may compare what he gets and what he pays for it at Pisa – where a F. I. A. T. garage is wanting – and note the difference.
The real Italian hotel, outside the great centres, has less of a clientèle of snobs and malades imaginaires than one finds in France – in the Pyrenees or on the Riviera, or in Switzerland among the Alps, and accordingly there is always accommodation to be found that is in a class between the resplendent gold-lace and silver-gilt establishments of the resorts and working-men’s lodging houses. True there is the same class of establishment existing in the smaller cities in France, but the small towns of France are not yet as much “travelled” by strangers as are those of Italy, and hence the difference to be remarked.
The real Italian hotels, not the tourist establishments, will cater for one at about one half the price demanded by even the second order of tourist hotels, and the Italian landlord shows no disrespect towards a client who would know his price beforehand – and he will usually make it favourable at the first demand, for fear you will “shop around” and finally go elsewhere.
The automobile here, as everywhere, tends to elevate prices, but much depends on the individual attitude of the traveller. A convincing air of independence and knowledge on the part of the automobilist, as he arrives, will speedily put him en rapport with the Italian landlord. Look as wise as possible and always ask the price beforehand – even while your motor is still chugging away. That never fails to bring things to a just and proper relation.
It is at Florence, and in the environs of Naples, of all the great tourist centres, that one finds the best fare at the most favourable prices, but certainly at Rome and Venice, in the great hotels, it is far less attractive and a great deal dearer, delightful though it may be to sojourn in a palace of other days.
The Italian wayside inns, or trattoria, are not all bad; neither are they all good. The average is better than it has usually been given the credit of being, and the automobile is doing much here, as in France, towards a general improvement. A dozen automobiles, with a score or more of people aboard, may come and go in a day to a little inn in some picturesque framing on a main road, say that between Siena and Rome via Orvieto, or to Finale Marina or Varazze in Liguria, to one carriage and pair with two persons and a driver. Accordingly, this means increased prosperity for the inn-holder, and he would be a dull wit indeed if he didn’t see it. He does see it in France, with a very clear vision; in Italy, with a point of view very little dimmed; in Switzerland, when the governmental authorities will let him; and in England, when the country boniface comes anywhere near to being the intelligent person that his continental compeer finds himself. This is truth, plain, unvarnished truth, just as the writer has found it. Others may have their own ideas about the subject, but this is the record of one man’s experiences, and presumably of some others.
The chief disadvantages of the hotel of the small Italian town are its often crowded and incomplete accessories, and its proximity to a stable of braying donkeys, bellowing cows, or an industrious blacksmith who begins before sun-up to pound out the same metallic ring that his confrères do all over the world. There is nothing especially Italian about a blacksmith’s shop in Italy. All blacksmith interiors are the same whether painted by “Old Crome,” Eastman Johnson or Jean François Millet.
The idiosyncrasies of the inns of the small Italian towns do not necessarily preclude their offering good wholesome fare to the traveller, and this in spite of the fact that not every one likes his salad with garlic in liberal doses or his macaroni smothered in oil. Each, however, is better than steak smothered in onions or potatoes fried in lard; any “hygienist” will tell you that.
The trouble with most foreigners in Italy, when they begin to talk about the rancid oil and other strange tasting native products, is that they have not previously known the real thing. Olive oil, real olive oil, tastes like – well, like olive oil. The other kinds, those we are mostly used to elsewhere, taste like cotton seed or peanut oil, which is probably what they are. One need not blame the Italian for this, though when he himself eats of it, or gives it you to eat, it is the genuine article. You may eat it or not, according as you may like it or not, but the Italian isn’t trying to poison you or work off anything on your stomach half so bad as the rancid bacon one sometimes gets in Germany or the kippers of two seasons ago that appear all over England in the small towns.
As before intimated, the chief trouble with the small hotels in Italy is their deficiencies, but the Touring Club Italiano in Italy, like the Touring Club de France in France, is doing heroic work in educating the country inn-keeper. Why should not some similar institution do the same thing in England and America? How many American country hotels, in towns of three or five thousand people, in say Georgia or Missouri, would get up, for the chance traveller who dropped in on them unexpectedly, a satisfactory meal? Not many, the writer fancies.
There is, all over Europe, a desire on the part of the small or large hotel keeper to furnish meals out of hours, and often at no increase in price. The automobilist appreciates this, and has come to learn in Italy that the old Italian proverb “chi tardi arriva mal alloggia” is entirely a myth of the guide books of a couple of generations ago. A cold bird, a dish of macaroni, a salad and a flask of wine will try no inn-keeper’s capabilities, even with no notice beforehand. The Italian would seemingly prefer to serve meals in this fashion than at the tavola rotonda, which is the Italian’s way of referring to a table d’hôte. If you have doubts as to your Italian Boniface treating you right as to price (after you have eaten of his fare) arrange things beforehand a prezzo fisso and you will be safe.
As for wine, the cheapest is often as good as the best in the small towns, and is commonly included in the prezzo fisso, or should be. It’s for you to see that you get it on that basis of reckoning.
The padrona of an Italian country inn is very democratic; he believes in equality and fraternity, and whether you come in a sixty-horse Mercédès or on donkey-back he sits you down in a room with a mixed crew of his countrymen and pays no more attention to you than if you were one of them. That is, he doesn’t exploit you as does the Swiss, he doesn’t overcharge you, and he doesn’t try to tempt your palate with poor imitation of the bacon and eggs of old England, or the tenderloins of America. He gives you simply the fare of the country and lets it go at that.
Of Italian inns, it may be truly said the day has passed when the traveller wished he was a horse in order that he might eat their food; oats being good everywhere.
The fare of the great Italian cities, at least that of the hotels frequented by tourists, has very little that is national about it. To find these one has to go elsewhere, to the small Italian hotels in the large towns, along with the priests and the soldiers, or keep to the byways.
The polenta, or corn-meal bread, and the companatico, sardines, anchovies or herrings which are worked over into a paste and spread on it butter-wise, is everywhere found, and it is good. No osteria or trattoria by the roadside, but will give you this on short order if you do not seek anything more substantial. The minestra, or cabbage soup – it may not be cabbage at all, but it looks it – a sort of “omnium gatherum” soup – is warming and filling. Polenta, companatico, minestra and a salad, with fromaggio to wind up with, and red wine to drink, ought not to cost more than a lira, or a lira and a half at the most wherever found. You won’t want to continue the same fare for dinner the same day, perhaps, but it works well for luncheon.
Pay no charges for attendance. No one does anyway, but tourists of convention. Let the buono mano to the waiter who serves you be the sole largess that you distribute, save to the man-of-all-work who brings you water for the thirsty maw of your automobile, or to the amiable, sunshiny individual who lugs your baggage up and down to and from your room. This is quite enough, heaven knows, according to our democratic ideas. At any rate, pay only those who serve you, in Italy, as elsewhere, and don’t merely tip to impress the waiter with your importance. He won’t see it that way.
The Italian albergo, or hotel of the small town, is apt to be poorly and meanly furnished, even in what may be called “public rooms,” though, indeed, there are frequently no public rooms in many more or less pretentious Italian inns. If there ever is a salon or reception room it is furnished scantily with a rough, uncomfortable sofa covered with a gunny sack, a small square of fibre carpeting (if indeed it has any covering whatever to its chilly tile or stone floor), and a few rush covered chairs. Usually there is no chimney, but there is always a stuffy lambrequined curtain at each window, almost obliterating any rays of light which may filter feebly through. In general the average reception room of any Italian albergo (except those great joint-stock affairs of the large cities which adopt the word hotel) is an uncomfortable and unwholesome apartment. One regrets to say this but it is so.
Beds in Italian hotels are often “queer,” but they are surprisingly and comfortably clean, considering their antiquity. Every one who has observed the Italian in his home, in Italy or in some stranger land, even in a crowded New York tenement, knows that the Italian sets great store by his sleeping arrangements and their proper care. It is an ever-to-be-praised and emulated fact that the common people of continental Europe are more frequently “luxurious” with regard to their beds and bed linen than is commonly supposed. They may eat off of an oilcloth (which by some vague conjecture they call “American cloth”) covered table, may dip their fingers deep in the polenta and throw bones on the tile or brick floor to the dogs and cats edging about their feet, but the draps of their beds are real, rough old linen, not the ninety-nine-cent-store kind of the complete house-furnishing establishments.