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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 Cappuccini, 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.
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 Cavaliere 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 Confraternita, 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 Confraternita
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 Cappuccino 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 Cappuccino 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
protege, 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 Cappuccini, 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 Cappuccino 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-meme,' 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 Vetturino, 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.
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