Read Europe in the Looking Glass Online
Authors: Robert Byron Jan Morris
Europe in the Looking Glass (5 page)
IN A BOOK
named
Up and Down
, E.F. Benson, its author, describes the sensation of ‘coming home’ that always assails him on his entry into Italy. What is it that arouses this emotion in English people, in men and women who have not a drop of foreign blood in their veins? An emotion that, far from being the result of habit, can only be stirred to the full by the initial rapture of the first arrival, of the first vision of the cypresses and campaniles, the
hummock-borne
fortress towns of Umbria, the wild stretches of the Campagna and the ultimate incarnation of Vesuvius and her stone-pine? What is it? Do all nationalities experience this conviction that Italy is their birthright, just as great works of art are the heritage of civilization? Or is there a something akin between the island and the peninsula, a something not similar, but which by reason of its very distinction from the rest of Europe, constitutes an affinity? It may be a quality too subtle for definition. But the fact remains, English people live in Italy because, unlike the Riviera and apart from the artistic monuments, they can love the country as a home. In France the resorts become Anglicised; in Italy the visitors Italianised. The English resident is not liked; but in his sincerity must be sought his absolution from the charge of ‘living cheaply on the natives’. He loves the country.
Thus it was with this inevitable exhilaration that I left the hotel on the morning of my third arrival in Italy and turning a corner, entered the market place of Verona, a large square, flooded with huge flapping white umbrellas, under which stood stalls of fruit and flowers and other necessaries. I drank
a cup of coffee and bought myself a buttonhole; Simon then appeared. We decided to stay another night. He was interested, as he had not visited Italy before.
Verona shows strong traces of the Venetian domination. The windows of the older palaces are built in that form of graceful Gothic arcading, so beautiful in its legitimate setting of delicate unrelieved brick, so repellent as popularised by Ruskin amid the walls of the miniature Chantillys and Rambouillets with which he decorated the cities where his influence was paramount. Weatherbeaten lions of St Mark are to be seen prowling above the doors of the municipal buildings; and the towers are roofed with those foursided cones that are peculiar to the north-east corner of the country.
At the back of the hotel, in a little courtyard attendant on a small and very ancient church, we came upon the tombs of the della Scala family. Of the three most important, each is surmounted by an elaborate Gothic
baldochino
, some twenty-five feet high, on top of which is perched an equestrian statue. The finest of these, that of Can Grande, is an exceptional work of art that can only be compared with the equestrian fresco in the Palazzo Publico, at Siena, by Simone Martini. The horses in both are draped to the fetlock; and there is something unusual, and at the same time satisfying, in the implied movement of an animal beneath the conventional but now unfamiliar folds of formal drapery. The riders, too, communicate something of their complacency to the beholder.
The courtyard is enclosed by a low wall, on top of which is stretched a kind of gigantic wrought-iron chain mail, introducing into its design the family badge, the ladder. Though dating from the fourteenth century, it is still as flexible as a gold purse. Verona has adopted the ladder as her badge; it appeared in blue and orange on the stained-glass windows of the hotel.
A guide, who spoke French, showed us round the tombs. He then pointed to three windows in an overlooking palace, and said that behind them Danté had composed the
Divina
Commedia
. Moving his podgy forefinger a few degrees further round the compass, he fixed upon a low red-brick shell of a house, the ground-floor of which was occupied by a wheelwright’s shop. This, he said, was the palace of Romeo’s family, where Romeo had actually lived. There is always a certain unreasonable humour about the reverence that foreigners display for Shakespeare. Simon and I burst into unthinking merriment, at which the guide took great offence. He angrily spluttered out long passages of Danté, which were intended to prove that Romeo’s family was not merely an ornament of fiction, and that if it had been, it had existed not only in the imagination of our national poet, but also in that of his.
After lunch we motored to Vicenza, twenty miles east across the Lombardy plain. It was very hot; the white dust was stifling and the road monotonous. Vicenza was the home of Palladio, for whose works, as the founder of English domestic architecture, David had a peculiar reverence. He does not admit the Jacobean and Elizabethan styles to be architecture. The Gothic town hall, re-encased by the master in a light, silver-grey stone that has not lost its freshness, is a lovely building, though it presents the appearance of an inverted galleon. There were one or two other fragments to be seen. Palladio’s sense of proportion was unfailing, and it is this, whether we owe it to him or not, that is the outstanding characteristic of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century English country house.
That evening, after an early dinner, we had the satisfaction of feeling that we had at last been fully compensated for anything that we might have missed at the Mozart Festival. I cannot do better than quote the column that appeared a fortnight later in the
Times
of August 29th:
ROSSINI’S ‘MOSES’
PERFORMANCE IN THE VERONA ARENA
(From a Correspondent)
…a performance more astounding and grandiose than could have been expected even of Italy. Mozart and M. Reinhardt faded into insignificance. The elements themselves were harnessed to this production.
The opera was Rossini’s ‘Mosé’; the theatre the famous ‘Arena’. This enormous Roman amphitheatre, the most complete of its kind in the world, presented an astonishing appearance. From the further section of the vast arena a row of brilliant electric lamps, so dazzling as to fulfil the functions of a curtain, proclaimed the existence of a stage fifty yards in length. This was flanked by two towering, white obelisks, against which could vaguely be discerned two lesser dark ones. An immense chatter filled the night, as the tiers and tiers of people loomed up to the black roof of sky. To one side, high up above the whole, three ruined arches, outlined faintly light against the firmament, stood symbol of the past. Reminder of the present, a lively overture burst out, to be drowned beneath the storm of hisses with which each member of the audience thought fit to admonish his neighbour to silence. Then suddenly, amid the clash of cymbals the row of electric lights reversed, beams shone from the smaller obelisks, and the twelve tribes of Israel, arrayed with all the picturesqueness of a missionary calendar, were disclosed in a tremendous concourse against a jungle of luxuriant vegetation and a great mass of overhanging rocks and boulders.
Irrelevant as the detail may have been – for instance, two pompous, Renaissance equestrian statues prancing among the palms behind the obelisks – it was an impressive spectacle by reason of its very size and the very sound emitted by this colossal chorus. At length there came a pause – a roll of drums, a crash – and, with a superb gesture, Moses stepped out upon a promontory of rock. He was ‘after Michael Angelo’: a tremendous figure of a man with a far-reaching bass voice; his hair twisted into horns,
his beard flowing down in the traditional ringlets of the famous statue, as though each strand were musclebound. Throughout, a pillar of power and strength, he dominated the performance as he dominated the Israelites.
The chronology of the opera is curious. The first act is occupied with the giving of the tables. While Aaron struggled with the people in an acquiescent tenor, darkness fell upon the stage, save for one spot illuminated by a prism of light. The orchestra quickened. Lightning flashed from the wings, to be answered by summer lightning, shot in violet streaks across the sky. The Almighty, a baritone, spake. Then, with a blare of trumpets, the Prophet stood forth bearing the tables. The act ended with a tremendous finale, and the audience shouted for Moses, and shouted again. He eventually reappeared with only his horns emerging from a gargantuan laurel wreath adorned with false berries and upheld by two black-shirted Fascisti. These blandly arrogated to themselves the thunders of applause that greeted the trio.
It lasted from nine till one. The Italians take their national composers very seriously. In the third act, unnerved by the stupendous bad taste with which modern imagination has invested the courts of ancient Egypt, the leading tenor missed his note – and the populace burst into a tumult of loathing and disapprobation. The last scene, however, was superb. The lights reversed, disclosing, as at the beginning, the people of Israel, in a long and sombre line. Behind them, instead of jungle growths, the Red Sea heaved and rolled in a manner ominously uncalm. Led by Moses, a figure scarcely human in the growing twilight, the tribes sang a protracted and mournful farewell song. Above, the summer lightning flashed, accompanied now by distant rumbles of thunder. Then the inevitable followed. Pharaoh and his host were espied in pursuit. With a supreme gesture Moses turned upon the waters, harangued them, hypnotized them, and slowly watched them part. Soon only a diagonal stream of heads was visible between the waves. As the last disappeared, Pharaoh sprang to view, a sinister silhouette perched high upon a rock.
A short recitative of hate ensued. The thunder – natural, not orchestral – drew nearer. Followed by his army he rushed in the wake of the fugitives. Like doom the waters bore down upon them, closed and resumed their inexorable rolling, punctuated for a minute by an occasional arm or spear waving in awful despair. The orchestra grew calmer. A great red sun appeared on an infinitely distant black cloth and spread the rays of hope over the waters. Then all was over.
It had been an astonishing performance. The very scale on which it was produced ensured its success. And the advent of real thunder and lightning to synchronise with the wrath of Pharaoh produced a dramatic effect which may never be repeated. During the intervals we drank beer and vermouth and ate composite ices in the vaulted crypt that ran round beneath the tiers of seats, where formerly lions and Christians had awaited their turn to gratify the frivolity of the public. And now, upon this very site, that in days gone by was wont to parade the pagan orgies of a corrupting empire, a representation of the most treasured of all our Old Testament stories was actually in progress. Such, my brethren, are the miracles that Faith has wrought.
AS WE WALKED BACK FROM THE OPERA
, David said that we ought to start for Florence at 10 o’clock the next morning. Supposing that, as usual, he meant twelve, I lay in bed until the porter suddenly came up for my luggage. My toilet was therefore necessarily hurried, and I started the day in a state of disorder.
Motoring down the plain of Lombardy is not interesting. The roads are passably smooth and wide, but so dusty that even a horse and cart throws up a cloud that obscures the view for ten to twenty yards; while a preceding motor vehicle makes it impossible to see for half-a-mile. One is seldom out of sight of a house. Villas large and small, former homes of the Medici and residences of local bank managers, lie always a quarter-
of-a
-mile, or not so far, off the road, visible at the end of perfectly straight avenues, through pairs of elaborate and pompous gate-posts. Every vineyard can boast an entrance which in England would denote a substantial mansion of the Georgian period. The country is entirely cultivated in strips, that are, like everything else, at right angles to the road. Though the plain is completely flat, it is impossible to see anything in the late summer owing to tall crops of maize and other unfamiliar growths, and the festoons of vines hanging from the rows of little pollarded trees. The loads of hay are even bigger than in Germany, being piled right on to the horse’s back so that only the ears of the animal remain visible. As David is never intimidated into removing his foot from the accelerator by any substance so fragile as grass, we generally carried off about a third of a rick from each load that we passed. Simon,
seated on the left outside, was apt to receive most of it on his head. For a person who prides himself on his manners, he was in a false position.
We passed through Villafranca, interesting only for its strip of tarred road, and crossed the Po, entering Mantua by a covered bridge. The pandemonium in this narrow, darkened tunnel was indescribable. Long lines of carts and droves of unmanageable cattle, panic-stricken by the reverberating echoes, jostled from side to side in angry confusion. We reached Bologna about midday, and, after driving three times round the town in search of the Restaurant Grande Italia, lunched at the Hotel Baglioni. Italian food at its best can compare with any in the world; and the Grande Italia had had the reputation of being the finest restaurant in Italy. Though now closed, its mantle seemed to have fallen on the Baglioni, which also contained an excellent American Bar, run by a waiter trained at the Savoy.
It was four o’clock before we eventually started out for Florence again, feeling very lazy and looking forward to arriving there. Five hours later we made an ignominious
re-entry
into Bologna, attached to the end of a rope.
Our first misfortune was to take the wrong road out of the town, which, after about five miles, lured us without warning into the midst of a group of smaller Apennines, mountains which in reality are just as preposterous as they appear in Perugino backgrounds, and not, therefore, as a rule, frequented by motorists. Up and up we twisted round these
amusement-park
peaks by a track not an inch wider than the wheel-base of the car, and so steep that the luggage nearly fell out of the back; round corners that Diana’s huge body could scarcely negotiate without her hind wheels flying into mid-air three hundred feet above some smiling farmstead; down valleys so narrow that she bridged them; and up humps so sharp that they threatened to harpoon her undercarriage; all this far up in the heavens with a view of fifty miles on either side. Having forced a passage through a cemetery, we felt, when the road threatened to pass through the front door of a farm, that the
moment had arrived to turn round. And we had at least on the way back, the satisfaction of finding that another car had followed us and was now stuck in the cemetery, its occupants goggled and hooded, gesticulating among the tombs. We left them silhouetted against the skyline, looking like a party of divers stranded on a mountain peak.
Turning a corner we suddenly found ourselves sliding down a precipice, tilted so far forward that it was necessary to hold ourselves back with our hands pressed against the dashboard as half-a-dozen Apennine valleys beckoned invitingly below. Ramming the gears to the lowest and putting on both brakes, David could just hold the car as we slithered down what was little better than a goat-run. Once at the bottom we hurried along to rejoin the main road and landed in a dried river-bed. Backing, we fell into a ditch. Luckily a large stone caught the rear off-wheel. Eventually we shot out of it, dragging with us the stone and about a hundredweight of earth. When at last we did attain the main road, we had not gone a hundred yards along it, when for no conceivable reason, Diana came to a sudden and irrevocable standstill.
David thought that the root of the trouble must be the carburettor. So did I. Simon did not venture an opinion. After unloading our combined luggage in an effort to find the book of instructions which all the time was safely in the front locker where it should have been, we set about the carburettor with spanners and pincers; and after an hour’s hard work succeeded in getting it in pieces. There seemed nothing the matter; we blew the jets at either end until our cheeks ached; then put it together again. After that we changed the plugs, because they ‘wanted doing anyhow’. This made no difference. It was useless. We gave up in despair and decided to stop a car and ask for help. Every five minutes for the last two hours we had been so enveloped in dust by mechanically driven transport, as to be scarcely able to breathe. But now, in the natural course of things, another hour elapsed before anything appeared at all.
At last, from round the corner of the bridge down the road, came the rumble of a lorry. With arms outstretched, like the little girl on the railway line, we stopped it, and two beneficent and filthy human beings, with immensely round stomachs concealed beneath white aprons, emerged from the front. They fastened on Diana’s inside with the ecstasy of starving leeches. In a moment the engine was emitting sheets of flame. David reached between the licking tongues and turned off
the petrol; Simon and I scooped the refuse of the gutter into Diana’s most delicate intestines; and, while one of the men thrust his enormous torso bodily on top of the carburettor, the other fetched a piece of sacking from the lorry, with which he eventually quenched the conflagration.
Laughing loudly, the men then embarked on a second attempt, this time wrapping the sacking round the carburettor in the first instance. We remained more collected, with one eye on the luggage at the back, as the flames shot up in the air. Finally they tried a third time. But it was not a success. They decided to tow us.
I sat in front off the lorry with the larger of the two. He started off with a bound that snapped the rope like a piece of thread. We retied it and tried again. The lorry was delivering Bolzano beer, with the result that we stopped at every public house on the road proving a refreshing object of ridicule to the parties of drinkers seated barefooted and half hidden in the dust. My companion told me that he had a son who spoke German and English. He also made a great deal of other conversation which I did not understand, occasionally almost stopping to apostrophise the landscape. The other man danced about the back of the lorry, asking David and Simon if he could introduce them to any ladies.
Our progress was slow, and it was nearly dark by the time we reached the tram terminus, which lay some distance out in the country. The lorry could delay no longer. Explaining our plight to the occupant of the Bologna Tramways Office, our two benefactors left us, they to deliver the remainder of their beer, we to telephone to the Baglioni for assistance. Though not easy, we succeeded in getting through. Another car would arrive in about half-an-hour.
During the interval we entered a wineshop. Two
Wandervögel
were eating bread and milk at a neighbouring table. A kitten with a dislocated shoulder proved an object of interest and affection to David. The car arrived, accompanied by an interpreter, who resembled Harold Lloyd in mind and face,
confusing every issue that he was called upon to solve. The rope broke again. We mended it and reached the hotel about nine, three ghoulish figures, unrecognisable beneath a livid coating of clotted, white dust. Baths and dinner revived us. The waiter expressed himself willing, if necessary, to introduce us to some ladies. Instead we went out and entered the first café that we came to.
Being rather tired we sat for some time in silence. The waiter behind the counter showed great interest in us. Eventually, handing me a confidential vermouth, he suggested that we might care to meet some ladies. Meanwhile his mother, a plump and elderly woman behind a pay desk, with clay-white skin and a wicked gleam in her eyes that belied her benevolent smile, was whispering in David’s ear that she did, as a matter of fact, know of some ladies who would not be unwilling to make our acquaintance. As an alternative she produced with furtive secrecy one of those packs of ‘greasy’ playing cards that one had imagined existed only among gold-diggers and pirates, and with these she tried to wave us into the back premises. Other people seemed to be coming and going in a mysterious way. The atmosphere became so disreputable that we began to feel uncomfortable.
Meanwhile we had made friends with a small Fascista, who spoke French. He was extremely communicative. He was a private – as opposed to an official – policeman; that is to say, a night-watchman. Despite this he was always about in the day. That morning, in fact, his father, who was a policeman proper, had been taken ill; and he had himself donned the livery and cocked hat of the House of Savoy and gone out to do duty instead. Bologna was a charming town. Yes, he thought it might be possible for us to join the local Fascisti. If we would come with him tomorrow morning he would see what could be done. Meanwhile, if we would like the meet any ladies, there would be no difficulty. And he and the waiter and the waiter’s mother all fell into an earnest and unintelligible conversation. We thought it time to escape.
In order to spare the reader the suspense and irritation, aggravated by the intense heat and airlessness of the town, that we ourselves endured, it may be as well to admit that our stay in Bologna was prolonged to the extent of six days. On the morning after the disaster, it was discovered that one of the cog-wheels in the magneto had been stripped of its teeth. The car would be ready on Saturday. But the peculiarities of the ‘distribution’ made it impossible to fit a foreign magneto. It was therefore necessary to remake the inside of the old one. Saturday was a holiday, on which the mechanics could not work; Sunday was a Sunday, on which they could. The presence in the town of a ‘State Magneto Works’ facilitated matters to a certain extent. The car would be ready on Monday night. Meanwhile, if we were lonely, the mechanic would be delighted to effect a meeting between ourselves and some ladies who were friends of his.
To cut a long story short, the car was not in fact in running order until Wednesday evening. As David had particularly enquired, before leaving England whether it would be advisable to take a spare magneto, and had been met with a distinct negative from the firm from whom he had purchased the car, we felt that our annoyance was justifiable. At the same time we obtained an insight into certain aspects of Italian provincial life that is not vouchsafed to everyone.