Chapter 32
By far the best part of all such papers is the richly-tinted personal column, wherein lovers communicate with each other, or endeavour to do so. I read it conscientiously from beginning to end, admiring, in my physical capacity, the throbbing passion that prompts such public outbursts of confidence and, from a literary point of view, their lapidary style, model of condensation, impossible to render in English and conditioned by the hard fact that every word costs two sous. Under this painful material stress, indeed, the messages are sometimes crushed into a conciseness which the females concerned must have some difficulty in unperplexing: what on earth does the parsimonious _Flower_ mean by his Delphic fourpenny worth, thus punctuated—
“(You have) not received. How. Safety.”
One cannot help smiling at this circuitous and unromantic method of touching the hearts of ladies who take one’s fancy; at the same time, it testifies to a resourceful vitality, striving to break through the barriers of Hispano-Arabic convention which surround the fair sex in this country. They are nothing if not poetic, these love-sick swains. _Arrow_ murmurs: “My soul lies on your pillow, caressing you softly”; _Strawberry_ laments that “as bird outside nest, I am alone and lost. What sadness,” and _Star_ finds the “Days eternal, till Thursday.” And yet they often choose rather prosaic pseudonyms. Here is _Sahara_ who “suffers from your silence,” while _Asthma_ is “anticipating one endless kiss,” and _Old England_ observing, more ir sorrow than in anger, that he “waited vainly one whole hour.”
But the sagacious _Cooked Lobster_ desires, before commiting himself further, “a personal interview.” He has perhaps been cooked once before.
Letters and numbers are best, after all. So thinks F. N. 13, who is utterly disgusted with his flame—
“Your silence speaks. Useless saying anything. Ça ira.” And likewise 7776—B, a designing rogue and plainly a spendthrift, who wastes ninepence in making it clear that he “wishes to marry rich young lady, forgiving youthful errors.” If I were the girl, I would prefer to take my chances with “Cooked Lobster.”
_“Will much-admired young-lady cherries-in-black-hat indicate method possible correspondence_ 10211, _Post-Office?”_
How many of these arrows, I wonder, reach their mark?
Ah, here are politics and News of the World, at last. A promising article on the “Direttissimo Roma-Napoli”—the railway line that is to connect the two towns by way of the Pontine Marshes. . . . Dear me! This reads very familiarly. . . . Why, to be sure, it is the identical dissertation, with a few changes by the office-boy, that has cropped up periodically in these pages for the last half-century, or whenever the railway was first projected. The line, as usual, is being projected more strenuously than before, and certain members of the government have gone so far as to declare. . . . H’m! Let me try something else: “The Feminist Movement in England” by Our London Correspondent (who lives in a little side street off the Toledo); that sounds stimulating. . . . The advanced English Feminists—so it runs—are taking the lead in encouraging their torpid sisters on the Continent. . . . Hardly a day passes, that some new manifestation of the Feminist Movement ... in fact, it may be avowed that the Feminist Movement in England. . . .
The air is cooler, as I awake, and looking out of the window I perceive from the mellow light-effects that day is declining.
Towards this sunset hour the unbroken dome of the sky often undergoes a brief transformation. High-piled masses of cloud may then be seen accumulating over the Sila heights and gathering auxiliaries from every quarter; lightning is soon playing about the livid and murky vapours—you can hear the thunders muttering, up yonder, to some drenching downpour. But on the plain the sun continues to shine in vacuously benevolent fashion; nothing is felt of the tempest save unquiet breaths of wind that raise dust-eddies from the country roads and lash the sea into a mock frenzy of crisp little waves. It is the merest interlude. Soon the blue-black drifts have fled away from the mountains that stand out, clear and refreshed, in the twilight. The wind has died down, the storm is over and Cotrone thirsts, as ever, for rain that never comes. Yet they have a Madonna-picture here—a celebrated _black_ Madonna, painted by Saint Luke—who “always procures rain, when prayed to.”
Once indeed the tail of a shower must have passed overhead, for there fell a few sad drops. I hurried abroad, together with some other citizens, to observe the phenomenon. There was no doubt about the matter; it was genuine rain; the drops lay, at respectable intervals, on the white dust of the station turnpike. A boy, who happened to be passing in a cart, remarked that if the shower could have been collected into a saucer or some other small receptacle, it might have sufficed to quench the thirst of a puppy-dog.
I usually take a final dip in the sea, at this time of the evening. After that, it is advisable to absorb an ice or two—they are excellent, at Cotrone—and a glass of Strega liqueur, to ward off the effects of over-work. Next, a brief promenade through the clean, well-lighted streets and now populous streets, or along the boulevard Margherita to view the rank and fashion taking the air by the murmuring waves, under the cliff-like battlements of Charles the Fifth’s castle; and so to dinner.
This meal marks the termination of my daily tasks; nothing serious is allowed to engage my attention, once that repast is ended; I call for a chair and sit down at one of the small marble-topped tables in the open street and watch the crowd as it floats around me, smoking a Neapolitan cigar and imbibing, alternately, ices and black coffee until, towards midnight, a final bottle of _vino di Cirò_ is uncorked—fit seal for the labours of the day.
One might say much in praise of Calabrian wine. The land is full of pleasant surprises for the œnophilist, and one of these days I hope to embody my experiences in the publication of a wine-chart of the province with descriptive text running alongside—the purchasers of which, if few, will certainly be of the right kind. The good Dr. Barth—all praise to him!—has already done something of the kind for certain parts of Italy, but does not so much as mention Calabria. And yet here nearly every village has its own type of wine and every self-respecting family its own peculiar method of preparation, little known though they be outside the place of production, on account of the octroi laws which strangle internal trade and remove all stimulus to manufacture a good article for export. This wine of Cirò, for instance, is purest nectar, and so is that which grows still nearer at hand in the classical vale of the Neto and was praised, long ago, by old Pliny; and so are at least two dozen more. For even as Gregorovius says that the smallest Italian community possesses its duly informed antiquarian, if you can but put your hand upon him, so, I may be allowed to add, every little place hereabouts can boast of at least one individual who will give you good wine, provided—provided you go properly to work to find him.
Now although, when young, the Calabrian Bacchus has a wild-eyed _beauté du diable_ which appeals to one’s expansive moods, he already begins to totter, at seven years of age, in sour, decrepit eld. To pounce upon him at the psychological moment, to discover in whose cool and cobwebby cellar he is dreaming out his golden summer of manhood—that is what a foreigner can never, never hope to achieve, without competent local aid.
To this end, I generally apply to the priests; not because they are the greatest drunkards (far from it; they are mildly epicurean, or even abstemious) but by reason of their unrivalled knowledge of personalities. They know exactly who has been able to keep his liquor of such and such a year, and who has been obliged to sell or partially adulterate it; they know, from the confessional of the wives, the why and wherefore of all such private family affairs and share, with the chemist, the gift of seeing furthest into the tangled web of home life. They are “gialosi,” however, of these acquirements, and must be approached in the right spirit—a spirit of humility. But if you tactfully lead up to the subject by telling of the manifold hardships of travel in foreign lands, the discomfort of life in hostelries, the food that leaves so much to be desired and, above all, the coarse wine that is already beginning, you greatly fear, to injure your sensitive spleen (an important organ, in Calabria), inducing a hypochondriacal tendency to see all the beauties of this fair land in an odious and sombre light—turning your day into night, as it were—it must be an odd priest, indeed, who is not compassionately moved to impart the desired information regarding the whereabouts of the best _vino di famiglia_ at that moment obtainable. After all, it costs him nothing to do a double favour—one to yourself and another to the proprietor of the wine, doubtless an old friend of his, who will be able to sell his stuff to a foreigner 20 per cent dearer than to a native.
And failing the priests, I go to an elderly individual of that tribe of red-nosed connaisseurs, the coachmen, ever thirsty and mercenary souls, who for a small consideration may be able to disclose not only this secret, but others far more mysterious.
As to your host at the inn—he raises not the least objection to your importing alien liquor into his house. His own wine, he tells you, is last year’s vintage and somewhat harsh (slightly watered, he might add)—and why not? The ordinary customers are gentlemen of commerce who don’t care a fig what they eat and drink, so long as there is enough of it. No horrible suggestions are proffered concerning corkage; on the contrary, he tests your wine, smacks his lips, and thanks you for communicating a valuable discovery. He thinks he will buy a bottle or two for the use of himself and a few particular friends. . . .
Midnight has come and gone. The street is emptying; the footsteps of passengers begin to ring hollow. I arise, for my customary stroll in the direction of the cemetery, to attune myself to repose by shaking off those restlessly trivial images of humanity which might otherwise haunt my slumbers.
Town visions are soon left behind; it is very quiet here under the hot, starlit heavens; nothing speaks of man save the lighthouse flashing in ghostly activity—no, it is a fixed light—on the distant Cape of the Column. And nothing breaks the stillness save the rhythmic breathing of the waves, and a solitary cricket that has yet to finish his daily task of instrumental music, far away, in some warm crevice of the hills.
A suave odour rises up from the narrow patch of olives, and figs loaded with fruit, and ripening vines, that skirts the path by the beach. _The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell._
And so I plough my way through the sand, in the darkness, encompassed by tepid exhalations of earth and sea. Another spirit has fallen upon me—a spirit of biblical calm. Here, then, stood _the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation!_ It is indeed hard to realize that a town thronged with citizens covered all this area. Yet so it is. Every footstep is a memory. Along this very track walked the sumptuous ladies of Croton on their way to deposit their vain jewels before the goddess Hera, at the bidding of Pythagoras. On this spot, maybe, stood that public hall which was specially built for the delivery of his lectures.
No doubt the townsfolk had been sunk in apathetic luxury; the time was ripe for a Messiah.
And lo! he appeared.
XXXVIII THE SAGE OF CROTON
The popularity of this sage at Croton offers no problem: the inhabitants had become sufficiently civilized to appreciate the charm of being regenerated. We all do. Renunciation has always exercised an irresistible attraction for good society; it makes us feel so comfortable, to be told we are going to hell—and Pythagoras was very eloquent on the subject of Tartarus as a punishment. The Crotoniates discovered in repentance of sins a new and subtle form of pleasure; exactly as did the Florentines, when Savonarola appeared on the scene.
Next: his doctrines found a ready soil in Magna Graecia which was already impregnated with certain vague notions akin to those he introduced. And then—he permitted and even encouraged the emotional sex to participate in the mysteries; the same tactics that later on materially helped the triumph of Christianity over the more exclusive and rational cult of Mithra. Lastly, he came with a “message,” like the Apostle of the Gentiles; and in those times a preaching reformer was a novelty. That added a zest.
We know them a little better, nowadays.
He enjoyed the specious and short-lived success that has attended, elsewhere, such efforts to cultivate the _ego_ at the expense of its environment. “A type of aspiring humanity,” says Gissing, echoing the sentiments of many of us, “a sweet and noble figure, moving as a dim radiance through legendary Hellas.” I fancy that the mist of centuries of undiscriminating admiration has magnified this figure out of all proportion and contrived, furthermore, to fix an iridescent nimbus of sanctity about its head. Such things have been known to happen, in foggy weather.
Was Greece so very legendary, in those times? Why, on the contrary, it was full of real personages, of true sages to whom it seemed as if no secrets of heaven or earth were past fathoming; far from being legendary, the country had never attained a higher plane of intellectual curiosity than when Pythagoras made his appearance. And it cannot be gainsaid that he and his disciples gave the impetus away from these wise and beneficial researches into the arid regions of metaphysics. It is so much more gentlemanly (and so much easier) to talk bland balderdash about soul-migrations than to calculate an eclipse of the moon or bother about the circulation of the blood.
That a man of his speculative vigour, knowing so many extra-Hellenic races, should have hit upon one or two good things adventitiously is only to be expected. But they were mere by-products. One might as well praise John Knox for creating the commons of Scotland with a view to the future prosperity of that country—a consummation which his black fanaticism assuredly never foresaw.
The chief practical doctrine of Pythagoras, that mankind are to be governed on the principle of a community of eastern monks, makes for the disintegration of rational civic life.
And his chief theoretical doctrines, of metempsychosis and the reduction of everything to a system of numbers[1]—these are sheer lunacy.
[1] Vincenzo Dorsa, an Albanian, has written two pamphlets on the survival of Greco-Roman traditions in Calabria. They are difficult to procure, but whoever is lucky enough to find them will be much helped in his understanding of the common people. In one place, he speaks of the charm-formula of _Otto-Nave!_ (Eight-Nine) It is considered meet and proper, in the presence of a suckling infant, to spit thrice and then call out, three times, Otto-Nove! This brings luck; and the practice, he thinks, is an echo of the number-system of Pythagoras.
Was it not something of a relapse, after the rigorous mental discipline of old, to have a man gravely assuring his fellows that he is the son of Hermes and the divinely appointed messenger of Apollo; treating diseases, like an Eskimo Angekok, by incantation; recording veracious incidents of his experiences during a previous life in Hell, which he seems to have explored almost as thoroughly as Swedenborg; dabbling in magic, and consulting dreams, birds and the smoke of incense as oracles? And in the exotic conglomerate of his teachings are to be found the _prima stamina_ of much that is worse: the theory of the pious fraud which has infected Latin countries to this day; the Jesuitical maxim of the end justifying the means; the insanity of preferring deductions to facts which has degraded philosophy up to the days of Kant; mysticism, demon-worship and much else of pernicious mettle—they are all there, embryonically embedded in Pythagoras.
We are told much of his charity; indeed, an English author has written a learned work to prove that Pythagoreanism has close affinities with Christianity. Charity has now been tried on an ample scale, and has proved a dismal failure. To give, they say, is more blessed than to receive. It is certainly far easier, for the most part, to give than to refrain from giving. We are at last shaking off the form, of self-indulgence called charity; we realize that if mankind is to profit, sterner conceptions must prevail. The apotheosis of the god-favoured loafer is drawing to a close.
For the rest, there was the inevitable admixture of quackery about our reforming sage; his warmest admirers cannot but admit that he savours somewhat strongly of the holy impostor. Those charms and amulets, those dark gnomic aphorisms which constitute the stock-in-trade of all religious cheap-jacks, the bribe of future life, the sacerdotal tinge with its complement of mendacity, the secrecy of doctrine, the pretentiously-mysterious self-retirement, the “sacred quaternion,” the bean-humbug . . .
He had the true maraboutic note.
And for me, this regenerator crowned with a saintly aureole remains a glorified marabout—an intellectual dissolvent; the importer of that oriental introspectiveness which culminated in the idly-splendid yearnings of Plato, paved the way for the quaint Alexandrian _tutti-frutti_ known as Christianity, and tainted the well-springs of honest research for two thousand years. By their works ye shall known them. It was the Pythagoreans who, not content with a just victory over the Sybarites, annihilated their city amid anathemas worthy of those old Chaldeans (past masters in the art of pious cursings); a crime against their common traditions and common interests; a piece of savagery which wrecked Hellenic civilization in Italy. It is ever thus, when the soul is appointed arbiter over reason. It is ever thus, when gentle, god-fearing dreamers meddle with worldly affairs. Beware of the wrath of the lamb!
So rapidly did the virus act, that soon we find Plato declaring that all the useful arts are _degrading;_ that “so long as a man tries to study any sensible object, he can never be said to be learning anything”; in other words, that the kind of person to whom one looks for common sense should be excluded from the management of his most refined republic. It needed courage of a rather droll kind to make such propositions in Greece, under the shadow of the Parthenon. And hand in hand with this feudalism in philosophy there began that unhealthy preoccupation with the morals of our fellow-creatures, that miasma of puritanism, which has infected life and literature up to this moment.
The Renaissance brought many fine things to England. But the wicked fairy was there with her gift: Pythagoras and Plato. We were not like the Italians who, after the first rapture of discovery was over, soon outgrew these distracted dialectics; we stuck fast in them. Hence our Platonic touch: our _demi-vierge_ attitude in matters of the mind, our academic horror of clean thinking. How Plato hated a fact! He could find no place for it in his twilight world of abstractions. Was it not he who wished to burn the works of Democritus of Abdera, most exact and reasonable of old sages?
They are all alike, these humanitarian lovers of first causes. Always ready to burn something, or somebody; always ready with their cheerful Hell-fire and gnashing of teeth.
_Know thyself:_ to what depths of vain, egocentric brooding has that dictum led! But we are discarding, now, such a mischievously narrow view of the Cosmos, though our upbringing is still too rhetorical and mediæval to appraise its authors at their true worth. Youth is prone to judge with the heart rather than the head; youth thrives on vaporous ideas, and there was a time when I would have yielded to none in my enthusiasm for these mellifluous babblers; one had a blind, sentimental regard for their great names. It seems to me, now, that we take them somewhat too seriously; that a healthy adult has nothing to learn from their teachings, save by way of warning example. Plato is food for adolescents. And a comfort, possibly, in old age, when the judicial faculties of the mind are breaking up and primitive man, the visionary, reasserts his ancient rights. For questioning moods grow burdensome with years; after a strain of virile doubt we are glad to acquiesce once more—to relapse into Platonic animism, the logic of valetudinarians. The dog to his vomit.
And after Plato—the deluge. Neo-platonism. . . .
Yet it was quite good sport, while it lasted. To “make men better” by choice dissertations about Utopias, to sit in marble halls and have a fair and fondly ardent _jeunesse dorée_ reclining about your knees while you discourse, in rounded periods, concerning the salvation of their souls by means of transcendental Love—it would suit me well enough, at this present moment; far better than croaking, forlorn as the night-raven, among the ruins of their radiant lives.
Meanwhile, and despite our Universities, new conceptions are prevailing, Aristotle is winning the day. A fresh kind of thinker has arisen, whose chief idea of “virtue” is to investigate patiently the facts of life; men of the type of Lister, any one of whom have done more to regenerate mankind, and to increase the sum of human happiness, than a wilderness of the amiably-hazy old doctrinaires who professed the same object. I call to mind those physicians engaged in their malaria-campaign, and wonder what Plato would have thought of them. Would he have recognized the significance of their researches which, while allaying pain and misery, are furthering the prosperity of the country, causing waters to flow in dry places and villages to spring up in deserts—strengthening its political resources, improving its very appearance? Not likely. Plato’s opinion of doctors was on a par with the rest of his mentality. Yet these are the men who are taking up the thread where it was dropped, perforce, by those veritable Greek sages, whelmed under turbid floods of Pythagorean irrationalism. And are such things purely utilitarian? Are they so grossly mundane? Is there really no “philosophy” in the choice of such a healing career, no romance in its studious self-denial, no beauty in its results? If so, we must revise that classic adage which connects vigour with beauty—not to speak of several others.
XXXIX MIDDAY AT PETELIA
Day after day, I look across the six miles of sea to the Lacinian promontory and its column. How reach it? The boatmen are eager for the voyage: it all depends, they say, upon the wind.
Day after day—a dead calm.
“Two hours—three hours—four hours—according!” And they point to the sky. A little breeze, they add, sometimes makes itself felt in the early mornings; one might fix up a sail.
“And for returning at midday?”
“Three hours—four hours—five hours—according!”
The prospect of rocking about for half a day in a small boat under a blazing sky is not my ideal of enjoyment, the novelty of such an experience having worn off a good many years ago. I decide to wait; to make an attack, meanwhile, upon old Petelia—the “Stromboli” of my lady-friend at the Catanzaro Museum....