Chapter 4
Before going to the dressmaker’s yesterday, I spent five minutes learning the Italian for the expression “This blouse bags; it sits in wrinkles between the shoulders.” As this was the only criticism given in the little book, I imagined that Italian dressmakers erred in this special direction. What was my discomfiture to find that my blouse was much too small and refused to meet. I could only use gestures for the dressmaker’s enlightenment, but in order not to waste my recently gained knowledge, I tried to tell a melodramatic tale of a friend of mine whose blouse bagged and sat in wrinkles between the shoulders. It was not successful, because I was obliged to substitute the past for the present tense of the verb.
Somebody says that if we learn the irregular verbs of a language first, all will be well. I think by the use of considerable mental agility one can generally avoid them altogether, although it materially reduces one’s vocabulary; but at all events there is no way of learning them thoroughly save by marrying a native. A native, particularly after marriage, uses the irregular verbs with great freedom, and one acquires a familiarity with them never gained in the formal instruction of a teacher. This method of education may be considered radical, and in cases where one is already married, illegal and bigamous, but on the whole it is not attended with any more difficulty than the immersing of one’s self in a study day after day and month after month learning the irregular verbs from a grammar.
My rule in studying a language is to seize upon some salient point, or one generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery. A little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance elsewhere. In Italian, for example, the polite way of addressing one’s equal is to speak in the third person singular, using _Ella_ (she) as the pronoun. “_Come sta Ella_?” (How are you? but literally “How is she?”)
I pay great attention to this detail, and make opportunities to meet our _padrona_ on the staircase and say “How is she?” to her. I can never escape the feeling that I am inquiring for the health of an absent person; moreover, I could not understand her symptoms if she should recount them, and I have no language in which to describe my own symptoms, which, so far as I have observed, is the only reason we ever ask anybody else how he feels.
To remember on the instant whether one is addressing equals, superiors, or inferiors, and to marshal hastily the proper pronoun, adds a new terror to conversation, so that I find myself constantly searching my memory to decide whether it shall be:
_Scusate_ or _Scusi_, _Avanti_ or _Passi_, _A rivederci_ or _Addio_, _Che cosa dite_? or _Che coma dice_? _Quanto domandate_? or _Quanto domanda_? _Dove andate_? or _Dove va_? _Come vi chiamate_? or _Come si chiama_? and so forth and so forth until one’s mind seems to be arranged in tabulated columns, with special N.B.’s to use the infinitive in talking to the gondolier.
Finding the hours of time rather puzzling as recorded in the “Study of Italian Made Easy,” I devoted twenty-four hours to learning how to say the time from one o’clock at noon to midnight, or thirteen to twenty-three o’clock. My soul revolted at the task, for a foreign tongue abounds in these malicious little refinements of speech, invented, I suppose, to prevent strangers from making too free with it on short acquaintance. I found later on that my labour had been useless, and that evidently the Italians themselves have no longer the leisure for these little eccentricities of language and suffer them to pass from common use. If the Latin races would only meet in convention and agree to bestow the comfortable neuter gender on inanimate objects and commodities, how popular they might make themselves with the English-speaking nations; but having begun to “enrich” their language, and make it more “subtle” by these perplexities, centuries ago, they will no doubt continue them until the end of time.
If one has been a devoted patron of the opera or student of music, one has an Italian vocabulary to begin with. This, if accompanied by the proper gestures (for it is vain to speak without liberal movements, of the hands, shoulders, and eyebrows), this, I maintain, will deceive all the English-speaking persons who may be seated near your table in a foreign café.
The very first evening after our arrival, Jack Copley asked Salemina and me to dine with him at the best restaurant in Venice. Jack Copley is a well of nonsense undefiled, and he, like ourselves, had been in Italy only a few hours. He called for us in his gondola, and in the row across from the Giudecca we amused ourselves by calling to mind the various Italian words or phrases with which we were familiar. They were mostly titles of arias or songs, but Jack insisted, notwithstanding Salemina’s protestations, that, properly interlarded with names of famous Italians, he could maintain a brilliant conversation with me at table, to the envy and amazement of our neighbours. The following paragraph, then, was our stock in trade, and Jack’s volubility and ingenuity in its use kept Salemina quite helpless with laughter:—
_Guarda che bianca luna_—_Il tempo passato_—_Lascia ch’ io pianga_—_Dolce far niente_—_Batti batti nel Masetto_—_Da capo_—_Ritardando_—_Andante_—_Piano_—_Adagio_—_Spaghetti_—_Macaroni_— _Polenta_—_Non è ver_—_Ah, non giunge_—_Si la stanchezza_—_Bravo_—_Lento_—_Presto_—_Scherzo_—_Dormi pura_—_La ci darem la mano_—_Celeste Aïda_—_Spirito gentil_—_Voi che sapete_—_Crispino e la Comare_—_Pietà, Signore_—_Tintoretto_—_Boccaccio_—_Garibaldi_—_Mazzini_—_Beatrice Cenci_—_Gordigiani_—_Santa Lucia_—_Il mio tesoro_—_Margherita_—_Umberto_—_Vittoria Colonna_—_Tutti frutti_—_Botticelli_—_Una furtiva lagrima_.
No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley’s acquaintance could believe with what effect he used these unrelated words and sentences. I could only assist, and lead him to ever higher flights of fancy.
We perceive with pleasure that our mother tongue presents equal difficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of affairs. The so-called mineral water we use at table is specially still and dead, and we think it may have been compared to its disadvantage with other more sparkling beverages, since every bottle bears a printed label announcing, “To Distrust of the mineral waters too foaming, since that they do invariable spread the Stomach.”
We learn also by studying another bottle that “The Wermouth is a white wine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who leso me aromatic herbs.” _Who leso me_ we printed in italics in our own minds, giving the phrase a pure Italian accent until we discovered that it was the somewhat familiar adjective “wholesome.”
In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual pasteboard fans bearing explanations of the frescoes:—
ROOM I. _In the middle_. The sin of our fathers.
_On every side_. The ovens of Babylony. Möise saved from the water.
ROOM II. _In the middle_. Möise who sprung the water.
_On every side_. The luminous column in the dessert and the ardent wood.
ROOM III. _In the middle_. Elia transported in the heaven.
_On every side_. Eliseus dispansing brods.
ROOM IV. The wood carvings are by Anonymous. The tapestry shows the multiplications of brods and fishs.
VII
CASA ROSA, _May_ 30.
We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa—a battle over the breaking of a huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a pitcher belonging to the Little Genius.
The room that leads from the dining-room to the kitchen is reached by the descent of two or three stone steps. It is always full, and is like the orthodox hell in one respect, that though myriads of people are seen to go into it, none ever seem to come out. It is not more than twelve feet square, and the persons most continuously in it, not counting those who are in transit, are the Padrona Angela; the Padrona Angela’s daughter, Signorina Rita; the Signorina Rita’s temporary suitor; the suitor’s mother and cousin; the padrona’s great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two families, and somebody’s baby: not always the same baby; any baby answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter of tongues.
This morning, the door from the dining-room being ajar, I heard a subdued sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went nearer to the scene of action, finding the cause in a heap of broken china in the centre of the floor. I glanced at the excited company, but there was nothing to show me who was the criminal. There was a spry girl washing dishes; the fritter-woman (at least we call her so, because she brings certain goodies called, if I mistake not, _frittoli_); the gardener’s wife; Angelo, the gondolier; Peppina, the waiting-maid; and the men that had just brought the sausages and sweetmeats for the gondolier’s ball, which we were giving in the evening. There was also the contralto, with a large soup-ladle in her hand. (We now call Rosalia, the cook, “the contralto,” because she sings so much better than she cooks that it seems only proper to distinguish her in the line of her special talent.)
The assembled company were all talking and gesticulating at once. There was a most delicate point of justice involved, for, as far as I could gather, the sweetmeat-man had come in unexpectedly and collided with the sausage-man, thereby startling the fritter-woman, who turned suddenly and jostled the spry girl: hence the pile of broken china.
The spry girl was all for justice. If she had carelessly or wilfully dropped the pitcher, she would have been willing to suffer the extreme penalty,—the number of saints she called upon to witness this statement was sufficient to prove her honesty,—but under the circumstances she would be blessed if she suffered anything, even the abuse that filled the air. The fritter-woman upbraided the sweetmeat-man, who in return reviled the sausage-vender, who remarked that if Angelo or Peppina had received the sausages at the door, as they should, he would never have been in the house at all; adding a few picturesque generalizations concerning the moral turpitude of Angelo’s parents and the vicious nature of their offspring.
The contralto, who was divided in her soul, being betrothed to the sausage-vender, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the arena, armed with the soup-ladle, and dispensed injustice on all sides. The feud now reached its height. There is nothing that the chief participants did not call one another, and no intimation or aspersion concerning the reputation of ancestors to the remotest generation that was not cast in the others’ teeth. The spry girl referred to the sausage-vender as a _generalissimo_ of all the fiends, and the compliments concerning the gentle art of cookery which flew between the fritter-woman and the contralto will not bear repetition. I listened breathlessly, hoping to hear one of the party refer to somebody as the figure of a pig (strangely enough the most unforgettable of insults), for each of the combatants held, suspended in air, the weapon of his choice—broken crockery, soup-ladle, rolling-pin, or sausage. Each, I say, flourished the emblem of his craft wildly in the air—and then, with a change of front like that of the celebrated King of France in the Mother Goose rhyme, dropped it swiftly and silently; for at this juncture the Little Genius flew down the broad staircase from her eagle’s nest. Her sculptor’s smock surmounted her blue cotton gown, and her blond hair was flying in the breeze created by her rapid descent. I wish I could affirm that by her gentle dignity and serene self-control she awed the company into silence, or that there was a holy dignity about her that held them spellbound; but such, unhappily, is not the case. It was her pet blue pitcher that had been broken—the pitcher that was to serve as just the right bit of colour at the evening’s feast. She took command of the situation in a masterly manner—a manner that had American energy and decision as its foundation and Italian fluency as its superstructure. She questioned the virtue of no one’s ancestors, cast no shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of any one’s posterity, called no one by the name of any four-footed beast or crawling, venomous thing, yet she somehow brought order out of chaos. Her language (for which she would have been fined thirty days in her native land) charmed and enthralled the Venetians by its delicacy, reserve, and restraint, and they dispersed pleasantly. The sausage-vender wished good appetite to the cook,—she had need of it, Heaven knows, and we had more,—while the spry girl embraced the fritter-woman ardently, begging her to come in again soon and make a longer visit.
VIII
CASA ROSA, _June_ 10
I am saying all my good-byes—to Angelo and the gondola; to the greedy pigeons of San Marco, so heavy in the crop that they can scarcely waddle on their little red feet; to the bees and birds and flowers and trees of the beautiful garden behind the _casa_; to the Little Genius and her eagle’s nest on the house-top; to “the city that is always just putting out to sea.” It has been a month of enchantment, and although rather expensive, it is pleasant to think that the padrona’s mortgage is nearly paid.
It is a saint’s day, and to-night there will be a _fiesta_. Coming home to our island, we shall hear the laughter and the song floating out from the wine shops and the _caffès_; we shall see the lighted barges with their musicians; we shall thrill with the cries of “_Viva Italia_! _viva el Re_!” The moon will rise above the white palaces; their innumerable lights will be reflected in the glassy surface of the Grand Canal. We shall feel for the last time “the quick silent passing” of the only Venetian cab.
“How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola!”
To-morrow we shall be rowed against the current to Padua. We shall see Malcontenta and its ruined villa: Oriago and Mira and the campanile of Dolo. Venice will lie behind us, but she will never be forgotten. Many a time on such a night as this we shall say with other wandering Venetians:—
“O Venezia benedetta! Non ti voglio più lasciar!”
III PENELOPE’S PRINTS OF WALES
And at length it chanced that I came to the fairest Valley in the World, wherein were trees of equal growth; and a river ran through the Valley, and a path was by the side of the river. And I followed the path until midday, and I continued my journey along the remainder of the Valley until the evening: and at the extremity of a plain I came to a lone and lustrous Castle, at the foot of which was a torrent.
WE are coaching in Wales, having journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Llanberis, Penygwryd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert and Dolgelly on our way to Bristol, where we shall make up our minds as to the next step; deciding in solemn conclave, with floods of argument and temperamental differences of opinion, what is best worth seeing where all is beautiful and inspiring. If I had possessed a little foresight I should have avoided Wales, for, having proved apt at itinerary doggerel, I was solemnly created, immediately on arrival, Mistress of Rhymes and Travelling Laureate to the party—an office, however honourable, that is no sinecure since it obliges me to write rhymed eulogies or diatribes on Dolgelly, Tan-y-Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh hamlets whose names offer breakneck fences to the Muse.
I have not wanted for training in this direction, having made a journey (heavenly in reminiscence) along the Thames, stopping at all the villages along its green banks. It was Kitty Schuyler and Jack Copley who insisted that I should rhyme Henley and Streatley and Wargrave before I should be suffered to eat luncheon, and they who made me a crown of laurel and hung a pasteboard medal about my blushing neck when I succeeded better than usual with Datchett!—I well remember Datchett, where the water-rats crept out of the reeds in the shallows to watch our repast; and better still do I recall Medmenham Abbey, which defied all my efforts till I found that it was pronounced Meddenam with the accent on the first syllable. The results of my enforced tussles with the Muse stare at me now from my Commonplace Book.
“Said a rat to a hen once, at Datchett, ‘Throw an egg to me, dear, and I’ll catch it!’ ‘I thank you, good sir, But I greatly prefer To sit on mine _here_ till I hatch it.’”
“Few hairs had the Vicar of Medmenham, Few hairs, and he still was a-sheddin’ ’em, But had none remained, He would not have complained, Because there was _far_ too much red in ’em!”
It was Jack Copley, too, who incited me to play with rhymes for Venice until I produced the following _tour de force_:
“A giddy young hostess in Venice Gave her guests hard-boiled eggs to play tennis. She said ‘If they _should_ break, What odds would it make? You can’t _think_ how prolific my hen is.’”
Reminiscences of former difficulties bravely surmounted faded into insignificance before our first day in Wales was over.
Jack Copley is very autocratic, almost brutal in discipline. It is he who leads me up to the Visitors’ Books at the wayside inns, and putting the quill in my reluctant fingers bids me write in cheerful hexameters my impressions of the unpronounceable spot. My martyrdom began at Penygwryd (Penny-goo-rid’). We might have stopped at Conway or some other town of simple name, or we might have allowed the roof of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the Saracen’s Read to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a comparatively easy task; but no; Penygwryd it was, and the outskirts at that, because of two inns that bore on their swinging signs the names: _Ty Ucha_ and _Ty Isaf_, both of which would make any minor poet shudder. When I saw the sign over the door of our chosen hostelry I was moved to disappear and avert my fate. Hunger at length brought me out of my lair, and promising to do my duty, I was allowed to join the irresponsible ones at luncheon.
Such a toothsome feast it was! A delicious ham where roses and lilies melted sweetly into one another; some crisp lettuces, ale in pewter mugs, a good old cheese, and that stodgy cannon-ball the “household loaf,” dear for old association’s sake. We were served at table by the granddaughter of the house, a little damsel of fifteen summers with sleek brown hair and the eyes of a doe. The pretty creature was all blushes and dimples and pinafores and curtsies and eloquent goodwill. With what a sweet politeness do they invest their service, some of these soft-voiced British maids! Their kindness almost moves one to tears when one is fresh from the resentful civility fostered by Democracy.
As we strolled out on the greensward by the hawthorn hedge we were followed by the little waitress, whose name, however pronounced, was written Nelw Evans. She asked us if we would write in the “Locked Book,” whereupon she presented us with the key. It seems that there is an ordinary Visitors’ Book, where the common herd is invited to scrawl its unknown name; but when persons of evident distinction and genius patronize the inn, this “Locked Book” is put into their hands.
I found that many a lord and lady had written on its pages, and men mighty in Church and State had left their mark, with much bad poetry commendatory of the beds, the food, the scenery, and the fishing. Nobody, however, had given a line to pretty Nelw Evans; so I pencilled her a rhyme, for which I was well paid in dimples:—
“At the Inn called the Penygwryd A sweet little maiden is hid. She’s so rosy and pretty I write her this ditty And leave it at Penygwryd.”
Our next halt was at Bettws-y-Coed, where we passed the week-end. It was a memorable spot, as I failed at first to rhyme the name, and only succeeded under threats of a fate like unto that of the immortal babes in the wood. I left the verse to be carved on a bronze tablet in the village church, should any one be found fitted to bear the weight of its eulogy:—
“Here lies an old woman of Bettws-y-Co_ed_; Wherever she went, it was there that she go_ed_. She frequently said: ‘My own row have I ho_ed_, And likewise the church water-mark have I to_ed_. I’m therefore expecting to reap what I’ve sow_ed_, And go straight to heaven from Bettws-y-Co_ed_.’”
At another stage of our journey, when the coaching tour was nearly ended, we were stopping at the Royal Goat at Beddgelert. We were seated about the cheerful blaze (one and sixpence extra), portfolio in lap, making ready our letters for the post. I announced my intention of writing to Salemina, left behind in London with a sprained ankle, and determined that the missive should be saturated with local colour. None of us were able to spell the few Welsh words we had picked up in our journeyings, but I evaded the difficulties by writing an exciting little episode in which all the principal substantives were names of Welsh towns, dragged in bodily, and so used as to deceive the casual untravelled reader.
I read it aloud. Jack Copley declared that it made capital sense, and sounded as if it had happened exactly as stated. Perhaps you will agree with him:—
DDOLGHYHGGLLWN, WALES.
. . . We left Bettws-y-Coed yesterday morning, and coached thirty-three miles to this point. (How do you like this point when you see it spelled?) We lunched at a wayside inn, and as we journeyed on we began to see pposters on the ffences announcing the ffact that there was to be a Festiniog that day in the village of Portmadoc, through which we were to pass.
I always enoyw a Festiniog yn any country, and my hheart beat hhigh with anticipation. Yt was ffive o’clock yn the cool of the dday, and ppresently the roadw became ggay with the returning festinioggers. Here was a fine Llanberis, its neck encircled with shining meddals wonw in previous festiniogs; there, just behind, a wee shaggy Rhyl led along proudly by its owner. Evydently the gayety was over for the day, for the ppeople now came yn crowds, the women with gay plaid Rhuddlans over their shoulders and straw Beddgelerts on their hheads.
The guardd ttooted his hhorn continuously, for we now approached the principalw street of the village, where hhundreds of ppeople were conggreggated. Of course there were allw manner of Dolgelleys yn the crowd, and allw that had taken pprizes were gayly decked with ribbons. Just at this moment the hhorn of our gguard ffrightened a superb Llanrwst, a spirited black creature of enormous size. It made a ddash through the lines of tterrified mothers, who caught their innocent Pwllhelis closer to their bbosoms. In its madd course it bruised the side of a huge Llandudno hitched to a stout Tyn-y-Coed by the way-side. It bbroke its Bettws and leaped ynto the air. Ddeath stared us yn the face. David the whip grew ppale, and signalled to Absalom the gguard to save as many lives as he could and leave the rrest to Pprovidence. Absalom spprang from his seat, and taking a sharp Capel Curig from his ppocket (Hheaven knows how he chanced to have it about his pperson), he aimed straight between the Llangollens of the infuriated Llandudno. With a moan of baffled rrage, he sank to earth with a hheavy thuddw. Absalom withdrew the bbloody Capel Curig from the dying Llandudno, and wiping yt on his Penygwryd, replaced yt yn his pocket for future possible use.
The local Dolwyddelan approached, and ordered a detachment of Tan-y-Bulchs to remove the corpse of the Llandudno. With a shudder we saw him borne to his last rrest, for we realized that had yt not bbeen for Absalom’s Capel Curig we had bbeen bburied yn an unpronounceable Welsh ggrave.