Chapter 5

The story of San Remo begins with Saracenic inroads from Corsica and Sardinia in the ninth century, to which Nizza, Oneglia, and Genoa owed their walls. But before this time the wild Ligurian coast had afforded hermitages to the earlier bishops of Genoa; to Siro who became its apostle, to Romolo who was destined to give his name to the territory of the town. San Romolo is indeed its invariable designation till the fifteenth century, and it has been conjectured that its present name is owing to no fanciful punning on Romulus and Remus but to a popular contraction of its full ecclesiastical title, "Sancti Romuli in eremo." It was in this "waste," left without inhabitants by the Saracenic inroads, that Theodulf, bishop of Genoa, settled a little agricultural colony round the Carolingian fort and lands which, though within the feudal jurisdiction of the Counts of Ventimiglia, were the property of his see. Two centuries passed quietly over the little town ere the sudden rise of the Consulate here, as at Genoa and Milan, gave it municipal liberty. The civil authority of the bishops passed to the communal Parliament, the free assembly of the citizens in the church of San Stefano; all civil administration, even the right of peace and war, or of alliance, was exercised with perfect freedom from episcopal intervention. The rights of the bishop in fact were reduced to the nomination of the judicial magistrates of the town and the reception of certain fees; rights which were subsequently sold to the Dorias, and transferred by the Dorias to the Republic of Genoa.

This great communal revolution, itself a result of the wave of feeling produced by the Crusades, left its characteristic mark in the armorial bearings of the town, the Crusaders' Palm upon its shield. While its neighbours, Ventimiglia and Albenga, sank into haunts of a feudal noblesse, San Remo became a town of busy merchants, linked by treaties of commerce with the trading cities of the French and Italian coasts. The erection of San Siro marked the wealth and devotion of its citizens. Ruined as it is, like all the churches of the Riviera, by the ochre and stucco of a tasteless restoration, San Siro still retains much of the characteristic twelfth-century work of its first foundation. The alliance of the city with Genoa was that of a perfectly free State. The terms of the treaty which was concluded between the two Republics in 1361 in the Genoese basilica of San Lorenzo are curious as illustrating the federal relations of Italian States. It was in effect little more than a judicial and military convention. Internal legislation, taxation, rights of independent warfare, peace, and alliance were left wholly in the power of the free commune. San Remo was bound to contribute ships and men for service in Genoese warfare, but in return its citizens shared the valuable privileges of those of Genoa in all parts of the world. Genoa, as purchaser of the feudal rights of its lords, nominated the podesta and other judicial officers, but these officers were bound to administer the laws passed or adopted by the commune. The red cross of Genoa was placed above the palm tree of San Remo on the shield of the Republic; and on these terms the federal relations of the two States continued without quarrel or change for nearly four hundred years.

The town continued to prosper till the alliance of Francis I. with the Turks brought the scourge of the Moslem again on the Riviera. The "Saracen towers" with which the coast is studded tell to this day the tale of the raids of Barbarossa and Dragut. The blow fell heavily on San Remo. The ruined quarter beneath its wall still witnesses to the heathen fury. San Siro, which lay without the walls, was more than once desecrated and reduced to ruin. A special officer was appointed by the town to receive contributions for the ransom of citizens carried off by the corsairs of Algiers or Tunis. These terrible razzias, which went on to the very close of the last century, have left their mark on the popular traditions of the coast. But the ruin which they began was consummated by the purposeless bombardment of San Remo by an English fleet during the war of the Austrian Succession, and by the perfidy with which Genoa crushed at a single blow the freedom she had respected for so many centuries. The square Genoese fort near the harbour commemorates the extinction of the liberty of San Remo in 1729. The French revolution found the city ruined and enslaved, and the gratitude of the citizens for their deliverance by Buonaparte was shown by a sacrifice which it is hard to forgive them. A row of magnificent ilexes, which stretched along the ridge from the town to San Romolo, is said to have been felled for the construction of vessels for the French navy.

Some of the criticism which has been lavished on San Remo is fair and natural enough. To any one who has been accustomed to the exquisite scenery around Cannes its background of olives seems tame and monotonous. People who are fond of the bustle and gaiety of Nizza or Mentone in their better days can hardly find much to amuse them in San Remo. It is certainly quiet, and its quiet verges upon dulness. A more serious drawback lies in the scarcity of promenades or level walks for weaker invalids. For people with good legs, or who are at home on a donkey, there are plenty of charming walks and rides up into the hills. But it is not everybody who is strong enough to walk uphill or who cares to mount a donkey. Visitors with sensitive noses may perhaps find reason for growls at the mode of cultivation which is characteristic of the olive groves. The town itself and the country around is, like the bulk of the Riviera, entirely without architectural or archæological interest. There is a fine castle within a long drive at Dolceacqua, and a picturesque church still untouched within a short one at Ceriana, but this is all. Beneficial as the reforms of Carlo Borromeo may have been to the religious life of the Cornice, they have been fatal to its architecture. On the other hand, any one with an artistic eye and a sketch-book may pass his time pleasantly enough at San Remo. The botanist may revel day after day in new "finds" among its valleys and hill-sides. The rural quiet of the place delivers one from the fashionable bustle of livelier watering-places, from the throng of gorgeous equipages that pour along the streets of Nice, or from picnics with a host of flunkeys uncorking the champagne.

The sunshine, the colour, the beauty of the little town, secure its future. The time must soon come when the whole coast of the Riviera will be lined with winter resorts; but we can hardly hope that any will surpass the happy blending of warmth and interest and repose which makes the charm of San Remo.

THE POETRY OF WEALTH.

There is one marvellous tale which is hardly likely to be forgotten so long as men can look down from Notre Dame de la Garde on the sunny beauty of Marseilles. Even if the rest of Dumas' works sink into oblivion, the sight of Château d'If as it rises glowing from the blue waters of the Mediterranean will serve to recall the wonders of 'Monte Christo.' But the true claim of the book to remembrance lies not in its mere command over the wonderful but in the peculiar sense of wonder which it excites. It was the first literary attempt to raise the mere dead fact of money into the sphere of the imagination, and to reveal the dormant poetry of wealth. There has as yet been only a single age in the world's history when wealth has told with any force upon the imagination of men. Unpoetic as the Roman mind essentially was, the sudden burst upon it of the accumulated riches of the older world kindled in senators and proconsuls a sense of romance which, wild and extravagant as it seems, has in some of its qualities found no parallel since. The feast of Lucullus, the gluttony of Heliogabalus, the sudden upgrowth of vast amphitheatres, the waste of millions on the sport of a day, the encounters of navies in the mimic warfare of the Coliseum, are the freaks of gigantic children tossing about wildly the slowly-hoarded treasures of past generations; but they are freaks which for the first time revealed the strange possibilities which lay in the future of wealth.

It is hard to say whether such a time will ever return. No doubt the world is infinitely richer now than it was in the time of the Romans, and no doubt too there are at least a dozen people in London alone whose actual income far exceeds that of the wealthiest of proconsuls. But the wealth of the modern capitalist is a wealth which has grown by slow accumulations, a wealth which has risen almost insensibly into its enormous mass, and the vastness of which its owner has never had brought home to him with the same sort of shock as that which Lucullus must have felt when he fronted the treasures of Mithridates, or Clive when he threaded his way among the sacks of jewels in the royal vaults of Moorshedabad. So far indeed is wealth from stimulating the imagination nowadays that a banker is the very type of the unimaginative man, and the faintest suspicion of genius is enough to render a financier an object of suspicion to the money market. But it is conceivable in the odd freaks of things that we may yet see the advent of the Poet-Capitalist. It is almost impossible to say what new opportunities the possession of fabulous resources might not add to the fancy of a dreamer or to the speculations of a philanthropist. It is not till after a little thought that we realize how materially the course of human progress is obstructed by sheer want of money at critical moments, or how easily the sum of human happiness might be increased by the sudden descent of a golden shower on the right people at the right time.

There are dreams which men have been dreaming for generation after generation which require nothing for their realization but the appearance of such a capitalist as we have imagined. To take what may seem perhaps an odd instance, just because it is an odd instance, let us remember what a wonderful amount of hope and anticipation has been thrown by a great religious party into the restoration of the Jews. Rightly or wrongly, it is the one theme which sends a throb of excitement through the life of quiet parsonages and kindles a new fire even in the dreariest May meetings at Exeter Hall. But in point of actual fact there is not the slightest necessity to await any great spiritual revolution for the accomplishment of such a dream if its accomplishment were really desirable. A league of Evangelical bankers who fully believed in the prophecies they are so fond of quoting could turn the wildest fancies of Dr. Cumming into sober earnest with very little trouble indeed. Any emigration agent would undertake the transport of Houndsditch bodily to Joppa; the bare limestone uplands of Judæa could be covered again with terraces of olive and vine at precisely the same cost of money and industry as is still required to keep up the cultivation of the Riviera; and Mr. Fergusson would furnish for a due consideration plans and estimates for a restoration of the Temple on Zion. We are not suggesting such a scheme as an opportunity for investing money to any great profit, but it is odd to live in a world of wealthy people who believe firmly that its realization would make this world into a little heaven below and yet never seem to feel that they have the means of bringing it about in their cheque-books. Or to take a hardly less odd instance, but one which has actually been brought a little nearer to practical realization. Some time ago a body of Welsh patriots determined to save the tongue and literature of the Cymry from extinction by founding a new Welsh nation on the shores of Patagonia. Nothing but Welsh was to be spoken, none but Welsh books were to be read, and the laws of the colony were to be an amalgam of the codes of Moses and of Howel the Good. The plan failed simply because its originators were poor and unable to tide over the first difficulties of the project. But conceive an ardent capitalist with a passion for nationalities embracing such a cause, and at the cost of a few hundreds of thousands creating perhaps a type of national life which might directly or indirectly affect the future of the world. Such a man might secure himself a niche in history at less cost and with less trouble than he could obtain a large estate and a share in the commission of the peace for a midland county.

But there is no need to restrict ourselves simply to oddities, although oddities of this sort acquire a grandeur of their own at the touch of wealth. The whole field of social experiment lies open to a great capitalist. The one thing required, for instance, to render the squalor and misery of our larger towns practically impossible would be the actual sight of a large town without squalor or misery; and yet if Liverpool were simply handed over to a great philanthropist with the income of half-a-dozen Dukes of Westminster such a sight might easily be seen. Schemes of this sort require nothing but what we may term the poetic employment of capital for their realization. It is strange that no financial hero makes his appearance to use his great money-club to fell direr monsters than those which Hercules encountered, and by the creation of a city at once great, beautiful, and healthy to realize the conception of the Utopia and the dream of Sir Thomas More. Or take a parallel instance from the country. Those who have watched the issues of the co-operative system as applied to agriculture believe they see in it the future solution of two of our greatest social difficulties--those, we mean, which spring from the increasing hardships of the farmer's position, and those which arise from the terrible serfage of the rural labourer. But the experiments which have been as yet carried on are on too small a scale either to produce any influence on the labour market as a whole, or to make that impression on the public imagination which could alone raise the matter into a "question of the day." What is wanted is simply that two or three dukes should try the experiment of peasant co-operation on a whole county, and try it with a command of capital which would give the experiment fair play. Whether it succeeded or not, such an attempt would have a poetic and heroic aspect of a different order from the usual expenditure of a British peer.

Or we may turn to a wholly different field, the field of art. We are always ready to cry out against "pot boilers" as we wander through the galleries of the Academy, and to grumble at the butchers' bills and bonnet bills which stand between great artists and the production of great works. But the butchers' bills and bonnet bills of all the forty Academicians might be paid by a great capitalist without any deep dip into his money bags, and a whole future opened to English art by the sheer poetry of wealth. There are hundreds of men with special faculties for scientific inquiry who are at the present moment pinned down to the daily drudgery of the lawyer's desk or the doctor's consulting-room by the necessities of daily bread. A Rothschild who would take a score of natural philosophers and enable them to apply their whole energies to investigation would help forward science as really as Newton himself, if less directly. But there are even direct ways in which wealth on a gigantic scale might put out a poetic force which would affect the very fortunes of the world. There are living people who are the masters of twenty millions; and twenty millions would drive a tunnel under the Straits of Dover. If increased intercourse means, as is constantly contended, an increase of friendship and of mutual understanding among nations, the man who devoted a vast wealth to linking two peoples together would rise at once to the level of the great benefactors of mankind. An opportunity for a yet more direct employment of the influence of wealth will some day or other be found in the field of international politics. Already those who come in contact with the big-wigs of the financial world hear whispers of a future when the destinies of peoples are to be decided in bank parlours, and questions of peace and war settled, not by the diplomatist and statesman, but by the capitalist. But as yet these are mere whispers, and no European Gould has risen up to "finance" Downing Street into submission, or to meet the boldest move of Prince Bismarck by a fall of the Stock Exchange. Of all the schemes however which we have suggested, this is probably the nearest to practical realization. If not we ourselves, our children at any rate may see International Congresses made possible by a few people quietly buttoning their breeches-pockets, and the march of "armed nations" arrested by "a run for gold."

Taking however men as they are, it is far more wonderful that no one has hit on the enormous field which wealth opens for the developement of sheer downright mischief. The sense of mischief is a sense which goes quietly to sleep as soon as childhood is over from mere want of opportunity. The boy who wants to trip up his tutor can easily find a string to tie across the garden walk; but when one has got beyond the simpler joys of childhood strings are not so easy to find. To carry out a practical joke of the Christopher Sly sort we require, as Shakespere saw, the resources of a prince. But once grant possession of unlimited wealth, and the possibilities of mischief rise to a grandeur such as the world has never realized. The Erie Ring taught us a little of what capital might do in this way, but in the Erie Ring capital was fettered by considerations of profit and loss. Throw these considerations overboard and treat a great question in the spirit of sheer mischief, and the results may be simply amazing. Conceive, for instance, a capitalist getting the railways round London into his power, and then in sheer freak stopping the traffic for a single day. No doubt the day would be a short one, but even twelve hours of such a practical joke would bring about a "Black Monday" such as England has never seen. But there would be no need of such an enormous operation to enable us to realize the power of latent mischief which the owner of great wealth really possesses. An adroit operator might secure every omnibus and every cab in the metropolis and compel us to paddle about for a week in the mud of November before the loss was replaced.

It is quite possible indeed that gigantic mischief of this sort may find its sphere in practical politics. Already Continental Governments watch with anxiety the power which employers possess of bringing about a revolution by simply closing their doors and throwing thousands of unemployed labourers on the street; but it is a power which in some degree or other capital will always possess, and any one who remembers the assistance which Reform derived from the Hyde Park rows will see at once that mischief on the large scale might be made in this way an important factor in political questions.

Ambition has yet a wider sphere of action than even mischief in this poetic use of wealth. A London preacher recently drew pointed attention to the merely selfish use of their riches by great English nobles, and contrasted it with the days when Elizabeth's Lords of the Council clubbed together to provide an English fleet against the Armada, or the nobles of Venice placed their wealth on every great emergency at the service of the State. But from any constitutional point of view there is perhaps nothing on which we may more heartily congratulate ourselves than on the blindness which hides from the great capitalists of England the political power which such a national employment of their wealth would give them--a blindness which is all the more wonderful in what is at once the wealthiest and the most political aristocracy which the world has ever seen. What fame the mere devotion of a quarter of a million to public uses may give to a quiet merchant the recent example of Mr. Peabody abundantly showed. But the case of the Baroness Burdett Coutts is yet more strictly to the point. The mere fact that she has been for years credited with a wide and unselfish benevolence has given her a power over the imagination of vast masses of the London poor which no one who is not really conversant with their daily life and modes of thinking could for an instant imagine. Her bounty is enlarged in the misty air of the slums of Wapping or Rotherhithe to colossal dimensions, and the very quietness and unobtrusiveness of her work gives it an air of mystery which tells like romance on the fancy of the poor.

It was characteristic of the power which such a use of wealth may give that the mobs who smashed the Hyde Park railings stopped to cheer before the house of Lady Burdett Coutts. Luckily none of our political nobles has ever bethought himself of the means by which the great Roman leaders rose habitually to influence or won over the labouring masses by "panem et Circenses." But a nobler ambition might find its field in a large employment of wealth for public ends of a higher sort. Something of the old patrician pride might have spurred the five or six great Houses who own half London to construct the Thames Embankment at their own cost, and to hand it over free from the higglings of Mr. Gore to the people at large. Even now we may hear of some earl whose rent-roll is growing with fabulous rapidity as coming forward to relieve the Treasury by the offer of a National Gallery of Art, or checkmating the jobbers of South Kensington by the erection of a National Museum. It seems to be easy enough for peer after peer to fling away a hundred thousand at Newmarket or Tattersall's, and yet a hundred thousand would establish in the crowded haunts of working London great "Conservatoires" where the finest music might be brought to bear without cost on the coarseness and vulgarity of the life of the poor. The higher drama may be perishing in default of a State subvention, but it never seems to enter any one's head that there are dozens of people among those who grumbled at the artistic taste of Mr. Ayrton who could furnish such a subvention at the present cost of their stable. As yet however we must be content, we suppose, with such a use of wealth as 'Lothair' brings to the front--the purely selfish use of it carried to the highest pitch which selfishness has ever reached. Great parks and great houses, costly studs and costly conservatories, existence relieved of every hitch and discomfort--these are the outlets which wealth has as yet succeeded in finding. For nobler outlets we must wait for the advent of the Poet-Capitalist.

LAMBETH AND THE ARCHBISHOPS.

A little higher up the river, but almost opposite to the huge mass of the Houses of Parliament, lies a broken, irregular pile of buildings, at whose angle, looking out over the Thames, is one grey weatherbeaten tower. The broken pile is the archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth; the grey weatherbeaten building is its Lollards' Tower. From this tower the mansion itself stretches in a varied line, chapel and guard-room and gallery and the stately buildings of the new house looking out on the terrace and garden; while the Great Hall, in which the library has now found a home, is the low picturesque building which reaches southward along the river to the gate.