Part 6

“We are going to have _maccheroni_ this evening,” said my hostess. “I rolled them out before I left home this morning. But we must cut them first,” she added, as she produced the long strips of home-made unbaked paste.

We accordingly cut them into pieces about an inch square, and then, taking a pile in our hands, threw them one by one into the boiling salt and water of the cauldron. While they were cooking we made the tomato sauce, and the farmer grated the cheese; and by the time these were ready, and the table laid, the _maccheroni_ could be taken off the fire.

It was now quite dark, the only light came from the dancing flames; and the whole family, including the broad-shouldered shepherdess, assembled in the kitchen to watch the progress of events. By the side of the fire sat the daughter-in-law, a beautiful, fair-haired, refined-looking woman, unswaddling her baby; in the middle of the floor, lighted from the right by the fire, my little grey-haired hostess was kneeling in front of the cauldron and fishing up the _maccheroni_, which she put in layers into a huge red earthern pipkin; and on the other side of the cauldron was the farmer with the tomato sauce, some of which he poured into the pipkin as each layer was completed, adding cheese, pepper and salt. Then there were the two sons, Beppe, low-built and square-cut, and Sandro, the baby’s father, more slender, more courteous in manner, but also more lazy; and lastly, two dogs and two cats who prowled on the outside of the group, in eager expectation of their supper.

The _maccheroni_ being now all transferred to the pipkin, the water was given to the dogs and cats, and we went into the parlour to eat. Needless to say there was no dressing for dinner. The men came in their hats and shirt-sleeves, the women in their bright kerchiefs. Yet certain rules of etiquette were strictly observed. The system of _complimenti_, for instance, was carried to an extent that seemed ridiculous to English eyes. The mother would fill the son’s plate, he would declare he could not eat so much, she would continue to press him, he to refuse, until the voices grew quite loud and excited. When it came to serving the shepherdess, things came almost to a good-natured quarrel. She was a low-built, broad-shouldered, broad-backed girl of about fifteen, of almost gigantic strength, who strode along in her hob-nailed shoes as though she had the seven-leagued boots on. I was evidently a great novelty to her, for she could scarcely eat for looking at me, and presently set the table in a roar of laughter by coming out with a:—“No, thank you,” instead of the usual blank “No.” Opposite to me sat Sandro with his wife and baby. Charming indeed was it to see the way in which the young fellow fondled and nursed the little one. When he came home from the fields, the first thing he did was to take it in his arms, and sit down on the doorstep in the sunlight; at supper-time he neglected himself to play with it and feed it. There is a great fund of kindness in the Italian character, crossed, however, by a vein of strange hard cruelty, arising perhaps from a remarkable want of dramatic imagination. Sandro and his wife sat side by side according to old-established custom. When a son marries, his housekeeping amounts to this: a double-bed and a large cupboard are put into the biggest bedroom, and husband and wife sit next each other at table. If there are several married sons, all the families live together until the quarrels are so intolerable as to drive them apart.

After supper, at about a quarter past eight, all the family went to bed. Three of the four bedrooms opened out of each other, and in the smallest of these three, the middle one, was a single bed in which the shepherdess usually slept. This was now reserved for me. The bed, the Madonna, and a rickety chest of drawers, were the only furniture considered necessary. In the room on the right slept Beppe and Sandro; in that on the left, which one entered through a doorway guiltless of a door, were the shepherdess and Sandro’s wife, Maria. Everyone was in bed in half a minute; for it was summer-time, and they “slept like beasts,” as my hostess put it, without even saying their rosary. “Good-night,” called out Beppe and Sandro. “Good-night,” answered everyone else, and then there was silence till between four and five next morning.

It was hardly dawn when Sandro’s voice was heard:—“Emilia, Emilia.” The shepherdess gave a grunt, tumbled on to the floor, and a moment later strode fully dressed across my room, clamped downstairs and went out. Maria slept longer, for the baby had kept her awake. As a matter of fact, the little thing could scarcely be expected to sleep, for it had been kept under the bedclothes all day. Italian peasant-babies have not a very pleasant life of it. In the morning they are tightly swaddled, put into bed under a wooden frame, and entirely covered with the clothes. There they lie in the dark, sleeping or screaming till about midday when they are taken up, reswaddled, fed, and put to bed again till the evening. Then the same process is repeated, and they are expected to sleep all night. This particular baby was washed about twice a week, if indeed the term “washing” can be applied to the operation. The mother sits down by the fire, and puts a glass of wine by her. She then fills her mouth with wine, puts it out into her hand, and rubs the baby, which screams violently.

At about eight o’clock the men came in from the fields, the cauldron was suspended from the chain, water was boiled, and my host set to work to make the _polenta_. The maize flour is added gradually to the boiling water until the mixture is so thick that none but a strong man can stir it. Then it is turned out on to a board kept for the purpose, cut into slices with a string, and eaten smoking hot with cheese. There are no plates, of course; all stand round and help themselves. Maize flour, chestnut flour, lentils, cheese, and beans, are the staple food of the peasants, with now and then a fowl to celebrate some specially great _festa_. Milk they never seem to drink, butter they rarely make; they use their dairy produce exclusively for cheese.

These Tuscan peasants may be called an industrious race; that is to say, they are never entirely idle. At the same time they do not work in such a way as to make it tiring to watch them; they take things very easily. A strong, well-built man, for instance, will be contentedly stripping chestnut-leaves off the branches for the cows, or leaning against a tree watching the animals feed. In another part of the field a woman will be taking advantage of the gusts of wind to _folare_ her grain, that is, to complete the winnowing of it. She spreads a sheet on the ground, empties a sack of corn on to one corner of it, fills a heavy wooden tray with the grain, puts it on her head, and turns to catch the wind. As soon as she feels a gust—_folata_—she lets the corn fall in a narrow trickling stream on to the sheet; the chaff is blown away in the descent, and the winnowing is completed. The very poor have a terribly hard time of it, however, for they do the work of mules and donkeys, carrying great loads of wood on their backs for many miles over the hills; and no one thinks of mending or making roads for them. An old woman I was once talking to told me of the huge burdens she used to carry in her youth.

“The roads were bad then,” she said, but added naïvely, “they are better now; they were mended for the horses.”

But to return to my hosts. On Sunday morning, the day being a _festa_, the house received its weekly apology for a sweep, the women put on dresses and kerchiefs, and went so far as to comb their hair, and we started for the village, to go to Mass. It was very picturesque to watch the parties of rosy, healthy peasant women as they came along the road, in their bright aprons and head-gear. In one party was Beppe’s intended bride.

“Come to Rivoreta, and see me married, Signorina,” said she. “Do come.”

And with many promises that I would do so if possible, I took leave of my kind friends.[9]

THE FLORENTINE CALCIO: GAME OF KICK

WE may not approve of the manner in which Italy is living in her Past, and celebrating centenaries when she ought to be setting her face strenuously towards the Future; nevertheless, we must confess that the Florentine fêtes a year or two back presented one historical spectacle that was distinctly worth the trouble of reviving. We refer to the mediæval game known as _Calcio_, or Kick, which is interesting to English and American youths as bearing at least a superficial likeness to Football. At the time of the fêtes it was indeed spoken of as the Football of Florence; but it differs from Football in two ways that are eminently characteristic of Italian character: it is more complicated and more spectacular.

To begin with, there were twenty-seven actual players needed on each side, besides trumpeters, drummers, standard-bearers, referees, and a ball-thrower. Of the twenty-seven players, fifteen, divided into three equal companies, were placed face to face with the enemy in the front of the battle, and bore the brunt of the strife. They were called Runners (_Corridori_) or Fronts (_Innanzi_).

Behind the three battalions of Runners were placed in loose order, extending across the whole breadth of the field, five Spoilers (_Sconciatori_), so called because their business was to spoil the game for the Runners of the opposite side.

The Spoilers were supported by four Front Hitters (_Datori innanzi_); and these again by three Back Hitters (_Datori indietro_). These Datori may be spoken of as Half-backs and Backs.

The favourite Calcio ground in Florence was the square before the church and convent of Santa Croce. Here the great costume matches (_Calcio a livrea_) were held, as well as the ordinary games (not in costume) which enlivened the cold afternoons during Carnival time. A description of one of the costume matches at once makes clear the fundamental difference between Calcio and Football.

The field was 100 metres long by 50 broad, enclosed top and bottom by a palisade, on the left by a ditch, on the right by a low wall. Along the wall were erected stands for the more honourable spectators and for the umpires. At each end of the field was a tent round which stood the referees, standard-bearers, etc., of their respective sides, together with showily dressed halberdiers, who were also stationed at intervals round the field.

The spectators being assembled, the umpires and, perhaps, some foreign potentate or his ambassador, seated in the stand above the wall, the grand march in of the players commenced. It was a procession of picked men from the noblest Florentine families. For the Calcio was an aristocratic game. It was not to be played “by any kind of scum: not by artisans nor servants nor ignoble nor infamous men; but by honoured soldier men of noble birth, gentlemen, and princes.” The ages of the players ranged from eighteen to forty-five, and they were all well-built, athletic men. They wore light shoes, long hose, doublet and cap, and their costumes were of the most splendid material—velvet, silk, cloth of gold or silver—for were not the brightest eyes of the city to watch the game? Not only did each side have its own colours, but the players had also to be dressed in the same material.

The march was opened by the trumpeters and drummers. Then came the Runners, going in couples, and chequer fashion: a red, say, behind a white, and _vice versâ_. The Runners were followed by nine more drummers preceding the standard-bearers, each dressed in the colours and bearing the flag of his side. Finally appeared the Spoilers, the Half-Backs bearing the ball, and the Backs.

After making the round of the field the procession, at the sound of a single trumpet-blast, split up into its component parts. Trumpeters, drummers, referees, standard-bearers, placed themselves at the tents of their respective sides; the Runners divided up into their companies of five and faced each other in the centre of the field; the Spoilers placed themselves at a distance of 13½ metres behind the Runners and 9 metres from each other; the Half-backs 10½ metres behind the Spoilers and 12 metres from each other; the Backs again 10½ metres in the rear of the Half-backs and 17½ metres from each other.

A second trumpet blast, and the serving-men retired from the field; a third, and the game began.

The Ball-bearer (_Pallaio_), in a parti-coloured dress formed of the colours of both sides, threw the ball with great force against a marble sign let into the middle of the wall on the right-hand side of the field. It rebounded between the two ranks of the Runners, who immediately rushed towards it, acting, however, not independently, but in their companies.

The company of Runners which had possessed itself of the ball began, of course, to work it with their feet towards the opposite goal. Now came the turn of the Spoilers, of whom the two nearest left their stations and ran obliquely at the advancing Runners, hustling them and endeavouring to get the ball from them and pass it to their own Runners, who were hovering near.

The Runners and the Spoilers worked the ball forward with their feet; the Hitters (Half-backs and Backs) were allowed, nay, as their name implies encouraged, to use their hands.

If the Runners succeeded in taking the ball past the Spoilers, they had to face the onset of two Half-backs, who, if they got the ball, would probably pitch it clear over the heads of the players to the Half-back on the opposite side. This was considered very diverting play, and was much appreciated by the onlookers.

Having pierced the lines of the Spoilers and Half-backs, the Runners found themselves opposed by one of the Backs. The Backs were the strongest men on the field, as, being placed so far apart, they were obliged to act separately.

The ball was generally knocked, not kicked, over the goal. When this happened the two sides changed places on the field; the winning side marching to its new position with flag unfurled and waving, the losers with furled flag and lowered staff.

Such is a diagram—a mere diagram, though a correct one—of the Florentine _Calcio_. Its connection with Football evidently lies, to adapt an expression from the vocabulary of folk-lore, in the fundamental formula: to send a ball through a goal without the aid of an instrument. But this formula developed differently in England and in Florence. The traditions of the Florentines were military. Their youths were trained to war from boyhood upward: they were accustomed to act in bands. Has anyone ever noticed the truly military spirit in which Dante continually combines the souls into bands, _schiere_, moving and acting in unison? The remembrance of the disposition of the Roman army, too, with its close and extended ranks, still lingered amongst them. Add to this that they were a thoroughly artistic people, devoted to spectacular effects and cunning in the planning of them, and we at once perceive the cause of the radical difference between this most interesting game of ancient Florence and the English Football.

Those were the times when Florentines penetrated either as merchants or exiles, and generally as both combined, into all parts of the Peninsula and of Europe; and they took their games with them. Matteo Strozzi’s sons, one of whom was Filippo, the famous founder of the great Strozzi Palace, more than once beg their mother to put balls in with linen, etc., which she constantly despatched from Florence to her exiled family, these balls being probably for the most energetic game of _Pallone_, still played throughout Tuscany.

They took the _Calcio_ with them too, just as the English take their football, cricket or tennis. Thus Tommaso Rinuccini, living at Lyons, writes in his memoirs that: “When Henry III., King of Poland, after the death of Charles IX. his brother, left Poland for France in 1575 to take possession of the kingdom, he passed through Lyons in France. And the Florentines living in that city played before him a _Calcio_, in which all the Florentine nobles took part, as it was their custom to do. And they sent Pierantonio Bandini and Pierfrancesco Rinuccini, two extremely handsome gentlemen and tall, both Florentines (who were the standard-bearers in the _Calcio_), to invite his Majesty, in the name of their native city, to be present at the celebration. King Henry accepted the invitation and was a spectator of the game. When he spoke to them before they left his presence he asked whether all Florentines were as tall and handsome as they.”

It would be, indeed, well for the physical development of modern Florentines should the _Calcio_ enter again into the ordinary life of the youth of the city.

ELBA

A MONTH IN ELBA

I.

AN atmosphere as invisible as that of Egypt, a sea of the clearest amethyst and emerald, merging into sapphire in the distance, and jealously guarded by a series of frowning headlands, now grey, now black, now red, with heart and veins of iron, that enclose miniature beaches and mysterious grottos where the water sleeps peacefully in the arms of its lord; and within, a sea of vines embracing the feet of mountains clothed with pines, with lentisks that have watched the passage of centuries, with bushes of white heather taller than a tall man, with glaucous agaves, rigid and puritanical, with prickly pears, fantastic and repellent; the very air of a voluptuous quality: soft, velvety even, with the mingled odours of an infinite number of aromatic plants and herbs, sweet with the white amaryllis that fringes the sea. Such, in broad outlines, is the island for which Etruscans, Romans, Genoese, Pisans, Saracens, Spanish, French and English have fought, in which Victor Hugo was nursed into life, in which Napoleon was caged; a land of wine and iron, glowing with strength and passion.

A land of perfect peace and infinite possibilities does this island seem as one drifts along the coast, watching the fish dart below the keel of the boat, rounding the islets that look as though they had skipped from the mainland in play and were intent on their own reflection in the water; as one swims into grottos purple-roofed, over water of the purest aquamarine, and looks through the narrow opening across the twinkling sea outside; or, as one walks through miles of vineyard in which grow the choicest grapes, or climbs up to the iron quarries, where the mountain is being simply dug away.

Yet, the deepest impression made on the mind of a visitor to Elba is not so much that of the future prosperity of the island, for all its resources, as of its past importance. Almost every peak bears its ruined castle; headland after headland was fortified in the Middle Ages by Powers jealously tenacious of their rights; the iron quarries, now comparatively little known, were worked unremittingly by the ancients, witness Virgil’s well-known line:

“Insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis;”

and witness the iron slag that proves the existence in Roman times of furnaces for refining the ore; the very wine, delicious as it is, is no longer the great source of wealth it was some years ago, partly on account of the phylloxera which has lessened the production, partly because the customs-war between Italy and France stopped its export to the country which afforded the most profitable market, partly for the reason that the peasants are primitive enough to insist on selling the unadulterated juice of the grape to a public that prefers manufactured wines.

All this adds to the sense of repose; the past is so long past, the future seems still so far off. And meanwhile the peasants and the small proprietors prune their vines and shell their almonds, and use their old-fashioned lamps, and dance barefoot on _festas_ to the music of a concertina, either at their own houses or at the _palazzo_ of a neighbouring large proprietor. They give each other nicknames, which gradually supplant the surnames, descending from father to son after the fashion of primitive times. Thus a man who thought a good deal of himself was called _il Papa_ (the Pope), whereupon his sons and sons’ sons are called _Papini_ (little Popes); a man noted for his patience was called _Giobbe_ (Job) and his children are known as _Giobbetti_; a man who once wore a coat that was too long for him has ever since been called the Doctor; another from a bad stroke at bowls rejoices in the name of Scatterer (_il Baracone_), and one who should now call him John would be scarcely understood. They intermarry largely. They troop from all parts of the island on donkeys and diminutive horses to the _festas_ of the various miraculous Madonnas, not omitting to go down to the nearest beach on the eve of a _festa_ and wash according to traditional custom. They preserve local differences and hostilities that tell of difficult intercommunication: thus a Lacona man will tell you that the men of Capoliveri,[10] whose township he can see perched on a hill to the east, are “_danniferi_; what they have with their eyes they must also have with their hands,” he adds, as he picks up a bunch of unripe grapes, wantonly broken off and thrown away. No one but a Capoliveri man would commit damage of that sort.

The earliest among the buildings that tell of the past importance of the island is the Castle of Volterraio. A ride along the hills overhanging the gulf of Portoferraio brings us to the foot of the precipice on which it stands, rising, with the sheer rocks that form part of the building, out of a tangled mass of low growth, from which, every now and again springs a graceful wild olive. By only one path is the place accessible. Path is a courtesy title. The way up is a scramble, often on hands and feet, up smooth, slippery, slanting masses of jasper rock in whose crevices flourish rounded, hedgehog-like cushions of the most cross-grained thorns. Ten minutes’ climb brings us to an ancient wall with a gap, where was once a gate, and a strongly built, vaulted guard-house. Up again, over short grass this time, and we come to the low, narrow doorway at the top of a steep flight of steps sheer down on one side, without any trace of railing. At the bottom of the steps a hole in the ground gives evidence that an upright there supported a further defence of some sort. Inside, where armed men fought, a couple of fig-trees flourish greatly, and the ground is a series of heaps of grass-covered _débris_ that sound strangely hollow as one stamps on them. The sentinel’s round within the castellation of the walls is still intact. At some little distance on each side of the tower, which forms the south-eastern corner, it stops short, and deep holes for uprights in the parapet show clearly that a drawbridge on each side enabled the defenders to isolate the tower and fight to the last gasp. At one place it widens out. A number of men could make a stand there; the inner wall is pierced with many loopholes, and these all converge on one place: the steps leading up to the wall, and the well at the bottom of them. One can creep too, into a number of dungeon-like recesses in the walls, or clamber through a hole down a steeply inclined ledge of rock to a little underground chamber having a recess like a rough bed on one side, lighted by a hole in the rock that forms the roof, and another in that which looks over the gulf. A small opening, defended by an outwork, puts this underground cell into communication with the outer world; but the outwork is evidently a comparatively late structure.