CHAPTER XVII

THE WRITING OF MY BOOKS: PART II

IN 1906 I was busy writing two books into which a good deal of history came, _Carthage and Tunis, the Old and New Gates of the Orient_, and _The Secrets of the Vatican_, the former of which I published at the end of that year, and the latter at the beginning of the following year.

We were hovering between Italy in the winter, and Tenby in the summer, and taking uncommonly little out of our rent at 32 Addison Mansions.

I had always been mightily interested in Carthage. I hated Carthage being beaten by Rome, partly, perhaps, because history has invested the career of Hannibal and the fall of Carthage with such undying romance. When we were in Sicily in 1906 we suddenly made up our minds to go to Tunis, of which Carthage is practically a suburb, just as when we were at Vancouver we suddenly made up our minds to take a trip to Japan.

Carthage is disappointing to those who wish to see Punic remains. Of the mighty walls described by Polybius, there remains hardly one stone upon another. Its impregnable naval harbour and arsenal have dried up into mere ponds—in fact, there is nothing Punic about it, except subterranean tombs, which you can only reach by being lowered in a basket, and the gorgeous coffins and ornaments which came out of them, and are preserved in the museum of the White Fathers.

But of Roman Carthage there are plenty of remains—an amphitheatre, and a theatre, and mighty underground cisterns, and the foundations of immense churches. In that amphitheatre a most interesting lot of saints were martyred, St. Perpetua herself among them.

No ruins have been discovered connected with the career of St. Augustine, the Carthaginian to whom the White Fathers attach so much more importance than to Hannibal or Hamilcar; and all memories of Dido have hopelessly disappeared. Any remains that there might have been of the citadel so desperately defended against Scipio, have been obliterated by the erection of a cathedral on the site, the consummation of the life-work of Cardinal Lavigerie. That there is not one human being for a congregation, except the White Fathers in the monastery, does not appear to signify at all. The cathedral is there, just on the spot where you want to forget it most, and think of the tremendous human tragedy to which that hill is sacred.

I loved wandering about the site of Carthage, ruminating upon history; I found the study of the saints of Carthage fascinating, and gave a good deal of my book to them when I came to write about Carthage, in which I also gave translations of the very extensive passages which Virgil devotes to it, without apparently having possessed any antiquarian knowledge at all upon the subject.

History is very ironical here. You sometimes meet wandering, or encamped about the site of Carthage, Berbers, lineal descendants of the aborigines dispossessed by Dido and her Phœnicians when they founded Carthage, who lasted as a race to see Phœnician Carthage perish, and the Christian and Roman Carthage, which rose upon its ashes, perish likewise before the invading Arabs, and the Arabs, after temporary subjugation by this or the other invader, finally conquered by the French. Their language, too, has survived, though it was in danger of extinction till French scholars made its preservation and study a hobby.

It must not be forgotten that when Carthage came to life again she had her revenge on Rome, for the Vandal King of Carthage captured Rome, and carries its empress in chains to Carthage, with the Table of the Shewbread, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Seven-branched Candlestick captured by Titus—trophies to which the Romans had ever since attached superstitious importance.

In the last half of 1906 and the spring of 1907 I was unusually busy. We spent the summer for the fourth year in succession at Tenby. Eustache de Lorey was there with me collaborating in _Queer Things about Persia_. I planned the outline of the book; I suggested subjects for the chapters; I extracted some of them by cross-examination; I wrote down others when he was in an anecdotal vein. And some he wrote in French, and we translated them together. Had he been able to accumulate a book in English unaided, there was no reason why he should not have written it all himself. His careful, slightly foreign English was very effective. But I may take this credit to myself, that the book would never have been conceived without me, and even had it been conceived, it would neither have been begun, nor, having been begun, would it have been finished, without my professional industry. I enjoyed writing it very much indeed. De Lorey was such a delightful companion, and I learnt so much about Persia by writing a book on it. This sounds like a paradox, but it is a universal truth.

Simultaneously I was engaged on finishing my own book on Carthage and Tunis. In this book I had to rely almost entirely on French materials, because the two main sources of information are the official publications of the French authorities, and commercial firms interested in the exploitation of Tunis, and the publications of the White Fathers out at Carthage, about its site and its remains.

I was also finishing a book upon which I had been at work for some years—_The Secrets of the Vatican_, in which I enjoyed the assistance of his Eminence the Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster, in the chapter which dealt with the Church crisis in France.

When I went to ask him to help me, he asked me what I was going to call my book. I replied, _The Secrets of the Vatican_. He said, “Doesn’t it sound rather——”—instead of giving me the word, he gave a sniff. I shall never forget that sniff—it expressed the whole situation. I hastened to explain that the Secrets were all archæological secrets, and he handed me the materials for my chapter.

Some time before this, he had asked our mutual friend, Cortesi, Reuter’s agent at Rome, to tell me a story of the Pope, in connection with my _Sicily, the New Winter Resort_. Cardinal Bourne had taken a tour in Sicily, using my _Sicily_ as his guide. When he got back to Rome, he showed an anecdote in the book to the Pope. The anecdote was about Cardinal Newman, who had told me an extraordinary experience he had had in Sicily. It was at Castrogiovanni, where he lay for some weeks between life and death, suffering from a fever, which was the result of his being totally robbed of sleep by fleas when he was making a tour round Etna. The greatest affliction with which he had to contend was the incessant ringing of church bells—Castrogiovanni, the Enna of Ceres and Proserpine, has more churches for its size than any city in Sicily. Poor Newman’s only chance of sleep, which meant life to him, was to keep his head under the bedclothes in that semi-tropical climate. The inhabitants went about aghast, saying that he had a devil. The Pope thought the idea of the future Prince of the Church (Protestant though he was then) having a devil, was ludicrously funny, and laughed till his sides ached, like an ordinary man. When Newman did recover from the fever, and was on his way from Sicily to Sardinia in a fruit boat, he wrote his famous hymn, “Lead, kindly light.”

_The Secrets of the Vatican_ formed one half of a book which I began as a commission from Eveleigh Nash some years before. The numerous changes in non-papal Rome, and the important excavations of its pagan monuments, which were announced, but postponed and postponed, made me despair of ever getting the book finished, and finally I decided to publish the part which related to the Vatican in a volume by itself. This, after going through three editions, has been, for further publication, divided into two parts. The personal matter about the present Pope, and the information about the ceremonies which relate to the election, coronation, death and burial of a Pope, and about the composition of his court, are still published by Hurst & Blackett, with certain additional information on the subject, under the title of _The Pope at Home_, while the part which relates to the history, architecture and collections of the Vatican, is now published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., under the title of _How to See the Vatican_.

_The Secrets of the Vatican_ was published in 1907, a few months before we began our memorable expedition to Egypt, which has played such an important part in my writings ever since.

Having to study economy in our travels, we determined to break the journey to Egypt in Italy, and with that idea went to Lake Como in the last days of July 1907.

Anything more beautiful than Lago di Como in August it is difficult to conceive. All the way up its west side the lake is fringed with crimson oleanders in full blossom. Though the days are cloudless, and the nights encrusted with stars, by perfect summer weather, there are no mosquitoes. It is a land of peaches, and of old villas with gardens, which look as if they had come down from the ancient Romans, with their vases and pavilions and terraces and broad flights of steps leading down into the clear water of the lake—this is the lake from Arconati to Cadenabbia.

Here we spent a month under the acacia and tulip trees, revelling in fruit and flowers, before we went south to Como City; and east to Sermione, in the reedy shallows of Lago di Garda, dominated by the castle of the Scaligers, which loses not one ray of sunshine from sunrise to sunset; to storied Mantua in its marches; to Verona, half ancient Roman, half Gothic, and wholly romantic, and to Venice the matchless.

Venice is a stone city conjured up from the sea. In the city proper there is no more earth than you might have in roof-gardens. There are no horses, no motors. You seem to be living on the roof of the sea. The palaces, which rise from the water in such unending succession, were mostly built in the Middle Ages, when Venice had the sea-trade of the world. The finest of them line the Grand Canal from side to side for a mile from its mouth, and at its mouth are the most beautiful buildings in Europe, which have been standing there three and four and five hundred years at the head of the stately flight of steps where the world once came to the feet of Venice—St. Mark’s, the Doge’s Palace, and the Library, surrounding that Piazetta of smooth white flagstones. You feel that they are too beautiful to be true, that they must be the airy fabric of a vision, which will presently pass away, and leave not a wrack behind.

I never go to Venice without wondering why I can live away from it. Yet I have never published my tribute to it, except in periodicals, and in the pages about it which come into my _How to See Italy_.

I have to say the same of Florence, to which we moved from Venice on our progress through Italy to Egypt. Like Venice, I have visited it many times, and I find Florence one of the most inspiring cities in the world. The Venetian, unless he be a guide or a gondolier, is silent to foreigners; he takes no account of them; there are few foreigners living in Venice. But in Florence there are five thousand foreigners, who talk about the glories of Florence every day, and all the inhabitants seem to be children of the Medici Florence, who think that every foreigner’s mind should be in the Florence of the Middle Ages. You talk pictures or history all day long.

From Florence we went on to Rome and Naples, where we were to take ship for Egypt. Of Rome I have written much in _How to See Italy_, as well as in _The Secrets of the Vatican_, which contained the fruit of years of study. I have also published in periodicals enough to fill another book about the parts which belong to the kingdom of Italy, as the Vatican belongs to the Papacy. To Rome I go back regularly. About Rome I intend to publish a book like _How to See Italy_, and _Sicily, the New Winter Resort_, combined, to make use of my street by street study of the Eternal City. I know Rome far better than London. Rome has always appealed to my historical enthusiasm, in the one point where Florence leaves me cold, for Florence was, as it were, at the back of the door while kingdoms were being carved out of the unformed mass of Europe during the Middle Ages, while Rome gave the world laws, language and civilisation, collated from the wisdom of the ancient world.

Naples itself is not an inviting town, but it slopes up from one of the most beautiful bays in the world, and it is rich in outstanding objects—Capri in front, Vesuvius on the left, the hill of Posilippo on the right, and the three great castles, St. Elmo, del Ovo and Nuovo, which make the points of a vast triangle from the sea to the mountain-top, while in the centre is the rock of Parthenope, now called the Falcon’s Peak, the site of Palæpolis, the old city, which came before Neapolis, the new city.

The outskirts of Naples are of the highest interest, for on the south side the disinterred ruins of Pompeii and Herculanæum lie under their destroyer, Vesuvius, the most interesting volcano in the world; and on the other are Cumæ, the first settlement of the Greeks in the virgin lands of Italy, which was their America; and all the volcanic phenomena, which furnished Roman mythology with the details of its Hades.

Pompeii is of undying interest to me, especially since the new custom has come in of leaving any fresh treasures which are discovered, _in situ_. There is no place where, if you study it in conjunction with the collections in the museum of Naples, you can so easily picture the life of the Greeks and Romans as at Pompeii. I have many times thought of writing upon Pompeii.