Italian Journeys

Dean Howells William

Description

Caught in bureaucratic limbo as he waited to hear whether his tenure as a consul in Venice was concluded, William Dean Howells decided to spend three months exploring some little-known regions of Italy. His journalistic eye for detail and keen insight come through in this engaging volume of travel essays based on the trip.

Sujets

• Travel writing

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776676095
• Langue: English

Extrait

ITALIAN JOURNEYS
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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
 
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Italian Journeys First published in 1895 Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-609-5 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-610-1 © 2015 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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The Road to Rome from Venice I - Leaving Venice II - From Padua to Ferrara III - The Picturesque, the Improbable, and the Pathetic in Ferrara IV - Through Bologna to Genoa V - Up and down Genoa VI - By Sea from Genoa to Naples VII - Certain Things in Naples VIII - A Day in Pompeii IX - A Half-Hour at Herculaneum X - Capri and Capriotes XI - The Protestant Ragged Schools at Naples XII - Between Rome and Naples XIII - Roman Pearls Forza Maggiore At Padua A Pilgrimage to Petrarch's House at Arquà A Visit to the Cimbri Minor Travels Stopping at Vicenza, Verona, and Parma Ducal Mantua Endnotes
The Road to Rome from Venice
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I - Leaving Venice
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We did not know, when we started from home in Venice, on the 8th ofNovember, 1864, that we had taken the longest road to Rome. We thoughtthat of all the proverbial paths to the Eternal City that leading toPadua, and thence through Ferrara and Bologna to Florence, and sodown the sea-shore from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia, was the best, thebriefest, and the cheapest. Who could have dreamed that this path,so wisely and carefully chosen, would lead us to Genoa, conduct us onshipboard, toss us four dizzy days and nights, and set us down, void,battered, and bewildered, in Naples? Luckily,
"The moving accident is not my trade,"
for there are events of this journey (now happily at an end) which,if I recounted them with unsparing sincerity, would forever deter thereader from taking any road to Rome.
Though, indeed, what is Rome, after all, when you come to it?
II - From Padua to Ferrara
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As far as to Ferrara there was no sign of deviation from the directline in our road, and the company was well enough. We had a Swissfamily in the car with us to Padua, and they told us how they weregoing home to their mountains from Russia, where they had spentnineteen years of their lives. They were mother and father and onlydaughter and the last, without ever having seen her ancestral country,was so Swiss in her yet childish beauty, that she filled the morningtwilight with vague images of glacial height, blue lake, snug chalet,and whatever else of picturesque there is in paint and print aboutSwitzerland. Of course, as the light grew brighter these images meltedaway, and left only a little frost upon the window-pane.
The mother was restively anxious at nearing her country, and told usevery thing of its loveliness and happiness. Nineteen years of absencehad not robbed it of the poorest charm, and I hope that seeing itagain took nothing from it. We said how glad we should be if we wereas near America as she was to Switzerland. "America!" she screamed;"you come from America! Dear God, the world is wide—the world iswide!" The thought was so paralyzing that it silenced the fat littlelady for a moment, and gave her husband time to express his sympathywith us in our war, which he understood perfectly well. He trustedthat the revolution to perpetuate slavery must fail, and he hoped thatthe war would soon end, for it made cotton very dear.
Europe is material: I doubt if, after Victor Hugo and Garibaldi, therewere many upon that continent whose enthusiasm for Americanunity (which is European freedom) was not somewhat chilled by theexpensiveness of cotton. The fabrics were all doubled in price, andevery man in Europe paid tribute in hard money to the devotion withwhich we prosecuted the war, and, incidentally, interrupted thecultivation of cotton.
We shook hands with our friends, and dismounted at Padua, where wewere to take the diligence for the Po. In the diligence their loss wasmore than made good by the company of the only honest man in Italy.Of course this honest man had been a great sufferer from his owncountrymen, and I wish that all English and American tourists, whothink themselves the sole victims of publican rapacity and deceit inItaly, could have heard our honest man's talk. The truth is, theseingenious people prey upon their own kind with an avidity quite askeen as that with which they devour strangers; and I am half-persuadedthat a ready-witted foreigner fares better among them than a travellerof their own nation. Italians will always pretend, on any occasion,that you have been plundered much worse than they but the reverseoften happens. They give little in fees; but their landlord, theirporter, their driver, and their boatman pillage them with the sameimpunity that they rob an Inglese. As for this honest man in thediligence, he had suffered such enormities at the hands of thePaduans, from which we had just escaped, and at the hands of theFerrarese, into which we were rushing (at the rate of five miles scantan hour), that I was almost minded to stop between the nests of thosebrigands and pass the rest of my days at Rovigo, where the honest manlived. His talk was amusingly instructive, and went to illustrate thestrong municipal spirit which still dominates all Italy, and which ismore inimical to an effectual unity among Italians than Pope or Kaiserhas ever been. Our honest man of Rovigo was a foreigner at Padua,twenty-five miles north, and a foreigner at Ferrara, twenty-five milessouth; and throughout Italy the native of one city is an alien inanother, and is as lawful prey as a Russian or an American with peoplewho consider every stranger as sent them by the bounty of Providenceto be eaten alive. Heaven knows what our honest man had paid at hishotel in Padua, but in Ferrara the other week he had been made to givefive francs apiece for two small roast chickens, besides a fee tothe waiter; and he pathetically warned us to beware how we dealt withItalians. Indeed, I never met a man so thoroughly persuaded of therascality of his nation and of his own exceptional virtue. He tooksnuff with his whole person; and he volunteered, at sight of aflock of geese, a recipe which I give the reader: Stuff a goose withsausage; let it hang in the weather during the winter; and in thespring cut it up and stew it, and you have an excellent and delicatesoup.
But after all our friend's talk, though constant, became dispiriting,and we were willing when he left us. His integrity had, indeed, beenso oppressive that I was glad to be swindled in the charge for ourdinner at the Iron Crown, in Rovigo, and rode more cheerfully on toFerrara.
III - The Picturesque, the Improbable, and the Pathetic in Ferrara
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I.
It was one of the fatalities of travel, rather than any real interestin the poet, which led me to visit the prison of Tasso on the night ofour arrival, which was mild and moonlit. The portier at theStella d'Oro suggested the sentimental homage to sorrows which it issometimes difficult to respect, and I went and paid this homage in thecoal-cellar in which was never imprisoned the poet whose works I hadnot read.
The famous hospital of St. Anna, where Tasso was confined for sevenyears, is still an asylum for the infirm and sick, but it is no longerused as a mad-house. It stands on one of the lone, silent Ferraresestreets, not far from the Ducal Castle, and it is said that from thewindow of his cell the unhappy poet could behold Leonora in her tower.It may be so; certainly those who can believe in the genuineness ofthe cell will have no trouble in believing that the vision of Tassocould pierce through several brick walls and a Doric portico, and atlast comprehend the lady at her casement in the castle. We entered amodern gateway, and passed into a hall of the elder edifice, where aslim young soldier sat reading a romance of Dumas. This was the keeperof Tasso's prison; and knowing me, by the instinct which teaches anItalian custodian to distinguish his prey, for a seeker after the Trueand Beautiful, he relinquished his romance, lighted a waxen taper,unbolted a heavy door with a dramatic clang, and preceded me to thecell of Tasso. We descended a little stairway, and found ourselves ina sufficiently spacious court, which was still ampler in the poet'stime, and was then a garden planted with trees and flowers. On a lowdoorway to the right was inscribed the legend "PRIGIONE DI TASSO," andpassing through this doorway into a kind of reception-cell, we enteredthe poet's dungeon. It is an oblong room, with a low wagon-roofceiling, under which it is barely possible to stand upright. A singlenarrow window admits the light, and the stone casing of this windowhas a hollow in a certain place, which might well have been worn thereby the friction of the hand that for seven years passed the prisonerhis food through the small opening. The young custodian pointed tothis memento of suffering, without effusion, and he drew my attentionto other remarkable things in the cell, without troubling himselfto palliate their improbability in the least. They were his stock intrade; you paid your money, and took your choice of believing inthem or not. On the other hand, my portier , an ex- valet de place ,pumped a softly murmuring stream of enthusiasm; and expressed thefreshest delight in the inspection of each object of interest.
One still faintly discerns among the vast number of names with whichthe walls of the ante-cell are bewritten, that of Lamartine. The nameof Byron, which was once deeply graven in the stucco, had been scoopedaway by the Grand Duke of Tuscany (so the