Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860
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But to return to the kitchen-gardens. Pretty as they are to the eye,
they are not considered to be wholesome; and no Roman will live in a
house near one of them, especially if it lie on the southern and
western side, so that the Sirocco and the prevalent summer winds blow
over it. The daily irrigation, in itself, would be sufficient to
frighten all Italians away; for they have a deadly fear of all effluvia
arising from decomposing vegetable substances, and suppose, with a good
deal of truth, that, wherever there is water on the earth, there is
decomposition. But this is not the only reason; for the same prejudice
exists in regard to all kinds of gardens, whether irrigated or
not,--and even to groves of trees and clusters of bushes, or vegetation
of any kind, around a house. This is the real reason why, even in their
country villas, their trees are almost always planted at a distance
from the house, so as to expose it to the sun and to give it a free
ventilation; these they do not care for; damp is their determined foe,
and therefore they will not purchase the luxury of shade from trees at
the risk of the damp it is supposed to engender. On the north, however,
gardens are not thought to be so prejudicial as on the south and
west,--as the cold, dry winds come from the former direction. The
malaria, as we call it, though the term is unknown to Romans, is never
so dangerous as after a slight rain, just sufficient to wet the surface
of the earth without deeply penetrating it; for decomposition is then
stimulated, and the miasma arising from the Campagna is blown abroad.
So long as the earth is dry, there is no danger of fever, except at
morning and nightfall, and then simply because of the heavy dews which
the porous and baked earth then inhales and expires. After the autumn
has given a thorough, drenching rain, Rome is healthy and free from
fever.
Rome has with strangers the reputation of being unhealthy; but this
opinion I cannot think well founded,--to the extent, at least, of the
common belief. The diseases of children there are ordinarily very
light, while in America and England they are terrible. Scarlet and
typhus fevers, those fearful scourges in the North, are known at Rome
only under most mitigated forms. Cholera has shown no virulence there;
and for diseases of the throat and lungs the air alone is almost
curative. The great curse of the place is the intermittent fever, in
which any other illness is apt to end. But this, except in its peculiar
phase of _Perniciosa_, though a very annoying, is by no means a
dangerous disease, and has the additional advantage of a specific
remedy. The Romans themselves of the better class seldom suffer from
it, and I cannot but think that with a little prudence it may be easily
avoided. Those who are most attacked by it are the laborers and
_contadini_ on the Campagna; and how can it be otherwise with them?
They sleep often on the bare ground, or on a little straw under a
_capanna_ just large enough to admit them on all-fours. Their labor is
exhausting, and performed in the sun, and while in a violent
perspiration they are often exposed to sudden draughts and checks.
Their food is poor, their habits careless, and it would require an iron
constitution to resist what they endure. But, despite the life they
lead and their various exposures, they are for the most part a very
strong and sturdy class. This intermittent fever is undoubtedly a far
from pleasant thing; but Americans who are terrified at it in Rome give
it no thought in Philadelphia, where it is more prevalent,--and while
they call Rome unhealthy, live with undisturbed confidence in cities
where scarlet and typhus fevers annually rage.
It is a curious fact, that the French soldiers, who in 1848 made the
siege of Rome, suffered no inconvenience or injury to their health from
sleeping on the Campagna, and that, despite the prophecies to the
contrary, very few cases of fever appeared, though the siege lasted
during all the summer months. The reason of this is doubtless to be
found in the fact that they were better clothed, better fed, and in
every way more careful of themselves, than the _contadini_. Foreigners,
too, who visit Rome, are very seldom attacked by intermittent fever;
and it may truly be said, that, when they are, it is, for the most
part, their own fault. There is generally the grossest inconsistency
between their theories and their practice. Believing as they do that
the least exposure will induce fever, they expose themselves with
singular recklessness to the very causes of fever. After hurrying
through the streets and getting into a violent perspiration, they
plunge at once into some damp pit-like church or chill gallery, where
the temperature is at least ten degrees lower than the outer air. The
bald-headed, rosy John Bull, steaming with heat, doffs at once the hat
which he wore in the street, and, of course, is astounded, if the
result prove just what it would be anywhere else,--and if he take cold
and get a fever, charges it to the climate, and not to his own
stupidity and recklessness. Beside this, foreigners will always insist
on carrying their home-habits with them wherever they go, and it is
exceedingly difficult to persuade any one that he does not understand
the climate better than the Italians themselves, whom he puts down as a
poor set of timid ignoramuses. However, the longer one lives in Rome,
the more he learns to value the Italian rules of health. There is
probably no people so careful in these matters as the Italians, and
especially the Romans. They understand their own climate, and they have
a special dislike of death. In France and England suicides are very
common; in Italy they are almost unknown. The American recklessness of
life completely astounds the Italian. He enjoys life, studies every
method to preserve it, and considers any one who risks it unnecessarily
as simply a fool.
What, then, are their rules of life? In the first place, in all their
habits they are very regular. They eat at stated times, and cannot be
persuaded to partake of anything in the intervals. If it be not their
hour for eating, they will refuse the choicest viands, and will sit at
your table fasting, despite every temptation you can offer them. They
are also very abstemious in their diet, and gluttony is the very rarest
of vices. I do not believe there is another nation in Europe that eats
so sparingly. In the morning they take a cup of coffee, generally
without milk, sopping in it some light _brioche_. Later in the day they
take a slight lunch of soup and macaroni, with a glass of wine. This
lasts them until dinner, which begins with a watery soup; after which
the _lesso_ or boiled meat comes on and is eaten with one vegetable,
which is less a dish than a garnish to the meat; then comes a dish of
some vegetable eaten with bread; then, perhaps, a chop, or another dish
of meat, garnished with a vegetable; some light _dolce_ or fruit, and a
cup of black coffee,--the latter for digestion's sake,--finish the
repast. The quantity is very small, however, compared to what is eaten
in England, France, America, or, though last, not least, Germany. Late
in the evening they have a supper. When dinner is taken in the middle
of the day, lunch is omitted. This is the rule of the better classes.
The workmen and middle classes, after their cup of coffee and bit of
bread or _brioche_ in the morning, take nothing until night, except
another cup of coffee and bread,--and their dinner finishes their meals
after their work is done. From my own observation, I should say that an
Italian does not certainly eat more than half as much as a German, or
two-thirds as much as an American. The climate will not allow of
gormandizing, and much less food is required to sustain the vital
powers than in America, where the atmosphere is so stimulating to the
brain and the digestion, or in England, where the depressing effects of
the climate must be counteracted by stimulants. Go to any _table
d'hote_ in the season, and you will at once know all the English who
are new comers by their bottle of ale or claret or sherry or brandy;
for the Englishman assimilates with difficulty, and unwillingly puts
off his home-habits. The fresh American will always be recognized by
the morning-dinner, which he calls a breakfast.
If you wish to keep your health in Italy, follow the example of the
Italians. Eat a third less than you are accustomed to at home. Do not
drink habitually of brandy, porter, ale, or even Marsala, but confine
yourselves to the lighter wines of the country or of France. Do not
walk much in the sun; "only Englishmen and dogs" do that, as the
proverb goes; and especially take heed not to expose yourself, when
warm, to any sudden changes of temperature. If you have heated yourself
with walking in the sun, be careful not to go at once, and especially
towards nightfall, into the lower and shaded streets, which have begun
to gather the damps, and which are kept cool by the high, thick walls
of the houses. Remember that the difference of temperature is very
great between the narrow, shaded streets and the high, sunny Pincio. If
you have the misfortune to be of the male sex, and especially if you
suffer under the sorrow of the first great Caesar in being bald, buy
yourself a little skullcap, (it is as good as his laurels for the
purpose,) and put it on your head whenever you enter the churches and
cold galleries. Almost every fever here is the result of suddenly
checked transpiration of the skin; and if you will take the precaution
to cool yourself before entering churches and galleries, and not to
expose yourself while warm to sudden changes of temperature, you may
live twenty years in Rome without a fever. Do not stand in draughts of
cold air, and shut your windows when you go to bed. There is nothing an
Italian fears like a current of air, and with reason. He will never sit
between two doors or two windows. If he has walked to see you and is in
the least warm, pray him to keep his hat on until he is cool, if you
would be courteous to him. You will find that he will always use the
same _gentilezza_ to you. The reason why you should shut your windows
at night is very simple. The night-air is invariably damp and cold,
contrasting greatly with the warmth of the day, and it is then that the
miasma from the Campagna drifts into the city. And oh, my American
friends! repress your national love for hot rooms and great fires, and
do not make an oven of your _salon_. Bake yourselves, kiln-dry
yourselves, if you choose, in your furnaced houses at home, but, if you
value your health, "reform that altogether" in Italy. Increase your
clothing and suppress your fires, and you will find yourselves better
in head and in pocket. With your great fires you will always be cold
and always have colds; for the houses are not tight, and you only
create great draughts thereby. You will not persuade an Italian to sit
near them;--"_Scusa, Signore_" he will say, "_mi fa male; se non gli
dispiace, mi metto in questo cantone_,"--and with your permission he
takes the farthest corner away from the fire. Seven winters in Rome
have convinced me of the correctness of their rule. Of course, you do
not believe me or them; but it would be better for you, if you
did,--and for me, too, when I come to visit you.
But I must beg pardon for all this advice; and as my business is not to
write a medical thesis here, let me return to pleasanter things.
Scarcely does the sun drop behind St. Peter's on the first day of May,
before bonfires begin to blaze from all the country towns on the
mountain-sides, showing like great beacons. This is a custom founded in
great antiquity, and common to the North and South. The first of May is
the Festival of the Holy Apostles in Italy; but in Germany, and still
farther north, in Sweden and Norway, it is _Walpurgisnacht_,--when
goblins, witches, hags, and devils hold high holiday, mounting on their
brooms for the Brocken. And it was on this night that Mephistopheles
carried Faust on his wondrous ride, and showed him the spectre of
Margaret with the red line round her throat. Miss Bremer, in her "Life
in Dalecarlia," gives the following account of the origin of this
custom:--"It is so old," she says, "that there is no perfect certainty
either of its origin or signification. It is, however, believed that it
derives its origin from a heathen sacrificatory festival; and there is
ground for the acceptation that children were sacrificed alive at this
very feast,--and this, in fact, in order to expel or reconcile the evil
spirits, of whom the people believed, that, partly flying, partly
riding, they commenced their passages over fields and woods at the
beginning of spring, and which are to this day called enchanters,
witches, nymphs, and so forth. It is also believed that about this time
the spirits of the earth came forth from out of the bosom of the earth
and the heart of the mountains in order to seek intercourse with the
children of men. Fires were frequently kindled upon the sepulchral
hills, and at these, sacrifices were offered, chiefly to the good
powers, namely, to those who provide for a fruitful year. At present I
should scarcely think there is an individual who believes in such
superstitious stuff. But they still, as in days of yore, kindle fires
upon the mountains on this night, and still look upon it as a bad omen,
if any common or ugly-formed creature, whether beast or man, makes its
appearance at the fire."
In the Neapolitan towns great fires are built on this festival, around
which the people dance, jumping through the flames, and flinging
themselves about in every wild and fantastic attitude. It is probably a
relic of some old sacrificatory festival to Maia, who has given her
name to this month,--the custom still remaining after its significance
is gone.
The month of May is the culmination of the spring and the season of
seasons at Rome. No wonder that foreigners who have come when winter
sets in and take wing before April shows her sky sometimes growl at the
weather, and ask if this is the beautiful Italian clime. They have
simply selected the rainy season for their visit; and one cannot expect
to have sun the whole year through, without intermission. Where will
they find more sun in the same season? where will they find milder and
softer air? Days even in the middle of winter, and sometimes weeks,
descend as it were from heaven to fill the soul with delight; and a
lovely day in Rome is lovelier than under any other sky on earth. But
just when foreigners go away in crowds, the weather is settling into
the perfection of spring, and then it is that Rome is most charming.
The rains are over, the sun is a daily blessing, all Nature is bursting
into leaf and flower, and one may spend days on the Campagna without
fear of colds and fever. Stay in Rome during May, if you wish to feel
its beauty.
The best rule for a traveller who desires to enjoy the charms of every
clime would be to go to the North in the winter and to the South in the
spring and summer. Cold is the speciality of the North, and all its
sports and gayeties take thence their tone. The houses are built to
shut out the demon of Frost, and protect one from his assaults of ice
and snow. Let him howl about your windows and scrawl his wonderful
landscapes on your panes and pile his fantastic wreaths outside, while
you draw round the blazing hearth and enjoy the artificial heat and
warm in the social converse that he provokes. Your punch is all the
better for his threats; by contrast you enjoy the more. Or brave him
outside in a flying sledge, careering with jangling bells over white
wastes of snow, while the stars, as you go, fly through the naked trees
that are glittering with ice-jewels, and your blood tingles with
excitement, and your breath is blown like a white incense to the skies.
That is the real North. How tame he will look to you, when you go back
in August and find a few hard apples, a few tough plums, and some sour
little things which are apologies for grapes! He looks sneaky enough
then, with his make-believe summer, and all his furs off. No, then is
the time for the South. All is simmering outside, and the locust saws
and shrills till he seems to heat the air. You stay in the house at
noon, and know what a virtue there is in thick walls which keep out the
fierce heats, in gaping windows and doors that will not shut because
you need the ventilation. You will not now complain of the stone and
brick floors that you cursed all winter long, and on which you now
sprinkle water to keep the air cool in your rooms. The blunders and
stupidities of winter are all over. The breezy _loggia_ is no longer a
joke. You are glad enough to sit there and drink your wine and look
over the landscape. Manuccia brings in a great basket of grapes that
are grapes, which the wasp envies you as you eat, and comes to share.
And here are luscious figs bursting with seedy sweetness, and apricots
rusted in the sun, and velvety peaches that break into juice in your
mouth, and great black-seeded _cocomeri_. Nature empties her cornucopia
of fruits and flowers and vegetables all over your table. Luxuriously
you enjoy them and fan yourself and take your _siesta_, with full
appreciation of your _dolce far niente_. When the sun begins to slope
westward, if you are in the country, you wander through the green lanes
festooned with vines and pluck the grapes as you go; or, if you are in
the city, you saunter the evening long through the streets, where all
the world are strolling, and take your _granito_ of ice or sherbet, and
talk over the things of the day and the time, and pass as you go home
groups of singers and serenaders with guitars, flutes, and
violins,--serenade, perhaps, sometimes, yourself; and all the time the
great planets and stars palpitate in the near heavens, and the soft air
full of fragrance blows against your cheek. And you can really say,
This is Italy! For it is not what you do, so much as what you feel,
that makes Italy.
But pray remember, when you go there, that in the South every
arrangement is made for the nine hot months, and not for the three cold
and rainy ones you choose to spend there, and perhaps your views may be
somewhat modified in respect of this "miserable people," who, you say,
"have no idea of comfort,"--meaning, of course, English comfort.
Perhaps, I say; for it is in the nature of travellers to come to sudden
conclusions upon slight premises, to maintain with obstinacy
preconceived notions, and to quarrel with all national traits except
their own. And being English, unless you have a friend in India who has
made you aware that cane-bottom chairs are India-English, you will be
pretty sure to believe that there is no comfort without carpets and
coal; or being an American, you will be apt to undervalue a gallery of
pictures with only a three-ply carpet on the floor, and to "calculate,"
that, if they could see your house in Washington Street, they would
feel rather ashamed. However, there is a great deal of human nature in
mankind, wherever you go,--except in Paris, perhaps, where Nature is
rather inhuman and artificial. And when I instance the Englishman and
American as making false judgments, let me not be misunderstood as
supposing them the only nations in that category. No, no! did not my
Parisian acquaintance the other day assure me very gravely, after
lamenting the absurdity of the Italians' not speaking French instead of
their own language,--"But, Sir, what is this Italian? nothing but bad
French!"--and did not another of that same polished nation, in
describing his travels to Naples, say, in answer to the question,
whether he had seen the grand old temples of Paestum,--"Ah, yes, I have
seen Paestum; 'tis a detestable country!--like the Campagna of Rome"? I
am perfectly aware that there are differences of opinion.
Let me, then, beg you to remain in Rome during the mouth of May, if
you can possibly make your arrangements to do so.
May is the month of the Madonna, and on every _festa_-day you will see
at the corners of the streets a little improvised shrine, or it may be
only a festooned print of the Madonna hung against the walls of some
house or against the back of a chair, and tended by two or three
children, who hold out to you a plate, as you pass, and beg for
charity, sometimes, I confess, in the most pertinacious way,--the money
thus raised to be expended in oil for the lamps before the Madonna
shrines in the streets. The monasteries of nuns are also busy with
processions and celebrations in honor of "the Mother of God," which are
carried on pleasantly within their precincts and seen only of female
friends. Sometimes you will meet a procession of ladies outside the
gates following a cross on foot, while their carriages come after in a
long file. These are societies which are making the pilgrimage of the
Seven Basilicas outside the Walls. They set out early in the morning,
stopping in each basilica for a half-hour to say their prayers, and
return to Rome at Ave Maria.
Life, too, is altogether changed now. All the windows are wide open,
and there is at least one head and shoulders leaning out at every
house. And the poorer families are all out on their door-steps, working
and chatting together, while their children run about them in the
streets, sprawling, playing, and fighting. Many a beautiful theme for
the artist is now to be found in these careless and characteristic
groups; and curly-headed Saint Johns may be seen in every street, half
naked, with great black eyes and rounded arms and legs. It is this
which makes Rome so admirable a residence for an artist. All things are
easy and careless in the out-of-doors life of the common people,--all
poses unsought, all groupings accidental, all action unaffected and
unconscious. One meets Nature at every turn,--not braced up in prim
forms, not conscious in manners, not made up into the fashionable or
the proper, but impulsive, free, and simple. With the whole street
looking on, they are as unconscious and natural as if they were where
no eye could see them,--ay, and more natural, too, than it is possible
for some people to be, even in the privacy of their solitary rooms.
They sing at the top of their lungs as they sit on their door-steps at
their work, and often shout from house to house across the street a
long conversation, and sometimes even read letters from upper windows
to their friends below in the street. The men and women who cry their
fruits, vegetables, and wares up and down the city, laden with baskets
or panniers, and often accompanied by a donkey, stop to chat with group
after group, or get into animated debates about prices, or exercise
their wits and lungs at once in repartee in a very amusing way.
Everybody is in dishabille in the morning, but towards twilight the
girls put on their better dresses, and comb their glossy raven hair,
heaping it up in great solid braids, and, hanging two long golden
ear-rings in their ears and _collane_ round their full necks, come
forth conquering and to conquer, and saunter bare-headed up and down
the streets, or lounge about the doorways or piazzas in groups, ready
to give back to any jeerer as good as he sends. You see them marching
along sometimes in a broad platoon of five or six, all their brows as
straight as if they had been ruled, and their great dark eyes flashing
out under them, ready in a moment for a laugh or a frown. What stalwart
creatures they are! What shoulders, bosoms, and backs they have! what a
chance for the lungs under those stout _busti_! and what finished and
elegant heads! They are certainly cast in a large mould, with nothing
belittled or meagre about them, either in feature or figure.
Early in the morning you will see streaming through the streets or
gathered together in picturesque groups, some standing, some couching
on the pavement, herds of long-haired goats, brown and white and black,
which have been driven, or rather which have followed their shepherd,
into the city to be milked. The majestical, long-bearded, patriarchal
rams shake their bells and parade solemnly round,--while the silken
females clatter their little hoofs as they run from the hand of the
milker when he has filled his can. The shepherd is kept pretty busy,
too, milking at everybody's door; and before the fashionable world is
up at nine, the milk is gone and the goats are off.
You may know that it is May by the orange and lemon stands, which are
erected in almost every piazza. These are little booths covered with
canvas, and fantastically adorned with lemons and oranges intermixed,
which, piled into pyramids and disposed about everywhere, have a very
gay effect. They are generally placed near a fountain, the water of
which is conducted through a _canna_ into the centre of the booth, and
there, finding its own level again, makes a little spilling fountain
from which the _bibite_ are diluted. Here for a _baiocco_ one buys
lemonade or orangeade and all sorts of curious little drinks or
_bibite_, with a feeble taste of anisette or some other herb to take
off the mawkishness of the water,--or for a half-_baiocco_ one may have
the lemonade without sugar, and in this way it is usually drunk. On all
_festa_-days, little portable tables are carried round the streets,
hung to the neck of the _limonaro_, and set down at convenient spots,
or whenever a customer presents himself, and the cries of "_Acqua
fresca,--limonaro, limonaro,--chi vuol bere?_" are heard on all sides;
and I can assure you, that, after standing on tiptoe for an hour in the
heat and straining your neck and head to get sight of some Church
procession, you are glad enough to go to the extravagance of even a
lemonade with sugar; and smacking your lips, you bless the institution
of the _limonaro_ as one which must have been early instituted by the
Good Samaritan. Listen to his own description of himself in one of the
popular _canzonetti_ sung about the streets by wandering musicians to
the accompaniment of a violin and guitar:--
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