Penelope's Postscripts
Page 10
VI
CASA ROSA, _May_ 28.
Oh, this misery of being dumb, incoherent, unintelligible, foolish,inarticulate in a foreign land, for lack of words! It is unwise, I fear,to have at the outset too high an ideal either in grammar or accent. Asour gondola passed one of the hotels this afternoon, we paused longenough to hear an intrepid lady converse with an Italian who carried amandolin and had apparently come to give a music lesson to her husband.She seemed to be from the Middle West of America, but I am not disposedto insist upon this point, nor to make any particular State in the Unionblush for her crudities of speech. She translated immediately everythingthat she said into her own tongue, as if the hearer might, between Frenchand English, possibly understand something.
“_Elle nay pars easy_—he ain’t here,” she remarked, oblivious of gender.“_Elle retoorneray ah seas oors et dammi_—he’ll be back sure by half-pastsix. _Bone swar_, I should say _Bony naughty_—Good-night to you, and Iwon’t let him forget to show up to-morrer.”
This was neither so ingenious nor so felicitous as the language-expedientof the man who wished to leave some luggage at a railway station in Rome,and knowing nothing of any foreign tongue but a few Latin phrases, mostlyof an obituary character, pointed several times to his effects, saying,“_Requiescat in pace_,” and then, pointing again to himself, uttered theone pregnant word “_Resurgam_.” This at any rate had the merit oftickling his own sense of humour, if it availed nothing with the railwayporters, and if any one remarks that he has read the tale in some ancient“Farmers’ Almanack,” I shall only retort that it is still worthrepeating.
My little red book on the “Study of Italian Made Easy for the Traveller”is always in my pocket, but it is extraordinary how little use it is tome. The critics need not assert that individuality is dying out in thehuman race and that we are all more or less alike. If we were, we shouldfind our daily practical wants met by such little books. Mine gives me asentence requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence,at midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere canthe new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day afterto-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of starch,but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the frills dipped.
Before going to the dressmaker’s yesterday, I spent five minutes learningthe Italian for the expression “This blouse bags; it sits in wrinklesbetween the shoulders.” As this was the only criticism given in thelittle book, I imagined that Italian dressmakers erred in this specialdirection. What was my discomfiture to find that my blouse was much toosmall and refused to meet. I could only use gestures for thedressmaker’s enlightenment, but in order not to waste my recently gainedknowledge, I tried to tell a melodramatic tale of a friend of mine whoseblouse bagged and sat in wrinkles between the shoulders. It was notsuccessful, because I was obliged to substitute the past for the presenttense of the verb.
Somebody says that if we learn the irregular verbs of a language first,all will be well. I think by the use of considerable mental agility onecan generally avoid them altogether, although it materially reduces one’svocabulary; but at all events there is no way of learning them thoroughlysave by marrying a native. A native, particularly after marriage, usesthe irregular verbs with great freedom, and one acquires a familiaritywith them never gained in the formal instruction of a teacher. Thismethod of education may be considered radical, and in cases where one isalready married, illegal and bigamous, but on the whole it is notattended with any more difficulty than the immersing of one’s self in astudy day after day and month after month learning the irregular verbsfrom a grammar.
My rule in studying a language is to seize upon some salient point, orone generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one knownonly to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery. A littleknowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance elsewhere. InItalian, for example, the polite way of addressing one’s equal is tospeak in the third person singular, using _Ella_ (she) as the pronoun.“_Come sta Ella_?” (How are you? but literally “How is she?”)
I pay great attention to this detail, and make opportunities to meet our_padrona_ on the staircase and say “How is she?” to her. I can neverescape the feeling that I am inquiring for the health of an absentperson; moreover, I could not understand her symptoms if she shouldrecount them, and I have no language in which to describe my ownsymptoms, which, so far as I have observed, is the only reason we everask anybody else how he feels.
To remember on the instant whether one is addressing equals, superiors,or inferiors, and to marshal hastily the proper pronoun, adds a newterror to conversation, so that I find myself constantly searching mymemory to decide whether it shall be:
_Scusate_ or _Scusi_, _Avanti_ or _Passi_, _A rivederci_ or _Addio_, _Checosa dite_? or _Che coma dice_? _Quanto domandate_? or _Quanto domanda_?_Dove andate_? or _Dove va_? _Come vi chiamate_? or _Come si chiama_?and so forth and so forth until one’s mind seems to be arranged intabulated columns, with special N.B.’s to use the infinitive in talkingto the gondolier.
Finding the hours of time rather puzzling as recorded in the “Study ofItalian Made Easy,” I devoted twenty-four hours to learning how to saythe time from one o’clock at noon to midnight, or thirteen totwenty-three o’clock. My soul revolted at the task, for a foreign tongueabounds in these malicious little refinements of speech, invented, Isuppose, to prevent strangers from making too free with it on shortacquaintance. I found later on that my labour had been useless, and thatevidently the Italians themselves have no longer the leisure for theselittle eccentricities of language and suffer them to pass from commonuse. If the Latin races would only meet in convention and agree tobestow the comfortable neuter gender on inanimate objects andcommodities, how popular they might make themselves with theEnglish-speaking nations; but having begun to “enrich” their language,and make it more “subtle” by these perplexities, centuries ago, they willno doubt continue them until the end of time.
If one has been a devoted patron of the opera or student of music, onehas an Italian vocabulary to begin with. This, if accompanied by theproper gestures (for it is vain to speak without liberal movements, ofthe hands, shoulders, and eyebrows), this, I maintain, will deceive allthe English-speaking persons who may be seated near your table in aforeign café.
The very first evening after our arrival, Jack Copley asked Salemina andme to dine with him at the best restaurant in Venice. Jack Copley is awell of nonsense undefiled, and he, like ourselves, had been in Italyonly a few hours. He called for us in his gondola, and in the row acrossfrom the Giudecca we amused ourselves by calling to mind the variousItalian words or phrases with which we were familiar. They were mostlytitles of arias or songs, but Jack insisted, notwithstanding Salemina’sprotestations, that, properly interlarded with names of famous Italians,he could maintain a brilliant conversation with me at table, to the envyand amazement of our neighbours. The following paragraph, then, was ourstock in trade, and Jack’s volubility and ingenuity in its use keptSalemina quite helpless with laughter:—
_Guarda che bianca luna_—_Il tempo passato_—_Lascia ch’ io pianga_—_Dolcefar niente_—_Batti batti nel Masetto_—_Dacapo_—_Ritardando_—_Andante_—_Piano_—_Adagio_—_Spaghetti_—_Macaroni_—_Polenta_—_Non è ver_—_Ah, non giunge_—_Si lastanchezza_—_Bravo_—_Lento_—_Presto_—_Scherzo_—_Dormi pura_—_La ci daremla mano_—_Celeste Aïda_—_Spirito gentil_—_Voi che sapete_—_Crispino e laComare_—_Pietà,Signore_—_Tintoretto_—_Boccaccio_—_Garibaldi_—_Mazzini_—_BeatriceCenci_—_Gordigiani_—_Santa Lucia_—_Il miotesoro_—_Margherita_—_Umberto_—_Vittoria Colonna_—_Tuttifrutti_—_Botticelli_—_Una furtiva lagrima_.
No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley’s acquaintance couldbelieve with what effect he used these unrelated words and sentences. Icould only assist, and lead him to ever higher flights of fancy.
We perceive with pleasure
that our mother tongue presents equaldifficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of affairs. The so-calledmineral water we use at table is specially still and dead, and we thinkit may have been compared to its disadvantage with other more sparklingbeverages, since every bottle bears a printed label announcing, “ToDistrust of the mineral waters too foaming, since that they do invariablespread the Stomach.”
We learn also by studying another bottle that “The Wermouth is a whitewine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who leso me aromatic herbs.”_Who leso me_ we printed in italics in our own minds, giving the phrase apure Italian accent until we discovered that it was the somewhat familiaradjective “wholesome.”
In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual pasteboard fansbearing explanations of the frescoes:—
ROOM I. _In the middle_. The sin of our fathers.
_On every side_. The ovens of Babylony. Möise saved from the water.
ROOM II. _In the middle_. Möise who sprung the water.
_On every side_. The luminous column in the dessert and the ardent wood.
ROOM III. _In the middle_. Elia transported in the heaven.
_On every side_. Eliseus dispansing brods.
ROOM IV. The wood carvings are by Anonymous. The tapestry shows themultiplications of brods and fishs.