Leading the Blind

by Alan Sillitoe

  The drinking water at Venice was said to contain ‘a small quantity of iron and some vegetable matter, the latter derived from the peaty stratum through which it niters, and strangers should avoid drinking it without wine. Mosquito-curtains are usually provided to the beds; but if not, a request should be at once made for them.’

  Lampugnini’s guidebook Venice and the Lagoon, 1905, was presumably translated into English by someone whose native language was not English, since the quirkiness of style, especially in the placement of commas, is at times amusing.

  ‘Venice is situated at the end of the lagoons of the Adriatic Sea; the lagoons are kinds of lakes or better still of, gulfs deeply surrounded with banks of sand and the lagoon is called living or dead according to the tide which it feels more or less, from this it, becomes divided into two parts, little by little from the same extension.’

  The gondola, we are told, is one of the characteristic features of Venice, being ‘a light boat long and narrow, in the centre is a little cabin which raises or lowers as you desire, the seats of the best are upholstered in leather and have seats for four persons, all the gondolas are painted black in conformity to a law of the XV century and, it is not permitted to have any colour, so it is impossible to know the mystery of a closed gondola, the gondolier remains on foot at the poop with a heavy rowlock of iron if, there are two gondoliers one is at the prow and the other at the poop, the gondola glides smoothly and rapidly on the waves, if there is only one person you feel a slight rolling at every stroke of the oar; at the corner of a canal or when nearing a bridge the gondoliers have a particular cry to warn and avoid collision.’

  Murray says that all gondoliers must carry the police tariff, and show it if required. ‘Complaints for misbehaviour or overcharge may be made to the Guardie Municipale, or at the office of the Municipality.’

  Lampugnini’s prose has a breathlessness which paces the blood in his account of the artistic treasures of the city. The Campanile of San Marco, we are told, ‘existed until the 14th. of July 1902; the day of its fall, was situated at the point of entrance to the square and the Piazzetta; it was commenced in the X centy and finished in 1178, it was, in gothic style and had an height of 319 feet … From the top of this belfry, which gave a splendid view of Venice, the lagoons and the Alps; was, by its fall a real artistic disaster to the city; the construction has been decreed, and the work begun but, will certainly never be possible to say of this new monument that, it will have the merit of the first one.’

  Language verging on the operatic suggests an engraving by Piranesi, when he tells us that the prison by the Bridge of Sighs was built in the late sixteenth century so as to

  fill in the pond of the Ducal Palace; the front of this edifice towards the canal is severe and gloomy, but the entrance towards the bank of the Schiavoni is more elegant; this part of the Palace was destined to be the residence of the six magistrates called Gentlemen of the night criminals … The terrible Pond was the antique prison for political offences, it is still existing in the cellar, with the torture room and that of execution, here you go down by the corridor stated above; here are the dark cells on a level with the soil and the level of the water above, a low door is still shown to visitors; on the canal, by which the corpses were passed through and conveyed by gondola to the Orfano canal; one of these cells served for the prisoners of Carmagnola who were tortured and then afterwards decapitated, on the Piazzetta between two columns.

  Should the visitor feel the urge to swim, Lampugnini is reassuring: ‘An important thing to know about everything else, is that the Lido has not any Mosquitoes. The bathing establishment contains more than 600 rooms, placed on the sea in two long lines, from one part to the other is a very large hall, where select concerts are given every day. There is a first class Coffee Restaurant, with a ladies saloon on the terrace facing the sea which is the general rendezvous of the foreign elette society. Near the Grand Baths is erected the new Hydro-electric-Therapeutic Establishment; for massage cure, mud baths, vapour baths, light baths and the cures with the X Rays.’

  Murray, on the other hand, is not at all happy with the segregational arrangements at the beach, finding that ‘the line of demarcation between the baths of the two sexes is not sufficiently observed to make the bathing pleasant for English ladies, and the authorities ought to interfere’.

  On that note we will leave Venice for Verona, where we can let a tear or two fall on the tomb of Juliet, if we can find it. Murray says that ‘it certainly was shown in the last century, before Shakespeare was generally known to the Italians. That tomb, however, has long since been destroyed. The present one – on the garden of the Orfanotrofio, entered (small fee) from a little street running down to the Adige – is of red Verona marble, and before it was promoted to its present honour, was used as a washing-trough.’

  Augustus Hare says that the tomb may be visited out of sentiment, but the one ‘which was shown here in the last century was all chopped up long ago by relic hunters, and French and English ladies are wearing it in bracelets’.

  The next stop in Pisa, ‘that little nest of singing birds’ (when Shelley and Byron sojourned there in 1821), and where, says Hare, ‘The soft climate has a wonderfully soothing effect upon complaints of the chest, but it is horribly wet.’ During a conducted tour of the famous Leaning Tower he tells us: ‘The sensation of falling over is very curious and unpleasant. Those who ascend must be careful not really to fall over, as the railing at the top is not continuous, and very misguiding.’

  A day trip by train to Leghorn would, according to Hare, be a disappointment. Should the traveller land from a steamer, ‘the boatmen and porters are peculiarly fierce and extortionate … There is nothing whatever worth seeing, though … its shops are sometimes amusing. The place is full of galley-slaves who do all the dirty work of the town in red caps, brown vests, and yellow trousers. The Cathedral has a facade by Inigo Jones.’

  Murray finds the place more interesting, and remarks on the Protestant cemetery, which was ‘until the present century the only one in Italy, and contains the tomb of Smollett’. He also reminds us that in the sixteenth century Ferdinand I invited people of every nation and creed to Leghorn, ‘seeking to escape the tyranny of their respective governments; Roman Catholics who withdrew from persecution in England; and New Christians, – that is, forcibly converted Moors and Jews, – as well as Jews who adhered to their religion, then driven from Spain and Portugal by the cruelty of Phillip II, animated and assisted by the Inquisition.’

  Florence is an hour or so inland by rail from Pisa, and our traveller would find there many of his compatriots studiously referring to Baedeker or Murray on their walks around the town. Murray says that at least a week should be devoted to Florence, though, as elsewhere, mosquitoes were a problem. The large Hôtel de la Paix was well situated, with a lift, but ‘some persons find the noise produced by the weir, just opposite, very objectionable’. If a hotel was inconvenient, or too expensive, there were pensions kept by Mrs Jennings, Miss Hill ‘very comfortable’ and Miss Clark – ‘excellent food and very healthy situation’.

  For those who got into trouble there was an English consul; also an English club, ‘the Florence’, an English baker, three English bankers, five English doctors, three English dentists and an English nurse. One could attend the Church of England, or a Presbyterian church; or wander around the studio of the English painter, R. Spencer Stanhope, or join an Artistic Society where ‘classes are held for young ladies three or four times a week’.

  An English sculptor was in residence, and whoever bought a piece from him had a choice of not less than four English forwarding agents to get it back to England. The purchaser would have to be careful, in taking the works out himself, not to travel via Chiasso where, says Murray in 1892, the customs officials ‘will detain the goods, and refuse to answer any inquiries by letter as to the means by which they can be released, a course for which they are said to have the authority of their government’.

/>   There were two booksellers in Florence, three English chemists and two English grocers, not to mention a picture dealer and a tailor, so that one could feel quite at home there. Even the uncertain weather seemed imported from the Home Country, for the rainfall was considerable, ‘especially in the autumn and early winter. From the nature of the pavement and improved drainage it soon finds its way into the Arno; there is consequently no stagnant water in any part of the town.’ From a sanitary point of view Florence was much improved since the cholera epidemics of 1854 and 1855, ‘not only as regards drainage, but by the forbidding of intramural interments except in some very few cases’.

  Matters of health are gone into in some detail, the city being ‘exempt from specific diseases or epidemics. In October and the beginning of November, as in April and May, the climate of Florence is much less relaxing than that of Rome or Naples. Chronic dyspepsia generally diminishes in intensity after a residence in the Tuscan capital; in fact, all those diseases of a non-inflammatory character requiring a bracing atmosphere appear to be benefitted in Florence. Ague and fevers similar to those of Rome and Naples are unknown, save as the result of importation, the disease having been contracted elsewhere. Measles and scarlatina, like all other eruptive diseases occurring in Tuscany, as a general rule, run a remarkably mild course.’ What all travellers had to beware of was the change from bright sunshine on the banks of the Arno to the ‘dark sunless streets, which form so many funnels for cold air descending from the gorges of the Apennines. To this source may be traced most of the indisposition from which English and American visitors occasionally suffer.’

  In the early part of the nineteenth century, before railways had been laid down, one travelled from Florence to Rome by diligence, information about the route being supplied by such books as Rome in the Nineteenth Century by Charlotte A. Eaton (1788–1859), which was a sort of proto-guide in two volumes first published in 1820. The author was an erudite lady whose occasional attempts to be fair with regard to travelling conditions in Italy after the Napoleonic Wars only serve to highlight her frequent blasts of complaint. The work, one of the more popular, went into four editions.

  Her 150-mile journey to Rome by vetturino took six days, and at the start she compares Italian scenery favourably to that in the south of France, but the hard conditions of travel soon heighten the tone of her justifiable strictures: ‘Wretched, indeed, is the fate of those who, like us, travel Vetturino! In an evil hour were we persuaded to engage the trio of mules, and the man, or Vetturino, by whose united efforts we are to be dragged along, day by day, at a pace not at all exceeding in velocity that of an English waggon; stopping, for the convenience of these animals, two hours at noon, in some filthy hole, no better than an English pig-stye; getting up in the morning, or rather in the middle of the night, about four hours before day-break; and when, by our labours, we have achieved a distance, often of thirty miles, we are put up for the night in whatever wretched Osterìa our evil destiny may have conducted ourselves and our mules to.’

  Nevertheless, she could not deny that ‘the moon does look larger, and shines with far more warmth and brilliancy, in the sky of Italy, than amidst the fogs and vapours of England. The scenery through which we passed was singularly beautiful. Sometimes winding round the sides of the hills, we looked down into peaceful valleys among the mountains, in whose sheltered bosom lay scattered cottages, shaded with olive-trees, and surrounded with fields of the richest fertility.’

  They arrived late at the little inn of Poggibonzi, and found it by no means uncomfortable; as interesting, in fact, as many posadas in Spain still were in the 1950s, especially at remote places inland: ‘To be sure, it smokes so incessantly that we are compelled to sit with open windows, though the air is extremely cold; but this is no uncommon occurrence. The house is tolerably clean, and the room I am writing in is very tastefully ornamented with some elegant angels painted in fresco, the beauties of which must beguile the time while we are waiting for the repast …’

  Dinner finally comes, the waiter ‘placing on the table the minestra, or soup, in a huge tureen, containing plenty of hot water, with some half-boiled macaroni in it. If you don’t like this kind of soup, you may have bread boiled in water; it is all the same. There is always a plate of grated parmesan cheese, to mix with the minestra, of whatever sort it may be, without which even Italian palates could never tolerate such a potion. This is generally followed by a frittura, which consists of liver, brains, or something of that sort, fried in oil. Then comes the rosto, which to-day appears in the shape of half a starved turkey, attended by some other indescribable dish, smelling strong of garlic.’

  Our authoress-traveller and her companions found Siena to have a somewhat antiquated appearance, though later guidebooks were to see it in a better light. ‘Its streets, or rather lanes, are lined with high gloomy old-fashioned houses, looking like jails, and called, or rather miscalled, palaces, which have fallen into decay like their possessors, who are too proud to resign, and too poor to inhabit them.’

  She duly visits all the sites, including the library, ‘which contains a great quantity of books, though I would not answer for their value’, concluding that ‘Siena is a very dull place. Some English friends of ours who spent a winter there found a great want of cultivated society. There is no theatre, nor opera, nor public amusement of any kind. Life stagnates here; for its active pursuits, its interests, its honours, its pleasures, and its hopes, can have no place. No happy Briton can see and know what Siena is, without looking back with a swelling heart to his own country.’

  After leaving Siena, ‘night closed in upon us long before we reached our destined place of rest, the wretched Osterìa of the still more wretched village of Buon Convento. Thither, when a wearisome pilgrimage of four mortal hours had at last conducted us, its half-starved looking denizens would not admit us into the horrible pig-stye in which they wallowed themselves, but conducted us to a lone uninhabited house on the other side of the way, in which there was not a human being. We were ushered up an old ghastly staircase, along which the wind whistled mournfully, into an open hall, the raftered roof of which was overhung with cobwebs, and the stone floor was deep in filth. Four doors entered into this forlorn-looking place, two of which led to the chill, dirty, miserable holes which were our destined places of repose; and the other two, to rooms that the people said did not belong to them, one old woman assuring us they were inhabited by nobody, while the other maintained they were occupied by very honest people. In the meantime, it was certain that the frail doors of our dormitories would yield on the slightest push; that the door of the hall itself, leading upon the stairs, had no fastening at all; that the stairs were open to the road in front, and to the fields behind, the house itself having no door whatever; and thus, that whoever chose to pay us a nocturnal visit, might do so without the smallest inconvenience or difficulty to himself.’

  Worse than anything was that ‘the wind blew about us, and we could get no fire. But there was no remedy for these grievances, and we resigned ourselves to fate and to bed. The two hideous old beldames who had brought us our wretched supper, had left us for the night, and no human being was near us, when we heard the sound of a heavy foot on the creaking staircase, and a man wrapped in a cloak, and armed with a sword and musket, stalked into the hall.

  ‘If we had been heroines, what terrors might have agitated, and what adventures might not have befallen us! But as we were not heroical, we neither screamed nor fainted, we only looked at him; and notwithstanding his formidable appearance, and that he had long black moustachios and bushy eye-brows, he did us no mischief, though he might have cut our throats with all the ease in the world; indeed, he had still abundance of leisure for the exploit, for he informed us that he had the honour of lodging in the house, that he was the only person who had that honour, and that he should have the honour of sleeping in the room next to ours.’

  Whoever he was, Charlotte treated him like a gentleman and, after several formal go
od-nights, ‘our whiskered neighbour retreated into his apartment, the key of which he had in his pocket, and we contented ourselves with barricading our door with the only table and chair that our desolate chamber contained; then, in uncurtained and uncoverleted wretchedness, upon flock beds, the prey of innumerable fleas, and shaking with cold, if not with fear, we lay the live-long night; not even having wherewithall to cover us, for the potent smell of the filthy rug, which performed the double duties of blanket and quilt, obliged us to discard it, and our carriage cloaks were but an inadequate defence against the blasts that whistled through the manifold chinks of the room.’ They got up at four o’clock the next morning and ‘began in the dark to wend our weary way from this miserable Osterìa’.

  After several hours on the road they stopped at a solitary house called La Scala. ‘It was the filthiest place I ever beheld, and the smell was so intolerable, that nothing but the excessive cold out of doors could have induced us to have remained a single moment within it. Two hours, however, did we stay, cowering over the smoke of a wet wood fire, waiting till the mules were fed – for they could get something to eat, but for us there was nothing; neither bread, coffee, eggs, milk, meat, vegetables, nor even macaroni, were to be had; so that we might have starved, or breakfasted upon salt dried fish in oil, had not our Vetturino, more provident than ourselves, produced a store of stale loaves and hard boiled eggs, that he had laid in at Siena.’

  After La Scala they toiled up apparently interminable hills: ‘The countrymen were all clothed in shaggy sheep-skins, with the wool outside, rudely stitched together to serve as a covering to their bodies, and pieces of the same were tied about their thighs, partially concealing the ragged vestments they wore beneath. Their legs and feet were bare; and this savage attire gave a strange, wild effect to the dark eyes that glared at us from beneath their bushy and matted locks. Indeed their whole appearance reminded us literally of wolves in sheep’s clothing.’