CHAPTER XII
PERUGIA IS THE STOCK HILL TOWN. It is not as picturesque as most and has manufacturing suburbs, which produce chocolate and pencils. But in the middle of the last century there arrived upon the scene the celebrated M. Brufani, who proceeded to plant on top of the cliffs an English family hotel. This he adorned with portraits of Queen Victoria, Edward, Prince of Wales, and Mr Gladstone, and thus made famous and popular the least interesting of Tuscan and Umbrian cities. The earliest known painting of Raphael, the largest stained-glass window in the world, and a series of moon-faced and boneless frescoes in the Sala del Cambio by Perugino, whose figures always have an air of being ‘stuffed and done to a turn’, are the chief objects of interest.
The electric light of the city is of a dubious quality. In my experience it has gone out twice and left my whole hotel to the mercy of a box of nightlights. While only a year previously the grandmother of a friend of ours had been carried fainting to the roof of a building by an uncontrollable lift, where she remained for an hour and a half, having only a few months before been precipitated from the top to the bottom of one of London’s largest stores in another. Finally, even during the short eighteen hours of this present visit, our evening café was plunged into darkness for twenty minutes; and by the time that the lights had gone on again, the band had retired in despair.
As a tourist centre, this town seems to exercise an irresistible attraction for Americans. The visitors at Brufani’s, under the influence of a ‘family hotel’, were disarmingly chatty. I was writing some letters one morning before breakfast, when a voice from out of an elaborately coiffured head, surmounted by a toque of pheasants’ breasts, broke on my peace with the words: ‘Say, young man, you look about the right age to inform me whether it was right here in Perugia that Shakespeare staged “The Taming of the Shrew”.’
And again, just as we were hurrying out one evening to an appointment for which we were already late, we were buttonholed in a swing-door by an animated professor, who was anxious to inform us that he had been given a year’s holiday, with travelling expenses paid, to go wherever he liked, and that though only four months of it were over, he wished he was nowhere so much as ‘back over in Chicago, setting down to a good meal of buckwheat fritters and clams’. We seconded his desire.
Fifteen miles away, clinging scab-like to the mountainside, is Assisi, also monopolized by the English-speaking peoples. There are at least to be seen here, however, the finest of Giotto’s frescoes, especially that of St Francis calling water from the rock, the companion to the famous picture of his preaching to the birds. For the rest, there is something disillusioning in struggling round a grated cloister in the company of a battalion of well-meaning but loud-voiced matrons and their daughters, to view the plantation of those emasculated bushes into which St Francis is supposed to have fallen, and eventually carrying away a little sprig of thornless rose-leaves encased in an illuminated sachet, for which five lire have been paid. One cannot help feeling that the money taken would be better devoted to the provision of soap for the monks, rather than the relief of a fictitious poor.
We did nothing in Perugia. David, to annoy, pretended that he liked the place and wished to see its sights. Simon and I, by subterfuges, prevented anything of the sort, and next morning insisted on starting at once. The drive was most confusing. We accidentally left the town on the Assisi road, and had to go right up the hill and into it again before finding our way out on the right side. Then, after about ten miles, we lost the main road in the mountains. Every turning that we took ended, after leading us five miles along it, in a village perched on some impregnable promontory of rock. Then down a street no wider than herself, Diana, amid a crowd of gesticulating men, women and children, bleating goats, braying asses, patient oxen and fluttered fowls, would back slowly out again, turn round, and after an operatic converse with the population, retrace her tracks and endeavour to take the second turning after the two pine trees by the white house, as instructed. At length, however, we found a continuous mountain path, which pursued its way up the steepest peaks and down the most bottomless valleys with irresistible pertinacity. For some twenty miles we crept along this ledge, corkscrewing up between woods of stunted oaks with fresh, light-green leaves, until on the top of the range, we finally rejoined the telegraph wires.
Round the next corner, Orvieto came in sight. In the foreground of an enormous landscape, dominated in one distant corner of the horizon by the dome of Monte Fiascone, there reared the rocky shape of some gigantic Stilton cheese, with Orvieto spread over the top and the white Gothic spikes of her cathedral peaking querulously above a sea of roofs. The sky was overcast with low black clouds and the city on her platform stood out a mysterious dark blue from a panorama outlined in the delicate tints of smoke arising from a bonfire of dead leaves. We descended by a series of twenty-five hairpin bends into this tremendous valley and then curveted our way up the road cut in the cliff beneath the town, in time for a late lunch at the hotel. A gramophone from behind two glass folding-doors was playing some dance tunes of three years ago.
From the hotel we walked to the cathedral, which is not unlike that of Siena, save that the black and white stripes are carried out in stone instead of marble, and thereby lose much of their effectiveness. The three main doorways alternate with four large panels of primitive bas-reliefs illustrating the Creation and other Bible incidents. The doors themselves are flanked by twisted columns of marvellous intricacy and elaboration, ornamented with Cosmati-work, a sort of gold and coloured inlay, that winds in and out of their circuitous flutings.
The interior is famous for the frescoes of Signorelli, which are said to have inspired those by Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. In revolt from Perugino and his school, which included Raphael, Signorelli was the first artist to study anatomy; and his pupil, Michael Angelo, profited by his example. It was he, Signorelli, who first made his figures stand upon the ground. They grip the earth with a kind of prehensile intensity that tautens the muscles of their calves like knotted rope and leaves those of the spectator aching in sheer sympathy.
From Orvieto we motored to Viterbo, and without entering the town went straight to the Villa Lante to see the gardens, designed in their entirety by Giovanni di Bologna. The Italian garden, if not one of the greatest contributions made by that country to civilization, is one of the most purely pleasurable. That of the Villa Lante is small and not so obviously magnificent or such a feat of engineering as the fountains and cascaded terraces of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli. The whole design is subordinated to the course of a single stream, which flows down from a wooded hill behind. Even the house is divided into two square blocks in order to preserve the effect of symmetry. Right at the back, where the woods begin, the stream falls wildly over a small declivity of fern-grown rock, to find itself confined in a dark, still pool, heavily shaded beneath the myriad leaves of ancient, twisted ilexes. On either side stand the cracked and pillared façades of two old moss-grown pavilions. The stream then descends from terrace to terrace in a series of sloping troughs about twenty feet long and eighteen inches wide. The first of these is square and massive like an elongated sarcophagus with a broad brim curving slightly downwards at the edges. The second is shallow, and shaped in a succession of formalized scallop shells, not only at the sides but on the bottom, so that the water itself is cast into a regular design as it ripples down the moulded surface to the next terrace.
The stream is then received in a semi-circular basin, ruled by two recumbent Tritons, barely distinguishable beneath their coating of ferns and moss. From the balustrading above them expectorating lions assist the downward course of the waters. Between the two blocks of the villa they flow and come to rest in a large open square, laid out like a Dutch garden: but in place of beds is water, and in place of box hedges, stone. The climax is reached in the bronze group of four male figures upholding the Lante crest, a pile of mountains surmounted by a star, from the innumerable points of which, at all angl
es and from all planes, long thin jets of water rise into the air like the tail of a spun-glass bird, and form a rainbow against the sun. This square, the only part of the garden that is not heavily shaded by ilexes, is separated from the attendant town by a high, grey stone wall. In the middle of this, in line with the course of the water and the troughs, is an archway, through which can be discerned the main street, sloping downhill to an indistinct vista of mountains on a distant horizon. Being the summer, the Duke of Lante was in residence, and we were not allowed, as formerly, to examine the lower part of the garden.
Driving back to the town, itself famous for its ancient fountains, we went to the papal palace, a ruin with a beautiful raised loggia, Gothic arcaded, supported on the side of a hill by one huge pillar. Through the tracery could be discerned a view of a domed church, standing out on the other side of a valley against a sky already pink with evening light. It was here that the two-year election of Martin V, who started the schism and went to Avignon, took place. Public opinion was so incensed at the delay that the building was de-roofed and the cardinals left to debate in the rain. Hence the ruin. Simon was full of historical theories about it. Viterbo is a curious decayed town, very old in appearance, with twelfth-century balconies and staircases still clinging to the outside of the houses. We left at about six o’clock on the last stage of our journey to the Eternal City.
Simon had expressed a desire to see the dome of St Peter’s from afar, rising as it does, like some huge mauve bulb out of the landscape. The road turns a corner and far below in the plain it suddenly appears. This is the view, this first glimpse of Rome amid her halo of the past, that has thrilled so many statesmen, writers, artists and pilgrims to ecstasy, the culminating moment in the ‘Grand Tour’ of other days. Late as it was, we still had hopes that despite the fifty miles, we should catch sight of the cupola before dark.
The absurd ups and downs of the northern Apennines were now finally behind us, and the country assumed a lonely and uninhabited aspect. The hills rose and fell in wild, sweeping curves; a vast plain appeared, edged with mountains in the very far distance; out of the foreground rose Soracte, like the shadowy crest of a wave arrested in mid-air; on the right, deep in the purple shadows of a great hollow, a lake glistened like a mirror of burnished silver, as the setting sun slanted its rays over the unrippled surface of the water. The road had been mended since David and I had traversed it in 1924 and 1923, and we looked eagerly for the corner round which St Peter’s should appear.
But it was not to be. At a small town named Roncigliano, climbing down the side of a steep cobbled street, a dense crowd barred our way: well-to-do shop-keepers; peasants come in from the country, the holsters of their arm-chair saddles bristling with bottles; and the inevitable brass bands in uniform. We waited half-an-hour expectantly, amused rather than annoyed at the delay. Suddenly, with no preliminary warning, there was a clatter, a roar from the crowd, and two men in faded jockey’s colours rode full gallop up the cobbles on two small, stockily-built chestnut horses. This, however, was only a preliminary heat. The winner was led to one side and covered by a horse-rug embroidered with a large coronet. We hurried on before it could happen again.
We had not gone ten miles further when Diana, emitting a series of agonised coughs, stopped dead in her tracks. With sickening apprehension for the magneto, we leapt out, to discover that she had run out of petrol. We filled the tank, but still she refused to move. It was now almost dark and the road was deserted. With great resolution, Simon and I stopped the first car that came along. In the back sat a fat man in a straw hat and bow tie, accompanied by an extremely fat woman in a pink muslin decolleté, against whose swarthy skin Roman pearl earrings and a Roman pearl necklace glistened in that peculiarly rotund manner in which Roman pearls glisten against swarthy skin. The man spoke English. He requested me to sit in front by the chauffeur. The car was a cheap little Fiat limousine, upholstered in fancy embroideries and sporting a spray of artificial grass from a silvered icecream horn.
We had not gone four miles before David caught us up. Diana was restored, having been pushed to the top of the nearest hill. She had refused to move owing to an air-lock, caused by David’s having accelerated on an empty tank. With effusive thanks and many apologies, I changed cars once more. Immediately afterwards we had a puncture; and it was nine o’clock before we arrived outside the Hotel de Russie, just off the Piazza del Popolo. We dined in the garden amidst electric fairy lights buried in beds of begonias, and dangling like fruit in a protestant Heaven from two poplars and a giant acacia. After a walk up the Corso, we went to bed.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHARM OF ROME is a hackneyed subject; but one aspect of it that writers usually fail to mention is the colour with which so many of the buildings are coated. It is difficult to describe this particular shade. The effect is as though a kind of dull burnt orange had been covered with a roseate wash, yet at the same time the whole is flat and restful. Our rooms at the Russie – a hotel which the others affected to dislike as I had recommended it – gave out on to a large, leaded expanse of roof, surrounded on three sides by walls of this colour, against which the now flowerless wistaria climbed in festoons of green. Towards sunset the tints became intensified to an extent that one would have believed impossible outside the limelight of Drury Lane. The Fascisti, impelled by a secret hankering after skyscrapers and municipal Gothic, hold that this colour is incompatible with the dignity of a great capital, and have given orders that it shall be used no more. It is only natural that they should prefer that Italy should live in the present rather than the past. But there is something a little grotesque about the hysterical modernity that has inspired such edicts as this, and the threatened prohibition of the gondolas in Venice.
Letters were waiting for us at Cook’s and at the Embassy. In one of his, David was bidden by a friend to pay a visit to an attaché at the Vatican Legation, named Harold Mott. Fetching Diana from her garage, we set off in search of him. After some difficulty, we unearthed the Vatican Legation from beneath a heap of debris, half-way up a ruined house, apparently in process of demolition. The attaché, we were informed through a grating, lived in an appartment in the Palazzo Doria, at the far end of the Corso. To the Palazzo Doria we went, and after climbing several long and exhausting flights of shallow stairs, were ushered, not into the expected attic, but into a large suite of rooms, parquet-floored and beautifully furnished, one as big as a London ballroom, the others equally spacious, though not so long. Mr Mott, in London trousers affixed to his waist by a brown leather belt, seemed surprised at the apparition of two young men disturbing his quiet afternoon. He gave us tea and was most hospitable.
That evening we stepped into a taxi, purposing to dine at a certain restaurant known to David. It proved to be shut. We were wondering what to do, when the driver took the bit between his teeth and motored us a long way out into the country to a restaurant overlooking the city. The main feature of the view was the red, white and green electric sign presented to Rome by Italian colonists in South America as a token of their affection. The taxi waited while we had our meal, then drove us back to a cabaret at the Apollo in the Via Nazionale. The last item on the programme was an apache dance, rendered with all the fire and passion of the Paris underworld. ‘La Tigresse’, spurned by the man she loves, plunges a knife into his back; the grip upon her throat gradually relaxes; she stands immobile, staring; then falls, a crumpled heap, by the side of him whom she has murdered; and remains, her frame shaken only by convulsive, racking sobs, as the music draws to a close. Curtain. Five minutes later a plump little woman on the wrong side of thirty-five, painted, and wearing a black neckband, trots up to our table and seats herself, with the words:
‘Moi, j’étais “la Tigresse”.’
Upon enquiry she proved to be a German, and, after our first surprise at her arrival, entertained us for the rest of the evening.
At a neighbouring table a loose-knit student of the University College Hospital was
having the time of his life. He said his name was Walker. We stayed until late watching his gyrations. On our way home, the sporting spirit, latent in all Englishmen, bubbled to the surface with what might have proved disastrous results. We decided to run a race down the tunnel beneath the Quirinal. As the white-tiled roof echoes every sound a thousandfold, we made perhaps more noise than we realised in the utter silence of the early morning. I was slightly ahead, when suddenly, by some inexplicable means, a cordon of fifteen police appeared across the middle of the road. With an adroit swerve I negotiated these, to be confronted thirty yards in front by a second line. Not having enough breath to continue, I surrendered quietly. The others, who had not realised what had happened, were astonished at suddenly finding themselves arrested by thirty policemen. Simon produced his card. We walked off to the police station, guarded as though a rescue was expected.
The police station, or rather the room in which we were imprisoned, contained three iron beds covered with coarse brown blankets. On two of these reposed men who had not shaved for several days. We tried to talk to one of them, who resented it. The heat was stifling, so that it made us uncomfortable even to move. We talked to one another, then fell asleep. Eventually, after about two hours, a man with several chins arrived and said in a surly voice that as we were English people we might go. David said that if that was the reason we would not go, and demanded an explanation. None was forthcoming, so we did go.
The hotel contained several families of Americans who spent their day in the lounge because it was too hot to go out, while at night they danced with embarrassing vigour on a marble floor to a jazz band that possessed a number of ambitious instruments but no syncopation. Simon, who boasts that he can always pick an acquaintance with anyone in an hotel, picked one with them by winning eighty lire off the gambling machine in the bar and thus attracting their attention. The only good that came of it was that they introduced us to a little man named Petruccicroce, who took us to dine at a restaurant in the slums, where we could none of us eat the pudding that he had ordered. He worked on the Bourse, and was very proud of his Oxford trousers, made in Rome. His clothes, as imitation English, were satisfactory with the exception of his hat. With him we visited other cabarets. But Roman night life was not entertaining at this time of the year, the Bonbonnière, where everyone habitually goes, being shut.
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