Well, we left Bordighera the day after Christmas. Brown called it "Boxing Day," but I didn't understand what he meant till he explained. We went spinning along the Riviera di Ponente, towards Genoa la Superba, where we were to halt for the night. Perhaps-just perhaps-a true critic of beauty, whose blood had cooled with much experience, would say that the Italian Riviera road wasn't quite equal to the French between Cannes and Mentone. But it's Italy, Italy! And there's the difference of charm between the two (as I said to Brown) that there is between a magnificent young French Duchesse, confident of her own charms, with generations of breeding and wealth behind her, and a lovely, peach-tinted, simple-hearted Italian peasant girl. How rich the colour is everywhere!-and yet it never seems to dazzle the eye. I suppose it's the wonderful atmosphere that harmonises everything. And then the lovely, softening effect of the years; the moss, the lichen; the endearing dilapidation! So many things appeal to your heart as you pass through Italy. Oh I don't know how to describe it; but luckily you've been here, and we generally feel things alike, you and I; so you'll know what I mean. Poor little pathetic houses, painted red, blue, or yellow! You laugh at them, and want to cry over them, and love them, too. And the reds, yellows, and blues are like no other reds, yellows, and blues in the world. Fancy, if we had houses like that in our new land! How frightful they would be! We would want the painters to be put in prison for their crime.
I can tell you this: That first day of ours was like hurrying through a whole gallery of Turner's paintings. I love Turner, and I often wonder if my world isn't as different from many people's old grey worlds as his was!
Another thing, we had become phenomenal. That is, we were in a motor-car-less region. Ours was the only car, whereas on the other side of Mentone we met a rival every ten minutes. I do get cause and effect so mixed up. Aren't there many automobiles in Italy because there are such lots of places where you can't buy petrol; or can't you buy petrol because people won't go in automobiles?
We went flashing along past pretty little Ospedaletti, with its big white casino, and into gay and colourful San Remo, where we bought inferior petrol and paid twice as much for it as in France. I wonder if any small watering-place ever had as many attractive-looking hotels in it as San Remo? If I were staying there, I should weep because I couldn't live in them all at once. But one would be obliged to have about thirty astral bodies to go round, and each one would have to be a well-dressed astral body. That would come expensive; or do astral bodies exude frocks, so to speak?
I insisted on stopping for a few moments within sight of Taggia, because a great friend of mine lived there, or rather, the author of his being. His name was "Doctor Antonio," and he existed in the pages of a book written by a famous Italian, John Ruffini. Brown gave me the book for a Christmas present, apologising for the liberty; but, you see, it was all about Bordighera, and he thought I would like to have it. So I did, for it is one of the most enchanting stories I have ever read, though written in an old-fashioned style, and also with a pretty little heroine who was so old-fashionedly meek I could have shaken her. I sat up nearly all night reading the book, and oh, how I cried! There never was such a splendid fellow in real life as Doctor Antonio, except, of course, you. And, do you know, if Brown had been born a gentleman I think he might have turned out something like that. I liked Taggia for Doctor Antonio's sake; and I admired Porto Maurizio on its haughty promontory. It towers in my recollection just as the real Porto Maurizio towers above the indigo-blue sea, out of which it seems to grow.
If it hadn't been for Brown, I'm ashamed to say I shouldn't have known much about the Ligurian Alps. Do you. Dad? They're frightfully interesting, a sort of "bed rock" of Italian history. Dear me, how ignorant one can be, when all the while one is quite pleased with oneself as an Educated Person, with a capital E and P.
Alassio I thought a dear little place. You stopped there when you were coaching, in your honeymoon days. How little you dreamed then that your daughter would go tearing through on a motor? It has a nicer beach than any of the rival towns we saw; no wonder the Italians love to bathe there! Brown told me interesting stories about the enormous, lofty brick towers of Albenza, that seemed to nod so drowsily over the narrow, shadowed streets; Savona was too much modernised to please me, though the name had chimed alluringly in my ears; and with Prà we were treading on the trailing skirts of Genoa. Jimmy Payne had told Aunt Mary that it was nicer to stay all night in Pegli than in Genoa, because there were large gardens and a splendid view; but Brown said, if we would trust him, he would take us to a hotel in the midst of Genoa, with a large garden and a splendid view. So we did trust him-at least I did. And oh, Dad, I had my first experience in driving through real, enormous city traffic in Genoa! I would try it; and I succeeded beyond my dreams. I have got things to a fine point now, so that I manipulate the clutch and throttle (don't they sound murderous?) almost automatically; and there's something quite magical in the ease with which one can bring the car instantly down to a crawling walk, which wouldn't disconcert a tortoise, behind a string of carts, or at a touch dart ahead of the string, and leave the swiftest horse as if he were standing still.
There must be comparatively few automobiles in Genoa, or else ours beat the record for beauty; for people in the long, straight, narrow old streets lined with palaces, or the wide, stately, newer streets of splendid shops (where they showed everything on earth except the Genoa velvet I had always yearned to see on its native heath) turned to stare at us. But oh, perhaps it was only because a girl was driving! Anyway, the girl didn't disgrace herself. You would have been proud to see her daringly steer down an old sloping causeway into the Garden of Eden-I mean, the garden of our hotel. Anyway, the girl was proud of herself when the Lightning Conductor said, "Brava! No one could have done that better."
Brown was quite right about coming on to Genoa. It was a lovely hotel, with quite a tropical garden that had a sort of private Zoo of its own; jolly little beasts and birds in cages, which Aunt Mary and I fed next morning, when we'd had a delicious rest after a long day. After an early breakfast we went sight-seeing; and isn't the Campo Santo the very quaintest thing you ever saw? I don't think I could have helped laughing at some of the extraordinary marble ladies (with hoop skirts and bustles, and embroidered granite ruffles, and stone roses in their bonnets, kissing the hands of angel husbands with mutton-chop whiskers and elastic-sided boots; or knocking at the doors of forbidding-looking tombs, with Death as a sort of unliveried footman saying, "Not at home") if it hadn't been for the mourners coming to visit their dead. Oh, the pathos of them, with their sad, dark eyes, their heavy black draperies, and the flowers they were bringing to tell their loved ones that they were never forgotten! Instead of laughing, I came near crying. But the two moods are often so near together that one makes mistakes in their identity. The only fine and simple thing in the huge, strange place was the tomb of Mazzini.
I was tremendously impressed with the harbour at Genoa. It seemed so proud, as if Italy need have no shame to be represented by it, in the presence of all the crowding ships from all the ports of the world.