Dagonet Abroad

by George R. Sims

I saw many things in Genoa which most people see, and which are doubtless fully described in the guide-books; but I saw something also of which the guide-books make no mention. I have mentioned the great public spirit of the Genoese nobility. There is in Genoa a beautiful building on the heights overlooking the sea, which is called the Hotel of the Poor. This was founded and endowed by a Genoese marquis. Here respectable workmen, when they are past work, can come and end their days in perfect peace. Another nobleman, when it was proposed to move the University to Padua for lack of room, instantly gave up his magnificent palace to the town, saying, ‘This is henceforward your University.’ But all deeds of this sort are put into the shade by the princely charities of the Duke and Duchess of Ferrari-Galliera. The Duke, shortly before his death, gave one million pounds sterling towards the building of the new port. The Duchess, continuing his good work, has founded noble charities which are almost unique of their kind. One of them has such direct bearing on the great question of the day—the housing of the poor—that I cannot resist the temptation to give the reader a few particulars.

First let me say that the Ferrari-Galliera fortune is estimated at ten million pounds, and then you will understand how the Opera Pia, or pious works of this noble family, are carried out on such a gigantic scale. I had been told a great deal in Genoa about the Duchess’s scheme for housing the working classes in model lodging-houses, and so, obtaining proper credentials, I called upon the Duchess’s agent, and he most courteously had me personally conducted over the new working class dwellings. Built in blocks, somewhat on the Peabody system, these dwellings are perfect in every detail. The tenant must be a genuine working man, of good character. In the Duchess’s model lodging-house, for the accommodation of himself and family, he has five rooms—five lofty, big rooms: a sitting-room, three bedrooms, and a kitchen, fitted up with a capital range and every requisite. Besides these there are cupboard room and a larder. These rooms have all tiled floors, and the walls are painted or whitewashed. The rent is eight francs a month, and this includes all necessary repairs, which are done by a staff of workmen attached to the central office. Every month every room is inspected, and the slightest damage instantly repaired.

My visit to the dwellings was quite unexpected. I drove straight from the office to one of the blocks, and took the inhabitants unawares, so that what I saw must be taken as a fair specimen of the general condition of the tenements. I knocked at a door, was admitted, and made my inspection, much to the astonishment of the children, who wondered why the ‘strange man’ should come prying into their kitchen and walking into their bedrooms. I inspected four blocks, and took a suite on each floor, and everywhere I found the most perfect cleanliness and the greatest comfort. The women were mostly the wives of working men earning from twenty to twenty-five francs a week, but their homes were perfect pictures of neatness and order. The floors were swept and garnished, and the kitchens were little models of tidiness. One good soul was horrified when I asked to see the bedroom. The bed wasn’t made, she explained, and she was afraid I should think she was a careless housewife. As I went over these homes of the Genoese working classes, I could not help thinking of some that I knew at home. What would some hard-working Englishmen and their wives give to get such ‘model lodgings’ as these, and how gladly would they pay double and treble the rent that the lucky Genoese pay for such accommodation!

As I came out of the block I had a look round the big courtyard in the centre. At one end I found a large public washhouse; at the other end baths fitted up for the inhabitants, and also on the premises I found for their accommodation a bakehouse, in which the frugal wives who make their own bread have it baked free of charge. And what could you wish for more?

The Duchess has founded also, for the education of the poor children of Genoa, a free college. To all who attend it breakfast is given, and also a mid-day meal. Each boy is for one year ‘under observation.’ If his conduct is good, he has a right to stay on and receive a liberal education. If his conduct is bad, he is struck off the school list. A poor boy who is industrious and shows any talent can even choose a profession, and be specially educated free for that profession until the age of seventeen. Young Genoa has certainly a chance to distinguish itself in the future.

But the Duchess’s crowning work is the grandest of all her charities. She has already built and endowed two hospitals—one for children and one for incurables; the third, which was to be a general hospital, was not yet opened, but by the courtesy of the Duchess’s agent I was conducted over the whole building and everything was explained to me. As the hospital is undoubtedly one of the finest and most complete in the world, I must tell you something about it.

But first let me tell you the sad story which is bound up for ever with it—a story which the Duchess herself has handed down to posterity by having it inscribed upon a marble tablet in the grand entrance-hall. This tablet states that the building of the hospital has been delayed for four years, ‘owing to the treachery of my agent. General So-and-So.’ The Duchess names her treacherous agent, who was her own cousin, and so brands him for all time to come. His treachery was this: He decamped with £800,000, the money paid to his credit by the Duchess for the building of the hospital. Poor old gentleman! He is eighty years of age now, and he is said to have hidden himself from the world in a monastery, there to expiate his fault. They say that the money did him no good—that he is poor. That he took it to save from shame the son he idolized—the son who was leading a life of extravagance, and who had involved himself in such a way that the poor old General had to use the Duchess’s money to save him. Whatever the truth may be, the General used the money, and his treachery is ‘writ large’ upon the walls of the magnificent hospital, the building of which his unhappy act delayed for four long years.

The hospital itself stands in a magnificent position above the sea, and is the perfection of every modern principle. It is so perfect and so full of marvellous appliances and inventions that one feels, in walking about it, that it is one of Jules Verne’s ideas. The glorious halls and corridors, the massive marble pillars, the splendid marble staircases, indicate wealth, but the perfection of the sanitary and scientific arrangements tells of long years of anxious thought and study and research. So perfectly is this marvellous hospital built that, in the event of plague or cholera breaking out to such an extent as to infect the building, the whole of the inside of the hospital can be removed and another hospital will still be left standing as complete as the other. To accomplish this the hospital is being built double, with a space between the walls.

It would not interest the general reader for me to go into technical details of the wonderful arrangements for the patients, and the magnificent system of baths built on the premises, which includes every kind and variety; but the general reader will understand the value of a tramway system over the entire basement for the conveyance of stores, linen, provision stores, officials, patients, etc.; and the advantage of pure air conveyed straight from the adjacent mountains through underground tubes, and distributed all over the building. This palatial hospital looks on to the sea and on to the mountains, and, in order to isolate it and give the inmates gardens and terraces and glorious views, the Duchess has purchased a whole street of houses in the neighbourhood and demolished them, that nothing shall detract from the perfect sanitation of her glorious gift to the city of Genoa.

Genova la Superba! Genoa the Proud! Proud indeed, and with good reason, with such a city, such citizens, and such nobles! In what other town in Europe can you find, as here, a whole street of palaces given up by their owners to the people?