The manner in which Italians of this rank contrive to gratify their taste for dress would seem perfectly marvellous, considering their slender resources, if one had not some insight into the remarkable frugality of their household expenditure. No English economist could contrive to keep body and soul together in the way they do: our northern constitutions would sink from insufficiency of aliment if compelled to follow their regimen.
Let us take a peep at another family by way of illustration. It consists of father, mother, two children, and a maid-servant; and the income on which they depend for their maintenance may be estimated at from fifty to sixty pounds a year. The husband holds some responsible Government appointment in the Customs, or Provincial Treasury, or something of the kind. Before he gets up in the morning, he drinks a cup of café noir, or, if his circumstances permit, he partakes of it at the caffè, with the addition, perhaps, of a cake of the value of a half-penny: the same beverage, with milk and a little bread, forms the breakfast of the family at home. One o'clock is the general hour for dinner. There is soup, containing either slices of toasted bread, or rice, or vermicelli; then the lesso, the meat from which the broth has been made, never exceeding two pounds—of twelve ounces—in weight, half a pound being usually calculated as the allowance for a grown-up person; this is eaten with bread, which holds the place of potatoes in England, and is consumed in large quantities. A dish of vegetables, done up with lard or oil, completes the repast; but I must not omit that the poorest table is well furnished with excellent native wine, which, as well as the oil, is generally the production of some little piece of land in the country that the family possess. This routine of living is never departed from, except on maigre-days—when fish, either fresh or salted, Indian corn-meal, with a little tomata and cheese, dried haricot beans, lentils, and so forth, take the place of the usual fare—and Sundays and Festas, which are solemnized by an additional dish—such as a roasted pigeon or a few cutlets. In the evening they sup; but it is scarcely to be called a meal—consisting merely of a little salad, fennel-root eaten raw, or fruit, with those never-failing accompaniments of bread and the sparkling ruby wine, that really seem their principal support.
The head of the house does not trouble his family much with his presence; he spends his evenings abroad, either making conversazione at some neighbour's, or at the caffè; or if his means be so restricted as to deny him the occasional indulgence of a cigar or a glass of eau sucrée, which he might be led into there, he has the resource of going into the apothecary's shop, where, amidst a stifling atmosphere of drugs and nauseous compounds, a number of people congregate to lounge and gossip. The doctors resort here, and a choice circle of their intimate friends besides, and all the news—foreign, medical, and domestic—is fully discussed.
There are, of course, many amongst the mezzo cetto whose incomes are much beyond the instance I have just stated; some are in positive affluence, but their style of housekeeping does not vary in proportion; and the account here given may be taken as a very faithful specimen of the condition of the majority of this class, in which the elements of several gradations of rank in England are curiously blended.
The domestic manners here attempted to be traced are, it will be at once perceived, widely different from what are comprehended by us in the term “middle classes;” strangely opposed to all we are accustomed to include under that designation. Those evening conversazioni at the apothecary's, for instance; not mere students lounging about on the look-out for practice, but white-headed men, ranking high in their profession, lawyers, merchants, shopkeepers, all cronies and gossips of half a century's standing—what analogy is there in our own country to anything of this sort?
A physician of repute, in one of our large towns, would stare at finding himself in the centre of a group assembled in the dingy Farmacia; still greater would be his surprise could he understand the nature of the conversation so eagerly carried on. Contrary to English medical etiquette in matters which belong to their profession, these Esculapians are especially diffuse, each relating, for the benefit of the circle, the minutest particulars of any interesting case he has in hand, without the slightest reserve in mentioning the patient, who becomes public property, to be dissected and lectured upon at pleasure. Besides which laudable relaxation, a pastime of another kind is often carried on in some little den at the back of the shop, where a card-table is spread, and large sums, in reference to the means of the players, are nightly staked.
The passion for gambling is very general, extending to all ranks, and, not confined to cards, exhibits itself in a fondness for everything connected with hazard—such as raffles and lotteries, about which last I shall speak more in detail in another chapter.
Scarcely a day used to pass in which people did not come to the door to ask us to take tickets in some riffa; it was either a poor woman who wanted to dispose of her pearl ear-rings; or a girl che si voleva far sposa, and by way of earning a few pauls to buy a wedding dress, offered a pincushion for a prize. Fishermen made raffles of their finest turbots; ladies (though rather sub rosâ) of their old-fashioned shawls; distressed dandies of elaborate pipes; in fact, never was there a population in which the fickle goddess numbered more persevering votaries.
In the caffès, play was always going on, I believe, in a greater or less degree. These establishments, so indispensable to an Italian's existence, must not be identified with the fairy-like structures of mirrors, chandeliers, and arcades, that Paris and some of the principal cities of Italy exhibit. In all the inferior towns which I have visited, one description of a caffè may serve to convey a very correct idea of the totality. A middle-sized room, opening on the street—in summer with an awning, benches, and little round tables outside the door; within, similar benches and round tables, a very dirty brick floor, and a dark region at the back, from whence ices, lemonades, eau sucrée, coffee, chocolate, fruit syrups, and occasionally punch—denominated un ponch, and cautiously partaken of—are served out. Youths with cadaverous faces and mustachios, in white jackets striped with blue, answering to the appellation of bottega, fly about like ministering genii, and from four or five o'clock in the morning till past twelve at night, know repose only as a name.
The caffè likewise comprehends the office of confectioner and pastrycook, and no cakes or sweetmeats can be procured but what it furnishes; sorry compositions, it must be owned, their predominant flavour being that of tobacco, with which, from being kept on a counter in the general room, amid a thick cloud of smoke from a dozen or so of detestable cigars, they are naturally impregnated. They are inexpensive delicacies, however; for the value of a half-penny such gigantic puffs of pastry and preserve, such blocks of sponge-cake garnished with deleterious ornaments, such massive compounds of almond and white of egg are obtainable, as would make a schoolboy's eyes glisten with delight. Sold at half-price the next day—a farthing, be it remembered—they are purchased by poor people for their children's slight matutinal refection. We could never persuade one of my uncle's servants, the father of a family, that a piece of bread would have been a far more wholesome breakfast for children of five or six years old, than a little weak coffee, and one of these stale cakes. He would shake his head, and say it was more civile, i. e. refined, for the povere creature than bread; as for brown bread—soldiers' bread, as they contemptuously term it—being reduced to that, is considered the extremity of degradation.