More Italian Yesterdays

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Livorno is an anomaly—an Italian city with no history, no ancient monuments, no works of art. In fact it always seemed to me less Italian than any spot I knew in the whole country, but in the days when we used to frequent it I took that, as one took everything else in that cheerful age, for granted, and it was only long afterwards that I gave myself the trouble to hunt up the cause of the phenomenon. Then I learnt that down to the days of the Medici it was a small fishing village with a few hundred inhabitants, bearing for some unknown reason the name of another tiny place farther north, Livorno Vercellese. The Medici first noted its possibilities, and set to work to make it the real port of Florence, till then largely dependent for such a commodity on Pisa, a little farther up the coast.

Pisa, the ancient rival of Genoa and Venice, still sick with memories of her past greatness, and, since 1405, the bought-and-paid-for fief of Florence, was always seething with disaffection and conspiracy. Its last desperate effort at retrieving its independence was made in 1494, and the Florentines were put to the trouble of besieging it and taking it by force. It was some sixty or seventy years later (I think during the reign of Francesco, the father of Marie de Medici) that Livorno recommended itself to the Ruler of the Republic as a fine spot for a port that would have no disturbing memories of independence to interfere with its usefulness. In order to ensure this they did not colonize it with Italians at all, but craftily invited the more commercially minded among the malcontents of all Europe to come and open up trading houses there. The invitation was eagerly accepted; persecuted Catholics from England and Germany, Moors from Spain, Jews in great numbers from all parts, came, settled, and flourished, the Jews of course outnumbering all the rest, so that the Leghorn population is largely Jewish to this day. But there are also several old English merchant houses, that, while still affecting to regard England as “home,” are deeply rooted in the bright little city on the Ligurian Sea, and very kind and hospitable were their representatives to us. I remember certain commodities—great chests of tea, rolls of English flannel, and fine table linen—my mother always sent for to one of these Leghorn merchants, and I fancy it is due to the little English-speaking community that the town is generally known by that barbarous travesty of its Italian name.

In our times it has of course all the unsightly riches of a great modern military and commercial centre—foundries, docks, shipyards, fortifications, naval arsenals, and all the rest of it, but its real attractions lie in the marvellous freshness of its air and its unbroken sea-line, changing in tint at every hour of the day and taking on certain splendours that I never remember seeing elsewhere. Livorno always seems cool, for when the sun is shining his hottest the breeze never fails, and the billows roll in and break in laughter and thunder on the rocks and toss their spray almost to the windows of your room, where the light comes up in a glow of green and gold through the Venetians and the wind plays games with the clean white curtains all day long.

But it is at evening that the Mare Ligure takes you and holds you with a spell of its own. At sunset the wind generally dies down, and then the sun sinks slowly over a softly moving but untroubled sea. The sky clears of its dancing clouds, and becomes not sky, somehow, but a fathomless infinity of breathing rose and topaz, transparent and liquid like jewelled wine. And every ripple and dimple of the water soaks up the transcendent flush, swaying rhythmically, and smoothing out into vast pools of melting mother-of-pearl in which that living wet crimson seems to lie like a transparent veil over deeper tints that float beneath. When the sun is gone, the red deepens to the velvet of a dark June rose, and the western sky is flame, not light; but hurrying night has chilled the east behind you, and now every ripple is violet blue on its hither side, the golden glow recedes farther and farther towards the west, is sucked away in the trail of the sun at last, and then nothing is left of the day but a forsaken sweep of primrose and the wraith of a new-born star.

For sheer splurge of colour and light one must go farther north and be out in the Bay of Spezia some September noon, when the harbour is full of white battleships all beaconed with signals like strung flowers, and the bands are playing madly and salutes are crashing through the music for some royal holiday. The white town and the green hills behind it seem to thrill visibly in unison, and the sea is cobalt, that would make your eyes ache but for the fringe of feathery white ripples that the breeze combs up all over its surface, and the sky is transparent turquoise, and night seems a thousand years away. Farther on yet Genoa the Superb has a sea as blue, a sky as stainless, but she dominates in her white and emerald loveliness so that her setting is almost effaced. One forgets to notice the steps of the throne where Sovereign Beauty queens it so royally.

Then cross the plain to Venice, the witch who holds east and west in her soft hands and plays with their riches as a millionaire’s child might slip a rain of gold pieces from one palm to another, in idleness, recking nothing of their value. Sea and sky, priceless palace and empty island—it is all hers—she can never exhaust her past; and our century, jejune and vulgar as it is, only seems to touch her to a scornful smile.

But Venice can tremble still. Once in many years there sweeps down on her one of Nature’s handfuls of retribution—a storm that makes her quake to her artificial incredible foundations. I saw one such. It was in May, Venice’s most perfect month. We had been out to the Lido that morning, bathing in water smooth as cream; there was not a cloud in the sky. We had barely got home when inky darkness descended, and out of it burst a gale that lashed the Grand Canal to fury, and a machine-gun fire of hail was flung against the windows, to result, an instant later, in a crash of broken glass and tumbling bricks that was truly appalling. Through the tumult came shrieks and cries. Every window in the Ducal Palace was smashed, and most of the others in the town. When it was over—the whole thing did not last more than twenty minutes—I went out on our balcony and picked up, from the thick layer lying there, hailstones as big as pigeons’ eggs. The next day we went out again to the Lido, and where a long, green pergola of vines had shaded the way to the bathing establishment now stood a bare tracery of dry branches. Not a single leaf was left.

But generally the Adriatic waits on Venice with subservient calm, and one can float over those vast yet not unpictured lagoons in still assurance that one’s reveries will not be disturbed. I doubt whether such lengths of languorous idling be good for young, strong people, but as a rest-cure for tired ones there can be nothing more complete. The shape and build of the gondola (what a perfect name for the gliding, sinuous thing!) was evolved by an artist in comfort; the enormous leather cushions let you sink into their thickness as far as you please without ever touching the limit of their pleasant elasticity. Whether cowled in to keep off the sun’s rays in the day, or uncovered to give you all the coolness of the evening, the gondola seat relieves you of all responsibility for your body; it holds you as an experienced nurse holds a tired child; and in its silent, swan-like rush through the water you get just the sense of motion necessary to keep your nerves employed yet soothed.

With the right companion, what talks are possible, as you glide out in the last flush of evening towards the more distant lagoons and wait for the moon to come up out of Istria across the sea! Your gondolier, silent as Charon, is behind you and you forget his existence. And all the rest is behind too, but very far behind—daily life with its horrid strident claims and calculations that won’t even leave honey-mooning couples alone! Time has ceased, and the world is standing still to let you look at life in its beauty and kiss its face in its peace. When at last you say, without turning your head, “A casa, Sandruccio,” your black swan quivers an instant from low stern to dark-arched prow, swings round in the smallest space any boat did ever turn in, and you float back to the regular rhythm of Sandruccio’s twenty-foot oar, till a necklace of light lies low on the land, and the faintest of songs—a very mist of music—is wafted over the water.

“Alla Pizzetta?” inquires Sandruccio, speaking for the first time, and in a voice expressing much amused indulgence for dreaming lovers. A few minutes later he is imperiously ordering fellow-gondoliers out of his way to the steps, is holding the side of the swan the eighth of an inch off the grind of the stone, and you and your other self dance on shore to become light-hearted young people, keeping time surreptitiously to the gay waltz of the band and laughing at everything and nothing because all the festive crowd around you is doing the same thing.