So my inheritance of Sabina has always been very precious to me. Many weary years have passed since I set foot there, but the remembrance of young days spent in those high rich solitudes comes still as a fresh breeze across the dusty wastes of the world, and very gladly shall I return to them before I die. I have travelled so far and seen such strange and endless varieties of scenery that I think I have a right to say that there are few places on earth where nature has done more to rejoice and strengthen the body and soul of man.
From Rome the Sabines are merely a noble chain of peaks culminating in the calm lion profile of the couchant “Lionessa,” her face to the north, waiting through the long blue days of summer for the crown of snow that the winter lays on her brow. The slopes and spurs that descend towards the Campagna are smiling enough—as they should be, turned everlastingly to the sun and the sea. One must pass beyond all that, climb by rough and narrow paths to the great tossed heart of the hills and stand on some peak like Guadognolo, to take in the amazing grandeur of the Sabines. Even from lower places, Olevano, for instance, you may look east and west and south and north, and feel as if you were standing on an island crag in an ocean of long sapphire billows rolling away, breaker beyond breaker, into infinity—a sea that in some moment of surpassing pride raised its breast too near the sky and froze to stone in that passion of ambition; and your heart, the heart of the native-born, tells you that every hollow between the breakers holds its rivers and lakes smothered in olives and vines and corn, its walled town and ancient church, its old fortified farm-houses, dazzlingly white against the sun-warmed rock of the mounting ridge—farm-houses with broad brick loggias garlanded with festoons of scarlet and orange, the bursting red pepperoni as big as citrons, and strings of flame-coloured maize like golden pear-heads, all drying in the sun for the winter’s needs.
Stop at one of these houses and ask for hospitality, and you will find out what the word really means. I have often thought of it when I was sitting through huge official dinners where the great ones of the earth were arranging its destinies over the champagne and truffles—with the murder of a nation in their hearts. The commanded smile, and the cold, watchful eyes—the men fencing with words for rapiers, and we women watching every play of the shrouded steel and pretending to talk amiable nothings to each other; the gasp of relief at parting, and the consignment to everlasting perdition of the adversary, which broke from our worried mate when the door of the brougham had been clapped to and we could sink back on the cushions as we rolled away!
Then would return a vision of some halt in the hills at home, of the dark, cavernous kitchen with its freshly sprinkled brick floor and its bunches of herbs hanging from the high blackened beams overhead shedding their dry fragrance on the air, so cool and refreshing on entering from the burning midday sunshine outside. “Favorisca!” cries the “Sposa”—she may be eighteen or eighty, but that is her title from her wedding day forward—“Condescend to enter! Let the signori be accommodated!” The rush-bottomed chairs are set out on the loggia in the shade, the boys are sent to fetch ice-cool water from the well, and as the bucket goes splashing down into the invisible flood and comes up all diamonds in the sun, “Sposa” brings out four or five heavy glasses, freshly rinsed, in the fingers of one hand and a straw-bound fiaschetta of her own wine in the other. “Vino sincero, signori miei!” she assures you as she sets it down on the deal table already spread with the clean cloth that smells of rosemary. Aye, a “sincere wine,” with no “dope” in its crimson or topaz depths, and the welcome is as sincere as the wine. She pours it out, smiling, her handsome head and rich costume standing out picturesquely against the dark doorway behind her, within which one of her girls is kneeling on the bricks, washing freshly pulled lettuce for your salad in a great copper bowl, hand-beaten and reflecting the light from every one of its red-bronze facets. Everything in the kitchen is of beaten copper; these people would as soon think of cooking in any other metal as of sleeping in cotton sheets—a degradation the poorest scorns to put up with.
“Sposa” disappears within the kitchen and one of the girls comes out to entertain the visitors while the dinner is cooking. She stands with one hand on the back of a chair, the other fingering her blue-and-yellow apron, pink with shyness, but devoured with curiosity. Every detail of one’s dress, every bit of jewellery, is being taken in—to be described to all the other girls of the place when they meet at church on Sunday, but she answers one’s questions with a confident smile. How old? Oh, “in seventeen”—that is, sixteen last birthday. Her name? Candiduccia, at the Signora’s service! Betrothed? A pinker flush and an indescribable little movement of the shoulders, and then down goes her head, while “Mammà,” whose sharp ears have heard all, replies in her deep, sonorous tones, from among the pots and pans: “A good youth, but he is getting a bad bargain! This lazy one has not spun half her linen yet. I had mine all spun and woven by the time I was fourteen! Here, thou! come and fetch the plates! The illustrious ones are hungry!”
Candiduccia dives into the kitchen, and a moment later your dinner is before you—a big, dimpled omelet, trout from the stream fried in olive oil, and crisp salad in a big majolica bowl. “Sposa” cuts the fresh, rough bread—first making the sign of the Cross over the loaf—and serves you cream-cheese made from goat’s milk, instead of butter. Butter and cow’s milk do not enter into the Sabina bill of fare—our mountain people do not care about these things; but it is a feast for the gods, all the same.
When the time comes to go, you give “Sposa” what you think right, and she takes it rather unwillingly, but very gratefully, and as you ride away she and her girls stand at the door and wave their hands and say “La Madonna v’accompagni,” and the boys, young rascals, will race your horses to the foot of the hill or the turn in the road, knowing well that you will give them a few coppers for their very own as soon as you are out of sight of “Mammà,” who, you may be sure, will never hear of the transaction.
If one is an invited guest at some important farm-house an elaborate feast is prepared, and there are heart-burnings if the guests do not eat heartily of everything. I remember once going with the Cavalettis to the bene of one of their tenants, for dinner—a really mediæval repast which staggered even my robust young appetite. It began with the polentata, a curious first course which is de rigueur in Sabina when guests of honour are being entertained. The chief table was already set out with a dozen kinds of fresh and dried fruits, alicetti (the tiny local sardines), smoked ham, and home-made liqueurs, all intended to stimulate the appetite.
But before sitting down to that we were led to a small pine-wood table at one side of the room and requested to take our seats around it. Then the mistress of the house advanced with a huge cauldron of polenta, which, to my consternation, she poured out on the freshly-scrubbed table-top, so deftly that it exactly covered the entire surface. I stared, wondering what was to happen next; but my companions took no notice of me, and the Marchese, whom his peasants adored—as did everybody else who knew him—leant back in his chair and discussed the condition of the game in the woods with “Sor Giacomo,” while the wife, a piece of new string in her hands, watched the polenta cool and fix to about the consistency of cream cheese. Then, suddenly leaning over my shoulder, she cut it swiftly across and across with the string in symmetrical divisions nearly a foot square, one for each person, solemnly handed us each a spoon, and, bowing gracefully, begged us to eat!
It was a searching preparation for a hearty meal!