“Lastly, we come to the much-debated point: I mean the aesthetic side of the matter. No doubt, to judge by some old pictures such as those of the renowned Mantegna, there must have been a time when men thought long hair in children rather beautiful than otherwise. And I am not so rigorous as to deny a certain charm to these portraits—a charm which is largely due I fancy, to the becoming costumes of the period. At the same time——”
The stranger did not trust himself to listen any longer. He threw down a coin and walked out of the shop with his son, muttering something not very complimentary to the barber’s female relations.
But the other was quite unmoved. “And after all,” he continued, addressing the half-opened door through which his visitor had fled, “the true question is this: What is ‘too short’? Don’t cut it too short, you said. Che vuol dire? An ambiguous phrase! “Too short for one man may be too long for another. Everything is relative. Yes, gentlemen” (turning to myself and his shop-assistant), “everything on this earth is relative.”
With this sole exception, I have hitherto garnered no Hellenic traits in Taranto.
Visible even from Giadrezze, on the other side of the inland sea and beyond the arsenal, there stands a tall, solitary palm. It is the last, the very last, or almost the very last, of a race of giants that adorned the gardens which have now been converted into the “New Quarter.”I imagine it is the highest existing palm in Italy, and am glad to have taken a likeness of it, ere it shall have been cut down like the rest of its fellows. Taranto was once celebrated for these queenly growths, which the Saracens brought over from their flaming Africa.
The same fate has overtaken the trees of the Villa Beaumont, which used to be a shady retreat, but was bought by the municipality and forthwith “pulizzato”—i.e. cleaned. This is in accordance with that mutilomania of the south: that love of torturing trees which causes them to prune pines till they look like paint-brushes that had been out all night, and which explains their infatuation for the much-enduring robinia that allows itself to be teased into any pattern suggested by their unhealthy phantasy. It is really as if there were something offensive to the Latin mind in the sight of a well-grown tree, as if man alone had the right of expanding normally. But I must not do the City Fathers an injustice. They have planted two rows of cryptomerias. Will people never learn that cryptomerias cannot flourish in south Italy? Instead of this amateurish gardening, why not consult some competent professional, who with bougain-villeas, hibiscus and fifty other such plants would soon transform this favoured spot into a miniature paradise?
The Villa Beaumont and the road along the Admiralty canal are now the citizens’ chief places of disport. Before the year 1869 the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, that skirts the sea on the south side of the old town, was their sole promenade. And even this street was built only a short time ago. Vainly one conjectures where the medieval Tarentines took the air. It must have been like Manfredonia at the present day.
This Corso, which has a most awkward pavement and is otherwise disagreeable as looking due south, becomes interesting after sunset. Here you may see the young bloods of Taranto leaning in rows against the railing with their backs to the sea—they are looking across the road whence, from balconies and windows, the fair sex are displaying their charms. Never a word is spoken. They merely gaze at each other like lovesick puppies; and after watching the performance for several evenings, I decided in favour of robuster methods—I decided that courtship, under conditions such as the Corso supplies, can only be pursued by the very young or the hopelessly infatuated. But in the south, this gazing is only part of a huge game. They are not really in love at all, these excellent young men—not at all, at all; they know better. They are only pretending, because it looks manly.
We must revise our conceptions as to the love-passions of these southerners; no people are more fundamentally sane in matters of the heart; they have none of our obfuscated sentimentality; they are seldom naively enamoured, save in early stages of life. It is then that small girls of eight or ten may be seen furtively recording their feelings on the white walls of their would-be lovers’ houses; these archaic scrawls go straight to the point, and are models of what love-letters may ultimately become, in the time-saving communities of the future. But when the adolescent and perfumed-pink-paper stage is reached, the missives relapse into barbarous ambiguity; they grow allegorical and wilfully exuberant as a Persian carpet, the effigy of a pierced heart at the end, with enormous blood-drops oozing from it, alone furnishing a key to the document.
So far they are in earnest, and it is the girl who takes the lead; her youthful innamorato ties these letters into bundles and returns them conscientiously, in due course, to their respective senders. Seldom does a boy make overtures in love; he gets more of it than he knows what to do with; he is still torpid, and slightly bored by all these attentions.