A Traveler at Forty

by Theodore Dreiser

The village of La Turbie, although in France, gave me my first real taste of the Italian village. High up on this mountain above Monte Carlo, in touch really with the quintessence of showy expenditure—clothes, jewels, architecture, food—here it stood, quite as it must have been standing for the last three or four hundred years—its narrow streets clambering up and down between houses of gray stone or brick, covered with gray lichens. I thought of Benvenuto Cellini—how he always turned the corners of the dark, narrow streets of Rome in as wide a circle as possible in order to save himself from any lurking assassin—that he might draw his own knife quickly. Dirt and age and quaintness and romance: it was in these terms that La Turbie spoke to us. Although anxious to proceed to Eze, not so very far away, which they both assured me was so much more picturesque and characteristic, yet we lingered, looking lovingly up and down narrow passages where stairs clambered gracefully, where arches curved picturesquely over streets, and where plants bloomed bravely in spotted, crumbling windows. Age! age! And with it men, women and children of the usual poverty-stricken Italian type—not French, but Italians. Women with bunchy blue or purple skirts, white or colored kerchiefs, black hair, wrinkled, yellow or blackish-brown faces, glittering dark eyes and claw-like hands.

Not far from the center of this moldy scene, flourishing like a great lichen at the foot of Augustus, his magnificent column, was a public fountain, of what date I do not know. The housewives of the community were hard at their washing, piling the wet clothes in soapy masses on the stone rim of the basin. They were pattering and chattering, their skirts looped up at their hips, their heads wound about with cloths of various colors. It brought back to my mind, by way of contrast, the gloomy wash- and bath-house in Bethnal Green, which I have previously commented on. Despite poverty and ignorance, the scene here was so much more inviting—even inspiring. Under a blue sky, in the rays of a bright afternoon sun, beside a moldering but none the less lovely fountain, they seemed a very different kind of mortal—far more fortunate than those I had seen in Bethnal Green and Stepney. What can governments do toward supplying blue skies, broken fountains and humanly stirring and delightful atmosphere? Would Socialism provide these things?

With many backward glances, we departed, conveyed hence in an inadequate little vehicle drawn by one of the boniest horses it has ever been my lot to ride behind. The cheerful driver was as fat as his horse was lean, and as dusty as the road itself. We were wedged tightly in the single green cloth seat, Scorp on one side, I on the other, Barfleur in the middle, expatiating as usual on the charm of life and enduring cheerfully all the cares and difficulties of his exalted and self-constituted office of guide, mentor and friend.

Deep green valleys, dizzy precipices along which the narrow road skirted nervously, tall tops of hills that rose about you craggily or pastorally—so runs the road to Eze and we followed it jestingly, Sir Scorp so dizzy contemplating the depths that we had to hold him in. Barfleur was gay and ebullient. I never knew a man who could become so easily intoxicated with life.

“There you have it,” said Sir Scorp, pointing far down a green slope to where a shepherd was watching his sheep, a cape coat over his arm, a crooked staff in his hand; “there is your pastoral, lineally descended from the ancient Greeks. Barfleur pretends to love nature, but that would not bring him out here. There is no canard à la presse attached to it—no sole walewski.”

“And see the goose-girl!” I exclaimed, as a maiden in bare feet, her skirt falling half way below her knees, crossed the road.

“All provided, my dear boy,” assured Barfleur, beaming on me through his monocle. “Everything as it should be for you. You see how I do. Goose-girls, shepherds, public fountains, old monuments to Cæsar, anything you like. I will show you Eze now. Nothing finer in Europe.”

We were nearing Eze around the green edge of a mountain—its top—and there I saw it, my first hill-city. Not unlike La Turbie, it was old and gray, but with that spectacular dignity which anything set on a hill possesses. Barfleur carefully explained to me that in the olden days—some few hundred years before—the inhabitants of the seashore and plain were compelled to take to the hills to protect themselves against marauding pirates—that the hill-city dates from the earliest times in Italy and was common to the Latins before the dawn of history. Eze towered up, completely surrounded by a wall, the only road leading to it being the one on which we were traveling. By a bridge we crossed a narrow gully, dividing one mountain height from another, and then, discharging our fat cabman and his bony horse, mounted to the open gate or arched door, now quite unguarded. Some of the village children were selling the common flowers of the field, and a native in tight dusty trousers and soft hat was entering.

I think I devoured the strangeness and glamour of Eze as one very hungry would eat a meal. I examined all the peculiarities of this outer entrance and noted how like a hole in a snail shell it was, giving not directly into the old city, or village, but into a path that skirted the outer wall. Above were holes through which defenders could shower arrows and boiling oil upon those who might have penetrated this outer defense. There was a blind passage at one point, luring the invaders into a devilish pocket where their fate was sealed. If one gained this first gate and the second, which gave into a narrow, winding, upward-climbing street, the fighting would be hand to hand and always upward against men on a higher level. The citadel, as we found at last, was now a red and gray brick ruin, only some arches and angles of which were left, crowning the summit, from which the streets descended like the whorls of a snail-shell. Gray cobble-stone, and long narrow bricks set on their sides, form the streets or passages. The squat houses of brick and gray stone followed closely the convolutions of the street. It was a silent, sleepy little city. Few people were about. The small shops were guarded by old women or children. The men were sheep-herders, muleteers, gardeners and farmers on the slopes below. Anything that is sold in this high-placed city is brought up to it on the backs of slow-climbing, recalcitrant donkeys. One blessed thing, the sewage problem of these older Italian-French cities, because of their situation on the hillside, solves itself—otherwise, God help the cities. Barfleur insisted that there was leprosy hereabouts—a depressing thought.

Climbing up and around these various streets, peering in at the meager little windows where tobacco, fruit, cheese and modest staples were sold, we reached finally the summit of Eze, where for the first time in Italy—I count the Riviera Italian—the guide nuisance began. An old woman, in patois French, insisted on chanting about the ruins. Sir Scorp kept repeating, “No, no, my good woman, go away,” and I said in English, “Run, tell it to Barfleur. He is the bell-wether of this flock.”