: A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Fox Davies Arthur Charles Johnston Graham Illustrator - Heraldry Great Britain

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MAY, 1914 JUNE, 1914 JULY, 1914 AUGUST, 1914 SEPTEMBER, 1915 OCTOBER, 1915 DECEMBER, 1915 JANUARY, 1917 FEBRUARY, 1917 MARCH, 1917 APRIL, 1917

MAY, 1914

I do not know whether in remote generations some trickle of Italian blood went to the making of that entity which I feel to be myself, or whether in some previous incarnation I enjoyed a Latin existence, nor do I greatly care: all that really concerns me is that the moment the train crawls out from its burrowings through the black roots of pine-scented mountains into the southern openings of the Alpine tunnels, I am conscious that I have come home. I greet the new heaven and the new earth, or, perhaps more accurately, the beloved old heaven and the beloved old earth; I hail the sun, and know that something within me has slept and dreamed and yearned while I lived up in the north, and wakes again now with the awakening of Br?nnhilde....

The conviction is as unfathomable and as impervious to analysis as the springs of character, and if it is an illusion I am deceived by it as completely as by some master-trick of conjuring. It is not merely that I love for their own sakes the liquid and dustless thoroughfares of Venice, the dim cool churches and galleries that glow with the jewels of Bellini and Tintoret, the push of the gliding gondola round the corners of the narrow canals beneath the mouldering cornices and mellow brickwork, for I should love these things wherever they happened to be, and the actual spell of Venice would be potent if Venice was situated in the United States of America or in Manchester. But right at the back of all Venetian sounds and scents and sights sits enthroned the fact that the theatre of those things is in Italy. Florence has her spell, too, when from the hills above it in the early morning you see her hundred towers pricking the mists; Rome the imperial has her spell, when at sunset you wander through the Forum and see the small blue campanulas bubbling out of the crumbling travertine, while the Coliseum glows like a furnace of molten amber, or pushing aside the leather curtain you pass into the huge hushed halls of St. Peter's; Naples has her spell, and the hill-side of Assisi hers, but all these are but the blossoms that cluster on the imperishable stem that nourishes them. Yet for all the waving of these wands, it is not Bellini nor Tintoret, nor Pope nor Emperor who gives the spells their potency, but Italy, the fact of Italy. Indeed you will find the spell not only and not so fully in the churches and forums and galleries of cities, but on empty hill-sides and in orchards, where the vine grows in garlands from tree to tree, and the purple clusters of shadowed grapes alternate with the pale sunshine of the ripened lemons. There, more than among marbles, you get close to that which the lover of Italy adores in her inviolable shrine, and if you say that such adoration is very easily explicable since lemon trees and vines are beautiful things, we will take some example that shall be really devoid of beauty to anyone who has not Italy in his heart, but to her lover is more characteristic of her than any of her conventional manifestations.

So imagine yourself standing on a hilly road ankledeep in dust. On one side of it is a wine-shop, in the open doorway of which sits a lean, dishevelled cat, while from the dim interior there oozes out a stale sour smell of spilt wine mingled with the odour of frying oil. A rough wooden balcony projects from the stained stucco of the house-front, and on the lip of the balcony is perched a row of petroleum tins, in which are planted half a dozen unprosperous carnations. An oblong of sharp-edged shadow stretches across the road; but you, the lover of Italy, stand in the white of the scorching sunshine, blinded by the dazzle, choked by the dust, and streaming with the heat. On the side of the road opposite the wine-shop is a boulder-built wall, buttressing the hillside; a little behind the wall stands a grey-foliaged olive-tree, and on the wall, motionless but tense as a curled spring, lies a dappled lizard. From somewhere up the road comes the jingle of bells and the sound of a cracked whip, and presently round the corner swings a dingy little victoria drawn by two thin horses decorated between their ears with a plume of a pheasant's tail feathers. The driver sits cross-legged on the box, with a red flower behind his ear, and inside are three alien English folk with puggarees and parasols and Baedekers. You step aside into the gutter to avoid the equipage, and as he passes, the driver, with a white-toothed smile, raises and flourishes his hat and says, "Giorno, signor!" The lizard darts into a crevice from which his tail protrudes, the carriage yaws along in a cloud of dust.... It all sounds marvellously ugly and uncomfortable, and yet, if you are an exiled Italian, the thought of it will bring your heart into your mouth.

Francis has been an exceedingly wise person in the conduct of his life. Some fifteen years ago he settled, much to the dismay of his uncle, who thought that all gentlemen were stockbrokers, that he liked Italy much better than any other country in the world, and that, of all the towns and mountains and plains of Italy, he loved best this rocky pinnacle of an island that rises sheer from the sapphire in the mouth of the Bay of Naples. Thus, having come across from Naples for the inside of a day, he telegraphed to his hotel for his luggage and stopped a month. After a brief absence in England, feverish with interviews, he proceeded to stop here for a year, and, when that year was over, to stop here permanently. He was always unwell in England and always well here; there was no material reason why he should ever return to the fogs, nor any moral reason except that the English idea of duty seems to be inextricably entwined with the necessity of doing something you dislike and are quite unfitted for. So herein he showed true wisdom, firstly, in knowing what he liked, and secondly, in doing it. For many otherwise sensible people have not the slightest idea what they like, and a large proportion of that elect remainder have not the steadfastness to do it. But Francis, with no ties that bound him to the island of England, which did not suit him at all, had the good sense to make his home in this island of Italy that did. Otherwise he most certainly would have lived anaemically in an office in the City, and have amassed money that he did not in the least want. And though it was thought very odd that he should have chosen to be cheerful and busy here rather than occupied and miserable in London, I applaud the unworldliness of his wisdom. He settled also that he wanted to think, and, as you will see before this record of diary is out, he succeeded in so doing.

Many Mays and Junes I spent with him here, and six months ago now, while I was groping and choking in the fogs, he wrote to me, saying that the Villa Tiberiana, at which we had for years cast longing glances as at a castle in Spain, was to be let on lease. It was too big for him alone, but if I felt inclined to go shares in the rent, we might take it together. I sent an affirmative telegram, and sat stewing with anxiety till I received his favourable reply. So, when a fortnight ago I returned here, I made my return home not to Italy alone, but to my home in Italy.

Within, the house has assumed its summer toilet, which is another way of saying that it has been undressed; carpets and curtains have been banished; doors are latched back, and the air sweeps softly from end to end of it. A sitting-room that faces south has been dismantled, and its contents put in the big studio that looks northwards, and even in the height of summer, we hope, will not get over-hot, especially since a few days ago we had the roof whitewashed and thick matting hung over its one southern window. Breakfast and dinner, now that the true May weather has begun, we have on the terrace-top of the big cistern in the garden, roofed over between the pilasters of its pergola with trellis, through which the vineleaves wriggle and wrestle. But now at noon it is too hot in the garden, and to-day I found lunch ready in the square vaulted little dining-room, with Pasqualino bringing in macaroni and vine-leaf-stoppered decanter, and Francis, who refrained from bathing this morning owing to the Martha-cares of the household, debating with Seraphina as to whether the plumbago ought not to be pruned. It has come right into the room, and, as Seraphina most justly remarks, it is already impossible to shut the window. But since we shall not need to shut the window for some months to come, I give my vote to support Francis, and suffer the plumbago to do exactly as it likes. So we are two to one, and Seraphina takes her defeat, wreathed in smiles, and says it is not her fault if burglars come. That is a poor argument, for there are no burglars in Alatri, and, besides, there is nothing to steal except the grand piano....

This island-life is the busiest sort of existence, though I suppose a stockbroker would say it was the laziest, and, in consequence, these social efforts give one a sense of rush that I have never felt in London. The whole of the morning is taken up with bathing , and on the way up you call at the post-office for papers and letters. The letters it is impossible to answer immediately, since there is so much to do, and the pile on my table grows steadily, waiting for a wet day. After lunch you read the papers, and then, following the example of the natives, who may be supposed to know the proper way of living in their own climate, you have a good siesta. After tea, the English habit of physical exercise asserts itself, and we walk or water the garden till dinner. After dinner it is, I take it, permissible to have a little relaxation, and we either play a game or two of picquet up here in the studio, or more often stroll down to the piazza and play in the caf?, or attend a thrilling cinematograph show. In the country it is natural to go to bed early, and, behold, it is to-morrow almost before you knew it was to-day. When it rains, or when the weather is cold, it is possible to do some work, and Francis asserts that he does an immense quantity during the winter. I daresay that is so; I should be the last person to quarrel with the statement, since he so amiably agrees that it is impossible to behave like that in the summer.

An hour afterwards Luigi, defrauded of half his holiday afternoon, returned to the gaiety and companionship of the Piazza, and recounted to an indignant audience this outrageous affair. But some time during the afternoon, Francis, looking out of his bedroom window after his siesta, thought he saw Luigi slipping across the garden of the Villa Tiberiana, and climbing down over the wall at the bottom. He says he was not sure, being still sleepy, and when he shouted Luigi's name out of his window, there came no answer.

Expostulation being useless, and Luigi being fairly comfortable, Maria left him, and on her way home gave very serious consideration to the features of the case which she intended to back at the lottery. She had ascertained that Luigi had his new clothes on , and on looking up the number of "new clothes, novelty, freshness," found that it was 8. Then, on further study of "Smorfia," she learned that the word "thief" was represented by No. 28, and following her own train of thought, discovered that No. 88 meant "liar." Here was a strange thing, especially when, with an emotional spasm, she remembered that "boy" was No. 2. Here was the whole adventure nutshelled for her. For was there not a boy who put on his new clothes , showed himself a thief and subsequently a liar ? 2 and 8 covered the whole thing, and almost throttled by the thread of coincidence, she hurried down to the lottery-office, aflame with the premonition of some staggering success, and invested fifteen liras in the numbers 2, 8, 28, 88.

She lingered in the Piazza a little, after laying this touching garland on the altar of luck, to receive the condolences of her friends on Luigi's wickedness, and had a kind word thrown to her by Signor Gelotti, the great lawyer, who had come over for a week's holiday to his native island. Ah, there was a man! Why, if he got you into the witness-box, he could make you contradict yourself before you knew you had opened your mouth. Give him a couple of minutes at you, and he would make you say that the man you had described as having a black coat and a moustache had no coat at all and whiskers, and that, though you had met him at three o'clock precisely in the Piazza, you had just informed the Court that at that hour you were having a siesta in your own house. Luigi's father had at one time been in his service, and though he had left it, handcuffed, for a longer period of imprisonment than his son was threatened with, Lawyer Gelotti had always a nod and a smile for his widow, and to-day a pleasant little joke about heredity. Ah, if Lawyer Gelotti would only take up the case! He would muddle everybody up finely, and in especial that fat German fellow, who, like his beastly, swaggering, truculent race, was determined to press home his charge. But Lawyer Gelotti, as all the world knew, never held up his forefinger at a witness under a thousand liras. What a forefinger. It made you tell two more lies in order to escape from each lie that you had already told.

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