Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr - North Italian Folk

View of Genoa, from the Terrace of the Acquasola.

NORTH ITALIAN FOLK

Sketches of Town and Country Life

BY

MRS COMYNS CARR

ILLUSTRATED BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT

London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1878

[All rights reserved]

Italyabout which so much has been writtenpolitical, geographical, social, pontifical, poeticalItaly is my theme. But not the Italy of popes and priests and controversies, of civic struggles and new kingdoms, nor the Italy of tourists or guide-books, of fame and fashion, nor even the Italy of art and artists. The folk about whom my gossip shall be are folk who, living or dead, have made the best part of Italy these many years gone by. They are those who, unwittingly, inherit most of the poetry for which their nation, long ago, won its fame; on theminnocent of lore and reading though they, most of them, behas fallen something that recalls the great names of their own great men of the past. They are of the people. To them rather than to others in the land belong the freedom and freshness, the grace and good-heartedness, the frank honesty that finds a place even beside worldly-wise prudence, the simple and courteous dignity which the educated classes have not always been able to maintain. No one who has lived long beside them could have failed to learn the grace of their ways, the humour of their rustic simplicity; no one who has grown up in their midst could ever forget their pleasant faces and quaint enthusiasms, their friendly greetings, their frank speech and emphatic opinions.

I, who thus learned to know them in days gone by, can, at all events, never so forget; and I am fain now to set down some memory of those sun-lit scenes of the past, for friends whose lot has never been cast, as mine was, among them. My sketches will not always be portraits of living people or existing things, but they will always be sketches of things or friends that have been: recollections vignetted in the past, rather than photographs taken on the spot. And so, if anyone should discover aught that is inaccurate towards the present, let him go back a space upon the steps of time and live away fifteen years beside the country housekeeper or la Pettinatrice, in the Signor Prevostos company or with the village sempstress. For to these will I go for a verdict, and to thesenot my readers, because they will not read what I have written, but my staunch supporters alwaysto the people of the Riviera and the Apennines I now dedicate North Italian Folk.

ALICE CARR.

Spring returns. In northern lands, where much work is done and living is hard, our skies are yet grey and the winds blow keen while the earth is hard with the late frosts. Yet almond blossoms bloom sweetly in scant little gardens or beside the bleak walls of town houses, and spring begins to bud even in the lands where springs struggle is the longest, and as I watch her oncoming and rejoice in her tender-toned early flowers, I must needs remember the home where her life is the fairest and merriest, and her sunlight the stronger to play and be played with. It is the Mediterranean that I call to mind, her winds and waves and sails and rocks, her shores, towers, villages, grovesthe light and colour on her kindly peoples life. And most of all, as the sunshine grows and the air gets whiter, memory paints again for me that whitest, but not newest of towns, where winds and waves and groves and all are fair, the city of marblela SuperbaGenoa, the Queen of the Riviera. Genoa, no longer the great republic, no longer the city of much merchandise and wealth, but Genoa, the city of palaces still.

Who is there that has seen her from off the waves of her own Mediterranean, and looked upon her as she climbs the slopes on every side, gorgeous in her towers, her domes and cupolas, her terraces and gardens, quietly lying within the great amphitheatre of her hillswho could fail to acknowledge that she is the city of palaces still? Above and around her stand her fortifications, gaunt and grey upon the soft sky, like sentinels upon the tops of the green and barren mountains, while half way down, the hills begin to be dotted with villas and terraces, and, as they creep towards the sea, grow white with palaces and campanili, that multiply upon their sides until they become the great town itself, where whiteness is all around in stone and marble. In the streets there is marble, for it is fashioned into churches and colonnades; and upon the waters brink there is marble still that has taken the shape of terraces and loggias. There is no end to the whiteness, for the air is white too on these early spring days, yet there is no lack of colour as well; it lurks in the sunshine, it lives on the earth and the sky, is dashed along the public ways in dresses of the people, and over the harbour in curious hues of sails and flags, red and green and yellow, that the weather has mellowed into harmony. The sky is heavy with colour, in the March air that is keen and sun-steeped. Genoa, with her crooked and narrow streets and her curious nooks, with her picturesque piazzas and her sumptuous churches, of her would I write as I dream of flowers and Eastertide.