It is one of the maladies of our
age, a sign of sheer nervousness, to profess a frenzied allegiance to
truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where
graver issues are at stake.
We cannot lay claim to a truthful state of
mind. In this respect the eighteenth century, for all its foppery, was
ahead of ours. What is the basic note of Horace Walpole's iridescent
worldliness - what about veracity? How one yearns, nowadays, for that
spacious and playful outlook of his; or, better still, for some
altogether Golden Age where everybody is corrupt and delightful and has
nothing whatever to do, and does it well....
My second ideal family at Alatri lives along a side path which diverges
off the main road to Ferentino. They are peasant proprietors, more
wealthy and civilised than those others, but lacking their terrestrial
pathos. They live among their own vines and fruit-trees on the hillside.
The female parent, a massive matron, would certainly never send those
winsome children into the Pontine Marshes, not for a single day, not for
their weight in gold. The father is quite an uncommon creature. I look
at him and ask myself; where have I seen that face before, so classic
and sinewy and versatile? I have seen it on Greek vases, and among the
sailors of the Cyclades and on the Bosphorus. It is a non-Latin face,
with sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and crisply curling
beard; a legendary face.
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