He
has better things to do. While others nurse their griefs, he nurses his
joy. He endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and to be
true to that self when found - a worthy and ample occupation for a
life-time. The happiness-of-the-greatest-number, of those who pasture on
delusions: what dreamer is responsible for this eunuchry? Mill, was it?
Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest number were not necessarily the
least-intelligent! As if their happiness were not necessarily
incompatible with that of the sage! Why foster it? He is a poor
philosopher, who cuts his own throat. Away with their ghosts;
de-spiritualize yourself; what you cannot find on earth is not worth
seeking.
That charming M. M., I fear, will never compass this clarity of vision,
this perfect de-spiritualization and contempt of illusions. He will
never remain curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in
nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has inherited that all
too common taint of psychasthenia (miscalled neurasthenia); he
confesses, moreover, - like other men of strong carnal proclivities - to
certain immaterial needs and aspirations after "the beyond." Not one of
these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but has his Achilles heel: a
mental crotchet or physical imperfection to mar the worldly perspective.
Not one of them, at close of life, will sit beside some open window in
view of a fair landscape and call up memories of certain moments which
no cataclysms have taken from him; not one will lay them in the balance
and note how they outweigh, in their tiny grains of gold, the dross of
an age of other men's lives. Not one of them! They will be preoccupied,
for the most part, with unseasonable little concerns. Pleasant folk,
none the less. And sufficiently abundant in Italy. Altogether, the
Englishman here is as often an intenser being than the home product.
Alien surroundings awaken fresh and unexpected notes in his nature. His
fibres seem to lie more exposed; you have glimpses into the man's
anatomy. There is something hostile in this sunlight to the hazy or
spongy quality which saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the
sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will also meet with dull
persons; Rome is full of them, but, the type being easier to detect
among a foreign environment, there is still less difficulty in evading
them....
Thus I should have had no compunction, some nights ago, in making myself
highly objectionable to Mr. P. G. who has turned up here on some mission
connected with the war - so he says, and it may well be true; no
compunction whatever, had that gentleman been in his ordinary social
state. Mr. P. G., the acme of British propriety, inhabiting a house, a
mansion, on the breezy heights of north London, was on that occasion
decidedly drunk. "Indulging in a jag," he would probably have called it.
He tottered into a place where I happened to be sitting, having lost his
friends, he declared; and soon began pouring into my ear, after the
confidential manner of a drunkard, a flood of low talk, which if I
attempted to set it down here, would only result in my being treated to
the same humiliating process as the excellent M. M. with his "choicest
paragraphs." It was highly instructive - the contrast between that
impeccable personality which he displays at home and his present state.
I wish his wife and two little girls could have caught a few shreds of
what he said - just a few shreds; they would have seen a new light on
dear daddy.
In vino veritas. Ever avid of experimentum in some corpore vili and
determined to reach the bed-rock of his gross mentality, I plied him
vigorously with drink, and was rewarded. It was rich sport, unmasking
this Philistine and thanking God, meanwhile, that I was not like unto
him. We are all lost sheep; and none the worse for that. Yet whoso is
liable, however drunk, to make an exhibition of himself after the
peculiar fashion of Mr. P. G., should realize that there is something
fundamentally wrong with his character and take drastic measures of
reform - measures which would include, among others, a total abstention
from alcohol. Old Aristotle, long ago, laboured to define wherein
consisted the trait known as gentlemanliness; others will have puzzled
since his day, for we have bedaubed ourselves with so thick a coating of
manner and phrase that many a cad will pass for something better. Well,
here is the test. Unvarnish your man; make him drink, and listen. That
was my procedure with P. G. Esquire. I listened to his outpouring of
inanity and obscenity and, listening sympathetically, like some
compassionate family doctor, could not help asking myself: Is such a man
to be respected, even when sober? Be that as it may, he gave me to
understand why some folk are rightly afraid of exposing, under the
influence of drink, the bete humaine which lurks below their skin of
decency. His language would have terrified many people. Me it rejoiced.
I would not have missed that entertainment for worlds. He finally wanted
to have a fight, because I refused to accompany him to a certain place
of delights, the address of which - I might have given him a far better
one - had been scrawled on the back of a crumpled envelope by some
cabman. Unable to stand on his legs, what could he hope to do there?
Olevano
I have loafed into Olevano.
A thousand feet below my window, and far away, lies the gap between the
Alban and Volscian hills; veiled in mists, the Pontine marches extend
beyond, and further still - discernible only to the eye of faith - the
Tyrrhenian.
The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable grace. It recalls
Etna, as viewed from Taormina. How the mountain cleaves to earth, how
reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line!
Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on its
lower slope.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 37 of 77
Words from 36548 to 37576
of 77809
