A Kindlier Dame Than My Hostess Could Nowhere Be Found.
She hails from
the province of the Marche and has no high opinion of this town, where
she only lives on account of her husband, a retired something-or-other
who owns the house.
Although convulsed with grief, both of them, at the
moment of my arrival - a favourite kitten had just been run over - they at
once set about making me comfortable in a room with exposure due south.
The flooring is of cement: the usual Viareggio custom. Bricks are cold,
stone is cold, tiles are cold; but cement! It freezes your marrow
through double carpets. For meals I go to the "Assassino" or the
Vittoria hotel; the fare is better at the first, the company at the
other....
The large dining-room at the "Vittoria" is not in use just now. We take
our meals in two smaller rooms adjoining each other, one of which leads
into the kitchen where privileged guests may talk secrets with the cook
and poke their noses into saucepans. At a table by herself sits the
little signorina who controls the establishment, wide awake, pale of
complexion, slightly hump-backed, close-fisted as the devil though
sufficiently vulnerable to a bluff masculine protest. Our waiter is
noteworthy in his line. He is that exceptional being, an Italian snob;
he can talk of nothing but dukes and princes, Bourbons by choice,
because he once served at a banquet given by some tuppenny Parma
royalties round the corner.
The food would be endurable, save for those vile war-time maccheroni.
The wine is of doubtful origin. Doubtful, at least, to the uninitiated
who smacks his lips and wonders vaguely where he has tasted the stuff
before. The concoction has so many flavours - a veritable Proteus! I know
it well, though its father and mother would be hard to identify. It was
born on the banks of the Tiber and goes by the name of ripa: ask any
Roman. Certain cheap and heady products of the south - Sicily, Sardinia,
Naples, Apulia, Ischia - have contributed their share to its composition;
Tiber-water is the one and constant ingredient. This ripa is exported by
the ton to wine-less centres like Genoa and there drunk under any name
you please. A few butts have doubtless been dropped overboard at
Viareggio for the poisoning of its ten thousand summer visitors.
Quite a jolly crowd of folk assembles here every evening. There is, of
course, the ubiquitous retired major; also some amusing gentlemen who
run up and down between this place and Lucca on mysterious errands
connected, I fancy, with oil; as well as a dissipated young marquis sent
hither from Rimini by the ridiculously old-fashioned father to expiate
his sins - his gambling debts, his multifarious and costly
love-adventures, and the manslaughter of a carpenter whom he ran over in
his car. [6] My favourite is a fat creature with a glorious fleshy face,
the face of some Neronian parvenu - a memorable face, full of the brutal
prosperity of Trimalchio's Banquet.
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