The Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as he
from them....
I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to
me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always
finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial
matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was
personally acquainted with several men whose names I have
mentioned - Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano;
in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him
with profit. And even at an earlier time; for I once claimed to have
discovered the ruins of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets
(the Galli, opposite Positano) - now I find him forestalling me by nearly
a century. It is often thus, with archaeological discoveries.
He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress Calypso which has
disappeared since his day, and would have sailed there but for the fact
that no boat was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who landed
here, found any prehistoric remains on the spot; I should doubt it. On
another Mediterranean island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the
relics of what would formerly have been described as the residence of
that second Homeric witch, Circe. [30]
The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have already, of course,
discovered my ideal family at Alatri. Two ideal families....
One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that
luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow - that
verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with
fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with
wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich
philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in the
cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold of his two-roomed
abode, or wander about those tiny patches of culture, geometrically
disposed, where he guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots
of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of his misfortunes;
intuitive civility has taught him to avoid troubling a stranger with
personal concerns.
The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are
hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their
offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left.
"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can
only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach - nothing; not
milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him
for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now
there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children
dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others."
I looked at him.
"You sent him into the plains last summer?" I ventured.
"To Cisterna. One must make a little money, or starve."
"And you expect to keep your children alive if you send them to
Cisterna?"
I was astonished that the local medicine man had not diagnosed malaria.
I undertook that if she would put him into the train when next I went to
Rome, I would have him overhauled by a competent physician and packed
home again with written instructions. (I kept my word, and the good
doctor Salatino of the Via Torino - a Calabrian who knows something about
malaria - wrote out a treatment for this neglected case, no part of
which, I fear, has been observed. Such is the fatalism of the
country-folk that if drugs and injections do not work like magic they
are quietly discarded. This youth may well have gone the way of "those
other two" - who, by the by, were also sent into the Pontine
Marshes - since you cannot reject your food for ever, and grow more
anaemic every day, without producing some such result.)
Meanwhile my friendly offer caused so great a joy in the mother's heart
that I became quite embarrassed. She likened me, among other things, to
her favourite Saint.
All comparisons being odious, I turned the conversation by asking:
"And that last one?"
"Here," she said, pushing open the door of the inner room.
He lay on the couch fast asleep, in a glorious tangle of limbs, the
picture of radiant boyhood.
"This one, I think, has never been to Cisterna."
"No. He goes into the mountains with the woodcutters every morning an
hour before sunrise. It is up beyond Collepardo - seven hours' labour,
and seven hours' march there and back. The rest of the time he sleeps
like a log...."
Children from these hill-places often accompany their parents into the
plains to work; more commonly they go in droves of any number under the
charge of some local man. They are part of that immense army of
hirelings which descends annually, from the uplands of Tuscany to the
very toe of Italy, into these low-lying regions, hardly an inch of which
is fever-free. I do not know even approximately the numbers of these
migratory swarms of all ages and both sexes; let us say, to be on the
safe side, a quarter of a million. They herd down there, in the broiling
heat of summer and autumn, under conditions which are not all that could
be desired. [31] Were they housed in marble palaces and served on
platters of gold, the risk would not be diminished by a hair. How many
return infected? I have no idea. It cannot be less than sixty per cent.
How many of these perish? Perhaps five per cent. A few thousand annual
deaths are not worth talking about. What concerns the country - and what
the country, indeed, has taken seriously in hand - is this impoverishment
of its best blood; this devitalising action of malaria upon unnumbered
multitudes of healthy men, women, and children who do not altogether
succumb to its attacks.
