And born of them, somehow I see the poet who enjoyed as one of the good companions in Stevenson’s archaics:
‘Brave lads in olden, musical centuries
Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,
Sat late by alehouse doors in April
Chanting in joy as the moon was rising!’
And again I am reading of him, how that driving with a party in Tuscany he happened upon a village fair. Fairs and circuses were always occasions to Kenneth, but this fair beat any Berkshire ‘Veast’ by far. For here, beside the high road, sat vagabonds who roasted chickens on spits over wayside fires of wood. The ravishing smell of the roasting went to his head like music. The call to eat was irresistible. And the chicken that ensued was pronounced to be the best ever man tasted since Noah came out of the Ark.
And, later, I find the big man drawing his chair in to a salad so marvellously coloured (red and gold it is and mottled in cool greens and purples) that for a moment he hesitates, his horn spoon lifted, to disturb such a masterpiece. The moment was, I suppose, but a brief one. Fresh sardines too and sweet potatoes compete for his attention, upon another occasion, with a cathedral — and successfully. For, as he said, cathedrals knew how to wait — this one indeed had already waited five hundred years.
And at Bologna he sees with interest the Mortadella sausage alive upon the hoof in lovely babyhood. So chubby and so rosy are those little cock-nosed piglings that they remind him as they run of those pink-sugar mice with the string tails that ‘one used to buy in Torquay And, in Perugia, he shows a Lamblike enthusiasm for porchetta. Porchetta, the whole hog, the full-grown pig, stuffed with rosemary and, on saints’ days, roasted whole in gargantuan ovens. On these red-letter mornings Kenneth Grahame, strolling, would stop on cellar steps and, peeping down into bake-houses, would sniff luxuriously and, later, linger where on long tables, a pig to a table, the porchetta was exposed for sale. He was the ready purchaser then, and, come dinner-time, the true, full-fed appreciator of Perugia and its saints — St. Francis and St. Bartolommeo and the rest of them.
In Naples his attentions are divided between the Castel dell Ovo, the embodiment of the enchanted egg on which Virgil (the magician) made the safety of the city to depend, and ‘a most delicious lunch’ at one of the neighbouring trattorie; ‘fresh anchovies and a most delicate white wine’ are as unforgotten as are the frescoes by Giotto in the chapel of the Castel.
Perugia, Siena and ‘sweet Assisi’, cities set upon a hill, were always the loadstones to him. In the latter city the thornless roses, the roses that lost their thorns under the benign influence of St. Francis, were ‘just the roses for St. Andrews’ Lang’. And he quoted:
‘Had cigarettes no ashes
And roses ne’er a thorn
No man would be a funker
Of burn or whin or bunker
There’d be no need of mashies
And turf would ne’er be torn
Had cigarettes no ashes
And roses ne’er a thorn.’
And, being in Florence at the time of the Palio in Siena, a party was made, a motor-car hired and the fiestas attended. The Palio delle Contrade are famous feasts. They are held in the public square, the Piazza del Campo, in July and August annually. They date from the Middle Ages and they commemorate victories and the Virgin. They were initiated as bull-fights. But, in the sixteenth century, races on mounted buffaloes were instituted and the bull-fighting ceased. Since 1650 the festivities have centred round a pageant and a fancy-dress horse race, three times round the stony and precipitous square, to win a palio, or banner.
Siena is divided into contrade, or wards, each one having a distinct title — The Giraffe, the Goose, the Wave and so on — each one with a chapel and a flag of its own. And each one living up to the truth laid down long ago by the schoolboy Kenneth Grahame in the Chronicle of St. Edward’s School in Oxford, namely that ‘it is very difficult to feel friendly towards a rival’.
There are seventeen contrade and, yearly, ten of them, chosen by lot, may enter one horse to compete for the palio and be galloped lame on the pavement of the Piazza.
A lady who went with the Grahames to Siena that summer day writes of the outing: ‘It was a lovely drive in the cool of the morning and, though we reached Siena early, the steep narrow streets were already full and grey-and-green soldiers were everywhere diverting the traffic. Bands of performers, in costume, waiting the word “go”, strolled here and there in the medieval designs, velvet, satin and lace, of Michael Angelo. Windows and balconies, in the immense grey square, were “hung with garlands all”, the stands were crowded and gay, the sky was blue as cornflowers, carabinieri, mounted and on foot, were noisily clearing the course and, just as we got to our seats, the bells in the Campanili began to ring. In the distance one heard fifes and drums and then the processions trickled round the corner and into the square.
‘Each contrada has its own procession and its own thirteenth-century costumes. Each marched, men-at-arms, halberdiers, drummers, “nimble and naughty” pages, behind its own cognizance. To each procession were two gonfalonieri, bearers of banners, defiant fellows who tossed their enormous gold-fringed standards aloft juggling with them, in challenge, as easily as winking, and flapping them like signallers on Salisbury Plain. The dresses were as rich as stained glass windows — green and white, blue and scarlet, black and yellow. The banners were stiff with bullion and slashed with flaming colours. The processions saluted the Archbishop’s balcony and moved to their stone seats above the Palace steps. There they broke like kaleidoscopes and sat down glowing like a garden of flowers.
‘Marching eight abreast in gala, the children followed linked up by garlands of laurel. Lastly came a four-horse wagon. Its postilions wore green livery and the tall caps of the Middle Ages. In the wagon was the Palio itself — great and old and splendid, guarded by mounted men in helmets and bronze armour. The belfries clash and are silent. There is an interval for refreshment.
‘And now the ten runners (previously blessed by the Archbishop before the Cathedral’s altar) face the starter. They are of all kinds but mostly indifferent. They start and are flogged indiscriminately by their jockeys and by the spectators. Hoofs clatter “as if Cheapside were mad The race is awarded to a horse who, having unshipped his rider, finishes first. On second thoughts this decision is reversed. Jockeys, whip-slashing, attack other jockeys, a dozen free fights ensue and I hear Mr. Grahame say, half to himself, “Lisheen Races, second-hand”. A horse, called Lola, has won for the Contrada Girafa.
‘The jockey is one Melone who has refused, we hear, to “nobble” Lola for a bribe or even to pull her. “Ne anche per millione” (not for a million), said the impeccable Melone. Or so declared the men of The Giraffe. These go shouting of victory now, “La Girafa e granda, arriva al terzopiano!” (The Giraffe is so high that it can see into third-floor windows.)
‘Mr. Grahame was a noticeable-looking man anywhere and here, among that Southern crowd, he seemed remarkably so. Heads turned his way and a courtly priest approached him and, bowing, paid him the compliment of begging that he and his party would eventually accept the hospitality of his house which overlooked the street where the winning Contrada was later to celebrate victory with a dinner.
‘Kenneth Grahame was as pleased as a boy and named himself “the man who found the key in the horse’s ear”, “And who might he be?” I asked. He told me a French fairy tale about a seeker who sought “a golden key on a green silk cord” which unlocked all doors. It was to be found in a far city, in a secret stable, and hidden in a horse’s ear.
‘The feast that we had been invited to witness was laid (a fortnight later) in the main street of the Contrada of the Girafa. Tables were laid, so as to form one continuous “switch-back” table in the centre of the narrow, hilly street. It was spread with white cloths and embellished with flowers and regiments of wine flasks. At one interminable end sat Melone, the winning jockey. At the other stood Lola, the winning mare. She wore
a necklace of green apples and seemed, on the whole, to be enjoying herself. The illuminations made the warm night as bright as day. Great moths fluttered and swooped, a hundred bands played, the fun was noisy and grew noisier. Our host handed round china bowls of sweet biscuits and glasses of sweet wine. We got back to Florence nearer five than four in the morning.’
‘The golden key in the horse’s ear’ was one of Kenneth Grahame’s conceits. By it he explained his welcome in places where the tourist is not usually persona grata. He was familiar, for example, with the Bassi in Naples (those ‘under-structural’ dwellings where the poor live, with their wretched livestock, in a common gloom) and at Capri of the Quail he was on jolly, gossip terms with old women porters who would ‘remember back’, to please the Englishman, to the very times of Tiberius. In Palermo ‘the key’ unlocked the heart of a little, desiccated keeper of a wineshop whom Kenneth christened ‘Mr. Venus’ vowing that he was the identical taxidermist of Our Mutual Friend.
In the tavern under the four judas trees the ‘Barone’ (Kenneth was prompt to receive courtesy titles in Italy — the English ambassador dubbed him knight, as we know, and here, in Palermo, he was Baron) would sit and sip the gold Marsala till closing-time, pledging the aristocrats of the place — the tailor, the tinker, the candlestick-maker. And then, bowing his buone notte to the company, he would stroll to feel ‘the Boulevart break again to warmth and light and bliss’.
If a stranger enters that wine-shop to-day and calls for a beaker of the best he will be served from the choice of the ‘Barone’, from the cask still known as the Cask of the Englishman.
Palermo is the place of puppet shows and to one of these, given specially for children, Kenneth Grahame, as the English Interpreter of Childhood, was earnestly invited. The show bore the promising nursery title, The Damnation of Judas. And when the hero hanged himself and was finally engulfed in an inferno of flames, the little audience, which had been twittering like a flock of delighted sparrows throughout, went wild with enthusiasm. Judas was encored again and again; indeed, said the guest, had Judas betrayed his Master a hundred times, he would not even then have satisfied fully the demands of his admirers. ‘Mr. Punch,’ said Kenneth Grahame, ‘will have to take a back seat.’
This Art of the Marionettes is one that holds the heart of the artist. He may throw it aside for a better-paid employment, but the strings of the Fantocci are round his heart and they draw him back to the booths as surely as the sea calls the sailor.
Once at Syracuse, as Kenneth brooded (like the good Arcadian that he was) over the deep tranquillity of the Fonte d’ Arethusa, two pretty girls near him asked their duenna who Arethusa might be? She could not say, but Kenneth Grahame could and did. And to a pair of little princesses he told, standing bare-headed and mighty courtly, the old legend of how a frightened nymph became first a spring of running water, then, as a secret river, how she fled under the sea and, lastly, how she rose again in safety to make a happy ending just where the present party stood.
And at lovely Taormina ‘the key’ admitted him to the orange groves where the jewelled lizards run in that bit of long-ago England which is still the house and estate bestowed on the first Lord Nelson by the King of the two Sicilies. There the English modes of the time of Trafalgar were observed in their continuity. And there old manuscripts and relics were examined by the author of The Twenty-first of October as likewise was some ‘admirable white wine’ which had been forty years in the dark and now trickled into the big monogramed goblets ‘like molten sunshine’. Somebody quoted as he raised his glass, ‘“It’s Trafalgar Day,” said Selina.” “And nobody cares”’, Kenneth Grahame capped him and set his beaker down empty.
Taormina is full of saints and superstitions. Two of the former were black. ‘Comme votre chapeau noir,’ a Cockney linguist told a French girl at table d’hote. He spoke of San Philipo — Neri and he was right. A journey was made to the shrine of the saint which is perched on a high rock.
It was the feast day when San Philipo comes forth on a litter, borne, at break-neck speed, by fifty bearers. A slip, a stumble on the part of any one of these latter, means failure of the crops. To-day no stumble was made and all was therefore well.
So San Philipo proceeded to ‘cast out devils’. Those ‘possessed’, young and good-looking wenches all of them, were bidden to kiss the saint and be restored. One refused — for a time — pouting and flouncing. ‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Kenneth, looking at the sullening minx. He was told that she would not answer when spoken to, that she was, in fact, possessed by a devil of dumbness. ‘“Mum-saucy”, that devil’s called in Berkshire,’ said he.
To country fairs he went when opportunity served, for, though the unthinking (but unthinkable) cruelty to the live stock exposed for sale revolted him, he could yet listen to cheapjacks and enjoy their jests and chaffer with the witty vendors of inanimate merchandise such as paper butterflies and flowers. Of the latter, once he said to their stout and good-looking contadina, ‘Your bouquets, Signora, are fine enough for a church.’
‘For a church?’ flashed she, ‘but they are fine enough for a salon.’
Perhaps the best bit of keyholing on the part of the ‘golden key’ was to admit its bearer to the appeal court of Palermo where Paolo, the brigand, was appealing against a sentence of one hundred years’ imprisonment which (since capital punishment is not to Sicilian taste) he had received for numerous malefactions, including thirteen proved murders.
Paolo was an archdeaconal looking man of middle age, and of a portly habit. His complexion was as apple-blossom, he was heavily manacled and he was surrounded by a bristling guard which he kept in smiling humour by his cheerful sallies and witty conversation. There was no public in court except Kenneth Grahame to whom one small soldier was allotted as sufficient personal protection for a man so large as he. There were the judges (to each of whom ten bayonets made bodyguard) who, eventually granting Paolo’s appeal, reduced his sentence to one of ninety years. There were counsel for and against; and to each advocate a guard of five soldiers sufficed. The well of the court was filled by an army corps. In the dock stood, of course, the urbane Paolo who, presently, overjoyed by his success, became more amusing than ever and was finally led back to jail by an escort now convulsed with laughter.
I will take yet one more incident of the ‘golden key’.
It was a rainy day in Brittany; and the Landes are forlorn when it rains. A wedding was in process and the guests, hand-in-hand, capered through the wet streets of a little town pausing before each wine-shop on their itinerary to execute a set dance. The men wore glossy, black, short-jacketed suits and low-crowned black hats, wide and heavy of brim. The women also wore black dresses banded, on sleeve and skirt, with black velvet. They were coiffed with the elaborately goffered Brittany cap and an otherwise sombre scheme was enlivened, a little, by gala aprons of flowered brocade — rose and gold, silver and blue, green and lavender.
These folk danced woodenly and without spirit, their faces seemed as melancholy to Kenneth as ‘seven years of famine’. They went on their way to a private dance-room where the main festivities were to be.
As at Siena so at Pont Aven. Some one noticed the tall Englishman and, addressing him as ‘Mon Colonel’, invited him to take a part in the revels. Within doors matters became a little more cheerful. Even so, however, the party was only too evidently a frost.
But of a sudden there was among the guests a dumpy, slatternly, not so young woman with a vacant, turnip face. Her sleeves were rolled up above her fat, red elbows. She wore no goffered, snowy cap. Her coarse, untidy hair strayed, in fiercest carrot, from under a check duster bound about her head. No gala apron was hers but, around her ample middle, a sack was draped. And yet a glossy-suited swain hastened to take her rough hand. And a miracle came. This almost grotesque figure suddenly assumed the attributes of a premiere danseuse so agile was she, so gay, so animated, so graceful. Her eyes sparkled, her lips smiled. She was beautiful. She wa
s a lyric. And the whole party, inspired, followed her, first with verve then with abandon and delight.
‘Mon Colonel’ was charmed and, during an interlude, he sought and obtained an introduction. The sylph apologized for her lack of wedding clothes. ‘You see, Monsieur, I was making my dishes, my arms were in the water when they fetched me. They had to fetch me because the dance was not going, oh, not going at all. And when that is so I must come and dance with them for then all goes well indeed. For I love to dance and it is I who make others love to dance. In rain and sun I have danced over every stone in Pont Aven. I am not always so graceless in my toilet, but to-day they would not, could not wait. No moment might I have to change my apron, no moment to put on my cap.’
‘Mademoiselle,’ said Monsieur le Colonel, ‘your sister is my old friend.’
‘So, Monsieur?’— ‘Your sister Thalia — for surely you are Terpsichore’s self?’ She dropped him a smiling ‘reverence’ and a partner claimed her. ‘And, well — anyhow she didn’t deny it,’ said Kenneth Grahame.
CHAPTER XVI. ‘A DARK STAR’
WHAT follows is the last address that Kenneth Grahame delivered. It was spoken within a stone’s throw of the Thames and to an audience that came from near and far to fill a village-hall to overflow. It was the only occasion upon which I, his biographer, had heard him speak in public. He was over seventy years old. Yet when he stood up under the arc-light he was as upright as a man of half his age and his voice was musical, far-reaching and young. He named his address ‘A Dark Star’.
And this is what he said:
Complete Works of Kenneth Grahame Page 100