by Ouida
Moreover, it is strange to note how, with the vulgarisation of the towns and of the landscapes in this classic land, the human physiognomy loses its classic unity and grace, grows heavier, coarser, meaner, commoner, changes indeed entirely its type and colouring; the camus or the snub nose replaces the aquiline, the scrofulous mouth replaces the lips shaped like a Cupid’s bow; the eyes diminish in size and grow lack-lustre; the beautiful oval outline of cheek and chin alters to the bull-dog jaw and puffy cheeks; the clear and pure skin alters to the sodden, pallid, unwholesome complexion of the new type. This is no exaggerated statement; anyone can see the change for himself who will take the trouble to observe such young Italians as throng the second-rate and the third-rate cafés and dining-saloons of cities, and then go into the more remote country, and see the Italiote race still in its integrity, in old-world hamlets of the Abruzzi or the Apennines, in forest-sheltered nooks of the Sabine or the Carrara mountains, in sea-faring, wind-swept villages of the Veneto, in nomad sheep-folds on the oak-studded grass plains of the Basilicata, or in old walled towns, calm and venerable, in the lap of the high hills, where the shriek of the engine has not yet been heard; where it is still unknown, that which Loti calls in his latest work, ‘cette chose de laid, de noirâtre, de tapageur, d’idiotement empressée, qui passe vite vite, ébranle la terre, trouble ce calme délicieux par des sifflets et des bruits de ferailles, le chemin de fer, le chemin de fer! — plus nivelant que le temps, propageant la basse camelote de l’industrie, déversant chaque jour de la banalité et des imbéciles.’
In the provinces he will still find, in thousands of living creatures, the youths of Luca Signorelli, the knights of Giorgione and Carpaccio, the young gods of Paolo Veronese, the noble grey-beards of Tiziano, the stately women of Michelangiolo, the enchanting children of Raffaelle, and Correggio. But in the towns, and in the country where it receives the moral and physical miasma of the towns, he will find little else but the debased modern type, with its snigger of conceit, its cynical grin, its criminal’s jaw, its cutaneous eruptions, its dull and insolent eyes, its stunted growth, and its breath foul with nicotine and chemical drinks, such as the modern schools, and the modern scientists, and the modern dram-shops have made it.
Commerce, from being beneficent, is fast becoming a curse. It usurps and absorbs all place and all energy. Its objects are allowed to push out of existence all higher aims; armies and navies exist only to protect it; and an English Premier was not ashamed at a Lord Mayor’s banquet to declare that this was their unique aim: to conquer fresh fields for trading, and protect the trader in his invasion of the rights of others. His Secretary of State for the Colonies and his Chancellor of the Exchequer have, still more recently, repeated after him this singularly ignoble view of a nation’s duty, and of a soldier’s and sailor’s obligation.
The Secretary of the Colonies, indeed, rising to unwonted enthusiasm, added that all the greatness of Great Britain lies in its commerce. No doubt this may be a fact; but it is not an ennobling fact; and it is one which is the parent of gross sins, and the enemy of high ideals; in the name of commerce, murder, theft, and torture are all legalised, and the most brutal egotism deified; it can be at best only a material greatness which is thus consolidated.
To measure the virtue of a nation by its commerce alone is like measuring the virtue of a man solely by the amount of his income. This manner of estimation is one common in the world, but it can never be considered a high standard. However, this excuse of the prior and dominant claims of commerce which may be put forward in the case of Great Britain for the sacrifice to it of all other interests cannot be alleged by Italy except in some districts of the north. What requires protection in five-sixths of Italy, and only suffers extinction through fiscal pressure, is small commerce: personal arts, crafts, and trades, which flourished so happily in past times, and would still live in fair peace and comfort were they not stoned out of existence by a merciless taxation, direct and indirect. These neither disfigure nor offend the beautiful and venerable little towns in which they dwell; the smith has his anvil under a Lombard arch, the apothecary keeps his ointments and simples in old majolica vases, the barber’s pole slants under a shrine of the Renascence, the cloth-seller piles his bales against the sculpture of a Seicento wall, the seedsman’s sacks show the shining berries in their gaping mouths behind the iron scroll-work of mediæval kneeling-windows. It is not they who have hurt their birthplaces. It is the English syndicate, the Jew syndicate, the German money-changer, the American tram-contractor, the foreign electric company, the foreign co-operative store-keeper, who have no end but their own gain, and who tempt to shameful acts those native to the soil, in whose hands lie the fate of these historic, and late happy, places.
Ferrero has, concerning this, a true and touching passage which is much worthier of him than his views regarding Lombardy and the factories. He says, in a recent able article on the ‘Miseria e Richezza in Italia’: —
‘The tendencies of new commercial life, in its immense enterprises, is to send money and movement into a very few amongst the cities of Italy, the others live content with their small traffic and trade; though trembling when the fleet well-springs of their small fortunes are menaced or run dry. Many of these towns were in other days rich, and still preserve the evidences of their splendid past in sumptuous palaces, spacious squares, monumental churches; a sense of venerable years, of profound repose lie on them; yet a sad and cruel tragedy often passes between these walls; beneath the magnificent palaces of the Renascence and the beautiful mediæval Lombard churches, the populace perishes slowly of hunger. The small ancient industries disappear, crushed out by the victorious rivalry of the great tradesmen of the north. The ruin of these small industries and of these individual crafts began some decades ago; but it was much less cruelly felt then than it is now, and the sole recourse or solace now left to it is in revolt. A revolt to which the Government only replies by fixed bayonets, and a duty on corn, which is a crime.’
Ferrero, as a political economist is bound to do, considers that no means should be taken to artificially sustain ancient methods of work and trade, but he says with entire truth that to artificially depress and deplete them is on the part of the State an abominable act. To wear out the temper and patience of the populace with harassing edicts; to drive to desperation those who are cheerful and contented in an honestly supported poverty; to starve them by artificially raised food-prices, and by gate-taxes, which ruin the small trader, the modest householder, and the rural vendor alike; to render it, by a monstrous taxation, impossible for small industries to exist; to levy income-tax (focatico) on the poorest labourer — this is the terrible error, the inexcusable cruelty, of which the actual, and every preceding, Italian Cabinet is, and has been, guilty. If there be revolution in the air, who can wonder? The granaries are guarded by battalions, whilst millions are thrown away on bad statues to Savoy princes. These are facts which it is not necessary for a man to know his A B C to read. But they are the primer which is daily placed before the eyes of the many various peoples of Italy from the Col de Tenda to Cape Sorano; and these peoples are of rare intelligence even where wholly illiterate: often, indeed, most intelligent where most illiterate.
There were, not many years ago, a great measure of mirth and contentment in all the minor cities of Italy, and in the small towns and the big walled villages; much harmless merry-making and pastime, much simple and neighbourly pleasure, much enjoyment of that ‘ben’ di Dio,’ the blessed air and sunshine. Most of it has been killed now; starved out, strangled by regulations and penalties and imposts, and a fiendish fiscal tyranny; dead like the poor slaughtered forgotten conscripts in Africa.
But this opens out a political question, and it is not of politics that these pages treat, but of art and its outrage: above all, of such outrage in Venice; since the President of her Academy did me, of late, the honour to say to me, ‘Non può Lei far nulla per salvare la nostra povera Venezia?’ Alas! how powerless are all our f
orces against the ever-rising tide of modern barbarism!
A precious intaglio of exquisite workmanship is being broken up and pulverised under our eyes; and no one cares.
I know a wide plain, intersected by many streams, and lying full in the light of the west; these streams are filled from August to October with millions of white water-lilies.
Nothing more beautiful can be beheld than these countless water-courses covered with these cups of snow, which share the clear, slowly-rippling streams only with the water-wagtail and the sedge-warbler, the bullrush, and the flag. They resemble exactly the river on which the Virgine delle Rocce drift with their brothers and Claudio. But the peasants push their black, flat-bottomed boats recklessly amongst the silver goblets of the flowers, crashing into them and breaking them with brutal indifference, and raking them into heaps in their boats, to be cast up on to the oozing banks to rot and serve as land manure; the boorish insensibility of the boatmen is typical of their time; the lilies would serve quite as well for manure were they allowed to live out their lovely life, and were not gathered until they were yellow and faded; but they who rake them in do not wait for their natural season of decay; they smash and break them in full flower as they kill birds on the nest in the fields and hedges.
Their fate is like the fate of that greater lily, rosy-red at sunset, which lies cradled on the waters between Mestre and Murano; and which is roughly and painfully being uprooted and destroyed that a pack of foreign traders and native attorneys may wax fat and lay up gold.
No doubt the fate of Venice is common in these days; no doubt, all over the world, capitalists and socialists join hands across the gulf of their differences to unite in the destruction of all that is beautiful, graceful, harmonious, and venerable.
But in Italy such destruction is more sad and shameful than anywhere else in Europe, by reason of the magnificence and glory of her past, and in view of the pitiful fact that the land, which was a Pharos of light and leading to the earth, is now every year and every day receding farther and farther into darkness: that dreadful darkness of the modern world which comes of polluted waters and polluted air, of the breath of poisoned lungs, and the pressure of starving crowds. The basest form of venality, the lowest form of greed, have fastened on her with the tentacles of the devil-fish; and are every hour devouring her.
The Biography
Caricature of Ouida, Punch, 20 August 1881
Brief Biography by Elizabeth Lee
From ‘Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement’
MARIE LOUISE DE LA RAMÉE, ‘Ouida’ (1839–1908), novelist, born on 1 Jan. 1839 at 1 Union Terrace, Bury St. Edmunds, was daughter of Louis Ramé and his wife Susan Sutton. She owed all her education to her father, a teacher of French, whose mental power was exceptional. She expanded her surname of ‘Ramé’ into ‘De la Ramée’ at an early age. A diary of girlhood from April 1850 to May 1853 (Huntington, Memories, 1911, p-96) proves her precocity, love of reading, and eagerness to learn. She visited Boulogne with her parents in 1850, and accompanied them to London in 1851 to see the Great Exhibition. In 1859 she was living in London at Bessborough House, Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith, and her neighbour and medical adviser, Dr. Francis W. Ainsworth, introduced her to his cousin, William Harrison Ainsworth [q. v.]. She began her literary career under Harrison Ainsworth’s auspices, publishing in the ‘New Monthly Magazine’ a short story entitled ‘Dashwood’s Drag or, the Derby and what came of it’ (1859). Ainsworth, convinced of her ability, accepted and published by the end of 1860 seventeen tales by her, none of which she reprinted, although they brought her into notice. Like her later novels they dealt with dubious phases of military and fashionable life. Her first long novel, ‘Granville de Vigne,’ appeared in the same magazine in 1863. Tinsley published it in three volumes, changing the title with her consent to ‘Held in Bondage’ and paying her 80l. On the title-page Miss Ramé first adopted the pseudonym of ‘Ouida,’ a childish mispronunciation of her name Louise, by which she was henceforth exclusively known as a writer. ‘Strathmore’ followed in 1865, and ‘Idalia,’ written when she was sixteen, in 1867. ‘Strathmore’ was parodied as ‘Strapmore! a romance by “Weeder” ‘ in ‘Punch’ by (Sir) Francis Burnand in 1878. Ouida’s vogue, thenceforth established, was assisted by an attack which Lord Strangford made on her novels in the ‘Pall Mall Gazette.’
From 1860 onwards ‘Ouida’ spent much time in Italy. When in London she stayed at the Langham Hotel, and attracted attention which was not always flattering in literary society. William Allingham met her at a dinner in London in December 1868; he describes her as dressed in green silk, with a sinister clever face, her hair down, small hands and feet, and a voice like a carving-knife (H. Allingham and D. Radford, William Allingham, a Diary, 1907, p-4). She made a more favourable impression on Shirley Brooks in 1870 (Layard, Shirley Brooks, 1907). Bulwer Lytton greatly admired her work, and in 1871 on the publication of ‘Folle-Farine’ he wrote her an eight- page letter in which he hailed the book as a triumph of modern English romance. In 1874 she settled permanently with her mother in Florence, and there long pursued her work as a novelist. At first she rented an ‘apartment’ at the Palazzo Vagnonville. Later she removed to the Villa Farinola at Scandicci, three miles from Florence, where she lived in great style, entertained largely, collected objets d’art, dressed expensively but not tastefully, drove good horses, and kept many dogs, to which she was deeply attached. She declared that she never received from her publishers more than 1600l. for any one novel, but that she found America ‘a mine of wealth.’ In ‘The Massarenes’ (1897) she gave a lurid picture of the parvenu millionaire in smart London society. This book was greatly prized by Ouida, but it failed to sustain her popularity, which waned after 1890. Thenceforth she chiefly wrote for the leading magazines essays on social questions or literary criticisms, which were not remunerative.
Unpractical, and not very scrupulous in money matters, Ouida fell into debt when her literary profits declined, and gradually became a prey to acute poverty. Her mother, who died in 1893, was buried in the Allori cemetery at Florence as a pauper. From 1894 to 1904 Ouida lived, often in a state bordering on destitution, at the Villa Massoni, at Sant’ Alessio near Lucca. From 1904 to 1908 she made her home at Via-reggio, where a rough peasant woman looked after her, and her tenement was shared with dogs which she brought in from the street. A civil list pension of 150l. a year offered her by the prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannennan, on the application of Alfred Austin, George Wyndham, and Lady Paget, was at first declined on the score of the humiliation (Austin, Autobiography, 1835-1910, 1911, ii. 105-6), but her scruples were overcome by her old friend, Lady Howard of Glossop, and Ouida accepted the recognition on 16 July 1906. The pension was granted her in August to date from the previous 1 April. An appeal made to her admirers to subscribe for her relief was met by Ouida’s indignant denial that she was in want. She died on 25 Jan. 1908, at 70 Via Zanardelli, Viareggio, of the effects of pneumonia, and was buried in the English cemetery at the Bagni di Lucca. An anonymous lady admirer erected over the grave a monument representing the recumbent figure of Ouida with a dog at her feet.
Ouida had an artificial and affected manner, and although amiable to her friends was rude to strangers. Cynical, petulant, and prejudiced, she was quick at repartee. She was fond of painting, for which she believed she had more talent than for writing, and she was through life in the habit of making gifts of her sketches to her friends. She knew little at first hand of the Bohemians or of the wealthy men and women who are her chief dramatis personæ. She described love like a precocious school-girl, and with an exuberance which, if it arrested the attention of young readers, moved the amusement of their elders (cf. G. S. Street in Yellow Book, 1895, vi. 167-176). Yet she wrote of the Italian peasants with knowledge and sympathy and of dogs with an admirable fidelity. Her affection for dumb animals grew into a craze, but it came of her horror of injustice. Her faith in all humanitarian causes was earnest and sinc
ere. She strongly sympathised with the Boers through the South African war.
Slightly built, fair, with an oval face, she had large dark blue eyes, and golden brown hair. A portrait in red chalk, drawn in September 1904 by Visconde Giorgio de Moraes Sarmento, was presented by the artist to the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1908. He presented another drawing, made also in her declining years, to the Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St. Edmunds. A memorial drinking fountain (with trough), designed by Ernest G. Gillick, with a medallion portrait, was erected by public subscription at Bury St. Edmunds (unveiled on 2 Nov. 1909); the inscription is by Earl Curzon of Kedleston.
Ouida published forty-four works of fiction either separate novels or volumes of collected short stories. The most popular were ‘Held in Bondage’ (1863, 1870, 1900); ‘Strathmore’ (1865); ‘Idalia’ (1867); ‘Under Two Flags’ (1867); ‘Tricotrin’ (1869); ‘Puck’ (1870); ‘A Dog of Flanders and other Stories’ (1872); ‘Two Little Wooden Shoes’ (1874); ‘Moths’ (1880); and ‘Bimbi, Stories for Children’ (1882), which was translated into French for the ‘Bibliothèque Rose.’ Her books were constantly reprinted in cheap editions, and some of them translated into French, or Italian, or Hungarian. Many of her later essays in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ and the ‘North American Review’ were republished in ‘Views and Opinions’ (1895) and ‘Critical Studies’ (1900). There she proclaimed her hostility to woman’s suffrage and to vivisection, or proved her critical insight into English, French, and Italian literature. Her uncompleted last novel, ‘Helianthus’ (1908), was published after her death.