Tuscan folk-lore and sketches, together with some other papers

Portoferraio, Ferraio, the iron city, as it was originally called, dates, at any rate, from Roman times. The name would suggest this, and the fact is abundantly proved by Roman walls, pavements of brick and marble, tombs with inscriptions, skeletons, lamps, etc., coins of consuls and emperors, workmen’s tools, that were unearthed from time to time during the seventeenth century, when excavations were being made for the subterranean cisterns, guard-houses, powder-magazines, halls of every kind that honeycomb the ground.

Towards the end of April, 1548, there arrived in the bay below Portoferraio a fleet bearing one thousand soldiers, three hundred sappers and miners, and the architect John Baptist Camerini. Ferraio was at that time a heap of ancient ruins, but Cosimo I., the merchant Duke of Tuscany, whose coasts lay open to the invasion of the Turks, and whose galleys were continually assailed by pirates, concluded that the best possible points of defence against these redoubtable enemies were Ferraio and Piombino. With a large sum of money, and a very great deal of diplomacy, he persuaded Charles V. (who thought that the same points of defence would be as irritating to the French as to the Turks) to grant him the places. The agreement was hardly concluded when the Duke’s men landed on the little peninsula, quarried the blocks, ready squared to their hands from the Roman villas and walls, made a brick kiln on the coast near by where there was suitable clay, obtained excellent mortar from the stones of the neighbouring hills, and in a fortnight had raised the walls breast high. Cosimo made two visits to the island to inspect the works, living not in Ferraio itself, but in a house on the hillside opposite, that is still known as the Casa del Duca (Duke’s house), and bears on its garden wall a defaced, weather-stained marble bust of Duke Cosimo. The Turks, the French, the Genoese, and the rest of Cosimo’s many enemies were beside themselves with rage. Elba was wasted throughout its length and breadth, the new town – no longer Ferraio, but Cosmopolis – was besieged by mighty fleets, intrigues were obstinately kept up to induce the Emperor to revoke his grant, but the Duke (now Grand Duke) made head against force and intrigue; the town remained in his hands, and still, as witness to his might, bears over its gateways the proud inscription:

templa, moenia, domos, arces, portum,cosmus florentinorum dux II. a fundamentiserexit an. MDXLVIII

The port, as made by Cosimo, still remains, but the defences and engineering works completed by him and his successors are now deserted, or have been turned into the convict prison, the three white columns of whose water-gate form a striking feature in a view of the port. The convicts are here allowed to work at various trades. Workshops are provided within the prison walls, and a show-room for the sale of their goods. The government exacts a small royalty on objects sold.

A sentimental interest attaches itself to Portoferraio, as being the place which preserved to mankind a sickly puling infant of the name of Victor Hugo. An epigraph by Mario Foresi, on the walls of the town-hall, commemorates the fact.13

Along the shore of that part of the gulf, which lies outside the port, the sea looks as though some eccentric gardener had been laying out garden beds in it, with grassy walks between, and white pyramids at irregular intervals. These are the saline, where the government makes salt (not very good salt either) for its subjects. It produces about 1,152 tons a year, which it sells at the rate of 3d. per pound. Truly a government salt monopoly is not a pleasant thing for peasants, who can get salt alone as a condiment for their soup of cabbages and beans, or their mess of maize flour.

Ferraio, then, takes its name from the principal product of the island, but the mines are not near the town; they are on the eastern coast, at Rio and at Cape Calamita (Loadstone Cape).

Rio, like all other villages in this part of the world, consists of two parts: Rio Alto, whose streets are merely a succession of stairs; and Rio Marina, a modern town, where the mines are. The prevailing colour in Rio Marina is red: red are the hills that shut out the fresh north breezes from the town, red is the sea where the steamers lie off to be loaded, red are the four piers where the trucks go up and down, red the houses, with their curtains, stairs, and furniture. This red ochrous ore is associated, as one ascends the mountain, with the massive and micaceous varieties of hæmatite; so that while one sees red cliffs towering on one side, and solid knobs and blocks of iron, almost native, on the other, one walks over roads that glitter and sparkle like running water, and are almost as slippery as ice.

“And Seius, whose eight hundred slavesSicken in Ilva’s mines,”

writes Lord Macaulay; thereby showing that he had never been to Rio. For there is no mining properly so-called here; there is no tunnelling, no blasting on a large scale. The men work in the open air, digging away the red earth, blowing away the harder masses with small charges of powder or getting them out with picks. The earth is washed in a large cistern, with a revolving paddle-wheel, that keeps the water in continual motion; and the iron thus separated from the clay is loaded on to the ships without further refining.

At present the mines are farmed out by the Government, and produce about 176,516 tons yearly. The men are paid by piece work, and earn from two francs to four francs a day. Only one set of men is kept. When they are not lading foreign vessels, they dig ore, and make great heaps of it; when they are not digging, they lade. It is evident the place wants development.

At the iron quarries of Cape Calamita, where magnetic iron is obtained, we watched the process of lading. A large English-built steamer had come in, under a Genoese captain, for iron, which it was to exchange for coal at Cardiff. She stood in as near to the shore as was safe, and then anchoring, opened three mouths on each side to receive her food. Come out to her six willing slaves, small boats called laconi, with the most audacious masts and yard-arms one can imagine. They look as though they would rend the clouds and pierce the sky; but it is all bluster; the boats are such helpless creatures that if they are to cross the bay, they must have a steam-tug to pull them. The men in the laconi rest planks on the open lips of the monster that towers above them, and proceed to pour down its six gaping throats an infinite number of small baskets of the red, earthy ore. For four consecutive days they feed her, if the weather be fine, and then she goes off to the northern seas, where laconi are unknown, where the water is rarely motionless, and where steam cranes and puffing engines tell of work done in a hurry. It must be confessed, however, that the Elban method is adorably picturesque. Sea, sky, and hills are glowing in the great calm. The big black ship lies motionless; her crew lounge, her jovial, white-suited captain, so proud of his mahogany-fitted passenger ship that used to go to India, stands watching the ore slide in; the Elbans cluster up the sides of the planks to pass the baskets from one to the other; they talk and laugh, showing glittering white teeth; and they wear hanging red fishermen’s caps, patchwork shirts and bright sashes.

Onward along the coasts from Rio, we come to the ancient town of Portolongone, built along the curve of a fine, natural harbour. Sheer above the town, where the Portolongone women flaunt it along their sea front after mass, in the brightest of dresses, and the most artistic of black or white lace head-veils, rises one of the strongest fortresses of the island. It was built in 1603, to the infinite dismay and disturbance of such small fry as the Florentines, Genoese, and the Pope, by Philip III. of Spain. The approach to it is broad, but very steep; the outer ring of fortifications are a city in themselves; and within, across the inner moat and drawbridge, there are spacious squares, clusters of houses, an interesting church, and the large prisons in which are kept criminals condemned to solitary confinement. The prisons we cannot enter, but let us sit for a while in the chaplain’s cool, brick-paved room, sipping the country wine and breaking the long, curled strips of pastry which his hospitable womenfolk have heaped on the table, and listen to what he has to tell us of his charges.

“No,” he says, “they none of them live long, once they come in here; they go mad or fall into consumption, and so die if they have not succeeded in committing suicide first. We have to look out sharply to prevent that. A man managed to do it, though, about a month ago. He tore his shirt into strips and made a slip-knot for his neck, climbed, no one knows how, to the grate in the middle of the deep window-hole, and tied the end of the noose there, bound his own hands together somehow or other, and then kicked away the stool he had been standing on. When he felt himself strangling, he struggled to get free, but his hands were fast, and he only succeeded in pulling the noose tighter and tighter. He was quite dead when they took him down. Outside the prison are a number of cells open to the air, closed by iron gates. You can see them down there.” We were walking about outside by this time, where the convicts not in solitary confinement are building the new prisons. “Every prisoner has an hour’s turn in one of those open-air cells once a day, guards pacing outside the gates the whole time.

“Their food? Well, yes, as you say, it is clean, savoury, and well-cooked” – we had been peeping into the kitchens as we came along – “but they have a very small allowance; a plate of soup given half at midday and half in the evening (vegetable soup, with pasta in it) and two loaves, not much bigger than rolls, of white bread. It is piteous to see how a stout well-built man dwindles away on this régime. The men who are at work buy extras with their wages. Those who wear chains from ankle to wrist were sentenced under the old penal code. When they go to bed they are chained to the wall. Chains are abolished by the new code.

“The prison consists of two storeys of cells, running down each side of a central corridor that extends up to the roof. Communication with the cells of the upper storey is obtained by an iron balcony which runs the length of the building at the height of the first storey. All the cell doors open towards the inner end of the prison, where an altar has been set up.

“When I say mass, they are all set ajar (there is in every case an iron gate, kept locked, inside the wooden door), and so the prisoners can look at the altar without seeing each other. I go round to them at regular intervals, unless someone calls for me specially, and talk to them from outside the iron gates. No, I am not afraid, but it is the custom. They generally like to have me go, and appear really to appreciate the comforts of religion. Read! Ah, you saw Library printed up near the gate, did you? But there are very few books in it. What can we give them? They must not read novels, and they must not read politics. I give them a religious paper about the miraculous Madonna at Pompeii, and some of them read that. Otherwise they do nothing. All the work of the place, washing, nursing, cooking, building, cleaning, is done by convicts. Even the barbers are convicts, and as they have nearly served their time, and besides get better paid than the others, they are careful of their behaviour; there is no need to be afraid of them. That house down there, with its back against the rock, is the lowest depth of all. The cells are dark, and none but the most refractory prisoners ever go there. It has been empty for some time past.

“Born criminals? No, I don’t much believe in that doctrine; I think that in most cases one whom Lombroso would call a born criminal, may be saved by careful training. Before I came here I knew a man who brutally killed his wife while his little boy looked on. The man was condemned; we looked after the bringing up of the boy. At first but little could be done with him. He would bully his fellows, and then, crossing his arms over his breast, would throw back his head defiantly and say: ‘Do you know who I am? My father was the terror of the village.’ He did not seem to know what pain was. I have seen him undergo an operation in his finger which had been caught in a machine, without a sign of suffering. One day the lads were working at a machine, and one of them grew tired. ‘Who’ll take my place?’ he called out. No answer. ‘Will no one help me?’ Another pause. Then the criminal’s son called out, ‘I will.’ He went to the machine and worked there till he was nearly dropping with fatigue. But from that day he was completely changed, and he has grown up into a quiet, trustworthy, hard-working man.”

By this time our courteous host had accompanied us back to the inner gateway; and so, taking leave of him, we left that terrible artificial world, over which, with a hush still greater than that of the sea and sky and mountain, broods the awful presence of unknown crime terribly expiated.

THE FIRST STEP OF A MIGHTY FALL

“Le premier degré d’une chute profonde,” says Victor Hugo, speaking of Elba in connection with Napoleon. And it is impossible to remain in the island long without conjuring up the figure of the fallen prince hurrying hither and thither with one or two attendants, building his villa, enquiring into the agricultural and mineral wealth of his new kingdom, collecting his taxes and his customs duties, strengthening his fortifications, holding the tiny court of which the people of Portoferraio were so inordinately proud, carrying on his amours, chatting with the peasants and the proprietors – and under the mask of all this activity enlisting men, collecting stores, conducting a continuous secret correspondence with Naples, with Corsica, with France, undecided whether to make himself King of Italy or to go back to be Emperor of the French.

Elba, towering above her satellites Pianosa, Monte Cristo, S. Stefano, Giglio, with the rocky islet of Palmaiola as sentinel in the very narrow channel towards Piombino, is an excellent place to plot in, and a very difficult place to watch. Napoleon, as was but natural, took in the advantages of his position at a glance. He had hardly arrived in Elba before he claimed the neighbouring islands as part of his domain, and began to establish outposts on them. Thus he surrounded himself with a barrier within which no foreign ship could penetrate without violating the independence secured to him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau; and which at the same time afforded him a valid excuse for short sea-trips and for a constant movement of small vessels eminently adapted to conceal secret negotiations of every kind, and especially his intercourse with Corsica. In this most favourable position, shut off from prying eyes by diplomacy and nature combined, within easy communicating distance on the one hand of Tuscany and of Murat, on the other of Corsica and France, Napoleon remained from May 4th, 1814, to February 26th, 1815. With his political intrigues during that time we do not propose to concern ourselves, nor with the vexed question raised by some disappointed Frenchmen, who seem to have understood neither the Treaty of Fontainebleau nor the geography of Elba, as to England’s complicity in his escape; rather we would picture him in the places with which we too are familiar, would shadow him forth not as the banished Emperor of France, but as Monarch of Elba.

By the time the English frigate, the Undaunted, that bore him, reached Portoferraio, Napoleon had decided on the line of conduct he intended to pursue: that of a monarch on a small scale, intent on developing the resources of his kingdom, firm in exacting respect for his new flag from all maritime powers. And so well did he play his part of miniature kingship that even Sir Neil Campbell, English Commissioner in the island, thought that he was contented; and more than once opined that if Napoleon were well supplied with money – as he should have been by the terms of the treaty – he would remain quietly where he was; but he was such a very eccentric person that, if he ran short, there was no knowing what improper conduct he might pursue.

He assumed this position at once on his arrival in the harbour of Portoferraio. He refused to land until his new subjects should have had time to prepare an ovation suitable to the reception of a monarch, and he issued an address to General d’Alhesme, then commanding in the island, in the following terms: —

“General! I have sacrificed my rights to the interests of my country, reserving the sovereignty and possession of the island of Elba. To this the Powers have consented. Have the kindness to make known the new state of things to the inhabitants, and the choice that I have made of their island as my abode on account of the mildness of their customs and their climate. Tell them that they will always be the objects of my warmest interest.”

The Portoferraiesi took the Emperor at his word. They were overwhelmed with gratitude at the honour he showed them. They received him with flags, with fireworks and with Te Deums; they sent deputations to wait on him; they presented him with a map of his dominions – a very bad one, by-the-by – on a silver tray; they gave up their best furniture to furnish, provisionally at least, the Palazzina dei Mulini, just under Forte Falcone, where he was to live; they took his officers into their homes; they put on their finest dresses and went to receptions in the town-hall in the evening, telling themselves that their city already seemed like one of the capitals of Europe. And Napoleon fostered their delusion. He proposed to readopt the name given to the city by Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, and to call it Cosmopoli; deriving the first part of the word, not from Cosimo, but from the Greek kosmos, world, declaring that his Cosmopoli was to be the City of the World. At the same time he built and altered extensively in and around his house, adding another storey, planting a garden, forming a library, erecting a tribunal and theatre; he shipped over furniture from the mainland; he prepared a residence close to his own for his mother; he bought land and built a country-house not far from Portoferraio; he sent for his sister Pauline; he prepared extensive stabling; he established a lazaretto in the harbour, which was to compete with that of Leghorn: everything pointed to complete acquiescence in his position.

He had, in fact, scarcely landed before he began to take possession of his new dominions, as a good monarch should do, and had soon visited the places of importance in Elba and its dependant isles. His corpulence rendered climbing and even walking difficult, but his active spirit overcame all difficulties; and the Elbans who met him, his officers and attendants, continually on the roads and mountain paths, felt quite convinced that the Emperor was devoting himself to their welfare.

One of his first expeditions brought vividly before him the extent of his fall. He had visited all the forts and surroundings of Portoferraio, had collected information concerning the salt manufacture (a Government monopoly) and the tunny fishery; and turning to the left from the land gate of Portoferraio, had pushed as far as the iron mines of Rio – then, as now, Government property – and the fort of Longone; but he had not yet climbed the hills that shut in his capital at the back. These are crossed by a few bridle-paths and by a road, sheer up and down, paved now with the native rock, now with loose, rolling stones, and known as the Colle Reciso. About half-way up the Portoferraio side of this road, a breakneck path leads to the right, up the face of a hill called St. Lucia, whence the Etruscans once drew copper for their bronze. The Emperor, Colonel Campbell, General Bertrand, and their attendants, riding to the top of this hill, found themselves among the ruins of a very large ancient castle. The towers lie prone in enormous masses of masonry, the walls have partly fallen in, partly been quarried for surrounding buildings; of roof there is no trace; the place is simply a large grass-grown square surrounded by naked, ruined blocks of masonry. Not quite abandoned, either, for in one corner is a tiny church with a couple of rooms built on to it in which a hermit once lived and died. Here the party halted and looked round. They were dominating the narrowest part of the island. Right and left the hills stretch away in barren, fantastic peaks now crowned with ruins, now sheer with granite cliffs; before and behind the sea is visible in four different places. Napoleon looked around for a little while, taking in the principal points of the landscape, and then, turning to Campbell, said, with a quiet smile: – “Eh, mon île est bien petite.”

Later on he would often follow the Colle Reciso down into the fertile, vine-covered plain of Lacona, which lies at its foot on the southern side. The conditions here, even now, are truly patriarchal. The mountains form a semi-circle about the coast; and in the midst stands the proprietor’s villa surrounded by eucalyptus trees, prickly-pears and aloes – an island among the spreading vineyards. To see the contadini waiting at the well for the master, his arrival with his family, and the respectful familiarity with which they take their orders from their padrone, is to get a glimpse into old world ways and ideas such as does not fall to the lot of everyone.

From this plain springs the headland known as Capo di Stella. It is narrow and low at its base, but rises and swells as it advances into the sea, and becomes a wild rocky hill, with sheer precipices down to the water, covered with lentisks, with aromatic herbs, with great silvery shining thorn-bushes known to the inhabitants as prune caprine. It is the home of hares and innumerable birds. Here Napoleon proposed to make a preserve for game; and actually went the length of arranging matters with the proprietor, Jacopo Foresi, and of making some show of beginning the wall which was to span the isthmus, cutting off the headland from the rest of the estate. Needless to say that the game on Capo di Stella was not in reality profoundly interesting to Napoleon, and that the plan was never carried out. There is an incident recounted of the Emperor in these parts, commemorated by an inscription affixed by the present proprietor, Mario Foresi, to the walls of the house of one of his peasants. A certain Giaconi was ploughing when Napoleon came along, and in his character of one interested in everything, took the ploughshare out of the man’s hands and attempted to guide it himself. But the oxen refused to obey him, overturned the share and spoilt the furrow. Foresi’s inscription runs as follows:

napoleone il grande

quivi passando nel MDCCCXIV.

tolto nel campo adiacente l’aratro d’un contadino

provavasi egli stesso ad arare

ma i bovi rebelli a quelle mani

che pur seppero infrenare l’europa

precipitosamente

fuggirono dal solco.14

Farther along the coast, to the west of Lacona, and separated from it by a semi-circle of almost pathless hills, is the beach and village of Campo, where are extensive granite quarries. To this place also Napoleon paid several visits, and caused a road to be made winding round the base of the hills and joining it with Portoferraio. Must he not develop the resources of his island by providing for the carriage of its granite? Or rather, would not such a road be extremely convenient for keeping up communication with the outlying island of Pianosa, where he was collecting troops and training cavalry? The room where Napoleon passed the night on one of his visits to the village is still shown; an old man, too, blear-eyed and tottering, is listened to with a certain respect by the villagers as he relates how he was nursed and caressed by the Emperor. His father had been a sailor in one of Napoleon’s fleets, had been taken prisoner by Nelson, had spent many years in England, had been ultimately accepted as a sailor on an English ship, and had made his escape from Genoa. Napoleon visited the man, made him relate his experiences, and showed himself affable with the children, as was his general way in Elba.

Most thickly do reminiscences of Napoleon cluster round the lovely village of Marciana. The road leading westwards from Portoferraio skirts the seashore. On the left hand rise cliffs densely overgrown with white heather; below, on the right, lies the shore in a succession of bewitching bays and headlands. A ride of between two and three hours brings one to a village lying along a graceful curve, backed by dense chestnut woods, over which hang the frowning precipices of Monte Capanne, the highest mountain in the island. This is Marciana Marina. Behind it a steep, boulder-paved path, running along a ridge above the chestnut woods, where cicale sing all day long to the sound of falling waters, leads to Marciana Alta, a fortified place defended once by a huge castle. The castle is now a mere shell within which fowls are penned; they pick up a living among the heaps of débris, and drink out of the two halves of the large iron crown which once hung proudly above the Medici arms. To the right of Marciana Alta, a long Via Crucis leads to a church known as the Madonna del Monte. The road is absolutely breakneck, formed of blocks of stone, which devout visitors to the shrine have hammered into the soil at their somewhat eccentric pleasure. The church is one of the richest in the island, possessing beautiful massive silver chalices and lamps, rich vestments, vineyards and fields. It stands in a wood of magnificent chestnut trees, and has at the back a charming semi-circular wall of grey stone, divided by pilasters into three sections, each of which contains an ancient stone mask spouting the coldest, lightest of water. Close by the church is a little house in which a lay hermit lives. What wonder that Napoleon should take a liking to so picturesque a place, renowned throughout the island for the excellence of its air and its water? What wonder that he should love to retire thither, and to wander through the woods to the truculent little village of Poggio that stands up so defiantly on its granite prominence? That he should even like to picnic on the road in the fold of the hills where the five springs keep up a continuous splashing? That he should choose this place to receive that mysterious lady (in reality, the Polish Countess Walewsky) whom the unlucky mayor of Marciana wanted to fête as no less a person than the Empress Marie Louise in person? Surely all this was harmless and natural enough. But follow up the path that leads off to the right of the hermitage, pass out of the shade of the trees and across the granite boulders to the promontory that commands the coast of Elba, the mainland, and Corsica. There two huge masses of rock tower above their comrades. Between them is a little stairway, partly natural, partly artificial, which leads to the top of the outer rock. This presents a natural platform shielded along part of its length by a natural parapet. The parapet has been added to with brickwork, and a deep hole big enough to hold a large flagstaff has been driven into the platform. This was a favourite resort of Napoleon’s. What place could be better for taking the air? And what place could be better for signalling to Corsica, the window-panes of whose villages glitter at so short a distance? As a matter of fact it is some thirty-five miles away; but in the limpid atmosphere of this “isle of the blessed,” distance, like time, seems to be annihilated. Here then, like the hero of Balzac’s tale, would the prodigal sit gazing at his peau de chagrin, now so wofully shrunken, and scheming for some way to reverse the spell and restore it to its former amplitude. Vain dream! from which he was finally awakened by the rude shock of Waterloo. After Napoleon left the island, the people of Marciana put up a pompous inscription on the outer wall of the church. It runs as follows: —