My Life

During a part of my stay in and about Venice, I lived alone in an empty house at San Nicoletto on the Lido. Within a stone's throw was the military prison, dreaming about which, in the empty house, after a luxurious gratuitous dinner, sometimes made night life rather gloomy. I got my non-gratuitous meals at an osteria near-by. I wonder whether the asthmatic little steamer that used to run from the Riva to San Nicoletto is still afloat? It was owned and captained by a conte, who also collected the fares. I patronized his craft for a while, and then in partnership with a corporale, stationed at the San Nicoletto marine signal station, invested in a canoe.

The adventures that we had with this canoe were many and varied. On one occasion, for instance, the canoe and I were suspected of being spies, and came very near being bombarded. I had spent the afternoon in Venice, leaving the canoe near the Giardino Pubblico. It was darker than usual when I was ready to return to the Lido, and I carried no light; but I set out for home undaunted. I had been paddling along serenely enough for fifteen minutes or so, when, on nearing the powder magazine island, or whatever it is between Venice and San Nicoletto that is guarded by a sentry, I was partly awakened from my dreaming by a strenuous "Chi va la?" on my left. I say partly awakened advisedly, because I paid no attention to the challenge, and paddled on. It seemed impossible that anybody could want to learn who I was out there on the water. Again the words rang out, clear and sharp, and again I failed to heed them. The third time the challenge was accompanied by an ominous click of a gun. I came out of my dream like a shot. Why I should be challenged was absolutely unintelligible to me, but that suggestive click jogged my work-a-day senses back into action.

"Amico! Amico!" I yelled.

"Well, draw up here to the landing and let me look at you."

I put about and paddled over to the island, where the sentry detained me nearly half an hour, making me explain how harmless and innocent I was. I must needs tell him who my landlord was on the Lido, which room I occupied in the empty house, why in the name of Maria I lived on the Lido at all, and by what maladetto right I dared cruise in those waters without lights. He finally let me pass on, with the warning that my craft stood a good chance of being sent to the bottom if she passed that way again at night without the proper illumination.

One day this canoe foundered near the Giardino Pubblico, and the accident brought to light a typical Italian trait in the corporale. I thought that it was an exhibition of simple stubbornness at the time, but Brown assured me later that I was mistaken. I was trying to manage things when the canoe put her nose into the mud bank, and the corporale was in the garden, I think, looking on. He was slicked up in his best uniform and looked very fine, but, as a sailor and part owner of the canoe, I thought he should come to her aid in such a case of signal distress. At first he also thought that he ought to bestir himself in the matter, and carefully looked about to see if anybody was watching. Then he picked his way more like a woman with fine lace skirts on than like a man, let alone a sailor, to a dry spot within perhaps thirty feet of the canoe. There he spent himself utterly in telling me how to do what he could do a hundred times better from the shore. All the canoe needed was a good, big shove, which he could have given her without any great inconvenience. I urged him in spotless Italian to get a real genuine move on and send me seaward.

"Ma non – ma non," he kept on whining, pointing to his highly polished shoes and the mud – with which there was no need for him to come in contact. At this juncture Brown and his gondolier hove in sight, and I gave them the shipwreck signal. While they were coming to my rescue, the corporale, again, like a mincing woman, got back into the garden. The gondolier threw me a rope, and then towed me out of my predicament, the corporale watching the maneuvers, cat-like, from his vantage ground above. I waved him adieu, and would not speak to him all of the next day. Brown explained his conduct with the one word —critica. If there is anything that Italians dislike, he told me, it is to be surprised by their neighbors in predicaments that make them appear ludicrous. He said that the corporale would have let the canoe rot in her mud berth before he would have subjected himself to the scrutiny of the onlookers in an attempt to save her. The reason he retired to the garden so quickly when Brown appeared was because he saw critica coming his way.

I am afraid that a similar fright possessed him several weeks later, when the canoe was blown through the Nicoletto Strait and out into the billowy Adriatic, whence she never returned. I was not present when the accident occurred, but "they" say that the corporale was, and that all that was necessary to save the canoe was to swim a short distance from shore and tow her back. But the "public" was doubtless looking on, and the corporale was afraid of the critical comments and suggestions.

I had the most fun with the canoe, while she lasted, in the small, narrow canals in Venice proper. Day after day, I cruised with her in different parts of the city, exploring new routes and sections, lunching where the hour overtook me, and in the evening paddled back to port on the Lido, feeling very nautical and picturesque. The principal fun came when I had to turn corners in the small canals. The gondoliers have regular calls, "To the right," and "To the left," and by rights I should have used them, too. But, somehow, all I could think of when surprised at a turn by an oncoming craft was to cry "Wa-hoo!" at the top of my voice, and then hug the side of some buildings till the danger had passed. The way the gondoliers scolded me was enough to have frightened a prizefighter, but I learned to expect scoldings and not to mind them. On the Riva, where I was wont to forgather with many of them, they finally got to calling me "Wa-hoo."

Of one of the Riva gondoliers I made quite an intimate, and when I moved back to Venice from the Lido we were almost daily together, either on the water or in his sandalo, or swapping yarns over a glass of wine and Polenta in some osteria.

On one occasion he came to me and said: "Signor, will you not accompany me on a journey to the fine lace and glasshouses in Venice?"

I said: "Gladly."

He continued: "You will see many fine things in our lace houses and our glass houses."

I said: "Let us see these wonderful things."

So we proceeded up the Grand Canal; afterwards we went down the Grand Canal. Since Lord Byron's time I believe there is a slight difference of opinion as to which is up or down in this canal. We got into Sambo's sandalo, and Sambo took me to one of the great lace houses, where I had to expose all my ignorance of lace, and yet try to appear to be a specialist in this commodity; then, to a place where what I understand is called Venetian glass was sold; then to other places. During none of our calls did I make a purchase, much to the disgust of the attending clerks, but fully within the agreement with Sambo that I should not buy that which I did not want or did not have money enough to buy. I noticed that Sambo received either a brass check or a small amount in Italian currency on each call. Eventually this pilgrimage to places of Venetian commercialism was finished. I said to Sambo: "What in the world is the meaning of all this?"

He said: "Why, signor, did you not observe? We have been friendly together, have we not?"

I said: "Certainly, Sambo, but it strikes me as funny that you should take me to places where you know I have no idea of buying anything."

"Ah, signor, you do not understand the situation here in Venice. You see, these glass people, these lace people – and other people – give us gondoliers a commission. When we get so many brass checks, we go over and cash them in, and get a certain percentage for such business as we may have brought to the business houses. When we get money, of course that comes in the shape of tips such as you have seen, and we put that direct in our pockets.

"I want to say to you, signor, that although my story may offend you, and you may think I had no right to take you on the ride, which, as you will remember, I suggested should be on me, I have succeeded in accumulating nine lire. Signor, please do not take offense. I knew the game. Will you not come as my guest to-night at one of our gondolier's restaurants, where I will spend every one of those nine lire on a good dinner?"

I suppose that Sambo is still inviting other innocent people like myself to pilgrimages to the lace and glass houses of Venice.

Of Rome, which I visited after my experiences in Venice, there is also much that I should like to say literarily, if I felt that I could do it. Most writers dwell heavily on the ancient sadness of Rome. There was nothing in the ancient sadness of Rome, during the month that I spent in that city, in the spring of 1895, which compared with the sadness which came over me on going to the English cemetery and reading the names of certain great men known to all the world, and of certain young men known personally to me, Englishmen and Americans, who are buried in that picturesque but unwaveringly sad spot.

A friend of mine, who has since settled down and gone in for all the intricacies of what settling down means, was with me in Rome, on a certain night in 1895, when there was a discussion of what was the best thing for two students at a German university to do. It was decided that, first of all, Gambrinus, in the Corso, was the best place for considering things. I remember that my friend lost his umbrella. As it came time to leave the Gambrinus, he became very indignant over the disappearance of this umbrella, which he thought should be in his hands at any time that he wanted it. The umbrella was not to be found. The supposition was that one of the waiters had taken it. How could this be proved? We called our waiter and said to him: "Where is that umbrella?"

He replied: "Signor, I have no idea."

My friend said: "Well, suppose you get an idea just about as quickly as you know how."

The waiter said that he would do as suggested. He went to the proprietor's wife, and came back pretty soon and said that there was no record of any missing umbrella.

My friend, who was completely occupied with the determination that he was going to get that umbrella, got up, and, in his very abrupt way, said: "You bring me my 'bamberillo.' If you don't, there will be trouble."

On account of fear that there might be some other instruments used than those which would ordinarily go after this pronouncement of my friend, I suggested that we proceed up a certain stairway and ask the proprietor's wife whether she did not think that my friend should get his "bamberillo" back. She replied, with such pathos as a German woman is capable of: "I fear you do not understand the Italian mind. This Italian mind is strange and peculiar."

"Yes," my friend said in German, "it is so strange that I cannot find my 'bamberillo.'"

The good Hausfrau said: "Well, you must excuse us down in this country of —Ja, Sie kennen das Vieh, nicht wahr?"

From Rome I went to Naples. My money gave out in this town with pronounced persistency. I received there fifty dollars a month to meet all bills – promissory notes and other financial engagements. My home during my residence in the city was a room which I shared unwillingly with two of the most marvelous cats that I have ever known. Some men say they like cats. It would please me to have any one of these men sentenced to ten days' imprisonment in my room in the Santa Lucia in Naples. The song called "Santa Lucia" is often heard in our streets. It is a pleasant song for those who have never had to live in the Santa Lucia with cats as I did. I honestly tried to increase my Italian vocabulary with the Neapolitan variations while in Naples. But I could never find any word, vituperative or otherwise, that would explain what those cats that prowled around in that strange room in the Santa Lucia meant to me. I make so much of them because they made so much of me during my fifty-dollar-a-month existence in Italy. I found it difficult to live within my bounds. My fifty dollars a month were generally all torn to pieces by the twentieth of the month, and not always on account of nonsense. At this time I was much engaged in buying books that interested me, and I think it fair to say that a good quarter of my monthly stipend went for their purchase.

On the twentieth, particularly in Naples, I was very ragged with my fifty dollars. I had a proprietor there in this catful Santa Lucia who was a North Italian. My fifty dollars did not reach me as quickly as I wanted it and I got worried. My rent was due. It was a problem how I was to make this plain to the landlord. In the end I went to him and said in all frankness: "I should like to say to you, signor, that I am very much disappointed that my money has not come. It will come. It must come. There seems to be some delay."

Again there was that fine Italian touch. He said: "My son, do not be worried. I understand your difficulty. Mio figlio," and he patted me on the back, "you will be taken care of." Is there anything in the English language that can beat that?

While I was stopping in the Santa Lucia I took my meals, such as I could get, in a restaurant one or two doors away. In this restaurant were all kinds of truckmen, cabmen and men in general who have to spend much of their time in the open air. I had learned in Venice that there was a strong bond of sympathy among Italian criminals.

It occurred to me that while I was among some of these people, it would be worth while to learn something about the Maffia Society and the Camorra. I had heard indirectly that these societies were working pretty well in their own interests at home.

How many Italians there are in the United States I do not know. It is questionable whether any one else knows exactly. We certainly know that there are several millions of them. My interest in inquiring in Naples, so far as I was able, into the workings of the Maffia and the Camorra, was to find out, if I could, what power they were alleged to have over their own countrymen.

In pursuance of these facts, I ran up against a facchino. A facchino is a common porter in Italy.

I said to one of my facchino friends: "Can you not make me acquainted with some friend in the Maffia Society?"

He was a genuine lounger, a stevedore, a longshoreman – and a big man.

He said to me, in effect: "Are you not wise enough to go into that park, where you can meet anybody, and find out all you want to know about the Maffia or the Camorra?"

I said: "Yes, I suppose I am. But what will it cost?"

"Why, you just go over there. Perhaps you will find somebody of the stripe you want; perhaps you won't."

I made no discoveries that were of any value. But what is to be said about my friend, the facchino, and the Maffia and the Camorra? I look at it this way. If these people have quarrels which so concern themselves, then let them proceed on their own lines. If they have quarrels in my country, and think that by any chance their secret societies can rule my country, they have terribly mistaken their calling. They are not so dangerous as the newspapers make them out to be. They believe, true enough, in their end of the game, to a finish, which can sometimes be disturbing.

I asked my facchino friend what he thought in general of the people who might be called Maffia or Camorra in the park which he suggested.

"Well," he said, "I no more know what the Maffia or the Camorra will do, than I know what will happen to me in the next five minutes."

"Then I must make my own conclusions," was my reply

CHAPTER XVII

A VISIT TO TOLSTOY

In midsummer of 1896 I learned to know Tolstoy. It was at the time of the National Exhibition at Nijni-Novgorod. Cheap excursion tickets on the railroads and river boats were to be had throughout the summer, while correspondents for foreign newspapers were given first-class passes for three months in every rod of railroad trackage in the country. It was an opportunity for exercising Wanderlust in style such as had never before come my way. Baedeker's little book on the Russian language was bought, introductions to friends in St. Petersburg were secured, and away I went to spend preliminarily a week or so as a field-hand, or in any other capacity that I was equal to, on Tolstoy's farm, at Yasnaya Polyana, an estate about one hundred and fifty miles south of Moscow. At that time I was not sure about the railroad pass. In St. Petersburg, friends kindly put me in the way of getting it, and on I went to Moscow, and, before the summer was over, to hundreds of other towns and villages in different parts of the Empire. On two hundred and fifty Russian words, or thereabouts, my passport, free railroad transportation, and perhaps $75, I traveled, before I got back to Berlin, about twenty-five thousand miles. I kept my hotel expenses down by living on trains. First-class railroad accommodations include a bed. So when night came I calmly took my berth in a train bound in any direction long enough to secure me a good rest. In the morning I got out and looked about me, or rode on as I liked. This proceeding also saved me passport dues at hotels, an item of considerable expense in Russia if one does much traveling. My meals were found at the stations, which provide the best railroad restaurant service found anywhere. With all the saving, sight-seeing and riding, however, my vacation over, I was heartily glad to return to Germany, and for months afterwards my Wanderlust was delightfully under control.

By all odds the most interesting national feature that Russia allowed me to see was Count Tolstoy. The Tsar, the museums, the palaces, the large estates, the great unworked Ninghik– these men and things were entertaining, but they did not take my fancy as did the novelist and would-be philanthropist. And yet I had never read any of Tolstoy's novels before meeting him, and my notions of his altruism were vague, indeed – about what the ideas are of people who have never been in Russia or seen Tolstoy, and who, on learning that you have been there and met him ask immediately: "Say, on the level, is he a fakir or not?"

Once and for all, so far as my simple intercourse with him is concerned, it may be most boldly declared that he never was a fakir – no more of one when he was sampling all the vices he could hear of, than he is now in urging others not to follow his examples as an explorer of Vicedom. It is strange, but when a man, who has sampled everything that he could, in the way of deviltry, and then quits such sampling, says that he has enough, and attempts to steer others on a better tack than he took, there is a prodigious amount of doubt in thousands of minds as to whether the man sampled enough cussedness to know what the real article is, or whether others should fight shy of what he saw or not.

The man at Yasnaya Polyana in 1896 was a fairly well preserved old gentleman, with a white beard, sunken gray eyes, overhanging bushy eyebrows, a slight stoop in the shoulders, which were carrying, I think, pretty close to seventy years of age. He wore the simple peasant clothes about which there has been so much nonsensical talk. Every man who lives in the country in Russia, puts on, when summer comes, garments very similar in cut and shape to those worn by the Ninghik. The main difference during the warm months between the Ninghik's outfit and that of his employer's is that the latter's is clean and the Ninghik's isn't.

My purpose in going to Yasnaya Polyana was mainly journalistic, I fear. The entire trip in Russia, indeed, was to find "available" copy for the New York newspaper referred to. The free railroad transportation allowed me to cover "news" stories on very short notice, and also made it easy to get material for "space" articles. Or, rather, on first getting it, I thought that the pass would work wonders along these lines. In other hands it would very possibly have done so, but the "available" matter finally delivered by me proved only moderately successful. Putting aside all questions of ability, reputation and connections, it has been my experience that European "stuff" is not in such demand in the United States that the average writer can make it support him even on a vegetarian diet. Our editors, as a rule, want American "stuff." Only in very recent years have they given much attention even to the foreign news service, leaving the gathering, sifting, and distribution of the day's facts to newsmongers who have often been as unscrupulous as they were incapable.

Americans flock to Europe in thousands, going feverishly from place to place as if their very lives depended on seeing such trifles as the old snuff-boxes of ancient celebrities. Nothing must escape them. They want their money's worth at every turn. A few tarry longer than the rest and try to acquire some knowledge of the present condition of the countries and people they see. But the vast majority push on hurriedly, elbowing their way into nooks and crannies of alleged historical interest, until Europe becomes for many of them, probably most of them, a mere museum of things "starred" or not "starred" as the guidebook man saw fit to make them. The life of the people, their contemporaries, is looked into only incidentally; "anteeks" are what the mob is after and look for. This indifference to present-day Europe, its politics, social customs and institutions, has in the past been largely to blame for the inefficiency of our foreign news service. What was the use of going to heavy expense to inform Americans about things abroad which they would pay no attention to when they were abroad themselves? The publishers and editors reasoned that there was no use, and even at this late day many of them prefer a news item from Yankton, Dakota, to one from London. Their readers may know very little more about Yankton than about London, but that does not matter. Perhaps they have relatives in Dakota, or formerly loaned money to farmers out there at three per cent. a month. That settles the matter for the newsmongers. The Yankton dispatch is given prominence, although it refers to nothing of more importance than a divorce. Its provinciality is of greater cash value to the newspaper than the cosmopolitan significance of the message from London. This, and more that might be said, has made a foreign correspondent's life in Europe unattractive, to say the least. At one time, however, I seriously considered preparing myself for such a career. The trip to Russia was meant as a trying-out of my qualifications. It seemed to me then, and, if our newspapers, or, rather the newspaper readers, would take more interest in other things than massacres, notable suicides and fashionable scandals, it would seem to me now, that such a calling ought to be useful as well as profitable. Until our people care more, however, for a well-considered article from London or Berlin than they do for a hasty "wire" from Wilkesbarre concerning the mobbing of an Italian, the usefulness and commercial value of the foreign correspondent's efforts do not appear very evident. At any rate, the time came when I decided that my foreign "stuff" was not of the bread-winning kind, and I threw overboard the dream of becoming a writer on such lines. To this hour, however, I regret that some good opening in the foreign service did not show up at the time the dream was so present.

But to return to Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana. All told, I was in and about this place for ten days, seeing Tolstoy and his family practically every day; even when I did not stop in the house overnight I divided my time between Yasnaya Polyana and the home of a neighbor of the Tolstoys. When staying at Yasnaya Polyana I slept in what was called the Count's library, but it was evidently a bedroom as well. At the neighbor's home I had a cot in the barn where two young Russians, friends of the Count, also slept. They were helping Tolstoy "re-edit" the Four Gospels, omitting in their edition such verses as Tolstoy found confusing or non-essential. The life on the old estate at Yasnaya Polyana has been described so often by both English and American visitors, that there is very little that I can add to the known description of the grounds and daily routine. The place looks neglected and unkempt in many respects, but the two remaining wings of the old mansion are roomy and comfortable. Eight children of the original sixteen were living at the time of my visit, ranging in years from fourteen to thirty and over. The Countess was the "boss" of the establishment in and out of the house. What she said of a morning constituted the law for the day, so far as work was concerned. She had assistants, and I think a superintendent, to help her, but she was the final authority in matters of management. The Count did not appear to take any active part in the direction of affairs. He spent his time writing, riding, walking and visiting with the guests, of whom there were a goodly number. At one time he may have worked in the fields with the peasants, but in July of 1896 he did not share any of their toil – at least I personally did not see him at work among them. His second daughter, Maria Lvovna, however, the one child that in those days was trying to put her father's theories to a practical test, was a field worker of no mean importance, certainly to the peasants, if not to her mother. Trained as a nurse she was also the neighborhood physician, having a little pharmacy in the straggling, dirty village outside the lodge gates. It was through her kindness that I was permitted to join the peasants in the hayfield, and to get acquainted with them in their dingy cabins. Although it was pleasanter to gather with the other children on the tennis court, the haying experience was at any rate healthy and, to some extent, instructive. I noticed, however, that my presence caused considerable merriment among the peasants. They had grown accustomed to Maria Lvovna, indeed she had grown up among them, whereas I was a stranger of whom they knew nothing beyond the little that Maria had told them. Some of them no doubt thought it very foolish of me to prefer haying to tennis and refreshments, while others probably doubted the sincerity of my purpose – viz.: to get acquainted with their conditions and to see what effect Maria Lvovna's would-be altruism was having upon them. I might as well state immediately that at no time did I succeed in finding out satisfactorily what this effect was, if it existed at all. That she was a very welcome companion in the fields and cabins there could be no doubt, but was this due to the peasant's correct interpretation of her intentions or to her commercial value to them as a voluntary, wageless helper? Maria herself thought that some of the peasants understood her position as well as her father's teachings. Not being able to converse with the peasants privately I cannot say whether she was deceived or not.