Of All the Arts
By JAIN HAMILTON
Now is the time when the postman brings sheaves of leaflets inviting the culture-happy to go on pilgrimage. The map of Europe is now so starred with art festivals that a man of piety and appetite might 'stupefy himself for months on end, all the way from Bergen to ,Venice. But it is the, name Torrento that I look for, and always in vain. I yearn and I seek, like Sappho, although reason tells me that some years must pass before that sadly wronged town can afford another festival. .
"A Festival of All the Arts," said the letter, which added frankly that Torrento needed some help to restore the old annual flow of tourists. For myself, I was ready and willing; that was a grey season when post-war London seemed to be covered with a fine floury ash which insinuated itself into all levels of physical and mental existence. Accidie was the pre- vailing malaise. But the cauterising sun and the candid art which flourishes beneath it, said I, would between them make short work of metaphysical despair. But the Prince, the Prince, that shabby colossus of patronage who stood with one foot in a dream of Renaissance Italy and the other in the reality of Hollywood! Little did the honest Torrentans know the forms his ' artistic direction ' was to take. When we came to the rendezvous in Rome an orgy was in progress. The Prince was celebrating his marriage to Ant°. nella, a Neapolitan of sixteen, tender of years but massive of frame, and by the time we arrived the wedding-feast was more like a Parisian art students' ball. The journalists from abroad were hastily assembled in an ante-room by an American wear- ing a terre-verte tussore suit and a crimson cummerbund; the Prince—small, dark and repellent—appeared, promised us that the Festival would be magnificent beyond all dreams of splen- dour, instructed us to be outside the palazzo at ten on the following morning, and invited us to join the present revels. In the mottling a slightly etherealised crowd assembled out- side, beside a small fleet of limousines. Half an hour later the Prince (no more princely than Trimalchio was imperial) turned up with his brawny Antonella. The Prince had a long scratch running from his right eye to his chin. Antonella's forehead was bruised. They were quarrelling loudly. By degrees others joined in, and within five minutes there was in progress a furious debate from which only the handful of foreign journalists was excluded. But, like the summer storms which swell 'over the Alban Hills—pouf! and away; and suddenly the caravan was heading south.
By nightfall we were well into Magna Graecia. By ten we were in the main square of Torrento. By midnight I was one of the judges in a beauty contest. At one o'clock I was booed when the word got round that I was voting for an unpopular candidate, a dark-faced Sicilian. At two a number of dance bands began to play turn about on the terrace of the hotel. At three I was deep in conversation with a theatre director from Stockholm who was beginning to have some doubts about this "Festival of All the Arts." At five I was in my room above the terrace, vainly stuffing my ears against the howling of the amplifiers. insisted. The Princi lost his temper, waving and screaming They did likewise. The contagion spread over the hotel an through its gardens until everyone was snarling.
" Kennst du das Land," the Swedish director enquired of me, " wo die Citronen bliihn ? "
I Was learning. An art critic pushed his way through a clutter of outraged exquisites and asked where the great comprehensive exhibition of modern Italian painting and sculpture was to be seen. The Prince explained that there had been certain unforeseen diffi- culties, that there was, in short, no great comprehensive exhibition.
"But never mind," he added, "tomorrow I shall engage three aeroplanes and we shall all fly to Sicily and inspect the noble Phoenician ruins of Agrigento."
Greek ruins," said the art critic testily. "Phoenician, I beg your pardon," said the Prince.
And so the row started up again. It was ended by the Prince squealing : " Very well, no Sicily." He fluttered off it search of Antonella and we lunched in morose silence.
In the afternoon there was what the programme engagingly. described in English as "proceedings in the ancient carriages." The hotel was full of beauty queens and their mothers. They were packed into a long line of fiacres and the rest of us took up the rear in a couple of vast motor coaches. We wound our way through the toWn and ended up in the main square where hordes of over-appreciative young men were struggling with the police. Such a shrilling of mammas has never been heard.
Fiasco.
But fiasco was the Order a the day. In the evening we were promised 'art films.' Most of them, needless to say, had not arrived, and the reels of those which had were some, how entangled. After a delay of an hour or two and a feW speeches from the Prince we were treated to part of a Czech film, followed immediately by part of an American film, and then a portion of a French comedy which was run backwards. At this grotesque point a gust of wind from the sea tore the open-air screen from its trellis frame and the entertainment was over. But there remained the pleasure of quarrelling. "All the Arts! " cried some of the journalists scornfully, "What about our money? " cried the Prince's many guestSi My acquaintance, the director, silently packed his bags and arranged to leave for Stockholm in the morning. The Prince alternately wept and screamed. The dance bands struck up. The Torrentan bigwigs took the Prince into a corner and begafl to put sbme awkward questions. The night grew hideous. And that was what the "Festival of All the Arts" amounted to. For myself, I watched, listened, and (having had my fare paid) shrugged my, shoulders. My room became a sort 01 neutral ground' on which members of all parties could meet and rehearse their protests. The Prince had not a friend except his Antonella. But if the festival was a failure, there was alwayg the sun, the sea, the wine, the light on the silvery olive leaveth Those who did not return in high dudgeon to London or Paril -stayed on and made the best of it. A good word might aftet all be said for Torrento itself, if not for its city fathers iti appointing the Prince as 'artistic director' of their festival.
But everything must come to an end, and this is how it came about that we quitted Torrento under a cloud of embarrass, ment. One afternoon some of us were joined at the American bar by the Prince, who straightway began to tell us for the umpteenth time that nothing had been his fault, that he wail misunderstood, etc. But he did not get far, for Antonella sod. denly burst into .the room, seized him by the scruff of the neck/ threw him out among the prickly pears, and kicked him round the garden, shouting, "Wanton! Wanton ! " and certain other names not to be repeated here. This quaint incident Ail altogether too much for the Torrentan bigwigs, who decide to end the festival forthwith and cut their losses.
And yet I yearn and I seek. Bayreuth and Venice an Avignon give us better art but less curious sidelights on tb0 human character and its infinite variations. I'd give up opera or two for another sight of those cummerbunde characters brawling on the terrace.
Previous page
