ON THE WING.*
Tars book is not at all inaptly named. It is not a book of travel, it is indeed a flight, and a rapid flight too. Once ,on the wing,' the writer only stops for brief periods here and there, until she alights at her final destination, Naples. If we seek for a raison d'être for this publication, we can only find it in the fact that the writer, a convert to the Roman Catholic faith, wishes to show how Italy and things Italian present themselves to the English tiltramontane. Not that Mrs. Montgomery professes to have such an idea, or claims to have any thought of controversy, merely offering her book as a series of slight sketches of what she saw and did ; but the spirit which animates her pages is too strongly marked to be ignored, and indeed it is that spirit alone which gives them their peculiar tone and colouring, and invests them with a certain interest. It was perhaps inevitable that such should be the case, if Mrs. Montgomery's book was to be written with honesty; and as she does not seem to have done more or seen more than the ordinary British tourist, the peep she gives us into the convert's way of looking at what must strike others so
• On the Wing: a Southern Flight. By the Hon. Atm Alfred Montgomery. London: Hurst and Blackett
differently is not without its value. In order, however, to in- troduce conveniently disquisitions which might often with advan- tage have been left out altogether, the writer of On the Wing adopts the somewhat antique device of personating one of a trio of travellers, two sisters and a brother, who ventilate their opinions in the form
of dialogue. For the sake of variety, "Sister Jane" (the writer), who starts as a soi-disant old maid, becomes engaged, in the course of her peregrinations, to a certain Italian Count ; and "Brother Frank" fur& a lady-love in one of the Vernons, old friends of the travellers, who are residing at Posilippo, and have an Italian priest for their private chaplain. Don Emidio and Padre Cataldo both figure largely in this recital, and are able, of course, to furnish explanations and anecdotes whenever required. What is absurd, however, is that Mrs. Montgomery makes a curious jumble of the old maid she personates and her own real self. Towards the conclusion of her book she tells us that she is writing these pages in an English village, contrasts her "own pale land" with the beauties of Amalfi, and then, after finishing off her account of the departure of the party from Naples, expresses a hope that she may be "numbered with those who return to the southern shores of beautiful Italy." Naturally the reader is inclined to ask what has become of Don Emidio, to whose villa at Capo di Monte and palazzo in Rome, "Miss Jane," his fiancee, ought, of course, to return without any question. It is strange that Mrs. Montgomery should not have perceived how awkward and in- artistic this is, and that she should not have seen that having commenced and carried out her narrative under fictitious circumstances, she was bound to conclude it in the same manner. Another ridiculous idea is "Miss Jane's" taking exception to certain national habits of her Italian suitor, and even to his name. Surely having engaged herself to such a paragon as a man with "the simplicity of a child, the honour of a true-born gentleman, the delicacy of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the piety of a saint," it would be natural to suppose that she might have loved him well enough to over- look small conventional shortcomings, or what at least are such in English eyes.
While living at Posilippo, the ladies make acquaintance with many of the neighbouring peasantry, of whose manner of life the writer gives some pleasant descriptions, while at the same time, her estimates of their character are rather contradictory. At one time, they are represented as joyous, placid, and patient, at another, as venal, deceitful, mercenary, and treacherous. In the episode of the Casanelli villa, the family are made out to be accomplished Macchiavellians, practising throughout their whole lives a kind of sustained deceitfulness of which the object is said to be gain, but which would, one might imagine, rather result in the very opposite. It is a sort of thing which an Englishman would find as hard to understand as it would be impossible to him to practise. The story is this. The Casanelli, a family of two brothers and seven sisters, are in the habit of letting two sets of apartments in their villa at Posilippo, and in order to secure all possible profit, the elder sister, who is supposed to own one of these suites of rooms, and the eldest brother, who is called the master of the house, are ostensibly at daggers drawn, although in reality the pair of rogues not only pull together, but are well backed up by the rest of their amiable family. The sister, accord- ing to her own account, a paragon of virtue, will only accept as lodgers persons not only of irreproachable character, but of some- thing more than respectability as to position ; the brother, on the other hand, will take in any one, no matter who or what, who will pay him well? In order the better to carry out their views, the ownership of the rooms is shifted from one to the other of these worthies, as may happen for the moment to suit them beat. Thus should people of questionable character desire to rent a certain apartment, the brother comes forward, and vice versa. Belonging to the rooms tenanted by the Vernons is a little chapel, long deserted, cut in the tufa rock ; with the full permission of the Casanelli, this is restored to order, and made use of not only by the Vernon family, but by the vigneroli for miles around. When, however, the other set of rooms have been let to a certain wicked Signor Martorelli, a regular persecution of the Vernons and of poor Padre Cataldo is inaugurated, and afterwards aided and abetted by the Casanelli en masse. The story as related by Mrs. Montgomery is amusing enough, although why people should conspire to maltreat those who were not only inoffensive, but profitable tenants, one cannot comprehend. The incident, how- ever, leads to a discussion upon the Italian character, which is summed up by Don Emidio as not being in itself deceitful, but as one which uses deceit as a means to succeed. "If truth will serve him, the Italian," he says, "will employ
truth ; when that fails, deceit will be as readily adopted," the- basis of his character being, according to this exponent of it., a concentrated, determined strength of will, capable of being turned in the direction of either good or evil, but always inflexible, so long as its purpose is unchanged. This may be so with regard to great spirits, whether good or bad, in Italy, but though it was Metternich's opinion too, can scarcely be true of the mass of the people. Don Emidio's description of the jealousy of Italian husbands might, one would think, have been sufficient to deter any young lady from accepting the offer of his hand, but jealousy in the distance, merely spoken of as a national character- istic, or as taking the form of paying to the wife innumerable petits soins, may perhaps sound rather flattering than otherwise. It is amusing, however, to contrast the account Don Emidio gives of the Italian husband with that which we find in other recent books concerning Italy. Whereas they speak of girls as looking forward to marriage to emancipate them from all restraint, of wives as surrounded by lovers with complacent husbands looking calmly on, and making their own conquests of the wives of their neighbours, Don Emidio, after recalling to his future bride in rather picturesque terms the comforts and pleasures of her English home, asking her if she will never regret them, and receiving for answer that the imperious beauty of Italy will hold quite as much sway over her heart in time, tells her that he is as- satisfied as his jealous Italian nature will allow him to be, and goes on to say :—
"Do not look frightened, catissima. I am not going to prove a regular Bluobeard, like some of my countrymen. But it would sound strange to your English ears to know the intense sense of appropriation with which an Italian regards his wife. It is true he adores her, but it is an adoration which would exclude the remotest homage of the merest stranger. He waits upon her, watches her, serves her. But it is possible to have too much of that, particularly when it is done with an evident intention to prevent the approach of any other human being."
We should think it would be quite possible to have too much of this sort of thing, and too much also of Don Emidio himself. The fact is, that after reading Mrs. Montgomery's book very carefully,. we have quite come to the conclusion that we do not like any of the people to whom she introduces us. Jane is silly and rather prosy, Mary is sentimentally devout, and although she is said to stroke every one's fur the right way, would, we are quite certain, speedily drive us wild, especially if she were to talk of "adumbrations," and use similarly grand words in ordinary conversation. Frank is harmless, and the Vernons mere lay figures. Don Emidio is slightly priggish, and Padre Cataldo, on the whole, the best of the group, although even he is rather shadowy. Now and then in this book we come upon some little bit of pretty description, but these gems are very rare, and as a whole, it is made up of exceedingly light reading, interspersed with a good deal of prosy discussion ; nor is the style in which it is written by any means especially good, indeed here and there it is positively ungrammaticaL
Previous page
