All Roads Lead to Rome ..

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6890, 22 April 1929, Page 4

All Roads Lead to Rome ..

MRS. A. GLADYS KERNOT WHOSE BRILLIANT ARTICLES ON EUROPEAN CITIES HAVE ATTRACTED MUCH ATTENTION NOW PENS HER IMPRESSIONS OF THE ETERNAL CITY !

Copyright—THE SUN Feature Service.

3ROUGHOUT several exciting and legend-laden centuries, concerning which the historians of later ages have been so discursive, ,we are told

that all roads led to Rome. Did anyone doubt the somewhat wholesale statement, the most cursory glance at the old part of the city as it stands, largely unaltered to-day, would prove its essential truthfulness. If you bring a road into a town it automatically ceases its wild wanderings and settles down, respectably, into being just a street; and surely the endings of all the roaas of all the world are gathered together in that tangle of streets that weaves a heavy pattern across the heart of Rome. Without troubling the historian at all, we can recall the names, old as timeitself, of 'many of those illustrious people who contributed a road, later to become a street. We can see them arriving over one or another of the Seven Hills. We can picture them entering the city through a gateway that was as tall as an Emperor’s dream could make it, and throwing the unused bit of road down anywhere, leaving it to the classic builders of the period—whichever that happened to-be—to embellish it on either side with buildings that would be at once imposing and appropriate. This, one is hound to admit, was done as perfectly as possible, and the casual roads became haughty and important, if unusually hemmed-in, streets. One could have hoped, perhaps, for a little more lateral expansiveness and a little less perpendicular austerity; but there they are for ever, the narrow streets that wind and wind,, and the immense stone structures that define their windings. The few’ inches of pavement-with which they are bordered are of small practical use to pedestrians, and, anyway, the cheerful intimacy of the middle of the road is much to' be .preferred. There is adventure there, and variety. One should not have a dull moment, traversing the worn rqosaic over whose diamond-shaped cobbles the equipages of Imperial Caesars may have rolled, and :along which, at any curving:corner, Rome’s present Caesar may swiftly pass in the model de luxe of the moment.’ It is, too. rather intriguing .to be even an unimportant unit of a procession whose human and dramatic interests are so varied and so' enthralling. Entering one of the great blocks of shadow,, above which a strip of. sky, between grey buildings, runs like a peacock-coloured ribbon, one encounters a diversity of creatures and things hardly likely to be met with elsewhere. ’ . The moving medley is composed of trams and omnibuses; mild little companies of Capuchin monks from whose humble sandals protrude somewhat, needlessly pink toes; men standing over chestnut braziers; .“crocodiles” of divinity'students in geranium-coloured robes; English visitors with the vapiditiesof E. V. Lucas folded beneath one arm; American ones, going deeper Into this business of seeing Rome, carrying Baedekers; gaily-painted wine cars drawn by mules; redwheeled carriages drawn by horses that look like rather faded etchings, and which appear to be moving in their sleep. Highly-enamelled limousines; many irresponsible hand -barrows, one : of which always proudly bears a green; and gold . brocaded chair; an unheeded street musician; men selling • brooms; . women with baskets of washing on their heads: beautiful young Italian gentlemen With provocative glances and “sideboards’* that look as if they were painted on their slim, brown cheeks: men carrying plaster casts; soldiers in every kind of picturesque uniform, and every manner of hat; • officers 1 with bales of blue cloth wound around them; officers trimmed with astrakhan; -officers—most gorgeous—.with plumed golden helmets; mounted police wearing voluminous aud tricorne hats; dozen of different orders of priests, moving silently yet swiftly In spite of their cumbersome petticoats. With the possible exception’ of the Capuchins, whose bare toes studiedly irradiate a certain amount of holiness, everyone is welldressed, everyone apparently moderately prosperous, everyone most certainly occupied. Above all, everything is orderly. Occasionally a handcart gets out of control and, if the street inclines downward, runs away with its human propeller; but even the irrelevant and irresponsible perambulations of the brocaded chair come to a definite mooring somewhere, one supposes. If you love the equine race as much as I do, it will never disconcert you to- find that you have walked, unexpectedly, into the thoughtful of a horse, or to discover that, in eva-i----ing the sudden onrush of a taxicab, you have sheltered against the flat grey flank of a mule. Mules, you

may think, do not sound wildly progressive or. quite in keeping with the spirit of New Italy and the best Mussolini tradition. But though' the mule undoubtedly belongs more to the archaeological period of Rome than to the modern one, you must not think of him as a primitive or an archaic creature. He Is as native to the city as are any of the crippled columns that time has strewn about the Forum; indeed, he might have walked off any of thG scarcely decipherable friezes from which a mule is missing. He may be amusing, with his long, leathery ears and hide the colour of an elephant—but remember, he is not all buffoon. Half of him, any way, is quite ! good horse. Besides, the Italians with their love of colour and their dramatic instinct, have made him pictorial. They have put scarlet tassels on the poor love’s nose and hung little brass bells on his neck and around his ears. It is singularly pleasant to waken in the morning to the sound of these musical bells, aud to know that the brightly-painted wine carts are arriving from Frascati, aud that the great city’s milk and vegetable supply is steadily coming in from the outlying farms. For Rome ends abruptly, just as it did in the days when high city walls sought to make its preciousness inviolable; and where there might be ignoble or straggling suburbs stretch the gentle Campagna, and fields full of cows, and —since recently—acres under cultivation. “Since recently” in Italy, almost inevitably means since the coming of Mussolini. I am no student, myself, of foreign politics, In affairs of State, Signor Mussolini may be a modern Machiavelli for all I immediately know, or may presently care. But I at least am able to compare the Italy of today with the Italy I remember before the war, and if 'my small tribute of praise is of any use to the Duce, I offer it with all my heart. For to his efforts must be attributed the extraordinary cleanliness that has superseded all the picturesque dirt; the modern methods of the municipalities; the efficiency of the police force; the absence of unemployment and of public beggars; the suppression of foolish and profitless anarchy; the enforcement of laws relating to the proper treatment of animals, and the cheerfulness and good behaviour of the general population. Italy’s present Dictator has indeed been ( like one cf those greatly advertised soaps that “banish dirt”; but he has also banished a great many other things that were fully as disagreeable. Naturally there are some people .who do not care for the modernised, revitalised Italy, but surely everyone must, admit the greatness of the man who has accomplished so much, and who, in addition, can write an excellent autobiography, in his spare moments; the man who can crown the Pope to-day, and bring but a new novel to-morrow. If I might make a suggestion that Italy, as a country only slowly recovering fr.om.the financial disabilities of the war,' ' might effect some small economy, I should say that the voluminous/; ornate and rather theatrical uniforms of all soldiers and public officials might be somewhat modified. It would be a thousand pities, of course, and one respects a renaissance ‘ ■that‘leaves the colour and poetry of its national life Intact. But such miles of excellent apd expensive cloth are draped, drooped or carelessly thrown around masculine figures whose generally superb good appearance needs no enhancing. The ecclesiastics, too, and particularly their younger members, seem to me awfully overclothed. They are so vital and so fresh-looking, these young priests in the making. One can only hope that such secular mo-

ments as they may occasionally snatch from- their routine are not without the ordinary interests of frailer mortals. Anyway, they look most happy, though one fancies one sometimes sees the glimmer of a fleeting regret in their eyes. In the Borghese Gardens, wherp every morning the ladies of Rome ride, astride and untrammelled, on thoroughbred horses, and where dashing young officers go by at a gallop, standing up in their stirrups and being tremendously Cossack, the divinity students often gather and watch the manner in which smart Rome ’ enjoys itself. At such times, perhaps, they wonder at the wide divergence of modern fashion and ancient custom, and are a little sadly conscious of the tyranny of the garments which ever-encroaching emancipations leave severely untouched.

There are some bright brains among the fiercer Fascisti, but the pronouncements of their official newspaper are at moments a trifle too illuminating. In a recent issue of this journal there appeared an article which deplored the presence in the capital city of so many foreigners. These people were chiefly annoying, it seems, on account of their affected voices and their esoteric pronunciation! Well, of course, such complaints naturally command a certain amount of our sympathy, knowing what we know and hearing what we hear; but unless English visitors commit some more serious crime than these I am afraid their presence will, however unwillingly, have to be For no place in the winter . can be more charming than Roihe, with its skies of incorruptible blueness, and its languid, windless days. There may be an occasional lapse. Indeed, one day recently there happened, in weather circles, something that amounted to a scandal. There is, in Rome, no such period as “the dead of winter.” Winter here has no dead. The most that happens is that the pathway of the sun across the trackless blue vault of heaven is a little shorter than In the summertime; but the sun himself sets, each evening in his accustomed curve of colour behind the Capitoline Hill. One evening he was observed to creep away shabbily, like the least important guest at a party. The next moniing, when one looked out of the window, there lay snow, everywhere, a white scandal —and more was falling. The hotel servants were reticent, when the condition was commented on, or embarrassed, or/ unbelieving. “II neve?” they said in surprise; “yes, but it is not our snow. There are cold countries north of Italy. It has come from one of them.” The mimosa trees were deeply affronted. In about a week’s time all the little clusters of yellow, duckling-like buds would be opening, and now this! The whole city covered with the woolly fleeces of angel lambs. The pointed cypresses, used only to leaning against the pastel blue of Italian landscape, were suddenly and ignominiously turned into Christmas trees. Taxis slithered on the polished roads. The red-wheeled carriages with the vague, somnambulistic horses did not appear at all. Many shops' did not open their doors. Rome was a city beleaguered and ashamed. But oh, how beautiful and how unreal was that Roman snow. So impalpable/so ethereal was it, that If you tried to keep a snowflake; it died delicately, with a little gasp, in your hand. It seemed so unkind to bring out the fire hoses and wash all the lovely Whiteness away. For once I hated Signor Mussolini for his efficiency. But God was greater than Mussolini. With a gesture of magnificent derision he had piled his glorious snow high v dazzlingly, on all the mountains around . Rome, and even II Duce could hardly suggest hosing them!