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VENDITORE DI PESCE.
“Pesce vivo, calamaretti!” “Live fish, little inkstands!” The calamaretti, small cuttle-fish, are]
called little inkstands because of the black liquid—sepia, isn’t it?—which they eject when attacked. Fried a golden brown and served with fresh soles as a garnishing they are too good for common people.
The umbrella mender is a bit of a poet, he makes his cry rhyme. “Ombrellare. Chi ha ombrelle per raccomodare?” “The umbrella man. Who has umbrellas to mend?”
“O ricotta, ricotta!” When I hear this I run to the window, wave my handkerchief, and the ricotta man brings up a fresh goat’s-milk cheese in a green wicker basket; it is a sort of spiritualized cottage cheese. When quite new, eaten with maritozzi warm from the bakery downstairs, it makes a better luncheon than I can get at the Café di Roma.
“Alice!” (pronounced a-lee-chee) “anchovies,” is a strident cry which we hear at intervals all day. Anchovies are a staple food with the lower classes. At home I only remember them as an appetizer at some brutally long dinner parties. The people eat anchovies with bread or with macaroni; they are cheap, strong of flavor, and a little of them goes a long way. We have them with crostine and provatura for luncheon sometimes. Provatura is cheese made of buffalo’s milk. Little crusts of bread with alternate layers of provatura and anchovies skewered together like chickens’ livers and toasted make a pleasant dish.
One cry I do not like, “aqua vita!” short and sharp in the early morning, as soon as the newsboys begin to shout “Don Quichotte” “Popolo Romano,” “Corriere,” this cry comes like an antiphony. “Aqua vita!” “Water of life?” Water of death! brandy.
We sent all the way to the English bakery in Via Babuino for our bread till the day I met Count Luigi Primoli in the baker’s shop on the ground floor of our palace; he was tucking a brown paper parcel into his pocket. There had been a function at the Vatican. He had been to pay his respects to Leo XIII., and on his way home had stopped to buy what he told me were the best maritozzi in Rome. The baker is an important person; he owns his shop and four caged nightingales, which sing divinely. We now buy our bread, flour, macaroni, and oil from him, and he changes all the neat fifty-franc notes we get from the banker’s; he can always be trusted to give honest money.
I soon found out that in all domestic affairs I must learn Italian methods; it was useless to try and teach Pompilia and Filomena our ways. After the tussle over the washing I gave it up. Set tubs, wash-boards, wringing-machines? Nothing of that sort. On Sunday evening the clothes are put in a large copper vessel, a basket-work cover is laid on top, over which a layer of wood-ashes is spread. Boiling water is then poured on slowly, percolating a little at a time through the clothes, which are bleached by the lye of the ashes; this is the bucato. When they have stood long enough in this witch’s cauldron the clothes are carried down to the basement and washed with cold water in the vast stone fountains of the palace, which we have the right to use one day in the week. The women employ a stiff brush and the queerest green soap to scrub the linen; if we have any table-cloths left at the end of six months, we shall be lucky. The American clothes-pins and line I sent for are neatly displayed in the kitchen as curiosities. We “hang out” on an iron clothes-line to which the linen is tied by small pieces of twine, as it was in the days of the Empress Faustina. We are no better than our mothers! The clothes are sent out to a stiratrice to be ironed.
Our cooking fuel costs us one dollar a week. Saturday morning the carbonaro arrives, carrying on his back a huge sack of charcoal, for which I pay five francs. I am told it is ten cents too much, but one must pay something for being “forestieri.” The cooking is done over four little square holes filled with charcoal, set in a table of blue and white tiles; a big hood overhead carries off the fumes; quite the prettiest kitchen range I ever saw! The charcoal is kindled by means of paper, little fagots, and a turkey-feather fan plied by old Nena. I like my kitchen, it is full of such queer, nice pots and pans; a row of deceitful copper saucepans hang along the wall, always bright, never used, but brushed over with white of egg, which acts like a varnish to protect the polish; a big white marble mortar, a long copper kettle for the fish, and the green and yellow bowls and mixing dishes are my favorite utensils. I foresee that the old brass scaldino J. picked up at the junk shop will some day serve as an ornament to the front hall at home. We have a brace of warming-pans and the queerest metal box for live charcoal. When you want a warm bath you fill your tub with cold water, put hot coals in this box, screw it up tight, and put it into the water, which it finally heats. Prehistoric? Fortunately, we prefer our baths cold! Pompilia begged some slips from our geraniums, planted them in empty kerosene cans, and now the kitchen window is bright with flowers. Everything grows so quickly here that it is easier to have plants than not.
August 16, 1894.
The parroco (parish priest) has called. Filomena came all of a flutter to summon me. The visit has raised us in our servants’ eyes; they have never before lived with pagans or Protestants. I like the parroco. He is a fine man of forty-five, evidently a peasant, but possessing that assured, courteous manner the priests all have; it is wonderful, the bearing and polish the Church gives them. The parroco was rather disturbed at being offered a cup of tea at five in the afternoon—it was stupid of me to have it brought in; the Anglo-Saxon association of eating and drinking with sociability is hard to get rid of—but he made a long visit and gave me good advice about the local charities. The gnawing poverty all about us is the drop of gall in our honeypot. Our door is literally besieged by our poor neighbors and by begging monks and nuns. At the parroco’s suggestion we now divide what we can afford to give between the benevolent society which looks after the sick and old, the Trinitarian order of monks, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Besides these a man calls on Saturday morning from the “Holy Family” and carries away a big bag filled with robaccio—trash—things that at home would go into the ash-barrel.
General Booth must have got his idea of the Household Brigade from some such institution, and I am learning new lessons in economy every day! Nothing is wasted here, not the tiniest scrap of food nor the most disreputable cast-off garment. My servants watch for my old shoes; three pairs of eyes are fastened on them daily. You know how much more precious old shoes are than new—especially Appleton’s, which come all the way from Boston? Well, yesterday I was shamed into giving away my most cherished old boots and am wearing to-day a horrid stiff new pair. Every night a bundle is smuggled out of the house full of odds and ends of food which support a certain poor family whose grandmother has attached herself to us. Her perquisites are the old newspapers, empty bottles, stale cake and bread, sour milk, the very orange and lemon peels, and the leavings from the servants’ table. I am so thankful there is enough to fill the poor old blue market handkerchief, but it would never do for me to show knowledge of its existence; that would spoil the sport.
You ask about the comparative expense of life here. People who would be called well off at home are rich in Rome; people we should consider poor can live here with much comfort and some luxury. For instance, cabs cost sixteen cents a course for two people, or forty cents an hour. I pay my seamstress fifty cents a day, and my cook seven dollars a month; a clever young Italian doctor, modern, up-to-date, well educated, is quite satisfied with a dollar a visit. Good hotels (not the two or three most extravagant) charge twelve francs (about two dollars and forty cents) a day. Meat, chicken, eggs, fish, fruit, and vegetables are cheap; but all imported groceries are horribly dear by reason of the fifty per cent. duty they must pay. Coffee costs fifty cents a pound, sugar twenty, American kerosene oil is sold in five-gallon cans for three dollars—fancy! we pay more for petroleum than for olive oil or for wine. Postage stamps, salt, and tobacco—all government monopolies—are sold only at tobacconists’. Milk is not cheap; the best in Rome comes from Prince Doria’s herd of Jerseys. Unfortunately, we are not