With that genially serious attention to minute details, that humorous circumstantiality in treating the commonplace, which we have all come to know so well and to like (or dislike) so heartily in Mr. Howells, he has filled a substantial volume with his easily-flowing narrative of a Mediterranean vacation journey, naming his book 'Roman Holidays and Others.' The first landing of his party was made at Madeira, whence they proceeded to Gibraltar, and then to Genoa, Naples, Rome, Leghorn, Pisa, Genoa again, and Monte Carlo. The style of the narrative – if it is necessary to indicate it at all – is well illustrated by the opening words of the second chapter: «There is nothing strikes the traveler in his approach to the rock of Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential Insurance Company. He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of that institution.» Mr. Howells says of the Romans of these days that they have «a republican simplicity of manner, and I liked this better in the shop people and work people than the civility overflowing into servility which one finds among the like folk, for instance, in England.»
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William Dean Howells. Roman Holidays And Others
CONTENTS:
I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA
II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN
III. ASHORE AT GENOA
IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE
V. POMPEII REVISITED
VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS. I. HOTELS, PENSIONS, AND APARTMENTS
II. A PRAISE OF NEW ROME
III. THE COLOSSEUM AND THE FORUM
IV. THE ANGLO-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE SPANISH STEPS
V. AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY
VI. PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH THE PAST
VII. CHANCES IN CHURCHES
VIII. A FEW VILLAS
IX. DRAMATIC INCIDENTS
X. SEEING ROME AS ROMANS SEE US
XI. IN AND ABOUT THE VATICAN
XII. SUPERFICIAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONJECTURES
XIII. CASUAL IMPRESSIONS
XIV. TIVOLI AND FRASCATI
XV. A FEW REMAINING MOMENTS
VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN
VIII. OVER AT PISA
IX. BACK AT GENOA
X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL
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Roman Holiday And Others
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
.....
When we were safely and gladly on board our steamer again, we had nothing to do, until the deck-steward came round with tea, but watch the islanders swarming around us in their cockles and diving for sixpences and shillings, which they caught impartially with their fingers and toes. With so many all shouting and gesticulating, one could not venture one's silver indiscriminately; one must employ some particular diver, and I selected for my investments a poor young fellow who had lost an arm. With his one hand and his two feet he never failed of the coin I risked, and I wish they had been many enough to enable him to retire from the trade, which even in that mild air kept him visibly shivering when out of the water. I do not know his name, but I commend him to future travellers by the token of his pathetic mutilation.
By-and-by we felt the gentle stir of the steamer under us; the last tender went ashore, and the divers retired in their cockles from our side. Funchal began to rearrange the lines of her streets, while keeping those of her roofs and house-walls and terraced gardens. We passed out of the roadstead, we rounded the mighty headland by which we had entered, and were once more in face of that magnificent drop-curtain, which had now fallen upon one of the most vivid and novel passages of our lives.
