Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1925)

APRIL 1925 Pictures and Pict\jre$uer ii To my horror, I discovered that there was no room and bath reserved Not only was there no room with a bath, but there was no bath on the floor, and, to go still further, there was no bath AT ALL. None, anywhere, in the whole hotel. ""The worthy manager spread his fingers wide apart, in a gesture of complete self-exoneration, " Because," he said, " there is a Turkish hath around the corner we don't need one in the hotel !" Can you imagine going to any hotel in New York, even in America, and having them tell you that there is no bath for the good and sufficient reason that there is one "around the corner?" I was wretchedly dusty enough, however, to prevail upon the manager to present me with an ample basin, which he did, in great puzzlement, wondering what all the hurry was about and why I couldn't wait a few hours, a day or two, and then step into the convenient Turkish bath " around the corner " at my leisure and convenience. I finally managed to take a sponge bath— cold — and thought, as I ■splashed, of the Ritz in New York, with longing and regret. This travelling, I pondered, between shudders, is not always what it is cracked up to be. Ah, Rudy, my boy, it has its disadvantages ! After I had made myself as and are renewed, but human nature, unless it be ignited by the moving spark variously called genius, or creativeness, or only mere ambition, human nature remains amazingly the scrmc. These men, these familiar faces, WOO I saw, to my unfeigned surprise, sitting around the same old table, in the same old indolent postures, in the same old cafe, hail been young fellows of twenty-three or four when I was a mere lad of thirteen or fourteen. At that time they wouldn't have anything to do with me, of course, and it had been one of the ambitions of my life to be recognised by them, to be made same smallncss of intellect. As 1 narrow and stultified ideas, with the w.itohed them there from a nearby table, 1 realised that the luckiest thing that had ever happened to me. was getting away and going to America. I might so conceivably, so easily have me one of them Sitting at our table, with my cousin, there came back to me so vividly that rather painful period just before I went to America. That period was painful for me and also for my rather long-suffering family. I had won honours at the Royal Academy of Agriculture, but my brief and croud position as Pride of A group of townsfolk gathered to ivelcome Rudy at Castellaneta presentable as I could, my cousin and I sallied forth, and I met a lot of my old friends at the very same old cafe they had used to frequent and were still frequenting, as it seemed to me quite unmoved since I had left. They were the only thing about the old town that had not changed. Things, I thought, move on and alter one of them, to receive a slap on the back or a tentative confidence. It would have fairly swelled me with pride and import. They had seemed so splendid to me then ! Now, here they were in their approaching midthirties, still sitting about the table, still talking the same language in the same way, still exchanging the same This little church overlooking the precipice was Rudy's favourite play-ground as a child. the Family was more or less shortlived. I was, of course, in the lovesick period of life. And if there is anything on earth more lamentably love-sick than an Italian youth in love, then I have yet to gaze upon that phenomenon. I languished, wrote violent love verse. I copied page after page from Tasso and Petrarch. I sighed like a furnace. I took out in surreptitiousness what an American youth of the same age and station is able to give vent to by word of mouth. Tn Italy rigid convention prevents a youth from much social intercourse with gently-bred girls, who are never without those perennials, chaperons. My family predicted darksome fates for me. And it was, therefore, small wonder, I suppose, that Paris called me. In Paris, I thought, the mistress of the cities of the world — in Paris. I would find my just due of appreciation — and pleasure. Regardless of my family's entreaties, I pocketed what little money I had and dashed away to Paris to see what might be seen. And for a time the favours that I won turned my giddy head. I felt triumphant. Elated. Conquering. Here, I (Continued on page 58).