Part 41

Valiante, Marquis Valmontone; its upper terrace; capture of a deserter at, Pergola, tavern Velino, mountain Velletri Venice Ventimiglia, wine of Verde antico, marble Veroli Via Appia; Flaminia; Labiena; Nomentana Viareggio, an objectionable place; its Vittoria hotel; pine woods Victorians, their perverse sense of duty Villalago Villetta Barrea Viterbo Voss, R.

Wallace, A. R. Walpole, Horace War, the present, local opinions concerning; repercussion on thoughtful non-combatants; effects on agriculture War Office, pandemonium; confuses Turkish and Russian Waterton, C., a freak Whistling, denotes mental vacuity White, colour, unpopular in South Italy Will-o'-the-wisp Wine, red and black Wolf, at Mentone; at Frattura Wryneck, bird

Young, J. Youth, should be temperate Yucca, plant

Zagarola "Zone of defense," drawbacks of Zurich, its attractions

* * * * * * * * * * *

1. There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to see it.

2. Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be confounded with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian marble of the ancients.

3. See North American Review, September, 1913. Ramage's Calabrian tour of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky undertaking. The few travellers who then penetrated into this country kept to the main roads and never moved without a military escort. One of them actually hired a brigand as a protection.

4. Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle in the stream-bed--mere disconnected pools to show where the river was, and will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence. Grant Duff says he has seen the Arno "blue." So have I: a hepatic blue.

5. It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown Prince.

6. He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died.

7. I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method of the Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older monuments are in better condition than the new ones. We live and learn.

8. The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters, "... I am writing without due consideration of the interesting point. But this possible explanation occurs to me: children are active motor machines, always restless and moving when not asleep. When asleep, the motor tendencies, being not quite passive, translate themselves into the dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant or painful, according to bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As the muscles are almost passive in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming activity--into dreams of flying when bodily states are pleasant, into falling down precipices, etc., when they are out of sorts. This is quite a hasty reflection...."

9. "The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams and Norgate, 1891.)

10. Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your reference to Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I thought I was the first to fully point out. It is a most interesting anticipation. I do not read German, but from what I have heard of his works he was the last man I should have expected to make such an acute suggestion in Natural History."

11. Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions.

12. Fecit! He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on the 4th November, 1920.

13. This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166, "I have lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine." We learn from the Dictionary of National Biography that he was born in 1803; he must therefore have been twenty-five years old when he bemused the coastguard. Only twenty-five; and already at this stage. We are further told that he was tutor to somebody's son. Unhappy child!

14. Not all of them are true thistles. Abbadé's Guide to the Abruzzi (1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region.

15. Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name--a love intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of a good word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my plot "rightly filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better.

16. Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making a scientific collection of local imprecations--abusive, vituperative or profane expletives; swear-words, in short--enriched with elaborate commentary. I would gladly print this little study in folk-lore as an appendix to the present volume, were it fit for publication.

17. Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made considerable progress in the peninsula.

18. This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others have garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here, and to their list may be added that of the rock on which stood the villa of Pollius Felix; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but used to be called Petrapoli; pure Greek: Pollio's rock. There is still a mine of such material to be exploited by all who care to study the vernacular. The giant euphorbia, for instance, common on these hills, is locally known as "totomaglie"; pure Greek again: tithymalos.

19. Query: whether there be no connection between brachycephalism and this modern deification of machinery?

20. Robert L. Bowles, M.D. "Sunburn on the Alps" (Alpine Journal, November, 1888) and "The Influence of Light on the Skin" (British Journal of Dermatology, No. 105, Vol. 9).

21. It has now been cleaned--with inevitable results.

22. Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's diary.

23. Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has improved. Somebody now feeds them--which could hardly have been expected during those stressful times of war, when bread barely sufficed for the human population. They are also fewer in numbers. Their owners, I fancy, can afford to keep them at home once more.