Home Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature 1St Edition Chiara Giuliani Full Chapter
Home Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature 1St Edition Chiara Giuliani Full Chapter
Home Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature 1St Edition Chiara Giuliani Full Chapter
“This lucid and finely crafted book explores how migration has made ‘home’
a constantly evolving concept and how practices of home-making can extend
through memory and imagination to include spaces as diverse as the call centre
and the train station. Providing detailed new readings of a range of postcolonial
texts in Italian, this book will be essential reading for all scholars and students
who engage with cultural representations of migration.”
—Emma Bond, Reader, University of St Andrews, Scotland
Home, Memory
and Belonging
in Italian Postcolonial
Literature
Chiara Giuliani
University College Cork
Cork, Ireland
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Acknowledgments
This book is the product of years of research during which time I met
wonderful people who helped and inspired me and to whom I am greatly
indebted. First and foremost, I would like to thank my former Ph.D.
supervisor Derek Duncan, who has always been enlightening, honest and
generous with his time and expertise. His constant guidance, support and
encouragement is really appreciated. My sincere thanks to Emma Bond
and Jennifer Burns, for their careful reading of the dissertation, and their
meticulous and in-depth feedback that informed the writing of this book.
My gratitude goes also to the School of Modern Languages at the Univer-
sity of St Andrews for their generous support in funding my Ph.D., the
colleagues, especially in the Italian Department, and to all the friends I
met there. A special thanks to all the people in the Department of Italian
at the University of Bristol where I started my Ph.D.
My heartfelt thanks goes also to all my stellar colleagues in the
Department of Italian at University College Cork, always welcoming
and supportive. Grazie di cuore. I am also indebted to the Centre for
Advanced Studies in Literatures and Cultures (CASiLaC), for allowing
me to attend and organise conferences and events. I feel extremely lucky
to work in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at UCC,
where I am surrounded by fantastic people willing to share their time
and interests. A special word of gratitude goes to my generous colleagues
and friends Céire Broderick, Kevin Cawley, Dónal Hassett and Ailbhe Ní
Ghearbhuigh for reading various parts of this book and providing such
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
vii
viii CONTENTS
Index 181
CHAPTER 1
what it might have seemed. While the slogan was obviously conveying
a clear message, the different situations in which it had to be enforced
challenged some of the conventional meanings associated with the idea
of home.
The main problem in these particular cases was the impossibility of
staying at home when there is no home, but the two examples also
conjures an unquestionable interpretation of home as a clear, circum-
scribed, fixed, and private place. In the first example, by being in the
publicness of the urban space, the man is not inside the private walls
of a house, thus he is seen as not at home. In the second example,
the campervan is viewed only as a vehicle: for its ability to move and
move the people inside it, rather than its potential to house people, to
provide stability and refuge. Even though the van was parked, the man
was considered to be on the move, which in itself seems to be diametri-
cally opposed to the idea of home. The inclusion of these examples here
is not to question whether the two men “felt at home” in these specific
circumstances, but rather to draw attention towards a common defini-
tion of home, which often does not include more nuanced and particular
experiences. The idea of home that grounds this book manifests itself
as a plurality, deeply rooted in space while constantly changing to adapt
to the evolving circumstances within and outside the subjects. An idea
of home that enables a sense of belonging attached to a multiplicity of
spaces. In the following chapters, I investigate a selection of places and
how they are inhabited by migrant characters in Italian postcolonial liter-
ature. By establishing a series of relations and putting in place different
kinds of home-making practices, characters are able to experience these
places, either public or private, as home spaces .
Home spaces rely on an idea of home that is modifiable, personal and
spatial, that allows for the establishment of roots, multiple roots (Weil
1987, 41) and multiple feelings of belonging. Edward Relph remarked
that “to have roots in a place is to have a secure point from which
to look out on the world, a firm grasp of one’s own position in the
order of things” (1976, 41). He also specified that the “secure point”
he refers to is the home, which is not the house where you live, but it
is the place with which you establish strong connections, with which you
develop an attachment, making it an “irreplaceable centre of significance”
(Relph 1976, 41). The analysis carried out in this book considers different
irreplaceable centres of significance, different home spaces .
4 C. GIULIANI
The settlement of migrants in Italy, their visibility in the urban space, the
sharing of dwellings such as flats, buildings and, in a wider perspective,
cities with Italian non-migrants, along with the launching of commer-
cial enterprises, has been frequently depicted by the press as a dangerous
consequence of the failed enforcement of security laws and Italy’s lack of
means to welcome them.
The lack of an inclusive law on citizenship, and the representation of
migrants as a threat, are all elements that challenge the materialisation of
that mutual belonging mentioned above. Amara Lakhous, whose work
features prominently in this book, answering the question of why space
is so important in his novels, affirms that space is crucial because it is
in space “that the contradictions of Italian society emerge […]. Space is
the protagonist of the novel […] because everything happens there: the
encounter, the clash, the communication, the love” (in Brogi 2011, 2–
3, my translation). These spaces of encounter, love but also clash and
conflict, these contact zones allow for the creation of new spaces of
belonging, that I interpret as home spaces .
One of the elements that connects all the different practices that trans-
form an ordinary – at times unexpected – place into a home space is the
agency that characters are able to exercise over it. From the decision to
have traditional food at the train station to the choice of locking oneself
in the bathroom and deal with personal trauma, that agency makes those
places different from any other place in Italy. According to Michel De
Certeau “a place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with
which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. […] In
short, space is a practiced place” (2011, 117). Therefore, the characters
analysed here transform lieu into a specific kind of space and some places
which are not conventionally linked to the image of the home are prac-
ticed so as to transform them into home spaces . Emma Bond expands De
Certeau’s distinction between place and space locating it in a transnational
context, she argues that “the trans-national thus offers the possibility
to connect place […], with a more fluid idea of space which is akin to
Bauman’s flexible notion of a habitat of meaning, […] it is the text itself
that becomes trans-national in the very practice of its construction” (Bond
2014, 423). The text is transnational and so are the spaces it represents,
insomuch as they manage to accommodate the characters’ abilities to turn
them into home spaces . The ways in which characters turn these contact
zones into home spaces , recall what De Certeau referred to as a “tactic”, as
“a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. […] The
1 SPACES OF MEMORY, SPACES OF BELONGING … 9
We carry our home with us, our home can travel. It’s not fixed walls that
make a home out of the place where we live. In our home, Domenica Axad,
little Taariikh, and I find comfort and protection, we lay down foundations
in order to have the strength to fight every day. It’s no longer possible to
remain isolated; we seek to adapt and to rebuild our path. (Ali Farah 2011,
226)
With these words, one of the protagonists of Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s
Madre piccola [Little Mother] (2007, 2011) describes the meaning of
home for her and her family. This description encapsulates the idea of
home grounding the understanding of home spaces in this book. It is an
idea of home not necessarily linked to a house, a home that can move, and
that provides familiarity and a sense of community, a point of reference
from which to engage with the rest of the world. A similar description
is provided in La mia casa è dove sono [My home is where I am] by
Igiaba Scego (2010). As already suggested by the title, home is again
interpreted as a mobile element, as the mother tells the protagonist about
her nomadic past “we used to carry our home on our shoulders” (Scego
2010, 9, my translation). The whole text is a spatial autobiography in
which the description of the city of Rome overlaps with events of the
author’s life and with memories of her closest relatives, in a successful
attempt to map her own personal geography through her emotions and
through the places capable of generating and retrieving such emotions.
In both these texts, two public places appear quite frequently and both
of them become, in my analysis, home spaces : Termini train station and
the phone centre. These same spaces are present in several other texts of
Italian postcolonial literature, for instance, the phone centre is also one
of the most important places in Lakhous’s Divorzio all’islamica a viale
Marconi [Divorce Islamic Style] (2010, 2012), while Termini train station
occurs in many texts as a place of gathering for members of different
communities.11
The texts mentioned so far, along with others that I will refer to below,
constitute the main corpus of this book, a corpus that I look at as Italian
postcolonial literature, in which a major feature is “the concern with place
12 C. GIULIANI
What is within is here - a place the migrant will not be entitled to call
his own. The displacement is made all the more poignant by the paradox
that it corresponds to no distantiation in time. For it is stapled firmly to
an accentuated and immediate present cut off from a shared past by the
adverbial force of “no longer”. (1998, 156)
above, the majority of the characters included in this analysis are first-
generation migrants and they all show different attitudes towards the
possibility—or impossibility—of a return to the country they left. La mia
casa è dove sono is the text that perhaps presents a sharper difference with
regard to attitudes toward the idea of return. While the mother’s experi-
ence of Italy is affected by the initial plan to go back to Somalia (and the
later disappointment for its failure), Scego, born and raised in Rome, does
not entirely share this idea. Nonetheless, and the novel itself (in its juxta-
position of Italy and Somalia) stands as a demonstration of this, Scego’s
idea of home, as expressed in the book, is informed by a constant dialogue
between the two countries. Therefore, the theme of return is not—or not
exclusively—about the wish to go back to a previous home, but rather it
is about the incorporation of that past in the current experience of place
which only through the establishment of this encounter becomes a home
space.
I draw on different theoretical approaches to tackle the variety of
home-making practices enacted by the characters to turn these locations
into home spaces . While studies on home and transnational homes form
the backbone of the entire book, Chapter 2 and 3, focusing on public
spaces, rely more decisively on a geocritical approach and their corpus
also includes journalistic sources. In these chapters, I position the discus-
sion across critical works on cultural geography and mobility studies. The
chapter on the phone centre pays also attention to a selection of works
on the role of digital media in transnational contexts. In the second part
of the book, the close textual analysis is supported with research on the
fields of trauma studies and affect theory.
Notes
1. The full text of this law can be found on the Gazzetta Ufficiale website
(see Decreto Legge 9 Marzo 2020, n.14 2021). For this specific passage
of the press conference see La Repubblica (2020).
2. See, for instance, Agnew (2005), Altman and Werner (1985); George
(1996); Hurdley (2013); Morley (2000) and Naficy (1999).
3. By phone centres [internet cafés] I mean spaces that started to appear in
Italy at the beginning of the 2000s which offered different services like
international phone calls, internet access and money transfer services. In
the texts analysed here, they are at times defined as “call centres”. For
consistency, I will use phone centres throughout.
4. To some extent, these are also heterotopic spaces as they are “capable
of juxtaposing in a single real place, several spaces” (Foucault 1986, 25).
Simone Brioni (2017) used this particular lens to analyse Termini train
station.
5. Citizenship in Italy can be obtained through ius sanguinis (born or
adopted by Italian parents), through marriage with an Italian citizen or
after ten years of legal, uninterrupted residence if meeting the economic
and legal requirements. See the webpage for the Ministry of Home Affairs
(Cittadinanza 2021).
6. Furthermore, the processes of renewal are often long and costly bureau-
cratic journeys. For more information on the residency permits see the
dedicated webpage for the Ministry of Home Affairs (Visto e permesso di
soggiorno 2021).
7. The laborious and nerve-wracking process second generations have to go
through to obtain Italian citizenship produces what Marianna Boero and
Cristina Greco have defined “suspended identities […] temporally ‘sus-
pended’ between a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ that remain uncertain” (2018,
17). Different associations and groups were created throughout the years;
see in particular Rete G2 – Seconde Generazioni (2005) and Associna:
Associazione di seconde generazioni Italo-Cinesi (2005). For more infor-
mation on second generations and the ius soli/ius sanguinis debate see
Andall (2002, 2010); Bianchi (2011); Bulli (2018) and Tintori (2018).
8. The literary sources included in my corpus were all originally written
in Italian; many of those were then translated into English. In those
instances, I will use the translated text, for all the others I will provide my
own translation.
9. I have applied the same frame to the online research tool of all the news-
paper mentioned. The Corriere della sera and La Repubblica provided
more material thanks also to their local editions.
10. Another reason for selecting 1990 as the starting date for the newspaper
articles is connected to the fact that the oldest literary text included in
20 C. GIULIANI
References
Agnew, Vijay. 2005. Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A Search for Home.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ahmed, Sara. 1999. Home and Away Narratives of Migration and Estrangement.
International Journal of Cultural Studies 2 (3): 329–347.
Ahmed, Sara, Claudia Castañeda, Anne-Marie. Fortier, and Mimi Sheller. 2003.
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London and New York: Routledge.
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———. 2004. Rapdipunt. In Quaderni Del 900, IV: 127–130. Pisa and Rome:
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———. 2007. Madre piccola. Cles (TN): Frassinelli.
———. 2011. Little Mother. Trans. Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria
Poletto. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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Bond, Emma. 2018. Writing Migration through the Body. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
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Studies 72 (4): 443–454.
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1 SPACES OF MEMORY, SPACES OF BELONGING … 23
2.1 Introduction
British author Edward Forster published Howards End in 1910, and even
if train stations are only briefly mentioned, they are described, not for
their modern nature as we would expect given the chronological prox-
imity to the Futurist movement, but rather as “gates to the glorious and
the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine,
to them, alas! we return” (Forster 1973, 9; also in Ceserani 2002, 184).
This point is immediately supported by a reference to the train station in
Berlin and what it represents for Italian emigrants in Germany, “Italians
realise this, as is natural; those of them who are so unfortunate as to serve
as waiters in Berlin call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d’Italia, because
by it they must return to their homes” (Forster 1973, 9).
Since its creation, the space of the train station—as many places of
transit—has always represented a source of fascination. In Treni di carta
[Paper Trains] (2002), Remo Ceserani, investigating the role of trains
and train stations in literature, reflects on Pirandello’s work arguing that
all the usual spaces constituting a train station—the waiting room, the
gallery, the cafés—are all places that invite anonymous encounters. They
are no man’s land, where time is suspended in long waits and empty
conversations (Ceserani 2002, 291). Such a description, however, can
accommodate different attitudes towards the railway station. Ideas of
“suspended time” and “long wait”, have a straightforward meaning in
our understanding of the train station as the place where travellers wait
for a connection or for someone to arrive. On the other hand, these two
features acquire a new meaning if considered in a context of migration,
as we see from Forster’s passage mentioned before. In that quote, Italian
migrants had established such a familiar connection with the space to call
it “Stazione d’Italia” [Station of Italy] (Forster 1973, 9). Approximately
a century later, stations seem to still play an analogous role.
This chapter will look at the role played by a specific train station in
Italy, Roma Termini, which has come to represent a key pole of attrac-
tion for newly arrived migrants as well as established migrant communities
often in search of a public space that could fulfil needs for sociality.
Even though railway stations (and the neighbourhoods in which they
are located) perform a similar function in many Italian cities, the chapter
will focus on Roma Termini, the capital’s main train station due to its
constant presence in the literary texts considered.1 Termini—like Berlin’s
Anhalter Bahnhof in Foster’s quote—is a meeting point for several
migrant communities who have turned it into a space to congregate with
fellow compatriots, to speak one’s own language, to eat traditional food
and to, metaphorically, go back home. In the last few decades, Termini
has become a suspended space, temporally balanced between past and
present, and geographically connecting Italy and the country left behind.
This new purpose of the station, which sees migrants regularly spending
time there, is often perceived by locals as a source of fear and anxiety.
Graziella Parati, looking at the use of space in Lakhous’s work, high-
lights this by emphasising how the arrival of immigrants in Rome led to
the redefinition of urban spaces creating “new urban proximities” (Parati
2010, 433). She posits: “the urban space of Rome is thus filled with the
anxieties and the tensions inherent in acts of appropriation between the
native and the non-native. What is at stake is the construction of new
urban proximities” (Parati 2010, 433). According to Parati the city is a
“fluid entity”, porous and prone to modifications (Parati 2010, 433), in
this sense, the train station and the changes produced by the different
ways in which migrants use it, became a source of concern.
Migrants’ various uses of Termini are, in fact, frequently portrayed as
dangerous and unhealthy, as overall inappropriate, because a place of tran-
sition, of passage, of movement, is instead used as a place of stability, a
place in which to pause and engage with fellow countrymen. However,
this is not entirely surprising, as Pierpaolo Mudu highlighted “Termini
station has always been a pole of attraction for the most marginalised
2 TERMINI TRAIN STATION … 29
To consider its multiple uses and functions, and using Teresa Fiore’s crit-
ical lens, the station can be interpreted, as both a “pre-occupied” and
a “preoccupied” space (Fiore 2017). According to Fiore, pre-occupied
spaces are those spaces that, at the arrival of immigrants, are already
“occupied by others” and with which migrants engage “by borrowing
fragments of past traditions and leaving new signs” (Fiore 2017, 12).
The presence of migrants in urban spaces, however, especially when they
inhabit them in ways that are not the traditional ones, as in the case of
Termini, creates apprehension in the natives. Those spaces are thus also
preoccupied, “in the sense that they host worries among both newcomers
and locals, who perceive each other respectively as defensive occupants of
and illegitimate intruders into natural, urban, and domestic spaces” (Fiore
2017, 12).
The station will thus be discussed through the unpacking of the
different dynamics that on the one hand, underpin such preoccupation
while, on the other, turn the station into a home space. A further caveat
is necessary. I will consider the ways in which Termini comes to represent
home to people who, even if precarious, do have a place to stay, a place of
residence and therefore do not use the station for that purpose. Indeed,
one of the main preoccupations when it comes to Termini train station
is the presence of people without housing that do resort to Termini
as a physical refuge.2 This instance, however, falls beyond the scope of
this study. Thus, the chapter will look at the other side of the coin
where Termini becomes a home space when it is not used as a phys-
ical dwelling. After an exploration of different uses and representations of
the station, the chapter will examine the ways in which the connections
created between the Roman train station and the place of origin, located
30 C. GIULIANI
Dear Mrs Latella, I was thinking: considering that the situation at Termini
is already in itself an autonomous pole of attraction, that guarantees the
inflow and the welcoming of thieves, pickpockets, rapists, prostitutes and
pimps, illegal immigrants, rascals and so on and so forth that can comfort-
ably and freely take advantage of shops, supermarkets, bars, restaurants,
phone centres […], wouldn’t it be possible to consider also the needs of
the poor travellers? Shouldn’t they be able to reach their trains without
having to plough through multi-ethnic and multi-colour crowds? (Latella
2003, my translation)
Noteworthy here is the clear belief that the “poor travellers” are those
who have every right to use the station, because they know how to use it,
and thus should be prioritised in their use of the space. Conversely, the
other category of people is initially described as a composite group made
of migrants (with and without documents), thieves, prostitutes, criminals
of different kinds, while towards the end they are all united in the expres-
sion “multi-ethnic and varicoloured crowds” (Latella 2003). This group
is not using the station “properly” while also representing an obstruction
to those who try to do so. The combination of the different categories
of people in one single group, seen as causing the decay of the area, is a
common tendency which brings to the depiction of all the different kinds
of people included in this group as equally dangerous. Other perhaps less
explicit remarks manage to convey the same message.
An article entitled “Italiani vi abbiamo stancato?” [Italians, have we
tired you?], published by the Corriere della sera in 1993 describes the
area around Termini station as “the small Roman Soweto […] where
the curfew is in force from 9 pm. Black faces at the bar, no palefaces
around” (Ruggeri 1992, my translation). The article, which carries on
with an interview with a Tunisian man criticising the Martelli law for
being “too inclusive”, starts with a clear distinction between Italians as
a white homogenous group, and not Italians as a black equally homoge-
nous group.4 This is reminiscent of Nirmal Puwar’s words on the visibility
of minorities in positions of power. According to her “for those for whom
the whiteness of these spaces provides a comforting familiarity the arrival
of racialized members can represent the monstrous” (Puwar 2004, 50).
2 TERMINI TRAIN STATION … 33
the police to justify the decision of making people leave the station. The
verb fare, used in this context, can also be translated with to produce, in
the sense that their behaviour was in some way producing dirt. Yet, in this
case, fare can perhaps, more problematically, be translated with to consti-
tute, to form filth, echoing Douglas’s remark that dirt and uncleanness
are “that which must not be included if a pattern is to be maintained”
(Douglas 1991, 41). According to this interpretation, it is not migrants’
behaviours that are questioned, but rather migrants themselves; it is their
presence that is perceived as transgressing the boundaries of common
sense thus endangering the order.
This transgression is also perceived as a way of threatening the homo-
geneity of a place that, before the arrival of migrants—supposedly—used
to carry out only the function of a train station. Nonetheless, the station
has served a similar function in the past. According to Brioni, who draws
on Levi’s Roma fuggitiva, the station used to be a gathering point also
for internal migrants (Brioni 2017, 449).7 However, the representations
of Termini as inhabited by intranational and international migrants differ
because, “hegemonic narratives that talk about immigrants often crim-
inalise them and represent them in explicitly racialised terms” (Brioni
2017, 449). The construction of migrants’ presence at the station as clan-
destine, as illegal, leads to the perception of migrants as transgressing the
boundaries of legality by simply being there. This transgression produces
feelings of fear and insecurity echoing Puwar’s analysis mentioned above
(Puwar 2004, 50). Termini is also used as a synecdoche for Italy and
migrants in Italy and complaints against the situation at the Roman
station mirror the common complaints voiced against immigrants in Italy.
The following example, which is taken from Il Giornale, which as a news-
paper expresses an explicit anti-immigrant stance, dates to 2009 but it is
similar to earlier ones already mentioned:
Rossella sees all sort of things: “from the drug addicts that, many times,
we managed to save from overdosing, to the homosexuals that at times
beat each other up. As I was saying, sometimes Somali and other Arab
women, lock themselves in the bathroom for a while, because they fish
out the mat and pray. Or they wash themselves completely, or they write
home. We know about it, and we let them, trying to respect everyone”.
[…] It really is another world, unknown and with its own rules. (Bianconi
1996, my translation)
Noteworthy is the fact that many women use the restroom to pray or
to write a letter. This use, however, is not surprising, as the bathroom
can be locked and therefore the occupants feel protected and they can be
sure they will not be bothered. Significantly, the allusion to the gesture of
washing oneself belongs to a broader set of recurring actions that pertain
to the sphere of cleansing and purifying, and thus the private sphere. Yet,
the journalist is describing Termini, as the other article mentioned above,
as an unknown world with its own rules. This is also portrayed in the
literary texts analysed.
Igiaba Scego in La mia casa è dove sono, which has an entire chapter
dedicated to the role of Termini in the life of her family (as well as in the
life of the Somali community in Rome), explains:
As for any other Somali of the Roman diaspora, the station came into
my life immediately. […] But the most precious goods that you can find
at Termini are chats. […] It is here that you can compile the list of the
newborns and those who recently died. It is here that you can randomly
run into an aunt that you haven’t seen for six years. At the little fountain
in via dei Mille, I often see young men performing ablutions. (Scego 2010,
99–100, 104–105, my translation)
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frequently called at Apia. He was a widower with two young
daughters.
These daughters, Anne and Marjorie, or “the two Ide girls” as they
were then popularly known, displayed no sign of Puritan ancestry or
upbringing. They were just remarkably beautiful and altogether
charming and delightful. A large part of their girlhood had been
spent in Samoa; they were the product of an intermittent, but very
picturesque education, and there was ingrained in them some of that
happy-go-lucky attitude toward life, and that freedom from useless
convention which the Occidental is not unlikely to acquire in the
Orient.
These girls had, in Samoa, been great friends of Robert Louis
Stevenson. Anne, the elder, was the especial favourite of the beauty-
loving invalid and he willed to her his birthday, as can be learned
from his Samoan letters. She was born near Christmas time and had
never known what it was to have her birthday celebrated, a great
deprivation in childhood. But she now celebrates as her own the
birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson and it is, I believe, her most
cherished possession.
Marjorie, whose career, ever since our first trip together, I have
followed with the greatest affection and interest, had even more of
the care-free attitude than Anne. She used to convulse us with cruelly
funny accounts of her adventures with admirers, of whom there were
many, and with descriptions of some of the strange acquaintances
she made during her travels with her father.
Among the passengers on the Hancock was Dr. Kneedler, an army
surgeon, with his wife and two little girls. These little girls were
exceedingly bright and inquisitive. Young ladies and gentlemen had
particular and irresistible attractions for them and the Ide young
ladies kept them very much occupied. The Ide young ladies didn’t
encourage their attentions and this fact engendered their hostility.
They therefore referred to the Misses Ide as “them there Ides.” With
their delightful sense of humour the Ides, of course, rejoiced in the
designation and in all the thirteen years since then they have never
met Mr. Taft or me without presenting themselves as “them there
Ides.”
The Misses Ide were destined to be the unrivalled belles of Manila
society for six years and then to move on to broader social spheres.
Anne was married to Mr. Bourke Cochran shortly after her father left
the Philippines, but Marjorie continued to be her father’s companion
for several years, going with him to Madrid when he was appointed
Minister to Spain and presiding over the American Legation there
until she married Mr. Shane Leslie and went to London to live.
General Wright, Judge Ide and Mr. Taft were the lawyers on the
Commission and it was felt that their familiarity with law and
governmental matters greatly enhanced the strength and
preparedness of the Commission for the work they had to do.
Mr. Worcester was an assistant professor at the University of
Michigan. He too was a Vermonter, with quite as much fortiter in re,
but with somewhat less of the suaviter in modo than Judge Ide
inherently had, or had acquired in his Samoan experience.
Mr. Worcester was the only member of the party who had ever
been to the Philippines before. I think he had been there twice with
scientific expeditions before the Battle of Manila Bay had thrust the
guardianship of the Filipinos upon our country, and in the course of
his trips, with his fluency in Spanish as it is spoken in the
Philippines, he had acquired a very intimate knowledge of the people
and their customs, as well as of the flora and fauna of the islands. He
had written a book on the Philippines which came out at a most
fortunate time, just when Dewey’s victory had turned the eyes of the
country upon that never-before-thought-of corner of the world. This
book led to his appointment on the first Commission and his useful,
loyal, courageous and effective labours with that body led Mr.
McKinley to appoint him on the second.
He is a large, forceful man with rather abrupt manners and very
decided opinions and perhaps no greater contrast could be imagined
than exists between him and Mrs. Worcester, who, in outward
seeming, is the frailest kind of little woman, with a sweet face and
engagingly gentle manners which suggest timidity. Mrs. Worcester
has proved herself to possess the frailty of flexible steel. At that time
we were quite concerned about her, I remember, thinking she would
not be able to endure the Philippine climate even for a short period.
But she has lived there from that day to this. She has been with her
husband through many experiences from which the strongest woman
would shrink, toiling with him over hundreds of miles of mountain
and jungle trail on his frequent expeditions into the countries of the
wild tribes and meeting every difficulty without comment. She is in
excellent health and is a living refutation of the familiar
exaggerations as to the effect of the climate. They had with them two
little white haired children, one of them quite delicate, who have
grown up in the Philippines strong and healthy and have received
most of their education in the schools established there under
American government.
The last member of the Commission was Professor Bernard Moses
of the political and historical department of the University of
California. He was a man of profound learning, a Connecticut
Yankee, combining a very excellent knowledge of business with his
unusual qualifications as an historian, economist and student of
politics. He was especially familiar with all Spanish-American
countries, had travelled extensively in the South American republics
and had written a learned book on the constitution of Colombia. My
husband always says that he thinks Mr. McKinley exercised the
wisest discretion in the selection of all the members of this
Commission since they possessed, among them, qualifications for
every line of work in practical government and original research.
Mrs. Moses, a graduate from the University of California, was a
very attractive woman. She had a gift for vivid description and for
seeing the funny side of every situation. Her book, “Unofficial Letters
of an Official’s Wife,” gives an interesting and accurate picture of
social life in the early days of military rule, which are known in
Manila history as “the days of the Empire” and of that period when
American civil government was in the process of organisation. Her
wit sometimes had a suggestion of the caustic in it, but she never
failed to contribute her quota to the day’s amusement.
There were many other interesting members of the party,
including Mr. Arthur Fergusson, the Spanish secretary, and Mrs.
Fergusson, Mr. Frank A. Branagan, the disbursing officer, and Mrs.
Branagan, and several private secretaries with their families.
The voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu was quite perfect. As
we sailed toward the tropics the weather gradually grew warmer and
the sheltered decks became the most attractive part of the ship. The
promenade deck of the Hancock reaches from bow to stern. I believe
there is a regular term to describe such ship construction,—“decked
over all” is it?—but to me it was just a very long deck which served
unusually well for exercise. The Commission held regular business
sessions in a cabin which had been fitted up for the purpose, but
when work was over they would start on a long march around and
around the deck, covering many miles each day. My husband was
especially industrious and walked one man after another “off his
feet” until, finally, he was obliged to finish his long tramp alone. He
set himself the task of so many miles a day, so many times around
the deck being a mile, and to keep count of laps requires some
concentration. His quiet persistence in this kind of exercise was
calculated to make the lazy onlooker intensely nervous, and when I
had done my modest little turn I was always glad to indulge in a sort
of counter-concentration at a whist table, or at General Wright’s ever
constant pinochle.
Altogether the days passed very pleasantly and we were a very
merry and friendly party by the time we reached Honolulu.
At Honolulu I got my first glimpse of real tropics, and I was
enchanted. It was a glorious sensation for me that April morning
when I saw these mid-Pacific islands, for the first time, rise before
me out of a white-capped sea; clear-cut in an atmosphere which
seems never to be blurred by mist.
American energy, ambition and initiative have wrought great
material changes in the islands and these, which were even then
important, were brought to our admiring attention later on. I shall
always think of Hawaii,—of the island of Oahu, rather,—as it
appeared to me then when our ship steamed past Diamond Head,
skirted the high breakers of Waikiki and made its way up through the
bright waters of the bay into the harbour of Honolulu. Honolulu is a
little, modern city lying, all in sight, against the green of a narrow,
gently-sloping, peak-encircled valley.
The Punchbowl, a spent and emptied volcano, outlined in perfect
form against the higher hills behind it, plainly tells the story of the
spectacular construction of the islands and makes it almost possible
to visualise their sudden rise from the sea. They are not very old,
according to scientific measurements of time, but they are old
enough, at any rate, to have clothed themselves in the most brilliant
luxuriance, which is the first thing to impress the traveller as his ship
sails into the harbour.
The brilliance from the ship’s deck is the brilliance of every
imaginable shade of green, massed against the towering, pointed
hills and picked into contrasts of high-light and shadow by a sun and
atmosphere peculiar to the tropics. Once ashore, the green foliage
becomes the background for a wealth of blooming flowers, flowers
everywhere, of unnumbered different varieties, with the flaming
hibiscus in every garden, striking the high note of colour. Until we
left Honolulu laden with “leis”—long festoons of flower petals which
are thrown upon the shoulders of departing friends and visitors—
there were always flowers.
And with the flowers and the foliage and the tall palm trees and
the warm tropic sunlight, there is music, the music of the native
which greets one in welcome at the dock and contributes constantly
to the spirit of festivity until the departing ship gets too far from
shore to catch the strains of the farewell song “Aloha” whose closing
words: “Until we meet, until we meet again,” linger long in the mind
of the grateful recipient of Hawaiian hospitality.
The first thing we were to learn when our ship came up into the
harbour was that the bubonic plague had been epidemic in Honolulu
for a long time. It was our first encounter with this terror of the East.
There had been seventy-one cases in all, and sixty-one deaths. Six
Europeans had contracted the disease and of these four had died.
When we dropped anchor we were at once boarded by the local
health officer, Dr. Carmichael of the Marine Hospital Service, who
was accompanied by United States Minister Sewell and Consul
General Hayward. They wanted us to land, of course, and we were
very anxious to do so, but as the quarantine was not yet raised they
could not answer for the attitude of the Japanese health officers
when we got to Yokohama. Our going ashore might result in a long
detention in quarantine for ourselves and, aside from the discomfort
of this, we could not afford the delay. There was no particular danger
for us personally, since no new cases had been reported for twenty-
four days, but it was all a question of being able to land later in
Japan. It was really too much of a disappointment; there was not a
dissenting voice on that score, and Honolulu kept getting more and
more attractive as the possibility dawned on us that we might not see
it at all. But it was arranged. We sent for the Japanese vice-Consul
and explained matters to him and he finally agreed to hold himself
responsible for our breaking the quarantine, in so far as it concerned
Japan, if we would keep our ship out in the stream instead of tying
up at the dock, and permit no member of the crew to go ashore
during our stay. This we readily agreed to do and made our plans
accordingly. We, too, were to live on board the Hancock, but there
were any number of harbour launches put at our disposal.
We were received by the Americans in Honolulu with the utmost
cordiality and immediately found ourselves sharing the exhilarating
suspense with which the people were then awaiting the passage of
the bill in Congress which was to make the Hawaiian Islands a part
of the United States. The first thing the Commission did was to call
on President Dole, of the provisional republican government, and
with him they met the Ministers of the Treasury and the Interior, Mr.
Damon and Mr. Young. Indeed, we met all the people who had the
affairs of the islands in hand and were most delightfully entertained
by them. We found them of one mind, just anxiously waiting to be
annexed to the United States. The men, who realised the importance
of our mission to the Philippines, were eager to foregather with the
Commission and discuss with them, long and earnestly, this broad
American venture and its possible effect upon the future prosperity
of the Hawaiian Islands, but in so far as I was concerned, nothing in
the way of state problems was allowed to intrude itself upon their
purely social hospitality. There were dinners and luncheons and teas
and receptions, and, in the intervals, sightseeing.
There are a number of entertaining things to do in Honolulu and
while I do not wish to make this, in any way, a book of travel, I must
record my impressions of the world as they came to me.
The Hawaiian Islands have a background of romantic history
which makes the museums, the public buildings and even the
cemeteries of the capital extremely interesting. Besides all of which
there are some wonderful views which every one must see.
The trip to Nuuani Pali is the first thing to be undertaken in
Honolulu, perhaps because it is the greatest thing on the island of
Oahu. We didn’t know what the Pali was,—had no idea. It was just
the place to go, so we went,—the very first day. We drove up the
valley over a perfect road which wound in and out past beautiful,
palm-shaded country homes, and along the bank of a noisy, crystal-
clear little mountain stream, until we came to a point which looked
to me like the “jumping off place.” And it is; the “jumping off place”
is the Pali. The road turns sharp around the solid rock wall of the cliff
and winds its way on down into the valley on the other side, but it is
a distinct surprise to find that it doesn’t end right there. The Pali is
the Pass of the Winds; the meeting place of all the young hurricanes
of the Pacific. They say the winds in the Pali are never still. We were
flattened out against the wall of the cliff, our hats were torn from our
heads and we had to hold onto our coats for dear life, but before us
lay one of the grandest spectacles in the whole world. Coral-tinted,
purple, rose and bright blue sea; beetling, pointed, terrible cliffs, and
a broad, green plain running down to a surf-washed ribbon of beach;
a panorama as wide as the compass of vision. I have been back since
then thinking that, on first sight, I might have overestimated the
grandeur of the Pali. But I didn’t. It is one of the world’s great views.
And it has its touch of savage history too. It was up these hills and
over the cliffs of the Pali that King Kamehameha drove to certain
death the offending hordes in arms against his sovereignty. There
was no escape for them. Once in this pass they had either to go over
the precipice or back against the spears of the enemy. This being
history, and not myth, it adds much to the thrill of the spectacle.
After a visit to the indescribable “aquarium of the painted fishes”—
painted, I suppose, by the bright sun-rays in the coral shallows of the
tropic seas—we went, as guests of Mr. Carter, a prominent member
of the American colony, who afterward became governor of the
islands, out to Waikiki Beach for surf-bathing,—or, surf-riding, as it
is more aptly called.
Surf-riding at Waikiki Beach is a great game. In the first place the
surf there doesn’t look as if any human being would dare venture
into it; but when you see a beautiful, slim, brown native, naked save
for short swimming trunks, come gliding down a high white breaker,
poised like a Mercury, erect on a single narrow plank—it looks
delightfully exhilarating. It took me some time to make up my mind,
but after sufficient persuasion I finally decided to risk my life with
the others. Dressed in bathing suits, we were taken out beyond the
line of breakers in long canoes with outriggers and, with a native at
prow and stern armed with broad paddles to guide the craft, we rode
in on the crest of the waves. Even this modified version of the
natives’ foolhardy performance is dangerous enough. There is every
likelihood of an upset and not any of us could be said to swim
expertly, so there was great excitement when one member of the
party after another was plunged, out of depth, into the foaming and
seething water. Two members of our party, indeed, had a narrow
escape, though we didn’t know it at the time. General Wright and
Judge Ide were capsized in a particularly vicious breaker and Judge
Ide at once began to make frantic efforts to attract attention and
secure aid, but in the confusion his signs of distress were taken for
indications of vast enjoyment and he would have been left to drown
if he hadn’t been washed ashore by the force of the surf. General
Wright, though much the better swimmer, had no less difficulty, and
they were both quite white and shaken when they crawled up on the
beach.
We stayed four days in this “Paradise of the Pacific,” during which
we made many interesting trips, were introduced to many strange
Hawaiian customs and were regaled with many feasts, not always, I
may say, particularly appetizing. I have had in my time, for
politeness’ sake, to eat various queer messes in all sorts of odd
corners of the earth, but to me “poi” will always be “poi”—in a class
by itself. It is the true Hawaiian dish and is offered to guests by the
natives in the same spirit of compliment with which we offer to
“break bread” with our friends. It is the custom for Americans
residing in Honolulu to introduce visitors to this dish, and the native
viands which go with it, in entertainments which are called “poi
dinners,” and we were treated to as many of these as our time would
permit. “Poi” bears an unpleasant outward resemblance to cockroach
paste and, try as I would, I was never able to cultivate a taste for it.
But foreigners do learn to like it, for I found Americans in Honolulu
eating it with the greatest relish and dipping it up with their fingers
in true Hawaiian style.
On our last evening in Honolulu, after a morning of sightseeing, a
luncheon, an hour in the buffeting surf, and a large tea-party, we
were given a particularly elaborate “poi dinner” where we all sat on
the floor and at which all the guests appeared in native costume with
“leis” around their necks and in their hair. The Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Mr. Mott Smith, sent the Hawaiian Band, whose leader came
out from old Emperor William to King Kalakaua, and they serenaded
us with most wonderful Hawaiian music, interspersed, for their own
pride’s sake, with well rendered selections from the finest operas.
The girls came in flaming bright “Mother-Hubbard” dresses,
crowned and covered with “leis,” to dance for us the curious folk-lore
dances of the old-time. It was a delightful whirl of music and lights
and colour—added to fish and poi and a cramped position—but I was
tired enough not to be sorry when the time came for the singing of
“Aloha Oe” and our departure for the ship which lay out in the
harbour ready to up-anchor at daybreak and start on its way to
Japan.
On the evening of the tenth of May we reached the estuary near the
head of which is Yokohama and further on is Tokyo. For at least two
hours we steamed past a low-lying shore line before we came in sight
of the sweep of steep cliff to the southward which forms the great
outer harbour.
NIKKO. AN ANCIENT CRYPTOMERIA
AVENUE AND A GLIMPSE OF THE
FAMOUS TEMPLES
There was just one thing that we could really look at; one insistent,
dominant point in the landscape which caught us and held us
fascinated,—Fujiyama. I had seen Fujiyama on screens and fans and
porcelains all my life, but I had no conception of it. For one half hour
this “Queen of Mountains”—rightly called—rising thirteen thousand
feet out of sheer sea-level, perfect in form, snow-capped, majestic,
blazed for us against the western sky. Then a cloud curtain fell,—and
the sun went down.
As we steamed up close to the breakwater in the grey light of late
evening we could see nothing but the dark outlines of many ships
and a long row of substantial looking buildings, under high arc lights,
stretching along a wide, water-front street which I was afterward to
know as The Bund.
We wanted to go ashore, but it was not possible. We had to lie
outside the breakwater and wait for the doctors to come aboard.
“Wait for the doctors to come aboard;” how familiar that proceeding
becomes to the traveller among the ports of the East, and especially,
of Japan. You arrive at Yokohama and are examined there; you go
just around the bend of the coast line and arrive at Kobe and you are
examined there; you go on through the Inland Sea to Nagasaki and
again you are examined. Wherever you arrive in this land of much
caution you must “wait for the doctors to come aboard.”
But our doctors didn’t keep us waiting long. About eight o’clock
half a dozen of them, important little men with much gold lace, came
smiling up the gangway. We worried, rather, about the plague we had
braved,—and we did hope none of our crew would develop
symptoms,—but, having faith in the Japanese Vice-Consul in
Honolulu, we hoped for special leniency. We were not disappointed.
They examined the ship’s company with great care, but our
examination was a mere formality, a sort of apologetic enumeration
as a matter of fact, and after giving us a clean bill of health the
doctors bowed themselves most courteously away. But we had a
narrow escape. Charlie’s nurse developed a suspicious sore throat the
very next afternoon and gave us many days of anxiety for the baby
and the other children. And, as I shall make plain further on, our
anxiety was not without cause.
In reading over my own and my husband’s letters, written on that
trip to various members of the family, I find that Charlie was very
much in evidence at all times. I suppose he was spoiled because,
certainly, everybody took a hand in his misguidance, but the spoiling
process at least kept him in high good humour, unless it happened to
take the form of secret indulgence in prohibited sweets; then I had to
meet the consequences. I find my husband writing to his brother
Charles: “Charlie continues to be as full of spirits and as determined
to have his own way as ever. We call him ‘the tornado’; he creates
such a sensation when he lands in the midst of the children on board
the ship. He is very badly in need of discipline and I long for the time
to come when he will be better able to appreciate it. Maria has
become quite as much a slave to him as Nellie and you may tell his
Aunt Annie that I am still the only hope the boy has of moral
training.” This sounds so much like the average father that I thought
I ought to quote it.
When Bessie, Charlie’s nurse, was taken away from him and
quarantined we got for him a Japanese “amah” who filled him at first
with indignation, not unmixed with fear. But she was so patient, and
followed him around so much like a faithful watchdog, that he grew
to be exceedingly fond of her and straightway proceeded to exchange
his small English vocabulary for, to him, more useful Japanese
words.
The first thing to claim our attention in Yokohama Harbour was
the American cruiser Newark, the Admiral’s flagship of the Asiatic
fleet, with Admiral Kempff aboard. As soon as we came inside the
breakwater she fired a salute of seventeen guns, and we wondered
what it was all about, until suddenly we remembered that the
Commissioners had the rank of ministers plenipotentiary and
decided that it was meant for us. It was the first time in my
husband’s life that he had ever been saluted. In his later career he
reached a point where he would have been almost willing to assume
a disguise in order to escape the thunder of the twenty-one guns that
roared at him whenever he approached a naval vessel of any kind,
but I think he was rather elated by this first tribute to his official
standing.
We found later that an old friend, Captain McCalla, was in
command of the Newark. We had known Captain McCalla in
Washington when my husband was Solicitor General. He had been
court-martialed and suspended from the Navy for a year for striking
an unruly and insubordinate sailor and at his request Mr. Taft read
the record of the court-martial. Mr. Choate had been his counsel, but
the case was given a great deal of unpleasant publicity. He displayed
such bravery at the Battle of Guantanamo, in Cuba, that the files he
had lost were restored to him. He also rendered distinguished service
in the Philippines, taking over the surrender of one of Aguinaldo’s
generals at Caygayan; and later on, in China, he was in the van of the
allied troops that relieved Peking and was severely wounded. Being a
man of broad intelligence and great enterprise he appreciated the
importance of the Philippine Commission and lost no time in
extending to them all the courtesies at his command.
Shortly after we landed and got ourselves comfortably settled at
the Grand Hotel, an ensign from the Newark came to ask when the
Commission would receive the Admiral. The hour was set for this
formality and when it had been duly disposed of, Captain McCalla
called on us unofficially, with much news for our hungry ears from
the big world that we had known nothing about for eleven long days.
That was before the wireless era when going to sea was really going
to sea, and seldom has the world known a more exciting year than
1900. Grim talk about the terrible Boxer insurrection was on every
tongue and Captain McCalla told us that the Newark was lying in
readiness to proceed to China at an instant’s notice. The British were
just then pressing the Boers northward in South Africa, and our own
troubles in the Philippines were by no means over. We had nearly
seventy thousand troops in the field, and we heard of decisive
engagements between the division under General Young and some
religious fanatic insurrectos in northern Luzon. We found ourselves
feeling very much in touch with big events.
The Commission went out to the Newark to return the Admiral’s
call and when they got back to the hotel they were full of valuable
information and advice about sightseeing in Japan, housekeeping in
the Orient and other important things. Among other bits of news
they had to tell their wives was that we would all probably be
received at the Japanese Court,—which was quite exciting.
My experience is that the most formal branch of the government
service is the naval branch. The state department may be as formal,
but I doubt it. The ceremony on board naval vessels is constant, and
the severity of the penalties for any failure to follow the regulations
impresses itself upon every naval officer. Therefore, every naval
officer must have diplomatic training and must be alert in finding
out and in carrying out the duties of polite intercourse which prevail
in every country.
Captain McCalla regarded the Commissioners as pro-consuls going
to an important province, quite equal to the foremost diplomatic
representatives of the United States anywhere, and he thought it was
incumbent upon them to make the fact of their presence in Japan
known at the Imperial Court and to apply for an audience with the
Emperor. It hadn’t occurred to them. Their minds were so full of the
weighty problems confronting them at Manila that they had given no
consideration to any possible intervening formalities, and, anyhow,
Mr. Taft said he thought the Emperor wouldn’t lose much sleep if he
did miss seeing them. But this was not the proper attitude at all, and
Captain McCalla, expostulating with them for their too casual
conduct, finally prevailed upon them to communicate with the
American Minister in Tokyo and ask to have application made for the
audience. They were immediately informed that their arrival had
been expected and that the matter had already been attended to.