Italian Country Life Etiquette (1882)

The balls are not select; even the peasants are included; and the price of admission is only one sou. There is every variety of class and costume. Some of the ladies will appear masked; other in what they fondly imagine to be the height of fashion; some in evening and some in morning dress, and some in a happy mixture of both. One will wear a low gown and her best bonnet; another will carry in addition to fan and smelling bottle, her muff. The band plays on a raised scaffolding. — At the Fancy Dress Ball of 1893

Amusements in Italian Country Life

There is always a band, often very good, and there is generally a theatre, where, during the carnival, some sort of dramatic representation takes place, and the theatre serves also for a ballroom; then there are the fairs, which make a rendezvous for all classes, and. at the risk of appearing irreverent, I must include processions among the entertainments. 

Italian amateur actors are infinitely better than English. To simulate emotion, to speak distinctly, to suit the action to the word all this comes naturally to them. A great many are born actors and actresses, and display their talents freely off the stage; for the exhibition of feeling is thought so proper and becoming that they feign it where they have it not. To weep at every parting, even with the most casual acquaintance, is thought a point of etiquette, and the art of pumping up tears at will is one of the first to be acquired. 

Knowing the amount of pain and rehearsing necessary to get up private theatricals in England with any success, I was surprised at the facility with which the dullest and most uneducated Italian would learn and recite his art, and with what grace and what effect each point would be given. He never mumbles, or looks as if he didn t know what to do with his arms and legs, or appear to be wondering why he is making such a ridiculous fool of himself, as is the way of the English amateur. 

The balls are not select; even the peasants are included; and the price of admission is only one sou. There is every variety of class and costume. Some of the ladies will appear masked; other in what they fondly imagine to be the height of fashion; some in evening and some in morning dress, and some in a happy mixture of both. One will wear a low gown and her best bonnet; another will carry in addition to fan and smelling bottle, her muff. The band plays on a raised scaffolding. 

Musicians and dancers cannot agree, “Do you know what it is yon are playing ?” is occasionally shouted from below. “Do you know what it is you are dancing ?” is the tu quoque from above. More lively banter follows, ending perhaps, in a quarrel. The musicians strike work; the dancers reply that does not matter; but it ends in a reconciliation, and all goes on as before. The peasants prefer dancing in the open air. The only dance known to them in these parts is the “salterello.”  The man and woman dance opposite one another, she looking as if she must fall forward, and he backward. Hands are sometime joined; but this is thought bad form by the peasant aristocracy. 

Two or three fiddlers play a monotonous, bagpipe like tune, which is occasionally enlivened by a shout and gust of song. Then an “improvisatore” will be inspired by bis muse, and, like some clergymen who preach extempore, has a difficulty in leaving off. The energy which the peasants display after a hard day's reaping under a burning sun seems amazing, but Italians, though some times averse to work, never tire of their amusements. 

The band plays an important part in all festivities. During a wedding it will play operatic music inside the church; it brings up the rear in all processions; it celebrates the “Befana” (Epiphany) by going about, much as our “waits,” do, from house to house, and, like the “waits,” it is apt to become a nuisance. On occasion such as a birth, or a christening, or an electoral triumph, or the return from a journey, we have suffered much from the midnight serenade of a particularly zealous band belonging to a neighboring village. –The Cornhill Magazine, 1882

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