There is a very little crowd waiting on the quay: mostly men with theirhands in their pockets. But, thank Heaven, they have a certain aloofnessand reserve. They are not like the tourist-parasites of these post-wardays, who move to the attack with a terrifying cold vindictiveness themoment one emerges from any vehicle. And some of these men look reallypoor. There are no poor Italians any more: at least, loafers.
Make an old lady Halloween costume this year with a few thrift store finds. We actually made this one last year but I didn’t have time to post it. I wanted to get it up extra early this year so that you have time to stalk your local second-hand stores for supplies. This is a simple costume and will work for kids and adults of any age! Well, because it is fun, and any opportunity to explore characters and personas through costume may gladly be taken advantage of! Vintage Halloween Costume Ideas – Glamorous Ghost. For this glamorous ghost costume, as inspiration I have chosen Elvira from the 1945 movie Blithe Spirit. Throughout the movie, Elvira wears a beautiful 1940s. Dark Harvest does not trigger off of damage that applies neither attack nor spell effects (e.g. Scorch, Liandry's Anguish, Ricochet). Dark Harvest will trigger on clones, but not zombies. Prototype: Omnistone has a unique passive based entirely on the number of Dark Harvest stacks. Dark Harvest is often takenon the Howling Abyss, as the single lane setup causes regular teamfightsleading to a.
Strange the feeling round the harbour: as if everybody had gone away.Yet there are people about. It is 'festa' however, Epiphany. But it isso different from Sicily: none of the suave Greek-Italian charms, noneof the airs and graces, none of the glamour. Rather bare, rather stark,rather cold and yellow—somehow like Malta, without Malta's foreignliveliness. Thank Goodness no one wants to carry my knapsack. ThankGoodness no one has a fit at the sight of it. Thank Heaven no one takesany notice. They stand cold and aloof, and don't move.
We make our way through the Customs: then through the Dazio, the CityCustoms-house. Then we are free. We set off up a steep, new, broad road,with little trees on either side. But stone, arid, new, wide stone,yellowish under the cold sky—and abandoned-seeming. Though, of course,there are people about. The north wind blows bitingly.
We climb a broad flight of steps, always upwards, up the wide,precipitous, dreary boulevard with sprouts of trees. Looking for theHotel, and dying with hunger.
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At last we find it, the Scala di Ferro: through a courtyard with greenplants. And at last a little man with lank, black hair, like an esquimo,comes smiling. He is one brand of Sardinian—esquimo looking. There isno room with two beds: only single rooms. And thus we are led off, ifyou please, to the 'bagnio': the bathing-establishment wing, on the dankground floor. Cubicles on either side a stone passage, and in everycubicle a dark stone bath, and a little bed. We can have each a littlebath cubicle. If there's nothing else for it, there isn't: but it seemsdank and cold and horrid, underground. And one thinks of all theunsavory 'assignations' at these old bagnio places. True, at the end ofthe passage are seated two carabinieri. But whether to ensurerespectibility or not, Heaven knows. We are in the baths, that's all.
ISILI
The esquimo returns after five minutes, however. There is a bedroom inthe house. He is pleased, because he didn't like putting us into thebagnio. Where he found the bedroom I don't know. But there it was,large, sombre, cold, and over the kitchen fumes of a small inner courtlike a well. But perfectly clean and all right. And the people seemedwarm and good-natured, like human beings. One has got so used to thenon-human ancient-souled Sicilians, who are suave and so completelycallous.
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After a really good meal we went out to see the town. It was after threeo'clock and everywhere was shut up like an English Sunday. Cold, stonyCagliari: in summer you must be sizzling hot, Cagliari, like a kiln. Themen stood about in groups, but without the intimate Italian watchfulnessthat never leaves a passer-by alone.
Strange, stony Cagliari. We climbed up a street like a corkscrewstairway. And we saw announcements of a children's fancy-dress ball.Cagliari is very steep. Half-way up there is a strange place called thebastions, a large, level space like a drill-ground with trees,curiously suspended over the town, and sending off a long shoot like awide viaduct, across above the corkscrew street that comes climbing up.Above this bastion place the town still rises steeply to the Cathedraland the fort. What is so curious is that this terrace or bastion is solarge, like some big recreation ground, that it is almost dreary, andone cannot understand its being suspended in mid-air. Down below is thelittle circle of the harbour. To the left a low, malarial-looking seaplain, with tufts of palm trees and Arab-looking houses. From this runsout the long spit of land towards that black-and-white watch-fort, thewhite road trailing forth. On the right, most curiously, a long strangespit of sand runs in a causeway far across the shallows of the bay, withthe open sea on one hand, and vast, end-of-the-world lagoons on theother. There are peaky, dark mountains beyond this—just as across thevast bay are gloomy hills. It is a strange, strange landscape: as ifhere the world left off. The bay is vast in itself; and all thesecurious things happening at its head: this curious, craggy-studded town,like a great stud of house-covered rock jutting up out of the bay flats:around it on one side the weary, Arab-looking palm-desolated malarialplain, and on the other side great salt lagoons, dead beyond thesand-bar: these backed again by serried, clustered mountains, suddenly,while away beyond the plain, hills rise to sea again. Land and sea bothseem to give out, exhausted, at the bay head: the world's end. And intothis world's end starts up Cagliari, and on either side, sudden,serpent-crest hills.
But it still reminds me of Malta: lost between Europe and Africa andbelonging to nowhere. Belonging to nowhere, never having belonged toanywhere. To Spain and the Arabs and the Phœnicians most. But as ifit had never really had a fate. No fate. Left outside of time andhistory.
The spirit of the place is a strange thing. Our mechanical age tries tooverride it. But it does not succeed. In the end the strange, sinisterspirit of the place, so diverse and adverse in differing places, willsmash our mechanical oneness into smithereens, and all that we think thereal thing will go off with a pop, and we shall be left staring.
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On the great parapet above the Municipal Hall and above the corkscrewhigh-street a thick fringe of people is hanging, looking down. We go tolook too: and behold, below there is the entrance to the ball. Yes,there is a china shepherdess in pale blue and powdered hair, crook,ribbons, Marie Antoinette satin daintiness and all, slowly andhaughtily walking up the road, and gazing superbly round. She is notmore than twelve years old, moreover. Two servants accompany her. Shegazes supremely from right to left as she goes, mincingly, and I wouldgive her the prize for haughtiness. She is perfect—a little too haughtyfor Watteau, but 'marquise' to a T. The people watch in silence. Thereis no yelling and screaming and running. They watch in a suitablesilence.
Dh Costume Old Woman
Comes a carriage with two fat bay horses slithering, almost swimming upthe corkscrew high-street. That in itself is a 'tour-de-force': forCagliari doesn't have carriages. Imagine a street like a corkscrewstair, paved with slippery stone. And imagine two bay horses rowingtheir way up it: they did not walk a single stride. But they arrived.And there fluttered out three strangely exquisite children, two frail,white satin Pierrots and a white satin Pierrette. They were like fragilewinter butterflies with black spots. They had a curious, indefinableremote elegance, something conventional and 'fin-de-siècle'. But not ourcentury. The wonderful artificial delicacy of the eighteenth. The boyshad big, perfect ruffs round their necks: and behind were slung old,cream-colored Spanish shawls, for warmth. They were frail as tobaccoflowers, and with remote, cold elegance they fluttered by the carriage,from which emerged a large black-satin Mama. Fluttering their queerlittle butterfly feet on the pavement, hovering round the large Mamalike three frail-tissued ghosts, they found their way past the solid,seated Carabinieri into the hall.
Arrived a primrose-brocade beau, with ruffles, and his hat under hisarm: about twelve years old. Walking statelily, without a qualm up thesteep twist of the street. Or perhaps so perfect in hisself-consciousness that it became an elegant 'aplomb' in him. He was agenuine eighteenth-century exquisite, rather stiffer than the French,maybe, but completely in the spirit. Curious, curious children! They hada certain stand-offish superbness, and not a single trace of misgiving.For them, their 'noblesse' was indisputable. For the first time in mylife I recognized the true cold superbness of the old 'noblesse'. Theyhad not a single qualm about their own perfect representing of thehigher order of being.
Followed another white satin 'marquise', with a maid-servant. They arestrong on the eighteenth century in Cagliari. Perhaps it is the lastbright reality to them. The nineteenth hardly counts.
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Curious the children in Cagliari. The poor seem thoroughlypoor-bare-footed urchins, gay and wild in the narrow dark streets. Butthe more well-to-do children are so fine: so extraordinarily elegantlydressed. It quite strikes one of a heap. Not so much the grown-ups. Thechildren. All the 'chic,' all the fashion, all the originality isexpended on the children. And with a great deal of success. Better thanKensington Gardens very often. And they promenade with Papa and Mamawith such alert assurance, having quite brought it off, theirfashionable get-up. Who would have expected it?
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Oh narrow, dark, and humid streets going up to the Cathedral, likecrevices. I narrowly miss a huge pail of slop-water which comes crashingdown from heaven. A small boy who was playing in the street, and whosemiss is not quite a clean miss, looks up with that naïve, impersonalwonder with which children stare at a star or a lamp-lighter.
The Cathedral must have been a fine old pagan stone fortress once. Nowit has come, as it were, through the mincing machine of the ages, andoozed out baroque and sausagey, a bit like the horrible baldachins inSt. Peter's at Rome. None the less it is homely and hole-and-cornery,with a rather ragged high mass trailing across the pavement towards thehigh altar, since it is almost sunset, and Epiphany. It feels as if onemight squat in a corner and play marbles and eat bread and cheese and beat home: a comfortable old-time churchey feel.
There is some striking filet lace on the various altar-cloths. And St.Joseph must be a prime saint. He has an altar and a verse of invocationpraying for the dying.
'Oh, St. Joseph, true potential father of Our Lord.' What can it profita man, I wonder, to be the potential father of anybody! For the rest Iam not Baedeker.
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The top of Cagliari is the fortress: the old gate, the old ramparts, ofhoney-combed, fine yellowish sandstone. Up in a great sweep goes therampart wall, Spanish and splendid, dizzy. And the road creeping downagain at the foot, down the back of the hill. There lies the country:that dead plain with its bunch of palms and a fainting sea, and inlandagain, hills. Cagliari must be on a single, loose, lost bluff of rock.
From the terrace just below the fortress, above the town, not behind it,we stand and look at the sunset. It is all terrible, taking place beyondthe knotted, serpent-crested hills that lie, bluey and velvety, beyondthe waste lagoons. Dark, sultry, heavy crimson the west is, hangingsinisterly, with those gloomy blue cloud-bars and cloud-banks drawnacross. All behind the blue-gloomy peaks stretches the curtain ofsinister, smouldering red, and away to the sea. Deep below lie thesea-meres. They seem miles and miles, and utterly waste. But thesand-bar crosses like a bridge, and has a road. All the air is dark, asombre bluish tone. The great west burns inwardly, sullenly, and givesno glow, yet a deep red. It is cold.
We go down the steep streets, smelly, dark, dank, and very cold. Nowheeled vehicle can scramble up them, presumably. People live in oneroom. Men are combing their hair or fastening their collars in thedoorways. Evening is here, and it is a feast day.
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At the bottom of the street we come to a little bunch of masked youths,one in a long yellow frock and a frilled bonnet, another like an oldwoman, another in red twill. They are arm in arm and are accosting thepassers-by. The q-b gives a cry, and looks for escape. She has a terrorof maskers, a terror that comes from childhood. To say the truth, sohave I. We hasten invisibly down the far side of the street, and comeout under the bastions. Then we go down our own familiar wide, short,cold boulevard to the sea.
At the bottom, again, is a carriage with more maskers. Carnival isbeginning. A man dressed as a peasant woman in native costume isclambering with his great wide skirts and wide strides on to the box,and, flourishing his ribboned whip, is addressing a little crowd oflisteners. He opens his mouth wide and goes on with a long yellingharangue of taking a drive with his mother—another man in old-woman'sgaudy finery and wig who sits already bobbing on the box. The would-bedaughter flourishes, yells, and prances up there on the box of thecarriage. The crowd listens attentively and mildly smiles. It all seemsreal to them. The q-b hovers in the distance, half-fascinated, andwatches. With a great flourish of whip and legs—showing his frilleddrawers—the masker pulls round to drive along the boulevard by thesea—the only place where one can drive.
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The big street by the sea is the Via Roma. It has the cafés on one sideand across the road the thick tufts of trees intervening between the seaand us. Among these thick tufts of sea-front trees the little steamtram, like a little train, bumps to rest, after having wound round theback of the town.
The Via Roma is all social Cagliari. Including the cafés with theiroutdoor tables on the one side of the road, and the avenue strand on theother, it is very wide, and at evening it contains the whole town. Here,and here alone carriages can spank along, very slowly, officers canride, and the people can promenade 'en masse.'
We were amazed at the sudden crowd we found ourselves amongst—like ashort, dense river of people streaming slowly in a mass. There ispractically no vehicular traffic—only the steady dense streams of humanbeings of all sorts, all on a human footing. It must have been somethinglike this in the streets of imperial Rome, where no chariots might driveand humanity was all on foot.
Little bunches of maskers, and single maskers danced and strutted alongin the thick flow under the trees. If you are a mask you don't walk likea human being: you dance and prance along extraordinarily like thelife-size marionettes, conducted by wires from above. That is how yougo: with that odd jauntiness as if lifted and propelled by wires fromthe shoulders. In front of me went a charming coloured harlequin, all indiamond-shaped colours, and beautiful as a piece of china. He trippedwith the light, fantastic trip, quite alone in the thick crowd, andquite blithe. Came two little children hand in hand in brilliant scarletand white costumes, sauntering calmly. They did not do the mask trip.After a while a sky-blue girl with a high hat and full skirts, veryshort, that went flip-flip-flip, as a ballet dancer's, whilst shestrutted; after her a Spanish grandee capering like a monkey. Theythreaded among the slow stream of the crowd. Appeared Dante andBeatrice, in Paradise apparently, all in white sheet-robes, and withsilver wreaths on their heads, arm in arm, and prancing very slowly andmajestically, yet with the long lilt as if hitched along by wires fromabove. They were very good: all the well-known vision come to life,Dante incorporate, and white as a shroud, with his tow-haired,silver-crowned, immortal Beatrice on his arm, strutting the darkavenues. He had the nose and cheek-bones and banded cheek, and thestupid wooden look, and offered a modern criticism on the Inferno.
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It had become quite dark, the lamps were lighted. We crossed the road tothe Café Roma, and found a table on the pavement among the crowd. In amoment we had our tea. The evening was cold, with ice in the wind. Butthe crowd surged on, back and forth, back and forth, slowly. At thetables were seated mostly men, taking coffee or vermouth or aqua vitae,all familiar and easy, without the modern self-consciousness. There wasa certain pleasant, natural robustness of spirit, and something of afeudal free-and-easiness. Then arrived a family, with children, andnurse in her native costume. They all sat at table together, perfectlyeasy with one another, though the marvellous nurse seemed to be seatedbelow the salt. She was bright as a poppy, in a rose-scarlet dress offine cloth, with a curious little waistcoat of emerald green and purple,and a bodice of soft, homespun linen with great full sleeves. On herhead she had a rose-scarlet and white head-dress, and she wore greatstuds of gold filigree, and similar ear-rings. The feudal-bourgeoisfamily drank its syrup-drinks and watched the crowd. Most remarkable isthe complete absence of self-consciousness. They all have a perfectnatural 'sang-froid,' the nurse in her marvellous native costume is asthoroughly at her ease as if she were in her own village street. Shemoves and speaks and calls to a passer-by without the slightestconstraint, and much more, without the slightest presumption. She isbelow the invisible salt, the invisible but insuperable salt. And itstrikes me the salt-barrier is a fine thing for both parties: they bothremain natural and human on either side of it, instead of becomingdevilish, scrambling and pushing at the barricade.
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The crowd is across the road, under the trees near the sea. On this sidestroll occasional pedestrians. And I see my first peasant in costume.He is an elderly, upright, handsome man, beautiful in theblack-and-white costume. He wears the full-sleeved white shirt and theclose black bodice of thick, native frieze, cut low. From this sticksout a short kilt or frill, of the same black frieze, a band of whichgoes between the legs, between the full loose drawers of coarse linen.The drawers are banded below the knee into tight black frieze gaiters.On his head he has the long black stocking cap, hanging down behind. Howhandsome he is, and so beautifully male! He walks with his hands loosebehind his back, slowly, upright, and aloof. The lovelyunapproachableness, indomitable. And the flash of the black and white,the slow stride of the full white drawers, the black gaiters and blackcuirass with the bolero, then the great white sleeves and white breastagain, and once more the black cap—what marvellous massing of thecontrast, marvellous, and superb, as on a magpie.—How beautifulmaleness is, if it finds its right expression.—And how perfectlyridiculous it is made in modern clothes.
There is another peasant too, a young one with a swift eye and hardcheek and hard, dangerous thighs. He has folded his stocking cap, sothat it comes forward to his brow like a phrygian cap. He wears closeknee breeches and close sleeved waistcoat of thick brownish stuff thatlooks like leather. Over the waistcoat a sort of cuirass of black, rustysheepskin, the curly wool outside. So he strides, talking to a comrade.How fascinating it is, after the soft Italians, to see these limbs intheir close knee-breeches, so definite, so manly, with the oldfierceness in them still. One realises, with horror, that the race ofmen is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christ-like heroes andwoman-worshipping Don Juans, and rabid equality-mongrels. The old,hardy, indomitable male is gone. His fierce singleness is quenched. Thelast sparks are dying out in Sardinia and Spain. Nothing left but theherd-proletariat and the herd-equality mongrelism, and the wistfulpoisonous self-sacrificial cultured soul. How detestable.
But that curious, flashing, black-and-white costume! I seem to haveknown it before: to have worn it even: to have dreamed it. To havedreamed it: to have had actual contact with it. It belongs in some wayto something in me—to my past, perhaps. I don't know. But the uneasysense of blood-familiarity haunts me. I know I have known it before.It is something of the same uneasiness I feel before Mount Eryx: butwithout the awe this time.
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In the morning the sun was shining from a blue, blue sky, but theshadows were deadly cold, and the wind like a flat blade of ice. We wentout running to the sun. The hotel could not give us coffee and milk:only a little black coffee. So we descended to the sea-front again, tothe Via Roma, and to our café. It was Friday: people seemed to bebustling in from the country with huge baskets.
The Café Roma had coffee and milk, but no butter. We sat and watched themovement outside. Tiny Sardinian donkeys, the tiniest things ever seen,trotted their infinitesimal little paws along the road, drawing littlewagons like handcarts. Their proportion is so small, that they make aboy walking at their side look like a tall man, while a natural manlooks like a Cyclops stalking hugely and cruelly. It is ridiculous for agrown man to have one of these little creatures, hardly bigger than afly, hauling his load for him. One is pulling a chest of drawers on acart, and it seems to have a whole house behind it. Nevertheless itplods bravely, away beneath the load, a wee thing.
They tell me there used to be flocks of these donkeys, feeding half wildon the wild, moor-like hills of Sardinia. But the war—and also theimbecile wantonness of the war-masters—consumed these flocks too, sothat few are left. The same with the cattle. Sardinia, home of cattle,hilly little Argentine of the Mediterranean, is now almost deserted. Itis war, say the Italiana.—And also the wanton, imbecile, foullavishness of the war-masters. It was not alone the war which exhaustedthe world. It was the deliberate evil wastefulness of the war-makers intheir own countries. Italy ruined Italy.
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Two peasants in black-and-white are strolling in the sun, flashing. Andmy dream of last evening was not a dream. And my nostalgia for somethingI know not what was not an illusion. I feel it again, at once, at thesight of the men in frieze and linen, a heart yearning for something Ihave known, and which I want back again.
It is market day. We turn up the Largo Carlo-Felice, the second wide gapof a street, a vast but very short boulevard, like the end of something.Cagliari is like that: all bits and bobs. And by the side of thepavement are many stalls, stalls selling combs and collar-studs, cheapmirrors, handkerchiefs, shoddy Manchester goods, bed-ticking,boot-paste, poor crockery, and so on. But we see also Madame of Cagliarigoing marketing, with a servant accompanying her, carrying a hugegrass-woven basket: or returning from marketing, followed by a smallboy supporting one of these huge grass-woven baskets—like hugedishes—on his head, piled with bread, eggs, vegetables, a chicken, andso forth. Therefore we follow Madame going marketing, and find ourselvesin the vast market house, and it fairly glows with eggs: eggs in thesegreat round dish-baskets of golden grass: but eggs in piles, in mounds,in heaps, a Sierra Nevada of eggs, glowing warm white. How they glow! Ihave never noticed it before. But they give off a warm, pearlyeffulgence into the air, almost a warmth. A pearly-gold heat seems tocome out of them. Myriads of eggs, glowing avenues of eggs.
And they are marked—60 centimes, 65 centimes. Ah, cries the q-b, I mustlive in Cagliari—For in Sicily the eggs cost 1.50 each.
This is the meat and poultry and bread market. There are stalls of new,various-shaped bread, brown and bright: there are tiny stalls ofmarvellous native cakes, which I want to taste, there is a great deal ofmeat and kid: and there are stalls of cheese, all cheeses, all shapes,all whitenesses, all the cream-colours, on into daffodil yellow. Goatcheese, sheeps cheese, Swiss cheese, Parmegiano, stracchino,caciocavallo, torolone, how many cheeses I don't know the names of! Butthey cost about the same as in Sicily, eighteen francs, twenty francs,twenty-five francs the kilo. And there is lovely ham—thirty andthirty-five francs the kilo. There is a little fresh butter too—thirtyor thirty-two francs the kilo. Most of the butter, however, is tinned inMilan. It costs the same as the fresh. There are splendid piles ofsalted black olives, and huge bowls of green salted olives. There arechickens and ducks and wild-fowl: at eleven and twelve and fourteenfrancs a kilo. There is mortadella, the enormous Bologna sausage, thickas a church pillar: 16 francs: and there are various sorts of smallersausage, salami, to be eaten in slices. A wonderful abundance of food,glowing and shining. We are rather late for fish, especially on Friday.But a barefooted man offers us two weird objects from the Mediterranean,which teems with marine monsters.
The peasant women sit behind their wares, their home-woven linen skirts,hugely full, and of various colours, ballooning round them. The yellowbaskets give off a glow of light. There is a sense of profusion oncemore. But alas no sense of cheapness: save the eggs. Every month, upgoes the price of everything.
'I must come and live in Cagliari, to do my shopping here,' says theq-b. 'I must have one of those big grass baskets.'
We went down to the little street—but saw more baskets emerging from abroad flight of stone stairs, enclosed. So up we went-and foundourselves in the vegetable market. Here the q-b was happier still.Peasant women, sometimes barefoot, sat in their tight little bodices andvoluminous, coloured skirts behind the piles of vegetables, and neverhave I seen a lovelier show. The intense deep green of spinach seemed topredominate, and out of that came the monuments of curd-white andblack-purple cauliflowers: but marvellous cauliflowers, like aflower-show, the purple ones intense as great bunches of violets. Fromthis green, white, and purple massing struck out the vivid rose-scarletand blue crimson of radishes, large radishes like little turnips, inpiles. Then the long, slim, grey-purple buds of artichokes, and danglingclusters of dates, and piles of sugar-dusty white figs andsombre-looking black figs, and bright burnt figs: basketfuls andbasketfuls of figs. A few baskets of almonds, and many huge walnuts.Basket-pans of native raisins. Scarlet peppers like trumpets:magnificent fennels, so white and big and succulent: baskets of newpotatoes: scaly kohlrabi: wild asparagus in bunches, yellow-buddingsparacelli: big, clean-fleshed carrots: feathery salads with whitehearts: long, brown-purple onions and then, of course pyramids of bigoranges, pyramids of pale apples, and baskets of brilliant shinymandarini, the little tangerine orange with their green-black leaves.The green and vivid-coloured world of fruit-gleams I have never seen insuch splendour as under the market roof at Cagliari: so raw andgorgeous. And all quite cheap, the one remaining cheapness, exceptpotatoes. Potatoes of any sort are 1.40 or 1.50 the kilo.
'Oh!' cried the q-b, 'If I don't live at Cagliari and come and do myshopping here, I shall die with one of my wishes unfulfilled.'
Dh Costume Old Man
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But out of the sun it was cold, nevertheless. We went into the streetsto try and get warm. The sun was powerful. But alas, as in southerntowns generally, the streets are sunless as wells.
So the q-b and I creep slowly along the sunny bits, and then perforceare swallowed by shadow. We look at the shops. But there is not much tosee. Little, frowsy provincial shops, on the whole.
But a fair number of peasants in the streets, and peasant women inrather ordinary costume: tight-bodiced, volume-skirted dresses ofhand-woven linen or thickish cotton. The prettiest is ofdark-blue-and-red, stripes-and-lines, intermingled, so made that thedark-blue gathers round the waist into one colour, the myriad pleatshiding all the rosy red. But when she walks, the full-petticoatedpeasant woman, then the red goes flash-flash-flash, like a bird showingits colours. Pretty that looks in the sombre street. She has a plain,light bodice with a peak: sometimes a little vest, and great full whitesleeves, and usually a handkerchief or shawl loose knotted. It ischarming the way they walk, with quick, short steps. When all is saidand done, the most attractive costume for women in my eye, is the tightlittle bodice and the many-pleated skirt, full and vibrating withmovement. It has a charm which modern elegance lacks completely—abird-like play in movement.
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They are amusing, these peasant girls and women: so brisk and defiant.They have straight backs, like little walls, and decided, well-drawnbrows. And they are amusingly on the alert. There is no easterncreeping. Like sharp, brisk birds they dart along the streets, and youfeel they would fetch you a bang over the head as leave as look at you.Tenderness, thank heaven, does not seem to be a Sardinian quality. Italyis so tender—like cooked macaroni—yards and yards of soft tendernessravelled round everything. Here men don't idealise women, by the looksof things. Here they don't make these great leering eyes, the inevitableyours-to-command look of Italian males. When the men from the countrylook at these women, then it is Mind-yourself, my lady. I should thinkthe grovelling Madonna-worship is not much of a Sardinian feature. Thesewomen have to look out for themselves, keep their own back-bone stiffand their knuckles hard. Man is going to be male Lord if he can. Andwoman isn't going to give him too much of his own way, either. So thereyou have it, the fine old martial split between the sexes. It is tonicand splendid, really, after so much sticky intermingling andbackboneless Madonna-worship. The Sardinian isn't looking for the 'noblewoman nobly planned.' No, thank you. He wants that young madam overthere, a young stiff-necked generation that she is. Far better sportthan with the nobly-planned sort: hollow frauds that they are. Bettersport too than with a Carmen, who gives herself away too much, In thesewomen there is something shy and defiant and un-get-atable. The defiant,splendid split between the sexes, each absolutely determined to defendhis side, her side, from assault. So the meeting has a certain wild,salty savour, each the deadly unknown to the other. And at the sametime, each his own, her own native pride and courage, taking thedangerous leap and scrambling back.
Give me the old, salty way of love. How I am nauseated with sentimentand nobility, the macaroni slithery-slobbery mess of modern adorations.
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One sees a few fascinating faces in Cagliari: those great dark unlightedeyes. There are fascinating dark eyes in Sicily, bright, big, with animpudent point of light, and a curious roll, and long lashes: the eyesof old Greece, surely. But here one sees eyes of soft, blank darkness,all velvet, with no imp looking out of them. And they strike a stranger,older note: before the soul became self-conscious: before the mentalityof Greece appeared in the world. Remote, always remote, as if theintelligence lay deep within the cave, and never came forward. Onesearches into the gloom for one second, while the glance lasts. Butwithout being able to penetrate to the reality. It recedes, like someunknown creature deeper into its lair. There is a creature, dark andpotent. But what?
Sometimes Velasquez, and sometimes Goya gives us a suggestion of theselarge, dark, unlighted eyes. And they go with fine, fleecy blackhair—almost as fine as fur. I have not seen them north of Cagliari.
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The q-b spies some of the blue-and-red stripe-and-line cotton stuff ofwhich the peasants make their dress: a large roll in the doorway of adark shop. In we go, and begin to feel it. It is just soft, thickishcotton stuff—twelve francs a metre. Like most peasant patterns, it ismuch more complicated and subtle than appears: the curious placing ofthe stripes, the subtle proportion, and a white thread left down oneside only of each broad blue block. The stripes, moreover, run acrossthe cloth, not lengthwise with it. But the width would be just longenough for a skirt—though the peasant skirts have almost all a band atthe bottom with the stripes running round-ways.
The man—he is the esquimo type, simple, frank and aimiable—says thestuff is made in France, and this the first roll since the war. It isthe old, old pattern, quite correct—but the material not quite sogood. The q-b takes enough for a dress.
He shows us also cashmeres, orange, scarlet, sky-blue, royal blue: good,pure-wool cashmeres that were being sent to India, and were capturedfrom a German mercantile sub-marine. So he says. Fifty francs ametre—very, very wide. But they are too much trouble to carry in aknapsack, though their brilliance fascinates.
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So we stroll and look at the shops, at the filigree gold jewelling ofthe peasants, at a good bookshop. But there is little to see andtherefore the question is, shall we go on? Shall we go forward?
There are two ways of leaving Cagliari for the north: the State railwaythat runs up the west side of the island, and the narrow-gauge secondaryrailway that pierces the centre. But we are too late for the big trains.So we will go by the secondary railway, wherever it goes.
There is a train at 2.30, and we can get as far as Mandas, some fiftymiles in the interior. When we tell the queer little waiter at thehotel, he says he comes from Mandas, and there are two inns. So afterlunch—a strictly fish menu—we pay our bill. It comes to sixty oddfrancs—for three good meals each, with wine, and the night's lodging,this is cheap, as prices now are in Italy.
Pleased with the simple and friendly Scala di Ferre, I shoulder my sackand we walk off to the second station. The sun is shining hot thisafternoon—burning hot, by the sea. The road and the buildings look dryand desiccated, the harbour rather weary and end of the world.
There is a great crowd of peasants at the little station. And almostevery man has a pair of woven saddle-bags—a great flat strip ofcoarse-woven wool, with flat pockets at either end, stuffed withpurchases. These are almost the only carrying bags. The men sling themover their shoulder, so that one great pocket hangs in front, onebehind.
These saddle bags are most fascinating. They are coarsely woven in bandsof raw black-rusty wool, with varying bands of raw white wool or hemp orcotton—the bands and stripes of varying widths going cross-wise. And onthe pale bands are woven sometimes flowers in most lovely colours,rose-red and blue and green, peasant patterns—and sometimes fantasticanimals, beasts, in dark wool again. So that these striped zebra bags,some wonderful gay with flowery colours on their stripes, some weirdwith fantastic, griffin-like animals, are a whole landscape inthemselves.
The train has only first and third class. It costs about thirty francsfor the two of us, third class to Mandas, which is some sixty miles. Inwe crowd with the joyful saddle-bags, into the wooden carriage with itsmany seats.
And, wonder of wonders, punctually to the second, off we go, out ofCagliari. En route again.
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There's around £60 million-worth of vintage jewellery lying around in British people's homes without them knowing it, according to auction house Bonhams.
It could have been handed down from previous generations, one of your signature party pieces or even in your child’s dressing up box, Bonhams says.
Jewellery prices have been rising in recent years as investors move away from stocks and shares into more tangible commodities like diamonds, gemstones and collectable pieces.
And it cites the example of a dusty ruby brooch, which was bought in a Cambridgeshire charity shop for £1.50 and sold for £2,400 at auction after ‘scratches’ on its back were identified as a Cartier signature. That's a whopping 1,600 times its purchase price.
Remarkable finds
Some great success stories have come out of valuations.
One lady brought in a 4.50 carat single-stone ruby ring which had been passed on by her grandmother. After being sent away for testing, Bonhams discovered that it was an ultra-rare Burmese unheated stone, which sold for £134,500.
Another found a five carats brilliant cut diamond in an early 20th century ring mount, which his mother had buried in the garden in a jar and didn’t tell him where it was before she died. It was worth the year of digging around the garden to find it as it was eventually sold for £20,000.
And one man from East Anglia brought in a bright green bangle for valuation. It was identified as jade and was worth an estimated £20,000-£30,000.
Bonhams went on to sell it in Hong Kong for a massive £443,500.
Identifying valuable jewellery
Emily Barber from Bonhams has given us some advice on how to identify high-value items of jewellery.
Gather information
Try to gather as much information as possible as to where the piece came from. Look for original receipts, fitted cases, letters or notes giving an idea of where it was purchased, when and by whom.
Look out for the big jewellery houses such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Tiffany's. Jewellery made by these brands in the first half of the 20th century are highly sought after.
Look for marks
Check the jewellery to see if it has any marks. Is it signed?
Does it have UK hallmarks – stamps that when read together tell you the city, date, precious metal content of the piece? Perhaps it has other marks like letters or stamps.
These could be maker’s marks or foreign assay marks. For example, an eagle’s head stamp indicates French manufacture in gold and a dog’s head indicates French manufacture platinum.
French marks are a sign that the piece is good quality as some of the best period jewellery was made in France.
Pearls
As for pearls, there is a huge difference in value between cultured pearls – formed by man’s intervention by ‘farming’ the oyster – and natural pearls, which are solid pearls formed over many years naturally. The only way to be absolutely certain is to x-ray the pearls, but a jewellery specialist will have a good idea by looking at the pearls’ shape and lustre.
The difference in value is huge. A cultured pearl necklace is worth a few hundred pounds at auction; its natural counterpart comes in at several thousand pounds.
Know your gems
Check out colourless gems. Modern diamond cuts are very precise but older cuts are lumpier and less precise.
There has been a huge increase in the value of coloured gems (rubies, sapphires and emeralds). Look for strong, bright colours and good transparency.
Antique gems tend to be untreated (modern gems are often heated to ‘improve’ them) which makes them more valuable and antique gems tend to come from premier mines which are now exhausted. They are rare and demand is huge.
Don't just rely on your judgment
Just because a jewel may not be to your taste does not mean it is not valuable. Jewellery goes through fads and fashions at auction and something that was out of fashion a few years ago might now be on the up. For example, jewellery made in the 1970s and 1980s is now collected widely.
Is it unusual?
If a jewel looks highly unusual it might well be a unique, one of a kind piece and therefore carries a premium. It could be by an artist jeweller, a craftsman who did not work for a big jewellery organisation.
Look at the workmanship
The very best jewellery has been crafted to an excellent finish on all sides of the piece, not just the front part which people see. Look at the back and underneath too.
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Going for a valuation
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Bonhams is holding free valuation days as part of its ‘Jewellery in June’ campaign. You can visit its regional offices in the North East, Yorkshire, Humberside, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and North Derbyshire but by appointment only.
Goldsmiths also offers valuations. There's a £60 flat fee for the first item and £45 for each additional item.
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For local services, go to the Institute of Registered Valuers. It lists valuers across the UK.