Roman Remains

Nostalgia is a thing of the past......

I have written about Rome about a dozen times on this blog, peppering pieces with photos taken now and then, quoting Bob Dylan and Claudio Villa, reminiscing, discovering, returning, wondering..... The above picture was taken around 1978, and while I can still name some of the individuals, and remember their characters, I don't know where they are now nor how their lives have developed - so if you have any news, please get in touch!

The picture was taken at St George's British International School (then St George's English School, founded on the Via Salaria in 1958), whose home is now in this ex-Jesuit Seminary at La Storta, at Km 16 on the Via Cassia (on the spot where, in November 1537, Ignatius of Loyola, on his way from Venice to Rome, had a vision in which God appeared to him with Jesus carrying his cross.)

I arrived there in the summer of 1976, appointed to teach English by the then Headmaster, the late Tom Jackson.  It was the beginning of an enduring affair with Rome and Italy, which has led not only to many friendships, but also to marriage and family.  

That move to Italy was the turning point in my life and, for better or worse, made me what I am today.... (whatever that may be)....  You could say I grew up there, weaned by the she-wolf....

So why am I writing yet again about the past?  I will come to that, but one step at a time:

Like St Ignatius I came down (this time) to Rome from Venice (but there the similarity ends!) to see friends and have a little R & R after the excesses of the Carnival.  I am greeted by Popes:

And Emperors:

Who stretch out their right arms to me in Musk-like greetings that may (even?) have inspired Mussolini?  Who knows? Perhaps the colossal Constantine might have raised his arm in such a way on occasion....?

Though Gian Lorenzo Bernini's statue of the River Plate on the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona illustrates an entirely different hand gesture - apparently raised to stop Borromini's church of S. Agnese from falling:

Well, when Rome falls, then falls the world, as my hero (George Gordon) Lord Byron once said....  Or rather:

'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand:

'When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

'And when Rome falls. - the World.'

[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, CXLV)

So maybe there is hope for us yet?  Despite the awfulness of Trump et alios that reminds us of the worst excesses of Imperatorial Rome.

As Dylan said (and I have quoted oft times) The streets of Rome are filled with rubble [When I paint my Masterpiece].  But what is this I see atop the broken stones?

Well, as if you didn't know, it is a Black Redstart, a tiny life not uncommon on city sites. And its Italian name is Codirosso spazzacamino, which translates as Red-tailed Chimneysweep, an example, as if I needed one, of why I love Italy, the Italian language, and Italians so much.  That strangely imaginative straightforwardness. Calling a spada a spada......  

And then there is that comfortable ease of reclining in public, cooling by a fishpond:

Or the delicate shyness that hides so many private thoughts, while taking no heed of what may be in the mirror:

There is the complete innocence when standing in front of a photographer who just might be wishing to capture a scene:

Or perhaps there is the ability to strike a pose when you know it is you that is being photographed?

Anyway, enough of my feelings for Italy for the moment....

Back to St George's.

When people hear I was "a teacher" they often ask, And what did you teach?  And I, with coy glibness, often reply, Not a lot.  

I think, despite the truth of my answer (if someone wants to learn then they will; ideally the teacher is someone who creates that desire to learn, and facilitates the process) a better question might be, And what did you learn?  For, glibness aside, learning is, for some at least, a life-long practice, and, put bluntly, a teacher has to keep at least a page ahead of his/her pupils and so will be learning as well.  

So, for example, if the curriculum demands a lesson on Othello, the teacher should at least have read Act One before the lesson starts (and maybe know how the play ends.....)

{Yes I am aware that many teachers know everything.....  Just not me.} 

And to illustrate this thesis that learning is ongoing, I was invited to see Vittorio Gassman (whose son Alessandro and stepson Emanuele were at the school) as 'Othello'  and it was there that I learned that Desdemona (the accent being on the second, not the third, syllable) was like many of my students - a bright, excitable, impressionable, passionate young Italian girl (not so much a character out of Jane Austen for example).  And this gave life to the play, and indeed to some of my own experience.....

Admittedly, Gassman's Othello and this view of Desdemona may well now be out-dated - even improper? But times and attitudes change (Gassman died twenty-five years ago). I mean, Caligula is said to have planned to appoint his horse, Incitatus, as consul.  Can you imagine anything like that happening today?

Anyway, it wasn't just Il Mattatore that coloured our time at St George's (there were other stars in the firmament, including children of Rosi, Proietti, Giuffrè, Augias, Zanone, Placido, Andress, Trovajoli, Uboldi, Guerra, Khan, Timmermans, Thyssen, Tocci, Porro, and many others.....)  

It was a scintillating - 

{I cannot resist this:

I have outlived 

my youthfulness

so a quiet life for me

where once

I used to

scintillate

now I sin

till ten

past three.

Thank you Roger McGough, who I brought to St George's to read his poetry in support of Amnesty International}

Yes, it was scintillating to be a part of the St George's community and it gives me great pleasure to remain in contact with many from those years, though sadly some are no longer with us. 

On this last visit to Rome, I had lunch, at the Antica Trattoria Polese, with one of my ex-pupils, Maria Valentini, who is now Professore associato di letteratura inglese at the Università degli Studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale (as well as being, among other things, on the Board of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association in Rome, having been Chair and Vice-Chair).  We had a typically Roman lunch:  Carciofi alla Romana:

Followed by Fracostina di vitella alla fornara con patate arrosto, a house speciality since 1960.

Apart from the pleasure of meeting up with Maria, and the relaxed atmosphere of the trattoria (as opposed to the frenetic workings of the tourist venues a few hundred metres away on the route between St Peter's/Castel Sant'Angelo and Piazza Navona), I was especially touched by my memory of this place as it was where we had a dinner to say goodbye to Janey Alcock in the summer of 1977.  

Janey was the feisty Deputy Head (lictor) of St George's when I arrived, who ruled with a fasces of steel.  On one occasion, after a series of carjackings on the Raccordo Anulare, she said, with a nod to her battered rust-coloured 230 S Mercedes - I dinna mind been raped, but I dinna want to lose ma Mercedes.....

Or words to that effect.  RIP Janey (You're late!)

I also caught up with a Governor of St George's with whom I had worked in the past. Rob Guthrie was Head of Secondary and Acting Principal in the early nineties and has now been a Governor since 2017. We had a very enjoyable drink *or was it two?) together in Prati, and he told me of the school's re-acquisition of parts of the land and property at La Storta and the development of St George's City Centre Junior School, which is situated close to the Vatican.  

I also noted that the Chair of Governors and one of the Trustees were pupils when I taught there.  

Tempus fugit!

In addition I was greatly privileged on this trip to be invited to visit the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda, which nestles inside and above the Tempio di Antonino e Faustina in the Foro Romano.  The temple was built in honour of Faustina, the wife of Antonino, who died in the year 141.  The ten, seventeen metre tall, columns of cipollino were brought from Greece. The church was probably created in the eleventh century, but was radically restyled in the early seventeenth century.

My invitation came from Guido Torelli, a pupil (with his sister Silvia) at St George's early in my days there, who, after school did his military service and then joined the Carabinieri.  He had a change of heart, though, in his twenties, and, after studying at University, he took over his parents' Pharmacy business in the Portuense district of Rome, which is where he is today.

And now he is also Secretary of the Nobile Collegio Chimico Farmaceutico Universitas Aromatariorum Urbis, (or, more simply, the Collegio degli Speziali [Guild of Apothecaries]) founded in 1429 by Papa Martino V, which has its seat in this church.

It was great to meet up, and, even after some forty-four years, we recognised each other instantly and got on as if time had not intervened.  The church is richly decorated, and contains works by Pietro di Cortona, Domenichino and from the school of Raphael, among others:

The main doors open out through the portico over the Forum:

Though it has not always looked like this. In 1860, when the photograph below was taken (not by me, I hasten to add) the whole area was completely buried, with medieval houses and fields for pasturing cattle and it was known as the Campo Vaccino. So in those days you would not have fallen ten metres to the Via Sacra if you stepped out.....

In the various chambers above the body of the church there are offices and archives and a library, and then the crypt houses the Guild Hall and a remarkable museum of Pharmacology, with some very beautiful vases and bronze mortars.  

It was a fascinating visit, and great to catch up with another Georgian.  Thank you Guido! 

When I leave, it has begun to rain, but the umbrellas are out:

Framed by ancient Roman structures:

And fighting the wind across the Isola Tiberina:

It can be very wet in Rome - it's a mistake to think that it is always fine in Italy. I've seen frozen fountains in the city, as well as hailstones as big as marbles. I have experienced three earthquakes here and melted in the summer heat.....

I retrace some of my ancient steps, following some of the ways I went to catch the morning bus to St George's, though spray paint graffiti was not a feature in those days:

And electric scooters didn't exist either! The Tiber is high, though it is now contained within solid embankments (begun in 1876). Before then the Campus Martius part of the city would regularly flood to a depth of two metres and there were several major disasters such as that of September 15th, 1557 when over a thousand people died. 

I walk across the Ponte Sisto to Trastevere, where I lived for seven years, and take refuge in the basilica of Santa Maria with its mosaic apse and cosmatesque floor:

Later, in better weather, I visit the Largo di Torre Argentina (which takes its name from Strasbourg, which was called Argentoratum in Latin - the Silver City) in the centre of the Campus Martius.  I must have walked past this dropped space a thousand times in my youth, but was then constrained only to peer over the railings to watch the cats lying in the sun.  The Area Sacra is now, however, open to the public and you can (almost) walk on the very spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated, several metres below the modern street level.

I walk past the Theatre of Marcellus, past the Portico d'Ottavia and the Roman Ghetto:

And climb the Capitoline Hill, from where I gaze back over the city towards St Peter's, a view that still takes my breath away:

And then pass by the Roman Forum again, marvelling at the remains of what was, perhaps, civilisation.  [When did it start?  When did it end?]

Yes, Rome is not what it was. Nothing ever is. 

As Giuseppe Tomasi wrote in Il Gattopardo, Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi.  [If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change....]

In my own time I have seen many changes in Rome.  For example there was a thriving open air market in Piazza di San Cosimato just near where I lived in Trastevere.  The market used to fill the whole piazza, every day except Sunday.  There is still a market, but it is sadly diminished and much of the piazza is now a car park.

Another market, in the Campo de' Fiori, was then as Roman as you could get.  The market is still there but many of the stalls are no longer in the hands of Romans.  

A similar change has overtaken the streets near the train station of Roma Termini.  Many of the smaller enterprises around there are now run by Chinese, who rotate their staff every so often to avoid problems with visas.

When I was first in Rome, you could walk into the Colosseum at will, and find it almost empty much of the time.  Now you need to book in advance and still queue with thousands of others.....  We used to eat out every night as it was cheaper than staying in.....  In August the city was near deserted, as Romans took to the beaches and mountains to escape the torrid summer heat - now it's busy all year round. 

Anyway, finally, in an instinctive trip down memory lane, I walk along the Via del Lavatore, which is where I first lodged in 1976, to the newly cleaned Trevi Fountain.  It used to be said that if you drank of the water here you would return to Rome, and then somewhere in time it became fashionable to throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain whilst making a wish (apparently €1.4 million were collected from the fountain in 2016!) a practice featured in the 1955 film Three Coins in the Fountain, with the song performed by Frank Sinatra.  

Well, I have never drunk from Anita Ekberg's paddling pool, and I don't like to throw money away, but I do keep returning to Rome. 

Despite the changes, I do love it very much. My experiences in the city, my friends, the privilege of working at St George's, these have all intricately coloured and enriched my life - I cannot give thanks enough.

Maybe I shall return again?

This piece has been composed with love and best wishes to all my friends past and present, in and from Rome, especially to those whose paths have taken them far away and with whom I may have lost contact.

Three coins in the fountain

Through the ripples how they shine

Just one wish will be granted

One heart will wear a valentine

Make it mine

Sammy Cahn