Let's all go down Eyre Street Hill, for there, you know, organs are
still gurgling, and there are lazy laughter and spaghetti and _dolce far
niente_, and cigarettes are six a penny. There are little restaurants
here hardly bigger than a couple of telephone boxes. They contain but
two tables, and some wooden benches, but about a dozen gloriously savage
boys from Palermo and Naples are noisily supping after their day's tramp
round London with whatever industry they affect. They have olive skins,
black curly hair, flashing eyes, and fingers that dance with gemmy
rings. A new-comer arrives, unhooking from his shoulders the wooden tray
which holds the group of statuettes that he has been hawking round
Streatham and Norwood. He salutes them in mellifluous tones, and sits
down. He orders nothing; but a heaped-up dish of macaroni is put before
him, and he attacks it with fork and finger. There are few women to be
seen, but those few are gaudily arrayed in coloured handkerchiefs, their
mournful eyes and purring voices touching the stern night to beauty. Of
children there are dozens: furious boys and chattering girls. All the
little girls, from four to fourteen, wear socks, and the narrow roadway
flashes with the whirling of little white legs, so that the pedestrian
must dodge his way along as one dancing a _schottische_. A few
public-houses shed their dusty radiance, but these, too, are little
better than dolls' houses. I have never seen village beer-shops so
small. They are really about the size of the front room of a labourer's
cottage, divided into two--Public Bar and Private Bar.
Such is the High Street of Italy, where one feeds. Most of the Italians,
however, live in one of those huge blocks of tenements of which there
are, I should think, a dozen in Clerkenwell. They seem to centre about
the sounding viaducts that leap over Rosebery Avenue. Upon a time the
place had a reputation for lawlessness, but that is now gone, with most
of the colour of things. Occasionally there is an affray with knives,
but it is always among themselves: a sort of vendetta; and nobody
interferes so long as they refrain from bloodshed or from annoying
peaceable people. The services in the Italian Church are very
picturesque, and so, too, are their ceremonies at Christmas-time; while
the procession of the children at First Communion is a thing of beauty.
The little girls and boys walk together, the boys in black, the girls in
white, with white wreaths gleaming in their dark curls. At
Christmas-time there are great feasts, and every Italian baker and
restaurant-keeper stocks his trays with Panetonnes, a kind of small loaf
or bun, covered with sugar, which are distributed among the little ones
of the Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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