Those who go from the mountain districts down to the Maremma, to
work during the summer months, probably keep well while they are there; but as
soon as they return to the keen, dry air of the mountains, the effect of it is
to develop the malarial fever that has been dormant in their system. In cases of consumption it is the same thing.
Where it is latent in the system, there is no more sure way to develop it than
to bring the patient to this keen, piercing Tuscan air. I have known this frequently happen in the
case of English people, who might have been considered delicate but in regard
to whom there had been no suspicion of consumption. The climate of Tuscany is
one that stimulates without bracing, and requires long and frequent absences
from it, if one wishes to preserve the constitution unimpaired. It is a most
uncertain climate, with variations quite as great as those of England, only, as
Italians say, always in esaggerazione. It is always an extreme, be it of heat, cold,
drought, or rain, as is expressed by the Italian proverb, “Ni in freddo, ni in caldo,
siamo in cielo”. And the people have the
same characteristic, - unbalanced in the highest degree, and it is extremely difficult
for a foreigner to deal with them until, after some years of experience, he
begins to understand the different types, and to discriminate between
them. There is no training of children in
any rank of life, and it is really not until a young fellow goes to his
military service that he gets some idea of discipline. There is no better servant than a youth just
returned from his military service; it is the one education of the country. When I look back and think of the way the
garden and I struggled on, always making a little headway, it does seem to me
extraordinary that it should ever have developed at all.
In the late eighties, family matters recalled us to England, and
we were absent for a year and a half, and again in 1891, for fully six
months. When we returned on this last
occasion, the place was in such a state
that I was thoroughly disheartened, and seriously thought of giving it over
into the hands of someone who could supply us with flowers, and make what he
could out of it. But by this time I had
gone to very considerable expense with regard to it. We had had a number of
frames made, which I was allowed to stand on the sunny side of the big park, and
after the stanzone came into my hands, finding it was a kind of cemetery for
plants in the winter, I entirely remodelled it, putting in a glazed window to
the west, taking down the tiles from the roof in two places, and glazing the
vacant spaces, doing away with the lumbering old doors that suggested a convict
prison as they swung to and fro, and making two neat, small beds at each side
of the new doors, which were on a wooden frame inside and slid backwards and
forwards into place, and were fastened at night by a padlock. These beds had nice stone edgings, and we
planted creepers in them to cover the stanzone roof. After all this trouble and outlay, the Junior
Partner protested loudly against any scuttling policy. So I decided to engage a
permanent gardener, but before doing so, again had everything put to rights as
far as it could be done, knowing well how fatal it would be to any future
prospect of law and order if things were not in a good state when handed over.
The man I engaged was a powerful young fellow, and he, too, came
of a good gardening family. His brother
had charge of the rose-grafting department in one of the leading Florentine
nurseries. His home was only about a mile
distant from us, and I found him very honest and industrious, and with a fair
amount of knowledge. He was with me for
two years, during which time I had raised his wages, and he was just about to
be married when, to my great regret, I found I should have to make another change,
in consequence of his conduct during a short absence I made in the autumn of his
second year, when he conceived the happy idea of adding to his income – in view
of his approaching marriage – by taking on other gardens and totally neglecting
mine.
That is the bedrock on which one so often lands in this country –
the absolute untrustworthiness of the people with whom you have to deal! The Tuscan saying is that “you must begin
with suspicion, and go on with suspicion.”
The beginning is legitimate enough, it is the “going on” that is so very
painful and that brings so many forestieri
to the frame of mind when one shrugs one’s shoulders and says, “Che vuole? – what
else would you expect?”
And sympathy here is always – Irish-like – with the criminal,
and never with you, the aggrieved and injured employer. I was thought a monster of cruelty on this
occasion for turning the man away, though he had left standing out in torrents
of rain all our seed pans and boxes, containing all our autumn sown seeds, rather
than trouble himself to put them into the frames, securely under glass. I returned home two days after the storm that had literally washed the
earth and seeds out of their seed pans, to find the garden that I had left six
weeks before in perfect order, a wilderness.
I felt especially aggrieved on this occasion, having lent my
house to some Italians, to whom I knew it would be a great boon during the hot
months, and had hoped that their presence would be a certain check on any irregular
proceedings, and that they would let me know by letter if anything was
amiss. I should know better by now than to expect anything of the
kind 
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