Ragusa

"A proud and noble city is that of Ragusa; and truly she has a right to glory in her history, though alas! It is now all gone into the past. […]. She is the only city in Dalmatia where no Lion of St. Mark is to be seen, and to this day it is impossible to converse with any Ragusan for half an hour, without his reminding you of that proud fact. […].

The principal street, called the Stradone, of Ragusa debouches at each end into a double fortress with a bridge over a deep ditch: the southern fortress or gate is called the Porta Plocce, the northern Porta Pille. Outside the latter is a large café and a gravelled place called 'il Boschetto', shaded by a group of the magnificent Paulonia imperialis of 'short but sweet' duration. Here is the sole hotel of Ragusa; a tolerably well-built house, looking from two sides on the sea-washed rocks, and seemingly embedded between the fortresses of Pille and San Lorenzo. Under the management of a landlord who abhorred vermin and incoherent accounts, the hotel would be very comfortable; as it was, we found it airy, and the cuisine good, and, by dint of daily beholding with our own eyes the washing out of our apartments, and paying for every meal as soon as swallowed, we got on very well.

Ragusa is a place comme il y en a peu for the lovers of art and history, and its charming climate and beautiful scenery would make it a delightful residence for many months at a time, both summer and winter: but it needs a little more of English enterprise and capital before it can become, as it well deserves to be, a favourite abiding-place for the invalid or the tourist. It is hot in the summer, but the sea breezes sweep so refreshingly through it that it is never close or stuffy: while in the winter its western aspect prevents its ever being really very cold; and the city is said to be remarkably healthy. I can well believe it, for I never saw a cleaner town in this part of the world. The streets are all paved with large flat flags, and most of them have a gutter of running water. Like every walled town, with no exception, on this coast, carrieges cannot enter within the city: the gates are small and narrow; but besides this impediment, the flat flag pavement renders them unfit for traffic of this kind" (pp. 109-112).

"Ragusa is a very strictly Catholic city: there are only three Greek priests in the whole place. It contains a very large Jesuit seminary and innumerable monks, Franciscans, Dominicans, &c. It is also the largest garrison town in Dalmatia, about 3,000 Austrian soldiers being quartered here, and the common saying appeared to me most practically true, that every third man you meet in the streets is a soldier, and every second man a priest. The population is about 52,000 (*This number was given me by the Civil Governor of the city, and confirmed by H. B. M.'s Consul.). […].

Every Ragusan woman wears a set of these beautiful gold beads round her throat, with ear-rings of the same fine work, perfectly originale; she has almost invariably also a pair of ear-rings formed of drop pearls, connected with foliated curves and cloisons of delicate enamel of various colours, some of them translucent: they are of the same kind as the enamels, and something of the same pattern as those on the case of San Biagio's head. These ear-rings are much prized: they are seldom unbroken, but are still beautiful. A score of them, fastened together into a huge stomacher, have been offered up to one of the figures of the Madonna in this church. I was told that many of these ear-rings could be authenticated as having been in certain families for six hundred years. A vast number of other things in gold and silver, brought here for safety from old monasteries in Bosnia and the Herzegovina might be mentioned, […]. Behind the Stradone there is a small place called the Piazza dell'Erbe, where the vegetable market is held every morning. We generally found our way there between 6 and 7 A.M. each day, in order to see the country costumes of the Morlachs. The women are perhaps more comely than handsome, but they are a fine-looking set, not masculine though very robust. Their dress resembles the Albanian, but is much handsomer and gayer: it has the briskness of an Italian costume united to the barbaric richness of an Oriental dress. The country women arrange a white cloth in a simple Syrian fashion over the red fez, which has a few coins sewed to it. They generally have white bodices, and sometimes a jacket of cloth, with blue or red tight skirts of coarse and very thick woollen stuff, and striped aprons of the same material; stockings of every conceivable hue that can be knitted together appear underneath. The townswomen are dressed entirely in cotton, invariably of scarlet and yelllow mixed, trimmed with yellow braid, with a pink apron and neckerchief; another kerchief of the same colours is bound on the head. All the women from town or country have necklaces of the gold beads peculiar to Ragusa, and one, two, three, even four pair of gold or pearl and enamel ear-rings worn in their ears at once; and scarcely a woman but has one or two massive gold rings on every finger. But the chief peculiarity of the Morlach costume, as belonging to Ragusa, is the gold sword, about six inches long, which every woman sticks into her hair as soon as she is engaged to her lover: two curious gold bows are hung upon the hilt of this sword on the day of marriage. In Albania and the west of Dalmatia all the women's ornaments are of silver; in Ragusa all is gold or silver gilt.

Outside the Porta Plocce is the meat market; and beyond this a semi-Oriental, stony slope, where beasts are sold and caravans from the interior of the country unloaded. Here you see men from the Herzegovina, from Montenegro, and occasionally Bosniacs and Turks from Bosnia; […]. We wandered till after the moon was up among the woodland paths, […]. Passing through the town on our way home, we were amused to see the gatherings of loungers and gossipers and newspaper readers at the chemist's shops; but I found it the Dalmatian custom to eschew the barbers, bakers, or sweet-shops, so much frequented in other countries, for the more wholesome precincts of the apothecary. The next day the Civil Governor, the General or Military Governor, Monsignore Zubranich, the venerable and charming bishop of Ragusa and Trebigné, and many others, called upon us or returned our visits. […].

It seems that two years ago a lady, to whose name the amplest pubblicity should be given - Ida von Durrenberg - visited Ragusa. She was received with much kindness by the whole society of Ragusa, I must be forgiven for adding my testimony that the Ragusans are very hospitable to strangers, warm-hearted and cordial in manner. Madame Ida von Durrenberg entered into every house […], and, on leaving it, wrote and published an account of the society of Ragusa, detailing every petty on dit as a serious fact, not merely of 'M or N', but with all their names at full length! […]. And I myself found an icy current stealing between us after a friend had thoughtlessly informed them I had once been guilty of writing a book! I can, consequently, only allow myself to say that I found the ladies of Ragusa more lively, agreeable, and graceful in mind and manners than almost any society with which I am acquainted, and their beauty is remarkable. […].

Ragusa is the home of all the ancient families and real nobilty of Dalmatia. Many of them have left an unbroken pedigree and undispersed estates since the earliest ages of the patrician order - an order founded by a citizen named Gozze in 930: and though some are exceedingly poor, they still look down with jealous contempt on the modern nobility whose patents are dated since the earthquake in 1667, when the Rector of the Republic and so many of the Senators had been swallowed up, that others were obliged to be created at once, in order to keep up the requisite numbers of the Grand Council. Of course, at the present day, every Ragusan salon is half filled by the Austrian military officers and their families quartered there, and the Ragusans speak German as readily as nearly all the Austrians speak Italian; but the native nobility invariably slip into Sclave when speaking to each other, and they only contract marriages with the Austrians reluctantly. Nor can one fail to sympathise with their unwillingness to lose such names of old historic interest as those of Caboga, Bona, Ghetaldi, Gozze, Giorgi, Gondola, Boscovich, &c., as meet one at every step in the society of Ragusa.    

One anecdote more, and I have done with all personalities among a society I shall always remember with pleasure. Of all the foreign Consuls in the city, only one, the Prussian Consul, Baron de L., omitted to call on me. I could not help noticing the omission, and I naturally enquired the reason. The Baron must have had small experience of Englishwomen, and but a mean opinion of the fascinations of Ragusa, as I was told that he said it was perfectly impossible I could have come to see the country for my pleasure only, and that he had made up his mind I had received a commission from the Cabinet of St. James's to collect information respecting the political relations of Dalmatia and its neighbourhood; that he heard I was going to Montenegro to pursue these enquiries, with the special object of taking Servia in the rear, and finding out from the Montenegrines, if possible, what crooked political scheme had taken the Princess of Servia to England, &c., and that he did not wish to be reported upon! And so as long as I stayed there the excellent but over-careful Baron never joined the élite of the world under the Boschetto at the café, and cruelly deprived me of his acquaintance!

Very pleasant is this little meeting under the trees; the Austrian band performs here every evening from 6 to 10 o'clock, while the listeners chat and eat ices. On Thursdays the Civil Governor leaves his chair and his cigarette at 8 o'clock, and walks back into the city, followed by all the invités of his circle, to his house in the Piazza dell'Erbe, tha band accompanying them and stationing itself in the Piazza below; the company then dance without any further formality in their morning dresses, till the 10 o'clock gun sends everybody home to his own house" (pp. 116-126).