Carl Stearns Clancy, the first round-the-world biker, whose route we were following 100 years on, was surprised to find the ancient Rome of his dreams now a bustling modern city.
He made straight for the Forum, which he found packed with “Americans of the noisy tourist type”, then ticked off the Palatine Hill, St Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum and a night at the opera, where he found the audience small, the acting bad, but the singing much better than back home.
He was lucky; the last time I was in Rome, I found myself at the Fantasie Theatre, where several chaps in drag and women in authentic polycotton peasant costumes were singing to an audience which consisted entirely – apart from me – of Japanese people politely chewing salami.
St Peter’s impressed Clancy more as a beautiful, rich place than as a house of worship, and it still seems a monumental tribute to man’s sense of his own importance far removed from Christianity’s humble roots. Today, to get in you have to pass through airport-style scanners which presumably remove all traces of Protestantism; inside, the opulence is as stunning as Clancy found it.
Almost as stunning is a souvenir shop where the Italians’ normally impeccable sense of style has momentarily deserted them. Here, you can buy everything from 3ft high plastic Virgins to holograms which turn from Jesus to Mary and back again. From far above, if you listen, you can hear God weeping quietly.
The thing that still impresses me about Rome, even after several visits, is the sheer scale of the public buildings. To build the Colosseum, 70,000 Hebrew slaves hauled 50,000 cartloads of pre-cut stone from the quarries at Tivoli, 17 miles away. When they weren’t singing, that is.
Clancy left Italy regretting that he had not studied more history and learned the language so that he could have appreciated it more.
His plan had been to sail to India and ride across it to Calcutta and then on to China through Shanghai. But he met an Englishman in Naples who had lived in India for 10 years, who told him crossing India by motorbike would be impossible, with few roads, bridgeless rivers, prostrating heat, dangerous fevers and petrol only available 300 miles apart – twice the range of the Henderson, even with spare cans.
Dismissing a crossing of Turkey into Persia as impossible, presumably because of the first Balkan War, he headed for Naples and bought a third-class ticket to Ceylon.
During the two-week voyage, his daily diet was pork and potatoes washed down by wretched coffee or tea. All of it, he noted carefully, tasted of sawdust.
Still, as the Lutzow slid down the Suez Canal and into the Indian Ocean, and he stood on deck admiring the flying fish and the increasingly astonishing sunsets,Clancy slowly turned his back on a Europe preparing for war, and turned his face towards the fantastic, unknown Orient.
Next week: Sri Lanka
