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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37179-0.txt b/37179-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee8b8b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/37179-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5455 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 37179 *** + +LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS + +TO WHICH IS NOW ADDED ARIADNE IN MANTUA + +BY + +VERNON LEE + +LONDON--JOHN LANE--THE BODLEY HEAD + NEW YORK--JOHN LANE COMPANY + +MCMVIII + + + + +CONTENTS + + LIMBO + IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES + THE LIE OF THE LAND + TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC + ON MODERN TRAVELLING + OLD ITALIAN GARDENS + ABOUT LEISURE + RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS + THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE + ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS + ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + + +LIMBO + + Perocchè gente di molto valore + Conobbi che in quel _Limbo_ eran sospesi. + + + +I + +It may seem curious to begin with Dante and pass on to the Children's +Rabbits' House; but I require both to explain what it is I mean by +Limbo; no such easy matter on trying. For this discourse is not about +the Pious Pagans whom the poet found in honourable confinement at the +Gate of Hell, nor of their neighbours the Unchristened Babies; but I am +glad of Dante's authority for the existence of a place holding such +creatures as have just missed a necessary rite, or come too soon for +thorough salvation. And I am glad, moreover, that the poet has insisted +on the importance--"gente di molto valore"--of the beings thus enclosed; +because it is just with the superior quality of the things in what I +mean by Limbo that we are peculiarly concerned. + +And now for the other half of my preliminary illustration of the +subject, to wit, the Children's Rabbits' House. The little gardens which +the children played at cultivating have long since disappeared, taken +insensibly back into that corner of the formal but slackly kept garden +which looks towards the steep hill dotted with cows and sheep. But in +that corner, behind the shapeless Portugal laurels and the patches of +seeding grass, there still remains, beneath big trees, what the children +used to call the "Rabbits' Villa." 'Tis merely a wooden toy house, with +green moss-eaten roof, standing, like the lake dwellings of prehistoric +times, on wooden posts, with the tall foxgloves, crimson and white, +growing all round it. There is something ludicrous in this superannuated +toy, this Noah's ark on stilts among the grass and bushes; but when you +look into the thing, finding the empty plates and cups "for having tea +with the rabbits," and when you look into it spiritually also, it grows +oddly pathetic. We walked up and down between the high hornbeam +hedges, the sunlight lying low on the armies of tall daisies and +seeding grasses, and falling in narrow glints among the white boles and +hanging boughs of the beeches, where the wooden benches stand unused in +the deep grass, and the old swing hangs crazily crooked. Yes, the +Rabbits' Villa and the surrounding overgrown beds are quite pathetic. Is +it because they are, in a way, the graves of children long dead, as +dead--despite the grown-up folk who may come and say "It was I"--as the +rabbits and guinea-pigs with whom they once had tea? That is it; and +that explains my meaning: the Rabbits' Villa is, to the eye of the +initiate, one of many little branch establishments of Limbo surrounding +us on all sides. Another poet, more versed in similar matters than Dante +(one feels sure that Dante knew his own mind, and always had his own +way, even when exiled), Rossetti, in a sonnet, has given us the terrible +little speech which would issue from the small Limbos of this kind: + + Look in my face: My name is _Might-have-been_. + + +II + +Of all the things that Limbo might contain, there is one about which +some persons, very notably Churchyard Gray, have led us into error. I do +not believe there is much genius to be found in Limbo. The world, +although it takes a lot of dunning, offers a fair price for this +article, which it requires as much as water-power and coal, nay even as +much as food and clothes (bread for its soul and raiment for its +thought); so that what genius there is will surely be brought into +market. But even were it wholly otherwise, genius, like murder, _would +out_; for genius is one of the liveliest forces of nature; not to be +quelled or quenched, adaptable, protean, expansive, nay explosive; of +all things in the world the most able to take care of itself; which +accounts for so much public expenditure to foster and encourage it: +foster the sun's chemistry, the force of gravitation, encourage atomic +affinity and natural selection, magnificent Mæcenas and judicious +Parliamentary Board, they are sure to do you credit! + +Hence, to my mind, there are _no mute inglorious Miltons_, or none +worth taking into account. Our sentimental surmises about them grow from +the notion that human power is something like the wheels or cylinder of +a watch, a neat numbered scrap of mechanism, stamped at a blow by a +creative _fiat_, or hand-hammered by evolution, and fitting just exactly +into one little plan, serving exactly one little purpose, indispensable +for that particular machine, and otherwise fit for the dust-heap. +Happily for us, it is certainly not so. The very greatest men have +always been the most versatile: Lionardo, Goethe, Napoleon; the next +greatest can still be imagined under different circumstances as turning +their energy to very different tasks; and I am tempted to think that the +hobbies by which many of them have laid much store, while the world +merely laughed at the statesman's trashy verses or the musician's +third-rate sketches, may have been of the nature of rudimentary organs, +which, given a different environment, might have developed, become the +creature's chief _raison d'être_, leaving that which has actually +chanced to be his talent to become atrophied, perhaps invisible. + +Be this last as it may--and I commend it to those who believe in genius +as a form of monomania--it is quite certain that genius has nothing in +common with machinery. It is the most organic and alive of living +organisms; the most adaptable therefore, and least easily killed; and +for this reason, and despite Gray's _Elegy_, there is no chance of much +of it in Limbo. + +This is no excuse for the optimistic extermination of distinguished men. +It is indeed most difficult to kill genius, but there are a hundred ways +of killing its possessors; and with them as much of their work as they +have left undone. What pictures might Giorgione not have painted but for +the lady, the rival, or the plague, whichever it was that killed him! +Mozart could assuredly have given us a half-dozen more _Don Giovannis_ +if he had had fewer lessons, fewer worries, better food; nay, by his +miserable death the world has lost, methinks, more even than that--a +commanding influence which would have kept music, for a score of years, +earnest and masterly but joyful: Rossini would not have run to seed, and +Beethoven's ninth symphony might have been a genuine "Hymn to Joy" if +only Mozart, the Apollo of musicians, had, for a few years more, +flooded men's souls with radiance. A similar thing is said of Rafael; +but his followers were mediocre, and he himself lacked personality, so +that many a better example might be brought. + +These are not useless speculations; it is as well we realise that, +although genius be immortal, poor men of genius are not. Quite an +extraordinary small amount of draughts and microbes, of starvation +bodily and spiritual, of pin-pricks of various kinds, will do for them; +we can all have a hand in their killing; the killing also of their +peace, kindliness, and justice, sending these qualities to Limbo, which +is full of such. And now, dear reader, I perceive that we have at last +got Limbo well in sight and, in another minute, we may begin to discern +some of its real contents. + + +III + +The Paladin Astolfo, as Ariosto relates, was sent on a winged horse up +to the moon; where, under the ciceroneship of John the Evangelist, he +saw most of the things which had been lost on earth, among others the +wits of many persons in bottles, his cousin Orlando's which he had come +on purpose to fetch, and, curiously enough, his own, which he had never +missed. + +The moon does well as storehouse for such brilliant, romantic things. +The Limbo whose contents and branches I would speak of is far less +glorious, a trifle humdrum; sometimes such as makes one smile, like that +Villa of the Rabbits in the neglected garden. 'Twas for this reason, +indeed, that I preferred to clear away at once the question of the Mute +Inglorious Miltons, and of such solemn public loss as comes of the +untimely death of illustrious men. Do you remember, by the way, reader, +a certain hasty sketch by Cazin, which hangs in a corner of the +Luxembourg? The bedroom of Gambetta after his death: the white bed +neatly made, empty, with laurel garlands replacing him; the tricolor +flag, half-furled, leaned against the chair, and on the table vague +heaped-up papers; a thing quite modest and heroic, suitable to all +similar occasions--Mirabeau say, and Stevenson on his far-off +island--and with whose image we can fitly close our talk of genius +wasted by early death. + +I have alluded to _happiness_ as filling up much space in Limbo; and I +think that the amount of it lying in that kingdom of Might-have-been is +probably out of all proportion with that which must do that duty in this +actual life. Browning's _Last Ride Together_--one has to be perpetually +referring to poets on this matter, for philosophers and moralists +consider happiness in its _causal connection_ or as a fine snare to +virtue--Browning's _Last Ride Together_ expresses, indeed, a view of the +subject commending itself to active and cheerful persons, which comes to +many just after their salad days; to wit, what a mercy that we don't +often get what we want most. The objects of our recent ardent longings +reveal themselves, most luridly sometimes, as dangers, deadlocks, +fetters, hopeless labyrinths, from which we have barely escaped. This is +the house I wanted to buy, the employment I fretted to obtain, the lady +I pined to marry, the friend with whom I projected to share lodgings. +With such sudden chill recognitions comes belief in a special +providence, some fine Greek-sounding goddess, thwarting one's dearest +wishes from tender solicitude that we shouldn't get what we want. In +such a crisis the nobler of us feel like the Riding Lover, and learn +ideal philosophy and manly acquiescence; the meaner snigger ungenerously +about those youthful escapes; and know not that they have gained safety +at the price, very often, of the little good--ideality, faith and +dash--there ever was about them: safe, smug individuals, whose safety is +mere loss to the cosmos. But later on, when our characters have settled, +when repeated changes have taught us which is our unchangeable ego, we +begin to let go that optimist creed, and to suspect (suspicion turning +to certainty) that, as all things which _have_ happened to us have not +been always advantageous, so likewise things longed for in vain need not +necessarily have been curses. As we grow less attached to theories, and +more to our neighbours, we recognise every day that loss, refusal of the +desired, has not by any means always braced or chastened the lives we +look into; we admit that the Powers That Be showed considerable judgment +in disregarding the teachings of asceticism, and inspiring mankind with +innate repugnance to having a bad time. And, to return to the question +of Limbo, as we watch the best powers, the whole usefulness and +sweetness starved out of certain lives for lack of the love, the +liberty, or the special activities they prayed for; as regards the +question of Limbo, I repeat, we grow (or try to grow) a little more +cautious about sending so much more happiness--ours and other folk's--to +the place of Might-have-been. + +Some of it certainly does seem beyond our control, a fatal matter of +constitution. I am not speaking of the results of vice or stupidity; +this talk of Limbo is exclusively addressed to the very nicest people. + +A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness. We have +all of us seen instances. They often occur between members of the same +family, the very similarity of nature, which might make mothers and +daughters, brothers and sisters, into closest companions, merely +doubling the dose of that terrible reserve, timidity, horror of human +contact, paralysis of speech, which keeps the most loving hearts +asunder. It is useless to console ourselves by saying that each has its +own love of the other. And thus they walk, sometimes side by side, +never looking in one another's eyes, never saying the word, till death +steps in, death sometimes unable to loosen the tongue of the mourner. +Such things are common among our reserved northern races, making us so +much less happy and less helpful in everyday life than our Latin and +Teuton neighbours; and, I imagine, are commonest among persons of the +same blood. But the same will happen between lovers, or those who should +have been such; doubt of one's own feeling, fear of the other's charity, +apprehension of its all being a mistake, has silently prevented many a +marriage. The two, then, could not have been much in love? Not _in +love_, since neither ever allowed that to happen, more's the pity; but +loving one another with the whole affinity of their natures, and, after +all, _being in love_ is but the crisis, or the beginning of that, if +it's worth anything. + +Thus shyness sends much happiness to Limbo. But actual shyness is not +the worst. Some persons, sometimes of the very finest kind, endowed for +loving-kindness, passion, highest devotion, nay requiring it as much as +air or warmth, have received, from some baleful fairy, a sterilising +gift of fear. Fear of what they could not tell; something which makes +all community of soul a terror, and every friend a threat. Something +terrible, in whose presence we must bow our heads and pray impunity +therefrom for ourselves and ours. + +But the bulk of happiness stacked up in Limbo appears, on careful +looking, to be an agglomeration of other lost things; justice, charm, +appreciation, and faith in one another, all recklessly packed off as so +much lumber, sometimes to make room for fine new qualities instead! +Justice, I am inclined to think, is usually sent to Limbo through the +agency of others. A work in many folios might be written by condensing +what famous men have had said against them in their days of struggle, +and what they have answered about others in their days of prosperity. + +The loss of _charm_ is due to many more circumstances; the stress of +life indeed seems calculated to send it to Limbo. Certain it is that few +women, and fewer men, of forty, preserve a particle of it. I am not +speaking of youth or beauty, though it does seem a pity that mature +human beings should mostly be too fat or too thin, and lacking either +sympathy or intellectual keenness. _Charm_ must comprise all that, but +much besides. It is the undefinable quality of nearly every child, and +of all nice lads and girls; the quality which (though it _can_ reach +perfection in exceptional old people) usually vanishes, no one knows +when exactly, into the Limbo marked by the Rabbits' Villa, with its +plates and tea-cups, mouldering on its wooden posts in the unweeded +garden. + +More useful qualities replace all these: hardness, readiness to snatch +opportunity, mistrust of all ideals, inflexible self-righteousness; +useful, nay necessary; but, let us admit it, in a life which, judged by +the amount of dignity and sweetness it contains, is perhaps scarce +necessary itself, and certainly not useful. The case might be summed up, +for our guidance, by saying that the loss of many of our finer qualities +is due to the complacent, and sometimes dutiful, cultivation of our +worse ones! + +For, even in the list of virtues, there are finer and less fine, nay +virtues one might almost call atrocious, and virtues with a taint of +ignominy. I have said that we lose some of our finer qualities this way; +what's worse is, that we often fail to appreciate the finest qualities +of others. + + +IV + +And here, coming to the vague rubric _appreciation of others_, I feel we +have got to a district of Limbo about which few of us should have the +audacity to speak, and few, as a fact, have the courage honestly to +think. _What do we make of our idea of others_ in our constant attempt +to justify ourselves? No Japanese bogie-monger ever produced the equal +of certain wooden monster-puppets which we carve, paint, rig out, and +christen by the names of real folk--alas, alas, dear names sometimes of +friends!--and stick up to gibber in our memory; while the real image, +the creature we have really known, is carted off to Limbo! But this is +too bad to speak of. + +Let us rather think gently of things, sad, but sad without ignominy, of +friendships still-born or untimely cut off, hurried by death into a +place like that which holds the souls of the unchristened babies; +often, like them, let us hope, removed to a sphere where such things +grow finer and more fruitful, the sphere of the love of those we have +not loved enough in life. + +But that at best is but a place of ghosts; so let us never forget, dear +friends, how close all round lies Limbo, the Kingdom of +Might-have-been. + + + + + +IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES + + + +I + +My Yorkshire friend was saying that she hated being in an old house. +_There seemed to be other_ people in it besides the living.... + +These words, expressing the very reverse of what I feel, have set me +musing on my foolish passion for the Past. The Past, but the real one; +not the Past considered as a possible Present. For though I should like +to have seen ancient Athens, or Carthage according to Salambô, and +though I have pined to hear the singers of last century, I know that any +other period than this of the world's history would be detestable to +live in. For one thing--one among other instances of brutish +dulness--our ancestors knew nothing of the emotion of the past, the +rapture of old towns and houses. + +This emotion, at times this rapture, depends upon a number of mingled +causes; its origin is complex and subtle, like that of all things +exquisite; the flavour of certain dishes, the feel of sea or mountain +air, in which chemical peculiarities and circumstances of temperature +join with a hundred trifles, seaweed, herbs, tar, heather and so forth; +and like, more particularly, music and poetry, whose essence is so +difficult of ascertaining. And in this case, the causes that first occur +to our mind merely suggest a number more. Of these there is a principal +one, only just less important than that suggested by my Yorkshire +friend, which might be summed up thus: _That the action of time makes +man's works into natural objects._ + +Now, with no disrespect to man, 'tis certain Nature can do more than he. +Not that she is the more intelligent of the two; on the contrary, she +often makes the grossest artistic blunders, and has, for instance, a +woeful lack of design in England, and a perfect mania for obvious +composition and deliberate picturesqueness in Italy and Argyllshire. But +Nature is greater than man because she is bigger, and can do more things +at a time. Man seems unable to attend to one point without neglecting +some other; where he has a fine fancy in melody, his harmony is apt to +be threadbare; if he succeeds with colour, he cannot manage line, and if +light and shade, then neither; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark +that whenever and wherever man has built beautiful temples, churches, +and palaces, he has been impelled to bedizen them with primary colours, +of which, in Venice and the Alhambra, time at last made something +agreeable, and time also, in Greece, has judged best to obliterate every +odious trace. Hence, in the works of man there is always a tendency to +simplify, to suppress detail, to make things clear and explain patterns +and points of view; to save trouble, thought, and material; to be +symmetrical, which means, after all, to repeat the same thing twice +over; he knows it is wrong to carve one frieze on the top of the other, +and to paint in more than one layer of paint. Of all such restrictions +Nature is superbly unconscious. She smears weather-stain on +weather-stain and lichen on lichen, never stopping to match them. She +jags off corners and edges, and of one meagre line makes fifty curves +and facets. She weaves pattern over pattern, regardless of confusion, +so that the mangiest hedgerow is richer, more subtle than all the +carpets and papers ever designed by Mr. Morris. Her one notion is _More, +always more_; whereas that of man, less likely to exceed, is a timid +_Enough_. No wonder, for has she not the chemistry of soil and sun and +moisture and wind and frost, all at her beck and call? + +Be it as it may, Nature does more for us than man, in the way of +pleasure and interest. And to say, therefore, that time turns the works +of man into natural objects is, therefore, saying that time gives them +infinitely more variety and charm. In making them natural objects also +time gives to man's lifeless productions the chief quality of everything +belonging to Nature--life. Compare a freshly plastered wall with one +that has been exposed to sun and rain, or a newly slated roof to one all +covered with crumbling, grey, feathery stuff, like those of the Genoese +villages, which look as if they had been thatched with olive-leaves from +off their hills. 'Tis the comparison between life and death; or, rather, +since death includes change, between something and nothing. Imagine a +tree as regular as a column, or an apple as round as a door-knob! + + +II + +So much for the material improvements which time effects in our +surroundings. We now come to the spiritual advantages of dealing with +the past instead of the present. + +These begin in our earliest boy- or girl-hood. What right-minded child +of ten or twelve cares, beyond its tribute of apples, and jam, and +cricket, and guinea-pigs, for so dull a thing as the present? Why, the +present is like this schoolroom or playground, compared with Polar Seas, +Rocky Mountains, or Pacific Islands; a place for the body, not for the +soul. It all came back to me, a little while ago, when doing up for my +young friend, L.V., sundry Roman coins long mislaid in a trunk, and +which had formed my happiness at his age. Delightful things!--smooth and +bright green like certain cabbage-leaves, or of a sorry brown, rough +with rust and verdigris; but all leaving alike a perceptible portion of +themselves in the paper bag, a delectable smell of copper on one's +hands. How often had I turned you round and round betwixt finger and +thumb, trying to catch the slant of an inscription, or to get, in some +special light, the film of effaced effigy--the chin of Nero, or the +undulating, benevolent nose of Marcus Aurelius? How often have my hands +not anointed you with every conceivable mixture of oil, varnish, and +gum, rubbing you gently with silk and wool, and kid gloves, in hopes +that something ineffable might rise up on your surface! I quite +sympathised with my young friend when, having waggled and chortled over +each of them several times, he thought it necessary to overcome the +natural manly horror for kissing, and shook my hand twice, thrice, and +then once more, returning from the door.... For had they not +concentrated in their interesting verdigrised, brass-smelling smallness +something, to me, of the glory and wonder of Rome? Cæcilia Metella, the +Grotto of Egeria--a vague vision, through some twenty years' fog, of a +drive between budding hedges and dry reeds; a walk across short +anemone-starred turf; but turning into distinct remembrance of the +buying of two old pennies, one of Augustus, the other even more +interesting, owing to entire obliteration of both reverse and obverse; a +valuable coin, undoubtedly. And the Baths of Caracalla, which I can +recollect with the thick brushwood, oak scrub, ivy and lentisk, and even +baby ilexes, covering the masonry and overhanging the arches, and with +rose hedges just cut away to dig out some huge porphyry pillar--were not +their charms all concentrated in dim, delicious hopes of finding, just +where the green turf ended and the undulating expanse of purple, green +and white tessellated pavement began, some other brazen penny? And then, +in Switzerland, soon after, did I not suffer acutely, as I cleaned my +coins, from the knowledge that in this barbarous Northern place, which +the Romans had, perhaps, never come near, it was quite useless to keep +one's eyes on the ruts of roads and the gravel of paths, and +consequently almost useless to go out, or to exist; until one day I +learnt that a certain old lawyer, in a certain field, had actually dug +up Roman antiquities.... I don't know whether I ever saw them with +corporeal eyes, but certainly with those of the spirit; and I was lent +a drawing of one of them, a gold armlet, of which I insisted on having +a copy made, and sticking it up in my room.... + +It does but little honour to our greatest living philosopher that he, +whom children will bless for free permission to bruise, burn, and cut +their bodies, and empty the sugar-bowl and jam-pot, should wish to +deprive the coming generation of all historical knowledge, of so much +joy therefore, and, let me add, of so much education. For do not tell me +that it is not education, and of the best, to enable a child to feel the +passion and poetry of life; to live, while it trudges along the dull +familiar streets, in company with dull, familiar, and often stolidly +incurious grown-up folk, in that terrible, magnificent past, in dungeons +and palaces, loving and worshipping Joan of Arc, execrating Bloody Mary, +dreaming strange impossible possibilities of what we would have said and +done for Marie Antoinette--said to her, _her_ actually coming towards +us, by some stroke of magic, in that advancing carriage! There is enough +in afterlife, God knows, to teach us _not to be heroic_; 'tis just as +well that, as children, we learn a lingering liking for the quality; +'tis as important, perhaps, as learning that our tissues consume +carbon, if they do so. I can speak very fervently of the enormous value +for happiness of such an historical habit of mind. + +Such a habit transcends altogether, in its power of filling one's life, +the merely artistic and literary habit. For, after all, painting, +architecture, music, poetry, are things which touch us in a very +intermittent way. I would compare this historic habit rather to the +capacity of deriving pleasure from nature, not merely through the eye, +but through all the senses; and largely, doubtless, through those +obscure perceptions which make certain kinds of weather, air, &c., an +actual tonic, nay food, for the body. To this alone would I place my +_historical habit_ in the second rank. For, as the sensitiveness to +nature means supplementing our physical life by the life of the air and +the sun, the clouds and waters, so does this historic habit mean +supplementing our present life by a life in the past; a life larger, +richer than our own, multiplying our emotions by those of the dead.... + +I am no longer speaking of our passions for Joan of Arc and Marie +Antoinette, which disappear with our childhood; I am speaking of a +peculiar sense, ineffable, indescribable, but which every one knows +again who has once had it, and which to many of us has grown into a +cherished habit--the sense of being companioned by the past, of being in +a place warmed for our living by the lives of others. To me, as I +started with saying, the reverse of this is almost painful; and I know +few things more odious than the chilly, draughty emptiness of a place +without a history. For this reason America, save what may remain of +Hawthorne's New England and Irving's New York, never tempts my vagabond +fancy. Nature can scarcely afford beauty wherewith to compensate for +living in block-tin shanties or brand new palaces. How different if we +find ourselves in some city, nay village, rendered habitable for our +soul by the previous dwelling therein of others, of souls! Here the +streets are never empty; and, surrounded by that faceless crowd of +ghosts, one feels a right to walk about, being invited by them, instead +of rushing along on one's errands among a throng of other wretched +living creatures who are blocked by us and block us in their turn. + +How convey this sense? I do not mean that if I walk through old Paris or +through Rome my thoughts revolve on Louis XI. or Julius Cæsar. Nothing +could be further from the fact. Indeed the charm of the thing is that +one feels oneself accompanied not by this or that magnifico of the past +(whom of course one would never have been introduced to), but by a crowd +of nameless creatures; the daily life, common joy, suffering, heroism of +the past. Nay, there is something more subtle than this: the whole place +(how shall I explain it?) becomes a sort of living something. Thus, when +I hurry (for one must needs hurry through Venetian narrowness) between +the pink and lilac houses, with faded shutters and here and there a +shred of tracery; now turning a sharp corner before the locksmith's or +the chestnut-roaster's; now hearing my steps lonely between high walls +broken by a Gothic doorway; now crossing some smooth-paved little square +with its sculptured well and balconied palaces, I feel, I say, walking +day after day through these streets, that I am in contact with a whole +living, breathing thing, full of habits of life, of suppressed words; a +sort of odd, mysterious, mythical, but very real creature; as if, in +the dark, I stretched out my hand and met something (but without any +fear), something absolutely indefinable in shape and kind, but warm, +alive. This changes solitude in unknown places into the reverse of +solitude and strangeness. I remember walking thus along the bastions +under the bishop's palace at Laon, the great stone cows peering down +from the belfry above, with a sense of inexpressible familiarity and +peace. And, strange to say, this historic habit makes us familiar also +with places where we have never been. How well, for instance, do I not +know Dinant and Bouvines, rival cities on the Meuse (topography and +detail equally fantastic); and how I sometimes long, as with +homesickness, for a scramble among the stones and grass and +chandelier-like asphodels of Agrigentum, Veii, Collatium! Why, to one +minded like myself, a map, and even the names of stations in a +time-table, are full of possible delight. + +And sometimes it rises to rapture. This time, eight years ago, I was +fretting my soul away, ill, exiled away from home, forbidden all work, +in the south of Spain. At Granada for three dreary weeks it rained +without ceasing, till the hill of the Alhambra became filled with the +babbling of streams, and the town was almost cut off by a sea of mud. +Between the showers one rushed up into the damp gardens of the +Generalife, or into the Alhambra, to be imprisoned for hours in its +desolate halls, while the rain splashed down into the courts. My +sitting-room had five doors, four of glass; and the snow lay thick on +the mountains. My few books had been read long ago; there remained to +spell through a Spanish tome on the rebellion of the Alpujarras, whose +Moorish leader, having committed every crime, finally went to heaven for +spitting on the Koran on his death-bed. Letters from home were +perpetually lost, or took a week to come. It seemed as if the world had +quite unlearned every single trick that had ever given me pleasure. Yet, +in these dreary weeks, there was one happy morning. + +It was the anniversary, worse luck to it, of the Conquest of Granada +from the Moors. We got seats in the chapel of the Catholic kings, and +watched a gentleman in a high hat (which he kept on in church) and +swallow tails, carry the banner of Castile and Aragon, in the presence +of the archbishop and chapter, some mediæval pages, two trumpeters with +pigtails, and an array of soldiers. A paltry ceremony enough. But before +it began, and while mass was still going on, there came to me for a few +brief moments that happiness unknown for so many, many months, that +beloved historic emotion. + +My eyes were wandering round the chapel, up the sheaves of the pilasters +to the gilded spandrils, round the altars covered with gibbering +sculpture, and down again among the crowd kneeling on the matted +floor--women in veils, men with scarlet cloak-lining over the shoulder, +here and there the shaven head and pigtail of the bull-ring. In the +middle of it all, on their marble beds, lay the effigies of Ferdinand +and Isabella, with folded hands and rigid feet, four crimson banners of +the Moors overhead. The crowd was pouring in from the cathedral, and +bevies of priests, and scarlet choir-boys led by their fiddler. The +organ, above the chants, was running through vague mazes. I felt it +approaching and stealing over me, that curious emotion felt before in +such different places: walking up and down, one day, in the church of +Lamballe in Brittany; seated, another time, in the porch at Ely. And +then it possessed me completely, raising one into a sort of beatitude. +This kind of rapture is not easy to describe. No rare feeling is. But I +would warn you from thinking that in such solemn moments there sweeps +across the brain a paltry pageant, a Lord Mayor's Show of bygone things, +like the cavalcades of future heroes who descend from frescoed or +sculptured wall at the bidding of Ariosto's wizards and Spenser's +fairies. This is something infinitely more potent and subtle; and like +all strong intellectual emotions, it is compounded of many and various +elements, and has its origin far down in mysterious depths of our +nature; and it arises overwhelmingly from many springs, filling us with +the throb of vague passions welling from our most vital parts. There is +in it no possession of any definite portion of bygone times; but a +yearning expectancy, a sense of the near presence, as it were, of the +past; or, rather, of a sudden capacity in ourselves of apprehending the +past which looms all round. + +For a few moments thus, in that chapel before the tombs of the Catholic +kings; in the churches of Bruges and Innsbruck at the same time (for +such emotion gives strange possibilities of simultaneous presence in +various places); with the gold pomegranate flower of the badges, and the +crimson tassels of the Moorish standards before my eyes; also the iron +knights who watch round Maximilian's grave--for a moment while the +priests were chanting and the organs quavering, the life of to-day +seemed to reel and vanish, and my mind to be swept along the dark and +gleaming whirlpools of the past.... + + +III + +Catholic kings, Moorish banners, wrought-iron statues of paladins; these +are great things, and not at all what I had intended to speak of when I +set out to explain why old houses, which give my Yorkshire friend the +creeps, seem to my feelings so far more peaceful and familiar. + +Yes, it is just because the past is somehow more companionable, warmer, +more full of flavour, than the present, that I love all old houses; but +best of all such as are solitary in the country, isolated both from new +surroundings, and from such alterations as contact with the world's +hurry almost always brings. It certainly is no question of beauty. The +houses along Chelsea embankment are more beautiful, and some of them a +great deal more picturesque than that Worcestershire rectory to which I +always long to return: the long brick house on its terraced river-bank, +the overladen plum-trees on one side, and the funereally prosperous +churchyard yews on the other; and with corridors and staircases hung +with stained, frameless Bolognese nakedness, Judgments of Paris, +Venuses, Carità Romanas, shipped over cheap by some bear-leading +parson-tutor of the eighteenth century. Nor are they architectural, +those brick and timber cottages all round, sinking (one might think) +into the rich, damp soil. But they have a mellowness corresponding to +that of the warm, wet, fruitful land, and due to the untroubled, warm +brooding over by the past. And what is architecture to that? As to these +Italian ones, which my soul loveth most, they have even less of what you +would call beauty; at most such grace of projecting window-grating or +buttressed side as the South gives its buildings; and such colour, or +rather discolouring, as a comparatively small number of years will +bring. + +It kept revolving in my mind, this question of old houses and their +charm, as I was sitting waiting for a tram one afternoon, in the +church-porch of Pieve a Ripoli, a hamlet about two miles outside the +south-east gate of Florence. That church porch is like the baldacchino +over certain Roman high altars, or, more humbly, like a very large +fourpost bedstead. On the one hand was a hillside of purple and brown +scrub and dark cypresses fringed against the moist, moving grey sky; on +the other, some old, bare, mulberry-trees, a hedge of russet sloe, +closing in wintry fields; and, more particularly, next the porch, an +insignificant house, with blistered green shutters at irregular +intervals in the stained whitewash, a big green door, and a little +coat-of-arms--the three Strozzi half-moons--clapped on to the sharp +corner. I sat there, among the tombstones of the porch, and wondered why +I loved this house: and why it would remain, as I knew it must, a +landmark in my memory. Yes, the charm must lie in the knowledge of the +many creatures who have lived in this house, the many things that have +been done and felt. + +The creatures who have lived here, the things which have been felt and +done.... But those things felt and done, were they not mainly trivial, +base; at best nowise uncommon, and such as must be going on in every new +house all around? People worked and shirked their work, endured, +fretted, suffered somewhat, and amused themselves a little; were loving, +unkind, neglected and neglectful, and died, some too soon, some too +late. That is human life, and as such doubtless important. But all that +goes on to-day just the same; and there is no reason why that former +life should have been more interesting than that these people, Argenta +Cavallesi and Vincenzio Grazzini, buried at my feet, should have had +bigger or better made souls and bodies than I or my friends. Indeed, in +sundry ways, and owing to the narrowness of life and thought, the calmer +acceptance of coarse or cruel things, I incline to think that they were +less interesting, those men and women of the past, whose rustling +dresses fill old houses with fantastic sounds. They had, some few of +them, their great art, great aims, feelings, struggles; but the majority +were of the earth, and intolerably earthy. 'Tis their clothes' ghosts +that haunt us, not their own. + +So why should the past be charming? Perhaps merely because of its being +the one free place for our imagination. For, as to the future, it is +either empty or filled only with the cast shadows of ourselves and our +various machineries. The past is the unreal and the yet visible; it has +the fascination of the distant hills, the valleys seen from above; the +unreal, but the unreal whose unreality, unlike that of the unreal things +with which we cram the present, can never be forced on us. _There is +more behind; there may be anything._ This sense which makes us in love +with all intricacies of things and feelings, roads which turn, views +behind views, trees behind trees, makes the past so rich in +possibilities.... An ordinary looking priest passes by, rings at the +door of the presbytery, and enters. Those who lived there, in that old +stained house with the Strozzi escutcheon, opposite the five bare +mulberry-trees, were doubtless as like as may be to this man who lives +there in the present. Quite true; and yet there creeps up the sense that +_they_ lived in the past. + +For there is no end to the deceits of the past; we protest that we know +it is cozening us, and it continues to cozen us just as much. Reading +over Browning's _Galuppi_ lately, it struck me that this dead world of +vanity was no more charming or poetical than the one we live in, when it +also was alive; and that those ladies, Mrs. X., Countess Y., and Lady +Z., of whose _toilettes_ at last night's ball that old gossip P---- had +been giving us details throughout dinner, will in their turn, if any one +care, be just as charming, as dainty, and elegiac as those other women +who sat by while Galuppi "played toccatas stately at the clavichord." +Their dresses, should they hang for a century or so, will emit a perfume +as frail, and sad, and heady; their wardrobe filled with such dust as +makes tears come into one's eyes, from no mechanical reason. + +"Was a lady _such_ a lady?" They will say that of ours also. And, in +recognising this, we recognise how trumpery, flat, stale and +unprofitable were those ladies of the past. It is not they who make the +past charming, but the past that makes them. Time has wonderful +cosmetics for its favoured ones; and if it brings white hairs and +wrinkles to the realities, how much does it not heighten the bloom, +brighten the eyes and hair of those who survive in our imagination! + +And thus, somewhat irrelevantly, concludes my chapter in praise of old +houses. + + + + +THE LIE OF THE LAND + +NOTES ABOUT LANDSCAPES + + + +I + +I want to talk about the something which makes the real, individual +landscape--the landscape one actually sees with the eyes of the body and +the eyes of the spirit--the _landscape you cannot describe_. + +That is the drawback of my subject--that it just happens to elude all +literary treatment, and yet it must be treated. There is not even a +single word or phrase to label it, and I have had to call it, in sheer +despair, _the lie of the land_: it is an unnamed mystery into which +various things enter, and I feel as if I ought to explain myself by dumb +show. It will serve at any rate as an object-lesson in the extreme +one-sidedness of language and a protest against human silence about the +things it likes best. + +Of outdoor things words can of course tell us some important points: +colour, for instance, and light, and somewhat of their gradations and +relations. And an adjective, a metaphor, may evoke an entire atmospheric +effect, paint us a sunset or a star-lit night. But the far subtler and +more individual relations of visible line defy expression: no poet or +prose writer can give you the tilt of a roof, the undulation of a field, +the bend of a road. Yet these are the things in landscape which +constitute its individuality and which reach home to our feelings. + +For colour and light are variable--nay, more, they are relative. The +same tract will be green in connection with one sort of sky, blue with +another, and yellow with a third. We may be disappointed when the woods, +which we had seen as vague, moss-like blue before the sun had overtopped +the hills, become at midday a mere vast lettuce-bed. We should be much +more than disappointed, we should doubt of our senses if we found on +going to our window that it looked down upon outlines of hills, upon +precipices, ledges, knolls, or flat expanses, different from those we +had seen the previous day or the previous year. Thus the unvarying items +of a landscape happen to be those for which precise words cannot be +found. Briefly, we praise colour, but we actually _live_ in the +indescribable thing which I must call the _lie of the land_. The lie of +the land means walking or climbing, shelter or bleakness; it means the +corner where we dread a boring neighbour, the bend round which we have +watched some one depart, the stretch of road which seemed to lead us +away out of captivity. Yes, _lie of the land_ is what has mattered to us +since we were children, to our fathers and remotest ancestors; and its +perception, the instinctive preference for one kind rather than another, +is among the obscure things inherited with our blood, and making up the +stuff of our souls. For how else explain the strange powers which +different shapes of the earth's surface have over different individuals; +the sudden pleasure, as of the sight of an old friend, the pang of +pathos which we may all receive in a scene which is new, without +memories, and so unlike everything familiar as to be almost without +associations? + +The _lie of the land_ has therefore an importance in art, or if it have +not, ought to have, quite independent of pleasantness of line or of +anything merely visual. An immense charm consists in the fact that the +mind can walk about in a landscape. The delight at the beauty which is +seen is heightened by the anticipation of further unseen beauty; by the +sense of exploring the unknown; and to our present pleasure before a +painted landscape is added the pleasure we have been storing up during +years of intercourse, if I may use this word, with so many real ones. + + +II + +For there is such a thing as intercourse with fields and trees and +skies, with the windings of road and water and hedge, in our everyday, +ordinary life. And a terrible thing for us all if there were not; if our +lives were not full of such various commerce, of pleasure, curiosity, +and gratitude, of kindly introduction of friend by friend, quite apart +from the commerce with other human beings. Indeed, one reason why the +modern rectangular town (built at one go for the convenience of running +omnibuses and suppressing riots) fills our soul with bitterness and +dryness, is surely that this ill-conditioned convenient thing can give +us only its own poor, paltry presence, introducing our eye and fancy +neither to further details of itself, nor to other places and people, +past or distant. + +Words can just barely indicate the charm of this _other place other +time_ enriching of the present impression. Words cannot in the least, I +think, render that other suggestion contained in _The Lie of the Land_, +the suggestion of the possibility of a delightful walk. What walks have +we not taken, leaving sacred personages and profane, not to speak of +allegoric ones, far behind in the backgrounds of the old Tuscans, +Umbrians, and Venetians! Up Benozzo's hillside woods of cypress and +pine, smelling of myrrh and sweet-briar, over Perugino's green rising +grounds, towards those slender, scant-leaved trees, straight-stemmed +acacias and elms, by the water in the cool, blue evening valley. Best of +all, have not Giorgione and Titian, Palma and Bonifazio, and the dear +imitative people labelled _Venetian school_, led us between the hedges +russet already with the ripening of the season and hour into those +fields where the sheep are nibbling, under the twilight of the big +brown trees, to where some pale blue alp closes in the slopes and the +valleys? + + +III + +It is a pity that the landscape painters of our day--I mean those French +or French taught, whose methods are really new--tend to neglect _The Lie +of the Land_. Some of them, I fear, deliberately avoid it as +old-fashioned--what they call obvious--as interfering with their aim of +interesting by the mere power of vision and skill in laying on the +paint. Be this as it may, their innovations inevitably lead them away +from all research of what we may call _topographical_ charm, for what +they have added to art is the perfection of very changeable conditions +of light and atmosphere, of extremely fleeting accidents of colour. One +would indeed be glad to open one's window on the fairyland of iridescent +misty capes, of vibrating skies and sparkling seas of Monsieur Claude +Monet; still more to stand at the close of an autumn day watching the +light fogs rise along the fields, mingling with delicate pinkish mist of +the bare poplar rows against the green of the first sprouts of corn. +But I am not sure that the straight line of sea and shore would be +interesting at any other moment of the day; and the poplar rows and +cornfields would very likely be drearily dull until sunset. The moment, +like Faust's second of perfect bliss, is such as should be made +immortal, but the place one would rather not see again. Yet Monsieur +Monet is the one of his school who shows most care for the scene he is +painting. The others, even the great ones--men like Pissarro and Sisley, +who have shown us so many delightful things in the details of even the +dull French foliage, even the dull midday sky--the other _modern ones_ +make one long to pull up their umbrella and easel and carry them on--not +very far surely--to some spot where the road made a bend, the embankment +had a gap, the water a swirl; for we would not be so old-fashioned as to +request that the country might have a few undulations.... Of course it +was very dull of our ancestors--particularly of Clive Newcome's +day--always to paint a panorama with whole ranges of hills, miles of +river, and as many cities as possible; and even our pleasure in Turner's +large landscapes is spoilt by their being the sort of thing people +would drive for miles or climb for hours to enjoy, what our grandfathers +in post-chaises called a _noble fine prospect_. All that had to be got +rid of, like the contemporaneous literary descriptions: "A smiling +valley proceeded from south-east to north-west; an amphitheatre of +cliffs bounding it on the right hand; while to the left a magnificent +waterfall leapt from a rock three hundred feet in height and expanded +into a noble natural basin of granite some fifty yards in diameter," &c. +&c. The British classics, thus busy with compass, measuring-rod and +level, thus anxious to enable the reader to reconstruct their landscape +on paste-board, had no time of course to notice trifling matters: how, +for instance, + + The woods are round us, heaped and dim; + From slab to slab how it slips and springs + The thread of water, single and slim, + Through the ravage some torrent brings. + +Nor could the panoramic painter of the earlier nineteenth century pay +much attention to mere alternations of light while absorbed in his great +"Distant View of Jerusalem and Madagascar"; indeed, he could afford to +move off only when it began to rain very hard. + + +IV + +The impressionist painters represent the reaction against this dignified +and also more stolid school of landscape; they have seen, or are still +seeing, all the things which other men did not see. And here I may +remark that one of the most important items of this seeing is exactly +the fact that in many cases we can _see_ only very little. The +impressionists have been scoffed at for painting rocks which might be +chimney-stacks, and flowering hedges which might be foaming brooks; +plains also which might be hills, and _vice versâ_, and described as +wretches, disrespectful to natural objects, which, we are told, reveal +new beauties at every glance. But is it more respectful to natural +objects to put a drawing-screen behind a willow-bush and copy its +minutest detail of branch and trunk, than to paint that same willow, a +mere mist of glorious orange, as we see it flame against the hillside +confusion of mauve, and russet and pinkish sereness? I am glad to have +brought in that word _confusion_: the modern school of landscape has +done a great and pious thing in reinstating the complexity, the mystery, +the confusion of Nature's effects; Nature, which differs from the paltry +work of man just in this, that she does not thin out, make clear and +symmetrical for the easier appreciation of foolish persons, but packs +effect upon effect, in space even as in time, one close upon the other, +leaf upon leaf, branch upon branch, tree upon tree, colour upon colour, +a mystery of beauty wrapped in beauty, without the faintest concern +whether it would not be better to say "this is really a river," or, +"that is really a tree." "But," answer the critics with much +superiority, "art should not be the mere copying of Nature; surely there +is already enough of Nature herself; art should be the expression of +man's delight in Nature's shows." Well, Nature shows a great many things +which are not unchanging and not by any means unperplexing; she shows +them at least to those who will see, see what is really there to be +seen; and she will show them, thanks to our brave impressionists, to all +men henceforth who have eyes and a heart. And here comes our debt to +these great painters: what a number of effects, modest and exquisite, or +bizarre and magnificent, they will have taught us to look out for; what +beauty and poetry in humdrum scenery, what perfect loveliness even among +sordidness and squalor: tints as of dove's breasts in city mud, enamel +splendours in heaps of furnace refuse, mysterious magnificence, visions +of Venice at night, of Eblis palace, of I know not what, in wet gaslit +nights, in looming lit-up factories. Nay, leaving that alone, since 'tis +better, perhaps, that we should not enjoy anything connected with grime +and misery and ugliness--how much have not these men added to the +delight of our walks and rides; revealing to us, among other things, the +supreme beauty of winter colouring, the harmony of purple, blue, slate, +brown, pink, and russet, of tints and compounds of tints without a name, +of bare hedgerows and leafless trees, sere grass and mist-veiled waters; +compared with which spring is but raw, summer dull, and autumn +positively ostentatious in her gala suit of tawny and yellow. + +Perhaps, indeed, these modern painters have done more for us by the +beauty they have taught us to see in Nature than by the beauty they have +actually put before us in their pictures; if I except some winter +landscapes of Monet's and the wonderful water-colours of Mr. Brabazon, +whose exquisite sense of form and knowledge of drawing have enabled him, +in rapidest sketches of rapidly passing effects, to indicate the +structure of hills and valleys, the shape of clouds, in the mere wash of +colour, even as Nature indicates them herself. With such exceptions as +these, and the beautiful mysteries of Mr. Whistler, there is +undoubtedly, in recent landscape, a preoccupation of technical methods +and an indifference to choice of subject, above all, a degree of +insistence on what is _actually seen_ which leads one to suspect that +the impressionists represent rather a necessary phase in the art, than a +definite achievement, in the same manner as the Renaissance painters who +gave themselves up to the study of perspective and anatomy. This +terrible over-importance of the act of vision is doubtless the +preparation for a new kind of landscape, which will employ these +arduously acquired facts of colour and light, this restlessly renovated +technique, in the service of a new kind of sentiment and imagination, +differing from that of previous ages even as the sentiment and +imagination of Browning differs from that of his great predecessors. But +it is probably necessary that the world at large, as well as the +artists, should be familiarised with the new facts, the new methods of +impressionism, before such facts and methods can find their significance +and achievement; even as in the Renaissance people had to recognise the +realities of perspective and anatomy before they could enjoy an art +which attained beauty through this means; it would have been no use +showing Sixtine chapels to the contemporaries of Giotto. There is at +present a certain lack of enjoyable quality, a lack of soul appealing to +soul, in the new school of landscape. But where there is a faithful, +reverent eye, a subtle hand, a soul cannot be far round the corner. And +we may hope that, if we be as sincere and willing as themselves, our +Pollaiolos and Mantegnas of the impressionist school, discoverers of new +subtleties of colour and light, will be duly succeeded by modern +Michelangelos and Titians, who will receive all the science ready for +use, and bid it fetch and carry and build new wonderful things for the +pleasure of their soul and of ours. + + +V + +And mentioning Titian, brings to my memory a remark once made to me on +one of those washed away, rubbly hills, cypresses and pines holding the +earth together, which the old Tuscans drew so very often. The remark, +namely, that some of the charm of the old masters' landscapes is due to +the very reverse of what sometimes worries one in modern work, to the +notion which these backgrounds give at first--bits of valley, outlines +of hills, distant views of towered villages, of having been done without +trouble, almost from memory, till you discover that your Titian has +modelled his blue valley into delicate blue ridges; and your Piero della +Francesca indicated the precise structure of his pale, bony mountains. +Add to this, to the old men's credit, that, as I said, they knew _the +lie of the land_, they gave us landscapes in which our fancy, our +memories, could walk. + +How large a share such fancy and such memories have in the life of art, +people can scarcely realise. Nay, such is the habit of thinking of the +picture, statue, or poem, as a complete and vital thing apart from the +mind which perceives it, that the expression _life of art_ is sure to be +interpreted as life of various schools of art: thus, the life of art +developed from the type of Phidias to that of Praxiteles, and so forth. +But in the broader, truer sense, the life of all art goes on in the mind +and heart, not merely of those who make the work, but of those who see +and read it. Nay, is not _the_ work, the real one, a certain particular +state of feeling, a pattern woven of new perceptions and impressions and +of old memories and feelings, which the picture, the statue or poem, +awakens, different in each different individual? 'Tis a thought perhaps +annoying to those who have slaved seven years over a particular outline +of muscles, a particular colour of grass, or the cadence of a particular +sentence. What! all this to be refused finality, to be disintegrated by +the feelings and fancies of the man who looks at the picture, or reads +the book, heaven knows how carelessly besides? Well, if not +disintegrated, would you prefer it to be unassimilated? Do you wish your +picture, statue or poem to remain whole as you made it? Place it +permanently in front of a mirror; consign it to the memory of a parrot; +or, if you are musician, sing your song, expression and all, down a +phonograph. You cannot get from the poor human soul, that living +microcosm of changing impressions, the thorough, wholesale appreciation +which you want. + + +VI + +This same power of sentiment and fancy, that is to say, of association, +enables us to carry about, like a verse or a tune, whole mountain +ranges, valleys, rivers and lakes, things in appearance the least easy +to remove from their place. As some persons are never unattended by a +melody; so others, and among them your humble servant, have always for +their thoughts and feelings, an additional background besides the one +which happens to be visible behind their head and shoulders. By this +means I am usually in two places at a time, sometimes in several very +distant ones within a few seconds. + +It is extraordinary how much of my soul seems to cling to certain +peculiarities of what I have called _lie of the land_, undulations, +bends of rivers, straightenings and snakings of road; how much of one's +past life, sensations, hopes, wishes, words, has got entangled in the +little familiar sprigs, grasses and moss. The order of time and space is +sometimes utterly subverted; thus, last autumn, in a corner of +Argyllshire, I seemed suddenly cut off from everything in the British +Isles, and reunited to the life I used to lead hundreds of miles away, +years ago in the high Apennines, merely because of the minute starry +moss under foot and the bubble of brooks in my ears. + +Nay, the power of outdoor things, their mysterious affinities, can +change the values even of what has been and what has not been, can make +one live for a moment in places which have never existed save in the +fancy. Have I not found myself suddenly taken back to certain woods +which I loved in my childhood simply because I had halted before a great +isolated fir with hanging branches, a single fir shading a circle of +soft green turf, and watched the rabbits sitting, like round grey +stones suddenly flashing into white tails and movement? Woods where? I +have not the faintest notion. Perhaps only woods I imagined my father +must be shooting in when I was a baby, woods which I made up out of +Christmas trees, moss and dead rabbits, woods I had heard of in fairy +tales.... + +Such are some of the relations of landscape and sentiments, a correct +notion of which is necessary before it is possible to consider the best +manner of _representing landscape with words_; a subject to which none +of my readers, I think, nor myself, have at present the smallest desire +to pass on. + + + + +TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC + + + +I + +"Then," I said, "you decline to tell me about the Three Kings, when +their procession wound round and round these hillocks: all the little +wooden horses with golden bridles and velvet holsters, out of the toy +boxes; and the camelopard, and the monkeys and the lynx, and the little +doll pages blowing toy trumpets. And still, I know it happened here, +because I recognise the place from the pictures: the hillocks all washed +away into breasts like those of Diana of the Ephesians, and the rows of +cypresses and spruce pines--also out of the toy box. I know it happened +in this very place, because Benozzo Gozzoli painted it all at the time; +and you were already about the place, I presume?" + +I knew that by her dress, but I did not like to allude to its being +old-fashioned. It was the sort of thing, muslin all embroidered with +little nosegays of myrtle and yellow broom, and tied into odd bunches at +the elbows and waist, which they wore in the days of Botticelli's +_Spring_; and on her head she had a garland of eglantine and palm-shaped +hellebore leaves which was quite unmistakable. + +The nymph Terzollina (for of course she was the tutelary divinity of the +narrow valley behind the great Medicean Villa) merely shook her head and +shifted one of her bare feet, on which she was seated under a cypress +tree, and went on threading the yellow broom flowers. + +"At all events, you might tell me something about the Magnificent +Lorenzo," I went on, impatient at her obstinacy. "You know quite well +that he used to come and court you here, and make verses most likely." + +The exasperating goddess raised her thin, brown face, with the sharp +squirrel's teeth and the glittering goat's eyes. Very pretty I thought +her, though undoubtedly a little _passée_, like all the symbolical +ladies of her set. She plucked at a clump of dry peppermint, perfuming +the hot air as she crushed it, and then looked up, with a sly, shy +little peasant-girl's look, which was absurd in a lady so mature and so +elaborately adorned. Then, in a crooning voice, she began to recite some +stanzas in _ottava rima_, as follows: + +"The house where the good old Knight Gualando hid away the little +Princess, was itself hidden in this hidden valley. It was small and +quite white, with great iron bars to the windows. In front was a long +piece of greensward, starred with white clover, and behind and in front, +to where the pines and cypresses began ran strips of cornfield. It was +remote from all the pomps of life; and when the cuckoo had become silent +and the nightingales had cracked their voices, the only sound was the +coo of the wood-pigeons, the babble of the stream, and the twitter of +the young larks. + +"The old Knight Gualando had hidden his bright armour in an oaken chest; +and went to the distant town every day dressed in the blue smock of a +peasant, and driving a donkey before him. Thence he returned with +delicates for the little Princess and with news of the wicked usurper; +nor did any one suspect who he was, or dream of his hiding-place. + +"During his absence the little Princess, whose name was Fiordispina, +used to string beads through the hot hours when the sun smote through +the trees, and the green corn ridges began to take a faint gilding in +their silveriness, as the Princess remembered it in a picture in the +Castle Chapel, where the sun was represented by a big embossed ball of +gold, projecting from the picture, which she was allowed to stroke on +holidays. + +"In the evening, when the sky turned pearl white, and a breeze rustled +through the pines and cypresses which made a little black fringe on the +hill-top and a little patch of feathery velvet pile on the slopes, the +little Princess would come forth, and ramble about in her peasant's +frock, her fair face stained browner by the sun than by any walnut +juice. She would climb the hill, and sniff the scent of the sun-warmed +resin, and the sweetness of the yellow broom. It spread all over the +hills, and the king, her father, had not possessed so many ells of cloth +of gold. + +"But one evening she wandered further than usual, and saw on a bank, at +the edge of a cornfield, five big white lilies blowing. She went back +home and fetched the golden scissors from her work-bag, and cut off one +of the lilies. On the next day she came again and cut another until she +had cut them all. + +"But it happened that an old witch was staying in that neighbourhood, +gathering herbs among the hills. She had taken note of the five lilies, +because she disliked them on account of their being white; and she +remarked that one of them had been cut off; then another, then another. +She hated people who like lilies. When she found the fifth lily gone, +she wondered greatly, and climbed on the ridge, and looked at their +stalks where they were cut. She was a wise woman, who knew many things. +So she laid her finger upon the cut stalk, and said, 'This has not been +cut with iron shears'; and she laid her lip against the cut stalk, and +felt that it had been cut with gold shears, for gold cuts like nothing +else. + +"'Oho!' said the old witch--'where there are gold scissors, there must +be gold work-bags; and where there are gold work-bags, there must be +little Princesses.'" + +"Well, and then?" I asked. + +"Oh then, nothing at all," answered the Nymph Terzollina beloved by the +Magnificent Lorenzo, who had seen the procession of the Three Kings. +"Good evening to you." + +And where her white muslin dress, embroidered with nosegays of broom and +myrtle, had been spread on the dry grass and crushed mint, there was +only, beneath the toy cypresses, a bush of white-starred myrtle and a +tuft of belated yellow broom. + + +II + +One must have leisure to converse with goddesses; and certainly, during +a summer in Tuscany, when folk are scattered in their country houses, +and are disinclined to move out of hammock or off shaded bench, there +are not many other persons to talk with. + +On the other hand, during those weeks of cloudless summer, natural +objects vie with each other in giving one amateur representations. +Things look their most unexpected, masquerade as other things, get queer +unintelligible allegoric meanings, leaving you to guess what it all +means, a constant dumb crambo of trees, flowers, animals, houses, and +moonlight. + +The moon, particularly, is continually _en scène_, as if to take the +place of the fireflies, which last only so long as the corn is in the +ear, gradually getting extinguished and trailing about, humble helpless +moths with a pale phosphorescence in their tail, in the grass and in the +curtains. The moon takes their place; the moon which, in an Italian +summer, seems to be full for three weeks out of the four. + +One evening the performance was given by the moon and the corn-sheaves, +assisted by minor actors such as crickets, downy owls, and +vine-garlands. The oats, which had been of such exquisite delicacy of +green, had just been reaped in the field beyond our garden and were now +stacked up. Suspecting one of the usual performances, I went after +dinner to the upper garden-gate, and looked through the bars. There it +was, the familiar, elemental witchery. The moon was nearly full, +blurring the stars, steeping the sky and earth in pale blue mist, which +seemed somehow to be the visible falling dew. It left a certain +greenness to the broad grass path, a vague yellow to the unsickled +wheat; and threw upon the sheaves of oats the shadows of festooned vine +garlands. Those sheaves, or stooks--who can describe their metamorphose? +Palest yellow on the pale stubbly ground, they were frosted by the +moonbeams in their crisp fringe of ears, and in the shining straws +projecting here and there. Straws, ears? You would never have guessed +that they were made of anything so mundane. They sat there, propped +against the trees, between the pools of light and the shadows, while the +crickets trilled their cool, shrill song; sat solemnly with an air of +expectation, calling to me, frightening me. And one in particular, with +a great additional bunch on his head, cut by a shadow, was oddly +unaccountable and terrible. After a minute I had to slink away, back +into the garden, like an intruder. + + +III + +There are performances also in broad daylight, and then human beings are +admitted as supernumeraries. Such was a certain cattle fair, up the +valley of the Mugnone. + +The beasts were being sold on a piece of rough, freshly reaped ground, +lying between the high road and the river bed, empty of waters, but full +among its shingle of myrrh-scented yellow herbage. The oxen were mostly +of the white Tuscan breeds (those of Romagna are smaller but more +spirited, and of a delicate grey) only their thighs slightly browned; +the scarlet cloth neck-fringes set off, like a garland of geranium, +against the perfect milkiness of backs and necks. They looked, indeed, +these gigantic creatures, as if moulded out of whipped cream or cream +cheese; suggesting no strength, and even no resistance to the touch, +with their smooth surface here and there packed into minute wrinkles, +exactly like the little _stracchini_ cheeses. This impalpable whiteness +of the beasts suited their perfect tameness, passiveness, letting +themselves be led about with great noiseless strides over the stubbly +ridges and up the steep banks; and hustled together, flank against +flank, horns interlaced with horns, without even a sound or movement of +astonishment or disobedience. Never a low or a moo; never a glance round +of their big, long-lashed, blue-brown eyes. Their big jaws move like +millstones, their long tufted tails switch monotonously like pendulums. + +Around them circle peasants, measuring them with the eye, prodding them +with the finger, pulling them by the horns. And every now and then one +of the red-faced men, butchers mainly, who act as go-betweens, +dramatically throws his arms round the neck of some recalcitrant dealer +or buyer, leads him aside, whispering with a gesture like Judas's kiss; +or he clasps together the red hands and arms of contracting parties, +silencing their objections, forcing them to do business. The contrast is +curious between these hot, excited, yelling, jostling human beings, +above whose screaming _Dio Canes!_ and _Dio Ladros!_ the cry of the +iced-water seller recurs monotonously and the silent, impassive +bullocks, white, unreal, inaudible; so still and huge, indeed, that, +seen from above, they look like an encampment, their white flanks like +so much spread canvas in the sunshine. And from a little distance, +against the hillside beyond the river, the already bought yokes of +bullocks look, tethered in a grove of cypresses, like some old mediæval +allegory--an allegory, as usual, nobody knows of what. + + +IV + +Another performance was that of the woods of Lecceto, and the hermitage +of the same name. You will find them on the map of the district of +Siena; but I doubt very much whether you will find them on the surface +of the real globe, for I suspect them to be a piece of midsummer magic +and nothing more. They had been for years to me among the number (we all +have such) of things familiar but inaccessible; or rather things whose +inaccessibility--due to no conceivable cause--is an essential quality of +their existence. Every now and then from one of the hills you get a +glimpse of the square red tower, massive and battlemented, rising among +the grey of its ilexes, beckoning one across a ridge or two and a +valley; then disappearing again, engulfed in the oak woods, green in +summer, copper-coloured in winter; to reappear, but on the side you +least expected it, plume of ilexes, battlements of tower, as you +twisted along the high-lying vineyards and the clusters of umbrella +pines fringing the hill-tops; and then, another minute and they were +gone. + +We determined to attain them, to be mocked no longer by Lecceto; and +went forth on one endless July afternoon. After much twisting from +hillside to hillside and valley to valley, we at last got into a country +which was strange enough to secrete even Lecceto. In a narrow valley we +were met by a scent, warm, delicious, familiar, which seemed to lead us +(as perfumes we cannot identify will usually do) to ideas very hazy, but +clear enough to be utterly inappropriate: English cottage-gardens, linen +presses of old houses, old-fashioned sitting-rooms full of pots of +_pot-pourri_; and then, behold, in front of us a hill covered every inch +of it with flowering lavender, growing as heather does on the hills +outside fairyland. And behind this lilac, sun-baked, scented hill, open +the woods of ilexes. The trees were mostly young and with their summer +upper garment of green, fresh leaves over the crackling old ones; trees +packed close like a hedge, their every gap filled with other verdure, +arbutus and hornbeam, fern and heather; the close-set greenery crammed, +as it were, with freshness and solitude. + +These must be the woods of Lecceto, and in their depths the red +battlemented tower of the Hermitage. For I had forgotten to say that for +a thousand years that tower had been the abode of a succession of holy +personages, so holy and so like each other as to have almost grown into +one, an immortal hermit whom Popes and Emperors would come to consult +and be blessed by. Deeper and deeper therefore we made our way into the +green coolness and dampness, the ineffable deliciousness of young leaf +and uncurling fern; till it seemed as if the plantation were getting +impenetrable, and we began to think that, as usual, Lecceto had mocked +us, and would probably appear, if we retraced our steps, in the +diametrically opposite direction. When suddenly, over the tree-tops, +rose the square battlemented tower of red brick. Then, at a turn of the +rough narrow lane, there was the whole place, the tower, a church and +steeple, and some half-fortified buildings, in a wide clearing planted +with olive trees. We tied our pony to an ilex and went to explore the +Hermitage. But the building was enclosed round by walls and hedges, and +the only entrance was by a stout gate armed with a knocker, behind which +was apparently an outer yard and a high wall pierced only by a twisted +iron balcony. So we knocked. + +But that knocker was made only for Popes and Emperors walking about with +their tiaras and crowns and sceptres, like the genuine Popes and +Emperors of Italian folk-tales and of Pinturicchio's frescoes; for no +knocking of ours, accompanied by loud yells, could elicit an answer. It +seemed simple enough to get in some other way; there must be peasants +about at work, even supposing the holy hermit to have ceased to exist. +But climbing walls and hurdles and squeezing between the close tight +ilexes, brought us only to more walls, above which, as above the +oak-woods from a distance, rose the inaccessible battlemented tower. And +a small shepherdess, in a flapping Leghorn hat, herding black and white +baby pigs in a neighbouring stubble-field under the olives, was no more +able than we to break the spell of the Hermitage. And all round, for +miles apparently, undulated the dense grey plumage of the ilex woods. + +The low sun was turning the stubble orange, where the pigs were feeding; +and the distant hills of the Maremma were growing very blue behind the +olive trees. So, lest night should overtake us, we turned our pony's +head towards the city, and traversed the oak-woods and skirted the +lavender hill, rather disbelieving in the reality of the place we had +just been at, save when we saw its tower mock us, emerging again; an +inaccessible, improbable place. The air was scented by the warm lavender +of the hillsides; and by the pines forming a Japanese pattern, black +upon the golden lacquer of the sky. Soon the moon rose, big and yellow, +lighting very gradually the road in whose gloom you could vaguely see +the yokes of white cattle returning from work. By the time we reached +the city hill everything was steeped in a pale yellowish light, with +queer yellowish shadows; and the tall tanneries glared out with their +buttressed balconied top, exaggerated and alarming. Scrambling up the +moonlit steep of Fonte Branda, and passing under a black arch, we found +ourselves in the heart of the gaslit and crowded city, much as if we had +been shot out of a cannon into another planet, and feeling that the +Hermitage of Lecceto was absolutely apocryphal. + + +V + +The reason of this midsummer magic--whose existence no legitimate +descendant of Goths and Vandals and other early lovers of Italy can +possibly deny--the reason is altogether beyond my philosophy. The only +word which expresses the phenomenon is the German word, untranslatable, +_Bescheerung_, a universal giving of gifts, lighting of candles, gilding +of apples, manifestation of marvels, realisation of the desirable and +improbable--to wit, a Christmas Tree. And Italy, which knows no +Christmas trees, makes its _Bescheerung_ in midsummer, gets rid of its +tourist vulgarities, hides away the characteristics of its trivial +nineteenth century, decks itself with magnolia blossoms and water-melons +with awnings and street booths, with mandolins and guitars; spangles +itself with church festivals and local pageants; and instead of +wax-tapers and Chinese lanterns, lights up the biggest golden sun by +day, the biggest silver moon by night, all for the benefit of a few +childish descendants of Goths and Vandals. + +Nonsense apart, I am inclined to think that the specific charm of Italy +exists only during the hot months; the charm which gives one a little +stab now and then and makes one say--"This is Italy." + +I felt that little stab, to which my heart had long become unused, at +the beginning of this very summer in Tuscany, to which belong the above +instances of Italian Midsummer Magic. I was spending the day at a small, +but very ancient, Benedictine Monastery (it was a century old when St. +Peter Igneus, according to the chronicle, went through his celebrated +Ordeal by Fire), now turned into a farm, and hidden, battlemented walls +and great gate towers, among the cornfields near the Arno. It came to me +as the revival of an impression long forgotten, that overpowering sense +that "This was Italy," it recurred and recurred in those same three +words, as I sat under the rose-hedge opposite the water-wheel shed, +garlanded with drying pea-straw; and as I rambled through the chill +vaults, redolent of old wine-vats, into the sudden sunshine and broad +shadows of the cloistered yards. + +That smell was mysteriously connected with it; the smell of wine-vats +mingled, I fancy (though I could not say why), with the sweet faint +smell of decaying plaster and wood-work. One night, as we were driving +through Bologna to wile away the hours between two trains, in the blue +moon-mist and deep shadows of the black porticoed city, that same smell +came to my nostrils as in a dream, and with it a whiff of bygone years, +the years when first I had had this impression of Italian Magic. Oddly +enough, Rome, where I spent much of my childhood and which was the +object of my childish and tragic adoration, was always something apart, +never Italy for my feelings. The Apennines of Lucca and Pistoia, with +their sudden revelation of Italian fields and lanes, of flowers on wall +and along roadside, of bells ringing in the summer sky, of peasants +working in the fields and with the loom and distaff, meant Italy. + +But how much more Italy--and hence longed for how much!--was Lucca, the +town in the plain, with cathedral and palaces. Nay, any of the mountain +hamlets where there was nothing modern, and where against the scarred +brick masonry and blackened stonework the cypresses rose black and +tapering, the trelisses crawled bright green up hill! One never feels, +once out of childhood, such joy as on the rare occasions when I was +taken to such places. A certain farmhouse, with cypresses at the terrace +corner and a great oleander over the wall, was also Italy before it +became my home for several years. Most of all, however, Italy was +represented by certain towns: Bologna, Padua and Vicenza, and Siena, +which I saw mainly in the summer. + +It is curious how one's associations change: nowadays Italy means mainly +certain familiar effects of light and cloud, certain exquisitenesses of +sunset amber against ultramarine hills, of winter mists among misty +olives, of folds and folds of pale blue mountains; it is a country which +belongs to no time, which will always exist, superior to picturesqueness +and romance. But that is but a vague, half-indifferent habit of +enjoyment. And every now and then, when the Midsummer Magic is rife, +there comes to me that very different, old, childish meaning of the +word; as on that day among the roses of those Benedictine cloisters, the +cool shadow of the fig-trees in the yards, with the whiff of that queer +smell, heavy with romance, of wine-saturated oak and crumbling plaster; +and I know with a little stab of joy that this is Italy. + + + + +ON MODERN TRAVELLING + + + +I + +There is one charming impression peculiar to railway travelling, that of +the twilight hour in the train; but the charm is greater on a short +journey, when one is not tired and has not the sense of being uprooted, +than on a long one. The movement of the train seems, after sunset, +particularly in the South where night fall is rapid, to take a quality +of mystery. It glides through a landscape of which the smaller details +are effaced, as are likewise effaced the details of the railway itself. +And that rapid gliding brings home to one the instability of the hour, +of the changing light, the obliterating form. It makes one feel that +everything is, as it were, a mere vision; bends of poplared river with +sunset redness in their grey swirls; big towered houses of other days; +the spectral white fruit trees in the dark fields; the pine tops round, +separate, yet intangible, against the sky of unearthy blue; the darkness +not descending, as foolish people say it does, from the skies to the +earth, but rising slowly from the earth where it has gathered fold upon +fold, an emanation thereof, into the sky still pale and luminous, +turning its colour to white, its whiteness to grey, till the stars, mere +little white specks before, kindle one by one. + +Dante, who had travelled so much, and so much against his will, +described this hour as turning backwards the longing of the traveller, +and making the heart grow soft of them who had that day said farewell to +their friends. It is an hour of bitterness, the crueller for mingled +sweetness, to the exile; and in those days when distances were difficult +to overcome, every traveller must in a sense have been somewhat of an +exile. But to us, who have not necessarily left our friends, who may be +returning to them; to us accustomed to coming and going, to us hurried +along in dreary swiftness, it is the hour also when the earth seems full +of peace and goodwill; and our pensiveness is only just sad enough to be +sweet, not sad enough to be bitter. For every hamlet we pass seems +somehow the place where we ought to tarry for all our days; every room +or kitchen, a red square of light in the dimness with dark figures +moving before the window, seems full of people who might be friends; and +the hills we have never beheld before, the bends of rivers, the screen +of trees, seem familiar as if we had lived among them in distant days +which we think of with longing. + + +II + +This is the best that can be said, I think, for modern modes of travel. +But then, although I have been jolted about a good deal from country to +country, and slept in the train on my nurse's knees, and watched all my +possessions, from my cardboard donkey and my wax dolls to my manuscripts +and proof-sheets, overhauled on custom-house counters--but then, despite +all this, I have never made a great journey. I have never been to the +United States, nor to Egypt, nor to Russia; and it may well be that I +shall see the Eleusinian gods, Persephone and whoever else imparts +knowledge in ghostland, without ever having set foot in Greece. My +remarks are therefore meant for the less fortunate freight of railways +and steamers; though do I really envy those who see the wonderful places +of the earth before they have dreamed of them, the dream-land of other +men revealed to them for the first time in the solid reality of Cook and +Gaze? + +I would not for the world be misunderstood; I have not the faintest +prejudice against Gaze or Cook. I fervently desire that these gentlemen +may ever quicken trains and cheapen hotels; I am ready to be jostled in +Alpine valleys and Venetian canals by any number of vociferous tourists, +for the sake of the one, schoolmistress, or clerk, or artisan, or +curate, who may by this means have reached at last the land east of the +sun and west of the moon, the St. Brandan's Isle of his or her longings. +What I object to are the well-mannered, well-dressed, often +well-informed persons who, having turned Scotland into a sort of +Hurlingham, are apparently making Egypt, the Holy Land, Japan, into +_succursales_ and _dépendances_ (I like the good Swiss names evoking +couriers and waiters) of their own particularly dull portion of London +and Paris and New York. + +Less externally presentable certainly, but how much more really +venerable is the mysterious class of dwellers in obscure pensions: +curious beings who migrate without perceiving any change of landscape +and people, but only change of fare, from the cheap boarding-house in +Dresden to the cheap boarding-house in Florence, Prague, Seville, Rouen, +or Bruges. It is a class whom one of nature's ingenious provisions, +intended doubtless to maintain a balance of inhabited and uninhabited, +directs unconsciously, automatically to the great cities of the past +rather than to those of the present; so that they sit in what were once +palaces, castles, princely pleasure-houses, discussing over the stony +pears and apples the pleasures and drawbacks, the prices and fares, the +dark staircase against the Sunday ices, of other boarding-houses in +other parts of Europe. A quaint race it is, neither marrying nor giving +in marriage, and renewed by natural selection among the poor in purse +and poor in spirit; but among whom the sentimental traveller, did he +still exist, might pick up many droll and melancholy and perhaps +chivalrous stories. + +My main contention then is merely that, before visiting countries and +towns in the body, we ought to have visited them in the spirit; +otherwise I fear we might as well sit still at home. I do not mean that +we should read about them; some persons I know affect to extract a kind +of pleasure from it; but to me it seems dull work. One wants to visit +unknown lands in company, not with other men's descriptions, but with +one's own wishes and fancies. And very curious such wishes and fancies +are, or rather the countries and cities they conjure up, having no +existence on any part of the earth's surface, but a very vivid one in +one's own mind. Surely most of us, arriving in any interesting place, +are already furnished with a tolerable picture or plan thereof; the +cathedral on a slant or a rising ground, the streets running uphill or +somewhat in a circle, the river here or there, the lie of the land, +colour of the houses, nay, the whole complexion of the town, so and so. +The reality, so far as my own experience goes, never once tallies with +the fancy; but the town of our building is so compact and clear that it +often remains in our memory alongside of the town of stone and brick, +only gradually dissolving, and then leaving sometimes airy splendours +of itself hanging to the solid structures of its prosaic rival. + +Another curious thing to note is how certain real scenes will sometimes +get associated in our minds with places we have never beheld, to such a +point that the charm of the known is actually enhanced by that of the +unknown. I remember a little dell in the High Alps, which, with its huge +larches and mountain pines, its tufts of bee-haunted heather and thyme +among the mossy boulders, its overlooking peak and glimpses of far-down +lakes, became dear to me much less for its own sake than because it +always brought to my mind the word _Thrace_, and with it a vague +fleeting image of satyrs and mænads, a bar of the music of Orpheus. And +less explicable than this, a certain rolling table-land, not more remote +than the high road to Rome, used at one time to impress me with a +mysterious consciousness of the plains of Central Asia; a ruined byre, a +heap of whitewashed stones, among the thistles and stubbles of a Fife +hillside, had for me once a fascination due to the sense that it must be +like Algeria. + +Has any painter ever fixed on canvas such visions, distinct and +haunting, of lands he had never seen, Claude or Turner, or the Flemish +people who painted the little towered and domed celestial Jerusalem? I +know not. The nearest thing of the kind was a wonderful erection of +brown paper and (apparently) ingeniously arranged shavings, built up in +rocklike fashion, covered with little green toy-box trees, and dotted +here and there with bits of mirror glass and cardboard houses, which +once puzzled me considerably in the parlour of a cottage. "Do tell me +what that is?" at last rose to my lips. "That," answered my hostess very +slowly, "that is a work of my late 'usband; a representation of the +Halps as close as 'e could imagine them, for 'e never was abroad." I +often think of that man "who never was abroad," and of his +representation of the Alps; of the hours of poetic vision, of actual +creation perhaps from sheer strength of longing, which resulted in that +quaint work of art. + +As close as he could imagine them! He had read, then, about the Alps, +read perhaps in Byron or some Radcliffian novel on a stall; and he had +wondered till the vision had come, ready for pasteboard and toy trees +and glue and broken mirror to embody it! And meanwhile I, who am +obliged to cross those very Alps twice every year, I try to do so at +night, to rumble and rattle up and down their gorges in a sleeping-car! +There seems something wrong in this; something wrong in the world's +adjustments, not really in me, for I swear it is respect for the Alps +which makes me thus avoid their sight. + + +III + +And here is the moment for stating my plea against our modern, rapid, +hurried travelling: there is to decent minds a certain element of +humiliation therein, as I suspect there is in every _royal road_. There +is something almost superhumanly selfish in this rushing across +countries without giving them a thought, indeed with no thoughts in us +save of our convenience, inconvenience, food, sleep, weariness. The +whole of Central Europe is thus reduced, for our feelings, to an +arrangement of buffets and custom-houses, its acres checked off on our +sensorium as so many jolts. For it is not often that respectable people +spend a couple of days, or even three, so utterly engrossed in +themselves, so without intellectual relation or responsibility to their +surroundings, living in a moral stratum not above ordinary life, but +below it. Perhaps it is this suspending of connection with all interests +which makes such travelling restful to very busy persons, and agreeable +to very foolish ones. But to decent, active, leisured folk it is, I +maintain, humiliating; humiliating to become so much by comparison in +one's own consciousness; and I suspect that the vague sense of +self-disgust attendant on days thus spent is a sample of the +self-disgust we feel very slightly (and ought to feel very strongly) +whenever our wretched little self is allowed to occupy the whole stage +of our perceptions. + +There is in M. Zola's _Bête Humaine_ a curious picture of a train, one +train after another, full of eager modern life, being whirled from Paris +to Havre through the empty fields, before cottages and old-world houses +miles remote from any town. But in reality is not the train the empty +thing, and are not those solitary houses and pastures that which is +filled with life? The Roman express thus rushes to Naples, Egypt, India, +the far East, the great Austral islands, cutting in two the cypress +avenue of a country house of the Val d'Arno, Neptune with his conch, a +huge figure of the seventeenth century, looking on from an artificial +grotto. What to him is this miserable little swish past of to-day? + +There is only one circumstance when this vacuity, this suspension of all +real life, is in its place; when one is hurrying to some dreadful goal, +a death-bed or perhaps a fresh-made grave. The soul is precipitated +forward to one object, one moment, and cannot exist meanwhile; _ruit_ +not _hora_, but _anima_; emptiness suits passion and suffering, for they +empty out the world. + + +IV + +Be this as it may, it will be a great pity if we lose a certain sense of +wonder at distance overcome, a certain emotion of change of place. This +emotion--paid for no doubt by much impatience and weariness where the +plains were wide, the mountains high, or the roads persistently +straight--must have been one of the great charms of the old mode of +travelling. You savoured the fact of each change in the lie of the +land, of each variation in climate and province, the difference between +the chestnut and the beech zones, for instance, in the south, of the fir +and the larch in the Alps; the various types of window, roof, chimney, +or well, nay, the different fold of the cap or kerchief of the market +women. One inn, one square, one town-hall or church, introduced you +gradually to its neighbours. We feel this in the talk of old people, +those who can remember buying their team at Calais, of elderly ones who +chartered their _vetturino_ at Marseilles or Nice; in certain scraps in +the novels even of Thackeray, giving the sense of this gradual +occupation of the continent by relays. One of Mr. Ruskin's drawings at +Oxford evokes it strongly in me. On what railway journey would he have +come across that little town of Rheinfelden (where is Rheinfelden?), +would he have wandered round those quaint towered walls, over that +bridge, along that grassy walk? + +I can remember, in my childhood, the Alps before they had railways; the +enormous remoteness of Italy, the sense of its lying down there, far, +far away in its southern sea; the immense length of the straight road +from Bellinzona to the lake, the endlessness of the winding valleys. +Now, as I said in relation to that effigy of the Alps by the man who had +never been abroad, I get into my bunk at Milan, and waking up, see in +the early morning crispness, the glass-green Reuss tear past, and the +petticoated turrets of Lucerne. + +Once also (and I hope not once and never again) I made an immense +journey through Italy in a pony-cart. We seemed to traverse all +countries and climates; lush, stifling valleys with ripening maize and +grapes; oak-woods where rows of cypress showed roads long gone, and +crosses told of murders; desolate heaths high on hill-tops, and stony +gorges full of myrtle; green irrigated meadows with plashing +water-wheels, and grey olive groves; so that in the evening we felt +homesick for that distant, distant morning: yet we had only covered as +much ground as from London to Dover! And how immensely far off from +Florence did we not feel when, four hours after leaving its walls, we +arrived in utter darkness at the friendly mountain farm, and sat down to +supper in the big bare room, where high-backed chairs and the plates +above the immense chimney-piece loomed and glimmered in the half-light; +feeling, as if in a dream, the cool night air still in our throats, the +jingle of cart-bells and chirp of wayside crickets still in our ears! +Where was Florence then? As a fact it was just sixteen miles off. + +To travel in this way one should, however, as old John Evelyn advises, +"diet with the natives." Our ancestors (for one takes for granted, of +course, that one's ancestors were _milords_) were always plentifully +furnished, I observe, with letters of introduction. They were necessary +when persons of distinction carried their bedding on mules and rode in +coaches escorted by blunderbuses, like John Evelyn himself. + +It is this dieting with the natives which brings one fully in contact +with a country's reality. At the tables of one's friends, while being +strolled through the gardens or driven across country, one learns all +about the life, thoughts, feelings of the people; the very gossip of the +neighbourhood becomes instructive, and you touch the past through +traditions of the family. Here the French put up the maypole in 1796; +there the beautiful abbess met her lover; that old bowed man was the one +who struck the Austrian colonel at Milan before 1859. 'Tis the mode of +travelling that constituted the delight and matured the genius of +Stendhal, king of cosmopolitans and grand master of the psychologic +novel. To my kind friends, wherever I have any, but most perhaps in +Northern Italy, is due among other kinds of gratitude, gratitude for +having travelled in this way. + + +V + +But there is another way of travelling, more suitable methinks to the +poet. For what does the poet want with details of reality when he +possesses its universal essence, or with local manners and historic +tradition, seeing that his work is for all times and all men? + +Mr. Browning, I was told last year by his dear friends at Asolo, first +came upon the kingdom of Kate the Queen by accident, perhaps not having +heard its name or not remembering it, in the course of a long walking +tour from Venice to the Alps. It was the first time he was in Italy, +nay, abroad, and he had come from London to Venice by sea. That village +of palaces on the hill-top, with the Lombard plain at its feet and the +great Alps at its back; with its legends of the Queen of Cyprus was, +therefore, one of the first impressions of mainland Italy which the poet +could have received. And one can understand _Pippa Passes_ resulting +therefrom, better than from his years of familiarity with Florence. +Pippa, Sebald, Ottima, Jules, his bride, the Bishop, the Spy, nay, even +Queen Kate and her Page, are all born of that sort of misinterpretation +of places, times, and stories which is so fruitful in poetry, because it +means the begetting of things in the image of the poet's own soul, +rather than the fashioning them to match something outside it. + +Even without being a poet you may profit in an especial manner by +travelling in a country where you know no one, provided you have in you +that scrap of poetic fibre without which poets and poetry are caviare to +you. There is no doubt that wandering about in the haunts of the past +undisturbed by the knowledge of the present is marvellously favourable +to the historic, the poetical emotion. The American fresh from the +States thinks of Johnson and Dickens in Fleet Street; at Oxford or +Cambridge he has raptures (are any raptures like these?) into which, +like notes in a chord and overtones in a note, there enters the +deliciousness, the poignancy of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Turner. + +The Oxford or Cambridge man, on the other hand, will have similar +raptures in some boarding-house at Venice or Florence; raptures +rapturous in proportion almost to his ignorance of the language and the +people. Do not let us smile, dear friends, who have lived in Rome till +you are Romans, dear friends, who are Romans yourselves, at the +foreigner with his Baedeker, turning his back to the Colosseum in his +anxiety to reach it, and ashamed as well as unable to ask his way. That +Goth or Vandal, very likely, is in the act of possessing Rome, of making +its wonder and glory his own, consubstantial to his soul; Rome is his +for the moment. It is ours? Alas! + +Nature, Fate, I know not whether the mother or the daughter, they are so +like each other, looks with benignity upon these poor ignorant, solitary +tourists, and gives them what she denies to those who have more leisure +and opportunity. I cannot explain by any other reason a fact which is +beyond all possibility of doubt, and patent to the meanest observer, +namely, that it is always during our first sojourn in a place, during +its earlier part, and more particularly when we are living prosaically +at inns and boarding-houses, that something happens--a procession, a +serenade, a street-fight, a fair, or a pilgrimage--which shows the place +in a particularly characteristic light, and which never occurs again. +The very elements are desired to perform for the benefit of the +stranger. I remember a thunderstorm, the second night I was ever at +Venice, lighting up St. George's, the Salute, the whole lagoon as I have +never seen it since. + +I can testify, also, to having seen the Alhambra under snow, a sparkling +whiteness lying soft on the myrtle hedges, and the reflection of arches +and domes waving, with the drip of melted snow from the roofs, in the +long-stagnant tanks. If I lived in Granada, or went back there, should I +ever see this wonder again? It was so ordered merely because I had just +come, and was lodging at an inn. + +Yes, Fate is friendly to those who travel rarely, who go abroad to see +abroad, not to be warm or cold, or to meet the people they may meet +anywhere else. Honour the tourist; he walks in a halo of romance, The +cosmopolitan abroad desists from flannel shirts because he is always at +home; and he knows to a nicety hours and places which demand a high hat. +But does that compensate? + + +VI + +There is yet another mystery connected with travelling, but 'tis too +subtle almost for words. All I can ask is, do you know what it is to +meet, say, in some college room, or on the staircase of an English +country house, or even close behind the front door in Bloomsbury, the +photograph of some Florentine relief or French cathedral, the black, +gaunt Piranesi print of some Roman ruin; and to feel suddenly Florence, +Rouen, Reims, or Rome, the whole of their presence distilled, as it +were, into one essence of emotion? + +What does it mean? That in this solid world only delusion is worth +having? Nay; but that nothing can come into the presence of that +capricious despot, our fancy, which has not dwelt six months and six in +the purlieus of its palace, steeped, like the candidates for Ahasuerus's +favour, in sweet odours and myrrh. + + + + + +OLD ITALIAN GARDENS + + + +I + +There are also modern gardens in Italy, and in such I have spent many +pleasant hours. But that has been part of my life of reality, which +concerns only my friends and myself. The gardens I would speak about are +those in which I have lived the life of the fancy, and into which I may +lead the idle thoughts of my readers. + +It is pleasant to have flowers growing in a garden. I make this remark +because there have been very fine gardens without any flowers at all; in +fact, when the art of gardening reached its height, it took to despising +its original material, as, at one time, people came to sing so well that +it was considered vulgar to have any voice. There is a magnificent +garden near Pescia, in Tuscany, built in terraces against a hillside, +with wonderful waterworks, which give you shower-baths when you expect +them least; and in this garden, surrounded by the trimmest box hedges, +there bloom only imperishable blossoms of variegated pebbles and chalk. +That I have seen with my own eyes. A similar garden, near Genoa, +consisting of marble mosaics and coloured bits of glass, with a peach +tree on a wall, and an old harpsichord on the doorstep to serve instead +of bell or knocker, I am told of by a friend, who pretends to have spent +her youth in it. But I suspect her to be of supernatural origin, and +this garden to exist only in the world of Ariosto's enchantresses, +whence she originally hails. To return to my first remark, it is +pleasant, therefore, to have flowers in a garden, though not necessary. +We moderns have flowers, and no gardens. I must protest against such a +state of things. Still worse is it to suppose that you can get a garden +by running up a wall or planting a fence round a field, a wood or any +portion of what is vaguely called Nature. Gardens have nothing to do +with Nature, or not much. Save the garden of Eden, which was perhaps no +more a garden than certain London streets so called, gardens are always +primarily the work of man. I say primarily, for these outdoor +habitations, where man weaves himself carpets of grass and gravel, cuts +himself walls out of ilex or hornbeam, and fits on as roof so much of +blue day or of starspecked, moonsilvered night, are never perfect until +Time has furnished it all with his weather stains and mosses, and Fancy, +having given notice to the original occupants, has handed it into the +charge of gentle little owls and furgloved bats, and of other tenants, +human in shape, but as shy and solitary as they. + +That is a thing of our days, or little short of them. I should be +curious to know something of early Italian gardens, long ago; long +before the magnificence of Roman Cæsars had reappeared, with their +rapacity and pride, in the cardinals and princes of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries. I imagine those beginnings to have been humble; +the garden of the early middle ages to have been a thing more for +utility than pleasure, and not at all for ostentation. For the garden of +the castle is necessarily small; and the plot of ground between the +inner and outer rows of walls, where corn and hay might be grown for the +horses, is not likely to be given up exclusively to her ladyship's +lilies and gillyflowers; salads and roots must grow there, and onions +and leeks, for it is not always convenient to get vegetables from the +villages below, particularly when there are enemies or disbanded +pillaging mercenaries about; hence, also, there will be fewer roses than +vines, pears, or apples, spaliered against the castle wall. On the other +hand the burgher of the towns begins by being a very small artisan or +shopkeeper, and even when he lends money to kings of England and +Emperors, and is part owner of Constantinople, he keeps his house with +business-like frugality. Whatever they lavished on churches, frescoes, +libraries, and pageants, the citizens, even of the fifteenth century, +whose wives and daughters still mended the linen and waited at table, +are not likely to have seen in their villa more than a kind of rural +place of business, whence to check factors and peasants, where to store +wine and oil; and from whose garden, barely enclosed from the fields, to +obtain the fruit and flowers for their table. I think that mediæval +poetry and tales have led me to this notion. There is little mention in +them of a garden as such: the Provençal lovers meet in orchards--"en un +vergier sor folha d'albespi"--where the May bushes grow among the almond +trees. Boccaccio and the Italians more usually employ the word _orto_, +which has lost its Latin signification, and is a place, as we learn from +the context, planted with fruit trees and with pot-herbs, the sage which +brought misfortune on poor Simona, and the sweet basil which Lisabetta +watered, as it grew out of Lorenzo's head, "only with rosewater, or that +of orange flowers, or with her own tears." A friend of mine has painted +a picture of another of Boccaccio's ladies, Madonna Dianora, visiting +the garden, which (to the confusion of her virtuous stratagem) the +enamoured Ansaldo has made to bloom in January by magic arts; a little +picture full of the quaint lovely details of Dello's wedding chests, the +charm of the roses and lilies, the plashing fountains and birds singing +against a background of wintry trees and snow-shrouded fields, the +dainty youths and damsels treading their way among the flowers, looking +like tulips and ranunculus themselves in their fur and brocade. But +although in this story Boccaccio employs the word _giardino_ instead of +_orto_, I think we must imagine that magic flower garden rather as a +corner--they still exist on every hillside--of orchard connected with +the fields of wheat and olives below by the long tunnels of vine +trellis, and dying away into them with the great tufts of lavender and +rosemary and fennel on the grassy bank under the cherry trees. This +piece of terraced ground along which the water--spurted from the +dolphin's mouth or the siren's breasts--runs through walled channels, +refreshing impartially violets and salads, lilies and tall flowering +onions, under the branches of the peach tree and the pomegranate, to +where, in the shade of the great pink oleander tufts, it pours out below +into the big tank, for the maids to rinse their linen in the evening, +and the peasants to fill their cans to water the bedded-out tomatoes, +and the potted clove-pinks in the shadow of the house. + +The Blessed Virgin's garden is like that, where, as she prays in the +cool of the evening, the gracious Gabriel flutters on to one knee +(hushing the sound of his wings lest he startle her) through the pale +green sky, the deep blue-green valley; and you may still see in the +Tuscan fields clumps of cypresses clipped wheel-shape, which might mark +the very spot. + +The transition from this orchard-garden, this _orto_, of the old Italian +novelists and painters to the architectural garden of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries, is indicated in some of the descriptions and +illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a sort of handbook of +antiquities in the shape of a novel, written by Fra Francesco Colonna, +and printed at Venice about 1480. Here we find trees and hedges treated +as brick and stone work; walls, niches, colonnades, cut out of ilex and +laurel; statues, vases, peacocks, clipped in box and yew; moreover +antiquities, busts, inscriptions, broken altars and triumphal arches, +temples to the graces and Venus, stuck about the place very much as we +find them in the Roman Villas of the late sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries. But I doubt whether the Hypnerotomachia can be taken as +evidence of the gardens of Colonna's own days. I think his descriptions +are rather of what his archæological lore made him long for, and what +came in time, when antiques were more plentiful than in the early +Renaissance, and the monuments of the ancients could be incorporated +freely into the gardens. For the classic Italian garden is essentially +Roman in origin; it could have arisen only on the top of ancient walls +and baths, its shape suggested by the ruins below, its ornaments dug up +in the planting of the trees; and until the time of Julius II. and Leo +X., Rome was still a mediæval city, feudal and turbulent, in whose +outskirts, for ever overrun by baronial squabbles, no sane man would +have built himself a garden; and in whose ancient monuments castles were +more to be expected than belvederes and orangeries. Indeed, by the side +of quaint arches and temples, and labyrinths which look like designs for +a box of toys, we find among the illustrations of Polifilo various +charming woodcuts showing bits of vine trellis, of tank and of fountain, +on the small scale, and in the domestic, quite unclassic style of the +Italian burgher's garden. I do not mean to say that the gardens of +Lorenzo dei Medici, of Catherine Cornaro near Asolo, of the Gonzagas +near Mantua, of the Estensi at Scandiano and Sassuolo, were kitchen +gardens like those of Isabella's basil pot. They had waterworks already, +and aviaries full of costly birds, and enclosures where camels and +giraffes were kept at vast expense, and parks with deer and fishponds; +they were the gardens of the castle, of the farm, magnified and made +magnificent, spread over a large extent of ground. But they were not, +any more than are the gardens of Boiardo's and Ariosto's enchantresses +(copied by Spenser) the typical Italian gardens of later days. + +And here, having spoken of that rare and learned Hypnerotomachia +Poliphili (which, by the way, any one who wishes to be instructed, +sickened, and bored for many days together, may now read in Monsieur +Claudius Popelin's French translation), it is well I should state that +for the rest of this dissertation I have availed myself of neither the +_British Museum_, nor the _National Library of Paris_, nor the _Library +of South Kensington_ (the italics seem necessary to show my appreciation +of those haunts of learning), but merely of the light of my own poor +intellect. For I do not think I care to read about gardens among +foolscap and inkstains and printed forms; in fact I doubt whether I +care to read about them at all, save in Boccaccio and Ariosto, Spenser +and Tasso; though I hope that my readers will be more literary +characters than myself. + + +II + +The climate of Italy (moving on in my discourse) renders it difficult +and almost impossible to have flowers growing in the ground all through +the summer. After the magnificent efflorescence of May and June the soil +cakes into the consistence of terra-cotta, and the sun, which has +expanded and withered the roses and lilies with such marvellous +rapidity, toasts everything like so much corn or maize. Very few +herbaceous flowers--the faithful, friendly, cheerful zinnias, for +instance--can continue blooming, and the oleander, become more +brilliantly rose-colour with every additional week's drought, triumph +over empty beds. Flowers in Italy are a crop like corn, hemp, or beans; +you must be satisfied with fallow soil when they are over. I say these +things, learned by some bitter experience of flowerless summers, to +explain why Italian flower-gardening mainly takes refuge in pots--from +the great ornamented lemon-jars down to the pots of carnations, double +geraniums, tuberoses, and jasmines on every wall, on every ledge or +window-sill; so much so, in fact, that even the famous sweet basil, and +with it young Lorenzo's head, had to be planted in a pot. Now this +poverty of flower-beds and richness of pots made it easy and natural for +the Italian garden to become, like the Moorish one, a place of mere +greenery and water, a palace whose fountains plashed in sunny yards +walled in with myrtle and bay, in mysterious chambers roofed over with +ilex and box. + +And this it became. Moderately at first; a few hedges of box and +cypress--exhaling its resinous breath in the sunshine--leading up to the +long, flat Tuscan house, with its tower or pillared loggia under the +roof to take the air and dry linen; a few quaintly cut trees set here +and there, along with the twisted mulberry tree where the family drank +its wine and ate its fruit of an evening; a little grove of ilexes to +the back, in whose shade you could sleep while the cicalas buzzed at +noon; some cypresses gathered together into a screen, just to separate +the garden from the olive yard above; gradually perhaps a balustrade set +at the end of the bowling-green, that you might see, even from a +distance, the shimmery blue valley below, the pale blue distant hills; +and if you had it, some antique statue not good enough for the courtyard +of the town house, set on the balustrade or against the tree; also, +where water was plentiful, a little grotto, scooped out under that +semicircular screen of cypresses. A very modest place, but differing +essentially from the orchard and kitchen garden of the mediæval burgher; +and out of which came something immense and unique--the classic Roman +villa. + +For your new garden, your real Italian garden, brings in a new +element--that of perspective, architecture, decoration; the trees used +as building material, the lie of the land as theatre arrangements, the +water as the most docile and multiform stage property. Now think what +would happen when such gardens begin to be made in Rome. The Popes and +Popes' nephews can enclose vast tracts of land, expropriated by some +fine sweeping fiscal injustice, or by the great expropriator, fever, in +the outskirts of the town; and there place their casino, at first a mere +summer-house, whither to roll of spring evenings in stately coaches and +breathe the air with a few friends; then gradually a huge house, with +its suits of guests' chambers, stables, chapel, orangery, collection of +statues and pictures, its subsidiary smaller houses, belvederes, +circuses, and what not! And around the house His Eminence or His Serene +Excellency may lay out his garden. Now go where you may in the outskirts +of Rome you are sure to find ruins--great aqueduct arches, temples +half-standing, gigantic terrace-works belonging to some baths or palace +hidden beneath the earth and vegetation. Here you have naturally an +element of architectural ground-plan and decoration which is easily +followed: the terraces of quincunxes, the symmetrical groves, the long +flights of steps, the triumphal arches, the big ponds, come, as it were, +of themselves, obeying the order of what is below. And from underground, +everywhere, issues a legion of statues, headless, armless, in all stages +of mutilation, who are charitably mended, and take their place, mute +sentinels, white and earth-stained, at every intersecting box hedge, +under every ilex grove, beneath the cypresses of each sweeping hillside +avenue, wherever a tree can make a niche or a bough a canopy. Also +vases, sarcophagi, baths, little altars, columns, reliefs by the score +and hundred, to be stuck about everywhere, let into every wall, clapped +on the top of every gable, every fountain stacked up, in every empty +space. + +Among these inhabitants of the gardens of Cæsar, Lucullus, or Sallust, +who, after a thousand years' sleep, pierce through the earth into new +gardens, of crimson cardinals and purple princes, each fattened on his +predecessors' spoils--Medici, Farnesi, Peretti, Aldobrandini, Ludovisi, +Rospigliosi, Borghese, Pamphili--among this humble people of stone I +would say a word of garden Hermes and their vicissitudes. There they +stand, squeezing from out their triangular sheath the stout pectorals +veined with rust, scarred with corrosions, under the ilexes, whose drip, +drip, through all the rainy days and nights of those ancient times and +these modern ones has gradually eaten away an eye here, a cheek there, +making up for the loss by gilding the hair with lichens, and matting the +beard with green ooze; while patched chin, and restored nose, give them +an odd look of fierce German duellists. Have they been busts of Cæsars, +hastily ordered on the accession of some Tiberius or Nero, hastily sent +to alter into Caligula or Galba, or chucked into the Tiber on to the top +of the monster Emperor's body after that had been properly hauled +through the streets? Or are they philosophers, at your choice, Plato or +Aristotle or Zeno or Epicurus, once presiding over the rolls of poetry +and science in some noble's or some rhetor's library? Or is it possible +that this featureless block, smiling foolishly with its orbless +eye-sockets and worn-out mouth, may have had, once upon a time, a nose +from Phidias's hand, a pair of Cupid lips carved by Praxiteles? + + +III + +A book of seventeenth-century prints--"The Gardens of Rome, with their +plans raised and seen in perspective, drawn and engraved by Giov: +Battista Falda, at the printing-house of Gio: Giacomo de' Rossi, at the +sign of Paris, near the church of Peace in Rome"--brings home to one, +with the names of the architects who laid them out, that these Roman +villas are really a kind of architecture cut out of living instead of +dead timber. To this new kind of architecture belongs a new kind of +sculpture. The antiques do well in their niches of box and laurel under +their canopy of hanging ilex boughs; they are, in their weather-stained, +mutilated condition, another sort of natural material fit for the +artist's use; but the old sculpture being thus in a way assimilated +through the operation of earth, wind, and rain, into tree-trunks and +mossy boulders, a new sculpture arises undertaking to make of marble +something which will continue the impression of the trees and waters, +wave its jagged outlines like the branches, twist its supple limbs like +the fountains. It is high time that some one should stop the laughing +and sniffing at this great sculpture, of Bernini and his Italian and +French followers, the last spontaneous outcome of the art of the +Renaissance, of the decorative sculpture which worked in union with +place and light and surroundings. Mistaken as indoor decoration, as free +statuary in the sense of the antique, this sculpture has after all +given us the only works which are thoroughly right in the open air, +among the waving trees, the mad vegetation which sprouts under the +moist, warm Roman sky, from every inch of masonry and travertine. They +are comic of course looked at in all the details, those angels who smirk +and gesticulate with the emblems of the passion, those popes and saints +who stick out colossal toes and print on the sky gigantic hands, on the +parapets of bridges and the gables of churches; but imagine them +replaced by fine classic sculpture--stiff mannikins struggling with the +overwhelming height, the crushing hugeness of all things Roman; little +tin soldiers lost in the sky instead of those gallant theatrical +creatures swaggering among the clouds, pieces of wind-torn cloud, +petrified for the occasion, themselves! Think of Bernini's Apollo and +Daphne, a group unfortunately kept in a palace room, with whose right +angles its every outline swears, but which, if placed in a garden, would +be the very summing up of all garden and park impressions in the waving, +circling lines; yet not without a niminy piminy restraint of the +draperies, the limbs, the hair turning to clustered leaves, the body +turning to smooth bark, of the flying nymph and the pursuing god. + +The great creation of this Bernini school, which shows it as the +sculpture born of gardens, is the fountain. No one till the seventeenth +century had guessed what might be the relations of stone and water, each +equally obedient to the artist's hand. The mediæval Italian fountain is +a tank, a huge wash-tub fed from lions' mouths, as if by taps, and +ornamented, more or less, with architectural and sculptured devices. In +the Renaissance we get complicated works of art--Neptunes with tridents +throne above sirens squeezing their breasts, and cupids riding on +dolphins, like the beautiful fountain of Bologna; or boys poised on one +foot, holding up tortoises, like Rafael's Tartarughe of Piazza Mattei; +more elaborate devices still, like the one of the villa at Bagnaia, near +Viterbo. But these fountains do equally well when dry, equally well +translated into bronze or silver: they are wonderful saltcellars or +fruit-dishes; everything is delightful except the water, which spurts in +meagre threads as from a garden-hose. They are the fitting ornament of +Florence, where there is pure drinking water only on Sundays and +holidays, of Bologna, where there is never any at all. + +The seventeenth century made a very different thing of its +fountains--something as cool, as watery, as the jets which gurgle and +splash in Moorish gardens and halls, and full of form and fancy withal, +the water never alone, but accompanied by its watery suggestion of power +and will and whim. They are so absolutely right, these Roman fountains +of the Bernini school, that we are apt to take them as a matter of +course, as if the horses had reared between the spurts from below and +the gushes and trickles above; as if the Triton had been draped with the +overflowing of his horn; as if the Moor with his turban, the Asiatic +with his veiled fall, the solemn Egyptian river god, had basked and +started back with the lion and the seahorse among the small cataracts +breaking into foam in the pond, the sheets of water dropping, +prefiguring icicles, lazily over the rocks, all stained black by the +north winds and yellow by the lichen, all always, always, in those Roman +gardens and squares, from the beginning of time, natural objects, +perfect and not more to be wondered at than the water-encircled rocks of +the mountains and seashores. Such art as this cannot be done justice to +with the pen; diagrams would be necessary, showing how in every case the +lines of the sculpture harmonise subtly, or clash to be more subtly +harmonised, with the movement, the immensely varied, absolutely +spontaneous movement of the water; the sculptor, become infinitely +modest, willing to sacrifice his own work, to make it uninteresting in +itself, as a result of the hours and days he must have spent watching +the magnificent manners and exquisite tricks of natural waterfalls--nay, +the mere bursting alongside of breakwaters, the jutting up between +stones, of every trout-stream and milldam. It is not till we perceive +its absence (in the fountains, for instance, of modern Paris) that we +appreciate this Roman art of water sculpture. Meanwhile we accept the +fountains as we accept the whole magnificent harmony of nature and +art--nature tutored by art, art fostered by nature--of the Roman villas, +undulating, with their fringe of pines and oaks, over the hillocks and +dells of the Campagna, or stacked up proudly, vineyards and woods all +round, on the steep sides of Alban and Sabine hills. + + +IV + +This book of engravings of the villas of the Serene Princes +Aldobrandini, Pamphili, Borghese, and so forth, brings home to us +another fact, to wit, that the original owners and layers-out thereof +must have had but little enjoyment of them. There they go in their big +coaches, among the immense bows and curtsies of the ladies and gentlemen +and dapper ecclesiastics whom they meet; princes in feathers and laces, +and cardinals in silk and ermine. But the delightful gardens on which +they are being complimented are meanwhile mere dreadful little +plantations, like a nurseryman's squares of cabbages, you would think, +rather than groves of ilexes and cypresses, for, alas, the greatest +princes, the most magnificent cardinals, cannot bribe Time, or hustle +him to hurry up. + +And thus the gardens were planted and grew. For whom? Certainly not for +the men of those days, who would doubtless have been merely shocked +could they have seen or foreseen.... For their ghosts perhaps? Scarcely. +A friend of mine, in whose information on such matters I have implicit +belief, assures me that it is not the _whole_ ghosts of the ladies and +cavaliers of long ago who haunt the gardens; not the ghost of their +everyday, humdrum likeness to ourselves, but the ghost of certain +moments of their existence, certain rustlings, and shimmerings of their +personality, their waywardness, momentary, transcendent graces and +graciousnesses, unaccountable wistfulness and sorrow, certain looks of +the face and certain tones of the voice (perhaps none of the steadiest), +things that seemed to die away into nothing on earth, but which have +permeated their old haunts, clung to the statues with the ivy, risen and +fallen with the plash of the fountains, and which now exhale in the +breath of the honeysuckle and murmur in the voice of the birds, in the +rustle of the leaves and the high, invading grasses. There are some +verses of Verlaine's, which come to me always, on the melancholy minuet +tune to which Monsieur Fauré has set them, as I walk in those Italian +gardens, Roman and Florentine, walk in the spirit as well as in the +flesh: + + Votre âme est un paysage choisi + Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques + Jouant du luth et quasi + Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques. + Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur + L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune, + Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur; + Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune, + Au calme clair de lune triste et beau + Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres + Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau, + Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres. + + +V + +And this leads me to wonder what these gardens must be when the key has +turned in their rusty gates, and the doorkeeper gone to sleep under the +gun hanging from its nail. What must such places be, Mondragone, for +instance, near Frascati, and the deserted Villa Pucci near Signa, during +the great May nights, when my own small scrap of garden, not beyond +kitchen sounds and servants' lamps, is made wonderful and magical by the +scents which rise up, by the song of the nightingales, the dances of +the fireflies, copying in the darkness below the figures which are +footed by the nimble stars overhead. Into such rites as these, which the +poetry of the past practises with the poetry of summer nights, one durst +not penetrate, save after leaving one's vulgar flesh, one's habits, +one's realities outside the gate. + +And since I have mentioned gates, I must not forget one other sort of +old Italian garden, perhaps the most poetical and pathetic--the garden +that has ceased to exist. You meet it along every Italian highroad or +country lane; a piece of field, tender green with the short wheat in +winter, brown and orange with the dried maize husks and seeding sorghum +in summer, the wide grass path still telling of coaches that once rolled +in; a big stone bench, with sweeping shell-like back under the rosemary +bushes; and, facing the road, between solemnly grouped cypresses or +stately marshalled poplars, a gate of charming hammered iron standing +open between its scroll-work masonry and empty vases, under its covered +escutcheon. The gate that leads to nowhere. + + + + +ABOUT LEISURE + + Sancte Hieronyme, ora pro nobis! + _Litany of the Saints._ + + + +I + +Hung in my room, in such a manner as to catch my eye on waking, is an +excellent photograph of Bellini's _St. Jerome in his Study_. I am aware +that it is not at all by Bellini, but by an inferior painter called +Catena, and I am, therefore, careful not to like it very much. It +occupies that conspicuous place not as a work of art but as an _aid to +devotion_. For I have instituted in my mind, and quite apart from the +orthodox cultus, a special devotion to St. Jerome as the Patron of +Leisure. + +And here let me forestall the cavillings of those who may object that +Hieronymus, whom we call Jerome (born in Dalmatia and died at Bethlehem +about 1500 years ago), was on the contrary a busy, even an overworked +Father of the Church; that he wrote three stout volumes of polemical +treatises, besides many others (including the dispute "concerning +seraphs"), translated the greater part of the Bible into Latin, edited +many obscure texts, and, on the top of it all, kept up an active +correspondence with seven or eight great ladies, a circumstance alone +sufficient to prove that he could not have had much time to spare. I +know. But all that either has nothing to do with it or serves to explain +why St. Jerome was afterwards rewarded by the gift of Leisure, and is, +therefore, to be invoked by all those who aspire at enjoying the same. +For the painters of all schools, faithful to the higher truth, have +agreed in telling us that: first, St. Jerome had a most delightful +study, looking out on the finest scenery; secondly, that he was never +writing, but always reading or looking over the edge of his book at the +charming tables and chairs and curiosities, or at the sea and mountains +through the window; and thirdly, _that he was never interrupted by +anybody_. I underline this item, because on it, above all the others, is +founded my certainty that St. Jerome is the only person who ever +enjoyed perfect leisure, and, therefore, the natural patron and +advocate of all the other persons to whom even imperfect leisure is +refused. In what manner this miracle was compassed is exactly what I +propose to discuss in this essay. An excellent _Roman Catholic_ friend +of mine, to whom I propounded the question, did indeed solve it by +reminding me that Heaven had made St. Jerome a present of a lion who +slept on his door-mat, after which, she thought, his leisure could take +care of itself. But although this answer seems decisive, it really only +begs the question; and we are obliged to inquire further into the _real +nature of St. Jerome's lion_. This formula has a fine theological ring, +calling to mind Hieronymus's own treatise, _Of the Nature of Seraphs_, +and I am pleased to have found anything so suitable to the arrangements +of a Father of the Church. Nevertheless, I propose to investigate into +the subject of Leisure with a method rather human and earthly than in +any way transcendental. + + +II + +We must evidently begin by a little work of defining; and this will be +easiest done by considering first what Leisure is not. In the first +place, it is one of those things about which we erroneously suppose that +other people have plenty of it, and we ourselves have little or none, +owing to our thoroughly realising only that which lies nearest to our +eye--to wit, _ourself_. How often do we not go into another person's +room and say, "Ah! _this_ is a place where one can feel peaceful!" How +often do we not long to share the peacefulness of some old house, say in +a deserted suburb, with its red fruit wall and its cedar half hiding the +windows, or of some convent portico, with glimpses of spaliered orange +trees. Meanwhile, in that swept and garnished spacious room, in that +house or convent, is no peacefulness to share; barely, perhaps, enough +to make life's two ends meet. For we do not see what fills up, chokes +and frets the life of others, whereas we are uncomfortably aware of the +smallest encumbrance in our own; in these matters we feel quickly enough +the mote in our own eye, and do not perceive the beam in our +neighbour's. + +And leisure, like its sister, peace, is among those things which are +internally felt rather than seen from the outside. (Having written this +part of my definition, it strikes me that I have very nearly given away +St. Jerome and St. Jerome's lion, since any one may say, that probably +that famous leisure of his was just one of the delusions in question. +But this is not the case. St. Jerome really had leisure, at least when +he was painted; I know it to be a fact; and, for the purposes of +literature, I require it to be one. So I close this parenthesis with the +understanding that so much is absolutely settled.) + +Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so +much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. We speak of _leisure +time_, but what we really mean thereby is _time in which we can feel at +leisure_. What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. +It has nothing to do with being idle, or having time on one's hands, +although it does involve a certain sense of free space about one, as we +shall see anon. There is time and to spare in a lawyer's waiting-room, +but there is no leisure, neither do we enjoy this blessing when we have +to wait two or three hours at a railway junction. On both these +occasions (for persons who can profit thereby to read the papers, to +learn a verb, or to refresh memories of foreign travel, are distinctly +abnormal) we do not feel in possession of ourselves. There is something +fuming and raging inside us, something which seems to be kicking at our +inner bulwarks as we kicked the cushions of a tardy four-wheeler in our +childhood. St. Jerome, patron of leisure, never behaved like that, and +his lion was always engrossed in pleasant contemplation of the +cardinal's hat on the peg. I have said that when we are bored we feel as +if possessed by something not quite ourselves (much as we feel possessed +by a stone in a shoe, or a cold in the head); and this brings me to a +main characteristic of leisure: it implies that we feel free to do what +we like, and that we have plenty of space to do it in. This is a very +important remark of mine, and if it seem trite, that is merely because +it is so wonderfully true. Besides, it is fraught with unexpected +consequences. + + +III + +The worst enemy of leisure is boredom: it is one of the most active +pests existing, fruitful of vanity and vexation of spirit. I do not +speak merely of the wear and tear of so-called social amusements, though +that is bad enough. We kill time, and kill our better powers also, as +much in the work undertaken to keep off _ennui_ as in the play. Count +Tolstoi, with his terrible eye for shams, showed it all up in a famous +answer to M. Dumas _fils_. Many, many of us, work, he says, in order to +escape from ourselves. Now, we should not want to escape from ourselves; +we ought to carry ourselves, the more unconsciously the better, along +ever widening circles of interest and activity; we should bring +ourselves into ever closer contact with everything that is outside us; +we should be perpetually giving ourselves from sheer loving instinct; +but how can we give ourself if we have run away from it, or buried it at +home, or chained it up in a treadmill? Good work is born of the love of +the Power-to-do for the Job-to-be-done; nor can any sort of chemical +arrangements, like those by which Faust's pupil made _Homunculus_ in +his retort, produce genuinely living, and in its turn fruitful, work. +The fear of boredom, the fear of the moral going to bits which boredom +involves, encumbers the world with rubbish, and exhibitions of pictures, +publishers' announcements, lecture syllabuses, schemes of charitable +societies, are pattern-books of such litter. The world, for many people, +and unfortunately, for the finer and nobler (those most afraid of +_ennui_) is like a painter's garret, where some half-daubed canvas, +eleven feet by five, hides the Jaconda on the wall, the Venus in the +corner, and blocks the charming tree-tops, gables, and distant meadows +through the window. + +Art, literature, and philanthropy are notoriously expressions no longer +of men's and women's thoughts and feelings, but of their dread of +finding themselves without thoughts to think or feelings to feel. +So-called practical persons know this, and despise such employments as +frivolous and effeminate. But are they not also, to a great extent, +frightened of themselves and running away from boredom? See your +well-to-do weighty man of forty-five or fifty, merchant, or soldier, or +civil servant; the same who thanks God _he_ is no idler. Does he really +require more money? Is he more really useful as a colonel than as a +major, in a wig or cocked hat than out of it? Is he not shuffling money +from one heap into another, making rules and regulations for others to +unmake, preparing for future restless idlers the only useful work which +restless idleness can do, the carting away of their predecessor's +litter? + +Nor is this all the mischief. Work undertaken to kill time, at best to +safeguard one's dignity, is clearly not the work which one was born to, +since that would have required no such incentives. Now, trying to do +work one is not fit for, implies the more or less unfitting oneself to +do, or even to be, the something for which one had facilities. It means +competing with those who are utterly different, competing in things +which want a totally different kind of organism; it means, therefore, +offering one's arms and legs, and feelings and thoughts to those blind, +brutal forces of adaptation which, having to fit a human character into +a given place, lengthen and shorten it, mangling it unconcernedly in +the process. + +Say one was naturally adventurous, a creature for open air and quick, +original resolves. Is he the better for a deliberative, sedentary +business, or it for him? There are people whose thought poises on +distant points, swirls and pounces, and gets the prey which can't be got +by stalking along the bushes; there are those who, like divers, require +to move head downwards, feet in the air, an absurd position for going up +hill. There are people who must not feel æsthetically, in order (so Dr. +Bain assures us) that they may be thorough-paced, scientific thinkers; +others who cannot get half a page or fifty dates by heart because they +assimilate and alter everything they take in. + +And think of the persons born to contemplation or sympathy, who, in the +effort to be prompt and practical, in the struggle for a fortune or a +visiting-list lose, atrophy (alas, after so much cruel bruising!) their +inborn exquisite powers. + +The world wants useful inhabitants. True. But the clouds building +bridges over the sea, the storms modelling the peaks and flanks of the +mountains, are a part of the world; and they want creatures to sit and +look at them and learn their life's secrets, and carry them away, +conveyed perhaps merely in altered tone of voice, or brightened colour +of eye, to revive the spiritual and physical hewers of wood and drawers +of water. For the poor sons and daughters of men require for sustenance, +as well as food and fuel, and intellect and morals, the special +mysterious commodity called _charm_.... + + +IV + +And here let me open a parenthesis of lamentation over the ruthless +manner in which our century and nation destroys this precious thing, +even in its root and seed. _Charm_ is, where it exists, an intrinsic and +ultimate quality; it makes our actions, persons, life, significant and +desirable, apart from anything they may lead to, or any use to which +they can be put. Now we are allowing ourselves to get into a state where +nothing is valued, otherwise than as a means; where to-day is +interesting only because it leads up to to-morrow; and the flower is +valued only on account of the fruit, and the fruit, in its turn, on +account of the seed. + +It began, perhaps, with the loss of that sacramental view of life and +life's details which belonged to Judaism and the classic religions, and +of which even Catholicism has retained a share; making eating, drinking, +sleeping, cleaning house and person, let alone marriage, birth, and +death, into something grave and meaningful, not merely animal and +accidental; and mapping out the years into days, each with its symbolic +or commemorative meaning and emotion. All this went long ago, and +inevitably. But we are losing nowadays something analogous and more +important: the cultivation and sanctification not merely of acts and +occasions but of the individual character. + +Life has been allowed to arrange itself, if such can be called +arrangement, into an unstable, jostling heap of interests, ours and +other folk's, serious and vacuous, trusted to settle themselves +according to the line of least resistance (that is, of most breakage!) +and the survival of the toughest, without our sympathy directing the +choice. As the days of the year have become confused, hurried, and +largely filled with worthless toil and unworthy trouble, so in a +measure, alas, our souls! We rarely envy people for being delightful; we +are always ashamed of mentioning that any of our friends are virtuous; +we state what they have done, or do, or are attempting; we state their +chances of success. Yet success may depend, and often does, on greater +hurrying and jostling, not on finer material and workmanship, in our +hurrying times. The quick method, the rapid worker, the cheap object +quickly replaced by a cheaper--these we honour; we want the last new +thing, and have no time to get to love our properties, bodily and +spiritual. 'Tis bad economy, we think, to weave such damask, linen, and +brocade as our fathers have left us; and perhaps this reason accounts +for our love of _bric-à -brac_; we wish to buy associations ready made, +like that wealthy man of taste who sought to buy a half-dozen old +statues, properly battered and lichened by the centuries, to put in his +brand new garden. With this is connected--I mean this indifference to +what folk _are_ as distinguished from what they _do_--the self-assertion +and aggressiveness of many worthy persons, men more than women, and +gifted, alas, more than giftless; the special powers proportionately +accompanied by special odiousness. Such persons cultivate themselves, +indeed, but as fruit and vegetables for the market, and, with good luck +and trouble, possibly _primeurs_: concentrate every means, chemical +manure and sunshine, and quick each still hard pear or greenish +cauliflower into the packing-case, the shavings and sawdust, for export. +It is with such well-endowed persons that originates the terrible mania +(caught by their neighbours) of tangible work, something which can be +put alongside of others' tangible work, if possible with some visible +social number attached to it. So long as this be placed on the stall +where it courts inspection, what matter how empty and exhausted the soul +which has grown it? For nobody looks at souls except those who use them +for this market-gardening. + +Dropping metaphor; it is woeful to see so many fine qualities sacrificed +to _getting on_, independent of actual necessity; getting on, no matter +why, on to the road _to no matter what_. And on that road, what +bitterness and fury if another passes in front! Take up books of +science, of history and criticism, let alone newspapers; half the space +is taken up in explaining (or forestalling explanations), that the sage, +hero, poet, artist said, did, or made the particular thing before some +other sage, hero, poet, artist; and that what the other did, or said, or +made, was either a bungle, or a plagiarism, or worst of all--was +something _obvious_. Hence, like the bare-back riders at the Siena +races, illustrious persons, and would-be illustrious, may be watched +using their energies, not merely in pressing forward, but in hitting +competitors out of the way with inflated bladders--bladders filled with +the wind of conceit, not merely the breath of the lungs. People who +might have been modest and gentle, grow, merely from self-defence, +arrogant and aggressive; they become waspish, contradictory, unfair, who +were born to be wise and just, and well-mannered. And to return to the +question of _Charm_, they lose, soil, maim in this scuffle, much of this +most valuable possession; their intimate essential quality, their +natural manner of being towards nature and neighbours and ideas; their +individual shape, perfume, savour, and, in the sense of herbals, their +individual _virtue_. And when, sometimes, one comes across some of it +remaining, it is with the saddened feeling of finding a delicate plant +trampled by cattle or half eaten up by goats. + +Alas, alas, for charm! People are busy painting pictures, writing poems, +and making music all the world over, and busy making money for the +buying or hiring thereof. But as to that charm of character which is +worth all the music and poetry and pictures put together, how the good +common-sense generations do waste it. + + +V + +Now I suspect that _Charm_ is closely related to _Leisure_. Charm is a +living harmony in the individual soul. It is organised internally, the +expression of mere inborn needs, the offspring of free choice; and as it +is the great giver of pleasure to others, sprung probably from pleasure +within ourselves; making life seem easier, more flexible, even as life +feels in so far easier and more flexible to those who have it. Now even +the best work means struggle, if not with the world and oneself, at +least with difficulties inanimate and animate, pressure and resistance +which make the individual soul stronger, but also harder and less +flower-like, and often a trifle warped by inevitable routine. Hence +Charm is not the nursling of our hours of work, but the delicate and +capricious foster-child of Leisure. For, as observed, Leisure suspends +the pull and push, the rough-and-ready reciprocity of man and +circumstance. 'Tis in leisure that the soul is free to grow by its own +laws, grow inwardly organised and harmonious; its fine individual +hierarchism to form feelings and thoughts, each taking rank and motion +under a conscious headship. 'Tis, I would show, in leisure, while +talking with the persons who are dear, while musing on the themes that +are dearer even than they, that voices learn their harmonious modes, +intonation, accent, pronunciation of single words; all somehow falling +into characteristic pattern, and the features of the face learn to move +with that centred meaning which oftentimes makes homeliness itself more +radiant than beauty. Nay more, may it not be in Leisure, during life's +pauses, that we learn to live, what for and how? + + +VI + +_Life's Pauses._ We think of Leisure in those terms, comparing it with +the scramble, at best the bustle, of work. But this might be a delusion, +like that of the moving shore and the motionless boat. St. Jerome, our +dear patron of Leisure, is looking dreamily over the top of his desk, +listening to the larks outside the wide window, watching the white +sailing clouds. Is he less alive than if his eyes were glued to the +page, his thoughts focussed on one topic, his pen going scratch-scratch, +his soul oblivious of itself? He might be writing fine words, thinking +fine thoughts; but would he have had fine thoughts to think, fine words +to write, if he had always been busy thinking and writing, and had kept +company not with the larks and the clouds and the dear lion on the mat, +but only with the scratching pen? + +For, when all is said and done, 'tis during work we spend, during +leisure we amass those qualities which we barter for ever with other +folk, and the act of barter is _life_. Anyhow, metaphysics apart, and to +return to St. Jerome. This much is clear, that if Leisure were not a +very good thing, this dear old saint would never have been made its +heavenly patron. + +But your discourse, declares the stern reader or he of sicklier +conscience, might be a masked apology for idleness; and pray how many +people would work in this world if every one insisted on having Leisure? +The question, moralising friend, contains its own answer: if every one +insisted on a share of Leisure, every one also would do a share of work. +For as things stand, 'tis the superfluity of one man which makes the +poverty of the other. And who knows? The realisation that Leisure is a +good thing, a thing which every one must have, may, before very long, +set many an idle man digging his garden and grooming his horses, many an +idle woman cooking her dinner and rubbing her furniture. Not merely +because one half of the world (the larger) will have recognised that +work from morning to night is not in any sense living; but also because +the other half may have learned (perhaps through grumbling experience) +that doing nothing all day long, incidentally consuming or spoiling the +work of others, is not _living_ either. The recognition of the necessity +of Leisure, believe me, will imply the recognition of the necessity of +work, as its moral--I might say its _hygienic_, as much as its economic, +co-relative. + +For Leisure (and the ignorance of this truth is at the bottom of much +_ennui_)--Leisure implies a superabundance not only of time but of the +energy needed to spend time pleasantly. And it takes the finest activity +to be truly at Leisure. Since Being at Leisure is but a name for being +active from an inner impulse instead of a necessity; moving like a +dancer or skater for the sake of one's inner rhythm instead of moving, +like a ploughman or an errand-boy, for the sake of the wages you get for +it. Indeed, for this reason, the type of all Leisure is _art_. + +But this is an intricate question, and time, alas! presses. We must +break off this leisurely talk, and betake ourselves each to his +business--let us hope not to his treadmill! And, as we do so, the more +to enjoy our work if luckily useful, the less to detest it if, alas! as +so often in our days, useless; let us invoke the good old greybeard, +painted enjoying himself between his lion and his quail in the +wide-windowed study; and, wishing for leisure, invoke its patron. Give +us spare time, Holy Jerome, and joyful energy to use it. Sancte +Hieronyme, ora pro nobis! + + + + +RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS + + +My oldest impression of Ravenna, before it became in my eyes the abode +of living friends as well as of outlandish ghosts, is of a melancholy +spring sunset at Classe. + +Classe, which Dante and Boccaccio call in less Latin fashion Chiassi, is +the place where of old the fleet _(classis)_ of the Romans and +Ostrogoths rode at anchor in the Adriatic. And Boccaccio says that it is +(but I think he over-calculates) at three miles distance from Ravenna. +It is represented in the mosaic of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, dating from +the reign of Theodoric, by a fine city wall of gold _tesseræ_ (facing +the representation of Theodoric's town palace with the looped-up +embroidered curtains) and a strip of ultramarine sea, with two +rowing-boats and one white blown-out sail upon it. Ravenna, which is now +an inland town, was at that time built in a lagoon; and we must picture +Classe in much the same relation to it that Malamocco or the Port of +Lido is to Venice, the open sea-harbour, where big ships and flotillas +were stationed, while smaller craft wound through the channels and +sand-banks up to the city. But now the lagoon has dried up, the Adriatic +has receded, and there remains of Classis not a stone, save, in the +midst of stagnant canals, rice marsh and brown bogland, a gaunt and +desolate church, with a ruinous mildewed house and a crevassed round +tower by its side. + +It seemed to me that first time, and has ever since seemed, no Christian +church, but the temple of the great Roman goddess Fever. The gates stood +open, as they do all day lest inner damp consume the building, and a +beam from the low sun slanted across the oozy brown nave and struck a +round spot of glittering green on the mosaic of the apse. There, in the +half dome, stood rows and rows of lambs, each with its little tree and +lilies, shining out white from the brilliant green grass of Paradise, +great streams of gold and blue circling around them, and widening +overhead into lakes of peacock splendour. The slanting sunbeam which +burnished that spot of green and gold and brown mosaic, fell also +across the altar steps, brown and green in their wet mildew like the +ceiling above. The floor of the church, sunk below the level of the +road, was as a piece of boggy ground leaving the feet damp, and +breathing a clammy horror on the air. Outside the sun was setting behind +a bank of solid grey clouds, faintly reddening their rifts and sending a +few rose-coloured streaks into the pure yellow evening sky. Against that +sky stood out the long russet line, the delicate cupolaed silhouette of +the sear pinewood recently blasted by frost. While, on the other side, +the marsh stretched out beyond sight, confused in the distance with grey +clouds its lines of bare spectral poplars picked out upon its green and +the greyness of the sky. All round the church lay brown grass, livid +pools, green rice-fields covered with clear water reflecting the red +sunset streaks; and overhead, driven by storm from the sea, the white +gulls, ghosts you might think, of the white-sailed galleys of Theodoric, +still haunting the harbour of Classis. + +Since then, as I hinted, Ravenna has become the home of dear friends, +to which I periodically return, in autumn or winter or blazing summer, +without taking thought for any of the ghosts. And the impressions of +Ravenna are mainly those of life; the voices of children, the plans of +farmers, the squabbles of local politics. I am waked in the morning by +the noises of the market; and opening my shutters, look down upon green +umbrellas and awnings spread over baskets of fruit and vegetables, and +heaps of ironware and stalls of coloured stuffs and gaudy kerchiefs. The +streets are by no means empty. A steam tramcar puffs slowly along the +widest of them; and, in the narrower, you have perpetually to squeeze +against a house to make room for a clattering pony-cart, a jingling +carriole, or one of those splendid bullock-waggons, shaped like an +old-fashioned cannon-cart with spokeless wheels and metal studdings. +There are no mediæval churches in Ravenna, and very few mediæval houses. +The older palaces, though practically fortified, have a vague look of +Roman villas; and the whole town is painted a delicate rose and apricot +colour, which, particularly if you have come from the sad coloured +cities of Tuscany, gives it a Venetian, and (if I may say so) +chintz-petticoat flowered-kerchief cheerfulness. And the life of the +people, when you come in contact with it, also leaves an impression of +provincial, rustic bustle. The Romagnas are full of crude socialism. The +change from rice to wheat-growing has produced agricultural discontent; +and conspiracy has been in the blood of these people, ever since Dante +answered the Romagnolo Guido that his country would never have peace in +its heart. The ghosts of Byzantine emperors and exarchs, of Gothic kings +and mediæval tyrants must be laid, one would think, by socialist +meetings and electioneering squabbles; and perhaps by another movement, +as modern and as revolutionary, which also centres in this big +historical village, the reclaiming of marshland, which may bring about +changes in mode of living and thinking such as Socialism can never +effect; nay, for all one knows, changes in climate, in sea and wind and +clouds. _Bonification_, reclaiming, that is the great word in Ravenna; +and I had scarcely arrived last autumn, before I found myself whirled +off, among dog-carts and _chars-à -bancs_, to view reclaimed land in the +cloudless, pale blue, ice-cold weather. On we trotted, with a great +consulting of maps and discussing of expenses and production, through +the flat green fields and meadows marked with haystacks; and jolted +along a deep sandy track, all that remains of the Roméa, the pilgrims' +way from Venice to Rome, where marsh and pool begin to interrupt the +well-kept pastures, and the line of pine woods to come nearer and +nearer. Over the fields, the frequent canals, and hidden ponds, circled +gulls and wild fowl; and at every farm there was a little crowd of +pony-carts and of gaitered sportsmen returning from the marshes. A sense +of reality, of the present, of useful, bread-giving, fever-curing +activity came by sympathy, as I listened to the chatter of my friends, +and saw field after field, farm after farm, pointed out where, but a +while ago, only swamp grass and bushes grew, and cranes and wild duck +nested. In ten, twenty, fifty years, they went on calculating, Ravenna +will be able to diminish by so much the town-rates; the Romagnas will be +able to support so many more thousands of inhabitants; and that merely +by employing the rivers to deposit arable soil torn from the mountain +valleys; the rivers--Po and his followers, as Dante called them--which +have so long turned this country into marsh; the rivers which, in a +thousand years, cut off Ravenna from her sea. + +We turned towards home, greedy for tea, and mightily in conceit with +progress. But before us, at a turn of the road, appeared Ravenna, its +towers and cupolas against a bank of clouds, a piled-up heap of sunset +fire; its canal, barred with flame, leading into its black vagueness, a +spectre city. And there, to the left, among the bare trees, loomed the +great round tomb of Theodoric. We jingled on, silent and overcome by the +deathly December chill. + +That is the odd thing about Ravenna. It is, more than any of the Tuscan +towns, more than most of the Lombard ones, modern, and full of rough, +dull, modern life; and the past which haunts it comes from so far off, +from a world with which we have no contact. Those pillared basilicas, +which look like modern village churches from the street, affect one with +their almost Moorish arches, their enamelled splendour of ultramarine, +russet, sea-green and gold mosaics, their lily fields and peacock's +tails in mosque-like domes, as great stranded hulks, come floating +across Eastern seas and drifted ashore among the marsh and rice-field. +The grapes and ivy berries, the pouting pigeons, the palm-trees and +pecking peacocks, all this early symbolism with its association of +Bacchic, Eleusinian mysteries, seems, quite as much as the actual +fragments of Grecian capitals, the discs and gratings of porphyry and +alabaster, so much flotsam and jetsam cast up from the shipwreck of an +older Antiquity than Rome's; remnants of early Hellas, of Ionia, perhaps +of Tyre. + +I used to feel this particularly in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, or, as it is +usually called, _Classe dentro_, the long basilica built by Theodoric, +outrivalled later by Justinian's octagon church of Saint Vitalis. There +is something extremely Hellenic in feeling (however un-Grecian in form) +in the pearly fairness of the delicate silvery white columns and +capitals; in the gleam of white, on golden ground, and reticulated with +jewels and embroideries, of the long band of mosaic virgins and martyrs +running above them. The virgins, with their Byzantine names--Sancta +Anastasia, Sancta Anatolia, Sancta Eulalia, Sancta Euphemia--have big +kohled eyes and embroidered garments fantastically suggesting some +Eastern hieratic dancing-girl; but they follow each other, in single +file (each with her lily or rose-bush sprouting from the gauze, green +mosaic), with erect, slightly balanced gait like the maidens of the +Panathenaic procession, carrying, one would say, votive offerings to the +altar, rather than crowns of martyrdom; all stately, sedate, as if +drilled by some priestly ballet-master, all with the same wide eyes and +set smile as of early Greek sculpture. There is no attempt to +distinguish one from the other. There are no gaping wounds, tragic +attitudes, wheels, swords, pincers or other attributes of martyrdom. And +the male saints on the wall opposite are equally unlike mediæval +Sebastians and Laurences, going, one behind the other, in shining white +togas, to present their crowns to Christ on His throne. Christ also, in +this Byzantine art, is never the Saviour. He sits, an angel on each +side, on His golden seat, clad in purple and sandalled with gold, +serene, beardless, wide-eyed like some distant descendant of the +Olympic Jove with his mantle of purple and gold. + +This church of Saint Apollinaris contains a chapel specially dedicated +to the saint, which sums up that curious impression of Hellenic +pre-Christian cheerfulness. It is encrusted with porphyry and _giallo +antico_, framed with delicate carved ivy wreaths along the sides, and +railed in with an exquisite piece of alabaster openwork of vines and +grapes, as on an antique altar. And in a corner of this little temple, +which seems to be waiting for some painter enamoured of Greece and +marble, stands the episcopal seat of the patron saint of the church, the +saint who took his name from Apollo; an alabaster seat, wide-curved and +delicate, in whose back you expect to find, so striking is the +resemblance, the relief of dancing satyrs of the chair of the Priest of +Dionysus. + +As I was sitting one morning, as was my wont, in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, +which (like all Ravenna churches) is always empty, a woman came in, with +a woollen shawl over her head, who, after hunting anxiously about, asked +me where she would find the parish priest. "It is," she said, "for the +Madonna's milk. My husband is a labourer out of work, he has been ill, +and the worry of it all has made me unable to nurse my little baby. I +want the priest, to ask him to get the Madonna to give me back my milk." +I thought, as I listened to the poor creature, that there was but little +hope of motherly sympathy from that Byzantine Madonna in purple and gold +mosaic magnificence, seated ceremoniously on her throne like an antique +Cybele. + +Little by little one returns to one's first impression, and recognises +that this thriving little provincial town, with its socialism and its +_bonification_ is after all a nest of ghosts, and little better than the +churchyard of centuries. + +Never, surely, did a town contain so many coffins, or at least thrust +coffins more upon one's notice. The coffins are stone, immense oblong +boxes, with massive sloping lids horned at each corner, or trough-like +things with delicate sea-wave patternings, figures of toga'd saints and +devices of palm-trees, peacocks, and doves, the carving made clearer by +a picking out of bright green damp. They stand about in all the +churches, not walled in, but quite free in the aisles, the chapels, and +even close to the door. Most of them are doubtless of the fifth or sixth +century, others perhaps barbarous or mediæval imitations; but they all +equally belong to the ages in general, including our own, not +curiosities or heirlooms, but serviceable furniture, into which +generations have been put, and out of which generations have been turned +to make room for later corners. It strikes one as curious at first to +see, for instance, the date 1826 on a sarcophagus probably made under +Theodoric or the Exarchs, but that merely means that a particular +gentleman of Ravenna began that year his lease of entombment. They have +passed from hand to hand (or, more properly speaking, from corpse to +corpse) not merely by being occasionally discovered in digging +foundations, but by inheritance, and frequently by sale. My friends +possess a stone coffin, and the receipt from its previous owner. The +transaction took place some fifty years ago; a name (they are cut very +lightly) changed, a slab or coat-of-arms placed with the sarcophagus in +a different church or chapel, a deed before the notary--that was all. +What became of the previous tenant? Once at least he surprised posterity +very much; perhaps it was in the case of that very purchase for which my +friends still keep the bill. I know not; but the stone-mason of the +house used to relate that, some forty years ago, he was called in to +open a stone coffin; when, the immense horned lid having been rolled +off, there was seen, lying in the sarcophagus, a man in complete armour, +his sword by his side and vizor up, who, as they cried out in +astonishment, instantly fell to dust. Was he an Ostrogothic knight, some +Gunther or Volker turned Roman senator, or perhaps a companion of Guido +da Polenta, a messmate of Dante, a playfellow of Francesca? + +Coffins being thus plentiful, their occupants (like this unknown +warrior) have played considerable part in the gossip of Ravenna. It is +well known, for instance, that Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius, +sister of Arcadius and Honorius, and wife to a Visigothic king, sat for +centuries enthroned (after a few years of the strangest adventures) +erect, inside the alabaster coffin, formerly plated with gold, in the +wonderful little blue mosaic chapel which bears her name. You could see +her through a hole, quite plainly; until, three centuries ago, some +inquisitive boys thrust in a candle, and burned Theodosius's daughter to +ashes. Dante also is buried under a little cupola at the corner of a +certain street, and there was, for many years, a strange doubt about his +bones. Had they been mislaid, stolen, mixed up with those of ordinary +mortals? The whole thing was shrouded in mystery. That street corner +where Dante lies, a remote corner under the wing of a church, resembled, +until it was modernised and surrounded by gratings, and filled with +garlands and inscriptions to Mazzini, nothing so much as the corner of +Dis where Dante himself found Farinata and Cavalcante. It is crowded +with stone coffins; and, passing there in the twilight, one might expect +to see flames upheaving their lids, and the elbows and shoulders of +imprisoned followers of Epicurus. + +Only once, so far as I know, have the inhabitants of Ravenna, Byzantine, +mediæval, or modern, wasted a coffin; but one is very glad of that once. +I am speaking of a Roman sarcophagus, on which you can still trace the +outlines of garlands, which stands turned into a cattle trough, behind +the solitary farm in the depth of the forest of St. Vitalis. Round it +the grass is covered in summer by the creeping tendrils of the white +clematis; and, in winter, the great thorn bushes and barberries and oaks +blaze out crimson and scarlet and golden. The big, long-horned, grey +cows pass to and fro to be milked; and the shaggy ponies who haunt the +pine wood come there to drink. It is better than housing no matter how +many generations, jurisconsults, knights, monks, tyrants and persons of +quality, among the damp and the stale incense of a church! + +Enough of coffins! There are live things at Ravenna and near Ravenna; +amongst others, though few people realise its presence, there is the +sea. + +It was on the day of the fish auction that I first went there. In the +tiny port by the pier (for Ravenna has now no harbour) they were making +an incredible din over the emptyings of the nets; pretty, mottled, +metallic fish, and slimy octopuses and sepias and flounders, looking +like pieces of sea-mud. The fishing-boats, mostly from the Venetian +lagoon, were moored along the pier, wide-bowed things, with eyes in the +prow like the ships of Ulysses; and bigger craft, with little castles +and weather-vanes and saints' images and penons on the masts like the +galleys of St. Ursula as painted by Carpaccio; but all with the splendid +orange sail, patched with suns, lions, and coloured stripes, of the +Northern Adriatic. The fishermen from Chioggia, their heads covered with +the high scarlet cap of the fifteenth century, were yelling at the +fishmongers from town; and all round lounged artillerymen in their white +undress and yellow straps, who are encamped for practice on the sands, +and whose carts and guns we had met rattling along the sandy road +through the marsh. + +On the pier we were met by an old man, very shabby and unshaven, who had +been the priest for many years, with a salary of twelve pounds a year, +of Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori, a little Gothic church in the marsh, where +he had discovered and rubbed slowly into existence (it took him two +months and heaven knows how many pennyworths of bread!) some valuable +Giottesque frescoes. He was now chaplain of the harbour, and had turned +his mind to maritime inventions, designing lighthouses, and shooting +dolphins to make oil of their blubber. A kind old man, but with the odd +brightness of a creature who has lived for years amid solitude and +fever; a fit companion for the haggard saints whom he brought, one by +one, in robes of glory and golden halos, to life again in his forlorn +little church. + +While we were looking out at the sea, where a little flotilla of yellow +and cinnamon sails sat on the blue of the view-line like parrots on a +rail, the sun had begun to set, a crimson ball, over the fringe of pine +woods. We turned to go. Over the town, the place whence presently will +emerge the slanting towers of Ravenna, the sky had become a brilliant, +melancholy slate-blue; and apparently out of its depths, in the early +twilight, flowed the wide canal between its dim banks fringed with +tamarisk. No tree, no rock, or house was reflected in the jade-coloured +water, only the uniform shadow of the bank made a dark, narrow band +alongside its glassiness. It flows on towards the invisible sea, whose +yellow sails overtop the grey marshland. In thick smooth strands of +curdled water it flows lilac, pale pink, opalescent according to the +sky above, reflecting nothing besides, save at long intervals the +spectral spars and spider-like tissue of some triangular fishing-net; a +wan and delicate Lethe, issuing, you would say, out of a far-gone past +into the sands and the almost tideless sea. + +Other places become solemn, sad, or merely beautiful at sunset. But +Ravenna, it seems to me, grows actually ghostly; the Past takes it back +at that moment, and the ghosts return to the surface. + +For it is, after all, a nest of ghosts. They hang about all those +silent, damp churches; invisible, or at most tantalising one with a +sudden gleam which may, after all, be only that of the mosaics, an +uncertain outline which, when you near it, is after all only a pale grey +column. But one feels their breathing all round. They are legion, but I +do not know who they are. I only know that they are white, luminous, +with gold embroideries to their robes, and wide, painted eyes, and that +they are silent. The good citizens of Ravenna, in the comfortable +eighteenth century, filled the churches with wooden pews, convenient, +genteel in line and colour, with their names and coats-of-arms in full +on the backs. But the ghosts took no notice of this measure; and there +they are, even among these pews themselves. + +Bishops and Exarchs, and jewelled Empresses, and half Oriental +Autocrats, saints and bedizened court-ladies, and barbarian guards and +wicked chamberlains; I know not what they are. Only one of the ghosts +takes a shape I can distinguish, and a name I am certain of. It is not +Justinian or Theodora, who stare goggle-eyed from their mosaic in San +Vitale mere wretched historic realities; _they_ cannot haunt. The +spectre I speak of is Theodoric. His tomb is still standing, outside the +town in an orchard; a great round tower, with a circular roof made +(heaven knows how) of one huge slab of Istrian stone, horned at the +sides like the sarcophagi, or vaguely like a Viking's cap. The ashes of +the great king have long been dispersed, for he was an Arian heretic. +But the tomb remains, intact, a thing which neither time nor earthquake +can dismantle. + +In the town they show a piece of masonry, the remains of a doorway, and +a delicate, pillared window, built on to a modern house, which is +identified (but wrongly I am told) as Theodoric's palace, by its +resemblance to the golden palace with the looped-up curtains on the +mosaic of the neighbouring church. Into the wall of this building is +built a great Roman porphyry bath, with rings carved on it, to which +time has adjusted a lid of brilliant green lichen. There is no more. But +Theodoric still haunts Ravenna. I have always, ever since I have known +the town, been anxious to know more about Theodoric, but the accounts +are jejune, prosaic, not at all answering to what that great king, who +took his place with Attila and Sigurd in the great Northern epic, must +have been. Historians represent him generally as a sort of superior +barbarian, trying to assimilate and save the civilisation he was bound +to destroy; an Ostrogothic king trying to be a Roman emperor; a military +organiser and bureaucrat, exchanging his birthright of Valhalla for +heaven knows what aulic red-tape miseries. But that is unsatisfactory. +The real man, the Berserker trying to tame himself into the Cæsar of a +fallen, shrunken Rome, seems to come out in the legend of his remorse +and visions, pursued by the ghosts of Boetius and Symmachus, the wise +men he had slain in his madness. + +He haunts Ravenna, striding along the aisles of her basilicas, riding +under the high moon along the dykes of her marshes, surrounded by +white-stoled Romans, and Roman ensigns with eagles and crosses; but +clad, as the Gothic brass-worker of Innsbruck has shown him, in no Roman +lappets and breastplate, but in full mail, with beaked steel shoes and +steel gorget, his big sword drawn, his vizor down, mysterious, the +Dietrich of the Nibelungenlied, Theodoric King of the Goths. + +These are the ghosts that haunt Ravenna, the true ghosts haunting only +for such as can know their presence. But Ravenna, almost alone among +Italian cities, possesses moreover a complete ghost-story of the most +perfect type and highest antiquity, which has gone round the world and +become known to all people. Boccaccio wrote it in prose; Dryden re-wrote +it in verse; Botticelli illustrated it; and Byron summed up its quality +in one of his most sympathetic passages. After this, to re-tell it were +useless, had I not chanced to obtain, in a manner I am not at liberty to +divulge, another version, arisen in Ravenna itself, and written, most +evidently, in fullest knowledge of the case. Its language is the +barbarous Romagnol dialect of the early fifteenth century, and it lacks +all the Tuscan graces of the Decameron. But it possesses a certain air +of truthfulness, suggesting that it was written by some one who had +heard the facts from those who believed in them, and who believed in +them himself; and I am therefore decided to give it, turned into +English. + + +THE LEGEND + +About that time (when Messer Guido da Pollenta was lord of Ravenna) men +spoke not a little of what happened to Messer Nastasio de Honestis, son +of Messer Brunoro, in the forest of Classis. Now the forest of Classis +is exceeding vast, extending along the sea-shore between Ravenna and +Cervia for the space of some fifteen miles, and has its beginning near +the church of Saint Apollinaris, which is in the marsh; and you reach +it directly from the gate of the same name, but also, crossing the River +Ronco where it is easier to ford, by the gate called Sisa, beyond the +houses of the Rasponis. And this forest aforesaid is made of many kinds +of noble and useful trees, to wit, oaks, both free standing and in +bushes, ilexes, elms, poplars, bays, and many plants of smaller growth +but great dignity and pleasantness, as hawthorns, barberries, +blackthorn, blackberry, brier-rose, and the thorn called marrucca, which +bears pods resembling small hats or cymbals, and is excellent for +hedging. But principally does this noble forest consist of pine-trees, +exceeding lofty and perpetually green; whence indeed the arms of this +ancient city, formerly the seat of the Emperors of Rome, are none other +than a green pine-tree. + +And the forest aforesaid is well stocked with animals, both such as run +and creep, and many birds. The animals are foxes, badgers, hares, +rabbits, ferrets, squirrels, and wild boars, the which issue forth and +eat the young crops and grub the fields with incredible damage to all +concerned. Of the birds it would be too long to speak, both of those +which are snared, shot with cross-bows, or hunted with the falcon; and +they feed off fish in the ponds and streams of the forest, and grasses +and berries, and the pods of the white vine (clematis) which covers the +grass on all sides. And the manner of Messer Nastasio being in the +forest was thus, he being at the time a youth of twenty years or +thereabouts, of illustrious birth, and comely person and learning and +prowess, and modest and discreet bearing. For it so happened that, being +enamoured of the daughter of Messer Hostasio de Traversariis, the +damsel, who was lovely, but exceeding coy and shrewish, would not +consent to marry him, despite the desire of her parents, who in +everything, as happens with only daughters of old men (for Messer +Hostasio was well stricken in years), sought only to please her. +Whereupon Messer Nastasio, fearing lest the damsel might despise his +fortunes, wasted his substance in presents and feastings, and joustings, +but all to no avail. + +When it happened that having spent nearly all he possessed and ashamed +to show his poverty and his unlucky love before the eyes of his +townsmen, he betook him to the forest of Classis, it being autumn, on +the pretext of snaring birds, but intending to take privily the road to +Rimini and thence to Rome, and there seek his fortune. And Nastasio took +with him fowling-nets, and bird-lime, and tame owls, and two horses (one +of which was ridden by his servant), and food for some days; and they +alighted in the midst of the forest, and slept in one of the +fowling-huts of cut branches set up by the citizens of Ravenna for their +pleasure. + +And it happened that on the afternoon of the second day (and it chanced +to be a Friday) of his stay in the forest, Messer Nastasio, being +exceeding sad in his heart, went forth towards the sea to muse upon the +unkindness of his beloved and the hardness of his fortune. Now you +should know that near the sea, where you can clearly hear its roaring +even on windless days there is in that forest a clear place, made as by +the hand of man, set round with tall pines even like a garden, but in +the shape of a horse-course, free from bushes and pools, and covered +with the finest greensward. Here, as Nastasio sate him on the trunk of a +pine--the hour was sunset, the weather being uncommon clear--he heard a +rushing sound in the distance, as of the sea; and there blew a +death-cold wind; and then came sounds of crashing branches, and neighing +of horses, and yelping of hounds, and halloes and horns. And Nastasio +wondered greatly, for that was not the hour for hunting; and he hid +behind a great pine trunk, fearing to be recognised. And the sounds came +nearer, even of horns, and hounds, and the shouts of huntsmen; and the +bushes rustled and crashed, and the hunt rushed into the clearing, +horsemen and foot, with many hounds. And behold, what they pursued was +not a wild boar, but something white that ran erect, and it seemed to +Messer Nastasio, as if it greatly resembled a naked woman; and it +screamed piteously. + +Now when the hunt had swept past, Messer Nastasio rubbed his eyes and +wondered greatly. But even as he wondered, and stood in the middle of +the clearing, behold, part of the hunt swept back, and the thing which +they pursued ran in a circle on the greensward, shrieking piteously. And +behold, it was a young damsel, naked, her hair loose and full of +brambles, with only a tattered cloth round her middle. And as she came +near to where Messer Nastasio was standing (but no one of the hunt +seemed to heed him) the hounds were upon her, barking furiously, and a +hunter on a black horse, black even as night. And a cold wind blew and +caused Nastasio's hair to stand on end; and he tried to cry out, and to +rush forward, but his voice died in his throat and his limbs were heavy, +and covered with sweat, and refused to move. + +Then the hounds fastening on the damsel threw her down, and he on the +black horse turned swiftly, and transfixed her, shrieking dismally, with +a boar-spear. And those of the hunt galloped up, and wound their horns; +and he of the black horse, which was a stately youth habited in a coat +of black and gold, and black boots and black feathers on his hat, threw +his reins to a groom, and alighted and approached the damsel where she +lay, while the huntsmen were holding back the hounds and winding their +horns. Then he drew a knife, such as are used by huntsmen, and driving +its blade into the damsel's side, cut out her heart, and threw it, all +smoking, into the midst of the hounds. And a cold wind rustled through +the bushes, and all had disappeared, horses, and huntsmen, and hounds. +And the grass was untrodden as if no man's foot or horse's hoof had +passed there for months. + +And Messer Nastasio shuddered, and his limbs loosened, and he knew that +the hunter on the black horse was Messer Guido Degli Anastagi, and the +damsel Monna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara. Messer Guido +had loved the damsel greatly, and been flouted by her, and leaving his +home in despair, had been killed on the way by robbers, and Madonna +Filomena had died shortly after. The tale was still fresh in men's +memory, for it had happened in the city of Ravenna barely five years +before. And those whom Nastasio had seen, both the hunter and the lady, +and the huntsmen and horses and hounds, were the spirits of the dead. + +When he had recovered his courage, Messer Nastasio sighed and said unto +himself: "How like is my fate to that of Messer Guido! Yet would I +never, even when a spectre, without weight or substance, made of wind +and delusion, and arisen from hell, act with such cruelty towards her I +love." And then he thought: "Would that the daughter of Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis might hear of this! For surely it would cause her to +relent!" But he knew that his words would be vain, and that none of the +citizens of Ravenna, and least of all the damsel of the Traversari, +would believe them, but rather esteem him a madman. + +Now it came about that when Friday came round once more, Nastasio, by +some chance, was again walking in the forest-clearing by the great +pines, and he had forgotten; when the sea began to roar, and a cold wind +blew; and there came through the forest the sound of horses and hounds, +causing Messer Nastasio's hair to stand up and his limbs to grow weak as +water. And he on the black horse again pursued the naked damsel, and +struck here with his boar-spear, and cut out her heart and threw it to +the hounds; the which hunter and damsel were the ghosts of Messer Guido, +and of Madonna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara, arisen out +of Hell. And in this fashion did it happen for three Fridays following, +the sea beginning to moan, the cold wind to blow and the spirits to +hunt the deceased damsel at twilight in the clearing among the +pine-trees. + +Now when Messer Nastasio noticed this, he thanked Cupid, which is the +Lord of all Lovers, and devised in his mind a cunning plan. And he +mounted his horse and returned to Ravenna, and gave out to his friends +that he had found a treasure in Rome; and that he was minded to forget +the damsel of the Traversari and seek another wife. But in reality he +went to certain money-lenders, and gave himself into bondage, even to be +sold as a slave to the Dalmatian pirates if he could not repay his loan. +And he published that he desired to take to him a wife, and for that +reason would feast all his friends and the chief citizens of Ravenna, +and regale them with a pageant in the pine forest, where certain foreign +slaves of his should show wonderful feats for their delight. And he sent +forth invitations, and among them to Messer Pavolo de Traversariis and +his wife and daughter. And he bid them for a Friday, which was also the +eve of the Feast of the Dead. + +Meanwhile he took to the pine forest carpenters and masons, and such as +paint and gild cunningly, and waggons of timber, and cut stone for +foundations, and furniture of all kinds; and the waggons were drawn by +four and twenty yoke of oxen, grey oxen of the Romagnol breed. And he +caused the artisans to work day and night, making great fires of dry +myrtle and pine branches, which lit up the forest all around. And he +caused them to make foundations, and build a pavilion of timber in the +clearing which is the shape of a horse-course, surrounded by pines. The +pavilion was oblong, raised by ten steps above the grass, open all round +and reposing on arches and pillars; and there was a projecting _abacus_ +under the arches over the capitals, after the Roman fashion; and the +pillars were painted red, and the capitals red also picked out with gold +and blue, and a shield with the arms of the Honestis on each. The roof +was raftered, each rafter painted with white lilies on a red ground, and +heads of youths and damsels; and the roof outside was made of wooden +tiles, shaped like shells and gilded. And on the top of the roof was a +weather-vane; and the vane was a figure of Cupid, god of love, +cunningly carved of wood and painted like life, as he flies, poised in +air, and shoots his darts on mortals. He was winged and blindfolded, to +show that love is inconstant and no respecter of persons; and when the +wind blew, he turned about, and the end of his scarf, which was beaten +metal, swung in the wind. Now when the pavilion was ready, within six +days of its beginning, carpets were spread on the floor, and seats +placed, and garlands of bay and myrtle slung from pillar to pillar +between the arches. And tables were set, and sideboards covered with +gold and silver dishes and trenchers; and a raised place, covered with +arras, was made for the players of fifes and drums and lutes; and tents +were set behind for the servants, and fires prepared for cooking meat. +Whole oxen and sheep were brought from Ravenna in wains, and casks of +wine, and fruit and white bread, and many cooks, and serving-men, and +musicians, all habited gallantly in the colours of the Honestis, which +are vermilion and white, parti-coloured, with black stripes; and they +wore doublets laced with gold, and on their breast the arms of the +house of Honestis, which are a dove holding a leaf. + +Now on Friday the eve of the Feast of the Dead, all was ready, and the +chief citizens of Ravenna set out for the forest of Classis, with their +wives and children and servants, some on horseback, and others in wains +drawn by oxen, for the tracks in that forest are deep. And when they +arrived, Messer Nastasio welcomed them and thanked them all, and +conducted them to their places in the pavilion. Then all wondered +greatly at its beauty and magnificence, and chiefly Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis; and he sighed, and thought within himself, "Would that my +daughter were less shrewish, that I might have so noble a son-in-law to +prop up my old age!" They were seated at the tables, each according to +their dignity, and they ate and drank and praised the excellence of the +cheer; and flowers were scattered on the tables, and young maidens sang +songs in praise of love, most sweetly. Now when they had eaten their +fill, and the tables been removed, and the sun was setting between the +pine-trees, Messer Nastasio caused them all to be seated facing the +clearing, and a herald came forward, in the livery of the Honestis, +sounding his trumpet and declaring in a loud voice that they should now +witness a pageant, the which was called the Mystery of Love and Death. +Then the musicians struck up, and began a concert of fifes and lutes, +exceeding sweet and mournful. And at that moment the sea began to moan, +and a cold wind to blow: a sound of horsemen and hounds and horns and +crashing branches came through the wood; and the damsel, the daughter of +the Lord of Gambellara, rushed naked, her hair streaming and her veil +torn, across the grass, pursued by the hounds, and by the ghost of +Messer Guido on the black horse, the nostrils of which were filled with +fire. Now when the ghost of Messer Guido struck that damsel with the +boar-spear, and cut out her heart, and threw it, while the others wound +their horns, to the hounds, and all vanished, Messer Nastasio de +Honestis, seizing the herald's trumpet, blew in it, and cried in a loud +voice, "The Pageant of Death and Love! The Pageant of Death and Love! +Such is the fate of cruel damsels!" and the gilt Cupid on the roof swung +round creaking dreadfully, and the daughter of Messer Pavolo uttered a +great shriek and fell on the ground in a swoon. + + * * * * * + +Here the Romagnol manuscript comes to a sudden end, the outer sheet +being torn through the middle. But we know from the Decameron that the +damsel of the Traversari was so impressed by the spectre-hunt she had +witnessed that she forthwith relented towards Nastagio degli Onesti, and +married him, and that they lived happily ever after. But whether or not +that part of the pine forest of Classis still witnesses this ghostly +hunt, we have no means of knowing. + +On the whole, I incline to think that, when the great frost blasted the +pines (if not earlier) the ghosts shifted quarters from the forest of +Classis to the church of the same name, on that forest's brink. +Certainly there seems nothing to prevent them. Standing in the midst of +those uninhabited rice-fields and marshes, the church of Classis is yet +always open, from morning till night; the great portals gaping, no +curtain interposed. Open and empty; mass not even on Sundays; empty of +human beings, open to the things of without. The sunbeams enter through +the open side windows, cutting a slice away from that pale, greenish +twilight; making a wedge of light on the dark, damp bricks; bringing +into brief prominence some of the great sarcophagi, their peacocks and +palm-trees picked out in vivid green lichen. Snakes also enter, the +Sacristan tells me, and I believe it, for within the same minute, I saw +a dead and a living one among the arum leaves at the gate. Is that +little altar, a pagan-looking marble table, isolated in the midst of the +church, the place where they meet, pagan creatures claiming those +Grecian marbles? Or do they hunt one another round the aisles and into +the crypt, slithering and hissing, the souls of Guido degli Anastagi, +perhaps, and of his cruel lady love? + +Such are Ravenna and Classis, and the Ghosts that haunt them. + + + + +THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE + + +In the street of the Almond and appropriately close to the covered-over +canal (Rio Terra) of the Assassins, there is a cook-shop which has +attracted my attention these two last months in Venice. For in its +window is a row of tiny corpses--birds, raw, red, with agonised plucked +little throats, the throats through which the sweet notes came. And the +sight brings home to me more than the suggestion of a dish at supper, +savoury things of the size of a large plum, on a cushion of polenta.... + +I had often noticed the fowling-places which stand out against the sky +like mural crowns on the low hills of Northern Italy; Bresciana is the +name given to the thing, from the province, doubtless, of its origin. +Last summer, driving at the foot of the Alps of Friuli, such a place was +pointed out to me on a green knoll; it marked the site of a village of +Collalto, once the fief of the great family of that name, which had +died, disappeared, church and all, after the Black Death of the +fourteenth century. + +The strangeness of the matter attracted me; and I set out, the next +morning, to find the fowling-place. I thought I must have lost my way, +and was delighting in the radiance of a perfectly fresh, clear, already +autumnal morning, walking along through the flowery grass fields in +sight of the great mountains, when, suddenly, there I was before the +uncanny thing, the Bresciana. Uncanny in its odd shape of walled and +moated city of clipped bushes, tight-closed on its hill-top, with its +Guelph battlements of hornbeam against the pale blue sky. And uncannier +for its mysterious delightfulness. Imagine it set in the loveliest mossy +grass, full of delicate half-Alpine flowers; beautiful butterflies +everywhere about; and the sort of ditch surrounding it overgrown with +blackberries, haws, sloes, ivy, all manner of berries; a sort of false +garden of paradise for the poor birds. + +But when I craned over the locked wicket and climbed on to the ladder +alongside, what I saw was more uncanny yet. I looked down on to rows of +clipped, regular, hornbeam hedges, with grass paths between them, +maze-like. A kind of Versailles for the birds, you might think. Only, in +the circular grass plot from which those green hedges and paths all +radiated, something alarming: an empty cage hung to a tree. And going +the round of the place I discovered that between the cut hornbeam +battlements of the circular enclosure there was a wreath of thin wire +nooses, almost invisible, in which the poor little birds hang +themselves. It seems oddly appropriate that this sinister little place, +with its vague resemblance to that clipped garden in which Mantegna's +allegorical Vices are nesting, should be, in fact, a cemetery; that tiny +City of Dis of the Birds, on its green hillock in front of the great +blue Alps, being planted on those villagers dead of the Plague. + +The fowling-place began to haunt me, and I was filled with a perhaps +morbid desire to know more of its evil rites. After some inquiry, I +introduced myself accordingly to the most famous fowler of the +neighbourhood, the owner of a wineshop at Martignacco. He received me +with civility, and expounded his trade with much satisfaction; an +amiable, intelligent old man, with sufficient of Italian in that +province of strange dialect. + +In the passage at the foot of his staircase and under sundry dark arches +he showed me a quantity of tiny wooden cages and of larger cages divided +into tiny compartments. There were numbers of goldfinches, a blackbird, +some small thrushes, an ortolan, and two or three other kinds I could +not identify; nay, even a brace of unhappy quail in a bottle-shaped +basket. These are the decoys; the cages are hung in the circular walks +of the fowling-place, and the wretched little prisoners, many of them +blinded of one or both eyes, sing their hearts out and attract their +companions into the nooses. Then he showed me the nets--like thin, thin +fishing nets--for quail; and the little wands which are covered with +lime and which catch the wings of the creatures; but that seemed a +merciful proceeding compared with the gruesome snares of the Bresciana. +When he had shown me these things he produced a little Jew's-harp, on +which he fell to imitating the calls of various birds. But I noticed +that none of the little blinded prisoners hanging aloft made any +response. Only, quite spontaneously and all of a sudden, the poor +goldfinches set up a loud and lovely song; and the solitary blackbird +gave a whistle. Never have I heard anything more lugubrious than these +hedgerow and woodland notes issuing from the cages in that damp, black +corridor. And the old fowler, for all his venerable appearance and +gentleness of voice and manner, struck me as a wicked warlock, and own +sib of the witch who turned Jorinde and Jorinel into nightingales in her +little house hung round with cages. + +A few days after my visit to the fowler, and one of the last evenings I +had in Friuli, I was walking once more beneath the Castle. After +threading the narrow green lanes, blocked by great hay-carts, I came of +a sudden on an open, high-lying field of mossy grass, freshly scythed, +with the haycocks still upon it, and a thin plantation of larches on one +side. And in front, at the end of that grey-green sweetness, the Alps of +Cadore, portals and battlements of dark leaden blue, with the last +flame-colour of sunset behind them, and the sunset's last rosy feathers +rising into the pale sky. The mowers were coming slowly along, +shouldering their scythes and talking in undertones, as folk do at that +hour. I also walked home in the quickly gathering twilight; the delicate +hemlock flowers of an unmowed field against the pearly luminous sky; the +wonderful blue of the thistles singing out in the dusk of the grass. +There rose the scent of cut grass, of ripening maize, and every +freshness of acacia and poplar leaf; and the crickets began to shrill. + +As the light faded away I passed within sight of the fowling-place, the +little sinister formal garden of Versailles on the mound marking the +village which had died of the Black Death. + +This is what returned to my mind every time, lately in Venice, that I +passed that cook-shop near the closed-up Canal of the Assassins, and saw +the row of tiny corpses ready for roasting. The little throats which +sang so sweetly had got caught, had writhed, twisted in the tiny wire +nooses between the hornbeam battlements. What ruffling of feathers and +starting of eyeballs in agony there had been, while the poor blind +decoy, finch or blackbird, sang, sang on in his cage on the central +grass-plot! + +And we scrunch them under our knife and tooth, and remark how excellent +are little birds on a cushion of polenta, between a sage-leaf and a bit +of bacon! But fowling-places have come down from the remotest and most +venerable antiquity; and they exist of all kinds; and some of them, +moreover, are allegories. + + + + +ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS + + +One of the things I should have liked, I said to myself to-day, as I +rode past one of the dreadful little fowling-places on the ridge of our +hills, would have been to become acquainted with birds.... + +The wish is simple, but quite without hope for a dweller in Tuscany, +where, what with poverty and lawlessness, peasants' nets and city +'prentices' guns, there are no birds whose acquaintance you can make. +You hear them singing and twittering, indeed, wherever a clump of garden +ilexes or a cypress hedge offers them protection; but they never let +themselves be seen, for they know that being seen is being shot: or at +least being caged. They cage them for singing, nightingales, thrushes, +and every kind of finch; and you can see them, poor isolated captives, +in rows and rows of cages in the markets. That is the way that people +like them: a certain devout lady of my neighbourhood, for instance, +whose little seventeenth-century house was hung round with endless tiny +cages, like the witches in the tale of Jorinde and Jorinel; a wicked +witch herself, no doubt, despite her illuminations in honour of the +Madonna, who should have taught her better. Another way of liking +singing-birds is on toast between a scrap of bacon and a leaf of sage, a +dainty dish much prized by persons of weak stomach. Persons with bad +digestions are apt, I fancy, to lose, and make others forego, much +pleasant companionship of soul. + +For animals, at least, when not turned into pets, are excellent +companions for our souls. I say expressly "when not pets," because the +essence of this spiritual (for it _is_ spiritual) relation between us +and creatures is that they should not become our property, nor we +theirs; that we should be able to refresh ourselves by the thought and +contemplation of a life apart from our own, different from it; in some +ways more really natural, and, at all events, capable of seeming more +natural to our fancy. And birds, for many reasons, meet this +requirement to perfection. I have read, indeed, in various works that +they are not without vices, not a bit kinder than the other unkind +members of creation; and that their treatment of the unfit among +themselves is positively inhuman--or shall I say human? Perhaps this is +calumny, or superficial judgment of their sterner morality; but, be this +as it may, it is evident that they are in many respects very charming +people. It is very nice of them to be so æsthetic, to be amused and kept +quiet, like the hen birds, by music; and the tone of their conversation +is quite exquisitely affable. + +My own opportunities of watching their proceedings have, alas! been very +limited; but, judging by the pigeons at Venice, they are wonderfully +forbearing and courteous to each other. I have often watched these +pigeons having their morning bath at the corner of St. Mark's, in a +little shallow trough in the pavement. They collect round by scores, and +wait for room to go in quite patiently; while the crowd inside ruffle, +dip, throw up water into their wings and shake it off; a mass of moving +grey and purple feathers, with never an angry push or a cry of +ill-temper among them. So I can readily believe a certain friend of mine +who passes hours in English brakes and hedgerows, watching birds through +special ten-guinea opera-glasses, that time and money could not be +better spent. + +One reason, moreover, why all animals (one feels that so much in +Kipling's stories) are excellent company for our spirit is surely +because they are animals, not men; because the thought of them relieves +us therefore from that sense of overcrowding and jostling and general +wordiness and fuss from which we all suffer; and birds, more than any +other creatures, give us that sense of relief, of breathing-space and +margin, so very necessary to our spiritual welfare. For there is +freedom, air, light, in the very element in which birds exist, and in +their movements, the delightful sense of poising, of buoyancy, of being +delivered from our own body and made independent of gravitation, which, +as a friend of mine wisely remarks, Sir Isaac Newton most injudiciously +put into Nature's head. Indeed, there is a very special quality in the +mere thought of birds. St. Francis, had he preached to fishes, like his +follower of Padua, might have had as attentive an audience, but we +should not have cared to hear about it. _Aves mei fratres_--why, it is +the soul's kinship with air, light, liberty, what the soul loves best. +And similarly I suspect that the serene and lovely quality of Dante's +Francesca episode is due in great part to those similes of birds: the +starlings in the winter weather, the cranes "singing their dirge," and +those immortal doves swirling nestwards, _dal disio chiamate_, which +lift the lid of that cavern of hell and winnow its fumes into breathable +quality. + +Perhaps (I say to myself, being ever disposed to make the best of a bad +bargain), perhaps the scantiness of my acquaintance with birds, the +difficulty about seeing them (for there is none about hearing them in +Tuscany, and I shall be kept awake by vociferous nightingales in a +month's time), gives to my feeling about them a pleasant, half-painful +eagerness. Certainly it raises the sight of birds, when I get out of +this country, into something of the nature of a performance. Even in +Rome, the larks, going up tiny brown rockets, into the pale blue sky +above the pale green endless undulations of grass, and the rooks and +magpies flocking round the ruins. And how much in Germany? Indeed, one +of Germany's charms is the condition, or, rather, the position, the +civic status, of birds and small creatures. One is constantly reminded +of the Minnesinger Walther's legacy to the birds of Wurzburg, and of +Luther's hiding the hare in the sleeve of his tunic. One of my first +impressions after crossing the Alps last year was of just such a hare, +only perfectly at his ease, running in front of my bicycle for ever so +long during a great thunderstorm which overtook us in the cornfields +between Donaustauff and Ratisbon. And as to birds! They are not merely +left in liberty, but assiduously courted by these kindly, and, in their +prosaic way, poetical Teutons. Already in the village shop on the top of +the Tyrolese pass there was a nest of swallows deep down in a passage. +And in the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg, while the electric trams go +clanking outside, the swallows whirr cheerfully along the aisles, among +the coats-of-arms, the wonderfully crested helmets suspended on high. +There was a swallow's nest in the big entrance room (where the peasants +sit and drink among the little dry birch-trees and fir garlands from the +Whitsuntide festivities) of the inn at Rothenburg; a nest above the rows +of pewter and stoneware, with baby swallows looking unconcernedly out at +the guests. But the great joy at Rothenburg was the family of storks +which still inhabit one of the high, pointed gatehouses. I used to go +and see them every morning: the great cartwheel on the funnel-shaped +roof, wisps of comfortable hay hanging over it; one of the parent storks +standing sentinel on one leg, the little ones raising themselves +occasionally into sight, the other stork hovering around on outspread +wings like tattered banners. To think that there were once storks also +in Italy, storks' homes, the old Lombard name _Cicognara_ meaning that; +and cranes also, whom the people in Boccaccio, and even Lorenzo di +Medici, went out to hunt! The last of them were certainly netted and +eaten, as they used to eat porcupines in Rome in my childish days. + +Speaking of cranes reminds me of the pleasure I have had also in +watching herons, particularly among the ponds of my mother's old home. + +"Would you like to see one near? I'll go and shoot it you at once," said +my very kind cousin. + +How odd it is, when one thinks of it, that mere contemplation seems so +insufficient for us poor restless human beings! We cannot see a flower +without an impulse to pick it, a character without an impulse to, let us +say, analyse; a bird without an impulse to shoot. And in this way we +certainly lose most of the good which any of these things could be to +us: just to be looked at, thought about, enjoyed, and let alone. + + + * * * * * + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + +TO + +ETHEL SMYTH + +THANKING, AND BEGGING, HER FOR MUSIC + + + + +PREFACE + + +_"Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss"_ + + +_It is in order to give others the pleasure of reading or +re-reading a small masterpiece, that I mention the likelihood +of the catastrophe of my_ Ariadne _having been suggested by +the late Mr. Shorthouse's_ Little Schoolmaster Mark; _but I +must ask forgiveness of my dear old friend, Madame Emile +Duclaux_ (Mary Robinson), _for unwarranted use of one of the +songs of her_ Italian Garden. + +_Readers of my own little volume_ Genius Loci _may meanwhile +recognise that I have been guilty of plagiarism towards myself +also_. + +_For a couple of years after writing those pages, the image of +the Palace of Mantua and the lakes it steeps in, haunted my +fancy with that peculiar insistency, as of the half-lapsed +recollection of a name or date, which tells us that we know +(if we could only remember!)_ what happened in a place. _I let +the matter rest. But, looking into my mind one day, I found +that a certain song of the early seventeenth century_--(not +_Monteverde's_ Lamento d'Arianna _but an air_, Amarilli, _by +Caccini, printed alongside in Parisotti's collection_)--_had +entered that Palace of Mantua, and was, in some manner not +easy to define, the musical shape of what must have happened +there. And that, translated back into human personages, was +the story I have set forth in the following little Drama_. + +_So much for the origin of_ Ariadne in Mantua, _supposing any +friend to be curious about it. What seems more interesting is +my feeling, which grew upon me as I worked over and over the +piece and its French translation, that these personages had an +importance greater than that of their life and adventures, a +meaning, if I may say so, a little_ sub specie aeternitatis. +_For, besides the real figures, there appeared to me vague +shadows cast by them, as it were, on the vast spaces of life, +and magnified far beyond those little puppets that I twitched. +And I seem to feel here the struggle, eternal, necessary, +between mere impulse, unreasoning and violent, but absolutely +true to its aim; and all the moderating, the weighing and +restraining influences of civilisation, with their idealism, +their vacillation, but their final triumph over the mere +forces of nature. These well-born people of Mantua, +privileged beings wanting little because they have much, and +able therefore to spend themselves in quite harmonious effort, +must necessarily get the better of the poor gutter-born +creature without whom, after all, one of them would have been +dead and the others would have had no opening in life. Poor_ +Diego _acts magnanimously, being cornered; but he (or she) has +not the delicacy, the dignity to melt into thin air with a +mere lyric Metastasian "Piangendo partè", and leave them to +their untroubled conscience. He must needs assert himself, +violently wrench at their heart-strings, give them a final +stab, hand them over to endless remorse; briefly, commit that +public and theatrical deed of suicide, splashing the murderous +waters into the eyes of well-behaved wedding guests_. + +_Certainly neither the_ Duke, _nor the_ Duchess Dowager, _nor_ +Hippolyta _would have done this. But, on the other hand, they +could calmly, coldly, kindly accept the self-sacrifice +culminating in that suicide: well-bred people, faithful to +their standards and forcing others, however unwilling, into +their own conformity. Of course without them the world would +be a den of thieves, a wilderness of wolves; for they are,--if +I may call them by their less personal names,--Tradition, +Discipline, Civilisation_. + +_On the other hand, but for such as_ Diego _the world would +come to an end within twenty years: mere sense of duty and +fitness not being sufficient for the killing and cooking of +victuals, let alone the begetting and suckling of children. +The descendants of_ Ferdinand _and_ Hippolyta, _unless they +intermarried with some bastard of_ Diego's _family, would +dwindle, die out; who knows, perhaps supplement the impulses +they lacked by silly newfangled evil_. + +_These are the contending forces of history and life: Impulse +and Discipline, creating and keeping; love such as_ Diego's, +_blind, selfish, magnanimous; and detachment, noble, a little +bloodless and cruel, like that of the_ Duke of Mantua. + +_And it seems to me that the conflicts which I set forth on my +improbable little stage, are but the trifling realities +shadowing those great abstractions which we seek all through +the history of man, and everywhere in man's own heart_. + + +VERNON LEE. + + +Maiano, near Florence, + +June, 1903. + + + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + VIOLA. _....I'll serve this Duke: + ....for I can sing + And speak to him in many sorts of music._ + TWELFTH NIGHT, 1, 2. + + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + + FERDINAND, Duke of Mantua. + THE CARDINAL, his Uncle. + THE DUCHESS DOWAGER. + HIPPOLYTA, Princess of Mirandola. + MAGDALEN, known as DIEGO. + THE MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA. + THE BISHOP OF CREMONA. + THE DOGE'S WIFE. + THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR. + THE DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET. + THE VICEROY OF NAPLES' JESTER. + A TENOR as BACCHUS. + The CARDINAL'S CHAPLAIN. + THE DUCHESS'S GENTLEWOMAN. + THE PRINCESS'S TUTOR. + Singers as Maenads and Satyrs; Courtiers, + Pages, Wedding Guests and Musicians. + + * * * * * + +The action takes place in the Palace of Mantua through a +period of a year, during the reign of Prospero I, of Milan, +and shortly before the Venetian expedition to Cyprus under +Othello. + + + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + + +ACT I + + +_The_ CARDINAL'S _Study in the Palace at Mantua. The_ CARDINAL _is +seated at a table covered with Persian embroidery, rose-colour picked +out with blue, on which lies open a volume of Machiavelli's works, and +in it a manuscript of Catullus; alongside thereof are a bell and a +magnifying-glass. Under his feet a red cushion with long tassels, and an +oriental carpet of pale lavender and crimson_. _The_ CARDINAL _is +dressed in scarlet, a crimson fur-lined cape upon his shoulders. He is +old, but beautiful and majestic, his face furrowed like the marble bust +of Seneca among the books opposite_. + +_Through the open Renaissance window, with candelabra and birds carved +on the copings, one sees the lake, pale blue, faintly rippled, with a +rose-coloured brick bridge and bridge-tower at its narrowest point_. +DIEGO (_in reality_ MAGDALEN) _has just been admitted into the_ +CARDINAL'S _presence, and after kissing his ring, has remained standing, +awaiting his pleasure_. + +DIEGO _is fantastically habited as a youth in russet and violet tunic +reaching below the knees in Moorish fashion, as we see it in the +frescoes of Pinturicchio; with silver buttons down the seams, and +plaited linen at the throat and in the unbuttoned purfles of the +sleeves. His hair, dark but red where it catches the light, is cut over +the forehead and touches his shoulders. He is not very tall in his boy's +clothes, and very sparely built. He is pale, almost sallow; the face, +dogged, sullen, rather expressive than beautiful, save for the +perfection of the brows and of the flower-like singer's mouth. He stands +ceremoniously before the_ CARDINAL, _one hand on his dagger, nervously, +while the other holds a large travelling hat, looped up, with a long +drooping plume_. + +_The_ CARDINAL _raises his eyes, slightly bows his head, closes the +manuscript and the volume, and puts both aside deliberately. He is, +meanwhile, examining the appearance of_ DIEGO. + +CARDINAL + +We are glad to see you at Mantua, Signor Diego. And from what our worthy +Venetian friend informs us in the letter which he gave you for our +hands, we shall without a doubt be wholly satisfied with your singing, +which is said to be both sweet and learned. Prythee, Brother Matthias +(_turning to his_ Chaplain), bid them bring hither my virginal,--that +with the Judgment of Paris painted on the lid by Giulio Romano; its tone +is admirably suited to the human voice. And, Brother Matthias, hasten to +the Duke's own theorb player, and bid him come straightways. Nay, go +thyself, good Brother Matthias, and seek till thou hast found him. We +are impatient to judge of this good youth's skill. + +_The_ Chaplain _bows and retires_. DIEGO (_in reality_ MAGDALEN) +_remains alone in the_ CARDINAL'S _presence. The_ CARDINAL _remains for +a second turning over a letter, and then reads through the +magnifying-glass out loud_. + +CARDINAL + +Ah, here is the sentence: "Diego, a Spaniard of Moorish descent, and a +most expert singer and player on the virginal, whom I commend to your +Eminence's favour as entirely fitted for such services as your revered +letter makes mention of----" Good, good. + +_The_ CARDINAL _folds the letter and beckons_ Diego _to approach, then +speaks in a manner suddenly altered to abruptness, but with no enquiry +in his tone_. + +Signor Diego, you are a woman---- + +DIEGO _starts, flushes and exclaims huskily_, "My Lord----." _But the_ +CARDINAL _makes a deprecatory movement and continues his sentence_. + +and, as my honoured Venetian correspondent assures me, a courtesan of +some experience and of more than usual tact. I trust this favourable +judgment may be justified. The situation is delicate; and the work for +which you have been selected is dangerous as well as difficult. Have you +been given any knowledge of this case? + +DIEGO _has by this time recovered his composure, and answers with +respectful reserve_. + +DIEGO + +I asked no questions, your Eminence. But the Senator Gratiano vouchsafed +to tell me that my work at Mantua would be to soothe and cheer with +music your noble nephew Duke Ferdinand, who, as is rumoured, has been a +prey to a certain languor and moodiness ever since his return from many +years' captivity among the Infidels. Moreover (such were the Senator +Gratiano's words), that if the Fates proved favourable to my music, I +might gain access to His Highness's confidence, and thus enable your +Eminence to understand and compass his strange malady. + +CARDINAL + +Even so. You speak discreetly, Diego; and your manner gives hope of more +good sense than is usual in your sex and in your trade. But this matter +is of more difficulty than such as you can realise. Your being a woman +will be of use should our scheme prove practicable. In the outset it may +wreck us beyond recovery. For all his gloomy apathy, my nephew is quick +to suspicion, and extremely subtle. He will delight in flouting us, +should the thought cross his brain that we are practising some coarse +and foolish stratagem. And it so happens, that his strange moodiness is +marked by abhorrence of all womankind. For months he has refused the +visits of his virtuous mother. And the mere name of his young cousin and +affianced bride, Princess Hippolyta, has thrown him into paroxysms of +anger. Yet Duke Ferdinand possesses all his faculties. He is aware of +being the last of our house, and must know full well that, should he die +without an heir, this noble dukedom will become the battlefield of +rapacious alien claimants. He denies none of this, but nevertheless +looks on marriage with unseemly horror. + +DIEGO + +Is it so?----And----is there any reason His Highness's melancholy should +take this shape? I crave your Eminence's pardon if there is any +indiscretion in this question; but I feel it may be well that I should +know some more upon this point. Has Duke Ferdinand suffered some wrong +at the hands of women? Or is it the case of some passion, hopeless, +unfitting to his rank, perhaps? + +CARDINAL + +Your imagination, good Madam Magdalen, runs too easily along the tracks +familiar to your sex; and such inquisitiveness smacks too much of the +courtesan. And beware, my lad, of touching on such subjects with the +Duke: women and love, and so forth. For I fear, that while endeavouring +to elicit the Duke's secret, thy eyes, thy altered voice, might betray +thy own. + +DIEGO + +Betray me? My secret? What do you mean, my Lord? I fail to grasp your +meaning. + +CARDINAL + +Have you so soon forgotten that the Duke must not suspect your being a +woman? For if a woman may gradually melt his torpor, and bring him under +the control of reason and duty, this can only come about by her growing +familiar and necessary to him without alarming his moody virtue. + +DIEGO + +I crave your Eminence's indulgence for that one question, which I repeat +because, as a musician, it may affect my treatment of His Highness. Has +the Duke ever loved? + +CARDINAL + +Too little or too much,--which of the two it will be for you to find +out. My nephew was ever, since his boyhood, a pious and joyless youth; +and such are apt to love once, and, as the poets say, to die for love. +Be this as it may, keep to your part of singer; and even if you suspect +that he suspects you, let him not see your suspicion, and still less +justify his own. Be merely a singer: a sexless creature, having seen +passion but never felt it; yet capable, by the miracle of art, of +rousing and soothing it in others. Go warily, and mark my words: there +is, I notice, even in your speaking voice, a certain quality such as +folk say melts hearts; a trifle hoarseness, a something of a break, +which mars it as mere sound, but gives it more power than that of sound. +Employ that quality when the fit moment comes; but most times restrain +it. You have understood? + +DIEGO + +I think I have, my Lord. + +CARDINAL + +Then only one word more. Women, and women such as you, are often ill +advised and foolishly ambitious. Let not success, should you have any in +this enterprise, endanger it and you. Your safety lies in being my tool. +My spies are everywhere; but I require none; I seem to know the folly +which poor mortals think and feel. And see! this palace is surrounded on +three sides by lakes; a rare and beautiful circumstance, which has done +good service on occasion. Even close to this pavilion these blue waters +are less shallow than they seem. + +DIEGO + +I had noted it. Such an enterprise as mine requires courage, my Lord; +and your palace, built into the lake, as life,--saving all thought of +heresy,--is built out into death, your palace may give courage as well +as prudence. + +CARDINAL + +Your words, Diego, are irrelevant, but do not displease me. + +DIEGO _bows. The_ Chaplain _enters with_ Pages _carrying a harpsichord, +which they place upon the table; also two_ Musicians _with theorb and +viol_. + +Brother Matthias, thou hast been a skilful organist, and hast often +delighted me with thy fugues and canons.--Sit to the instrument, and +play a prelude, while this good youth collects his memory and his voice +preparatory to displaying his skill. + +_The_ chaplain, _not unlike the monk in Titian's "Concert" begins to +play_, DIEGO _standing by him at the harpsichord. While the cunningly +interlaced themes, with wide, unclosed cadences, tinkle metallically +from the instrument, the_ CARDINAL _watches, very deliberately, the face +of_ DIEGO, _seeking to penetrate through its sullen sedateness. But_ +DIEGO _remains with his eyes fixed on the view framed by the window: the +pale blue lake, of the colour of periwinkle, under a sky barely bluer +than itself, and the lines on the horizon--piled up clouds or perhaps +Alps. Only, as the_ Chaplain _is about to finish his prelude, the face +of_ DIEGO _undergoes a change: a sudden fervour and tenderness +transfigure the features; while the eyes, from very dark turn to the +colour of carnelian. This illumination dies out as quickly as it came, +and_ DIEGO _becomes very self-contained and very listless as before_. + +DIEGO + +Will it please your Eminence that I should sing the Lament of Ariadne on +Naxos? + + + + +ACT II + + +_A few months later. Another part of the Ducal Palace of Mantua. The_ +DUCHESS'S _closet: a small irregular chamber; the vaulted ceiling +painted with Giottesque patterns in blue and russet, much blackened, and +among which there is visible only a coronation of the Virgin, white and +vision-like. Shelves with a few books and phials and jars of medicine; a +small movable organ in a corner; and, in front of the ogival window, a +praying-chair and large crucifix. The crucifix is black against the +landscape, against the grey and misty waters of the lake; and framed by +the nearly leafless branches of a willow growing below_. + +_The_ DUCHESS DOWAGER _is tall and straight, but almost bodiless in her +black nun-like dress. Her face is so white, its lips and eyebrows so +colourless, and eyes so pale a blue, that one might at first think it +insignificant, and only gradually notice the strength and beauty of the +features. The_ DUCHESS _has laid aside her sewing on the entrance of_ +DIEGO, _in reality_ MAGDALEN; _and, forgetful of all state, been on the +point of rising to meet him. But_ DIEGO _has ceremoniously let himself +down on one knee, expecting to kiss her hand_. + +DUCHESS + +Nay, Signor Diego, do not kneel. Such forms have long since left my +life, nor are they, as it seems to me, very fitting between God's +creatures. Let me grasp your hand, and look into the face of him whom +Heaven has chosen to work a miracle. You have cured my son! + +DIEGO + +It is indeed a miracle of Heaven, most gracious Madam; and one in which, +alas, my poor self has been as nothing. For sounds, subtly linked, take +wondrous powers from the soul of him who frames their patterns; and we, +who sing, are merely as the string or keys he presses, or as the reed +through which he blows. The virtue is not ours, though coming out of us. + +DIEGO _has made this speech as if learned by rote, with listless +courtesy. The_ DUCHESS _has at first been frozen by his manner, but at +the end she answers very simply_. + +DUCHESS + +You speak too learnedly, good Signor Diego, and your words pass my poor +understanding. The virtue in any of us is but God's finger-touch or +breath; but those He chooses as His instruments are, methinks, angels or +saints; and whatsoever you be, I look upon you with loving awe. You +smile? You are a courtier, while I, although I have not left this palace +for twenty years, have long forgotten the words and ways of courts. I am +but a simpleton: a foolish old woman who has unlearned all ceremony +through many years of many sorts of sorrow; and now, dear youth, +unlearned it more than ever from sheer joy at what it has pleased God to +do through you. For, thanks to you, I have seen my son again, my dear, +wise, tender son again. I would fain thank you. If I had worldly goods +which you have not in plenty, or honours to give, they should be yours. +You shall have my prayers. For even you, so favoured of Heaven, will +some day want them. + +DIEGO + +Give them me now, most gracious Madam. I have no faith in prayers; but I +need them. + +DUCHESS + +Great joy has made me heartless as well as foolish. I have hurt you, +somehow. Forgive me, Signor Diego. + +DIEGO + +As you said, I am a courtier, Madam, and I know it is enough if we can +serve our princes. We have no business with troubles of our own; but +having them, we keep them to ourselves. His Highness awaits me at this +hour for the usual song which happily unclouds his spirit. Has your +Grace any message for him? + +DUCHESS + +Stay. My son will wait a little while. I require you, Diego, for I have +hurt you. Your words are terrible, but just. We princes are brought +up--but many of us, alas, are princes in this matter!--to think that +when we say "I thank you" we have done our duty; though our very +satisfaction, our joy, may merely bring out by comparison the emptiness +of heart, the secret soreness, of those we thank. We are not allowed to +see the burdens of others, and merely load them with our own. + +DIEGO + +Is this not wisdom? Princes should not see those burdens which they +cannot, which they must not, try to carry. And after all, princes or +slaves, can others ever help us, save with their purse, with advice, +with a concrete favour, or, say, with a song? Our troubles smart because +they are _our_ troubles; our burdens weigh because on _our_ shoulders; +they are part of us, and cannot be shifted. But God doubtless loves such +kind thoughts as you have, even if, with your Grace's indulgence, they +are useless. + +DUCHESS + +If it were so, God would be no better than an earthly prince. But +believe me, Diego, if He prefer what you call kindness--bare sense of +brotherhood in suffering--'tis for its usefulness. We cannot carry each +other's burden for a minute; true, and rightly so; but we can give each +other added strength to bear it. + +DIEGO + +By what means, please your Grace? + +DUCHESS + +By love, Diego. + +DIEGO + +Love! But that was surely never a source of strength, craving your +Grace's pardon? + +DUCHESS + +The love which I am speaking of--and it may surely bear the name, since +'tis the only sort of love that cannot turn to hatred. Love for who +requires it because it is required--say love of any woman who has been a +mother for any child left motherless. Nay, forgive my boldness: my +gratitude gives me rights on you, Diego. You are unhappy; you are still +a child; and I imagine that you have no mother. + +DIEGO + +I am told I had one, gracious Madam. She was, saving your Grace's +presence, only a light woman, and sold for a ducat to the Infidels. I +cannot say I ever missed her. Forgive me, Madam. Although a courtier, +the stock I come from is extremely base. I have no understanding of the +words of noble women and saints like you. My vileness thinks them +hollow; and my pretty manners are only, as your Grace has unluckily had +occasion to see, a very thin and bad veneer. I thank your Grace, and +once more crave permission to attend the Duke. + +DUCHESS + +Nay. That is not true. Your soul is nowise base-born. I owe you +everything, and, by some inadvertence, I have done nothing save stir up +pain in you. I want--the words may seem presumptuous, yet carry a +meaning which is humble--I want to be your friend; and to help you to a +greater, better Friend. I will pray for you, Diego. + +DIEGO + +No, no. You are a pious and virtuous woman, and your pity and prayers +must keep fit company. + +DUCHESS + +The only fitting company for pity and prayers, for love, dear lad, is +the company of those who need them. Am I over bold? + +_The_ DUCHESS _has risen, and shyly laid her hand on_ DIEGO'S +_shoulder_. DIEGO _breaks loose and covers his face, exclaiming in a dry +and husky voice_. + +DIEGO + +Oh the cruelty of loneliness, Madam! Save for two years which taught me +by comparison its misery, I have lived in loneliness always in this +lonely world; though never, alas, alone. Would it had always continued! +But as the wayfarer from out of the snow and wind feels his limbs numb +and frozen in the hearth's warmth, so, having learned that one might +speak, be understood, be comforted, that one might love and be +beloved,--the misery of loneliness was revealed to me. And then to be +driven back into it once more, shut in to it for ever! Oh, Madam, when +one can no longer claim understanding and comfort; no longer say "I +suffer: help me!"--because the creature one would say it to is the very +same who hurts and spurns one! + +DUCHESS + +How can a child like you already know such things? We women may, indeed. +I was as young as you, years ago, when I too learned it. And since I +learned it, let my knowledge, my poor child, help you to bear it. I know +how silence galls and wearies. If silence hurts you, speak,--not for me +to answer, but understand and sorrow for you. I am old and simple and +unlearned; but, God willing, I shall understand. + +DIEGO + +If anything could help me, 'tis the sense of kindness such as yours. I +thank you for your gift; but acceptance of it would be theft; for it is +not meant for what I really am. And though a living lie in many things; +I am still, oddly enough, honest. Therefore, I pray you, Madam, +farewell. + +DUCHESS + +Do not believe it, Diego. Where it is needed, our poor loving kindness +can never be stolen. + +DIEGO + +Do not tempt me, Madam! Oh God, I do not want your pity, your loving +kindness! What are such things to me? And as to understanding my +sorrows, no one can, save the very one who is inflicting them. Besides, +you and I call different things by the same names. What you call _love_, +to me means nothing: nonsense taught to children, priest's metaphysics. +What _I_ mean, you do not know. (_A pause_, DIEGO _walks up and down in +agitation_.) But woe's me! You have awakened the power of breaking +through this silence,--this silence which is starvation and deathly +thirst and suffocation. And it so happens that if I speak to you all +will be wrecked. (_A pause_.) But there remains nothing to wreck! +Understand me, Madam, I care not who you are. I know that once I have +spoken, you _must_ become my enemy. But I am grateful to you; you have +shown me the way to speaking; and, no matter now to whom, I now _must_ +speak. + +DUCHESS + +You shall speak to God, my friend, though you speak seemingly to me. + +DIEGO + +To God! To God! These are the icy generalities we strike upon under all +pious warmth. No, gracious Madam, I will not speak to God; for God knows +it already, and, knowing, looks on indifferent. I will speak to you. Not +because you are kind and pitiful; for you will cease to be so. Not +because you will understand; for you never will. I will speak to you +because, although you are a saint, you are _his_ mother, have kept +somewhat of his eyes and mien; because it will hurt you if I speak, as I +would it might hurt _him_. I am a woman, Madam; a harlot; and I was the +Duke your son's mistress while among the Infidels. + +_A long silence. The_ DUCHESS _remains seated. She barely starts, +exclaiming_ "Ah!--" _and becomes suddenly absorbed in thought_. DIEGO +_stands looking listlessly through the window at the lake and the +willow_. + +DIEGO + +I await your Grace's orders. Will it please you that I call your +maid-of-honour, or summon the gentleman outside? If it so please you, +there need be no scandal. I shall give myself up to any one your Grace +prefers. + +_The_ DUCHESS _pays no attention to_ DIEGO'S _last words, and remains +reflecting_. + +DUCHESS + +Then, it is he who, as you call it, spurns you? How so? For you are +admitted to his close familiarity; nay, you have worked the miracle of +curing him. I do not understand the situation. For, Diego,--I know not +by what other name to call you--I feel your sorrow is a deep one. You +are not the----woman who would despair and call God cruel for a mere +lover's quarrel. You love my son; you have cured him,--cured him, do I +guess rightly, through your love? But if it be so, what can my son have +done to break your heart? + +DIEGO + +(_after listening astonished at the_ DUCHESS'S _unaltered tone of +kindness_) + +Your Grace will understand the matter as much as I can; and I cannot. He +does not recognise me, Madam. + +DUCHESS + +Not recognise you? What do you mean? + +DIEGO + +What the words signify: Not recognise. + +DUCHESS + +Then----he does not know----he still believes you to be----a stranger? + +DIEGO + +So it seems, Madam. + +DUCHESS + +And yet you have cured his melancholy by your presence. And in the +past----tell me: had you ever sung to him? + +DIEGO (_weeping silently_) + +Daily, Madam. + +DUCHESS (_slowly_) + +They say that Ferdinand is, thanks to you, once more in full possession +of his mind. It cannot be. Something still lacks; he is not fully cured. + +DIEGO + +Alas, he is. The Duke remembers everything, save me. + +DUCHESS + +There is some mystery in this. I do not understand such matters. But I +know that Ferdinand could never be base towards you knowingly. And you, +methinks, would never be base towards him. Diego, time will bring light +into this darkness. Let us pray God together that He may make our eyes +and souls able to bear it. + +DIEGO + +I cannot pray for light, most gracious Madam, because I fear it. Indeed +I cannot pray at all, there remains nought to pray for. But, among the +vain and worldly songs I have had to get by heart, there is, by chance, +a kind of little hymn, a childish little verse, but a sincere one. And +while you pray for me--for you promised to pray for me, Madam--I should +like to sing it, with your Grace's leave. + +DIEGO _opens a little movable organ in a corner, and strikes a few +chords, remaining standing the while. The_ DUCHESS _kneels down before +the crucifix, turning her back upon him. While she is silently praying_, +DIEGO, _still on his feet, sings very low to a kind of lullaby tune_. + + Mother of God, + We are thy weary children; + Teach us, thou weeping Mother, + To cry ourselves to sleep. + + + + +ACT III + + +_Three months later. Another part of the Palace of Mantua: the hanging +gardens in the_ DUKE'S _apartments. It is the first warm night of +Spring. The lemon trees have been brought out that day, and fill the air +with fragrance. Terraces and flights of steps; in the background the +dark mass of the palace, with its cupolas and fortified towers; here and +there a lit window picking out the dark; and from above the principal +yards, the flare of torches rising into the deep blue of the sky. In the +course of the scene, the moon gradually emerges from behind a group of +poplars on the opposite side of the lake into which the palace is built. +During the earlier part of the act, darkness. Great stillness, with, +only occasionally, the plash of a fisherman's oar, or a very distant +thrum of mandolines.--The_ DUKE _and_ DIEGO _are walking up and down the +terrace_. + +DUKE + +Thou askedst me once, dear Diego, the meaning of that labyrinth which I +have had carved, a shapeless pattern enough, but well suited, methinks, +to blue and gold, upon the ceiling of my new music room. And wouldst +have asked, I fancy, as many have done, the hidden meaning of the device +surrounding it.--I left thee in the dark, dear lad, and treated thy +curiosity in a peevish manner. Thou hast long forgiven and perhaps +forgotten, deeming my lack of courtesy but another ailment of thy poor +sick master; another of those odd ungracious moods with which, kindest +of healing creatures, thou hast had such wise and cheerful patience. I +have often wished to tell thee; but I could not. 'Tis only now, in some +mysterious fashion, I seem myself once more,--able to do my judgment's +bidding, and to dispose, in memory and words, of my own past. My strange +sickness, which thou hast cured, melting its mists away with thy +beneficent music even as the sun penetrates and sucks away the fogs of +dawn from our lakes--my sickness, Diego, the sufferings of my flight +from Barbary; the horror, perhaps, of that shipwreck which cast me (so +they say, for I remember nothing) senseless on the Illyrian +coast----these things, or Heaven's judgment on but a lukewarm +Crusader,--had somehow played strange havoc with my will and +recollections. I could not think; or thinking, not speak; or +recollecting, feel that he whom I thought of in the past was this same +man, myself. + +_The_ DUKE _pauses, and leaning on the parapet, watches the long +reflections of the big stars in the water_. + +But now, and thanks to thee, Diego, I am another; I am myself. + +DIEGO'S _face, invisible in the darkness, has undergone dreadful +convulsions. His breast heaves, and he stops for breath before +answering; but when he does so, controls his voice into its usual rather +artificially cadenced tone_. + +DIEGO + +And now, dear Master, you can recollect----all? + +DUKE + +Recollect, sweet friend, and tell thee. For it is seemly that I should +break through this churlish silence with thee. Thou didst cure the +weltering distress of my poor darkened mind; I would have thee, now, +know somewhat of the past of thy grateful patient. The maze, Diego, +carved and gilded on that ceiling is but a symbol of my former life; and +the device which, being interpreted, means "I seek straight ways," the +expression of my wish and duty. + +DIEGO + +You loathed the maze, my Lord? + +DUKE + +Not so. I loved it then. And I still love it now. But I have issued from +it--issued to recognise that the maze was good. Though it is good I left +it. When I entered it, I was a raw youth, although in years a man; full +of easy theory, and thinking all practice simple; unconscious of +passion; ready to govern the world with a few learned notions; moreover +never having known either happiness or grief, never loved and wondered +at a creature different from myself; acquainted, not with the straight +roads which I now seek, but only with the rectangular walls of +schoolrooms. The maze, and all the maze implied, made me a man. + +DIEGO + +(_who has listened with conflicting feelings, and now unable to conceal +his joy_) + +A man, dear Master; and the gentlest, most just of men. Then, that +maze----But idle stories, interpreting all spiritual meaning as prosy +fact, would have it, that this symbol was a reality. The legend of your +captivity, my Lord, has turned the pattern on that ceiling into a real +labyrinth, some cunningly built fortress or prison, where the Infidels +kept you, and whose clue----you found, and with the clue, freedom, after +five weary years. + +DUKE + +Whose clue, dear Diego, was given into my hands,--the clue meaning +freedom, but also eternal parting--by the most faithful, intrepid, +magnanimous, the most loving----and the most beloved of women! + +_The_ Duke _has raised his arms from the parapet, and drawn himself +erect, folding them on his breast, and seeking for_ Diego's _face in the +darkness. But_ Diego, _unseen by the_ Duke, _has clutched the parapet +and sunk on to a bench_. + +DUKE + +(_walking up and down, slowly and meditatively, after a pause_) + +The poets have fabled many things concerning virtuous women. The Roman +Arria, who stabbed herself to make honourable suicide easier for her +husband; Antigone, who buried her brother at the risk of death; and the +Thracian Alkestis, who descended into the kingdom of Death in place of +Admetus. But none, to my mind, comes up to _her_. For fancy is but thin +and simple, a web of few bright threads; whereas reality is closely +knitted out of the numberless fibres of life, of pain and joy. For note +it, Diego--those antique women whom we read of were daughters of kings, +or of Romans more than kings; bred of a race of heroes, and trained, +while still playing with dolls, to pride themselves on austere duty, and +look upon the wounds and maimings of their soul as their brothers and +husbands looked upon the mutilations of battle. Whereas here; here was a +creature infinitely humble; a waif, a poor spurned toy of brutal +mankind's pleasure; accustomed only to bear contumely, or to snatch, +unthinking, what scanty happiness lay along her difficult and despised +path,--a wild creature, who had never heard such words as duty or +virtue; and yet whose acts first taught me what they truly meant. + +DIEGO + +(_who has recovered himself, and is now leaning in his turn on the +parapet_) + +Ah----a light woman, bought and sold many times over, my Lord; but who +loved, at last. + +DUKE + +That is the shallow and contemptuous way in which men think, Diego,--and +boys like thee pretend to; those to whom life is but a chess-board, a +neatly painted surface alternate black and white, most suitable for +skilful games, with a soul clean lost or gained at the end! I thought +like that. But I grew to understand life as a solid world: rock, fertile +earth, veins of pure metal, mere mud, all strangely mixed and overlaid; +and eternal fire at the core! I learned it, knowing Magdalen. + +DIEGO + +Her name was Magdalen? + +DUKE + +So she bade me call her. + +DIEGO + +And the name explained the trade? + +DUKE (_after a pause_) + +I cannot understand thee Diego,--cannot understand thy lack of +understanding----Well yes! Her trade. All in this universe is trade, +trade of prince, pope, philosopher or harlot; and once the badge put on, +the licence signed--the badge a crown or a hot iron's brand, as the case +may be,--why then we ply it according to prescription, and that's all! +Yes, Diego,--since thou obligest me to say it in its harshness, I do so, +and I glory for her in every contemptuous word I use!--The woman I speak +of was but a poor Venetian courtesan; some drab's child, sold to the +Infidels as to the Christians; and my cruel pirate master's--shall we +say?--mistress. There! For the first time, Diego, thou dost not +understand me; or is it----that I misjudged thee, thinking thee, dear +boy----(_breaks off hurriedly_). + +DIEGO (_very slowly_) + +Thinking me what, my Lord? + +DUKE (_lightly, but with effort_) + +Less of a little Sir Paragon of Virtue than a dear child, who is only a +child, must be. + +DIEGO + +It is better, perhaps, that your Highness should be certain of my +limitations----But I crave your Highness's pardon. I had meant to say +that being a waif myself, pure gutter-bred, I have known, though young, +more Magdalens than you, my Lord. They are, in a way, my sisters; and +had I been a woman, I should, likely enough, have been one myself. + +DUKE + +You mean, Diego? + +DIEGO + +I mean, that knowing them well, I also know that women such as your +Highness has described, occasionally learn to love most truly. Nay, let +me finish, my Lord; I was not going to repeat a mere sentimental +commonplace. Briefly then, that such women, being expert in love, +sometimes understand, quicker than virtuous dames brought up to heroism, +when love for them is cloyed. They can walk out of a man's house or life +with due alacrity, being trained to such flittings. Or, recognising the +first signs of weariness before 'tis known to him who feels it, they can +open the door for the other--hand him the clue of the labyrinth with a +fine theatric gesture!--But I crave your Highness's pardon for enlarging +on this theme. + +DUKE + +Thou speakest Diego, as if thou hadst a mind to wound thy Master. Is +this, my friend, the reward of my confiding in thee, even if tardily? + +DIEGO + +I stand rebuked, my Lord. But, in my own defence----how shall I say +it?----Your Highness has a manner to-night which disconcerts me by its +novelty; a saying things and then unsaying them; suggesting and then, +somehow, treading down the suggestion like a spark of your lightning. +Lovers, I have been told, use such a manner to revive their flagging +feeling by playing on the other one's. Even in so plain and solid a +thing as friendship, such ways--I say it subject to your Highness's +displeasure--are dangerous. But in love, I have known cases where, +carried to certain lengths, such ways of speaking undermined a woman's +faith and led her to desperate things. Women, despite their strength, +which often surprises us, are brittle creatures. Did you never, perhaps, +make trial of this----Magdalen, with---- + +DUKE + +With what? Good God, Diego, 'tis I who ask thy pardon; and thou sheddest +a dreadful light upon the past. But it is not possible. I am not such a +cur that, after all she did, after all she was,--my life saved by her +audacity a hundred times, made rich and lovely by her love, her wit, her +power,--that I could ever have whimpered for my freedom, or made her +suspect I wanted it more than I wanted her? Is it possible, Diego? + +DIEGO (_slowly_) + +Why more than you wanted her? She may have thought the two compatible. + +DUKE + +Never. First, because my escape could not be compassed save by her +staying behind; and then because---she knew, in fact, what thing I was, +or must become, once set at liberty. + +DIEGO (_after a pause_) + +I see. You mean, my Lord, that you being Duke of Mantua, while she----If +she knew that; knew it not merely as a fact, but as one knows the full +savour of grief,--well, she was indeed the paragon you think; one might +indeed say, bating one point, a virtuous woman. + +DUKE + +Thou hast understood, dear Diego, and I thank thee for it. + +DIEGO + +But I fear, my Lord, she did not know these things. Such as she, as +yourself remarked, are not trained to conceive of duty, even in others. +Passion moves them; and they believe in passion. You loved her; good. +Why then, at Mantua as in Barbary. No, my dear Master, believe me; she +had seen your love was turning stale, and set you free, rather than +taste its staleness. Passion, like duty, has its pride; and even we +waifs, as gypsies, have our point of honour. + +DUKE + +Stale! My love grown stale! You make me laugh, boy, instead of angering. +Stale! You never knew her. She was not like a song--even your sweetest +song--which, heard too often, cloys, its phrases dropping to senseless +notes. She was like music,--the whole art: new modes, new melodies, new +rhythms, with every day and hour, passionate or sad, or gay, or very +quiet; more wondrous notes than in thy voice; and more strangely sweet, +even when they grated, than the tone of those newfangled fiddles, which +wound the ear and pour balm in, they make now at Cremona. + +DIEGO + +You loved her then, sincerely? + +DUKE + +Methinks it may be Diego now, tormenting his Master with needless +questions. Loved her, boy! I love her. + +_A long pause_. Diego _has covered his face, with a gesture as if about +to speak. But the moon has suddenly risen from behind the poplars, and +put scales of silver light upon the ripples of the lake, and a pale +luminous mist around the palace. As the light invades the terrace, a +sort of chill has come upon both speakers; they walk up and down further +from one another_. + +DIEGO + +A marvellous story, dear Master. And I thank you from my heart for +having told it me. I always loved you, and I thought I knew you. I know +you better still, now. You are--a most magnanimous prince. + +DUKE + +Alas, dear lad, I am but a poor prisoner of my duties; a poorer +prisoner, and a sadder far, than there in Barbary----O Diego, how I have +longed for her! How deeply I still long, sometimes! But I open my eyes, +force myself to stare reality in the face, whenever her image comes +behind closed lids, driving her from me----And to end my confession. At +the beginning, Diego, there seemed in thy voice and manner something of +_her_; I saw her sometimes in thee, as children see the elves they fear +and hope for in stains on walls and flickers on the path. And all thy +wondrous power, thy miraculous cure--nay, forgive what seems +ingratitude--was due, Diego, to my sick fancy making me see glances of +her in thy eyes and hear her voice in thine. Not music but love, love's +delusion, was what worked my cure. + +DIEGO + +Do you speak truly, Master? Was it so? And now? + +DUKE + +Now, dear lad, I am cured--completely; I know bushes from ghosts; and I +know thee, dearest friend, to be Diego. + +DIEGO + +When these imaginations still held you, my Lord, did it ever happen that +you wondered: what if the bush had been a ghost; if Diego had turned +into--what was she called?---- + +DUKE + +Magdalen. My fancy never went so far, good Diego. There was a grain of +reason left. But if it had----Well, I should have taken Magdalen's hand, +and said, "Welcome, dear sister. This is a world of spells; let us +repeat some. Become henceforth my brother; be the Duke of Mantua's best +and truest friend; turn into Diego, Magdalen." + +_The_ DUKE _presses_ DIEGO'S _arm, and, letting it go, walks away into +the moonlight with an enigmatic air. A long pause_. + +Hark, they are singing within; the idle pages making songs to their +ladies' eyebrows. Shall we go and listen? + +(_They walk in the direction of the palace_.) + +And (_with a little hesitation_) that makes me say, Diego, before we +close this past of mine, and bury it for ever in our silence, that there +is a little Moorish song, plaintive and quaint, she used to sing, which +some day I will write down, and thou shalt sing it to me--on my +deathbed. + +DIEGO + +Why not before? Speaking of songs, that mandolin, though out of tune, +and vilely played, has got hold of a ditty I like well enough. Hark, the +words are Tuscan, well known in the mountains. (_Sings_.) + +I'd like to die, but die a little death only, I'd like to die, but look +down from the window; I'd like to die, but stand upon the doorstep; I'd +like to die, but follow the procession; I'd like to die, but see who +smiles and weepeth; I'd like to die, but die a little death only. + +(_While_ DIEGO _sings very loud, the mandolin inside the palace thrums +faster and faster. As he ends, with a long defiant leap into a high +note, a burst of applause from the palace_.) + +DIEGO (_clapping his hands_) + +Well sung, Diego! + + + + +ACT IV + + +_A few weeks later. The new music room in the Palace of Mantua. Windows +on both sides admitting a view of the lake, so that the hall looks like +a galley surrounded by water. Outside, morning: the lake, the sky, and +the lines of poplars on the banks, are all made of various textures of +luminous blue. From the gardens below, bay trees raise their flowering +branches against the windows. In every window an antique statue: the +Mantuan Muse, the Mantuan Apollo, etc. In the walls between the windows +are framed panels representing allegorical triumphs: those nearest the +spectator are the triumphs of Chastity and of Fortitude. At the end of +the room, steps and a balustrade, with a harpsichord and double basses +on a dais. The roof of the room is blue and gold; a deep blue ground, +constellated with a gold labyrinth in relief. Round the cornice, blue +and gold also, the inscription_: "RECTAS PETO," _and the name_ +Ferdinandus Mantuae Dux. + +_The_ PRINCESS HIPPOLYTA _of Mirandola, cousin to the_ DUKE; _and_ +DIEGO. HIPPOLYTA _is very young, but with the strength and grace, and +the candour, rather of a beautiful boy than of a woman. She is +dazzlingly fair; and her hair, arranged in waves like an antique +amazon's, is stiff and lustrous, as if made of threads of gold. The +brows are wide and straight, like a man's; the glance fearless, but +virginal and almost childlike_. HIPPOLYTA _is dressed in black and gold, +particoloured, like Mantegna's Duchess. An old man, in scholar's gown, +the_ Princess's Greek Tutor, _has just introduced_ DIEGO _and retired_. + +DIEGO + +The Duke your cousin's greeting and service, illustrious damsel. His +Highness bids me ask how you are rested after your journey hither. + +PRINCESS + +Tell my cousin, good Signor Diego, that I am touched at his concern for +me. And tell him, such is the virtuous air of his abode, that a whole +night's rest sufficed to right me from the fatigue of two hours' journey +in a litter; for I am new to that exercise, being accustomed to follow +my poor father's hounds and falcons only on horseback. You shall thank +the Duke my cousin for his civility. (PRINCESS _laughs_.) + +DIEGO + +(_bowing, and keeping his eyes on the_ PRINCESS _as he speaks_) + +His Highness wished to make his fair cousin smile. He has told me often +how your illustrious father, the late Lord of Mirandola, brought his +only daughter up in such a wise as scarcely to lack a son, with manly +disciplines of mind and body; and that he named you fittingly after +Hippolyta, who was Queen of the Amazons, virgins unlike their vain and +weakly sex. + +PRINCESS + +She was; and wife of Theseus. But it seems that the poets care but +little for the like of her; they tell us nothing of her, compared with +her poor predecessor, Cretan Ariadne, she who had given Theseus the clue +of the labyrinth. Methinks that maze must have been mazier than this +blue and gold one overhead. What say you, Signor Diego? + +DIEGO (_who has started slightly_) + +Ariadne? Was she the predecessor of Hippolyta? I did not know it. I am +but a poor scholar, Madam; knowing the names and stories of gods and +heroes only from songs and masques. The Duke should have selected some +fitter messenger to hold converse with his fair learned cousin. + +PRINCESS (_gravely_) + +Speak not like that, Signor Diego. You may not be a scholar, as you say; +but surely you are a philosopher. Nay, conceive my meaning: the fame of +your virtuous equanimity has spread further than from this city to my +small dominions. Your precocious wisdom--for you seem younger than I, +and youths do not delight in being very wise--your moderation in the use +of sudden greatness, your magnanimous treatment of enemies and +detractors; and the manner in which, disdainful of all personal +advantage, you have surrounded the Duke my cousin with wisest +counsellors and men expert in office--such are the results men seek from +the study of philosophy. + +DIEGO + +(_at first astonished, then amused, a little sadly_) + +You are mistaken, noble maiden. 'Tis not philosophy to refrain from +things that do not tempt one. Riches or power are useless to me. As for +the rest, you are mistaken also. The Duke is wise and valiant, and +chooses therefore wise and valiant counsellors. + +PRINCESS (_impetuously_) + +You are eloquent, Signor Diego, even as you are wise! But your words do +not deceive me. Ambition lurks in every one; and power intoxicates all +save those who have schooled themselves to use it as a means to virtue. + +DIEGO + +The thought had never struck me; but men have told me what you tell me +now. + +PRINCESS + +Even Antiquity, which surpasses us so vastly in all manner of wisdom and +heroism, can boast of very few like you. The noblest souls have grown +tyrannical and rapacious and foolhardy in sudden elevation. Remember +Alcibiades, the beloved pupil of the wisest of all mortals. Signor +Diego, you may have read but little; but you have meditated to much +profit, and must have wrestled like some great athlete with all that +baser self which the divine Plato has told us how to master. + +DIEGO (_shaking his head_) + +Alas, Madam, your words make me ashamed, and yet they make me smile, +being so far of the mark! I have wrestled with nothing; followed only my +soul's blind impulses. + +PRINCESS (_gravely_) + +It must be, then, dear Signor Diego, as the Pythagoreans held: the +discipline of music is virtuous for the soul. There is a power in +numbered and measured sound very akin to wisdom; mysterious and +excellent; as indeed the Ancients fabled in the tales of Orpheus and +Amphion, musicians and great sages and legislators of states. I have +long desired your conversation, admirable Diego. + +DIEGO (_with secret contempt_) + +Noble maiden, such words exceed my poor unscholarly appreciation. The +antique worthies whom you name are for me merely figures in tapestries +and frescoes, quaint greybeards in laurel wreaths and helmets; and I can +scarcely tell whether the Ladies Fortitude and Rhetoric with whom they +hold converse, are real daughters of kings, or mere Arts and Virtues. +But the Duke, a learned and judicious prince, will set due store by his +youthful cousin's learning. As for me, simpleton and ignoramus that I +am, all I see is that Princess Hippolyta is very beautiful and very +young. + +PRINCESS + +(_sighing a little, but with great simplicity_) + +I know it. I am young, and perhaps crude; although I study hard to learn +the rules of wisdom. You, Diego, seem to know them without study. + +DIEGO + +I know somewhat of the world and of men, gracious Princess, but that can +scarce be called knowing wisdom. Say rather knowing blindness, envy, +cruelty, endless nameless folly in others and oneself. But why should +you seek to be wise? you who are fair, young, a princess, and betrothed +from your cradle to a great prince? Be beautiful, be young, be what you +are, a woman. + +Diego _has said this last word with emphasis, but the_ Princess _has not +noticed the sarcasm in his voice_. + +PRINCESS (_shaking her head_) + +That is not my lot. I was destined, as you said, to be the wife of a +great prince; and my dear father trained me to fill that office. + +DIEGO + +Well, and to be beautiful, young, radiant; to be a woman; is not that +the office of a wife? + +PRINCESS + +I have not much experience. But my father told me, and I have gathered +from books, that in the wives of princes, such gifts are often thrown +away; that other women, supplying them, seem to supply them better. Look +at my cousin's mother. I can remember her still beautiful, young, and +most tenderly loving. Yet the Duke, my uncle, disdained her, and all she +got was loneliness and heartbreak. An honourable woman, a princess, +cannot compete with those who study to please and to please only. She +must either submit to being ousted from her husband's love, or soar +above it into other regions. + +DIEGO (_interested_) + +Other regions? + +PRINCESS + +Higher ones. She must be fit to be her husband's help, and to nurse his +sons to valour and wisdom. + +DIEGO + +I see. The Prince must know that besides all the knights that he summons +to battle, and all the wise men whom he hears in council, there is +another knight, in rather lighter armour and quicker tired, another +counsellor, less experienced and of less steady temper, ready for use. +Is this great gain? + +PRINCESS + +It is strange that being a man, you should conceive of women from---- + +DIEGO + +From a man's standpoint? + +PRINCESS + +Nay; methinks a woman's. For I observe that women, when they wish to +help men, think first of all of some transparent masquerade, donning +men's clothes, at all events in metaphor, in order to be near their +lovers when not wanted. + +DIEGO (_hastily_) + +Donning men's clothes? A masquerade? I fail to follow your meaning, +gracious maiden. + +PRINCESS (_simply_) + +So I have learned at least from our poets. Angelica, and Bradamante and +Fiordispina, scouring the country after their lovers, who were busy +enough without them. I prefer Penelope, staying at home to save the +lands and goods of Ulysses, and bringing up his son to rescue and avenge +him. + +DIEGO (_reassured and indifferent_) + +Did Ulysses love Penelope any better for it, Madam? better than poor +besotted Menelaus, after all his injuries, loved Helen back in Sparta? + +PRINCESS + +That is not the question. A woman born to be a prince's wife and +prince's mother, does her work not for the sake of something greater +than love, whether much or little. + +DIEGO + +For what then? + +PRINCESS + +Does a well-bred horse or excellent falcon do its duty to please its +master? No; but because such is its nature. Similarly, methinks, a woman +bred to be a princess works with her husband, for her husband, not for +any reward, but because he and she are of the same breed, and obey the +same instincts. + +DIEGO + +Ah!----Then happiness, love,--all that a woman craves for? + +PRINCESS + +Are accidents. Are they not so in the life of a prince? Love he may +snatch; and she, being in woman's fashion not allowed to snatch, may +receive as a gift, or not. But received or snatched, it is not either's +business; not their nature's true fulfilment. + +DIEGO + +You think so, Lady? + +PRINCESS + +I am bound to think so. I was born to it and taught it. You know the +Duke, my cousin,--well, I am his bride, not being born his sister. + +DIEGO + +And you are satisfied? O beautiful Princess, you are of illustrious +lineage and mind, and learned. Your father brought you up on Plutarch +instead of Amadis; you know many things; but there is one, methinks, no +one can know the nature of it until he has it. + +PRINCESS + +What is that, pray? + +DIEGO + +A heart. Because you have not got one yet, you make your plans without +it,--a negligible item in your life. + +Princess + +I am not a child. + +DIEGO + +But not yet a woman. + +PRINCESS (_meditatively_) + +You think, then---- + +DIEGO + +I do not _think_; I _know_. And _you_ will know, some day. And then---- + +PRINCESS + +Then I shall suffer. Why, we must all suffer. Say that, having a heart, +a heart for husband or child, means certain grief,--well, does not +riding, walking down your stairs, mean the chance of broken bones? Does +not living mean old age, disease, possible blindness or paralysis, and +quite inevitable aches? If, as you say, I must needs grow a heart, and +if a heart must needs give agony, why, I shall live through heartbreak +as through pain in any other limb. + +DIEGO + +Yes,--were your heart a limb like all the rest,--but 'tis the very +centre and fountain of all life. + +PRINCESS + +You think so? 'Tis, methinks, pushing analogy too far, and metaphor. +This necessary organ, diffusing life throughout us, and, as physicians +say, removing with its vigorous floods all that has ceased to live, +replacing it with new and living tissue,--this great literal heart +cannot be the seat of only one small passion. + +DIEGO + +Yet I have known more women than one die of that small passion's +frustrating. + +PRINCESS + +But you have known also, I reckon, many a man in whom life, what he had +to live for, was stronger than all love. They say the Duke my cousin's +melancholy sickness was due to love which he had outlived. + +DIEGO They say so, Madam. + +PRINCESS (_thoughtfully_) + +I think it possible, from what I know of him. He was much with my father +when a lad; and I, a child, would listen to their converse, not +understanding its items, but seeming to understand the general drift. My +father often said my cousin was romantic, favoured overmuch his tender +mother, and would suffer greatly, learning to live for valour and for +wisdom. + +DIEGO + +Think you he has, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +If 'tis true that occasion has already come. + +DIEGO + +And--if that occasion came, for the first time or for the second, +perhaps, after your marriage? What would you do, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I cannot tell as yet. Help him, I trust, when help could come, by the +sympathy of a soul's strength and serenity. Stand aside, most likely, +waiting to be wanted. Or else---- + +DIEGO + +Or else, illustrious maiden? + +PRINCESS + +Or else----I know not----perhaps, growing a heart, get some use from it. + +DIEGO + +Your Highness surely does not mean use it to love with? + +PRINCESS + +Why not? It might be one way of help. And if I saw him struggling with +grief, seeking to live the life and think the thought fit for his +station; why, methinks I could love him. He seems lovable. Only love +could have taught fidelity like yours. + +DIEGO + +You forget, gracious Princess, that you attributed great power of virtue +to a habit of conduct, which is like the nature of high-bred horses, +needing no spur. But in truth you are right. I am no high-bred creature. +Quite the contrary. Like curs, I love; love, and only love. For curs are +known to love their masters. + +PRINCESS + +Speak not thus, virtuous Diego. I have indeed talked in magnanimous +fashion, and believed, sincerely, that I felt high resolves. But you +have acted, lived, and done magnanimously. What you have been and are to +the Duke is better schooling for me than all the Lives of Plutarch. + +DIEGO. + +You could not learn from me, Lady. + +PRINCESS + +But I would try, Diego. + +DIEGO + +Be not grasping, Madam. The generous coursers whom your father taught +you to break and harness have their set of virtues. Those of curs are +different. Do not grudge them those. Your noble horses kick them enough, +without even seeing their presence. But I feel I am beyond my depth, not +being philosophical by nature or schooling. And I had forgotten to give +you part of his Highnesses message. Knowing your love of music, and the +attention you have given it, the Duke imagined it might divert you, till +he was at leisure to pay you homage, to make trial of my poor powers. +Will it please you to order the other musicians, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +Nay, good Diego, humour me in this. I have studied music, and would fain +make trial of accompanying your voice. Have you notes by you? + +DIEGO + +Here are some, Madam, left for the use of his Highness's band this +evening. Here is the pastoral of Phyllis by Ludovic of the Lute; a hymn +in four parts to the Virgin by Orlandus Lassus; a madrigal by the Pope's +Master, Signor Pierluigi of Praeneste. Ah! Here is a dramatic scene +between Medea and Creusa, rivals in love, by the Florentine Octavio. +Have you knowledge of it, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I have sung it with my master for exercise. But, good Diego, find a song +for yourself. + +DIEGO + +You shall humour me, now, gracious Lady. Think I am your master. I +desire to hear your voice. And who knows? In this small matter I may +really teach you something. + +_The_ PRINCESS _sits to the harpsichord_, DIEGO _standing beside her on +the dais. They sing, the_ PRINCESS _taking the treble_, DIEGO _the +contralto part. The_ PRINCESS _enters first--with a full-toned voice +clear and high, singing very carefully_. DIEGO _follows, singing in a +whisper. His voice is a little husky, and here and there broken, but +ineffably delicious and penetrating, and, as he sings, becomes, without +quitting the whisper, dominating and disquieting. The_ PRINCESS _plays a +wrong chord, and breaks off suddenly._ + +DIEGO + +(_having finished a cadence, rudely_) + +What is it, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I know not. I have lost my place----I----I feel bewildered. When your +voice rose up against mine, Diego, I lost my head. And--I do not know +how to express it--when our voices met in that held dissonance, it +seemed as if you hurt me----horribly. + +DIEGO + +(_smiling, with hypocritical apology_) + +Forgive me, Madam. I sang too loud, perhaps. We theatre singers are apt +to strain things. I trust some day to hear you sing alone. You have a +lovely voice: more like a boy's than like a maiden's still. + +PRINCESS + +And yours----'tis strange that at your age we should reverse the +parts,--yours, though deeper than mine, is like a woman's. + +DIEGO (_laughing_) + +I have grown a heart, Madam; 'tis an organ grows quicker where the breed +is mixed and lowly, no nobler limbs retarding its development by theirs. + +PRINCESS + +Speak not thus, excellent Diego. Why cause me pain by disrespectful +treatment of a person--your own admirable self--whom I respect? You have +experience, Diego, and shall teach me many things, for I desire +learning. + +_The_ Princess _takes his hand in both hers, very kindly and simply_. +Diego, _disengaging his, bows very ceremoniously_. + +DIEGO + +Shall I teach you to sing as I do, gracious Madam? + +PRINCESS (_after a moment_) + +I think not, Diego. + + + + +ACT V + + +_Two months later. The wedding day of the_ DUKE. _Another part of the +Palace of Mantua. A long terrace still to be seen, with roof supported +by columns. It looks on one side on to the jousting ground, a green +meadow surrounded by clipped hedges and set all round with mulberry +trees. On the other side it overlooks the lake, against which, as a +fact, it acts as dyke. The Court of Mantua and Envoys of foreign +Princes, together with many Prelates, are assembled on the terrace, +surrounding the seats of the_ DUKE, _the young_ DUCHESS HIPPOLYTA, _the_ +DUCHESS DOWAGER _and the_ CARDINAL. _Facing this gallery, and separated +from it by a line of sedge and willows, and a few yards of pure green +water, starred with white lilies, is a stage in the shape of a Grecian +temple, apparently rising out of the lake. Its pediment and columns are +slung with garlands of bay and cypress. In the gable, the_ DUKE'S +_device of a labyrinth in gold on a blue ground and the motto:_ "RECTAS +PETO." _On the stage, but this side of the curtain, which is down, are a +number of_ Musicians _with violins, viols, theorbs, a hautboy, a flute, +a bassoon, viola d'amore and bass viols, grouped round two men with +double basses and a man at a harpsichord, in dress like the musicians in +Veronese's paintings. They are preluding gently, playing elaborately +fugued variations on a dance tune in three-eighth time, rendered +singularly plaintive by the absence of perfect closes_. + +CARDINAL + +(_to_ VENETIAN AMBASSADOR) + +What say you to our Diego's masque, my Lord? Does not his skill as a +composer vie almost with his sublety as a singer? + +MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA + +(_to the_ DUCHESS DOWAGER) + +A most excellent masque, methinks, Madam. And of so new a kind. We have +had masques in palaces and also in gardens, and some, I own it, +beautiful; for our palace on the hill affords fine vistas of cypress +avenues and the distant plain. But, until the Duke your son, no one has +had a masque on the water, it would seem. 'Tis doubtless his invention? + +DUCHESS + +(_with evident preoccupation_) + +I think not, Madam. 'Tis our foolish Diego's freak. And I confess I like +it not. It makes me anxious for the players. + +BISHOP OF CREMONA (_to the_ CARDINAL) + +A wondrous singer, your Signor Diego. They say the Spaniards have subtle +exercises for keeping the voice thus youthful. His Holiness has several +such who sing divinely under Pierluigi's guidance. But your Diego seems +really but a child, yet has a mode of singing like one who knows a world +of joys and sorrows. + +CARDINAL + +He has. Indeed, I sometimes think he pushes the pathetic quality too +far. I am all for the Olympic serenity of the wise Ancients. + +YOUNG DUCHESS (_laughing_) + +My uncle would, I almost think, exile our divine Diego, as Plato did the +poets, for moving us too much. + +PRINCE OF MASSA (_whispering_) + +He has moved your noble husband strangely. Or is it, gracious bride, +that too much happiness overwhelms our friend? + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_turning round and noticing the_ DUKE, _a few seats off_) + +'Tis true. Ferdinand is very sensitive to music, and is greatly +concerned for our Diego's play. Still----I wonder----. + +MARCHIONESS (_to the_ DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET, _who is standing near +her_) + +I really never could have recognised Signor Diego in his disguise. He +looks for all the world exactly like a woman. + +POET + +A woman! Say a goddess, Madam! Upon my soul (_whispering_), the bride is +scarce as beautiful as he, although as fair as one of the noble swans +who sail on those clear waters. + +JESTER + +After the play we shall see admiring dames trooping behind the scenes to +learn the secret of the paints which can change a scrubby boy into a +beauteous nymph; a metamorphosis worth twenty of Sir Ovid's. + +DOGE'S WIFE (_to the_ DUKE) + +They all tell me--but 'tis a secret naturally--that the words of this +ingenious masque are from your Highness's own pen; and that you +helped--such are your varied gifts--your singing-page to set them to +music. + +DUKE (_impatiently_) + +It may be that your Serenity is rightly informed, or not. + +KNIGHT OF MALTA (_to_ YOUNG DUCHESS) + +One recognises, at least, the mark of Duke Ferdinand's genius in the +suiting of the play to the surroundings. Given these lakes, what fitter +argument than Ariadne abandoned on her little island? And the labyrinth +in the story is a pretty allusion to your lord's personal device and the +magnificent ceiling he lately designed for our admiration. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_with her eyes fixed on the curtain, which begins to move_) + +Nay, 'tis all Diego's thought. Hush, they begin to play. Oh, my heart +beats with curiosity to know how our dear Diego will carry his invention +through, and to hear the last song which he has never let me hear him +sing. + +_The curtain is drawn aside, displaying the stage, set with orange and +myrtle trees in jars, and a big flowering oleander. There is no painted +background; but instead, the lake, with distant shore, and the sky with +the sun slowly descending into clouds, which light up purple and +crimson, and send rosy streamers into the high blue air. On the stage a +rout of_ Bacchanals, _dressed like Mantegna's Hours, but with +vine-garlands; also_ Satyrs _quaintly dressed in goatskins, but with +top-knots of ribbons, all singing a Latin ode in praise of_ BACCHUS _and +wine; while girls dressed as nymphs, with ribboned thyrsi in their +hands, dance a pavana before a throne of moss overhung by ribboned +garlands. On this throne are seated a_ TENOR _as_ BACCHUS, _dressed in +russet and leopard skins, a garland of vine leaves round his waist and +round his wide-brimmed hat; and_ DIEGO, _as_ ARIADNE. DIEGO, _no longer +habited as a man, but in woman's garments, like those of Guercino's +Sibyls: a floating robe and vest of orange and violet, open at the +throat; with particoloured scarves hanging, and a particoloured scarf +wound like a turban round the head, the locks of dark hair escaping from +beneath. She is extremely beautiful_. + +MAGDALEN (_sometime known as_ DIEGO, _now representing_ ARIADNE) _rises +from the throne and speaks, turning to_ BACCHUS. _Her voice is a +contralto, but not deep, and with upper notes like a hautboy's. She +speaks in an irregular recitative, sustained by chords on the viols and +harpsichord_. + +ARIADNE + +Tempt me not, gentle Bacchus, sunburnt god of ruddy vines and rustic +revelry. The gifts you bring, the queenship of the world of +wine-inspired Fancies, cannot quell my grief at Theseus' loss. + +BACCHUS (_tenor_) + +Princess, I do beseech you, give me leave to try and soothe your +anguish. Daughter of Cretan Minos, stern Judge of the Departed, your +rearing has been too sad for youth and beauty, and the shade of Orcus +has ever lain across your path. But I am God of Gladness; I can take +your soul, suspend it in Mirth's sun, even as the grapes, translucent +amber or rosy, hang from the tendril in the ripening sun of the crisp +autumn day. I can unwind your soul, and string it in the serene sky of +evening, smiling in the deep blue like to the stars, encircled, I offer +you as crown. Listen, fair Nymph: 'tis a God woos you. + +ARIADNE + +Alas, radiant Divinity of a time of year gentler than Spring and +fruitfuller than Summer, there is no Autumn for hapless Ariadne. Only +Winter's nights and frosts wrap my soul. When Theseus went, my youth +went also. I pray you leave me to my poor tears and the thoughts of him. + +BACCHUS + +Lady, even a God, and even a lover, must respect your grief. Farewell. +Comrades, along; the pine trees on the hills, the ivy-wreaths upon the +rocks, await your company; and the red-stained vat, the heady-scented +oak-wood, demand your presence. + +_The_ Bacchantes _and_ Satyrs _sing a Latin ode in praise of Wine, in +four parts, with accompaniment of bass viols and lutes, and exeunt with_ +BACCHUS. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_to_ DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET) + +Now, now, Master Torquato, now we shall hear Poetry's own self sing with +our Diego's voice. + +DIEGO, _as_ ARIADNE, _walks slowly up and down the stage, while the +viola plays a prelude in the minor. Then she speaks, recitative with +chords only by strings and harpsichord_. + +ARIADNE + +They are gone at last. Kind creatures, how their kindness fretted my +weary soul I To be alone with grief is almost pleasure, since grief +means thought of Theseus. Yet that thought is killing me. O Theseus, why +didst thou ever come into my life? Why did not the cruel Minotaur gore +and trample thee like all the others? Hapless Ariadne! The clue was in +my keeping, and I reached it to him. And now his ship has long since +neared his native shores, and he stands on the prow, watching for his +new love. But the Past belongs to me. + +_A flute rises in the orchestra, with viols accompanying, pizzicati, and +plays three or four bars of intricate mazy passages, very sweet and +poignant, stopping on a high note, with imperfect close_. + +ARIADNE (_continuing_) + +And in the past he loved me, and he loves me still. Nothing can alter +that. Nay, Theseus, thou canst never never love another like me. + +_Arioso. The declamation becomes more melodic, though still +unrhythmical, and is accompanied by a rapid and passionate tremolo of +violins and viols_. + +And thy love for her will be but the thin ghost of the reality that +lived for me. But Theseus----Do not leave me yet. Another hour, another +minute. I have so much to tell thee, dearest, ere thou goest. + +_Accompaniment more and more agitated. A hautboy echoes_ ARIADNE'S _last +phrase with poignant reedy tone_. + +Thou knowest, I have not yet sung thee that little song thou lovest to +hear of evenings; the little song made by the Aeolian Poetess whom +Apollo loved when in her teens. And thou canst not go away till I have +sung it. See! my lute. But I must tune it. All is out of tune in my poor +jangled life. + +_Lute solo in the orchestra. A Siciliana or slow dance, very delicate +and simple_. ARIADNE _sings_. + +Song + + Let us forget we loved each other much; + Let us forget we ever have to part; + Let us forget that any look or touch + Once let in either to the other's heart. + + Only we'll sit upon the daisied grass, + And hear the larks and see the swallows pass; + Only we live awhile, as children play, + Without to-morrow, without yesterday. +_During the ritornello, between the two verses._ + +POET + +(_to the_ Young Duchess, _whispering_) + +Madam, methinks his Highness is unwell. Turn round, I pray you. + +YOUNG DUCHESS (_without turning_). + +He feels the play's charm. Hush. + +DUCHESS DOWAGER (_whispering_) + +Come Ferdinand, you are faint. Come with me. + +DUKE (_whispering_) + +Nay, mother. It will pass. Only a certain oppression at the heart, I was +once subject to. Let us be still. + +Song (_repeats_) + + Only we'll live awhile, as children play, + Without to-morrow, without yesterday. + +_A few bars of ritornello after the song_. + +DUCHESS DOWAGER (_whispering_) + +Courage, my son, I know all. + +ARIADNE + +(_Recitative with accompaniment of violins, flute and harp_) + +Theseus, I've sung my song. Alas, alas for our poor songs we sing to the +beloved, and vainly try to vary into newness! + +_A few notes of the harp well up, slow and liquid_. + +Now I can go to rest, and darkness lap my weary heart. Theseus, my love, +good night! + +_Violins tremolo. The hautboy suddenly enters with a long wailing +phrase_. ARIADNE _quickly mounts on to the back of the stage, turns +round for one second, waving a kiss to an imaginary person, and then +flings herself down into the lake_. + +_A great burst of applause. Enter immediately, and during the cries and +clapping, a chorus of_ Water-Nymphs _in transparent veils and garlands +of willows and lilies, which sings to a solemn counterpoint, the dirge +of_ ARIADNE. _But their singing is barely audible through the applause +of the whole Court, and the shouts of_ "DIEGO! DIEGO! ARIADNE! ARIADNE!" +_The young_ DUCHESS _rises excitedly, wiping her eyes_. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +Dear friend! Diego! Diego! Our Orpheus, come forth! + +CROWD + +Diego! Diego! + +POET (_to the_ POPE'S LEGATE) + +He is a real artist, and scorns to spoil the play's impression by +truckling to this foolish habit of applause. + +MARCHIONESS + +Still, a mere singer, a page----when his betters call----. But see! the +Duke has left our midst. + +CARDINAL + +He has gone to bring back Diego in triumph, doubtless. + +VENETIAN AMBASSADOR + +And, I note, his venerable mother has also left us. I doubt whether this +play has not offended her strict widow's austerity. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +But where is Diego, meanwhile? + +_The Chorus and orchestra continue the dirge for_ ARIADNE. A +GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING _elbows through the crowd to the_ CARDINAL. + +GENTLEMAN (_whispering_) + +Most Eminent, a word---- + +CARDINAL (_whispering_) + +The Duke has had a return of his malady? + +GENTLEMAN (_whispering_) + +No, most Eminent. But Diego is nowhere to be found. And they have +brought up behind the stage the body of a woman in Ariadne's weeds. + +CARDINAL (whispering) + +Ah, is that all? Discretion, pray. I knew it. But 'tis a most +distressing accident. Discretion above all. + +_The Chorus suddenly breaks off. For on to the stage comes the_ DUKE. +_He is dripping, and bears in his arms the dead body, drowned, of_ +DIEGO, _in the garb of_ ARIADNE. _A shout from the crowd_. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_with a cry, clutching the_ POET'S _arm_) + +Diego! + +DUKE + +(_stooping over the body, which he has laid upon the stage, and speaking +very low_) + +Magdalen! + +(_The curtain is hastily closed_.) + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Limbo and Other Essays, by Vernon Lee + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 37179 *** diff --git a/37179-h/37179-h.htm b/37179-h/37179-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0c3d68 --- /dev/null +++ b/37179-h/37179-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5726 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Limbo And Other Essays, by Vernon Lee. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +.persona {font-size: 0.8em;} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 37179 ***</div> + +<h1>LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS</h1> + +<h4>TO WHICH IS NOW ADDED ARIADNE IN MANTUA</h4> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>VERNON LEE</h2> + + +<h5>LONDON—JOHN LANE—THE BODLEY HEAD</h5> + +<h5>NEW YORK—JOHN LANE COMPANY</h5> + +<h5>MCMVIII</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p class="caption">CONTENTS</p> + + +<p> +<a href="#LIMBO"><b>LIMBO</b></a><br /> +<a href="#IN_PRAISE_OF_OLD_HOUSES"><b>IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_LIE_OF_THE_LAND"><b>THE LIE OF THE LAND</b></a><br /> +<a href="#TUSCAN_MIDSUMMER_MAGIC"><b>TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ON_MODERN_TRAVELLING"><b>ON MODERN TRAVELLING</b></a><br /> +<a href="#OLD_ITALIAN_GARDENS"><b>OLD ITALIAN GARDENS</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ABOUT_LEISURE"><b>ABOUT LEISURE</b></a><br /> +<a href="#RAVENNA_AND_HER_GHOSTS"><b>RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_COOK-SHOP_AND_THE_FOWLING-PLACE"><b>THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ACQUAINTANCE_WITH_BIRDS"><b>ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ARIADNE_IN_MANTUA"><b>ARIADNE IN MANTUA</b></a> +</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="LIMBO" id="LIMBO"></a>LIMBO</h3> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Perocchè gente di molto valore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Conobbi che in quel <i>Limbo</i> eran sospesi.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>It may seem curious to begin with Dante and pass on to the Children's +Rabbits' House; but I require both to explain what it is I mean by +Limbo; no such easy matter on trying. For this discourse is not about +the Pious Pagans whom the poet found in honourable confinement at the +Gate of Hell, nor of their neighbours the Unchristened Babies; but I am +glad of Dante's authority for the existence of a place holding such +creatures as have just missed a necessary rite, or come too soon for +thorough salvation. And I am glad, moreover, that the poet has insisted +on the importance—"gente di molto valore"—of the beings thus enclosed; +because it is just with the superior quality of the things in what I +mean by Limbo that we are peculiarly concerned.</p> + +<p>And now for the other half of my preliminary illustration of the +subject, to wit, the Children's Rabbits' House. The little gardens which +the children played at cultivating have long since disappeared, taken +insensibly back into that corner of the formal but slackly kept garden +which looks towards the steep hill dotted with cows and sheep. But in +that corner, behind the shapeless Portugal laurels and the patches of +seeding grass, there still remains, beneath big trees, what the children +used to call the "Rabbits' Villa." 'Tis merely a wooden toy house, with +green moss-eaten roof, standing, like the lake dwellings of prehistoric +times, on wooden posts, with the tall foxgloves, crimson and white, +growing all round it. There is something ludicrous in this superannuated +toy, this Noah's ark on stilts among the grass and bushes; but when you +look into the thing, finding the empty plates and cups "for having tea +with the rabbits," and when you look into it spiritually also, it grows +oddly pathetic. We walked up and down between the high hornbeam +hedges, the sunlight lying low on the armies of tall daisies and +seeding grasses, and falling in narrow glints among the white boles and +hanging boughs of the beeches, where the wooden benches stand unused in +the deep grass, and the old swing hangs crazily crooked. Yes, the +Rabbits' Villa and the surrounding overgrown beds are quite pathetic. Is +it because they are, in a way, the graves of children long dead, as +dead—despite the grown-up folk who may come and say "It was I"—as the +rabbits and guinea-pigs with whom they once had tea? That is it; and +that explains my meaning: the Rabbits' Villa is, to the eye of the +initiate, one of many little branch establishments of Limbo surrounding +us on all sides. Another poet, more versed in similar matters than Dante +(one feels sure that Dante knew his own mind, and always had his own +way, even when exiled), Rossetti, in a sonnet, has given us the terrible +little speech which would issue from the small Limbos of this kind:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Look in my face: My name is <i>Might-have-been</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>Of all the things that Limbo might contain, there is one about which +some persons, very notably Churchyard Gray, have led us into error. I do +not believe there is much genius to be found in Limbo. The world, +although it takes a lot of dunning, offers a fair price for this +article, which it requires as much as water-power and coal, nay even as +much as food and clothes (bread for its soul and raiment for its +thought); so that what genius there is will surely be brought into +market. But even were it wholly otherwise, genius, like murder, <i>would +out</i>; for genius is one of the liveliest forces of nature; not to be +quelled or quenched, adaptable, protean, expansive, nay explosive; of +all things in the world the most able to take care of itself; which +accounts for so much public expenditure to foster and encourage it: +foster the sun's chemistry, the force of gravitation, encourage atomic +affinity and natural selection, magnificent Mæcenas and judicious +Parliamentary Board, they are sure to do you credit!</p> + +<p>Hence, to my mind, there are <i>no mute inglorious Miltons</i>, or none +worth taking into account. Our sentimental surmises about them grow from +the notion that human power is something like the wheels or cylinder of +a watch, a neat numbered scrap of mechanism, stamped at a blow by a +creative <i>fiat</i>, or hand-hammered by evolution, and fitting just exactly +into one little plan, serving exactly one little purpose, indispensable +for that particular machine, and otherwise fit for the dust-heap. +Happily for us, it is certainly not so. The very greatest men have +always been the most versatile: Lionardo, Goethe, Napoleon; the next +greatest can still be imagined under different circumstances as turning +their energy to very different tasks; and I am tempted to think that the +hobbies by which many of them have laid much store, while the world +merely laughed at the statesman's trashy verses or the musician's +third-rate sketches, may have been of the nature of rudimentary organs, +which, given a different environment, might have developed, become the +creature's chief <i>raison d'être</i>, leaving that which has actually +chanced to be his talent to become atrophied, perhaps invisible.</p> + +<p>Be this last as it may—and I commend it to those who believe in genius +as a form of monomania—it is quite certain that genius has nothing in +common with machinery. It is the most organic and alive of living +organisms; the most adaptable therefore, and least easily killed; and +for this reason, and despite Gray's <i>Elegy</i>, there is no chance of much +of it in Limbo.</p> + +<p>This is no excuse for the optimistic extermination of distinguished men. +It is indeed most difficult to kill genius, but there are a hundred ways +of killing its possessors; and with them as much of their work as they +have left undone. What pictures might Giorgione not have painted but for +the lady, the rival, or the plague, whichever it was that killed him! +Mozart could assuredly have given us a half-dozen more <i>Don Giovannis</i> +if he had had fewer lessons, fewer worries, better food; nay, by his +miserable death the world has lost, methinks, more even than that—a +commanding influence which would have kept music, for a score of years, +earnest and masterly but joyful: Rossini would not have run to seed, and +Beethoven's ninth symphony might have been a genuine "Hymn to Joy" if +only Mozart, the Apollo of musicians, had, for a few years more, +flooded men's souls with radiance. A similar thing is said of Rafael; +but his followers were mediocre, and he himself lacked personality, so +that many a better example might be brought.</p> + +<p>These are not useless speculations; it is as well we realise that, +although genius be immortal, poor men of genius are not. Quite an +extraordinary small amount of draughts and microbes, of starvation +bodily and spiritual, of pin-pricks of various kinds, will do for them; +we can all have a hand in their killing; the killing also of their +peace, kindliness, and justice, sending these qualities to Limbo, which +is full of such. And now, dear reader, I perceive that we have at last +got Limbo well in sight and, in another minute, we may begin to discern +some of its real contents.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>The Paladin Astolfo, as Ariosto relates, was sent on a winged horse up +to the moon; where, under the ciceroneship of John the Evangelist, he +saw most of the things which had been lost on earth, among others the +wits of many persons in bottles, his cousin Orlando's which he had come +on purpose to fetch, and, curiously enough, his own, which he had never +missed.</p> + +<p>The moon does well as storehouse for such brilliant, romantic things. +The Limbo whose contents and branches I would speak of is far less +glorious, a trifle humdrum; sometimes such as makes one smile, like that +Villa of the Rabbits in the neglected garden. 'Twas for this reason, +indeed, that I preferred to clear away at once the question of the Mute +Inglorious Miltons, and of such solemn public loss as comes of the +untimely death of illustrious men. Do you remember, by the way, reader, +a certain hasty sketch by Cazin, which hangs in a corner of the +Luxembourg? The bedroom of Gambetta after his death: the white bed +neatly made, empty, with laurel garlands replacing him; the tricolor +flag, half-furled, leaned against the chair, and on the table vague +heaped-up papers; a thing quite modest and heroic, suitable to all +similar occasions—Mirabeau say, and Stevenson on his far-off +island—and with whose image we can fitly close our talk of genius +wasted by early death.</p> + +<p>I have alluded to <i>happiness</i> as filling up much space in Limbo; and I +think that the amount of it lying in that kingdom of Might-have-been is +probably out of all proportion with that which must do that duty in this +actual life. Browning's <i>Last Ride Together</i>—one has to be perpetually +referring to poets on this matter, for philosophers and moralists +consider happiness in its <i>causal connection</i> or as a fine snare to +virtue—Browning's <i>Last Ride Together</i> expresses, indeed, a view of the +subject commending itself to active and cheerful persons, which comes to +many just after their salad days; to wit, what a mercy that we don't +often get what we want most. The objects of our recent ardent longings +reveal themselves, most luridly sometimes, as dangers, deadlocks, +fetters, hopeless labyrinths, from which we have barely escaped. This is +the house I wanted to buy, the employment I fretted to obtain, the lady +I pined to marry, the friend with whom I projected to share lodgings. +With such sudden chill recognitions comes belief in a special +providence, some fine Greek-sounding goddess, thwarting one's dearest +wishes from tender solicitude that we shouldn't get what we want. In +such a crisis the nobler of us feel like the Riding Lover, and learn +ideal philosophy and manly acquiescence; the meaner snigger ungenerously +about those youthful escapes; and know not that they have gained safety +at the price, very often, of the little good—ideality, faith and +dash—there ever was about them: safe, smug individuals, whose safety is +mere loss to the cosmos. But later on, when our characters have settled, +when repeated changes have taught us which is our unchangeable ego, we +begin to let go that optimist creed, and to suspect (suspicion turning +to certainty) that, as all things which <i>have</i> happened to us have not +been always advantageous, so likewise things longed for in vain need not +necessarily have been curses. As we grow less attached to theories, and +more to our neighbours, we recognise every day that loss, refusal of the +desired, has not by any means always braced or chastened the lives we +look into; we admit that the Powers That Be showed considerable judgment +in disregarding the teachings of asceticism, and inspiring mankind with +innate repugnance to having a bad time. And, to return to the question +of Limbo, as we watch the best powers, the whole usefulness and +sweetness starved out of certain lives for lack of the love, the +liberty, or the special activities they prayed for; as regards the +question of Limbo, I repeat, we grow (or try to grow) a little more +cautious about sending so much more happiness—ours and other folk's—to +the place of Might-have-been.</p> + +<p>Some of it certainly does seem beyond our control, a fatal matter of +constitution. I am not speaking of the results of vice or stupidity; +this talk of Limbo is exclusively addressed to the very nicest people.</p> + +<p>A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness. We have +all of us seen instances. They often occur between members of the same +family, the very similarity of nature, which might make mothers and +daughters, brothers and sisters, into closest companions, merely +doubling the dose of that terrible reserve, timidity, horror of human +contact, paralysis of speech, which keeps the most loving hearts +asunder. It is useless to console ourselves by saying that each has its +own love of the other. And thus they walk, sometimes side by side, +never looking in one another's eyes, never saying the word, till death +steps in, death sometimes unable to loosen the tongue of the mourner. +Such things are common among our reserved northern races, making us so +much less happy and less helpful in everyday life than our Latin and +Teuton neighbours; and, I imagine, are commonest among persons of the +same blood. But the same will happen between lovers, or those who should +have been such; doubt of one's own feeling, fear of the other's charity, +apprehension of its all being a mistake, has silently prevented many a +marriage. The two, then, could not have been much in love? Not <i>in +love</i>, since neither ever allowed that to happen, more's the pity; but +loving one another with the whole affinity of their natures, and, after +all, <i>being in love</i> is but the crisis, or the beginning of that, if +it's worth anything.</p> + +<p>Thus shyness sends much happiness to Limbo. But actual shyness is not +the worst. Some persons, sometimes of the very finest kind, endowed for +loving-kindness, passion, highest devotion, nay requiring it as much as +air or warmth, have received, from some baleful fairy, a sterilising +gift of fear. Fear of what they could not tell; something which makes +all community of soul a terror, and every friend a threat. Something +terrible, in whose presence we must bow our heads and pray impunity +therefrom for ourselves and ours.</p> + +<p>But the bulk of happiness stacked up in Limbo appears, on careful +looking, to be an agglomeration of other lost things; justice, charm, +appreciation, and faith in one another, all recklessly packed off as so +much lumber, sometimes to make room for fine new qualities instead! +Justice, I am inclined to think, is usually sent to Limbo through the +agency of others. A work in many folios might be written by condensing +what famous men have had said against them in their days of struggle, +and what they have answered about others in their days of prosperity.</p> + +<p>The loss of <i>charm</i> is due to many more circumstances; the stress of +life indeed seems calculated to send it to Limbo. Certain it is that few +women, and fewer men, of forty, preserve a particle of it. I am not +speaking of youth or beauty, though it does seem a pity that mature +human beings should mostly be too fat or too thin, and lacking either +sympathy or intellectual keenness. <i>Charm</i> must comprise all that, but +much besides. It is the undefinable quality of nearly every child, and +of all nice lads and girls; the quality which (though it <i>can</i> reach +perfection in exceptional old people) usually vanishes, no one knows +when exactly, into the Limbo marked by the Rabbits' Villa, with its +plates and tea-cups, mouldering on its wooden posts in the unweeded +garden.</p> + +<p>More useful qualities replace all these: hardness, readiness to snatch +opportunity, mistrust of all ideals, inflexible self-righteousness; +useful, nay necessary; but, let us admit it, in a life which, judged by +the amount of dignity and sweetness it contains, is perhaps scarce +necessary itself, and certainly not useful. The case might be summed up, +for our guidance, by saying that the loss of many of our finer qualities +is due to the complacent, and sometimes dutiful, cultivation of our +worse ones!</p> + +<p>For, even in the list of virtues, there are finer and less fine, nay +virtues one might almost call atrocious, and virtues with a taint of +ignominy. I have said that we lose some of our finer qualities this way; +what's worse is, that we often fail to appreciate the finest qualities +of others.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>And here, coming to the vague rubric <i>appreciation of others</i>, I feel we +have got to a district of Limbo about which few of us should have the +audacity to speak, and few, as a fact, have the courage honestly to +think. <i>What do we make of our idea of others</i> in our constant attempt +to justify ourselves? No Japanese bogie-monger ever produced the equal +of certain wooden monster-puppets which we carve, paint, rig out, and +christen by the names of real folk—alas, alas, dear names sometimes of +friends!—and stick up to gibber in our memory; while the real image, +the creature we have really known, is carted off to Limbo! But this is +too bad to speak of.</p> + +<p>Let us rather think gently of things, sad, but sad without ignominy, of +friendships still-born or untimely cut off, hurried by death into a +place like that which holds the souls of the unchristened babies; +often, like them, let us hope, removed to a sphere where such things +grow finer and more fruitful, the sphere of the love of those we have +not loved enough in life.</p> + +<p>But that at best is but a place of ghosts; so let us never forget, dear +friends, how close all round lies Limbo, the Kingdom of +Might-have-been.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="IN_PRAISE_OF_OLD_HOUSES" id="IN_PRAISE_OF_OLD_HOUSES"></a>IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>My Yorkshire friend was saying that she hated being in an old house. +<i>There seemed to be other</i> people in it besides the living....</p> + +<p>These words, expressing the very reverse of what I feel, have set me +musing on my foolish passion for the Past. The Past, but the real one; +not the Past considered as a possible Present. For though I should like +to have seen ancient Athens, or Carthage according to Salambô, and +though I have pined to hear the singers of last century, I know that any +other period than this of the world's history would be detestable to +live in. For one thing—one among other instances of brutish +dulness—our ancestors knew nothing of the emotion of the past, the +rapture of old towns and houses.</p> + +<p>This emotion, at times this rapture, depends upon a number of mingled +causes; its origin is complex and subtle, like that of all things +exquisite; the flavour of certain dishes, the feel of sea or mountain +air, in which chemical peculiarities and circumstances of temperature +join with a hundred trifles, seaweed, herbs, tar, heather and so forth; +and like, more particularly, music and poetry, whose essence is so +difficult of ascertaining. And in this case, the causes that first occur +to our mind merely suggest a number more. Of these there is a principal +one, only just less important than that suggested by my Yorkshire +friend, which might be summed up thus: <i>That the action of time makes +man's works into natural objects.</i></p> + +<p>Now, with no disrespect to man, 'tis certain Nature can do more than he. +Not that she is the more intelligent of the two; on the contrary, she +often makes the grossest artistic blunders, and has, for instance, a +woeful lack of design in England, and a perfect mania for obvious +composition and deliberate picturesqueness in Italy and Argyllshire. But +Nature is greater than man because she is bigger, and can do more things +at a time. Man seems unable to attend to one point without neglecting +some other; where he has a fine fancy in melody, his harmony is apt to +be threadbare; if he succeeds with colour, he cannot manage line, and if +light and shade, then neither; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark +that whenever and wherever man has built beautiful temples, churches, +and palaces, he has been impelled to bedizen them with primary colours, +of which, in Venice and the Alhambra, time at last made something +agreeable, and time also, in Greece, has judged best to obliterate every +odious trace. Hence, in the works of man there is always a tendency to +simplify, to suppress detail, to make things clear and explain patterns +and points of view; to save trouble, thought, and material; to be +symmetrical, which means, after all, to repeat the same thing twice +over; he knows it is wrong to carve one frieze on the top of the other, +and to paint in more than one layer of paint. Of all such restrictions +Nature is superbly unconscious. She smears weather-stain on +weather-stain and lichen on lichen, never stopping to match them. She +jags off corners and edges, and of one meagre line makes fifty curves +and facets. She weaves pattern over pattern, regardless of confusion, +so that the mangiest hedgerow is richer, more subtle than all the +carpets and papers ever designed by Mr. Morris. Her one notion is <i>More, +always more</i>; whereas that of man, less likely to exceed, is a timid +<i>Enough</i>. No wonder, for has she not the chemistry of soil and sun and +moisture and wind and frost, all at her beck and call?</p> + +<p>Be it as it may, Nature does more for us than man, in the way of +pleasure and interest. And to say, therefore, that time turns the works +of man into natural objects is, therefore, saying that time gives them +infinitely more variety and charm. In making them natural objects also +time gives to man's lifeless productions the chief quality of everything +belonging to Nature—life. Compare a freshly plastered wall with one +that has been exposed to sun and rain, or a newly slated roof to one all +covered with crumbling, grey, feathery stuff, like those of the Genoese +villages, which look as if they had been thatched with olive-leaves from +off their hills. 'Tis the comparison between life and death; or, rather, +since death includes change, between something and nothing. Imagine a +tree as regular as a column, or an apple as round as a door-knob!</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>So much for the material improvements which time effects in our +surroundings. We now come to the spiritual advantages of dealing with +the past instead of the present.</p> + +<p>These begin in our earliest boy- or girl-hood. What right-minded child +of ten or twelve cares, beyond its tribute of apples, and jam, and +cricket, and guinea-pigs, for so dull a thing as the present? Why, the +present is like this schoolroom or playground, compared with Polar Seas, +Rocky Mountains, or Pacific Islands; a place for the body, not for the +soul. It all came back to me, a little while ago, when doing up for my +young friend, L.V., sundry Roman coins long mislaid in a trunk, and +which had formed my happiness at his age. Delightful things!—smooth and +bright green like certain cabbage-leaves, or of a sorry brown, rough +with rust and verdigris; but all leaving alike a perceptible portion of +themselves in the paper bag, a delectable smell of copper on one's +hands. How often had I turned you round and round betwixt finger and +thumb, trying to catch the slant of an inscription, or to get, in some +special light, the film of effaced effigy—the chin of Nero, or the +undulating, benevolent nose of Marcus Aurelius? How often have my hands +not anointed you with every conceivable mixture of oil, varnish, and +gum, rubbing you gently with silk and wool, and kid gloves, in hopes +that something ineffable might rise up on your surface! I quite +sympathised with my young friend when, having waggled and chortled over +each of them several times, he thought it necessary to overcome the +natural manly horror for kissing, and shook my hand twice, thrice, and +then once more, returning from the door.... For had they not +concentrated in their interesting verdigrised, brass-smelling smallness +something, to me, of the glory and wonder of Rome? Cæcilia Metella, the +Grotto of Egeria—a vague vision, through some twenty years' fog, of a +drive between budding hedges and dry reeds; a walk across short +anemone-starred turf; but turning into distinct remembrance of the +buying of two old pennies, one of Augustus, the other even more +interesting, owing to entire obliteration of both reverse and obverse; a +valuable coin, undoubtedly. And the Baths of Caracalla, which I can +recollect with the thick brushwood, oak scrub, ivy and lentisk, and even +baby ilexes, covering the masonry and overhanging the arches, and with +rose hedges just cut away to dig out some huge porphyry pillar—were not +their charms all concentrated in dim, delicious hopes of finding, just +where the green turf ended and the undulating expanse of purple, green +and white tessellated pavement began, some other brazen penny? And then, +in Switzerland, soon after, did I not suffer acutely, as I cleaned my +coins, from the knowledge that in this barbarous Northern place, which +the Romans had, perhaps, never come near, it was quite useless to keep +one's eyes on the ruts of roads and the gravel of paths, and +consequently almost useless to go out, or to exist; until one day I +learnt that a certain old lawyer, in a certain field, had actually dug +up Roman antiquities.... I don't know whether I ever saw them with +corporeal eyes, but certainly with those of the spirit; and I was lent +a drawing of one of them, a gold armlet, of which I insisted on having +a copy made, and sticking it up in my room....</p> + +<p>It does but little honour to our greatest living philosopher that he, +whom children will bless for free permission to bruise, burn, and cut +their bodies, and empty the sugar-bowl and jam-pot, should wish to +deprive the coming generation of all historical knowledge, of so much +joy therefore, and, let me add, of so much education. For do not tell me +that it is not education, and of the best, to enable a child to feel the +passion and poetry of life; to live, while it trudges along the dull +familiar streets, in company with dull, familiar, and often stolidly +incurious grown-up folk, in that terrible, magnificent past, in dungeons +and palaces, loving and worshipping Joan of Arc, execrating Bloody Mary, +dreaming strange impossible possibilities of what we would have said and +done for Marie Antoinette—said to her, <i>her</i> actually coming towards +us, by some stroke of magic, in that advancing carriage! There is enough +in afterlife, God knows, to teach us <i>not to be heroic</i>; 'tis just as +well that, as children, we learn a lingering liking for the quality; +'tis as important, perhaps, as learning that our tissues consume +carbon, if they do so. I can speak very fervently of the enormous value +for happiness of such an historical habit of mind.</p> + +<p>Such a habit transcends altogether, in its power of filling one's life, +the merely artistic and literary habit. For, after all, painting, +architecture, music, poetry, are things which touch us in a very +intermittent way. I would compare this historic habit rather to the +capacity of deriving pleasure from nature, not merely through the eye, +but through all the senses; and largely, doubtless, through those +obscure perceptions which make certain kinds of weather, air, &c., an +actual tonic, nay food, for the body. To this alone would I place my +<i>historical habit</i> in the second rank. For, as the sensitiveness to +nature means supplementing our physical life by the life of the air and +the sun, the clouds and waters, so does this historic habit mean +supplementing our present life by a life in the past; a life larger, +richer than our own, multiplying our emotions by those of the dead....</p> + +<p>I am no longer speaking of our passions for Joan of Arc and Marie +Antoinette, which disappear with our childhood; I am speaking of a +peculiar sense, ineffable, indescribable, but which every one knows +again who has once had it, and which to many of us has grown into a +cherished habit—the sense of being companioned by the past, of being in +a place warmed for our living by the lives of others. To me, as I +started with saying, the reverse of this is almost painful; and I know +few things more odious than the chilly, draughty emptiness of a place +without a history. For this reason America, save what may remain of +Hawthorne's New England and Irving's New York, never tempts my vagabond +fancy. Nature can scarcely afford beauty wherewith to compensate for +living in block-tin shanties or brand new palaces. How different if we +find ourselves in some city, nay village, rendered habitable for our +soul by the previous dwelling therein of others, of souls! Here the +streets are never empty; and, surrounded by that faceless crowd of +ghosts, one feels a right to walk about, being invited by them, instead +of rushing along on one's errands among a throng of other wretched +living creatures who are blocked by us and block us in their turn.</p> + +<p>How convey this sense? I do not mean that if I walk through old Paris or +through Rome my thoughts revolve on Louis XI. or Julius Cæsar. Nothing +could be further from the fact. Indeed the charm of the thing is that +one feels oneself accompanied not by this or that magnifico of the past +(whom of course one would never have been introduced to), but by a crowd +of nameless creatures; the daily life, common joy, suffering, heroism of +the past. Nay, there is something more subtle than this: the whole place +(how shall I explain it?) becomes a sort of living something. Thus, when +I hurry (for one must needs hurry through Venetian narrowness) between +the pink and lilac houses, with faded shutters and here and there a +shred of tracery; now turning a sharp corner before the locksmith's or +the chestnut-roaster's; now hearing my steps lonely between high walls +broken by a Gothic doorway; now crossing some smooth-paved little square +with its sculptured well and balconied palaces, I feel, I say, walking +day after day through these streets, that I am in contact with a whole +living, breathing thing, full of habits of life, of suppressed words; a +sort of odd, mysterious, mythical, but very real creature; as if, in +the dark, I stretched out my hand and met something (but without any +fear), something absolutely indefinable in shape and kind, but warm, +alive. This changes solitude in unknown places into the reverse of +solitude and strangeness. I remember walking thus along the bastions +under the bishop's palace at Laon, the great stone cows peering down +from the belfry above, with a sense of inexpressible familiarity and +peace. And, strange to say, this historic habit makes us familiar also +with places where we have never been. How well, for instance, do I not +know Dinant and Bouvines, rival cities on the Meuse (topography and +detail equally fantastic); and how I sometimes long, as with +homesickness, for a scramble among the stones and grass and +chandelier-like asphodels of Agrigentum, Veii, Collatium! Why, to one +minded like myself, a map, and even the names of stations in a +time-table, are full of possible delight.</p> + +<p>And sometimes it rises to rapture. This time, eight years ago, I was +fretting my soul away, ill, exiled away from home, forbidden all work, +in the south of Spain. At Granada for three dreary weeks it rained +without ceasing, till the hill of the Alhambra became filled with the +babbling of streams, and the town was almost cut off by a sea of mud. +Between the showers one rushed up into the damp gardens of the +Generalife, or into the Alhambra, to be imprisoned for hours in its +desolate halls, while the rain splashed down into the courts. My +sitting-room had five doors, four of glass; and the snow lay thick on +the mountains. My few books had been read long ago; there remained to +spell through a Spanish tome on the rebellion of the Alpujarras, whose +Moorish leader, having committed every crime, finally went to heaven for +spitting on the Koran on his death-bed. Letters from home were +perpetually lost, or took a week to come. It seemed as if the world had +quite unlearned every single trick that had ever given me pleasure. Yet, +in these dreary weeks, there was one happy morning.</p> + +<p>It was the anniversary, worse luck to it, of the Conquest of Granada +from the Moors. We got seats in the chapel of the Catholic kings, and +watched a gentleman in a high hat (which he kept on in church) and +swallow tails, carry the banner of Castile and Aragon, in the presence +of the archbishop and chapter, some mediæval pages, two trumpeters with +pigtails, and an array of soldiers. A paltry ceremony enough. But before +it began, and while mass was still going on, there came to me for a few +brief moments that happiness unknown for so many, many months, that +beloved historic emotion.</p> + +<p>My eyes were wandering round the chapel, up the sheaves of the pilasters +to the gilded spandrils, round the altars covered with gibbering +sculpture, and down again among the crowd kneeling on the matted +floor—women in veils, men with scarlet cloak-lining over the shoulder, +here and there the shaven head and pigtail of the bull-ring. In the +middle of it all, on their marble beds, lay the effigies of Ferdinand +and Isabella, with folded hands and rigid feet, four crimson banners of +the Moors overhead. The crowd was pouring in from the cathedral, and +bevies of priests, and scarlet choir-boys led by their fiddler. The +organ, above the chants, was running through vague mazes. I felt it +approaching and stealing over me, that curious emotion felt before in +such different places: walking up and down, one day, in the church of +Lamballe in Brittany; seated, another time, in the porch at Ely. And +then it possessed me completely, raising one into a sort of beatitude. +This kind of rapture is not easy to describe. No rare feeling is. But I +would warn you from thinking that in such solemn moments there sweeps +across the brain a paltry pageant, a Lord Mayor's Show of bygone things, +like the cavalcades of future heroes who descend from frescoed or +sculptured wall at the bidding of Ariosto's wizards and Spenser's +fairies. This is something infinitely more potent and subtle; and like +all strong intellectual emotions, it is compounded of many and various +elements, and has its origin far down in mysterious depths of our +nature; and it arises overwhelmingly from many springs, filling us with +the throb of vague passions welling from our most vital parts. There is +in it no possession of any definite portion of bygone times; but a +yearning expectancy, a sense of the near presence, as it were, of the +past; or, rather, of a sudden capacity in ourselves of apprehending the +past which looms all round.</p> + +<p>For a few moments thus, in that chapel before the tombs of the Catholic +kings; in the churches of Bruges and Innsbruck at the same time (for +such emotion gives strange possibilities of simultaneous presence in +various places); with the gold pomegranate flower of the badges, and the +crimson tassels of the Moorish standards before my eyes; also the iron +knights who watch round Maximilian's grave—for a moment while the +priests were chanting and the organs quavering, the life of to-day +seemed to reel and vanish, and my mind to be swept along the dark and +gleaming whirlpools of the past....</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>Catholic kings, Moorish banners, wrought-iron statues of paladins; these +are great things, and not at all what I had intended to speak of when I +set out to explain why old houses, which give my Yorkshire friend the +creeps, seem to my feelings so far more peaceful and familiar.</p> + +<p>Yes, it is just because the past is somehow more companionable, warmer, +more full of flavour, than the present, that I love all old houses; but +best of all such as are solitary in the country, isolated both from new +surroundings, and from such alterations as contact with the world's +hurry almost always brings. It certainly is no question of beauty. The +houses along Chelsea embankment are more beautiful, and some of them a +great deal more picturesque than that Worcestershire rectory to which I +always long to return: the long brick house on its terraced river-bank, +the overladen plum-trees on one side, and the funereally prosperous +churchyard yews on the other; and with corridors and staircases hung +with stained, frameless Bolognese nakedness, Judgments of Paris, +Venuses, Carità Romanas, shipped over cheap by some bear-leading +parson-tutor of the eighteenth century. Nor are they architectural, +those brick and timber cottages all round, sinking (one might think) +into the rich, damp soil. But they have a mellowness corresponding to +that of the warm, wet, fruitful land, and due to the untroubled, warm +brooding over by the past. And what is architecture to that? As to these +Italian ones, which my soul loveth most, they have even less of what you +would call beauty; at most such grace of projecting window-grating or +buttressed side as the South gives its buildings; and such colour, or +rather discolouring, as a comparatively small number of years will +bring.</p> + +<p>It kept revolving in my mind, this question of old houses and their +charm, as I was sitting waiting for a tram one afternoon, in the +church-porch of Pieve a Ripoli, a hamlet about two miles outside the +south-east gate of Florence. That church porch is like the baldacchino +over certain Roman high altars, or, more humbly, like a very large +fourpost bedstead. On the one hand was a hillside of purple and brown +scrub and dark cypresses fringed against the moist, moving grey sky; on +the other, some old, bare, mulberry-trees, a hedge of russet sloe, +closing in wintry fields; and, more particularly, next the porch, an +insignificant house, with blistered green shutters at irregular +intervals in the stained whitewash, a big green door, and a little +coat-of-arms—the three Strozzi half-moons—clapped on to the sharp +corner. I sat there, among the tombstones of the porch, and wondered why +I loved this house: and why it would remain, as I knew it must, a +landmark in my memory. Yes, the charm must lie in the knowledge of the +many creatures who have lived in this house, the many things that have +been done and felt.</p> + +<p>The creatures who have lived here, the things which have been felt and +done.... But those things felt and done, were they not mainly trivial, +base; at best nowise uncommon, and such as must be going on in every new +house all around? People worked and shirked their work, endured, +fretted, suffered somewhat, and amused themselves a little; were loving, +unkind, neglected and neglectful, and died, some too soon, some too +late. That is human life, and as such doubtless important. But all that +goes on to-day just the same; and there is no reason why that former +life should have been more interesting than that these people, Argenta +Cavallesi and Vincenzio Grazzini, buried at my feet, should have had +bigger or better made souls and bodies than I or my friends. Indeed, in +sundry ways, and owing to the narrowness of life and thought, the calmer +acceptance of coarse or cruel things, I incline to think that they were +less interesting, those men and women of the past, whose rustling +dresses fill old houses with fantastic sounds. They had, some few of +them, their great art, great aims, feelings, struggles; but the majority +were of the earth, and intolerably earthy. 'Tis their clothes' ghosts +that haunt us, not their own.</p> + +<p>So why should the past be charming? Perhaps merely because of its being +the one free place for our imagination. For, as to the future, it is +either empty or filled only with the cast shadows of ourselves and our +various machineries. The past is the unreal and the yet visible; it has +the fascination of the distant hills, the valleys seen from above; the +unreal, but the unreal whose unreality, unlike that of the unreal things +with which we cram the present, can never be forced on us. <i>There is +more behind; there may be anything.</i> This sense which makes us in love +with all intricacies of things and feelings, roads which turn, views +behind views, trees behind trees, makes the past so rich in +possibilities.... An ordinary looking priest passes by, rings at the +door of the presbytery, and enters. Those who lived there, in that old +stained house with the Strozzi escutcheon, opposite the five bare +mulberry-trees, were doubtless as like as may be to this man who lives +there in the present. Quite true; and yet there creeps up the sense that +<i>they</i> lived in the past.</p> + +<p>For there is no end to the deceits of the past; we protest that we know +it is cozening us, and it continues to cozen us just as much. Reading +over Browning's <i>Galuppi</i> lately, it struck me that this dead world of +vanity was no more charming or poetical than the one we live in, when it +also was alive; and that those ladies, Mrs. X., Countess Y., and Lady +Z., of whose <i>toilettes</i> at last night's ball that old gossip P—— had +been giving us details throughout dinner, will in their turn, if any one +care, be just as charming, as dainty, and elegiac as those other women +who sat by while Galuppi "played toccatas stately at the clavichord." +Their dresses, should they hang for a century or so, will emit a perfume +as frail, and sad, and heady; their wardrobe filled with such dust as +makes tears come into one's eyes, from no mechanical reason.</p> + +<p>"Was a lady <i>such</i> a lady?" They will say that of ours also. And, in +recognising this, we recognise how trumpery, flat, stale and +unprofitable were those ladies of the past. It is not they who make the +past charming, but the past that makes them. Time has wonderful +cosmetics for its favoured ones; and if it brings white hairs and +wrinkles to the realities, how much does it not heighten the bloom, +brighten the eyes and hair of those who survive in our imagination!</p> + +<p>And thus, somewhat irrelevantly, concludes my chapter in praise of old +houses.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_LIE_OF_THE_LAND" id="THE_LIE_OF_THE_LAND"></a>THE LIE OF THE LAND</h3> + +<h4>NOTES ABOUT LANDSCAPES</h4> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>I want to talk about the something which makes the real, individual +landscape—the landscape one actually sees with the eyes of the body and +the eyes of the spirit—the <i>landscape you cannot describe</i>.</p> + +<p>That is the drawback of my subject—that it just happens to elude all +literary treatment, and yet it must be treated. There is not even a +single word or phrase to label it, and I have had to call it, in sheer +despair, <i>the lie of the land</i>: it is an unnamed mystery into which +various things enter, and I feel as if I ought to explain myself by dumb +show. It will serve at any rate as an object-lesson in the extreme +one-sidedness of language and a protest against human silence about the +things it likes best.</p> + +<p>Of outdoor things words can of course tell us some important points: +colour, for instance, and light, and somewhat of their gradations and +relations. And an adjective, a metaphor, may evoke an entire atmospheric +effect, paint us a sunset or a star-lit night. But the far subtler and +more individual relations of visible line defy expression: no poet or +prose writer can give you the tilt of a roof, the undulation of a field, +the bend of a road. Yet these are the things in landscape which +constitute its individuality and which reach home to our feelings.</p> + +<p>For colour and light are variable—nay, more, they are relative. The +same tract will be green in connection with one sort of sky, blue with +another, and yellow with a third. We may be disappointed when the woods, +which we had seen as vague, moss-like blue before the sun had overtopped +the hills, become at midday a mere vast lettuce-bed. We should be much +more than disappointed, we should doubt of our senses if we found on +going to our window that it looked down upon outlines of hills, upon +precipices, ledges, knolls, or flat expanses, different from those we +had seen the previous day or the previous year. Thus the unvarying items +of a landscape happen to be those for which precise words cannot be +found. Briefly, we praise colour, but we actually <i>live</i> in the +indescribable thing which I must call the <i>lie of the land</i>. The lie of +the land means walking or climbing, shelter or bleakness; it means the +corner where we dread a boring neighbour, the bend round which we have +watched some one depart, the stretch of road which seemed to lead us +away out of captivity. Yes, <i>lie of the land</i> is what has mattered to us +since we were children, to our fathers and remotest ancestors; and its +perception, the instinctive preference for one kind rather than another, +is among the obscure things inherited with our blood, and making up the +stuff of our souls. For how else explain the strange powers which +different shapes of the earth's surface have over different individuals; +the sudden pleasure, as of the sight of an old friend, the pang of +pathos which we may all receive in a scene which is new, without +memories, and so unlike everything familiar as to be almost without +associations?</p> + +<p>The <i>lie of the land</i> has therefore an importance in art, or if it have +not, ought to have, quite independent of pleasantness of line or of +anything merely visual. An immense charm consists in the fact that the +mind can walk about in a landscape. The delight at the beauty which is +seen is heightened by the anticipation of further unseen beauty; by the +sense of exploring the unknown; and to our present pleasure before a +painted landscape is added the pleasure we have been storing up during +years of intercourse, if I may use this word, with so many real ones.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>For there is such a thing as intercourse with fields and trees and +skies, with the windings of road and water and hedge, in our everyday, +ordinary life. And a terrible thing for us all if there were not; if our +lives were not full of such various commerce, of pleasure, curiosity, +and gratitude, of kindly introduction of friend by friend, quite apart +from the commerce with other human beings. Indeed, one reason why the +modern rectangular town (built at one go for the convenience of running +omnibuses and suppressing riots) fills our soul with bitterness and +dryness, is surely that this ill-conditioned convenient thing can give +us only its own poor, paltry presence, introducing our eye and fancy +neither to further details of itself, nor to other places and people, +past or distant.</p> + +<p>Words can just barely indicate the charm of this <i>other place other +time</i> enriching of the present impression. Words cannot in the least, I +think, render that other suggestion contained in <i>The Lie of the Land</i>, +the suggestion of the possibility of a delightful walk. What walks have +we not taken, leaving sacred personages and profane, not to speak of +allegoric ones, far behind in the backgrounds of the old Tuscans, +Umbrians, and Venetians! Up Benozzo's hillside woods of cypress and +pine, smelling of myrrh and sweet-briar, over Perugino's green rising +grounds, towards those slender, scant-leaved trees, straight-stemmed +acacias and elms, by the water in the cool, blue evening valley. Best of +all, have not Giorgione and Titian, Palma and Bonifazio, and the dear +imitative people labelled <i>Venetian school</i>, led us between the hedges +russet already with the ripening of the season and hour into those +fields where the sheep are nibbling, under the twilight of the big +brown trees, to where some pale blue alp closes in the slopes and the +valleys?</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>It is a pity that the landscape painters of our day—I mean those French +or French taught, whose methods are really new—tend to neglect <i>The Lie +of the Land</i>. Some of them, I fear, deliberately avoid it as +old-fashioned—what they call obvious—as interfering with their aim of +interesting by the mere power of vision and skill in laying on the +paint. Be this as it may, their innovations inevitably lead them away +from all research of what we may call <i>topographical</i> charm, for what +they have added to art is the perfection of very changeable conditions +of light and atmosphere, of extremely fleeting accidents of colour. One +would indeed be glad to open one's window on the fairyland of iridescent +misty capes, of vibrating skies and sparkling seas of Monsieur Claude +Monet; still more to stand at the close of an autumn day watching the +light fogs rise along the fields, mingling with delicate pinkish mist of +the bare poplar rows against the green of the first sprouts of corn. +But I am not sure that the straight line of sea and shore would be +interesting at any other moment of the day; and the poplar rows and +cornfields would very likely be drearily dull until sunset. The moment, +like Faust's second of perfect bliss, is such as should be made +immortal, but the place one would rather not see again. Yet Monsieur +Monet is the one of his school who shows most care for the scene he is +painting. The others, even the great ones—men like Pissarro and Sisley, +who have shown us so many delightful things in the details of even the +dull French foliage, even the dull midday sky—the other <i>modern ones</i> +make one long to pull up their umbrella and easel and carry them on—not +very far surely—to some spot where the road made a bend, the embankment +had a gap, the water a swirl; for we would not be so old-fashioned as to +request that the country might have a few undulations.... Of course it +was very dull of our ancestors—particularly of Clive Newcome's +day—always to paint a panorama with whole ranges of hills, miles of +river, and as many cities as possible; and even our pleasure in Turner's +large landscapes is spoilt by their being the sort of thing people +would drive for miles or climb for hours to enjoy, what our grandfathers +in post-chaises called a <i>noble fine prospect</i>. All that had to be got +rid of, like the contemporaneous literary descriptions: "A smiling +valley proceeded from south-east to north-west; an amphitheatre of +cliffs bounding it on the right hand; while to the left a magnificent +waterfall leapt from a rock three hundred feet in height and expanded +into a noble natural basin of granite some fifty yards in diameter," &c. +&c. The British classics, thus busy with compass, measuring-rod and +level, thus anxious to enable the reader to reconstruct their landscape +on paste-board, had no time of course to notice trifling matters: how, +for instance,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The woods are round us, heaped and dim;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">From slab to slab how it slips and springs</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The thread of water, single and slim,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Through the ravage some torrent brings.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Nor could the panoramic painter of the earlier nineteenth century pay +much attention to mere alternations of light while absorbed in his great +"Distant View of Jerusalem and Madagascar"; indeed, he could afford to +move off only when it began to rain very hard.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>The impressionist painters represent the reaction against this dignified +and also more stolid school of landscape; they have seen, or are still +seeing, all the things which other men did not see. And here I may +remark that one of the most important items of this seeing is exactly +the fact that in many cases we can <i>see</i> only very little. The +impressionists have been scoffed at for painting rocks which might be +chimney-stacks, and flowering hedges which might be foaming brooks; +plains also which might be hills, and <i>vice versâ</i>, and described as +wretches, disrespectful to natural objects, which, we are told, reveal +new beauties at every glance. But is it more respectful to natural +objects to put a drawing-screen behind a willow-bush and copy its +minutest detail of branch and trunk, than to paint that same willow, a +mere mist of glorious orange, as we see it flame against the hillside +confusion of mauve, and russet and pinkish sereness? I am glad to have +brought in that word <i>confusion</i>: the modern school of landscape has +done a great and pious thing in reinstating the complexity, the mystery, +the confusion of Nature's effects; Nature, which differs from the paltry +work of man just in this, that she does not thin out, make clear and +symmetrical for the easier appreciation of foolish persons, but packs +effect upon effect, in space even as in time, one close upon the other, +leaf upon leaf, branch upon branch, tree upon tree, colour upon colour, +a mystery of beauty wrapped in beauty, without the faintest concern +whether it would not be better to say "this is really a river," or, +"that is really a tree." "But," answer the critics with much +superiority, "art should not be the mere copying of Nature; surely there +is already enough of Nature herself; art should be the expression of +man's delight in Nature's shows." Well, Nature shows a great many things +which are not unchanging and not by any means unperplexing; she shows +them at least to those who will see, see what is really there to be +seen; and she will show them, thanks to our brave impressionists, to all +men henceforth who have eyes and a heart. And here comes our debt to +these great painters: what a number of effects, modest and exquisite, or +bizarre and magnificent, they will have taught us to look out for; what +beauty and poetry in humdrum scenery, what perfect loveliness even among +sordidness and squalor: tints as of dove's breasts in city mud, enamel +splendours in heaps of furnace refuse, mysterious magnificence, visions +of Venice at night, of Eblis palace, of I know not what, in wet gaslit +nights, in looming lit-up factories. Nay, leaving that alone, since 'tis +better, perhaps, that we should not enjoy anything connected with grime +and misery and ugliness—how much have not these men added to the +delight of our walks and rides; revealing to us, among other things, the +supreme beauty of winter colouring, the harmony of purple, blue, slate, +brown, pink, and russet, of tints and compounds of tints without a name, +of bare hedgerows and leafless trees, sere grass and mist-veiled waters; +compared with which spring is but raw, summer dull, and autumn +positively ostentatious in her gala suit of tawny and yellow.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, indeed, these modern painters have done more for us by the +beauty they have taught us to see in Nature than by the beauty they have +actually put before us in their pictures; if I except some winter +landscapes of Monet's and the wonderful water-colours of Mr. Brabazon, +whose exquisite sense of form and knowledge of drawing have enabled him, +in rapidest sketches of rapidly passing effects, to indicate the +structure of hills and valleys, the shape of clouds, in the mere wash of +colour, even as Nature indicates them herself. With such exceptions as +these, and the beautiful mysteries of Mr. Whistler, there is +undoubtedly, in recent landscape, a preoccupation of technical methods +and an indifference to choice of subject, above all, a degree of +insistence on what is <i>actually seen</i> which leads one to suspect that +the impressionists represent rather a necessary phase in the art, than a +definite achievement, in the same manner as the Renaissance painters who +gave themselves up to the study of perspective and anatomy. This +terrible over-importance of the act of vision is doubtless the +preparation for a new kind of landscape, which will employ these +arduously acquired facts of colour and light, this restlessly renovated +technique, in the service of a new kind of sentiment and imagination, +differing from that of previous ages even as the sentiment and +imagination of Browning differs from that of his great predecessors. But +it is probably necessary that the world at large, as well as the +artists, should be familiarised with the new facts, the new methods of +impressionism, before such facts and methods can find their significance +and achievement; even as in the Renaissance people had to recognise the +realities of perspective and anatomy before they could enjoy an art +which attained beauty through this means; it would have been no use +showing Sixtine chapels to the contemporaries of Giotto. There is at +present a certain lack of enjoyable quality, a lack of soul appealing to +soul, in the new school of landscape. But where there is a faithful, +reverent eye, a subtle hand, a soul cannot be far round the corner. And +we may hope that, if we be as sincere and willing as themselves, our +Pollaiolos and Mantegnas of the impressionist school, discoverers of new +subtleties of colour and light, will be duly succeeded by modern +Michelangelos and Titians, who will receive all the science ready for +use, and bid it fetch and carry and build new wonderful things for the +pleasure of their soul and of ours.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>And mentioning Titian, brings to my memory a remark once made to me on +one of those washed away, rubbly hills, cypresses and pines holding the +earth together, which the old Tuscans drew so very often. The remark, +namely, that some of the charm of the old masters' landscapes is due to +the very reverse of what sometimes worries one in modern work, to the +notion which these backgrounds give at first—bits of valley, outlines +of hills, distant views of towered villages, of having been done without +trouble, almost from memory, till you discover that your Titian has +modelled his blue valley into delicate blue ridges; and your Piero della +Francesca indicated the precise structure of his pale, bony mountains. +Add to this, to the old men's credit, that, as I said, they knew <i>the +lie of the land</i>, they gave us landscapes in which our fancy, our +memories, could walk.</p> + +<p>How large a share such fancy and such memories have in the life of art, +people can scarcely realise. Nay, such is the habit of thinking of the +picture, statue, or poem, as a complete and vital thing apart from the +mind which perceives it, that the expression <i>life of art</i> is sure to be +interpreted as life of various schools of art: thus, the life of art +developed from the type of Phidias to that of Praxiteles, and so forth. +But in the broader, truer sense, the life of all art goes on in the mind +and heart, not merely of those who make the work, but of those who see +and read it. Nay, is not <i>the</i> work, the real one, a certain particular +state of feeling, a pattern woven of new perceptions and impressions and +of old memories and feelings, which the picture, the statue or poem, +awakens, different in each different individual? 'Tis a thought perhaps +annoying to those who have slaved seven years over a particular outline +of muscles, a particular colour of grass, or the cadence of a particular +sentence. What! all this to be refused finality, to be disintegrated by +the feelings and fancies of the man who looks at the picture, or reads +the book, heaven knows how carelessly besides? Well, if not +disintegrated, would you prefer it to be unassimilated? Do you wish your +picture, statue or poem to remain whole as you made it? Place it +permanently in front of a mirror; consign it to the memory of a parrot; +or, if you are musician, sing your song, expression and all, down a +phonograph. You cannot get from the poor human soul, that living +microcosm of changing impressions, the thorough, wholesale appreciation +which you want.</p> + + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p>This same power of sentiment and fancy, that is to say, of association, +enables us to carry about, like a verse or a tune, whole mountain +ranges, valleys, rivers and lakes, things in appearance the least easy +to remove from their place. As some persons are never unattended by a +melody; so others, and among them your humble servant, have always for +their thoughts and feelings, an additional background besides the one +which happens to be visible behind their head and shoulders. By this +means I am usually in two places at a time, sometimes in several very +distant ones within a few seconds.</p> + +<p>It is extraordinary how much of my soul seems to cling to certain +peculiarities of what I have called <i>lie of the land</i>, undulations, +bends of rivers, straightenings and snakings of road; how much of one's +past life, sensations, hopes, wishes, words, has got entangled in the +little familiar sprigs, grasses and moss. The order of time and space is +sometimes utterly subverted; thus, last autumn, in a corner of +Argyllshire, I seemed suddenly cut off from everything in the British +Isles, and reunited to the life I used to lead hundreds of miles away, +years ago in the high Apennines, merely because of the minute starry +moss under foot and the bubble of brooks in my ears.</p> + +<p>Nay, the power of outdoor things, their mysterious affinities, can +change the values even of what has been and what has not been, can make +one live for a moment in places which have never existed save in the +fancy. Have I not found myself suddenly taken back to certain woods +which I loved in my childhood simply because I had halted before a great +isolated fir with hanging branches, a single fir shading a circle of +soft green turf, and watched the rabbits sitting, like round grey +stones suddenly flashing into white tails and movement? Woods where? I +have not the faintest notion. Perhaps only woods I imagined my father +must be shooting in when I was a baby, woods which I made up out of +Christmas trees, moss and dead rabbits, woods I had heard of in fairy +tales....</p> + +<p>Such are some of the relations of landscape and sentiments, a correct +notion of which is necessary before it is possible to consider the best +manner of <i>representing landscape with words</i>; a subject to which none +of my readers, I think, nor myself, have at present the smallest desire +to pass on.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="TUSCAN_MIDSUMMER_MAGIC" id="TUSCAN_MIDSUMMER_MAGIC"></a>TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>"Then," I said, "you decline to tell me about the Three Kings, when +their procession wound round and round these hillocks: all the little +wooden horses with golden bridles and velvet holsters, out of the toy +boxes; and the camelopard, and the monkeys and the lynx, and the little +doll pages blowing toy trumpets. And still, I know it happened here, +because I recognise the place from the pictures: the hillocks all washed +away into breasts like those of Diana of the Ephesians, and the rows of +cypresses and spruce pines—also out of the toy box. I know it happened +in this very place, because Benozzo Gozzoli painted it all at the time; +and you were already about the place, I presume?"</p> + +<p>I knew that by her dress, but I did not like to allude to its being +old-fashioned. It was the sort of thing, muslin all embroidered with +little nosegays of myrtle and yellow broom, and tied into odd bunches at +the elbows and waist, which they wore in the days of Botticelli's +<i>Spring</i>; and on her head she had a garland of eglantine and palm-shaped +hellebore leaves which was quite unmistakable.</p> + +<p>The nymph Terzollina (for of course she was the tutelary divinity of the +narrow valley behind the great Medicean Villa) merely shook her head and +shifted one of her bare feet, on which she was seated under a cypress +tree, and went on threading the yellow broom flowers.</p> + +<p>"At all events, you might tell me something about the Magnificent +Lorenzo," I went on, impatient at her obstinacy. "You know quite well +that he used to come and court you here, and make verses most likely."</p> + +<p>The exasperating goddess raised her thin, brown face, with the sharp +squirrel's teeth and the glittering goat's eyes. Very pretty I thought +her, though undoubtedly a little <i>passée</i>, like all the symbolical +ladies of her set. She plucked at a clump of dry peppermint, perfuming +the hot air as she crushed it, and then looked up, with a sly, shy +little peasant-girl's look, which was absurd in a lady so mature and so +elaborately adorned. Then, in a crooning voice, she began to recite some +stanzas in <i>ottava rima</i>, as follows:</p> + +<p>"The house where the good old Knight Gualando hid away the little +Princess, was itself hidden in this hidden valley. It was small and +quite white, with great iron bars to the windows. In front was a long +piece of greensward, starred with white clover, and behind and in front, +to where the pines and cypresses began ran strips of cornfield. It was +remote from all the pomps of life; and when the cuckoo had become silent +and the nightingales had cracked their voices, the only sound was the +coo of the wood-pigeons, the babble of the stream, and the twitter of +the young larks.</p> + +<p>"The old Knight Gualando had hidden his bright armour in an oaken chest; +and went to the distant town every day dressed in the blue smock of a +peasant, and driving a donkey before him. Thence he returned with +delicates for the little Princess and with news of the wicked usurper; +nor did any one suspect who he was, or dream of his hiding-place.</p> + +<p>"During his absence the little Princess, whose name was Fiordispina, +used to string beads through the hot hours when the sun smote through +the trees, and the green corn ridges began to take a faint gilding in +their silveriness, as the Princess remembered it in a picture in the +Castle Chapel, where the sun was represented by a big embossed ball of +gold, projecting from the picture, which she was allowed to stroke on +holidays.</p> + +<p>"In the evening, when the sky turned pearl white, and a breeze rustled +through the pines and cypresses which made a little black fringe on the +hill-top and a little patch of feathery velvet pile on the slopes, the +little Princess would come forth, and ramble about in her peasant's +frock, her fair face stained browner by the sun than by any walnut +juice. She would climb the hill, and sniff the scent of the sun-warmed +resin, and the sweetness of the yellow broom. It spread all over the +hills, and the king, her father, had not possessed so many ells of cloth +of gold.</p> + +<p>"But one evening she wandered further than usual, and saw on a bank, at +the edge of a cornfield, five big white lilies blowing. She went back +home and fetched the golden scissors from her work-bag, and cut off one +of the lilies. On the next day she came again and cut another until she +had cut them all.</p> + +<p>"But it happened that an old witch was staying in that neighbourhood, +gathering herbs among the hills. She had taken note of the five lilies, +because she disliked them on account of their being white; and she +remarked that one of them had been cut off; then another, then another. +She hated people who like lilies. When she found the fifth lily gone, +she wondered greatly, and climbed on the ridge, and looked at their +stalks where they were cut. She was a wise woman, who knew many things. +So she laid her finger upon the cut stalk, and said, 'This has not been +cut with iron shears'; and she laid her lip against the cut stalk, and +felt that it had been cut with gold shears, for gold cuts like nothing +else.</p> + +<p>"'Oho!' said the old witch—'where there are gold scissors, there must +be gold work-bags; and where there are gold work-bags, there must be +little Princesses.'"</p> + +<p>"Well, and then?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh then, nothing at all," answered the Nymph Terzollina beloved by the +Magnificent Lorenzo, who had seen the procession of the Three Kings. +"Good evening to you."</p> + +<p>And where her white muslin dress, embroidered with nosegays of broom and +myrtle, had been spread on the dry grass and crushed mint, there was +only, beneath the toy cypresses, a bush of white-starred myrtle and a +tuft of belated yellow broom.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>One must have leisure to converse with goddesses; and certainly, during +a summer in Tuscany, when folk are scattered in their country houses, +and are disinclined to move out of hammock or off shaded bench, there +are not many other persons to talk with.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, during those weeks of cloudless summer, natural +objects vie with each other in giving one amateur representations. +Things look their most unexpected, masquerade as other things, get queer +unintelligible allegoric meanings, leaving you to guess what it all +means, a constant dumb crambo of trees, flowers, animals, houses, and +moonlight.</p> + +<p>The moon, particularly, is continually <i>en scène</i>, as if to take the +place of the fireflies, which last only so long as the corn is in the +ear, gradually getting extinguished and trailing about, humble helpless +moths with a pale phosphorescence in their tail, in the grass and in the +curtains. The moon takes their place; the moon which, in an Italian +summer, seems to be full for three weeks out of the four.</p> + +<p>One evening the performance was given by the moon and the corn-sheaves, +assisted by minor actors such as crickets, downy owls, and +vine-garlands. The oats, which had been of such exquisite delicacy of +green, had just been reaped in the field beyond our garden and were now +stacked up. Suspecting one of the usual performances, I went after +dinner to the upper garden-gate, and looked through the bars. There it +was, the familiar, elemental witchery. The moon was nearly full, +blurring the stars, steeping the sky and earth in pale blue mist, which +seemed somehow to be the visible falling dew. It left a certain +greenness to the broad grass path, a vague yellow to the unsickled +wheat; and threw upon the sheaves of oats the shadows of festooned vine +garlands. Those sheaves, or stooks—who can describe their metamorphose? +Palest yellow on the pale stubbly ground, they were frosted by the +moonbeams in their crisp fringe of ears, and in the shining straws +projecting here and there. Straws, ears? You would never have guessed +that they were made of anything so mundane. They sat there, propped +against the trees, between the pools of light and the shadows, while the +crickets trilled their cool, shrill song; sat solemnly with an air of +expectation, calling to me, frightening me. And one in particular, with +a great additional bunch on his head, cut by a shadow, was oddly +unaccountable and terrible. After a minute I had to slink away, back +into the garden, like an intruder.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>There are performances also in broad daylight, and then human beings are +admitted as supernumeraries. Such was a certain cattle fair, up the +valley of the Mugnone.</p> + +<p>The beasts were being sold on a piece of rough, freshly reaped ground, +lying between the high road and the river bed, empty of waters, but full +among its shingle of myrrh-scented yellow herbage. The oxen were mostly +of the white Tuscan breeds (those of Romagna are smaller but more +spirited, and of a delicate grey) only their thighs slightly browned; +the scarlet cloth neck-fringes set off, like a garland of geranium, +against the perfect milkiness of backs and necks. They looked, indeed, +these gigantic creatures, as if moulded out of whipped cream or cream +cheese; suggesting no strength, and even no resistance to the touch, +with their smooth surface here and there packed into minute wrinkles, +exactly like the little <i>stracchini</i> cheeses. This impalpable whiteness +of the beasts suited their perfect tameness, passiveness, letting +themselves be led about with great noiseless strides over the stubbly +ridges and up the steep banks; and hustled together, flank against +flank, horns interlaced with horns, without even a sound or movement of +astonishment or disobedience. Never a low or a moo; never a glance round +of their big, long-lashed, blue-brown eyes. Their big jaws move like +millstones, their long tufted tails switch monotonously like pendulums.</p> + +<p>Around them circle peasants, measuring them with the eye, prodding them +with the finger, pulling them by the horns. And every now and then one +of the red-faced men, butchers mainly, who act as go-betweens, +dramatically throws his arms round the neck of some recalcitrant dealer +or buyer, leads him aside, whispering with a gesture like Judas's kiss; +or he clasps together the red hands and arms of contracting parties, +silencing their objections, forcing them to do business. The contrast is +curious between these hot, excited, yelling, jostling human beings, +above whose screaming <i>Dio Canes!</i> and <i>Dio Ladros!</i> the cry of the +iced-water seller recurs monotonously and the silent, impassive +bullocks, white, unreal, inaudible; so still and huge, indeed, that, +seen from above, they look like an encampment, their white flanks like +so much spread canvas in the sunshine. And from a little distance, +against the hillside beyond the river, the already bought yokes of +bullocks look, tethered in a grove of cypresses, like some old mediæval +allegory—an allegory, as usual, nobody knows of what.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>Another performance was that of the woods of Lecceto, and the hermitage +of the same name. You will find them on the map of the district of +Siena; but I doubt very much whether you will find them on the surface +of the real globe, for I suspect them to be a piece of midsummer magic +and nothing more. They had been for years to me among the number (we all +have such) of things familiar but inaccessible; or rather things whose +inaccessibility—due to no conceivable cause—is an essential quality of +their existence. Every now and then from one of the hills you get a +glimpse of the square red tower, massive and battlemented, rising among +the grey of its ilexes, beckoning one across a ridge or two and a +valley; then disappearing again, engulfed in the oak woods, green in +summer, copper-coloured in winter; to reappear, but on the side you +least expected it, plume of ilexes, battlements of tower, as you +twisted along the high-lying vineyards and the clusters of umbrella +pines fringing the hill-tops; and then, another minute and they were +gone.</p> + +<p>We determined to attain them, to be mocked no longer by Lecceto; and +went forth on one endless July afternoon. After much twisting from +hillside to hillside and valley to valley, we at last got into a country +which was strange enough to secrete even Lecceto. In a narrow valley we +were met by a scent, warm, delicious, familiar, which seemed to lead us +(as perfumes we cannot identify will usually do) to ideas very hazy, but +clear enough to be utterly inappropriate: English cottage-gardens, linen +presses of old houses, old-fashioned sitting-rooms full of pots of +<i>pot-pourri</i>; and then, behold, in front of us a hill covered every inch +of it with flowering lavender, growing as heather does on the hills +outside fairyland. And behind this lilac, sun-baked, scented hill, open +the woods of ilexes. The trees were mostly young and with their summer +upper garment of green, fresh leaves over the crackling old ones; trees +packed close like a hedge, their every gap filled with other verdure, +arbutus and hornbeam, fern and heather; the close-set greenery crammed, +as it were, with freshness and solitude.</p> + +<p>These must be the woods of Lecceto, and in their depths the red +battlemented tower of the Hermitage. For I had forgotten to say that for +a thousand years that tower had been the abode of a succession of holy +personages, so holy and so like each other as to have almost grown into +one, an immortal hermit whom Popes and Emperors would come to consult +and be blessed by. Deeper and deeper therefore we made our way into the +green coolness and dampness, the ineffable deliciousness of young leaf +and uncurling fern; till it seemed as if the plantation were getting +impenetrable, and we began to think that, as usual, Lecceto had mocked +us, and would probably appear, if we retraced our steps, in the +diametrically opposite direction. When suddenly, over the tree-tops, +rose the square battlemented tower of red brick. Then, at a turn of the +rough narrow lane, there was the whole place, the tower, a church and +steeple, and some half-fortified buildings, in a wide clearing planted +with olive trees. We tied our pony to an ilex and went to explore the +Hermitage. But the building was enclosed round by walls and hedges, and +the only entrance was by a stout gate armed with a knocker, behind which +was apparently an outer yard and a high wall pierced only by a twisted +iron balcony. So we knocked.</p> + +<p>But that knocker was made only for Popes and Emperors walking about with +their tiaras and crowns and sceptres, like the genuine Popes and +Emperors of Italian folk-tales and of Pinturicchio's frescoes; for no +knocking of ours, accompanied by loud yells, could elicit an answer. It +seemed simple enough to get in some other way; there must be peasants +about at work, even supposing the holy hermit to have ceased to exist. +But climbing walls and hurdles and squeezing between the close tight +ilexes, brought us only to more walls, above which, as above the +oak-woods from a distance, rose the inaccessible battlemented tower. And +a small shepherdess, in a flapping Leghorn hat, herding black and white +baby pigs in a neighbouring stubble-field under the olives, was no more +able than we to break the spell of the Hermitage. And all round, for +miles apparently, undulated the dense grey plumage of the ilex woods.</p> + +<p>The low sun was turning the stubble orange, where the pigs were feeding; +and the distant hills of the Maremma were growing very blue behind the +olive trees. So, lest night should overtake us, we turned our pony's +head towards the city, and traversed the oak-woods and skirted the +lavender hill, rather disbelieving in the reality of the place we had +just been at, save when we saw its tower mock us, emerging again; an +inaccessible, improbable place. The air was scented by the warm lavender +of the hillsides; and by the pines forming a Japanese pattern, black +upon the golden lacquer of the sky. Soon the moon rose, big and yellow, +lighting very gradually the road in whose gloom you could vaguely see +the yokes of white cattle returning from work. By the time we reached +the city hill everything was steeped in a pale yellowish light, with +queer yellowish shadows; and the tall tanneries glared out with their +buttressed balconied top, exaggerated and alarming. Scrambling up the +moonlit steep of Fonte Branda, and passing under a black arch, we found +ourselves in the heart of the gaslit and crowded city, much as if we had +been shot out of a cannon into another planet, and feeling that the +Hermitage of Lecceto was absolutely apocryphal.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>The reason of this midsummer magic—whose existence no legitimate +descendant of Goths and Vandals and other early lovers of Italy can +possibly deny—the reason is altogether beyond my philosophy. The only +word which expresses the phenomenon is the German word, untranslatable, +<i>Bescheerung</i>, a universal giving of gifts, lighting of candles, gilding +of apples, manifestation of marvels, realisation of the desirable and +improbable—to wit, a Christmas Tree. And Italy, which knows no +Christmas trees, makes its <i>Bescheerung</i> in midsummer, gets rid of its +tourist vulgarities, hides away the characteristics of its trivial +nineteenth century, decks itself with magnolia blossoms and water-melons +with awnings and street booths, with mandolins and guitars; spangles +itself with church festivals and local pageants; and instead of +wax-tapers and Chinese lanterns, lights up the biggest golden sun by +day, the biggest silver moon by night, all for the benefit of a few +childish descendants of Goths and Vandals.</p> + +<p>Nonsense apart, I am inclined to think that the specific charm of Italy +exists only during the hot months; the charm which gives one a little +stab now and then and makes one say—"This is Italy."</p> + +<p>I felt that little stab, to which my heart had long become unused, at +the beginning of this very summer in Tuscany, to which belong the above +instances of Italian Midsummer Magic. I was spending the day at a small, +but very ancient, Benedictine Monastery (it was a century old when St. +Peter Igneus, according to the chronicle, went through his celebrated +Ordeal by Fire), now turned into a farm, and hidden, battlemented walls +and great gate towers, among the cornfields near the Arno. It came to me +as the revival of an impression long forgotten, that overpowering sense +that "This was Italy," it recurred and recurred in those same three +words, as I sat under the rose-hedge opposite the water-wheel shed, +garlanded with drying pea-straw; and as I rambled through the chill +vaults, redolent of old wine-vats, into the sudden sunshine and broad +shadows of the cloistered yards.</p> + +<p>That smell was mysteriously connected with it; the smell of wine-vats +mingled, I fancy (though I could not say why), with the sweet faint +smell of decaying plaster and wood-work. One night, as we were driving +through Bologna to wile away the hours between two trains, in the blue +moon-mist and deep shadows of the black porticoed city, that same smell +came to my nostrils as in a dream, and with it a whiff of bygone years, +the years when first I had had this impression of Italian Magic. Oddly +enough, Rome, where I spent much of my childhood and which was the +object of my childish and tragic adoration, was always something apart, +never Italy for my feelings. The Apennines of Lucca and Pistoia, with +their sudden revelation of Italian fields and lanes, of flowers on wall +and along roadside, of bells ringing in the summer sky, of peasants +working in the fields and with the loom and distaff, meant Italy.</p> + +<p>But how much more Italy—and hence longed for how much!—was Lucca, the +town in the plain, with cathedral and palaces. Nay, any of the mountain +hamlets where there was nothing modern, and where against the scarred +brick masonry and blackened stonework the cypresses rose black and +tapering, the trelisses crawled bright green up hill! One never feels, +once out of childhood, such joy as on the rare occasions when I was +taken to such places. A certain farmhouse, with cypresses at the terrace +corner and a great oleander over the wall, was also Italy before it +became my home for several years. Most of all, however, Italy was +represented by certain towns: Bologna, Padua and Vicenza, and Siena, +which I saw mainly in the summer.</p> + +<p>It is curious how one's associations change: nowadays Italy means mainly +certain familiar effects of light and cloud, certain exquisitenesses of +sunset amber against ultramarine hills, of winter mists among misty +olives, of folds and folds of pale blue mountains; it is a country which +belongs to no time, which will always exist, superior to picturesqueness +and romance. But that is but a vague, half-indifferent habit of +enjoyment. And every now and then, when the Midsummer Magic is rife, +there comes to me that very different, old, childish meaning of the +word; as on that day among the roses of those Benedictine cloisters, the +cool shadow of the fig-trees in the yards, with the whiff of that queer +smell, heavy with romance, of wine-saturated oak and crumbling plaster; +and I know with a little stab of joy that this is Italy.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ON_MODERN_TRAVELLING" id="ON_MODERN_TRAVELLING"></a>ON MODERN TRAVELLING</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>There is one charming impression peculiar to railway travelling, that of +the twilight hour in the train; but the charm is greater on a short +journey, when one is not tired and has not the sense of being uprooted, +than on a long one. The movement of the train seems, after sunset, +particularly in the South where night fall is rapid, to take a quality +of mystery. It glides through a landscape of which the smaller details +are effaced, as are likewise effaced the details of the railway itself. +And that rapid gliding brings home to one the instability of the hour, +of the changing light, the obliterating form. It makes one feel that +everything is, as it were, a mere vision; bends of poplared river with +sunset redness in their grey swirls; big towered houses of other days; +the spectral white fruit trees in the dark fields; the pine tops round, +separate, yet intangible, against the sky of unearthy blue; the darkness +not descending, as foolish people say it does, from the skies to the +earth, but rising slowly from the earth where it has gathered fold upon +fold, an emanation thereof, into the sky still pale and luminous, +turning its colour to white, its whiteness to grey, till the stars, mere +little white specks before, kindle one by one.</p> + +<p>Dante, who had travelled so much, and so much against his will, +described this hour as turning backwards the longing of the traveller, +and making the heart grow soft of them who had that day said farewell to +their friends. It is an hour of bitterness, the crueller for mingled +sweetness, to the exile; and in those days when distances were difficult +to overcome, every traveller must in a sense have been somewhat of an +exile. But to us, who have not necessarily left our friends, who may be +returning to them; to us accustomed to coming and going, to us hurried +along in dreary swiftness, it is the hour also when the earth seems full +of peace and goodwill; and our pensiveness is only just sad enough to be +sweet, not sad enough to be bitter. For every hamlet we pass seems +somehow the place where we ought to tarry for all our days; every room +or kitchen, a red square of light in the dimness with dark figures +moving before the window, seems full of people who might be friends; and +the hills we have never beheld before, the bends of rivers, the screen +of trees, seem familiar as if we had lived among them in distant days +which we think of with longing.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>This is the best that can be said, I think, for modern modes of travel. +But then, although I have been jolted about a good deal from country to +country, and slept in the train on my nurse's knees, and watched all my +possessions, from my cardboard donkey and my wax dolls to my manuscripts +and proof-sheets, overhauled on custom-house counters—but then, despite +all this, I have never made a great journey. I have never been to the +United States, nor to Egypt, nor to Russia; and it may well be that I +shall see the Eleusinian gods, Persephone and whoever else imparts +knowledge in ghostland, without ever having set foot in Greece. My +remarks are therefore meant for the less fortunate freight of railways +and steamers; though do I really envy those who see the wonderful places +of the earth before they have dreamed of them, the dream-land of other +men revealed to them for the first time in the solid reality of Cook and +Gaze?</p> + +<p>I would not for the world be misunderstood; I have not the faintest +prejudice against Gaze or Cook. I fervently desire that these gentlemen +may ever quicken trains and cheapen hotels; I am ready to be jostled in +Alpine valleys and Venetian canals by any number of vociferous tourists, +for the sake of the one, schoolmistress, or clerk, or artisan, or +curate, who may by this means have reached at last the land east of the +sun and west of the moon, the St. Brandan's Isle of his or her longings. +What I object to are the well-mannered, well-dressed, often +well-informed persons who, having turned Scotland into a sort of +Hurlingham, are apparently making Egypt, the Holy Land, Japan, into +<i>succursales</i> and <i>dépendances</i> (I like the good Swiss names evoking +couriers and waiters) of their own particularly dull portion of London +and Paris and New York.</p> + +<p>Less externally presentable certainly, but how much more really +venerable is the mysterious class of dwellers in obscure pensions: +curious beings who migrate without perceiving any change of landscape +and people, but only change of fare, from the cheap boarding-house in +Dresden to the cheap boarding-house in Florence, Prague, Seville, Rouen, +or Bruges. It is a class whom one of nature's ingenious provisions, +intended doubtless to maintain a balance of inhabited and uninhabited, +directs unconsciously, automatically to the great cities of the past +rather than to those of the present; so that they sit in what were once +palaces, castles, princely pleasure-houses, discussing over the stony +pears and apples the pleasures and drawbacks, the prices and fares, the +dark staircase against the Sunday ices, of other boarding-houses in +other parts of Europe. A quaint race it is, neither marrying nor giving +in marriage, and renewed by natural selection among the poor in purse +and poor in spirit; but among whom the sentimental traveller, did he +still exist, might pick up many droll and melancholy and perhaps +chivalrous stories.</p> + +<p>My main contention then is merely that, before visiting countries and +towns in the body, we ought to have visited them in the spirit; +otherwise I fear we might as well sit still at home. I do not mean that +we should read about them; some persons I know affect to extract a kind +of pleasure from it; but to me it seems dull work. One wants to visit +unknown lands in company, not with other men's descriptions, but with +one's own wishes and fancies. And very curious such wishes and fancies +are, or rather the countries and cities they conjure up, having no +existence on any part of the earth's surface, but a very vivid one in +one's own mind. Surely most of us, arriving in any interesting place, +are already furnished with a tolerable picture or plan thereof; the +cathedral on a slant or a rising ground, the streets running uphill or +somewhat in a circle, the river here or there, the lie of the land, +colour of the houses, nay, the whole complexion of the town, so and so. +The reality, so far as my own experience goes, never once tallies with +the fancy; but the town of our building is so compact and clear that it +often remains in our memory alongside of the town of stone and brick, +only gradually dissolving, and then leaving sometimes airy splendours +of itself hanging to the solid structures of its prosaic rival.</p> + +<p>Another curious thing to note is how certain real scenes will sometimes +get associated in our minds with places we have never beheld, to such a +point that the charm of the known is actually enhanced by that of the +unknown. I remember a little dell in the High Alps, which, with its huge +larches and mountain pines, its tufts of bee-haunted heather and thyme +among the mossy boulders, its overlooking peak and glimpses of far-down +lakes, became dear to me much less for its own sake than because it +always brought to my mind the word <i>Thrace</i>, and with it a vague +fleeting image of satyrs and mænads, a bar of the music of Orpheus. And +less explicable than this, a certain rolling table-land, not more remote +than the high road to Rome, used at one time to impress me with a +mysterious consciousness of the plains of Central Asia; a ruined byre, a +heap of whitewashed stones, among the thistles and stubbles of a Fife +hillside, had for me once a fascination due to the sense that it must be +like Algeria.</p> + +<p>Has any painter ever fixed on canvas such visions, distinct and +haunting, of lands he had never seen, Claude or Turner, or the Flemish +people who painted the little towered and domed celestial Jerusalem? I +know not. The nearest thing of the kind was a wonderful erection of +brown paper and (apparently) ingeniously arranged shavings, built up in +rocklike fashion, covered with little green toy-box trees, and dotted +here and there with bits of mirror glass and cardboard houses, which +once puzzled me considerably in the parlour of a cottage. "Do tell me +what that is?" at last rose to my lips. "That," answered my hostess very +slowly, "that is a work of my late 'usband; a representation of the +Halps as close as 'e could imagine them, for 'e never was abroad." I +often think of that man "who never was abroad," and of his +representation of the Alps; of the hours of poetic vision, of actual +creation perhaps from sheer strength of longing, which resulted in that +quaint work of art.</p> + +<p>As close as he could imagine them! He had read, then, about the Alps, +read perhaps in Byron or some Radcliffian novel on a stall; and he had +wondered till the vision had come, ready for pasteboard and toy trees +and glue and broken mirror to embody it! And meanwhile I, who am +obliged to cross those very Alps twice every year, I try to do so at +night, to rumble and rattle up and down their gorges in a sleeping-car! +There seems something wrong in this; something wrong in the world's +adjustments, not really in me, for I swear it is respect for the Alps +which makes me thus avoid their sight.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>And here is the moment for stating my plea against our modern, rapid, +hurried travelling: there is to decent minds a certain element of +humiliation therein, as I suspect there is in every <i>royal road</i>. There +is something almost superhumanly selfish in this rushing across +countries without giving them a thought, indeed with no thoughts in us +save of our convenience, inconvenience, food, sleep, weariness. The +whole of Central Europe is thus reduced, for our feelings, to an +arrangement of buffets and custom-houses, its acres checked off on our +sensorium as so many jolts. For it is not often that respectable people +spend a couple of days, or even three, so utterly engrossed in +themselves, so without intellectual relation or responsibility to their +surroundings, living in a moral stratum not above ordinary life, but +below it. Perhaps it is this suspending of connection with all interests +which makes such travelling restful to very busy persons, and agreeable +to very foolish ones. But to decent, active, leisured folk it is, I +maintain, humiliating; humiliating to become so much by comparison in +one's own consciousness; and I suspect that the vague sense of +self-disgust attendant on days thus spent is a sample of the +self-disgust we feel very slightly (and ought to feel very strongly) +whenever our wretched little self is allowed to occupy the whole stage +of our perceptions.</p> + +<p>There is in M. Zola's <i>Bête Humaine</i> a curious picture of a train, one +train after another, full of eager modern life, being whirled from Paris +to Havre through the empty fields, before cottages and old-world houses +miles remote from any town. But in reality is not the train the empty +thing, and are not those solitary houses and pastures that which is +filled with life? The Roman express thus rushes to Naples, Egypt, India, +the far East, the great Austral islands, cutting in two the cypress +avenue of a country house of the Val d'Arno, Neptune with his conch, a +huge figure of the seventeenth century, looking on from an artificial +grotto. What to him is this miserable little swish past of to-day?</p> + +<p>There is only one circumstance when this vacuity, this suspension of all +real life, is in its place; when one is hurrying to some dreadful goal, +a death-bed or perhaps a fresh-made grave. The soul is precipitated +forward to one object, one moment, and cannot exist meanwhile; <i>ruit</i> +not <i>hora</i>, but <i>anima</i>; emptiness suits passion and suffering, for they +empty out the world.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>Be this as it may, it will be a great pity if we lose a certain sense of +wonder at distance overcome, a certain emotion of change of place. This +emotion—paid for no doubt by much impatience and weariness where the +plains were wide, the mountains high, or the roads persistently +straight—must have been one of the great charms of the old mode of +travelling. You savoured the fact of each change in the lie of the +land, of each variation in climate and province, the difference between +the chestnut and the beech zones, for instance, in the south, of the fir +and the larch in the Alps; the various types of window, roof, chimney, +or well, nay, the different fold of the cap or kerchief of the market +women. One inn, one square, one town-hall or church, introduced you +gradually to its neighbours. We feel this in the talk of old people, +those who can remember buying their team at Calais, of elderly ones who +chartered their <i>vetturino</i> at Marseilles or Nice; in certain scraps in +the novels even of Thackeray, giving the sense of this gradual +occupation of the continent by relays. One of Mr. Ruskin's drawings at +Oxford evokes it strongly in me. On what railway journey would he have +come across that little town of Rheinfelden (where is Rheinfelden?), +would he have wandered round those quaint towered walls, over that +bridge, along that grassy walk?</p> + +<p>I can remember, in my childhood, the Alps before they had railways; the +enormous remoteness of Italy, the sense of its lying down there, far, +far away in its southern sea; the immense length of the straight road +from Bellinzona to the lake, the endlessness of the winding valleys. +Now, as I said in relation to that effigy of the Alps by the man who had +never been abroad, I get into my bunk at Milan, and waking up, see in +the early morning crispness, the glass-green Reuss tear past, and the +petticoated turrets of Lucerne.</p> + +<p>Once also (and I hope not once and never again) I made an immense +journey through Italy in a pony-cart. We seemed to traverse all +countries and climates; lush, stifling valleys with ripening maize and +grapes; oak-woods where rows of cypress showed roads long gone, and +crosses told of murders; desolate heaths high on hill-tops, and stony +gorges full of myrtle; green irrigated meadows with plashing +water-wheels, and grey olive groves; so that in the evening we felt +homesick for that distant, distant morning: yet we had only covered as +much ground as from London to Dover! And how immensely far off from +Florence did we not feel when, four hours after leaving its walls, we +arrived in utter darkness at the friendly mountain farm, and sat down to +supper in the big bare room, where high-backed chairs and the plates +above the immense chimney-piece loomed and glimmered in the half-light; +feeling, as if in a dream, the cool night air still in our throats, the +jingle of cart-bells and chirp of wayside crickets still in our ears! +Where was Florence then? As a fact it was just sixteen miles off.</p> + +<p>To travel in this way one should, however, as old John Evelyn advises, +"diet with the natives." Our ancestors (for one takes for granted, of +course, that one's ancestors were <i>milords</i>) were always plentifully +furnished, I observe, with letters of introduction. They were necessary +when persons of distinction carried their bedding on mules and rode in +coaches escorted by blunderbuses, like John Evelyn himself.</p> + +<p>It is this dieting with the natives which brings one fully in contact +with a country's reality. At the tables of one's friends, while being +strolled through the gardens or driven across country, one learns all +about the life, thoughts, feelings of the people; the very gossip of the +neighbourhood becomes instructive, and you touch the past through +traditions of the family. Here the French put up the maypole in 1796; +there the beautiful abbess met her lover; that old bowed man was the one +who struck the Austrian colonel at Milan before 1859. 'Tis the mode of +travelling that constituted the delight and matured the genius of +Stendhal, king of cosmopolitans and grand master of the psychologic +novel. To my kind friends, wherever I have any, but most perhaps in +Northern Italy, is due among other kinds of gratitude, gratitude for +having travelled in this way.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>But there is another way of travelling, more suitable methinks to the +poet. For what does the poet want with details of reality when he +possesses its universal essence, or with local manners and historic +tradition, seeing that his work is for all times and all men?</p> + +<p>Mr. Browning, I was told last year by his dear friends at Asolo, first +came upon the kingdom of Kate the Queen by accident, perhaps not having +heard its name or not remembering it, in the course of a long walking +tour from Venice to the Alps. It was the first time he was in Italy, +nay, abroad, and he had come from London to Venice by sea. That village +of palaces on the hill-top, with the Lombard plain at its feet and the +great Alps at its back; with its legends of the Queen of Cyprus was, +therefore, one of the first impressions of mainland Italy which the poet +could have received. And one can understand <i>Pippa Passes</i> resulting +therefrom, better than from his years of familiarity with Florence. +Pippa, Sebald, Ottima, Jules, his bride, the Bishop, the Spy, nay, even +Queen Kate and her Page, are all born of that sort of misinterpretation +of places, times, and stories which is so fruitful in poetry, because it +means the begetting of things in the image of the poet's own soul, +rather than the fashioning them to match something outside it.</p> + +<p>Even without being a poet you may profit in an especial manner by +travelling in a country where you know no one, provided you have in you +that scrap of poetic fibre without which poets and poetry are caviare to +you. There is no doubt that wandering about in the haunts of the past +undisturbed by the knowledge of the present is marvellously favourable +to the historic, the poetical emotion. The American fresh from the +States thinks of Johnson and Dickens in Fleet Street; at Oxford or +Cambridge he has raptures (are any raptures like these?) into which, +like notes in a chord and overtones in a note, there enters the +deliciousness, the poignancy of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Turner.</p> + +<p>The Oxford or Cambridge man, on the other hand, will have similar +raptures in some boarding-house at Venice or Florence; raptures +rapturous in proportion almost to his ignorance of the language and the +people. Do not let us smile, dear friends, who have lived in Rome till +you are Romans, dear friends, who are Romans yourselves, at the +foreigner with his Baedeker, turning his back to the Colosseum in his +anxiety to reach it, and ashamed as well as unable to ask his way. That +Goth or Vandal, very likely, is in the act of possessing Rome, of making +its wonder and glory his own, consubstantial to his soul; Rome is his +for the moment. It is ours? Alas!</p> + +<p>Nature, Fate, I know not whether the mother or the daughter, they are so +like each other, looks with benignity upon these poor ignorant, solitary +tourists, and gives them what she denies to those who have more leisure +and opportunity. I cannot explain by any other reason a fact which is +beyond all possibility of doubt, and patent to the meanest observer, +namely, that it is always during our first sojourn in a place, during +its earlier part, and more particularly when we are living prosaically +at inns and boarding-houses, that something happens—a procession, a +serenade, a street-fight, a fair, or a pilgrimage—which shows the place +in a particularly characteristic light, and which never occurs again. +The very elements are desired to perform for the benefit of the +stranger. I remember a thunderstorm, the second night I was ever at +Venice, lighting up St. George's, the Salute, the whole lagoon as I have +never seen it since.</p> + +<p>I can testify, also, to having seen the Alhambra under snow, a sparkling +whiteness lying soft on the myrtle hedges, and the reflection of arches +and domes waving, with the drip of melted snow from the roofs, in the +long-stagnant tanks. If I lived in Granada, or went back there, should I +ever see this wonder again? It was so ordered merely because I had just +come, and was lodging at an inn.</p> + +<p>Yes, Fate is friendly to those who travel rarely, who go abroad to see +abroad, not to be warm or cold, or to meet the people they may meet +anywhere else. Honour the tourist; he walks in a halo of romance, The +cosmopolitan abroad desists from flannel shirts because he is always at +home; and he knows to a nicety hours and places which demand a high hat. +But does that compensate?</p> + + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p>There is yet another mystery connected with travelling, but 'tis too +subtle almost for words. All I can ask is, do you know what it is to +meet, say, in some college room, or on the staircase of an English +country house, or even close behind the front door in Bloomsbury, the +photograph of some Florentine relief or French cathedral, the black, +gaunt Piranesi print of some Roman ruin; and to feel suddenly Florence, +Rouen, Reims, or Rome, the whole of their presence distilled, as it +were, into one essence of emotion?</p> + +<p>What does it mean? That in this solid world only delusion is worth +having? Nay; but that nothing can come into the presence of that +capricious despot, our fancy, which has not dwelt six months and six in +the purlieus of its palace, steeped, like the candidates for Ahasuerus's +favour, in sweet odours and myrrh.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="OLD_ITALIAN_GARDENS" id="OLD_ITALIAN_GARDENS"></a>OLD ITALIAN GARDENS</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>There are also modern gardens in Italy, and in such I have spent many +pleasant hours. But that has been part of my life of reality, which +concerns only my friends and myself. The gardens I would speak about are +those in which I have lived the life of the fancy, and into which I may +lead the idle thoughts of my readers.</p> + +<p>It is pleasant to have flowers growing in a garden. I make this remark +because there have been very fine gardens without any flowers at all; in +fact, when the art of gardening reached its height, it took to despising +its original material, as, at one time, people came to sing so well that +it was considered vulgar to have any voice. There is a magnificent +garden near Pescia, in Tuscany, built in terraces against a hillside, +with wonderful waterworks, which give you shower-baths when you expect +them least; and in this garden, surrounded by the trimmest box hedges, +there bloom only imperishable blossoms of variegated pebbles and chalk. +That I have seen with my own eyes. A similar garden, near Genoa, +consisting of marble mosaics and coloured bits of glass, with a peach +tree on a wall, and an old harpsichord on the doorstep to serve instead +of bell or knocker, I am told of by a friend, who pretends to have spent +her youth in it. But I suspect her to be of supernatural origin, and +this garden to exist only in the world of Ariosto's enchantresses, +whence she originally hails. To return to my first remark, it is +pleasant, therefore, to have flowers in a garden, though not necessary. +We moderns have flowers, and no gardens. I must protest against such a +state of things. Still worse is it to suppose that you can get a garden +by running up a wall or planting a fence round a field, a wood or any +portion of what is vaguely called Nature. Gardens have nothing to do +with Nature, or not much. Save the garden of Eden, which was perhaps no +more a garden than certain London streets so called, gardens are always +primarily the work of man. I say primarily, for these outdoor +habitations, where man weaves himself carpets of grass and gravel, cuts +himself walls out of ilex or hornbeam, and fits on as roof so much of +blue day or of starspecked, moonsilvered night, are never perfect until +Time has furnished it all with his weather stains and mosses, and Fancy, +having given notice to the original occupants, has handed it into the +charge of gentle little owls and furgloved bats, and of other tenants, +human in shape, but as shy and solitary as they.</p> + +<p>That is a thing of our days, or little short of them. I should be +curious to know something of early Italian gardens, long ago; long +before the magnificence of Roman Cæsars had reappeared, with their +rapacity and pride, in the cardinals and princes of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries. I imagine those beginnings to have been humble; +the garden of the early middle ages to have been a thing more for +utility than pleasure, and not at all for ostentation. For the garden of +the castle is necessarily small; and the plot of ground between the +inner and outer rows of walls, where corn and hay might be grown for the +horses, is not likely to be given up exclusively to her ladyship's +lilies and gillyflowers; salads and roots must grow there, and onions +and leeks, for it is not always convenient to get vegetables from the +villages below, particularly when there are enemies or disbanded +pillaging mercenaries about; hence, also, there will be fewer roses than +vines, pears, or apples, spaliered against the castle wall. On the other +hand the burgher of the towns begins by being a very small artisan or +shopkeeper, and even when he lends money to kings of England and +Emperors, and is part owner of Constantinople, he keeps his house with +business-like frugality. Whatever they lavished on churches, frescoes, +libraries, and pageants, the citizens, even of the fifteenth century, +whose wives and daughters still mended the linen and waited at table, +are not likely to have seen in their villa more than a kind of rural +place of business, whence to check factors and peasants, where to store +wine and oil; and from whose garden, barely enclosed from the fields, to +obtain the fruit and flowers for their table. I think that mediæval +poetry and tales have led me to this notion. There is little mention in +them of a garden as such: the Provençal lovers meet in orchards—"en un +vergier sor folha d'albespi"—where the May bushes grow among the almond +trees. Boccaccio and the Italians more usually employ the word <i>orto</i>, +which has lost its Latin signification, and is a place, as we learn from +the context, planted with fruit trees and with pot-herbs, the sage which +brought misfortune on poor Simona, and the sweet basil which Lisabetta +watered, as it grew out of Lorenzo's head, "only with rosewater, or that +of orange flowers, or with her own tears." A friend of mine has painted +a picture of another of Boccaccio's ladies, Madonna Dianora, visiting +the garden, which (to the confusion of her virtuous stratagem) the +enamoured Ansaldo has made to bloom in January by magic arts; a little +picture full of the quaint lovely details of Dello's wedding chests, the +charm of the roses and lilies, the plashing fountains and birds singing +against a background of wintry trees and snow-shrouded fields, the +dainty youths and damsels treading their way among the flowers, looking +like tulips and ranunculus themselves in their fur and brocade. But +although in this story Boccaccio employs the word <i>giardino</i> instead of +<i>orto</i>, I think we must imagine that magic flower garden rather as a +corner—they still exist on every hillside—of orchard connected with +the fields of wheat and olives below by the long tunnels of vine +trellis, and dying away into them with the great tufts of lavender and +rosemary and fennel on the grassy bank under the cherry trees. This +piece of terraced ground along which the water—spurted from the +dolphin's mouth or the siren's breasts—runs through walled channels, +refreshing impartially violets and salads, lilies and tall flowering +onions, under the branches of the peach tree and the pomegranate, to +where, in the shade of the great pink oleander tufts, it pours out below +into the big tank, for the maids to rinse their linen in the evening, +and the peasants to fill their cans to water the bedded-out tomatoes, +and the potted clove-pinks in the shadow of the house.</p> + +<p>The Blessed Virgin's garden is like that, where, as she prays in the +cool of the evening, the gracious Gabriel flutters on to one knee +(hushing the sound of his wings lest he startle her) through the pale +green sky, the deep blue-green valley; and you may still see in the +Tuscan fields clumps of cypresses clipped wheel-shape, which might mark +the very spot.</p> + +<p>The transition from this orchard-garden, this <i>orto</i>, of the old Italian +novelists and painters to the architectural garden of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries, is indicated in some of the descriptions and +illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a sort of handbook of +antiquities in the shape of a novel, written by Fra Francesco Colonna, +and printed at Venice about 1480. Here we find trees and hedges treated +as brick and stone work; walls, niches, colonnades, cut out of ilex and +laurel; statues, vases, peacocks, clipped in box and yew; moreover +antiquities, busts, inscriptions, broken altars and triumphal arches, +temples to the graces and Venus, stuck about the place very much as we +find them in the Roman Villas of the late sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries. But I doubt whether the Hypnerotomachia can be taken as +evidence of the gardens of Colonna's own days. I think his descriptions +are rather of what his archæological lore made him long for, and what +came in time, when antiques were more plentiful than in the early +Renaissance, and the monuments of the ancients could be incorporated +freely into the gardens. For the classic Italian garden is essentially +Roman in origin; it could have arisen only on the top of ancient walls +and baths, its shape suggested by the ruins below, its ornaments dug up +in the planting of the trees; and until the time of Julius II. and Leo +X., Rome was still a mediæval city, feudal and turbulent, in whose +outskirts, for ever overrun by baronial squabbles, no sane man would +have built himself a garden; and in whose ancient monuments castles were +more to be expected than belvederes and orangeries. Indeed, by the side +of quaint arches and temples, and labyrinths which look like designs for +a box of toys, we find among the illustrations of Polifilo various +charming woodcuts showing bits of vine trellis, of tank and of fountain, +on the small scale, and in the domestic, quite unclassic style of the +Italian burgher's garden. I do not mean to say that the gardens of +Lorenzo dei Medici, of Catherine Cornaro near Asolo, of the Gonzagas +near Mantua, of the Estensi at Scandiano and Sassuolo, were kitchen +gardens like those of Isabella's basil pot. They had waterworks already, +and aviaries full of costly birds, and enclosures where camels and +giraffes were kept at vast expense, and parks with deer and fishponds; +they were the gardens of the castle, of the farm, magnified and made +magnificent, spread over a large extent of ground. But they were not, +any more than are the gardens of Boiardo's and Ariosto's enchantresses +(copied by Spenser) the typical Italian gardens of later days.</p> + +<p>And here, having spoken of that rare and learned Hypnerotomachia +Poliphili (which, by the way, any one who wishes to be instructed, +sickened, and bored for many days together, may now read in Monsieur +Claudius Popelin's French translation), it is well I should state that +for the rest of this dissertation I have availed myself of neither the +<i>British Museum</i>, nor the <i>National Library of Paris</i>, nor the <i>Library +of South Kensington</i> (the italics seem necessary to show my appreciation +of those haunts of learning), but merely of the light of my own poor +intellect. For I do not think I care to read about gardens among +foolscap and inkstains and printed forms; in fact I doubt whether I +care to read about them at all, save in Boccaccio and Ariosto, Spenser +and Tasso; though I hope that my readers will be more literary +characters than myself.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>The climate of Italy (moving on in my discourse) renders it difficult +and almost impossible to have flowers growing in the ground all through +the summer. After the magnificent efflorescence of May and June the soil +cakes into the consistence of terra-cotta, and the sun, which has +expanded and withered the roses and lilies with such marvellous +rapidity, toasts everything like so much corn or maize. Very few +herbaceous flowers—the faithful, friendly, cheerful zinnias, for +instance—can continue blooming, and the oleander, become more +brilliantly rose-colour with every additional week's drought, triumph +over empty beds. Flowers in Italy are a crop like corn, hemp, or beans; +you must be satisfied with fallow soil when they are over. I say these +things, learned by some bitter experience of flowerless summers, to +explain why Italian flower-gardening mainly takes refuge in pots—from +the great ornamented lemon-jars down to the pots of carnations, double +geraniums, tuberoses, and jasmines on every wall, on every ledge or +window-sill; so much so, in fact, that even the famous sweet basil, and +with it young Lorenzo's head, had to be planted in a pot. Now this +poverty of flower-beds and richness of pots made it easy and natural for +the Italian garden to become, like the Moorish one, a place of mere +greenery and water, a palace whose fountains plashed in sunny yards +walled in with myrtle and bay, in mysterious chambers roofed over with +ilex and box.</p> + +<p>And this it became. Moderately at first; a few hedges of box and +cypress—exhaling its resinous breath in the sunshine—leading up to the +long, flat Tuscan house, with its tower or pillared loggia under the +roof to take the air and dry linen; a few quaintly cut trees set here +and there, along with the twisted mulberry tree where the family drank +its wine and ate its fruit of an evening; a little grove of ilexes to +the back, in whose shade you could sleep while the cicalas buzzed at +noon; some cypresses gathered together into a screen, just to separate +the garden from the olive yard above; gradually perhaps a balustrade set +at the end of the bowling-green, that you might see, even from a +distance, the shimmery blue valley below, the pale blue distant hills; +and if you had it, some antique statue not good enough for the courtyard +of the town house, set on the balustrade or against the tree; also, +where water was plentiful, a little grotto, scooped out under that +semicircular screen of cypresses. A very modest place, but differing +essentially from the orchard and kitchen garden of the mediæval burgher; +and out of which came something immense and unique—the classic Roman +villa.</p> + +<p>For your new garden, your real Italian garden, brings in a new +element—that of perspective, architecture, decoration; the trees used +as building material, the lie of the land as theatre arrangements, the +water as the most docile and multiform stage property. Now think what +would happen when such gardens begin to be made in Rome. The Popes and +Popes' nephews can enclose vast tracts of land, expropriated by some +fine sweeping fiscal injustice, or by the great expropriator, fever, in +the outskirts of the town; and there place their casino, at first a mere +summer-house, whither to roll of spring evenings in stately coaches and +breathe the air with a few friends; then gradually a huge house, with +its suits of guests' chambers, stables, chapel, orangery, collection of +statues and pictures, its subsidiary smaller houses, belvederes, +circuses, and what not! And around the house His Eminence or His Serene +Excellency may lay out his garden. Now go where you may in the outskirts +of Rome you are sure to find ruins—great aqueduct arches, temples +half-standing, gigantic terrace-works belonging to some baths or palace +hidden beneath the earth and vegetation. Here you have naturally an +element of architectural ground-plan and decoration which is easily +followed: the terraces of quincunxes, the symmetrical groves, the long +flights of steps, the triumphal arches, the big ponds, come, as it were, +of themselves, obeying the order of what is below. And from underground, +everywhere, issues a legion of statues, headless, armless, in all stages +of mutilation, who are charitably mended, and take their place, mute +sentinels, white and earth-stained, at every intersecting box hedge, +under every ilex grove, beneath the cypresses of each sweeping hillside +avenue, wherever a tree can make a niche or a bough a canopy. Also +vases, sarcophagi, baths, little altars, columns, reliefs by the score +and hundred, to be stuck about everywhere, let into every wall, clapped +on the top of every gable, every fountain stacked up, in every empty +space.</p> + +<p>Among these inhabitants of the gardens of Cæsar, Lucullus, or Sallust, +who, after a thousand years' sleep, pierce through the earth into new +gardens, of crimson cardinals and purple princes, each fattened on his +predecessors' spoils—Medici, Farnesi, Peretti, Aldobrandini, Ludovisi, +Rospigliosi, Borghese, Pamphili—among this humble people of stone I +would say a word of garden Hermes and their vicissitudes. There they +stand, squeezing from out their triangular sheath the stout pectorals +veined with rust, scarred with corrosions, under the ilexes, whose drip, +drip, through all the rainy days and nights of those ancient times and +these modern ones has gradually eaten away an eye here, a cheek there, +making up for the loss by gilding the hair with lichens, and matting the +beard with green ooze; while patched chin, and restored nose, give them +an odd look of fierce German duellists. Have they been busts of Cæsars, +hastily ordered on the accession of some Tiberius or Nero, hastily sent +to alter into Caligula or Galba, or chucked into the Tiber on to the top +of the monster Emperor's body after that had been properly hauled +through the streets? Or are they philosophers, at your choice, Plato or +Aristotle or Zeno or Epicurus, once presiding over the rolls of poetry +and science in some noble's or some rhetor's library? Or is it possible +that this featureless block, smiling foolishly with its orbless +eye-sockets and worn-out mouth, may have had, once upon a time, a nose +from Phidias's hand, a pair of Cupid lips carved by Praxiteles?</p> + +<h4> +III</h4> + +<p>A book of seventeenth-century prints—"The Gardens of Rome, with their +plans raised and seen in perspective, drawn and engraved by Giov: +Battista Falda, at the printing-house of Gio: Giacomo de' Rossi, at the +sign of Paris, near the church of Peace in Rome"—brings home to one, +with the names of the architects who laid them out, that these Roman +villas are really a kind of architecture cut out of living instead of +dead timber. To this new kind of architecture belongs a new kind of +sculpture. The antiques do well in their niches of box and laurel under +their canopy of hanging ilex boughs; they are, in their weather-stained, +mutilated condition, another sort of natural material fit for the +artist's use; but the old sculpture being thus in a way assimilated +through the operation of earth, wind, and rain, into tree-trunks and +mossy boulders, a new sculpture arises undertaking to make of marble +something which will continue the impression of the trees and waters, +wave its jagged outlines like the branches, twist its supple limbs like +the fountains. It is high time that some one should stop the laughing +and sniffing at this great sculpture, of Bernini and his Italian and +French followers, the last spontaneous outcome of the art of the +Renaissance, of the decorative sculpture which worked in union with +place and light and surroundings. Mistaken as indoor decoration, as free +statuary in the sense of the antique, this sculpture has after all +given us the only works which are thoroughly right in the open air, +among the waving trees, the mad vegetation which sprouts under the +moist, warm Roman sky, from every inch of masonry and travertine. They +are comic of course looked at in all the details, those angels who smirk +and gesticulate with the emblems of the passion, those popes and saints +who stick out colossal toes and print on the sky gigantic hands, on the +parapets of bridges and the gables of churches; but imagine them +replaced by fine classic sculpture—stiff mannikins struggling with the +overwhelming height, the crushing hugeness of all things Roman; little +tin soldiers lost in the sky instead of those gallant theatrical +creatures swaggering among the clouds, pieces of wind-torn cloud, +petrified for the occasion, themselves! Think of Bernini's Apollo and +Daphne, a group unfortunately kept in a palace room, with whose right +angles its every outline swears, but which, if placed in a garden, would +be the very summing up of all garden and park impressions in the waving, +circling lines; yet not without a niminy piminy restraint of the +draperies, the limbs, the hair turning to clustered leaves, the body +turning to smooth bark, of the flying nymph and the pursuing god.</p> + +<p>The great creation of this Bernini school, which shows it as the +sculpture born of gardens, is the fountain. No one till the seventeenth +century had guessed what might be the relations of stone and water, each +equally obedient to the artist's hand. The mediæval Italian fountain is +a tank, a huge wash-tub fed from lions' mouths, as if by taps, and +ornamented, more or less, with architectural and sculptured devices. In +the Renaissance we get complicated works of art—Neptunes with tridents +throne above sirens squeezing their breasts, and cupids riding on +dolphins, like the beautiful fountain of Bologna; or boys poised on one +foot, holding up tortoises, like Rafael's Tartarughe of Piazza Mattei; +more elaborate devices still, like the one of the villa at Bagnaia, near +Viterbo. But these fountains do equally well when dry, equally well +translated into bronze or silver: they are wonderful saltcellars or +fruit-dishes; everything is delightful except the water, which spurts in +meagre threads as from a garden-hose. They are the fitting ornament of +Florence, where there is pure drinking water only on Sundays and +holidays, of Bologna, where there is never any at all.</p> + +<p>The seventeenth century made a very different thing of its +fountains—something as cool, as watery, as the jets which gurgle and +splash in Moorish gardens and halls, and full of form and fancy withal, +the water never alone, but accompanied by its watery suggestion of power +and will and whim. They are so absolutely right, these Roman fountains +of the Bernini school, that we are apt to take them as a matter of +course, as if the horses had reared between the spurts from below and +the gushes and trickles above; as if the Triton had been draped with the +overflowing of his horn; as if the Moor with his turban, the Asiatic +with his veiled fall, the solemn Egyptian river god, had basked and +started back with the lion and the seahorse among the small cataracts +breaking into foam in the pond, the sheets of water dropping, +prefiguring icicles, lazily over the rocks, all stained black by the +north winds and yellow by the lichen, all always, always, in those Roman +gardens and squares, from the beginning of time, natural objects, +perfect and not more to be wondered at than the water-encircled rocks of +the mountains and seashores. Such art as this cannot be done justice to +with the pen; diagrams would be necessary, showing how in every case the +lines of the sculpture harmonise subtly, or clash to be more subtly +harmonised, with the movement, the immensely varied, absolutely +spontaneous movement of the water; the sculptor, become infinitely +modest, willing to sacrifice his own work, to make it uninteresting in +itself, as a result of the hours and days he must have spent watching +the magnificent manners and exquisite tricks of natural waterfalls—nay, +the mere bursting alongside of breakwaters, the jutting up between +stones, of every trout-stream and milldam. It is not till we perceive +its absence (in the fountains, for instance, of modern Paris) that we +appreciate this Roman art of water sculpture. Meanwhile we accept the +fountains as we accept the whole magnificent harmony of nature and +art—nature tutored by art, art fostered by nature—of the Roman villas, +undulating, with their fringe of pines and oaks, over the hillocks and +dells of the Campagna, or stacked up proudly, vineyards and woods all +round, on the steep sides of Alban and Sabine hills.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>This book of engravings of the villas of the Serene Princes +Aldobrandini, Pamphili, Borghese, and so forth, brings home to us +another fact, to wit, that the original owners and layers-out thereof +must have had but little enjoyment of them. There they go in their big +coaches, among the immense bows and curtsies of the ladies and gentlemen +and dapper ecclesiastics whom they meet; princes in feathers and laces, +and cardinals in silk and ermine. But the delightful gardens on which +they are being complimented are meanwhile mere dreadful little +plantations, like a nurseryman's squares of cabbages, you would think, +rather than groves of ilexes and cypresses, for, alas, the greatest +princes, the most magnificent cardinals, cannot bribe Time, or hustle +him to hurry up.</p> + +<p>And thus the gardens were planted and grew. For whom? Certainly not for +the men of those days, who would doubtless have been merely shocked +could they have seen or foreseen.... For their ghosts perhaps? Scarcely. +A friend of mine, in whose information on such matters I have implicit +belief, assures me that it is not the <i>whole</i> ghosts of the ladies and +cavaliers of long ago who haunt the gardens; not the ghost of their +everyday, humdrum likeness to ourselves, but the ghost of certain +moments of their existence, certain rustlings, and shimmerings of their +personality, their waywardness, momentary, transcendent graces and +graciousnesses, unaccountable wistfulness and sorrow, certain looks of +the face and certain tones of the voice (perhaps none of the steadiest), +things that seemed to die away into nothing on earth, but which have +permeated their old haunts, clung to the statues with the ivy, risen and +fallen with the plash of the fountains, and which now exhale in the +breath of the honeysuckle and murmur in the voice of the birds, in the +rustle of the leaves and the high, invading grasses. There are some +verses of Verlaine's, which come to me always, on the melancholy minuet +tune to which Monsieur Fauré has set them, as I walk in those Italian +gardens, Roman and Florentine, walk in the spirit as well as in the +flesh:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Votre âme est un paysage choisi</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Jouant du luth et quasi</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Au calme clair de lune triste et beau</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>And this leads me to wonder what these gardens must be when the key has +turned in their rusty gates, and the doorkeeper gone to sleep under the +gun hanging from its nail. What must such places be, Mondragone, for +instance, near Frascati, and the deserted Villa Pucci near Signa, during +the great May nights, when my own small scrap of garden, not beyond +kitchen sounds and servants' lamps, is made wonderful and magical by the +scents which rise up, by the song of the nightingales, the dances of +the fireflies, copying in the darkness below the figures which are +footed by the nimble stars overhead. Into such rites as these, which the +poetry of the past practises with the poetry of summer nights, one durst +not penetrate, save after leaving one's vulgar flesh, one's habits, +one's realities outside the gate.</p> + +<p>And since I have mentioned gates, I must not forget one other sort of +old Italian garden, perhaps the most poetical and pathetic—the garden +that has ceased to exist. You meet it along every Italian highroad or +country lane; a piece of field, tender green with the short wheat in +winter, brown and orange with the dried maize husks and seeding sorghum +in summer, the wide grass path still telling of coaches that once rolled +in; a big stone bench, with sweeping shell-like back under the rosemary +bushes; and, facing the road, between solemnly grouped cypresses or +stately marshalled poplars, a gate of charming hammered iron standing +open between its scroll-work masonry and empty vases, under its covered +escutcheon. The gate that leads to nowhere.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ABOUT_LEISURE" id="ABOUT_LEISURE"></a>ABOUT LEISURE</h3> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sancte Hieronyme, ora pro nobis!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;"><i>Litany of the Saints.</i></span><br /> +</p> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>Hung in my room, in such a manner as to catch my eye on waking, is an +excellent photograph of Bellini's <i>St. Jerome in his Study</i>. I am aware +that it is not at all by Bellini, but by an inferior painter called +Catena, and I am, therefore, careful not to like it very much. It +occupies that conspicuous place not as a work of art but as an <i>aid to +devotion</i>. For I have instituted in my mind, and quite apart from the +orthodox cultus, a special devotion to St. Jerome as the Patron of +Leisure.</p> + +<p>And here let me forestall the cavillings of those who may object that +Hieronymus, whom we call Jerome (born in Dalmatia and died at Bethlehem +about 1500 years ago), was on the contrary a busy, even an overworked +Father of the Church; that he wrote three stout volumes of polemical +treatises, besides many others (including the dispute "concerning +seraphs"), translated the greater part of the Bible into Latin, edited +many obscure texts, and, on the top of it all, kept up an active +correspondence with seven or eight great ladies, a circumstance alone +sufficient to prove that he could not have had much time to spare. I +know. But all that either has nothing to do with it or serves to explain +why St. Jerome was afterwards rewarded by the gift of Leisure, and is, +therefore, to be invoked by all those who aspire at enjoying the same. +For the painters of all schools, faithful to the higher truth, have +agreed in telling us that: first, St. Jerome had a most delightful +study, looking out on the finest scenery; secondly, that he was never +writing, but always reading or looking over the edge of his book at the +charming tables and chairs and curiosities, or at the sea and mountains +through the window; and thirdly, <i>that he was never interrupted by +anybody</i>. I underline this item, because on it, above all the others, is +founded my certainty that St. Jerome is the only person who ever +enjoyed perfect leisure, and, therefore, the natural patron and +advocate of all the other persons to whom even imperfect leisure is +refused. In what manner this miracle was compassed is exactly what I +propose to discuss in this essay. An excellent <i>Roman Catholic</i> friend +of mine, to whom I propounded the question, did indeed solve it by +reminding me that Heaven had made St. Jerome a present of a lion who +slept on his door-mat, after which, she thought, his leisure could take +care of itself. But although this answer seems decisive, it really only +begs the question; and we are obliged to inquire further into the <i>real +nature of St. Jerome's lion</i>. This formula has a fine theological ring, +calling to mind Hieronymus's own treatise, <i>Of the Nature of Seraphs</i>, +and I am pleased to have found anything so suitable to the arrangements +of a Father of the Church. Nevertheless, I propose to investigate into +the subject of Leisure with a method rather human and earthly than in +any way transcendental.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>We must evidently begin by a little work of defining; and this will be +easiest done by considering first what Leisure is not. In the first +place, it is one of those things about which we erroneously suppose that +other people have plenty of it, and we ourselves have little or none, +owing to our thoroughly realising only that which lies nearest to our +eye—to wit, <i>ourself</i>. How often do we not go into another person's +room and say, "Ah! <i>this</i> is a place where one can feel peaceful!" How +often do we not long to share the peacefulness of some old house, say in +a deserted suburb, with its red fruit wall and its cedar half hiding the +windows, or of some convent portico, with glimpses of spaliered orange +trees. Meanwhile, in that swept and garnished spacious room, in that +house or convent, is no peacefulness to share; barely, perhaps, enough +to make life's two ends meet. For we do not see what fills up, chokes +and frets the life of others, whereas we are uncomfortably aware of the +smallest encumbrance in our own; in these matters we feel quickly enough +the mote in our own eye, and do not perceive the beam in our +neighbour's.</p> + +<p>And leisure, like its sister, peace, is among those things which are +internally felt rather than seen from the outside. (Having written this +part of my definition, it strikes me that I have very nearly given away +St. Jerome and St. Jerome's lion, since any one may say, that probably +that famous leisure of his was just one of the delusions in question. +But this is not the case. St. Jerome really had leisure, at least when +he was painted; I know it to be a fact; and, for the purposes of +literature, I require it to be one. So I close this parenthesis with the +understanding that so much is absolutely settled.)</p> + +<p>Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so +much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. We speak of <i>leisure +time</i>, but what we really mean thereby is <i>time in which we can feel at +leisure</i>. What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. +It has nothing to do with being idle, or having time on one's hands, +although it does involve a certain sense of free space about one, as we +shall see anon. There is time and to spare in a lawyer's waiting-room, +but there is no leisure, neither do we enjoy this blessing when we have +to wait two or three hours at a railway junction. On both these +occasions (for persons who can profit thereby to read the papers, to +learn a verb, or to refresh memories of foreign travel, are distinctly +abnormal) we do not feel in possession of ourselves. There is something +fuming and raging inside us, something which seems to be kicking at our +inner bulwarks as we kicked the cushions of a tardy four-wheeler in our +childhood. St. Jerome, patron of leisure, never behaved like that, and +his lion was always engrossed in pleasant contemplation of the +cardinal's hat on the peg. I have said that when we are bored we feel as +if possessed by something not quite ourselves (much as we feel possessed +by a stone in a shoe, or a cold in the head); and this brings me to a +main characteristic of leisure: it implies that we feel free to do what +we like, and that we have plenty of space to do it in. This is a very +important remark of mine, and if it seem trite, that is merely because +it is so wonderfully true. Besides, it is fraught with unexpected +consequences.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>The worst enemy of leisure is boredom: it is one of the most active +pests existing, fruitful of vanity and vexation of spirit. I do not +speak merely of the wear and tear of so-called social amusements, though +that is bad enough. We kill time, and kill our better powers also, as +much in the work undertaken to keep off <i>ennui</i> as in the play. Count +Tolstoi, with his terrible eye for shams, showed it all up in a famous +answer to M. Dumas <i>fils</i>. Many, many of us, work, he says, in order to +escape from ourselves. Now, we should not want to escape from ourselves; +we ought to carry ourselves, the more unconsciously the better, along +ever widening circles of interest and activity; we should bring +ourselves into ever closer contact with everything that is outside us; +we should be perpetually giving ourselves from sheer loving instinct; +but how can we give ourself if we have run away from it, or buried it at +home, or chained it up in a treadmill? Good work is born of the love of +the Power-to-do for the Job-to-be-done; nor can any sort of chemical +arrangements, like those by which Faust's pupil made <i>Homunculus</i> in +his retort, produce genuinely living, and in its turn fruitful, work. +The fear of boredom, the fear of the moral going to bits which boredom +involves, encumbers the world with rubbish, and exhibitions of pictures, +publishers' announcements, lecture syllabuses, schemes of charitable +societies, are pattern-books of such litter. The world, for many people, +and unfortunately, for the finer and nobler (those most afraid of +<i>ennui</i>) is like a painter's garret, where some half-daubed canvas, +eleven feet by five, hides the Jaconda on the wall, the Venus in the +corner, and blocks the charming tree-tops, gables, and distant meadows +through the window.</p> + +<p>Art, literature, and philanthropy are notoriously expressions no longer +of men's and women's thoughts and feelings, but of their dread of +finding themselves without thoughts to think or feelings to feel. +So-called practical persons know this, and despise such employments as +frivolous and effeminate. But are they not also, to a great extent, +frightened of themselves and running away from boredom? See your +well-to-do weighty man of forty-five or fifty, merchant, or soldier, or +civil servant; the same who thanks God <i>he</i> is no idler. Does he really +require more money? Is he more really useful as a colonel than as a +major, in a wig or cocked hat than out of it? Is he not shuffling money +from one heap into another, making rules and regulations for others to +unmake, preparing for future restless idlers the only useful work which +restless idleness can do, the carting away of their predecessor's +litter?</p> + +<p>Nor is this all the mischief. Work undertaken to kill time, at best to +safeguard one's dignity, is clearly not the work which one was born to, +since that would have required no such incentives. Now, trying to do +work one is not fit for, implies the more or less unfitting oneself to +do, or even to be, the something for which one had facilities. It means +competing with those who are utterly different, competing in things +which want a totally different kind of organism; it means, therefore, +offering one's arms and legs, and feelings and thoughts to those blind, +brutal forces of adaptation which, having to fit a human character into +a given place, lengthen and shorten it, mangling it unconcernedly in +the process.</p> + +<p>Say one was naturally adventurous, a creature for open air and quick, +original resolves. Is he the better for a deliberative, sedentary +business, or it for him? There are people whose thought poises on +distant points, swirls and pounces, and gets the prey which can't be got +by stalking along the bushes; there are those who, like divers, require +to move head downwards, feet in the air, an absurd position for going up +hill. There are people who must not feel æsthetically, in order (so Dr. +Bain assures us) that they may be thorough-paced, scientific thinkers; +others who cannot get half a page or fifty dates by heart because they +assimilate and alter everything they take in.</p> + +<p>And think of the persons born to contemplation or sympathy, who, in the +effort to be prompt and practical, in the struggle for a fortune or a +visiting-list lose, atrophy (alas, after so much cruel bruising!) their +inborn exquisite powers.</p> + +<p>The world wants useful inhabitants. True. But the clouds building +bridges over the sea, the storms modelling the peaks and flanks of the +mountains, are a part of the world; and they want creatures to sit and +look at them and learn their life's secrets, and carry them away, +conveyed perhaps merely in altered tone of voice, or brightened colour +of eye, to revive the spiritual and physical hewers of wood and drawers +of water. For the poor sons and daughters of men require for sustenance, +as well as food and fuel, and intellect and morals, the special +mysterious commodity called <i>charm</i>....</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>And here let me open a parenthesis of lamentation over the ruthless +manner in which our century and nation destroys this precious thing, +even in its root and seed. <i>Charm</i> is, where it exists, an intrinsic and +ultimate quality; it makes our actions, persons, life, significant and +desirable, apart from anything they may lead to, or any use to which +they can be put. Now we are allowing ourselves to get into a state where +nothing is valued, otherwise than as a means; where to-day is +interesting only because it leads up to to-morrow; and the flower is +valued only on account of the fruit, and the fruit, in its turn, on +account of the seed.</p> + +<p>It began, perhaps, with the loss of that sacramental view of life and +life's details which belonged to Judaism and the classic religions, and +of which even Catholicism has retained a share; making eating, drinking, +sleeping, cleaning house and person, let alone marriage, birth, and +death, into something grave and meaningful, not merely animal and +accidental; and mapping out the years into days, each with its symbolic +or commemorative meaning and emotion. All this went long ago, and +inevitably. But we are losing nowadays something analogous and more +important: the cultivation and sanctification not merely of acts and +occasions but of the individual character.</p> + +<p>Life has been allowed to arrange itself, if such can be called +arrangement, into an unstable, jostling heap of interests, ours and +other folk's, serious and vacuous, trusted to settle themselves +according to the line of least resistance (that is, of most breakage!) +and the survival of the toughest, without our sympathy directing the +choice. As the days of the year have become confused, hurried, and +largely filled with worthless toil and unworthy trouble, so in a +measure, alas, our souls! We rarely envy people for being delightful; we +are always ashamed of mentioning that any of our friends are virtuous; +we state what they have done, or do, or are attempting; we state their +chances of success. Yet success may depend, and often does, on greater +hurrying and jostling, not on finer material and workmanship, in our +hurrying times. The quick method, the rapid worker, the cheap object +quickly replaced by a cheaper—these we honour; we want the last new +thing, and have no time to get to love our properties, bodily and +spiritual. 'Tis bad economy, we think, to weave such damask, linen, and +brocade as our fathers have left us; and perhaps this reason accounts +for our love of <i>bric-à -brac</i>; we wish to buy associations ready made, +like that wealthy man of taste who sought to buy a half-dozen old +statues, properly battered and lichened by the centuries, to put in his +brand new garden. With this is connected—I mean this indifference to +what folk <i>are</i> as distinguished from what they <i>do</i>—the self-assertion +and aggressiveness of many worthy persons, men more than women, and +gifted, alas, more than giftless; the special powers proportionately +accompanied by special odiousness. Such persons cultivate themselves, +indeed, but as fruit and vegetables for the market, and, with good luck +and trouble, possibly <i>primeurs</i>: concentrate every means, chemical +manure and sunshine, and quick each still hard pear or greenish +cauliflower into the packing-case, the shavings and sawdust, for export. +It is with such well-endowed persons that originates the terrible mania +(caught by their neighbours) of tangible work, something which can be +put alongside of others' tangible work, if possible with some visible +social number attached to it. So long as this be placed on the stall +where it courts inspection, what matter how empty and exhausted the soul +which has grown it? For nobody looks at souls except those who use them +for this market-gardening.</p> + +<p>Dropping metaphor; it is woeful to see so many fine qualities sacrificed +to <i>getting on</i>, independent of actual necessity; getting on, no matter +why, on to the road <i>to no matter what</i>. And on that road, what +bitterness and fury if another passes in front! Take up books of +science, of history and criticism, let alone newspapers; half the space +is taken up in explaining (or forestalling explanations), that the sage, +hero, poet, artist said, did, or made the particular thing before some +other sage, hero, poet, artist; and that what the other did, or said, or +made, was either a bungle, or a plagiarism, or worst of all—was +something <i>obvious</i>. Hence, like the bare-back riders at the Siena +races, illustrious persons, and would-be illustrious, may be watched +using their energies, not merely in pressing forward, but in hitting +competitors out of the way with inflated bladders—bladders filled with +the wind of conceit, not merely the breath of the lungs. People who +might have been modest and gentle, grow, merely from self-defence, +arrogant and aggressive; they become waspish, contradictory, unfair, who +were born to be wise and just, and well-mannered. And to return to the +question of <i>Charm</i>, they lose, soil, maim in this scuffle, much of this +most valuable possession; their intimate essential quality, their +natural manner of being towards nature and neighbours and ideas; their +individual shape, perfume, savour, and, in the sense of herbals, their +individual <i>virtue</i>. And when, sometimes, one comes across some of it +remaining, it is with the saddened feeling of finding a delicate plant +trampled by cattle or half eaten up by goats.</p> + +<p>Alas, alas, for charm! People are busy painting pictures, writing poems, +and making music all the world over, and busy making money for the +buying or hiring thereof. But as to that charm of character which is +worth all the music and poetry and pictures put together, how the good +common-sense generations do waste it.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>Now I suspect that <i>Charm</i> is closely related to <i>Leisure</i>. Charm is a +living harmony in the individual soul. It is organised internally, the +expression of mere inborn needs, the offspring of free choice; and as it +is the great giver of pleasure to others, sprung probably from pleasure +within ourselves; making life seem easier, more flexible, even as life +feels in so far easier and more flexible to those who have it. Now even +the best work means struggle, if not with the world and oneself, at +least with difficulties inanimate and animate, pressure and resistance +which make the individual soul stronger, but also harder and less +flower-like, and often a trifle warped by inevitable routine. Hence +Charm is not the nursling of our hours of work, but the delicate and +capricious foster-child of Leisure. For, as observed, Leisure suspends +the pull and push, the rough-and-ready reciprocity of man and +circumstance. 'Tis in leisure that the soul is free to grow by its own +laws, grow inwardly organised and harmonious; its fine individual +hierarchism to form feelings and thoughts, each taking rank and motion +under a conscious headship. 'Tis, I would show, in leisure, while +talking with the persons who are dear, while musing on the themes that +are dearer even than they, that voices learn their harmonious modes, +intonation, accent, pronunciation of single words; all somehow falling +into characteristic pattern, and the features of the face learn to move +with that centred meaning which oftentimes makes homeliness itself more +radiant than beauty. Nay more, may it not be in Leisure, during life's +pauses, that we learn to live, what for and how?</p> + + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p><i>Life's Pauses.</i> We think of Leisure in those terms, comparing it with +the scramble, at best the bustle, of work. But this might be a delusion, +like that of the moving shore and the motionless boat. St. Jerome, our +dear patron of Leisure, is looking dreamily over the top of his desk, +listening to the larks outside the wide window, watching the white +sailing clouds. Is he less alive than if his eyes were glued to the +page, his thoughts focussed on one topic, his pen going scratch-scratch, +his soul oblivious of itself? He might be writing fine words, thinking +fine thoughts; but would he have had fine thoughts to think, fine words +to write, if he had always been busy thinking and writing, and had kept +company not with the larks and the clouds and the dear lion on the mat, +but only with the scratching pen?</p> + +<p>For, when all is said and done, 'tis during work we spend, during +leisure we amass those qualities which we barter for ever with other +folk, and the act of barter is <i>life</i>. Anyhow, metaphysics apart, and to +return to St. Jerome. This much is clear, that if Leisure were not a +very good thing, this dear old saint would never have been made its +heavenly patron.</p> + +<p>But your discourse, declares the stern reader or he of sicklier +conscience, might be a masked apology for idleness; and pray how many +people would work in this world if every one insisted on having Leisure? +The question, moralising friend, contains its own answer: if every one +insisted on a share of Leisure, every one also would do a share of work. +For as things stand, 'tis the superfluity of one man which makes the +poverty of the other. And who knows? The realisation that Leisure is a +good thing, a thing which every one must have, may, before very long, +set many an idle man digging his garden and grooming his horses, many an +idle woman cooking her dinner and rubbing her furniture. Not merely +because one half of the world (the larger) will have recognised that +work from morning to night is not in any sense living; but also because +the other half may have learned (perhaps through grumbling experience) +that doing nothing all day long, incidentally consuming or spoiling the +work of others, is not <i>living</i> either. The recognition of the necessity +of Leisure, believe me, will imply the recognition of the necessity of +work, as its moral—I might say its <i>hygienic</i>, as much as its economic, +co-relative.</p> + +<p>For Leisure (and the ignorance of this truth is at the bottom of much +<i>ennui</i>)—Leisure implies a superabundance not only of time but of the +energy needed to spend time pleasantly. And it takes the finest activity +to be truly at Leisure. Since Being at Leisure is but a name for being +active from an inner impulse instead of a necessity; moving like a +dancer or skater for the sake of one's inner rhythm instead of moving, +like a ploughman or an errand-boy, for the sake of the wages you get for +it. Indeed, for this reason, the type of all Leisure is <i>art</i>.</p> + +<p>But this is an intricate question, and time, alas! presses. We must +break off this leisurely talk, and betake ourselves each to his +business—let us hope not to his treadmill! And, as we do so, the more +to enjoy our work if luckily useful, the less to detest it if, alas! as +so often in our days, useless; let us invoke the good old greybeard, +painted enjoying himself between his lion and his quail in the +wide-windowed study; and, wishing for leisure, invoke its patron. Give +us spare time, Holy Jerome, and joyful energy to use it. Sancte +Hieronyme, ora pro nobis!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="RAVENNA_AND_HER_GHOSTS" id="RAVENNA_AND_HER_GHOSTS"></a>RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS</h3> + + +<p>My oldest impression of Ravenna, before it became in my eyes the abode +of living friends as well as of outlandish ghosts, is of a melancholy +spring sunset at Classe.</p> + +<p>Classe, which Dante and Boccaccio call in less Latin fashion Chiassi, is +the place where of old the fleet <i>(classis)</i> of the Romans and +Ostrogoths rode at anchor in the Adriatic. And Boccaccio says that it is +(but I think he over-calculates) at three miles distance from Ravenna. +It is represented in the mosaic of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, dating from +the reign of Theodoric, by a fine city wall of gold <i>tesseræ</i> (facing +the representation of Theodoric's town palace with the looped-up +embroidered curtains) and a strip of ultramarine sea, with two +rowing-boats and one white blown-out sail upon it. Ravenna, which is now +an inland town, was at that time built in a lagoon; and we must picture +Classe in much the same relation to it that Malamocco or the Port of +Lido is to Venice, the open sea-harbour, where big ships and flotillas +were stationed, while smaller craft wound through the channels and +sand-banks up to the city. But now the lagoon has dried up, the Adriatic +has receded, and there remains of Classis not a stone, save, in the +midst of stagnant canals, rice marsh and brown bogland, a gaunt and +desolate church, with a ruinous mildewed house and a crevassed round +tower by its side.</p> + +<p>It seemed to me that first time, and has ever since seemed, no Christian +church, but the temple of the great Roman goddess Fever. The gates stood +open, as they do all day lest inner damp consume the building, and a +beam from the low sun slanted across the oozy brown nave and struck a +round spot of glittering green on the mosaic of the apse. There, in the +half dome, stood rows and rows of lambs, each with its little tree and +lilies, shining out white from the brilliant green grass of Paradise, +great streams of gold and blue circling around them, and widening +overhead into lakes of peacock splendour. The slanting sunbeam which +burnished that spot of green and gold and brown mosaic, fell also +across the altar steps, brown and green in their wet mildew like the +ceiling above. The floor of the church, sunk below the level of the +road, was as a piece of boggy ground leaving the feet damp, and +breathing a clammy horror on the air. Outside the sun was setting behind +a bank of solid grey clouds, faintly reddening their rifts and sending a +few rose-coloured streaks into the pure yellow evening sky. Against that +sky stood out the long russet line, the delicate cupolaed silhouette of +the sear pinewood recently blasted by frost. While, on the other side, +the marsh stretched out beyond sight, confused in the distance with grey +clouds its lines of bare spectral poplars picked out upon its green and +the greyness of the sky. All round the church lay brown grass, livid +pools, green rice-fields covered with clear water reflecting the red +sunset streaks; and overhead, driven by storm from the sea, the white +gulls, ghosts you might think, of the white-sailed galleys of Theodoric, +still haunting the harbour of Classis.</p> + +<p>Since then, as I hinted, Ravenna has become the home of dear friends, +to which I periodically return, in autumn or winter or blazing summer, +without taking thought for any of the ghosts. And the impressions of +Ravenna are mainly those of life; the voices of children, the plans of +farmers, the squabbles of local politics. I am waked in the morning by +the noises of the market; and opening my shutters, look down upon green +umbrellas and awnings spread over baskets of fruit and vegetables, and +heaps of ironware and stalls of coloured stuffs and gaudy kerchiefs. The +streets are by no means empty. A steam tramcar puffs slowly along the +widest of them; and, in the narrower, you have perpetually to squeeze +against a house to make room for a clattering pony-cart, a jingling +carriole, or one of those splendid bullock-waggons, shaped like an +old-fashioned cannon-cart with spokeless wheels and metal studdings. +There are no mediæval churches in Ravenna, and very few mediæval houses. +The older palaces, though practically fortified, have a vague look of +Roman villas; and the whole town is painted a delicate rose and apricot +colour, which, particularly if you have come from the sad coloured +cities of Tuscany, gives it a Venetian, and (if I may say so) +chintz-petticoat flowered-kerchief cheerfulness. And the life of the +people, when you come in contact with it, also leaves an impression of +provincial, rustic bustle. The Romagnas are full of crude socialism. The +change from rice to wheat-growing has produced agricultural discontent; +and conspiracy has been in the blood of these people, ever since Dante +answered the Romagnolo Guido that his country would never have peace in +its heart. The ghosts of Byzantine emperors and exarchs, of Gothic kings +and mediæval tyrants must be laid, one would think, by socialist +meetings and electioneering squabbles; and perhaps by another movement, +as modern and as revolutionary, which also centres in this big +historical village, the reclaiming of marshland, which may bring about +changes in mode of living and thinking such as Socialism can never +effect; nay, for all one knows, changes in climate, in sea and wind and +clouds. <i>Bonification</i>, reclaiming, that is the great word in Ravenna; +and I had scarcely arrived last autumn, before I found myself whirled +off, among dog-carts and <i>chars-à -bancs</i>, to view reclaimed land in the +cloudless, pale blue, ice-cold weather. On we trotted, with a great +consulting of maps and discussing of expenses and production, through +the flat green fields and meadows marked with haystacks; and jolted +along a deep sandy track, all that remains of the Roméa, the pilgrims' +way from Venice to Rome, where marsh and pool begin to interrupt the +well-kept pastures, and the line of pine woods to come nearer and +nearer. Over the fields, the frequent canals, and hidden ponds, circled +gulls and wild fowl; and at every farm there was a little crowd of +pony-carts and of gaitered sportsmen returning from the marshes. A sense +of reality, of the present, of useful, bread-giving, fever-curing +activity came by sympathy, as I listened to the chatter of my friends, +and saw field after field, farm after farm, pointed out where, but a +while ago, only swamp grass and bushes grew, and cranes and wild duck +nested. In ten, twenty, fifty years, they went on calculating, Ravenna +will be able to diminish by so much the town-rates; the Romagnas will be +able to support so many more thousands of inhabitants; and that merely +by employing the rivers to deposit arable soil torn from the mountain +valleys; the rivers—Po and his followers, as Dante called them—which +have so long turned this country into marsh; the rivers which, in a +thousand years, cut off Ravenna from her sea.</p> + +<p>We turned towards home, greedy for tea, and mightily in conceit with +progress. But before us, at a turn of the road, appeared Ravenna, its +towers and cupolas against a bank of clouds, a piled-up heap of sunset +fire; its canal, barred with flame, leading into its black vagueness, a +spectre city. And there, to the left, among the bare trees, loomed the +great round tomb of Theodoric. We jingled on, silent and overcome by the +deathly December chill.</p> + +<p>That is the odd thing about Ravenna. It is, more than any of the Tuscan +towns, more than most of the Lombard ones, modern, and full of rough, +dull, modern life; and the past which haunts it comes from so far off, +from a world with which we have no contact. Those pillared basilicas, +which look like modern village churches from the street, affect one with +their almost Moorish arches, their enamelled splendour of ultramarine, +russet, sea-green and gold mosaics, their lily fields and peacock's +tails in mosque-like domes, as great stranded hulks, come floating +across Eastern seas and drifted ashore among the marsh and rice-field. +The grapes and ivy berries, the pouting pigeons, the palm-trees and +pecking peacocks, all this early symbolism with its association of +Bacchic, Eleusinian mysteries, seems, quite as much as the actual +fragments of Grecian capitals, the discs and gratings of porphyry and +alabaster, so much flotsam and jetsam cast up from the shipwreck of an +older Antiquity than Rome's; remnants of early Hellas, of Ionia, perhaps +of Tyre.</p> + +<p>I used to feel this particularly in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, or, as it is +usually called, <i>Classe dentro</i>, the long basilica built by Theodoric, +outrivalled later by Justinian's octagon church of Saint Vitalis. There +is something extremely Hellenic in feeling (however un-Grecian in form) +in the pearly fairness of the delicate silvery white columns and +capitals; in the gleam of white, on golden ground, and reticulated with +jewels and embroideries, of the long band of mosaic virgins and martyrs +running above them. The virgins, with their Byzantine names—Sancta +Anastasia, Sancta Anatolia, Sancta Eulalia, Sancta Euphemia—have big +kohled eyes and embroidered garments fantastically suggesting some +Eastern hieratic dancing-girl; but they follow each other, in single +file (each with her lily or rose-bush sprouting from the gauze, green +mosaic), with erect, slightly balanced gait like the maidens of the +Panathenaic procession, carrying, one would say, votive offerings to the +altar, rather than crowns of martyrdom; all stately, sedate, as if +drilled by some priestly ballet-master, all with the same wide eyes and +set smile as of early Greek sculpture. There is no attempt to +distinguish one from the other. There are no gaping wounds, tragic +attitudes, wheels, swords, pincers or other attributes of martyrdom. And +the male saints on the wall opposite are equally unlike mediæval +Sebastians and Laurences, going, one behind the other, in shining white +togas, to present their crowns to Christ on His throne. Christ also, in +this Byzantine art, is never the Saviour. He sits, an angel on each +side, on His golden seat, clad in purple and sandalled with gold, +serene, beardless, wide-eyed like some distant descendant of the +Olympic Jove with his mantle of purple and gold.</p> + +<p>This church of Saint Apollinaris contains a chapel specially dedicated +to the saint, which sums up that curious impression of Hellenic +pre-Christian cheerfulness. It is encrusted with porphyry and <i>giallo +antico</i>, framed with delicate carved ivy wreaths along the sides, and +railed in with an exquisite piece of alabaster openwork of vines and +grapes, as on an antique altar. And in a corner of this little temple, +which seems to be waiting for some painter enamoured of Greece and +marble, stands the episcopal seat of the patron saint of the church, the +saint who took his name from Apollo; an alabaster seat, wide-curved and +delicate, in whose back you expect to find, so striking is the +resemblance, the relief of dancing satyrs of the chair of the Priest of +Dionysus.</p> + +<p>As I was sitting one morning, as was my wont, in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, +which (like all Ravenna churches) is always empty, a woman came in, with +a woollen shawl over her head, who, after hunting anxiously about, asked +me where she would find the parish priest. "It is," she said, "for the +Madonna's milk. My husband is a labourer out of work, he has been ill, +and the worry of it all has made me unable to nurse my little baby. I +want the priest, to ask him to get the Madonna to give me back my milk." +I thought, as I listened to the poor creature, that there was but little +hope of motherly sympathy from that Byzantine Madonna in purple and gold +mosaic magnificence, seated ceremoniously on her throne like an antique +Cybele.</p> + +<p>Little by little one returns to one's first impression, and recognises +that this thriving little provincial town, with its socialism and its +<i>bonification</i> is after all a nest of ghosts, and little better than the +churchyard of centuries.</p> + +<p>Never, surely, did a town contain so many coffins, or at least thrust +coffins more upon one's notice. The coffins are stone, immense oblong +boxes, with massive sloping lids horned at each corner, or trough-like +things with delicate sea-wave patternings, figures of toga'd saints and +devices of palm-trees, peacocks, and doves, the carving made clearer by +a picking out of bright green damp. They stand about in all the +churches, not walled in, but quite free in the aisles, the chapels, and +even close to the door. Most of them are doubtless of the fifth or sixth +century, others perhaps barbarous or mediæval imitations; but they all +equally belong to the ages in general, including our own, not +curiosities or heirlooms, but serviceable furniture, into which +generations have been put, and out of which generations have been turned +to make room for later corners. It strikes one as curious at first to +see, for instance, the date 1826 on a sarcophagus probably made under +Theodoric or the Exarchs, but that merely means that a particular +gentleman of Ravenna began that year his lease of entombment. They have +passed from hand to hand (or, more properly speaking, from corpse to +corpse) not merely by being occasionally discovered in digging +foundations, but by inheritance, and frequently by sale. My friends +possess a stone coffin, and the receipt from its previous owner. The +transaction took place some fifty years ago; a name (they are cut very +lightly) changed, a slab or coat-of-arms placed with the sarcophagus in +a different church or chapel, a deed before the notary—that was all. +What became of the previous tenant? Once at least he surprised posterity +very much; perhaps it was in the case of that very purchase for which my +friends still keep the bill. I know not; but the stone-mason of the +house used to relate that, some forty years ago, he was called in to +open a stone coffin; when, the immense horned lid having been rolled +off, there was seen, lying in the sarcophagus, a man in complete armour, +his sword by his side and vizor up, who, as they cried out in +astonishment, instantly fell to dust. Was he an Ostrogothic knight, some +Gunther or Volker turned Roman senator, or perhaps a companion of Guido +da Polenta, a messmate of Dante, a playfellow of Francesca?</p> + +<p>Coffins being thus plentiful, their occupants (like this unknown +warrior) have played considerable part in the gossip of Ravenna. It is +well known, for instance, that Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius, +sister of Arcadius and Honorius, and wife to a Visigothic king, sat for +centuries enthroned (after a few years of the strangest adventures) +erect, inside the alabaster coffin, formerly plated with gold, in the +wonderful little blue mosaic chapel which bears her name. You could see +her through a hole, quite plainly; until, three centuries ago, some +inquisitive boys thrust in a candle, and burned Theodosius's daughter to +ashes. Dante also is buried under a little cupola at the corner of a +certain street, and there was, for many years, a strange doubt about his +bones. Had they been mislaid, stolen, mixed up with those of ordinary +mortals? The whole thing was shrouded in mystery. That street corner +where Dante lies, a remote corner under the wing of a church, resembled, +until it was modernised and surrounded by gratings, and filled with +garlands and inscriptions to Mazzini, nothing so much as the corner of +Dis where Dante himself found Farinata and Cavalcante. It is crowded +with stone coffins; and, passing there in the twilight, one might expect +to see flames upheaving their lids, and the elbows and shoulders of +imprisoned followers of Epicurus.</p> + +<p>Only once, so far as I know, have the inhabitants of Ravenna, Byzantine, +mediæval, or modern, wasted a coffin; but one is very glad of that once. +I am speaking of a Roman sarcophagus, on which you can still trace the +outlines of garlands, which stands turned into a cattle trough, behind +the solitary farm in the depth of the forest of St. Vitalis. Round it +the grass is covered in summer by the creeping tendrils of the white +clematis; and, in winter, the great thorn bushes and barberries and oaks +blaze out crimson and scarlet and golden. The big, long-horned, grey +cows pass to and fro to be milked; and the shaggy ponies who haunt the +pine wood come there to drink. It is better than housing no matter how +many generations, jurisconsults, knights, monks, tyrants and persons of +quality, among the damp and the stale incense of a church!</p> + +<p>Enough of coffins! There are live things at Ravenna and near Ravenna; +amongst others, though few people realise its presence, there is the +sea.</p> + +<p>It was on the day of the fish auction that I first went there. In the +tiny port by the pier (for Ravenna has now no harbour) they were making +an incredible din over the emptyings of the nets; pretty, mottled, +metallic fish, and slimy octopuses and sepias and flounders, looking +like pieces of sea-mud. The fishing-boats, mostly from the Venetian +lagoon, were moored along the pier, wide-bowed things, with eyes in the +prow like the ships of Ulysses; and bigger craft, with little castles +and weather-vanes and saints' images and penons on the masts like the +galleys of St. Ursula as painted by Carpaccio; but all with the splendid +orange sail, patched with suns, lions, and coloured stripes, of the +Northern Adriatic. The fishermen from Chioggia, their heads covered with +the high scarlet cap of the fifteenth century, were yelling at the +fishmongers from town; and all round lounged artillerymen in their white +undress and yellow straps, who are encamped for practice on the sands, +and whose carts and guns we had met rattling along the sandy road +through the marsh.</p> + +<p>On the pier we were met by an old man, very shabby and unshaven, who had +been the priest for many years, with a salary of twelve pounds a year, +of Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori, a little Gothic church in the marsh, where +he had discovered and rubbed slowly into existence (it took him two +months and heaven knows how many pennyworths of bread!) some valuable +Giottesque frescoes. He was now chaplain of the harbour, and had turned +his mind to maritime inventions, designing lighthouses, and shooting +dolphins to make oil of their blubber. A kind old man, but with the odd +brightness of a creature who has lived for years amid solitude and +fever; a fit companion for the haggard saints whom he brought, one by +one, in robes of glory and golden halos, to life again in his forlorn +little church.</p> + +<p>While we were looking out at the sea, where a little flotilla of yellow +and cinnamon sails sat on the blue of the view-line like parrots on a +rail, the sun had begun to set, a crimson ball, over the fringe of pine +woods. We turned to go. Over the town, the place whence presently will +emerge the slanting towers of Ravenna, the sky had become a brilliant, +melancholy slate-blue; and apparently out of its depths, in the early +twilight, flowed the wide canal between its dim banks fringed with +tamarisk. No tree, no rock, or house was reflected in the jade-coloured +water, only the uniform shadow of the bank made a dark, narrow band +alongside its glassiness. It flows on towards the invisible sea, whose +yellow sails overtop the grey marshland. In thick smooth strands of +curdled water it flows lilac, pale pink, opalescent according to the +sky above, reflecting nothing besides, save at long intervals the +spectral spars and spider-like tissue of some triangular fishing-net; a +wan and delicate Lethe, issuing, you would say, out of a far-gone past +into the sands and the almost tideless sea.</p> + +<p>Other places become solemn, sad, or merely beautiful at sunset. But +Ravenna, it seems to me, grows actually ghostly; the Past takes it back +at that moment, and the ghosts return to the surface.</p> + +<p>For it is, after all, a nest of ghosts. They hang about all those +silent, damp churches; invisible, or at most tantalising one with a +sudden gleam which may, after all, be only that of the mosaics, an +uncertain outline which, when you near it, is after all only a pale grey +column. But one feels their breathing all round. They are legion, but I +do not know who they are. I only know that they are white, luminous, +with gold embroideries to their robes, and wide, painted eyes, and that +they are silent. The good citizens of Ravenna, in the comfortable +eighteenth century, filled the churches with wooden pews, convenient, +genteel in line and colour, with their names and coats-of-arms in full +on the backs. But the ghosts took no notice of this measure; and there +they are, even among these pews themselves.</p> + +<p>Bishops and Exarchs, and jewelled Empresses, and half Oriental +Autocrats, saints and bedizened court-ladies, and barbarian guards and +wicked chamberlains; I know not what they are. Only one of the ghosts +takes a shape I can distinguish, and a name I am certain of. It is not +Justinian or Theodora, who stare goggle-eyed from their mosaic in San +Vitale mere wretched historic realities; <i>they</i> cannot haunt. The +spectre I speak of is Theodoric. His tomb is still standing, outside the +town in an orchard; a great round tower, with a circular roof made +(heaven knows how) of one huge slab of Istrian stone, horned at the +sides like the sarcophagi, or vaguely like a Viking's cap. The ashes of +the great king have long been dispersed, for he was an Arian heretic. +But the tomb remains, intact, a thing which neither time nor earthquake +can dismantle.</p> + +<p>In the town they show a piece of masonry, the remains of a doorway, and +a delicate, pillared window, built on to a modern house, which is +identified (but wrongly I am told) as Theodoric's palace, by its +resemblance to the golden palace with the looped-up curtains on the +mosaic of the neighbouring church. Into the wall of this building is +built a great Roman porphyry bath, with rings carved on it, to which +time has adjusted a lid of brilliant green lichen. There is no more. But +Theodoric still haunts Ravenna. I have always, ever since I have known +the town, been anxious to know more about Theodoric, but the accounts +are jejune, prosaic, not at all answering to what that great king, who +took his place with Attila and Sigurd in the great Northern epic, must +have been. Historians represent him generally as a sort of superior +barbarian, trying to assimilate and save the civilisation he was bound +to destroy; an Ostrogothic king trying to be a Roman emperor; a military +organiser and bureaucrat, exchanging his birthright of Valhalla for +heaven knows what aulic red-tape miseries. But that is unsatisfactory. +The real man, the Berserker trying to tame himself into the Cæsar of a +fallen, shrunken Rome, seems to come out in the legend of his remorse +and visions, pursued by the ghosts of Boetius and Symmachus, the wise +men he had slain in his madness.</p> + +<p>He haunts Ravenna, striding along the aisles of her basilicas, riding +under the high moon along the dykes of her marshes, surrounded by +white-stoled Romans, and Roman ensigns with eagles and crosses; but +clad, as the Gothic brass-worker of Innsbruck has shown him, in no Roman +lappets and breastplate, but in full mail, with beaked steel shoes and +steel gorget, his big sword drawn, his vizor down, mysterious, the +Dietrich of the Nibelungenlied, Theodoric King of the Goths.</p> + +<p>These are the ghosts that haunt Ravenna, the true ghosts haunting only +for such as can know their presence. But Ravenna, almost alone among +Italian cities, possesses moreover a complete ghost-story of the most +perfect type and highest antiquity, which has gone round the world and +become known to all people. Boccaccio wrote it in prose; Dryden re-wrote +it in verse; Botticelli illustrated it; and Byron summed up its quality +in one of his most sympathetic passages. After this, to re-tell it were +useless, had I not chanced to obtain, in a manner I am not at liberty to +divulge, another version, arisen in Ravenna itself, and written, most +evidently, in fullest knowledge of the case. Its language is the +barbarous Romagnol dialect of the early fifteenth century, and it lacks +all the Tuscan graces of the Decameron. But it possesses a certain air +of truthfulness, suggesting that it was written by some one who had +heard the facts from those who believed in them, and who believed in +them himself; and I am therefore decided to give it, turned into +English.</p> + + +<h4>THE LEGEND</h4> + +<p>About that time (when Messer Guido da Pollenta was lord of Ravenna) men +spoke not a little of what happened to Messer Nastasio de Honestis, son +of Messer Brunoro, in the forest of Classis. Now the forest of Classis +is exceeding vast, extending along the sea-shore between Ravenna and +Cervia for the space of some fifteen miles, and has its beginning near +the church of Saint Apollinaris, which is in the marsh; and you reach +it directly from the gate of the same name, but also, crossing the River +Ronco where it is easier to ford, by the gate called Sisa, beyond the +houses of the Rasponis. And this forest aforesaid is made of many kinds +of noble and useful trees, to wit, oaks, both free standing and in +bushes, ilexes, elms, poplars, bays, and many plants of smaller growth +but great dignity and pleasantness, as hawthorns, barberries, +blackthorn, blackberry, brier-rose, and the thorn called marrucca, which +bears pods resembling small hats or cymbals, and is excellent for +hedging. But principally does this noble forest consist of pine-trees, +exceeding lofty and perpetually green; whence indeed the arms of this +ancient city, formerly the seat of the Emperors of Rome, are none other +than a green pine-tree.</p> + +<p>And the forest aforesaid is well stocked with animals, both such as run +and creep, and many birds. The animals are foxes, badgers, hares, +rabbits, ferrets, squirrels, and wild boars, the which issue forth and +eat the young crops and grub the fields with incredible damage to all +concerned. Of the birds it would be too long to speak, both of those +which are snared, shot with cross-bows, or hunted with the falcon; and +they feed off fish in the ponds and streams of the forest, and grasses +and berries, and the pods of the white vine (clematis) which covers the +grass on all sides. And the manner of Messer Nastasio being in the +forest was thus, he being at the time a youth of twenty years or +thereabouts, of illustrious birth, and comely person and learning and +prowess, and modest and discreet bearing. For it so happened that, being +enamoured of the daughter of Messer Hostasio de Traversariis, the +damsel, who was lovely, but exceeding coy and shrewish, would not +consent to marry him, despite the desire of her parents, who in +everything, as happens with only daughters of old men (for Messer +Hostasio was well stricken in years), sought only to please her. +Whereupon Messer Nastasio, fearing lest the damsel might despise his +fortunes, wasted his substance in presents and feastings, and joustings, +but all to no avail.</p> + +<p>When it happened that having spent nearly all he possessed and ashamed +to show his poverty and his unlucky love before the eyes of his +townsmen, he betook him to the forest of Classis, it being autumn, on +the pretext of snaring birds, but intending to take privily the road to +Rimini and thence to Rome, and there seek his fortune. And Nastasio took +with him fowling-nets, and bird-lime, and tame owls, and two horses (one +of which was ridden by his servant), and food for some days; and they +alighted in the midst of the forest, and slept in one of the +fowling-huts of cut branches set up by the citizens of Ravenna for their +pleasure.</p> + +<p>And it happened that on the afternoon of the second day (and it chanced +to be a Friday) of his stay in the forest, Messer Nastasio, being +exceeding sad in his heart, went forth towards the sea to muse upon the +unkindness of his beloved and the hardness of his fortune. Now you +should know that near the sea, where you can clearly hear its roaring +even on windless days there is in that forest a clear place, made as by +the hand of man, set round with tall pines even like a garden, but in +the shape of a horse-course, free from bushes and pools, and covered +with the finest greensward. Here, as Nastasio sate him on the trunk of a +pine—the hour was sunset, the weather being uncommon clear—he heard a +rushing sound in the distance, as of the sea; and there blew a +death-cold wind; and then came sounds of crashing branches, and neighing +of horses, and yelping of hounds, and halloes and horns. And Nastasio +wondered greatly, for that was not the hour for hunting; and he hid +behind a great pine trunk, fearing to be recognised. And the sounds came +nearer, even of horns, and hounds, and the shouts of huntsmen; and the +bushes rustled and crashed, and the hunt rushed into the clearing, +horsemen and foot, with many hounds. And behold, what they pursued was +not a wild boar, but something white that ran erect, and it seemed to +Messer Nastasio, as if it greatly resembled a naked woman; and it +screamed piteously.</p> + +<p>Now when the hunt had swept past, Messer Nastasio rubbed his eyes and +wondered greatly. But even as he wondered, and stood in the middle of +the clearing, behold, part of the hunt swept back, and the thing which +they pursued ran in a circle on the greensward, shrieking piteously. And +behold, it was a young damsel, naked, her hair loose and full of +brambles, with only a tattered cloth round her middle. And as she came +near to where Messer Nastasio was standing (but no one of the hunt +seemed to heed him) the hounds were upon her, barking furiously, and a +hunter on a black horse, black even as night. And a cold wind blew and +caused Nastasio's hair to stand on end; and he tried to cry out, and to +rush forward, but his voice died in his throat and his limbs were heavy, +and covered with sweat, and refused to move.</p> + +<p>Then the hounds fastening on the damsel threw her down, and he on the +black horse turned swiftly, and transfixed her, shrieking dismally, with +a boar-spear. And those of the hunt galloped up, and wound their horns; +and he of the black horse, which was a stately youth habited in a coat +of black and gold, and black boots and black feathers on his hat, threw +his reins to a groom, and alighted and approached the damsel where she +lay, while the huntsmen were holding back the hounds and winding their +horns. Then he drew a knife, such as are used by huntsmen, and driving +its blade into the damsel's side, cut out her heart, and threw it, all +smoking, into the midst of the hounds. And a cold wind rustled through +the bushes, and all had disappeared, horses, and huntsmen, and hounds. +And the grass was untrodden as if no man's foot or horse's hoof had +passed there for months.</p> + +<p>And Messer Nastasio shuddered, and his limbs loosened, and he knew that +the hunter on the black horse was Messer Guido Degli Anastagi, and the +damsel Monna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara. Messer Guido +had loved the damsel greatly, and been flouted by her, and leaving his +home in despair, had been killed on the way by robbers, and Madonna +Filomena had died shortly after. The tale was still fresh in men's +memory, for it had happened in the city of Ravenna barely five years +before. And those whom Nastasio had seen, both the hunter and the lady, +and the huntsmen and horses and hounds, were the spirits of the dead.</p> + +<p>When he had recovered his courage, Messer Nastasio sighed and said unto +himself: "How like is my fate to that of Messer Guido! Yet would I +never, even when a spectre, without weight or substance, made of wind +and delusion, and arisen from hell, act with such cruelty towards her I +love." And then he thought: "Would that the daughter of Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis might hear of this! For surely it would cause her to +relent!" But he knew that his words would be vain, and that none of the +citizens of Ravenna, and least of all the damsel of the Traversari, +would believe them, but rather esteem him a madman.</p> + +<p>Now it came about that when Friday came round once more, Nastasio, by +some chance, was again walking in the forest-clearing by the great +pines, and he had forgotten; when the sea began to roar, and a cold wind +blew; and there came through the forest the sound of horses and hounds, +causing Messer Nastasio's hair to stand up and his limbs to grow weak as +water. And he on the black horse again pursued the naked damsel, and +struck here with his boar-spear, and cut out her heart and threw it to +the hounds; the which hunter and damsel were the ghosts of Messer Guido, +and of Madonna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara, arisen out +of Hell. And in this fashion did it happen for three Fridays following, +the sea beginning to moan, the cold wind to blow and the spirits to +hunt the deceased damsel at twilight in the clearing among the +pine-trees.</p> + +<p>Now when Messer Nastasio noticed this, he thanked Cupid, which is the +Lord of all Lovers, and devised in his mind a cunning plan. And he +mounted his horse and returned to Ravenna, and gave out to his friends +that he had found a treasure in Rome; and that he was minded to forget +the damsel of the Traversari and seek another wife. But in reality he +went to certain money-lenders, and gave himself into bondage, even to be +sold as a slave to the Dalmatian pirates if he could not repay his loan. +And he published that he desired to take to him a wife, and for that +reason would feast all his friends and the chief citizens of Ravenna, +and regale them with a pageant in the pine forest, where certain foreign +slaves of his should show wonderful feats for their delight. And he sent +forth invitations, and among them to Messer Pavolo de Traversariis and +his wife and daughter. And he bid them for a Friday, which was also the +eve of the Feast of the Dead.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he took to the pine forest carpenters and masons, and such as +paint and gild cunningly, and waggons of timber, and cut stone for +foundations, and furniture of all kinds; and the waggons were drawn by +four and twenty yoke of oxen, grey oxen of the Romagnol breed. And he +caused the artisans to work day and night, making great fires of dry +myrtle and pine branches, which lit up the forest all around. And he +caused them to make foundations, and build a pavilion of timber in the +clearing which is the shape of a horse-course, surrounded by pines. The +pavilion was oblong, raised by ten steps above the grass, open all round +and reposing on arches and pillars; and there was a projecting <i>abacus</i> +under the arches over the capitals, after the Roman fashion; and the +pillars were painted red, and the capitals red also picked out with gold +and blue, and a shield with the arms of the Honestis on each. The roof +was raftered, each rafter painted with white lilies on a red ground, and +heads of youths and damsels; and the roof outside was made of wooden +tiles, shaped like shells and gilded. And on the top of the roof was a +weather-vane; and the vane was a figure of Cupid, god of love, +cunningly carved of wood and painted like life, as he flies, poised in +air, and shoots his darts on mortals. He was winged and blindfolded, to +show that love is inconstant and no respecter of persons; and when the +wind blew, he turned about, and the end of his scarf, which was beaten +metal, swung in the wind. Now when the pavilion was ready, within six +days of its beginning, carpets were spread on the floor, and seats +placed, and garlands of bay and myrtle slung from pillar to pillar +between the arches. And tables were set, and sideboards covered with +gold and silver dishes and trenchers; and a raised place, covered with +arras, was made for the players of fifes and drums and lutes; and tents +were set behind for the servants, and fires prepared for cooking meat. +Whole oxen and sheep were brought from Ravenna in wains, and casks of +wine, and fruit and white bread, and many cooks, and serving-men, and +musicians, all habited gallantly in the colours of the Honestis, which +are vermilion and white, parti-coloured, with black stripes; and they +wore doublets laced with gold, and on their breast the arms of the +house of Honestis, which are a dove holding a leaf.</p> + +<p>Now on Friday the eve of the Feast of the Dead, all was ready, and the +chief citizens of Ravenna set out for the forest of Classis, with their +wives and children and servants, some on horseback, and others in wains +drawn by oxen, for the tracks in that forest are deep. And when they +arrived, Messer Nastasio welcomed them and thanked them all, and +conducted them to their places in the pavilion. Then all wondered +greatly at its beauty and magnificence, and chiefly Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis; and he sighed, and thought within himself, "Would that my +daughter were less shrewish, that I might have so noble a son-in-law to +prop up my old age!" They were seated at the tables, each according to +their dignity, and they ate and drank and praised the excellence of the +cheer; and flowers were scattered on the tables, and young maidens sang +songs in praise of love, most sweetly. Now when they had eaten their +fill, and the tables been removed, and the sun was setting between the +pine-trees, Messer Nastasio caused them all to be seated facing the +clearing, and a herald came forward, in the livery of the Honestis, +sounding his trumpet and declaring in a loud voice that they should now +witness a pageant, the which was called the Mystery of Love and Death. +Then the musicians struck up, and began a concert of fifes and lutes, +exceeding sweet and mournful. And at that moment the sea began to moan, +and a cold wind to blow: a sound of horsemen and hounds and horns and +crashing branches came through the wood; and the damsel, the daughter of +the Lord of Gambellara, rushed naked, her hair streaming and her veil +torn, across the grass, pursued by the hounds, and by the ghost of +Messer Guido on the black horse, the nostrils of which were filled with +fire. Now when the ghost of Messer Guido struck that damsel with the +boar-spear, and cut out her heart, and threw it, while the others wound +their horns, to the hounds, and all vanished, Messer Nastasio de +Honestis, seizing the herald's trumpet, blew in it, and cried in a loud +voice, "The Pageant of Death and Love! The Pageant of Death and Love! +Such is the fate of cruel damsels!" and the gilt Cupid on the roof swung +round creaking dreadfully, and the daughter of Messer Pavolo uttered a +great shriek and fell on the ground in a swoon.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Here the Romagnol manuscript comes to a sudden end, the outer sheet +being torn through the middle. But we know from the Decameron that the +damsel of the Traversari was so impressed by the spectre-hunt she had +witnessed that she forthwith relented towards Nastagio degli Onesti, and +married him, and that they lived happily ever after. But whether or not +that part of the pine forest of Classis still witnesses this ghostly +hunt, we have no means of knowing.</p> + +<p>On the whole, I incline to think that, when the great frost blasted the +pines (if not earlier) the ghosts shifted quarters from the forest of +Classis to the church of the same name, on that forest's brink. +Certainly there seems nothing to prevent them. Standing in the midst of +those uninhabited rice-fields and marshes, the church of Classis is yet +always open, from morning till night; the great portals gaping, no +curtain interposed. Open and empty; mass not even on Sundays; empty of +human beings, open to the things of without. The sunbeams enter through +the open side windows, cutting a slice away from that pale, greenish +twilight; making a wedge of light on the dark, damp bricks; bringing +into brief prominence some of the great sarcophagi, their peacocks and +palm-trees picked out in vivid green lichen. Snakes also enter, the +Sacristan tells me, and I believe it, for within the same minute, I saw +a dead and a living one among the arum leaves at the gate. Is that +little altar, a pagan-looking marble table, isolated in the midst of the +church, the place where they meet, pagan creatures claiming those +Grecian marbles? Or do they hunt one another round the aisles and into +the crypt, slithering and hissing, the souls of Guido degli Anastagi, +perhaps, and of his cruel lady love?</p> + +<p>Such are Ravenna and Classis, and the Ghosts that haunt them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_COOK-SHOP_AND_THE_FOWLING-PLACE" id="THE_COOK-SHOP_AND_THE_FOWLING-PLACE"></a>THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE</h3> + + +<p>In the street of the Almond and appropriately close to the covered-over +canal (Rio Terra) of the Assassins, there is a cook-shop which has +attracted my attention these two last months in Venice. For in its +window is a row of tiny corpses—birds, raw, red, with agonised plucked +little throats, the throats through which the sweet notes came. And the +sight brings home to me more than the suggestion of a dish at supper, +savoury things of the size of a large plum, on a cushion of polenta....</p> + +<p>I had often noticed the fowling-places which stand out against the sky +like mural crowns on the low hills of Northern Italy; Bresciana is the +name given to the thing, from the province, doubtless, of its origin. +Last summer, driving at the foot of the Alps of Friuli, such a place was +pointed out to me on a green knoll; it marked the site of a village of +Collalto, once the fief of the great family of that name, which had +died, disappeared, church and all, after the Black Death of the +fourteenth century.</p> + +<p>The strangeness of the matter attracted me; and I set out, the next +morning, to find the fowling-place. I thought I must have lost my way, +and was delighting in the radiance of a perfectly fresh, clear, already +autumnal morning, walking along through the flowery grass fields in +sight of the great mountains, when, suddenly, there I was before the +uncanny thing, the Bresciana. Uncanny in its odd shape of walled and +moated city of clipped bushes, tight-closed on its hill-top, with its +Guelph battlements of hornbeam against the pale blue sky. And uncannier +for its mysterious delightfulness. Imagine it set in the loveliest mossy +grass, full of delicate half-Alpine flowers; beautiful butterflies +everywhere about; and the sort of ditch surrounding it overgrown with +blackberries, haws, sloes, ivy, all manner of berries; a sort of false +garden of paradise for the poor birds.</p> + +<p>But when I craned over the locked wicket and climbed on to the ladder +alongside, what I saw was more uncanny yet. I looked down on to rows of +clipped, regular, hornbeam hedges, with grass paths between them, +maze-like. A kind of Versailles for the birds, you might think. Only, in +the circular grass plot from which those green hedges and paths all +radiated, something alarming: an empty cage hung to a tree. And going +the round of the place I discovered that between the cut hornbeam +battlements of the circular enclosure there was a wreath of thin wire +nooses, almost invisible, in which the poor little birds hang +themselves. It seems oddly appropriate that this sinister little place, +with its vague resemblance to that clipped garden in which Mantegna's +allegorical Vices are nesting, should be, in fact, a cemetery; that tiny +City of Dis of the Birds, on its green hillock in front of the great +blue Alps, being planted on those villagers dead of the Plague.</p> + +<p>The fowling-place began to haunt me, and I was filled with a perhaps +morbid desire to know more of its evil rites. After some inquiry, I +introduced myself accordingly to the most famous fowler of the +neighbourhood, the owner of a wineshop at Martignacco. He received me +with civility, and expounded his trade with much satisfaction; an +amiable, intelligent old man, with sufficient of Italian in that +province of strange dialect.</p> + +<p>In the passage at the foot of his staircase and under sundry dark arches +he showed me a quantity of tiny wooden cages and of larger cages divided +into tiny compartments. There were numbers of goldfinches, a blackbird, +some small thrushes, an ortolan, and two or three other kinds I could +not identify; nay, even a brace of unhappy quail in a bottle-shaped +basket. These are the decoys; the cages are hung in the circular walks +of the fowling-place, and the wretched little prisoners, many of them +blinded of one or both eyes, sing their hearts out and attract their +companions into the nooses. Then he showed me the nets—like thin, thin +fishing nets—for quail; and the little wands which are covered with +lime and which catch the wings of the creatures; but that seemed a +merciful proceeding compared with the gruesome snares of the Bresciana. +When he had shown me these things he produced a little Jew's-harp, on +which he fell to imitating the calls of various birds. But I noticed +that none of the little blinded prisoners hanging aloft made any +response. Only, quite spontaneously and all of a sudden, the poor +goldfinches set up a loud and lovely song; and the solitary blackbird +gave a whistle. Never have I heard anything more lugubrious than these +hedgerow and woodland notes issuing from the cages in that damp, black +corridor. And the old fowler, for all his venerable appearance and +gentleness of voice and manner, struck me as a wicked warlock, and own +sib of the witch who turned Jorinde and Jorinel into nightingales in her +little house hung round with cages.</p> + +<p>A few days after my visit to the fowler, and one of the last evenings I +had in Friuli, I was walking once more beneath the Castle. After +threading the narrow green lanes, blocked by great hay-carts, I came of +a sudden on an open, high-lying field of mossy grass, freshly scythed, +with the haycocks still upon it, and a thin plantation of larches on one +side. And in front, at the end of that grey-green sweetness, the Alps of +Cadore, portals and battlements of dark leaden blue, with the last +flame-colour of sunset behind them, and the sunset's last rosy feathers +rising into the pale sky. The mowers were coming slowly along, +shouldering their scythes and talking in undertones, as folk do at that +hour. I also walked home in the quickly gathering twilight; the delicate +hemlock flowers of an unmowed field against the pearly luminous sky; the +wonderful blue of the thistles singing out in the dusk of the grass. +There rose the scent of cut grass, of ripening maize, and every +freshness of acacia and poplar leaf; and the crickets began to shrill.</p> + +<p>As the light faded away I passed within sight of the fowling-place, the +little sinister formal garden of Versailles on the mound marking the +village which had died of the Black Death.</p> + +<p>This is what returned to my mind every time, lately in Venice, that I +passed that cook-shop near the closed-up Canal of the Assassins, and saw +the row of tiny corpses ready for roasting. The little throats which +sang so sweetly had got caught, had writhed, twisted in the tiny wire +nooses between the hornbeam battlements. What ruffling of feathers and +starting of eyeballs in agony there had been, while the poor blind +decoy, finch or blackbird, sang, sang on in his cage on the central +grass-plot!</p> + +<p>And we scrunch them under our knife and tooth, and remark how excellent +are little birds on a cushion of polenta, between a sage-leaf and a bit +of bacon! But fowling-places have come down from the remotest and most +venerable antiquity; and they exist of all kinds; and some of them, +moreover, are allegories.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ACQUAINTANCE_WITH_BIRDS" id="ACQUAINTANCE_WITH_BIRDS"></a>ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>One of the things I should have liked, I said to myself to-day, as I +rode past one of the dreadful little fowling-places on the ridge of our +hills, would have been to become acquainted with birds....</p> + +<p>The wish is simple, but quite without hope for a dweller in Tuscany, +where, what with poverty and lawlessness, peasants' nets and city +'prentices' guns, there are no birds whose acquaintance you can make. +You hear them singing and twittering, indeed, wherever a clump of garden +ilexes or a cypress hedge offers them protection; but they never let +themselves be seen, for they know that being seen is being shot: or at +least being caged. They cage them for singing, nightingales, thrushes, +and every kind of finch; and you can see them, poor isolated captives, +in rows and rows of cages in the markets. That is the way that people +like them: a certain devout lady of my neighbourhood, for instance, +whose little seventeenth-century house was hung round with endless tiny +cages, like the witches in the tale of Jorinde and Jorinel; a wicked +witch herself, no doubt, despite her illuminations in honour of the +Madonna, who should have taught her better. Another way of liking +singing-birds is on toast between a scrap of bacon and a leaf of sage, a +dainty dish much prized by persons of weak stomach. Persons with bad +digestions are apt, I fancy, to lose, and make others forego, much +pleasant companionship of soul.</p> + +<p>For animals, at least, when not turned into pets, are excellent +companions for our souls. I say expressly "when not pets," because the +essence of this spiritual (for it <i>is</i> spiritual) relation between us +and creatures is that they should not become our property, nor we +theirs; that we should be able to refresh ourselves by the thought and +contemplation of a life apart from our own, different from it; in some +ways more really natural, and, at all events, capable of seeming more +natural to our fancy. And birds, for many reasons, meet this +requirement to perfection. I have read, indeed, in various works that +they are not without vices, not a bit kinder than the other unkind +members of creation; and that their treatment of the unfit among +themselves is positively inhuman—or shall I say human? Perhaps this is +calumny, or superficial judgment of their sterner morality; but, be this +as it may, it is evident that they are in many respects very charming +people. It is very nice of them to be so æsthetic, to be amused and kept +quiet, like the hen birds, by music; and the tone of their conversation +is quite exquisitely affable.</p> + +<p>My own opportunities of watching their proceedings have, alas! been very +limited; but, judging by the pigeons at Venice, they are wonderfully +forbearing and courteous to each other. I have often watched these +pigeons having their morning bath at the corner of St. Mark's, in a +little shallow trough in the pavement. They collect round by scores, and +wait for room to go in quite patiently; while the crowd inside ruffle, +dip, throw up water into their wings and shake it off; a mass of moving +grey and purple feathers, with never an angry push or a cry of +ill-temper among them. So I can readily believe a certain friend of mine +who passes hours in English brakes and hedgerows, watching birds through +special ten-guinea opera-glasses, that time and money could not be +better spent.</p> + +<p>One reason, moreover, why all animals (one feels that so much in +Kipling's stories) are excellent company for our spirit is surely +because they are animals, not men; because the thought of them relieves +us therefore from that sense of overcrowding and jostling and general +wordiness and fuss from which we all suffer; and birds, more than any +other creatures, give us that sense of relief, of breathing-space and +margin, so very necessary to our spiritual welfare. For there is +freedom, air, light, in the very element in which birds exist, and in +their movements, the delightful sense of poising, of buoyancy, of being +delivered from our own body and made independent of gravitation, which, +as a friend of mine wisely remarks, Sir Isaac Newton most injudiciously +put into Nature's head. Indeed, there is a very special quality in the +mere thought of birds. St. Francis, had he preached to fishes, like his +follower of Padua, might have had as attentive an audience, but we +should not have cared to hear about it. <i>Aves mei fratres</i>—why, it is +the soul's kinship with air, light, liberty, what the soul loves best. +And similarly I suspect that the serene and lovely quality of Dante's +Francesca episode is due in great part to those similes of birds: the +starlings in the winter weather, the cranes "singing their dirge," and +those immortal doves swirling nestwards, <i>dal disio chiamate</i>, which +lift the lid of that cavern of hell and winnow its fumes into breathable +quality.</p> + +<p>Perhaps (I say to myself, being ever disposed to make the best of a bad +bargain), perhaps the scantiness of my acquaintance with birds, the +difficulty about seeing them (for there is none about hearing them in +Tuscany, and I shall be kept awake by vociferous nightingales in a +month's time), gives to my feeling about them a pleasant, half-painful +eagerness. Certainly it raises the sight of birds, when I get out of +this country, into something of the nature of a performance. Even in +Rome, the larks, going up tiny brown rockets, into the pale blue sky +above the pale green endless undulations of grass, and the rooks and +magpies flocking round the ruins. And how much in Germany? Indeed, one +of Germany's charms is the condition, or, rather, the position, the +civic status, of birds and small creatures. One is constantly reminded +of the Minnesinger Walther's legacy to the birds of Wurzburg, and of +Luther's hiding the hare in the sleeve of his tunic. One of my first +impressions after crossing the Alps last year was of just such a hare, +only perfectly at his ease, running in front of my bicycle for ever so +long during a great thunderstorm which overtook us in the cornfields +between Donaustauff and Ratisbon. And as to birds! They are not merely +left in liberty, but assiduously courted by these kindly, and, in their +prosaic way, poetical Teutons. Already in the village shop on the top of +the Tyrolese pass there was a nest of swallows deep down in a passage. +And in the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg, while the electric trams go +clanking outside, the swallows whirr cheerfully along the aisles, among +the coats-of-arms, the wonderfully crested helmets suspended on high. +There was a swallow's nest in the big entrance room (where the peasants +sit and drink among the little dry birch-trees and fir garlands from the +Whitsuntide festivities) of the inn at Rothenburg; a nest above the rows +of pewter and stoneware, with baby swallows looking unconcernedly out at +the guests. But the great joy at Rothenburg was the family of storks +which still inhabit one of the high, pointed gatehouses. I used to go +and see them every morning: the great cartwheel on the funnel-shaped +roof, wisps of comfortable hay hanging over it; one of the parent storks +standing sentinel on one leg, the little ones raising themselves +occasionally into sight, the other stork hovering around on outspread +wings like tattered banners. To think that there were once storks also +in Italy, storks' homes, the old Lombard name <i>Cicognara</i> meaning that; +and cranes also, whom the people in Boccaccio, and even Lorenzo di +Medici, went out to hunt! The last of them were certainly netted and +eaten, as they used to eat porcupines in Rome in my childish days.</p> + +<p>Speaking of cranes reminds me of the pleasure I have had also in +watching herons, particularly among the ponds of my mother's old home.</p> + +<p>"Would you like to see one near? I'll go and shoot it you at once," said +my very kind cousin.</p> + +<p>How odd it is, when one thinks of it, that mere contemplation seems so +insufficient for us poor restless human beings! We cannot see a flower +without an impulse to pick it, a character without an impulse to, let us +say, analyse; a bird without an impulse to shoot. And in this way we +certainly lose most of the good which any of these things could be to +us: just to be looked at, thought about, enjoyed, and let alone.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="ARIADNE_IN_MANTUA" id="ARIADNE_IN_MANTUA"></a>ARIADNE IN MANTUA</h3> + + + +<h5>TO</h5> + +<h5>ETHEL SMYTH</h5> + +<h5>THANKING, AND BEGGING, HER FOR MUSIC</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h4><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h4> + + +<p><i>"Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss"</i></p> + + +<p><i>It is in order to give others the pleasure of reading or +re-reading a small masterpiece, that I mention the likelihood +of the catastrophe of my</i> Ariadne <i>having been suggested by +the late Mr. Shorthouse's</i> Little Schoolmaster Mark; <i>but I +must ask forgiveness of my dear old friend, Madame Emile +Duclaux</i> (Mary Robinson), <i>for unwarranted use of one of the +songs of her</i> Italian Garden.</p> + +<p><i>Readers of my own little volume</i> Genius Loci <i>may meanwhile +recognise that I have been guilty of plagiarism towards myself +also</i>.</p> + +<p><i>For a couple of years after writing those pages, the image of +the Palace of Mantua and the lakes it steeps in, haunted my +fancy with that peculiar insistency, as of the half-lapsed +recollection of a name or date, which tells us that we know +(if we could only remember!)</i> what happened in a place. <i>I let +the matter rest. But, looking into my mind one day, I found +that a certain song of the early seventeenth century</i>—(not +<i>Monteverde's</i> Lamento d'Arianna <i>but an air</i>, Amarilli, <i>by +Caccini, printed alongside in Parisotti's collection</i>)—<i>had +entered that Palace of Mantua, and was, in some manner not +easy to define, the musical shape of what must have happened +there. And that, translated back into human personages, was +the story I have set forth in the following little Drama</i>.</p> + +<p><i>So much for the origin of</i> Ariadne in Mantua, <i>supposing any +friend to be curious about it. What seems more interesting is +my feeling, which grew upon me as I worked over and over the +piece and its French translation, that these personages had an +importance greater than that of their life and adventures, a +meaning, if I may say so, a little</i> sub specie aeternitatis. +<i>For, besides the real figures, there appeared to me vague +shadows cast by them, as it were, on the vast spaces of life, +and magnified far beyond those little puppets that I twitched. +And I seem to feel here the struggle, eternal, necessary, +between mere impulse, unreasoning and violent, but absolutely +true to its aim; and all the moderating, the weighing and +restraining influences of civilisation, with their idealism, +their vacillation, but their final triumph over the mere +forces of nature. These well-born people of Mantua, +privileged beings wanting little because they have much, and +able therefore to spend themselves in quite harmonious effort, +must necessarily get the better of the poor gutter-born +creature without whom, after all, one of them would have been +dead and the others would have had no opening in life. Poor</i> +Diego <i>acts magnanimously, being cornered; but he (or she) has +not the delicacy, the dignity to melt into thin air with a +mere lyric Metastasian "Piangendo partè", and leave them to +their untroubled conscience. He must needs assert himself, +violently wrench at their heart-strings, give them a final +stab, hand them over to endless remorse; briefly, commit that +public and theatrical deed of suicide, splashing the murderous +waters into the eyes of well-behaved wedding guests</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Certainly neither the</i> Duke, <i>nor the</i> Duchess Dowager, <i>nor</i> +Hippolyta <i>would have done this. But, on the other hand, they +could calmly, coldly, kindly accept the self-sacrifice +culminating in that suicide: well-bred people, faithful to +their standards and forcing others, however unwilling, into +their own conformity. Of course without them the world would +be a den of thieves, a wilderness of wolves; for they are,—if +I may call them by their less personal names,—Tradition, +Discipline, Civilisation</i>.</p> + +<p><i>On the other hand, but for such as</i> Diego <i>the world would +come to an end within twenty years: mere sense of duty and +fitness not being sufficient for the killing and cooking of +victuals, let alone the begetting and suckling of children. +The descendants of</i> Ferdinand <i>and</i> Hippolyta, <i>unless they +intermarried with some bastard of</i> Diego's <i>family, would +dwindle, die out; who knows, perhaps supplement the impulses +they lacked by silly newfangled evil</i>.</p> + +<p><i>These are the contending forces of history and life: Impulse +and Discipline, creating and keeping; love such as</i> Diego's, +<i>blind, selfish, magnanimous; and detachment, noble, a little +bloodless and cruel, like that of the</i> Duke of Mantua.</p> + +<p><i>And it seems to me that the conflicts which I set forth on my +improbable little stage, are but the trifling realities +shadowing those great abstractions which we seek all through +the history of man, and everywhere in man's own heart</i>.</p> + + +<p>VERNON LEE.</p> + + +<p>Maiano, near Florence,</p> + +<p>June, 1903.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">VIOLA. <i>....I'll serve this Duke:</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;"><i>....for I can sing</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>And speak to him in many sorts of music.</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">TWELFTH NIGHT, 1, 2.</span><br /> +</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h4>DRAMATIS PERSONAE</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">FERDINAND, Duke of Mantua.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE CARDINAL, his Uncle.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DUCHESS DOWAGER.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">HIPPOLYTA, Princess of Mirandola.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">MAGDALEN, known as DIEGO.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE BISHOP OF CREMONA.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DOGE'S WIFE.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE VICEROY OF NAPLES' JESTER.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A TENOR as BACCHUS.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The CARDINAL'S CHAPLAIN.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DUCHESS'S GENTLEWOMAN.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE PRINCESS'S TUTOR.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Singers as Maenads and Satyrs; Courtiers,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pages, Wedding Guests and Musicians.</span><br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The action takes place in the Palace of Mantua through a +period of a year, during the reign of Prospero I, of Milan, +and shortly before the Venetian expedition to Cyprus under +Othello.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_I" id="ACT_I"></a>ACT I</h4> + + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL'S</span> <i>Study in the Palace at Mantua. The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> +<i>is seated at a table covered with Persian embroidery, +rose-colour picked out with blue, on which lies open a volume +of Machiavelli's works, and in it a manuscript of Catullus; +alongside thereof are a bell and a magnifying-glass. Under his +feet a red cushion with long tassels, and an oriental carpet +of pale lavender and crimson</i>. <i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>is dressed in +scarlet, a crimson fur-lined cape upon his shoulders. He is +old, but beautiful and majestic, his face furrowed like the +marble bust of Seneca among the books opposite</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Through the open Renaissance window, with candelabra and +birds carved on the copings, one sees the lake, pale blue, +faintly rippled, with a rose-coloured brick bridge and +bridge-tower at its narrowest point</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>in reality</i> +<span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span>) <i>has just been admitted into the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL'S</span> +<i>presence, and after kissing his ring, has remained standing, +awaiting his pleasure</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>is fantastically habited as a youth in russet and +violet tunic reaching below the knees in Moorish fashion, as +we see it in the frescoes of Pinturicchio; with silver buttons +down the seams, and plaited linen at the throat and in the +unbuttoned purfles of the sleeves. His hair, dark but red +where it catches the light, is cut over the forehead and +touches his shoulders. He is not very tall in his boy's +clothes, and very sparely built. He is pale, almost sallow; +the face, dogged, sullen, rather expressive than beautiful, +save for the perfection of the brows and of the flower-like +singer's mouth. He stands ceremoniously before the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>, +<i>one hand on his dagger, nervously, while the other holds a +large travelling hat, looped up, with a long drooping plume</i>.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>raises his eyes, slightly bows his head, +closes the manuscript and the volume, and puts both aside +deliberately. He is, meanwhile, examining the appearance of</i> +<span class="persona">DIEGO</span>.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>We are glad to see you at Mantua, Signor Diego. And from what +our worthy Venetian friend informs us in the letter which he +gave you for our hands, we shall without a doubt be wholly +satisfied with your singing, which is said to be both sweet +and learned. Prythee, Brother Matthias (<i>turning to his</i> +Chaplain), bid them bring hither my virginal,—that with the +Judgment of Paris painted on the lid by Giulio Romano; its +tone is admirably suited to the human voice. And, Brother +Matthias, hasten to the Duke's own theorb player, and bid him +come straightways. Nay, go thyself, good Brother Matthias, and +seek till thou hast found him. We are impatient to judge of +this good youth's skill.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> Chaplain <i>bows and retires</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>in reality</i> +<span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span>) <i>remains alone in the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL'S</span> <i>presence. The</i> +<span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>remains for a second turning over a letter, and then +reads through the magnifying-glass out loud</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Ah, here is the sentence: "Diego, a Spaniard of Moorish +descent, and a most expert singer and player on the virginal, +whom I commend to your Eminence's favour as entirely fitted +for such services as your revered letter makes mention of——" +Good, good.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>folds the letter and beckons</i> Diego <i>to +approach, then speaks in a manner suddenly altered to +abruptness, but with no enquiry in his tone</i>.</p> + +<p>Signor Diego, you are a woman——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO <i>starts, flushes and exclaims huskily</i>, "My Lord——." +<i>But the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>makes a deprecatory movement and continues +his sentence</i>.</p> + +<p>and, as my honoured Venetian correspondent assures me, a +courtesan of some experience and of more than usual tact. I +trust this favourable judgment may be justified. The situation +is delicate; and the work for which you have been selected is +dangerous as well as difficult. Have you been given any +knowledge of this case?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO <i>has by this time recovered his composure, and answers +with respectful reserve</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I asked no questions, your Eminence. But the Senator Gratiano +vouchsafed to tell me that my work at Mantua would be to +soothe and cheer with music your noble nephew Duke Ferdinand, +who, as is rumoured, has been a prey to a certain languor and +moodiness ever since his return from many years' captivity +among the Infidels. Moreover (such were the Senator Gratiano's +words), that if the Fates proved favourable to my music, I +might gain access to His Highness's confidence, and thus +enable your Eminence to understand and compass his strange +malady.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Even so. You speak discreetly, Diego; and your manner gives +hope of more good sense than is usual in your sex and in your +trade. But this matter is of more difficulty than such as you +can realise. Your being a woman will be of use should our +scheme prove practicable. In the outset it may wreck us beyond +recovery. For all his gloomy apathy, my nephew is quick to +suspicion, and extremely subtle. He will delight in flouting +us, should the thought cross his brain that we are practising +some coarse and foolish stratagem. And it so happens, that his +strange moodiness is marked by abhorrence of all womankind. +For months he has refused the visits of his virtuous mother. +And the mere name of his young cousin and affianced bride, +Princess Hippolyta, has thrown him into paroxysms of anger. +Yet Duke Ferdinand possesses all his faculties. He is aware of +being the last of our house, and must know full well that, +should he die without an heir, this noble dukedom will become +the battlefield of rapacious alien claimants. He denies none +of this, but nevertheless looks on marriage with unseemly +horror.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Is it so?——And——is there any reason His Highness's +melancholy should take this shape? I crave your Eminence's +pardon if there is any indiscretion in this question; but I +feel it may be well that I should know some more upon this +point. Has Duke Ferdinand suffered some wrong at the hands of +women? Or is it the case of some passion, hopeless, unfitting +to his rank, perhaps?</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Your imagination, good Madam Magdalen, runs too easily along +the tracks familiar to your sex; and such inquisitiveness +smacks too much of the courtesan. And beware, my lad, of +touching on such subjects with the Duke: women and love, and +so forth. For I fear, that while endeavouring to elicit the +Duke's secret, thy eyes, thy altered voice, might betray thy +own.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Betray me? My secret? What do you mean, my Lord? I fail to +grasp your meaning.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Have you so soon forgotten that the Duke must not suspect your +being a woman? For if a woman may gradually melt his torpor, +and bring him under the control of reason and duty, this can +only come about by her growing familiar and necessary to him +without alarming his moody virtue.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I crave your Eminence's indulgence for that one question, +which I repeat because, as a musician, it may affect my +treatment of His Highness. Has the Duke ever loved?</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Too little or too much,—which of the two it will be for you +to find out. My nephew was ever, since his boyhood, a pious +and joyless youth; and such are apt to love once, and, as the +poets say, to die for love. Be this as it may, keep to your +part of singer; and even if you suspect that he suspects you, +let him not see your suspicion, and still less justify his +own. Be merely a singer: a sexless creature, having seen +passion but never felt it; yet capable, by the miracle of art, +of rousing and soothing it in others. Go warily, and mark my +words: there is, I notice, even in your speaking voice, a +certain quality such as folk say melts hearts; a trifle +hoarseness, a something of a break, which mars it as mere +sound, but gives it more power than that of sound. Employ that +quality when the fit moment comes; but most times restrain it. +You have understood?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I think I have, my Lord.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Then only one word more. Women, and women such as you, are +often ill advised and foolishly ambitious. Let not success, +should you have any in this enterprise, endanger it and you. +Your safety lies in being my tool. My spies are everywhere; +but I require none; I seem to know the folly which poor +mortals think and feel. And see! this palace is surrounded on +three sides by lakes; a rare and beautiful circumstance, which +has done good service on occasion. Even close to this pavilion +these blue waters are less shallow than they seem.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I had noted it. Such an enterprise as mine requires courage, +my Lord; and your palace, built into the lake, as +life,—saving all thought of heresy,—is built out into death, +your palace may give courage as well as prudence.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Your words, Diego, are irrelevant, but do not displease me.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>bows. The</i> Chaplain <i>enters with</i> Pages <i>carrying a +harpsichord, which they place upon the table; also two</i> +Musicians <i>with theorb and viol</i>.</p> + +<p>Brother Matthias, thou hast been a skilful organist, and hast +often delighted me with thy fugues and canons.—Sit to the +instrument, and play a prelude, while this good youth collects +his memory and his voice preparatory to displaying his skill.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> chaplain, <i>not unlike the monk in Titian's "Concert" +begins to play</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>standing by him at the harpsichord. +While the cunningly interlaced themes, with wide, unclosed +cadences, tinkle metallically from the instrument, the</i> +<span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>watches, very deliberately, the face of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, +<i>seeking to penetrate through its sullen sedateness. But</i> +<span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>remains with his eyes fixed on the view framed by the +window: the pale blue lake, of the colour of periwinkle, under +a sky barely bluer than itself, and the lines on the +horizon—piled up clouds or perhaps Alps. Only, as the</i> +Chaplain <i>is about to finish his prelude, the face of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> +<i>undergoes a change: a sudden fervour and tenderness +transfigure the features; while the eyes, from very dark turn +to the colour of carnelian. This illumination dies out as +quickly as it came, and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>becomes very self-contained +and very listless as before</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Will it please your Eminence that I should sing the Lament of +Ariadne on Naxos?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_II" id="ACT_II"></a>ACT II</h4> + + +<p><i>A few months later. Another part of the Ducal Palace of +Mantua. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS'S</span> <i>closet: a small irregular chamber; the +vaulted ceiling painted with Giottesque patterns in blue and +russet, much blackened, and among which there is visible only +a coronation of the Virgin, white and vision-like. Shelves +with a few books and phials and jars of medicine; a small +movable organ in a corner; and, in front of the ogival window, +a praying-chair and large crucifix. The crucifix is black +against the landscape, against the grey and misty waters of +the lake; and framed by the nearly leafless branches of a +willow growing below</i>.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> <i>is tall and straight, but almost +bodiless in her black nun-like dress. Her face is so white, +its lips and eyebrows so colourless, and eyes so pale a blue, +that one might at first think it insignificant, and only +gradually notice the strength and beauty of the features. The</i> +<span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>has laid aside her sewing on the entrance of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, +<i>in reality</i> <span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span>; <i>and, forgetful of all state, been on +the point of rising to meet him. But</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>has ceremoniously +let himself down on one knee, expecting to kiss her hand</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Nay, Signor Diego, do not kneel. Such forms have long since +left my life, nor are they, as it seems to me, very fitting +between God's creatures. Let me grasp your hand, and look into +the face of him whom Heaven has chosen to work a miracle. You +have cured my son!</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>It is indeed a miracle of Heaven, most gracious Madam; and one +in which, alas, my poor self has been as nothing. For sounds, +subtly linked, take wondrous powers from the soul of him who +frames their patterns; and we, who sing, are merely as the +string or keys he presses, or as the reed through which he +blows. The virtue is not ours, though coming out of us.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>has made this speech as if learned by rote, with +listless courtesy. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>has at first been frozen by +his manner, but at the end she answers very simply</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>You speak too learnedly, good Signor Diego, and your words +pass my poor understanding. The virtue in any of us is but +God's finger-touch or breath; but those He chooses as His +instruments are, methinks, angels or saints; and whatsoever +you be, I look upon you with loving awe. You smile? You are a +courtier, while I, although I have not left this palace for +twenty years, have long forgotten the words and ways of +courts. I am but a simpleton: a foolish old woman who has +unlearned all ceremony through many years of many sorts of +sorrow; and now, dear youth, unlearned it more than ever from +sheer joy at what it has pleased God to do through you. For, +thanks to you, I have seen my son again, my dear, wise, tender +son again. I would fain thank you. If I had worldly goods +which you have not in plenty, or honours to give, they should +be yours. You shall have my prayers. For even you, so favoured +of Heaven, will some day want them.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Give them me now, most gracious Madam. I have no faith in +prayers; but I need them.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Great joy has made me heartless as well as foolish. I have +hurt you, somehow. Forgive me, Signor Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>As you said, I am a courtier, Madam, and I know it is enough +if we can serve our princes. We have no business with troubles +of our own; but having them, we keep them to ourselves. His +Highness awaits me at this hour for the usual song which +happily unclouds his spirit. Has your Grace any message for +him?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Stay. My son will wait a little while. I require you, Diego, +for I have hurt you. Your words are terrible, but just. We +princes are brought up—but many of us, alas, are princes in +this matter!—to think that when we say "I thank you" we have +done our duty; though our very satisfaction, our joy, may +merely bring out by comparison the emptiness of heart, the +secret soreness, of those we thank. We are not allowed to see +the burdens of others, and merely load them with our own.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Is this not wisdom? Princes should not see those burdens which +they cannot, which they must not, try to carry. And after all, +princes or slaves, can others ever help us, save with their +purse, with advice, with a concrete favour, or, say, with a +song? Our troubles smart because they are <i>our</i> troubles; our +burdens weigh because on <i>our</i> shoulders; they are part of us, +and cannot be shifted. But God doubtless loves such kind +thoughts as you have, even if, with your Grace's indulgence, +they are useless.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>If it were so, God would be no better than an earthly prince. +But believe me, Diego, if He prefer what you call +kindness—bare sense of brotherhood in suffering—'tis for its +usefulness. We cannot carry each other's burden for a minute; +true, and rightly so; but we can give each other added +strength to bear it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>By what means, please your Grace?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>By love, Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Love! But that was surely never a source of strength, craving +your Grace's pardon?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>The love which I am speaking of—and it may surely bear the +name, since 'tis the only sort of love that cannot turn to +hatred. Love for who requires it because it is required—say +love of any woman who has been a mother for any child left +motherless. Nay, forgive my boldness: my gratitude gives me +rights on you, Diego. You are unhappy; you are still a child; +and I imagine that you have no mother.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I am told I had one, gracious Madam. She was, saving your +Grace's presence, only a light woman, and sold for a ducat to +the Infidels. I cannot say I ever missed her. Forgive me, +Madam. Although a courtier, the stock I come from is extremely +base. I have no understanding of the words of noble women and +saints like you. My vileness thinks them hollow; and my pretty +manners are only, as your Grace has unluckily had occasion to +see, a very thin and bad veneer. I thank your Grace, and once +more crave permission to attend the Duke.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Nay. That is not true. Your soul is nowise base-born. I owe +you everything, and, by some inadvertence, I have done nothing +save stir up pain in you. I want—the words may seem +presumptuous, yet carry a meaning which is humble—I want to +be your friend; and to help you to a greater, better Friend. I +will pray for you, Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>No, no. You are a pious and virtuous woman, and your pity and +prayers must keep fit company.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>The only fitting company for pity and prayers, for love, dear +lad, is the company of those who need them. Am I over bold?</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>has risen, and shyly laid her hand on</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> +<i>shoulder</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>breaks loose and covers his face, +exclaiming in a dry and husky voice</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Oh the cruelty of loneliness, Madam! Save for two years which +taught me by comparison its misery, I have lived in loneliness +always in this lonely world; though never, alas, alone. Would +it had always continued! But as the wayfarer from out of the +snow and wind feels his limbs numb and frozen in the hearth's +warmth, so, having learned that one might speak, be +understood, be comforted, that one might love and be +beloved,—the misery of loneliness was revealed to me. And +then to be driven back into it once more, shut in to it for +ever! Oh, Madam, when one can no longer claim understanding +and comfort; no longer say "I suffer: help me!"—because the +creature one would say it to is the very same who hurts and +spurns one!</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>How can a child like you already know such things? We women +may, indeed. I was as young as you, years ago, when I too +learned it. And since I learned it, let my knowledge, my poor +child, help you to bear it. I know how silence galls and +wearies. If silence hurts you, speak,—not for me to answer, +but understand and sorrow for you. I am old and simple and +unlearned; but, God willing, I shall understand.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>If anything could help me, 'tis the sense of kindness such as +yours. I thank you for your gift; but acceptance of it would +be theft; for it is not meant for what I really am. And though +a living lie in many things; I am still, oddly enough, honest. +Therefore, I pray you, Madam, farewell.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Do not believe it, Diego. Where it is needed, our poor loving +kindness can never be stolen.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Do not tempt me, Madam! Oh God, I do not want your pity, your +loving kindness! What are such things to me? And as to +understanding my sorrows, no one can, save the very one who is +inflicting them. Besides, you and I call different things by +the same names. What you call <i>love</i>, to me means nothing: +nonsense taught to children, priest's metaphysics. What <i>I</i> +mean, you do not know. (<i>A pause</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>walks up and down in +agitation</i>.) But woe's me! You have awakened the power of +breaking through this silence,—this silence which is +starvation and deathly thirst and suffocation. And it so +happens that if I speak to you all will be wrecked. (<i>A +pause</i>.) But there remains nothing to wreck! Understand me, +Madam, I care not who you are. I know that once I have spoken, +you <i>must</i> become my enemy. But I am grateful to you; you have +shown me the way to speaking; and, no matter now to whom, I +now <i>must</i> speak.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>You shall speak to God, my friend, though you speak seemingly +to me.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>To God! To God! These are the icy generalities we strike upon +under all pious warmth. No, gracious Madam, I will not speak +to God; for God knows it already, and, knowing, looks on +indifferent. I will speak to you. Not because you are kind and +pitiful; for you will cease to be so. Not because you will +understand; for you never will. I will speak to you because, +although you are a saint, you are <i>his</i> mother, have kept +somewhat of his eyes and mien; because it will hurt you if I +speak, as I would it might hurt <i>him</i>. I am a woman, Madam; a +harlot; and I was the Duke your son's mistress while among the +Infidels.</p> + +<p><i>A long silence. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>remains seated. She barely +starts, exclaiming</i> "Ah!—" <i>and becomes suddenly absorbed in +thought</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>stands looking listlessly through the window +at the lake and the willow</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I await your Grace's orders. Will it please you that I call +your maid-of-honour, or summon the gentleman outside? If it +so please you, there need be no scandal. I shall give myself +up to any one your Grace prefers.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>pays no attention to</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>last words, and +remains reflecting</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Then, it is he who, as you call it, spurns you? How so? For +you are admitted to his close familiarity; nay, you have +worked the miracle of curing him. I do not understand the +situation. For, Diego,—I know not by what other name to call +you—I feel your sorrow is a deep one. You are not +the——woman who would despair and call God cruel for a mere +lover's quarrel. You love my son; you have cured him,—cured +him, do I guess rightly, through your love? But if it be so, +what can my son have done to break your heart?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>after listening astonished at the</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS'S</span> <i>unaltered tone +of kindness</i>)</p> + +<p>Your Grace will understand the matter as much as I can; and I +cannot. He does not recognise me, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Not recognise you? What do you mean?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>What the words signify: Not recognise.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Then——he does not know——he still believes you to be——a +stranger?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>So it seems, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>And yet you have cured his melancholy by your presence. And in +the past——tell me: had you ever sung to him?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO (<i>weeping silently</i>)</p> + +<p>Daily, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS (<i>slowly</i>)</p> + +<p>They say that Ferdinand is, thanks to you, once more in full +possession of his mind. It cannot be. Something still lacks; +he is not fully cured.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Alas, he is. The Duke remembers everything, save me.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>There is some mystery in this. I do not understand such +matters. But I know that Ferdinand could never be base +towards you knowingly. And you, methinks, would never be base +towards him. Diego, time will bring light into this darkness. +Let us pray God together that He may make our eyes and souls +able to bear it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I cannot pray for light, most gracious Madam, because I fear +it. Indeed I cannot pray at all, there remains nought to pray +for. But, among the vain and worldly songs I have had to get +by heart, there is, by chance, a kind of little hymn, a +childish little verse, but a sincere one. And while you pray +for me—for you promised to pray for me, Madam—I should like +to sing it, with your Grace's leave.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>opens a little movable organ in a corner, and strikes a +few chords, remaining standing the while. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>kneels +down before the crucifix, turning her back upon him. While she +is silently praying</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>still on his feet, sings very +low to a kind of lullaby tune</i>.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Mother of God,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">We are thy weary children;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Teach us, thou weeping Mother,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To cry ourselves to sleep.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_III" id="ACT_III"></a>ACT III</h4> + + +<p><i>Three months later. Another part of the Palace of Mantua: the +hanging gardens in the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE'S</span> <i>apartments. It is the first +warm night of Spring. The lemon trees have been brought out +that day, and fill the air with fragrance. Terraces and +flights of steps; in the background the dark mass of the +palace, with its cupolas and fortified towers; here and there +a lit window picking out the dark; and from above the +principal yards, the flare of torches rising into the deep +blue of the sky. In the course of the scene, the moon +gradually emerges from behind a group of poplars on the +opposite side of the lake into which the palace is built. +During the earlier part of the act, darkness. Great stillness, +with, only occasionally, the plash of a fisherman's oar, or a +very distant thrum of mandolines.—The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>are +walking up and down the terrace</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Thou askedst me once, dear Diego, the meaning of that +labyrinth which I have had carved, a shapeless pattern enough, +but well suited, methinks, to blue and gold, upon the ceiling +of my new music room. And wouldst have asked, I fancy, as +many have done, the hidden meaning of the device surrounding +it.—I left thee in the dark, dear lad, and treated thy +curiosity in a peevish manner. Thou hast long forgiven and +perhaps forgotten, deeming my lack of courtesy but another +ailment of thy poor sick master; another of those odd +ungracious moods with which, kindest of healing creatures, +thou hast had such wise and cheerful patience. I have often +wished to tell thee; but I could not. 'Tis only now, in some +mysterious fashion, I seem myself once more,—able to do my +judgment's bidding, and to dispose, in memory and words, of my +own past. My strange sickness, which thou hast cured, melting +its mists away with thy beneficent music even as the sun +penetrates and sucks away the fogs of dawn from our lakes—my +sickness, Diego, the sufferings of my flight from Barbary; the +horror, perhaps, of that shipwreck which cast me (so they say, +for I remember nothing) senseless on the Illyrian +coast——these things, or Heaven's judgment on but a lukewarm +Crusader,—had somehow played strange havoc with my will and +recollections. I could not think; or thinking, not speak; or +recollecting, feel that he whom I thought of in the past was +this same man, myself.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>pauses, and leaning on the parapet, watches the +long reflections of the big stars in the water</i>.</p> + +<p>But now, and thanks to thee, Diego, I am another; I am myself.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>face, invisible in the darkness, has undergone +dreadful convulsions. His breast heaves, and he stops for +breath before answering; but when he does so, controls his +voice into its usual rather artificially cadenced tone</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And now, dear Master, you can recollect——all?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Recollect, sweet friend, and tell thee. For it is seemly that +I should break through this churlish silence with thee. Thou +didst cure the weltering distress of my poor darkened mind; I +would have thee, now, know somewhat of the past of thy +grateful patient. The maze, Diego, carved and gilded on that +ceiling is but a symbol of my former life; and the device +which, being interpreted, means "I seek straight ways," the +expression of my wish and duty.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You loathed the maze, my Lord?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Not so. I loved it then. And I still love it now. But I have +issued from it—issued to recognise that the maze was good. +Though it is good I left it. When I entered it, I was a raw +youth, although in years a man; full of easy theory, and +thinking all practice simple; unconscious of passion; ready to +govern the world with a few learned notions; moreover never +having known either happiness or grief, never loved and +wondered at a creature different from myself; acquainted, not +with the straight roads which I now seek, but only with the +rectangular walls of schoolrooms. The maze, and all the maze +implied, made me a man.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>who has listened with conflicting feelings, and now unable +to conceal his joy</i>)</p> + +<p>A man, dear Master; and the gentlest, most just of men. Then, +that maze——But idle stories, interpreting all spiritual +meaning as prosy fact, would have it, that this symbol was a +reality. The legend of your captivity, my Lord, has turned the +pattern on that ceiling into a real labyrinth, some cunningly +built fortress or prison, where the Infidels kept you, and +whose clue——you found, and with the clue, freedom, after +five weary years.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Whose clue, dear Diego, was given into my hands,—the clue +meaning freedom, but also eternal parting—by the most +faithful, intrepid, magnanimous, the most loving——and the +most beloved of women!</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>has raised his arms from the parapet, and drawn +himself erect, folding them on his breast, and seeking for</i> +<span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>face in the darkness. But</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>unseen by the</i> +<span class="persona">DUKE</span>, <i>has clutched the parapet and sunk on to a bench</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>(<i>walking up and down, slowly and meditatively, after a +pause</i>)</p> + +<p>The poets have fabled many things concerning virtuous women. +The Roman Arria, who stabbed herself to make honourable +suicide easier for her husband; Antigone, who buried her +brother at the risk of death; and the Thracian Alkestis, who +descended into the kingdom of Death in place of Admetus. But +none, to my mind, comes up to <i>her</i>. For fancy is but thin and +simple, a web of few bright threads; whereas reality is +closely knitted out of the numberless fibres of life, of pain +and joy. For note it, Diego—those antique women whom we read +of were daughters of kings, or of Romans more than kings; bred +of a race of heroes, and trained, while still playing with +dolls, to pride themselves on austere duty, and look upon the +wounds and maimings of their soul as their brothers and +husbands looked upon the mutilations of battle. Whereas here; +here was a creature infinitely humble; a waif, a poor spurned +toy of brutal mankind's pleasure; accustomed only to bear +contumely, or to snatch, unthinking, what scanty happiness lay +along her difficult and despised path,—a wild creature, who +had never heard such words as duty or virtue; and yet whose +acts first taught me what they truly meant.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>who has recovered himself, and is now leaning in his turn on +the parapet</i>)</p> + +<p>Ah——a light woman, bought and sold many times over, my Lord; +but who loved, at last.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>That is the shallow and contemptuous way in which men think, +Diego,—and boys like thee pretend to; those to whom life is +but a chess-board, a neatly painted surface alternate black +and white, most suitable for skilful games, with a soul clean +lost or gained at the end! I thought like that. But I grew to +understand life as a solid world: rock, fertile earth, veins +of pure metal, mere mud, all strangely mixed and overlaid; and +eternal fire at the core! I learned it, knowing Magdalen.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Her name was Magdalen?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>So she bade me call her.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And the name explained the trade?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>after a pause</i>)</p> + +<p>I cannot understand thee Diego,—cannot understand thy lack of +understanding——Well yes! Her trade. All in this universe is +trade, trade of prince, pope, philosopher or harlot; and once +the badge put on, the licence signed—the badge a crown or a +hot iron's brand, as the case may be,—why then we ply it +according to prescription, and that's all! Yes, Diego,—since +thou obligest me to say it in its harshness, I do so, and I +glory for her in every contemptuous word I use!—The woman I +speak of was but a poor Venetian courtesan; some drab's child, +sold to the Infidels as to the Christians; and my cruel pirate +master's—shall we say?—mistress. There! For the first time, +Diego, thou dost not understand me; or is it——that I +misjudged thee, thinking thee, dear boy——(<i>breaks off +hurriedly</i>).</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>very slowly</i>)</p> + +<p>Thinking me what, my Lord?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>lightly, but with effort</i>)</p> + +<p>Less of a little Sir Paragon of Virtue than a dear child, who +is only a child, must be.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>It is better, perhaps, that your Highness should be certain of +my limitations——But I crave your Highness's pardon. I had +meant to say that being a waif myself, pure gutter-bred, I +have known, though young, more Magdalens than you, my Lord. +They are, in a way, my sisters; and had I been a woman, I +should, likely enough, have been one myself.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>You mean, Diego?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I mean, that knowing them well, I also know that women such as +your Highness has described, occasionally learn to love most +truly. Nay, let me finish, my Lord; I was not going to repeat +a mere sentimental commonplace. Briefly then, that such women, +being expert in love, sometimes understand, quicker than +virtuous dames brought up to heroism, when love for them is +cloyed. They can walk out of a man's house or life with due +alacrity, being trained to such flittings. Or, recognising the +first signs of weariness before 'tis known to him who feels +it, they can open the door for the other—hand him the clue of +the labyrinth with a fine theatric gesture!—But I crave your +Highness's pardon for enlarging on this theme.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Thou speakest Diego, as if thou hadst a mind to wound thy +Master. Is this, my friend, the reward of my confiding in +thee, even if tardily?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I stand rebuked, my Lord. But, in my own defence——how shall +I say it?——Your Highness has a manner to-night which +disconcerts me by its novelty; a saying things and then +unsaying them; suggesting and then, somehow, treading down the +suggestion like a spark of your lightning. Lovers, I have been +told, use such a manner to revive their flagging feeling by +playing on the other one's. Even in so plain and solid a thing +as friendship, such ways—I say it subject to your Highness's +displeasure—are dangerous. But in love, I have known cases +where, carried to certain lengths, such ways of speaking +undermined a woman's faith and led her to desperate things. +Women, despite their strength, which often surprises us, are +brittle creatures. Did you never, perhaps, make trial of +this——Magdalen, with——</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>With what? Good God, Diego, 'tis I who ask thy pardon; and +thou sheddest a dreadful light upon the past. But it is not +possible. I am not such a cur that, after all she did, after +all she was,—my life saved by her audacity a hundred times, +made rich and lovely by her love, her wit, her power,—that I +could ever have whimpered for my freedom, or made her suspect +I wanted it more than I wanted her? Is it possible, Diego?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>slowly</i>)</p> + +<p>Why more than you wanted her? She may have thought the two +compatible.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Never. First, because my escape could not be compassed save by +her staying behind; and then because—-she knew, in fact, what +thing I was, or must become, once set at liberty.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>after a pause</i>)</p> + +<p>I see. You mean, my Lord, that you being Duke of Mantua, while +she——If she knew that; knew it not merely as a fact, but as +one knows the full savour of grief,—well, she was indeed the +paragon you think; one might indeed say, bating one point, a +virtuous woman.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Thou hast understood, dear Diego, and I thank thee for it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>But I fear, my Lord, she did not know these things. Such as +she, as yourself remarked, are not trained to conceive of +duty, even in others. Passion moves them; and they believe in +passion. You loved her; good. Why then, at Mantua as in +Barbary. No, my dear Master, believe me; she had seen your +love was turning stale, and set you free, rather than taste +its staleness. Passion, like duty, has its pride; and even we +waifs, as gypsies, have our point of honour.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Stale! My love grown stale! You make me laugh, boy, instead of +angering. Stale! You never knew her. She was not like a +song—even your sweetest song—which, heard too often, cloys, +its phrases dropping to senseless notes. She was like +music,—the whole art: new modes, new melodies, new rhythms, +with every day and hour, passionate or sad, or gay, or very +quiet; more wondrous notes than in thy voice; and more +strangely sweet, even when they grated, than the tone of those +newfangled fiddles, which wound the ear and pour balm in, they +make now at Cremona.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You loved her then, sincerely?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Methinks it may be Diego now, tormenting his Master with +needless questions. Loved her, boy! I love her.</p> + +<p><i>A long pause</i>. Diego <i>has covered his face, with a gesture as +if about to speak. But the moon has suddenly risen from behind +the poplars, and put scales of silver light upon the ripples +of the lake, and a pale luminous mist around the palace. As +the light invades the terrace, a sort of chill has come upon +both speakers; they walk up and down further from one +another</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>A marvellous story, dear Master. And I thank you from my heart +for having told it me. I always loved you, and I thought I +knew you. I know you better still, now. You are—a most +magnanimous prince.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Alas, dear lad, I am but a poor prisoner of my duties; a +poorer prisoner, and a sadder far, than there in Barbary——O +Diego, how I have longed for her! How deeply I still long, +sometimes! But I open my eyes, force myself to stare reality +in the face, whenever her image comes behind closed lids, +driving her from me——And to end my confession. At the +beginning, Diego, there seemed in thy voice and manner +something of <i>her</i>; I saw her sometimes in thee, as children +see the elves they fear and hope for in stains on walls and +flickers on the path. And all thy wondrous power, thy +miraculous cure—nay, forgive what seems ingratitude—was due, +Diego, to my sick fancy making me see glances of her in thy +eyes and hear her voice in thine. Not music but love, love's +delusion, was what worked my cure.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Do you speak truly, Master? Was it so? And now?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Now, dear lad, I am cured—completely; I know bushes from +ghosts; and I know thee, dearest friend, to be Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>When these imaginations still held you, my Lord, did it ever +happen that you wondered: what if the bush had been a ghost; +if Diego had turned into—what was she called?——</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Magdalen. My fancy never went so far, good Diego. There was a +grain of reason left. But if it had——Well, I should have +taken Magdalen's hand, and said, "Welcome, dear sister. This +is a world of spells; let us repeat some. Become henceforth +my brother; be the Duke of Mantua's best and truest friend; +turn into Diego, Magdalen."</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>presses</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>arm, and, letting it go, walks +away into the moonlight with an enigmatic air. A long pause</i>.</p> + +<p>Hark, they are singing within; the idle pages making songs to +their ladies' eyebrows. Shall we go and listen?</p> + +<p>(<i>They walk in the direction of the palace</i>.)</p> + +<p>And (<i>with a little hesitation</i>) that makes me say, Diego, +before we close this past of mine, and bury it for ever in our +silence, that there is a little Moorish song, plaintive and +quaint, she used to sing, which some day I will write down, +and thou shalt sing it to me—on my deathbed.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Why not before? Speaking of songs, that mandolin, though out +of tune, and vilely played, has got hold of a ditty I like +well enough. Hark, the words are Tuscan, well known in the +mountains. (<i>Sings</i>.)</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I'd like to die, but die a little death only,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but look down from the window;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but stand upon the doorstep;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I'd like to die, but follow the procession;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but see who smiles and weepeth;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but die a little death only.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>(<i>While</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>sings very loud, the mandolin inside the +palace thrums faster and faster. As he ends, with a long +defiant leap into a high note, a burst of applause from the +palace</i>.)</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>clapping his hands</i>)</p> + +<p>Well sung, Diego!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_IV" id="ACT_IV"></a>ACT IV</h4> + + +<p><i>A few weeks later. The new music room in the Palace of +Mantua. Windows on both sides admitting a view of the lake, so +that the hall looks like a galley surrounded by water. +Outside, morning: the lake, the sky, and the lines of poplars +on the banks, are all made of various textures of luminous +blue. From the gardens below, bay trees raise their flowering +branches against the windows. In every window an antique +statue: the Mantuan Muse, the Mantuan Apollo, etc. In the +walls between the windows are framed panels representing +allegorical triumphs: those nearest the spectator are the +triumphs of Chastity and of Fortitude. At the end of the room, +steps and a balustrade, with a harpsichord and double basses +on a dais. The roof of the room is blue and gold; a deep blue +ground, constellated with a gold labyrinth in relief. Round +the cornice, blue and gold also, the inscription</i>: "RECTAS +PETO," <i>and the name</i> Ferdinandus Mantuae Dux.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS HIPPOLYTA</span> <i>of Mirandola, cousin to the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>; +<i>and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>. <span class="persona">HIPPOLYTA</span> <i>is very young, but with the strength +and grace, and the candour, rather of a beautiful boy than of +a woman. She is dazzlingly fair; and her hair, arranged in +waves like an antique amazon's, is stiff and lustrous, as if +made of threads of gold. The brows are wide and straight, +like a man's; the glance fearless, but virginal and almost +childlike</i>. <span class="persona">HIPPOLYTA</span> <i>is dressed in black and gold, +particoloured, like Mantegna's Duchess. An old man, in +scholar's gown, the</i> Princess's Greek Tutor, <i>has just +introduced</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>and retired</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>The Duke your cousin's greeting and service, illustrious +damsel. His Highness bids me ask how you are rested after your +journey hither.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Tell my cousin, good Signor Diego, that I am touched at his +concern for me. And tell him, such is the virtuous air of his +abode, that a whole night's rest sufficed to right me from the +fatigue of two hours' journey in a litter; for I am new to +that exercise, being accustomed to follow my poor father's +hounds and falcons only on horseback. You shall thank the Duke +my cousin for his civility. (<span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>laughs</i>.)</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>bowing, and keeping his eyes on the</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>as he +speaks</i>)</p> + +<p>His Highness wished to make his fair cousin smile. He has told +me often how your illustrious father, the late Lord of +Mirandola, brought his only daughter up in such a wise as +scarcely to lack a son, with manly disciplines of mind and +body; and that he named you fittingly after Hippolyta, who was +Queen of the Amazons, virgins unlike their vain and weakly +sex.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>She was; and wife of Theseus. But it seems that the poets care +but little for the like of her; they tell us nothing of her, +compared with her poor predecessor, Cretan Ariadne, she who +had given Theseus the clue of the labyrinth. Methinks that +maze must have been mazier than this blue and gold one +overhead. What say you, Signor Diego?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO (<i>who has started slightly</i>)</p> + +<p>Ariadne? Was she the predecessor of Hippolyta? I did not know +it. I am but a poor scholar, Madam; knowing the names and +stories of gods and heroes only from songs and masques. The +Duke should have selected some fitter messenger to hold +converse with his fair learned cousin.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>gravely</i>)</p> + +<p>Speak not like that, Signor Diego. You may not be a scholar, +as you say; but surely you are a philosopher. Nay, conceive +my meaning: the fame of your virtuous equanimity has spread +further than from this city to my small dominions. Your +precocious wisdom—for you seem younger than I, and youths do +not delight in being very wise—your moderation in the use of +sudden greatness, your magnanimous treatment of enemies and +detractors; and the manner in which, disdainful of all +personal advantage, you have surrounded the Duke my cousin +with wisest counsellors and men expert in office—such are the +results men seek from the study of philosophy.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>at first astonished, then amused, a little sadly</i>)</p> + +<p>You are mistaken, noble maiden. 'Tis not philosophy to refrain +from things that do not tempt one. Riches or power are useless +to me. As for the rest, you are mistaken also. The Duke is +wise and valiant, and chooses therefore wise and valiant +counsellors.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>impetuously</i>)</p> + +<p>You are eloquent, Signor Diego, even as you are wise! But your +words do not deceive me. Ambition lurks in every one; and +power intoxicates all save those who have schooled themselves +to use it as a means to virtue.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>The thought had never struck me; but men have told me what you +tell me now.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Even Antiquity, which surpasses us so vastly in all manner of +wisdom and heroism, can boast of very few like you. The +noblest souls have grown tyrannical and rapacious and +foolhardy in sudden elevation. Remember Alcibiades, the +beloved pupil of the wisest of all mortals. Signor Diego, you +may have read but little; but you have meditated to much +profit, and must have wrestled like some great athlete with +all that baser self which the divine Plato has told us how to +master.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>shaking his head</i>)</p> + +<p>Alas, Madam, your words make me ashamed, and yet they make me +smile, being so far of the mark! I have wrestled with nothing; +followed only my soul's blind impulses.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>gravely</i>)</p> + +<p>It must be, then, dear Signor Diego, as the Pythagoreans held: +the discipline of music is virtuous for the soul. There is a +power in numbered and measured sound very akin to wisdom; +mysterious and excellent; as indeed the Ancients fabled in the +tales of Orpheus and Amphion, musicians and great sages and +legislators of states. I have long desired your conversation, +admirable Diego.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>with secret contempt</i>)</p> + +<p>Noble maiden, such words exceed my poor unscholarly +appreciation. The antique worthies whom you name are for me +merely figures in tapestries and frescoes, quaint greybeards +in laurel wreaths and helmets; and I can scarcely tell whether +the Ladies Fortitude and Rhetoric with whom they hold +converse, are real daughters of kings, or mere Arts and +Virtues. But the Duke, a learned and judicious prince, will +set due store by his youthful cousin's learning. As for me, +simpleton and ignoramus that I am, all I see is that Princess +Hippolyta is very beautiful and very young.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>(<i>sighing a little, but with great simplicity</i>)</p> + +<p>I know it. I am young, and perhaps crude; although I study +hard to learn the rules of wisdom. You, Diego, seem to know +them without study.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I know somewhat of the world and of men, gracious Princess, +but that can scarce be called knowing wisdom. Say rather +knowing blindness, envy, cruelty, endless nameless folly in +others and oneself. But why should you seek to be wise? you +who are fair, young, a princess, and betrothed from your +cradle to a great prince? Be beautiful, be young, be what you +are, a woman.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>has said this last word with emphasis, but the</i> +<span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>has not noticed the sarcasm in his voice</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>shaking her head</i>)</p> + +<p>That is not my lot. I was destined, as you said, to be the +wife of a great prince; and my dear father trained me to fill +that office.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Well, and to be beautiful, young, radiant; to be a woman; is +not that the office of a wife?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I have not much experience. But my father told me, and I have +gathered from books, that in the wives of princes, such gifts +are often thrown away; that other women, supplying them, seem +to supply them better. Look at my cousin's mother. I can +remember her still beautiful, young, and most tenderly loving. +Yet the Duke, my uncle, disdained her, and all she got was +loneliness and heartbreak. An honourable woman, a princess, +cannot compete with those who study to please and to please +only. She must either submit to being ousted from her +husband's love, or soar above it into other regions.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>interested</i>)</p> + +<p>Other regions?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Higher ones. She must be fit to be her husband's help, and to +nurse his sons to valour and wisdom.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I see. The Prince must know that besides all the knights that +he summons to battle, and all the wise men whom he hears in +council, there is another knight, in rather lighter armour and +quicker tired, another counsellor, less experienced and of +less steady temper, ready for use. Is this great gain?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>It is strange that being a man, you should conceive of women +from——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>From a man's standpoint?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Nay; methinks a woman's. For I observe that women, when they +wish to help men, think first of all of some transparent +masquerade, donning men's clothes, at all events in metaphor, +in order to be near their lovers when not wanted.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>hastily</i>)</p> + +<p>Donning men's clothes? A masquerade? I fail to follow your +meaning, gracious maiden.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>simply</i>)</p> + +<p>So I have learned at least from our poets. Angelica, and +Bradamante and Fiordispina, scouring the country after their +lovers, who were busy enough without them. I prefer Penelope, +staying at home to save the lands and goods of Ulysses, and +bringing up his son to rescue and avenge him.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>reassured and indifferent</i>)</p> + +<p>Did Ulysses love Penelope any better for it, Madam? better +than poor besotted Menelaus, after all his injuries, loved +Helen back in Sparta?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>That is not the question. A woman born to be a prince's wife +and prince's mother, does her work not for the sake of +something greater than love, whether much or little.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>For what then?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Does a well-bred horse or excellent falcon do its duty to +please its master? No; but because such is its nature. +Similarly, methinks, a woman bred to be a princess works with +her husband, for her husband, not for any reward, but because +he and she are of the same breed, and obey the same instincts.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Ah!—--Then happiness, love,—all that a woman craves for?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Are accidents. Are they not so in the life of a prince? Love +he may snatch; and she, being in woman's fashion not allowed +to snatch, may receive as a gift, or not. But received or +snatched, it is not either's business; not their nature's true +fulfilment.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You think so, Lady?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I am bound to think so. I was born to it and taught it. You +know the Duke, my cousin,—well, I am his bride, not being +born his sister.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And you are satisfied? O beautiful Princess, you are of +illustrious lineage and mind, and learned. Your father brought +you up on Plutarch instead of Amadis; you know many things; +but there is one, methinks, no one can know the nature of it +until he has it.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>What is that, pray?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>A heart. Because you have not got one yet, you make your plans +without it,—a negligible item in your life.</p> + +<p class="persona">Princess</p> + +<p>I am not a child.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>But not yet a woman.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>meditatively</i>)</p> + +<p>You think, then——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I do not <i>think</i>; I <i>know</i>. And <i>you</i> will know, some day. And +then——</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Then I shall suffer. Why, we must all suffer. Say that, having +a heart, a heart for husband or child, means certain +grief,—well, does not riding, walking down your stairs, mean +the chance of broken bones? Does not living mean old age, +disease, possible blindness or paralysis, and quite inevitable +aches? If, as you say, I must needs grow a heart, and if a +heart must needs give agony, why, I shall live through +heartbreak as through pain in any other limb.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Yes,—were your heart a limb like all the rest,—but 'tis the +very centre and fountain of all life.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>You think so? 'Tis, methinks, pushing analogy too far, and +metaphor. This necessary organ, diffusing life throughout us, +and, as physicians say, removing with its vigorous floods all +that has ceased to live, replacing it with new and living +tissue,—this great literal heart cannot be the seat of only +one small passion.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Yet I have known more women than one die of that small +passion's frustrating.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>But you have known also, I reckon, many a man in whom life, +what he had to live for, was stronger than all love. They say +the Duke my cousin's melancholy sickness was due to love which +he had outlived.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>They say so, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS (<i>thoughtfully</i>)</p> + +<p>I think it possible, from what I know of him. He was much with +my father when a lad; and I, a child, would listen to their +converse, not understanding its items, but seeming to +understand the general drift. My father often said my cousin +was romantic, favoured overmuch his tender mother, and would +suffer greatly, learning to live for valour and for wisdom.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Think you he has, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>If 'tis true that occasion has already come.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And—if that occasion came, for the first time or for the +second, perhaps, after your marriage? What would you do, +Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I cannot tell as yet. Help him, I trust, when help could come, +by the sympathy of a soul's strength and serenity. Stand +aside, most likely, waiting to be wanted. Or else——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Or else, illustrious maiden?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Or else——I know not——perhaps, growing a heart, get some +use from it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Your Highness surely does not mean use it to love with?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Why not? It might be one way of help. And if I saw him +struggling with grief, seeking to live the life and think the +thought fit for his station; why, methinks I could love him. +He seems lovable. Only love could have taught fidelity like +yours.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You forget, gracious Princess, that you attributed great power +of virtue to a habit of conduct, which is like the nature of +high-bred horses, needing no spur. But in truth you are right. +I am no high-bred creature. Quite the contrary. Like curs, I +love; love, and only love. For curs are known to love their +masters.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Speak not thus, virtuous Diego. I have indeed talked in +magnanimous fashion, and believed, sincerely, that I felt high +resolves. But you have acted, lived, and done magnanimously. +What you have been and are to the Duke is better schooling for +me than all the Lives of Plutarch.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO.</p> + +<p>You could not learn from me, Lady.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>But I would try, Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Be not grasping, Madam. The generous coursers whom your father +taught you to break and harness have their set of virtues. +Those of curs are different. Do not grudge them those. Your +noble horses kick them enough, without even seeing their +presence. But I feel I am beyond my depth, not being +philosophical by nature or schooling. And I had forgotten to +give you part of his Highnesses message. Knowing your love of +music, and the attention you have given it, the Duke imagined +it might divert you, till he was at leisure to pay you homage, +to make trial of my poor powers. Will it please you to order +the other musicians, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Nay, good Diego, humour me in this. I have studied music, and +would fain make trial of accompanying your voice. Have you +notes by you?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Here are some, Madam, left for the use of his Highness's band +this evening. Here is the pastoral of Phyllis by Ludovic of +the Lute; a hymn in four parts to the Virgin by Orlandus +Lassus; a madrigal by the Pope's Master, Signor Pierluigi of +Praeneste. Ah! Here is a dramatic scene between Medea and +Creusa, rivals in love, by the Florentine Octavio. Have you +knowledge of it, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I have sung it with my master for exercise. But, good Diego, +find a song for yourself.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You shall humour me, now, gracious Lady. Think I am your +master. I desire to hear your voice. And who knows? In this +small matter I may really teach you something.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>sits to the harpsichord</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>standing +beside her on the dais. They sing, the</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>taking the +treble</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>the contralto part. The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>enters +first—with a full-toned voice clear and high, singing very +carefully</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>follows, singing in a whisper. His voice is +a little husky, and here and there broken, but ineffably +delicious and penetrating, and, as he sings, becomes, without +quitting the whisper, dominating and disquieting. The</i> +<span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>plays a wrong chord, and breaks off suddenly.</i></p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>having finished a cadence, rudely</i>)</p> + +<p>What is it, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I know not. I have lost my place——I——I feel bewildered. +When your voice rose up against mine, Diego, I lost my head. +And—I do not know how to express it—when our voices met in +that held dissonance, it seemed as if you hurt me——horribly.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>smiling, with hypocritical apology</i>)</p> + +<p>Forgive me, Madam. I sang too loud, perhaps. We theatre +singers are apt to strain things. I trust some day to hear you +sing alone. You have a lovely voice: more like a boy's than +like a maiden's still.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>And yours——'tis strange that at your age we should reverse +the parts,—yours, though deeper than mine, is like a +woman's.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>laughing</i>)</p> + +<p>I have grown a heart, Madam; 'tis an organ grows quicker where +the breed is mixed and lowly, no nobler limbs retarding its +development by theirs.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Speak not thus, excellent Diego. Why cause me pain by +disrespectful treatment of a person—your own admirable +self—whom I respect? You have experience, Diego, and shall +teach me many things, for I desire learning.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>takes his hand in both hers, very kindly and +simply</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>disengaging his, bows very ceremoniously</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Shall I teach you to sing as I do, gracious Madam?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>after a moment</i>)</p> + +<p>I think not, Diego.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_V" id="ACT_V"></a>ACT V</h4> + + +<p><i>Two months later. The wedding day of the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>. <i>Another part +of the Palace of Mantua. A long terrace still to be seen, with +roof supported by columns. It looks on one side on to the +jousting ground, a green meadow surrounded by clipped hedges +and set all round with mulberry trees. On the other side it +overlooks the lake, against which, as a fact, it acts as dyke. +The Court of Mantua and Envoys of foreign Princes, together +with many Prelates, are assembled on the terrace, surrounding +the seats of the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>, <i>the young</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS HIPPOLYTA</span>, <i>the</i> +<span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> <i>and the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>. <i>Facing this gallery, and +separated from it by a line of sedge and willows, and a few +yards of pure green water, starred with white lilies, is a +stage in the shape of a Grecian temple, apparently rising out +of the lake. Its pediment and columns are slung with garlands +of bay and cypress. In the gable, the</i> DUKE'S <i>device of a +labyrinth in gold on a blue ground and the motto:</i> "<span class="persona">RECTAS +PETO.</span>" <i>On the stage, but this side of the curtain, which is +down, are a number of</i> Musicians <i>with violins, viols, +theorbs, a hautboy, a flute, a bassoon, viola d'amore and bass +viols, grouped round two men with double basses and a man at a +harpsichord, in dress like the musicians in Veronese's +paintings. They are preluding gently, playing elaborately +fugued variations on a dance tune in three-eighth time, +rendered singularly plaintive by the absence of perfect +closes</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>(<i>to</i> <span class="persona">VENETIAN AMBASSADOR</span>)</p> + +<p>What say you to our Diego's masque, my Lord? Does not his +skill as a composer vie almost with his sublety as a singer?</p> + +<p class="persona">MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA</p> + +<p>(<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span>)</p> + +<p>A most excellent masque, methinks, Madam. And of so new a +kind. We have had masques in palaces and also in gardens, and +some, I own it, beautiful; for our palace on the hill affords +fine vistas of cypress avenues and the distant plain. But, +until the Duke your son, no one has had a masque on the water, +it would seem. 'Tis doubtless his invention?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>with evident preoccupation</i>)</p> + +<p>I think not, Madam. 'Tis our foolish Diego's freak. And I +confess I like it not. It makes me anxious for the players.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">BISHOP OF CREMONA</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>)</p> + +<p>A wondrous singer, your Signor Diego. They say the Spaniards +have subtle exercises for keeping the voice thus youthful. His +Holiness has several such who sing divinely under Pierluigi's +guidance. But your Diego seems really but a child, yet has a +mode of singing like one who knows a world of joys and +sorrows.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>He has. Indeed, I sometimes think he pushes the pathetic +quality too far. I am all for the Olympic serenity of the wise +Ancients.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span> (<i>laughing</i>)</p> + +<p>My uncle would, I almost think, exile our divine Diego, as +Plato did the poets, for moving us too much.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCE OF MASSA</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>He has moved your noble husband strangely. Or is it, gracious +bride, that too much happiness overwhelms our friend?</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>turning round and noticing the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>, <i>a few seats off</i>)</p> + +<p>'Tis true. Ferdinand is very sensitive to music, and is +greatly concerned for our Diego's play. Still——I wonder——.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">MARCHIONESS</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET</span>, <i>who is standing +near her</i>)</p> + +<p>I really never could have recognised Signor Diego in his +disguise. He looks for all the world exactly like a woman.</p> + +<p class="persona">POET</p> + +<p>A woman! Say a goddess, Madam! Upon my soul (<i>whispering</i>), +the bride is scarce as beautiful as he, although as fair as +one of the noble swans who sail on those clear waters.</p> + +<p class="persona">JESTER</p> + +<p>After the play we shall see admiring dames trooping behind the +scenes to learn the secret of the paints which can change a +scrubby boy into a beauteous nymph; a metamorphosis worth +twenty of Sir Ovid's.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DOGE'S WIFE</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>)</p> + +<p>They all tell me—but 'tis a secret naturally—that the words +of this ingenious masque are from your Highness's own pen; and +that you helped—such are your varied gifts—your singing-page +to set them to music.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>impatiently</i>)</p> + +<p>It may be that your Serenity is rightly informed, or not.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">KNIGHT OF MALTA</span> (<i>to</i> <span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span>)</p> + +<p>One recognises, at least, the mark of Duke Ferdinand's genius +in the suiting of the play to the surroundings. Given these +lakes, what fitter argument than Ariadne abandoned on her +little island? And the labyrinth in the story is a pretty +allusion to your lord's personal device and the magnificent +ceiling he lately designed for our admiration.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>with her eyes fixed on the curtain, which begins to move</i>)</p> + +<p>Nay, 'tis all Diego's thought. Hush, they begin to play. Oh, +my heart beats with curiosity to know how our dear Diego will +carry his invention through, and to hear the last song which +he has never let me hear him sing.</p> + +<p><i>The curtain is drawn aside, displaying the stage, set with +orange and myrtle trees in jars, and a big flowering oleander. +There is no painted background; but instead, the lake, with +distant shore, and the sky with the sun slowly descending +into clouds, which light up purple and crimson, and send rosy +streamers into the high blue air. On the stage a rout of</i> +Bacchanals, <i>dressed like Mantegna's Hours, but with +vine-garlands; also</i> Satyrs <i>quaintly dressed in goatskins, +but with top-knots of ribbons, all singing a Latin ode in +praise of</i> <span class="persona">BACCHUS</span> <i>and wine; while girls dressed as nymphs, +with ribboned thyrsi in their hands, dance a pavana before a +throne of moss overhung by ribboned garlands. On this throne +are seated a</i> <span class="persona">TENOR</span> <i>as</i> <span class="persona">BACCHUS</span>, <i>dressed in russet and +leopard skins, a garland of vine leaves round his waist and +round his wide-brimmed hat; and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>as</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, +<i>no longer habited as a man, but in woman's garments, like +those of Guercino's Sibyls: a floating robe and vest of orange +and violet, open at the throat; with particoloured scarves +hanging, and a particoloured scarf wound like a turban round +the head, the locks of dark hair escaping from beneath. She is +extremely beautiful</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span> (<i>sometime known as</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>now representing</i> +<span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>) <i>rises from the throne and speaks, turning to</i> +<span class="persona">BACCHUS</span>. <i>Her voice is a contralto, but not deep, and with +upper notes like a hautboy's. She speaks in an irregular +recitative, sustained by chords on the viols and +harpsichord</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>Tempt me not, gentle Bacchus, sunburnt god of ruddy vines and +rustic revelry. The gifts you bring, the queenship of the +world of wine-inspired Fancies, cannot quell my grief at +Theseus' loss.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">BACCHUS</span> (<i>tenor</i>)</p> + +<p>Princess, I do beseech you, give me leave to try and soothe +your anguish. Daughter of Cretan Minos, stern Judge of the +Departed, your rearing has been too sad for youth and beauty, +and the shade of Orcus has ever lain across your path. But I +am God of Gladness; I can take your soul, suspend it in +Mirth's sun, even as the grapes, translucent amber or rosy, +hang from the tendril in the ripening sun of the crisp autumn +day. I can unwind your soul, and string it in the serene sky +of evening, smiling in the deep blue like to the stars, +encircled, I offer you as crown. Listen, fair Nymph: 'tis a +God woos you.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>Alas, radiant Divinity of a time of year gentler than Spring +and fruitfuller than Summer, there is no Autumn for hapless +Ariadne. Only Winter's nights and frosts wrap my soul. When +Theseus went, my youth went also. I pray you leave me to my +poor tears and the thoughts of him.</p> + +<p class="persona">BACCHUS</p> + +<p>Lady, even a God, and even a lover, must respect your grief. +Farewell. Comrades, along; the pine trees on the hills, the +ivy-wreaths upon the rocks, await your company; and the +red-stained vat, the heady-scented oak-wood, demand your +presence.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> Bacchantes <i>and</i> Satyrs <i>sing a Latin ode in praise of +Wine, in four parts, with accompaniment of bass viols and +lutes, and exeunt with</i> <span class="persona">BACCHUS</span>.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>to</i> <span class="persona">DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET</span>)</p> + +<p>Now, now, Master Torquato, now we shall hear Poetry's own self +sing with our Diego's voice.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>as</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>, <i>walks slowly up and down the stage, +while the viola plays a prelude in the minor. Then she speaks, +recitative with chords only by strings and harpsichord</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>They are gone at last. Kind creatures, how their kindness +fretted my weary soul I To be alone with grief is almost +pleasure, since grief means thought of Theseus. Yet that +thought is killing me. O Theseus, why didst thou ever come +into my life? Why did not the cruel Minotaur gore and trample +thee like all the others? Hapless Ariadne! The clue was in my +keeping, and I reached it to him. And now his ship has long +since neared his native shores, and he stands on the prow, +watching for his new love. But the Past belongs to me.</p> + +<p><i>A flute rises in the orchestra, with viols accompanying, +pizzicati, and plays three or four bars of intricate mazy +passages, very sweet and poignant, stopping on a high note, +with imperfect close</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">ARIADNE</span> (<i>continuing</i>)</p> + +<p>And in the past he loved me, and he loves me still. Nothing +can alter that. Nay, Theseus, thou canst never never love +another like me.</p> + +<p><i>Arioso. The declamation becomes more melodic, though still +unrhythmical, and is accompanied by a rapid and passionate +tremolo of violins and viols</i>.</p> + +<p>And thy love for her will be but the thin ghost of the reality +that lived for me. But Theseus——Do not leave me yet. +Another hour, another minute. I have so much to tell thee, +dearest, ere thou goest.</p> + +<p><i>Accompaniment more and more agitated. A hautboy echoes</i> +<span class="persona">ARIADNE'S</span> <i>last phrase with poignant reedy tone</i>.</p> + +<p>Thou knowest, I have not yet sung thee that little song thou +lovest to hear of evenings; the little song made by the +Aeolian Poetess whom Apollo loved when in her teens. And thou +canst not go away till I have sung it. See! my lute. But I +must tune it. All is out of tune in my poor jangled life.</p> + +<p><i>Lute solo in the orchestra. A Siciliana or slow dance, very +delicate and simple</i>. <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span> <i>sings</i>.</p> + +<p>Song</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Let us forget we loved each other much;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Let us forget we ever have to part;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Let us forget that any look or touch</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Once let in either to the other's heart.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Only we'll sit upon the daisied grass,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And hear the larks and see the swallows pass;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Only we live awhile, as children play,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Without to-morrow, without yesterday.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>During the ritornello, between the two verses.</i></p> + +<p class="persona">POET</p> + +<p>(<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span>, <i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Madam, methinks his Highness is unwell. Turn round, I pray +you.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span> (<i>without turning</i>).</p> + +<p>He feels the play's charm. Hush.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Come Ferdinand, you are faint. Come with me.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Nay, mother. It will pass. Only a certain oppression at the +heart, I was once subject to. Let us be still.</p> + +<p>Song (<i>repeats</i>)</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Only we'll live awhile, as children play,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Without to-morrow, without yesterday.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>A few bars of ritornello after the song</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Courage, my son, I know all.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>(<i>Recitative with accompaniment of violins, flute and harp</i>)</p> + +<p>Theseus, I've sung my song. Alas, alas for our poor songs we +sing to the beloved, and vainly try to vary into newness!</p> + +<p><i>A few notes of the harp well up, slow and liquid</i>.</p> + +<p>Now I can go to rest, and darkness lap my weary heart. +Theseus, my love, good night!</p> + +<p><i>Violins tremolo. The hautboy suddenly enters with a long +wailing phrase</i>. <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span> <i>quickly mounts on to the back of the +stage, turns round for one second, waving a kiss to an +imaginary person, and then flings herself down into the lake</i>.</p> + +<p><i>A great burst of applause. Enter immediately, and during the +cries and clapping, a chorus of</i> Water-Nymphs <i>in transparent +veils and garlands of willows and lilies, which sings to a +solemn counterpoint, the dirge of</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. <i>But their singing +is barely audible through the applause of the whole Court, and +the shouts of</i> "<span class="persona">DIEGO! DIEGO! ARIADNE! ARIADNE!</span>" <i>The young</i> +<span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>rises excitedly, wiping her eyes</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Dear friend! Diego! Diego! Our Orpheus, come forth!</p> + +<p class="persona">CROWD</p> + +<p>Diego! Diego!</p> + +<p><span class="persona">POET</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">POPE'S LEGATE</span>)</p> + +<p>He is a real artist, and scorns to spoil the play's impression +by truckling to this foolish habit of applause.</p> + +<p class="persona">MARCHIONESS</p> + +<p>Still, a mere singer, a page——when his betters call——. But +see! the Duke has left our midst.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>He has gone to bring back Diego in triumph, doubtless.</p> + +<p class="persona">VENETIAN AMBASSADOR</p> + +<p>And, I note, his venerable mother has also left us. I doubt +whether this play has not offended her strict widow's +austerity.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>But where is Diego, meanwhile?</p> + +<p><i>The Chorus and orchestra continue the dirge for</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. A +<span class="persona">GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING</span> <i>elbows through the crowd to the</i> +<span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">GENTLEMAN</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Most Eminent, a word——</p> + +<p><span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>The Duke has had a return of his malady?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">GENTLEMAN</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>No, most Eminent. But Diego is nowhere to be found. And they +have brought up behind the stage the body of a woman in +Ariadne's weeds.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> (whispering)</p> + +<p>Ah, is that all? Discretion, pray. I knew it. But 'tis a most +distressing accident. Discretion above all.</p> + +<p><i>The Chorus suddenly breaks off. For on to the stage comes +the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>. <i>He is dripping, and bears in his arms the dead +body, drowned, of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>in the garb of</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. <i>A shout +from the crowd</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>with a cry, clutching the</i> <span class="persona">POET'S</span> <i>arm</i>)</p> + +<p>Diego!</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>(<i>stooping over the body, which he has laid upon the stage, +and speaking very low</i>)</p> + +<p>Magdalen!</p> + +<p>(<i>The curtain is hastily closed</i>.)</p> + +<p>THE END</p> + + + + + + + + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 37179 ***</div> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8324ac3 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #37179 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37179) diff --git a/old/37179-8.txt b/old/37179-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5226269 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/37179-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5845 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Limbo and Other Essays, by Vernon Lee + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Limbo and Other Essays + To which is now added Ariadne in Mantua + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: August 23, 2011 [EBook #37179] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe +at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously +made available by the Internet Archive) + + + + + +LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS + +TO WHICH IS NOW ADDED ARIADNE IN MANTUA + +BY + +VERNON LEE + +LONDON--JOHN LANE--THE BODLEY HEAD + NEW YORK--JOHN LANE COMPANY + +MCMVIII + + + + +CONTENTS + + LIMBO + IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES + THE LIE OF THE LAND + TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC + ON MODERN TRAVELLING + OLD ITALIAN GARDENS + ABOUT LEISURE + RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS + THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE + ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS + ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + + +LIMBO + + Perocchè gente di molto valore + Conobbi che in quel _Limbo_ eran sospesi. + + + +I + +It may seem curious to begin with Dante and pass on to the Children's +Rabbits' House; but I require both to explain what it is I mean by +Limbo; no such easy matter on trying. For this discourse is not about +the Pious Pagans whom the poet found in honourable confinement at the +Gate of Hell, nor of their neighbours the Unchristened Babies; but I am +glad of Dante's authority for the existence of a place holding such +creatures as have just missed a necessary rite, or come too soon for +thorough salvation. And I am glad, moreover, that the poet has insisted +on the importance--"gente di molto valore"--of the beings thus enclosed; +because it is just with the superior quality of the things in what I +mean by Limbo that we are peculiarly concerned. + +And now for the other half of my preliminary illustration of the +subject, to wit, the Children's Rabbits' House. The little gardens which +the children played at cultivating have long since disappeared, taken +insensibly back into that corner of the formal but slackly kept garden +which looks towards the steep hill dotted with cows and sheep. But in +that corner, behind the shapeless Portugal laurels and the patches of +seeding grass, there still remains, beneath big trees, what the children +used to call the "Rabbits' Villa." 'Tis merely a wooden toy house, with +green moss-eaten roof, standing, like the lake dwellings of prehistoric +times, on wooden posts, with the tall foxgloves, crimson and white, +growing all round it. There is something ludicrous in this superannuated +toy, this Noah's ark on stilts among the grass and bushes; but when you +look into the thing, finding the empty plates and cups "for having tea +with the rabbits," and when you look into it spiritually also, it grows +oddly pathetic. We walked up and down between the high hornbeam +hedges, the sunlight lying low on the armies of tall daisies and +seeding grasses, and falling in narrow glints among the white boles and +hanging boughs of the beeches, where the wooden benches stand unused in +the deep grass, and the old swing hangs crazily crooked. Yes, the +Rabbits' Villa and the surrounding overgrown beds are quite pathetic. Is +it because they are, in a way, the graves of children long dead, as +dead--despite the grown-up folk who may come and say "It was I"--as the +rabbits and guinea-pigs with whom they once had tea? That is it; and +that explains my meaning: the Rabbits' Villa is, to the eye of the +initiate, one of many little branch establishments of Limbo surrounding +us on all sides. Another poet, more versed in similar matters than Dante +(one feels sure that Dante knew his own mind, and always had his own +way, even when exiled), Rossetti, in a sonnet, has given us the terrible +little speech which would issue from the small Limbos of this kind: + + Look in my face: My name is _Might-have-been_. + + +II + +Of all the things that Limbo might contain, there is one about which +some persons, very notably Churchyard Gray, have led us into error. I do +not believe there is much genius to be found in Limbo. The world, +although it takes a lot of dunning, offers a fair price for this +article, which it requires as much as water-power and coal, nay even as +much as food and clothes (bread for its soul and raiment for its +thought); so that what genius there is will surely be brought into +market. But even were it wholly otherwise, genius, like murder, _would +out_; for genius is one of the liveliest forces of nature; not to be +quelled or quenched, adaptable, protean, expansive, nay explosive; of +all things in the world the most able to take care of itself; which +accounts for so much public expenditure to foster and encourage it: +foster the sun's chemistry, the force of gravitation, encourage atomic +affinity and natural selection, magnificent Mæcenas and judicious +Parliamentary Board, they are sure to do you credit! + +Hence, to my mind, there are _no mute inglorious Miltons_, or none +worth taking into account. Our sentimental surmises about them grow from +the notion that human power is something like the wheels or cylinder of +a watch, a neat numbered scrap of mechanism, stamped at a blow by a +creative _fiat_, or hand-hammered by evolution, and fitting just exactly +into one little plan, serving exactly one little purpose, indispensable +for that particular machine, and otherwise fit for the dust-heap. +Happily for us, it is certainly not so. The very greatest men have +always been the most versatile: Lionardo, Goethe, Napoleon; the next +greatest can still be imagined under different circumstances as turning +their energy to very different tasks; and I am tempted to think that the +hobbies by which many of them have laid much store, while the world +merely laughed at the statesman's trashy verses or the musician's +third-rate sketches, may have been of the nature of rudimentary organs, +which, given a different environment, might have developed, become the +creature's chief _raison d'être_, leaving that which has actually +chanced to be his talent to become atrophied, perhaps invisible. + +Be this last as it may--and I commend it to those who believe in genius +as a form of monomania--it is quite certain that genius has nothing in +common with machinery. It is the most organic and alive of living +organisms; the most adaptable therefore, and least easily killed; and +for this reason, and despite Gray's _Elegy_, there is no chance of much +of it in Limbo. + +This is no excuse for the optimistic extermination of distinguished men. +It is indeed most difficult to kill genius, but there are a hundred ways +of killing its possessors; and with them as much of their work as they +have left undone. What pictures might Giorgione not have painted but for +the lady, the rival, or the plague, whichever it was that killed him! +Mozart could assuredly have given us a half-dozen more _Don Giovannis_ +if he had had fewer lessons, fewer worries, better food; nay, by his +miserable death the world has lost, methinks, more even than that--a +commanding influence which would have kept music, for a score of years, +earnest and masterly but joyful: Rossini would not have run to seed, and +Beethoven's ninth symphony might have been a genuine "Hymn to Joy" if +only Mozart, the Apollo of musicians, had, for a few years more, +flooded men's souls with radiance. A similar thing is said of Rafael; +but his followers were mediocre, and he himself lacked personality, so +that many a better example might be brought. + +These are not useless speculations; it is as well we realise that, +although genius be immortal, poor men of genius are not. Quite an +extraordinary small amount of draughts and microbes, of starvation +bodily and spiritual, of pin-pricks of various kinds, will do for them; +we can all have a hand in their killing; the killing also of their +peace, kindliness, and justice, sending these qualities to Limbo, which +is full of such. And now, dear reader, I perceive that we have at last +got Limbo well in sight and, in another minute, we may begin to discern +some of its real contents. + + +III + +The Paladin Astolfo, as Ariosto relates, was sent on a winged horse up +to the moon; where, under the ciceroneship of John the Evangelist, he +saw most of the things which had been lost on earth, among others the +wits of many persons in bottles, his cousin Orlando's which he had come +on purpose to fetch, and, curiously enough, his own, which he had never +missed. + +The moon does well as storehouse for such brilliant, romantic things. +The Limbo whose contents and branches I would speak of is far less +glorious, a trifle humdrum; sometimes such as makes one smile, like that +Villa of the Rabbits in the neglected garden. 'Twas for this reason, +indeed, that I preferred to clear away at once the question of the Mute +Inglorious Miltons, and of such solemn public loss as comes of the +untimely death of illustrious men. Do you remember, by the way, reader, +a certain hasty sketch by Cazin, which hangs in a corner of the +Luxembourg? The bedroom of Gambetta after his death: the white bed +neatly made, empty, with laurel garlands replacing him; the tricolor +flag, half-furled, leaned against the chair, and on the table vague +heaped-up papers; a thing quite modest and heroic, suitable to all +similar occasions--Mirabeau say, and Stevenson on his far-off +island--and with whose image we can fitly close our talk of genius +wasted by early death. + +I have alluded to _happiness_ as filling up much space in Limbo; and I +think that the amount of it lying in that kingdom of Might-have-been is +probably out of all proportion with that which must do that duty in this +actual life. Browning's _Last Ride Together_--one has to be perpetually +referring to poets on this matter, for philosophers and moralists +consider happiness in its _causal connection_ or as a fine snare to +virtue--Browning's _Last Ride Together_ expresses, indeed, a view of the +subject commending itself to active and cheerful persons, which comes to +many just after their salad days; to wit, what a mercy that we don't +often get what we want most. The objects of our recent ardent longings +reveal themselves, most luridly sometimes, as dangers, deadlocks, +fetters, hopeless labyrinths, from which we have barely escaped. This is +the house I wanted to buy, the employment I fretted to obtain, the lady +I pined to marry, the friend with whom I projected to share lodgings. +With such sudden chill recognitions comes belief in a special +providence, some fine Greek-sounding goddess, thwarting one's dearest +wishes from tender solicitude that we shouldn't get what we want. In +such a crisis the nobler of us feel like the Riding Lover, and learn +ideal philosophy and manly acquiescence; the meaner snigger ungenerously +about those youthful escapes; and know not that they have gained safety +at the price, very often, of the little good--ideality, faith and +dash--there ever was about them: safe, smug individuals, whose safety is +mere loss to the cosmos. But later on, when our characters have settled, +when repeated changes have taught us which is our unchangeable ego, we +begin to let go that optimist creed, and to suspect (suspicion turning +to certainty) that, as all things which _have_ happened to us have not +been always advantageous, so likewise things longed for in vain need not +necessarily have been curses. As we grow less attached to theories, and +more to our neighbours, we recognise every day that loss, refusal of the +desired, has not by any means always braced or chastened the lives we +look into; we admit that the Powers That Be showed considerable judgment +in disregarding the teachings of asceticism, and inspiring mankind with +innate repugnance to having a bad time. And, to return to the question +of Limbo, as we watch the best powers, the whole usefulness and +sweetness starved out of certain lives for lack of the love, the +liberty, or the special activities they prayed for; as regards the +question of Limbo, I repeat, we grow (or try to grow) a little more +cautious about sending so much more happiness--ours and other folk's--to +the place of Might-have-been. + +Some of it certainly does seem beyond our control, a fatal matter of +constitution. I am not speaking of the results of vice or stupidity; +this talk of Limbo is exclusively addressed to the very nicest people. + +A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness. We have +all of us seen instances. They often occur between members of the same +family, the very similarity of nature, which might make mothers and +daughters, brothers and sisters, into closest companions, merely +doubling the dose of that terrible reserve, timidity, horror of human +contact, paralysis of speech, which keeps the most loving hearts +asunder. It is useless to console ourselves by saying that each has its +own love of the other. And thus they walk, sometimes side by side, +never looking in one another's eyes, never saying the word, till death +steps in, death sometimes unable to loosen the tongue of the mourner. +Such things are common among our reserved northern races, making us so +much less happy and less helpful in everyday life than our Latin and +Teuton neighbours; and, I imagine, are commonest among persons of the +same blood. But the same will happen between lovers, or those who should +have been such; doubt of one's own feeling, fear of the other's charity, +apprehension of its all being a mistake, has silently prevented many a +marriage. The two, then, could not have been much in love? Not _in +love_, since neither ever allowed that to happen, more's the pity; but +loving one another with the whole affinity of their natures, and, after +all, _being in love_ is but the crisis, or the beginning of that, if +it's worth anything. + +Thus shyness sends much happiness to Limbo. But actual shyness is not +the worst. Some persons, sometimes of the very finest kind, endowed for +loving-kindness, passion, highest devotion, nay requiring it as much as +air or warmth, have received, from some baleful fairy, a sterilising +gift of fear. Fear of what they could not tell; something which makes +all community of soul a terror, and every friend a threat. Something +terrible, in whose presence we must bow our heads and pray impunity +therefrom for ourselves and ours. + +But the bulk of happiness stacked up in Limbo appears, on careful +looking, to be an agglomeration of other lost things; justice, charm, +appreciation, and faith in one another, all recklessly packed off as so +much lumber, sometimes to make room for fine new qualities instead! +Justice, I am inclined to think, is usually sent to Limbo through the +agency of others. A work in many folios might be written by condensing +what famous men have had said against them in their days of struggle, +and what they have answered about others in their days of prosperity. + +The loss of _charm_ is due to many more circumstances; the stress of +life indeed seems calculated to send it to Limbo. Certain it is that few +women, and fewer men, of forty, preserve a particle of it. I am not +speaking of youth or beauty, though it does seem a pity that mature +human beings should mostly be too fat or too thin, and lacking either +sympathy or intellectual keenness. _Charm_ must comprise all that, but +much besides. It is the undefinable quality of nearly every child, and +of all nice lads and girls; the quality which (though it _can_ reach +perfection in exceptional old people) usually vanishes, no one knows +when exactly, into the Limbo marked by the Rabbits' Villa, with its +plates and tea-cups, mouldering on its wooden posts in the unweeded +garden. + +More useful qualities replace all these: hardness, readiness to snatch +opportunity, mistrust of all ideals, inflexible self-righteousness; +useful, nay necessary; but, let us admit it, in a life which, judged by +the amount of dignity and sweetness it contains, is perhaps scarce +necessary itself, and certainly not useful. The case might be summed up, +for our guidance, by saying that the loss of many of our finer qualities +is due to the complacent, and sometimes dutiful, cultivation of our +worse ones! + +For, even in the list of virtues, there are finer and less fine, nay +virtues one might almost call atrocious, and virtues with a taint of +ignominy. I have said that we lose some of our finer qualities this way; +what's worse is, that we often fail to appreciate the finest qualities +of others. + + +IV + +And here, coming to the vague rubric _appreciation of others_, I feel we +have got to a district of Limbo about which few of us should have the +audacity to speak, and few, as a fact, have the courage honestly to +think. _What do we make of our idea of others_ in our constant attempt +to justify ourselves? No Japanese bogie-monger ever produced the equal +of certain wooden monster-puppets which we carve, paint, rig out, and +christen by the names of real folk--alas, alas, dear names sometimes of +friends!--and stick up to gibber in our memory; while the real image, +the creature we have really known, is carted off to Limbo! But this is +too bad to speak of. + +Let us rather think gently of things, sad, but sad without ignominy, of +friendships still-born or untimely cut off, hurried by death into a +place like that which holds the souls of the unchristened babies; +often, like them, let us hope, removed to a sphere where such things +grow finer and more fruitful, the sphere of the love of those we have +not loved enough in life. + +But that at best is but a place of ghosts; so let us never forget, dear +friends, how close all round lies Limbo, the Kingdom of +Might-have-been. + + + + + +IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES + + + +I + +My Yorkshire friend was saying that she hated being in an old house. +_There seemed to be other_ people in it besides the living.... + +These words, expressing the very reverse of what I feel, have set me +musing on my foolish passion for the Past. The Past, but the real one; +not the Past considered as a possible Present. For though I should like +to have seen ancient Athens, or Carthage according to Salambô, and +though I have pined to hear the singers of last century, I know that any +other period than this of the world's history would be detestable to +live in. For one thing--one among other instances of brutish +dulness--our ancestors knew nothing of the emotion of the past, the +rapture of old towns and houses. + +This emotion, at times this rapture, depends upon a number of mingled +causes; its origin is complex and subtle, like that of all things +exquisite; the flavour of certain dishes, the feel of sea or mountain +air, in which chemical peculiarities and circumstances of temperature +join with a hundred trifles, seaweed, herbs, tar, heather and so forth; +and like, more particularly, music and poetry, whose essence is so +difficult of ascertaining. And in this case, the causes that first occur +to our mind merely suggest a number more. Of these there is a principal +one, only just less important than that suggested by my Yorkshire +friend, which might be summed up thus: _That the action of time makes +man's works into natural objects._ + +Now, with no disrespect to man, 'tis certain Nature can do more than he. +Not that she is the more intelligent of the two; on the contrary, she +often makes the grossest artistic blunders, and has, for instance, a +woeful lack of design in England, and a perfect mania for obvious +composition and deliberate picturesqueness in Italy and Argyllshire. But +Nature is greater than man because she is bigger, and can do more things +at a time. Man seems unable to attend to one point without neglecting +some other; where he has a fine fancy in melody, his harmony is apt to +be threadbare; if he succeeds with colour, he cannot manage line, and if +light and shade, then neither; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark +that whenever and wherever man has built beautiful temples, churches, +and palaces, he has been impelled to bedizen them with primary colours, +of which, in Venice and the Alhambra, time at last made something +agreeable, and time also, in Greece, has judged best to obliterate every +odious trace. Hence, in the works of man there is always a tendency to +simplify, to suppress detail, to make things clear and explain patterns +and points of view; to save trouble, thought, and material; to be +symmetrical, which means, after all, to repeat the same thing twice +over; he knows it is wrong to carve one frieze on the top of the other, +and to paint in more than one layer of paint. Of all such restrictions +Nature is superbly unconscious. She smears weather-stain on +weather-stain and lichen on lichen, never stopping to match them. She +jags off corners and edges, and of one meagre line makes fifty curves +and facets. She weaves pattern over pattern, regardless of confusion, +so that the mangiest hedgerow is richer, more subtle than all the +carpets and papers ever designed by Mr. Morris. Her one notion is _More, +always more_; whereas that of man, less likely to exceed, is a timid +_Enough_. No wonder, for has she not the chemistry of soil and sun and +moisture and wind and frost, all at her beck and call? + +Be it as it may, Nature does more for us than man, in the way of +pleasure and interest. And to say, therefore, that time turns the works +of man into natural objects is, therefore, saying that time gives them +infinitely more variety and charm. In making them natural objects also +time gives to man's lifeless productions the chief quality of everything +belonging to Nature--life. Compare a freshly plastered wall with one +that has been exposed to sun and rain, or a newly slated roof to one all +covered with crumbling, grey, feathery stuff, like those of the Genoese +villages, which look as if they had been thatched with olive-leaves from +off their hills. 'Tis the comparison between life and death; or, rather, +since death includes change, between something and nothing. Imagine a +tree as regular as a column, or an apple as round as a door-knob! + + +II + +So much for the material improvements which time effects in our +surroundings. We now come to the spiritual advantages of dealing with +the past instead of the present. + +These begin in our earliest boy- or girl-hood. What right-minded child +of ten or twelve cares, beyond its tribute of apples, and jam, and +cricket, and guinea-pigs, for so dull a thing as the present? Why, the +present is like this schoolroom or playground, compared with Polar Seas, +Rocky Mountains, or Pacific Islands; a place for the body, not for the +soul. It all came back to me, a little while ago, when doing up for my +young friend, L.V., sundry Roman coins long mislaid in a trunk, and +which had formed my happiness at his age. Delightful things!--smooth and +bright green like certain cabbage-leaves, or of a sorry brown, rough +with rust and verdigris; but all leaving alike a perceptible portion of +themselves in the paper bag, a delectable smell of copper on one's +hands. How often had I turned you round and round betwixt finger and +thumb, trying to catch the slant of an inscription, or to get, in some +special light, the film of effaced effigy--the chin of Nero, or the +undulating, benevolent nose of Marcus Aurelius? How often have my hands +not anointed you with every conceivable mixture of oil, varnish, and +gum, rubbing you gently with silk and wool, and kid gloves, in hopes +that something ineffable might rise up on your surface! I quite +sympathised with my young friend when, having waggled and chortled over +each of them several times, he thought it necessary to overcome the +natural manly horror for kissing, and shook my hand twice, thrice, and +then once more, returning from the door.... For had they not +concentrated in their interesting verdigrised, brass-smelling smallness +something, to me, of the glory and wonder of Rome? Cæcilia Metella, the +Grotto of Egeria--a vague vision, through some twenty years' fog, of a +drive between budding hedges and dry reeds; a walk across short +anemone-starred turf; but turning into distinct remembrance of the +buying of two old pennies, one of Augustus, the other even more +interesting, owing to entire obliteration of both reverse and obverse; a +valuable coin, undoubtedly. And the Baths of Caracalla, which I can +recollect with the thick brushwood, oak scrub, ivy and lentisk, and even +baby ilexes, covering the masonry and overhanging the arches, and with +rose hedges just cut away to dig out some huge porphyry pillar--were not +their charms all concentrated in dim, delicious hopes of finding, just +where the green turf ended and the undulating expanse of purple, green +and white tessellated pavement began, some other brazen penny? And then, +in Switzerland, soon after, did I not suffer acutely, as I cleaned my +coins, from the knowledge that in this barbarous Northern place, which +the Romans had, perhaps, never come near, it was quite useless to keep +one's eyes on the ruts of roads and the gravel of paths, and +consequently almost useless to go out, or to exist; until one day I +learnt that a certain old lawyer, in a certain field, had actually dug +up Roman antiquities.... I don't know whether I ever saw them with +corporeal eyes, but certainly with those of the spirit; and I was lent +a drawing of one of them, a gold armlet, of which I insisted on having +a copy made, and sticking it up in my room.... + +It does but little honour to our greatest living philosopher that he, +whom children will bless for free permission to bruise, burn, and cut +their bodies, and empty the sugar-bowl and jam-pot, should wish to +deprive the coming generation of all historical knowledge, of so much +joy therefore, and, let me add, of so much education. For do not tell me +that it is not education, and of the best, to enable a child to feel the +passion and poetry of life; to live, while it trudges along the dull +familiar streets, in company with dull, familiar, and often stolidly +incurious grown-up folk, in that terrible, magnificent past, in dungeons +and palaces, loving and worshipping Joan of Arc, execrating Bloody Mary, +dreaming strange impossible possibilities of what we would have said and +done for Marie Antoinette--said to her, _her_ actually coming towards +us, by some stroke of magic, in that advancing carriage! There is enough +in afterlife, God knows, to teach us _not to be heroic_; 'tis just as +well that, as children, we learn a lingering liking for the quality; +'tis as important, perhaps, as learning that our tissues consume +carbon, if they do so. I can speak very fervently of the enormous value +for happiness of such an historical habit of mind. + +Such a habit transcends altogether, in its power of filling one's life, +the merely artistic and literary habit. For, after all, painting, +architecture, music, poetry, are things which touch us in a very +intermittent way. I would compare this historic habit rather to the +capacity of deriving pleasure from nature, not merely through the eye, +but through all the senses; and largely, doubtless, through those +obscure perceptions which make certain kinds of weather, air, &c., an +actual tonic, nay food, for the body. To this alone would I place my +_historical habit_ in the second rank. For, as the sensitiveness to +nature means supplementing our physical life by the life of the air and +the sun, the clouds and waters, so does this historic habit mean +supplementing our present life by a life in the past; a life larger, +richer than our own, multiplying our emotions by those of the dead.... + +I am no longer speaking of our passions for Joan of Arc and Marie +Antoinette, which disappear with our childhood; I am speaking of a +peculiar sense, ineffable, indescribable, but which every one knows +again who has once had it, and which to many of us has grown into a +cherished habit--the sense of being companioned by the past, of being in +a place warmed for our living by the lives of others. To me, as I +started with saying, the reverse of this is almost painful; and I know +few things more odious than the chilly, draughty emptiness of a place +without a history. For this reason America, save what may remain of +Hawthorne's New England and Irving's New York, never tempts my vagabond +fancy. Nature can scarcely afford beauty wherewith to compensate for +living in block-tin shanties or brand new palaces. How different if we +find ourselves in some city, nay village, rendered habitable for our +soul by the previous dwelling therein of others, of souls! Here the +streets are never empty; and, surrounded by that faceless crowd of +ghosts, one feels a right to walk about, being invited by them, instead +of rushing along on one's errands among a throng of other wretched +living creatures who are blocked by us and block us in their turn. + +How convey this sense? I do not mean that if I walk through old Paris or +through Rome my thoughts revolve on Louis XI. or Julius Cæsar. Nothing +could be further from the fact. Indeed the charm of the thing is that +one feels oneself accompanied not by this or that magnifico of the past +(whom of course one would never have been introduced to), but by a crowd +of nameless creatures; the daily life, common joy, suffering, heroism of +the past. Nay, there is something more subtle than this: the whole place +(how shall I explain it?) becomes a sort of living something. Thus, when +I hurry (for one must needs hurry through Venetian narrowness) between +the pink and lilac houses, with faded shutters and here and there a +shred of tracery; now turning a sharp corner before the locksmith's or +the chestnut-roaster's; now hearing my steps lonely between high walls +broken by a Gothic doorway; now crossing some smooth-paved little square +with its sculptured well and balconied palaces, I feel, I say, walking +day after day through these streets, that I am in contact with a whole +living, breathing thing, full of habits of life, of suppressed words; a +sort of odd, mysterious, mythical, but very real creature; as if, in +the dark, I stretched out my hand and met something (but without any +fear), something absolutely indefinable in shape and kind, but warm, +alive. This changes solitude in unknown places into the reverse of +solitude and strangeness. I remember walking thus along the bastions +under the bishop's palace at Laon, the great stone cows peering down +from the belfry above, with a sense of inexpressible familiarity and +peace. And, strange to say, this historic habit makes us familiar also +with places where we have never been. How well, for instance, do I not +know Dinant and Bouvines, rival cities on the Meuse (topography and +detail equally fantastic); and how I sometimes long, as with +homesickness, for a scramble among the stones and grass and +chandelier-like asphodels of Agrigentum, Veii, Collatium! Why, to one +minded like myself, a map, and even the names of stations in a +time-table, are full of possible delight. + +And sometimes it rises to rapture. This time, eight years ago, I was +fretting my soul away, ill, exiled away from home, forbidden all work, +in the south of Spain. At Granada for three dreary weeks it rained +without ceasing, till the hill of the Alhambra became filled with the +babbling of streams, and the town was almost cut off by a sea of mud. +Between the showers one rushed up into the damp gardens of the +Generalife, or into the Alhambra, to be imprisoned for hours in its +desolate halls, while the rain splashed down into the courts. My +sitting-room had five doors, four of glass; and the snow lay thick on +the mountains. My few books had been read long ago; there remained to +spell through a Spanish tome on the rebellion of the Alpujarras, whose +Moorish leader, having committed every crime, finally went to heaven for +spitting on the Koran on his death-bed. Letters from home were +perpetually lost, or took a week to come. It seemed as if the world had +quite unlearned every single trick that had ever given me pleasure. Yet, +in these dreary weeks, there was one happy morning. + +It was the anniversary, worse luck to it, of the Conquest of Granada +from the Moors. We got seats in the chapel of the Catholic kings, and +watched a gentleman in a high hat (which he kept on in church) and +swallow tails, carry the banner of Castile and Aragon, in the presence +of the archbishop and chapter, some mediæval pages, two trumpeters with +pigtails, and an array of soldiers. A paltry ceremony enough. But before +it began, and while mass was still going on, there came to me for a few +brief moments that happiness unknown for so many, many months, that +beloved historic emotion. + +My eyes were wandering round the chapel, up the sheaves of the pilasters +to the gilded spandrils, round the altars covered with gibbering +sculpture, and down again among the crowd kneeling on the matted +floor--women in veils, men with scarlet cloak-lining over the shoulder, +here and there the shaven head and pigtail of the bull-ring. In the +middle of it all, on their marble beds, lay the effigies of Ferdinand +and Isabella, with folded hands and rigid feet, four crimson banners of +the Moors overhead. The crowd was pouring in from the cathedral, and +bevies of priests, and scarlet choir-boys led by their fiddler. The +organ, above the chants, was running through vague mazes. I felt it +approaching and stealing over me, that curious emotion felt before in +such different places: walking up and down, one day, in the church of +Lamballe in Brittany; seated, another time, in the porch at Ely. And +then it possessed me completely, raising one into a sort of beatitude. +This kind of rapture is not easy to describe. No rare feeling is. But I +would warn you from thinking that in such solemn moments there sweeps +across the brain a paltry pageant, a Lord Mayor's Show of bygone things, +like the cavalcades of future heroes who descend from frescoed or +sculptured wall at the bidding of Ariosto's wizards and Spenser's +fairies. This is something infinitely more potent and subtle; and like +all strong intellectual emotions, it is compounded of many and various +elements, and has its origin far down in mysterious depths of our +nature; and it arises overwhelmingly from many springs, filling us with +the throb of vague passions welling from our most vital parts. There is +in it no possession of any definite portion of bygone times; but a +yearning expectancy, a sense of the near presence, as it were, of the +past; or, rather, of a sudden capacity in ourselves of apprehending the +past which looms all round. + +For a few moments thus, in that chapel before the tombs of the Catholic +kings; in the churches of Bruges and Innsbruck at the same time (for +such emotion gives strange possibilities of simultaneous presence in +various places); with the gold pomegranate flower of the badges, and the +crimson tassels of the Moorish standards before my eyes; also the iron +knights who watch round Maximilian's grave--for a moment while the +priests were chanting and the organs quavering, the life of to-day +seemed to reel and vanish, and my mind to be swept along the dark and +gleaming whirlpools of the past.... + + +III + +Catholic kings, Moorish banners, wrought-iron statues of paladins; these +are great things, and not at all what I had intended to speak of when I +set out to explain why old houses, which give my Yorkshire friend the +creeps, seem to my feelings so far more peaceful and familiar. + +Yes, it is just because the past is somehow more companionable, warmer, +more full of flavour, than the present, that I love all old houses; but +best of all such as are solitary in the country, isolated both from new +surroundings, and from such alterations as contact with the world's +hurry almost always brings. It certainly is no question of beauty. The +houses along Chelsea embankment are more beautiful, and some of them a +great deal more picturesque than that Worcestershire rectory to which I +always long to return: the long brick house on its terraced river-bank, +the overladen plum-trees on one side, and the funereally prosperous +churchyard yews on the other; and with corridors and staircases hung +with stained, frameless Bolognese nakedness, Judgments of Paris, +Venuses, Carità Romanas, shipped over cheap by some bear-leading +parson-tutor of the eighteenth century. Nor are they architectural, +those brick and timber cottages all round, sinking (one might think) +into the rich, damp soil. But they have a mellowness corresponding to +that of the warm, wet, fruitful land, and due to the untroubled, warm +brooding over by the past. And what is architecture to that? As to these +Italian ones, which my soul loveth most, they have even less of what you +would call beauty; at most such grace of projecting window-grating or +buttressed side as the South gives its buildings; and such colour, or +rather discolouring, as a comparatively small number of years will +bring. + +It kept revolving in my mind, this question of old houses and their +charm, as I was sitting waiting for a tram one afternoon, in the +church-porch of Pieve a Ripoli, a hamlet about two miles outside the +south-east gate of Florence. That church porch is like the baldacchino +over certain Roman high altars, or, more humbly, like a very large +fourpost bedstead. On the one hand was a hillside of purple and brown +scrub and dark cypresses fringed against the moist, moving grey sky; on +the other, some old, bare, mulberry-trees, a hedge of russet sloe, +closing in wintry fields; and, more particularly, next the porch, an +insignificant house, with blistered green shutters at irregular +intervals in the stained whitewash, a big green door, and a little +coat-of-arms--the three Strozzi half-moons--clapped on to the sharp +corner. I sat there, among the tombstones of the porch, and wondered why +I loved this house: and why it would remain, as I knew it must, a +landmark in my memory. Yes, the charm must lie in the knowledge of the +many creatures who have lived in this house, the many things that have +been done and felt. + +The creatures who have lived here, the things which have been felt and +done.... But those things felt and done, were they not mainly trivial, +base; at best nowise uncommon, and such as must be going on in every new +house all around? People worked and shirked their work, endured, +fretted, suffered somewhat, and amused themselves a little; were loving, +unkind, neglected and neglectful, and died, some too soon, some too +late. That is human life, and as such doubtless important. But all that +goes on to-day just the same; and there is no reason why that former +life should have been more interesting than that these people, Argenta +Cavallesi and Vincenzio Grazzini, buried at my feet, should have had +bigger or better made souls and bodies than I or my friends. Indeed, in +sundry ways, and owing to the narrowness of life and thought, the calmer +acceptance of coarse or cruel things, I incline to think that they were +less interesting, those men and women of the past, whose rustling +dresses fill old houses with fantastic sounds. They had, some few of +them, their great art, great aims, feelings, struggles; but the majority +were of the earth, and intolerably earthy. 'Tis their clothes' ghosts +that haunt us, not their own. + +So why should the past be charming? Perhaps merely because of its being +the one free place for our imagination. For, as to the future, it is +either empty or filled only with the cast shadows of ourselves and our +various machineries. The past is the unreal and the yet visible; it has +the fascination of the distant hills, the valleys seen from above; the +unreal, but the unreal whose unreality, unlike that of the unreal things +with which we cram the present, can never be forced on us. _There is +more behind; there may be anything._ This sense which makes us in love +with all intricacies of things and feelings, roads which turn, views +behind views, trees behind trees, makes the past so rich in +possibilities.... An ordinary looking priest passes by, rings at the +door of the presbytery, and enters. Those who lived there, in that old +stained house with the Strozzi escutcheon, opposite the five bare +mulberry-trees, were doubtless as like as may be to this man who lives +there in the present. Quite true; and yet there creeps up the sense that +_they_ lived in the past. + +For there is no end to the deceits of the past; we protest that we know +it is cozening us, and it continues to cozen us just as much. Reading +over Browning's _Galuppi_ lately, it struck me that this dead world of +vanity was no more charming or poetical than the one we live in, when it +also was alive; and that those ladies, Mrs. X., Countess Y., and Lady +Z., of whose _toilettes_ at last night's ball that old gossip P---- had +been giving us details throughout dinner, will in their turn, if any one +care, be just as charming, as dainty, and elegiac as those other women +who sat by while Galuppi "played toccatas stately at the clavichord." +Their dresses, should they hang for a century or so, will emit a perfume +as frail, and sad, and heady; their wardrobe filled with such dust as +makes tears come into one's eyes, from no mechanical reason. + +"Was a lady _such_ a lady?" They will say that of ours also. And, in +recognising this, we recognise how trumpery, flat, stale and +unprofitable were those ladies of the past. It is not they who make the +past charming, but the past that makes them. Time has wonderful +cosmetics for its favoured ones; and if it brings white hairs and +wrinkles to the realities, how much does it not heighten the bloom, +brighten the eyes and hair of those who survive in our imagination! + +And thus, somewhat irrelevantly, concludes my chapter in praise of old +houses. + + + + +THE LIE OF THE LAND + +NOTES ABOUT LANDSCAPES + + + +I + +I want to talk about the something which makes the real, individual +landscape--the landscape one actually sees with the eyes of the body and +the eyes of the spirit--the _landscape you cannot describe_. + +That is the drawback of my subject--that it just happens to elude all +literary treatment, and yet it must be treated. There is not even a +single word or phrase to label it, and I have had to call it, in sheer +despair, _the lie of the land_: it is an unnamed mystery into which +various things enter, and I feel as if I ought to explain myself by dumb +show. It will serve at any rate as an object-lesson in the extreme +one-sidedness of language and a protest against human silence about the +things it likes best. + +Of outdoor things words can of course tell us some important points: +colour, for instance, and light, and somewhat of their gradations and +relations. And an adjective, a metaphor, may evoke an entire atmospheric +effect, paint us a sunset or a star-lit night. But the far subtler and +more individual relations of visible line defy expression: no poet or +prose writer can give you the tilt of a roof, the undulation of a field, +the bend of a road. Yet these are the things in landscape which +constitute its individuality and which reach home to our feelings. + +For colour and light are variable--nay, more, they are relative. The +same tract will be green in connection with one sort of sky, blue with +another, and yellow with a third. We may be disappointed when the woods, +which we had seen as vague, moss-like blue before the sun had overtopped +the hills, become at midday a mere vast lettuce-bed. We should be much +more than disappointed, we should doubt of our senses if we found on +going to our window that it looked down upon outlines of hills, upon +precipices, ledges, knolls, or flat expanses, different from those we +had seen the previous day or the previous year. Thus the unvarying items +of a landscape happen to be those for which precise words cannot be +found. Briefly, we praise colour, but we actually _live_ in the +indescribable thing which I must call the _lie of the land_. The lie of +the land means walking or climbing, shelter or bleakness; it means the +corner where we dread a boring neighbour, the bend round which we have +watched some one depart, the stretch of road which seemed to lead us +away out of captivity. Yes, _lie of the land_ is what has mattered to us +since we were children, to our fathers and remotest ancestors; and its +perception, the instinctive preference for one kind rather than another, +is among the obscure things inherited with our blood, and making up the +stuff of our souls. For how else explain the strange powers which +different shapes of the earth's surface have over different individuals; +the sudden pleasure, as of the sight of an old friend, the pang of +pathos which we may all receive in a scene which is new, without +memories, and so unlike everything familiar as to be almost without +associations? + +The _lie of the land_ has therefore an importance in art, or if it have +not, ought to have, quite independent of pleasantness of line or of +anything merely visual. An immense charm consists in the fact that the +mind can walk about in a landscape. The delight at the beauty which is +seen is heightened by the anticipation of further unseen beauty; by the +sense of exploring the unknown; and to our present pleasure before a +painted landscape is added the pleasure we have been storing up during +years of intercourse, if I may use this word, with so many real ones. + + +II + +For there is such a thing as intercourse with fields and trees and +skies, with the windings of road and water and hedge, in our everyday, +ordinary life. And a terrible thing for us all if there were not; if our +lives were not full of such various commerce, of pleasure, curiosity, +and gratitude, of kindly introduction of friend by friend, quite apart +from the commerce with other human beings. Indeed, one reason why the +modern rectangular town (built at one go for the convenience of running +omnibuses and suppressing riots) fills our soul with bitterness and +dryness, is surely that this ill-conditioned convenient thing can give +us only its own poor, paltry presence, introducing our eye and fancy +neither to further details of itself, nor to other places and people, +past or distant. + +Words can just barely indicate the charm of this _other place other +time_ enriching of the present impression. Words cannot in the least, I +think, render that other suggestion contained in _The Lie of the Land_, +the suggestion of the possibility of a delightful walk. What walks have +we not taken, leaving sacred personages and profane, not to speak of +allegoric ones, far behind in the backgrounds of the old Tuscans, +Umbrians, and Venetians! Up Benozzo's hillside woods of cypress and +pine, smelling of myrrh and sweet-briar, over Perugino's green rising +grounds, towards those slender, scant-leaved trees, straight-stemmed +acacias and elms, by the water in the cool, blue evening valley. Best of +all, have not Giorgione and Titian, Palma and Bonifazio, and the dear +imitative people labelled _Venetian school_, led us between the hedges +russet already with the ripening of the season and hour into those +fields where the sheep are nibbling, under the twilight of the big +brown trees, to where some pale blue alp closes in the slopes and the +valleys? + + +III + +It is a pity that the landscape painters of our day--I mean those French +or French taught, whose methods are really new--tend to neglect _The Lie +of the Land_. Some of them, I fear, deliberately avoid it as +old-fashioned--what they call obvious--as interfering with their aim of +interesting by the mere power of vision and skill in laying on the +paint. Be this as it may, their innovations inevitably lead them away +from all research of what we may call _topographical_ charm, for what +they have added to art is the perfection of very changeable conditions +of light and atmosphere, of extremely fleeting accidents of colour. One +would indeed be glad to open one's window on the fairyland of iridescent +misty capes, of vibrating skies and sparkling seas of Monsieur Claude +Monet; still more to stand at the close of an autumn day watching the +light fogs rise along the fields, mingling with delicate pinkish mist of +the bare poplar rows against the green of the first sprouts of corn. +But I am not sure that the straight line of sea and shore would be +interesting at any other moment of the day; and the poplar rows and +cornfields would very likely be drearily dull until sunset. The moment, +like Faust's second of perfect bliss, is such as should be made +immortal, but the place one would rather not see again. Yet Monsieur +Monet is the one of his school who shows most care for the scene he is +painting. The others, even the great ones--men like Pissarro and Sisley, +who have shown us so many delightful things in the details of even the +dull French foliage, even the dull midday sky--the other _modern ones_ +make one long to pull up their umbrella and easel and carry them on--not +very far surely--to some spot where the road made a bend, the embankment +had a gap, the water a swirl; for we would not be so old-fashioned as to +request that the country might have a few undulations.... Of course it +was very dull of our ancestors--particularly of Clive Newcome's +day--always to paint a panorama with whole ranges of hills, miles of +river, and as many cities as possible; and even our pleasure in Turner's +large landscapes is spoilt by their being the sort of thing people +would drive for miles or climb for hours to enjoy, what our grandfathers +in post-chaises called a _noble fine prospect_. All that had to be got +rid of, like the contemporaneous literary descriptions: "A smiling +valley proceeded from south-east to north-west; an amphitheatre of +cliffs bounding it on the right hand; while to the left a magnificent +waterfall leapt from a rock three hundred feet in height and expanded +into a noble natural basin of granite some fifty yards in diameter," &c. +&c. The British classics, thus busy with compass, measuring-rod and +level, thus anxious to enable the reader to reconstruct their landscape +on paste-board, had no time of course to notice trifling matters: how, +for instance, + + The woods are round us, heaped and dim; + From slab to slab how it slips and springs + The thread of water, single and slim, + Through the ravage some torrent brings. + +Nor could the panoramic painter of the earlier nineteenth century pay +much attention to mere alternations of light while absorbed in his great +"Distant View of Jerusalem and Madagascar"; indeed, he could afford to +move off only when it began to rain very hard. + + +IV + +The impressionist painters represent the reaction against this dignified +and also more stolid school of landscape; they have seen, or are still +seeing, all the things which other men did not see. And here I may +remark that one of the most important items of this seeing is exactly +the fact that in many cases we can _see_ only very little. The +impressionists have been scoffed at for painting rocks which might be +chimney-stacks, and flowering hedges which might be foaming brooks; +plains also which might be hills, and _vice versâ_, and described as +wretches, disrespectful to natural objects, which, we are told, reveal +new beauties at every glance. But is it more respectful to natural +objects to put a drawing-screen behind a willow-bush and copy its +minutest detail of branch and trunk, than to paint that same willow, a +mere mist of glorious orange, as we see it flame against the hillside +confusion of mauve, and russet and pinkish sereness? I am glad to have +brought in that word _confusion_: the modern school of landscape has +done a great and pious thing in reinstating the complexity, the mystery, +the confusion of Nature's effects; Nature, which differs from the paltry +work of man just in this, that she does not thin out, make clear and +symmetrical for the easier appreciation of foolish persons, but packs +effect upon effect, in space even as in time, one close upon the other, +leaf upon leaf, branch upon branch, tree upon tree, colour upon colour, +a mystery of beauty wrapped in beauty, without the faintest concern +whether it would not be better to say "this is really a river," or, +"that is really a tree." "But," answer the critics with much +superiority, "art should not be the mere copying of Nature; surely there +is already enough of Nature herself; art should be the expression of +man's delight in Nature's shows." Well, Nature shows a great many things +which are not unchanging and not by any means unperplexing; she shows +them at least to those who will see, see what is really there to be +seen; and she will show them, thanks to our brave impressionists, to all +men henceforth who have eyes and a heart. And here comes our debt to +these great painters: what a number of effects, modest and exquisite, or +bizarre and magnificent, they will have taught us to look out for; what +beauty and poetry in humdrum scenery, what perfect loveliness even among +sordidness and squalor: tints as of dove's breasts in city mud, enamel +splendours in heaps of furnace refuse, mysterious magnificence, visions +of Venice at night, of Eblis palace, of I know not what, in wet gaslit +nights, in looming lit-up factories. Nay, leaving that alone, since 'tis +better, perhaps, that we should not enjoy anything connected with grime +and misery and ugliness--how much have not these men added to the +delight of our walks and rides; revealing to us, among other things, the +supreme beauty of winter colouring, the harmony of purple, blue, slate, +brown, pink, and russet, of tints and compounds of tints without a name, +of bare hedgerows and leafless trees, sere grass and mist-veiled waters; +compared with which spring is but raw, summer dull, and autumn +positively ostentatious in her gala suit of tawny and yellow. + +Perhaps, indeed, these modern painters have done more for us by the +beauty they have taught us to see in Nature than by the beauty they have +actually put before us in their pictures; if I except some winter +landscapes of Monet's and the wonderful water-colours of Mr. Brabazon, +whose exquisite sense of form and knowledge of drawing have enabled him, +in rapidest sketches of rapidly passing effects, to indicate the +structure of hills and valleys, the shape of clouds, in the mere wash of +colour, even as Nature indicates them herself. With such exceptions as +these, and the beautiful mysteries of Mr. Whistler, there is +undoubtedly, in recent landscape, a preoccupation of technical methods +and an indifference to choice of subject, above all, a degree of +insistence on what is _actually seen_ which leads one to suspect that +the impressionists represent rather a necessary phase in the art, than a +definite achievement, in the same manner as the Renaissance painters who +gave themselves up to the study of perspective and anatomy. This +terrible over-importance of the act of vision is doubtless the +preparation for a new kind of landscape, which will employ these +arduously acquired facts of colour and light, this restlessly renovated +technique, in the service of a new kind of sentiment and imagination, +differing from that of previous ages even as the sentiment and +imagination of Browning differs from that of his great predecessors. But +it is probably necessary that the world at large, as well as the +artists, should be familiarised with the new facts, the new methods of +impressionism, before such facts and methods can find their significance +and achievement; even as in the Renaissance people had to recognise the +realities of perspective and anatomy before they could enjoy an art +which attained beauty through this means; it would have been no use +showing Sixtine chapels to the contemporaries of Giotto. There is at +present a certain lack of enjoyable quality, a lack of soul appealing to +soul, in the new school of landscape. But where there is a faithful, +reverent eye, a subtle hand, a soul cannot be far round the corner. And +we may hope that, if we be as sincere and willing as themselves, our +Pollaiolos and Mantegnas of the impressionist school, discoverers of new +subtleties of colour and light, will be duly succeeded by modern +Michelangelos and Titians, who will receive all the science ready for +use, and bid it fetch and carry and build new wonderful things for the +pleasure of their soul and of ours. + + +V + +And mentioning Titian, brings to my memory a remark once made to me on +one of those washed away, rubbly hills, cypresses and pines holding the +earth together, which the old Tuscans drew so very often. The remark, +namely, that some of the charm of the old masters' landscapes is due to +the very reverse of what sometimes worries one in modern work, to the +notion which these backgrounds give at first--bits of valley, outlines +of hills, distant views of towered villages, of having been done without +trouble, almost from memory, till you discover that your Titian has +modelled his blue valley into delicate blue ridges; and your Piero della +Francesca indicated the precise structure of his pale, bony mountains. +Add to this, to the old men's credit, that, as I said, they knew _the +lie of the land_, they gave us landscapes in which our fancy, our +memories, could walk. + +How large a share such fancy and such memories have in the life of art, +people can scarcely realise. Nay, such is the habit of thinking of the +picture, statue, or poem, as a complete and vital thing apart from the +mind which perceives it, that the expression _life of art_ is sure to be +interpreted as life of various schools of art: thus, the life of art +developed from the type of Phidias to that of Praxiteles, and so forth. +But in the broader, truer sense, the life of all art goes on in the mind +and heart, not merely of those who make the work, but of those who see +and read it. Nay, is not _the_ work, the real one, a certain particular +state of feeling, a pattern woven of new perceptions and impressions and +of old memories and feelings, which the picture, the statue or poem, +awakens, different in each different individual? 'Tis a thought perhaps +annoying to those who have slaved seven years over a particular outline +of muscles, a particular colour of grass, or the cadence of a particular +sentence. What! all this to be refused finality, to be disintegrated by +the feelings and fancies of the man who looks at the picture, or reads +the book, heaven knows how carelessly besides? Well, if not +disintegrated, would you prefer it to be unassimilated? Do you wish your +picture, statue or poem to remain whole as you made it? Place it +permanently in front of a mirror; consign it to the memory of a parrot; +or, if you are musician, sing your song, expression and all, down a +phonograph. You cannot get from the poor human soul, that living +microcosm of changing impressions, the thorough, wholesale appreciation +which you want. + + +VI + +This same power of sentiment and fancy, that is to say, of association, +enables us to carry about, like a verse or a tune, whole mountain +ranges, valleys, rivers and lakes, things in appearance the least easy +to remove from their place. As some persons are never unattended by a +melody; so others, and among them your humble servant, have always for +their thoughts and feelings, an additional background besides the one +which happens to be visible behind their head and shoulders. By this +means I am usually in two places at a time, sometimes in several very +distant ones within a few seconds. + +It is extraordinary how much of my soul seems to cling to certain +peculiarities of what I have called _lie of the land_, undulations, +bends of rivers, straightenings and snakings of road; how much of one's +past life, sensations, hopes, wishes, words, has got entangled in the +little familiar sprigs, grasses and moss. The order of time and space is +sometimes utterly subverted; thus, last autumn, in a corner of +Argyllshire, I seemed suddenly cut off from everything in the British +Isles, and reunited to the life I used to lead hundreds of miles away, +years ago in the high Apennines, merely because of the minute starry +moss under foot and the bubble of brooks in my ears. + +Nay, the power of outdoor things, their mysterious affinities, can +change the values even of what has been and what has not been, can make +one live for a moment in places which have never existed save in the +fancy. Have I not found myself suddenly taken back to certain woods +which I loved in my childhood simply because I had halted before a great +isolated fir with hanging branches, a single fir shading a circle of +soft green turf, and watched the rabbits sitting, like round grey +stones suddenly flashing into white tails and movement? Woods where? I +have not the faintest notion. Perhaps only woods I imagined my father +must be shooting in when I was a baby, woods which I made up out of +Christmas trees, moss and dead rabbits, woods I had heard of in fairy +tales.... + +Such are some of the relations of landscape and sentiments, a correct +notion of which is necessary before it is possible to consider the best +manner of _representing landscape with words_; a subject to which none +of my readers, I think, nor myself, have at present the smallest desire +to pass on. + + + + +TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC + + + +I + +"Then," I said, "you decline to tell me about the Three Kings, when +their procession wound round and round these hillocks: all the little +wooden horses with golden bridles and velvet holsters, out of the toy +boxes; and the camelopard, and the monkeys and the lynx, and the little +doll pages blowing toy trumpets. And still, I know it happened here, +because I recognise the place from the pictures: the hillocks all washed +away into breasts like those of Diana of the Ephesians, and the rows of +cypresses and spruce pines--also out of the toy box. I know it happened +in this very place, because Benozzo Gozzoli painted it all at the time; +and you were already about the place, I presume?" + +I knew that by her dress, but I did not like to allude to its being +old-fashioned. It was the sort of thing, muslin all embroidered with +little nosegays of myrtle and yellow broom, and tied into odd bunches at +the elbows and waist, which they wore in the days of Botticelli's +_Spring_; and on her head she had a garland of eglantine and palm-shaped +hellebore leaves which was quite unmistakable. + +The nymph Terzollina (for of course she was the tutelary divinity of the +narrow valley behind the great Medicean Villa) merely shook her head and +shifted one of her bare feet, on which she was seated under a cypress +tree, and went on threading the yellow broom flowers. + +"At all events, you might tell me something about the Magnificent +Lorenzo," I went on, impatient at her obstinacy. "You know quite well +that he used to come and court you here, and make verses most likely." + +The exasperating goddess raised her thin, brown face, with the sharp +squirrel's teeth and the glittering goat's eyes. Very pretty I thought +her, though undoubtedly a little _passée_, like all the symbolical +ladies of her set. She plucked at a clump of dry peppermint, perfuming +the hot air as she crushed it, and then looked up, with a sly, shy +little peasant-girl's look, which was absurd in a lady so mature and so +elaborately adorned. Then, in a crooning voice, she began to recite some +stanzas in _ottava rima_, as follows: + +"The house where the good old Knight Gualando hid away the little +Princess, was itself hidden in this hidden valley. It was small and +quite white, with great iron bars to the windows. In front was a long +piece of greensward, starred with white clover, and behind and in front, +to where the pines and cypresses began ran strips of cornfield. It was +remote from all the pomps of life; and when the cuckoo had become silent +and the nightingales had cracked their voices, the only sound was the +coo of the wood-pigeons, the babble of the stream, and the twitter of +the young larks. + +"The old Knight Gualando had hidden his bright armour in an oaken chest; +and went to the distant town every day dressed in the blue smock of a +peasant, and driving a donkey before him. Thence he returned with +delicates for the little Princess and with news of the wicked usurper; +nor did any one suspect who he was, or dream of his hiding-place. + +"During his absence the little Princess, whose name was Fiordispina, +used to string beads through the hot hours when the sun smote through +the trees, and the green corn ridges began to take a faint gilding in +their silveriness, as the Princess remembered it in a picture in the +Castle Chapel, where the sun was represented by a big embossed ball of +gold, projecting from the picture, which she was allowed to stroke on +holidays. + +"In the evening, when the sky turned pearl white, and a breeze rustled +through the pines and cypresses which made a little black fringe on the +hill-top and a little patch of feathery velvet pile on the slopes, the +little Princess would come forth, and ramble about in her peasant's +frock, her fair face stained browner by the sun than by any walnut +juice. She would climb the hill, and sniff the scent of the sun-warmed +resin, and the sweetness of the yellow broom. It spread all over the +hills, and the king, her father, had not possessed so many ells of cloth +of gold. + +"But one evening she wandered further than usual, and saw on a bank, at +the edge of a cornfield, five big white lilies blowing. She went back +home and fetched the golden scissors from her work-bag, and cut off one +of the lilies. On the next day she came again and cut another until she +had cut them all. + +"But it happened that an old witch was staying in that neighbourhood, +gathering herbs among the hills. She had taken note of the five lilies, +because she disliked them on account of their being white; and she +remarked that one of them had been cut off; then another, then another. +She hated people who like lilies. When she found the fifth lily gone, +she wondered greatly, and climbed on the ridge, and looked at their +stalks where they were cut. She was a wise woman, who knew many things. +So she laid her finger upon the cut stalk, and said, 'This has not been +cut with iron shears'; and she laid her lip against the cut stalk, and +felt that it had been cut with gold shears, for gold cuts like nothing +else. + +"'Oho!' said the old witch--'where there are gold scissors, there must +be gold work-bags; and where there are gold work-bags, there must be +little Princesses.'" + +"Well, and then?" I asked. + +"Oh then, nothing at all," answered the Nymph Terzollina beloved by the +Magnificent Lorenzo, who had seen the procession of the Three Kings. +"Good evening to you." + +And where her white muslin dress, embroidered with nosegays of broom and +myrtle, had been spread on the dry grass and crushed mint, there was +only, beneath the toy cypresses, a bush of white-starred myrtle and a +tuft of belated yellow broom. + + +II + +One must have leisure to converse with goddesses; and certainly, during +a summer in Tuscany, when folk are scattered in their country houses, +and are disinclined to move out of hammock or off shaded bench, there +are not many other persons to talk with. + +On the other hand, during those weeks of cloudless summer, natural +objects vie with each other in giving one amateur representations. +Things look their most unexpected, masquerade as other things, get queer +unintelligible allegoric meanings, leaving you to guess what it all +means, a constant dumb crambo of trees, flowers, animals, houses, and +moonlight. + +The moon, particularly, is continually _en scène_, as if to take the +place of the fireflies, which last only so long as the corn is in the +ear, gradually getting extinguished and trailing about, humble helpless +moths with a pale phosphorescence in their tail, in the grass and in the +curtains. The moon takes their place; the moon which, in an Italian +summer, seems to be full for three weeks out of the four. + +One evening the performance was given by the moon and the corn-sheaves, +assisted by minor actors such as crickets, downy owls, and +vine-garlands. The oats, which had been of such exquisite delicacy of +green, had just been reaped in the field beyond our garden and were now +stacked up. Suspecting one of the usual performances, I went after +dinner to the upper garden-gate, and looked through the bars. There it +was, the familiar, elemental witchery. The moon was nearly full, +blurring the stars, steeping the sky and earth in pale blue mist, which +seemed somehow to be the visible falling dew. It left a certain +greenness to the broad grass path, a vague yellow to the unsickled +wheat; and threw upon the sheaves of oats the shadows of festooned vine +garlands. Those sheaves, or stooks--who can describe their metamorphose? +Palest yellow on the pale stubbly ground, they were frosted by the +moonbeams in their crisp fringe of ears, and in the shining straws +projecting here and there. Straws, ears? You would never have guessed +that they were made of anything so mundane. They sat there, propped +against the trees, between the pools of light and the shadows, while the +crickets trilled their cool, shrill song; sat solemnly with an air of +expectation, calling to me, frightening me. And one in particular, with +a great additional bunch on his head, cut by a shadow, was oddly +unaccountable and terrible. After a minute I had to slink away, back +into the garden, like an intruder. + + +III + +There are performances also in broad daylight, and then human beings are +admitted as supernumeraries. Such was a certain cattle fair, up the +valley of the Mugnone. + +The beasts were being sold on a piece of rough, freshly reaped ground, +lying between the high road and the river bed, empty of waters, but full +among its shingle of myrrh-scented yellow herbage. The oxen were mostly +of the white Tuscan breeds (those of Romagna are smaller but more +spirited, and of a delicate grey) only their thighs slightly browned; +the scarlet cloth neck-fringes set off, like a garland of geranium, +against the perfect milkiness of backs and necks. They looked, indeed, +these gigantic creatures, as if moulded out of whipped cream or cream +cheese; suggesting no strength, and even no resistance to the touch, +with their smooth surface here and there packed into minute wrinkles, +exactly like the little _stracchini_ cheeses. This impalpable whiteness +of the beasts suited their perfect tameness, passiveness, letting +themselves be led about with great noiseless strides over the stubbly +ridges and up the steep banks; and hustled together, flank against +flank, horns interlaced with horns, without even a sound or movement of +astonishment or disobedience. Never a low or a moo; never a glance round +of their big, long-lashed, blue-brown eyes. Their big jaws move like +millstones, their long tufted tails switch monotonously like pendulums. + +Around them circle peasants, measuring them with the eye, prodding them +with the finger, pulling them by the horns. And every now and then one +of the red-faced men, butchers mainly, who act as go-betweens, +dramatically throws his arms round the neck of some recalcitrant dealer +or buyer, leads him aside, whispering with a gesture like Judas's kiss; +or he clasps together the red hands and arms of contracting parties, +silencing their objections, forcing them to do business. The contrast is +curious between these hot, excited, yelling, jostling human beings, +above whose screaming _Dio Canes!_ and _Dio Ladros!_ the cry of the +iced-water seller recurs monotonously and the silent, impassive +bullocks, white, unreal, inaudible; so still and huge, indeed, that, +seen from above, they look like an encampment, their white flanks like +so much spread canvas in the sunshine. And from a little distance, +against the hillside beyond the river, the already bought yokes of +bullocks look, tethered in a grove of cypresses, like some old mediæval +allegory--an allegory, as usual, nobody knows of what. + + +IV + +Another performance was that of the woods of Lecceto, and the hermitage +of the same name. You will find them on the map of the district of +Siena; but I doubt very much whether you will find them on the surface +of the real globe, for I suspect them to be a piece of midsummer magic +and nothing more. They had been for years to me among the number (we all +have such) of things familiar but inaccessible; or rather things whose +inaccessibility--due to no conceivable cause--is an essential quality of +their existence. Every now and then from one of the hills you get a +glimpse of the square red tower, massive and battlemented, rising among +the grey of its ilexes, beckoning one across a ridge or two and a +valley; then disappearing again, engulfed in the oak woods, green in +summer, copper-coloured in winter; to reappear, but on the side you +least expected it, plume of ilexes, battlements of tower, as you +twisted along the high-lying vineyards and the clusters of umbrella +pines fringing the hill-tops; and then, another minute and they were +gone. + +We determined to attain them, to be mocked no longer by Lecceto; and +went forth on one endless July afternoon. After much twisting from +hillside to hillside and valley to valley, we at last got into a country +which was strange enough to secrete even Lecceto. In a narrow valley we +were met by a scent, warm, delicious, familiar, which seemed to lead us +(as perfumes we cannot identify will usually do) to ideas very hazy, but +clear enough to be utterly inappropriate: English cottage-gardens, linen +presses of old houses, old-fashioned sitting-rooms full of pots of +_pot-pourri_; and then, behold, in front of us a hill covered every inch +of it with flowering lavender, growing as heather does on the hills +outside fairyland. And behind this lilac, sun-baked, scented hill, open +the woods of ilexes. The trees were mostly young and with their summer +upper garment of green, fresh leaves over the crackling old ones; trees +packed close like a hedge, their every gap filled with other verdure, +arbutus and hornbeam, fern and heather; the close-set greenery crammed, +as it were, with freshness and solitude. + +These must be the woods of Lecceto, and in their depths the red +battlemented tower of the Hermitage. For I had forgotten to say that for +a thousand years that tower had been the abode of a succession of holy +personages, so holy and so like each other as to have almost grown into +one, an immortal hermit whom Popes and Emperors would come to consult +and be blessed by. Deeper and deeper therefore we made our way into the +green coolness and dampness, the ineffable deliciousness of young leaf +and uncurling fern; till it seemed as if the plantation were getting +impenetrable, and we began to think that, as usual, Lecceto had mocked +us, and would probably appear, if we retraced our steps, in the +diametrically opposite direction. When suddenly, over the tree-tops, +rose the square battlemented tower of red brick. Then, at a turn of the +rough narrow lane, there was the whole place, the tower, a church and +steeple, and some half-fortified buildings, in a wide clearing planted +with olive trees. We tied our pony to an ilex and went to explore the +Hermitage. But the building was enclosed round by walls and hedges, and +the only entrance was by a stout gate armed with a knocker, behind which +was apparently an outer yard and a high wall pierced only by a twisted +iron balcony. So we knocked. + +But that knocker was made only for Popes and Emperors walking about with +their tiaras and crowns and sceptres, like the genuine Popes and +Emperors of Italian folk-tales and of Pinturicchio's frescoes; for no +knocking of ours, accompanied by loud yells, could elicit an answer. It +seemed simple enough to get in some other way; there must be peasants +about at work, even supposing the holy hermit to have ceased to exist. +But climbing walls and hurdles and squeezing between the close tight +ilexes, brought us only to more walls, above which, as above the +oak-woods from a distance, rose the inaccessible battlemented tower. And +a small shepherdess, in a flapping Leghorn hat, herding black and white +baby pigs in a neighbouring stubble-field under the olives, was no more +able than we to break the spell of the Hermitage. And all round, for +miles apparently, undulated the dense grey plumage of the ilex woods. + +The low sun was turning the stubble orange, where the pigs were feeding; +and the distant hills of the Maremma were growing very blue behind the +olive trees. So, lest night should overtake us, we turned our pony's +head towards the city, and traversed the oak-woods and skirted the +lavender hill, rather disbelieving in the reality of the place we had +just been at, save when we saw its tower mock us, emerging again; an +inaccessible, improbable place. The air was scented by the warm lavender +of the hillsides; and by the pines forming a Japanese pattern, black +upon the golden lacquer of the sky. Soon the moon rose, big and yellow, +lighting very gradually the road in whose gloom you could vaguely see +the yokes of white cattle returning from work. By the time we reached +the city hill everything was steeped in a pale yellowish light, with +queer yellowish shadows; and the tall tanneries glared out with their +buttressed balconied top, exaggerated and alarming. Scrambling up the +moonlit steep of Fonte Branda, and passing under a black arch, we found +ourselves in the heart of the gaslit and crowded city, much as if we had +been shot out of a cannon into another planet, and feeling that the +Hermitage of Lecceto was absolutely apocryphal. + + +V + +The reason of this midsummer magic--whose existence no legitimate +descendant of Goths and Vandals and other early lovers of Italy can +possibly deny--the reason is altogether beyond my philosophy. The only +word which expresses the phenomenon is the German word, untranslatable, +_Bescheerung_, a universal giving of gifts, lighting of candles, gilding +of apples, manifestation of marvels, realisation of the desirable and +improbable--to wit, a Christmas Tree. And Italy, which knows no +Christmas trees, makes its _Bescheerung_ in midsummer, gets rid of its +tourist vulgarities, hides away the characteristics of its trivial +nineteenth century, decks itself with magnolia blossoms and water-melons +with awnings and street booths, with mandolins and guitars; spangles +itself with church festivals and local pageants; and instead of +wax-tapers and Chinese lanterns, lights up the biggest golden sun by +day, the biggest silver moon by night, all for the benefit of a few +childish descendants of Goths and Vandals. + +Nonsense apart, I am inclined to think that the specific charm of Italy +exists only during the hot months; the charm which gives one a little +stab now and then and makes one say--"This is Italy." + +I felt that little stab, to which my heart had long become unused, at +the beginning of this very summer in Tuscany, to which belong the above +instances of Italian Midsummer Magic. I was spending the day at a small, +but very ancient, Benedictine Monastery (it was a century old when St. +Peter Igneus, according to the chronicle, went through his celebrated +Ordeal by Fire), now turned into a farm, and hidden, battlemented walls +and great gate towers, among the cornfields near the Arno. It came to me +as the revival of an impression long forgotten, that overpowering sense +that "This was Italy," it recurred and recurred in those same three +words, as I sat under the rose-hedge opposite the water-wheel shed, +garlanded with drying pea-straw; and as I rambled through the chill +vaults, redolent of old wine-vats, into the sudden sunshine and broad +shadows of the cloistered yards. + +That smell was mysteriously connected with it; the smell of wine-vats +mingled, I fancy (though I could not say why), with the sweet faint +smell of decaying plaster and wood-work. One night, as we were driving +through Bologna to wile away the hours between two trains, in the blue +moon-mist and deep shadows of the black porticoed city, that same smell +came to my nostrils as in a dream, and with it a whiff of bygone years, +the years when first I had had this impression of Italian Magic. Oddly +enough, Rome, where I spent much of my childhood and which was the +object of my childish and tragic adoration, was always something apart, +never Italy for my feelings. The Apennines of Lucca and Pistoia, with +their sudden revelation of Italian fields and lanes, of flowers on wall +and along roadside, of bells ringing in the summer sky, of peasants +working in the fields and with the loom and distaff, meant Italy. + +But how much more Italy--and hence longed for how much!--was Lucca, the +town in the plain, with cathedral and palaces. Nay, any of the mountain +hamlets where there was nothing modern, and where against the scarred +brick masonry and blackened stonework the cypresses rose black and +tapering, the trelisses crawled bright green up hill! One never feels, +once out of childhood, such joy as on the rare occasions when I was +taken to such places. A certain farmhouse, with cypresses at the terrace +corner and a great oleander over the wall, was also Italy before it +became my home for several years. Most of all, however, Italy was +represented by certain towns: Bologna, Padua and Vicenza, and Siena, +which I saw mainly in the summer. + +It is curious how one's associations change: nowadays Italy means mainly +certain familiar effects of light and cloud, certain exquisitenesses of +sunset amber against ultramarine hills, of winter mists among misty +olives, of folds and folds of pale blue mountains; it is a country which +belongs to no time, which will always exist, superior to picturesqueness +and romance. But that is but a vague, half-indifferent habit of +enjoyment. And every now and then, when the Midsummer Magic is rife, +there comes to me that very different, old, childish meaning of the +word; as on that day among the roses of those Benedictine cloisters, the +cool shadow of the fig-trees in the yards, with the whiff of that queer +smell, heavy with romance, of wine-saturated oak and crumbling plaster; +and I know with a little stab of joy that this is Italy. + + + + +ON MODERN TRAVELLING + + + +I + +There is one charming impression peculiar to railway travelling, that of +the twilight hour in the train; but the charm is greater on a short +journey, when one is not tired and has not the sense of being uprooted, +than on a long one. The movement of the train seems, after sunset, +particularly in the South where night fall is rapid, to take a quality +of mystery. It glides through a landscape of which the smaller details +are effaced, as are likewise effaced the details of the railway itself. +And that rapid gliding brings home to one the instability of the hour, +of the changing light, the obliterating form. It makes one feel that +everything is, as it were, a mere vision; bends of poplared river with +sunset redness in their grey swirls; big towered houses of other days; +the spectral white fruit trees in the dark fields; the pine tops round, +separate, yet intangible, against the sky of unearthy blue; the darkness +not descending, as foolish people say it does, from the skies to the +earth, but rising slowly from the earth where it has gathered fold upon +fold, an emanation thereof, into the sky still pale and luminous, +turning its colour to white, its whiteness to grey, till the stars, mere +little white specks before, kindle one by one. + +Dante, who had travelled so much, and so much against his will, +described this hour as turning backwards the longing of the traveller, +and making the heart grow soft of them who had that day said farewell to +their friends. It is an hour of bitterness, the crueller for mingled +sweetness, to the exile; and in those days when distances were difficult +to overcome, every traveller must in a sense have been somewhat of an +exile. But to us, who have not necessarily left our friends, who may be +returning to them; to us accustomed to coming and going, to us hurried +along in dreary swiftness, it is the hour also when the earth seems full +of peace and goodwill; and our pensiveness is only just sad enough to be +sweet, not sad enough to be bitter. For every hamlet we pass seems +somehow the place where we ought to tarry for all our days; every room +or kitchen, a red square of light in the dimness with dark figures +moving before the window, seems full of people who might be friends; and +the hills we have never beheld before, the bends of rivers, the screen +of trees, seem familiar as if we had lived among them in distant days +which we think of with longing. + + +II + +This is the best that can be said, I think, for modern modes of travel. +But then, although I have been jolted about a good deal from country to +country, and slept in the train on my nurse's knees, and watched all my +possessions, from my cardboard donkey and my wax dolls to my manuscripts +and proof-sheets, overhauled on custom-house counters--but then, despite +all this, I have never made a great journey. I have never been to the +United States, nor to Egypt, nor to Russia; and it may well be that I +shall see the Eleusinian gods, Persephone and whoever else imparts +knowledge in ghostland, without ever having set foot in Greece. My +remarks are therefore meant for the less fortunate freight of railways +and steamers; though do I really envy those who see the wonderful places +of the earth before they have dreamed of them, the dream-land of other +men revealed to them for the first time in the solid reality of Cook and +Gaze? + +I would not for the world be misunderstood; I have not the faintest +prejudice against Gaze or Cook. I fervently desire that these gentlemen +may ever quicken trains and cheapen hotels; I am ready to be jostled in +Alpine valleys and Venetian canals by any number of vociferous tourists, +for the sake of the one, schoolmistress, or clerk, or artisan, or +curate, who may by this means have reached at last the land east of the +sun and west of the moon, the St. Brandan's Isle of his or her longings. +What I object to are the well-mannered, well-dressed, often +well-informed persons who, having turned Scotland into a sort of +Hurlingham, are apparently making Egypt, the Holy Land, Japan, into +_succursales_ and _dépendances_ (I like the good Swiss names evoking +couriers and waiters) of their own particularly dull portion of London +and Paris and New York. + +Less externally presentable certainly, but how much more really +venerable is the mysterious class of dwellers in obscure pensions: +curious beings who migrate without perceiving any change of landscape +and people, but only change of fare, from the cheap boarding-house in +Dresden to the cheap boarding-house in Florence, Prague, Seville, Rouen, +or Bruges. It is a class whom one of nature's ingenious provisions, +intended doubtless to maintain a balance of inhabited and uninhabited, +directs unconsciously, automatically to the great cities of the past +rather than to those of the present; so that they sit in what were once +palaces, castles, princely pleasure-houses, discussing over the stony +pears and apples the pleasures and drawbacks, the prices and fares, the +dark staircase against the Sunday ices, of other boarding-houses in +other parts of Europe. A quaint race it is, neither marrying nor giving +in marriage, and renewed by natural selection among the poor in purse +and poor in spirit; but among whom the sentimental traveller, did he +still exist, might pick up many droll and melancholy and perhaps +chivalrous stories. + +My main contention then is merely that, before visiting countries and +towns in the body, we ought to have visited them in the spirit; +otherwise I fear we might as well sit still at home. I do not mean that +we should read about them; some persons I know affect to extract a kind +of pleasure from it; but to me it seems dull work. One wants to visit +unknown lands in company, not with other men's descriptions, but with +one's own wishes and fancies. And very curious such wishes and fancies +are, or rather the countries and cities they conjure up, having no +existence on any part of the earth's surface, but a very vivid one in +one's own mind. Surely most of us, arriving in any interesting place, +are already furnished with a tolerable picture or plan thereof; the +cathedral on a slant or a rising ground, the streets running uphill or +somewhat in a circle, the river here or there, the lie of the land, +colour of the houses, nay, the whole complexion of the town, so and so. +The reality, so far as my own experience goes, never once tallies with +the fancy; but the town of our building is so compact and clear that it +often remains in our memory alongside of the town of stone and brick, +only gradually dissolving, and then leaving sometimes airy splendours +of itself hanging to the solid structures of its prosaic rival. + +Another curious thing to note is how certain real scenes will sometimes +get associated in our minds with places we have never beheld, to such a +point that the charm of the known is actually enhanced by that of the +unknown. I remember a little dell in the High Alps, which, with its huge +larches and mountain pines, its tufts of bee-haunted heather and thyme +among the mossy boulders, its overlooking peak and glimpses of far-down +lakes, became dear to me much less for its own sake than because it +always brought to my mind the word _Thrace_, and with it a vague +fleeting image of satyrs and mænads, a bar of the music of Orpheus. And +less explicable than this, a certain rolling table-land, not more remote +than the high road to Rome, used at one time to impress me with a +mysterious consciousness of the plains of Central Asia; a ruined byre, a +heap of whitewashed stones, among the thistles and stubbles of a Fife +hillside, had for me once a fascination due to the sense that it must be +like Algeria. + +Has any painter ever fixed on canvas such visions, distinct and +haunting, of lands he had never seen, Claude or Turner, or the Flemish +people who painted the little towered and domed celestial Jerusalem? I +know not. The nearest thing of the kind was a wonderful erection of +brown paper and (apparently) ingeniously arranged shavings, built up in +rocklike fashion, covered with little green toy-box trees, and dotted +here and there with bits of mirror glass and cardboard houses, which +once puzzled me considerably in the parlour of a cottage. "Do tell me +what that is?" at last rose to my lips. "That," answered my hostess very +slowly, "that is a work of my late 'usband; a representation of the +Halps as close as 'e could imagine them, for 'e never was abroad." I +often think of that man "who never was abroad," and of his +representation of the Alps; of the hours of poetic vision, of actual +creation perhaps from sheer strength of longing, which resulted in that +quaint work of art. + +As close as he could imagine them! He had read, then, about the Alps, +read perhaps in Byron or some Radcliffian novel on a stall; and he had +wondered till the vision had come, ready for pasteboard and toy trees +and glue and broken mirror to embody it! And meanwhile I, who am +obliged to cross those very Alps twice every year, I try to do so at +night, to rumble and rattle up and down their gorges in a sleeping-car! +There seems something wrong in this; something wrong in the world's +adjustments, not really in me, for I swear it is respect for the Alps +which makes me thus avoid their sight. + + +III + +And here is the moment for stating my plea against our modern, rapid, +hurried travelling: there is to decent minds a certain element of +humiliation therein, as I suspect there is in every _royal road_. There +is something almost superhumanly selfish in this rushing across +countries without giving them a thought, indeed with no thoughts in us +save of our convenience, inconvenience, food, sleep, weariness. The +whole of Central Europe is thus reduced, for our feelings, to an +arrangement of buffets and custom-houses, its acres checked off on our +sensorium as so many jolts. For it is not often that respectable people +spend a couple of days, or even three, so utterly engrossed in +themselves, so without intellectual relation or responsibility to their +surroundings, living in a moral stratum not above ordinary life, but +below it. Perhaps it is this suspending of connection with all interests +which makes such travelling restful to very busy persons, and agreeable +to very foolish ones. But to decent, active, leisured folk it is, I +maintain, humiliating; humiliating to become so much by comparison in +one's own consciousness; and I suspect that the vague sense of +self-disgust attendant on days thus spent is a sample of the +self-disgust we feel very slightly (and ought to feel very strongly) +whenever our wretched little self is allowed to occupy the whole stage +of our perceptions. + +There is in M. Zola's _Bête Humaine_ a curious picture of a train, one +train after another, full of eager modern life, being whirled from Paris +to Havre through the empty fields, before cottages and old-world houses +miles remote from any town. But in reality is not the train the empty +thing, and are not those solitary houses and pastures that which is +filled with life? The Roman express thus rushes to Naples, Egypt, India, +the far East, the great Austral islands, cutting in two the cypress +avenue of a country house of the Val d'Arno, Neptune with his conch, a +huge figure of the seventeenth century, looking on from an artificial +grotto. What to him is this miserable little swish past of to-day? + +There is only one circumstance when this vacuity, this suspension of all +real life, is in its place; when one is hurrying to some dreadful goal, +a death-bed or perhaps a fresh-made grave. The soul is precipitated +forward to one object, one moment, and cannot exist meanwhile; _ruit_ +not _hora_, but _anima_; emptiness suits passion and suffering, for they +empty out the world. + + +IV + +Be this as it may, it will be a great pity if we lose a certain sense of +wonder at distance overcome, a certain emotion of change of place. This +emotion--paid for no doubt by much impatience and weariness where the +plains were wide, the mountains high, or the roads persistently +straight--must have been one of the great charms of the old mode of +travelling. You savoured the fact of each change in the lie of the +land, of each variation in climate and province, the difference between +the chestnut and the beech zones, for instance, in the south, of the fir +and the larch in the Alps; the various types of window, roof, chimney, +or well, nay, the different fold of the cap or kerchief of the market +women. One inn, one square, one town-hall or church, introduced you +gradually to its neighbours. We feel this in the talk of old people, +those who can remember buying their team at Calais, of elderly ones who +chartered their _vetturino_ at Marseilles or Nice; in certain scraps in +the novels even of Thackeray, giving the sense of this gradual +occupation of the continent by relays. One of Mr. Ruskin's drawings at +Oxford evokes it strongly in me. On what railway journey would he have +come across that little town of Rheinfelden (where is Rheinfelden?), +would he have wandered round those quaint towered walls, over that +bridge, along that grassy walk? + +I can remember, in my childhood, the Alps before they had railways; the +enormous remoteness of Italy, the sense of its lying down there, far, +far away in its southern sea; the immense length of the straight road +from Bellinzona to the lake, the endlessness of the winding valleys. +Now, as I said in relation to that effigy of the Alps by the man who had +never been abroad, I get into my bunk at Milan, and waking up, see in +the early morning crispness, the glass-green Reuss tear past, and the +petticoated turrets of Lucerne. + +Once also (and I hope not once and never again) I made an immense +journey through Italy in a pony-cart. We seemed to traverse all +countries and climates; lush, stifling valleys with ripening maize and +grapes; oak-woods where rows of cypress showed roads long gone, and +crosses told of murders; desolate heaths high on hill-tops, and stony +gorges full of myrtle; green irrigated meadows with plashing +water-wheels, and grey olive groves; so that in the evening we felt +homesick for that distant, distant morning: yet we had only covered as +much ground as from London to Dover! And how immensely far off from +Florence did we not feel when, four hours after leaving its walls, we +arrived in utter darkness at the friendly mountain farm, and sat down to +supper in the big bare room, where high-backed chairs and the plates +above the immense chimney-piece loomed and glimmered in the half-light; +feeling, as if in a dream, the cool night air still in our throats, the +jingle of cart-bells and chirp of wayside crickets still in our ears! +Where was Florence then? As a fact it was just sixteen miles off. + +To travel in this way one should, however, as old John Evelyn advises, +"diet with the natives." Our ancestors (for one takes for granted, of +course, that one's ancestors were _milords_) were always plentifully +furnished, I observe, with letters of introduction. They were necessary +when persons of distinction carried their bedding on mules and rode in +coaches escorted by blunderbuses, like John Evelyn himself. + +It is this dieting with the natives which brings one fully in contact +with a country's reality. At the tables of one's friends, while being +strolled through the gardens or driven across country, one learns all +about the life, thoughts, feelings of the people; the very gossip of the +neighbourhood becomes instructive, and you touch the past through +traditions of the family. Here the French put up the maypole in 1796; +there the beautiful abbess met her lover; that old bowed man was the one +who struck the Austrian colonel at Milan before 1859. 'Tis the mode of +travelling that constituted the delight and matured the genius of +Stendhal, king of cosmopolitans and grand master of the psychologic +novel. To my kind friends, wherever I have any, but most perhaps in +Northern Italy, is due among other kinds of gratitude, gratitude for +having travelled in this way. + + +V + +But there is another way of travelling, more suitable methinks to the +poet. For what does the poet want with details of reality when he +possesses its universal essence, or with local manners and historic +tradition, seeing that his work is for all times and all men? + +Mr. Browning, I was told last year by his dear friends at Asolo, first +came upon the kingdom of Kate the Queen by accident, perhaps not having +heard its name or not remembering it, in the course of a long walking +tour from Venice to the Alps. It was the first time he was in Italy, +nay, abroad, and he had come from London to Venice by sea. That village +of palaces on the hill-top, with the Lombard plain at its feet and the +great Alps at its back; with its legends of the Queen of Cyprus was, +therefore, one of the first impressions of mainland Italy which the poet +could have received. And one can understand _Pippa Passes_ resulting +therefrom, better than from his years of familiarity with Florence. +Pippa, Sebald, Ottima, Jules, his bride, the Bishop, the Spy, nay, even +Queen Kate and her Page, are all born of that sort of misinterpretation +of places, times, and stories which is so fruitful in poetry, because it +means the begetting of things in the image of the poet's own soul, +rather than the fashioning them to match something outside it. + +Even without being a poet you may profit in an especial manner by +travelling in a country where you know no one, provided you have in you +that scrap of poetic fibre without which poets and poetry are caviare to +you. There is no doubt that wandering about in the haunts of the past +undisturbed by the knowledge of the present is marvellously favourable +to the historic, the poetical emotion. The American fresh from the +States thinks of Johnson and Dickens in Fleet Street; at Oxford or +Cambridge he has raptures (are any raptures like these?) into which, +like notes in a chord and overtones in a note, there enters the +deliciousness, the poignancy of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Turner. + +The Oxford or Cambridge man, on the other hand, will have similar +raptures in some boarding-house at Venice or Florence; raptures +rapturous in proportion almost to his ignorance of the language and the +people. Do not let us smile, dear friends, who have lived in Rome till +you are Romans, dear friends, who are Romans yourselves, at the +foreigner with his Baedeker, turning his back to the Colosseum in his +anxiety to reach it, and ashamed as well as unable to ask his way. That +Goth or Vandal, very likely, is in the act of possessing Rome, of making +its wonder and glory his own, consubstantial to his soul; Rome is his +for the moment. It is ours? Alas! + +Nature, Fate, I know not whether the mother or the daughter, they are so +like each other, looks with benignity upon these poor ignorant, solitary +tourists, and gives them what she denies to those who have more leisure +and opportunity. I cannot explain by any other reason a fact which is +beyond all possibility of doubt, and patent to the meanest observer, +namely, that it is always during our first sojourn in a place, during +its earlier part, and more particularly when we are living prosaically +at inns and boarding-houses, that something happens--a procession, a +serenade, a street-fight, a fair, or a pilgrimage--which shows the place +in a particularly characteristic light, and which never occurs again. +The very elements are desired to perform for the benefit of the +stranger. I remember a thunderstorm, the second night I was ever at +Venice, lighting up St. George's, the Salute, the whole lagoon as I have +never seen it since. + +I can testify, also, to having seen the Alhambra under snow, a sparkling +whiteness lying soft on the myrtle hedges, and the reflection of arches +and domes waving, with the drip of melted snow from the roofs, in the +long-stagnant tanks. If I lived in Granada, or went back there, should I +ever see this wonder again? It was so ordered merely because I had just +come, and was lodging at an inn. + +Yes, Fate is friendly to those who travel rarely, who go abroad to see +abroad, not to be warm or cold, or to meet the people they may meet +anywhere else. Honour the tourist; he walks in a halo of romance, The +cosmopolitan abroad desists from flannel shirts because he is always at +home; and he knows to a nicety hours and places which demand a high hat. +But does that compensate? + + +VI + +There is yet another mystery connected with travelling, but 'tis too +subtle almost for words. All I can ask is, do you know what it is to +meet, say, in some college room, or on the staircase of an English +country house, or even close behind the front door in Bloomsbury, the +photograph of some Florentine relief or French cathedral, the black, +gaunt Piranesi print of some Roman ruin; and to feel suddenly Florence, +Rouen, Reims, or Rome, the whole of their presence distilled, as it +were, into one essence of emotion? + +What does it mean? That in this solid world only delusion is worth +having? Nay; but that nothing can come into the presence of that +capricious despot, our fancy, which has not dwelt six months and six in +the purlieus of its palace, steeped, like the candidates for Ahasuerus's +favour, in sweet odours and myrrh. + + + + + +OLD ITALIAN GARDENS + + + +I + +There are also modern gardens in Italy, and in such I have spent many +pleasant hours. But that has been part of my life of reality, which +concerns only my friends and myself. The gardens I would speak about are +those in which I have lived the life of the fancy, and into which I may +lead the idle thoughts of my readers. + +It is pleasant to have flowers growing in a garden. I make this remark +because there have been very fine gardens without any flowers at all; in +fact, when the art of gardening reached its height, it took to despising +its original material, as, at one time, people came to sing so well that +it was considered vulgar to have any voice. There is a magnificent +garden near Pescia, in Tuscany, built in terraces against a hillside, +with wonderful waterworks, which give you shower-baths when you expect +them least; and in this garden, surrounded by the trimmest box hedges, +there bloom only imperishable blossoms of variegated pebbles and chalk. +That I have seen with my own eyes. A similar garden, near Genoa, +consisting of marble mosaics and coloured bits of glass, with a peach +tree on a wall, and an old harpsichord on the doorstep to serve instead +of bell or knocker, I am told of by a friend, who pretends to have spent +her youth in it. But I suspect her to be of supernatural origin, and +this garden to exist only in the world of Ariosto's enchantresses, +whence she originally hails. To return to my first remark, it is +pleasant, therefore, to have flowers in a garden, though not necessary. +We moderns have flowers, and no gardens. I must protest against such a +state of things. Still worse is it to suppose that you can get a garden +by running up a wall or planting a fence round a field, a wood or any +portion of what is vaguely called Nature. Gardens have nothing to do +with Nature, or not much. Save the garden of Eden, which was perhaps no +more a garden than certain London streets so called, gardens are always +primarily the work of man. I say primarily, for these outdoor +habitations, where man weaves himself carpets of grass and gravel, cuts +himself walls out of ilex or hornbeam, and fits on as roof so much of +blue day or of starspecked, moonsilvered night, are never perfect until +Time has furnished it all with his weather stains and mosses, and Fancy, +having given notice to the original occupants, has handed it into the +charge of gentle little owls and furgloved bats, and of other tenants, +human in shape, but as shy and solitary as they. + +That is a thing of our days, or little short of them. I should be +curious to know something of early Italian gardens, long ago; long +before the magnificence of Roman Cæsars had reappeared, with their +rapacity and pride, in the cardinals and princes of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries. I imagine those beginnings to have been humble; +the garden of the early middle ages to have been a thing more for +utility than pleasure, and not at all for ostentation. For the garden of +the castle is necessarily small; and the plot of ground between the +inner and outer rows of walls, where corn and hay might be grown for the +horses, is not likely to be given up exclusively to her ladyship's +lilies and gillyflowers; salads and roots must grow there, and onions +and leeks, for it is not always convenient to get vegetables from the +villages below, particularly when there are enemies or disbanded +pillaging mercenaries about; hence, also, there will be fewer roses than +vines, pears, or apples, spaliered against the castle wall. On the other +hand the burgher of the towns begins by being a very small artisan or +shopkeeper, and even when he lends money to kings of England and +Emperors, and is part owner of Constantinople, he keeps his house with +business-like frugality. Whatever they lavished on churches, frescoes, +libraries, and pageants, the citizens, even of the fifteenth century, +whose wives and daughters still mended the linen and waited at table, +are not likely to have seen in their villa more than a kind of rural +place of business, whence to check factors and peasants, where to store +wine and oil; and from whose garden, barely enclosed from the fields, to +obtain the fruit and flowers for their table. I think that mediæval +poetry and tales have led me to this notion. There is little mention in +them of a garden as such: the Provençal lovers meet in orchards--"en un +vergier sor folha d'albespi"--where the May bushes grow among the almond +trees. Boccaccio and the Italians more usually employ the word _orto_, +which has lost its Latin signification, and is a place, as we learn from +the context, planted with fruit trees and with pot-herbs, the sage which +brought misfortune on poor Simona, and the sweet basil which Lisabetta +watered, as it grew out of Lorenzo's head, "only with rosewater, or that +of orange flowers, or with her own tears." A friend of mine has painted +a picture of another of Boccaccio's ladies, Madonna Dianora, visiting +the garden, which (to the confusion of her virtuous stratagem) the +enamoured Ansaldo has made to bloom in January by magic arts; a little +picture full of the quaint lovely details of Dello's wedding chests, the +charm of the roses and lilies, the plashing fountains and birds singing +against a background of wintry trees and snow-shrouded fields, the +dainty youths and damsels treading their way among the flowers, looking +like tulips and ranunculus themselves in their fur and brocade. But +although in this story Boccaccio employs the word _giardino_ instead of +_orto_, I think we must imagine that magic flower garden rather as a +corner--they still exist on every hillside--of orchard connected with +the fields of wheat and olives below by the long tunnels of vine +trellis, and dying away into them with the great tufts of lavender and +rosemary and fennel on the grassy bank under the cherry trees. This +piece of terraced ground along which the water--spurted from the +dolphin's mouth or the siren's breasts--runs through walled channels, +refreshing impartially violets and salads, lilies and tall flowering +onions, under the branches of the peach tree and the pomegranate, to +where, in the shade of the great pink oleander tufts, it pours out below +into the big tank, for the maids to rinse their linen in the evening, +and the peasants to fill their cans to water the bedded-out tomatoes, +and the potted clove-pinks in the shadow of the house. + +The Blessed Virgin's garden is like that, where, as she prays in the +cool of the evening, the gracious Gabriel flutters on to one knee +(hushing the sound of his wings lest he startle her) through the pale +green sky, the deep blue-green valley; and you may still see in the +Tuscan fields clumps of cypresses clipped wheel-shape, which might mark +the very spot. + +The transition from this orchard-garden, this _orto_, of the old Italian +novelists and painters to the architectural garden of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries, is indicated in some of the descriptions and +illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a sort of handbook of +antiquities in the shape of a novel, written by Fra Francesco Colonna, +and printed at Venice about 1480. Here we find trees and hedges treated +as brick and stone work; walls, niches, colonnades, cut out of ilex and +laurel; statues, vases, peacocks, clipped in box and yew; moreover +antiquities, busts, inscriptions, broken altars and triumphal arches, +temples to the graces and Venus, stuck about the place very much as we +find them in the Roman Villas of the late sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries. But I doubt whether the Hypnerotomachia can be taken as +evidence of the gardens of Colonna's own days. I think his descriptions +are rather of what his archæological lore made him long for, and what +came in time, when antiques were more plentiful than in the early +Renaissance, and the monuments of the ancients could be incorporated +freely into the gardens. For the classic Italian garden is essentially +Roman in origin; it could have arisen only on the top of ancient walls +and baths, its shape suggested by the ruins below, its ornaments dug up +in the planting of the trees; and until the time of Julius II. and Leo +X., Rome was still a mediæval city, feudal and turbulent, in whose +outskirts, for ever overrun by baronial squabbles, no sane man would +have built himself a garden; and in whose ancient monuments castles were +more to be expected than belvederes and orangeries. Indeed, by the side +of quaint arches and temples, and labyrinths which look like designs for +a box of toys, we find among the illustrations of Polifilo various +charming woodcuts showing bits of vine trellis, of tank and of fountain, +on the small scale, and in the domestic, quite unclassic style of the +Italian burgher's garden. I do not mean to say that the gardens of +Lorenzo dei Medici, of Catherine Cornaro near Asolo, of the Gonzagas +near Mantua, of the Estensi at Scandiano and Sassuolo, were kitchen +gardens like those of Isabella's basil pot. They had waterworks already, +and aviaries full of costly birds, and enclosures where camels and +giraffes were kept at vast expense, and parks with deer and fishponds; +they were the gardens of the castle, of the farm, magnified and made +magnificent, spread over a large extent of ground. But they were not, +any more than are the gardens of Boiardo's and Ariosto's enchantresses +(copied by Spenser) the typical Italian gardens of later days. + +And here, having spoken of that rare and learned Hypnerotomachia +Poliphili (which, by the way, any one who wishes to be instructed, +sickened, and bored for many days together, may now read in Monsieur +Claudius Popelin's French translation), it is well I should state that +for the rest of this dissertation I have availed myself of neither the +_British Museum_, nor the _National Library of Paris_, nor the _Library +of South Kensington_ (the italics seem necessary to show my appreciation +of those haunts of learning), but merely of the light of my own poor +intellect. For I do not think I care to read about gardens among +foolscap and inkstains and printed forms; in fact I doubt whether I +care to read about them at all, save in Boccaccio and Ariosto, Spenser +and Tasso; though I hope that my readers will be more literary +characters than myself. + + +II + +The climate of Italy (moving on in my discourse) renders it difficult +and almost impossible to have flowers growing in the ground all through +the summer. After the magnificent efflorescence of May and June the soil +cakes into the consistence of terra-cotta, and the sun, which has +expanded and withered the roses and lilies with such marvellous +rapidity, toasts everything like so much corn or maize. Very few +herbaceous flowers--the faithful, friendly, cheerful zinnias, for +instance--can continue blooming, and the oleander, become more +brilliantly rose-colour with every additional week's drought, triumph +over empty beds. Flowers in Italy are a crop like corn, hemp, or beans; +you must be satisfied with fallow soil when they are over. I say these +things, learned by some bitter experience of flowerless summers, to +explain why Italian flower-gardening mainly takes refuge in pots--from +the great ornamented lemon-jars down to the pots of carnations, double +geraniums, tuberoses, and jasmines on every wall, on every ledge or +window-sill; so much so, in fact, that even the famous sweet basil, and +with it young Lorenzo's head, had to be planted in a pot. Now this +poverty of flower-beds and richness of pots made it easy and natural for +the Italian garden to become, like the Moorish one, a place of mere +greenery and water, a palace whose fountains plashed in sunny yards +walled in with myrtle and bay, in mysterious chambers roofed over with +ilex and box. + +And this it became. Moderately at first; a few hedges of box and +cypress--exhaling its resinous breath in the sunshine--leading up to the +long, flat Tuscan house, with its tower or pillared loggia under the +roof to take the air and dry linen; a few quaintly cut trees set here +and there, along with the twisted mulberry tree where the family drank +its wine and ate its fruit of an evening; a little grove of ilexes to +the back, in whose shade you could sleep while the cicalas buzzed at +noon; some cypresses gathered together into a screen, just to separate +the garden from the olive yard above; gradually perhaps a balustrade set +at the end of the bowling-green, that you might see, even from a +distance, the shimmery blue valley below, the pale blue distant hills; +and if you had it, some antique statue not good enough for the courtyard +of the town house, set on the balustrade or against the tree; also, +where water was plentiful, a little grotto, scooped out under that +semicircular screen of cypresses. A very modest place, but differing +essentially from the orchard and kitchen garden of the mediæval burgher; +and out of which came something immense and unique--the classic Roman +villa. + +For your new garden, your real Italian garden, brings in a new +element--that of perspective, architecture, decoration; the trees used +as building material, the lie of the land as theatre arrangements, the +water as the most docile and multiform stage property. Now think what +would happen when such gardens begin to be made in Rome. The Popes and +Popes' nephews can enclose vast tracts of land, expropriated by some +fine sweeping fiscal injustice, or by the great expropriator, fever, in +the outskirts of the town; and there place their casino, at first a mere +summer-house, whither to roll of spring evenings in stately coaches and +breathe the air with a few friends; then gradually a huge house, with +its suits of guests' chambers, stables, chapel, orangery, collection of +statues and pictures, its subsidiary smaller houses, belvederes, +circuses, and what not! And around the house His Eminence or His Serene +Excellency may lay out his garden. Now go where you may in the outskirts +of Rome you are sure to find ruins--great aqueduct arches, temples +half-standing, gigantic terrace-works belonging to some baths or palace +hidden beneath the earth and vegetation. Here you have naturally an +element of architectural ground-plan and decoration which is easily +followed: the terraces of quincunxes, the symmetrical groves, the long +flights of steps, the triumphal arches, the big ponds, come, as it were, +of themselves, obeying the order of what is below. And from underground, +everywhere, issues a legion of statues, headless, armless, in all stages +of mutilation, who are charitably mended, and take their place, mute +sentinels, white and earth-stained, at every intersecting box hedge, +under every ilex grove, beneath the cypresses of each sweeping hillside +avenue, wherever a tree can make a niche or a bough a canopy. Also +vases, sarcophagi, baths, little altars, columns, reliefs by the score +and hundred, to be stuck about everywhere, let into every wall, clapped +on the top of every gable, every fountain stacked up, in every empty +space. + +Among these inhabitants of the gardens of Cæsar, Lucullus, or Sallust, +who, after a thousand years' sleep, pierce through the earth into new +gardens, of crimson cardinals and purple princes, each fattened on his +predecessors' spoils--Medici, Farnesi, Peretti, Aldobrandini, Ludovisi, +Rospigliosi, Borghese, Pamphili--among this humble people of stone I +would say a word of garden Hermes and their vicissitudes. There they +stand, squeezing from out their triangular sheath the stout pectorals +veined with rust, scarred with corrosions, under the ilexes, whose drip, +drip, through all the rainy days and nights of those ancient times and +these modern ones has gradually eaten away an eye here, a cheek there, +making up for the loss by gilding the hair with lichens, and matting the +beard with green ooze; while patched chin, and restored nose, give them +an odd look of fierce German duellists. Have they been busts of Cæsars, +hastily ordered on the accession of some Tiberius or Nero, hastily sent +to alter into Caligula or Galba, or chucked into the Tiber on to the top +of the monster Emperor's body after that had been properly hauled +through the streets? Or are they philosophers, at your choice, Plato or +Aristotle or Zeno or Epicurus, once presiding over the rolls of poetry +and science in some noble's or some rhetor's library? Or is it possible +that this featureless block, smiling foolishly with its orbless +eye-sockets and worn-out mouth, may have had, once upon a time, a nose +from Phidias's hand, a pair of Cupid lips carved by Praxiteles? + + +III + +A book of seventeenth-century prints--"The Gardens of Rome, with their +plans raised and seen in perspective, drawn and engraved by Giov: +Battista Falda, at the printing-house of Gio: Giacomo de' Rossi, at the +sign of Paris, near the church of Peace in Rome"--brings home to one, +with the names of the architects who laid them out, that these Roman +villas are really a kind of architecture cut out of living instead of +dead timber. To this new kind of architecture belongs a new kind of +sculpture. The antiques do well in their niches of box and laurel under +their canopy of hanging ilex boughs; they are, in their weather-stained, +mutilated condition, another sort of natural material fit for the +artist's use; but the old sculpture being thus in a way assimilated +through the operation of earth, wind, and rain, into tree-trunks and +mossy boulders, a new sculpture arises undertaking to make of marble +something which will continue the impression of the trees and waters, +wave its jagged outlines like the branches, twist its supple limbs like +the fountains. It is high time that some one should stop the laughing +and sniffing at this great sculpture, of Bernini and his Italian and +French followers, the last spontaneous outcome of the art of the +Renaissance, of the decorative sculpture which worked in union with +place and light and surroundings. Mistaken as indoor decoration, as free +statuary in the sense of the antique, this sculpture has after all +given us the only works which are thoroughly right in the open air, +among the waving trees, the mad vegetation which sprouts under the +moist, warm Roman sky, from every inch of masonry and travertine. They +are comic of course looked at in all the details, those angels who smirk +and gesticulate with the emblems of the passion, those popes and saints +who stick out colossal toes and print on the sky gigantic hands, on the +parapets of bridges and the gables of churches; but imagine them +replaced by fine classic sculpture--stiff mannikins struggling with the +overwhelming height, the crushing hugeness of all things Roman; little +tin soldiers lost in the sky instead of those gallant theatrical +creatures swaggering among the clouds, pieces of wind-torn cloud, +petrified for the occasion, themselves! Think of Bernini's Apollo and +Daphne, a group unfortunately kept in a palace room, with whose right +angles its every outline swears, but which, if placed in a garden, would +be the very summing up of all garden and park impressions in the waving, +circling lines; yet not without a niminy piminy restraint of the +draperies, the limbs, the hair turning to clustered leaves, the body +turning to smooth bark, of the flying nymph and the pursuing god. + +The great creation of this Bernini school, which shows it as the +sculpture born of gardens, is the fountain. No one till the seventeenth +century had guessed what might be the relations of stone and water, each +equally obedient to the artist's hand. The mediæval Italian fountain is +a tank, a huge wash-tub fed from lions' mouths, as if by taps, and +ornamented, more or less, with architectural and sculptured devices. In +the Renaissance we get complicated works of art--Neptunes with tridents +throne above sirens squeezing their breasts, and cupids riding on +dolphins, like the beautiful fountain of Bologna; or boys poised on one +foot, holding up tortoises, like Rafael's Tartarughe of Piazza Mattei; +more elaborate devices still, like the one of the villa at Bagnaia, near +Viterbo. But these fountains do equally well when dry, equally well +translated into bronze or silver: they are wonderful saltcellars or +fruit-dishes; everything is delightful except the water, which spurts in +meagre threads as from a garden-hose. They are the fitting ornament of +Florence, where there is pure drinking water only on Sundays and +holidays, of Bologna, where there is never any at all. + +The seventeenth century made a very different thing of its +fountains--something as cool, as watery, as the jets which gurgle and +splash in Moorish gardens and halls, and full of form and fancy withal, +the water never alone, but accompanied by its watery suggestion of power +and will and whim. They are so absolutely right, these Roman fountains +of the Bernini school, that we are apt to take them as a matter of +course, as if the horses had reared between the spurts from below and +the gushes and trickles above; as if the Triton had been draped with the +overflowing of his horn; as if the Moor with his turban, the Asiatic +with his veiled fall, the solemn Egyptian river god, had basked and +started back with the lion and the seahorse among the small cataracts +breaking into foam in the pond, the sheets of water dropping, +prefiguring icicles, lazily over the rocks, all stained black by the +north winds and yellow by the lichen, all always, always, in those Roman +gardens and squares, from the beginning of time, natural objects, +perfect and not more to be wondered at than the water-encircled rocks of +the mountains and seashores. Such art as this cannot be done justice to +with the pen; diagrams would be necessary, showing how in every case the +lines of the sculpture harmonise subtly, or clash to be more subtly +harmonised, with the movement, the immensely varied, absolutely +spontaneous movement of the water; the sculptor, become infinitely +modest, willing to sacrifice his own work, to make it uninteresting in +itself, as a result of the hours and days he must have spent watching +the magnificent manners and exquisite tricks of natural waterfalls--nay, +the mere bursting alongside of breakwaters, the jutting up between +stones, of every trout-stream and milldam. It is not till we perceive +its absence (in the fountains, for instance, of modern Paris) that we +appreciate this Roman art of water sculpture. Meanwhile we accept the +fountains as we accept the whole magnificent harmony of nature and +art--nature tutored by art, art fostered by nature--of the Roman villas, +undulating, with their fringe of pines and oaks, over the hillocks and +dells of the Campagna, or stacked up proudly, vineyards and woods all +round, on the steep sides of Alban and Sabine hills. + + +IV + +This book of engravings of the villas of the Serene Princes +Aldobrandini, Pamphili, Borghese, and so forth, brings home to us +another fact, to wit, that the original owners and layers-out thereof +must have had but little enjoyment of them. There they go in their big +coaches, among the immense bows and curtsies of the ladies and gentlemen +and dapper ecclesiastics whom they meet; princes in feathers and laces, +and cardinals in silk and ermine. But the delightful gardens on which +they are being complimented are meanwhile mere dreadful little +plantations, like a nurseryman's squares of cabbages, you would think, +rather than groves of ilexes and cypresses, for, alas, the greatest +princes, the most magnificent cardinals, cannot bribe Time, or hustle +him to hurry up. + +And thus the gardens were planted and grew. For whom? Certainly not for +the men of those days, who would doubtless have been merely shocked +could they have seen or foreseen.... For their ghosts perhaps? Scarcely. +A friend of mine, in whose information on such matters I have implicit +belief, assures me that it is not the _whole_ ghosts of the ladies and +cavaliers of long ago who haunt the gardens; not the ghost of their +everyday, humdrum likeness to ourselves, but the ghost of certain +moments of their existence, certain rustlings, and shimmerings of their +personality, their waywardness, momentary, transcendent graces and +graciousnesses, unaccountable wistfulness and sorrow, certain looks of +the face and certain tones of the voice (perhaps none of the steadiest), +things that seemed to die away into nothing on earth, but which have +permeated their old haunts, clung to the statues with the ivy, risen and +fallen with the plash of the fountains, and which now exhale in the +breath of the honeysuckle and murmur in the voice of the birds, in the +rustle of the leaves and the high, invading grasses. There are some +verses of Verlaine's, which come to me always, on the melancholy minuet +tune to which Monsieur Fauré has set them, as I walk in those Italian +gardens, Roman and Florentine, walk in the spirit as well as in the +flesh: + + Votre âme est un paysage choisi + Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques + Jouant du luth et quasi + Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques. + Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur + L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune, + Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur; + Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune, + Au calme clair de lune triste et beau + Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres + Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau, + Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres. + + +V + +And this leads me to wonder what these gardens must be when the key has +turned in their rusty gates, and the doorkeeper gone to sleep under the +gun hanging from its nail. What must such places be, Mondragone, for +instance, near Frascati, and the deserted Villa Pucci near Signa, during +the great May nights, when my own small scrap of garden, not beyond +kitchen sounds and servants' lamps, is made wonderful and magical by the +scents which rise up, by the song of the nightingales, the dances of +the fireflies, copying in the darkness below the figures which are +footed by the nimble stars overhead. Into such rites as these, which the +poetry of the past practises with the poetry of summer nights, one durst +not penetrate, save after leaving one's vulgar flesh, one's habits, +one's realities outside the gate. + +And since I have mentioned gates, I must not forget one other sort of +old Italian garden, perhaps the most poetical and pathetic--the garden +that has ceased to exist. You meet it along every Italian highroad or +country lane; a piece of field, tender green with the short wheat in +winter, brown and orange with the dried maize husks and seeding sorghum +in summer, the wide grass path still telling of coaches that once rolled +in; a big stone bench, with sweeping shell-like back under the rosemary +bushes; and, facing the road, between solemnly grouped cypresses or +stately marshalled poplars, a gate of charming hammered iron standing +open between its scroll-work masonry and empty vases, under its covered +escutcheon. The gate that leads to nowhere. + + + + +ABOUT LEISURE + + Sancte Hieronyme, ora pro nobis! + _Litany of the Saints._ + + + +I + +Hung in my room, in such a manner as to catch my eye on waking, is an +excellent photograph of Bellini's _St. Jerome in his Study_. I am aware +that it is not at all by Bellini, but by an inferior painter called +Catena, and I am, therefore, careful not to like it very much. It +occupies that conspicuous place not as a work of art but as an _aid to +devotion_. For I have instituted in my mind, and quite apart from the +orthodox cultus, a special devotion to St. Jerome as the Patron of +Leisure. + +And here let me forestall the cavillings of those who may object that +Hieronymus, whom we call Jerome (born in Dalmatia and died at Bethlehem +about 1500 years ago), was on the contrary a busy, even an overworked +Father of the Church; that he wrote three stout volumes of polemical +treatises, besides many others (including the dispute "concerning +seraphs"), translated the greater part of the Bible into Latin, edited +many obscure texts, and, on the top of it all, kept up an active +correspondence with seven or eight great ladies, a circumstance alone +sufficient to prove that he could not have had much time to spare. I +know. But all that either has nothing to do with it or serves to explain +why St. Jerome was afterwards rewarded by the gift of Leisure, and is, +therefore, to be invoked by all those who aspire at enjoying the same. +For the painters of all schools, faithful to the higher truth, have +agreed in telling us that: first, St. Jerome had a most delightful +study, looking out on the finest scenery; secondly, that he was never +writing, but always reading or looking over the edge of his book at the +charming tables and chairs and curiosities, or at the sea and mountains +through the window; and thirdly, _that he was never interrupted by +anybody_. I underline this item, because on it, above all the others, is +founded my certainty that St. Jerome is the only person who ever +enjoyed perfect leisure, and, therefore, the natural patron and +advocate of all the other persons to whom even imperfect leisure is +refused. In what manner this miracle was compassed is exactly what I +propose to discuss in this essay. An excellent _Roman Catholic_ friend +of mine, to whom I propounded the question, did indeed solve it by +reminding me that Heaven had made St. Jerome a present of a lion who +slept on his door-mat, after which, she thought, his leisure could take +care of itself. But although this answer seems decisive, it really only +begs the question; and we are obliged to inquire further into the _real +nature of St. Jerome's lion_. This formula has a fine theological ring, +calling to mind Hieronymus's own treatise, _Of the Nature of Seraphs_, +and I am pleased to have found anything so suitable to the arrangements +of a Father of the Church. Nevertheless, I propose to investigate into +the subject of Leisure with a method rather human and earthly than in +any way transcendental. + + +II + +We must evidently begin by a little work of defining; and this will be +easiest done by considering first what Leisure is not. In the first +place, it is one of those things about which we erroneously suppose that +other people have plenty of it, and we ourselves have little or none, +owing to our thoroughly realising only that which lies nearest to our +eye--to wit, _ourself_. How often do we not go into another person's +room and say, "Ah! _this_ is a place where one can feel peaceful!" How +often do we not long to share the peacefulness of some old house, say in +a deserted suburb, with its red fruit wall and its cedar half hiding the +windows, or of some convent portico, with glimpses of spaliered orange +trees. Meanwhile, in that swept and garnished spacious room, in that +house or convent, is no peacefulness to share; barely, perhaps, enough +to make life's two ends meet. For we do not see what fills up, chokes +and frets the life of others, whereas we are uncomfortably aware of the +smallest encumbrance in our own; in these matters we feel quickly enough +the mote in our own eye, and do not perceive the beam in our +neighbour's. + +And leisure, like its sister, peace, is among those things which are +internally felt rather than seen from the outside. (Having written this +part of my definition, it strikes me that I have very nearly given away +St. Jerome and St. Jerome's lion, since any one may say, that probably +that famous leisure of his was just one of the delusions in question. +But this is not the case. St. Jerome really had leisure, at least when +he was painted; I know it to be a fact; and, for the purposes of +literature, I require it to be one. So I close this parenthesis with the +understanding that so much is absolutely settled.) + +Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so +much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. We speak of _leisure +time_, but what we really mean thereby is _time in which we can feel at +leisure_. What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. +It has nothing to do with being idle, or having time on one's hands, +although it does involve a certain sense of free space about one, as we +shall see anon. There is time and to spare in a lawyer's waiting-room, +but there is no leisure, neither do we enjoy this blessing when we have +to wait two or three hours at a railway junction. On both these +occasions (for persons who can profit thereby to read the papers, to +learn a verb, or to refresh memories of foreign travel, are distinctly +abnormal) we do not feel in possession of ourselves. There is something +fuming and raging inside us, something which seems to be kicking at our +inner bulwarks as we kicked the cushions of a tardy four-wheeler in our +childhood. St. Jerome, patron of leisure, never behaved like that, and +his lion was always engrossed in pleasant contemplation of the +cardinal's hat on the peg. I have said that when we are bored we feel as +if possessed by something not quite ourselves (much as we feel possessed +by a stone in a shoe, or a cold in the head); and this brings me to a +main characteristic of leisure: it implies that we feel free to do what +we like, and that we have plenty of space to do it in. This is a very +important remark of mine, and if it seem trite, that is merely because +it is so wonderfully true. Besides, it is fraught with unexpected +consequences. + + +III + +The worst enemy of leisure is boredom: it is one of the most active +pests existing, fruitful of vanity and vexation of spirit. I do not +speak merely of the wear and tear of so-called social amusements, though +that is bad enough. We kill time, and kill our better powers also, as +much in the work undertaken to keep off _ennui_ as in the play. Count +Tolstoi, with his terrible eye for shams, showed it all up in a famous +answer to M. Dumas _fils_. Many, many of us, work, he says, in order to +escape from ourselves. Now, we should not want to escape from ourselves; +we ought to carry ourselves, the more unconsciously the better, along +ever widening circles of interest and activity; we should bring +ourselves into ever closer contact with everything that is outside us; +we should be perpetually giving ourselves from sheer loving instinct; +but how can we give ourself if we have run away from it, or buried it at +home, or chained it up in a treadmill? Good work is born of the love of +the Power-to-do for the Job-to-be-done; nor can any sort of chemical +arrangements, like those by which Faust's pupil made _Homunculus_ in +his retort, produce genuinely living, and in its turn fruitful, work. +The fear of boredom, the fear of the moral going to bits which boredom +involves, encumbers the world with rubbish, and exhibitions of pictures, +publishers' announcements, lecture syllabuses, schemes of charitable +societies, are pattern-books of such litter. The world, for many people, +and unfortunately, for the finer and nobler (those most afraid of +_ennui_) is like a painter's garret, where some half-daubed canvas, +eleven feet by five, hides the Jaconda on the wall, the Venus in the +corner, and blocks the charming tree-tops, gables, and distant meadows +through the window. + +Art, literature, and philanthropy are notoriously expressions no longer +of men's and women's thoughts and feelings, but of their dread of +finding themselves without thoughts to think or feelings to feel. +So-called practical persons know this, and despise such employments as +frivolous and effeminate. But are they not also, to a great extent, +frightened of themselves and running away from boredom? See your +well-to-do weighty man of forty-five or fifty, merchant, or soldier, or +civil servant; the same who thanks God _he_ is no idler. Does he really +require more money? Is he more really useful as a colonel than as a +major, in a wig or cocked hat than out of it? Is he not shuffling money +from one heap into another, making rules and regulations for others to +unmake, preparing for future restless idlers the only useful work which +restless idleness can do, the carting away of their predecessor's +litter? + +Nor is this all the mischief. Work undertaken to kill time, at best to +safeguard one's dignity, is clearly not the work which one was born to, +since that would have required no such incentives. Now, trying to do +work one is not fit for, implies the more or less unfitting oneself to +do, or even to be, the something for which one had facilities. It means +competing with those who are utterly different, competing in things +which want a totally different kind of organism; it means, therefore, +offering one's arms and legs, and feelings and thoughts to those blind, +brutal forces of adaptation which, having to fit a human character into +a given place, lengthen and shorten it, mangling it unconcernedly in +the process. + +Say one was naturally adventurous, a creature for open air and quick, +original resolves. Is he the better for a deliberative, sedentary +business, or it for him? There are people whose thought poises on +distant points, swirls and pounces, and gets the prey which can't be got +by stalking along the bushes; there are those who, like divers, require +to move head downwards, feet in the air, an absurd position for going up +hill. There are people who must not feel æsthetically, in order (so Dr. +Bain assures us) that they may be thorough-paced, scientific thinkers; +others who cannot get half a page or fifty dates by heart because they +assimilate and alter everything they take in. + +And think of the persons born to contemplation or sympathy, who, in the +effort to be prompt and practical, in the struggle for a fortune or a +visiting-list lose, atrophy (alas, after so much cruel bruising!) their +inborn exquisite powers. + +The world wants useful inhabitants. True. But the clouds building +bridges over the sea, the storms modelling the peaks and flanks of the +mountains, are a part of the world; and they want creatures to sit and +look at them and learn their life's secrets, and carry them away, +conveyed perhaps merely in altered tone of voice, or brightened colour +of eye, to revive the spiritual and physical hewers of wood and drawers +of water. For the poor sons and daughters of men require for sustenance, +as well as food and fuel, and intellect and morals, the special +mysterious commodity called _charm_.... + + +IV + +And here let me open a parenthesis of lamentation over the ruthless +manner in which our century and nation destroys this precious thing, +even in its root and seed. _Charm_ is, where it exists, an intrinsic and +ultimate quality; it makes our actions, persons, life, significant and +desirable, apart from anything they may lead to, or any use to which +they can be put. Now we are allowing ourselves to get into a state where +nothing is valued, otherwise than as a means; where to-day is +interesting only because it leads up to to-morrow; and the flower is +valued only on account of the fruit, and the fruit, in its turn, on +account of the seed. + +It began, perhaps, with the loss of that sacramental view of life and +life's details which belonged to Judaism and the classic religions, and +of which even Catholicism has retained a share; making eating, drinking, +sleeping, cleaning house and person, let alone marriage, birth, and +death, into something grave and meaningful, not merely animal and +accidental; and mapping out the years into days, each with its symbolic +or commemorative meaning and emotion. All this went long ago, and +inevitably. But we are losing nowadays something analogous and more +important: the cultivation and sanctification not merely of acts and +occasions but of the individual character. + +Life has been allowed to arrange itself, if such can be called +arrangement, into an unstable, jostling heap of interests, ours and +other folk's, serious and vacuous, trusted to settle themselves +according to the line of least resistance (that is, of most breakage!) +and the survival of the toughest, without our sympathy directing the +choice. As the days of the year have become confused, hurried, and +largely filled with worthless toil and unworthy trouble, so in a +measure, alas, our souls! We rarely envy people for being delightful; we +are always ashamed of mentioning that any of our friends are virtuous; +we state what they have done, or do, or are attempting; we state their +chances of success. Yet success may depend, and often does, on greater +hurrying and jostling, not on finer material and workmanship, in our +hurrying times. The quick method, the rapid worker, the cheap object +quickly replaced by a cheaper--these we honour; we want the last new +thing, and have no time to get to love our properties, bodily and +spiritual. 'Tis bad economy, we think, to weave such damask, linen, and +brocade as our fathers have left us; and perhaps this reason accounts +for our love of _bric-à-brac_; we wish to buy associations ready made, +like that wealthy man of taste who sought to buy a half-dozen old +statues, properly battered and lichened by the centuries, to put in his +brand new garden. With this is connected--I mean this indifference to +what folk _are_ as distinguished from what they _do_--the self-assertion +and aggressiveness of many worthy persons, men more than women, and +gifted, alas, more than giftless; the special powers proportionately +accompanied by special odiousness. Such persons cultivate themselves, +indeed, but as fruit and vegetables for the market, and, with good luck +and trouble, possibly _primeurs_: concentrate every means, chemical +manure and sunshine, and quick each still hard pear or greenish +cauliflower into the packing-case, the shavings and sawdust, for export. +It is with such well-endowed persons that originates the terrible mania +(caught by their neighbours) of tangible work, something which can be +put alongside of others' tangible work, if possible with some visible +social number attached to it. So long as this be placed on the stall +where it courts inspection, what matter how empty and exhausted the soul +which has grown it? For nobody looks at souls except those who use them +for this market-gardening. + +Dropping metaphor; it is woeful to see so many fine qualities sacrificed +to _getting on_, independent of actual necessity; getting on, no matter +why, on to the road _to no matter what_. And on that road, what +bitterness and fury if another passes in front! Take up books of +science, of history and criticism, let alone newspapers; half the space +is taken up in explaining (or forestalling explanations), that the sage, +hero, poet, artist said, did, or made the particular thing before some +other sage, hero, poet, artist; and that what the other did, or said, or +made, was either a bungle, or a plagiarism, or worst of all--was +something _obvious_. Hence, like the bare-back riders at the Siena +races, illustrious persons, and would-be illustrious, may be watched +using their energies, not merely in pressing forward, but in hitting +competitors out of the way with inflated bladders--bladders filled with +the wind of conceit, not merely the breath of the lungs. People who +might have been modest and gentle, grow, merely from self-defence, +arrogant and aggressive; they become waspish, contradictory, unfair, who +were born to be wise and just, and well-mannered. And to return to the +question of _Charm_, they lose, soil, maim in this scuffle, much of this +most valuable possession; their intimate essential quality, their +natural manner of being towards nature and neighbours and ideas; their +individual shape, perfume, savour, and, in the sense of herbals, their +individual _virtue_. And when, sometimes, one comes across some of it +remaining, it is with the saddened feeling of finding a delicate plant +trampled by cattle or half eaten up by goats. + +Alas, alas, for charm! People are busy painting pictures, writing poems, +and making music all the world over, and busy making money for the +buying or hiring thereof. But as to that charm of character which is +worth all the music and poetry and pictures put together, how the good +common-sense generations do waste it. + + +V + +Now I suspect that _Charm_ is closely related to _Leisure_. Charm is a +living harmony in the individual soul. It is organised internally, the +expression of mere inborn needs, the offspring of free choice; and as it +is the great giver of pleasure to others, sprung probably from pleasure +within ourselves; making life seem easier, more flexible, even as life +feels in so far easier and more flexible to those who have it. Now even +the best work means struggle, if not with the world and oneself, at +least with difficulties inanimate and animate, pressure and resistance +which make the individual soul stronger, but also harder and less +flower-like, and often a trifle warped by inevitable routine. Hence +Charm is not the nursling of our hours of work, but the delicate and +capricious foster-child of Leisure. For, as observed, Leisure suspends +the pull and push, the rough-and-ready reciprocity of man and +circumstance. 'Tis in leisure that the soul is free to grow by its own +laws, grow inwardly organised and harmonious; its fine individual +hierarchism to form feelings and thoughts, each taking rank and motion +under a conscious headship. 'Tis, I would show, in leisure, while +talking with the persons who are dear, while musing on the themes that +are dearer even than they, that voices learn their harmonious modes, +intonation, accent, pronunciation of single words; all somehow falling +into characteristic pattern, and the features of the face learn to move +with that centred meaning which oftentimes makes homeliness itself more +radiant than beauty. Nay more, may it not be in Leisure, during life's +pauses, that we learn to live, what for and how? + + +VI + +_Life's Pauses._ We think of Leisure in those terms, comparing it with +the scramble, at best the bustle, of work. But this might be a delusion, +like that of the moving shore and the motionless boat. St. Jerome, our +dear patron of Leisure, is looking dreamily over the top of his desk, +listening to the larks outside the wide window, watching the white +sailing clouds. Is he less alive than if his eyes were glued to the +page, his thoughts focussed on one topic, his pen going scratch-scratch, +his soul oblivious of itself? He might be writing fine words, thinking +fine thoughts; but would he have had fine thoughts to think, fine words +to write, if he had always been busy thinking and writing, and had kept +company not with the larks and the clouds and the dear lion on the mat, +but only with the scratching pen? + +For, when all is said and done, 'tis during work we spend, during +leisure we amass those qualities which we barter for ever with other +folk, and the act of barter is _life_. Anyhow, metaphysics apart, and to +return to St. Jerome. This much is clear, that if Leisure were not a +very good thing, this dear old saint would never have been made its +heavenly patron. + +But your discourse, declares the stern reader or he of sicklier +conscience, might be a masked apology for idleness; and pray how many +people would work in this world if every one insisted on having Leisure? +The question, moralising friend, contains its own answer: if every one +insisted on a share of Leisure, every one also would do a share of work. +For as things stand, 'tis the superfluity of one man which makes the +poverty of the other. And who knows? The realisation that Leisure is a +good thing, a thing which every one must have, may, before very long, +set many an idle man digging his garden and grooming his horses, many an +idle woman cooking her dinner and rubbing her furniture. Not merely +because one half of the world (the larger) will have recognised that +work from morning to night is not in any sense living; but also because +the other half may have learned (perhaps through grumbling experience) +that doing nothing all day long, incidentally consuming or spoiling the +work of others, is not _living_ either. The recognition of the necessity +of Leisure, believe me, will imply the recognition of the necessity of +work, as its moral--I might say its _hygienic_, as much as its economic, +co-relative. + +For Leisure (and the ignorance of this truth is at the bottom of much +_ennui_)--Leisure implies a superabundance not only of time but of the +energy needed to spend time pleasantly. And it takes the finest activity +to be truly at Leisure. Since Being at Leisure is but a name for being +active from an inner impulse instead of a necessity; moving like a +dancer or skater for the sake of one's inner rhythm instead of moving, +like a ploughman or an errand-boy, for the sake of the wages you get for +it. Indeed, for this reason, the type of all Leisure is _art_. + +But this is an intricate question, and time, alas! presses. We must +break off this leisurely talk, and betake ourselves each to his +business--let us hope not to his treadmill! And, as we do so, the more +to enjoy our work if luckily useful, the less to detest it if, alas! as +so often in our days, useless; let us invoke the good old greybeard, +painted enjoying himself between his lion and his quail in the +wide-windowed study; and, wishing for leisure, invoke its patron. Give +us spare time, Holy Jerome, and joyful energy to use it. Sancte +Hieronyme, ora pro nobis! + + + + +RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS + + +My oldest impression of Ravenna, before it became in my eyes the abode +of living friends as well as of outlandish ghosts, is of a melancholy +spring sunset at Classe. + +Classe, which Dante and Boccaccio call in less Latin fashion Chiassi, is +the place where of old the fleet _(classis)_ of the Romans and +Ostrogoths rode at anchor in the Adriatic. And Boccaccio says that it is +(but I think he over-calculates) at three miles distance from Ravenna. +It is represented in the mosaic of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, dating from +the reign of Theodoric, by a fine city wall of gold _tesseræ_ (facing +the representation of Theodoric's town palace with the looped-up +embroidered curtains) and a strip of ultramarine sea, with two +rowing-boats and one white blown-out sail upon it. Ravenna, which is now +an inland town, was at that time built in a lagoon; and we must picture +Classe in much the same relation to it that Malamocco or the Port of +Lido is to Venice, the open sea-harbour, where big ships and flotillas +were stationed, while smaller craft wound through the channels and +sand-banks up to the city. But now the lagoon has dried up, the Adriatic +has receded, and there remains of Classis not a stone, save, in the +midst of stagnant canals, rice marsh and brown bogland, a gaunt and +desolate church, with a ruinous mildewed house and a crevassed round +tower by its side. + +It seemed to me that first time, and has ever since seemed, no Christian +church, but the temple of the great Roman goddess Fever. The gates stood +open, as they do all day lest inner damp consume the building, and a +beam from the low sun slanted across the oozy brown nave and struck a +round spot of glittering green on the mosaic of the apse. There, in the +half dome, stood rows and rows of lambs, each with its little tree and +lilies, shining out white from the brilliant green grass of Paradise, +great streams of gold and blue circling around them, and widening +overhead into lakes of peacock splendour. The slanting sunbeam which +burnished that spot of green and gold and brown mosaic, fell also +across the altar steps, brown and green in their wet mildew like the +ceiling above. The floor of the church, sunk below the level of the +road, was as a piece of boggy ground leaving the feet damp, and +breathing a clammy horror on the air. Outside the sun was setting behind +a bank of solid grey clouds, faintly reddening their rifts and sending a +few rose-coloured streaks into the pure yellow evening sky. Against that +sky stood out the long russet line, the delicate cupolaed silhouette of +the sear pinewood recently blasted by frost. While, on the other side, +the marsh stretched out beyond sight, confused in the distance with grey +clouds its lines of bare spectral poplars picked out upon its green and +the greyness of the sky. All round the church lay brown grass, livid +pools, green rice-fields covered with clear water reflecting the red +sunset streaks; and overhead, driven by storm from the sea, the white +gulls, ghosts you might think, of the white-sailed galleys of Theodoric, +still haunting the harbour of Classis. + +Since then, as I hinted, Ravenna has become the home of dear friends, +to which I periodically return, in autumn or winter or blazing summer, +without taking thought for any of the ghosts. And the impressions of +Ravenna are mainly those of life; the voices of children, the plans of +farmers, the squabbles of local politics. I am waked in the morning by +the noises of the market; and opening my shutters, look down upon green +umbrellas and awnings spread over baskets of fruit and vegetables, and +heaps of ironware and stalls of coloured stuffs and gaudy kerchiefs. The +streets are by no means empty. A steam tramcar puffs slowly along the +widest of them; and, in the narrower, you have perpetually to squeeze +against a house to make room for a clattering pony-cart, a jingling +carriole, or one of those splendid bullock-waggons, shaped like an +old-fashioned cannon-cart with spokeless wheels and metal studdings. +There are no mediæval churches in Ravenna, and very few mediæval houses. +The older palaces, though practically fortified, have a vague look of +Roman villas; and the whole town is painted a delicate rose and apricot +colour, which, particularly if you have come from the sad coloured +cities of Tuscany, gives it a Venetian, and (if I may say so) +chintz-petticoat flowered-kerchief cheerfulness. And the life of the +people, when you come in contact with it, also leaves an impression of +provincial, rustic bustle. The Romagnas are full of crude socialism. The +change from rice to wheat-growing has produced agricultural discontent; +and conspiracy has been in the blood of these people, ever since Dante +answered the Romagnolo Guido that his country would never have peace in +its heart. The ghosts of Byzantine emperors and exarchs, of Gothic kings +and mediæval tyrants must be laid, one would think, by socialist +meetings and electioneering squabbles; and perhaps by another movement, +as modern and as revolutionary, which also centres in this big +historical village, the reclaiming of marshland, which may bring about +changes in mode of living and thinking such as Socialism can never +effect; nay, for all one knows, changes in climate, in sea and wind and +clouds. _Bonification_, reclaiming, that is the great word in Ravenna; +and I had scarcely arrived last autumn, before I found myself whirled +off, among dog-carts and _chars-à-bancs_, to view reclaimed land in the +cloudless, pale blue, ice-cold weather. On we trotted, with a great +consulting of maps and discussing of expenses and production, through +the flat green fields and meadows marked with haystacks; and jolted +along a deep sandy track, all that remains of the Roméa, the pilgrims' +way from Venice to Rome, where marsh and pool begin to interrupt the +well-kept pastures, and the line of pine woods to come nearer and +nearer. Over the fields, the frequent canals, and hidden ponds, circled +gulls and wild fowl; and at every farm there was a little crowd of +pony-carts and of gaitered sportsmen returning from the marshes. A sense +of reality, of the present, of useful, bread-giving, fever-curing +activity came by sympathy, as I listened to the chatter of my friends, +and saw field after field, farm after farm, pointed out where, but a +while ago, only swamp grass and bushes grew, and cranes and wild duck +nested. In ten, twenty, fifty years, they went on calculating, Ravenna +will be able to diminish by so much the town-rates; the Romagnas will be +able to support so many more thousands of inhabitants; and that merely +by employing the rivers to deposit arable soil torn from the mountain +valleys; the rivers--Po and his followers, as Dante called them--which +have so long turned this country into marsh; the rivers which, in a +thousand years, cut off Ravenna from her sea. + +We turned towards home, greedy for tea, and mightily in conceit with +progress. But before us, at a turn of the road, appeared Ravenna, its +towers and cupolas against a bank of clouds, a piled-up heap of sunset +fire; its canal, barred with flame, leading into its black vagueness, a +spectre city. And there, to the left, among the bare trees, loomed the +great round tomb of Theodoric. We jingled on, silent and overcome by the +deathly December chill. + +That is the odd thing about Ravenna. It is, more than any of the Tuscan +towns, more than most of the Lombard ones, modern, and full of rough, +dull, modern life; and the past which haunts it comes from so far off, +from a world with which we have no contact. Those pillared basilicas, +which look like modern village churches from the street, affect one with +their almost Moorish arches, their enamelled splendour of ultramarine, +russet, sea-green and gold mosaics, their lily fields and peacock's +tails in mosque-like domes, as great stranded hulks, come floating +across Eastern seas and drifted ashore among the marsh and rice-field. +The grapes and ivy berries, the pouting pigeons, the palm-trees and +pecking peacocks, all this early symbolism with its association of +Bacchic, Eleusinian mysteries, seems, quite as much as the actual +fragments of Grecian capitals, the discs and gratings of porphyry and +alabaster, so much flotsam and jetsam cast up from the shipwreck of an +older Antiquity than Rome's; remnants of early Hellas, of Ionia, perhaps +of Tyre. + +I used to feel this particularly in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, or, as it is +usually called, _Classe dentro_, the long basilica built by Theodoric, +outrivalled later by Justinian's octagon church of Saint Vitalis. There +is something extremely Hellenic in feeling (however un-Grecian in form) +in the pearly fairness of the delicate silvery white columns and +capitals; in the gleam of white, on golden ground, and reticulated with +jewels and embroideries, of the long band of mosaic virgins and martyrs +running above them. The virgins, with their Byzantine names--Sancta +Anastasia, Sancta Anatolia, Sancta Eulalia, Sancta Euphemia--have big +kohled eyes and embroidered garments fantastically suggesting some +Eastern hieratic dancing-girl; but they follow each other, in single +file (each with her lily or rose-bush sprouting from the gauze, green +mosaic), with erect, slightly balanced gait like the maidens of the +Panathenaic procession, carrying, one would say, votive offerings to the +altar, rather than crowns of martyrdom; all stately, sedate, as if +drilled by some priestly ballet-master, all with the same wide eyes and +set smile as of early Greek sculpture. There is no attempt to +distinguish one from the other. There are no gaping wounds, tragic +attitudes, wheels, swords, pincers or other attributes of martyrdom. And +the male saints on the wall opposite are equally unlike mediæval +Sebastians and Laurences, going, one behind the other, in shining white +togas, to present their crowns to Christ on His throne. Christ also, in +this Byzantine art, is never the Saviour. He sits, an angel on each +side, on His golden seat, clad in purple and sandalled with gold, +serene, beardless, wide-eyed like some distant descendant of the +Olympic Jove with his mantle of purple and gold. + +This church of Saint Apollinaris contains a chapel specially dedicated +to the saint, which sums up that curious impression of Hellenic +pre-Christian cheerfulness. It is encrusted with porphyry and _giallo +antico_, framed with delicate carved ivy wreaths along the sides, and +railed in with an exquisite piece of alabaster openwork of vines and +grapes, as on an antique altar. And in a corner of this little temple, +which seems to be waiting for some painter enamoured of Greece and +marble, stands the episcopal seat of the patron saint of the church, the +saint who took his name from Apollo; an alabaster seat, wide-curved and +delicate, in whose back you expect to find, so striking is the +resemblance, the relief of dancing satyrs of the chair of the Priest of +Dionysus. + +As I was sitting one morning, as was my wont, in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, +which (like all Ravenna churches) is always empty, a woman came in, with +a woollen shawl over her head, who, after hunting anxiously about, asked +me where she would find the parish priest. "It is," she said, "for the +Madonna's milk. My husband is a labourer out of work, he has been ill, +and the worry of it all has made me unable to nurse my little baby. I +want the priest, to ask him to get the Madonna to give me back my milk." +I thought, as I listened to the poor creature, that there was but little +hope of motherly sympathy from that Byzantine Madonna in purple and gold +mosaic magnificence, seated ceremoniously on her throne like an antique +Cybele. + +Little by little one returns to one's first impression, and recognises +that this thriving little provincial town, with its socialism and its +_bonification_ is after all a nest of ghosts, and little better than the +churchyard of centuries. + +Never, surely, did a town contain so many coffins, or at least thrust +coffins more upon one's notice. The coffins are stone, immense oblong +boxes, with massive sloping lids horned at each corner, or trough-like +things with delicate sea-wave patternings, figures of toga'd saints and +devices of palm-trees, peacocks, and doves, the carving made clearer by +a picking out of bright green damp. They stand about in all the +churches, not walled in, but quite free in the aisles, the chapels, and +even close to the door. Most of them are doubtless of the fifth or sixth +century, others perhaps barbarous or mediæval imitations; but they all +equally belong to the ages in general, including our own, not +curiosities or heirlooms, but serviceable furniture, into which +generations have been put, and out of which generations have been turned +to make room for later corners. It strikes one as curious at first to +see, for instance, the date 1826 on a sarcophagus probably made under +Theodoric or the Exarchs, but that merely means that a particular +gentleman of Ravenna began that year his lease of entombment. They have +passed from hand to hand (or, more properly speaking, from corpse to +corpse) not merely by being occasionally discovered in digging +foundations, but by inheritance, and frequently by sale. My friends +possess a stone coffin, and the receipt from its previous owner. The +transaction took place some fifty years ago; a name (they are cut very +lightly) changed, a slab or coat-of-arms placed with the sarcophagus in +a different church or chapel, a deed before the notary--that was all. +What became of the previous tenant? Once at least he surprised posterity +very much; perhaps it was in the case of that very purchase for which my +friends still keep the bill. I know not; but the stone-mason of the +house used to relate that, some forty years ago, he was called in to +open a stone coffin; when, the immense horned lid having been rolled +off, there was seen, lying in the sarcophagus, a man in complete armour, +his sword by his side and vizor up, who, as they cried out in +astonishment, instantly fell to dust. Was he an Ostrogothic knight, some +Gunther or Volker turned Roman senator, or perhaps a companion of Guido +da Polenta, a messmate of Dante, a playfellow of Francesca? + +Coffins being thus plentiful, their occupants (like this unknown +warrior) have played considerable part in the gossip of Ravenna. It is +well known, for instance, that Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius, +sister of Arcadius and Honorius, and wife to a Visigothic king, sat for +centuries enthroned (after a few years of the strangest adventures) +erect, inside the alabaster coffin, formerly plated with gold, in the +wonderful little blue mosaic chapel which bears her name. You could see +her through a hole, quite plainly; until, three centuries ago, some +inquisitive boys thrust in a candle, and burned Theodosius's daughter to +ashes. Dante also is buried under a little cupola at the corner of a +certain street, and there was, for many years, a strange doubt about his +bones. Had they been mislaid, stolen, mixed up with those of ordinary +mortals? The whole thing was shrouded in mystery. That street corner +where Dante lies, a remote corner under the wing of a church, resembled, +until it was modernised and surrounded by gratings, and filled with +garlands and inscriptions to Mazzini, nothing so much as the corner of +Dis where Dante himself found Farinata and Cavalcante. It is crowded +with stone coffins; and, passing there in the twilight, one might expect +to see flames upheaving their lids, and the elbows and shoulders of +imprisoned followers of Epicurus. + +Only once, so far as I know, have the inhabitants of Ravenna, Byzantine, +mediæval, or modern, wasted a coffin; but one is very glad of that once. +I am speaking of a Roman sarcophagus, on which you can still trace the +outlines of garlands, which stands turned into a cattle trough, behind +the solitary farm in the depth of the forest of St. Vitalis. Round it +the grass is covered in summer by the creeping tendrils of the white +clematis; and, in winter, the great thorn bushes and barberries and oaks +blaze out crimson and scarlet and golden. The big, long-horned, grey +cows pass to and fro to be milked; and the shaggy ponies who haunt the +pine wood come there to drink. It is better than housing no matter how +many generations, jurisconsults, knights, monks, tyrants and persons of +quality, among the damp and the stale incense of a church! + +Enough of coffins! There are live things at Ravenna and near Ravenna; +amongst others, though few people realise its presence, there is the +sea. + +It was on the day of the fish auction that I first went there. In the +tiny port by the pier (for Ravenna has now no harbour) they were making +an incredible din over the emptyings of the nets; pretty, mottled, +metallic fish, and slimy octopuses and sepias and flounders, looking +like pieces of sea-mud. The fishing-boats, mostly from the Venetian +lagoon, were moored along the pier, wide-bowed things, with eyes in the +prow like the ships of Ulysses; and bigger craft, with little castles +and weather-vanes and saints' images and penons on the masts like the +galleys of St. Ursula as painted by Carpaccio; but all with the splendid +orange sail, patched with suns, lions, and coloured stripes, of the +Northern Adriatic. The fishermen from Chioggia, their heads covered with +the high scarlet cap of the fifteenth century, were yelling at the +fishmongers from town; and all round lounged artillerymen in their white +undress and yellow straps, who are encamped for practice on the sands, +and whose carts and guns we had met rattling along the sandy road +through the marsh. + +On the pier we were met by an old man, very shabby and unshaven, who had +been the priest for many years, with a salary of twelve pounds a year, +of Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori, a little Gothic church in the marsh, where +he had discovered and rubbed slowly into existence (it took him two +months and heaven knows how many pennyworths of bread!) some valuable +Giottesque frescoes. He was now chaplain of the harbour, and had turned +his mind to maritime inventions, designing lighthouses, and shooting +dolphins to make oil of their blubber. A kind old man, but with the odd +brightness of a creature who has lived for years amid solitude and +fever; a fit companion for the haggard saints whom he brought, one by +one, in robes of glory and golden halos, to life again in his forlorn +little church. + +While we were looking out at the sea, where a little flotilla of yellow +and cinnamon sails sat on the blue of the view-line like parrots on a +rail, the sun had begun to set, a crimson ball, over the fringe of pine +woods. We turned to go. Over the town, the place whence presently will +emerge the slanting towers of Ravenna, the sky had become a brilliant, +melancholy slate-blue; and apparently out of its depths, in the early +twilight, flowed the wide canal between its dim banks fringed with +tamarisk. No tree, no rock, or house was reflected in the jade-coloured +water, only the uniform shadow of the bank made a dark, narrow band +alongside its glassiness. It flows on towards the invisible sea, whose +yellow sails overtop the grey marshland. In thick smooth strands of +curdled water it flows lilac, pale pink, opalescent according to the +sky above, reflecting nothing besides, save at long intervals the +spectral spars and spider-like tissue of some triangular fishing-net; a +wan and delicate Lethe, issuing, you would say, out of a far-gone past +into the sands and the almost tideless sea. + +Other places become solemn, sad, or merely beautiful at sunset. But +Ravenna, it seems to me, grows actually ghostly; the Past takes it back +at that moment, and the ghosts return to the surface. + +For it is, after all, a nest of ghosts. They hang about all those +silent, damp churches; invisible, or at most tantalising one with a +sudden gleam which may, after all, be only that of the mosaics, an +uncertain outline which, when you near it, is after all only a pale grey +column. But one feels their breathing all round. They are legion, but I +do not know who they are. I only know that they are white, luminous, +with gold embroideries to their robes, and wide, painted eyes, and that +they are silent. The good citizens of Ravenna, in the comfortable +eighteenth century, filled the churches with wooden pews, convenient, +genteel in line and colour, with their names and coats-of-arms in full +on the backs. But the ghosts took no notice of this measure; and there +they are, even among these pews themselves. + +Bishops and Exarchs, and jewelled Empresses, and half Oriental +Autocrats, saints and bedizened court-ladies, and barbarian guards and +wicked chamberlains; I know not what they are. Only one of the ghosts +takes a shape I can distinguish, and a name I am certain of. It is not +Justinian or Theodora, who stare goggle-eyed from their mosaic in San +Vitale mere wretched historic realities; _they_ cannot haunt. The +spectre I speak of is Theodoric. His tomb is still standing, outside the +town in an orchard; a great round tower, with a circular roof made +(heaven knows how) of one huge slab of Istrian stone, horned at the +sides like the sarcophagi, or vaguely like a Viking's cap. The ashes of +the great king have long been dispersed, for he was an Arian heretic. +But the tomb remains, intact, a thing which neither time nor earthquake +can dismantle. + +In the town they show a piece of masonry, the remains of a doorway, and +a delicate, pillared window, built on to a modern house, which is +identified (but wrongly I am told) as Theodoric's palace, by its +resemblance to the golden palace with the looped-up curtains on the +mosaic of the neighbouring church. Into the wall of this building is +built a great Roman porphyry bath, with rings carved on it, to which +time has adjusted a lid of brilliant green lichen. There is no more. But +Theodoric still haunts Ravenna. I have always, ever since I have known +the town, been anxious to know more about Theodoric, but the accounts +are jejune, prosaic, not at all answering to what that great king, who +took his place with Attila and Sigurd in the great Northern epic, must +have been. Historians represent him generally as a sort of superior +barbarian, trying to assimilate and save the civilisation he was bound +to destroy; an Ostrogothic king trying to be a Roman emperor; a military +organiser and bureaucrat, exchanging his birthright of Valhalla for +heaven knows what aulic red-tape miseries. But that is unsatisfactory. +The real man, the Berserker trying to tame himself into the Cæsar of a +fallen, shrunken Rome, seems to come out in the legend of his remorse +and visions, pursued by the ghosts of Boetius and Symmachus, the wise +men he had slain in his madness. + +He haunts Ravenna, striding along the aisles of her basilicas, riding +under the high moon along the dykes of her marshes, surrounded by +white-stoled Romans, and Roman ensigns with eagles and crosses; but +clad, as the Gothic brass-worker of Innsbruck has shown him, in no Roman +lappets and breastplate, but in full mail, with beaked steel shoes and +steel gorget, his big sword drawn, his vizor down, mysterious, the +Dietrich of the Nibelungenlied, Theodoric King of the Goths. + +These are the ghosts that haunt Ravenna, the true ghosts haunting only +for such as can know their presence. But Ravenna, almost alone among +Italian cities, possesses moreover a complete ghost-story of the most +perfect type and highest antiquity, which has gone round the world and +become known to all people. Boccaccio wrote it in prose; Dryden re-wrote +it in verse; Botticelli illustrated it; and Byron summed up its quality +in one of his most sympathetic passages. After this, to re-tell it were +useless, had I not chanced to obtain, in a manner I am not at liberty to +divulge, another version, arisen in Ravenna itself, and written, most +evidently, in fullest knowledge of the case. Its language is the +barbarous Romagnol dialect of the early fifteenth century, and it lacks +all the Tuscan graces of the Decameron. But it possesses a certain air +of truthfulness, suggesting that it was written by some one who had +heard the facts from those who believed in them, and who believed in +them himself; and I am therefore decided to give it, turned into +English. + + +THE LEGEND + +About that time (when Messer Guido da Pollenta was lord of Ravenna) men +spoke not a little of what happened to Messer Nastasio de Honestis, son +of Messer Brunoro, in the forest of Classis. Now the forest of Classis +is exceeding vast, extending along the sea-shore between Ravenna and +Cervia for the space of some fifteen miles, and has its beginning near +the church of Saint Apollinaris, which is in the marsh; and you reach +it directly from the gate of the same name, but also, crossing the River +Ronco where it is easier to ford, by the gate called Sisa, beyond the +houses of the Rasponis. And this forest aforesaid is made of many kinds +of noble and useful trees, to wit, oaks, both free standing and in +bushes, ilexes, elms, poplars, bays, and many plants of smaller growth +but great dignity and pleasantness, as hawthorns, barberries, +blackthorn, blackberry, brier-rose, and the thorn called marrucca, which +bears pods resembling small hats or cymbals, and is excellent for +hedging. But principally does this noble forest consist of pine-trees, +exceeding lofty and perpetually green; whence indeed the arms of this +ancient city, formerly the seat of the Emperors of Rome, are none other +than a green pine-tree. + +And the forest aforesaid is well stocked with animals, both such as run +and creep, and many birds. The animals are foxes, badgers, hares, +rabbits, ferrets, squirrels, and wild boars, the which issue forth and +eat the young crops and grub the fields with incredible damage to all +concerned. Of the birds it would be too long to speak, both of those +which are snared, shot with cross-bows, or hunted with the falcon; and +they feed off fish in the ponds and streams of the forest, and grasses +and berries, and the pods of the white vine (clematis) which covers the +grass on all sides. And the manner of Messer Nastasio being in the +forest was thus, he being at the time a youth of twenty years or +thereabouts, of illustrious birth, and comely person and learning and +prowess, and modest and discreet bearing. For it so happened that, being +enamoured of the daughter of Messer Hostasio de Traversariis, the +damsel, who was lovely, but exceeding coy and shrewish, would not +consent to marry him, despite the desire of her parents, who in +everything, as happens with only daughters of old men (for Messer +Hostasio was well stricken in years), sought only to please her. +Whereupon Messer Nastasio, fearing lest the damsel might despise his +fortunes, wasted his substance in presents and feastings, and joustings, +but all to no avail. + +When it happened that having spent nearly all he possessed and ashamed +to show his poverty and his unlucky love before the eyes of his +townsmen, he betook him to the forest of Classis, it being autumn, on +the pretext of snaring birds, but intending to take privily the road to +Rimini and thence to Rome, and there seek his fortune. And Nastasio took +with him fowling-nets, and bird-lime, and tame owls, and two horses (one +of which was ridden by his servant), and food for some days; and they +alighted in the midst of the forest, and slept in one of the +fowling-huts of cut branches set up by the citizens of Ravenna for their +pleasure. + +And it happened that on the afternoon of the second day (and it chanced +to be a Friday) of his stay in the forest, Messer Nastasio, being +exceeding sad in his heart, went forth towards the sea to muse upon the +unkindness of his beloved and the hardness of his fortune. Now you +should know that near the sea, where you can clearly hear its roaring +even on windless days there is in that forest a clear place, made as by +the hand of man, set round with tall pines even like a garden, but in +the shape of a horse-course, free from bushes and pools, and covered +with the finest greensward. Here, as Nastasio sate him on the trunk of a +pine--the hour was sunset, the weather being uncommon clear--he heard a +rushing sound in the distance, as of the sea; and there blew a +death-cold wind; and then came sounds of crashing branches, and neighing +of horses, and yelping of hounds, and halloes and horns. And Nastasio +wondered greatly, for that was not the hour for hunting; and he hid +behind a great pine trunk, fearing to be recognised. And the sounds came +nearer, even of horns, and hounds, and the shouts of huntsmen; and the +bushes rustled and crashed, and the hunt rushed into the clearing, +horsemen and foot, with many hounds. And behold, what they pursued was +not a wild boar, but something white that ran erect, and it seemed to +Messer Nastasio, as if it greatly resembled a naked woman; and it +screamed piteously. + +Now when the hunt had swept past, Messer Nastasio rubbed his eyes and +wondered greatly. But even as he wondered, and stood in the middle of +the clearing, behold, part of the hunt swept back, and the thing which +they pursued ran in a circle on the greensward, shrieking piteously. And +behold, it was a young damsel, naked, her hair loose and full of +brambles, with only a tattered cloth round her middle. And as she came +near to where Messer Nastasio was standing (but no one of the hunt +seemed to heed him) the hounds were upon her, barking furiously, and a +hunter on a black horse, black even as night. And a cold wind blew and +caused Nastasio's hair to stand on end; and he tried to cry out, and to +rush forward, but his voice died in his throat and his limbs were heavy, +and covered with sweat, and refused to move. + +Then the hounds fastening on the damsel threw her down, and he on the +black horse turned swiftly, and transfixed her, shrieking dismally, with +a boar-spear. And those of the hunt galloped up, and wound their horns; +and he of the black horse, which was a stately youth habited in a coat +of black and gold, and black boots and black feathers on his hat, threw +his reins to a groom, and alighted and approached the damsel where she +lay, while the huntsmen were holding back the hounds and winding their +horns. Then he drew a knife, such as are used by huntsmen, and driving +its blade into the damsel's side, cut out her heart, and threw it, all +smoking, into the midst of the hounds. And a cold wind rustled through +the bushes, and all had disappeared, horses, and huntsmen, and hounds. +And the grass was untrodden as if no man's foot or horse's hoof had +passed there for months. + +And Messer Nastasio shuddered, and his limbs loosened, and he knew that +the hunter on the black horse was Messer Guido Degli Anastagi, and the +damsel Monna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara. Messer Guido +had loved the damsel greatly, and been flouted by her, and leaving his +home in despair, had been killed on the way by robbers, and Madonna +Filomena had died shortly after. The tale was still fresh in men's +memory, for it had happened in the city of Ravenna barely five years +before. And those whom Nastasio had seen, both the hunter and the lady, +and the huntsmen and horses and hounds, were the spirits of the dead. + +When he had recovered his courage, Messer Nastasio sighed and said unto +himself: "How like is my fate to that of Messer Guido! Yet would I +never, even when a spectre, without weight or substance, made of wind +and delusion, and arisen from hell, act with such cruelty towards her I +love." And then he thought: "Would that the daughter of Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis might hear of this! For surely it would cause her to +relent!" But he knew that his words would be vain, and that none of the +citizens of Ravenna, and least of all the damsel of the Traversari, +would believe them, but rather esteem him a madman. + +Now it came about that when Friday came round once more, Nastasio, by +some chance, was again walking in the forest-clearing by the great +pines, and he had forgotten; when the sea began to roar, and a cold wind +blew; and there came through the forest the sound of horses and hounds, +causing Messer Nastasio's hair to stand up and his limbs to grow weak as +water. And he on the black horse again pursued the naked damsel, and +struck here with his boar-spear, and cut out her heart and threw it to +the hounds; the which hunter and damsel were the ghosts of Messer Guido, +and of Madonna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara, arisen out +of Hell. And in this fashion did it happen for three Fridays following, +the sea beginning to moan, the cold wind to blow and the spirits to +hunt the deceased damsel at twilight in the clearing among the +pine-trees. + +Now when Messer Nastasio noticed this, he thanked Cupid, which is the +Lord of all Lovers, and devised in his mind a cunning plan. And he +mounted his horse and returned to Ravenna, and gave out to his friends +that he had found a treasure in Rome; and that he was minded to forget +the damsel of the Traversari and seek another wife. But in reality he +went to certain money-lenders, and gave himself into bondage, even to be +sold as a slave to the Dalmatian pirates if he could not repay his loan. +And he published that he desired to take to him a wife, and for that +reason would feast all his friends and the chief citizens of Ravenna, +and regale them with a pageant in the pine forest, where certain foreign +slaves of his should show wonderful feats for their delight. And he sent +forth invitations, and among them to Messer Pavolo de Traversariis and +his wife and daughter. And he bid them for a Friday, which was also the +eve of the Feast of the Dead. + +Meanwhile he took to the pine forest carpenters and masons, and such as +paint and gild cunningly, and waggons of timber, and cut stone for +foundations, and furniture of all kinds; and the waggons were drawn by +four and twenty yoke of oxen, grey oxen of the Romagnol breed. And he +caused the artisans to work day and night, making great fires of dry +myrtle and pine branches, which lit up the forest all around. And he +caused them to make foundations, and build a pavilion of timber in the +clearing which is the shape of a horse-course, surrounded by pines. The +pavilion was oblong, raised by ten steps above the grass, open all round +and reposing on arches and pillars; and there was a projecting _abacus_ +under the arches over the capitals, after the Roman fashion; and the +pillars were painted red, and the capitals red also picked out with gold +and blue, and a shield with the arms of the Honestis on each. The roof +was raftered, each rafter painted with white lilies on a red ground, and +heads of youths and damsels; and the roof outside was made of wooden +tiles, shaped like shells and gilded. And on the top of the roof was a +weather-vane; and the vane was a figure of Cupid, god of love, +cunningly carved of wood and painted like life, as he flies, poised in +air, and shoots his darts on mortals. He was winged and blindfolded, to +show that love is inconstant and no respecter of persons; and when the +wind blew, he turned about, and the end of his scarf, which was beaten +metal, swung in the wind. Now when the pavilion was ready, within six +days of its beginning, carpets were spread on the floor, and seats +placed, and garlands of bay and myrtle slung from pillar to pillar +between the arches. And tables were set, and sideboards covered with +gold and silver dishes and trenchers; and a raised place, covered with +arras, was made for the players of fifes and drums and lutes; and tents +were set behind for the servants, and fires prepared for cooking meat. +Whole oxen and sheep were brought from Ravenna in wains, and casks of +wine, and fruit and white bread, and many cooks, and serving-men, and +musicians, all habited gallantly in the colours of the Honestis, which +are vermilion and white, parti-coloured, with black stripes; and they +wore doublets laced with gold, and on their breast the arms of the +house of Honestis, which are a dove holding a leaf. + +Now on Friday the eve of the Feast of the Dead, all was ready, and the +chief citizens of Ravenna set out for the forest of Classis, with their +wives and children and servants, some on horseback, and others in wains +drawn by oxen, for the tracks in that forest are deep. And when they +arrived, Messer Nastasio welcomed them and thanked them all, and +conducted them to their places in the pavilion. Then all wondered +greatly at its beauty and magnificence, and chiefly Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis; and he sighed, and thought within himself, "Would that my +daughter were less shrewish, that I might have so noble a son-in-law to +prop up my old age!" They were seated at the tables, each according to +their dignity, and they ate and drank and praised the excellence of the +cheer; and flowers were scattered on the tables, and young maidens sang +songs in praise of love, most sweetly. Now when they had eaten their +fill, and the tables been removed, and the sun was setting between the +pine-trees, Messer Nastasio caused them all to be seated facing the +clearing, and a herald came forward, in the livery of the Honestis, +sounding his trumpet and declaring in a loud voice that they should now +witness a pageant, the which was called the Mystery of Love and Death. +Then the musicians struck up, and began a concert of fifes and lutes, +exceeding sweet and mournful. And at that moment the sea began to moan, +and a cold wind to blow: a sound of horsemen and hounds and horns and +crashing branches came through the wood; and the damsel, the daughter of +the Lord of Gambellara, rushed naked, her hair streaming and her veil +torn, across the grass, pursued by the hounds, and by the ghost of +Messer Guido on the black horse, the nostrils of which were filled with +fire. Now when the ghost of Messer Guido struck that damsel with the +boar-spear, and cut out her heart, and threw it, while the others wound +their horns, to the hounds, and all vanished, Messer Nastasio de +Honestis, seizing the herald's trumpet, blew in it, and cried in a loud +voice, "The Pageant of Death and Love! The Pageant of Death and Love! +Such is the fate of cruel damsels!" and the gilt Cupid on the roof swung +round creaking dreadfully, and the daughter of Messer Pavolo uttered a +great shriek and fell on the ground in a swoon. + + * * * * * + +Here the Romagnol manuscript comes to a sudden end, the outer sheet +being torn through the middle. But we know from the Decameron that the +damsel of the Traversari was so impressed by the spectre-hunt she had +witnessed that she forthwith relented towards Nastagio degli Onesti, and +married him, and that they lived happily ever after. But whether or not +that part of the pine forest of Classis still witnesses this ghostly +hunt, we have no means of knowing. + +On the whole, I incline to think that, when the great frost blasted the +pines (if not earlier) the ghosts shifted quarters from the forest of +Classis to the church of the same name, on that forest's brink. +Certainly there seems nothing to prevent them. Standing in the midst of +those uninhabited rice-fields and marshes, the church of Classis is yet +always open, from morning till night; the great portals gaping, no +curtain interposed. Open and empty; mass not even on Sundays; empty of +human beings, open to the things of without. The sunbeams enter through +the open side windows, cutting a slice away from that pale, greenish +twilight; making a wedge of light on the dark, damp bricks; bringing +into brief prominence some of the great sarcophagi, their peacocks and +palm-trees picked out in vivid green lichen. Snakes also enter, the +Sacristan tells me, and I believe it, for within the same minute, I saw +a dead and a living one among the arum leaves at the gate. Is that +little altar, a pagan-looking marble table, isolated in the midst of the +church, the place where they meet, pagan creatures claiming those +Grecian marbles? Or do they hunt one another round the aisles and into +the crypt, slithering and hissing, the souls of Guido degli Anastagi, +perhaps, and of his cruel lady love? + +Such are Ravenna and Classis, and the Ghosts that haunt them. + + + + +THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE + + +In the street of the Almond and appropriately close to the covered-over +canal (Rio Terra) of the Assassins, there is a cook-shop which has +attracted my attention these two last months in Venice. For in its +window is a row of tiny corpses--birds, raw, red, with agonised plucked +little throats, the throats through which the sweet notes came. And the +sight brings home to me more than the suggestion of a dish at supper, +savoury things of the size of a large plum, on a cushion of polenta.... + +I had often noticed the fowling-places which stand out against the sky +like mural crowns on the low hills of Northern Italy; Bresciana is the +name given to the thing, from the province, doubtless, of its origin. +Last summer, driving at the foot of the Alps of Friuli, such a place was +pointed out to me on a green knoll; it marked the site of a village of +Collalto, once the fief of the great family of that name, which had +died, disappeared, church and all, after the Black Death of the +fourteenth century. + +The strangeness of the matter attracted me; and I set out, the next +morning, to find the fowling-place. I thought I must have lost my way, +and was delighting in the radiance of a perfectly fresh, clear, already +autumnal morning, walking along through the flowery grass fields in +sight of the great mountains, when, suddenly, there I was before the +uncanny thing, the Bresciana. Uncanny in its odd shape of walled and +moated city of clipped bushes, tight-closed on its hill-top, with its +Guelph battlements of hornbeam against the pale blue sky. And uncannier +for its mysterious delightfulness. Imagine it set in the loveliest mossy +grass, full of delicate half-Alpine flowers; beautiful butterflies +everywhere about; and the sort of ditch surrounding it overgrown with +blackberries, haws, sloes, ivy, all manner of berries; a sort of false +garden of paradise for the poor birds. + +But when I craned over the locked wicket and climbed on to the ladder +alongside, what I saw was more uncanny yet. I looked down on to rows of +clipped, regular, hornbeam hedges, with grass paths between them, +maze-like. A kind of Versailles for the birds, you might think. Only, in +the circular grass plot from which those green hedges and paths all +radiated, something alarming: an empty cage hung to a tree. And going +the round of the place I discovered that between the cut hornbeam +battlements of the circular enclosure there was a wreath of thin wire +nooses, almost invisible, in which the poor little birds hang +themselves. It seems oddly appropriate that this sinister little place, +with its vague resemblance to that clipped garden in which Mantegna's +allegorical Vices are nesting, should be, in fact, a cemetery; that tiny +City of Dis of the Birds, on its green hillock in front of the great +blue Alps, being planted on those villagers dead of the Plague. + +The fowling-place began to haunt me, and I was filled with a perhaps +morbid desire to know more of its evil rites. After some inquiry, I +introduced myself accordingly to the most famous fowler of the +neighbourhood, the owner of a wineshop at Martignacco. He received me +with civility, and expounded his trade with much satisfaction; an +amiable, intelligent old man, with sufficient of Italian in that +province of strange dialect. + +In the passage at the foot of his staircase and under sundry dark arches +he showed me a quantity of tiny wooden cages and of larger cages divided +into tiny compartments. There were numbers of goldfinches, a blackbird, +some small thrushes, an ortolan, and two or three other kinds I could +not identify; nay, even a brace of unhappy quail in a bottle-shaped +basket. These are the decoys; the cages are hung in the circular walks +of the fowling-place, and the wretched little prisoners, many of them +blinded of one or both eyes, sing their hearts out and attract their +companions into the nooses. Then he showed me the nets--like thin, thin +fishing nets--for quail; and the little wands which are covered with +lime and which catch the wings of the creatures; but that seemed a +merciful proceeding compared with the gruesome snares of the Bresciana. +When he had shown me these things he produced a little Jew's-harp, on +which he fell to imitating the calls of various birds. But I noticed +that none of the little blinded prisoners hanging aloft made any +response. Only, quite spontaneously and all of a sudden, the poor +goldfinches set up a loud and lovely song; and the solitary blackbird +gave a whistle. Never have I heard anything more lugubrious than these +hedgerow and woodland notes issuing from the cages in that damp, black +corridor. And the old fowler, for all his venerable appearance and +gentleness of voice and manner, struck me as a wicked warlock, and own +sib of the witch who turned Jorinde and Jorinel into nightingales in her +little house hung round with cages. + +A few days after my visit to the fowler, and one of the last evenings I +had in Friuli, I was walking once more beneath the Castle. After +threading the narrow green lanes, blocked by great hay-carts, I came of +a sudden on an open, high-lying field of mossy grass, freshly scythed, +with the haycocks still upon it, and a thin plantation of larches on one +side. And in front, at the end of that grey-green sweetness, the Alps of +Cadore, portals and battlements of dark leaden blue, with the last +flame-colour of sunset behind them, and the sunset's last rosy feathers +rising into the pale sky. The mowers were coming slowly along, +shouldering their scythes and talking in undertones, as folk do at that +hour. I also walked home in the quickly gathering twilight; the delicate +hemlock flowers of an unmowed field against the pearly luminous sky; the +wonderful blue of the thistles singing out in the dusk of the grass. +There rose the scent of cut grass, of ripening maize, and every +freshness of acacia and poplar leaf; and the crickets began to shrill. + +As the light faded away I passed within sight of the fowling-place, the +little sinister formal garden of Versailles on the mound marking the +village which had died of the Black Death. + +This is what returned to my mind every time, lately in Venice, that I +passed that cook-shop near the closed-up Canal of the Assassins, and saw +the row of tiny corpses ready for roasting. The little throats which +sang so sweetly had got caught, had writhed, twisted in the tiny wire +nooses between the hornbeam battlements. What ruffling of feathers and +starting of eyeballs in agony there had been, while the poor blind +decoy, finch or blackbird, sang, sang on in his cage on the central +grass-plot! + +And we scrunch them under our knife and tooth, and remark how excellent +are little birds on a cushion of polenta, between a sage-leaf and a bit +of bacon! But fowling-places have come down from the remotest and most +venerable antiquity; and they exist of all kinds; and some of them, +moreover, are allegories. + + + + +ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS + + +One of the things I should have liked, I said to myself to-day, as I +rode past one of the dreadful little fowling-places on the ridge of our +hills, would have been to become acquainted with birds.... + +The wish is simple, but quite without hope for a dweller in Tuscany, +where, what with poverty and lawlessness, peasants' nets and city +'prentices' guns, there are no birds whose acquaintance you can make. +You hear them singing and twittering, indeed, wherever a clump of garden +ilexes or a cypress hedge offers them protection; but they never let +themselves be seen, for they know that being seen is being shot: or at +least being caged. They cage them for singing, nightingales, thrushes, +and every kind of finch; and you can see them, poor isolated captives, +in rows and rows of cages in the markets. That is the way that people +like them: a certain devout lady of my neighbourhood, for instance, +whose little seventeenth-century house was hung round with endless tiny +cages, like the witches in the tale of Jorinde and Jorinel; a wicked +witch herself, no doubt, despite her illuminations in honour of the +Madonna, who should have taught her better. Another way of liking +singing-birds is on toast between a scrap of bacon and a leaf of sage, a +dainty dish much prized by persons of weak stomach. Persons with bad +digestions are apt, I fancy, to lose, and make others forego, much +pleasant companionship of soul. + +For animals, at least, when not turned into pets, are excellent +companions for our souls. I say expressly "when not pets," because the +essence of this spiritual (for it _is_ spiritual) relation between us +and creatures is that they should not become our property, nor we +theirs; that we should be able to refresh ourselves by the thought and +contemplation of a life apart from our own, different from it; in some +ways more really natural, and, at all events, capable of seeming more +natural to our fancy. And birds, for many reasons, meet this +requirement to perfection. I have read, indeed, in various works that +they are not without vices, not a bit kinder than the other unkind +members of creation; and that their treatment of the unfit among +themselves is positively inhuman--or shall I say human? Perhaps this is +calumny, or superficial judgment of their sterner morality; but, be this +as it may, it is evident that they are in many respects very charming +people. It is very nice of them to be so æsthetic, to be amused and kept +quiet, like the hen birds, by music; and the tone of their conversation +is quite exquisitely affable. + +My own opportunities of watching their proceedings have, alas! been very +limited; but, judging by the pigeons at Venice, they are wonderfully +forbearing and courteous to each other. I have often watched these +pigeons having their morning bath at the corner of St. Mark's, in a +little shallow trough in the pavement. They collect round by scores, and +wait for room to go in quite patiently; while the crowd inside ruffle, +dip, throw up water into their wings and shake it off; a mass of moving +grey and purple feathers, with never an angry push or a cry of +ill-temper among them. So I can readily believe a certain friend of mine +who passes hours in English brakes and hedgerows, watching birds through +special ten-guinea opera-glasses, that time and money could not be +better spent. + +One reason, moreover, why all animals (one feels that so much in +Kipling's stories) are excellent company for our spirit is surely +because they are animals, not men; because the thought of them relieves +us therefore from that sense of overcrowding and jostling and general +wordiness and fuss from which we all suffer; and birds, more than any +other creatures, give us that sense of relief, of breathing-space and +margin, so very necessary to our spiritual welfare. For there is +freedom, air, light, in the very element in which birds exist, and in +their movements, the delightful sense of poising, of buoyancy, of being +delivered from our own body and made independent of gravitation, which, +as a friend of mine wisely remarks, Sir Isaac Newton most injudiciously +put into Nature's head. Indeed, there is a very special quality in the +mere thought of birds. St. Francis, had he preached to fishes, like his +follower of Padua, might have had as attentive an audience, but we +should not have cared to hear about it. _Aves mei fratres_--why, it is +the soul's kinship with air, light, liberty, what the soul loves best. +And similarly I suspect that the serene and lovely quality of Dante's +Francesca episode is due in great part to those similes of birds: the +starlings in the winter weather, the cranes "singing their dirge," and +those immortal doves swirling nestwards, _dal disio chiamate_, which +lift the lid of that cavern of hell and winnow its fumes into breathable +quality. + +Perhaps (I say to myself, being ever disposed to make the best of a bad +bargain), perhaps the scantiness of my acquaintance with birds, the +difficulty about seeing them (for there is none about hearing them in +Tuscany, and I shall be kept awake by vociferous nightingales in a +month's time), gives to my feeling about them a pleasant, half-painful +eagerness. Certainly it raises the sight of birds, when I get out of +this country, into something of the nature of a performance. Even in +Rome, the larks, going up tiny brown rockets, into the pale blue sky +above the pale green endless undulations of grass, and the rooks and +magpies flocking round the ruins. And how much in Germany? Indeed, one +of Germany's charms is the condition, or, rather, the position, the +civic status, of birds and small creatures. One is constantly reminded +of the Minnesinger Walther's legacy to the birds of Wurzburg, and of +Luther's hiding the hare in the sleeve of his tunic. One of my first +impressions after crossing the Alps last year was of just such a hare, +only perfectly at his ease, running in front of my bicycle for ever so +long during a great thunderstorm which overtook us in the cornfields +between Donaustauff and Ratisbon. And as to birds! They are not merely +left in liberty, but assiduously courted by these kindly, and, in their +prosaic way, poetical Teutons. Already in the village shop on the top of +the Tyrolese pass there was a nest of swallows deep down in a passage. +And in the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg, while the electric trams go +clanking outside, the swallows whirr cheerfully along the aisles, among +the coats-of-arms, the wonderfully crested helmets suspended on high. +There was a swallow's nest in the big entrance room (where the peasants +sit and drink among the little dry birch-trees and fir garlands from the +Whitsuntide festivities) of the inn at Rothenburg; a nest above the rows +of pewter and stoneware, with baby swallows looking unconcernedly out at +the guests. But the great joy at Rothenburg was the family of storks +which still inhabit one of the high, pointed gatehouses. I used to go +and see them every morning: the great cartwheel on the funnel-shaped +roof, wisps of comfortable hay hanging over it; one of the parent storks +standing sentinel on one leg, the little ones raising themselves +occasionally into sight, the other stork hovering around on outspread +wings like tattered banners. To think that there were once storks also +in Italy, storks' homes, the old Lombard name _Cicognara_ meaning that; +and cranes also, whom the people in Boccaccio, and even Lorenzo di +Medici, went out to hunt! The last of them were certainly netted and +eaten, as they used to eat porcupines in Rome in my childish days. + +Speaking of cranes reminds me of the pleasure I have had also in +watching herons, particularly among the ponds of my mother's old home. + +"Would you like to see one near? I'll go and shoot it you at once," said +my very kind cousin. + +How odd it is, when one thinks of it, that mere contemplation seems so +insufficient for us poor restless human beings! We cannot see a flower +without an impulse to pick it, a character without an impulse to, let us +say, analyse; a bird without an impulse to shoot. And in this way we +certainly lose most of the good which any of these things could be to +us: just to be looked at, thought about, enjoyed, and let alone. + + + * * * * * + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + +TO + +ETHEL SMYTH + +THANKING, AND BEGGING, HER FOR MUSIC + + + + +PREFACE + + +_"Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss"_ + + +_It is in order to give others the pleasure of reading or +re-reading a small masterpiece, that I mention the likelihood +of the catastrophe of my_ Ariadne _having been suggested by +the late Mr. Shorthouse's_ Little Schoolmaster Mark; _but I +must ask forgiveness of my dear old friend, Madame Emile +Duclaux_ (Mary Robinson), _for unwarranted use of one of the +songs of her_ Italian Garden. + +_Readers of my own little volume_ Genius Loci _may meanwhile +recognise that I have been guilty of plagiarism towards myself +also_. + +_For a couple of years after writing those pages, the image of +the Palace of Mantua and the lakes it steeps in, haunted my +fancy with that peculiar insistency, as of the half-lapsed +recollection of a name or date, which tells us that we know +(if we could only remember!)_ what happened in a place. _I let +the matter rest. But, looking into my mind one day, I found +that a certain song of the early seventeenth century_--(not +_Monteverde's_ Lamento d'Arianna _but an air_, Amarilli, _by +Caccini, printed alongside in Parisotti's collection_)--_had +entered that Palace of Mantua, and was, in some manner not +easy to define, the musical shape of what must have happened +there. And that, translated back into human personages, was +the story I have set forth in the following little Drama_. + +_So much for the origin of_ Ariadne in Mantua, _supposing any +friend to be curious about it. What seems more interesting is +my feeling, which grew upon me as I worked over and over the +piece and its French translation, that these personages had an +importance greater than that of their life and adventures, a +meaning, if I may say so, a little_ sub specie aeternitatis. +_For, besides the real figures, there appeared to me vague +shadows cast by them, as it were, on the vast spaces of life, +and magnified far beyond those little puppets that I twitched. +And I seem to feel here the struggle, eternal, necessary, +between mere impulse, unreasoning and violent, but absolutely +true to its aim; and all the moderating, the weighing and +restraining influences of civilisation, with their idealism, +their vacillation, but their final triumph over the mere +forces of nature. These well-born people of Mantua, +privileged beings wanting little because they have much, and +able therefore to spend themselves in quite harmonious effort, +must necessarily get the better of the poor gutter-born +creature without whom, after all, one of them would have been +dead and the others would have had no opening in life. Poor_ +Diego _acts magnanimously, being cornered; but he (or she) has +not the delicacy, the dignity to melt into thin air with a +mere lyric Metastasian "Piangendo partè", and leave them to +their untroubled conscience. He must needs assert himself, +violently wrench at their heart-strings, give them a final +stab, hand them over to endless remorse; briefly, commit that +public and theatrical deed of suicide, splashing the murderous +waters into the eyes of well-behaved wedding guests_. + +_Certainly neither the_ Duke, _nor the_ Duchess Dowager, _nor_ +Hippolyta _would have done this. But, on the other hand, they +could calmly, coldly, kindly accept the self-sacrifice +culminating in that suicide: well-bred people, faithful to +their standards and forcing others, however unwilling, into +their own conformity. Of course without them the world would +be a den of thieves, a wilderness of wolves; for they are,--if +I may call them by their less personal names,--Tradition, +Discipline, Civilisation_. + +_On the other hand, but for such as_ Diego _the world would +come to an end within twenty years: mere sense of duty and +fitness not being sufficient for the killing and cooking of +victuals, let alone the begetting and suckling of children. +The descendants of_ Ferdinand _and_ Hippolyta, _unless they +intermarried with some bastard of_ Diego's _family, would +dwindle, die out; who knows, perhaps supplement the impulses +they lacked by silly newfangled evil_. + +_These are the contending forces of history and life: Impulse +and Discipline, creating and keeping; love such as_ Diego's, +_blind, selfish, magnanimous; and detachment, noble, a little +bloodless and cruel, like that of the_ Duke of Mantua. + +_And it seems to me that the conflicts which I set forth on my +improbable little stage, are but the trifling realities +shadowing those great abstractions which we seek all through +the history of man, and everywhere in man's own heart_. + + +VERNON LEE. + + +Maiano, near Florence, + +June, 1903. + + + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + VIOLA. _....I'll serve this Duke: + ....for I can sing + And speak to him in many sorts of music._ + TWELFTH NIGHT, 1, 2. + + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + + FERDINAND, Duke of Mantua. + THE CARDINAL, his Uncle. + THE DUCHESS DOWAGER. + HIPPOLYTA, Princess of Mirandola. + MAGDALEN, known as DIEGO. + THE MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA. + THE BISHOP OF CREMONA. + THE DOGE'S WIFE. + THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR. + THE DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET. + THE VICEROY OF NAPLES' JESTER. + A TENOR as BACCHUS. + The CARDINAL'S CHAPLAIN. + THE DUCHESS'S GENTLEWOMAN. + THE PRINCESS'S TUTOR. + Singers as Maenads and Satyrs; Courtiers, + Pages, Wedding Guests and Musicians. + + * * * * * + +The action takes place in the Palace of Mantua through a +period of a year, during the reign of Prospero I, of Milan, +and shortly before the Venetian expedition to Cyprus under +Othello. + + + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + + +ACT I + + +_The_ CARDINAL'S _Study in the Palace at Mantua. The_ CARDINAL _is +seated at a table covered with Persian embroidery, rose-colour picked +out with blue, on which lies open a volume of Machiavelli's works, and +in it a manuscript of Catullus; alongside thereof are a bell and a +magnifying-glass. Under his feet a red cushion with long tassels, and an +oriental carpet of pale lavender and crimson_. _The_ CARDINAL _is +dressed in scarlet, a crimson fur-lined cape upon his shoulders. He is +old, but beautiful and majestic, his face furrowed like the marble bust +of Seneca among the books opposite_. + +_Through the open Renaissance window, with candelabra and birds carved +on the copings, one sees the lake, pale blue, faintly rippled, with a +rose-coloured brick bridge and bridge-tower at its narrowest point_. +DIEGO (_in reality_ MAGDALEN) _has just been admitted into the_ +CARDINAL'S _presence, and after kissing his ring, has remained standing, +awaiting his pleasure_. + +DIEGO _is fantastically habited as a youth in russet and violet tunic +reaching below the knees in Moorish fashion, as we see it in the +frescoes of Pinturicchio; with silver buttons down the seams, and +plaited linen at the throat and in the unbuttoned purfles of the +sleeves. His hair, dark but red where it catches the light, is cut over +the forehead and touches his shoulders. He is not very tall in his boy's +clothes, and very sparely built. He is pale, almost sallow; the face, +dogged, sullen, rather expressive than beautiful, save for the +perfection of the brows and of the flower-like singer's mouth. He stands +ceremoniously before the_ CARDINAL, _one hand on his dagger, nervously, +while the other holds a large travelling hat, looped up, with a long +drooping plume_. + +_The_ CARDINAL _raises his eyes, slightly bows his head, closes the +manuscript and the volume, and puts both aside deliberately. He is, +meanwhile, examining the appearance of_ DIEGO. + +CARDINAL + +We are glad to see you at Mantua, Signor Diego. And from what our worthy +Venetian friend informs us in the letter which he gave you for our +hands, we shall without a doubt be wholly satisfied with your singing, +which is said to be both sweet and learned. Prythee, Brother Matthias +(_turning to his_ Chaplain), bid them bring hither my virginal,--that +with the Judgment of Paris painted on the lid by Giulio Romano; its tone +is admirably suited to the human voice. And, Brother Matthias, hasten to +the Duke's own theorb player, and bid him come straightways. Nay, go +thyself, good Brother Matthias, and seek till thou hast found him. We +are impatient to judge of this good youth's skill. + +_The_ Chaplain _bows and retires_. DIEGO (_in reality_ MAGDALEN) +_remains alone in the_ CARDINAL'S _presence. The_ CARDINAL _remains for +a second turning over a letter, and then reads through the +magnifying-glass out loud_. + +CARDINAL + +Ah, here is the sentence: "Diego, a Spaniard of Moorish descent, and a +most expert singer and player on the virginal, whom I commend to your +Eminence's favour as entirely fitted for such services as your revered +letter makes mention of----" Good, good. + +_The_ CARDINAL _folds the letter and beckons_ Diego _to approach, then +speaks in a manner suddenly altered to abruptness, but with no enquiry +in his tone_. + +Signor Diego, you are a woman---- + +DIEGO _starts, flushes and exclaims huskily_, "My Lord----." _But the_ +CARDINAL _makes a deprecatory movement and continues his sentence_. + +and, as my honoured Venetian correspondent assures me, a courtesan of +some experience and of more than usual tact. I trust this favourable +judgment may be justified. The situation is delicate; and the work for +which you have been selected is dangerous as well as difficult. Have you +been given any knowledge of this case? + +DIEGO _has by this time recovered his composure, and answers with +respectful reserve_. + +DIEGO + +I asked no questions, your Eminence. But the Senator Gratiano vouchsafed +to tell me that my work at Mantua would be to soothe and cheer with +music your noble nephew Duke Ferdinand, who, as is rumoured, has been a +prey to a certain languor and moodiness ever since his return from many +years' captivity among the Infidels. Moreover (such were the Senator +Gratiano's words), that if the Fates proved favourable to my music, I +might gain access to His Highness's confidence, and thus enable your +Eminence to understand and compass his strange malady. + +CARDINAL + +Even so. You speak discreetly, Diego; and your manner gives hope of more +good sense than is usual in your sex and in your trade. But this matter +is of more difficulty than such as you can realise. Your being a woman +will be of use should our scheme prove practicable. In the outset it may +wreck us beyond recovery. For all his gloomy apathy, my nephew is quick +to suspicion, and extremely subtle. He will delight in flouting us, +should the thought cross his brain that we are practising some coarse +and foolish stratagem. And it so happens, that his strange moodiness is +marked by abhorrence of all womankind. For months he has refused the +visits of his virtuous mother. And the mere name of his young cousin and +affianced bride, Princess Hippolyta, has thrown him into paroxysms of +anger. Yet Duke Ferdinand possesses all his faculties. He is aware of +being the last of our house, and must know full well that, should he die +without an heir, this noble dukedom will become the battlefield of +rapacious alien claimants. He denies none of this, but nevertheless +looks on marriage with unseemly horror. + +DIEGO + +Is it so?----And----is there any reason His Highness's melancholy should +take this shape? I crave your Eminence's pardon if there is any +indiscretion in this question; but I feel it may be well that I should +know some more upon this point. Has Duke Ferdinand suffered some wrong +at the hands of women? Or is it the case of some passion, hopeless, +unfitting to his rank, perhaps? + +CARDINAL + +Your imagination, good Madam Magdalen, runs too easily along the tracks +familiar to your sex; and such inquisitiveness smacks too much of the +courtesan. And beware, my lad, of touching on such subjects with the +Duke: women and love, and so forth. For I fear, that while endeavouring +to elicit the Duke's secret, thy eyes, thy altered voice, might betray +thy own. + +DIEGO + +Betray me? My secret? What do you mean, my Lord? I fail to grasp your +meaning. + +CARDINAL + +Have you so soon forgotten that the Duke must not suspect your being a +woman? For if a woman may gradually melt his torpor, and bring him under +the control of reason and duty, this can only come about by her growing +familiar and necessary to him without alarming his moody virtue. + +DIEGO + +I crave your Eminence's indulgence for that one question, which I repeat +because, as a musician, it may affect my treatment of His Highness. Has +the Duke ever loved? + +CARDINAL + +Too little or too much,--which of the two it will be for you to find +out. My nephew was ever, since his boyhood, a pious and joyless youth; +and such are apt to love once, and, as the poets say, to die for love. +Be this as it may, keep to your part of singer; and even if you suspect +that he suspects you, let him not see your suspicion, and still less +justify his own. Be merely a singer: a sexless creature, having seen +passion but never felt it; yet capable, by the miracle of art, of +rousing and soothing it in others. Go warily, and mark my words: there +is, I notice, even in your speaking voice, a certain quality such as +folk say melts hearts; a trifle hoarseness, a something of a break, +which mars it as mere sound, but gives it more power than that of sound. +Employ that quality when the fit moment comes; but most times restrain +it. You have understood? + +DIEGO + +I think I have, my Lord. + +CARDINAL + +Then only one word more. Women, and women such as you, are often ill +advised and foolishly ambitious. Let not success, should you have any in +this enterprise, endanger it and you. Your safety lies in being my tool. +My spies are everywhere; but I require none; I seem to know the folly +which poor mortals think and feel. And see! this palace is surrounded on +three sides by lakes; a rare and beautiful circumstance, which has done +good service on occasion. Even close to this pavilion these blue waters +are less shallow than they seem. + +DIEGO + +I had noted it. Such an enterprise as mine requires courage, my Lord; +and your palace, built into the lake, as life,--saving all thought of +heresy,--is built out into death, your palace may give courage as well +as prudence. + +CARDINAL + +Your words, Diego, are irrelevant, but do not displease me. + +DIEGO _bows. The_ Chaplain _enters with_ Pages _carrying a harpsichord, +which they place upon the table; also two_ Musicians _with theorb and +viol_. + +Brother Matthias, thou hast been a skilful organist, and hast often +delighted me with thy fugues and canons.--Sit to the instrument, and +play a prelude, while this good youth collects his memory and his voice +preparatory to displaying his skill. + +_The_ chaplain, _not unlike the monk in Titian's "Concert" begins to +play_, DIEGO _standing by him at the harpsichord. While the cunningly +interlaced themes, with wide, unclosed cadences, tinkle metallically +from the instrument, the_ CARDINAL _watches, very deliberately, the face +of_ DIEGO, _seeking to penetrate through its sullen sedateness. But_ +DIEGO _remains with his eyes fixed on the view framed by the window: the +pale blue lake, of the colour of periwinkle, under a sky barely bluer +than itself, and the lines on the horizon--piled up clouds or perhaps +Alps. Only, as the_ Chaplain _is about to finish his prelude, the face +of_ DIEGO _undergoes a change: a sudden fervour and tenderness +transfigure the features; while the eyes, from very dark turn to the +colour of carnelian. This illumination dies out as quickly as it came, +and_ DIEGO _becomes very self-contained and very listless as before_. + +DIEGO + +Will it please your Eminence that I should sing the Lament of Ariadne on +Naxos? + + + + +ACT II + + +_A few months later. Another part of the Ducal Palace of Mantua. The_ +DUCHESS'S _closet: a small irregular chamber; the vaulted ceiling +painted with Giottesque patterns in blue and russet, much blackened, and +among which there is visible only a coronation of the Virgin, white and +vision-like. Shelves with a few books and phials and jars of medicine; a +small movable organ in a corner; and, in front of the ogival window, a +praying-chair and large crucifix. The crucifix is black against the +landscape, against the grey and misty waters of the lake; and framed by +the nearly leafless branches of a willow growing below_. + +_The_ DUCHESS DOWAGER _is tall and straight, but almost bodiless in her +black nun-like dress. Her face is so white, its lips and eyebrows so +colourless, and eyes so pale a blue, that one might at first think it +insignificant, and only gradually notice the strength and beauty of the +features. The_ DUCHESS _has laid aside her sewing on the entrance of_ +DIEGO, _in reality_ MAGDALEN; _and, forgetful of all state, been on the +point of rising to meet him. But_ DIEGO _has ceremoniously let himself +down on one knee, expecting to kiss her hand_. + +DUCHESS + +Nay, Signor Diego, do not kneel. Such forms have long since left my +life, nor are they, as it seems to me, very fitting between God's +creatures. Let me grasp your hand, and look into the face of him whom +Heaven has chosen to work a miracle. You have cured my son! + +DIEGO + +It is indeed a miracle of Heaven, most gracious Madam; and one in which, +alas, my poor self has been as nothing. For sounds, subtly linked, take +wondrous powers from the soul of him who frames their patterns; and we, +who sing, are merely as the string or keys he presses, or as the reed +through which he blows. The virtue is not ours, though coming out of us. + +DIEGO _has made this speech as if learned by rote, with listless +courtesy. The_ DUCHESS _has at first been frozen by his manner, but at +the end she answers very simply_. + +DUCHESS + +You speak too learnedly, good Signor Diego, and your words pass my poor +understanding. The virtue in any of us is but God's finger-touch or +breath; but those He chooses as His instruments are, methinks, angels or +saints; and whatsoever you be, I look upon you with loving awe. You +smile? You are a courtier, while I, although I have not left this palace +for twenty years, have long forgotten the words and ways of courts. I am +but a simpleton: a foolish old woman who has unlearned all ceremony +through many years of many sorts of sorrow; and now, dear youth, +unlearned it more than ever from sheer joy at what it has pleased God to +do through you. For, thanks to you, I have seen my son again, my dear, +wise, tender son again. I would fain thank you. If I had worldly goods +which you have not in plenty, or honours to give, they should be yours. +You shall have my prayers. For even you, so favoured of Heaven, will +some day want them. + +DIEGO + +Give them me now, most gracious Madam. I have no faith in prayers; but I +need them. + +DUCHESS + +Great joy has made me heartless as well as foolish. I have hurt you, +somehow. Forgive me, Signor Diego. + +DIEGO + +As you said, I am a courtier, Madam, and I know it is enough if we can +serve our princes. We have no business with troubles of our own; but +having them, we keep them to ourselves. His Highness awaits me at this +hour for the usual song which happily unclouds his spirit. Has your +Grace any message for him? + +DUCHESS + +Stay. My son will wait a little while. I require you, Diego, for I have +hurt you. Your words are terrible, but just. We princes are brought +up--but many of us, alas, are princes in this matter!--to think that +when we say "I thank you" we have done our duty; though our very +satisfaction, our joy, may merely bring out by comparison the emptiness +of heart, the secret soreness, of those we thank. We are not allowed to +see the burdens of others, and merely load them with our own. + +DIEGO + +Is this not wisdom? Princes should not see those burdens which they +cannot, which they must not, try to carry. And after all, princes or +slaves, can others ever help us, save with their purse, with advice, +with a concrete favour, or, say, with a song? Our troubles smart because +they are _our_ troubles; our burdens weigh because on _our_ shoulders; +they are part of us, and cannot be shifted. But God doubtless loves such +kind thoughts as you have, even if, with your Grace's indulgence, they +are useless. + +DUCHESS + +If it were so, God would be no better than an earthly prince. But +believe me, Diego, if He prefer what you call kindness--bare sense of +brotherhood in suffering--'tis for its usefulness. We cannot carry each +other's burden for a minute; true, and rightly so; but we can give each +other added strength to bear it. + +DIEGO + +By what means, please your Grace? + +DUCHESS + +By love, Diego. + +DIEGO + +Love! But that was surely never a source of strength, craving your +Grace's pardon? + +DUCHESS + +The love which I am speaking of--and it may surely bear the name, since +'tis the only sort of love that cannot turn to hatred. Love for who +requires it because it is required--say love of any woman who has been a +mother for any child left motherless. Nay, forgive my boldness: my +gratitude gives me rights on you, Diego. You are unhappy; you are still +a child; and I imagine that you have no mother. + +DIEGO + +I am told I had one, gracious Madam. She was, saving your Grace's +presence, only a light woman, and sold for a ducat to the Infidels. I +cannot say I ever missed her. Forgive me, Madam. Although a courtier, +the stock I come from is extremely base. I have no understanding of the +words of noble women and saints like you. My vileness thinks them +hollow; and my pretty manners are only, as your Grace has unluckily had +occasion to see, a very thin and bad veneer. I thank your Grace, and +once more crave permission to attend the Duke. + +DUCHESS + +Nay. That is not true. Your soul is nowise base-born. I owe you +everything, and, by some inadvertence, I have done nothing save stir up +pain in you. I want--the words may seem presumptuous, yet carry a +meaning which is humble--I want to be your friend; and to help you to a +greater, better Friend. I will pray for you, Diego. + +DIEGO + +No, no. You are a pious and virtuous woman, and your pity and prayers +must keep fit company. + +DUCHESS + +The only fitting company for pity and prayers, for love, dear lad, is +the company of those who need them. Am I over bold? + +_The_ DUCHESS _has risen, and shyly laid her hand on_ DIEGO'S +_shoulder_. DIEGO _breaks loose and covers his face, exclaiming in a dry +and husky voice_. + +DIEGO + +Oh the cruelty of loneliness, Madam! Save for two years which taught me +by comparison its misery, I have lived in loneliness always in this +lonely world; though never, alas, alone. Would it had always continued! +But as the wayfarer from out of the snow and wind feels his limbs numb +and frozen in the hearth's warmth, so, having learned that one might +speak, be understood, be comforted, that one might love and be +beloved,--the misery of loneliness was revealed to me. And then to be +driven back into it once more, shut in to it for ever! Oh, Madam, when +one can no longer claim understanding and comfort; no longer say "I +suffer: help me!"--because the creature one would say it to is the very +same who hurts and spurns one! + +DUCHESS + +How can a child like you already know such things? We women may, indeed. +I was as young as you, years ago, when I too learned it. And since I +learned it, let my knowledge, my poor child, help you to bear it. I know +how silence galls and wearies. If silence hurts you, speak,--not for me +to answer, but understand and sorrow for you. I am old and simple and +unlearned; but, God willing, I shall understand. + +DIEGO + +If anything could help me, 'tis the sense of kindness such as yours. I +thank you for your gift; but acceptance of it would be theft; for it is +not meant for what I really am. And though a living lie in many things; +I am still, oddly enough, honest. Therefore, I pray you, Madam, +farewell. + +DUCHESS + +Do not believe it, Diego. Where it is needed, our poor loving kindness +can never be stolen. + +DIEGO + +Do not tempt me, Madam! Oh God, I do not want your pity, your loving +kindness! What are such things to me? And as to understanding my +sorrows, no one can, save the very one who is inflicting them. Besides, +you and I call different things by the same names. What you call _love_, +to me means nothing: nonsense taught to children, priest's metaphysics. +What _I_ mean, you do not know. (_A pause_, DIEGO _walks up and down in +agitation_.) But woe's me! You have awakened the power of breaking +through this silence,--this silence which is starvation and deathly +thirst and suffocation. And it so happens that if I speak to you all +will be wrecked. (_A pause_.) But there remains nothing to wreck! +Understand me, Madam, I care not who you are. I know that once I have +spoken, you _must_ become my enemy. But I am grateful to you; you have +shown me the way to speaking; and, no matter now to whom, I now _must_ +speak. + +DUCHESS + +You shall speak to God, my friend, though you speak seemingly to me. + +DIEGO + +To God! To God! These are the icy generalities we strike upon under all +pious warmth. No, gracious Madam, I will not speak to God; for God knows +it already, and, knowing, looks on indifferent. I will speak to you. Not +because you are kind and pitiful; for you will cease to be so. Not +because you will understand; for you never will. I will speak to you +because, although you are a saint, you are _his_ mother, have kept +somewhat of his eyes and mien; because it will hurt you if I speak, as I +would it might hurt _him_. I am a woman, Madam; a harlot; and I was the +Duke your son's mistress while among the Infidels. + +_A long silence. The_ DUCHESS _remains seated. She barely starts, +exclaiming_ "Ah!--" _and becomes suddenly absorbed in thought_. DIEGO +_stands looking listlessly through the window at the lake and the +willow_. + +DIEGO + +I await your Grace's orders. Will it please you that I call your +maid-of-honour, or summon the gentleman outside? If it so please you, +there need be no scandal. I shall give myself up to any one your Grace +prefers. + +_The_ DUCHESS _pays no attention to_ DIEGO'S _last words, and remains +reflecting_. + +DUCHESS + +Then, it is he who, as you call it, spurns you? How so? For you are +admitted to his close familiarity; nay, you have worked the miracle of +curing him. I do not understand the situation. For, Diego,--I know not +by what other name to call you--I feel your sorrow is a deep one. You +are not the----woman who would despair and call God cruel for a mere +lover's quarrel. You love my son; you have cured him,--cured him, do I +guess rightly, through your love? But if it be so, what can my son have +done to break your heart? + +DIEGO + +(_after listening astonished at the_ DUCHESS'S _unaltered tone of +kindness_) + +Your Grace will understand the matter as much as I can; and I cannot. He +does not recognise me, Madam. + +DUCHESS + +Not recognise you? What do you mean? + +DIEGO + +What the words signify: Not recognise. + +DUCHESS + +Then----he does not know----he still believes you to be----a stranger? + +DIEGO + +So it seems, Madam. + +DUCHESS + +And yet you have cured his melancholy by your presence. And in the +past----tell me: had you ever sung to him? + +DIEGO (_weeping silently_) + +Daily, Madam. + +DUCHESS (_slowly_) + +They say that Ferdinand is, thanks to you, once more in full possession +of his mind. It cannot be. Something still lacks; he is not fully cured. + +DIEGO + +Alas, he is. The Duke remembers everything, save me. + +DUCHESS + +There is some mystery in this. I do not understand such matters. But I +know that Ferdinand could never be base towards you knowingly. And you, +methinks, would never be base towards him. Diego, time will bring light +into this darkness. Let us pray God together that He may make our eyes +and souls able to bear it. + +DIEGO + +I cannot pray for light, most gracious Madam, because I fear it. Indeed +I cannot pray at all, there remains nought to pray for. But, among the +vain and worldly songs I have had to get by heart, there is, by chance, +a kind of little hymn, a childish little verse, but a sincere one. And +while you pray for me--for you promised to pray for me, Madam--I should +like to sing it, with your Grace's leave. + +DIEGO _opens a little movable organ in a corner, and strikes a few +chords, remaining standing the while. The_ DUCHESS _kneels down before +the crucifix, turning her back upon him. While she is silently praying_, +DIEGO, _still on his feet, sings very low to a kind of lullaby tune_. + + Mother of God, + We are thy weary children; + Teach us, thou weeping Mother, + To cry ourselves to sleep. + + + + +ACT III + + +_Three months later. Another part of the Palace of Mantua: the hanging +gardens in the_ DUKE'S _apartments. It is the first warm night of +Spring. The lemon trees have been brought out that day, and fill the air +with fragrance. Terraces and flights of steps; in the background the +dark mass of the palace, with its cupolas and fortified towers; here and +there a lit window picking out the dark; and from above the principal +yards, the flare of torches rising into the deep blue of the sky. In the +course of the scene, the moon gradually emerges from behind a group of +poplars on the opposite side of the lake into which the palace is built. +During the earlier part of the act, darkness. Great stillness, with, +only occasionally, the plash of a fisherman's oar, or a very distant +thrum of mandolines.--The_ DUKE _and_ DIEGO _are walking up and down the +terrace_. + +DUKE + +Thou askedst me once, dear Diego, the meaning of that labyrinth which I +have had carved, a shapeless pattern enough, but well suited, methinks, +to blue and gold, upon the ceiling of my new music room. And wouldst +have asked, I fancy, as many have done, the hidden meaning of the device +surrounding it.--I left thee in the dark, dear lad, and treated thy +curiosity in a peevish manner. Thou hast long forgiven and perhaps +forgotten, deeming my lack of courtesy but another ailment of thy poor +sick master; another of those odd ungracious moods with which, kindest +of healing creatures, thou hast had such wise and cheerful patience. I +have often wished to tell thee; but I could not. 'Tis only now, in some +mysterious fashion, I seem myself once more,--able to do my judgment's +bidding, and to dispose, in memory and words, of my own past. My strange +sickness, which thou hast cured, melting its mists away with thy +beneficent music even as the sun penetrates and sucks away the fogs of +dawn from our lakes--my sickness, Diego, the sufferings of my flight +from Barbary; the horror, perhaps, of that shipwreck which cast me (so +they say, for I remember nothing) senseless on the Illyrian +coast----these things, or Heaven's judgment on but a lukewarm +Crusader,--had somehow played strange havoc with my will and +recollections. I could not think; or thinking, not speak; or +recollecting, feel that he whom I thought of in the past was this same +man, myself. + +_The_ DUKE _pauses, and leaning on the parapet, watches the long +reflections of the big stars in the water_. + +But now, and thanks to thee, Diego, I am another; I am myself. + +DIEGO'S _face, invisible in the darkness, has undergone dreadful +convulsions. His breast heaves, and he stops for breath before +answering; but when he does so, controls his voice into its usual rather +artificially cadenced tone_. + +DIEGO + +And now, dear Master, you can recollect----all? + +DUKE + +Recollect, sweet friend, and tell thee. For it is seemly that I should +break through this churlish silence with thee. Thou didst cure the +weltering distress of my poor darkened mind; I would have thee, now, +know somewhat of the past of thy grateful patient. The maze, Diego, +carved and gilded on that ceiling is but a symbol of my former life; and +the device which, being interpreted, means "I seek straight ways," the +expression of my wish and duty. + +DIEGO + +You loathed the maze, my Lord? + +DUKE + +Not so. I loved it then. And I still love it now. But I have issued from +it--issued to recognise that the maze was good. Though it is good I left +it. When I entered it, I was a raw youth, although in years a man; full +of easy theory, and thinking all practice simple; unconscious of +passion; ready to govern the world with a few learned notions; moreover +never having known either happiness or grief, never loved and wondered +at a creature different from myself; acquainted, not with the straight +roads which I now seek, but only with the rectangular walls of +schoolrooms. The maze, and all the maze implied, made me a man. + +DIEGO + +(_who has listened with conflicting feelings, and now unable to conceal +his joy_) + +A man, dear Master; and the gentlest, most just of men. Then, that +maze----But idle stories, interpreting all spiritual meaning as prosy +fact, would have it, that this symbol was a reality. The legend of your +captivity, my Lord, has turned the pattern on that ceiling into a real +labyrinth, some cunningly built fortress or prison, where the Infidels +kept you, and whose clue----you found, and with the clue, freedom, after +five weary years. + +DUKE + +Whose clue, dear Diego, was given into my hands,--the clue meaning +freedom, but also eternal parting--by the most faithful, intrepid, +magnanimous, the most loving----and the most beloved of women! + +_The_ Duke _has raised his arms from the parapet, and drawn himself +erect, folding them on his breast, and seeking for_ Diego's _face in the +darkness. But_ Diego, _unseen by the_ Duke, _has clutched the parapet +and sunk on to a bench_. + +DUKE + +(_walking up and down, slowly and meditatively, after a pause_) + +The poets have fabled many things concerning virtuous women. The Roman +Arria, who stabbed herself to make honourable suicide easier for her +husband; Antigone, who buried her brother at the risk of death; and the +Thracian Alkestis, who descended into the kingdom of Death in place of +Admetus. But none, to my mind, comes up to _her_. For fancy is but thin +and simple, a web of few bright threads; whereas reality is closely +knitted out of the numberless fibres of life, of pain and joy. For note +it, Diego--those antique women whom we read of were daughters of kings, +or of Romans more than kings; bred of a race of heroes, and trained, +while still playing with dolls, to pride themselves on austere duty, and +look upon the wounds and maimings of their soul as their brothers and +husbands looked upon the mutilations of battle. Whereas here; here was a +creature infinitely humble; a waif, a poor spurned toy of brutal +mankind's pleasure; accustomed only to bear contumely, or to snatch, +unthinking, what scanty happiness lay along her difficult and despised +path,--a wild creature, who had never heard such words as duty or +virtue; and yet whose acts first taught me what they truly meant. + +DIEGO + +(_who has recovered himself, and is now leaning in his turn on the +parapet_) + +Ah----a light woman, bought and sold many times over, my Lord; but who +loved, at last. + +DUKE + +That is the shallow and contemptuous way in which men think, Diego,--and +boys like thee pretend to; those to whom life is but a chess-board, a +neatly painted surface alternate black and white, most suitable for +skilful games, with a soul clean lost or gained at the end! I thought +like that. But I grew to understand life as a solid world: rock, fertile +earth, veins of pure metal, mere mud, all strangely mixed and overlaid; +and eternal fire at the core! I learned it, knowing Magdalen. + +DIEGO + +Her name was Magdalen? + +DUKE + +So she bade me call her. + +DIEGO + +And the name explained the trade? + +DUKE (_after a pause_) + +I cannot understand thee Diego,--cannot understand thy lack of +understanding----Well yes! Her trade. All in this universe is trade, +trade of prince, pope, philosopher or harlot; and once the badge put on, +the licence signed--the badge a crown or a hot iron's brand, as the case +may be,--why then we ply it according to prescription, and that's all! +Yes, Diego,--since thou obligest me to say it in its harshness, I do so, +and I glory for her in every contemptuous word I use!--The woman I speak +of was but a poor Venetian courtesan; some drab's child, sold to the +Infidels as to the Christians; and my cruel pirate master's--shall we +say?--mistress. There! For the first time, Diego, thou dost not +understand me; or is it----that I misjudged thee, thinking thee, dear +boy----(_breaks off hurriedly_). + +DIEGO (_very slowly_) + +Thinking me what, my Lord? + +DUKE (_lightly, but with effort_) + +Less of a little Sir Paragon of Virtue than a dear child, who is only a +child, must be. + +DIEGO + +It is better, perhaps, that your Highness should be certain of my +limitations----But I crave your Highness's pardon. I had meant to say +that being a waif myself, pure gutter-bred, I have known, though young, +more Magdalens than you, my Lord. They are, in a way, my sisters; and +had I been a woman, I should, likely enough, have been one myself. + +DUKE + +You mean, Diego? + +DIEGO + +I mean, that knowing them well, I also know that women such as your +Highness has described, occasionally learn to love most truly. Nay, let +me finish, my Lord; I was not going to repeat a mere sentimental +commonplace. Briefly then, that such women, being expert in love, +sometimes understand, quicker than virtuous dames brought up to heroism, +when love for them is cloyed. They can walk out of a man's house or life +with due alacrity, being trained to such flittings. Or, recognising the +first signs of weariness before 'tis known to him who feels it, they can +open the door for the other--hand him the clue of the labyrinth with a +fine theatric gesture!--But I crave your Highness's pardon for enlarging +on this theme. + +DUKE + +Thou speakest Diego, as if thou hadst a mind to wound thy Master. Is +this, my friend, the reward of my confiding in thee, even if tardily? + +DIEGO + +I stand rebuked, my Lord. But, in my own defence----how shall I say +it?----Your Highness has a manner to-night which disconcerts me by its +novelty; a saying things and then unsaying them; suggesting and then, +somehow, treading down the suggestion like a spark of your lightning. +Lovers, I have been told, use such a manner to revive their flagging +feeling by playing on the other one's. Even in so plain and solid a +thing as friendship, such ways--I say it subject to your Highness's +displeasure--are dangerous. But in love, I have known cases where, +carried to certain lengths, such ways of speaking undermined a woman's +faith and led her to desperate things. Women, despite their strength, +which often surprises us, are brittle creatures. Did you never, perhaps, +make trial of this----Magdalen, with---- + +DUKE + +With what? Good God, Diego, 'tis I who ask thy pardon; and thou sheddest +a dreadful light upon the past. But it is not possible. I am not such a +cur that, after all she did, after all she was,--my life saved by her +audacity a hundred times, made rich and lovely by her love, her wit, her +power,--that I could ever have whimpered for my freedom, or made her +suspect I wanted it more than I wanted her? Is it possible, Diego? + +DIEGO (_slowly_) + +Why more than you wanted her? She may have thought the two compatible. + +DUKE + +Never. First, because my escape could not be compassed save by her +staying behind; and then because---she knew, in fact, what thing I was, +or must become, once set at liberty. + +DIEGO (_after a pause_) + +I see. You mean, my Lord, that you being Duke of Mantua, while she----If +she knew that; knew it not merely as a fact, but as one knows the full +savour of grief,--well, she was indeed the paragon you think; one might +indeed say, bating one point, a virtuous woman. + +DUKE + +Thou hast understood, dear Diego, and I thank thee for it. + +DIEGO + +But I fear, my Lord, she did not know these things. Such as she, as +yourself remarked, are not trained to conceive of duty, even in others. +Passion moves them; and they believe in passion. You loved her; good. +Why then, at Mantua as in Barbary. No, my dear Master, believe me; she +had seen your love was turning stale, and set you free, rather than +taste its staleness. Passion, like duty, has its pride; and even we +waifs, as gypsies, have our point of honour. + +DUKE + +Stale! My love grown stale! You make me laugh, boy, instead of angering. +Stale! You never knew her. She was not like a song--even your sweetest +song--which, heard too often, cloys, its phrases dropping to senseless +notes. She was like music,--the whole art: new modes, new melodies, new +rhythms, with every day and hour, passionate or sad, or gay, or very +quiet; more wondrous notes than in thy voice; and more strangely sweet, +even when they grated, than the tone of those newfangled fiddles, which +wound the ear and pour balm in, they make now at Cremona. + +DIEGO + +You loved her then, sincerely? + +DUKE + +Methinks it may be Diego now, tormenting his Master with needless +questions. Loved her, boy! I love her. + +_A long pause_. Diego _has covered his face, with a gesture as if about +to speak. But the moon has suddenly risen from behind the poplars, and +put scales of silver light upon the ripples of the lake, and a pale +luminous mist around the palace. As the light invades the terrace, a +sort of chill has come upon both speakers; they walk up and down further +from one another_. + +DIEGO + +A marvellous story, dear Master. And I thank you from my heart for +having told it me. I always loved you, and I thought I knew you. I know +you better still, now. You are--a most magnanimous prince. + +DUKE + +Alas, dear lad, I am but a poor prisoner of my duties; a poorer +prisoner, and a sadder far, than there in Barbary----O Diego, how I have +longed for her! How deeply I still long, sometimes! But I open my eyes, +force myself to stare reality in the face, whenever her image comes +behind closed lids, driving her from me----And to end my confession. At +the beginning, Diego, there seemed in thy voice and manner something of +_her_; I saw her sometimes in thee, as children see the elves they fear +and hope for in stains on walls and flickers on the path. And all thy +wondrous power, thy miraculous cure--nay, forgive what seems +ingratitude--was due, Diego, to my sick fancy making me see glances of +her in thy eyes and hear her voice in thine. Not music but love, love's +delusion, was what worked my cure. + +DIEGO + +Do you speak truly, Master? Was it so? And now? + +DUKE + +Now, dear lad, I am cured--completely; I know bushes from ghosts; and I +know thee, dearest friend, to be Diego. + +DIEGO + +When these imaginations still held you, my Lord, did it ever happen that +you wondered: what if the bush had been a ghost; if Diego had turned +into--what was she called?---- + +DUKE + +Magdalen. My fancy never went so far, good Diego. There was a grain of +reason left. But if it had----Well, I should have taken Magdalen's hand, +and said, "Welcome, dear sister. This is a world of spells; let us +repeat some. Become henceforth my brother; be the Duke of Mantua's best +and truest friend; turn into Diego, Magdalen." + +_The_ DUKE _presses_ DIEGO'S _arm, and, letting it go, walks away into +the moonlight with an enigmatic air. A long pause_. + +Hark, they are singing within; the idle pages making songs to their +ladies' eyebrows. Shall we go and listen? + +(_They walk in the direction of the palace_.) + +And (_with a little hesitation_) that makes me say, Diego, before we +close this past of mine, and bury it for ever in our silence, that there +is a little Moorish song, plaintive and quaint, she used to sing, which +some day I will write down, and thou shalt sing it to me--on my +deathbed. + +DIEGO + +Why not before? Speaking of songs, that mandolin, though out of tune, +and vilely played, has got hold of a ditty I like well enough. Hark, the +words are Tuscan, well known in the mountains. (_Sings_.) + +I'd like to die, but die a little death only, I'd like to die, but look +down from the window; I'd like to die, but stand upon the doorstep; I'd +like to die, but follow the procession; I'd like to die, but see who +smiles and weepeth; I'd like to die, but die a little death only. + +(_While_ DIEGO _sings very loud, the mandolin inside the palace thrums +faster and faster. As he ends, with a long defiant leap into a high +note, a burst of applause from the palace_.) + +DIEGO (_clapping his hands_) + +Well sung, Diego! + + + + +ACT IV + + +_A few weeks later. The new music room in the Palace of Mantua. Windows +on both sides admitting a view of the lake, so that the hall looks like +a galley surrounded by water. Outside, morning: the lake, the sky, and +the lines of poplars on the banks, are all made of various textures of +luminous blue. From the gardens below, bay trees raise their flowering +branches against the windows. In every window an antique statue: the +Mantuan Muse, the Mantuan Apollo, etc. In the walls between the windows +are framed panels representing allegorical triumphs: those nearest the +spectator are the triumphs of Chastity and of Fortitude. At the end of +the room, steps and a balustrade, with a harpsichord and double basses +on a dais. The roof of the room is blue and gold; a deep blue ground, +constellated with a gold labyrinth in relief. Round the cornice, blue +and gold also, the inscription_: "RECTAS PETO," _and the name_ +Ferdinandus Mantuae Dux. + +_The_ PRINCESS HIPPOLYTA _of Mirandola, cousin to the_ DUKE; _and_ +DIEGO. HIPPOLYTA _is very young, but with the strength and grace, and +the candour, rather of a beautiful boy than of a woman. She is +dazzlingly fair; and her hair, arranged in waves like an antique +amazon's, is stiff and lustrous, as if made of threads of gold. The +brows are wide and straight, like a man's; the glance fearless, but +virginal and almost childlike_. HIPPOLYTA _is dressed in black and gold, +particoloured, like Mantegna's Duchess. An old man, in scholar's gown, +the_ Princess's Greek Tutor, _has just introduced_ DIEGO _and retired_. + +DIEGO + +The Duke your cousin's greeting and service, illustrious damsel. His +Highness bids me ask how you are rested after your journey hither. + +PRINCESS + +Tell my cousin, good Signor Diego, that I am touched at his concern for +me. And tell him, such is the virtuous air of his abode, that a whole +night's rest sufficed to right me from the fatigue of two hours' journey +in a litter; for I am new to that exercise, being accustomed to follow +my poor father's hounds and falcons only on horseback. You shall thank +the Duke my cousin for his civility. (PRINCESS _laughs_.) + +DIEGO + +(_bowing, and keeping his eyes on the_ PRINCESS _as he speaks_) + +His Highness wished to make his fair cousin smile. He has told me often +how your illustrious father, the late Lord of Mirandola, brought his +only daughter up in such a wise as scarcely to lack a son, with manly +disciplines of mind and body; and that he named you fittingly after +Hippolyta, who was Queen of the Amazons, virgins unlike their vain and +weakly sex. + +PRINCESS + +She was; and wife of Theseus. But it seems that the poets care but +little for the like of her; they tell us nothing of her, compared with +her poor predecessor, Cretan Ariadne, she who had given Theseus the clue +of the labyrinth. Methinks that maze must have been mazier than this +blue and gold one overhead. What say you, Signor Diego? + +DIEGO (_who has started slightly_) + +Ariadne? Was she the predecessor of Hippolyta? I did not know it. I am +but a poor scholar, Madam; knowing the names and stories of gods and +heroes only from songs and masques. The Duke should have selected some +fitter messenger to hold converse with his fair learned cousin. + +PRINCESS (_gravely_) + +Speak not like that, Signor Diego. You may not be a scholar, as you say; +but surely you are a philosopher. Nay, conceive my meaning: the fame of +your virtuous equanimity has spread further than from this city to my +small dominions. Your precocious wisdom--for you seem younger than I, +and youths do not delight in being very wise--your moderation in the use +of sudden greatness, your magnanimous treatment of enemies and +detractors; and the manner in which, disdainful of all personal +advantage, you have surrounded the Duke my cousin with wisest +counsellors and men expert in office--such are the results men seek from +the study of philosophy. + +DIEGO + +(_at first astonished, then amused, a little sadly_) + +You are mistaken, noble maiden. 'Tis not philosophy to refrain from +things that do not tempt one. Riches or power are useless to me. As for +the rest, you are mistaken also. The Duke is wise and valiant, and +chooses therefore wise and valiant counsellors. + +PRINCESS (_impetuously_) + +You are eloquent, Signor Diego, even as you are wise! But your words do +not deceive me. Ambition lurks in every one; and power intoxicates all +save those who have schooled themselves to use it as a means to virtue. + +DIEGO + +The thought had never struck me; but men have told me what you tell me +now. + +PRINCESS + +Even Antiquity, which surpasses us so vastly in all manner of wisdom and +heroism, can boast of very few like you. The noblest souls have grown +tyrannical and rapacious and foolhardy in sudden elevation. Remember +Alcibiades, the beloved pupil of the wisest of all mortals. Signor +Diego, you may have read but little; but you have meditated to much +profit, and must have wrestled like some great athlete with all that +baser self which the divine Plato has told us how to master. + +DIEGO (_shaking his head_) + +Alas, Madam, your words make me ashamed, and yet they make me smile, +being so far of the mark! I have wrestled with nothing; followed only my +soul's blind impulses. + +PRINCESS (_gravely_) + +It must be, then, dear Signor Diego, as the Pythagoreans held: the +discipline of music is virtuous for the soul. There is a power in +numbered and measured sound very akin to wisdom; mysterious and +excellent; as indeed the Ancients fabled in the tales of Orpheus and +Amphion, musicians and great sages and legislators of states. I have +long desired your conversation, admirable Diego. + +DIEGO (_with secret contempt_) + +Noble maiden, such words exceed my poor unscholarly appreciation. The +antique worthies whom you name are for me merely figures in tapestries +and frescoes, quaint greybeards in laurel wreaths and helmets; and I can +scarcely tell whether the Ladies Fortitude and Rhetoric with whom they +hold converse, are real daughters of kings, or mere Arts and Virtues. +But the Duke, a learned and judicious prince, will set due store by his +youthful cousin's learning. As for me, simpleton and ignoramus that I +am, all I see is that Princess Hippolyta is very beautiful and very +young. + +PRINCESS + +(_sighing a little, but with great simplicity_) + +I know it. I am young, and perhaps crude; although I study hard to learn +the rules of wisdom. You, Diego, seem to know them without study. + +DIEGO + +I know somewhat of the world and of men, gracious Princess, but that can +scarce be called knowing wisdom. Say rather knowing blindness, envy, +cruelty, endless nameless folly in others and oneself. But why should +you seek to be wise? you who are fair, young, a princess, and betrothed +from your cradle to a great prince? Be beautiful, be young, be what you +are, a woman. + +Diego _has said this last word with emphasis, but the_ Princess _has not +noticed the sarcasm in his voice_. + +PRINCESS (_shaking her head_) + +That is not my lot. I was destined, as you said, to be the wife of a +great prince; and my dear father trained me to fill that office. + +DIEGO + +Well, and to be beautiful, young, radiant; to be a woman; is not that +the office of a wife? + +PRINCESS + +I have not much experience. But my father told me, and I have gathered +from books, that in the wives of princes, such gifts are often thrown +away; that other women, supplying them, seem to supply them better. Look +at my cousin's mother. I can remember her still beautiful, young, and +most tenderly loving. Yet the Duke, my uncle, disdained her, and all she +got was loneliness and heartbreak. An honourable woman, a princess, +cannot compete with those who study to please and to please only. She +must either submit to being ousted from her husband's love, or soar +above it into other regions. + +DIEGO (_interested_) + +Other regions? + +PRINCESS + +Higher ones. She must be fit to be her husband's help, and to nurse his +sons to valour and wisdom. + +DIEGO + +I see. The Prince must know that besides all the knights that he summons +to battle, and all the wise men whom he hears in council, there is +another knight, in rather lighter armour and quicker tired, another +counsellor, less experienced and of less steady temper, ready for use. +Is this great gain? + +PRINCESS + +It is strange that being a man, you should conceive of women from---- + +DIEGO + +From a man's standpoint? + +PRINCESS + +Nay; methinks a woman's. For I observe that women, when they wish to +help men, think first of all of some transparent masquerade, donning +men's clothes, at all events in metaphor, in order to be near their +lovers when not wanted. + +DIEGO (_hastily_) + +Donning men's clothes? A masquerade? I fail to follow your meaning, +gracious maiden. + +PRINCESS (_simply_) + +So I have learned at least from our poets. Angelica, and Bradamante and +Fiordispina, scouring the country after their lovers, who were busy +enough without them. I prefer Penelope, staying at home to save the +lands and goods of Ulysses, and bringing up his son to rescue and avenge +him. + +DIEGO (_reassured and indifferent_) + +Did Ulysses love Penelope any better for it, Madam? better than poor +besotted Menelaus, after all his injuries, loved Helen back in Sparta? + +PRINCESS + +That is not the question. A woman born to be a prince's wife and +prince's mother, does her work not for the sake of something greater +than love, whether much or little. + +DIEGO + +For what then? + +PRINCESS + +Does a well-bred horse or excellent falcon do its duty to please its +master? No; but because such is its nature. Similarly, methinks, a woman +bred to be a princess works with her husband, for her husband, not for +any reward, but because he and she are of the same breed, and obey the +same instincts. + +DIEGO + +Ah!----Then happiness, love,--all that a woman craves for? + +PRINCESS + +Are accidents. Are they not so in the life of a prince? Love he may +snatch; and she, being in woman's fashion not allowed to snatch, may +receive as a gift, or not. But received or snatched, it is not either's +business; not their nature's true fulfilment. + +DIEGO + +You think so, Lady? + +PRINCESS + +I am bound to think so. I was born to it and taught it. You know the +Duke, my cousin,--well, I am his bride, not being born his sister. + +DIEGO + +And you are satisfied? O beautiful Princess, you are of illustrious +lineage and mind, and learned. Your father brought you up on Plutarch +instead of Amadis; you know many things; but there is one, methinks, no +one can know the nature of it until he has it. + +PRINCESS + +What is that, pray? + +DIEGO + +A heart. Because you have not got one yet, you make your plans without +it,--a negligible item in your life. + +Princess + +I am not a child. + +DIEGO + +But not yet a woman. + +PRINCESS (_meditatively_) + +You think, then---- + +DIEGO + +I do not _think_; I _know_. And _you_ will know, some day. And then---- + +PRINCESS + +Then I shall suffer. Why, we must all suffer. Say that, having a heart, +a heart for husband or child, means certain grief,--well, does not +riding, walking down your stairs, mean the chance of broken bones? Does +not living mean old age, disease, possible blindness or paralysis, and +quite inevitable aches? If, as you say, I must needs grow a heart, and +if a heart must needs give agony, why, I shall live through heartbreak +as through pain in any other limb. + +DIEGO + +Yes,--were your heart a limb like all the rest,--but 'tis the very +centre and fountain of all life. + +PRINCESS + +You think so? 'Tis, methinks, pushing analogy too far, and metaphor. +This necessary organ, diffusing life throughout us, and, as physicians +say, removing with its vigorous floods all that has ceased to live, +replacing it with new and living tissue,--this great literal heart +cannot be the seat of only one small passion. + +DIEGO + +Yet I have known more women than one die of that small passion's +frustrating. + +PRINCESS + +But you have known also, I reckon, many a man in whom life, what he had +to live for, was stronger than all love. They say the Duke my cousin's +melancholy sickness was due to love which he had outlived. + +DIEGO They say so, Madam. + +PRINCESS (_thoughtfully_) + +I think it possible, from what I know of him. He was much with my father +when a lad; and I, a child, would listen to their converse, not +understanding its items, but seeming to understand the general drift. My +father often said my cousin was romantic, favoured overmuch his tender +mother, and would suffer greatly, learning to live for valour and for +wisdom. + +DIEGO + +Think you he has, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +If 'tis true that occasion has already come. + +DIEGO + +And--if that occasion came, for the first time or for the second, +perhaps, after your marriage? What would you do, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I cannot tell as yet. Help him, I trust, when help could come, by the +sympathy of a soul's strength and serenity. Stand aside, most likely, +waiting to be wanted. Or else---- + +DIEGO + +Or else, illustrious maiden? + +PRINCESS + +Or else----I know not----perhaps, growing a heart, get some use from it. + +DIEGO + +Your Highness surely does not mean use it to love with? + +PRINCESS + +Why not? It might be one way of help. And if I saw him struggling with +grief, seeking to live the life and think the thought fit for his +station; why, methinks I could love him. He seems lovable. Only love +could have taught fidelity like yours. + +DIEGO + +You forget, gracious Princess, that you attributed great power of virtue +to a habit of conduct, which is like the nature of high-bred horses, +needing no spur. But in truth you are right. I am no high-bred creature. +Quite the contrary. Like curs, I love; love, and only love. For curs are +known to love their masters. + +PRINCESS + +Speak not thus, virtuous Diego. I have indeed talked in magnanimous +fashion, and believed, sincerely, that I felt high resolves. But you +have acted, lived, and done magnanimously. What you have been and are to +the Duke is better schooling for me than all the Lives of Plutarch. + +DIEGO. + +You could not learn from me, Lady. + +PRINCESS + +But I would try, Diego. + +DIEGO + +Be not grasping, Madam. The generous coursers whom your father taught +you to break and harness have their set of virtues. Those of curs are +different. Do not grudge them those. Your noble horses kick them enough, +without even seeing their presence. But I feel I am beyond my depth, not +being philosophical by nature or schooling. And I had forgotten to give +you part of his Highnesses message. Knowing your love of music, and the +attention you have given it, the Duke imagined it might divert you, till +he was at leisure to pay you homage, to make trial of my poor powers. +Will it please you to order the other musicians, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +Nay, good Diego, humour me in this. I have studied music, and would fain +make trial of accompanying your voice. Have you notes by you? + +DIEGO + +Here are some, Madam, left for the use of his Highness's band this +evening. Here is the pastoral of Phyllis by Ludovic of the Lute; a hymn +in four parts to the Virgin by Orlandus Lassus; a madrigal by the Pope's +Master, Signor Pierluigi of Praeneste. Ah! Here is a dramatic scene +between Medea and Creusa, rivals in love, by the Florentine Octavio. +Have you knowledge of it, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I have sung it with my master for exercise. But, good Diego, find a song +for yourself. + +DIEGO + +You shall humour me, now, gracious Lady. Think I am your master. I +desire to hear your voice. And who knows? In this small matter I may +really teach you something. + +_The_ PRINCESS _sits to the harpsichord_, DIEGO _standing beside her on +the dais. They sing, the_ PRINCESS _taking the treble_, DIEGO _the +contralto part. The_ PRINCESS _enters first--with a full-toned voice +clear and high, singing very carefully_. DIEGO _follows, singing in a +whisper. His voice is a little husky, and here and there broken, but +ineffably delicious and penetrating, and, as he sings, becomes, without +quitting the whisper, dominating and disquieting. The_ PRINCESS _plays a +wrong chord, and breaks off suddenly._ + +DIEGO + +(_having finished a cadence, rudely_) + +What is it, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I know not. I have lost my place----I----I feel bewildered. When your +voice rose up against mine, Diego, I lost my head. And--I do not know +how to express it--when our voices met in that held dissonance, it +seemed as if you hurt me----horribly. + +DIEGO + +(_smiling, with hypocritical apology_) + +Forgive me, Madam. I sang too loud, perhaps. We theatre singers are apt +to strain things. I trust some day to hear you sing alone. You have a +lovely voice: more like a boy's than like a maiden's still. + +PRINCESS + +And yours----'tis strange that at your age we should reverse the +parts,--yours, though deeper than mine, is like a woman's. + +DIEGO (_laughing_) + +I have grown a heart, Madam; 'tis an organ grows quicker where the breed +is mixed and lowly, no nobler limbs retarding its development by theirs. + +PRINCESS + +Speak not thus, excellent Diego. Why cause me pain by disrespectful +treatment of a person--your own admirable self--whom I respect? You have +experience, Diego, and shall teach me many things, for I desire +learning. + +_The_ Princess _takes his hand in both hers, very kindly and simply_. +Diego, _disengaging his, bows very ceremoniously_. + +DIEGO + +Shall I teach you to sing as I do, gracious Madam? + +PRINCESS (_after a moment_) + +I think not, Diego. + + + + +ACT V + + +_Two months later. The wedding day of the_ DUKE. _Another part of the +Palace of Mantua. A long terrace still to be seen, with roof supported +by columns. It looks on one side on to the jousting ground, a green +meadow surrounded by clipped hedges and set all round with mulberry +trees. On the other side it overlooks the lake, against which, as a +fact, it acts as dyke. The Court of Mantua and Envoys of foreign +Princes, together with many Prelates, are assembled on the terrace, +surrounding the seats of the_ DUKE, _the young_ DUCHESS HIPPOLYTA, _the_ +DUCHESS DOWAGER _and the_ CARDINAL. _Facing this gallery, and separated +from it by a line of sedge and willows, and a few yards of pure green +water, starred with white lilies, is a stage in the shape of a Grecian +temple, apparently rising out of the lake. Its pediment and columns are +slung with garlands of bay and cypress. In the gable, the_ DUKE'S +_device of a labyrinth in gold on a blue ground and the motto:_ "RECTAS +PETO." _On the stage, but this side of the curtain, which is down, are a +number of_ Musicians _with violins, viols, theorbs, a hautboy, a flute, +a bassoon, viola d'amore and bass viols, grouped round two men with +double basses and a man at a harpsichord, in dress like the musicians in +Veronese's paintings. They are preluding gently, playing elaborately +fugued variations on a dance tune in three-eighth time, rendered +singularly plaintive by the absence of perfect closes_. + +CARDINAL + +(_to_ VENETIAN AMBASSADOR) + +What say you to our Diego's masque, my Lord? Does not his skill as a +composer vie almost with his sublety as a singer? + +MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA + +(_to the_ DUCHESS DOWAGER) + +A most excellent masque, methinks, Madam. And of so new a kind. We have +had masques in palaces and also in gardens, and some, I own it, +beautiful; for our palace on the hill affords fine vistas of cypress +avenues and the distant plain. But, until the Duke your son, no one has +had a masque on the water, it would seem. 'Tis doubtless his invention? + +DUCHESS + +(_with evident preoccupation_) + +I think not, Madam. 'Tis our foolish Diego's freak. And I confess I like +it not. It makes me anxious for the players. + +BISHOP OF CREMONA (_to the_ CARDINAL) + +A wondrous singer, your Signor Diego. They say the Spaniards have subtle +exercises for keeping the voice thus youthful. His Holiness has several +such who sing divinely under Pierluigi's guidance. But your Diego seems +really but a child, yet has a mode of singing like one who knows a world +of joys and sorrows. + +CARDINAL + +He has. Indeed, I sometimes think he pushes the pathetic quality too +far. I am all for the Olympic serenity of the wise Ancients. + +YOUNG DUCHESS (_laughing_) + +My uncle would, I almost think, exile our divine Diego, as Plato did the +poets, for moving us too much. + +PRINCE OF MASSA (_whispering_) + +He has moved your noble husband strangely. Or is it, gracious bride, +that too much happiness overwhelms our friend? + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_turning round and noticing the_ DUKE, _a few seats off_) + +'Tis true. Ferdinand is very sensitive to music, and is greatly +concerned for our Diego's play. Still----I wonder----. + +MARCHIONESS (_to the_ DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET, _who is standing near +her_) + +I really never could have recognised Signor Diego in his disguise. He +looks for all the world exactly like a woman. + +POET + +A woman! Say a goddess, Madam! Upon my soul (_whispering_), the bride is +scarce as beautiful as he, although as fair as one of the noble swans +who sail on those clear waters. + +JESTER + +After the play we shall see admiring dames trooping behind the scenes to +learn the secret of the paints which can change a scrubby boy into a +beauteous nymph; a metamorphosis worth twenty of Sir Ovid's. + +DOGE'S WIFE (_to the_ DUKE) + +They all tell me--but 'tis a secret naturally--that the words of this +ingenious masque are from your Highness's own pen; and that you +helped--such are your varied gifts--your singing-page to set them to +music. + +DUKE (_impatiently_) + +It may be that your Serenity is rightly informed, or not. + +KNIGHT OF MALTA (_to_ YOUNG DUCHESS) + +One recognises, at least, the mark of Duke Ferdinand's genius in the +suiting of the play to the surroundings. Given these lakes, what fitter +argument than Ariadne abandoned on her little island? And the labyrinth +in the story is a pretty allusion to your lord's personal device and the +magnificent ceiling he lately designed for our admiration. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_with her eyes fixed on the curtain, which begins to move_) + +Nay, 'tis all Diego's thought. Hush, they begin to play. Oh, my heart +beats with curiosity to know how our dear Diego will carry his invention +through, and to hear the last song which he has never let me hear him +sing. + +_The curtain is drawn aside, displaying the stage, set with orange and +myrtle trees in jars, and a big flowering oleander. There is no painted +background; but instead, the lake, with distant shore, and the sky with +the sun slowly descending into clouds, which light up purple and +crimson, and send rosy streamers into the high blue air. On the stage a +rout of_ Bacchanals, _dressed like Mantegna's Hours, but with +vine-garlands; also_ Satyrs _quaintly dressed in goatskins, but with +top-knots of ribbons, all singing a Latin ode in praise of_ BACCHUS _and +wine; while girls dressed as nymphs, with ribboned thyrsi in their +hands, dance a pavana before a throne of moss overhung by ribboned +garlands. On this throne are seated a_ TENOR _as_ BACCHUS, _dressed in +russet and leopard skins, a garland of vine leaves round his waist and +round his wide-brimmed hat; and_ DIEGO, _as_ ARIADNE. DIEGO, _no longer +habited as a man, but in woman's garments, like those of Guercino's +Sibyls: a floating robe and vest of orange and violet, open at the +throat; with particoloured scarves hanging, and a particoloured scarf +wound like a turban round the head, the locks of dark hair escaping from +beneath. She is extremely beautiful_. + +MAGDALEN (_sometime known as_ DIEGO, _now representing_ ARIADNE) _rises +from the throne and speaks, turning to_ BACCHUS. _Her voice is a +contralto, but not deep, and with upper notes like a hautboy's. She +speaks in an irregular recitative, sustained by chords on the viols and +harpsichord_. + +ARIADNE + +Tempt me not, gentle Bacchus, sunburnt god of ruddy vines and rustic +revelry. The gifts you bring, the queenship of the world of +wine-inspired Fancies, cannot quell my grief at Theseus' loss. + +BACCHUS (_tenor_) + +Princess, I do beseech you, give me leave to try and soothe your +anguish. Daughter of Cretan Minos, stern Judge of the Departed, your +rearing has been too sad for youth and beauty, and the shade of Orcus +has ever lain across your path. But I am God of Gladness; I can take +your soul, suspend it in Mirth's sun, even as the grapes, translucent +amber or rosy, hang from the tendril in the ripening sun of the crisp +autumn day. I can unwind your soul, and string it in the serene sky of +evening, smiling in the deep blue like to the stars, encircled, I offer +you as crown. Listen, fair Nymph: 'tis a God woos you. + +ARIADNE + +Alas, radiant Divinity of a time of year gentler than Spring and +fruitfuller than Summer, there is no Autumn for hapless Ariadne. Only +Winter's nights and frosts wrap my soul. When Theseus went, my youth +went also. I pray you leave me to my poor tears and the thoughts of him. + +BACCHUS + +Lady, even a God, and even a lover, must respect your grief. Farewell. +Comrades, along; the pine trees on the hills, the ivy-wreaths upon the +rocks, await your company; and the red-stained vat, the heady-scented +oak-wood, demand your presence. + +_The_ Bacchantes _and_ Satyrs _sing a Latin ode in praise of Wine, in +four parts, with accompaniment of bass viols and lutes, and exeunt with_ +BACCHUS. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_to_ DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET) + +Now, now, Master Torquato, now we shall hear Poetry's own self sing with +our Diego's voice. + +DIEGO, _as_ ARIADNE, _walks slowly up and down the stage, while the +viola plays a prelude in the minor. Then she speaks, recitative with +chords only by strings and harpsichord_. + +ARIADNE + +They are gone at last. Kind creatures, how their kindness fretted my +weary soul I To be alone with grief is almost pleasure, since grief +means thought of Theseus. Yet that thought is killing me. O Theseus, why +didst thou ever come into my life? Why did not the cruel Minotaur gore +and trample thee like all the others? Hapless Ariadne! The clue was in +my keeping, and I reached it to him. And now his ship has long since +neared his native shores, and he stands on the prow, watching for his +new love. But the Past belongs to me. + +_A flute rises in the orchestra, with viols accompanying, pizzicati, and +plays three or four bars of intricate mazy passages, very sweet and +poignant, stopping on a high note, with imperfect close_. + +ARIADNE (_continuing_) + +And in the past he loved me, and he loves me still. Nothing can alter +that. Nay, Theseus, thou canst never never love another like me. + +_Arioso. The declamation becomes more melodic, though still +unrhythmical, and is accompanied by a rapid and passionate tremolo of +violins and viols_. + +And thy love for her will be but the thin ghost of the reality that +lived for me. But Theseus----Do not leave me yet. Another hour, another +minute. I have so much to tell thee, dearest, ere thou goest. + +_Accompaniment more and more agitated. A hautboy echoes_ ARIADNE'S _last +phrase with poignant reedy tone_. + +Thou knowest, I have not yet sung thee that little song thou lovest to +hear of evenings; the little song made by the Aeolian Poetess whom +Apollo loved when in her teens. And thou canst not go away till I have +sung it. See! my lute. But I must tune it. All is out of tune in my poor +jangled life. + +_Lute solo in the orchestra. A Siciliana or slow dance, very delicate +and simple_. ARIADNE _sings_. + +Song + + Let us forget we loved each other much; + Let us forget we ever have to part; + Let us forget that any look or touch + Once let in either to the other's heart. + + Only we'll sit upon the daisied grass, + And hear the larks and see the swallows pass; + Only we live awhile, as children play, + Without to-morrow, without yesterday. +_During the ritornello, between the two verses._ + +POET + +(_to the_ Young Duchess, _whispering_) + +Madam, methinks his Highness is unwell. Turn round, I pray you. + +YOUNG DUCHESS (_without turning_). + +He feels the play's charm. Hush. + +DUCHESS DOWAGER (_whispering_) + +Come Ferdinand, you are faint. Come with me. + +DUKE (_whispering_) + +Nay, mother. It will pass. Only a certain oppression at the heart, I was +once subject to. Let us be still. + +Song (_repeats_) + + Only we'll live awhile, as children play, + Without to-morrow, without yesterday. + +_A few bars of ritornello after the song_. + +DUCHESS DOWAGER (_whispering_) + +Courage, my son, I know all. + +ARIADNE + +(_Recitative with accompaniment of violins, flute and harp_) + +Theseus, I've sung my song. Alas, alas for our poor songs we sing to the +beloved, and vainly try to vary into newness! + +_A few notes of the harp well up, slow and liquid_. + +Now I can go to rest, and darkness lap my weary heart. Theseus, my love, +good night! + +_Violins tremolo. The hautboy suddenly enters with a long wailing +phrase_. ARIADNE _quickly mounts on to the back of the stage, turns +round for one second, waving a kiss to an imaginary person, and then +flings herself down into the lake_. + +_A great burst of applause. Enter immediately, and during the cries and +clapping, a chorus of_ Water-Nymphs _in transparent veils and garlands +of willows and lilies, which sings to a solemn counterpoint, the dirge +of_ ARIADNE. _But their singing is barely audible through the applause +of the whole Court, and the shouts of_ "DIEGO! DIEGO! ARIADNE! ARIADNE!" +_The young_ DUCHESS _rises excitedly, wiping her eyes_. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +Dear friend! Diego! Diego! Our Orpheus, come forth! + +CROWD + +Diego! Diego! + +POET (_to the_ POPE'S LEGATE) + +He is a real artist, and scorns to spoil the play's impression by +truckling to this foolish habit of applause. + +MARCHIONESS + +Still, a mere singer, a page----when his betters call----. But see! the +Duke has left our midst. + +CARDINAL + +He has gone to bring back Diego in triumph, doubtless. + +VENETIAN AMBASSADOR + +And, I note, his venerable mother has also left us. I doubt whether this +play has not offended her strict widow's austerity. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +But where is Diego, meanwhile? + +_The Chorus and orchestra continue the dirge for_ ARIADNE. A +GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING _elbows through the crowd to the_ CARDINAL. + +GENTLEMAN (_whispering_) + +Most Eminent, a word---- + +CARDINAL (_whispering_) + +The Duke has had a return of his malady? + +GENTLEMAN (_whispering_) + +No, most Eminent. But Diego is nowhere to be found. And they have +brought up behind the stage the body of a woman in Ariadne's weeds. + +CARDINAL (whispering) + +Ah, is that all? Discretion, pray. I knew it. But 'tis a most +distressing accident. Discretion above all. + +_The Chorus suddenly breaks off. For on to the stage comes the_ DUKE. +_He is dripping, and bears in his arms the dead body, drowned, of_ +DIEGO, _in the garb of_ ARIADNE. _A shout from the crowd_. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_with a cry, clutching the_ POET'S _arm_) + +Diego! + +DUKE + +(_stooping over the body, which he has laid upon the stage, and speaking +very low_) + +Magdalen! + +(_The curtain is hastily closed_.) + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Limbo and Other Essays, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS *** + +***** This file should be named 37179-8.txt or 37179-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/1/7/37179/ + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe +at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously +made available by the Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Limbo and Other Essays + To which is now added Ariadne in Mantua + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: August 23, 2011 [EBook #37179] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe +at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously +made available by the Internet Archive) + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS</h1> + +<h4>TO WHICH IS NOW ADDED ARIADNE IN MANTUA</h4> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>VERNON LEE</h2> + + +<h5>LONDON—JOHN LANE—THE BODLEY HEAD</h5> + +<h5>NEW YORK—JOHN LANE COMPANY</h5> + +<h5>MCMVIII</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p class="caption">CONTENTS</p> + + +<p> +<a href="#LIMBO"><b>LIMBO</b></a><br /> +<a href="#IN_PRAISE_OF_OLD_HOUSES"><b>IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_LIE_OF_THE_LAND"><b>THE LIE OF THE LAND</b></a><br /> +<a href="#TUSCAN_MIDSUMMER_MAGIC"><b>TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ON_MODERN_TRAVELLING"><b>ON MODERN TRAVELLING</b></a><br /> +<a href="#OLD_ITALIAN_GARDENS"><b>OLD ITALIAN GARDENS</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ABOUT_LEISURE"><b>ABOUT LEISURE</b></a><br /> +<a href="#RAVENNA_AND_HER_GHOSTS"><b>RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_COOK-SHOP_AND_THE_FOWLING-PLACE"><b>THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ACQUAINTANCE_WITH_BIRDS"><b>ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ARIADNE_IN_MANTUA"><b>ARIADNE IN MANTUA</b></a> +</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="LIMBO" id="LIMBO"></a>LIMBO</h3> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Perocchè gente di molto valore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Conobbi che in quel <i>Limbo</i> eran sospesi.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>It may seem curious to begin with Dante and pass on to the Children's +Rabbits' House; but I require both to explain what it is I mean by +Limbo; no such easy matter on trying. For this discourse is not about +the Pious Pagans whom the poet found in honourable confinement at the +Gate of Hell, nor of their neighbours the Unchristened Babies; but I am +glad of Dante's authority for the existence of a place holding such +creatures as have just missed a necessary rite, or come too soon for +thorough salvation. And I am glad, moreover, that the poet has insisted +on the importance—"gente di molto valore"—of the beings thus enclosed; +because it is just with the superior quality of the things in what I +mean by Limbo that we are peculiarly concerned.</p> + +<p>And now for the other half of my preliminary illustration of the +subject, to wit, the Children's Rabbits' House. The little gardens which +the children played at cultivating have long since disappeared, taken +insensibly back into that corner of the formal but slackly kept garden +which looks towards the steep hill dotted with cows and sheep. But in +that corner, behind the shapeless Portugal laurels and the patches of +seeding grass, there still remains, beneath big trees, what the children +used to call the "Rabbits' Villa." 'Tis merely a wooden toy house, with +green moss-eaten roof, standing, like the lake dwellings of prehistoric +times, on wooden posts, with the tall foxgloves, crimson and white, +growing all round it. There is something ludicrous in this superannuated +toy, this Noah's ark on stilts among the grass and bushes; but when you +look into the thing, finding the empty plates and cups "for having tea +with the rabbits," and when you look into it spiritually also, it grows +oddly pathetic. We walked up and down between the high hornbeam +hedges, the sunlight lying low on the armies of tall daisies and +seeding grasses, and falling in narrow glints among the white boles and +hanging boughs of the beeches, where the wooden benches stand unused in +the deep grass, and the old swing hangs crazily crooked. Yes, the +Rabbits' Villa and the surrounding overgrown beds are quite pathetic. Is +it because they are, in a way, the graves of children long dead, as +dead—despite the grown-up folk who may come and say "It was I"—as the +rabbits and guinea-pigs with whom they once had tea? That is it; and +that explains my meaning: the Rabbits' Villa is, to the eye of the +initiate, one of many little branch establishments of Limbo surrounding +us on all sides. Another poet, more versed in similar matters than Dante +(one feels sure that Dante knew his own mind, and always had his own +way, even when exiled), Rossetti, in a sonnet, has given us the terrible +little speech which would issue from the small Limbos of this kind:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Look in my face: My name is <i>Might-have-been</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>Of all the things that Limbo might contain, there is one about which +some persons, very notably Churchyard Gray, have led us into error. I do +not believe there is much genius to be found in Limbo. The world, +although it takes a lot of dunning, offers a fair price for this +article, which it requires as much as water-power and coal, nay even as +much as food and clothes (bread for its soul and raiment for its +thought); so that what genius there is will surely be brought into +market. But even were it wholly otherwise, genius, like murder, <i>would +out</i>; for genius is one of the liveliest forces of nature; not to be +quelled or quenched, adaptable, protean, expansive, nay explosive; of +all things in the world the most able to take care of itself; which +accounts for so much public expenditure to foster and encourage it: +foster the sun's chemistry, the force of gravitation, encourage atomic +affinity and natural selection, magnificent Mæcenas and judicious +Parliamentary Board, they are sure to do you credit!</p> + +<p>Hence, to my mind, there are <i>no mute inglorious Miltons</i>, or none +worth taking into account. Our sentimental surmises about them grow from +the notion that human power is something like the wheels or cylinder of +a watch, a neat numbered scrap of mechanism, stamped at a blow by a +creative <i>fiat</i>, or hand-hammered by evolution, and fitting just exactly +into one little plan, serving exactly one little purpose, indispensable +for that particular machine, and otherwise fit for the dust-heap. +Happily for us, it is certainly not so. The very greatest men have +always been the most versatile: Lionardo, Goethe, Napoleon; the next +greatest can still be imagined under different circumstances as turning +their energy to very different tasks; and I am tempted to think that the +hobbies by which many of them have laid much store, while the world +merely laughed at the statesman's trashy verses or the musician's +third-rate sketches, may have been of the nature of rudimentary organs, +which, given a different environment, might have developed, become the +creature's chief <i>raison d'être</i>, leaving that which has actually +chanced to be his talent to become atrophied, perhaps invisible.</p> + +<p>Be this last as it may—and I commend it to those who believe in genius +as a form of monomania—it is quite certain that genius has nothing in +common with machinery. It is the most organic and alive of living +organisms; the most adaptable therefore, and least easily killed; and +for this reason, and despite Gray's <i>Elegy</i>, there is no chance of much +of it in Limbo.</p> + +<p>This is no excuse for the optimistic extermination of distinguished men. +It is indeed most difficult to kill genius, but there are a hundred ways +of killing its possessors; and with them as much of their work as they +have left undone. What pictures might Giorgione not have painted but for +the lady, the rival, or the plague, whichever it was that killed him! +Mozart could assuredly have given us a half-dozen more <i>Don Giovannis</i> +if he had had fewer lessons, fewer worries, better food; nay, by his +miserable death the world has lost, methinks, more even than that—a +commanding influence which would have kept music, for a score of years, +earnest and masterly but joyful: Rossini would not have run to seed, and +Beethoven's ninth symphony might have been a genuine "Hymn to Joy" if +only Mozart, the Apollo of musicians, had, for a few years more, +flooded men's souls with radiance. A similar thing is said of Rafael; +but his followers were mediocre, and he himself lacked personality, so +that many a better example might be brought.</p> + +<p>These are not useless speculations; it is as well we realise that, +although genius be immortal, poor men of genius are not. Quite an +extraordinary small amount of draughts and microbes, of starvation +bodily and spiritual, of pin-pricks of various kinds, will do for them; +we can all have a hand in their killing; the killing also of their +peace, kindliness, and justice, sending these qualities to Limbo, which +is full of such. And now, dear reader, I perceive that we have at last +got Limbo well in sight and, in another minute, we may begin to discern +some of its real contents.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>The Paladin Astolfo, as Ariosto relates, was sent on a winged horse up +to the moon; where, under the ciceroneship of John the Evangelist, he +saw most of the things which had been lost on earth, among others the +wits of many persons in bottles, his cousin Orlando's which he had come +on purpose to fetch, and, curiously enough, his own, which he had never +missed.</p> + +<p>The moon does well as storehouse for such brilliant, romantic things. +The Limbo whose contents and branches I would speak of is far less +glorious, a trifle humdrum; sometimes such as makes one smile, like that +Villa of the Rabbits in the neglected garden. 'Twas for this reason, +indeed, that I preferred to clear away at once the question of the Mute +Inglorious Miltons, and of such solemn public loss as comes of the +untimely death of illustrious men. Do you remember, by the way, reader, +a certain hasty sketch by Cazin, which hangs in a corner of the +Luxembourg? The bedroom of Gambetta after his death: the white bed +neatly made, empty, with laurel garlands replacing him; the tricolor +flag, half-furled, leaned against the chair, and on the table vague +heaped-up papers; a thing quite modest and heroic, suitable to all +similar occasions—Mirabeau say, and Stevenson on his far-off +island—and with whose image we can fitly close our talk of genius +wasted by early death.</p> + +<p>I have alluded to <i>happiness</i> as filling up much space in Limbo; and I +think that the amount of it lying in that kingdom of Might-have-been is +probably out of all proportion with that which must do that duty in this +actual life. Browning's <i>Last Ride Together</i>—one has to be perpetually +referring to poets on this matter, for philosophers and moralists +consider happiness in its <i>causal connection</i> or as a fine snare to +virtue—Browning's <i>Last Ride Together</i> expresses, indeed, a view of the +subject commending itself to active and cheerful persons, which comes to +many just after their salad days; to wit, what a mercy that we don't +often get what we want most. The objects of our recent ardent longings +reveal themselves, most luridly sometimes, as dangers, deadlocks, +fetters, hopeless labyrinths, from which we have barely escaped. This is +the house I wanted to buy, the employment I fretted to obtain, the lady +I pined to marry, the friend with whom I projected to share lodgings. +With such sudden chill recognitions comes belief in a special +providence, some fine Greek-sounding goddess, thwarting one's dearest +wishes from tender solicitude that we shouldn't get what we want. In +such a crisis the nobler of us feel like the Riding Lover, and learn +ideal philosophy and manly acquiescence; the meaner snigger ungenerously +about those youthful escapes; and know not that they have gained safety +at the price, very often, of the little good—ideality, faith and +dash—there ever was about them: safe, smug individuals, whose safety is +mere loss to the cosmos. But later on, when our characters have settled, +when repeated changes have taught us which is our unchangeable ego, we +begin to let go that optimist creed, and to suspect (suspicion turning +to certainty) that, as all things which <i>have</i> happened to us have not +been always advantageous, so likewise things longed for in vain need not +necessarily have been curses. As we grow less attached to theories, and +more to our neighbours, we recognise every day that loss, refusal of the +desired, has not by any means always braced or chastened the lives we +look into; we admit that the Powers That Be showed considerable judgment +in disregarding the teachings of asceticism, and inspiring mankind with +innate repugnance to having a bad time. And, to return to the question +of Limbo, as we watch the best powers, the whole usefulness and +sweetness starved out of certain lives for lack of the love, the +liberty, or the special activities they prayed for; as regards the +question of Limbo, I repeat, we grow (or try to grow) a little more +cautious about sending so much more happiness—ours and other folk's—to +the place of Might-have-been.</p> + +<p>Some of it certainly does seem beyond our control, a fatal matter of +constitution. I am not speaking of the results of vice or stupidity; +this talk of Limbo is exclusively addressed to the very nicest people.</p> + +<p>A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness. We have +all of us seen instances. They often occur between members of the same +family, the very similarity of nature, which might make mothers and +daughters, brothers and sisters, into closest companions, merely +doubling the dose of that terrible reserve, timidity, horror of human +contact, paralysis of speech, which keeps the most loving hearts +asunder. It is useless to console ourselves by saying that each has its +own love of the other. And thus they walk, sometimes side by side, +never looking in one another's eyes, never saying the word, till death +steps in, death sometimes unable to loosen the tongue of the mourner. +Such things are common among our reserved northern races, making us so +much less happy and less helpful in everyday life than our Latin and +Teuton neighbours; and, I imagine, are commonest among persons of the +same blood. But the same will happen between lovers, or those who should +have been such; doubt of one's own feeling, fear of the other's charity, +apprehension of its all being a mistake, has silently prevented many a +marriage. The two, then, could not have been much in love? Not <i>in +love</i>, since neither ever allowed that to happen, more's the pity; but +loving one another with the whole affinity of their natures, and, after +all, <i>being in love</i> is but the crisis, or the beginning of that, if +it's worth anything.</p> + +<p>Thus shyness sends much happiness to Limbo. But actual shyness is not +the worst. Some persons, sometimes of the very finest kind, endowed for +loving-kindness, passion, highest devotion, nay requiring it as much as +air or warmth, have received, from some baleful fairy, a sterilising +gift of fear. Fear of what they could not tell; something which makes +all community of soul a terror, and every friend a threat. Something +terrible, in whose presence we must bow our heads and pray impunity +therefrom for ourselves and ours.</p> + +<p>But the bulk of happiness stacked up in Limbo appears, on careful +looking, to be an agglomeration of other lost things; justice, charm, +appreciation, and faith in one another, all recklessly packed off as so +much lumber, sometimes to make room for fine new qualities instead! +Justice, I am inclined to think, is usually sent to Limbo through the +agency of others. A work in many folios might be written by condensing +what famous men have had said against them in their days of struggle, +and what they have answered about others in their days of prosperity.</p> + +<p>The loss of <i>charm</i> is due to many more circumstances; the stress of +life indeed seems calculated to send it to Limbo. Certain it is that few +women, and fewer men, of forty, preserve a particle of it. I am not +speaking of youth or beauty, though it does seem a pity that mature +human beings should mostly be too fat or too thin, and lacking either +sympathy or intellectual keenness. <i>Charm</i> must comprise all that, but +much besides. It is the undefinable quality of nearly every child, and +of all nice lads and girls; the quality which (though it <i>can</i> reach +perfection in exceptional old people) usually vanishes, no one knows +when exactly, into the Limbo marked by the Rabbits' Villa, with its +plates and tea-cups, mouldering on its wooden posts in the unweeded +garden.</p> + +<p>More useful qualities replace all these: hardness, readiness to snatch +opportunity, mistrust of all ideals, inflexible self-righteousness; +useful, nay necessary; but, let us admit it, in a life which, judged by +the amount of dignity and sweetness it contains, is perhaps scarce +necessary itself, and certainly not useful. The case might be summed up, +for our guidance, by saying that the loss of many of our finer qualities +is due to the complacent, and sometimes dutiful, cultivation of our +worse ones!</p> + +<p>For, even in the list of virtues, there are finer and less fine, nay +virtues one might almost call atrocious, and virtues with a taint of +ignominy. I have said that we lose some of our finer qualities this way; +what's worse is, that we often fail to appreciate the finest qualities +of others.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>And here, coming to the vague rubric <i>appreciation of others</i>, I feel we +have got to a district of Limbo about which few of us should have the +audacity to speak, and few, as a fact, have the courage honestly to +think. <i>What do we make of our idea of others</i> in our constant attempt +to justify ourselves? No Japanese bogie-monger ever produced the equal +of certain wooden monster-puppets which we carve, paint, rig out, and +christen by the names of real folk—alas, alas, dear names sometimes of +friends!—and stick up to gibber in our memory; while the real image, +the creature we have really known, is carted off to Limbo! But this is +too bad to speak of.</p> + +<p>Let us rather think gently of things, sad, but sad without ignominy, of +friendships still-born or untimely cut off, hurried by death into a +place like that which holds the souls of the unchristened babies; +often, like them, let us hope, removed to a sphere where such things +grow finer and more fruitful, the sphere of the love of those we have +not loved enough in life.</p> + +<p>But that at best is but a place of ghosts; so let us never forget, dear +friends, how close all round lies Limbo, the Kingdom of +Might-have-been.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="IN_PRAISE_OF_OLD_HOUSES" id="IN_PRAISE_OF_OLD_HOUSES"></a>IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>My Yorkshire friend was saying that she hated being in an old house. +<i>There seemed to be other</i> people in it besides the living....</p> + +<p>These words, expressing the very reverse of what I feel, have set me +musing on my foolish passion for the Past. The Past, but the real one; +not the Past considered as a possible Present. For though I should like +to have seen ancient Athens, or Carthage according to Salambô, and +though I have pined to hear the singers of last century, I know that any +other period than this of the world's history would be detestable to +live in. For one thing—one among other instances of brutish +dulness—our ancestors knew nothing of the emotion of the past, the +rapture of old towns and houses.</p> + +<p>This emotion, at times this rapture, depends upon a number of mingled +causes; its origin is complex and subtle, like that of all things +exquisite; the flavour of certain dishes, the feel of sea or mountain +air, in which chemical peculiarities and circumstances of temperature +join with a hundred trifles, seaweed, herbs, tar, heather and so forth; +and like, more particularly, music and poetry, whose essence is so +difficult of ascertaining. And in this case, the causes that first occur +to our mind merely suggest a number more. Of these there is a principal +one, only just less important than that suggested by my Yorkshire +friend, which might be summed up thus: <i>That the action of time makes +man's works into natural objects.</i></p> + +<p>Now, with no disrespect to man, 'tis certain Nature can do more than he. +Not that she is the more intelligent of the two; on the contrary, she +often makes the grossest artistic blunders, and has, for instance, a +woeful lack of design in England, and a perfect mania for obvious +composition and deliberate picturesqueness in Italy and Argyllshire. But +Nature is greater than man because she is bigger, and can do more things +at a time. Man seems unable to attend to one point without neglecting +some other; where he has a fine fancy in melody, his harmony is apt to +be threadbare; if he succeeds with colour, he cannot manage line, and if +light and shade, then neither; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark +that whenever and wherever man has built beautiful temples, churches, +and palaces, he has been impelled to bedizen them with primary colours, +of which, in Venice and the Alhambra, time at last made something +agreeable, and time also, in Greece, has judged best to obliterate every +odious trace. Hence, in the works of man there is always a tendency to +simplify, to suppress detail, to make things clear and explain patterns +and points of view; to save trouble, thought, and material; to be +symmetrical, which means, after all, to repeat the same thing twice +over; he knows it is wrong to carve one frieze on the top of the other, +and to paint in more than one layer of paint. Of all such restrictions +Nature is superbly unconscious. She smears weather-stain on +weather-stain and lichen on lichen, never stopping to match them. She +jags off corners and edges, and of one meagre line makes fifty curves +and facets. She weaves pattern over pattern, regardless of confusion, +so that the mangiest hedgerow is richer, more subtle than all the +carpets and papers ever designed by Mr. Morris. Her one notion is <i>More, +always more</i>; whereas that of man, less likely to exceed, is a timid +<i>Enough</i>. No wonder, for has she not the chemistry of soil and sun and +moisture and wind and frost, all at her beck and call?</p> + +<p>Be it as it may, Nature does more for us than man, in the way of +pleasure and interest. And to say, therefore, that time turns the works +of man into natural objects is, therefore, saying that time gives them +infinitely more variety and charm. In making them natural objects also +time gives to man's lifeless productions the chief quality of everything +belonging to Nature—life. Compare a freshly plastered wall with one +that has been exposed to sun and rain, or a newly slated roof to one all +covered with crumbling, grey, feathery stuff, like those of the Genoese +villages, which look as if they had been thatched with olive-leaves from +off their hills. 'Tis the comparison between life and death; or, rather, +since death includes change, between something and nothing. Imagine a +tree as regular as a column, or an apple as round as a door-knob!</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>So much for the material improvements which time effects in our +surroundings. We now come to the spiritual advantages of dealing with +the past instead of the present.</p> + +<p>These begin in our earliest boy- or girl-hood. What right-minded child +of ten or twelve cares, beyond its tribute of apples, and jam, and +cricket, and guinea-pigs, for so dull a thing as the present? Why, the +present is like this schoolroom or playground, compared with Polar Seas, +Rocky Mountains, or Pacific Islands; a place for the body, not for the +soul. It all came back to me, a little while ago, when doing up for my +young friend, L.V., sundry Roman coins long mislaid in a trunk, and +which had formed my happiness at his age. Delightful things!—smooth and +bright green like certain cabbage-leaves, or of a sorry brown, rough +with rust and verdigris; but all leaving alike a perceptible portion of +themselves in the paper bag, a delectable smell of copper on one's +hands. How often had I turned you round and round betwixt finger and +thumb, trying to catch the slant of an inscription, or to get, in some +special light, the film of effaced effigy—the chin of Nero, or the +undulating, benevolent nose of Marcus Aurelius? How often have my hands +not anointed you with every conceivable mixture of oil, varnish, and +gum, rubbing you gently with silk and wool, and kid gloves, in hopes +that something ineffable might rise up on your surface! I quite +sympathised with my young friend when, having waggled and chortled over +each of them several times, he thought it necessary to overcome the +natural manly horror for kissing, and shook my hand twice, thrice, and +then once more, returning from the door.... For had they not +concentrated in their interesting verdigrised, brass-smelling smallness +something, to me, of the glory and wonder of Rome? Cæcilia Metella, the +Grotto of Egeria—a vague vision, through some twenty years' fog, of a +drive between budding hedges and dry reeds; a walk across short +anemone-starred turf; but turning into distinct remembrance of the +buying of two old pennies, one of Augustus, the other even more +interesting, owing to entire obliteration of both reverse and obverse; a +valuable coin, undoubtedly. And the Baths of Caracalla, which I can +recollect with the thick brushwood, oak scrub, ivy and lentisk, and even +baby ilexes, covering the masonry and overhanging the arches, and with +rose hedges just cut away to dig out some huge porphyry pillar—were not +their charms all concentrated in dim, delicious hopes of finding, just +where the green turf ended and the undulating expanse of purple, green +and white tessellated pavement began, some other brazen penny? And then, +in Switzerland, soon after, did I not suffer acutely, as I cleaned my +coins, from the knowledge that in this barbarous Northern place, which +the Romans had, perhaps, never come near, it was quite useless to keep +one's eyes on the ruts of roads and the gravel of paths, and +consequently almost useless to go out, or to exist; until one day I +learnt that a certain old lawyer, in a certain field, had actually dug +up Roman antiquities.... I don't know whether I ever saw them with +corporeal eyes, but certainly with those of the spirit; and I was lent +a drawing of one of them, a gold armlet, of which I insisted on having +a copy made, and sticking it up in my room....</p> + +<p>It does but little honour to our greatest living philosopher that he, +whom children will bless for free permission to bruise, burn, and cut +their bodies, and empty the sugar-bowl and jam-pot, should wish to +deprive the coming generation of all historical knowledge, of so much +joy therefore, and, let me add, of so much education. For do not tell me +that it is not education, and of the best, to enable a child to feel the +passion and poetry of life; to live, while it trudges along the dull +familiar streets, in company with dull, familiar, and often stolidly +incurious grown-up folk, in that terrible, magnificent past, in dungeons +and palaces, loving and worshipping Joan of Arc, execrating Bloody Mary, +dreaming strange impossible possibilities of what we would have said and +done for Marie Antoinette—said to her, <i>her</i> actually coming towards +us, by some stroke of magic, in that advancing carriage! There is enough +in afterlife, God knows, to teach us <i>not to be heroic</i>; 'tis just as +well that, as children, we learn a lingering liking for the quality; +'tis as important, perhaps, as learning that our tissues consume +carbon, if they do so. I can speak very fervently of the enormous value +for happiness of such an historical habit of mind.</p> + +<p>Such a habit transcends altogether, in its power of filling one's life, +the merely artistic and literary habit. For, after all, painting, +architecture, music, poetry, are things which touch us in a very +intermittent way. I would compare this historic habit rather to the +capacity of deriving pleasure from nature, not merely through the eye, +but through all the senses; and largely, doubtless, through those +obscure perceptions which make certain kinds of weather, air, &c., an +actual tonic, nay food, for the body. To this alone would I place my +<i>historical habit</i> in the second rank. For, as the sensitiveness to +nature means supplementing our physical life by the life of the air and +the sun, the clouds and waters, so does this historic habit mean +supplementing our present life by a life in the past; a life larger, +richer than our own, multiplying our emotions by those of the dead....</p> + +<p>I am no longer speaking of our passions for Joan of Arc and Marie +Antoinette, which disappear with our childhood; I am speaking of a +peculiar sense, ineffable, indescribable, but which every one knows +again who has once had it, and which to many of us has grown into a +cherished habit—the sense of being companioned by the past, of being in +a place warmed for our living by the lives of others. To me, as I +started with saying, the reverse of this is almost painful; and I know +few things more odious than the chilly, draughty emptiness of a place +without a history. For this reason America, save what may remain of +Hawthorne's New England and Irving's New York, never tempts my vagabond +fancy. Nature can scarcely afford beauty wherewith to compensate for +living in block-tin shanties or brand new palaces. How different if we +find ourselves in some city, nay village, rendered habitable for our +soul by the previous dwelling therein of others, of souls! Here the +streets are never empty; and, surrounded by that faceless crowd of +ghosts, one feels a right to walk about, being invited by them, instead +of rushing along on one's errands among a throng of other wretched +living creatures who are blocked by us and block us in their turn.</p> + +<p>How convey this sense? I do not mean that if I walk through old Paris or +through Rome my thoughts revolve on Louis XI. or Julius Cæsar. Nothing +could be further from the fact. Indeed the charm of the thing is that +one feels oneself accompanied not by this or that magnifico of the past +(whom of course one would never have been introduced to), but by a crowd +of nameless creatures; the daily life, common joy, suffering, heroism of +the past. Nay, there is something more subtle than this: the whole place +(how shall I explain it?) becomes a sort of living something. Thus, when +I hurry (for one must needs hurry through Venetian narrowness) between +the pink and lilac houses, with faded shutters and here and there a +shred of tracery; now turning a sharp corner before the locksmith's or +the chestnut-roaster's; now hearing my steps lonely between high walls +broken by a Gothic doorway; now crossing some smooth-paved little square +with its sculptured well and balconied palaces, I feel, I say, walking +day after day through these streets, that I am in contact with a whole +living, breathing thing, full of habits of life, of suppressed words; a +sort of odd, mysterious, mythical, but very real creature; as if, in +the dark, I stretched out my hand and met something (but without any +fear), something absolutely indefinable in shape and kind, but warm, +alive. This changes solitude in unknown places into the reverse of +solitude and strangeness. I remember walking thus along the bastions +under the bishop's palace at Laon, the great stone cows peering down +from the belfry above, with a sense of inexpressible familiarity and +peace. And, strange to say, this historic habit makes us familiar also +with places where we have never been. How well, for instance, do I not +know Dinant and Bouvines, rival cities on the Meuse (topography and +detail equally fantastic); and how I sometimes long, as with +homesickness, for a scramble among the stones and grass and +chandelier-like asphodels of Agrigentum, Veii, Collatium! Why, to one +minded like myself, a map, and even the names of stations in a +time-table, are full of possible delight.</p> + +<p>And sometimes it rises to rapture. This time, eight years ago, I was +fretting my soul away, ill, exiled away from home, forbidden all work, +in the south of Spain. At Granada for three dreary weeks it rained +without ceasing, till the hill of the Alhambra became filled with the +babbling of streams, and the town was almost cut off by a sea of mud. +Between the showers one rushed up into the damp gardens of the +Generalife, or into the Alhambra, to be imprisoned for hours in its +desolate halls, while the rain splashed down into the courts. My +sitting-room had five doors, four of glass; and the snow lay thick on +the mountains. My few books had been read long ago; there remained to +spell through a Spanish tome on the rebellion of the Alpujarras, whose +Moorish leader, having committed every crime, finally went to heaven for +spitting on the Koran on his death-bed. Letters from home were +perpetually lost, or took a week to come. It seemed as if the world had +quite unlearned every single trick that had ever given me pleasure. Yet, +in these dreary weeks, there was one happy morning.</p> + +<p>It was the anniversary, worse luck to it, of the Conquest of Granada +from the Moors. We got seats in the chapel of the Catholic kings, and +watched a gentleman in a high hat (which he kept on in church) and +swallow tails, carry the banner of Castile and Aragon, in the presence +of the archbishop and chapter, some mediæval pages, two trumpeters with +pigtails, and an array of soldiers. A paltry ceremony enough. But before +it began, and while mass was still going on, there came to me for a few +brief moments that happiness unknown for so many, many months, that +beloved historic emotion.</p> + +<p>My eyes were wandering round the chapel, up the sheaves of the pilasters +to the gilded spandrils, round the altars covered with gibbering +sculpture, and down again among the crowd kneeling on the matted +floor—women in veils, men with scarlet cloak-lining over the shoulder, +here and there the shaven head and pigtail of the bull-ring. In the +middle of it all, on their marble beds, lay the effigies of Ferdinand +and Isabella, with folded hands and rigid feet, four crimson banners of +the Moors overhead. The crowd was pouring in from the cathedral, and +bevies of priests, and scarlet choir-boys led by their fiddler. The +organ, above the chants, was running through vague mazes. I felt it +approaching and stealing over me, that curious emotion felt before in +such different places: walking up and down, one day, in the church of +Lamballe in Brittany; seated, another time, in the porch at Ely. And +then it possessed me completely, raising one into a sort of beatitude. +This kind of rapture is not easy to describe. No rare feeling is. But I +would warn you from thinking that in such solemn moments there sweeps +across the brain a paltry pageant, a Lord Mayor's Show of bygone things, +like the cavalcades of future heroes who descend from frescoed or +sculptured wall at the bidding of Ariosto's wizards and Spenser's +fairies. This is something infinitely more potent and subtle; and like +all strong intellectual emotions, it is compounded of many and various +elements, and has its origin far down in mysterious depths of our +nature; and it arises overwhelmingly from many springs, filling us with +the throb of vague passions welling from our most vital parts. There is +in it no possession of any definite portion of bygone times; but a +yearning expectancy, a sense of the near presence, as it were, of the +past; or, rather, of a sudden capacity in ourselves of apprehending the +past which looms all round.</p> + +<p>For a few moments thus, in that chapel before the tombs of the Catholic +kings; in the churches of Bruges and Innsbruck at the same time (for +such emotion gives strange possibilities of simultaneous presence in +various places); with the gold pomegranate flower of the badges, and the +crimson tassels of the Moorish standards before my eyes; also the iron +knights who watch round Maximilian's grave—for a moment while the +priests were chanting and the organs quavering, the life of to-day +seemed to reel and vanish, and my mind to be swept along the dark and +gleaming whirlpools of the past....</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>Catholic kings, Moorish banners, wrought-iron statues of paladins; these +are great things, and not at all what I had intended to speak of when I +set out to explain why old houses, which give my Yorkshire friend the +creeps, seem to my feelings so far more peaceful and familiar.</p> + +<p>Yes, it is just because the past is somehow more companionable, warmer, +more full of flavour, than the present, that I love all old houses; but +best of all such as are solitary in the country, isolated both from new +surroundings, and from such alterations as contact with the world's +hurry almost always brings. It certainly is no question of beauty. The +houses along Chelsea embankment are more beautiful, and some of them a +great deal more picturesque than that Worcestershire rectory to which I +always long to return: the long brick house on its terraced river-bank, +the overladen plum-trees on one side, and the funereally prosperous +churchyard yews on the other; and with corridors and staircases hung +with stained, frameless Bolognese nakedness, Judgments of Paris, +Venuses, Carità Romanas, shipped over cheap by some bear-leading +parson-tutor of the eighteenth century. Nor are they architectural, +those brick and timber cottages all round, sinking (one might think) +into the rich, damp soil. But they have a mellowness corresponding to +that of the warm, wet, fruitful land, and due to the untroubled, warm +brooding over by the past. And what is architecture to that? As to these +Italian ones, which my soul loveth most, they have even less of what you +would call beauty; at most such grace of projecting window-grating or +buttressed side as the South gives its buildings; and such colour, or +rather discolouring, as a comparatively small number of years will +bring.</p> + +<p>It kept revolving in my mind, this question of old houses and their +charm, as I was sitting waiting for a tram one afternoon, in the +church-porch of Pieve a Ripoli, a hamlet about two miles outside the +south-east gate of Florence. That church porch is like the baldacchino +over certain Roman high altars, or, more humbly, like a very large +fourpost bedstead. On the one hand was a hillside of purple and brown +scrub and dark cypresses fringed against the moist, moving grey sky; on +the other, some old, bare, mulberry-trees, a hedge of russet sloe, +closing in wintry fields; and, more particularly, next the porch, an +insignificant house, with blistered green shutters at irregular +intervals in the stained whitewash, a big green door, and a little +coat-of-arms—the three Strozzi half-moons—clapped on to the sharp +corner. I sat there, among the tombstones of the porch, and wondered why +I loved this house: and why it would remain, as I knew it must, a +landmark in my memory. Yes, the charm must lie in the knowledge of the +many creatures who have lived in this house, the many things that have +been done and felt.</p> + +<p>The creatures who have lived here, the things which have been felt and +done.... But those things felt and done, were they not mainly trivial, +base; at best nowise uncommon, and such as must be going on in every new +house all around? People worked and shirked their work, endured, +fretted, suffered somewhat, and amused themselves a little; were loving, +unkind, neglected and neglectful, and died, some too soon, some too +late. That is human life, and as such doubtless important. But all that +goes on to-day just the same; and there is no reason why that former +life should have been more interesting than that these people, Argenta +Cavallesi and Vincenzio Grazzini, buried at my feet, should have had +bigger or better made souls and bodies than I or my friends. Indeed, in +sundry ways, and owing to the narrowness of life and thought, the calmer +acceptance of coarse or cruel things, I incline to think that they were +less interesting, those men and women of the past, whose rustling +dresses fill old houses with fantastic sounds. They had, some few of +them, their great art, great aims, feelings, struggles; but the majority +were of the earth, and intolerably earthy. 'Tis their clothes' ghosts +that haunt us, not their own.</p> + +<p>So why should the past be charming? Perhaps merely because of its being +the one free place for our imagination. For, as to the future, it is +either empty or filled only with the cast shadows of ourselves and our +various machineries. The past is the unreal and the yet visible; it has +the fascination of the distant hills, the valleys seen from above; the +unreal, but the unreal whose unreality, unlike that of the unreal things +with which we cram the present, can never be forced on us. <i>There is +more behind; there may be anything.</i> This sense which makes us in love +with all intricacies of things and feelings, roads which turn, views +behind views, trees behind trees, makes the past so rich in +possibilities.... An ordinary looking priest passes by, rings at the +door of the presbytery, and enters. Those who lived there, in that old +stained house with the Strozzi escutcheon, opposite the five bare +mulberry-trees, were doubtless as like as may be to this man who lives +there in the present. Quite true; and yet there creeps up the sense that +<i>they</i> lived in the past.</p> + +<p>For there is no end to the deceits of the past; we protest that we know +it is cozening us, and it continues to cozen us just as much. Reading +over Browning's <i>Galuppi</i> lately, it struck me that this dead world of +vanity was no more charming or poetical than the one we live in, when it +also was alive; and that those ladies, Mrs. X., Countess Y., and Lady +Z., of whose <i>toilettes</i> at last night's ball that old gossip P—— had +been giving us details throughout dinner, will in their turn, if any one +care, be just as charming, as dainty, and elegiac as those other women +who sat by while Galuppi "played toccatas stately at the clavichord." +Their dresses, should they hang for a century or so, will emit a perfume +as frail, and sad, and heady; their wardrobe filled with such dust as +makes tears come into one's eyes, from no mechanical reason.</p> + +<p>"Was a lady <i>such</i> a lady?" They will say that of ours also. And, in +recognising this, we recognise how trumpery, flat, stale and +unprofitable were those ladies of the past. It is not they who make the +past charming, but the past that makes them. Time has wonderful +cosmetics for its favoured ones; and if it brings white hairs and +wrinkles to the realities, how much does it not heighten the bloom, +brighten the eyes and hair of those who survive in our imagination!</p> + +<p>And thus, somewhat irrelevantly, concludes my chapter in praise of old +houses.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_LIE_OF_THE_LAND" id="THE_LIE_OF_THE_LAND"></a>THE LIE OF THE LAND</h3> + +<h4>NOTES ABOUT LANDSCAPES</h4> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>I want to talk about the something which makes the real, individual +landscape—the landscape one actually sees with the eyes of the body and +the eyes of the spirit—the <i>landscape you cannot describe</i>.</p> + +<p>That is the drawback of my subject—that it just happens to elude all +literary treatment, and yet it must be treated. There is not even a +single word or phrase to label it, and I have had to call it, in sheer +despair, <i>the lie of the land</i>: it is an unnamed mystery into which +various things enter, and I feel as if I ought to explain myself by dumb +show. It will serve at any rate as an object-lesson in the extreme +one-sidedness of language and a protest against human silence about the +things it likes best.</p> + +<p>Of outdoor things words can of course tell us some important points: +colour, for instance, and light, and somewhat of their gradations and +relations. And an adjective, a metaphor, may evoke an entire atmospheric +effect, paint us a sunset or a star-lit night. But the far subtler and +more individual relations of visible line defy expression: no poet or +prose writer can give you the tilt of a roof, the undulation of a field, +the bend of a road. Yet these are the things in landscape which +constitute its individuality and which reach home to our feelings.</p> + +<p>For colour and light are variable—nay, more, they are relative. The +same tract will be green in connection with one sort of sky, blue with +another, and yellow with a third. We may be disappointed when the woods, +which we had seen as vague, moss-like blue before the sun had overtopped +the hills, become at midday a mere vast lettuce-bed. We should be much +more than disappointed, we should doubt of our senses if we found on +going to our window that it looked down upon outlines of hills, upon +precipices, ledges, knolls, or flat expanses, different from those we +had seen the previous day or the previous year. Thus the unvarying items +of a landscape happen to be those for which precise words cannot be +found. Briefly, we praise colour, but we actually <i>live</i> in the +indescribable thing which I must call the <i>lie of the land</i>. The lie of +the land means walking or climbing, shelter or bleakness; it means the +corner where we dread a boring neighbour, the bend round which we have +watched some one depart, the stretch of road which seemed to lead us +away out of captivity. Yes, <i>lie of the land</i> is what has mattered to us +since we were children, to our fathers and remotest ancestors; and its +perception, the instinctive preference for one kind rather than another, +is among the obscure things inherited with our blood, and making up the +stuff of our souls. For how else explain the strange powers which +different shapes of the earth's surface have over different individuals; +the sudden pleasure, as of the sight of an old friend, the pang of +pathos which we may all receive in a scene which is new, without +memories, and so unlike everything familiar as to be almost without +associations?</p> + +<p>The <i>lie of the land</i> has therefore an importance in art, or if it have +not, ought to have, quite independent of pleasantness of line or of +anything merely visual. An immense charm consists in the fact that the +mind can walk about in a landscape. The delight at the beauty which is +seen is heightened by the anticipation of further unseen beauty; by the +sense of exploring the unknown; and to our present pleasure before a +painted landscape is added the pleasure we have been storing up during +years of intercourse, if I may use this word, with so many real ones.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>For there is such a thing as intercourse with fields and trees and +skies, with the windings of road and water and hedge, in our everyday, +ordinary life. And a terrible thing for us all if there were not; if our +lives were not full of such various commerce, of pleasure, curiosity, +and gratitude, of kindly introduction of friend by friend, quite apart +from the commerce with other human beings. Indeed, one reason why the +modern rectangular town (built at one go for the convenience of running +omnibuses and suppressing riots) fills our soul with bitterness and +dryness, is surely that this ill-conditioned convenient thing can give +us only its own poor, paltry presence, introducing our eye and fancy +neither to further details of itself, nor to other places and people, +past or distant.</p> + +<p>Words can just barely indicate the charm of this <i>other place other +time</i> enriching of the present impression. Words cannot in the least, I +think, render that other suggestion contained in <i>The Lie of the Land</i>, +the suggestion of the possibility of a delightful walk. What walks have +we not taken, leaving sacred personages and profane, not to speak of +allegoric ones, far behind in the backgrounds of the old Tuscans, +Umbrians, and Venetians! Up Benozzo's hillside woods of cypress and +pine, smelling of myrrh and sweet-briar, over Perugino's green rising +grounds, towards those slender, scant-leaved trees, straight-stemmed +acacias and elms, by the water in the cool, blue evening valley. Best of +all, have not Giorgione and Titian, Palma and Bonifazio, and the dear +imitative people labelled <i>Venetian school</i>, led us between the hedges +russet already with the ripening of the season and hour into those +fields where the sheep are nibbling, under the twilight of the big +brown trees, to where some pale blue alp closes in the slopes and the +valleys?</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>It is a pity that the landscape painters of our day—I mean those French +or French taught, whose methods are really new—tend to neglect <i>The Lie +of the Land</i>. Some of them, I fear, deliberately avoid it as +old-fashioned—what they call obvious—as interfering with their aim of +interesting by the mere power of vision and skill in laying on the +paint. Be this as it may, their innovations inevitably lead them away +from all research of what we may call <i>topographical</i> charm, for what +they have added to art is the perfection of very changeable conditions +of light and atmosphere, of extremely fleeting accidents of colour. One +would indeed be glad to open one's window on the fairyland of iridescent +misty capes, of vibrating skies and sparkling seas of Monsieur Claude +Monet; still more to stand at the close of an autumn day watching the +light fogs rise along the fields, mingling with delicate pinkish mist of +the bare poplar rows against the green of the first sprouts of corn. +But I am not sure that the straight line of sea and shore would be +interesting at any other moment of the day; and the poplar rows and +cornfields would very likely be drearily dull until sunset. The moment, +like Faust's second of perfect bliss, is such as should be made +immortal, but the place one would rather not see again. Yet Monsieur +Monet is the one of his school who shows most care for the scene he is +painting. The others, even the great ones—men like Pissarro and Sisley, +who have shown us so many delightful things in the details of even the +dull French foliage, even the dull midday sky—the other <i>modern ones</i> +make one long to pull up their umbrella and easel and carry them on—not +very far surely—to some spot where the road made a bend, the embankment +had a gap, the water a swirl; for we would not be so old-fashioned as to +request that the country might have a few undulations.... Of course it +was very dull of our ancestors—particularly of Clive Newcome's +day—always to paint a panorama with whole ranges of hills, miles of +river, and as many cities as possible; and even our pleasure in Turner's +large landscapes is spoilt by their being the sort of thing people +would drive for miles or climb for hours to enjoy, what our grandfathers +in post-chaises called a <i>noble fine prospect</i>. All that had to be got +rid of, like the contemporaneous literary descriptions: "A smiling +valley proceeded from south-east to north-west; an amphitheatre of +cliffs bounding it on the right hand; while to the left a magnificent +waterfall leapt from a rock three hundred feet in height and expanded +into a noble natural basin of granite some fifty yards in diameter," &c. +&c. The British classics, thus busy with compass, measuring-rod and +level, thus anxious to enable the reader to reconstruct their landscape +on paste-board, had no time of course to notice trifling matters: how, +for instance,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The woods are round us, heaped and dim;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">From slab to slab how it slips and springs</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The thread of water, single and slim,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Through the ravage some torrent brings.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Nor could the panoramic painter of the earlier nineteenth century pay +much attention to mere alternations of light while absorbed in his great +"Distant View of Jerusalem and Madagascar"; indeed, he could afford to +move off only when it began to rain very hard.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>The impressionist painters represent the reaction against this dignified +and also more stolid school of landscape; they have seen, or are still +seeing, all the things which other men did not see. And here I may +remark that one of the most important items of this seeing is exactly +the fact that in many cases we can <i>see</i> only very little. The +impressionists have been scoffed at for painting rocks which might be +chimney-stacks, and flowering hedges which might be foaming brooks; +plains also which might be hills, and <i>vice versâ</i>, and described as +wretches, disrespectful to natural objects, which, we are told, reveal +new beauties at every glance. But is it more respectful to natural +objects to put a drawing-screen behind a willow-bush and copy its +minutest detail of branch and trunk, than to paint that same willow, a +mere mist of glorious orange, as we see it flame against the hillside +confusion of mauve, and russet and pinkish sereness? I am glad to have +brought in that word <i>confusion</i>: the modern school of landscape has +done a great and pious thing in reinstating the complexity, the mystery, +the confusion of Nature's effects; Nature, which differs from the paltry +work of man just in this, that she does not thin out, make clear and +symmetrical for the easier appreciation of foolish persons, but packs +effect upon effect, in space even as in time, one close upon the other, +leaf upon leaf, branch upon branch, tree upon tree, colour upon colour, +a mystery of beauty wrapped in beauty, without the faintest concern +whether it would not be better to say "this is really a river," or, +"that is really a tree." "But," answer the critics with much +superiority, "art should not be the mere copying of Nature; surely there +is already enough of Nature herself; art should be the expression of +man's delight in Nature's shows." Well, Nature shows a great many things +which are not unchanging and not by any means unperplexing; she shows +them at least to those who will see, see what is really there to be +seen; and she will show them, thanks to our brave impressionists, to all +men henceforth who have eyes and a heart. And here comes our debt to +these great painters: what a number of effects, modest and exquisite, or +bizarre and magnificent, they will have taught us to look out for; what +beauty and poetry in humdrum scenery, what perfect loveliness even among +sordidness and squalor: tints as of dove's breasts in city mud, enamel +splendours in heaps of furnace refuse, mysterious magnificence, visions +of Venice at night, of Eblis palace, of I know not what, in wet gaslit +nights, in looming lit-up factories. Nay, leaving that alone, since 'tis +better, perhaps, that we should not enjoy anything connected with grime +and misery and ugliness—how much have not these men added to the +delight of our walks and rides; revealing to us, among other things, the +supreme beauty of winter colouring, the harmony of purple, blue, slate, +brown, pink, and russet, of tints and compounds of tints without a name, +of bare hedgerows and leafless trees, sere grass and mist-veiled waters; +compared with which spring is but raw, summer dull, and autumn +positively ostentatious in her gala suit of tawny and yellow.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, indeed, these modern painters have done more for us by the +beauty they have taught us to see in Nature than by the beauty they have +actually put before us in their pictures; if I except some winter +landscapes of Monet's and the wonderful water-colours of Mr. Brabazon, +whose exquisite sense of form and knowledge of drawing have enabled him, +in rapidest sketches of rapidly passing effects, to indicate the +structure of hills and valleys, the shape of clouds, in the mere wash of +colour, even as Nature indicates them herself. With such exceptions as +these, and the beautiful mysteries of Mr. Whistler, there is +undoubtedly, in recent landscape, a preoccupation of technical methods +and an indifference to choice of subject, above all, a degree of +insistence on what is <i>actually seen</i> which leads one to suspect that +the impressionists represent rather a necessary phase in the art, than a +definite achievement, in the same manner as the Renaissance painters who +gave themselves up to the study of perspective and anatomy. This +terrible over-importance of the act of vision is doubtless the +preparation for a new kind of landscape, which will employ these +arduously acquired facts of colour and light, this restlessly renovated +technique, in the service of a new kind of sentiment and imagination, +differing from that of previous ages even as the sentiment and +imagination of Browning differs from that of his great predecessors. But +it is probably necessary that the world at large, as well as the +artists, should be familiarised with the new facts, the new methods of +impressionism, before such facts and methods can find their significance +and achievement; even as in the Renaissance people had to recognise the +realities of perspective and anatomy before they could enjoy an art +which attained beauty through this means; it would have been no use +showing Sixtine chapels to the contemporaries of Giotto. There is at +present a certain lack of enjoyable quality, a lack of soul appealing to +soul, in the new school of landscape. But where there is a faithful, +reverent eye, a subtle hand, a soul cannot be far round the corner. And +we may hope that, if we be as sincere and willing as themselves, our +Pollaiolos and Mantegnas of the impressionist school, discoverers of new +subtleties of colour and light, will be duly succeeded by modern +Michelangelos and Titians, who will receive all the science ready for +use, and bid it fetch and carry and build new wonderful things for the +pleasure of their soul and of ours.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>And mentioning Titian, brings to my memory a remark once made to me on +one of those washed away, rubbly hills, cypresses and pines holding the +earth together, which the old Tuscans drew so very often. The remark, +namely, that some of the charm of the old masters' landscapes is due to +the very reverse of what sometimes worries one in modern work, to the +notion which these backgrounds give at first—bits of valley, outlines +of hills, distant views of towered villages, of having been done without +trouble, almost from memory, till you discover that your Titian has +modelled his blue valley into delicate blue ridges; and your Piero della +Francesca indicated the precise structure of his pale, bony mountains. +Add to this, to the old men's credit, that, as I said, they knew <i>the +lie of the land</i>, they gave us landscapes in which our fancy, our +memories, could walk.</p> + +<p>How large a share such fancy and such memories have in the life of art, +people can scarcely realise. Nay, such is the habit of thinking of the +picture, statue, or poem, as a complete and vital thing apart from the +mind which perceives it, that the expression <i>life of art</i> is sure to be +interpreted as life of various schools of art: thus, the life of art +developed from the type of Phidias to that of Praxiteles, and so forth. +But in the broader, truer sense, the life of all art goes on in the mind +and heart, not merely of those who make the work, but of those who see +and read it. Nay, is not <i>the</i> work, the real one, a certain particular +state of feeling, a pattern woven of new perceptions and impressions and +of old memories and feelings, which the picture, the statue or poem, +awakens, different in each different individual? 'Tis a thought perhaps +annoying to those who have slaved seven years over a particular outline +of muscles, a particular colour of grass, or the cadence of a particular +sentence. What! all this to be refused finality, to be disintegrated by +the feelings and fancies of the man who looks at the picture, or reads +the book, heaven knows how carelessly besides? Well, if not +disintegrated, would you prefer it to be unassimilated? Do you wish your +picture, statue or poem to remain whole as you made it? Place it +permanently in front of a mirror; consign it to the memory of a parrot; +or, if you are musician, sing your song, expression and all, down a +phonograph. You cannot get from the poor human soul, that living +microcosm of changing impressions, the thorough, wholesale appreciation +which you want.</p> + + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p>This same power of sentiment and fancy, that is to say, of association, +enables us to carry about, like a verse or a tune, whole mountain +ranges, valleys, rivers and lakes, things in appearance the least easy +to remove from their place. As some persons are never unattended by a +melody; so others, and among them your humble servant, have always for +their thoughts and feelings, an additional background besides the one +which happens to be visible behind their head and shoulders. By this +means I am usually in two places at a time, sometimes in several very +distant ones within a few seconds.</p> + +<p>It is extraordinary how much of my soul seems to cling to certain +peculiarities of what I have called <i>lie of the land</i>, undulations, +bends of rivers, straightenings and snakings of road; how much of one's +past life, sensations, hopes, wishes, words, has got entangled in the +little familiar sprigs, grasses and moss. The order of time and space is +sometimes utterly subverted; thus, last autumn, in a corner of +Argyllshire, I seemed suddenly cut off from everything in the British +Isles, and reunited to the life I used to lead hundreds of miles away, +years ago in the high Apennines, merely because of the minute starry +moss under foot and the bubble of brooks in my ears.</p> + +<p>Nay, the power of outdoor things, their mysterious affinities, can +change the values even of what has been and what has not been, can make +one live for a moment in places which have never existed save in the +fancy. Have I not found myself suddenly taken back to certain woods +which I loved in my childhood simply because I had halted before a great +isolated fir with hanging branches, a single fir shading a circle of +soft green turf, and watched the rabbits sitting, like round grey +stones suddenly flashing into white tails and movement? Woods where? I +have not the faintest notion. Perhaps only woods I imagined my father +must be shooting in when I was a baby, woods which I made up out of +Christmas trees, moss and dead rabbits, woods I had heard of in fairy +tales....</p> + +<p>Such are some of the relations of landscape and sentiments, a correct +notion of which is necessary before it is possible to consider the best +manner of <i>representing landscape with words</i>; a subject to which none +of my readers, I think, nor myself, have at present the smallest desire +to pass on.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="TUSCAN_MIDSUMMER_MAGIC" id="TUSCAN_MIDSUMMER_MAGIC"></a>TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>"Then," I said, "you decline to tell me about the Three Kings, when +their procession wound round and round these hillocks: all the little +wooden horses with golden bridles and velvet holsters, out of the toy +boxes; and the camelopard, and the monkeys and the lynx, and the little +doll pages blowing toy trumpets. And still, I know it happened here, +because I recognise the place from the pictures: the hillocks all washed +away into breasts like those of Diana of the Ephesians, and the rows of +cypresses and spruce pines—also out of the toy box. I know it happened +in this very place, because Benozzo Gozzoli painted it all at the time; +and you were already about the place, I presume?"</p> + +<p>I knew that by her dress, but I did not like to allude to its being +old-fashioned. It was the sort of thing, muslin all embroidered with +little nosegays of myrtle and yellow broom, and tied into odd bunches at +the elbows and waist, which they wore in the days of Botticelli's +<i>Spring</i>; and on her head she had a garland of eglantine and palm-shaped +hellebore leaves which was quite unmistakable.</p> + +<p>The nymph Terzollina (for of course she was the tutelary divinity of the +narrow valley behind the great Medicean Villa) merely shook her head and +shifted one of her bare feet, on which she was seated under a cypress +tree, and went on threading the yellow broom flowers.</p> + +<p>"At all events, you might tell me something about the Magnificent +Lorenzo," I went on, impatient at her obstinacy. "You know quite well +that he used to come and court you here, and make verses most likely."</p> + +<p>The exasperating goddess raised her thin, brown face, with the sharp +squirrel's teeth and the glittering goat's eyes. Very pretty I thought +her, though undoubtedly a little <i>passée</i>, like all the symbolical +ladies of her set. She plucked at a clump of dry peppermint, perfuming +the hot air as she crushed it, and then looked up, with a sly, shy +little peasant-girl's look, which was absurd in a lady so mature and so +elaborately adorned. Then, in a crooning voice, she began to recite some +stanzas in <i>ottava rima</i>, as follows:</p> + +<p>"The house where the good old Knight Gualando hid away the little +Princess, was itself hidden in this hidden valley. It was small and +quite white, with great iron bars to the windows. In front was a long +piece of greensward, starred with white clover, and behind and in front, +to where the pines and cypresses began ran strips of cornfield. It was +remote from all the pomps of life; and when the cuckoo had become silent +and the nightingales had cracked their voices, the only sound was the +coo of the wood-pigeons, the babble of the stream, and the twitter of +the young larks.</p> + +<p>"The old Knight Gualando had hidden his bright armour in an oaken chest; +and went to the distant town every day dressed in the blue smock of a +peasant, and driving a donkey before him. Thence he returned with +delicates for the little Princess and with news of the wicked usurper; +nor did any one suspect who he was, or dream of his hiding-place.</p> + +<p>"During his absence the little Princess, whose name was Fiordispina, +used to string beads through the hot hours when the sun smote through +the trees, and the green corn ridges began to take a faint gilding in +their silveriness, as the Princess remembered it in a picture in the +Castle Chapel, where the sun was represented by a big embossed ball of +gold, projecting from the picture, which she was allowed to stroke on +holidays.</p> + +<p>"In the evening, when the sky turned pearl white, and a breeze rustled +through the pines and cypresses which made a little black fringe on the +hill-top and a little patch of feathery velvet pile on the slopes, the +little Princess would come forth, and ramble about in her peasant's +frock, her fair face stained browner by the sun than by any walnut +juice. She would climb the hill, and sniff the scent of the sun-warmed +resin, and the sweetness of the yellow broom. It spread all over the +hills, and the king, her father, had not possessed so many ells of cloth +of gold.</p> + +<p>"But one evening she wandered further than usual, and saw on a bank, at +the edge of a cornfield, five big white lilies blowing. She went back +home and fetched the golden scissors from her work-bag, and cut off one +of the lilies. On the next day she came again and cut another until she +had cut them all.</p> + +<p>"But it happened that an old witch was staying in that neighbourhood, +gathering herbs among the hills. She had taken note of the five lilies, +because she disliked them on account of their being white; and she +remarked that one of them had been cut off; then another, then another. +She hated people who like lilies. When she found the fifth lily gone, +she wondered greatly, and climbed on the ridge, and looked at their +stalks where they were cut. She was a wise woman, who knew many things. +So she laid her finger upon the cut stalk, and said, 'This has not been +cut with iron shears'; and she laid her lip against the cut stalk, and +felt that it had been cut with gold shears, for gold cuts like nothing +else.</p> + +<p>"'Oho!' said the old witch—'where there are gold scissors, there must +be gold work-bags; and where there are gold work-bags, there must be +little Princesses.'"</p> + +<p>"Well, and then?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh then, nothing at all," answered the Nymph Terzollina beloved by the +Magnificent Lorenzo, who had seen the procession of the Three Kings. +"Good evening to you."</p> + +<p>And where her white muslin dress, embroidered with nosegays of broom and +myrtle, had been spread on the dry grass and crushed mint, there was +only, beneath the toy cypresses, a bush of white-starred myrtle and a +tuft of belated yellow broom.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>One must have leisure to converse with goddesses; and certainly, during +a summer in Tuscany, when folk are scattered in their country houses, +and are disinclined to move out of hammock or off shaded bench, there +are not many other persons to talk with.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, during those weeks of cloudless summer, natural +objects vie with each other in giving one amateur representations. +Things look their most unexpected, masquerade as other things, get queer +unintelligible allegoric meanings, leaving you to guess what it all +means, a constant dumb crambo of trees, flowers, animals, houses, and +moonlight.</p> + +<p>The moon, particularly, is continually <i>en scène</i>, as if to take the +place of the fireflies, which last only so long as the corn is in the +ear, gradually getting extinguished and trailing about, humble helpless +moths with a pale phosphorescence in their tail, in the grass and in the +curtains. The moon takes their place; the moon which, in an Italian +summer, seems to be full for three weeks out of the four.</p> + +<p>One evening the performance was given by the moon and the corn-sheaves, +assisted by minor actors such as crickets, downy owls, and +vine-garlands. The oats, which had been of such exquisite delicacy of +green, had just been reaped in the field beyond our garden and were now +stacked up. Suspecting one of the usual performances, I went after +dinner to the upper garden-gate, and looked through the bars. There it +was, the familiar, elemental witchery. The moon was nearly full, +blurring the stars, steeping the sky and earth in pale blue mist, which +seemed somehow to be the visible falling dew. It left a certain +greenness to the broad grass path, a vague yellow to the unsickled +wheat; and threw upon the sheaves of oats the shadows of festooned vine +garlands. Those sheaves, or stooks—who can describe their metamorphose? +Palest yellow on the pale stubbly ground, they were frosted by the +moonbeams in their crisp fringe of ears, and in the shining straws +projecting here and there. Straws, ears? You would never have guessed +that they were made of anything so mundane. They sat there, propped +against the trees, between the pools of light and the shadows, while the +crickets trilled their cool, shrill song; sat solemnly with an air of +expectation, calling to me, frightening me. And one in particular, with +a great additional bunch on his head, cut by a shadow, was oddly +unaccountable and terrible. After a minute I had to slink away, back +into the garden, like an intruder.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>There are performances also in broad daylight, and then human beings are +admitted as supernumeraries. Such was a certain cattle fair, up the +valley of the Mugnone.</p> + +<p>The beasts were being sold on a piece of rough, freshly reaped ground, +lying between the high road and the river bed, empty of waters, but full +among its shingle of myrrh-scented yellow herbage. The oxen were mostly +of the white Tuscan breeds (those of Romagna are smaller but more +spirited, and of a delicate grey) only their thighs slightly browned; +the scarlet cloth neck-fringes set off, like a garland of geranium, +against the perfect milkiness of backs and necks. They looked, indeed, +these gigantic creatures, as if moulded out of whipped cream or cream +cheese; suggesting no strength, and even no resistance to the touch, +with their smooth surface here and there packed into minute wrinkles, +exactly like the little <i>stracchini</i> cheeses. This impalpable whiteness +of the beasts suited their perfect tameness, passiveness, letting +themselves be led about with great noiseless strides over the stubbly +ridges and up the steep banks; and hustled together, flank against +flank, horns interlaced with horns, without even a sound or movement of +astonishment or disobedience. Never a low or a moo; never a glance round +of their big, long-lashed, blue-brown eyes. Their big jaws move like +millstones, their long tufted tails switch monotonously like pendulums.</p> + +<p>Around them circle peasants, measuring them with the eye, prodding them +with the finger, pulling them by the horns. And every now and then one +of the red-faced men, butchers mainly, who act as go-betweens, +dramatically throws his arms round the neck of some recalcitrant dealer +or buyer, leads him aside, whispering with a gesture like Judas's kiss; +or he clasps together the red hands and arms of contracting parties, +silencing their objections, forcing them to do business. The contrast is +curious between these hot, excited, yelling, jostling human beings, +above whose screaming <i>Dio Canes!</i> and <i>Dio Ladros!</i> the cry of the +iced-water seller recurs monotonously and the silent, impassive +bullocks, white, unreal, inaudible; so still and huge, indeed, that, +seen from above, they look like an encampment, their white flanks like +so much spread canvas in the sunshine. And from a little distance, +against the hillside beyond the river, the already bought yokes of +bullocks look, tethered in a grove of cypresses, like some old mediæval +allegory—an allegory, as usual, nobody knows of what.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>Another performance was that of the woods of Lecceto, and the hermitage +of the same name. You will find them on the map of the district of +Siena; but I doubt very much whether you will find them on the surface +of the real globe, for I suspect them to be a piece of midsummer magic +and nothing more. They had been for years to me among the number (we all +have such) of things familiar but inaccessible; or rather things whose +inaccessibility—due to no conceivable cause—is an essential quality of +their existence. Every now and then from one of the hills you get a +glimpse of the square red tower, massive and battlemented, rising among +the grey of its ilexes, beckoning one across a ridge or two and a +valley; then disappearing again, engulfed in the oak woods, green in +summer, copper-coloured in winter; to reappear, but on the side you +least expected it, plume of ilexes, battlements of tower, as you +twisted along the high-lying vineyards and the clusters of umbrella +pines fringing the hill-tops; and then, another minute and they were +gone.</p> + +<p>We determined to attain them, to be mocked no longer by Lecceto; and +went forth on one endless July afternoon. After much twisting from +hillside to hillside and valley to valley, we at last got into a country +which was strange enough to secrete even Lecceto. In a narrow valley we +were met by a scent, warm, delicious, familiar, which seemed to lead us +(as perfumes we cannot identify will usually do) to ideas very hazy, but +clear enough to be utterly inappropriate: English cottage-gardens, linen +presses of old houses, old-fashioned sitting-rooms full of pots of +<i>pot-pourri</i>; and then, behold, in front of us a hill covered every inch +of it with flowering lavender, growing as heather does on the hills +outside fairyland. And behind this lilac, sun-baked, scented hill, open +the woods of ilexes. The trees were mostly young and with their summer +upper garment of green, fresh leaves over the crackling old ones; trees +packed close like a hedge, their every gap filled with other verdure, +arbutus and hornbeam, fern and heather; the close-set greenery crammed, +as it were, with freshness and solitude.</p> + +<p>These must be the woods of Lecceto, and in their depths the red +battlemented tower of the Hermitage. For I had forgotten to say that for +a thousand years that tower had been the abode of a succession of holy +personages, so holy and so like each other as to have almost grown into +one, an immortal hermit whom Popes and Emperors would come to consult +and be blessed by. Deeper and deeper therefore we made our way into the +green coolness and dampness, the ineffable deliciousness of young leaf +and uncurling fern; till it seemed as if the plantation were getting +impenetrable, and we began to think that, as usual, Lecceto had mocked +us, and would probably appear, if we retraced our steps, in the +diametrically opposite direction. When suddenly, over the tree-tops, +rose the square battlemented tower of red brick. Then, at a turn of the +rough narrow lane, there was the whole place, the tower, a church and +steeple, and some half-fortified buildings, in a wide clearing planted +with olive trees. We tied our pony to an ilex and went to explore the +Hermitage. But the building was enclosed round by walls and hedges, and +the only entrance was by a stout gate armed with a knocker, behind which +was apparently an outer yard and a high wall pierced only by a twisted +iron balcony. So we knocked.</p> + +<p>But that knocker was made only for Popes and Emperors walking about with +their tiaras and crowns and sceptres, like the genuine Popes and +Emperors of Italian folk-tales and of Pinturicchio's frescoes; for no +knocking of ours, accompanied by loud yells, could elicit an answer. It +seemed simple enough to get in some other way; there must be peasants +about at work, even supposing the holy hermit to have ceased to exist. +But climbing walls and hurdles and squeezing between the close tight +ilexes, brought us only to more walls, above which, as above the +oak-woods from a distance, rose the inaccessible battlemented tower. And +a small shepherdess, in a flapping Leghorn hat, herding black and white +baby pigs in a neighbouring stubble-field under the olives, was no more +able than we to break the spell of the Hermitage. And all round, for +miles apparently, undulated the dense grey plumage of the ilex woods.</p> + +<p>The low sun was turning the stubble orange, where the pigs were feeding; +and the distant hills of the Maremma were growing very blue behind the +olive trees. So, lest night should overtake us, we turned our pony's +head towards the city, and traversed the oak-woods and skirted the +lavender hill, rather disbelieving in the reality of the place we had +just been at, save when we saw its tower mock us, emerging again; an +inaccessible, improbable place. The air was scented by the warm lavender +of the hillsides; and by the pines forming a Japanese pattern, black +upon the golden lacquer of the sky. Soon the moon rose, big and yellow, +lighting very gradually the road in whose gloom you could vaguely see +the yokes of white cattle returning from work. By the time we reached +the city hill everything was steeped in a pale yellowish light, with +queer yellowish shadows; and the tall tanneries glared out with their +buttressed balconied top, exaggerated and alarming. Scrambling up the +moonlit steep of Fonte Branda, and passing under a black arch, we found +ourselves in the heart of the gaslit and crowded city, much as if we had +been shot out of a cannon into another planet, and feeling that the +Hermitage of Lecceto was absolutely apocryphal.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>The reason of this midsummer magic—whose existence no legitimate +descendant of Goths and Vandals and other early lovers of Italy can +possibly deny—the reason is altogether beyond my philosophy. The only +word which expresses the phenomenon is the German word, untranslatable, +<i>Bescheerung</i>, a universal giving of gifts, lighting of candles, gilding +of apples, manifestation of marvels, realisation of the desirable and +improbable—to wit, a Christmas Tree. And Italy, which knows no +Christmas trees, makes its <i>Bescheerung</i> in midsummer, gets rid of its +tourist vulgarities, hides away the characteristics of its trivial +nineteenth century, decks itself with magnolia blossoms and water-melons +with awnings and street booths, with mandolins and guitars; spangles +itself with church festivals and local pageants; and instead of +wax-tapers and Chinese lanterns, lights up the biggest golden sun by +day, the biggest silver moon by night, all for the benefit of a few +childish descendants of Goths and Vandals.</p> + +<p>Nonsense apart, I am inclined to think that the specific charm of Italy +exists only during the hot months; the charm which gives one a little +stab now and then and makes one say—"This is Italy."</p> + +<p>I felt that little stab, to which my heart had long become unused, at +the beginning of this very summer in Tuscany, to which belong the above +instances of Italian Midsummer Magic. I was spending the day at a small, +but very ancient, Benedictine Monastery (it was a century old when St. +Peter Igneus, according to the chronicle, went through his celebrated +Ordeal by Fire), now turned into a farm, and hidden, battlemented walls +and great gate towers, among the cornfields near the Arno. It came to me +as the revival of an impression long forgotten, that overpowering sense +that "This was Italy," it recurred and recurred in those same three +words, as I sat under the rose-hedge opposite the water-wheel shed, +garlanded with drying pea-straw; and as I rambled through the chill +vaults, redolent of old wine-vats, into the sudden sunshine and broad +shadows of the cloistered yards.</p> + +<p>That smell was mysteriously connected with it; the smell of wine-vats +mingled, I fancy (though I could not say why), with the sweet faint +smell of decaying plaster and wood-work. One night, as we were driving +through Bologna to wile away the hours between two trains, in the blue +moon-mist and deep shadows of the black porticoed city, that same smell +came to my nostrils as in a dream, and with it a whiff of bygone years, +the years when first I had had this impression of Italian Magic. Oddly +enough, Rome, where I spent much of my childhood and which was the +object of my childish and tragic adoration, was always something apart, +never Italy for my feelings. The Apennines of Lucca and Pistoia, with +their sudden revelation of Italian fields and lanes, of flowers on wall +and along roadside, of bells ringing in the summer sky, of peasants +working in the fields and with the loom and distaff, meant Italy.</p> + +<p>But how much more Italy—and hence longed for how much!—was Lucca, the +town in the plain, with cathedral and palaces. Nay, any of the mountain +hamlets where there was nothing modern, and where against the scarred +brick masonry and blackened stonework the cypresses rose black and +tapering, the trelisses crawled bright green up hill! One never feels, +once out of childhood, such joy as on the rare occasions when I was +taken to such places. A certain farmhouse, with cypresses at the terrace +corner and a great oleander over the wall, was also Italy before it +became my home for several years. Most of all, however, Italy was +represented by certain towns: Bologna, Padua and Vicenza, and Siena, +which I saw mainly in the summer.</p> + +<p>It is curious how one's associations change: nowadays Italy means mainly +certain familiar effects of light and cloud, certain exquisitenesses of +sunset amber against ultramarine hills, of winter mists among misty +olives, of folds and folds of pale blue mountains; it is a country which +belongs to no time, which will always exist, superior to picturesqueness +and romance. But that is but a vague, half-indifferent habit of +enjoyment. And every now and then, when the Midsummer Magic is rife, +there comes to me that very different, old, childish meaning of the +word; as on that day among the roses of those Benedictine cloisters, the +cool shadow of the fig-trees in the yards, with the whiff of that queer +smell, heavy with romance, of wine-saturated oak and crumbling plaster; +and I know with a little stab of joy that this is Italy.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ON_MODERN_TRAVELLING" id="ON_MODERN_TRAVELLING"></a>ON MODERN TRAVELLING</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>There is one charming impression peculiar to railway travelling, that of +the twilight hour in the train; but the charm is greater on a short +journey, when one is not tired and has not the sense of being uprooted, +than on a long one. The movement of the train seems, after sunset, +particularly in the South where night fall is rapid, to take a quality +of mystery. It glides through a landscape of which the smaller details +are effaced, as are likewise effaced the details of the railway itself. +And that rapid gliding brings home to one the instability of the hour, +of the changing light, the obliterating form. It makes one feel that +everything is, as it were, a mere vision; bends of poplared river with +sunset redness in their grey swirls; big towered houses of other days; +the spectral white fruit trees in the dark fields; the pine tops round, +separate, yet intangible, against the sky of unearthy blue; the darkness +not descending, as foolish people say it does, from the skies to the +earth, but rising slowly from the earth where it has gathered fold upon +fold, an emanation thereof, into the sky still pale and luminous, +turning its colour to white, its whiteness to grey, till the stars, mere +little white specks before, kindle one by one.</p> + +<p>Dante, who had travelled so much, and so much against his will, +described this hour as turning backwards the longing of the traveller, +and making the heart grow soft of them who had that day said farewell to +their friends. It is an hour of bitterness, the crueller for mingled +sweetness, to the exile; and in those days when distances were difficult +to overcome, every traveller must in a sense have been somewhat of an +exile. But to us, who have not necessarily left our friends, who may be +returning to them; to us accustomed to coming and going, to us hurried +along in dreary swiftness, it is the hour also when the earth seems full +of peace and goodwill; and our pensiveness is only just sad enough to be +sweet, not sad enough to be bitter. For every hamlet we pass seems +somehow the place where we ought to tarry for all our days; every room +or kitchen, a red square of light in the dimness with dark figures +moving before the window, seems full of people who might be friends; and +the hills we have never beheld before, the bends of rivers, the screen +of trees, seem familiar as if we had lived among them in distant days +which we think of with longing.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>This is the best that can be said, I think, for modern modes of travel. +But then, although I have been jolted about a good deal from country to +country, and slept in the train on my nurse's knees, and watched all my +possessions, from my cardboard donkey and my wax dolls to my manuscripts +and proof-sheets, overhauled on custom-house counters—but then, despite +all this, I have never made a great journey. I have never been to the +United States, nor to Egypt, nor to Russia; and it may well be that I +shall see the Eleusinian gods, Persephone and whoever else imparts +knowledge in ghostland, without ever having set foot in Greece. My +remarks are therefore meant for the less fortunate freight of railways +and steamers; though do I really envy those who see the wonderful places +of the earth before they have dreamed of them, the dream-land of other +men revealed to them for the first time in the solid reality of Cook and +Gaze?</p> + +<p>I would not for the world be misunderstood; I have not the faintest +prejudice against Gaze or Cook. I fervently desire that these gentlemen +may ever quicken trains and cheapen hotels; I am ready to be jostled in +Alpine valleys and Venetian canals by any number of vociferous tourists, +for the sake of the one, schoolmistress, or clerk, or artisan, or +curate, who may by this means have reached at last the land east of the +sun and west of the moon, the St. Brandan's Isle of his or her longings. +What I object to are the well-mannered, well-dressed, often +well-informed persons who, having turned Scotland into a sort of +Hurlingham, are apparently making Egypt, the Holy Land, Japan, into +<i>succursales</i> and <i>dépendances</i> (I like the good Swiss names evoking +couriers and waiters) of their own particularly dull portion of London +and Paris and New York.</p> + +<p>Less externally presentable certainly, but how much more really +venerable is the mysterious class of dwellers in obscure pensions: +curious beings who migrate without perceiving any change of landscape +and people, but only change of fare, from the cheap boarding-house in +Dresden to the cheap boarding-house in Florence, Prague, Seville, Rouen, +or Bruges. It is a class whom one of nature's ingenious provisions, +intended doubtless to maintain a balance of inhabited and uninhabited, +directs unconsciously, automatically to the great cities of the past +rather than to those of the present; so that they sit in what were once +palaces, castles, princely pleasure-houses, discussing over the stony +pears and apples the pleasures and drawbacks, the prices and fares, the +dark staircase against the Sunday ices, of other boarding-houses in +other parts of Europe. A quaint race it is, neither marrying nor giving +in marriage, and renewed by natural selection among the poor in purse +and poor in spirit; but among whom the sentimental traveller, did he +still exist, might pick up many droll and melancholy and perhaps +chivalrous stories.</p> + +<p>My main contention then is merely that, before visiting countries and +towns in the body, we ought to have visited them in the spirit; +otherwise I fear we might as well sit still at home. I do not mean that +we should read about them; some persons I know affect to extract a kind +of pleasure from it; but to me it seems dull work. One wants to visit +unknown lands in company, not with other men's descriptions, but with +one's own wishes and fancies. And very curious such wishes and fancies +are, or rather the countries and cities they conjure up, having no +existence on any part of the earth's surface, but a very vivid one in +one's own mind. Surely most of us, arriving in any interesting place, +are already furnished with a tolerable picture or plan thereof; the +cathedral on a slant or a rising ground, the streets running uphill or +somewhat in a circle, the river here or there, the lie of the land, +colour of the houses, nay, the whole complexion of the town, so and so. +The reality, so far as my own experience goes, never once tallies with +the fancy; but the town of our building is so compact and clear that it +often remains in our memory alongside of the town of stone and brick, +only gradually dissolving, and then leaving sometimes airy splendours +of itself hanging to the solid structures of its prosaic rival.</p> + +<p>Another curious thing to note is how certain real scenes will sometimes +get associated in our minds with places we have never beheld, to such a +point that the charm of the known is actually enhanced by that of the +unknown. I remember a little dell in the High Alps, which, with its huge +larches and mountain pines, its tufts of bee-haunted heather and thyme +among the mossy boulders, its overlooking peak and glimpses of far-down +lakes, became dear to me much less for its own sake than because it +always brought to my mind the word <i>Thrace</i>, and with it a vague +fleeting image of satyrs and mænads, a bar of the music of Orpheus. And +less explicable than this, a certain rolling table-land, not more remote +than the high road to Rome, used at one time to impress me with a +mysterious consciousness of the plains of Central Asia; a ruined byre, a +heap of whitewashed stones, among the thistles and stubbles of a Fife +hillside, had for me once a fascination due to the sense that it must be +like Algeria.</p> + +<p>Has any painter ever fixed on canvas such visions, distinct and +haunting, of lands he had never seen, Claude or Turner, or the Flemish +people who painted the little towered and domed celestial Jerusalem? I +know not. The nearest thing of the kind was a wonderful erection of +brown paper and (apparently) ingeniously arranged shavings, built up in +rocklike fashion, covered with little green toy-box trees, and dotted +here and there with bits of mirror glass and cardboard houses, which +once puzzled me considerably in the parlour of a cottage. "Do tell me +what that is?" at last rose to my lips. "That," answered my hostess very +slowly, "that is a work of my late 'usband; a representation of the +Halps as close as 'e could imagine them, for 'e never was abroad." I +often think of that man "who never was abroad," and of his +representation of the Alps; of the hours of poetic vision, of actual +creation perhaps from sheer strength of longing, which resulted in that +quaint work of art.</p> + +<p>As close as he could imagine them! He had read, then, about the Alps, +read perhaps in Byron or some Radcliffian novel on a stall; and he had +wondered till the vision had come, ready for pasteboard and toy trees +and glue and broken mirror to embody it! And meanwhile I, who am +obliged to cross those very Alps twice every year, I try to do so at +night, to rumble and rattle up and down their gorges in a sleeping-car! +There seems something wrong in this; something wrong in the world's +adjustments, not really in me, for I swear it is respect for the Alps +which makes me thus avoid their sight.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>And here is the moment for stating my plea against our modern, rapid, +hurried travelling: there is to decent minds a certain element of +humiliation therein, as I suspect there is in every <i>royal road</i>. There +is something almost superhumanly selfish in this rushing across +countries without giving them a thought, indeed with no thoughts in us +save of our convenience, inconvenience, food, sleep, weariness. The +whole of Central Europe is thus reduced, for our feelings, to an +arrangement of buffets and custom-houses, its acres checked off on our +sensorium as so many jolts. For it is not often that respectable people +spend a couple of days, or even three, so utterly engrossed in +themselves, so without intellectual relation or responsibility to their +surroundings, living in a moral stratum not above ordinary life, but +below it. Perhaps it is this suspending of connection with all interests +which makes such travelling restful to very busy persons, and agreeable +to very foolish ones. But to decent, active, leisured folk it is, I +maintain, humiliating; humiliating to become so much by comparison in +one's own consciousness; and I suspect that the vague sense of +self-disgust attendant on days thus spent is a sample of the +self-disgust we feel very slightly (and ought to feel very strongly) +whenever our wretched little self is allowed to occupy the whole stage +of our perceptions.</p> + +<p>There is in M. Zola's <i>Bête Humaine</i> a curious picture of a train, one +train after another, full of eager modern life, being whirled from Paris +to Havre through the empty fields, before cottages and old-world houses +miles remote from any town. But in reality is not the train the empty +thing, and are not those solitary houses and pastures that which is +filled with life? The Roman express thus rushes to Naples, Egypt, India, +the far East, the great Austral islands, cutting in two the cypress +avenue of a country house of the Val d'Arno, Neptune with his conch, a +huge figure of the seventeenth century, looking on from an artificial +grotto. What to him is this miserable little swish past of to-day?</p> + +<p>There is only one circumstance when this vacuity, this suspension of all +real life, is in its place; when one is hurrying to some dreadful goal, +a death-bed or perhaps a fresh-made grave. The soul is precipitated +forward to one object, one moment, and cannot exist meanwhile; <i>ruit</i> +not <i>hora</i>, but <i>anima</i>; emptiness suits passion and suffering, for they +empty out the world.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>Be this as it may, it will be a great pity if we lose a certain sense of +wonder at distance overcome, a certain emotion of change of place. This +emotion—paid for no doubt by much impatience and weariness where the +plains were wide, the mountains high, or the roads persistently +straight—must have been one of the great charms of the old mode of +travelling. You savoured the fact of each change in the lie of the +land, of each variation in climate and province, the difference between +the chestnut and the beech zones, for instance, in the south, of the fir +and the larch in the Alps; the various types of window, roof, chimney, +or well, nay, the different fold of the cap or kerchief of the market +women. One inn, one square, one town-hall or church, introduced you +gradually to its neighbours. We feel this in the talk of old people, +those who can remember buying their team at Calais, of elderly ones who +chartered their <i>vetturino</i> at Marseilles or Nice; in certain scraps in +the novels even of Thackeray, giving the sense of this gradual +occupation of the continent by relays. One of Mr. Ruskin's drawings at +Oxford evokes it strongly in me. On what railway journey would he have +come across that little town of Rheinfelden (where is Rheinfelden?), +would he have wandered round those quaint towered walls, over that +bridge, along that grassy walk?</p> + +<p>I can remember, in my childhood, the Alps before they had railways; the +enormous remoteness of Italy, the sense of its lying down there, far, +far away in its southern sea; the immense length of the straight road +from Bellinzona to the lake, the endlessness of the winding valleys. +Now, as I said in relation to that effigy of the Alps by the man who had +never been abroad, I get into my bunk at Milan, and waking up, see in +the early morning crispness, the glass-green Reuss tear past, and the +petticoated turrets of Lucerne.</p> + +<p>Once also (and I hope not once and never again) I made an immense +journey through Italy in a pony-cart. We seemed to traverse all +countries and climates; lush, stifling valleys with ripening maize and +grapes; oak-woods where rows of cypress showed roads long gone, and +crosses told of murders; desolate heaths high on hill-tops, and stony +gorges full of myrtle; green irrigated meadows with plashing +water-wheels, and grey olive groves; so that in the evening we felt +homesick for that distant, distant morning: yet we had only covered as +much ground as from London to Dover! And how immensely far off from +Florence did we not feel when, four hours after leaving its walls, we +arrived in utter darkness at the friendly mountain farm, and sat down to +supper in the big bare room, where high-backed chairs and the plates +above the immense chimney-piece loomed and glimmered in the half-light; +feeling, as if in a dream, the cool night air still in our throats, the +jingle of cart-bells and chirp of wayside crickets still in our ears! +Where was Florence then? As a fact it was just sixteen miles off.</p> + +<p>To travel in this way one should, however, as old John Evelyn advises, +"diet with the natives." Our ancestors (for one takes for granted, of +course, that one's ancestors were <i>milords</i>) were always plentifully +furnished, I observe, with letters of introduction. They were necessary +when persons of distinction carried their bedding on mules and rode in +coaches escorted by blunderbuses, like John Evelyn himself.</p> + +<p>It is this dieting with the natives which brings one fully in contact +with a country's reality. At the tables of one's friends, while being +strolled through the gardens or driven across country, one learns all +about the life, thoughts, feelings of the people; the very gossip of the +neighbourhood becomes instructive, and you touch the past through +traditions of the family. Here the French put up the maypole in 1796; +there the beautiful abbess met her lover; that old bowed man was the one +who struck the Austrian colonel at Milan before 1859. 'Tis the mode of +travelling that constituted the delight and matured the genius of +Stendhal, king of cosmopolitans and grand master of the psychologic +novel. To my kind friends, wherever I have any, but most perhaps in +Northern Italy, is due among other kinds of gratitude, gratitude for +having travelled in this way.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>But there is another way of travelling, more suitable methinks to the +poet. For what does the poet want with details of reality when he +possesses its universal essence, or with local manners and historic +tradition, seeing that his work is for all times and all men?</p> + +<p>Mr. Browning, I was told last year by his dear friends at Asolo, first +came upon the kingdom of Kate the Queen by accident, perhaps not having +heard its name or not remembering it, in the course of a long walking +tour from Venice to the Alps. It was the first time he was in Italy, +nay, abroad, and he had come from London to Venice by sea. That village +of palaces on the hill-top, with the Lombard plain at its feet and the +great Alps at its back; with its legends of the Queen of Cyprus was, +therefore, one of the first impressions of mainland Italy which the poet +could have received. And one can understand <i>Pippa Passes</i> resulting +therefrom, better than from his years of familiarity with Florence. +Pippa, Sebald, Ottima, Jules, his bride, the Bishop, the Spy, nay, even +Queen Kate and her Page, are all born of that sort of misinterpretation +of places, times, and stories which is so fruitful in poetry, because it +means the begetting of things in the image of the poet's own soul, +rather than the fashioning them to match something outside it.</p> + +<p>Even without being a poet you may profit in an especial manner by +travelling in a country where you know no one, provided you have in you +that scrap of poetic fibre without which poets and poetry are caviare to +you. There is no doubt that wandering about in the haunts of the past +undisturbed by the knowledge of the present is marvellously favourable +to the historic, the poetical emotion. The American fresh from the +States thinks of Johnson and Dickens in Fleet Street; at Oxford or +Cambridge he has raptures (are any raptures like these?) into which, +like notes in a chord and overtones in a note, there enters the +deliciousness, the poignancy of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Turner.</p> + +<p>The Oxford or Cambridge man, on the other hand, will have similar +raptures in some boarding-house at Venice or Florence; raptures +rapturous in proportion almost to his ignorance of the language and the +people. Do not let us smile, dear friends, who have lived in Rome till +you are Romans, dear friends, who are Romans yourselves, at the +foreigner with his Baedeker, turning his back to the Colosseum in his +anxiety to reach it, and ashamed as well as unable to ask his way. That +Goth or Vandal, very likely, is in the act of possessing Rome, of making +its wonder and glory his own, consubstantial to his soul; Rome is his +for the moment. It is ours? Alas!</p> + +<p>Nature, Fate, I know not whether the mother or the daughter, they are so +like each other, looks with benignity upon these poor ignorant, solitary +tourists, and gives them what she denies to those who have more leisure +and opportunity. I cannot explain by any other reason a fact which is +beyond all possibility of doubt, and patent to the meanest observer, +namely, that it is always during our first sojourn in a place, during +its earlier part, and more particularly when we are living prosaically +at inns and boarding-houses, that something happens—a procession, a +serenade, a street-fight, a fair, or a pilgrimage—which shows the place +in a particularly characteristic light, and which never occurs again. +The very elements are desired to perform for the benefit of the +stranger. I remember a thunderstorm, the second night I was ever at +Venice, lighting up St. George's, the Salute, the whole lagoon as I have +never seen it since.</p> + +<p>I can testify, also, to having seen the Alhambra under snow, a sparkling +whiteness lying soft on the myrtle hedges, and the reflection of arches +and domes waving, with the drip of melted snow from the roofs, in the +long-stagnant tanks. If I lived in Granada, or went back there, should I +ever see this wonder again? It was so ordered merely because I had just +come, and was lodging at an inn.</p> + +<p>Yes, Fate is friendly to those who travel rarely, who go abroad to see +abroad, not to be warm or cold, or to meet the people they may meet +anywhere else. Honour the tourist; he walks in a halo of romance, The +cosmopolitan abroad desists from flannel shirts because he is always at +home; and he knows to a nicety hours and places which demand a high hat. +But does that compensate?</p> + + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p>There is yet another mystery connected with travelling, but 'tis too +subtle almost for words. All I can ask is, do you know what it is to +meet, say, in some college room, or on the staircase of an English +country house, or even close behind the front door in Bloomsbury, the +photograph of some Florentine relief or French cathedral, the black, +gaunt Piranesi print of some Roman ruin; and to feel suddenly Florence, +Rouen, Reims, or Rome, the whole of their presence distilled, as it +were, into one essence of emotion?</p> + +<p>What does it mean? That in this solid world only delusion is worth +having? Nay; but that nothing can come into the presence of that +capricious despot, our fancy, which has not dwelt six months and six in +the purlieus of its palace, steeped, like the candidates for Ahasuerus's +favour, in sweet odours and myrrh.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="OLD_ITALIAN_GARDENS" id="OLD_ITALIAN_GARDENS"></a>OLD ITALIAN GARDENS</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>There are also modern gardens in Italy, and in such I have spent many +pleasant hours. But that has been part of my life of reality, which +concerns only my friends and myself. The gardens I would speak about are +those in which I have lived the life of the fancy, and into which I may +lead the idle thoughts of my readers.</p> + +<p>It is pleasant to have flowers growing in a garden. I make this remark +because there have been very fine gardens without any flowers at all; in +fact, when the art of gardening reached its height, it took to despising +its original material, as, at one time, people came to sing so well that +it was considered vulgar to have any voice. There is a magnificent +garden near Pescia, in Tuscany, built in terraces against a hillside, +with wonderful waterworks, which give you shower-baths when you expect +them least; and in this garden, surrounded by the trimmest box hedges, +there bloom only imperishable blossoms of variegated pebbles and chalk. +That I have seen with my own eyes. A similar garden, near Genoa, +consisting of marble mosaics and coloured bits of glass, with a peach +tree on a wall, and an old harpsichord on the doorstep to serve instead +of bell or knocker, I am told of by a friend, who pretends to have spent +her youth in it. But I suspect her to be of supernatural origin, and +this garden to exist only in the world of Ariosto's enchantresses, +whence she originally hails. To return to my first remark, it is +pleasant, therefore, to have flowers in a garden, though not necessary. +We moderns have flowers, and no gardens. I must protest against such a +state of things. Still worse is it to suppose that you can get a garden +by running up a wall or planting a fence round a field, a wood or any +portion of what is vaguely called Nature. Gardens have nothing to do +with Nature, or not much. Save the garden of Eden, which was perhaps no +more a garden than certain London streets so called, gardens are always +primarily the work of man. I say primarily, for these outdoor +habitations, where man weaves himself carpets of grass and gravel, cuts +himself walls out of ilex or hornbeam, and fits on as roof so much of +blue day or of starspecked, moonsilvered night, are never perfect until +Time has furnished it all with his weather stains and mosses, and Fancy, +having given notice to the original occupants, has handed it into the +charge of gentle little owls and furgloved bats, and of other tenants, +human in shape, but as shy and solitary as they.</p> + +<p>That is a thing of our days, or little short of them. I should be +curious to know something of early Italian gardens, long ago; long +before the magnificence of Roman Cæsars had reappeared, with their +rapacity and pride, in the cardinals and princes of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries. I imagine those beginnings to have been humble; +the garden of the early middle ages to have been a thing more for +utility than pleasure, and not at all for ostentation. For the garden of +the castle is necessarily small; and the plot of ground between the +inner and outer rows of walls, where corn and hay might be grown for the +horses, is not likely to be given up exclusively to her ladyship's +lilies and gillyflowers; salads and roots must grow there, and onions +and leeks, for it is not always convenient to get vegetables from the +villages below, particularly when there are enemies or disbanded +pillaging mercenaries about; hence, also, there will be fewer roses than +vines, pears, or apples, spaliered against the castle wall. On the other +hand the burgher of the towns begins by being a very small artisan or +shopkeeper, and even when he lends money to kings of England and +Emperors, and is part owner of Constantinople, he keeps his house with +business-like frugality. Whatever they lavished on churches, frescoes, +libraries, and pageants, the citizens, even of the fifteenth century, +whose wives and daughters still mended the linen and waited at table, +are not likely to have seen in their villa more than a kind of rural +place of business, whence to check factors and peasants, where to store +wine and oil; and from whose garden, barely enclosed from the fields, to +obtain the fruit and flowers for their table. I think that mediæval +poetry and tales have led me to this notion. There is little mention in +them of a garden as such: the Provençal lovers meet in orchards—"en un +vergier sor folha d'albespi"—where the May bushes grow among the almond +trees. Boccaccio and the Italians more usually employ the word <i>orto</i>, +which has lost its Latin signification, and is a place, as we learn from +the context, planted with fruit trees and with pot-herbs, the sage which +brought misfortune on poor Simona, and the sweet basil which Lisabetta +watered, as it grew out of Lorenzo's head, "only with rosewater, or that +of orange flowers, or with her own tears." A friend of mine has painted +a picture of another of Boccaccio's ladies, Madonna Dianora, visiting +the garden, which (to the confusion of her virtuous stratagem) the +enamoured Ansaldo has made to bloom in January by magic arts; a little +picture full of the quaint lovely details of Dello's wedding chests, the +charm of the roses and lilies, the plashing fountains and birds singing +against a background of wintry trees and snow-shrouded fields, the +dainty youths and damsels treading their way among the flowers, looking +like tulips and ranunculus themselves in their fur and brocade. But +although in this story Boccaccio employs the word <i>giardino</i> instead of +<i>orto</i>, I think we must imagine that magic flower garden rather as a +corner—they still exist on every hillside—of orchard connected with +the fields of wheat and olives below by the long tunnels of vine +trellis, and dying away into them with the great tufts of lavender and +rosemary and fennel on the grassy bank under the cherry trees. This +piece of terraced ground along which the water—spurted from the +dolphin's mouth or the siren's breasts—runs through walled channels, +refreshing impartially violets and salads, lilies and tall flowering +onions, under the branches of the peach tree and the pomegranate, to +where, in the shade of the great pink oleander tufts, it pours out below +into the big tank, for the maids to rinse their linen in the evening, +and the peasants to fill their cans to water the bedded-out tomatoes, +and the potted clove-pinks in the shadow of the house.</p> + +<p>The Blessed Virgin's garden is like that, where, as she prays in the +cool of the evening, the gracious Gabriel flutters on to one knee +(hushing the sound of his wings lest he startle her) through the pale +green sky, the deep blue-green valley; and you may still see in the +Tuscan fields clumps of cypresses clipped wheel-shape, which might mark +the very spot.</p> + +<p>The transition from this orchard-garden, this <i>orto</i>, of the old Italian +novelists and painters to the architectural garden of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries, is indicated in some of the descriptions and +illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a sort of handbook of +antiquities in the shape of a novel, written by Fra Francesco Colonna, +and printed at Venice about 1480. Here we find trees and hedges treated +as brick and stone work; walls, niches, colonnades, cut out of ilex and +laurel; statues, vases, peacocks, clipped in box and yew; moreover +antiquities, busts, inscriptions, broken altars and triumphal arches, +temples to the graces and Venus, stuck about the place very much as we +find them in the Roman Villas of the late sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries. But I doubt whether the Hypnerotomachia can be taken as +evidence of the gardens of Colonna's own days. I think his descriptions +are rather of what his archæological lore made him long for, and what +came in time, when antiques were more plentiful than in the early +Renaissance, and the monuments of the ancients could be incorporated +freely into the gardens. For the classic Italian garden is essentially +Roman in origin; it could have arisen only on the top of ancient walls +and baths, its shape suggested by the ruins below, its ornaments dug up +in the planting of the trees; and until the time of Julius II. and Leo +X., Rome was still a mediæval city, feudal and turbulent, in whose +outskirts, for ever overrun by baronial squabbles, no sane man would +have built himself a garden; and in whose ancient monuments castles were +more to be expected than belvederes and orangeries. Indeed, by the side +of quaint arches and temples, and labyrinths which look like designs for +a box of toys, we find among the illustrations of Polifilo various +charming woodcuts showing bits of vine trellis, of tank and of fountain, +on the small scale, and in the domestic, quite unclassic style of the +Italian burgher's garden. I do not mean to say that the gardens of +Lorenzo dei Medici, of Catherine Cornaro near Asolo, of the Gonzagas +near Mantua, of the Estensi at Scandiano and Sassuolo, were kitchen +gardens like those of Isabella's basil pot. They had waterworks already, +and aviaries full of costly birds, and enclosures where camels and +giraffes were kept at vast expense, and parks with deer and fishponds; +they were the gardens of the castle, of the farm, magnified and made +magnificent, spread over a large extent of ground. But they were not, +any more than are the gardens of Boiardo's and Ariosto's enchantresses +(copied by Spenser) the typical Italian gardens of later days.</p> + +<p>And here, having spoken of that rare and learned Hypnerotomachia +Poliphili (which, by the way, any one who wishes to be instructed, +sickened, and bored for many days together, may now read in Monsieur +Claudius Popelin's French translation), it is well I should state that +for the rest of this dissertation I have availed myself of neither the +<i>British Museum</i>, nor the <i>National Library of Paris</i>, nor the <i>Library +of South Kensington</i> (the italics seem necessary to show my appreciation +of those haunts of learning), but merely of the light of my own poor +intellect. For I do not think I care to read about gardens among +foolscap and inkstains and printed forms; in fact I doubt whether I +care to read about them at all, save in Boccaccio and Ariosto, Spenser +and Tasso; though I hope that my readers will be more literary +characters than myself.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>The climate of Italy (moving on in my discourse) renders it difficult +and almost impossible to have flowers growing in the ground all through +the summer. After the magnificent efflorescence of May and June the soil +cakes into the consistence of terra-cotta, and the sun, which has +expanded and withered the roses and lilies with such marvellous +rapidity, toasts everything like so much corn or maize. Very few +herbaceous flowers—the faithful, friendly, cheerful zinnias, for +instance—can continue blooming, and the oleander, become more +brilliantly rose-colour with every additional week's drought, triumph +over empty beds. Flowers in Italy are a crop like corn, hemp, or beans; +you must be satisfied with fallow soil when they are over. I say these +things, learned by some bitter experience of flowerless summers, to +explain why Italian flower-gardening mainly takes refuge in pots—from +the great ornamented lemon-jars down to the pots of carnations, double +geraniums, tuberoses, and jasmines on every wall, on every ledge or +window-sill; so much so, in fact, that even the famous sweet basil, and +with it young Lorenzo's head, had to be planted in a pot. Now this +poverty of flower-beds and richness of pots made it easy and natural for +the Italian garden to become, like the Moorish one, a place of mere +greenery and water, a palace whose fountains plashed in sunny yards +walled in with myrtle and bay, in mysterious chambers roofed over with +ilex and box.</p> + +<p>And this it became. Moderately at first; a few hedges of box and +cypress—exhaling its resinous breath in the sunshine—leading up to the +long, flat Tuscan house, with its tower or pillared loggia under the +roof to take the air and dry linen; a few quaintly cut trees set here +and there, along with the twisted mulberry tree where the family drank +its wine and ate its fruit of an evening; a little grove of ilexes to +the back, in whose shade you could sleep while the cicalas buzzed at +noon; some cypresses gathered together into a screen, just to separate +the garden from the olive yard above; gradually perhaps a balustrade set +at the end of the bowling-green, that you might see, even from a +distance, the shimmery blue valley below, the pale blue distant hills; +and if you had it, some antique statue not good enough for the courtyard +of the town house, set on the balustrade or against the tree; also, +where water was plentiful, a little grotto, scooped out under that +semicircular screen of cypresses. A very modest place, but differing +essentially from the orchard and kitchen garden of the mediæval burgher; +and out of which came something immense and unique—the classic Roman +villa.</p> + +<p>For your new garden, your real Italian garden, brings in a new +element—that of perspective, architecture, decoration; the trees used +as building material, the lie of the land as theatre arrangements, the +water as the most docile and multiform stage property. Now think what +would happen when such gardens begin to be made in Rome. The Popes and +Popes' nephews can enclose vast tracts of land, expropriated by some +fine sweeping fiscal injustice, or by the great expropriator, fever, in +the outskirts of the town; and there place their casino, at first a mere +summer-house, whither to roll of spring evenings in stately coaches and +breathe the air with a few friends; then gradually a huge house, with +its suits of guests' chambers, stables, chapel, orangery, collection of +statues and pictures, its subsidiary smaller houses, belvederes, +circuses, and what not! And around the house His Eminence or His Serene +Excellency may lay out his garden. Now go where you may in the outskirts +of Rome you are sure to find ruins—great aqueduct arches, temples +half-standing, gigantic terrace-works belonging to some baths or palace +hidden beneath the earth and vegetation. Here you have naturally an +element of architectural ground-plan and decoration which is easily +followed: the terraces of quincunxes, the symmetrical groves, the long +flights of steps, the triumphal arches, the big ponds, come, as it were, +of themselves, obeying the order of what is below. And from underground, +everywhere, issues a legion of statues, headless, armless, in all stages +of mutilation, who are charitably mended, and take their place, mute +sentinels, white and earth-stained, at every intersecting box hedge, +under every ilex grove, beneath the cypresses of each sweeping hillside +avenue, wherever a tree can make a niche or a bough a canopy. Also +vases, sarcophagi, baths, little altars, columns, reliefs by the score +and hundred, to be stuck about everywhere, let into every wall, clapped +on the top of every gable, every fountain stacked up, in every empty +space.</p> + +<p>Among these inhabitants of the gardens of Cæsar, Lucullus, or Sallust, +who, after a thousand years' sleep, pierce through the earth into new +gardens, of crimson cardinals and purple princes, each fattened on his +predecessors' spoils—Medici, Farnesi, Peretti, Aldobrandini, Ludovisi, +Rospigliosi, Borghese, Pamphili—among this humble people of stone I +would say a word of garden Hermes and their vicissitudes. There they +stand, squeezing from out their triangular sheath the stout pectorals +veined with rust, scarred with corrosions, under the ilexes, whose drip, +drip, through all the rainy days and nights of those ancient times and +these modern ones has gradually eaten away an eye here, a cheek there, +making up for the loss by gilding the hair with lichens, and matting the +beard with green ooze; while patched chin, and restored nose, give them +an odd look of fierce German duellists. Have they been busts of Cæsars, +hastily ordered on the accession of some Tiberius or Nero, hastily sent +to alter into Caligula or Galba, or chucked into the Tiber on to the top +of the monster Emperor's body after that had been properly hauled +through the streets? Or are they philosophers, at your choice, Plato or +Aristotle or Zeno or Epicurus, once presiding over the rolls of poetry +and science in some noble's or some rhetor's library? Or is it possible +that this featureless block, smiling foolishly with its orbless +eye-sockets and worn-out mouth, may have had, once upon a time, a nose +from Phidias's hand, a pair of Cupid lips carved by Praxiteles?</p> + +<h4> +III</h4> + +<p>A book of seventeenth-century prints—"The Gardens of Rome, with their +plans raised and seen in perspective, drawn and engraved by Giov: +Battista Falda, at the printing-house of Gio: Giacomo de' Rossi, at the +sign of Paris, near the church of Peace in Rome"—brings home to one, +with the names of the architects who laid them out, that these Roman +villas are really a kind of architecture cut out of living instead of +dead timber. To this new kind of architecture belongs a new kind of +sculpture. The antiques do well in their niches of box and laurel under +their canopy of hanging ilex boughs; they are, in their weather-stained, +mutilated condition, another sort of natural material fit for the +artist's use; but the old sculpture being thus in a way assimilated +through the operation of earth, wind, and rain, into tree-trunks and +mossy boulders, a new sculpture arises undertaking to make of marble +something which will continue the impression of the trees and waters, +wave its jagged outlines like the branches, twist its supple limbs like +the fountains. It is high time that some one should stop the laughing +and sniffing at this great sculpture, of Bernini and his Italian and +French followers, the last spontaneous outcome of the art of the +Renaissance, of the decorative sculpture which worked in union with +place and light and surroundings. Mistaken as indoor decoration, as free +statuary in the sense of the antique, this sculpture has after all +given us the only works which are thoroughly right in the open air, +among the waving trees, the mad vegetation which sprouts under the +moist, warm Roman sky, from every inch of masonry and travertine. They +are comic of course looked at in all the details, those angels who smirk +and gesticulate with the emblems of the passion, those popes and saints +who stick out colossal toes and print on the sky gigantic hands, on the +parapets of bridges and the gables of churches; but imagine them +replaced by fine classic sculpture—stiff mannikins struggling with the +overwhelming height, the crushing hugeness of all things Roman; little +tin soldiers lost in the sky instead of those gallant theatrical +creatures swaggering among the clouds, pieces of wind-torn cloud, +petrified for the occasion, themselves! Think of Bernini's Apollo and +Daphne, a group unfortunately kept in a palace room, with whose right +angles its every outline swears, but which, if placed in a garden, would +be the very summing up of all garden and park impressions in the waving, +circling lines; yet not without a niminy piminy restraint of the +draperies, the limbs, the hair turning to clustered leaves, the body +turning to smooth bark, of the flying nymph and the pursuing god.</p> + +<p>The great creation of this Bernini school, which shows it as the +sculpture born of gardens, is the fountain. No one till the seventeenth +century had guessed what might be the relations of stone and water, each +equally obedient to the artist's hand. The mediæval Italian fountain is +a tank, a huge wash-tub fed from lions' mouths, as if by taps, and +ornamented, more or less, with architectural and sculptured devices. In +the Renaissance we get complicated works of art—Neptunes with tridents +throne above sirens squeezing their breasts, and cupids riding on +dolphins, like the beautiful fountain of Bologna; or boys poised on one +foot, holding up tortoises, like Rafael's Tartarughe of Piazza Mattei; +more elaborate devices still, like the one of the villa at Bagnaia, near +Viterbo. But these fountains do equally well when dry, equally well +translated into bronze or silver: they are wonderful saltcellars or +fruit-dishes; everything is delightful except the water, which spurts in +meagre threads as from a garden-hose. They are the fitting ornament of +Florence, where there is pure drinking water only on Sundays and +holidays, of Bologna, where there is never any at all.</p> + +<p>The seventeenth century made a very different thing of its +fountains—something as cool, as watery, as the jets which gurgle and +splash in Moorish gardens and halls, and full of form and fancy withal, +the water never alone, but accompanied by its watery suggestion of power +and will and whim. They are so absolutely right, these Roman fountains +of the Bernini school, that we are apt to take them as a matter of +course, as if the horses had reared between the spurts from below and +the gushes and trickles above; as if the Triton had been draped with the +overflowing of his horn; as if the Moor with his turban, the Asiatic +with his veiled fall, the solemn Egyptian river god, had basked and +started back with the lion and the seahorse among the small cataracts +breaking into foam in the pond, the sheets of water dropping, +prefiguring icicles, lazily over the rocks, all stained black by the +north winds and yellow by the lichen, all always, always, in those Roman +gardens and squares, from the beginning of time, natural objects, +perfect and not more to be wondered at than the water-encircled rocks of +the mountains and seashores. Such art as this cannot be done justice to +with the pen; diagrams would be necessary, showing how in every case the +lines of the sculpture harmonise subtly, or clash to be more subtly +harmonised, with the movement, the immensely varied, absolutely +spontaneous movement of the water; the sculptor, become infinitely +modest, willing to sacrifice his own work, to make it uninteresting in +itself, as a result of the hours and days he must have spent watching +the magnificent manners and exquisite tricks of natural waterfalls—nay, +the mere bursting alongside of breakwaters, the jutting up between +stones, of every trout-stream and milldam. It is not till we perceive +its absence (in the fountains, for instance, of modern Paris) that we +appreciate this Roman art of water sculpture. Meanwhile we accept the +fountains as we accept the whole magnificent harmony of nature and +art—nature tutored by art, art fostered by nature—of the Roman villas, +undulating, with their fringe of pines and oaks, over the hillocks and +dells of the Campagna, or stacked up proudly, vineyards and woods all +round, on the steep sides of Alban and Sabine hills.</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>This book of engravings of the villas of the Serene Princes +Aldobrandini, Pamphili, Borghese, and so forth, brings home to us +another fact, to wit, that the original owners and layers-out thereof +must have had but little enjoyment of them. There they go in their big +coaches, among the immense bows and curtsies of the ladies and gentlemen +and dapper ecclesiastics whom they meet; princes in feathers and laces, +and cardinals in silk and ermine. But the delightful gardens on which +they are being complimented are meanwhile mere dreadful little +plantations, like a nurseryman's squares of cabbages, you would think, +rather than groves of ilexes and cypresses, for, alas, the greatest +princes, the most magnificent cardinals, cannot bribe Time, or hustle +him to hurry up.</p> + +<p>And thus the gardens were planted and grew. For whom? Certainly not for +the men of those days, who would doubtless have been merely shocked +could they have seen or foreseen.... For their ghosts perhaps? Scarcely. +A friend of mine, in whose information on such matters I have implicit +belief, assures me that it is not the <i>whole</i> ghosts of the ladies and +cavaliers of long ago who haunt the gardens; not the ghost of their +everyday, humdrum likeness to ourselves, but the ghost of certain +moments of their existence, certain rustlings, and shimmerings of their +personality, their waywardness, momentary, transcendent graces and +graciousnesses, unaccountable wistfulness and sorrow, certain looks of +the face and certain tones of the voice (perhaps none of the steadiest), +things that seemed to die away into nothing on earth, but which have +permeated their old haunts, clung to the statues with the ivy, risen and +fallen with the plash of the fountains, and which now exhale in the +breath of the honeysuckle and murmur in the voice of the birds, in the +rustle of the leaves and the high, invading grasses. There are some +verses of Verlaine's, which come to me always, on the melancholy minuet +tune to which Monsieur Fauré has set them, as I walk in those Italian +gardens, Roman and Florentine, walk in the spirit as well as in the +flesh:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Votre âme est un paysage choisi</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Jouant du luth et quasi</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Au calme clair de lune triste et beau</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.</span><br /> +</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>And this leads me to wonder what these gardens must be when the key has +turned in their rusty gates, and the doorkeeper gone to sleep under the +gun hanging from its nail. What must such places be, Mondragone, for +instance, near Frascati, and the deserted Villa Pucci near Signa, during +the great May nights, when my own small scrap of garden, not beyond +kitchen sounds and servants' lamps, is made wonderful and magical by the +scents which rise up, by the song of the nightingales, the dances of +the fireflies, copying in the darkness below the figures which are +footed by the nimble stars overhead. Into such rites as these, which the +poetry of the past practises with the poetry of summer nights, one durst +not penetrate, save after leaving one's vulgar flesh, one's habits, +one's realities outside the gate.</p> + +<p>And since I have mentioned gates, I must not forget one other sort of +old Italian garden, perhaps the most poetical and pathetic—the garden +that has ceased to exist. You meet it along every Italian highroad or +country lane; a piece of field, tender green with the short wheat in +winter, brown and orange with the dried maize husks and seeding sorghum +in summer, the wide grass path still telling of coaches that once rolled +in; a big stone bench, with sweeping shell-like back under the rosemary +bushes; and, facing the road, between solemnly grouped cypresses or +stately marshalled poplars, a gate of charming hammered iron standing +open between its scroll-work masonry and empty vases, under its covered +escutcheon. The gate that leads to nowhere.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ABOUT_LEISURE" id="ABOUT_LEISURE"></a>ABOUT LEISURE</h3> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sancte Hieronyme, ora pro nobis!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;"><i>Litany of the Saints.</i></span><br /> +</p> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>Hung in my room, in such a manner as to catch my eye on waking, is an +excellent photograph of Bellini's <i>St. Jerome in his Study</i>. I am aware +that it is not at all by Bellini, but by an inferior painter called +Catena, and I am, therefore, careful not to like it very much. It +occupies that conspicuous place not as a work of art but as an <i>aid to +devotion</i>. For I have instituted in my mind, and quite apart from the +orthodox cultus, a special devotion to St. Jerome as the Patron of +Leisure.</p> + +<p>And here let me forestall the cavillings of those who may object that +Hieronymus, whom we call Jerome (born in Dalmatia and died at Bethlehem +about 1500 years ago), was on the contrary a busy, even an overworked +Father of the Church; that he wrote three stout volumes of polemical +treatises, besides many others (including the dispute "concerning +seraphs"), translated the greater part of the Bible into Latin, edited +many obscure texts, and, on the top of it all, kept up an active +correspondence with seven or eight great ladies, a circumstance alone +sufficient to prove that he could not have had much time to spare. I +know. But all that either has nothing to do with it or serves to explain +why St. Jerome was afterwards rewarded by the gift of Leisure, and is, +therefore, to be invoked by all those who aspire at enjoying the same. +For the painters of all schools, faithful to the higher truth, have +agreed in telling us that: first, St. Jerome had a most delightful +study, looking out on the finest scenery; secondly, that he was never +writing, but always reading or looking over the edge of his book at the +charming tables and chairs and curiosities, or at the sea and mountains +through the window; and thirdly, <i>that he was never interrupted by +anybody</i>. I underline this item, because on it, above all the others, is +founded my certainty that St. Jerome is the only person who ever +enjoyed perfect leisure, and, therefore, the natural patron and +advocate of all the other persons to whom even imperfect leisure is +refused. In what manner this miracle was compassed is exactly what I +propose to discuss in this essay. An excellent <i>Roman Catholic</i> friend +of mine, to whom I propounded the question, did indeed solve it by +reminding me that Heaven had made St. Jerome a present of a lion who +slept on his door-mat, after which, she thought, his leisure could take +care of itself. But although this answer seems decisive, it really only +begs the question; and we are obliged to inquire further into the <i>real +nature of St. Jerome's lion</i>. This formula has a fine theological ring, +calling to mind Hieronymus's own treatise, <i>Of the Nature of Seraphs</i>, +and I am pleased to have found anything so suitable to the arrangements +of a Father of the Church. Nevertheless, I propose to investigate into +the subject of Leisure with a method rather human and earthly than in +any way transcendental.</p> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>We must evidently begin by a little work of defining; and this will be +easiest done by considering first what Leisure is not. In the first +place, it is one of those things about which we erroneously suppose that +other people have plenty of it, and we ourselves have little or none, +owing to our thoroughly realising only that which lies nearest to our +eye—to wit, <i>ourself</i>. How often do we not go into another person's +room and say, "Ah! <i>this</i> is a place where one can feel peaceful!" How +often do we not long to share the peacefulness of some old house, say in +a deserted suburb, with its red fruit wall and its cedar half hiding the +windows, or of some convent portico, with glimpses of spaliered orange +trees. Meanwhile, in that swept and garnished spacious room, in that +house or convent, is no peacefulness to share; barely, perhaps, enough +to make life's two ends meet. For we do not see what fills up, chokes +and frets the life of others, whereas we are uncomfortably aware of the +smallest encumbrance in our own; in these matters we feel quickly enough +the mote in our own eye, and do not perceive the beam in our +neighbour's.</p> + +<p>And leisure, like its sister, peace, is among those things which are +internally felt rather than seen from the outside. (Having written this +part of my definition, it strikes me that I have very nearly given away +St. Jerome and St. Jerome's lion, since any one may say, that probably +that famous leisure of his was just one of the delusions in question. +But this is not the case. St. Jerome really had leisure, at least when +he was painted; I know it to be a fact; and, for the purposes of +literature, I require it to be one. So I close this parenthesis with the +understanding that so much is absolutely settled.)</p> + +<p>Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so +much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. We speak of <i>leisure +time</i>, but what we really mean thereby is <i>time in which we can feel at +leisure</i>. What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. +It has nothing to do with being idle, or having time on one's hands, +although it does involve a certain sense of free space about one, as we +shall see anon. There is time and to spare in a lawyer's waiting-room, +but there is no leisure, neither do we enjoy this blessing when we have +to wait two or three hours at a railway junction. On both these +occasions (for persons who can profit thereby to read the papers, to +learn a verb, or to refresh memories of foreign travel, are distinctly +abnormal) we do not feel in possession of ourselves. There is something +fuming and raging inside us, something which seems to be kicking at our +inner bulwarks as we kicked the cushions of a tardy four-wheeler in our +childhood. St. Jerome, patron of leisure, never behaved like that, and +his lion was always engrossed in pleasant contemplation of the +cardinal's hat on the peg. I have said that when we are bored we feel as +if possessed by something not quite ourselves (much as we feel possessed +by a stone in a shoe, or a cold in the head); and this brings me to a +main characteristic of leisure: it implies that we feel free to do what +we like, and that we have plenty of space to do it in. This is a very +important remark of mine, and if it seem trite, that is merely because +it is so wonderfully true. Besides, it is fraught with unexpected +consequences.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>The worst enemy of leisure is boredom: it is one of the most active +pests existing, fruitful of vanity and vexation of spirit. I do not +speak merely of the wear and tear of so-called social amusements, though +that is bad enough. We kill time, and kill our better powers also, as +much in the work undertaken to keep off <i>ennui</i> as in the play. Count +Tolstoi, with his terrible eye for shams, showed it all up in a famous +answer to M. Dumas <i>fils</i>. Many, many of us, work, he says, in order to +escape from ourselves. Now, we should not want to escape from ourselves; +we ought to carry ourselves, the more unconsciously the better, along +ever widening circles of interest and activity; we should bring +ourselves into ever closer contact with everything that is outside us; +we should be perpetually giving ourselves from sheer loving instinct; +but how can we give ourself if we have run away from it, or buried it at +home, or chained it up in a treadmill? Good work is born of the love of +the Power-to-do for the Job-to-be-done; nor can any sort of chemical +arrangements, like those by which Faust's pupil made <i>Homunculus</i> in +his retort, produce genuinely living, and in its turn fruitful, work. +The fear of boredom, the fear of the moral going to bits which boredom +involves, encumbers the world with rubbish, and exhibitions of pictures, +publishers' announcements, lecture syllabuses, schemes of charitable +societies, are pattern-books of such litter. The world, for many people, +and unfortunately, for the finer and nobler (those most afraid of +<i>ennui</i>) is like a painter's garret, where some half-daubed canvas, +eleven feet by five, hides the Jaconda on the wall, the Venus in the +corner, and blocks the charming tree-tops, gables, and distant meadows +through the window.</p> + +<p>Art, literature, and philanthropy are notoriously expressions no longer +of men's and women's thoughts and feelings, but of their dread of +finding themselves without thoughts to think or feelings to feel. +So-called practical persons know this, and despise such employments as +frivolous and effeminate. But are they not also, to a great extent, +frightened of themselves and running away from boredom? See your +well-to-do weighty man of forty-five or fifty, merchant, or soldier, or +civil servant; the same who thanks God <i>he</i> is no idler. Does he really +require more money? Is he more really useful as a colonel than as a +major, in a wig or cocked hat than out of it? Is he not shuffling money +from one heap into another, making rules and regulations for others to +unmake, preparing for future restless idlers the only useful work which +restless idleness can do, the carting away of their predecessor's +litter?</p> + +<p>Nor is this all the mischief. Work undertaken to kill time, at best to +safeguard one's dignity, is clearly not the work which one was born to, +since that would have required no such incentives. Now, trying to do +work one is not fit for, implies the more or less unfitting oneself to +do, or even to be, the something for which one had facilities. It means +competing with those who are utterly different, competing in things +which want a totally different kind of organism; it means, therefore, +offering one's arms and legs, and feelings and thoughts to those blind, +brutal forces of adaptation which, having to fit a human character into +a given place, lengthen and shorten it, mangling it unconcernedly in +the process.</p> + +<p>Say one was naturally adventurous, a creature for open air and quick, +original resolves. Is he the better for a deliberative, sedentary +business, or it for him? There are people whose thought poises on +distant points, swirls and pounces, and gets the prey which can't be got +by stalking along the bushes; there are those who, like divers, require +to move head downwards, feet in the air, an absurd position for going up +hill. There are people who must not feel æsthetically, in order (so Dr. +Bain assures us) that they may be thorough-paced, scientific thinkers; +others who cannot get half a page or fifty dates by heart because they +assimilate and alter everything they take in.</p> + +<p>And think of the persons born to contemplation or sympathy, who, in the +effort to be prompt and practical, in the struggle for a fortune or a +visiting-list lose, atrophy (alas, after so much cruel bruising!) their +inborn exquisite powers.</p> + +<p>The world wants useful inhabitants. True. But the clouds building +bridges over the sea, the storms modelling the peaks and flanks of the +mountains, are a part of the world; and they want creatures to sit and +look at them and learn their life's secrets, and carry them away, +conveyed perhaps merely in altered tone of voice, or brightened colour +of eye, to revive the spiritual and physical hewers of wood and drawers +of water. For the poor sons and daughters of men require for sustenance, +as well as food and fuel, and intellect and morals, the special +mysterious commodity called <i>charm</i>....</p> + + +<h4>IV</h4> + +<p>And here let me open a parenthesis of lamentation over the ruthless +manner in which our century and nation destroys this precious thing, +even in its root and seed. <i>Charm</i> is, where it exists, an intrinsic and +ultimate quality; it makes our actions, persons, life, significant and +desirable, apart from anything they may lead to, or any use to which +they can be put. Now we are allowing ourselves to get into a state where +nothing is valued, otherwise than as a means; where to-day is +interesting only because it leads up to to-morrow; and the flower is +valued only on account of the fruit, and the fruit, in its turn, on +account of the seed.</p> + +<p>It began, perhaps, with the loss of that sacramental view of life and +life's details which belonged to Judaism and the classic religions, and +of which even Catholicism has retained a share; making eating, drinking, +sleeping, cleaning house and person, let alone marriage, birth, and +death, into something grave and meaningful, not merely animal and +accidental; and mapping out the years into days, each with its symbolic +or commemorative meaning and emotion. All this went long ago, and +inevitably. But we are losing nowadays something analogous and more +important: the cultivation and sanctification not merely of acts and +occasions but of the individual character.</p> + +<p>Life has been allowed to arrange itself, if such can be called +arrangement, into an unstable, jostling heap of interests, ours and +other folk's, serious and vacuous, trusted to settle themselves +according to the line of least resistance (that is, of most breakage!) +and the survival of the toughest, without our sympathy directing the +choice. As the days of the year have become confused, hurried, and +largely filled with worthless toil and unworthy trouble, so in a +measure, alas, our souls! We rarely envy people for being delightful; we +are always ashamed of mentioning that any of our friends are virtuous; +we state what they have done, or do, or are attempting; we state their +chances of success. Yet success may depend, and often does, on greater +hurrying and jostling, not on finer material and workmanship, in our +hurrying times. The quick method, the rapid worker, the cheap object +quickly replaced by a cheaper—these we honour; we want the last new +thing, and have no time to get to love our properties, bodily and +spiritual. 'Tis bad economy, we think, to weave such damask, linen, and +brocade as our fathers have left us; and perhaps this reason accounts +for our love of <i>bric-à-brac</i>; we wish to buy associations ready made, +like that wealthy man of taste who sought to buy a half-dozen old +statues, properly battered and lichened by the centuries, to put in his +brand new garden. With this is connected—I mean this indifference to +what folk <i>are</i> as distinguished from what they <i>do</i>—the self-assertion +and aggressiveness of many worthy persons, men more than women, and +gifted, alas, more than giftless; the special powers proportionately +accompanied by special odiousness. Such persons cultivate themselves, +indeed, but as fruit and vegetables for the market, and, with good luck +and trouble, possibly <i>primeurs</i>: concentrate every means, chemical +manure and sunshine, and quick each still hard pear or greenish +cauliflower into the packing-case, the shavings and sawdust, for export. +It is with such well-endowed persons that originates the terrible mania +(caught by their neighbours) of tangible work, something which can be +put alongside of others' tangible work, if possible with some visible +social number attached to it. So long as this be placed on the stall +where it courts inspection, what matter how empty and exhausted the soul +which has grown it? For nobody looks at souls except those who use them +for this market-gardening.</p> + +<p>Dropping metaphor; it is woeful to see so many fine qualities sacrificed +to <i>getting on</i>, independent of actual necessity; getting on, no matter +why, on to the road <i>to no matter what</i>. And on that road, what +bitterness and fury if another passes in front! Take up books of +science, of history and criticism, let alone newspapers; half the space +is taken up in explaining (or forestalling explanations), that the sage, +hero, poet, artist said, did, or made the particular thing before some +other sage, hero, poet, artist; and that what the other did, or said, or +made, was either a bungle, or a plagiarism, or worst of all—was +something <i>obvious</i>. Hence, like the bare-back riders at the Siena +races, illustrious persons, and would-be illustrious, may be watched +using their energies, not merely in pressing forward, but in hitting +competitors out of the way with inflated bladders—bladders filled with +the wind of conceit, not merely the breath of the lungs. People who +might have been modest and gentle, grow, merely from self-defence, +arrogant and aggressive; they become waspish, contradictory, unfair, who +were born to be wise and just, and well-mannered. And to return to the +question of <i>Charm</i>, they lose, soil, maim in this scuffle, much of this +most valuable possession; their intimate essential quality, their +natural manner of being towards nature and neighbours and ideas; their +individual shape, perfume, savour, and, in the sense of herbals, their +individual <i>virtue</i>. And when, sometimes, one comes across some of it +remaining, it is with the saddened feeling of finding a delicate plant +trampled by cattle or half eaten up by goats.</p> + +<p>Alas, alas, for charm! People are busy painting pictures, writing poems, +and making music all the world over, and busy making money for the +buying or hiring thereof. But as to that charm of character which is +worth all the music and poetry and pictures put together, how the good +common-sense generations do waste it.</p> + + +<h4>V</h4> + +<p>Now I suspect that <i>Charm</i> is closely related to <i>Leisure</i>. Charm is a +living harmony in the individual soul. It is organised internally, the +expression of mere inborn needs, the offspring of free choice; and as it +is the great giver of pleasure to others, sprung probably from pleasure +within ourselves; making life seem easier, more flexible, even as life +feels in so far easier and more flexible to those who have it. Now even +the best work means struggle, if not with the world and oneself, at +least with difficulties inanimate and animate, pressure and resistance +which make the individual soul stronger, but also harder and less +flower-like, and often a trifle warped by inevitable routine. Hence +Charm is not the nursling of our hours of work, but the delicate and +capricious foster-child of Leisure. For, as observed, Leisure suspends +the pull and push, the rough-and-ready reciprocity of man and +circumstance. 'Tis in leisure that the soul is free to grow by its own +laws, grow inwardly organised and harmonious; its fine individual +hierarchism to form feelings and thoughts, each taking rank and motion +under a conscious headship. 'Tis, I would show, in leisure, while +talking with the persons who are dear, while musing on the themes that +are dearer even than they, that voices learn their harmonious modes, +intonation, accent, pronunciation of single words; all somehow falling +into characteristic pattern, and the features of the face learn to move +with that centred meaning which oftentimes makes homeliness itself more +radiant than beauty. Nay more, may it not be in Leisure, during life's +pauses, that we learn to live, what for and how?</p> + + +<h4>VI</h4> + +<p><i>Life's Pauses.</i> We think of Leisure in those terms, comparing it with +the scramble, at best the bustle, of work. But this might be a delusion, +like that of the moving shore and the motionless boat. St. Jerome, our +dear patron of Leisure, is looking dreamily over the top of his desk, +listening to the larks outside the wide window, watching the white +sailing clouds. Is he less alive than if his eyes were glued to the +page, his thoughts focussed on one topic, his pen going scratch-scratch, +his soul oblivious of itself? He might be writing fine words, thinking +fine thoughts; but would he have had fine thoughts to think, fine words +to write, if he had always been busy thinking and writing, and had kept +company not with the larks and the clouds and the dear lion on the mat, +but only with the scratching pen?</p> + +<p>For, when all is said and done, 'tis during work we spend, during +leisure we amass those qualities which we barter for ever with other +folk, and the act of barter is <i>life</i>. Anyhow, metaphysics apart, and to +return to St. Jerome. This much is clear, that if Leisure were not a +very good thing, this dear old saint would never have been made its +heavenly patron.</p> + +<p>But your discourse, declares the stern reader or he of sicklier +conscience, might be a masked apology for idleness; and pray how many +people would work in this world if every one insisted on having Leisure? +The question, moralising friend, contains its own answer: if every one +insisted on a share of Leisure, every one also would do a share of work. +For as things stand, 'tis the superfluity of one man which makes the +poverty of the other. And who knows? The realisation that Leisure is a +good thing, a thing which every one must have, may, before very long, +set many an idle man digging his garden and grooming his horses, many an +idle woman cooking her dinner and rubbing her furniture. Not merely +because one half of the world (the larger) will have recognised that +work from morning to night is not in any sense living; but also because +the other half may have learned (perhaps through grumbling experience) +that doing nothing all day long, incidentally consuming or spoiling the +work of others, is not <i>living</i> either. The recognition of the necessity +of Leisure, believe me, will imply the recognition of the necessity of +work, as its moral—I might say its <i>hygienic</i>, as much as its economic, +co-relative.</p> + +<p>For Leisure (and the ignorance of this truth is at the bottom of much +<i>ennui</i>)—Leisure implies a superabundance not only of time but of the +energy needed to spend time pleasantly. And it takes the finest activity +to be truly at Leisure. Since Being at Leisure is but a name for being +active from an inner impulse instead of a necessity; moving like a +dancer or skater for the sake of one's inner rhythm instead of moving, +like a ploughman or an errand-boy, for the sake of the wages you get for +it. Indeed, for this reason, the type of all Leisure is <i>art</i>.</p> + +<p>But this is an intricate question, and time, alas! presses. We must +break off this leisurely talk, and betake ourselves each to his +business—let us hope not to his treadmill! And, as we do so, the more +to enjoy our work if luckily useful, the less to detest it if, alas! as +so often in our days, useless; let us invoke the good old greybeard, +painted enjoying himself between his lion and his quail in the +wide-windowed study; and, wishing for leisure, invoke its patron. Give +us spare time, Holy Jerome, and joyful energy to use it. Sancte +Hieronyme, ora pro nobis!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="RAVENNA_AND_HER_GHOSTS" id="RAVENNA_AND_HER_GHOSTS"></a>RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS</h3> + + +<p>My oldest impression of Ravenna, before it became in my eyes the abode +of living friends as well as of outlandish ghosts, is of a melancholy +spring sunset at Classe.</p> + +<p>Classe, which Dante and Boccaccio call in less Latin fashion Chiassi, is +the place where of old the fleet <i>(classis)</i> of the Romans and +Ostrogoths rode at anchor in the Adriatic. And Boccaccio says that it is +(but I think he over-calculates) at three miles distance from Ravenna. +It is represented in the mosaic of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, dating from +the reign of Theodoric, by a fine city wall of gold <i>tesseræ</i> (facing +the representation of Theodoric's town palace with the looped-up +embroidered curtains) and a strip of ultramarine sea, with two +rowing-boats and one white blown-out sail upon it. Ravenna, which is now +an inland town, was at that time built in a lagoon; and we must picture +Classe in much the same relation to it that Malamocco or the Port of +Lido is to Venice, the open sea-harbour, where big ships and flotillas +were stationed, while smaller craft wound through the channels and +sand-banks up to the city. But now the lagoon has dried up, the Adriatic +has receded, and there remains of Classis not a stone, save, in the +midst of stagnant canals, rice marsh and brown bogland, a gaunt and +desolate church, with a ruinous mildewed house and a crevassed round +tower by its side.</p> + +<p>It seemed to me that first time, and has ever since seemed, no Christian +church, but the temple of the great Roman goddess Fever. The gates stood +open, as they do all day lest inner damp consume the building, and a +beam from the low sun slanted across the oozy brown nave and struck a +round spot of glittering green on the mosaic of the apse. There, in the +half dome, stood rows and rows of lambs, each with its little tree and +lilies, shining out white from the brilliant green grass of Paradise, +great streams of gold and blue circling around them, and widening +overhead into lakes of peacock splendour. The slanting sunbeam which +burnished that spot of green and gold and brown mosaic, fell also +across the altar steps, brown and green in their wet mildew like the +ceiling above. The floor of the church, sunk below the level of the +road, was as a piece of boggy ground leaving the feet damp, and +breathing a clammy horror on the air. Outside the sun was setting behind +a bank of solid grey clouds, faintly reddening their rifts and sending a +few rose-coloured streaks into the pure yellow evening sky. Against that +sky stood out the long russet line, the delicate cupolaed silhouette of +the sear pinewood recently blasted by frost. While, on the other side, +the marsh stretched out beyond sight, confused in the distance with grey +clouds its lines of bare spectral poplars picked out upon its green and +the greyness of the sky. All round the church lay brown grass, livid +pools, green rice-fields covered with clear water reflecting the red +sunset streaks; and overhead, driven by storm from the sea, the white +gulls, ghosts you might think, of the white-sailed galleys of Theodoric, +still haunting the harbour of Classis.</p> + +<p>Since then, as I hinted, Ravenna has become the home of dear friends, +to which I periodically return, in autumn or winter or blazing summer, +without taking thought for any of the ghosts. And the impressions of +Ravenna are mainly those of life; the voices of children, the plans of +farmers, the squabbles of local politics. I am waked in the morning by +the noises of the market; and opening my shutters, look down upon green +umbrellas and awnings spread over baskets of fruit and vegetables, and +heaps of ironware and stalls of coloured stuffs and gaudy kerchiefs. The +streets are by no means empty. A steam tramcar puffs slowly along the +widest of them; and, in the narrower, you have perpetually to squeeze +against a house to make room for a clattering pony-cart, a jingling +carriole, or one of those splendid bullock-waggons, shaped like an +old-fashioned cannon-cart with spokeless wheels and metal studdings. +There are no mediæval churches in Ravenna, and very few mediæval houses. +The older palaces, though practically fortified, have a vague look of +Roman villas; and the whole town is painted a delicate rose and apricot +colour, which, particularly if you have come from the sad coloured +cities of Tuscany, gives it a Venetian, and (if I may say so) +chintz-petticoat flowered-kerchief cheerfulness. And the life of the +people, when you come in contact with it, also leaves an impression of +provincial, rustic bustle. The Romagnas are full of crude socialism. The +change from rice to wheat-growing has produced agricultural discontent; +and conspiracy has been in the blood of these people, ever since Dante +answered the Romagnolo Guido that his country would never have peace in +its heart. The ghosts of Byzantine emperors and exarchs, of Gothic kings +and mediæval tyrants must be laid, one would think, by socialist +meetings and electioneering squabbles; and perhaps by another movement, +as modern and as revolutionary, which also centres in this big +historical village, the reclaiming of marshland, which may bring about +changes in mode of living and thinking such as Socialism can never +effect; nay, for all one knows, changes in climate, in sea and wind and +clouds. <i>Bonification</i>, reclaiming, that is the great word in Ravenna; +and I had scarcely arrived last autumn, before I found myself whirled +off, among dog-carts and <i>chars-à-bancs</i>, to view reclaimed land in the +cloudless, pale blue, ice-cold weather. On we trotted, with a great +consulting of maps and discussing of expenses and production, through +the flat green fields and meadows marked with haystacks; and jolted +along a deep sandy track, all that remains of the Roméa, the pilgrims' +way from Venice to Rome, where marsh and pool begin to interrupt the +well-kept pastures, and the line of pine woods to come nearer and +nearer. Over the fields, the frequent canals, and hidden ponds, circled +gulls and wild fowl; and at every farm there was a little crowd of +pony-carts and of gaitered sportsmen returning from the marshes. A sense +of reality, of the present, of useful, bread-giving, fever-curing +activity came by sympathy, as I listened to the chatter of my friends, +and saw field after field, farm after farm, pointed out where, but a +while ago, only swamp grass and bushes grew, and cranes and wild duck +nested. In ten, twenty, fifty years, they went on calculating, Ravenna +will be able to diminish by so much the town-rates; the Romagnas will be +able to support so many more thousands of inhabitants; and that merely +by employing the rivers to deposit arable soil torn from the mountain +valleys; the rivers—Po and his followers, as Dante called them—which +have so long turned this country into marsh; the rivers which, in a +thousand years, cut off Ravenna from her sea.</p> + +<p>We turned towards home, greedy for tea, and mightily in conceit with +progress. But before us, at a turn of the road, appeared Ravenna, its +towers and cupolas against a bank of clouds, a piled-up heap of sunset +fire; its canal, barred with flame, leading into its black vagueness, a +spectre city. And there, to the left, among the bare trees, loomed the +great round tomb of Theodoric. We jingled on, silent and overcome by the +deathly December chill.</p> + +<p>That is the odd thing about Ravenna. It is, more than any of the Tuscan +towns, more than most of the Lombard ones, modern, and full of rough, +dull, modern life; and the past which haunts it comes from so far off, +from a world with which we have no contact. Those pillared basilicas, +which look like modern village churches from the street, affect one with +their almost Moorish arches, their enamelled splendour of ultramarine, +russet, sea-green and gold mosaics, their lily fields and peacock's +tails in mosque-like domes, as great stranded hulks, come floating +across Eastern seas and drifted ashore among the marsh and rice-field. +The grapes and ivy berries, the pouting pigeons, the palm-trees and +pecking peacocks, all this early symbolism with its association of +Bacchic, Eleusinian mysteries, seems, quite as much as the actual +fragments of Grecian capitals, the discs and gratings of porphyry and +alabaster, so much flotsam and jetsam cast up from the shipwreck of an +older Antiquity than Rome's; remnants of early Hellas, of Ionia, perhaps +of Tyre.</p> + +<p>I used to feel this particularly in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, or, as it is +usually called, <i>Classe dentro</i>, the long basilica built by Theodoric, +outrivalled later by Justinian's octagon church of Saint Vitalis. There +is something extremely Hellenic in feeling (however un-Grecian in form) +in the pearly fairness of the delicate silvery white columns and +capitals; in the gleam of white, on golden ground, and reticulated with +jewels and embroideries, of the long band of mosaic virgins and martyrs +running above them. The virgins, with their Byzantine names—Sancta +Anastasia, Sancta Anatolia, Sancta Eulalia, Sancta Euphemia—have big +kohled eyes and embroidered garments fantastically suggesting some +Eastern hieratic dancing-girl; but they follow each other, in single +file (each with her lily or rose-bush sprouting from the gauze, green +mosaic), with erect, slightly balanced gait like the maidens of the +Panathenaic procession, carrying, one would say, votive offerings to the +altar, rather than crowns of martyrdom; all stately, sedate, as if +drilled by some priestly ballet-master, all with the same wide eyes and +set smile as of early Greek sculpture. There is no attempt to +distinguish one from the other. There are no gaping wounds, tragic +attitudes, wheels, swords, pincers or other attributes of martyrdom. And +the male saints on the wall opposite are equally unlike mediæval +Sebastians and Laurences, going, one behind the other, in shining white +togas, to present their crowns to Christ on His throne. Christ also, in +this Byzantine art, is never the Saviour. He sits, an angel on each +side, on His golden seat, clad in purple and sandalled with gold, +serene, beardless, wide-eyed like some distant descendant of the +Olympic Jove with his mantle of purple and gold.</p> + +<p>This church of Saint Apollinaris contains a chapel specially dedicated +to the saint, which sums up that curious impression of Hellenic +pre-Christian cheerfulness. It is encrusted with porphyry and <i>giallo +antico</i>, framed with delicate carved ivy wreaths along the sides, and +railed in with an exquisite piece of alabaster openwork of vines and +grapes, as on an antique altar. And in a corner of this little temple, +which seems to be waiting for some painter enamoured of Greece and +marble, stands the episcopal seat of the patron saint of the church, the +saint who took his name from Apollo; an alabaster seat, wide-curved and +delicate, in whose back you expect to find, so striking is the +resemblance, the relief of dancing satyrs of the chair of the Priest of +Dionysus.</p> + +<p>As I was sitting one morning, as was my wont, in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, +which (like all Ravenna churches) is always empty, a woman came in, with +a woollen shawl over her head, who, after hunting anxiously about, asked +me where she would find the parish priest. "It is," she said, "for the +Madonna's milk. My husband is a labourer out of work, he has been ill, +and the worry of it all has made me unable to nurse my little baby. I +want the priest, to ask him to get the Madonna to give me back my milk." +I thought, as I listened to the poor creature, that there was but little +hope of motherly sympathy from that Byzantine Madonna in purple and gold +mosaic magnificence, seated ceremoniously on her throne like an antique +Cybele.</p> + +<p>Little by little one returns to one's first impression, and recognises +that this thriving little provincial town, with its socialism and its +<i>bonification</i> is after all a nest of ghosts, and little better than the +churchyard of centuries.</p> + +<p>Never, surely, did a town contain so many coffins, or at least thrust +coffins more upon one's notice. The coffins are stone, immense oblong +boxes, with massive sloping lids horned at each corner, or trough-like +things with delicate sea-wave patternings, figures of toga'd saints and +devices of palm-trees, peacocks, and doves, the carving made clearer by +a picking out of bright green damp. They stand about in all the +churches, not walled in, but quite free in the aisles, the chapels, and +even close to the door. Most of them are doubtless of the fifth or sixth +century, others perhaps barbarous or mediæval imitations; but they all +equally belong to the ages in general, including our own, not +curiosities or heirlooms, but serviceable furniture, into which +generations have been put, and out of which generations have been turned +to make room for later corners. It strikes one as curious at first to +see, for instance, the date 1826 on a sarcophagus probably made under +Theodoric or the Exarchs, but that merely means that a particular +gentleman of Ravenna began that year his lease of entombment. They have +passed from hand to hand (or, more properly speaking, from corpse to +corpse) not merely by being occasionally discovered in digging +foundations, but by inheritance, and frequently by sale. My friends +possess a stone coffin, and the receipt from its previous owner. The +transaction took place some fifty years ago; a name (they are cut very +lightly) changed, a slab or coat-of-arms placed with the sarcophagus in +a different church or chapel, a deed before the notary—that was all. +What became of the previous tenant? Once at least he surprised posterity +very much; perhaps it was in the case of that very purchase for which my +friends still keep the bill. I know not; but the stone-mason of the +house used to relate that, some forty years ago, he was called in to +open a stone coffin; when, the immense horned lid having been rolled +off, there was seen, lying in the sarcophagus, a man in complete armour, +his sword by his side and vizor up, who, as they cried out in +astonishment, instantly fell to dust. Was he an Ostrogothic knight, some +Gunther or Volker turned Roman senator, or perhaps a companion of Guido +da Polenta, a messmate of Dante, a playfellow of Francesca?</p> + +<p>Coffins being thus plentiful, their occupants (like this unknown +warrior) have played considerable part in the gossip of Ravenna. It is +well known, for instance, that Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius, +sister of Arcadius and Honorius, and wife to a Visigothic king, sat for +centuries enthroned (after a few years of the strangest adventures) +erect, inside the alabaster coffin, formerly plated with gold, in the +wonderful little blue mosaic chapel which bears her name. You could see +her through a hole, quite plainly; until, three centuries ago, some +inquisitive boys thrust in a candle, and burned Theodosius's daughter to +ashes. Dante also is buried under a little cupola at the corner of a +certain street, and there was, for many years, a strange doubt about his +bones. Had they been mislaid, stolen, mixed up with those of ordinary +mortals? The whole thing was shrouded in mystery. That street corner +where Dante lies, a remote corner under the wing of a church, resembled, +until it was modernised and surrounded by gratings, and filled with +garlands and inscriptions to Mazzini, nothing so much as the corner of +Dis where Dante himself found Farinata and Cavalcante. It is crowded +with stone coffins; and, passing there in the twilight, one might expect +to see flames upheaving their lids, and the elbows and shoulders of +imprisoned followers of Epicurus.</p> + +<p>Only once, so far as I know, have the inhabitants of Ravenna, Byzantine, +mediæval, or modern, wasted a coffin; but one is very glad of that once. +I am speaking of a Roman sarcophagus, on which you can still trace the +outlines of garlands, which stands turned into a cattle trough, behind +the solitary farm in the depth of the forest of St. Vitalis. Round it +the grass is covered in summer by the creeping tendrils of the white +clematis; and, in winter, the great thorn bushes and barberries and oaks +blaze out crimson and scarlet and golden. The big, long-horned, grey +cows pass to and fro to be milked; and the shaggy ponies who haunt the +pine wood come there to drink. It is better than housing no matter how +many generations, jurisconsults, knights, monks, tyrants and persons of +quality, among the damp and the stale incense of a church!</p> + +<p>Enough of coffins! There are live things at Ravenna and near Ravenna; +amongst others, though few people realise its presence, there is the +sea.</p> + +<p>It was on the day of the fish auction that I first went there. In the +tiny port by the pier (for Ravenna has now no harbour) they were making +an incredible din over the emptyings of the nets; pretty, mottled, +metallic fish, and slimy octopuses and sepias and flounders, looking +like pieces of sea-mud. The fishing-boats, mostly from the Venetian +lagoon, were moored along the pier, wide-bowed things, with eyes in the +prow like the ships of Ulysses; and bigger craft, with little castles +and weather-vanes and saints' images and penons on the masts like the +galleys of St. Ursula as painted by Carpaccio; but all with the splendid +orange sail, patched with suns, lions, and coloured stripes, of the +Northern Adriatic. The fishermen from Chioggia, their heads covered with +the high scarlet cap of the fifteenth century, were yelling at the +fishmongers from town; and all round lounged artillerymen in their white +undress and yellow straps, who are encamped for practice on the sands, +and whose carts and guns we had met rattling along the sandy road +through the marsh.</p> + +<p>On the pier we were met by an old man, very shabby and unshaven, who had +been the priest for many years, with a salary of twelve pounds a year, +of Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori, a little Gothic church in the marsh, where +he had discovered and rubbed slowly into existence (it took him two +months and heaven knows how many pennyworths of bread!) some valuable +Giottesque frescoes. He was now chaplain of the harbour, and had turned +his mind to maritime inventions, designing lighthouses, and shooting +dolphins to make oil of their blubber. A kind old man, but with the odd +brightness of a creature who has lived for years amid solitude and +fever; a fit companion for the haggard saints whom he brought, one by +one, in robes of glory and golden halos, to life again in his forlorn +little church.</p> + +<p>While we were looking out at the sea, where a little flotilla of yellow +and cinnamon sails sat on the blue of the view-line like parrots on a +rail, the sun had begun to set, a crimson ball, over the fringe of pine +woods. We turned to go. Over the town, the place whence presently will +emerge the slanting towers of Ravenna, the sky had become a brilliant, +melancholy slate-blue; and apparently out of its depths, in the early +twilight, flowed the wide canal between its dim banks fringed with +tamarisk. No tree, no rock, or house was reflected in the jade-coloured +water, only the uniform shadow of the bank made a dark, narrow band +alongside its glassiness. It flows on towards the invisible sea, whose +yellow sails overtop the grey marshland. In thick smooth strands of +curdled water it flows lilac, pale pink, opalescent according to the +sky above, reflecting nothing besides, save at long intervals the +spectral spars and spider-like tissue of some triangular fishing-net; a +wan and delicate Lethe, issuing, you would say, out of a far-gone past +into the sands and the almost tideless sea.</p> + +<p>Other places become solemn, sad, or merely beautiful at sunset. But +Ravenna, it seems to me, grows actually ghostly; the Past takes it back +at that moment, and the ghosts return to the surface.</p> + +<p>For it is, after all, a nest of ghosts. They hang about all those +silent, damp churches; invisible, or at most tantalising one with a +sudden gleam which may, after all, be only that of the mosaics, an +uncertain outline which, when you near it, is after all only a pale grey +column. But one feels their breathing all round. They are legion, but I +do not know who they are. I only know that they are white, luminous, +with gold embroideries to their robes, and wide, painted eyes, and that +they are silent. The good citizens of Ravenna, in the comfortable +eighteenth century, filled the churches with wooden pews, convenient, +genteel in line and colour, with their names and coats-of-arms in full +on the backs. But the ghosts took no notice of this measure; and there +they are, even among these pews themselves.</p> + +<p>Bishops and Exarchs, and jewelled Empresses, and half Oriental +Autocrats, saints and bedizened court-ladies, and barbarian guards and +wicked chamberlains; I know not what they are. Only one of the ghosts +takes a shape I can distinguish, and a name I am certain of. It is not +Justinian or Theodora, who stare goggle-eyed from their mosaic in San +Vitale mere wretched historic realities; <i>they</i> cannot haunt. The +spectre I speak of is Theodoric. His tomb is still standing, outside the +town in an orchard; a great round tower, with a circular roof made +(heaven knows how) of one huge slab of Istrian stone, horned at the +sides like the sarcophagi, or vaguely like a Viking's cap. The ashes of +the great king have long been dispersed, for he was an Arian heretic. +But the tomb remains, intact, a thing which neither time nor earthquake +can dismantle.</p> + +<p>In the town they show a piece of masonry, the remains of a doorway, and +a delicate, pillared window, built on to a modern house, which is +identified (but wrongly I am told) as Theodoric's palace, by its +resemblance to the golden palace with the looped-up curtains on the +mosaic of the neighbouring church. Into the wall of this building is +built a great Roman porphyry bath, with rings carved on it, to which +time has adjusted a lid of brilliant green lichen. There is no more. But +Theodoric still haunts Ravenna. I have always, ever since I have known +the town, been anxious to know more about Theodoric, but the accounts +are jejune, prosaic, not at all answering to what that great king, who +took his place with Attila and Sigurd in the great Northern epic, must +have been. Historians represent him generally as a sort of superior +barbarian, trying to assimilate and save the civilisation he was bound +to destroy; an Ostrogothic king trying to be a Roman emperor; a military +organiser and bureaucrat, exchanging his birthright of Valhalla for +heaven knows what aulic red-tape miseries. But that is unsatisfactory. +The real man, the Berserker trying to tame himself into the Cæsar of a +fallen, shrunken Rome, seems to come out in the legend of his remorse +and visions, pursued by the ghosts of Boetius and Symmachus, the wise +men he had slain in his madness.</p> + +<p>He haunts Ravenna, striding along the aisles of her basilicas, riding +under the high moon along the dykes of her marshes, surrounded by +white-stoled Romans, and Roman ensigns with eagles and crosses; but +clad, as the Gothic brass-worker of Innsbruck has shown him, in no Roman +lappets and breastplate, but in full mail, with beaked steel shoes and +steel gorget, his big sword drawn, his vizor down, mysterious, the +Dietrich of the Nibelungenlied, Theodoric King of the Goths.</p> + +<p>These are the ghosts that haunt Ravenna, the true ghosts haunting only +for such as can know their presence. But Ravenna, almost alone among +Italian cities, possesses moreover a complete ghost-story of the most +perfect type and highest antiquity, which has gone round the world and +become known to all people. Boccaccio wrote it in prose; Dryden re-wrote +it in verse; Botticelli illustrated it; and Byron summed up its quality +in one of his most sympathetic passages. After this, to re-tell it were +useless, had I not chanced to obtain, in a manner I am not at liberty to +divulge, another version, arisen in Ravenna itself, and written, most +evidently, in fullest knowledge of the case. Its language is the +barbarous Romagnol dialect of the early fifteenth century, and it lacks +all the Tuscan graces of the Decameron. But it possesses a certain air +of truthfulness, suggesting that it was written by some one who had +heard the facts from those who believed in them, and who believed in +them himself; and I am therefore decided to give it, turned into +English.</p> + + +<h4>THE LEGEND</h4> + +<p>About that time (when Messer Guido da Pollenta was lord of Ravenna) men +spoke not a little of what happened to Messer Nastasio de Honestis, son +of Messer Brunoro, in the forest of Classis. Now the forest of Classis +is exceeding vast, extending along the sea-shore between Ravenna and +Cervia for the space of some fifteen miles, and has its beginning near +the church of Saint Apollinaris, which is in the marsh; and you reach +it directly from the gate of the same name, but also, crossing the River +Ronco where it is easier to ford, by the gate called Sisa, beyond the +houses of the Rasponis. And this forest aforesaid is made of many kinds +of noble and useful trees, to wit, oaks, both free standing and in +bushes, ilexes, elms, poplars, bays, and many plants of smaller growth +but great dignity and pleasantness, as hawthorns, barberries, +blackthorn, blackberry, brier-rose, and the thorn called marrucca, which +bears pods resembling small hats or cymbals, and is excellent for +hedging. But principally does this noble forest consist of pine-trees, +exceeding lofty and perpetually green; whence indeed the arms of this +ancient city, formerly the seat of the Emperors of Rome, are none other +than a green pine-tree.</p> + +<p>And the forest aforesaid is well stocked with animals, both such as run +and creep, and many birds. The animals are foxes, badgers, hares, +rabbits, ferrets, squirrels, and wild boars, the which issue forth and +eat the young crops and grub the fields with incredible damage to all +concerned. Of the birds it would be too long to speak, both of those +which are snared, shot with cross-bows, or hunted with the falcon; and +they feed off fish in the ponds and streams of the forest, and grasses +and berries, and the pods of the white vine (clematis) which covers the +grass on all sides. And the manner of Messer Nastasio being in the +forest was thus, he being at the time a youth of twenty years or +thereabouts, of illustrious birth, and comely person and learning and +prowess, and modest and discreet bearing. For it so happened that, being +enamoured of the daughter of Messer Hostasio de Traversariis, the +damsel, who was lovely, but exceeding coy and shrewish, would not +consent to marry him, despite the desire of her parents, who in +everything, as happens with only daughters of old men (for Messer +Hostasio was well stricken in years), sought only to please her. +Whereupon Messer Nastasio, fearing lest the damsel might despise his +fortunes, wasted his substance in presents and feastings, and joustings, +but all to no avail.</p> + +<p>When it happened that having spent nearly all he possessed and ashamed +to show his poverty and his unlucky love before the eyes of his +townsmen, he betook him to the forest of Classis, it being autumn, on +the pretext of snaring birds, but intending to take privily the road to +Rimini and thence to Rome, and there seek his fortune. And Nastasio took +with him fowling-nets, and bird-lime, and tame owls, and two horses (one +of which was ridden by his servant), and food for some days; and they +alighted in the midst of the forest, and slept in one of the +fowling-huts of cut branches set up by the citizens of Ravenna for their +pleasure.</p> + +<p>And it happened that on the afternoon of the second day (and it chanced +to be a Friday) of his stay in the forest, Messer Nastasio, being +exceeding sad in his heart, went forth towards the sea to muse upon the +unkindness of his beloved and the hardness of his fortune. Now you +should know that near the sea, where you can clearly hear its roaring +even on windless days there is in that forest a clear place, made as by +the hand of man, set round with tall pines even like a garden, but in +the shape of a horse-course, free from bushes and pools, and covered +with the finest greensward. Here, as Nastasio sate him on the trunk of a +pine—the hour was sunset, the weather being uncommon clear—he heard a +rushing sound in the distance, as of the sea; and there blew a +death-cold wind; and then came sounds of crashing branches, and neighing +of horses, and yelping of hounds, and halloes and horns. And Nastasio +wondered greatly, for that was not the hour for hunting; and he hid +behind a great pine trunk, fearing to be recognised. And the sounds came +nearer, even of horns, and hounds, and the shouts of huntsmen; and the +bushes rustled and crashed, and the hunt rushed into the clearing, +horsemen and foot, with many hounds. And behold, what they pursued was +not a wild boar, but something white that ran erect, and it seemed to +Messer Nastasio, as if it greatly resembled a naked woman; and it +screamed piteously.</p> + +<p>Now when the hunt had swept past, Messer Nastasio rubbed his eyes and +wondered greatly. But even as he wondered, and stood in the middle of +the clearing, behold, part of the hunt swept back, and the thing which +they pursued ran in a circle on the greensward, shrieking piteously. And +behold, it was a young damsel, naked, her hair loose and full of +brambles, with only a tattered cloth round her middle. And as she came +near to where Messer Nastasio was standing (but no one of the hunt +seemed to heed him) the hounds were upon her, barking furiously, and a +hunter on a black horse, black even as night. And a cold wind blew and +caused Nastasio's hair to stand on end; and he tried to cry out, and to +rush forward, but his voice died in his throat and his limbs were heavy, +and covered with sweat, and refused to move.</p> + +<p>Then the hounds fastening on the damsel threw her down, and he on the +black horse turned swiftly, and transfixed her, shrieking dismally, with +a boar-spear. And those of the hunt galloped up, and wound their horns; +and he of the black horse, which was a stately youth habited in a coat +of black and gold, and black boots and black feathers on his hat, threw +his reins to a groom, and alighted and approached the damsel where she +lay, while the huntsmen were holding back the hounds and winding their +horns. Then he drew a knife, such as are used by huntsmen, and driving +its blade into the damsel's side, cut out her heart, and threw it, all +smoking, into the midst of the hounds. And a cold wind rustled through +the bushes, and all had disappeared, horses, and huntsmen, and hounds. +And the grass was untrodden as if no man's foot or horse's hoof had +passed there for months.</p> + +<p>And Messer Nastasio shuddered, and his limbs loosened, and he knew that +the hunter on the black horse was Messer Guido Degli Anastagi, and the +damsel Monna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara. Messer Guido +had loved the damsel greatly, and been flouted by her, and leaving his +home in despair, had been killed on the way by robbers, and Madonna +Filomena had died shortly after. The tale was still fresh in men's +memory, for it had happened in the city of Ravenna barely five years +before. And those whom Nastasio had seen, both the hunter and the lady, +and the huntsmen and horses and hounds, were the spirits of the dead.</p> + +<p>When he had recovered his courage, Messer Nastasio sighed and said unto +himself: "How like is my fate to that of Messer Guido! Yet would I +never, even when a spectre, without weight or substance, made of wind +and delusion, and arisen from hell, act with such cruelty towards her I +love." And then he thought: "Would that the daughter of Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis might hear of this! For surely it would cause her to +relent!" But he knew that his words would be vain, and that none of the +citizens of Ravenna, and least of all the damsel of the Traversari, +would believe them, but rather esteem him a madman.</p> + +<p>Now it came about that when Friday came round once more, Nastasio, by +some chance, was again walking in the forest-clearing by the great +pines, and he had forgotten; when the sea began to roar, and a cold wind +blew; and there came through the forest the sound of horses and hounds, +causing Messer Nastasio's hair to stand up and his limbs to grow weak as +water. And he on the black horse again pursued the naked damsel, and +struck here with his boar-spear, and cut out her heart and threw it to +the hounds; the which hunter and damsel were the ghosts of Messer Guido, +and of Madonna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara, arisen out +of Hell. And in this fashion did it happen for three Fridays following, +the sea beginning to moan, the cold wind to blow and the spirits to +hunt the deceased damsel at twilight in the clearing among the +pine-trees.</p> + +<p>Now when Messer Nastasio noticed this, he thanked Cupid, which is the +Lord of all Lovers, and devised in his mind a cunning plan. And he +mounted his horse and returned to Ravenna, and gave out to his friends +that he had found a treasure in Rome; and that he was minded to forget +the damsel of the Traversari and seek another wife. But in reality he +went to certain money-lenders, and gave himself into bondage, even to be +sold as a slave to the Dalmatian pirates if he could not repay his loan. +And he published that he desired to take to him a wife, and for that +reason would feast all his friends and the chief citizens of Ravenna, +and regale them with a pageant in the pine forest, where certain foreign +slaves of his should show wonderful feats for their delight. And he sent +forth invitations, and among them to Messer Pavolo de Traversariis and +his wife and daughter. And he bid them for a Friday, which was also the +eve of the Feast of the Dead.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he took to the pine forest carpenters and masons, and such as +paint and gild cunningly, and waggons of timber, and cut stone for +foundations, and furniture of all kinds; and the waggons were drawn by +four and twenty yoke of oxen, grey oxen of the Romagnol breed. And he +caused the artisans to work day and night, making great fires of dry +myrtle and pine branches, which lit up the forest all around. And he +caused them to make foundations, and build a pavilion of timber in the +clearing which is the shape of a horse-course, surrounded by pines. The +pavilion was oblong, raised by ten steps above the grass, open all round +and reposing on arches and pillars; and there was a projecting <i>abacus</i> +under the arches over the capitals, after the Roman fashion; and the +pillars were painted red, and the capitals red also picked out with gold +and blue, and a shield with the arms of the Honestis on each. The roof +was raftered, each rafter painted with white lilies on a red ground, and +heads of youths and damsels; and the roof outside was made of wooden +tiles, shaped like shells and gilded. And on the top of the roof was a +weather-vane; and the vane was a figure of Cupid, god of love, +cunningly carved of wood and painted like life, as he flies, poised in +air, and shoots his darts on mortals. He was winged and blindfolded, to +show that love is inconstant and no respecter of persons; and when the +wind blew, he turned about, and the end of his scarf, which was beaten +metal, swung in the wind. Now when the pavilion was ready, within six +days of its beginning, carpets were spread on the floor, and seats +placed, and garlands of bay and myrtle slung from pillar to pillar +between the arches. And tables were set, and sideboards covered with +gold and silver dishes and trenchers; and a raised place, covered with +arras, was made for the players of fifes and drums and lutes; and tents +were set behind for the servants, and fires prepared for cooking meat. +Whole oxen and sheep were brought from Ravenna in wains, and casks of +wine, and fruit and white bread, and many cooks, and serving-men, and +musicians, all habited gallantly in the colours of the Honestis, which +are vermilion and white, parti-coloured, with black stripes; and they +wore doublets laced with gold, and on their breast the arms of the +house of Honestis, which are a dove holding a leaf.</p> + +<p>Now on Friday the eve of the Feast of the Dead, all was ready, and the +chief citizens of Ravenna set out for the forest of Classis, with their +wives and children and servants, some on horseback, and others in wains +drawn by oxen, for the tracks in that forest are deep. And when they +arrived, Messer Nastasio welcomed them and thanked them all, and +conducted them to their places in the pavilion. Then all wondered +greatly at its beauty and magnificence, and chiefly Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis; and he sighed, and thought within himself, "Would that my +daughter were less shrewish, that I might have so noble a son-in-law to +prop up my old age!" They were seated at the tables, each according to +their dignity, and they ate and drank and praised the excellence of the +cheer; and flowers were scattered on the tables, and young maidens sang +songs in praise of love, most sweetly. Now when they had eaten their +fill, and the tables been removed, and the sun was setting between the +pine-trees, Messer Nastasio caused them all to be seated facing the +clearing, and a herald came forward, in the livery of the Honestis, +sounding his trumpet and declaring in a loud voice that they should now +witness a pageant, the which was called the Mystery of Love and Death. +Then the musicians struck up, and began a concert of fifes and lutes, +exceeding sweet and mournful. And at that moment the sea began to moan, +and a cold wind to blow: a sound of horsemen and hounds and horns and +crashing branches came through the wood; and the damsel, the daughter of +the Lord of Gambellara, rushed naked, her hair streaming and her veil +torn, across the grass, pursued by the hounds, and by the ghost of +Messer Guido on the black horse, the nostrils of which were filled with +fire. Now when the ghost of Messer Guido struck that damsel with the +boar-spear, and cut out her heart, and threw it, while the others wound +their horns, to the hounds, and all vanished, Messer Nastasio de +Honestis, seizing the herald's trumpet, blew in it, and cried in a loud +voice, "The Pageant of Death and Love! The Pageant of Death and Love! +Such is the fate of cruel damsels!" and the gilt Cupid on the roof swung +round creaking dreadfully, and the daughter of Messer Pavolo uttered a +great shriek and fell on the ground in a swoon.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Here the Romagnol manuscript comes to a sudden end, the outer sheet +being torn through the middle. But we know from the Decameron that the +damsel of the Traversari was so impressed by the spectre-hunt she had +witnessed that she forthwith relented towards Nastagio degli Onesti, and +married him, and that they lived happily ever after. But whether or not +that part of the pine forest of Classis still witnesses this ghostly +hunt, we have no means of knowing.</p> + +<p>On the whole, I incline to think that, when the great frost blasted the +pines (if not earlier) the ghosts shifted quarters from the forest of +Classis to the church of the same name, on that forest's brink. +Certainly there seems nothing to prevent them. Standing in the midst of +those uninhabited rice-fields and marshes, the church of Classis is yet +always open, from morning till night; the great portals gaping, no +curtain interposed. Open and empty; mass not even on Sundays; empty of +human beings, open to the things of without. The sunbeams enter through +the open side windows, cutting a slice away from that pale, greenish +twilight; making a wedge of light on the dark, damp bricks; bringing +into brief prominence some of the great sarcophagi, their peacocks and +palm-trees picked out in vivid green lichen. Snakes also enter, the +Sacristan tells me, and I believe it, for within the same minute, I saw +a dead and a living one among the arum leaves at the gate. Is that +little altar, a pagan-looking marble table, isolated in the midst of the +church, the place where they meet, pagan creatures claiming those +Grecian marbles? Or do they hunt one another round the aisles and into +the crypt, slithering and hissing, the souls of Guido degli Anastagi, +perhaps, and of his cruel lady love?</p> + +<p>Such are Ravenna and Classis, and the Ghosts that haunt them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_COOK-SHOP_AND_THE_FOWLING-PLACE" id="THE_COOK-SHOP_AND_THE_FOWLING-PLACE"></a>THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE</h3> + + +<p>In the street of the Almond and appropriately close to the covered-over +canal (Rio Terra) of the Assassins, there is a cook-shop which has +attracted my attention these two last months in Venice. For in its +window is a row of tiny corpses—birds, raw, red, with agonised plucked +little throats, the throats through which the sweet notes came. And the +sight brings home to me more than the suggestion of a dish at supper, +savoury things of the size of a large plum, on a cushion of polenta....</p> + +<p>I had often noticed the fowling-places which stand out against the sky +like mural crowns on the low hills of Northern Italy; Bresciana is the +name given to the thing, from the province, doubtless, of its origin. +Last summer, driving at the foot of the Alps of Friuli, such a place was +pointed out to me on a green knoll; it marked the site of a village of +Collalto, once the fief of the great family of that name, which had +died, disappeared, church and all, after the Black Death of the +fourteenth century.</p> + +<p>The strangeness of the matter attracted me; and I set out, the next +morning, to find the fowling-place. I thought I must have lost my way, +and was delighting in the radiance of a perfectly fresh, clear, already +autumnal morning, walking along through the flowery grass fields in +sight of the great mountains, when, suddenly, there I was before the +uncanny thing, the Bresciana. Uncanny in its odd shape of walled and +moated city of clipped bushes, tight-closed on its hill-top, with its +Guelph battlements of hornbeam against the pale blue sky. And uncannier +for its mysterious delightfulness. Imagine it set in the loveliest mossy +grass, full of delicate half-Alpine flowers; beautiful butterflies +everywhere about; and the sort of ditch surrounding it overgrown with +blackberries, haws, sloes, ivy, all manner of berries; a sort of false +garden of paradise for the poor birds.</p> + +<p>But when I craned over the locked wicket and climbed on to the ladder +alongside, what I saw was more uncanny yet. I looked down on to rows of +clipped, regular, hornbeam hedges, with grass paths between them, +maze-like. A kind of Versailles for the birds, you might think. Only, in +the circular grass plot from which those green hedges and paths all +radiated, something alarming: an empty cage hung to a tree. And going +the round of the place I discovered that between the cut hornbeam +battlements of the circular enclosure there was a wreath of thin wire +nooses, almost invisible, in which the poor little birds hang +themselves. It seems oddly appropriate that this sinister little place, +with its vague resemblance to that clipped garden in which Mantegna's +allegorical Vices are nesting, should be, in fact, a cemetery; that tiny +City of Dis of the Birds, on its green hillock in front of the great +blue Alps, being planted on those villagers dead of the Plague.</p> + +<p>The fowling-place began to haunt me, and I was filled with a perhaps +morbid desire to know more of its evil rites. After some inquiry, I +introduced myself accordingly to the most famous fowler of the +neighbourhood, the owner of a wineshop at Martignacco. He received me +with civility, and expounded his trade with much satisfaction; an +amiable, intelligent old man, with sufficient of Italian in that +province of strange dialect.</p> + +<p>In the passage at the foot of his staircase and under sundry dark arches +he showed me a quantity of tiny wooden cages and of larger cages divided +into tiny compartments. There were numbers of goldfinches, a blackbird, +some small thrushes, an ortolan, and two or three other kinds I could +not identify; nay, even a brace of unhappy quail in a bottle-shaped +basket. These are the decoys; the cages are hung in the circular walks +of the fowling-place, and the wretched little prisoners, many of them +blinded of one or both eyes, sing their hearts out and attract their +companions into the nooses. Then he showed me the nets—like thin, thin +fishing nets—for quail; and the little wands which are covered with +lime and which catch the wings of the creatures; but that seemed a +merciful proceeding compared with the gruesome snares of the Bresciana. +When he had shown me these things he produced a little Jew's-harp, on +which he fell to imitating the calls of various birds. But I noticed +that none of the little blinded prisoners hanging aloft made any +response. Only, quite spontaneously and all of a sudden, the poor +goldfinches set up a loud and lovely song; and the solitary blackbird +gave a whistle. Never have I heard anything more lugubrious than these +hedgerow and woodland notes issuing from the cages in that damp, black +corridor. And the old fowler, for all his venerable appearance and +gentleness of voice and manner, struck me as a wicked warlock, and own +sib of the witch who turned Jorinde and Jorinel into nightingales in her +little house hung round with cages.</p> + +<p>A few days after my visit to the fowler, and one of the last evenings I +had in Friuli, I was walking once more beneath the Castle. After +threading the narrow green lanes, blocked by great hay-carts, I came of +a sudden on an open, high-lying field of mossy grass, freshly scythed, +with the haycocks still upon it, and a thin plantation of larches on one +side. And in front, at the end of that grey-green sweetness, the Alps of +Cadore, portals and battlements of dark leaden blue, with the last +flame-colour of sunset behind them, and the sunset's last rosy feathers +rising into the pale sky. The mowers were coming slowly along, +shouldering their scythes and talking in undertones, as folk do at that +hour. I also walked home in the quickly gathering twilight; the delicate +hemlock flowers of an unmowed field against the pearly luminous sky; the +wonderful blue of the thistles singing out in the dusk of the grass. +There rose the scent of cut grass, of ripening maize, and every +freshness of acacia and poplar leaf; and the crickets began to shrill.</p> + +<p>As the light faded away I passed within sight of the fowling-place, the +little sinister formal garden of Versailles on the mound marking the +village which had died of the Black Death.</p> + +<p>This is what returned to my mind every time, lately in Venice, that I +passed that cook-shop near the closed-up Canal of the Assassins, and saw +the row of tiny corpses ready for roasting. The little throats which +sang so sweetly had got caught, had writhed, twisted in the tiny wire +nooses between the hornbeam battlements. What ruffling of feathers and +starting of eyeballs in agony there had been, while the poor blind +decoy, finch or blackbird, sang, sang on in his cage on the central +grass-plot!</p> + +<p>And we scrunch them under our knife and tooth, and remark how excellent +are little birds on a cushion of polenta, between a sage-leaf and a bit +of bacon! But fowling-places have come down from the remotest and most +venerable antiquity; and they exist of all kinds; and some of them, +moreover, are allegories.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ACQUAINTANCE_WITH_BIRDS" id="ACQUAINTANCE_WITH_BIRDS"></a>ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS</h3> + + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>One of the things I should have liked, I said to myself to-day, as I +rode past one of the dreadful little fowling-places on the ridge of our +hills, would have been to become acquainted with birds....</p> + +<p>The wish is simple, but quite without hope for a dweller in Tuscany, +where, what with poverty and lawlessness, peasants' nets and city +'prentices' guns, there are no birds whose acquaintance you can make. +You hear them singing and twittering, indeed, wherever a clump of garden +ilexes or a cypress hedge offers them protection; but they never let +themselves be seen, for they know that being seen is being shot: or at +least being caged. They cage them for singing, nightingales, thrushes, +and every kind of finch; and you can see them, poor isolated captives, +in rows and rows of cages in the markets. That is the way that people +like them: a certain devout lady of my neighbourhood, for instance, +whose little seventeenth-century house was hung round with endless tiny +cages, like the witches in the tale of Jorinde and Jorinel; a wicked +witch herself, no doubt, despite her illuminations in honour of the +Madonna, who should have taught her better. Another way of liking +singing-birds is on toast between a scrap of bacon and a leaf of sage, a +dainty dish much prized by persons of weak stomach. Persons with bad +digestions are apt, I fancy, to lose, and make others forego, much +pleasant companionship of soul.</p> + +<p>For animals, at least, when not turned into pets, are excellent +companions for our souls. I say expressly "when not pets," because the +essence of this spiritual (for it <i>is</i> spiritual) relation between us +and creatures is that they should not become our property, nor we +theirs; that we should be able to refresh ourselves by the thought and +contemplation of a life apart from our own, different from it; in some +ways more really natural, and, at all events, capable of seeming more +natural to our fancy. And birds, for many reasons, meet this +requirement to perfection. I have read, indeed, in various works that +they are not without vices, not a bit kinder than the other unkind +members of creation; and that their treatment of the unfit among +themselves is positively inhuman—or shall I say human? Perhaps this is +calumny, or superficial judgment of their sterner morality; but, be this +as it may, it is evident that they are in many respects very charming +people. It is very nice of them to be so æsthetic, to be amused and kept +quiet, like the hen birds, by music; and the tone of their conversation +is quite exquisitely affable.</p> + +<p>My own opportunities of watching their proceedings have, alas! been very +limited; but, judging by the pigeons at Venice, they are wonderfully +forbearing and courteous to each other. I have often watched these +pigeons having their morning bath at the corner of St. Mark's, in a +little shallow trough in the pavement. They collect round by scores, and +wait for room to go in quite patiently; while the crowd inside ruffle, +dip, throw up water into their wings and shake it off; a mass of moving +grey and purple feathers, with never an angry push or a cry of +ill-temper among them. So I can readily believe a certain friend of mine +who passes hours in English brakes and hedgerows, watching birds through +special ten-guinea opera-glasses, that time and money could not be +better spent.</p> + +<p>One reason, moreover, why all animals (one feels that so much in +Kipling's stories) are excellent company for our spirit is surely +because they are animals, not men; because the thought of them relieves +us therefore from that sense of overcrowding and jostling and general +wordiness and fuss from which we all suffer; and birds, more than any +other creatures, give us that sense of relief, of breathing-space and +margin, so very necessary to our spiritual welfare. For there is +freedom, air, light, in the very element in which birds exist, and in +their movements, the delightful sense of poising, of buoyancy, of being +delivered from our own body and made independent of gravitation, which, +as a friend of mine wisely remarks, Sir Isaac Newton most injudiciously +put into Nature's head. Indeed, there is a very special quality in the +mere thought of birds. St. Francis, had he preached to fishes, like his +follower of Padua, might have had as attentive an audience, but we +should not have cared to hear about it. <i>Aves mei fratres</i>—why, it is +the soul's kinship with air, light, liberty, what the soul loves best. +And similarly I suspect that the serene and lovely quality of Dante's +Francesca episode is due in great part to those similes of birds: the +starlings in the winter weather, the cranes "singing their dirge," and +those immortal doves swirling nestwards, <i>dal disio chiamate</i>, which +lift the lid of that cavern of hell and winnow its fumes into breathable +quality.</p> + +<p>Perhaps (I say to myself, being ever disposed to make the best of a bad +bargain), perhaps the scantiness of my acquaintance with birds, the +difficulty about seeing them (for there is none about hearing them in +Tuscany, and I shall be kept awake by vociferous nightingales in a +month's time), gives to my feeling about them a pleasant, half-painful +eagerness. Certainly it raises the sight of birds, when I get out of +this country, into something of the nature of a performance. Even in +Rome, the larks, going up tiny brown rockets, into the pale blue sky +above the pale green endless undulations of grass, and the rooks and +magpies flocking round the ruins. And how much in Germany? Indeed, one +of Germany's charms is the condition, or, rather, the position, the +civic status, of birds and small creatures. One is constantly reminded +of the Minnesinger Walther's legacy to the birds of Wurzburg, and of +Luther's hiding the hare in the sleeve of his tunic. One of my first +impressions after crossing the Alps last year was of just such a hare, +only perfectly at his ease, running in front of my bicycle for ever so +long during a great thunderstorm which overtook us in the cornfields +between Donaustauff and Ratisbon. And as to birds! They are not merely +left in liberty, but assiduously courted by these kindly, and, in their +prosaic way, poetical Teutons. Already in the village shop on the top of +the Tyrolese pass there was a nest of swallows deep down in a passage. +And in the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg, while the electric trams go +clanking outside, the swallows whirr cheerfully along the aisles, among +the coats-of-arms, the wonderfully crested helmets suspended on high. +There was a swallow's nest in the big entrance room (where the peasants +sit and drink among the little dry birch-trees and fir garlands from the +Whitsuntide festivities) of the inn at Rothenburg; a nest above the rows +of pewter and stoneware, with baby swallows looking unconcernedly out at +the guests. But the great joy at Rothenburg was the family of storks +which still inhabit one of the high, pointed gatehouses. I used to go +and see them every morning: the great cartwheel on the funnel-shaped +roof, wisps of comfortable hay hanging over it; one of the parent storks +standing sentinel on one leg, the little ones raising themselves +occasionally into sight, the other stork hovering around on outspread +wings like tattered banners. To think that there were once storks also +in Italy, storks' homes, the old Lombard name <i>Cicognara</i> meaning that; +and cranes also, whom the people in Boccaccio, and even Lorenzo di +Medici, went out to hunt! The last of them were certainly netted and +eaten, as they used to eat porcupines in Rome in my childish days.</p> + +<p>Speaking of cranes reminds me of the pleasure I have had also in +watching herons, particularly among the ponds of my mother's old home.</p> + +<p>"Would you like to see one near? I'll go and shoot it you at once," said +my very kind cousin.</p> + +<p>How odd it is, when one thinks of it, that mere contemplation seems so +insufficient for us poor restless human beings! We cannot see a flower +without an impulse to pick it, a character without an impulse to, let us +say, analyse; a bird without an impulse to shoot. And in this way we +certainly lose most of the good which any of these things could be to +us: just to be looked at, thought about, enjoyed, and let alone.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="ARIADNE_IN_MANTUA" id="ARIADNE_IN_MANTUA"></a>ARIADNE IN MANTUA</h3> + + + +<h5>TO</h5> + +<h5>ETHEL SMYTH</h5> + +<h5>THANKING, AND BEGGING, HER FOR MUSIC</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h4><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h4> + + +<p><i>"Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss"</i></p> + + +<p><i>It is in order to give others the pleasure of reading or +re-reading a small masterpiece, that I mention the likelihood +of the catastrophe of my</i> Ariadne <i>having been suggested by +the late Mr. Shorthouse's</i> Little Schoolmaster Mark; <i>but I +must ask forgiveness of my dear old friend, Madame Emile +Duclaux</i> (Mary Robinson), <i>for unwarranted use of one of the +songs of her</i> Italian Garden.</p> + +<p><i>Readers of my own little volume</i> Genius Loci <i>may meanwhile +recognise that I have been guilty of plagiarism towards myself +also</i>.</p> + +<p><i>For a couple of years after writing those pages, the image of +the Palace of Mantua and the lakes it steeps in, haunted my +fancy with that peculiar insistency, as of the half-lapsed +recollection of a name or date, which tells us that we know +(if we could only remember!)</i> what happened in a place. <i>I let +the matter rest. But, looking into my mind one day, I found +that a certain song of the early seventeenth century</i>—(not +<i>Monteverde's</i> Lamento d'Arianna <i>but an air</i>, Amarilli, <i>by +Caccini, printed alongside in Parisotti's collection</i>)—<i>had +entered that Palace of Mantua, and was, in some manner not +easy to define, the musical shape of what must have happened +there. And that, translated back into human personages, was +the story I have set forth in the following little Drama</i>.</p> + +<p><i>So much for the origin of</i> Ariadne in Mantua, <i>supposing any +friend to be curious about it. What seems more interesting is +my feeling, which grew upon me as I worked over and over the +piece and its French translation, that these personages had an +importance greater than that of their life and adventures, a +meaning, if I may say so, a little</i> sub specie aeternitatis. +<i>For, besides the real figures, there appeared to me vague +shadows cast by them, as it were, on the vast spaces of life, +and magnified far beyond those little puppets that I twitched. +And I seem to feel here the struggle, eternal, necessary, +between mere impulse, unreasoning and violent, but absolutely +true to its aim; and all the moderating, the weighing and +restraining influences of civilisation, with their idealism, +their vacillation, but their final triumph over the mere +forces of nature. These well-born people of Mantua, +privileged beings wanting little because they have much, and +able therefore to spend themselves in quite harmonious effort, +must necessarily get the better of the poor gutter-born +creature without whom, after all, one of them would have been +dead and the others would have had no opening in life. Poor</i> +Diego <i>acts magnanimously, being cornered; but he (or she) has +not the delicacy, the dignity to melt into thin air with a +mere lyric Metastasian "Piangendo partè", and leave them to +their untroubled conscience. He must needs assert himself, +violently wrench at their heart-strings, give them a final +stab, hand them over to endless remorse; briefly, commit that +public and theatrical deed of suicide, splashing the murderous +waters into the eyes of well-behaved wedding guests</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Certainly neither the</i> Duke, <i>nor the</i> Duchess Dowager, <i>nor</i> +Hippolyta <i>would have done this. But, on the other hand, they +could calmly, coldly, kindly accept the self-sacrifice +culminating in that suicide: well-bred people, faithful to +their standards and forcing others, however unwilling, into +their own conformity. Of course without them the world would +be a den of thieves, a wilderness of wolves; for they are,—if +I may call them by their less personal names,—Tradition, +Discipline, Civilisation</i>.</p> + +<p><i>On the other hand, but for such as</i> Diego <i>the world would +come to an end within twenty years: mere sense of duty and +fitness not being sufficient for the killing and cooking of +victuals, let alone the begetting and suckling of children. +The descendants of</i> Ferdinand <i>and</i> Hippolyta, <i>unless they +intermarried with some bastard of</i> Diego's <i>family, would +dwindle, die out; who knows, perhaps supplement the impulses +they lacked by silly newfangled evil</i>.</p> + +<p><i>These are the contending forces of history and life: Impulse +and Discipline, creating and keeping; love such as</i> Diego's, +<i>blind, selfish, magnanimous; and detachment, noble, a little +bloodless and cruel, like that of the</i> Duke of Mantua.</p> + +<p><i>And it seems to me that the conflicts which I set forth on my +improbable little stage, are but the trifling realities +shadowing those great abstractions which we seek all through +the history of man, and everywhere in man's own heart</i>.</p> + + +<p>VERNON LEE.</p> + + +<p>Maiano, near Florence,</p> + +<p>June, 1903.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">VIOLA. <i>....I'll serve this Duke:</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;"><i>....for I can sing</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>And speak to him in many sorts of music.</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">TWELFTH NIGHT, 1, 2.</span><br /> +</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h4>DRAMATIS PERSONAE</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">FERDINAND, Duke of Mantua.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE CARDINAL, his Uncle.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DUCHESS DOWAGER.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">HIPPOLYTA, Princess of Mirandola.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">MAGDALEN, known as DIEGO.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE BISHOP OF CREMONA.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DOGE'S WIFE.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE VICEROY OF NAPLES' JESTER.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A TENOR as BACCHUS.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The CARDINAL'S CHAPLAIN.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE DUCHESS'S GENTLEWOMAN.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">THE PRINCESS'S TUTOR.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Singers as Maenads and Satyrs; Courtiers,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pages, Wedding Guests and Musicians.</span><br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The action takes place in the Palace of Mantua through a +period of a year, during the reign of Prospero I, of Milan, +and shortly before the Venetian expedition to Cyprus under +Othello.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_I" id="ACT_I"></a>ACT I</h4> + + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL'S</span> <i>Study in the Palace at Mantua. The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> +<i>is seated at a table covered with Persian embroidery, +rose-colour picked out with blue, on which lies open a volume +of Machiavelli's works, and in it a manuscript of Catullus; +alongside thereof are a bell and a magnifying-glass. Under his +feet a red cushion with long tassels, and an oriental carpet +of pale lavender and crimson</i>. <i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>is dressed in +scarlet, a crimson fur-lined cape upon his shoulders. He is +old, but beautiful and majestic, his face furrowed like the +marble bust of Seneca among the books opposite</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Through the open Renaissance window, with candelabra and +birds carved on the copings, one sees the lake, pale blue, +faintly rippled, with a rose-coloured brick bridge and +bridge-tower at its narrowest point</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>in reality</i> +<span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span>) <i>has just been admitted into the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL'S</span> +<i>presence, and after kissing his ring, has remained standing, +awaiting his pleasure</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>is fantastically habited as a youth in russet and +violet tunic reaching below the knees in Moorish fashion, as +we see it in the frescoes of Pinturicchio; with silver buttons +down the seams, and plaited linen at the throat and in the +unbuttoned purfles of the sleeves. His hair, dark but red +where it catches the light, is cut over the forehead and +touches his shoulders. He is not very tall in his boy's +clothes, and very sparely built. He is pale, almost sallow; +the face, dogged, sullen, rather expressive than beautiful, +save for the perfection of the brows and of the flower-like +singer's mouth. He stands ceremoniously before the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>, +<i>one hand on his dagger, nervously, while the other holds a +large travelling hat, looped up, with a long drooping plume</i>.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>raises his eyes, slightly bows his head, +closes the manuscript and the volume, and puts both aside +deliberately. He is, meanwhile, examining the appearance of</i> +<span class="persona">DIEGO</span>.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>We are glad to see you at Mantua, Signor Diego. And from what +our worthy Venetian friend informs us in the letter which he +gave you for our hands, we shall without a doubt be wholly +satisfied with your singing, which is said to be both sweet +and learned. Prythee, Brother Matthias (<i>turning to his</i> +Chaplain), bid them bring hither my virginal,—that with the +Judgment of Paris painted on the lid by Giulio Romano; its +tone is admirably suited to the human voice. And, Brother +Matthias, hasten to the Duke's own theorb player, and bid him +come straightways. Nay, go thyself, good Brother Matthias, and +seek till thou hast found him. We are impatient to judge of +this good youth's skill.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> Chaplain <i>bows and retires</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>in reality</i> +<span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span>) <i>remains alone in the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL'S</span> <i>presence. The</i> +<span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>remains for a second turning over a letter, and then +reads through the magnifying-glass out loud</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Ah, here is the sentence: "Diego, a Spaniard of Moorish +descent, and a most expert singer and player on the virginal, +whom I commend to your Eminence's favour as entirely fitted +for such services as your revered letter makes mention of——" +Good, good.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>folds the letter and beckons</i> Diego <i>to +approach, then speaks in a manner suddenly altered to +abruptness, but with no enquiry in his tone</i>.</p> + +<p>Signor Diego, you are a woman——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO <i>starts, flushes and exclaims huskily</i>, "My Lord——." +<i>But the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>makes a deprecatory movement and continues +his sentence</i>.</p> + +<p>and, as my honoured Venetian correspondent assures me, a +courtesan of some experience and of more than usual tact. I +trust this favourable judgment may be justified. The situation +is delicate; and the work for which you have been selected is +dangerous as well as difficult. Have you been given any +knowledge of this case?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO <i>has by this time recovered his composure, and answers +with respectful reserve</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I asked no questions, your Eminence. But the Senator Gratiano +vouchsafed to tell me that my work at Mantua would be to +soothe and cheer with music your noble nephew Duke Ferdinand, +who, as is rumoured, has been a prey to a certain languor and +moodiness ever since his return from many years' captivity +among the Infidels. Moreover (such were the Senator Gratiano's +words), that if the Fates proved favourable to my music, I +might gain access to His Highness's confidence, and thus +enable your Eminence to understand and compass his strange +malady.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Even so. You speak discreetly, Diego; and your manner gives +hope of more good sense than is usual in your sex and in your +trade. But this matter is of more difficulty than such as you +can realise. Your being a woman will be of use should our +scheme prove practicable. In the outset it may wreck us beyond +recovery. For all his gloomy apathy, my nephew is quick to +suspicion, and extremely subtle. He will delight in flouting +us, should the thought cross his brain that we are practising +some coarse and foolish stratagem. And it so happens, that his +strange moodiness is marked by abhorrence of all womankind. +For months he has refused the visits of his virtuous mother. +And the mere name of his young cousin and affianced bride, +Princess Hippolyta, has thrown him into paroxysms of anger. +Yet Duke Ferdinand possesses all his faculties. He is aware of +being the last of our house, and must know full well that, +should he die without an heir, this noble dukedom will become +the battlefield of rapacious alien claimants. He denies none +of this, but nevertheless looks on marriage with unseemly +horror.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Is it so?——And——is there any reason His Highness's +melancholy should take this shape? I crave your Eminence's +pardon if there is any indiscretion in this question; but I +feel it may be well that I should know some more upon this +point. Has Duke Ferdinand suffered some wrong at the hands of +women? Or is it the case of some passion, hopeless, unfitting +to his rank, perhaps?</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Your imagination, good Madam Magdalen, runs too easily along +the tracks familiar to your sex; and such inquisitiveness +smacks too much of the courtesan. And beware, my lad, of +touching on such subjects with the Duke: women and love, and +so forth. For I fear, that while endeavouring to elicit the +Duke's secret, thy eyes, thy altered voice, might betray thy +own.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Betray me? My secret? What do you mean, my Lord? I fail to +grasp your meaning.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Have you so soon forgotten that the Duke must not suspect your +being a woman? For if a woman may gradually melt his torpor, +and bring him under the control of reason and duty, this can +only come about by her growing familiar and necessary to him +without alarming his moody virtue.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I crave your Eminence's indulgence for that one question, +which I repeat because, as a musician, it may affect my +treatment of His Highness. Has the Duke ever loved?</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Too little or too much,—which of the two it will be for you +to find out. My nephew was ever, since his boyhood, a pious +and joyless youth; and such are apt to love once, and, as the +poets say, to die for love. Be this as it may, keep to your +part of singer; and even if you suspect that he suspects you, +let him not see your suspicion, and still less justify his +own. Be merely a singer: a sexless creature, having seen +passion but never felt it; yet capable, by the miracle of art, +of rousing and soothing it in others. Go warily, and mark my +words: there is, I notice, even in your speaking voice, a +certain quality such as folk say melts hearts; a trifle +hoarseness, a something of a break, which mars it as mere +sound, but gives it more power than that of sound. Employ that +quality when the fit moment comes; but most times restrain it. +You have understood?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I think I have, my Lord.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Then only one word more. Women, and women such as you, are +often ill advised and foolishly ambitious. Let not success, +should you have any in this enterprise, endanger it and you. +Your safety lies in being my tool. My spies are everywhere; +but I require none; I seem to know the folly which poor +mortals think and feel. And see! this palace is surrounded on +three sides by lakes; a rare and beautiful circumstance, which +has done good service on occasion. Even close to this pavilion +these blue waters are less shallow than they seem.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I had noted it. Such an enterprise as mine requires courage, +my Lord; and your palace, built into the lake, as +life,—saving all thought of heresy,—is built out into death, +your palace may give courage as well as prudence.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>Your words, Diego, are irrelevant, but do not displease me.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>bows. The</i> Chaplain <i>enters with</i> Pages <i>carrying a +harpsichord, which they place upon the table; also two</i> +Musicians <i>with theorb and viol</i>.</p> + +<p>Brother Matthias, thou hast been a skilful organist, and hast +often delighted me with thy fugues and canons.—Sit to the +instrument, and play a prelude, while this good youth collects +his memory and his voice preparatory to displaying his skill.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> chaplain, <i>not unlike the monk in Titian's "Concert" +begins to play</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>standing by him at the harpsichord. +While the cunningly interlaced themes, with wide, unclosed +cadences, tinkle metallically from the instrument, the</i> +<span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> <i>watches, very deliberately, the face of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, +<i>seeking to penetrate through its sullen sedateness. But</i> +<span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>remains with his eyes fixed on the view framed by the +window: the pale blue lake, of the colour of periwinkle, under +a sky barely bluer than itself, and the lines on the +horizon—piled up clouds or perhaps Alps. Only, as the</i> +Chaplain <i>is about to finish his prelude, the face of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> +<i>undergoes a change: a sudden fervour and tenderness +transfigure the features; while the eyes, from very dark turn +to the colour of carnelian. This illumination dies out as +quickly as it came, and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>becomes very self-contained +and very listless as before</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Will it please your Eminence that I should sing the Lament of +Ariadne on Naxos?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_II" id="ACT_II"></a>ACT II</h4> + + +<p><i>A few months later. Another part of the Ducal Palace of +Mantua. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS'S</span> <i>closet: a small irregular chamber; the +vaulted ceiling painted with Giottesque patterns in blue and +russet, much blackened, and among which there is visible only +a coronation of the Virgin, white and vision-like. Shelves +with a few books and phials and jars of medicine; a small +movable organ in a corner; and, in front of the ogival window, +a praying-chair and large crucifix. The crucifix is black +against the landscape, against the grey and misty waters of +the lake; and framed by the nearly leafless branches of a +willow growing below</i>.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> <i>is tall and straight, but almost +bodiless in her black nun-like dress. Her face is so white, +its lips and eyebrows so colourless, and eyes so pale a blue, +that one might at first think it insignificant, and only +gradually notice the strength and beauty of the features. The</i> +<span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>has laid aside her sewing on the entrance of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, +<i>in reality</i> <span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span>; <i>and, forgetful of all state, been on +the point of rising to meet him. But</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>has ceremoniously +let himself down on one knee, expecting to kiss her hand</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Nay, Signor Diego, do not kneel. Such forms have long since +left my life, nor are they, as it seems to me, very fitting +between God's creatures. Let me grasp your hand, and look into +the face of him whom Heaven has chosen to work a miracle. You +have cured my son!</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>It is indeed a miracle of Heaven, most gracious Madam; and one +in which, alas, my poor self has been as nothing. For sounds, +subtly linked, take wondrous powers from the soul of him who +frames their patterns; and we, who sing, are merely as the +string or keys he presses, or as the reed through which he +blows. The virtue is not ours, though coming out of us.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>has made this speech as if learned by rote, with +listless courtesy. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>has at first been frozen by +his manner, but at the end she answers very simply</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>You speak too learnedly, good Signor Diego, and your words +pass my poor understanding. The virtue in any of us is but +God's finger-touch or breath; but those He chooses as His +instruments are, methinks, angels or saints; and whatsoever +you be, I look upon you with loving awe. You smile? You are a +courtier, while I, although I have not left this palace for +twenty years, have long forgotten the words and ways of +courts. I am but a simpleton: a foolish old woman who has +unlearned all ceremony through many years of many sorts of +sorrow; and now, dear youth, unlearned it more than ever from +sheer joy at what it has pleased God to do through you. For, +thanks to you, I have seen my son again, my dear, wise, tender +son again. I would fain thank you. If I had worldly goods +which you have not in plenty, or honours to give, they should +be yours. You shall have my prayers. For even you, so favoured +of Heaven, will some day want them.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Give them me now, most gracious Madam. I have no faith in +prayers; but I need them.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Great joy has made me heartless as well as foolish. I have +hurt you, somehow. Forgive me, Signor Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>As you said, I am a courtier, Madam, and I know it is enough +if we can serve our princes. We have no business with troubles +of our own; but having them, we keep them to ourselves. His +Highness awaits me at this hour for the usual song which +happily unclouds his spirit. Has your Grace any message for +him?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Stay. My son will wait a little while. I require you, Diego, +for I have hurt you. Your words are terrible, but just. We +princes are brought up—but many of us, alas, are princes in +this matter!—to think that when we say "I thank you" we have +done our duty; though our very satisfaction, our joy, may +merely bring out by comparison the emptiness of heart, the +secret soreness, of those we thank. We are not allowed to see +the burdens of others, and merely load them with our own.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Is this not wisdom? Princes should not see those burdens which +they cannot, which they must not, try to carry. And after all, +princes or slaves, can others ever help us, save with their +purse, with advice, with a concrete favour, or, say, with a +song? Our troubles smart because they are <i>our</i> troubles; our +burdens weigh because on <i>our</i> shoulders; they are part of us, +and cannot be shifted. But God doubtless loves such kind +thoughts as you have, even if, with your Grace's indulgence, +they are useless.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>If it were so, God would be no better than an earthly prince. +But believe me, Diego, if He prefer what you call +kindness—bare sense of brotherhood in suffering—'tis for its +usefulness. We cannot carry each other's burden for a minute; +true, and rightly so; but we can give each other added +strength to bear it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>By what means, please your Grace?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>By love, Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Love! But that was surely never a source of strength, craving +your Grace's pardon?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>The love which I am speaking of—and it may surely bear the +name, since 'tis the only sort of love that cannot turn to +hatred. Love for who requires it because it is required—say +love of any woman who has been a mother for any child left +motherless. Nay, forgive my boldness: my gratitude gives me +rights on you, Diego. You are unhappy; you are still a child; +and I imagine that you have no mother.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I am told I had one, gracious Madam. She was, saving your +Grace's presence, only a light woman, and sold for a ducat to +the Infidels. I cannot say I ever missed her. Forgive me, +Madam. Although a courtier, the stock I come from is extremely +base. I have no understanding of the words of noble women and +saints like you. My vileness thinks them hollow; and my pretty +manners are only, as your Grace has unluckily had occasion to +see, a very thin and bad veneer. I thank your Grace, and once +more crave permission to attend the Duke.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Nay. That is not true. Your soul is nowise base-born. I owe +you everything, and, by some inadvertence, I have done nothing +save stir up pain in you. I want—the words may seem +presumptuous, yet carry a meaning which is humble—I want to +be your friend; and to help you to a greater, better Friend. I +will pray for you, Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>No, no. You are a pious and virtuous woman, and your pity and +prayers must keep fit company.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>The only fitting company for pity and prayers, for love, dear +lad, is the company of those who need them. Am I over bold?</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>has risen, and shyly laid her hand on</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> +<i>shoulder</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>breaks loose and covers his face, +exclaiming in a dry and husky voice</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Oh the cruelty of loneliness, Madam! Save for two years which +taught me by comparison its misery, I have lived in loneliness +always in this lonely world; though never, alas, alone. Would +it had always continued! But as the wayfarer from out of the +snow and wind feels his limbs numb and frozen in the hearth's +warmth, so, having learned that one might speak, be +understood, be comforted, that one might love and be +beloved,—the misery of loneliness was revealed to me. And +then to be driven back into it once more, shut in to it for +ever! Oh, Madam, when one can no longer claim understanding +and comfort; no longer say "I suffer: help me!"—because the +creature one would say it to is the very same who hurts and +spurns one!</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>How can a child like you already know such things? We women +may, indeed. I was as young as you, years ago, when I too +learned it. And since I learned it, let my knowledge, my poor +child, help you to bear it. I know how silence galls and +wearies. If silence hurts you, speak,—not for me to answer, +but understand and sorrow for you. I am old and simple and +unlearned; but, God willing, I shall understand.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>If anything could help me, 'tis the sense of kindness such as +yours. I thank you for your gift; but acceptance of it would +be theft; for it is not meant for what I really am. And though +a living lie in many things; I am still, oddly enough, honest. +Therefore, I pray you, Madam, farewell.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Do not believe it, Diego. Where it is needed, our poor loving +kindness can never be stolen.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Do not tempt me, Madam! Oh God, I do not want your pity, your +loving kindness! What are such things to me? And as to +understanding my sorrows, no one can, save the very one who is +inflicting them. Besides, you and I call different things by +the same names. What you call <i>love</i>, to me means nothing: +nonsense taught to children, priest's metaphysics. What <i>I</i> +mean, you do not know. (<i>A pause</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>walks up and down in +agitation</i>.) But woe's me! You have awakened the power of +breaking through this silence,—this silence which is +starvation and deathly thirst and suffocation. And it so +happens that if I speak to you all will be wrecked. (<i>A +pause</i>.) But there remains nothing to wreck! Understand me, +Madam, I care not who you are. I know that once I have spoken, +you <i>must</i> become my enemy. But I am grateful to you; you have +shown me the way to speaking; and, no matter now to whom, I +now <i>must</i> speak.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>You shall speak to God, my friend, though you speak seemingly +to me.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>To God! To God! These are the icy generalities we strike upon +under all pious warmth. No, gracious Madam, I will not speak +to God; for God knows it already, and, knowing, looks on +indifferent. I will speak to you. Not because you are kind and +pitiful; for you will cease to be so. Not because you will +understand; for you never will. I will speak to you because, +although you are a saint, you are <i>his</i> mother, have kept +somewhat of his eyes and mien; because it will hurt you if I +speak, as I would it might hurt <i>him</i>. I am a woman, Madam; a +harlot; and I was the Duke your son's mistress while among the +Infidels.</p> + +<p><i>A long silence. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>remains seated. She barely +starts, exclaiming</i> "Ah!—" <i>and becomes suddenly absorbed in +thought</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>stands looking listlessly through the window +at the lake and the willow</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I await your Grace's orders. Will it please you that I call +your maid-of-honour, or summon the gentleman outside? If it +so please you, there need be no scandal. I shall give myself +up to any one your Grace prefers.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>pays no attention to</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>last words, and +remains reflecting</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Then, it is he who, as you call it, spurns you? How so? For +you are admitted to his close familiarity; nay, you have +worked the miracle of curing him. I do not understand the +situation. For, Diego,—I know not by what other name to call +you—I feel your sorrow is a deep one. You are not +the——woman who would despair and call God cruel for a mere +lover's quarrel. You love my son; you have cured him,—cured +him, do I guess rightly, through your love? But if it be so, +what can my son have done to break your heart?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>after listening astonished at the</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS'S</span> <i>unaltered tone +of kindness</i>)</p> + +<p>Your Grace will understand the matter as much as I can; and I +cannot. He does not recognise me, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Not recognise you? What do you mean?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>What the words signify: Not recognise.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Then——he does not know——he still believes you to be——a +stranger?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>So it seems, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>And yet you have cured his melancholy by your presence. And in +the past——tell me: had you ever sung to him?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO (<i>weeping silently</i>)</p> + +<p>Daily, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS (<i>slowly</i>)</p> + +<p>They say that Ferdinand is, thanks to you, once more in full +possession of his mind. It cannot be. Something still lacks; +he is not fully cured.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Alas, he is. The Duke remembers everything, save me.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>There is some mystery in this. I do not understand such +matters. But I know that Ferdinand could never be base +towards you knowingly. And you, methinks, would never be base +towards him. Diego, time will bring light into this darkness. +Let us pray God together that He may make our eyes and souls +able to bear it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I cannot pray for light, most gracious Madam, because I fear +it. Indeed I cannot pray at all, there remains nought to pray +for. But, among the vain and worldly songs I have had to get +by heart, there is, by chance, a kind of little hymn, a +childish little verse, but a sincere one. And while you pray +for me—for you promised to pray for me, Madam—I should like +to sing it, with your Grace's leave.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>opens a little movable organ in a corner, and strikes a +few chords, remaining standing the while. The</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>kneels +down before the crucifix, turning her back upon him. While she +is silently praying</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>still on his feet, sings very +low to a kind of lullaby tune</i>.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Mother of God,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">We are thy weary children;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Teach us, thou weeping Mother,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To cry ourselves to sleep.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_III" id="ACT_III"></a>ACT III</h4> + + +<p><i>Three months later. Another part of the Palace of Mantua: the +hanging gardens in the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE'S</span> <i>apartments. It is the first +warm night of Spring. The lemon trees have been brought out +that day, and fill the air with fragrance. Terraces and +flights of steps; in the background the dark mass of the +palace, with its cupolas and fortified towers; here and there +a lit window picking out the dark; and from above the +principal yards, the flare of torches rising into the deep +blue of the sky. In the course of the scene, the moon +gradually emerges from behind a group of poplars on the +opposite side of the lake into which the palace is built. +During the earlier part of the act, darkness. Great stillness, +with, only occasionally, the plash of a fisherman's oar, or a +very distant thrum of mandolines.—The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>are +walking up and down the terrace</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Thou askedst me once, dear Diego, the meaning of that +labyrinth which I have had carved, a shapeless pattern enough, +but well suited, methinks, to blue and gold, upon the ceiling +of my new music room. And wouldst have asked, I fancy, as +many have done, the hidden meaning of the device surrounding +it.—I left thee in the dark, dear lad, and treated thy +curiosity in a peevish manner. Thou hast long forgiven and +perhaps forgotten, deeming my lack of courtesy but another +ailment of thy poor sick master; another of those odd +ungracious moods with which, kindest of healing creatures, +thou hast had such wise and cheerful patience. I have often +wished to tell thee; but I could not. 'Tis only now, in some +mysterious fashion, I seem myself once more,—able to do my +judgment's bidding, and to dispose, in memory and words, of my +own past. My strange sickness, which thou hast cured, melting +its mists away with thy beneficent music even as the sun +penetrates and sucks away the fogs of dawn from our lakes—my +sickness, Diego, the sufferings of my flight from Barbary; the +horror, perhaps, of that shipwreck which cast me (so they say, +for I remember nothing) senseless on the Illyrian +coast——these things, or Heaven's judgment on but a lukewarm +Crusader,—had somehow played strange havoc with my will and +recollections. I could not think; or thinking, not speak; or +recollecting, feel that he whom I thought of in the past was +this same man, myself.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>pauses, and leaning on the parapet, watches the +long reflections of the big stars in the water</i>.</p> + +<p>But now, and thanks to thee, Diego, I am another; I am myself.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>face, invisible in the darkness, has undergone +dreadful convulsions. His breast heaves, and he stops for +breath before answering; but when he does so, controls his +voice into its usual rather artificially cadenced tone</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And now, dear Master, you can recollect——all?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Recollect, sweet friend, and tell thee. For it is seemly that +I should break through this churlish silence with thee. Thou +didst cure the weltering distress of my poor darkened mind; I +would have thee, now, know somewhat of the past of thy +grateful patient. The maze, Diego, carved and gilded on that +ceiling is but a symbol of my former life; and the device +which, being interpreted, means "I seek straight ways," the +expression of my wish and duty.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You loathed the maze, my Lord?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Not so. I loved it then. And I still love it now. But I have +issued from it—issued to recognise that the maze was good. +Though it is good I left it. When I entered it, I was a raw +youth, although in years a man; full of easy theory, and +thinking all practice simple; unconscious of passion; ready to +govern the world with a few learned notions; moreover never +having known either happiness or grief, never loved and +wondered at a creature different from myself; acquainted, not +with the straight roads which I now seek, but only with the +rectangular walls of schoolrooms. The maze, and all the maze +implied, made me a man.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>who has listened with conflicting feelings, and now unable +to conceal his joy</i>)</p> + +<p>A man, dear Master; and the gentlest, most just of men. Then, +that maze——But idle stories, interpreting all spiritual +meaning as prosy fact, would have it, that this symbol was a +reality. The legend of your captivity, my Lord, has turned the +pattern on that ceiling into a real labyrinth, some cunningly +built fortress or prison, where the Infidels kept you, and +whose clue——you found, and with the clue, freedom, after +five weary years.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Whose clue, dear Diego, was given into my hands,—the clue +meaning freedom, but also eternal parting—by the most +faithful, intrepid, magnanimous, the most loving——and the +most beloved of women!</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>has raised his arms from the parapet, and drawn +himself erect, folding them on his breast, and seeking for</i> +<span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>face in the darkness. But</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>unseen by the</i> +<span class="persona">DUKE</span>, <i>has clutched the parapet and sunk on to a bench</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>(<i>walking up and down, slowly and meditatively, after a +pause</i>)</p> + +<p>The poets have fabled many things concerning virtuous women. +The Roman Arria, who stabbed herself to make honourable +suicide easier for her husband; Antigone, who buried her +brother at the risk of death; and the Thracian Alkestis, who +descended into the kingdom of Death in place of Admetus. But +none, to my mind, comes up to <i>her</i>. For fancy is but thin and +simple, a web of few bright threads; whereas reality is +closely knitted out of the numberless fibres of life, of pain +and joy. For note it, Diego—those antique women whom we read +of were daughters of kings, or of Romans more than kings; bred +of a race of heroes, and trained, while still playing with +dolls, to pride themselves on austere duty, and look upon the +wounds and maimings of their soul as their brothers and +husbands looked upon the mutilations of battle. Whereas here; +here was a creature infinitely humble; a waif, a poor spurned +toy of brutal mankind's pleasure; accustomed only to bear +contumely, or to snatch, unthinking, what scanty happiness lay +along her difficult and despised path,—a wild creature, who +had never heard such words as duty or virtue; and yet whose +acts first taught me what they truly meant.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>who has recovered himself, and is now leaning in his turn on +the parapet</i>)</p> + +<p>Ah——a light woman, bought and sold many times over, my Lord; +but who loved, at last.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>That is the shallow and contemptuous way in which men think, +Diego,—and boys like thee pretend to; those to whom life is +but a chess-board, a neatly painted surface alternate black +and white, most suitable for skilful games, with a soul clean +lost or gained at the end! I thought like that. But I grew to +understand life as a solid world: rock, fertile earth, veins +of pure metal, mere mud, all strangely mixed and overlaid; and +eternal fire at the core! I learned it, knowing Magdalen.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Her name was Magdalen?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>So she bade me call her.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And the name explained the trade?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>after a pause</i>)</p> + +<p>I cannot understand thee Diego,—cannot understand thy lack of +understanding——Well yes! Her trade. All in this universe is +trade, trade of prince, pope, philosopher or harlot; and once +the badge put on, the licence signed—the badge a crown or a +hot iron's brand, as the case may be,—why then we ply it +according to prescription, and that's all! Yes, Diego,—since +thou obligest me to say it in its harshness, I do so, and I +glory for her in every contemptuous word I use!—The woman I +speak of was but a poor Venetian courtesan; some drab's child, +sold to the Infidels as to the Christians; and my cruel pirate +master's—shall we say?—mistress. There! For the first time, +Diego, thou dost not understand me; or is it——that I +misjudged thee, thinking thee, dear boy——(<i>breaks off +hurriedly</i>).</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>very slowly</i>)</p> + +<p>Thinking me what, my Lord?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>lightly, but with effort</i>)</p> + +<p>Less of a little Sir Paragon of Virtue than a dear child, who +is only a child, must be.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>It is better, perhaps, that your Highness should be certain of +my limitations——But I crave your Highness's pardon. I had +meant to say that being a waif myself, pure gutter-bred, I +have known, though young, more Magdalens than you, my Lord. +They are, in a way, my sisters; and had I been a woman, I +should, likely enough, have been one myself.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>You mean, Diego?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I mean, that knowing them well, I also know that women such as +your Highness has described, occasionally learn to love most +truly. Nay, let me finish, my Lord; I was not going to repeat +a mere sentimental commonplace. Briefly then, that such women, +being expert in love, sometimes understand, quicker than +virtuous dames brought up to heroism, when love for them is +cloyed. They can walk out of a man's house or life with due +alacrity, being trained to such flittings. Or, recognising the +first signs of weariness before 'tis known to him who feels +it, they can open the door for the other—hand him the clue of +the labyrinth with a fine theatric gesture!—But I crave your +Highness's pardon for enlarging on this theme.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Thou speakest Diego, as if thou hadst a mind to wound thy +Master. Is this, my friend, the reward of my confiding in +thee, even if tardily?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I stand rebuked, my Lord. But, in my own defence——how shall +I say it?——Your Highness has a manner to-night which +disconcerts me by its novelty; a saying things and then +unsaying them; suggesting and then, somehow, treading down the +suggestion like a spark of your lightning. Lovers, I have been +told, use such a manner to revive their flagging feeling by +playing on the other one's. Even in so plain and solid a thing +as friendship, such ways—I say it subject to your Highness's +displeasure—are dangerous. But in love, I have known cases +where, carried to certain lengths, such ways of speaking +undermined a woman's faith and led her to desperate things. +Women, despite their strength, which often surprises us, are +brittle creatures. Did you never, perhaps, make trial of +this——Magdalen, with——</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>With what? Good God, Diego, 'tis I who ask thy pardon; and +thou sheddest a dreadful light upon the past. But it is not +possible. I am not such a cur that, after all she did, after +all she was,—my life saved by her audacity a hundred times, +made rich and lovely by her love, her wit, her power,—that I +could ever have whimpered for my freedom, or made her suspect +I wanted it more than I wanted her? Is it possible, Diego?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>slowly</i>)</p> + +<p>Why more than you wanted her? She may have thought the two +compatible.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Never. First, because my escape could not be compassed save by +her staying behind; and then because—-she knew, in fact, what +thing I was, or must become, once set at liberty.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>after a pause</i>)</p> + +<p>I see. You mean, my Lord, that you being Duke of Mantua, while +she——If she knew that; knew it not merely as a fact, but as +one knows the full savour of grief,—well, she was indeed the +paragon you think; one might indeed say, bating one point, a +virtuous woman.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Thou hast understood, dear Diego, and I thank thee for it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>But I fear, my Lord, she did not know these things. Such as +she, as yourself remarked, are not trained to conceive of +duty, even in others. Passion moves them; and they believe in +passion. You loved her; good. Why then, at Mantua as in +Barbary. No, my dear Master, believe me; she had seen your +love was turning stale, and set you free, rather than taste +its staleness. Passion, like duty, has its pride; and even we +waifs, as gypsies, have our point of honour.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Stale! My love grown stale! You make me laugh, boy, instead of +angering. Stale! You never knew her. She was not like a +song—even your sweetest song—which, heard too often, cloys, +its phrases dropping to senseless notes. She was like +music,—the whole art: new modes, new melodies, new rhythms, +with every day and hour, passionate or sad, or gay, or very +quiet; more wondrous notes than in thy voice; and more +strangely sweet, even when they grated, than the tone of those +newfangled fiddles, which wound the ear and pour balm in, they +make now at Cremona.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You loved her then, sincerely?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Methinks it may be Diego now, tormenting his Master with +needless questions. Loved her, boy! I love her.</p> + +<p><i>A long pause</i>. Diego <i>has covered his face, with a gesture as +if about to speak. But the moon has suddenly risen from behind +the poplars, and put scales of silver light upon the ripples +of the lake, and a pale luminous mist around the palace. As +the light invades the terrace, a sort of chill has come upon +both speakers; they walk up and down further from one +another</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>A marvellous story, dear Master. And I thank you from my heart +for having told it me. I always loved you, and I thought I +knew you. I know you better still, now. You are—a most +magnanimous prince.</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Alas, dear lad, I am but a poor prisoner of my duties; a +poorer prisoner, and a sadder far, than there in Barbary——O +Diego, how I have longed for her! How deeply I still long, +sometimes! But I open my eyes, force myself to stare reality +in the face, whenever her image comes behind closed lids, +driving her from me——And to end my confession. At the +beginning, Diego, there seemed in thy voice and manner +something of <i>her</i>; I saw her sometimes in thee, as children +see the elves they fear and hope for in stains on walls and +flickers on the path. And all thy wondrous power, thy +miraculous cure—nay, forgive what seems ingratitude—was due, +Diego, to my sick fancy making me see glances of her in thy +eyes and hear her voice in thine. Not music but love, love's +delusion, was what worked my cure.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Do you speak truly, Master? Was it so? And now?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Now, dear lad, I am cured—completely; I know bushes from +ghosts; and I know thee, dearest friend, to be Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>When these imaginations still held you, my Lord, did it ever +happen that you wondered: what if the bush had been a ghost; +if Diego had turned into—what was she called?——</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>Magdalen. My fancy never went so far, good Diego. There was a +grain of reason left. But if it had——Well, I should have +taken Magdalen's hand, and said, "Welcome, dear sister. This +is a world of spells; let us repeat some. Become henceforth +my brother; be the Duke of Mantua's best and truest friend; +turn into Diego, Magdalen."</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span> <i>presses</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO'S</span> <i>arm, and, letting it go, walks +away into the moonlight with an enigmatic air. A long pause</i>.</p> + +<p>Hark, they are singing within; the idle pages making songs to +their ladies' eyebrows. Shall we go and listen?</p> + +<p>(<i>They walk in the direction of the palace</i>.)</p> + +<p>And (<i>with a little hesitation</i>) that makes me say, Diego, +before we close this past of mine, and bury it for ever in our +silence, that there is a little Moorish song, plaintive and +quaint, she used to sing, which some day I will write down, +and thou shalt sing it to me—on my deathbed.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Why not before? Speaking of songs, that mandolin, though out +of tune, and vilely played, has got hold of a ditty I like +well enough. Hark, the words are Tuscan, well known in the +mountains. (<i>Sings</i>.)</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I'd like to die, but die a little death only,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but look down from the window;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but stand upon the doorstep;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I'd like to die, but follow the procession;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but see who smiles and weepeth;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I'd like to die, but die a little death only.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>(<i>While</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>sings very loud, the mandolin inside the +palace thrums faster and faster. As he ends, with a long +defiant leap into a high note, a burst of applause from the +palace</i>.)</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>clapping his hands</i>)</p> + +<p>Well sung, Diego!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_IV" id="ACT_IV"></a>ACT IV</h4> + + +<p><i>A few weeks later. The new music room in the Palace of +Mantua. Windows on both sides admitting a view of the lake, so +that the hall looks like a galley surrounded by water. +Outside, morning: the lake, the sky, and the lines of poplars +on the banks, are all made of various textures of luminous +blue. From the gardens below, bay trees raise their flowering +branches against the windows. In every window an antique +statue: the Mantuan Muse, the Mantuan Apollo, etc. In the +walls between the windows are framed panels representing +allegorical triumphs: those nearest the spectator are the +triumphs of Chastity and of Fortitude. At the end of the room, +steps and a balustrade, with a harpsichord and double basses +on a dais. The roof of the room is blue and gold; a deep blue +ground, constellated with a gold labyrinth in relief. Round +the cornice, blue and gold also, the inscription</i>: "RECTAS +PETO," <i>and the name</i> Ferdinandus Mantuae Dux.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS HIPPOLYTA</span> <i>of Mirandola, cousin to the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>; +<i>and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>. <span class="persona">HIPPOLYTA</span> <i>is very young, but with the strength +and grace, and the candour, rather of a beautiful boy than of +a woman. She is dazzlingly fair; and her hair, arranged in +waves like an antique amazon's, is stiff and lustrous, as if +made of threads of gold. The brows are wide and straight, +like a man's; the glance fearless, but virginal and almost +childlike</i>. <span class="persona">HIPPOLYTA</span> <i>is dressed in black and gold, +particoloured, like Mantegna's Duchess. An old man, in +scholar's gown, the</i> Princess's Greek Tutor, <i>has just +introduced</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>and retired</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>The Duke your cousin's greeting and service, illustrious +damsel. His Highness bids me ask how you are rested after your +journey hither.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Tell my cousin, good Signor Diego, that I am touched at his +concern for me. And tell him, such is the virtuous air of his +abode, that a whole night's rest sufficed to right me from the +fatigue of two hours' journey in a litter; for I am new to +that exercise, being accustomed to follow my poor father's +hounds and falcons only on horseback. You shall thank the Duke +my cousin for his civility. (<span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>laughs</i>.)</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>bowing, and keeping his eyes on the</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>as he +speaks</i>)</p> + +<p>His Highness wished to make his fair cousin smile. He has told +me often how your illustrious father, the late Lord of +Mirandola, brought his only daughter up in such a wise as +scarcely to lack a son, with manly disciplines of mind and +body; and that he named you fittingly after Hippolyta, who was +Queen of the Amazons, virgins unlike their vain and weakly +sex.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>She was; and wife of Theseus. But it seems that the poets care +but little for the like of her; they tell us nothing of her, +compared with her poor predecessor, Cretan Ariadne, she who +had given Theseus the clue of the labyrinth. Methinks that +maze must have been mazier than this blue and gold one +overhead. What say you, Signor Diego?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO (<i>who has started slightly</i>)</p> + +<p>Ariadne? Was she the predecessor of Hippolyta? I did not know +it. I am but a poor scholar, Madam; knowing the names and +stories of gods and heroes only from songs and masques. The +Duke should have selected some fitter messenger to hold +converse with his fair learned cousin.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>gravely</i>)</p> + +<p>Speak not like that, Signor Diego. You may not be a scholar, +as you say; but surely you are a philosopher. Nay, conceive +my meaning: the fame of your virtuous equanimity has spread +further than from this city to my small dominions. Your +precocious wisdom—for you seem younger than I, and youths do +not delight in being very wise—your moderation in the use of +sudden greatness, your magnanimous treatment of enemies and +detractors; and the manner in which, disdainful of all +personal advantage, you have surrounded the Duke my cousin +with wisest counsellors and men expert in office—such are the +results men seek from the study of philosophy.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>at first astonished, then amused, a little sadly</i>)</p> + +<p>You are mistaken, noble maiden. 'Tis not philosophy to refrain +from things that do not tempt one. Riches or power are useless +to me. As for the rest, you are mistaken also. The Duke is +wise and valiant, and chooses therefore wise and valiant +counsellors.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>impetuously</i>)</p> + +<p>You are eloquent, Signor Diego, even as you are wise! But your +words do not deceive me. Ambition lurks in every one; and +power intoxicates all save those who have schooled themselves +to use it as a means to virtue.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>The thought had never struck me; but men have told me what you +tell me now.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Even Antiquity, which surpasses us so vastly in all manner of +wisdom and heroism, can boast of very few like you. The +noblest souls have grown tyrannical and rapacious and +foolhardy in sudden elevation. Remember Alcibiades, the +beloved pupil of the wisest of all mortals. Signor Diego, you +may have read but little; but you have meditated to much +profit, and must have wrestled like some great athlete with +all that baser self which the divine Plato has told us how to +master.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>shaking his head</i>)</p> + +<p>Alas, Madam, your words make me ashamed, and yet they make me +smile, being so far of the mark! I have wrestled with nothing; +followed only my soul's blind impulses.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>gravely</i>)</p> + +<p>It must be, then, dear Signor Diego, as the Pythagoreans held: +the discipline of music is virtuous for the soul. There is a +power in numbered and measured sound very akin to wisdom; +mysterious and excellent; as indeed the Ancients fabled in the +tales of Orpheus and Amphion, musicians and great sages and +legislators of states. I have long desired your conversation, +admirable Diego.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>with secret contempt</i>)</p> + +<p>Noble maiden, such words exceed my poor unscholarly +appreciation. The antique worthies whom you name are for me +merely figures in tapestries and frescoes, quaint greybeards +in laurel wreaths and helmets; and I can scarcely tell whether +the Ladies Fortitude and Rhetoric with whom they hold +converse, are real daughters of kings, or mere Arts and +Virtues. But the Duke, a learned and judicious prince, will +set due store by his youthful cousin's learning. As for me, +simpleton and ignoramus that I am, all I see is that Princess +Hippolyta is very beautiful and very young.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>(<i>sighing a little, but with great simplicity</i>)</p> + +<p>I know it. I am young, and perhaps crude; although I study +hard to learn the rules of wisdom. You, Diego, seem to know +them without study.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I know somewhat of the world and of men, gracious Princess, +but that can scarce be called knowing wisdom. Say rather +knowing blindness, envy, cruelty, endless nameless folly in +others and oneself. But why should you seek to be wise? you +who are fair, young, a princess, and betrothed from your +cradle to a great prince? Be beautiful, be young, be what you +are, a woman.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>has said this last word with emphasis, but the</i> +<span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>has not noticed the sarcasm in his voice</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>shaking her head</i>)</p> + +<p>That is not my lot. I was destined, as you said, to be the +wife of a great prince; and my dear father trained me to fill +that office.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Well, and to be beautiful, young, radiant; to be a woman; is +not that the office of a wife?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I have not much experience. But my father told me, and I have +gathered from books, that in the wives of princes, such gifts +are often thrown away; that other women, supplying them, seem +to supply them better. Look at my cousin's mother. I can +remember her still beautiful, young, and most tenderly loving. +Yet the Duke, my uncle, disdained her, and all she got was +loneliness and heartbreak. An honourable woman, a princess, +cannot compete with those who study to please and to please +only. She must either submit to being ousted from her +husband's love, or soar above it into other regions.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>interested</i>)</p> + +<p>Other regions?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Higher ones. She must be fit to be her husband's help, and to +nurse his sons to valour and wisdom.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I see. The Prince must know that besides all the knights that +he summons to battle, and all the wise men whom he hears in +council, there is another knight, in rather lighter armour and +quicker tired, another counsellor, less experienced and of +less steady temper, ready for use. Is this great gain?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>It is strange that being a man, you should conceive of women +from——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>From a man's standpoint?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Nay; methinks a woman's. For I observe that women, when they +wish to help men, think first of all of some transparent +masquerade, donning men's clothes, at all events in metaphor, +in order to be near their lovers when not wanted.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>hastily</i>)</p> + +<p>Donning men's clothes? A masquerade? I fail to follow your +meaning, gracious maiden.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>simply</i>)</p> + +<p>So I have learned at least from our poets. Angelica, and +Bradamante and Fiordispina, scouring the country after their +lovers, who were busy enough without them. I prefer Penelope, +staying at home to save the lands and goods of Ulysses, and +bringing up his son to rescue and avenge him.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>reassured and indifferent</i>)</p> + +<p>Did Ulysses love Penelope any better for it, Madam? better +than poor besotted Menelaus, after all his injuries, loved +Helen back in Sparta?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>That is not the question. A woman born to be a prince's wife +and prince's mother, does her work not for the sake of +something greater than love, whether much or little.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>For what then?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Does a well-bred horse or excellent falcon do its duty to +please its master? No; but because such is its nature. +Similarly, methinks, a woman bred to be a princess works with +her husband, for her husband, not for any reward, but because +he and she are of the same breed, and obey the same instincts.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Ah!—--Then happiness, love,—all that a woman craves for?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Are accidents. Are they not so in the life of a prince? Love +he may snatch; and she, being in woman's fashion not allowed +to snatch, may receive as a gift, or not. But received or +snatched, it is not either's business; not their nature's true +fulfilment.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You think so, Lady?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I am bound to think so. I was born to it and taught it. You +know the Duke, my cousin,—well, I am his bride, not being +born his sister.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And you are satisfied? O beautiful Princess, you are of +illustrious lineage and mind, and learned. Your father brought +you up on Plutarch instead of Amadis; you know many things; +but there is one, methinks, no one can know the nature of it +until he has it.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>What is that, pray?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>A heart. Because you have not got one yet, you make your plans +without it,—a negligible item in your life.</p> + +<p class="persona">Princess</p> + +<p>I am not a child.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>But not yet a woman.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>meditatively</i>)</p> + +<p>You think, then——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>I do not <i>think</i>; I <i>know</i>. And <i>you</i> will know, some day. And +then——</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Then I shall suffer. Why, we must all suffer. Say that, having +a heart, a heart for husband or child, means certain +grief,—well, does not riding, walking down your stairs, mean +the chance of broken bones? Does not living mean old age, +disease, possible blindness or paralysis, and quite inevitable +aches? If, as you say, I must needs grow a heart, and if a +heart must needs give agony, why, I shall live through +heartbreak as through pain in any other limb.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Yes,—were your heart a limb like all the rest,—but 'tis the +very centre and fountain of all life.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>You think so? 'Tis, methinks, pushing analogy too far, and +metaphor. This necessary organ, diffusing life throughout us, +and, as physicians say, removing with its vigorous floods all +that has ceased to live, replacing it with new and living +tissue,—this great literal heart cannot be the seat of only +one small passion.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Yet I have known more women than one die of that small +passion's frustrating.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>But you have known also, I reckon, many a man in whom life, +what he had to live for, was stronger than all love. They say +the Duke my cousin's melancholy sickness was due to love which +he had outlived.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>They say so, Madam.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS (<i>thoughtfully</i>)</p> + +<p>I think it possible, from what I know of him. He was much with +my father when a lad; and I, a child, would listen to their +converse, not understanding its items, but seeming to +understand the general drift. My father often said my cousin +was romantic, favoured overmuch his tender mother, and would +suffer greatly, learning to live for valour and for wisdom.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Think you he has, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>If 'tis true that occasion has already come.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>And—if that occasion came, for the first time or for the +second, perhaps, after your marriage? What would you do, +Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I cannot tell as yet. Help him, I trust, when help could come, +by the sympathy of a soul's strength and serenity. Stand +aside, most likely, waiting to be wanted. Or else——</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Or else, illustrious maiden?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Or else——I know not——perhaps, growing a heart, get some +use from it.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Your Highness surely does not mean use it to love with?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Why not? It might be one way of help. And if I saw him +struggling with grief, seeking to live the life and think the +thought fit for his station; why, methinks I could love him. +He seems lovable. Only love could have taught fidelity like +yours.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You forget, gracious Princess, that you attributed great power +of virtue to a habit of conduct, which is like the nature of +high-bred horses, needing no spur. But in truth you are right. +I am no high-bred creature. Quite the contrary. Like curs, I +love; love, and only love. For curs are known to love their +masters.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Speak not thus, virtuous Diego. I have indeed talked in +magnanimous fashion, and believed, sincerely, that I felt high +resolves. But you have acted, lived, and done magnanimously. +What you have been and are to the Duke is better schooling for +me than all the Lives of Plutarch.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO.</p> + +<p>You could not learn from me, Lady.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>But I would try, Diego.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Be not grasping, Madam. The generous coursers whom your father +taught you to break and harness have their set of virtues. +Those of curs are different. Do not grudge them those. Your +noble horses kick them enough, without even seeing their +presence. But I feel I am beyond my depth, not being +philosophical by nature or schooling. And I had forgotten to +give you part of his Highnesses message. Knowing your love of +music, and the attention you have given it, the Duke imagined +it might divert you, till he was at leisure to pay you homage, +to make trial of my poor powers. Will it please you to order +the other musicians, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Nay, good Diego, humour me in this. I have studied music, and +would fain make trial of accompanying your voice. Have you +notes by you?</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Here are some, Madam, left for the use of his Highness's band +this evening. Here is the pastoral of Phyllis by Ludovic of +the Lute; a hymn in four parts to the Virgin by Orlandus +Lassus; a madrigal by the Pope's Master, Signor Pierluigi of +Praeneste. Ah! Here is a dramatic scene between Medea and +Creusa, rivals in love, by the Florentine Octavio. Have you +knowledge of it, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I have sung it with my master for exercise. But, good Diego, +find a song for yourself.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>You shall humour me, now, gracious Lady. Think I am your +master. I desire to hear your voice. And who knows? In this +small matter I may really teach you something.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>sits to the harpsichord</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>standing +beside her on the dais. They sing, the</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>taking the +treble</i>, <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>the contralto part. The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>enters +first—with a full-toned voice clear and high, singing very +carefully</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span> <i>follows, singing in a whisper. His voice is +a little husky, and here and there broken, but ineffably +delicious and penetrating, and, as he sings, becomes, without +quitting the whisper, dominating and disquieting. The</i> +<span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>plays a wrong chord, and breaks off suddenly.</i></p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>having finished a cadence, rudely</i>)</p> + +<p>What is it, Madam?</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>I know not. I have lost my place——I——I feel bewildered. +When your voice rose up against mine, Diego, I lost my head. +And—I do not know how to express it—when our voices met in +that held dissonance, it seemed as if you hurt me——horribly.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>(<i>smiling, with hypocritical apology</i>)</p> + +<p>Forgive me, Madam. I sang too loud, perhaps. We theatre +singers are apt to strain things. I trust some day to hear you +sing alone. You have a lovely voice: more like a boy's than +like a maiden's still.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>And yours——'tis strange that at your age we should reverse +the parts,—yours, though deeper than mine, is like a +woman's.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span> (<i>laughing</i>)</p> + +<p>I have grown a heart, Madam; 'tis an organ grows quicker where +the breed is mixed and lowly, no nobler limbs retarding its +development by theirs.</p> + +<p class="persona">PRINCESS</p> + +<p>Speak not thus, excellent Diego. Why cause me pain by +disrespectful treatment of a person—your own admirable +self—whom I respect? You have experience, Diego, and shall +teach me many things, for I desire learning.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> <span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> <i>takes his hand in both hers, very kindly and +simply</i>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>disengaging his, bows very ceremoniously</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">DIEGO</p> + +<p>Shall I teach you to sing as I do, gracious Madam?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCESS</span> (<i>after a moment</i>)</p> + +<p>I think not, Diego.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4><a name="ACT_V" id="ACT_V"></a>ACT V</h4> + + +<p><i>Two months later. The wedding day of the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>. <i>Another part +of the Palace of Mantua. A long terrace still to be seen, with +roof supported by columns. It looks on one side on to the +jousting ground, a green meadow surrounded by clipped hedges +and set all round with mulberry trees. On the other side it +overlooks the lake, against which, as a fact, it acts as dyke. +The Court of Mantua and Envoys of foreign Princes, together +with many Prelates, are assembled on the terrace, surrounding +the seats of the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>, <i>the young</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS HIPPOLYTA</span>, <i>the</i> +<span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> <i>and the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>. <i>Facing this gallery, and +separated from it by a line of sedge and willows, and a few +yards of pure green water, starred with white lilies, is a +stage in the shape of a Grecian temple, apparently rising out +of the lake. Its pediment and columns are slung with garlands +of bay and cypress. In the gable, the</i> DUKE'S <i>device of a +labyrinth in gold on a blue ground and the motto:</i> "<span class="persona">RECTAS +PETO.</span>" <i>On the stage, but this side of the curtain, which is +down, are a number of</i> Musicians <i>with violins, viols, +theorbs, a hautboy, a flute, a bassoon, viola d'amore and bass +viols, grouped round two men with double basses and a man at a +harpsichord, in dress like the musicians in Veronese's +paintings. They are preluding gently, playing elaborately +fugued variations on a dance tune in three-eighth time, +rendered singularly plaintive by the absence of perfect +closes</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>(<i>to</i> <span class="persona">VENETIAN AMBASSADOR</span>)</p> + +<p>What say you to our Diego's masque, my Lord? Does not his +skill as a composer vie almost with his sublety as a singer?</p> + +<p class="persona">MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA</p> + +<p>(<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span>)</p> + +<p>A most excellent masque, methinks, Madam. And of so new a +kind. We have had masques in palaces and also in gardens, and +some, I own it, beautiful; for our palace on the hill affords +fine vistas of cypress avenues and the distant plain. But, +until the Duke your son, no one has had a masque on the water, +it would seem. 'Tis doubtless his invention?</p> + +<p class="persona">DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>with evident preoccupation</i>)</p> + +<p>I think not, Madam. 'Tis our foolish Diego's freak. And I +confess I like it not. It makes me anxious for the players.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">BISHOP OF CREMONA</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>)</p> + +<p>A wondrous singer, your Signor Diego. They say the Spaniards +have subtle exercises for keeping the voice thus youthful. His +Holiness has several such who sing divinely under Pierluigi's +guidance. But your Diego seems really but a child, yet has a +mode of singing like one who knows a world of joys and +sorrows.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>He has. Indeed, I sometimes think he pushes the pathetic +quality too far. I am all for the Olympic serenity of the wise +Ancients.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span> (<i>laughing</i>)</p> + +<p>My uncle would, I almost think, exile our divine Diego, as +Plato did the poets, for moving us too much.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">PRINCE OF MASSA</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>He has moved your noble husband strangely. Or is it, gracious +bride, that too much happiness overwhelms our friend?</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>turning round and noticing the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>, <i>a few seats off</i>)</p> + +<p>'Tis true. Ferdinand is very sensitive to music, and is +greatly concerned for our Diego's play. Still——I wonder——.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">MARCHIONESS</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET</span>, <i>who is standing +near her</i>)</p> + +<p>I really never could have recognised Signor Diego in his +disguise. He looks for all the world exactly like a woman.</p> + +<p class="persona">POET</p> + +<p>A woman! Say a goddess, Madam! Upon my soul (<i>whispering</i>), +the bride is scarce as beautiful as he, although as fair as +one of the noble swans who sail on those clear waters.</p> + +<p class="persona">JESTER</p> + +<p>After the play we shall see admiring dames trooping behind the +scenes to learn the secret of the paints which can change a +scrubby boy into a beauteous nymph; a metamorphosis worth +twenty of Sir Ovid's.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DOGE'S WIFE</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>)</p> + +<p>They all tell me—but 'tis a secret naturally—that the words +of this ingenious masque are from your Highness's own pen; and +that you helped—such are your varied gifts—your singing-page +to set them to music.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>impatiently</i>)</p> + +<p>It may be that your Serenity is rightly informed, or not.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">KNIGHT OF MALTA</span> (<i>to</i> <span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span>)</p> + +<p>One recognises, at least, the mark of Duke Ferdinand's genius +in the suiting of the play to the surroundings. Given these +lakes, what fitter argument than Ariadne abandoned on her +little island? And the labyrinth in the story is a pretty +allusion to your lord's personal device and the magnificent +ceiling he lately designed for our admiration.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>with her eyes fixed on the curtain, which begins to move</i>)</p> + +<p>Nay, 'tis all Diego's thought. Hush, they begin to play. Oh, +my heart beats with curiosity to know how our dear Diego will +carry his invention through, and to hear the last song which +he has never let me hear him sing.</p> + +<p><i>The curtain is drawn aside, displaying the stage, set with +orange and myrtle trees in jars, and a big flowering oleander. +There is no painted background; but instead, the lake, with +distant shore, and the sky with the sun slowly descending +into clouds, which light up purple and crimson, and send rosy +streamers into the high blue air. On the stage a rout of</i> +Bacchanals, <i>dressed like Mantegna's Hours, but with +vine-garlands; also</i> Satyrs <i>quaintly dressed in goatskins, +but with top-knots of ribbons, all singing a Latin ode in +praise of</i> <span class="persona">BACCHUS</span> <i>and wine; while girls dressed as nymphs, +with ribboned thyrsi in their hands, dance a pavana before a +throne of moss overhung by ribboned garlands. On this throne +are seated a</i> <span class="persona">TENOR</span> <i>as</i> <span class="persona">BACCHUS</span>, <i>dressed in russet and +leopard skins, a garland of vine leaves round his waist and +round his wide-brimmed hat; and</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>as</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, +<i>no longer habited as a man, but in woman's garments, like +those of Guercino's Sibyls: a floating robe and vest of orange +and violet, open at the throat; with particoloured scarves +hanging, and a particoloured scarf wound like a turban round +the head, the locks of dark hair escaping from beneath. She is +extremely beautiful</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">MAGDALEN</span> (<i>sometime known as</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>now representing</i> +<span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>) <i>rises from the throne and speaks, turning to</i> +<span class="persona">BACCHUS</span>. <i>Her voice is a contralto, but not deep, and with +upper notes like a hautboy's. She speaks in an irregular +recitative, sustained by chords on the viols and +harpsichord</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>Tempt me not, gentle Bacchus, sunburnt god of ruddy vines and +rustic revelry. The gifts you bring, the queenship of the +world of wine-inspired Fancies, cannot quell my grief at +Theseus' loss.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">BACCHUS</span> (<i>tenor</i>)</p> + +<p>Princess, I do beseech you, give me leave to try and soothe +your anguish. Daughter of Cretan Minos, stern Judge of the +Departed, your rearing has been too sad for youth and beauty, +and the shade of Orcus has ever lain across your path. But I +am God of Gladness; I can take your soul, suspend it in +Mirth's sun, even as the grapes, translucent amber or rosy, +hang from the tendril in the ripening sun of the crisp autumn +day. I can unwind your soul, and string it in the serene sky +of evening, smiling in the deep blue like to the stars, +encircled, I offer you as crown. Listen, fair Nymph: 'tis a +God woos you.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>Alas, radiant Divinity of a time of year gentler than Spring +and fruitfuller than Summer, there is no Autumn for hapless +Ariadne. Only Winter's nights and frosts wrap my soul. When +Theseus went, my youth went also. I pray you leave me to my +poor tears and the thoughts of him.</p> + +<p class="persona">BACCHUS</p> + +<p>Lady, even a God, and even a lover, must respect your grief. +Farewell. Comrades, along; the pine trees on the hills, the +ivy-wreaths upon the rocks, await your company; and the +red-stained vat, the heady-scented oak-wood, demand your +presence.</p> + +<p><i>The</i> Bacchantes <i>and</i> Satyrs <i>sing a Latin ode in praise of +Wine, in four parts, with accompaniment of bass viols and +lutes, and exeunt with</i> <span class="persona">BACCHUS</span>.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>to</i> <span class="persona">DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET</span>)</p> + +<p>Now, now, Master Torquato, now we shall hear Poetry's own self +sing with our Diego's voice.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>as</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>, <i>walks slowly up and down the stage, +while the viola plays a prelude in the minor. Then she speaks, +recitative with chords only by strings and harpsichord</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>They are gone at last. Kind creatures, how their kindness +fretted my weary soul I To be alone with grief is almost +pleasure, since grief means thought of Theseus. Yet that +thought is killing me. O Theseus, why didst thou ever come +into my life? Why did not the cruel Minotaur gore and trample +thee like all the others? Hapless Ariadne! The clue was in my +keeping, and I reached it to him. And now his ship has long +since neared his native shores, and he stands on the prow, +watching for his new love. But the Past belongs to me.</p> + +<p><i>A flute rises in the orchestra, with viols accompanying, +pizzicati, and plays three or four bars of intricate mazy +passages, very sweet and poignant, stopping on a high note, +with imperfect close</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">ARIADNE</span> (<i>continuing</i>)</p> + +<p>And in the past he loved me, and he loves me still. Nothing +can alter that. Nay, Theseus, thou canst never never love +another like me.</p> + +<p><i>Arioso. The declamation becomes more melodic, though still +unrhythmical, and is accompanied by a rapid and passionate +tremolo of violins and viols</i>.</p> + +<p>And thy love for her will be but the thin ghost of the reality +that lived for me. But Theseus——Do not leave me yet. +Another hour, another minute. I have so much to tell thee, +dearest, ere thou goest.</p> + +<p><i>Accompaniment more and more agitated. A hautboy echoes</i> +<span class="persona">ARIADNE'S</span> <i>last phrase with poignant reedy tone</i>.</p> + +<p>Thou knowest, I have not yet sung thee that little song thou +lovest to hear of evenings; the little song made by the +Aeolian Poetess whom Apollo loved when in her teens. And thou +canst not go away till I have sung it. See! my lute. But I +must tune it. All is out of tune in my poor jangled life.</p> + +<p><i>Lute solo in the orchestra. A Siciliana or slow dance, very +delicate and simple</i>. <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span> <i>sings</i>.</p> + +<p>Song</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Let us forget we loved each other much;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Let us forget we ever have to part;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Let us forget that any look or touch</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Once let in either to the other's heart.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Only we'll sit upon the daisied grass,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And hear the larks and see the swallows pass;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Only we live awhile, as children play,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Without to-morrow, without yesterday.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>During the ritornello, between the two verses.</i></p> + +<p class="persona">POET</p> + +<p>(<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span>, <i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Madam, methinks his Highness is unwell. Turn round, I pray +you.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</span> (<i>without turning</i>).</p> + +<p>He feels the play's charm. Hush.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Come Ferdinand, you are faint. Come with me.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUKE</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Nay, mother. It will pass. Only a certain oppression at the +heart, I was once subject to. Let us be still.</p> + +<p>Song (<i>repeats</i>)</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Only we'll live awhile, as children play,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Without to-morrow, without yesterday.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>A few bars of ritornello after the song</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">DUCHESS DOWAGER</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Courage, my son, I know all.</p> + +<p class="persona">ARIADNE</p> + +<p>(<i>Recitative with accompaniment of violins, flute and harp</i>)</p> + +<p>Theseus, I've sung my song. Alas, alas for our poor songs we +sing to the beloved, and vainly try to vary into newness!</p> + +<p><i>A few notes of the harp well up, slow and liquid</i>.</p> + +<p>Now I can go to rest, and darkness lap my weary heart. +Theseus, my love, good night!</p> + +<p><i>Violins tremolo. The hautboy suddenly enters with a long +wailing phrase</i>. <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span> <i>quickly mounts on to the back of the +stage, turns round for one second, waving a kiss to an +imaginary person, and then flings herself down into the lake</i>.</p> + +<p><i>A great burst of applause. Enter immediately, and during the +cries and clapping, a chorus of</i> Water-Nymphs <i>in transparent +veils and garlands of willows and lilies, which sings to a +solemn counterpoint, the dirge of</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. <i>But their singing +is barely audible through the applause of the whole Court, and +the shouts of</i> "<span class="persona">DIEGO! DIEGO! ARIADNE! ARIADNE!</span>" <i>The young</i> +<span class="persona">DUCHESS</span> <i>rises excitedly, wiping her eyes</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>Dear friend! Diego! Diego! Our Orpheus, come forth!</p> + +<p class="persona">CROWD</p> + +<p>Diego! Diego!</p> + +<p><span class="persona">POET</span> (<i>to the</i> <span class="persona">POPE'S LEGATE</span>)</p> + +<p>He is a real artist, and scorns to spoil the play's impression +by truckling to this foolish habit of applause.</p> + +<p class="persona">MARCHIONESS</p> + +<p>Still, a mere singer, a page——when his betters call——. But +see! the Duke has left our midst.</p> + +<p class="persona">CARDINAL</p> + +<p>He has gone to bring back Diego in triumph, doubtless.</p> + +<p class="persona">VENETIAN AMBASSADOR</p> + +<p>And, I note, his venerable mother has also left us. I doubt +whether this play has not offended her strict widow's +austerity.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>But where is Diego, meanwhile?</p> + +<p><i>The Chorus and orchestra continue the dirge for</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. A +<span class="persona">GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING</span> <i>elbows through the crowd to the</i> +<span class="persona">CARDINAL</span>.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">GENTLEMAN</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>Most Eminent, a word——</p> + +<p><span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>The Duke has had a return of his malady?</p> + +<p><span class="persona">GENTLEMAN</span> (<i>whispering</i>)</p> + +<p>No, most Eminent. But Diego is nowhere to be found. And they +have brought up behind the stage the body of a woman in +Ariadne's weeds.</p> + +<p><span class="persona">CARDINAL</span> (whispering)</p> + +<p>Ah, is that all? Discretion, pray. I knew it. But 'tis a most +distressing accident. Discretion above all.</p> + +<p><i>The Chorus suddenly breaks off. For on to the stage comes +the</i> <span class="persona">DUKE</span>. <i>He is dripping, and bears in his arms the dead +body, drowned, of</i> <span class="persona">DIEGO</span>, <i>in the garb of</i> <span class="persona">ARIADNE</span>. <i>A shout +from the crowd</i>.</p> + +<p class="persona">YOUNG DUCHESS</p> + +<p>(<i>with a cry, clutching the</i> <span class="persona">POET'S</span> <i>arm</i>)</p> + +<p>Diego!</p> + +<p class="persona">DUKE</p> + +<p>(<i>stooping over the body, which he has laid upon the stage, +and speaking very low</i>)</p> + +<p>Magdalen!</p> + +<p>(<i>The curtain is hastily closed</i>.)</p> + +<p>THE END</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Limbo and Other Essays, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS *** + +***** This file should be named 37179-h.htm or 37179-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/1/7/37179/ + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe +at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously +made available by the Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Limbo and Other Essays + To which is now added Ariadne in Mantua + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: August 23, 2011 [EBook #37179] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe +at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously +made available by the Internet Archive) + + + + + +LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS + +TO WHICH IS NOW ADDED ARIADNE IN MANTUA + +BY + +VERNON LEE + +LONDON--JOHN LANE--THE BODLEY HEAD + NEW YORK--JOHN LANE COMPANY + +MCMVIII + + + + +CONTENTS + + LIMBO + IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES + THE LIE OF THE LAND + TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC + ON MODERN TRAVELLING + OLD ITALIAN GARDENS + ABOUT LEISURE + RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS + THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE + ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS + ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + + +LIMBO + + Perocche gente di molto valore + Conobbi che in quel _Limbo_ eran sospesi. + + + +I + +It may seem curious to begin with Dante and pass on to the Children's +Rabbits' House; but I require both to explain what it is I mean by +Limbo; no such easy matter on trying. For this discourse is not about +the Pious Pagans whom the poet found in honourable confinement at the +Gate of Hell, nor of their neighbours the Unchristened Babies; but I am +glad of Dante's authority for the existence of a place holding such +creatures as have just missed a necessary rite, or come too soon for +thorough salvation. And I am glad, moreover, that the poet has insisted +on the importance--"gente di molto valore"--of the beings thus enclosed; +because it is just with the superior quality of the things in what I +mean by Limbo that we are peculiarly concerned. + +And now for the other half of my preliminary illustration of the +subject, to wit, the Children's Rabbits' House. The little gardens which +the children played at cultivating have long since disappeared, taken +insensibly back into that corner of the formal but slackly kept garden +which looks towards the steep hill dotted with cows and sheep. But in +that corner, behind the shapeless Portugal laurels and the patches of +seeding grass, there still remains, beneath big trees, what the children +used to call the "Rabbits' Villa." 'Tis merely a wooden toy house, with +green moss-eaten roof, standing, like the lake dwellings of prehistoric +times, on wooden posts, with the tall foxgloves, crimson and white, +growing all round it. There is something ludicrous in this superannuated +toy, this Noah's ark on stilts among the grass and bushes; but when you +look into the thing, finding the empty plates and cups "for having tea +with the rabbits," and when you look into it spiritually also, it grows +oddly pathetic. We walked up and down between the high hornbeam +hedges, the sunlight lying low on the armies of tall daisies and +seeding grasses, and falling in narrow glints among the white boles and +hanging boughs of the beeches, where the wooden benches stand unused in +the deep grass, and the old swing hangs crazily crooked. Yes, the +Rabbits' Villa and the surrounding overgrown beds are quite pathetic. Is +it because they are, in a way, the graves of children long dead, as +dead--despite the grown-up folk who may come and say "It was I"--as the +rabbits and guinea-pigs with whom they once had tea? That is it; and +that explains my meaning: the Rabbits' Villa is, to the eye of the +initiate, one of many little branch establishments of Limbo surrounding +us on all sides. Another poet, more versed in similar matters than Dante +(one feels sure that Dante knew his own mind, and always had his own +way, even when exiled), Rossetti, in a sonnet, has given us the terrible +little speech which would issue from the small Limbos of this kind: + + Look in my face: My name is _Might-have-been_. + + +II + +Of all the things that Limbo might contain, there is one about which +some persons, very notably Churchyard Gray, have led us into error. I do +not believe there is much genius to be found in Limbo. The world, +although it takes a lot of dunning, offers a fair price for this +article, which it requires as much as water-power and coal, nay even as +much as food and clothes (bread for its soul and raiment for its +thought); so that what genius there is will surely be brought into +market. But even were it wholly otherwise, genius, like murder, _would +out_; for genius is one of the liveliest forces of nature; not to be +quelled or quenched, adaptable, protean, expansive, nay explosive; of +all things in the world the most able to take care of itself; which +accounts for so much public expenditure to foster and encourage it: +foster the sun's chemistry, the force of gravitation, encourage atomic +affinity and natural selection, magnificent Maecenas and judicious +Parliamentary Board, they are sure to do you credit! + +Hence, to my mind, there are _no mute inglorious Miltons_, or none +worth taking into account. Our sentimental surmises about them grow from +the notion that human power is something like the wheels or cylinder of +a watch, a neat numbered scrap of mechanism, stamped at a blow by a +creative _fiat_, or hand-hammered by evolution, and fitting just exactly +into one little plan, serving exactly one little purpose, indispensable +for that particular machine, and otherwise fit for the dust-heap. +Happily for us, it is certainly not so. The very greatest men have +always been the most versatile: Lionardo, Goethe, Napoleon; the next +greatest can still be imagined under different circumstances as turning +their energy to very different tasks; and I am tempted to think that the +hobbies by which many of them have laid much store, while the world +merely laughed at the statesman's trashy verses or the musician's +third-rate sketches, may have been of the nature of rudimentary organs, +which, given a different environment, might have developed, become the +creature's chief _raison d'etre_, leaving that which has actually +chanced to be his talent to become atrophied, perhaps invisible. + +Be this last as it may--and I commend it to those who believe in genius +as a form of monomania--it is quite certain that genius has nothing in +common with machinery. It is the most organic and alive of living +organisms; the most adaptable therefore, and least easily killed; and +for this reason, and despite Gray's _Elegy_, there is no chance of much +of it in Limbo. + +This is no excuse for the optimistic extermination of distinguished men. +It is indeed most difficult to kill genius, but there are a hundred ways +of killing its possessors; and with them as much of their work as they +have left undone. What pictures might Giorgione not have painted but for +the lady, the rival, or the plague, whichever it was that killed him! +Mozart could assuredly have given us a half-dozen more _Don Giovannis_ +if he had had fewer lessons, fewer worries, better food; nay, by his +miserable death the world has lost, methinks, more even than that--a +commanding influence which would have kept music, for a score of years, +earnest and masterly but joyful: Rossini would not have run to seed, and +Beethoven's ninth symphony might have been a genuine "Hymn to Joy" if +only Mozart, the Apollo of musicians, had, for a few years more, +flooded men's souls with radiance. A similar thing is said of Rafael; +but his followers were mediocre, and he himself lacked personality, so +that many a better example might be brought. + +These are not useless speculations; it is as well we realise that, +although genius be immortal, poor men of genius are not. Quite an +extraordinary small amount of draughts and microbes, of starvation +bodily and spiritual, of pin-pricks of various kinds, will do for them; +we can all have a hand in their killing; the killing also of their +peace, kindliness, and justice, sending these qualities to Limbo, which +is full of such. And now, dear reader, I perceive that we have at last +got Limbo well in sight and, in another minute, we may begin to discern +some of its real contents. + + +III + +The Paladin Astolfo, as Ariosto relates, was sent on a winged horse up +to the moon; where, under the ciceroneship of John the Evangelist, he +saw most of the things which had been lost on earth, among others the +wits of many persons in bottles, his cousin Orlando's which he had come +on purpose to fetch, and, curiously enough, his own, which he had never +missed. + +The moon does well as storehouse for such brilliant, romantic things. +The Limbo whose contents and branches I would speak of is far less +glorious, a trifle humdrum; sometimes such as makes one smile, like that +Villa of the Rabbits in the neglected garden. 'Twas for this reason, +indeed, that I preferred to clear away at once the question of the Mute +Inglorious Miltons, and of such solemn public loss as comes of the +untimely death of illustrious men. Do you remember, by the way, reader, +a certain hasty sketch by Cazin, which hangs in a corner of the +Luxembourg? The bedroom of Gambetta after his death: the white bed +neatly made, empty, with laurel garlands replacing him; the tricolor +flag, half-furled, leaned against the chair, and on the table vague +heaped-up papers; a thing quite modest and heroic, suitable to all +similar occasions--Mirabeau say, and Stevenson on his far-off +island--and with whose image we can fitly close our talk of genius +wasted by early death. + +I have alluded to _happiness_ as filling up much space in Limbo; and I +think that the amount of it lying in that kingdom of Might-have-been is +probably out of all proportion with that which must do that duty in this +actual life. Browning's _Last Ride Together_--one has to be perpetually +referring to poets on this matter, for philosophers and moralists +consider happiness in its _causal connection_ or as a fine snare to +virtue--Browning's _Last Ride Together_ expresses, indeed, a view of the +subject commending itself to active and cheerful persons, which comes to +many just after their salad days; to wit, what a mercy that we don't +often get what we want most. The objects of our recent ardent longings +reveal themselves, most luridly sometimes, as dangers, deadlocks, +fetters, hopeless labyrinths, from which we have barely escaped. This is +the house I wanted to buy, the employment I fretted to obtain, the lady +I pined to marry, the friend with whom I projected to share lodgings. +With such sudden chill recognitions comes belief in a special +providence, some fine Greek-sounding goddess, thwarting one's dearest +wishes from tender solicitude that we shouldn't get what we want. In +such a crisis the nobler of us feel like the Riding Lover, and learn +ideal philosophy and manly acquiescence; the meaner snigger ungenerously +about those youthful escapes; and know not that they have gained safety +at the price, very often, of the little good--ideality, faith and +dash--there ever was about them: safe, smug individuals, whose safety is +mere loss to the cosmos. But later on, when our characters have settled, +when repeated changes have taught us which is our unchangeable ego, we +begin to let go that optimist creed, and to suspect (suspicion turning +to certainty) that, as all things which _have_ happened to us have not +been always advantageous, so likewise things longed for in vain need not +necessarily have been curses. As we grow less attached to theories, and +more to our neighbours, we recognise every day that loss, refusal of the +desired, has not by any means always braced or chastened the lives we +look into; we admit that the Powers That Be showed considerable judgment +in disregarding the teachings of asceticism, and inspiring mankind with +innate repugnance to having a bad time. And, to return to the question +of Limbo, as we watch the best powers, the whole usefulness and +sweetness starved out of certain lives for lack of the love, the +liberty, or the special activities they prayed for; as regards the +question of Limbo, I repeat, we grow (or try to grow) a little more +cautious about sending so much more happiness--ours and other folk's--to +the place of Might-have-been. + +Some of it certainly does seem beyond our control, a fatal matter of +constitution. I am not speaking of the results of vice or stupidity; +this talk of Limbo is exclusively addressed to the very nicest people. + +A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness. We have +all of us seen instances. They often occur between members of the same +family, the very similarity of nature, which might make mothers and +daughters, brothers and sisters, into closest companions, merely +doubling the dose of that terrible reserve, timidity, horror of human +contact, paralysis of speech, which keeps the most loving hearts +asunder. It is useless to console ourselves by saying that each has its +own love of the other. And thus they walk, sometimes side by side, +never looking in one another's eyes, never saying the word, till death +steps in, death sometimes unable to loosen the tongue of the mourner. +Such things are common among our reserved northern races, making us so +much less happy and less helpful in everyday life than our Latin and +Teuton neighbours; and, I imagine, are commonest among persons of the +same blood. But the same will happen between lovers, or those who should +have been such; doubt of one's own feeling, fear of the other's charity, +apprehension of its all being a mistake, has silently prevented many a +marriage. The two, then, could not have been much in love? Not _in +love_, since neither ever allowed that to happen, more's the pity; but +loving one another with the whole affinity of their natures, and, after +all, _being in love_ is but the crisis, or the beginning of that, if +it's worth anything. + +Thus shyness sends much happiness to Limbo. But actual shyness is not +the worst. Some persons, sometimes of the very finest kind, endowed for +loving-kindness, passion, highest devotion, nay requiring it as much as +air or warmth, have received, from some baleful fairy, a sterilising +gift of fear. Fear of what they could not tell; something which makes +all community of soul a terror, and every friend a threat. Something +terrible, in whose presence we must bow our heads and pray impunity +therefrom for ourselves and ours. + +But the bulk of happiness stacked up in Limbo appears, on careful +looking, to be an agglomeration of other lost things; justice, charm, +appreciation, and faith in one another, all recklessly packed off as so +much lumber, sometimes to make room for fine new qualities instead! +Justice, I am inclined to think, is usually sent to Limbo through the +agency of others. A work in many folios might be written by condensing +what famous men have had said against them in their days of struggle, +and what they have answered about others in their days of prosperity. + +The loss of _charm_ is due to many more circumstances; the stress of +life indeed seems calculated to send it to Limbo. Certain it is that few +women, and fewer men, of forty, preserve a particle of it. I am not +speaking of youth or beauty, though it does seem a pity that mature +human beings should mostly be too fat or too thin, and lacking either +sympathy or intellectual keenness. _Charm_ must comprise all that, but +much besides. It is the undefinable quality of nearly every child, and +of all nice lads and girls; the quality which (though it _can_ reach +perfection in exceptional old people) usually vanishes, no one knows +when exactly, into the Limbo marked by the Rabbits' Villa, with its +plates and tea-cups, mouldering on its wooden posts in the unweeded +garden. + +More useful qualities replace all these: hardness, readiness to snatch +opportunity, mistrust of all ideals, inflexible self-righteousness; +useful, nay necessary; but, let us admit it, in a life which, judged by +the amount of dignity and sweetness it contains, is perhaps scarce +necessary itself, and certainly not useful. The case might be summed up, +for our guidance, by saying that the loss of many of our finer qualities +is due to the complacent, and sometimes dutiful, cultivation of our +worse ones! + +For, even in the list of virtues, there are finer and less fine, nay +virtues one might almost call atrocious, and virtues with a taint of +ignominy. I have said that we lose some of our finer qualities this way; +what's worse is, that we often fail to appreciate the finest qualities +of others. + + +IV + +And here, coming to the vague rubric _appreciation of others_, I feel we +have got to a district of Limbo about which few of us should have the +audacity to speak, and few, as a fact, have the courage honestly to +think. _What do we make of our idea of others_ in our constant attempt +to justify ourselves? No Japanese bogie-monger ever produced the equal +of certain wooden monster-puppets which we carve, paint, rig out, and +christen by the names of real folk--alas, alas, dear names sometimes of +friends!--and stick up to gibber in our memory; while the real image, +the creature we have really known, is carted off to Limbo! But this is +too bad to speak of. + +Let us rather think gently of things, sad, but sad without ignominy, of +friendships still-born or untimely cut off, hurried by death into a +place like that which holds the souls of the unchristened babies; +often, like them, let us hope, removed to a sphere where such things +grow finer and more fruitful, the sphere of the love of those we have +not loved enough in life. + +But that at best is but a place of ghosts; so let us never forget, dear +friends, how close all round lies Limbo, the Kingdom of +Might-have-been. + + + + + +IN PRAISE OF OLD HOUSES + + + +I + +My Yorkshire friend was saying that she hated being in an old house. +_There seemed to be other_ people in it besides the living.... + +These words, expressing the very reverse of what I feel, have set me +musing on my foolish passion for the Past. The Past, but the real one; +not the Past considered as a possible Present. For though I should like +to have seen ancient Athens, or Carthage according to Salambo, and +though I have pined to hear the singers of last century, I know that any +other period than this of the world's history would be detestable to +live in. For one thing--one among other instances of brutish +dulness--our ancestors knew nothing of the emotion of the past, the +rapture of old towns and houses. + +This emotion, at times this rapture, depends upon a number of mingled +causes; its origin is complex and subtle, like that of all things +exquisite; the flavour of certain dishes, the feel of sea or mountain +air, in which chemical peculiarities and circumstances of temperature +join with a hundred trifles, seaweed, herbs, tar, heather and so forth; +and like, more particularly, music and poetry, whose essence is so +difficult of ascertaining. And in this case, the causes that first occur +to our mind merely suggest a number more. Of these there is a principal +one, only just less important than that suggested by my Yorkshire +friend, which might be summed up thus: _That the action of time makes +man's works into natural objects._ + +Now, with no disrespect to man, 'tis certain Nature can do more than he. +Not that she is the more intelligent of the two; on the contrary, she +often makes the grossest artistic blunders, and has, for instance, a +woeful lack of design in England, and a perfect mania for obvious +composition and deliberate picturesqueness in Italy and Argyllshire. But +Nature is greater than man because she is bigger, and can do more things +at a time. Man seems unable to attend to one point without neglecting +some other; where he has a fine fancy in melody, his harmony is apt to +be threadbare; if he succeeds with colour, he cannot manage line, and if +light and shade, then neither; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark +that whenever and wherever man has built beautiful temples, churches, +and palaces, he has been impelled to bedizen them with primary colours, +of which, in Venice and the Alhambra, time at last made something +agreeable, and time also, in Greece, has judged best to obliterate every +odious trace. Hence, in the works of man there is always a tendency to +simplify, to suppress detail, to make things clear and explain patterns +and points of view; to save trouble, thought, and material; to be +symmetrical, which means, after all, to repeat the same thing twice +over; he knows it is wrong to carve one frieze on the top of the other, +and to paint in more than one layer of paint. Of all such restrictions +Nature is superbly unconscious. She smears weather-stain on +weather-stain and lichen on lichen, never stopping to match them. She +jags off corners and edges, and of one meagre line makes fifty curves +and facets. She weaves pattern over pattern, regardless of confusion, +so that the mangiest hedgerow is richer, more subtle than all the +carpets and papers ever designed by Mr. Morris. Her one notion is _More, +always more_; whereas that of man, less likely to exceed, is a timid +_Enough_. No wonder, for has she not the chemistry of soil and sun and +moisture and wind and frost, all at her beck and call? + +Be it as it may, Nature does more for us than man, in the way of +pleasure and interest. And to say, therefore, that time turns the works +of man into natural objects is, therefore, saying that time gives them +infinitely more variety and charm. In making them natural objects also +time gives to man's lifeless productions the chief quality of everything +belonging to Nature--life. Compare a freshly plastered wall with one +that has been exposed to sun and rain, or a newly slated roof to one all +covered with crumbling, grey, feathery stuff, like those of the Genoese +villages, which look as if they had been thatched with olive-leaves from +off their hills. 'Tis the comparison between life and death; or, rather, +since death includes change, between something and nothing. Imagine a +tree as regular as a column, or an apple as round as a door-knob! + + +II + +So much for the material improvements which time effects in our +surroundings. We now come to the spiritual advantages of dealing with +the past instead of the present. + +These begin in our earliest boy- or girl-hood. What right-minded child +of ten or twelve cares, beyond its tribute of apples, and jam, and +cricket, and guinea-pigs, for so dull a thing as the present? Why, the +present is like this schoolroom or playground, compared with Polar Seas, +Rocky Mountains, or Pacific Islands; a place for the body, not for the +soul. It all came back to me, a little while ago, when doing up for my +young friend, L.V., sundry Roman coins long mislaid in a trunk, and +which had formed my happiness at his age. Delightful things!--smooth and +bright green like certain cabbage-leaves, or of a sorry brown, rough +with rust and verdigris; but all leaving alike a perceptible portion of +themselves in the paper bag, a delectable smell of copper on one's +hands. How often had I turned you round and round betwixt finger and +thumb, trying to catch the slant of an inscription, or to get, in some +special light, the film of effaced effigy--the chin of Nero, or the +undulating, benevolent nose of Marcus Aurelius? How often have my hands +not anointed you with every conceivable mixture of oil, varnish, and +gum, rubbing you gently with silk and wool, and kid gloves, in hopes +that something ineffable might rise up on your surface! I quite +sympathised with my young friend when, having waggled and chortled over +each of them several times, he thought it necessary to overcome the +natural manly horror for kissing, and shook my hand twice, thrice, and +then once more, returning from the door.... For had they not +concentrated in their interesting verdigrised, brass-smelling smallness +something, to me, of the glory and wonder of Rome? Caecilia Metella, the +Grotto of Egeria--a vague vision, through some twenty years' fog, of a +drive between budding hedges and dry reeds; a walk across short +anemone-starred turf; but turning into distinct remembrance of the +buying of two old pennies, one of Augustus, the other even more +interesting, owing to entire obliteration of both reverse and obverse; a +valuable coin, undoubtedly. And the Baths of Caracalla, which I can +recollect with the thick brushwood, oak scrub, ivy and lentisk, and even +baby ilexes, covering the masonry and overhanging the arches, and with +rose hedges just cut away to dig out some huge porphyry pillar--were not +their charms all concentrated in dim, delicious hopes of finding, just +where the green turf ended and the undulating expanse of purple, green +and white tessellated pavement began, some other brazen penny? And then, +in Switzerland, soon after, did I not suffer acutely, as I cleaned my +coins, from the knowledge that in this barbarous Northern place, which +the Romans had, perhaps, never come near, it was quite useless to keep +one's eyes on the ruts of roads and the gravel of paths, and +consequently almost useless to go out, or to exist; until one day I +learnt that a certain old lawyer, in a certain field, had actually dug +up Roman antiquities.... I don't know whether I ever saw them with +corporeal eyes, but certainly with those of the spirit; and I was lent +a drawing of one of them, a gold armlet, of which I insisted on having +a copy made, and sticking it up in my room.... + +It does but little honour to our greatest living philosopher that he, +whom children will bless for free permission to bruise, burn, and cut +their bodies, and empty the sugar-bowl and jam-pot, should wish to +deprive the coming generation of all historical knowledge, of so much +joy therefore, and, let me add, of so much education. For do not tell me +that it is not education, and of the best, to enable a child to feel the +passion and poetry of life; to live, while it trudges along the dull +familiar streets, in company with dull, familiar, and often stolidly +incurious grown-up folk, in that terrible, magnificent past, in dungeons +and palaces, loving and worshipping Joan of Arc, execrating Bloody Mary, +dreaming strange impossible possibilities of what we would have said and +done for Marie Antoinette--said to her, _her_ actually coming towards +us, by some stroke of magic, in that advancing carriage! There is enough +in afterlife, God knows, to teach us _not to be heroic_; 'tis just as +well that, as children, we learn a lingering liking for the quality; +'tis as important, perhaps, as learning that our tissues consume +carbon, if they do so. I can speak very fervently of the enormous value +for happiness of such an historical habit of mind. + +Such a habit transcends altogether, in its power of filling one's life, +the merely artistic and literary habit. For, after all, painting, +architecture, music, poetry, are things which touch us in a very +intermittent way. I would compare this historic habit rather to the +capacity of deriving pleasure from nature, not merely through the eye, +but through all the senses; and largely, doubtless, through those +obscure perceptions which make certain kinds of weather, air, &c., an +actual tonic, nay food, for the body. To this alone would I place my +_historical habit_ in the second rank. For, as the sensitiveness to +nature means supplementing our physical life by the life of the air and +the sun, the clouds and waters, so does this historic habit mean +supplementing our present life by a life in the past; a life larger, +richer than our own, multiplying our emotions by those of the dead.... + +I am no longer speaking of our passions for Joan of Arc and Marie +Antoinette, which disappear with our childhood; I am speaking of a +peculiar sense, ineffable, indescribable, but which every one knows +again who has once had it, and which to many of us has grown into a +cherished habit--the sense of being companioned by the past, of being in +a place warmed for our living by the lives of others. To me, as I +started with saying, the reverse of this is almost painful; and I know +few things more odious than the chilly, draughty emptiness of a place +without a history. For this reason America, save what may remain of +Hawthorne's New England and Irving's New York, never tempts my vagabond +fancy. Nature can scarcely afford beauty wherewith to compensate for +living in block-tin shanties or brand new palaces. How different if we +find ourselves in some city, nay village, rendered habitable for our +soul by the previous dwelling therein of others, of souls! Here the +streets are never empty; and, surrounded by that faceless crowd of +ghosts, one feels a right to walk about, being invited by them, instead +of rushing along on one's errands among a throng of other wretched +living creatures who are blocked by us and block us in their turn. + +How convey this sense? I do not mean that if I walk through old Paris or +through Rome my thoughts revolve on Louis XI. or Julius Caesar. Nothing +could be further from the fact. Indeed the charm of the thing is that +one feels oneself accompanied not by this or that magnifico of the past +(whom of course one would never have been introduced to), but by a crowd +of nameless creatures; the daily life, common joy, suffering, heroism of +the past. Nay, there is something more subtle than this: the whole place +(how shall I explain it?) becomes a sort of living something. Thus, when +I hurry (for one must needs hurry through Venetian narrowness) between +the pink and lilac houses, with faded shutters and here and there a +shred of tracery; now turning a sharp corner before the locksmith's or +the chestnut-roaster's; now hearing my steps lonely between high walls +broken by a Gothic doorway; now crossing some smooth-paved little square +with its sculptured well and balconied palaces, I feel, I say, walking +day after day through these streets, that I am in contact with a whole +living, breathing thing, full of habits of life, of suppressed words; a +sort of odd, mysterious, mythical, but very real creature; as if, in +the dark, I stretched out my hand and met something (but without any +fear), something absolutely indefinable in shape and kind, but warm, +alive. This changes solitude in unknown places into the reverse of +solitude and strangeness. I remember walking thus along the bastions +under the bishop's palace at Laon, the great stone cows peering down +from the belfry above, with a sense of inexpressible familiarity and +peace. And, strange to say, this historic habit makes us familiar also +with places where we have never been. How well, for instance, do I not +know Dinant and Bouvines, rival cities on the Meuse (topography and +detail equally fantastic); and how I sometimes long, as with +homesickness, for a scramble among the stones and grass and +chandelier-like asphodels of Agrigentum, Veii, Collatium! Why, to one +minded like myself, a map, and even the names of stations in a +time-table, are full of possible delight. + +And sometimes it rises to rapture. This time, eight years ago, I was +fretting my soul away, ill, exiled away from home, forbidden all work, +in the south of Spain. At Granada for three dreary weeks it rained +without ceasing, till the hill of the Alhambra became filled with the +babbling of streams, and the town was almost cut off by a sea of mud. +Between the showers one rushed up into the damp gardens of the +Generalife, or into the Alhambra, to be imprisoned for hours in its +desolate halls, while the rain splashed down into the courts. My +sitting-room had five doors, four of glass; and the snow lay thick on +the mountains. My few books had been read long ago; there remained to +spell through a Spanish tome on the rebellion of the Alpujarras, whose +Moorish leader, having committed every crime, finally went to heaven for +spitting on the Koran on his death-bed. Letters from home were +perpetually lost, or took a week to come. It seemed as if the world had +quite unlearned every single trick that had ever given me pleasure. Yet, +in these dreary weeks, there was one happy morning. + +It was the anniversary, worse luck to it, of the Conquest of Granada +from the Moors. We got seats in the chapel of the Catholic kings, and +watched a gentleman in a high hat (which he kept on in church) and +swallow tails, carry the banner of Castile and Aragon, in the presence +of the archbishop and chapter, some mediaeval pages, two trumpeters with +pigtails, and an array of soldiers. A paltry ceremony enough. But before +it began, and while mass was still going on, there came to me for a few +brief moments that happiness unknown for so many, many months, that +beloved historic emotion. + +My eyes were wandering round the chapel, up the sheaves of the pilasters +to the gilded spandrils, round the altars covered with gibbering +sculpture, and down again among the crowd kneeling on the matted +floor--women in veils, men with scarlet cloak-lining over the shoulder, +here and there the shaven head and pigtail of the bull-ring. In the +middle of it all, on their marble beds, lay the effigies of Ferdinand +and Isabella, with folded hands and rigid feet, four crimson banners of +the Moors overhead. The crowd was pouring in from the cathedral, and +bevies of priests, and scarlet choir-boys led by their fiddler. The +organ, above the chants, was running through vague mazes. I felt it +approaching and stealing over me, that curious emotion felt before in +such different places: walking up and down, one day, in the church of +Lamballe in Brittany; seated, another time, in the porch at Ely. And +then it possessed me completely, raising one into a sort of beatitude. +This kind of rapture is not easy to describe. No rare feeling is. But I +would warn you from thinking that in such solemn moments there sweeps +across the brain a paltry pageant, a Lord Mayor's Show of bygone things, +like the cavalcades of future heroes who descend from frescoed or +sculptured wall at the bidding of Ariosto's wizards and Spenser's +fairies. This is something infinitely more potent and subtle; and like +all strong intellectual emotions, it is compounded of many and various +elements, and has its origin far down in mysterious depths of our +nature; and it arises overwhelmingly from many springs, filling us with +the throb of vague passions welling from our most vital parts. There is +in it no possession of any definite portion of bygone times; but a +yearning expectancy, a sense of the near presence, as it were, of the +past; or, rather, of a sudden capacity in ourselves of apprehending the +past which looms all round. + +For a few moments thus, in that chapel before the tombs of the Catholic +kings; in the churches of Bruges and Innsbruck at the same time (for +such emotion gives strange possibilities of simultaneous presence in +various places); with the gold pomegranate flower of the badges, and the +crimson tassels of the Moorish standards before my eyes; also the iron +knights who watch round Maximilian's grave--for a moment while the +priests were chanting and the organs quavering, the life of to-day +seemed to reel and vanish, and my mind to be swept along the dark and +gleaming whirlpools of the past.... + + +III + +Catholic kings, Moorish banners, wrought-iron statues of paladins; these +are great things, and not at all what I had intended to speak of when I +set out to explain why old houses, which give my Yorkshire friend the +creeps, seem to my feelings so far more peaceful and familiar. + +Yes, it is just because the past is somehow more companionable, warmer, +more full of flavour, than the present, that I love all old houses; but +best of all such as are solitary in the country, isolated both from new +surroundings, and from such alterations as contact with the world's +hurry almost always brings. It certainly is no question of beauty. The +houses along Chelsea embankment are more beautiful, and some of them a +great deal more picturesque than that Worcestershire rectory to which I +always long to return: the long brick house on its terraced river-bank, +the overladen plum-trees on one side, and the funereally prosperous +churchyard yews on the other; and with corridors and staircases hung +with stained, frameless Bolognese nakedness, Judgments of Paris, +Venuses, Carita Romanas, shipped over cheap by some bear-leading +parson-tutor of the eighteenth century. Nor are they architectural, +those brick and timber cottages all round, sinking (one might think) +into the rich, damp soil. But they have a mellowness corresponding to +that of the warm, wet, fruitful land, and due to the untroubled, warm +brooding over by the past. And what is architecture to that? As to these +Italian ones, which my soul loveth most, they have even less of what you +would call beauty; at most such grace of projecting window-grating or +buttressed side as the South gives its buildings; and such colour, or +rather discolouring, as a comparatively small number of years will +bring. + +It kept revolving in my mind, this question of old houses and their +charm, as I was sitting waiting for a tram one afternoon, in the +church-porch of Pieve a Ripoli, a hamlet about two miles outside the +south-east gate of Florence. That church porch is like the baldacchino +over certain Roman high altars, or, more humbly, like a very large +fourpost bedstead. On the one hand was a hillside of purple and brown +scrub and dark cypresses fringed against the moist, moving grey sky; on +the other, some old, bare, mulberry-trees, a hedge of russet sloe, +closing in wintry fields; and, more particularly, next the porch, an +insignificant house, with blistered green shutters at irregular +intervals in the stained whitewash, a big green door, and a little +coat-of-arms--the three Strozzi half-moons--clapped on to the sharp +corner. I sat there, among the tombstones of the porch, and wondered why +I loved this house: and why it would remain, as I knew it must, a +landmark in my memory. Yes, the charm must lie in the knowledge of the +many creatures who have lived in this house, the many things that have +been done and felt. + +The creatures who have lived here, the things which have been felt and +done.... But those things felt and done, were they not mainly trivial, +base; at best nowise uncommon, and such as must be going on in every new +house all around? People worked and shirked their work, endured, +fretted, suffered somewhat, and amused themselves a little; were loving, +unkind, neglected and neglectful, and died, some too soon, some too +late. That is human life, and as such doubtless important. But all that +goes on to-day just the same; and there is no reason why that former +life should have been more interesting than that these people, Argenta +Cavallesi and Vincenzio Grazzini, buried at my feet, should have had +bigger or better made souls and bodies than I or my friends. Indeed, in +sundry ways, and owing to the narrowness of life and thought, the calmer +acceptance of coarse or cruel things, I incline to think that they were +less interesting, those men and women of the past, whose rustling +dresses fill old houses with fantastic sounds. They had, some few of +them, their great art, great aims, feelings, struggles; but the majority +were of the earth, and intolerably earthy. 'Tis their clothes' ghosts +that haunt us, not their own. + +So why should the past be charming? Perhaps merely because of its being +the one free place for our imagination. For, as to the future, it is +either empty or filled only with the cast shadows of ourselves and our +various machineries. The past is the unreal and the yet visible; it has +the fascination of the distant hills, the valleys seen from above; the +unreal, but the unreal whose unreality, unlike that of the unreal things +with which we cram the present, can never be forced on us. _There is +more behind; there may be anything._ This sense which makes us in love +with all intricacies of things and feelings, roads which turn, views +behind views, trees behind trees, makes the past so rich in +possibilities.... An ordinary looking priest passes by, rings at the +door of the presbytery, and enters. Those who lived there, in that old +stained house with the Strozzi escutcheon, opposite the five bare +mulberry-trees, were doubtless as like as may be to this man who lives +there in the present. Quite true; and yet there creeps up the sense that +_they_ lived in the past. + +For there is no end to the deceits of the past; we protest that we know +it is cozening us, and it continues to cozen us just as much. Reading +over Browning's _Galuppi_ lately, it struck me that this dead world of +vanity was no more charming or poetical than the one we live in, when it +also was alive; and that those ladies, Mrs. X., Countess Y., and Lady +Z., of whose _toilettes_ at last night's ball that old gossip P---- had +been giving us details throughout dinner, will in their turn, if any one +care, be just as charming, as dainty, and elegiac as those other women +who sat by while Galuppi "played toccatas stately at the clavichord." +Their dresses, should they hang for a century or so, will emit a perfume +as frail, and sad, and heady; their wardrobe filled with such dust as +makes tears come into one's eyes, from no mechanical reason. + +"Was a lady _such_ a lady?" They will say that of ours also. And, in +recognising this, we recognise how trumpery, flat, stale and +unprofitable were those ladies of the past. It is not they who make the +past charming, but the past that makes them. Time has wonderful +cosmetics for its favoured ones; and if it brings white hairs and +wrinkles to the realities, how much does it not heighten the bloom, +brighten the eyes and hair of those who survive in our imagination! + +And thus, somewhat irrelevantly, concludes my chapter in praise of old +houses. + + + + +THE LIE OF THE LAND + +NOTES ABOUT LANDSCAPES + + + +I + +I want to talk about the something which makes the real, individual +landscape--the landscape one actually sees with the eyes of the body and +the eyes of the spirit--the _landscape you cannot describe_. + +That is the drawback of my subject--that it just happens to elude all +literary treatment, and yet it must be treated. There is not even a +single word or phrase to label it, and I have had to call it, in sheer +despair, _the lie of the land_: it is an unnamed mystery into which +various things enter, and I feel as if I ought to explain myself by dumb +show. It will serve at any rate as an object-lesson in the extreme +one-sidedness of language and a protest against human silence about the +things it likes best. + +Of outdoor things words can of course tell us some important points: +colour, for instance, and light, and somewhat of their gradations and +relations. And an adjective, a metaphor, may evoke an entire atmospheric +effect, paint us a sunset or a star-lit night. But the far subtler and +more individual relations of visible line defy expression: no poet or +prose writer can give you the tilt of a roof, the undulation of a field, +the bend of a road. Yet these are the things in landscape which +constitute its individuality and which reach home to our feelings. + +For colour and light are variable--nay, more, they are relative. The +same tract will be green in connection with one sort of sky, blue with +another, and yellow with a third. We may be disappointed when the woods, +which we had seen as vague, moss-like blue before the sun had overtopped +the hills, become at midday a mere vast lettuce-bed. We should be much +more than disappointed, we should doubt of our senses if we found on +going to our window that it looked down upon outlines of hills, upon +precipices, ledges, knolls, or flat expanses, different from those we +had seen the previous day or the previous year. Thus the unvarying items +of a landscape happen to be those for which precise words cannot be +found. Briefly, we praise colour, but we actually _live_ in the +indescribable thing which I must call the _lie of the land_. The lie of +the land means walking or climbing, shelter or bleakness; it means the +corner where we dread a boring neighbour, the bend round which we have +watched some one depart, the stretch of road which seemed to lead us +away out of captivity. Yes, _lie of the land_ is what has mattered to us +since we were children, to our fathers and remotest ancestors; and its +perception, the instinctive preference for one kind rather than another, +is among the obscure things inherited with our blood, and making up the +stuff of our souls. For how else explain the strange powers which +different shapes of the earth's surface have over different individuals; +the sudden pleasure, as of the sight of an old friend, the pang of +pathos which we may all receive in a scene which is new, without +memories, and so unlike everything familiar as to be almost without +associations? + +The _lie of the land_ has therefore an importance in art, or if it have +not, ought to have, quite independent of pleasantness of line or of +anything merely visual. An immense charm consists in the fact that the +mind can walk about in a landscape. The delight at the beauty which is +seen is heightened by the anticipation of further unseen beauty; by the +sense of exploring the unknown; and to our present pleasure before a +painted landscape is added the pleasure we have been storing up during +years of intercourse, if I may use this word, with so many real ones. + + +II + +For there is such a thing as intercourse with fields and trees and +skies, with the windings of road and water and hedge, in our everyday, +ordinary life. And a terrible thing for us all if there were not; if our +lives were not full of such various commerce, of pleasure, curiosity, +and gratitude, of kindly introduction of friend by friend, quite apart +from the commerce with other human beings. Indeed, one reason why the +modern rectangular town (built at one go for the convenience of running +omnibuses and suppressing riots) fills our soul with bitterness and +dryness, is surely that this ill-conditioned convenient thing can give +us only its own poor, paltry presence, introducing our eye and fancy +neither to further details of itself, nor to other places and people, +past or distant. + +Words can just barely indicate the charm of this _other place other +time_ enriching of the present impression. Words cannot in the least, I +think, render that other suggestion contained in _The Lie of the Land_, +the suggestion of the possibility of a delightful walk. What walks have +we not taken, leaving sacred personages and profane, not to speak of +allegoric ones, far behind in the backgrounds of the old Tuscans, +Umbrians, and Venetians! Up Benozzo's hillside woods of cypress and +pine, smelling of myrrh and sweet-briar, over Perugino's green rising +grounds, towards those slender, scant-leaved trees, straight-stemmed +acacias and elms, by the water in the cool, blue evening valley. Best of +all, have not Giorgione and Titian, Palma and Bonifazio, and the dear +imitative people labelled _Venetian school_, led us between the hedges +russet already with the ripening of the season and hour into those +fields where the sheep are nibbling, under the twilight of the big +brown trees, to where some pale blue alp closes in the slopes and the +valleys? + + +III + +It is a pity that the landscape painters of our day--I mean those French +or French taught, whose methods are really new--tend to neglect _The Lie +of the Land_. Some of them, I fear, deliberately avoid it as +old-fashioned--what they call obvious--as interfering with their aim of +interesting by the mere power of vision and skill in laying on the +paint. Be this as it may, their innovations inevitably lead them away +from all research of what we may call _topographical_ charm, for what +they have added to art is the perfection of very changeable conditions +of light and atmosphere, of extremely fleeting accidents of colour. One +would indeed be glad to open one's window on the fairyland of iridescent +misty capes, of vibrating skies and sparkling seas of Monsieur Claude +Monet; still more to stand at the close of an autumn day watching the +light fogs rise along the fields, mingling with delicate pinkish mist of +the bare poplar rows against the green of the first sprouts of corn. +But I am not sure that the straight line of sea and shore would be +interesting at any other moment of the day; and the poplar rows and +cornfields would very likely be drearily dull until sunset. The moment, +like Faust's second of perfect bliss, is such as should be made +immortal, but the place one would rather not see again. Yet Monsieur +Monet is the one of his school who shows most care for the scene he is +painting. The others, even the great ones--men like Pissarro and Sisley, +who have shown us so many delightful things in the details of even the +dull French foliage, even the dull midday sky--the other _modern ones_ +make one long to pull up their umbrella and easel and carry them on--not +very far surely--to some spot where the road made a bend, the embankment +had a gap, the water a swirl; for we would not be so old-fashioned as to +request that the country might have a few undulations.... Of course it +was very dull of our ancestors--particularly of Clive Newcome's +day--always to paint a panorama with whole ranges of hills, miles of +river, and as many cities as possible; and even our pleasure in Turner's +large landscapes is spoilt by their being the sort of thing people +would drive for miles or climb for hours to enjoy, what our grandfathers +in post-chaises called a _noble fine prospect_. All that had to be got +rid of, like the contemporaneous literary descriptions: "A smiling +valley proceeded from south-east to north-west; an amphitheatre of +cliffs bounding it on the right hand; while to the left a magnificent +waterfall leapt from a rock three hundred feet in height and expanded +into a noble natural basin of granite some fifty yards in diameter," &c. +&c. The British classics, thus busy with compass, measuring-rod and +level, thus anxious to enable the reader to reconstruct their landscape +on paste-board, had no time of course to notice trifling matters: how, +for instance, + + The woods are round us, heaped and dim; + From slab to slab how it slips and springs + The thread of water, single and slim, + Through the ravage some torrent brings. + +Nor could the panoramic painter of the earlier nineteenth century pay +much attention to mere alternations of light while absorbed in his great +"Distant View of Jerusalem and Madagascar"; indeed, he could afford to +move off only when it began to rain very hard. + + +IV + +The impressionist painters represent the reaction against this dignified +and also more stolid school of landscape; they have seen, or are still +seeing, all the things which other men did not see. And here I may +remark that one of the most important items of this seeing is exactly +the fact that in many cases we can _see_ only very little. The +impressionists have been scoffed at for painting rocks which might be +chimney-stacks, and flowering hedges which might be foaming brooks; +plains also which might be hills, and _vice versa_, and described as +wretches, disrespectful to natural objects, which, we are told, reveal +new beauties at every glance. But is it more respectful to natural +objects to put a drawing-screen behind a willow-bush and copy its +minutest detail of branch and trunk, than to paint that same willow, a +mere mist of glorious orange, as we see it flame against the hillside +confusion of mauve, and russet and pinkish sereness? I am glad to have +brought in that word _confusion_: the modern school of landscape has +done a great and pious thing in reinstating the complexity, the mystery, +the confusion of Nature's effects; Nature, which differs from the paltry +work of man just in this, that she does not thin out, make clear and +symmetrical for the easier appreciation of foolish persons, but packs +effect upon effect, in space even as in time, one close upon the other, +leaf upon leaf, branch upon branch, tree upon tree, colour upon colour, +a mystery of beauty wrapped in beauty, without the faintest concern +whether it would not be better to say "this is really a river," or, +"that is really a tree." "But," answer the critics with much +superiority, "art should not be the mere copying of Nature; surely there +is already enough of Nature herself; art should be the expression of +man's delight in Nature's shows." Well, Nature shows a great many things +which are not unchanging and not by any means unperplexing; she shows +them at least to those who will see, see what is really there to be +seen; and she will show them, thanks to our brave impressionists, to all +men henceforth who have eyes and a heart. And here comes our debt to +these great painters: what a number of effects, modest and exquisite, or +bizarre and magnificent, they will have taught us to look out for; what +beauty and poetry in humdrum scenery, what perfect loveliness even among +sordidness and squalor: tints as of dove's breasts in city mud, enamel +splendours in heaps of furnace refuse, mysterious magnificence, visions +of Venice at night, of Eblis palace, of I know not what, in wet gaslit +nights, in looming lit-up factories. Nay, leaving that alone, since 'tis +better, perhaps, that we should not enjoy anything connected with grime +and misery and ugliness--how much have not these men added to the +delight of our walks and rides; revealing to us, among other things, the +supreme beauty of winter colouring, the harmony of purple, blue, slate, +brown, pink, and russet, of tints and compounds of tints without a name, +of bare hedgerows and leafless trees, sere grass and mist-veiled waters; +compared with which spring is but raw, summer dull, and autumn +positively ostentatious in her gala suit of tawny and yellow. + +Perhaps, indeed, these modern painters have done more for us by the +beauty they have taught us to see in Nature than by the beauty they have +actually put before us in their pictures; if I except some winter +landscapes of Monet's and the wonderful water-colours of Mr. Brabazon, +whose exquisite sense of form and knowledge of drawing have enabled him, +in rapidest sketches of rapidly passing effects, to indicate the +structure of hills and valleys, the shape of clouds, in the mere wash of +colour, even as Nature indicates them herself. With such exceptions as +these, and the beautiful mysteries of Mr. Whistler, there is +undoubtedly, in recent landscape, a preoccupation of technical methods +and an indifference to choice of subject, above all, a degree of +insistence on what is _actually seen_ which leads one to suspect that +the impressionists represent rather a necessary phase in the art, than a +definite achievement, in the same manner as the Renaissance painters who +gave themselves up to the study of perspective and anatomy. This +terrible over-importance of the act of vision is doubtless the +preparation for a new kind of landscape, which will employ these +arduously acquired facts of colour and light, this restlessly renovated +technique, in the service of a new kind of sentiment and imagination, +differing from that of previous ages even as the sentiment and +imagination of Browning differs from that of his great predecessors. But +it is probably necessary that the world at large, as well as the +artists, should be familiarised with the new facts, the new methods of +impressionism, before such facts and methods can find their significance +and achievement; even as in the Renaissance people had to recognise the +realities of perspective and anatomy before they could enjoy an art +which attained beauty through this means; it would have been no use +showing Sixtine chapels to the contemporaries of Giotto. There is at +present a certain lack of enjoyable quality, a lack of soul appealing to +soul, in the new school of landscape. But where there is a faithful, +reverent eye, a subtle hand, a soul cannot be far round the corner. And +we may hope that, if we be as sincere and willing as themselves, our +Pollaiolos and Mantegnas of the impressionist school, discoverers of new +subtleties of colour and light, will be duly succeeded by modern +Michelangelos and Titians, who will receive all the science ready for +use, and bid it fetch and carry and build new wonderful things for the +pleasure of their soul and of ours. + + +V + +And mentioning Titian, brings to my memory a remark once made to me on +one of those washed away, rubbly hills, cypresses and pines holding the +earth together, which the old Tuscans drew so very often. The remark, +namely, that some of the charm of the old masters' landscapes is due to +the very reverse of what sometimes worries one in modern work, to the +notion which these backgrounds give at first--bits of valley, outlines +of hills, distant views of towered villages, of having been done without +trouble, almost from memory, till you discover that your Titian has +modelled his blue valley into delicate blue ridges; and your Piero della +Francesca indicated the precise structure of his pale, bony mountains. +Add to this, to the old men's credit, that, as I said, they knew _the +lie of the land_, they gave us landscapes in which our fancy, our +memories, could walk. + +How large a share such fancy and such memories have in the life of art, +people can scarcely realise. Nay, such is the habit of thinking of the +picture, statue, or poem, as a complete and vital thing apart from the +mind which perceives it, that the expression _life of art_ is sure to be +interpreted as life of various schools of art: thus, the life of art +developed from the type of Phidias to that of Praxiteles, and so forth. +But in the broader, truer sense, the life of all art goes on in the mind +and heart, not merely of those who make the work, but of those who see +and read it. Nay, is not _the_ work, the real one, a certain particular +state of feeling, a pattern woven of new perceptions and impressions and +of old memories and feelings, which the picture, the statue or poem, +awakens, different in each different individual? 'Tis a thought perhaps +annoying to those who have slaved seven years over a particular outline +of muscles, a particular colour of grass, or the cadence of a particular +sentence. What! all this to be refused finality, to be disintegrated by +the feelings and fancies of the man who looks at the picture, or reads +the book, heaven knows how carelessly besides? Well, if not +disintegrated, would you prefer it to be unassimilated? Do you wish your +picture, statue or poem to remain whole as you made it? Place it +permanently in front of a mirror; consign it to the memory of a parrot; +or, if you are musician, sing your song, expression and all, down a +phonograph. You cannot get from the poor human soul, that living +microcosm of changing impressions, the thorough, wholesale appreciation +which you want. + + +VI + +This same power of sentiment and fancy, that is to say, of association, +enables us to carry about, like a verse or a tune, whole mountain +ranges, valleys, rivers and lakes, things in appearance the least easy +to remove from their place. As some persons are never unattended by a +melody; so others, and among them your humble servant, have always for +their thoughts and feelings, an additional background besides the one +which happens to be visible behind their head and shoulders. By this +means I am usually in two places at a time, sometimes in several very +distant ones within a few seconds. + +It is extraordinary how much of my soul seems to cling to certain +peculiarities of what I have called _lie of the land_, undulations, +bends of rivers, straightenings and snakings of road; how much of one's +past life, sensations, hopes, wishes, words, has got entangled in the +little familiar sprigs, grasses and moss. The order of time and space is +sometimes utterly subverted; thus, last autumn, in a corner of +Argyllshire, I seemed suddenly cut off from everything in the British +Isles, and reunited to the life I used to lead hundreds of miles away, +years ago in the high Apennines, merely because of the minute starry +moss under foot and the bubble of brooks in my ears. + +Nay, the power of outdoor things, their mysterious affinities, can +change the values even of what has been and what has not been, can make +one live for a moment in places which have never existed save in the +fancy. Have I not found myself suddenly taken back to certain woods +which I loved in my childhood simply because I had halted before a great +isolated fir with hanging branches, a single fir shading a circle of +soft green turf, and watched the rabbits sitting, like round grey +stones suddenly flashing into white tails and movement? Woods where? I +have not the faintest notion. Perhaps only woods I imagined my father +must be shooting in when I was a baby, woods which I made up out of +Christmas trees, moss and dead rabbits, woods I had heard of in fairy +tales.... + +Such are some of the relations of landscape and sentiments, a correct +notion of which is necessary before it is possible to consider the best +manner of _representing landscape with words_; a subject to which none +of my readers, I think, nor myself, have at present the smallest desire +to pass on. + + + + +TUSCAN MIDSUMMER MAGIC + + + +I + +"Then," I said, "you decline to tell me about the Three Kings, when +their procession wound round and round these hillocks: all the little +wooden horses with golden bridles and velvet holsters, out of the toy +boxes; and the camelopard, and the monkeys and the lynx, and the little +doll pages blowing toy trumpets. And still, I know it happened here, +because I recognise the place from the pictures: the hillocks all washed +away into breasts like those of Diana of the Ephesians, and the rows of +cypresses and spruce pines--also out of the toy box. I know it happened +in this very place, because Benozzo Gozzoli painted it all at the time; +and you were already about the place, I presume?" + +I knew that by her dress, but I did not like to allude to its being +old-fashioned. It was the sort of thing, muslin all embroidered with +little nosegays of myrtle and yellow broom, and tied into odd bunches at +the elbows and waist, which they wore in the days of Botticelli's +_Spring_; and on her head she had a garland of eglantine and palm-shaped +hellebore leaves which was quite unmistakable. + +The nymph Terzollina (for of course she was the tutelary divinity of the +narrow valley behind the great Medicean Villa) merely shook her head and +shifted one of her bare feet, on which she was seated under a cypress +tree, and went on threading the yellow broom flowers. + +"At all events, you might tell me something about the Magnificent +Lorenzo," I went on, impatient at her obstinacy. "You know quite well +that he used to come and court you here, and make verses most likely." + +The exasperating goddess raised her thin, brown face, with the sharp +squirrel's teeth and the glittering goat's eyes. Very pretty I thought +her, though undoubtedly a little _passee_, like all the symbolical +ladies of her set. She plucked at a clump of dry peppermint, perfuming +the hot air as she crushed it, and then looked up, with a sly, shy +little peasant-girl's look, which was absurd in a lady so mature and so +elaborately adorned. Then, in a crooning voice, she began to recite some +stanzas in _ottava rima_, as follows: + +"The house where the good old Knight Gualando hid away the little +Princess, was itself hidden in this hidden valley. It was small and +quite white, with great iron bars to the windows. In front was a long +piece of greensward, starred with white clover, and behind and in front, +to where the pines and cypresses began ran strips of cornfield. It was +remote from all the pomps of life; and when the cuckoo had become silent +and the nightingales had cracked their voices, the only sound was the +coo of the wood-pigeons, the babble of the stream, and the twitter of +the young larks. + +"The old Knight Gualando had hidden his bright armour in an oaken chest; +and went to the distant town every day dressed in the blue smock of a +peasant, and driving a donkey before him. Thence he returned with +delicates for the little Princess and with news of the wicked usurper; +nor did any one suspect who he was, or dream of his hiding-place. + +"During his absence the little Princess, whose name was Fiordispina, +used to string beads through the hot hours when the sun smote through +the trees, and the green corn ridges began to take a faint gilding in +their silveriness, as the Princess remembered it in a picture in the +Castle Chapel, where the sun was represented by a big embossed ball of +gold, projecting from the picture, which she was allowed to stroke on +holidays. + +"In the evening, when the sky turned pearl white, and a breeze rustled +through the pines and cypresses which made a little black fringe on the +hill-top and a little patch of feathery velvet pile on the slopes, the +little Princess would come forth, and ramble about in her peasant's +frock, her fair face stained browner by the sun than by any walnut +juice. She would climb the hill, and sniff the scent of the sun-warmed +resin, and the sweetness of the yellow broom. It spread all over the +hills, and the king, her father, had not possessed so many ells of cloth +of gold. + +"But one evening she wandered further than usual, and saw on a bank, at +the edge of a cornfield, five big white lilies blowing. She went back +home and fetched the golden scissors from her work-bag, and cut off one +of the lilies. On the next day she came again and cut another until she +had cut them all. + +"But it happened that an old witch was staying in that neighbourhood, +gathering herbs among the hills. She had taken note of the five lilies, +because she disliked them on account of their being white; and she +remarked that one of them had been cut off; then another, then another. +She hated people who like lilies. When she found the fifth lily gone, +she wondered greatly, and climbed on the ridge, and looked at their +stalks where they were cut. She was a wise woman, who knew many things. +So she laid her finger upon the cut stalk, and said, 'This has not been +cut with iron shears'; and she laid her lip against the cut stalk, and +felt that it had been cut with gold shears, for gold cuts like nothing +else. + +"'Oho!' said the old witch--'where there are gold scissors, there must +be gold work-bags; and where there are gold work-bags, there must be +little Princesses.'" + +"Well, and then?" I asked. + +"Oh then, nothing at all," answered the Nymph Terzollina beloved by the +Magnificent Lorenzo, who had seen the procession of the Three Kings. +"Good evening to you." + +And where her white muslin dress, embroidered with nosegays of broom and +myrtle, had been spread on the dry grass and crushed mint, there was +only, beneath the toy cypresses, a bush of white-starred myrtle and a +tuft of belated yellow broom. + + +II + +One must have leisure to converse with goddesses; and certainly, during +a summer in Tuscany, when folk are scattered in their country houses, +and are disinclined to move out of hammock or off shaded bench, there +are not many other persons to talk with. + +On the other hand, during those weeks of cloudless summer, natural +objects vie with each other in giving one amateur representations. +Things look their most unexpected, masquerade as other things, get queer +unintelligible allegoric meanings, leaving you to guess what it all +means, a constant dumb crambo of trees, flowers, animals, houses, and +moonlight. + +The moon, particularly, is continually _en scene_, as if to take the +place of the fireflies, which last only so long as the corn is in the +ear, gradually getting extinguished and trailing about, humble helpless +moths with a pale phosphorescence in their tail, in the grass and in the +curtains. The moon takes their place; the moon which, in an Italian +summer, seems to be full for three weeks out of the four. + +One evening the performance was given by the moon and the corn-sheaves, +assisted by minor actors such as crickets, downy owls, and +vine-garlands. The oats, which had been of such exquisite delicacy of +green, had just been reaped in the field beyond our garden and were now +stacked up. Suspecting one of the usual performances, I went after +dinner to the upper garden-gate, and looked through the bars. There it +was, the familiar, elemental witchery. The moon was nearly full, +blurring the stars, steeping the sky and earth in pale blue mist, which +seemed somehow to be the visible falling dew. It left a certain +greenness to the broad grass path, a vague yellow to the unsickled +wheat; and threw upon the sheaves of oats the shadows of festooned vine +garlands. Those sheaves, or stooks--who can describe their metamorphose? +Palest yellow on the pale stubbly ground, they were frosted by the +moonbeams in their crisp fringe of ears, and in the shining straws +projecting here and there. Straws, ears? You would never have guessed +that they were made of anything so mundane. They sat there, propped +against the trees, between the pools of light and the shadows, while the +crickets trilled their cool, shrill song; sat solemnly with an air of +expectation, calling to me, frightening me. And one in particular, with +a great additional bunch on his head, cut by a shadow, was oddly +unaccountable and terrible. After a minute I had to slink away, back +into the garden, like an intruder. + + +III + +There are performances also in broad daylight, and then human beings are +admitted as supernumeraries. Such was a certain cattle fair, up the +valley of the Mugnone. + +The beasts were being sold on a piece of rough, freshly reaped ground, +lying between the high road and the river bed, empty of waters, but full +among its shingle of myrrh-scented yellow herbage. The oxen were mostly +of the white Tuscan breeds (those of Romagna are smaller but more +spirited, and of a delicate grey) only their thighs slightly browned; +the scarlet cloth neck-fringes set off, like a garland of geranium, +against the perfect milkiness of backs and necks. They looked, indeed, +these gigantic creatures, as if moulded out of whipped cream or cream +cheese; suggesting no strength, and even no resistance to the touch, +with their smooth surface here and there packed into minute wrinkles, +exactly like the little _stracchini_ cheeses. This impalpable whiteness +of the beasts suited their perfect tameness, passiveness, letting +themselves be led about with great noiseless strides over the stubbly +ridges and up the steep banks; and hustled together, flank against +flank, horns interlaced with horns, without even a sound or movement of +astonishment or disobedience. Never a low or a moo; never a glance round +of their big, long-lashed, blue-brown eyes. Their big jaws move like +millstones, their long tufted tails switch monotonously like pendulums. + +Around them circle peasants, measuring them with the eye, prodding them +with the finger, pulling them by the horns. And every now and then one +of the red-faced men, butchers mainly, who act as go-betweens, +dramatically throws his arms round the neck of some recalcitrant dealer +or buyer, leads him aside, whispering with a gesture like Judas's kiss; +or he clasps together the red hands and arms of contracting parties, +silencing their objections, forcing them to do business. The contrast is +curious between these hot, excited, yelling, jostling human beings, +above whose screaming _Dio Canes!_ and _Dio Ladros!_ the cry of the +iced-water seller recurs monotonously and the silent, impassive +bullocks, white, unreal, inaudible; so still and huge, indeed, that, +seen from above, they look like an encampment, their white flanks like +so much spread canvas in the sunshine. And from a little distance, +against the hillside beyond the river, the already bought yokes of +bullocks look, tethered in a grove of cypresses, like some old mediaeval +allegory--an allegory, as usual, nobody knows of what. + + +IV + +Another performance was that of the woods of Lecceto, and the hermitage +of the same name. You will find them on the map of the district of +Siena; but I doubt very much whether you will find them on the surface +of the real globe, for I suspect them to be a piece of midsummer magic +and nothing more. They had been for years to me among the number (we all +have such) of things familiar but inaccessible; or rather things whose +inaccessibility--due to no conceivable cause--is an essential quality of +their existence. Every now and then from one of the hills you get a +glimpse of the square red tower, massive and battlemented, rising among +the grey of its ilexes, beckoning one across a ridge or two and a +valley; then disappearing again, engulfed in the oak woods, green in +summer, copper-coloured in winter; to reappear, but on the side you +least expected it, plume of ilexes, battlements of tower, as you +twisted along the high-lying vineyards and the clusters of umbrella +pines fringing the hill-tops; and then, another minute and they were +gone. + +We determined to attain them, to be mocked no longer by Lecceto; and +went forth on one endless July afternoon. After much twisting from +hillside to hillside and valley to valley, we at last got into a country +which was strange enough to secrete even Lecceto. In a narrow valley we +were met by a scent, warm, delicious, familiar, which seemed to lead us +(as perfumes we cannot identify will usually do) to ideas very hazy, but +clear enough to be utterly inappropriate: English cottage-gardens, linen +presses of old houses, old-fashioned sitting-rooms full of pots of +_pot-pourri_; and then, behold, in front of us a hill covered every inch +of it with flowering lavender, growing as heather does on the hills +outside fairyland. And behind this lilac, sun-baked, scented hill, open +the woods of ilexes. The trees were mostly young and with their summer +upper garment of green, fresh leaves over the crackling old ones; trees +packed close like a hedge, their every gap filled with other verdure, +arbutus and hornbeam, fern and heather; the close-set greenery crammed, +as it were, with freshness and solitude. + +These must be the woods of Lecceto, and in their depths the red +battlemented tower of the Hermitage. For I had forgotten to say that for +a thousand years that tower had been the abode of a succession of holy +personages, so holy and so like each other as to have almost grown into +one, an immortal hermit whom Popes and Emperors would come to consult +and be blessed by. Deeper and deeper therefore we made our way into the +green coolness and dampness, the ineffable deliciousness of young leaf +and uncurling fern; till it seemed as if the plantation were getting +impenetrable, and we began to think that, as usual, Lecceto had mocked +us, and would probably appear, if we retraced our steps, in the +diametrically opposite direction. When suddenly, over the tree-tops, +rose the square battlemented tower of red brick. Then, at a turn of the +rough narrow lane, there was the whole place, the tower, a church and +steeple, and some half-fortified buildings, in a wide clearing planted +with olive trees. We tied our pony to an ilex and went to explore the +Hermitage. But the building was enclosed round by walls and hedges, and +the only entrance was by a stout gate armed with a knocker, behind which +was apparently an outer yard and a high wall pierced only by a twisted +iron balcony. So we knocked. + +But that knocker was made only for Popes and Emperors walking about with +their tiaras and crowns and sceptres, like the genuine Popes and +Emperors of Italian folk-tales and of Pinturicchio's frescoes; for no +knocking of ours, accompanied by loud yells, could elicit an answer. It +seemed simple enough to get in some other way; there must be peasants +about at work, even supposing the holy hermit to have ceased to exist. +But climbing walls and hurdles and squeezing between the close tight +ilexes, brought us only to more walls, above which, as above the +oak-woods from a distance, rose the inaccessible battlemented tower. And +a small shepherdess, in a flapping Leghorn hat, herding black and white +baby pigs in a neighbouring stubble-field under the olives, was no more +able than we to break the spell of the Hermitage. And all round, for +miles apparently, undulated the dense grey plumage of the ilex woods. + +The low sun was turning the stubble orange, where the pigs were feeding; +and the distant hills of the Maremma were growing very blue behind the +olive trees. So, lest night should overtake us, we turned our pony's +head towards the city, and traversed the oak-woods and skirted the +lavender hill, rather disbelieving in the reality of the place we had +just been at, save when we saw its tower mock us, emerging again; an +inaccessible, improbable place. The air was scented by the warm lavender +of the hillsides; and by the pines forming a Japanese pattern, black +upon the golden lacquer of the sky. Soon the moon rose, big and yellow, +lighting very gradually the road in whose gloom you could vaguely see +the yokes of white cattle returning from work. By the time we reached +the city hill everything was steeped in a pale yellowish light, with +queer yellowish shadows; and the tall tanneries glared out with their +buttressed balconied top, exaggerated and alarming. Scrambling up the +moonlit steep of Fonte Branda, and passing under a black arch, we found +ourselves in the heart of the gaslit and crowded city, much as if we had +been shot out of a cannon into another planet, and feeling that the +Hermitage of Lecceto was absolutely apocryphal. + + +V + +The reason of this midsummer magic--whose existence no legitimate +descendant of Goths and Vandals and other early lovers of Italy can +possibly deny--the reason is altogether beyond my philosophy. The only +word which expresses the phenomenon is the German word, untranslatable, +_Bescheerung_, a universal giving of gifts, lighting of candles, gilding +of apples, manifestation of marvels, realisation of the desirable and +improbable--to wit, a Christmas Tree. And Italy, which knows no +Christmas trees, makes its _Bescheerung_ in midsummer, gets rid of its +tourist vulgarities, hides away the characteristics of its trivial +nineteenth century, decks itself with magnolia blossoms and water-melons +with awnings and street booths, with mandolins and guitars; spangles +itself with church festivals and local pageants; and instead of +wax-tapers and Chinese lanterns, lights up the biggest golden sun by +day, the biggest silver moon by night, all for the benefit of a few +childish descendants of Goths and Vandals. + +Nonsense apart, I am inclined to think that the specific charm of Italy +exists only during the hot months; the charm which gives one a little +stab now and then and makes one say--"This is Italy." + +I felt that little stab, to which my heart had long become unused, at +the beginning of this very summer in Tuscany, to which belong the above +instances of Italian Midsummer Magic. I was spending the day at a small, +but very ancient, Benedictine Monastery (it was a century old when St. +Peter Igneus, according to the chronicle, went through his celebrated +Ordeal by Fire), now turned into a farm, and hidden, battlemented walls +and great gate towers, among the cornfields near the Arno. It came to me +as the revival of an impression long forgotten, that overpowering sense +that "This was Italy," it recurred and recurred in those same three +words, as I sat under the rose-hedge opposite the water-wheel shed, +garlanded with drying pea-straw; and as I rambled through the chill +vaults, redolent of old wine-vats, into the sudden sunshine and broad +shadows of the cloistered yards. + +That smell was mysteriously connected with it; the smell of wine-vats +mingled, I fancy (though I could not say why), with the sweet faint +smell of decaying plaster and wood-work. One night, as we were driving +through Bologna to wile away the hours between two trains, in the blue +moon-mist and deep shadows of the black porticoed city, that same smell +came to my nostrils as in a dream, and with it a whiff of bygone years, +the years when first I had had this impression of Italian Magic. Oddly +enough, Rome, where I spent much of my childhood and which was the +object of my childish and tragic adoration, was always something apart, +never Italy for my feelings. The Apennines of Lucca and Pistoia, with +their sudden revelation of Italian fields and lanes, of flowers on wall +and along roadside, of bells ringing in the summer sky, of peasants +working in the fields and with the loom and distaff, meant Italy. + +But how much more Italy--and hence longed for how much!--was Lucca, the +town in the plain, with cathedral and palaces. Nay, any of the mountain +hamlets where there was nothing modern, and where against the scarred +brick masonry and blackened stonework the cypresses rose black and +tapering, the trelisses crawled bright green up hill! One never feels, +once out of childhood, such joy as on the rare occasions when I was +taken to such places. A certain farmhouse, with cypresses at the terrace +corner and a great oleander over the wall, was also Italy before it +became my home for several years. Most of all, however, Italy was +represented by certain towns: Bologna, Padua and Vicenza, and Siena, +which I saw mainly in the summer. + +It is curious how one's associations change: nowadays Italy means mainly +certain familiar effects of light and cloud, certain exquisitenesses of +sunset amber against ultramarine hills, of winter mists among misty +olives, of folds and folds of pale blue mountains; it is a country which +belongs to no time, which will always exist, superior to picturesqueness +and romance. But that is but a vague, half-indifferent habit of +enjoyment. And every now and then, when the Midsummer Magic is rife, +there comes to me that very different, old, childish meaning of the +word; as on that day among the roses of those Benedictine cloisters, the +cool shadow of the fig-trees in the yards, with the whiff of that queer +smell, heavy with romance, of wine-saturated oak and crumbling plaster; +and I know with a little stab of joy that this is Italy. + + + + +ON MODERN TRAVELLING + + + +I + +There is one charming impression peculiar to railway travelling, that of +the twilight hour in the train; but the charm is greater on a short +journey, when one is not tired and has not the sense of being uprooted, +than on a long one. The movement of the train seems, after sunset, +particularly in the South where night fall is rapid, to take a quality +of mystery. It glides through a landscape of which the smaller details +are effaced, as are likewise effaced the details of the railway itself. +And that rapid gliding brings home to one the instability of the hour, +of the changing light, the obliterating form. It makes one feel that +everything is, as it were, a mere vision; bends of poplared river with +sunset redness in their grey swirls; big towered houses of other days; +the spectral white fruit trees in the dark fields; the pine tops round, +separate, yet intangible, against the sky of unearthy blue; the darkness +not descending, as foolish people say it does, from the skies to the +earth, but rising slowly from the earth where it has gathered fold upon +fold, an emanation thereof, into the sky still pale and luminous, +turning its colour to white, its whiteness to grey, till the stars, mere +little white specks before, kindle one by one. + +Dante, who had travelled so much, and so much against his will, +described this hour as turning backwards the longing of the traveller, +and making the heart grow soft of them who had that day said farewell to +their friends. It is an hour of bitterness, the crueller for mingled +sweetness, to the exile; and in those days when distances were difficult +to overcome, every traveller must in a sense have been somewhat of an +exile. But to us, who have not necessarily left our friends, who may be +returning to them; to us accustomed to coming and going, to us hurried +along in dreary swiftness, it is the hour also when the earth seems full +of peace and goodwill; and our pensiveness is only just sad enough to be +sweet, not sad enough to be bitter. For every hamlet we pass seems +somehow the place where we ought to tarry for all our days; every room +or kitchen, a red square of light in the dimness with dark figures +moving before the window, seems full of people who might be friends; and +the hills we have never beheld before, the bends of rivers, the screen +of trees, seem familiar as if we had lived among them in distant days +which we think of with longing. + + +II + +This is the best that can be said, I think, for modern modes of travel. +But then, although I have been jolted about a good deal from country to +country, and slept in the train on my nurse's knees, and watched all my +possessions, from my cardboard donkey and my wax dolls to my manuscripts +and proof-sheets, overhauled on custom-house counters--but then, despite +all this, I have never made a great journey. I have never been to the +United States, nor to Egypt, nor to Russia; and it may well be that I +shall see the Eleusinian gods, Persephone and whoever else imparts +knowledge in ghostland, without ever having set foot in Greece. My +remarks are therefore meant for the less fortunate freight of railways +and steamers; though do I really envy those who see the wonderful places +of the earth before they have dreamed of them, the dream-land of other +men revealed to them for the first time in the solid reality of Cook and +Gaze? + +I would not for the world be misunderstood; I have not the faintest +prejudice against Gaze or Cook. I fervently desire that these gentlemen +may ever quicken trains and cheapen hotels; I am ready to be jostled in +Alpine valleys and Venetian canals by any number of vociferous tourists, +for the sake of the one, schoolmistress, or clerk, or artisan, or +curate, who may by this means have reached at last the land east of the +sun and west of the moon, the St. Brandan's Isle of his or her longings. +What I object to are the well-mannered, well-dressed, often +well-informed persons who, having turned Scotland into a sort of +Hurlingham, are apparently making Egypt, the Holy Land, Japan, into +_succursales_ and _dependances_ (I like the good Swiss names evoking +couriers and waiters) of their own particularly dull portion of London +and Paris and New York. + +Less externally presentable certainly, but how much more really +venerable is the mysterious class of dwellers in obscure pensions: +curious beings who migrate without perceiving any change of landscape +and people, but only change of fare, from the cheap boarding-house in +Dresden to the cheap boarding-house in Florence, Prague, Seville, Rouen, +or Bruges. It is a class whom one of nature's ingenious provisions, +intended doubtless to maintain a balance of inhabited and uninhabited, +directs unconsciously, automatically to the great cities of the past +rather than to those of the present; so that they sit in what were once +palaces, castles, princely pleasure-houses, discussing over the stony +pears and apples the pleasures and drawbacks, the prices and fares, the +dark staircase against the Sunday ices, of other boarding-houses in +other parts of Europe. A quaint race it is, neither marrying nor giving +in marriage, and renewed by natural selection among the poor in purse +and poor in spirit; but among whom the sentimental traveller, did he +still exist, might pick up many droll and melancholy and perhaps +chivalrous stories. + +My main contention then is merely that, before visiting countries and +towns in the body, we ought to have visited them in the spirit; +otherwise I fear we might as well sit still at home. I do not mean that +we should read about them; some persons I know affect to extract a kind +of pleasure from it; but to me it seems dull work. One wants to visit +unknown lands in company, not with other men's descriptions, but with +one's own wishes and fancies. And very curious such wishes and fancies +are, or rather the countries and cities they conjure up, having no +existence on any part of the earth's surface, but a very vivid one in +one's own mind. Surely most of us, arriving in any interesting place, +are already furnished with a tolerable picture or plan thereof; the +cathedral on a slant or a rising ground, the streets running uphill or +somewhat in a circle, the river here or there, the lie of the land, +colour of the houses, nay, the whole complexion of the town, so and so. +The reality, so far as my own experience goes, never once tallies with +the fancy; but the town of our building is so compact and clear that it +often remains in our memory alongside of the town of stone and brick, +only gradually dissolving, and then leaving sometimes airy splendours +of itself hanging to the solid structures of its prosaic rival. + +Another curious thing to note is how certain real scenes will sometimes +get associated in our minds with places we have never beheld, to such a +point that the charm of the known is actually enhanced by that of the +unknown. I remember a little dell in the High Alps, which, with its huge +larches and mountain pines, its tufts of bee-haunted heather and thyme +among the mossy boulders, its overlooking peak and glimpses of far-down +lakes, became dear to me much less for its own sake than because it +always brought to my mind the word _Thrace_, and with it a vague +fleeting image of satyrs and maenads, a bar of the music of Orpheus. And +less explicable than this, a certain rolling table-land, not more remote +than the high road to Rome, used at one time to impress me with a +mysterious consciousness of the plains of Central Asia; a ruined byre, a +heap of whitewashed stones, among the thistles and stubbles of a Fife +hillside, had for me once a fascination due to the sense that it must be +like Algeria. + +Has any painter ever fixed on canvas such visions, distinct and +haunting, of lands he had never seen, Claude or Turner, or the Flemish +people who painted the little towered and domed celestial Jerusalem? I +know not. The nearest thing of the kind was a wonderful erection of +brown paper and (apparently) ingeniously arranged shavings, built up in +rocklike fashion, covered with little green toy-box trees, and dotted +here and there with bits of mirror glass and cardboard houses, which +once puzzled me considerably in the parlour of a cottage. "Do tell me +what that is?" at last rose to my lips. "That," answered my hostess very +slowly, "that is a work of my late 'usband; a representation of the +Halps as close as 'e could imagine them, for 'e never was abroad." I +often think of that man "who never was abroad," and of his +representation of the Alps; of the hours of poetic vision, of actual +creation perhaps from sheer strength of longing, which resulted in that +quaint work of art. + +As close as he could imagine them! He had read, then, about the Alps, +read perhaps in Byron or some Radcliffian novel on a stall; and he had +wondered till the vision had come, ready for pasteboard and toy trees +and glue and broken mirror to embody it! And meanwhile I, who am +obliged to cross those very Alps twice every year, I try to do so at +night, to rumble and rattle up and down their gorges in a sleeping-car! +There seems something wrong in this; something wrong in the world's +adjustments, not really in me, for I swear it is respect for the Alps +which makes me thus avoid their sight. + + +III + +And here is the moment for stating my plea against our modern, rapid, +hurried travelling: there is to decent minds a certain element of +humiliation therein, as I suspect there is in every _royal road_. There +is something almost superhumanly selfish in this rushing across +countries without giving them a thought, indeed with no thoughts in us +save of our convenience, inconvenience, food, sleep, weariness. The +whole of Central Europe is thus reduced, for our feelings, to an +arrangement of buffets and custom-houses, its acres checked off on our +sensorium as so many jolts. For it is not often that respectable people +spend a couple of days, or even three, so utterly engrossed in +themselves, so without intellectual relation or responsibility to their +surroundings, living in a moral stratum not above ordinary life, but +below it. Perhaps it is this suspending of connection with all interests +which makes such travelling restful to very busy persons, and agreeable +to very foolish ones. But to decent, active, leisured folk it is, I +maintain, humiliating; humiliating to become so much by comparison in +one's own consciousness; and I suspect that the vague sense of +self-disgust attendant on days thus spent is a sample of the +self-disgust we feel very slightly (and ought to feel very strongly) +whenever our wretched little self is allowed to occupy the whole stage +of our perceptions. + +There is in M. Zola's _Bete Humaine_ a curious picture of a train, one +train after another, full of eager modern life, being whirled from Paris +to Havre through the empty fields, before cottages and old-world houses +miles remote from any town. But in reality is not the train the empty +thing, and are not those solitary houses and pastures that which is +filled with life? The Roman express thus rushes to Naples, Egypt, India, +the far East, the great Austral islands, cutting in two the cypress +avenue of a country house of the Val d'Arno, Neptune with his conch, a +huge figure of the seventeenth century, looking on from an artificial +grotto. What to him is this miserable little swish past of to-day? + +There is only one circumstance when this vacuity, this suspension of all +real life, is in its place; when one is hurrying to some dreadful goal, +a death-bed or perhaps a fresh-made grave. The soul is precipitated +forward to one object, one moment, and cannot exist meanwhile; _ruit_ +not _hora_, but _anima_; emptiness suits passion and suffering, for they +empty out the world. + + +IV + +Be this as it may, it will be a great pity if we lose a certain sense of +wonder at distance overcome, a certain emotion of change of place. This +emotion--paid for no doubt by much impatience and weariness where the +plains were wide, the mountains high, or the roads persistently +straight--must have been one of the great charms of the old mode of +travelling. You savoured the fact of each change in the lie of the +land, of each variation in climate and province, the difference between +the chestnut and the beech zones, for instance, in the south, of the fir +and the larch in the Alps; the various types of window, roof, chimney, +or well, nay, the different fold of the cap or kerchief of the market +women. One inn, one square, one town-hall or church, introduced you +gradually to its neighbours. We feel this in the talk of old people, +those who can remember buying their team at Calais, of elderly ones who +chartered their _vetturino_ at Marseilles or Nice; in certain scraps in +the novels even of Thackeray, giving the sense of this gradual +occupation of the continent by relays. One of Mr. Ruskin's drawings at +Oxford evokes it strongly in me. On what railway journey would he have +come across that little town of Rheinfelden (where is Rheinfelden?), +would he have wandered round those quaint towered walls, over that +bridge, along that grassy walk? + +I can remember, in my childhood, the Alps before they had railways; the +enormous remoteness of Italy, the sense of its lying down there, far, +far away in its southern sea; the immense length of the straight road +from Bellinzona to the lake, the endlessness of the winding valleys. +Now, as I said in relation to that effigy of the Alps by the man who had +never been abroad, I get into my bunk at Milan, and waking up, see in +the early morning crispness, the glass-green Reuss tear past, and the +petticoated turrets of Lucerne. + +Once also (and I hope not once and never again) I made an immense +journey through Italy in a pony-cart. We seemed to traverse all +countries and climates; lush, stifling valleys with ripening maize and +grapes; oak-woods where rows of cypress showed roads long gone, and +crosses told of murders; desolate heaths high on hill-tops, and stony +gorges full of myrtle; green irrigated meadows with plashing +water-wheels, and grey olive groves; so that in the evening we felt +homesick for that distant, distant morning: yet we had only covered as +much ground as from London to Dover! And how immensely far off from +Florence did we not feel when, four hours after leaving its walls, we +arrived in utter darkness at the friendly mountain farm, and sat down to +supper in the big bare room, where high-backed chairs and the plates +above the immense chimney-piece loomed and glimmered in the half-light; +feeling, as if in a dream, the cool night air still in our throats, the +jingle of cart-bells and chirp of wayside crickets still in our ears! +Where was Florence then? As a fact it was just sixteen miles off. + +To travel in this way one should, however, as old John Evelyn advises, +"diet with the natives." Our ancestors (for one takes for granted, of +course, that one's ancestors were _milords_) were always plentifully +furnished, I observe, with letters of introduction. They were necessary +when persons of distinction carried their bedding on mules and rode in +coaches escorted by blunderbuses, like John Evelyn himself. + +It is this dieting with the natives which brings one fully in contact +with a country's reality. At the tables of one's friends, while being +strolled through the gardens or driven across country, one learns all +about the life, thoughts, feelings of the people; the very gossip of the +neighbourhood becomes instructive, and you touch the past through +traditions of the family. Here the French put up the maypole in 1796; +there the beautiful abbess met her lover; that old bowed man was the one +who struck the Austrian colonel at Milan before 1859. 'Tis the mode of +travelling that constituted the delight and matured the genius of +Stendhal, king of cosmopolitans and grand master of the psychologic +novel. To my kind friends, wherever I have any, but most perhaps in +Northern Italy, is due among other kinds of gratitude, gratitude for +having travelled in this way. + + +V + +But there is another way of travelling, more suitable methinks to the +poet. For what does the poet want with details of reality when he +possesses its universal essence, or with local manners and historic +tradition, seeing that his work is for all times and all men? + +Mr. Browning, I was told last year by his dear friends at Asolo, first +came upon the kingdom of Kate the Queen by accident, perhaps not having +heard its name or not remembering it, in the course of a long walking +tour from Venice to the Alps. It was the first time he was in Italy, +nay, abroad, and he had come from London to Venice by sea. That village +of palaces on the hill-top, with the Lombard plain at its feet and the +great Alps at its back; with its legends of the Queen of Cyprus was, +therefore, one of the first impressions of mainland Italy which the poet +could have received. And one can understand _Pippa Passes_ resulting +therefrom, better than from his years of familiarity with Florence. +Pippa, Sebald, Ottima, Jules, his bride, the Bishop, the Spy, nay, even +Queen Kate and her Page, are all born of that sort of misinterpretation +of places, times, and stories which is so fruitful in poetry, because it +means the begetting of things in the image of the poet's own soul, +rather than the fashioning them to match something outside it. + +Even without being a poet you may profit in an especial manner by +travelling in a country where you know no one, provided you have in you +that scrap of poetic fibre without which poets and poetry are caviare to +you. There is no doubt that wandering about in the haunts of the past +undisturbed by the knowledge of the present is marvellously favourable +to the historic, the poetical emotion. The American fresh from the +States thinks of Johnson and Dickens in Fleet Street; at Oxford or +Cambridge he has raptures (are any raptures like these?) into which, +like notes in a chord and overtones in a note, there enters the +deliciousness, the poignancy of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Turner. + +The Oxford or Cambridge man, on the other hand, will have similar +raptures in some boarding-house at Venice or Florence; raptures +rapturous in proportion almost to his ignorance of the language and the +people. Do not let us smile, dear friends, who have lived in Rome till +you are Romans, dear friends, who are Romans yourselves, at the +foreigner with his Baedeker, turning his back to the Colosseum in his +anxiety to reach it, and ashamed as well as unable to ask his way. That +Goth or Vandal, very likely, is in the act of possessing Rome, of making +its wonder and glory his own, consubstantial to his soul; Rome is his +for the moment. It is ours? Alas! + +Nature, Fate, I know not whether the mother or the daughter, they are so +like each other, looks with benignity upon these poor ignorant, solitary +tourists, and gives them what she denies to those who have more leisure +and opportunity. I cannot explain by any other reason a fact which is +beyond all possibility of doubt, and patent to the meanest observer, +namely, that it is always during our first sojourn in a place, during +its earlier part, and more particularly when we are living prosaically +at inns and boarding-houses, that something happens--a procession, a +serenade, a street-fight, a fair, or a pilgrimage--which shows the place +in a particularly characteristic light, and which never occurs again. +The very elements are desired to perform for the benefit of the +stranger. I remember a thunderstorm, the second night I was ever at +Venice, lighting up St. George's, the Salute, the whole lagoon as I have +never seen it since. + +I can testify, also, to having seen the Alhambra under snow, a sparkling +whiteness lying soft on the myrtle hedges, and the reflection of arches +and domes waving, with the drip of melted snow from the roofs, in the +long-stagnant tanks. If I lived in Granada, or went back there, should I +ever see this wonder again? It was so ordered merely because I had just +come, and was lodging at an inn. + +Yes, Fate is friendly to those who travel rarely, who go abroad to see +abroad, not to be warm or cold, or to meet the people they may meet +anywhere else. Honour the tourist; he walks in a halo of romance, The +cosmopolitan abroad desists from flannel shirts because he is always at +home; and he knows to a nicety hours and places which demand a high hat. +But does that compensate? + + +VI + +There is yet another mystery connected with travelling, but 'tis too +subtle almost for words. All I can ask is, do you know what it is to +meet, say, in some college room, or on the staircase of an English +country house, or even close behind the front door in Bloomsbury, the +photograph of some Florentine relief or French cathedral, the black, +gaunt Piranesi print of some Roman ruin; and to feel suddenly Florence, +Rouen, Reims, or Rome, the whole of their presence distilled, as it +were, into one essence of emotion? + +What does it mean? That in this solid world only delusion is worth +having? Nay; but that nothing can come into the presence of that +capricious despot, our fancy, which has not dwelt six months and six in +the purlieus of its palace, steeped, like the candidates for Ahasuerus's +favour, in sweet odours and myrrh. + + + + + +OLD ITALIAN GARDENS + + + +I + +There are also modern gardens in Italy, and in such I have spent many +pleasant hours. But that has been part of my life of reality, which +concerns only my friends and myself. The gardens I would speak about are +those in which I have lived the life of the fancy, and into which I may +lead the idle thoughts of my readers. + +It is pleasant to have flowers growing in a garden. I make this remark +because there have been very fine gardens without any flowers at all; in +fact, when the art of gardening reached its height, it took to despising +its original material, as, at one time, people came to sing so well that +it was considered vulgar to have any voice. There is a magnificent +garden near Pescia, in Tuscany, built in terraces against a hillside, +with wonderful waterworks, which give you shower-baths when you expect +them least; and in this garden, surrounded by the trimmest box hedges, +there bloom only imperishable blossoms of variegated pebbles and chalk. +That I have seen with my own eyes. A similar garden, near Genoa, +consisting of marble mosaics and coloured bits of glass, with a peach +tree on a wall, and an old harpsichord on the doorstep to serve instead +of bell or knocker, I am told of by a friend, who pretends to have spent +her youth in it. But I suspect her to be of supernatural origin, and +this garden to exist only in the world of Ariosto's enchantresses, +whence she originally hails. To return to my first remark, it is +pleasant, therefore, to have flowers in a garden, though not necessary. +We moderns have flowers, and no gardens. I must protest against such a +state of things. Still worse is it to suppose that you can get a garden +by running up a wall or planting a fence round a field, a wood or any +portion of what is vaguely called Nature. Gardens have nothing to do +with Nature, or not much. Save the garden of Eden, which was perhaps no +more a garden than certain London streets so called, gardens are always +primarily the work of man. I say primarily, for these outdoor +habitations, where man weaves himself carpets of grass and gravel, cuts +himself walls out of ilex or hornbeam, and fits on as roof so much of +blue day or of starspecked, moonsilvered night, are never perfect until +Time has furnished it all with his weather stains and mosses, and Fancy, +having given notice to the original occupants, has handed it into the +charge of gentle little owls and furgloved bats, and of other tenants, +human in shape, but as shy and solitary as they. + +That is a thing of our days, or little short of them. I should be +curious to know something of early Italian gardens, long ago; long +before the magnificence of Roman Caesars had reappeared, with their +rapacity and pride, in the cardinals and princes of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries. I imagine those beginnings to have been humble; +the garden of the early middle ages to have been a thing more for +utility than pleasure, and not at all for ostentation. For the garden of +the castle is necessarily small; and the plot of ground between the +inner and outer rows of walls, where corn and hay might be grown for the +horses, is not likely to be given up exclusively to her ladyship's +lilies and gillyflowers; salads and roots must grow there, and onions +and leeks, for it is not always convenient to get vegetables from the +villages below, particularly when there are enemies or disbanded +pillaging mercenaries about; hence, also, there will be fewer roses than +vines, pears, or apples, spaliered against the castle wall. On the other +hand the burgher of the towns begins by being a very small artisan or +shopkeeper, and even when he lends money to kings of England and +Emperors, and is part owner of Constantinople, he keeps his house with +business-like frugality. Whatever they lavished on churches, frescoes, +libraries, and pageants, the citizens, even of the fifteenth century, +whose wives and daughters still mended the linen and waited at table, +are not likely to have seen in their villa more than a kind of rural +place of business, whence to check factors and peasants, where to store +wine and oil; and from whose garden, barely enclosed from the fields, to +obtain the fruit and flowers for their table. I think that mediaeval +poetry and tales have led me to this notion. There is little mention in +them of a garden as such: the Provencal lovers meet in orchards--"en un +vergier sor folha d'albespi"--where the May bushes grow among the almond +trees. Boccaccio and the Italians more usually employ the word _orto_, +which has lost its Latin signification, and is a place, as we learn from +the context, planted with fruit trees and with pot-herbs, the sage which +brought misfortune on poor Simona, and the sweet basil which Lisabetta +watered, as it grew out of Lorenzo's head, "only with rosewater, or that +of orange flowers, or with her own tears." A friend of mine has painted +a picture of another of Boccaccio's ladies, Madonna Dianora, visiting +the garden, which (to the confusion of her virtuous stratagem) the +enamoured Ansaldo has made to bloom in January by magic arts; a little +picture full of the quaint lovely details of Dello's wedding chests, the +charm of the roses and lilies, the plashing fountains and birds singing +against a background of wintry trees and snow-shrouded fields, the +dainty youths and damsels treading their way among the flowers, looking +like tulips and ranunculus themselves in their fur and brocade. But +although in this story Boccaccio employs the word _giardino_ instead of +_orto_, I think we must imagine that magic flower garden rather as a +corner--they still exist on every hillside--of orchard connected with +the fields of wheat and olives below by the long tunnels of vine +trellis, and dying away into them with the great tufts of lavender and +rosemary and fennel on the grassy bank under the cherry trees. This +piece of terraced ground along which the water--spurted from the +dolphin's mouth or the siren's breasts--runs through walled channels, +refreshing impartially violets and salads, lilies and tall flowering +onions, under the branches of the peach tree and the pomegranate, to +where, in the shade of the great pink oleander tufts, it pours out below +into the big tank, for the maids to rinse their linen in the evening, +and the peasants to fill their cans to water the bedded-out tomatoes, +and the potted clove-pinks in the shadow of the house. + +The Blessed Virgin's garden is like that, where, as she prays in the +cool of the evening, the gracious Gabriel flutters on to one knee +(hushing the sound of his wings lest he startle her) through the pale +green sky, the deep blue-green valley; and you may still see in the +Tuscan fields clumps of cypresses clipped wheel-shape, which might mark +the very spot. + +The transition from this orchard-garden, this _orto_, of the old Italian +novelists and painters to the architectural garden of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries, is indicated in some of the descriptions and +illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a sort of handbook of +antiquities in the shape of a novel, written by Fra Francesco Colonna, +and printed at Venice about 1480. Here we find trees and hedges treated +as brick and stone work; walls, niches, colonnades, cut out of ilex and +laurel; statues, vases, peacocks, clipped in box and yew; moreover +antiquities, busts, inscriptions, broken altars and triumphal arches, +temples to the graces and Venus, stuck about the place very much as we +find them in the Roman Villas of the late sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries. But I doubt whether the Hypnerotomachia can be taken as +evidence of the gardens of Colonna's own days. I think his descriptions +are rather of what his archaeological lore made him long for, and what +came in time, when antiques were more plentiful than in the early +Renaissance, and the monuments of the ancients could be incorporated +freely into the gardens. For the classic Italian garden is essentially +Roman in origin; it could have arisen only on the top of ancient walls +and baths, its shape suggested by the ruins below, its ornaments dug up +in the planting of the trees; and until the time of Julius II. and Leo +X., Rome was still a mediaeval city, feudal and turbulent, in whose +outskirts, for ever overrun by baronial squabbles, no sane man would +have built himself a garden; and in whose ancient monuments castles were +more to be expected than belvederes and orangeries. Indeed, by the side +of quaint arches and temples, and labyrinths which look like designs for +a box of toys, we find among the illustrations of Polifilo various +charming woodcuts showing bits of vine trellis, of tank and of fountain, +on the small scale, and in the domestic, quite unclassic style of the +Italian burgher's garden. I do not mean to say that the gardens of +Lorenzo dei Medici, of Catherine Cornaro near Asolo, of the Gonzagas +near Mantua, of the Estensi at Scandiano and Sassuolo, were kitchen +gardens like those of Isabella's basil pot. They had waterworks already, +and aviaries full of costly birds, and enclosures where camels and +giraffes were kept at vast expense, and parks with deer and fishponds; +they were the gardens of the castle, of the farm, magnified and made +magnificent, spread over a large extent of ground. But they were not, +any more than are the gardens of Boiardo's and Ariosto's enchantresses +(copied by Spenser) the typical Italian gardens of later days. + +And here, having spoken of that rare and learned Hypnerotomachia +Poliphili (which, by the way, any one who wishes to be instructed, +sickened, and bored for many days together, may now read in Monsieur +Claudius Popelin's French translation), it is well I should state that +for the rest of this dissertation I have availed myself of neither the +_British Museum_, nor the _National Library of Paris_, nor the _Library +of South Kensington_ (the italics seem necessary to show my appreciation +of those haunts of learning), but merely of the light of my own poor +intellect. For I do not think I care to read about gardens among +foolscap and inkstains and printed forms; in fact I doubt whether I +care to read about them at all, save in Boccaccio and Ariosto, Spenser +and Tasso; though I hope that my readers will be more literary +characters than myself. + + +II + +The climate of Italy (moving on in my discourse) renders it difficult +and almost impossible to have flowers growing in the ground all through +the summer. After the magnificent efflorescence of May and June the soil +cakes into the consistence of terra-cotta, and the sun, which has +expanded and withered the roses and lilies with such marvellous +rapidity, toasts everything like so much corn or maize. Very few +herbaceous flowers--the faithful, friendly, cheerful zinnias, for +instance--can continue blooming, and the oleander, become more +brilliantly rose-colour with every additional week's drought, triumph +over empty beds. Flowers in Italy are a crop like corn, hemp, or beans; +you must be satisfied with fallow soil when they are over. I say these +things, learned by some bitter experience of flowerless summers, to +explain why Italian flower-gardening mainly takes refuge in pots--from +the great ornamented lemon-jars down to the pots of carnations, double +geraniums, tuberoses, and jasmines on every wall, on every ledge or +window-sill; so much so, in fact, that even the famous sweet basil, and +with it young Lorenzo's head, had to be planted in a pot. Now this +poverty of flower-beds and richness of pots made it easy and natural for +the Italian garden to become, like the Moorish one, a place of mere +greenery and water, a palace whose fountains plashed in sunny yards +walled in with myrtle and bay, in mysterious chambers roofed over with +ilex and box. + +And this it became. Moderately at first; a few hedges of box and +cypress--exhaling its resinous breath in the sunshine--leading up to the +long, flat Tuscan house, with its tower or pillared loggia under the +roof to take the air and dry linen; a few quaintly cut trees set here +and there, along with the twisted mulberry tree where the family drank +its wine and ate its fruit of an evening; a little grove of ilexes to +the back, in whose shade you could sleep while the cicalas buzzed at +noon; some cypresses gathered together into a screen, just to separate +the garden from the olive yard above; gradually perhaps a balustrade set +at the end of the bowling-green, that you might see, even from a +distance, the shimmery blue valley below, the pale blue distant hills; +and if you had it, some antique statue not good enough for the courtyard +of the town house, set on the balustrade or against the tree; also, +where water was plentiful, a little grotto, scooped out under that +semicircular screen of cypresses. A very modest place, but differing +essentially from the orchard and kitchen garden of the mediaeval burgher; +and out of which came something immense and unique--the classic Roman +villa. + +For your new garden, your real Italian garden, brings in a new +element--that of perspective, architecture, decoration; the trees used +as building material, the lie of the land as theatre arrangements, the +water as the most docile and multiform stage property. Now think what +would happen when such gardens begin to be made in Rome. The Popes and +Popes' nephews can enclose vast tracts of land, expropriated by some +fine sweeping fiscal injustice, or by the great expropriator, fever, in +the outskirts of the town; and there place their casino, at first a mere +summer-house, whither to roll of spring evenings in stately coaches and +breathe the air with a few friends; then gradually a huge house, with +its suits of guests' chambers, stables, chapel, orangery, collection of +statues and pictures, its subsidiary smaller houses, belvederes, +circuses, and what not! And around the house His Eminence or His Serene +Excellency may lay out his garden. Now go where you may in the outskirts +of Rome you are sure to find ruins--great aqueduct arches, temples +half-standing, gigantic terrace-works belonging to some baths or palace +hidden beneath the earth and vegetation. Here you have naturally an +element of architectural ground-plan and decoration which is easily +followed: the terraces of quincunxes, the symmetrical groves, the long +flights of steps, the triumphal arches, the big ponds, come, as it were, +of themselves, obeying the order of what is below. And from underground, +everywhere, issues a legion of statues, headless, armless, in all stages +of mutilation, who are charitably mended, and take their place, mute +sentinels, white and earth-stained, at every intersecting box hedge, +under every ilex grove, beneath the cypresses of each sweeping hillside +avenue, wherever a tree can make a niche or a bough a canopy. Also +vases, sarcophagi, baths, little altars, columns, reliefs by the score +and hundred, to be stuck about everywhere, let into every wall, clapped +on the top of every gable, every fountain stacked up, in every empty +space. + +Among these inhabitants of the gardens of Caesar, Lucullus, or Sallust, +who, after a thousand years' sleep, pierce through the earth into new +gardens, of crimson cardinals and purple princes, each fattened on his +predecessors' spoils--Medici, Farnesi, Peretti, Aldobrandini, Ludovisi, +Rospigliosi, Borghese, Pamphili--among this humble people of stone I +would say a word of garden Hermes and their vicissitudes. There they +stand, squeezing from out their triangular sheath the stout pectorals +veined with rust, scarred with corrosions, under the ilexes, whose drip, +drip, through all the rainy days and nights of those ancient times and +these modern ones has gradually eaten away an eye here, a cheek there, +making up for the loss by gilding the hair with lichens, and matting the +beard with green ooze; while patched chin, and restored nose, give them +an odd look of fierce German duellists. Have they been busts of Caesars, +hastily ordered on the accession of some Tiberius or Nero, hastily sent +to alter into Caligula or Galba, or chucked into the Tiber on to the top +of the monster Emperor's body after that had been properly hauled +through the streets? Or are they philosophers, at your choice, Plato or +Aristotle or Zeno or Epicurus, once presiding over the rolls of poetry +and science in some noble's or some rhetor's library? Or is it possible +that this featureless block, smiling foolishly with its orbless +eye-sockets and worn-out mouth, may have had, once upon a time, a nose +from Phidias's hand, a pair of Cupid lips carved by Praxiteles? + + +III + +A book of seventeenth-century prints--"The Gardens of Rome, with their +plans raised and seen in perspective, drawn and engraved by Giov: +Battista Falda, at the printing-house of Gio: Giacomo de' Rossi, at the +sign of Paris, near the church of Peace in Rome"--brings home to one, +with the names of the architects who laid them out, that these Roman +villas are really a kind of architecture cut out of living instead of +dead timber. To this new kind of architecture belongs a new kind of +sculpture. The antiques do well in their niches of box and laurel under +their canopy of hanging ilex boughs; they are, in their weather-stained, +mutilated condition, another sort of natural material fit for the +artist's use; but the old sculpture being thus in a way assimilated +through the operation of earth, wind, and rain, into tree-trunks and +mossy boulders, a new sculpture arises undertaking to make of marble +something which will continue the impression of the trees and waters, +wave its jagged outlines like the branches, twist its supple limbs like +the fountains. It is high time that some one should stop the laughing +and sniffing at this great sculpture, of Bernini and his Italian and +French followers, the last spontaneous outcome of the art of the +Renaissance, of the decorative sculpture which worked in union with +place and light and surroundings. Mistaken as indoor decoration, as free +statuary in the sense of the antique, this sculpture has after all +given us the only works which are thoroughly right in the open air, +among the waving trees, the mad vegetation which sprouts under the +moist, warm Roman sky, from every inch of masonry and travertine. They +are comic of course looked at in all the details, those angels who smirk +and gesticulate with the emblems of the passion, those popes and saints +who stick out colossal toes and print on the sky gigantic hands, on the +parapets of bridges and the gables of churches; but imagine them +replaced by fine classic sculpture--stiff mannikins struggling with the +overwhelming height, the crushing hugeness of all things Roman; little +tin soldiers lost in the sky instead of those gallant theatrical +creatures swaggering among the clouds, pieces of wind-torn cloud, +petrified for the occasion, themselves! Think of Bernini's Apollo and +Daphne, a group unfortunately kept in a palace room, with whose right +angles its every outline swears, but which, if placed in a garden, would +be the very summing up of all garden and park impressions in the waving, +circling lines; yet not without a niminy piminy restraint of the +draperies, the limbs, the hair turning to clustered leaves, the body +turning to smooth bark, of the flying nymph and the pursuing god. + +The great creation of this Bernini school, which shows it as the +sculpture born of gardens, is the fountain. No one till the seventeenth +century had guessed what might be the relations of stone and water, each +equally obedient to the artist's hand. The mediaeval Italian fountain is +a tank, a huge wash-tub fed from lions' mouths, as if by taps, and +ornamented, more or less, with architectural and sculptured devices. In +the Renaissance we get complicated works of art--Neptunes with tridents +throne above sirens squeezing their breasts, and cupids riding on +dolphins, like the beautiful fountain of Bologna; or boys poised on one +foot, holding up tortoises, like Rafael's Tartarughe of Piazza Mattei; +more elaborate devices still, like the one of the villa at Bagnaia, near +Viterbo. But these fountains do equally well when dry, equally well +translated into bronze or silver: they are wonderful saltcellars or +fruit-dishes; everything is delightful except the water, which spurts in +meagre threads as from a garden-hose. They are the fitting ornament of +Florence, where there is pure drinking water only on Sundays and +holidays, of Bologna, where there is never any at all. + +The seventeenth century made a very different thing of its +fountains--something as cool, as watery, as the jets which gurgle and +splash in Moorish gardens and halls, and full of form and fancy withal, +the water never alone, but accompanied by its watery suggestion of power +and will and whim. They are so absolutely right, these Roman fountains +of the Bernini school, that we are apt to take them as a matter of +course, as if the horses had reared between the spurts from below and +the gushes and trickles above; as if the Triton had been draped with the +overflowing of his horn; as if the Moor with his turban, the Asiatic +with his veiled fall, the solemn Egyptian river god, had basked and +started back with the lion and the seahorse among the small cataracts +breaking into foam in the pond, the sheets of water dropping, +prefiguring icicles, lazily over the rocks, all stained black by the +north winds and yellow by the lichen, all always, always, in those Roman +gardens and squares, from the beginning of time, natural objects, +perfect and not more to be wondered at than the water-encircled rocks of +the mountains and seashores. Such art as this cannot be done justice to +with the pen; diagrams would be necessary, showing how in every case the +lines of the sculpture harmonise subtly, or clash to be more subtly +harmonised, with the movement, the immensely varied, absolutely +spontaneous movement of the water; the sculptor, become infinitely +modest, willing to sacrifice his own work, to make it uninteresting in +itself, as a result of the hours and days he must have spent watching +the magnificent manners and exquisite tricks of natural waterfalls--nay, +the mere bursting alongside of breakwaters, the jutting up between +stones, of every trout-stream and milldam. It is not till we perceive +its absence (in the fountains, for instance, of modern Paris) that we +appreciate this Roman art of water sculpture. Meanwhile we accept the +fountains as we accept the whole magnificent harmony of nature and +art--nature tutored by art, art fostered by nature--of the Roman villas, +undulating, with their fringe of pines and oaks, over the hillocks and +dells of the Campagna, or stacked up proudly, vineyards and woods all +round, on the steep sides of Alban and Sabine hills. + + +IV + +This book of engravings of the villas of the Serene Princes +Aldobrandini, Pamphili, Borghese, and so forth, brings home to us +another fact, to wit, that the original owners and layers-out thereof +must have had but little enjoyment of them. There they go in their big +coaches, among the immense bows and curtsies of the ladies and gentlemen +and dapper ecclesiastics whom they meet; princes in feathers and laces, +and cardinals in silk and ermine. But the delightful gardens on which +they are being complimented are meanwhile mere dreadful little +plantations, like a nurseryman's squares of cabbages, you would think, +rather than groves of ilexes and cypresses, for, alas, the greatest +princes, the most magnificent cardinals, cannot bribe Time, or hustle +him to hurry up. + +And thus the gardens were planted and grew. For whom? Certainly not for +the men of those days, who would doubtless have been merely shocked +could they have seen or foreseen.... For their ghosts perhaps? Scarcely. +A friend of mine, in whose information on such matters I have implicit +belief, assures me that it is not the _whole_ ghosts of the ladies and +cavaliers of long ago who haunt the gardens; not the ghost of their +everyday, humdrum likeness to ourselves, but the ghost of certain +moments of their existence, certain rustlings, and shimmerings of their +personality, their waywardness, momentary, transcendent graces and +graciousnesses, unaccountable wistfulness and sorrow, certain looks of +the face and certain tones of the voice (perhaps none of the steadiest), +things that seemed to die away into nothing on earth, but which have +permeated their old haunts, clung to the statues with the ivy, risen and +fallen with the plash of the fountains, and which now exhale in the +breath of the honeysuckle and murmur in the voice of the birds, in the +rustle of the leaves and the high, invading grasses. There are some +verses of Verlaine's, which come to me always, on the melancholy minuet +tune to which Monsieur Faure has set them, as I walk in those Italian +gardens, Roman and Florentine, walk in the spirit as well as in the +flesh: + + Votre ame est un paysage choisi + Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques + Jouant du luth et quasi + Tristes sous leurs deguisements fantasques. + Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur + L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune, + Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire a leur bonheur; + Et leur chanson se mele au clair de lune, + Au calme clair de lune triste et beau + Qui fait rever les oiseaux dans les arbres + Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau, + Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres. + + +V + +And this leads me to wonder what these gardens must be when the key has +turned in their rusty gates, and the doorkeeper gone to sleep under the +gun hanging from its nail. What must such places be, Mondragone, for +instance, near Frascati, and the deserted Villa Pucci near Signa, during +the great May nights, when my own small scrap of garden, not beyond +kitchen sounds and servants' lamps, is made wonderful and magical by the +scents which rise up, by the song of the nightingales, the dances of +the fireflies, copying in the darkness below the figures which are +footed by the nimble stars overhead. Into such rites as these, which the +poetry of the past practises with the poetry of summer nights, one durst +not penetrate, save after leaving one's vulgar flesh, one's habits, +one's realities outside the gate. + +And since I have mentioned gates, I must not forget one other sort of +old Italian garden, perhaps the most poetical and pathetic--the garden +that has ceased to exist. You meet it along every Italian highroad or +country lane; a piece of field, tender green with the short wheat in +winter, brown and orange with the dried maize husks and seeding sorghum +in summer, the wide grass path still telling of coaches that once rolled +in; a big stone bench, with sweeping shell-like back under the rosemary +bushes; and, facing the road, between solemnly grouped cypresses or +stately marshalled poplars, a gate of charming hammered iron standing +open between its scroll-work masonry and empty vases, under its covered +escutcheon. The gate that leads to nowhere. + + + + +ABOUT LEISURE + + Sancte Hieronyme, ora pro nobis! + _Litany of the Saints._ + + + +I + +Hung in my room, in such a manner as to catch my eye on waking, is an +excellent photograph of Bellini's _St. Jerome in his Study_. I am aware +that it is not at all by Bellini, but by an inferior painter called +Catena, and I am, therefore, careful not to like it very much. It +occupies that conspicuous place not as a work of art but as an _aid to +devotion_. For I have instituted in my mind, and quite apart from the +orthodox cultus, a special devotion to St. Jerome as the Patron of +Leisure. + +And here let me forestall the cavillings of those who may object that +Hieronymus, whom we call Jerome (born in Dalmatia and died at Bethlehem +about 1500 years ago), was on the contrary a busy, even an overworked +Father of the Church; that he wrote three stout volumes of polemical +treatises, besides many others (including the dispute "concerning +seraphs"), translated the greater part of the Bible into Latin, edited +many obscure texts, and, on the top of it all, kept up an active +correspondence with seven or eight great ladies, a circumstance alone +sufficient to prove that he could not have had much time to spare. I +know. But all that either has nothing to do with it or serves to explain +why St. Jerome was afterwards rewarded by the gift of Leisure, and is, +therefore, to be invoked by all those who aspire at enjoying the same. +For the painters of all schools, faithful to the higher truth, have +agreed in telling us that: first, St. Jerome had a most delightful +study, looking out on the finest scenery; secondly, that he was never +writing, but always reading or looking over the edge of his book at the +charming tables and chairs and curiosities, or at the sea and mountains +through the window; and thirdly, _that he was never interrupted by +anybody_. I underline this item, because on it, above all the others, is +founded my certainty that St. Jerome is the only person who ever +enjoyed perfect leisure, and, therefore, the natural patron and +advocate of all the other persons to whom even imperfect leisure is +refused. In what manner this miracle was compassed is exactly what I +propose to discuss in this essay. An excellent _Roman Catholic_ friend +of mine, to whom I propounded the question, did indeed solve it by +reminding me that Heaven had made St. Jerome a present of a lion who +slept on his door-mat, after which, she thought, his leisure could take +care of itself. But although this answer seems decisive, it really only +begs the question; and we are obliged to inquire further into the _real +nature of St. Jerome's lion_. This formula has a fine theological ring, +calling to mind Hieronymus's own treatise, _Of the Nature of Seraphs_, +and I am pleased to have found anything so suitable to the arrangements +of a Father of the Church. Nevertheless, I propose to investigate into +the subject of Leisure with a method rather human and earthly than in +any way transcendental. + + +II + +We must evidently begin by a little work of defining; and this will be +easiest done by considering first what Leisure is not. In the first +place, it is one of those things about which we erroneously suppose that +other people have plenty of it, and we ourselves have little or none, +owing to our thoroughly realising only that which lies nearest to our +eye--to wit, _ourself_. How often do we not go into another person's +room and say, "Ah! _this_ is a place where one can feel peaceful!" How +often do we not long to share the peacefulness of some old house, say in +a deserted suburb, with its red fruit wall and its cedar half hiding the +windows, or of some convent portico, with glimpses of spaliered orange +trees. Meanwhile, in that swept and garnished spacious room, in that +house or convent, is no peacefulness to share; barely, perhaps, enough +to make life's two ends meet. For we do not see what fills up, chokes +and frets the life of others, whereas we are uncomfortably aware of the +smallest encumbrance in our own; in these matters we feel quickly enough +the mote in our own eye, and do not perceive the beam in our +neighbour's. + +And leisure, like its sister, peace, is among those things which are +internally felt rather than seen from the outside. (Having written this +part of my definition, it strikes me that I have very nearly given away +St. Jerome and St. Jerome's lion, since any one may say, that probably +that famous leisure of his was just one of the delusions in question. +But this is not the case. St. Jerome really had leisure, at least when +he was painted; I know it to be a fact; and, for the purposes of +literature, I require it to be one. So I close this parenthesis with the +understanding that so much is absolutely settled.) + +Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so +much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. We speak of _leisure +time_, but what we really mean thereby is _time in which we can feel at +leisure_. What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. +It has nothing to do with being idle, or having time on one's hands, +although it does involve a certain sense of free space about one, as we +shall see anon. There is time and to spare in a lawyer's waiting-room, +but there is no leisure, neither do we enjoy this blessing when we have +to wait two or three hours at a railway junction. On both these +occasions (for persons who can profit thereby to read the papers, to +learn a verb, or to refresh memories of foreign travel, are distinctly +abnormal) we do not feel in possession of ourselves. There is something +fuming and raging inside us, something which seems to be kicking at our +inner bulwarks as we kicked the cushions of a tardy four-wheeler in our +childhood. St. Jerome, patron of leisure, never behaved like that, and +his lion was always engrossed in pleasant contemplation of the +cardinal's hat on the peg. I have said that when we are bored we feel as +if possessed by something not quite ourselves (much as we feel possessed +by a stone in a shoe, or a cold in the head); and this brings me to a +main characteristic of leisure: it implies that we feel free to do what +we like, and that we have plenty of space to do it in. This is a very +important remark of mine, and if it seem trite, that is merely because +it is so wonderfully true. Besides, it is fraught with unexpected +consequences. + + +III + +The worst enemy of leisure is boredom: it is one of the most active +pests existing, fruitful of vanity and vexation of spirit. I do not +speak merely of the wear and tear of so-called social amusements, though +that is bad enough. We kill time, and kill our better powers also, as +much in the work undertaken to keep off _ennui_ as in the play. Count +Tolstoi, with his terrible eye for shams, showed it all up in a famous +answer to M. Dumas _fils_. Many, many of us, work, he says, in order to +escape from ourselves. Now, we should not want to escape from ourselves; +we ought to carry ourselves, the more unconsciously the better, along +ever widening circles of interest and activity; we should bring +ourselves into ever closer contact with everything that is outside us; +we should be perpetually giving ourselves from sheer loving instinct; +but how can we give ourself if we have run away from it, or buried it at +home, or chained it up in a treadmill? Good work is born of the love of +the Power-to-do for the Job-to-be-done; nor can any sort of chemical +arrangements, like those by which Faust's pupil made _Homunculus_ in +his retort, produce genuinely living, and in its turn fruitful, work. +The fear of boredom, the fear of the moral going to bits which boredom +involves, encumbers the world with rubbish, and exhibitions of pictures, +publishers' announcements, lecture syllabuses, schemes of charitable +societies, are pattern-books of such litter. The world, for many people, +and unfortunately, for the finer and nobler (those most afraid of +_ennui_) is like a painter's garret, where some half-daubed canvas, +eleven feet by five, hides the Jaconda on the wall, the Venus in the +corner, and blocks the charming tree-tops, gables, and distant meadows +through the window. + +Art, literature, and philanthropy are notoriously expressions no longer +of men's and women's thoughts and feelings, but of their dread of +finding themselves without thoughts to think or feelings to feel. +So-called practical persons know this, and despise such employments as +frivolous and effeminate. But are they not also, to a great extent, +frightened of themselves and running away from boredom? See your +well-to-do weighty man of forty-five or fifty, merchant, or soldier, or +civil servant; the same who thanks God _he_ is no idler. Does he really +require more money? Is he more really useful as a colonel than as a +major, in a wig or cocked hat than out of it? Is he not shuffling money +from one heap into another, making rules and regulations for others to +unmake, preparing for future restless idlers the only useful work which +restless idleness can do, the carting away of their predecessor's +litter? + +Nor is this all the mischief. Work undertaken to kill time, at best to +safeguard one's dignity, is clearly not the work which one was born to, +since that would have required no such incentives. Now, trying to do +work one is not fit for, implies the more or less unfitting oneself to +do, or even to be, the something for which one had facilities. It means +competing with those who are utterly different, competing in things +which want a totally different kind of organism; it means, therefore, +offering one's arms and legs, and feelings and thoughts to those blind, +brutal forces of adaptation which, having to fit a human character into +a given place, lengthen and shorten it, mangling it unconcernedly in +the process. + +Say one was naturally adventurous, a creature for open air and quick, +original resolves. Is he the better for a deliberative, sedentary +business, or it for him? There are people whose thought poises on +distant points, swirls and pounces, and gets the prey which can't be got +by stalking along the bushes; there are those who, like divers, require +to move head downwards, feet in the air, an absurd position for going up +hill. There are people who must not feel aesthetically, in order (so Dr. +Bain assures us) that they may be thorough-paced, scientific thinkers; +others who cannot get half a page or fifty dates by heart because they +assimilate and alter everything they take in. + +And think of the persons born to contemplation or sympathy, who, in the +effort to be prompt and practical, in the struggle for a fortune or a +visiting-list lose, atrophy (alas, after so much cruel bruising!) their +inborn exquisite powers. + +The world wants useful inhabitants. True. But the clouds building +bridges over the sea, the storms modelling the peaks and flanks of the +mountains, are a part of the world; and they want creatures to sit and +look at them and learn their life's secrets, and carry them away, +conveyed perhaps merely in altered tone of voice, or brightened colour +of eye, to revive the spiritual and physical hewers of wood and drawers +of water. For the poor sons and daughters of men require for sustenance, +as well as food and fuel, and intellect and morals, the special +mysterious commodity called _charm_.... + + +IV + +And here let me open a parenthesis of lamentation over the ruthless +manner in which our century and nation destroys this precious thing, +even in its root and seed. _Charm_ is, where it exists, an intrinsic and +ultimate quality; it makes our actions, persons, life, significant and +desirable, apart from anything they may lead to, or any use to which +they can be put. Now we are allowing ourselves to get into a state where +nothing is valued, otherwise than as a means; where to-day is +interesting only because it leads up to to-morrow; and the flower is +valued only on account of the fruit, and the fruit, in its turn, on +account of the seed. + +It began, perhaps, with the loss of that sacramental view of life and +life's details which belonged to Judaism and the classic religions, and +of which even Catholicism has retained a share; making eating, drinking, +sleeping, cleaning house and person, let alone marriage, birth, and +death, into something grave and meaningful, not merely animal and +accidental; and mapping out the years into days, each with its symbolic +or commemorative meaning and emotion. All this went long ago, and +inevitably. But we are losing nowadays something analogous and more +important: the cultivation and sanctification not merely of acts and +occasions but of the individual character. + +Life has been allowed to arrange itself, if such can be called +arrangement, into an unstable, jostling heap of interests, ours and +other folk's, serious and vacuous, trusted to settle themselves +according to the line of least resistance (that is, of most breakage!) +and the survival of the toughest, without our sympathy directing the +choice. As the days of the year have become confused, hurried, and +largely filled with worthless toil and unworthy trouble, so in a +measure, alas, our souls! We rarely envy people for being delightful; we +are always ashamed of mentioning that any of our friends are virtuous; +we state what they have done, or do, or are attempting; we state their +chances of success. Yet success may depend, and often does, on greater +hurrying and jostling, not on finer material and workmanship, in our +hurrying times. The quick method, the rapid worker, the cheap object +quickly replaced by a cheaper--these we honour; we want the last new +thing, and have no time to get to love our properties, bodily and +spiritual. 'Tis bad economy, we think, to weave such damask, linen, and +brocade as our fathers have left us; and perhaps this reason accounts +for our love of _bric-a-brac_; we wish to buy associations ready made, +like that wealthy man of taste who sought to buy a half-dozen old +statues, properly battered and lichened by the centuries, to put in his +brand new garden. With this is connected--I mean this indifference to +what folk _are_ as distinguished from what they _do_--the self-assertion +and aggressiveness of many worthy persons, men more than women, and +gifted, alas, more than giftless; the special powers proportionately +accompanied by special odiousness. Such persons cultivate themselves, +indeed, but as fruit and vegetables for the market, and, with good luck +and trouble, possibly _primeurs_: concentrate every means, chemical +manure and sunshine, and quick each still hard pear or greenish +cauliflower into the packing-case, the shavings and sawdust, for export. +It is with such well-endowed persons that originates the terrible mania +(caught by their neighbours) of tangible work, something which can be +put alongside of others' tangible work, if possible with some visible +social number attached to it. So long as this be placed on the stall +where it courts inspection, what matter how empty and exhausted the soul +which has grown it? For nobody looks at souls except those who use them +for this market-gardening. + +Dropping metaphor; it is woeful to see so many fine qualities sacrificed +to _getting on_, independent of actual necessity; getting on, no matter +why, on to the road _to no matter what_. And on that road, what +bitterness and fury if another passes in front! Take up books of +science, of history and criticism, let alone newspapers; half the space +is taken up in explaining (or forestalling explanations), that the sage, +hero, poet, artist said, did, or made the particular thing before some +other sage, hero, poet, artist; and that what the other did, or said, or +made, was either a bungle, or a plagiarism, or worst of all--was +something _obvious_. Hence, like the bare-back riders at the Siena +races, illustrious persons, and would-be illustrious, may be watched +using their energies, not merely in pressing forward, but in hitting +competitors out of the way with inflated bladders--bladders filled with +the wind of conceit, not merely the breath of the lungs. People who +might have been modest and gentle, grow, merely from self-defence, +arrogant and aggressive; they become waspish, contradictory, unfair, who +were born to be wise and just, and well-mannered. And to return to the +question of _Charm_, they lose, soil, maim in this scuffle, much of this +most valuable possession; their intimate essential quality, their +natural manner of being towards nature and neighbours and ideas; their +individual shape, perfume, savour, and, in the sense of herbals, their +individual _virtue_. And when, sometimes, one comes across some of it +remaining, it is with the saddened feeling of finding a delicate plant +trampled by cattle or half eaten up by goats. + +Alas, alas, for charm! People are busy painting pictures, writing poems, +and making music all the world over, and busy making money for the +buying or hiring thereof. But as to that charm of character which is +worth all the music and poetry and pictures put together, how the good +common-sense generations do waste it. + + +V + +Now I suspect that _Charm_ is closely related to _Leisure_. Charm is a +living harmony in the individual soul. It is organised internally, the +expression of mere inborn needs, the offspring of free choice; and as it +is the great giver of pleasure to others, sprung probably from pleasure +within ourselves; making life seem easier, more flexible, even as life +feels in so far easier and more flexible to those who have it. Now even +the best work means struggle, if not with the world and oneself, at +least with difficulties inanimate and animate, pressure and resistance +which make the individual soul stronger, but also harder and less +flower-like, and often a trifle warped by inevitable routine. Hence +Charm is not the nursling of our hours of work, but the delicate and +capricious foster-child of Leisure. For, as observed, Leisure suspends +the pull and push, the rough-and-ready reciprocity of man and +circumstance. 'Tis in leisure that the soul is free to grow by its own +laws, grow inwardly organised and harmonious; its fine individual +hierarchism to form feelings and thoughts, each taking rank and motion +under a conscious headship. 'Tis, I would show, in leisure, while +talking with the persons who are dear, while musing on the themes that +are dearer even than they, that voices learn their harmonious modes, +intonation, accent, pronunciation of single words; all somehow falling +into characteristic pattern, and the features of the face learn to move +with that centred meaning which oftentimes makes homeliness itself more +radiant than beauty. Nay more, may it not be in Leisure, during life's +pauses, that we learn to live, what for and how? + + +VI + +_Life's Pauses._ We think of Leisure in those terms, comparing it with +the scramble, at best the bustle, of work. But this might be a delusion, +like that of the moving shore and the motionless boat. St. Jerome, our +dear patron of Leisure, is looking dreamily over the top of his desk, +listening to the larks outside the wide window, watching the white +sailing clouds. Is he less alive than if his eyes were glued to the +page, his thoughts focussed on one topic, his pen going scratch-scratch, +his soul oblivious of itself? He might be writing fine words, thinking +fine thoughts; but would he have had fine thoughts to think, fine words +to write, if he had always been busy thinking and writing, and had kept +company not with the larks and the clouds and the dear lion on the mat, +but only with the scratching pen? + +For, when all is said and done, 'tis during work we spend, during +leisure we amass those qualities which we barter for ever with other +folk, and the act of barter is _life_. Anyhow, metaphysics apart, and to +return to St. Jerome. This much is clear, that if Leisure were not a +very good thing, this dear old saint would never have been made its +heavenly patron. + +But your discourse, declares the stern reader or he of sicklier +conscience, might be a masked apology for idleness; and pray how many +people would work in this world if every one insisted on having Leisure? +The question, moralising friend, contains its own answer: if every one +insisted on a share of Leisure, every one also would do a share of work. +For as things stand, 'tis the superfluity of one man which makes the +poverty of the other. And who knows? The realisation that Leisure is a +good thing, a thing which every one must have, may, before very long, +set many an idle man digging his garden and grooming his horses, many an +idle woman cooking her dinner and rubbing her furniture. Not merely +because one half of the world (the larger) will have recognised that +work from morning to night is not in any sense living; but also because +the other half may have learned (perhaps through grumbling experience) +that doing nothing all day long, incidentally consuming or spoiling the +work of others, is not _living_ either. The recognition of the necessity +of Leisure, believe me, will imply the recognition of the necessity of +work, as its moral--I might say its _hygienic_, as much as its economic, +co-relative. + +For Leisure (and the ignorance of this truth is at the bottom of much +_ennui_)--Leisure implies a superabundance not only of time but of the +energy needed to spend time pleasantly. And it takes the finest activity +to be truly at Leisure. Since Being at Leisure is but a name for being +active from an inner impulse instead of a necessity; moving like a +dancer or skater for the sake of one's inner rhythm instead of moving, +like a ploughman or an errand-boy, for the sake of the wages you get for +it. Indeed, for this reason, the type of all Leisure is _art_. + +But this is an intricate question, and time, alas! presses. We must +break off this leisurely talk, and betake ourselves each to his +business--let us hope not to his treadmill! And, as we do so, the more +to enjoy our work if luckily useful, the less to detest it if, alas! as +so often in our days, useless; let us invoke the good old greybeard, +painted enjoying himself between his lion and his quail in the +wide-windowed study; and, wishing for leisure, invoke its patron. Give +us spare time, Holy Jerome, and joyful energy to use it. Sancte +Hieronyme, ora pro nobis! + + + + +RAVENNA AND HER GHOSTS + + +My oldest impression of Ravenna, before it became in my eyes the abode +of living friends as well as of outlandish ghosts, is of a melancholy +spring sunset at Classe. + +Classe, which Dante and Boccaccio call in less Latin fashion Chiassi, is +the place where of old the fleet _(classis)_ of the Romans and +Ostrogoths rode at anchor in the Adriatic. And Boccaccio says that it is +(but I think he over-calculates) at three miles distance from Ravenna. +It is represented in the mosaic of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, dating from +the reign of Theodoric, by a fine city wall of gold _tesserae_ (facing +the representation of Theodoric's town palace with the looped-up +embroidered curtains) and a strip of ultramarine sea, with two +rowing-boats and one white blown-out sail upon it. Ravenna, which is now +an inland town, was at that time built in a lagoon; and we must picture +Classe in much the same relation to it that Malamocco or the Port of +Lido is to Venice, the open sea-harbour, where big ships and flotillas +were stationed, while smaller craft wound through the channels and +sand-banks up to the city. But now the lagoon has dried up, the Adriatic +has receded, and there remains of Classis not a stone, save, in the +midst of stagnant canals, rice marsh and brown bogland, a gaunt and +desolate church, with a ruinous mildewed house and a crevassed round +tower by its side. + +It seemed to me that first time, and has ever since seemed, no Christian +church, but the temple of the great Roman goddess Fever. The gates stood +open, as they do all day lest inner damp consume the building, and a +beam from the low sun slanted across the oozy brown nave and struck a +round spot of glittering green on the mosaic of the apse. There, in the +half dome, stood rows and rows of lambs, each with its little tree and +lilies, shining out white from the brilliant green grass of Paradise, +great streams of gold and blue circling around them, and widening +overhead into lakes of peacock splendour. The slanting sunbeam which +burnished that spot of green and gold and brown mosaic, fell also +across the altar steps, brown and green in their wet mildew like the +ceiling above. The floor of the church, sunk below the level of the +road, was as a piece of boggy ground leaving the feet damp, and +breathing a clammy horror on the air. Outside the sun was setting behind +a bank of solid grey clouds, faintly reddening their rifts and sending a +few rose-coloured streaks into the pure yellow evening sky. Against that +sky stood out the long russet line, the delicate cupolaed silhouette of +the sear pinewood recently blasted by frost. While, on the other side, +the marsh stretched out beyond sight, confused in the distance with grey +clouds its lines of bare spectral poplars picked out upon its green and +the greyness of the sky. All round the church lay brown grass, livid +pools, green rice-fields covered with clear water reflecting the red +sunset streaks; and overhead, driven by storm from the sea, the white +gulls, ghosts you might think, of the white-sailed galleys of Theodoric, +still haunting the harbour of Classis. + +Since then, as I hinted, Ravenna has become the home of dear friends, +to which I periodically return, in autumn or winter or blazing summer, +without taking thought for any of the ghosts. And the impressions of +Ravenna are mainly those of life; the voices of children, the plans of +farmers, the squabbles of local politics. I am waked in the morning by +the noises of the market; and opening my shutters, look down upon green +umbrellas and awnings spread over baskets of fruit and vegetables, and +heaps of ironware and stalls of coloured stuffs and gaudy kerchiefs. The +streets are by no means empty. A steam tramcar puffs slowly along the +widest of them; and, in the narrower, you have perpetually to squeeze +against a house to make room for a clattering pony-cart, a jingling +carriole, or one of those splendid bullock-waggons, shaped like an +old-fashioned cannon-cart with spokeless wheels and metal studdings. +There are no mediaeval churches in Ravenna, and very few mediaeval houses. +The older palaces, though practically fortified, have a vague look of +Roman villas; and the whole town is painted a delicate rose and apricot +colour, which, particularly if you have come from the sad coloured +cities of Tuscany, gives it a Venetian, and (if I may say so) +chintz-petticoat flowered-kerchief cheerfulness. And the life of the +people, when you come in contact with it, also leaves an impression of +provincial, rustic bustle. The Romagnas are full of crude socialism. The +change from rice to wheat-growing has produced agricultural discontent; +and conspiracy has been in the blood of these people, ever since Dante +answered the Romagnolo Guido that his country would never have peace in +its heart. The ghosts of Byzantine emperors and exarchs, of Gothic kings +and mediaeval tyrants must be laid, one would think, by socialist +meetings and electioneering squabbles; and perhaps by another movement, +as modern and as revolutionary, which also centres in this big +historical village, the reclaiming of marshland, which may bring about +changes in mode of living and thinking such as Socialism can never +effect; nay, for all one knows, changes in climate, in sea and wind and +clouds. _Bonification_, reclaiming, that is the great word in Ravenna; +and I had scarcely arrived last autumn, before I found myself whirled +off, among dog-carts and _chars-a-bancs_, to view reclaimed land in the +cloudless, pale blue, ice-cold weather. On we trotted, with a great +consulting of maps and discussing of expenses and production, through +the flat green fields and meadows marked with haystacks; and jolted +along a deep sandy track, all that remains of the Romea, the pilgrims' +way from Venice to Rome, where marsh and pool begin to interrupt the +well-kept pastures, and the line of pine woods to come nearer and +nearer. Over the fields, the frequent canals, and hidden ponds, circled +gulls and wild fowl; and at every farm there was a little crowd of +pony-carts and of gaitered sportsmen returning from the marshes. A sense +of reality, of the present, of useful, bread-giving, fever-curing +activity came by sympathy, as I listened to the chatter of my friends, +and saw field after field, farm after farm, pointed out where, but a +while ago, only swamp grass and bushes grew, and cranes and wild duck +nested. In ten, twenty, fifty years, they went on calculating, Ravenna +will be able to diminish by so much the town-rates; the Romagnas will be +able to support so many more thousands of inhabitants; and that merely +by employing the rivers to deposit arable soil torn from the mountain +valleys; the rivers--Po and his followers, as Dante called them--which +have so long turned this country into marsh; the rivers which, in a +thousand years, cut off Ravenna from her sea. + +We turned towards home, greedy for tea, and mightily in conceit with +progress. But before us, at a turn of the road, appeared Ravenna, its +towers and cupolas against a bank of clouds, a piled-up heap of sunset +fire; its canal, barred with flame, leading into its black vagueness, a +spectre city. And there, to the left, among the bare trees, loomed the +great round tomb of Theodoric. We jingled on, silent and overcome by the +deathly December chill. + +That is the odd thing about Ravenna. It is, more than any of the Tuscan +towns, more than most of the Lombard ones, modern, and full of rough, +dull, modern life; and the past which haunts it comes from so far off, +from a world with which we have no contact. Those pillared basilicas, +which look like modern village churches from the street, affect one with +their almost Moorish arches, their enamelled splendour of ultramarine, +russet, sea-green and gold mosaics, their lily fields and peacock's +tails in mosque-like domes, as great stranded hulks, come floating +across Eastern seas and drifted ashore among the marsh and rice-field. +The grapes and ivy berries, the pouting pigeons, the palm-trees and +pecking peacocks, all this early symbolism with its association of +Bacchic, Eleusinian mysteries, seems, quite as much as the actual +fragments of Grecian capitals, the discs and gratings of porphyry and +alabaster, so much flotsam and jetsam cast up from the shipwreck of an +older Antiquity than Rome's; remnants of early Hellas, of Ionia, perhaps +of Tyre. + +I used to feel this particularly in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, or, as it is +usually called, _Classe dentro_, the long basilica built by Theodoric, +outrivalled later by Justinian's octagon church of Saint Vitalis. There +is something extremely Hellenic in feeling (however un-Grecian in form) +in the pearly fairness of the delicate silvery white columns and +capitals; in the gleam of white, on golden ground, and reticulated with +jewels and embroideries, of the long band of mosaic virgins and martyrs +running above them. The virgins, with their Byzantine names--Sancta +Anastasia, Sancta Anatolia, Sancta Eulalia, Sancta Euphemia--have big +kohled eyes and embroidered garments fantastically suggesting some +Eastern hieratic dancing-girl; but they follow each other, in single +file (each with her lily or rose-bush sprouting from the gauze, green +mosaic), with erect, slightly balanced gait like the maidens of the +Panathenaic procession, carrying, one would say, votive offerings to the +altar, rather than crowns of martyrdom; all stately, sedate, as if +drilled by some priestly ballet-master, all with the same wide eyes and +set smile as of early Greek sculpture. There is no attempt to +distinguish one from the other. There are no gaping wounds, tragic +attitudes, wheels, swords, pincers or other attributes of martyrdom. And +the male saints on the wall opposite are equally unlike mediaeval +Sebastians and Laurences, going, one behind the other, in shining white +togas, to present their crowns to Christ on His throne. Christ also, in +this Byzantine art, is never the Saviour. He sits, an angel on each +side, on His golden seat, clad in purple and sandalled with gold, +serene, beardless, wide-eyed like some distant descendant of the +Olympic Jove with his mantle of purple and gold. + +This church of Saint Apollinaris contains a chapel specially dedicated +to the saint, which sums up that curious impression of Hellenic +pre-Christian cheerfulness. It is encrusted with porphyry and _giallo +antico_, framed with delicate carved ivy wreaths along the sides, and +railed in with an exquisite piece of alabaster openwork of vines and +grapes, as on an antique altar. And in a corner of this little temple, +which seems to be waiting for some painter enamoured of Greece and +marble, stands the episcopal seat of the patron saint of the church, the +saint who took his name from Apollo; an alabaster seat, wide-curved and +delicate, in whose back you expect to find, so striking is the +resemblance, the relief of dancing satyrs of the chair of the Priest of +Dionysus. + +As I was sitting one morning, as was my wont, in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, +which (like all Ravenna churches) is always empty, a woman came in, with +a woollen shawl over her head, who, after hunting anxiously about, asked +me where she would find the parish priest. "It is," she said, "for the +Madonna's milk. My husband is a labourer out of work, he has been ill, +and the worry of it all has made me unable to nurse my little baby. I +want the priest, to ask him to get the Madonna to give me back my milk." +I thought, as I listened to the poor creature, that there was but little +hope of motherly sympathy from that Byzantine Madonna in purple and gold +mosaic magnificence, seated ceremoniously on her throne like an antique +Cybele. + +Little by little one returns to one's first impression, and recognises +that this thriving little provincial town, with its socialism and its +_bonification_ is after all a nest of ghosts, and little better than the +churchyard of centuries. + +Never, surely, did a town contain so many coffins, or at least thrust +coffins more upon one's notice. The coffins are stone, immense oblong +boxes, with massive sloping lids horned at each corner, or trough-like +things with delicate sea-wave patternings, figures of toga'd saints and +devices of palm-trees, peacocks, and doves, the carving made clearer by +a picking out of bright green damp. They stand about in all the +churches, not walled in, but quite free in the aisles, the chapels, and +even close to the door. Most of them are doubtless of the fifth or sixth +century, others perhaps barbarous or mediaeval imitations; but they all +equally belong to the ages in general, including our own, not +curiosities or heirlooms, but serviceable furniture, into which +generations have been put, and out of which generations have been turned +to make room for later corners. It strikes one as curious at first to +see, for instance, the date 1826 on a sarcophagus probably made under +Theodoric or the Exarchs, but that merely means that a particular +gentleman of Ravenna began that year his lease of entombment. They have +passed from hand to hand (or, more properly speaking, from corpse to +corpse) not merely by being occasionally discovered in digging +foundations, but by inheritance, and frequently by sale. My friends +possess a stone coffin, and the receipt from its previous owner. The +transaction took place some fifty years ago; a name (they are cut very +lightly) changed, a slab or coat-of-arms placed with the sarcophagus in +a different church or chapel, a deed before the notary--that was all. +What became of the previous tenant? Once at least he surprised posterity +very much; perhaps it was in the case of that very purchase for which my +friends still keep the bill. I know not; but the stone-mason of the +house used to relate that, some forty years ago, he was called in to +open a stone coffin; when, the immense horned lid having been rolled +off, there was seen, lying in the sarcophagus, a man in complete armour, +his sword by his side and vizor up, who, as they cried out in +astonishment, instantly fell to dust. Was he an Ostrogothic knight, some +Gunther or Volker turned Roman senator, or perhaps a companion of Guido +da Polenta, a messmate of Dante, a playfellow of Francesca? + +Coffins being thus plentiful, their occupants (like this unknown +warrior) have played considerable part in the gossip of Ravenna. It is +well known, for instance, that Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius, +sister of Arcadius and Honorius, and wife to a Visigothic king, sat for +centuries enthroned (after a few years of the strangest adventures) +erect, inside the alabaster coffin, formerly plated with gold, in the +wonderful little blue mosaic chapel which bears her name. You could see +her through a hole, quite plainly; until, three centuries ago, some +inquisitive boys thrust in a candle, and burned Theodosius's daughter to +ashes. Dante also is buried under a little cupola at the corner of a +certain street, and there was, for many years, a strange doubt about his +bones. Had they been mislaid, stolen, mixed up with those of ordinary +mortals? The whole thing was shrouded in mystery. That street corner +where Dante lies, a remote corner under the wing of a church, resembled, +until it was modernised and surrounded by gratings, and filled with +garlands and inscriptions to Mazzini, nothing so much as the corner of +Dis where Dante himself found Farinata and Cavalcante. It is crowded +with stone coffins; and, passing there in the twilight, one might expect +to see flames upheaving their lids, and the elbows and shoulders of +imprisoned followers of Epicurus. + +Only once, so far as I know, have the inhabitants of Ravenna, Byzantine, +mediaeval, or modern, wasted a coffin; but one is very glad of that once. +I am speaking of a Roman sarcophagus, on which you can still trace the +outlines of garlands, which stands turned into a cattle trough, behind +the solitary farm in the depth of the forest of St. Vitalis. Round it +the grass is covered in summer by the creeping tendrils of the white +clematis; and, in winter, the great thorn bushes and barberries and oaks +blaze out crimson and scarlet and golden. The big, long-horned, grey +cows pass to and fro to be milked; and the shaggy ponies who haunt the +pine wood come there to drink. It is better than housing no matter how +many generations, jurisconsults, knights, monks, tyrants and persons of +quality, among the damp and the stale incense of a church! + +Enough of coffins! There are live things at Ravenna and near Ravenna; +amongst others, though few people realise its presence, there is the +sea. + +It was on the day of the fish auction that I first went there. In the +tiny port by the pier (for Ravenna has now no harbour) they were making +an incredible din over the emptyings of the nets; pretty, mottled, +metallic fish, and slimy octopuses and sepias and flounders, looking +like pieces of sea-mud. The fishing-boats, mostly from the Venetian +lagoon, were moored along the pier, wide-bowed things, with eyes in the +prow like the ships of Ulysses; and bigger craft, with little castles +and weather-vanes and saints' images and penons on the masts like the +galleys of St. Ursula as painted by Carpaccio; but all with the splendid +orange sail, patched with suns, lions, and coloured stripes, of the +Northern Adriatic. The fishermen from Chioggia, their heads covered with +the high scarlet cap of the fifteenth century, were yelling at the +fishmongers from town; and all round lounged artillerymen in their white +undress and yellow straps, who are encamped for practice on the sands, +and whose carts and guns we had met rattling along the sandy road +through the marsh. + +On the pier we were met by an old man, very shabby and unshaven, who had +been the priest for many years, with a salary of twelve pounds a year, +of Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori, a little Gothic church in the marsh, where +he had discovered and rubbed slowly into existence (it took him two +months and heaven knows how many pennyworths of bread!) some valuable +Giottesque frescoes. He was now chaplain of the harbour, and had turned +his mind to maritime inventions, designing lighthouses, and shooting +dolphins to make oil of their blubber. A kind old man, but with the odd +brightness of a creature who has lived for years amid solitude and +fever; a fit companion for the haggard saints whom he brought, one by +one, in robes of glory and golden halos, to life again in his forlorn +little church. + +While we were looking out at the sea, where a little flotilla of yellow +and cinnamon sails sat on the blue of the view-line like parrots on a +rail, the sun had begun to set, a crimson ball, over the fringe of pine +woods. We turned to go. Over the town, the place whence presently will +emerge the slanting towers of Ravenna, the sky had become a brilliant, +melancholy slate-blue; and apparently out of its depths, in the early +twilight, flowed the wide canal between its dim banks fringed with +tamarisk. No tree, no rock, or house was reflected in the jade-coloured +water, only the uniform shadow of the bank made a dark, narrow band +alongside its glassiness. It flows on towards the invisible sea, whose +yellow sails overtop the grey marshland. In thick smooth strands of +curdled water it flows lilac, pale pink, opalescent according to the +sky above, reflecting nothing besides, save at long intervals the +spectral spars and spider-like tissue of some triangular fishing-net; a +wan and delicate Lethe, issuing, you would say, out of a far-gone past +into the sands and the almost tideless sea. + +Other places become solemn, sad, or merely beautiful at sunset. But +Ravenna, it seems to me, grows actually ghostly; the Past takes it back +at that moment, and the ghosts return to the surface. + +For it is, after all, a nest of ghosts. They hang about all those +silent, damp churches; invisible, or at most tantalising one with a +sudden gleam which may, after all, be only that of the mosaics, an +uncertain outline which, when you near it, is after all only a pale grey +column. But one feels their breathing all round. They are legion, but I +do not know who they are. I only know that they are white, luminous, +with gold embroideries to their robes, and wide, painted eyes, and that +they are silent. The good citizens of Ravenna, in the comfortable +eighteenth century, filled the churches with wooden pews, convenient, +genteel in line and colour, with their names and coats-of-arms in full +on the backs. But the ghosts took no notice of this measure; and there +they are, even among these pews themselves. + +Bishops and Exarchs, and jewelled Empresses, and half Oriental +Autocrats, saints and bedizened court-ladies, and barbarian guards and +wicked chamberlains; I know not what they are. Only one of the ghosts +takes a shape I can distinguish, and a name I am certain of. It is not +Justinian or Theodora, who stare goggle-eyed from their mosaic in San +Vitale mere wretched historic realities; _they_ cannot haunt. The +spectre I speak of is Theodoric. His tomb is still standing, outside the +town in an orchard; a great round tower, with a circular roof made +(heaven knows how) of one huge slab of Istrian stone, horned at the +sides like the sarcophagi, or vaguely like a Viking's cap. The ashes of +the great king have long been dispersed, for he was an Arian heretic. +But the tomb remains, intact, a thing which neither time nor earthquake +can dismantle. + +In the town they show a piece of masonry, the remains of a doorway, and +a delicate, pillared window, built on to a modern house, which is +identified (but wrongly I am told) as Theodoric's palace, by its +resemblance to the golden palace with the looped-up curtains on the +mosaic of the neighbouring church. Into the wall of this building is +built a great Roman porphyry bath, with rings carved on it, to which +time has adjusted a lid of brilliant green lichen. There is no more. But +Theodoric still haunts Ravenna. I have always, ever since I have known +the town, been anxious to know more about Theodoric, but the accounts +are jejune, prosaic, not at all answering to what that great king, who +took his place with Attila and Sigurd in the great Northern epic, must +have been. Historians represent him generally as a sort of superior +barbarian, trying to assimilate and save the civilisation he was bound +to destroy; an Ostrogothic king trying to be a Roman emperor; a military +organiser and bureaucrat, exchanging his birthright of Valhalla for +heaven knows what aulic red-tape miseries. But that is unsatisfactory. +The real man, the Berserker trying to tame himself into the Caesar of a +fallen, shrunken Rome, seems to come out in the legend of his remorse +and visions, pursued by the ghosts of Boetius and Symmachus, the wise +men he had slain in his madness. + +He haunts Ravenna, striding along the aisles of her basilicas, riding +under the high moon along the dykes of her marshes, surrounded by +white-stoled Romans, and Roman ensigns with eagles and crosses; but +clad, as the Gothic brass-worker of Innsbruck has shown him, in no Roman +lappets and breastplate, but in full mail, with beaked steel shoes and +steel gorget, his big sword drawn, his vizor down, mysterious, the +Dietrich of the Nibelungenlied, Theodoric King of the Goths. + +These are the ghosts that haunt Ravenna, the true ghosts haunting only +for such as can know their presence. But Ravenna, almost alone among +Italian cities, possesses moreover a complete ghost-story of the most +perfect type and highest antiquity, which has gone round the world and +become known to all people. Boccaccio wrote it in prose; Dryden re-wrote +it in verse; Botticelli illustrated it; and Byron summed up its quality +in one of his most sympathetic passages. After this, to re-tell it were +useless, had I not chanced to obtain, in a manner I am not at liberty to +divulge, another version, arisen in Ravenna itself, and written, most +evidently, in fullest knowledge of the case. Its language is the +barbarous Romagnol dialect of the early fifteenth century, and it lacks +all the Tuscan graces of the Decameron. But it possesses a certain air +of truthfulness, suggesting that it was written by some one who had +heard the facts from those who believed in them, and who believed in +them himself; and I am therefore decided to give it, turned into +English. + + +THE LEGEND + +About that time (when Messer Guido da Pollenta was lord of Ravenna) men +spoke not a little of what happened to Messer Nastasio de Honestis, son +of Messer Brunoro, in the forest of Classis. Now the forest of Classis +is exceeding vast, extending along the sea-shore between Ravenna and +Cervia for the space of some fifteen miles, and has its beginning near +the church of Saint Apollinaris, which is in the marsh; and you reach +it directly from the gate of the same name, but also, crossing the River +Ronco where it is easier to ford, by the gate called Sisa, beyond the +houses of the Rasponis. And this forest aforesaid is made of many kinds +of noble and useful trees, to wit, oaks, both free standing and in +bushes, ilexes, elms, poplars, bays, and many plants of smaller growth +but great dignity and pleasantness, as hawthorns, barberries, +blackthorn, blackberry, brier-rose, and the thorn called marrucca, which +bears pods resembling small hats or cymbals, and is excellent for +hedging. But principally does this noble forest consist of pine-trees, +exceeding lofty and perpetually green; whence indeed the arms of this +ancient city, formerly the seat of the Emperors of Rome, are none other +than a green pine-tree. + +And the forest aforesaid is well stocked with animals, both such as run +and creep, and many birds. The animals are foxes, badgers, hares, +rabbits, ferrets, squirrels, and wild boars, the which issue forth and +eat the young crops and grub the fields with incredible damage to all +concerned. Of the birds it would be too long to speak, both of those +which are snared, shot with cross-bows, or hunted with the falcon; and +they feed off fish in the ponds and streams of the forest, and grasses +and berries, and the pods of the white vine (clematis) which covers the +grass on all sides. And the manner of Messer Nastasio being in the +forest was thus, he being at the time a youth of twenty years or +thereabouts, of illustrious birth, and comely person and learning and +prowess, and modest and discreet bearing. For it so happened that, being +enamoured of the daughter of Messer Hostasio de Traversariis, the +damsel, who was lovely, but exceeding coy and shrewish, would not +consent to marry him, despite the desire of her parents, who in +everything, as happens with only daughters of old men (for Messer +Hostasio was well stricken in years), sought only to please her. +Whereupon Messer Nastasio, fearing lest the damsel might despise his +fortunes, wasted his substance in presents and feastings, and joustings, +but all to no avail. + +When it happened that having spent nearly all he possessed and ashamed +to show his poverty and his unlucky love before the eyes of his +townsmen, he betook him to the forest of Classis, it being autumn, on +the pretext of snaring birds, but intending to take privily the road to +Rimini and thence to Rome, and there seek his fortune. And Nastasio took +with him fowling-nets, and bird-lime, and tame owls, and two horses (one +of which was ridden by his servant), and food for some days; and they +alighted in the midst of the forest, and slept in one of the +fowling-huts of cut branches set up by the citizens of Ravenna for their +pleasure. + +And it happened that on the afternoon of the second day (and it chanced +to be a Friday) of his stay in the forest, Messer Nastasio, being +exceeding sad in his heart, went forth towards the sea to muse upon the +unkindness of his beloved and the hardness of his fortune. Now you +should know that near the sea, where you can clearly hear its roaring +even on windless days there is in that forest a clear place, made as by +the hand of man, set round with tall pines even like a garden, but in +the shape of a horse-course, free from bushes and pools, and covered +with the finest greensward. Here, as Nastasio sate him on the trunk of a +pine--the hour was sunset, the weather being uncommon clear--he heard a +rushing sound in the distance, as of the sea; and there blew a +death-cold wind; and then came sounds of crashing branches, and neighing +of horses, and yelping of hounds, and halloes and horns. And Nastasio +wondered greatly, for that was not the hour for hunting; and he hid +behind a great pine trunk, fearing to be recognised. And the sounds came +nearer, even of horns, and hounds, and the shouts of huntsmen; and the +bushes rustled and crashed, and the hunt rushed into the clearing, +horsemen and foot, with many hounds. And behold, what they pursued was +not a wild boar, but something white that ran erect, and it seemed to +Messer Nastasio, as if it greatly resembled a naked woman; and it +screamed piteously. + +Now when the hunt had swept past, Messer Nastasio rubbed his eyes and +wondered greatly. But even as he wondered, and stood in the middle of +the clearing, behold, part of the hunt swept back, and the thing which +they pursued ran in a circle on the greensward, shrieking piteously. And +behold, it was a young damsel, naked, her hair loose and full of +brambles, with only a tattered cloth round her middle. And as she came +near to where Messer Nastasio was standing (but no one of the hunt +seemed to heed him) the hounds were upon her, barking furiously, and a +hunter on a black horse, black even as night. And a cold wind blew and +caused Nastasio's hair to stand on end; and he tried to cry out, and to +rush forward, but his voice died in his throat and his limbs were heavy, +and covered with sweat, and refused to move. + +Then the hounds fastening on the damsel threw her down, and he on the +black horse turned swiftly, and transfixed her, shrieking dismally, with +a boar-spear. And those of the hunt galloped up, and wound their horns; +and he of the black horse, which was a stately youth habited in a coat +of black and gold, and black boots and black feathers on his hat, threw +his reins to a groom, and alighted and approached the damsel where she +lay, while the huntsmen were holding back the hounds and winding their +horns. Then he drew a knife, such as are used by huntsmen, and driving +its blade into the damsel's side, cut out her heart, and threw it, all +smoking, into the midst of the hounds. And a cold wind rustled through +the bushes, and all had disappeared, horses, and huntsmen, and hounds. +And the grass was untrodden as if no man's foot or horse's hoof had +passed there for months. + +And Messer Nastasio shuddered, and his limbs loosened, and he knew that +the hunter on the black horse was Messer Guido Degli Anastagi, and the +damsel Monna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara. Messer Guido +had loved the damsel greatly, and been flouted by her, and leaving his +home in despair, had been killed on the way by robbers, and Madonna +Filomena had died shortly after. The tale was still fresh in men's +memory, for it had happened in the city of Ravenna barely five years +before. And those whom Nastasio had seen, both the hunter and the lady, +and the huntsmen and horses and hounds, were the spirits of the dead. + +When he had recovered his courage, Messer Nastasio sighed and said unto +himself: "How like is my fate to that of Messer Guido! Yet would I +never, even when a spectre, without weight or substance, made of wind +and delusion, and arisen from hell, act with such cruelty towards her I +love." And then he thought: "Would that the daughter of Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis might hear of this! For surely it would cause her to +relent!" But he knew that his words would be vain, and that none of the +citizens of Ravenna, and least of all the damsel of the Traversari, +would believe them, but rather esteem him a madman. + +Now it came about that when Friday came round once more, Nastasio, by +some chance, was again walking in the forest-clearing by the great +pines, and he had forgotten; when the sea began to roar, and a cold wind +blew; and there came through the forest the sound of horses and hounds, +causing Messer Nastasio's hair to stand up and his limbs to grow weak as +water. And he on the black horse again pursued the naked damsel, and +struck here with his boar-spear, and cut out her heart and threw it to +the hounds; the which hunter and damsel were the ghosts of Messer Guido, +and of Madonna Filomena, daughter of the Lord of Gambellara, arisen out +of Hell. And in this fashion did it happen for three Fridays following, +the sea beginning to moan, the cold wind to blow and the spirits to +hunt the deceased damsel at twilight in the clearing among the +pine-trees. + +Now when Messer Nastasio noticed this, he thanked Cupid, which is the +Lord of all Lovers, and devised in his mind a cunning plan. And he +mounted his horse and returned to Ravenna, and gave out to his friends +that he had found a treasure in Rome; and that he was minded to forget +the damsel of the Traversari and seek another wife. But in reality he +went to certain money-lenders, and gave himself into bondage, even to be +sold as a slave to the Dalmatian pirates if he could not repay his loan. +And he published that he desired to take to him a wife, and for that +reason would feast all his friends and the chief citizens of Ravenna, +and regale them with a pageant in the pine forest, where certain foreign +slaves of his should show wonderful feats for their delight. And he sent +forth invitations, and among them to Messer Pavolo de Traversariis and +his wife and daughter. And he bid them for a Friday, which was also the +eve of the Feast of the Dead. + +Meanwhile he took to the pine forest carpenters and masons, and such as +paint and gild cunningly, and waggons of timber, and cut stone for +foundations, and furniture of all kinds; and the waggons were drawn by +four and twenty yoke of oxen, grey oxen of the Romagnol breed. And he +caused the artisans to work day and night, making great fires of dry +myrtle and pine branches, which lit up the forest all around. And he +caused them to make foundations, and build a pavilion of timber in the +clearing which is the shape of a horse-course, surrounded by pines. The +pavilion was oblong, raised by ten steps above the grass, open all round +and reposing on arches and pillars; and there was a projecting _abacus_ +under the arches over the capitals, after the Roman fashion; and the +pillars were painted red, and the capitals red also picked out with gold +and blue, and a shield with the arms of the Honestis on each. The roof +was raftered, each rafter painted with white lilies on a red ground, and +heads of youths and damsels; and the roof outside was made of wooden +tiles, shaped like shells and gilded. And on the top of the roof was a +weather-vane; and the vane was a figure of Cupid, god of love, +cunningly carved of wood and painted like life, as he flies, poised in +air, and shoots his darts on mortals. He was winged and blindfolded, to +show that love is inconstant and no respecter of persons; and when the +wind blew, he turned about, and the end of his scarf, which was beaten +metal, swung in the wind. Now when the pavilion was ready, within six +days of its beginning, carpets were spread on the floor, and seats +placed, and garlands of bay and myrtle slung from pillar to pillar +between the arches. And tables were set, and sideboards covered with +gold and silver dishes and trenchers; and a raised place, covered with +arras, was made for the players of fifes and drums and lutes; and tents +were set behind for the servants, and fires prepared for cooking meat. +Whole oxen and sheep were brought from Ravenna in wains, and casks of +wine, and fruit and white bread, and many cooks, and serving-men, and +musicians, all habited gallantly in the colours of the Honestis, which +are vermilion and white, parti-coloured, with black stripes; and they +wore doublets laced with gold, and on their breast the arms of the +house of Honestis, which are a dove holding a leaf. + +Now on Friday the eve of the Feast of the Dead, all was ready, and the +chief citizens of Ravenna set out for the forest of Classis, with their +wives and children and servants, some on horseback, and others in wains +drawn by oxen, for the tracks in that forest are deep. And when they +arrived, Messer Nastasio welcomed them and thanked them all, and +conducted them to their places in the pavilion. Then all wondered +greatly at its beauty and magnificence, and chiefly Messer Pavolo de +Traversariis; and he sighed, and thought within himself, "Would that my +daughter were less shrewish, that I might have so noble a son-in-law to +prop up my old age!" They were seated at the tables, each according to +their dignity, and they ate and drank and praised the excellence of the +cheer; and flowers were scattered on the tables, and young maidens sang +songs in praise of love, most sweetly. Now when they had eaten their +fill, and the tables been removed, and the sun was setting between the +pine-trees, Messer Nastasio caused them all to be seated facing the +clearing, and a herald came forward, in the livery of the Honestis, +sounding his trumpet and declaring in a loud voice that they should now +witness a pageant, the which was called the Mystery of Love and Death. +Then the musicians struck up, and began a concert of fifes and lutes, +exceeding sweet and mournful. And at that moment the sea began to moan, +and a cold wind to blow: a sound of horsemen and hounds and horns and +crashing branches came through the wood; and the damsel, the daughter of +the Lord of Gambellara, rushed naked, her hair streaming and her veil +torn, across the grass, pursued by the hounds, and by the ghost of +Messer Guido on the black horse, the nostrils of which were filled with +fire. Now when the ghost of Messer Guido struck that damsel with the +boar-spear, and cut out her heart, and threw it, while the others wound +their horns, to the hounds, and all vanished, Messer Nastasio de +Honestis, seizing the herald's trumpet, blew in it, and cried in a loud +voice, "The Pageant of Death and Love! The Pageant of Death and Love! +Such is the fate of cruel damsels!" and the gilt Cupid on the roof swung +round creaking dreadfully, and the daughter of Messer Pavolo uttered a +great shriek and fell on the ground in a swoon. + + * * * * * + +Here the Romagnol manuscript comes to a sudden end, the outer sheet +being torn through the middle. But we know from the Decameron that the +damsel of the Traversari was so impressed by the spectre-hunt she had +witnessed that she forthwith relented towards Nastagio degli Onesti, and +married him, and that they lived happily ever after. But whether or not +that part of the pine forest of Classis still witnesses this ghostly +hunt, we have no means of knowing. + +On the whole, I incline to think that, when the great frost blasted the +pines (if not earlier) the ghosts shifted quarters from the forest of +Classis to the church of the same name, on that forest's brink. +Certainly there seems nothing to prevent them. Standing in the midst of +those uninhabited rice-fields and marshes, the church of Classis is yet +always open, from morning till night; the great portals gaping, no +curtain interposed. Open and empty; mass not even on Sundays; empty of +human beings, open to the things of without. The sunbeams enter through +the open side windows, cutting a slice away from that pale, greenish +twilight; making a wedge of light on the dark, damp bricks; bringing +into brief prominence some of the great sarcophagi, their peacocks and +palm-trees picked out in vivid green lichen. Snakes also enter, the +Sacristan tells me, and I believe it, for within the same minute, I saw +a dead and a living one among the arum leaves at the gate. Is that +little altar, a pagan-looking marble table, isolated in the midst of the +church, the place where they meet, pagan creatures claiming those +Grecian marbles? Or do they hunt one another round the aisles and into +the crypt, slithering and hissing, the souls of Guido degli Anastagi, +perhaps, and of his cruel lady love? + +Such are Ravenna and Classis, and the Ghosts that haunt them. + + + + +THE COOK-SHOP AND THE FOWLING-PLACE + + +In the street of the Almond and appropriately close to the covered-over +canal (Rio Terra) of the Assassins, there is a cook-shop which has +attracted my attention these two last months in Venice. For in its +window is a row of tiny corpses--birds, raw, red, with agonised plucked +little throats, the throats through which the sweet notes came. And the +sight brings home to me more than the suggestion of a dish at supper, +savoury things of the size of a large plum, on a cushion of polenta.... + +I had often noticed the fowling-places which stand out against the sky +like mural crowns on the low hills of Northern Italy; Bresciana is the +name given to the thing, from the province, doubtless, of its origin. +Last summer, driving at the foot of the Alps of Friuli, such a place was +pointed out to me on a green knoll; it marked the site of a village of +Collalto, once the fief of the great family of that name, which had +died, disappeared, church and all, after the Black Death of the +fourteenth century. + +The strangeness of the matter attracted me; and I set out, the next +morning, to find the fowling-place. I thought I must have lost my way, +and was delighting in the radiance of a perfectly fresh, clear, already +autumnal morning, walking along through the flowery grass fields in +sight of the great mountains, when, suddenly, there I was before the +uncanny thing, the Bresciana. Uncanny in its odd shape of walled and +moated city of clipped bushes, tight-closed on its hill-top, with its +Guelph battlements of hornbeam against the pale blue sky. And uncannier +for its mysterious delightfulness. Imagine it set in the loveliest mossy +grass, full of delicate half-Alpine flowers; beautiful butterflies +everywhere about; and the sort of ditch surrounding it overgrown with +blackberries, haws, sloes, ivy, all manner of berries; a sort of false +garden of paradise for the poor birds. + +But when I craned over the locked wicket and climbed on to the ladder +alongside, what I saw was more uncanny yet. I looked down on to rows of +clipped, regular, hornbeam hedges, with grass paths between them, +maze-like. A kind of Versailles for the birds, you might think. Only, in +the circular grass plot from which those green hedges and paths all +radiated, something alarming: an empty cage hung to a tree. And going +the round of the place I discovered that between the cut hornbeam +battlements of the circular enclosure there was a wreath of thin wire +nooses, almost invisible, in which the poor little birds hang +themselves. It seems oddly appropriate that this sinister little place, +with its vague resemblance to that clipped garden in which Mantegna's +allegorical Vices are nesting, should be, in fact, a cemetery; that tiny +City of Dis of the Birds, on its green hillock in front of the great +blue Alps, being planted on those villagers dead of the Plague. + +The fowling-place began to haunt me, and I was filled with a perhaps +morbid desire to know more of its evil rites. After some inquiry, I +introduced myself accordingly to the most famous fowler of the +neighbourhood, the owner of a wineshop at Martignacco. He received me +with civility, and expounded his trade with much satisfaction; an +amiable, intelligent old man, with sufficient of Italian in that +province of strange dialect. + +In the passage at the foot of his staircase and under sundry dark arches +he showed me a quantity of tiny wooden cages and of larger cages divided +into tiny compartments. There were numbers of goldfinches, a blackbird, +some small thrushes, an ortolan, and two or three other kinds I could +not identify; nay, even a brace of unhappy quail in a bottle-shaped +basket. These are the decoys; the cages are hung in the circular walks +of the fowling-place, and the wretched little prisoners, many of them +blinded of one or both eyes, sing their hearts out and attract their +companions into the nooses. Then he showed me the nets--like thin, thin +fishing nets--for quail; and the little wands which are covered with +lime and which catch the wings of the creatures; but that seemed a +merciful proceeding compared with the gruesome snares of the Bresciana. +When he had shown me these things he produced a little Jew's-harp, on +which he fell to imitating the calls of various birds. But I noticed +that none of the little blinded prisoners hanging aloft made any +response. Only, quite spontaneously and all of a sudden, the poor +goldfinches set up a loud and lovely song; and the solitary blackbird +gave a whistle. Never have I heard anything more lugubrious than these +hedgerow and woodland notes issuing from the cages in that damp, black +corridor. And the old fowler, for all his venerable appearance and +gentleness of voice and manner, struck me as a wicked warlock, and own +sib of the witch who turned Jorinde and Jorinel into nightingales in her +little house hung round with cages. + +A few days after my visit to the fowler, and one of the last evenings I +had in Friuli, I was walking once more beneath the Castle. After +threading the narrow green lanes, blocked by great hay-carts, I came of +a sudden on an open, high-lying field of mossy grass, freshly scythed, +with the haycocks still upon it, and a thin plantation of larches on one +side. And in front, at the end of that grey-green sweetness, the Alps of +Cadore, portals and battlements of dark leaden blue, with the last +flame-colour of sunset behind them, and the sunset's last rosy feathers +rising into the pale sky. The mowers were coming slowly along, +shouldering their scythes and talking in undertones, as folk do at that +hour. I also walked home in the quickly gathering twilight; the delicate +hemlock flowers of an unmowed field against the pearly luminous sky; the +wonderful blue of the thistles singing out in the dusk of the grass. +There rose the scent of cut grass, of ripening maize, and every +freshness of acacia and poplar leaf; and the crickets began to shrill. + +As the light faded away I passed within sight of the fowling-place, the +little sinister formal garden of Versailles on the mound marking the +village which had died of the Black Death. + +This is what returned to my mind every time, lately in Venice, that I +passed that cook-shop near the closed-up Canal of the Assassins, and saw +the row of tiny corpses ready for roasting. The little throats which +sang so sweetly had got caught, had writhed, twisted in the tiny wire +nooses between the hornbeam battlements. What ruffling of feathers and +starting of eyeballs in agony there had been, while the poor blind +decoy, finch or blackbird, sang, sang on in his cage on the central +grass-plot! + +And we scrunch them under our knife and tooth, and remark how excellent +are little birds on a cushion of polenta, between a sage-leaf and a bit +of bacon! But fowling-places have come down from the remotest and most +venerable antiquity; and they exist of all kinds; and some of them, +moreover, are allegories. + + + + +ACQUAINTANCE WITH BIRDS + + +One of the things I should have liked, I said to myself to-day, as I +rode past one of the dreadful little fowling-places on the ridge of our +hills, would have been to become acquainted with birds.... + +The wish is simple, but quite without hope for a dweller in Tuscany, +where, what with poverty and lawlessness, peasants' nets and city +'prentices' guns, there are no birds whose acquaintance you can make. +You hear them singing and twittering, indeed, wherever a clump of garden +ilexes or a cypress hedge offers them protection; but they never let +themselves be seen, for they know that being seen is being shot: or at +least being caged. They cage them for singing, nightingales, thrushes, +and every kind of finch; and you can see them, poor isolated captives, +in rows and rows of cages in the markets. That is the way that people +like them: a certain devout lady of my neighbourhood, for instance, +whose little seventeenth-century house was hung round with endless tiny +cages, like the witches in the tale of Jorinde and Jorinel; a wicked +witch herself, no doubt, despite her illuminations in honour of the +Madonna, who should have taught her better. Another way of liking +singing-birds is on toast between a scrap of bacon and a leaf of sage, a +dainty dish much prized by persons of weak stomach. Persons with bad +digestions are apt, I fancy, to lose, and make others forego, much +pleasant companionship of soul. + +For animals, at least, when not turned into pets, are excellent +companions for our souls. I say expressly "when not pets," because the +essence of this spiritual (for it _is_ spiritual) relation between us +and creatures is that they should not become our property, nor we +theirs; that we should be able to refresh ourselves by the thought and +contemplation of a life apart from our own, different from it; in some +ways more really natural, and, at all events, capable of seeming more +natural to our fancy. And birds, for many reasons, meet this +requirement to perfection. I have read, indeed, in various works that +they are not without vices, not a bit kinder than the other unkind +members of creation; and that their treatment of the unfit among +themselves is positively inhuman--or shall I say human? Perhaps this is +calumny, or superficial judgment of their sterner morality; but, be this +as it may, it is evident that they are in many respects very charming +people. It is very nice of them to be so aesthetic, to be amused and kept +quiet, like the hen birds, by music; and the tone of their conversation +is quite exquisitely affable. + +My own opportunities of watching their proceedings have, alas! been very +limited; but, judging by the pigeons at Venice, they are wonderfully +forbearing and courteous to each other. I have often watched these +pigeons having their morning bath at the corner of St. Mark's, in a +little shallow trough in the pavement. They collect round by scores, and +wait for room to go in quite patiently; while the crowd inside ruffle, +dip, throw up water into their wings and shake it off; a mass of moving +grey and purple feathers, with never an angry push or a cry of +ill-temper among them. So I can readily believe a certain friend of mine +who passes hours in English brakes and hedgerows, watching birds through +special ten-guinea opera-glasses, that time and money could not be +better spent. + +One reason, moreover, why all animals (one feels that so much in +Kipling's stories) are excellent company for our spirit is surely +because they are animals, not men; because the thought of them relieves +us therefore from that sense of overcrowding and jostling and general +wordiness and fuss from which we all suffer; and birds, more than any +other creatures, give us that sense of relief, of breathing-space and +margin, so very necessary to our spiritual welfare. For there is +freedom, air, light, in the very element in which birds exist, and in +their movements, the delightful sense of poising, of buoyancy, of being +delivered from our own body and made independent of gravitation, which, +as a friend of mine wisely remarks, Sir Isaac Newton most injudiciously +put into Nature's head. Indeed, there is a very special quality in the +mere thought of birds. St. Francis, had he preached to fishes, like his +follower of Padua, might have had as attentive an audience, but we +should not have cared to hear about it. _Aves mei fratres_--why, it is +the soul's kinship with air, light, liberty, what the soul loves best. +And similarly I suspect that the serene and lovely quality of Dante's +Francesca episode is due in great part to those similes of birds: the +starlings in the winter weather, the cranes "singing their dirge," and +those immortal doves swirling nestwards, _dal disio chiamate_, which +lift the lid of that cavern of hell and winnow its fumes into breathable +quality. + +Perhaps (I say to myself, being ever disposed to make the best of a bad +bargain), perhaps the scantiness of my acquaintance with birds, the +difficulty about seeing them (for there is none about hearing them in +Tuscany, and I shall be kept awake by vociferous nightingales in a +month's time), gives to my feeling about them a pleasant, half-painful +eagerness. Certainly it raises the sight of birds, when I get out of +this country, into something of the nature of a performance. Even in +Rome, the larks, going up tiny brown rockets, into the pale blue sky +above the pale green endless undulations of grass, and the rooks and +magpies flocking round the ruins. And how much in Germany? Indeed, one +of Germany's charms is the condition, or, rather, the position, the +civic status, of birds and small creatures. One is constantly reminded +of the Minnesinger Walther's legacy to the birds of Wurzburg, and of +Luther's hiding the hare in the sleeve of his tunic. One of my first +impressions after crossing the Alps last year was of just such a hare, +only perfectly at his ease, running in front of my bicycle for ever so +long during a great thunderstorm which overtook us in the cornfields +between Donaustauff and Ratisbon. And as to birds! They are not merely +left in liberty, but assiduously courted by these kindly, and, in their +prosaic way, poetical Teutons. Already in the village shop on the top of +the Tyrolese pass there was a nest of swallows deep down in a passage. +And in the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg, while the electric trams go +clanking outside, the swallows whirr cheerfully along the aisles, among +the coats-of-arms, the wonderfully crested helmets suspended on high. +There was a swallow's nest in the big entrance room (where the peasants +sit and drink among the little dry birch-trees and fir garlands from the +Whitsuntide festivities) of the inn at Rothenburg; a nest above the rows +of pewter and stoneware, with baby swallows looking unconcernedly out at +the guests. But the great joy at Rothenburg was the family of storks +which still inhabit one of the high, pointed gatehouses. I used to go +and see them every morning: the great cartwheel on the funnel-shaped +roof, wisps of comfortable hay hanging over it; one of the parent storks +standing sentinel on one leg, the little ones raising themselves +occasionally into sight, the other stork hovering around on outspread +wings like tattered banners. To think that there were once storks also +in Italy, storks' homes, the old Lombard name _Cicognara_ meaning that; +and cranes also, whom the people in Boccaccio, and even Lorenzo di +Medici, went out to hunt! The last of them were certainly netted and +eaten, as they used to eat porcupines in Rome in my childish days. + +Speaking of cranes reminds me of the pleasure I have had also in +watching herons, particularly among the ponds of my mother's old home. + +"Would you like to see one near? I'll go and shoot it you at once," said +my very kind cousin. + +How odd it is, when one thinks of it, that mere contemplation seems so +insufficient for us poor restless human beings! We cannot see a flower +without an impulse to pick it, a character without an impulse to, let us +say, analyse; a bird without an impulse to shoot. And in this way we +certainly lose most of the good which any of these things could be to +us: just to be looked at, thought about, enjoyed, and let alone. + + + * * * * * + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + +TO + +ETHEL SMYTH + +THANKING, AND BEGGING, HER FOR MUSIC + + + + +PREFACE + + +_"Alles Vergaengliche ist nur ein Gleichniss"_ + + +_It is in order to give others the pleasure of reading or +re-reading a small masterpiece, that I mention the likelihood +of the catastrophe of my_ Ariadne _having been suggested by +the late Mr. Shorthouse's_ Little Schoolmaster Mark; _but I +must ask forgiveness of my dear old friend, Madame Emile +Duclaux_ (Mary Robinson), _for unwarranted use of one of the +songs of her_ Italian Garden. + +_Readers of my own little volume_ Genius Loci _may meanwhile +recognise that I have been guilty of plagiarism towards myself +also_. + +_For a couple of years after writing those pages, the image of +the Palace of Mantua and the lakes it steeps in, haunted my +fancy with that peculiar insistency, as of the half-lapsed +recollection of a name or date, which tells us that we know +(if we could only remember!)_ what happened in a place. _I let +the matter rest. But, looking into my mind one day, I found +that a certain song of the early seventeenth century_--(not +_Monteverde's_ Lamento d'Arianna _but an air_, Amarilli, _by +Caccini, printed alongside in Parisotti's collection_)--_had +entered that Palace of Mantua, and was, in some manner not +easy to define, the musical shape of what must have happened +there. And that, translated back into human personages, was +the story I have set forth in the following little Drama_. + +_So much for the origin of_ Ariadne in Mantua, _supposing any +friend to be curious about it. What seems more interesting is +my feeling, which grew upon me as I worked over and over the +piece and its French translation, that these personages had an +importance greater than that of their life and adventures, a +meaning, if I may say so, a little_ sub specie aeternitatis. +_For, besides the real figures, there appeared to me vague +shadows cast by them, as it were, on the vast spaces of life, +and magnified far beyond those little puppets that I twitched. +And I seem to feel here the struggle, eternal, necessary, +between mere impulse, unreasoning and violent, but absolutely +true to its aim; and all the moderating, the weighing and +restraining influences of civilisation, with their idealism, +their vacillation, but their final triumph over the mere +forces of nature. These well-born people of Mantua, +privileged beings wanting little because they have much, and +able therefore to spend themselves in quite harmonious effort, +must necessarily get the better of the poor gutter-born +creature without whom, after all, one of them would have been +dead and the others would have had no opening in life. Poor_ +Diego _acts magnanimously, being cornered; but he (or she) has +not the delicacy, the dignity to melt into thin air with a +mere lyric Metastasian "Piangendo parte", and leave them to +their untroubled conscience. He must needs assert himself, +violently wrench at their heart-strings, give them a final +stab, hand them over to endless remorse; briefly, commit that +public and theatrical deed of suicide, splashing the murderous +waters into the eyes of well-behaved wedding guests_. + +_Certainly neither the_ Duke, _nor the_ Duchess Dowager, _nor_ +Hippolyta _would have done this. But, on the other hand, they +could calmly, coldly, kindly accept the self-sacrifice +culminating in that suicide: well-bred people, faithful to +their standards and forcing others, however unwilling, into +their own conformity. Of course without them the world would +be a den of thieves, a wilderness of wolves; for they are,--if +I may call them by their less personal names,--Tradition, +Discipline, Civilisation_. + +_On the other hand, but for such as_ Diego _the world would +come to an end within twenty years: mere sense of duty and +fitness not being sufficient for the killing and cooking of +victuals, let alone the begetting and suckling of children. +The descendants of_ Ferdinand _and_ Hippolyta, _unless they +intermarried with some bastard of_ Diego's _family, would +dwindle, die out; who knows, perhaps supplement the impulses +they lacked by silly newfangled evil_. + +_These are the contending forces of history and life: Impulse +and Discipline, creating and keeping; love such as_ Diego's, +_blind, selfish, magnanimous; and detachment, noble, a little +bloodless and cruel, like that of the_ Duke of Mantua. + +_And it seems to me that the conflicts which I set forth on my +improbable little stage, are but the trifling realities +shadowing those great abstractions which we seek all through +the history of man, and everywhere in man's own heart_. + + +VERNON LEE. + + +Maiano, near Florence, + +June, 1903. + + + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + VIOLA. _....I'll serve this Duke: + ....for I can sing + And speak to him in many sorts of music._ + TWELFTH NIGHT, 1, 2. + + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + + FERDINAND, Duke of Mantua. + THE CARDINAL, his Uncle. + THE DUCHESS DOWAGER. + HIPPOLYTA, Princess of Mirandola. + MAGDALEN, known as DIEGO. + THE MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA. + THE BISHOP OF CREMONA. + THE DOGE'S WIFE. + THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR. + THE DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET. + THE VICEROY OF NAPLES' JESTER. + A TENOR as BACCHUS. + The CARDINAL'S CHAPLAIN. + THE DUCHESS'S GENTLEWOMAN. + THE PRINCESS'S TUTOR. + Singers as Maenads and Satyrs; Courtiers, + Pages, Wedding Guests and Musicians. + + * * * * * + +The action takes place in the Palace of Mantua through a +period of a year, during the reign of Prospero I, of Milan, +and shortly before the Venetian expedition to Cyprus under +Othello. + + + + +ARIADNE IN MANTUA + + + + +ACT I + + +_The_ CARDINAL'S _Study in the Palace at Mantua. The_ CARDINAL _is +seated at a table covered with Persian embroidery, rose-colour picked +out with blue, on which lies open a volume of Machiavelli's works, and +in it a manuscript of Catullus; alongside thereof are a bell and a +magnifying-glass. Under his feet a red cushion with long tassels, and an +oriental carpet of pale lavender and crimson_. _The_ CARDINAL _is +dressed in scarlet, a crimson fur-lined cape upon his shoulders. He is +old, but beautiful and majestic, his face furrowed like the marble bust +of Seneca among the books opposite_. + +_Through the open Renaissance window, with candelabra and birds carved +on the copings, one sees the lake, pale blue, faintly rippled, with a +rose-coloured brick bridge and bridge-tower at its narrowest point_. +DIEGO (_in reality_ MAGDALEN) _has just been admitted into the_ +CARDINAL'S _presence, and after kissing his ring, has remained standing, +awaiting his pleasure_. + +DIEGO _is fantastically habited as a youth in russet and violet tunic +reaching below the knees in Moorish fashion, as we see it in the +frescoes of Pinturicchio; with silver buttons down the seams, and +plaited linen at the throat and in the unbuttoned purfles of the +sleeves. His hair, dark but red where it catches the light, is cut over +the forehead and touches his shoulders. He is not very tall in his boy's +clothes, and very sparely built. He is pale, almost sallow; the face, +dogged, sullen, rather expressive than beautiful, save for the +perfection of the brows and of the flower-like singer's mouth. He stands +ceremoniously before the_ CARDINAL, _one hand on his dagger, nervously, +while the other holds a large travelling hat, looped up, with a long +drooping plume_. + +_The_ CARDINAL _raises his eyes, slightly bows his head, closes the +manuscript and the volume, and puts both aside deliberately. He is, +meanwhile, examining the appearance of_ DIEGO. + +CARDINAL + +We are glad to see you at Mantua, Signor Diego. And from what our worthy +Venetian friend informs us in the letter which he gave you for our +hands, we shall without a doubt be wholly satisfied with your singing, +which is said to be both sweet and learned. Prythee, Brother Matthias +(_turning to his_ Chaplain), bid them bring hither my virginal,--that +with the Judgment of Paris painted on the lid by Giulio Romano; its tone +is admirably suited to the human voice. And, Brother Matthias, hasten to +the Duke's own theorb player, and bid him come straightways. Nay, go +thyself, good Brother Matthias, and seek till thou hast found him. We +are impatient to judge of this good youth's skill. + +_The_ Chaplain _bows and retires_. DIEGO (_in reality_ MAGDALEN) +_remains alone in the_ CARDINAL'S _presence. The_ CARDINAL _remains for +a second turning over a letter, and then reads through the +magnifying-glass out loud_. + +CARDINAL + +Ah, here is the sentence: "Diego, a Spaniard of Moorish descent, and a +most expert singer and player on the virginal, whom I commend to your +Eminence's favour as entirely fitted for such services as your revered +letter makes mention of----" Good, good. + +_The_ CARDINAL _folds the letter and beckons_ Diego _to approach, then +speaks in a manner suddenly altered to abruptness, but with no enquiry +in his tone_. + +Signor Diego, you are a woman---- + +DIEGO _starts, flushes and exclaims huskily_, "My Lord----." _But the_ +CARDINAL _makes a deprecatory movement and continues his sentence_. + +and, as my honoured Venetian correspondent assures me, a courtesan of +some experience and of more than usual tact. I trust this favourable +judgment may be justified. The situation is delicate; and the work for +which you have been selected is dangerous as well as difficult. Have you +been given any knowledge of this case? + +DIEGO _has by this time recovered his composure, and answers with +respectful reserve_. + +DIEGO + +I asked no questions, your Eminence. But the Senator Gratiano vouchsafed +to tell me that my work at Mantua would be to soothe and cheer with +music your noble nephew Duke Ferdinand, who, as is rumoured, has been a +prey to a certain languor and moodiness ever since his return from many +years' captivity among the Infidels. Moreover (such were the Senator +Gratiano's words), that if the Fates proved favourable to my music, I +might gain access to His Highness's confidence, and thus enable your +Eminence to understand and compass his strange malady. + +CARDINAL + +Even so. You speak discreetly, Diego; and your manner gives hope of more +good sense than is usual in your sex and in your trade. But this matter +is of more difficulty than such as you can realise. Your being a woman +will be of use should our scheme prove practicable. In the outset it may +wreck us beyond recovery. For all his gloomy apathy, my nephew is quick +to suspicion, and extremely subtle. He will delight in flouting us, +should the thought cross his brain that we are practising some coarse +and foolish stratagem. And it so happens, that his strange moodiness is +marked by abhorrence of all womankind. For months he has refused the +visits of his virtuous mother. And the mere name of his young cousin and +affianced bride, Princess Hippolyta, has thrown him into paroxysms of +anger. Yet Duke Ferdinand possesses all his faculties. He is aware of +being the last of our house, and must know full well that, should he die +without an heir, this noble dukedom will become the battlefield of +rapacious alien claimants. He denies none of this, but nevertheless +looks on marriage with unseemly horror. + +DIEGO + +Is it so?----And----is there any reason His Highness's melancholy should +take this shape? I crave your Eminence's pardon if there is any +indiscretion in this question; but I feel it may be well that I should +know some more upon this point. Has Duke Ferdinand suffered some wrong +at the hands of women? Or is it the case of some passion, hopeless, +unfitting to his rank, perhaps? + +CARDINAL + +Your imagination, good Madam Magdalen, runs too easily along the tracks +familiar to your sex; and such inquisitiveness smacks too much of the +courtesan. And beware, my lad, of touching on such subjects with the +Duke: women and love, and so forth. For I fear, that while endeavouring +to elicit the Duke's secret, thy eyes, thy altered voice, might betray +thy own. + +DIEGO + +Betray me? My secret? What do you mean, my Lord? I fail to grasp your +meaning. + +CARDINAL + +Have you so soon forgotten that the Duke must not suspect your being a +woman? For if a woman may gradually melt his torpor, and bring him under +the control of reason and duty, this can only come about by her growing +familiar and necessary to him without alarming his moody virtue. + +DIEGO + +I crave your Eminence's indulgence for that one question, which I repeat +because, as a musician, it may affect my treatment of His Highness. Has +the Duke ever loved? + +CARDINAL + +Too little or too much,--which of the two it will be for you to find +out. My nephew was ever, since his boyhood, a pious and joyless youth; +and such are apt to love once, and, as the poets say, to die for love. +Be this as it may, keep to your part of singer; and even if you suspect +that he suspects you, let him not see your suspicion, and still less +justify his own. Be merely a singer: a sexless creature, having seen +passion but never felt it; yet capable, by the miracle of art, of +rousing and soothing it in others. Go warily, and mark my words: there +is, I notice, even in your speaking voice, a certain quality such as +folk say melts hearts; a trifle hoarseness, a something of a break, +which mars it as mere sound, but gives it more power than that of sound. +Employ that quality when the fit moment comes; but most times restrain +it. You have understood? + +DIEGO + +I think I have, my Lord. + +CARDINAL + +Then only one word more. Women, and women such as you, are often ill +advised and foolishly ambitious. Let not success, should you have any in +this enterprise, endanger it and you. Your safety lies in being my tool. +My spies are everywhere; but I require none; I seem to know the folly +which poor mortals think and feel. And see! this palace is surrounded on +three sides by lakes; a rare and beautiful circumstance, which has done +good service on occasion. Even close to this pavilion these blue waters +are less shallow than they seem. + +DIEGO + +I had noted it. Such an enterprise as mine requires courage, my Lord; +and your palace, built into the lake, as life,--saving all thought of +heresy,--is built out into death, your palace may give courage as well +as prudence. + +CARDINAL + +Your words, Diego, are irrelevant, but do not displease me. + +DIEGO _bows. The_ Chaplain _enters with_ Pages _carrying a harpsichord, +which they place upon the table; also two_ Musicians _with theorb and +viol_. + +Brother Matthias, thou hast been a skilful organist, and hast often +delighted me with thy fugues and canons.--Sit to the instrument, and +play a prelude, while this good youth collects his memory and his voice +preparatory to displaying his skill. + +_The_ chaplain, _not unlike the monk in Titian's "Concert" begins to +play_, DIEGO _standing by him at the harpsichord. While the cunningly +interlaced themes, with wide, unclosed cadences, tinkle metallically +from the instrument, the_ CARDINAL _watches, very deliberately, the face +of_ DIEGO, _seeking to penetrate through its sullen sedateness. But_ +DIEGO _remains with his eyes fixed on the view framed by the window: the +pale blue lake, of the colour of periwinkle, under a sky barely bluer +than itself, and the lines on the horizon--piled up clouds or perhaps +Alps. Only, as the_ Chaplain _is about to finish his prelude, the face +of_ DIEGO _undergoes a change: a sudden fervour and tenderness +transfigure the features; while the eyes, from very dark turn to the +colour of carnelian. This illumination dies out as quickly as it came, +and_ DIEGO _becomes very self-contained and very listless as before_. + +DIEGO + +Will it please your Eminence that I should sing the Lament of Ariadne on +Naxos? + + + + +ACT II + + +_A few months later. Another part of the Ducal Palace of Mantua. The_ +DUCHESS'S _closet: a small irregular chamber; the vaulted ceiling +painted with Giottesque patterns in blue and russet, much blackened, and +among which there is visible only a coronation of the Virgin, white and +vision-like. Shelves with a few books and phials and jars of medicine; a +small movable organ in a corner; and, in front of the ogival window, a +praying-chair and large crucifix. The crucifix is black against the +landscape, against the grey and misty waters of the lake; and framed by +the nearly leafless branches of a willow growing below_. + +_The_ DUCHESS DOWAGER _is tall and straight, but almost bodiless in her +black nun-like dress. Her face is so white, its lips and eyebrows so +colourless, and eyes so pale a blue, that one might at first think it +insignificant, and only gradually notice the strength and beauty of the +features. The_ DUCHESS _has laid aside her sewing on the entrance of_ +DIEGO, _in reality_ MAGDALEN; _and, forgetful of all state, been on the +point of rising to meet him. But_ DIEGO _has ceremoniously let himself +down on one knee, expecting to kiss her hand_. + +DUCHESS + +Nay, Signor Diego, do not kneel. Such forms have long since left my +life, nor are they, as it seems to me, very fitting between God's +creatures. Let me grasp your hand, and look into the face of him whom +Heaven has chosen to work a miracle. You have cured my son! + +DIEGO + +It is indeed a miracle of Heaven, most gracious Madam; and one in which, +alas, my poor self has been as nothing. For sounds, subtly linked, take +wondrous powers from the soul of him who frames their patterns; and we, +who sing, are merely as the string or keys he presses, or as the reed +through which he blows. The virtue is not ours, though coming out of us. + +DIEGO _has made this speech as if learned by rote, with listless +courtesy. The_ DUCHESS _has at first been frozen by his manner, but at +the end she answers very simply_. + +DUCHESS + +You speak too learnedly, good Signor Diego, and your words pass my poor +understanding. The virtue in any of us is but God's finger-touch or +breath; but those He chooses as His instruments are, methinks, angels or +saints; and whatsoever you be, I look upon you with loving awe. You +smile? You are a courtier, while I, although I have not left this palace +for twenty years, have long forgotten the words and ways of courts. I am +but a simpleton: a foolish old woman who has unlearned all ceremony +through many years of many sorts of sorrow; and now, dear youth, +unlearned it more than ever from sheer joy at what it has pleased God to +do through you. For, thanks to you, I have seen my son again, my dear, +wise, tender son again. I would fain thank you. If I had worldly goods +which you have not in plenty, or honours to give, they should be yours. +You shall have my prayers. For even you, so favoured of Heaven, will +some day want them. + +DIEGO + +Give them me now, most gracious Madam. I have no faith in prayers; but I +need them. + +DUCHESS + +Great joy has made me heartless as well as foolish. I have hurt you, +somehow. Forgive me, Signor Diego. + +DIEGO + +As you said, I am a courtier, Madam, and I know it is enough if we can +serve our princes. We have no business with troubles of our own; but +having them, we keep them to ourselves. His Highness awaits me at this +hour for the usual song which happily unclouds his spirit. Has your +Grace any message for him? + +DUCHESS + +Stay. My son will wait a little while. I require you, Diego, for I have +hurt you. Your words are terrible, but just. We princes are brought +up--but many of us, alas, are princes in this matter!--to think that +when we say "I thank you" we have done our duty; though our very +satisfaction, our joy, may merely bring out by comparison the emptiness +of heart, the secret soreness, of those we thank. We are not allowed to +see the burdens of others, and merely load them with our own. + +DIEGO + +Is this not wisdom? Princes should not see those burdens which they +cannot, which they must not, try to carry. And after all, princes or +slaves, can others ever help us, save with their purse, with advice, +with a concrete favour, or, say, with a song? Our troubles smart because +they are _our_ troubles; our burdens weigh because on _our_ shoulders; +they are part of us, and cannot be shifted. But God doubtless loves such +kind thoughts as you have, even if, with your Grace's indulgence, they +are useless. + +DUCHESS + +If it were so, God would be no better than an earthly prince. But +believe me, Diego, if He prefer what you call kindness--bare sense of +brotherhood in suffering--'tis for its usefulness. We cannot carry each +other's burden for a minute; true, and rightly so; but we can give each +other added strength to bear it. + +DIEGO + +By what means, please your Grace? + +DUCHESS + +By love, Diego. + +DIEGO + +Love! But that was surely never a source of strength, craving your +Grace's pardon? + +DUCHESS + +The love which I am speaking of--and it may surely bear the name, since +'tis the only sort of love that cannot turn to hatred. Love for who +requires it because it is required--say love of any woman who has been a +mother for any child left motherless. Nay, forgive my boldness: my +gratitude gives me rights on you, Diego. You are unhappy; you are still +a child; and I imagine that you have no mother. + +DIEGO + +I am told I had one, gracious Madam. She was, saving your Grace's +presence, only a light woman, and sold for a ducat to the Infidels. I +cannot say I ever missed her. Forgive me, Madam. Although a courtier, +the stock I come from is extremely base. I have no understanding of the +words of noble women and saints like you. My vileness thinks them +hollow; and my pretty manners are only, as your Grace has unluckily had +occasion to see, a very thin and bad veneer. I thank your Grace, and +once more crave permission to attend the Duke. + +DUCHESS + +Nay. That is not true. Your soul is nowise base-born. I owe you +everything, and, by some inadvertence, I have done nothing save stir up +pain in you. I want--the words may seem presumptuous, yet carry a +meaning which is humble--I want to be your friend; and to help you to a +greater, better Friend. I will pray for you, Diego. + +DIEGO + +No, no. You are a pious and virtuous woman, and your pity and prayers +must keep fit company. + +DUCHESS + +The only fitting company for pity and prayers, for love, dear lad, is +the company of those who need them. Am I over bold? + +_The_ DUCHESS _has risen, and shyly laid her hand on_ DIEGO'S +_shoulder_. DIEGO _breaks loose and covers his face, exclaiming in a dry +and husky voice_. + +DIEGO + +Oh the cruelty of loneliness, Madam! Save for two years which taught me +by comparison its misery, I have lived in loneliness always in this +lonely world; though never, alas, alone. Would it had always continued! +But as the wayfarer from out of the snow and wind feels his limbs numb +and frozen in the hearth's warmth, so, having learned that one might +speak, be understood, be comforted, that one might love and be +beloved,--the misery of loneliness was revealed to me. And then to be +driven back into it once more, shut in to it for ever! Oh, Madam, when +one can no longer claim understanding and comfort; no longer say "I +suffer: help me!"--because the creature one would say it to is the very +same who hurts and spurns one! + +DUCHESS + +How can a child like you already know such things? We women may, indeed. +I was as young as you, years ago, when I too learned it. And since I +learned it, let my knowledge, my poor child, help you to bear it. I know +how silence galls and wearies. If silence hurts you, speak,--not for me +to answer, but understand and sorrow for you. I am old and simple and +unlearned; but, God willing, I shall understand. + +DIEGO + +If anything could help me, 'tis the sense of kindness such as yours. I +thank you for your gift; but acceptance of it would be theft; for it is +not meant for what I really am. And though a living lie in many things; +I am still, oddly enough, honest. Therefore, I pray you, Madam, +farewell. + +DUCHESS + +Do not believe it, Diego. Where it is needed, our poor loving kindness +can never be stolen. + +DIEGO + +Do not tempt me, Madam! Oh God, I do not want your pity, your loving +kindness! What are such things to me? And as to understanding my +sorrows, no one can, save the very one who is inflicting them. Besides, +you and I call different things by the same names. What you call _love_, +to me means nothing: nonsense taught to children, priest's metaphysics. +What _I_ mean, you do not know. (_A pause_, DIEGO _walks up and down in +agitation_.) But woe's me! You have awakened the power of breaking +through this silence,--this silence which is starvation and deathly +thirst and suffocation. And it so happens that if I speak to you all +will be wrecked. (_A pause_.) But there remains nothing to wreck! +Understand me, Madam, I care not who you are. I know that once I have +spoken, you _must_ become my enemy. But I am grateful to you; you have +shown me the way to speaking; and, no matter now to whom, I now _must_ +speak. + +DUCHESS + +You shall speak to God, my friend, though you speak seemingly to me. + +DIEGO + +To God! To God! These are the icy generalities we strike upon under all +pious warmth. No, gracious Madam, I will not speak to God; for God knows +it already, and, knowing, looks on indifferent. I will speak to you. Not +because you are kind and pitiful; for you will cease to be so. Not +because you will understand; for you never will. I will speak to you +because, although you are a saint, you are _his_ mother, have kept +somewhat of his eyes and mien; because it will hurt you if I speak, as I +would it might hurt _him_. I am a woman, Madam; a harlot; and I was the +Duke your son's mistress while among the Infidels. + +_A long silence. The_ DUCHESS _remains seated. She barely starts, +exclaiming_ "Ah!--" _and becomes suddenly absorbed in thought_. DIEGO +_stands looking listlessly through the window at the lake and the +willow_. + +DIEGO + +I await your Grace's orders. Will it please you that I call your +maid-of-honour, or summon the gentleman outside? If it so please you, +there need be no scandal. I shall give myself up to any one your Grace +prefers. + +_The_ DUCHESS _pays no attention to_ DIEGO'S _last words, and remains +reflecting_. + +DUCHESS + +Then, it is he who, as you call it, spurns you? How so? For you are +admitted to his close familiarity; nay, you have worked the miracle of +curing him. I do not understand the situation. For, Diego,--I know not +by what other name to call you--I feel your sorrow is a deep one. You +are not the----woman who would despair and call God cruel for a mere +lover's quarrel. You love my son; you have cured him,--cured him, do I +guess rightly, through your love? But if it be so, what can my son have +done to break your heart? + +DIEGO + +(_after listening astonished at the_ DUCHESS'S _unaltered tone of +kindness_) + +Your Grace will understand the matter as much as I can; and I cannot. He +does not recognise me, Madam. + +DUCHESS + +Not recognise you? What do you mean? + +DIEGO + +What the words signify: Not recognise. + +DUCHESS + +Then----he does not know----he still believes you to be----a stranger? + +DIEGO + +So it seems, Madam. + +DUCHESS + +And yet you have cured his melancholy by your presence. And in the +past----tell me: had you ever sung to him? + +DIEGO (_weeping silently_) + +Daily, Madam. + +DUCHESS (_slowly_) + +They say that Ferdinand is, thanks to you, once more in full possession +of his mind. It cannot be. Something still lacks; he is not fully cured. + +DIEGO + +Alas, he is. The Duke remembers everything, save me. + +DUCHESS + +There is some mystery in this. I do not understand such matters. But I +know that Ferdinand could never be base towards you knowingly. And you, +methinks, would never be base towards him. Diego, time will bring light +into this darkness. Let us pray God together that He may make our eyes +and souls able to bear it. + +DIEGO + +I cannot pray for light, most gracious Madam, because I fear it. Indeed +I cannot pray at all, there remains nought to pray for. But, among the +vain and worldly songs I have had to get by heart, there is, by chance, +a kind of little hymn, a childish little verse, but a sincere one. And +while you pray for me--for you promised to pray for me, Madam--I should +like to sing it, with your Grace's leave. + +DIEGO _opens a little movable organ in a corner, and strikes a few +chords, remaining standing the while. The_ DUCHESS _kneels down before +the crucifix, turning her back upon him. While she is silently praying_, +DIEGO, _still on his feet, sings very low to a kind of lullaby tune_. + + Mother of God, + We are thy weary children; + Teach us, thou weeping Mother, + To cry ourselves to sleep. + + + + +ACT III + + +_Three months later. Another part of the Palace of Mantua: the hanging +gardens in the_ DUKE'S _apartments. It is the first warm night of +Spring. The lemon trees have been brought out that day, and fill the air +with fragrance. Terraces and flights of steps; in the background the +dark mass of the palace, with its cupolas and fortified towers; here and +there a lit window picking out the dark; and from above the principal +yards, the flare of torches rising into the deep blue of the sky. In the +course of the scene, the moon gradually emerges from behind a group of +poplars on the opposite side of the lake into which the palace is built. +During the earlier part of the act, darkness. Great stillness, with, +only occasionally, the plash of a fisherman's oar, or a very distant +thrum of mandolines.--The_ DUKE _and_ DIEGO _are walking up and down the +terrace_. + +DUKE + +Thou askedst me once, dear Diego, the meaning of that labyrinth which I +have had carved, a shapeless pattern enough, but well suited, methinks, +to blue and gold, upon the ceiling of my new music room. And wouldst +have asked, I fancy, as many have done, the hidden meaning of the device +surrounding it.--I left thee in the dark, dear lad, and treated thy +curiosity in a peevish manner. Thou hast long forgiven and perhaps +forgotten, deeming my lack of courtesy but another ailment of thy poor +sick master; another of those odd ungracious moods with which, kindest +of healing creatures, thou hast had such wise and cheerful patience. I +have often wished to tell thee; but I could not. 'Tis only now, in some +mysterious fashion, I seem myself once more,--able to do my judgment's +bidding, and to dispose, in memory and words, of my own past. My strange +sickness, which thou hast cured, melting its mists away with thy +beneficent music even as the sun penetrates and sucks away the fogs of +dawn from our lakes--my sickness, Diego, the sufferings of my flight +from Barbary; the horror, perhaps, of that shipwreck which cast me (so +they say, for I remember nothing) senseless on the Illyrian +coast----these things, or Heaven's judgment on but a lukewarm +Crusader,--had somehow played strange havoc with my will and +recollections. I could not think; or thinking, not speak; or +recollecting, feel that he whom I thought of in the past was this same +man, myself. + +_The_ DUKE _pauses, and leaning on the parapet, watches the long +reflections of the big stars in the water_. + +But now, and thanks to thee, Diego, I am another; I am myself. + +DIEGO'S _face, invisible in the darkness, has undergone dreadful +convulsions. His breast heaves, and he stops for breath before +answering; but when he does so, controls his voice into its usual rather +artificially cadenced tone_. + +DIEGO + +And now, dear Master, you can recollect----all? + +DUKE + +Recollect, sweet friend, and tell thee. For it is seemly that I should +break through this churlish silence with thee. Thou didst cure the +weltering distress of my poor darkened mind; I would have thee, now, +know somewhat of the past of thy grateful patient. The maze, Diego, +carved and gilded on that ceiling is but a symbol of my former life; and +the device which, being interpreted, means "I seek straight ways," the +expression of my wish and duty. + +DIEGO + +You loathed the maze, my Lord? + +DUKE + +Not so. I loved it then. And I still love it now. But I have issued from +it--issued to recognise that the maze was good. Though it is good I left +it. When I entered it, I was a raw youth, although in years a man; full +of easy theory, and thinking all practice simple; unconscious of +passion; ready to govern the world with a few learned notions; moreover +never having known either happiness or grief, never loved and wondered +at a creature different from myself; acquainted, not with the straight +roads which I now seek, but only with the rectangular walls of +schoolrooms. The maze, and all the maze implied, made me a man. + +DIEGO + +(_who has listened with conflicting feelings, and now unable to conceal +his joy_) + +A man, dear Master; and the gentlest, most just of men. Then, that +maze----But idle stories, interpreting all spiritual meaning as prosy +fact, would have it, that this symbol was a reality. The legend of your +captivity, my Lord, has turned the pattern on that ceiling into a real +labyrinth, some cunningly built fortress or prison, where the Infidels +kept you, and whose clue----you found, and with the clue, freedom, after +five weary years. + +DUKE + +Whose clue, dear Diego, was given into my hands,--the clue meaning +freedom, but also eternal parting--by the most faithful, intrepid, +magnanimous, the most loving----and the most beloved of women! + +_The_ Duke _has raised his arms from the parapet, and drawn himself +erect, folding them on his breast, and seeking for_ Diego's _face in the +darkness. But_ Diego, _unseen by the_ Duke, _has clutched the parapet +and sunk on to a bench_. + +DUKE + +(_walking up and down, slowly and meditatively, after a pause_) + +The poets have fabled many things concerning virtuous women. The Roman +Arria, who stabbed herself to make honourable suicide easier for her +husband; Antigone, who buried her brother at the risk of death; and the +Thracian Alkestis, who descended into the kingdom of Death in place of +Admetus. But none, to my mind, comes up to _her_. For fancy is but thin +and simple, a web of few bright threads; whereas reality is closely +knitted out of the numberless fibres of life, of pain and joy. For note +it, Diego--those antique women whom we read of were daughters of kings, +or of Romans more than kings; bred of a race of heroes, and trained, +while still playing with dolls, to pride themselves on austere duty, and +look upon the wounds and maimings of their soul as their brothers and +husbands looked upon the mutilations of battle. Whereas here; here was a +creature infinitely humble; a waif, a poor spurned toy of brutal +mankind's pleasure; accustomed only to bear contumely, or to snatch, +unthinking, what scanty happiness lay along her difficult and despised +path,--a wild creature, who had never heard such words as duty or +virtue; and yet whose acts first taught me what they truly meant. + +DIEGO + +(_who has recovered himself, and is now leaning in his turn on the +parapet_) + +Ah----a light woman, bought and sold many times over, my Lord; but who +loved, at last. + +DUKE + +That is the shallow and contemptuous way in which men think, Diego,--and +boys like thee pretend to; those to whom life is but a chess-board, a +neatly painted surface alternate black and white, most suitable for +skilful games, with a soul clean lost or gained at the end! I thought +like that. But I grew to understand life as a solid world: rock, fertile +earth, veins of pure metal, mere mud, all strangely mixed and overlaid; +and eternal fire at the core! I learned it, knowing Magdalen. + +DIEGO + +Her name was Magdalen? + +DUKE + +So she bade me call her. + +DIEGO + +And the name explained the trade? + +DUKE (_after a pause_) + +I cannot understand thee Diego,--cannot understand thy lack of +understanding----Well yes! Her trade. All in this universe is trade, +trade of prince, pope, philosopher or harlot; and once the badge put on, +the licence signed--the badge a crown or a hot iron's brand, as the case +may be,--why then we ply it according to prescription, and that's all! +Yes, Diego,--since thou obligest me to say it in its harshness, I do so, +and I glory for her in every contemptuous word I use!--The woman I speak +of was but a poor Venetian courtesan; some drab's child, sold to the +Infidels as to the Christians; and my cruel pirate master's--shall we +say?--mistress. There! For the first time, Diego, thou dost not +understand me; or is it----that I misjudged thee, thinking thee, dear +boy----(_breaks off hurriedly_). + +DIEGO (_very slowly_) + +Thinking me what, my Lord? + +DUKE (_lightly, but with effort_) + +Less of a little Sir Paragon of Virtue than a dear child, who is only a +child, must be. + +DIEGO + +It is better, perhaps, that your Highness should be certain of my +limitations----But I crave your Highness's pardon. I had meant to say +that being a waif myself, pure gutter-bred, I have known, though young, +more Magdalens than you, my Lord. They are, in a way, my sisters; and +had I been a woman, I should, likely enough, have been one myself. + +DUKE + +You mean, Diego? + +DIEGO + +I mean, that knowing them well, I also know that women such as your +Highness has described, occasionally learn to love most truly. Nay, let +me finish, my Lord; I was not going to repeat a mere sentimental +commonplace. Briefly then, that such women, being expert in love, +sometimes understand, quicker than virtuous dames brought up to heroism, +when love for them is cloyed. They can walk out of a man's house or life +with due alacrity, being trained to such flittings. Or, recognising the +first signs of weariness before 'tis known to him who feels it, they can +open the door for the other--hand him the clue of the labyrinth with a +fine theatric gesture!--But I crave your Highness's pardon for enlarging +on this theme. + +DUKE + +Thou speakest Diego, as if thou hadst a mind to wound thy Master. Is +this, my friend, the reward of my confiding in thee, even if tardily? + +DIEGO + +I stand rebuked, my Lord. But, in my own defence----how shall I say +it?----Your Highness has a manner to-night which disconcerts me by its +novelty; a saying things and then unsaying them; suggesting and then, +somehow, treading down the suggestion like a spark of your lightning. +Lovers, I have been told, use such a manner to revive their flagging +feeling by playing on the other one's. Even in so plain and solid a +thing as friendship, such ways--I say it subject to your Highness's +displeasure--are dangerous. But in love, I have known cases where, +carried to certain lengths, such ways of speaking undermined a woman's +faith and led her to desperate things. Women, despite their strength, +which often surprises us, are brittle creatures. Did you never, perhaps, +make trial of this----Magdalen, with---- + +DUKE + +With what? Good God, Diego, 'tis I who ask thy pardon; and thou sheddest +a dreadful light upon the past. But it is not possible. I am not such a +cur that, after all she did, after all she was,--my life saved by her +audacity a hundred times, made rich and lovely by her love, her wit, her +power,--that I could ever have whimpered for my freedom, or made her +suspect I wanted it more than I wanted her? Is it possible, Diego? + +DIEGO (_slowly_) + +Why more than you wanted her? She may have thought the two compatible. + +DUKE + +Never. First, because my escape could not be compassed save by her +staying behind; and then because---she knew, in fact, what thing I was, +or must become, once set at liberty. + +DIEGO (_after a pause_) + +I see. You mean, my Lord, that you being Duke of Mantua, while she----If +she knew that; knew it not merely as a fact, but as one knows the full +savour of grief,--well, she was indeed the paragon you think; one might +indeed say, bating one point, a virtuous woman. + +DUKE + +Thou hast understood, dear Diego, and I thank thee for it. + +DIEGO + +But I fear, my Lord, she did not know these things. Such as she, as +yourself remarked, are not trained to conceive of duty, even in others. +Passion moves them; and they believe in passion. You loved her; good. +Why then, at Mantua as in Barbary. No, my dear Master, believe me; she +had seen your love was turning stale, and set you free, rather than +taste its staleness. Passion, like duty, has its pride; and even we +waifs, as gypsies, have our point of honour. + +DUKE + +Stale! My love grown stale! You make me laugh, boy, instead of angering. +Stale! You never knew her. She was not like a song--even your sweetest +song--which, heard too often, cloys, its phrases dropping to senseless +notes. She was like music,--the whole art: new modes, new melodies, new +rhythms, with every day and hour, passionate or sad, or gay, or very +quiet; more wondrous notes than in thy voice; and more strangely sweet, +even when they grated, than the tone of those newfangled fiddles, which +wound the ear and pour balm in, they make now at Cremona. + +DIEGO + +You loved her then, sincerely? + +DUKE + +Methinks it may be Diego now, tormenting his Master with needless +questions. Loved her, boy! I love her. + +_A long pause_. Diego _has covered his face, with a gesture as if about +to speak. But the moon has suddenly risen from behind the poplars, and +put scales of silver light upon the ripples of the lake, and a pale +luminous mist around the palace. As the light invades the terrace, a +sort of chill has come upon both speakers; they walk up and down further +from one another_. + +DIEGO + +A marvellous story, dear Master. And I thank you from my heart for +having told it me. I always loved you, and I thought I knew you. I know +you better still, now. You are--a most magnanimous prince. + +DUKE + +Alas, dear lad, I am but a poor prisoner of my duties; a poorer +prisoner, and a sadder far, than there in Barbary----O Diego, how I have +longed for her! How deeply I still long, sometimes! But I open my eyes, +force myself to stare reality in the face, whenever her image comes +behind closed lids, driving her from me----And to end my confession. At +the beginning, Diego, there seemed in thy voice and manner something of +_her_; I saw her sometimes in thee, as children see the elves they fear +and hope for in stains on walls and flickers on the path. And all thy +wondrous power, thy miraculous cure--nay, forgive what seems +ingratitude--was due, Diego, to my sick fancy making me see glances of +her in thy eyes and hear her voice in thine. Not music but love, love's +delusion, was what worked my cure. + +DIEGO + +Do you speak truly, Master? Was it so? And now? + +DUKE + +Now, dear lad, I am cured--completely; I know bushes from ghosts; and I +know thee, dearest friend, to be Diego. + +DIEGO + +When these imaginations still held you, my Lord, did it ever happen that +you wondered: what if the bush had been a ghost; if Diego had turned +into--what was she called?---- + +DUKE + +Magdalen. My fancy never went so far, good Diego. There was a grain of +reason left. But if it had----Well, I should have taken Magdalen's hand, +and said, "Welcome, dear sister. This is a world of spells; let us +repeat some. Become henceforth my brother; be the Duke of Mantua's best +and truest friend; turn into Diego, Magdalen." + +_The_ DUKE _presses_ DIEGO'S _arm, and, letting it go, walks away into +the moonlight with an enigmatic air. A long pause_. + +Hark, they are singing within; the idle pages making songs to their +ladies' eyebrows. Shall we go and listen? + +(_They walk in the direction of the palace_.) + +And (_with a little hesitation_) that makes me say, Diego, before we +close this past of mine, and bury it for ever in our silence, that there +is a little Moorish song, plaintive and quaint, she used to sing, which +some day I will write down, and thou shalt sing it to me--on my +deathbed. + +DIEGO + +Why not before? Speaking of songs, that mandolin, though out of tune, +and vilely played, has got hold of a ditty I like well enough. Hark, the +words are Tuscan, well known in the mountains. (_Sings_.) + +I'd like to die, but die a little death only, I'd like to die, but look +down from the window; I'd like to die, but stand upon the doorstep; I'd +like to die, but follow the procession; I'd like to die, but see who +smiles and weepeth; I'd like to die, but die a little death only. + +(_While_ DIEGO _sings very loud, the mandolin inside the palace thrums +faster and faster. As he ends, with a long defiant leap into a high +note, a burst of applause from the palace_.) + +DIEGO (_clapping his hands_) + +Well sung, Diego! + + + + +ACT IV + + +_A few weeks later. The new music room in the Palace of Mantua. Windows +on both sides admitting a view of the lake, so that the hall looks like +a galley surrounded by water. Outside, morning: the lake, the sky, and +the lines of poplars on the banks, are all made of various textures of +luminous blue. From the gardens below, bay trees raise their flowering +branches against the windows. In every window an antique statue: the +Mantuan Muse, the Mantuan Apollo, etc. In the walls between the windows +are framed panels representing allegorical triumphs: those nearest the +spectator are the triumphs of Chastity and of Fortitude. At the end of +the room, steps and a balustrade, with a harpsichord and double basses +on a dais. The roof of the room is blue and gold; a deep blue ground, +constellated with a gold labyrinth in relief. Round the cornice, blue +and gold also, the inscription_: "RECTAS PETO," _and the name_ +Ferdinandus Mantuae Dux. + +_The_ PRINCESS HIPPOLYTA _of Mirandola, cousin to the_ DUKE; _and_ +DIEGO. HIPPOLYTA _is very young, but with the strength and grace, and +the candour, rather of a beautiful boy than of a woman. She is +dazzlingly fair; and her hair, arranged in waves like an antique +amazon's, is stiff and lustrous, as if made of threads of gold. The +brows are wide and straight, like a man's; the glance fearless, but +virginal and almost childlike_. HIPPOLYTA _is dressed in black and gold, +particoloured, like Mantegna's Duchess. An old man, in scholar's gown, +the_ Princess's Greek Tutor, _has just introduced_ DIEGO _and retired_. + +DIEGO + +The Duke your cousin's greeting and service, illustrious damsel. His +Highness bids me ask how you are rested after your journey hither. + +PRINCESS + +Tell my cousin, good Signor Diego, that I am touched at his concern for +me. And tell him, such is the virtuous air of his abode, that a whole +night's rest sufficed to right me from the fatigue of two hours' journey +in a litter; for I am new to that exercise, being accustomed to follow +my poor father's hounds and falcons only on horseback. You shall thank +the Duke my cousin for his civility. (PRINCESS _laughs_.) + +DIEGO + +(_bowing, and keeping his eyes on the_ PRINCESS _as he speaks_) + +His Highness wished to make his fair cousin smile. He has told me often +how your illustrious father, the late Lord of Mirandola, brought his +only daughter up in such a wise as scarcely to lack a son, with manly +disciplines of mind and body; and that he named you fittingly after +Hippolyta, who was Queen of the Amazons, virgins unlike their vain and +weakly sex. + +PRINCESS + +She was; and wife of Theseus. But it seems that the poets care but +little for the like of her; they tell us nothing of her, compared with +her poor predecessor, Cretan Ariadne, she who had given Theseus the clue +of the labyrinth. Methinks that maze must have been mazier than this +blue and gold one overhead. What say you, Signor Diego? + +DIEGO (_who has started slightly_) + +Ariadne? Was she the predecessor of Hippolyta? I did not know it. I am +but a poor scholar, Madam; knowing the names and stories of gods and +heroes only from songs and masques. The Duke should have selected some +fitter messenger to hold converse with his fair learned cousin. + +PRINCESS (_gravely_) + +Speak not like that, Signor Diego. You may not be a scholar, as you say; +but surely you are a philosopher. Nay, conceive my meaning: the fame of +your virtuous equanimity has spread further than from this city to my +small dominions. Your precocious wisdom--for you seem younger than I, +and youths do not delight in being very wise--your moderation in the use +of sudden greatness, your magnanimous treatment of enemies and +detractors; and the manner in which, disdainful of all personal +advantage, you have surrounded the Duke my cousin with wisest +counsellors and men expert in office--such are the results men seek from +the study of philosophy. + +DIEGO + +(_at first astonished, then amused, a little sadly_) + +You are mistaken, noble maiden. 'Tis not philosophy to refrain from +things that do not tempt one. Riches or power are useless to me. As for +the rest, you are mistaken also. The Duke is wise and valiant, and +chooses therefore wise and valiant counsellors. + +PRINCESS (_impetuously_) + +You are eloquent, Signor Diego, even as you are wise! But your words do +not deceive me. Ambition lurks in every one; and power intoxicates all +save those who have schooled themselves to use it as a means to virtue. + +DIEGO + +The thought had never struck me; but men have told me what you tell me +now. + +PRINCESS + +Even Antiquity, which surpasses us so vastly in all manner of wisdom and +heroism, can boast of very few like you. The noblest souls have grown +tyrannical and rapacious and foolhardy in sudden elevation. Remember +Alcibiades, the beloved pupil of the wisest of all mortals. Signor +Diego, you may have read but little; but you have meditated to much +profit, and must have wrestled like some great athlete with all that +baser self which the divine Plato has told us how to master. + +DIEGO (_shaking his head_) + +Alas, Madam, your words make me ashamed, and yet they make me smile, +being so far of the mark! I have wrestled with nothing; followed only my +soul's blind impulses. + +PRINCESS (_gravely_) + +It must be, then, dear Signor Diego, as the Pythagoreans held: the +discipline of music is virtuous for the soul. There is a power in +numbered and measured sound very akin to wisdom; mysterious and +excellent; as indeed the Ancients fabled in the tales of Orpheus and +Amphion, musicians and great sages and legislators of states. I have +long desired your conversation, admirable Diego. + +DIEGO (_with secret contempt_) + +Noble maiden, such words exceed my poor unscholarly appreciation. The +antique worthies whom you name are for me merely figures in tapestries +and frescoes, quaint greybeards in laurel wreaths and helmets; and I can +scarcely tell whether the Ladies Fortitude and Rhetoric with whom they +hold converse, are real daughters of kings, or mere Arts and Virtues. +But the Duke, a learned and judicious prince, will set due store by his +youthful cousin's learning. As for me, simpleton and ignoramus that I +am, all I see is that Princess Hippolyta is very beautiful and very +young. + +PRINCESS + +(_sighing a little, but with great simplicity_) + +I know it. I am young, and perhaps crude; although I study hard to learn +the rules of wisdom. You, Diego, seem to know them without study. + +DIEGO + +I know somewhat of the world and of men, gracious Princess, but that can +scarce be called knowing wisdom. Say rather knowing blindness, envy, +cruelty, endless nameless folly in others and oneself. But why should +you seek to be wise? you who are fair, young, a princess, and betrothed +from your cradle to a great prince? Be beautiful, be young, be what you +are, a woman. + +Diego _has said this last word with emphasis, but the_ Princess _has not +noticed the sarcasm in his voice_. + +PRINCESS (_shaking her head_) + +That is not my lot. I was destined, as you said, to be the wife of a +great prince; and my dear father trained me to fill that office. + +DIEGO + +Well, and to be beautiful, young, radiant; to be a woman; is not that +the office of a wife? + +PRINCESS + +I have not much experience. But my father told me, and I have gathered +from books, that in the wives of princes, such gifts are often thrown +away; that other women, supplying them, seem to supply them better. Look +at my cousin's mother. I can remember her still beautiful, young, and +most tenderly loving. Yet the Duke, my uncle, disdained her, and all she +got was loneliness and heartbreak. An honourable woman, a princess, +cannot compete with those who study to please and to please only. She +must either submit to being ousted from her husband's love, or soar +above it into other regions. + +DIEGO (_interested_) + +Other regions? + +PRINCESS + +Higher ones. She must be fit to be her husband's help, and to nurse his +sons to valour and wisdom. + +DIEGO + +I see. The Prince must know that besides all the knights that he summons +to battle, and all the wise men whom he hears in council, there is +another knight, in rather lighter armour and quicker tired, another +counsellor, less experienced and of less steady temper, ready for use. +Is this great gain? + +PRINCESS + +It is strange that being a man, you should conceive of women from---- + +DIEGO + +From a man's standpoint? + +PRINCESS + +Nay; methinks a woman's. For I observe that women, when they wish to +help men, think first of all of some transparent masquerade, donning +men's clothes, at all events in metaphor, in order to be near their +lovers when not wanted. + +DIEGO (_hastily_) + +Donning men's clothes? A masquerade? I fail to follow your meaning, +gracious maiden. + +PRINCESS (_simply_) + +So I have learned at least from our poets. Angelica, and Bradamante and +Fiordispina, scouring the country after their lovers, who were busy +enough without them. I prefer Penelope, staying at home to save the +lands and goods of Ulysses, and bringing up his son to rescue and avenge +him. + +DIEGO (_reassured and indifferent_) + +Did Ulysses love Penelope any better for it, Madam? better than poor +besotted Menelaus, after all his injuries, loved Helen back in Sparta? + +PRINCESS + +That is not the question. A woman born to be a prince's wife and +prince's mother, does her work not for the sake of something greater +than love, whether much or little. + +DIEGO + +For what then? + +PRINCESS + +Does a well-bred horse or excellent falcon do its duty to please its +master? No; but because such is its nature. Similarly, methinks, a woman +bred to be a princess works with her husband, for her husband, not for +any reward, but because he and she are of the same breed, and obey the +same instincts. + +DIEGO + +Ah!----Then happiness, love,--all that a woman craves for? + +PRINCESS + +Are accidents. Are they not so in the life of a prince? Love he may +snatch; and she, being in woman's fashion not allowed to snatch, may +receive as a gift, or not. But received or snatched, it is not either's +business; not their nature's true fulfilment. + +DIEGO + +You think so, Lady? + +PRINCESS + +I am bound to think so. I was born to it and taught it. You know the +Duke, my cousin,--well, I am his bride, not being born his sister. + +DIEGO + +And you are satisfied? O beautiful Princess, you are of illustrious +lineage and mind, and learned. Your father brought you up on Plutarch +instead of Amadis; you know many things; but there is one, methinks, no +one can know the nature of it until he has it. + +PRINCESS + +What is that, pray? + +DIEGO + +A heart. Because you have not got one yet, you make your plans without +it,--a negligible item in your life. + +Princess + +I am not a child. + +DIEGO + +But not yet a woman. + +PRINCESS (_meditatively_) + +You think, then---- + +DIEGO + +I do not _think_; I _know_. And _you_ will know, some day. And then---- + +PRINCESS + +Then I shall suffer. Why, we must all suffer. Say that, having a heart, +a heart for husband or child, means certain grief,--well, does not +riding, walking down your stairs, mean the chance of broken bones? Does +not living mean old age, disease, possible blindness or paralysis, and +quite inevitable aches? If, as you say, I must needs grow a heart, and +if a heart must needs give agony, why, I shall live through heartbreak +as through pain in any other limb. + +DIEGO + +Yes,--were your heart a limb like all the rest,--but 'tis the very +centre and fountain of all life. + +PRINCESS + +You think so? 'Tis, methinks, pushing analogy too far, and metaphor. +This necessary organ, diffusing life throughout us, and, as physicians +say, removing with its vigorous floods all that has ceased to live, +replacing it with new and living tissue,--this great literal heart +cannot be the seat of only one small passion. + +DIEGO + +Yet I have known more women than one die of that small passion's +frustrating. + +PRINCESS + +But you have known also, I reckon, many a man in whom life, what he had +to live for, was stronger than all love. They say the Duke my cousin's +melancholy sickness was due to love which he had outlived. + +DIEGO They say so, Madam. + +PRINCESS (_thoughtfully_) + +I think it possible, from what I know of him. He was much with my father +when a lad; and I, a child, would listen to their converse, not +understanding its items, but seeming to understand the general drift. My +father often said my cousin was romantic, favoured overmuch his tender +mother, and would suffer greatly, learning to live for valour and for +wisdom. + +DIEGO + +Think you he has, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +If 'tis true that occasion has already come. + +DIEGO + +And--if that occasion came, for the first time or for the second, +perhaps, after your marriage? What would you do, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I cannot tell as yet. Help him, I trust, when help could come, by the +sympathy of a soul's strength and serenity. Stand aside, most likely, +waiting to be wanted. Or else---- + +DIEGO + +Or else, illustrious maiden? + +PRINCESS + +Or else----I know not----perhaps, growing a heart, get some use from it. + +DIEGO + +Your Highness surely does not mean use it to love with? + +PRINCESS + +Why not? It might be one way of help. And if I saw him struggling with +grief, seeking to live the life and think the thought fit for his +station; why, methinks I could love him. He seems lovable. Only love +could have taught fidelity like yours. + +DIEGO + +You forget, gracious Princess, that you attributed great power of virtue +to a habit of conduct, which is like the nature of high-bred horses, +needing no spur. But in truth you are right. I am no high-bred creature. +Quite the contrary. Like curs, I love; love, and only love. For curs are +known to love their masters. + +PRINCESS + +Speak not thus, virtuous Diego. I have indeed talked in magnanimous +fashion, and believed, sincerely, that I felt high resolves. But you +have acted, lived, and done magnanimously. What you have been and are to +the Duke is better schooling for me than all the Lives of Plutarch. + +DIEGO. + +You could not learn from me, Lady. + +PRINCESS + +But I would try, Diego. + +DIEGO + +Be not grasping, Madam. The generous coursers whom your father taught +you to break and harness have their set of virtues. Those of curs are +different. Do not grudge them those. Your noble horses kick them enough, +without even seeing their presence. But I feel I am beyond my depth, not +being philosophical by nature or schooling. And I had forgotten to give +you part of his Highnesses message. Knowing your love of music, and the +attention you have given it, the Duke imagined it might divert you, till +he was at leisure to pay you homage, to make trial of my poor powers. +Will it please you to order the other musicians, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +Nay, good Diego, humour me in this. I have studied music, and would fain +make trial of accompanying your voice. Have you notes by you? + +DIEGO + +Here are some, Madam, left for the use of his Highness's band this +evening. Here is the pastoral of Phyllis by Ludovic of the Lute; a hymn +in four parts to the Virgin by Orlandus Lassus; a madrigal by the Pope's +Master, Signor Pierluigi of Praeneste. Ah! Here is a dramatic scene +between Medea and Creusa, rivals in love, by the Florentine Octavio. +Have you knowledge of it, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I have sung it with my master for exercise. But, good Diego, find a song +for yourself. + +DIEGO + +You shall humour me, now, gracious Lady. Think I am your master. I +desire to hear your voice. And who knows? In this small matter I may +really teach you something. + +_The_ PRINCESS _sits to the harpsichord_, DIEGO _standing beside her on +the dais. They sing, the_ PRINCESS _taking the treble_, DIEGO _the +contralto part. The_ PRINCESS _enters first--with a full-toned voice +clear and high, singing very carefully_. DIEGO _follows, singing in a +whisper. His voice is a little husky, and here and there broken, but +ineffably delicious and penetrating, and, as he sings, becomes, without +quitting the whisper, dominating and disquieting. The_ PRINCESS _plays a +wrong chord, and breaks off suddenly._ + +DIEGO + +(_having finished a cadence, rudely_) + +What is it, Madam? + +PRINCESS + +I know not. I have lost my place----I----I feel bewildered. When your +voice rose up against mine, Diego, I lost my head. And--I do not know +how to express it--when our voices met in that held dissonance, it +seemed as if you hurt me----horribly. + +DIEGO + +(_smiling, with hypocritical apology_) + +Forgive me, Madam. I sang too loud, perhaps. We theatre singers are apt +to strain things. I trust some day to hear you sing alone. You have a +lovely voice: more like a boy's than like a maiden's still. + +PRINCESS + +And yours----'tis strange that at your age we should reverse the +parts,--yours, though deeper than mine, is like a woman's. + +DIEGO (_laughing_) + +I have grown a heart, Madam; 'tis an organ grows quicker where the breed +is mixed and lowly, no nobler limbs retarding its development by theirs. + +PRINCESS + +Speak not thus, excellent Diego. Why cause me pain by disrespectful +treatment of a person--your own admirable self--whom I respect? You have +experience, Diego, and shall teach me many things, for I desire +learning. + +_The_ Princess _takes his hand in both hers, very kindly and simply_. +Diego, _disengaging his, bows very ceremoniously_. + +DIEGO + +Shall I teach you to sing as I do, gracious Madam? + +PRINCESS (_after a moment_) + +I think not, Diego. + + + + +ACT V + + +_Two months later. The wedding day of the_ DUKE. _Another part of the +Palace of Mantua. A long terrace still to be seen, with roof supported +by columns. It looks on one side on to the jousting ground, a green +meadow surrounded by clipped hedges and set all round with mulberry +trees. On the other side it overlooks the lake, against which, as a +fact, it acts as dyke. The Court of Mantua and Envoys of foreign +Princes, together with many Prelates, are assembled on the terrace, +surrounding the seats of the_ DUKE, _the young_ DUCHESS HIPPOLYTA, _the_ +DUCHESS DOWAGER _and the_ CARDINAL. _Facing this gallery, and separated +from it by a line of sedge and willows, and a few yards of pure green +water, starred with white lilies, is a stage in the shape of a Grecian +temple, apparently rising out of the lake. Its pediment and columns are +slung with garlands of bay and cypress. In the gable, the_ DUKE'S +_device of a labyrinth in gold on a blue ground and the motto:_ "RECTAS +PETO." _On the stage, but this side of the curtain, which is down, are a +number of_ Musicians _with violins, viols, theorbs, a hautboy, a flute, +a bassoon, viola d'amore and bass viols, grouped round two men with +double basses and a man at a harpsichord, in dress like the musicians in +Veronese's paintings. They are preluding gently, playing elaborately +fugued variations on a dance tune in three-eighth time, rendered +singularly plaintive by the absence of perfect closes_. + +CARDINAL + +(_to_ VENETIAN AMBASSADOR) + +What say you to our Diego's masque, my Lord? Does not his skill as a +composer vie almost with his sublety as a singer? + +MARCHIONESS OF GUASTALLA + +(_to the_ DUCHESS DOWAGER) + +A most excellent masque, methinks, Madam. And of so new a kind. We have +had masques in palaces and also in gardens, and some, I own it, +beautiful; for our palace on the hill affords fine vistas of cypress +avenues and the distant plain. But, until the Duke your son, no one has +had a masque on the water, it would seem. 'Tis doubtless his invention? + +DUCHESS + +(_with evident preoccupation_) + +I think not, Madam. 'Tis our foolish Diego's freak. And I confess I like +it not. It makes me anxious for the players. + +BISHOP OF CREMONA (_to the_ CARDINAL) + +A wondrous singer, your Signor Diego. They say the Spaniards have subtle +exercises for keeping the voice thus youthful. His Holiness has several +such who sing divinely under Pierluigi's guidance. But your Diego seems +really but a child, yet has a mode of singing like one who knows a world +of joys and sorrows. + +CARDINAL + +He has. Indeed, I sometimes think he pushes the pathetic quality too +far. I am all for the Olympic serenity of the wise Ancients. + +YOUNG DUCHESS (_laughing_) + +My uncle would, I almost think, exile our divine Diego, as Plato did the +poets, for moving us too much. + +PRINCE OF MASSA (_whispering_) + +He has moved your noble husband strangely. Or is it, gracious bride, +that too much happiness overwhelms our friend? + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_turning round and noticing the_ DUKE, _a few seats off_) + +'Tis true. Ferdinand is very sensitive to music, and is greatly +concerned for our Diego's play. Still----I wonder----. + +MARCHIONESS (_to the_ DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET, _who is standing near +her_) + +I really never could have recognised Signor Diego in his disguise. He +looks for all the world exactly like a woman. + +POET + +A woman! Say a goddess, Madam! Upon my soul (_whispering_), the bride is +scarce as beautiful as he, although as fair as one of the noble swans +who sail on those clear waters. + +JESTER + +After the play we shall see admiring dames trooping behind the scenes to +learn the secret of the paints which can change a scrubby boy into a +beauteous nymph; a metamorphosis worth twenty of Sir Ovid's. + +DOGE'S WIFE (_to the_ DUKE) + +They all tell me--but 'tis a secret naturally--that the words of this +ingenious masque are from your Highness's own pen; and that you +helped--such are your varied gifts--your singing-page to set them to +music. + +DUKE (_impatiently_) + +It may be that your Serenity is rightly informed, or not. + +KNIGHT OF MALTA (_to_ YOUNG DUCHESS) + +One recognises, at least, the mark of Duke Ferdinand's genius in the +suiting of the play to the surroundings. Given these lakes, what fitter +argument than Ariadne abandoned on her little island? And the labyrinth +in the story is a pretty allusion to your lord's personal device and the +magnificent ceiling he lately designed for our admiration. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_with her eyes fixed on the curtain, which begins to move_) + +Nay, 'tis all Diego's thought. Hush, they begin to play. Oh, my heart +beats with curiosity to know how our dear Diego will carry his invention +through, and to hear the last song which he has never let me hear him +sing. + +_The curtain is drawn aside, displaying the stage, set with orange and +myrtle trees in jars, and a big flowering oleander. There is no painted +background; but instead, the lake, with distant shore, and the sky with +the sun slowly descending into clouds, which light up purple and +crimson, and send rosy streamers into the high blue air. On the stage a +rout of_ Bacchanals, _dressed like Mantegna's Hours, but with +vine-garlands; also_ Satyrs _quaintly dressed in goatskins, but with +top-knots of ribbons, all singing a Latin ode in praise of_ BACCHUS _and +wine; while girls dressed as nymphs, with ribboned thyrsi in their +hands, dance a pavana before a throne of moss overhung by ribboned +garlands. On this throne are seated a_ TENOR _as_ BACCHUS, _dressed in +russet and leopard skins, a garland of vine leaves round his waist and +round his wide-brimmed hat; and_ DIEGO, _as_ ARIADNE. DIEGO, _no longer +habited as a man, but in woman's garments, like those of Guercino's +Sibyls: a floating robe and vest of orange and violet, open at the +throat; with particoloured scarves hanging, and a particoloured scarf +wound like a turban round the head, the locks of dark hair escaping from +beneath. She is extremely beautiful_. + +MAGDALEN (_sometime known as_ DIEGO, _now representing_ ARIADNE) _rises +from the throne and speaks, turning to_ BACCHUS. _Her voice is a +contralto, but not deep, and with upper notes like a hautboy's. She +speaks in an irregular recitative, sustained by chords on the viols and +harpsichord_. + +ARIADNE + +Tempt me not, gentle Bacchus, sunburnt god of ruddy vines and rustic +revelry. The gifts you bring, the queenship of the world of +wine-inspired Fancies, cannot quell my grief at Theseus' loss. + +BACCHUS (_tenor_) + +Princess, I do beseech you, give me leave to try and soothe your +anguish. Daughter of Cretan Minos, stern Judge of the Departed, your +rearing has been too sad for youth and beauty, and the shade of Orcus +has ever lain across your path. But I am God of Gladness; I can take +your soul, suspend it in Mirth's sun, even as the grapes, translucent +amber or rosy, hang from the tendril in the ripening sun of the crisp +autumn day. I can unwind your soul, and string it in the serene sky of +evening, smiling in the deep blue like to the stars, encircled, I offer +you as crown. Listen, fair Nymph: 'tis a God woos you. + +ARIADNE + +Alas, radiant Divinity of a time of year gentler than Spring and +fruitfuller than Summer, there is no Autumn for hapless Ariadne. Only +Winter's nights and frosts wrap my soul. When Theseus went, my youth +went also. I pray you leave me to my poor tears and the thoughts of him. + +BACCHUS + +Lady, even a God, and even a lover, must respect your grief. Farewell. +Comrades, along; the pine trees on the hills, the ivy-wreaths upon the +rocks, await your company; and the red-stained vat, the heady-scented +oak-wood, demand your presence. + +_The_ Bacchantes _and_ Satyrs _sing a Latin ode in praise of Wine, in +four parts, with accompaniment of bass viols and lutes, and exeunt with_ +BACCHUS. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_to_ DUKE OF FERRARA'S POET) + +Now, now, Master Torquato, now we shall hear Poetry's own self sing with +our Diego's voice. + +DIEGO, _as_ ARIADNE, _walks slowly up and down the stage, while the +viola plays a prelude in the minor. Then she speaks, recitative with +chords only by strings and harpsichord_. + +ARIADNE + +They are gone at last. Kind creatures, how their kindness fretted my +weary soul I To be alone with grief is almost pleasure, since grief +means thought of Theseus. Yet that thought is killing me. O Theseus, why +didst thou ever come into my life? Why did not the cruel Minotaur gore +and trample thee like all the others? Hapless Ariadne! The clue was in +my keeping, and I reached it to him. And now his ship has long since +neared his native shores, and he stands on the prow, watching for his +new love. But the Past belongs to me. + +_A flute rises in the orchestra, with viols accompanying, pizzicati, and +plays three or four bars of intricate mazy passages, very sweet and +poignant, stopping on a high note, with imperfect close_. + +ARIADNE (_continuing_) + +And in the past he loved me, and he loves me still. Nothing can alter +that. Nay, Theseus, thou canst never never love another like me. + +_Arioso. The declamation becomes more melodic, though still +unrhythmical, and is accompanied by a rapid and passionate tremolo of +violins and viols_. + +And thy love for her will be but the thin ghost of the reality that +lived for me. But Theseus----Do not leave me yet. Another hour, another +minute. I have so much to tell thee, dearest, ere thou goest. + +_Accompaniment more and more agitated. A hautboy echoes_ ARIADNE'S _last +phrase with poignant reedy tone_. + +Thou knowest, I have not yet sung thee that little song thou lovest to +hear of evenings; the little song made by the Aeolian Poetess whom +Apollo loved when in her teens. And thou canst not go away till I have +sung it. See! my lute. But I must tune it. All is out of tune in my poor +jangled life. + +_Lute solo in the orchestra. A Siciliana or slow dance, very delicate +and simple_. ARIADNE _sings_. + +Song + + Let us forget we loved each other much; + Let us forget we ever have to part; + Let us forget that any look or touch + Once let in either to the other's heart. + + Only we'll sit upon the daisied grass, + And hear the larks and see the swallows pass; + Only we live awhile, as children play, + Without to-morrow, without yesterday. +_During the ritornello, between the two verses._ + +POET + +(_to the_ Young Duchess, _whispering_) + +Madam, methinks his Highness is unwell. Turn round, I pray you. + +YOUNG DUCHESS (_without turning_). + +He feels the play's charm. Hush. + +DUCHESS DOWAGER (_whispering_) + +Come Ferdinand, you are faint. Come with me. + +DUKE (_whispering_) + +Nay, mother. It will pass. Only a certain oppression at the heart, I was +once subject to. Let us be still. + +Song (_repeats_) + + Only we'll live awhile, as children play, + Without to-morrow, without yesterday. + +_A few bars of ritornello after the song_. + +DUCHESS DOWAGER (_whispering_) + +Courage, my son, I know all. + +ARIADNE + +(_Recitative with accompaniment of violins, flute and harp_) + +Theseus, I've sung my song. Alas, alas for our poor songs we sing to the +beloved, and vainly try to vary into newness! + +_A few notes of the harp well up, slow and liquid_. + +Now I can go to rest, and darkness lap my weary heart. Theseus, my love, +good night! + +_Violins tremolo. The hautboy suddenly enters with a long wailing +phrase_. ARIADNE _quickly mounts on to the back of the stage, turns +round for one second, waving a kiss to an imaginary person, and then +flings herself down into the lake_. + +_A great burst of applause. Enter immediately, and during the cries and +clapping, a chorus of_ Water-Nymphs _in transparent veils and garlands +of willows and lilies, which sings to a solemn counterpoint, the dirge +of_ ARIADNE. _But their singing is barely audible through the applause +of the whole Court, and the shouts of_ "DIEGO! DIEGO! ARIADNE! ARIADNE!" +_The young_ DUCHESS _rises excitedly, wiping her eyes_. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +Dear friend! Diego! Diego! Our Orpheus, come forth! + +CROWD + +Diego! Diego! + +POET (_to the_ POPE'S LEGATE) + +He is a real artist, and scorns to spoil the play's impression by +truckling to this foolish habit of applause. + +MARCHIONESS + +Still, a mere singer, a page----when his betters call----. But see! the +Duke has left our midst. + +CARDINAL + +He has gone to bring back Diego in triumph, doubtless. + +VENETIAN AMBASSADOR + +And, I note, his venerable mother has also left us. I doubt whether this +play has not offended her strict widow's austerity. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +But where is Diego, meanwhile? + +_The Chorus and orchestra continue the dirge for_ ARIADNE. A +GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING _elbows through the crowd to the_ CARDINAL. + +GENTLEMAN (_whispering_) + +Most Eminent, a word---- + +CARDINAL (_whispering_) + +The Duke has had a return of his malady? + +GENTLEMAN (_whispering_) + +No, most Eminent. But Diego is nowhere to be found. And they have +brought up behind the stage the body of a woman in Ariadne's weeds. + +CARDINAL (whispering) + +Ah, is that all? Discretion, pray. I knew it. But 'tis a most +distressing accident. Discretion above all. + +_The Chorus suddenly breaks off. For on to the stage comes the_ DUKE. +_He is dripping, and bears in his arms the dead body, drowned, of_ +DIEGO, _in the garb of_ ARIADNE. _A shout from the crowd_. + +YOUNG DUCHESS + +(_with a cry, clutching the_ POET'S _arm_) + +Diego! + +DUKE + +(_stooping over the body, which he has laid upon the stage, and speaking +very low_) + +Magdalen! + +(_The curtain is hastily closed_.) + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Limbo and Other Essays, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS *** + +***** This file should be named 37179.txt or 37179.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/1/7/37179/ + +Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe +at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously +made available by the Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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