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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/7422-0.txt b/7422-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b3f363 --- /dev/null +++ b/7422-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8850 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. Howells + +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: Roman Holidays and Others + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7422] +Last Updated: February 25, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred and David Widger + + + + + + +[Illustration: 01 GLIMPSE OUTSIDE OF MODERN ROME] + + +ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS + +By W. D. Howells + +ILLUSTRATED + + + + + + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + Copyright, 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS. + Copyright, 1908, by THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. + Published October, 1908. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA + +II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN + +III. ASHORE AT GENOA + +IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE + +V. POMPEII REVISITED + +VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS + +VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN + +VIII. OVER AT PISA + +IX.. BACK AT GENOA + +X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL + + + + + +ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS + + + + +I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA. + + +No drop-curtain, at any theatre I have seen, was ever so richly +imagined, with misty tops and shadowy clefts and frowning cliffs and +gloomy valleys and long, plunging cataracts, as the actual landscape of +Madeira, when we drew nearer and nearer to it, at the close of a tearful +afternoon of mid-January. The scenery of drop-curtains is often very +boldly beautiful, but here Nature, if she had taken a hint from art, had +certainly bettered her instruction. During the waits between acts at the +theatre, while studying the magnificent painting beyond the trouble of +the orchestra, I have been most impressed by the splendid variety which +the artist had got into his picture, where the spacious frame lent +itself to his passion for saying everything; but I remembered his +thronging fancies as meagre and scanty in the presence of the stupendous +reality before me. I have, for instance, not even mentioned the sea, +which swept smoother and smoother in toward the feet of those precipices +and grew more and more trans-lucently purple and yellow and green, while +half a score of cascades shot straight down their fronts in shafts of +snowy foam, and over their pachydermatous shoulders streamed and hung +long reaches of gray vines or mosses. To the view from the sea the +island is all, with its changing capes and promontories and bays and +inlets, one immeasurable mountain; and on the afternoon of our approach +it was bestridden by a steadfast rainbow, of which we could only see one +leg indeed, but that very stout and athletic. + +There were breadths of dark woodland aloft on this mountain, and +terraced vineyards lower down; and on the shelving plateaus yet farther +from the heights that lost themselves in the clouds there were scattered +white cottages; on little levels close to the sea there were set white +villas. These, as the ship coquetted with the vagaries of the shore, +thickened more and more, until after rounding a prodigious headland we +found ourselves in face of the charming little city of Funchal: long +horizontal lines of red roofs, ivory and pink and salmon walls, evenly +fenestrated, with an ancient fortress giving the modern look of things a +proper mediaeval touch. Large hotels, with the air of palaces, crowned +the upland vantages; there were bell-towers of churches, and in one +place there was a wide splotch of vivid color from the red of the +densely flowering creeper on the side of some favored house. There was +an acceptable expanse of warm brown near the quay from the withered but +unfailing leaves of a sycamore-shaded promenade, and in the fine +roadstead where we anchored there lay other steamers and a lead-colored +Portuguese war-ship. I am not a painter, but I think that here are the +materials of a water-color which almost any one else could paint. In the +hands of a scene-painter they would yield a really unrivalled +drop-curtain. I stick to the notion of this because when the beautiful +goes too far, as it certainly does at Madeira, it leaves you not only +sated but vindictive; you wish to mock it. + +The afternoon saddened more and more, and one could not take an interest +in the islanders who came out in little cockles and proposed to dive for +shillings and sixpences, though quarters and dimes would do. The +company's tender also came out, and numbers of passengers went ashore in +the mere wantonness of paying for their dinner and a night's lodging in +the annexes of the hotels, which they were told beforehand were full. +The lights began to twinkle from the windows of the town, and the dark +fell upon the insupportable picturesqueness of the prospect, leaving one +to a gayety of trooping and climbing lamps which defined the course of +the streets. + +The morning broke in sunshine, and after early breakfast the launches +began to ply again between the ship and the shore and continued till +nearly all the first and second cabin people had been carried off. The +people of the steerage satisfied what longing they had for strange +sights and scenes by thronging to the sides of the steamer until they +gave her a strong list landward, as they easily might, for there were +twenty-five hundred of them. At Madeira there is a local Thomas Cook & +Son of quite another name, but we were not finally sure that the alert +youth on the pier who sold us transportation and provision was really +their agent. However, his tickets served perfectly well at all points, +and he was of such an engaging civility and personal comeliness that I +should not have much minded their failing us here and there. He gave the +first charming-touch of the Latin south whose renewed contact is such a +pleasure to any one knowing it from the past. All Portuguese as Funchal +was, it looked so like a hundred little Italian towns that it seemed to +me as if I must always have driven about them in calico-tented +bullock-carts set on runners, as later I drove about Eunchal. + +It was warm enough on the ship, but here in the town we found ourselves +in weather that one could easily have taken for summer, if the +inhabitants had not repeatedly assured us that it was the season of +winter, and that there were no flowers and no fruits. They could not, if +they had wished, have denied the flies; these, in a hotel interior to +which we penetrated, simply swarmed. If it was winter in Funchal it was +no wintrier than early autumn would have been in one of those Italian +towns of other days; it had the same temperament, the same little +tree-planted spaces, the same devious, cobble-paved streets, the same +pleasant stucco houses; the churches had bells of like tone, and if +their facades confessed a Spanish touch they were not more Spanish than +half the churches in Naples. The public ways were of a scrupulous +cleanliness, as if, with so many English signs glaring down at them, +they durst not untidy out-of-doors, though in-doors it was said to be +different with them. There are three thousand English living at Funchal +and everybody speaks English, however slightly. The fresh faces of +English girls met us in the streets and no doubt English invalids +abound. + +We shipmates were all going to the station of the funicular railway, but +our tickets did not call for bullock-sleds and so we took a clattering +little horse-car, which climbed with us through up-hill streets and got +us to the station too soon. Within the closed grille there the +handsomest of swarthy, black-eyed, black-mustached station-masters (if +such was his quality) told us that we could not have a train at once, +though we had been advised that any ten of us could any time have a +train, because the cars had all gone up the mountain and none would be +down for twenty minutes. He spoke English and he mitigated by a most +amiable personality sufferings which were perhaps not so great as we +would have liked to think. Some of us wandered off down a pink-and-cream +colored avenue near by and admired so much the curtains of +red-and-yellow flowers--a cross between honeysuckles and trumpet +blossoms--overhanging a garden-wall that two friendly boys began to +share our interest in them. One of them mounted the other and tore down +handfuls of the flowers, which they bestowed upon us with so little +apparent expectation of reward that we promptly gave them of the +international copper coinage current in Madeira, and went back to the +station doubtless feeling guiltier than they. Had we not been accessory +after the fact to something like theft and, as it was Sunday, to +Sabbath-breaking besides? Afterward flowers proved so abundant in +Madeira in spite of its being winter, that we could not feel the larceny +a serious one, and the Sunday was a Latin Sabbath well used to being +broken. The pony engine which was to push our slanting car over the +cogged track up the mountain arrived with due ceremony of bell and +whistle, and we were let through the grille by the station-master as +politely as if we had been each his considered guest. Then the climb +began through the fields of sugar-cane, terraced vineyards, orchards of +fruit trees, and gardens of vegetables planted under the arbors over +which the grapes were trained. One of us told the others that the +vegetables were sheltered to save them from being scorched by the summer +sun, and that much of the work among them was done by moonlight to save +the laborers from the same fate. I do not know how he had amassed this +knowledge, and I am not sure that I have the right to impart it without +his leave. I myself saw some melons lolling on one of the tiled roofs of +the cottages where they had perhaps been pushed by the energetic forces +of the earth and sky. The grape-vines were quiescent, partly because it +was winter, as everybody said, and partly because the wine culture is no +longer so profitable in the island. It has been found for the moment +that Madeira is bad for the gout, and this discovery of the doctors is +bad for the peasants (already cruelly overtaxed by Portugal), who are +leaving their homes in great numbers and seeking their fortunes in both +of the Americas, as well as the islands of all the seas. It must be a +heartbreak for them to forsake such homes as we saw in the clean white +cottages, with the balconies and terraces. + +But there were no signs of depopulation either of old or young. Smiling +mothers and fathers of all ages, in their Sunday leisure and their +Sunday best, watched our ascent as if they had never seen the like +before, and our course was never so swift but we could be easily +overtaken by the children; they embarrassed us with the riches of the +camellias which they flung in upon us, and they were accompanied by +small dogs which barked excitedly. Our train almost grazed the walls of +the door-yards as we passed through the succession of the one- and +two-story cottages, which dotted the mountain-side in every direction. +When the eye could leave them it was lured from height to height, and at +each rise of the track to some wider and lovelier expanse of the sea. We +could see merely our own steamer in the roadstead, with the Portuguese +war-ship, and the few other vessels at anchor, but we could never +exhaust the variety of those varied mountain slopes and tops. Their +picturesqueness of form and their delight of color would beggar any +thesaurus of its descriptive reserves, and yet leave their beauty almost +unhinted. A drop-curtain were here a vain simile; the chromatic glories +of colored postal-cards might suggest the scene, but then again they +might overdo it. Nature is modest in her most magnificent moods, and I +do not see how she could have a more magnificent mood than Madeira. It +can never be represented by my art, but it may be measurably stated: low +lying sea; the town scattering and fraying everywhere into outlying +hamlets, villas and cottages; steep rising upon steep, till they reach +uninhabitable climaxes where the woods darken upward into the +everlasting snows, in one whole of grandeur resuming in its unity every +varying detail. + +[Illustration: 02 FUNCHAL BAY] + +I dwell rather helplessly upon the scenery, because it was what we +professedly went up or half up, or one-tenth or-hundredth up, the +mountain for. Un-professedly we went up in order to come down by the +toboggan of the country, though we vowed one another not to attempt +anything so mad. In the meanwhile, before it should be time for lunch, +we could walk up to a small church near the station and see the people +at prayer in an interior which did not differ in bareness and tawdriness +from most other country churches of the Latin south, though it had a +facade so satisfyingly Spanish, because I suppose it was so perfectly +Portuguese, that heart could ask no more. Not all the people were at +prayer within; irregular files of them attended our progress to give us +the opportunity of doing charity. The beggars were of every sort, sex, +and age, and some, from the hands they held out, with fingers reduced to +their last joints, looked as if they might be lepers, but I do not say +they were. What I am sure of is that the faces of the worshippers--men, +women, and children--when they came out of the church were of a +gentleness which, if it was not innocence and goodness, might well have +passed for those virtues. They had kind eyes, which seemed as often blue +as black, and if they had no great beauty they were seldom quite ugly. I +wish I could think we strangers, as they gazed curiously, timorously at +us, struck them as favorably. + +An involuntary ferocity from the famine which we began to feel may have +glared from our visages, for we had eaten nothing for three hours, which +was long for saloon passengers. At the first restaurant which we found, +and in which we all but sat down at table, our coupons were not good, +but this was not wholly loss, for we recouped ourselves in the beauties +of the walk on which we wandered along the mountain-side to the right of +the restaurant. At the point where we were no longer confident of our +way an opportune native appeared and Jed us over paths paved with fine +pebbles, sometimes wrought into geometric patterns, and always through +pleasing sun and shade, till we reached a pretty hotel set, with its +gardens before it, on a shelf of level land and commanding a view of our +steamer and the surrounding sea. Tropic growths, which I will venture to +call myrtle, oleander, laurel, and eucalyptus, environed the hotel, not +too closely nor densely, and our increasing party was presently +discovered from the head of its steps by a hospitable matron, who with a +cry of comprehensive welcome ran within and was replaced by a +head-waiter of as friendly aspect and much more English. He said our +coupons were good there and that our luncheon would be ready in two +minutes; for proof of the despatch with which we should be served he +held up the first and second fingers of his right hand. Restored by his +assurance, we did not really mind waiting twice the tale of all his ten +fingers, and we spent our time variously in wandering about the plateau, +among the wonted iron tables and chairs in front of the hotel, in being +photographed in a fairy grotto behind it, and in examining the visitors' +book in the parlor. The names of visitors from South Africa largely +prevailed, for the Cape Town steamers, oftener than any others, touch at +Madeira, but there was one traveller of Portuguese race who had written +his name in bold characters above the cry, “Long live the Portuguese +Republic.” Soon after the Portuguese monarchy ceased to live for a time +in the person of the murdered king and his heir, but it is doubtful if +the health of the potential republic was as great as before. + +That bright Sunday morning no shadow of the black event was forecast, +and we gave our unstinted sympathy to our unknown co-republican. The +luncheon, when we were called to it, had merits of novelty and quality +which I will celebrate only as regards the delicate fish fresh from the +sea, and the pease fresh from the garden, with poached eggs fresh from +the coop dropped upon them. The conception of chops which followed was +not so faultless, though the fruit with which we ended did much to +repair any error of kid which may have mistaken itself for lamb. Perhaps +our enthusiasm was heightened by the fine air which had sharpened our +appetites. At any rate, it all ended in an habitual transaction in real +estate by which I became the owner of the place, without expropriating +the actual possessor, and established there those castles in Spain +belonging to me in so many parts of the world. + +There remained now nothing for us to do but to toboggan down the +mountain, and we overcame our resolution not to do so far enough to go +and look at the toboggans under the guidance of our head-waiter. When +once we had looked we were lost. The toboggans were flat baskets set on +iron-shod runners, and well cushioned and padded; they held one, two, or +three passengers; the track on which they descended was paved, in gentle +undulations, with thin pebbles set on edge and greased wherever the +descent found a level. A smiling native, with a strong rope attached to +the toboggan, stood on each side of it, and held it back or pulled it +forward, according to the exigencies of the case. It is long since I +slid down hill on a sled of my own, and I do not pretend to recall the +sensation; but I can remember nothing so luxurious in transportation as +the swift flight of the Madeira toboggan, which you temper at will +through its guides and guards, but do not wish to temper at all when +your first alarm, mainly theoretical, passes into the gayety ending in +exultant rejoicing at the bottom of the course. + +Our two toboggan men were possibly vigilant and reassuring beyond the +common, but one was quite silently so; the other, who spoke a little +English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were +“strong mans,” afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules +of Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the +noun, and declaring that they were “strongs mans.” We met many toboggan +men who needed to be “strongs mans” in their ascent of our track, with +their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some of them did not look +strong, and our own arrived spent and panting at the bottom. Something +like that is what always spoils pleasure in this world. Even when you +have paid for it with your money, some one else has paid with his person +twice as much, and you have not equalled his outlay when you have tipped +him your handsomest. + +A shilling apiece seemed handsome for those “strongs mans,” but +afterward there were watches of the nights when the spirit grieved that +the shilling had not been made two apiece or even half a crown, and I +wish now that the first reader of mine who toboggans down Madeira would +make up the difference for me in his tip to those poor fellows. I do not +mind if he adds a few pennies for the children who ran before our +toboggan and tossed camellias into it, and then followed in the hopes of +a reward, which we tried not to disappoint. + +The future traveller need not add to the fee of the authorized and +numbered guide who took possession of us as soon as we got out of our +basket and led us unresisting to a waiting bullock sled. He invited +himself into it, and gave himself the best of characters in the +autobiography into which he wove his scanty instruction concerning the +objects we passed. A bullock sled is not of such blithe progress as a +toboggan, but it is very comfortable, and it is of an Oriental and +litter-like dignity, with its calico cushions and curtains. One could +not well use it in New York, but it serves every purpose of a cab in +Funchal, where we noted a peculiar feature of local commerce which I +hesitate to specify, since it cast apparent discredit upon woman. It +was, as I have noted, Sunday; but every shop where things pleasing or +even useful to women were sold was wide open, and somewhat flaringly +invited the custom of our fellow-passengers of that sex; but there was +not a shop where such things as men's collars were for sale, or anything +pleasing or useful to man, but was closed and locked fast. I must except +from this sweeping statement the cafes, but these should not count, for +women as well as men frequented them, as we ascertained by going to a +very bowery one on the quay and ordering a bottle of the best and dryest +Madeira. We wished perhaps to prove that it was really not bad for gout, +or perhaps that it was no better than the Madeira you get in New York +for the same price. Even with the help of friends, of the sex which +could have been freely buying native laces, hats, fans, photographs, +parasols, and tailor-made dresses, we could not finish that bottle. +Glass after glass we bestowed on our smiling guide, with no final effect +upon the bottle and none upon him, except to make him follow us to the +tender and take an after-fee for showing us a way which we could not +have missed blindfold. It was rather strange, but not stranger than the +behavior of the captain of the tender, who, when he had collected our +tickets, invited a free-will offering for collecting them, and mostly +got it. + +When we were safely and gladly on board our steamer again, we had +nothing to do, until the deck-steward came round with tea, but watch the +islanders swarming around us in their cockles and diving for sixpences +and shillings, which they caught impartially with their fingers and +toes. With so many all shouting and gesticulating, one could not venture +one's silver indiscriminately; one must employ some particular diver, +and I selected for my investments a poor young fellow who had lost an +arm. With his one hand and his two feet he never failed of the coin I +risked, and I wish they had been many enough to enable him to retire +from the trade, which even in that mild air kept him visibly shivering +when out of the water. I do not know his name, but I commend him to +future travellers by the token of his pathetic mutilation. + +By-and-by we felt the gentle stir of the steamer under us; the last +tender went ashore, and the divers retired in their cockles from our +side. Funchal began to rearrange the lines of her streets, while keeping +those of her roofs and house-walls and terraced gardens. We passed out +of the roadstead, we rounded the mighty headland by which we had +entered, and were once more in face of that magnificent drop-curtain, +which had now fallen upon one of the most vivid and novel passages of +our lives. + +[Illustration: 03 BOATS AND DIVING BOYS, FUNCHAL] + + + + +II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN + + +There is nothing strikes the traveller in his approach to the rock of +Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential +Insurance Company. He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is +pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of that institution. As +the lines change with the ship's course, the resemblance is less +remarkable; but it is always remarkable, and I suppose it detracts +somewhat from the majesty of the fortress, which we could wish to be +more entirely original. This was my feeling when I first saw Gibraltar +four years ago, and it remains my feeling after having last seen it four +weeks ago. The eye seeks the bold, familiar legend, and one suffers a +certain disappointment in its absence. Otherwise Gibraltar does not and +cannot disappoint the most exacting tourist. + +[Illustration: 04 GIBRALTAR FROM THE BAY] + +The morning which found us in face of it was in brisk contrast to the +bland afternoon on which we had parted from Madeira. No flocking +coracles surrounded our steamer, with crews eager to plunge into the +hissing brine for shillings or equivalent quarters. The whitecaps looked +snow cold as they tossed under the sharp north wind, and the tender +which put us ashore had all it could do to embark and disembark us +upright, or even aslant. But, once in the lee of the rocky Africa +breathed a genial warmth across the strait beyond which its summits +faintly shimmered; or was it the welcome of Cook's carriages which +warmed us so? We were promised separate vehicles for parties of three or +four, with English-speaking drivers, and the promise was fairly well +kept. The carriages bore a strong family likeness to the pictures of +Spanish state coaches of the seventeenth century, and were curtained and +cushioned in reddish calico. Rubber tires are yet unknown in southern +Europe, and these mediaeval arks bounded over the stones with a violence +which must once have been characteristic of those in the illustrations. +But the English of our English-speaking driver was all that we could +have asked for the shillings we paid Cook for him, or, if it was not, it +was all we got. He was an energetic young fellow and satisfyingly +Spanish in coloring, but in his eagerness to please he was less grave +than I could now wish; I now wish everything in Spain to have been in +keeping. + +What was most perfectly, most fittingly in keeping was the sight of the +Moors whom we began at once to see on the wharves and in the streets. +They probably looked very much like the Moors who followed their caliph, +if he was a caliph, into Spain when he drove Don Roderick out of his +kingdom and established his own race and religion in the Peninsula. +Moslem costumes can have changed very little in the last eleven or +twelve hundred years, and these handsome fellows, who had come over with +fresh eggs and vegetables and chickens and turkeys from Tangier, could +not have been handsomer when they bore scimitars and javelins instead of +coops and baskets. They had baggy drawers on, and brown cloaks, with +bare, red legs and yellow slippers; one, when he took his fez off, had a +head shaved perfectly bald, like the one-eyed Calender or the Barber's +brother out of the _Arabian Nights;_ the sparse mustache and +short-forked beard heightened the verisimilitude. Whether they squatted +on the wharf, or passed gravely through the street, or waited for custom +in their little market among the hen-coops and the herds of rather lean, +dispirited turkeys (which had not the satisfaction of their American +kindred in being fattened for the sacrifice, for in Europe all turkeys +are served lean), these Moors had an allure impossible to any Occidental +race. It was greater even than that of their Semitic brethren, who had a +market farther up in the town, and showed that a Jewish market could be +much filthier than a' Moorish market without being more picturesque. +Into the web of Oriental life were wrought the dapper figures of the +red-coated, red-cheeked English soldiers, with blue, blue eyes and +incredible red and yellow hair, lounging or hurrying orderlies with +swagger-sticks, and apparently aimless privates no doubt bent 'upon +quite definite business or pleasure. Now and then an English groom led +an English horse through the long street from which the other streets in +Gibraltar branch up and down hill, for there is no other level; and now +and then an English man or woman rode trimly by. + +The whole place is an incongruous mixture of Latin and Saxon. The +strictly South-European effect of the houses and churches is a mute +protest against the alien presence which keeps the streets so clean and +maintains order by means of policemen showing under the helmets of the +London bobby the faces of the native alguazil. In the shops the +saleswomen speak English and look Spanish. Our driver, indeed, looked +more Spanish than he spoke English. + +His knowledge of our rude tongue extended hardly beyond the mention of +certain conventional objects of interest, and did not suffice to explain +why we could not see the old disused galleries of the fortifications. I +do not know why we wished to see these; I doubt if we really did so, but +we embittered life for that well-meaning boy by our insistence upon +them, and we brought him under unjust suspicion of deceit by forcing him +to a sort of time-limit in respect to them. We appealed from him to the +blandest of black-mus-tached, olive-skinned bobby-alguazils, who +directed us to a certain government office for a permit. There our +application caused something like dismay, and we were directed to +another office, but were saved from the shame of failure by incidentally +learning that the galleries could not be seen till after three o'clock. +As our ship sailed at that hour, we were probably saved a life-long +disappointment. + +Everywhere the rock of the Prudential beetles and towers over the town; +but the fortifications are so far up in the sky that you can really +distinguish nothing but the Marconi telegraphic apparatus at the top. +Along the sea-level, which the town mostly keeps, the war-like harness +of the stronghold shows through the civil dress of the town in barracks +and specific forts and gray battle-ships lying at anchor in the docks. +But all is simple and reserved, in the right English fashion. The +strength of the place is not to be put forth till it is needed, which +will be never, since it is hard to imagine how it can ever be even +attempted by a hostile force. This is not saying, I hope, that an +American fleet could not batter it down, nor leave one letter of the +insurance advertisement after another on the face of the precipice. + +There is a pretty public garden at Gibraltar in that part of the town +which is farthest from the steamer's landing, and this proved the end of +our excursion in our state coach. We found other state coaches there, +and joined their passengers in strolling over the pleasant paths and +trying to make out what bird it was singing somewhere in the trees. We +made out an almond-tree in bloom, after some dispute; and, in fact, the +climate there was much softer than at the landing, so insidiously soft +that it required great force of character to keep from buying the +flowers which some tasteful boys gathered from the public beds. There is +a mild monument or two in this garden, to what memories I promptly +failed to remember afterward; but as there are more military memories in +the world than is good for it, and as these were undoubtedly military +memories, I cannot much blame myself in the matter. After viewing them, +there was nothing left to do but to get lunch, which we got extremely +good at the hotel where a friend led us. There was at this hotel a +head-waiter, in a silver-braided silk dress-coat of a mauve color, who +imagined our wants so perfectly that I shall always regret not taking +more of the omelette; the table-waiter urged it upon us twice with true +friendliness. The eggs must have been laid for it in Africa that morning +at daybreak, and brought over by a Moorish marketman, but we turned from +the poetic experience of this omelette in the greedy hope of better +things. Better things there could not be, but the fish was as good as +the fish at Madeira, and the belief of the chops that they were lamb and +not kid seemed better founded. + +There had been an excellent bottle of Rioja Blanca, such as you may have +as good at some Spanish restaurant in New York for as little money; and +the lunch, when reckoned up in English shillings and Spanish undertones, +was not cheap. Yet it was not dear, either, and there was no specific +charge for that silver-braided dress-coat of a mauve color. An English +dean in full clericals, and some English ladies talking in the +waiting-room, added an agreeable confusion to our doubt of where and +what we were, and we came away from the hotel as well content as if we +had lunched in Plymouth or Bath. The table-waiter took an extra fee for +confiding that he was a Milanese, and was almost the only Italian in +Gibraltar; whether he was right or not I do not know, but it was +certainly not his fault that we did not take twice of the omelette. + +It is said that living is dear in Gibraltar, especially in the matter of +house rent. The houses in the town are like all the houses of Latin +Europe in their gray or yellowish walls of stone or stucco and their +dark-green shutters. There is an English residential quarter at the east +end of the town, where the houses may be different, for all I know; the +English of our driver or the hire of our state coach did not enable us +to visit that suburb, where the reader may imagine villas standing in +grounds with lawns and gardens about them. The English have prevailed +nothing against the local civilization in most things, while they have +infected it with the costliness of the whole Anglo-Saxon life. We should +not think seven hundred dollars in New York dear for even a quite small +house, but it has come to that in Gibraltar, and there they think it +dear, with other things proportionately so. Of course, it is an +artificial place; the fortress makes the town, and the town in turn +lives upon the fortress. + +The English plant themselves nowhere without gathering English +conveniences or conventions about them; Americans would not always think +them comforts. There is at Gibraltar a club or clubs; there is a hunt, +there is a lending library, there is tennis, there is golf, there is +bridge, there is a cathedral, and I dare say there is gossip, but I do +not know it. It was difficult to get land for the golf links, we heard, +because of the Spanish jealousy of the English occupation, which they +will not have extended any farther over Spanish soil, even in golf +links. Gibraltar is fondly or whimsically known to the invaders as Gib, +and I believe it is rather a favorite sojourn, though in summer it is +frightfully hot, held out on the knees and insteps of the rock to the +burning African sun, which comes up every morning over the sea after +setting Sahara on fire. + +[Illustration: 05 GIBRALTAR FROM THE NEUTRAL GROUND] + +All this foreign life must be exterior to the aboriginal Spanish life +which has so long outlasted the Moorish, and is not without hope of +outlasting the English. I do not know what the occupations and +amusements of that life are, but I will suppose them unworthy enough. +There must be a certain space of neutral life uniting or dividing the +two, which would form a curious inquiry, but would probably not lend +itself to literary study. Besides this middle ground there is another +neutral territory at Gibraltar which we traversed after luncheon, in +order to say that we had been in Spain. That was the country of many +more youthful dreamers in my time than, I fancy, it is in this. We used +then, much more than now, to read Washington Irving, his _Tales of the +Alhambra,_ and his history of _The Conquest of Granada,_ and we read +Prescott's histories of Spanish kings and adventures in the old world +and the new. We read _Don Quixote,_ which very few read now, and we read +_Gil Blas,_ which fewer still now read; and all these constituted Spain +a realm of faery, where every sort of delightful things did or could +happen. I for my part had always expected to go to Spain and live among +the people I had known in those charming books, yet I had been often in +Europe, and had spent whole years there without ever going near Spain. +But now, I saw, was my chance, and when the friend who had been lunching +with us asked if we would not like to drive across that neutral +territory and go into Spain a bit, it seemed as if the dream of my youth +had suddenly renewed itself with the purpose of coming immediately true. +It was a charmingly characteristic foretaste of Spanish travel that the +driver of the state coach which we first engaged should, when we +presently came back, have replaced himself by another for no other +reason than, perhaps, that he could so provide us with a worse horse. I +am not sure of this theory, and I do not insist upon it, but it seems +plausible. + +As soon as we rounded the rock of Gibraltar and struck across a flatter +country than I supposed could be found within fifty miles of Gibraltar, +we were swept by a blast which must have come from the Pyrenees, it was +so savagely rough and cold. It may be always blowing there as a Spanish +protest against the English treatment of the neutral territory; in fact, +it does not seem quite the thing to build over that space as the English +have done, though the structures are entirely peaceable, and it is not +strange that the Spaniards have refused to meet them half-way with a +good road over it, or to let them make one the whole way. They stand +gravely opposed to any further incursion. Officially in all the Spanish +documents the place is styled “Gibraltar, temporarily occupied by Great +Britain,” and there is a little town which you see sparkling in the sun +no great way off in Spain called San Roque, of which the mayor is also +mayor of Gibraltar; he visits his province once a year, and many people +living for generations over the Spanish line keep the keys of the houses +that they personally or ancestrally own in Gibraltar. The case has its +pathos, but as a selfish witness I wish they had let the English make +that road through the neutral territory. The present road is so bad that +our state coach, in bounding over its inequalities, sometimes almost +flung us into the arms of the Spanish beggars always extended toward us. +They were probably most of them serious, but some of the younger ones +recognized the _bouffe_ quality of their calling. One pleasant +starveling of ten or twelve entreated us for bread with a cigarette in +his mouth, and, being rewarded for his impudence, entered into the +spirit of the affair and asked for more, just as if we had given +nothing. + +A squalid little town grew up out of the flying gravel as we approached, +and we left our state coach at the custom-house, which seemed the chief +public edifice. There the inspectors did not go through the form of +examining our hand-bags, as they would have done at an American +frontier; and they did not pierce our carriage cushions with the long +javelins with which they are armed for the detection of smuggling among +the natives who have been shopping in Gibraltar. As the gates of that +town are closed every day at nightfall by a patrol with drum and fife, +and everybody is shut either in or out, it may easily happen with +shoppers in haste to get through that they bring dutiable goods into +Spain; but the official javelins rectify the error. + +We left our belongings in our state coach and started for that stroll in +Spain which I have measured as two up-town blocks, by what I think a +pretty accurate guess; two cross-town blocks I am sure it was not. It +was a mean-looking street, unswept and otherwise unkempt, with the usual +yellowish or grayish buildings, rather low and rather new, as if +prompted by a mistaken modern enterprise. They were both shops and +dwellings; I am sure of a neat pharmacy and a fresh-looking cafe +restaurant, and one dwelling all faced with bright-green tiles. An +alguazil--I am certain he was an alguazil, though he looked like an +Italian carabiniere and wore a cocked hat--loitered into a police +station; but I remember no one else during our brief stay in that street +except those _bouffe_ boy beggars. Of course, they wished to sell us +postal-cards, but they were willing to accept charity on any terms. +Otherwise our Spanish tour was, so far as we then knew, absolutely +without incident; but when we got too far away to return we found that +we had been among brigands as well as beggars, and all the Spanish +picaresque fiction seemed to come true in the theft of a black chudda +shawl, which had indeed been so often lost in duplicate that it was time +it was entirely lost. Whether it was secretly confiscated by the +customs, or was accepted as a just tribute by the populace from a poetic +admirer, I do not know, but I hope it is now in the keeping of some +dark-eyed Spanish girl, who will wear it while murmuring through her +lattice to her _novio_ on the pavement outside. It was rather heavy to +be worn as a veil, but I am sure she could manage it after dark, and +_could_ hold it under her chin, as she leaned forward to the grille, +with one little olive hand, so that the _novio_ would think it was a +black silk mantilla. Or if it was a gift from him, it would be all +right, anyway. + +Our visit to Spain did not wholly realize my early dreams of that +romantic land, and yet it had not been finally destitute of incident. +Besides, _we_ had not gone very far into the country; a third block +might have teemed with adventure, but we had to be back on the steamer +before three o'clock, and we dared not go beyond the second. Even +within this limit a love of reality underlying all my love of romance +was satisfied in the impression left by that dusty, empty, silent +street. It seemed somehow like the street of a new, dreary, Western +American town, so that I afterward could hardly believe that the shops +and restaurants had not eked out their height with dashboard fronts. It +was not a place that I would have chosen for a summer sojourn; the sense +of a fly-blown past must have become a vivid part of future experience, +and yet I could imagine that if one were born to it, and were young and +hopeful, and had some one to share one's youth and hope, that Spanish +street, which was all there was of that Spanish town, might have had its +charm. I do not say that even for age there was not a railway station by +which one might have got away, though there was no sign of any trains +arriving or departing--perhaps because it was not one o'clock in the +morning, which is the favorite hour of departure for Spanish trains. + +When we turned to drive back over the neutral territory the rock of +Gibraltar suddenly bulked up before us, in a sheer ascent that left the +familiar Prudential view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness. +Till one has seen it from this point one has not truly seen it. The vast +stone shows like a half from which the other half has been sharply cleft +and removed, that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may +unrelievedly strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment the +whole world to tower up in from the level at its feet. No dictionary, +however unabridged, has language adequate to convey the notion of it. + + + + +III. ASHORE AT GENOA + + +The pride of Americans in their native scenery is brought down almost to +the level of the South Shore of Long Island in arriving home from the +Mediterranean voyage to Europe. The last thing one sees in Europe is the +rock of Gibraltar, but before that there have been the snow-topped +Maritime Alps of Italy and the gray-brown, softly rounded, velvety +heights of Spain; and one has to think very hard of the Palisades above +the point where they have been blasted away for road-making material if +one wishes to keep up one's spirits. The last time I came home the +Mediterranean way I had a struggle with myself against excusing our +sandy landscape, when we came in sight of it, with its summer cottages +for the sole altitudes, to some Italian fellow-passengers who were not +spellbound by its grandeur. I had to remember the Rocky Mountains, which +I had never seen, and all the moral magnificence of our life before I +could withhold the words of apology pressing to my lips. I was glad that +I succeeded; but now, going back by the same route, I abandoned myself +to transports in the beauty of the Mediterranean coast which I hope were +not untrue to my country. Perhaps there is no country which can show +anything like that beauty, and America is no worse off than the rest of +the world; but I am not sure that I have a right to this consolation. +Again there were those + + “Silent pinnacles of aged snow,” + +flushed with the Southern sun; in those sombre slopes of pine; again the +olives climbing to their gloom; again the terraced vineyards and the +white farmsteads, with villages nestling in the vast clefts of the +hills, and all along the sea-level the blond towns and cities which +broidei the hem of the land from Marseilles to Genoa. One is willing to +brag; one must be a good American; but, honestly, have we anything like +that to show the arriving foreigner? For some reason our ship was +abating the speed with which she had crossed the Atlantic, and now she +was swimming along the Mediterranean coasts so slowly and so closely +that it seemed as if we could almost have cast an apple ashore, though +probably we could not. We were at least far enough off to mistake Nice +for Monte Carlo and then for San Remo, but that was partly because our +course was so leisurely, and we thought we must have passed Nice long +before we did. It did not matter; all those places were alike beautiful +under the palms of their promenades, with their scattered villas and +hotels stretching along their upper levels, and the ranks of shops and +dwellings solidly forming the streets which left the shipping of their +ports to climb to the gardens and farms beyond the villas. Cannes, +Mentone, Ventimiglia, Ospedeletti, Bordighera, Taggia, Alassio: was that +their fair succession, or did they follow in another order? Once more it +did not matter; what is certain is that the golden sun of the soft +January afternoon turned to crimson and left the last of them suffused +in dim rose before we drifted into Genoa and came to anchor at dusk +beside a steamer which had left New York on the same day as ours. By her +vast size we could measure our own and have an objective perception of +our grandeur. We had crossed in one of the largest ships afloat, but +you cannot be both spectacle and spectator; and you must match your +magnificence with some rival magnificence before you can have a due +sense of it. That was what we now got at Genoa, and we could not help +pitying the people on that other ship, who must have suffered shame from +our overwhelming magnitude; the fact that she was of nearly the same +tonnage as our own ship had nothing to do with the case. + +[Illustration: 06 DAUGHTERS OF CLIMATE ALONG THE RIVIERA] + +After the creamy and rosy tints of those daughters of climate along the +Riviera, it was pleasant to find a many-centuried mother of commerce +like Genoa of the dignified gray which she wears to the eye, whether it +looks down on her from the heights above her port or up at her from the +thickly masted and thickly funnelled waters of the harbor. Most European +towns have red tiled roofs, which one gets rather tired of putting into +one's word paintings, but the roofs of Genoa are gray tiled, and gray +are her serried house walls, and gray her many churches and bell-towers. +The sober tone gratifies your eye immensely, and the fact that your eye +has noted it and not attributed the conventional coloring of southern +Europe to the city is a flattery to your pride which you will not +refuse. It is not a setting for opera like Naples; there is something +businesslike in it which agrees with your American mood if you are true +to America, and recalls you to duty if you are not. + +I had not been in Genoa since 1864 except for a few days in 1905, and I +saw changes which I will mostly not specify. Already at the earlier date +the railway had cut through the beautiful and reverend Doria garden and +left the old palace some scanty grounds on the sea-level, where commerce +noisily encompassed it with trains and tracks and lines of freight-cars. +But there had remained up to my last visit that grot on the gardened +hill-slope whence a colossal marble Hercules helplessly overlooked the +offence offered by the railroad; and now suddenly here was the lofty +wall of some new edifice stretching across in front of the Hercules and +wholly shutting him from view; for all I know it may have made him part +of its structure. + +Let this stand for a type of the change which had passed upon Genoa and +has passed or is passing upon all Italy. The trouble is that Italy is +full of very living Italians, the quickest-witted people in the world, +who are alert to seize every chance for bettering themselves financially +as they have bettered themselves politically. For my part, I always +wonder they do not still rule the world when I see how intellectually +fit they are to do it, how beyond any other race they seem still +equipped for their ancient primacy. Possibly it is their ancient primacy +which hangs about their necks and loads them down. It is better to have +too little past, as we have, than too much, as they have. But if +antiquity hampers them, they are tenderer of its vast mass than we are +of our little fragments of it; tenderer than any other people, except +perhaps the English, have shown themselves; but when the time comes that +the past stands distinctly in the way of the future, down goes the past, +even in Italy. I am not saying that I do not see why that railroad could +not have tunnelled under the Doria garden rather than cut through it; +and I am waiting for that new building to justify its behavior toward +that poor old Hercules; but in the mean time I hold that Italy is for +the Italians who now live in it, and have to get that better living out +of it which we others all want our countries to yield us; and that it is +not merely a playground for tourists who wish to sentimentalize it, or +study it, or sketch it, or make copy of it, as I am doing now. + +All the same I will not deny that I enjoyed more than any of the +improvements which I noted in Genoa that bit of the old Doria +palace-grounds which progress has left it. The gray edifice looks out on +the neighboring traffic across the leanness of a lovely old garden, with +statues and stone seats, and in the midst a softly soliloquizing +fountain, painted green with moss and mould. When you enter the palace, +as you do in response to a custodian who soon comes with a key and asks +if you would like to see it, you find yourself, one flight up, in a long +glazed gallery, fronting on the garden, which is so warm with the sun +that you wish to spend the rest of your stay in Genoa there. It is +frescoed round with classically imagined portraits of the different +Dorias, and above all the portrait of that great hero of the republic. I +do not know that this portrait particularly impresses you; if you have +been here before you will be reserving yourself for the portrait which +the custodian will lead you to see in the ultimate chamber of the rather +rude old palace, where it is like a living presence. + +It is the picture of a very old man in a flat cap, sitting sunken +forward in his deep chair, with his thin, long hands folded one on the +other, and looking wearily at you out of his faded eyes, in which dwell +the memories of action in every sort and counsel in every kind. Victor +in battles by land and sea, statesman and leader and sage, he looks it +all in that wonderful effigy, which shuns no effect of his more than +ninety years, but confesses his great age as a part of his greatness +with a pathetic reality. The white beard, with “each particular hair” + defined, falling almost to the pale, lean hands, is an essential part of +the presentment, which is full of such scrupulous detail as the eye +would unconsciously take note of in confronting the man himself and +afterward supply in the remembrance of the whole. As if it were a part +of his personality, on a table facing him, covered with maps and papers, +sits the mighty admiral's cat, which, with true feline im-passiveness, +ignores the spectator and gives its sole regard to the admiral. There +are possibly better portraits in the world than this, which was once by +Sebastiano del Piombo and is now by Titian; but I remember none which +has moved me more. + +We tried in vain for a photograph of it, and then after a brief glance +at the riches of the Church of the Annunziata, where we were followed +around the interior by a sacristan who desired us to note that the +pillars were “All inlady, all inlady” with different marbles, and, after +a chilly moment in San Lorenzo, which the worshippers and the masons +were sharing between them in the prayers and repairs always going on in +cathedrals, we drove for luncheon to the hotel where we had sojourned in +great comfort three years before. Genoa has rather a bad name for its +hotels, but we had found this one charming, perhaps because when we had +objected to going five flights up the landlord had led us yet a floor +higher, that we might walk into the garden. It is so in much of Genoa, +where the precipitous nature of the site makes this vivid contrast +between the levels of the front door and the back gate. Many of the +streets have been widened since Heine saw the gossiping neighbors +touching knees across them, but nothing less than an earthquake could +change the temperamental topography of the place. It has its advantages; +when there is a ring at the door the housemaid, instead of panting up +from the kitchen to answer it, has merely to fall down five pairs of +stairs. It cannot be denied, either, that the steep incline gives a +charm to the streets which overcome it with sidewalks and driveways and +trolley-tracks. Such a street as the Via Garibaldi (there is a Via +Garibaldi in every Italian city, town, and village, and ought to be a +dozen), compactly built, but giving here and there over the houses' +shoulders glimpses of the gardens lurking behind them, is of a dignity +full of the energy which a flat thoroughfare never displays or imparts. +Without the inspiration lent us by the street, I am sure we should never +have got to the top of it with our cab when we went to the Campo Santo; +and, as it was, we had to help our horses upward by involuntarily +straining forward from our places. But the Campo Santo was richly worth +the effort, for to visit that famous cemetery is to enjoy an experience +of which it is the unique opportunity. + +I wish to celebrate it because it seems to me one of the frankest +expressions of national taste and nature, and I do like simplicity--in +others. The modern Italians are the most literal of the realists in all +the arts, and, as I had striven for reality in my own poor way, I was +perhaps the more curious to see its effects in sculpture which I had +heard of so much. I will own that they went far beyond my expectation +and possibly my wishes; but it is not to be supposed that it is only +inferior artists who have abandoned themselves to the excesses of +fidelity so abundant in the Campo Santo. There are, of course, enough +poor falterings of allegory and tradition in the marble walls and floors +of this vast residence of the dead (as it gives you the cheerful +impression of being), but the characteristic note of the place is a +realism braving it out in every extreme of actuality. Possibly the fact +is most striking in that death-bed scene where the family, life-size and +unsparingly portraitured, and, as it were, photographed in marble, are +gathered in the room of the dying mother. She lies on a bedstead which +bears every mark of being one of a standard chamber-set in the early +eighteen-seventies, and about her stand her husband and her sons and +daughters and their wives and husbands, in the fashions of that day. I +recall a brother, in a cutaway coat, and a daughter, in a tie-back, +embraced in their grief and turning their faces away from their mother +toward the spectator; and doubtless there were others whom to describe +in their dress would render as grotesque. It is enough to say that the +artist, of a name well known in Italy and of uncommon gift, has been as +true to the moment in their costume as to the eternal humanity in their +faces. He has done what the sculptor or painter of the great periods of +art used to do with their historical and scriptural people--he has put +them in the dress of his own time and place; and it is impossible to +deny him a convincing logic. No sophistry or convention of drapery in +the scene could have conveyed its pathos half so well, or indeed at all. +It does make you shudder, I allow; it sets your teeth on edge; but then, +if you are a real man or woman, it brings the lump into your throat; the +smile fails from your lip; you pay the tribute of genuine pity and awe. +I will not pretend that I was so much moved by the meeting in heaven of +a son and father: the spirit of the son in a cutaway, with a derby hat +in his hand, gazing with rapture into the face of the father's spirit in +a long sack-coat holding his marble bowler elegantly away from his side, +if I remember rightly. But here the fact wanted the basis of simplicity +so strong in the other scene; in the mixture of the real and the ideal +the group was romanticistic. + +There are innumerable other portrait figures and busts in which the +civic and social hour is expressed. The women's hair is dressed in this +fashionable way or that; the men's beards are cut in conformity to the +fashion or the personal preference in side whiskers or mustache or +imperial or goatee; and their bronze or marble faces convey the +contemporary character of aristocrat or bourgeois or politician or +professional. I do not know just what the reader would expect me to say +in defence of the full-length figure of a lady in _decollete_ and +trained evening dress, who enters from the tomb toward the spectator as +if she were coming into a drawing-room after dinner. She is very +beautiful, but she is no longer very young, and the bare arms, which +hang gracefully at her side, respond to an intimation of _embonpoint_ in +the figure, with a slightly flabby over-largeness where they lose +themselves in the ample shoulders. Whether this figure is the fancy of +the sorrowing husband or the caprice of the defunct herself, who wished +to be shown to after-time as she hoped she looked in the past, I do not +know; but I had the same difficulty with it as I had with that father +and son; it was romanticistic. Wholly realistic and rightly actual was +that figure of an old woman who is said to have put by all her savings +from the grocery business that she might appear properly in the Campo +Santo, and who is shown there short and stout and common, in her +ill-fitting best dress, but motherly and kind and of an undeniable and +touching dignity. + +If I am giving the reader the impression that I went to the Campo Santo +in my last stop at Genoa, I am deceiving him; I record here the memories +of four years ago. I did not revisit the place, but I should like to see +it again, if only to revive my recollections of its unique interest. I +did really revisit the Pal-lavicini-Durazzo palace, and there revived +the pleasure I had known before in its wonderful Van Dycks. Most +wonderful was and will always be the “Boy in White,” the little serene +princeling, whoever he was, in whom the painter has fixed forever a +bewitching mood and moment of childhood. “The Mother with two Children” + is very well and self-evidently true to personality and period and +position; but, after all, she is nothing beside that “Boy in White,” + though she and her children are otherwise so wonderful. Now that I speak +of her, however, she rather grows upon my recollection as a woman +greater than her great world and proudly weary of it. + +[Illustration: 07 TYPICAL MONUMENT IN THE CAMPO SANTO] + +She was a lady of that very patrician house whose palace, in its cold +grandeur and splendor, renews at once all one's faded or fading sense of +the commercial past of Italy, when her greatest merchants were her +greatest nobles and dwelt in magnificence unparalleled yet since Rome +began to be old. Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Florence, what state their +business men housed themselves in and environed themselves with! Their +palaces by the hundreds were such as only the public edifices of our +less simple State capitols could equal in size and not surpass in cost. +Their _folie des grandeurs_ realized illusions in architecture, in +sculpture, and in painting which the assembled and concentrated feats of +those arts all the way up and down Fifth Avenue, and in the millionaire +blocks eastward could not produce the likeness of. We have the same +madness in our brains; we have even a Roman megalomania, but the effect +of it in Chicago or Pittsburg or Philadelphia or New York has not yet +got beyond a ducal or a princely son-in-law. The splendors of such +alliances have still to take substantial form in a single instance +worthy to compare with a thousand instances in the commercial republics +of Italy. This does not mean that our rich people have not so much money +as the Italians of the Renaissance, but that perhaps in their _folie des +grandeurs_ they are a different kind of madmen; it means also that land +and labor are dearer positively and comparatively with us, and that our +pork-packing or stock-broking princes prefer to spend on comfort rather +than size in their houses, and do not like the cold feet which the +merchant princes of Italy must have had from generation to generation. I +shall always be sorry I did not wear arctics when I went to the +Pallavicini-Durazzo palace, and I strongly urge the reader to do so +when he goes. + +He will not so much need them out-of-doors in a Genoese January, unless +a _tramontana_ is blowing, and there was none on our half-day. But in +any case we did not walk. We selected the best-looking cab-horse we +could find, and he turned out better than his driver, who asked a +fabulous price by the hour. We obliged him to show his tariff, when his +wickedness was apparent from the printed rates. He explained that the +part we were looking at was obsolete, and he showed us another part, +which was really for drives outside the city; but we agreed to pay it, +and set out hoping for good behavior from him that would make up the +difference. Again we were deceived; at the end he demanded a franc +beyond even his unnatural fare. I urged that one should be reasonable; +but he seemed to think not, and to avoid controversy I paid the +extortionate franc. I remembered that just a month before, in New York, +I had paid an extortionate dollar in like circumstances. + +Nevertheless, that franc above and beyond the stipulated extortion +impoverished me, and when we came to take a rowboat back to our steamer +I beat the boatman down cruelly, mercilessly. He was a poor, lean little +man, with rather a superannuated boat, and he labored harder at the oar +than I could bear to see without noting his exertion to him. This was +fatal; instantly he owned that I was right, and he confessed, moreover, +that he was the father of a family, and that some of his children were +then suffering from sickness as well as want. What could one do but make +the fare up to the first demand of three francs after having got the +price down to one and a half? At the time it seemed to me that I was +somehow by this means getting the better of the cabman who had obliged +me to pay a franc more than his stipulated extortion, but I do not now +hope to make it appear so to the reader. + + + + +IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE + + +We heard the joyful noise of Naples as soon as our steamer came to +anchor within the moles whose rigid lines perhaps disfigure her famous +bay, while they render her harbor so secure. The noise first rose to us, +hanging over the guard, and trying to get phrases for the glory of her +sea and sky and mountains and monuments, from a boat which seemed to +have been keeping abreast of us ever since we had slowed up. It was not +a largo boat, but it managed to contain two men with mandolins, a mother +of a family with a guitar, and a young girl with an alternate tambourine +and umbrella. The last instrument was inverted to catch the coins, such +as they were, which the passengers flung down to the minstrels for their +repetitions of “Santa Lucia,” “Funicoli-Funicola,” “II Cacciatore,” and +other popular Neapolitan airs, such as “John Brown's Body” and “In the +Bowery.” To the songs that had a waltz movement the mother of a family +performed a restricted dance, at some risk of falling overboard, while +she smiled radiantly up at us, as, in fact, they all did, except the +young girl, who had to play simultaneously on her tambourine and her +inverted umbrella, and seemed careworn. Her anxiety visibly deepened to +despair when she missed a shilling, which must have looked as large to +her as a full moon as it sank slowly down into the sea. + +[Illustration: 08 NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE] + +But her despair did not last long; nothing lasts long in Naples except +the joyful noise, which is incessant and perpetual, and which seems the +expression of the universal temperament in both man and beast. Our +good-fortune placed us in a hotel fronting the famous Castel dell' Ovo, +across a little space of land and water, and we could hear, late and +early, the cackling and crowing of the chickens which have replaced the +hapless prisoners of other days in that fortress. At times the voices of +the hens were lifted in a choral of self-praise, as if they had among +them just laid the mighty structure which takes its name from its +resemblance to the egg they ordinarily produce. In other lands the +peculiar note of the donkey is not thought very melodious, but in Naples +before it can fade away it is caught up in the general orchestration and +ceases in music. The cabmen at our corner, lying in wait by scores for +the strangers whom it is their convention to suppose ignorant of their +want of a carriage, quarrelled rhythmically with one another; the +mendicants, lying everywhere in wait for charity, murmured a modulated +appeal; if you heard shouts or yells afar off they died upon your ear in +a strain of melody at the moment when they were lifted highest. I am +aware of seeming to burlesque the operatic fact which every one must +have noticed in Naples; and I will not say that the neglected or +affronted babe, or the trodden dog, is as tuneful as the midnight cat +there, but only that they approach it in the prevailing tendency of all +the local discords to soften and lose themselves in the general unison. +This embraces the clatter of the cabs, which are seldom less than fifty +years old, and of a looseness in all their joints responsive to their +effect of dusty decrepitude. Their clatter penetrates the volumed tread +of the myriad feet in a city where, if you did not see all sorts of +people driving, you would say the whole population walked. Above the +manifold noises gayly springing to the sky spreads and swims the clangor +of the church-bells and holds the terrestrial uproar in immeasurable +solution. It would be rash to say that the whole population of Naples is +always in the street, for if you look into the shops or cafes, or, I +dare say, the houses, you will find them quite full; but the general +statement verifies itself almost tiresomely in its agreement with what +everybody has always said of Naples. It is so quite what you expect that +if you could you would turn away in satiety, especially from the +swarming life of the poor, which seems to have no concealments from the +public, but frankly works at all the trades and arts that can be carried +on out-of-doors; cooks, eats, laughs, cries, sleeps, wakes, makes love, +quarrels, scolds, does everything but wash itself--clothes enough it +washes for other people's life. There is a reason for this in the fact +that in bad weather at Naples it is cold and dark and damp in-doors, and +in fine so bright and warm and charming without that there is really no +choice. Then there is the expansive temperament, which if it were shut +up would probably be much more explosive than it is now. As it is, it +vents itself in volleyed detonations and scattered shots which language +can give no sense of. + +For the true sense of it you must go to Naples, and then you will never +lose the sense of it. I had not been there since 1864, but when I woke +up the morning after my arrival, and heard the chickens cackling in the +Castel dell' Ovo, and the donkeys braying, and the cab-drivers +quarrelling, and the cries of the street vendors, and the dogs barking, +and the children wailing, and their mothers scolding, and the clatter of +wheels and hoops and feet, and all that mighty harmony of the joyful +Neapolitan noises, it seemed to me that it was the first morning after +my first arrival, and I was still only twenty-seven years old. As soon +as possible, when the short but sweet Vincenzo had brought up my +breakfast of tea and bread-and-butter and honey (to which my appetite +turned from the gross superabundance of the steamer's breakfasts with +instant acquiescence), and announced with a smile as liberal as the +sunshine that it was a fine day, I went out for those impressions which +I had better make over to the reader in their original disorder. +Vesuvius, which was silver veiled the day before, was now of a soft, +smoky white, and the sea, of a milky blue, swam round the shore and out +to every dim island and low cape and cliffy promontory. The street was +full of people on foot and in trolleys and cabs and donkey +pleasure-carts, and the familiar teasing of cabmen and peddlers and +beggars began with my first steps toward what I remembered as the +Toledo, but what now called itself, with the moderner Italian +patriotism, the Via Roma. The sole poetic novelty of my experience was +in my being offered loaves of bread which, when I bought them, would be +given to the poor, in honor of what saint's day I did not learn. But it +was all charming; even the inattention of the young woman over the +book-counter was charming, since it was a condition of her flirtation +with the far younger man beside me who wanted something far more +interesting from her than any brief sketch of the history of Naples, in +either English or Italian or French or, at the worst, German. She was +very pretty, though rather powdered, and when the young man went away +she was sympathetically regretful to me that there was no such sketch, +in place of which she offered me several large histories in more or less +volumes. But why should I have wanted a history of Naples when I had +Naples itself? It was like wanting a photograph when you have the +original. Had I not just come through the splendid Piazza San +Ferdinando, with the nobly arcaded church on one hand and the +many-statued royal palace on the other, and between them a lake of +mellow sunshine, as warm as ours in June? + +What I found Naples and the Neapolitans in 1908 I had found them in +1864, and Mr. Gray (as he of the “Elegy” used to be called on his +title-pages) found them in 1740. “The streets,” he wrote home to his +mother, “are one continued market, and thronged with populace so much +that a coach can hardly pass. The common sort are a jolly, lively kind +of animals, more industrious than Italians usually are; they work till +evening; then they take their lute or guitar (for they all play) and +walk about the city or upon the seashore with it, to enjoy the fresco.” + There was, in fact, a bold gayety in the aspect of the city, without the +refinement which you do not begin to feel till you get into North Italy. +When I came upon church after church, with its facade of Spanish +baroque, I lamented the want of Gothic delicacy and beauty, but I was +consoled abundantly later in the churches antedating the Spanish +domination. I had no reason, such as travellers give for hating places, +to be dissatisfied with Naples in any way. I had been warned that the +customs officers were terrible there, and that I might be kept hours +with my baggage. But the inspector, after the politest demand for a +declaration of tobacco, ordered only a small valise, the Benjamin of its +tribe, opened and then closed untouched; and his courteous forbearance, +acknowledged later through the hotel porter, cost me but a dollar. The +hotel itself was inexpressibly better in lighting, heating, service, and +table than any New York hotel at twice the money--in fact, no money +could buy the like with us at any hotel I know of; but this is a theme +which I hope to treat more fully hereafter. It is true that the streets +of Naples are very long and rather narrow and pretty crooked, and full +of a damp cold that no sunlight seems ever to hunt out of them; but then +they are seldom ironed down with trolley-tracks; the cabs feel their way +among the swarming crowds with warning voices and smacking whips; even +the prepotent automobile shows some tenderness for human life and limb, +and proceeds still more cautiously than the cabs and carts--in fact, I +thought I saw recurrent proofs of that respect for the average man which +seems the characteristic note of Italian liberty; and this belief of +mine, bred of my first observations in Naples, did not, after twelve +weeks in Italy, prove an illusion. If it is not the equality we fancy +ourselves having, it is rather more fraternity in effect. + +[Illustration: 09 OUT-DOOR LIFE IN OLD NAPLES] + +The failure of other researches for that sketch of Neapolitan history +left me in the final ignorance which I must share with the reader; but +my inquiries brought me prompt knowledge of one of those charming +features in which the Italian cities excel, if they are not unique. I +remember too vaguely the Galleria, as they call the beautiful glazed +arcade of Milan, to be sure that it is finer than the Galleria at +Naples, but I am sure this is finer than that at Genoa, with which, +however, I know nothing in other cities to compare. The Neapolitan +gallery, wider than any avenue of the place, branching in the form of a +Greek cross to four principal streets, is lighted by its roof of glass, +and a hundred brilliant shops and cafes spread their business and +leisure over its marble floor. Nothing could be architecturally more +cheerful, and, if it were not too hot in summer, there could be no doubt +of its adaptation to our year, for it could be easily closed against the +winter by great portals, and at other seasons would give that out-door +expansion which in Latin countries hospitably offers the spectacle of +pleasant eating and drinking to people who have nothing to eat and +drink. These spectators could be kept at a distance with us by porters +at the entrances, while they would not be altogether deprived of the +gratifying glimpses. + +I do not know whether poverty avails itself of its privileges by +visiting the Neapolitan gallery; but probably, like poverty elsewhere, +it is too much interested by the drama of life in its own quarter ever +willingly to leave it. Poverty is very conservative, for reasons more +than one; its quarter in Naples is the oldest, and was the most +responsive to our recollections of the Naples of 1864. Overhead the +houses tower and beetle with their balconies and bulging casements, +shutting the sun, except at noon, from the squalor below, where the +varied dwellers bargain and battle and ply their different trades, +bringing their work from the dusk of cavernous shops to their doorways +for the advantage of the prevailing twilight. Carpentry and tailoring +and painting and plumbing, locksmithing and copper-smithing go on there, +touching elbows with frying and feeding, and the vending of all the +strange and hideous forms of flesh, fish, and fowl. If you wish to know +how much the tentacle of a small polyp is worth you may chance to see a +cent pass for it from the crone who buys to the boy who sells it smoking +from the kettle; but the price of cooked cabbage or pumpkin must remain +a mystery, along with that of many raw vegetables and the more revolting +viscera of the less-recognizable animals. + +The poor people worming in and out around your cab are very patient of +your progress over the terrible floor of their crooked thoroughfare, +perhaps because they reciprocate your curiosity, and perhaps because +they are very amiable and not very sensitive. They are not always +crowded into these dismal chasms; their quarter expands here and there +into market-plates, like the fish-market where the uprising of the +fisherman Masaniello against the Spaniards fitly took place; and the +Jewish market-place, where the poor young Corra-dino, last of the +imperial Hohenstaufen line, was less appropriately beheaded by the +Angevines. The open spaces are not less loathsome than the reeking +alleys, but if you have the intelligent guide we had you approach them +through the triumphal arch by which Charles V. entered Naples, and that +is something. Yet we will now talk less of the emperor than of the +guide, who appealed more to my sympathy. + +He had been six years in America, which he adored, because, he said, he +had got work and earned his living there the very day he landed. That +was in Boston, where he turned his hand first to one thing and then +another, and came away at last through some call home, honoring and +loving the Americans as the kindest, the noblest, the friendliest people +in the world. I tried, politely, to persuade him that we were not all of +us all he thought us, but he would not yield, and at one place he +generously claimed a pre-eminence in wickedness for his +fellow-Neapolitans. That was when we came to a vast, sorrowful prison, +from which an iron cage projected into the street. Around this cage +wretched women and children and old men clustered till the prisoners +dear to them were let into it from the jail and allowed to speak with +them. The scene was as public as all of life and death is in Naples, and +the publicity seemed to give it peculiar sadness, which I noted to our +guide. He owned its pathos; “but,” he said, “you know we have a terrible +class of people here in Naples.” I protested that there were terrible +classes of people everywhere, even in America. He would not consent +entirely, but in partly convincing each other we became better friends. +He had a large black mustache and gentle black eyes, and he spoke very +fair English, which, when he wished to be most impressive, he dropped +and used a very literary Italian instead. He showed us where he lived, +on a hill-top back of our gardened quay, and said that he paid twelve +dollars a month for a tenement of five rooms there. Schooling is +compulsory in Naples, but he sends his boy willingly, and has him +especially study English as the best provision he can make for him--as +heir of his own calling of cicerone, perhaps. He has a little farm at +Bavello, which he tills when it is past the season for cultivating +foreigners in Naples; he expects to spend his old age there; and I +thought it not a bad lookout. He was perfectly well-mannered, and at a +hotel where we stopped for tea he took his coffee at our table unbidden, +like any American fellow-man. He and the landlord had their joke +together, the landlord warning me against him in English as “very bad +man,” and clapping him affectionately on the shoulder to emphasize the +irony. We did not demand too much social information of him; all the +more we valued the gratuitous fact that the Neapolitan nobles were now +rather poor, because they preferred a life of pleasure to a life of +business. I could have told him that the American nobles were +increasingly like them in their love of pleasure, but I would not have +known how to explain that they were not poor also. He was himself a +moderate in politics, but he told us, what seems to be the fact +everywhere in Italy, that singly the largest party in Naples is the +Socialist party. + +He went with me first one day to the beautiful old Church of Santa +Chiara, to show me the Angevine tombs there, in which I satisfied a +secret, lingering love for the Gothic; and then to the cathedral, where +the sacristan showed us everything but the blood of St. Jannarius, +perhaps because it was not then in the act of liquefying; but I am +thankful to say I saw one of his finger-bones. My guide had made me +observe how several of the churches on the way to this were built on the +sites and of the remnants of pagan temples, and he summoned the +world-old sacristan of St. Januarius to show us evidences of a rival +antiquity in the crypt; for it had begun as a temple of Neptune. The +sacristan practically lived in those depths and the chill sanctuary +above them, and-he was so full of rheumatism that you could almost hear +it creak as he walked; yet he was a cheerful sage, and satisfied with +the fee which my guide gave him and which he made small, as he +explained, that the sacristan might not be discontented with future +largesse. I need not say that each church we visited had its tutelary +beggar, and that my happy youth came back to me in the blindness of one, +or the mutilation of another, or the haggish wrinkles of a third. At +Santa Chiara I could not at first make out what it was which caused my +heart to rejoice so; but then I found that it was because the church was +closed, and we had to go and dig a torpid monk out of his crevice in a +cold, many-storied cliff near by, and get him to come and open it, just +as I used, with the help of neighbors, to do in the past. + +Our day ended at sunset--a sunset of watermelon red--with a visit to the +Castel Nuovo, where my guide found himself at home with the garrison, +because, as he explained, he had served his term as a soldier. He was +the born friend of the custodian of the castle church, which was the +most comfortable church for warmth we had visited, and to which we +entered by the bronze gates of the triumphal arch raised in honor of the +Aragonese victory over the Angevines in 1442, when this New Castle was +newer than it is now. The bronze gates record in bas-relief the battles +between the French and Spanish powers in their quarrel over the people +one or other must make its prey; but whether it was to the greater +advantage of the Neapolitans to be battened on by the house of Aragon +and then that of Bourbon for the next six hundred years after the +Angevines had retired from the banquet is problematical. History is a +very baffling study, and one may be well content to know little or +nothing about it. I knew so little or had forgotten so much that I +scarcely deserved to be taken down into the crypt of this church and +shown the skeletons of four conspirators for Anjou whom Aragon had put +to death--two laymen and an archbishop by beheading, and a woman by +dividing crosswise into thirds. The skeletons lay in their tattered and +dusty shrouds, and I suppose were authentic enough; but I had met them, +poor things, too late in my life to wish for their further +acquaintance. Once I could have exulted to search out their story and +make much of it; but now I must leave it to the reader's imagination, +along with most other facts of my observation in Naples. + +I was at some pains to look up the traces of my lost youth there, and if +I could have found more of them no doubt I should have been more +interested in these skeletons. For forty-odd years I had remembered the +prodigious picturesqueness of certain streets branching from a busy +avenue and ascending to uplands above by stately successions of steps. +When I demanded these of my guide, he promptly satisfied me, and in a +few moments, there in the Chiaja, we stood at the foot of such a public +staircase. I had no wish to climb it, but I found it more charming even +than I remembered. All the way to the top it was banked on either side +with glowing masses of flowers and fruits and the spectacular vegetables +of the South, and between these there were series of people, whom I +tacitly delegated to make the ascent for me, passing the groups +bargaining at the stalls. Nothing could have been better; nothing that I +think of is half so well in New York, where the markets are on that dead +level which in the social structure those above it abhor; though there +are places on the East River where we might easily have inclined +markets. + +[Illustration: 10 UP-STAIRS STREET IN OLD NAPLES] + +Other associations of that far past awoke with my identification of the +hotel where we had stayed at the end of the Villa Nazionale. In those +days the hotel was called, in appeal to our patriotism, more flattered +then than now in Europe, Hotel Washington; but it is to-day a mere +pension, though it looks over the same length of palm-shaded, +statue-peopled garden. The palms were larger than I remembered them, and +the statues had grown up and seemed to have had large families since my +day; but the lovely sea was the same, with all the mural decorations of +the skyey horizons beyond, dim precipices and dreamy island tops, and +the dozing Vesuvius mistakable for any of them. At one place there was a +file of fishermen, including a fisherwoman, drawing their net by means +of a rope carried across the carriage-way from the seawall, with a +splendid show of their black eyes and white teeth and swarthy, bare +legs, and always there were beggars, both of those who frankly begged +and those who importuned with postal-cards. This terrible traffic +pervades all southern Europe, and everywhere pesters the meeting +traveller with undesired bargains. In its presence it is almost +impossible to fit a scene with the apposite phrase; and yet one must own +that it has its rights. What would those boys do if they did not sell, +or fail to sell, postal-cards. It is another aspect of the labor +problem, so many-faced in our time. Would it be better that they should +take to open mendicancy, or try to win the soft American heart with such +acquired slang as “Skiddoo to twenty-three”? One who had no postal-cards +had English enough to say he would go away for a penny; it was his +price, and I did not see how he could take less; when he was reproached +by a citizen of uncommon austerity for his shameless annoyance of +strangers, I could not see that he looked abashed--in fact, he went away +singing. He did not take with him the divine beauty of the afternoon +light on the sea and mountains; and, if he was satisfied, we were +content with our bargain. + +In fact, it would be impossible to exaggerate in the praise of that +incomparable environment. At every hour of the day, and, for all I know, +the night, it had a varying beauty and a constant loveliness. Six days +out of the week of our stay the sunshine was glorious, and five days of +at least a May or September warmth; and though one day was shrill and +stiff with the _tramontana,_ it was of as glorious sunshine as the rest. +The gale had blown my window open and chilled my room, but with that sun +blazing outside I could not believe in the hurricane which seemed to +blow our car up the funicular railway when we mounted to the height +where the famous old Convent of San Martino stands, and then blew us all +about the dust-clouded streets of that upland in our search for the +right way to the monastery. It was worth more than we suffered in +finding it; for the museum is a record of the most significant events of +Neapolitan history from the time of the Spanish domination down to that +of the Garibaldian invasion; and the church and corridors through which +the wind hustled us abound in paintings and frescos such as one would be +willing to give a whole week of quiet weather to. I do not know but I +should like to walk always in the convent garden, or merely look into it +from my window in the cloister wall, and gossip with my fellow-friars at +their windows. We should all be ghosts, of course, but the more easily +could the sun warm us through in spite of the _tramontana._ + +[Illustration: 11 NAPLES AND THE CASTEL ST. ELMO FROM THE MOLE] + +I do not know that Naples is very beautiful in certain phases in which +Venice and Genoa are excellent. Those cities were adorned by their sons +with palaces of an outlook worthy of their splendor. But in the other +Italian cities the homes of her patricians were crowded into the narrow +streets where their architecture fails of its due effect. It is so with +them in Naples, and even along the Villa Nazionale, where many palatial +villas are set, they seclude themselves in gardens where one fancies +rather than sees them. These are, in fact, sometimes the houses of the +richest bourgeoisie--bankers and financiers--and the houses which have +names conspicuous in the mainly inglorious turmoil of Neapolitan history +help unnoted to darken the narrow and winding ways of the old city. A +glimpse of a deep court or of a towering facade is what you get in +passing, but it is to be said of the sunless streets over which they +gloom that they are kept in a modern neatness beside which the dirt of +New York is mediaeval. It is so with most other streets in Naples, +except those poorest ones where the out-door life insists upon the most +intimate domestic expression. Even such streets are no worse than our +worst streets, and the good streets are all better kept than our best. + +I am not sure that there are even more beggars in Naples than in New +York, though I will own that I kept no count. In both cities beggary is +common enough, and I am not noting it with disfavor in either, for it is +one of my heresies that comfort should be constantly reminded of misery +by the sight of it--comfort is so forgetful. Besides, in Italy charity +costs so little; a cent of our money pays a man for the loss of a leg or +an arm; two cents is the compensation for total blindness; a sick mother +with a brood of starving children is richly rewarded for her pains with +a nickel worth four cents. Organized charity is not absent in the midst +of such volunteers of poverty; one day, when we thought we had passed +the last outpost of want in our drive, two Sisters of Charity suddenly +appeared with out-stretched tin cups. Our driver did not imagine our +inexhaustible benovelence; he drove on, and before we could bring him to +a halt the Sisters of Charity ran us down, their black robes flying +abroad and their sweet faces flushed with the pursuit. Upon the whole it +was very humiliating; we could have wished to offer our excuses and +regrets; but our silver seemed enough, and the gentle sisters fell back +when we had given it. + +That was while we were driving toward Posilipo for the beauty of the +prospect along the sea and shore, and for a sense of which any colored +postal-card will suffice better than the most hectic word-painting. The +worst of Italy is the superabundance of the riches it offers ear and eye +and nose--offers every sense--ending in a glut of pleasure. At the point +where we descended from our carriage to look from the upland out over +the vast hollow of land and sea toward Pozzuoli, which is so interesting +as the scene of Jove's memorable struggle with the Titans, and just when +we were really beginning to feel equal to it, a company of minstrels +suddenly burst upon us with guitars and mandolins and comic songs much +dramatized, while the immediate natives offered us violets and other +distracting flowers. In the effect, art and nature combined to +neutralize each other, as they do with us, for instance, in those +restaurants where they have music during dinner, and where you do not +know whether you are eating the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of a cook or a composer. + +It was at the new hotel which is evolving itself through the repair of +the never-finished and long-ruined Palace of Donn' Anna, wife of a +Spanish viceroy in the seventeenth century, that our guide stopped with +us for that cup of tea already mentioned. We had to climb four nights of +stairs for it to the magnificent salon overlooking the finest +postal-card prospect in all Naples. We lingered long upon it, in the +balcony from which we could have dropped into the sunset sea any coin +which we could have brought ourselves to part with; but we had none of +the bad money which had been so easily passed off upon us. This sort +rather abounds in Naples, and the traveller should watch not only for +false francs, but for francs of an obsolete coinage which you can know +by the king's head having a longer neck than in the current pieces. At +the bookseller's they would not take a perfectly good five-franc piece +because it was so old as 1815; and what becomes of all the bad money one +innocently takes for good? One fraudulent franc I made a virtue of +throwing away; but I do not know what I did with a copper refused by a +trolley conductor as counterfeit. I could not take the affair seriously, +and perhaps I gave that copper in charity. + +As we drove hotelward through the pink twilight we met many carriages of +people who looked rich and noble, but whether they were so I do not +know. I only know that old ladies who regard the world severely from +their coaches behind the backs of their perfectly appointed coachmen and +footmen ought to be both, and that old gentlemen who frown over their +white mustaches have no right to their looks if they are neither. It +was, at any rate, the hour of the fashionable drive, which included a +pause midway of the Villa Nazionale for the music of the military band. + +The band plays near the Aquarium, which I hope the reader will visit at +the earlier hours of the day. Then, if he has a passion for polyps, and +wishes to imagine how they could ingulf good-sized ships in the ages of +fable, he can see one of the hideous things float from its torpor in the +bottom of its tank, and seize Avith its hungry tentacles the food +lowered to it by a string. Still awfuller is it to see it rise and reach +with those prehensile members, as with the tails of a multi-caudate ape, +some rocky projection of its walls and lurk fearsomely into the hollow, +and vanish there in a loathly quiescence. The carnivorous spray and +bloom of the deep-sea flowers amid which drowned men's “bones are coral +made” seem of one temperament with the polyps as they slowly, slowly +wave their tendrils and petals; but there is amusement if not pleasure +in store for the traveller who turns from them to the company of shad +softly and continuously circling in their tank, and regarding the +spectators with a surly dignity becoming to people in better society +than others. One large shad, imaginably of very old family and +independent property, sails at the head of several smaller shad, his +flatterers and toadies, who try to look like him. Mostly his expression +is very severe; but in milder moments he offers a perverse resemblance +to some portraits of Washington. + +All our days in Naples died like dolphins to the music which I have +tried to impart the sense of. The joyful noises which it was made up of +culminated for us on that evening when a company of the street and boat +musicians came into the hotel and danced and sang and played the +tarantella. They were of all ages, sexes, and bulks, and of divers +operatic costumes, but they were of one temperament only, which was glad +and childlike. They went through their repertory, which included a great +deal more than the tarantella, and which we applauded with an enthusiasm +attested by our contributions when the tambourine went round. Then they +repeated their selections, and at the second collection we guests of the +hotel repeated our contributions, but in a more guarded spirit. After +the second repetition the prettiest girl came round with her photographs +and sold them at prices out of all reason. Then we became very +melancholy, and began to steal out one by one. I myself did not stay for +the fourth collection, and I cannot report how the different points of +view, the Southern and the Northern, were reconciled in the event which +I am not sure was final. But I am sure that unless you can make +allowance for a world-wide difference in the Neapolitans from yourself +you can never understand them. Perhaps you cannot, even then. + + + + +V. POMPEII REVISITED + + +Because I felt very happy in going back to Pompeii after a generation, +and being alive to do so in the body, I resolved to behave handsomely by +the cabman who drove me from my hotel to the station. I said to myself +that I would do something that would surprise him, and I gave him his +fee and nearly a franc over; but it was I who was surprised, for he ran +after me into the station, as I supposed, to extort more. He was holding +out a franc toward me, and I asked the guide who was bothering me to +take him to Pompeii (where there are swarms of guides always on the +grounds) what the matter was. “It is false,” he explained, and this +proved true, though whether the franc was the one I had given the driver +or whether it was one which he had thoughtfully substituted for it to +make good an earlier loss I shall now never know. I put it into my +pocket, wondering what I should do with it; the question what you shall +do with counterfeit money in Italy is one which is apt to recur as I +have hinted, and in despair of solving it at the moment I threw the +false franc out of the car-window; it was the false franc I have already +boasted of throwing away. + +This was, of course, after I got into the car, and after I had suffered +another wrong, and was resolved at least to be good myself. I had taken +first-class tickets, but, when we had followed several conductors up and +down the train, the last of them said there were no first-class places +left, though I shall always doubt this. I asked what we should do, and +he shrugged. I had heard that if you will stand upon your rights in such +a matter the company will have to put on another car for you. But I was +now dealing with the Italian government, which has nationalized the +railroads, but has apparently not yet repleted the rolling stock; and +when the conductor found us places in a second-class carriage, rather +than quarrel with a government which had troubles enough already I got +aboard. I suppose really that I have not much public spirit, and that +the little I have I commonly leave at home; in travelling it is +burdensome. Besides, the second-class carriage would have been +comfortable enough if it had not been so dirty; it looked as if it had +not been washed since it was flooded with liquid ashes at the +destruction of Pompeii, though they seemed to be cigar ashes. + +The country through which we made the hour's run was sympathetically +squalid. We had, to be sure, the sea on one side, and that was clean +enough; but the day was gray, and the sea was responsively gray; while +the earth on the other side was torn and ragged, with people digging +manure into the patches of broccoli, and gardening away as if it had +been April instead of January. There were shabby villas, with +stone-pines and cypresses herding about the houses, and tatters of +life-plant overhanging their shabby walls; there were stucco shanties +which the men and women working in the fields would lurk in at +nightfall. At places there was some cheerful boat building, and at one +place there was a large macaroni manufactory, with far stretches of the +product dangling in hanks and skeins from rows of trellises. We passed +through towns where women and children swarmed, working at doorways and +playing in the dim, cold streets; from the balconies everywhere winter +melons hung in nets, dozens and scores of them, such as you can buy at +the Italian fruiterers' in New York, and will keep buying when once you +know how good they are. In Naples they sell them by the slice in the +street, the fruiterer carrying a board on his head with the slices +arranged in an upright coronal like the rich, barbaric head-dress of +some savage prince. + +Our train was slow and our car was foul, but nothing could keep us from +arriving at Pompeii in very good spirits. The entrance to the dead city +is gardened about with a cemeterial prettiness of evergreens; but, after +you have bought your ticket and been assigned your guide, you pass +through this decorative zone and find yourself in the first of streets +where the past makes no such terms with the present. If some of the +houses of an ampler plan had little spaces beyond the atrium planted +with such flowers as probably grew there two thousand years ago, and +stuck round with tiny figurines, it was to the advantage of the people's +fancy; but it did not appeal so much to the imagination as the mould and +moss, and the small, weedy network that covered the ground in the +roofless chambers and temples and basilicas, where the broken columns +and walls started from the floors which this unmeditated verdure painted +in the favorite hue of ruin. + +Most of the places I re-entered through my recollection of them, but to +this subjective experience there was added that of seeing much newer and +vaster things than I remembered. That sad population of the victims of +the disaster, restored to the semhlance of life, or perhaps rather of +death, in plaster casts taken from the moulds their decay had left in +the hardening ashes, had much increased in the melancholy museum where +one visits them the first thing within the city gates. But their effect +was not cumulative; there were more writhing women and more contorted +men; but they did not make their tragedy more evident than it had been +when I saw them, fewer but not less affecting, all those years ago. It +was the same with the city itself; Pompeii had grown, like the rest of +the world in the interval, and, although it had been dug tip instead of +built up, a good third had been added to the count of its streets and +houses. There were not, so far as I could see, more ruts from +chariot-wheels in the lava blocks of the thoroughfares, but some +convincingly two-storied dwellings had been exhumed, and others with +ceilings in better condition than those of the earlier excavations; +there were more all-but-unbroken walls and columns; some mosaic floors +were almost as perfect as when their dwellers fled over them out of the +stifling city. But upon the whole the result was a greater monotony; the +revelation of house after house, nearly the same in design, did not gain +impressiveness from their repetition; just as the case would be if the +dwellings of an old-fashioned cross-town street in New York were dug out +two thousand years after their submergence by an eruption of Orange +Mountain. The identity of each of the public edifices is easily attested +to the archaeologist, but the generally intelligent, as the generally +unintelligent, visitor must take the archaeologist's word for the fact. +One temple is much like another in its stumps of columns and vague +foundations and broken altars. Among the later discoveries certain of +the public baths are in the best repair, both structurally and +decoratively, and in these one could replace the antique life with the +least wear and tear of the imagination. + +[Illustration: 12 EXCAVATING AT POMPEII] + +I could not tell which the several private houses were; but the +guide-books can, and there I leave the specific knowledge of them; their +names would say nothing to the reader if they said nothing to me. In +Pompeii, where all the houses were rather small, some of the new ones +were rather large, though not larger than a few of the older ones. Not +more recognizably than these, they had been devoted to the varied uses +known to advanced civilization in all ages: there were dwellings, and +taverns and drinking-houses and eating-houses, and there were those +houses where the feet of them that abide therein and of those that +frequent them alike take hold on hell. In these the guide stays the men +of his party to prove the character of the places to them from the +frescos and statues; but it may be questioned if the visitors so +indulged had not better taken the guide's word for the fact. There can +be no doubt that at the heart of paganism the same plague festered which +poisons Christian life, and which, while the social conditions remain +the same from age to age, will poison life forever. + +The pictures on the walls of the newly excavated houses are not +strikingly better than those I had not forgotten; but of late it has +been the purpose to leave as many of the ornaments and utensils in +position as possible. The best are, as they ought to be, gathered into +the National Museum at Naples, but those which remain impart a more +living sense of the past than such wisely ordered accumulations; for it +is the Pompeian paradox that in the image of death it can best recall +life. It is a grave which has been laid bare, and it were best to leave +its ghastly memories unhindered by other companionship. One feels that +one ought to be there alone in order to see it aright. One should not +perhaps + + “Go visit it by the pale moonlight,” + +but if one could have it all to one's self by day, such a gray day as we +had for it, there is no telling what might happen. One thing only would +certainly happen: one would get lost. It never was a town of large area; +and, like all spaces that have been ruined over, it looked smaller than +it would have looked if all its walls were standing with all their roofs +upon them. Still, it was a mesh of streets, out of which you would in +vain have sought your way if you had been caught in it alone; though it +is mostly so level that if you had mounted a truncated column almost +anywhere you could have looked over the labyrinth to its verge. + +It was not much crowded by visitors; though there were strings of them +at the heels of the respective guides, with, I thought, a prevalence of +the Germans, who are now overrunning Italy; I am sorry to say they are +not able to keep it cheap, at least for other nationalities. Among these +I noted two little smiling, shining, twinkling Japs, who carried kodaks +for the capture of that classical antiquity which could never really +belong to them. Their want of a pagan past in common with us may be what +keeps us alien even more than the want of a common Christian tradition. + + “The glory that was Greece + And the grandeur that was Rome” + +could never mean to our brown companions what they meant to us; but they +put on a polite air of being interested in the Graeco-Roman ruin, and +were so gentle and friendly that one could almost feel they were +fellow-men. Very likely they were; at any rate, until we are at war with +them I shall believe so. + +[Illustration: 13 THE STREET OF TOMBS, POMPEII] + +Our guide, whom we had really bought the whole use of at the gate, +thriftily took on another party, with our leave, and it was pleasant to +find that the American type from Utah was the same as from Ohio or +Massachusetts; with all our differences we are the most homogeneous +people under the sun, and likest a large family. We all frankly got +tired at about the same time at the same place, and agreed that we had, +without the amphitheatre, had enough when we ended at the Street of +Tombs, where the tombs are in so much better repair than the houses. For +myself, I remembered the amphitheatre so perfectly from 1864 that I did +not see how I could add a single emotion there in 1908 to those I had +already turned into literature; and though Pompeii is but small, the +amphitheatre is practically as far from the Street of Tombs, after you +have walked about the place for two hours, as the Battery is from High +Bridge. There is no Elevated or Subway at Pompeii, and even the lines of +public chariots, if such they were, which left those ruts in the lava +pavements seem to have been permanently suspended after the final +destruction in the year 79. + +We were not only very tired, but very hungry, and we asked our guide to +take us back the shortest way. I suggested a cross-cut at one point, and +he caught at the word eagerly, and wrote it in his note-book for future +use. He also acted upon it instantly, and we cut across the back yards +and over the kitchen areas of several absent citizens on our way back. +Our guide was as good and true as it is in the nature of guides to be, +but absolute goodness and truth are rather the attributes of American +travellers; and you will not escape the small graft which the guides are +so rigorously forbidden to practise. Pompeii is no longer in the +keeping of the Italian army; with the Italian instinct of +decentralization the place has claimed the right of self-government, and +now the guides are civilians, and not soldiers, as they were in my far +day. They do not accept fees, but still they take them; and our guide +said that he had a brother-in-law who had the best restaurant outside +the gate, where we could get luncheon for two francs. As soon as we +were in the hands of the runner for that restaurant the price augmented +itself to two francs and a half; when we mounted to the threshold, lured +on by the fascinating mystery of this increase, it became three francs, +without wine. But as the waiter justly noted, in hovering about us with +the cutlery and napery while he laid the table, a two-fifty luncheon was +unworthy such lords as we. When he began to bring on the delicious +omelette, the admirable fish, the excellent cutlets, he made us observe +that if we paid three francs we ought to eat a great deal; and there +seemed reason in this; at any rate, we did so. The truth is, that +luncheon was worth the money, and more; as for the Vesuvian wine, it had +the rich red blood of the volcano in it, and it could not be bought in +New York for half a franc the bottle, if at all; at thrice that sum in +Naples it was not a third as good. + +If there had been anything to do after lunch except go to the train, we +could not have done it, we were so spent with our two hours' walk +through Pompeii, though the gray day had been rather invigorating. +Certainly it was not so exhausting as that white-hot day forty-three +years before when I had broiled over the same ground under the blazing +sun of a Pompeian November. Yet the difference in the muscles and +emotions of twenty-seven as against those of seventy told in favor of +the white-hot day; and, besides that, in the time that had elapsed a +much greater burden of antiquity had been added to the city than had +accumulated in its history between the year 79 and the year 1864. During +most of those centuries Pompeii had been dreamlessly sleeping under its +ashes, but in the ensuing less than half a century it had wakefully, +however unwillingly, witnessed such events as the failure of secession +and the abolition of slavery, the unification of Italy and Germany, the +fall of the Second Empire, the liberation of Cuba, and the acquisition +of the Philippines, the exile of Richard Croker, the destruction of the +Boer Republic, the rise and spread of the trusts, the purification of +municipal politics, the invention of wireless telegraphy, and the +general adoption of automobiling. These things, and others like them, +had perhaps not aged Pompeii so much as they had aged me, but their +subjective effect was the same, and upon the whole I was not altogether +sorry to have added scarcely a new impression of the place to those I +had been carrying for more than a generation. Quantitatively there were +plenty of new impressions to be had; impressions of more roofs, gardens, +columns, houses, temples, walls, frescos; but qualitatively the Greater +Pompeii was now not different from the lesser which I remembered so +well. + +This, at least, was what I said to myself on the ground and afterward in +the National Museum at Naples, where most of the precious Pompeian +things, new and old, are heaped up. They still make but a poor show +there beside the treasures of Herculaneum, where the excavation of a few +streets and houses has yielded costlier and lovelier things than all the +lengths and breadths of Pompeii. But not for this would I turn against +Pompeii at the last moment, as it were, though my second visit had not +aesthetically enriched me beyond my first. I keep the vision of it under +that gray January sky, with Vesuvius smokeless in the background, and +the plan of the dead city, opener to the eye than ever it could have +been in life, inscribed upon the broadly opened area of the gentle +slopes within its gates. Whether one had not better known it dead than +alive, one might not wish perhaps to say; but the place itself is +curiously without pathos; Newport in ruins might not be touching; +possibly all skeletons or even mummies are without pathos; and Pompeii +is a skeleton, or at the most a mummy, of the past. + +Seeing what antiquity so largely was, however, one might be not only +resigned but cheerful in the ef-facement of any particular piece of it; +and for a help to this at Pompeii I may advise the reader to take with +him a certain little guide-book, written in English by a very courageous +Italian, which I chanced to find in Naples. Though it treats of the +tragical facts with seriousness, it is not with equal gravity that one +reads that sixteen years before the Vesuvian eruption “the region had +been shaken by strong sismic movements, which induced Pompei inhabitants +to forsake precipitately their habitations. But being the amazement up, +they got one's home again as soon as the earth was quiet and all fear +and sadness went off by memory.” Signs of the final disaster to follow +were not wanting; the wells failed, the water-courses were crossed by +currents of carbonic acid; “the domestic animals were also very sensible +of the approaching of the scourge; they lost the habitual vivacity, and +having the food in disgust, had from time to time to complain with +mournful wailings, without justified reasons.... The sky became of a +thick darkness,... interrupted only by flashes of light which the +lava reverberated, by the bloody gliding of the thunderbolts, by the +incandescence of enormous projectiles, thrown to an incommensurable +highness.... Death surprised the charming town; houses and streets +became the tombs of the unhappies hit by an atrocious torture.” + +The author's study of the life of Pompeii is notable for diction which, +if there were logic in language, would be admirable English, for while +yet in his mind it must have been “very choice Italian.” He tells us +that “Pompei's dwellings are surprising by their specific littleness,” + and explains that “Pompei inhabitants, for the habitudes of the climate +could allow, lived almost always to the open sky,” just as the Naples +inhabitants do now. “They got home only to rest a little, to fulfill +life wants, to be protected by bad weather. They spent much time during +the day in forum, temples, thermes, tennis-court, or intervened to +public sports, religious functions and meetings.... Few houses only +had windows. The sunlight and ventilation to the ancients was given +through empty spaces in the roofs.... Hoofs knocked under the weight +of materials thrown out by Vesuvius; it is undoubted, however, that +roofs were provided with covers or supported terraces. In the middle of +the roofs was cut an overture through which air and light brought their +benefits to the underlaid ambients.... Proprietor disposed the locals +according to his own delight.... So that, there were bed, bath, +dining, talking and game rooms.” In the peristyle “the ground was +gardened, the area shared in flower beds, had narrow paths; herbs, +flowers, shrubs were put with art well in order on flower beds, +delighted from time to time by statues of various subjects,” as may be +noted in the actual restorations of some of the Pompeian houses. + +As for their spiritual life, “Pompeian's religion, like by Roman people, +was the Paganism. Deities were worshipped in the temples with prayers, +sacrifices, vows, and festivities.... Banquets to the Deity were +joined to prayers. In fact, dining tables were dressed near the altars, +and all around them on dining beds, _tricli-nari,_ placed Divinities +statues as these were assembled to own account to the joyous banquet.” + Auspices or auguries “gave interpretation to thunders, lightnings, +winds, rain crashes, comets, or to bird songs and flights.... +Horuspices inquired the divine will on the animal bowels, sacrificed to +the altar; they took out further indications by fleshes and bowels +flames when burnt on the altar.” + +An important feature of Pompeian social life was the bath, which “was +one of the hospitality duty, and very often required in several +religious functions.... Large and colossal edifices were quite +furnished with all the necessary for care and sport. Besides localities +for all kind of bath--cold, warm, steam bath--didn't want parks, alleys, +and porticos in order to walk; lists rings for gymnastic exercises, +conversation and reading rooms, localities for theatrical +representations, swimming stations, localities for scientific +disquisitions, moral and religious teachings. The most splendid art +works adorned the ambient.” + +When we pass to the popular amusements we are presented with the +materials of pictures vividly realized in _The Last Days of Pompeii,_ +but somewhat faded since. “In the beginning gladiators' rank was made by +condemned to death slaves and war prisoners. Later also thoughtless +young men, who had never learned an advantageous trade, became +gladiators.” In the arena they engaged in sham fights till the +spectators demanded blood. Then, “sometimes one provided one's self nets +for wrapping up the adversary, who, hit by a trident much, frequently +die. When the gladiator was deadly wounded, forsaking the arm, struck +down and stretching the index, asked the people grace of life. The +spectators decided up his destiny, turning the thumb to the breast, or +toward the ground. The thumb turned toward the ground was the unlucky's +death doom, and he had without fail the throat cut off.” + +Such, dimly but unmistakably seen through our Italian author's +well-reasoned English, were the ancient Pompeians; and, upon the whole, +the visitor to their city could not wish them back in it. I preferred +even those modern Pompeians who followed us so molestively to the train +with bargains in postal-cards and coral. They are very alert, the modern +Pompeians, to catch the note of national character, and I saw one of +them pursuing an elderly American with a spread of hat-pins, primarily +two francs each, and with the appeal, evidently studied from some fair +American girl: “Buy it, Poppa! Six for one franc. Oh, Poppa, buy it!” + +I had again lavished my substance upon first-class tickets, and so had +my Utah friend, who expounded his philosophy of travel as we managed to +secure a first-class carriage. “When I can't go first-class in Italy, +I'll go home.” I promptly and proudly agreed with him, but I concealed +my morning's experience of the fact that in Italy you may sometimes go +second class when you have paid first. I agreed with him, however, in +not minding the plunder of Italian travel, since, with all the +extortions, it would come to a third less than you expected to spend. +His was the true American spirit. + + + + +VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS + + + + +I. HOTELS, PENSIONS, AND APARTMENTS + + +“Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?” the traveller asks rather +anxiously than defiantly when he finds himself a stranger in a strange +place, and he is apt to add, if he has not written or wired ahead to +some specific hotel, “Which of mine inns shall I take mine ease in?” He +is the more puzzled to choose the more inns there are to choose from, +and his difficulty is enhanced if he has not considered that some of his +inns may be full or may be too dear, and yet others undesirable. + +The run from Naples in four hours and a half had been so flattering fair +an experience to people who had last made it in eight that they arrived +in Rome on a sunny afternoon of January preoccupied with expectations of +an instant ease in their inn which seemed the measure of their merit. +They indeed found their inn, and it was with a painful surprise that +they did not find the rooms in it which they wanted. There were neither +rooms full south, nor over the garden, nor off the tram, and in these +circumstances there was nothing for it but to drive to some one else's +inn and try for better quarters there. They, in fact, drove to half a +dozen such, their demands rising for more rooms and sunnier and quieter +and cheaper, the fewer and darker and noisier and dearer were those they +found. + +The trouble was that they found in the very first alien hotel where they +applied an apartment so exactly what they wanted, with its four rooms +and bath, all more or less full south, though mostly veering west and +north, that they carried the fatal norm in their consciousness and +tested all other apartments by it, the earlier notion of single rooms +being promptly rejected after the sight of it. The reader will therefore +not be so much, astonished as these travellers were to learn that there +was nothing else in Rome (where there must be about five hundred hotels, +_hotels garnis,_ and pensions) that one could comparatively stay even +overnight in, and that they settled in that alluring apartment +provisionally, the next day being Sunday, and the crystalline Saturday +of their arrival being well worn away toward its topaz and ruby sunset. +Of course, they continued their search for several days afterward, +zealously but hopelessly, yet not fruitlessly, for it resulted in an +acquaintance with Roman hotels which they might otherwise never have +made, and for one of them in literary material of interest to every one +hoping to come to Rome or despairing of it. The psychology of the matter +was very curious, and involved the sort of pleasing self-illusion by +which people so often get themselves over questionable passes in life +and come out with a good conscience, or a dead one, which is practically +the same thing. These particular people had come to Rome with +reminiscences of in-expensiveness and had intended to recoup themselves +for the cost of several previous winters in New York hotels by the +saving they would make in their Roman sojourn. When it appeared, after +all the negotiation and consequent abatement, that their Roman hotel +apartment would cost them hardly a fifth less than they had last paid in +New York, they took a guilty refuge in the fact that they were getting +for less money something which no money could buy in New York. Gradually +all sense of guilt wore off, and they boldly, or even impudently, said +to themselves that they ought to have what they could pay for, and that +there were reasons, which they were not obliged to render in their +frankest soliloquies, why they should do just what they chose in the +matter. + +The truth is that the modern Roman hotel is far better in every way than +the hotel of far higher class, or of the highest class, in New York. In +the first place, the managers are in the precious secret, which our +managers have lost, of making you believe that they want you; and, +having you, they know how to look after your pleasure and welfare. The +table is always of more real variety, though vastly less stupid +profusion than ours. The materials are wholesomer and fresher and are +without the proofs, always present in our hotel viands, of a +probationary period in cold storage. As for the cooking, there is no +comparison, whether the things are simply or complexly treated; and the +service is of that neatness and promptness which ours is so ignorant of. + +Your agreement is usually for meals as well as rooms; the European plan +is preferably ignored in Europe; and the _table d'hote_ luncheon and +dinner are served at small, separate tables; your breakfast is brought +to your room. Being old-fashioned, myself, I am rather sorry for the +small, separate tables. I liked the one large, long table, where you +made talk with your neighbors; but it is gone, and much facile +friendliness with it, on either hand and across the board. The rooms are +tastefully furnished, and the beds are unquestionable; the carpets +warmly cover the floor if stone, or amply rug it if of wood. The +steam-heating is generous and performs its office of “roasting you out +of the house” without the sizzling and crackling which accompany its +efforts at home. The electricity really illuminates, and there is always +an electric lamp at your bed-head for those long hours when your remorse +or your digestion will not let you sleep, and you must substitute some +other's waking dreams for those of your own slumbers. Above all, there +is a lift, or elevator, not enthusiastically active or convulsively +swift, but entirely practicable and efficient. It will hold from four to +eight persons, and will take up at least six without reluctance. + +It must be clearly understood that the ideal of American comfort is +fully and faithfully realized, and if the English have reformed the +Italian hotels in respect of cleanliness, it is we who have brought them +quite to our domestic level in regard to heat and light. But if we want +these things in Rome, we must pay for them as we do at home, though +still we do not pay so much as we pay at home. The tips are about half +our average, but whether they are given currently or ultimately I do not +know. Who, indeed, knows about others' tips anywhere in the world? I +asked an experienced fellow-citizen what the custom was, and he said +that he believed the English gave in going away, but he thought the +spirits of the helpers drooped under the strain of hope deferred, and he +preferred to give every week. The donations, I understood, were pooled +by the dining-room waiters and then equally divided; but gifts bestowed +above stairs were for the sole behoof of him or her who took them. +Germans are said to give less than Anglo-Saxons, and it is said that +Italians in some cases do not give at all. But, again, who knows? The +Italians are said never to give drink money to the cabmen, but to pay +only the letter of the tariff. If I had done that in driving about to +look up worse hotels than the one I chose first and last, I should now +be a richer man, but I doubt if a happier. Two cents seems to satisfy a +Roman cabman; five cents has for him the witchery of money found in the +road; but I must not leave the subject of hotels for that of cabs, +however alluringly it beckons. + +The reader who knows Italy only from the past should clear his mind of +his old impressions of the hotels. There is no longer that rivalry +between the coming guest and the manager to see how few or many candles +can be lighted in his room and charged in the bill; there are no longer +candles, but only electricity. There is no longer an extortion for +hearth-fires which send all the heat up the chimney; there are steam +radiators in every room. There is no longer a tedious bargaining for +rooms; the price is fixed and cannot be abated except for a sojourn of +weeks or months. But the price is much greater than it used to be--twice +as great almost; for the taxes are heavy and provisions are dear, and +coal and electricity are costly, and you must share the expense with the +landlord. He is not there for his health, and, if for your comfort, you +are not his invited guest. As I have intimated, an apartment of four +rooms with a bath will cost almost as much, with board, as the same +quarters in New York, but you will get far more for your money in Rome. +If you take a single room, even to the south, in many first-class Roman +hotels it will cost you for room and board only two dollars or two and a +half a day, which is what you pay for a far meaner and smaller room +alone in New York; and the Roman board is such, as you can get at none +but our most expensive houses for twice the money. Generally you cannot +get a single room and bath, but at present a very exclusive hotel is +going up in a good quarter which promises, with huge English signs, a +bath with every room and every room full south. One does not see just +how the universal sunny exposure is to be managed, but there can be no +question of the baths; and, with the steam radiators everywhere, the +northernmost room might well imagine itself full south. + +Nearly all the hotels have a pleasant tea-room, which is called a winter +garden, because of a pair of palm-trees set under the centre of its +glass roof and the painted bamboo chairs and tables set about. This sort +of garden is found even in the hotels which are almost of the grade of +pensions and of their prices; but generally the pensions proper are +without it. Their rates are much lower, but quite as good people +frequent them, and they are often found in good streets and sometimes +open into or overlook charming gardens; the English especially seem to +like the pensions, which are managed like hotels. They are commonly +without steam-heat, which might account for their being less frequented +by Americans. + +There are two supreme hotels in Rome--one in the Ludovisi quarter, as it +is called, and the other near the Baths of Diocletian, which Americans +frequent to their cost, for the rates approach a New York or London +magnificence. The first is rather the more spectacular of the two and is +the resort of all the finer sort of afternoon tea-drinkers, who find +themselves the observed of observers of all nationalities; there is +music and dress, and there are titles of every degree, with as much +informality as people choose, if they go to look, or as much state if +they go to be looked at; these things are much less cumbrously contrived +than with us. The other hotel, I have the somewhat unauthorized fancy, +is rather more addicted to very elect dinner-parties and suppers. Below +these two are an endless variety of first-rate and second-rate houses, +both in the newer quarter of the city, where the villa paths have been +turned into streets, and in the old town on all the pleasant squares and +avenues. There is a tradition of unhealth concerning the old town which +the modern death-rate of Rome shows to be unjust; at the worst these +places have more dark and damp, and the hotels are not steam-heated. + +It has seemed to me that there are not so many _hotels garnis_ in Rome +as there used to be in Italian cities, but they, too, abound in pleasant +streets, and the stranger who has a fancy for lodgings with breakfast in +his rooms, and likes to browse about for his luncheon and dinner, will +easily suit himself. If it comes to taking a furnished apartment for the +season, there is much range in price and much choice in place. The +agents who have them to let will begin, rather dismayingly, “Oh, +apartments in Rome are very dear.” But you learn on inquiry that a +furnished flat in the Ludovisi region, in a house with a lift and full +sun, may be had for two hundred dollars a month. From this height the +rents of palatial apartments soar to such lonely peaks as eight hundred +and sink to such levels as a hundred and twenty or a hundred; and for +this you have linen and silver and all the movables and utensils you +want, as well as several vast rooms opening wastefully from one to +another till you reach the salon. The rents of the like flats, if +vacant, would be a quarter or a third less, though again the agents +begin by telling you that there is very little difference between the +rents of furnished and unfurnished flats. The flats are in every part +of the old town and the new; and some are in noble sixteenth and +seventeenth century palaces, such as we are accustomed to at home only +in the theatre. My own experience is that everybody, especially in +houses where there are no lifts, lives on the top floor. You pass many +other floors in going up, but you are left to believe that nobody lives +on them. When you reach the inhabited levels, you find them charming +inside for their state and beauty, and outside for their magnificent +view, which may be pretty confidently relied upon to command the dome of +St. Peter's. That magnificent stone bubble seems to blow all round the +horizon. + +When you have taken your furnished flat, the same agency will provide +you a cook at ten or twelve dollars a month, a maid at seven dollars, a +lady's maid at eight or nine dollars, and so on; the cook will prefer to +sleep out of the house. Then will come the question of provisions, and +these seem really to be dear in Rome. Meats and vegetables both are +dear, and game and poultry. Beef will be forty cents a pound, and veal +and mutton in proportion; a chicken which has been banting for the table +from its birth will be forty cents; eggs which have not yet taken active +shape are twenty-five and thirty cents throughout winters so bland that +a hen of any heart can hardly keep from laying every day. I am afraid I +am no authority on butter and milk, and groceries I do not know the +prices of; but coffee ought to be cheap, for nobody drinks anything but +substitutes more or less unabashed. + +For the passing stranger, or even the protracted so-journer, whose time +and money are not too much at odds, a hotel is best, and a hotel in the +new quarter is pleasanter than one in the old quarters. Ours, at any +rate, was in a wide, sunny, and (if I must own it) dusty street, laid +out in a line of beauty on the borders of the former Villa Ludovisi, +where the aging or middle-aging reader used to come to see Guercino's +“Aurora” in the roof of the casino. Now all trace of the garden is +hidden under vast and vaster hotels and great blond apartment-houses, +and ironed down with trolley-rails; but the Guercino has been spared, +though it is no longer so accessible to the public. Still, there is a +garden left, and our hotel, with others, looks across the sun and dust +of its street into the useful vegetation of the famous old Capuchin +convent, with the church, to which I came so eagerly so long ago to +revere Guido's “St. Michael and the Dragon” and the decorative bones of +the good brothers braided on the walls and roofs of the crypt in the +indissoluble community of floral and geometric designs. + +[Illustration: 14 THE CAPUCHIN CHURCH, ROME] + +All through the months of February and March I woke to the bell that +woke the brothers to their prayers before daybreak and burst the +beauty-sleep of the hotel-dwellers, who have so far outnumbered the +monks since the obliteration of the once neighboring villa. This was, of +course, a hardship, and one thought things of that bell which the monks +were too good to say; but being awake, and while one was reading one's +self to sleep again, one could hear the beginning of the bird singing in +the modern garden in the rear which followed upon the bell-ringing. I do +not know what make or manner of bird it was that mostly sang among the +palms and laurels and statues, but it had a note of liquid gold, which +it poured till a certain flageo-lettist, whom I never saw, came to the +corner under the villa wall and blew his soul into one end of his +instrument and out of the other in the despondent breathings of most +melancholy music. Then, having attuned the spirits of his involuntary +listeners to a pensive sympathy, he closed with that international hymn +which does not rightly know whether it is “My Country, 'tis of Thee,” or +“God Save the King,” but serves equally for the patriotism of any +English or Americans in hearing. I do not know why this harmless hymn, +which the flageolettist gave extremely well, should always have seemed +to provoke the derision of the donkey which apparently dwelt in harmony +with the birds in that garden, but the flageolettist had no sooner ended +than the donkey burst into a bray, loud, long, and full of mockery, with +a close of ironical whistling and most insolent hissing; you would think +that some arch-enemy of the Anglo-Saxon race was laughing the new-felt +unity of the English and Americans to scorn. Later, but still before +daylight, came the wild cry of a boy, somewhere out of perdition, +following the deep bass invitation of his father's lost spirit to buy +his wares, whatever they were. We never knew, but we liked that boy's +despairing wail, and would not have missed it for ever so much extra +slumber. When all hope of more sleep was past there was no question of +the desirability of the boy who visibly arranged his store of oranges on +the curbstone under the villa wall, and seemed to think that they had a +peculiar attraction from being offered for sale in pairs. His cry filled +the rest of the forenoon. + +The Italian spring comes on slowly everywhere, with successive snubs in +its early ardor from the snows on the mountains, which regulate the +climate from north to south. We could not see that it made more speed +behind the sheltering walls of the Capuchin convent garden than in other +places. The old gardener whom we saw pottering about in it seemed to +potter no more actively at the end of March than at the beginning of +February; on the first days of April a heap of old leaves and stalks was +sending up the ruddy flame and pleasant smell that the like burning +heaps do with us at the like hour of spring--in fact, vegetation had +much more reason to be cheerful throughout February than at any time in +March. Those February days were really incomparable. They had not the +melting heat of the warm spells that sometimes come in our Februaries; +but their suns were golden, and their skies unutterably blue, and their +airs mild, yet fresh. You always wanted a heavy coat for driving or for +the shade in walking; otherwise the temperature was that of a New +England April which was resolved to begin as it could carry out. But +March came with cold rains of whole days, and with suns that might +overheat but could not be trusted to warm you. The last Sunday of +January I found ice in the Colosseum; but that was the only time I saw +ice anywhere in Rome. In March, however, in a moment of great +exasperation from the mountains, it almost snowed. Yet that month would +in our climate have been remembered for its beauty and for a prevailing +kindness of temperature. The worst you could say of it was that it left +the spring in the Capuchin garden where it found it. But possibly, since +the temporal power was overthrown, the seasons are neglected and +indifferent. Certainly man seems so in the case of the Capuchin convent. +Great stretches of the poor old plain edifice look vacant, and the high +wall which encloses it is plastered and painted with huge advertisements +of clothiers and hotels and druggists, and announcements of races and +other events out of keeping with its character and tradition. + +The sentimentalists who overrun Rome from all the Northern lands will +tell you that this is of a piece with all the Newer Rome which has +sprung into existence since the Italian occupation. Their griefs with +the thing that is are loud and they are long; but I, who am a +sentimentalist too, though of another make, do not share them. No doubt +the Newer Rome has made mistakes, but, without defending her +indiscriminately, I am a Newer-Roman to the core, perhaps because I knew +the Older Rome and what it was like; and not all my brother and sister +sentimentalists can say as much. + + + + +II. A PRAISE OF NEW ROME + + +Rome and I had both grown older since I had seen her last, but she +seemed not to show so much as I the forty-three years that had passed. +Naturally a city that was already twenty-seven centuries of age (and no +one knows how much more) would not betray the lapse of time since 1864 +as a man must who was then only twenty-seven years of age. In fact, I +should say that Rome looked, if anything, younger at our second meeting, +in 1908, or, at any rate, newer; and I am so warm a friend of youth (in +others) that I was not sorry to find Rome young, or merely new, in so +many good things. At the same time I must own that I heard no other +foreigner praising her for her newness except a fellow-septuagenarian, +who had seen Rome earlier even than I, and who thought it well that the +Ghetto should have been cleared away, though some visitors, who had +perhaps never lived in a Ghetto, thought it a pity if not a shame, and +an incalculable loss to the picturesque. These also thought the Tiber +Embankments a wicked sacrifice to the commonplace, though the mud-banks +of other days invited the torrent to an easy overflow of whole quarters +of the town, which were left reeking with the filth of the flood that +overlay the filth of the streets, and combined with it to an effect of +disease and of discomfort not always personally unknown to the lover of +the picturesque. There used to be a particular type of typhoid known as +Roman fever, but now quite unknown, thanks to the Tiber Embankments and +to the light and air let into the purlieus of that mediaeval Rome for +which the injudicious grieve so loudly. The perfect municipal +housekeeping of our time leaves no darkest and narrowest lane or alley +unswept; every morning the shovel and broom go over the surfaces +formerly almost impassable to the foot and quite impossible to the nose. + +I am speaking literally as well as frankly, and though I can understand +why some envious New-Yorker, remembering our blackguard streets and +avenues, should look askance at the decency of the newer Rome and feign +it an offence against beauty and poetry, I do not see why a Londoner, +who himself lives in a well-kept town, should join with any of my +fellow-barbarians in hypocritically deploring the modern spirit which +has so happily invaded the Eternal City. The Londoner should rather +entreat us not to be humbugs and should invite us to join him in +rejoicing that the death-rate of Rome, once the highest in the civilized +world, is now almost the lowest. But the language of Shakespeare and +Milton is too often internationally employed in deploring the modernity +which has housed us aliens there in such perfect comfort and safety. One +must confine one's self to instances, and one may take that of the +Ludovisi Quarter, as it is called, where I dwelt in so much peace and +pleasure except when I was reminded that it was formed by plotting the +lovely Villa Ludovisi in house lots and building it up in attractive +hotels and apartment-houses. Even then I did not suffer so keenly as +some younger people, who had never seen the villa, seemed to do, though +there are still villas to burn in and about Rome, and they could not +really miss the Ludovisi. It was a pretty place, but not beyond praise, +and the quarter also is pretty, though also not beyond praise. The villa +was for the pleasure and pride of one family, but it signified, even in +its beauty, nothing but patrician splendor, which is a poor thing at +best; and the quarter is now for the pleasure and pride of great numbers +of tourists, mostly of that plutocracy from which a final democracy is +inevitably to evolve itself. I could see no cause to beat the breast in +this; and in humbler instances, even to very humble, I could not find +that things were nearly as bad in Rome as they have been painted. + +There is no doubt but at one time, directly after the coming of the +capital, Rome was badly overbuilt. There is no doubt, also, that Rome +has grown up to these rash provisions for her growth, and that she now +“stuffs out her vacant garments with her form” pretty fully. One must +not say that all the flats in all the houses are occupied, but most of +them are; and if now the property of the speculators is the property of +the banks, the banks are no bad landlords, and the law does not spare +them the least of their duties to their tenants; or so, at least, it is +said. + +Another typical wrong to the old Rome, or rather to the not-yet Rome, +was the building-up, beyond the Tiber, of the Quarter of the Fields, so +called, where Zola in his novel of _Rome_ has placed most of the squalor +which he so lavishly employs in its contrasts. In these he shows +himself the romanticist that he always frankly owned he was in spite of +himself; but after I had read his book I made it my affair to visit the +scenes of poverty and misery in the Quartiere dei Prati. When I did so I +found that I had already passed through the quarter without noting +anything especially poor or specifically miserable, and I went a third +time to make sure that I had not overlooked something impressively +lamentable. But I did not see above three tenement-houses with the wash +hung from the windows, and with the broken shutters of poverty and +misery, in a space where on the East Side or the North Side in New York +I could have counted such houses by the score, almost the hundred. In +this quarter the streets were swept every morning as they are everywhere +in Rome, and though toward noon they were beginning to look as slovenly +as our streets look when they have just been “cleaned,” I knew that the +next morning these worst avenues of Rome would be swept as our best +never have been since the days of Waring. + +Beyond the tenements the generous breadth of the new streets has been +bordered by pleasant stucco houses of the pretty Italian type, +fleetingly touched but not spoiled by the taste of the _art nouveau,_ +standing in their own grounds, and not so high-fenced but one could look +over their garden-walls into the shrubs and flowers about them. Like +suburban effects are characteristic of the new wide residential streets +on the hither side of the Tiber, and on both shores the streets expand +from time to time into squares, with more or less tolerable new +monuments--say, of the Boston average--in them. The business streets +where they bear the lines of the frequently recurrent trams are spacious +and straight, and though they are not the Corso, the Corso itself, it +must be remembered, is only a street of shops by no means impressive, +and is mostly dim under the overtowering walls of palaces which have no +space to be dignified in. Now and then their open portals betray a +glimpse of a fountained or foliaged court, but whether these palaces are +outwardly beautiful or not no one can tell from what sight one can get +of them; no, not even the most besotted sentimentalist of those who +bewail the loss of mediaeval Rome when they mean Rome of the +Renaissance. How much of that Rome has been erased by modern Rome I do +not know, but I think not so much as people pretend. Some of the ugly +baroque churches have been pulled down to allow the excavation of +imperial Rome, but there are plenty of ugly baroque churches left. It is +said the princely proprietors of the old palaces which are let in +apartments along the different Corsos (for the Corso is several) are +going to pull them down and put up modern houses, with the hope of +modern rents, but again I do not know. More than once the fortuities of +hospitality found one the guest of dwellers in such stately domiciles, +and I could honestly share the anxiety with which they spoke of these +rumors; but there are a great many vast edifices of the sort, and I +should not be surprised if I went back to Rome after another forty-three +years to find most of them standing in 1951 where they now stand in +1908. Rome was not built in a day, and it will not be unbuilt or rebuilt +within the brief period that will make me one hundred and fourteen years +old. By that time I shall have outlived most of the medievalists, and I +can say to the few survivors: “There, you see that new Rome never went +half so far as you expected.” + +But no doubt it will go further than it has yet gone, in the way that is +for the good and comfort of mankind. In one of the newer quarters, of +which the Baths of Diocletian form the imperial centre, my just American +pride was flattered by the sign on a handsome apartment-house going up +in gardened grounds, which advertised that it was to be finished with a +lift and steam-heating. Many of the newer houses are already supplied +with lifts, but central heating is as yet only beginning to spread from +the hotels, where steam has been installed in compliance with the +impassioned American demand to be warm all round when one is in-doors. +New Rome is not going so fast and so far but that it will keep, to +whatever end it reaches, one of the characteristic charms of the old and +older Rome. I shall expect to see when I come back in 1951 the same or +the like corners of garden walls, with the tops of shining foliage +peering over them, that now enchant the passer in the street; from the +windows of my electric-elevatored, steam-heated apartment I shall look +down into the seclusion of gardens, with the golden globes of orange +espaliers mellowing against the walls, and the fountain in the midst of +oleanders and of laurels + + “Shaking its loosened silver in the sun.” + +Slim cypresses will then as now blacken through the delicate air against +the blue sky, and a stone-pine will spread its umbrella over some +sequestered nook. By that time the craze for the eucalyptus which now +possesses all Italy will be over, and every palm-tree will be cut down, +while the ilex will darken in its place and help the eternal youth of +the marbles to a greener old age of moss and mould in the gloom of its +spreading shade. All these things beautifully abound in Rome now, as +they always have abounded, and there is no reason to fear that they will +cease to abound. + +Rome grows, and as Italy prospers it will grow more and more, for there +must forever be a great and famous capital where there has always been +one. The place is so perfectly the seat of an eternal city that it might +well seem to have been divinely chosen because of the earth and heaven +which are more in sympathy there than anywhere else in the world. The +climate is beyond praise for a winter which is mild without being weak; +there is a summer of tolerable noonday heat, and of nights deliciously +cool; the spring is scarcely earlier than in our latitudes, but the fall +is a long, slow decline from the temperature of October to the lowest +level of January without the vicissitudes of other autumns. The +embrowning or reddening or yellowing leaves turn sere, but drop or cling +to their parent boughs as they choose, for there is seldom a frost to +loosen their hold, and seldom a storm to tear them away. + +So it is said by those who profess a more intimate acquaintance with the +Roman meteorology than I can boast, but from the little I know I can +believe anything of it that is of good report. Everywhere the prevalence +of the ilex, the orange, the laurel, the pine, flatters January with an +illusion of June, and under our hotel windows I was witness of the +success of the sycamore leaves in keeping a grip of their native twigs +even after the new buds came to push them away. In the last days of +March a plum-tree hung its robe of white blossoms over the wall of the +Capuchin convent from the garden within; but the almond-trees had been +in bloom for six weeks before, and the deeper pink of the peach had more +warmly flushed the suburbs for fully a fortnight. + +Still, a mild winter and an endurable summer will not of themselves make +a great capital, and it was probably the Romans themselves who in the +past made Rome the capital of the world, first politically and then +religiously. Whether they will make it so hereafter remains to be seen. +In the sense of all the Italians being Romans, I believe, with my +profound faith in the race, that they are very capable of doing it; and +they will have the help of the whole world in the work, or what is most +liberal and enlightened in the whole world. As it is, Rome has a pull +with Occidental civilization which forever constitutes her its head +city. The only European capitals comparable with her are London, Paris, +and Berlin; one cannot take account of New York, which is merely the +commercial metropolis of America, with a possibility of becoming the +business centre of both hemispheres. Washington is still in its nonage +and of a numerical unimportance in which it must long remain almost +ludicrously inferior to other capitals, not to dwell upon its want of +anything like artistic, literary, scientific, and historical primacy. It +is the voluntary political centre of the greatest republic of any time +and of a nation which is already unrivalled in its claim upon the +future. But it is not of the involuntary and unconscious growth of a +capital like London, which is the centre of a mighty state, deep-rooted +in the past, and the capital of that Anglo-Saxon race of which we are +ourselves a condition, and of a colonial empire without a present equal. +Paris is France in the sense of representing the intense life of a +nation unsurpassed in the things which enlighten and ennoble the human +intellect and advance mankind. Berlin is the concentration of the strong +will of a state which has made itself great out of the weak will of +sundry inferior states, homogeneous in their disunity more than in any +positive quality, and which stands for a political ideal more nearly +reactionary, more nearly mediaeval, than any other modern state. Berlin +is not German as Paris is French, and Rome is not so exclusively +Italian. In fact, her greatness, accomplished and destined, lies in just +the fact that she is not and never can be exclusively Italian. Human +interests too universal and imperative for the control of a single race, +even so brilliant and so gifted as the Italian race, which is naturally +and necessarily in possession, centre about her through history, +religion, art, and make every one at home in the city which is the +capital of Christendom. Now and then I saw some shining and twinkling +Japs going about with Baedekers, and I imagined them giving a modest and +unprejudiced mind to Rome without claiming, tacitly or explicitly, the +right to dispute the Italian theory and practice in its control. But +every Occidental stranger (if any one of European blood is a stranger in +the home of Christianity) I knew to be there in a mood more or less +critical, and in a disposition to find fault with the Rome which is now +making, or making over. + +[Illustration: 15 GLIMPSE INSIDE OF IMPERIAL ROME] + +We journeyers or sojourners can do this without expense or inconvenience +to ourselves, and we can easily blame the Italian conception of the +future city which, to name but one fact, has made it possible for us to +visit her in comfort at every season and to come away without having +come down with the Roman fever. In spite of the sort of motherly, or at +the worst step-motherly, welcome which she gives to all us closely or +distantly related children of hers; in spite of her immemorial fame and +her immortal beauty; in spite of her admirable housekeeping, in which +she rises every morning at daybreak and sweeps clean every hole and +corner of her dwelling; in spite of her wonderful sky, her life-giving +air; in spite of the level head she keeps in her political affairs, and +the miraculous poise she maintains between the antagonism of State and +Church; in spite of her wise eclecticism in modern improvements; in +spite of her admirable hygiene, which has constituted her one of the +healthiest, if not the healthiest city in Europe; in spite of the +solvency which she preserves amid expenses to which the vast scale of +antiquity obliges her in all her public enterprises (a thing to be +hereafter studied), we, the ungracious offspring of her youth, come from +our North and West and censure and criticise and carp. I have seldom +conversed with any fellow-visitor in Rome who could not improve her in +some phase or other, who could not usefully advise her, who, at the +best, did not patronize her. I offer myself as almost the sole example +of a stranger who was contented with her as she is, or as she is going +to be without his help; and I am the more confident, therefore, in +suggesting to Rome an expedient by which she can repair the finances +which her visitors say are so foolishly and wastefully mismanaged in her +civic schemes. A good round tax, such as Carlsbad levies upon all +sojourners, if laid upon the multitudinous tourists joining in such a +chorus of criticism of Rome would give them the indefeasible right to +their opinions and would help to replete a treasury which they believe +is always in danger of being exhausted. + + + + +III. THE COLOSSEUM AND THE FORUM + + +As I have told, the first visit I paid to the antique world in Rome was +at the Colosseum the day after our arrival. For some unknown reason I +was going to begin with the Baths of Caracalla, but, as it happened, +these were the very last ruins we visited in Rome; and I do not know +just what accident diverted us to the Colosseum; perhaps we stopped +because it was on the way to the Baths and looked an easier conquest. At +any rate, I shall never regret that we began with it. + +After twoscore years and three it was all strangely familiar. I do not +say that in 1864 there was a horde of boys at the entrance wishing to +sell me postcards--these are a much later invention of the Enemy--but I +am sure of the men with trays full of mosaic pins and brooches, and +looking, they and their wares, just as they used to look. The Colosseum +itself looked unchanged, though I had read that a minion of the wicked +Italian government had once scraped its flowers and weeds away and +cleaned it up so that it was perfectly spoiled. But it would take a good +deal more than that to spoil the Colosseum, for neither the rapine of +the mediaeval nobles, who quarried their palaces from it, nor the +industrial enterprise of some of the popes, who wished to turn it into +workshops, nor the archeology of United Italy had sufficed to weaken in +it that hold upon the interest proper to the scene of the most +stupendous variety shows that the world has yet witnessed. The terrible +stunts in which men fought one another for the delight of other men in +every manner of murder, and wild beasts tore the limbs of those glad to +perish for their faith, can be as easily imagined there as ever, and the +traveller who visits the place has the assistance of increasing hordes +of other tourists in imagining them. + +I will not be the one to speak slight of that enterprise which marshals +troops of the personally conducted through the place and instructs them +in divers languages concerning it. Save your time and money so, if you +have not too much of either, and be one of an English, French, or German +party, rather than try to puzzle the facts out for yourself, with one +contorted eye on your Baedeker and the other on the object in question. +In such parties a sort of domestic relation seems to grow up through +their associated pleasures in sight-seeing, and they are like family +parties, though politer and patienter among themselves than real family +parties. They are commonly very serious, though they doubtless all have +their moments of gayety; and in the Colosseum I saw a French party +grouped for photography by a young woman of their number, who ran up and +down before them with a kodak and coquettishly hustled them into +position with pretty, bird-like chirpings of appeal and reproach, and +much graceful self-evidencing. I do not censure her behavior, though +doubtless there were ladies among the photographed who thought it +overbold; if the reader had been young and blond and _svelte,_ in a +Parisian gown and hat, with narrow russet shoes, not too high-heeled for +good taste, I do not believe he would have been any better; or, if he +would, I should not have liked him so well. + +On the earlier day which I began speaking of I found that I was +insensibly attaching myself to an English-hearing party of the +personally conducted, in the dearth of my own recollections of the local +history, but I quickly detached myself for shame and went back and +meekly hired the help of a guide who had already offered his services in +English, and whom I had haughtily spurned in his own tongue. His +English, though queer, was voluminous; but I am not going to drag the +reader at our heels laden with lore which can be applied only on the +spot or in the presence of postal-card views of the Colosseum. It is +enough that before my guide released us we knew where was the box of +Caesar, whom those about to die saluted, and where the box of the +Vestals whose fatal thumbs gave the signal of life or death for the +unsuccessful performer; where the wild beasts were kept, and where the +Christians; where were the green-rooms of the gladiators, who waited +chatting for their turn to go on and kill one another. One must make +light of such things or sink under them; and if I am trying to be a +little gay, it is for the readers' sake, whom I would not have perish of +their realization. Our guide spared us nothing, such was his conscience +or his science, and I wish I could remember his name, for I could +commend him as most intelligent, even, when least intelligible. +However, the traveller will know him by the winning smile of his +rosy-faced little son, who follows him round and is doubtless bringing +himself up as the guide of coming generations of tourists. There had +been a full pour of forenoon sunshine on the white dust of the street +before our hotel, but the cold of the early morning, though it had not +been too much for the birds that sang in the garden back of us, had left +a skim of ice in damp spots, and now, in the late gray of the afternoon, +the ice was visible and palpable underfoot in the Colosseum, where +crowds of people wandered severally or collectively about in the +half-frozen mud. They were, indeed, all over the place, up and down, in +every variety of costume and aspect, but none were so picturesque as a +little group of monks who had climbed to a higher tier of the arches and +stood looking down into the depths where we looked up at them, denned +against the sky in their black robes, which opened to show their under +robes of white. They were picturesque, but they were not so monumental +as an old, unmistakable American in high-hat, with long, drooping +side-whiskers, not above a purple suspicion of dye, who sat on a broken +column and vainly endeavored to collect his family for departure. +Whenever he had gathered two or three about him they strayed off as the +others came up, and we left him sardonically patient of their adhesions +and defections, which seemed destined to continue indefinitely, while we +struggled out through the postal-card boys and mosaic-pin men to our +carriage. Then we drove away through the quarter of somewhat jerry-built +apartment-houses which neighbor the Colosseum, and on into the salmon +sunset which, after the gray of the afternoon, we found waiting us at +our hotel, with the statues on the balustrated wall of the villa garden +behind it effectively posed in the tender light, together with the +eidolons of those picturesque monks and that monumental American. + +[Illustration: 16 INTERIOR OF COLOSSEUM FROM THE SOUTH] + +We could safely have stayed longer, for the evening damp no longer +brings danger of Roman fever, which people used to take in the +Colosseum, unless I am thinking of the signal case of Daisy Miller. She, +indeed, I believe, got it there by moonlight; but now people visit the +place by moonlight in safety; and there are even certain nights of the +season advertised when you may see it by the varicolored lights of the +fireworks set off in it. My impression of it was quite vivid enough +without that, and the vision of the Colosseum remained, and still +remains, the immense skeleton of the stupendous form stripped of all +integumental charm and broken down half one side of its vast oval, so +that wellnigh a quarter of the structural bones are gone. + +[Illustration: 17 THE SACRED WAY THROUGH THE FORUM] + +With its image there persisted and persists the question constantly +recurrent in the presence of all the imperial ruins, whether imperial +Rome was not rather ugly than otherwise. The idea of those +world-conquerors was first immensity and then beauty, as much as could +survive consistently with getting immensity into a given space. The +question is most of all poignant in the Forum, which I let wait a full +fortnight before moving against it in the warm sun of an amiable +February morning. On my first visit to Rome I could hardly wait for day +to dawn after my arrival before rushing to the Cow Field, as it was then +called, and seeing the wide-horned cattle chewing the cud among the +broken monuments now so carefully cherished and, as it were, sedulously +cultivated. It is doubtful whether all that has since been done, and +which could not but have been done, by the eager science as much +involuntarily as voluntarily applied to the task, has resulted in a more +potent suggestion of what the Forum was in the republican or imperial +day than what that simple, old, unassuming Cow Field afforded. There +were then as now the beautiful arches; there were the fragments of the +temple porches, with their pillars; there was the “unknown column with +the buried base”; there were all the elements of emotion and meditation; +and it is possible that sentiment has only been cumbered Avith the +riches which archaeology has dug up for it by lowering the surface of +the Cow Field fifteen or twenty feet; by scraping clean the buried +pavements; by identifying the storied points; by multiplying the +fragments of basal or columnar marbles and revealing the plans of +temples and palaces and courts and tracing the Sacred Way on which the +magnificence of the past went to dusty death. After all, the imagination +is very childlike, and it prefers the elements of its pleas-ures simple +and few; if the materials are very abundant or complex, it can make +little out of them; they embarrass it, and it turns critical in +self-defence. The grandeur that was Rome as visioned from the Cow Field +becomes in the mind's eye the kaleidoscopic clutter which the +resurrection of the Forum Romanum must more and more realize. + +If the visitor would have some rash notion of what the ugliness of the +place was like when it was in its glory, he may go look at the plastic +reconstruction of it, indefinitely reduced, in the modest building +across the way from the official entrance to the Forum. One cannot say +but this is intensely interesting, and it affords the consolation which +the humble (but not too humble) spirit may gather from witness of the +past, that the fashion of this world and the pride of the eyes and all +ruthless vainglory defeated themselves in ancient Rome, as they must +everywhere when they can work their will. If one had thought that in +magnitude and multitude some entire effect of beauty was latent, one had +but to look at that huddle of warring forms, each with beauty in it, but +beauty lost in the crazy agglomeration of temples and basilicas and +columns and arches and statues and palaces, incredibly painted and +gilded, and huddled into spaces too little for the least, and crowding +severally upon one another, without relation or proportion. Their mass +is supremely tasteless, almost senseless; that mob of architectural +incongruities was not only without collective beauty, but it was without +that far commoner and cheaper thing which we call picturesqueness. This +has come to it through ruin, and we must give a new meaning to the word +vandalism if we would appreciate what the barbarians did for Rome in +tumbling her tawdry splendor into the heaps which are now at least +paint-able. Imperial Rome as it stood was not paintable; I doubt if it +would have been even photographable to anything but a picture post-card +effect. + +But as yet I wandered in the Forum safe from the realization of its +ugliness when it was in its glory. I cannot say that even now it is +picturesque, but it is paintable, and certainly it is pathetic. Stumps +of columns, high and low, stand about in the places where they stood in +their unbroken pride, and though it seems a hardship that they should +not have been left lying in the kindly earth or on it instead of being +pulled up and set on end, it must be owned that they are scarcely +overworked in their present postures. More touching are those +inarticulate heaps, cairns of sculptured fragments, piled here and there +together and waiting the knowledge which is some time to assort them and +translate them into some measure of coherent meaning. But it must always +be remembered that when they were coherent they were only beautiful +parts of a whole that was brutally unbeautiful. We have but to use the +little common-sense which Heaven has vouchsafed some of us in order to +realize that Rome, either republican or imperial, was a state for which +we can have no genuine reverence, and that mostly the ruins of her past +can stir in us no finer emotion than wonder. But necessarily, for the +sake of knowledge, and of ascertaining just what quantity and quality of +human interest the material records of Roman antiquity embody, +archaeology must devote itself with all possible piety to their +recovery. The removal, handful by handful, of the earth from the grave +of the past which the whole Forum is, tomb upon tomb, is as dramatic a +spectacle as anything one can well witness; for that soil is richer than +any gold-mine in its potentiality of treasure, and it must be strictly +scrutinized, almost by particles, lest some gem of art should be cast +aside with the accumulated rubbish of centuries. Yet this drama, +poignantly suggestive as it always must be, was the least incident of +that morning in the Forum which it was my fortune to pass there with +other better if not older tourists as guest of the Genius Loci. It was +not quite a public event, though the Commendatore Boni is so well known +to the higher journalism, and even to fiction (as the reader of Anatole +France's _La Pierre Blanche_ will not have forgotten), that nothing +which he archaeologically does is without public interest, and this +excursion in the domain of antiquity was expected to result in +identifying the site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator. It was conjectured +that the temple vowed to this specific Jupiter for his public spirit in +stopping the flight of a highly demoralized Roman army would be found +where we actually found it. Archaeology seems to proceed by hypothesis, +like other sciences, and to enjoy a forecast of events before they are +actually accomplished. I do not say that I was very vividly aware of the +event in question; I could not go now and show where the temple stood, +but when I read of it in a cablegram to the American newspapers I almost +felt that I had dug it up with my own hands. + +[Illustration: 18 THE ROMAN FORUM] + +Of many other facts I was at the time vividly aware: of the charm of +finding the archaeologist in an upper room of the mediaeval church which +is turning itself into his study, of listening to his prefatory talk, so +informal and so easy that one did not realize how learned it was, and +then of following him down to the scene of his researches and hearing +him speak wisely, poetically, humorously, even, of what he believed he +had reason to expect to find. We stood with him by the Arch of Titus and +saw how the sculptures had been broken from it in the fragments found at +its base, and how the carved marbles had been burned for lime in the +kiln built a few feet off, so that those who wanted the lime need not +have the trouble of carrying the sculptures away before burning them. A +handful of iridescent glass from a house-drain near by, where it had +been thrown by the servants after breaking it, testified of the +continuity of human nature in the domestics of all ages. A somewhat +bewildering suggestion of the depth at which the different periods of +Rome underlie one another spoke from the mouth of the imperial well or +cistern which had been sunk on the top of a republican well or cistern +at another corner of the arch. In a place not far off, looking like a +potter's clay pit, were graves so old that they seem to have antedated +the skill of man to spell any record of himself; and in the small +building which seems the provisional repository of the archaeologist's +finds we saw skeletons of the immemorial dead in the coffins of split +trees still shutting them imperfectly in. Mostly the bones and bark were +of the same indifferent interest, but the eternal pathos of human grief +appealed from what mortal part remained of a little child, with beads on +her tattered tunic and an ivory bracelet on her withered arm. History in +the presence of such world-old atomies seemed an infant babbling of +yesterday, in what it could say of the Rome of the Popes, the Rome of +the Emperors, the Rome of the Republicans, the Rome of the Kings, the +Rome of the Shepherds and Cowherds, through which a shaft sunk in the +Forum would successively pierce in reaching those aboriginals whose +sepulchres alone witnessed that they had ever lived. + +It is the voluble sorrow common to all the emotional visitors in Rome +that the past of the different generations has not been treated by the +present with due tenderness, and the Colosseum is a case notoriously in +point. But, if it was an Italian archaeologist who destroyed the wilding +growths in the Colosseum and scraped it to a bareness which nature is +again trying to clothe with grass and weeds, it ought to be remembered +that it is another Italian archaeologist who has set laurels all up and +down the slopes of the Forum, and has invited roses and honeysuckles to +bloom wherever they shall not interfere with science, but may best help +repair the wounds he must needs deal the soil in researches which seem +no mere dissections, but feats of a conservative, almost a constructive +surgery. It is said that the German archaeologists objected to those +laurels where the birds sing so sweetly; perhaps they thought them not +strictly scientific; but when the German Kaiser, who always knows so +much better than all the other Germans put together, visited the Forum, +he liked them, and he parted from the Genius Loci with the imperial +charge, “Laurels, laurels, evermore laurels.” After that the emotional +tourist must be hard indeed to please who would begrudge his laurels to +Commendatore Boni, or would not wish him a perpetual crown of them. + + + + +IV. THE ANGLO-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE SPANISH STEPS + + +It is not every undeserving American who can have the erudition and +divination of the Genius Loci in answer to his unuttered prayer during a +visit to even a small part of the Roman Forum. But failing the company +of the Commendatore Boni, which is without price, there are to be had +for a very little money the guidance and philosophy, and, for all I +know, the friendship of several peripatetic historians who lead people +about the ruins in Rome, and instruct them in the fable, and doubtless +in the moral, of the things they see. If I had profited by their +learning, so much greater, or at least securer, than any the average +American has about him, I should now be tiring the reader with knowledge +which I am so willingly leaving him to imagine in me. If he is like the +average American, he has really once had some nodding acquaintance with +the facts, but history is apt to forsake you on the scene of it, and to +come lagging back when it is too late. In this psychological experience +you feel the need of help which the peripatetic historian supplies to +the groups of perhaps rather oblivious than ignorant tourists of all +nations in all languages, but preferably English. We Anglo-Saxons seem +to be the most oblivious or most ignorant; but I would not slight our +occasionally available culture any more than I would imply that those +peripatetic historians are at all like the cicerones whom they have so +largely replaced. I believe they are instructed and scholarly men; I +offer them my respect; and I wish now that I had been one of their daily +disciples, for it is full sixty years since I read Goldsmith's _History +of Rome._ As I saw them, somewhat beyond earshot, they and their +disciples formed a spectacle which was always interesting, and, so far +as the human desire for information is affecting, was also affecting. +The listeners to the lecturers would carry back to their respective +villages and towns, or the yet simpler circles of our ordinary city +lift, vastly more association with the storied scene than I had brought +to it or should bring away. In fact, there is nothing more impressive in +the floating foreign society of Rome than its zeal for self-improvement. +No one classes himself with his fellow-tourists, though if he happens to +be a traveller he is really one of them; and it is with difficulty I +keep myself from the appearance of patronizing them in these praises, +which are for the most part reverently meant. Their zeal never seemed to +be without knowledge, whatever their age or sex; the intensity of their +application reached to all the historical and actual interests, to the +religious as well as the social, the political as well as the financial; +but, fitly in Rome, it seemed specially turned to the study of +antiquity, in the remoter or the nearer past. There was given last +winter a series of lectures at the American School of Archaeology by the +head of it, which were followed with eager attention by hearers who +packed the room. But these lectures, which were so admirably first in. +the means of intelligent study, seemed only one of the means by which my +fellow-tourists were climbing the different branches of knowledge. All +round my apathy I felt, where I did not see, the energy of the others; +with my mind's ear I heard a rustle as of the turning leaves of +Baedekers, of Murrays, of Hares, and of the many general histories and +monographs of which these intelligent authorities advised the +supplementary reading. + +If I am not so mistaken as I might very well be, however, the local +language is less studied than it was in former times, when far fewer +Italians spoke English. My own Italian was of that date; but, though I +began by using it, I found myself so often helped for a forgotten +meaning that I became subtly demoralized and fell luxuriously into the +habit of speaking English like a native of Rome. Yet tacitly, secretly +perhaps, there may have been many people who were taking up Italian as +zealously as many more were taking up antiquity. One day in the Piazza +di Spagna, in a modest little violet of a tea-room, which was venturing +to open in the face of the old-established and densely thronged parterre +opposite, I noted from my Roman version of a buttered muffin a tall, +young Scandinavian girl, clad in complete corduroy, gray in color to the +very cap surmounting her bandeaux of dark-red hair. She looked like some +of those athletic-minded young women of Ibsen's plays, and the pile of +books on the table beside her tea suggested a student character. When +she had finished her tea she put these books back into a leather bag, +which they filled to a rigid repletion, and, after a few laconic phrases +with the tea-girl, she went out like going off the stage. Her powerful +demeanor somehow implied severe studies; but the tea-girl--a massive, +confident, confiding Roman--said, No, she was studying Italian, and all +those books related to the language, for which she had a passion. She +was a Swede; and here the student being exhausted as a topic, and my own +nationality being ascertained, What steps, the tea-girl asked, should +one take if one wished to go to New York in order to secure a place as +cashier in a restaurant? + +My facts were not equal to the demand upon them, nor are they equal to +anything like exact knowledge of the intellectual pursuits of the many +studious foreign youth of all ages and sexes whom one meets in Rome. As +I say, our acquaintance with Italian is far less useful, however +ornamental, than it used to be. The Romans are so quick that they +understand you when they speak no English, and take your meaning before +you can formulate it in their own tongue. A classically languaged +friend of mine, who was hard bested in bargaining for rooms, tried his +potential landlord in Latin, and was promptly answered in Latin. It was +a charming proof that in the home of the Church her mother-speech had +never ceased to be spoken by some of her children, but I never heard of +any Americans, except my friend, recurring to their college courses in +order to meet the modern Latins in their ancient parlance. In spite of +this instance, and that of the Swedish votary of Italian, I decided that +the studies of most strangers were archaeological rather than +philological, historical rather than literary, topographical rather than +critical. I do not say that I had due confirmation of my theory from the +talk of the fellow-sojourners whom one is always meeting at teas and +lunches and dinners in Rome. Generally the talk did not get beyond an +exchange of enthusiasms for the place, and of experiences of the +morning, in the respective researches of the talkers. + +Such of us as were staying the winter, of course held aloof from the +hurried passers-through, or looked with kindly tolerance on their +struggles to get more out of Rome in a given moment than she perhaps +yielded with perfect acquiescence. We fancied that she kept something +back; she is very subtle, and has her reserves even with people who pass +a whole winter within her gates. The fact is, there are a great many of +her, though we knew her afar as one mighty personality. There is the +antique Rome, the mediaeval Rome, the modern Rome; but that is only the +beginning. There is the Rome of the State and the Rome of the Church, +which divide between them the Rome of politics and the Rome of fashion; +but here is a field so vast that Ave may not enter it without danger of +being promptly lost in it. There is the Rome of the visiting +nationalities, severally and collectively; there is especially the +Anglo-American Rome, which if not so populous as the German, for +instance, is more important to the Anglo-Saxons. It sees a great deal of +itself socially, but not to the exclusion of the sympathetic Southern +temperaments which seem to have a strange but not unnatural affinity +with it. So far as we might guess, it was a little more Clerical than +Liberal in its local politics; if you were very Liberal, it was well to +be careful, for Conversion lurked under many exteriors which gave no +outward sign of it; if the White of the monarchy and the Black of the +papacy divide the best Roman families, of course foreigners are more +intensely one or the other than the natives. But Anglo-Saxon life was +easy for one not self-obliged to be of either opinion or party; and it +was pleasant in most of its conditions. In Rome our internationalities +seemed to have certain quarters largely to themselves. In spite of our +abhorrence of the destruction and construction which have made modern +Rome so wholesome and delightful, most of us had our habitations in the +new quarters; but certain pleasanter of the older streets, like the Via +Sistina, Via del Babuino, Via Capo le Case, Via Gregoriana, were our +sojourn or our resort. Especially in the two first our language filled +the outer air to the exclusion of other conversation, and within doors +the shopmen spoke it at least as well as the English think the Americans +speak it. It was pleasant to meet the honest English faces, to recognize +the English fashions, to note the English walk; and if these were +oftener present than their American counterparts, it was not from our +habitual minority, but from our occasional sparsity through the panic +that had frightened us into a homekeeping foreign to our natures. + +In like manner our hyphenated nationalities have the Piazza di Spagna +for their own. There are the two English book-stores and the circulating +libraries, in each of which the books are so torn and dirty that you +think they cannot be quite so bad in the other till you try it; there +seems nothing for it, then, but to wash and iron the different Tauchnitz +authors, and afterward darn and mend them. The books on sale are, of +course, not so bad; they are even quite clean; and except for giving out +on the points of interest where you could most wish them to abound, +there is nothing in them to complain of. There is less than nothing to +complain of in the tea-room which enjoys our international favor except +that at the most psychological moment of the afternoon you cannot get a +table, in spite of the teas going on in the fashionable hotels and the +friendly houses everywhere. The toast is exceptional; the muffins so +far from home are at least reminiscent of their native island; the tea +and butter are alike blameless. The company, to the eye of the friend of +man, is still more acceptable, for, if the Americans have dwindled, the +English have increased; and there is nothing more endearing than the +sight of a roomful of English people at their afternoon tea in a strange +land. No type seems to predominate; there are bohemians as obvious as +clerics; there are old ladies and young, alike freshly fair; there are +the white beards of age and the clean-shaven cheeks of youth among the +men; some are fashionable and some outrageously not; peculiarities of +all kinds abound without conflicting. Some talk, frankly audible, and +others are frankly silent, but a deep, wide purr, tacit or explicit, +close upon a muted hymn of thanksgiving, in that assemblage of mutually +repellent personalities, for the nonce united, would best denote the +universal content. + +Hard by this tea-room there is a public elevator by which the reader +will no doubt rather ascend with me than, climb the Spanish Steps +without me; after the first time, I never climbed them. The elevator +costs but ten centimes, and I will pay for both; there is sometimes +drama thrown in that is worth twice the money; for there is war, more or +less roaring, set between the old man who works the elevator and the +young man who sells the tickets to it. The law is that the elevator will +hold only eight persons, but one memorable afternoon the ticket-seller +insisted upon giving a ticket to a tall, young English girl who formed +an unlawful ninth. The elevator-man, a precisian of the old school, +expelled her; the ticket-seller came forward and reinstated her; again +the elder stood upon the letter of the law; again the younger demanded +its violation. The Tuscan tongue in their Roman mouths flew into +unintelligibility, while the poor girl was put into the elevator and out +of it; and the respective parties to the quarrel were enjoying it so +much that it might never have ended if she had not taken the affair into +her own hands. She finally followed the ticket-seller back to his desk, +to which he retired after each act of the melodrama, and threw her +ticket violently down. “Here is your ticket!” she said in English so +severe that he could not help understanding and cowering before it. +“Give me back my money!” He was too much stupefied by her decision of +character to speak; and he returned her centimes in silence while we got +into our cage and mounted to the top, and the elevator-man furiously +repeated to himself his side of the recent argument all the way up. This +did not prevent his touching his hat to each of us in parting, and +assuring us that he revered us; a thing that only old-fashioned Romans +seem to do nowadays, in the supposed decay of manners which the +comfortable classes everywhere like to note in the uncomfortable. Then +some ladies of our number went off on a platform across the house-tops +to which the elevator had brought us, as if they expected to go down the +chimneys to their apartments; and the rest of us expanded into the +Piazza Trinita de' Monti; and I stopped to lounge against the uppermost +balustrade of the Spanish Steps. + +It is notable, but not surprising, how soon one forms the habit of this, +for, seen from above, the Spanish Steps are only less enchanting than +the Spanish Steps seen from below, whence they are absolutely the most +charming sight in the world. The reader, if he has nothing better than a +post-card (which I could have bought him on the spot for fifty a franc), +knows how the successive stairways part and flow downward to right and +left, like the parted waters of a cascade, and lose themselves at the +bottom in banks of flowers. No lovelier architectural effect was ever +realized from a happy fancy; but, of course, the pictorial effect is +richer from below, especially from the Via dei Condotti, where it opens +into the Piazza di Spagna. I suppose there must be hours of the day, and +certainly there are hours of the night, when in this prospect the Steps +have not the sunset on them. But most of the time they have the sunset +on them, warm, tender; a sunset that begins with the banks of daffodils +and lilies and anemones and carnations and roses and almond blossoms, +keeping the downpour of the marble cascades from flooding the piazza, +and mounts, mellowing and yellowing, up their gray stone, until it +reaches the Church of Trinita de' Monti at the top. + +[Illustration: 19 SPANISH STEPS] + +There it lingers, I should say, till dawn, bathing the golden-brown +facade in an effulgence that lifelong absence cannot eclipse when once +it has blessed your sight. It is beauty that rather makes the heart +ache, and the charm of the Steps from above is something that you can +bear better if you are very, very worthy, or have the conceit of feeling +yourself so. It is a charm that imparts itself more in detail and is +less exclusively the effect of perpetual sunset. From the parapet +against which you lean you have a perfecter conception of the +architectural form than you get from below, and you are never tired of +seeing the successive falls of the Steps dividing themselves and then +coming together on the broad landings and again parting and coming +together. + +If there were once many models, male, female, and infant, brigands, +peasants, sages, and martyrs, lounging on the Spanish Steps, as it seems +to me there used to be, and as every one has heard say, waiting there +for the artists to come and carry them off to their studios and transfer +them to their canvases, they are now no longer there in noticeable +number. I saw some small boys in steeple-crowned soft hats and short +jackets, with their little legs wound round with the favorite bandaging +of brigands; and some mothers suitable for Madonnas, perhaps, with babes +at the breast; there was a patriarchal old man or two, ready no doubt to +pose for the prophets, or, at a pinch, for yet more celestial persons; +but for the rest the Steps were rather given up to flower-girls, +fruit-peddlers, and beggars pure and simple, on levels distinctly below +those infested by the post-card peddlers. The whole neighborhood abounds +in opportunities for charity, and at the corner of the Via Sistina there +is a one-legged beggar who professes to black shoes in the intervals of +alms-taking, and who early made me his prey. If sometimes I fancied +escaping by him to my lounge against the parapet of the steps, he +joyously overtook me with a swiftness of which few two-legged men are +capable; he wore a soldier's cap, and I hoped, for the credit of our +species, that he had lost his leg in battle, but I do not know. + +On a Sunday evening I once hung there a long time, watching with one eye +the people who were coming back from their promenade on the Pincian +Hill, and with the other the groups descending and ascending the Steps. +On the first landing below me there was a boy who gratified me, I dare +say unconsciously, by trying to stand on his hands; and a little +dramatic spectacle added itself to this feat of the circus. Two pretty +girls, smartly dressed in hats and gowns exactly alike, and doubtless +sisters, if not twins, passed down to the same level. One was with a +handsome young officer, and walked staidly beside him, as if content +with her quality of captive or captor. The other was with a civilian, of +whom she was apparently not sure. Suddenly she ran away from him to the +verge of the next fall of steps, possibly to show him how charmingly she +was dressed, possibly to tempt him by her grace in flight to follow her +madly. But he followed sanely and slowly, and she waited for him to come +up, in a capricious quiet, as if she had not done anything or meant +anything. That was all; but I am not hard to suit; and it was richly +enough for me. + +[Illustration: 20 TOWARD THE PINCIAN HILL] + +Her little comedy came to its denouement just under the shoulder of the +rose-roofed terrace jutting from a lowish, plainish house on the left, +beyond certain palms and eucalyptus-trees. It is one of the most sacred +shrines in Rome, for it was in this house that the “young English poet +whose name was writ in water” died to deathless fame three or fourscore +years ago. It is the Keats house, which when he lived in it was the +house of Severn the painter, his host and friend. I had visited it for +the kind sake of the one and the dear sake of the others when I first +visited Rome in 1864; and it was one of the earliest stations of my +second pilgrimage. It is now in form for any and all visitors, but the +day I went it had not yet been put in its present simple and tasteful +keeping. A somewhat shrill and scraping-voiced matron inquired my +pleasure when she followed me into the ground-floor entrance from +somewhere without, and then, understanding, called hor young daughter, +who led me up to the room where Keats mused his last verse and breathed +his last sigh. It is a very little room, looking down over the Spanish +Steps, with their dike of bloom, across the piazza to the narrow stretch +of the Via del Babuino. I must have stood in it with Severn and heard +him talk of Keats and his ultimate days and hours; for I remember some +such talk, but not the details of it. He was a very gentle old man and +fondly proud of his goodness to the poor dying poet, as he well might +be, and I was glad to be one of the many Americans who, he said, came to +grieve with him for the dead poet. + +Now, on my later visit, it was a cold, rainy day, and it was chill +within the house and without, and I imputed my weather to the time of +Keats's sojourn, and thought of him sitting by his table there in that +bare, narrow, stony room and coughing at the dismal outlook. Afterward I +saw the whole place put in order and warmed by a generous stove, for +people who came to see the Keats and Shelley collections of books and +pictures; but still the sense of that day remains. The young girl +sympathized with my sympathy, and wished to find a rose for me in the +trellis through which the rain dripped. She could not, and I suggested +that there would be roses in the spring. “No,” she persisted, “sometimes +it makes them in the winter,” but I had to come away through the reeking +streets without one. + +When it rains, it rains easily in Rome. But the weather was divine the +evening I looked one of my latest looks down on the Spanish Steps. The +sun had sunk rather wanly beyond the city, but a cheerful light of +electrics shone up at me from the Via dei Condotti. I stood and thought +of as much as I could summon from the past, and I was strongest, I do +not know why, with the persecutions of the early Christians. Presently a +smell of dinner came from the hotels around and the houses below, and I +was reminded to go home to my own _table d'hote._ My one-legged beggar +seemed to have gone to his, and I escaped him; but I was intercepted by +the sight of an old woman asleep over her store of matches. She was not +wakened by the fall of my ten-centime piece in her tray, but the boy +drowsing beside her roused himself, and roused her to the dreamy +expression of a gratitude quite out of scale with my alms. + + + + +V. AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY + +[Illustration: 21 SEPULCHRE OF ROMULUS, FORUM] + +My visit to the Roman Forum when the Genius Loci verified to my +ignorance and the intelligence of my companions the well-conjectured +site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator was not the first nor yet the +second visit I had paid the place. There had been intermediate mornings +when I met two friends there, indefinitely more instructed, with whom I +sauntered from point to point, preying upon their knowledge for my +emotion concerning each. Information is an excellent thing--in others; +and but for these friends I should not now be able to say that this +mouldering heap of brickwork, rather than that, was Julius Caesar's +house; or just where it was that Antony made his oration over the waxen +effigy which served him for Caesar's body. They helped me realize how +the business life and largely the social life of Rome centred in the +Forum, but spared me so much detail that my fancy could play about among +its vanished edifices without inconvenience from the clutter of shops +and courts and monuments which were ultimately to hem it in and finally +to stifle it. They knew their Forum so well that they could not only +gratify any curiosity I had, but could supply me with curiosity when I +had none. For the moment I was aware that this spot or that, though it +looked so improbable, was the scene of deeds which will reverberate +forever; they taught me to be tolerant of what I had too lightly +supposed fables as serious traditions closely verging on facts. I +learned to believe again that the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, +because she had her den no great way off on the Palatine, and that +Romulus himself had really lived, since he had died and was buried in +the Forum, where they showed me his tomb, or as much of it as I could +imagine in the sullen little cellar so called. They also showed me the +rostrum where the Roman orators addressed the mass-meetings of the +republican times, and they showed me the lake, or the puddle left of it, +into which Curtius (or one of three heroes of the name) leaped at an +earlier day as a specific for the pestilence which the medical science +of the period had failed to control. In our stroll about the place we +were joined by one of the several cats living in the Forum, which +offered us collectively its acquaintance, as if wishing to make us feel +at home. It joined us and it quitted us from time to time, as the whim +took it, but it did not abandon us wholly till we showed a disposition +to believe in that lake of Curtius, so called after those three +public-spirited heroes, the first being a foreigner. Then the cat, which +had more than once stretched itself as if bored, turned from us in +contempt and went and lay down in a sunny corner near the tomb of +Romulus, and fell asleep. + +[Illustration: 22 TRAJAN'S FORUM AND COLUMN] + +It is quite possible that my reader does not know, as lately I did not, +that the Roman Forum is but one of several forums connected with it by +ways long centuries since buried fathoms deep and built upon many +stories high. But I am now able to assure him that in the whole region +between the Roman Forum and the Forum of Trajan, which were formerly +opened into each other by the removal of a hill as tall as the top of +Trajan's Column, you pass over other forums hidden beneath your feet or +wheels. You cannot be stayed there, however, by the wonders which +archaeology will yet reveal in them (for archaeology has its relentless +eye upon every inch of the ground above them), but you will certainly +pause at the Forum of Trajan, where archaeology, as it is in +Commendatore Boni, has had its way already. In fact, until his work in +the Roman Forum is finished, the Forum of Trajan must remain his +greatest achievement, and the sculptured column of the great emperor +must serve equally as the archaeologist's monument. I do not remember +why in the old time I should have kept coming to look at that column and +study the sculptured history of Trajan's campaigns, toiling around it to +its top. I think one could then get close to its base, as now one +cannot, what with the deepening of the Forum to its antique level and +the enclosure of the whole space with an iron rail. The area below is +free only to a large company of those cats which seem to have their +dwelling among all the ruins and restorations of ancient Rome. People +come to feed the Trajan cats with the fish sold near by for the purpose, +and one morning, in pausing to view his column from the respectful +distance I had to keep, I counted no less than thirteen of his cats in +his forum. They were of every age and color, but much more respectable +in appearance than the cats of the Pantheon, which have no such sunny +expanse as that forum for their quarters, but only a very damp corner +beside the temple, and seem to have suffered in their looks and health +from the situation. It was afterward with dismay that I realized the +fatal number of the Trajan cats coming to their breakfast that morning +so unconscious of evil omen in the figure; but as there are probably no +statistics of mortality among the cats of Rome, I shall never know +whether any of the thirteen has rendered up one of their hundred and +seventeen lives. + +However, if I allowed myself to go on about the cats of Rome, either +ancient or modern, there would be no end. For instance, in a statuary's +shop in the Via Sistina there is a large yellow cat, which I one day saw +dressing the hair of the statuary's boy. It performed this office with a +very motherly anxiety, seated on the top of a high rotary table where +ordinarily the statuary worked at his carving, and pausing from time to +time, as it licked the boy's thick, black locks, to get the effect of +its labors. On other days or at other hours it slept under the +table-top, unvexed by the hammering that went on over its head. Even in +Rome, where cats are so abundant, it was a notable cat. + +If you visit the Roman Forum in the morning you are only too apt to be +hurried home by remembrance of the lunch-hour. That, at any rate, was my +case, but I was not so hungry that I would not pause on my way hotelward +at what used to be the Temple of Vesta in my earlier time, but which, is +now superseded by the more authentic temple in the Forum. I had long +revered the first in its former quality, and I now paid it the tribute +of unwilling renunciation. It is so nearly a perfect relic of ancient +Rome and so much more impressive, in its all but unbroken peristyle, +than the later but recumbent claimant to its identity that I am sure the +owners of the little bronze or alabaster copies of it scattered over the +world must share my pious reluctance. The custodian is still very proud +of it, and would have lectured me upon it much longer than I let him; as +it was, he kept me while he could cast a blazing copy of the _Popolo +Romano_ into the cavernous crypt under it, apparently to show me how +deep it was. He may have had other reasons; but in any case I urge the +traveller to allow him to do it, for it costs no additional fee, and it +seems to do him so much good. If it is not very near lunch-time, let the +traveller look well about him in the dusty little piazza there, for the +Temple of Fortune, with its bruised but beautiful facade, is hard by, as +much in the form that Servius Tullius gave it as could well be expected +after all this time. + +Perhaps the Circus of Marcellus is on the traveller's way home to lunch; +but he will always be passing the segment of its arcaded wall, filled in +with mediaeval masonry; and he need not stop, especially if he has his +cab by the hour, for there is nothing more to be seen of the circus. A +glimpse, through overhanging foliage, of the steps to the Campidoglio, +with Castor and Pollux beside their horses at top, may be a fortunate +accident of his course. If this happens it will help to rehabilitate for +him the Rome of the paganism to which these divinities remained true +through all temptations to Judaize during the unnumbered centuries of +their sojourn, forgotten, in the Ghetto. It is hardly possible that his +glimpse will include even the top of Marcus Aurelius's head where he +sits his bronze charger--an extremely fat one--so majestically in the +piazza beyond those brothers, as if conscious of being the most noble +equestrian statue which has ridden down to us from antiquity. + +A more purposed sight of all this will, of course, supply any defects of +chance, though I myself always liked chance encounters with the +monuments of the past. I had constantly cherished a remembrance of the +nobly beautiful facade which is all that is left of the Temple of +Neptune, and I meant deliberately to revisit it if I could find out +where it was. A kind fortuity befriended me when one day, driving +through the little piazza where it lurks behind the Piazza Co-lonna, I +looked up, and there, in awe-striking procession, stood the mighty +antique columns sustaining the entablature of mediaeval stucco with +their fluted marble. I could not say why their poor, defaced, immortal +grandeur should have always so affected me, for I do not know that my +veneration was due it more than many other fragments of the past; but no +arch or pillar of them all seems so impressive, so pathetic. To make the +reader the greatest possible confidence, I will own that I passed five +times through the Piazza Colonna to my tailor's in the next piazza (at +Rome your tailor wishes you to try on till you have almost worn your new +clothes out in the ordeal) before I realized that the Column of Marcus +Aurelius was not the more famous Column of Trajan. There is, in fact, a +strong family likeness between these columns, both being bandaged round +from bottom to top with the tale of the imperial achievements and having +a general effect in common; but there is no brother or cousin to the +dignity of that melancholy yet vigorous ruin of the Temple of Neptune, +or anything that resembles it in the whole of ancient Rome. It survives +having been a custom-house and being a stock-exchange without apparent +ignominy, while one feels an incongruity, to say the least, in the +Column of Marcus Aurelius looking down on the sign of the Mutual Life +Insurance Company of New York. Whether this is worse than for the +Palazzo di Venezia to confront the American Express Company where it is +housed on the other side of the piazza I cannot say. What I can say is +that I believe the Temple of Neptune would have been superior to either +fate; though I may be mistaken. + +Ruin, nearly everywhere in Rome, has to be very patient of the +environment; and even the monuments of the past which are in +comparatively good repair have not always the keeping that the past +would probably have chosen for them. One that suffers as little as any, +if not the very least, is the Pantheon, on whose glorious porch you are +apt to come suddenly, either from a narrow street beside it or across +its piazza, beyond the fountain fringed with post-card boys and their +bargains. In spite of them, the sight of the temple does mightily lift +the heart; and though you may have had, as I had, forty-odd years to +believe in it, you must waver in doubt of its reality whenever you see +it. It seems too great to be true, standing there in its immortal +sublimity, the temple of all the gods by pagan creation, and all the +saints by Christian consecration, and challenging your veneration +equally as classic or catholic. It is worthy the honor ascribed to it in +the very latest edition of Murray's _Handbook_ as “the best-preserved +monument of ancient Rome”; worthy the praise of the fastidious and +difficult Hare as “the most perfect pagan building in the city”; worthy +whatever higher laud my unconsulted Baedeker bestows upon it. But I +speak of the outside; and let not the traveller grieve if he comes upon +it at the noon hour, as I did last, and finds its vast bronze doors +closing against him until three o'clock; there are many sadder things in +life than not seeing the interior of the Pantheon. The gods are all +gone, and the saints are gone or going, for the State has taken the +Pantheon from the Church and is making it a national mausoleum. Victor +Emmanuel the Great and Umberto the Kind already lie there; but otherwise +the wide Cyclopean eye of the opening in the roof of the rotunda looks +down upon a vacancy which even your own name, as written in the +visitors' book, in the keeping of a solemn beadle, does not suffice to +fill, and which the lingering side altars scarcely relieve. + +I proved the fact by successive visits; but, after all my content with +the outside of the Pantheon, I came to think that what you want in Rome +is not the best-preserved monument, not the most perfect pagan building, +but the most ruinous ruin you can get. I am not sure that you get this +in the mouldering memorials of the past on the Palatine Hill, but you +get something more nearly like it than anything I can think of at the +moment. In that imperial and patrician and plutocratic residential +quarter you see, if you are of the moderately moneyed middle class, what +the pride of life must always come to when it has its way; and your +consolation is full if you pause to reflect how some day Fifth Avenue +and the two millionaire blocks eastward will be as the Palatine now is. + +Riches and power are of the same make in every time, though they may +wear different faces from age to age; and it will be well for the very +wealthy members of our smart set to keep this fact in mind when they +visit that huge sepulchre of human vainglory. + +But I will not pretend that I did so myself that matchless April morning +when I climbed over the ruins of the Palatine and found the sun rather +sickeningly hot there. That is to say, it was so in the open spaces +which were respectively called the house of this emperor and that, the +temple of this deity or that, whose divine honors half the Caesars +shared; in the Stadium, beside the Lupercal, and the like. The Lupercal +was really imaginable as the home of the patroness wolf of Rome, being a +wild knot of hill fitly overgrown with brambles and bushes, and looking +very probably the spot where Caesar would thrice have refused the crown +that Antony offered him. But for the rest, one ruin might very well pass +for another; a temple with a broken statue and the stumps of a few +columns could very easily deceive any one but an archaeologist. +Fortunately we had the charming companionship of one of the most amiable +of archaeologists, who was none the less learned for being a woman; and +she made even me dimly aware of identities which would else have been +lost upon me. To be sure, I think that without help I should have known +the Stadium when I came to it, because it seemed studied from that in +Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, though it was indefinitely more +dilapidated, was so obviously meant for the same sorts of games and +races. I do not know but it was larger than the Cambridge Stadium, +though I will not speak so confidently of its size as of that deathly +cold in the vaults and subterranean passages by which we found our way +to the burning upper air out of the foundations and basements of palaces +and temples and libraries and theatres that had ceased to be. + +[Illustration: 23 THE ROSTRA IN THE FORUM] + +One of the most comfortable of these galleries was that in which +Caligula was justly done to death, or, if not Caligula, it was some +other tyrant who deserved as little to live. But for our guide I should +not have remembered his slaughter there, and how much satisfaction it +had given me when I first read of it in Goldsmith's _History of Rome;_ +and really you must not acquaint yourself too early with such facts, for +you forget them just when you could turn them to account. History is apt +to forsake you in the scene of it and come lagging hack afterward; and +you cannot hope always to have an archaeologist at your elbow to remind +you of things you have forgotten or possibly have not known. Suetonius, +Plutarch, De Quincey, Gibbon, these are no bad preparations for a visit +to the Palatine, but it is better to have read them yesterday than the +day before if you wish to draw suddenly upon them for associations with +any specific spot. If I were to go again to the Palatine, I would take +care to fortify myself with such structural facts from Hare's _Walks in +Rome,_ or from Murray, or even from Baedeker, as that it was the home of +Augustus and Tiberius, Domitian and Nero and Caligula and Septimius +Severus and Germanicus, and a very few of their next friends, and that +it radically differed from the Forum in being exclusively private and +personal to the residents, while that was inclusively public and common +to the whole world. I strongly urge the reader to fortify himself on +this point, for otherwise he will miss such significance as the place +may possibly have for him. Let him not trust to his impressions from +his general reading; there is nothing so treacherous; he may have +general reading enough to sink a ship, but unless he has a cargo taken +newly on board he will find himself tossing without ballast on those +billowy slopes of the Palatine, where he will vainly try for definite +anchorage. + +The billowy effect of the Palatine, inconvenient to the explorer, is its +greatest charm from afar, in whatever morning or evening light, or sun +or rain, you get its soft, brownish, greenish, velvety masses. Distance +on it is best, and distance in time as well as space. If you can believe +the stucco reconstruction opposite the Forum gate, ruin has been even +kinder to the Palatine than to the Forum, with which it was equally ugly +when in repair, if taken in the altogether, however beautiful in detail. +As you see it in that reproduction, it is a horror, and a very vulgar +horror, such a horror as only unlimited wealth and uncontrolled power +can produce. If you will think of individualism gone mad, and each +successive personality crushing out and oversloughing some other, +without that regard for proportion and propriety which only the sense of +a superior collective right can inspire, you will imagine the Palatine. +Mount Morris, at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, if unscrupulously +built upon by the multimillionaires thronging to New York and seeking to +house themselves each more splendidly and spaciously than the other, +would offer a suggestion in miniature of what the Palatine seems to have +been like in its glory. But the ruined Mount Morris, even allowing for +the natural growth of the landscape in two thousand years, could show no +such prospect twenty centuries hence as we got that morning from a bit +of wilding garden near the Convent of San Bonaventura, on the brow of +the Palatine. Some snowy tops pillowed themselves on the utmost horizon, +and across the Campagna the broken aqueducts stalked and fell down and +stumbled to their legs again. The Baths of Caracalla bulked up in +rugged, monstrous fragments, and then in the foreground, filling the +whole eye, the Colosseum rose and stood, and all Rome sank round it. The +Forum lay deep under us, vainly struggling with the broken syllables of +its demolition to impart a sense of its past, and at our feet in that +bit of garden where the roses were blooming and the plum-trees were +blowing and the birds were singing, there stretched itself in the grass +a fallen pillar wreathed with the folds of a marble serpent, the emblem +of the oldest worship under the sun, as I was proud to remember without +present help. It was the same immemorial, universal faith which the +Mound Builders of our own West symbolized in the huge earthen serpents +they shaped uncounted ages before the red savages came to wonder at +them, and doubtless it had been welcomed by Rome in her large, loose, +cynical toleration, together with cults which, like that of Isis and +Osiris, were fads of yesterday beside it. Somehow it gave the humanest +touch in the complex impression of the overhistoried scene. It made one +feel very old, yet very young--old with the age and young with the youth +of the world--and very much at home. + + + + +VI. PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH THE PAST + + +I was myself part of the antiquity with which I have been trying to be +honest; and, though my date was no earlier than the seventh decade of +the nineteenth century, still so many and such cataclysmal changes had +passed over Rome since my time that I was, as far as concerned my own +consciousness, practically of the period of the Pantheon, say. The +Pantheon, in fact, was among my first associations with Rome. I lodged +very near it, in the next piazza, so that, if we were not +contemporaries, we were companions, and I could not go out of my hotel +to look up a more permanent sojourn without passing by it. Perhaps I +wished to pass by it, and might really have found my way to the Corso +without the Pantheon's help. + +I have no longer a definite idea why I should have made my sojourn in +the very simple and modest little street called Via del Gambero, which +runs along behind the Corso apparently till it gets tired and then +stops. But very possibly it was because the Via del Gambero was so +simple and modest that I chose it as the measure of my means; or +possibly I may have heard of the apartment I took in it from wayfarers +passing through Venice, where I then lived, and able to commend it from +their own experience of it; people in that kind day used to do such +things. However it was, I took the apartment, and found it, though +small, apt for me, as Ariosto said of his house, and I dwelt in it with +my family a month or more in great comfort and content. In fact, it +seemed to us the pleasantest apartment in Rome, where the apartments of +passing strangers were not so proud under Pius IX. as they are under +Victor Emmanuel III. I do not know why it should have been called the +Street of the Lobster, but it may have been in an obscure play of the +fancy with the notion of a backward gait in it that I came to believe +that, in the many improvements which had befallen Rome, Via del Gambero +had disappeared. Destroyed, some traveller from antique lands had told +me, I dare say; obliterated, wiped out by the march of municipal +progress. At any rate, I had so long resigned the hope of revisiting the +quiet scene that when I revisited Rome last winter, after the flight of +ages, and one day found myself in a shop on the Corso, it was from +something like a hardy irony that I asked the shopman if a street called +Via del Gambero still existed in that neighborhood. I said that I had +once lodged in it forty-odd years before; but I believed it had been +demolished. Not at all, the shopman said; it was just behind his place; +and what was the number of the house? I told him, and he laughed for joy +in being able to do me a pleasure; me, a stranger from the strange land +of sky-scratchers _(grattacieli),_ as the Italians not inadequately +translate sky-scrapers. If I would favor him through his back shop he +would show me how close I was upon it; and from his threshold he pointed +to the corner twenty yards off, which, when I had turned it, left me +almost at my own door. + +In that transmuted Rome Via del Gambero, at least, was wholly unchanged, +and there was not a wrinkle in the front of the house where we had +sojourned so comfortably, so contentedly, in our incredible youth. I had +not quite the courage to ring and ask if we were at home; but, standing +across the way and looking up at the window, it seemed to me that I +might have seen my own young face peering out in a somewhat suspicious +question of the old eyes staring up so fixedly at it. Who was I, and +what was I doing there? Was I waiting, hanging idly about, to see the +Armenian archbishop coming to carry my other self in his red coach to +the Sistine Chapel, where we were to hear Pius IX. say mass? There was +no harm in my hanging about, but the street was narrow and there was a +chance of my being ground up by some passing cart against the wall there +behind me if I was not careful. I could not tell my proud young double +that we were one, and that I was going in the archbishop's red coach as +well; he would never have believed it of my gray hairs and sunken +figure. I could not even ask him what had become of the grocer near by, +whom I used to get some homely supplies of, perhaps eggs or oranges, or +the like, when I came out in the December mornings, and who, when I said +that it was very cold, would own that it was _un poco rigidetto,_ or a +little bit stiffish. The ice on the pavement, not clean-swept as now, +but slopped and frozen, had been witness of that; the ice was gone and +the grocer with it; and where really was I? At the window up there, or +leaning against the apse of the church opposite? What church was it, +anyway? I never knew; I never asked. Why should I insist upon a common +identity with a man of twenty-seven to whom my threescore and ten could +only bring perplexity, to say the least, and very likely vexation? I +went away from Via del Gambero, where the piety of the reader will seek +either of myselves in vain. In my earlier date one used to see the red +legs of the French soldiers about the Roman streets, and the fierce +faces of the French officers, fierce as if they felt themselves +wrongfully there and were braving it out against their consciences. Very +likely they had no conscience about it; they had come there over the +dead body of the Roman Republic at the will of their rascal president, +and they were staying there by the will of their rascal emperor, to keep +on his throne the pope from whom the Italians had hoped for unity and +liberty. No one is very much to blame for anything, I suppose, and very +likely Pius IX. had not voluntarily disappointed his countrymen, who may +have expected too much. But then the French had been there fifteen +years, and were to be there another fifteen years yet. Now they are +gone, with the archbishop's red coach, and the complaisant grocer, and +the young man of twenty-seven in Via del Gambero, and the rest of the +things that the sun looked on and will look on the like of again, no +doubt, in our monotonous round of him. + +To-day, instead of the red legs of the French soldiers, you see the blue +legs of the Italian soldiers, and instead of the fierce faces of their +officers, the serious, intelligent, mostly spectacled faces of the +Italian officers, in sweeping cloaks of tender blue verging on lavender. +They are soldierly men none the less for their gentler aspect, and +perhaps something the more; and a better thing yet is that there are +comparatively few of them. There are few of the privates also, far fewer +than the priests and the students of the ecclesiastical schools, who +dress like priests and go dashing through the streets in files and +troops. + +I have an impression that one sees about the proportion of Italian +soldiers in Rome that one sees of American soldiers in Washington, or, +at least, not many more. The barracks are apparently outside the walls; +there you meet cavalry going and coming, and detachments of +_bersaglieri;_ or riflemen, pushing on at their quick trot, or plainer +infantry trudging wearily. Certainly, in a capital where the Church +holds itself prisoner, there is no show of force on the part of its +captors; and this is pleasant to the friend of man and the lover of +Italy for other reasons. In the absence of the military you can imagine +that not only does the state not wish to boast its political supremacy +in the ancient capital of the Church, but it does not desire to show the +potentiality of holding its own against the republic which is instinct +there. The monarchy is the consensus of all the differing wills in +Italy, which naturally would not for the most part have chosen a +monarchy. But never was a monarchy so mild-mannered or seated so firmly, +for the present at least, in the affection and reason of its people. + +This is not the place (as writers say who have not prepared themselves +with the requisite ideas at a given point) to speak of the situation in +Rome; and I meant only to note that there are more ecclesiastics than +conscripts to be seen there. Of all the varying costumes of the varying +schools, none is so pleasing, so vivid, as that of the German students +as they rush swiftly by in their flying robes of scarlet. The red +matches the ruddy health in their cheeks, and there is a sort of +gladness in their fling that wins the liking as well as the looking; so +that almost one would not mind being a German student of theology one's +self. There are other-costumes running in color from violet, and blue +with orange sashes, to unrelieved black and black trimmed with red; but +I cannot remember which nationality wears which. + +[Illustration: 24 THE MOSAICS UNDER THE CAPUCHIN CHURCH] + +I am not sure but one sees as many priests in Rome now as in the times +when they ruled it; and I am no such Protestant that I will pretend I do +not like a monsignore when I meet him, either in the street or at +afternoon tea, as one sometimes may. I have no grudge against priests of +any rank; but I did not seek to see them at the functions, as I used in +the old days to do. Shall I say that I now rather tolerated than +welcomed myself there through the hospitality which so freely opens the +churches of the Church to all comers of whatever creed? What right had +I, a heretic and recusant, to come staring and standing round where the +faithful were kneeling and praying? If we could conceive of our +fast-locked conventicles being thrown as freely open, could we conceive +of Catholics wandering up and down their naves and aisles while the +hymning or preaching went on? After being so high-minded in the matter, +shall I confess that I was a good deal kept out of the churches by the +cold in them? It was a sort of stored cold, much greater than that +outside, though there was something warming to the fancy, at least, in +the smoke and smell of the incense. + +Even with the Church of the Capuchins, which we lived opposite, I was +dilatory, though in my mediaeval days it had been one of the first +places to which I hurried. In those days everybody said you must be sure +and go to the Capuchins', because Guide's “St. Michael and the Enemy” + was there, and still more because the wonderful bone mosaics in the +cemetery under the church were not on any account to be missed. I +suspect that in both these matters I had then a very crude taste, but it +was not from my greater refinement that I now let the Capuchin church go +on long un-revisited. It was, for one thing, too instantly and +constantly accessible across the street there; and it is well known +human nature is such that it will not seek the line of the least +resistance as long as it can help. Besides, I could hardly believe that +it was really the Capuchin church which I had once so hastened to see, +and I neglected it almost two months, contenting myself with the display +of those hand-bills on the convent walls, spreading largely and +glaringly incongruous over it. When I did go I found the Guido +ridiculous, of course, in the painter's imagination of the archangel as +a sort of dancing figure in a _tableau vivant,_ and yet of a sublime +authority in the execution. To be more honest, I had little feeling +about it and less knowledge. + +It was not so cold in the church as I had expected; and in the +succession of side chapels, beginning with the St. Michael's and opening +into one another, we found a kind of domesticity close upon cosiness, +which we were enjoying for its own sake, when we were aware of a pale, +gentle young girl who seemed to be alone there. She asked, in our +unmistakable native accents, if we were going to see the Capuchin +mosaics in their place below; and one of us said, promptly, No, indeed; +but relented at the shadow of disappointment that came over the girl's +face, and asked, Was she going? The girl said, Oh, she guessed she could +see them some other time; and then she who had spoken ordered him who +had not spoken to go with her. I do not know what question of propriety +engaged them with reference to her going alone with the handsome young +monk waiting to accompany her; but he was certainly too handsome for a +monk of any age. We followed him, however, and I had my usual nausea on +viewing the decoration of the ceilings and walls of the place below; it +always makes me sick to go into that place; between realizing that I am +of the same make as the brothers composing those mosaics, and trying to +imagine what the intricate patterns will do at the Resurrection Day, I +cannot command myself. Neither am I supported by the sight of some +skeletons, the raw material of that grewsome artistry, deposited whole +in their coffins in the niches next the ground, though their skulls +smile so reassuringly from their cowls; their cheeriness cannot make me +like them. But my companion seemed to be merely interested; and I +fancied her deciding that it all quite came up to her expectations, +while I translated for her from the monk that the dead used to be left +in the hallowed earth from Jerusalem covering the ground before they +were taken up and decoratively employed, but that since the Italian +occupation of Rome the art had fallen into abeyance. She said nothing, +but when we came out she stood a moment on the pavement beside our cab +and confessed herself a New England girl, from an inland town, who was +travelling with relatives. She had been sick, and she had come alone, as +soon as she could get out, to see the wonders of the Capuchin church, +because she had heard so much of them. We said we hoped she had been +pleased, and she said, “Oh yes, indeed,” and then she said, “Well, +good-bye,” and gently tilted away, leaving us glad that there could +still be in an old, spoiled world such sweetness and innocence and +easily gratified love of the beautiful. + +Taking Rome so easily, so provisionally, while waiting the eventualities +of the colds which mild climates are sure to give their frequenters from +the winterlands, I became aware of a latent anxiety respecting St. +Peter's. I did not feel that the church would really get away without +our meeting, but I felt that it was somehow culpably hazardous in me to +be taking chances with it. As a family, we might never collectively +visit it, and, in fact, we never did; but one day I drove boldly (if +secretly) off alone and renewed my acquaintance with this contemporary +of mine; for, if you have been in Rome a generation and a half ago, you +find that you are coeval not only with the regal, the republican, and +the imperial Rome, but with each Rome of the successive popes, down, at +least, to that of Pius IX. St. Peter's will not be, by any means, your +oldest friend, but it will be an acquaintance of such long standing that +you may not wish to use it with all the frankness which its faults +invite. If you say, when you drive into its piazza between the sublime +colonnades which stretch forth their mighty embrace as if to take the +whole world to the church's heart, that here is the best of St. Peter's, +you will not be wrong. If you say that here is grandeur, and that there +where the temple fronts you grandiosity begins, you will be rhetorical, +but, again, you will not be wrong. The day of my furtive visit was sober +and already waning, with a breeze in which the fountains streamed +flaglike, and with a gentle sky on which the population of statues above +the colonnades defined themselves in leisure attitudes, so recognizable +all that I am sure if they had come down and taken me by the hand we +could have called one another by name without a moment's hesitation. +Every detail of a prospect which is without its peer on earth, but may +very possibly be matched in Paradise, had been so deeply stamped in my +remembrance that I smiled for pleasure in finding myself in an +environment far more familiar than any other I could think of at the +time. It was measurably the same within the church, but it was not quite +the same in the reserves I was obliged to make, the reefs I was obliged +to take in my rapture. The fact is, that unless you delight in a +hugeness whose bareness no ornamentation can, or does at least, conceal, +you do not find the interior of St. Peter's adequate to the exterior. In +the mere article of hugeness, even, it fails through the interposition +of the baldachin midway of the vast nave, and each detail seems to fail +of the office of beauty more lamentably than another. + +I had known, I had never forgotten, that St. Peter's was very, very +baroque, but I had not known, I had not remembered how baroque it was. +It is not so badly baroque as the Church of the Jesuits either in Rome +or in Venice, or as the Cathedral at Wuerzburg; but still it is badly +baroque, though, again, not so baroque in the architecture as in the +sculpture. In the statues of most of the saints and popes it could not +be more baroque; they swagger in their niches or over their tombs in an +excess of decadent taste for which the most bigoted agnostic, however +Protestant he may be, must generously grieve. It is not conceivably the +taste of the church or the faith; it is the taste of the wicked world, +now withered and wasted to powerlessness, which overruled both for evil +in art from its evil life. The saints and the popes are, aesthetically, +lamentable enough; but the allegories in bronze or marble, which are +mostly the sixteenth-century notions of the Virtues, are +inexpressible--some of these creatures ought really to be put out of the +place; but I suppose their friends would say they ought to be left as +typical of the period. In the case of that merciless miscreant, Queen +Christina of Sweden, who has her monument in St. Peter's, there would be +people to say she must have her monument in some place; but, all the +same, remembering Monaldeschi--how he was stabbed to death by her +command, the kinder assassins staying their hands from time to time, +while his confessor went vainly to implore her pardon--it is shocking to +find her tomb in the prime church in Christendom. At first it offends +one to see certain pontiffs with mustaches and imperials and goatees; +but, if one reflects that so they wore them in life, one perceives right +in it; only when one comes to earlier or later popes, bearded in +medieval majority or shaven in the decent modern fashion, one can endure +those others only as part of the prevailing baroque of the church. +Canova was not so Greek or even so classic as one used to think him, but +one hardly has a moment of repose in St. Peter's till one comes to a +monument by him and rests in its quiet. It is tame, it is even weak, if +you like; but compared with the frantic agglomeration of gilt clouds and +sunbursts, and marble and bronze figures in the high-altar, it is +heavenly serene and lovely. + +There were not many people in St. Peter's that afternoon, so that I +could give undisturbed attention to the workman repairing the pavement +at one point and grinding the marble smooth with a slow, secular +movement, as if he were part of its age-Ions: waste and repair. Another +day, the last day I came, there were companies of the personally +conducted, following their leaders about and listening to the lectures +in several languages, which no more stirred the immense tranquillity +than they themselves qualified the spacious vacancy of the temple: you +were vaguely sensible of the one and of the other like things heard and +seen in a drowse. It was a pleasant vagueness in which all angularities +of feeling were lost, and you were disposed to a tolerance of the things +that had hurt or offended you before. As a contemporary of the edifice, +throughout its growth, you could account for them more and more as of +their periods. Perhaps through your genial reconciliation there came, +however dimly, a suggestion of something unnatural and alien in your +presence there as a mere sightseer, or, at best, a connoisseur much or +little instructed. If you had been there, say, as a worshipper, would +you have been afflicted by the incongruities of the sculptures or by the +whole baroque keeping? Possibly this consideration made you go away much +modester than you came. “After all,” you may have said, “it is not a +gallery; it is not a museum. It is a house of prayer,” and you emerged, +let us hope, humbled, and in so far fitted for renewed joy in the +beauty, the glory of the sublime colonnades. + + + + +VII. CHANCES IN CHURCHES + +[Illustration: 25 SANTA MARIA SOPRA MINERVA] + +If any one were to ask me which was the most beautiful church in Rome I +should temporize, and perhaps I should end by saying that there was +none. Ecclesiastical Rome seems to have inherited the instinct of +imperial Rome for ugliness; only, where imperial Rome used the instinct +collectively, ecclesiastical Rome has used it distributively in the +innumerable churches, each less lovely than the other. This position +will do to hedge from; it is a bold outpost from which I may be driven +in, especially by travellers who have seen the churches I did not see. I +took my chances, they theirs; for nobody can singly see all the churches +in Rome; that would need a syndicate. + +If imperial Rome was beautiful in detail because it had the Greeks to +imagine the things it so hideously grouped, ecclesiastical Rome may be +unbeautiful in detail because it had not the Goths to realize the beauty +of its religious aspiration--that is, if it was the Goths who invented +Gothic architecture; I do not suppose it was. Anyway, there is said to +be but one Gothic church in Rome, and this I did not visit, perhaps +because I felt that I must inure myself to the prevalent baroque, or +perhaps from mere perversity. I can merely say in self-defence that, on +the outside, Santa Maria sopra Minerva no more promised an inner beauty +than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the +power of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches +sometimes have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in sculpture, +in architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the +roof, and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others. Marvels of riches +are lavished upon chapels and altars, which again are so burdened with +bronze gilded or silver plated, and precious stones wrought and +unwrought, that the soul, or if not the soul the taste, shrinks dismayed +from them. Execution in default of inspiration has had its way to the +last excess; there is nothing that it has not done to show what it can +do; and all that it has done is a triumph of misguided skill and power. +But it would be a mistake for the spectator to imagine that anything has +been done from the spirit in which he receives it; everything is the +expression of devoted faith in the forms that the art of the time +offered. + +In the monstrous marble tableau, say, of “Religion Triumphing Over +Heresy,” he may be very sure that the artist was not winking an ironical +eye where he made Faith spurning Schism with her foot look very much +like a lady of imperfect breeding who has lost her temper; he was most +devoutly in earnest, or at least those were so, both cleric and laic, +for whom he wrought his prodigy. We others, pagans or Protestants, had +better understand that the children of the Church, and especially the +poor children, were serious through all the shows that seem to us +preposterous; they had not renounced something for nothing; if they +bowed that very fallible thing, Reason, to Dogma, they got faith for +their reward and could gladly accept whatever symbol of it was offered +them. + +[Illustration: 26 CHURCH OP ARA COELI] + +No matter how baroque any church was, it could express something of this +sincerity, and in their way the worshippers seemed always simply at home +in it. In San Lorenzo in Lucina, where I went to see the truly sublime +“Crucifixion” by Guido (there is also a bar of St. Lawrence's gridiron +to be seen, but I did not know it at the time) I liked the +unconsciousness of the girl kneeling before the high altar and +provisionally gossiping with the young sacristan before she began her +devotions. She gave her mind to them when he asked me if I wished to see +the Guido, for I could see her lips moving while she shared my +veneration of that most affecting masterpiece; the more genuinely +affecting because it expresses the rapture and not the anguish of the +Passion. I have no doubt she was grateful when the sacristan proposed my +having the electric light turned on it, and when, though that I knew it +would cost me something more, I assented. + +They have the electric light now in all the holy places, and notably in +the dungeon where St. Peter was imprisoned, and where the custodian was +so proud of it, as the latest improvement, and as far more satisfactory +than candles. The shrine of the miraculous Bambino in the Church of Ara +Coeli is also lighted by electricity, which spares no detail of the +child's apparel and appearance. To other eyes than those of faith it has +the effect of a life-size but not life-like doll, piously bedizened and +jewelled over, but rather ill-humored looking, or, if not that, proud +looking or severe looking. To the eyes in which its sickbed visits have +dried the tears it must wear an aspect of heavenly pity and beauty; and +I am very willing to believe that these are the eyes which see it +aright. As it was, and taking it literally, it seemed far less +mechanical and unfeeling than the monk who pulled it out and pushed it +back on its wheeled platform. But he must get tired of showing it to the +unbelievers who come out of curiosity, and very likely I should, if I +were in his place, as nonchalantly wipe across the glass front of the +shrine the card with the Bambino's legend printed in various languages +on it, which you may then buy with the blessing from the glass for +whatever you choose to give. + +Where art and antiquity are so abundant as in Rome, the Bambino incident +is probably what the reader, when he has visited the Church of Ara Coeli +will chiefly remember, and I will not pretend to be any better than the +reader, though I will say that I have a persistent sense of something +important about the roof; and there are the Pinturrichio frescos, which +an old Sienese like me must have the taste for. The not easily praiseful +Hare says it is “one of the most interesting of Christian churches,” and +without allowing that there are any other sorts of churches I may allow +that this is one of the least unlovely in Rome. Trinita de' Monti seemed +to be another, but only, I dare say, subjectively, because of the +exquisite pleasure we had one afternoon in March when we went into it +for the nuns' singing of the Benediction. That, we had been told, was +something which no one coming to Rome should miss; and we were so +anxious not to miss it that on our way to the Pincian Hill we stopped at +the foot of the church-steps, and reassured ourselves of the hour +through the kindness of an English-speaking nurse-maid at the bottom and +of a gentle nun at the top, who both told us the hour would be exactly +five. + +When we came back at that time and bought our way into the church by +rightful payment to the two blind beggars who guarded its doors, we +found it packed with people who bad been more literally punctual. They +were of all nations, but a large part were Anglo-Americans, and a young +girl of this race rose and gave her seat, with a sweet insistence that +would not be denied, to that one of us who deserved it most. He who was +left leaning against the soft side of a pillar hesitated whether to make +some young priests spreading over undue space on one of the benches push +up, and he enjoyed a rich moment of self-satisfaction in his +forbearance. He was there, to be sure, an alien and a heretic, out of +mere curiosity, and they were there probably so rapt in their devout +attention that they did not notice their errant step-brother, and so did +not think to offer him the hospitality of their mother church's house. +But he would not make any such allowance; he condemned them with the +unsparing severity of the strap-hanger in a trolley-car, who blushes +with shame for the serried rows of men sitting behind their newspapers. +When he was at his wit's end to find excuse for them a priest on another +bench made room, and he sank down glad to forgive and forget; but now he +would not have yielded his place to any other Protestant in Christendom. + +In the collective curiosity he lost the sense of self-reproach for his +own, and eagerly bent his gaze on the group of officiating priests at +the high altar beyond the grille of the choir. The altar was all a blaze +of electric lights, and there was a novel effect in their composition in +the crosses resting diagonally on either side of it. Next the grille +showed the feathers and fashions of the mothers and sisters of the young +girls from the school of the adjoining Convent of the Sacred Heart, and +midway between these visitors, like a flock of white birds stooping on +some heavenly plain, the white veils of the girls stretched in lovely +levels to left and right. Nothing could have attuned the spirit for the +surprise awaiting it like this angelic sight; and when the voices of the +nuns fell suddenly from the organ gallery, behind all the people, like +the singing of the morning stars molten in one adoring music and falling +from the zenith down, whatever moments of innocent joy life might have +had it could have had none surpassing that. + +But when we came out the self-mockery with which life is apt to recover +itself from any exaltation began. In returning from the Pincio the only +cab we had been able to get was the last left of the very worst cabs in +Rome, and we had bidden the driver wait for us at the church-steps, not +without some hope that he would play us false. But there he was, true +to his word, with such disciplined fidelity as that of the Roman +sentinels who used to die at their posts; and we mounted to ours with +the muted prayer that we, at least, might reach home alive. This did not +seem probable when the driver whipped up his horse. It appeared to have +aged and sickened while we were in the church, though we had thought it +looked as bad as could be before, and it lurched alarmingly from side to +side, recovering itself with a plunge of its heavy head away from the +side in which its body was sinking. The driver swayed on his box, having +fallen equally decrepit in spite of the restoratives he seemed to have +applied for his years and infirmities. His clothes had put on some such +effect of extreme decay as those of Rip Van Winkle in the third act; +there was danger that he would fall on top of his falling horse, and +that their raiment would mingle in one scandalous ruin. Via Sistina had +never been so full of people before; never before had it been so long to +that point where we were to turn out of it into the friendly obscurity +of the little cross street which would bring us to our hotel. We could +not consent to arrive in that form; we made the driver stop, and we got +out and began overpaying him to release us. But the more generously we +overpaid him the more nobly he insisted upon serving us to our door. At +last, by such a lavish expenditure as ought richly to provide for the +few remaining years of himself and his horse, we prevailed with him to +let us go, and reached our hotel glad, almost proud, to arrive on foot. + +[Illustration: 27 CHURCH OF SANTA MAGGIORE] + +Hare tells me, now it is too late, that I may reach the Church of Santa +Maggiore by keeping straight on through the long, long straightness of +the Via Sistina. I reached that church by quite another way after many +postponements; for I thought I remembered all about it from my visit in +1864. But really nothing had remained to me save a sense of the +exceptional dignity of the church, and the sole fact that the roof of +its most noble nave is thickly plated with the first gold mined in South +America, which Ferdinand and Isabella gave that least estimable of the +popes, Alexander VI. Now I know that it is far richer than any gold +could make it in the treasures of history and legend, which fairly +encrust it in every part. Doubtless some portion of this wealth my +fellow-sightseers were striving to store up out of the guide-books which +they bore in their hands and from which they strained their eyes to the +memorable points as they slowly paced through the temple. Some were +reading one to another in bated voices, and I thought them ridiculous; +but perhaps they were wise, and rather he was ridiculous who marched by +them and contented himself with a general sense of the grandeur, the +splendor. More than any other church except that of San Paolo fuori le +Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore imparts this sense, for, as I have already +pretended, St. Peter's fails of it. Without as well as within the church +is spacious and impressive from its spaciousness; but it seems more +densely fringed than most others with peddlers of post-cards and mosaic +pins. On going in you can plunge through their ranks, but in coming out +you do not so easily escape. One boy pursued me quite to my cab, in +spite of my denials of hand and tongue. There he stayed the driver while +he made a last, a humorous appeal. “Skiddoo?” he asked in my native +speech. “Yes,” I sullenly replied, “skiddoo!” But it is now one of the +regrets which I shall always feel for my wasted opportunities in Rome +that I did not buy all his post-cards. Patient gayety like his merited +as much. + +As it was, I drove callously away from Santa Maria Maggiore to San +Pietro in Vincoli, where I expected to renew my veneration for +Michelangelo's Moses. That famous figure is no longer so much in the +minds of men as it used to be, I think; and, if one were to be quite +honest with one's self as to the why and wherefore of one's earlier +veneration, one might not get a very distinct or convincing reply. Do +sculptors and painters suffer periods of slight as authors do? Are +Raphael and Michelangelo only provisionally eclipsed by Botticelli and +by Donatello and Mino da Fiesole, or are they remanded to a lasting +limbo? I find I have said in my notes that the Moses is improbable and +unimpressive, and I pretended a more genuine joy in the heads of the two +Pollajuolo brothers which startle you from their tomb as you enter the +church. Is the true, then, better than the ideal, or is it only my +grovelling spirit which prefers it? What I scarcely venture to say is +that those two men evidently lived and still live, and that +Michelangelo's prophet never lived; I scarcely venture, because I +remember with tenderness how certain clear and sweet spirits used to bow +their reason before the Moses as before a dogma of art which must be +implicitly accepted. Do they still do so, those clear and sweet spirits? + +[Illustration: 28 MICHELANGELO'S “MOSES” IN SAN PIETRO IN VINCOLI] + +The archaeologist who was driving my cab that morning had pointed out to +me on the way to this church the tower on which Nero stood fiddling +while Rome was burning. It is a strong, square, mediaeval structure +which will serve the purpose of legend yet many centuries, if progress +does not pull it down; but the fiddle no longer exists, apparently, and +Nero himself is dead. When I came out and mounted into my cab, my driver +showed me with his whip, beyond a garden wall, a second tower, very +beautiful against the blue sky, above the slim cypresses, which he said +was the scene of the wicked revels of Lucrezia Borgia. I do not know why +it has been chosen for this distinction above other towers; but it was a +great satisfaction to have it identified. Very possibly I had seen both +of these memorable towers in my former Roman sojourn, but I did not +remember them, whereas I renewed my old impressions of San Paolo fuori +le Mura in almost every detail. + +That is the most majestic church in Rome, I think, and I suppose it is, +for a cold splendor, unequalled anywhere. Somehow, from its form and +from the great propriety of its decoration, it far surpasses St. +Peter's. The antic touch of the baroque is scarcely present in it, for, +being newly rebuilt after the fire which destroyed the fourth-century +basilica in 1823, its faults are not those of sixteenth-century excess. +It would be a very bold or a very young connoisseur who should venture +to appraise its merits beyond this negative valuation; and timid age can +affirm no more than that it came away with its sensibilities unwounded. +Tradition and history combine with the stately architecture, which +reverently includes every possible relic of the original fabric, to +render the immense temple venerable; and as it is still in process of +construction, with a colonnaded porch in scale and keeping with the body +of the basilica, it offers to the eye of wonder the actual spectacle of +that unstinted outlay of riches which has filled Rome with its +multitudes of pious monuments--monuments mainly ugly, but potent with +the imagination even in their ugliness through the piety of their +origin. Where did all that riches come from? + +Out of what unfathomable opulence, out of what pitiable penury, out of +what fear, out of what love? One fancies the dying hands of wealth that +released their gift to the sacred use, the knotted hands of work that +spared it from their need. The giving continues in this latest Christian +age as in the earliest, and Rome is increasingly Rome in a world which +its thinkers think no longer believes. + +From San Paolo we were going to another shrine, more hallowed to our +literary sense, and we drove through the sweet morning sunshine and +bird-singing, past pale-pink clouds of almond bloom on the garden +slopes, with snowy heights far beyond, to the simple graveyard where +Keats and Shelley lie. Our way to the Protestant cemetery held by some +shabby apartment-houses of that very modern Rome which was largely so +jerry-built, and which I would not leave out of the landscape if I +could, for I think their shabbiness rather heightens your sense of the +peaceful loveliness to which you come under the cypresses, among the +damp aisles, so thickly studded with the stones recording the death in +exile of the English strangers lying there far from home. In a faulty +perspective of memory, I had always seen the graves of the two poets +side by side; but the heart of Shelley rests in a prouder part of the +cemetery, where the paths between the finer tombs are carefully kept; +and the dust of Keats lies in an old, plain, almost neglected corner, +well off beyond a dividing trench. It seems an ungracious chance which +has so parted the two poets so inextricably united in their fame; it is +as if here, too, the world would have its way; but, of course, it is +only at the worst an ungracious chance. Keats, at least, has the +companionship of the painter Severn, the friend on whose “fond breast +his parting soul relied,” and who has here followed him into the dust. + +A few withered daisies had been scattered in the thin grass over the +poet, and one hardly dared lift one's eyes from them to the +heartbreaking epitaph which one could not spell for tears. + + + + +VIII. A FEW VILLAS + + +It was but a few minutes' walk from the hotel to the Porta Pinciana, +and, if you took this short walk, you found yourself almost before you +knew it in the Villa Borghese. You might then, on your first Sunday in +Rome, have fancied yourself in Central Park, for all difference in the +easily satisfied Sunday-afternoon crowd. But with me a difference began +in the grove of stone-pines, and their desultory stretch toward the +Casino, where in the simple young times which are now the old we had +hurried, with our Kugler in our hands and other reading in our heads, to +see Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (it has got another name now) and +Canova's Pauline Bonaparte, who was also the Princess Borghese, and all +the rest of the precious gallery. However, if I had any purpose of +visiting the Casino now, I put it aside, and contented myself with the +gentle sun, the gentle shade, and the sweet air, which might have had +less dust in it, breathing over grass as green in late January as in +early June. I did not care so much for a mounted corporal who was +jumping his horse over a two-foot barrier in the circular path rounding +between the Villa Borghese and the Pincian Hill, though his admirers +hung in rows on the rail beside it so thickly that I could hardly have +got a place to see him if I had tried. But there was room enough to the +fathers and mothers who had brought their children, and young lovers who +had brought each other for the afternoon's outing, just as the people in +Central Park do, and, no doubt, just as any Sunday crowd must do in the +planet Mars, if the inhabitants are human. There was a _vacherie_ nearby +where not many persons were drinking milk or even coffee; it is never +the notion of the Italians that amusement can be had only through the +purchase of refreshments. + +[Illustration: 29 THE LITTLE STADIUM WITH ITS GRADINES] + +I did not get as far as the Casino till the last Sunday of our Roman +stay, though we came again and again to the park (as we should call it, +rather than villa), sometimes to walk, sometimes to drive, and always to +rejoice in its loveliness. It was not now a very guarded, if once a very +studied, loveliness; not quite neglect, but a forgottenness to which it +took kindly, had fallen upon it; the drives seemed largely left to take +care of themselves, the walks were such as the frequenters chose to make +over the grass or through the woods; the buildings--the aviary, the +conservatory, the dairy, the stables--which formed part of the old +pleasance, stood about, as if in an absent-minded indifference to their +various roles. The weather had grown a little more wintry, or, at least, +autumnal, as the season advanced toward spring, and one day at the end +of February, when we were passing a woody hollow, the fallen leaves +stirred crisply with a sound like that of late October at home. We had +been at some pains and expense to put home four thousand miles away, but +this sound was the sweetest and dearest we had heard in Rome, and it +strangely attuned our spirits to the enjoyment of the fake antiquities, +the broken arches, pediments, columns, statues, which, in a region +glutted with ruin, the landscape architect of the Villa Borghese had +fancied putting about in pleasing stages of artificial dilapidation. But +there was nothing faked in the dishevelled grass of the little stadium, +with its gradines around the sides, and the game of tennis which some +young girls were playing in it. Neither was there anything ungenuine in +the rapture of the boy whom we saw racing through the dead leaves of +that woody hollow in chase of the wild fancies that fly before boyhood; +and I hope that the charm of the plinths and statues in the careless +grounds behind the soft, old, yellow Casino was a real charm. At any +rate, these things all consoled, and the turf under the pines, now +thickly starred with daisies, gave every assurance of being original. + +When we came last the daisies were mingled with clustering anemones, +which seem a greatly overrated sort of flower, crude and harsh in color, +like cheap calico. If it were not for their pretty name I do not see how +people could like them; yet the children that day were pouncing upon +them and pulling them by handfuls; for the Villa Borghese is now state +property and is free to the children of the people in a measure quite +beyond Central Park. They can apparently pull anything they want, except +mushrooms; there are signs advising people that the state draws the line +at mushrooms. + +It was once more a Sunday, and it was a free day in the Casino. The +trodden earth sent up its homely, kindly smell from many feet on their +way to the galleries, which we found full of people looking greater +intelligence than the frequenters of such places commonly betray. They +might have been such more cultivated sight-seers as could not afford to +come on the paydays, and, if they had not crowded the room so, one might +have been glad as well as proud to be of their number. They did not +really keep one from older friends, from the statues and the pictures +which were as familiarly there in 1908 as in 1864. In a world of +vicissitudes such things do not change; the Sacred and Profane Love of +Titian, though it had changed its name, had not changed its nature, and +was as divinely serene, as richly beautiful as before. The Veroneses +still glowed from the walls, dimming with their Venetian effulgence all +the other pictures but the Botticellis and the Francias, and comforting +one with the hope that, if one had always felt their beauty so much, one +might, without suspecting it, have always had some little sense of art. +But it was probably only a literary sense of art, such as moves the +observer when he finds himself again in the presence of Canova's Pauline +Borghese. That is there, on the terms which were those no less of her +character than of her time, in the lasting enjoyment of a publicity +which her husband denied it in his lifetime; but it had no more to say +now than it had so many, many years ago. As, a piece of personal history +it is amusing enough, and as a sermon in stone it preaches whatever +moral you choose to read into it. But as the masterpiece of the +sculptor it testifies to an ideal of his art for which the world has +reason to be grateful. Criticism does not now put Canova on the height +where we once looked up to him; but criticism is a fickle thing, +especially in its final judgments; and one cannot remember the behavior +of the Virtues in some of the baroque churches without paying homage to +the portrait of a lady who, whatever she was, was not a Virtue, but who +yet helped the sculptor to realize in her statue a Venus of exceptional +propriety. Tame, yes, we may now safely declare Canova to have been, but +sane we must allow; and we must never forget that he has been the +inspiration in modern sculpture of the eternal Greek truth of repose +from which the art had so wildly wandered, He, more than any other, +stayed it in the mad career on which Michelangelo, however remotely, had +started it; and we owe it to him that the best marbles now no longer +strut or swagger or bully. + +It was by one of those accidents which are the best fortunes of travel +that I visited the Villa Papa Giulio, when I thought I was merely going +to the Piazza del Popolo, to which one cannot go too often. A chance +look at my guide-book beguiled me with the notion that the villa was +just outside the gate; but it was a deceit which I should be glad to +have practised on me every February 17th of my life. If the villa was +farther off than I thought, the way to it lay for a while through a +tramwayed suburban street delightfully encumbered with wide-horned oxen +drawing heavy wagon-loads of grain, donkeys pulling carts laden with +vegetables, and children and hens and dogs playing their several parts +in a perspective through which one would like to continue indefinitely. +But after awhile a dim, cool, curving lane leaves this street and +irresistibly invites your cab to follow it; and sooner than you could +ask you get to the villa gate. There a gatekeeper tacitly wonders at +your arriving before he is well awake, and will keep you a good five +minutes while he parleys with another custodian before he can bring +himself to sell you a ticket and let you into the beautiful, old, +orange-gray cloistered court, where there is a young architect with the +T-square of his calling sketching some point of it, and a gardener +gently hacking off from the parent stems such palm-leaves as have +survived their usefulness. Beyond is the famous fountained court, and a +classic temple to the right, and other structures responsive to the +impulses of the good Pope Julius III., who was never tired of adding to +this pleasure palace of his. It was his favorite resort, with all his +court, from the Vatican, and his favorite amusement in it was the +somewhat academic diversion of proverbs, which Ranke says sometimes +“mingled blushes with the smiles of his guests.” + +Lest the reader should think I have gone direct to Ranke for this +knowledge, I will own that I got it at second-hand out of Hare's _Walks +in Rome,_ where he tells us also that the pope used to come to his villa +every day by water, and that “the richly decorated barge, filled with +venerable ecclesiastics, gliding through the osier-fringed banks of the +Tiber,... would make a fine subject for a picture.” No doubt, and if +I owned such a picture I would lose no time in public-spiritedly +bestowing it on the first needy gallery. Our author is, as usual, +terribly severe on the Italian government for some wrong done the villa, +I could not well make out what. But it seems to involve the present +disposition of the Etruscan antiquities in the upper rooms of the +casino, where these, the most precious witnesses of that rather +inarticulate civilization, must in any arrangement exhaust the most +instructed interest. Just when the amateur archaeologist, however, is +sinking under his learning, the custodian opens a window and lets him +look out on a beautiful hill beyond certain gardens, where a bird is +singing angelically. I suppose it is the same bird which sings all +through these papers, and I am sorry I do not know its name. But we will +call it a blackcap: blackcap has a sweet, saucy sound like its own note, +and is the pretty translation of _caponero,_ a name which the bird might +gladly know itself by. + +[Illustration: 30 CASINO OF THE VILLA DORIA AND GARDENS] + +Villa Papa Giulio is but a little place compared with something on the +scale of the Villa Pamfili Doria though from its casino it has a charm +far beyond that. What it may once have been as to grounds and gardens +there is little to show now, and the Pamfili Doria itself had not much +to show in gardens, though it had grounds, and to spare. It is, in fact, +a large park, though whether larger than the Villa Borghese I cannot +say. But it has not been taken by the state, and it is so far off on its +hills that it is safe from the overrunning of city feet. It is safe even +from city wheels, unless they are those of livery carriages, for +numbered cabs are not suffered in its proud precincts. You partake of +this pride when you come in your rubber-tired _remise,_ and have the +consolation of being part of the beautiful exclusiveness. It costs you +fifteen francs, but one must suffer for being patrician, even for a +single afternoon. Outside we had the satisfaction of seeing innumerable +numbered cabs drawn up, and within the villa gates of meeting or passing +the plebeians who had come in them, and were now walking while we were +smoothly rolling in our victoria. The day was everything we could ask, +very warm and bright below the Janiculum, on which we had mounted, and +here on the summit delicious with cool currents of air. There had been +beggars, on the way up, at every point where our horses must be walked, +and we had paid our way handsomely, so that when we went back they bowed +without asking again; this is a convention at Rome which no +self-respecting beggar will violate; they all touch their hats in +recognition of it. + +The beautiful prospect from a certain curve of the drive after you have +passed the formal sunken garden, at which you pause, is the greatest +beauty of the Villa Pamfili Doria. You stop to look at it by the impulse +of your coachman, and then you keep on driving round, in the long +ellipse which the road describes, through grassy and woody slopes and +levels, watered by a pleasant stream, and through long aisles of pine +and ilex. We thought twice round was enough, and told the driver so, to +his evident surprise and to our own regret, so far as the long aisle of +ilex was concerned, for I do not suppose there is a more perfect thing +of its kind in the world. The shade under the thick sun-proof roofing of +horizontal boughs was practically as old as night, and on our second +passage of its dim length it had some Capuchin monks walking down it, +who formed the fittest possible human interest in the perspective. Off +on the grass at one side some Ursuline nuns were sitting with their +pupils, laughing and talking, and one nun was playing ball with the +smaller girls, and mingling with their shouts her own gay, innocent +cries of joy as she romped among them. Nothing could have been prettier, +sweeter, or better suited to the place; all was very simple, and +apparently the whole place was hospitably free to the poor women who +ranged over it, digging chiccory for salad out of the meadows. The +daisies were thick as white clover, and the harsh purple of the anemones +showed everywhere. + +The casino is plainer than the casino of the Villa Borghese, and is not +public like that; its sculptures have been taken to the Doria palace in +the city; and there is no longer any excuse for curiosity even to try +penetrating it. It stands on the left of the road by which you leave the +villa, and to the right on the grassy incline in full view of the casino +was something that puzzled us at first. It did not seem probable that +the gigantic capital letters grown in box should be spelling the English +name Mary, but it proved that they were, and later it proved that this +was the name of the noble English lady whom the late Prince Pamfili +Doria had married. Whether they marked her grave or merely commemorated +her, it was easy to impute a pathos to the fancy of having them there, +which it might not have been so easy to verify. You cannot attempt to +pass over any ground in Rome without danger of sinking into historical +depths from which it will be hard to extricate yourself, and it is best +to heed one's steps and keep them to the day's activities. But one +could not well visit the Villa Pamfili Doria without at least wishing to +remember that in 1849 Garibaldi held it for weeks against the whole +French army, in his defence of republican Rome. A votive temple within +the villa grounds commemorates the invaders who fell in this struggle; +on a neighboring height the Italian leader triumphs in the monument his +adoring country has raised to him. + +If we are to believe the censorious Hare, the love of the hero's +countrymen went rather far when the Roman municipality, to please him, +tried to change the course of the Tiber in conformity with a scheme of +his, and so spoiled the beauty of the Farnesina garden without +effecting a too-difficult piece of engineering. The less passionate +Murray says merely that “a large slice of this garden was cut off to +widen the river for the Tiber embankment,” and let us hope that it was +no worse. I suppose we must have seen the villa in its glory when we +went, in 1864, to see the Raphael frescos in the casino there, but in +the touching melancholy of the wasted and neglected grounds we easily +accepted the present as an image of the past. For all we remembered, the +weed-grown, green-mossed gravel-paths of the sort of bewildered garden +that remained, with its quenched fountain, its vases of dead or dying +plants, and its dishevelled shrubbery, were what had always been; and it +was of such a charm that we were gratefully content with it. The truth +is, one cannot do much with beauty in perfect repair; the splendor that +belongs to somebody else, unless it belongs also to everybody else, +wounds one's vulgar pride and inspires envious doubts of the owner's +rightful possession. But when the blight of ruin has fallen upon it, +when dilapidation and disintegration have begun their work of atonement +and exculpation, then our hearts melt in compassion of the waning +magnificence and in a soft pity for the expropriated possessor, to whom +we attribute every fine and endearing quality. It is this which makes us +such friends of the past and such critics of the present, and enables us +to enjoy the adversity of others without a pang of the jealousy which +their prosperity excites. + +There was much to please a somewhat peculiar taste in our visit to the +Farnesina. The gateman, being an Italian official, had not been at the +gate when we arrived, but came running and smiling from his gossip with +the door-keeper of the casino, and this was a good deal in itself; but +the door-keeper, amiably obese, was better still in her acceptance of +the joke with which the hand-mirror for the easier study of the roof +frescos was accepted. “It is more convenient,” she suggested, and at the +counter-suggestion, “Yes, especially for people with short necks,” she +shook with gelatinous laughter, and burst into the generous cry, “Oh, +how delightful!” Perhaps this was because she, too, had experienced the +advantage of perusing the frescos in the hand-mirror's reversal. At any +rate, she would not be satisfied till she had returned a Roland for that +easy Oliver. Her chance came in showing a Rubens in one of the rooms, +with the master's usual assortment of billowy beauties, when she could +say--and she ought to have known--that they had eaten too much macaroni. +It was not much of a joke; but one hears so few jokes in Rome. + +Do I linger in this study of simple character because I feel myself +unequal to the ecstasies which the frescos of Raphael and his school in +that pleasure dome demanded of me? Something like that, I suppose, but I +do not pride myself on my inability. It seemed to me that the coloring +of the frescos had lost whatever tenderness it once had; and that what +was never meant to be matter of conscious perception, but only of the +vague sense which it is the office of decoration to impart, had grown +less pleasing with the passage of time. There in the first hall was the +story of Cupid and Psyche in the literal illustration of Apuleius, and +there in another hall was Galatea on her shell with her Nymphs and +Tritons and Amorini; and there were Perseus and Medusa and Icarus and +Phaeton and the rest of them. But, if I gave way to all the frankness of +my nature, I should own the subjects fallen silly through the old age of +an outworn life and redeemed only by the wonderful skill with which they +are rendered. At the same time, I will say in self-defence that, if I +had a very long summer in which to keep coming and dwelling long hours +in the company of these frescos, I think I might live back into the +spirit which invented the fables, and enjoy even more the amusing taste +that was never tired of their repetition. Masterly conception and +incomparable execution are there in histories which are the dreams of +worlds almost as extinct as the dead planets whose last rays still reach +us and in whose death-glimmer we can fancy, if we will, a unity of life +with our own not impossible nor improbable. But more than some such +appeal the Raphaels and the Giulio Romanos of the Farnesina hardly make +to the eye untrained in the art which created them, or unversed in the +technique by which they will live till the last line moulders and the +last tint fades. + +We came out and stood a long time looking up in the pale afternoon light +at the beautiful face of the tenderly aging but not yet decrepit casino. +It was utterly charming, and it prompted many vagaries which I might +easily have mistaken for ideas. This is perhaps the best of such +experiences, and, after you have been with famous works of art and have +got them well over and done with, it is natural and it is not unjust +that you should wish to make them some return, if not in kind, then in +quantity. You will try to believe that you have thought about them, and +you should not too strictly inquire as to the fact. It is some such +forbearance that accounts for a good deal of the appreciation and even +the criticism of works of art. + + + + +IX. DRAMATIC INCIDENTS + + +If the joke of the door-keeper at the Farnesina was not so delicate in +any sense as some other jokes, it had, at least, the merit of being +voluntary. In fact, it is the only voluntary joke which I remember +hearing in the Tuscan tongue from the Roman mouth during a stay of three +months in the Eternal City. This was very disappointing, for I had +always thought of the Italians as gay and as liking to laugh and to make +laugh. In Venice, where I used to live, the gondoliers were full of +jokes, good, bad, and indifferent, and an infection of humor seemed to +spread from them to all the lower classes, who were as ready to joke as +the lower classes of Irish, and who otherwise often reminded one of +them. The joking habit extended as far down as Florence, even as Siena, +and at Naples I had found cabmen who tempered their predacity with +_bonhomie._ But the Romans were preferably serious, at least with the +average American, though, if I had tried them in their English instead +of my Italian, it might have been different. At times I thought, they +felt the weight of being Romans, as it had descended to them from +antiquity, and that the strain of supporting it had sobered them. In any +case, though there was shouting by night, and some singing of not at all +the Neapolitan quality and still less the Neapolitan quantity, there was +no laughing, or, as far as I could see, smiling by day. + +Yet one day there was a tragedy in front of the hotel next ours which +would have made a dog laugh, as the saying is, unless it was a Roman +dog. It was a quarrel, more or less murderous, between a fat, elderly +man and an agile stripling of not half his age or girth, of whom the +tumult about them permitted only fleeting glimpses. By these the elder +seemed to be laboriously laying about him with a five-foot club and the +younger to be making wild dashes at him and then escaping to the skirts +of the cabmen, mounted and dismounted, who surrounded them. Now and then +a cabman drove out of the mellee very excitedly, and then turned and +drove excitedly back into the thick of it. All the while the dismounted +cabmen pressed about the combatants with their hands on one another's +backs and their heads peering carefully over one another's shoulders. +On the very outermost rim of these, more careful than any, was one +of those strange images whom you see about Italian towns in couples, +with red-braided swallowtail coats and cocked hats, those carabinieres +--namely, who are soldiers in war and policemen in times of peace. Any +spectator from a foreign land would have thought it the business of such +an officer of the law to press in and stop the fighting; but he did not +so interpret his duty. He gingerly touched the shoulders next him with +the tips of his fingers, and now and then lifted himself on the tips of +his toes to look if the fight had stopped of itself or not. + +At last the fat, elderly man, whom his friends--and all the throng +except that one wicked youth seemed his friends--were caressing in +untimely embraces and coaxing in tones of tender entreaty, burst from +them, and, aiming at the head of his enemy, flung his club, to the +imminent peril of all the bystanders, and missed him. Then he frankly +put himself in the hands of his friends, who lifted him into a cab, +where one of them mounted with him and stayed him on the seat, while the +cabman drove rapidly away. The wicked youth had vanished in unknown +space; but the carabiniere, attended by a group of admirers, marched +boldly up the middle of the street, and the crowd, with whatever +reluctance, persuaded itself to disperse, though the cabmen, to the +number of ten or twenty, continued to drive around in concentric circles +and irregular ellipses. In five minutes not an eye-witness of the fray +remained, such being the fear of the law, not so much in those who break +it as in those who see it broken, and who dread incurring the vengeance +of the culprit, if he is acquitted, or of his family if he is convicted +on their testimony. The quarrel had gone on a full quarter of an hour, +but the concierge of the hotel in front of which it had raged professed +to have known nothing of it, having, he said, been in-doors all the +time. A cabman whom we eliminated from the hysterical company of his +fellows and persuaded to drive us away to see a church attempted to +ignore the whole affair when asked about it. With difficulty he could be +made to recollect it, and then he dismissed it as a trifle. “Oh,” he +said, “chiacchiere di donnicciuole,” which is something like “Clatter +of little old women,” a thing not worth noticing. He had, if we could +believe him, not cared to know how it began or ended, and he would not +talk about it. + +Later, still interested by the action of the carabiniere in guarding the +public security in his own person, I asked an Italian gentleman, who +owned to have seen the affair, why the officer did not break through the +crowd and arrest the fighters. “They had knives,” he explained, and it +seemed a good reason for the carabiniere's forbearance, as far as it +went; but I thought of the short work the brute locust of an Irish +policeman at home would have made of the knives. My friend said he had +himself gone to one of the municipal police who was looking on at a +pleasant remove and said, “Those fellows have knives; they will kill +each other,” and the municipal policeman had answered, with the calm of +an antique Roman sentinel on duty in time of earthquake, “Let them +kill.” + +I could not approve of so much impartiality, but afterward it seemed to +me I had little to be proud of in the shorter and easier method of our +own police, as contrasted with the caution of that Roman carabiniere who +left the combatants to the mild might of their friends' moral suasion. +It was better that the youth should escape, if he did, without a +vexatious criminal trial; he may have been no more to blame than the +other, who, I learned, had been carried off, in the honorable manner I +saw, to a doctor and had his stab looked to. It was not dangerous, and +the whole affair ended so. Besides, as I learned, still longer +afterward, when it was quite safe for a cabman from the same stand to +speak, the combatants were not Romans, but peasants from the Campagna, +who had come in with their market-carts and had become heated with the +bad spirits which the peasants have the habit of drinking five or six +glasses of when they visit Rome. “What we call benzine,” my cabman +explained. “We Romans,” he added from a moral height, “drink only a +glass or two of wine, and we never carry knives.” + +He may have been right concerning the peacefulness of the Romans and +their sobriety, and I am bound to say that I never saw any other violent +scene during my stay. Sometimes I heard loud quarrelling among our +cabmen, and sometimes I was the subject of it, when one driver snatched +me, an impartial prey, from another. But the bad feeling, if there was +really any, quickly passed, and some other day I fell to the cabman who +had been wronged of me. I had not always the fine sense of being booty +which I had one day on coming out of a church and blundering toward the +wrong cab. Then the driver whom I had left waiting at the door seized me +from the very cab of an unjust rival with the indignant cry, “E roba +mia!” (He's my stuff!). It was not quite the phrase I would have chosen, +but I had no quarrel, generally speaking, with the cabmen of Rome. To be +sure, they have not a rubber tire among them, and their dress leaves +much to be desired in professional uniformity. Not one of them looks +like a cabman, but many of them in picturesqueness of hats and coats +look like brigands. I think they would each prefer to have a fur-lined +overcoat, which the Roman of any class likes to wear well into the +spring; but they mostly content themselves with an Astrakhan collar, +more or less mangy. For the rest, some of them will point out the +objects of interest as you pass, and they are proud to do so; they are +not extortionate, and, if you overpay them ever so little (which is +quite worth while), they will not stand upon a matter of lawful fare. A +two-cent tip contents them, one of four cents makes them your friends +for life; as for a five-cent tip, I do not know what it does, but I +advise the reader when he goes to Rome to try it and see. + +One fine thing is that the cabmen are in great superabundance in Rome, +and the number of barrel-ribbed, ewe-necked, and broken-kneed horses is +in no greater proportion than in Paris. Still, the average is large, +though, if you will go to the stand, you may select any horse you please +without offence. It was a cheerful sight, verging upon gayety, to see +every morning the crowd of cabs at our stand and to hear the drivers' +talk, sometimes rising into protest and mutual upbraiding. But one +Thursday morning, the brightest of the spring, a Sunday silence had +fallen on the place, and a Sabbath solitude deepened to the eye the +mystery that had first addressed itself to the ear. Then, suddenly, we +knew that we were in the presence of that Italian conception of a +general strike which interprets itself as a _sciopero._ It is saying +very little of that two days' strike to say that it was far the most +impressive experience of our Roman winter; in some sort it was the most +impressive experience of my life, for I beheld in it a reduced and +imperfect image of what labor could do if it universally chose to do +nothing. The dream of William Morris was that a world which we know is +pretty much wrong could be put right by this simple process. The trouble +has always been to get all sorts of labor to join in the universal +strike, but in the Italian _sciopero_ of four years ago the miracle was +wrought from one end of the peninsula to the other. + +In the Roman strike of last April a partial miracle of the same nature +was illustratively wrought, with the same alarming effect on the +imagination. + +As with the national strike, the inspiration of the Roman strike came +from the government's violent dealing with a popular manifestation which +only threatened to be mischievous. A stone-mason was killed by falling +from a scaffolding, and his funeral was attended by so many hundreds, +amounting to thousands, of workmen that the police conceived, not quite +unjustifiably, that it was to be made the occasion of a demonstration, +especially as the proposed route of the procession lay through the +Piazza di Venezia, under the windows of the Austrian Embassy, Austria +being always a red rag to the Italian bull and peculiarly irritating +through the reservation of the Palazzo Venezia to the ancient enemy at +the cession of Venice to Italy. The mourners were therefore forbidden to +pass that way, and the police forces were drawn up in the Piazza Gesu, +before the Jesuit church, with a strong detachment of troops to support +them. Their wisdom in all this was very questionable after what +followed, for the mourners insisted on their rights and would go no way +but through the Piazza di Venezia. When the dispute was at its height +two wagons laden with bricks appeared on the scene. The mourners swarmed +upon them, broke the bricks into bats, and hurled them at the police. +They had apparently the simple-hearted expectation that the police would +stand this indefinitely, but the brickbats hurt, and in their paroxysms +of pain the sufferers began firing their revolvers at the mourners. Four +persons were killed, with the usual proportion of innocent spectators. +At night the labor unions met, and the _sciopero_ was proclaimed as an +expression of the popular indignation; but the police had been left with +the victory. Whether it was not in some sort a defeat I do not know, but +a retired English officer, whom I had no reason to think a radical, said +to me that he thought it a great mistake to have let the police oppose +the people with firearms. Soldiers should alone be used for such work; +they alone knew when to fire and when to stop, and they never acted +without orders. In fact, the troops supporting the police took no part +in the fray, as the workmen's press recognized with patriotic rejoicing. + +The next morning a signal silence prevailed throughout the city, where +not a wheel stirred or the sound of a hoof broke the hush of the +streets. We had noted already that there were seven Sundays every week +in Rome, as was fit in the capital of the Christian religion, but this +Thursday was of an intenser Sabbath stillness than any first day of the +week that we had yet known. There was the clack of passing feet in the +street under our windows, but we looked out upon a yawning void where +the busy cabs had clustered, and the cabmen had socially chaffed and +quarrelled, and entreated the stranger in the cabman's superstition that +a stranger never knows when he wants a cab. Now he could have walked all +over Rome without being once invited to drive. Except for here and there +a private carriage, or the coupe evidently of a doctor, the streets were +empty, and the tourists had to join the citizens in their pedestrian +exercise. + +The shopkeepers had been notified to close their places of business on +the tacit condition of having their windows broken for non-compliance, +but in the early forenoon they were still slowly and partially putting +up their shutters. You could get in through the darkened doors up till +noon; after that it was more and more difficult. But it would be hard to +say how far and how deep the _sciopero_ went. In our hotel we knew of it +only the second day through the failure of the morning rolls, for there +had been no baking overnight. Most of the in-door service was of Swiss +or other foreign extraction, and the mechanism of our comfort, our +luxury, was operated as usual. Our floor _facchino,_ or porter, went to +the meeting of the unions in the evening, being an Italian. Otherwise +the strike fell especially on the helpless and guiltless foreigner, who +might be, and very often was, in sympathy with the strikers. He had to +walk to the ruins, the galleries, the gardens, the churches, if he +wanted anything of them; he could not get a carriage even from a stable. + +Between the hotels and the station the omnibus traffic was suspended. +The railroads being national, push-carts manned by the government +employes carried the baggage to and fro, but if one wanted to arrive or +depart one had to do it on foot. Tragical scenes presented themselves in +relation to this fact. In the afternoon, as I walked up the street +toward the great railroad station, I saw coming down the middle of it a +strange procession of ladies and gentlemen of every age, gray-haired +elders and children of tender years, mixed with porters and push-carts, +footing it into the region of the fashionable hotels. They were all +laden according to their strength, and people who had never done a +stroke of work in their lives were actually carrying their own +hand-bags, rugs, and umbrella-cases. It was terrible. + +It was terrible for what it was, and terrible for what it suggested, if +ever that poor dull beast of labor took the bit permanently into its +teeth, or, worse yet, hung back in the breeching and inexorably balked. +What would then become of us others, us ladies and gentlemen who had +never done a stroke of work and never wished to do one? Should we be +forced to the hard necessity of beginning? Could we remain in the +comfortable belief that we gave work, or must we be made to own +distastefully that it had always been given to us? Should we be able to +flatter ourselves with the notion that we had once had dependents +because we had money, or should we realize that we had always been +dependents because of our having money? + +These were the hateful doubts which the Roman strike suggested to the +witness, or, at least, one of the witnesses, who has here the pleasure +of unburdening himself upon the reader. Yet there was something amusing +in the situation; there was a joke--that rarest of all things in +Rome--latent in it, which one suspected only from the amiable, the +all-but-smiling behavior of the strikers. There was not the slightest +disorder during the two days that the strike lasted. When it was called +off at a meeting of the unions on Saturday night, one of the seven +Sundays of the Roman week dawned upon an activity at the neighboring +cab-stand no peacefuller and not much gayer than the silence and +solitude of the mornings previous. As for the general effect in the +city, you would hardly have known that particular Sunday from those +which had gone by the names of Friday and Saturday. Throughout Italy +there is now a Sunday-closing law whose effect in a land once of joyous +Sabbaths strikes some such chill to the heart as pierces it in Boston on +that day, or in the farther eastern or western avenues of New York, when +the Family Entrances are religiously locked. + +The Italian state has, in fact, so far taken the matter in charge as to +have established a secular holiday, coming once a week, which has almost +disestablished the holidays of the Church, formerly of much more +frequent occurrence. This secular holiday, which every workman has a +right to, he may neither give nor sell to his master. He may not even +loaf it away in the place where he works, lest he should be +clandestinely employed. He must go out of the shop or house or factory +or foundry, and spend his ten hours where he cannot be suspected of +employing them in productive industry for hire. This law has been +enacted in accordance with the will of the unions and no doubt in +correction of great abuses. Neither masters nor men now recognize the +old-fashioned _festa_ as they once did. Whether the men like the new +holiday so well, I did not get any of them explicitly to say. Of course, +they cannot all take it at once; they must take it turn about, and they +may not find their enforced leisure so lively as the old voluntary +saints' days, when their comrades were resting, too. As for the masters, +one of the employers of labor, whom I found filling his man's place, +would merely say: “It is the new law. No doubt we shall adjust ourselves +to it.” He did not complain. + + + + +X. SEEING ROME AS ROMANS SEE US + + +Shortly after our settlement in the Eternal City, which has so much more +time to be seen than the so-journer has to see it, I pleased myself with +the notion of surprising it by visiting in a studied succession the many +different piazzas. This, I thought, would acquaint me with the different +churches, and on the way to them I should make friends with the various +quarters. Everything, old or new, would have the charm of the +unexpected; no lurking ruin would escape me; no monument, whether column +or obelisk, statue, “storied urn or animated bust” or mere tablet, would +be safe from my indirect research. Before I knew it, I should know Rome +by heart, and this would be something to boast of long after I had +forgotten it. + +I could not say what suggested so admirable a notion, but it may have +been coming by chance one day on the statue of Giordano Bruno, and +realizing that it stood in the Campo di Fieri, on the spot where he was +burned three hundred years ago for abetting Copernicus in his +sacrilegious system of astronomy, and for divers other heresies, as well +as the violation of his monastic vows. I saw it with the thrill which +the solemn figure, heavily draped, deeply hooded, must impart as mere +mystery, and I made haste to come again in the knowledge of what it was +that had moved me so. Naturally I was not moved in the same measure a +second time. It was not that the environment was, to my mind, unworthy +the martyr, though I found the market at the foot of the statue given +over, not to flowers, as the name of the place might imply, but to such +homely fruits of the earth as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and, above +all, onions. There was a placidity in the simple scene that pleased me: +I liked the quiet gossiping of the old market-women over their baskets +of vegetables; the confidential fashion in which a gentle crone came to +my elbow and begged of me in undertone, as if she meant the matter to go +no further, was even mattering. But the solemnity of the face that +looked down on the scene was spoiled by the ribbon drawn across it to +fasten a wreath on the head, in the effort of some mistaken zealot of +free thought to enhance its majesty by decoration. It was the moment +when the society calling itself by Giordano Bruno's name was making an +effort for the suppression of ecclesiastical instruction in the public +schools; and on the anniversary of his martyrdom his effigy had suffered +this unmeant hurt. In all the churches there had been printed appeals to +parents against the agnostic attack on the altar and the home, and there +had been some of the open tumults which seem in Rome to express every +social emotion. But the clericals had triumphed, and an observer more +anxious than I to give a mystical meaning to accident might have +interpreted the disfiguring ribbon over Bruno's bronze lips as a new +silencing of the heretic. + +[Illustration: 31 THE CARNIVAL (AS IT ONCE WAS)] + +I certainly did not construe it so, and, if my notion of serially +visiting the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of +the Campo di Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any +mischance in my meditated vision of it. I had merely reflected that I +could not hope to carry out my scheme without greater expense both in +time and money than I could well afford, for, though cabs in Rome are +swift and cheap, yet the piazzas are many and widely distributed; and I +finally decided to indulge myself in a novelty of adventure verging +close upon originality. It had always seemed to me that the happy +strangers mounted on the tiers of seats that rise from front to back on +the motor-chariots for seeing New York and looking down, even from the +lowest place, on the life of our streets had a peculiar, almost a +bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means of a fresh +impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I have not +the courage to give, though the reader can perhaps imagine them. In Rome +I did not feel that the like reasons held; of all the unknown, I was one +of the most unknown; by me nobody would be put to the shame of +recognizing an acquaintance on the benches of the like chariot, or +forced to the cruelty of cutting him in my person. When once I had fully +realized this, it was only a question of the time when I should yield to +the temptation which renewed itself as often as I saw the stately +automobile passing through the storied streets, with its English legend +of “Touring Rome” inscribed on the back of the rear seat. There remained +the question whether I should go alone or whether I should ask the +countenance of friends in so bold an enterprise. When I suggested it to +some persons of the more courageous sex, they did not wait to be asked +to go with me; they instantly entreated to be allowed to go; they said +they had always wished to see Rome in that way; and we only waited to be +chosen by the raw and blustery afternoon which made us its own for the +occasion. + +It was the eve of the last sad day of such shrunken and faded carnival +as is still left to Rome, and there were signs of it in the straggling +groups of children in holiday costume, and in here and there a pair of +young girls in a cab, safely masked against identification and venting, +in the sense of wild escape, the joyous spirits kept in restraint all +the rest of the year. Already in the Corso, where our touring-car waited +for us at the first corner, a great cafe was turning itself inside out +with a spread of chairs and tables over the sidewalk, which we found +thronged on our return with spectators far outnumbering the merrymakers +of the carnival. Our car was not nearly so packed, and when we mounted +to the benches we found that the last and highest of them was left to +the sole occupancy of a young man, well enough dressed (his yellow +gloves may have been more than well enough) and well-mannered enough, +who continued enigmatical to the last. There was a German couple and +there were some French-speaking people; the rest of us were bound in the +tie of our common English. The agent of the enterprise accompanied us, +an international of undetermined race, and beside the chauffeur sat the +middle-aged, anxious-looking Italian who presently arose when we made +our first stop in the Piazza Colonna and harangued us in three +languages--successively, of course--concerning the Column of Marcus +Aurelius. He did not use the megaphone of his American confrere; and +from the shudder which the first sound of his voice must have sent +through a less fastidious substance than mine I perceived that an +address by megaphone I could not have borne; to that extreme of excess +even my modernism could not go. As it was, there was an instant when I +could have wished to be on foot, or even in a cab, with a red Baedeker +in my hand; and yet, as the orator went on, I had to own that he was +giving me a better account of the column than I could have got for +myself out of the guide-book. He spoke first in French, with an Italian +accent and occasionally an Italian idiom; then he spoke in English, and +then in a German which suffered from his knowledge of English. + +He sat down, looking rather spent with his effort, and on the way to our +next stop, at the Temple of Neptune, the agent examined us upon our +necessities in the article of language. He himself spoke such good +English that we could not do otherwise than declare that we could get on +perfectly with an address in French. The German pair, perhaps from +patriotic grudge, denied a working knowledge of the unfriendly tongue. +The solitary on the back seat, being asked in his turn, graciously +answered, “Toutes les langues me sont egales,” and thereafter we +suffered with the orator only through French and German. + +The reply which decided the matter launched us upon yet wider conjecture +regarding the unknown: was he a retired courier, a concierge out of +place, a professor of languages on his holiday, or merely an amateur of +philological studies? His declared proficiency was manifested in +unexpected measure as we drove away from the Temple of Neptune on +through the narrow street leading to it. Every motor has its peculiar +note, and our car had something like the scream of a wild animal in +pain, such as might have justly alarmed a stouter spirit than that of +the poor little cab-horse which we encountered at the corner of this +street. It reared, it plunged; when our chauffeur held us in it still +backed and filled so dangerously that the mother and children +overflowing the cab followed the example of the driver in spilling to +the ground. Then our good international, the agent, jumped down and, +mounting to the coachman's seat, took the reins and urged the horse +forward, while its driver pulled it by the bridle. All was of no effect +till the solitary of the back seat rose in his place and shouted to the +frightened creature in choice American: “What d' you mean, there? Come +on! Come on, you fool!” Then, as if it had been an “impenitent mule” in +some far-distant Far-Western incarnation, this Eoman cab-horse +recognized the voice of authority; it nerved itself against the +imaginary danger, and came steadily forward; our agent regained his +place, and we moved shriekingly on to the next object of interest. It +was not quite the note blown from level tubes of brass in the progress +of a conqueror, but we did not lack the cheers of a disinterested +populace, which at several points impartially applauded our orator's +French and German versions of his not always tacit Italian. + +Our height above the cheers helped preserve us from the sense of +anything ironical in them, and there was an advantage in the outlook +from our elevation which the wayfarer in cab or on foot can only +imagine. No such wayfarer can realize the vast scope and compass of our +excursion, which was but one of two excursions made on alternate +afternoons by the Touring-Rome wagons. It included, perhaps not quite in +the following order, after the Temple of Neptune, such objects of prime +importance as the Palazzo Madama, where Catharine de' Medici once dwelt +and where the Italian Senate now holds its sessions; the Fountain of +Trevi, the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the new Palace of Justice and +the Cavour monument beyond the Tiber, the Castle of Sant' Angelo, the +Vatican and St. Peter's, the Janiculum and the Garibaldi monument on it, +and the stupendous prospect of the city from that supreme top, the +bridge that Horatius held in Macaulay's ballad, the island in the Tiber +formed after the expulsion of the Tarquins by the river sand and drift +catching on the seed-corn thrown into the stream from the fields +consecrated to Mars, the Temple of Fortune, the once-supposed House of +Rienzi, and the former Temple of Vesta; the Palatine Hill and the +Aventine Hill, the Circus Maximus, the Colosseum, the Campidoglio, the +Theatre of Marcellus, the worst slum in Rome, where the worst boy in +Rome, flown with Carnival, will try to board your passing car; back to +Piazza Colonna through Piazza Monte Citerio, where the Italian House of +Deputies meets in the plain old palace of the same name. + +The mere mention of these storied places will kindle in the reader's +fancy a fire which he will feel all the need of if ever he verifies my +account of them in touring Rome on so cold an afternoon as that of our +excursion. The wind rose with our ascent of every elevation, if it did +not fall with our return to a lower level; on the Janiculum it blew a +blizzard in which the incongruous ilexes and laurels bowed and writhed, +and some groups of almond-trees in their pale bloom on a distant upland +mocked us with a derisive image of spring. At the foot of the steps to +the Campidoglio, where some of our party dismounted to go up and view +the statue of Marcus Aurelius, it was so cold that nothing but the sense +of a strong common interest prevented those who remained from persuading +the chauffeur to go on without the sight-seers. But we forbore, both +because we knew we were then very near the end of our tour, and because +we felt it would have been cruel to abandon the lady who had got out of +the car only by turning herself sidewise and could not have made her way +home on foot without sufferings which would justly have brought us to +shame. Certain idle particulars will always cling to the memory which +lets so many ennobling facts slip from it; and I find myself helpless +against the recollection of this poor lady's wearing a thick +motoring-veil which no curiosity could pierce, but which, when she +lifted it, revealed a complexion of heated copper and a gray mustache +such as nature vouchsafes to few women. + +The crowd, which thickened most in the Piazza di Venezia, had grown more +and more carnivalesque in attire and behavior. We had been obliged to +avoid the more densely peopled streets because, as our international +explained, if the car had slowed at any point the revellers would have +joined our excursion of their own initiative and accompanied us to the +end in overwhelming numbers. They wellnigh blocked the entrance of the +Corso when we got back to it, and the cafe where we had agreed to have +tea was so packed that our gay escapade began to look rather gloomy in +the retrospect. But suddenly a table was vacated; a waiter was caught, +in the vain attempt to ignore us, and given such a comprehensive order +that we could see respect kindling in his eyes, and before we could +reasonably have hoped it be spread before us tea and bread and butter +and tarts and little cakes, while scores of hungry spectators stood +round and flatteringly envied us. In this happy climax our adventure +showed as a royal progress throughout. We counted up the wonders of our +three hours' course in an absolutely novel light; and we said that +touring Rome was a thing not only not to be despised, but to be forever +proud of. + +For myself, I decided that if I were some poor hurried fellow-countryman +of mine, doing Europe in a month and obliged to scamp Rome with a couple +of days, I would not fail to spend two of them in what I must always +think of as a triumphal chariot. I resolved to take the second +excursion, not the next day perhaps, but certainly the day after the +next, and complete the most compendious impression of ancient, +mediaeval, and modern Rome that one can have; but the firmest resolution +sometimes has not force to hold one to it. The second excursion remains +for a second sojourn, when perhaps I may be able to solve the question +whether I was moved by a fine instinct of proportion or by mere innate +meanness in giving our orator at parting just two francs in recognition +of his eloquence. No one else, indeed, gave him anything, and he seemed +rather surprised by my tempered munificence. It might have been +mystically adjusted to the number of languages he used in addressing us; +if he had held to three languages I might have made it three francs; but +now I shall never be certain till I take the second excursion with a +company which imperatively requires English as well as French and +German, and with no solitary in yellow gloves to whom all languages are +alike. + +To this end I ought to have thrown a copper coin into the Fountain of +Trevi as we passed it. You may return to Rome without doing this, but it +is well known that if you do it you are sure to come back. The Fountain +of Trevi is alone worth coming back for, and I could not see that it +poured scanter streams than it formerly poured over brimming brinks or +from the clefts of the artificial rocks that spread in fine disorder +about the feet of its sea-gods and sea-horses; but they who mourn the +old papal rule accuse the present Italian government of stinting the +supply of water. To me there seemed no stint of water in any of the +fountains of Rome. In some a mere wasteful spilth seems the sole design +of the artist, as in the Fontana Paolina on the Janiculum, where the +cold wash of its deluge seemed to add a piercing chill to our windy +afternoon. The other fountains have each a quaint grace or absolute +charm or pleasing absurdity, whether the waters shower over groups of +more or less irrelevant statuary in their basins or spout into the air +in columns unfurling flags of spray and keeping the pavement about them +green with tender mould. The most sympathetic is the Fountain of the +Triton, who blows the water through his wreathed horn and on the coldest +day seems not to mind its refluent splash on his mossy back; in fact, he +seems rather to like it. + +[Illustration: 32 THE FOUNTAIN OF TREVI] + +He is one of many tritons, rivers, sea-gods, and aqueous allegories +similarly employed in Rome and similarly indifferent to what flesh and +blood might find the hardship of their calling. I had rashly said to +myself that their respective fountains needed the sun on them to be just +what one could wish, but the first gray days taught me better. Then the +thinly clouded sky dropped a softened light over their glitter and +sparkle and gave them a spirituality as much removed from the suggestion +of physical cold as any diaphanous apparition would suggest. Then they +seemed rapt into a finer beauty than that of earth, though I will not +pretend that they were alike beautiful. No fountain can be quite ugly, +but some fountains can be quite stupid, like, for instance, those which +give its pretty name to the Street of the Four Fountains and which +consist of two extremely plain Virtues and two very dull old Rivers, +diagonally dozing at each other over their urns in niches of the four +converging edifices. They are not quite so idiotic under their +disproportionate foliage as the conventional Egyptian lions of the +Fountain of Moses, with manes like the wigs of so many lord chancellors, +and with thin streams of water drooling from the tubes between their +lips. But these are the exceptional fountains; there are few sculptured +or architectural designs which the showering or spouting water does not +retrieve from error; and in Rome the water (deliciously potable) is so +abundant that it has force to do almost anything for beauty, even where, +as in the Fontana Paolina, it is merely a torrent tumbling over a +facade. It is lavished everywhere; in the Piazza Navona alone there are +three fountains, but then the Piazza Navona is very long, and three +fountains are few enough for it, even though one is that famous Fountain +of Bernini, in which he has made one of the usual rivers--the Nile, I +believe--holding his hand before his eyes in mock terror of the ungainly +facade of a rival architect's church opposite, lest it shall fall and +crush him. That, however, is the least merit of the fountain; and +without any fountain the Piazza Navona would be charming; it is such a +vast lake of sunshine and is so wide as well as long, and is so mellowed +with such rich browns and golden grays in the noble edifices. + +I do not know, now, what all the edifices are, but there are churches, +more than one, and palaces, and the reader can find their names in any +of the guidebooks. If I were buying piazzas in Rome I should begin with +the Navona, but there are enough to suit all purses and tastes. The +fountains would be thrown in, I suppose, along with the churches and +palaces; but I really never inquired, and, in fact, not having carried +out my plan of visiting them all, I am in no position to advise +intending purchasers. What I can say is that if you are in a hurry to +inspect, that kind of property, and in immediate need of a piazza, you +cannot do better than take the wagon for touring Rome. In two days you +can visit every piazza worth having, including the Piazza di Spagna, +where there is a fountain in the form of a marble galley in which you +can embark for any fairyland you like, through the Via del Babuino and +the Piazza del Popolo. Come to think of it, I am not so sure but I would +as soon have the Piazza del Popolo as the Piazza Navona. If the +fountains are not so fine, they are still very fine, and the Pincian +Hill overtops one side of the place, with foliaged drives and gardened +walks descending into it. + +Everything of importance that did not happen elsewhere in Rome seems to +have happened in the Piazza del Popolo, and I may name as a few of its +attractions for investors the facts that it was here Sulla's funeral +pyre was kindled; that Nero was buried on the left side of it, and out +of his tomb grew a huge walnut-tree, the haunt of demoniacal crows till +the Madonna appeared to Paschal II. and bade him cut it down; that the +arch-heretic Luther sojourned in the Augustinian convent here while in +Rome; that the dignitaries of Church and State received Christina of +Sweden here when, after her conversion, she visited the city; that +Lucrezia Borgia celebrated her betrothal in one of the churches; that it +used to be a favorite place for executing brigands, whose wives then +became artists' models, and whose sons, if they were like Cardinal +Antonelli, became princes of the Church. So I learn from Hare in his +_Walks in Rome,_ and, if he enables me to boast the rivalry of the +Piazza Navona in no such array of merits, still I will not deny my love +for it. Certainly it was not a favorite place for executing brigands, +but the miracle which saved St. Agnes from, cruel shame was wrought in +the vaulted chambers under the church of her name there, and that is +something beyond all the wonders of the Piazza del Popolo for its pathos +and for its poetry. But, if the Piazza Navona had no other claim on me, +I should find a peculiar pleasure in the old custom of stopping the +escapes from its fountains and flooding with water the place I saw +flooded with sun, for the patricians to wade and drive about in during +the very hot weather and eat ices and drink coffee, while the plebeians +looked sumptuously down on them from the galleries built around the +lake. + + + + +XI. IN AND ABOUT THE VATICAN + +[Illustration: 33 COLONNADE AND FOUNTAIN AT ST. PETER'S] + +It would be a very bold or very incompetent observer of the Roman +situation who should venture upon a decided opinion of the relations of +the monarchy and the papacy. You hear it said with intimations of +special authority in the matter, that both king and pope are well +content with the situation, and it is clearly explained how and why they +are so; but I did not understand how or why at the moment of the +explanation, or else I have now forgotten whatever was clear in it. I +believe, however, it was to the effect that the pope willingly remained +self-prisoned in the Vatican because, if he came out, he might not only +invalidate a future claim upon the sovereign dignity which the Italian +occupation had invaded, but he might incur risks from the more +unfriendly extremists which would at least be very offensive. On his +part, it was said that the king used the embarrassment occasioned by the +pope's attitude as his own defence against the anti-Clericals, who +otherwise would have urged him to far more hostile measures with the +Church. The king and the pope were therefore not very real enemies, it +was said by those who tried to believe themselves better informed than +others. + +To the passing or tarrying stranger the situation does not offer many +dramatic aspects. When you are going to St. Peter's, if you will look up +at the plain wall of the Vatican palace you will see two windows with +their shutters open, and these are the windows of the rooms where Pius +X. lives, a voluntary captive; the closed blinds are those of the rooms +where Leo XIII. died, a voluntary captive. Whatever we think of the +wisdom or the reason of the papal protest against the occupation of the +States of the Church by the Italian people, these windows have their +pathos. The pope immures himself in the Vatican and takes his walks in +the Vatican gardens, whose beauty I could have envied him, if he had not +been a prisoner, when I caught a glimpse of them one morning, with the +high walls of their privet and laurel alleys blackening in the sun. + +But otherwise the severest Protestant could not cherish so unkind a +feeling toward the gentle priest whom all men speak well of for his +piety and humility. It is a touching fact of his private life that his +three maiden sisters, who wish to be as near him as they can, have their +simple lodging over a shop for the sale of holy images in a street +opening into the Piazza of St. Peter's. We all know that they are of a +Venetian family neither rich nor great; their pride and joy is solely in +him, as it well might be, and it is said that when they come to hear him +in some high function at the Sistine Chapel their rapture of affection +and devotion is as evident as it is sweet and touching. + +Their relation to him is the supremely poetic fact of a situation which +even one who knows of it merely by hearsay cannot refuse to feel. The +tragical effect of the situation is in the straining and sundering of +family ties among those who take one side or the other in the difference +of the monarchy and papacy. I do not know how equally Roman society, in +the large or the small sense, is divided into the Black of the Papists +and the White of the Monarchists (for the mediaeval names of Neri and +Bianchi are revived in the modern differences), but one cannot help +hearing of instances in which their political and religious opinions +part fathers and sons and mothers and daughters. These are promptly +noted to the least-inquiring foreigner, and his imagination is kindled +by the attribution of like variances to the members of the reigning +family, who are reported respectively blacker and whiter if they are not +as positively black or white as the nobles. Some of these are said to +meet one another only in secret across the gulf that divides them +openly; but how far the cleavage may descend among other classes I +cannot venture to conjecture; I can only testify to some expressions of +priest-hatred which might have shocked a hardier heretical substance +than mine. + +One Sunday we went to the wonderful old Church of San Clemente, which is +built three deep into the earth or high into the air, one story above or +below the other, in the three successive periods of imperial, mediaeval, +and modern Rome. It was the day when the church is illuminated, and the +visitors come with their Baedekers and Hares and Murrays to identify its +antiquities of architecture and fresco; it was full of people, and, if I +fancied an unusual proportion of English-speaking converts among them, +that might well have been, since the adjoining convent belongs to the +Irish Dominicans. But I carried with me through all the historic and +artistic interest of the place the sensation left by two inscriptions +daubed in black on the white convent wall next the church. One of these +read: _“VV. la Repubblica”_ (Long live the Republic), and the other: +_“M. ai Preti”_ (Death to the Priests). No attempt had been made to +efface them, and as they expressed an equal hatred for the monarchy and +the papacy, neither laity nor clergy may have felt obliged to interfere. +Perhaps, however, it was rightly inferred that the ferocity of one +inscription might be best left to counteract the influence of the other. +I know that with regard to the priests you experience some such effect +from the atrocious attacks in the chief satirical paper of Rome, The +name of this paper was given me, with a deprecation not unmixed with +recognition of its cleverness, by an Italian friend whom I was making my +creditor for some knowledge of Roman journalism; and the sole copy of it +which I bought was handed to me with a sort of smiling abhorrence by the +kindly old kiosk woman whom I liked best to buy my daily papers of. When +I came to look it through, I made more and more haste, for its satire of +the priests was of an indecency so rank that it seemed to offend the +nose as well as the eye. To turn from the paper was easy, but from the +fact of its popularity a painful impression remained. It was not a +question of whether the priests were so bad as all that, but whether its +many readers believed them so, or believed them bad short of it, in the +kind of wickedness they were accused of. + +There can be no doubt of the constant rancor between the Clericals and +the Radicals in their different phases throughout Italy. There can be +almost no doubt that the Radicals will have their way increasingly, and +that if, for instance, the catechism is kept in the public schools this +year, it will be cast out some other year not far hence. Much, of +course, depends upon whether the status can maintain itself. It is, like +the status everywhere and always, very anomalous; but it is difficult to +imagine either the monarchy or the papacy yielding at any point. +Apparently the State is the more self-assertive of the two, but this is +through the patriotism which is the political life of the people. It +must always be remembered that when the Italians entered Rome and made +it the capital of their kingdom they did not drive out the French +troops, which had already been withdrawn; they drove out the papal +troops, the picturesque and inefficient foreign volunteers who remained +behind. Every memorial of that event, therefore, is a blow at the +Church, so far as the Church is identified with the lost temporal power. +One of the chief avenues is named Twenty-second September Street because +the national troops entered Rome on that date; the tablets on the Porta +Pia where they entered, the monument on the Pincio to the Cairoli +brothers, who died for Italy; the statues of Garibaldi, of Cavour, of +Victor Emmanuel everywhere painfully remind the papacy of its lost +sovereignty. But the national feeling has gone in its expression beyond +and behind the patriotic occupation of Rome; and no one who suffered +conspicuously, at any time in the past, for freedom of thought through +the piety of the fallen power is suffered to be forgotten. On its side +the Church enters its perpetual protest in the self-imprisonment of the +pope; and here and there, according to its opportunity, it makes record +of what it has suffered from the State. For instance, at St. John +Lateran, which theoretically forms part of the Leonine City of the Popes +and is therefore extraterritorial to Italy, a stretch of wall is +suffered to remain scarred by the cannon-shot which the monarchy fired +when it took Rome from the papacy. + +Doubtless there are other monuments of the kind, but their enumeration +would not throw greater light on a situation which endures with no +apparent promise of change. The patience of the Church is infinite; it +lives and it outlives. Remembering that Arianism was older than +Protestantism when Catholicism finally survived it, we must not be +surprised if the Roman Church shall hold out against the Italian State +not merely decades, but centuries. In the meanwhile to its children from +other lands it means Rome above all the other Romes; and on us, its +step-children of different faiths or unfaiths, its prison-house--if we +choose so to think of the Vatican--has a supreme claim, if we love the +sculpture of pagan Rome or the painting of Christian Rome. + +We swarm to its galleries in every variety of nationality, with +guide-books in every tongue, and we are very queer, for the most part, +to any one of our number who can sufficiently exteriorate himself to get +the rest of us in perspective. It is probably well that most of us do +not stagger under any great knowledge of the crushing history of the +place, which has been the scene of the most terrible experiences of the +race, the most touching, the most august. Provisionally ignorant, at +least, we begin to appear at the earliest practicable hour before the +outermost stairway of the Vatican, and, while the Swiss Guards still +have on their long, blue cloaks to keep their black and yellow legs +warm, mount to the Sistine Chapel. Here we help instruct one another, as +we stand about or sit about in twos and threes or larger groups, reading +aloud from our polyglot Baedekers while we join in identifying the +different facts. Here, stupendously familiar, whether we have seen it +before or not, is Michelangelo's giant fresco of the Judgment, as +prodigious as we imagined or remembered it; here are his mighty Prophets +and his mighty Sibyls; and here below them, in incomparably greater +charm, are the frescos of Botticelli, with the grace of his Primavera +playing through them all like a strain of music and taking the soul with +joy. + +[Illustration: 34 SISTINE CHAPEL, VATICAN PALACE] + +It is the same crowd in the Raphael Stanze, but rather silenter, for by +now we have taught ourselves enough from our Baedekers at least to read +them under our breaths, and we talk low before the frescos and the +canvases. Some of us are even mute in the presence of the School of +Athens, whatever reserves we may utter concerning the Transfiguration. +If we are honest, we more or less own what our impressions really are +from those other famous works, concerning which our impressions are +otherwise altogether and inexpressibly unimportant; it is a question of +ethics and not aesthetics, as most of our simple-hearted company suppose +it to be; and, if we are dishonest, we pretend to have felt and thought +things at first-hand from them which we have learned at second-hand from +our reading. I will confess, for my small part, that I had more pleasure +in the coloring and feeling of some of the older canvases and in here +and there a Titian than in all the Raphaels in the Stanze of his name. + +I was not knowing his works for the first time; no one perhaps does +that, such is the multiplicity of the copies of them; and I vividly +remembered them from my acquaintance with the originals four decades +before, as I had remembered the Michelangelos; but in their presence and +in the presence of so many other masterpieces in the different rooms, +with their horrible miracles and atrocious martyrdoms, I realized as for +the first time what a bloody religion ours was. It was such relief, such +rest, to go from those broilings and beheadings and crucifixions and +Sayings and stabbings into the long, tranquil aisles of the museum where +the marble men and women, created for earthly immortality by Greek art, +welcomed me to their serenity and sanity. The earlier gods might have +been the devils which the early Christians fancied them, but they did +not look it; they did not look as if it was they that had loosed the +terrors upon mankind out of which the true faith has but barely +struggled at last, now when its relaxing grasp seems slipping from the +human mind. I remembered those peaceful pagans so perfectly that I could +have gone confidently to this or that and hailed him friend; and though +I might not have liked to claim the acquaintance of all of them in the +flesh, in the marble I fled to it as refuge from the cruel visions of +Christian art. If this is perhaps saying too much, I wish also to hedge +from the wholesale censure of my fellow-sight-seers which I may have +seemed to imply. They did not prevail so clutteringly in the sculpture +galleries as in the Sistine Chapel and the Stanze. One could have the +statues as much to one's self as one liked; there were courts with +murmuring fountains in them; and there was a view of Rome from a certain +window, where no fellow-tourist intruded between one and the innumerable +roofs and domes and towers, and the heights beyond whose snows there was +nothing but blue sky. It was a beautiful morning, with a sun mild as +English summer, which did not prevent the afternoon from turning cold +with wind and raining and hailing and snowing. This in turn did not keep +off a fine red sunset, with an evening star of glittering silver that +brightened as the sunset faded. At Rome the weather can be of as many +minds in March as in April at New York. + +But through all one's remembrance of the Roman winter a sentiment of +spring plays enchantingly, like that grace of Botticelli's Primavera in +his Sistine frescos. It is not a sentiment of summer, though it is +sometimes a summer warmth which you feel, and except in the steam-heated +hotels it does not penetrate to the interiors. In the galleries and the +churches you must blow your nails if you wish to thaw your fingers, but, +if you go out-of-doors, there is a radiant imitation of May awaiting +you. She takes you by your thick glove and leads you in your fur-lined +overcoat through sullen streets that open upon sunny squares, with +fountains streaming into the crystal air, and makes you own that this is +the Italian winter as advertised--that is, if you are a wanderer and a +stranger; if you are an Italian and at home you keep in the out-door +warmth, but shun the sun, and in-doors you wrap up more thickly than +ever, or you go to bed if you have a more luxurious prejudice against +shivering. If you are a beggar, as you very well may be in Rome, you +impart your personal heat to a specific curbstone or the spot which you +select as being most in the path of charity, and cling to it from dawn +till dark. Or you acquire somehow the rights of a chair just within the +padded curtain of a church, and do not leave it till the hour for +closing. The Roman beggars are of all claims upon pity, but preferably I +should say they were blind, and some of these are quite young girls, and +mostly rather cheerful. But the very gayest beggar I remember was a +legless man at the gate of the Vatican Museum; the saddest was a sullen +dwarf on the way to this cripple, whose gloom a donative even of +twenty-five centessimi did not suffice to abate. + + + + +XII. SUPERFICIAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONJECTURES + + +It had seemed to me that in the afternoons of the old papal times, so +dear to foreigners who never knew them, I used to see a series of +patrician ladies driving round and round on the Pincio, reclining in +their landaus and shielding their complexions from the November suns of +the year 1864 with the fringed parasols of the period. In the doubt +which attends all recollections of the past, after age renders us +uncertain of the present, I hastened on my second Sunday at Rome in +February, 1908, to enjoy this vision, if possible. I found the Pincio +unexpectedly near; I found the sunshine; I found the familiar winter +warmth which in Southern climates is so unlike the summer warmth in +ours; but the drive which I had remembered as a long ellipse had +narrowed to a little circle, where one could not have driven round +faster than a slow trot without danger of vertigo. I did not find that +series of apparent principessas or imaginable marchesas leaning at their +lovely lengths in their landaus. I found in overwhelming majority the +numbered victorias, which pass for cabs in Rome, full of decent +tourists, together with a great variety of people on foot, but not much +fashion and no swells that my snobbish soul could be sure of. There was, +indeed, one fine moment when, at a retired point of the drive, I saw two +private carriages drawn up side by side in their encounter, with two +stout old ladies, whom I decided to be dowager countesses at the least, +partially projected from their opposing windows and lost in a delightful +exchange, as I hoped, of scandal. But the only other impressive +personality was that of an elderly, obviously American gentleman, in the +solitary silk hat and long frock-coat of the scene. There were other +Americans, but none so formal; the English were in all degrees of +informality down to tan shoes and at least one travelling-cap. The +women's dress, whether they were on foot or in cabs, was not striking, +though more than half of them were foreigners and could easily have +afforded to outdress the Italians, especially the work people, though +these were there in their best. + +[Illustration: 35 PIAZZA DEL POPOLO FROM THE PINCIAN HILL] + +There was a band-stand in the space first reached by the promenaders, +and there ought clearly to have been a band, but I was convinced that +there was to be none by a brief colloquy between one of the cab-drivers +(doubtless goaded to it by his fair freight) and the gentlest of Roman +policemen, whose response was given in accents of hopeful compassion: + +CABMAN: _“Musica, no?”_ (No music?) + +POLICEMAN: “_Forse l' avremo oramai”_ (Perhaps we shall have it +presently.) + +We did not have it at all that Sunday, possibly because it was the day +after the assassination of the King of Portugal, and the flags were at +half-mast everywhere. So we went, such of us as liked, to the parapet +overlooking the Piazza del Popolo, and commanding one of those prospects +of Rome which are equally incomparable from every elevation. I, for my +part, made the dizzying circuit of the brief drive on foot in the dark +shadows of the roofing ilexes (if they are ilexes), and then strolled +back and forth on the paths set thick with plinths bearing the heads of +the innumerable national great--the poets, historians, artists, +scientists, politicians, heroes--from the ancient Roman to the modern +Italian times. I particularly looked up the poets of the last hundred +years, because I had written about them in one of my many forgotten +books, till I fancied a growing consciousness in them at this encounter +with an admirer; they, at least, seemed to remember my book. Then I went +off to the cafe overlooking them in their different alleys, and had tea +next a man who was taking lemon instead of milk in his. Here I was beset +with an impassioned longing to know whether he was a Russian or +American, since the English always take milk in their tea, but I could +not ask, and when I had suffered my question as long as I could in his +presence I escaped from it, if you can call it escaping, to the more +poignant question of what it would be like to come, Sunday after Sunday, +to the Pincio, in the life-long voluntary exile of some Americans I +knew, who meant to spend the rest of their years under the spell of +Rome. I thought, upon the whole, that it would be a dull, sad fate, for +somehow we seem born in a certain country in order to die in it, and I +went home, to come again other Sundays to the Pincio, but not all the +Sundays I promised myself. + +On one of these Sundays I found Roman boys playing an inscrutable game +among the busts of their storied compatriots, a sort of “I spy” or “Hide +and go whoop,” counting who should be “It” in an Italian version of +“Oneary, ory, ickory, an,” and then scattering in every direction behind +the plinths and bushes. They were not more molestive than boys always +are in a world which ought to be left entirely to old people, and I +could not see that they did any harm. But somebody must have done harm, +for not only was a bust here and there scribbled over in pencil, but the +bust of Machiavelli had its nose freshly broken off in a jagged fracture +that was very hurting to look at. This may have been done by some +mistaken moralist, who saw in the old republican adviser of princes that +enemy of mankind which he was once reputed to be. At any rate, I will +not attribute the mutilation to the boys of Rome, whom I saw at other +times foregoing so many opportunities of mischief in the Villa +Bor-ghese. One of them even refused money from me there when I +misunderstood his application for matches and offered him some coppers. +He put my tip aside with a dignified wave of his hand and a proud +backward step; and, indeed, I ought to have seen from the flat, broad +cap he wore that he was a school-boy of civil condition. The Romans are +not nearly so dramatic as the Neapolitans or Venetians or even as the +Tuscans; but once in the same pleasance I saw a controversy between +school-boys which was carried on with an animation full of beauty and +finish. They argued back and forth, not violently, but vividly, and one +whom I admired most enforced his reasons with charming gesticulations, +whirling from his opponents with quick turns of his body and many a +renunciatory retirement, and then facing about and advancing again upon +the unconvinced. I decided that his admirable drama had been studied +from the histrionics of his mother in domestic scenes; and, if I had +been one of those other boys, I should have come over to his side +instantly. + +The Roman manners vary from Roman to Roman, just as our own manners, if +we had any, would vary from New-Yorker to New-Yorker. Zola thinks the +whole population is more or less spoiled with the conceit of Rome's +ancient greatness, and shows it. One could hardly blame them if this +were so; but I did not see any strong proof of it, though I could have +imagined it on occasion. I should say rather that they had a republican +simplicity of manner, and I liked this better in the shop people and +work people than the civility overflowing into servility which one finds +among the like folk, for instance, in England. I heard complaints from +foreigners that the old-time deference of the lower classes was gone, +but I did not miss it. Once in a cafe, indeed, the waiter spoke to me in +_Voi_ (you) instead of _Lei_ (lordship), but the Neapolitans often do +this, and I took it for a friendly effort to put me at my ease in a +strange tongue with a more accustomed form. We were trying to come +together on the kind of tea I wanted, but we failed, if I wanted it +strong, for I got it very weak and tepid. I thought another day that it +would be stronger if I could get it brought hotter, but it was not, and +so I went no more to a place where I was liable to be called You instead +of Lordship and still get weak tea. I think this was a mistake of mine +and a loss, for at that cafe I saw some old-fashioned Italian types +drinking their black coffee at afternoon tea-time out of tumblers, and +others calling for pen and ink and writing letters, and ladies sweetly +asking for newspapers and reading them there; and I ought to have +continued coming to study them. + +As to my conjectures of republican quality in the Romans, I had explicit +confirmation from a very intelligent Italian who said of the anomalous +social and political situation in Rome: “We Italians are naturally +republicans, and, if it were a question of any other reigning family, we +should have the republic. But we feel that we owe everything, the very +existence of the nation, to the house of Savoy, and we are loyal to it +in our gratitude. Especially we are true to the present king.” It is +known, of course, that Menotti Garibaldi continues the republican that +his father always was, but I heard of his saying that, if a republic +were established, Victor Emmanuel III. would be overwhelmingly chosen +the first president. It is the Socialists who hold off unrelentingly +from the monarchy, and not the republicans, as they can be differenced +from them. One of the well-known Roman anomalies is that some members of +the oldest families are or have been Socialists; and such a noble was +reproached because he would not go to thank the king in recognition of +some signal proof of his public spirit and unselfish patriotism. He +owned the generosity of the king's behavior and his claim upon popular +acknowledgment, but he said that he had taught the young men of his +party the duty of ignoring the monarchy, and he could not go counter to +the doctrine he had preached. + +If I venture to speak now of a very extraordinary trait of the municipal +situation at Rome, it must be without the least pretence to authority or +to more than such superficial knowledge as the most incurious visitor to +Rome can hardly help having. In the capital of Christendom, where the +head of the Church dwells in a tradition of supremacy hardly less +Italian than Christian, the syndic, or mayor, is a Jew, and not merely a +Jew, but an alien Jew, English by birth and education, a Londoner and an +Oxford man. More yet, he is a Freemason, which in Italy means things +anathema to the Church, and he is a very prominent Freemason. With +reference to the State, his official existence, though not inimical, is +through the fusion of the political parties which elected him hardly +less anomalous. This combination overthrew the late Clerical city +government, and it included Liberals, Republicans, Socialists, and all +the other anti-Clericals. Whatever liberalism or republicanism means, +socialism cannot mean less than the economic solution of regality and +aristocracy in Europe, and in Italy as elsewhere. It does not mean the +old-fashioned revolution; it means simply the effacement of all social +differences by equal industrial obligations. So far as the Socialists +can characterize it, therefore, the actual municipal government of Rome +is as antimonarchical as it is antipapal. But the syndic of Rome is a +man of education, of culture, of intelligence, and he is evidently a man +of consummate tact. He has known how to reconcile the warring elements, +which made peace in his election, to one another and to their outside +antagonists, to the Church and to the State, as well as to himself, in +the course he holds over a very rugged way. His opportunities of +downfall are pretty constant, it will be seen, when it is explained that +if a measure with which he is identified fails in the city council it +becomes his duty to resign, like the prime-minister of England in the +like case with Parliament, But Mr. Nathan, who is as alien in his name +as in his race and religion, and is known orally to the Romans as Signor +Nahtahn, has not yet been obliged to resign. He has felt his way through +every difficulty, and has not yet been identified with any fatally +compromising measure. In such an extremely embarrassing predicament as +that created by the conflict between the labor unions and the police +early in April, and eventuating in the two days' strike, he knew how to +do the wise thing and the right thing. As to the incident, he held his +hand and he held his tongue, but he went to visit the wounded workmen in +the hospital, and he condoled with their families. He was somewhat +blamed for that, but his action kept for him the confidence of that +large body of his supporters who earn their living with their hands. + +It is said that the common Romans do not willingly earn their living +with their hands; that they like better being idle and, so far as they +can, ornamental. In this they would not differ from the uncommon Romans, +the moneyed, the leisured, the pedigreed classes, who reproach them for +their indolence; but I do not know whether they are so indolent as all +that or not. I heard it said that they no longer want work, and that +when they get it they do not do it well--a supposed effect of the +socialism which is supposed to have spoiled their manners. I heard it +said more intelligently, as I thought, that they are not easily +disciplined, and that they cannot be successfully associated in the +industries requiring workmen to toil in large bodies together; they will +not stand that. Also I heard it said, as I thought again rather +intelligently, that where work is given them to do after a certain +model, they will conform perfectly for the first three or four times; +then their fatal creativeness comes into play, and they begin to better +their instruction by trying to improve upon the patterns--that is, they +are artists, not artisans. They must please their fancy in their work or +they cannot do it well. From my own experience I cannot say whether this +is generally or only sometimes true, but I can affirm that where they +delayed or erred in their work they took their failure very amiably. I +never saw sweeter patience than that of the Roman matron who had +undertaken a small job of getting spots out of a garment, and who quite +surpassed me in self-control when she announced, day after appointed +day, that the work was not done yet or not done perfectly; she was +politeness itself. + +On the other hand, some young ladies at a fashionable concert which the +queen-mother honored with her presence did not seem very polite. They +kept on their immense hats, as women still do in all public places on +the European continent, and they seized as many chairs as they could for +friends who did not come, and at supreme moments they stood up on their +chairs and spoiled such poor chance of seeing the queen-mother as the +stranger might have had. While the good King Umberto lived the stranger +would have had many other chances, for it is said that the queen showed +herself with him to the people at the windows of their palace every +afternoon; but in her widowhood she lives retired, though now and then +her carriage may be seen passing through the streets, with four special +policemen on bicycles following it. These waited about the doorway of +the concert-hall that afternoon and formed a very simple, if effective, +guard. In fact, it might be said that in its relations with the popular +life the reigning family could hardly be simpler. The present king and +queen are not so much seen in public as King Umberto and Queen +Margherita were, but it is known from many words and deeds that King +Victor Emmanuel wishes to be the friend, if not the acquaintance, of his +people. When it was proposed to push the present tunnel, with its walks +and drives and trolley-lines, under the Quirinal Palace and gardens, so +as to connect the two principal business quarters of the city, the king +was notified that the noise and jar of the traffic in it might interfere +with his comfort. He asked if the tunnel would be for the general +advantage, and, when this could not be denied, he gave his consent in +words to some such effect as “That settles it.” When the German Emperor +last visited Rome he is said to have had some state question as to +whether he should drive on a certain occasion to the Palatine with the +king's horses or the pope's. He who told the story did not remember how +the question was solved by the emperor, but he said, “Our king walked.” + +All this does not mean republican simplicity in the king; a citizen king +is doubtless a contradiction in terms anywhere out of France, and even +there Louis Philippe found the part difficult. But there is no doubt +that the King of Italy means to be the best sort of constituional king, +and, as he is in every way an uncommon man, he will probably succeed. +One may fancy in him, if one likes, something of that almost touching +anxiety of thoughtful Italians to be and to do all that they can for +Italy, in a patriotism that seems as enlightened as it is devoted. If I +had any criticism to make of such Italians it would be that they +expected, or that they asked, too much of themselves. To be sure, they +have a right to expect much, for they have done wonders with a country +which, without great natural resources except of heart and brain, +entered bankrupt into its national existence, and has now grown +financially to the dimensions of its vast treasury building, with a +paper currency at par and of equal validity with French and English +money. If the industrial conditions in Italy were so bad as we +compassionate outsiders have been taught to suppose, this financial +change is one of the most important events accomplished in Europe since +the great era of the racial unifications began. No one will pretend that +there have not been great errors of administration in Italy, but +apparently the Italians have known how to learn wisdom from their folly. +There has been a great deal of industrial adversity; the cost of living +has advanced; the taxes are very heavy, and the burdens are unequally +adjusted; many speculators have been ruined, and much honestly invested +money has been lost. But wages have increased with the prices and rents +and taxes, and in a country where every ounce of coal that drives a +wheel of production or transportation has to be brought a thousand miles +manufactures and railroads have been multiplied. + +The state has now taken over the roads and has added their cost to that +of its expensive army and navy, but no reasonable witness can doubt that +the Italians will be equal to this as well as their other national +undertakings. These in Rome are peculiarly difficult and onerous, +because they must be commensurate with the scale of antiquity. In a city +surviving amid the colossal ruins of the past it would be grotesque to +build anything of the modest modern dimensions such as would satisfy the +eye in other capitals. The Palace of Finance, at a time when Italian +paper was at a discount almost equal to that of American paper during +the Civil War, had to be prophetic of the present solvency in size. The +yet-unfinished Palace of Justice (one dare not recognize its beauty +above one's breath) must be planned so huge that the highest story had +to be left off if the foundations were to support the superstructure; +the memorial of Victor Emmanuel II. must be of a vastness in keeping +with the monuments of imperial Rome, some of which it will partly +obscure. Yet as the nation has grown in strength under burdens and +duties, it will doubtless prove adequate to the colossal architectural +enterprises of its capital. Private speculation in Rome brought disaster +twenty-five years ago, but now the city has overflowed with new life the +edifices that long stood like empty sepulchres, and public enterprises +cannot finally fail; otherwise we should not be digging the Panama Canal +or be trying to keep the New York streets in repair. We may confide in +the ability of the Italians to carry out their undertakings and to pay +the cost out of their own pockets. It is easy to criticise them, but we +cannot criticise them more severely than they criticise themselves; and +perhaps, as our censure cannot profit them, we might with advantage to +ourselves, now and then, convert it into recognition of the great things +they have accomplished. + + + + +XIII. CASUAL IMPRESSIONS + + +The day that we arrived in Rome the unclouded sun was yellow on the +white dust of the streets, which is never laid by a municipal +watering-cart, though sometimes it is sprinkled into mire from the +garden-hose of the abutting hotels; and in my rashness I said that for +Rome you want sun and you want youth. Yet there followed many gray days +when my age found Rome very well indeed, and I would not have the +septuagenarian keep away because he is no longer in the sunny sixties. +He may see through his glasses some things hidden even from the eyes of +the early forties. If he drives out beyond the Porta Pia, say, some +bright afternoon, and notes how the avenue between the beautiful old +villas is also bordered by many vacant lots advertised for sale as well +as built up with pleasant new houses, he will be able to carry away with +him the significant fact that a convenient and public-spirited +trolley-line has the same suburban effect in Rome, Italy, as in Rome, +New York. If he meets some squadrons of cavalry or some regiments of +foot, in that military necessity of constant movement which the civilian +can never understand, he may make the useful reflection that it is much +better to have the troops out of the city than in it, and he can praise +the wisdom of the Italian government accordingly. On the neighboring +mountains the presence or absence of snow forms the difference between +summer and winter in Rome, and will suggest the question whether, after +all, our one continental weather is better than the many local weathers +of Europe; and perhaps he will acquire national modesty in owning that +there is something more picturesque in the indications of those azure or +silvery tops than in his morning paper's announcement that there is or +is not a lower pressure in the region of the lakes. + +At any rate, I would not have him note the intimations of such a drive +at less worth than those of any more conventional fact of his Roman +sojourn. If one is quite honest, or merely as honest as one may be with +safety, one will often own to one's self that something merely +incidental to one's purpose, in visiting this memorable place or that, +was of greater charm and greater value than the fulfilment of a direct +purpose. One happy morning I went, being in the vicinity, to renew the +acquaintance with the Tarpeian Rock, which I had hastened to make on my +first visit to Rome. I had then found it so far from such a frightfully +precipitous height as I had led myself to expect that I came away and +rather mocked it in print. But now, possibly because the years had +moderated all my expectations in life, I thought the Tarpeian Rock very +respectably steep and quite impressively lofty; either the houses at its +foot had sunk with their chimneys and balconies, or the rock had risen, +so that one could no longer be hurled from it with impunity. We looked +at it from an arbor of the lovely little garden which we were let into +beyond the top of the rock, and which was the pleasance of some sort of +hospital. I think there were probably flowers there, since it was a +garden, but what was best was the almond-tree covering the whole space +with a roof of bloom, and in this roof a score of birds that sang +divinely. + +[Illustration: 36 THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN] + +I am aware of bringing a great many birds into these papers; but really +Rome would not be Rome without them; and I could not exaggerate their +number or the sweetness of their song. They particularly abounded in the +cloistered and gardened close of the Cistercian Convent, which three +hundred years ago ensconsed itself within the ruinous Baths of +Diocletian. I have no fable at hand to explain what seems the special +preference of the birds for this garden; it is possibly an idiosyncrasy, +something like that of the cats which make Trajan's Forum their favorite +resort. All that I can positively say is that if I were a bird I would +ask nothing better than to frequent the cypresses of that garden and +tune my numbers for the entertainment of the audience of extraordinary +monsters in the aisles below, which bea'in plinths of clipped privet and +end marble heads of horses, bulls, elephants, rhinoceroses, and their +like. I do not pretend to be exact in their nomination; they may be +other animals; but I am sure of their attention to the birds. I am not +quite so sure of the attention of the antique shapes in the rooms of the +Ludovisi collection looking into the close. I fancy them preoccupied +with the in-doors cold, so great in all Italian galleries, and scarcely +tempered for them by the remote and solitary brazier over which the +custodians take turns in stifling themselves. They cannot come down +into the sun and song of the garden, to which the American tourist may +return from visiting them, to thaw out his love of the beautiful. + +They are not so many or so famous as their marble brothers and sisters +in the Vatican Museum, but the tourist should not miss seeing them. +Neither should he miss any accessible detail of the environing ruins of +the Diocletian Baths. Let him not think because they are so handy, and +so next door, as it were, to the railway station where he arrives, and +to Cook's office where he goes for his letters next morning, that they +are of less merit than other monuments of imperial Rome. They are not +only colossally vast, but they are singularly noble, as well as so +admirably convenient. Because they are so convenient, the modern Romans +have turned their cavernous immensity to account in the trades and +industries, and have built them up in carpenters' and blacksmiths' and +plumbers' shops, where there is a cheerful hammering and banging much +better than the sullen silence of more remote and difficult ruins. In +color they are a very agreeable reddish brown, though not so soft to the +eye as the velvety masses of the Palatine, which at any distance great +enough to obscure their excavation have a beauty like that of primitive +nature. I do not know but you see these best from the glazed terrace of +that restaurant on the Aventine which is the resort of the well-advised +Romans and visitors, and from which you look across to the mount of +fallen and buried grandeur over a champaign of gardens and orchards. All +round is a landscape which I was not able to think of as less than +tremendous, with the whole of Rome in it, and the snow-topped hills +about it--a scene to which you may well give more than a moment from the +varied company at the other tables, where English, German, French, and +Americans, as well as Italians, are returning to the simple life in +their enjoyment of the local dishes, washed down with golden draughts of +local wine, served ciderwise in generous jugs. + +If your mind is, as ours was in that place, to drive farther and see the +chapter-house of the Knights of Malta, clinging to the height over the +Tiber, and looking up and down its yellow torrent and the black boats +along the shore, with universal Rome melting into the distance, you must +not fail to stop at the old, old Church of St. Sabina. You will +naturally want to see this, not only because there in the cloister (as +the ladies can ascertain at the window let into the wall for their +dangerous eyes to peer through from the outside) is the successor of the +orange-tree transplanted from the Holy Land by St. Dominic six or seven +hundred years ago; not only because one of the doors of the church, +covered with Bible stories, is thought the oldest wood-carving in the +world, but also because there will be sitting in his white robes on a +bench beside the nave an aged Dominican monk reading some holy book, +with his spectacles fallen forward on his nose and his cowl fallen back +on his neck, and his wide tonsure gleaming glacially in the pale light, +whom nothing in the church or its visitors can distract from his +devotions. + +It is very, very cold in there, but he probably would not, if he could, +follow you into the warm outer world and on into the garden of the +Knights, who came here after they had misruled Malta for centuries and +finally rendered a facile submission to General Bonaparte of the French +Republican army in 1798. Their fixing here cannot be called anything so +vigorous as their last stand; but, without specific reference to the +easy-chairs in their chapter-house, it may be fitly called their last +seat; and, if it is true that none of plebeian blood may enjoy the +order's privileges, the place will afford another of those satisfactions +which the best of all possible worlds is always offering its admirers. +Even if one were disposed to moralize the comfortable end of the poor +Knights harshly, one must admit that their view of Rome is one of the +unrivalled views, and that the glimpse of St. Peter's through the +key-hole of their garden-gate is little short of tin-rivalled. I could +not manage the glimpse myself, but I can testify to the unique character +of the avenue of clipped box and laurel which the key-hole also +commands. Lovers of the supernatural, of which I am the first, will like +to be reminded, or perhaps instructed, that the Church of the Priory +stands on the spot where Remus had a seance with the spiritual +authorities and was advised against building Rome where he proposed, +being shown only six vultures as against twelve that Romulus saw in +favor of his chosen site. The fact gave the Aventine Hill the fame of +bad luck, but any one may safely visit it now, after the long time that +has passed. + +I do not, however, advise visiting it above any other place in Rome. +What I always say is, take your chances with any or every time or place; +you cannot fail of some impression which you will always like recurring +to as characteristically delightful. For instance, I once walked home +from the Piazza di Spagna with some carnival masks frolicking about me +through the sun-shotten golden dust of the delicious evening air, and I +had a pleasure from the experience which I shall never forget. It was as +rich as that I got from the rosy twilight in which I wandered homeward +another time from the Piazza di Venezia and found myself passing the +Fountain of Trevi, and lingered long there and would not throw my penny +into its waters because I knew I could not help coming back to Rome +anyhow. Yet another time I was driving through a certain piazza where +the peasants stand night long waiting to be hired by the proprietors who +come to find them there, and suddenly the piety of the Middle Ages stood +before me in the figure of the Brotherhood of the Misericordia, draped +to the foot and hooded in their gray, unbleached linen. The brothers +were ranged in a file at the doors of the church ready to visit the +house of sickness or of mourning, barefooted, with their eyes showing +spectrally through their masks and their hands coming soft and white out +of their sleeves and betraying the lily class that neither toils nor +spins and yet is bound, as in the past, to the poorest and humblest +through the only Church that knows how to unite them in the offering and +acceptance of reciprocal religious duties. + +In Rome, as elsewhere in Catholic countries, it seemed to me that the +worshippers were mostly of the poorer classes and were mostly old women, +but in the Church of the Jesuits I saw worshippers almost as well +dressed as the average of our Christian Scientists, and in that church, +whose name I forget, but which is in the wide street or narrow piazza +below the windows of the palace where the last Stuarts lived and died, +my ineradicable love of gentility was flattered and my faith in the +final sanctification of good society restored by the sight of gentlemen +coming to and going from prayer with their silk hats in their hands. + +The performance of ritual implies a certain measure of mechanism, and +the wonder is that in the Catholic churches it is not more mechanical +than it actually is. I was no great frequenter of functions, and I +cannot claim that my superior spirituality was ever deeply wounded; +sometimes it was even supported and consoled. I noted, without offence, +in the Church of San Giuseppe how the young monk, who preached an +eloquent sermon on the saint's life and character, exhausted himself +before he exhausted his topic, and sat down between the successive heads +of his discourse and took a good rest. It was the saint's day, which +seemed more generally observed than any other saint's day in Rome, and +his baroque church in Via Capo le Case was thronged with people, mostly +poor and largely peasants, who were apparently not so fatigued by the +preacher's shrill, hard delivery as he was himself. There were many +children, whom their elders held up to see, and there was one young girl +in a hat as wide as a barrel-head standing up where others sat, and +blotting out the prospect of half the church with her flaring brim and +flaunting feathers. The worshippers came and went, and while the monk +preached and reposed a man crept dizzyingly round the cornice with a +taper at the end of a long pole lighting the chandeliers, while two +other men on the floor kindled the candles before the altars. As soon as +their work was completed, the monk, as if he had been preaching against +time, sat definitely down and left us to the rapture of the perfected +splendor. The high-altar was canopied and curtained in crimson, fringed +with gold, and against this the candle-flames floated like yellow +flowers. Suddenly, amid the hush and expectance, a tenor voice pealed +from the organ-loft, and a train of priests issued from the sacristy and +elbowed and shouldered their way through the crowd to the high-altar, +where their intoning, like so many + + “Silver snarling trumpets 'gan to glide,” + +and those flower-like flames and that tenor voice seemed to sing +together, and all sense of mortal agency in the effect was lost. + +[Illustration: 37 CHURCH OF ST. JOHN LATERAN AND LATERAN PALACE] + +How much our pale Northern faith has suffered from the elimination of +the drama which is so large an element in the worship of the South could +not be conjectured without offence to both. Drama I have said, but, if I +had said opera, it would have been equally with the will merely to +recognize the fact and not to censure it. Many have imagined a concert +of praise in heaven, and portrayed it as a spectacle of which the elder +Christian worship seems emulous. Go, therefore, to Rome, dear +fellow-Protestant, with any measure of ignorance short of mine, but +leave as much of your prejudice behind you as you can. You are not more +likely to become a convert because of your tolerance; in fact, you may +be the safer for it; and it will prepare you for a gentler pleasure than +you would otherwise enjoy in the rites and ceremonies which seem exotic +in our wintrier world, but which are here native to the climate, or, at +least, could not have had their origin under any but oriental or +meridional skies. The kindlier mood will help you to a truer +appreciation of that peculiar keeping of the churches which the stranger +is apt to encounter in his approach. Be tender of the hapless mendicants +at the door; they are not there for their pleasure, those blind and halt +and old. Be modestly receptive of the good office of the whole tribe of +cicerones, of custodians, of sacristans; they can save you time, which, +though it is not quite the same as money, even in Rome is worth saving, +and are the repository of many rejected fables waiting to be recognized +as facts again. I, for instance, committed the potential error of wholly +rejecting with scorn the services of an authorized guide to the Church +of St. John Lateran because he said the tariff was three francs. But +after wandering, the helpless prey of my own Baedeker, up and down the +huge temple, I was glad to find him waiting my emergence where I had +left him, in the church porch, one of the most pathetic figures that +ever wrung the remorseful heart. + +His poor black clothes showed the lustre of inveterate wear; his +waistcoat would have been the better for a whole bottle of benzine; his +shoes, if they did not share the polish of those threadbare textures, +reciprocated the effect of his broken-spirited cuffs and collar, and the +forlorn gentility of his hat. His beard had not been shaved for three +days; I do not know why, but doubtless for as good a reason as that his +shirt had not been washed for seven. It was with something like a cry +for pardon of my previous brutality that I now closed with his unabated +demand of a three-franc fee, and we went with him wherever he would, +from one holy edifice to another of those that constitute the church; +but I will not ask the reader to follow us in the cab which he mounted +into with us, but which would not conveniently hold four. Let him look +it all up in the admirably compendious pages of Hare and Murray, and +believe, if he can, that I missed nothing of that history and mystery. +If I speak merely of the marvellous baptistery, it is doubtless not +because the other parts were not equally worthy of my wonder, but +because I would not have even an enemy miss the music of the singing +doors, mighty valves of bronze which, when they turn upon their hinges, +emit a murmur of grief or a moan of remorse for whatever heathen uses +they once served the wicked Caracalla at his baths. Not to have heard +their rich harmony would be like not having heard the echo in the +baptistery of Pisa, a life-long loss. + +Heaven knows how punctiliously our guide would have acquainted us with +every particular of the Lateran group, which for a thousand years before +the Vatican was the home of the popes. We begged off from this and that, +but even indolence like mine would not spare itself the sight of the +Scala Santa. That was another of the things which I distinctly +remembered from the year 1864, and I did not find the spectacle of the +modern penitents covering the holy steps different in 1908. Now, as +then, there was something incongruous in their fashions and aspirations, +but one could not doubt that it was a genuine piety that nerved them to +climb up and down the hard ascent on their knees, or, at the worst, that +it was good exercise. Still, I would rather leave my reader the sense of +that most noble facade of the church, with its lofty balustraded +entablature, where the gigantic Christ and ten of his saints look out +forever to the Alban hills. + + + + +XIV. TIVOLI AND FRASCATI + + +One of the most agreeable illusions of travel is a sort of expectation +that if you will give objects of interest time enough they will present +themselves to you, and, if they will not actually come to you in your +hotel, will happen in your way when you go out. This was my notion of +the right way of seeing Rome, but, as the days of my winter passed, so +many memorable monuments failed not merely to seek me out, but stiffly +held aloof from me in my walks abroad, that I began to feel anxious lest +I should miss them altogether. I had, for instance, always had the +friendliest curiosity concerning Tivoli and Frascati as the two most +amiable Roman neighborhoods, and hoped to see both of them in some +informal and casual sort; but they persisted so long in keeping off on +* their respective hills that I saw something positive on my part must be +done. Clearly I must make the advances; and so when, one morning of +mid-March, a friend sent to ask if we would not motor out to Tivoli with +him and his family, I closed eagerly with the chance of a compromise +which would save feeling all round. My friend has never yet known how he +was bringing Tivoli and me together after a mutual diffidence, but, as +he was a poet, I am sure he will be glad to know now. + +Our road across the Campagna lay the greater part of the distance beside +the tram-line, but at other points parted with it and stretched rough, +if lately mended, and smooth, if long neglected, between the wide, +lonely pastures and narrow drill-sown fields of wheat. The Campagna is +said to be ploughed only once in five years by the peasants for the +proprietors, who have philosophized its fertility as something that can +be better restored by the activities of nature in that time than by +phosphates in less. As they are mostly Roman patricians, they have +always felt able to wait; but now it is said that northern Italian +capital and enterprise are coming in, and the Campagna will soon be +cropped every season, though as yet its chief yield seemed to be the +two-year-old colts we saw browsing about. For some distance we had the +company of the different aqueducts, but their broken stretches presently +ceased altogether, and then for other human association we had, besides +the fencings of the meadows, only the huts and shelters scattered among +the grassy humps and hollows. There were more humps than I had +remembered of the Campagna, and probably they were the rounded and +turfed-over chunks of antiquity which otherwhere showed their naked +masonry unsoft-ened and unfriended by the passing centuries. At times a +dusty hamlet, that seemed to crop up from the roadside ditches, followed +us a little way with children that shouted for joy in our motor and dogs +that barked for pleasure in their joy. Women with the square linen +head-dress of the Roman peasants stood and stared, and sallow men, each +with his jacket hanging from one of his shoulders, seemed stalking +backward from us as we whirled by. Here and there we scared a horse or a +mule, but we did not so much as run over a hen; and both man and beast +are becoming here, as elsewhere, reconciled to the automobile. Now and +then a carter would set his team slantwise in our course and stay us out +of good-humored deviltry, and when he let us pass would fling some chaff +to the fresh-faced English youngster who was our chauffeur. + +“I suppose you don't always understand what those fellows say,” I +suggested from my seat beside him. + +“No, sir,” he confessed. “But I give it to 'em back in English,” he +added, joyously. + +He rather liked these encounters, apparently, but not the beds of sharp, +broken stone with which the road was repaired. It was his belief that +there was not a steam-roller in all Italy, and he seemed to reserve an +opinion of the government's motives in the matter with respect to +motors, as if he thought them bad. + +The scenery of the Campagna was not varied. Once we came to a +battlemented tomb, of mighty girth and height, as perdurable in its +masonry as the naked, stony hills that in the distance propped the +mountains fainting along the horizon under their burden of snow. But as +we drew nearer Tivoli the hills drew nearer us, and now they were no +longer naked, but densely covered with the gray, interminable stretch of +the olive forests. The olive is the tree which, of all others, is the +friend of civilized man; it is older and kinder even than the apple, +which is its next rival in beneficence; but these two kinds are so like +each other, in the mass, that this boundless forest of olives around +Tivoli offered an image of all the aggregated apple-orchards in the +world. Where the trees came closest to the road they seemed to watch our +passing, each with its trunk aslant and its branches akimbo, in a +humorous make-believe of being in some joke with us, like so many +gnarled and twisted apple-trees, used to children's play-fellowship. You +felt a racial intimacy with the whimsical and antic shapes which your +brief personal consciousness denied in vain; and you rose among the +slopes around Tivoli with a sense of home-coming from the desert of the +Campagna. But in the distance to which the olive forests stretched they +lost this effect of tricksy familiarity. They looked like a gray sea +against the horizon; more fantastically yet, they seemed a vast hoar +silence, full of mystery and loneliness. + +If Tivoli does not flourish so frankly on its oil as Frascati on its +wine, it is perhaps because it has of late years tacitly prospered as +much on the electricity which its wonderful and beautiful waterfalls +enable it to furnish as abundantly to Rome as our own Niagara to +Buffalo. The scrupulous Hare, whose _Walks in Rome_ include Tivoli, does +not, indeed, advise you to visit the electrical works, but he says that +if you have not strength enough for all the interests and attractions of +Tivoli it will be wise to give yourself entirely to the cascades and to +the Villa d'Este, and this was what we instinctively did, but in the +reverse order. Chance rewarded us before we left the villa with a sight +of the electric plant, which just below the villa walls smokes +industriously away with a round, redbrick chimney almost as lofty and as +ugly as some chimney in America. On our way to and fro we necessarily +passed through the town, which, with its widish but not straightish +chief street, I found as clean as Rome itself, and looking, after the +long tumult of its history, beginning well back in fable, as peaceable +as Montclair, New Jersey. It had its charm, and, if I could have spent +two weeks there instead of two hours, I might impart its effect in much +more circumstance than I can now promise the reader. Most of my little +time I gladly gave to the villa, which, with the manifold classic +associations of the region, attracts the stranger and helps the +cataracts sum up all that most people can keep of Tivoli. + +[Illustration: 38 STAIRWAY AND FOUNTAIN, VILLA D'ESTE] + +The Villa d'Este is not yet a ruin, but it is ruinous enough to win the +fancy without cumbering it with the mere rubbish of decay. Some +neglected pleasances are so far gone that you cannot wish to live in +them, but the forgottenness of the Villa d'Este hospitably allured me to +instant and permanent occupation, so that when I heard it could now be +bought, casino and all, for thirty thousand dollars, nothing but the +want of the money kept me from making the purchase. I indeed recognized +certain difficulties in living there the year round; but who lives +anywhere the year round if he can help it? The casino, standing among +the simpler town buildings on the plateau above the gardens, would be a +little inclement, for all its frescoing and stuccoing by the +sixteenth-century arts, and in its noble halls, amid the painted and +modelled figures, the new American proprietor would shiver with the +former host and guests after the first autumn chill began; but while it +was yet summer it Avould be as delicious there as in the aisles and +avenues of the garden which its balustrated terrace looked into. From +that level you descend by marble steps which must have some trouble in +knowing themselves from the cascades pouring down the broken steeps +beside them, and companionably sharing their seclusion among the +cypresses and ilexes. You are never out of the sight and sound of the +plunging water, which is still trained in falls and fountains, or left +to a pathetic dribble through the tattered stucco of the neglected +grots. It is now a good three centuries and a half since the Cardinal +Ippolito d'.Este had these gardens laid out and his pleasure-house built +overlooking them; and his gardener did not plan so substantially as his +architect. In fact, you might suppose that the landscapist wrought with +an eye to the loveliness of the ruin it all would soon fall into, and, +where he used stone, used it fragilely, so that it would ultimately +suggest old frayed and broken lace. Clearly he meant some of the +cataracts to face one another, and to have a centre from which they +could all be seen--say the still, dull-green basin which occupies a +large space in the grounds between them. But he must have meant this for +a surprise to the spectator, who easily misses it under the trees +overleaning the moss-grown walks which hardly kept themselves from +running wild. There is a sense of crumbling decorations of statues, +broken in their rococo caverns; of cypresses carelessly grouped and +fallen out of their proper straightness and slimness; of unkempt bushes +crowding the space beneath; of fragmentary gods or giants half hid in +the tangling grasses. It all has the air of something impatiently done +for eager luxury, and its greatest charm is such as might have been +expected to be won from eventual waste and wreck. If there was design in +the treatment of the propitious ground, self-shaped to an irregular +amphitheatre, it is now obscured, and the cultiavted tourist of our day +may reasonably please himself with the belief that he is having a better +time there than the academic Roman of the sixteenth century. + +Academic it all is, however hastily and nonchalantly, and I feel that I +have so signally failed to make the charm of the villa felt that I am +going to let a far politer observer celebrate the beauties of the other +supreme interest of Tivoli. When Mr. Gray (as the poet loved to be +called in print) visited the town with Mr. Walpole in May, 1740, the +Villa d'Este by no means shared the honors of the cataracts, and Mr. +Gray seems not to have thought it worth seriously describing in his +letter to Mr. West, but mocks the casino with a playful mention before +proceeding to speak fully, if still playfully, of the great attraction +of Tivoli: “Dame Nature... has built here three or four little +mountains and laid them out in an irregular semicircle; from certain +others behind, at a greater distance, she has drawn a canal into which +she has put a little river of hers called the Anio,... which she has +no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles down a declivity +fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to shatters, and is +converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms many a bow--red, +green, blue, and yellow.... By this time it has divided itself, being +crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, each of +which, in emulation of the greater one, will tumble down, too: and it +does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you +have at one view all these cascades intermixed with groves of olive and +little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of one +(that which forms the extremity of the half-circle's horns) is seated +the town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on the brink +of the precipice, stands the Sibyls' Temple, the remains of a little +rotunda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose beautiful +Corinthian pillars are still standing and entire.” + +For the reader who has been on the spot the poet's words will paint a +vivid picture of the scene; for the reader who has not been there, so +much the worse; he should lose no time in going, and drinking a cup of +the local wine at a table of the restaurant now in possession of Mr. +Gray's point of view. I do not know a more filling moment, exclusive of +the wine, than he can enjoy there, with those cascades before him and +those temples beside him; for Mr. Gray has mentioned only one of the +two, I do not know why, that exist on this enchanted spot, and that +define their sharp, black shadows as with an inky line just beyond the +restaurant tables. One is round and the other oblong, and the round one +has been called the Sibyls', though now it is getting itself called +Vesta's--the goddess who long unrightfully claimed the temple of Mater +Matuta in the Forum Boarium at Rome. As Vesta has lately been +dispossessed there by archaeology (which seems in Rome to enjoy the +plenary powers of our Boards of Health), she may have been given the +Sibyls' Temple at Tivoli in compensation; but all this does not really +matter. What really matters is the mighty chasm which yawns away almost +from your feet, where you sit, and the cataracts, from their brinks, +high or low, plunging into it, and the wavering columns of mist weakly +striving upward out of it: the whole hacked by those mountains Mr. Gray +mentions, with belts of olive orchard on their flanks, and wild paths +furrowing and wrinkling their stern faces. To your right there is a +sheeted cataract falling from the basins of the town laundry, where the +toil of the washers melts into music, and their chatter, like that of +birds, drifts brokenly across the abyss to you. While you sit musing or +murmuring in your rapture, two mandolins and a guitar smilingly intrude, +and after a prelude of Italian airs swing into strains which presently, +through your revery, you recognize as “In the Bowery” and “Just One +Girl,” and the smile of the two mandolins and the guitar spreads to a +grin of sympathy, and you are no longer at the Cafe Sibylla in Tivoli, +but in your own Manhattan on some fairy roof-garden, or at some +sixty-cent _table d'hote,_ with wine and music included. + +It was a fortnight later that we paid our visit to Frascati, not proudly +motoring now, but traversing the Campagna on the roof of a populous +tram-car, which in its lofty narrowness was of the likeness of an +old-fashionable lake propeller. The morning was, like most other +mornings in Rome, of an amiability which the afternoons often failed of; +but none of us passengers for Frascati doubted its promise as we +gathered at the tram-station and tried for tickets at the little booth +in a wall sparely containing the official who bade us get them in the +car. We all did this, whatever our nation--American, English, German, or +Italian--and then we mounted to the hurricane-deck of our propeller and +entered into a generous rivalry for the best seats. We had a roof over +our heads, and there were curtains which we might have drawn if we could +have borne to lose a single glimpse of the landscape, or if we would not +rather have suffered the chill which our swift progress evoked from the +morning's warmth after we left the shelter of the city streets. We +passed through stretches of the ancient aqueducts consorting on familiar +terms with rows of shabby tenement-houses, and whisked by the ends of +wide, dusty avenues of yet incomplete structure, and by beds of +market-gardens, and by simple feeding-places for man and beast, with the +tables set close in front of the stalls. An ambitiously frescoed casino +had a gigantic peacock painted over a whole story, and the peach-trees +were in bloom in the villa spaces. When we struck into the Campagna we +found it of like physiognomy with the Campagna toward Tivoli. + +There was very little tillage, but wide stretches of grazing-land, with +those lumps of turfed or naked antiquity starting out of them, and +cattle, sheep, and horses feeding over them, the colts' tails blowing +picturesquely in the wind that seemed more and more opposed to our +advance. It dropped, at times, where we paused to leave a passenger near +one of those suburbs which the tram-lines are building up round Rome, +but on our course building so slowly that our passengers had to walk +rather far from the stations before they reached home. There were other +pedestrians who looked rather English, especially some ladies making for +the gate of a kind, sunny walled old villa, where there was a girl +singing and a gardener coming slowly down to let them in. Nearer +Frascati were many neat, new stone houses, where Eoman families come out +to stay the spring and fall seasons, and even the summer. But these +looked too freshly like the suburban cottages on a Boston trolley-line; +and we perversely found our delight in a fine breadth of brown woods for +the very reason of that homelikeness which gave us pause in the houses. +The trees looked American; there were American wood-roads penetrating +the forest's broken and irregular extent; there was one steep-sided +ravine worth any man's American money; and the dead leaves littered the +sylvan paths with an allure to the foot which it was hard for the head +to resist. + +Elsewhere the tram-line that curved upward to Fras-cati was flanked, +after it left the Campagna's level, with vineyards as measureless as the +olive orchards of Tivoli. There was yet, at the end of March, no sign of +leaf on the newly trimmed vines, which were trained on long poles of +canes brought together in peaks to support them and netting the +hill-slopes with the endless succession of their tops. The eye wearied +itself in following them as in following the checkered wiring of the +Kentish hop-fields, and was glad to leave them for the closer-set, but +never too closely set, palaces of Frascati: the sort of palaces which we +call cottages in our summer cities, and the Italians call casinos from +the same instinctive modesty. When we began to doubt of our destination, +our car passed a long, shaded promenade, and then stopped in a cheerful +square amidst hotels and restaurants, with tables hospitably spread on +the sidewalks before them. + +We decided not to lunch at that early hour, but we could not keep our +eyes from feasting, even at eleven o'clock in the morning, on the +wonderful prospect that tempted them, on every hand, away from the more +immediate affair of choosing one out of the many cabs that thronged +about our arriving train. The cabs of Frascati are all finer than the +cabs of Rome, and the horses are handsomer and younger and stronger; we +could have taken the worst of the equipages that contested our favor and +still fared well; but we chose the best--a glittering victoria and an +animal of proud action, with a lustrous coat of bay. He wore a ring of +joyous bells; he had, indeed, not a headstall of such gay colors as some +others; but you cannot have everything, and his driver was of a mental +vividness which compensated for all the color wanting in his horse's +headstall, and of a personal attraction which made us ambitious for his +company on any terms. He quickly reduced us from our vain supposition +that carriages in a country-place should be cheaper than in a city; +because, as he proved, there were fewer strangers to hire them and they +ought logically to be dearer. So far from accepting our modest standards +of time and money, he all but persuaded us to employ him for the whole +day instead of a few hours at a price beyond our imagination; and he +only consented to compromise on a half-day at an increased figure. + +We supposed that it was the negotiation which drew and held the +attention of all the leisure of Frascati, and that it was the driver and +our relation to him rather than the horse and our relation to it that +concentrated the public interest in us; and when we had convinced him +that we had no wish but to see some of the more immediate and memorable +villas, we mounted to our places in the victoria and drove out through +the reluctantly parting spectators, who remained looking after us as if +unable to disperse to their business or pleasure. + +[Illustration: 39 VILLA FALCONIERI, ENTRANCE, FRASCATI] + +Our driver decided for us to go first to the Villa Falconieri, which had +lately been bought and presented by a fond subject to the German +Emperor, and by him in turn bestowed on the German Academy at Rome. In +the cold, clean, stony streets of Frascati, as we rattled through them, +there breathed the odor of the great local industry; and the doorways of +many buildings, widening almost in a circle to admit the burly tuns of +wine, testified how generally, how almost universally, the vintage of +that measureless acreage of grapes around the place employed the +inhabitants. But there was little else to impress the observer in +Frascati, and we willingly passed out of the town in the road climbing +the long incline to the Villa Falconieri, with its glimpses, far and +near, of woods and gardens. It was a road so much to our minds that +nothing was further from us than the notion that our horse might not +like it so well; but, at the first distinct rise, he stopped and wheeled +round so abruptly, after first pawing the air, that there could be no +doubt where the popular interest we had lately enjoyed in Frascati had +really originated. Probably our horse's distinguishing trait was known +to everybody in Frascati except his driver. He, at least, showed the +greatest surprise at the horse's behavior, as unprecedented in their +acquaintance, which he owned was brief, for he had bought him in Rome +only the week before. With successive retreats to level ground he put +him again and again at the incline, but as soon as the horse felt the +ground rising under his feet he lifted them from it and whirled round +for another retreat. All this we witnessed from an advantageous point +at the roadside which we had taken up at his first show of reluctance; +and at last the driver suggested that we should leave it and go on to +the Villa Falconieri on foot. On our part, we suggested that he should +attempt some other villa which would not involve an objectionable climb. +He then proposed the Villa Mandragone, and the horse seemed to agree +with us. As we drove again through the clean, cold, stony streets, with +the rounded doorways for the wine-casks, we fancied something clearly +ironical in the general interest renewed by our return. But we tried to +look as if we had merely done the Villa Falconieri with unexampled +rapidity, and pushed on to the Villa Mandragone, where, under the roof +of interlacing ilex toughs, our horse ought to have been tempted on in a +luxurious unconsciousness of anything like an incline. But he was +apparently an animal which would have felt the difference between two +rose-leaves and one in a flowery path, and just when we were thinking +what a delightful time we were having, and beginning to feel a gentle +question as to who the pathetic little cripple halting toward us with a +color-box and a camp-stool might be, and whether she painted as well as +a kind heart could wish, our horse stopped with the suddenness which we +knew to be definite. The sensitive creature could not be deceived; he +must have reached rising ground, and we sided with him against our +driver, who would have pretended it was fancy. + +It was now noon, and we drove back to the _piazza,_ agreeing upon a less +price in view of the imperfect service rendered, and deciding to collect +our thoughts for a new venture over such luncheon as the best hotel +could give us. It was not so good a hotel as the lunch it gave. It was +beyond the cleansing tide of modernity which has swept the Roman hotels, +and was dirty everywhere, but with a specially dirty, large, shabby +dining-room, cold and draughty, yet precious for the large, round +brazier near our table which kept one side of us warm in romantic +mediaeval fashion, and invited us to rise from time to time and thaw our +fingers over its blinking coals. The bath in which our chicken had been +boiled formed a good soup; there was an admirable _pasta_ and a +creditable, if imperfect, conception of beefsteak; and there was a +caraffe of new Frascati wine, sweet, like new cider. If we could have +asked more, it would not have been more than the young Italian officer +who sat in the other corner with his pretty young wife, and who allowed +me to weave a whole realistic fiction out of their being at Frascati so +out of season. + +Just as I was most satisfyingly accounting for them, our late driver +alarmed me by appearing at the door and beckoning me to the outside. The +occasion was nothing worse than the presence of a man who, he said, was +his brother, with a horse which, upon the same authority, was without +moral blame or physical blemish. If anything, it preferred a mountain to +a plain country, and could be warranted to balk at nothing. The man, who +was almost as exemplary as the horse, would assume the unfulfilled +contract of the other man and horse with a slight increase of pay; and +yet I had my doubts. The day had clouded, and I meekly contended that it +was going to rain; but the man explicitly and the horse tacitly scoffed +at the notion, and I yielded. I shall always be glad that I did so, for +in the keeping of those good creatures the rest of our day was an +unalloyed delight. It appeared, upon further acquaintance, that the man +paid a hundred dollars for the horse; his brother had paid a hundred and +twenty-five for the balker; but it was the belief of our driver that it +would be worth the difference when it had reconciled itself to the +rising ground of Frascati; as yet it was truly a stranger there. His own +horse was used to ups and downs everywhere; they had just come from a +long trip, and he was going to drive to Siena and back the next week +with two ladies for passengers, who were to pay him five dollars a day +for himself and horse and their joint keep. He said the ladies, whose +names he gave, were from Boston; he balked at adding Massachusetts, but +I am sure the horse would not; and, if I could have hired them both to +carry me about Italy indefinitely, I would have gladly paid them five +dollars a day as long as I had the money. The fact is, that driver was +charming, a man of sense and intelligence, who reflected credit even +upon his brother and his brother's horse: one of those perfect Italian +temperaments which endear their possessors to the head and heart, so +that you wonder, at parting, how you are going to live without them. + +We did not excite such vivid interest in Frascati at our second start as +at our first; but, as we necessarily passed over the same route again, +we had the applause of the children in streets now growing familiar, and +a glad welcome back from the pretty girls and blithe matrons of all ages +rhythmically washing in the public laundry, who recognized us in our new +equipage. The public laundry is always the gayest scene in an Italian +town, and probably our adventures continued the subject of joyous +comment throughout the day which was now passing only too rapidly for +us. We were again on the way to the Villa Falconieri, and while our +brave horse is valiantly mounting the steep to its gate this is perhaps +as good a place as any to own that the Villa Falconieri and the Villa +Man-dragone were the only sights we saw in Frascati. We did, indeed, +penetrate the chill interior of the local cathedral, but as we did not +know at the time that we were sharing it with the memory of the young +Stuart pretender Charles Edward, who died in Frascati, and whose +brother, Cardinal York, placed a mural tablet to him in the church, we +were conscious of no special claim upon our interest. We ought, of +course, to have visited the Villa Aldobrandini and the Villa Ruffinella +and the Villa Graziola and the Villa Taverna, but we left all these to +the reader, who will want some reason for going to Frascati in person, +and to whom I commend them as richly worth crossing the Atlantic for. +Doubtless from a like motive we left the ruins of Tusculum unvisited, +just as at Tivoli we refrained from diverging to Hadrian's Villa--the +two things supremely worthy to be seen in their respective regions. But, +if I had seen only half as much as I saw at Frascati--the Villa +Falconieri, namely--I should feel forever over-enriched by the +experience. + +Slowly an ancient servitor, whose family had been in the employ of the +Falconieri for a century, advanced as with the burden of their united +years and opened the high gate to us and delivered us over to a mild +boy. He bestowed on us, for a consideration, a bunch of wild violets, +and then, as if to keep us from the too abrupt sight of the repairs and +changes going on near the casino, led us first to the fish-pond, in the +untouched seclusion of a wooded hill, and silently showed us the +magnificent view which the top commanded, if commanded is not too proud +a word for a place so pathetic in its endearing neglect. It had once +been the haunt of many a gay picnicking crew in hoops and bag-wigs and +all the faded fashion of the past, when hosts and guests had planned a +wilder escapade than the grove before the casino invited, with its +tables of moss-painted marble. There would have been an academic poet, +or more than one, in the company, and they would have furnished forth +the prospect with phrases far finer than any I have about me, who can +only say that the Cam-pagna, clothed in mist and cloud-shadowed, swam +round the upland in the colors of a tropic sea. + +[Illustration: 40 IN THE GARDENS OF THE VILLA FALCONIERI] + +Our mild boy waited a decent moment, as if to let me do better, and then +led down to the casino, round through a wooded valley where there were +some men with fowling-pieces, whom I objected to in tones, if not in +terms. “What are they shooting?” “They are shooting larks, signore.” + “What a pity!” “But the larks are leaving Italy, now, and going north.” + It was a reason, like many another that humanity is put to it in giving, +and I do not know that I missed any larks, later, from an English meadow +where I saw them spiring up in song, and glad as if none of their +friends had been shot at the Villa Falconieri. In fact, I did not see +those fowlers actually killing any; and I can still hope they were not +very good shots. + +The workmen who were putting the place in repair were lunching near the +casino, in a litter of lumber and other structural material, but the +casino itself seemed as yet unprofaned by their touch. At any rate, we +had it quite to ourselves, let wander at will through its cool, bare, +still spaces. If there was a great deal to see, there was not much to +remember, or to remember so much as the satirical frescos of Pier Leone +Ghezzi, who has caricatured himself as well as others in them. They are +not bitter satires, but, on the contrary, very charming; and still more +charming are the family portraits frescoed round the principal room. +Under one curve of the vaulted ceiling the whole family of a given time +is shown, half-length but life-size, looking down pleasantly on the +unexpected American guests who try to pretend they were invited, or at +least came by mistaking the house for another. Better even than this +most amiable circle, or half-circle, of father, mother, and daughter are +the figures of friends or acquaintances or kinsfolk: figures not only +life-size, but full-length, in panels of the walls, in the very act of +stepping on the floor and coming forward to greet their host and hostess +from the other walls. They did not visibly move during our stay, but I +know they only waited for us to go; and that at night, especially when +there was a moon, or none, they left their backgrounds and mingled in +the polite gayeties of their period. One could hardly help looking over +one's shoulder to see if they were not following to that farthermost +room called Primavera, which is painted around and aloft like a very +bower of spring, with foliage and flowers covering the walls and +dropping through the trellis feigned overhead. Of all the caprices of +art, which in Italy so loved caprice, I recall no such pleasing +playfulness as in the decoration of these rooms. If you pass through +the last you may look from the spring within on no fairer spring without +bordering the shores of the Campagna sea. + +It was so pathetic to imagine the place going out of the right Italian +keeping that I attributed a responsive sadness to the tall, handsome, +elderly woman who had allowed us the freedom of the casino. Her faded +beauty was a little sallow, as the faded beauty of a Roman matron should +be, and her large, dark eyes glowed from purpling shadows. + +“And the German Emperor owns it now?” + +“Yes, they say he has bought it.” + +“And the Germans will soon be coming?” + +“They say.” + +She would not commit herself but by a tone, an inflection, but we knew +very well what she and the frescoed presences about us thought. I wish +now I could have stayed behind and got the frescos to tell me just how +far I ought recognize her sorrow in my tip, but one must always guess at +these things, and I shall never know whether I rewarded the aged +gatekeeper according to the century of service his generations had +rendered those of the frescos. + +We were going now to the Villa Mandragone, but we had not yet the +courage for the rise of ground where we had failed before, and we +entreated our driver to go round some other way, if he could, and +descend rather than ascend to it. He said that was easy, and it was when +we came away that we passed through that ilex avenue which we had not +yet penetrated in its whole length, and where we now met many +foot-passengers, lay and cleric, who added to the character of the +scene, and saw again the little cripple artist, now trying to seize its +features, or some of them. I did not see whether she was succeeding so +well as in pity she might and as I knew she did. + +In spite of our triumph with the Villa Mandragone in this second +attempt, we can never think it half as charming as the Villa Falconieri. +I forget what cardinal it was who built it so spacious and splendid, +with three hundred and sixty-five windows, in honor of the calendar as +reformed by the reigning pope, Gregory XIII. It is a palace enclosing a +quadrangle of whole acres (I will not own to less), with a stately +colonnade following as far round as the reader likes. When he passes +through all this magnificence he will come out on a grassy terrace, with +a fountain below it, and below that again the chromatic ocean of the +Cam-pagna (I have said sea often enough). A weird sort of barbaric +stateliness is given to the place by the twisted and tapering pillars +that rise at the several corners, with colossal masques carven at the +top and the sky showing through the eye-hollows, as the flame of torches +must often have shown at night. But for all the outlandish suggestion of +these pillars, the villa now belongs to the Jesuits, who have a college +there, where only the sons of noble families are received for education. +As we rounded a sunny wall in driving away, we saw a line of people, old +and young of both sexes, but probably not of noble families, seated with +their backs against the warm stone eating from comfortable bowls +a soup which our driver said was the soup of charity and the daily dole +of the fathers to such hungry as came for it. The day was now growing +colder than it had been, and we felt that the poor needed all the soup, +and hot, that they could get. + +After a vain visit to Grotta Ferrata, which was signally disappointing, +in spite of the traces of a recent country fair and the historical +merits of a church of the Greek rite, with a black-bearded monk coming +to show it through a gardened cloister, we were glad to take the tram +back to Rome and to get into the snug inside of it. The roof, which had +been so popular and populous in the morning, was now so little envied +that a fat lady descended from it and wedged herself into a row of the +interior where a sylph would have fitted better but might not have added +so much to the warmth. No one, myself of the number, thought of getting +up, though there were plenty of straps to hang by if one had chosen to +stand. This was quite like home, and so was it like home to have the +conductor ask me to wait for my change, with all the ensuing fears that +wronged the long-delayed remembrance of his debt. In some things it +appears that at Rome the Romans do as the Americans do, but I wish we +were like them in having such a place as Frascati within easy tram-reach +of our cities. + + + + +XV. A FEW REMAINING MOMENTS + + +[Illustration: 41 THE MARBLE FAUN] + +In the days of the earlier sixties, we youth who wished to be thought +elect did not feel ourselves so unless we were deeply read in +Hawthorne's romance of _The Marble Faun._ We made that our aesthetic +handbook in Rome, and we devoutly looked up all the places mentioned in +it, which were important for being mentioned; though such places as the +Tarpeian Rock, the Forum, the Capitoline Museum, and the Villa Bor-ghese +might secondarily have their historical or artistic interest. In like +manner Story's statue of Cleopatra was to be seen, because it was the +“original” of the imaginary sculptor Kenyon's Cleopatra, and a certain +mediaeval tower was sacred because it was universally identified as the +tower where the heroine Hilda lived dreaming and drawing, and fed the +doves that circled around its top. We used to show the new arrivals +where Hilda's tower was, and then stand with them watching the pigeons +which made it unmistakable. I should then have thought I could never +forget it, but I must have passed it several times unnoting in my latest +Roman sojourn, when one afternoon in a pilgrimage to the Via del Gambero +a contemporary of that earlier day glanced around the narrow piazza +through which we were passing and, seeing a cloud of doves wheeling +aloft, joyfully shouted, “Look! There is Hilda's tower!” and if Hilda +herself had waved to us from its battlements we could not have been +surer of it. The present vanished, and we were restored to our +citizenship in that Rome of the imagination which is greater than any +material Rome, and which it needs no archaeologist to discover in its +indestructible integrity. + +No one to-day, probably, visits the Capitoline Museum for the Faun of +Praxiteles because it gave the romance its name; but at my latest sight +of it I remembered it with a thrill of the young piety which first drew +me to it, and involuntarily I looked again for the pointed, furry ears, +as I had done of old, to make sure that it was really the Marble Faun of +Hawthorne. I was now, however, for no merit of mine, in official and +scientific company with which it would have been idle to share my +satisfaction in the verification of the Faun's ears. Instead of boasting +it, I listened to very interesting talk of the deathless Dying +Gladiator, who is held to have been originally looked at more from below +than he has been seen in modern times, and who is presently to be lifted +to something like his antique level. He, in fact, requires this from the +spectator who would feel all his pathos, as we realized in sitting down +and looking a little upward at him. + +[Illustration: 42 MARCUS AURELIUS WITH OUT-STRETCHED ARM] + +In his room and in the succession of the rooms filled with his immortal +bronze and marble companions I was as if with ghosts of people I had +known in some anterior life. They were so familiar that I felt no need +to go about asking their names, even if the archaeologists had in +several cases given them new names. I should have known certain of them +by traits which remain in the memory long after names have dropped out +of it. Julius Caesar, with his long Celtic upper-lip, still looked like +the finer sort of Irish-American politician; Tiberius again surprised me +with the sort of racial sanity and beauty surviving in his atrocious +personality from his mother's blood; but the too Neronian head of +Nero, which seems to have been studied from the wild young miscreant +when trying to look the part, had an unremembered effect of chubby +idiocy. A thing that freshly struck me in the busts of those +imperialities, which of course must have been done in their lifetimes, +was not merely that the subjects were mostly so ugly and evil but that +the artists were apparently safe in showing them so. The men might not +have minded that, but how had the sculptors managed to portray the women +as they did and live? Perhaps they did not live, or live long; they are +a forgotten tribe, and no one can say what became of any given artist +after executing the bust of an empress; his own execution may have +immediately followed. But what is certain is that those ladies are no +lovelier in their looks than they were in their lives; to be sure, in +their rank they had not so great need of personal charm as women of the +lower class. The most touching face as well as the most dignified and +beautiful face among them is that of the seated figure which used to be +known as that of Agrippina but which, known now as that of a Roman +matron, does not relieve the imperial average of plainness. The rest +could rival the average American society woman only in the prevailing +modernity of their expression; imperial Rome was very modern, as we all +know, and nothing in our own time could be more up to date than the +lives and looks of its smart people. + +The general impression of the other marbles of the Capitoline Museum +remains a composite of standing, sitting, stooping, and leaning figures, +of urns and vases, of sarcophaguses and bas-reliefs. If you can be +definite about some such delightful presence as that old River dozing +over his fountain in the little cold court you see first and last as you +come and go, it is more than your reader, if he is as wise as you wish +him, can ask of you. I have been wondering whether he could profitably +ask of me some record of my experiences in the official and scientific +company with which I was honored that day at the Campidoglio; but I +should have to offer him again a sort of composite psychograph of +objects printed one upon another and hardly separable in their +succession. There would be the figure of Marcus Aurelius, commanding us +with outstretched arm from the back of the bronze charger which would +not obey Michelangelo when he bade it “Go,” not because it was not +lifelike, but because it was too fat to move. Against the afternoon +sky, looking down into the piazza with dreamy unconcern from their +vantage would be the statues on the balustrated roof of the museum. +There would be the sense, rather than the vision, of the white shoulders +of Castor and Pollux beside their steeds above the dark-green garden +spaces on either hand; there would be the front of the Church of Ara +Coeli visible beyond the insignificance of Rienzi's monument; and +filling in the other end of the piazza which Michelangelo imagined, and +not the Romans knew, there would be the palace of the senator, to which +the mayor and the common council of modern Rome now mount by a double +stairway, and presumably meet at the top in proceeding to their +municipal labors. Facing the museum would be the palace of the +Conservatori, where in the noblest of its splendid halls the present +company would find itself in the carved and gilded arm-chairs of the +conservators, seated at an afternoon tea-table and restoring itself from +the fatigues of more and more antique art in the galleries about. After +this there would be the gardened court of the palace, with a thin lawn, +and a soft little fountain musing in the midst of it, and the sunset +light lifting on the wall where the fragments of Septimius Severus's +marble map of Rome order themselves in such coherence as archaeology can +suggest for them. + +In the palace of the Senator (who was not, as I dare say the reader +ignorantly supposes, a residuum of the old Roman senate, but was the +dictator whom the mediaeval republic summoned from within or without +to be its head and its safeguard from the aristocracy) there would be, +beyond the chamber where the actual city council of Rome meets under the +presidency of the mayor, the great public rooms bannered and memorialled +around with heroic and historic blazons; and last there would be the +private room where the syndic devotes himself to civic affairs when he +can turn from the sight of the Roman Forum, with a peripatetic +archaeologist lecturing a group of earnest Americans, while long, +velvety shadows of imperial purple stretch from the sunset on the softly +rounded and hollowed ruins of the Palatine. + +But, if each of these bare facts could be parted from the others and +intelligently presented, what would it avail with the reader who has +never seen the originals of my psychograph? It is from some such +question, and not from want of a hospitable will, that I hesitate to ask +him to go with me on a golden morning of March and spend it in the Villa +Medici on the Pincian Hill. If I could I should like to pour its +yellowness and mellowness round him, perfumed with a potpourri of +associations from the time of Lucullus down through every mediaeval and +modern time to that very day, when I knew Carolus Duran to be living +somewhere in these beauteous bounds as the head of the French Academy +which has its home in them. The academic garden-paths, with a few happy +people wandering between their correctly balanced passages of box; the +blond facade of the casino looking down with its statues and reliefs on +these parterres; a young girl vanishing up an aisle of the grove beside +the garden into whatever dream awaited her youth in the leafy dusk; an +old American pair gazing after her from the terrace, with the void of +the vanished years aching in their hearts for the Rome that was once +young with them: does this represent to the reader an appreciable +morning in the Villa Medici? He may be grateful to me if he does, and if +he likes. I cannot do more for him without doing less, and yet I know it +is a palette rather than a picture I am giving him. + +[Illustration: 43 IN THE VILLA MEDICI] + +All the while I was there, the guest of the French nation by the payment +of fifty centimes gate-money, I was obscurely resenting its retention of +a place which Bonaparte bestowed upon the First Republic with so much +other loot from Italy. But now I have lately heard that the magnanimous +Third Republic is going to restore it to the people rightfully its +owners, and the remembrance of my morning in the Villa Medici will +remain a pure joy. So few joys in this world, even in the very capital +of it, are without some touch of abatement. I could not so much as visit +the Catacombs of Domatilla without suffering a frustration which, though +incidental merely, left a lasting pang of unrequited interest. As we +drew toward the place, I saw in a field the beginning of one of those +domestic dramas which are not attributable to Italy alone. Three +peasants, a man and two women, were engaged in controversy which, on his +side, the man supported with both hands flapping wildly at the heads of +the women, who alertly dodged and circled around him in the endeavor to +close in upon him. It was instantly conjecturable, if not apparent, that +they were his wife and daughter, and that he was the worse for the +vintage of their home acre, and would be the better for being got into +the house and into bed. The conjecture enlisted the worthier instincts +of the witness on the side of the mother and daughter; but he was in no +hurry to have the animated action brought to a close, and was about to +tell his cabman to drive very, very slowly, when suddenly the cab +descended into a valley, and when the eager spectator rose to his former +level again the stone wall had risen with him, and he never knew the end +of that passage of real life. + +It was impossible to bid the cabman drive back for the close of the +scene; the abrupt conclusion must be accepted as final; but it is proof +of the charm I found in the gentle guide who presently began to marshal +us among the paths of the subterranean sanctuary and cemetery that for +the moment my bitter sense of loss was assuaged, and it only returns now +at long intervals. Such as the woman actors in this brief scene were +some early Christians might have been, and it must have been the +stubborn old pagan spirit I saw surviving in the husband and father. He +was probably such a vessel of wrath as, being filled with Bacchus, would +have lent itself to the persecuting rage of Domitian and helped drive +the emperor's gentle cousin Domatilla into the exile whence she returned +to found a Christian cemetery in her villa. One understands, of course, +under the villa; for the catacombs in some places reach as many as five +levels below the surface. I will not follow the reader with that kind +guide who will cheer his wanderings through those sunless corridors of +death, where many of the sleepers still lie sealed within their tombs on +either hand, and show him by the smoky taper's light the frescos which +adorn the cramped chapels. I prefer to stand at the top of the entrance +and ask him if he noticed how the artist sometimes seemed not to know +whether he was pagan or Christian, and did not mind, for instance, +putting a Mercury at the heads of the horses in an Ascent of Elijah. +Perhaps the artist was really a pagan and thought a Greek god as good as +a Hebrew prophet any day; art was probably one of the last things to be +converted, having a presentiment of the dark and bloody themes the new +religion would give it to deal with. + +The earthy scent of the catacomb will cling to the reader's clothes, and +he will have two minds about keeping for a souvenir the taper which he +carried, and which the guide wraps in a bit of newspaper for him; he may +prefer the flower which he is allowed to gather from the tiny garden at +the entrance to the catacombs. Yet these Catacombs of Domatilla are +among the cheerfulest of all the catacombs, and a sense of something +sweet and appealing invests them from the memory of the gentle lady +whose piety consecrated them as the last home of the refugees and +martyrs. They are of the more recent Roman excavations, but I do not +know whether later or earlier than those which have revealed the house +of the two Christian gentlemen, John and Paul, of unknown surname, where +they suffered death for their faith, under the Passionist church named +for them. Twenty-four rooms on the two stories have been opened, and +there are others yet to be opened; when all are laid bare they will +perfectly show what a Roman city dwelling of the better sort was like in +the mid-imperial time. The plan differs from that of the average +Pompeian house as much as the plan of a cross-town New York dwelling +would differ from that of the average Newport cottage. The rooms are +incomparably smaller than those of the mediaeval palaces of the Roman +nobles, and the decoration is sometimes crudely mixed of pagan and +Christian themes and motives; the artists, like the painters of the +Domatilla catacombs, were probably lingering in the old Greek tradition. + +The young Passionist father who showed us through the church and the +house under it made us wait half an hour while he finished his lunch, +but he was worth waiting for. He was a charming enthusiast for both, +radiantly yet reverently exulting in their respective treasures, and +justly but not haughtily proud of the newly introduced electricity which +lighted the darkness of the underground rooms and corridors. He told us +he had been twenty years a missionary in Rumania, where he had possibly +acquired the delightful English he spoke. When he would have us follow +him he said, “All persons come this way,” and he politely spoke of the +wicked emperor whose bust was somehow there as Mr. Commodus. With all +his gentleness, however, that good father had a certain smiling severity +before which the spirit bowed. He had made us wait half an hour before +he came to let us into the church, and during the hour we were with him +there he kept the door locked against an unlucky lady who arrived just +too late to enter with us. Not only this, but he utterly refused to go +back with her singly and show her the things we had seen. Perhaps it +would not have been decorous; they do not let ladies, either singly or +plurally, into the garden of the convent, which is memorable among many +other facts as being the retreat of Mr. Commodus when he suffered from +sleeplessness, and where he once carelessly left his list of victims +lying about, so that his friend Marcia found it and, reading her name in +it, joined with other friends in his assassination. The sex has indeed +had much restraint to bear from the Church, but in some respects it has +been rendered fearless in the assertion of its rights. With poor women +one of these is the indefeasible right to ask alms, and I admired the +courage, almost the ferocity, of the aged crone whom I had promised +charity in coming to the place and who rose up as I was being driven +past her, in going away, and stayed my cabman with a clamor which he +dared not ignore. Her reproaches continued through the ensuing +transaction, and followed him away with stings which instinct and +experience taught her how to implant in his tenderest sensibilities. + +A chapter much longer than any I have written here might well be devoted +to the study of the clerical or secular guides in the minor churches of +Rome. They are of every manner and degree of kindliness, mixed with a +fair measure of intelligence and a very fitting faith in the legends of +their churches. You soon get on terms of impersonal intimacy with them, +and you cannot come away without sharing their professional zeal, and +distinguishing for the moment in favor of their respective churches +above every other. It did not matter whether it was that newest church +in the Quartiere dei Prati, or that most venerable among the oldest +churches, the Church of San Gregorio: I found a reason for agreeing with +the sacristan upon its singular claims. These were especially enforced +by the good dame, the only woman sacristan I remember, who would not +spare us a single object of interest in San Gregorio's, which is indeed +for the visitor of Anglo-Saxon race supremely rich in its associations +with the conversions of his ancestors from heathenism. + +[Illustration: 44 THE BATHS OF CARACALLA] + +Being myself of Cymric blood, and of a Christianity several hundred +years older than that of the ordinary Anglo-Saxon traveller, I am afraid +that it was from a rather patronizing piety that I visited the church +where the great St. Gregory dismissed to their mission in England St. +Augustine and his fellow-apostles on one of the greatest days of the +sixth century. I might have stayed to imagine them kneeling among the +people who then thronged the genially irregular piazza, but as we came +up some ecclesiastical students were playing ball there, their robes +tucked into their girdles for their greater convenience, and we made our +way at once into the church. It forms one of a consecrated group of +edifices enshrining the memory of the best of the popes, who was also +the greatest; and here or in the adjacent convents a score of miracles +were wrought through the heavenly beauty of his life. Of these miracles, +of whose inspiration you must feel the poetry even if you cannot feel +their verity, the loveliest has its substantial witness in one of the +little chapels next the church. There you may see with your eyes and +touch with your hands the table at which St. Gregory fed every morning +twelve poor men, till one morning a thirteenth appeared in the figure of +Christ the Lord, as if to own them His disciples. The chapel which +enshrines the table is one of three, quaint in form and rich in art, +standing in the garden called St. Silvia's, after the mother of St. +Gregory. As we came out through it the westering sun poured the narrow +court before the chapel full of golden light and threw the black shadow +of a cypress across the way that a file of Comaldolese monks were taking +to the adjoining convent. They were talking cheerily together, and swung +unheeding by in their white robes so near that I could almost feel the +waft of them across the centuries that parted their faith and mine. + +We had come to St. Gregory's from the Baths of Caracalla, which we had +set out to see on the first of our Roman holidays, and, after turning +aside for the Coliseum, had now visited on next to the last of them. The +stupendous ruin could scarcely have been growing in the ten or twelve +weeks that had passed, but a bewildering notion of something like this +obsessed me as I saw it bulking aloof in overhanging cliffs and +precipices, through the cool and bright April air, against a sky of +absolute blue. As if it had been cast up out of the earth in some +convulsive throe of nature, it floundered over its vast area in +shapeless masses which seemed to have capriciously received the effect +of human design in the coping of the inaccessible steeps, in the arches +flinging themselves across the spaces between the beetling crags, in the +monstrous spring and sweep of the vaults, in the gloom of the cavernous +apertures of its Titanic walls. For the moment its immensity dwarfed the +image of all the other fragments of the Roman world and set definite +bounds to their hugeness in the mind. It seemed to have been not so much +a single edifice as a whole city, the dwelling instead of the resort of +the multitudes that once thronged it. The traces of the ornamentation +which had enriched it everywhere and which it had taken ages of ravage +to strip from it, accented its savage majesty, and again the sentiment +of spring in the fresh afternoon breeze and sunshine, and the innocent +beauty of the blooming peach and cherry in the orchards around, imparted +to it a pathos in which one's mere brute wonder was lost. But it was a +purely adventitious pathos, and it must be owned here, at the end, that +none of the relics of ancient Rome stir a soft emotion in the beholder, +and, as for beauty, there is more of it in some ivy-netted fragment of +some English abbey which Henry's Cromwell “hammered down” than in the +ruin of all the palaces and temples and theatres and circuses and baths +of that imperial Rome which the world is so well rid of. + + + + +VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN + + +We left Rome with such a nostalgic pang in our hearts that we tried to +find relief in a name for it, and we called ourselves Romesick. +Afterward, when we practised the name with such friends as we could get +to listen, they thought we said homesick. Being better instructed, they +stared or simpered, and said, “Oh!” That was not all we could have +asked, but Rome herself would understand, and, while we were seeking +this outlet for our grief, she followed us as far as she could on her +poor, broken aqueducts. At places they gave way under her, and she fell +down, but scrambled up again on the next stretch of arches, like some +fond cripple pursuing a friend on crutches; when at last our train +outran them, and there was no longer an arch to halt upon, she gave up +the vain chase and turned back within her walls, where we saw her domes +and bell-towers fading into the heaven to which they pointed. + +It was a heaven of better than absolute blue, for there were soft, white +clouds in it, and the air that our Sunday breathed under it was, at the +beginning of April, as bland as that of an American May-end. The orchard +trees were in bloom--peach and plum, cherry and pear--whenever you chose +to look at them, and all nature seemed to rejoice in the cessation of +the two days' strike which had now enabled us to drive to the station +instead of walking and carrying our bags and bundles. There were so many +of these that we had taken two cabs, and at the station our drivers +attempted to rejoice with nature in an overcharge that would have +recouped them for the loss suffered in their recent leisure. But as we +were then leaving Koine, and were not yet melted with the grief of +absence, I had the courage to resist their demand. Long before we +reached Leghorn I was so Romesick that I would have paid them anything +they asked. + +When we emerged from the suburbs upon the open Campagna, we passed +through many fields of wheat, more than we had yet seen on the grassy +waste, but there were also many flocks of sheep feeding with the cattle +in pastures. Now and then we passed a wretched hut which seemed to be +the dwelling of the shepherds we saw tending the flocks, and here and +there we came upon a group of farm buildings, all of straw, whether for +man or beast, set within a sort of squalid court, with a frowzy +suggestion of old women and children about the doors of the cottages. We +saw no men, though there must have been men off at work in the fields +with the younger women. + +As we drew near Civita Vecchia the sea widened on our view, wild with a +wind that seemed to have been blowing ever since the stormy evening in +1865 when, after looking at the tossing ships in the harbor, we decided +to take the diligence for Leghorn, rather than the little steamer we had +meant to take. From our pleasant train we now patronized Civita Vecchia +with a recognition of its picturesqueness, unvexed by the choice that +then insisted on itself, though the harbor was as full of shipping as of +old. There was time to run out for a cup of coffee at the station +buffet, where there had been neither station nor buffet in our young +time: but doubtless then as now there had been the lonely graveyard +outside the town, with its sea-beaten, seaward wall. We buried there the +last of our Roman holidays under a sky that had changed from blue to +gray since our journey began, and mournfully set out faces northward in +the malarial Maremma. + +If the Maremma is as malarial as it is famed, it does not look it. There +were stretches of hopeless morass, with wide acreages under water, but +mostly, I should say, it was rather a hilly country. Now and then we ran +by a stony old town on a distant summit like the outcropping of granite +or marble, and there were frequent breadths of woodland, oak and pine +and, I dare say, walnut and chestnut. Evidently there had been efforts +to reclaim the Maremma from its evil air and make it safely habitable, +and the farther we penetrated it the more frequent the evidences were. +There were many new buildings of a good sort, and of wood as well as +stone; when we came to Grosetto, where we had spent a memorable night +after being overturned in the Ombrone, in the attempt of our diligence +to pass its flood, we were aware, in the evening light, of a prosperity +which, if not excessive for the twoscore years that had passed, was +still very noticeable. I should not quite say that the brick wall of the +city had been scraped and scrubbed, but it looked very neat and new, +and there was a pleasant suburb under it where the moat might have been, +and people were coming and going who had almost the effect of commuters; +at least, they seemed to have come out to their homes by trolley. We +resisted an impulse to dismount and go up to the inn in the heart of the +town where we had spent that “night of memory and of sighs.” + +But we searched the horizon round for the point on the highway where our +diligence had failed of the track between the telegraph-poles and softly +rolled with us in the muddy waters, like an elephant taking a bath, but, +so far from finding it, we could not even find the highway. We began to +have our doubts of what we had always believed had happened, and +remained as snugly as we could in our compartment, where, to tell the +truth, we were not very snug. In too fond a reliance on the almanac, the +Italian government had cut off the steam which ought to have heated it, +and the cold from the hills, on which we saw snow, pierced our rugs and +cushions; but, if we had known what we were coming to in Leghorn, we +should have thought ourselves very enviable. + +I do not know exactly how far it is from the station in Leghorn to the +hotel where we had providently engaged rooms with a fire in at least one +of them, but I should say at a rough calculation it was a hundred miles +as we covered the distance in a one-horse omnibus, through long, +straight streets, after ten o'clock at night. The streets and houses +were mostly dark, as houses of good habits should be at that hour, but, +after passing through a wide, lonely piazza, we struck into a street +longer and straighter than the others, and drew up at our hotel door +opposite an hilarious cafe, where there seemed a general rejoicing of +some sort. We were unable to make out just what sort, or to join in it +without knowing, though it lasted well toward morning, and we were up +often during the night to see that the fire did not die out of our one +porcelain stove and leave us to perish of cold. + +In Leghorn the good Baedeker says that all the hotels are good, and this +sweeping verdict may be true if taken in the sense that one is as good +as another, but they are of the old Italian type which our winter in +Rome had taught us to think obsolete; now we found that it was only +obsolescent. We had written to bespeak a room with fire in it, and this +was well, for the hotel was otherwise heated only by the bodies of its +frequenters, who, when filled with Chianti, might emit a sensible +warmth; though it was very modern in being lighted with electricity, and +having a lift, in which, after a tepid supper, we were carried to our +apartment. We had our landlord's company at supper, and had learned from +him that the most eminent of American financiers, who shall not +otherwise be identified here, was in the habit, when coming to Leghorn, +of letting him know that he was bringing a party of friends, and +commanding of him a banquet such as he alone knew how to furnish a +millionaire of that princely quality. After that we were not so much +surprised as grieved to find that our elderly chambermaid had profited +by our absence to gather all the coals out of our one stove into two +_scaldini,_ which were bristling before her where she knelt when we +opened the door upon her. She apologized, but still she carried away the +coals, and we were left to rekindle the zeal of our stove as best we +could. It was not a large stove, and it seemed to feel its inadequacy to +the office of taking the chill off that vast, dim room, where it +cowered, dark and low upon the floor, with a yearning, upward stretch of +its pipe lost in space before it reached the lowermost goddess in the +allegory frescoed on the ceiling. If it had been a white porcelain +stove, that might have helped, but it was of a gloomy earthen color that +imparted no more cheer than warmth. + +We rebuilt our fire, after many repeated demands for kindling, which had +apparently to be sawed and split in a distant wood-yard before we could +get it, and then the long, arctic night set in, unrelieved by the noisy +gayeties of the cafe across the way. These burst from time to time the +thin film of sleep which formed like a coating of ice over the +consciousness, and then one could only get up and put more wood into the +despairing stove and more clothes on the beds. Well for us that we had +thought to bring all our travelling rugs with us in straps, instead of +abandoning them with our other baggage in the station till next day! +But, even with these heaping the hotel blankets and com-forters, we +shivered, and a superannuated odor that had lurked in the recesses of +those rooms, to which the sun or wind had never pierced, grew with the +growing cold, and haunted the night like something palpable as well as +sensible--the materialization of smells dead and buried there long ago. +It was wonderful how little way the electric bulb shed its beams in that +naughty air; it would not even light the page which at one time was +opened in the vain hope that the author would help the benumbing cold to +bring torpor if not slumber to the weary brain. + +It is really impossible to say where or how we breakfasted, but it was +somehow managed, and then search was made by the swiftest conveyance for +the hotel which we had heard of outside the city, as helping make +Leghorn the watering-place it is for Italians in the summer, and in the +winter as being steam-heated and appointed with every modern comfort for +the passing or sojourning stranger. It was all that and more, and only +for the fear that I should seem to join it in advertising its merits I +should like to celebrate it by name. But perhaps it is as well not; if I +did, all my readers would swarm upon that hotel, and there would be no +room for me, who hope some day to go back there and spend an old age of +luxurious leisure. There was not only steam-heat in the public rooms of +the ground floor, but there was furnace heat in all the corridors, and +there were fireplaces in certain chambers, which also looked out on the +sea, to Corsica and Elba and other isles of it, and would be full of sun +as soon as the cold rain closed a fortnight's activity. That which +diffused a blander atmosphere than steam or radiator, register and +hearth, however, was the kind will, the benevolent intelligence, which +imagined us, and which would not then let us go. We had become not only +agnostic as respected the possibility of warmth in Leghorn, we were open +sceptics, aggressive infidels. But the landlord himself followed us from +one room to another, lighting fires here and there on the hearth, making +us feel the warm air rising from the furnace, calling us to witness by +palpation the heat of the radiators, soothing our fears, and coaxing our +unfaith. His wife joined him in Italian and his son in English, and, if +I do not say that these amiable people were worthy all the prosperity +which was not then apparent in their establishment, may I never be +comfortably lodged or fed again. Our daily return for what we got was a +poor twelve francs each; but fancy a haughty American landlord caressing +us with such sweet and reassuring civility for any sum of money! Those +gentle people made themselves our friends; there was nothing they would +not do, or try to do, for us, in the vast, pink palace where we were +never twenty guests together, and mostly eight or ten, with the run of a +reading-room where there were the latest papers and periodicals from +London and Paris, and with a kitchen whence we were served the best +luncheons and dinners we ate in Europe. + +The place had the true out-of-season charm. There were two stately +dining-rooms besides the one where we dined, and there were pleasant +spaces where we had afternoon tea or after-dinner coffee, and from which +a magnificent stairway ascended to the upper halls, and a quiet lift +waited our orders, with the landlord or his son to take us up; and so +lonely and quiet and gentle, with porters and chambermaids speaking +beautiful Tuscan, and watchful attendants everywhere prophesying and +fulfilling our wants. It was a keeping to make the worst believe in +their merit, and we were not the worst. Outside, the environment +flattered or rewarded us with a garden of laurel and other evergreens, +and with flower-beds where the annuals were beginning to show the +gardener's designs in their sprouting seeds. Beyond these ample villa +bounds a tram-car murmured to and from the well-removed city, and beyond +its track lay a line of open-air theatres and variety shows and bathing +establishments, as at our own Atlantic City, but here in enduring +masonry instead of the provisional wood of our summer architecture. + +[Illustration: 45 PIAZZA VICTOR EMANUEL, LEGHORN] + +This festive preparation intimated the watering-place supremacy which +Leghorn enjoys in Italy, and which must make our quiet hotel in the +season glisten and twitter and flutter with the vivid national life. The +preparation includes a delightful drive by the seashore, with groves and +gardens, to the city gate and indefinitely beyond it, which we one day +followed as far as an old fort, where a little hotel had nestled with +every promise of simple comfort. There was a neighboring village of no +very exciting interest, and I do not know that the Italian Naval +Academy, which we passed on the way, was very exciting, though with its +villa grounds it had a pleasing rural effect. Hard by our hotel, in a +piazza that seemed to have nothing to do but surround it, was the +colossal bust of an Italian admiral, or the like, which had not the +impressiveness of a colossal full-length figure, but which rendered the +original with the faithful realism of the Genoese Campo Santo sculpture. +In compensation there was, toward the city, near the ship-yards where +the great Italian battle-ships are built, the statue of their builder--a +man who looked it--standing at large ease, with one hand in his +pantaloons pocket, and not apparently conscious of the passer's gaze. +Beyond the ship-yard, in which a battle-ship was then receiving the last +touches, was a statue for which I could not claim an equal +unconsciousness. In fact, it challenged the public attention and even +homage as it extended the baton of command and triumphed over the four +Moorish or Algerine corsairs who, in their splendid nudity, were chained +to the several corners of the monument and owned themselves +galley-slaves. The Medicean grand-duke who lords it over them, and who +erected this monument in honor of himself for the victories his admirals +had gained in sweeping the pirates from the seas, is a very proud +presence, and is certainly worthy of the admiration which his bronze +requires from the spectator. I instantly suspected this monument of +being the chief sculpture of Leghorn, and I did not wonder that a +_valet de place_ was lying in wait for me there to make me observe that +from a certain point I could get all four of the galley-slaves' noses in +perspective at once. Upon experiment I did not find that I could do +this, but I imputed my failure to want of merit in myself and not the +monument, and I willingly paid half a franc for the suggestion; if all +one's failures cost so little, one could save money. I was going then to +view at close quarters the port of Leghorn, which is famous for its mole +and lighthouse and quarantine, the first of their kind in their time. +The old port, with the fortifications, was the work of a natural son of +Queen Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester, whose noble origin was so +constantly recognized by the Tuscan grand-dukes that he came at last to +be accepted as Lord Dudley by the English. From his day, if not from his +work, the prosperity of Leghorn began, and the English have always had a +great part in it. Early in the nineteenth century there were a score of +great British merchants settled there, and, though afterward they +declined in number, the trade with England did not decline, and the +trade with America has always been such that American merchants and +captains have fully shared in the commerce directly or indirectly. Both +the old and the new port were a scene of pleasant activity the pleasant +afternoon when I visited them, and were full of varied sail as well as +many steamers, loading or unloading for or from the Mediterranean ports, +east and west, and the Hanseatic cities and the far coasts of Norway. + +Any seaport is charming and full of romantic interest, but an Italian +port has always a prime picturesqueness. Its sailors are the most +ancient mariners, and they look full of history, and capable, each of +them, of discovering a continent. I cannot say that I saw any nascent +Columbus in the tanned and tarry company I met, but I do not deny that +there was one. Leghorn is still in her lusty youth, being not much older +than our Boston in the prosperity which has not failed her since the +Medici divined her importance toward the close of the sixteenth century, +and fortified her harbor till she was one of the strongest places on the +Mediterranean. With a hazy general consciousness of her modernity in +mind, I had imagined her yet more modern, and I was somewhat surprised +to read, in a rather airy and ironical but very capable local guidebook +called _Su e Giu per Livorno_ (or _Up and Down Leghorn),_ that the place +was settled twenty-six hundred and fifty-six years before Christ. The +author records this with a smile, and then, by a leap over some forty +centuries, he finds firm footing in the fact that the great Countess +Matilde, then much bothering about in the affairs of her Tuscan +neighbors everywhere, gave the Livornese coasts to Pisa in 1103. This +seems to have been the signal for the Genoese, eleven years later, to +ravage and destroy the Pisan settlements; but later the Pisans, +confirmed in their possession by the Emperor of Germany, rebuilt and +embellished the port. A century after, Charles of Anjou demolished it, +and then the Pisans fortified it some more. Then, in the last years of +the thirteenth century, the Florentines, Lucchese, and Genoese +devastated the whole territory of Pisa, and left Leghorn only one poor +little church. Well throughout the fourteenth century there were wars +between these republics, and Leghorn suffered the consequences, being, +as our author says, “according to custom, assailed, taken, wasted, and +destroyed.” But before that century was out she seems to have flourished +up again, and to have received with all honor Gregory XL, returning from +Avignon to Rome and bringing the papacy back from its long exile to the +Eternal City. + +The Genoese now sold Leghorn to Milan, and in 1407 she was sold to +France for twenty-six thousand florins, which seems low for a whole +city. But in less than ten years we find the Genoese back again, and +strengthening and adorning her at the greatest rate. It was quite time +now that she should be visited by a virulent pestilence, and that, +having passed to Florence in the meanwhile, she should have been ceded +without a blow to Charles VIII. of France. But in a year she was once +more in the hold of Florence and helping that republic fight her enemies +the Pisans, and her other enemies under the Emperor Maximilian of +Germany. + +More fortifying, embellishing, and pestilence followed, and in 1429 +Michelangelo came to inspect the new fortifications which the Florentine +republic had built at Leghorn to repair the damages she had suffered. +The next year the republic fell, and Alessandro de' Medici, who came in +master at Florence, took Leghorn into the favor which his family +continued to show her to the end. The first Cosimo greatly improved her +harbor, dug canals, and built forts, but he let the Spaniards, for a +pleasure to Charles V., place garrisons in Florence, Pisa, and Leghorn, +and the Spaniards remained six years at Leghorn. In the last year of the +sixteenth century Ferdinand erected to himself the superb monument with +the four captive corsairs at the corners, whose noses I had failed to +get in range, and in the meanwhile many great public works had been +constructed and the city desolated by another plague. It was now time +for the English to appear in those waters, and in 1652 they were +defeated by the Dutch off Leghorn. About seventy-five years later the +grippe paid Leghorn a first visit, and not long after a violent +earthquake shook down many buildings and killed many women and children; +but the authorities did what they could to secure the city in future by +declaring the day a perpetual fast, and forbidding masking and dancing +on it. + +No disaster worth recording befell the city till Bonaparte came with the +Rights of Man in 1796 and left a French garrison, which evacuated the +place the next year, after having levied a fine of two million francs. +The year after that Nelson occupied it with eight thousand English +troops, and the following year the French reoccupied it and sacked the +churches and imposed another fine nearly as great as the first. After +the Napoleonic victories in the Italian wars, they seem to have come +back again and fined the city two million francs more. They now remained +five years, and in the mean time a Livornese, Giovanni Antonio Giaschi, +invented a submarine-boat for attacking and destroying war-vessels, and +a Spanish ship brought the yellow-fever. In 1808 Napoleon gave all +Tuscany, and Leghorn with it, to his sister Elisa, but when in 1814 he +was deposed, Leghorn was restored to the Tuscan grand-dukes and +garrisoned for them by German troops, an earthquake having profited by +the general disorder meantime to pay it another visit. The grand-duke +now being driven out of Florence by Murat, he took refuge at Leghorn, +which fell a prey to an epidemic of typhus. The first steam-vessel +appared there in 1818, and in 1835 the Asiatic cholera; in 1847 a +telegraphic line to Pisa was opened. + +In 1848 the revolutions prevalent throughout Europe had their effect at +Leghorn. The citizens shared in the uprising against the grand-duke, and +elected among its representatives F. D. Guerrazzi, once famous as the +first of Italian novelists and a man of generous mind and heart, who +duly suffered arrest and imprisonment when the grand-duke was restored +by the Austrians. He was sentenced to fifteen years' prison with hard +labor, but later his sentence was commuted to exile. He lived to return +and take part in the Italian unification in 1860, and in 1866 he led the +movement against making peace with Austria unless all her +Italian-speaking provinces were ceded to Italy. He died in 1873, and is +remembered in Leghorn by a monument very ineffective as a whole, but +singularly interesting in certain details. + +I have omitted from this catalogue of events many of peaceful interest, +such as visits from popes, princes, and poets, and I am not sure I have +got in all the plagues and earthquakes. Perhaps I have the more +willingly suppressed a few war-like facts, in the interest of the +superstition I had cherished that Leghorn was without a history, or that +it had no more history than, most American cities of equal date with its +commercial importance, which began with the wise hospitality of the +Medici to merchants of all races and nations, religions and races, +settled there, and especially to the Spanish Jews who came in great +numbers to the city that it was a common saying that you had as well +strike the duke as strike a Jew in Leghorn. Greeks, Turks, Armenians +were protected equally with English and Dutch, and infidel and heretic +were alike free in their worship. It was the great prison of the +galley-slaves, who were chiefly the pirates and corsairs taken on the +high seas by the duke's ships. These captives not only served as models +for the Moors at the base of his monument, but they must have been very +useful in the different public works which he and his successors carried +out. Now they and their like are gone, and though the Greeks, the +Armenians, the English, and the Scotch still have their churches, I do +not suppose there is a mosque in all Leghorn. + +[Illustration: 46 THE CANAL AT LEGHORN] + +I do not speak very confidently, because my researches in that sort were +not exhaustive. I indeed visited the cathedral, not wholly because Inigo +Jones had something to do in planning it, but because I had formed the +habit of visiting churches in Rome, and I mechanically went into one +wherever I saw it. Generally speaking, I think that they were rather +bare in painting or sculpture, but they were such churches as in America +one would go a long way to see and think one's self well rewarded by +their objects of interest. I do not know what defence to offer for not +having visited the galleries of the Museo Civico, where by actual count +in the guide-book I missed one hundred and sixty-nine works of art, +though just how many masterpieces I am not able to say: probably one out +of every ten was a masterpiece. But, if I did not much resort to the +churches and galleries in Leghorn, I roamed gladly through its pleasant +streets and squares, and by the shores of the canals which once gave it +the name of New Venice, and which still invite the smaller shipping up +among its houses in right Venetian fashion. The streets of Leghorn are +not so straight as they are long, but many are very straight, and the +others are curved rather than crooked. The longest and straight-est were +streets of low dwelling-houses, uncommon in Italian towns, where each +family lived under its own roof with a little garden behind, and a +respective entrance, as people still mostly do in our towns. From the +force of the mid-April sun in these streets I realized what they might +be in summer, and, if I lived in Leghorn, I would rather live on the +sea-front, in one of the comfortable, square, stone villas which border +it. But everywhere Leghorn seemed a pleasant place to live, and +convenient, with lively shops and cafes and trams and open spaces, and +statues and monuments in them. The city, I understood, is of somewhat +radical politics, tending from clericalism to socialism; and, like every +other Italian city, it is full of patriotic monuments. There is a Victor +Emmanuel on horseback, plump and squat, but heroic as always, and a +Garibaldi struggling in vain for beauty in his poncho and his round, +flat cap; there is a Mazzini, there is a Cavour, and, above all, there +is a Guerrazzi, no great thing as to the seated figure, but most +interesting, most touching in two of the bas-reliefs below. One +represents him proclaiming the provisional government at Florence in +1849, after the expulsion of the grand-duke, where the fact is studied, +with the wonderful realism of the Italians, in all its incidents and the +costumes of the thronging spectators. The sculptor has hesitated at no +top-hat or open umbrella; there are barefooted boys and bareheaded young +girls, as well as bearded elders; if my memory serves, the scene is not +without a dog or two. But it is the other relief which is so simply and +so deeply affecting--the interior of a narrow cell, with one chair and a +rude table, at which the patriot novelist wrote his greatest work, _The +Siege of Florence,_ and with him standing a little way from it. In spite +of the small space and the almost vacant stage, the scene is full of +most moving drama, and records a whole Italian epoch, now happily past +forever. + +These are modern sculptures, and they scarcely contest the palm with the +monument of the four galley-slaves and the Medicean grand-duke. In +another piazza two princes of the Lorrainese family, if I remember +rightly, face each other over its oblong--classic motives, with the +figures much undraped, and one of them singularly impressive from the +mutton-chop whiskers which modernized him. There are several theatres, +and among them a Goldoni theatre, as there should be in a city where the +sweet old playwright sojourned for a time and has placed the action of +his famous comedy, “La Locandiera.” But I was told that the local +theatres were not so much frequented by polite people, especially for +opera, as the theatre in Pisa, which, if poorer, is prouder in its +society than its old-time vassal by the sea, and attracts the fashion of +Leghorn during the season. + +As Pisa has ceased to be the colony of literary English it once was, in +the time of Byron and Hunt and Shelley, to name no others, so Leghorn +has ceased to be the mercantile colony of former days. It has still a +great deal of commerce with England, but this is no longer carried on by +resident merchants, though here and there an English name lingers in the +style of a business house; and the distinctive qualities of both +colonies are united in the author of a charming book who fills the post +of British consul at Leghorn. His _Tuscan Towns_ must not be confused +with another book called _Tuscan Cities,_ though, if the traveller +chooses to carry both with him about Tuscany, I will not say that he +could do better. In _Tuscan Cities_ there is nothing about Leghorn, I +believe, but in _Tuscan Towns_ there is a specially delightful chapter +about the place, its people, language, and customs which I can commend +to the reader as the best corrective of the errors I must have been +constantly falling into here. + +It was in company no less enviable than this author's that I revisited +the port on a gray Sunday afternoon of my stay, and then for the first +time visited the ancient fortifications which began to be in the time of +the Countess Matilde and intermittently increased under the rule of the +Pisan, Genoese, and Florentine republics, until the Medicean grand-dukes +amplified them in almost the proportions I saw. The brutal first duke of +their line, Alessandro de' Medici, who some say was no Medici, but the +bastard of a negro and a washerwoman, stamped his creed in the +inscription below his adoptive arms, “Under one Faith and one Law, one +Lord,” and it was in the palace here, the story goes, that the wicked +Cosimo I. killed his son Don Garzia before the eyes of the boy's mother. +Anything is imaginable of an early Medicean grand-duke, but in a manner +the father's murderous fury was provoked by the fact, if it was a fact, +that Don Garzia had just mortally wounded his brother Giovanni. I should +like to pretend that the tragedy had wrought in my unconsciousness to +the effect of the pensive gloom which the old fortress cast over me, but +perhaps I had better not. There are some gray Sunday afternoons of a +depressing effect on the spirit which requires no positive or palpable +reason. + +In any case it was a relief to go from the shadow of the past there +through the pleasant city streets to the gentle quiet of the British +cemetery, where so many of our race and some even of our own nation are +taking their long rest. No one is now buried there, and the place, in +the gradual diminution of the English colony at Leghorn, has fallen into +a lovely and appealing neglect if not oblivion. Oblivion quite covers +its origin, but it is almost as old as Protestantism itself, and, if the +ground for it was the gift of the grand-duke who tolerated heretics as +well as Jews in the impulse he gave to the city's growth, it would not +be strange. The beautiful porch of the English church, for once Greek +and not Gothic, fronts upon it, but the dwindling congregation has no +care of it, and there is no fund to keep it so much as free from weeds +and brambles and the insidious ivy rending its monuments asunder. The +afternoon of our visit it was in the sole charge of a large, gray cat, +which, after feasting upon the favorite herb, lay stretched in sleep on +a sunny bed of catnip under the walls of a mansion near, at whose +windows some young girls looked down in a Sunday listlessness, as we +wandered about among the “tall cypresses, myrtles, pines, +eucalyptus-trees, oleanders, cactuses, huge bushes of monthly roses, a +jungle of periwinkles, sarsaparilla, wild irises, violets, and other +loveliest of wild flowers.” On the forgotten tombs were the touching +epitaphs of those who had died in exile, and whose monuments are +sometimes here while their ashes lie in Florence or Rome, or wherever +else they chanced to meet their end. Among them were the inscriptions on +the graves of “William Magee Seton, merchant of New York,” who died at +Pisa in 1803, and “Henry De Butts, a citizen of Baltimore, N. America,” + who died at Sarzana; with “James M. Knight, Esq., Captain of Marines, +Citizen of the United States of America,” who died at Leghorn in 1802; +and “Thomas Gamble, Late Captain in the Navy of the United States of +America,” who died at Pisa in 1818; and doubtless there were other +Americans whose tombs I did not see. The memorials of the English were +likewise here, whether they died at Leghorn or not; but most of them +seem to have ended their lives in that place, where there were once so +many English residents, whether for their health or their profit. The +youth of some testified to the fact that they had failed to find the air +specific for their maladies, and doubtless this would account also for +the disproportionate number of noble ladies who rest here, with their +hatchments and their coronets and robes of state carven on the stones +above them. Among others one reads the titles of “Lady Catharine Burgess +born Beauclerk; Jane Isabella, widow of the Earl of Lanesborough and +daughter of the Earl of Molesworth; and Catharine Murray, only child of +James Murray,... and the Right Honorable Lady Catharine Stewart his +Spouse,” with knights, admirals, generals, and other military and naval +officers a many. Most important of all is the tomb of that strenuous +spirit, more potent for good and ill in the English fiction of his time +than any other novelist of his time, and second only to Richardson in +the wide influence of his literary method, Tobias Smollett, namely, who +here ended his long fight with consumption and the indifference of his +country to his claims upon her official recognition. After many years of +narrow circumstance in the Southern climates where he spent his later +life, he tried in vain for that meek hope of literary ambition, a +consulate, perhaps the very post that my companion, a hundred and fifty +years later, was worthily holding. The truest monument to his stay in +Italy is the book of Italian travel that he wrote, and the best effect +is that sort of peripatetic novel which he may be said to have invented +in _Humphrey Clinker,_ and which has survived the epistolary form into +our own time. It is a very simple shaft that rises over his grave, with +the brief record, “Memoriae Tobiae Smollett, qui Liburni animam +efflavit, 16 Sept., 1773,” but it is imaginable with what wrath he would +have disputed the record, if it is true, according to all the other +authorities, that he exhaled his spirit two years earlier, and how he +would have had it out with those “friends and fellow-countrymen” who had +the error perpetuated above his helpless dust. + +It was not easy to quit the sweetly solemn place or to resist the wish +which I have here indulged, that some kinsman or kinswoman of those whom +the blossoms and leaves are hiding would come to their rescue from +nature now claiming an undue part in them, and obliterating their very +memories. One would not have a great deal done, but only enough to save +their names from entire oblivion, and with the hope of this I have named +some of their names. It might not be too much even for the United +Kingdom and the United States, though both very poor nations, to join in +contributing the sum necessary for the work. Or some millionaire English +duke, or some millionaire American manufacturer, might make the outlay +alone; I cannot expect any millionaire author to provide a special fund +for the care of the tomb of Smollett. + + + + +VIII. OVER AT PISA + + +If the half-hour between Leghorn and Pisa had been spent in any less +lovely transit, I should still be grieving for the loss of the thirty +minutes which might so much better have been given to either place. But +with the constant line of mountains enclosing the landscape on the +right, in all its variety of tillage, pasture-land, vineyard, and +orchard, and the unchanging level which had once been the bed of the +sea, we were gainers in sort beyond the gift of those cities. We had the +company, great part of the way, of more stone-pines than we had seen +even between Naples and Rome, here gathering into thick woods, with the +light beautiful beneath the spread of their horizontal boughs, there +grouped in classic groves, and yonder straying off in twos and threes. +We had the canal that of old time made Pisa a port of the Mediterranean, +with Leghorn for her servant on the shore (or, if it was not this canal, +it was another as straight and long), with a peasant walking beside it, +under a light-green umbrella, in the showers which threatened our start +but spared our arrival. We had then the city, with its domes and towers, +grown full height out of the plain through which the Arno curves in the +stateliest crescent of all its course. + +The day had turned finer than any other day I can now think of in my +whole life, and I was once more in Pisa without the care for its history +or art or even novelty which had corroded my mind in former visits. I +had been there twice before--once in 1864, when I had done its wonders +with all the wonder they merited, and again in 1883, when I had lived +its memories on the scene of its manifold and mighty experiences. No +distinct light from that learning vexed my present vision, but an +agreeable mist of association, nothing certain, nothing tangible +remaining, but only a gentle vague involving everything, in which I +could possess my soul in peace. In this glimmer I recognized a certain +cabman as having been waiting there from the dawn of time, with his +dark-eyed little son, to make me his willing captive at something above +the tariff rates, but destined by the same fate to serve me well, and to +part with me friends at the close of the day for a franc more than the +excess agreed upon. It costs so small a sum to corrupt the common +carrier in Italy that I hold it wrong to fail of any chance, and this +driver had not only a horse of uncommon qualities, but he spoke a +beautiful Tuscan, and he had his Pisa at his fingers' ends. + +[Illustration: 47 THE CATHEDRAL, BAPTISTERY, AND LEANING TOWER, PISA] + +We were of one mind about driving without delay to the famous group +which is without rival on the earth, though there may be associated +edifices in the red planet Mars that surpass the Cathedral, the Leaning +Tower, the Baptistery, and the Campo Santo at Pisa. What genius it was +imagined placing them in the pleasant meadow where they sit, just beyond +the city streets, I do not know, but it was inspiration beyond any +effect of mere taste, and it commanded my worship as much the last as +the first time. The meadow still swims round them and breaks in a foam +of daisies at their feet; for I take it that it is always mid-April +there, and that the grass is as green and the sun as yellow on it as the +afternoon we saw it. The sacred edifices are as golden as the light on +them, and there is such a joyous lift in the air that it is a wonder +they do not swing loose from their foundations and soar away into the +celestial blue. For travellers in our willing mood there was, of course, +the predestined cicerone waiting for us at the door of the cathedral, +who would fix no price for the pleasure he was born to do us, yet still +consented to take more than twice that he ought to have had at parting. +But he was worth the money; he was worth quite two francs, and, though +he was not without the fault of his calling and would have cumbered us +with instruction, I will not blame him, for after a moment I perceived +that his intelligence was such that I might safely put my hands in my +pocket on my shut guide-book and follow him from point to point without +fear of missing anything worth noting. Among the things worthiest +noting, I saw, as if I had never seen them before, the unforgettable, +forgotten Andrea del Sartos, especially the St. Agnes, in whose face you +recognize the well-known features of the painter's wife, but with a +gentler look than they usually wore in his Madonnas, perhaps because he +happened to study these from that difficult lady when she was in her +least celestial moods. Besides the masterpieces of other masters, there +is a most noble Sodoma, which the great Napoleon carried away to Paris +and which the greater French people afterward restored. At every step in +the beautiful temple you may well pause, for it abounds in pictures and +sculptures, the least of which would enrich St. Peter's at Rome beyond +the proudest effect of its poverty-stricken grandeur. Ghirlandajo, +Michelangelo, Gaddo Gaddi, John of Bologna--the names came back to me +out of a past of my own almost as remote as theirs, while our guide +repeated them, in their relation to the sculptures or pictures or +architecture, with those of lesser lights of art, and that school of +Giotto, of all whose frescos once covering its walls the fire of three +hundred years ago has left a few figures clinging to one of the pillars, +faint and uncertain as the memories of my own former visits to the +church. I did, indeed, remember me of an old bronze lamp, by Vincenzo +Possenti, hanging from the roof, which I now revered the third time, at +intervals of twenty years; from its oscillation Galileo is said to have +got the notion of the pendulum; but it is now tied back with a wire, +being no longer needed for such an inspiration. Mostly in this last +visit I took Pisa as lightly as at the first, when, as I have noted from +the printed witness, I was gayly indifferent to the claims of her +objects of interest. If they came in my way, I looked at them, but I did +not put myself much about for them. I rested mostly in the twilight of +old associations, trusting to the guidance of our cicerone, whom, in +some form or under some name, the reader will find waiting for him at +the cathedral door as we did. But I have since recurred to the record of +my second visit in 1883, with amazement at the exact knowledge of events +shown there, which became, in 1908, all a blur of dim conjecture. It +appears that I was then acquainted with much more Pisan history than any +other author I have found own to. I had also surprising adventures of +different kinds, such as my poorer experience of the present cannot +parallel. I find, for instance, that in 1883 I gave a needy crone in the +cathedral a franc instead of the piece of five centimes which I meant +for her, and that the lamp of Galileo did nothing to light the gloom +into which this error plunged my spirit. + +It appears to have jaundiced my view of the whole cathedral, which I did +not find at all comparable to that of Siena, whereas in 1908 I thought +it all beautiful. This may have been because I was so newly from the +ugliness of the Eoman churches; though I felt, as I had felt before, +that the whole group of sacred edifices at Pisa was too suggestive of +decorative pastry and confectionery. No more than at the second view of +it did I now attempt the ascent of the Leaning Tower; I had discharged +this duty for life when I first saw it; with my seventy-one years upon +me, I was not willing to climb its winding stairs, and I doubted if I +could keep it from falling, as I then did, by inclining myself the other +way. I resolved that I would leave this to the new-comer; but I gladly +followed our cicerone across the daisied green from the cathedral to the +baptistery, where I found the famous echo waiting to welcome me back, +and greet me with its angelic sweetness, when the custodian who has it +in charge appealed to it; though its voice seemed to have been weakened +and coarsened in its forced replies to some rude Americans there, who +shouted out to it and mocked at it. One wished to ask them if they did +not know that this echo was sacred, and that their challenges of it were +a species of sacrilege. But doubtless that would not have availed to +silence them. By-and-by they went away, and then we were aware of an +interesting group of people by the font near the lovely Lombardic pulpit +of Nicola Pisano. They were peasants, by their dress--a young father and +mother and a little girl or two, and then a gentle, elderly woman, with +a baby in her arms, at which she looked proudly down. They were in their +simple best, and they had good Tuscan faces, full of kindness. I +ventured some propitiatory coppers with the children, and, when the old +woman made them thank me, I thought I could not be mistaken and I +ventured further: “You are the grandmother?” + +“Yes, signer,” she answered; and then we had some talk about the age and +the beauty of the baby, which I declared wonderful for both, in praises +loud enough for the father and mother to hear. After that they seemed to +hold a family council, from which I thought it respectful to stand apart +until the grandmother spoke to me again. + +I did not understand, and I appealed to our guide for help. + +“She wishes you to be godfather to the child.” + +I had never yet been a godfather, but I had the belief that it brought +grave responsibilities, which in the very casual and impermanent +circumstances I did not see how I was to meet. Yet how to refuse without +wounding these kind people who had so honored me I did not know until a +sudden inspiration came to my rescue. + +“Tell them,” I said, “and be careful to make them understand, that I am +very grateful and very sorry, but that I am a Protestant, and that I +suppose I cannot, for that reason, be godfather to their child.” + +He explained, and they received my thanks and regrets with smiling +acquiescence; and just then a very stout little old priest (who has +baptized nearly all the babies in Pisa for fifty years) came in, and the +baptism proceeded without my intervention. But I remained, somehow, +disappointed; it would have been pleasant to leave a godchild behind me +there in the neighborhood of Pisa; to have sent him from time to time +some little remembrance of this remote America, and, perhaps, when he +grew up and came to Pisa, and learned the art of the statuary, to have +had from him a Leaning Tower which he had cut in alabaster for me. I was +taking it for granted he was a boy, but he may not have been; there is +always that chance. + +If I had been alone, I suppose I should still have gone into the Campo +Santo, from mere force of habit; I always go, in Pisa, but I had now +with me clearer eyes for art than mine are, and I wished to have their +light on the great allegories and histories frescoed round the +cloisters, and test with them the objects of my tacit and explicit +reserves and misgivings. I needed such eyes, and even some such powerful +glasses as would have pierced through the faded and wasted pictures and +shown them at least as I had first seen them. They were then in such +reasonable disrepair as one might expect after three or four centuries, +but in the last thirty years a ruinous waste has set in before which not +only the colors have faded, but the surfaces have crumbled under the +colors; and as yet no man knows how to stop the ravage. I think I have +read that it is caused by a germ; but, if not, the loss is the same, and +until a parasite for the germ is found the loss must go on, and the work +of Giotto, of Benozzo Gozzoli, of Memmi, must perish with that of the +Orgagnas, which may indeed go, for all me. Bible stories, miracles, +allegories--they are all hasting to decay, and it can be but a few years +until they shall vanish like the splendors of the dawn which they typify +in art. + +In some things the ruin is not altogether to be regretted. It has +softened certain loathsome details of the charnel facts portrayed, and +in other pictures the torment and anguish of the lost souls are no +longer so painful as the old painters ascertained them. Hell in the +Campo Santo is not now the hell of other days, just as the hell of +Christian doctrine is not the hell it used to be. Death and the world +are indeed immitigable; the corpses in their coffins are as terrifying +to the gay lords and ladies who come suddenly upon them as ever they +were, though doubtless of no more lasting effect with such sinners than +they would be nowadays. But what one must chiefly lament is the waste of +the whole quaint and charming series of Scripture incidents by Benozzo +Gozzoli. This is indeed most lamentable, and after realizing the loss +one is only a little heartened by the gayety of certain grieving widows, +sitting in marble for monuments to their husbands at several points +under the arcades. What cheer they might have brought us was impaired by +the sight of the sarcophaguses and the other antiques against the walls, +which inflicted an inappeasable ache for the city where such things +abound, and brought our refluent Romesickness back full tide upon us. +More than once Pisa elsewhere did us the like involuntary unkindness; +she, too, is yellow and mellow like Rome, and she had moments of the +Piazza Navona and the Piazza di Spagna which were poignant. But she had +moments of her own when Rome could not rival her--such, for instance, as +that when she invited us from the perishing frescos of her Campo Santo +to turn our eyes on the flower-strewn field of death which the cloisters +surrounded, and where in the hallowed earth which her galleys brought +from Jerusalem her children, in their several turns, used to sleep so +sweetly and safely. + +The afternoon sunlight was prolonging the day there as well as it could, +and we should have liked to linger with it as late as it would, but +there were other places in Pisa calling us, and we must go. We found our +driver, and his black-eyed boy beside him on the box, waiting for us at +the cathedral door, and we seem to have left it pretty much to them +where we should go. They decided us, if we really left it to them, +mainly for the outside of things, so that we might see as much of Pisa +as possible; but it appears to have been their notion that we ought to +visit, at least, the inside of the Church of the Knights of St. +Stephen. I do not know whether I protested or not that I had abundantly +seen this already, but, at any rate, I am now glad that they took us +there. As every traveller will pretend to remember, the main business of +the knights was to fight the Barbary pirates, and the main business of +their church is now to serve as a repository of the prows of the galleys +and the flags which they took in their battles with the infidels. There +are other monuments of their valor, but by all odds the flags will be +the most interesting to the American visitor, because of the start that +many of them will give him by their resemblance to our own banner, with +their red-and-white stripes, which the eye follows in vivid expectation +of finding the blue field of stars in the upper left-hand corner. It +never does find this, and that is the sufficient reason for holding to +the theory that our flag was copied from the armorial bearings of the +Washington family, and not taken from the standard of those paynim +corsairs; but there is poignant instant when one trembles. + +We viewed, of course, the exterior of the edifice standing on the site +of the Tower of Famine, where the cruel archbishop starved the Count +Ugolino and his grandchildren to death; and we drove by the buildings of +Pisa's famous university, which we afterward fancied rather pervaded the +city with the young and ardent life of its students. It is no great +architectural presence, but there are churches and palaces to make up +for that. Everywhere you chance on them in the narrow streets and the +ample piazzas, but the palaces follow mostly the stately curve of the +Arno, where some of them have condescended to the office of hotels, and +where, I believe, one might live in economy and comfort; or, at any +rate, I should like to try. It would get rather warm there in May, and +July and August are not to be thought of, but all the other year it +would be divine, with such a prospect as can hardly be matched anywhere +else. Pisa used once to be the resort of many seeking health or warmth, +and for mere climate it ought again to come into favor. Probably there +is reasonably accessible society there, and, as the Livornese believe, +there is at least excellent opera. The time might grow long, but ought +not to be very heavy, and there is a cafe, at the very finest point of +the curve, where you can get an excellent cup of tea. Whether this +attests the resort or sojourn of many English, or the growth of the +tea-habit among the Pisans, I cannot say, but that cafe is very +charming, with students standing about in it and admiring the ladies who +come in to buy pastry, and who do not suppose there is any one there to +look at them. I am sure that the handsome mother with the pretty +daughter who lingered so long over their choice of little cakes could +not have imagined any one was looking, or she would at once have taken +macaroons and hurried away: at that cafe they have macaroons almost +three inches across, and delicious. + +[Illustration: 48 WITH ALMOST ANY OF MY BACKGROUNDS] + +The whole keeping was so pleasant that we hated to leave it to the +lengthening shadows from the other shore, but we were to drive down the +Arno into the promenade that follows it, I do not know how far; with the +foolish greed of travel, we wanted to get in all of Pisa that we could, +even if we tore ourselves from its most tempting morsel. But it was all +joy, and I should like, at this moment, to be starting on that +enchanting drive again. I leave the reader to imagine the lovely scenery +for himself; almost any of my many backgrounds will serve; but I will +supply him with a piece of statistics such as does not fall in +everybody's way. We noted the great number of anglers who lined the +opposite bank, with no appearance of catching anything, and I asked our +driver if they never happened to get a bite. “Not in the daytime,” he +explained, compassionately, “but as soon as the evening comes they get +all the fish they want.” + +I could pour out on the reader many other Pisan statistics, but they +would be at second-hand. After long vicissitude, the city is again +almost as prosperous as she was in the heyday of her national greatness, +when she had commerce with every Levantine and Oriental port. We +ourselves saw a silk factory pouring forth a tide of pretty girls from +their work at the end of the day; there was no ruin or disrepair +noticeable anywhere, and the whole city was as clean as Rome, with +streets paved with broad, smooth flagstones where you never missed the +rubber tires which your carriage failed of. But Pisa had a great air of +resting, of taking life easily after a tumultuous existence in the long +past which she had put behind her. Throughout the Middle Ages she was +always fighting foreign foes without her walls or domestic factions +within, now the Saracens wherever she could find them or they could find +her, now the Normans in Naples, now the Cor-sicans and Sardinians, now +Lucca, now Genoa, now Florence, and now all three. Her wars with these +republics were really incessant; they were not so much wars as battles +in one long war, with a peace occasionally made during the five or ten +or fifteen years, which was no better than a truce. When she fell under +the Medici, together with her enemy Florence, she shared the death-quiet +the tyrants brought that prepotent republic, and it was the Medicean +strength probably which saved her from Lucca and Genoa, though it left +them to continue republics down to the nineteenth century. She was at +one time an oligarchy, and at another a democracy, and at another the +liege of this prince or that priest, but she was never out of trouble as +long as she possessed independence or the shadow of it. In the safe hold +of united Italy she now sits by her Arno and draws long, deep breaths, +which you may almost hear as you pass; and I hope the prospect of +increasing prosperity will not tempt her to work too hard. It does not +look as if it would. + +We were getting a little anxious, but not very anxious, for that one +cannot be in Pisa, about our train back to Leghorn; though we did not +wish to go, we did not wish to be left; but our driver reassured us, and +would not let us shirk the duty of seeing the house where Galileo was +born. We found it in a long street on the thither side of the river, and +in such a poor quarter that our driver could himself afford to live only +a few doors from it. As if they had expected him to pass about this +time, his wife and his five children were sitting at his door and +playing before it. He proudly pointed them out with his whip, and one of +the little ones followed on foot far enough to levy tribute. They were +sufficiently comely children, but blond, whereas the boy on the box was +both black-eyed and black-haired. When we required an explanation of the +mystery, the father easily solved it; this boy was the child of his +first wife. If there were other details, I have forgotten them, but we +made our romance to the effect that the boy, to whose beautiful eyes we +now imputed a lurking sadness, was not happy with his step-mother, and +that he took refuge from her on the box with his father. They seemed +very good comrades; the boy had shared with his father the small cakes +we had given him at the cafe. At the station, in recognition of his +hapless lot, I gave him half a franc. By that time his father was +radiant from the small extortion I had suffered him to practice with me, +and he bade the boy thank me, which he did so charmingly that I almost, +but not quite, gave him another half-franc. Now I am sorry I did not. +Pisa was worth it. + + + + +IX. BACK AT GENOA + + +There is an old saying, probably as old as Genoa's first loot of her +step-sister republic, “If you want to see Pisa, you must go to Genoa,” + which may have obscurely governed us in our purpose of stopping there on +our way up out of Italy. We could not have too much of Pisa, as +apparently the Genoese could not; but before our journey ended I decided +that they would have thought twice before plundering Pisa if they had +been forced to make their forays by means of the present railroad +connection between the two cities. At least there would have been but +one of the many wars of murder and rapine between the republics, and +that would have been the first. After a single experience of the eighty +tunnels on that line, with the perpetually recurring necessity of +putting down and putting up the car-window, no army would have repeated +the invasion; and, though we might now be without that satirical old +saying, mankind would, on the whole, have been the gainer. As it was, +the enemies could luxuriously go and come in their galleys and enjoy the +fresh sea-breezes both ways, instead of stifling in the dark and gasping +for breath as they came into the light, while their train ran in and out +under the serried peaks that form the Mediterranean shore. I myself +wished to take a galley from Leghorn, or even a small steamer, but I was +overruled by less hardy but more obdurate spirits, and so we took the +Florentine express at Pisa, where we changed cars. + +The Italian government had providently arranged that the car we changed +into should be standing beyond the station in the dash of an unexpected +shower, and that it should be provided with steps so high and steep, +with Italian ladies standing all over them and sticking their umbrellas +into the faces of American citizens trying to get in after them, that it +was a feat of something like mountain-climbing to reach the corridor, +and then of daring-do to secure a compartment. Though a collectivist, +with a firm belief in the government ownership of railroads everywhere, +I might have been tempted at times in Italy to abjure my creed if I had +not always reflected that the state there had just come into possession +of the roads, with all their capitalistic faults of management and +outwear of equipment which it would doubtless soon reform and repair. I +venture to suggest now, however, that its prime duty is to have +platforms level with the car-doors, as they are in England, and not to +let Italian ladies stand in the doorways with their umbrellas. I do not +insist that it shall impose silence and sobriety upon a party of young +French people in the next compartment, but I do think it should remove +those mountains back from the sea so that the trains carrying cultivated +Americans can run along the open shore the whole way to Genoa. Pending +this, it should provide strong and watchful employees to lower and raise +the windows at the mouth of each of the eighty tunnels in every car. I +do not demand that it shall change the site of the station in Genoa so +that it shall not always be the city's whole length away from the hotel +you have chosen, but I think this would be a desirable improvement, +especially if it is after dark when you arrive and raining a peculiarly +cold, disagreeable rain. + +That rain was very disappointing; for, in the intervals between tunnels, +we had fancied, from the few brief glimpses we caught of the landscape, +that the April so backward elsewhere in Italy was forwarder in the +blossomed trees along the eastern Riviera; and we learned at our hotel +that the steam-heat had just been taken off because the day had been so +hot and dry, though the evening was now so cold and wet. It was fitfully +put on and off during the chilly week that ensued, though in our +fifth-story garden, to which we sometimes resorted, there was a mildness +in the air that was absent in-doors. The hotel itself was disappointing; +any hotel would be after our hotel in Leghorn; and, though there was the +good-will of former days, there was not the former effect. The corridors +crashed and clattered all day long and well into the night with the +gayety of some cheap incursion of German tourists, who seemed, indeed, +to fill the whole city with their clamor. They were given a long table +to themselves, and when they were set at it and began to ply their +knives and tongues the din was deafening. That would not have been so +bad if they had not been so plain, or if, when they happened, in a young +girl or two, to be pretty, they had not guttled and guzzled so like the +plainest of their number. One such pretty girl was really beautiful, +with a bloom perhaps already too rich, which, as she abandoned herself +to her meat and drink, reddened downward over her lily neck and upward +to her golden hair, past the brows under which her blue, blue eyes +protruded painfully, all in a frightful prophecy of what she would be +when the bud of her spring should be the full-blown cabbage-rose of her +summer. + +I dare say those people were not typical of their civilization. Probably +modern enterprise makes travel easy to sorts and conditions of Germans +who once would not have dreamed of leaving home, and now tempts these +rude Teutonic hordes over or under the Alps and pours them out on the +Peninsula, far out-deluging the once-prevalent Anglo-Saxons. The first +night there was an Englishman at dinner, but he vanished after +breakfast; the next day an Italian officer was at lunch, but he came no +more; we were the only Americans, and now we had the sole society of +those German tourists. Perhaps it was national vanity, but I could not +at the moment think of an equal number of our fellow-citizens of any +condition who would not have been less molestively happy. One forgot +what one was eating, and left the table bruised as if physically beaten +upon by those sound-waves and sight-waves. But our companions must have +made themselves acceptable to the city they had come to visit; Genoa is +very noisy, and they could not be heard above the trams and omnibuses, +and in the streets they could not be seen at table; when I ventured to +note to a sacristan, here and there, that there seemed to be a great +many Germans in town, the fact apparently roused nothing of the old-time +Italian antipathy for the Tedeschi. Severally they may have been +cultivated and interesting people; and that blooming maiden may really +have been the Blue Flower of Romance that she looked before she began to +dine. + +[Illustration: 49 WASHING IN THE RIVER, GENOA] + +We were entering upon our third view of Genoa with the zest of our +first, and I was glad to find there were so many things I had left +unseen or had forgotten. First of all the Campo Santo allured me, and I +went at once to verify the impressions of former years in a tram +following the bed of a torrential river which was now dry except in the +pools where the laundresses were at work, picturesquely as always in +Italy. But here they were not alone the worthy theme of art; their +husbands and fathers, and perhaps even their _fiances,_ were at work +with them, not, indeed, washing the linen, but spreading to dry it in +snowy spaces over the clean gravel. On either bank of the stream newly +finished or partly finished apartment-houses testified to the prosperity +of the city, which seemed to be growing everywhere, and it would not be +too bold to imagine this a favorite quarter because of its convenience +to the Cam-po Santo. Already in the early forenoon our train was +carrying people to that popular resort, who seemed to be intending to +spend the day there. Some had wreaths and flowers, and were clearly +sorrowing friends of the dead; others, with their guide-books, were as +plainly mere sight-seers, and these were Italians as well as strangers, +gratifying what seems the universal passion for cemeteries. In our own +villages the graveyards are the favorite Sunday haunt of the young +people and the scene of their love-making; and it has been the complaint +of English visitors to our cities that the first thing their hosts took +them to see was the cemetery. They did not realize that this was often +the thing best worth showing them, for our feeble aesthetic instincts +found their first expression in the attempt to dignify or beautify the +homes of the dead. Each mourner grieved in marble as fitly as he knew +how, and, if there was sometimes a rivalry in vaults and shafts, the +effect was of a collective interest which all could feel. Sometimes it +was touching, sometimes it was revolting; and in Italy it is not +otherwise. The Campo Santo of San Miniato at Florence, the Campo Santo +at Bologna, the Campo Santo wherever else you find it, you find of one +quality with the Campo Santo at Genoa. It makes you the helpless +confidant of family pride, of bruised and lacerated love, of fond +aspiration, of religious longing, of striving faith, of foolish vanity +and vulgar pretence, but, if the traveller would read the local +civilization aright, he cannot do better than go to study it there. + +My third experience of the Genoese Campo Santo was different only in +quantity from the first and second. There seemed more of the things, +better and worse, but the increasing witness was of the art which +rendered the fact with unsparing realism, sometimes alloyed with +allegory and sometimes not, but always outright, literal, strong, rank. +The hundreds of groups, reliefs, statues, busts; the long aisles where +the dead are sealed in the tableted shelves of the wall, like the dead +in the catacombs, the ample space of open ground enclosed by the +cloisters and set thick with white crosses, are all dominated by a +colossal Christ which, in my fancy, remains of very significant effect. +It is as if no presence less mighty and impressive could centre in +itself the multitudinous passions, wills, and hopes expressed in those +incongruous monuments and reduce them to that unity of meaning which one +cannot deny them. + +[Illustration: 50 REALISTIC GROUP IN THE CAMPO SANTO] + +The Campo Santo of Genoa is a mortuary gloss of Genoese history: of the +long succession of civic strifes and foreign wars common to all the +Italian republics, now pacified at last by a spirit of unity, of +brotherhood. At Genoa, more than anywhere else in Italy except Milan, +you are aware of the North--its strenuousness, its enterprise, its +restless outstretching for worlds beyond itself. Columbus came with the +gift of a New World in his hand, and, in the fulness of time, Mazzini +came with the gift of a Newer World in his hand: the realization of +Christ in the ideal of duties without which the old ideal of rights is +heathen and helpless. Against the rude force of Genoa, the aristocratic +beauty of such a place as Pisa was nothing; only Florence and Venice +might vie with her. But she had not the inspiration of Florence, her +art, her literature; the dialect in which she uttered herself is harsh +and crabbed, and no poet known beyond it has breathed his soul into it; +her architecture was first the Gothic from over the Alps, and then of +the Renaissance which built the palaces of her merchants in a giant bulk +and of a brutal grandeur. She had not the political genius of Venice, +the oligarchic instinct of self-preservation from popular misgovernment +and princely aggression. Her story is the usual Italian story of a +people jealous of each other, and, in their fear of a native tyrant, +impatiently calling in one foreign tyrant after another and then +furiously expelling him. When she would govern herself, she first made +her elective chief magistrate Doge for life, and then for two years; +under both forms she submitted and rebelled at will from 1359 till 1802, +when, after having accepted the French notion of freedom from Bonaparte, +she enjoyed a lion's share of his vicissitudes. For a hundred years +before that the warring powers had fought over her in their various +quarrels about successions, and she ought to have been well inured to +suffering when, in 1800, the English and the Austrians besieged her +French garrison, and twenty thousand of her people starved in a cause +not their own. The English restored the Doges, and the Republic of Genoa +fell at last nineteen years after the Republic of Venice and three +hundred years after the Republic of Florence. She was given to Piedmont +in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, and she has formed part of Italy ever +since the unification. I believe that now she is of rather radical +opinions in politics, though the bookseller who found on his shelves a +last copy of the interesting sketch of Genoese history which I have +profited by so little, said that the Genoese had been disappointed in +the Socialists, lately in power, and were now voting Clerical by a large +majority. + +The fact may have been colored by the book-seller's feelings. If the +Clericals are in superior force, the clerics are not: nowhere in Italy +did I see so few priests. All other orders of people throng the narrow, +noisy, lofty streets, where the crash of feet and hoofs and wheels beats +to the topmost stories of the palaces towering overhead in their stony +grandiosity. Everywhere in the structures dating after the Gothic period +there is want of sensibility; the art of the Renaissance was not moulded +here in the moods of a refined and effeminate patriciate, such as in +Venice tempered it to beauty; but it renders in marble the prepotence of +a commercialized nobility, and makes good in that form the right of the +city to be called Genoa the Proud. Perhaps she would not wish to be +called proud because of these palaces alone. It is imaginable that she +would like the stranger to remember the magnificence with which she +rewarded the patriotism of her greatest citizen after Columbus and +Mazzini: that mighty admiral, Andrea Doria, who freed this country first +from the rule of Charles V. and then from the rule of Francis I.; who +swept the Barbary corsairs from the seas; who beat the Turks in battles +on ship and on shore; who took Corsica from the French when he was +eighty-eight years old; who suffered from civil faction; who outlived +exile as he had outlived war, and who died at the age of ninety-four, +after he had refused the sovereignty of the country he had served so +long; who was the Washington of his day, and was equally statesman and +soldier, and, above all, patriot. It is his portrait that you see in +that old palace (called the Palace of the Prince because Charles V. had +called him Prince) overlooking the port, where he sits an old, old man, +very weary, in the sole society of his sarcastic cat, as I have noted +before. The cat seems to have just passed some ironical reflection on +the vanity of human things and to be studying him for the effect. Both +appear indifferent to the spectator, but perhaps they are not, and you +must not for all that fail of a visit to the Church of San Matteo, set +round with the palaces of the Doria family--the palace which his +grateful country gave the Admiral after he refused to be her master, and +the palaces of his kindred neighboring it round. + +I do not remember any equal space in all Europe which, through a very +little knowledge, so takes the heart as the gentle little church founded +by an earlier Doria, and, after four hundred years, restored by a later, +and then environed with the stately homes of the race, where they could +be domesticated in the honor and reverence of their countrymen because +of the goodness and greatness of the loftiest of their line. It is such +a place as one may revere and yet possess one's soul in self-respect, +very much as one may revere Mount Vernon. The church, as well as the +piazza, is full of Dorian memories, and the cloister must be visited not +only for its rather damp beauty, but for the full meaning of the irony +which Doria's cat in the portrait wished to convey: against the wall +here are gathered the fragments of the statue of Doria which, when the +French Revolution came to Genoa, the patriots threw out of the ducal +palace and broke in the street below. + +We were some time in finding our way into the magnificent hall of the +Great Council where this statue once stood, with the statues of many +other Genoese heroes and statesmen, and I am not sure that it was worth +all our trouble. Magnificent it certainly was, but coarsely magnificent, +like so much elsewhere in Genoa; but, if we had been at ten times the +trouble we were in seeing the Palace of the Municipality, I should not +think it too much. There in the great hall are the monuments of those +Genoese notables whose munificence their country wished to remember in +the order of their generosity. I do not remember just what the maximum +was, but the Doge or other leading citizen who gave, say, twenty-five +thousand ducats to the state had a statue erected to him; one who gave +fifteen, a bust; and one who gave five, an honorary tablet. The +surprising thing is that nearly all the statues and busts, whether good +likenesses or not, are delightful art: it is as if the noble acts of the +benefactors of their country had inspired the sculptors to reproduce +them not only in true character, but in due dignity. To the American who +views them and remembers that we have now so much money that some of us +do not know what to do with it, they will suggest that our millionaires +have an unrivalled opportunity of immortality in the same sort. There is +hardly a town of ten thousand inhabitants in the country where there are +not men who could easily afford to give a hundred thousand dollars, or +fifty, or twenty to their native or adoptive place and so enter upon a +new life in bronze or marble. This would enrich us beyond the dreams of +avarice in a high-grade portrait statuary; it would give work to +hundreds of sculptors who now have little or nothing to do, and would +revive or create the supplementary industries of casting in metal or +carving in stone. + +The time was in Genoa, it seems, as the time is now with us, when a +great many people did not know what to do with their money. There were +sumptuary laws which forbade their spending it, either they or their +wives or daughters, in dress; apparently they could not even wear Genoa +velvet, which had to be sold abroad for the corruption of the outside +world; and this is said to be the reason why there were so many palaces +built in Genoa in the days of the republic. People who did not wish to +figure in that hall of fame put their surplus into the immense and often +ugly edifices which we still see ministering to their pride in the wide +and narrow streets of the city. Now and then a devout family built or +rebuilt a church and gave it to the public; but by far the greater +number put up palaces, where, after the house-warming, they dwelt in a +cold and economical seclusion. Some of their palaces are now devoted to +public uses; they are galleries of pictures and statues most worthy to +be seen, or they are municipal offices, or museums, or schools of art or +science; but part are still in the keeping of the families that +contributed them to the splendor of their city. The streets in which +they stand are loud with transit and traffic, but the palaces hold aloof +from the turmoil and lift their lofty heads to the level of the gardens +behind them. Huge, heavy they are, according to the local ideal, and +always wanting the delicacy of Venetian architecture, where something in +the native genius tempered to gentleness the cold severity of Palladio, +and where Sansovino knew how to bridge the gulf between the Gothic and +the Renascent art that would have been Greek but halted at being Roman. + +The grandeur of those streets of palaces in Genoa cannot be denied, but +perhaps, if the visitor quite consulted his preference or indulged his +humor, he would wander rather through the arcades of the busy port, up +the chasmal alleys of little shops into the tiny piazzas, no bigger than +a good-sized room, opening before some ancient church and packed with +busy, noisy people. The perspective there is often like the perspective +in old Naples, but the uproar in Genoa does not break in music as it +does in Naples, and the chill lingering in the sunless depths of those +chasms is the cold of a winter that begins earlier and a spring that +loiters later than the genial seasons of the South. + + + + +X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL + + +A few years ago an Englishman who had lived our neighbor in the same +villa at San Remo, came and said that he was going away because it was +so dull at San Remo. He was going with his wife to Monte Carlo, because +you could find amusement every day in the week at the tables of the +different games of chance, and Sundays there was a very nice little +English church. He did not seem to think there was anything out of the +way in his grouping of these advantages, but he did not strongly urge +them upon us, and we restricted ourselves in turn to our tacit +reflections on the indifference of the English to a point of morals on +which the American conscience is apt to suffer more or less anguish if +it offends. So far as I know they do not think it wrong to take money +won at any game; but possibly their depravity in this matter rather +comforted us than offended. At any rate, I am sure of the superiority of +our own morals in visiting Monte Carlo after we left Genoa. If we did +not look forward with our Englishman's complacency to the nice little +church there, we certainly did not mean to risk our money at the tables +of Roulette, nor yet at the tables of Trente et Quarante, in the Casino. +What we really wished to do was to look on in the spiritual security of +saints while the sinners of both sexes lost and gained to the equal hurt +of their souls. We perhaps expected to hear the report of a pistol in +the gardens of the Casino, if we did not actually see the ruined gambler +falling among the flowers, or if not so much as this, we thought we +might witness his dramatic despair as the croupier drew in the last +remnant of his fortune and mechanically invited the other Messieurs and +Mesdames to make their game; secretly, we might even have been willing +to see something hysterical on the part of the Mesdames if fate frowned +upon them, or something scandalously exuberant if it smiled. If our +motives were not the worst, they were, at any rate, not the best; I +suppose they were the usual human motives, and I am afraid they were +mixed. + +We found it rather long from Genoa to Monte Carlo, but this was not so +much because of the distance as because of the delays of our train, +which, having started late, grew reckless on the way, and before we +reached the Italian frontier at Ventimiglia, had lost all shame and +failed to connect there with the French train for the rest of our +journey. So, instead of having barely time to affirm our innocence of +tobacco, spirits, or perfumes to the customs officers, and to wash down +a sandwich with a cup of coffee at the restaurant, we had an hour and +forty minutes at Ventimiglia, which I partly spent in vain attempts to +buy the poverty of the inspector so far as to prevail with him not to +delay the examination of our baggage, but to proceed to it at once, in +order that we might have it all off our minds, and devote our long +leisure to the inquiry by what steps the ancient Ligurian tribe of the +Intemelii lost their name in its actual corruption of Ventimiglia. It is +a charming old town, far more charming than the stranger who never has +time to walk into it from the station can imagine, and there is a +palm-bordered avenue leading from the railway to the sea, with the shops +and cafes of Italy on one side and the shops and cafes of France on the +other. So late as six o'clock in the evening those cafes and shops +preserved a reciprocal integrity which I could not praise too highly, +but after dark there must be a ghostly interchange of forbidden +commodities among them which no force of customs officers could wholly +suppress. At any rate, I should have liked to see them try it, though I +should not have liked to be kept in Ventimiglia overnight for any less +reason; it seemed a lonesome place, though mighty picturesque, with old +walls, and a magnificent old fort toward the sea, and a fine bridge +spanning, though for the moment superfluously spanning, the perfectly +dry bed of a river. + +I wished to ask what the name of the river was, but out of all the files +of people coming and going I chose an aged man who could not tell me; he +excused himself with real regret on the ground that he was a stranger in +those parts. Then there was nothing for me to do but go back to the +station and renew my attempt on the inspector, who still remained proof +against me. What added to the hardship of the situation was that it was +Italy at one end of the station and France at the other, and in one +extremity it was an hour earlier than it was at the other, by the time +of Central Europe at the east and by the time of Paris at the west, so +that I do not know but we were two hours and forty minutes at +Ventimiglia instead of one hour and forty minutes. Of this period little +could be employed at tea, and we were not otherwise hungry; we could +give something of our interminable leisure to counting our baggage and +suffering unfounded alarms at failing to make it come out right, but we +could not give much. + +The weather had turned chilly, the long station was full of draughts, +and the invalid of the party, without whom no American party is +perfectly national, was rapidly taking cold. We were quite incredulous +when the examination actually began, but at last it really did, and it +began with our pieces, with such a show of favoring us on the +inspector's part, that when it was over, in about two minutes, one trunk +serving as a type of the innocence of all, I furtively held up a piece +of five francs in recognition of his kindness. But he slowly shook his +head, whether in regret or whether in stern refusal I shall never know. +He was an Italian, but in the employment of the French republic, and I +have not been able since to credit with certainty his incorruptibility +to his native or his adoptive country; I might easily be mistaken in +deciding either way. + +What I am certain of, and certainly sorry for, is the superiority of the +French company's railway carriage, from Ventimiglia on, to the Italian +carriage which had brought us so far, and it is still with unwillingness +that I own the corporation's greater care for our comfort. If we had +been in the paternal care of the administration of the gambling-house. +at Monte Carlo, we could not have been more tenderly or cleanly +cushioned about, or borne away on softer springs; and very possibly a +measure of wickedness in the means is a condition of comfort in the end +to which we are so tempted to abandon ourselves in a world which is not +yet so sternly collectivist as I could wish. It was not quite dark when +we arrived at Monte Carlo and began to experience, in the beautiful +keeping of the place, how admirably a gambling-house can manage the +affairs of a principality when it pays all the taxes. There were many +two-horse landaus waiting our pleasure outside the station, and the +horses were all so robust and handsome that we were not put to our usual +painful endeavor in seeking the best and getting the worst. All those +stately equipages were good, and the one that fell to us mounted the +hill to our hotel by a grade so insinuating that the balkiest horse in +Frascati could hardly have suspected it. + +In our easy ascent we were aware of the gray-and-blond houses behind +their walls among their groves and gardens, among flowers and blossoms; +of the varying inclines and levels from which some lovely difference of +prospect appeared at every step; of the admirably tended roadways, and +the walks that followed them up hill and down, and crossed to little +parks, or led to streets brilliant with shops and hotels, clustering +about the great gambling-house, the centre of the common prosperity and +animation. The air had softened with the setting sun, and the weather +which had at Leghorn and Genoa delayed through two weeks of rain and +cold, seemed to confess the control of the Casino administration, as +everything else does at Monte Carlo, and promised an amiability to which +we eagerly trusted. + +[Illustration: 51 MONACO] + +It was of course warmer out-doors than in-doors, and while the fire was +kindling on our hearth we gave the quarter hour before dinner to looking +over our garden-wall into the comely town in the valley below, and to +the palace and capital of the Prince of Monaco on the heights beyond. +Nothing by day or by night could be more exquisite than the little +harbor, a perfect horseshoe in shape, and now, at our first sight of it, +set round with electric lights, like diamonds in the scarf-pin of some +sporty Titan, or perhaps of Hercules Monoecus himself, who is said to +have founded Monaco. In the morning we saw that the waters arranged +themselves in the rainbow colors of such a scarf round the shores, and +that there were only pleasure-craft moored in them: the yacht of the +Prince of Monaco and the yacht of some American Prince, whose title I +did not ascertain, but whose flag was unmistakable. There must have been +other yachts, but I do not remember them, and possibly there were some +workaday craft, of which I do not now recall the impression; but I am +certain of the festive air of disoccupation pervading the port from the +adjacent towns, both Monte Carlo and Monaco, which its wicked suburb has +cleansed in corrupting, and rendered attractive by the example of its +elegant leisure. There remains from both places, and from Condamine in +the plain between them the sense of a perpetual round of holidays. There +seemed to be no more creative business in one place than another, but I +do not say there is none; there is certainly a polite distillery of +perfumes and liqueurs in Condamine, but what one sees is the commerce of +the shops, and the building up of more and more villas and hotels, on +every shelf and ledge, to harden and whiten in the sun, and let their +gardens hang over the verges of the cliffs. On the northeast, the +mountains rise into magnificent steeps whose names would say nothing to +the reader, except that of Turbia, which he will recall as the classic +Tropaea of Augustus, who marked there the bounds between Italy and Gaul. +But we were as yet in no mood to climb this height, even with the help +of a funicular railway, and I made my explorations at such convenient +elevations as I could reach on foot, or by the help of one of those +luxurious landaus peculiar to Monte Carlo. + +One such point was undoubtedly the headland of Monaco, where the Greeks +of Marseilles, long enough before Augustus, built a temple to Hercules +Monoecus. The Grimaldi family which gave Genoa many doges, came early +into the sovereignty of Monaco, by the hook or crook those days, but +whether it was they who fostered its piracy in the fourteenth century, +does not distinctly appear, though it seems certain that one of the +Grimaldi princes served against the English under Philip of Valois, and +was wounded at Crecy. In 1524 a successor went over to the empire under +Charles V. Still later the principality returned to the sovereignty of +France, and in 1793 the French republicans frankly annexed it, but it +was given back to the Grimaldi in 1814. + +The Grimaldi on the whole were a baddish line of potentates, and only +lacked largeness of scene to have left the memory of world-tragedies. +They murdered one another, at least in two cases; in another, the people +killed their ruler by publicly drowning him in the sea for insulting +their women; the princes were the protectors of piracy, and in the very +late times following their restoration by the Congress of Vienna, the +reigning prince confiscated the property of the churches for his own +behoof, and took into his hands the whole trade of the principality. He +alone bought and ground the grain, and baked the bread, which he sold to +his people at an extortionate price; he bought damaged flour in Genoa +and fed it to his subjects at the same rate as good. When they murmured +and threatened rebellion, he threatened in turn that he would rule them +with a rod of iron, as if their actual conditions were not bad enough. +Some of his oppressions were of a fantasticality bordering on comic +opera: travellers had to give up their provisions at the frontier and +eat the official bread of Monaco; ships entering the port were +confiscated if they had brought more loaves than sufficed them for their +voyage thither; no man might cut his own wood without leave of the +police, or prune his trees, or till his land, or irrigate it; the birth +and death of every animal must be publicly registered, with the payment +of a given tax, and nobody could go out after ten at night without +carrying a taxed lantern. When Nice was annexed to France in 1860 Monaco +passed under French protection again, and now it is subject to +conscription like the rest of France. Ten years after the beginning of +this new order of things the great M. Blanc was expelled from Hombourg, +and the Prince of Monaco rented to him the-gambling privilege of Monte +Carlo. + +Then the modern splendor of the place began. The entire population of +the three towns, Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Condamine, is not above +fifteen thousand, and apparently the greater part of the inhabitants +depend upon the gay industry of the Casino for their livelihood. I +should say that the most of the houses in Monte Carlo were hotels, or +pensions, or furnished villas, or furnished apartments, and if one could +be content to live in the atmosphere of the Casino, which is not +meteorologically lurid, I do not know where one could live in greater +comfort. It is said that everything is rather dearer than in Nice, for +instance, but such things as I wanted to buy I did not find very dear. +The rates at the most expensive hotels did not seem exhorbitant when +reduced to dollars, and if you went a little way from the Casino the +hotels were very reasonable, so that you could spend a great deal of +money at the tables which in America you would spend in board and +lodging. I fancy that a villa could be got there very reasonably, and as +the morals of all the inhabitants are scrupulously cared for by the +administration of the Casino, and no one living in the principality is +allowed to frequent the gaming-tables, it is probable that domestic +service is good and cheap. If I may speak from our experience at our +very simple little hotel, it is admirable, one waiter sufficing for ten +or twelve guests, with leisure for much friendly conversation in the +office, between the breakfasts served in our rooms and the excellent +dinners at the small tables in the salon. If you liked, he would speak +French or Italian, though he spoke English as well as any one, and he +was of that excellent Piedmontese race which has been the saving salt of +the whole peninsula. As for the food, it was far beyond that of our +cold-storage, and it must have been cheap, since it was provided for us +at the rate we paid. + +The cost of dress varies, according to the taste of and the purse, +everywhere. White serge seemed the favorite wear of most of the ladies +one saw in the street at Monte Carlo, especially in the region of the +Casino. This may have expressed an inner condition, or it may have been +a sympathetic response to the advances of the flowers in the pretty beds +and parterres so fancifully designed by the gardeners of the +administration, or it may have been a token of the helpless submission +to which the windows of the milliners and modistes reduced all comers of +the dressful sex. Many of the men with the women, or without them, were +also in white serge, but they seemed more variably attired; there was a +prevailing suggestion of yachting or automobiling in their dress, +though doubtless most of them had not sailed or motored to the spot. +Some few, say four or five, may have motored away from it, for in the +centre of the charming square before the Casino there was an automobile +of some newest type being raffled for in the interest of that chiefest +of the Christian virtues which makes its most successful appeals in the +vicinity of games of chance. Some one must have won the machine and +carried a party of his friends away, and triumphantly turned turtle with +it over the first of the precipices which abound at Monte Carlo. More +than the tables within this opportunity of fortune tempted me, and it +was only by the repeated recurrence to my principles that I was able to +get away alive. In spite of myself, I did not get away without, however +guiltlessly, having yielded to the spirit of the place. It was at the +Administrational Art Exhibition, where there were really some good +pictures, and where, on my entering, I was given a small brass disk. On +going out I attempted to restore this to the door-keeper, but he went +back with me to a certain piece of mechanism, where he instructed me to +put the disk into a slot. Then the disk ran its course, and a small +brass ball came out at the bottom. The door-keeper opened this, and +showed me that it was empty; but he gave me to understand that it might +have been full of diamonds, or rubies, or seed-pearls, which might have +implanted in me a lust of gambling I should never have overcome. Monte +Carlo was in every way tempting. A vast oblong, brilliant with flowers +in artistic patterns, stretched upward from the Casino, and there was an +agreeable park where one might sit. On every other side there were +costly hotels and costly restaurants, including that of the unexampled, +the insurpassable Giro, where one saw people eating and drinking at the +windows whenever one passed, by day or night. Beyond the Casino seaward +were the beautiful terraces, planted with palms and other tropic +growths, where people might come out and kill themselves when they had +nothing left to lose but their lives; and against the dark green of +their fronds the temple of fortune lifted a frosted-cake-like front of +long extent. I do not know just what type of architecture it is of, but +it distinctly suggests the art of the pastry cook when he has triumphed +in some edifice crowning the centre of the table at a great public +dinner. What mars the pleasing effect most is a detail which enforces +this suggestion, for the region of the Casino is thickly frequented by a +species of black doves, and when these gather in close lines of black +dots along the eaves, they have exactly the effect of flies clustering +on the sugary surfaces of the cake. At intervals are bronze statues of +what seem a sort of adolescent cherubs, but which have, I do not know +why, a peculiarly devilish appearance. No doubt they are harmless +enough; but certainly they do nothing to keep the flies off the cake. + +In fine, as an edifice the Casino disappoints, and if one is not +pressingly curious about the interior, one rather lingers on the terrace +overlooking the sea, and the lines of the railroad following the shore, +and the panorama of the several towns. It is charming to sit there, and +if it is in the afternoon, you may see an artist there painting +water-colors of the scenery. Even if he were not painting, you could not +help knowing him for an artist, because he wears a black velvet jacket +and knickerbockers, and a soft slouch hat, and has a curled black +mustache and pointed beard; there is no mistaking him; and at a given +moment, after he has been working long enough, he puts above his sketch +the sign, “For Sale,” as artists always do, and then, if you want a +masterpiece, you go down a few steps from where you are sitting and buy +it. But I never did that any more than I took tickets for the charity +automobile, though there is no telling what I might not have done if I +had broken the bank when at last I went into the Casino. + +It seems to open about eleven o'clock in the morning, for gamblers are +hard-working, impatient people, and do not want to lose time. A broad +stretch of red carpet is laid down the steps from the portal and they +begin to go in at once, and people keep going in until I know not what +hour at night. But I think mid-afternoon is the best hour to see them, +and it is then that I will invite the reader to accompany me, +instructing him to turn to the left on entering, and get his gratis +billet of admission to the rooms from the polite officials there in +charge, who will ask for his card, and inquire his country and city, but +will not insist upon his street and his number in it. This form is +apparently to make sure that you are not a resident of the principality, +and that if you suffer in your morals from your visit to the Casino you +shall not be a source of local corruption thereafter. They bow you away, +first audibly pronouncing your name with polyglottic accuracy, and then +you are free to wander where you like. But probably you will want to go +at once from the large, nobly colonnaded reception-hall or atrium, into +that series of salons where wickeder visitors than yourself are already +closely seated at the oblong tables, and standing one or two deep round +them. The salons of the series are four, and the tables in each are from +two to five, according to the demands of the season; some are Trente et +Quarante-tables, and some, by far the greater number, are +Roulette-tables. Roulette seems the simpler game, and the more popular; +I formed the notion that there was a sort of aristocratic quality in +Trente et Quarante, and that the players of that game were of higher +rank and longer purse, but I can allege no reason justifying my notion. +All that I can say is that the tables devoted to it commanded the +seaward views, and the tops of the gardens where the players withdrew +when they wished to commit suicide. The rooms are decorated by several +French painters of note, and the whole interior is designed by the +famous architect Gamier, to as little effect of beauty as could well be. +It is as if these French artists had worked in the German taste, rather +than their own, and in any case they have achieved in their several +allegories and impersonations something uniformly heavy and dull. One +might fancy that the mood of the players at the tables had imparted +itself to the figures in the panels, but very likely this is not so, for +the players had apparently parted with none of their unpleasing dulness. +They were in about equal number men and women, and they partook equally +of a look of hard repression. The repression may not have been wholly +from within; a little away from each table hovered, with an air of +detachment, certain plain and quiet men, who, for all their apparent +inattention, may have been agents of the Administration vigilant to +subdue the slightest show of drama in the players. I myself saw no +drama, unless I may call so the attitude of a certain tall, handsome +young man, who stood at the corner of one of the tables, and, with +nervously working jaws, staked his money at each invitation of the +croupiers. I did not know whether he won or lost, and I could not decide +from their faces which of the other men or women were winning or losing. +I had supposed that I might see distinguished faces, distinguished +figures, but I saw none. The players were of the average of the +spectators in dress and carriage, but in the heavy atmosphere of the +rooms, which was very hot and very bad, they all alike looked dull. At a +psychological moment it suddenly came to me in their presence, that if +there was such a place as hell, it must be very dull, like that, and +that the finest misery of perdition must be the stupid dulness of it. +For some unascertained reason, but probably from a mistaken purpose of +ornament, there hung over the centre of each table, almost down to the +level of the players' heads, lengths of large-linked chains, and it was +imaginable, though not very probable, that if any of the lost souls rose +violently up, or made an unseemly outcry, or other rebellious +demonstration, those plain, quiet men, the agents of the Administration, +would fling themselves upon him or her, and bind them with those chains, +and cast them into such outer darkness as could be symbolized by the +shade of the terrace trees. The thing was improbable, as I say, but not +impossible, if there is truth in Swedenborg's relation that the hells +are vigilantly policed, and from time to time put in order by angels +detailed for that office. To be sure the plain, quiet men did not look +like angels, and the Administration of which they were agents, could +not, except in its love of order, be likened to any celestial authority. + +Commonly in the afternoon there is music in the great atrium from which +the gambling-rooms open, and then there is a pleasant movement of people +up and down. They are kept in motion perhaps by their preference, +somewhat, but also largely by the want of seats. If you can secure one +of these you may amuse yourself very well by looking on at the fashion +and beauty of those who have not secured any. Here you will see much +more distinction than in the gambling-rooms; the air is better, and if +you choose to fancy this the limbo of that inferno, it will not be by a +violent strain. In the crowd will be many pretty young girls, in proper +chaperonage, and dressed in the latest effects of Paris; if they happen +to be wearing the mob-cap hats of the moment it is your greater gain; +they could not be so charming in anything else, or look more innocent, +or more consciously innocent. You could only hope, however, such were +the malign associations of the place, that their chaperons would not +neglect them for the gaming-tables beyond, but you could not be sure, if +the chaperons were all like that old English lady one evening at the +opera in the Casino, who came in charge of her niece, or possibly some +friend's daughter. She remained dutifully enough beside the girl through +the first act of the stupid musical comedy, and even through the ensuing +ballet, and when a flaunting female, in a hat of cart-wheel +circumference, came in and shut out the whole stage from the hapless +stranger behind, this good old lady authorized her charge to ask him to +take the seat next them where he could see something of the action if he +wished. But at the end of the ballet, she rose, and bidding the girl +wait her return, she vanished in the direction of the gaming-rooms. She +may merely have gone to look on at a spectacle which, dulness for +dulness, was no worse than that of the musical comedy, and I have no +proof that she risked her money there. The girl sat through the next +act, and then in a sudden fine alarm, like that of a bird which, from no +visible cause, starts from its perch, she took flight, and I hope she +found her aunt, or her mother's friend, quietly sleeping on one of those +seats in the atrium. It was one of those tacit, eventless dramas which +in travel are always offering themselves to your witness. They begin in +silence, and go quietly on to their unfinish, and leave you steeped in +an interest which is life-long, whereas a story whose end you know soon +perishes from your mind. Art has not yet learned the supreme lesson of +life, which is never a tale that is told within the knowledge of the +living. + +Nowhere, I think, is the “sweet security of streets” felt more than in +Monte Carlo. Whether the control of that good Administration of the +Casino reaches to the policing of the place in other respects or not, I +cannot say, but one walks home at night from the theatre of the Casino +with the same sense of safety that one enjoys under that paternal roof. +At eleven o'clock all Monte Carlo sleeps the sleep of the innocent and +the just in the dwellings of the citizens and permanent residents; +though it cannot be denied that there appear to be late suppers in the +hotels and restaurants surrounding the Casino, which the iniquitous may +be giving to the guilty. Away from the flare of their bold lights the +town reposes in a demi-dark, and presents to the more strenuous fancy +the effect of a mezzotint study of itself; by day it is a group of +wash-drawings near to, and farther off, of water-colors, very richly and +broadly treated. I could not insist too much upon this notion with the +reader who has never been there, or has not received picture +postal-cards from sojourning correspondents. These would afford him a +portrait of the chief features and characteristics of the place not too +highly flattered, for in fact it would be impossible for even a picture +postal-card to exaggerate its beauty. They will besides convey one of +the few convincing proofs that in spite of the Blanc Casino and the +French Republic the Prince of Monaco is still a reigning sovereign, for +the postage-stamps bear the tastefully printed head of that potentate. +If the visitor requires other proofs he may take a landau at the station +in Monaco, and drive up over the heights of the capital into the piazza +before the prince's palace. When the prince is not at home he can +readily get leave to visit the palace for twenty minutes, but on my +unlucky day the prince was doubly at home, for he was sick as well as in +residence. I satisfied myself as well as I could, and I am very easy to +satisfy, with my drive through the pleasant town, which is entirely +Italian in effect, with its people standing about or looking out of +their windows in their Sunday leisure, and quite Roman in the +cleanliness of its streets. I took due pleasure in the unfinished +exterior of the Oceanographic Museum and the newly finished interior of +the Monaco Cathedral. The cathedral, which is so new as to make one +rejoice that most other cathedrals are old, is of a glaring freshness, +but is very handsome; somehow in spite of its newness it contains the +tombs of the reigning family, and perhaps it has only been newly done +over. The museum which is ultimately to be the greatest of its kind in +the world, already contains somewhere in its raw inaccessible recesses +the collections made by Prince Albert in his many cruises, and is of a +palatiality worthy of a sovereign with a tenant so generous and prompt +in its rent as the Administration of the Casino of Monte Carlo. + +[Illustration: 52 THE CASINO, MONTE CARLO] + +This fact, namely, that the princely grandeur and splendor of Monaco all +came out of the gaming-tables, was something that the driver of my +landau made me observe, when our intimacy had mounted with our road, and +we paused for the magnificent view of the sea from the headland near the +museum. He was otherwise a shrewd and conversible Piedmontese who did +not make me pay much above the tariff, and who had pity on my poor +French after awhile, and consented to speak Italian with me. In the sort +of French glare over the whole local civilization of the principality, +everybody will wish to seem French, but after you break through the +surface, the natives will be as comfortably and endearingly Italian as +anybody in the peninsula. Among themselves they speak a Ligurian patois, +but with the stranger they will use an Italian easily much better than +his, and also much better than their own French. I think they prefer you +in their racial parlance after you have shown some knowledge of it, and +two kind women of whom I asked my way in Monte Carlo, one day when I was +trying for the station of the funicular to Turbia, grew more volubly +kind when I asked it in such Tuscan as I could command. That station is +really not hard to find when once you know where it is, and at three +o'clock in the afternoon I was mounting the precipitous incline of the +alp on whose summit Augustus divided Italy from Gaul, and left the +stupendous trophy which one sees there in ruins to-day. + +I should like to render the sense of my upward progress dramatic by +pretending that we mounted from a zone of flowers at Monte Carlo into +regions where only the hardiest blossoms greeted us, but what I really +noticed was that by-and-by the little patches of vineyard seemed to grow +less and the olive-trees scraggier. Perhaps even this was partly fancy; +as for the flowers, I cannot bring myself to partake of their deceit; +for they are the most shameless fakers, as regards climate, in nature. +It is, for instance, perfectly true that they are in bloom along the +Riviera all winter long, but this does not prove that the winter of the +Riviera is always warm. It merely proves that flowers can stand a degree +of cold that nips the nose bent to hale their perfume, and brings tears +into the eyes dwelling in rapture on their loveliness. They are like +women; they look so fragile and delicate that you think they cannot +stand anything, but they can stand pretty much everything, or at least +everything they wish to. Throughout that week at Monte Carlo, while we +cowered round our fires or went out into a frigid sunshine, the flowers +smiled from every garden-ground in a gayety emulous of that of their +sisters passing in white serge. So probably I gave less attention to the +details of the scenery through which my funicular was passing than to +the stupendous prospects of sea and shore which it varyingly commanded. +If words could paint these I should not spare the words, but when I +recall them, my richest treasure of adjectives seems a beggarly array of +color tubes, flattened and twisted past all col-lapsibility. Nothing +less than an old-fashioned panoramic show would impart any notion of it, +and even that must fail where it should most abound, namely, in the +delicacy of that ineffable majesty. + +We climbed and climbed, with many a muted hope and many a muted fear of +the mechanism which carried us so safely, and then we ran across a +stretch of comparative level and reached the last station, under the +cliff on which the local hotel stood, with the mighty ruin behind it. +Our passengers flocked up to the terrace of the hotel, much shoved and +shouldered by automobiles bearing the company which seems proper to +those vehicles, and dispersed themselves at the many little tables set +about for tea, and the glory of the matchless outlook. While one could +yet have the ruin mostly to one's self, it seemed the most favorable +moment to visit the crumbling walls and broken tower, whose fragments +strewed the slopes around. The tower was of Augustus, and the fortress +into which it was turned in the Middle Ages was of unknown authority, +but the ruin was the work of Marshal Villars, who blew up both trophy +and stronghold sometime in the French king's wars with the imperialists +in the first half of the eighteenth century. The destruction was +incomplete, though probably sufficient for the purpose, but as a ruin, +nothing could be more admirable. There seems to be at present something +like a restoration going on; it has not gone very far, however; it has +developed some fragments of majestic pillars, and some breadths of Roman +brick-work; a few spaces about the base of the tower are cleared; but +the rehabilitation will probably never proceed to such an extreme that +you may not sit down on some carven remnant of the past, and closing +your eyes to the surrounding glory of alp and sea find yourself again on +the Palatine or amid the memorials of the Forum. + +THE END + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/7422-0.zip b/7422-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9b7eb04 --- /dev/null +++ b/7422-0.zip diff --git a/7422-h.zip b/7422-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..12abe02 --- /dev/null +++ b/7422-h.zip diff --git a/7422-h/7422-h.htm b/7422-h/7422-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..060688a --- /dev/null +++ b/7422-h/7422-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9680 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. Howells + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. Howells + +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: Roman Holidays and Others + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: July 22, 2009 [EBook #7422] +Last Updated: February 25, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger + + + + + + +</pre> + + <p> + <br /><br /> <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-1.jpg" alt="01 Glimpse Outside of Modern Rome " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + <big>ROMAN HOLIDAYS</big> <br /> <br /> AND OTHERS + </h1> + <h2> + By W. D. Howells + </h2> + <h3> + ILLUSTRATED<br /> + </h3> + <h4> + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /> NEW YORK AND LONDON<br /> Copyright, + 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS.<br /> Copyright, 1908, by THE SUN PRINTING + AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION.<br /> Published October, 1908.<br /> + </h4> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS</b></big> + </a><br /><br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. ASHORE AT GENOA </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V. POMPEII REVISITED </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> <big><b>VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS</b></big> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> I. HOTELS, PENSIONS, AND APARTMENTS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> II. A PRAISE OF NEW ROME </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> III. THE COLOSSEUM AND THE FORUM </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> IV. THE ANGLO-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE + SPANISH STEPS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> V. AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> VI. PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH THE PAST </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> VII. CHANCES IN CHURCHES </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> VIII. A FEW VILLAS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> IX. DRAMATIC INCIDENTS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> X. SEEING ROME AS ROMANS SEE US </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XI. IN AND ABOUT THE VATICAN </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XII. SUPERFICIAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONJECTURES + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XIII. CASUAL IMPRESSIONS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XIV. TIVOLI AND FRASCATI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XV. A FEW REMAINING MOMENTS </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> VIII. OVER AT PISA </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> IX. BACK AT GENOA </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>ILLUSTRATIONS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0001"> 01 Glimpse Outside of Modern Rome </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0002"> 02 Funchal Bay </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0003"> 03 Boats and Diving Boys, Funchal </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0004"> 04 Gibraltar from the Bay </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0005"> 05 Gibraltar from the Neutral Ground </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0006"> 06 Daughters of Climate Along the Riviera + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0007"> 07 Typical Monument in the Campo Santo </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0008"> 08 Naples and Her Joyful Noise </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0009"> 09 Out-door Life in Old Naples </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0010"> 10 Up-stairs Street in Old Naples </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0011"> 11 Naples and the Castel St. Elmo from The + Mole </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0012"> 12 Excavating at Pompeii </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0013"> 13 the Street of Tombs, Pompeii </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0014"> 14 the Capuchin Church, Rome </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0015"> 15 Glimpse Inside of Imperial Rome </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0016"> 16 Interior of Colosseum from the South </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0017"> 17 the Sacred Way Through The Forum </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0018"> 18 the Roman Forum </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0019"> 19 Spanish Steps </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0020"> 20 Toward the Pincian Hill </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0021"> 21 Sepulchre of Romulus, Forum </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0022"> 22 Trajan's Forum and Column </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0023"> 23 the Rostra in The Forum </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0024"> 24 the Mosaics Under The Capuchin Church </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0025"> 25 Santa Maria Sopra Minerva </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0026"> 26 Church Op Ara Coeli </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0027"> 27 Church of Santa Maggiore </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0028"> 28 Michelangelo's “moses” in San Pietro In + Vincoli </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0029"> 29 the Little Stadium With Its Gradines </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0030"> 30 Casino of the Villa Doria and Gardens </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0031"> 31 the Carnival (as It Once Was) </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0032"> 32 the Fountain of Trevi </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0033"> 33 Colonnade and Fountain at St. Peter's </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0034"> 34 Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0035"> 35 Piazza Del Popolo from the Pincian Hill + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0036"> 36 the Baths of Diocletian </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0037"> 37 Church of St. John Lateran and Lateran + Palace </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0038"> 38 Stairway and Fountain, Villa D'este </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0039"> 39 Villa Falconieri, Entrance, Frascati </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0040"> 40 in the Gardens of The Villa Falconieri + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0041"> 41 the Marble Faun </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0042"> 42 Marcus Aurelius With Out-stretched Arm + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0043"> 43 in the Villa Medici </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0044"> 44 the Baths of Caracalla </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0045"> 45 Piazza Victor Emanuel, Leghorn </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0046"> 46 the Canal at Leghorn </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0047"> 47 the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Leaning + Tower, Pisa </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0048"> 48 With Almost Any of My Backgrounds </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0049"> 49 Washing in the River, Genoa </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0050"> 50 Realistic Group in the Campo Santo </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0051"> 51 Monaco </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#linkimage-0052"> 52 the Casino, Monte Carlo </a> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h1> + ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS + </h1> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA. + </h2> + <p> + No drop-curtain, at any theatre I have seen, was ever so richly imagined, + with misty tops and shadowy clefts and frowning cliffs and gloomy valleys + and long, plunging cataracts, as the actual landscape of Madeira, when we + drew nearer and nearer to it, at the close of a tearful afternoon of + mid-January. The scenery of drop-curtains is often very boldly beautiful, + but here Nature, if she had taken a hint from art, had certainly bettered + her instruction. During the waits between acts at the theatre, while + studying the magnificent painting beyond the trouble of the orchestra, I + have been most impressed by the splendid variety which the artist had got + into his picture, where the spacious frame lent itself to his passion for + saying everything; but I remembered his thronging fancies as meagre and + scanty in the presence of the stupendous reality before me. I have, for + instance, not even mentioned the sea, which swept smoother and smoother in + toward the feet of those precipices and grew more and more trans-lucently + purple and yellow and green, while half a score of cascades shot straight + down their fronts in shafts of snowy foam, and over their pachydermatous + shoulders streamed and hung long reaches of gray vines or mosses. To the + view from the sea the island is all, with its changing capes and + promontories and bays and inlets, one immeasurable mountain; and on the + afternoon of our approach it was bestridden by a steadfast rainbow, of + which we could only see one leg indeed, but that very stout and athletic. + </p> + <p> + There were breadths of dark woodland aloft on this mountain, and terraced + vineyards lower down; and on the shelving plateaus yet farther from the + heights that lost themselves in the clouds there were scattered white + cottages; on little levels close to the sea there were set white villas. + These, as the ship coquetted with the vagaries of the shore, thickened + more and more, until after rounding a prodigious headland we found + ourselves in face of the charming little city of Funchal: long horizontal + lines of red roofs, ivory and pink and salmon walls, evenly fenestrated, + with an ancient fortress giving the modern look of things a proper + mediaeval touch. Large hotels, with the air of palaces, crowned the upland + vantages; there were bell-towers of churches, and in one place there was a + wide splotch of vivid color from the red of the densely flowering creeper + on the side of some favored house. There was an acceptable expanse of warm + brown near the quay from the withered but unfailing leaves of a + sycamore-shaded promenade, and in the fine roadstead where we anchored + there lay other steamers and a lead-colored Portuguese war-ship. I am not + a painter, but I think that here are the materials of a water-color which + almost any one else could paint. In the hands of a scene-painter they + would yield a really unrivalled drop-curtain. I stick to the notion of + this because when the beautiful goes too far, as it certainly does at + Madeira, it leaves you not only sated but vindictive; you wish to mock it. + </p> + <p> + The afternoon saddened more and more, and one could not take an interest + in the islanders who came out in little cockles and proposed to dive for + shillings and sixpences, though quarters and dimes would do. The company's + tender also came out, and numbers of passengers went ashore in the mere + wantonness of paying for their dinner and a night's lodging in the annexes + of the hotels, which they were told beforehand were full. The lights began + to twinkle from the windows of the town, and the dark fell upon the + insupportable picturesqueness of the prospect, leaving one to a gayety of + trooping and climbing lamps which defined the course of the streets. + </p> + <p> + The morning broke in sunshine, and after early breakfast the launches + began to ply again between the ship and the shore and continued till + nearly all the first and second cabin people had been carried off. The + people of the steerage satisfied what longing they had for strange sights + and scenes by thronging to the sides of the steamer until they gave her a + strong list landward, as they easily might, for there were twenty-five + hundred of them. At Madeira there is a local Thomas Cook & Son of + quite another name, but we were not finally sure that the alert youth on + the pier who sold us transportation and provision was really their agent. + However, his tickets served perfectly well at all points, and he was of + such an engaging civility and personal comeliness that I should not have + much minded their failing us here and there. He gave the first + charming-touch of the Latin south whose renewed contact is such a pleasure + to any one knowing it from the past. All Portuguese as Funchal was, it + looked so like a hundred little Italian towns that it seemed to me as if I + must always have driven about them in calico-tented bullock-carts set on + runners, as later I drove about Eunchal. + </p> + <p> + It was warm enough on the ship, but here in the town we found ourselves in + weather that one could easily have taken for summer, if the inhabitants + had not repeatedly assured us that it was the season of winter, and that + there were no flowers and no fruits. They could not, if they had wished, + have denied the flies; these, in a hotel interior to which we penetrated, + simply swarmed. If it was winter in Funchal it was no wintrier than early + autumn would have been in one of those Italian towns of other days; it had + the same temperament, the same little tree-planted spaces, the same + devious, cobble-paved streets, the same pleasant stucco houses; the + churches had bells of like tone, and if their facades confessed a Spanish + touch they were not more Spanish than half the churches in Naples. The + public ways were of a scrupulous cleanliness, as if, with so many English + signs glaring down at them, they durst not untidy out-of-doors, though + in-doors it was said to be different with them. There are three thousand + English living at Funchal and everybody speaks English, however slightly. + The fresh faces of English girls met us in the streets and no doubt + English invalids abound. + </p> + <p> + We shipmates were all going to the station of the funicular railway, but + our tickets did not call for bullock-sleds and so we took a clattering + little horse-car, which climbed with us through up-hill streets and got us + to the station too soon. Within the closed grille there the handsomest of + swarthy, black-eyed, black-mustached station-masters (if such was his + quality) told us that we could not have a train at once, though we had + been advised that any ten of us could any time have a train, because the + cars had all gone up the mountain and none would be down for twenty + minutes. He spoke English and he mitigated by a most amiable personality + sufferings which were perhaps not so great as we would have liked to + think. Some of us wandered off down a pink-and-cream colored avenue near + by and admired so much the curtains of red-and-yellow flowers—a + cross between honeysuckles and trumpet blossoms—overhanging a + garden-wall that two friendly boys began to share our interest in them. + One of them mounted the other and tore down handfuls of the flowers, which + they bestowed upon us with so little apparent expectation of reward that + we promptly gave them of the international copper coinage current in + Madeira, and went back to the station doubtless feeling guiltier than + they. Had we not been accessory after the fact to something like theft + and, as it was Sunday, to Sabbath-breaking besides? Afterward flowers + proved so abundant in Madeira in spite of its being winter, that we could + not feel the larceny a serious one, and the Sunday was a Latin Sabbath + well used to being broken. The pony engine which was to push our slanting + car over the cogged track up the mountain arrived with due ceremony of + bell and whistle, and we were let through the grille by the station-master + as politely as if we had been each his considered guest. Then the climb + began through the fields of sugar-cane, terraced vineyards, orchards of + fruit trees, and gardens of vegetables planted under the arbors over which + the grapes were trained. One of us told the others that the vegetables + were sheltered to save them from being scorched by the summer sun, and + that much of the work among them was done by moonlight to save the + laborers from the same fate. I do not know how he had amassed this + knowledge, and I am not sure that I have the right to impart it without + his leave. I myself saw some melons lolling on one of the tiled roofs of + the cottages where they had perhaps been pushed by the energetic forces of + the earth and sky. The grape-vines were quiescent, partly because it was + winter, as everybody said, and partly because the wine culture is no + longer so profitable in the island. It has been found for the moment that + Madeira is bad for the gout, and this discovery of the doctors is bad for + the peasants (already cruelly overtaxed by Portugal), who are leaving + their homes in great numbers and seeking their fortunes in both of the + Americas, as well as the islands of all the seas. It must be a heartbreak + for them to forsake such homes as we saw in the clean white cottages, with + the balconies and terraces. + </p> + <p> + But there were no signs of depopulation either of old or young. Smiling + mothers and fathers of all ages, in their Sunday leisure and their Sunday + best, watched our ascent as if they had never seen the like before, and + our course was never so swift but we could be easily overtaken by the + children; they embarrassed us with the riches of the camellias which they + flung in upon us, and they were accompanied by small dogs which barked + excitedly. Our train almost grazed the walls of the door-yards as we + passed through the succession of the one- and two-story cottages, which + dotted the mountain-side in every direction. When the eye could leave them + it was lured from height to height, and at each rise of the track to some + wider and lovelier expanse of the sea. We could see merely our own steamer + in the roadstead, with the Portuguese war-ship, and the few other vessels + at anchor, but we could never exhaust the variety of those varied mountain + slopes and tops. Their picturesqueness of form and their delight of color + would beggar any thesaurus of its descriptive reserves, and yet leave + their beauty almost unhinted. A drop-curtain were here a vain simile; the + chromatic glories of colored postal-cards might suggest the scene, but + then again they might overdo it. Nature is modest in her most magnificent + moods, and I do not see how she could have a more magnificent mood than + Madeira. It can never be represented by my art, but it may be measurably + stated: low lying sea; the town scattering and fraying everywhere into + outlying hamlets, villas and cottages; steep rising upon steep, till they + reach uninhabitable climaxes where the woods darken upward into the + everlasting snows, in one whole of grandeur resuming in its unity every + varying detail. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-2.jpg" alt="02 Funchal Bay " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I dwell rather helplessly upon the scenery, because it was what we + professedly went up or half up, or one-tenth or-hundredth up, the mountain + for. Un-professedly we went up in order to come down by the toboggan of + the country, though we vowed one another not to attempt anything so mad. + In the meanwhile, before it should be time for lunch, we could walk up to + a small church near the station and see the people at prayer in an + interior which did not differ in bareness and tawdriness from most other + country churches of the Latin south, though it had a facade so + satisfyingly Spanish, because I suppose it was so perfectly Portuguese, + that heart could ask no more. Not all the people were at prayer within; + irregular files of them attended our progress to give us the opportunity + of doing charity. The beggars were of every sort, sex, and age, and some, + from the hands they held out, with fingers reduced to their last joints, + looked as if they might be lepers, but I do not say they were. What I am + sure of is that the faces of the worshippers—men, women, and + children—when they came out of the church were of a gentleness + which, if it was not innocence and goodness, might well have passed for + those virtues. They had kind eyes, which seemed as often blue as black, + and if they had no great beauty they were seldom quite ugly. I wish I + could think we strangers, as they gazed curiously, timorously at us, + struck them as favorably. + </p> + <p> + An involuntary ferocity from the famine which we began to feel may have + glared from our visages, for we had eaten nothing for three hours, which + was long for saloon passengers. At the first restaurant which we found, + and in which we all but sat down at table, our coupons were not good, but + this was not wholly loss, for we recouped ourselves in the beauties of the + walk on which we wandered along the mountain-side to the right of the + restaurant. At the point where we were no longer confident of our way an + opportune native appeared and Jed us over paths paved with fine pebbles, + sometimes wrought into geometric patterns, and always through pleasing sun + and shade, till we reached a pretty hotel set, with its gardens before it, + on a shelf of level land and commanding a view of our steamer and the + surrounding sea. Tropic growths, which I will venture to call myrtle, + oleander, laurel, and eucalyptus, environed the hotel, not too closely nor + densely, and our increasing party was presently discovered from the head + of its steps by a hospitable matron, who with a cry of comprehensive + welcome ran within and was replaced by a head-waiter of as friendly aspect + and much more English. He said our coupons were good there and that our + luncheon would be ready in two minutes; for proof of the despatch with + which we should be served he held up the first and second fingers of his + right hand. Restored by his assurance, we did not really mind waiting + twice the tale of all his ten fingers, and we spent our time variously in + wandering about the plateau, among the wonted iron tables and chairs in + front of the hotel, in being photographed in a fairy grotto behind it, and + in examining the visitors' book in the parlor. The names of visitors from + South Africa largely prevailed, for the Cape Town steamers, oftener than + any others, touch at Madeira, but there was one traveller of Portuguese + race who had written his name in bold characters above the cry, “Long live + the Portuguese Republic.” Soon after the Portuguese monarchy ceased to + live for a time in the person of the murdered king and his heir, but it is + doubtful if the health of the potential republic was as great as before. + </p> + <p> + That bright Sunday morning no shadow of the black event was forecast, and + we gave our unstinted sympathy to our unknown co-republican. The luncheon, + when we were called to it, had merits of novelty and quality which I will + celebrate only as regards the delicate fish fresh from the sea, and the + pease fresh from the garden, with poached eggs fresh from the coop dropped + upon them. The conception of chops which followed was not so faultless, + though the fruit with which we ended did much to repair any error of kid + which may have mistaken itself for lamb. Perhaps our enthusiasm was + heightened by the fine air which had sharpened our appetites. At any rate, + it all ended in an habitual transaction in real estate by which I became + the owner of the place, without expropriating the actual possessor, and + established there those castles in Spain belonging to me in so many parts + of the world. + </p> + <p> + There remained now nothing for us to do but to toboggan down the mountain, + and we overcame our resolution not to do so far enough to go and look at + the toboggans under the guidance of our head-waiter. When once we had + looked we were lost. The toboggans were flat baskets set on iron-shod + runners, and well cushioned and padded; they held one, two, or three + passengers; the track on which they descended was paved, in gentle + undulations, with thin pebbles set on edge and greased wherever the + descent found a level. A smiling native, with a strong rope attached to + the toboggan, stood on each side of it, and held it back or pulled it + forward, according to the exigencies of the case. It is long since I slid + down hill on a sled of my own, and I do not pretend to recall the + sensation; but I can remember nothing so luxurious in transportation as + the swift flight of the Madeira toboggan, which you temper at will through + its guides and guards, but do not wish to temper at all when your first + alarm, mainly theoretical, passes into the gayety ending in exultant + rejoicing at the bottom of the course. + </p> + <p> + Our two toboggan men were possibly vigilant and reassuring beyond the + common, but one was quite silently so; the other, who spoke a little + English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were “strong + mans,” afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules of + Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the + noun, and declaring that they were “strongs mans.” We met many toboggan + men who needed to be “strongs mans” in their ascent of our track, with + their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some of them did not look + strong, and our own arrived spent and panting at the bottom. Something + like that is what always spoils pleasure in this world. Even when you have + paid for it with your money, some one else has paid with his person twice + as much, and you have not equalled his outlay when you have tipped him + your handsomest. + </p> + <p> + A shilling apiece seemed handsome for those “strongs mans,” but afterward + there were watches of the nights when the spirit grieved that the shilling + had not been made two apiece or even half a crown, and I wish now that the + first reader of mine who toboggans down Madeira would make up the + difference for me in his tip to those poor fellows. I do not mind if he + adds a few pennies for the children who ran before our toboggan and tossed + camellias into it, and then followed in the hopes of a reward, which we + tried not to disappoint. + </p> + <p> + The future traveller need not add to the fee of the authorized and + numbered guide who took possession of us as soon as we got out of our + basket and led us unresisting to a waiting bullock sled. He invited + himself into it, and gave himself the best of characters in the + autobiography into which he wove his scanty instruction concerning the + objects we passed. A bullock sled is not of such blithe progress as a + toboggan, but it is very comfortable, and it is of an Oriental and + litter-like dignity, with its calico cushions and curtains. One could not + well use it in New York, but it serves every purpose of a cab in Funchal, + where we noted a peculiar feature of local commerce which I hesitate to + specify, since it cast apparent discredit upon woman. It was, as I have + noted, Sunday; but every shop where things pleasing or even useful to + women were sold was wide open, and somewhat flaringly invited the custom + of our fellow-passengers of that sex; but there was not a shop where such + things as men's collars were for sale, or anything pleasing or useful to + man, but was closed and locked fast. I must except from this sweeping + statement the cafes, but these should not count, for women as well as men + frequented them, as we ascertained by going to a very bowery one on the + quay and ordering a bottle of the best and dryest Madeira. We wished + perhaps to prove that it was really not bad for gout, or perhaps that it + was no better than the Madeira you get in New York for the same price. + Even with the help of friends, of the sex which could have been freely + buying native laces, hats, fans, photographs, parasols, and tailor-made + dresses, we could not finish that bottle. Glass after glass we bestowed on + our smiling guide, with no final effect upon the bottle and none upon him, + except to make him follow us to the tender and take an after-fee for + showing us a way which we could not have missed blindfold. It was rather + strange, but not stranger than the behavior of the captain of the tender, + who, when he had collected our tickets, invited a free-will offering for + collecting them, and mostly got it. + </p> + <p> + When we were safely and gladly on board our steamer again, we had nothing + to do, until the deck-steward came round with tea, but watch the islanders + swarming around us in their cockles and diving for sixpences and + shillings, which they caught impartially with their fingers and toes. With + so many all shouting and gesticulating, one could not venture one's silver + indiscriminately; one must employ some particular diver, and I selected + for my investments a poor young fellow who had lost an arm. With his one + hand and his two feet he never failed of the coin I risked, and I wish + they had been many enough to enable him to retire from the trade, which + even in that mild air kept him visibly shivering when out of the water. I + do not know his name, but I commend him to future travellers by the token + of his pathetic mutilation. + </p> + <p> + By-and-by we felt the gentle stir of the steamer under us; the last tender + went ashore, and the divers retired in their cockles from our side. + Funchal began to rearrange the lines of her streets, while keeping those + of her roofs and house-walls and terraced gardens. We passed out of the + roadstead, we rounded the mighty headland by which we had entered, and + were once more in face of that magnificent drop-curtain, which had now + fallen upon one of the most vivid and novel passages of our lives. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-3.jpg" alt="03 Boats and Diving Boys, Funchal " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN + </h2> + <p> + There is nothing strikes the traveller in his approach to the rock of + Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential + Insurance Company. He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is + pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of that institution. As + the lines change with the ship's course, the resemblance is less + remarkable; but it is always remarkable, and I suppose it detracts + somewhat from the majesty of the fortress, which we could wish to be more + entirely original. This was my feeling when I first saw Gibraltar four + years ago, and it remains my feeling after having last seen it four weeks + ago. The eye seeks the bold, familiar legend, and one suffers a certain + disappointment in its absence. Otherwise Gibraltar does not and cannot + disappoint the most exacting tourist. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-4.jpg" alt="04 Gibraltar from the Bay " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The morning which found us in face of it was in brisk contrast to the + bland afternoon on which we had parted from Madeira. No flocking coracles + surrounded our steamer, with crews eager to plunge into the hissing brine + for shillings or equivalent quarters. The whitecaps looked snow cold as + they tossed under the sharp north wind, and the tender which put us ashore + had all it could do to embark and disembark us upright, or even aslant. + But, once in the lee of the rocky Africa breathed a genial warmth across + the strait beyond which its summits faintly shimmered; or was it the + welcome of Cook's carriages which warmed us so? We were promised separate + vehicles for parties of three or four, with English-speaking drivers, and + the promise was fairly well kept. The carriages bore a strong family + likeness to the pictures of Spanish state coaches of the seventeenth + century, and were curtained and cushioned in reddish calico. Rubber tires + are yet unknown in southern Europe, and these mediaeval arks bounded over + the stones with a violence which must once have been characteristic of + those in the illustrations. But the English of our English-speaking driver + was all that we could have asked for the shillings we paid Cook for him, + or, if it was not, it was all we got. He was an energetic young fellow and + satisfyingly Spanish in coloring, but in his eagerness to please he was + less grave than I could now wish; I now wish everything in Spain to have + been in keeping. + </p> + <p> + What was most perfectly, most fittingly in keeping was the sight of the + Moors whom we began at once to see on the wharves and in the streets. They + probably looked very much like the Moors who followed their caliph, if he + was a caliph, into Spain when he drove Don Roderick out of his kingdom and + established his own race and religion in the Peninsula. Moslem costumes + can have changed very little in the last eleven or twelve hundred years, + and these handsome fellows, who had come over with fresh eggs and + vegetables and chickens and turkeys from Tangier, could not have been + handsomer when they bore scimitars and javelins instead of coops and + baskets. They had baggy drawers on, and brown cloaks, with bare, red legs + and yellow slippers; one, when he took his fez off, had a head shaved + perfectly bald, like the one-eyed Calender or the Barber's brother out of + the <i>Arabian Nights;</i> the sparse mustache and short-forked beard + heightened the verisimilitude. Whether they squatted on the wharf, or + passed gravely through the street, or waited for custom in their little + market among the hen-coops and the herds of rather lean, dispirited + turkeys (which had not the satisfaction of their American kindred in being + fattened for the sacrifice, for in Europe all turkeys are served lean), + these Moors had an allure impossible to any Occidental race. It was + greater even than that of their Semitic brethren, who had a market farther + up in the town, and showed that a Jewish market could be much filthier + than a' Moorish market without being more picturesque. Into the web of + Oriental life were wrought the dapper figures of the red-coated, + red-cheeked English soldiers, with blue, blue eyes and incredible red and + yellow hair, lounging or hurrying orderlies with swagger-sticks, and + apparently aimless privates no doubt bent 'upon quite definite business or + pleasure. Now and then an English groom led an English horse through the + long street from which the other streets in Gibraltar branch up and down + hill, for there is no other level; and now and then an English man or + woman rode trimly by. + </p> + <p> + The whole place is an incongruous mixture of Latin and Saxon. The strictly + South-European effect of the houses and churches is a mute protest against + the alien presence which keeps the streets so clean and maintains order by + means of policemen showing under the helmets of the London bobby the faces + of the native alguazil. In the shops the saleswomen speak English and look + Spanish. Our driver, indeed, looked more Spanish than he spoke English. + </p> + <p> + His knowledge of our rude tongue extended hardly beyond the mention of + certain conventional objects of interest, and did not suffice to explain + why we could not see the old disused galleries of the fortifications. I do + not know why we wished to see these; I doubt if we really did so, but we + embittered life for that well-meaning boy by our insistence upon them, and + we brought him under unjust suspicion of deceit by forcing him to a sort + of time-limit in respect to them. We appealed from him to the blandest of + black-mus-tached, olive-skinned bobby-alguazils, who directed us to a + certain government office for a permit. There our application caused + something like dismay, and we were directed to another office, but were + saved from the shame of failure by incidentally learning that the + galleries could not be seen till after three o'clock. As our ship sailed + at that hour, we were probably saved a life-long disappointment. + </p> + <p> + Everywhere the rock of the Prudential beetles and towers over the town; + but the fortifications are so far up in the sky that you can really + distinguish nothing but the Marconi telegraphic apparatus at the top. + Along the sea-level, which the town mostly keeps, the war-like harness of + the stronghold shows through the civil dress of the town in barracks and + specific forts and gray battle-ships lying at anchor in the docks. But all + is simple and reserved, in the right English fashion. The strength of the + place is not to be put forth till it is needed, which will be never, since + it is hard to imagine how it can ever be even attempted by a hostile + force. This is not saying, I hope, that an American fleet could not batter + it down, nor leave one letter of the insurance advertisement after another + on the face of the precipice. + </p> + <p> + There is a pretty public garden at Gibraltar in that part of the town + which is farthest from the steamer's landing, and this proved the end of + our excursion in our state coach. We found other state coaches there, and + joined their passengers in strolling over the pleasant paths and trying to + make out what bird it was singing somewhere in the trees. We made out an + almond-tree in bloom, after some dispute; and, in fact, the climate there + was much softer than at the landing, so insidiously soft that it required + great force of character to keep from buying the flowers which some + tasteful boys gathered from the public beds. There is a mild monument or + two in this garden, to what memories I promptly failed to remember + afterward; but as there are more military memories in the world than is + good for it, and as these were undoubtedly military memories, I cannot + much blame myself in the matter. After viewing them, there was nothing + left to do but to get lunch, which we got extremely good at the hotel + where a friend led us. There was at this hotel a head-waiter, in a + silver-braided silk dress-coat of a mauve color, who imagined our wants so + perfectly that I shall always regret not taking more of the omelette; the + table-waiter urged it upon us twice with true friendliness. The eggs must + have been laid for it in Africa that morning at daybreak, and brought over + by a Moorish marketman, but we turned from the poetic experience of this + omelette in the greedy hope of better things. Better things there could + not be, but the fish was as good as the fish at Madeira, and the belief of + the chops that they were lamb and not kid seemed better founded. + </p> + <p> + There had been an excellent bottle of Rioja Blanca, such as you may have + as good at some Spanish restaurant in New York for as little money; and + the lunch, when reckoned up in English shillings and Spanish undertones, + was not cheap. Yet it was not dear, either, and there was no specific + charge for that silver-braided dress-coat of a mauve color. An English + dean in full clericals, and some English ladies talking in the + waiting-room, added an agreeable confusion to our doubt of where and what + we were, and we came away from the hotel as well content as if we had + lunched in Plymouth or Bath. The table-waiter took an extra fee for + confiding that he was a Milanese, and was almost the only Italian in + Gibraltar; whether he was right or not I do not know, but it was certainly + not his fault that we did not take twice of the omelette. + </p> + <p> + It is said that living is dear in Gibraltar, especially in the matter of + house rent. The houses in the town are like all the houses of Latin Europe + in their gray or yellowish walls of stone or stucco and their dark-green + shutters. There is an English residential quarter at the east end of the + town, where the houses may be different, for all I know; the English of + our driver or the hire of our state coach did not enable us to visit that + suburb, where the reader may imagine villas standing in grounds with lawns + and gardens about them. The English have prevailed nothing against the + local civilization in most things, while they have infected it with the + costliness of the whole Anglo-Saxon life. We should not think seven + hundred dollars in New York dear for even a quite small house, but it has + come to that in Gibraltar, and there they think it dear, with other things + proportionately so. Of course, it is an artificial place; the fortress + makes the town, and the town in turn lives upon the fortress. + </p> + <p> + The English plant themselves nowhere without gathering English + conveniences or conventions about them; Americans would not always think + them comforts. There is at Gibraltar a club or clubs; there is a hunt, + there is a lending library, there is tennis, there is golf, there is + bridge, there is a cathedral, and I dare say there is gossip, but I do not + know it. It was difficult to get land for the golf links, we heard, + because of the Spanish jealousy of the English occupation, which they will + not have extended any farther over Spanish soil, even in golf links. + Gibraltar is fondly or whimsically known to the invaders as Gib, and I + believe it is rather a favorite sojourn, though in summer it is + frightfully hot, held out on the knees and insteps of the rock to the + burning African sun, which comes up every morning over the sea after + setting Sahara on fire. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-5.jpg" alt="05 Gibraltar from the Neutral Ground " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + All this foreign life must be exterior to the aboriginal Spanish life + which has so long outlasted the Moorish, and is not without hope of + outlasting the English. I do not know what the occupations and amusements + of that life are, but I will suppose them unworthy enough. There must be a + certain space of neutral life uniting or dividing the two, which would + form a curious inquiry, but would probably not lend itself to literary + study. Besides this middle ground there is another neutral territory at + Gibraltar which we traversed after luncheon, in order to say that we had + been in Spain. That was the country of many more youthful dreamers in my + time than, I fancy, it is in this. We used then, much more than now, to + read Washington Irving, his <i>Tales of the Alhambra,</i> and his history + of <i>The Conquest of Granada,</i> and we read Prescott's histories of + Spanish kings and adventures in the old world and the new. We read <i>Don + Quixote,</i> which very few read now, and we read <i>Gil Blas,</i> which + fewer still now read; and all these constituted Spain a realm of faery, + where every sort of delightful things did or could happen. I for my part + had always expected to go to Spain and live among the people I had known + in those charming books, yet I had been often in Europe, and had spent + whole years there without ever going near Spain. But now, I saw, was my + chance, and when the friend who had been lunching with us asked if we + would not like to drive across that neutral territory and go into Spain a + bit, it seemed as if the dream of my youth had suddenly renewed itself + with the purpose of coming immediately true. It was a charmingly + characteristic foretaste of Spanish travel that the driver of the state + coach which we first engaged should, when we presently came back, have + replaced himself by another for no other reason than, perhaps, that he + could so provide us with a worse horse. I am not sure of this theory, and + I do not insist upon it, but it seems plausible. + </p> + <p> + As soon as we rounded the rock of Gibraltar and struck across a flatter + country than I supposed could be found within fifty miles of Gibraltar, we + were swept by a blast which must have come from the Pyrenees, it was so + savagely rough and cold. It may be always blowing there as a Spanish + protest against the English treatment of the neutral territory; in fact, + it does not seem quite the thing to build over that space as the English + have done, though the structures are entirely peaceable, and it is not + strange that the Spaniards have refused to meet them half-way with a good + road over it, or to let them make one the whole way. They stand gravely + opposed to any further incursion. Officially in all the Spanish documents + the place is styled “Gibraltar, temporarily occupied by Great Britain,” + and there is a little town which you see sparkling in the sun no great way + off in Spain called San Roque, of which the mayor is also mayor of + Gibraltar; he visits his province once a year, and many people living for + generations over the Spanish line keep the keys of the houses that they + personally or ancestrally own in Gibraltar. The case has its pathos, but + as a selfish witness I wish they had let the English make that road + through the neutral territory. The present road is so bad that our state + coach, in bounding over its inequalities, sometimes almost flung us into + the arms of the Spanish beggars always extended toward us. They were + probably most of them serious, but some of the younger ones recognized the + <i>bouffe</i> quality of their calling. One pleasant starveling of ten or + twelve entreated us for bread with a cigarette in his mouth, and, being + rewarded for his impudence, entered into the spirit of the affair and + asked for more, just as if we had given nothing. + </p> + <p> + A squalid little town grew up out of the flying gravel as we approached, + and we left our state coach at the custom-house, which seemed the chief + public edifice. There the inspectors did not go through the form of + examining our hand-bags, as they would have done at an American frontier; + and they did not pierce our carriage cushions with the long javelins with + which they are armed for the detection of smuggling among the natives who + have been shopping in Gibraltar. As the gates of that town are closed + every day at nightfall by a patrol with drum and fife, and everybody is + shut either in or out, it may easily happen with shoppers in haste to get + through that they bring dutiable goods into Spain; but the official + javelins rectify the error. + </p> + <p> + We left our belongings in our state coach and started for that stroll in + Spain which I have measured as two up-town blocks, by what I think a + pretty accurate guess; two cross-town blocks I am sure it was not. It was + a mean-looking street, unswept and otherwise unkempt, with the usual + yellowish or grayish buildings, rather low and rather new, as if prompted + by a mistaken modern enterprise. They were both shops and dwellings; I am + sure of a neat pharmacy and a fresh-looking cafe restaurant, and one + dwelling all faced with bright-green tiles. An alguazil—I am certain + he was an alguazil, though he looked like an Italian carabiniere and wore + a cocked hat—loitered into a police station; but I remember no one + else during our brief stay in that street except those <i>bouffe</i> boy + beggars. Of course, they wished to sell us postal-cards, but they were + willing to accept charity on any terms. Otherwise our Spanish tour was, so + far as we then knew, absolutely without incident; but when we got too far + away to return we found that we had been among brigands as well as + beggars, and all the Spanish picaresque fiction seemed to come true in the + theft of a black chudda shawl, which had indeed been so often lost in + duplicate that it was time it was entirely lost. Whether it was secretly + confiscated by the customs, or was accepted as a just tribute by the + populace from a poetic admirer, I do not know, but I hope it is now in the + keeping of some dark-eyed Spanish girl, who will wear it while murmuring + through her lattice to her <i>novio</i> on the pavement outside. It was + rather heavy to be worn as a veil, but I am sure she could manage it after + dark, and <i>could</i> hold it under her chin, as she leaned forward to + the grille, with one little olive hand, so that the <i>novio</i> would + think it was a black silk mantilla. Or if it was a gift from him, it would + be all right, anyway. + </p> + <p> + Our visit to Spain did not wholly realize my early dreams of that romantic + land, and yet it had not been finally destitute of incident. Besides, <i>we</i> + had not gone very far into the country; a third block might have teemed + with adventure, but we had to be back on the steamer before three o'clock, + and we dared not go beyond the second. Even within this limit a love of + reality underlying all my love of romance was satisfied in the impression + left by that dusty, empty, silent street. It seemed somehow like the + street of a new, dreary, Western American town, so that I afterward could + hardly believe that the shops and restaurants had not eked out their + height with dashboard fronts. It was not a place that I would have chosen + for a summer sojourn; the sense of a fly-blown past must have become a + vivid part of future experience, and yet I could imagine that if one were + born to it, and were young and hopeful, and had some one to share one's + youth and hope, that Spanish street, which was all there was of that + Spanish town, might have had its charm. I do not say that even for age + there was not a railway station by which one might have got away, though + there was no sign of any trains arriving or departing—perhaps + because it was not one o'clock in the morning, which is the favorite hour + of departure for Spanish trains. + </p> + <p> + When we turned to drive back over the neutral territory the rock of + Gibraltar suddenly bulked up before us, in a sheer ascent that left the + familiar Prudential view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness. Till + one has seen it from this point one has not truly seen it. The vast stone + shows like a half from which the other half has been sharply cleft and + removed, that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may unrelievedly + strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment the whole world to + tower up in from the level at its feet. No dictionary, however unabridged, + has language adequate to convey the notion of it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. ASHORE AT GENOA + </h2> + <p> + The pride of Americans in their native scenery is brought down almost to + the level of the South Shore of Long Island in arriving home from the + Mediterranean voyage to Europe. The last thing one sees in Europe is the + rock of Gibraltar, but before that there have been the snow-topped + Maritime Alps of Italy and the gray-brown, softly rounded, velvety heights + of Spain; and one has to think very hard of the Palisades above the point + where they have been blasted away for road-making material if one wishes + to keep up one's spirits. The last time I came home the Mediterranean way + I had a struggle with myself against excusing our sandy landscape, when we + came in sight of it, with its summer cottages for the sole altitudes, to + some Italian fellow-passengers who were not spellbound by its grandeur. I + had to remember the Rocky Mountains, which I had never seen, and all the + moral magnificence of our life before I could withhold the words of + apology pressing to my lips. I was glad that I succeeded; but now, going + back by the same route, I abandoned myself to transports in the beauty of + the Mediterranean coast which I hope were not untrue to my country. + Perhaps there is no country which can show anything like that beauty, and + America is no worse off than the rest of the world; but I am not sure that + I have a right to this consolation. Again there were those + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Silent pinnacles of aged snow,” + </pre> + <p> + flushed with the Southern sun; in those sombre slopes of pine; again the + olives climbing to their gloom; again the terraced vineyards and the white + farmsteads, with villages nestling in the vast clefts of the hills, and + all along the sea-level the blond towns and cities which broidei the hem + of the land from Marseilles to Genoa. One is willing to brag; one must be + a good American; but, honestly, have we anything like that to show the + arriving foreigner? For some reason our ship was abating the speed with + which she had crossed the Atlantic, and now she was swimming along the + Mediterranean coasts so slowly and so closely that it seemed as if we + could almost have cast an apple ashore, though probably we could not. We + were at least far enough off to mistake Nice for Monte Carlo and then for + San Remo, but that was partly because our course was so leisurely, and we + thought we must have passed Nice long before we did. It did not matter; + all those places were alike beautiful under the palms of their promenades, + with their scattered villas and hotels stretching along their upper + levels, and the ranks of shops and dwellings solidly forming the streets + which left the shipping of their ports to climb to the gardens and farms + beyond the villas. Cannes, Mentone, Ventimiglia, Ospedeletti, Bordighera, + Taggia, Alassio: was that their fair succession, or did they follow in + another order? Once more it did not matter; what is certain is that the + golden sun of the soft January afternoon turned to crimson and left the + last of them suffused in dim rose before we drifted into Genoa and came to + anchor at dusk beside a steamer which had left New York on the same day as + ours. By her vast size we could measure our own and have an objective + perception of our grandeur. We had crossed in one of the largest ships + afloat, but you cannot be both spectacle and spectator; and you must match + your magnificence with some rival magnificence before you can have a due + sense of it. That was what we now got at Genoa, and we could not help + pitying the people on that other ship, who must have suffered shame from + our overwhelming magnitude; the fact that she was of nearly the same + tonnage as our own ship had nothing to do with the case. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-6.jpg" alt="06 Daughters of Climate Along the Riviera " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + After the creamy and rosy tints of those daughters of climate along the + Riviera, it was pleasant to find a many-centuried mother of commerce like + Genoa of the dignified gray which she wears to the eye, whether it looks + down on her from the heights above her port or up at her from the thickly + masted and thickly funnelled waters of the harbor. Most European towns + have red tiled roofs, which one gets rather tired of putting into one's + word paintings, but the roofs of Genoa are gray tiled, and gray are her + serried house walls, and gray her many churches and bell-towers. The sober + tone gratifies your eye immensely, and the fact that your eye has noted it + and not attributed the conventional coloring of southern Europe to the + city is a flattery to your pride which you will not refuse. It is not a + setting for opera like Naples; there is something businesslike in it which + agrees with your American mood if you are true to America, and recalls you + to duty if you are not. + </p> + <p> + I had not been in Genoa since 1864 except for a few days in 1905, and I + saw changes which I will mostly not specify. Already at the earlier date + the railway had cut through the beautiful and reverend Doria garden and + left the old palace some scanty grounds on the sea-level, where commerce + noisily encompassed it with trains and tracks and lines of freight-cars. + But there had remained up to my last visit that grot on the gardened + hill-slope whence a colossal marble Hercules helplessly overlooked the + offence offered by the railroad; and now suddenly here was the lofty wall + of some new edifice stretching across in front of the Hercules and wholly + shutting him from view; for all I know it may have made him part of its + structure. + </p> + <p> + Let this stand for a type of the change which had passed upon Genoa and + has passed or is passing upon all Italy. The trouble is that Italy is full + of very living Italians, the quickest-witted people in the world, who are + alert to seize every chance for bettering themselves financially as they + have bettered themselves politically. For my part, I always wonder they do + not still rule the world when I see how intellectually fit they are to do + it, how beyond any other race they seem still equipped for their ancient + primacy. Possibly it is their ancient primacy which hangs about their + necks and loads them down. It is better to have too little past, as we + have, than too much, as they have. But if antiquity hampers them, they are + tenderer of its vast mass than we are of our little fragments of it; + tenderer than any other people, except perhaps the English, have shown + themselves; but when the time comes that the past stands distinctly in the + way of the future, down goes the past, even in Italy. I am not saying that + I do not see why that railroad could not have tunnelled under the Doria + garden rather than cut through it; and I am waiting for that new building + to justify its behavior toward that poor old Hercules; but in the mean + time I hold that Italy is for the Italians who now live in it, and have to + get that better living out of it which we others all want our countries to + yield us; and that it is not merely a playground for tourists who wish to + sentimentalize it, or study it, or sketch it, or make copy of it, as I am + doing now. + </p> + <p> + All the same I will not deny that I enjoyed more than any of the + improvements which I noted in Genoa that bit of the old Doria + palace-grounds which progress has left it. The gray edifice looks out on + the neighboring traffic across the leanness of a lovely old garden, with + statues and stone seats, and in the midst a softly soliloquizing fountain, + painted green with moss and mould. When you enter the palace, as you do in + response to a custodian who soon comes with a key and asks if you would + like to see it, you find yourself, one flight up, in a long glazed + gallery, fronting on the garden, which is so warm with the sun that you + wish to spend the rest of your stay in Genoa there. It is frescoed round + with classically imagined portraits of the different Dorias, and above all + the portrait of that great hero of the republic. I do not know that this + portrait particularly impresses you; if you have been here before you will + be reserving yourself for the portrait which the custodian will lead you + to see in the ultimate chamber of the rather rude old palace, where it is + like a living presence. + </p> + <p> + It is the picture of a very old man in a flat cap, sitting sunken forward + in his deep chair, with his thin, long hands folded one on the other, and + looking wearily at you out of his faded eyes, in which dwell the memories + of action in every sort and counsel in every kind. Victor in battles by + land and sea, statesman and leader and sage, he looks it all in that + wonderful effigy, which shuns no effect of his more than ninety years, but + confesses his great age as a part of his greatness with a pathetic + reality. The white beard, with “each particular hair” defined, falling + almost to the pale, lean hands, is an essential part of the presentment, + which is full of such scrupulous detail as the eye would unconsciously + take note of in confronting the man himself and afterward supply in the + remembrance of the whole. As if it were a part of his personality, on a + table facing him, covered with maps and papers, sits the mighty admiral's + cat, which, with true feline im-passiveness, ignores the spectator and + gives its sole regard to the admiral. There are possibly better portraits + in the world than this, which was once by Sebastiano del Piombo and is now + by Titian; but I remember none which has moved me more. + </p> + <p> + We tried in vain for a photograph of it, and then after a brief glance at + the riches of the Church of the Annunziata, where we were followed around + the interior by a sacristan who desired us to note that the pillars were + “All inlady, all inlady” with different marbles, and, after a chilly + moment in San Lorenzo, which the worshippers and the masons were sharing + between them in the prayers and repairs always going on in cathedrals, we + drove for luncheon to the hotel where we had sojourned in great comfort + three years before. Genoa has rather a bad name for its hotels, but we had + found this one charming, perhaps because when we had objected to going + five flights up the landlord had led us yet a floor higher, that we might + walk into the garden. It is so in much of Genoa, where the precipitous + nature of the site makes this vivid contrast between the levels of the + front door and the back gate. Many of the streets have been widened since + Heine saw the gossiping neighbors touching knees across them, but nothing + less than an earthquake could change the temperamental topography of the + place. It has its advantages; when there is a ring at the door the + housemaid, instead of panting up from the kitchen to answer it, has merely + to fall down five pairs of stairs. It cannot be denied, either, that the + steep incline gives a charm to the streets which overcome it with + sidewalks and driveways and trolley-tracks. Such a street as the Via + Garibaldi (there is a Via Garibaldi in every Italian city, town, and + village, and ought to be a dozen), compactly built, but giving here and + there over the houses' shoulders glimpses of the gardens lurking behind + them, is of a dignity full of the energy which a flat thoroughfare never + displays or imparts. Without the inspiration lent us by the street, I am + sure we should never have got to the top of it with our cab when we went + to the Campo Santo; and, as it was, we had to help our horses upward by + involuntarily straining forward from our places. But the Campo Santo was + richly worth the effort, for to visit that famous cemetery is to enjoy an + experience of which it is the unique opportunity. + </p> + <p> + I wish to celebrate it because it seems to me one of the frankest + expressions of national taste and nature, and I do like simplicity—in + others. The modern Italians are the most literal of the realists in all + the arts, and, as I had striven for reality in my own poor way, I was + perhaps the more curious to see its effects in sculpture which I had heard + of so much. I will own that they went far beyond my expectation and + possibly my wishes; but it is not to be supposed that it is only inferior + artists who have abandoned themselves to the excesses of fidelity so + abundant in the Campo Santo. There are, of course, enough poor falterings + of allegory and tradition in the marble walls and floors of this vast + residence of the dead (as it gives you the cheerful impression of being), + but the characteristic note of the place is a realism braving it out in + every extreme of actuality. Possibly the fact is most striking in that + death-bed scene where the family, life-size and unsparingly portraitured, + and, as it were, photographed in marble, are gathered in the room of the + dying mother. She lies on a bedstead which bears every mark of being one + of a standard chamber-set in the early eighteen-seventies, and about her + stand her husband and her sons and daughters and their wives and husbands, + in the fashions of that day. I recall a brother, in a cutaway coat, and a + daughter, in a tie-back, embraced in their grief and turning their faces + away from their mother toward the spectator; and doubtless there were + others whom to describe in their dress would render as grotesque. It is + enough to say that the artist, of a name well known in Italy and of + uncommon gift, has been as true to the moment in their costume as to the + eternal humanity in their faces. He has done what the sculptor or painter + of the great periods of art used to do with their historical and + scriptural people—he has put them in the dress of his own time and + place; and it is impossible to deny him a convincing logic. No sophistry + or convention of drapery in the scene could have conveyed its pathos half + so well, or indeed at all. It does make you shudder, I allow; it sets your + teeth on edge; but then, if you are a real man or woman, it brings the + lump into your throat; the smile fails from your lip; you pay the tribute + of genuine pity and awe. I will not pretend that I was so much moved by + the meeting in heaven of a son and father: the spirit of the son in a + cutaway, with a derby hat in his hand, gazing with rapture into the face + of the father's spirit in a long sack-coat holding his marble bowler + elegantly away from his side, if I remember rightly. But here the fact + wanted the basis of simplicity so strong in the other scene; in the + mixture of the real and the ideal the group was romanticistic. + </p> + <p> + There are innumerable other portrait figures and busts in which the civic + and social hour is expressed. The women's hair is dressed in this + fashionable way or that; the men's beards are cut in conformity to the + fashion or the personal preference in side whiskers or mustache or + imperial or goatee; and their bronze or marble faces convey the + contemporary character of aristocrat or bourgeois or politician or + professional. I do not know just what the reader would expect me to say in + defence of the full-length figure of a lady in <i>decollete</i> and + trained evening dress, who enters from the tomb toward the spectator as if + she were coming into a drawing-room after dinner. She is very beautiful, + but she is no longer very young, and the bare arms, which hang gracefully + at her side, respond to an intimation of <i>embonpoint</i> in the figure, + with a slightly flabby over-largeness where they lose themselves in the + ample shoulders. Whether this figure is the fancy of the sorrowing husband + or the caprice of the defunct herself, who wished to be shown to + after-time as she hoped she looked in the past, I do not know; but I had + the same difficulty with it as I had with that father and son; it was + romanticistic. Wholly realistic and rightly actual was that figure of an + old woman who is said to have put by all her savings from the grocery + business that she might appear properly in the Campo Santo, and who is + shown there short and stout and common, in her ill-fitting best dress, but + motherly and kind and of an undeniable and touching dignity. + </p> + <p> + If I am giving the reader the impression that I went to the Campo Santo in + my last stop at Genoa, I am deceiving him; I record here the memories of + four years ago. I did not revisit the place, but I should like to see it + again, if only to revive my recollections of its unique interest. I did + really revisit the Pal-lavicini-Durazzo palace, and there revived the + pleasure I had known before in its wonderful Van Dycks. Most wonderful was + and will always be the “Boy in White,” the little serene princeling, + whoever he was, in whom the painter has fixed forever a bewitching mood + and moment of childhood. “The Mother with two Children” is very well and + self-evidently true to personality and period and position; but, after + all, she is nothing beside that “Boy in White,” though she and her + children are otherwise so wonderful. Now that I speak of her, however, she + rather grows upon my recollection as a woman greater than her great world + and proudly weary of it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-7.jpg" alt="07 Typical Monument in the Campo Santo " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + She was a lady of that very patrician house whose palace, in its cold + grandeur and splendor, renews at once all one's faded or fading sense of + the commercial past of Italy, when her greatest merchants were her + greatest nobles and dwelt in magnificence unparalleled yet since Rome + began to be old. Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Florence, what state their business + men housed themselves in and environed themselves with! Their palaces by + the hundreds were such as only the public edifices of our less simple + State capitols could equal in size and not surpass in cost. Their <i>folie + des grandeurs</i> realized illusions in architecture, in sculpture, and in + painting which the assembled and concentrated feats of those arts all the + way up and down Fifth Avenue, and in the millionaire blocks eastward could + not produce the likeness of. We have the same madness in our brains; we + have even a Roman megalomania, but the effect of it in Chicago or + Pittsburg or Philadelphia or New York has not yet got beyond a ducal or a + princely son-in-law. The splendors of such alliances have still to take + substantial form in a single instance worthy to compare with a thousand + instances in the commercial republics of Italy. This does not mean that + our rich people have not so much money as the Italians of the Renaissance, + but that perhaps in their <i>folie des grandeurs</i> they are a different + kind of madmen; it means also that land and labor are dearer positively + and comparatively with us, and that our pork-packing or stock-broking + princes prefer to spend on comfort rather than size in their houses, and + do not like the cold feet which the merchant princes of Italy must have + had from generation to generation. I shall always be sorry I did not wear + arctics when I went to the Pallavicini-Durazzo palace, and I strongly urge + the reader to do so when he goes. + </p> + <p> + He will not so much need them out-of-doors in a Genoese January, unless a + <i>tramontana</i> is blowing, and there was none on our half-day. But in + any case we did not walk. We selected the best-looking cab-horse we could + find, and he turned out better than his driver, who asked a fabulous price + by the hour. We obliged him to show his tariff, when his wickedness was + apparent from the printed rates. He explained that the part we were + looking at was obsolete, and he showed us another part, which was really + for drives outside the city; but we agreed to pay it, and set out hoping + for good behavior from him that would make up the difference. Again we + were deceived; at the end he demanded a franc beyond even his unnatural + fare. I urged that one should be reasonable; but he seemed to think not, + and to avoid controversy I paid the extortionate franc. I remembered that + just a month before, in New York, I had paid an extortionate dollar in + like circumstances. + </p> + <p> + Nevertheless, that franc above and beyond the stipulated extortion + impoverished me, and when we came to take a rowboat back to our steamer I + beat the boatman down cruelly, mercilessly. He was a poor, lean little + man, with rather a superannuated boat, and he labored harder at the oar + than I could bear to see without noting his exertion to him. This was + fatal; instantly he owned that I was right, and he confessed, moreover, + that he was the father of a family, and that some of his children were + then suffering from sickness as well as want. What could one do but make + the fare up to the first demand of three francs after having got the price + down to one and a half? At the time it seemed to me that I was somehow by + this means getting the better of the cabman who had obliged me to pay a + franc more than his stipulated extortion, but I do not now hope to make it + appear so to the reader. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE + </h2> + <p> + We heard the joyful noise of Naples as soon as our steamer came to anchor + within the moles whose rigid lines perhaps disfigure her famous bay, while + they render her harbor so secure. The noise first rose to us, hanging over + the guard, and trying to get phrases for the glory of her sea and sky and + mountains and monuments, from a boat which seemed to have been keeping + abreast of us ever since we had slowed up. It was not a largo boat, but it + managed to contain two men with mandolins, a mother of a family with a + guitar, and a young girl with an alternate tambourine and umbrella. The + last instrument was inverted to catch the coins, such as they were, which + the passengers flung down to the minstrels for their repetitions of “Santa + Lucia,” “Funicoli-Funicola,” “II Cacciatore,” and other popular Neapolitan + airs, such as “John Brown's Body” and “In the Bowery.” To the songs that + had a waltz movement the mother of a family performed a restricted dance, + at some risk of falling overboard, while she smiled radiantly up at us, + as, in fact, they all did, except the young girl, who had to play + simultaneously on her tambourine and her inverted umbrella, and seemed + careworn. Her anxiety visibly deepened to despair when she missed a + shilling, which must have looked as large to her as a full moon as it sank + slowly down into the sea. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-8.jpg" alt="08 Naples and Her Joyful Noise " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + But her despair did not last long; nothing lasts long in Naples except the + joyful noise, which is incessant and perpetual, and which seems the + expression of the universal temperament in both man and beast. Our + good-fortune placed us in a hotel fronting the famous Castel dell' Ovo, + across a little space of land and water, and we could hear, late and + early, the cackling and crowing of the chickens which have replaced the + hapless prisoners of other days in that fortress. At times the voices of + the hens were lifted in a choral of self-praise, as if they had among them + just laid the mighty structure which takes its name from its resemblance + to the egg they ordinarily produce. In other lands the peculiar note of + the donkey is not thought very melodious, but in Naples before it can fade + away it is caught up in the general orchestration and ceases in music. The + cabmen at our corner, lying in wait by scores for the strangers whom it is + their convention to suppose ignorant of their want of a carriage, + quarrelled rhythmically with one another; the mendicants, lying everywhere + in wait for charity, murmured a modulated appeal; if you heard shouts or + yells afar off they died upon your ear in a strain of melody at the moment + when they were lifted highest. I am aware of seeming to burlesque the + operatic fact which every one must have noticed in Naples; and I will not + say that the neglected or affronted babe, or the trodden dog, is as + tuneful as the midnight cat there, but only that they approach it in the + prevailing tendency of all the local discords to soften and lose + themselves in the general unison. This embraces the clatter of the cabs, + which are seldom less than fifty years old, and of a looseness in all + their joints responsive to their effect of dusty decrepitude. Their + clatter penetrates the volumed tread of the myriad feet in a city where, + if you did not see all sorts of people driving, you would say the whole + population walked. Above the manifold noises gayly springing to the sky + spreads and swims the clangor of the church-bells and holds the + terrestrial uproar in immeasurable solution. It would be rash to say that + the whole population of Naples is always in the street, for if you look + into the shops or cafes, or, I dare say, the houses, you will find them + quite full; but the general statement verifies itself almost tiresomely in + its agreement with what everybody has always said of Naples. It is so + quite what you expect that if you could you would turn away in satiety, + especially from the swarming life of the poor, which seems to have no + concealments from the public, but frankly works at all the trades and arts + that can be carried on out-of-doors; cooks, eats, laughs, cries, sleeps, + wakes, makes love, quarrels, scolds, does everything but wash itself—clothes + enough it washes for other people's life. There is a reason for this in + the fact that in bad weather at Naples it is cold and dark and damp + in-doors, and in fine so bright and warm and charming without that there + is really no choice. Then there is the expansive temperament, which if it + were shut up would probably be much more explosive than it is now. As it + is, it vents itself in volleyed detonations and scattered shots which + language can give no sense of. + </p> + <p> + For the true sense of it you must go to Naples, and then you will never + lose the sense of it. I had not been there since 1864, but when I woke up + the morning after my arrival, and heard the chickens cackling in the + Castel dell' Ovo, and the donkeys braying, and the cab-drivers + quarrelling, and the cries of the street vendors, and the dogs barking, + and the children wailing, and their mothers scolding, and the clatter of + wheels and hoops and feet, and all that mighty harmony of the joyful + Neapolitan noises, it seemed to me that it was the first morning after my + first arrival, and I was still only twenty-seven years old. As soon as + possible, when the short but sweet Vincenzo had brought up my breakfast of + tea and bread-and-butter and honey (to which my appetite turned from the + gross superabundance of the steamer's breakfasts with instant + acquiescence), and announced with a smile as liberal as the sunshine that + it was a fine day, I went out for those impressions which I had better + make over to the reader in their original disorder. Vesuvius, which was + silver veiled the day before, was now of a soft, smoky white, and the sea, + of a milky blue, swam round the shore and out to every dim island and low + cape and cliffy promontory. The street was full of people on foot and in + trolleys and cabs and donkey pleasure-carts, and the familiar teasing of + cabmen and peddlers and beggars began with my first steps toward what I + remembered as the Toledo, but what now called itself, with the moderner + Italian patriotism, the Via Roma. The sole poetic novelty of my experience + was in my being offered loaves of bread which, when I bought them, would + be given to the poor, in honor of what saint's day I did not learn. But it + was all charming; even the inattention of the young woman over the + book-counter was charming, since it was a condition of her flirtation with + the far younger man beside me who wanted something far more interesting + from her than any brief sketch of the history of Naples, in either English + or Italian or French or, at the worst, German. She was very pretty, though + rather powdered, and when the young man went away she was sympathetically + regretful to me that there was no such sketch, in place of which she + offered me several large histories in more or less volumes. But why should + I have wanted a history of Naples when I had Naples itself? It was like + wanting a photograph when you have the original. Had I not just come + through the splendid Piazza San Ferdinando, with the nobly arcaded church + on one hand and the many-statued royal palace on the other, and between + them a lake of mellow sunshine, as warm as ours in June? + </p> + <p> + What I found Naples and the Neapolitans in 1908 I had found them in 1864, + and Mr. Gray (as he of the “Elegy” used to be called on his title-pages) + found them in 1740. “The streets,” he wrote home to his mother, “are one + continued market, and thronged with populace so much that a coach can + hardly pass. The common sort are a jolly, lively kind of animals, more + industrious than Italians usually are; they work till evening; then they + take their lute or guitar (for they all play) and walk about the city or + upon the seashore with it, to enjoy the fresco.” There was, in fact, a + bold gayety in the aspect of the city, without the refinement which you do + not begin to feel till you get into North Italy. When I came upon church + after church, with its facade of Spanish baroque, I lamented the want of + Gothic delicacy and beauty, but I was consoled abundantly later in the + churches antedating the Spanish domination. I had no reason, such as + travellers give for hating places, to be dissatisfied with Naples in any + way. I had been warned that the customs officers were terrible there, and + that I might be kept hours with my baggage. But the inspector, after the + politest demand for a declaration of tobacco, ordered only a small valise, + the Benjamin of its tribe, opened and then closed untouched; and his + courteous forbearance, acknowledged later through the hotel porter, cost + me but a dollar. The hotel itself was inexpressibly better in lighting, + heating, service, and table than any New York hotel at twice the money—in + fact, no money could buy the like with us at any hotel I know of; but this + is a theme which I hope to treat more fully hereafter. It is true that the + streets of Naples are very long and rather narrow and pretty crooked, and + full of a damp cold that no sunlight seems ever to hunt out of them; but + then they are seldom ironed down with trolley-tracks; the cabs feel their + way among the swarming crowds with warning voices and smacking whips; even + the prepotent automobile shows some tenderness for human life and limb, + and proceeds still more cautiously than the cabs and carts—in fact, + I thought I saw recurrent proofs of that respect for the average man which + seems the characteristic note of Italian liberty; and this belief of mine, + bred of my first observations in Naples, did not, after twelve weeks in + Italy, prove an illusion. If it is not the equality we fancy ourselves + having, it is rather more fraternity in effect. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-9.jpg" alt="09 Out-door Life in Old Naples " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The failure of other researches for that sketch of Neapolitan history left + me in the final ignorance which I must share with the reader; but my + inquiries brought me prompt knowledge of one of those charming features in + which the Italian cities excel, if they are not unique. I remember too + vaguely the Galleria, as they call the beautiful glazed arcade of Milan, + to be sure that it is finer than the Galleria at Naples, but I am sure + this is finer than that at Genoa, with which, however, I know nothing in + other cities to compare. The Neapolitan gallery, wider than any avenue of + the place, branching in the form of a Greek cross to four principal + streets, is lighted by its roof of glass, and a hundred brilliant shops + and cafes spread their business and leisure over its marble floor. Nothing + could be architecturally more cheerful, and, if it were not too hot in + summer, there could be no doubt of its adaptation to our year, for it + could be easily closed against the winter by great portals, and at other + seasons would give that out-door expansion which in Latin countries + hospitably offers the spectacle of pleasant eating and drinking to people + who have nothing to eat and drink. These spectators could be kept at a + distance with us by porters at the entrances, while they would not be + altogether deprived of the gratifying glimpses. + </p> + <p> + I do not know whether poverty avails itself of its privileges by visiting + the Neapolitan gallery; but probably, like poverty elsewhere, it is too + much interested by the drama of life in its own quarter ever willingly to + leave it. Poverty is very conservative, for reasons more than one; its + quarter in Naples is the oldest, and was the most responsive to our + recollections of the Naples of 1864. Overhead the houses tower and beetle + with their balconies and bulging casements, shutting the sun, except at + noon, from the squalor below, where the varied dwellers bargain and battle + and ply their different trades, bringing their work from the dusk of + cavernous shops to their doorways for the advantage of the prevailing + twilight. Carpentry and tailoring and painting and plumbing, locksmithing + and copper-smithing go on there, touching elbows with frying and feeding, + and the vending of all the strange and hideous forms of flesh, fish, and + fowl. If you wish to know how much the tentacle of a small polyp is worth + you may chance to see a cent pass for it from the crone who buys to the + boy who sells it smoking from the kettle; but the price of cooked cabbage + or pumpkin must remain a mystery, along with that of many raw vegetables + and the more revolting viscera of the less-recognizable animals. + </p> + <p> + The poor people worming in and out around your cab are very patient of + your progress over the terrible floor of their crooked thoroughfare, + perhaps because they reciprocate your curiosity, and perhaps because they + are very amiable and not very sensitive. They are not always crowded into + these dismal chasms; their quarter expands here and there into + market-plates, like the fish-market where the uprising of the fisherman + Masaniello against the Spaniards fitly took place; and the Jewish + market-place, where the poor young Corra-dino, last of the imperial + Hohenstaufen line, was less appropriately beheaded by the Angevines. The + open spaces are not less loathsome than the reeking alleys, but if you + have the intelligent guide we had you approach them through the triumphal + arch by which Charles V. entered Naples, and that is something. Yet we + will now talk less of the emperor than of the guide, who appealed more to + my sympathy. + </p> + <p> + He had been six years in America, which he adored, because, he said, he + had got work and earned his living there the very day he landed. That was + in Boston, where he turned his hand first to one thing and then another, + and came away at last through some call home, honoring and loving the + Americans as the kindest, the noblest, the friendliest people in the + world. I tried, politely, to persuade him that we were not all of us all + he thought us, but he would not yield, and at one place he generously + claimed a pre-eminence in wickedness for his fellow-Neapolitans. That was + when we came to a vast, sorrowful prison, from which an iron cage + projected into the street. Around this cage wretched women and children + and old men clustered till the prisoners dear to them were let into it + from the jail and allowed to speak with them. The scene was as public as + all of life and death is in Naples, and the publicity seemed to give it + peculiar sadness, which I noted to our guide. He owned its pathos; “but,” + he said, “you know we have a terrible class of people here in Naples.” I + protested that there were terrible classes of people everywhere, even in + America. He would not consent entirely, but in partly convincing each + other we became better friends. He had a large black mustache and gentle + black eyes, and he spoke very fair English, which, when he wished to be + most impressive, he dropped and used a very literary Italian instead. He + showed us where he lived, on a hill-top back of our gardened quay, and + said that he paid twelve dollars a month for a tenement of five rooms + there. Schooling is compulsory in Naples, but he sends his boy willingly, + and has him especially study English as the best provision he can make for + him—as heir of his own calling of cicerone, perhaps. He has a little + farm at Bavello, which he tills when it is past the season for cultivating + foreigners in Naples; he expects to spend his old age there; and I thought + it not a bad lookout. He was perfectly well-mannered, and at a hotel where + we stopped for tea he took his coffee at our table unbidden, like any + American fellow-man. He and the landlord had their joke together, the + landlord warning me against him in English as “very bad man,” and clapping + him affectionately on the shoulder to emphasize the irony. We did not + demand too much social information of him; all the more we valued the + gratuitous fact that the Neapolitan nobles were now rather poor, because + they preferred a life of pleasure to a life of business. I could have told + him that the American nobles were increasingly like them in their love of + pleasure, but I would not have known how to explain that they were not + poor also. He was himself a moderate in politics, but he told us, what + seems to be the fact everywhere in Italy, that singly the largest party in + Naples is the Socialist party. + </p> + <p> + He went with me first one day to the beautiful old Church of Santa Chiara, + to show me the Angevine tombs there, in which I satisfied a secret, + lingering love for the Gothic; and then to the cathedral, where the + sacristan showed us everything but the blood of St. Jannarius, perhaps + because it was not then in the act of liquefying; but I am thankful to say + I saw one of his finger-bones. My guide had made me observe how several of + the churches on the way to this were built on the sites and of the + remnants of pagan temples, and he summoned the world-old sacristan of St. + Januarius to show us evidences of a rival antiquity in the crypt; for it + had begun as a temple of Neptune. The sacristan practically lived in those + depths and the chill sanctuary above them, and-he was so full of + rheumatism that you could almost hear it creak as he walked; yet he was a + cheerful sage, and satisfied with the fee which my guide gave him and + which he made small, as he explained, that the sacristan might not be + discontented with future largesse. I need not say that each church we + visited had its tutelary beggar, and that my happy youth came back to me + in the blindness of one, or the mutilation of another, or the haggish + wrinkles of a third. At Santa Chiara I could not at first make out what it + was which caused my heart to rejoice so; but then I found that it was + because the church was closed, and we had to go and dig a torpid monk out + of his crevice in a cold, many-storied cliff near by, and get him to come + and open it, just as I used, with the help of neighbors, to do in the + past. + </p> + <p> + Our day ended at sunset—a sunset of watermelon red—with a + visit to the Castel Nuovo, where my guide found himself at home with the + garrison, because, as he explained, he had served his term as a soldier. + He was the born friend of the custodian of the castle church, which was + the most comfortable church for warmth we had visited, and to which we + entered by the bronze gates of the triumphal arch raised in honor of the + Aragonese victory over the Angevines in 1442, when this New Castle was + newer than it is now. The bronze gates record in bas-relief the battles + between the French and Spanish powers in their quarrel over the people one + or other must make its prey; but whether it was to the greater advantage + of the Neapolitans to be battened on by the house of Aragon and then that + of Bourbon for the next six hundred years after the Angevines had retired + from the banquet is problematical. History is a very baffling study, and + one may be well content to know little or nothing about it. I knew so + little or had forgotten so much that I scarcely deserved to be taken down + into the crypt of this church and shown the skeletons of four conspirators + for Anjou whom Aragon had put to death—two laymen and an archbishop + by beheading, and a woman by dividing crosswise into thirds. The skeletons + lay in their tattered and dusty shrouds, and I suppose were authentic + enough; but I had met them, poor things, too late in my life to wish for + their further acquaintance. Once I could have exulted to search out their + story and make much of it; but now I must leave it to the reader's + imagination, along with most other facts of my observation in Naples. + </p> + <p> + I was at some pains to look up the traces of my lost youth there, and if I + could have found more of them no doubt I should have been more interested + in these skeletons. For forty-odd years I had remembered the prodigious + picturesqueness of certain streets branching from a busy avenue and + ascending to uplands above by stately successions of steps. When I + demanded these of my guide, he promptly satisfied me, and in a few + moments, there in the Chiaja, we stood at the foot of such a public + staircase. I had no wish to climb it, but I found it more charming even + than I remembered. All the way to the top it was banked on either side + with glowing masses of flowers and fruits and the spectacular vegetables + of the South, and between these there were series of people, whom I + tacitly delegated to make the ascent for me, passing the groups bargaining + at the stalls. Nothing could have been better; nothing that I think of is + half so well in New York, where the markets are on that dead level which + in the social structure those above it abhor; though there are places on + the East River where we might easily have inclined markets. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-10.jpg" alt="10 Up-stairs Street in Old Naples " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Other associations of that far past awoke with my identification of the + hotel where we had stayed at the end of the Villa Nazionale. In those days + the hotel was called, in appeal to our patriotism, more flattered then + than now in Europe, Hotel Washington; but it is to-day a mere pension, + though it looks over the same length of palm-shaded, statue-peopled + garden. The palms were larger than I remembered them, and the statues had + grown up and seemed to have had large families since my day; but the + lovely sea was the same, with all the mural decorations of the skyey + horizons beyond, dim precipices and dreamy island tops, and the dozing + Vesuvius mistakable for any of them. At one place there was a file of + fishermen, including a fisherwoman, drawing their net by means of a rope + carried across the carriage-way from the seawall, with a splendid show of + their black eyes and white teeth and swarthy, bare legs, and always there + were beggars, both of those who frankly begged and those who importuned + with postal-cards. This terrible traffic pervades all southern Europe, and + everywhere pesters the meeting traveller with undesired bargains. In its + presence it is almost impossible to fit a scene with the apposite phrase; + and yet one must own that it has its rights. What would those boys do if + they did not sell, or fail to sell, postal-cards. It is another aspect of + the labor problem, so many-faced in our time. Would it be better that they + should take to open mendicancy, or try to win the soft American heart with + such acquired slang as “Skiddoo to twenty-three”? One who had no + postal-cards had English enough to say he would go away for a penny; it + was his price, and I did not see how he could take less; when he was + reproached by a citizen of uncommon austerity for his shameless annoyance + of strangers, I could not see that he looked abashed—in fact, he + went away singing. He did not take with him the divine beauty of the + afternoon light on the sea and mountains; and, if he was satisfied, we + were content with our bargain. + </p> + <p> + In fact, it would be impossible to exaggerate in the praise of that + incomparable environment. At every hour of the day, and, for all I know, + the night, it had a varying beauty and a constant loveliness. Six days out + of the week of our stay the sunshine was glorious, and five days of at + least a May or September warmth; and though one day was shrill and stiff + with the <i>tramontana,</i> it was of as glorious sunshine as the rest. + The gale had blown my window open and chilled my room, but with that sun + blazing outside I could not believe in the hurricane which seemed to blow + our car up the funicular railway when we mounted to the height where the + famous old Convent of San Martino stands, and then blew us all about the + dust-clouded streets of that upland in our search for the right way to the + monastery. It was worth more than we suffered in finding it; for the + museum is a record of the most significant events of Neapolitan history + from the time of the Spanish domination down to that of the Garibaldian + invasion; and the church and corridors through which the wind hustled us + abound in paintings and frescos such as one would be willing to give a + whole week of quiet weather to. I do not know but I should like to walk + always in the convent garden, or merely look into it from my window in the + cloister wall, and gossip with my fellow-friars at their windows. We + should all be ghosts, of course, but the more easily could the sun warm us + through in spite of the <i>tramontana.</i> + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-11.jpg" + alt="11 Naples and the Castel St. Elmo from The Mole " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I do not know that Naples is very beautiful in certain phases in which + Venice and Genoa are excellent. Those cities were adorned by their sons + with palaces of an outlook worthy of their splendor. But in the other + Italian cities the homes of her patricians were crowded into the narrow + streets where their architecture fails of its due effect. It is so with + them in Naples, and even along the Villa Nazionale, where many palatial + villas are set, they seclude themselves in gardens where one fancies + rather than sees them. These are, in fact, sometimes the houses of the + richest bourgeoisie—bankers and financiers—and the houses + which have names conspicuous in the mainly inglorious turmoil of + Neapolitan history help unnoted to darken the narrow and winding ways of + the old city. A glimpse of a deep court or of a towering facade is what + you get in passing, but it is to be said of the sunless streets over which + they gloom that they are kept in a modern neatness beside which the dirt + of New York is mediaeval. It is so with most other streets in Naples, + except those poorest ones where the out-door life insists upon the most + intimate domestic expression. Even such streets are no worse than our + worst streets, and the good streets are all better kept than our best. + </p> + <p> + I am not sure that there are even more beggars in Naples than in New York, + though I will own that I kept no count. In both cities beggary is common + enough, and I am not noting it with disfavor in either, for it is one of + my heresies that comfort should be constantly reminded of misery by the + sight of it—comfort is so forgetful. Besides, in Italy charity costs + so little; a cent of our money pays a man for the loss of a leg or an arm; + two cents is the compensation for total blindness; a sick mother with a + brood of starving children is richly rewarded for her pains with a nickel + worth four cents. Organized charity is not absent in the midst of such + volunteers of poverty; one day, when we thought we had passed the last + outpost of want in our drive, two Sisters of Charity suddenly appeared + with out-stretched tin cups. Our driver did not imagine our inexhaustible + benovelence; he drove on, and before we could bring him to a halt the + Sisters of Charity ran us down, their black robes flying abroad and their + sweet faces flushed with the pursuit. Upon the whole it was very + humiliating; we could have wished to offer our excuses and regrets; but + our silver seemed enough, and the gentle sisters fell back when we had + given it. + </p> + <p> + That was while we were driving toward Posilipo for the beauty of the + prospect along the sea and shore, and for a sense of which any colored + postal-card will suffice better than the most hectic word-painting. The + worst of Italy is the superabundance of the riches it offers ear and eye + and nose—offers every sense—ending in a glut of pleasure. At + the point where we descended from our carriage to look from the upland out + over the vast hollow of land and sea toward Pozzuoli, which is so + interesting as the scene of Jove's memorable struggle with the Titans, and + just when we were really beginning to feel equal to it, a company of + minstrels suddenly burst upon us with guitars and mandolins and comic + songs much dramatized, while the immediate natives offered us violets and + other distracting flowers. In the effect, art and nature combined to + neutralize each other, as they do with us, for instance, in those + restaurants where they have music during dinner, and where you do not know + whether you are eating the <i>chef-d'oeuvre</i> of a cook or a composer. + </p> + <p> + It was at the new hotel which is evolving itself through the repair of the + never-finished and long-ruined Palace of Donn' Anna, wife of a Spanish + viceroy in the seventeenth century, that our guide stopped with us for + that cup of tea already mentioned. We had to climb four nights of stairs + for it to the magnificent salon overlooking the finest postal-card + prospect in all Naples. We lingered long upon it, in the balcony from + which we could have dropped into the sunset sea any coin which we could + have brought ourselves to part with; but we had none of the bad money + which had been so easily passed off upon us. This sort rather abounds in + Naples, and the traveller should watch not only for false francs, but for + francs of an obsolete coinage which you can know by the king's head having + a longer neck than in the current pieces. At the bookseller's they would + not take a perfectly good five-franc piece because it was so old as 1815; + and what becomes of all the bad money one innocently takes for good? One + fraudulent franc I made a virtue of throwing away; but I do not know what + I did with a copper refused by a trolley conductor as counterfeit. I could + not take the affair seriously, and perhaps I gave that copper in charity. + </p> + <p> + As we drove hotelward through the pink twilight we met many carriages of + people who looked rich and noble, but whether they were so I do not know. + I only know that old ladies who regard the world severely from their + coaches behind the backs of their perfectly appointed coachmen and footmen + ought to be both, and that old gentlemen who frown over their white + mustaches have no right to their looks if they are neither. It was, at any + rate, the hour of the fashionable drive, which included a pause midway of + the Villa Nazionale for the music of the military band. + </p> + <p> + The band plays near the Aquarium, which I hope the reader will visit at + the earlier hours of the day. Then, if he has a passion for polyps, and + wishes to imagine how they could ingulf good-sized ships in the ages of + fable, he can see one of the hideous things float from its torpor in the + bottom of its tank, and seize Avith its hungry tentacles the food lowered + to it by a string. Still awfuller is it to see it rise and reach with + those prehensile members, as with the tails of a multi-caudate ape, some + rocky projection of its walls and lurk fearsomely into the hollow, and + vanish there in a loathly quiescence. The carnivorous spray and bloom of + the deep-sea flowers amid which drowned men's “bones are coral made” seem + of one temperament with the polyps as they slowly, slowly wave their + tendrils and petals; but there is amusement if not pleasure in store for + the traveller who turns from them to the company of shad softly and + continuously circling in their tank, and regarding the spectators with a + surly dignity becoming to people in better society than others. One large + shad, imaginably of very old family and independent property, sails at the + head of several smaller shad, his flatterers and toadies, who try to look + like him. Mostly his expression is very severe; but in milder moments he + offers a perverse resemblance to some portraits of Washington. + </p> + <p> + All our days in Naples died like dolphins to the music which I have tried + to impart the sense of. The joyful noises which it was made up of + culminated for us on that evening when a company of the street and boat + musicians came into the hotel and danced and sang and played the + tarantella. They were of all ages, sexes, and bulks, and of divers + operatic costumes, but they were of one temperament only, which was glad + and childlike. They went through their repertory, which included a great + deal more than the tarantella, and which we applauded with an enthusiasm + attested by our contributions when the tambourine went round. Then they + repeated their selections, and at the second collection we guests of the + hotel repeated our contributions, but in a more guarded spirit. After the + second repetition the prettiest girl came round with her photographs and + sold them at prices out of all reason. Then we became very melancholy, and + began to steal out one by one. I myself did not stay for the fourth + collection, and I cannot report how the different points of view, the + Southern and the Northern, were reconciled in the event which I am not + sure was final. But I am sure that unless you can make allowance for a + world-wide difference in the Neapolitans from yourself you can never + understand them. Perhaps you cannot, even then. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V. POMPEII REVISITED + </h2> + <p> + Because I felt very happy in going back to Pompeii after a generation, and + being alive to do so in the body, I resolved to behave handsomely by the + cabman who drove me from my hotel to the station. I said to myself that I + would do something that would surprise him, and I gave him his fee and + nearly a franc over; but it was I who was surprised, for he ran after me + into the station, as I supposed, to extort more. He was holding out a + franc toward me, and I asked the guide who was bothering me to take him to + Pompeii (where there are swarms of guides always on the grounds) what the + matter was. “It is false,” he explained, and this proved true, though + whether the franc was the one I had given the driver or whether it was one + which he had thoughtfully substituted for it to make good an earlier loss + I shall now never know. I put it into my pocket, wondering what I should + do with it; the question what you shall do with counterfeit money in Italy + is one which is apt to recur as I have hinted, and in despair of solving + it at the moment I threw the false franc out of the car-window; it was the + false franc I have already boasted of throwing away. + </p> + <p> + This was, of course, after I got into the car, and after I had suffered + another wrong, and was resolved at least to be good myself. I had taken + first-class tickets, but, when we had followed several conductors up and + down the train, the last of them said there were no first-class places + left, though I shall always doubt this. I asked what we should do, and he + shrugged. I had heard that if you will stand upon your rights in such a + matter the company will have to put on another car for you. But I was now + dealing with the Italian government, which has nationalized the railroads, + but has apparently not yet repleted the rolling stock; and when the + conductor found us places in a second-class carriage, rather than quarrel + with a government which had troubles enough already I got aboard. I + suppose really that I have not much public spirit, and that the little I + have I commonly leave at home; in travelling it is burdensome. Besides, + the second-class carriage would have been comfortable enough if it had not + been so dirty; it looked as if it had not been washed since it was flooded + with liquid ashes at the destruction of Pompeii, though they seemed to be + cigar ashes. + </p> + <p> + The country through which we made the hour's run was sympathetically + squalid. We had, to be sure, the sea on one side, and that was clean + enough; but the day was gray, and the sea was responsively gray; while the + earth on the other side was torn and ragged, with people digging manure + into the patches of broccoli, and gardening away as if it had been April + instead of January. There were shabby villas, with stone-pines and + cypresses herding about the houses, and tatters of life-plant overhanging + their shabby walls; there were stucco shanties which the men and women + working in the fields would lurk in at nightfall. At places there was some + cheerful boat building, and at one place there was a large macaroni + manufactory, with far stretches of the product dangling in hanks and + skeins from rows of trellises. We passed through towns where women and + children swarmed, working at doorways and playing in the dim, cold + streets; from the balconies everywhere winter melons hung in nets, dozens + and scores of them, such as you can buy at the Italian fruiterers' in New + York, and will keep buying when once you know how good they are. In Naples + they sell them by the slice in the street, the fruiterer carrying a board + on his head with the slices arranged in an upright coronal like the rich, + barbaric head-dress of some savage prince. + </p> + <p> + Our train was slow and our car was foul, but nothing could keep us from + arriving at Pompeii in very good spirits. The entrance to the dead city is + gardened about with a cemeterial prettiness of evergreens; but, after you + have bought your ticket and been assigned your guide, you pass through + this decorative zone and find yourself in the first of streets where the + past makes no such terms with the present. If some of the houses of an + ampler plan had little spaces beyond the atrium planted with such flowers + as probably grew there two thousand years ago, and stuck round with tiny + figurines, it was to the advantage of the people's fancy; but it did not + appeal so much to the imagination as the mould and moss, and the small, + weedy network that covered the ground in the roofless chambers and temples + and basilicas, where the broken columns and walls started from the floors + which this unmeditated verdure painted in the favorite hue of ruin. + </p> + <p> + Most of the places I re-entered through my recollection of them, but to + this subjective experience there was added that of seeing much newer and + vaster things than I remembered. That sad population of the victims of the + disaster, restored to the semhlance of life, or perhaps rather of death, + in plaster casts taken from the moulds their decay had left in the + hardening ashes, had much increased in the melancholy museum where one + visits them the first thing within the city gates. But their effect was + not cumulative; there were more writhing women and more contorted men; but + they did not make their tragedy more evident than it had been when I saw + them, fewer but not less affecting, all those years ago. It was the same + with the city itself; Pompeii had grown, like the rest of the world in the + interval, and, although it had been dug tip instead of built up, a good + third had been added to the count of its streets and houses. There were + not, so far as I could see, more ruts from chariot-wheels in the lava + blocks of the thoroughfares, but some convincingly two-storied dwellings + had been exhumed, and others with ceilings in better condition than those + of the earlier excavations; there were more all-but-unbroken walls and + columns; some mosaic floors were almost as perfect as when their dwellers + fled over them out of the stifling city. But upon the whole the result was + a greater monotony; the revelation of house after house, nearly the same + in design, did not gain impressiveness from their repetition; just as the + case would be if the dwellings of an old-fashioned cross-town street in + New York were dug out two thousand years after their submergence by an + eruption of Orange Mountain. The identity of each of the public edifices + is easily attested to the archaeologist, but the generally intelligent, as + the generally unintelligent, visitor must take the archaeologist's word + for the fact. One temple is much like another in its stumps of columns and + vague foundations and broken altars. Among the later discoveries certain + of the public baths are in the best repair, both structurally and + decoratively, and in these one could replace the antique life with the + least wear and tear of the imagination. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-12.jpg" alt="12 Excavating at Pompeii " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I could not tell which the several private houses were; but the + guide-books can, and there I leave the specific knowledge of them; their + names would say nothing to the reader if they said nothing to me. In + Pompeii, where all the houses were rather small, some of the new ones were + rather large, though not larger than a few of the older ones. Not more + recognizably than these, they had been devoted to the varied uses known to + advanced civilization in all ages: there were dwellings, and taverns and + drinking-houses and eating-houses, and there were those houses where the + feet of them that abide therein and of those that frequent them alike take + hold on hell. In these the guide stays the men of his party to prove the + character of the places to them from the frescos and statues; but it may + be questioned if the visitors so indulged had not better taken the guide's + word for the fact. There can be no doubt that at the heart of paganism the + same plague festered which poisons Christian life, and which, while the + social conditions remain the same from age to age, will poison life + forever. + </p> + <p> + The pictures on the walls of the newly excavated houses are not strikingly + better than those I had not forgotten; but of late it has been the purpose + to leave as many of the ornaments and utensils in position as possible. + The best are, as they ought to be, gathered into the National Museum at + Naples, but those which remain impart a more living sense of the past than + such wisely ordered accumulations; for it is the Pompeian paradox that in + the image of death it can best recall life. It is a grave which has been + laid bare, and it were best to leave its ghastly memories unhindered by + other companionship. One feels that one ought to be there alone in order + to see it aright. One should not perhaps + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Go visit it by the pale moonlight,” + </pre> + <p> + but if one could have it all to one's self by day, such a gray day as we + had for it, there is no telling what might happen. One thing only would + certainly happen: one would get lost. It never was a town of large area; + and, like all spaces that have been ruined over, it looked smaller than it + would have looked if all its walls were standing with all their roofs upon + them. Still, it was a mesh of streets, out of which you would in vain have + sought your way if you had been caught in it alone; though it is mostly so + level that if you had mounted a truncated column almost anywhere you could + have looked over the labyrinth to its verge. + </p> + <p> + It was not much crowded by visitors; though there were strings of them at + the heels of the respective guides, with, I thought, a prevalence of the + Germans, who are now overrunning Italy; I am sorry to say they are not + able to keep it cheap, at least for other nationalities. Among these I + noted two little smiling, shining, twinkling Japs, who carried kodaks for + the capture of that classical antiquity which could never really belong to + them. Their want of a pagan past in common with us may be what keeps us + alien even more than the want of a common Christian tradition. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “The glory that was Greece + And the grandeur that was Rome” + </pre> + <p> + could never mean to our brown companions what they meant to us; but they + put on a polite air of being interested in the Graeco-Roman ruin, and were + so gentle and friendly that one could almost feel they were fellow-men. + Very likely they were; at any rate, until we are at war with them I shall + believe so. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-13.jpg" alt="13 the Street of Tombs, Pompeii " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Our guide, whom we had really bought the whole use of at the gate, + thriftily took on another party, with our leave, and it was pleasant to + find that the American type from Utah was the same as from Ohio or + Massachusetts; with all our differences we are the most homogeneous people + under the sun, and likest a large family. We all frankly got tired at + about the same time at the same place, and agreed that we had, without the + amphitheatre, had enough when we ended at the Street of Tombs, where the + tombs are in so much better repair than the houses. For myself, I + remembered the amphitheatre so perfectly from 1864 that I did not see how + I could add a single emotion there in 1908 to those I had already turned + into literature; and though Pompeii is but small, the amphitheatre is + practically as far from the Street of Tombs, after you have walked about + the place for two hours, as the Battery is from High Bridge. There is no + Elevated or Subway at Pompeii, and even the lines of public chariots, if + such they were, which left those ruts in the lava pavements seem to have + been permanently suspended after the final destruction in the year 79. + </p> + <p> + We were not only very tired, but very hungry, and we asked our guide to + take us back the shortest way. I suggested a cross-cut at one point, and + he caught at the word eagerly, and wrote it in his note-book for future + use. He also acted upon it instantly, and we cut across the back yards and + over the kitchen areas of several absent citizens on our way back. Our + guide was as good and true as it is in the nature of guides to be, but + absolute goodness and truth are rather the attributes of American + travellers; and you will not escape the small graft which the guides are + so rigorously forbidden to practise. Pompeii is no longer in the keeping + of the Italian army; with the Italian instinct of decentralization the + place has claimed the right of self-government, and now the guides are + civilians, and not soldiers, as they were in my far day. They do not + accept fees, but still they take them; and our guide said that he had a + brother-in-law who had the best restaurant outside the gate, where we + could get luncheon for two francs. As soon as we were in the hands of the + runner for that restaurant the price augmented itself to two francs and a + half; when we mounted to the threshold, lured on by the fascinating + mystery of this increase, it became three francs, without wine. But as the + waiter justly noted, in hovering about us with the cutlery and napery + while he laid the table, a two-fifty luncheon was unworthy such lords as + we. When he began to bring on the delicious omelette, the admirable fish, + the excellent cutlets, he made us observe that if we paid three francs we + ought to eat a great deal; and there seemed reason in this; at any rate, + we did so. The truth is, that luncheon was worth the money, and more; as + for the Vesuvian wine, it had the rich red blood of the volcano in it, and + it could not be bought in New York for half a franc the bottle, if at all; + at thrice that sum in Naples it was not a third as good. + </p> + <p> + If there had been anything to do after lunch except go to the train, we + could not have done it, we were so spent with our two hours' walk through + Pompeii, though the gray day had been rather invigorating. Certainly it + was not so exhausting as that white-hot day forty-three years before when + I had broiled over the same ground under the blazing sun of a Pompeian + November. Yet the difference in the muscles and emotions of twenty-seven + as against those of seventy told in favor of the white-hot day; and, + besides that, in the time that had elapsed a much greater burden of + antiquity had been added to the city than had accumulated in its history + between the year 79 and the year 1864. During most of those centuries + Pompeii had been dreamlessly sleeping under its ashes, but in the ensuing + less than half a century it had wakefully, however unwillingly, witnessed + such events as the failure of secession and the abolition of slavery, the + unification of Italy and Germany, the fall of the Second Empire, the + liberation of Cuba, and the acquisition of the Philippines, the exile of + Richard Croker, the destruction of the Boer Republic, the rise and spread + of the trusts, the purification of municipal politics, the invention of + wireless telegraphy, and the general adoption of automobiling. These + things, and others like them, had perhaps not aged Pompeii so much as they + had aged me, but their subjective effect was the same, and upon the whole + I was not altogether sorry to have added scarcely a new impression of the + place to those I had been carrying for more than a generation. + Quantitatively there were plenty of new impressions to be had; impressions + of more roofs, gardens, columns, houses, temples, walls, frescos; but + qualitatively the Greater Pompeii was now not different from the lesser + which I remembered so well. + </p> + <p> + This, at least, was what I said to myself on the ground and afterward in + the National Museum at Naples, where most of the precious Pompeian things, + new and old, are heaped up. They still make but a poor show there beside + the treasures of Herculaneum, where the excavation of a few streets and + houses has yielded costlier and lovelier things than all the lengths and + breadths of Pompeii. But not for this would I turn against Pompeii at the + last moment, as it were, though my second visit had not aesthetically + enriched me beyond my first. I keep the vision of it under that gray + January sky, with Vesuvius smokeless in the background, and the plan of + the dead city, opener to the eye than ever it could have been in life, + inscribed upon the broadly opened area of the gentle slopes within its + gates. Whether one had not better known it dead than alive, one might not + wish perhaps to say; but the place itself is curiously without pathos; + Newport in ruins might not be touching; possibly all skeletons or even + mummies are without pathos; and Pompeii is a skeleton, or at the most a + mummy, of the past. + </p> + <p> + Seeing what antiquity so largely was, however, one might be not only + resigned but cheerful in the ef-facement of any particular piece of it; + and for a help to this at Pompeii I may advise the reader to take with him + a certain little guide-book, written in English by a very courageous + Italian, which I chanced to find in Naples. Though it treats of the + tragical facts with seriousness, it is not with equal gravity that one + reads that sixteen years before the Vesuvian eruption “the region had been + shaken by strong sismic movements, which induced Pompei inhabitants to + forsake precipitately their habitations. But being the amazement up, they + got one's home again as soon as the earth was quiet and all fear and + sadness went off by memory.” Signs of the final disaster to follow were + not wanting; the wells failed, the water-courses were crossed by currents + of carbonic acid; “the domestic animals were also very sensible of the + approaching of the scourge; they lost the habitual vivacity, and having + the food in disgust, had from time to time to complain with mournful + wailings, without justified reasons.... The sky became of a thick + darkness,... interrupted only by flashes of light which the lava + reverberated, by the bloody gliding of the thunderbolts, by the + incandescence of enormous projectiles, thrown to an incommensurable + highness.... Death surprised the charming town; houses and streets became + the tombs of the unhappies hit by an atrocious torture.” + </p> + <p> + The author's study of the life of Pompeii is notable for diction which, if + there were logic in language, would be admirable English, for while yet in + his mind it must have been “very choice Italian.” He tells us that + “Pompei's dwellings are surprising by their specific littleness,” and + explains that “Pompei inhabitants, for the habitudes of the climate could + allow, lived almost always to the open sky,” just as the Naples + inhabitants do now. “They got home only to rest a little, to fulfill life + wants, to be protected by bad weather. They spent much time during the day + in forum, temples, thermes, tennis-court, or intervened to public sports, + religious functions and meetings.... Few houses only had windows. The + sunlight and ventilation to the ancients was given through empty spaces in + the roofs.... Hoofs knocked under the weight of materials thrown out by + Vesuvius; it is undoubted, however, that roofs were provided with covers + or supported terraces. In the middle of the roofs was cut an overture + through which air and light brought their benefits to the underlaid + ambients.... Proprietor disposed the locals according to his own + delight.... So that, there were bed, bath, dining, talking and game + rooms.” In the peristyle “the ground was gardened, the area shared in + flower beds, had narrow paths; herbs, flowers, shrubs were put with art + well in order on flower beds, delighted from time to time by statues of + various subjects,” as may be noted in the actual restorations of some of + the Pompeian houses. + </p> + <p> + As for their spiritual life, “Pompeian's religion, like by Roman people, + was the Paganism. Deities were worshipped in the temples with prayers, + sacrifices, vows, and festivities.... Banquets to the Deity were joined to + prayers. In fact, dining tables were dressed near the altars, and all + around them on dining beds, <i>tricli-nari,</i> placed Divinities statues + as these were assembled to own account to the joyous banquet.” Auspices or + auguries “gave interpretation to thunders, lightnings, winds, rain + crashes, comets, or to bird songs and flights.... Horuspices inquired the + divine will on the animal bowels, sacrificed to the altar; they took out + further indications by fleshes and bowels flames when burnt on the altar.” + </p> + <p> + An important feature of Pompeian social life was the bath, which “was one + of the hospitality duty, and very often required in several religious + functions.... Large and colossal edifices were quite furnished with all + the necessary for care and sport. Besides localities for all kind of bath—cold, + warm, steam bath—didn't want parks, alleys, and porticos in order to + walk; lists rings for gymnastic exercises, conversation and reading rooms, + localities for theatrical representations, swimming stations, localities + for scientific disquisitions, moral and religious teachings. The most + splendid art works adorned the ambient.” + </p> + <p> + When we pass to the popular amusements we are presented with the materials + of pictures vividly realized in <i>The Last Days of Pompeii,</i> but + somewhat faded since. “In the beginning gladiators' rank was made by + condemned to death slaves and war prisoners. Later also thoughtless young + men, who had never learned an advantageous trade, became gladiators.” In + the arena they engaged in sham fights till the spectators demanded blood. + Then, “sometimes one provided one's self nets for wrapping up the + adversary, who, hit by a trident much, frequently die. When the gladiator + was deadly wounded, forsaking the arm, struck down and stretching the + index, asked the people grace of life. The spectators decided up his + destiny, turning the thumb to the breast, or toward the ground. The thumb + turned toward the ground was the unlucky's death doom, and he had without + fail the throat cut off.” + </p> + <p> + Such, dimly but unmistakably seen through our Italian author's + well-reasoned English, were the ancient Pompeians; and, upon the whole, + the visitor to their city could not wish them back in it. I preferred even + those modern Pompeians who followed us so molestively to the train with + bargains in postal-cards and coral. They are very alert, the modern + Pompeians, to catch the note of national character, and I saw one of them + pursuing an elderly American with a spread of hat-pins, primarily two + francs each, and with the appeal, evidently studied from some fair + American girl: “Buy it, Poppa! Six for one franc. Oh, Poppa, buy it!” + </p> + <p> + I had again lavished my substance upon first-class tickets, and so had my + Utah friend, who expounded his philosophy of travel as we managed to + secure a first-class carriage. “When I can't go first-class in Italy, I'll + go home.” I promptly and proudly agreed with him, but I concealed my + morning's experience of the fact that in Italy you may sometimes go second + class when you have paid first. I agreed with him, however, in not minding + the plunder of Italian travel, since, with all the extortions, it would + come to a third less than you expected to spend. His was the true American + spirit. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. HOTELS, PENSIONS, AND APARTMENTS + </h2> + <p> + “Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?” the traveller asks rather + anxiously than defiantly when he finds himself a stranger in a strange + place, and he is apt to add, if he has not written or wired ahead to some + specific hotel, “Which of mine inns shall I take mine ease in?” He is the + more puzzled to choose the more inns there are to choose from, and his + difficulty is enhanced if he has not considered that some of his inns may + be full or may be too dear, and yet others undesirable. + </p> + <p> + The run from Naples in four hours and a half had been so flattering fair + an experience to people who had last made it in eight that they arrived in + Rome on a sunny afternoon of January preoccupied with expectations of an + instant ease in their inn which seemed the measure of their merit. They + indeed found their inn, and it was with a painful surprise that they did + not find the rooms in it which they wanted. There were neither rooms full + south, nor over the garden, nor off the tram, and in these circumstances + there was nothing for it but to drive to some one else's inn and try for + better quarters there. They, in fact, drove to half a dozen such, their + demands rising for more rooms and sunnier and quieter and cheaper, the + fewer and darker and noisier and dearer were those they found. + </p> + <p> + The trouble was that they found in the very first alien hotel where they + applied an apartment so exactly what they wanted, with its four rooms and + bath, all more or less full south, though mostly veering west and north, + that they carried the fatal norm in their consciousness and tested all + other apartments by it, the earlier notion of single rooms being promptly + rejected after the sight of it. The reader will therefore not be so much, + astonished as these travellers were to learn that there was nothing else + in Rome (where there must be about five hundred hotels, <i>hotels garnis,</i> + and pensions) that one could comparatively stay even overnight in, and + that they settled in that alluring apartment provisionally, the next day + being Sunday, and the crystalline Saturday of their arrival being well + worn away toward its topaz and ruby sunset. Of course, they continued + their search for several days afterward, zealously but hopelessly, yet not + fruitlessly, for it resulted in an acquaintance with Roman hotels which + they might otherwise never have made, and for one of them in literary + material of interest to every one hoping to come to Rome or despairing of + it. The psychology of the matter was very curious, and involved the sort + of pleasing self-illusion by which people so often get themselves over + questionable passes in life and come out with a good conscience, or a dead + one, which is practically the same thing. These particular people had come + to Rome with reminiscences of in-expensiveness and had intended to recoup + themselves for the cost of several previous winters in New York hotels by + the saving they would make in their Roman sojourn. When it appeared, after + all the negotiation and consequent abatement, that their Roman hotel + apartment would cost them hardly a fifth less than they had last paid in + New York, they took a guilty refuge in the fact that they were getting for + less money something which no money could buy in New York. Gradually all + sense of guilt wore off, and they boldly, or even impudently, said to + themselves that they ought to have what they could pay for, and that there + were reasons, which they were not obliged to render in their frankest + soliloquies, why they should do just what they chose in the matter. + </p> + <p> + The truth is that the modern Roman hotel is far better in every way than + the hotel of far higher class, or of the highest class, in New York. In + the first place, the managers are in the precious secret, which our + managers have lost, of making you believe that they want you; and, having + you, they know how to look after your pleasure and welfare. The table is + always of more real variety, though vastly less stupid profusion than + ours. The materials are wholesomer and fresher and are without the proofs, + always present in our hotel viands, of a probationary period in cold + storage. As for the cooking, there is no comparison, whether the things + are simply or complexly treated; and the service is of that neatness and + promptness which ours is so ignorant of. + </p> + <p> + Your agreement is usually for meals as well as rooms; the European plan is + preferably ignored in Europe; and the <i>table d'hote</i> luncheon and + dinner are served at small, separate tables; your breakfast is brought to + your room. Being old-fashioned, myself, I am rather sorry for the small, + separate tables. I liked the one large, long table, where you made talk + with your neighbors; but it is gone, and much facile friendliness with it, + on either hand and across the board. The rooms are tastefully furnished, + and the beds are unquestionable; the carpets warmly cover the floor if + stone, or amply rug it if of wood. The steam-heating is generous and + performs its office of “roasting you out of the house” without the + sizzling and crackling which accompany its efforts at home. The + electricity really illuminates, and there is always an electric lamp at + your bed-head for those long hours when your remorse or your digestion + will not let you sleep, and you must substitute some other's waking dreams + for those of your own slumbers. Above all, there is a lift, or elevator, + not enthusiastically active or convulsively swift, but entirely + practicable and efficient. It will hold from four to eight persons, and + will take up at least six without reluctance. + </p> + <p> + It must be clearly understood that the ideal of American comfort is fully + and faithfully realized, and if the English have reformed the Italian + hotels in respect of cleanliness, it is we who have brought them quite to + our domestic level in regard to heat and light. But if we want these + things in Rome, we must pay for them as we do at home, though still we do + not pay so much as we pay at home. The tips are about half our average, + but whether they are given currently or ultimately I do not know. Who, + indeed, knows about others' tips anywhere in the world? I asked an + experienced fellow-citizen what the custom was, and he said that he + believed the English gave in going away, but he thought the spirits of the + helpers drooped under the strain of hope deferred, and he preferred to + give every week. The donations, I understood, were pooled by the + dining-room waiters and then equally divided; but gifts bestowed above + stairs were for the sole behoof of him or her who took them. Germans are + said to give less than Anglo-Saxons, and it is said that Italians in some + cases do not give at all. But, again, who knows? The Italians are said + never to give drink money to the cabmen, but to pay only the letter of the + tariff. If I had done that in driving about to look up worse hotels than + the one I chose first and last, I should now be a richer man, but I doubt + if a happier. Two cents seems to satisfy a Roman cabman; five cents has + for him the witchery of money found in the road; but I must not leave the + subject of hotels for that of cabs, however alluringly it beckons. + </p> + <p> + The reader who knows Italy only from the past should clear his mind of his + old impressions of the hotels. There is no longer that rivalry between the + coming guest and the manager to see how few or many candles can be lighted + in his room and charged in the bill; there are no longer candles, but only + electricity. There is no longer an extortion for hearth-fires which send + all the heat up the chimney; there are steam radiators in every room. + There is no longer a tedious bargaining for rooms; the price is fixed and + cannot be abated except for a sojourn of weeks or months. But the price is + much greater than it used to be—twice as great almost; for the taxes + are heavy and provisions are dear, and coal and electricity are costly, + and you must share the expense with the landlord. He is not there for his + health, and, if for your comfort, you are not his invited guest. As I have + intimated, an apartment of four rooms with a bath will cost almost as + much, with board, as the same quarters in New York, but you will get far + more for your money in Rome. If you take a single room, even to the south, + in many first-class Roman hotels it will cost you for room and board only + two dollars or two and a half a day, which is what you pay for a far + meaner and smaller room alone in New York; and the Roman board is such, as + you can get at none but our most expensive houses for twice the money. + Generally you cannot get a single room and bath, but at present a very + exclusive hotel is going up in a good quarter which promises, with huge + English signs, a bath with every room and every room full south. One does + not see just how the universal sunny exposure is to be managed, but there + can be no question of the baths; and, with the steam radiators everywhere, + the northernmost room might well imagine itself full south. + </p> + <p> + Nearly all the hotels have a pleasant tea-room, which is called a winter + garden, because of a pair of palm-trees set under the centre of its glass + roof and the painted bamboo chairs and tables set about. This sort of + garden is found even in the hotels which are almost of the grade of + pensions and of their prices; but generally the pensions proper are + without it. Their rates are much lower, but quite as good people frequent + them, and they are often found in good streets and sometimes open into or + overlook charming gardens; the English especially seem to like the + pensions, which are managed like hotels. They are commonly without + steam-heat, which might account for their being less frequented by + Americans. + </p> + <p> + There are two supreme hotels in Rome—one in the Ludovisi quarter, as + it is called, and the other near the Baths of Diocletian, which Americans + frequent to their cost, for the rates approach a New York or London + magnificence. The first is rather the more spectacular of the two and is + the resort of all the finer sort of afternoon tea-drinkers, who find + themselves the observed of observers of all nationalities; there is music + and dress, and there are titles of every degree, with as much informality + as people choose, if they go to look, or as much state if they go to be + looked at; these things are much less cumbrously contrived than with us. + The other hotel, I have the somewhat unauthorized fancy, is rather more + addicted to very elect dinner-parties and suppers. Below these two are an + endless variety of first-rate and second-rate houses, both in the newer + quarter of the city, where the villa paths have been turned into streets, + and in the old town on all the pleasant squares and avenues. There is a + tradition of unhealth concerning the old town which the modern death-rate + of Rome shows to be unjust; at the worst these places have more dark and + damp, and the hotels are not steam-heated. + </p> + <p> + It has seemed to me that there are not so many <i>hotels garnis</i> in + Rome as there used to be in Italian cities, but they, too, abound in + pleasant streets, and the stranger who has a fancy for lodgings with + breakfast in his rooms, and likes to browse about for his luncheon and + dinner, will easily suit himself. If it comes to taking a furnished + apartment for the season, there is much range in price and much choice in + place. The agents who have them to let will begin, rather dismayingly, + “Oh, apartments in Rome are very dear.” But you learn on inquiry that a + furnished flat in the Ludovisi region, in a house with a lift and full + sun, may be had for two hundred dollars a month. From this height the + rents of palatial apartments soar to such lonely peaks as eight hundred + and sink to such levels as a hundred and twenty or a hundred; and for this + you have linen and silver and all the movables and utensils you want, as + well as several vast rooms opening wastefully from one to another till you + reach the salon. The rents of the like flats, if vacant, would be a + quarter or a third less, though again the agents begin by telling you that + there is very little difference between the rents of furnished and + unfurnished flats. The flats are in every part of the old town and the + new; and some are in noble sixteenth and seventeenth century palaces, such + as we are accustomed to at home only in the theatre. My own experience is + that everybody, especially in houses where there are no lifts, lives on + the top floor. You pass many other floors in going up, but you are left to + believe that nobody lives on them. When you reach the inhabited levels, + you find them charming inside for their state and beauty, and outside for + their magnificent view, which may be pretty confidently relied upon to + command the dome of St. Peter's. That magnificent stone bubble seems to + blow all round the horizon. + </p> + <p> + When you have taken your furnished flat, the same agency will provide you + a cook at ten or twelve dollars a month, a maid at seven dollars, a lady's + maid at eight or nine dollars, and so on; the cook will prefer to sleep + out of the house. Then will come the question of provisions, and these + seem really to be dear in Rome. Meats and vegetables both are dear, and + game and poultry. Beef will be forty cents a pound, and veal and mutton in + proportion; a chicken which has been banting for the table from its birth + will be forty cents; eggs which have not yet taken active shape are + twenty-five and thirty cents throughout winters so bland that a hen of any + heart can hardly keep from laying every day. I am afraid I am no authority + on butter and milk, and groceries I do not know the prices of; but coffee + ought to be cheap, for nobody drinks anything but substitutes more or less + unabashed. + </p> + <p> + For the passing stranger, or even the protracted so-journer, whose time + and money are not too much at odds, a hotel is best, and a hotel in the + new quarter is pleasanter than one in the old quarters. Ours, at any rate, + was in a wide, sunny, and (if I must own it) dusty street, laid out in a + line of beauty on the borders of the former Villa Ludovisi, where the + aging or middle-aging reader used to come to see Guercino's “Aurora” in + the roof of the casino. Now all trace of the garden is hidden under vast + and vaster hotels and great blond apartment-houses, and ironed down with + trolley-rails; but the Guercino has been spared, though it is no longer so + accessible to the public. Still, there is a garden left, and our hotel, + with others, looks across the sun and dust of its street into the useful + vegetation of the famous old Capuchin convent, with the church, to which I + came so eagerly so long ago to revere Guido's “St. Michael and the Dragon” + and the decorative bones of the good brothers braided on the walls and + roofs of the crypt in the indissoluble community of floral and geometric + designs. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-14.jpg" alt="14 the Capuchin Church, Rome " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + All through the months of February and March I woke to the bell that woke + the brothers to their prayers before daybreak and burst the beauty-sleep + of the hotel-dwellers, who have so far outnumbered the monks since the + obliteration of the once neighboring villa. This was, of course, a + hardship, and one thought things of that bell which the monks were too + good to say; but being awake, and while one was reading one's self to + sleep again, one could hear the beginning of the bird singing in the + modern garden in the rear which followed upon the bell-ringing. I do not + know what make or manner of bird it was that mostly sang among the palms + and laurels and statues, but it had a note of liquid gold, which it poured + till a certain flageo-lettist, whom I never saw, came to the corner under + the villa wall and blew his soul into one end of his instrument and out of + the other in the despondent breathings of most melancholy music. Then, + having attuned the spirits of his involuntary listeners to a pensive + sympathy, he closed with that international hymn which does not rightly + know whether it is “My Country, 'tis of Thee,” or “God Save the King,” but + serves equally for the patriotism of any English or Americans in hearing. + I do not know why this harmless hymn, which the flageolettist gave + extremely well, should always have seemed to provoke the derision of the + donkey which apparently dwelt in harmony with the birds in that garden, + but the flageolettist had no sooner ended than the donkey burst into a + bray, loud, long, and full of mockery, with a close of ironical whistling + and most insolent hissing; you would think that some arch-enemy of the + Anglo-Saxon race was laughing the new-felt unity of the English and + Americans to scorn. Later, but still before daylight, came the wild cry of + a boy, somewhere out of perdition, following the deep bass invitation of + his father's lost spirit to buy his wares, whatever they were. We never + knew, but we liked that boy's despairing wail, and would not have missed + it for ever so much extra slumber. When all hope of more sleep was past + there was no question of the desirability of the boy who visibly arranged + his store of oranges on the curbstone under the villa wall, and seemed to + think that they had a peculiar attraction from being offered for sale in + pairs. His cry filled the rest of the forenoon. + </p> + <p> + The Italian spring comes on slowly everywhere, with successive snubs in + its early ardor from the snows on the mountains, which regulate the + climate from north to south. We could not see that it made more speed + behind the sheltering walls of the Capuchin convent garden than in other + places. The old gardener whom we saw pottering about in it seemed to + potter no more actively at the end of March than at the beginning of + February; on the first days of April a heap of old leaves and stalks was + sending up the ruddy flame and pleasant smell that the like burning heaps + do with us at the like hour of spring—in fact, vegetation had much + more reason to be cheerful throughout February than at any time in March. + Those February days were really incomparable. They had not the melting + heat of the warm spells that sometimes come in our Februaries; but their + suns were golden, and their skies unutterably blue, and their airs mild, + yet fresh. You always wanted a heavy coat for driving or for the shade in + walking; otherwise the temperature was that of a New England April which + was resolved to begin as it could carry out. But March came with cold + rains of whole days, and with suns that might overheat but could not be + trusted to warm you. The last Sunday of January I found ice in the + Colosseum; but that was the only time I saw ice anywhere in Rome. In + March, however, in a moment of great exasperation from the mountains, it + almost snowed. Yet that month would in our climate have been remembered + for its beauty and for a prevailing kindness of temperature. The worst you + could say of it was that it left the spring in the Capuchin garden where + it found it. But possibly, since the temporal power was overthrown, the + seasons are neglected and indifferent. Certainly man seems so in the case + of the Capuchin convent. Great stretches of the poor old plain edifice + look vacant, and the high wall which encloses it is plastered and painted + with huge advertisements of clothiers and hotels and druggists, and + announcements of races and other events out of keeping with its character + and tradition. + </p> + <p> + The sentimentalists who overrun Rome from all the Northern lands will tell + you that this is of a piece with all the Newer Rome which has sprung into + existence since the Italian occupation. Their griefs with the thing that + is are loud and they are long; but I, who am a sentimentalist too, though + of another make, do not share them. No doubt the Newer Rome has made + mistakes, but, without defending her indiscriminately, I am a Newer-Roman + to the core, perhaps because I knew the Older Rome and what it was like; + and not all my brother and sister sentimentalists can say as much. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. A PRAISE OF NEW ROME + </h2> + <p> + Rome and I had both grown older since I had seen her last, but she seemed + not to show so much as I the forty-three years that had passed. Naturally + a city that was already twenty-seven centuries of age (and no one knows + how much more) would not betray the lapse of time since 1864 as a man must + who was then only twenty-seven years of age. In fact, I should say that + Rome looked, if anything, younger at our second meeting, in 1908, or, at + any rate, newer; and I am so warm a friend of youth (in others) that I was + not sorry to find Rome young, or merely new, in so many good things. At + the same time I must own that I heard no other foreigner praising her for + her newness except a fellow-septuagenarian, who had seen Rome earlier even + than I, and who thought it well that the Ghetto should have been cleared + away, though some visitors, who had perhaps never lived in a Ghetto, + thought it a pity if not a shame, and an incalculable loss to the + picturesque. These also thought the Tiber Embankments a wicked sacrifice + to the commonplace, though the mud-banks of other days invited the torrent + to an easy overflow of whole quarters of the town, which were left reeking + with the filth of the flood that overlay the filth of the streets, and + combined with it to an effect of disease and of discomfort not always + personally unknown to the lover of the picturesque. There used to be a + particular type of typhoid known as Roman fever, but now quite unknown, + thanks to the Tiber Embankments and to the light and air let into the + purlieus of that mediaeval Rome for which the injudicious grieve so + loudly. The perfect municipal housekeeping of our time leaves no darkest + and narrowest lane or alley unswept; every morning the shovel and broom go + over the surfaces formerly almost impassable to the foot and quite + impossible to the nose. + </p> + <p> + I am speaking literally as well as frankly, and though I can understand + why some envious New-Yorker, remembering our blackguard streets and + avenues, should look askance at the decency of the newer Rome and feign it + an offence against beauty and poetry, I do not see why a Londoner, who + himself lives in a well-kept town, should join with any of my + fellow-barbarians in hypocritically deploring the modern spirit which has + so happily invaded the Eternal City. The Londoner should rather entreat us + not to be humbugs and should invite us to join him in rejoicing that the + death-rate of Rome, once the highest in the civilized world, is now almost + the lowest. But the language of Shakespeare and Milton is too often + internationally employed in deploring the modernity which has housed us + aliens there in such perfect comfort and safety. One must confine one's + self to instances, and one may take that of the Ludovisi Quarter, as it is + called, where I dwelt in so much peace and pleasure except when I was + reminded that it was formed by plotting the lovely Villa Ludovisi in house + lots and building it up in attractive hotels and apartment-houses. Even + then I did not suffer so keenly as some younger people, who had never seen + the villa, seemed to do, though there are still villas to burn in and + about Rome, and they could not really miss the Ludovisi. It was a pretty + place, but not beyond praise, and the quarter also is pretty, though also + not beyond praise. The villa was for the pleasure and pride of one family, + but it signified, even in its beauty, nothing but patrician splendor, + which is a poor thing at best; and the quarter is now for the pleasure and + pride of great numbers of tourists, mostly of that plutocracy from which a + final democracy is inevitably to evolve itself. I could see no cause to + beat the breast in this; and in humbler instances, even to very humble, I + could not find that things were nearly as bad in Rome as they have been + painted. + </p> + <p> + There is no doubt but at one time, directly after the coming of the + capital, Rome was badly overbuilt. There is no doubt, also, that Rome has + grown up to these rash provisions for her growth, and that she now “stuffs + out her vacant garments with her form” pretty fully. One must not say that + all the flats in all the houses are occupied, but most of them are; and if + now the property of the speculators is the property of the banks, the + banks are no bad landlords, and the law does not spare them the least of + their duties to their tenants; or so, at least, it is said. + </p> + <p> + Another typical wrong to the old Rome, or rather to the not-yet Rome, was + the building-up, beyond the Tiber, of the Quarter of the Fields, so + called, where Zola in his novel of <i>Rome</i> has placed most of the + squalor which he so lavishly employs in its contrasts. In these he shows + himself the romanticist that he always frankly owned he was in spite of + himself; but after I had read his book I made it my affair to visit the + scenes of poverty and misery in the Quartiere dei Prati. When I did so I + found that I had already passed through the quarter without noting + anything especially poor or specifically miserable, and I went a third + time to make sure that I had not overlooked something impressively + lamentable. But I did not see above three tenement-houses with the wash + hung from the windows, and with the broken shutters of poverty and misery, + in a space where on the East Side or the North Side in New York I could + have counted such houses by the score, almost the hundred. In this quarter + the streets were swept every morning as they are everywhere in Rome, and + though toward noon they were beginning to look as slovenly as our streets + look when they have just been “cleaned,” I knew that the next morning + these worst avenues of Rome would be swept as our best never have been + since the days of Waring. + </p> + <p> + Beyond the tenements the generous breadth of the new streets has been + bordered by pleasant stucco houses of the pretty Italian type, fleetingly + touched but not spoiled by the taste of the <i>art nouveau,</i> standing + in their own grounds, and not so high-fenced but one could look over their + garden-walls into the shrubs and flowers about them. Like suburban effects + are characteristic of the new wide residential streets on the hither side + of the Tiber, and on both shores the streets expand from time to time into + squares, with more or less tolerable new monuments—say, of the + Boston average—in them. The business streets where they bear the + lines of the frequently recurrent trams are spacious and straight, and + though they are not the Corso, the Corso itself, it must be remembered, is + only a street of shops by no means impressive, and is mostly dim under the + overtowering walls of palaces which have no space to be dignified in. Now + and then their open portals betray a glimpse of a fountained or foliaged + court, but whether these palaces are outwardly beautiful or not no one can + tell from what sight one can get of them; no, not even the most besotted + sentimentalist of those who bewail the loss of mediaeval Rome when they + mean Rome of the Renaissance. How much of that Rome has been erased by + modern Rome I do not know, but I think not so much as people pretend. Some + of the ugly baroque churches have been pulled down to allow the excavation + of imperial Rome, but there are plenty of ugly baroque churches left. It + is said the princely proprietors of the old palaces which are let in + apartments along the different Corsos (for the Corso is several) are going + to pull them down and put up modern houses, with the hope of modern rents, + but again I do not know. More than once the fortuities of hospitality + found one the guest of dwellers in such stately domiciles, and I could + honestly share the anxiety with which they spoke of these rumors; but + there are a great many vast edifices of the sort, and I should not be + surprised if I went back to Rome after another forty-three years to find + most of them standing in 1951 where they now stand in 1908. Rome was not + built in a day, and it will not be unbuilt or rebuilt within the brief + period that will make me one hundred and fourteen years old. By that time + I shall have outlived most of the medievalists, and I can say to the few + survivors: “There, you see that new Rome never went half so far as you + expected.” + </p> + <p> + But no doubt it will go further than it has yet gone, in the way that is + for the good and comfort of mankind. In one of the newer quarters, of + which the Baths of Diocletian form the imperial centre, my just American + pride was flattered by the sign on a handsome apartment-house going up in + gardened grounds, which advertised that it was to be finished with a lift + and steam-heating. Many of the newer houses are already supplied with + lifts, but central heating is as yet only beginning to spread from the + hotels, where steam has been installed in compliance with the impassioned + American demand to be warm all round when one is in-doors. New Rome is not + going so fast and so far but that it will keep, to whatever end it + reaches, one of the characteristic charms of the old and older Rome. I + shall expect to see when I come back in 1951 the same or the like corners + of garden walls, with the tops of shining foliage peering over them, that + now enchant the passer in the street; from the windows of my + electric-elevatored, steam-heated apartment I shall look down into the + seclusion of gardens, with the golden globes of orange espaliers mellowing + against the walls, and the fountain in the midst of oleanders and of + laurels + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Shaking its loosened silver in the sun.” + </pre> + <p> + Slim cypresses will then as now blacken through the delicate air against + the blue sky, and a stone-pine will spread its umbrella over some + sequestered nook. By that time the craze for the eucalyptus which now + possesses all Italy will be over, and every palm-tree will be cut down, + while the ilex will darken in its place and help the eternal youth of the + marbles to a greener old age of moss and mould in the gloom of its + spreading shade. All these things beautifully abound in Rome now, as they + always have abounded, and there is no reason to fear that they will cease + to abound. + </p> + <p> + Rome grows, and as Italy prospers it will grow more and more, for there + must forever be a great and famous capital where there has always been + one. The place is so perfectly the seat of an eternal city that it might + well seem to have been divinely chosen because of the earth and heaven + which are more in sympathy there than anywhere else in the world. The + climate is beyond praise for a winter which is mild without being weak; + there is a summer of tolerable noonday heat, and of nights deliciously + cool; the spring is scarcely earlier than in our latitudes, but the fall + is a long, slow decline from the temperature of October to the lowest + level of January without the vicissitudes of other autumns. The embrowning + or reddening or yellowing leaves turn sere, but drop or cling to their + parent boughs as they choose, for there is seldom a frost to loosen their + hold, and seldom a storm to tear them away. + </p> + <p> + So it is said by those who profess a more intimate acquaintance with the + Roman meteorology than I can boast, but from the little I know I can + believe anything of it that is of good report. Everywhere the prevalence + of the ilex, the orange, the laurel, the pine, flatters January with an + illusion of June, and under our hotel windows I was witness of the success + of the sycamore leaves in keeping a grip of their native twigs even after + the new buds came to push them away. In the last days of March a plum-tree + hung its robe of white blossoms over the wall of the Capuchin convent from + the garden within; but the almond-trees had been in bloom for six weeks + before, and the deeper pink of the peach had more warmly flushed the + suburbs for fully a fortnight. + </p> + <p> + Still, a mild winter and an endurable summer will not of themselves make a + great capital, and it was probably the Romans themselves who in the past + made Rome the capital of the world, first politically and then + religiously. Whether they will make it so hereafter remains to be seen. In + the sense of all the Italians being Romans, I believe, with my profound + faith in the race, that they are very capable of doing it; and they will + have the help of the whole world in the work, or what is most liberal and + enlightened in the whole world. As it is, Rome has a pull with Occidental + civilization which forever constitutes her its head city. The only + European capitals comparable with her are London, Paris, and Berlin; one + cannot take account of New York, which is merely the commercial metropolis + of America, with a possibility of becoming the business centre of both + hemispheres. Washington is still in its nonage and of a numerical + unimportance in which it must long remain almost ludicrously inferior to + other capitals, not to dwell upon its want of anything like artistic, + literary, scientific, and historical primacy. It is the voluntary + political centre of the greatest republic of any time and of a nation + which is already unrivalled in its claim upon the future. But it is not of + the involuntary and unconscious growth of a capital like London, which is + the centre of a mighty state, deep-rooted in the past, and the capital of + that Anglo-Saxon race of which we are ourselves a condition, and of a + colonial empire without a present equal. Paris is France in the sense of + representing the intense life of a nation unsurpassed in the things which + enlighten and ennoble the human intellect and advance mankind. Berlin is + the concentration of the strong will of a state which has made itself + great out of the weak will of sundry inferior states, homogeneous in their + disunity more than in any positive quality, and which stands for a + political ideal more nearly reactionary, more nearly mediaeval, than any + other modern state. Berlin is not German as Paris is French, and Rome is + not so exclusively Italian. In fact, her greatness, accomplished and + destined, lies in just the fact that she is not and never can be + exclusively Italian. Human interests too universal and imperative for the + control of a single race, even so brilliant and so gifted as the Italian + race, which is naturally and necessarily in possession, centre about her + through history, religion, art, and make every one at home in the city + which is the capital of Christendom. Now and then I saw some shining and + twinkling Japs going about with Baedekers, and I imagined them giving a + modest and unprejudiced mind to Rome without claiming, tacitly or + explicitly, the right to dispute the Italian theory and practice in its + control. But every Occidental stranger (if any one of European blood is a + stranger in the home of Christianity) I knew to be there in a mood more or + less critical, and in a disposition to find fault with the Rome which is + now making, or making over. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-15.jpg" alt="15 Glimpse Inside of Imperial Rome " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + We journeyers or sojourners can do this without expense or inconvenience + to ourselves, and we can easily blame the Italian conception of the future + city which, to name but one fact, has made it possible for us to visit her + in comfort at every season and to come away without having come down with + the Roman fever. In spite of the sort of motherly, or at the worst + step-motherly, welcome which she gives to all us closely or distantly + related children of hers; in spite of her immemorial fame and her immortal + beauty; in spite of her admirable housekeeping, in which she rises every + morning at daybreak and sweeps clean every hole and corner of her + dwelling; in spite of her wonderful sky, her life-giving air; in spite of + the level head she keeps in her political affairs, and the miraculous + poise she maintains between the antagonism of State and Church; in spite + of her wise eclecticism in modern improvements; in spite of her admirable + hygiene, which has constituted her one of the healthiest, if not the + healthiest city in Europe; in spite of the solvency which she preserves + amid expenses to which the vast scale of antiquity obliges her in all her + public enterprises (a thing to be hereafter studied), we, the ungracious + offspring of her youth, come from our North and West and censure and + criticise and carp. I have seldom conversed with any fellow-visitor in + Rome who could not improve her in some phase or other, who could not + usefully advise her, who, at the best, did not patronize her. I offer + myself as almost the sole example of a stranger who was contented with her + as she is, or as she is going to be without his help; and I am the more + confident, therefore, in suggesting to Rome an expedient by which she can + repair the finances which her visitors say are so foolishly and wastefully + mismanaged in her civic schemes. A good round tax, such as Carlsbad levies + upon all sojourners, if laid upon the multitudinous tourists joining in + such a chorus of criticism of Rome would give them the indefeasible right + to their opinions and would help to replete a treasury which they believe + is always in danger of being exhausted. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. THE COLOSSEUM AND THE FORUM + </h2> + <p> + As I have told, the first visit I paid to the antique world in Rome was at + the Colosseum the day after our arrival. For some unknown reason I was + going to begin with the Baths of Caracalla, but, as it happened, these + were the very last ruins we visited in Rome; and I do not know just what + accident diverted us to the Colosseum; perhaps we stopped because it was + on the way to the Baths and looked an easier conquest. At any rate, I + shall never regret that we began with it. + </p> + <p> + After twoscore years and three it was all strangely familiar. I do not say + that in 1864 there was a horde of boys at the entrance wishing to sell me + postcards—these are a much later invention of the Enemy—but I + am sure of the men with trays full of mosaic pins and brooches, and + looking, they and their wares, just as they used to look. The Colosseum + itself looked unchanged, though I had read that a minion of the wicked + Italian government had once scraped its flowers and weeds away and cleaned + it up so that it was perfectly spoiled. But it would take a good deal more + than that to spoil the Colosseum, for neither the rapine of the mediaeval + nobles, who quarried their palaces from it, nor the industrial enterprise + of some of the popes, who wished to turn it into workshops, nor the + archeology of United Italy had sufficed to weaken in it that hold upon the + interest proper to the scene of the most stupendous variety shows that the + world has yet witnessed. The terrible stunts in which men fought one + another for the delight of other men in every manner of murder, and wild + beasts tore the limbs of those glad to perish for their faith, can be as + easily imagined there as ever, and the traveller who visits the place has + the assistance of increasing hordes of other tourists in imagining them. + </p> + <p> + I will not be the one to speak slight of that enterprise which marshals + troops of the personally conducted through the place and instructs them in + divers languages concerning it. Save your time and money so, if you have + not too much of either, and be one of an English, French, or German party, + rather than try to puzzle the facts out for yourself, with one contorted + eye on your Baedeker and the other on the object in question. In such + parties a sort of domestic relation seems to grow up through their + associated pleasures in sight-seeing, and they are like family parties, + though politer and patienter among themselves than real family parties. + They are commonly very serious, though they doubtless all have their + moments of gayety; and in the Colosseum I saw a French party grouped for + photography by a young woman of their number, who ran up and down before + them with a kodak and coquettishly hustled them into position with pretty, + bird-like chirpings of appeal and reproach, and much graceful + self-evidencing. I do not censure her behavior, though doubtless there + were ladies among the photographed who thought it overbold; if the reader + had been young and blond and <i>svelte,</i> in a Parisian gown and hat, + with narrow russet shoes, not too high-heeled for good taste, I do not + believe he would have been any better; or, if he would, I should not have + liked him so well. + </p> + <p> + On the earlier day which I began speaking of I found that I was insensibly + attaching myself to an English-hearing party of the personally conducted, + in the dearth of my own recollections of the local history, but I quickly + detached myself for shame and went back and meekly hired the help of a + guide who had already offered his services in English, and whom I had + haughtily spurned in his own tongue. His English, though queer, was + voluminous; but I am not going to drag the reader at our heels laden with + lore which can be applied only on the spot or in the presence of + postal-card views of the Colosseum. It is enough that before my guide + released us we knew where was the box of Caesar, whom those about to die + saluted, and where the box of the Vestals whose fatal thumbs gave the + signal of life or death for the unsuccessful performer; where the wild + beasts were kept, and where the Christians; where were the green-rooms of + the gladiators, who waited chatting for their turn to go on and kill one + another. One must make light of such things or sink under them; and if I + am trying to be a little gay, it is for the readers' sake, whom I would + not have perish of their realization. Our guide spared us nothing, such + was his conscience or his science, and I wish I could remember his name, + for I could commend him as most intelligent, even, when least + intelligible. However, the traveller will know him by the winning smile of + his rosy-faced little son, who follows him round and is doubtless bringing + himself up as the guide of coming generations of tourists. There had been + a full pour of forenoon sunshine on the white dust of the street before + our hotel, but the cold of the early morning, though it had not been too + much for the birds that sang in the garden back of us, had left a skim of + ice in damp spots, and now, in the late gray of the afternoon, the ice was + visible and palpable underfoot in the Colosseum, where crowds of people + wandered severally or collectively about in the half-frozen mud. They + were, indeed, all over the place, up and down, in every variety of costume + and aspect, but none were so picturesque as a little group of monks who + had climbed to a higher tier of the arches and stood looking down into the + depths where we looked up at them, denned against the sky in their black + robes, which opened to show their under robes of white. They were + picturesque, but they were not so monumental as an old, unmistakable + American in high-hat, with long, drooping side-whiskers, not above a + purple suspicion of dye, who sat on a broken column and vainly endeavored + to collect his family for departure. Whenever he had gathered two or three + about him they strayed off as the others came up, and we left him + sardonically patient of their adhesions and defections, which seemed + destined to continue indefinitely, while we struggled out through the + postal-card boys and mosaic-pin men to our carriage. Then we drove away + through the quarter of somewhat jerry-built apartment-houses which + neighbor the Colosseum, and on into the salmon sunset which, after the + gray of the afternoon, we found waiting us at our hotel, with the statues + on the balustrated wall of the villa garden behind it effectively posed in + the tender light, together with the eidolons of those picturesque monks + and that monumental American. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-16.jpg" alt="16 Interior of Colosseum from the South " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + We could safely have stayed longer, for the evening damp no longer brings + danger of Roman fever, which people used to take in the Colosseum, unless + I am thinking of the signal case of Daisy Miller. She, indeed, I believe, + got it there by moonlight; but now people visit the place by moonlight in + safety; and there are even certain nights of the season advertised when + you may see it by the varicolored lights of the fireworks set off in it. + My impression of it was quite vivid enough without that, and the vision of + the Colosseum remained, and still remains, the immense skeleton of the + stupendous form stripped of all integumental charm and broken down half + one side of its vast oval, so that wellnigh a quarter of the structural + bones are gone. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-17.jpg" alt="17 the Sacred Way Through The Forum " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + With its image there persisted and persists the question constantly + recurrent in the presence of all the imperial ruins, whether imperial Rome + was not rather ugly than otherwise. The idea of those world-conquerors was + first immensity and then beauty, as much as could survive consistently + with getting immensity into a given space. The question is most of all + poignant in the Forum, which I let wait a full fortnight before moving + against it in the warm sun of an amiable February morning. On my first + visit to Rome I could hardly wait for day to dawn after my arrival before + rushing to the Cow Field, as it was then called, and seeing the + wide-horned cattle chewing the cud among the broken monuments now so + carefully cherished and, as it were, sedulously cultivated. It is doubtful + whether all that has since been done, and which could not but have been + done, by the eager science as much involuntarily as voluntarily applied to + the task, has resulted in a more potent suggestion of what the Forum was + in the republican or imperial day than what that simple, old, unassuming + Cow Field afforded. There were then as now the beautiful arches; there + were the fragments of the temple porches, with their pillars; there was + the “unknown column with the buried base”; there were all the elements of + emotion and meditation; and it is possible that sentiment has only been + cumbered Avith the riches which archaeology has dug up for it by lowering + the surface of the Cow Field fifteen or twenty feet; by scraping clean the + buried pavements; by identifying the storied points; by multiplying the + fragments of basal or columnar marbles and revealing the plans of temples + and palaces and courts and tracing the Sacred Way on which the + magnificence of the past went to dusty death. After all, the imagination + is very childlike, and it prefers the elements of its pleas-ures simple + and few; if the materials are very abundant or complex, it can make little + out of them; they embarrass it, and it turns critical in self-defence. The + grandeur that was Rome as visioned from the Cow Field becomes in the + mind's eye the kaleidoscopic clutter which the resurrection of the Forum + Romanum must more and more realize. + </p> + <p> + If the visitor would have some rash notion of what the ugliness of the + place was like when it was in its glory, he may go look at the plastic + reconstruction of it, indefinitely reduced, in the modest building across + the way from the official entrance to the Forum. One cannot say but this + is intensely interesting, and it affords the consolation which the humble + (but not too humble) spirit may gather from witness of the past, that the + fashion of this world and the pride of the eyes and all ruthless vainglory + defeated themselves in ancient Rome, as they must everywhere when they can + work their will. If one had thought that in magnitude and multitude some + entire effect of beauty was latent, one had but to look at that huddle of + warring forms, each with beauty in it, but beauty lost in the crazy + agglomeration of temples and basilicas and columns and arches and statues + and palaces, incredibly painted and gilded, and huddled into spaces too + little for the least, and crowding severally upon one another, without + relation or proportion. Their mass is supremely tasteless, almost + senseless; that mob of architectural incongruities was not only without + collective beauty, but it was without that far commoner and cheaper thing + which we call picturesqueness. This has come to it through ruin, and we + must give a new meaning to the word vandalism if we would appreciate what + the barbarians did for Rome in tumbling her tawdry splendor into the heaps + which are now at least paint-able. Imperial Rome as it stood was not + paintable; I doubt if it would have been even photographable to anything + but a picture post-card effect. + </p> + <p> + But as yet I wandered in the Forum safe from the realization of its + ugliness when it was in its glory. I cannot say that even now it is + picturesque, but it is paintable, and certainly it is pathetic. Stumps of + columns, high and low, stand about in the places where they stood in their + unbroken pride, and though it seems a hardship that they should not have + been left lying in the kindly earth or on it instead of being pulled up + and set on end, it must be owned that they are scarcely overworked in + their present postures. More touching are those inarticulate heaps, cairns + of sculptured fragments, piled here and there together and waiting the + knowledge which is some time to assort them and translate them into some + measure of coherent meaning. But it must always be remembered that when + they were coherent they were only beautiful parts of a whole that was + brutally unbeautiful. We have but to use the little common-sense which + Heaven has vouchsafed some of us in order to realize that Rome, either + republican or imperial, was a state for which we can have no genuine + reverence, and that mostly the ruins of her past can stir in us no finer + emotion than wonder. But necessarily, for the sake of knowledge, and of + ascertaining just what quantity and quality of human interest the material + records of Roman antiquity embody, archaeology must devote itself with all + possible piety to their recovery. The removal, handful by handful, of the + earth from the grave of the past which the whole Forum is, tomb upon tomb, + is as dramatic a spectacle as anything one can well witness; for that soil + is richer than any gold-mine in its potentiality of treasure, and it must + be strictly scrutinized, almost by particles, lest some gem of art should + be cast aside with the accumulated rubbish of centuries. Yet this drama, + poignantly suggestive as it always must be, was the least incident of that + morning in the Forum which it was my fortune to pass there with other + better if not older tourists as guest of the Genius Loci. It was not quite + a public event, though the Commendatore Boni is so well known to the + higher journalism, and even to fiction (as the reader of Anatole France's + <i>La Pierre Blanche</i> will not have forgotten), that nothing which he + archaeologically does is without public interest, and this excursion in + the domain of antiquity was expected to result in identifying the site of + the Temple of Jupiter Stator. It was conjectured that the temple vowed to + this specific Jupiter for his public spirit in stopping the flight of a + highly demoralized Roman army would be found where we actually found it. + Archaeology seems to proceed by hypothesis, like other sciences, and to + enjoy a forecast of events before they are actually accomplished. I do not + say that I was very vividly aware of the event in question; I could not go + now and show where the temple stood, but when I read of it in a cablegram + to the American newspapers I almost felt that I had dug it up with my own + hands. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-18.jpg" alt="18 the Roman Forum " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Of many other facts I was at the time vividly aware: of the charm of + finding the archaeologist in an upper room of the mediaeval church which + is turning itself into his study, of listening to his prefatory talk, so + informal and so easy that one did not realize how learned it was, and then + of following him down to the scene of his researches and hearing him speak + wisely, poetically, humorously, even, of what he believed he had reason to + expect to find. We stood with him by the Arch of Titus and saw how the + sculptures had been broken from it in the fragments found at its base, and + how the carved marbles had been burned for lime in the kiln built a few + feet off, so that those who wanted the lime need not have the trouble of + carrying the sculptures away before burning them. A handful of iridescent + glass from a house-drain near by, where it had been thrown by the servants + after breaking it, testified of the continuity of human nature in the + domestics of all ages. A somewhat bewildering suggestion of the depth at + which the different periods of Rome underlie one another spoke from the + mouth of the imperial well or cistern which had been sunk on the top of a + republican well or cistern at another corner of the arch. In a place not + far off, looking like a potter's clay pit, were graves so old that they + seem to have antedated the skill of man to spell any record of himself; + and in the small building which seems the provisional repository of the + archaeologist's finds we saw skeletons of the immemorial dead in the + coffins of split trees still shutting them imperfectly in. Mostly the + bones and bark were of the same indifferent interest, but the eternal + pathos of human grief appealed from what mortal part remained of a little + child, with beads on her tattered tunic and an ivory bracelet on her + withered arm. History in the presence of such world-old atomies seemed an + infant babbling of yesterday, in what it could say of the Rome of the + Popes, the Rome of the Emperors, the Rome of the Republicans, the Rome of + the Kings, the Rome of the Shepherds and Cowherds, through which a shaft + sunk in the Forum would successively pierce in reaching those aboriginals + whose sepulchres alone witnessed that they had ever lived. + </p> + <p> + It is the voluble sorrow common to all the emotional visitors in Rome that + the past of the different generations has not been treated by the present + with due tenderness, and the Colosseum is a case notoriously in point. + But, if it was an Italian archaeologist who destroyed the wilding growths + in the Colosseum and scraped it to a bareness which nature is again trying + to clothe with grass and weeds, it ought to be remembered that it is + another Italian archaeologist who has set laurels all up and down the + slopes of the Forum, and has invited roses and honeysuckles to bloom + wherever they shall not interfere with science, but may best help repair + the wounds he must needs deal the soil in researches which seem no mere + dissections, but feats of a conservative, almost a constructive surgery. + It is said that the German archaeologists objected to those laurels where + the birds sing so sweetly; perhaps they thought them not strictly + scientific; but when the German Kaiser, who always knows so much better + than all the other Germans put together, visited the Forum, he liked them, + and he parted from the Genius Loci with the imperial charge, “Laurels, + laurels, evermore laurels.” After that the emotional tourist must be hard + indeed to please who would begrudge his laurels to Commendatore Boni, or + would not wish him a perpetual crown of them. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV. THE ANGLO-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE SPANISH STEPS + </h2> + <p> + It is not every undeserving American who can have the erudition and + divination of the Genius Loci in answer to his unuttered prayer during a + visit to even a small part of the Roman Forum. But failing the company of + the Commendatore Boni, which is without price, there are to be had for a + very little money the guidance and philosophy, and, for all I know, the + friendship of several peripatetic historians who lead people about the + ruins in Rome, and instruct them in the fable, and doubtless in the moral, + of the things they see. If I had profited by their learning, so much + greater, or at least securer, than any the average American has about him, + I should now be tiring the reader with knowledge which I am so willingly + leaving him to imagine in me. If he is like the average American, he has + really once had some nodding acquaintance with the facts, but history is + apt to forsake you on the scene of it, and to come lagging back when it is + too late. In this psychological experience you feel the need of help which + the peripatetic historian supplies to the groups of perhaps rather + oblivious than ignorant tourists of all nations in all languages, but + preferably English. We Anglo-Saxons seem to be the most oblivious or most + ignorant; but I would not slight our occasionally available culture any + more than I would imply that those peripatetic historians are at all like + the cicerones whom they have so largely replaced. I believe they are + instructed and scholarly men; I offer them my respect; and I wish now that + I had been one of their daily disciples, for it is full sixty years since + I read Goldsmith's <i>History of Rome.</i> As I saw them, somewhat beyond + earshot, they and their disciples formed a spectacle which was always + interesting, and, so far as the human desire for information is affecting, + was also affecting. The listeners to the lecturers would carry back to + their respective villages and towns, or the yet simpler circles of our + ordinary city lift, vastly more association with the storied scene than I + had brought to it or should bring away. In fact, there is nothing more + impressive in the floating foreign society of Rome than its zeal for + self-improvement. No one classes himself with his fellow-tourists, though + if he happens to be a traveller he is really one of them; and it is with + difficulty I keep myself from the appearance of patronizing them in these + praises, which are for the most part reverently meant. Their zeal never + seemed to be without knowledge, whatever their age or sex; the intensity + of their application reached to all the historical and actual interests, + to the religious as well as the social, the political as well as the + financial; but, fitly in Rome, it seemed specially turned to the study of + antiquity, in the remoter or the nearer past. There was given last winter + a series of lectures at the American School of Archaeology by the head of + it, which were followed with eager attention by hearers who packed the + room. But these lectures, which were so admirably first in. the means of + intelligent study, seemed only one of the means by which my + fellow-tourists were climbing the different branches of knowledge. All + round my apathy I felt, where I did not see, the energy of the others; + with my mind's ear I heard a rustle as of the turning leaves of Baedekers, + of Murrays, of Hares, and of the many general histories and monographs of + which these intelligent authorities advised the supplementary reading. + </p> + <p> + If I am not so mistaken as I might very well be, however, the local + language is less studied than it was in former times, when far fewer + Italians spoke English. My own Italian was of that date; but, though I + began by using it, I found myself so often helped for a forgotten meaning + that I became subtly demoralized and fell luxuriously into the habit of + speaking English like a native of Rome. Yet tacitly, secretly perhaps, + there may have been many people who were taking up Italian as zealously as + many more were taking up antiquity. One day in the Piazza di Spagna, in a + modest little violet of a tea-room, which was venturing to open in the + face of the old-established and densely thronged parterre opposite, I + noted from my Roman version of a buttered muffin a tall, young + Scandinavian girl, clad in complete corduroy, gray in color to the very + cap surmounting her bandeaux of dark-red hair. She looked like some of + those athletic-minded young women of Ibsen's plays, and the pile of books + on the table beside her tea suggested a student character. When she had + finished her tea she put these books back into a leather bag, which they + filled to a rigid repletion, and, after a few laconic phrases with the + tea-girl, she went out like going off the stage. Her powerful demeanor + somehow implied severe studies; but the tea-girl—a massive, + confident, confiding Roman—said, No, she was studying Italian, and + all those books related to the language, for which she had a passion. She + was a Swede; and here the student being exhausted as a topic, and my own + nationality being ascertained, What steps, the tea-girl asked, should one + take if one wished to go to New York in order to secure a place as cashier + in a restaurant? + </p> + <p> + My facts were not equal to the demand upon them, nor are they equal to + anything like exact knowledge of the intellectual pursuits of the many + studious foreign youth of all ages and sexes whom one meets in Rome. As I + say, our acquaintance with Italian is far less useful, however ornamental, + than it used to be. The Romans are so quick that they understand you when + they speak no English, and take your meaning before you can formulate it + in their own tongue. A classically languaged friend of mine, who was hard + bested in bargaining for rooms, tried his potential landlord in Latin, and + was promptly answered in Latin. It was a charming proof that in the home + of the Church her mother-speech had never ceased to be spoken by some of + her children, but I never heard of any Americans, except my friend, + recurring to their college courses in order to meet the modern Latins in + their ancient parlance. In spite of this instance, and that of the Swedish + votary of Italian, I decided that the studies of most strangers were + archaeological rather than philological, historical rather than literary, + topographical rather than critical. I do not say that I had due + confirmation of my theory from the talk of the fellow-sojourners whom one + is always meeting at teas and lunches and dinners in Rome. Generally the + talk did not get beyond an exchange of enthusiasms for the place, and of + experiences of the morning, in the respective researches of the talkers. + </p> + <p> + Such of us as were staying the winter, of course held aloof from the + hurried passers-through, or looked with kindly tolerance on their + struggles to get more out of Rome in a given moment than she perhaps + yielded with perfect acquiescence. We fancied that she kept something + back; she is very subtle, and has her reserves even with people who pass a + whole winter within her gates. The fact is, there are a great many of her, + though we knew her afar as one mighty personality. There is the antique + Rome, the mediaeval Rome, the modern Rome; but that is only the beginning. + There is the Rome of the State and the Rome of the Church, which divide + between them the Rome of politics and the Rome of fashion; but here is a + field so vast that Ave may not enter it without danger of being promptly + lost in it. There is the Rome of the visiting nationalities, severally and + collectively; there is especially the Anglo-American Rome, which if not so + populous as the German, for instance, is more important to the + Anglo-Saxons. It sees a great deal of itself socially, but not to the + exclusion of the sympathetic Southern temperaments which seem to have a + strange but not unnatural affinity with it. So far as we might guess, it + was a little more Clerical than Liberal in its local politics; if you were + very Liberal, it was well to be careful, for Conversion lurked under many + exteriors which gave no outward sign of it; if the White of the monarchy + and the Black of the papacy divide the best Roman families, of course + foreigners are more intensely one or the other than the natives. But + Anglo-Saxon life was easy for one not self-obliged to be of either opinion + or party; and it was pleasant in most of its conditions. In Rome our + internationalities seemed to have certain quarters largely to themselves. + In spite of our abhorrence of the destruction and construction which have + made modern Rome so wholesome and delightful, most of us had our + habitations in the new quarters; but certain pleasanter of the older + streets, like the Via Sistina, Via del Babuino, Via Capo le Case, Via + Gregoriana, were our sojourn or our resort. Especially in the two first + our language filled the outer air to the exclusion of other conversation, + and within doors the shopmen spoke it at least as well as the English + think the Americans speak it. It was pleasant to meet the honest English + faces, to recognize the English fashions, to note the English walk; and if + these were oftener present than their American counterparts, it was not + from our habitual minority, but from our occasional sparsity through the + panic that had frightened us into a homekeeping foreign to our natures. + </p> + <p> + In like manner our hyphenated nationalities have the Piazza di Spagna for + their own. There are the two English book-stores and the circulating + libraries, in each of which the books are so torn and dirty that you think + they cannot be quite so bad in the other till you try it; there seems + nothing for it, then, but to wash and iron the different Tauchnitz + authors, and afterward darn and mend them. The books on sale are, of + course, not so bad; they are even quite clean; and except for giving out + on the points of interest where you could most wish them to abound, there + is nothing in them to complain of. There is less than nothing to complain + of in the tea-room which enjoys our international favor except that at the + most psychological moment of the afternoon you cannot get a table, in + spite of the teas going on in the fashionable hotels and the friendly + houses everywhere. The toast is exceptional; the muffins so far from home + are at least reminiscent of their native island; the tea and butter are + alike blameless. The company, to the eye of the friend of man, is still + more acceptable, for, if the Americans have dwindled, the English have + increased; and there is nothing more endearing than the sight of a roomful + of English people at their afternoon tea in a strange land. No type seems + to predominate; there are bohemians as obvious as clerics; there are old + ladies and young, alike freshly fair; there are the white beards of age + and the clean-shaven cheeks of youth among the men; some are fashionable + and some outrageously not; peculiarities of all kinds abound without + conflicting. Some talk, frankly audible, and others are frankly silent, + but a deep, wide purr, tacit or explicit, close upon a muted hymn of + thanksgiving, in that assemblage of mutually repellent personalities, for + the nonce united, would best denote the universal content. + </p> + <p> + Hard by this tea-room there is a public elevator by which the reader will + no doubt rather ascend with me than, climb the Spanish Steps without me; + after the first time, I never climbed them. The elevator costs but ten + centimes, and I will pay for both; there is sometimes drama thrown in that + is worth twice the money; for there is war, more or less roaring, set + between the old man who works the elevator and the young man who sells the + tickets to it. The law is that the elevator will hold only eight persons, + but one memorable afternoon the ticket-seller insisted upon giving a + ticket to a tall, young English girl who formed an unlawful ninth. The + elevator-man, a precisian of the old school, expelled her; the + ticket-seller came forward and reinstated her; again the elder stood upon + the letter of the law; again the younger demanded its violation. The + Tuscan tongue in their Roman mouths flew into unintelligibility, while the + poor girl was put into the elevator and out of it; and the respective + parties to the quarrel were enjoying it so much that it might never have + ended if she had not taken the affair into her own hands. She finally + followed the ticket-seller back to his desk, to which he retired after + each act of the melodrama, and threw her ticket violently down. “Here is + your ticket!” she said in English so severe that he could not help + understanding and cowering before it. “Give me back my money!” He was too + much stupefied by her decision of character to speak; and he returned her + centimes in silence while we got into our cage and mounted to the top, and + the elevator-man furiously repeated to himself his side of the recent + argument all the way up. This did not prevent his touching his hat to each + of us in parting, and assuring us that he revered us; a thing that only + old-fashioned Romans seem to do nowadays, in the supposed decay of manners + which the comfortable classes everywhere like to note in the + uncomfortable. Then some ladies of our number went off on a platform + across the house-tops to which the elevator had brought us, as if they + expected to go down the chimneys to their apartments; and the rest of us + expanded into the Piazza Trinita de' Monti; and I stopped to lounge + against the uppermost balustrade of the Spanish Steps. + </p> + <p> + It is notable, but not surprising, how soon one forms the habit of this, + for, seen from above, the Spanish Steps are only less enchanting than the + Spanish Steps seen from below, whence they are absolutely the most + charming sight in the world. The reader, if he has nothing better than a + post-card (which I could have bought him on the spot for fifty a franc), + knows how the successive stairways part and flow downward to right and + left, like the parted waters of a cascade, and lose themselves at the + bottom in banks of flowers. No lovelier architectural effect was ever + realized from a happy fancy; but, of course, the pictorial effect is + richer from below, especially from the Via dei Condotti, where it opens + into the Piazza di Spagna. I suppose there must be hours of the day, and + certainly there are hours of the night, when in this prospect the Steps + have not the sunset on them. But most of the time they have the sunset on + them, warm, tender; a sunset that begins with the banks of daffodils and + lilies and anemones and carnations and roses and almond blossoms, keeping + the downpour of the marble cascades from flooding the piazza, and mounts, + mellowing and yellowing, up their gray stone, until it reaches the Church + of Trinita de' Monti at the top. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-19.jpg" alt="19 Spanish Steps " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + There it lingers, I should say, till dawn, bathing the golden-brown facade + in an effulgence that lifelong absence cannot eclipse when once it has + blessed your sight. It is beauty that rather makes the heart ache, and the + charm of the Steps from above is something that you can bear better if you + are very, very worthy, or have the conceit of feeling yourself so. It is a + charm that imparts itself more in detail and is less exclusively the + effect of perpetual sunset. From the parapet against which you lean you + have a perfecter conception of the architectural form than you get from + below, and you are never tired of seeing the successive falls of the Steps + dividing themselves and then coming together on the broad landings and + again parting and coming together. + </p> + <p> + If there were once many models, male, female, and infant, brigands, + peasants, sages, and martyrs, lounging on the Spanish Steps, as it seems + to me there used to be, and as every one has heard say, waiting there for + the artists to come and carry them off to their studios and transfer them + to their canvases, they are now no longer there in noticeable number. I + saw some small boys in steeple-crowned soft hats and short jackets, with + their little legs wound round with the favorite bandaging of brigands; and + some mothers suitable for Madonnas, perhaps, with babes at the breast; + there was a patriarchal old man or two, ready no doubt to pose for the + prophets, or, at a pinch, for yet more celestial persons; but for the rest + the Steps were rather given up to flower-girls, fruit-peddlers, and + beggars pure and simple, on levels distinctly below those infested by the + post-card peddlers. The whole neighborhood abounds in opportunities for + charity, and at the corner of the Via Sistina there is a one-legged beggar + who professes to black shoes in the intervals of alms-taking, and who + early made me his prey. If sometimes I fancied escaping by him to my + lounge against the parapet of the steps, he joyously overtook me with a + swiftness of which few two-legged men are capable; he wore a soldier's + cap, and I hoped, for the credit of our species, that he had lost his leg + in battle, but I do not know. + </p> + <p> + On a Sunday evening I once hung there a long time, watching with one eye + the people who were coming back from their promenade on the Pincian Hill, + and with the other the groups descending and ascending the Steps. On the + first landing below me there was a boy who gratified me, I dare say + unconsciously, by trying to stand on his hands; and a little dramatic + spectacle added itself to this feat of the circus. Two pretty girls, + smartly dressed in hats and gowns exactly alike, and doubtless sisters, if + not twins, passed down to the same level. One was with a handsome young + officer, and walked staidly beside him, as if content with her quality of + captive or captor. The other was with a civilian, of whom she was + apparently not sure. Suddenly she ran away from him to the verge of the + next fall of steps, possibly to show him how charmingly she was dressed, + possibly to tempt him by her grace in flight to follow her madly. But he + followed sanely and slowly, and she waited for him to come up, in a + capricious quiet, as if she had not done anything or meant anything. That + was all; but I am not hard to suit; and it was richly enough for me. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-20.jpg" alt="20 Toward the Pincian Hill " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Her little comedy came to its denouement just under the shoulder of the + rose-roofed terrace jutting from a lowish, plainish house on the left, + beyond certain palms and eucalyptus-trees. It is one of the most sacred + shrines in Rome, for it was in this house that the “young English poet + whose name was writ in water” died to deathless fame three or fourscore + years ago. It is the Keats house, which when he lived in it was the house + of Severn the painter, his host and friend. I had visited it for the kind + sake of the one and the dear sake of the others when I first visited Rome + in 1864; and it was one of the earliest stations of my second pilgrimage. + It is now in form for any and all visitors, but the day I went it had not + yet been put in its present simple and tasteful keeping. A somewhat shrill + and scraping-voiced matron inquired my pleasure when she followed me into + the ground-floor entrance from somewhere without, and then, understanding, + called hor young daughter, who led me up to the room where Keats mused his + last verse and breathed his last sigh. It is a very little room, looking + down over the Spanish Steps, with their dike of bloom, across the piazza + to the narrow stretch of the Via del Babuino. I must have stood in it with + Severn and heard him talk of Keats and his ultimate days and hours; for I + remember some such talk, but not the details of it. He was a very gentle + old man and fondly proud of his goodness to the poor dying poet, as he + well might be, and I was glad to be one of the many Americans who, he + said, came to grieve with him for the dead poet. + </p> + <p> + Now, on my later visit, it was a cold, rainy day, and it was chill within + the house and without, and I imputed my weather to the time of Keats's + sojourn, and thought of him sitting by his table there in that bare, + narrow, stony room and coughing at the dismal outlook. Afterward I saw the + whole place put in order and warmed by a generous stove, for people who + came to see the Keats and Shelley collections of books and pictures; but + still the sense of that day remains. The young girl sympathized with my + sympathy, and wished to find a rose for me in the trellis through which + the rain dripped. She could not, and I suggested that there would be roses + in the spring. “No,” she persisted, “sometimes it makes them in the + winter,” but I had to come away through the reeking streets without one. + </p> + <p> + When it rains, it rains easily in Rome. But the weather was divine the + evening I looked one of my latest looks down on the Spanish Steps. The sun + had sunk rather wanly beyond the city, but a cheerful light of electrics + shone up at me from the Via dei Condotti. I stood and thought of as much + as I could summon from the past, and I was strongest, I do not know why, + with the persecutions of the early Christians. Presently a smell of dinner + came from the hotels around and the houses below, and I was reminded to go + home to my own <i>table d'hote.</i> My one-legged beggar seemed to have + gone to his, and I escaped him; but I was intercepted by the sight of an + old woman asleep over her store of matches. She was not wakened by the + fall of my ten-centime piece in her tray, but the boy drowsing beside her + roused himself, and roused her to the dreamy expression of a gratitude + quite out of scale with my alms. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V. AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY + </h2> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-21.jpg" alt="21 Sepulchre of Romulus, Forum " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + My visit to the Roman Forum when the Genius Loci verified to my ignorance + and the intelligence of my companions the well-conjectured site of the + Temple of Jupiter Stator was not the first nor yet the second visit I had + paid the place. There had been intermediate mornings when I met two + friends there, indefinitely more instructed, with whom I sauntered from + point to point, preying upon their knowledge for my emotion concerning + each. Information is an excellent thing—in others; and but for these + friends I should not now be able to say that this mouldering heap of + brickwork, rather than that, was Julius Caesar's house; or just where it + was that Antony made his oration over the waxen effigy which served him + for Caesar's body. They helped me realize how the business life and + largely the social life of Rome centred in the Forum, but spared me so + much detail that my fancy could play about among its vanished edifices + without inconvenience from the clutter of shops and courts and monuments + which were ultimately to hem it in and finally to stifle it. They knew + their Forum so well that they could not only gratify any curiosity I had, + but could supply me with curiosity when I had none. For the moment I was + aware that this spot or that, though it looked so improbable, was the + scene of deeds which will reverberate forever; they taught me to be + tolerant of what I had too lightly supposed fables as serious traditions + closely verging on facts. I learned to believe again that the wolf suckled + Romulus and Remus, because she had her den no great way off on the + Palatine, and that Romulus himself had really lived, since he had died and + was buried in the Forum, where they showed me his tomb, or as much of it + as I could imagine in the sullen little cellar so called. They also showed + me the rostrum where the Roman orators addressed the mass-meetings of the + republican times, and they showed me the lake, or the puddle left of it, + into which Curtius (or one of three heroes of the name) leaped at an + earlier day as a specific for the pestilence which the medical science of + the period had failed to control. In our stroll about the place we were + joined by one of the several cats living in the Forum, which offered us + collectively its acquaintance, as if wishing to make us feel at home. It + joined us and it quitted us from time to time, as the whim took it, but it + did not abandon us wholly till we showed a disposition to believe in that + lake of Curtius, so called after those three public-spirited heroes, the + first being a foreigner. Then the cat, which had more than once stretched + itself as if bored, turned from us in contempt and went and lay down in a + sunny corner near the tomb of Romulus, and fell asleep. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-22.jpg" alt="22 Trajan's Forum and Column " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + It is quite possible that my reader does not know, as lately I did not, + that the Roman Forum is but one of several forums connected with it by + ways long centuries since buried fathoms deep and built upon many stories + high. But I am now able to assure him that in the whole region between the + Roman Forum and the Forum of Trajan, which were formerly opened into each + other by the removal of a hill as tall as the top of Trajan's Column, you + pass over other forums hidden beneath your feet or wheels. You cannot be + stayed there, however, by the wonders which archaeology will yet reveal in + them (for archaeology has its relentless eye upon every inch of the ground + above them), but you will certainly pause at the Forum of Trajan, where + archaeology, as it is in Commendatore Boni, has had its way already. In + fact, until his work in the Roman Forum is finished, the Forum of Trajan + must remain his greatest achievement, and the sculptured column of the + great emperor must serve equally as the archaeologist's monument. I do not + remember why in the old time I should have kept coming to look at that + column and study the sculptured history of Trajan's campaigns, toiling + around it to its top. I think one could then get close to its base, as now + one cannot, what with the deepening of the Forum to its antique level and + the enclosure of the whole space with an iron rail. The area below is free + only to a large company of those cats which seem to have their dwelling + among all the ruins and restorations of ancient Rome. People come to feed + the Trajan cats with the fish sold near by for the purpose, and one + morning, in pausing to view his column from the respectful distance I had + to keep, I counted no less than thirteen of his cats in his forum. They + were of every age and color, but much more respectable in appearance than + the cats of the Pantheon, which have no such sunny expanse as that forum + for their quarters, but only a very damp corner beside the temple, and + seem to have suffered in their looks and health from the situation. It was + afterward with dismay that I realized the fatal number of the Trajan cats + coming to their breakfast that morning so unconscious of evil omen in the + figure; but as there are probably no statistics of mortality among the + cats of Rome, I shall never know whether any of the thirteen has rendered + up one of their hundred and seventeen lives. + </p> + <p> + However, if I allowed myself to go on about the cats of Rome, either + ancient or modern, there would be no end. For instance, in a statuary's + shop in the Via Sistina there is a large yellow cat, which I one day saw + dressing the hair of the statuary's boy. It performed this office with a + very motherly anxiety, seated on the top of a high rotary table where + ordinarily the statuary worked at his carving, and pausing from time to + time, as it licked the boy's thick, black locks, to get the effect of its + labors. On other days or at other hours it slept under the table-top, + unvexed by the hammering that went on over its head. Even in Rome, where + cats are so abundant, it was a notable cat. + </p> + <p> + If you visit the Roman Forum in the morning you are only too apt to be + hurried home by remembrance of the lunch-hour. That, at any rate, was my + case, but I was not so hungry that I would not pause on my way hotelward + at what used to be the Temple of Vesta in my earlier time, but which, is + now superseded by the more authentic temple in the Forum. I had long + revered the first in its former quality, and I now paid it the tribute of + unwilling renunciation. It is so nearly a perfect relic of ancient Rome + and so much more impressive, in its all but unbroken peristyle, than the + later but recumbent claimant to its identity that I am sure the owners of + the little bronze or alabaster copies of it scattered over the world must + share my pious reluctance. The custodian is still very proud of it, and + would have lectured me upon it much longer than I let him; as it was, he + kept me while he could cast a blazing copy of the <i>Popolo Romano</i> + into the cavernous crypt under it, apparently to show me how deep it was. + He may have had other reasons; but in any case I urge the traveller to + allow him to do it, for it costs no additional fee, and it seems to do him + so much good. If it is not very near lunch-time, let the traveller look + well about him in the dusty little piazza there, for the Temple of + Fortune, with its bruised but beautiful facade, is hard by, as much in the + form that Servius Tullius gave it as could well be expected after all this + time. + </p> + <p> + Perhaps the Circus of Marcellus is on the traveller's way home to lunch; + but he will always be passing the segment of its arcaded wall, filled in + with mediaeval masonry; and he need not stop, especially if he has his cab + by the hour, for there is nothing more to be seen of the circus. A + glimpse, through overhanging foliage, of the steps to the Campidoglio, + with Castor and Pollux beside their horses at top, may be a fortunate + accident of his course. If this happens it will help to rehabilitate for + him the Rome of the paganism to which these divinities remained true + through all temptations to Judaize during the unnumbered centuries of + their sojourn, forgotten, in the Ghetto. It is hardly possible that his + glimpse will include even the top of Marcus Aurelius's head where he sits + his bronze charger—an extremely fat one—so majestically in the + piazza beyond those brothers, as if conscious of being the most noble + equestrian statue which has ridden down to us from antiquity. + </p> + <p> + A more purposed sight of all this will, of course, supply any defects of + chance, though I myself always liked chance encounters with the monuments + of the past. I had constantly cherished a remembrance of the nobly + beautiful facade which is all that is left of the Temple of Neptune, and I + meant deliberately to revisit it if I could find out where it was. A kind + fortuity befriended me when one day, driving through the little piazza + where it lurks behind the Piazza Co-lonna, I looked up, and there, in + awe-striking procession, stood the mighty antique columns sustaining the + entablature of mediaeval stucco with their fluted marble. I could not say + why their poor, defaced, immortal grandeur should have always so affected + me, for I do not know that my veneration was due it more than many other + fragments of the past; but no arch or pillar of them all seems so + impressive, so pathetic. To make the reader the greatest possible + confidence, I will own that I passed five times through the Piazza Colonna + to my tailor's in the next piazza (at Rome your tailor wishes you to try + on till you have almost worn your new clothes out in the ordeal) before I + realized that the Column of Marcus Aurelius was not the more famous Column + of Trajan. There is, in fact, a strong family likeness between these + columns, both being bandaged round from bottom to top with the tale of the + imperial achievements and having a general effect in common; but there is + no brother or cousin to the dignity of that melancholy yet vigorous ruin + of the Temple of Neptune, or anything that resembles it in the whole of + ancient Rome. It survives having been a custom-house and being a + stock-exchange without apparent ignominy, while one feels an incongruity, + to say the least, in the Column of Marcus Aurelius looking down on the + sign of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. Whether this is + worse than for the Palazzo di Venezia to confront the American Express + Company where it is housed on the other side of the piazza I cannot say. + What I can say is that I believe the Temple of Neptune would have been + superior to either fate; though I may be mistaken. + </p> + <p> + Ruin, nearly everywhere in Rome, has to be very patient of the + environment; and even the monuments of the past which are in comparatively + good repair have not always the keeping that the past would probably have + chosen for them. One that suffers as little as any, if not the very least, + is the Pantheon, on whose glorious porch you are apt to come suddenly, + either from a narrow street beside it or across its piazza, beyond the + fountain fringed with post-card boys and their bargains. In spite of them, + the sight of the temple does mightily lift the heart; and though you may + have had, as I had, forty-odd years to believe in it, you must waver in + doubt of its reality whenever you see it. It seems too great to be true, + standing there in its immortal sublimity, the temple of all the gods by + pagan creation, and all the saints by Christian consecration, and + challenging your veneration equally as classic or catholic. It is worthy + the honor ascribed to it in the very latest edition of Murray's <i>Handbook</i> + as “the best-preserved monument of ancient Rome”; worthy the praise of the + fastidious and difficult Hare as “the most perfect pagan building in the + city”; worthy whatever higher laud my unconsulted Baedeker bestows upon + it. But I speak of the outside; and let not the traveller grieve if he + comes upon it at the noon hour, as I did last, and finds its vast bronze + doors closing against him until three o'clock; there are many sadder + things in life than not seeing the interior of the Pantheon. The gods are + all gone, and the saints are gone or going, for the State has taken the + Pantheon from the Church and is making it a national mausoleum. Victor + Emmanuel the Great and Umberto the Kind already lie there; but otherwise + the wide Cyclopean eye of the opening in the roof of the rotunda looks + down upon a vacancy which even your own name, as written in the visitors' + book, in the keeping of a solemn beadle, does not suffice to fill, and + which the lingering side altars scarcely relieve. + </p> + <p> + I proved the fact by successive visits; but, after all my content with the + outside of the Pantheon, I came to think that what you want in Rome is not + the best-preserved monument, not the most perfect pagan building, but the + most ruinous ruin you can get. I am not sure that you get this in the + mouldering memorials of the past on the Palatine Hill, but you get + something more nearly like it than anything I can think of at the moment. + In that imperial and patrician and plutocratic residential quarter you + see, if you are of the moderately moneyed middle class, what the pride of + life must always come to when it has its way; and your consolation is full + if you pause to reflect how some day Fifth Avenue and the two millionaire + blocks eastward will be as the Palatine now is. + </p> + <p> + Riches and power are of the same make in every time, though they may wear + different faces from age to age; and it will be well for the very wealthy + members of our smart set to keep this fact in mind when they visit that + huge sepulchre of human vainglory. + </p> + <p> + But I will not pretend that I did so myself that matchless April morning + when I climbed over the ruins of the Palatine and found the sun rather + sickeningly hot there. That is to say, it was so in the open spaces which + were respectively called the house of this emperor and that, the temple of + this deity or that, whose divine honors half the Caesars shared; in the + Stadium, beside the Lupercal, and the like. The Lupercal was really + imaginable as the home of the patroness wolf of Rome, being a wild knot of + hill fitly overgrown with brambles and bushes, and looking very probably + the spot where Caesar would thrice have refused the crown that Antony + offered him. But for the rest, one ruin might very well pass for another; + a temple with a broken statue and the stumps of a few columns could very + easily deceive any one but an archaeologist. Fortunately we had the + charming companionship of one of the most amiable of archaeologists, who + was none the less learned for being a woman; and she made even me dimly + aware of identities which would else have been lost upon me. To be sure, I + think that without help I should have known the Stadium when I came to it, + because it seemed studied from that in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, + though it was indefinitely more dilapidated, was so obviously meant for + the same sorts of games and races. I do not know but it was larger than + the Cambridge Stadium, though I will not speak so confidently of its size + as of that deathly cold in the vaults and subterranean passages by which + we found our way to the burning upper air out of the foundations and + basements of palaces and temples and libraries and theatres that had + ceased to be. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-23.jpg" alt="23 the Rostra in The Forum " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + One of the most comfortable of these galleries was that in which Caligula + was justly done to death, or, if not Caligula, it was some other tyrant + who deserved as little to live. But for our guide I should not have + remembered his slaughter there, and how much satisfaction it had given me + when I first read of it in Goldsmith's <i>History of Rome;</i> and really + you must not acquaint yourself too early with such facts, for you forget + them just when you could turn them to account. History is apt to forsake + you in the scene of it and come lagging hack afterward; and you cannot + hope always to have an archaeologist at your elbow to remind you of things + you have forgotten or possibly have not known. Suetonius, Plutarch, De + Quincey, Gibbon, these are no bad preparations for a visit to the + Palatine, but it is better to have read them yesterday than the day before + if you wish to draw suddenly upon them for associations with any specific + spot. If I were to go again to the Palatine, I would take care to fortify + myself with such structural facts from Hare's <i>Walks in Rome,</i> or + from Murray, or even from Baedeker, as that it was the home of Augustus + and Tiberius, Domitian and Nero and Caligula and Septimius Severus and + Germanicus, and a very few of their next friends, and that it radically + differed from the Forum in being exclusively private and personal to the + residents, while that was inclusively public and common to the whole + world. I strongly urge the reader to fortify himself on this point, for + otherwise he will miss such significance as the place may possibly have + for him. Let him not trust to his impressions from his general reading; + there is nothing so treacherous; he may have general reading enough to + sink a ship, but unless he has a cargo taken newly on board he will find + himself tossing without ballast on those billowy slopes of the Palatine, + where he will vainly try for definite anchorage. + </p> + <p> + The billowy effect of the Palatine, inconvenient to the explorer, is its + greatest charm from afar, in whatever morning or evening light, or sun or + rain, you get its soft, brownish, greenish, velvety masses. Distance on it + is best, and distance in time as well as space. If you can believe the + stucco reconstruction opposite the Forum gate, ruin has been even kinder + to the Palatine than to the Forum, with which it was equally ugly when in + repair, if taken in the altogether, however beautiful in detail. As you + see it in that reproduction, it is a horror, and a very vulgar horror, + such a horror as only unlimited wealth and uncontrolled power can produce. + If you will think of individualism gone mad, and each successive + personality crushing out and oversloughing some other, without that regard + for proportion and propriety which only the sense of a superior collective + right can inspire, you will imagine the Palatine. Mount Morris, at One + Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, if unscrupulously built upon by the + multimillionaires thronging to New York and seeking to house themselves + each more splendidly and spaciously than the other, would offer a + suggestion in miniature of what the Palatine seems to have been like in + its glory. But the ruined Mount Morris, even allowing for the natural + growth of the landscape in two thousand years, could show no such prospect + twenty centuries hence as we got that morning from a bit of wilding garden + near the Convent of San Bonaventura, on the brow of the Palatine. Some + snowy tops pillowed themselves on the utmost horizon, and across the + Campagna the broken aqueducts stalked and fell down and stumbled to their + legs again. The Baths of Caracalla bulked up in rugged, monstrous + fragments, and then in the foreground, filling the whole eye, the + Colosseum rose and stood, and all Rome sank round it. The Forum lay deep + under us, vainly struggling with the broken syllables of its demolition to + impart a sense of its past, and at our feet in that bit of garden where + the roses were blooming and the plum-trees were blowing and the birds were + singing, there stretched itself in the grass a fallen pillar wreathed with + the folds of a marble serpent, the emblem of the oldest worship under the + sun, as I was proud to remember without present help. It was the same + immemorial, universal faith which the Mound Builders of our own West + symbolized in the huge earthen serpents they shaped uncounted ages before + the red savages came to wonder at them, and doubtless it had been welcomed + by Rome in her large, loose, cynical toleration, together with cults + which, like that of Isis and Osiris, were fads of yesterday beside it. + Somehow it gave the humanest touch in the complex impression of the + overhistoried scene. It made one feel very old, yet very young—old + with the age and young with the youth of the world—and very much at + home. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI. PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH THE PAST + </h2> + <p> + I was myself part of the antiquity with which I have been trying to be + honest; and, though my date was no earlier than the seventh decade of the + nineteenth century, still so many and such cataclysmal changes had passed + over Rome since my time that I was, as far as concerned my own + consciousness, practically of the period of the Pantheon, say. The + Pantheon, in fact, was among my first associations with Rome. I lodged + very near it, in the next piazza, so that, if we were not contemporaries, + we were companions, and I could not go out of my hotel to look up a more + permanent sojourn without passing by it. Perhaps I wished to pass by it, + and might really have found my way to the Corso without the Pantheon's + help. + </p> + <p> + I have no longer a definite idea why I should have made my sojourn in the + very simple and modest little street called Via del Gambero, which runs + along behind the Corso apparently till it gets tired and then stops. But + very possibly it was because the Via del Gambero was so simple and modest + that I chose it as the measure of my means; or possibly I may have heard + of the apartment I took in it from wayfarers passing through Venice, where + I then lived, and able to commend it from their own experience of it; + people in that kind day used to do such things. However it was, I took the + apartment, and found it, though small, apt for me, as Ariosto said of his + house, and I dwelt in it with my family a month or more in great comfort + and content. In fact, it seemed to us the pleasantest apartment in Rome, + where the apartments of passing strangers were not so proud under Pius IX. + as they are under Victor Emmanuel III. I do not know why it should have + been called the Street of the Lobster, but it may have been in an obscure + play of the fancy with the notion of a backward gait in it that I came to + believe that, in the many improvements which had befallen Rome, Via del + Gambero had disappeared. Destroyed, some traveller from antique lands had + told me, I dare say; obliterated, wiped out by the march of municipal + progress. At any rate, I had so long resigned the hope of revisiting the + quiet scene that when I revisited Rome last winter, after the flight of + ages, and one day found myself in a shop on the Corso, it was from + something like a hardy irony that I asked the shopman if a street called + Via del Gambero still existed in that neighborhood. I said that I had once + lodged in it forty-odd years before; but I believed it had been + demolished. Not at all, the shopman said; it was just behind his place; + and what was the number of the house? I told him, and he laughed for joy + in being able to do me a pleasure; me, a stranger from the strange land of + sky-scratchers <i>(grattacieli),</i> as the Italians not inadequately + translate sky-scrapers. If I would favor him through his back shop he + would show me how close I was upon it; and from his threshold he pointed + to the corner twenty yards off, which, when I had turned it, left me + almost at my own door. + </p> + <p> + In that transmuted Rome Via del Gambero, at least, was wholly unchanged, + and there was not a wrinkle in the front of the house where we had + sojourned so comfortably, so contentedly, in our incredible youth. I had + not quite the courage to ring and ask if we were at home; but, standing + across the way and looking up at the window, it seemed to me that I might + have seen my own young face peering out in a somewhat suspicious question + of the old eyes staring up so fixedly at it. Who was I, and what was I + doing there? Was I waiting, hanging idly about, to see the Armenian + archbishop coming to carry my other self in his red coach to the Sistine + Chapel, where we were to hear Pius IX. say mass? There was no harm in my + hanging about, but the street was narrow and there was a chance of my + being ground up by some passing cart against the wall there behind me if I + was not careful. I could not tell my proud young double that we were one, + and that I was going in the archbishop's red coach as well; he would never + have believed it of my gray hairs and sunken figure. I could not even ask + him what had become of the grocer near by, whom I used to get some homely + supplies of, perhaps eggs or oranges, or the like, when I came out in the + December mornings, and who, when I said that it was very cold, would own + that it was <i>un poco rigidetto,</i> or a little bit stiffish. The ice on + the pavement, not clean-swept as now, but slopped and frozen, had been + witness of that; the ice was gone and the grocer with it; and where really + was I? At the window up there, or leaning against the apse of the church + opposite? What church was it, anyway? I never knew; I never asked. Why + should I insist upon a common identity with a man of twenty-seven to whom + my threescore and ten could only bring perplexity, to say the least, and + very likely vexation? I went away from Via del Gambero, where the piety of + the reader will seek either of myselves in vain. In my earlier date one + used to see the red legs of the French soldiers about the Roman streets, + and the fierce faces of the French officers, fierce as if they felt + themselves wrongfully there and were braving it out against their + consciences. Very likely they had no conscience about it; they had come + there over the dead body of the Roman Republic at the will of their rascal + president, and they were staying there by the will of their rascal + emperor, to keep on his throne the pope from whom the Italians had hoped + for unity and liberty. No one is very much to blame for anything, I + suppose, and very likely Pius IX. had not voluntarily disappointed his + countrymen, who may have expected too much. But then the French had been + there fifteen years, and were to be there another fifteen years yet. Now + they are gone, with the archbishop's red coach, and the complaisant + grocer, and the young man of twenty-seven in Via del Gambero, and the rest + of the things that the sun looked on and will look on the like of again, + no doubt, in our monotonous round of him. + </p> + <p> + To-day, instead of the red legs of the French soldiers, you see the blue + legs of the Italian soldiers, and instead of the fierce faces of their + officers, the serious, intelligent, mostly spectacled faces of the Italian + officers, in sweeping cloaks of tender blue verging on lavender. They are + soldierly men none the less for their gentler aspect, and perhaps + something the more; and a better thing yet is that there are comparatively + few of them. There are few of the privates also, far fewer than the + priests and the students of the ecclesiastical schools, who dress like + priests and go dashing through the streets in files and troops. + </p> + <p> + I have an impression that one sees about the proportion of Italian + soldiers in Rome that one sees of American soldiers in Washington, or, at + least, not many more. The barracks are apparently outside the walls; there + you meet cavalry going and coming, and detachments of <i>bersaglieri;</i> + or riflemen, pushing on at their quick trot, or plainer infantry trudging + wearily. Certainly, in a capital where the Church holds itself prisoner, + there is no show of force on the part of its captors; and this is pleasant + to the friend of man and the lover of Italy for other reasons. In the + absence of the military you can imagine that not only does the state not + wish to boast its political supremacy in the ancient capital of the + Church, but it does not desire to show the potentiality of holding its own + against the republic which is instinct there. The monarchy is the + consensus of all the differing wills in Italy, which naturally would not + for the most part have chosen a monarchy. But never was a monarchy so + mild-mannered or seated so firmly, for the present at least, in the + affection and reason of its people. + </p> + <p> + This is not the place (as writers say who have not prepared themselves + with the requisite ideas at a given point) to speak of the situation in + Rome; and I meant only to note that there are more ecclesiastics than + conscripts to be seen there. Of all the varying costumes of the varying + schools, none is so pleasing, so vivid, as that of the German students as + they rush swiftly by in their flying robes of scarlet. The red matches the + ruddy health in their cheeks, and there is a sort of gladness in their + fling that wins the liking as well as the looking; so that almost one + would not mind being a German student of theology one's self. There are + other-costumes running in color from violet, and blue with orange sashes, + to unrelieved black and black trimmed with red; but I cannot remember + which nationality wears which. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-24.jpg" alt="24 the Mosaics Under The Capuchin Church " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I am not sure but one sees as many priests in Rome now as in the times + when they ruled it; and I am no such Protestant that I will pretend I do + not like a monsignore when I meet him, either in the street or at + afternoon tea, as one sometimes may. I have no grudge against priests of + any rank; but I did not seek to see them at the functions, as I used in + the old days to do. Shall I say that I now rather tolerated than welcomed + myself there through the hospitality which so freely opens the churches of + the Church to all comers of whatever creed? What right had I, a heretic + and recusant, to come staring and standing round where the faithful were + kneeling and praying? If we could conceive of our fast-locked conventicles + being thrown as freely open, could we conceive of Catholics wandering up + and down their naves and aisles while the hymning or preaching went on? + After being so high-minded in the matter, shall I confess that I was a + good deal kept out of the churches by the cold in them? It was a sort of + stored cold, much greater than that outside, though there was something + warming to the fancy, at least, in the smoke and smell of the incense. + </p> + <p> + Even with the Church of the Capuchins, which we lived opposite, I was + dilatory, though in my mediaeval days it had been one of the first places + to which I hurried. In those days everybody said you must be sure and go + to the Capuchins', because Guide's “St. Michael and the Enemy” was there, + and still more because the wonderful bone mosaics in the cemetery under + the church were not on any account to be missed. I suspect that in both + these matters I had then a very crude taste, but it was not from my + greater refinement that I now let the Capuchin church go on long + un-revisited. It was, for one thing, too instantly and constantly + accessible across the street there; and it is well known human nature is + such that it will not seek the line of the least resistance as long as it + can help. Besides, I could hardly believe that it was really the Capuchin + church which I had once so hastened to see, and I neglected it almost two + months, contenting myself with the display of those hand-bills on the + convent walls, spreading largely and glaringly incongruous over it. When I + did go I found the Guido ridiculous, of course, in the painter's + imagination of the archangel as a sort of dancing figure in a <i>tableau + vivant,</i> and yet of a sublime authority in the execution. To be more + honest, I had little feeling about it and less knowledge. + </p> + <p> + It was not so cold in the church as I had expected; and in the succession + of side chapels, beginning with the St. Michael's and opening into one + another, we found a kind of domesticity close upon cosiness, which we were + enjoying for its own sake, when we were aware of a pale, gentle young girl + who seemed to be alone there. She asked, in our unmistakable native + accents, if we were going to see the Capuchin mosaics in their place + below; and one of us said, promptly, No, indeed; but relented at the + shadow of disappointment that came over the girl's face, and asked, Was + she going? The girl said, Oh, she guessed she could see them some other + time; and then she who had spoken ordered him who had not spoken to go + with her. I do not know what question of propriety engaged them with + reference to her going alone with the handsome young monk waiting to + accompany her; but he was certainly too handsome for a monk of any age. We + followed him, however, and I had my usual nausea on viewing the decoration + of the ceilings and walls of the place below; it always makes me sick to + go into that place; between realizing that I am of the same make as the + brothers composing those mosaics, and trying to imagine what the intricate + patterns will do at the Resurrection Day, I cannot command myself. Neither + am I supported by the sight of some skeletons, the raw material of that + grewsome artistry, deposited whole in their coffins in the niches next the + ground, though their skulls smile so reassuringly from their cowls; their + cheeriness cannot make me like them. But my companion seemed to be merely + interested; and I fancied her deciding that it all quite came up to her + expectations, while I translated for her from the monk that the dead used + to be left in the hallowed earth from Jerusalem covering the ground before + they were taken up and decoratively employed, but that since the Italian + occupation of Rome the art had fallen into abeyance. She said nothing, but + when we came out she stood a moment on the pavement beside our cab and + confessed herself a New England girl, from an inland town, who was + travelling with relatives. She had been sick, and she had come alone, as + soon as she could get out, to see the wonders of the Capuchin church, + because she had heard so much of them. We said we hoped she had been + pleased, and she said, “Oh yes, indeed,” and then she said, “Well, + good-bye,” and gently tilted away, leaving us glad that there could still + be in an old, spoiled world such sweetness and innocence and easily + gratified love of the beautiful. + </p> + <p> + Taking Rome so easily, so provisionally, while waiting the eventualities + of the colds which mild climates are sure to give their frequenters from + the winterlands, I became aware of a latent anxiety respecting St. + Peter's. I did not feel that the church would really get away without our + meeting, but I felt that it was somehow culpably hazardous in me to be + taking chances with it. As a family, we might never collectively visit it, + and, in fact, we never did; but one day I drove boldly (if secretly) off + alone and renewed my acquaintance with this contemporary of mine; for, if + you have been in Rome a generation and a half ago, you find that you are + coeval not only with the regal, the republican, and the imperial Rome, but + with each Rome of the successive popes, down, at least, to that of Pius + IX. St. Peter's will not be, by any means, your oldest friend, but it will + be an acquaintance of such long standing that you may not wish to use it + with all the frankness which its faults invite. If you say, when you drive + into its piazza between the sublime colonnades which stretch forth their + mighty embrace as if to take the whole world to the church's heart, that + here is the best of St. Peter's, you will not be wrong. If you say that + here is grandeur, and that there where the temple fronts you grandiosity + begins, you will be rhetorical, but, again, you will not be wrong. The day + of my furtive visit was sober and already waning, with a breeze in which + the fountains streamed flaglike, and with a gentle sky on which the + population of statues above the colonnades defined themselves in leisure + attitudes, so recognizable all that I am sure if they had come down and + taken me by the hand we could have called one another by name without a + moment's hesitation. Every detail of a prospect which is without its peer + on earth, but may very possibly be matched in Paradise, had been so deeply + stamped in my remembrance that I smiled for pleasure in finding myself in + an environment far more familiar than any other I could think of at the + time. It was measurably the same within the church, but it was not quite + the same in the reserves I was obliged to make, the reefs I was obliged to + take in my rapture. The fact is, that unless you delight in a hugeness + whose bareness no ornamentation can, or does at least, conceal, you do not + find the interior of St. Peter's adequate to the exterior. In the mere + article of hugeness, even, it fails through the interposition of the + baldachin midway of the vast nave, and each detail seems to fail of the + office of beauty more lamentably than another. + </p> + <p> + I had known, I had never forgotten, that St. Peter's was very, very + baroque, but I had not known, I had not remembered how baroque it was. It + is not so badly baroque as the Church of the Jesuits either in Rome or in + Venice, or as the Cathedral at Wuerzburg; but still it is badly baroque, + though, again, not so baroque in the architecture as in the sculpture. In + the statues of most of the saints and popes it could not be more baroque; + they swagger in their niches or over their tombs in an excess of decadent + taste for which the most bigoted agnostic, however Protestant he may be, + must generously grieve. It is not conceivably the taste of the church or + the faith; it is the taste of the wicked world, now withered and wasted to + powerlessness, which overruled both for evil in art from its evil life. + The saints and the popes are, aesthetically, lamentable enough; but the + allegories in bronze or marble, which are mostly the sixteenth-century + notions of the Virtues, are inexpressible—some of these creatures + ought really to be put out of the place; but I suppose their friends would + say they ought to be left as typical of the period. In the case of that + merciless miscreant, Queen Christina of Sweden, who has her monument in + St. Peter's, there would be people to say she must have her monument in + some place; but, all the same, remembering Monaldeschi—how he was + stabbed to death by her command, the kinder assassins staying their hands + from time to time, while his confessor went vainly to implore her pardon—it + is shocking to find her tomb in the prime church in Christendom. At first + it offends one to see certain pontiffs with mustaches and imperials and + goatees; but, if one reflects that so they wore them in life, one + perceives right in it; only when one comes to earlier or later popes, + bearded in medieval majority or shaven in the decent modern fashion, one + can endure those others only as part of the prevailing baroque of the + church. Canova was not so Greek or even so classic as one used to think + him, but one hardly has a moment of repose in St. Peter's till one comes + to a monument by him and rests in its quiet. It is tame, it is even weak, + if you like; but compared with the frantic agglomeration of gilt clouds + and sunbursts, and marble and bronze figures in the high-altar, it is + heavenly serene and lovely. + </p> + <p> + There were not many people in St. Peter's that afternoon, so that I could + give undisturbed attention to the workman repairing the pavement at one + point and grinding the marble smooth with a slow, secular movement, as if + he were part of its age-Ions: waste and repair. Another day, the last day + I came, there were companies of the personally conducted, following their + leaders about and listening to the lectures in several languages, which no + more stirred the immense tranquillity than they themselves qualified the + spacious vacancy of the temple: you were vaguely sensible of the one and + of the other like things heard and seen in a drowse. It was a pleasant + vagueness in which all angularities of feeling were lost, and you were + disposed to a tolerance of the things that had hurt or offended you + before. As a contemporary of the edifice, throughout its growth, you could + account for them more and more as of their periods. Perhaps through your + genial reconciliation there came, however dimly, a suggestion of something + unnatural and alien in your presence there as a mere sightseer, or, at + best, a connoisseur much or little instructed. If you had been there, say, + as a worshipper, would you have been afflicted by the incongruities of the + sculptures or by the whole baroque keeping? Possibly this consideration + made you go away much modester than you came. “After all,” you may have + said, “it is not a gallery; it is not a museum. It is a house of prayer,” + and you emerged, let us hope, humbled, and in so far fitted for renewed + joy in the beauty, the glory of the sublime colonnades. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VII. CHANCES IN CHURCHES + </h2> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-25.jpg" alt="25 Santa Maria Sopra Minerva " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + If any one were to ask me which was the most beautiful church in Rome I + should temporize, and perhaps I should end by saying that there was none. + Ecclesiastical Rome seems to have inherited the instinct of imperial Rome + for ugliness; only, where imperial Rome used the instinct collectively, + ecclesiastical Rome has used it distributively in the innumerable + churches, each less lovely than the other. This position will do to hedge + from; it is a bold outpost from which I may be driven in, especially by + travellers who have seen the churches I did not see. I took my chances, + they theirs; for nobody can singly see all the churches in Rome; that + would need a syndicate. + </p> + <p> + If imperial Rome was beautiful in detail because it had the Greeks to + imagine the things it so hideously grouped, ecclesiastical Rome may be + unbeautiful in detail because it had not the Goths to realize the beauty + of its religious aspiration—that is, if it was the Goths who + invented Gothic architecture; I do not suppose it was. Anyway, there is + said to be but one Gothic church in Rome, and this I did not visit, + perhaps because I felt that I must inure myself to the prevalent baroque, + or perhaps from mere perversity. I can merely say in self-defence that, on + the outside, Santa Maria sopra Minerva no more promised an inner beauty + than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the power + of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches sometimes + have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in sculpture, in + architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the roof, + and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others. Marvels of riches are + lavished upon chapels and altars, which again are so burdened with bronze + gilded or silver plated, and precious stones wrought and unwrought, that + the soul, or if not the soul the taste, shrinks dismayed from them. + Execution in default of inspiration has had its way to the last excess; + there is nothing that it has not done to show what it can do; and all that + it has done is a triumph of misguided skill and power. But it would be a + mistake for the spectator to imagine that anything has been done from the + spirit in which he receives it; everything is the expression of devoted + faith in the forms that the art of the time offered. + </p> + <p> + In the monstrous marble tableau, say, of “Religion Triumphing Over + Heresy,” he may be very sure that the artist was not winking an ironical + eye where he made Faith spurning Schism with her foot look very much like + a lady of imperfect breeding who has lost her temper; he was most devoutly + in earnest, or at least those were so, both cleric and laic, for whom he + wrought his prodigy. We others, pagans or Protestants, had better + understand that the children of the Church, and especially the poor + children, were serious through all the shows that seem to us preposterous; + they had not renounced something for nothing; if they bowed that very + fallible thing, Reason, to Dogma, they got faith for their reward and + could gladly accept whatever symbol of it was offered them. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-26.jpg" alt="26 Church Op Ara Coeli " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + No matter how baroque any church was, it could express something of this + sincerity, and in their way the worshippers seemed always simply at home + in it. In San Lorenzo in Lucina, where I went to see the truly sublime + “Crucifixion” by Guido (there is also a bar of St. Lawrence's gridiron to + be seen, but I did not know it at the time) I liked the unconsciousness of + the girl kneeling before the high altar and provisionally gossiping with + the young sacristan before she began her devotions. She gave her mind to + them when he asked me if I wished to see the Guido, for I could see her + lips moving while she shared my veneration of that most affecting + masterpiece; the more genuinely affecting because it expresses the rapture + and not the anguish of the Passion. I have no doubt she was grateful when + the sacristan proposed my having the electric light turned on it, and + when, though that I knew it would cost me something more, I assented. + </p> + <p> + They have the electric light now in all the holy places, and notably in + the dungeon where St. Peter was imprisoned, and where the custodian was so + proud of it, as the latest improvement, and as far more satisfactory than + candles. The shrine of the miraculous Bambino in the Church of Ara Coeli + is also lighted by electricity, which spares no detail of the child's + apparel and appearance. To other eyes than those of faith it has the + effect of a life-size but not life-like doll, piously bedizened and + jewelled over, but rather ill-humored looking, or, if not that, proud + looking or severe looking. To the eyes in which its sickbed visits have + dried the tears it must wear an aspect of heavenly pity and beauty; and I + am very willing to believe that these are the eyes which see it aright. As + it was, and taking it literally, it seemed far less mechanical and + unfeeling than the monk who pulled it out and pushed it back on its + wheeled platform. But he must get tired of showing it to the unbelievers + who come out of curiosity, and very likely I should, if I were in his + place, as nonchalantly wipe across the glass front of the shrine the card + with the Bambino's legend printed in various languages on it, which you + may then buy with the blessing from the glass for whatever you choose to + give. + </p> + <p> + Where art and antiquity are so abundant as in Rome, the Bambino incident + is probably what the reader, when he has visited the Church of Ara Coeli + will chiefly remember, and I will not pretend to be any better than the + reader, though I will say that I have a persistent sense of something + important about the roof; and there are the Pinturrichio frescos, which an + old Sienese like me must have the taste for. The not easily praiseful Hare + says it is “one of the most interesting of Christian churches,” and + without allowing that there are any other sorts of churches I may allow + that this is one of the least unlovely in Rome. Trinita de' Monti seemed + to be another, but only, I dare say, subjectively, because of the + exquisite pleasure we had one afternoon in March when we went into it for + the nuns' singing of the Benediction. That, we had been told, was + something which no one coming to Rome should miss; and we were so anxious + not to miss it that on our way to the Pincian Hill we stopped at the foot + of the church-steps, and reassured ourselves of the hour through the + kindness of an English-speaking nurse-maid at the bottom and of a gentle + nun at the top, who both told us the hour would be exactly five. + </p> + <p> + When we came back at that time and bought our way into the church by + rightful payment to the two blind beggars who guarded its doors, we found + it packed with people who bad been more literally punctual. They were of + all nations, but a large part were Anglo-Americans, and a young girl of + this race rose and gave her seat, with a sweet insistence that would not + be denied, to that one of us who deserved it most. He who was left leaning + against the soft side of a pillar hesitated whether to make some young + priests spreading over undue space on one of the benches push up, and he + enjoyed a rich moment of self-satisfaction in his forbearance. He was + there, to be sure, an alien and a heretic, out of mere curiosity, and they + were there probably so rapt in their devout attention that they did not + notice their errant step-brother, and so did not think to offer him the + hospitality of their mother church's house. But he would not make any such + allowance; he condemned them with the unsparing severity of the + strap-hanger in a trolley-car, who blushes with shame for the serried rows + of men sitting behind their newspapers. When he was at his wit's end to + find excuse for them a priest on another bench made room, and he sank down + glad to forgive and forget; but now he would not have yielded his place to + any other Protestant in Christendom. + </p> + <p> + In the collective curiosity he lost the sense of self-reproach for his + own, and eagerly bent his gaze on the group of officiating priests at the + high altar beyond the grille of the choir. The altar was all a blaze of + electric lights, and there was a novel effect in their composition in the + crosses resting diagonally on either side of it. Next the grille showed + the feathers and fashions of the mothers and sisters of the young girls + from the school of the adjoining Convent of the Sacred Heart, and midway + between these visitors, like a flock of white birds stooping on some + heavenly plain, the white veils of the girls stretched in lovely levels to + left and right. Nothing could have attuned the spirit for the surprise + awaiting it like this angelic sight; and when the voices of the nuns fell + suddenly from the organ gallery, behind all the people, like the singing + of the morning stars molten in one adoring music and falling from the + zenith down, whatever moments of innocent joy life might have had it could + have had none surpassing that. + </p> + <p> + But when we came out the self-mockery with which life is apt to recover + itself from any exaltation began. In returning from the Pincio the only + cab we had been able to get was the last left of the very worst cabs in + Rome, and we had bidden the driver wait for us at the church-steps, not + without some hope that he would play us false. But there he was, true to + his word, with such disciplined fidelity as that of the Roman sentinels + who used to die at their posts; and we mounted to ours with the muted + prayer that we, at least, might reach home alive. This did not seem + probable when the driver whipped up his horse. It appeared to have aged + and sickened while we were in the church, though we had thought it looked + as bad as could be before, and it lurched alarmingly from side to side, + recovering itself with a plunge of its heavy head away from the side in + which its body was sinking. The driver swayed on his box, having fallen + equally decrepit in spite of the restoratives he seemed to have applied + for his years and infirmities. His clothes had put on some such effect of + extreme decay as those of Rip Van Winkle in the third act; there was + danger that he would fall on top of his falling horse, and that their + raiment would mingle in one scandalous ruin. Via Sistina had never been so + full of people before; never before had it been so long to that point + where we were to turn out of it into the friendly obscurity of the little + cross street which would bring us to our hotel. We could not consent to + arrive in that form; we made the driver stop, and we got out and began + overpaying him to release us. But the more generously we overpaid him the + more nobly he insisted upon serving us to our door. At last, by such a + lavish expenditure as ought richly to provide for the few remaining years + of himself and his horse, we prevailed with him to let us go, and reached + our hotel glad, almost proud, to arrive on foot. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-27.jpg" alt="27 Church of Santa Maggiore " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Hare tells me, now it is too late, that I may reach the Church of Santa + Maggiore by keeping straight on through the long, long straightness of the + Via Sistina. I reached that church by quite another way after many + postponements; for I thought I remembered all about it from my visit in + 1864. But really nothing had remained to me save a sense of the + exceptional dignity of the church, and the sole fact that the roof of its + most noble nave is thickly plated with the first gold mined in South + America, which Ferdinand and Isabella gave that least estimable of the + popes, Alexander VI. Now I know that it is far richer than any gold could + make it in the treasures of history and legend, which fairly encrust it in + every part. Doubtless some portion of this wealth my fellow-sightseers + were striving to store up out of the guide-books which they bore in their + hands and from which they strained their eyes to the memorable points as + they slowly paced through the temple. Some were reading one to another in + bated voices, and I thought them ridiculous; but perhaps they were wise, + and rather he was ridiculous who marched by them and contented himself + with a general sense of the grandeur, the splendor. More than any other + church except that of San Paolo fuori le Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore + imparts this sense, for, as I have already pretended, St. Peter's fails of + it. Without as well as within the church is spacious and impressive from + its spaciousness; but it seems more densely fringed than most others with + peddlers of post-cards and mosaic pins. On going in you can plunge through + their ranks, but in coming out you do not so easily escape. One boy + pursued me quite to my cab, in spite of my denials of hand and tongue. + There he stayed the driver while he made a last, a humorous appeal. + “Skiddoo?” he asked in my native speech. “Yes,” I sullenly replied, + “skiddoo!” But it is now one of the regrets which I shall always feel for + my wasted opportunities in Rome that I did not buy all his post-cards. + Patient gayety like his merited as much. + </p> + <p> + As it was, I drove callously away from Santa Maria Maggiore to San Pietro + in Vincoli, where I expected to renew my veneration for Michelangelo's + Moses. That famous figure is no longer so much in the minds of men as it + used to be, I think; and, if one were to be quite honest with one's self + as to the why and wherefore of one's earlier veneration, one might not get + a very distinct or convincing reply. Do sculptors and painters suffer + periods of slight as authors do? Are Raphael and Michelangelo only + provisionally eclipsed by Botticelli and by Donatello and Mino da Fiesole, + or are they remanded to a lasting limbo? I find I have said in my notes + that the Moses is improbable and unimpressive, and I pretended a more + genuine joy in the heads of the two Pollajuolo brothers which startle you + from their tomb as you enter the church. Is the true, then, better than + the ideal, or is it only my grovelling spirit which prefers it? What I + scarcely venture to say is that those two men evidently lived and still + live, and that Michelangelo's prophet never lived; I scarcely venture, + because I remember with tenderness how certain clear and sweet spirits + used to bow their reason before the Moses as before a dogma of art which + must be implicitly accepted. Do they still do so, those clear and sweet + spirits? + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-28.jpg" + alt="28 Michelangelo's 'moses' in San Pietro In Vincoli " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The archaeologist who was driving my cab that morning had pointed out to + me on the way to this church the tower on which Nero stood fiddling while + Rome was burning. It is a strong, square, mediaeval structure which will + serve the purpose of legend yet many centuries, if progress does not pull + it down; but the fiddle no longer exists, apparently, and Nero himself is + dead. When I came out and mounted into my cab, my driver showed me with + his whip, beyond a garden wall, a second tower, very beautiful against the + blue sky, above the slim cypresses, which he said was the scene of the + wicked revels of Lucrezia Borgia. I do not know why it has been chosen for + this distinction above other towers; but it was a great satisfaction to + have it identified. Very possibly I had seen both of these memorable + towers in my former Roman sojourn, but I did not remember them, whereas I + renewed my old impressions of San Paolo fuori le Mura in almost every + detail. + </p> + <p> + That is the most majestic church in Rome, I think, and I suppose it is, + for a cold splendor, unequalled anywhere. Somehow, from its form and from + the great propriety of its decoration, it far surpasses St. Peter's. The + antic touch of the baroque is scarcely present in it, for, being newly + rebuilt after the fire which destroyed the fourth-century basilica in + 1823, its faults are not those of sixteenth-century excess. It would be a + very bold or a very young connoisseur who should venture to appraise its + merits beyond this negative valuation; and timid age can affirm no more + than that it came away with its sensibilities unwounded. Tradition and + history combine with the stately architecture, which reverently includes + every possible relic of the original fabric, to render the immense temple + venerable; and as it is still in process of construction, with a + colonnaded porch in scale and keeping with the body of the basilica, it + offers to the eye of wonder the actual spectacle of that unstinted outlay + of riches which has filled Rome with its multitudes of pious monuments—monuments + mainly ugly, but potent with the imagination even in their ugliness + through the piety of their origin. Where did all that riches come from? + </p> + <p> + Out of what unfathomable opulence, out of what pitiable penury, out of + what fear, out of what love? One fancies the dying hands of wealth that + released their gift to the sacred use, the knotted hands of work that + spared it from their need. The giving continues in this latest Christian + age as in the earliest, and Rome is increasingly Rome in a world which its + thinkers think no longer believes. + </p> + <p> + From San Paolo we were going to another shrine, more hallowed to our + literary sense, and we drove through the sweet morning sunshine and + bird-singing, past pale-pink clouds of almond bloom on the garden slopes, + with snowy heights far beyond, to the simple graveyard where Keats and + Shelley lie. Our way to the Protestant cemetery held by some shabby + apartment-houses of that very modern Rome which was largely so + jerry-built, and which I would not leave out of the landscape if I could, + for I think their shabbiness rather heightens your sense of the peaceful + loveliness to which you come under the cypresses, among the damp aisles, + so thickly studded with the stones recording the death in exile of the + English strangers lying there far from home. In a faulty perspective of + memory, I had always seen the graves of the two poets side by side; but + the heart of Shelley rests in a prouder part of the cemetery, where the + paths between the finer tombs are carefully kept; and the dust of Keats + lies in an old, plain, almost neglected corner, well off beyond a dividing + trench. It seems an ungracious chance which has so parted the two poets so + inextricably united in their fame; it is as if here, too, the world would + have its way; but, of course, it is only at the worst an ungracious + chance. Keats, at least, has the companionship of the painter Severn, the + friend on whose “fond breast his parting soul relied,” and who has here + followed him into the dust. + </p> + <p> + A few withered daisies had been scattered in the thin grass over the poet, + and one hardly dared lift one's eyes from them to the heartbreaking + epitaph which one could not spell for tears. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VIII. A FEW VILLAS + </h2> + <p> + It was but a few minutes' walk from the hotel to the Porta Pinciana, and, + if you took this short walk, you found yourself almost before you knew it + in the Villa Borghese. You might then, on your first Sunday in Rome, have + fancied yourself in Central Park, for all difference in the easily + satisfied Sunday-afternoon crowd. But with me a difference began in the + grove of stone-pines, and their desultory stretch toward the Casino, where + in the simple young times which are now the old we had hurried, with our + Kugler in our hands and other reading in our heads, to see Titian's Sacred + and Profane Love (it has got another name now) and Canova's Pauline + Bonaparte, who was also the Princess Borghese, and all the rest of the + precious gallery. However, if I had any purpose of visiting the Casino + now, I put it aside, and contented myself with the gentle sun, the gentle + shade, and the sweet air, which might have had less dust in it, breathing + over grass as green in late January as in early June. I did not care so + much for a mounted corporal who was jumping his horse over a two-foot + barrier in the circular path rounding between the Villa Borghese and the + Pincian Hill, though his admirers hung in rows on the rail beside it so + thickly that I could hardly have got a place to see him if I had tried. + But there was room enough to the fathers and mothers who had brought their + children, and young lovers who had brought each other for the afternoon's + outing, just as the people in Central Park do, and, no doubt, just as any + Sunday crowd must do in the planet Mars, if the inhabitants are human. + There was a <i>vacherie</i> nearby where not many persons were drinking + milk or even coffee; it is never the notion of the Italians that amusement + can be had only through the purchase of refreshments. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-29.jpg" alt="29 the Little Stadium With Its Gradines " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I did not get as far as the Casino till the last Sunday of our Roman stay, + though we came again and again to the park (as we should call it, rather + than villa), sometimes to walk, sometimes to drive, and always to rejoice + in its loveliness. It was not now a very guarded, if once a very studied, + loveliness; not quite neglect, but a forgottenness to which it took + kindly, had fallen upon it; the drives seemed largely left to take care of + themselves, the walks were such as the frequenters chose to make over the + grass or through the woods; the buildings—the aviary, the + conservatory, the dairy, the stables—which formed part of the old + pleasance, stood about, as if in an absent-minded indifference to their + various roles. The weather had grown a little more wintry, or, at least, + autumnal, as the season advanced toward spring, and one day at the end of + February, when we were passing a woody hollow, the fallen leaves stirred + crisply with a sound like that of late October at home. We had been at + some pains and expense to put home four thousand miles away, but this + sound was the sweetest and dearest we had heard in Rome, and it strangely + attuned our spirits to the enjoyment of the fake antiquities, the broken + arches, pediments, columns, statues, which, in a region glutted with ruin, + the landscape architect of the Villa Borghese had fancied putting about in + pleasing stages of artificial dilapidation. But there was nothing faked in + the dishevelled grass of the little stadium, with its gradines around the + sides, and the game of tennis which some young girls were playing in it. + Neither was there anything ungenuine in the rapture of the boy whom we saw + racing through the dead leaves of that woody hollow in chase of the wild + fancies that fly before boyhood; and I hope that the charm of the plinths + and statues in the careless grounds behind the soft, old, yellow Casino + was a real charm. At any rate, these things all consoled, and the turf + under the pines, now thickly starred with daisies, gave every assurance of + being original. + </p> + <p> + When we came last the daisies were mingled with clustering anemones, which + seem a greatly overrated sort of flower, crude and harsh in color, like + cheap calico. If it were not for their pretty name I do not see how people + could like them; yet the children that day were pouncing upon them and + pulling them by handfuls; for the Villa Borghese is now state property and + is free to the children of the people in a measure quite beyond Central + Park. They can apparently pull anything they want, except mushrooms; there + are signs advising people that the state draws the line at mushrooms. + </p> + <p> + It was once more a Sunday, and it was a free day in the Casino. The + trodden earth sent up its homely, kindly smell from many feet on their way + to the galleries, which we found full of people looking greater + intelligence than the frequenters of such places commonly betray. They + might have been such more cultivated sight-seers as could not afford to + come on the paydays, and, if they had not crowded the room so, one might + have been glad as well as proud to be of their number. They did not really + keep one from older friends, from the statues and the pictures which were + as familiarly there in 1908 as in 1864. In a world of vicissitudes such + things do not change; the Sacred and Profane Love of Titian, though it had + changed its name, had not changed its nature, and was as divinely serene, + as richly beautiful as before. The Veroneses still glowed from the walls, + dimming with their Venetian effulgence all the other pictures but the + Botticellis and the Francias, and comforting one with the hope that, if + one had always felt their beauty so much, one might, without suspecting + it, have always had some little sense of art. But it was probably only a + literary sense of art, such as moves the observer when he finds himself + again in the presence of Canova's Pauline Borghese. That is there, on the + terms which were those no less of her character than of her time, in the + lasting enjoyment of a publicity which her husband denied it in his + lifetime; but it had no more to say now than it had so many, many years + ago. As, a piece of personal history it is amusing enough, and as a sermon + in stone it preaches whatever moral you choose to read into it. But as the + masterpiece of the sculptor it testifies to an ideal of his art for which + the world has reason to be grateful. Criticism does not now put Canova on + the height where we once looked up to him; but criticism is a fickle + thing, especially in its final judgments; and one cannot remember the + behavior of the Virtues in some of the baroque churches without paying + homage to the portrait of a lady who, whatever she was, was not a Virtue, + but who yet helped the sculptor to realize in her statue a Venus of + exceptional propriety. Tame, yes, we may now safely declare Canova to have + been, but sane we must allow; and we must never forget that he has been + the inspiration in modern sculpture of the eternal Greek truth of repose + from which the art had so wildly wandered, He, more than any other, stayed + it in the mad career on which Michelangelo, however remotely, had started + it; and we owe it to him that the best marbles now no longer strut or + swagger or bully. + </p> + <p> + It was by one of those accidents which are the best fortunes of travel + that I visited the Villa Papa Giulio, when I thought I was merely going to + the Piazza del Popolo, to which one cannot go too often. A chance look at + my guide-book beguiled me with the notion that the villa was just outside + the gate; but it was a deceit which I should be glad to have practised on + me every February 17th of my life. If the villa was farther off than I + thought, the way to it lay for a while through a tramwayed suburban street + delightfully encumbered with wide-horned oxen drawing heavy wagon-loads of + grain, donkeys pulling carts laden with vegetables, and children and hens + and dogs playing their several parts in a perspective through which one + would like to continue indefinitely. But after awhile a dim, cool, curving + lane leaves this street and irresistibly invites your cab to follow it; + and sooner than you could ask you get to the villa gate. There a + gatekeeper tacitly wonders at your arriving before he is well awake, and + will keep you a good five minutes while he parleys with another custodian + before he can bring himself to sell you a ticket and let you into the + beautiful, old, orange-gray cloistered court, where there is a young + architect with the T-square of his calling sketching some point of it, and + a gardener gently hacking off from the parent stems such palm-leaves as + have survived their usefulness. Beyond is the famous fountained court, and + a classic temple to the right, and other structures responsive to the + impulses of the good Pope Julius III., who was never tired of adding to + this pleasure palace of his. It was his favorite resort, with all his + court, from the Vatican, and his favorite amusement in it was the somewhat + academic diversion of proverbs, which Ranke says sometimes “mingled + blushes with the smiles of his guests.” + </p> + <p> + Lest the reader should think I have gone direct to Ranke for this + knowledge, I will own that I got it at second-hand out of Hare's <i>Walks + in Rome,</i> where he tells us also that the pope used to come to his + villa every day by water, and that “the richly decorated barge, filled + with venerable ecclesiastics, gliding through the osier-fringed banks of + the Tiber,... would make a fine subject for a picture.” No doubt, and if I + owned such a picture I would lose no time in public-spiritedly bestowing + it on the first needy gallery. Our author is, as usual, terribly severe on + the Italian government for some wrong done the villa, I could not well + make out what. But it seems to involve the present disposition of the + Etruscan antiquities in the upper rooms of the casino, where these, the + most precious witnesses of that rather inarticulate civilization, must in + any arrangement exhaust the most instructed interest. Just when the + amateur archaeologist, however, is sinking under his learning, the + custodian opens a window and lets him look out on a beautiful hill beyond + certain gardens, where a bird is singing angelically. I suppose it is the + same bird which sings all through these papers, and I am sorry I do not + know its name. But we will call it a blackcap: blackcap has a sweet, saucy + sound like its own note, and is the pretty translation of <i>caponero,</i> + a name which the bird might gladly know itself by. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-30.jpg" alt="30 Casino of the Villa Doria and Gardens " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Villa Papa Giulio is but a little place compared with something on the + scale of the Villa Pamfili Doria though from its casino it has a charm far + beyond that. What it may once have been as to grounds and gardens there is + little to show now, and the Pamfili Doria itself had not much to show in + gardens, though it had grounds, and to spare. It is, in fact, a large + park, though whether larger than the Villa Borghese I cannot say. But it + has not been taken by the state, and it is so far off on its hills that it + is safe from the overrunning of city feet. It is safe even from city + wheels, unless they are those of livery carriages, for numbered cabs are + not suffered in its proud precincts. You partake of this pride when you + come in your rubber-tired <i>remise,</i> and have the consolation of being + part of the beautiful exclusiveness. It costs you fifteen francs, but one + must suffer for being patrician, even for a single afternoon. Outside we + had the satisfaction of seeing innumerable numbered cabs drawn up, and + within the villa gates of meeting or passing the plebeians who had come in + them, and were now walking while we were smoothly rolling in our victoria. + The day was everything we could ask, very warm and bright below the + Janiculum, on which we had mounted, and here on the summit delicious with + cool currents of air. There had been beggars, on the way up, at every + point where our horses must be walked, and we had paid our way handsomely, + so that when we went back they bowed without asking again; this is a + convention at Rome which no self-respecting beggar will violate; they all + touch their hats in recognition of it. + </p> + <p> + The beautiful prospect from a certain curve of the drive after you have + passed the formal sunken garden, at which you pause, is the greatest + beauty of the Villa Pamfili Doria. You stop to look at it by the impulse + of your coachman, and then you keep on driving round, in the long ellipse + which the road describes, through grassy and woody slopes and levels, + watered by a pleasant stream, and through long aisles of pine and ilex. We + thought twice round was enough, and told the driver so, to his evident + surprise and to our own regret, so far as the long aisle of ilex was + concerned, for I do not suppose there is a more perfect thing of its kind + in the world. The shade under the thick sun-proof roofing of horizontal + boughs was practically as old as night, and on our second passage of its + dim length it had some Capuchin monks walking down it, who formed the + fittest possible human interest in the perspective. Off on the grass at + one side some Ursuline nuns were sitting with their pupils, laughing and + talking, and one nun was playing ball with the smaller girls, and mingling + with their shouts her own gay, innocent cries of joy as she romped among + them. Nothing could have been prettier, sweeter, or better suited to the + place; all was very simple, and apparently the whole place was hospitably + free to the poor women who ranged over it, digging chiccory for salad out + of the meadows. The daisies were thick as white clover, and the harsh + purple of the anemones showed everywhere. + </p> + <p> + The casino is plainer than the casino of the Villa Borghese, and is not + public like that; its sculptures have been taken to the Doria palace in + the city; and there is no longer any excuse for curiosity even to try + penetrating it. It stands on the left of the road by which you leave the + villa, and to the right on the grassy incline in full view of the casino + was something that puzzled us at first. It did not seem probable that the + gigantic capital letters grown in box should be spelling the English name + Mary, but it proved that they were, and later it proved that this was the + name of the noble English lady whom the late Prince Pamfili Doria had + married. Whether they marked her grave or merely commemorated her, it was + easy to impute a pathos to the fancy of having them there, which it might + not have been so easy to verify. You cannot attempt to pass over any + ground in Rome without danger of sinking into historical depths from which + it will be hard to extricate yourself, and it is best to heed one's steps + and keep them to the day's activities. But one could not well visit the + Villa Pamfili Doria without at least wishing to remember that in 1849 + Garibaldi held it for weeks against the whole French army, in his defence + of republican Rome. A votive temple within the villa grounds commemorates + the invaders who fell in this struggle; on a neighboring height the + Italian leader triumphs in the monument his adoring country has raised to + him. + </p> + <p> + If we are to believe the censorious Hare, the love of the hero's + countrymen went rather far when the Roman municipality, to please him, + tried to change the course of the Tiber in conformity with a scheme of + his, and so spoiled the beauty of the Farnesina garden without effecting a + too-difficult piece of engineering. The less passionate Murray says merely + that “a large slice of this garden was cut off to widen the river for the + Tiber embankment,” and let us hope that it was no worse. I suppose we must + have seen the villa in its glory when we went, in 1864, to see the Raphael + frescos in the casino there, but in the touching melancholy of the wasted + and neglected grounds we easily accepted the present as an image of the + past. For all we remembered, the weed-grown, green-mossed gravel-paths of + the sort of bewildered garden that remained, with its quenched fountain, + its vases of dead or dying plants, and its dishevelled shrubbery, were + what had always been; and it was of such a charm that we were gratefully + content with it. The truth is, one cannot do much with beauty in perfect + repair; the splendor that belongs to somebody else, unless it belongs also + to everybody else, wounds one's vulgar pride and inspires envious doubts + of the owner's rightful possession. But when the blight of ruin has fallen + upon it, when dilapidation and disintegration have begun their work of + atonement and exculpation, then our hearts melt in compassion of the + waning magnificence and in a soft pity for the expropriated possessor, to + whom we attribute every fine and endearing quality. It is this which makes + us such friends of the past and such critics of the present, and enables + us to enjoy the adversity of others without a pang of the jealousy which + their prosperity excites. + </p> + <p> + There was much to please a somewhat peculiar taste in our visit to the + Farnesina. The gateman, being an Italian official, had not been at the + gate when we arrived, but came running and smiling from his gossip with + the door-keeper of the casino, and this was a good deal in itself; but the + door-keeper, amiably obese, was better still in her acceptance of the joke + with which the hand-mirror for the easier study of the roof frescos was + accepted. “It is more convenient,” she suggested, and at the + counter-suggestion, “Yes, especially for people with short necks,” she + shook with gelatinous laughter, and burst into the generous cry, “Oh, how + delightful!” Perhaps this was because she, too, had experienced the + advantage of perusing the frescos in the hand-mirror's reversal. At any + rate, she would not be satisfied till she had returned a Roland for that + easy Oliver. Her chance came in showing a Rubens in one of the rooms, with + the master's usual assortment of billowy beauties, when she could say—and + she ought to have known—that they had eaten too much macaroni. It + was not much of a joke; but one hears so few jokes in Rome. + </p> + <p> + Do I linger in this study of simple character because I feel myself + unequal to the ecstasies which the frescos of Raphael and his school in + that pleasure dome demanded of me? Something like that, I suppose, but I + do not pride myself on my inability. It seemed to me that the coloring of + the frescos had lost whatever tenderness it once had; and that what was + never meant to be matter of conscious perception, but only of the vague + sense which it is the office of decoration to impart, had grown less + pleasing with the passage of time. There in the first hall was the story + of Cupid and Psyche in the literal illustration of Apuleius, and there in + another hall was Galatea on her shell with her Nymphs and Tritons and + Amorini; and there were Perseus and Medusa and Icarus and Phaeton and the + rest of them. But, if I gave way to all the frankness of my nature, I + should own the subjects fallen silly through the old age of an outworn + life and redeemed only by the wonderful skill with which they are + rendered. At the same time, I will say in self-defence that, if I had a + very long summer in which to keep coming and dwelling long hours in the + company of these frescos, I think I might live back into the spirit which + invented the fables, and enjoy even more the amusing taste that was never + tired of their repetition. Masterly conception and incomparable execution + are there in histories which are the dreams of worlds almost as extinct as + the dead planets whose last rays still reach us and in whose death-glimmer + we can fancy, if we will, a unity of life with our own not impossible nor + improbable. But more than some such appeal the Raphaels and the Giulio + Romanos of the Farnesina hardly make to the eye untrained in the art which + created them, or unversed in the technique by which they will live till + the last line moulders and the last tint fades. + </p> + <p> + We came out and stood a long time looking up in the pale afternoon light + at the beautiful face of the tenderly aging but not yet decrepit casino. + It was utterly charming, and it prompted many vagaries which I might + easily have mistaken for ideas. This is perhaps the best of such + experiences, and, after you have been with famous works of art and have + got them well over and done with, it is natural and it is not unjust that + you should wish to make them some return, if not in kind, then in + quantity. You will try to believe that you have thought about them, and + you should not too strictly inquire as to the fact. It is some such + forbearance that accounts for a good deal of the appreciation and even the + criticism of works of art. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IX. DRAMATIC INCIDENTS + </h2> + <p> + If the joke of the door-keeper at the Farnesina was not so delicate in any + sense as some other jokes, it had, at least, the merit of being voluntary. + In fact, it is the only voluntary joke which I remember hearing in the + Tuscan tongue from the Roman mouth during a stay of three months in the + Eternal City. This was very disappointing, for I had always thought of the + Italians as gay and as liking to laugh and to make laugh. In Venice, where + I used to live, the gondoliers were full of jokes, good, bad, and + indifferent, and an infection of humor seemed to spread from them to all + the lower classes, who were as ready to joke as the lower classes of + Irish, and who otherwise often reminded one of them. The joking habit + extended as far down as Florence, even as Siena, and at Naples I had found + cabmen who tempered their predacity with <i>bonhomie.</i> But the Romans + were preferably serious, at least with the average American, though, if I + had tried them in their English instead of my Italian, it might have been + different. At times I thought, they felt the weight of being Romans, as it + had descended to them from antiquity, and that the strain of supporting it + had sobered them. In any case, though there was shouting by night, and + some singing of not at all the Neapolitan quality and still less the + Neapolitan quantity, there was no laughing, or, as far as I could see, + smiling by day. + </p> + <p> + Yet one day there was a tragedy in front of the hotel next ours which + would have made a dog laugh, as the saying is, unless it was a Roman dog. + It was a quarrel, more or less murderous, between a fat, elderly man and + an agile stripling of not half his age or girth, of whom the tumult about + them permitted only fleeting glimpses. By these the elder seemed to be + laboriously laying about him with a five-foot club and the younger to be + making wild dashes at him and then escaping to the skirts of the cabmen, + mounted and dismounted, who surrounded them. Now and then a cabman drove + out of the mellee very excitedly, and then turned and drove excitedly back + into the thick of it. All the while the dismounted cabmen pressed about + the combatants with their hands on one another's backs and their heads + peering carefully over one another's shoulders. On the very outermost rim + of these, more careful than any, was one of those strange images whom you + see about Italian towns in couples, with red-braided swallowtail coats and + cocked hats, those carabinieres —namely, who are soldiers in war and + policemen in times of peace. Any spectator from a foreign land would have + thought it the business of such an officer of the law to press in and stop + the fighting; but he did not so interpret his duty. He gingerly touched + the shoulders next him with the tips of his fingers, and now and then + lifted himself on the tips of his toes to look if the fight had stopped of + itself or not. + </p> + <p> + At last the fat, elderly man, whom his friends—and all the throng + except that one wicked youth seemed his friends—were caressing in + untimely embraces and coaxing in tones of tender entreaty, burst from + them, and, aiming at the head of his enemy, flung his club, to the + imminent peril of all the bystanders, and missed him. Then he frankly put + himself in the hands of his friends, who lifted him into a cab, where one + of them mounted with him and stayed him on the seat, while the cabman + drove rapidly away. The wicked youth had vanished in unknown space; but + the carabiniere, attended by a group of admirers, marched boldly up the + middle of the street, and the crowd, with whatever reluctance, persuaded + itself to disperse, though the cabmen, to the number of ten or twenty, + continued to drive around in concentric circles and irregular ellipses. In + five minutes not an eye-witness of the fray remained, such being the fear + of the law, not so much in those who break it as in those who see it + broken, and who dread incurring the vengeance of the culprit, if he is + acquitted, or of his family if he is convicted on their testimony. The + quarrel had gone on a full quarter of an hour, but the concierge of the + hotel in front of which it had raged professed to have known nothing of + it, having, he said, been in-doors all the time. A cabman whom we + eliminated from the hysterical company of his fellows and persuaded to + drive us away to see a church attempted to ignore the whole affair when + asked about it. With difficulty he could be made to recollect it, and then + he dismissed it as a trifle. “Oh,” he said, “chiacchiere di donnicciuole,” + which is something like “Clatter of little old women,” a thing not worth + noticing. He had, if we could believe him, not cared to know how it began + or ended, and he would not talk about it. + </p> + <p> + Later, still interested by the action of the carabiniere in guarding the + public security in his own person, I asked an Italian gentleman, who owned + to have seen the affair, why the officer did not break through the crowd + and arrest the fighters. “They had knives,” he explained, and it seemed a + good reason for the carabiniere's forbearance, as far as it went; but I + thought of the short work the brute locust of an Irish policeman at home + would have made of the knives. My friend said he had himself gone to one + of the municipal police who was looking on at a pleasant remove and said, + “Those fellows have knives; they will kill each other,” and the municipal + policeman had answered, with the calm of an antique Roman sentinel on duty + in time of earthquake, “Let them kill.” + </p> + <p> + I could not approve of so much impartiality, but afterward it seemed to me + I had little to be proud of in the shorter and easier method of our own + police, as contrasted with the caution of that Roman carabiniere who left + the combatants to the mild might of their friends' moral suasion. It was + better that the youth should escape, if he did, without a vexatious + criminal trial; he may have been no more to blame than the other, who, I + learned, had been carried off, in the honorable manner I saw, to a doctor + and had his stab looked to. It was not dangerous, and the whole affair + ended so. Besides, as I learned, still longer afterward, when it was quite + safe for a cabman from the same stand to speak, the combatants were not + Romans, but peasants from the Campagna, who had come in with their + market-carts and had become heated with the bad spirits which the peasants + have the habit of drinking five or six glasses of when they visit Rome. + “What we call benzine,” my cabman explained. “We Romans,” he added from a + moral height, “drink only a glass or two of wine, and we never carry + knives.” + </p> + <p> + He may have been right concerning the peacefulness of the Romans and their + sobriety, and I am bound to say that I never saw any other violent scene + during my stay. Sometimes I heard loud quarrelling among our cabmen, and + sometimes I was the subject of it, when one driver snatched me, an + impartial prey, from another. But the bad feeling, if there was really + any, quickly passed, and some other day I fell to the cabman who had been + wronged of me. I had not always the fine sense of being booty which I had + one day on coming out of a church and blundering toward the wrong cab. + Then the driver whom I had left waiting at the door seized me from the + very cab of an unjust rival with the indignant cry, “E roba mia!” (He's my + stuff!). It was not quite the phrase I would have chosen, but I had no + quarrel, generally speaking, with the cabmen of Rome. To be sure, they + have not a rubber tire among them, and their dress leaves much to be + desired in professional uniformity. Not one of them looks like a cabman, + but many of them in picturesqueness of hats and coats look like brigands. + I think they would each prefer to have a fur-lined overcoat, which the + Roman of any class likes to wear well into the spring; but they mostly + content themselves with an Astrakhan collar, more or less mangy. For the + rest, some of them will point out the objects of interest as you pass, and + they are proud to do so; they are not extortionate, and, if you overpay + them ever so little (which is quite worth while), they will not stand upon + a matter of lawful fare. A two-cent tip contents them, one of four cents + makes them your friends for life; as for a five-cent tip, I do not know + what it does, but I advise the reader when he goes to Rome to try it and + see. + </p> + <p> + One fine thing is that the cabmen are in great superabundance in Rome, and + the number of barrel-ribbed, ewe-necked, and broken-kneed horses is in no + greater proportion than in Paris. Still, the average is large, though, if + you will go to the stand, you may select any horse you please without + offence. It was a cheerful sight, verging upon gayety, to see every + morning the crowd of cabs at our stand and to hear the drivers' talk, + sometimes rising into protest and mutual upbraiding. But one Thursday + morning, the brightest of the spring, a Sunday silence had fallen on the + place, and a Sabbath solitude deepened to the eye the mystery that had + first addressed itself to the ear. Then, suddenly, we knew that we were in + the presence of that Italian conception of a general strike which + interprets itself as a <i>sciopero.</i> It is saying very little of that + two days' strike to say that it was far the most impressive experience of + our Roman winter; in some sort it was the most impressive experience of my + life, for I beheld in it a reduced and imperfect image of what labor could + do if it universally chose to do nothing. The dream of William Morris was + that a world which we know is pretty much wrong could be put right by this + simple process. The trouble has always been to get all sorts of labor to + join in the universal strike, but in the Italian <i>sciopero</i> of four + years ago the miracle was wrought from one end of the peninsula to the + other. + </p> + <p> + In the Roman strike of last April a partial miracle of the same nature was + illustratively wrought, with the same alarming effect on the imagination. + </p> + <p> + As with the national strike, the inspiration of the Roman strike came from + the government's violent dealing with a popular manifestation which only + threatened to be mischievous. A stone-mason was killed by falling from a + scaffolding, and his funeral was attended by so many hundreds, amounting + to thousands, of workmen that the police conceived, not quite + unjustifiably, that it was to be made the occasion of a demonstration, + especially as the proposed route of the procession lay through the Piazza + di Venezia, under the windows of the Austrian Embassy, Austria being + always a red rag to the Italian bull and peculiarly irritating through the + reservation of the Palazzo Venezia to the ancient enemy at the cession of + Venice to Italy. The mourners were therefore forbidden to pass that way, + and the police forces were drawn up in the Piazza Gesu, before the Jesuit + church, with a strong detachment of troops to support them. Their wisdom + in all this was very questionable after what followed, for the mourners + insisted on their rights and would go no way but through the Piazza di + Venezia. When the dispute was at its height two wagons laden with bricks + appeared on the scene. The mourners swarmed upon them, broke the bricks + into bats, and hurled them at the police. They had apparently the + simple-hearted expectation that the police would stand this indefinitely, + but the brickbats hurt, and in their paroxysms of pain the sufferers began + firing their revolvers at the mourners. Four persons were killed, with the + usual proportion of innocent spectators. At night the labor unions met, + and the <i>sciopero</i> was proclaimed as an expression of the popular + indignation; but the police had been left with the victory. Whether it was + not in some sort a defeat I do not know, but a retired English officer, + whom I had no reason to think a radical, said to me that he thought it a + great mistake to have let the police oppose the people with firearms. + Soldiers should alone be used for such work; they alone knew when to fire + and when to stop, and they never acted without orders. In fact, the troops + supporting the police took no part in the fray, as the workmen's press + recognized with patriotic rejoicing. + </p> + <p> + The next morning a signal silence prevailed throughout the city, where not + a wheel stirred or the sound of a hoof broke the hush of the streets. We + had noted already that there were seven Sundays every week in Rome, as was + fit in the capital of the Christian religion, but this Thursday was of an + intenser Sabbath stillness than any first day of the week that we had yet + known. There was the clack of passing feet in the street under our + windows, but we looked out upon a yawning void where the busy cabs had + clustered, and the cabmen had socially chaffed and quarrelled, and + entreated the stranger in the cabman's superstition that a stranger never + knows when he wants a cab. Now he could have walked all over Rome without + being once invited to drive. Except for here and there a private carriage, + or the coupe evidently of a doctor, the streets were empty, and the + tourists had to join the citizens in their pedestrian exercise. + </p> + <p> + The shopkeepers had been notified to close their places of business on the + tacit condition of having their windows broken for non-compliance, but in + the early forenoon they were still slowly and partially putting up their + shutters. You could get in through the darkened doors up till noon; after + that it was more and more difficult. But it would be hard to say how far + and how deep the <i>sciopero</i> went. In our hotel we knew of it only the + second day through the failure of the morning rolls, for there had been no + baking overnight. Most of the in-door service was of Swiss or other + foreign extraction, and the mechanism of our comfort, our luxury, was + operated as usual. Our floor <i>facchino,</i> or porter, went to the + meeting of the unions in the evening, being an Italian. Otherwise the + strike fell especially on the helpless and guiltless foreigner, who might + be, and very often was, in sympathy with the strikers. He had to walk to + the ruins, the galleries, the gardens, the churches, if he wanted anything + of them; he could not get a carriage even from a stable. + </p> + <p> + Between the hotels and the station the omnibus traffic was suspended. The + railroads being national, push-carts manned by the government employes + carried the baggage to and fro, but if one wanted to arrive or depart one + had to do it on foot. Tragical scenes presented themselves in relation to + this fact. In the afternoon, as I walked up the street toward the great + railroad station, I saw coming down the middle of it a strange procession + of ladies and gentlemen of every age, gray-haired elders and children of + tender years, mixed with porters and push-carts, footing it into the + region of the fashionable hotels. They were all laden according to their + strength, and people who had never done a stroke of work in their lives + were actually carrying their own hand-bags, rugs, and umbrella-cases. It + was terrible. + </p> + <p> + It was terrible for what it was, and terrible for what it suggested, if + ever that poor dull beast of labor took the bit permanently into its + teeth, or, worse yet, hung back in the breeching and inexorably balked. + What would then become of us others, us ladies and gentlemen who had never + done a stroke of work and never wished to do one? Should we be forced to + the hard necessity of beginning? Could we remain in the comfortable belief + that we gave work, or must we be made to own distastefully that it had + always been given to us? Should we be able to flatter ourselves with the + notion that we had once had dependents because we had money, or should we + realize that we had always been dependents because of our having money? + </p> + <p> + These were the hateful doubts which the Roman strike suggested to the + witness, or, at least, one of the witnesses, who has here the pleasure of + unburdening himself upon the reader. Yet there was something amusing in + the situation; there was a joke—that rarest of all things in Rome—latent + in it, which one suspected only from the amiable, the all-but-smiling + behavior of the strikers. There was not the slightest disorder during the + two days that the strike lasted. When it was called off at a meeting of + the unions on Saturday night, one of the seven Sundays of the Roman week + dawned upon an activity at the neighboring cab-stand no peacefuller and + not much gayer than the silence and solitude of the mornings previous. As + for the general effect in the city, you would hardly have known that + particular Sunday from those which had gone by the names of Friday and + Saturday. Throughout Italy there is now a Sunday-closing law whose effect + in a land once of joyous Sabbaths strikes some such chill to the heart as + pierces it in Boston on that day, or in the farther eastern or western + avenues of New York, when the Family Entrances are religiously locked. + </p> + <p> + The Italian state has, in fact, so far taken the matter in charge as to + have established a secular holiday, coming once a week, which has almost + disestablished the holidays of the Church, formerly of much more frequent + occurrence. This secular holiday, which every workman has a right to, he + may neither give nor sell to his master. He may not even loaf it away in + the place where he works, lest he should be clandestinely employed. He + must go out of the shop or house or factory or foundry, and spend his ten + hours where he cannot be suspected of employing them in productive + industry for hire. This law has been enacted in accordance with the will + of the unions and no doubt in correction of great abuses. Neither masters + nor men now recognize the old-fashioned <i>festa</i> as they once did. + Whether the men like the new holiday so well, I did not get any of them + explicitly to say. Of course, they cannot all take it at once; they must + take it turn about, and they may not find their enforced leisure so lively + as the old voluntary saints' days, when their comrades were resting, too. + As for the masters, one of the employers of labor, whom I found filling + his man's place, would merely say: “It is the new law. No doubt we shall + adjust ourselves to it.” He did not complain. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + X. SEEING ROME AS ROMANS SEE US + </h2> + <p> + Shortly after our settlement in the Eternal City, which has so much more + time to be seen than the so-journer has to see it, I pleased myself with + the notion of surprising it by visiting in a studied succession the many + different piazzas. This, I thought, would acquaint me with the different + churches, and on the way to them I should make friends with the various + quarters. Everything, old or new, would have the charm of the unexpected; + no lurking ruin would escape me; no monument, whether column or obelisk, + statue, “storied urn or animated bust” or mere tablet, would be safe from + my indirect research. Before I knew it, I should know Rome by heart, and + this would be something to boast of long after I had forgotten it. + </p> + <p> + I could not say what suggested so admirable a notion, but it may have been + coming by chance one day on the statue of Giordano Bruno, and realizing + that it stood in the Campo di Fieri, on the spot where he was burned three + hundred years ago for abetting Copernicus in his sacrilegious system of + astronomy, and for divers other heresies, as well as the violation of his + monastic vows. I saw it with the thrill which the solemn figure, heavily + draped, deeply hooded, must impart as mere mystery, and I made haste to + come again in the knowledge of what it was that had moved me so. Naturally + I was not moved in the same measure a second time. It was not that the + environment was, to my mind, unworthy the martyr, though I found the + market at the foot of the statue given over, not to flowers, as the name + of the place might imply, but to such homely fruits of the earth as + potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and, above all, onions. There was a placidity + in the simple scene that pleased me: I liked the quiet gossiping of the + old market-women over their baskets of vegetables; the confidential + fashion in which a gentle crone came to my elbow and begged of me in + undertone, as if she meant the matter to go no further, was even + mattering. But the solemnity of the face that looked down on the scene was + spoiled by the ribbon drawn across it to fasten a wreath on the head, in + the effort of some mistaken zealot of free thought to enhance its majesty + by decoration. It was the moment when the society calling itself by + Giordano Bruno's name was making an effort for the suppression of + ecclesiastical instruction in the public schools; and on the anniversary + of his martyrdom his effigy had suffered this unmeant hurt. In all the + churches there had been printed appeals to parents against the agnostic + attack on the altar and the home, and there had been some of the open + tumults which seem in Rome to express every social emotion. But the + clericals had triumphed, and an observer more anxious than I to give a + mystical meaning to accident might have interpreted the disfiguring ribbon + over Bruno's bronze lips as a new silencing of the heretic. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-31.jpg" alt="31 the Carnival (as It Once Was) " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I certainly did not construe it so, and, if my notion of serially visiting + the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of the Campo di + Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any mischance in my + meditated vision of it. I had merely reflected that I could not hope to + carry out my scheme without greater expense both in time and money than I + could well afford, for, though cabs in Rome are swift and cheap, yet the + piazzas are many and widely distributed; and I finally decided to indulge + myself in a novelty of adventure verging close upon originality. It had + always seemed to me that the happy strangers mounted on the tiers of seats + that rise from front to back on the motor-chariots for seeing New York and + looking down, even from the lowest place, on the life of our streets had a + peculiar, almost a bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means + of a fresh impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I + have not the courage to give, though the reader can perhaps imagine them. + In Rome I did not feel that the like reasons held; of all the unknown, I + was one of the most unknown; by me nobody would be put to the shame of + recognizing an acquaintance on the benches of the like chariot, or forced + to the cruelty of cutting him in my person. When once I had fully realized + this, it was only a question of the time when I should yield to the + temptation which renewed itself as often as I saw the stately automobile + passing through the storied streets, with its English legend of “Touring + Rome” inscribed on the back of the rear seat. There remained the question + whether I should go alone or whether I should ask the countenance of + friends in so bold an enterprise. When I suggested it to some persons of + the more courageous sex, they did not wait to be asked to go with me; they + instantly entreated to be allowed to go; they said they had always wished + to see Rome in that way; and we only waited to be chosen by the raw and + blustery afternoon which made us its own for the occasion. + </p> + <p> + It was the eve of the last sad day of such shrunken and faded carnival as + is still left to Rome, and there were signs of it in the straggling groups + of children in holiday costume, and in here and there a pair of young + girls in a cab, safely masked against identification and venting, in the + sense of wild escape, the joyous spirits kept in restraint all the rest of + the year. Already in the Corso, where our touring-car waited for us at the + first corner, a great cafe was turning itself inside out with a spread of + chairs and tables over the sidewalk, which we found thronged on our return + with spectators far outnumbering the merrymakers of the carnival. Our car + was not nearly so packed, and when we mounted to the benches we found that + the last and highest of them was left to the sole occupancy of a young + man, well enough dressed (his yellow gloves may have been more than well + enough) and well-mannered enough, who continued enigmatical to the last. + There was a German couple and there were some French-speaking people; the + rest of us were bound in the tie of our common English. The agent of the + enterprise accompanied us, an international of undetermined race, and + beside the chauffeur sat the middle-aged, anxious-looking Italian who + presently arose when we made our first stop in the Piazza Colonna and + harangued us in three languages—successively, of course—concerning + the Column of Marcus Aurelius. He did not use the megaphone of his + American confrere; and from the shudder which the first sound of his voice + must have sent through a less fastidious substance than mine I perceived + that an address by megaphone I could not have borne; to that extreme of + excess even my modernism could not go. As it was, there was an instant + when I could have wished to be on foot, or even in a cab, with a red + Baedeker in my hand; and yet, as the orator went on, I had to own that he + was giving me a better account of the column than I could have got for + myself out of the guide-book. He spoke first in French, with an Italian + accent and occasionally an Italian idiom; then he spoke in English, and + then in a German which suffered from his knowledge of English. + </p> + <p> + He sat down, looking rather spent with his effort, and on the way to our + next stop, at the Temple of Neptune, the agent examined us upon our + necessities in the article of language. He himself spoke such good English + that we could not do otherwise than declare that we could get on perfectly + with an address in French. The German pair, perhaps from patriotic grudge, + denied a working knowledge of the unfriendly tongue. The solitary on the + back seat, being asked in his turn, graciously answered, “Toutes les + langues me sont egales,” and thereafter we suffered with the orator only + through French and German. + </p> + <p> + The reply which decided the matter launched us upon yet wider conjecture + regarding the unknown: was he a retired courier, a concierge out of place, + a professor of languages on his holiday, or merely an amateur of + philological studies? His declared proficiency was manifested in + unexpected measure as we drove away from the Temple of Neptune on through + the narrow street leading to it. Every motor has its peculiar note, and + our car had something like the scream of a wild animal in pain, such as + might have justly alarmed a stouter spirit than that of the poor little + cab-horse which we encountered at the corner of this street. It reared, it + plunged; when our chauffeur held us in it still backed and filled so + dangerously that the mother and children overflowing the cab followed the + example of the driver in spilling to the ground. Then our good + international, the agent, jumped down and, mounting to the coachman's + seat, took the reins and urged the horse forward, while its driver pulled + it by the bridle. All was of no effect till the solitary of the back seat + rose in his place and shouted to the frightened creature in choice + American: “What d' you mean, there? Come on! Come on, you fool!” Then, as + if it had been an “impenitent mule” in some far-distant Far-Western + incarnation, this Eoman cab-horse recognized the voice of authority; it + nerved itself against the imaginary danger, and came steadily forward; our + agent regained his place, and we moved shriekingly on to the next object + of interest. It was not quite the note blown from level tubes of brass in + the progress of a conqueror, but we did not lack the cheers of a + disinterested populace, which at several points impartially applauded our + orator's French and German versions of his not always tacit Italian. + </p> + <p> + Our height above the cheers helped preserve us from the sense of anything + ironical in them, and there was an advantage in the outlook from our + elevation which the wayfarer in cab or on foot can only imagine. No such + wayfarer can realize the vast scope and compass of our excursion, which + was but one of two excursions made on alternate afternoons by the + Touring-Rome wagons. It included, perhaps not quite in the following + order, after the Temple of Neptune, such objects of prime importance as + the Palazzo Madama, where Catharine de' Medici once dwelt and where the + Italian Senate now holds its sessions; the Fountain of Trevi, the + Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the new Palace of Justice and the Cavour + monument beyond the Tiber, the Castle of Sant' Angelo, the Vatican and St. + Peter's, the Janiculum and the Garibaldi monument on it, and the + stupendous prospect of the city from that supreme top, the bridge that + Horatius held in Macaulay's ballad, the island in the Tiber formed after + the expulsion of the Tarquins by the river sand and drift catching on the + seed-corn thrown into the stream from the fields consecrated to Mars, the + Temple of Fortune, the once-supposed House of Rienzi, and the former + Temple of Vesta; the Palatine Hill and the Aventine Hill, the Circus + Maximus, the Colosseum, the Campidoglio, the Theatre of Marcellus, the + worst slum in Rome, where the worst boy in Rome, flown with Carnival, will + try to board your passing car; back to Piazza Colonna through Piazza Monte + Citerio, where the Italian House of Deputies meets in the plain old palace + of the same name. + </p> + <p> + The mere mention of these storied places will kindle in the reader's fancy + a fire which he will feel all the need of if ever he verifies my account + of them in touring Rome on so cold an afternoon as that of our excursion. + The wind rose with our ascent of every elevation, if it did not fall with + our return to a lower level; on the Janiculum it blew a blizzard in which + the incongruous ilexes and laurels bowed and writhed, and some groups of + almond-trees in their pale bloom on a distant upland mocked us with a + derisive image of spring. At the foot of the steps to the Campidoglio, + where some of our party dismounted to go up and view the statue of Marcus + Aurelius, it was so cold that nothing but the sense of a strong common + interest prevented those who remained from persuading the chauffeur to go + on without the sight-seers. But we forbore, both because we knew we were + then very near the end of our tour, and because we felt it would have been + cruel to abandon the lady who had got out of the car only by turning + herself sidewise and could not have made her way home on foot without + sufferings which would justly have brought us to shame. Certain idle + particulars will always cling to the memory which lets so many ennobling + facts slip from it; and I find myself helpless against the recollection of + this poor lady's wearing a thick motoring-veil which no curiosity could + pierce, but which, when she lifted it, revealed a complexion of heated + copper and a gray mustache such as nature vouchsafes to few women. + </p> + <p> + The crowd, which thickened most in the Piazza di Venezia, had grown more + and more carnivalesque in attire and behavior. We had been obliged to + avoid the more densely peopled streets because, as our international + explained, if the car had slowed at any point the revellers would have + joined our excursion of their own initiative and accompanied us to the end + in overwhelming numbers. They wellnigh blocked the entrance of the Corso + when we got back to it, and the cafe where we had agreed to have tea was + so packed that our gay escapade began to look rather gloomy in the + retrospect. But suddenly a table was vacated; a waiter was caught, in the + vain attempt to ignore us, and given such a comprehensive order that we + could see respect kindling in his eyes, and before we could reasonably + have hoped it be spread before us tea and bread and butter and tarts and + little cakes, while scores of hungry spectators stood round and + flatteringly envied us. In this happy climax our adventure showed as a + royal progress throughout. We counted up the wonders of our three hours' + course in an absolutely novel light; and we said that touring Rome was a + thing not only not to be despised, but to be forever proud of. + </p> + <p> + For myself, I decided that if I were some poor hurried fellow-countryman + of mine, doing Europe in a month and obliged to scamp Rome with a couple + of days, I would not fail to spend two of them in what I must always think + of as a triumphal chariot. I resolved to take the second excursion, not + the next day perhaps, but certainly the day after the next, and complete + the most compendious impression of ancient, mediaeval, and modern Rome + that one can have; but the firmest resolution sometimes has not force to + hold one to it. The second excursion remains for a second sojourn, when + perhaps I may be able to solve the question whether I was moved by a fine + instinct of proportion or by mere innate meanness in giving our orator at + parting just two francs in recognition of his eloquence. No one else, + indeed, gave him anything, and he seemed rather surprised by my tempered + munificence. It might have been mystically adjusted to the number of + languages he used in addressing us; if he had held to three languages I + might have made it three francs; but now I shall never be certain till I + take the second excursion with a company which imperatively requires + English as well as French and German, and with no solitary in yellow + gloves to whom all languages are alike. + </p> + <p> + To this end I ought to have thrown a copper coin into the Fountain of + Trevi as we passed it. You may return to Rome without doing this, but it + is well known that if you do it you are sure to come back. The Fountain of + Trevi is alone worth coming back for, and I could not see that it poured + scanter streams than it formerly poured over brimming brinks or from the + clefts of the artificial rocks that spread in fine disorder about the feet + of its sea-gods and sea-horses; but they who mourn the old papal rule + accuse the present Italian government of stinting the supply of water. To + me there seemed no stint of water in any of the fountains of Rome. In some + a mere wasteful spilth seems the sole design of the artist, as in the + Fontana Paolina on the Janiculum, where the cold wash of its deluge seemed + to add a piercing chill to our windy afternoon. The other fountains have + each a quaint grace or absolute charm or pleasing absurdity, whether the + waters shower over groups of more or less irrelevant statuary in their + basins or spout into the air in columns unfurling flags of spray and + keeping the pavement about them green with tender mould. The most + sympathetic is the Fountain of the Triton, who blows the water through his + wreathed horn and on the coldest day seems not to mind its refluent splash + on his mossy back; in fact, he seems rather to like it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-32.jpg" alt="32 the Fountain of Trevi " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + He is one of many tritons, rivers, sea-gods, and aqueous allegories + similarly employed in Rome and similarly indifferent to what flesh and + blood might find the hardship of their calling. I had rashly said to + myself that their respective fountains needed the sun on them to be just + what one could wish, but the first gray days taught me better. Then the + thinly clouded sky dropped a softened light over their glitter and sparkle + and gave them a spirituality as much removed from the suggestion of + physical cold as any diaphanous apparition would suggest. Then they seemed + rapt into a finer beauty than that of earth, though I will not pretend + that they were alike beautiful. No fountain can be quite ugly, but some + fountains can be quite stupid, like, for instance, those which give its + pretty name to the Street of the Four Fountains and which consist of two + extremely plain Virtues and two very dull old Rivers, diagonally dozing at + each other over their urns in niches of the four converging edifices. They + are not quite so idiotic under their disproportionate foliage as the + conventional Egyptian lions of the Fountain of Moses, with manes like the + wigs of so many lord chancellors, and with thin streams of water drooling + from the tubes between their lips. But these are the exceptional + fountains; there are few sculptured or architectural designs which the + showering or spouting water does not retrieve from error; and in Rome the + water (deliciously potable) is so abundant that it has force to do almost + anything for beauty, even where, as in the Fontana Paolina, it is merely a + torrent tumbling over a facade. It is lavished everywhere; in the Piazza + Navona alone there are three fountains, but then the Piazza Navona is very + long, and three fountains are few enough for it, even though one is that + famous Fountain of Bernini, in which he has made one of the usual rivers—the + Nile, I believe—holding his hand before his eyes in mock terror of + the ungainly facade of a rival architect's church opposite, lest it shall + fall and crush him. That, however, is the least merit of the fountain; and + without any fountain the Piazza Navona would be charming; it is such a + vast lake of sunshine and is so wide as well as long, and is so mellowed + with such rich browns and golden grays in the noble edifices. + </p> + <p> + I do not know, now, what all the edifices are, but there are churches, + more than one, and palaces, and the reader can find their names in any of + the guidebooks. If I were buying piazzas in Rome I should begin with the + Navona, but there are enough to suit all purses and tastes. The fountains + would be thrown in, I suppose, along with the churches and palaces; but I + really never inquired, and, in fact, not having carried out my plan of + visiting them all, I am in no position to advise intending purchasers. + What I can say is that if you are in a hurry to inspect, that kind of + property, and in immediate need of a piazza, you cannot do better than + take the wagon for touring Rome. In two days you can visit every piazza + worth having, including the Piazza di Spagna, where there is a fountain in + the form of a marble galley in which you can embark for any fairyland you + like, through the Via del Babuino and the Piazza del Popolo. Come to think + of it, I am not so sure but I would as soon have the Piazza del Popolo as + the Piazza Navona. If the fountains are not so fine, they are still very + fine, and the Pincian Hill overtops one side of the place, with foliaged + drives and gardened walks descending into it. + </p> + <p> + Everything of importance that did not happen elsewhere in Rome seems to + have happened in the Piazza del Popolo, and I may name as a few of its + attractions for investors the facts that it was here Sulla's funeral pyre + was kindled; that Nero was buried on the left side of it, and out of his + tomb grew a huge walnut-tree, the haunt of demoniacal crows till the + Madonna appeared to Paschal II. and bade him cut it down; that the + arch-heretic Luther sojourned in the Augustinian convent here while in + Rome; that the dignitaries of Church and State received Christina of + Sweden here when, after her conversion, she visited the city; that + Lucrezia Borgia celebrated her betrothal in one of the churches; that it + used to be a favorite place for executing brigands, whose wives then + became artists' models, and whose sons, if they were like Cardinal + Antonelli, became princes of the Church. So I learn from Hare in his <i>Walks + in Rome,</i> and, if he enables me to boast the rivalry of the Piazza + Navona in no such array of merits, still I will not deny my love for it. + Certainly it was not a favorite place for executing brigands, but the + miracle which saved St. Agnes from, cruel shame was wrought in the vaulted + chambers under the church of her name there, and that is something beyond + all the wonders of the Piazza del Popolo for its pathos and for its + poetry. But, if the Piazza Navona had no other claim on me, I should find + a peculiar pleasure in the old custom of stopping the escapes from its + fountains and flooding with water the place I saw flooded with sun, for + the patricians to wade and drive about in during the very hot weather and + eat ices and drink coffee, while the plebeians looked sumptuously down on + them from the galleries built around the lake. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XI. IN AND ABOUT THE VATICAN + </h2> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0033" id="linkimage-0033"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-33.jpg" alt="33 Colonnade and Fountain at St. Peter's " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + It would be a very bold or very incompetent observer of the Roman + situation who should venture upon a decided opinion of the relations of + the monarchy and the papacy. You hear it said with intimations of special + authority in the matter, that both king and pope are well content with the + situation, and it is clearly explained how and why they are so; but I did + not understand how or why at the moment of the explanation, or else I have + now forgotten whatever was clear in it. I believe, however, it was to the + effect that the pope willingly remained self-prisoned in the Vatican + because, if he came out, he might not only invalidate a future claim upon + the sovereign dignity which the Italian occupation had invaded, but he + might incur risks from the more unfriendly extremists which would at least + be very offensive. On his part, it was said that the king used the + embarrassment occasioned by the pope's attitude as his own defence against + the anti-Clericals, who otherwise would have urged him to far more hostile + measures with the Church. The king and the pope were therefore not very + real enemies, it was said by those who tried to believe themselves better + informed than others. + </p> + <p> + To the passing or tarrying stranger the situation does not offer many + dramatic aspects. When you are going to St. Peter's, if you will look up + at the plain wall of the Vatican palace you will see two windows with + their shutters open, and these are the windows of the rooms where Pius X. + lives, a voluntary captive; the closed blinds are those of the rooms where + Leo XIII. died, a voluntary captive. Whatever we think of the wisdom or + the reason of the papal protest against the occupation of the States of + the Church by the Italian people, these windows have their pathos. The + pope immures himself in the Vatican and takes his walks in the Vatican + gardens, whose beauty I could have envied him, if he had not been a + prisoner, when I caught a glimpse of them one morning, with the high walls + of their privet and laurel alleys blackening in the sun. + </p> + <p> + But otherwise the severest Protestant could not cherish so unkind a + feeling toward the gentle priest whom all men speak well of for his piety + and humility. It is a touching fact of his private life that his three + maiden sisters, who wish to be as near him as they can, have their simple + lodging over a shop for the sale of holy images in a street opening into + the Piazza of St. Peter's. We all know that they are of a Venetian family + neither rich nor great; their pride and joy is solely in him, as it well + might be, and it is said that when they come to hear him in some high + function at the Sistine Chapel their rapture of affection and devotion is + as evident as it is sweet and touching. + </p> + <p> + Their relation to him is the supremely poetic fact of a situation which + even one who knows of it merely by hearsay cannot refuse to feel. The + tragical effect of the situation is in the straining and sundering of + family ties among those who take one side or the other in the difference + of the monarchy and papacy. I do not know how equally Roman society, in + the large or the small sense, is divided into the Black of the Papists and + the White of the Monarchists (for the mediaeval names of Neri and Bianchi + are revived in the modern differences), but one cannot help hearing of + instances in which their political and religious opinions part fathers and + sons and mothers and daughters. These are promptly noted to the + least-inquiring foreigner, and his imagination is kindled by the + attribution of like variances to the members of the reigning family, who + are reported respectively blacker and whiter if they are not as positively + black or white as the nobles. Some of these are said to meet one another + only in secret across the gulf that divides them openly; but how far the + cleavage may descend among other classes I cannot venture to conjecture; I + can only testify to some expressions of priest-hatred which might have + shocked a hardier heretical substance than mine. + </p> + <p> + One Sunday we went to the wonderful old Church of San Clemente, which is + built three deep into the earth or high into the air, one story above or + below the other, in the three successive periods of imperial, mediaeval, + and modern Rome. It was the day when the church is illuminated, and the + visitors come with their Baedekers and Hares and Murrays to identify its + antiquities of architecture and fresco; it was full of people, and, if I + fancied an unusual proportion of English-speaking converts among them, + that might well have been, since the adjoining convent belongs to the + Irish Dominicans. But I carried with me through all the historic and + artistic interest of the place the sensation left by two inscriptions + daubed in black on the white convent wall next the church. One of these + read: <i>“VV. la Repubblica”</i> (Long live the Republic), and the other: + <i>“M. ai Preti”</i> (Death to the Priests). No attempt had been made to + efface them, and as they expressed an equal hatred for the monarchy and + the papacy, neither laity nor clergy may have felt obliged to interfere. + Perhaps, however, it was rightly inferred that the ferocity of one + inscription might be best left to counteract the influence of the other. I + know that with regard to the priests you experience some such effect from + the atrocious attacks in the chief satirical paper of Rome, The name of + this paper was given me, with a deprecation not unmixed with recognition + of its cleverness, by an Italian friend whom I was making my creditor for + some knowledge of Roman journalism; and the sole copy of it which I bought + was handed to me with a sort of smiling abhorrence by the kindly old kiosk + woman whom I liked best to buy my daily papers of. When I came to look it + through, I made more and more haste, for its satire of the priests was of + an indecency so rank that it seemed to offend the nose as well as the eye. + To turn from the paper was easy, but from the fact of its popularity a + painful impression remained. It was not a question of whether the priests + were so bad as all that, but whether its many readers believed them so, or + believed them bad short of it, in the kind of wickedness they were accused + of. + </p> + <p> + There can be no doubt of the constant rancor between the Clericals and the + Radicals in their different phases throughout Italy. There can be almost + no doubt that the Radicals will have their way increasingly, and that if, + for instance, the catechism is kept in the public schools this year, it + will be cast out some other year not far hence. Much, of course, depends + upon whether the status can maintain itself. It is, like the status + everywhere and always, very anomalous; but it is difficult to imagine + either the monarchy or the papacy yielding at any point. Apparently the + State is the more self-assertive of the two, but this is through the + patriotism which is the political life of the people. It must always be + remembered that when the Italians entered Rome and made it the capital of + their kingdom they did not drive out the French troops, which had already + been withdrawn; they drove out the papal troops, the picturesque and + inefficient foreign volunteers who remained behind. Every memorial of that + event, therefore, is a blow at the Church, so far as the Church is + identified with the lost temporal power. One of the chief avenues is named + Twenty-second September Street because the national troops entered Rome on + that date; the tablets on the Porta Pia where they entered, the monument + on the Pincio to the Cairoli brothers, who died for Italy; the statues of + Garibaldi, of Cavour, of Victor Emmanuel everywhere painfully remind the + papacy of its lost sovereignty. But the national feeling has gone in its + expression beyond and behind the patriotic occupation of Rome; and no one + who suffered conspicuously, at any time in the past, for freedom of + thought through the piety of the fallen power is suffered to be forgotten. + On its side the Church enters its perpetual protest in the + self-imprisonment of the pope; and here and there, according to its + opportunity, it makes record of what it has suffered from the State. For + instance, at St. John Lateran, which theoretically forms part of the + Leonine City of the Popes and is therefore extraterritorial to Italy, a + stretch of wall is suffered to remain scarred by the cannon-shot which the + monarchy fired when it took Rome from the papacy. + </p> + <p> + Doubtless there are other monuments of the kind, but their enumeration + would not throw greater light on a situation which endures with no + apparent promise of change. The patience of the Church is infinite; it + lives and it outlives. Remembering that Arianism was older than + Protestantism when Catholicism finally survived it, we must not be + surprised if the Roman Church shall hold out against the Italian State not + merely decades, but centuries. In the meanwhile to its children from other + lands it means Rome above all the other Romes; and on us, its + step-children of different faiths or unfaiths, its prison-house—if + we choose so to think of the Vatican—has a supreme claim, if we love + the sculpture of pagan Rome or the painting of Christian Rome. + </p> + <p> + We swarm to its galleries in every variety of nationality, with + guide-books in every tongue, and we are very queer, for the most part, to + any one of our number who can sufficiently exteriorate himself to get the + rest of us in perspective. It is probably well that most of us do not + stagger under any great knowledge of the crushing history of the place, + which has been the scene of the most terrible experiences of the race, the + most touching, the most august. Provisionally ignorant, at least, we begin + to appear at the earliest practicable hour before the outermost stairway + of the Vatican, and, while the Swiss Guards still have on their long, blue + cloaks to keep their black and yellow legs warm, mount to the Sistine + Chapel. Here we help instruct one another, as we stand about or sit about + in twos and threes or larger groups, reading aloud from our polyglot + Baedekers while we join in identifying the different facts. Here, + stupendously familiar, whether we have seen it before or not, is Michelangelo's + giant fresco of the Judgment, as prodigious as we imagined or remembered + it; here are his mighty Prophets and his mighty Sibyls; and here below + them, in incomparably greater charm, are the frescos of Botticelli, with + the grace of his Primavera playing through them all like a strain of music + and taking the soul with joy. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-34.jpg" alt="34 Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + It is the same crowd in the Raphael Stanze, but rather silenter, for by + now we have taught ourselves enough from our Baedekers at least to read + them under our breaths, and we talk low before the frescos and the + canvases. Some of us are even mute in the presence of the School of + Athens, whatever reserves we may utter concerning the Transfiguration. If + we are honest, we more or less own what our impressions really are from + those other famous works, concerning which our impressions are otherwise + altogether and inexpressibly unimportant; it is a question of ethics and + not aesthetics, as most of our simple-hearted company suppose it to be; + and, if we are dishonest, we pretend to have felt and thought things at + first-hand from them which we have learned at second-hand from our + reading. I will confess, for my small part, that I had more pleasure in + the coloring and feeling of some of the older canvases and in here and + there a Titian than in all the Raphaels in the Stanze of his name. + </p> + <p> + I was not knowing his works for the first time; no one perhaps does that, + such is the multiplicity of the copies of them; and I vividly remembered + them from my acquaintance with the originals four decades before, as I had + remembered the Michelangelos; but in their presence and in the presence of + so many other masterpieces in the different rooms, with their horrible + miracles and atrocious martyrdoms, I realized as for the first time what a + bloody religion ours was. It was such relief, such rest, to go from those + broilings and beheadings and crucifixions and Sayings and stabbings into + the long, tranquil aisles of the museum where the marble men and women, + created for earthly immortality by Greek art, welcomed me to their + serenity and sanity. The earlier gods might have been the devils which the + early Christians fancied them, but they did not look it; they did not look + as if it was they that had loosed the terrors upon mankind out of which + the true faith has but barely struggled at last, now when its relaxing + grasp seems slipping from the human mind. I remembered those peaceful + pagans so perfectly that I could have gone confidently to this or that and + hailed him friend; and though I might not have liked to claim the + acquaintance of all of them in the flesh, in the marble I fled to it as + refuge from the cruel visions of Christian art. If this is perhaps saying + too much, I wish also to hedge from the wholesale censure of my + fellow-sight-seers which I may have seemed to imply. They did not prevail + so clutteringly in the sculpture galleries as in the Sistine Chapel and + the Stanze. One could have the statues as much to one's self as one liked; + there were courts with murmuring fountains in them; and there was a view + of Rome from a certain window, where no fellow-tourist intruded between + one and the innumerable roofs and domes and towers, and the heights beyond + whose snows there was nothing but blue sky. It was a beautiful morning, + with a sun mild as English summer, which did not prevent the afternoon + from turning cold with wind and raining and hailing and snowing. This in + turn did not keep off a fine red sunset, with an evening star of + glittering silver that brightened as the sunset faded. At Rome the weather + can be of as many minds in March as in April at New York. + </p> + <p> + But through all one's remembrance of the Roman winter a sentiment of + spring plays enchantingly, like that grace of Botticelli's Primavera in + his Sistine frescos. It is not a sentiment of summer, though it is + sometimes a summer warmth which you feel, and except in the steam-heated + hotels it does not penetrate to the interiors. In the galleries and the + churches you must blow your nails if you wish to thaw your fingers, but, + if you go out-of-doors, there is a radiant imitation of May awaiting you. + She takes you by your thick glove and leads you in your fur-lined overcoat + through sullen streets that open upon sunny squares, with fountains + streaming into the crystal air, and makes you own that this is the Italian + winter as advertised—that is, if you are a wanderer and a stranger; + if you are an Italian and at home you keep in the out-door warmth, but + shun the sun, and in-doors you wrap up more thickly than ever, or you go + to bed if you have a more luxurious prejudice against shivering. If you + are a beggar, as you very well may be in Rome, you impart your personal + heat to a specific curbstone or the spot which you select as being most in + the path of charity, and cling to it from dawn till dark. Or you acquire + somehow the rights of a chair just within the padded curtain of a church, + and do not leave it till the hour for closing. The Roman beggars are of + all claims upon pity, but preferably I should say they were blind, and + some of these are quite young girls, and mostly rather cheerful. But the + very gayest beggar I remember was a legless man at the gate of the Vatican + Museum; the saddest was a sullen dwarf on the way to this cripple, whose + gloom a donative even of twenty-five centessimi did not suffice to abate. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XII. SUPERFICIAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONJECTURES + </h2> + <p> + It had seemed to me that in the afternoons of the old papal times, so dear + to foreigners who never knew them, I used to see a series of patrician + ladies driving round and round on the Pincio, reclining in their landaus + and shielding their complexions from the November suns of the year 1864 + with the fringed parasols of the period. In the doubt which attends all + recollections of the past, after age renders us uncertain of the present, + I hastened on my second Sunday at Rome in February, 1908, to enjoy this + vision, if possible. I found the Pincio unexpectedly near; I found the + sunshine; I found the familiar winter warmth which in Southern climates is + so unlike the summer warmth in ours; but the drive which I had remembered + as a long ellipse had narrowed to a little circle, where one could not + have driven round faster than a slow trot without danger of vertigo. I did + not find that series of apparent principessas or imaginable marchesas + leaning at their lovely lengths in their landaus. I found in overwhelming + majority the numbered victorias, which pass for cabs in Rome, full of + decent tourists, together with a great variety of people on foot, but not + much fashion and no swells that my snobbish soul could be sure of. There + was, indeed, one fine moment when, at a retired point of the drive, I saw + two private carriages drawn up side by side in their encounter, with two + stout old ladies, whom I decided to be dowager countesses at the least, + partially projected from their opposing windows and lost in a delightful + exchange, as I hoped, of scandal. But the only other impressive + personality was that of an elderly, obviously American gentleman, in the + solitary silk hat and long frock-coat of the scene. There were other + Americans, but none so formal; the English were in all degrees of + informality down to tan shoes and at least one travelling-cap. The women's + dress, whether they were on foot or in cabs, was not striking, though more + than half of them were foreigners and could easily have afforded to + outdress the Italians, especially the work people, though these were there + in their best. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-35.jpg" + alt="35 Piazza Del Popolo from the Pincian Hill " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + There was a band-stand in the space first reached by the promenaders, and + there ought clearly to have been a band, but I was convinced that there + was to be none by a brief colloquy between one of the cab-drivers + (doubtless goaded to it by his fair freight) and the gentlest of Roman + policemen, whose response was given in accents of hopeful compassion: + </p> + <p> + CABMAN: <i>“Musica, no?”</i> (No music?) + </p> + <p> + POLICEMAN: “<i>Forse l' avremo oramai”</i> (Perhaps we shall have it + presently.) + </p> + <p> + We did not have it at all that Sunday, possibly because it was the day + after the assassination of the King of Portugal, and the flags were at + half-mast everywhere. So we went, such of us as liked, to the parapet + overlooking the Piazza del Popolo, and commanding one of those prospects + of Rome which are equally incomparable from every elevation. I, for my + part, made the dizzying circuit of the brief drive on foot in the dark + shadows of the roofing ilexes (if they are ilexes), and then strolled back + and forth on the paths set thick with plinths bearing the heads of the + innumerable national great—the poets, historians, artists, + scientists, politicians, heroes—from the ancient Roman to the modern + Italian times. I particularly looked up the poets of the last hundred + years, because I had written about them in one of my many forgotten books, + till I fancied a growing consciousness in them at this encounter with an + admirer; they, at least, seemed to remember my book. Then I went off to + the cafe overlooking them in their different alleys, and had tea next a + man who was taking lemon instead of milk in his. Here I was beset with an + impassioned longing to know whether he was a Russian or American, since + the English always take milk in their tea, but I could not ask, and when I + had suffered my question as long as I could in his presence I escaped from + it, if you can call it escaping, to the more poignant question of what it + would be like to come, Sunday after Sunday, to the Pincio, in the + life-long voluntary exile of some Americans I knew, who meant to spend the + rest of their years under the spell of Rome. I thought, upon the whole, + that it would be a dull, sad fate, for somehow we seem born in a certain + country in order to die in it, and I went home, to come again other + Sundays to the Pincio, but not all the Sundays I promised myself. + </p> + <p> + On one of these Sundays I found Roman boys playing an inscrutable game + among the busts of their storied compatriots, a sort of “I spy” or “Hide + and go whoop,” counting who should be “It” in an Italian version of + “Oneary, ory, ickory, an,” and then scattering in every direction behind + the plinths and bushes. They were not more molestive than boys always are + in a world which ought to be left entirely to old people, and I could not + see that they did any harm. But somebody must have done harm, for not only + was a bust here and there scribbled over in pencil, but the bust of + Machiavelli had its nose freshly broken off in a jagged fracture that was + very hurting to look at. This may have been done by some mistaken + moralist, who saw in the old republican adviser of princes that enemy of + mankind which he was once reputed to be. At any rate, I will not attribute + the mutilation to the boys of Rome, whom I saw at other times foregoing so + many opportunities of mischief in the Villa Bor-ghese. One of them even + refused money from me there when I misunderstood his application for + matches and offered him some coppers. He put my tip aside with a dignified + wave of his hand and a proud backward step; and, indeed, I ought to have + seen from the flat, broad cap he wore that he was a school-boy of civil + condition. The Romans are not nearly so dramatic as the Neapolitans or + Venetians or even as the Tuscans; but once in the same pleasance I saw a + controversy between school-boys which was carried on with an animation + full of beauty and finish. They argued back and forth, not violently, but + vividly, and one whom I admired most enforced his reasons with charming + gesticulations, whirling from his opponents with quick turns of his body + and many a renunciatory retirement, and then facing about and advancing + again upon the unconvinced. I decided that his admirable drama had been + studied from the histrionics of his mother in domestic scenes; and, if I + had been one of those other boys, I should have come over to his side + instantly. + </p> + <p> + The Roman manners vary from Roman to Roman, just as our own manners, if we + had any, would vary from New-Yorker to New-Yorker. Zola thinks the whole + population is more or less spoiled with the conceit of Rome's ancient + greatness, and shows it. One could hardly blame them if this were so; but + I did not see any strong proof of it, though I could have imagined it on + occasion. I should say rather that they had a republican simplicity of + manner, and I liked this better in the shop people and work people than + the civility overflowing into servility which one finds among the like + folk, for instance, in England. I heard complaints from foreigners that + the old-time deference of the lower classes was gone, but I did not miss + it. Once in a cafe, indeed, the waiter spoke to me in <i>Voi</i> (you) + instead of <i>Lei</i> (lordship), but the Neapolitans often do this, and I + took it for a friendly effort to put me at my ease in a strange tongue + with a more accustomed form. We were trying to come together on the kind + of tea I wanted, but we failed, if I wanted it strong, for I got it very + weak and tepid. I thought another day that it would be stronger if I could + get it brought hotter, but it was not, and so I went no more to a place + where I was liable to be called You instead of Lordship and still get weak + tea. I think this was a mistake of mine and a loss, for at that cafe I saw + some old-fashioned Italian types drinking their black coffee at afternoon + tea-time out of tumblers, and others calling for pen and ink and writing + letters, and ladies sweetly asking for newspapers and reading them there; + and I ought to have continued coming to study them. + </p> + <p> + As to my conjectures of republican quality in the Romans, I had explicit + confirmation from a very intelligent Italian who said of the anomalous + social and political situation in Rome: “We Italians are naturally + republicans, and, if it were a question of any other reigning family, we + should have the republic. But we feel that we owe everything, the very + existence of the nation, to the house of Savoy, and we are loyal to it in + our gratitude. Especially we are true to the present king.” It is known, + of course, that Menotti Garibaldi continues the republican that his father + always was, but I heard of his saying that, if a republic were + established, Victor Emmanuel III. would be overwhelmingly chosen the first + president. It is the Socialists who hold off unrelentingly from the + monarchy, and not the republicans, as they can be differenced from them. + One of the well-known Roman anomalies is that some members of the oldest + families are or have been Socialists; and such a noble was reproached + because he would not go to thank the king in recognition of some signal + proof of his public spirit and unselfish patriotism. He owned the + generosity of the king's behavior and his claim upon popular + acknowledgment, but he said that he had taught the young men of his party + the duty of ignoring the monarchy, and he could not go counter to the + doctrine he had preached. + </p> + <p> + If I venture to speak now of a very extraordinary trait of the municipal + situation at Rome, it must be without the least pretence to authority or + to more than such superficial knowledge as the most incurious visitor to + Rome can hardly help having. In the capital of Christendom, where the head + of the Church dwells in a tradition of supremacy hardly less Italian than + Christian, the syndic, or mayor, is a Jew, and not merely a Jew, but an + alien Jew, English by birth and education, a Londoner and an Oxford man. + More yet, he is a Freemason, which in Italy means things anathema to the + Church, and he is a very prominent Freemason. With reference to the State, + his official existence, though not inimical, is through the fusion of the + political parties which elected him hardly less anomalous. This + combination overthrew the late Clerical city government, and it included + Liberals, Republicans, Socialists, and all the other anti-Clericals. + Whatever liberalism or republicanism means, socialism cannot mean less + than the economic solution of regality and aristocracy in Europe, and in + Italy as elsewhere. It does not mean the old-fashioned revolution; it + means simply the effacement of all social differences by equal industrial + obligations. So far as the Socialists can characterize it, therefore, the + actual municipal government of Rome is as antimonarchical as it is + antipapal. But the syndic of Rome is a man of education, of culture, of + intelligence, and he is evidently a man of consummate tact. He has known + how to reconcile the warring elements, which made peace in his election, + to one another and to their outside antagonists, to the Church and to the + State, as well as to himself, in the course he holds over a very rugged + way. His opportunities of downfall are pretty constant, it will be seen, + when it is explained that if a measure with which he is identified fails + in the city council it becomes his duty to resign, like the prime-minister + of England in the like case with Parliament, But Mr. Nathan, who is as + alien in his name as in his race and religion, and is known orally to the + Romans as Signor Nahtahn, has not yet been obliged to resign. He has felt + his way through every difficulty, and has not yet been identified with any + fatally compromising measure. In such an extremely embarrassing + predicament as that created by the conflict between the labor unions and + the police early in April, and eventuating in the two days' strike, he + knew how to do the wise thing and the right thing. As to the incident, he + held his hand and he held his tongue, but he went to visit the wounded + workmen in the hospital, and he condoled with their families. He was + somewhat blamed for that, but his action kept for him the confidence of + that large body of his supporters who earn their living with their hands. + </p> + <p> + It is said that the common Romans do not willingly earn their living with + their hands; that they like better being idle and, so far as they can, + ornamental. In this they would not differ from the uncommon Romans, the + moneyed, the leisured, the pedigreed classes, who reproach them for their + indolence; but I do not know whether they are so indolent as all that or + not. I heard it said that they no longer want work, and that when they get + it they do not do it well—a supposed effect of the socialism which + is supposed to have spoiled their manners. I heard it said more + intelligently, as I thought, that they are not easily disciplined, and + that they cannot be successfully associated in the industries requiring + workmen to toil in large bodies together; they will not stand that. Also I + heard it said, as I thought again rather intelligently, that where work is + given them to do after a certain model, they will conform perfectly for + the first three or four times; then their fatal creativeness comes into + play, and they begin to better their instruction by trying to improve upon + the patterns—that is, they are artists, not artisans. They must + please their fancy in their work or they cannot do it well. From my own + experience I cannot say whether this is generally or only sometimes true, + but I can affirm that where they delayed or erred in their work they took + their failure very amiably. I never saw sweeter patience than that of the + Roman matron who had undertaken a small job of getting spots out of a + garment, and who quite surpassed me in self-control when she announced, + day after appointed day, that the work was not done yet or not done + perfectly; she was politeness itself. + </p> + <p> + On the other hand, some young ladies at a fashionable concert which the + queen-mother honored with her presence did not seem very polite. They kept + on their immense hats, as women still do in all public places on the + European continent, and they seized as many chairs as they could for + friends who did not come, and at supreme moments they stood up on their + chairs and spoiled such poor chance of seeing the queen-mother as the + stranger might have had. While the good King Umberto lived the stranger + would have had many other chances, for it is said that the queen showed + herself with him to the people at the windows of their palace every + afternoon; but in her widowhood she lives retired, though now and then her + carriage may be seen passing through the streets, with four special + policemen on bicycles following it. These waited about the doorway of the + concert-hall that afternoon and formed a very simple, if effective, guard. + In fact, it might be said that in its relations with the popular life the + reigning family could hardly be simpler. The present king and queen are + not so much seen in public as King Umberto and Queen Margherita were, but + it is known from many words and deeds that King Victor Emmanuel wishes to + be the friend, if not the acquaintance, of his people. When it was + proposed to push the present tunnel, with its walks and drives and + trolley-lines, under the Quirinal Palace and gardens, so as to connect the + two principal business quarters of the city, the king was notified that + the noise and jar of the traffic in it might interfere with his comfort. + He asked if the tunnel would be for the general advantage, and, when this + could not be denied, he gave his consent in words to some such effect as + “That settles it.” When the German Emperor last visited Rome he is said to + have had some state question as to whether he should drive on a certain + occasion to the Palatine with the king's horses or the pope's. He who told + the story did not remember how the question was solved by the emperor, but + he said, “Our king walked.” + </p> + <p> + All this does not mean republican simplicity in the king; a citizen king + is doubtless a contradiction in terms anywhere out of France, and even + there Louis Philippe found the part difficult. But there is no doubt that + the King of Italy means to be the best sort of constituional king, and, as + he is in every way an uncommon man, he will probably succeed. One may + fancy in him, if one likes, something of that almost touching anxiety of + thoughtful Italians to be and to do all that they can for Italy, in a + patriotism that seems as enlightened as it is devoted. If I had any + criticism to make of such Italians it would be that they expected, or that + they asked, too much of themselves. To be sure, they have a right to + expect much, for they have done wonders with a country which, without + great natural resources except of heart and brain, entered bankrupt into + its national existence, and has now grown financially to the dimensions of + its vast treasury building, with a paper currency at par and of equal + validity with French and English money. If the industrial conditions in + Italy were so bad as we compassionate outsiders have been taught to + suppose, this financial change is one of the most important events + accomplished in Europe since the great era of the racial unifications + began. No one will pretend that there have not been great errors of + administration in Italy, but apparently the Italians have known how to + learn wisdom from their folly. There has been a great deal of industrial + adversity; the cost of living has advanced; the taxes are very heavy, and + the burdens are unequally adjusted; many speculators have been ruined, and + much honestly invested money has been lost. But wages have increased with + the prices and rents and taxes, and in a country where every ounce of coal + that drives a wheel of production or transportation has to be brought a + thousand miles manufactures and railroads have been multiplied. + </p> + <p> + The state has now taken over the roads and has added their cost to that of + its expensive army and navy, but no reasonable witness can doubt that the + Italians will be equal to this as well as their other national + undertakings. These in Rome are peculiarly difficult and onerous, because + they must be commensurate with the scale of antiquity. In a city surviving + amid the colossal ruins of the past it would be grotesque to build + anything of the modest modern dimensions such as would satisfy the eye in + other capitals. The Palace of Finance, at a time when Italian paper was at + a discount almost equal to that of American paper during the Civil War, + had to be prophetic of the present solvency in size. The yet-unfinished + Palace of Justice (one dare not recognize its beauty above one's breath) + must be planned so huge that the highest story had to be left off if the + foundations were to support the superstructure; the memorial of Victor + Emmanuel II. must be of a vastness in keeping with the monuments of + imperial Rome, some of which it will partly obscure. Yet as the nation has + grown in strength under burdens and duties, it will doubtless prove + adequate to the colossal architectural enterprises of its capital. Private + speculation in Rome brought disaster twenty-five years ago, but now the + city has overflowed with new life the edifices that long stood like empty + sepulchres, and public enterprises cannot finally fail; otherwise we + should not be digging the Panama Canal or be trying to keep the New York + streets in repair. We may confide in the ability of the Italians to carry + out their undertakings and to pay the cost out of their own pockets. It is + easy to criticise them, but we cannot criticise them more severely than + they criticise themselves; and perhaps, as our censure cannot profit them, + we might with advantage to ourselves, now and then, convert it into + recognition of the great things they have accomplished. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIII. CASUAL IMPRESSIONS + </h2> + <p> + The day that we arrived in Rome the unclouded sun was yellow on the white + dust of the streets, which is never laid by a municipal watering-cart, + though sometimes it is sprinkled into mire from the garden-hose of the + abutting hotels; and in my rashness I said that for Rome you want sun and + you want youth. Yet there followed many gray days when my age found Rome + very well indeed, and I would not have the septuagenarian keep away + because he is no longer in the sunny sixties. He may see through his + glasses some things hidden even from the eyes of the early forties. If he + drives out beyond the Porta Pia, say, some bright afternoon, and notes how + the avenue between the beautiful old villas is also bordered by many + vacant lots advertised for sale as well as built up with pleasant new + houses, he will be able to carry away with him the significant fact that a + convenient and public-spirited trolley-line has the same suburban effect + in Rome, Italy, as in Rome, New York. If he meets some squadrons of + cavalry or some regiments of foot, in that military necessity of constant + movement which the civilian can never understand, he may make the useful + reflection that it is much better to have the troops out of the city than + in it, and he can praise the wisdom of the Italian government accordingly. + On the neighboring mountains the presence or absence of snow forms the + difference between summer and winter in Rome, and will suggest the + question whether, after all, our one continental weather is better than + the many local weathers of Europe; and perhaps he will acquire national + modesty in owning that there is something more picturesque in the + indications of those azure or silvery tops than in his morning paper's + announcement that there is or is not a lower pressure in the region of the + lakes. + </p> + <p> + At any rate, I would not have him note the intimations of such a drive at + less worth than those of any more conventional fact of his Roman sojourn. + If one is quite honest, or merely as honest as one may be with safety, one + will often own to one's self that something merely incidental to one's + purpose, in visiting this memorable place or that, was of greater charm + and greater value than the fulfilment of a direct purpose. One happy + morning I went, being in the vicinity, to renew the acquaintance with the + Tarpeian Rock, which I had hastened to make on my first visit to Rome. I + had then found it so far from such a frightfully precipitous height as I + had led myself to expect that I came away and rather mocked it in print. + But now, possibly because the years had moderated all my expectations in + life, I thought the Tarpeian Rock very respectably steep and quite + impressively lofty; either the houses at its foot had sunk with their + chimneys and balconies, or the rock had risen, so that one could no longer + be hurled from it with impunity. We looked at it from an arbor of the + lovely little garden which we were let into beyond the top of the rock, + and which was the pleasance of some sort of hospital. I think there were + probably flowers there, since it was a garden, but what was best was the + almond-tree covering the whole space with a roof of bloom, and in this + roof a score of birds that sang divinely. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0036" id="linkimage-0036"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-36.jpg" alt="36 the Baths of Diocletian " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I am aware of bringing a great many birds into these papers; but really + Rome would not be Rome without them; and I could not exaggerate their + number or the sweetness of their song. They particularly abounded in the + cloistered and gardened close of the Cistercian Convent, which three + hundred years ago ensconsed itself within the ruinous Baths of Diocletian. + I have no fable at hand to explain what seems the special preference of + the birds for this garden; it is possibly an idiosyncrasy, something like + that of the cats which make Trajan's Forum their favorite resort. All that + I can positively say is that if I were a bird I would ask nothing better + than to frequent the cypresses of that garden and tune my numbers for the + entertainment of the audience of extraordinary monsters in the aisles + below, which bea'in plinths of clipped privet and end marble heads of + horses, bulls, elephants, rhinoceroses, and their like. I do not pretend + to be exact in their nomination; they may be other animals; but I am sure + of their attention to the birds. I am not quite so sure of the attention + of the antique shapes in the rooms of the Ludovisi collection looking into + the close. I fancy them preoccupied with the in-doors cold, so great in + all Italian galleries, and scarcely tempered for them by the remote and + solitary brazier over which the custodians take turns in stifling + themselves. They cannot come down into the sun and song of the garden, to + which the American tourist may return from visiting them, to thaw out his + love of the beautiful. + </p> + <p> + They are not so many or so famous as their marble brothers and sisters in + the Vatican Museum, but the tourist should not miss seeing them. Neither + should he miss any accessible detail of the environing ruins of the + Diocletian Baths. Let him not think because they are so handy, and so next + door, as it were, to the railway station where he arrives, and to Cook's + office where he goes for his letters next morning, that they are of less + merit than other monuments of imperial Rome. They are not only colossally + vast, but they are singularly noble, as well as so admirably convenient. + Because they are so convenient, the modern Romans have turned their + cavernous immensity to account in the trades and industries, and have + built them up in carpenters' and blacksmiths' and plumbers' shops, where + there is a cheerful hammering and banging much better than the sullen + silence of more remote and difficult ruins. In color they are a very + agreeable reddish brown, though not so soft to the eye as the velvety + masses of the Palatine, which at any distance great enough to obscure + their excavation have a beauty like that of primitive nature. I do not + know but you see these best from the glazed terrace of that restaurant on + the Aventine which is the resort of the well-advised Romans and visitors, + and from which you look across to the mount of fallen and buried grandeur + over a champaign of gardens and orchards. All round is a landscape which I + was not able to think of as less than tremendous, with the whole of Rome + in it, and the snow-topped hills about it—a scene to which you may + well give more than a moment from the varied company at the other tables, + where English, German, French, and Americans, as well as Italians, are + returning to the simple life in their enjoyment of the local dishes, + washed down with golden draughts of local wine, served ciderwise in + generous jugs. + </p> + <p> + If your mind is, as ours was in that place, to drive farther and see the + chapter-house of the Knights of Malta, clinging to the height over the + Tiber, and looking up and down its yellow torrent and the black boats + along the shore, with universal Rome melting into the distance, you must + not fail to stop at the old, old Church of St. Sabina. You will naturally + want to see this, not only because there in the cloister (as the ladies + can ascertain at the window let into the wall for their dangerous eyes to + peer through from the outside) is the successor of the orange-tree + transplanted from the Holy Land by St. Dominic six or seven hundred years + ago; not only because one of the doors of the church, covered with Bible + stories, is thought the oldest wood-carving in the world, but also because + there will be sitting in his white robes on a bench beside the nave an + aged Dominican monk reading some holy book, with his spectacles fallen + forward on his nose and his cowl fallen back on his neck, and his wide + tonsure gleaming glacially in the pale light, whom nothing in the church + or its visitors can distract from his devotions. + </p> + <p> + It is very, very cold in there, but he probably would not, if he could, + follow you into the warm outer world and on into the garden of the + Knights, who came here after they had misruled Malta for centuries and + finally rendered a facile submission to General Bonaparte of the French + Republican army in 1798. Their fixing here cannot be called anything so + vigorous as their last stand; but, without specific reference to the + easy-chairs in their chapter-house, it may be fitly called their last + seat; and, if it is true that none of plebeian blood may enjoy the order's + privileges, the place will afford another of those satisfactions which the + best of all possible worlds is always offering its admirers. Even if one + were disposed to moralize the comfortable end of the poor Knights harshly, + one must admit that their view of Rome is one of the unrivalled views, and + that the glimpse of St. Peter's through the key-hole of their garden-gate + is little short of tin-rivalled. I could not manage the glimpse myself, + but I can testify to the unique character of the avenue of clipped box and + laurel which the key-hole also commands. Lovers of the supernatural, of + which I am the first, will like to be reminded, or perhaps instructed, + that the Church of the Priory stands on the spot where Remus had a seance + with the spiritual authorities and was advised against building Rome where + he proposed, being shown only six vultures as against twelve that Romulus + saw in favor of his chosen site. The fact gave the Aventine Hill the fame + of bad luck, but any one may safely visit it now, after the long time that + has passed. + </p> + <p> + I do not, however, advise visiting it above any other place in Rome. What + I always say is, take your chances with any or every time or place; you + cannot fail of some impression which you will always like recurring to as + characteristically delightful. For instance, I once walked home from the + Piazza di Spagna with some carnival masks frolicking about me through the + sun-shotten golden dust of the delicious evening air, and I had a pleasure + from the experience which I shall never forget. It was as rich as that I + got from the rosy twilight in which I wandered homeward another time from + the Piazza di Venezia and found myself passing the Fountain of Trevi, and + lingered long there and would not throw my penny into its waters because I + knew I could not help coming back to Rome anyhow. Yet another time I was + driving through a certain piazza where the peasants stand night long + waiting to be hired by the proprietors who come to find them there, and + suddenly the piety of the Middle Ages stood before me in the figure of the + Brotherhood of the Misericordia, draped to the foot and hooded in their + gray, unbleached linen. The brothers were ranged in a file at the doors of + the church ready to visit the house of sickness or of mourning, + barefooted, with their eyes showing spectrally through their masks and + their hands coming soft and white out of their sleeves and betraying the + lily class that neither toils nor spins and yet is bound, as in the past, + to the poorest and humblest through the only Church that knows how to + unite them in the offering and acceptance of reciprocal religious duties. + </p> + <p> + In Rome, as elsewhere in Catholic countries, it seemed to me that the + worshippers were mostly of the poorer classes and were mostly old women, + but in the Church of the Jesuits I saw worshippers almost as well dressed + as the average of our Christian Scientists, and in that church, whose name + I forget, but which is in the wide street or narrow piazza below the + windows of the palace where the last Stuarts lived and died, my + ineradicable love of gentility was flattered and my faith in the final + sanctification of good society restored by the sight of gentlemen coming + to and going from prayer with their silk hats in their hands. + </p> + <p> + The performance of ritual implies a certain measure of mechanism, and the + wonder is that in the Catholic churches it is not more mechanical than it + actually is. I was no great frequenter of functions, and I cannot claim + that my superior spirituality was ever deeply wounded; sometimes it was + even supported and consoled. I noted, without offence, in the Church of + San Giuseppe how the young monk, who preached an eloquent sermon on the + saint's life and character, exhausted himself before he exhausted his + topic, and sat down between the successive heads of his discourse and took + a good rest. It was the saint's day, which seemed more generally observed + than any other saint's day in Rome, and his baroque church in Via Capo le + Case was thronged with people, mostly poor and largely peasants, who were + apparently not so fatigued by the preacher's shrill, hard delivery as he + was himself. There were many children, whom their elders held up to see, + and there was one young girl in a hat as wide as a barrel-head standing up + where others sat, and blotting out the prospect of half the church with + her flaring brim and flaunting feathers. The worshippers came and went, + and while the monk preached and reposed a man crept dizzyingly round the + cornice with a taper at the end of a long pole lighting the chandeliers, + while two other men on the floor kindled the candles before the altars. As + soon as their work was completed, the monk, as if he had been preaching + against time, sat definitely down and left us to the rapture of the + perfected splendor. The high-altar was canopied and curtained in crimson, + fringed with gold, and against this the candle-flames floated like yellow + flowers. Suddenly, amid the hush and expectance, a tenor voice pealed from + the organ-loft, and a train of priests issued from the sacristy and + elbowed and shouldered their way through the crowd to the high-altar, + where their intoning, like so many + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Silver snarling trumpets 'gan to glide,” + </pre> + <p> + and those flower-like flames and that tenor voice seemed to sing together, + and all sense of mortal agency in the effect was lost. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0037" id="linkimage-0037"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-37.jpg" + alt="37 Church of St. John Lateran and Lateran Palace " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + How much our pale Northern faith has suffered from the elimination of the + drama which is so large an element in the worship of the South could not + be conjectured without offence to both. Drama I have said, but, if I had + said opera, it would have been equally with the will merely to recognize + the fact and not to censure it. Many have imagined a concert of praise in + heaven, and portrayed it as a spectacle of which the elder Christian + worship seems emulous. Go, therefore, to Rome, dear fellow-Protestant, + with any measure of ignorance short of mine, but leave as much of your + prejudice behind you as you can. You are not more likely to become a + convert because of your tolerance; in fact, you may be the safer for it; + and it will prepare you for a gentler pleasure than you would otherwise + enjoy in the rites and ceremonies which seem exotic in our wintrier world, + but which are here native to the climate, or, at least, could not have had + their origin under any but oriental or meridional skies. The kindlier mood + will help you to a truer appreciation of that peculiar keeping of the + churches which the stranger is apt to encounter in his approach. Be tender + of the hapless mendicants at the door; they are not there for their + pleasure, those blind and halt and old. Be modestly receptive of the good + office of the whole tribe of cicerones, of custodians, of sacristans; they + can save you time, which, though it is not quite the same as money, even + in Rome is worth saving, and are the repository of many rejected fables + waiting to be recognized as facts again. I, for instance, committed the + potential error of wholly rejecting with scorn the services of an + authorized guide to the Church of St. John Lateran because he said the + tariff was three francs. But after wandering, the helpless prey of my own + Baedeker, up and down the huge temple, I was glad to find him waiting my + emergence where I had left him, in the church porch, one of the most + pathetic figures that ever wrung the remorseful heart. + </p> + <p> + His poor black clothes showed the lustre of inveterate wear; his waistcoat + would have been the better for a whole bottle of benzine; his shoes, if + they did not share the polish of those threadbare textures, reciprocated + the effect of his broken-spirited cuffs and collar, and the forlorn + gentility of his hat. His beard had not been shaved for three days; I do + not know why, but doubtless for as good a reason as that his shirt had not + been washed for seven. It was with something like a cry for pardon of my + previous brutality that I now closed with his unabated demand of a + three-franc fee, and we went with him wherever he would, from one holy + edifice to another of those that constitute the church; but I will not ask + the reader to follow us in the cab which he mounted into with us, but + which would not conveniently hold four. Let him look it all up in the + admirably compendious pages of Hare and Murray, and believe, if he can, + that I missed nothing of that history and mystery. If I speak merely of + the marvellous baptistery, it is doubtless not because the other parts + were not equally worthy of my wonder, but because I would not have even an + enemy miss the music of the singing doors, mighty valves of bronze which, + when they turn upon their hinges, emit a murmur of grief or a moan of + remorse for whatever heathen uses they once served the wicked Caracalla at + his baths. Not to have heard their rich harmony would be like not having + heard the echo in the baptistery of Pisa, a life-long loss. + </p> + <p> + Heaven knows how punctiliously our guide would have acquainted us with + every particular of the Lateran group, which for a thousand years before + the Vatican was the home of the popes. We begged off from this and that, + but even indolence like mine would not spare itself the sight of the Scala + Santa. That was another of the things which I distinctly remembered from + the year 1864, and I did not find the spectacle of the modern penitents + covering the holy steps different in 1908. Now, as then, there was + something incongruous in their fashions and aspirations, but one could not + doubt that it was a genuine piety that nerved them to climb up and down + the hard ascent on their knees, or, at the worst, that it was good + exercise. Still, I would rather leave my reader the sense of that most + noble facade of the church, with its lofty balustraded entablature, where + the gigantic Christ and ten of his saints look out forever to the Alban + hills. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIV. TIVOLI AND FRASCATI + </h2> + <p> + One of the most agreeable illusions of travel is a sort of expectation + that if you will give objects of interest time enough they will present + themselves to you, and, if they will not actually come to you in your + hotel, will happen in your way when you go out. This was my notion of the + right way of seeing Rome, but, as the days of my winter passed, so many + memorable monuments failed not merely to seek me out, but stiffly held + aloof from me in my walks abroad, that I began to feel anxious lest I + should miss them altogether. I had, for instance, always had the + friendliest curiosity concerning Tivoli and Frascati as the two most + amiable Roman neighborhoods, and hoped to see both of them in some + informal and casual sort; but they persisted so long in keeping off on * + their respective hills that I saw something positive on my part must be + done. Clearly I must make the advances; and so when, one morning of + mid-March, a friend sent to ask if we would not motor out to Tivoli with + him and his family, I closed eagerly with the chance of a compromise which + would save feeling all round. My friend has never yet known how he was + bringing Tivoli and me together after a mutual diffidence, but, as he was + a poet, I am sure he will be glad to know now. + </p> + <p> + Our road across the Campagna lay the greater part of the distance beside + the tram-line, but at other points parted with it and stretched rough, if + lately mended, and smooth, if long neglected, between the wide, lonely + pastures and narrow drill-sown fields of wheat. The Campagna is said to be + ploughed only once in five years by the peasants for the proprietors, who + have philosophized its fertility as something that can be better restored + by the activities of nature in that time than by phosphates in less. As + they are mostly Roman patricians, they have always felt able to wait; but + now it is said that northern Italian capital and enterprise are coming in, + and the Campagna will soon be cropped every season, though as yet its + chief yield seemed to be the two-year-old colts we saw browsing about. For + some distance we had the company of the different aqueducts, but their + broken stretches presently ceased altogether, and then for other human + association we had, besides the fencings of the meadows, only the huts and + shelters scattered among the grassy humps and hollows. There were more + humps than I had remembered of the Campagna, and probably they were the + rounded and turfed-over chunks of antiquity which otherwhere showed their + naked masonry unsoft-ened and unfriended by the passing centuries. At + times a dusty hamlet, that seemed to crop up from the roadside ditches, + followed us a little way with children that shouted for joy in our motor + and dogs that barked for pleasure in their joy. Women with the square + linen head-dress of the Roman peasants stood and stared, and sallow men, + each with his jacket hanging from one of his shoulders, seemed stalking + backward from us as we whirled by. Here and there we scared a horse or a + mule, but we did not so much as run over a hen; and both man and beast are + becoming here, as elsewhere, reconciled to the automobile. Now and then a + carter would set his team slantwise in our course and stay us out of + good-humored deviltry, and when he let us pass would fling some chaff to + the fresh-faced English youngster who was our chauffeur. + </p> + <p> + “I suppose you don't always understand what those fellows say,” I + suggested from my seat beside him. + </p> + <p> + “No, sir,” he confessed. “But I give it to 'em back in English,” he added, + joyously. + </p> + <p> + He rather liked these encounters, apparently, but not the beds of sharp, + broken stone with which the road was repaired. It was his belief that + there was not a steam-roller in all Italy, and he seemed to reserve an + opinion of the government's motives in the matter with respect to motors, + as if he thought them bad. + </p> + <p> + The scenery of the Campagna was not varied. Once we came to a battlemented + tomb, of mighty girth and height, as perdurable in its masonry as the + naked, stony hills that in the distance propped the mountains fainting + along the horizon under their burden of snow. But as we drew nearer Tivoli + the hills drew nearer us, and now they were no longer naked, but densely + covered with the gray, interminable stretch of the olive forests. The + olive is the tree which, of all others, is the friend of civilized man; it + is older and kinder even than the apple, which is its next rival in + beneficence; but these two kinds are so like each other, in the mass, that + this boundless forest of olives around Tivoli offered an image of all the + aggregated apple-orchards in the world. Where the trees came closest to + the road they seemed to watch our passing, each with its trunk aslant and + its branches akimbo, in a humorous make-believe of being in some joke with + us, like so many gnarled and twisted apple-trees, used to children's + play-fellowship. You felt a racial intimacy with the whimsical and antic + shapes which your brief personal consciousness denied in vain; and you + rose among the slopes around Tivoli with a sense of home-coming from the + desert of the Campagna. But in the distance to which the olive forests + stretched they lost this effect of tricksy familiarity. They looked like a + gray sea against the horizon; more fantastically yet, they seemed a vast + hoar silence, full of mystery and loneliness. + </p> + <p> + If Tivoli does not flourish so frankly on its oil as Frascati on its wine, + it is perhaps because it has of late years tacitly prospered as much on + the electricity which its wonderful and beautiful waterfalls enable it to + furnish as abundantly to Rome as our own Niagara to Buffalo. The + scrupulous Hare, whose <i>Walks in Rome</i> include Tivoli, does not, + indeed, advise you to visit the electrical works, but he says that if you + have not strength enough for all the interests and attractions of Tivoli + it will be wise to give yourself entirely to the cascades and to the Villa + d'Este, and this was what we instinctively did, but in the reverse order. + Chance rewarded us before we left the villa with a sight of the electric + plant, which just below the villa walls smokes industriously away with a + round, redbrick chimney almost as lofty and as ugly as some chimney in + America. On our way to and fro we necessarily passed through the town, + which, with its widish but not straightish chief street, I found as clean + as Rome itself, and looking, after the long tumult of its history, + beginning well back in fable, as peaceable as Montclair, New Jersey. It + had its charm, and, if I could have spent two weeks there instead of two + hours, I might impart its effect in much more circumstance than I can now + promise the reader. Most of my little time I gladly gave to the villa, + which, with the manifold classic associations of the region, attracts the + stranger and helps the cataracts sum up all that most people can keep of + Tivoli. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0038" id="linkimage-0038"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-38.jpg" alt="38 Stairway and Fountain, Villa D'este " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The Villa d'Este is not yet a ruin, but it is ruinous enough to win the + fancy without cumbering it with the mere rubbish of decay. Some neglected + pleasances are so far gone that you cannot wish to live in them, but the + forgottenness of the Villa d'Este hospitably allured me to instant and + permanent occupation, so that when I heard it could now be bought, casino + and all, for thirty thousand dollars, nothing but the want of the money + kept me from making the purchase. I indeed recognized certain difficulties + in living there the year round; but who lives anywhere the year round if + he can help it? The casino, standing among the simpler town buildings on + the plateau above the gardens, would be a little inclement, for all its + frescoing and stuccoing by the sixteenth-century arts, and in its noble + halls, amid the painted and modelled figures, the new American proprietor + would shiver with the former host and guests after the first autumn chill + began; but while it was yet summer it Avould be as delicious there as in + the aisles and avenues of the garden which its balustrated terrace looked + into. From that level you descend by marble steps which must have some + trouble in knowing themselves from the cascades pouring down the broken + steeps beside them, and companionably sharing their seclusion among the + cypresses and ilexes. You are never out of the sight and sound of the + plunging water, which is still trained in falls and fountains, or left to + a pathetic dribble through the tattered stucco of the neglected grots. It + is now a good three centuries and a half since the Cardinal Ippolito + d'.Este had these gardens laid out and his pleasure-house built + overlooking them; and his gardener did not plan so substantially as his + architect. In fact, you might suppose that the landscapist wrought with an + eye to the loveliness of the ruin it all would soon fall into, and, where + he used stone, used it fragilely, so that it would ultimately suggest old + frayed and broken lace. Clearly he meant some of the cataracts to face one + another, and to have a centre from which they could all be seen—say + the still, dull-green basin which occupies a large space in the grounds + between them. But he must have meant this for a surprise to the spectator, + who easily misses it under the trees overleaning the moss-grown walks + which hardly kept themselves from running wild. There is a sense of + crumbling decorations of statues, broken in their rococo caverns; of + cypresses carelessly grouped and fallen out of their proper straightness + and slimness; of unkempt bushes crowding the space beneath; of fragmentary + gods or giants half hid in the tangling grasses. It all has the air of + something impatiently done for eager luxury, and its greatest charm is + such as might have been expected to be won from eventual waste and wreck. + If there was design in the treatment of the propitious ground, self-shaped + to an irregular amphitheatre, it is now obscured, and the cultiavted + tourist of our day may reasonably please himself with the belief that he + is having a better time there than the academic Roman of the sixteenth + century. + </p> + <p> + Academic it all is, however hastily and nonchalantly, and I feel that I + have so signally failed to make the charm of the villa felt that I am + going to let a far politer observer celebrate the beauties of the other + supreme interest of Tivoli. When Mr. Gray (as the poet loved to be called + in print) visited the town with Mr. Walpole in May, 1740, the Villa d'Este + by no means shared the honors of the cataracts, and Mr. Gray seems not to + have thought it worth seriously describing in his letter to Mr. West, but + mocks the casino with a playful mention before proceeding to speak fully, + if still playfully, of the great attraction of Tivoli: “Dame Nature... has + built here three or four little mountains and laid them out in an + irregular semicircle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, + she has drawn a canal into which she has put a little river of hers called + the Anio,... which she has no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it + tumbles down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to + shatters, and is converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms many + a bow—red, green, blue, and yellow.... By this time it has divided + itself, being crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, + each of which, in emulation of the greater one, will tumble down, too: and + it does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you + have at one view all these cascades intermixed with groves of olive and + little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of one + (that which forms the extremity of the half-circle's horns) is seated the + town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on the brink of the + precipice, stands the Sibyls' Temple, the remains of a little rotunda, + surrounded with its portico, above half of whose beautiful Corinthian + pillars are still standing and entire.” + </p> + <p> + For the reader who has been on the spot the poet's words will paint a + vivid picture of the scene; for the reader who has not been there, so much + the worse; he should lose no time in going, and drinking a cup of the + local wine at a table of the restaurant now in possession of Mr. Gray's + point of view. I do not know a more filling moment, exclusive of the wine, + than he can enjoy there, with those cascades before him and those temples + beside him; for Mr. Gray has mentioned only one of the two, I do not know + why, that exist on this enchanted spot, and that define their sharp, black + shadows as with an inky line just beyond the restaurant tables. One is + round and the other oblong, and the round one has been called the Sibyls', + though now it is getting itself called Vesta's—the goddess who long + unrightfully claimed the temple of Mater Matuta in the Forum Boarium at + Rome. As Vesta has lately been dispossessed there by archaeology (which + seems in Rome to enjoy the plenary powers of our Boards of Health), she + may have been given the Sibyls' Temple at Tivoli in compensation; but all + this does not really matter. What really matters is the mighty chasm which + yawns away almost from your feet, where you sit, and the cataracts, from + their brinks, high or low, plunging into it, and the wavering columns of + mist weakly striving upward out of it: the whole hacked by those mountains + Mr. Gray mentions, with belts of olive orchard on their flanks, and wild + paths furrowing and wrinkling their stern faces. To your right there is a + sheeted cataract falling from the basins of the town laundry, where the + toil of the washers melts into music, and their chatter, like that of + birds, drifts brokenly across the abyss to you. While you sit musing or + murmuring in your rapture, two mandolins and a guitar smilingly intrude, + and after a prelude of Italian airs swing into strains which presently, + through your revery, you recognize as “In the Bowery” and “Just One Girl,” + and the smile of the two mandolins and the guitar spreads to a grin of + sympathy, and you are no longer at the Cafe Sibylla in Tivoli, but in your + own Manhattan on some fairy roof-garden, or at some sixty-cent <i>table + d'hote,</i> with wine and music included. + </p> + <p> + It was a fortnight later that we paid our visit to Frascati, not proudly + motoring now, but traversing the Campagna on the roof of a populous + tram-car, which in its lofty narrowness was of the likeness of an + old-fashionable lake propeller. The morning was, like most other mornings + in Rome, of an amiability which the afternoons often failed of; but none + of us passengers for Frascati doubted its promise as we gathered at the + tram-station and tried for tickets at the little booth in a wall sparely + containing the official who bade us get them in the car. We all did this, + whatever our nation—American, English, German, or Italian—and + then we mounted to the hurricane-deck of our propeller and entered into a + generous rivalry for the best seats. We had a roof over our heads, and + there were curtains which we might have drawn if we could have borne to + lose a single glimpse of the landscape, or if we would not rather have + suffered the chill which our swift progress evoked from the morning's + warmth after we left the shelter of the city streets. We passed through + stretches of the ancient aqueducts consorting on familiar terms with rows + of shabby tenement-houses, and whisked by the ends of wide, dusty avenues + of yet incomplete structure, and by beds of market-gardens, and by simple + feeding-places for man and beast, with the tables set close in front of + the stalls. An ambitiously frescoed casino had a gigantic peacock painted + over a whole story, and the peach-trees were in bloom in the villa spaces. + When we struck into the Campagna we found it of like physiognomy with the + Campagna toward Tivoli. + </p> + <p> + There was very little tillage, but wide stretches of grazing-land, with + those lumps of turfed or naked antiquity starting out of them, and cattle, + sheep, and horses feeding over them, the colts' tails blowing + picturesquely in the wind that seemed more and more opposed to our + advance. It dropped, at times, where we paused to leave a passenger near + one of those suburbs which the tram-lines are building up round Rome, but + on our course building so slowly that our passengers had to walk rather + far from the stations before they reached home. There were other + pedestrians who looked rather English, especially some ladies making for + the gate of a kind, sunny walled old villa, where there was a girl singing + and a gardener coming slowly down to let them in. Nearer Frascati were + many neat, new stone houses, where Eoman families come out to stay the + spring and fall seasons, and even the summer. But these looked too freshly + like the suburban cottages on a Boston trolley-line; and we perversely + found our delight in a fine breadth of brown woods for the very reason of + that homelikeness which gave us pause in the houses. The trees looked + American; there were American wood-roads penetrating the forest's broken + and irregular extent; there was one steep-sided ravine worth any man's + American money; and the dead leaves littered the sylvan paths with an + allure to the foot which it was hard for the head to resist. + </p> + <p> + Elsewhere the tram-line that curved upward to Fras-cati was flanked, after + it left the Campagna's level, with vineyards as measureless as the olive + orchards of Tivoli. There was yet, at the end of March, no sign of leaf on + the newly trimmed vines, which were trained on long poles of canes brought + together in peaks to support them and netting the hill-slopes with the + endless succession of their tops. The eye wearied itself in following them + as in following the checkered wiring of the Kentish hop-fields, and was + glad to leave them for the closer-set, but never too closely set, palaces + of Frascati: the sort of palaces which we call cottages in our summer + cities, and the Italians call casinos from the same instinctive modesty. + When we began to doubt of our destination, our car passed a long, shaded + promenade, and then stopped in a cheerful square amidst hotels and + restaurants, with tables hospitably spread on the sidewalks before them. + </p> + <p> + We decided not to lunch at that early hour, but we could not keep our eyes + from feasting, even at eleven o'clock in the morning, on the wonderful + prospect that tempted them, on every hand, away from the more immediate + affair of choosing one out of the many cabs that thronged about our + arriving train. The cabs of Frascati are all finer than the cabs of Rome, + and the horses are handsomer and younger and stronger; we could have taken + the worst of the equipages that contested our favor and still fared well; + but we chose the best—a glittering victoria and an animal of proud + action, with a lustrous coat of bay. He wore a ring of joyous bells; he + had, indeed, not a headstall of such gay colors as some others; but you + cannot have everything, and his driver was of a mental vividness which + compensated for all the color wanting in his horse's headstall, and of a + personal attraction which made us ambitious for his company on any terms. + He quickly reduced us from our vain supposition that carriages in a + country-place should be cheaper than in a city; because, as he proved, + there were fewer strangers to hire them and they ought logically to be + dearer. So far from accepting our modest standards of time and money, he + all but persuaded us to employ him for the whole day instead of a few + hours at a price beyond our imagination; and he only consented to + compromise on a half-day at an increased figure. + </p> + <p> + We supposed that it was the negotiation which drew and held the attention + of all the leisure of Frascati, and that it was the driver and our + relation to him rather than the horse and our relation to it that + concentrated the public interest in us; and when we had convinced him that + we had no wish but to see some of the more immediate and memorable villas, + we mounted to our places in the victoria and drove out through the + reluctantly parting spectators, who remained looking after us as if unable + to disperse to their business or pleasure. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0039" id="linkimage-0039"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-39.jpg" alt="39 Villa Falconieri, Entrance, Frascati " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Our driver decided for us to go first to the Villa Falconieri, which had + lately been bought and presented by a fond subject to the German Emperor, + and by him in turn bestowed on the German Academy at Rome. In the cold, + clean, stony streets of Frascati, as we rattled through them, there + breathed the odor of the great local industry; and the doorways of many + buildings, widening almost in a circle to admit the burly tuns of wine, + testified how generally, how almost universally, the vintage of that + measureless acreage of grapes around the place employed the inhabitants. + But there was little else to impress the observer in Frascati, and we + willingly passed out of the town in the road climbing the long incline to + the Villa Falconieri, with its glimpses, far and near, of woods and + gardens. It was a road so much to our minds that nothing was further from + us than the notion that our horse might not like it so well; but, at the + first distinct rise, he stopped and wheeled round so abruptly, after first + pawing the air, that there could be no doubt where the popular interest we + had lately enjoyed in Frascati had really originated. Probably our horse's + distinguishing trait was known to everybody in Frascati except his driver. + He, at least, showed the greatest surprise at the horse's behavior, as + unprecedented in their acquaintance, which he owned was brief, for he had + bought him in Rome only the week before. With successive retreats to level + ground he put him again and again at the incline, but as soon as the horse + felt the ground rising under his feet he lifted them from it and whirled + round for another retreat. All this we witnessed from an advantageous + point at the roadside which we had taken up at his first show of + reluctance; and at last the driver suggested that we should leave it and + go on to the Villa Falconieri on foot. On our part, we suggested that he + should attempt some other villa which would not involve an objectionable + climb. He then proposed the Villa Mandragone, and the horse seemed to + agree with us. As we drove again through the clean, cold, stony streets, + with the rounded doorways for the wine-casks, we fancied something clearly + ironical in the general interest renewed by our return. But we tried to + look as if we had merely done the Villa Falconieri with unexampled + rapidity, and pushed on to the Villa Mandragone, where, under the roof of + interlacing ilex toughs, our horse ought to have been tempted on in a + luxurious unconsciousness of anything like an incline. But he was + apparently an animal which would have felt the difference between two + rose-leaves and one in a flowery path, and just when we were thinking what + a delightful time we were having, and beginning to feel a gentle question + as to who the pathetic little cripple halting toward us with a color-box + and a camp-stool might be, and whether she painted as well as a kind heart + could wish, our horse stopped with the suddenness which we knew to be + definite. The sensitive creature could not be deceived; he must have + reached rising ground, and we sided with him against our driver, who would + have pretended it was fancy. + </p> + <p> + It was now noon, and we drove back to the <i>piazza,</i> agreeing upon a + less price in view of the imperfect service rendered, and deciding to + collect our thoughts for a new venture over such luncheon as the best + hotel could give us. It was not so good a hotel as the lunch it gave. It + was beyond the cleansing tide of modernity which has swept the Roman + hotels, and was dirty everywhere, but with a specially dirty, large, + shabby dining-room, cold and draughty, yet precious for the large, round + brazier near our table which kept one side of us warm in romantic + mediaeval fashion, and invited us to rise from time to time and thaw our + fingers over its blinking coals. The bath in which our chicken had been + boiled formed a good soup; there was an admirable <i>pasta</i> and a + creditable, if imperfect, conception of beefsteak; and there was a caraffe + of new Frascati wine, sweet, like new cider. If we could have asked more, + it would not have been more than the young Italian officer who sat in the + other corner with his pretty young wife, and who allowed me to weave a + whole realistic fiction out of their being at Frascati so out of season. + </p> + <p> + Just as I was most satisfyingly accounting for them, our late driver + alarmed me by appearing at the door and beckoning me to the outside. The + occasion was nothing worse than the presence of a man who, he said, was + his brother, with a horse which, upon the same authority, was without + moral blame or physical blemish. If anything, it preferred a mountain to a + plain country, and could be warranted to balk at nothing. The man, who was + almost as exemplary as the horse, would assume the unfulfilled contract of + the other man and horse with a slight increase of pay; and yet I had my + doubts. The day had clouded, and I meekly contended that it was going to + rain; but the man explicitly and the horse tacitly scoffed at the notion, + and I yielded. I shall always be glad that I did so, for in the keeping of + those good creatures the rest of our day was an unalloyed delight. It + appeared, upon further acquaintance, that the man paid a hundred dollars + for the horse; his brother had paid a hundred and twenty-five for the + balker; but it was the belief of our driver that it would be worth the + difference when it had reconciled itself to the rising ground of Frascati; + as yet it was truly a stranger there. His own horse was used to ups and + downs everywhere; they had just come from a long trip, and he was going to + drive to Siena and back the next week with two ladies for passengers, who + were to pay him five dollars a day for himself and horse and their joint + keep. He said the ladies, whose names he gave, were from Boston; he balked + at adding Massachusetts, but I am sure the horse would not; and, if I + could have hired them both to carry me about Italy indefinitely, I would + have gladly paid them five dollars a day as long as I had the money. The + fact is, that driver was charming, a man of sense and intelligence, who + reflected credit even upon his brother and his brother's horse: one of + those perfect Italian temperaments which endear their possessors to the + head and heart, so that you wonder, at parting, how you are going to live + without them. + </p> + <p> + We did not excite such vivid interest in Frascati at our second start as + at our first; but, as we necessarily passed over the same route again, we + had the applause of the children in streets now growing familiar, and a + glad welcome back from the pretty girls and blithe matrons of all ages + rhythmically washing in the public laundry, who recognized us in our new + equipage. The public laundry is always the gayest scene in an Italian + town, and probably our adventures continued the subject of joyous comment + throughout the day which was now passing only too rapidly for us. We were + again on the way to the Villa Falconieri, and while our brave horse is + valiantly mounting the steep to its gate this is perhaps as good a place + as any to own that the Villa Falconieri and the Villa Man-dragone were the + only sights we saw in Frascati. We did, indeed, penetrate the chill + interior of the local cathedral, but as we did not know at the time that + we were sharing it with the memory of the young Stuart pretender Charles + Edward, who died in Frascati, and whose brother, Cardinal York, placed a + mural tablet to him in the church, we were conscious of no special claim + upon our interest. We ought, of course, to have visited the Villa + Aldobrandini and the Villa Ruffinella and the Villa Graziola and the Villa + Taverna, but we left all these to the reader, who will want some reason + for going to Frascati in person, and to whom I commend them as richly + worth crossing the Atlantic for. Doubtless from a like motive we left the + ruins of Tusculum unvisited, just as at Tivoli we refrained from diverging + to Hadrian's Villa—the two things supremely worthy to be seen in + their respective regions. But, if I had seen only half as much as I saw at + Frascati—the Villa Falconieri, namely—I should feel forever + over-enriched by the experience. + </p> + <p> + Slowly an ancient servitor, whose family had been in the employ of the + Falconieri for a century, advanced as with the burden of their united + years and opened the high gate to us and delivered us over to a mild boy. + He bestowed on us, for a consideration, a bunch of wild violets, and then, + as if to keep us from the too abrupt sight of the repairs and changes + going on near the casino, led us first to the fish-pond, in the untouched + seclusion of a wooded hill, and silently showed us the magnificent view + which the top commanded, if commanded is not too proud a word for a place + so pathetic in its endearing neglect. It had once been the haunt of many a + gay picnicking crew in hoops and bag-wigs and all the faded fashion of the + past, when hosts and guests had planned a wilder escapade than the grove + before the casino invited, with its tables of moss-painted marble. There + would have been an academic poet, or more than one, in the company, and + they would have furnished forth the prospect with phrases far finer than + any I have about me, who can only say that the Cam-pagna, clothed in mist + and cloud-shadowed, swam round the upland in the colors of a tropic sea. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0040" id="linkimage-0040"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-40.jpg" + alt="40 in the Gardens of The Villa Falconieri " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Our mild boy waited a decent moment, as if to let me do better, and then + led down to the casino, round through a wooded valley where there were + some men with fowling-pieces, whom I objected to in tones, if not in + terms. “What are they shooting?” “They are shooting larks, signore.” “What + a pity!” “But the larks are leaving Italy, now, and going north.” It was a + reason, like many another that humanity is put to it in giving, and I do + not know that I missed any larks, later, from an English meadow where I + saw them spiring up in song, and glad as if none of their friends had been + shot at the Villa Falconieri. In fact, I did not see those fowlers + actually killing any; and I can still hope they were not very good shots. + </p> + <p> + The workmen who were putting the place in repair were lunching near the + casino, in a litter of lumber and other structural material, but the + casino itself seemed as yet unprofaned by their touch. At any rate, we had + it quite to ourselves, let wander at will through its cool, bare, still + spaces. If there was a great deal to see, there was not much to remember, + or to remember so much as the satirical frescos of Pier Leone Ghezzi, who + has caricatured himself as well as others in them. They are not bitter + satires, but, on the contrary, very charming; and still more charming are + the family portraits frescoed round the principal room. Under one curve of + the vaulted ceiling the whole family of a given time is shown, half-length + but life-size, looking down pleasantly on the unexpected American guests + who try to pretend they were invited, or at least came by mistaking the + house for another. Better even than this most amiable circle, or + half-circle, of father, mother, and daughter are the figures of friends or + acquaintances or kinsfolk: figures not only life-size, but full-length, in + panels of the walls, in the very act of stepping on the floor and coming + forward to greet their host and hostess from the other walls. They did not + visibly move during our stay, but I know they only waited for us to go; + and that at night, especially when there was a moon, or none, they left + their backgrounds and mingled in the polite gayeties of their period. One + could hardly help looking over one's shoulder to see if they were not + following to that farthermost room called Primavera, which is painted + around and aloft like a very bower of spring, with foliage and flowers + covering the walls and dropping through the trellis feigned overhead. Of + all the caprices of art, which in Italy so loved caprice, I recall no such + pleasing playfulness as in the decoration of these rooms. If you pass + through the last you may look from the spring within on no fairer spring + without bordering the shores of the Campagna sea. + </p> + <p> + It was so pathetic to imagine the place going out of the right Italian + keeping that I attributed a responsive sadness to the tall, handsome, + elderly woman who had allowed us the freedom of the casino. Her faded + beauty was a little sallow, as the faded beauty of a Roman matron should + be, and her large, dark eyes glowed from purpling shadows. + </p> + <p> + “And the German Emperor owns it now?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, they say he has bought it.” + </p> + <p> + “And the Germans will soon be coming?” + </p> + <p> + “They say.” + </p> + <p> + She would not commit herself but by a tone, an inflection, but we knew + very well what she and the frescoed presences about us thought. I wish now + I could have stayed behind and got the frescos to tell me just how far I + ought recognize her sorrow in my tip, but one must always guess at these + things, and I shall never know whether I rewarded the aged gatekeeper + according to the century of service his generations had rendered those of + the frescos. + </p> + <p> + We were going now to the Villa Mandragone, but we had not yet the courage + for the rise of ground where we had failed before, and we entreated our + driver to go round some other way, if he could, and descend rather than + ascend to it. He said that was easy, and it was when we came away that we + passed through that ilex avenue which we had not yet penetrated in its + whole length, and where we now met many foot-passengers, lay and cleric, + who added to the character of the scene, and saw again the little cripple + artist, now trying to seize its features, or some of them. I did not see + whether she was succeeding so well as in pity she might and as I knew she + did. + </p> + <p> + In spite of our triumph with the Villa Mandragone in this second attempt, + we can never think it half as charming as the Villa Falconieri. I forget + what cardinal it was who built it so spacious and splendid, with three + hundred and sixty-five windows, in honor of the calendar as reformed by + the reigning pope, Gregory XIII. It is a palace enclosing a quadrangle of + whole acres (I will not own to less), with a stately colonnade following + as far round as the reader likes. When he passes through all this + magnificence he will come out on a grassy terrace, with a fountain below + it, and below that again the chromatic ocean of the Cam-pagna (I have said + sea often enough). A weird sort of barbaric stateliness is given to the + place by the twisted and tapering pillars that rise at the several + corners, with colossal masques carven at the top and the sky showing + through the eye-hollows, as the flame of torches must often have shown at + night. But for all the outlandish suggestion of these pillars, the villa + now belongs to the Jesuits, who have a college there, where only the sons + of noble families are received for education. As we rounded a sunny wall + in driving away, we saw a line of people, old and young of both sexes, but + probably not of noble families, seated with their backs against the warm + stone eating from comfortable bowls a soup which our driver said was the + soup of charity and the daily dole of the fathers to such hungry as came + for it. The day was now growing colder than it had been, and we felt that + the poor needed all the soup, and hot, that they could get. + </p> + <p> + After a vain visit to Grotta Ferrata, which was signally disappointing, in + spite of the traces of a recent country fair and the historical merits of + a church of the Greek rite, with a black-bearded monk coming to show it + through a gardened cloister, we were glad to take the tram back to Rome + and to get into the snug inside of it. The roof, which had been so popular + and populous in the morning, was now so little envied that a fat lady + descended from it and wedged herself into a row of the interior where a + sylph would have fitted better but might not have added so much to the + warmth. No one, myself of the number, thought of getting up, though there + were plenty of straps to hang by if one had chosen to stand. This was + quite like home, and so was it like home to have the conductor ask me to + wait for my change, with all the ensuing fears that wronged the + long-delayed remembrance of his debt. In some things it appears that at + Rome the Romans do as the Americans do, but I wish we were like them in + having such a place as Frascati within easy tram-reach of our cities. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XV. A FEW REMAINING MOMENTS + </h2> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0041" id="linkimage-0041"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-41.jpg" alt="41 the Marble Faun " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + In the days of the earlier sixties, we youth who wished to be thought + elect did not feel ourselves so unless we were deeply read in Hawthorne's + romance of <i>The Marble Faun.</i> We made that our aesthetic handbook in + Rome, and we devoutly looked up all the places mentioned in it, which were + important for being mentioned; though such places as the Tarpeian Rock, + the Forum, the Capitoline Museum, and the Villa Bor-ghese might + secondarily have their historical or artistic interest. In like manner + Story's statue of Cleopatra was to be seen, because it was the “original” + of the imaginary sculptor Kenyon's Cleopatra, and a certain mediaeval + tower was sacred because it was universally identified as the tower where + the heroine Hilda lived dreaming and drawing, and fed the doves that + circled around its top. We used to show the new arrivals where Hilda's + tower was, and then stand with them watching the pigeons which made it + unmistakable. I should then have thought I could never forget it, but I + must have passed it several times unnoting in my latest Roman sojourn, + when one afternoon in a pilgrimage to the Via del Gambero a contemporary + of that earlier day glanced around the narrow piazza through which we were + passing and, seeing a cloud of doves wheeling aloft, joyfully shouted, + “Look! There is Hilda's tower!” and if Hilda herself had waved to us from + its battlements we could not have been surer of it. The present vanished, + and we were restored to our citizenship in that Rome of the imagination + which is greater than any material Rome, and which it needs no + archaeologist to discover in its indestructible integrity. + </p> + <p> + No one to-day, probably, visits the Capitoline Museum for the Faun of + Praxiteles because it gave the romance its name; but at my latest sight of + it I remembered it with a thrill of the young piety which first drew me to + it, and involuntarily I looked again for the pointed, furry ears, as I had + done of old, to make sure that it was really the Marble Faun of Hawthorne. + I was now, however, for no merit of mine, in official and scientific + company with which it would have been idle to share my satisfaction in the + verification of the Faun's ears. Instead of boasting it, I listened to + very interesting talk of the deathless Dying Gladiator, who is held to + have been originally looked at more from below than he has been seen in + modern times, and who is presently to be lifted to something like his + antique level. He, in fact, requires this from the spectator who would + feel all his pathos, as we realized in sitting down and looking a little + upward at him. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0042" id="linkimage-0042"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-42.jpg" + alt="42 Marcus Aurelius With Out-stretched Arm " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + In his room and in the succession of the rooms filled with his immortal + bronze and marble companions I was as if with ghosts of people I had known + in some anterior life. They were so familiar that I felt no need to go + about asking their names, even if the archaeologists had in several cases + given them new names. I should have known certain of them by traits which + remain in the memory long after names have dropped out of it. Julius + Caesar, with his long Celtic upper-lip, still looked like the finer sort + of Irish-American politician; Tiberius again surprised me with the sort of + racial sanity and beauty surviving in his atrocious personality from his + mother's blood; but the too Neronian head of Nero, which seems to have + been studied from the wild young miscreant when trying to look the part, + had an unremembered effect of chubby idiocy. A thing that freshly struck + me in the busts of those imperialities, which of course must have been + done in their lifetimes, was not merely that the subjects were mostly so + ugly and evil but that the artists were apparently safe in showing them + so. The men might not have minded that, but how had the sculptors managed + to portray the women as they did and live? Perhaps they did not live, or + live long; they are a forgotten tribe, and no one can say what became of + any given artist after executing the bust of an empress; his own execution + may have immediately followed. But what is certain is that those ladies + are no lovelier in their looks than they were in their lives; to be sure, + in their rank they had not so great need of personal charm as women of the + lower class. The most touching face as well as the most dignified and + beautiful face among them is that of the seated figure which used to be + known as that of Agrippina but which, known now as that of a Roman matron, + does not relieve the imperial average of plainness. The rest could rival + the average American society woman only in the prevailing modernity of + their expression; imperial Rome was very modern, as we all know, and + nothing in our own time could be more up to date than the lives and looks + of its smart people. + </p> + <p> + The general impression of the other marbles of the Capitoline Museum + remains a composite of standing, sitting, stooping, and leaning figures, + of urns and vases, of sarcophaguses and bas-reliefs. If you can be + definite about some such delightful presence as that old River dozing over + his fountain in the little cold court you see first and last as you come + and go, it is more than your reader, if he is as wise as you wish him, can + ask of you. I have been wondering whether he could profitably ask of me + some record of my experiences in the official and scientific company with + which I was honored that day at the Campidoglio; but I should have to + offer him again a sort of composite psychograph of objects printed one + upon another and hardly separable in their succession. There would be the + figure of Marcus Aurelius, commanding us with outstretched arm from the + back of the bronze charger which would not obey Michelangelo when he bade + it “Go,” not because it was not lifelike, but because it was too fat to + move. Against the afternoon sky, looking down into the piazza with dreamy + unconcern from their vantage would be the statues on the balustrated roof + of the museum. There would be the sense, rather than the vision, of the + white shoulders of Castor and Pollux beside their steeds above the + dark-green garden spaces on either hand; there would be the front of the + Church of Ara Coeli visible beyond the insignificance of Rienzi's + monument; and filling in the other end of the piazza which Michelangelo + imagined, and not the Romans knew, there would be the palace of the + senator, to which the mayor and the common council of modern Rome now + mount by a double stairway, and presumably meet at the top in proceeding + to their municipal labors. Facing the museum would be the palace of the + Conservatori, where in the noblest of its splendid halls the present + company would find itself in the carved and gilded arm-chairs of the + conservators, seated at an afternoon tea-table and restoring itself from + the fatigues of more and more antique art in the galleries about. After + this there would be the gardened court of the palace, with a thin lawn, + and a soft little fountain musing in the midst of it, and the sunset light + lifting on the wall where the fragments of Septimius Severus's marble map + of Rome order themselves in such coherence as archaeology can suggest for + them. + </p> + <p> + In the palace of the Senator (who was not, as I dare say the reader + ignorantly supposes, a residuum of the old Roman senate, but was the + dictator whom the mediaeval republic summoned from within or without to be + its head and its safeguard from the aristocracy) there would be, beyond + the chamber where the actual city council of Rome meets under the + presidency of the mayor, the great public rooms bannered and memorialled + around with heroic and historic blazons; and last there would be the + private room where the syndic devotes himself to civic affairs when he can + turn from the sight of the Roman Forum, with a peripatetic archaeologist + lecturing a group of earnest Americans, while long, velvety shadows of + imperial purple stretch from the sunset on the softly rounded and hollowed + ruins of the Palatine. + </p> + <p> + But, if each of these bare facts could be parted from the others and + intelligently presented, what would it avail with the reader who has never + seen the originals of my psychograph? It is from some such question, and + not from want of a hospitable will, that I hesitate to ask him to go with + me on a golden morning of March and spend it in the Villa Medici on the + Pincian Hill. If I could I should like to pour its yellowness and + mellowness round him, perfumed with a potpourri of associations from the + time of Lucullus down through every mediaeval and modern time to that very + day, when I knew Carolus Duran to be living somewhere in these beauteous + bounds as the head of the French Academy which has its home in them. The + academic garden-paths, with a few happy people wandering between their + correctly balanced passages of box; the blond facade of the casino looking + down with its statues and reliefs on these parterres; a young girl + vanishing up an aisle of the grove beside the garden into whatever dream + awaited her youth in the leafy dusk; an old American pair gazing after her + from the terrace, with the void of the vanished years aching in their + hearts for the Rome that was once young with them: does this represent to + the reader an appreciable morning in the Villa Medici? He may be grateful + to me if he does, and if he likes. I cannot do more for him without doing + less, and yet I know it is a palette rather than a picture I am giving + him. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0043" id="linkimage-0043"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-43.jpg" alt="43 in the Villa Medici " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + All the while I was there, the guest of the French nation by the payment + of fifty centimes gate-money, I was obscurely resenting its retention of a + place which Bonaparte bestowed upon the First Republic with so much other + loot from Italy. But now I have lately heard that the magnanimous Third + Republic is going to restore it to the people rightfully its owners, and + the remembrance of my morning in the Villa Medici will remain a pure joy. + So few joys in this world, even in the very capital of it, are without + some touch of abatement. I could not so much as visit the Catacombs of + Domatilla without suffering a frustration which, though incidental merely, + left a lasting pang of unrequited interest. As we drew toward the place, I + saw in a field the beginning of one of those domestic dramas which are not + attributable to Italy alone. Three peasants, a man and two women, were + engaged in controversy which, on his side, the man supported with both + hands flapping wildly at the heads of the women, who alertly dodged and + circled around him in the endeavor to close in upon him. It was instantly + conjecturable, if not apparent, that they were his wife and daughter, and + that he was the worse for the vintage of their home acre, and would be the + better for being got into the house and into bed. The conjecture enlisted + the worthier instincts of the witness on the side of the mother and + daughter; but he was in no hurry to have the animated action brought to a + close, and was about to tell his cabman to drive very, very slowly, when + suddenly the cab descended into a valley, and when the eager spectator + rose to his former level again the stone wall had risen with him, and he + never knew the end of that passage of real life. + </p> + <p> + It was impossible to bid the cabman drive back for the close of the scene; + the abrupt conclusion must be accepted as final; but it is proof of the + charm I found in the gentle guide who presently began to marshal us among + the paths of the subterranean sanctuary and cemetery that for the moment + my bitter sense of loss was assuaged, and it only returns now at long + intervals. Such as the woman actors in this brief scene were some early + Christians might have been, and it must have been the stubborn old pagan + spirit I saw surviving in the husband and father. He was probably such a + vessel of wrath as, being filled with Bacchus, would have lent itself to + the persecuting rage of Domitian and helped drive the emperor's gentle + cousin Domatilla into the exile whence she returned to found a Christian + cemetery in her villa. One understands, of course, under the villa; for + the catacombs in some places reach as many as five levels below the + surface. I will not follow the reader with that kind guide who will cheer + his wanderings through those sunless corridors of death, where many of the + sleepers still lie sealed within their tombs on either hand, and show him + by the smoky taper's light the frescos which adorn the cramped chapels. I + prefer to stand at the top of the entrance and ask him if he noticed how + the artist sometimes seemed not to know whether he was pagan or Christian, + and did not mind, for instance, putting a Mercury at the heads of the + horses in an Ascent of Elijah. Perhaps the artist was really a pagan and + thought a Greek god as good as a Hebrew prophet any day; art was probably + one of the last things to be converted, having a presentiment of the dark + and bloody themes the new religion would give it to deal with. + </p> + <p> + The earthy scent of the catacomb will cling to the reader's clothes, and + he will have two minds about keeping for a souvenir the taper which he + carried, and which the guide wraps in a bit of newspaper for him; he may + prefer the flower which he is allowed to gather from the tiny garden at + the entrance to the catacombs. Yet these Catacombs of Domatilla are among + the cheerfulest of all the catacombs, and a sense of something sweet and + appealing invests them from the memory of the gentle lady whose piety + consecrated them as the last home of the refugees and martyrs. They are of + the more recent Roman excavations, but I do not know whether later or + earlier than those which have revealed the house of the two Christian + gentlemen, John and Paul, of unknown surname, where they suffered death + for their faith, under the Passionist church named for them. Twenty-four + rooms on the two stories have been opened, and there are others yet to be + opened; when all are laid bare they will perfectly show what a Roman city + dwelling of the better sort was like in the mid-imperial time. The plan + differs from that of the average Pompeian house as much as the plan of a + cross-town New York dwelling would differ from that of the average Newport + cottage. The rooms are incomparably smaller than those of the mediaeval + palaces of the Roman nobles, and the decoration is sometimes crudely mixed + of pagan and Christian themes and motives; the artists, like the painters + of the Domatilla catacombs, were probably lingering in the old Greek + tradition. + </p> + <p> + The young Passionist father who showed us through the church and the house + under it made us wait half an hour while he finished his lunch, but he was + worth waiting for. He was a charming enthusiast for both, radiantly yet + reverently exulting in their respective treasures, and justly but not + haughtily proud of the newly introduced electricity which lighted the + darkness of the underground rooms and corridors. He told us he had been + twenty years a missionary in Rumania, where he had possibly acquired the + delightful English he spoke. When he would have us follow him he said, + “All persons come this way,” and he politely spoke of the wicked emperor + whose bust was somehow there as Mr. Commodus. With all his gentleness, + however, that good father had a certain smiling severity before which the + spirit bowed. He had made us wait half an hour before he came to let us + into the church, and during the hour we were with him there he kept the + door locked against an unlucky lady who arrived just too late to enter + with us. Not only this, but he utterly refused to go back with her singly + and show her the things we had seen. Perhaps it would not have been + decorous; they do not let ladies, either singly or plurally, into the + garden of the convent, which is memorable among many other facts as being + the retreat of Mr. Commodus when he suffered from sleeplessness, and where + he once carelessly left his list of victims lying about, so that his + friend Marcia found it and, reading her name in it, joined with other + friends in his assassination. The sex has indeed had much restraint to + bear from the Church, but in some respects it has been rendered fearless + in the assertion of its rights. With poor women one of these is the + indefeasible right to ask alms, and I admired the courage, almost the + ferocity, of the aged crone whom I had promised charity in coming to the + place and who rose up as I was being driven past her, in going away, and + stayed my cabman with a clamor which he dared not ignore. Her reproaches + continued through the ensuing transaction, and followed him away with + stings which instinct and experience taught her how to implant in his + tenderest sensibilities. + </p> + <p> + A chapter much longer than any I have written here might well be devoted + to the study of the clerical or secular guides in the minor churches of + Rome. They are of every manner and degree of kindliness, mixed with a fair + measure of intelligence and a very fitting faith in the legends of their + churches. You soon get on terms of impersonal intimacy with them, and you + cannot come away without sharing their professional zeal, and + distinguishing for the moment in favor of their respective churches above + every other. It did not matter whether it was that newest church in the + Quartiere dei Prati, or that most venerable among the oldest churches, the + Church of San Gregorio: I found a reason for agreeing with the sacristan + upon its singular claims. These were especially enforced by the good dame, + the only woman sacristan I remember, who would not spare us a single + object of interest in San Gregorio's, which is indeed for the visitor of + Anglo-Saxon race supremely rich in its associations with the conversions + of his ancestors from heathenism. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0044" id="linkimage-0044"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-44.jpg" alt="44 the Baths of Caracalla " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + Being myself of Cymric blood, and of a Christianity several hundred years + older than that of the ordinary Anglo-Saxon traveller, I am afraid that it + was from a rather patronizing piety that I visited the church where the + great St. Gregory dismissed to their mission in England St. Augustine and + his fellow-apostles on one of the greatest days of the sixth century. I + might have stayed to imagine them kneeling among the people who then + thronged the genially irregular piazza, but as we came up some + ecclesiastical students were playing ball there, their robes tucked into + their girdles for their greater convenience, and we made our way at once + into the church. It forms one of a consecrated group of edifices + enshrining the memory of the best of the popes, who was also the greatest; + and here or in the adjacent convents a score of miracles were wrought + through the heavenly beauty of his life. Of these miracles, of whose + inspiration you must feel the poetry even if you cannot feel their verity, + the loveliest has its substantial witness in one of the little chapels + next the church. There you may see with your eyes and touch with your + hands the table at which St. Gregory fed every morning twelve poor men, + till one morning a thirteenth appeared in the figure of Christ the Lord, + as if to own them His disciples. The chapel which enshrines the table is + one of three, quaint in form and rich in art, standing in the garden + called St. Silvia's, after the mother of St. Gregory. As we came out + through it the westering sun poured the narrow court before the chapel + full of golden light and threw the black shadow of a cypress across the + way that a file of Comaldolese monks were taking to the adjoining convent. + They were talking cheerily together, and swung unheeding by in their white + robes so near that I could almost feel the waft of them across the + centuries that parted their faith and mine. + </p> + <p> + We had come to St. Gregory's from the Baths of Caracalla, which we had set + out to see on the first of our Roman holidays, and, after turning aside + for the Coliseum, had now visited on next to the last of them. The + stupendous ruin could scarcely have been growing in the ten or twelve + weeks that had passed, but a bewildering notion of something like this + obsessed me as I saw it bulking aloof in overhanging cliffs and + precipices, through the cool and bright April air, against a sky of + absolute blue. As if it had been cast up out of the earth in some + convulsive throe of nature, it floundered over its vast area in shapeless + masses which seemed to have capriciously received the effect of human + design in the coping of the inaccessible steeps, in the arches flinging + themselves across the spaces between the beetling crags, in the monstrous + spring and sweep of the vaults, in the gloom of the cavernous apertures of + its Titanic walls. For the moment its immensity dwarfed the image of all + the other fragments of the Roman world and set definite bounds to their + hugeness in the mind. It seemed to have been not so much a single edifice + as a whole city, the dwelling instead of the resort of the multitudes that + once thronged it. The traces of the ornamentation which had enriched it + everywhere and which it had taken ages of ravage to strip from it, + accented its savage majesty, and again the sentiment of spring in the + fresh afternoon breeze and sunshine, and the innocent beauty of the + blooming peach and cherry in the orchards around, imparted to it a pathos + in which one's mere brute wonder was lost. But it was a purely + adventitious pathos, and it must be owned here, at the end, that none of + the relics of ancient Rome stir a soft emotion in the beholder, and, as + for beauty, there is more of it in some ivy-netted fragment of some + English abbey which Henry's Cromwell “hammered down” than in the ruin of + all the palaces and temples and theatres and circuses and baths of that + imperial Rome which the world is so well rid of. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN + </h2> + <p> + We left Rome with such a nostalgic pang in our hearts that we tried to + find relief in a name for it, and we called ourselves Romesick. Afterward, + when we practised the name with such friends as we could get to listen, + they thought we said homesick. Being better instructed, they stared or + simpered, and said, “Oh!” That was not all we could have asked, but Rome + herself would understand, and, while we were seeking this outlet for our + grief, she followed us as far as she could on her poor, broken aqueducts. + At places they gave way under her, and she fell down, but scrambled up + again on the next stretch of arches, like some fond cripple pursuing a + friend on crutches; when at last our train outran them, and there was no + longer an arch to halt upon, she gave up the vain chase and turned back + within her walls, where we saw her domes and bell-towers fading into the + heaven to which they pointed. + </p> + <p> + It was a heaven of better than absolute blue, for there were soft, white + clouds in it, and the air that our Sunday breathed under it was, at the + beginning of April, as bland as that of an American May-end. The orchard + trees were in bloom—peach and plum, cherry and pear—whenever + you chose to look at them, and all nature seemed to rejoice in the + cessation of the two days' strike which had now enabled us to drive to the + station instead of walking and carrying our bags and bundles. There were + so many of these that we had taken two cabs, and at the station our + drivers attempted to rejoice with nature in an overcharge that would have + recouped them for the loss suffered in their recent leisure. But as we + were then leaving Koine, and were not yet melted with the grief of + absence, I had the courage to resist their demand. Long before we reached + Leghorn I was so Romesick that I would have paid them anything they asked. + </p> + <p> + When we emerged from the suburbs upon the open Campagna, we passed through + many fields of wheat, more than we had yet seen on the grassy waste, but + there were also many flocks of sheep feeding with the cattle in pastures. + Now and then we passed a wretched hut which seemed to be the dwelling of + the shepherds we saw tending the flocks, and here and there we came upon a + group of farm buildings, all of straw, whether for man or beast, set + within a sort of squalid court, with a frowzy suggestion of old women and + children about the doors of the cottages. We saw no men, though there must + have been men off at work in the fields with the younger women. + </p> + <p> + As we drew near Civita Vecchia the sea widened on our view, wild with a + wind that seemed to have been blowing ever since the stormy evening in + 1865 when, after looking at the tossing ships in the harbor, we decided to + take the diligence for Leghorn, rather than the little steamer we had + meant to take. From our pleasant train we now patronized Civita Vecchia + with a recognition of its picturesqueness, unvexed by the choice that then + insisted on itself, though the harbor was as full of shipping as of old. + There was time to run out for a cup of coffee at the station buffet, where + there had been neither station nor buffet in our young time: but doubtless + then as now there had been the lonely graveyard outside the town, with its + sea-beaten, seaward wall. We buried there the last of our Roman holidays + under a sky that had changed from blue to gray since our journey began, + and mournfully set out faces northward in the malarial Maremma. + </p> + <p> + If the Maremma is as malarial as it is famed, it does not look it. There + were stretches of hopeless morass, with wide acreages under water, but + mostly, I should say, it was rather a hilly country. Now and then we ran + by a stony old town on a distant summit like the outcropping of granite or + marble, and there were frequent breadths of woodland, oak and pine and, I + dare say, walnut and chestnut. Evidently there had been efforts to reclaim + the Maremma from its evil air and make it safely habitable, and the + farther we penetrated it the more frequent the evidences were. There were + many new buildings of a good sort, and of wood as well as stone; when we + came to Grosetto, where we had spent a memorable night after being + overturned in the Ombrone, in the attempt of our diligence to pass its + flood, we were aware, in the evening light, of a prosperity which, if not + excessive for the twoscore years that had passed, was still very + noticeable. I should not quite say that the brick wall of the city had + been scraped and scrubbed, but it looked very neat and new, and there was + a pleasant suburb under it where the moat might have been, and people were + coming and going who had almost the effect of commuters; at least, they + seemed to have come out to their homes by trolley. We resisted an impulse + to dismount and go up to the inn in the heart of the town where we had + spent that “night of memory and of sighs.” + </p> + <p> + But we searched the horizon round for the point on the highway where our + diligence had failed of the track between the telegraph-poles and softly + rolled with us in the muddy waters, like an elephant taking a bath, but, + so far from finding it, we could not even find the highway. We began to + have our doubts of what we had always believed had happened, and remained + as snugly as we could in our compartment, where, to tell the truth, we + were not very snug. In too fond a reliance on the almanac, the Italian + government had cut off the steam which ought to have heated it, and the + cold from the hills, on which we saw snow, pierced our rugs and cushions; + but, if we had known what we were coming to in Leghorn, we should have + thought ourselves very enviable. + </p> + <p> + I do not know exactly how far it is from the station in Leghorn to the + hotel where we had providently engaged rooms with a fire in at least one + of them, but I should say at a rough calculation it was a hundred miles as + we covered the distance in a one-horse omnibus, through long, straight + streets, after ten o'clock at night. The streets and houses were mostly + dark, as houses of good habits should be at that hour, but, after passing + through a wide, lonely piazza, we struck into a street longer and + straighter than the others, and drew up at our hotel door opposite an + hilarious cafe, where there seemed a general rejoicing of some sort. We + were unable to make out just what sort, or to join in it without knowing, + though it lasted well toward morning, and we were up often during the + night to see that the fire did not die out of our one porcelain stove and + leave us to perish of cold. + </p> + <p> + In Leghorn the good Baedeker says that all the hotels are good, and this + sweeping verdict may be true if taken in the sense that one is as good as + another, but they are of the old Italian type which our winter in Rome had + taught us to think obsolete; now we found that it was only obsolescent. We + had written to bespeak a room with fire in it, and this was well, for the + hotel was otherwise heated only by the bodies of its frequenters, who, + when filled with Chianti, might emit a sensible warmth; though it was very + modern in being lighted with electricity, and having a lift, in which, + after a tepid supper, we were carried to our apartment. We had our + landlord's company at supper, and had learned from him that the most + eminent of American financiers, who shall not otherwise be identified + here, was in the habit, when coming to Leghorn, of letting him know that + he was bringing a party of friends, and commanding of him a banquet such + as he alone knew how to furnish a millionaire of that princely quality. + After that we were not so much surprised as grieved to find that our + elderly chambermaid had profited by our absence to gather all the coals + out of our one stove into two <i>scaldini,</i> which were bristling before + her where she knelt when we opened the door upon her. She apologized, but + still she carried away the coals, and we were left to rekindle the zeal of + our stove as best we could. It was not a large stove, and it seemed to + feel its inadequacy to the office of taking the chill off that vast, dim + room, where it cowered, dark and low upon the floor, with a yearning, + upward stretch of its pipe lost in space before it reached the lowermost + goddess in the allegory frescoed on the ceiling. If it had been a white + porcelain stove, that might have helped, but it was of a gloomy earthen + color that imparted no more cheer than warmth. + </p> + <p> + We rebuilt our fire, after many repeated demands for kindling, which had + apparently to be sawed and split in a distant wood-yard before we could + get it, and then the long, arctic night set in, unrelieved by the noisy + gayeties of the cafe across the way. These burst from time to time the + thin film of sleep which formed like a coating of ice over the + consciousness, and then one could only get up and put more wood into the + despairing stove and more clothes on the beds. Well for us that we had + thought to bring all our travelling rugs with us in straps, instead of + abandoning them with our other baggage in the station till next day! But, + even with these heaping the hotel blankets and com-forters, we shivered, + and a superannuated odor that had lurked in the recesses of those rooms, + to which the sun or wind had never pierced, grew with the growing cold, + and haunted the night like something palpable as well as sensible—the + materialization of smells dead and buried there long ago. It was wonderful + how little way the electric bulb shed its beams in that naughty air; it + would not even light the page which at one time was opened in the vain + hope that the author would help the benumbing cold to bring torpor if not + slumber to the weary brain. + </p> + <p> + It is really impossible to say where or how we breakfasted, but it was + somehow managed, and then search was made by the swiftest conveyance for + the hotel which we had heard of outside the city, as helping make Leghorn + the watering-place it is for Italians in the summer, and in the winter as + being steam-heated and appointed with every modern comfort for the passing + or sojourning stranger. It was all that and more, and only for the fear + that I should seem to join it in advertising its merits I should like to + celebrate it by name. But perhaps it is as well not; if I did, all my + readers would swarm upon that hotel, and there would be no room for me, + who hope some day to go back there and spend an old age of luxurious + leisure. There was not only steam-heat in the public rooms of the ground + floor, but there was furnace heat in all the corridors, and there were + fireplaces in certain chambers, which also looked out on the sea, to + Corsica and Elba and other isles of it, and would be full of sun as soon + as the cold rain closed a fortnight's activity. That which diffused a + blander atmosphere than steam or radiator, register and hearth, however, + was the kind will, the benevolent intelligence, which imagined us, and + which would not then let us go. We had become not only agnostic as + respected the possibility of warmth in Leghorn, we were open sceptics, + aggressive infidels. But the landlord himself followed us from one room to + another, lighting fires here and there on the hearth, making us feel the + warm air rising from the furnace, calling us to witness by palpation the + heat of the radiators, soothing our fears, and coaxing our unfaith. His + wife joined him in Italian and his son in English, and, if I do not say + that these amiable people were worthy all the prosperity which was not + then apparent in their establishment, may I never be comfortably lodged or + fed again. Our daily return for what we got was a poor twelve francs each; + but fancy a haughty American landlord caressing us with such sweet and + reassuring civility for any sum of money! Those gentle people made + themselves our friends; there was nothing they would not do, or try to do, + for us, in the vast, pink palace where we were never twenty guests + together, and mostly eight or ten, with the run of a reading-room where + there were the latest papers and periodicals from London and Paris, and + with a kitchen whence we were served the best luncheons and dinners we ate + in Europe. + </p> + <p> + The place had the true out-of-season charm. There were two stately + dining-rooms besides the one where we dined, and there were pleasant + spaces where we had afternoon tea or after-dinner coffee, and from which a + magnificent stairway ascended to the upper halls, and a quiet lift waited + our orders, with the landlord or his son to take us up; and so lonely and + quiet and gentle, with porters and chambermaids speaking beautiful Tuscan, + and watchful attendants everywhere prophesying and fulfilling our wants. + It was a keeping to make the worst believe in their merit, and we were not + the worst. Outside, the environment flattered or rewarded us with a garden + of laurel and other evergreens, and with flower-beds where the annuals + were beginning to show the gardener's designs in their sprouting seeds. + Beyond these ample villa bounds a tram-car murmured to and from the + well-removed city, and beyond its track lay a line of open-air theatres + and variety shows and bathing establishments, as at our own Atlantic City, + but here in enduring masonry instead of the provisional wood of our summer + architecture. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0045" id="linkimage-0045"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-45.jpg" alt="45 Piazza Victor Emanuel, Leghorn " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + This festive preparation intimated the watering-place supremacy which + Leghorn enjoys in Italy, and which must make our quiet hotel in the season + glisten and twitter and flutter with the vivid national life. The + preparation includes a delightful drive by the seashore, with groves and + gardens, to the city gate and indefinitely beyond it, which we one day + followed as far as an old fort, where a little hotel had nestled with + every promise of simple comfort. There was a neighboring village of no + very exciting interest, and I do not know that the Italian Naval Academy, + which we passed on the way, was very exciting, though with its villa + grounds it had a pleasing rural effect. Hard by our hotel, in a piazza + that seemed to have nothing to do but surround it, was the colossal bust + of an Italian admiral, or the like, which had not the impressiveness of a + colossal full-length figure, but which rendered the original with the + faithful realism of the Genoese Campo Santo sculpture. In compensation + there was, toward the city, near the ship-yards where the great Italian + battle-ships are built, the statue of their builder—a man who looked + it—standing at large ease, with one hand in his pantaloons pocket, + and not apparently conscious of the passer's gaze. Beyond the ship-yard, + in which a battle-ship was then receiving the last touches, was a statue + for which I could not claim an equal unconsciousness. In fact, it + challenged the public attention and even homage as it extended the baton + of command and triumphed over the four Moorish or Algerine corsairs who, + in their splendid nudity, were chained to the several corners of the + monument and owned themselves galley-slaves. The Medicean grand-duke who + lords it over them, and who erected this monument in honor of himself for + the victories his admirals had gained in sweeping the pirates from the + seas, is a very proud presence, and is certainly worthy of the admiration + which his bronze requires from the spectator. I instantly suspected this + monument of being the chief sculpture of Leghorn, and I did not wonder + that a <i>valet de place</i> was lying in wait for me there to make me + observe that from a certain point I could get all four of the + galley-slaves' noses in perspective at once. Upon experiment I did not + find that I could do this, but I imputed my failure to want of merit in + myself and not the monument, and I willingly paid half a franc for the + suggestion; if all one's failures cost so little, one could save money. I + was going then to view at close quarters the port of Leghorn, which is + famous for its mole and lighthouse and quarantine, the first of their kind + in their time. The old port, with the fortifications, was the work of a + natural son of Queen Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester, whose noble origin was + so constantly recognized by the Tuscan grand-dukes that he came at last to + be accepted as Lord Dudley by the English. From his day, if not from his + work, the prosperity of Leghorn began, and the English have always had a + great part in it. Early in the nineteenth century there were a score of + great British merchants settled there, and, though afterward they declined + in number, the trade with England did not decline, and the trade with + America has always been such that American merchants and captains have + fully shared in the commerce directly or indirectly. Both the old and the + new port were a scene of pleasant activity the pleasant afternoon when I + visited them, and were full of varied sail as well as many steamers, + loading or unloading for or from the Mediterranean ports, east and west, + and the Hanseatic cities and the far coasts of Norway. + </p> + <p> + Any seaport is charming and full of romantic interest, but an Italian port + has always a prime picturesqueness. Its sailors are the most ancient + mariners, and they look full of history, and capable, each of them, of + discovering a continent. I cannot say that I saw any nascent Columbus in + the tanned and tarry company I met, but I do not deny that there was one. + Leghorn is still in her lusty youth, being not much older than our Boston + in the prosperity which has not failed her since the Medici divined her + importance toward the close of the sixteenth century, and fortified her + harbor till she was one of the strongest places on the Mediterranean. With + a hazy general consciousness of her modernity in mind, I had imagined her + yet more modern, and I was somewhat surprised to read, in a rather airy + and ironical but very capable local guidebook called <i>Su e Giu per + Livorno</i> (or <i>Up and Down Leghorn),</i> that the place was settled + twenty-six hundred and fifty-six years before Christ. The author records + this with a smile, and then, by a leap over some forty centuries, he finds + firm footing in the fact that the great Countess Matilde, then much + bothering about in the affairs of her Tuscan neighbors everywhere, gave + the Livornese coasts to Pisa in 1103. This seems to have been the signal + for the Genoese, eleven years later, to ravage and destroy the Pisan + settlements; but later the Pisans, confirmed in their possession by the + Emperor of Germany, rebuilt and embellished the port. A century after, + Charles of Anjou demolished it, and then the Pisans fortified it some + more. Then, in the last years of the thirteenth century, the Florentines, + Lucchese, and Genoese devastated the whole territory of Pisa, and left + Leghorn only one poor little church. Well throughout the fourteenth + century there were wars between these republics, and Leghorn suffered the + consequences, being, as our author says, “according to custom, assailed, + taken, wasted, and destroyed.” But before that century was out she seems + to have flourished up again, and to have received with all honor Gregory + XL, returning from Avignon to Rome and bringing the papacy back from its + long exile to the Eternal City. + </p> + <p> + The Genoese now sold Leghorn to Milan, and in 1407 she was sold to France + for twenty-six thousand florins, which seems low for a whole city. But in + less than ten years we find the Genoese back again, and strengthening and + adorning her at the greatest rate. It was quite time now that she should + be visited by a virulent pestilence, and that, having passed to Florence + in the meanwhile, she should have been ceded without a blow to Charles + VIII. of France. But in a year she was once more in the hold of Florence + and helping that republic fight her enemies the Pisans, and her other + enemies under the Emperor Maximilian of Germany. + </p> + <p> + More fortifying, embellishing, and pestilence followed, and in 1429 + Michelangelo came to inspect the new fortifications which the Florentine + republic had built at Leghorn to repair the damages she had suffered. The + next year the republic fell, and Alessandro de' Medici, who came in master + at Florence, took Leghorn into the favor which his family continued to + show her to the end. The first Cosimo greatly improved her harbor, dug + canals, and built forts, but he let the Spaniards, for a pleasure to + Charles V., place garrisons in Florence, Pisa, and Leghorn, and the + Spaniards remained six years at Leghorn. In the last year of the sixteenth + century Ferdinand erected to himself the superb monument with the four + captive corsairs at the corners, whose noses I had failed to get in range, + and in the meanwhile many great public works had been constructed and the + city desolated by another plague. It was now time for the English to + appear in those waters, and in 1652 they were defeated by the Dutch off + Leghorn. About seventy-five years later the grippe paid Leghorn a first + visit, and not long after a violent earthquake shook down many buildings + and killed many women and children; but the authorities did what they + could to secure the city in future by declaring the day a perpetual fast, + and forbidding masking and dancing on it. + </p> + <p> + No disaster worth recording befell the city till Bonaparte came with the + Rights of Man in 1796 and left a French garrison, which evacuated the + place the next year, after having levied a fine of two million francs. The + year after that Nelson occupied it with eight thousand English troops, and + the following year the French reoccupied it and sacked the churches and + imposed another fine nearly as great as the first. After the Napoleonic + victories in the Italian wars, they seem to have come back again and fined + the city two million francs more. They now remained five years, and in the + mean time a Livornese, Giovanni Antonio Giaschi, invented a submarine-boat + for attacking and destroying war-vessels, and a Spanish ship brought the + yellow-fever. In 1808 Napoleon gave all Tuscany, and Leghorn with it, to + his sister Elisa, but when in 1814 he was deposed, Leghorn was restored to + the Tuscan grand-dukes and garrisoned for them by German troops, an + earthquake having profited by the general disorder meantime to pay it + another visit. The grand-duke now being driven out of Florence by Murat, + he took refuge at Leghorn, which fell a prey to an epidemic of typhus. The + first steam-vessel appared there in 1818, and in 1835 the Asiatic cholera; + in 1847 a telegraphic line to Pisa was opened. + </p> + <p> + In 1848 the revolutions prevalent throughout Europe had their effect at + Leghorn. The citizens shared in the uprising against the grand-duke, and + elected among its representatives F. D. Guerrazzi, once famous as the + first of Italian novelists and a man of generous mind and heart, who duly + suffered arrest and imprisonment when the grand-duke was restored by the + Austrians. He was sentenced to fifteen years' prison with hard labor, but + later his sentence was commuted to exile. He lived to return and take part + in the Italian unification in 1860, and in 1866 he led the movement + against making peace with Austria unless all her Italian-speaking + provinces were ceded to Italy. He died in 1873, and is remembered in + Leghorn by a monument very ineffective as a whole, but singularly + interesting in certain details. + </p> + <p> + I have omitted from this catalogue of events many of peaceful interest, + such as visits from popes, princes, and poets, and I am not sure I have + got in all the plagues and earthquakes. Perhaps I have the more willingly + suppressed a few war-like facts, in the interest of the superstition I had + cherished that Leghorn was without a history, or that it had no more + history than, most American cities of equal date with its commercial + importance, which began with the wise hospitality of the Medici to + merchants of all races and nations, religions and races, settled there, + and especially to the Spanish Jews who came in great numbers to the city + that it was a common saying that you had as well strike the duke as strike + a Jew in Leghorn. Greeks, Turks, Armenians were protected equally with + English and Dutch, and infidel and heretic were alike free in their + worship. It was the great prison of the galley-slaves, who were chiefly + the pirates and corsairs taken on the high seas by the duke's ships. These + captives not only served as models for the Moors at the base of his + monument, but they must have been very useful in the different public + works which he and his successors carried out. Now they and their like are + gone, and though the Greeks, the Armenians, the English, and the Scotch + still have their churches, I do not suppose there is a mosque in all + Leghorn. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0046" id="linkimage-0046"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-46.jpg" alt="46 the Canal at Leghorn " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + I do not speak very confidently, because my researches in that sort were + not exhaustive. I indeed visited the cathedral, not wholly because Inigo + Jones had something to do in planning it, but because I had formed the + habit of visiting churches in Rome, and I mechanically went into one + wherever I saw it. Generally speaking, I think that they were rather bare + in painting or sculpture, but they were such churches as in America one + would go a long way to see and think one's self well rewarded by their + objects of interest. I do not know what defence to offer for not having + visited the galleries of the Museo Civico, where by actual count in the + guide-book I missed one hundred and sixty-nine works of art, though just + how many masterpieces I am not able to say: probably one out of every ten + was a masterpiece. But, if I did not much resort to the churches and + galleries in Leghorn, I roamed gladly through its pleasant streets and + squares, and by the shores of the canals which once gave it the name of + New Venice, and which still invite the smaller shipping up among its + houses in right Venetian fashion. The streets of Leghorn are not so + straight as they are long, but many are very straight, and the others are + curved rather than crooked. The longest and straight-est were streets of + low dwelling-houses, uncommon in Italian towns, where each family lived + under its own roof with a little garden behind, and a respective entrance, + as people still mostly do in our towns. From the force of the mid-April + sun in these streets I realized what they might be in summer, and, if I + lived in Leghorn, I would rather live on the sea-front, in one of the + comfortable, square, stone villas which border it. But everywhere Leghorn + seemed a pleasant place to live, and convenient, with lively shops and + cafes and trams and open spaces, and statues and monuments in them. The + city, I understood, is of somewhat radical politics, tending from + clericalism to socialism; and, like every other Italian city, it is full + of patriotic monuments. There is a Victor Emmanuel on horseback, plump and + squat, but heroic as always, and a Garibaldi struggling in vain for beauty + in his poncho and his round, flat cap; there is a Mazzini, there is a + Cavour, and, above all, there is a Guerrazzi, no great thing as to the + seated figure, but most interesting, most touching in two of the + bas-reliefs below. One represents him proclaiming the provisional + government at Florence in 1849, after the expulsion of the grand-duke, + where the fact is studied, with the wonderful realism of the Italians, in + all its incidents and the costumes of the thronging spectators. The + sculptor has hesitated at no top-hat or open umbrella; there are + barefooted boys and bareheaded young girls, as well as bearded elders; if + my memory serves, the scene is not without a dog or two. But it is the + other relief which is so simply and so deeply affecting—the interior + of a narrow cell, with one chair and a rude table, at which the patriot + novelist wrote his greatest work, <i>The Siege of Florence,</i> and with + him standing a little way from it. In spite of the small space and the + almost vacant stage, the scene is full of most moving drama, and records a + whole Italian epoch, now happily past forever. + </p> + <p> + These are modern sculptures, and they scarcely contest the palm with the + monument of the four galley-slaves and the Medicean grand-duke. In another + piazza two princes of the Lorrainese family, if I remember rightly, face + each other over its oblong—classic motives, with the figures much + undraped, and one of them singularly impressive from the mutton-chop + whiskers which modernized him. There are several theatres, and among them + a Goldoni theatre, as there should be in a city where the sweet old + playwright sojourned for a time and has placed the action of his famous + comedy, “La Locandiera.” But I was told that the local theatres were not + so much frequented by polite people, especially for opera, as the theatre + in Pisa, which, if poorer, is prouder in its society than its old-time + vassal by the sea, and attracts the fashion of Leghorn during the season. + </p> + <p> + As Pisa has ceased to be the colony of literary English it once was, in + the time of Byron and Hunt and Shelley, to name no others, so Leghorn has + ceased to be the mercantile colony of former days. It has still a great + deal of commerce with England, but this is no longer carried on by + resident merchants, though here and there an English name lingers in the + style of a business house; and the distinctive qualities of both colonies + are united in the author of a charming book who fills the post of British + consul at Leghorn. His <i>Tuscan Towns</i> must not be confused with + another book called <i>Tuscan Cities,</i> though, if the traveller chooses + to carry both with him about Tuscany, I will not say that he could do + better. In <i>Tuscan Cities</i> there is nothing about Leghorn, I believe, + but in <i>Tuscan Towns</i> there is a specially delightful chapter about + the place, its people, language, and customs which I can commend to the + reader as the best corrective of the errors I must have been constantly + falling into here. + </p> + <p> + It was in company no less enviable than this author's that I revisited the + port on a gray Sunday afternoon of my stay, and then for the first time + visited the ancient fortifications which began to be in the time of the + Countess Matilde and intermittently increased under the rule of the Pisan, + Genoese, and Florentine republics, until the Medicean grand-dukes + amplified them in almost the proportions I saw. The brutal first duke of + their line, Alessandro de' Medici, who some say was no Medici, but the + bastard of a negro and a washerwoman, stamped his creed in the inscription + below his adoptive arms, “Under one Faith and one Law, one Lord,” and it + was in the palace here, the story goes, that the wicked Cosimo I. killed + his son Don Garzia before the eyes of the boy's mother. Anything is + imaginable of an early Medicean grand-duke, but in a manner the father's + murderous fury was provoked by the fact, if it was a fact, that Don Garzia + had just mortally wounded his brother Giovanni. I should like to pretend + that the tragedy had wrought in my unconsciousness to the effect of the + pensive gloom which the old fortress cast over me, but perhaps I had + better not. There are some gray Sunday afternoons of a depressing effect + on the spirit which requires no positive or palpable reason. + </p> + <p> + In any case it was a relief to go from the shadow of the past there + through the pleasant city streets to the gentle quiet of the British + cemetery, where so many of our race and some even of our own nation are + taking their long rest. No one is now buried there, and the place, in the + gradual diminution of the English colony at Leghorn, has fallen into a + lovely and appealing neglect if not oblivion. Oblivion quite covers its + origin, but it is almost as old as Protestantism itself, and, if the + ground for it was the gift of the grand-duke who tolerated heretics as + well as Jews in the impulse he gave to the city's growth, it would not be + strange. The beautiful porch of the English church, for once Greek and not + Gothic, fronts upon it, but the dwindling congregation has no care of it, + and there is no fund to keep it so much as free from weeds and brambles + and the insidious ivy rending its monuments asunder. The afternoon of our + visit it was in the sole charge of a large, gray cat, which, after + feasting upon the favorite herb, lay stretched in sleep on a sunny bed of + catnip under the walls of a mansion near, at whose windows some young + girls looked down in a Sunday listlessness, as we wandered about among the + “tall cypresses, myrtles, pines, eucalyptus-trees, oleanders, cactuses, + huge bushes of monthly roses, a jungle of periwinkles, sarsaparilla, wild + irises, violets, and other loveliest of wild flowers.” On the forgotten + tombs were the touching epitaphs of those who had died in exile, and whose + monuments are sometimes here while their ashes lie in Florence or Rome, or + wherever else they chanced to meet their end. Among them were the + inscriptions on the graves of “William Magee Seton, merchant of New York,” + who died at Pisa in 1803, and “Henry De Butts, a citizen of Baltimore, N. + America,” who died at Sarzana; with “James M. Knight, Esq., Captain of + Marines, Citizen of the United States of America,” who died at Leghorn in + 1802; and “Thomas Gamble, Late Captain in the Navy of the United States of + America,” who died at Pisa in 1818; and doubtless there were other + Americans whose tombs I did not see. The memorials of the English were + likewise here, whether they died at Leghorn or not; but most of them seem + to have ended their lives in that place, where there were once so many + English residents, whether for their health or their profit. The youth of + some testified to the fact that they had failed to find the air specific + for their maladies, and doubtless this would account also for the + disproportionate number of noble ladies who rest here, with their + hatchments and their coronets and robes of state carven on the stones + above them. Among others one reads the titles of “Lady Catharine Burgess + born Beauclerk; Jane Isabella, widow of the Earl of Lanesborough and + daughter of the Earl of Molesworth; and Catharine Murray, only child of + James Murray,... and the Right Honorable Lady Catharine Stewart his + Spouse,” with knights, admirals, generals, and other military and naval + officers a many. Most important of all is the tomb of that strenuous + spirit, more potent for good and ill in the English fiction of his time + than any other novelist of his time, and second only to Richardson in the + wide influence of his literary method, Tobias Smollett, namely, who here + ended his long fight with consumption and the indifference of his country + to his claims upon her official recognition. After many years of narrow + circumstance in the Southern climates where he spent his later life, he + tried in vain for that meek hope of literary ambition, a consulate, + perhaps the very post that my companion, a hundred and fifty years later, + was worthily holding. The truest monument to his stay in Italy is the book + of Italian travel that he wrote, and the best effect is that sort of + peripatetic novel which he may be said to have invented in <i>Humphrey + Clinker,</i> and which has survived the epistolary form into our own time. + It is a very simple shaft that rises over his grave, with the brief + record, “Memoriae Tobiae Smollett, qui Liburni animam efflavit, 16 Sept., + 1773,” but it is imaginable with what wrath he would have disputed the + record, if it is true, according to all the other authorities, that he + exhaled his spirit two years earlier, and how he would have had it out + with those “friends and fellow-countrymen” who had the error perpetuated + above his helpless dust. + </p> + <p> + It was not easy to quit the sweetly solemn place or to resist the wish + which I have here indulged, that some kinsman or kinswoman of those whom + the blossoms and leaves are hiding would come to their rescue from nature + now claiming an undue part in them, and obliterating their very memories. + One would not have a great deal done, but only enough to save their names + from entire oblivion, and with the hope of this I have named some of their + names. It might not be too much even for the United Kingdom and the United + States, though both very poor nations, to join in contributing the sum + necessary for the work. Or some millionaire English duke, or some + millionaire American manufacturer, might make the outlay alone; I cannot + expect any millionaire author to provide a special fund for the care of + the tomb of Smollett. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VIII. OVER AT PISA + </h2> + <p> + If the half-hour between Leghorn and Pisa had been spent in any less + lovely transit, I should still be grieving for the loss of the thirty + minutes which might so much better have been given to either place. But + with the constant line of mountains enclosing the landscape on the right, + in all its variety of tillage, pasture-land, vineyard, and orchard, and + the unchanging level which had once been the bed of the sea, we were + gainers in sort beyond the gift of those cities. We had the company, great + part of the way, of more stone-pines than we had seen even between Naples + and Rome, here gathering into thick woods, with the light beautiful + beneath the spread of their horizontal boughs, there grouped in classic + groves, and yonder straying off in twos and threes. We had the canal that + of old time made Pisa a port of the Mediterranean, with Leghorn for her + servant on the shore (or, if it was not this canal, it was another as + straight and long), with a peasant walking beside it, under a light-green + umbrella, in the showers which threatened our start but spared our + arrival. We had then the city, with its domes and towers, grown full + height out of the plain through which the Arno curves in the stateliest + crescent of all its course. + </p> + <p> + The day had turned finer than any other day I can now think of in my whole + life, and I was once more in Pisa without the care for its history or art + or even novelty which had corroded my mind in former visits. I had been + there twice before—once in 1864, when I had done its wonders with + all the wonder they merited, and again in 1883, when I had lived its + memories on the scene of its manifold and mighty experiences. No distinct + light from that learning vexed my present vision, but an agreeable mist of + association, nothing certain, nothing tangible remaining, but only a + gentle vague involving everything, in which I could possess my soul in + peace. In this glimmer I recognized a certain cabman as having been + waiting there from the dawn of time, with his dark-eyed little son, to + make me his willing captive at something above the tariff rates, but + destined by the same fate to serve me well, and to part with me friends at + the close of the day for a franc more than the excess agreed upon. It + costs so small a sum to corrupt the common carrier in Italy that I hold it + wrong to fail of any chance, and this driver had not only a horse of + uncommon qualities, but he spoke a beautiful Tuscan, and he had his Pisa + at his fingers' ends. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0047" id="linkimage-0047"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-47.jpg" + alt="47 the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Leaning Tower, Pisa " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + We were of one mind about driving without delay to the famous group which + is without rival on the earth, though there may be associated edifices in + the red planet Mars that surpass the Cathedral, the Leaning Tower, the + Baptistery, and the Campo Santo at Pisa. What genius it was imagined + placing them in the pleasant meadow where they sit, just beyond the city + streets, I do not know, but it was inspiration beyond any effect of mere + taste, and it commanded my worship as much the last as the first time. The + meadow still swims round them and breaks in a foam of daisies at their + feet; for I take it that it is always mid-April there, and that the grass + is as green and the sun as yellow on it as the afternoon we saw it. The + sacred edifices are as golden as the light on them, and there is such a + joyous lift in the air that it is a wonder they do not swing loose from + their foundations and soar away into the celestial blue. For travellers in + our willing mood there was, of course, the predestined cicerone waiting + for us at the door of the cathedral, who would fix no price for the + pleasure he was born to do us, yet still consented to take more than twice + that he ought to have had at parting. But he was worth the money; he was + worth quite two francs, and, though he was not without the fault of his + calling and would have cumbered us with instruction, I will not blame him, + for after a moment I perceived that his intelligence was such that I might + safely put my hands in my pocket on my shut guide-book and follow him from + point to point without fear of missing anything worth noting. Among the + things worthiest noting, I saw, as if I had never seen them before, the + unforgettable, forgotten Andrea del Sartos, especially the St. Agnes, in + whose face you recognize the well-known features of the painter's wife, + but with a gentler look than they usually wore in his Madonnas, perhaps + because he happened to study these from that difficult lady when she was + in her least celestial moods. Besides the masterpieces of other masters, + there is a most noble Sodoma, which the great Napoleon carried away to + Paris and which the greater French people afterward restored. At every + step in the beautiful temple you may well pause, for it abounds in + pictures and sculptures, the least of which would enrich St. Peter's at + Rome beyond the proudest effect of its poverty-stricken grandeur. + Ghirlandajo, Michelangelo, Gaddo Gaddi, John of Bologna—the names + came back to me out of a past of my own almost as remote as theirs, while + our guide repeated them, in their relation to the sculptures or pictures + or architecture, with those of lesser lights of art, and that school of + Giotto, of all whose frescos once covering its walls the fire of three + hundred years ago has left a few figures clinging to one of the pillars, + faint and uncertain as the memories of my own former visits to the church. + I did, indeed, remember me of an old bronze lamp, by Vincenzo Possenti, + hanging from the roof, which I now revered the third time, at intervals of + twenty years; from its oscillation Galileo is said to have got the notion + of the pendulum; but it is now tied back with a wire, being no longer + needed for such an inspiration. Mostly in this last visit I took Pisa as + lightly as at the first, when, as I have noted from the printed witness, I + was gayly indifferent to the claims of her objects of interest. If they + came in my way, I looked at them, but I did not put myself much about for + them. I rested mostly in the twilight of old associations, trusting to the + guidance of our cicerone, whom, in some form or under some name, the + reader will find waiting for him at the cathedral door as we did. But I + have since recurred to the record of my second visit in 1883, with + amazement at the exact knowledge of events shown there, which became, in + 1908, all a blur of dim conjecture. It appears that I was then acquainted + with much more Pisan history than any other author I have found own to. I + had also surprising adventures of different kinds, such as my poorer + experience of the present cannot parallel. I find, for instance, that in + 1883 I gave a needy crone in the cathedral a franc instead of the piece of + five centimes which I meant for her, and that the lamp of Galileo did + nothing to light the gloom into which this error plunged my spirit. + </p> + <p> + It appears to have jaundiced my view of the whole cathedral, which I did + not find at all comparable to that of Siena, whereas in 1908 I thought it + all beautiful. This may have been because I was so newly from the ugliness + of the Eoman churches; though I felt, as I had felt before, that the whole + group of sacred edifices at Pisa was too suggestive of decorative pastry + and confectionery. No more than at the second view of it did I now attempt + the ascent of the Leaning Tower; I had discharged this duty for life when + I first saw it; with my seventy-one years upon me, I was not willing to + climb its winding stairs, and I doubted if I could keep it from falling, + as I then did, by inclining myself the other way. I resolved that I would + leave this to the new-comer; but I gladly followed our cicerone across the + daisied green from the cathedral to the baptistery, where I found the + famous echo waiting to welcome me back, and greet me with its angelic + sweetness, when the custodian who has it in charge appealed to it; though + its voice seemed to have been weakened and coarsened in its forced replies + to some rude Americans there, who shouted out to it and mocked at it. One + wished to ask them if they did not know that this echo was sacred, and + that their challenges of it were a species of sacrilege. But doubtless + that would not have availed to silence them. By-and-by they went away, and + then we were aware of an interesting group of people by the font near the + lovely Lombardic pulpit of Nicola Pisano. They were peasants, by their + dress—a young father and mother and a little girl or two, and then a + gentle, elderly woman, with a baby in her arms, at which she looked + proudly down. They were in their simple best, and they had good Tuscan + faces, full of kindness. I ventured some propitiatory coppers with the + children, and, when the old woman made them thank me, I thought I could + not be mistaken and I ventured further: “You are the grandmother?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, signer,” she answered; and then we had some talk about the age and + the beauty of the baby, which I declared wonderful for both, in praises + loud enough for the father and mother to hear. After that they seemed to + hold a family council, from which I thought it respectful to stand apart + until the grandmother spoke to me again. + </p> + <p> + I did not understand, and I appealed to our guide for help. + </p> + <p> + “She wishes you to be godfather to the child.” + </p> + <p> + I had never yet been a godfather, but I had the belief that it brought + grave responsibilities, which in the very casual and impermanent + circumstances I did not see how I was to meet. Yet how to refuse without + wounding these kind people who had so honored me I did not know until a + sudden inspiration came to my rescue. + </p> + <p> + “Tell them,” I said, “and be careful to make them understand, that I am + very grateful and very sorry, but that I am a Protestant, and that I + suppose I cannot, for that reason, be godfather to their child.” + </p> + <p> + He explained, and they received my thanks and regrets with smiling + acquiescence; and just then a very stout little old priest (who has + baptized nearly all the babies in Pisa for fifty years) came in, and the + baptism proceeded without my intervention. But I remained, somehow, + disappointed; it would have been pleasant to leave a godchild behind me + there in the neighborhood of Pisa; to have sent him from time to time some + little remembrance of this remote America, and, perhaps, when he grew up + and came to Pisa, and learned the art of the statuary, to have had from + him a Leaning Tower which he had cut in alabaster for me. I was taking it + for granted he was a boy, but he may not have been; there is always that + chance. + </p> + <p> + If I had been alone, I suppose I should still have gone into the Campo + Santo, from mere force of habit; I always go, in Pisa, but I had now with + me clearer eyes for art than mine are, and I wished to have their light on + the great allegories and histories frescoed round the cloisters, and test + with them the objects of my tacit and explicit reserves and misgivings. I + needed such eyes, and even some such powerful glasses as would have + pierced through the faded and wasted pictures and shown them at least as I + had first seen them. They were then in such reasonable disrepair as one + might expect after three or four centuries, but in the last thirty years a + ruinous waste has set in before which not only the colors have faded, but + the surfaces have crumbled under the colors; and as yet no man knows how + to stop the ravage. I think I have read that it is caused by a germ; but, + if not, the loss is the same, and until a parasite for the germ is found + the loss must go on, and the work of Giotto, of Benozzo Gozzoli, of Memmi, + must perish with that of the Orgagnas, which may indeed go, for all me. + Bible stories, miracles, allegories—they are all hasting to decay, + and it can be but a few years until they shall vanish like the splendors + of the dawn which they typify in art. + </p> + <p> + In some things the ruin is not altogether to be regretted. It has softened + certain loathsome details of the charnel facts portrayed, and in other + pictures the torment and anguish of the lost souls are no longer so + painful as the old painters ascertained them. Hell in the Campo Santo is + not now the hell of other days, just as the hell of Christian doctrine is + not the hell it used to be. Death and the world are indeed immitigable; + the corpses in their coffins are as terrifying to the gay lords and ladies + who come suddenly upon them as ever they were, though doubtless of no more + lasting effect with such sinners than they would be nowadays. But what one + must chiefly lament is the waste of the whole quaint and charming series + of Scripture incidents by Benozzo Gozzoli. This is indeed most lamentable, + and after realizing the loss one is only a little heartened by the gayety + of certain grieving widows, sitting in marble for monuments to their + husbands at several points under the arcades. What cheer they might have + brought us was impaired by the sight of the sarcophaguses and the other + antiques against the walls, which inflicted an inappeasable ache for the + city where such things abound, and brought our refluent Romesickness back + full tide upon us. More than once Pisa elsewhere did us the like + involuntary unkindness; she, too, is yellow and mellow like Rome, and she + had moments of the Piazza Navona and the Piazza di Spagna which were + poignant. But she had moments of her own when Rome could not rival her—such, + for instance, as that when she invited us from the perishing frescos of + her Campo Santo to turn our eyes on the flower-strewn field of death which + the cloisters surrounded, and where in the hallowed earth which her + galleys brought from Jerusalem her children, in their several turns, used + to sleep so sweetly and safely. + </p> + <p> + The afternoon sunlight was prolonging the day there as well as it could, + and we should have liked to linger with it as late as it would, but there + were other places in Pisa calling us, and we must go. We found our driver, + and his black-eyed boy beside him on the box, waiting for us at the + cathedral door, and we seem to have left it pretty much to them where we + should go. They decided us, if we really left it to them, mainly for the + outside of things, so that we might see as much of Pisa as possible; but + it appears to have been their notion that we ought to visit, at least, the + inside of the Church of the Knights of St. Stephen. I do not know whether + I protested or not that I had abundantly seen this already, but, at any + rate, I am now glad that they took us there. As every traveller will + pretend to remember, the main business of the knights was to fight the + Barbary pirates, and the main business of their church is now to serve as + a repository of the prows of the galleys and the flags which they took in + their battles with the infidels. There are other monuments of their valor, + but by all odds the flags will be the most interesting to the American + visitor, because of the start that many of them will give him by their + resemblance to our own banner, with their red-and-white stripes, which the + eye follows in vivid expectation of finding the blue field of stars in the + upper left-hand corner. It never does find this, and that is the + sufficient reason for holding to the theory that our flag was copied from + the armorial bearings of the Washington family, and not taken from the + standard of those paynim corsairs; but there is poignant instant when one + trembles. + </p> + <p> + We viewed, of course, the exterior of the edifice standing on the site of + the Tower of Famine, where the cruel archbishop starved the Count Ugolino + and his grandchildren to death; and we drove by the buildings of Pisa's + famous university, which we afterward fancied rather pervaded the city + with the young and ardent life of its students. It is no great + architectural presence, but there are churches and palaces to make up for + that. Everywhere you chance on them in the narrow streets and the ample + piazzas, but the palaces follow mostly the stately curve of the Arno, + where some of them have condescended to the office of hotels, and where, I + believe, one might live in economy and comfort; or, at any rate, I should + like to try. It would get rather warm there in May, and July and August + are not to be thought of, but all the other year it would be divine, with + such a prospect as can hardly be matched anywhere else. Pisa used once to + be the resort of many seeking health or warmth, and for mere climate it + ought again to come into favor. Probably there is reasonably accessible + society there, and, as the Livornese believe, there is at least excellent + opera. The time might grow long, but ought not to be very heavy, and there + is a cafe, at the very finest point of the curve, where you can get an + excellent cup of tea. Whether this attests the resort or sojourn of many + English, or the growth of the tea-habit among the Pisans, I cannot say, + but that cafe is very charming, with students standing about in it and + admiring the ladies who come in to buy pastry, and who do not suppose + there is any one there to look at them. I am sure that the handsome mother + with the pretty daughter who lingered so long over their choice of little + cakes could not have imagined any one was looking, or she would at once + have taken macaroons and hurried away: at that cafe they have macaroons + almost three inches across, and delicious. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0048" id="linkimage-0048"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-48.jpg" alt="48 With Almost Any of My Backgrounds " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The whole keeping was so pleasant that we hated to leave it to the + lengthening shadows from the other shore, but we were to drive down the + Arno into the promenade that follows it, I do not know how far; with the + foolish greed of travel, we wanted to get in all of Pisa that we could, + even if we tore ourselves from its most tempting morsel. But it was all + joy, and I should like, at this moment, to be starting on that enchanting + drive again. I leave the reader to imagine the lovely scenery for himself; + almost any of my many backgrounds will serve; but I will supply him with a + piece of statistics such as does not fall in everybody's way. We noted the + great number of anglers who lined the opposite bank, with no appearance of + catching anything, and I asked our driver if they never happened to get a + bite. “Not in the daytime,” he explained, compassionately, “but as soon as + the evening comes they get all the fish they want.” + </p> + <p> + I could pour out on the reader many other Pisan statistics, but they would + be at second-hand. After long vicissitude, the city is again almost as + prosperous as she was in the heyday of her national greatness, when she + had commerce with every Levantine and Oriental port. We ourselves saw a + silk factory pouring forth a tide of pretty girls from their work at the + end of the day; there was no ruin or disrepair noticeable anywhere, and + the whole city was as clean as Rome, with streets paved with broad, smooth + flagstones where you never missed the rubber tires which your carriage + failed of. But Pisa had a great air of resting, of taking life easily + after a tumultuous existence in the long past which she had put behind + her. Throughout the Middle Ages she was always fighting foreign foes + without her walls or domestic factions within, now the Saracens wherever + she could find them or they could find her, now the Normans in Naples, now + the Cor-sicans and Sardinians, now Lucca, now Genoa, now Florence, and now + all three. Her wars with these republics were really incessant; they were + not so much wars as battles in one long war, with a peace occasionally + made during the five or ten or fifteen years, which was no better than a + truce. When she fell under the Medici, together with her enemy Florence, + she shared the death-quiet the tyrants brought that prepotent republic, + and it was the Medicean strength probably which saved her from Lucca and + Genoa, though it left them to continue republics down to the nineteenth + century. She was at one time an oligarchy, and at another a democracy, and + at another the liege of this prince or that priest, but she was never out + of trouble as long as she possessed independence or the shadow of it. In + the safe hold of united Italy she now sits by her Arno and draws long, + deep breaths, which you may almost hear as you pass; and I hope the + prospect of increasing prosperity will not tempt her to work too hard. It + does not look as if it would. + </p> + <p> + We were getting a little anxious, but not very anxious, for that one + cannot be in Pisa, about our train back to Leghorn; though we did not wish + to go, we did not wish to be left; but our driver reassured us, and would + not let us shirk the duty of seeing the house where Galileo was born. We + found it in a long street on the thither side of the river, and in such a + poor quarter that our driver could himself afford to live only a few doors + from it. As if they had expected him to pass about this time, his wife and + his five children were sitting at his door and playing before it. He + proudly pointed them out with his whip, and one of the little ones + followed on foot far enough to levy tribute. They were sufficiently comely + children, but blond, whereas the boy on the box was both black-eyed and + black-haired. When we required an explanation of the mystery, the father + easily solved it; this boy was the child of his first wife. If there were + other details, I have forgotten them, but we made our romance to the + effect that the boy, to whose beautiful eyes we now imputed a lurking + sadness, was not happy with his step-mother, and that he took refuge from + her on the box with his father. They seemed very good comrades; the boy + had shared with his father the small cakes we had given him at the cafe. + At the station, in recognition of his hapless lot, I gave him half a + franc. By that time his father was radiant from the small extortion I had + suffered him to practice with me, and he bade the boy thank me, which he + did so charmingly that I almost, but not quite, gave him another + half-franc. Now I am sorry I did not. Pisa was worth it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IX. BACK AT GENOA + </h2> + <p> + There is an old saying, probably as old as Genoa's first loot of her + step-sister republic, “If you want to see Pisa, you must go to Genoa,” + which may have obscurely governed us in our purpose of stopping there on + our way up out of Italy. We could not have too much of Pisa, as apparently + the Genoese could not; but before our journey ended I decided that they + would have thought twice before plundering Pisa if they had been forced to + make their forays by means of the present railroad connection between the + two cities. At least there would have been but one of the many wars of + murder and rapine between the republics, and that would have been the + first. After a single experience of the eighty tunnels on that line, with + the perpetually recurring necessity of putting down and putting up the + car-window, no army would have repeated the invasion; and, though we might + now be without that satirical old saying, mankind would, on the whole, + have been the gainer. As it was, the enemies could luxuriously go and come + in their galleys and enjoy the fresh sea-breezes both ways, instead of + stifling in the dark and gasping for breath as they came into the light, + while their train ran in and out under the serried peaks that form the + Mediterranean shore. I myself wished to take a galley from Leghorn, or + even a small steamer, but I was overruled by less hardy but more obdurate + spirits, and so we took the Florentine express at Pisa, where we changed + cars. + </p> + <p> + The Italian government had providently arranged that the car we changed + into should be standing beyond the station in the dash of an unexpected + shower, and that it should be provided with steps so high and steep, with + Italian ladies standing all over them and sticking their umbrellas into + the faces of American citizens trying to get in after them, that it was a + feat of something like mountain-climbing to reach the corridor, and then + of daring-do to secure a compartment. Though a collectivist, with a firm + belief in the government ownership of railroads everywhere, I might have + been tempted at times in Italy to abjure my creed if I had not always + reflected that the state there had just come into possession of the roads, + with all their capitalistic faults of management and outwear of equipment + which it would doubtless soon reform and repair. I venture to suggest now, + however, that its prime duty is to have platforms level with the + car-doors, as they are in England, and not to let Italian ladies stand in + the doorways with their umbrellas. I do not insist that it shall impose + silence and sobriety upon a party of young French people in the next + compartment, but I do think it should remove those mountains back from the + sea so that the trains carrying cultivated Americans can run along the + open shore the whole way to Genoa. Pending this, it should provide strong + and watchful employees to lower and raise the windows at the mouth of each + of the eighty tunnels in every car. I do not demand that it shall change + the site of the station in Genoa so that it shall not always be the city's + whole length away from the hotel you have chosen, but I think this would + be a desirable improvement, especially if it is after dark when you arrive + and raining a peculiarly cold, disagreeable rain. + </p> + <p> + That rain was very disappointing; for, in the intervals between tunnels, + we had fancied, from the few brief glimpses we caught of the landscape, + that the April so backward elsewhere in Italy was forwarder in the + blossomed trees along the eastern Riviera; and we learned at our hotel + that the steam-heat had just been taken off because the day had been so + hot and dry, though the evening was now so cold and wet. It was fitfully + put on and off during the chilly week that ensued, though in our + fifth-story garden, to which we sometimes resorted, there was a mildness + in the air that was absent in-doors. The hotel itself was disappointing; + any hotel would be after our hotel in Leghorn; and, though there was the + good-will of former days, there was not the former effect. The corridors + crashed and clattered all day long and well into the night with the gayety + of some cheap incursion of German tourists, who seemed, indeed, to fill + the whole city with their clamor. They were given a long table to + themselves, and when they were set at it and began to ply their knives and + tongues the din was deafening. That would not have been so bad if they had + not been so plain, or if, when they happened, in a young girl or two, to + be pretty, they had not guttled and guzzled so like the plainest of their + number. One such pretty girl was really beautiful, with a bloom perhaps + already too rich, which, as she abandoned herself to her meat and drink, + reddened downward over her lily neck and upward to her golden hair, past + the brows under which her blue, blue eyes protruded painfully, all in a + frightful prophecy of what she would be when the bud of her spring should + be the full-blown cabbage-rose of her summer. + </p> + <p> + I dare say those people were not typical of their civilization. Probably + modern enterprise makes travel easy to sorts and conditions of Germans who + once would not have dreamed of leaving home, and now tempts these rude + Teutonic hordes over or under the Alps and pours them out on the + Peninsula, far out-deluging the once-prevalent Anglo-Saxons. The first + night there was an Englishman at dinner, but he vanished after breakfast; + the next day an Italian officer was at lunch, but he came no more; we were + the only Americans, and now we had the sole society of those German + tourists. Perhaps it was national vanity, but I could not at the moment + think of an equal number of our fellow-citizens of any condition who would + not have been less molestively happy. One forgot what one was eating, and + left the table bruised as if physically beaten upon by those sound-waves + and sight-waves. But our companions must have made themselves acceptable + to the city they had come to visit; Genoa is very noisy, and they could + not be heard above the trams and omnibuses, and in the streets they could + not be seen at table; when I ventured to note to a sacristan, here and + there, that there seemed to be a great many Germans in town, the fact + apparently roused nothing of the old-time Italian antipathy for the + Tedeschi. Severally they may have been cultivated and interesting people; + and that blooming maiden may really have been the Blue Flower of Romance + that she looked before she began to dine. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0049" id="linkimage-0049"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-49.jpg" alt="49 Washing in the River, Genoa " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + We were entering upon our third view of Genoa with the zest of our first, + and I was glad to find there were so many things I had left unseen or had + forgotten. First of all the Campo Santo allured me, and I went at once to + verify the impressions of former years in a tram following the bed of a + torrential river which was now dry except in the pools where the + laundresses were at work, picturesquely as always in Italy. But here they + were not alone the worthy theme of art; their husbands and fathers, and + perhaps even their <i>fiances,</i> were at work with them, not, indeed, + washing the linen, but spreading to dry it in snowy spaces over the clean + gravel. On either bank of the stream newly finished or partly finished + apartment-houses testified to the prosperity of the city, which seemed to + be growing everywhere, and it would not be too bold to imagine this a + favorite quarter because of its convenience to the Cam-po Santo. Already + in the early forenoon our train was carrying people to that popular + resort, who seemed to be intending to spend the day there. Some had + wreaths and flowers, and were clearly sorrowing friends of the dead; + others, with their guide-books, were as plainly mere sight-seers, and + these were Italians as well as strangers, gratifying what seems the + universal passion for cemeteries. In our own villages the graveyards are + the favorite Sunday haunt of the young people and the scene of their + love-making; and it has been the complaint of English visitors to our + cities that the first thing their hosts took them to see was the cemetery. + They did not realize that this was often the thing best worth showing + them, for our feeble aesthetic instincts found their first expression in + the attempt to dignify or beautify the homes of the dead. Each mourner + grieved in marble as fitly as he knew how, and, if there was sometimes a + rivalry in vaults and shafts, the effect was of a collective interest + which all could feel. Sometimes it was touching, sometimes it was + revolting; and in Italy it is not otherwise. The Campo Santo of San + Miniato at Florence, the Campo Santo at Bologna, the Campo Santo wherever + else you find it, you find of one quality with the Campo Santo at Genoa. + It makes you the helpless confidant of family pride, of bruised and + lacerated love, of fond aspiration, of religious longing, of striving + faith, of foolish vanity and vulgar pretence, but, if the traveller would + read the local civilization aright, he cannot do better than go to study + it there. + </p> + <p> + My third experience of the Genoese Campo Santo was different only in + quantity from the first and second. There seemed more of the things, + better and worse, but the increasing witness was of the art which rendered + the fact with unsparing realism, sometimes alloyed with allegory and + sometimes not, but always outright, literal, strong, rank. The hundreds of + groups, reliefs, statues, busts; the long aisles where the dead are sealed + in the tableted shelves of the wall, like the dead in the catacombs, the + ample space of open ground enclosed by the cloisters and set thick with + white crosses, are all dominated by a colossal Christ which, in my fancy, + remains of very significant effect. It is as if no presence less mighty + and impressive could centre in itself the multitudinous passions, wills, + and hopes expressed in those incongruous monuments and reduce them to that + unity of meaning which one cannot deny them. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0050" id="linkimage-0050"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-50.jpg" alt="50 Realistic Group in the Campo Santo " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + The Campo Santo of Genoa is a mortuary gloss of Genoese history: of the + long succession of civic strifes and foreign wars common to all the + Italian republics, now pacified at last by a spirit of unity, of + brotherhood. At Genoa, more than anywhere else in Italy except Milan, you + are aware of the North—its strenuousness, its enterprise, its + restless outstretching for worlds beyond itself. Columbus came with the + gift of a New World in his hand, and, in the fulness of time, Mazzini came + with the gift of a Newer World in his hand: the realization of Christ in + the ideal of duties without which the old ideal of rights is heathen and + helpless. Against the rude force of Genoa, the aristocratic beauty of such + a place as Pisa was nothing; only Florence and Venice might vie with her. + But she had not the inspiration of Florence, her art, her literature; the + dialect in which she uttered herself is harsh and crabbed, and no poet + known beyond it has breathed his soul into it; her architecture was first + the Gothic from over the Alps, and then of the Renaissance which built the + palaces of her merchants in a giant bulk and of a brutal grandeur. She had + not the political genius of Venice, the oligarchic instinct of + self-preservation from popular misgovernment and princely aggression. Her + story is the usual Italian story of a people jealous of each other, and, + in their fear of a native tyrant, impatiently calling in one foreign + tyrant after another and then furiously expelling him. When she would + govern herself, she first made her elective chief magistrate Doge for + life, and then for two years; under both forms she submitted and rebelled + at will from 1359 till 1802, when, after having accepted the French notion + of freedom from Bonaparte, she enjoyed a lion's share of his vicissitudes. + For a hundred years before that the warring powers had fought over her in + their various quarrels about successions, and she ought to have been well + inured to suffering when, in 1800, the English and the Austrians besieged + her French garrison, and twenty thousand of her people starved in a cause + not their own. The English restored the Doges, and the Republic of Genoa + fell at last nineteen years after the Republic of Venice and three hundred + years after the Republic of Florence. She was given to Piedmont in 1815 by + the Congress of Vienna, and she has formed part of Italy ever since the + unification. I believe that now she is of rather radical opinions in + politics, though the bookseller who found on his shelves a last copy of + the interesting sketch of Genoese history which I have profited by so + little, said that the Genoese had been disappointed in the Socialists, + lately in power, and were now voting Clerical by a large majority. + </p> + <p> + The fact may have been colored by the book-seller's feelings. If the + Clericals are in superior force, the clerics are not: nowhere in Italy did + I see so few priests. All other orders of people throng the narrow, noisy, + lofty streets, where the crash of feet and hoofs and wheels beats to the + topmost stories of the palaces towering overhead in their stony + grandiosity. Everywhere in the structures dating after the Gothic period + there is want of sensibility; the art of the Renaissance was not moulded + here in the moods of a refined and effeminate patriciate, such as in + Venice tempered it to beauty; but it renders in marble the prepotence of a + commercialized nobility, and makes good in that form the right of the city + to be called Genoa the Proud. Perhaps she would not wish to be called + proud because of these palaces alone. It is imaginable that she would like + the stranger to remember the magnificence with which she rewarded the + patriotism of her greatest citizen after Columbus and Mazzini: that mighty + admiral, Andrea Doria, who freed this country first from the rule of + Charles V. and then from the rule of Francis I.; who swept the Barbary + corsairs from the seas; who beat the Turks in battles on ship and on + shore; who took Corsica from the French when he was eighty-eight years + old; who suffered from civil faction; who outlived exile as he had + outlived war, and who died at the age of ninety-four, after he had refused + the sovereignty of the country he had served so long; who was the + Washington of his day, and was equally statesman and soldier, and, above + all, patriot. It is his portrait that you see in that old palace (called + the Palace of the Prince because Charles V. had called him Prince) + overlooking the port, where he sits an old, old man, very weary, in the + sole society of his sarcastic cat, as I have noted before. The cat seems + to have just passed some ironical reflection on the vanity of human things + and to be studying him for the effect. Both appear indifferent to the + spectator, but perhaps they are not, and you must not for all that fail of + a visit to the Church of San Matteo, set round with the palaces of the + Doria family—the palace which his grateful country gave the Admiral + after he refused to be her master, and the palaces of his kindred + neighboring it round. + </p> + <p> + I do not remember any equal space in all Europe which, through a very + little knowledge, so takes the heart as the gentle little church founded + by an earlier Doria, and, after four hundred years, restored by a later, + and then environed with the stately homes of the race, where they could be + domesticated in the honor and reverence of their countrymen because of the + goodness and greatness of the loftiest of their line. It is such a place + as one may revere and yet possess one's soul in self-respect, very much as + one may revere Mount Vernon. The church, as well as the piazza, is full of + Dorian memories, and the cloister must be visited not only for its rather + damp beauty, but for the full meaning of the irony which Doria's cat in + the portrait wished to convey: against the wall here are gathered the + fragments of the statue of Doria which, when the French Revolution came to + Genoa, the patriots threw out of the ducal palace and broke in the street + below. + </p> + <p> + We were some time in finding our way into the magnificent hall of the + Great Council where this statue once stood, with the statues of many other + Genoese heroes and statesmen, and I am not sure that it was worth all our + trouble. Magnificent it certainly was, but coarsely magnificent, like so + much elsewhere in Genoa; but, if we had been at ten times the trouble we + were in seeing the Palace of the Municipality, I should not think it too + much. There in the great hall are the monuments of those Genoese notables + whose munificence their country wished to remember in the order of their + generosity. I do not remember just what the maximum was, but the Doge or + other leading citizen who gave, say, twenty-five thousand ducats to the + state had a statue erected to him; one who gave fifteen, a bust; and one + who gave five, an honorary tablet. The surprising thing is that nearly all + the statues and busts, whether good likenesses or not, are delightful art: + it is as if the noble acts of the benefactors of their country had + inspired the sculptors to reproduce them not only in true character, but + in due dignity. To the American who views them and remembers that we have + now so much money that some of us do not know what to do with it, they + will suggest that our millionaires have an unrivalled opportunity of + immortality in the same sort. There is hardly a town of ten thousand + inhabitants in the country where there are not men who could easily afford + to give a hundred thousand dollars, or fifty, or twenty to their native or + adoptive place and so enter upon a new life in bronze or marble. This + would enrich us beyond the dreams of avarice in a high-grade portrait + statuary; it would give work to hundreds of sculptors who now have little + or nothing to do, and would revive or create the supplementary industries + of casting in metal or carving in stone. + </p> + <p> + The time was in Genoa, it seems, as the time is now with us, when a great + many people did not know what to do with their money. There were sumptuary + laws which forbade their spending it, either they or their wives or + daughters, in dress; apparently they could not even wear Genoa velvet, + which had to be sold abroad for the corruption of the outside world; and + this is said to be the reason why there were so many palaces built in + Genoa in the days of the republic. People who did not wish to figure in + that hall of fame put their surplus into the immense and often ugly + edifices which we still see ministering to their pride in the wide and + narrow streets of the city. Now and then a devout family built or rebuilt + a church and gave it to the public; but by far the greater number put up + palaces, where, after the house-warming, they dwelt in a cold and + economical seclusion. Some of their palaces are now devoted to public + uses; they are galleries of pictures and statues most worthy to be seen, + or they are municipal offices, or museums, or schools of art or science; + but part are still in the keeping of the families that contributed them to + the splendor of their city. The streets in which they stand are loud with + transit and traffic, but the palaces hold aloof from the turmoil and lift + their lofty heads to the level of the gardens behind them. Huge, heavy + they are, according to the local ideal, and always wanting the delicacy of + Venetian architecture, where something in the native genius tempered to + gentleness the cold severity of Palladio, and where Sansovino knew how to + bridge the gulf between the Gothic and the Renascent art that would have + been Greek but halted at being Roman. + </p> + <p> + The grandeur of those streets of palaces in Genoa cannot be denied, but + perhaps, if the visitor quite consulted his preference or indulged his + humor, he would wander rather through the arcades of the busy port, up the + chasmal alleys of little shops into the tiny piazzas, no bigger than a + good-sized room, opening before some ancient church and packed with busy, + noisy people. The perspective there is often like the perspective in old + Naples, but the uproar in Genoa does not break in music as it does in + Naples, and the chill lingering in the sunless depths of those chasms is + the cold of a winter that begins earlier and a spring that loiters later + than the genial seasons of the South. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL + </h2> + <p> + A few years ago an Englishman who had lived our neighbor in the same villa + at San Remo, came and said that he was going away because it was so dull + at San Remo. He was going with his wife to Monte Carlo, because you could + find amusement every day in the week at the tables of the different games + of chance, and Sundays there was a very nice little English church. He did + not seem to think there was anything out of the way in his grouping of + these advantages, but he did not strongly urge them upon us, and we + restricted ourselves in turn to our tacit reflections on the indifference + of the English to a point of morals on which the American conscience is + apt to suffer more or less anguish if it offends. So far as I know they do + not think it wrong to take money won at any game; but possibly their + depravity in this matter rather comforted us than offended. At any rate, I + am sure of the superiority of our own morals in visiting Monte Carlo after + we left Genoa. If we did not look forward with our Englishman's + complacency to the nice little church there, we certainly did not mean to + risk our money at the tables of Roulette, nor yet at the tables of Trente + et Quarante, in the Casino. What we really wished to do was to look on in + the spiritual security of saints while the sinners of both sexes lost and + gained to the equal hurt of their souls. We perhaps expected to hear the + report of a pistol in the gardens of the Casino, if we did not actually + see the ruined gambler falling among the flowers, or if not so much as + this, we thought we might witness his dramatic despair as the croupier + drew in the last remnant of his fortune and mechanically invited the other + Messieurs and Mesdames to make their game; secretly, we might even have + been willing to see something hysterical on the part of the Mesdames if + fate frowned upon them, or something scandalously exuberant if it smiled. + If our motives were not the worst, they were, at any rate, not the best; I + suppose they were the usual human motives, and I am afraid they were + mixed. + </p> + <p> + We found it rather long from Genoa to Monte Carlo, but this was not so + much because of the distance as because of the delays of our train, which, + having started late, grew reckless on the way, and before we reached the + Italian frontier at Ventimiglia, had lost all shame and failed to connect + there with the French train for the rest of our journey. So, instead of + having barely time to affirm our innocence of tobacco, spirits, or + perfumes to the customs officers, and to wash down a sandwich with a cup + of coffee at the restaurant, we had an hour and forty minutes at + Ventimiglia, which I partly spent in vain attempts to buy the poverty of + the inspector so far as to prevail with him not to delay the examination + of our baggage, but to proceed to it at once, in order that we might have + it all off our minds, and devote our long leisure to the inquiry by what + steps the ancient Ligurian tribe of the Intemelii lost their name in its + actual corruption of Ventimiglia. It is a charming old town, far more + charming than the stranger who never has time to walk into it from the + station can imagine, and there is a palm-bordered avenue leading from the + railway to the sea, with the shops and cafes of Italy on one side and the + shops and cafes of France on the other. So late as six o'clock in the + evening those cafes and shops preserved a reciprocal integrity which I + could not praise too highly, but after dark there must be a ghostly + interchange of forbidden commodities among them which no force of customs + officers could wholly suppress. At any rate, I should have liked to see + them try it, though I should not have liked to be kept in Ventimiglia + overnight for any less reason; it seemed a lonesome place, though mighty + picturesque, with old walls, and a magnificent old fort toward the sea, + and a fine bridge spanning, though for the moment superfluously spanning, + the perfectly dry bed of a river. + </p> + <p> + I wished to ask what the name of the river was, but out of all the files + of people coming and going I chose an aged man who could not tell me; he + excused himself with real regret on the ground that he was a stranger in + those parts. Then there was nothing for me to do but go back to the + station and renew my attempt on the inspector, who still remained proof + against me. What added to the hardship of the situation was that it was + Italy at one end of the station and France at the other, and in one + extremity it was an hour earlier than it was at the other, by the time of + Central Europe at the east and by the time of Paris at the west, so that I + do not know but we were two hours and forty minutes at Ventimiglia instead + of one hour and forty minutes. Of this period little could be employed at + tea, and we were not otherwise hungry; we could give something of our + interminable leisure to counting our baggage and suffering unfounded + alarms at failing to make it come out right, but we could not give much. + </p> + <p> + The weather had turned chilly, the long station was full of draughts, and + the invalid of the party, without whom no American party is perfectly + national, was rapidly taking cold. We were quite incredulous when the + examination actually began, but at last it really did, and it began with + our pieces, with such a show of favoring us on the inspector's part, that + when it was over, in about two minutes, one trunk serving as a type of the + innocence of all, I furtively held up a piece of five francs in + recognition of his kindness. But he slowly shook his head, whether in + regret or whether in stern refusal I shall never know. He was an Italian, + but in the employment of the French republic, and I have not been able + since to credit with certainty his incorruptibility to his native or his + adoptive country; I might easily be mistaken in deciding either way. + </p> + <p> + What I am certain of, and certainly sorry for, is the superiority of the + French company's railway carriage, from Ventimiglia on, to the Italian + carriage which had brought us so far, and it is still with unwillingness + that I own the corporation's greater care for our comfort. If we had been + in the paternal care of the administration of the gambling-house. at Monte + Carlo, we could not have been more tenderly or cleanly cushioned about, or + borne away on softer springs; and very possibly a measure of wickedness in + the means is a condition of comfort in the end to which we are so tempted + to abandon ourselves in a world which is not yet so sternly collectivist + as I could wish. It was not quite dark when we arrived at Monte Carlo and + began to experience, in the beautiful keeping of the place, how admirably + a gambling-house can manage the affairs of a principality when it pays all + the taxes. There were many two-horse landaus waiting our pleasure outside + the station, and the horses were all so robust and handsome that we were + not put to our usual painful endeavor in seeking the best and getting the + worst. All those stately equipages were good, and the one that fell to us + mounted the hill to our hotel by a grade so insinuating that the balkiest + horse in Frascati could hardly have suspected it. + </p> + <p> + In our easy ascent we were aware of the gray-and-blond houses behind their + walls among their groves and gardens, among flowers and blossoms; of the + varying inclines and levels from which some lovely difference of prospect + appeared at every step; of the admirably tended roadways, and the walks + that followed them up hill and down, and crossed to little parks, or led + to streets brilliant with shops and hotels, clustering about the great + gambling-house, the centre of the common prosperity and animation. The air + had softened with the setting sun, and the weather which had at Leghorn + and Genoa delayed through two weeks of rain and cold, seemed to confess + the control of the Casino administration, as everything else does at Monte + Carlo, and promised an amiability to which we eagerly trusted. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0051" id="linkimage-0051"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-51.jpg" alt="51 Monaco " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + It was of course warmer out-doors than in-doors, and while the fire was + kindling on our hearth we gave the quarter hour before dinner to looking + over our garden-wall into the comely town in the valley below, and to the + palace and capital of the Prince of Monaco on the heights beyond. Nothing + by day or by night could be more exquisite than the little harbor, a + perfect horseshoe in shape, and now, at our first sight of it, set round + with electric lights, like diamonds in the scarf-pin of some sporty Titan, + or perhaps of Hercules Monoecus himself, who is said to have founded + Monaco. In the morning we saw that the waters arranged themselves in the + rainbow colors of such a scarf round the shores, and that there were only + pleasure-craft moored in them: the yacht of the Prince of Monaco and the + yacht of some American Prince, whose title I did not ascertain, but whose + flag was unmistakable. There must have been other yachts, but I do not + remember them, and possibly there were some workaday craft, of which I do + not now recall the impression; but I am certain of the festive air of + disoccupation pervading the port from the adjacent towns, both Monte Carlo + and Monaco, which its wicked suburb has cleansed in corrupting, and + rendered attractive by the example of its elegant leisure. There remains + from both places, and from Condamine in the plain between them the sense + of a perpetual round of holidays. There seemed to be no more creative + business in one place than another, but I do not say there is none; there + is certainly a polite distillery of perfumes and liqueurs in Condamine, + but what one sees is the commerce of the shops, and the building up of + more and more villas and hotels, on every shelf and ledge, to harden and + whiten in the sun, and let their gardens hang over the verges of the + cliffs. On the northeast, the mountains rise into magnificent steeps whose + names would say nothing to the reader, except that of Turbia, which he + will recall as the classic Tropaea of Augustus, who marked there the + bounds between Italy and Gaul. But we were as yet in no mood to climb this + height, even with the help of a funicular railway, and I made my + explorations at such convenient elevations as I could reach on foot, or by + the help of one of those luxurious landaus peculiar to Monte Carlo. + </p> + <p> + One such point was undoubtedly the headland of Monaco, where the Greeks of + Marseilles, long enough before Augustus, built a temple to Hercules + Monoecus. The Grimaldi family which gave Genoa many doges, came early into + the sovereignty of Monaco, by the hook or crook those days, but whether it + was they who fostered its piracy in the fourteenth century, does not + distinctly appear, though it seems certain that one of the Grimaldi + princes served against the English under Philip of Valois, and was wounded + at Crecy. In 1524 a successor went over to the empire under Charles V. + Still later the principality returned to the sovereignty of France, and in + 1793 the French republicans frankly annexed it, but it was given back to + the Grimaldi in 1814. + </p> + <p> + The Grimaldi on the whole were a baddish line of potentates, and only + lacked largeness of scene to have left the memory of world-tragedies. They + murdered one another, at least in two cases; in another, the people killed + their ruler by publicly drowning him in the sea for insulting their women; + the princes were the protectors of piracy, and in the very late times + following their restoration by the Congress of Vienna, the reigning prince + confiscated the property of the churches for his own behoof, and took into + his hands the whole trade of the principality. He alone bought and ground + the grain, and baked the bread, which he sold to his people at an + extortionate price; he bought damaged flour in Genoa and fed it to his + subjects at the same rate as good. When they murmured and threatened + rebellion, he threatened in turn that he would rule them with a rod of + iron, as if their actual conditions were not bad enough. Some of his + oppressions were of a fantasticality bordering on comic opera: travellers + had to give up their provisions at the frontier and eat the official bread + of Monaco; ships entering the port were confiscated if they had brought + more loaves than sufficed them for their voyage thither; no man might cut + his own wood without leave of the police, or prune his trees, or till his + land, or irrigate it; the birth and death of every animal must be publicly + registered, with the payment of a given tax, and nobody could go out after + ten at night without carrying a taxed lantern. When Nice was annexed to + France in 1860 Monaco passed under French protection again, and now it is + subject to conscription like the rest of France. Ten years after the + beginning of this new order of things the great M. Blanc was expelled from + Hombourg, and the Prince of Monaco rented to him the-gambling privilege of + Monte Carlo. + </p> + <p> + Then the modern splendor of the place began. The entire population of the + three towns, Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Condamine, is not above fifteen + thousand, and apparently the greater part of the inhabitants depend upon + the gay industry of the Casino for their livelihood. I should say that the + most of the houses in Monte Carlo were hotels, or pensions, or furnished + villas, or furnished apartments, and if one could be content to live in + the atmosphere of the Casino, which is not meteorologically lurid, I do + not know where one could live in greater comfort. It is said that + everything is rather dearer than in Nice, for instance, but such things as + I wanted to buy I did not find very dear. The rates at the most expensive + hotels did not seem exhorbitant when reduced to dollars, and if you went a + little way from the Casino the hotels were very reasonable, so that you + could spend a great deal of money at the tables which in America you would + spend in board and lodging. I fancy that a villa could be got there very + reasonably, and as the morals of all the inhabitants are scrupulously + cared for by the administration of the Casino, and no one living in the + principality is allowed to frequent the gaming-tables, it is probable that + domestic service is good and cheap. If I may speak from our experience at + our very simple little hotel, it is admirable, one waiter sufficing for + ten or twelve guests, with leisure for much friendly conversation in the + office, between the breakfasts served in our rooms and the excellent + dinners at the small tables in the salon. If you liked, he would speak + French or Italian, though he spoke English as well as any one, and he was + of that excellent Piedmontese race which has been the saving salt of the + whole peninsula. As for the food, it was far beyond that of our + cold-storage, and it must have been cheap, since it was provided for us at + the rate we paid. + </p> + <p> + The cost of dress varies, according to the taste of and the purse, + everywhere. White serge seemed the favorite wear of most of the ladies one + saw in the street at Monte Carlo, especially in the region of the Casino. + This may have expressed an inner condition, or it may have been a + sympathetic response to the advances of the flowers in the pretty beds and + parterres so fancifully designed by the gardeners of the administration, + or it may have been a token of the helpless submission to which the + windows of the milliners and modistes reduced all comers of the dressful + sex. Many of the men with the women, or without them, were also in white + serge, but they seemed more variably attired; there was a prevailing + suggestion of yachting or automobiling in their dress, though doubtless + most of them had not sailed or motored to the spot. Some few, say four or + five, may have motored away from it, for in the centre of the charming + square before the Casino there was an automobile of some newest type being + raffled for in the interest of that chiefest of the Christian virtues + which makes its most successful appeals in the vicinity of games of + chance. Some one must have won the machine and carried a party of his + friends away, and triumphantly turned turtle with it over the first of the + precipices which abound at Monte Carlo. More than the tables within this + opportunity of fortune tempted me, and it was only by the repeated + recurrence to my principles that I was able to get away alive. In spite of + myself, I did not get away without, however guiltlessly, having yielded to + the spirit of the place. It was at the Administrational Art Exhibition, + where there were really some good pictures, and where, on my entering, I + was given a small brass disk. On going out I attempted to restore this to + the door-keeper, but he went back with me to a certain piece of mechanism, + where he instructed me to put the disk into a slot. Then the disk ran its + course, and a small brass ball came out at the bottom. The door-keeper + opened this, and showed me that it was empty; but he gave me to understand + that it might have been full of diamonds, or rubies, or seed-pearls, which + might have implanted in me a lust of gambling I should never have + overcome. Monte Carlo was in every way tempting. A vast oblong, brilliant + with flowers in artistic patterns, stretched upward from the Casino, and + there was an agreeable park where one might sit. On every other side there + were costly hotels and costly restaurants, including that of the + unexampled, the insurpassable Giro, where one saw people eating and + drinking at the windows whenever one passed, by day or night. Beyond the + Casino seaward were the beautiful terraces, planted with palms and other + tropic growths, where people might come out and kill themselves when they + had nothing left to lose but their lives; and against the dark green of + their fronds the temple of fortune lifted a frosted-cake-like front of + long extent. I do not know just what type of architecture it is of, but it + distinctly suggests the art of the pastry cook when he has triumphed in + some edifice crowning the centre of the table at a great public dinner. + What mars the pleasing effect most is a detail which enforces this + suggestion, for the region of the Casino is thickly frequented by a + species of black doves, and when these gather in close lines of black dots + along the eaves, they have exactly the effect of flies clustering on the + sugary surfaces of the cake. At intervals are bronze statues of what seem + a sort of adolescent cherubs, but which have, I do not know why, a + peculiarly devilish appearance. No doubt they are harmless enough; but + certainly they do nothing to keep the flies off the cake. + </p> + <p> + In fine, as an edifice the Casino disappoints, and if one is not + pressingly curious about the interior, one rather lingers on the terrace + overlooking the sea, and the lines of the railroad following the shore, + and the panorama of the several towns. It is charming to sit there, and if + it is in the afternoon, you may see an artist there painting water-colors + of the scenery. Even if he were not painting, you could not help knowing + him for an artist, because he wears a black velvet jacket and + knickerbockers, and a soft slouch hat, and has a curled black mustache and + pointed beard; there is no mistaking him; and at a given moment, after he + has been working long enough, he puts above his sketch the sign, “For + Sale,” as artists always do, and then, if you want a masterpiece, you go + down a few steps from where you are sitting and buy it. But I never did + that any more than I took tickets for the charity automobile, though there + is no telling what I might not have done if I had broken the bank when at + last I went into the Casino. + </p> + <p> + It seems to open about eleven o'clock in the morning, for gamblers are + hard-working, impatient people, and do not want to lose time. A broad + stretch of red carpet is laid down the steps from the portal and they + begin to go in at once, and people keep going in until I know not what + hour at night. But I think mid-afternoon is the best hour to see them, and + it is then that I will invite the reader to accompany me, instructing him + to turn to the left on entering, and get his gratis billet of admission to + the rooms from the polite officials there in charge, who will ask for his + card, and inquire his country and city, but will not insist upon his + street and his number in it. This form is apparently to make sure that you + are not a resident of the principality, and that if you suffer in your + morals from your visit to the Casino you shall not be a source of local + corruption thereafter. They bow you away, first audibly pronouncing your + name with polyglottic accuracy, and then you are free to wander where you + like. But probably you will want to go at once from the large, nobly + colonnaded reception-hall or atrium, into that series of salons where + wickeder visitors than yourself are already closely seated at the oblong + tables, and standing one or two deep round them. The salons of the series + are four, and the tables in each are from two to five, according to the + demands of the season; some are Trente et Quarante-tables, and some, by + far the greater number, are Roulette-tables. Roulette seems the simpler + game, and the more popular; I formed the notion that there was a sort of + aristocratic quality in Trente et Quarante, and that the players of that + game were of higher rank and longer purse, but I can allege no reason + justifying my notion. All that I can say is that the tables devoted to it + commanded the seaward views, and the tops of the gardens where the players + withdrew when they wished to commit suicide. The rooms are decorated by + several French painters of note, and the whole interior is designed by the + famous architect Gamier, to as little effect of beauty as could well be. + It is as if these French artists had worked in the German taste, rather + than their own, and in any case they have achieved in their several + allegories and impersonations something uniformly heavy and dull. One + might fancy that the mood of the players at the tables had imparted itself + to the figures in the panels, but very likely this is not so, for the + players had apparently parted with none of their unpleasing dulness. They + were in about equal number men and women, and they partook equally of a + look of hard repression. The repression may not have been wholly from + within; a little away from each table hovered, with an air of detachment, + certain plain and quiet men, who, for all their apparent inattention, may + have been agents of the Administration vigilant to subdue the slightest + show of drama in the players. I myself saw no drama, unless I may call so + the attitude of a certain tall, handsome young man, who stood at the + corner of one of the tables, and, with nervously working jaws, staked his + money at each invitation of the croupiers. I did not know whether he won + or lost, and I could not decide from their faces which of the other men or + women were winning or losing. I had supposed that I might see + distinguished faces, distinguished figures, but I saw none. The players + were of the average of the spectators in dress and carriage, but in the + heavy atmosphere of the rooms, which was very hot and very bad, they all + alike looked dull. At a psychological moment it suddenly came to me in + their presence, that if there was such a place as hell, it must be very + dull, like that, and that the finest misery of perdition must be the + stupid dulness of it. For some unascertained reason, but probably from a + mistaken purpose of ornament, there hung over the centre of each table, + almost down to the level of the players' heads, lengths of large-linked + chains, and it was imaginable, though not very probable, that if any of + the lost souls rose violently up, or made an unseemly outcry, or other + rebellious demonstration, those plain, quiet men, the agents of the + Administration, would fling themselves upon him or her, and bind them with + those chains, and cast them into such outer darkness as could be + symbolized by the shade of the terrace trees. The thing was improbable, as + I say, but not impossible, if there is truth in Swedenborg's relation that + the hells are vigilantly policed, and from time to time put in order by + angels detailed for that office. To be sure the plain, quiet men did not + look like angels, and the Administration of which they were agents, could + not, except in its love of order, be likened to any celestial authority. + </p> + <p> + Commonly in the afternoon there is music in the great atrium from which + the gambling-rooms open, and then there is a pleasant movement of people + up and down. They are kept in motion perhaps by their preference, + somewhat, but also largely by the want of seats. If you can secure one of + these you may amuse yourself very well by looking on at the fashion and + beauty of those who have not secured any. Here you will see much more + distinction than in the gambling-rooms; the air is better, and if you + choose to fancy this the limbo of that inferno, it will not be by a + violent strain. In the crowd will be many pretty young girls, in proper + chaperonage, and dressed in the latest effects of Paris; if they happen to + be wearing the mob-cap hats of the moment it is your greater gain; they + could not be so charming in anything else, or look more innocent, or more + consciously innocent. You could only hope, however, such were the malign + associations of the place, that their chaperons would not neglect them for + the gaming-tables beyond, but you could not be sure, if the chaperons were + all like that old English lady one evening at the opera in the Casino, who + came in charge of her niece, or possibly some friend's daughter. She + remained dutifully enough beside the girl through the first act of the + stupid musical comedy, and even through the ensuing ballet, and when a + flaunting female, in a hat of cart-wheel circumference, came in and shut + out the whole stage from the hapless stranger behind, this good old lady + authorized her charge to ask him to take the seat next them where he could + see something of the action if he wished. But at the end of the ballet, + she rose, and bidding the girl wait her return, she vanished in the + direction of the gaming-rooms. She may merely have gone to look on at a + spectacle which, dulness for dulness, was no worse than that of the + musical comedy, and I have no proof that she risked her money there. The + girl sat through the next act, and then in a sudden fine alarm, like that + of a bird which, from no visible cause, starts from its perch, she took + flight, and I hope she found her aunt, or her mother's friend, quietly + sleeping on one of those seats in the atrium. It was one of those tacit, + eventless dramas which in travel are always offering themselves to your + witness. They begin in silence, and go quietly on to their unfinish, and + leave you steeped in an interest which is life-long, whereas a story whose + end you know soon perishes from your mind. Art has not yet learned the + supreme lesson of life, which is never a tale that is told within the + knowledge of the living. + </p> + <p> + Nowhere, I think, is the “sweet security of streets” felt more than in + Monte Carlo. Whether the control of that good Administration of the Casino + reaches to the policing of the place in other respects or not, I cannot + say, but one walks home at night from the theatre of the Casino with the + same sense of safety that one enjoys under that paternal roof. At eleven + o'clock all Monte Carlo sleeps the sleep of the innocent and the just in + the dwellings of the citizens and permanent residents; though it cannot be + denied that there appear to be late suppers in the hotels and restaurants + surrounding the Casino, which the iniquitous may be giving to the guilty. + Away from the flare of their bold lights the town reposes in a demi-dark, + and presents to the more strenuous fancy the effect of a mezzotint study + of itself; by day it is a group of wash-drawings near to, and farther off, + of water-colors, very richly and broadly treated. I could not insist too + much upon this notion with the reader who has never been there, or has not + received picture postal-cards from sojourning correspondents. These would + afford him a portrait of the chief features and characteristics of the + place not too highly flattered, for in fact it would be impossible for + even a picture postal-card to exaggerate its beauty. They will besides + convey one of the few convincing proofs that in spite of the Blanc Casino + and the French Republic the Prince of Monaco is still a reigning + sovereign, for the postage-stamps bear the tastefully printed head of that + potentate. If the visitor requires other proofs he may take a landau at + the station in Monaco, and drive up over the heights of the capital into + the piazza before the prince's palace. When the prince is not at home he + can readily get leave to visit the palace for twenty minutes, but on my + unlucky day the prince was doubly at home, for he was sick as well as in + residence. I satisfied myself as well as I could, and I am very easy to + satisfy, with my drive through the pleasant town, which is entirely + Italian in effect, with its people standing about or looking out of their + windows in their Sunday leisure, and quite Roman in the cleanliness of its + streets. I took due pleasure in the unfinished exterior of the + Oceanographic Museum and the newly finished interior of the Monaco + Cathedral. The cathedral, which is so new as to make one rejoice that most + other cathedrals are old, is of a glaring freshness, but is very handsome; + somehow in spite of its newness it contains the tombs of the reigning + family, and perhaps it has only been newly done over. The museum which is + ultimately to be the greatest of its kind in the world, already contains + somewhere in its raw inaccessible recesses the collections made by Prince + Albert in his many cruises, and is of a palatiality worthy of a sovereign + with a tenant so generous and prompt in its rent as the Administration of + the Casino of Monte Carlo. + </p> + <p> + <a name="linkimage-0052" id="linkimage-0052"> + <!-- IMG --></a> + </p> + <div class="fig" style="width:80%;"> + <img src="images/r1-52.jpg" alt="52 the Casino, Monte Carlo " width="100%" /><br /> + </div> + <p> + This fact, namely, that the princely grandeur and splendor of Monaco all + came out of the gaming-tables, was something that the driver of my landau + made me observe, when our intimacy had mounted with our road, and we + paused for the magnificent view of the sea from the headland near the + museum. He was otherwise a shrewd and conversible Piedmontese who did not + make me pay much above the tariff, and who had pity on my poor French + after awhile, and consented to speak Italian with me. In the sort of + French glare over the whole local civilization of the principality, + everybody will wish to seem French, but after you break through the + surface, the natives will be as comfortably and endearingly Italian as + anybody in the peninsula. Among themselves they speak a Ligurian patois, + but with the stranger they will use an Italian easily much better than + his, and also much better than their own French. I think they prefer you + in their racial parlance after you have shown some knowledge of it, and + two kind women of whom I asked my way in Monte Carlo, one day when I was + trying for the station of the funicular to Turbia, grew more volubly kind + when I asked it in such Tuscan as I could command. That station is really + not hard to find when once you know where it is, and at three o'clock in + the afternoon I was mounting the precipitous incline of the alp on whose + summit Augustus divided Italy from Gaul, and left the stupendous trophy + which one sees there in ruins to-day. + </p> + <p> + I should like to render the sense of my upward progress dramatic by + pretending that we mounted from a zone of flowers at Monte Carlo into + regions where only the hardiest blossoms greeted us, but what I really + noticed was that by-and-by the little patches of vineyard seemed to grow + less and the olive-trees scraggier. Perhaps even this was partly fancy; as + for the flowers, I cannot bring myself to partake of their deceit; for + they are the most shameless fakers, as regards climate, in nature. It is, + for instance, perfectly true that they are in bloom along the Riviera all + winter long, but this does not prove that the winter of the Riviera is + always warm. It merely proves that flowers can stand a degree of cold that + nips the nose bent to hale their perfume, and brings tears into the eyes + dwelling in rapture on their loveliness. They are like women; they look so + fragile and delicate that you think they cannot stand anything, but they + can stand pretty much everything, or at least everything they wish to. + Throughout that week at Monte Carlo, while we cowered round our fires or + went out into a frigid sunshine, the flowers smiled from every + garden-ground in a gayety emulous of that of their sisters passing in + white serge. So probably I gave less attention to the details of the + scenery through which my funicular was passing than to the stupendous + prospects of sea and shore which it varyingly commanded. If words could + paint these I should not spare the words, but when I recall them, my + richest treasure of adjectives seems a beggarly array of color tubes, + flattened and twisted past all col-lapsibility. Nothing less than an + old-fashioned panoramic show would impart any notion of it, and even that + must fail where it should most abound, namely, in the delicacy of that + ineffable majesty. + </p> + <p> + We climbed and climbed, with many a muted hope and many a muted fear of + the mechanism which carried us so safely, and then we ran across a stretch + of comparative level and reached the last station, under the cliff on + which the local hotel stood, with the mighty ruin behind it. Our + passengers flocked up to the terrace of the hotel, much shoved and + shouldered by automobiles bearing the company which seems proper to those + vehicles, and dispersed themselves at the many little tables set about for + tea, and the glory of the matchless outlook. While one could yet have the + ruin mostly to one's self, it seemed the most favorable moment to visit + the crumbling walls and broken tower, whose fragments strewed the slopes + around. The tower was of Augustus, and the fortress into which it was + turned in the Middle Ages was of unknown authority, but the ruin was the + work of Marshal Villars, who blew up both trophy and stronghold sometime + in the French king's wars with the imperialists in the first half of the + eighteenth century. The destruction was incomplete, though probably + sufficient for the purpose, but as a ruin, nothing could be more + admirable. There seems to be at present something like a restoration going + on; it has not gone very far, however; it has developed some fragments of + majestic pillars, and some breadths of Roman brick-work; a few spaces + about the base of the tower are cleared; but the rehabilitation will + probably never proceed to such an extreme that you may not sit down on + some carven remnant of the past, and closing your eyes to the surrounding + glory of alp and sea find yourself again on the Palatine or amid the + memorials of the Forum. + </p> + <p> + THE END <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. 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diff --git a/7422-h/images/r1-8.jpg b/7422-h/images/r1-8.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8fceb34 --- /dev/null +++ b/7422-h/images/r1-8.jpg diff --git a/7422-h/images/r1-9.jpg b/7422-h/images/r1-9.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9d111d --- /dev/null +++ b/7422-h/images/r1-9.jpg 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..2b5f45b --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #7422 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7422) diff --git a/old/whrom10.txt b/old/whrom10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07b4a93 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whrom10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8770 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. Howells +#61 in our series by W. D. Howells + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Roman Holidays and Others + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7422] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on April 27, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred + + + + + +ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS + +W. D. HOWELLS + +ILLUSTRATED + + + + + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS +NEW YORK AND LONDON +Copyright, 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS. +Copyright, 1908, by THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. +Published October, 1908. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA + +II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN + +III. ASHORE AT GENOA + +IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE + +V. POMPEII REVISITED + +VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS + +VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN + +VIII. OVER AT PISA + +IX.. BACK AT GENOA + +X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL + + + + +ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS + +I + +UP AND DOWN MADEIRA. + + +No drop-curtain, at any theatre I have seen, was ever so richly +imagined, with misty tops and shadowy clefts and frowning cliffs and +gloomy valleys and long, plunging cataracts, as the actual landscape of +Madeira, when we drew nearer and nearer to it, at the close of a tearful +afternoon of mid-January. The scenery of drop-curtains is often very +holdly beautiful, but here Nature, if she had taken a hint from art, had +certainly bettered her instruction. During the waits between acts at the +theatre, while studying the magnificent painting beyond the trouble of +the orchestra, I have been most impressed by the splendid variety which +the artist had got into his picture, where the spacious frame lent +itself to his passion for saying everything; but I remembered his +thronging fancies as meagre and scanty in the presence of the stupendous +reality before me. I have, for instance, not even mentioned the sea, +which swept smoother and smoother in toward the feet of those precipices +and grew more and more trans-lucently purple and yellow and green, while +half a score of cascades shot straight down their fronts in shafts of +snowy foam, and over their pachydermatous shoulders streamed and hung +long reaches of gray vines or mosses. To the view from the sea the +island is all, with its changing capes and promontories and bays and +inlets, one immeasurable mountain; and on the afternoon of our approach +it was bestridden by a steadfast rainbow, of which we could only see one +leg indeed, but that very stout and athletic. + +There were breadths of dark woodland aloft on this mountain, and +terraced vineyards lower down; and on the shelving plateaus yet farther +from the heights that lost themselves in the clouds there were scattered +white cottages; on little levels close to the sea there were set white +villas. These, as the ship coquetted with the vagaries of the shore, +thickened more and more, until after rounding a prodigious headland we +found ourselves in face of the charming little city of Funchal: long +horizontal lines of red roofs, ivory and pink and salmon walls, evenly +fenestrated, with an ancient fortress giving the modern look of things a +proper mediaeval touch. Large hotels, with the air of palaces, crowned +the upland vantages; there were bell-towers of churches, and in one +place there was a wide splotch of vivid color from the red of the +densely flowering creeper on the side of some favored house. There was +an acceptable expanse of warm brown near the quay from the withered but +unfailing leaves of a sycamore-shaded promenade, and in the fine +roadstead where we anchored there lay other steamers and a lead-colored +Portuguese war-ship. I am not a painter, but I think that here are the +materials of a water-color which almost any one else could paint. In the +hands of a scene-painter they would yield a really unrivalled +drop-curtain. I stick to the notion of this because when the beautiful +goes too far, as it certainly does at Madeira, it leaves you not only +sated but vindictive; you wish to mock it. + +The afternoon saddened more and more, and one could not take an interest +in the islanders who came out in little cockles and proposed to dive for +shillings and sixpences, though quarters and dimes would do. The +company's tender also came out, and numbers of passengers went ashore in +the mere wantonness of paying for their dinner and a night's lodging in +the annexes of the hotels, which they were told beforehand were full. +The lights began to twinkle from the windows of the town, and the dark +fell upon the insupportable picturesqueness of the prospect, leaving one +to a gay-ety of trooping and climbing lamps which defined the course of +the streets. + +The morning broke in sunshine, and after early breakfast the launches +began to ply again between the ship and the shore and continued till +nearly all the first and second cabin people had been carried off. The +people of the steerage satisfied what longing they had for strange +sights and scenes by thronging to the sides of the steamer until they +gave her a strong list landward, as they easily might, for there were +twenty-five hundred of them. At Madeira there is a local Thomas Cook & +Son of quite another name, but we were not finally sure that the alert +youth on the pier who sold us transportation and provision was really +their agent. However, his tickets served perfectly well at all points, +and he was of such an engaging civility and personal comeliness that I +should not have much minded their failing us here and there. He gave the +first charming-touch of the Latin south whose renewed contact is such a +pleasure to any one knowing it from the past. All Portuguese as Funchal +was, it looked so like a hundred little Italian towns that it seemed to +me as if I must always have driven about them in calico-tented +bullock-carts set on runners, as later I drove about Eunchal. + +It was warm enough on the ship, but here in the town we found ourselves +in weather that one could easily have taken for summer, if the +inhabitants had not repeatedly assured us that it was the season of +winter, and that there were no flowers and no fruits. They could not, if +they had wished, have denied the flies; these, in a hotel interior to +which we penetrated, simply swarmed. If it was winter in Funchal it was +no wintrier than early autumn would have been in one of those Italian +towns of other days; it had the same temperament, the same little +tree-planted spaces, the same devious, cobble-paved streets, the same +pleasant stucco houses; the churches had bells of like tone, and if +their fagades confessed a Spanish touch they were not more Spanish than +half the churches in Naples. The public ways were of a scrupulous +cleanliness, as if, with so many English signs glaring down at them, +they durst not untidy out-of-doors, though in-doors it was said to be +different with them. There are three thousand English living at Funchal +and everybody speaks English, however slightly. The fresh faces of +English girls met us in the streets and no doubt English invalids +abound. + +We shipmates were all going to the station of the funicular railway, but +our tickets did not call for bullock-sleds and so we took a clattering +little horse-car, which climbed with us through up-hill streets and got +us to the station too soon. Within the closed grille there the +handsomest of swarthy, black-eyed, black-mustached station-masters (if +such was his quality) told us that we could not have a train at once, +though we had been advised that any ten of us could any time have a +train, because the cars had all gone up the mountain and none would be +down for twenty minutes. He spoke English and he mitigated by a most +amiable personality sufferings which were perhaps not so great as we +would have liked to think. Some of us wandered off down a pink-and-cream +colored avenue near by and admired so much the curtains of +red-and-yellow flowers--a cross between honeysuckles and trumpet +blossoms--overhanging a garden-wall that two friendly boys began to +share our interest in them. One of them mounted the other and tore down +handfuls of the flowers, which they bestowed upon us with so little +apparent expectation of reward that we promptly gave them of the +international copper coinage current in Madeira, and went back to the +station doubtless feeling guiltier than they. Had we not been accessory +after the fact to something like theft and, as it was Sunday, to +Sabbath-breaking besides? Afterward flowers proved so abundant in +Madeira in spite of its being winter, that we could not feel the larceny +a serious one, and the Sunday was a Latin Sabbath well used to being +broken. The pony engine which was to push our slanting car over the +cogged track up the mountain arrived with due ceremony of bell and +whistle, and we were let through the grille by the station-master as +politely as if we had been each his considered guest. Then the climb +began through the fields of sugar-cane, terraced vineyards, orchards of +fruit trees, and gardens of vegetables planted under the arbors over +which the grapes were trained. One of us told the others that the +vegetables were sheltered to save them from being scorched by the summer +sun, and that much of the work among them was done by moonlight to save +the laborers from the same fate. I do not know how he had amassed this +knowledge, and I am not sure that I have the right to impart it without +his leave. I myself saw some melons lolling on one of the tiled roofs of +the cottages where they had perhaps been pushed by the energetic forces +of the earth and sky. The grape-vines were quiescent, partly because it +was winter, as everybody said, and partly because the wine culture is no +longer so profitable in the island. It has been found for the moment +that Madeira is bad for the gout, and this discovery of the doctors is +bad for the peasants (already cruelly overtaxed by Portugal), who are +leaving their homes in great numbers and seeking their fortunes in both +of the Americas, as well as the islands of all the seas. It must be a +heartbreak for them to forsake such homes as we saw in the clean white +cottages, with the balconies and terraces. + +But there were no signs of depopulation either of old or young. Smiling +mothers and fathers of all ages, in their Sunday leisure and their +Sunday best, watched our ascent as if they had never seen the like +before, and our course was never so swift but we could be easily +overtaken by the children; they embarrassed us with the riches of the +camellias which they flung in upon us, and they were accompanied by +small dogs which barked excitedly. Our train almost grazed the walls of +the door-yards as we passed through the succession of the one- and +two-story cottages, which dotted the mountain-side in every direction. +When the eye could leave them it was lured from height to height, and at +each rise of the track to some wider and lovelier expanse of the sea. We +could see merely our own steamer in the roadstead, with the Portuguese +war-ship, and the few other vessels at anchor, but we could never +exhaust the variety of those varied mountain slopes and tops. Their +picturesqueness of form and their delight of color would beggar any +thesaurus of its descriptive reserves, and yet leave their beauty almost +unhinted. A drop-curtain were here a vain simile; the chromatic glories +of colored postal-cards might suggest the scene, but then again they +might overdo it. Nature is modest in her most magnificent moods, and I +do not see how she could have a more magnificent mood than Madeira. It +can never be represented by my art, but it may be measurably stated: low +lying sea; the town scattering and fraying everywhere into outlying +hamlets, villas and cottages; steep rising upon steep, till they reach +uninhabitable climaxes where the woods darken upward into the +everlasting snows, in one whole of grandeur resuming in its unity every +varying detail. + +I dwell rather helplessly upon the scenery, because it was what we +professedly went up or half up, or one-tenth or-hundredth up, the +mountain for. Un-professedly we went up in order to come down by the +toboggan of the country, though we vowed one another not to attempt +anything so mad. In the meanwhile, before it should be time for lunch, +we could walk up to a small church near the station and see the people +at prayer in an interior which did not differ in bareness and tawdriness +from most other country churches of the Latin south, though it had a +facade so satisfy-ingly Spanish, because I suppose it was so perfectly +Portuguese, that heart could ask no more. Not all the people were at +prayer within; irregular files of them attended our progress to give us +the opportunity of doing charity. The beggars were of every sort, sex, +and age, and some, from the hands they held out, with fingers reduced to +their last joints, looked as if they might be lepers, but I do not say +they were. What I am sure of is that the faces of the worshippers--men, +women, and children--when they came out of the church were of a +gentleness which, if it was not innocence and goodness, might well have +passed for those virtues. They had kind eyes, which seemed as often blue +as black, and if they had no great beauty they were seldom quite ugly. I +wish I could think we strangers, as they gazed curiously, timorously at +us, struck them as favorably. + +An involuntary ferocity from the famine which we began to feel may have +glared from our visages, for we had eaten nothing for three hours, which +was long for saloon passengers. At the first restaurant which we found, +and in which we all but sat down at table, our coupons were not good, +but this was not wholly loss, for we recouped ourselves in the beauties +of the walk on which we wandered along the mountain-side to the right of +the restaurant. At the point where we were no longer confident of our +way an opportune native appeared and Jed us over paths paved with fine +pebbles, sometimes wrought into geometric patterns, and always through +pleasing sun and shade, till we reached a pretty hotel set, with its +gardens before it, on a shelf of level land and commanding a view of our +steamer and the surrounding sea. Tropic growths, which I will venture to +call myrtle, oleander, laurel, and eucalyptus, environed the hotel, not +too closely nor densely, and our increasing party was presently +discovered from the head of its steps by a hospitable matron, who with a +cry of comprehensive welcome ran within and was replaced by a +head-waiter of as friendly aspect and much more English. He said our +coupons were good there and that our luncheon would be ready in two +minutes; for proof of the despatch with which we should be served he +held up the first and second fingers of his right hand. Restored by his +assurance, we did not really mind waiting twice the tale of all his ten +fingers, and we spent our time variously in wandering about the plateau, +among the wonted iron tables and chairs in front of the hotel, in being +photographed in a fairy grotto behind it, and in examining the visitors' +book in the parlor. The names of visitors from South Africa largely +prevailed, for the Cape Town steamers, oftener than any others, touch at +Madeira, but there was one traveller of Portuguese race who had written +his name in bold characters above the cry, "Long live the Portuguese +Republic." Soon after the Portuguese monarchy ceased to live for a time +in the person of the murdered king and his heir, but it is doubtful if +the health of the potential republic was as great as before. + +That bright Sunday morning no shadow of the black event was forecast, +and we gave our unstinted sympathy to our unknown co-republican. The +luncheon, when we were called to it, had merits of novelty and quality +which I will celebrate only as regards the delicate fish fresh from the +sea, and the pease fresh from the garden, with poached eggs fresh from +the coop dropped upon them. The conception of chops which followed was +not so faultless, though the fruit with which we ended did much to +repair any error of kid which may have mistaken itself for lamb. Perhaps +our enthusiasm was heightened by the fine air which had sharpened our +appetites. At any rate, it all ended in an habitual transaction in real +estate by which I became the owner of the place, without expropriating +the actual possessor, and established there those castles in Spain +belonging to me in so many parts of the world. + +There remained now nothing for us to do but to toboggan down the +mountain, and we overcame our resolution not to do so far enough to go +and look at the toboggans under the guidance of our head-waiter. When +once we had looked we were lost. The toboggans were flat baskets set on +iron-shod runners, and well cushioned and padded; they held one, two, or +three passengers; the track on which they descended was paved, in gentle +undulations, with thin pebbles set on edge and greased wherever the +descent found a level. A smiling native, with a strong rope attached to +the toboggan, stood on each side of it, and held it back or pulled it +forward, according to the exigencies of the case. It is long since I +slid down hill on a sled of my own, and I do not pretend to recall the +sensation; but I can remember nothing so luxurious in transportation as +the swift flight of the Madeira toboggan, which you temper at will +through its guides and guards, but do not wish to temper at all when +your first alarm, mainly theoretical, passes into the gayety ending in +exultant rejoicing at the bottom of the course. + +Our two toboggan men were possibly vigilant and reassuring beyond the +common, but one was quite silently so; the other, who spoke a little +English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were +"strong mans," afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules +of Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the +noun, and declaring that they were "strongs mans." We met many toboggan +men who needed to be "strongs mans" in their ascent of our track, with +their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some of them did not look +strong, and our own arrived spent and panting at the bottom. Something +like that is what always spoils pleasure in this world. Even when you +have paid for it with your money, some one else has paid with his person +twice as much, and you have not equalled his outlay when you have tipped +him your handsomest. + +A shilling apiece seemed handsome for those "strongs mans," but +afterward there were watches of the nights when the spirit grieved that +the shilling had not been made two apiece or even half a crown, and I +wish now that the first reader of mine who toboggans down Madeira would +make up the difference for me in his tip to those poor fellows. I do not +mind if he adds a few pennies for the children who ran before our +toboggan and tossed camellias into it, and then followed in the hopes of +a reward, which we tried not to disappoint. + +The future traveller need not add to the fee of the authorized and +numbered guide who took possession of us as soon as we got out of our +basket and led us unresisting to a waiting bullock sled. He invited +himself into it, and gave himself the best of characters in the +autobiography into which he wove his scanty instruction concerning the +objects we passed. A bullock sled is not of such blithe progress as a +toboggan, but it is very comfortable, and it is of an Oriental and +litter-like dignity, with its calico cushions and curtains. One could +not well use it in New York, but it serves every purpose of a cab in +Funchal, where we noted a peculiar feature of local commerce which I +hesitate to specify, since it cast apparent discredit upon woman. It +was, as I have noted, Sunday; but every shop where things pleasing or +even useful to women were sold was wide open, and somewhat flaringly +invited the custom of our fellow-passengers of that sex; but there was +not a shop where such things as men's collars were for sale, or anything +pleasing or useful to man, but was closed and locked fast. I must except +from this sweeping statement the cafes, but these should not count, for +women as well as men frequented them, as we ascertained by going to a +very bowery one on the quay and ordering a bottle of the best and dryest +Madeira. We wished perhaps to prove that it was really not bad for gout, +or perhaps that it was no better than the Madeira you get in New York +for the same price. Even with the help of friends, of the sex which +could have been freely buying native laces, hats, fans, photographs, +parasols, and tailor-made dresses, we could not finish that bottle. +Glass after glass we bestowed on our smiling guide, with no final effect +upon the bottle and none upon him, except to make him follow us to the +tender and take an after-fee for showing us a way which we could not +have missed blindfold. It was rather strange, but not stranger than the +behavior of the captain of the tender, who, when he had collected our +tickets, invited a free-will offering for collecting them, and mostly +got it. + +When we were safely and gladly on board our steamer again, we had +nothing to do, until the deck-steward came round with tea, but watch the +islanders swarming around us in their cockles and diving for sixpences +and shillings, which they caught impartially with their fingers and +toes. With so many all shouting and gesticulating, one could not venture +one's silver indiscriminately; one must employ some particular diver, +and I selected for my investments a poor young fellow who had lost an +arm. With his one hand and his two feet he never failed of the coin I +risked, and I wish they had been many enough to enable him to retire +from the trade, which even in that mild air kept him visibly shivering +when out of the water. I do not know his name, but I commend him to +future travellers by the token of his pathetic mutilation. + +By-and-by we felt the gentle stir of the steamer under us; the last +tender went ashore, and the divers retired in their cockles from our +side. Funchal began to rearrange the lines of her streets, while keeping +those of her roofs and house-walls and terraced gardens. We passed out +of the roadstead, we rounded the mighty headland by which we had +entered, and were once more in face of that magnificent drop-curtain, +which had now fallen upon one of the most vivid and novel passages of +our lives. + + + + +II + +TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN + + +There is nothing strikes the traveller in his approach to the rock of +Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential +Insurance Company. He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is +pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of that institution. As +the lines change with the ship's course, the resemblance is less +remarkable; but it is always remarkable, and I suppose it detracts +somewhat from the majesty of the fortress, which we could wish to be +more entirely original. This was my feeling when I first saw Gibraltar +four years ago, and it remains my feeling after having last seen it four +weeks ago. The eye seeks the bold, familiar legend, and one suffers a +certain disappointment in its absence. Otherwise Gibraltar does not and +cannot disappoint the most exacting tourist. + +The morning which found us in face of it was in brisk contrast to the +bland afternoon on which we had parted from Madeira. No flocking +coracles surrounded our steamer, with crews eager to plunge into the +hissing brine for shillings or equivalent quarters. The whitecaps looked +snow cold as they tossed under the sharp north wind, and the tender +which put us ashore had all it could do to embark and disembark us +upright, or even aslant. But, once in the lee of the rocky Africa +breathed a genial warmth across the strait beyond which its summits +faintly shimmered; or was it the welcome of Cook's carriages which +warmed us so? We were promised separate vehicles for parties of three or +four, with English-speaking drivers, and the promise was fairly well +kept. The carriages bore a strong family likeness to the pictures of +Spanish state coaches of the seventeenth century, and were curtained and +cushioned in reddish calico. Rubber tires are yet unknown in southern +Europe, and these mediaeval arks bounded over the stones with a violence +which must once have been characteristic of those in the illustrations. +But the English of our English-speaking driver was all that we could +have asked for the shillings we paid Cook for him, or, if it was not, it +was all we got. He was an energetic young fellow and satisfyingly +Spanish in coloring, but in his eagerness to please he was less grave +than I could now wish; I now wish everything in Spain to have been in +keeping. + +What was most perfectly, most fittingly in keeping was the sight of the +Moors whom we began at once to see on the wharves and in the streets. +They probably looked very much like the Moors who followed their caliph, +if he was a caliph, into Spain when he drove Don Roderick out of his +kingdom and established his own race and religion in the Peninsula. +Moslem costumes can have changed very little in the last eleven or +twelve hundred years, and these handsome fellows, who had come over with +fresh eggs and vegetables and chickens and turkeys from Tangier, could +not have been handsomer when they bore scimitars and javelins instead of +coops and baskets. They had baggy drawers on, and brown cloaks, with +bare, red legs and yellow slippers; one, when he took his fez off, had a +head shaved perfectly bald, like the one-eyed Calender or the Barber's +brother out of the _Arabian Nights;_ the sparse mustache and +short-forked beard heightened the verisimilitude. Whether they squatted +on the wharf, or passed gravely through the street, or waited for custom +in their little market among the hen-coops and the herds of rather lean, +dispirited turkeys (which had not the satisfaction of their American +kindred in being fattened for the sacrifice, for in Europe all turkeys +are served lean), these Moors had an allure impossible to any Occidental +race. It was greater even than that of their Semitic brethren, who had a +market farther up in the town, and showed that a Jewish market could be +much filthier than a' Moorish market without being more picturesque. +Into the web of Oriental life were wrought the dapper figures of the +red-coated, red-cheeked English soldiers, with blue, blue eyes and +incredible red and yellow hair, lounging or hurrying orderlies with +swagger-sticks, and apparently aimless privates no doubt bent 'upon +quite definite business or pleasure. Now and then an English groom led +an English horse through the long street from which the other streets in +Gibraltar branch up and down hill, for there is no other level; and now +and then an English man or woman rode trimly by. + +The whole place is an incongruous mixture of Latin and Saxon. The +strictly South-European effect of the houses and churches is a mute +protest against the alien presence which keeps the streets so clean and +maintains order by means of policemen showing under the helmets of the +London bobby the faces of the native alguazil. In the shops the +saleswomen speak English and look Spanish. Our driver, indeed, looked +more Spanish than he spoke English. + +His knowledge of our rude tongue extended hardly beyond the mention of +certain conventional objects of interest, and did not suffice to explain +why we could not see the old disused galleries of the fortifications. I +do not know why we wished to see these; I doubt if we really did so, but +we embittered life for that well-meaning boy by our insistence upon +them, and we brought him under unjust suspicion of deceit by forcing him +to a sort of time-limit in respect to them. We appealed from him to the +blandest of black-mus-tached, olive-skinned bobby-alguazils, who +directed us to a certain government office for a permit. There our +application caused something like dismay, and we were directed to +another office, but were saved from the shame of failure by incidentally +learning that the galleries could not be seen till after three o'clock. +As our ship sailed at that hour, we were probably saved a life-long +disappointment. + +Everywhere the rock of the Prudential beetles and towers over the town; +but the fortifications are so far up in the sky that you can really +distinguish nothing but the Marconi telegraphic apparatus at the top. +Along the sea-level, which the town mostly keeps, the war-like harness +of the stronghold shows through the civil dress of the town in barracks +and specific forts and gray battle-ships lying at anchor in the docks. +But all is simple and reserved, in the right English fashion. The +strength of the place is not to be put forth till it is needed, which +will be never, since it is hard to imagine how it can ever be even +attempted by a hostile force. This is not saying, I hope, that an +American fleet could not batter it down, nor leave one letter of the +insurance advertisement after another on the face of the precipice. + +There is a pretty public garden at Gibraltar in that part of the town +which is farthest from the steamer's landing, and this proved the end of +our excursion in our state coach. We found other state coaches there, +and joined their passengers in strolling over the pleasant paths and +trying to make out what bird it was singing somewhere in the trees. We +made out an almond-tree in bloom, after some dispute; and, in fact, the +climate there was much softer than at the landing, so insidiously soft +that it required great force of character to keep from buying the +flowers which some tasteful boys gathered from the public beds. There is +a mild monument or two in this garden, to what memories I promptly +failed to remember afterward; but as there are more military memories in +the world than is good for it, and as these were undoubtedly military +memories, I cannot much blame myself in the matter. After viewing them, +there was nothing left to do but to get lunch, which we got extremely +good at the hotel where a friend led us. There was at this hotel a +head-waiter, in a silver-braided silk dress-coat of a mauve color, who +imagined our wants so perfectly that I shall always regret not taking +more of the omelette; the table-waiter urged it upon us twice with true +friendliness. The eggs must have been laid for it in Africa that morning +at daybreak, and brought over by a Moorish marketman, but we turned from +the poetic experience of this omelette in the greedy hope of better +things. Better things there could not be, but the fish was as good as +the fish at Madeira, and the belief of the chops that they were lamb and +not kid seemed better founded. + +There had been an excellent bottle of Rioja Blanca, such as you may have +as good at some Spanish restaurant in New York for as little money; and +the lunch, when reckoned up in English shillings and Spanish undertones, +was not cheap. Yet it was not dear, either, and there was no specific +charge for that silver-braided dress-coat of a mauve color. An English +dean in full clericals, and some English ladies talking in the +waiting-room, added an agreeable confusion to our doubt of where and +what we were, and we came away from the hotel as well content as if we +had lunched in Plymouth or Bath. The table-waiter took an extra fee for +confiding that he was a Milanese, and was almost the only Italian in +Gibraltar; whether he was right or not I do not know, but it was +certainly not his fault that we did not take twice of the omelette. + +It is said that living is dear in Gibraltar, especially in the matter of +house rent. The houses in the town are like all the houses of Latin +Europe in their gray or yellowish walls of stone or stucco and their +dark-green shutters. There is an English residential quarter at the east +end of the town, where the houses may be different, for all I know; the +English of our driver or the hire of our state coach did not enable us +to visit that suburb, where the reader may imagine villas standing in +grounds with lawns and gardens about them. The English have prevailed +nothing against the local civilization in most things, while they have +infected it with the costliness of the whole Anglo-Saxon life. We should +not think seven hundred dollars in New York dear for even a quite small +house, but it has come to that in Gibraltar, and there they think it +dear, with other things proportionately so. Of course, it is an +artificial place; the fortress makes the town, and the town in turn +lives upon the fortress. + +The English plant themselves nowhere without gathering English +conveniences or conventions about them; Americans would not always think +them comforts. There is at Gibraltar a club or clubs; there is a hunt, +there is a lending library, there is tennis, there is golf, there is +bridge, there is a cathedral, and I dare say there is gossip, but I do +not know it. It was difficult to get land for the golf links, we heard, +because of the Spanish jealousy of the English occupation, which they +will not have extended any farther over Spanish soil, even in golf +links. Gibraltar is fondly or whimsically known to the invaders as Gib, +and I believe it is rather a favorite sojourn, though in summer it is +frightfully hot, held out on the knees and insteps of the rock to the +burning African sun, which comes up every morning over the sea after +setting Sahara on fire. + +All this foreign life must be exterior to the aboriginal Spanish life +which has so long outlasted the Moorish, and is not without hope of +outlasting the English. I do not know what the occupations and +amusements of that life are, but I will suppose them unworthy enough. +There must be a certain space of neutral life uniting or dividing the +two, which would form a curious inquiry, but Avould probably not lend +itself to literary study. Besides this middle ground there is another +neutral territory at Gibraltar which we traversed after luncheon, in +order to say that we had been in Spain. That was the country of many +more youthful dreamers in my time than, I fancy, it is in this. We used +then, much more than now, to read Washington Irving, his _Tales of the +Alhambra,_ and his history of _The Conquest of Granada,_ and we read +Prescott's histories of Spanish kings and adventures in the old world +and the new. We read _Don Quixote,_ which very few read now, and we read +_Gil Blas,_ which fewer still now read; and all these constituted Spain +a realm of faery, where every sort of delightful things did or could +happen. I for my part had always expected to go to Spain and live among +the people I had known in those charming books, yet I had been often in +Europe, and had spent whole years there without ever going near Spain. +But now, I saw, was my chance, and when the friend who had been lunching +with us asked if we would not like to drive across that neutral +territory and go into Spain a bit, it seemed as if the dream of my youth +had suddenly renewed itself with the purpose of coming immediately true. +It was a charmingly characteristic foretaste of Spanish travel that the +driver of the state coach which we first engaged should, when we +presently came back, have replaced himself by another for no other +reason than, perhaps, that he could so provide us with a worse horse. I +am not sure of this theory, and I do not insist upon it, but it seems +plausible. + +As soon as we rounded the rock of Gibraltar and struck across a flatter +country than I supposed could be found within fifty miles of Gibraltar, +we were swept by a blast which must have come from the Pyrenees, it was +so savagely rough and cold. It may be always blowing there as a Spanish +protest against the English treatment of the neutral territory; in fact, +it does not seem quite the thing to build over that space as the English +have done, though the structures are entirely peaceable, and it is not +strange that the Spaniards have refused to meet them half-way with a +good road over it, or to let them make one the whole way. They stand +gravely opposed to any further incursion. Officially in all the Spanish +documents the place is styled "Gibraltar, temporarily occupied by Great +Britain," and there is a little town which you see sparkling in the sun +no great way off in Spain called San Roque, of which the mayor is also +mayor of Gibraltar; he visits his province once a vear, and many people +living for generations over the Spanish line keep the keys of the houses +that they personally or ancestrally own in Gibraltar. The case has its +pathos, but as a selfish witness I wish they had let the English make +that road through the neutral territory. The present road is so bad that +our state coach, in bounding over its inequalities, sometimes almost +flung us into the arms of the Spanish beggars always extended toward us. +They were probably most of them serious, but some of the younger ones +recognized the _bouffe_ qtiality of their calling. One pleasant +starveling of ten or twelve entreated us for bread with a cigarette in +his mouth, and, being rewarded for his impudence, entered into the +spirit of the affair and asked for more, just as if we had given +nothing. + +A squalid little town grew up out of the flying gravel as we approached, +and we left our state coach at the custom-house, which seemed the chief +public edifice. There the inspectors did not go through the form of +examining our hand-bags, as they would have done at an American +frontier; and they did not pierce our carriage cushions with the long +javelins with which they are armed for the detection of smuggling among +the natives who have been shopping in Gibraltar. As the gates of that +town are closed every day at nightfall by a patrol with drum and fife, +and everybody is shut either in or out, it may easily happen with +shoppers in haste to get through that they bring dutiable goods into +Spain; but the official javelins rectify the error. + +We left our belongings in our state coach and started for that stroll in +Spain which I have measured as two up-town blocks, by what I think a +pretty accurate guess; two cross-town blocks I am sure it was not. It +was a mean-looking street, unswept and otherwise unkempt, with the usual +yellowish or grayish buildings, rather low and rather new, as if +prompted by a mistaken modern enterprise. They were both shops and +dwellings; I am sure of a neat pharmacy and a fresh-looking cafe +restaurant, and one dwelling all faced with bright-green tiles. An +alguazil--I am certain he was an alguazil, though he looked like an +Italian carabiniere and wore a cocked hat--loitered into a police +station; but I remember no one else during our brief stay in that street +except those _bouffe_ boy beggars. Of course, they wished to sell us +postal-cards, but they were willing to accept charity on any terms. +Otherwise our Spanish tour was, so far as we then knew, absolutely +without incident; but when we got too far away to return we found that +we had been among brigands as well as beggars, and all the Spanish +picaresque fiction seemed to come true in the theft of a black chudda +shawl, which had indeed been so often lost in duplicate that it was time +it was entirely lost. Whether it was secretly confiscated by the +customs, or was accepted as a just tribute by the populace from a poetic +admirer, I do not know, but I hope it is now in the keeping of some +dark-eyed Spanish girl, who will wear it while murmuring through her +lattice to her _novio_ on the pavement outside. It was rather heavy to +be worn as a veil, but I am sure she could manage it after dark, and +_could_ hold it under her chin, as she leaned forward to the grille, +with one little olive hand, so that the _novio_ would think it was a +black silk mantilla. Or if it was a gift from him, it would be all +right, anyway. + +Our visit to Spain did not wholly realize my early dreams of that +romantic land, and yet it had not been finally destitute of incident. +Besides, _we_ had not gone very far into the country; a third block +might have teemed with adventure, but we had to be back on the steamer +before three o'clock, and we dared not go beyond the second. Even +within this limit a love of reality underlying all my love of romance +was satisfied in the impression left by that dusty, empty, silent +street. It seemed somehow like the street of a new, dreary, Western +American town, so that I afterward could hardly believe that the shops +and restaurants had not eked out their height with dashboard fronts. It +was not a place that I would have chosen for a summer sojourn; the sense +of a fly-blown past must have become a vivid part of future experience, +and yet I could imagine that if one were born to it, and were young and +hopeful, and had some one to share one's youth and hope, that Spanish +street, which was all there was of that Spanish town, might have had its +charm. I do not say that even for age there was not a railway station by +which one might have got away, though there was no sign of any trains +arriving or departing--perhaps because it was not one o'clock in the +morning, which is the favorite hour of departure for Spanish trains. + +When we turned to drive back over the neutral territory the rock of +Gibraltar suddenly bulked up before us, in a sheer ascent that left the +familiar Prudential view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness. +Till one has seen it from this point one has not truly seen it. The vast +stone shows like a half from which the other half has been sharply cleft +and removed, that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may +unrelievedly strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment the +whole world to tower up in from the level at its feet. No dictionary, +however unabridged, has language adequate to convey the notion of it. + + + + +III + +ASHORE AT GENOA + + +The pride of Americans in their native scenery is brought down almost to +the level of the South Shore of Long Island in arriving home from the +Mediterranean voyage to Europe. The last thing one sees in Europe is the +rock of Gibraltar, but before that there have been the snow-topped +Maritime Alps of Italy and the gray-brown, softly rounded, velvety +heights of Spain; and one has to think very hard of the Palisades above +the point where they have been blasted away for road-making material if +one wishes to keep up one's spirits. The last time I came home the +Mediterranean way I had a struggle with myself against excusing our +sandy landscape, when we came in sight of it, with its summer cottages +for the sole altitudes, to some Italian fellow-passengers who were not +spellbound by its grandeur. I had to remember the Rocky Mountains, which +I had never seen, and all the moral magnificence of our life before I +could withhold the words of apology pressing to my lips. I was glad that +I succeeded; but now, going back by the same route, I abandoned myself +to transports in the beauty of the Mediterranean coast which I hope were +not untrue to my country. Perhaps there is no country which can show +anything like that beauty, and America is no worse off than the rest of +the world; but I am not sure that I have a right to this consolation. +Again there were those + + "Silent pinnacles of aged snow," + +flushed with the Southern sun; in those sombre slopes of pine; again the +olives climbing to their gloom; again the terraced vineyards and the +white farmsteads, with villages nestling in the vast clefts of the +hills, and all along the sea-level the blond towns and cities which +broidei the hem of the land from Marseilles to Genoa. One is willing to +brag; one must be a good American; but, honestly, have we anything like +that to show the arriving foreigner? For some reason our ship was +abating the speed with which she had crossed the Atlantic, and now she +was swimming along the Mediterranean coasts so slowly and so closely +that it seemed as if we could almost have cast an apple ashore, though +probably we could not. We were at least far enough off to mistake Nice +for Monte Carlo and then for San Remo, but that was partly because our +course was so leisurely, and we thought we must have passed Nice long +before we did. It did not matter; all those places were alike beautiful +under the palms of their promenades, with their scattered villas and +hotels stretching along their upper levels, and the ranks of shops and +dwellings solidly forming the streets which left the shipping of their +ports to climb to the gardens and farms beyond the villas. Cannes, +Mentone, Ventimiglia, Ospedeletti, Bordighera, Taggia, Alassio: was that +their fair succession, or did they follow in another order? Once more it +did not matter; what is certain is that the golden sun of the soft +January afternoon turned to crimson and left the last of them suffused +in dim rose before we drifted into Genoa and came to anchor at dusk +beside a steamer which had left New York on the same day as ours. By her +vast size we could measure our own and have an objective perception of +our grandeur. We had crossed in one of the largest ships afloat, but +you cannot be both spectacle and spectator; and you must match your +magnificence with some rival magnificence before you can have a due +sense of it. That was what we now got at Genoa, and we could not help +pitying the people on that other ship, who must have suffered shame from +our overwhelming magnitude; the fact that she was of nearly the same +tonnage as our own ship had nothing to do with the case. + +After the creamy and rosy tints of those daughters of climate along the +Riviera, it was pleasant to find a many-centuried mother of commerce +like Genoa of the dignified gray which she wears to the eye, whether it +looks down on her from the heights above her port or up at her from the +thickly masted and thickly funnelled waters of the harbor. Most European +towns have red tiled roofs, which one gets rather tired of putting into +one's word paintings, but the roofs of Genoa are gray tiled, and gray +are her serried house walls, and gray her many churches and bell-towers. +The sober tone gratifies your eye immensely, and the fact that your eye +has noted it and not attributed the conventional coloring of southern +Europe to the city is a flattery to your pride which you will not +refuse. It is not a setting for opera like Naples; there is something +businesslike in it which agrees with your American mood if you are true +to America, and recalls you to duty if you are not. + +I had not been in Genoa since 1864 except for a few days in 1905, and I +saw changes which I will mostly not specify. Already at the earlier date +the railway had cut through the beautiful and reverend Doria garden and +left the old palace some scanty grounds on the sea-level, where commerce +noisily encompassed it with trains and tracks and lines of freight-cars. +But there had remained up to my last visit that grot on the gardened +hill-slope whence a colossal marble Hercules helplessly overlooked the +offence offered by the railroad; and now suddenly here was the lofty +wall of some new edifice stretching across in front of the Hercules and +wholly shutting him from view; for all I know it may have made him part +of its structure. + +Let this stand for a type of the change which had passed upon Genoa and +has passed or is passing upon all Italy. The trouble is that Italy is +full of very living Italians, the quickest-witted people in the world, +who are alert to seize every chance for bettering themselves financially +as they have bettered themselves politically. For my part, I always +wonder they do not still rule the world when I see how intellectually +fit they are to do it, how beyond any other race they seem still +equipped for their ancient primacy. Possibly it is their ancient primacy +which hangs about their necks and loads them down. It is better to have +too little past, as we have, than too much, as they have. But if +antiquity hampers them, they are tenderer of its vast mass than we are +of our little fragments of it; tenderer than any other people, except +perhaps the English, have shown themselves; but when the time comes that +the past stands distinctly in the way of the future, down goes the past, +even in Italy. I am not saying that I do not see why that railroad could +not have tunnelled under the Doria garden rather than cut through it; +and I am waiting for that new building to justify its behavior toward +that poor old Hercules; but in the mean time I hold that Italy is for +the Italians who now live in it, and have to get that better living out +of it which we others all want our countries to yield us; and that it is +not merely a playground for tourists who wish to sentimentalize it, or +study it, or sketch it, or make copy of it, as I am doing now. + +All the same I will not deny that I enjoyed more than any of the +improvements which I noted in Genoa that bit of the old Doria +palace-grounds which progress has left it. The gray edifice looks out on +the neighboring traffic across the leanness of a lovely old garden, with +statues and stone seats, and in the midst a softly soliloquizing +fountain, painted green with moss and mould. When you enter the palace, +as you do in response to a custodian who soon comes with a key and asks +if you would like to see it, you find yourself, one flight up, in a long +glazed gallery, fronting on the garden, which is so warm with the sun +that you wish to spend the rest of your stay in Genoa there. It is +frescoed round with classically imagined portraits of the different +Dorias, and above all the portrait of that great hero of the republic. I +do not know that this portrait particularly impresses you; if you have +been here before you will be reserving yourself for the portrait which +the custodian will lead you to see in the ultimate chamber of the rather +rude old palace, where it is like a living presence. + +It is the picture of a very old man in a flat cap, sitting sunken +forward in his deep chair, with his thin, long hands folded one on the +other, and looking wearily at you out of his faded eyes, in which dwell +the memories of action in every sort and counsel in every kind. Victor +in battles by land and sea, statesman and leader and sage, he looks it +all in that wonderful effigy, which shuns no effect of his more than +ninety years, but confesses his great age as a part of his greatness +with a pathetic reality. The white beard, with "each particular hair" +defined, falling almost to the pale, lean hands, is an essential part of +the presentment, which is full of such scrupulous detail as the eye +would unconsciously take note of in confronting the man himself and +afterward supply in the remembrance of the whole. As if it were a part +of his personality, on a table facing him, covered with maps and papers, +sits the mighty admiral's cat, which, with true feline im-passiveness, +ignores the spectator and gives its sole regard to the admiral. There +are possibly better portraits in the world than this, which was once by +Sebastiano del Piombo and is now by Titian; but I remember none which +has moved me more. + +We tried in vain for a photograph of it, and then after a brief glance +at the riches of the Church of the Annunziata, where we were followed +around the interior by a sacristan who desired us to note that the +pillars were "All inlady, all inlady" with different marbles, and, after +a chilly moment in San Lorenzo, which the worshippers and the masons +were sharing between them in the prayers and repairs always going on in +cathedrals, we drove for luncheon to the hotel where we had sojourned in +great comfort three years before. Genoa has rather a bad name for its +hotels, but we had found this one charming, perhaps because when we had +objected to going five flights up the landlord had led us yet a floor +higher, that we might walk into the garden. It is so in much of Genoa, +where the precipitous nature of the site makes this vivid contrast +between the levels of the front door and the back gate. Many of the +streets have been widened since Heine saw the gossiping neighbors +touching knees across them, but nothing less than an earthquake could +change the temperamental topography of the place. It has its advantages; +when there is a ring at the door the housemaid, instead of panting up +from the kitchen to answer it, has merely to fall down five pairs of +stairs. It cannot he denied, either, that the steep incline gives a +charm to the streets which overcome it with sidewalks and driveways and +trolley-tracks. Such a street as the Via Garibaldi (there is a Via +Garibaldi in every Italian city, town, and village, and ought to be a +dozen), compactly built, but giving here and there over the houses' +shoulders glimpses of the gardens lurking behind them, is of a dignity +full of the energy which a flat thoroughfare never displays or imparts. +Without the inspiration lent us by the street, I am sure we should never +have got to the top of it with our cab when we went to the Campo Santo; +and, as it was, we had to help our horses upward by involuntarily +straining forward from our places. But the Campo Santo was richly worth +the effort, for to visit that famous cemetery is to enjoy an experience +of which it is the unique opportunity. + +I wish to celebrate it because it seems to me one of the frankest +expressions of national taste and nature, and I do like simplicity--in +others. The modern Italians are the most literal of the realists in all +the arts, and, as I had striven for reality in my own poor way, I was +perhaps the more curious to see its effects in sculpture which I had +heard of so much. I will own that they went far beyond my expectation +and possibly my wishes; but it is not to be supposed that it is only +inferior artists who have abandoned themselves to the excesses of +fidelity so abundant in the Campo Santo. There are, of course, enough +poor falterings of allegory and tradition in the marble walls and floors +of this vast residence of the dead (as it gives you the cheerful +impression of being), but the characteristic note of the place is a +realism braving it out in every extreme of actuality. Possibly the fact +is most striking in that death-bed scene where the family, life-size and +unsparingly portraitured, and, as it were, photographed in marble, are +gathered in the room of the dying mother. She lies on a bedstead which +bears every mark of being one of a standard chamber-set in the early +eighteen-seventies, and about her stand her husband and her sons and +daughters and their wives and husbands, in the fashions of that day. I +recall a brother, in a cutaway coat, and a daughter, in a tie-back, +embraced in their grief and turning their faces away from their mother +toward the spectator; and doubtless there were others whom to describe +in their dress would render as grotesque. It is enough to say that the +artist, of a name well known in Italy and of uncommon gift, has been as +true to the moment in their costume as to the eternal humanity in their +faces. He has done what the sculptor or painter of the great periods of +art used to do with their historical and scriptural people--he has put +them in the dress of his own time and place; and it is impossible to +deny him a convincing logic. No sophistry or convention of drapery in +the scene could have conveyed its pathos half so well, or indeed at all. +It does make you shudder, I allow; it sets your teeth on edge; but then, +if you are a real man or woman, it brings the lump into your throat; the +smile fails from your lip; you pay the tribute of genuine pity and awe. +I will not pretend that I was so much moved by the meeting in heaven of +a son and father: the spirit of the son in a cutaway, with a derby hat +in his hand, gazing with rapture into the face of the father's spirit in +a long sack-coat holding his marble bowler elegantly away from his side, +if I remember rightly. But here the fact wanted the basis of simplicity +so strong in the other scene; in the mixture of the real and the ideal +the group was romanticistic. + +There are innumerable other portrait figures and busts in which the +civic and social hour is expressed. The women's hair is dressed in this +fashionable way or that; the men's beards are cut in conformity to the +fashion or the personal preference in side whiskers or mustache or +imperial or goatee; and their bronze or marble faces convey the +contemporary character of aristocrat or bourgeois or politician or +professional. I do not know just what the reader would expect me to say +in defence of the full-length figure of a lady in _decollete_ and +trained evening dress, who enters from the tomb toward the spectator as +if she were coming into a drawing-room after dinner. She is very +beautiful, but she is no longer very young, and the bare arms, which +hang gracefully at her side, respond to an intimation of _embonpoint_ in +the figure, with a slightly flabby over-largeness where they lose +themselves in the ample shoulders. Whether this figure is the fancy of +the sorrowing husband or the caprice of the defunct herself, who wished +to be shown to after-time as she hoped she looked in the past, I do not +know; but I had the same difficulty with it as I had with that father +and son; it was romanticistic. Wholly realistic and rightly actual was +that figure of an old woman who is said to have put by all her savings +from the grocery business that she might appear properly in the Campo +Santo, and who is shown there short and stout and common, in her +ill-fitting best dress, but motherly and kind and of an undeniable and +touching dignity. + +If I am giving the reader the impression that I went to the Campo Santo +in my last stop at Genoa, I am deceiving him; I record here the memories +of four years ago. I did not revisit the place, but I should like to see +it again, if only to revive my recollections of its unique interest. I +did really revisit the Pal-lavicini-Durazzo palace, and there revived +the pleasure I had known before in its wonderful Van Dycks. Most +wonderful was and will always be the "Boy in White," the little serene +princeling, whoever he was, in whom_ the painter has fixed forever a +bewitching mood and moment of childhood. "The Mother with two Children" +is very well and self-evidently true to personality and period and +position; but, after all, she is nothing beside that "Boy in White," +though she and her children are otherwise so wonderful. Now that I speak +of her, however, she rather grows upon my recollection as a woman +greater than her great world and proudly weary of it. + +She was a lady of that very patrician house whose palace, in its cold +grandeur and splendor, renews at once all one's faded or fading sense of +the commercial past of Italy, when her greatest merchants were her +greatest nobles and dwelt in magnificence unparalleled yet since Rome +began to be old. Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Florence, what state their +business men housed themselves in and environed themselves with! Their +palaces by the hundreds were such as only the public edifices of our +less simple State capitols could equal in size and not surpass in cost. +Their _folie des grandeurs_ realized illusions in architecture, in +sculpture, and in painting which the assembled and concentrated feats of +those arts all the way up and down Fifth Avenue, and in the millionaire +blocks eastward could not produce the likeness of. We have the same +madness in our brains; we have even a Roman megalomania, but the effect +of it in Chicago or Pittsburg or Philadelphia or New York has not yet +got beyond a ducal or a princely son-in-law. The splendors of such +alliances have still to take substantial form in a single instance +worthy to compare with a thousand instances in the commercial republics +of Italy. This does not mean that our rich people have not so much money +as the Italians of the Renaissance, but that perhaps in their _folie des +grandeurs_ they are a different kind of madmen; it means also that land +and labor are dearer positively and comparatively with us, and that our +pork-packing or stock-broking princes prefer to spend on comfort rather +than size in their houses, and do not like the cold feet which the +merchant princes of Italy must have had from generation to generation. I +shall always be sorry I did not wear arctics when I went to the +Pallavicini-Durazzo palace, and I strongly tirge the reader to do so +when he goes. + +He will not so much need them out-of-doors in a Genoese January, unless +a _tramontana_ is blowing, and there was none on our half-day. But in +any case we did not walk. We selected the best-looking cab-horse we +could find, and he turned out better than his driver, who asked a +fabulous price by the hour. We obliged him to show his tariff, when his +wickedness was apparent from the printed rates. He explained that the +part we were looking at was obsolete, and he showed us another part, +which was really for drives outside the city; but we agreed to pay it, +and set out hoping for good behavior from him that would make up the +difference. Again we were deceived; at the end he demanded a franc +beyond even his unnatural fare. I urged that one should be reasonable; +but he seemed to think not, and to avoid controversy I paid the +extortionate franc. I remembered that just a month before, in New York, +I had paid an extortionate dollar in like circumstances. + +Nevertheless, that franc above and beyond the stipulated extortion +impoverished me, and when we came to take a rowboat back to our steamer +I beat the boatman down cruelly, mercilessly. He was a poor, lean little +man, with rather a superannuated boat, and he labored harder at the oar +than I could bear to see without noting his exertion to him. This was +fatal; instantly he owned that I was right, and he confessed, moreover, +that he was the father of a family, and that some of his children were +then suffering from sickness as well as want. What could one do but make +the fare up to the first demand of three francs after having got the +price down to one and a half? At the time it seemed to me that I was +somehow by this means getting the better of the cabman who had obliged +me to pay a franc more than his stipulated extortion, but I do not now +hope to make it appear so to the reader. + + + + +IV + +NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE + + +We heard the joyful noise of Naples as soon as our steamer came to +anchor within the moles whose rigid lines perhaps disfigure her famous +bay, while they render her harbor so secure. The noise first rose to us, +hanging over the guard, and trying to get phrases for the glory of her +sea and sky and mountains and monuments, from a boat which seemed to +have been keeping abreast of us ever since we had slowed up. It was not +a largo boat, but it managed to contain two men with mandolins, a mother +of a family with a guitar, and a young girl with an alternate tambourine +and umbrella. The last instrument was inverted to catch the coins, such +as they were, which the passengers flung down to the minstrels for their +repetitions of "Santa Lucia," "Funicoli-Funicola," "II Cacciatore," and +other popular Neapolitan airs, such as "John Brown's Body" and "In the +Bowery." To the songs that had a waltz movement the mother of a family +performed a restricted dance, at some risk of falling overboard, while +she smiled radiantly up at us, as, in fact, they all did, except the +young girl, who had to play simultaneously on her tambourine and her +inverted umbrella, and seemed careworn. Her anxiety visibly deepened to +despair when she missed a shilling, which must have looked as large to +her as a full moon as it sank slowly down into the sea. + +But her despair did not last long; nothing lasts long in Naples except +the joyful noise, which is incessant and perpetual, and which seems the +expression of the universal temperament in both man and beast. Our +good-fortune placed us in a hotel fronting the famous Castel dell' Ovo, +across a little space of land and water, and we could hear, late and +early, the cackling and crowing of the chickens which have replaced the +hapless prisoners of other days in that fortress. At times the voices of +the hens were lifted in a choral of self-praise, as if they had among +them just laid the mighty structure which takes its name from its +resemblance to the egg they ordinarily produce. In other lands the +peculiar note of the donkey is not thought very melodious, but in Naples +before it can fade away it is caught up in the general orchestration and +ceases in music. The cabmen at our corner, lying in wait by scores for +the strangers whom it is their convention to suppose ignorant of their +want of a carriage, quarrelled rhythmically with one another; the +mendicants, lying everywhere in wait for charity, murmured a modulated +appeal; if you heard shouts or yells afar off they died upon your ear in +a strain of melody at the moment when they were lifted highest. I am +aware of seeming to burlesque the operatic fact which every one must +have noticed in Naples; and I will not say that the neglected or +affronted babe, or the trodden dog, is as tuneful as the midnight cat +there, but only that they approach it in the prevailing tendency of all +the local discords to soften and lose themselves in the general unison. +This embraces the clatter of the cabs, which are seldom less than fifty +years old, and of a looseness in all their joints responsive to their +effect of dusty decrepitude. Their clatter penetrates the volumed tread +of the myriad feet in a city where, if you did not see all sorts of +people driving, you would say the whole population walked. Above the +manifold noises gayly springing to the sky spreads and swims the clangor +of the church-bells and holds the terrestrial uproar in immeasurable +solution. It would be rash to say that the whole population of Naples is +always in the street, for if you look into the shops or cafes, or, I +dare say, the houses, you will find them quite full; but the general +statement verifies itself almost tiresomely in its agreement with what +everybody has always said of Naples. It is so quite what you expect that +if you could you would turn away in satiety, especially from the +swarming life of the poor, which seems to have no concealments from the +public, but frankly works at all the trades and arts that can be carried +on out-of-doors; cooks, eats, laughs, cries, sleeps, wakes, makes love, +quarrels, scolds, does everything but wash itself--clothes enough it +washes for other people's life. There is a reason for this in the fact +that in bad weather at Naples it is cold and dark and damp in-doors, and +in fine so bright and warm and charming without that there is really no +choice. Then there is the expansive temperament, which if it were shut +up would probably be much more explosive than it is now. As it is, it +vents itself in volleyed detonations and scattered shots which language +can give no sense of. + +For the true sense of it you must go to Naples, and then you will never +lose the sense of it. I had not been there since 1864, but when I woke +up the morning after my arrival, and heard the chickens cackling in the +Castel dell' Ovo, and the donkeys braying, and the cab-drivers +quarrelling, and the cries of the street vendors, and the dogs barking, +and the children wailing, and their mothers scolding, and the clatter of +wheels and hoops and feet, and all that mighty harmony of the joyful +Neapolitan noises, it seemed to me that it was the first morning after +my first arrival, and I was still only twenty-seven years old. As soon +as possible, when the short but sweet Vincenzo had brought up my +breakfast of tea and bread-and-butter and honey (to which my appetite +turned from the gross superabundance of the steamer's breakfasts with +instant acquiescence), and announced with a smile as liberal as the +sunshine that it was a fine day, I went out for those impressions which +I had better make over to the reader in their original disorder. +Vesuvius, which was silver veiled the day before, was now of a soft, +smoky white, and the sea, of a milky blue, swam round the shore and out +to every dim island and low cape and cliffy promontory. The street was +full of people on foot and in trolleys and cabs and donkey +pleasure-carts, and the familiar teasing of cabmen and peddlers and +beggars began with my first steps toward what I remembered as the +Toledo, but what now called itself, with the moderner Italian +patriotism, the Via Roma. The sole poetic novelty of my experience was +in my being offered loaves of bread which, when I bought them, would be +given to the poor, in honor of what saint's day I did not learn. But it +was all charming; even the inattention of the young woman over the +book-counter was charming, since it was a condition of her flirtation +with the far younger man beside me who wanted something far more +interesting from her than any brief sketch of the history of Naples, in +either English or Italian or French or, at the worst, German. She was +very pretty, though rather powdered, and when the young man went away +she was sympathetically regretful to me that there was no such sketch, +in place of which she offered me several large histories in more or less +volumes. But why should I have wanted a history of Naples when I had +Naples itself? It was like wanting a photograph when you have the +original. Had I not just come through the splendid Piazza San +Ferdinando, with the nobly arcaded church on one hand and the +many-statued royal palace on the other, and between them a lake of +mellow sunshine, as warm as ours in June? + +What I found Naples and the Neapolitans in 1908 I had found them in +1864, and Mr. Gray (as he of the "Elegy" used to be called on his +title-pages) found them in 1740. "The streets," he wrote home to his +mother, "are one continued market, and thronged with populace so much +that a coach can hardly pass. The common sort are a jolly, lively kind +of animals, more industrious than Italians usually are; they work till +evening; then they take their lute or guitar (for they all play) and +walk about the city or upon the seashore with it, to enjoy the fresco." +There was, in fact, a bold gayety in the aspect of the city, without the +refinement which you do not begin to feel till you get into North Italy. +When I came upon church after church, with its facade of Spanish +baroque, I lamented the want of Gothic delicacy and beauty, but I was +consoled abundantly later in the churches antedating the Spanish +domination. I had no reason, such as travellers give for hating places, +to be dissatisfied with Naples in any way. I had been warned that the +customs officers were terrible there, and that I might be kept hours +with my baggage. But the inspector, after the politest demand for a +declaration of tobacco, ordered only a small valise, the Benjamin of its +tribe, opened and then closed untouched; and his courteous forbearance, +acknowledged later through the hotel porter, cost me but a dollar. The +hotel itself was inexpressibly better in lighting, heating, service, and +table than any New York hotel at twice the money--in fact, no money +could buy the like with us at any hotel I know of; but this is a theme +which I hope to treat more fully hereafter. It is true that the streets +of Naples are very long and rather narrow and pretty crooked, and full +of a damp cold that no sunlight seems ever to hunt out of them; but then +they are seldom ironed down with trolley-tracks; the cabs feel their way +among the swarming crowds with warning voices and smacking whips; even +the prepotent automobile shows some tenderness for human life and limb, +and proceeds still more cautiously than the cabs and carts--in fact, I +thought I saw recurrent proofs of that respect for the average man which +seems the characteristic note of Italian liberty; and this belief of +mine, bred of my first observations in Naples, did not, after twelve +weeks in Italy, prove an illusion. If it is not the equality we fancy +ourselves having, it is rather more fraternity in effect. + +The failure of other researches for that sketch of Neapolitan history +left me in the final ignorance which I must share with the reader; but +my inquiries brought me prompt knowledge of one of those charming +features in which the Italian cities excel, if they are not unique. I +remember too vaguely the Galleria, as they call the beautiful glazed +arcade of Milan, to be sure that it is finer than the Galleria at +Naples, but I am sure this is finer than that at Genoa, with which, +however, I know nothing in other cities to compare. The Neapolitan +gallery, wider than any avenue of the place, branching in the form of a +Greek cross to four principal streets, is lighted by its roof of glass, +and a hundred brilliant shops and cafes spread their business and +leisure over its marble floor. Nothing could be architecturally more +cheerful, and, if it were not too hot in summer, there could be no doubt +of its adaptation to our year, for it could be easily closed against the +winter by great portals, and at other seasons would give that out-door +expansion which in Latin countries hospitably offers the spectacle of +pleasant eating and drinking to people who have nothing to eat and +drink. These spectators could be kept at a distance with us by porters +at the entrances, while they would not be altogether deprived of the +gratifying glimpses. + +I do not know whether poverty avails itself of its privileges by +visiting the Neapolitan gallery; but probably, like poverty elsewhere, +it is too much interested by the drama of life in its own quarter ever +willingly to leave it. Poverty is very conservative, for reasons more +than one; its quarter in Naples is the oldest, and was the most +responsive to our recollections of the Naples of 1864. Overhead the +houses tower and beetle with their balconies and bulging casements, +shutting the sun, except at noon, from the squalor below, where the +varied dwellers bargain and battle and ply their different trades, +bringing their work from the dusk of cavernous shops to their doorways +for the advantage of the prevailing twilight. Carpentry and tailoring +and painting and plumbing, locksmithing and copper-smithing go on there, +touching elbows with frying and feeding, and the vending of all the +strange and hideous forms of flesh, fish, and fowl. If you wish to know +how much the tentacle of a small polyp is worth you may chance to see a +cent pass for it from the crone who buys to the boy who sells it smoking +from the kettle; but the price of cooked cabbage or pumpkin must remain +a mystery, along with that of many raw vegetables and the more revolting +viscera of the less-recognizable animals. + +The poor people worming in and out around your cab are very patient of +your progress over the terrible floor of their crooked thoroughfare, +perhaps because they reciprocate your curiosity, and perhaps because +they are very amiable and not very sensitive. They are not always +crowded into these dismal chasms; their quarter expands here and there +into market-plates, like the fish-market where the uprising of the +fisherman Masaniello against the Spaniards fitly took place; and the +Jewish market-place, where the poor young Corra-dino, last of the +imperial Hohenstaufen line, was less appropriately beheaded by the +Angevines. The open spaces are not less loathsome than the reeking +alleys, but if you have the intelligent guide we had you approach them +through the triumphal arch by which Charles V. entered Naples, and that +is something. Yet we will now talk less of the emperor than of the +guide, who appealed more to my sympathy. + +He had been six years in America, which he adored, because, he said, he +had got work and earned his living there the very day he landed. That +was in Boston, where he turned his hand first to one thing and then +another, and came away at last through some call home, honoring and +loving the Americans as the kindest, the noblest, the friendliest people +in the world. I tried, politely, to persuade him that we were not all of +us all he thought us, but he would not yield, and at one place he +generously claimed a pre-eminence in wickedness for his +fellow-Neapolitans. That was when we came to a vast, sorrowful prison, +from which an iron cage projected into the street. Around this cage +wretched women and children and old men clustered till the prisoners +dear to them were let into it from the jail and allowed to speak with +them. The scene was as public as all of life and death is in Naples, and +the publicity seemed to give it peculiar sadness, which I noted to our +guide. He owned its pathos; "but," he said, "you know we have a terrible +class of people here in Naples." I protested that there were terrible +classes of people everywhere, even in America. He would not consent +entirely, but in partly convincing each other we became better friends. +He had a large black mustache and gentle black eyes, and he spoke very +fair English, which, when he wished to be most impressive, he dropped +and used a very literary Italian instead. He showed us where he lived, +on a hill-top back of our gardened quay, and said that he paid twelve +dollars a month for a tenement of five rooms there. Schooling is +compulsory in Naples, but he sends his boy willingly, and has him +especially study English as the best provision he can make for him--as +heir of his own calling of cicerone, perhaps. He has a little farm at +Bavello, which he tills when it is past the season for cultivating +foreigners in Naples; he expects to spend his old age there; and I +thought it not a bad lookout. He was perfectly well-mannered, and at a +hotel where we stopped for tea he took his coffee at our table unbidden, +like any American fellow-man. He and the landlord had their joke +together, the landlord warning me against him in English as "very bad +man," and clapping him affectionately on the shoulder to emphasize the +irony. We did not demand too much social information of him; all the +more we valued the gratuitous fact that the Neapolitan nobles were now +rather poor, because they preferred a life of pleasure to a life of +business. I could have told him that the American nobles were +increasingly like them in their love of pleasure, but I would not have +known how to explain that they were not poor also. He was himself a +moderate in politics, but he told us, what seems to be the fact +everywhere in Italy, that singly the largest party in Naples is the +Socialist party. + +He went with me first one day to the beautiful old Church of Santa +Chiara, to show me the Angevine tombs there, in which I satisfied a +secret, lingering love for the Gothic; and then to the cathedral, where +the sacristan showed us everything but the blood of St. Jannarius, +perhaps because it was not then in the act of liquefying; but I am +thankful to say I saw one of his finger-bones. My guide had made me +observe how several of the churches on the way to this were built on the +sites and of the remnants of pagan temples, and he summoned the +world-old sacristan of St. Januarius to show us evidences of a rival +antiquity in the crypt; for it had begun as a temple of Neptune. The +sacristan practically lived in those depths and the chill sanctuary +above them, and-he was so full of rheumatism that you could almost hear +it creak as he walked; yet he was a cheerful sage, and satisfied with +the fee which my guide gave him and which he made small, as he +explained, that the sacristan might not be discontented with future +largesse. I need not say that each church we visited had its tutelary +beggar, and that my happy youth came back to me in the blindness of one, +or the mutilation of another, or the haggish wrinkles of a third. At +Santa Chiara I could not at first make out what it was which caused my +heart to rejoice so; but then I found that it was because the church was +closed, and we had to go and dig a torpid monk out of his crevice in a +cold, many-storied cliff near by, and get him to come and open it, just +as I used, with the help of neighbors, to do in the past. + +Our day ended at sunset--a sunset of watermelon red--with a visit to the +Castel Nuovo, where my guide found himself at home with the garrison, +because, as he explained, he had served his term as a soldier. He was +the born friend of the custodian of the castle church, which was the +most comfortable church for warmth we had visited, and to which we +entered by the bronze gates of the triumphal arch raised in honor of the +Aragonese victory over the Angevines in 1442, when this New Castle was +newer than it is now. The bronze gates record in bas-relief the battles +between the French and Spanish powers in their quarrel over the people +one or other must make its prey; but whether it was to the greater +advantage of the Neapolitans to be battened on by the house of Aragon +and then that of Bourbon for the next six hundred years after the +Angevines had retired from the banquet is problematical. History is a +very baffling study, and one may be well content to know little or +nothing about it. I knew so little or had forgotten so much that I +scarcely deserved to be taken down into the crypt of this church and +shown the skeletons of four conspirators for Anjou whom Aragon had put +to death--two laymen and an archbishop by beheading, and a woman by +dividing crosswise into thirds. The skeletons lay in their tattered and +dusty shrouds, and I suppose were authentic enough; but I had met them, +poor things, too late in my life to Avish for their further +acquaintance. Once I could have exulted to search out their story and +make much of it; but now I must leave it to the reader's imagination, +along with most other facts of my observation in Naples. + +I was at some pains to look up the traces of my lost youth there, and if +I could have found more of them no doubt I should have been more +interested in these skeletons. Eor forty-odd years I had remembered the +prodigious picturesqueness of certain streets branching from a busy +avenue and ascending to uplands above by stately successions of steps. +When I demanded these of my guide, he promptly satisfied me, and in a +few moments, there in the Chiaja, we stood at the foot of such a public +staircase. I had no wish to climb it, but I found it more charming even +than I remembered. All the way to the top it was banked on either side +with glowing masses of flowers and fruits and the spectacular vegetables +of the South, and between these there were series of people, whom I +tacitly delegated to make the ascent for me, passing the groups +bargaining at the stalls. Nothing could have been better; nothing that I +think of is half so well in New York, where the markets are on that dead +level which in the social structure those above it abhor; though there +are places on the East River where we might easily have inclined +markets. + +Other associations of that far past awoke with my identification of the +hotel where we had stayed at the end of the Villa Nazionale. In those +days the hotel was called, in appeal to our patriotism, more flattered +then than now in Europe, Hotel Washington; but it is to-day a mere +pension, though it looks over the same length of palm-shaded, +statue-peopled garden. The palms were larger than I remembered them, and +the statues had grown up and seemed to have had large families since my +day; but the lovely sea was the same, with all the mural decorations of +the skyey horizons beyond, dim precipices and dreamy island tops, and +the dozing Vesuvius mistakable for any of them. At one place there was a +file of fishermen, including a fisherwoman, drawing their net by means +of a rope carried across the carriage-way from the seawall, with a +splendid show of their black eyes and white teeth and swarthy, bare +legs, and always there were beggars, both of those who frankly begged +and those who importuned with postal-cards. This terrible traffic +pervades all southern Europe, and everywhere pesters the meeting +traveller with undesired bargains. In its presence it is almost +impossible to fit a scene with the apposite phrase; and yet one must own +that it has its rights. What would those boys do if they did not sell, +or fail to sell, postal-cards. It is another aspect of the labor +problem, so many-faced in our time. Would it be better that they should +take to open mendicancy, or try to win the soft American heart with such +acquired slang as "Skiddoo to twenty-three"? One who had no postal-cards +had English enough to say he would go away for a penny; it was his +price, and I did not see how he could take less; when he was reproached +by a citizen of uncommon austerity for his shameless annoyance of +strangers, I could not see that he looked abashed--in fact, he went away +singing. He did not take with him the divine beauty of the afternoon +light on the sea and mountains; and, if he was satisfied, we were +content with our bargain. + +In fact, it would be impossible to exaggerate in the praise of that +incomparable environment. At every hour of the day, and, for all I know, +the night, it had a varying beauty and a constant loveliness. Six days +out of the week of our stay the sunshine was glorious, and five days of +at least a May or September warmth; and though one day was shrill and +stiff with the _tramontana,_ it was of as glorious sunshine as the rest. +The gale had blown my window open and chilled my room, but with that sun +blazing outside I could not believe in the hurricane which seemed to +blow our car up the funicular railway when we mounted to the height +where the famous old Convent of San Martino stands, and then blew us all +about the dust-clouded streets of that upland in our search for the +right way to the monastery. It was worth more than we suffered in +finding it; for the museum is a record of the most significant events of +Neapolitan history from the time of the Spanish domination down to that +of the Garibaldian invasion; and the church and corridors through which +the wind hustled us abound in paintings and frescos such as one would be +willing to give a whole week of quiet weather to. I do not know but I +should like to walk always in the convent garden, or merely look into it +from my window in the cloister wall, and gossip with my fellow-friars at +their windows. We should all be ghosts, of course, but the more easily +could the sun warm us through in spite of the _tramontana._ + +I do not know that Naples is very beautiful in certain phases in which +Venice and Genoa are excellent. Those cities were adorned by their sons +with palaces of an outlook worthy of their splendor. But in the other +Italian cities the homes of her patricians were crowded into the narrow +streets where their architecture fails of its due effect. It is so with +them in Naples, and even along the Villa Nazionale, where many palatial +villas are set, they seclude themselves in gardens where one fancies +rather than sees them. These are, in fact, sometimes the houses of the +richest bourgeoisie--bankers and financiers--and the houses which have +names conspicuous in the mainly inglorious turmoil of Neapolitan history +help unnoted to darken the narrow and winding ways of the old city. A +glimpse of a deep court or of a towering facade is what you get in +passing, but it is to be said of the sunless streets over which they +gloom that they are kept in a modern neatness beside which the dirt of +New York is mediaeval. It is so with most other streets in Naples, +except those poorest ones where the out-door life insists upon the most +intimate domestic expression. Even such streets are no worse than our +worst streets, and the good streets are all better kept than our best. + +I am not sure that there are even more beggars in Naples than in New +York, though I will own that I kept no count. In both cities beggary is +common enough, and I am not noting it with disfavor in either, for it is +one of my heresies that comfort should be constantly reminded of misery +by the sight of it--comfort is so forgetful. Besides, in Italy charity +costs so little; a cent of our money pays a man for the loss of a leg or +an arm; two cents is the compensation for total blindness; a sick mother +with a brood of starving children is richly rewarded for her pains with +a nickel worth four cents. Organized charity is not absent in the midst +of such volunteers of poverty; one day, when we thought we had passed +the last outpost of want in our drive, two Sisters of Charity suddenly +appeared with out-stretched tin cups. Our driver did not imagine our +inexhaustible benovelence; he drove on, and before we could bring him to +a halt the Sisters of Charity ran us down, their black robes flying +abroad and their sweet faces flushed with the pursuit. Upon the whole it +was very humiliating; we could have wished to offer our excuses and +regrets; but our silver seemed enough, and the gentle sisters fell back +when we had given it. + +That was while we were driving toward Posilipo for the beauty of the +prospect along the sea and shore, and for a sense of which any colored +postal-card will suffice better than the most hectic word-painting. The +worst of Italy is the superabundance of the riches it offers ear and eye +and nose--offers every sense--ending in a glut of pleasure. At the point +where we descended from our carriage to look from the upland out over +the vast hollow of land and sea toward Pozzuoli, which is so interesting +as the scene of Jove's memorable struggle with the Titans, and just when +we were really beginning to feel equal to it, a company of minstrels +suddenly burst upon us with guitars and mandolins and comic songs much +dramatized, while the immediate natives offered us violets and other +distracting flowers. In the effect, art and nature combined to +neutralize each other, as they do with us, for instance, in those +restaurants where they have music during dinner, and where you do not +know whether you are eating the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of a cook or a composer. + +It was at the new hotel which is evolving itself through the repair of +the never-finished and long-ruined Palace of Donn' Anna, wife of a +Spanish viceroy in the seventeenth century, that our guide stopped with +us for that cup of tea already mentioned. We had to climb four nights of +stairs for it to the magnificent salon overlooking the finest +postal-card prospect in all Naples. We lingered long upon it, in the +balcony from which we could have dropped into the sunset sea any coin +which we could have brought ourselves to part with; but we had none of +the bad money which had been so easily passed off upon us. This sort +rather abounds in Naples, and the traveller should watch not only for +false francs, but for francs of an obsolete coinage which you can know +by the king's head having a longer neck than in the current pieces. At +the bookseller's they would not take a perfectly good five-franc piece +because it was so old as 1815; and what becomes of all the bad money one +innocently takes for good? One fraudulent franc I made a virtue of +throwing away; but I do not know what I did with a copper refused by a +trolley conductor as counterfeit. I could not take the affair seriously, +and perhaps I gave that copper in charity. + +As we drove hotehvard through the pink twilight we met many carriages of +people who looked rich and noble, but whether they were so I do not +know. I only know that old ladies who regard the world severely from +their coaches behind the backs of their perfectly appointed coachmen and +footmen ought to be both, and that old gentlemen who frown over their +white mustaches have no right to their looks if they are neither. It +was, at any rate, the hour of the fashionable drive, which included a +pause midway of the Villa Nazionale for the music of the military band. + +The band plays near the Aquarium, which I hope the reader will visit at +the earlier hours of the day. Then, if he has a passion for polyps, and +wishes to imagine how they could ingulf good-sized ships in the ages of +fable, he can see one of the hideous things float from its torpor in the +bottom of its tank, and seize Avith its hungry tentacles the food +lowered to it by a string. Still awfuller is it to see it rise and reach +with those prehensile members, as with the tails of a multi-caudate ape, +some rocky projection of its walls and lurk fearsomely into the hollow, +and vanish there in a loathly quiescence. The carnivorous spray and +bloom of the deep-sea flowers amid which drowned men's "bones are coral +made" seem of one temperament with the polyps as they slowly, slowly +wave their tendrils and petals; but there is amusement if not pleasure +in store for the traveller who turns from them to the company of shad +softly and continuously circling in their tank, and regarding the +spectators with a surly dignity becoming to people in better society +than others. One large shad, imaginably of very old family and +independent property, sails at the head of several smaller shad, his +flatterers and toadies, who try to look like him. Mostly his expression +is very severe; but in milder moments he offers a perverse resemblance +to some portraits of Washington. + +All our days in Naples died like dolphins to the music which I have +tried to impart the sense of. The joyful noises which it was made up of +culminated for us on that evening when a company of the street and boat +musicians came into the hotel and danced and sang and played the +tarantella. They were of all ages, sexes, and bulks, and of divers +operatic costumes, but they were of one temperament only, which was glad +and childlike. They went through their repertory, which included a great +deal more than the tarantella, and which we applauded with an enthusiasm +attested by our contributions when the tambourine went round. Then they +repeated their selections, and at the second collection we guests of the +hotel repeated our contributions, but in a more guarded spirit. After +the second repetition the prettiest girl came round with her photographs +and sold them at prices out of all reason. Then we became very +melancholy, and began to steal out one by one. I myself did not stay for +the fourth collection, and I cannot report how the different points of +view, the Southern and the Northern, were reconciled in the event which +I am not sure was final. But I am sure that unless you can make +allowance for a world-wide difference in the Neapolitans from yourself +you can never understand them. Perhaps you cannot, even then. + + + + +V + +POMPEII REVISITED + + +Because I felt very happy in going back to Pompeii after a generation, +and being alive to do so in the body, I resolved to behave handsomely by +the cabman who drove me from my hotel to the station. I said to myself +that I would do something that would surprise him, and I gave him his +fee and nearly a franc over; but it was I who was surprised, for he ran +after me into the station, as I supposed, to extort more. He was holding +out a franc toward me, and I asked the guide who was bothering me to +take him to Pompeii (where there are swarms of guides always on the +grounds) what the matter was. "It is false," he explained, and this +proved true, though whether the franc was the one I had given the driver +or whether it was one which he had thoughtfully substituted for it to +make good an earlier loss I shall now never know. I put it into my +pocket, wondering what I should do with it; the question what you shall +do with counterfeit money in Italy is one which is apt to recur as I +have hinted, and in despair of solving it at the moment I threw the +false franc out of the car-window; it was the false franc I have already +boasted of throwing away. + +This was, of course, after I got into the car, and after I had suffered +another wrong, and was resolved at least to be good myself. I had taken +first-class tickets, but, when we had followed several conductors up and +down the train, the last of them said there were no first-class places +left, though I shall always doubt this. I asked what we should do, and +he shrugged. I had heard that if you will stand upon your rights in such +a matter the company will have to put on another car for you. But I was +now dealing with the Italian government, which has nationalized the +railroads, but has apparently not yet repleted the rolling stock; and +when the conductor found us places in a second-class carriage, rather +than quarrel with a government which had troubles enough already I got +aboard. I suppose really that I have not much public spirit, and that +the little I have I commonly leave at home; in travelling it is +burdensome. Besides, the second-class carriage would have been +comfortable enough if it had not been so dirty; it looked as if it had +not been washed since it was flooded with liquid ashes at the +destruction of Pompeii, though they seemed to be cigar ashes. + +The country through which we made the hour's run was sympathetically +squalid. We had, to be sure, the sea on one side, and that was clean +enough; but the day was gray, and the sea was responsively gray; while +the earth on the other side was torn and ragged, with people digging +manure into the patches of broccoli, and gardening away as if it had +been April instead of January. There were shabby villas, with +stone-pines and cypresses herding about the houses, and tatters of +life-plant overhanging their shabby walls; there were stucco shanties +which the men and women working in the fields would lurk in at +nightfall. At places there was some cheerful boat building, and at one +place there was a large macaroni manufactory, with far stretches of the +product dangling in hanks and skeins from rows of trellises. We passed +through towns where women and children swarmed, working at doorways and +playing in the dim, cold streets; from the balconies everywhere winter +melons hung in nets, dozens and scores of them, such as you can buy at +the Italian fruiterers' in New York, and will keep buying when once you +know how good they are. In Naples they sell them by the slice in the +street, the fruiterer carrying a board on his head with the slices +arranged in an upright coronal like the rich, barbaric head-dress of +some savage prince. + +Our train was slow and our car was foul, but nothing could keep us from +arriving at Pompeii in very good spirits. The entrance to the dead city +is gardened about with a cemeterial prettiness of evergreens; but, after +you have bought your ticket and been assigned your guide, you pass +through this decorative zone and find yourself in the first of streets +where the past makes no such terms with the present. If some of the +houses of an ampler plan had little spaces beyond the atrium planted +with such flowers as probably grew there two thousand years ago, and +stuck round with tiny figurines, it was to the advantage of the people's +fancy; but it did not appeal so much to the imagination as the mould and +moss, and the small, weedy network that covered the ground in the +roofless chambers and temples and basilicas, where the broken columns +and walls started from the floors which this unmeditated verdure painted +in the favorite hue of ruin. + +Most of the places I re-entered through my recollection of them, but to +this subjective experience there was added that of seeing much newer and +vaster things than I remembered. That sad population of the victims of +the disaster, restored to the semhlance of life, or perhaps rather of +death, in plaster casts taken from the moulds their decay had left in +the hardening ashes, had much increased in the melancholy museum where +one visits them the first thing within the city gates. But their effect +was not cumulative; there were more writhing women and more contorted +men; but they did not make their tragedy more evident than it had been +when I saw them, fewer but not less affecting, all those years ago. It +was the same with the city itself; Pompeii had grown, like the rest of +the world in the interval, and, although it had been dug tip instead of +built up, a good third had been added to the count of its streets and +houses. There were not, so far as I could see, more ruts from +chariot-wheels in the lava blocks of the thoroughfares, but some +convincingly two-storied dwellings had been exhumed, and others with +ceilings in better condition than those of the earlier excavations; +there were more all-but-unbroken walls and columns; some mosaic floors +were almost as perfect as when their dwellers fled over them out of the +stifling city. But upon the whole the result was a greater monotony; the +revelation of house after house, nearly the same in design, did not gain +im-pressiveness from their repetition; just as the case would be if the +dwellings of an old-fashioned cross-town street in New York were dug out +two thousand years after their submergence by an eruption of Orange +Mountain. The identity of each of the public edifices is easily attested +to the archaeologist, but the generally intelligent, as the generally +unintelligent, visitor must take the archaeologist's word for the fact. +One temple is much like another in its stumps of columns and vague +foundations and broken altars. Among the later discoveries certain of +the public baths are in the best repair, both structurally and +decoratively, and in these one could replace the antique life with the +least wear and tear of the imagination. + +I could not tell which the several private houses were; but the +guide-books can, and there I leave the specific knowledge of them; their +names would say nothing to the reader if they said nothing to me. In +Pompeii, where all the houses were rather small, some of the new ones +were rather large, though not larger than a few of the older ones. Not +more recognizably than these, they had been devoted to the varied uses +known to advanced civilization in all ages: there were dwellings, and +taverns and drinking-houses and eating-houses, and there were those +houses where the feet of them that abide therein and of those that +frequent them alike take hold on hell. In these the guide stays the men +of his party to prove the character of the places to them from the +frescos and statues; but it may be questioned if the visitors so +indulged had not better taken the guide's word for the fact. There can +be no doubt that at the heart of paganism the same plague festered which +poisons Christian life, and which, while the social conditions remain +the same from age to age, will poison life forever. + +The pictures on the walls of the newly excavated houses are not +strikingly better than those I had not forgotten; but of late it has +been the purpose to leave as many of the ornaments and utensils in +position as possible. The best are, as they ought to be, gathered into +the National Museum at Naples, but those which remain impart a more +living sense of the past than such wisely ordered accumulations; for it +is the Pompeian paradox that in the image of death it can best recall +life. It is a grave which has been laid bare, and it were best to leave +its ghastly memories unhindered by other companionship. One feels that +one ought to be there alone in order to see it aright. One should not +perhaps + + "Go visit it by the pale moonlight," + +but if one could have it all to one's self by day, such a gray day as we +had for it, there is no telling what might happen. One thing only would +certainly happen: one would get lost. It never was a town of large area; +and, like all spaces that have been ruined over, it looked smaller than +it would have looked if all its walls were standing with all their roofs +upon them. Still, it was a mesh of streets, out of which you would in +vain have sought your way if you had been caught in it alone; though it +is mostly so level that if you had mounted a truncated column almost +anywhere you could have looked over the labyrinth to its verge. + +It was not much crowded by visitors; though there were strings of them +at the heels of the respective guides, with, I thought, a prevalence of +the Germans, who are now overrunning Italy; I am sorry to say they are +not able to keep it cheap, at least for other nationalities. Among these +I noted two little smiling, shining, twinkling Japs, who carried kodaks +for the capture of that classical antiquity which could never really +belong to them. Their want of a pagan past in common with us may be what +keeps us alien even more than the want of a common Christian tradition. + + "The glory that was Greece + And the grandeur that was Rome" + +could never mean to our brown companions what they meant to us; but they +put on a polite air of being interested in the Graeco-Roman ruin, and +were so gentle and friendly that one could almost feel they were +fellow-men. Very likely they were; at any rate, until we are at war with +them I shall believe so. + +Our guide, whom we had really bought the whole use of at the gate, +thriftily took on another party, with our leave, and it was pleasant to +find that the American type from Utah was the same as from Ohio or +Massachusetts; with all our differences we are the most homogeneous +people under the sun, and likest a large family. We all frankly got +tired at about the same time at the same place, and agreed that we had, +without the amphitheatre, had enough when we ended at the Street of +Tombs, where the tombs are in so much better repair than the houses. For +myself, I remembered the amphitheatre so perfectly from 1864 that I did +not see how I could add a single emotion there in 1908 to those I had +already turned into literature; and though Pompeii is but small, the +amphitheatre is practically as far from the Street of Tombs, after you +have walked about the place for two hours, as the Battery is from High +Bridge. There is no Elevated or Subway at Pompeii, and even the lines of +public chariots, if such they were, which left those ruts in the lava +pavements seem to have been permanently suspended after the final +destruction in the year 79. + +We were not only very tired, but very hungry, and we asked our guide to +take us back the shortest way. I suggested a cross-cut at one point, and +he caught at the word eagerly, and wrote it in his note-book for future +use. He also acted upon it instantly, and we cut across the back yards +and over the kitchen areas of several absent citizens on our way back. +Our guide was as good and true as it is in the nature of guides to be, +but absolute goodness and truth are rather the attributes of American +travellers; and you will not escape the small graft which the guides are +so rigorously forbidden to practise. Pompeii is no longer in the +keeping of the Italian army; with the Italian instinct of +decentralization the place has claimed the right of self-government, and +now the guides are civilians, and not soldiers, as they were in my far +day. They do not accept fees, but still they take them; and our guide +said that he had a brother-in-law who had the best restaurant outside +the gate, where we could get luncheon for two francs. As soon as we +were in the hands of the runner for that restaurant the price augmented +itself to two francs and a half; when we mounted to the threshold, lured +on by the fascinating mystery of this increase, it became three francs, +without wine. But as the waiter justly noted, in hovering about us with +the cutlery and napery while he laid the table, a two-fifty luncheon was +unworthy such lords as we. When he began to bring on the delicious +omelette, the admirable fish, the excellent cutlets, he made us observe +that if we paid three francs we ought to eat a great deal; and there +seemed reason in this; at any rate, we did so. The truth is, that +luncheon was worth the money, and more; as for the Vesuvian wine, it had +the rich red blood of the volcano in it, and it could not be bought in +New York for half a franc the bottle, if at all; at thrice that sum in +Naples it was not a third as good. + +If there had been anything to do after lunch except go to the train, we +could not have done it, we were so spent with our two hours' walk +through Pompeii, though the gray day had been rather invigorating. +Certainly it was not so exhausting as that white-hot day forty-three +years before when I had broiled over the same ground under the blazing +sun of a Pompeian November. Yet the difference in the muscles and +emotions of twenty-seven as against those of seventy told in favor of +the white-hot day; and, besides that, in the time that had elapsed a +much greater burden of antiquity had been added to the city than had +accumulated in its history between the year 79 and the year 1864. During +most of those centuries Pompeii had been dreamlessly sleeping under its +ashes, but in the ensuing less than half a century it had wakefully, +however unwillingly, witnessed such events as the failure of secession +and the abolition of slavery, the unification of Italy and Germany, the +fall of the Second Empire, the liberation of Cuba, and the acquisition +of the Philippines, the exile of Richard Croker, the destruction of the +Boer Republic, the rise and spread of the trusts, the purification of +municipal politics, the invention of wireless telegraphy, and the +general adoption of automobiling. These things, and others like them, +had perhaps not aged Pompeii so much as they had aged me, but their +subjective effect was the same, and upon the whole I was not altogether +sorry to have added scarcely a new impression of the place to those I +had been carrying for more than a generation. Quantitatively there were +plenty of new impressions to be had; impressions of more roofs, gardens, +columns, houses, temples, walls, frescos; but qualitatively the Greater +Pompeii was now not different from the lesser which I remembered so +well. + +This, at least, was what I said to myself on the ground and afterward in +the National Museum at Naples, where most of the precious Pompeian +things, new and old, are heaped up. They still make but a poor show +there beside the treasures of Herculaneum, where the excavation of a few +streets and houses has yielded costlier and lovelier things than all the +lengths and breadths of Pompeii. But not for this would I turn against +Pompeii at the last moment, as it were, though my second visit had not +aesthetically enriched me beyond my first. I keep the vision of it under +that gray January sky, with Vesuvius smokeless in the background, and +the plan of the dead city, opener to the eye than ever it could have +been in life, inscribed upon the broadly opened area of the gentle +slopes within its gates. Whether one had not better known it dead than +alive, one might not wish perhaps to say; but the place itself is +curiously without pathos; Newport in ruins might not be touching; +possibly all skeletons or even mummies are without pathos; and Pompeii +is a skeleton, or at the most a mummy, of the past. + +Seeing what antiquity so largely was, however, one might be not only +resigned but cheerful in the ef-facement of any particular piece of it; +and for a help to this at Pompeii I may advise the reader to take with +him a certain little guide-book, written in English by a very courageous +Italian, which I chanced to find in Naples. Though it treats of the +tragical facts with seriousness, it is not with equal gravity that one +reads that sixteen years before the Vesuvian eruption "the region had +been shaken by strong sismic movements, which induced Pompei inhabitants +to forsake precipitately their habitations. But being the amazement up, +they got one's home again as soon as the earth was quiet and all fear +and sadness went off by memory." Signs of the final disaster to follow +were not wanting; the wells failed, the water-courses were crossed by +currents of carbonic acid; "the domestic animals were also very sensible +of the approaching of the scourge; they lost the habitual vivacity, and +having the food in disgust, had from time to time to complain with +mournful wailings, without justified reasons. . . . The sky became of a +thick darkness, . . . interrupted only by flashes of light which the +lava riverberated, by the bloody gliding of the thunderbolts, by the +incandescence of enormous projectiles, thrown to an incommensurable +highness. . . . Death surprised the charming town; houses and streets +became the tombs of the unhappies hit by an atrocious torture." + +The author's study of the life of Pompeii is notable for diction which, +if there were logic in language, would be admirable English, for while +yet in his mind it must have been "very choice Italian." He tells us +that "Pompei's dwellings are surprising by their specific littleness," +and explains that "Pompei inhabitants, for the habitudes of the climate +could allow, lived almost always to the open sky," just as the Naples +inhabitants do now. "They got home only to rest a little, to fulfill +life wants, to be protected by bad weather. They spent much time during +the day in forum, temples, thermes, tennis-court, or intervened to +public sports, religious functions and meetings. . . . Few houses only +had windows. The sunlight and ventilation to the ancients was given +through empty spaces in the roofs. . . . Hoofs knocked under the weight +of materials thrown out by Vesuvius; it is undoubted, however, that +roofs were provided with covers or supported terraces. In the middle of +the roofs was cut an ouerture through which air and light brought their +benefits to the underlaid ambients. . . . Proprietor disposed the locals +according to his own delight. . . . So that, there were bed, bath, +dining, talking and game rooms." In the peristyle "the ground was +gardened, the area shared in flower beds, had narrow paths; herbs, +flowers, shrubs were put with art well in order on flower beds, +delighted from time to time by statues of various subjects," as may be +noted in the actual restorations of some of the Pompeian houses, + +As for their spiritual life, "Pompeian's religion, like by Roman people, +was the Paganism. Deities were worshipped in the temples with prayers, +sagrifices, vows, and festivities. . . . Banquets to the Deity were +joined to prayers. In fact, dining tables were dressed near the altars, +and all around them on dining beds, _tricli-nari,_ placed Divinities +statues as these were assembled to own account to the joyous banquest." +Auspices or auguries "gave interpretation to thunders, lightnings, +winds, rain crashes, comets, or to bird songs and flights. . . . +Horuspices inquired the divine will on the animal bowels, sacrificed to +the altar; they took out further indications by fleshes and bowels +flames when burnt on the altar." + +An important feature of Pompeian social life was the bath, which "was +one of the hospitality duty, and very often required in several +religious functions. . . . Large and colossal edifices were quite +furnished with all the necessary for care and sport. Besides localities +for all kind of bath--cold, warm, steam bath--didn't want parks, alleys, +and porticos in order to walk; lists rings for gymnastic exercises, +conversation and reading rooms, localities for theatrical +representations, swimming stations, localities for scientific +disquisitions, moral and religious teachings. The most splendid art +works adorned the ambient." + +When we pass to the popular amusements we are presented with the +materials of pictures vividly realized in _The Last Days of Pompeii,_ +but somewhat faded since. "In the beginning gladiators' rank was made by +condemned to death slaves and war prisoners. Later also thoughtless +young men, who had never learned an advantageous trade, became +gladiators." In the arena they engaged in sham fights till the +spectators demanded blood. Then, "sometimes one provided one's self nets +for wrapping up the adversary, who, hit by a trident much, frequently +die. When the gladiator was deadly wounded, forsaking the arm, struck +down and stretching the index, asked the people grace of life. The +spectators decided up his destiny, turning the thumb to the breast, or +toward the ground. The thumb turned toward the ground was the unlucky's +death doom, and he had without fail the throat cut off." + +Such, dimly but unmistakably seen through our Italian author's +well-reasoned English, were the ancient Pompeians; and, upon the whole, +the visitor to their city could not wish them back in it. I preferred +even those modern Pompeians who followed us so molestively to the train +with bargains in postal-cards and coral. They are very alert, the modern +Pompeians, to catch the note of national character, and I saw one of +them pursuing an elderly American with a spread of hat-pins, primarily +two francs each, and with the appeal, evidently studied from some fair +American girl: "Buy it, Poppa! Six for one franc. Oh, Poppa, buy it!" + +I had again lavished my substance upon first-class tickets, and so had +my Utah friend, who expounded his philosophy of travel as we managed to +secure a first-class carriage. "When I can't go first-class in Italy, +I'll go home." I promptly and proudly agreed with him, but I concealed +my morning's experience of the fact that in Italy you may sometimes go +second class when you have paid first. I agreed with him, however, in +not minding the plunder of Italian travel, since, with all the +extortions, it would come to a third less than you expected to spend. +His was the true American spirit. + + + + +VI + +ROMAN HOLIDAYS + +I + +HOTELS, PENSIONS, AND APARTMENTS + + +"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" the traveller asks rather +anxiously than defiantly when he finds himself a stranger in a strange +place, and he is apt to add, if he has not written or wired ahead to +some specific hotel, "Which of mine inns shall I take mine ease in?" He +is the more puzzled to choose the more inns there are to choose from, +and his difficulty is enhanced if he has not considered that some of his +inns may be full or may be too dear, and yet others undesirable. + +The run from Naples in four hours and a half had been so flattering fair +an experience to people who had last made it in eight that they arrived +in Rome on a sunny afternoon of January preoccupied with expectations of +an instant ease in their inn which seemed the measure of their merit. +They indeed found their inn, and it was with a painful surprise that +they did not find the rooms in it which they wanted. There were neither +rooms full south, nor over the garden, nor off the tram, and in these +circumstances there was nothing for it but to drive to some one else's +inn and try for better quarters there. They, in fact, drove to half a +dozen such, their demands rising for more rooms and sunnier and quieter +and cheaper, the fewer and darker and noisier and dearer were those they +found. + +The trouble was that they found in the very first alien hotel where they +applied an apartment so exactly what they wanted, with its four rooms +and bath, all more or less full south, though mostly veering west and +north, that they carried the fatal norm in their consciousness and +tested all other apartments by it, the earlier notion of single rooms +being promptly rejected after the sight of it. The reader will therefore +not be so much, astonished as these travellers were to learn that there +was nothing else in Rome (where there must be about five hundred hotels, +_hotels garnis,_ and pensions) that one could comparatively stay even +overnight in, and that they settled in that alluring apartment +provisionally, the next day being Sunday, and the crystalline Saturday +of their arrival being well worn away toward its topaz and ruby sunset. +Of course, they continued their search for several days afterward, +zealously but hopelessly, yet not fruitlessly, for it resulted in an +acquaintance with Roman hotels which they might otherwise never have +made, and for one of them in literary material of interest to every one +hoping to come to Rome or despairing of it. The psychology of the matter +was very curious, and involved the sort of pleasing self-illusion by +which people so often get themselves over questionable passes in life +and come out with a good conscience, or a dead one, which is practically +the same thing. These particular people had come to Rome with +reminiscences of in-expensiveness and had intended to recoup themselves +for the cost of several previous winters in New York hotels by the +saving they would make in their Roman sojourn. When it appeared, after +all the negotiation and consequent abatement, that their Roman hotel +apartment would cost them hardly a fifth less than they had last paid in +New York, they took a guilty refuge in the fact that they were getting +for less money something which no money could buy in New York. Gradually +all sense of guilt wore off, and they boldly, or even impudently, said +to themselves that they ought to have what they could pay for, and that +there were reasons, which they were not obliged to render in their +frankest soliloquies, why they should do just what they chose in the +matter. + +The truth is that the modern Roman hotel is far better in every way than +the hotel of far higher class, or of the highest class, in New York. In +the first place, the managers are in the precious secret, which our +managers have lost, of making you believe that they want you; and, +having you, they know how to look after your pleasure and welfare. The +table is always of more real variety, though vastly less stupid +profusion than ours. The materials are wholesomer and fresher and are +without the proofs, always present in our hotel viands, of a +probationary period in cold storage. As for the cooking, there is no +comparison, whether the things are simply or complexly treated; and the +service is of that neatness and promptness which ours is so ignorant of. + +Your agreement is usually for meals as well as rooms; the European plan +is preferably ignored in Europe; and the _table d'hote_ luncheon and +dinner are served at small, separate tables; your breakfast is brought +to your room. Being old-fashioned, myself, I am rather sorry for the +small, separate tables. I liked the one large, long table, where you +made talk with your neighbors; but it is gone, and much facile +friendliness with it, on either hand and across the board. The rooms are +tastefully furnished, and the beds are unquestionable; the carpets +warmly cover tho floor if stone, or amply rug it if of wood. The +steam-heating is generous and performs its office of "roasting you out +of the house" without the sizzling and crackling which accompany its +efforts at home. The electricity really illuminates, and there is always +an electric lamp at your bed-head for those long hours when your remorse +or your digestion will not let you sleep, and you must substitute some +other's waking dreams for those of your own slumbers. Above all, there +is a lift, or elevator, not enthusiastically active or convulsively +swift, but entirely practicable and efficient. It will hold from four to +eight persons, and will take up at least six without reluctance. + +It must be clearly understood that the ideal of American comfort is +fully and faithfully realized, and if the English have reformed the +Italian hotels in respect of cleanliness, it is we who have brought them +quite to our domestic level in regard to heat and light. But if we want +these things in Rome, we must pay for them as we do at home, though +still we do not pay so much as we pay at home. The tips are about half +our average, but whether they are given currently or ultimately I do not +know. Who, indeed, knows about others' tips anywhere in the world? I +asked an experienced fellow-citizen what the custom was, and he said +that he believed the English gave in going away, but he thought the +spirits of the helpers drooped under the strain of hope deferred, and he +preferred to give every week. The donations, I understood, were pooled +by the dining-room waiters and then equally divided; but gifts bestowed +above stairs were for the sole behoof of him or her who took them. +Germans are said to give less than Anglo-Saxons, and it is said that +Italians in some cases do not give at all. But, again, who knows? The +Italians are said never to give drink money to the cabmen, but to pay +only the letter of the tariff. If I had done that in driving about to +look up worse hotels than the one I chose first and last, I should now +be a richer man, but I doubt if a happier. Two cents seems to satisfy a +Roman cabman; five cents has for him the witchery of money found in the +road; but I must not leave the subject of hotels for that of cabs, +however alluringly it beckons. + +The reader who knows Italy only from the past should clear his mind of +his old impressions of the hotels. There is no longer that rivalry +between the coming guest and the manager to see how few or many candles +can be lighted in his room and charged in the bill; there are no longer +candles, but only electricity. There is no longer an extortion for +hearth-fires which send all the heat up the chimney; there are steam +radiators in every room. There is no longer a tedious bargaining for +rooms; the price is fixed and cannot be abated except for a sojourn of +weeks or months. But the price is much greater than it used to be--twice +as great almost; for the taxes are heavy and provisions are dear, and +coal and electricity are costly, and you must share the expense with the +landlord. He is not there for his health, and, if for your comfort, you +are not his invited guest. As I have intimated, an apartment of four +rooms with a bath will cost almost as much, with board, as the same +quarters in New York, but you will get far more for your money in Rome. +If you take a single room, even to the south, in many first-class Roman +hotels it will cost you for room and board only two dollars or two and a +half a day, which is what you pay for a far meaner and smaller room +alone in New York; and the Roman board is such, as you can get at none +but our most expensive houses for twice the money. Generally you cannot +get a single room and bath, but at present a very exclusive hotel is +going up in a good quarter which promises, with huge English signs, a +bath with every room and every room full south. One does not see just +how the universal sunny exposure is to be managed, but there can be no +question of the baths; and, with the steam radiators everywhere, the +northernmost room might well imagine itself full south. + +Nearly all the hotels have a pleasant tea-room, which is called a winter +garden, because of a pair of palm-trees set under the centre of its +glass roof and the painted bamboo chairs and tables set about. This sort +of garden is found even in the hotels which are almost of the grade of +pensions and of their prices; but generally the pensions proper are +without it. Their rates are much lower, but quite as good people +frequent them, and they are often found in good streets and sometimes +open into or overlook charming gardens; the English especially seem to +like the pensions, which are managed like hotels. They are commonly +without steam-heat, which might account for their being less frequented +by Americans. + +There are two supreme hotels in Rome--one in the Ludovisi quarter, as it +is called, and the other near the Baths of Diocletian, which Americans +frequent to their cost, for the rates approach a New York or London +magnificence. The first is rather the more spectacular of the two and is +the resort of all the finer sort of afternoon tea-drinkers, who find +themselves the observed of observers of all nationalities; there is +music and dress, and there are titles of every degree, with as much +informality as people choose, if they go to look, or as much state if +they go to be looked at; these things are much less cumbrously contrived +than with us. The other hotel, I have the somewhat unauthorized fancy, +is rather more addicted to very elect dinner-parties and suppers. Below +these two are an endless variety of first-rate and second-rate houses, +both in the newer quarter of the city, where the villa paths have been +turned into streets, and in the old town on all the pleasant squares and +avenues. There is a tradition of unhealth concerning the old town which +the modern death-rate of Rome shows to be unjust; at the worst these +places have more dark and damp, and the hotels are not steam-heated. + +It has seemed to me that there are not so many _hotels garnis_ in Rome +as there used to be in Italian cities, but they, too, abound in pleasant +streets, and the stranger who has a fancy for lodgings with breakfast in +his rooms, and likes to browse about for his luncheon and dinner, will +easily suit himself. If it comes to taking a furnished apartment for the +season, there is much range in price and much choice in place. The +agents who have them to let will begin, rather dismayingly, "Oh, +apartments in Rome are very dear." But you learn on inquiry that a +furnished flat in the Ludovisi region, in a house with a lift and full +sun, may be had for two hundred dollars a month. From this height the +rents of palatial apartments soar to such lonely peaks as eight hundred +and sink to such levels as a hundred and twenty or a hundred; and for +this you have linen and silver and all the movables and utensils you +want, as well as several vast rooms opening wastefully from one to +another till you reach the salon. The rents of the like flats, if +vacant, would be a quarter or a third less, though again the agents +begin by telling you that there is very little difference between the +rents of furnished and unfurnished flats. The flats are in every part +of the old town and the new; and some are in noble sixteenth and +seventeenth century palaces, such as we are accustomed to at home only +in the theatre. My own experience is that everybody, especially in +houses where there are no lifts, lives on the top floor. You pass many +other floors in going up, but you are left to believe that nobody lives +on them. When you reach the inhabited levels, you find them charming +inside for their state and beauty, and outside for their magnificent +view, which may be pretty confidently relied upon to command the dome of +St. Peter's. That magnificent stone bubble seems to blow all round the +horizon. + +When you have taken your furnished flat, the same agency will provide +you a cook at ten or twelve dollars a month, a maid at seven dollars, a +lady's maid at eight or nine dollars, and so on; the cook will prefer to +sleep out of the house. Then will come the question of provisions, and +these seem really to be dear in Rome. Meats and vegetables both are +dear, and game and poultry. Beef will be forty cents a pound, and veal +and mutton in proportion; a chicken which has been banting for the table +from its birth will be forty cents; eggs which have not yet taken active +shape are twenty-five and thirty cents throughout winters so bland that +a hen of any heart can hardly keep from laying every day. I am afraid I +am no authority on butter and milk, and groceries I do not know the +prices of; but coffee ought to be cheap, for nobody drinks anything but +substitutes more or less unabashed. + +For the passing stranger, or even the protracted so-journer, whose time +and money are not too much at odds, a hotel is best, and a hotel in the +new quarter is pleasanter than one in the old quarters. Ours, at any +rate, was in a wide, sunny, and (if I must own it) dusty street, laid +out in a line of beauty on the borders of the former Villa Ludovisi, +where the aging or middle-aging reader used to come to see Guercino's +"Aurora" in the roof of the casino. Now all trace of the garden is +hidden under vast and vaster hotels and great blond apartment-houses, +and ironed down with trolley-rails; but the Guercino has been spared, +though it is no longer so accessible to the public. Still, there is a +garden left, and our hotel, with others, looks across the sun and dust +of its street into the useful vegetation of the famous old Capuchin +convent, with the church, to which I came so eagerly so long ago to +revere Guido's "St. Michael and the Dragon" and the decorative bones of +the good brothers braided on the walls and roofs of the crypt in the +indissoluble community of floral and geometric designs. + +All through the months of February and March I woke to the bell that +woke the brothers to their prayers before daybreak and burst the +beauty-sleep of the hotel-dwellers, who have so far outnumbered the +monks since the obliteration of the once neighboring villa. This was, of +course, a hardship, and one thought things of that bell which the monks +were too good to say; but being awake, and while one was reading one's +self to sleep again, one could hear the beginning of the bird singing in +the modern garden in the rear which followed upon the bell-ringing. I do +not know what make or manner of bird it was that mostly sang among the +palms and laurels and statues, but it had a note of liquid gold, which +it poured till a certain flageo-lettist, whom I never saw, came to the +corner under the villa wall and blew his soul into one end of his +instrument and out of the other in the despondent breathings of most +melancholy music. Then, having attuned the spirits of his involuntary +listeners to a pensive sympathy, he closed with that international hymn +which does not rightly know whether it is "My Country, 'tis of Thee," or +"God Save the King," but serves equally for the patriotism of any +English or Americans in hearing. I do not know why this harmless hymn, +which the flageolettist gave extremely well, should always have seemed +to provoke the derision of the donkey which apparently dwelt in harmony +with the birds in that garden, but the flageolettist had no sooner ended +than the donkey burst into a bray, loud, long, and full of mockery, with +a close of ironical whistling and most insolent hissing; you would think +that some arch-enemy of the Anglo-Saxon race was laughing the new-felt +unity of the English and Americans to scorn. Later, but still before +daylight, came the wild cry of a boy, somewhere out of perdition, +following the deep bass invitation of his father's lost spirit to buy +his wares, whatever they were. We never knew, but we liked that boy's +despairing wail, and would not have missed it for ever so much extra +slumber. When all hope of more sleep was past there was no question of +the desirability of the boy who visibly arranged his store of oranges on +the curbstone under the villa wall, and seemed to think that they had a +peculiar attraction from being offered for sale in pairs. His cry filled +the rest of the forenoon. + +The Italian spring comes on slowly everywhere, with successive snubs in +its early ardor from the snows on the mountains, which regulate the +climate from north to south. We could not see that it made more speed +behind the sheltering walls of the Capuchin convent garden than in other +places. The old gardener whom we saw pottering about in it seemed to +potter no more actively at the end of March than at the beginning of +February; on the first days of April a heap of old leaves and stalks was +sending up the ruddy flame and pleasant smell that the like burning +heaps do with us at the like hour of spring--in fact, vegetation had +much more reason to be cheerful throughout February than at any time in +March. Those February days were really incomparable. They had not the +melting heat of the warm spells that sometimes come in our Februaries; +but their suns were golden, and their skies unutterably blue, and their +airs mild, yet fresh. You always wanted a heavy coat for driving or for +the shade in walking; otherwise the temperature was that of a New +England April which was resolved to begin as it could carry out. But +March came with cold rains of whole days, and with suns that might +overheat but could not be trusted to warm you. The last Sunday of +January I found ice in the Colosseum; but that was the only time I saw +ice anywhere in Rome. In March, however, in a moment of great +exasperation from the mountains, it almost snowed. Yet that month would +in our climate have been remembered for its beauty and for a prevailing +kindness of temperature. The worst you could say of it was that it left +the spring in the Capuchin garden where it found it. But possibly, since +the temporal power was overthrown, the seasons are neglected and +indifferent. Certainly man seems so in the case of the Capuchin convent. +Great stretches of the poor old plain edifice look vacant, and the high +wall which encloses it is plastered and painted with huge advertisements +of clothiers and hotels and druggists, and announcements of races and +other events out of keeping with its character and tradition. + +The sentimentalists who overrun Rome from all the Northern lands will +tell you that this is of a piece with all the Newer Rome which has +sprung into existence since the Italian occupation. Their griefs with +the thing that is are loud and they are long; but I, who am a +sentimentalist too, though of another make, do not share them. No doubt +the Newer Rome has made mistakes, but, without defending her +indiscriminately, I am a Newer-Roman to the core, perhaps because I knew +the Older Rome and what it was like; and not all my brother and sister +sentimentalists can say as much. + + + + +II + +A PRAISE OF NEW ROME + + +Rome and I had both grown older since I had seen her last, but she +seemed not to show so much as I the forty-three years that had passed. +Naturally a city that was already twenty-seven centuries of age (and no +one knows how much more) would not betray the lapse of time since 1864 +as a man must who was then only twenty-seven years of age. In fact, I +should say that Rome looked, if anything, younger at our second meeting, +in 1908, or, at any rate, newer; and I am so warm a friend of youth (in +others) that I was not sorry to find Rome young, or merely new, in so +many good things. At the same time I must own that I heard no other +foreigner praising her for her newness except a fellow-septuagenarian, +who had seen Rome earlier even than I, and who thought it well that the +Ghetto should have been cleared away, though some visitors, who had +perhaps never lived in a Ghetto, thought it a pity if not a shame, and +an incalculable loss to the picturesque. These also thought the Tiber +Embankments a wicked sacrifice to the commonplace, though the mud-banks +of other days invited the torrent to an easy overflow of whole quarters +of the town, which were left reeking with the filth of the flood that +overlay the filth of the streets, and combined with it to an effect of +disease and of discomfort not always personally unknown to the lover of +the picturesque. There used to be a particular type of typhoid known as +Roman fever, but now quite unknown, thanks to the Tiber Embankments and +to the light and air let into the purlieus of that mediaeval Rome for +which the injudicious grieve so loudly. The perfect municipal +housekeeping of our time leaves no darkest and narrowest lane or alley +unswept; every morning the shovel and broom go over the surfaces +formerly almost impassable to the foot and quite impossible to the nose. + +I am speaking literally as well as frankly, and though I can understand +why some envious New-Yorker, remembering our blackguard streets and +avenues, should look askance at the decency of the newer Rome and feign +it an offence against beauty and poetry, I do not see why a Londoner, +who himself lives in a well-kept town, should join with any of my +fellow-barbarians in hypocritically deploring the modern spirit which +has so happily invaded the Eternal City. The Londoner should rather +entreat us not to be humbugs and should invite us to join him in +rejoicing that the death-rate of Rome, once the highest in the civilized +world, is now almost the lowest. But the language of Shakespeare and +Milton is too often internationally employed in deploring the modernity +which has housed us aliens there in such perfect comfort and safety. One +must confine one's self to instances, and one may take that of the +Ludovisi Quarter, as it is called, where I dwelt in so much peace and +pleasure except when I was reminded that it was formed by plotting the +lovely Villa Ludovisi in house lots and building it up in attractive +hotels and apartment-houses. Even then I did not suffer so keenly as +some younger people, who had never seen the villa, seemed to do, though +there are still villas to burn in and about Rome, and they could not +really miss the Ludovisi. It was a pretty place, but not beyond praise, +and the quarter also is pretty, though also not beyond praise. The villa +was for the pleasure and pride of one family, but it signified, even in +its beauty, nothing but patrician splendor, which is a poor thing at +best; and the quarter is now for the pleasure and pride of great numbers +of tourists, mostly of that plutocracy from which a final democracy is +inevitably to evolve itself. I could see no cause to beat the breast in +this; and in humbler instances, even to very humble, I could not find +that things were nearly as bad in Rome as they have been painted. + +There is no doubt but at one time, directly after the coming of the +capital, Rome was badly overbuilt. There is no doubt, also, that Rome +has grown up to these rash provisions for her growth, and that she now +"stuffs out her vacant garments with her form" pretty fully. One must +not say that all the flats in all the houses are occupied, but most of +them are; and if now the property of the speculators is the property of +the banks, the banks are no bad landlords, and the law does not spare +them the least of their duties to their tenants; or so, at least, it is +said. + +Another typical wrong to the old Rome, or rather to the not-yet Rome, +was the building-up, beyond the Tiber, of the Quarter of the Fields, so +called, where Zola in his novel of _Rome_ has placed most of the squalor +which he so lavishly employs in its contrasts. In these he shows +himself the romanticist that he always frankly owned he was in spite of +himself; but after I had read his book I made it my affair to visit the +scenes of poverty and misery in the Quartiere dei Prati. When I did so I +found that I had already passed through the quarter without noting +anything especially poor or specifically miserable, and I went a third +time to make sure that I had not overlooked something impressively +lamentable. But I did not see above three tenement-houses with the wash +hung from the windows, and with the broken shutters of poverty and +misery, in a space where on the East Side or the North Side in New York +I could have counted such houses by the score, almost the hundred. In +this quarter the streets were swept every morning as they are everywhere +in Rome, and though toward noon they were beginning to look as slovenly +as our streets look when they have just been "cleaned," I knew that the +next morning these worst avenues of Rome would be swept as our best +never have been since the days of Waring. + +Beyond the tenements the generous breadth of the new streets has been +bordered by pleasant stucco houses of the pretty Italian type, +fleetingly touched but not spoiled by the taste of the _art nouveau,_ +standing in their own grounds, and not so high-fenced but one could look +over their garden-walls into the shrubs and flowers about them. Like +suburban effects are characteristic of the new wide residential streets +on the hither side of the Tiber, and on both shores the streets expand +from time to time into squares, with more or less tolerable new +monuments--say, of the Boston average--in them. The business streets +where they bear the lines of the frequently recurrent trams are spacious +and straight, and though they are not the Corso, the Corso itself, it +must be remembered, is only a street of shops by no means impressive, +and is mostly dim under the overtowering walls of palaces which have no +space to be dignified in. Now and then their open portals betray a +glimpse of a fountained or foliaged court, but whether these palaces are +outwardly beautiful or not no one can tell from what sight one can get +of them; no, not even the most besotted sentimentalist of those who +bewail the loss of mediaeval Rome when they mean Rome of the +Renaissance. How much of that Rome has been erased by modern Rome I do +not know, but I think not so much as people pretend. Some of the ugly +baroque churches have been pulled down to allow the excavation of +imperial Rome, but there are plenty of ugly baroque churches left. It is +said the princely proprietors of the old palaces which are let in +apartments along the different Corsos (for the Corso is several) are +going to pull them down and put up modern houses, with the hope of +modern rents, but again I do not know. More than once the fortuities of +hospitality found one the guest of dwellers in such stately domiciles, +and I could honestly share the anxiety with which they spoke of these +rumors; but there are a great many vast edifices of the sort, and I +should not be surprised if I went back to Rome after another forty-three +years to find most of them standing in 1951 where they now stand in +1908. Rome was not built in a day, and it will not be unbuilt or rebuilt +within the brief period that will make me one hundred and fourteen years +old. By that time I shall have outlived most of the medievalists, and I +can say to the few survivors: "There, you see that new Rome never went +half so far as you expected." + +But no doubt it will go further than it has yet gone, in the way that is +for the good and comfort of mankind. In one of the newer quarters, of +which the Baths of Diocletian form the imperial centre, my just American +pride was flattered by tho sign on a handsome apartment-house going up +in gardened grounds, which advertised that it was to be finished with a +lift and steam-heating. Many of the newer houses are already supplied +with lifts, but central heating is as yet only beginning to spread from +the hotels, where steam has been installed in compliance with the +impassioned American demand to be warm all round when one is in-doors. +New Rome is not going so fast and so far but that it will keep, to +whatever end it reaches, one of the characteristic charms of the old and +older Rome. I shall expect to see when I come back in 1951 the same or +the like corners of garden walls, with the tops of shining foliage +peering over them, that now enchant the passer in the street; from the +windows of my electric-ele-vatored, steam-heated apartment I shall look +down into the seclusion of gardens, with the golden globes of orange +espaliers mellowing against the walls, and the fountain in the midst of +oleanders and of laurels + + "Shaking its loosened silver in the sun." + +Slim cypresses will then as now blacken through the delicate air against +the blue sky, and a stone-pine will spread its umbrella over some +sequestered nook. By that time the craze for the eucalyptus which now +possesses all Italy will be over, and every palm-tree will be cut down, +while the ilex will darken in its place and help the eternal youth of +the marbles to a greener old age of moss and mould in the gloom of its +spreading shade. All these things beautifully abound in Rome now, as +they always have abounded, and there is no reason to fear that they will +cease to abound. + +Rome grows, and as Italy prospers it will grow more and more, for there +must forever be a great and famous capital where there has always been +one. The place is so perfectly the seat of an eternal city that it might +well seem to have been divinely chosen because of the earth and heaven +which are more in sympathy there than anywhere else in the world. The +climate is beyond praise for a winter which is mild without being weak; +there is a summer of tolerable noonday heat, and of nights deliciously +cool; the spring is scarcely earlier than in our latitudes, but the fall +is a long, slow decline from the temperature of October to the lowest +level of January without the vicissitudes of other autumns. The +embrowning or reddening or yellowing leaves turn sere, but drop or cling +to their parent boughs as they choose, for there is seldom a frost to +loosen their hold, and seldom a storm to tear them away. + +So it is said by those who profess a more intimate acquaintance with the +Roman meteorology than I can boast, but from the little I know I can +believe anything of it that is of good report. Everywhere the prevalence +of the ilex, the orange, the laurel, the pine, flatters January with an +illusion of June, and under our hotel windows I was witness of the +success of the sycamore leaves in keeping a grip of their native twigs +even after the new buds came to push them away. In the last days of +March a plum-tree hung its robe of white blossoms over the wall of the +Capuchin convent from the garden within; but the almond-trees had been +in bloom for six weeks before, and the deeper pink of the peach had more +warmly flushed the suburbs for fully a fortnight. + +Still, a mild winter and an endurable summer will not of themselves make +a great capital, and it was probably the Romans themselves who in the +past made Rome the capital of the world, first politically and then +religiously. Whether they will make it so hereafter remains to be seen. +In the sense of all the Italians being Romans, I believe, with my +profound faith in the race, that they are very capable of doing it; and +they will have the help of the whole world in the work, or what is most +liberal and enlightened in the whole world. As it is, Rome has a pull +with Occidental civilization which forever constitutes her its head +city. The only European capitals comparable with her are London, Paris, +and Berlin; one cannot take account of New York, which is merely the +commercial metropolis of America, with a possibility of becoming the +business centre of both hemispheres. Washington is still in its nonage +and of a numerical unimportance in which it must long remain almost +ludicrously inferior to other capitals, not to dwell upon its want of +anything like artistic, literary, scientific, and historical primacy. It +is the voluntary political centre of the greatest republic of any time +and of a nation which is already unrivalled in its claim upon the +future. But it is not of the involuntary and unconscious growth of a +capital like London, which is the centre of a mighty state, deep-rooted +in the past, and the capital of that Anglo-Saxon race of which we are +ourselves a condition, and of a colonial empire without a present equal. +Paris is France in the sense of representing the intense life of a +nation unsurpassed in the things which enlighten and ennoble the human +intellect and advance mankind. Berlin is the concentration of the strong +will of a state which has made itself great out of the weak will of +sundry inferior states, homogeneous in their disunity more than in any +positive quality, and which stands for a political ideal more nearly +reactionary, more nearly mediaeval, than any other modern state. Berlin +is not German as Paris is French, and Rome is not so exclusively +Italian. In fact, her greatness, accomplished and destined, lies in just +the fact that she is not and never can be exclusively Italian. Human +interests too universal and imperative for the control of a single race, +even so brilliant and so gifted as the Italian race, which is naturally +and necessarily in possession, centre about her through history, +religion, art, and make every one at home in the city which is the +capital of Christendom. Now and then I saw some shining and twinkling +Japs going about with Baedekers, and I imagined them giving a modest and +unprejudiced mind to Rome without claiming, tacitly or explicitly, the +right to dispute the Italian theory and practice in its control. But +every Occidental stranger (if any one of European blood is a stranger in +the home of Christianity) I knew to be there in a mood more or less +critical, and in a disposition to find fault with the Rome which is now +making, or making over. + +We journeyers or sojourners can do this without expense or inconvenience +to ourselves, and we can easily blame the Italian conception of the +future city which, to name but one fact, has made it possible for us to +visit her in comfort at every season and to come away without having +come down with the Roman fever. In spite of the sort of motherly, or at +the worst step-motherly, welcome which she gives to all us closely or +distantly related children of hers; in spite of her immemorial fame and +her immortal beauty; in spite of her admirable housekeeping, in which +she rises every morning at daybreak and sweeps clean every hole and +corner of her dwelling; in spite of her wonderful sky, her life-giving +air; in spite of the level head she keeps in her political affairs, and +the miraculous poise she maintains between the antagonism of State and +Church; in spite of her wise eclecticism in modern improvements; in +spite of her admirable hygiene, which has constituted her one of the +healthiest, if not the healthiest city in Europe; in spite of the +solvency which she preserves amid expenses to which the vast scale of +antiquity obliges her in all her public enterprises (a thing to be +hereafter studied), we, the ungracious offspring of her youth, come from +our North and West and censure and criticise and carp. I have seldom +conversed with any fellow-visitor in Rome who could not improve her in +some phase or other, who could not usefully advise her, who, at the +best, did not patronize her. I offer myself as almost the sole example +of a stranger who was contented with her as she is, or as she is going +to be without his help; and I am the more confident, therefore, in +suggesting to Rome an expedient by which she can repair the finances +which her visitors say are so foolishly and wastefully mismanaged in her +civic schemes. A good round tax, such as Carlsbad levies upon all +sojourners, if laid upon the multitudinous tourists joining in such a +chorus of criticism of Rome would give them the indefeasible right to +their opinions and would help to replete a treasury which they believe +is always in danger of being exhausted. + + + + +III + +THE COLOSSEUM AND THE FORUM + + +As I have told, the first visit I paid to the antique world in Rome was +at the Colosseum the day after our arrival. For some unknown reason I +was going to begin with the Baths of Caracalla, but, as it happened, +these were the very last ruins we visited in Rome; and I do not know +just what accident diverted us to the Colosseum; perhaps we stopped +because it was on the way to the Baths and looked an easier conquest. At +any rate, I shall never regret that we began with it. + +After twoscore years and three it was all strangely familiar. I do not +say that in 1864 there was a horde of boys at the entrance wishing to +sell me postcards--these are a much later invention of the Enemy--but I +am sure of the men with trays full of mosaic pins and brooches, and +looking, they and their wares, just as they used to look. The Colosseum +itself looked unchanged, though I had read that a minion of the wicked +Italian government had once scraped its flowers and weeds away and +cleaned it up so that it was perfectly spoiled. But it would take a good +deal more than that to spoil the Colosseum, for neither the rapine of +the mediaeval nobles, who quarried their palaces from it, nor the +industrial enterprise of some of the popes, who wished to turn it into +workshops, nor the archeology of United Italy had sufficed to weaken in +it that hold upon the interest proper to the scene of the most +stupendous variety shows that the world has yet witnessed. The terrible +stunts in which men fought one another for the delight of other men in +every manner of murder, and wild beasts tore the limbs of those glad to +perish for their faith, can be as easily imagined there as ever, and the +traveller who visits the place has the assistance of increasing hordes +of other tourists in imagining them. + +I will not be the one to speak slight of that enterprise which marshals +troops of the personally conducted through the place and instructs them +in divers languages concerning it. Save your time and money so, if you +have not too much of either, and be one of an English, French, or German +party, rather than try to puzzle the facts out for yourself, with one +contorted eye on your Baedeker and the other on the object in question. +In such parties a sort of domestic relation seems to grow up through +their associated pleasures in sight-seeing, and they are like family +parties, though politer and patienter among themselves than real family +parties. They are commonly very serious, though they doubtless all have +their moments of gayety; and in the Colosseum I saw a French party +grouped for photography by a young woman of their number, who ran up and +down before them with a kodak and coquet-tishly hustled them into +position with pretty, bird-like chirpings of appeal and reproach, and +much graceful self-evidencing. I do not censure her behavior, though +doubtless there were ladies among the photographed who thought it +overbold; if the reader had been young and blond and _svelte,_ in a +Parisian gown and hat, with narrow russet shoes, not too high-heeled for +good taste, I do not believe he would have been any better; or, if he +would, I should not have liked him so well. + +On the earlier day which I began speaking of I found that I was +insensibly attaching myself to an English-hearing party of the +personally conducted, in the dearth of my own recollections of the local +history, but I quickly detached myself for shame and went back and +meekly hired the help of a guide who had already offered his services in +English, and whom I had haughtily spurned in his own tongue. His +English, though queer, was voluminous; but I am not going to drag the +reader at our heels laden with lore which can be applied only on the +spot or in the presence of postal-card views of the Colosseum. It is +enough that before my guide released us we knew where was the box of +Caesar, whom those about to die saluted, and where the box of the +Vestals whose fatal thumbs gave the signal of life or death for the +unsuccessful performer; where the wild beasts were kept, and where the +Christians; where were the green-rooms of the gladiators, who waited +chatting for their turn to go on and kill one another. One must make +light of such things or sink under them; and if I am trying to be a +little gay, it is for the readers' sake, whom I would not have perish of +their realization. Our guide spared us nothing, such was his conscience +or his science, and I wish I could remember his name, for I could +commend him as most intelligent, even, when least intelligible. +However, the traveller will know him by the winning smile of his +rosy-faced little son, who follows him round and is doubtless bringing +himself up as the guide of coming generations of tourists. There had +been a full pour of forenoon sunshine on the white dust of the street +before our hotel, but the cold of the early morning, though it had not +been too much for the birds that sang in the garden back of us, had left +a skim of ice in damp spots, and now, in the late gray of the afternoon, +the ice was visible and palpable underfoot in the Colosseum, where +crowds of people wandered severally or collectively about in the +half-frozen mud. They were, indeed, all over the place, up and down, in +every variety of costume and aspect, but none were so picturesque as a +little group of monks who had climbed to a higher tier of the arches and +stood looking down into the depths where we looked up at them, denned +against the sky in their black robes, which opened to show their under +robes of white. They were picturesque, but they were not so monumental +as an old, unmistakable American in high-hat, with long, drooping +side-whiskers, not above a purple suspicion of dye, who sat on a broken +column and vainly endeavored to collect his family for departure. +Whenever he had gathered two or three about him they strayed off as the +others came up, and we left him sardonically patient of their adhesions +and defections, which seemed destined to continue indefinitely, while we +struggled out through the postal-card boys and mosaic-pin men to our +carriage. Then we drove away through the quarter of somewhat jerry-built +apartment-houses which neighbor the Colosseum, and on into the salmon +sunset which, after the gray of the afternoon, we found waiting us at +our hotel, with the statues on the balustrated wall of the villa garden +behind it effectively posed in the tender light, together with the +eidolons of those picturesque monks and that monumental American. + +We could safely have stayed longer, for the evening damp no longer +brings danger of Roman fever, which people used to take in the +Colosseum, unless I am thinking of the signal case of Daisy Miller. She, +indeed, I believe, got it there by moonlight; but now people visit the +place by moonlight in safety; and there are even certain nights of the +season advertised when you may see it by the varicolored lights of the +fireworks set off in it. My impression of it was quite vivid enough +without that, and the vision of the Colosseum remained, and still +remains, the immense skeleton of the stupendous form stripped of all +integumental charm and broken down half one side of its vast oval, so +that wellnigh a quarter of the structural bones are gone. + +With its image there persisted and persists the question constantly +recurrent in the presence of all the imperial ruins, whether imperial +Rome was not rather ugly than otherwise. The idea of those +world-conquerors was first immensity and then beauty, as much as could +survive consistently with getting immensity into a given space. The +question is most of all poignant in the Forum, which I let wait a full +fortnight before moving against it in the warm sun of an amiable +February morning. On my first visit to Rome I could hardly wait for day +to dawn after my arrival before rushing to the Cow Field, as it was then +called, and seeing the wide-horned cattle chewing the cud among the +broken monuments now so carefully cherished and, as it were, sedulously +cultivated. It is doubtful whether all that has since been done, and +which could not but have been done, by the eager science as much +involuntarily as voluntarily applied to the task, has resulted in a more +potent suggestion of what the Forum was in the republican or imperial +day than what that simple, old, unassuming Cow Field afforded. There +were then as now the beautiful arches; there were the fragments of the +temple porches, with their pillars; there was the "unknown column with +the buried base"; there were all the elements of emotion and meditation; +and it is possible that sentiment has only been cumbered Avith the +riches which archasology has dug up for it by lowering the surface of +the Cow Field fifteen or twenty feet; by scraping clean the buried +pavements; by identifying the storied points; by multiplying the +fragments of basal or columnar marbles and revealing the plans of +temples and palaces and courts and tracing the Sacred Way on which the +magnificence of the past went to dusty death. After all, the imagination +is very childlike, and it prefers the elements of its pleas-ures simple +and few; if the materials are very abundant or complex, it can make +little out of them; they embarrass it, and it turns critical in +self-defence. The grandeur that was Rome as visioned from the Cow Field +becomes in the mind's eye the kaleidoscopic clutter which the +resurrection of the Forum Romanum must more and more realize. + +If the visitor would have some rash notion of what the ugliness of the +place was like when it was in its glory, he may go look at the plastic +reconstruction of it, indefinitely reduced, in the modest building +across the way from the official entrance to the Forum. One cannot say +but this is intensely interesting, and it affords the consolation which +the humble (but not too humble) spirit may gather from witness of the +past, that the fashion of this world and the pride of the eyes and all +ruthless vainglory defeated themselves in ancient Rome, as they must +everywhere when they can work their will. If one had thought that in +magnitude and multitude some entire effect of beauty was latent, one had +but to look at that huddle of warring forms, each with beauty in it, but +beauty lost in the crazy agglomeration of temples and basilicas and +columns and arches and statues and palaces, incredibly painted and +gilded, and huddled into spaces too little for the least, and crowding +severally upon one another, without relation or proportion. Their mass +is supremely tasteless, almost senseless; that mob of architectural +incongruities was not only without collective beauty, but it was without +that far commoner and cheaper thing which we call picturesqueness. This +has come to it through ruin, and we must give a new meaning to the word +vandalism if we would appreciate what the barbarians did for Rome in +tumbling her tawdry splendor into the heaps which are now at least +paint-able. Imperial Rome as it stood was not paintable; I doubt if it +would have been even photographable to anything but a picture post-card +effect. + +But as yet I wandered in the Forum safe from the realization of its +ugliness when it was in its glory. I cannot say that even now it is +picturesque, but it is paintable, and certainly it is pathetic. Stumps +of columns, high and low, stand about in the places where they stood in +their unbroken pride, and though it seems a hardship that they should +not have been left lying in the kindly earth or on it instead of being +pulled up and set on end, it must be owned that they are scarcely +overworked in their present postures. More touching are those +inarticulate heaps, cairns of sculptured fragments, piled here and there +together and waiting the knowledge which is some time to assort them and +translate them into some measure of coherent meaning. But it must always +be remembered that when they were coherent they were only beautiful +parts of a whole that was brutally unbeautiful. We have but to use the +little common-sense which Heaven has vouchsafed some of us in order to +realize that Rome, either republican or imperial, was a state for which +we can have no genuine reverence, and that mostly the ruins of her past +can stir in us no finer emotion than wonder. But necessarily, for the +sake of knowledge, and of ascertaining just what quantity and quality of +human interest the material records of Roman antiquity embody, +archaeology must devote itself with all possible piety to their +recovery. The removal, handful by handful, of the earth from the grave +of the past which the whole Forum is, tomb upon tomb, is as dramatic a +spectacle as anything one can well witness; for that soil is richer than +any gold-mine in its potentiality of treasure, and it must be strictly +scrutinized, almost by particles, lest some gem of art should be cast +aside with the accumulated rubbish of centuries. Yet this drama, +poignantly suggestive as it always must be, was the least incident of +that morning in the Forum which it was my fortune to pass there with +other better if not older tourists as guest of the Genius Loci. It was +not quite a public event, though the Commend atore Boni is so well known +to the higher journalism, and even to fiction (as the reader of Anatole +France's _La Pierre Blanche_ will not have forgotten), that nothing +which he archseolog-ically does is without public interest, and this +excursion in the domain of antiquity was expected to result in +identifying the site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator. It was conjectured +that the temple vowed to this specific Jupiter for his public spirit in +stopping the flight of a highly demoralized Roman army would be found +where we actually found it. Archaaology seems to proceed by hypothesis, +like other sciences, and to enjoy a forecast of events before they are +actually accomplished. I do not say that I was very vividly aware of the +event in question; I could not go now and show where the temple stood, +but when I read of it in a cablegram to the American newspapers I almost +felt that I had dug it up with my own hands. + +Of many other facts I was at the time vividly aware: of the charm of +finding the archaeologist in an upper room of the mediaeval church which +is turning itself into his study, of listening to his prefatory talk, so +informal and so easy that one did not realize how learned it was, and +then of following him down to the scene of his researches and hearing +him speak wisely, poetically, humorously, even, of what he believed he +had reason to expect to find. We stood with him by the Arch of Titus and +saw how the sculptures had been broken from it in the fragments found at +its base, and how the carved marbles had been burned for lime in the +kiln built a few feet off, so that those who wanted the lime need not +have the trouble of carrying the sculptures away before burning them. A +handful of iridescent glass from a house-drain near by, where it had +been thrown by the servants after breaking it, testified of the +continuity of human nature in the domestics of all ages. A somewhat +bewildering suggestion of the depth at which the different periods of +Rome underlie one another spoke from the mouth of the imperial well or +cistern which had been sunk on the top of a republican well or cistern +at another corner of the arch. In a place not far off, looking like a +potter's clay pit, were graves so old that they seem to have antedated +the skill of man to spell any record of himself; and in the small +building which seems the provisional repository of the archaeologist's +finds we saw skeletons of the immemorial dead in the coffins of split +trees still shutting them imperfectly in. Mostly the bones and bark were +of the same indifferent interest, but the eternal pathos of human grief +appealed from what mortal part remained of a little child, with beads on +her tattered tunic and an ivory bracelet on her withered arm. History in +the presence of such world-old atomies seemed an infant babbling of +yesterday, in what it could say of the Rome of the Popes, the Rome of +the Emperors, the Rome of the Republicans, the Rome of the Kings, the +Rome of the Shepherds and Cowherds, through which a shaft sunk in the +Forum would successively pierce in reaching those aboriginals whose +sepulchres alone witnessed that they had ever lived. + +It is the voluble sorrow common to all the emotional visitors in Rome +that the past of the different generations has not been treated by the +present with due tenderness, and the Colosseum is a case notoriously in +point. But, if it was an Italian archaeologist who destroyed the wilding +growths in the Colosseum and scraped it to a bareness which nature is +again trying to clothe with grass and weeds, it ought to be remembered +that it is another Italian archaeologist who has set laurels all up and +down the slopes of the Forum, and has invited roses and honeysuckles to +bloom wherever they shall not interfere with science, but may best help +repair the wounds he must needs deal the soil in researches which seem +no mere dissections, but feats of a conservative, almost a constructive +surgery. It is said that the German archaeologists objected to those +laurels where the birds sing so sweetly; perhaps they thought them not +strictly scientific; but when the German Kaiser, who always knows so +much better than all the other Germans put together, visited the Forum, +he liked them, and he parted from the Genius Loci with the imperial +charge, "Laurels, laurels, evermore laurels." After that the emotional +tourist must be hard indeed to please who would begrudge his laurels to +Commendatore Boni, or would not wish him a perpetual crown of them. + + + + +IV + +THE ANGLO-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE SPANISH STEPS + + +It is not every undeserving American who can have the erudition and +divination of the Genius Loci in answer to his unuttered prayer during a +visit to even a small part of the Roman Forum. But failing the company +of the Commendatore Boni, which is without price, there are to be had +for a very little money the guidance and philosophy, and, for all I +know, the friendship of several peripatetic historians who lead people +about the ruins in Rome, and instruct them in the fable, and doubtless +in the moral, of the things they see. If I had profited by their +learning, so much greater, or at least securer, than any the average +American has about him, I should now be tiring the reader with knowledge +which I am so willingly leaving him to imagine in me. If he is like the +average American, he has really once had some nodding acquaintance with +the facts, but history is apt to forsake you on the scene of it, and to +come lagging back when it is too late. In this psychological experience +you feel the need of help which the peripatetic historian supplies to +the groups of perhaps rather oblivious than ignorant tourists of all +nations in all languages, but preferably English. We Anglo-Saxons seem +to be the most oblivious or most ignorant; but I would not slight our +occasionally available culture any more than I would imply that those +peripatetic historians are at all like the cicerones whom they have so +largely replaced. I believe they are instructed and scholarly men; I +offer them my respect; and I wish now that I had been one of their daily +disciples, for it is full sixty years since I read Goldsmith's _History +of Rome._ As I saw them, somewhat beyond earshot, they and their +disciples formed a spectacle which was always interesting, and, so far +as the human desire for information is affecting, was also affecting. +The listeners to the lecturers would carry back to their respective +villages and towns, or the yet simpler circles of our ordinary city +lift, vastly more association with the storied scene than I had brought +to it or should bring away. In fact, there is nothing more impressive in +the floating foreign society of Rome than its zeal for self-improvement. +No one classes himself with his fellow-tourists, though if he happens to +be a traveller he is really one of them; and it is with difficulty I +keep myself from the appearance of patronizing them in these praises, +which are for the most part reverently meant. Their zeal never seemed to +be without knowledge, whatever their age or sex; the intensity of their +application reached to all the historical and actual interests, to the +religious as well as the social, the political as well as the financial; +but, fitly in Rome, it seemed specially turned to the study of +antiquity, in the remoter or the nearer past. There was given last +winter a series of lectures at the American School of Archaeology by the +head of it, which were followed with eager attention by hearers who +packed the room. But these lectures, which were so admirably first in. +the means of intelligent study, seemed only one of the means by which my +fellow-tourists were climbing the different branches of knowledge. All +round my apathy I felt, where I did not see, the energy of the others; +with my mind's ear I heard a rustle as of the turning leaves of +Baedekers, of Murrays, of Hares, and of the many general histories and +monographs of which these intelligent authorities advised the +supplementary reading. + +If I am not so mistaken as I might very well be, however, the local +language is less studied than it was in former times, when far fewer +Italians spoke English. My own Italian was of that date; but, though I +began by using it, I found myself so often helped for a forgotten +meaning that I became subtly demoralized and fell luxuriously into the +habit of speaking English like a native of Rome. Yet tacitly, secretly +perhaps, there may have been many people who were taking up Italian as +zealously as many more were taking up antiquity. One day in the Piazza +di Spagna, in a modest little violet of a tea-room, which was venturing +to open in the face of the old-established and densely thronged parterre +opposite, I noted from my Roman version of a buttered muffin a tall, +young Scandinavian girl, clad in complete corduroy, gray in color to the +very cap surmounting her bandeaux of dark-red hair. She looked like some +of those athletic-minded young women of Ibsen's plays, and the pile of +books on the table beside her tea suggested a student character. When +she had finished her tea she put these books back into a leather bag, +which they filled to a rigid repletion, and, after a few laconic phrases +with the tea-girl, she went out like going off the stage. Her powerful +demeanor somehow implied severe studies; but the tea-girl--a massive, +confident, confiding Roman--said, No, she was studying Italian, and all +those books related to the language, for which she had a passion. She +was a Swede; and here the student being exhausted as a topic, and my own +nationality being ascertained, What steps, the tea-girl asked, should +one take if one wished to go to New York in order to secure a place as +cashier in a restaurant? + +My facts were not equal to the demand upon them, nor are they equal to +anything like exact knowledge of the intellectual pursuits of the many +studious foreign youth of all ages and sexes whom one meets in Rome. As +I say, our acquaintance with Italian is far less useful, however +ornamental, than it used to be. The Romans are so quick that they +understand you when they speak no English, and take your meaning before +you can formulate it in their own tongue. A classically languaged +friend of mine, who was hard bested in bargaining for rooms, tried his +potential landlord in Latin, and was promptly answered in Latin. It was +a charming proof that in the home of the Church her mother-speech had +never ceased to be spoken by some of her children, but I never heard of +any Americans, except my friend, recurring to their college courses in +order to meet the modern Latins in their ancient parlance. In spite of +this instance, and that of the Swedish votary of Italian, I decided that +the studies of most strangers were archaeological rather than +philological, historical rather than literary, topographical rather than +critical. I do not say that I had due confirmation of my theory from the +talk of the fellow-sojourners whom one is always meeting at teas and +lunches and dinners in Rome. Generally the talk did not get beyond an +exchange of enthusiasms for the place, and of experiences of the +morning, in the respective researches of the talkers. + +Such of us as were staying the winter, of course held aloof from the +hurried passers-through, or looked with kindly tolerance on their +struggles to get more out of Rome in a given moment than she perhaps +yielded with perfect acquiescence. We fancied that she kept something +back; she is very subtle, and has her reserves even with people who pass +a whole winter within her gates. The fact is, there are a great many of +her, though we knew her afar as one mighty personality. There is the +antique Rome, the mediaeval Rome, the modern Rome; but that is only the +beginning. There is the Rome of the State and the Rome of the Church, +which divide between them the Rome of politics and the Rome of fashion; +but here is a field so vast that Ave may not enter it without danger of +being promptly lost in it. There is the Rome of the visiting +nationalities, severally and collectively; there is especially the +Anglo-American Rome, which if not so populous as the German, for +instance, is more important to the Anglo-Saxons. It sees a great deal of +itself socially, but not to the exclusion of the sympathetic Southern +temperaments which seem to have a strange but not unnatural affinity +with it. So far as we might guess, it was a little more Clerical than +Liberal in its local politics; if you were very Liberal, it was well to +be careful, for Conversion lurked under many exteriors which gave no +outward sign of it; if the White of the monarchy and the Black of the +papacy divide the best Roman families, of course foreigners are more +intensely one or the other than the natives. But Anglo-Saxon life was +easy for one not self-obliged to be of either opinion or party; and it +was pleasant in most of its conditions. In Rome our internationali-ties +seemed to have certain quarters largely to themselves. In spite of our +abhorrence of the destruction and construction which have made modern +Rome so wholesome and delightful, most of us had our habitations in the +new quarters; but certain pleasanter of the older streets, like the Via +Sistina, Via del Babuino, Via Capo le Case, Via Gregoriana, were our +sojourn or our resort. Especially in the two first our language filled +the outer air to the exclusion of other conversation, and within doors +the shopmen spoke it at least as well as the English think the Americans +speak it. It was pleasant to meet the honest English faces, to recognize +the English fashions, to note the English walk; and if these were +oftener present than their American counterparts, it was not from our +habitual minority, but from our occasional sparsity through the panic +that had frightened us into a homekeeping foreign to our natures. + +In like manner our hyphenated nationalities have the Piazza di Spagna +for their own. There are the two English book-stores and the circulating +libraries, in each of which the books are so torn and dirty that you +think they cannot be quite so bad in the other till you try it; there +seems nothing for it, then, but to wash and iron the different Tauchnitz +authors, and afterward darn and mend them. The books on sale are, of +course, not so bad; they are even quite clean; and except for giving out +on the points of interest where you could most wish them to abound, +there is nothing in them to complain of. There is less than nothing to +complain of in the tea-room which enjoys our international favor except +that at the most psychological moment of the afternoon you cannot get a +table, in spite of the teas going on in the fashionable hotels and the +friendly houses everywhere. The toast is exceptional; the muffins so +far from home are at least reminiscent of their native island; the tea +and butter are alike blameless. The company, to the eye of the friend of +man, is still more acceptable, for, if the Americans have dwindled, the +English have increased; and there is nothing more endearing than the +sight of a roomful of English people at their afternoon tea in a strange +land. No type seems to predominate; there are bohemians as obvious as +clerics; there are old ladies and young, alike freshly fair; there are +the white beards of age and the clean-shaven cheeks of youth among the +men; some are fashionable and some outrageously not; peculiarities of +all kinds abound without conflicting. Some talk, frankly audible, and +others are frankly silent, but a deep, wide purr, tacit or explicit, +close upon a muted hymn of thanksgiving, in that assemblage of mutually +repellent personalities, for the nonce united, would best denote the +universal content. + +Hard by this tea-room there is a public elevator by which the reader +will no doubt rather ascend with me than, climb the Spanish Steps +without me; after the first time, I never climbed them. The elevator +costs but ten centimes, and I will pay for both; there is sometimes +drama thrown in that is worth twice the money; for there is war, more or +less roaring, set between the old man who works the elevator and the +young man who sells the tickets to it. The law is that the elevator will +hold only eight persons, but one memorable afternoon the ticket-seller +insisted upon giving a ticket to a tall, young English girl who formed +an unlawful ninth. The elevator-man, a precisian of the old school, +expelled her; the ticket-seller came forward and reinstated her; again +the elder stood upon the letter of the law; again the younger demanded +its violation. The Tuscan tongue in their Roman mouths flew into +unintelligibility, while the poor girl was put into the elevator and out +of it; and the respective parties to the quarrel were enjoying it so +much that it might never have ended if she had not taken the affair into +her own hands. She finally followed the ticket-seller back to his desk, +to which he retired after each act of the melodrama, and threw her +ticket violently down. "Here is your ticket!" she said in English so +severe that he could not help understanding and cowering before it. +"Give me back my money!" He was too much stupefied by her decision of +character to speak; and he returned her centimes in silence while we got +into our cage and mounted to the top, and the elevator-man furiously +repeated to himself his side of the recent argument all the way up. This +did not prevent his touching his hat to each of us in parting, and +assuring us that he revered us; a thing that only old-fashioned Romans +seem to do nowadays, in the supposed decay of manners which the +comfortable classes everywhere like to note in the uncomfortable. Then +some ladies of our number went off on a platform across the house-tops +to which the elevator had brought us, as if they expected to go down the +chimneys to their apartments; and the rest of us expanded into the +Piazza Trinita de' Monti; and I stopped to lounge against the uppermost +balustrade of the Spanish Steps. + +It is notable, but not surprising, how soon one forms the habit of this, +for, seen from above, the Spanish Steps are only less enchanting than +the Spanish Steps seen from below, whence they are absolutely the most +charming sight in the world. The reader, if he has nothing better than a +post-card (which I could have bought him on the spot for fifty a franc), +knows how the successive stairways part and flow downward to right and +left, like the parted waters of a cascade, and lose themselves at the +bottom in banks of flowers. No lovelier architectural effect was ever +realized from a happy fancy; but, of course, the pictorial effect is +richer from below, especially from the Via dei Condotti, where it opens +into the Piazza di Spagna. I suppose there must be hours of the day, and +certainly there are hours of the night, when in this prospect the Steps +have not the sunset on them. But most of the time they have the sunset +on them, warm, tender; a sunset that begins with the banks of daffodils +and lilies and anemones and carnations and roses and almond blossoms, +keeping the downpour of the marble cascades from flooding the piazza, +and mounts, mellowing and yellowing, up their gray stone, until it +reaches the Church of Trinita de' Monti at the top. + +There it lingers, I should say, till dawn, bathing the golden-brown +facade in an effulgence that lifelong absence cannot eclipse when once +it has blessed your sight. It is beauty that rather makes the heart +ache, and the charm of the Steps from above is something that you can +bear better if you are very, very worthy, or have the conceit of feeling +yourself so. It is a charm that imparts itself more in detail and is +less exclusively the effect of perpetual sunset. From the parapet +against which you lean you have a perfecter conception of the +architectural form than you get from below, and you are never tired of +seeing the successive falls of the Steps dividing themselves and then +coming together on the broad landings and again parting and coming +together. + +If there were once many models, male, female, and infant, brigands, +peasants, sages, and martyrs, lounging on the Spanish Steps, as it seems +to me there used to be, and as every one has heard say, waiting there +for the artists to come and carry them off to their studios and transfer +them to their canvases, they are now no longer there in noticeable +number. I saw some small boys in steeple-crowned soft hats and short +jackets, with their little legs wound round with the favorite bandaging +of brigands; and some mothers suitable for Madonnas, perhaps, with babes +at the breast; there was a patriarchal old man or two, ready no doubt to +pose for the prophets, or, at a pinch, for yet more celestial persons; +but for the rest the Steps were rather given up to flower-girls, +fruit-peddlers, and beggars pure and simple, on levels distinctly below +those infested by the post-card peddlers. The whole neighborhood abounds +in opportunities for charity, and at the corner of the Via Sistina there +is a one-legged beggar who professes to black shoes in the intervals of +alms-taking, and who early made me his prey. If sometimes I fancied +escaping by him to my lounge against the parapet of the steps, he +joyously overtook me with a swiftness of which few two-legged men are +capable; he wore a soldier's cap, and I hoped, for the credit of our +species, that he had lost his leg in battle, but I do not know. + +On a Sunday evening I once hung there a long time, watching with one eye +the people who were coining back from their promenade on the Pincian +Hill, and with the other the groups descending and ascending the Steps. +On the first landing below me there was a boy who gratified me, I dare +say unconsciously, by trying to stand on his hands; and a little +dramatic spectacle added itself to this feat of the circus. Two pretty +girls, smartly dressed in hats and gowns exactly alike, and doubtless +sisters, if not twins, passed down to the same level. One was with a +handsome young officer, and walked staidly beside him, as if content +with her quality of captive or captor. The other was with a civilian, of +whom she was apparently not sure. Suddenly she ran away from him to the +verge of the next fall of steps, possibly to show him how charmingly she +was dressed, possibly to tempt him by her grace in flight to follow her +madly. But he followed sanely and slowly, and she waited for him to come +up, in a capricious quiet, as if she had not done anything or meant +anything. That was all; but I am not hard to suit; and it was richly +enough for me. + +Her little comedy came to its denouement just under the shoulder of the +rose-roofed terrace jutting from a lowish, plainish house on the left, +beyond certain palms and eucalyptus-trees. It is one of the most sacred +shrines in Rome, for it was in this house that the "young English poet +whose name was writ in water" died to deathless fame three or fourscore +years ago. It is the Keats house, which when he lived in it was the +house of Severn the painter, his host and friend. I had visited it for +the kind sake of the one and the dear sake of the others when I first +visited Rome in 1864; and it was one of the earliest stations of my +second pilgrimage. It is now in form for any and all visitors, but the +day I went it had not yet been put in its present simple and tasteful +keeping. A somewhat shrill and scraping-voiced matron inquired my +pleasure when she followed me into the ground-floor entrance from +somewhere without, and then, understanding, called hor young daughter, +who led me up to the room where Keats mused his last verse and breathed +his last sigh. It is a very little room, looking down over the Spanish +Steps, with their dike of bloom, across the piazza to the narrow stretch +of the Via del Babuino. I must have stood in it with Severn and heard +him talk of Keats and his ultimate days and hours; for I remember some +such talk, but not the details of it. He was a very gentle old man and +fondly proud of his goodness to the poor dying poet, as he well might +be, and I was glad to be one of the many Americans who, he said, came to +grieve with him for the dead poet. + +Now, on my later visit, it was a cold, rainy day, and it was chill +within the house and without, and I imputed my weather to the time of +Keats's sojourn, and thought of him sitting by his table there in that +bare, narrow, stony room and coughing at the dismal outlook. Afterward I +saw the whole place put in order and warmed by a generous stove, for +people who came to see the Keats and Shelley collections of books and +pictures; but still the sense of that day remains. The young girl +sympathized with my sympathy, and wished to find a rose for me in the +trellis through which the rain dripped. She could not, and I suggested +that there would be roses in the spring. "No," she persisted, "sometimes +it makes them in the winter," but I had to come away through the reeking +streets without one. + +When it rains, it rains easily in Rome. But the weather was divine the +evening I looked one of my latest looks down on the Spanish Steps. The +sun had sunk rather wanly beyond the city, but a cheerful light of +electrics shone up at me from the Via dei Condotti. I stood and thought +of as much as I could summon from the past, and I was strongest, I do +not know why, with the persecutions of the early Christians. Presently a +smell of dinner came from the hotels around and the houses below, and I +was reminded to go home to my own _table d'hote._ My one-legged beggar +seemed to have gone to his, and I escaped him; but I was intercepted by +the sight of an old woman asleep over her store of matches. She was not +wakened by the fall of my ten-centime piece in her tray, but the boy +drowsing beside her roused himself, and roused her to the dreamy +expression of a gratitude quite out of scale with my alms. + + + + +V + +AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY + + +My visit to the Roman Forum when the Genius Loci verified to my +ignorance and the intelligence of my companions the well-conjectured +site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator was not the first nor yet the +second visit I had paid the place. There had been intermediate mornings +when I met two friends there, indefinitely more instructed, with whom I +sauntered from point to point, preying upon their knowledge for my +emotion concerning each. Information is an excellent thing--in others; +and but for these friends I should not now be able to say that this +mouldering heap of brickwork, rather than that, was Julius Caesar's +house; or just where it was that Antony made his oration over the waxen +effigy which served him for Caesar's body. They helped me realize how +the business life and largely the social life of Rome centred in the +Forum, but spared me so much detail that my fancy could play about among +its vanished edifices without inconvenience from the clutter of shops +and courts and monuments which were ultimately to hem it in and finally +to stifle it. They knew their Forum so well that they could not only +gratify any curiosity I had, but could supply me with curiosity when I +had none. For the moment I was aware that this spot or that, though it +looked so improbable, was the scene of deeds which will reverberate +forever; they taught me to be tolerant of what I had too lightly +supposed fables as serious traditions closely verging on facts. I +learned to believe again that the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, +because she had her den no great way off on the Palatine, and that +Romulus himself had really lived, since he had died and was buried in +the Forum, where they showed me his tomb, or as much of it as I could +imagine in the sullen little cellar so called. They also showed me the +rostrum where the Roman orators addressed the mass-meetings of the +republican times, and they showed me the lake, or the puddle left of it, +into which Curtius (or one of three heroes of the name) leaped at an +earlier day as a specific for the pestilence which the medical science +of the period had failed to control. In our stroll about the place we +were joined by one of the several cats living in the Forum, which +offered us collectively its acquaintance, as if wishing to make us feel +at home. It joined us and it quitted us from time to time, as the whim +took it, but it did not abandon us wholly till we showed a disposition +to believe in that lake of Curtius, so called after those three +public-spirited heroes, the first being a foreigner. Then the cat, which +had more than once stretched itself as if bored, turned from us in +contempt and went and lay down in a sunny corner near the tomb of +Romulus, and fell asleep. + +It is quite possible that my reader does not know, as lately I did not, +that the Roman Forum is but one of several forums connected with it by +ways long centuries since buried fathoms deep and built upon many +stories high. But I am now able to assure him that in the whole region +between the Roman Forum and the Forum of Trajan, which were formerly +opened into each other by the removal of a hill as tall as the top of +Trajan's Column, you pass over other forums hidden beneath your feet or +wheels. You cannot be stayed there, however, by the wonders which +archaeology will yet reveal in them (for archaeology has its relentless +eye upon every inch of the ground above them), but you will certainly +pause at the Forum of Trajan, where archaeology, as it is in +Commendatore Boni, has had its way already. In fact, until his work in +the Roman Forum is finished, the Forum of Trajan must remain his +greatest achievement, and the sculptured column of the great emperor +must serve equally as the archaeologist's monument. I do not remember +why in the old time I should have kept coming to look at that column and +study the sculptured history of Trajan's campaigns, toiling around it to +its top. I think one could then get close to its base, as now one +cannot, what with the deepening of the Forum to its antique level and +the enclosure of the whole space with an iron rail. The area below is +free only to a large company of those cats which seem to have their +dwelling among all the ruins and restorations of ancient Rome. People +come to feed the Trajan cats with the fish sold near by for the purpose, +and one morning, in pausing to view his column from the respectful +distance I had to keep, I counted no less than thirteen of his cats in +his forum. They were of every age and color, but much more respectable +in appearance than the cats of the Pantheon, which have no such sunny +expanse as that forum for their quarters, but only a very damp corner +beside the temple, and seem to have suffered in their looks and health +from the situation. It was afterward with dismay that I realized the +fatal number of the Trajan cats coming to their breakfast that morning +so unconscious of evil omen in the figure; but as there are probably no +statistics of mortality among the cats of Rome, I shall never know +whether any of the thirteen has rendered up one of their hundred and +seventeen lives. + +However, if I allowed myself to go on about the cats of Rome, either +ancient or modern, there would be no end. For instance, in a statuary's +shop in the Via Sistina there is a large yellow cat, which I one day saw +dressing the hair of the statuary's boy. It performed this office with a +very motherly anxiety, seated on the top of a high rotary table where +ordinarily the statuary worked at his carving, and pausing from time to +time, as it licked the boy's thick, black locks, to get the effect of +its labors. On other days or at other hours it slept under the +table-top, unvexed by the hammering that went on over its head. Even in +Rome, where cats are so abundant, it was a notable cat. + +If you visit the Roman Forum in the morning you are only too apt to be +hurried home by remembrance of the lunch-hour. That, at any rate, was my +case, but I was not so hungry that I would not pause on my way hotelward +at what used to be the Temple of Vesta in my earlier time, but which, is +now superseded by the more authentic temple in the Forum. I had long +revered the first in its former quality, and I now paid it the tribute +of unwilling renunciation. It is so nearly a perfect relic of ancient +Rome and so much more impressive, in its all but unbroken peristyle, +than the later but recumbent claimant to its identity that I am sure the +owners of the little bronze or alabaster copies of it scattered over the +world must share my pious reluctance. The custodian is still very proud +of it, and would have lectured me upon it much longer than I let him; as +it was, he kept me while he could cast a blazing copy of the _Popolo +Romano_ into the cavernous crypt under it, apparently to show me how +deep it was. He may have had other reasons; but in any case I urge the +traveller to allow him to do it, for it costs no additional fee, and it +seems to do him so much good. If it is not very near lunch-time, let the +traveller look well about him in the dusty little piazza there, for the +Temple of Fortune, with its bruised but beautiful facade, is hard by, as +much in the form that Servius Tullius gave it as could well be expected +after all this time. + +Perhaps the Circus of Marcellus is on the traveller's way home to lunch; +but he will always be passing the segment of its arcaded wall, filled in +with mediaeval masonry; and he need not stop, especially if he has his +cab by the hour, for there is nothing more to be seen of the circus. A +glimpse, through overhanging foliage, of the steps to the Campidoglio, +with Castor and Pollux beside their horses at top, may be a fortunate +accident of his course. If this happens it will help to rehabilitate for +him the Rome of the paganism to which these divinities remained true +through all temptations to Judaize during the unnumbered centuries of +their sojourn, forgotten, in the Ghetto. It is hardly possible that his +glimpse will include even the top of Marcus Aurelius's head where he +sits his bronze charger--an extremely fat one--so majestically in the +piazza beyond those brothers, as if conscious of being the most noble +equestrian statue which has ridden down to us from antiquity. + +A more purposed sight of all this will, of course, supply any defects of +chance, though I myself always liked chance encounters with the +monuments of the past. I had constantly cherished a remembrance of the +nobly beautiful facade which is all that is left of the Temple of +Neptune, and I meant deliberately to revisit it if I could find out +where it was. A kind fortuity befriended me when one day, driving +through the little piazza where it lurks behind the Piazza Co-lonna, I +looked up, and there, in awe-striking procession, stood the mighty +antique columns sustaining the entablature of mediaeval stucco with +their fluted marble. I could not say why their poor, defaced, immortal +grandeur should have always so affected me, for I do not know that my +veneration was due it more than many other fragments of the past; but no +arch or pillar of them all seems so impressive, so pathetic. To make the +reader the greatest possible confidence, I will own that I passed five +times through the Piazza Colonna to my tailor's in the next piazza (at +Rome your tailor wishes you to try on till you have almost worn your new +clothes out in the ordeal) before I realized that the Column of Marcus +Aurelius was not the more famous Column of Trajan. There is, in fact, a +strong family likeness between these columns, both being bandaged round +from bottom to top with the tale of the imperial achievements and having +a general effect in common; but there is no brother or cousin to the +dignity of that melancholy yet vigorous ruin of the Temple of Neptune, +or anything that resembles it in the whole of ancient Rome. It survives +having been a custom-house and being a stock-exchange without apparent +ignominy, while one feels an incongruity, to say the least, in the +Column of Marcus Aurelius looking down on the sign of the Mutual Life +Insurance Company of New York. Whether this is worse than for the +Palazzo di Venezia to confront the American Express Company where it is +housed on the other side of the piazza I cannot say. What I can say is +that I believe the Temple of Neptune would have been superior to either +fate; though I may be mistaken. + +Ruin, nearly everywhere in Rome, has to be very patient of the +environment; and even the monuments of the past which are in +comparatively good repair have not always the keeping that the past +would probably have chosen for them. One that suffers as little as any, +if not the very least, is the Pantheon, on whose glorious porch you are +apt to come suddenly, either from a narrow street beside it or across +its piazza, beyond the fountain fringed with post-card boys and their +bargains. In spite of them, the sight of the temple does mightily lift +the heart; and though you may have had, as I had, forty-odd years to +believe in it, you must waver in doubt of its reality whenever you see +it. It seems too great to be true, standing there in its immortal +sublimity, the temple of all the gods by pagan creation, and all the +saints by Christian consecration, and challenging your veneration +equally as classic or catholic. It is worthy the honor ascribed to it in +the very latest edition of Murray's _Handbook_ as "the best-preserved +monument of ancient Rome"; worthy the praise of the fastidious and +difficult Hare as "the most perfect pagan building in the city"; worthy +whatever higher laud my unconsulted Baedeker bestows upon it. But I +speak of the outside; and let not the traveller grieve if he comes upon +it at the noon hour, as I did last, and finds its vast bronze doors +closing against him until three o'clock; there are many sadder things in +life than not seeing the interior of the Pantheon. The gods are all +gone, and the saints are gone or going, for the State has taken the +Pantheon from the Church and is making it a national mausoleum. Victor +Emmanuel the Great and Umberto the Kind already lie there; but otherwise +the wide Cyclopean eye of the opening in the roof of the rotunda looks +down upon a vacancy which even your own name, as written in the +visitors' book, in the keeping of a solemn beadle, does not suffice to +fill, and which the lingering side altars scarcely relieve. + +I proved the fact by successive visits; but, after all my content with +the outside of the Pantheon, I came to think that what you want in Rome +is not the best-preserved monument, not the most perfect pagan building, +but the most ruinous ruin you can get. I am not sure that you get this +in the mouldering memorials of the past on the Palatine Hill, but you +get something more nearly like it than anything I can think of at the +moment. In that imperial and patrician and plutocratic residential +quarter you see, if you are of the moderately moneyed middle class, what +the pride of life must always come to when it has its way; and your +consolation is full if you pause to reflect how some day Fifth Avenue +and the two millionaire blocks eastward will be as the Palatine now is. + +Riches and power are of the same make in every time, though they may +wear different faces from age to age; and it will be well for the very +wealthy members of our smart set to keep this fact in mind when they +visit that huge sepulchre of human vainglory. + +But I will not pretend that I did so myself that matchless April morning +when I climbed over the ruins of the Palatine and found the sun rather +sick-eningly hot there. That is to say, it was so in the open spaces +which were respectively called the house of this emperor and that, the +temple of this deity or that, whose divine honors half the Caesars +shared; in the Stadium, beside the Lupercal, and the like. The Lupercal +was really imaginable as the home of the patroness wolf of Rome, being a +wild knot of hill fitly overgrown with brambles and bushes, and looking +very probably the spot where Caesar would thrice have refused the crown +that Antony offered him. But for the rest, one ruin might very well pass +for another; a temple with a broken statue and the stumps of a few +columns could very easily deceive any one but an archaeologist. +Fortunately we had the charming companionship of one of the most amiable +of archaeologists, who was none the less learned for being a woman; and +she made even me dimly aware of identities which would else have been +lost upon me. To be sure, I think that without help I should have known +the Stadium when I came to it, because it seemed studied from that in +Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, though it was indefinitely more +dilapidated, was so obviously meant for the same sorts of games and +races. I do not know but it was larger than the Cambridge Stadium, +though I will not speak so confidently of its size as of that deathly +cold in the vaults and subterranean passages by which we found our way +to the burning upper air out of the foundations and basements of palaces +and temples and libraries and theatres that had ceased to be. + +One of the most comfortable of these galleries was that in which +Caligula was justly done to death, or, if not Caligula, it was some +other tyrant who deserved as little to live. But for our guide I should +not have remembered his slaughter there, and how much satisfaction it +had given me when I first read of it in Goldsmith's _History of Rome;_ +and really you must not acquaint yourself too early with such facts, for +you forget them just when you could turn them to account. History is apt +to forsake you in the scene of it and come lagging hack afterward; and +you cannot hope always to have an archaeologist at your elbow to remind +you of things you have forgotten or possibly have not known. Suetonius, +Plutarch, De Quincey, Gibbon, these are no bad preparations for a visit +to the Palatine, but it is better to have read them yesterday than the +day before if you wish to draw suddenly upon them for associations with +any specific spot. If I were to go again to the Palatine, I would take +care to fortify myself with such structural facts from Hare's _Walks in +Rome,_ or from Murray, or even from Baedeker, as that it was the home of +Augustus and Tiberius, Domitian and Nero and Caligula and Septimius +Severus and Germanicus, and a very few of their next friends, and that +it radically differed from the Forum in being exclusively private and +personal to the residents, while that was inclusively public and common +to the whole world. I strongly urge the reader to fortify himself on +this point, for otherwise he will miss such significance as the place +may possibly have for him. Let him not trust to his impressions from +his general reading; there is nothing so treacherous; he may have +general reading enough to sink a ship, but unless he has a cargo taken +newly on board he will find himself tossing without ballast on those +billowy slopes of the Palatine, where he will vainly try for definite +anchorage. + +The billowy effect of the Palatine, inconvenient to the explorer, is its +greatest charm from afar, in whatever morning or evening light, or sun +or rain, you get its soft, brownish, greenish, velvety masses. Distance +on it is best, and distance in time as well as space. If you can believe +the stucco reconstruction opposite the Forum gate, ruin has been even +kinder to the Palatine than to the Forum, with which it was equally ugly +when in repair, if taken in the altogether, however beautiful in detail. +As you see it in that reproduction, it is a horror, and a very vulgar +horror, such a horror as only unlimited wealth and uncontrolled power +can produce. If you will think of individualism gone mad, and each +successive personality crushing out and oversloughing some other, +without that regard for proportion and propriety which only the sense of +a superior collective right can inspire, you will imagine the Palatine. +Mount Morris, at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, if unscrupulously +built upon by the multimillionaires thronging to New York and seeking to +house themselves each more splendidly and spaciously than the other, +would offer a suggestion in miniature of what the Palatine seems to have +been like in its glory. But the ruined Mount Morris, even allowing for +the natural growth of the landscape in two thousand years, could show no +such prospect twenty centuries hence as we got that morning from a bit +of wilding garden near the Convent of San Bonaventura, on the brow of +the Palatine. Some snowy tops pillowed themselves on the utmost horizon, +and across the Campagna the broken aqueducts stalked and fell down and +stumbled to their legs again. The Baths of Caracalla bulked up in +rugged, monstrous fragments, and then in the foreground, filling the +whole eye, the Colosseum rose and stood, and all Rome sank round it. The +Forum lay deep under us, vainly struggling with the broken syllables of +its demolition to impart a sense of its past, and at our feet in that +bit of garden where the roses were blooming and the plum-trees were +blowing and the birds were singing, there stretched itself in the grass +a fallen pillar wreathed with the folds of a marble serpent, the emblem +of the oldest worship under the sun, as I was proud to remember without +present help. It was the same immemorial, universal faith which the +Mound Builders of our own West symbolized in the huge earthen serpents +they shaped uncounted ages before the red savages came to wonder at +them, and doubtless it had been welcomed by Rome in her large, loose, +cynical toleration, together with cults which, like that of Isis and +Osiris, were fads of yesterday beside it. Somehow it gave the humanest +touch in the complex impression of the overhistoried scene. It made one +feel very old, yet very young--old with the age and young with the youth +of the world--and very much at home. + + + + +VI + +PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH THE PAST + + +I was myself part of the antiquity with which I have been trying to be +honest; and, though my date was no earlier than the seventh decade of +the nineteenth century, still so many and such cataclysmal changes had +passed over Rome since my time that I was, as far as concerned my own +consciousness, practically of the period of the Pantheon, say. The +Pantheon, in fact, was among my first associations with Rome. I lodged +very near it, in the next piazza, so that, if we were not +contemporaries, we were companions, and I could not go out of my hotel +to look up a more permanent sojourn without passing by it. Perhaps I +wished to pass by it, and might really have found my way to the Corso +without the Pantheon's help. + +I have no longer a definite idea why I should have made my sojourn in +the very simple and modest little street called Via del Gambero, which +runs along behind the Corso apparently till it gets tired and then +stops. But very possibly it was because the Via del Gambero was so +simple and modest that I chose it as the measure of my means; or +possibly I may have heard of the apartment I took in it from wayfarers +passing through Venice, where I then lived, and able to commend it from +their own experience of it; people in that kind day used to do such +things. However it was, I took the apartment, and found it, though +small, apt for me, as Ariosto said of his house, and I dwelt in it with +my family a month or more in great comfort and content. In fact, it +seemed to us the pleasantest apartment in Rome, where the apartments of +passing strangers were not so proud under Pius IX. as they are under +Victor Emmanuel III. I do not know why it should have been called the +Street of the Lobster, but it may have been in an obscure play of the +fancy with the notion of a backward gait in it that I came to believe +that, in the many improvements which had befallen Rome, Via del Gambero +had disappeared. Destroyed, some traveller from antique lands had told +me, I dare say; obliterated, wiped out by the march of municipal +progress. At any rate, I had so long resigned the hope of revisiting the +quiet scene that when I revisited Rome last winter, after the flight of +ages, and one day found myself in a shop on the Corso, it was from +something like a hardy irony that I asked the shopman if a street called +Via del Gambero still existed in that neighborhood. I said that I had +once lodged in it forty-odd years before; but I believed it had been +demolished. Not at all, the shopman said; it was just behind his place; +and what was the number of the house? I told him, and he laughed for joy +in being able to do me a pleasure; me, a stranger from the strange land +of sky-scratchers _(grattacieli),_ as the Italians not inadequately +translate sky-scrapers. If I would favor him through his back shop he +would show me how close I was upon it; and from his threshold he pointed +to the corner twenty yards off, which, when I had turned it, left me +almost at my own door. + +In that transmuted Rome Via del Gambero, at least, was wholly unchanged, +and there was not a wrinkle in the front of the house where we had +sojourned so comfortably, so contentedly, in our incredible youth. I had +not quite the courage to ring and ask if we were at home; but, standing +across the way and looking up at the window, it seemed to me that I +might have seen my own young face peering out in a somewhat suspicious +question of the old eyes staring up so fixedly at it. Who was I, and +what was I doing there? Was I waiting, hanging idly about, to see the +Armenian archbishop coming to carry my other self in his red coach to +the Sistine Chapel, where we were to hear Pius IX. say mass? There was +no harm in my hanging about, but the street was narrow and there was a +chance of my being ground up by some passing cart against the wall there +behind me if I was not careful. I could not tell my proud young double +that we were one, and that I was going in the archbishop's red coach as +well; he would never have believed it of my gray hairs and sunken +figure. I could not even ask him what had become of the grocer near by, +whom I used to get some homely supplies of, perhaps eggs or oranges, or +the like, when I came out in the December mornings, and who, when I said +that it was very cold, would own that it was _un poco rigidetto,_ or a +little bit stiffish. The ice on the pavement, not clean-swept as now, +but slopped and frozen, had been witness of that; the ice was gone and +the grocer with it; and where really was I? At the window up there, or +leaning against the apse of the church opposite? What church was it, +anyway? I never knew; I never asked. Why should I insist upon a common +identity with a man of twenty-seven to whom my threescore and ten could +only bring perplexity, to say the least, and very likely vexation? I +went away from Via del Gambero, where the piety of the reader will seek +either of myselves in vain. In my earlier date one used to see the red +legs of the French soldiers about the Roman streets, and the fierce +faces of the French officers, fierce as if they felt themselves +wrongfully there and were braving it out against their consciences. Very +likely they had no conscience about it; they had come there over the +dead body of the Roman Republic at the will of their rascal president, +and they were staying there by the will of their rascal emperor, to keep +on his throne the pope from whom the Italians had hoped for unity and +liberty. No one is very much to blame for anything, I suppose, and very +likely Pius IX. had not voluntarily disappointed his countrymen, who may +have expected too much. But then the French had been there fifteen +years, and were to be there another fifteen years yet. Now they are +gone, with the archbishop's red coach, and the complaisant grocer, and +the young man of twenty-seven in Via del Gambero, and the rest of the +things that the sun looked on and will look on the like of again, no +doubt, in our monotonous round of him. + +To-day, instead of the red legs of the French soldiers, you see the blue +legs of the Italian soldiers, and instead of the fierce faces of their +officers, the serious, intelligent, mostly spectacled faces of the +Italian officers, in sweeping cloaks of tender blue verging on lavender. +They are soldierly men none the less for their gentler aspect, and +perhaps something the more; and a better thing yet is that there are +comparatively few of them. There are few of the privates also, far fewer +than the priests and the students of the ecclesiastical schools, who +dress like priests and go dashing through the streets in files and +troops. + +I have an impression that one sees about the proportion of Italian +soldiers in Rome that one sees of American soldiers in Washington, or, +at least, not many more. The barracks are apparently outside the walls; +there you meet cavalry going and coming, and detachments of +_bersaglieri;_ or riflemen, pushing on at their quick trot, or plainer +infantry trudging wearily. Certainly, in a capital where the Church +holds itself prisoner, there is no show of force on the part of its +captors; and this is pleasant to the friend of man and the lover of +Italy for other reasons. In the absence of the military you can imagine +that not only does the state not wish to boast its political supremacy +in the ancient capital of the Church, but it does not desire to show the +potentiality of holding its own against the republic which is instinct +there. The monarchy is the consensus of all the differing wills in +Italy, which naturally would not for the most part have chosen a +monarchy. But never was a monarchy so mild-mannered or seated so firmly, +for the present at least, in the affection and reason of its people. + +This is not the place (as writers say who have not prepared themselves +with the requisite ideas at a given point) to speak of the situation in +Rome; and I meant only to note that there are more ecclesiastics than +conscripts to be seen there. Of all the varying costumes of the varying +schools, none is so pleasing, so vivid, as that of the German students +as they rush swiftly by in their flying robes of scarlet. The red +matches the ruddy health in their cheeks, and there is a sort of +gladness in their fling that wins the liking as well as the looking; so +that almost one would not mind being a German student of theology one's +self. There are other-costumes running in color from violet, and blue +with orange sashes, to unrelieved black and black trimmed with red; but +I cannot remember which nationality wears which. + +I am not sure but one sees as many priests in Rome now as in the times +when they ruled it; and I am no such Protestant that I will pretend I do +not like a monsignore when I meet him, either in the street or at +afternoon tea, as one sometimes may. I have no grudge against priests of +any rank; but I did not seek to see them at the functions, as I used in +the old days to do. Shall I say that I now rather tolerated than +welcomed myself there through the hospitality which so freely opens the +churches of the Church to all comers of whatever creed? What right had +I, a heretic and recusant, to come staring and standing round where the +faithful were kneeling and praying? If we could conceive of our +fast-locked conventicles being thrown as freely open, could we conceive +of Catholics wandering up and down their naves and aisles while the +hymning or preaching went on? After being so high-minded in the matter, +shall I confess that I was a good deal kept out of the churches by the +cold in them? It was a sort of stored cold, much greater than that +outside, though there was something warming to the fancy, at least, in +the smoke and smell of the incense. + +Even with the Church of the Capuchins, which we lived opposite, I was +dilatory, though in my mediaeval days it had been one of the first +places to which I hurried. In those days everybody said you must be sure +and go to the Capuchins', because Guide's "St. Michael and the Enemy" +was there, and still more because the wonderful bone mosaics in the +cemetery under the church were not on any account to be missed. I +suspect that in both these matters I had then a very crude taste, but it +was not from my greater refinement that I now let the Capuchin church go +on long un-revisited. It was, for one thing, too instantly and +constantly accessible across the street there; and it is well known +human nature is such that it will not seek the line of the least +resistance as long as it can help. Besides, I could hardly believe that +it was really the Capuchin church which I had once so hastened to see, +and I neglected it almost two months, contenting myself with the display +of those hand-bills on the convent walls, spreading largely and +glaringly incongruous over it. When I did go I found the Guido +ridiculous, of course, in the painter's imagination of the archangel as +a sort of dancing figure in a _tableau vivant,_ and yet of a sublime +authority in the execution. To be more honest, I had little feeling +about it and less knowledge. + +It was not so cold in the church as I had expected; and in the +succession of side chapels, beginning with the St. Michael's and opening +into one another, we found a kind of domesticity close upon cosiness, +which we were enjoying for its own sake, when we were aware of a pale, +gentle young girl who seemed to be alone there. She asked, in our +unmistakable native accents, if we were going to see the Capuchin +mosaics in their place below; and one of us said, promptly, No, indeed; +but relented at the shadow of disappointment that came over the girl's +face, and asked, Was she going? The girl said, Oh, she guessed she could +see them some other time; and then she who had spoken ordered him who +had not spoken to go with her. I do not know what question of propriety +engaged them with reference to her going alone with the handsome young +monk waiting to accompany her; but he was certainly too handsome for a +monk of any age. We followed him, however, and I had my usual nausea on +viewing the decoration of the ceilings and walls of the place below; it +always makes me sick to go into that place; between realizing that I am +of the same make as the brothers composing those mosaics, and trying to +imagine what the intricate patterns will do at the Resurrection Day, I +cannot command myself. Neither am I supported by the sight of some +skeletons, the raw material of that grewsome artistry, deposited whole +in their coffins in the niches next the ground, though their skulls +smile so reassuringly from their cowls; their cheeriness cannot make me +like them. But my companion seemed to be merely interested; and I +fancied her deciding that it all quite came up to her expectations, +while I translated for her from the monk that the dead used to be left +in the hallowed earth from Jerusalem covering the ground before they +were taken up and decoratively employed, but that since the Italian +occupation of Rome the art had fallen into abeyance. She said nothing, +but when we came out she stood a moment on the pavement beside our cab +and confessed herself a New England girl, from an inland town, who was +travelling with relatives. She had been sick, and she had come alone, as +soon as she could get out, to see the wonders of the Capuchin church, +because she had heard so much of them. We said we hoped she had been +pleased, and she said, "Oh yes, indeed," and then she said, "Well, +good-bye," and gently tilted away, leaving us glad that there could +still be in an old, spoiled world such sweetness and innocence and +easily gratified love of the beautiful. + +Taking Rome so easily, so provisionally, while waiting the eventualities +of the colds which mild climates are sure to give their frequenters from +the winterlands, I became aware of a latent anxiety respecting St. +Peter's. I did not feel that the church would really get away without +our meeting, but I felt that it was somehow culpably hazardous in me to +be taking chances with it. As a family, we might never collectively +visit it, and, in fact, we never did; but one day I drove boldly (if +secretly) off alone and renewed my acquaintance with this contemporary +of mine; for, if you have been in Rome a generation and a half ago, you +find that you are coeval not only with the regal, the republican, and +the imperial Rome, but with each Rome of the successive popes, down, at +least, to that of Pius IX. St. Peter's will not be, by any means, your +oldest friend, but it will be an acquaintance of such long standing that +you may not wish to use it with all the frankness which its faults +invite. If you say, when you drive into its piazza between the sublime +colonnades which stretch forth their mighty embrace as if to take the +whole world to the church's heart, that here is the best of St. Peter's, +you will not be wrong. If you say that here is grandeur, and that there +where the temple fronts you grandiosity begins, you will be rhetorical, +but, again, you will not be wrong. The day of my furtive visit was sober +and already waning, with a breeze in which the fountains streamed +flaglike, and with a gentle sky on which the population of statues above +the colonnades defined themselves in leisure attitudes, so recognizable +all that I am sure if they had come down and taken me by the hand we +could have called one another by name without a moment's hesitation. +Every detail of a prospect which is without its peer on earth, but may +very possibly be matched in Paradise, had been so deeply stamped in my +remembrance that I smiled for pleasure in finding myself in an +environment far more familiar than any other I could think of at the +time. It was measurably the same within the church, but it was not quite +the same in the reserves I was obliged to make, the reefs I was obliged +to take in my rapture. The fact is, that unless you delight in a +hugeness whose bareness no ornamentation can, or does at least, conceal, +you do not find the interior of St. Peter's adequate to the exterior. In +the mere article of hugeness, even, it fails through the interposition +of the baldachin midway of the vast nave, and each detail seems to fail +of the office of beauty more lamentably than another. + +I had known, I had never forgotten, that St. Peter's was very, very +baroque, but I had not known, I had not remembered how baroque it was. +It is not so badly baroque as the Church of the Jesuits either in Rome +or in Venice, or as the Cathedral at Wuerzburg; but still it is badly +baroque, though, again, not so baroque in the architecture as in the +sculpture. In the statues of most of the saints and popes it could not +be more baroque; they swagger in their niches or over their tombs in an +excess of decadent taste for which the most bigoted agnostic, however +Protestant he may be, must generously grieve. It is not conceivably the +taste of the church or the faith; it is the taste of the wicked world, +now withered and wasted to powerlessness, which overruled both for evil +in art from its evil life. The saints and the popes are, assthetically, +lamentable enough; but the allegories in bronze or marble, which are +mostly the sixteenth-century notions of the Virtues, are +inexpressible--some of these creatures ought really to be put out of the +place; but I suppose their friends would say they ought to be left as +typical of the period. In the case of that merciless miscreant, Queen +Christina of Sweden, who has her monument in St. Peter's, there would be +people to say she must have her monument in some place; but, all the +same, remembering Monaldeschi--how he was stabbed to death by her +command, the kinder assassins staying their hands from time to time, +while his confessor went vainly to implore her pardon--it is shocking to +find her tomb in the prime church in Christendom. At first it offends +one to see certain pontiffs with mustaches and imperials and goatees; +but, if one reflects that so they wore them in life, one perceives right +in it; only when one comes to earlier or later popes, bearded in +medieval majority or shaven in the decent modern fashion, one can endure +those others only as part of the prevailing baroque of the church. +Canova was not so Greek or even so classic as one used to think him, but +one hardly has a moment of repose in St. Peter's till one comes to a +monument by him and rests in its quiet. It is tame, it is even weak, if +you like; but compared with the frantic agglomeration of gilt clouds and +sunbursts, and marble and bronze figures in the high-altar, it is +heavenly serene and lovely. + +There were not many people in St. Peter's that afternoon, so that I +could give undisturbed attention to the workman repairing the pavement +at one point and grinding the marble smooth with a slow, secular +movement, as if he were part of its age-Ions: waste and repair. Another +day, the last day I came, there were companies of the personally +conducted, following their leaders about and listening to the lectures +in several languages, which no more stirred the immense tranquillity +than they themselves qualified the spacious vacancy of the temple: you +were vaguely sensible of the one and of the other like things heard and +seen in a drowse. It was a pleasant vagueness in which all angularities +of feeling were lost, and you were disposed to a tolerance of the things +that had hurt or offended you before. As a contemporary of the edifice, +throughout its growth, you could account for them more and more as of +their periods. Perhaps through your genial reconciliation there came, +however dimly, a suggestion of something unnatural and alien in your +presence there as a mere sightseer, or, at best, a connoisseur much or +little instructed. If you had been there, say, as a worshipper, would +you have been afflicted by the incongruities of the sculptures or by the +whole baroque keeping? Possibly this consideration made you go away much +modester than you came. "After all," you may have said, "it is not a +gallery; it is not a museum. It is a house of prayer," and you emerged, +let us hope, humbled, and in so far fitted for renewed joy in the +beauty, the glory of the sublime colonnades. + + + + +VII + +CHANCES IN CHURCHES + + +If any one were to ask me which was the most beautiful church in Rome I +should temporize, and perhaps I should end by saying that there was +none. Ecclesiastical Rome seems to have inherited the instinct of +imperial Rome for ugliness; only, where imperial Rome used the instinct +collectively, ecclesiastical Rome has used it distributively in the +innumerable churches, each less lovely than the other. This position +will do to hedge from; it is a bold outpost from which I may be driven +in, especially by travellers who have seen the churches I did not see. I +took my chances, they theirs; for nobody can singly see all the churches +in Rome; that would need a syndicate. + +If imperial Rome was beautiful in detail because it had the Greeks to +imagine the things it so hideously grouped, ecclesiastical Rome may be +unbeautiful in detail because it had not the Goths to realize the beauty +of its religious aspiration--that is, if it was the Goths who invented +Gothic architecture; I do not suppose it was. Anyway, there is said to +be but one Gothic church in Rome, and this I did not visit, perhaps +because I felt that I must inure myself to the prevalent baroque, or +perhaps from mere perversity. I can merely say in self-defence that, on +the outside, Santa Maria sopra Minerva no more promised an inner beauty +than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the +power of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches +sometimes have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in scuplture, +in architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the +roof, and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others. Marvels of riches +are lavished upon chapels and altars, which again are so burdened with +bronze gilded or silver plated, and precious stones wrought and +unwrought, that the soul, or if not the soul the taste, shrinks dismayed +from them. Execution in default of inspiration has had its way to the +last excess; there is nothing that it has not done to show what it can +do; and all that it has done is a triumph of misguided skill and power. +But it would be a mistake for the spectator to imagine that anything has +been done from the spirit in which he receives it; everything is the +expression of devoted faith in the forms that the art of the time +offered. + +In the monstrous marble tableau, say, of "Religion Triumphing Over +Heresy," he may be very sure that the artist was not winking an ironical +eye where he made Faith spurning Schism with her foot look very much +like a lady of imperfect breeding who has lost her temper; he was most +devoutly in earnest, or at least those were so, both cleric and laic, +for whom he wrought his prodigy. We others, pagans or Protestants, had +better understand that the children of the Church, and especially the +poor children, were serious through all the shows that seem to us +preposterous; they had not renounced something for nothing; if they +bowed that very fallible thing, Reason, to Dogma, they got faith for +their reward and could gladly accept whatever symbol of it was offered +them. + +No matter how baroque any church was, it could express something of this +sincerity, and in their way the worshippers seemed always simply at home +in it. In San Lorenzo in Lucina, where I went to see the truly sublime +"Crucifixion" by Guido (there is also a bar of St. Lawrence's gridiron +to be seen, but I did not know it at the time) I liked the +unconsciousness of the girl kneeling before the high altar and +provisionally gossiping with the young sacristan before she began her +devotions. She gave her mind to them when he asked me if I wished to see +the Guido, for I could see her lips moving while she shared my +veneration of that most affecting masterpiece; the more genuinely +affecting because it expresses the rapture and not the anguish of the +Passion. I have no doubt she was grateful when the sacristan proposed my +having the electric light turned on it, and when, though that I knew it +would cost me something more, I assented. + +They have the electric light now in all the holy places, and notably in +the dungeon where St. Peter was imprisoned, and where the custodian was +so proud of it, as the lastest improvement, and as far more satisfactory +than candles. The shrine of the miraculous Bambino in the Church of Ara +Coeli is also lighted by electricity, which spares no detail of the +child's apparel and appearance. To other eyes than those of faith it has +the effect of a life-size but not life-like doll, piously bedizened and +jewelled over, but rather ill-humored looking, or, if not that, proud +looking or severe looking. To the eyes in which its sickbed visits have +dried the tears it must wear an aspect of heavenly pity and beauty; and +I am very willing to believe that these are the eyes which see it +aright. As it was, and taking it literally, it seemed far less +mechanical and unfeeling than the monk who pulled it out and pushed it +back on its wheeled platform. But he must get tired of showing it to the +unbelievers who come out of curiosity, and very likely I should, if I +were in his place, as nonchalantly wipe across the glass front of the +shrine the card with the Bambino's legend printed in various languages +on it, which you may then buy with the blessing from the glass for +whatever you choose to give. + +Where art and antiquity are so abundant as in Rome, the Bambino incident +is probably what the reader, when he has visited the Church of Ara Coeli +will chiefly remember, and I will not pretend to be any better than the +reader, though I will say that I have a persistent sense of something +important about the roof; and there are the Pinturrichio frescos, which +an old Sienese like me must have the taste for. The not easily praiseful +Hare says it is "one of the most interesting of Christian churches," and +without allowing that there are any other sorts of churches I may allow +that this is one of the least unlovely in Rome. Trinita de' Monti seemed +to be another, but only, I dare say, subjectively, because of the +exquisite pleasure we had one afternoon in March when we went into it +for the nuns' singing of the Benediction. That, we had been told, was +something which no one coming to Rome should miss; and we were so +anxious not to miss it that on our way to the Pincian Hill we stopped at +the foot of the church-steps, and reassured ourselves of the hour +through the kindness of an English-speaking nurse-maid at the bottom and +of a gentle nun at the top, who both told us the hour would be exactly +five. + +When we came back at that time and bought our way into the church by +rightful payment to the two blind beggars who guarded its doors, we +found it packed with people who bad been more literally punctual. They +were of all nations, but a large part were Anglo-Americans, and a young +girl of this race rose and gave her seat, with a sweet insistence that +would not be denied, to that one of us who deserved it most. He who was +left leaning against the soft side of a pillar hesitated whether to make +some young priests spreading over undue space on one of the benches push +up, and he enjoyed a rich moment of self-satisfaction in his +forbearance. He was there, to be sure, an alien and a heretic, out of +mere curiosity, and they were there probably so rapt in their devout +attention that they did not notice their errant step-brother, and so did +not think to offer him the hospitality of their mother church's house. +But he would not make any such allowance; he condemned them with the +unsparing severity of the strap-hanger in a trolley-car, who blushes +with shame for the serried rows of men sitting behind their newspapers. +When he was at his wit's end to find excuse for them a priest on another +bench made room, and he sank down glad to forgive and forget; but now he +would not have yielded his place to any other Protesant in Christendom. + +In the collective curiosity he lost the sense of self-reproach for his +own, and eagerly bent his gaze on the group of officiating priests at +the high altar beyond the grille of the choir. The altar was all a blaze +of electric lights, and there was a novel effect in their composition in +the crosses resting diagonally on either side of it. Next the grille +showed the feathers and fashions of the mothers and sisters of the young +girls from the school of the adjoining Convent of the Sacred Heart, and +midway between these visitors, like a flock of white birds stooping on +some heavenly plain, the white veils of the girls stretched in lovely +levels to left and right. Nothing could have attuned the spirit for the +surprise awaiting it like this angelic sight; and when the voices of the +nuns fell suddenly from the organ gallery, behind all the people, like +the singing of the morning stars molten in one adoring music and falling +from the zenith down, whatever moments of innocent joy life might have +had it could have had none surpassing that. + +But when we came out the self-mockery with which life is apt to recover +itself from any exaltation began. In returning from the Pincio the only +cab we had been able to get was the last left of the very worst cabs in +Rome, and we had bidden the driver wait for us at the church-steps, not +without some hope that he would play us false. But there he was, true +to his word, with such disciplined fidelity as that of the Roman +sentinels who used to die at their posts; and we mounted to ours with +the muted prayer that we, at least, might reach home alive. This did not +seem probable when the driver whipped up his horse. It appeared to have +aged and sickened while we were in the church, though we had thought it +looked as bad as could be before, and it lurched alarmingly from side to +side, recovering itself with a plunge of its heavy head away from the +side in which its body was sinking. The driver swayed on his box, having +fallen equally decrepit in spite of the restoratives he seemed to have +applied for his years and infirmities. His clothes had put on some such +effect of extreme decay as those of Rip Van Winkle in the third act; +there was danger that he would fall on top of his falling horse, and +that their raiment would mingle in one scandalous ruin. Via Sistina had +never been so full of people before; never before had it been so long to +that point where we were to turn out of it into the friendly obscurity +of the little cross street which would bring us to our hotel. We could +not consent to arrive in that form; we made the driver stop, and we got +out and began overpaying him to release us. But the more generously we +overpaid him the more nobly he insisted upon serving us to our door. At +last, by such a lavish expenditure as ought richly to provide for the +few remaining years of himself and his horse, we prevailed with him to +let us go, and reached our hotel glad, almost proud, to arrive on foot. + +Hare tells me, now it is too late, that I may reach the Church of Santa +Maggiore by keeping straight on through the long, long straightness of +the Via Sistina. I reached that church by quite another way after many +postponements; for I thought I remembered all about it from my visit in +1864. But really nothing had remained to me save a sense of the +exceptional dignity of the church, and the sole fact that the roof of +its most noble nave is thickly plated with the first gold mined in South +America, which Ferdinand and Isabella gave that least estimable of the +popes, Alexander VI. Now I know that it is far richer than any gold +could make it in the treasures of history and legend, which fairly +encrust it in every part. Doubtless some portion of this wealth my +fellow-sightseers were striving to store up out of the guide-books which +they bore in their hands and from which they strained their eyes to the +memorable points as they slowly paced through the temple. Some were +reading one to another in bated voices, and I thought them ridiculous; +but perhaps they were wise, and rather he was ridiculous who marched by +them and contented himself with a general sense of the grandeur, the +splendor. More than any other church except that of San Paolo fuori le +Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore imparts this sense, for, as I have already +pretended, St. Peter's fails of it. Without as well as within the church +is spacious and impressive from its spaciousness; but it seems more +densely fringed than most others with peddlers of post-cards and mosaic +pins. On going in you can plunge through their ranks, but in coming out +you do not so easily escape. One boy pursued me quite to my cab, in +spite of my denials of hand and tongue. There he stayed the driver while +he made a last, a humorous appeal. "Skiddoo?" he asked in my native +speech. "Yes," I sullenly replied, "skiddoo!" But it is now one of the +regrets which I shall always feel for my wasted opportunities in Rome +that I did not buy all his post-cards. Patient gayety like his merited +as much. + +As it was, I drove callously away from Santa Maria Maggiore to San +Pietro in Vincoli, where I expected to renew my veneration for +Michelangelo's Moses. That famous figure is no longer so much in the +minds of men as it used to be, I think; and, if one were to be quite +honest with one's self as to the why and wherefore of one's earlier +veneration, one might not get a very distinct or convincing reply. Do +sculptors and painters suffer periods of slight as authors do? Are +Raphael and Michelangelo only provisionally eclipsed by Botticelli and +by Donatello and Mino da Fiesole, or are they remanded to a lasting +limbo? I find I have said in my notes that the Moses is improbable and +unimpressive, and I pretended a more genuine joy in the heads of the two +Pollajuolo brothers which startle you from their tomb as you enter the +church. Is the true, then, better than the ideal, or is it only my +grovelling spirit which prefers it? What I scarcely venture to say is +that those two men evidently lived and still live, and that +Michelangelo's prophet never lived; I scarcely venture, because I +remember with tenderness how certain clear and sweet spirits used to bow +their reason before the Moses as before a dogma of art which must be +implicitly accepted. Do they still do so, those clear and sweet spirits? + +The archaeologist who was driving my cab that morning had pointed out to +me on the way to this church the tower on which Nero stood fiddling +while Rome was burning. It is a strong, square, mediaeval structure +which will serve the purpose of legend yet many centuries, if progress +does not pull it down; but the fiddle no longer exists, apparently, and +Nero himself is dead. When I came out and mounted into my cab, my driver +showed me with his whip, beyond a garden wall, a second tower, very +beautiful against the blue sky, above the slim cypresses, which he said +was the scene of the wicked revels of Lucrezia Borgia. I do not know why +it has been chosen for this distinction above other towers; but it was a +great satisfaction to have it identified. Very possibly I had seen both +of these memorable towers in my former Roman sojourn, but I did not +remember them, whereas I renewed my old impressions of San Paolo fuori +le Mura in almost every detail. + +That is the most majestic church in Rome, I think, and I suppose it is, +for a cold splendor, unequalled anywhere. Somehow, from its form and +from the great propriety of its decoration, it far surpasses St. +Peter's. The antic touch of the baroque is scarcely present in it, for, +being newly rebuilt after the fire which destroyed the fourth-century +basilica in 1823, its faults are not those of sixteenth-century excess. +It would be a very bold or a very young connoisseur who should venture +to appraise its merits beyond this negative valuation; and timid age can +affirm no more than that it came away with its sensibilities unwounded. +Tradition and history combine with the stately architecture, which +reverently includes every possible relic of the original fabric, to +render the immense temple venerable; and as it is still in process of +construction, with a colonnaded porch in scale and keeping with the body +of the basilica, it offers to the eye of wonder the actual spectacle of +that unstinted outlay of riches which has filled Rome with its +multitudes of pious monuments--monuments mainly ugly, but potent with +the imagination even in their ugliness through the piety of their +origin. Where did all that riches come from? + +Out of what unfathomable opulence, out of what pitiable penury, out of +what fear, out of what love? One fancies the dying hands of wealth that +released their gift to the sacred use, the knotted hands of work that +spared it from their need. The giving continues in this latest Christian +age as in the earliest, and Rome is increasingly Rome in a world which +its thinkers think no longer believes. + +From San Paolo we were going to another shrine, more hallowed to our +literary sense, and we drove through the sweet morning sunshine and +bird-singing, past pale-pink clouds of almond bloom on the garden +slopes, with snowy heights far beyond, to the simple graveyard where +Keats and Shelley lie. Our way to the Protestant cemetery held by some +shabby apartment-houses of that very modern Rome which was largely so +jerry-built, and which I would not leave out of the landscape if I +could, for I think their shabbi-ness rather heightens your sense of the +peaceful loveliness to which you come under the cypresses, among the +damp aisles, so thickly studded with the stones recording the death in +exile of the English strangers lying there far from home. In a faulty +perspective of memory, I had always seen the graves of the two poets +side by side; but the heart of Shelley rests in a prouder part of the +cemetery, where the paths between the finer tombs are carefully kept; +and the dust of Keats lies in an old, plain, almost neglected corner, +well off beyond a dividing trench. It seems an ungracious chance which +has so parted the two poets so inextricably united in their fame; it is +as if here, too, the world would have its way; but, of course, it is +only at the worst an ungracious chance. Keats, at least, has the +companionship of the painter Severn, the friend on whose "fond breast +his parting soul relied," and who has here followed him into the dust. + +A few withered daisies had been scattered in the thin grass over the +poet, and one hardly dared lift one's eyes from them to the +heartbreaking epitaph which one could not spell for tears. + + + + +VIII + +A FEW VILLAS + + +It was but a few minutes' walk from the hotel to the Porta Pinciana, +and, if you took this short walk, you found yourself almost before you +knew it in the Villa Borghese. You might then, on your first Sunday in +Rome, have fancied yourself in Central Park, for all difference in the +easily satisfied Sunday-afternoon crowd. But with me a difference began +in the grove of stone-pines, and their desultory stretch toward the +Casino, where in the simple young times which are now the old we had +hurried, with our Kugler in our hands and other reading in our heads, to +see Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (it has got another name now) and +Canova's Pauline Bonaparte, who was also the Princess Borghese, and all +the rest of the precious gallery. However, if I had any purpose of +visiting the Casino now, I put it aside, and contented myself with the +gentle sun, the gentle shade, and the sweet air, which might have had +less dust in it, breathing over grass as green in late January as in +early June. I did not care so much for a mounted corporal who was +jumping his horse over a two-foot barrier in the circular path rounding +between the Villa Borghese and the Pincian Hill, though his admirers +hung in rows on the rail beside it so thickly that I could hardly have +got a place to see him if I had tried. But there was room enough to the +fathers and mothers who had brought their children, and young lovers who +had brought each other for the afternoon's outing, just as the people in +Central Park do, and, no doubt, just as any Sunday crowd must do in the +planet Mars, if the inhabitants are human. There was a _vacherie_ nearby +where not many persons were drinking milk or even coffee; it is never +the notion of the Italians that amusement can be had only through the +purchase of refreshments. + +I did not get as far as the Casino till the last Sunday of our Roman +stay, though we came again and again to the park (as we should call it, +rather than villa), sometimes to walk, sometimes to drive, and always to +rejoice in its loveliness. It was not now a very guarded, if once a very +studied, loveliness; not quite neglect, but a forgottenness to which it +took kindly, had fallen upon it; the drives seemed largely left to take +care of themselves, the walks were such as the frequenters chose to make +over the grass or through the woods; the buildings--the aviary, the +conservatory, the dairy, the stables--which formed part of the old +pleasance, stood about, as if in an absent-minded indifference to their +various roles. The weather had grown a little more wintry, or, at least, +autumnal, as the season advanced toward spring, and one day at the end +of February, when we were passing a woody hollow, the fallen leaves +stirred crisply with a sound like that of late October at home. We had +been at some pains and expense to put home four thousand miles away, but +this sound was the sweetest and dearest we had heard in Rome, and it +strangely attuned our spirits to the enjoyment of the fake antiquities, +the broken arches, pediments, columns, statues, which, in a region +glutted with ruin, the landscape architect of the Villa Borghese had +fancied putting about in pleasing stages of artificial dilapidation. But +there was nothing faked in the dishevelled grass of the little stadium, +with its gra-dines around the sides, and the game of tennis which some +young girls were playing in it. Neither was there anything ungenuine in +the rapture of the boy whom we saw racing through the dead leaves of +that woody hollow in chase of the wild fancies that fly before boyhood; +and I hope that the charm of the plinths and statues in the careless +grounds behind the soft, old, yellow Casino was a real charm. At any +rate, these things all consoled, and the turf under the pines, now +thickly starred with daisies, gave every assurance of being original. + +When we came last the daisies were mingled with clustering anemones, +which seem a greatly overrated sort of flower, crude and harsh in color, +like cheap calico. If it were not for their pretty name I do not see how +people could like them; yet the children that day were pouncing upon +them and pulling them by handfuls; for the Villa Borghese is now state +property and is free to the children of the people in a measure quite +beyond Central Park. They can apparently pull anything they want, except +mushrooms; there are signs advising people that the state draws the line +at mushrooms. + +It was once more a Sunday, and it was a free day in the Casino. The +trodden earth sent up its homely, kindly smell from many feet on their +way to the galleries, which we found full of people looking greater +intelligence than the frequenters of such places commonly betray. They +might have been such more cultivated sight-seers as could not afford to +come on the paydays, and, if they had not crowded the room so, one might +have been glad as well as proud to be of their number. They did not +really keep one from older friends, from the statues and the pictures +which were as familiarly there in 1908 as in 1864. In a world of +vicissitudes such things do not change; the Sacred and Profane Love of +Titian, though it had changed its name, had not changed its nature, and +was as divinely serene, as richly beautiful as before. The Veroneses +still glowed from the walls, dimming with their Venetian effulgence all +the other pictures but the Botticellis and the Francias, and comforting +one with the hope that, if one had always felt their beauty so much, one +might, without suspecting it, have always had some little sense of art. +But it was probably only a literary sense of art, such as moves the +observer when he finds himself again in the presence of Canova's Pauline +Borghese. That is there, on the terms which were those no less of her +character than of her time, in the lasting enjoyment of a publicity +which her husband denied it in his lifetime; but it had no more to say +now than it had so many, many years ago. As, a piece of personal history +it is amusing enough, and as a sermon in stone it preaches whatever +moral you choose to read into it. But as the masterpiece of the +sculptor it testifies to an ideal of his art for which the world has +reason to be grateful. Criticism does not now put Canova on the height +where we once looked up to him; but criticism is a fickle thing, +especially in its final judgments; and one cannot remember the behavior +of the Virtues in some of the baroque churches without paying homage to +the portrait of a lady who, whatever she was, was not a Virtue, but who +yet helped the sculptor to realize in her statue a Venus of exceptional +propriety. Tame, yes, we may now safely declare Canova to have been, but +sane we must allow; and we must never forget that he has been the +inspiration in modern sculpture of the eternal Greek truth of repose +from which the art had so wildly wandered, He, more than any other, +stayed it in the mad career on which Michelangelo, however remotely, had +started it; and we owe it to him that the best marbles now no longer +strut or swagger or bully. + +It was by one of those accidents which are the best fortunes of travel +that I visited the Villa Papa Giulio, when I thought I was merely going +to the Piazza del Popolo, to which one cannot go too often. A chance +look at my guide-book beguiled me with the notion that the villa was +just outside the gate; but it was a deceit which I should be glad to +have practised on me every February 17th of my life. If the villa was +farther off than I thought, the way to it lay for a while through a +tramwayed suburban street delightfully encumbered with wide-horned oxen +drawing heavy wagon-loads of grain, donkeys pulling carts laden with +vegetables, and children and hens and dogs playing their several parts +in a perspective through which one would like to continue indefinitely. +But after awhile a dim, cool, curving lane leaves this street and +irresistibly invites your cab to follow it; and sooner than you could +ask you get to the villa gate. There a gatekeeper tacitly wonders at +your arriving before he is well awake, and will keep you a good five +minutes while he parleys with another custodian before he can bring +himself to sell you a ticket and let you into the beautiful, old, +orange-gray cloistered court, where there is a young architect with the +T-square of his calling sketching some point of it, and a gardener +gently hacking off from the parent stems such palm-leaves as have +survived their usefulness. Beyond is the famous foun-tained court, and a +classic temple to the right, and other structures responsive to the +impulses of the good Pope Julius III., who was never tired of adding to +this pleasure palace of his. It was his favorite resort, with all his +court, from the Vatican, and his favorite amusement in it was the +somewhat academic diversion of proverbs, which Ranke says sometimes +"mingled blushes with the smiles of his guests." + +Lest the reader should think I have gone direct to Ranke for this +knowledge, I will own that I got it at second-hand out of Hare's _Walks +in Rome,_ where he tells us also that the pope used to come to his villa +every day by water, and that "the richly decorated barge, filled with +venerable ecclesiastics, gliding through the osier-fringed banks of the +Tiber, . . . would make a fine subject for a picture." No doubt, and if +I owned such a picture I would lose no time in public-spiritedly +bestowing it on the first needy gallery. Our author is, as usual, +terribly severe on the Italian government for some wrong done the villa, +I could not well make out what. But it seems to involve the present +disposition of the Etruscan antiquities in the upper rooms of the +casino, where these, the most precious witnesses of that rather +inarticulate civilization, must in any arrangement exhaust the most +instructed interest. Just when the amateur archaeologist, however, is +sinking under his learning, the custodian opens a window and lets him +look out on a beautiful hill beyond certain gardens, where a bird is +singing angelically. I suppose it is the same bird which sings all +through these papers, and I am sorry I do not know its name. But we will +call it a blackcap: blackcap has a sweet, saucy sound like its own note, +and is the pretty translation of _caponero,_ a name which the bird might +gladly know itself by. + +Villa Papa Giulio is but a little place compared with something on the +scale of the Villa Pamfili Doria though from its casino it has a charm +far beyond that. What it may once have been as to grounds and gardens +there is little to show now, and the Pam-fili Doria itself had not much +to show in gardens, though it had grounds, and to spare. It is, in fact, +a large park, though whether larger than the Villa Borghese I cannot +say. But it has not been taken by the state, and it is so far off on its +hills that it is safe from the overrunning of city feet. It is safe even +from city wheels, unless they are those of livery carriages, for +numbered cabs are not suffered in its proud precincts. You partake of +this pride when you come in your rubber-tired _remise,_ and have the +consolation of being part of the beautiful exclusiveness. It costs you +fifteen francs, but one must suffer for being patrician, even for a +single afternoon. Outside we had the satisfaction of seeing innumerable +numbered cabs drawn up, and within the villa gates of meeting or passing +the plebeians who had come in them, and were now walking while we were +smoothly rolling in our victoria. The day was everything we could ask, +very warm and bright below the Janiculum, on which we had mounted, and +here on the summit delicious with cool currents of air. There had been +beggars, on the way up, at every point where our horses must be walked, +and we had paid our way handsomely, so that when we went back they bowed +without asking again; this is a convention at Rome which no +self-respecting beggar will violate; they all touch their hats in +recognition of it. + +The beautiful prospect from a certain curve of the drive after yon have +passed the formal sunken garden, at which you pause, is the greatest +beauty of the Villa Pamfili Doria. You stop to look at it by the impulse +of your coachman, and then you keep on driving round, in the long +ellipse which the road describes, through grassy and woody slopes and +levels, watered by a pleasant stream, and through long aisles of pine +and ilex. We thought twice round was enough, and told the driver so, to +his evident surprise and to our own regret, so far as the long aisle of +ilex was concerned, for I do not suppose there is a more perfect thing +of its kind in the world. The shade under the thick sun-proof roofing of +horizontal boughs was practically as old as night, and on our second +passage of its dim length it had some Capuchin monks walking down it, +who formed the fittest possible human interest in the perspective. Off +on the grass at one side some Ursuline nuns were sitting with their +pupils, laughing and talking, and one nun was playing ball with the +smaller girls, and mingling with their shouts her own gay, innocent +cries of joy as she romped among them. Nothing could have been prettier, +sweeter, or better suited to the place; all was very simple, and +apparently the whole place was hospitably free to the poor women who +ranged over it, digging chiccory for salad out of the meadows. The +daisies were thick as white clover, and the harsh purple of the anemones +showed everywhere. + +The casino is plainer than the casino of the Villa Borghese, and is not +public like that; its sculptures have been taken to the Doria palace in +the city; and there is no longer any excuse for curiosity even to try +penetrating it. It stands on the left of the road by which you leave the +villa, and to the right on the grassy incline in full view of the casino +was something that puzzled us at first. It did not seem probable that +the gigantic capital letters grown in box should be spelling the English +name Mary, but it proved that they were, and later it proved that this +was the name of the noble English lady whom the late Prince Pamfill +Doria had married. Whether they marked her grave or merely commemorated +her, it was easy to impute a pathos to the fancy of having them there, +which it might not have been so easy to verify. You cannot attempt to +pass over any ground in Rome without danger of sinking into historical +depths from which it will be hard to extricate yourself, and it is best +to heed one's steps and keep them to the day's activities. But one +could not well visit the Villa Pamfili Doria without at least wishing to +remember that in 1849 Garibaldi held it for weeks against the whole +French army, in his defence of republican Rome. A votive temple within +the villa grounds commemorates the invaders who fell in this struggle; +on a neighboring height the Italian leader triumphs in the monument his +adoring country has raised to him. + +If we are to believe the censorious Hare, the love of the hero's +countrymen went rather far when the Roman municipality, to please him, +tried to change the course of the Tiber in conformity with a scheme of +his, and so spoiled the beauty of the Farnesina garden Avithout +effecting a too-difficult piece of engineering. The less passionate +Murray says merely that "a large slice of this garden was cut off to +widen the river for the Tiber embankment," and let us hope that it was +no worse. I suppose we must have seen the villa in its glory when we +went, in 1864, to see the Raphael frescos in the casino there, but in +the touching melancholy of the wasted and neglected grounds we easily +accepted the present as an image of the past. For all we remembered, the +weed-grown, green-mossed gravel-paths of the sort of bewildered garden +that remained, with its quenched fountain, its vases of dead or dying +plants, and its dishevelled shrubbery, were what had always been; and it +was of such a charm that we were gratefully content with it. The truth +is, one cannot do much with beauty in perfect repair; the splendor that +belongs to somebody else, unless it belongs also to everybody else, +wounds one's vulgar pride and inspires envious doubts of the owner's +rightful possession. But when the blight of ruin has fallen upon it, +when dilapidation and disintegration have begun their work of atonement +and exculpation, then our hearts melt in compassion of the waning +magnificence and in a soft pity for the expropriated possessor, to whom +we attribute every fine and endearing quality. It is this which makes us +such friends of the past and such critics of the present, and enables us +to enjoy the adversity of others without a pang of the jealousy which +their prosperity excites. + +There was much to please a somewhat peculiar taste in our visit to the +Farnesina. The gateman, being an Italian official, had not been at the +gate when we arrived, but came running and smiling from his gossip with +the door-keeper of the casino, and this was a good deal in itself; but +the door-keeper, amiably obese, was better still in her acceptance of +the joke with which the hand-mirror for the easier study of the roof +frescos was accepted. "It is more convenient," she suggested, and at the +counter-suggestion, "Yes, especially for people with short necks," she +shook with gelatinous laughter, and burst into the generous cry, "Oh, +how delightful!" Perhaps this was because she, too, had experienced the +advantage of perusing the frescos in the hand-mirror's reversal. At any +rate, she would not be satisfied till she had returned a Roland for that +easy Oliver. Her chance came in showing a Rubens in one of the rooms, +with the master's usual assortment of billowy beauties, when she could +say--and she ought to have known--that they had eaten too much macaroni. +It was not much of a joke; but one hears so few jokes in Rome. + +Do I linger in this study of simple character because I feel myself +unequal to the ecstasies which the frescos of Raphael and his school in +that pleasure dome demanded of me? Something like that, I suppose, but I +do not pride myself on my inability. It seemed to me that the coloring +of the frescos had lost whatever tenderness it once had; and that what +was never meant to be matter of conscious perception, but only of the +vague sense which it is the office of decoration to impart, had grown +less pleasing with the passage of time. There in the first hall was the +story of Cupid and Psyche in the literal illustration of Apuleius, and +there in another hall was Galatea on her shell with her Nymphs and +Tritons and Amorini; and there were Perseus and Medusa and Icarus and +Phaeton and the rest of them. But, if I gave way to all the frankness of +my nature, I should own the subjects fallen sillv through the old age of +an outworn life and redeemed only by the wonderful skill with which they +are rendered. At the same time, I will say in self-defence that, if I +had a very long summer in which to keep coming and dwelling long hours +in the company of these frescos, I think I might live back into the +spirit which invented the fables, and enjoy even more the amusing taste +that was never tired of their repetition. Masterly conception and +incomparable execution are there in histories which are the dreams of +worlds almost as extinct as the dead planets whose last rays still reach +us and in whose death-glimmer we can fancy, if we will, a unity of life +with our own not impossible nor improbable. But more than some such +appeal the Raphaels and the Giulio Romanos of the Farnesina hardly make +to the eye untrained in the art which created them, or unversed in the +technique by which they will live till the last line moulders and the +last tint fades. + +We came out and stood a long time looking up in the pale afternoon light +at the beautiful face of the tenderly aging but not yet decrepit casino. +It was utterly charming, and it prompted many vagaries which I might +easily have mistaken for ideas. This is perhaps the best of such +experiences, and, after you have been with famous works of art and have +got them well over and done with, it is natural and it is not unjust +that you should wish to make them some return, if not in kind, then in +quantity. You will try to believe that you have thought about them, and +you should not too strictly inquire as to the fact. It is some such +forbearance that accounts for a good deal of the appreciation and even +the criticism of works of art. + + + + +IX + +DRAMATIC INCIDENTS + + +If the joke of the door-keeper at the Farnesina was not so delicate in +any sense as some other jokes, it had, at least, the merit of being +voluntary. In fact, it is the only voluntary joke which I remember +hearing in the Tuscan tongue from the Roman mouth during a stay of three +months in the Eternal City. This was very disappointing, for I had +always thought of the Italians as gay and as liking to laugh and to make +laugh. In Venice, where I used to live, the gondoliers were full of +jokes, good, bad, and indifferent, and an infection of humor seemed to +spread from them to all the lower classes, who were as ready to joke as +the lower classes of Irish, and who otherwise often reminded one of +them. The joking hahit extended as far down as Florence, even as Siena, +and at Naples I had found cabmen who tempered their predacity with +_bonhomie._ But the Romans were preferably serious, at least with the +average American, though, if I had tried them in their English instead +of my Italian, it might have been different. At times I thought, they +felt the weight of being Romans, as it had descended to them from +antiquity, and that the strain of supporting it had sobered them. In any +case, though there was shouting by night, and some singing of not at all +the Neapolitan quality and still less the Neapolitan quantity, there was +no laughing, or, as far as I could see, smiling by day. + +Yet one day there was a tragedy in front of the hotel next ours which +would have made a dog laugh, as the saying is, unless it was a Roman +dog. It was a quarrel, more or less murderous, between a fat, elderly +man and an agile stripling of not half his age or girth, of whom the +tumult about them permitted only fleeting glimpses. By these the elder +seemed to be laboriously laying about him with a five-foot club and the +younger to be making wild dashes at him and then escaping to the skirts +of the cabmen, mounted and dismounted, who surrounded them. Now and then +a cabman drove out of the mellay very excitedly, and then turned and +drove excitedly back into the thick of it. All the while the dismounted +cabmen pressed about the combatants with their hands on one another's +backs and their heads peering carefully over one another's shoulders. On +the very outermost rim of these, more careful than any, was one of those +strange images whom you see about Italian towns in couples, with red- +braided swallowtail coats and cocked hats, those carabinieres--namely, +who are soldiers in war and policemen in times of peace. Any spectator +from a foreign land would have thought it the business of such an +officer of the law to press in and stop the fighting; but he did not so +interpret his duty. He gingerly touched the shoulders next him with the +tips of his fingers, and now and then lifted himself on the tips of his +toes to look if the fight had stopped of itself or not. + +At last the fat, elderly man, whom his friends--and all the throng +except that one wicked youth seemed his friends--were caressing in +untimely embraces and coaxing in tones of tender entreaty, burst from +them, and, aiming at the head of his enemy, flung his club, to the +imminent peril of all the bystanders, and missed him. Then he frankly +put himself in the hands of his friends, who lifted him into a cab, +where one of them mounted with him and stayed him on the seat, while the +cabman drove rapidly away. The wicked youth had vanished in unknown +space; but the cara-biniere, attended by a group of admirers, marched +boldly up the middle of the street, and the crowd, with whatever +reluctance, persuaded itself to disperse, though the cabmen, to the +number of ten or twenty, continued to drive around in concentric circles +and irregular ellipses. In five minutes not an eye-witness of the fray +remained, such being the fear of the law, not so much in those who break +it as in those who see it broken, and who dread incurring the vengeance +of the culprit, if he is acquitted, or of his family if he is convicted +on their testimony. The quarrel had gone on a full quarter of an hour, +but the concierge of the hotel in front of which it had raged professed +to have known nothing of it, having, he said, been in-doors all the +time. A cabman whom we eliminated from the hysterical company of his +fellows and persuaded to drive us away to see a church attempted to +ignore the whole affair when asked about it. With difficulty he could be +made to recollect it, and then he dismissed it as a trifle. "Oh," he +said, "chiacchiere di donnic-ciuole," which is something like "Clatter +of little old women," a thing not worth noticing. He had, if we could +believe him, not cared to know how it began or ended, and he would not +talk about it. + +Later, still interested by the action of the carabiniere in guarding the +public security in his own person, I asked an Italian gentleman, who +owned to have seen the affair, why the officer did not break through the +crowd and arrest the fighters. "They had knives," he explained, and it +seemed a good reason for the cara-biniere's forbearance, as far as it +went; but I thought of the short work the brute locust of an Irish +policeman at home would have made of the knives. My friend said he had +himself gone to one of the municipal police who was looking on at a +pleasant remove and said, "Those fellows have knives; they will kill +each other," and the municipal policeman had answered, with the calm of +an antique Roman sentinel on duty in time of earthquake, "Let them +kill." + +I could not approve of so much impartiality, but afterward it seemed to +me I had little to be proud of in the shorter and easier method of our +own police, as contrasted with the caution of that Roman carabiniere who +left the combatants to the mild might of their friends' moral suasion. +It was better that the youth should escape, if he did, without a +vexatious criminal trial; he may have been no more to blame than the +other, who, I learned, had been carried off, in the honorable manner I +saw, to a doctor and had his stab looked to. It was not dangerous, and +the whole affair ended so. Besides, as I learned, still longer +afterward, when it was quite safe for a cabman from the same stand to +speak, the combatants were not Romans, but peasants from the Campagna, +who had come in with their market-carts and had become heated with the +bad spirits which the peasants have the habit of drinking five or six +glasses of when they visit Rome. "What we call benzine," my cabman +explained. "We Romans," he added from a moral height, "drink only a +glass or two of wine, and we never carry knives." + +He may have been right concerning the peacefulness of the Romans and +their sobriety, and I am bound to say that I never saw any other violent +scene during my stay. Sometimes I heard loud quarrelling among our +cabmen, and sometimes I was the subject of it, when one driver snatched +me, an impartial prey, from another. But the bad feeling, if there was +really any, quickly passed, and some other day I fell to the cabman who +had been wronged of me. I had not always the fine sense of being booty +which I had one day on coming out of a church and blundering toward the +wrong cab. Then the driver whom I had left waiting at the door seized me +from the very cab of an unjust rival with the indignant cry, "E roba +mia!" (He's my stuff!). It was not quite the phrase I would have chosen, +but I had no quarrel, generally speaking, with the cabmen of Rome. To be +sure, they have not a rubber tire among them, and their dress leaves +much to be desired in professional uniformity. Not one of them looks +like a cabman, but many of them in pict-uresqueness of hats and coats +look like brigands. I think they would each prefer to have a fur-lined +overcoat, which the Roman of any class likes to wear well into the +spring; but they mostly content themselves with an Astrakhan collar, +more or less mangy. For the rest, some of them will point out the +objects of interest as you pass, and they are proud to do so; they are +not extortionate, and, if you overpay them ever so little (which is +quite worth while), they will not stand upon a matter of lawful fare. A +two-cent tip contents them, one of four cents makes them your friends +for life; as for a five-cent tip, I do not know what it does, but I +advise the reader when he goes to Rome to try it and see. + +One fine thing is that the cabmen are in great superabundance in Rome, +and the number of barrel-ribbed, ewe-necked, and broken-kneed horses is +in no greater proportion than in Paris. Still, the average is large, +though, if you will go to the stand, you may select any horse you please +without offence. It was a cheerful sight, verging upon gayety, to see +every morning the crowd of cabs at our stand and to hear the drivers' +talk, sometimes rising into protest and mutual upbraiding. But one +Thursday morning, the brightest of the spring, a Sunday silence had +fallen on the place, and a Sabbath solitude deepened to the eye the +mystery that had first addressed itself to the ear. Then, suddenly, we +knew that we were in the presence of that Italian conception of a +general strike which interprets itself as a _sciopero._ It is saying +very little of that two days' strike to say that it was far the most +impressive experience of our Roman winter; in some sort it was the most +impressive experience of my life, for I beheld in it a reduced and +imperfect image of what labor could do if it universally chose to do +nothing. The dream of William Morris was that a world which we know is +pretty much wrong could be put right by this simple process. The trouble +has always been to get all sorts of labor to join in the universal +strike, but in the Italian _sciopero_ of four years ago the miracle was +wrought from one end of the peninsula to the other. + +In the Roman strike of last April a partial miracle of the same nature +was illustratively wrought, with the same alarming effect on the +imagination. + +As with the national strike, the inspiration of the Roman strike came +from the government's violent dealing with a popular manifestation which +only threatened to be mischievous. A stone-mason was killed by falling +from a scaffolding, and his funeral was attended by so many hundreds, +amounting to thousands, of workmen that the police conceived, not quite +unjustifiably, that it was to be made the occasion of a demonstration, +especially as the proposed route of the procession lay through the +Piazza di Venezia, under the windows of the Austrian Embassy, Austria +being always a red rag to the Italian bull and peculiarly irritating +through the reservation of the Palazzo Venezia to the ancient enemy at +the cession of Venice to Italy. The mourners were therefore forbidden to +pass that way, and the police forces were drawn up in the Piazza Gesu, +before the Jesuit church, with a strong detachment of troops to support +them. Their wisdom in all this was very questionable after what +followed, for the mourners insisted on their rights and would go no way +but through the Piazza di Venezia. When the dispute was at its height +two wagons laden with bricks appeared on the scene. The mourners swarmed +upon them, broke the bricks into bats, and hurled them at the police. +They had apparently the simple-hearted expectation that the police would +stand this indefinitely, but the brickbats hurt, and in their paroxysms +of pain the sufferers began firing their revolvers at the mourners. Four +persons were killed, with the usual proportion of innocent spectators. +At night the labor unions met, and the _sciopero_ was proclaimed as an +expression of the popular indignation; but the police had been left with +the victory. Whether it was not in some sort a defeat I do not know, but +a retired English officer, whom I had no reason to think a radical, said +to me that he thought it a great mistake to have let the police oppose +the people with firearms. Soldiers should alone be used for such work; +they alone knew when to fire and when to stop, and they never acted +without orders. In fact, the troops supporting the police took no part +in the fray, as the workmen's press recognized with patriotic rejoicing. + +The next morning a signal silence prevailed throughout the city, where +not a wheel stirred or the sound of a hoof broke the hush of the +streets. We had noted already that there were seven Sundays every week +in Rome, as was fit in the capital of the Christian religion, but this +Thursday was of an intenser Sabbath stillness than any first day of the +week that we had yet known. There was the clack of passing feet in the +street under our windows, but we looked out upon a yawning void where +the busy cabs had clustered, and the cabmen had socially chaffed and +quarrelled, and entreated the stranger in the cabman's superstition that +a stranger never knows when he wants a cab. Now he could have walked all +over Rome without being once invited to drive. Except for here and there +a private carriage, or the coupe evidently of a doctor, the streets were +empty, and the tourists had to join the citizens in their pedestrian +exercise. + +The shopkeepers had been notified to close their places of business on +the tacit condition of having their windows broken for non-compliance, +but in the early forenoon they were still slowly and partially putting +up their shutters. You could get in through the darkened doors up till +noon; after that it was more and more difficult. But it would be hard to +say how far and how deep the _sciopero_ went. In our hotel we knew of it +only the second day through the failure of the morning rolls, for there +had been no baking overnight. Most of the in-door service was of Swiss +or other foreign extraction, and the mechanism of our comfort, our +luxury, was operated as usual. Our floor _facchino,_ or porter, went to +the meeting of the unions in the evening, being an Italian. Otherwise +the strike fell especially on the helpless and guiltless foreigner, who +might be, and very often was, in sympathy with the strikers. He had to +walk to the ruins, the galleries, the gardens, the churches, if he +wanted anything of them; he could not get a carriage even from a stable. + +Between the hotels and the station the omnibus traffic was suspended. +The railroads being national, push-carts manned by the government +employes carried the baggage to and fro, but if one wanted to arrive or +depart one had to do it on foot. Tragical scenes presented themselves in +relation to this fact. In the afternoon, as I walked up the street +toward the great railroad station, I saw coming down the middle of it a +strange procession of ladies and gentlemen of every age, gray-haired +elders and children of tender years, mixed with porters and push-carts, +footing it into the region of the fashionable hotels. They were all +laden according to their strength, and people who had never done a +stroke of work in their lives were actually carrying their own +hand-bags, rugs, and umbrella-cases. It was terrible. + +It was terrible for what it was, and terrible for what it suggested, if +ever that poor dull beast of labor took the bit permanently into its +teeth, or, worse yet, hung back in the breeching and inexorably balked. +What would then become of us others, us ladies and gentlemen who had +never done a stroke of work and never wished to do one? Should we be +forced to the hard necessity of beginning? Could we remain in the +comfortable belief that we gave work, or must we be made to own +distastefully that it had always been given to us? Should we be able to +flatter ourselves with the notion that we had once had dependents +because we had money, or should we realize that we had always been +dependents because of our having money? + +These were the hateful doubts which the Roman strike suggested to the +witness, or, at least, one of the witnesses, who has here the pleasure +of unburdening himself upon the reader. Yet there was something amusing +in the situation; there was a joke--that rarest of all things in +Rome--latent in it, which one suspected only from the amiable, the +all-but-smiling behavior of the strikers. There was not the slightest +disorder during the two days that the strike lasted. When it was called +off at a meeting of the unions on Saturday night, one of the seven +Sundays of the Roman week dawned upon an activity at the neighboring +cab-stand no peacefuller and not much gayer than the silence and +solitude of the mornings previous. As for the general effect in the +city, you would hardly have known that particular Sunday from those +which had gone by the names of Friday and Saturday. Throughout Italy +there is now a Sunday-closing law whose effect in a land once of joyous +Sabbaths strikes some such chill to the heart as pierces it in Boston on +that day, or in the farther eastern or western avenues of New York, when +the Family Entrances are religiously locked. + +The Italian state has, in fact, so far taken the matter in charge as to +have established a secular holiday, coming once a week, which has almost +disestablished the holidays of the Church, formerly of much more +frequent occurrence. This secular holiday, which every workman has a +right to, he may neither give nor sell to his master. He may not even +loaf it away in the place where he works, lest he should be +clandestinely employed. He must go out of the shop or house or factory +or foundry, and spend his ten hours where he cannot be suspected of +employing them in productive industry for hire. This law has been +enacted in accordance with the will of the unions and no doubt in +correction of great abuses. Neither masters nor men now recognize the +old-fashioned _festa_ as they once did. Whether the men like the new +holiday so well, I did not get any of them explicitly to say. Of course, +they cannot all take it at once; they must take it turn about, and they +may not find their enforced leisure so lively as the old voluntary +saints' days, when their comrades were resting, too. As for the masters, +one of the employers of labor, whom I found filling his man's place, +would merely say: "It is the new law. No doubt we shall adjust ourselves +to it." He did not complain. + + + + +X + +SEEING ROME AS ROMANS SEE US + + +Shortly after our settlement in the Eternal City, which has so much more +time to be seen than the so-journer has to see it, I pleased myself with +the notion of surprising it by visiting in a studied succession the many +different piazzas. This, I thought, would acquaint me with the different +churches, and on the way to them I should make friends with the various +quarters. Everything, old or new, would have the charm of the +unexpected; no lurking ruin would escape me; no monument, whether column +or obelisk, statue, "storied urn or animated bust" or mere tablet, would +be safe from my indirect research. Before I knew it, I should know Rome +by heart, and this would be something to boast of long after I had +forgotten it. + +I could not say what suggested so admirable a notion, but it may have +been coining by chance one day on the statue of Giordano Bruno, and +realizing that it stood in the Campo di Fieri, on the spot where he was +burned three hundred years ago for abetting Copernicus in his +sacrilegious system of astronomy, and for divers other heresies, as well +as the violation of his monastic vows. I saw it with the thrill which +the solemn figure, heavily draped, deeply hooded, must impart as mere +mystery, and I made haste to come again in the knowledge of what it was +that had moved me so. Naturally I was not moved in the same measure a +second time. It was not that the environment was, to my mind, unworthy +the martyr, though I found the market at the foot of the statue given +over, not to flowers, as the name of the place might imply, but to such +homely fruits of the earth as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and, above +all, onions. There was a placidity in the simple scene that pleased me: +I liked the quiet gossiping of the old market-women over their baskets +of vegetables; the confidential fashion in which a gentle crone came to +my elbow and begged of me in undertone, as if she meant the matter to go +no further, was even nattering. But the solemnity of the face that +looked down on the scene was spoiled by the ribbon drawn across it to +fasten a wreath on the head, in the effort of some mistaken zealot of +free thought to enhance its majesty by decoration. It was the moment +when the society calling itself by Giordano Bruno's name was making an +effort for the suppression of ecclesiastical instruction in the public +schools; and on the anniversary of his martyrdom his effigy had suffered +this unmeant hurt. In all the churches there had been printed appeals to +parents against the agnostic attack on the altar and the home, and there +had been some of the open tumults which seem in Rome to express every +social emotion. But the clericals had triumphed, and an observer more +anxious than I to give a mystical meaning to accident might have +interpreted the disfiguring ribbon over Bruno's bronze lips as a new +silencing of the heretic. + +I certainly did not construe it so, and, if my notion of serially +visiting the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of +the Campo di Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any +mischance in my meditated vision of it. I had merely reflected that I +could not hope to carry out my scheme without greater expense both in +time and money than I could well afford, for, though cabs in Rome are +swift and cheap, yet the piazzas are many and widely distributed; and I +finally decided to indulge myself in a novelty of adventure verging +close upon originality. It had always seemed to me that the happy +strangers mounted on the tiers of seats that rise from front to back on +the motor-chariots for seeing New York and looking down, even from the +lowest place, on the life of our streets had a peculiar, almost a +bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means of a fresh +impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I have not +the courage to give, though the reader can perhaps imagine them. In Rome +I did not feel that the like reasons held; of all the unknown, I was one +of the most unknown; by me nobody would be put to the shame of +recognizing an acquaintance on the benches of the like chariot, or +forced to the cruelty of cutting him in my person. When once I had fully +realized this, it was only a question of the time when I should yield to +the temptation which renewed itself as often as I saw the stately +automobile passing through the storied streets, with its English legend +of "Touring Rome" inscribed on the back of the rear seat. There remained +the question whether I should go alone or whether I should ask the +countenance of friends in so bold an enterprise. When I suggested it to +some persons of the more courageous sex, they did not wait to be asked +to go with me; they instantly entreated to be allowed to go; they said +they had always wished to see Rome in that way; and we only waited to be +chosen by the raw and blustery afternoon which made us its own for the +occasion. + +It was the eve of the last sad day of such shrunken and faded carnival +as is still left to Rome, and there were signs of it in the straggling +groups of children in holiday costume, and in here and there a pair of +young girls in a cab, safely masked against identification and venting, +in the sense of wild escape, the joyous spirits kept in restraint all +the rest of the year. Already in the Corso, where our touring-car waited +for us at the first corner, a great cafe was turning itself inside out +with a spread of chairs and tables over the sidewalk, which we found +thronged on our return with spectators far outnumbering the merrymakers +of the carnival. Our car was not nearly so packed, and when we mounted +to the benches we found that the last and highest of them was left to +the sole occupancy of a young man, well enough dressed (his yellow +gloves may have been more than well enough) and well-mannered enough, +who continued enigmatical to the last. There was a German couple and +there were some French-speaking people; the rest of us were bound in the +tie of our common English. The agent of the enterprise accompanied us, +an international of undetermined race, and beside the chauffeur sat the +middle-aged, anxious-looking Italian who presently arose when we made +our first stop in the Piazza Colonna and harangued us in three +languages--successively, of course--concerning the Column of Marcus +Aurelius. He did not use the megaphone of his American confrere; and +from the shudder which the first sound of his voice must have sent +through a less fastidious substance than mine I perceived that an +address by megaphone I could not have borne; to that extreme of excess +even my modernism could not go. As it was, there was an instant when I +could have wished to be on foot, or even in a cab, with a red Baedeker +in my hand; and yet, as the orator went on, I had to own that he was +giving me a better account of the column than I could have got for +myself out of the guide-book. He spoke first in French, with an Italian +accent and occasionally an Italian idiom; then he spoke in English, and +then in a German which suffered from his knowledge of English. + +He sat down, looking rather spent with his effort, and on the way to our +next stop, at the Temple of Neptune, the agent examined us upon our +necessities in the article of language. He himself spoke such good +English that we could not do otherwise than declare that we could get on +perfectly with an address in French. The German pair, perhaps from +patriotic grudge, denied a working knowledge of the unfriendly tongue. +The solitary on the back seat, being asked in his turn, graciously +answered, "Toutes les langues me sont egales," and thereafter we +suffered with the orator only through French and German. + +The reply which decided the matter launched us upon yet wider conjecture +regarding the unknown: was he a retired courier, a concierge out of +place, a professor of languages on his holiday, or merely an amateur of +philological studies? His declared proficiency was manifested in +unexpected measure as we drove away from the Temple of Neptune on +through the narrow street leading to it. Every motor has its peculiar +note, and our car had something like the scream of a wild animal in +pain, such as might have justly alarmed a stouter spirit than that of +the poor little cab-horse which we encountered at the corner of this +street. It reared, it plunged; when our chauffeur held us in it still +backed and filled so dangerously that the mother and children +overflowing the cab followed the example of the driver in spilling to +the ground. Then our good international, the agent, jumped down and, +mounting to the coachman's seat, took the reins and urged the horse +forward, while its driver pulled it by the bridle. All was of no effect +till the solitary of the back seat rose in his place and shouted to the +frightened creature in choice American: "What d' you mean, there? Come +on! Come on, you fool!" Then, as if it had been an "impenitent mule" in +some far-distant Far-Western incarnation, this Eoman cab-horse +recognized the voice of authority; it nerved itself against the +imaginary danger, and came steadily forward; our agent regained his +place, and we moved shriekingly on to the next object of interest. It +was not quite the note blown from level tubes of brass in the progress +of a conqueror, but we did not lack the cheers of a disinterested +populace, which at several points impartially applauded our orator's +French and German versions of his not always tacit Italian. + +Our height above the cheers helped preserve us from the sense of +anything ironical in them, and there was an advantage in the outlook +from our elevation which the wayfarer in cab or on foot can only +imagine. No such wayfarer can realize the vast scope and compass of our +excursion, which was but one of two excursions made on alternate +afternoons by the Touring-Rome wagons. It included, perhaps not quite in +the following order, after the Temple of Neptune, such objects of prime +importance as the Palazzo Madama, where Catharine de' Medici once dwelt +and where the Italian Senate now holds its sessions; the Fountain of +Trevi, the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the new Palace of Justice and +the Cavour monument beyond the Tiber, the Castle of Sant' Angelo, the +Vatican and St. Peter's, the Janiculum and the Garibaldi monument on it, +and the stupendous prospect of the city from that supreme top, the +bridge that Horatius held in Macaulay's ballad, the island in the Tiber +formed after the expulsion of the Tarquins by the river sand and drift +catching on the seed-corn thrown into the stream from the fields +consecrated to Mars, the Temple of Fortune, the once-supposed House of +Eienzi, and the former Temple of Vesta; the Palatine Hill and the +Aventine Hill, the Circus Maximus, the Colosseum, the Campidoglio, the +Theatre of Marcellus, the worst slum in Rome, where the worst boy in +Rome, flown with Carnival, will try to board your passing car; back to +Piazza Colonna through Piazza Monte Citerio, where the Italian House of +Deputies meets in the plain old palace of the same name. + +The mere mention of these storied places will kindle in the reader's +fancy a fire which he will feel all the need of if ever he verifies my +account of them in touring Rome on so cold an afternoon as that of our +excursion. The wind rose with our ascent of every elevation, if it did +not fall with our return to a lower level; on the Janiculum it blew a +blizzard in which the incongruous ilexes and laurels bowed and writhed, +and some groups of almond-trees in their pale bloom on a distant upland +mocked us with a derisive image of spring. At the foot of the steps to +the Campidoglio, where some of our party dismounted to go up and view +the statue of Marcus Aurelius, it was so cold that nothing but the sense +of a strong common interest prevented those who remained from persuading +the chauffeur to go on without the sight-seers. But we forbore, both +because we knew we were then very near the end of our tour, and because +we felt it would have been cruel to abandon the lady who had got out of +the car only by turning herself sidewise and could not have made her way +home on foot without sufferings which would justly have brought us to +shame. Certain idle particulars will always cling to the memory which +lets so many ennobling facts slip from it; and I find myself helpless +against the recollection of this poor lady's wearing a thick +motoring-veil which no curiosity could pierce, but which, when she +lifted it, revealed a complexion of heated copper and a gray mustache +such as nature vouchsafes to few women. + +The crowd, which thickened most in the Piazza di Venezia, had grown more +and more carnivalesque in attire and behavior. We had been obliged to +avoid the more densely peopled streets because, as our international +explained, if the car had slowed at any point the revellers would have +joined our excursion of their own initiative and accompanied us to the +end in overwhelming numbers. They wellnigh blocked the entrance of the +Corso when we got back to it, and the cafe where we had agreed to have +tea was so packed that our gay escapade began to look rather gloomy in +the retrospect. But suddenly a table was vacated; a waiter was caught, +in the vain attempt to ignore us, and given such a comprehensive order +that we could see respect kindling in his eyes, and before we could +reasonably have hoped it he spread before us tea and bread and butter +and tarts and little cakes, while scores of hungry spectators stood +round and flatteringly envied us. In this happy climax our adventure +showed as a royal progress throughout. We counted up the wonders of our +three hours' course in an absolutely novel light; and we said that +touring Rome was a thing not only not to be despised, but to be forever +proud of. + +For myself, I decided that if I were some poor hurried fellow-countryman +of mine, doing Europe in a month and obliged to scamp Rome with a couple +of days, I would not fail to spend two of them in what I must always +think of as a triumphal chariot. I resolved to take the second +excursion, not the next day perhaps, but certainly the day after the +next, and complete the most compendious impression of ancient, +mediaeval, and modern Rome that one can have; but the firmest resolution +sometimes has not force to hold one to it. The second excursion remains +for a second sojourn, when perhaps I may be able to solve the question +whether I was moved by a fine instinct of proportion or by mere innate +meanness in giving our orator at parting just two francs in recognition +of his eloquence. No one else, indeed, gave him anything, and he seemed +rather surprised by my tempered munificence. It might have been +mystically adjusted to the number of languages he used in addressing us; +if he had held to three languages I might have made it three francs; but +now I shall never be certain till I take the second excursion with a +company which imperatively requires English as well as French and +German, and with no solitary in yellow gloves to whom all languages are +alike. + +To this end I ought to have thrown a copper coin into the Fountain of +Trevi as we passed it. You may return to Rome without doing this, but it +is well known that if you do it you are sure to come back. The Fountain +of Trevi is alone worth coming back for, and I could not see that it +poured scanter streams than it formerly poured over brimming brinks or +from the clefts of the artificial rocks that spread in fine disorder +about the feet of its sea-gods and sea-horses; but they who mourn the +old papal rule accuse the present Italian government of stinting the +supply of water. To me there seemed no stint of water in any of the +fountains of Rome. In some a mere wasteful spilth seems the sole design +of the artist, as in the Fontana Paolina on the Janiculum, where the +cold wash of its deluge seemed to add a piercing chill to our windy +afternoon. The other fountains have each a quaint grace or absolute +charm or pleasing absurdity, whether the waters shower over groups of +more or less irrelevant statuary in their basins or spout into the air +in columns unfurling flags of spray and keeping the pavement about them +green with tender mould. The most sympathetic is the Fountain of the +Triton, who blows the water through his wreathed horn and on the coldest +day seems not to mind its refluent splash on his mossy back; in fact, he +seems rather to like it. + +He is one of many tritons, rivers, sea-gods, and aqueous allegories +similarly employed in Rome and similarly indifferent to what flesh and +blood might find the hardship of their calling. I had rashly said to +myself that their respective fountains needed the sun on them to be just +what one could wish, but the first gray days taught me better. Then the +thinly clouded sky dropped a softened light over their glitter and +sparkle and gave them a spirituality as much removed from the suggestion +of physical cold as any diaphanous apparition would suggest. Then they +seemed rapt into a finer beauty than that of earth, though I will not +pretend that they were alike beautiful. No fountain can be quite ugly, +but some fountains can be quite stupid, like, for instance, those which +give its pretty name to the Street of the Four Fountains and which +consist of two extremely plain Virtues and two very dull old Rivers, +diagonally dozing at each other over their urns in niches of the four +converging edifices. They are not quite so idiotic under their +disproportionate foliage as the conventional Egyptian lions of the +Fountain of Moses, with manes like the wigs of so many lord chancellors, +and with thin streams of water drooling from the tubes between their +lips. But these are the exceptional fountains; there are few sculptured +or architectural designs which the showering or spouting water does not +retrieve from error; and in Rome the water (deliciously potable) is so +abundant that it has force to do almost anything for beauty, even where, +as in the Fontana Paolina, it is merely a torrent tumbling over a +facade. It is lavished everywhere; in the Piazza Navona alone there are +three fountains, but then the Piazza Navona is very long, and three +fountains are few enough for it, even though one is that famous Fountain +of Bernini, in which he has made one of the usual rivers--the Nile, I +believe--holding his hand before his eyes in mock terror of the ungainly +facade of a rival architect's church opposite, lest it shall fall and +crush him. That, however, is the least merit of the fountain; and +without any fountain the Piazza Navona would be charming; it is such a +vast lake of sunshine and is so wide as well as long, and is so mellowed +with such rich browns and golden grays in the noble edifices. + +I do not know, now, what all the edifices are, but there are churches, +more than one, and palaces, and the reader can find their names in any +of the guidebooks. If I were buying piazzas in Rome I should begin with +the Navona, but there are enough to suit all purses and tastes. The +fountains would be thrown in, I suppose, along with the churches and +palaces; but I really never inquired, and, in fact, not having carried +out my plan of visiting them all, I am in no position to advise +intending purchasers. What I can say is that if you are in a hurry to +inspect, that kind of property, and in immediate need of a piazza, you +cannot do better than take the wagon for touring Rome. In two days you +can visit every piazza worth having, including the Piazza di Spagna, +where there is a fountain in the form of a marble galley in which you +can embark for any fairyland you like, through the Via del Babuino and +the Piazza del Popolo. Come to think of it, I am not so sure but I would +as soon have the Piazza del Popolo as the Piazza Navona. If the +fountains are not so fine, they are still very fine, and the Pincian +Hill overtops one side of the place, with foliaged drives and gardened +walks descending into it. + +Everything of importance that did not happen elsewhere in Rome seems to +have happened in the Piazza del Popolo, and I may name as a few of its +attractions for investors the facts that it was here Sulla's funeral +pyre was kindled; that Nero was buried on the left side of it, and out +of his tomb grew a huge walnut-tree, the haunt of demoniacal crows till +the Madonna appeared to Paschal II. and bade him cut it down; that the +arch-heretic Luther sojourned in the Augustinian convent here while in +Rome; that the dignitaries of Church and State received Christina of +Sweden here when, after her conversion, she visited the city; that +Lucrezia Borgia celebrated her betrothal in one of the churches; that it +used to be a favorite place for executing brigands, whose wives then +became artists' models, and whose sons, if they were like Cardinal +Antonelli, became princes of the Church. So I learn from Hare in his +_Walks in Rome,_ and, if he enables me to boast the rivalry of the +Piazza Navona in no such array of merits, still I will not deny my love +for it. Certainly it was not a favorite place for executing brigands, +but the miracle which saved St. Agnes from, cruel shame was wrought in +the vaulted chambers under the church of her name there, and that is +something beyond all the wonders of the Piazza del Popolo for its pathos +and for its poetry. But, if the Piazza Navona had no other claim on me, +I should find a peculiar pleasure in the old custom of stopping the +escapes from its fountains and flooding with water the place I saw +flooded with sun, for the patricians to wade and drive about in during +the very hot weather and eat ices and drink coffee, while the plebeians +looked sumptuously down on them from the galleries built around the +lake. + + + + +XI + +IN AND ABOUT THE VATICAN + + +It would be a very bold or very incompetent observer of the Roman +situation who should venture upon a decided opinion of the relations of +the monarchy and the papacy. You hear it said with intimations of +special authority in the matter, that both king and pope are well +content with the situation, and it is clearly explained how and why they +are so; but I did not understand how or why at the moment of the +explanation, or else I have now forgotten whatever was clear in it. I +believe, however, it was to the effect that the pope willingly remained +self-prisoned in the Vatican because, if he came out, he might not only +invalidate a future claim upon the sovereign dignity which the Italian +occupation had invaded, but he might incur risks from the more +unfriendly extremists which would at least be very offensive. On his +part, it was said that the king used the embarrassment occasioned by the +pope's attitude as his own defence against the anti-Clericals, who +otherwise would have urged him to far more hostile measures with the +Church. The king and the pope were therefore not very real enemies, it +was said by those who tried to believe themselves better informed than +others. + +To the passing or tarrying stranger the situation does not offer many +dramatic aspects. When you are going to St. Peter's, if you will look up +at the plain wall of the Vatican palace you will see two windows with +their shutters open, and these are the windows of the rooms where Pius +X. lives, a voluntary captive; the closed blinds are those of the rooms +where Leo XIII. died, a voluntary captive. Whatever we think of the +wisdom or the reason of the papal protest against the occupation of the +States of the Church by the Italian people, these windows have their +pathos. The pope immures himself in the Vatican and takes his walks in +the Vatican gardens, whose beauty I could have envied him, if he had not +been a prisoner, when I caught a glimpse of them one morning, with the +high walls of their privet and laurel alleys blackening in the sun. + +But otherwise the severest Protestant could not cherish so unkind a +feeling toward the gentle priest whom all men speak well of for his +piety and humility. It is a touching fact of his private life that his +three maiden sisters, who wish to be as near him as they can, have their +simple lodging over a shop for the sale of holy images in a street +opening into the Piazza of St. Peter's. We all know that they are of a +Venetian family neither rich nor great; their pride and joy is solely in +him, as it well might be, and it is said that when they come to hear him +in some high function at the Sistine Chapel their rapture of affection +and devotion is as evident as it is sweet and touching. + +Their relation to him is the supremely poetic fact of a situation which +even one who knows of it merely by hearsay cannot refuse to feel. The +tragical effect of the situation is in the straining and sundering of +family ties among those who take one side or the other in the difference +of the monarchy and papacy. I do not know how equally Roman society, in +the large or the small sense, is divided into the Black of the Papists +and the White of the Monarchists (for the mediaeval names of Neri and +Bianchi are revived in the modern differences), but one cannot help +hearing of instances in which their political and religious opinions +part fathers and sons and mothers and daughters. These are promptly +noted to the least-inquiring foreigner, and his imagination is kindled +by the attribution of like variances to the members of the reigning +family, who are reported respectively blacker and whiter if they are not +as positively black or white as the nobles. Some of these are said to +meet one another only in secret across the gulf that divides them +openly; but how far the cleavage may descend among other classes I +cannot venture to conjecture; I can only testify to some expressions of +priest-hatred which might have shocked a hardier heretical substance +than mine. + +One Sunday we went to the wonderful old Church of San Clemente, which is +built three deep into the earth or high into the air, one story above or +below the other, in the three successive periods of imperial, mediaeval, +and modern Rome. It was the day when the church is illuminated, and the +visitors come with their Baedekers and Hares and Murrays to identify its +antiquities of architecture and fresco; it was full of people, and, if I +fancied an unusual proportion of English-speaking converts among them, +that might well have been, since the adjoining convent belongs to the +Irish Dominicans. But I carried with me through all the historic and +artistic interest of the place the sensation left by two inscriptions +daubed in black on the white convent wall next the church. One of these +read: _"VV. la Repubblica"_ (Long live the Republic), and the other: +_"M. ai Preti"_ (Death to the Priests). No attempt had been made to +efface them, and as they expressed an equal hatred for the monarchy and +the papacy, neither laity nor clergy may have felt obliged to interfere. +Perhaps, however, it was rightly inferred that the ferocity of one +inscription might be best left to counteract the influence of the other. +I know that with regard to the priests you experience some such effect +from the atrocious attacks in the chief satirical paper of Rome, The +name of this paper was given me, with a deprecation not unmixed with +recognition of its cleverness, by an Italian friend whom I was making my +creditor for some knowledge of Roman journalism; and the sole copy of it +which I bought was handed to me with a sort of smiling abhorrence by the +kindly old kiosk woman whom I liked best to buy my daily papers of. When +I came to look it through, I made more and more haste, for its satire of +the priests was of an indecency so rank that it seemed to offend the +nose as well as the eye. To turn from the paper was easy, but from the +fact of its popularity a painful impression remained. It was not a +question of whether the priests were so bad as all that, but whether its +many readers believed them so, or believed them bad short of it, in the +kind of wickedness they were accused of. + +There can be no doubt of the constant rancor between the Clericals and +the Radicals in their different phases throughout Italy. There can be +almost no doubt that the Radicals will have their way increasingly, and +that if, for instance, the catechism is kept in the public schools this +year, it will be cast out some other year not far hence. Much, of +course, depends upon whether the status can maintain itself. It is, like +the status everywhere and always, very anomalous; but it is difficult to +imagine either the monarchy or the papacy yielding at any point. +Apparently the State is the more self-assertive of the two, but this is +through the patriotism which is the political life of the people. It +must always be remembered that when the Italians entered Rome and made +it the capital of their kingdom they did not drive out the French +troops, which had already been withdrawn; they drove out the papal +troops, the picturesque and inefficient foreign volunteers who remained +behind. Every memorial of that event, therefore, is a blow at the +Church, so far as the Church is identified with the lost temporal power. +One of the chief avenues is named Twenty-second September Street because +the national troops entered Rome on that date; the tablets on the Porta +Pia where they entered, the monument on the Pincio to the Cairoli +brothers, who died for Italy; the statues of Garibaldi, of Cavour, of +Victor Emmanuel everywhere painfully remind the papacy of its lost +sovereignty. But the national feeling has gone in its expression beyond +and behind the patriotic occupation of Rome; and no one who suffered +conspicuously, at any time in the past, for freedom of thought through +the piety of the fallen power is suffered to be forgotten. On its side +the Church enters its perpetual protest in the self-imprisonment of the +pope; and here and there, according to its opportunity, it makes record +of what it has suffered from the State. For instance, at St. John +Lateran, which theoretically forms part of the Leonine City of the Popes +and is therefore extraterritorial to Italy, a stretch of wall is +suffered to remain scarred by the cannon-shot which the monarchy fired +when it took Rome from the papacy. + +Doubtless there are other monuments of the kind, but their enumeration +would not throw greater light on a situation which endures with no +apparent promise of change. The patience of the Church is infinite; it +lives and it outlives. Remembering that Arianism was older than +Protestantism when Catholicism finally survived it, we must not be +surprised if the Roman Church shall hold out against the Italian State +not merely decades, but centuries. In the meanwhile to its children from +other lands it means Rome above all the other Romes; and on us, its +step-children of different faiths or unfaiths, its prison-house--if we +choose so to think of the Vatican--has a supreme claim, if we love the +sculpture of pagan Rome or the painting of Christian Rome. + +We swarm to its galleries in every variety of nationality, with +guide-books in every tongue, and we are very queer, for the most part, +to any one of our number who can sufficiently exteriorate himself to get +the rest of us in perspective. It is probably well that most of us do +not stagger under any great knowledge of the crushing history of the +place, which has been the scene of the most terrible experiences of the +race, the most touching, the most august. Provisionally ignorant, at +least, we begin to appear at the earliest practicable hour before the +outermost stairway of the Vatican, and, while the Swiss Guards still +have on their long, blue cloaks to keep their black and yellow legs +warm, mount to the Sistine Chapel. Here we help instruct one another, as +we stand about or sit about in twos and threes or larger groups, reading +aloud from our polyglot Baedekers while we join in identifying the +different facts. Here, stupendously familiar, whether we have seen it +before or not, is Michelangelo's giant fresco of the Judgment, as +prodigious as we imagined or remembered it; here are his mighty Prophets +and his mighty Sibyls; and here below them, in incomparably greater +charm, are the frescos of Botticelli, with the grace of his Primavera +playing through them all like a strain of music and taking the soul with +joy. + +It is the same crowd in the Raphael Stanze, but rather silenter, for by +now we have taught ourselves enough from our Baedekers at least to read +them under our breaths, and we talk low before the frescos and the +canvases. Some of us are even mute in the presence of the School of +Athens, whatever reserves we may utter concerning the Transfiguration. +If we are honest, we more or less own what our impressions really are +from those other famous works, concerning which our impressions are +otherwise altogether and inexpressibly unimportant; it is a question of +ethics and not aesthetics, as most of our simple-hearted company suppose +it to be; and, if we are dishonest, we pretend to have felt and thought +things at first-hand from them which we have learned at second-hand from +our reading. I will confess, for my small part, that I had more pleasure +in the coloring and feeling of some of the older canvases and in here +and there a Titian than in all the Raphaels in the Stanze of his name. + +I was not knowing his works for the first time; no one perhaps does +that, such is the multiplicity of the copies of them; and I vividly +remembered them from my acquaintance with the originals four decades +before, as I had remembered the Michelangelos; but in their presence and +in the presence of so many other masterpieces in the different rooms, +with their horrible miracles and atrocious martyrdoms, I realized as for +the first time what a bloody religion ours was. It was such relief, such +rest, to go from those broilings and beheadings and crucifixions and +Sayings and stabbings into the long, tranquil aisles of the museum where +the marble men and women, created for earthly immortality by Greek art, +welcomed me to their serenity and sanity. The earlier gods might have +been the devils which the early Christians fancied them, but they did +not look it; they did not look as if it was they that had loosed the +terrors upon mankind out of which the true faith has but barely +struggled at last, now when its relaxing grasp seems slipping from the +human mind. I remembered those peaceful pagans so perfectly that I could +have gone confidently to this or that and hailed him friend; and though +I might not have liked to claim the acquaintance of all of them in the +flesh, in the marble I fled to it as refuge from the cruel visions of +Christian art. If this is perhaps saying too much, I wish also to hedge +from the wholesale censure of my fellow-sight-seers which I may have +seemed to imply. They did not prevail so clutteringly in the sculpture +galleries as in the Sistine Chapel and the Stanze. One could have the +statues as much to one's self as one liked; there were courts with +murmuring fountains in them; and there was a view of Rome from a certain +window, where no fellow-tourist intruded between one and the innumerable +roofs and domes and towers, and the heights beyond whose snows there was +nothing but blue sky. It was a beautiful morning, with a sun mild as +English summer, which did not prevent the afternoon from turning cold +with wind and raining and hailing and snowing. This in turn did not keep +off a fine red sunset, with an evening star of glittering silver that +brightened as the sunset faded. At Rome the weather can be of as many +minds in March as in April at New York. + +But through all one's remembrance of the Roman winter a sentiment of +spring plays enchantingly, like that grace of Botticelli's Primavera in +his Sistine frescos. It is not a sentiment of summer, though it is +sometimes a summer warmth which you feel, and except in the steam-heated +hotels it does not penetrate to the interiors. In the galleries and the +churches you must blow your nails if you wish to thaw your fingers, but, +if you go out-of-doors, there is a radiant imitation of May awaiting +you. She takes you by your thick glove and leads you in your fur-lined +overcoat through sullen streets that open upon sunny squares, with +fountains streaming into the crystal air, and makes you own that this is +the Italian winter as advertised--that is, if you are a wanderer and a +stranger; if you are an Italian and at home you keep in the out-door +warmth, but shun the sun, and in-doors you wrap up more thickly than +ever, or you go to bed if you have a more luxurious prejudice against +shivering. If you are a beggar, as you very well may be in Rome, you +impart your personal heat to a specific curbstone or the spot which you +select as being most in the path of charity, and cling to it from dawn +till dark. Or you acquire somehow the rights of a chair just within the +padded curtain of a church, and do not leave it till the hour for +closing. The Roman beggars are of all claims upon pity, but preferably I +should say they were blind, and some of these are quite young girls, and +mostly rather cheerful. But the very gayest beggar I remember was a +legless man at the gate of the Vatican Museum; the saddest was a sullen +dwarf on the way to this cripple, whose gloom a donative even of +twenty-five centessimi did not suffice to abate. + + + + +XII + +SUPERFICIAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONJECTURES + + +It had seemed to me that in the afternoons of the old papal times, so +dear to foreigners who never knew them, I used to see a series of +patrician ladies driving round and round on the Pincio, reclining in +their landaus and shielding their complexions from the November suns of +the year 1864 with the fringed parasols of the period. In the doubt +which attends all recollections of the past, after age renders us +uncertain of the present, I hastened on my second Sunday at Rome in +February, 1908, to enjoy this vision, if possible. I found the Pincio +unexpectedly near; I found the sunshine; I found the familiar winter +warmth which in Southern climates is so unlike the summer warmth in +ours; but the drive which I had remembered as a long ellipse had +narrowed to a little circle, where one could not have driven round +faster than a slow trot without danger of vertigo. I did not find that +series of apparent principessas or imaginable marchesas leaning at their +lovely lengths in their landaus. I found in overwhelming majority the +numbered victorias, which pass for cabs in Rome, full of decent +tourists, together with a great variety of people on foot, but not much +fashion and no swells that my snobbish soul could be sure of. There was, +indeed, one fine moment when, at a retired point of the drive, I saw two +private carriages drawn up side by side in their encounter, with two +stout old ladies, whom I decided to be dowager countesses at the least, +partially projected from their opposing windows and lost in a delightful +exchange, as I hoped, of scandal. But the only other impressive +personality was that of an elderly, obviously American gentleman, in the +solitary silk hat and long frock-coat of the scene. There were other +Americans, but none so formal; the English were in all degrees of +informality down to tan shoes and at least one travelling-cap. The +women's dress, whether they were on foot or in cabs, was not striking, +though more than half of them were foreigners and could easily have +afforded to outdress the Italians, especially the work people, though +these were there in their best. + +There was a band-stand in the space first reached by the promenaders, +and there ought clearly to have been a band, but I was convinced that +there was to be none by a brief colloquy between one of the cab-drivers +(doubtless goaded to it by his fair freight) and the gentlest of Roman +policemen, whose response was given in accents of hopeful compassion: + +CABMAN: _"Musica, no?"_ (No music?) + +POLICEMAN: "_Forse l' avremo oramai"_ (Perhaps we shall have it +presently.) + +We did not have it at all that Sunday, possibly because it was the day +after the assassination of the King of Portugal, and the flags were at +half-mast everywhere. So we went, such of us as liked, to the parapet +overlooking the Piazza del Popolo, and commanding one of those prospects +of Rome which are equally incomparable from every elevation. I, for my +part, made the dizzying circuit of the brief drive on foot in the dark +shadows of the roofing ilexes (if they are ilexes), and then strolled +back and forth on the paths set thick with plinths bearing the heads of +the innumerable national great--the poets, historians, artists, +scientists, politicians, heroes--from the ancient Roman to the modern +Italian times. I particularly looked up the poets of the last hundred +years, because I had written about them in one of my many forgotten +books, till I fancied a growing consciousness in them at this encounter +with an admirer; they, at least, seemed to remember my book. Then I went +off to the cafe overlooking them in their different alleys, and had tea +next a man who was taking lemon instead of milk in his. Here I was beset +with an impassioned longing to know whether he was a Russian or +American, since the English always take milk in their tea, but I could +not ask, and when I had suffered my question as long as I could in his +presence I escaped from it, if you can call it escaping, to the more +poignant question of what it would be like to come, Sunday after Sunday, +to the Pincio, in the life-long voluntary exile of some Americans I +knew, who meant to spend the rest of their years under the spell of +Rome. I thought, upon the whole, that it would be a dull, sad fate, for +somehow we seem born in a certain country in order to die in it, and I +went home, to come again other Sundays to the Pincio, but not all the +Sundays I promised myself. + +On one of these Sundays I found Roman boys playing an inscrutable game +among the busts of their storied compatriots, a sort of "I spy" or "Hide +and go whoop," counting who should be "It" in an Italian version of +"Oneary, ory, ickory, an," and then scattering in every direction behind +the plinths and bushes. They were not more molestive than boys always +are in a world which ought to be left entirely to old people, and I +could not see that they did any harm. But somebody must have done harm, +for not only was a bust here and there scribbled over in pencil, but the +bust of Machiavelli had its nose freshly broken off in a jagged fracture +that was very hurting to look at. This may have been done by some +mistaken moralist, who saw in the old republican adviser of princes that +enemy of mankind which he was once reputed to be. At any rate, I will +not attribute the mutilation to the boys of Rome, whom I saw at other +times foregoing so many opportunities of mischief in the Villa +Bor-ghese. One of them even refused money from me there when I +misunderstood his application for matches and offered him some coppers. +He put my tip aside with a dignified wave of his hand and a proud +backward step; and, indeed, I ought to have seen from the flat, broad +cap he wore that he was a school-boy of civil condition. The Romans are +not nearly so dramatic as the Neapolitans or Venetians or even as the +Tuscans; but once in the same pleasance I saw a controversy between +school-boys which was carried on with an animation full of beauty and +finish. They argued back and forth, not violently, but vividly, and one +whom I admired most enforced his reasons with charming gesticulations, +whirling from his opponents with quick turns of his body and many a +renunciatory retirement, and then facing about and advancing again upon +the unconvinced. I decided that his admirable drama had been studied +from the histrionics of his mother in domestic scenes; and, if I had +been one of those other boys, I should have come over to his side +instantly. + +The Roman manners vary from Roman to Roman, just as our own manners, if +we had any, would vary from New-Yorker to New-Yorker. Zola thinks the +whole population is more or less spoiled with the conceit of Rome's +ancient greatness, and shows it. One could hardly blame them if this +were so; but I did not see any strong proof of it, though I could have +imagined it on occasion. I should say rather that they had a republican +simplicity of manner, and I liked this better in the shop people and +work people than the civility overflowing into servility which one finds +among the like folk, for instance, in England. I heard complaints from +foreigners that the old-time deference of the lower classes was gone, +but I did not miss it. Once in a cafe, indeed, the waiter spoke to me in +_Voi_ (you) instead of _Lei_ (lordship), but the Neapolitans often do +this, and I took it for a friendly effort to put me at my ease in a +strange tongue with a more accustomed form. We were trying to come +together on the kind of tea I wanted, but we failed, if I wanted it +strong, for I got it very weak and tepid. I thought another day that it +would be stronger if I could get it brought hotter, but it was not, and +so I went no more to a place where I was liable to be called You instead +of Lordship and still get weak tea. I think this was a mistake of mine +and a loss, for at that cafe I saw some old-fashioned Italian types +drinking their black coffee at afternoon tea-time out of tumblers, and +others calling for pen and ink and writing letters, and ladies sweetly +asking for newspapers and reading them there; and I ought to have +continued coming to study them. + +As to my conjectures of republican quality in the Romans, I had explicit +confirmation from a very intelligent Italian who said of the anomalous +social and political situation in Rome: "We Italians are naturally +republicans, and, if it were a question of any other reigning family, we +should have the republic. But we feel that we owe everything, the very +existence of the nation, to the house of Savoy, and we are loyal to it +in our gratitude. Especially we are true to the present king." It is +known, of course, that Menotti Garibaldi continues the republican that +his father always was, but I heard of his saying that, if a republic +were established, Victor Emmanuel III. would be overwhelmingly chosen +the first president. It is the Socialists who hold off unrelentingly +from the monarchy, and not the republicans, as they can be differenced +from them. One of the well-known Roman anomalies is that some members of +the oldest families are or have been Socialists; and such a noble was +reproached because he would not go to thank the king in recognition of +some signal proof of his public spirit and unselfish patriotism. He +owned the generosity of the king's behavior and his claim upon popular +acknowledgment, but he said that he had taught the young men of his +party the duty of ignoring the monarchy, and he could not go counter to +the doctrine he had preached. + +If I venture to speak now of a very extraordinary trait of the municipal +situation at Rome, it must be without the least pretence to authority or +to more than such superficial knowledge as the most incurious visitor to +Rome can hardly help having. In the capital of Christendom, where the +head of the Church dwells in a tradition of supremacy hardly less +Italian than Christian, the syndic, or mayor, is a Jew, and not merely a +Jew, but an alien Jew, English by birth and education, a Londoner and an +Oxford man. More yet, he is a Freemason, which in Italy means things +anathema to the Church, and he is a very prominent Freemason. With +reference to the State, his official existence, though not inimical, is +through the fusion of the political parties which elected him hardly +less anomalous. This combination overthrew the late Clerical city +government, and it included Liberals, Republicans, Socialists, and all +the other anti-Clericals. Whatever liberalism or republicanism means, +socialism cannot mean less than the economic solution of regality and +aristocracy in Europe, and in Italy as elsewhere. It does not mean the +old-fashioned revolution; it means simply the effacement of all social +differences by equal industrial obligations. So far as the Socialists +can characterize it, therefore, the actual municipal government of Rome +is as antimonarchical as it is antipapal. But the syndic of Rome is a +man of education, of culture, of intelligence, and he is evidently a man +of consummate tact. He has known how to reconcile the warring elements, +which made peace in his election, to one another and to their outside +antagonists, to the Church and to the State, as well as to himself, in +the course he holds over a very rugged way. His opportunities of +downfall are pretty constant, it will be seen, when it is explained that +if a measure with which he is identified fails in the city council it +becomes his duty to resign, like the prime-minister of England in the +like case with Parliament, But Mr. Nathan, who is as alien in his name +as in his race and religion, and is known orally to the Romans as Signor +Nahtahn, has not yet been obliged to resign. He has felt his way through +every difficulty, and has not yet been identified with any fatally +compromising measure. In such an extremely embarrassing predicament as +that created by the conflict between the labor unions and the police +early in April, and eventuating in the two days' strike, he knew how to +do the wise thing and the right thing. As to the incident, he held his +hand and he held his tongue, but he went to visit the wounded workmen in +the hospital, and he condoled with their families. He was somewhat +blamed for that, but his action kept for him the confidence of that +large body of his supporters who earn their living with their hands. + +It is said that the common Romans do not willingly earn their living +with their hands; that they like better being idle and, so far as they +can, ornamental. In this they would not differ from the uncommon Romans, +the moneyed, the leisured, the pedigreed classes, who reproach them for +their indolence; but I do not know whether they are so indolent as all +that or not. I heard it said that they no longer want work, and that +when they get it they do not do it well--a supposed effect of the +socialism which is supposed to have spoiled their manners. I heard it +said more intelligently, as I thought, that they are not easily +disciplined, and that they cannot be successfully associated in the +industries requiring workmen to toil in large bodies together; they will +not stand that. Also I heard it said, as I thought again rather +intelligently, that where work is given them to do after a certain +model, they will conform perfectly for the first three or four times; +then their fatal creativeness comes into play, and they begin to better +their instruction by trying to improve upon the patterns--that is, they +are artists, not artisans. They must please their fancy in their work or +they cannot do it well. From my own experience I cannot say whether this +is generally or only sometimes true, but I can affirm that where they +delayed or erred in their work they took their failure very amiably. I +never saw sweeter patience than that of the Roman matron who had +undertaken a small job of getting spots out of a garment, and who quite +surpassed me in self-control when she announced, day after appointed +day, that the work was not done yet or not done perfectly; she was +politeness itself. + +On the other hand, some young ladies at a fashionable concert which the +queen-mother honored with her presence did not seem very polite. They +kept on their immense hats, as women still do in all public places on +the European continent, and they seized as many chairs as they could for +friends who did not come, and at supreme moments they stood up on their +chairs and spoiled such poor chance of seeing the queen-mother as the +stranger might have had. While the good King Umberto lived the stranger +would have had many other chances, for it is said that the queen showed +herself with him to the people at the windows of their palace every +afternoon; but in her widowhood she lives retired, though now and then +her carriage may be seen passing through the streets, with four special +policemen on bicycles following it. These waited about the doorway of +the concert-hall that afternoon and formed a very simple, if effective, +guard. In fact, it might be said that in its relations with the popular +life the reigning family could hardly be simpler. The present king and +queen are not so much seen in public as King Umberto and Queen +Margherita were, but it is known from many words and deeds that King +Victor Emmanuel wishes to be the friend, if not the acquaintance, of his +people. When it was proposed to push the present tunnel, with its walks +and drives and trolley-lines, under the Quirinal Palace and gardens, so +as to connect the two principal business quarters of the city, the king +was notified that the noise and jar of the traffic in it might interfere +with his comfort. He asked if the tunnel would be for the general +advantage, and, when this could not be denied, he gave his consent in +words to some such effect as "That settles it." When the German Emperor +last visited Rome he is said to have had some state question as to +whether he should drive on a certain occasion to the Palatine with the +king's horses or the pope's. He who told the story did not remember how +the question was solved by the emperor, but he said, "Our king walked." + +All this does not mean republican simplicity in the king; a citizen king +is doubtless a contradiction in terms anywhere out of France, and even +there Louis Philippe found the part difficult. But there is no doubt +that the King of Italy means to be the best sort of constituional king, +and, as he is in every way an uncommon man, he will probably succeed. +One may fancy in him, if one likes, something of that almost touching +anxiety of thoughtful Italians to be and to do all that they can for +Italy, in a patriotism that seems as enlightened as it is devoted. If I +had any criticism to make of such Italians it would be that they +expected, or that they asked, too much of themselves. To be sure, they +have a right to expect much, for they have done wonders with a country +which, without great natural resources except of heart and brain, +entered bankrupt into its national existence, and has now grown +financially to the dimensions of its vast treasury building, with a +paper currency at par and of equal validity with French and English +money. If the industrial conditions in Italy were so bad as we +compassionate outsiders have been taught to suppose, this financial +change is one of the most important events accomplished in Europe since +the great era of the racial unifications began. No one will pretend that +there have not been great errors of administration in Italy, but +apparently the Italians have known how to learn wisdom from their folly. +There has been a great deal of industrial adversity; the cost of living +has advanced; the taxes are very heavy, and the burdens are unequally +adjusted; many speculators have been ruined, and much honestly invested +money has been lost. But wages have increased with the prices and rents +and taxes, and in a country where every ounce of coal that drives a +wheel of production or transportation has to be brought a thousand miles +manufactures and railroads have been multiplied. + +The state has now taken over the roads and has added their cost to that +of its expensive army and navy, but no reasonable witness can doubt that +the Italians will be equal to this as well as their other national +undertakings. These in Rome are peculiarly difficult and onerous, +because they must be commensurate with the scale of antiquity. In a city +surviving amid the colossal ruins of the past it would be grotesque to +build anything of the modest modern dimensions such as would satisfy the +eye in other capitals. The Palace of Finance, at a time when Italian +paper was at a discount almost equal to that of American paper during +the Civil War, had to be prophetic of the present solvency in size. The +yet-unfinished Palace of Justice (one dare not recognize its beauty +above one's breath) must be planned so huge that the highest story had +to be left off if the foundations were to support the superstructure; +the memorial of Victor Emmanuel II. must be of a vastness in keeping +with the monuments of imperial Rome, some of which it will partly +obscure. Yet as the nation has grown in strength under burdens and +duties, it will doubtless prove adequate to the colossal architectural +enterprises of its capital. Private speculation in Rome brought disaster +twenty-five years ago, but now the city has overflowed with new life the +edifices that long stood like empty sepulchres, and public enterprises +cannot finally fail; otherwise we should not be digging the Panama Canal +or be trying to keep the New York streets in repair. We may confide in +the ability of the Italians to carry out their undertakings and to pay +the cost out of their own pockets. It is easy to criticise them, but we +cannot criticise them more severely than they criticise themselves; and +perhaps, as our censure cannot profit them, we might with advantage to +ourselves, now and then, convert it into recognition of the great things +they have accomplished. + + + + +XIII + +CASUAL IMPRESSIONS + + +The day that we arrived in Rome the unclouded sun was yellow on the +white dust of the streets, which is never laid by a municipal +watering-cart, though sometimes it is sprinkled into mire from the +garden-hose of the abutting hotels; and in my rashness I said that for +Rome you want sun and you want youth. Yet there followed many gray days +when my age found Rome very well indeed, and I would not have the +septuagenarian keep away because he is no longer in the sunny sixties. +He may see through his glasses some things hidden even from the eyes of +the early forties. If he drives out beyond the Porta Pia, say, some +bright afternoon, and notes how the avenue between the beautiful old +villas is also bordered by many vacant lots advertised for sale as well +as built up with pleasant new houses, he will be able to carry away with +him the significant fact that a convenient and public-spirited +trolley-line has the same suburban effect in Rome, Italy, as in Rome, +New York. If he meets some squadrons of cavalry or some regiments of +foot, in that military necessity of constant movement which the civilian +can never understand, he may make the useful reflection that it is much +better to have the troops out of the city than in it, and he can praise +the wisdom of the Italian government accordingly. On the neighboring +mountains the presence or absence of snow forms the difference between +summer and winter in Rome, and will suggest the question whether, after +all, our one continental weather is better than the many local weathers +of Europe; and perhaps he will acquire national modesty in owning that +there is something more picturesque in the indications of those azure or +silvery tops than in his morning paper's announcement that there is or +is not a lower pressure in the region of the lakes. + +At any rate, I would not have him note the intimations of such a drive +at less worth than those of any more conventional fact of his Roman +sojourn. If one is quite honest, or merely as honest as one may be with +safety, one will often own to one's self that something merely +incidental to one's purpose, in visiting this memorable place or that, +was of greater charm and greater value than the fulfilment of a direct +purpose. One happy morning I went, being in the vicinity, to renew the +acquaintance with the Tarpeian Rock, which I had hastened to make on my +first visit to Rome. I had then found it so far from such a frightfully +precipitous height as I had led myself to expect that I came away and +rather mocked it in print. But now, possibly because the years had +moderated all my expectations in life, I thought the Tarpeian Rock very +respectably steep and quite impressively lofty; either the houses at its +foot had sunk with their chimneys and balconies, or the rock had risen, +so that one could no longer be hurled from it with impunity. We looked +at it from an arbor of the lovely little garden which we were let into +beyond the top of the rock, and which was the pleasance of some sort of +hospital. I think there were probably flowers there, since it was a +garden, but what was best was the almond-tree covering the whole space +with a roof of bloom, and in this roof a score of birds that sang +divinely. + +I am aware of bringing a great many birds into these papers; but really +Rome would not be Rome without them; and I could not exaggerate their +number or the sweetness of their song. They particularly abounded in the +cloistered and gardened close of the Cistercian Convent, which three +hundred years ago ensconsed itself within the ruinous Baths of +Diocletian. I have no fable at hand to explain what seems the special +preference of the birds for this garden; it is possibly an idiosyncrasy, +something like that of the cats which make Trajan's Forum their favorite +resort. All that I can positively say is that if I were a bird I would +ask nothing better than to frequent the cypresses of that garden and +tune my numbers for the entertainment of the audience of extraordinary +monsters in the aisles below, which bea'in plinths of clipped privet and +end marble heads of horses, bulls, elephants, rhinoceroses, and their +like. I do not pretend to be exact in their nomination; they may be +other animals; but I am sure of their attention to the birds. I am not +quite so sure of the attention of the antique shapes in the rooms of the +Ludovisi collection looking into the close. I fancy them preoccupied +with the in-doors cold, so great in all Italian galleries, and scarcely +tempered for them by the remote and solitary brazier over which the +custodians take turns in stifling themselves. They cannot come down +into the sun and song of the garden, to which the American tourist may +return from visiting them, to thaw out his love of the beautiful. + +They are not so many or so famous as their marble brothers and sisters +in the Vatican Museum, but the tourist should not miss seeing them. +Neither should he miss any accessible detail of the environing ruins of +the Diocletian Baths. Let him not think because they are so handy, and +so next door, as it were, to the railway station where he arrives, and +to Cook's office where he goes for his letters next morning, that they +are of less merit than other monuments of imperial Rome. They are not +only colossally vast, but they are singularly noble, as well as so +admirably convenient. Because they are so convenient, the modern Romans +have turned their cavernous immensity to account in the trades and +industries, and have built them up in carpenters' and blacksmiths' and +plumbers' shops, where there is a cheerful hammering and banging much +better than the sullen silence of more remote and difficult ruins. In +color they are a very agreeable reddish brown, though not so soft to the +eye as the velvety masses of the Palatine, which at any distance great +enough to obscure their excavation have a beauty like that of primitive +nature. I do not know but you see these best from the glazed terrace of +that restaurant on the Aventine which is the resort of the well-advised +Romans and visitors, and from which you look across to the mount of +fallen and buried grandeur over a champaign of gardens and orchards. All +round is a landscape which I was not able to think of as less than +tremendous, with the whole of Rome in it, and the snow-topped hills +about it--a scene to which you may well give more than a moment from the +varied company at the other tables, where English, German, French, and +Americans, as well as Italians, are returning to the simple life in +their enjoyment of the local dishes, washed down with golden draughts of +local wine, served ciderwise in generous jugs. + +If your mind is, as ours was in that place, to drive farther and see the +chapter-house of the Knights of Malta, clinging to the height over the +Tiber, and looking up and down its yellow torrent and the black boats +along the shore, with universal Rome melting into the distance, you must +not fail to stop at the old, old Church of St. Sabina. You will +naturally want to see this, not only because there in the cloister (as +the ladies can ascertain at the window let into the wall for their +dangerous eyes to peer through from the outside) is the successor of the +orange-tree transplanted from the Holy Land by St. Dominic six or seven +hundred years ago; not only because one of the doors of the church, +covered with Bible stories, is thought the oldest wood-carving in the +world, but also because there will be sitting in his white robes on a +bench beside the nave an aged Dominican monk reading some holy book, +with his spectacles fallen forward on his nose and his cowl fallen back +on his neck, and his wide tonsure gleaming glacially in the pale light, +whom nothing in the church or its visitors can distract from his +devotions. + +It is very, very cold in there, but he probably would not, if he could, +follow you into the warm outer world and on into the garden of the +Knights, who came here after they had misruled Malta for centuries and +finally rendered a facile submission to General Bonaparte of the French +Republican army in 1798. Their fixing here cannot be called anything so +vigorous as their last stand; but, without specific reference to the +easy-chairs in their chapter-house, it may be fitly called their last +seat; and, if it is true that none of plebeian blood may enjoy the +order's privileges, the place will afford another of those satisfactions +which the best of all possible worlds is always offering its admirers. +Even if one were disposed to moralize the comfortable end of the poor +Knights harshly, one must admit that their view of Rome is one of the +unrivalled views, and that the glimpse of St. Peter's through the +key-hole of their garden-gate is little short of tin-rivalled. I could +not manage the glimpse myself, but I can testify to the unique character +of the avenue of clipped box and laurel which the key-hole also +commands. Lovers of the supernatural, of which I am the first, will like +to be reminded, or perhaps instructed, that the Church of the Priory +stands on the spot where Remus had a seance with the spiritual +authorities and was advised against building Rome where he proposed, +being shown only six vultures as against twelve that Romulus saw in +favor of his chosen site. The fact gave the Aventine Hill the fame of +bad luck, but any one may safely visit it now, after the long time that +has passed. + +I do not, however, advise visiting it above any other place in Rome. +What I always say is, take your chances with any or every time or place; +you cannot fail of some impression which you will always like recurring +to as characteristically delightful. For instance, I once walked home +from the Piazza di Spagna with some carnival masks frolicking about me +through the sun-shotten golden dust of the delicious evening air, and I +had a pleasure from the experience which I shall never forget. It was as +rich as that I got from the rosy twilight in Avhich I wandered homeward +another time from the Piazza di Venezia and found myself passing the +Fountain of Trevi, and lingered long there and would not throw my penny +into its waters because I knew I could not help coming back to Rome +anyhow. Yet another time I was driving through a certain piazza where +the peasants stand night long waiting to be hired by the proprietors who +come to find them there, and suddenly the piety of the Middle Ages stood +before me in the figure of the Brotherhood of the Misericordia, draped +to the foot and hooded in their gray, unbleached linen. The brothers +were ranged in a file at the doors of the church ready to visit the +house of sickness or of mourning, barefooted, with their eyes showing +spectrally through their masks and their hands coming soft and white out +of their sleeves and betraying the lily class that neither toils nor +spins and yet is bound, as in the past, to the poorest and humblest +through the only Church that knows how to unite them in the offering and +acceptance of reciprocal religious duties. + +In Rome, as elsewhere in Catholic countries, it seemed to me that the +worshippers were mostly of the poorer classes and were mostly old women, +but in the Church of the Jesuits I saw worshippers almost as well +dressed as the average of our Christian Scientists, and in that church, +whose name I forget, but which is in the wide street or narrow piazza +below the windows of the palace where the last Stuarts lived and died, +my ineradicable love of gentility was flattered and my faith in the +final sanctification of good society restored by the sight of gentlemen +coming to and going from prayer with their silk hats in their hands. + +The performance of ritual implies a certain measure of mechanism, and +the wonder is that in the Catholic churches it is not more mechanical +than it actually is. I was no great frequenter of functions, and I +cannot claim that my superior spirituality was ever deeply wounded; +sometimes it was even supported and consoled. I noted, without offence, +in the Church of San Giuseppe how the young monk, who preached an +eloquent sermon on the saint's life and character, exhausted himself +before he exhausted his topic, and sat down between the successive heads +of his discourse and took a good rest. It was the saint's day, which +seemed more generally observed than any other saint's day in Rome, and +his baroque church in Via Capo le Case was thronged with people, mostly +poor and largely peasants, who were apparently not so fatigued by the +preacher's shrill, hard delivery as he was himself. There were many +children, whom their elders held up to see, and there was one young girl +in a hat as wide as a barrel-head standing up where others sat, and +blotting out the prospect of half the church with her flaring brim and +flaunting feathers. The worshippers came and went, and while the monk +preached and reposed a man crept dizzyingly round the cornice with a +taper at the end of a long pole lighting the chandeliers, while two +other men on the floor kindled the candles before the altars. As soon as +their work was completed, the monk, as if he had been preaching against +time, sat definitely down and left us to the rapture of the perfected +splendor. The high-altar was canopied and curtained in crimson, fringed +with gold, and against this the candle-flames floated like yellow +flowers. Suddenly, amid the hush and expectance, a tenor voice pealed +from the organ-loft, and a train of priests issued from the sacristy and +elbowed and shouldered their way through the crowd to the high-altar, +where their intoning, like so many + + "Silver snarling trumpets 'gan to glide," + +and those flower-like flames and that tenor voice seemed to sing +together, and all sense of mortal agency in the effect was lost. + +How much our pale Northern faith has suffered from the elimination of +the drama which is so large an element in the worship of the South could +not he conjectured without offence to both. Drama I have said, but, if I +had said opera, it would have been equally with the will merely to +recognize the fact and not to censure it. Many have imagined a concert +of praise in heaven, and portrayed it as a spectacle of which the elder +Christian worship seems emulous. Go, therefore, to Rome, dear +fellow-Protestant, with any measure of ignorance short of mine, but +leave as much of your prejudice behind you as you can. You are not more +likely to become a convert because of your tolerance; in fact, you may +be the safer for it; and it will prepare you for a gentler pleasure than +you would otherwise enjoy in the rites and ceremonies which seem exotic +in our wintrier world, but which are here native to the climate, or, at +least, could not have had their origin under any but oriental or +meridional skies. The kindlier mood will help you to a truer +appreciation of that peculiar keeping of the churches which the stranger +is apt to encounter in his approach. Be tender of the hapless mendicants +at the door; they are not there for their pleasure, those blind and halt +and old. Be modestly receptive of the good office of the whole tribe of +cicerones, of custodians, of sacristans; they can save you time, which, +though it is not quite the same as money, even in Rome is worth saving, +and are the repository of many rejected fables waiting to be recognized +as facts again. I, for instance, committed the potential error of wholly +rejecting with scorn the services of an authorized guide to the Church +of St. John Lateran because he said the tariff was three francs. But +after wandering, the helpless prey of my own Baedeker, up and down the +huge temple, I was glad to find him waiting my emergence where I had +left him, in the church porch, one of the most pathetic figures that +ever wrung the remorseful heart. + +His poor black clothes showed the lustre of inveterate wear; his +waistcoat would have been the better for a whole bottle of benzine; his +shoes, if they did not share the polish of those threadbare textures, +reciprocated the effect of his broken-spirited cuffs and collar, and the +forlorn gentility of his hat. His beard had not been shaved for three +days; I do not know why, but doubtless for as good a reason as that his +shirt had not been washed for seven. It was with something like a cry +for pardon of my previous brutality that I now closed with his unabated +demand of a three-franc fee, and we went with him wherever he would, +from one holy edifice to another of those that constitute the church; +but I will not ask the reader to follow us in the cab which he mounted +into with us, but which would not conveniently hold four. Let him look +it all up in the admirably compendious pages of Hare and Murray, and +believe, if he can, that I missed nothing of that history and mystery. +If I speak merely of the marvellous baptistery, it is doubtless not +because the other parts were not equally worthy of my wonder, but +because I would not have even an enemy miss the music of the singing +doors, mighty valves of bronze which, when they turn upon their hinges, +emit a murmur of grief or a moan of remorse for whatever heathen uses +they once served the wicked Caracalla at his baths. Not to have heard +their rich harmony would he like not having heard the echo in the +baptistery of Pisa, a life-long loss. + +Heaven knows how punctiliously our guide would have acquainted us with +every particular of the Lateran group, which for a thousand years before +the Vatican was the home of the popes. We begged off from this and that, +but even indolence like mine would not spare itself the sight of the +Scala Santa. That was another of the things which I distinctly +remembered from the year 1864, and I did not find the spectacle of the +modern penitents covering the holy steps different in 1908. Now, as +then, there was something incongruous in their fashions and aspirations, +but one could not doubt that it was a genuine piety that nerved them to +climb up and down the hard ascent on their knees, or, at the worst, that +it was good exercise. Still, I would rather leave my reader the sense of +that most noble fagade of the church, with its lofty balustraded +entablature, where the gigantic Christ and ten of his saints look out +forever to the Alban hills. + + + + +XIV + +TIVOLI AND FRASCATI + + +One of the most agreeable illusions of travel is a sort of expectation +that if you will give objects of interest time enough they will present +themselves to you, and, if they will not actually come to you in your +hotel, will happen in your way when you go out. This was my notion of +the right way of seeing Rome, but, as the days of my winter passed, so +many memorable monuments failed not merely to seek me out, but stiffly +held aloof from me in my walks abroad, that I began to feel anxious lest +I should miss them altogether. I had, for instance, always had the +friendliest curiosity concerning Tivoli and Frascati as the two most +amiable Roman neighborhoods, and hoped to see both of them in some +informal and casual sort; but they persisted so long in keeping off on +their respective hills that I saw something positive on niy part must be +done. Clearly I must make the advances; and so when, one morning of +mid-March, a friend sent to ask if we would not motor out to Tivoli with +him and his family, I closed eagerly with the chance of a compromise +which would save feeling all round. My friend has never yet known how he +was bringing Tivoli and me together after a mutual diffidence, but, as +he was a poet, I am sure he will be glad to know now. + +Our road across the Campagna lay the greater part of the distance beside +the tram-line, but at other points parted with it and stretched rough, +if lately mended, and smooth, if long neglected, between the wide, +lonely pastures and narrow drill-sown fields of wheat. The Campagna is +said to be ploughed only once in five years by the peasants for the +proprietors, who have philosophized its fertility as something that can +be better restored by the activities of nature in that time than by +phosphates in less. As they are mostly Roman patricians, they have +always felt able to wait; but now it is said that northern Italian +capital and enterprise are coming in, and the Campagna will soon be +cropped every season, though as yet its chief yield seemed to be the +two-year-old colts we saw browsing about. For some distance we had the +company of the different aqueducts, but their broken stretches presently +ceased altogether, and then for other human association we had, besides +the fencings of the meadows, only the huts and shelters scattered among +the grassy humps and hollows. There were more humps than I had +remembered of the Campagna, and probably they were the rounded and +turfed-over chunks of antiquity which otherwhere showed their naked +masonry unsoft-ened and unfriended by the passing centuries. At times a +dusty hamlet, that seemed to crop up from the roadside ditches, followed +us a little way with children that shouted for joy in our motor and dogs +that barked for pleasure in their joy. Women with the square linen +head-dress of the Roman peasants stood and stared, and sallow men, each +with his jacket hanging from one of his shoulders, seemed stalking +backward from us as we whirled by. Here and there we scared a horse or a +mule, but we did not so much as run over a hen; and both man and beast +are becoming here, as elsewhere, reconciled to the automobile. Now and +then a carter would set his team slantwise in our course and stay us out +of good-humored deviltry, and when he let us pass would fling some chaff +to the fresh-faced English youngster who was our chauffeur. + +"I suppose you don't always understand what those fellows say," I +suggested from my seat beside him. + +"No, sir," he confessed. "But I give it to 'em back in English," he +added, joyously. + +He rather liked these encounters, apparently, but not the beds of sharp, +broken stone with which the road was repaired. It was his belief that +there was not a steam-roller in all Italy, and he seemed to reserve an +opinion of the government's motives in the matter with respect to +motors, as if he thought them bad. + +The scenery of the Campagna was not varied. Once we came to a +battlemented tomb, of mighty girth and height, as perdurable in its +masonry as the naked, stony hills that in the distance propped the +mountains fainting along the horizon under their burden of snow. But as +we drew nearer Tivoli the hills drew nearer us, and now they were no +longer naked, but densely covered with the gray, interminable stretch of +the olive forests. The olive is the tree which, of all others, is the +friend of civilized man; it is older and kinder even than the apple, +which is its next rival in beneficence; but these two kinds are so like +each other, in the mass, that this boundless forest of olives around +Tivoli offered an image of all the aggregated apple-orchards in the +world. Where the trees came closest to the road they seemed to watch our +passing, each with its trunk aslant and its branches akimbo, in a +humorous make-believe of being in some joke with us, like so many +gnarled and twisted apple-trees, used to children's play-fellowship. You +felt a racial intimacy with the whimsical and antic shapes which your +brief personal consciousness denied in vain; and you rose among the +slopes around Tivoli with a sense of home-coming from the desert of the +Campagna. But in the distance to which the olive forests stretched they +lost this effect of tricksy familiarity. They looked like a gray sea +against the horizon; more fantastically yet, they seemed a vast hoar +silence, full of mystery and loneliness. + +If Tivoli does not flourish so frankly on its oil as Frascati on its +wine, it is perhaps because it has of late years tacitly prospered as +much on the electricity which its wonderful and beautiful waterfalls +enable it to furnish as abundantly to Rome as our own Niagara to +Buffalo. The scrupulous Hare, whose _Walks in Rome_ include Tivoli, does +not, indeed, advise you to visit the electrical works, but he says that +if you have not strength enough for all the interests and attractions of +Tivoli it will be wise to give yourself entirely to the cascades and to +the Villa d'Este, and this was what we instinctively did, but in the +reverse order. Chance rewarded us before we left the villa with a sight +of the electric plant, which just below the villa walls smokes +industriously away with a round, redbrick chimney almost as lofty and as +ugly as some chimney in America. On our way to and fro we necessarily +passed through the town, which, with its widish but not straightish +chief street, I found as clean as Rome itself, and looking, after the +long tumult of its history, beginning well back in fable, as peaceable +as Montclair, New Jersey. It had its charm, and, if I could have spent +two weeks there instead of two hours, I might impart its effect in much +more circumstance than I can now promise the reader. Most of my little +time I gladly gave to the villa, which, with the manifold classic +associations of the region, attracts the stranger and helps the +cataracts sum up all that most people can keep of Tivoli. + +The Villa d'Este is not yet a ruin, but it is ruinous enough to win the +fancy without cumbering it with the mere rubbish of decay. Some +neglected pleasances are so far gone that you cannot wish to live in +them, but the forgottenness of the Villa d'Este hospitably allured me to +instant and permament occupation, so that when I heard it could now be +bought, casino and all, for thirty thousand dollars, nothing but the +want of the money kept me from making the purchase. I indeed recognized +certain difficulties in living there the year round; but who lives +anywhere the year round if he can help it? The casino, standing among +the simpler town buildings on the plateau above the gardens, would be a +little inclement, for all its frescoing and stuccoing by the +sixteenth-century arts, and in its noble halls, amid the painted and +modelled figures, the new American proprietor would shiver with the +former host and guests after the first autumn chill began; but while it +was yet summer it Avould be as delicious there as in the aisles and +avenues of the garden which its balustrated terrace looked into. From +that level you descend by marble steps which must have some trouble in +knowing themselves from the cascades pouring down the broken steeps +beside them, and com-panionably sharing their seclusion among the +cypresses and ilexes. You are never out of the sight and sound of the +plunging water, which is still trained in falls and fountains, or left +to a pathetic dribble through the tattered stucco of the neglected +grots. It is now a good three centuries and a half since the Cardinal +Ippolito d'.Este had these gardens laid out and his pleasure-house built +overlooking them; and his gardener did not plan so substantially as his +architect. In fact, you might suppose that the landscapist wrought with +an eye to the loveliness of the ruin it all would soon fall into, and, +where he used stone, used it fragilely, so that it would ultimately +suggest old frayed and broken lace. Clearly he meant some of the +cataracts to face one another, and to have a centre from which they +could all be seen--say the still, dull-green basin which occupies a +large space in the grounds between them. But he must have meant this for +a surprise to the spectator, who easily misses it under the trees +overleaning the moss-grown walks which hardly kept themselves from +running wild. There is a sense of crumbling decorations of statues, +broken in their rococo caverns; of cypresses carelessly grouped and +fallen out of their proper straightness and slimness; of unkempt bushes +crowding the space beneath; of fragmentary gods or giants half hid in +the tangling grasses. It all has the air of something impatiently done +for eager luxury, and its greatest charm is such as might have been +expected to be won from eventual waste and wreck. If there was design in +the treatment of the propitious ground, self-shaped to an irregular +amphitheatre, it is now obscured, and the cultiavted tourist of our day +may reasonably please himself with the belief that he is having a better +time there than the academic Roman of the sixteenth century. + +Academic it all is, however hastily and nonchalantly, and I feel that I +have so signally failed to make the charm of the villa felt that I am +going to let a far politer observer celebate the beauties of the other +supreme interest of Tivoli. When Mr. Gray (as the poet loved to be +called in print) visited the town with Mr. Walpole in May, 1740, the +Villa d'Este by no means shared the honors of the cataracts, and Mr. +Gray seems not to have thought it worth seriously describing in his +letter to Mr. West, but mocks the casino with a playful mention before +proceeding to speak fully, if still playfully, of the great attraction +of Tivoli: "Dame Nature . . . has built here three or four little +mountains and laid them out in an irregular semicircle; from certain +others behind, at a greater distance, she has drawn a canal into which +she has put a little river of hers called the Anio, . . . which she has +no sooner done, but, like a heedless chit, it tumbles down a declivity +fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to shatters, and is +converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms many a bow--red, +green, blue, and yellow. . . . By this time it has divided itself, being +crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, each of +which, in emulation of the greater one, will tumble down, too: and it +does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you +have at one view all these cascades intermixed with groves of olive and +little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of one +(that which forms the extremity of the half-circle's horns) is seated +the town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on the brink +of the precipice, stands the Sibyls' Temple, the remains of a little +rotunda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose beautiful +Corinthian pillars are still standing and entire." + +For the reader who has been on the spot the poet's words will paint a +vivid picture of the scene; for the reader who has not been there, so +much the worse; he should lose no time in going, and drinking a cup of +the local wine at a table of the restaurant now in possession of Mr. +Gray's point of view. I do not know a more filling moment, exclusive of +the wine, than he can enjoy there, with those cascades before him and +those temples beside him; for Mr. Gray has mentioned only one of the +two, I do not know why, that exist on this enchanted spot, and that +define their sharp, black shadows as with an inky line just beyond the +restaurant tables. One is round and the other oblong, and the round one +has been called the Sibyls', though now it is getting itself called +Vesta's--the goddess who long unrightfully claimed the temple of Mater +Matuta in the Forum Boarium at Rome. As Vesta has lately been +dispossessed there by archaeology (which seems in Rome to enjoy the +plenary powers of our Boards of Health), she may have been given the +Sibyls' Temple at Tivoli in compensation; but all this does not really +matter. What really matters is the mighty chasm which yawns away almost +from your feet, where you sit, and the cataracts, from their brinks, +high or low, plunging into it, and the wavering columns of mist weakly +striving upward out of it: the whole hacked by those mountains Mr. Gray +mentions, with belts of olive orchard on their flanks, and wild paths +furrowing and wrinkling their stern faces. To your right there is a +sheeted cataract falling from the basins of the town laundry, where the +toil of the washers melts into nmsic, and their chatter, like that of +birds, drifts brokenly across the abyss to you. While you sit musing or +murmuring in your rapture, two mandolins and a guitar smilingly intrude, +and after a prelude of Italian airs swing into strains which presently, +through your revery, you recognize as "In the Bowery" and "Just One +Girl," and the smile of the two mandolins and the guitar spreads to a +grin of sympathy, and you are no longer at the Caffe Sibylla in Tivoli, +but in your own Manhattan on some fairy roof-garden, or at some +sixty-cent _table d'hote,_ with wine and music included. + +It was a fortnight later that we paid our visit to Frascati, not proudly +motoring now, but traversing the Campagna on the roof of a populous +tram-car, which in its lofty narrowness was of the likeness of an +old-fashionable lake propeller. The morning was, like most other +mornings in Rome, of an amiability which the afternoons often failed of; +but none of us passengers for Frascati doubted its promise as we +gathered at the tram-station and tried for tickets at the little booth +in a wall sparely containing the official who bade us get them in the +car. We all did this, whatever our nation--American, English, German, or +Italian--and then we mounted to the hurricane-deck of our propeller and +entered into a generous rivalry for the best seats. We had a roof over +our heads, and there were curtains which we might have drawn if we could +have borne to lose a single glimpse of the landscape, or if we would not +rather have suffered the chill which our swift progress evoked from the +morning's warmth after we left the shelter of the city streets. We +passed through stretches of the ancient aqueducts consorting on familiar +terms with rows of shabby tenement-houses, and whisked by the ends of +wide, dusty avenues of yet incomplete structure, and by beds of +market-gardens, and by simple feeding-places for man and beast, with the +tables set close in front of the stalls. An ambitiously frescoed casino +had a gigantic peacock painted over a whole story, and the peach-trees +were in bloom in the villa spaces. When we struck into the Campagna we +found it of like physiognomy with the Campagna toward Tivoli. + +There was very little tillage, but wide stretches of grazing-land, with +those lumps of turfed or naked antiquity starting out of them, and +cattle, sheep, and horses feeding over them, the colts' tails blowing +picturesquely in the wind that seemed more and more opposed to our +advance. It dropped, at times, where we paused to leave a passenger near +one of those suburbs which the tram-lines are building up round Rome, +but on our course building so slowly that our passengers had to walk +rather far from the stations before they reached home. There were other +pedestrians who looked rather English, especially some ladies making for +the gate of a kind, sunny walled old villa, where there was a girl +singing and a gardener coming slowly down to let them in. Nearer +Frascati were many neat, new stone houses, where Eoman families come out +to stay the spring and fall seasons, and even the summer. But these +looked too freshly like the suburban cottages on a Boston trolley-line; +and we perversely found our delight in a fine breadth of brown woods for +the very reason of that homelikeness which gave us pause in the houses. +The trees looked American; there were American wood-roads penetrating +the forest's broken and irregular extent; there was one steep-sided +ravine worth any man's American money; and the dead leaves littered the +sylvan paths with an allure to the foot which it was hard for the head +to resist. + +Elsewhere the tram-line that curved upward to Fras-cati was flanked, +after it left the Campagna's level, with vineyards as measureless as the +olive orchards of Tivoli. There was yet, at the end of March, no sign of +leaf on the newly trimmed vines, which were trained on long poles of +canes brought together in peaks to support them and netting the +hill-slopes with the endless succession of their tops. The eye wearied +itself in following them as in following the checkered wiring of the +Kentish hop-fields, and was glad to leave them for the closer-set, but +never too closely set, palaces of Frascati: the sort of palaces which we +call cottages in our summer cities, and the Italians call casinos from +the same instinctive modesty. When we began to doubt of our destination, +our car passed a long, shaded promenade, and then stopped in a cheerful +square amidst hotels and restaurants, with tables hospitably spread on +the sidewalks before them. + +We decided not to lunch at that early hour, but we could not keep our +eyes from feasting, even at eleven o'clock in the morning, on the +wonderful prospect that tempted them, on every hand, away from the more +immediate affair of choosing one out of the many cabs that thronged +about our arriving train. The cabs of Frascati are all finer than the +cabs of Rome, and the horses are handsomer and younger and stronger; we +could have taken the worst of the equipages that contested our favor and +still fared well; but we chose the best--a glittering victoria and an +animal of proud action, with a lustrous coat of bay. He wore a ring of +joyous bells; he had, indeed, not a headstall of such gay colors as some +others; but you cannot have everything, and his driver was of a mental +vividness which compensated for all the color wanting in his horse's +headstall, and of a personal attraction which made us ambitious for his +company on any terms. He quickly reduced us from our vain supposition +that carriages in a country-place should be cheaper than in a city; +because, as he proved, there were fewer strangers to hire them and they +ought logically to be dearer. So far from accepting our modest standards +of time and money, he all but persuaded us to employ him for the whole +day instead of a few hours at a price beyond our imagination; and he +only consented to compromise on a half-day at an increased figure. + +We supposed that it was the negotiation which drew and held the +attention of all the leisure of Frascati, and that it was the driver and +our relation to him rather than the horse and our relation to it that +concentrated the public interest in us; and when we had convinced him +that we had no wish but to see some of the more immediate and memorable +villas, we mounted to our places in the victoria and drove out through +the reluctantly parting spectators, who remained looking after us as if +unable to disperse to their business or pleasure. + +Our driver decided for us to go first to the Villa Falconieri, which had +lately been bought and presented by a fond subject to the German +Emperor, and by him in turn bestowed on the German Academy at Rome. In +the cold, clean, stony streets of Frascati, as we rattled through them, +there breathed the odor of the great local industry; and the doorways of +many buildings, widening almost in a circle to admit the burly tuns of +wine, testified how generally, how almost universally, the vintage of +that measureless acreage of grapes around the place employed the +inhabitants. But there was little else to impress the observer in +Frascati, and we willingly passed out of the town in the road climbing +the long incline to the Villa Fal-conieri, with its glimpses, far and +near, of woods and gardens. It was a road so much to our minds that +nothing was further from us than the notion that our horse might not +like it so well; but, at the first distinct rise, he stopped and wheeled +round so abruptly, after first pawing the air, that there could be no +doubt where the popular interest we had lately enjoyed in Frascati had +really originated. Probably our horse's distinguishing trait was known +to everybody in Frascati except his driver. He, at least, showed the +greatest surprise at the horse's behavior, as unprecedented in their +acquaintance, which he owned was brief, for he had bought him in Rome +only the week before. With successive retreats to level ground he put +him again and again at the incline, but as soon as the horse felt the +ground rising under his feet he lifted them from it and whirled round +for another retreat. All this we witnessed from an advantageotis point +at the roadside which we had taken up at his first show of reluctance; +and at last the driver suggested that we should leave it and go on to +the Villa Falconieri on foot. On our part, we suggested that he should +attempt some other villa which would not involve an objectionable climb. +He then proposed the Villa Mandragone, and the horse seemed to agree +with us. As we drove again through the clean, cold, stony streets, with +the rounded doorways for the wine-casks, we fancied something clearly +ironical in the general interest renewed by our return. But we tried to +look as if we had merely done the Villa Falconieri with unexampled +rapidity, and pushed on to the Villa Mandragone, where, under the roof +of interlacing ilex toughs, our horse ought to have been tempted on in a +luxurious unconsciousness of anything like an incline. But he was +apparently an animal which would have felt the difference between two +rose-leaves and one in a flowery path, and just when we were thinking +what a delightful time we were having, and beginning to feel a gentle +question as to who the pathetic little cripple halting toward us with a +color-box and a camp-stool might be, and whether she painted as well as +a kind heart could wish, our horse stopped with the suddenness which we +knew to be definite. The sensitive creature could not be deceived; he +must have reached rising ground, and we sided with him against our +driver, who would have pretended it was fancy. + +It was now noon, and we drove back to the _piazza,_ agreeing upon a less +price in view of the imperfect service rendered, and deciding to collect +our thoughts for a new venture over such luncheon as the best hotel +could give us. It was not so good a hotel as the lunch it gave. It was +beyond the cleansing tide of modernity which has swept the Roman hotels, +and was dirty everywhere, but with a specially dirty, large, shabby +dining-room, cold and draughty, yet precious for the large, round +brazier near our table which kept one side of us warm in romantic +mediaeval fashion, and invited us to rise from time to time and thaw our +fingers over its blinking coals. The bath in which our chicken had been +boiled formed a good soup; there was an admirable _pasta_ and a +creditable, if imperfect, conception of beefsteak; and there was a +caraffe of new Frascati wine, sweet, like new cider. If we could have +asked more, it would not have been more than the young Italian officer +who sat in the other corner with his pretty young wife, and who allowed +me to weave a whole realtistic fiction out of their being at Frascati so +out of season. + +Just as I was most satisfyingly accounting for them, our late driver +alarmed me by appearing at the door and beckoning me to the outside. The +occasion was nothing worse than the presence of a man who, he said, was +his brother, with a horse which, upon the same authority, was without +moral blame or physical blemish. If anything, it preferred a mountain to +a plain country, and could be warranted to balk at nothing. The man, who +was almost as exemplary as the horse, would assume the unfulfilled +contract of the other man and horse with a slight increase of pay; and +yet I had my doubts. The day had clouded, and I meekly contended that it +was going to rain; but the man explicitly and the horse tacitly scoffed +at the notion, and I yielded. I shall always be glad that I did so, for +in the keeping of those good creatures the rest of our day was an +unalloyed delight. It appeared, upon further acquaintance, that the man +paid a hundred dollars for the horse; his brother had paid a hundred and +twenty-five for the balker; but it was the belief of our driver that it +would be worth the difference when it had reconciled itself to the +rising ground of Frascati; as yet it was truly a stranger there. His own +horse was used to ups and downs everywhere; they had just come from a +long trip, and he was going to drive to Siena and back the next week +with two ladies for passengers, who were to pay him five dollars a day +for himself and horse and their joint keep. He said the ladies, whose +names he gave, were from Boston; he balked at adding Massachusetts, but +I am sure the horse would not; and, if I could have hired them both to +carry me about Italy indefinitely, I would have gladly paid them five +dollars a day as long as I had the money. The fact is, that driver was +charming, a man of sense and intelligence, who reflected credit even +upon his brother and his brother's horse: one of those perfect Italian +temperaments which endear their possessors to the head and heart, so +that you wonder, at parting, how you are going to live without them. + +We did not excite such vivid interest in Frascati at our second start as +at our first; but, as we necessarily passed over the same route again, +we had the applause of the children in streets now growing familiar, and +a glad welcome back from the pretty girls and blithe matrons of all ages +rhythmically washing in the public laundry, who recognized us in our new +equipage. The public laundry is always the gayest scene in an Italian +town, and probably our adventures continued the subject of joyous +comment throughout the day which was now passing only too rapidly for +us. We were again on the way to the Villa Falconieri, and while our +brave horse is valiantly mounting the steep to its gate this is perhaps +as good a place as any to own that the Villa Falconieri and the Villa +Man-dragone were the only sights we saw in Frascati. We did, indeed, +penetrate the chill interior of the local cathedral, but as we did not +know at the time that we were sharing it with the memory of the young +Stuart pretender Charles Edward, who died in Frascati, and whose +brother, Cardinal York, placed a mural tablet to him in the church, we +were conscious of no special claim upon our interest. We ought, of +course, to have visited the Villa Aldobrandini and the Villa Ruffinella +and the Villa Graziola and the Villa Taverna, but we left all these to +the reader, who will want some reason for going to Frascati in person, +and to whom I commend them as richly worth crossing the Atlantic for. +Doubtless from a like motive we left the ruins of Tusculum unvisited, +just as at Tivoli we refrained from diverging to Hadrian's Villa--the +two things supremely worthy to be seen in their respective regions. But, +if I had seen only half as much as I saw at Frascati--the Villa +Falconieri, namely--I should feel forever over-enriched by the +experience. + +Slowly an ancient servitor, whose family had been in the employ of the +Falconieri for a century, advanced as with the burden of their united +years and opened the high gate to us and delivered us over to a mild +boy. He bestowed on us, for a consideration, a bunch of wild violets, +and then, as if to keep us from the too abrupt sight of the repairs and +changes going on near the casino, led us first to the fish-pond, in the +untouched seclusion of a wooded hill, and silently showed us the +magnificent view which the top commanded, if commanded is not too proud +a word for a place so pathetic in its endearing neglect. It had once +been the haunt of many a gay picnicking crew in hoops and bag-wigs and +all the faded fashion of the past, when hosts and guests had planned a +wilder escapade than the grove before the casino invited, with its +tables of moss-painted marble. There would have been an academic poet, +or more than one, in the company, and they would have furnished forth +the prospect with phrases far finer than any I have about me, who can +only say that the Cam-pagna, clothed in mist and cloud-shadowed, swam +round the upland in the colors of a tropic sea. + +Our mild boy waited a decent moment, as if to let me do better, and then +led down to the casino, round through a wooded valley where there were +some men with fowling-pieces, whom I objected to in tones, if not in +terms. "What are they shooting?" "They are shooting larks, signore." +"What a pity!" "But the larks are leaving Italy, now, and going north." +It was a reason, like many another that humanity is put to it in giving, +and I do not know that I missed any larks, later, from an English meadow +where I saw them spiring up in song, and glad as if none of their +friends had been shot at the Villa Falconieri. In fact, I did not see +those fowlers actually killing any; and I can still hope they were not +very good shots. + +The workmen who were putting the place in repair were lunching near the +casino, in a litter of lumber and other structural material, but the +casino itself seemed as yet unprofaned by their touch. At any rate, we +had it quite to ourselves, let wander at will through its cool, bare, +still spaces. If there was a great deal to see, there was not much to +remember, or to remember so much as the satirical frescos of Pier Leone +Ghezzi, who has caricatured himself as well as others in them. They are +not bitter satires, but, on the contrary, very charming; and still more +charming are the family portraits frescoed round the principal room. +Under one curve of the vaulted ceiling the whole family of a given time +is shown, half-length but life-size, looking down pleasantly on the +unexpected American guests who try to pretend they were invited, or at +least came by mistaking the house for another. Better even than this +most amiable circle, or half-circle, of father, mother, and daughter are +the figures of friends or acquaintances or kinsfolk: figures not only +life-size, but full-length, in panels of the walls, in the very act of +stepping on the floor and coming forward to greet their host and hostess +from the other walls. They did not visibly move during our stay, but I +know they only waited for us to go; and that at night, especially when +there was a moon, or none, they left their backgrounds and mingled in +the polite gayeties of their period. One could hardly help looking over +one's shoulder to see if they were not following to that farthermost +room called Primavera, which is painted around and aloft like a very +bower of spring, with foliage and flowers covering the walls and +dropping through the trellis feigned overhead. Of all the caprices of +art, which in Italy so loved caprice, I recall no such pleasing +playfulness as in the decoration of these rooms. If you pass through +the last you may look from the spring within on no fairer spring without +bordering the shores of the Campagna sea. + +It was so pathetic to imagine the place going out of the right Italian +keeping that I attributed a responsive sadness to the tall, handsome, +elderly woman who had allowed us the freedom of the casino. Her faded +beauty was a little sallow, as the faded beauty of a Roman matron should +be, and her large, dark eyes glowed from purpling shadows. + +"And the German Emperor owns it now?" + +"Yes, they say he has bought it." + +"And the Germans will soon be coming?" + +"They say." + +She would not commit herself but by a tone, an inflection, but we knew +very well what she and the frescoed presences about us thought. I wish +now I could have stayed behind and got the frescos to tell me just how +far I ought recognize her sorrow in my tip, but one must always guess at +these things, and I shall never know whether I rewarded the aged +gatekeeper according to the century of service his generations had +rendered those of the frescos. + +We were going now to the Villa Mandragone, but we had not yet the +courage for the rise of ground where we had failed before, and we +entreated our driver to go round some other way, if he could, and +descend rather than ascend to it. He said that was easy, and it was when +we came away that we passed through that ilex avenue which we had not +yet penetrated in its whole length, and where we now met many +foot-passengers, lay and cleric, who added to the character of the +scene, and saw again the little cripple artist, now trying to seize its +features, or some of them. I did not see whether she was succeeding so +well as in pity she might and as I knew she did. + +In spite of our triumph with the Villa Mandragone in this second +attempt, we can never think it half as charming as the Villa Falconieri. +I forget what cardinal it was who built it so spacious and splendid, +with three hundred and sixty-five windows, in honor of the calendar as +reformed by the reigning pope, Gregory XIII. It is a palace enclosing a +quadrangle of whole acres (I will not own to less), with a stately +colonnade following as far round as the reader likes. When he passes +through all this magnificence he will come out on a grassy terrace, with +a fountain below it, and below that again the chromatic ocean of the +Cam-pagna (I have said sea often enough). A weird sort of barbaric +stateliness is given to the place by the twisted and tapering pillars +that rise at the several corners, with colossal masques carven at the +top and the sky showing through the eye-hollows, as the flame of torches +must often have shown at night. But for all the outlandish suggestion of +these pillars, the villa now belongs to the Jesuits, who have a college +there, where only the sons of noble families are received for education. +As we rounded a sunny wall in driving away, we saw a line of people, old +and young of both sexes, but probably not of noble families, seated with +their backs against the warm stone eating from comfortable bowls +a soup which our driver said was the soup of charity and the daily dole +of the fathers to such hungry as came for it. The day was now growing +colder thaa it had been, and we felt that the poor needed all the soup, +and hot, that they could get. + +After a vain visit to Grotta Ferrata, which was signally disappointing, +in spite of the traces of a recent country fair and the historical +merits of a church of the Greek rite, with a black-bearded monk coming +to show it through a gardened cloister, we were glad to take the tram +back to Rome and to get into the snug inside of it. The roof, which had +been so popular and populous in the morning, was now so little envied +that a fat lady descended from it and wedged herself into a row of the +interior where a sylph would have fitted better but might not have added +so much to the warmth. No one, myself of the number, thought of getting +up, though there were plenty of straps to hang by if one had chosen to +stand. This was quite like home, and so was it like home to have the +conductor ask me to Avait for my change, with all the ensuing fears that +wronged the long-delayed remembrance of his debt. In some things it +appears that at Rome the Romans do as the Americans do, but I wish we +were like them in having such a place as Frascati within easy tram-reach +of our cities. + + + + +XV + +A FEW REMAINING MOMENTS + + +In the days of the earlier sixties, we youth who wished to be thought +elect did not feel ourselves so unless we were deeply read in +Hawthorne's romance of _The Marble Faun._ We made that our aesthetic +handbook in Rome, and we devoutly looked up all the places mentioned in +it, which were important for being mentioned; though such places as the +Tarpeian Rock, the Forum, the Capitoline Museum, and the Villa Bor-ghese +might secondarily have their historical or artistic interest. In like +manner Story's statue of Cleopatra was to be seen, because it was the +"original" of the imaginary sculptor Kenyon's Cleopatra, and a certain +mediaeval tower was sacred because it was universally identified as the +tower where the heroine Hilda lived dreaming and drawing, and fed the +doves that circled around its top. We used to show the new arrivals +where Hilda's tower was, and then stand with them watching the pigeons +which made it unmistakable. I should then have thought I could never +forget it, but I must have passed it several times unnoting in my latest +Roman sojourn, when one afternoon in a pilgrimage to the Via del Gambero +a contemporary of that earlier day glanced around the narrow piazza +through which we were passing and, seeing a cloud of doves wheeling +aloft, joyfully shouted, "Look! There is Hilda's tower!" and if Hilda +herself had waved to us from its battlements we could not have been +surer of it. The present vanished, and we were restored to our +citizenship in that Rome of the imagination which is greater than any +material Rome, and which it needs no archaeologist to discover in its +indestructible integrity. + +No one to-day, probably, visits the Capitoline Museum for the Faun of +Praxiteles because it gave the romance its name; but at my latest sight +of it I remembered it with a thrill of the young piety which first drew +me to it, and involuntarily I looked again for the pointed, furry ears, +as I had done of old, to make sure that it was really the Marble Faun of +Hawthorne. I was now, however, for no merit of mine, in official and +scientific company with which it would have been idle to share my +satisfaction in the verification of the Faun's ears. Instead of boasting +it, I listened to very interesting talk of the deathless Dying +Gladiator, who is held to have been originally looked at more from below +than he has been seen in modern times, and who is presently to be lifted +to something like his antique level. He, in fact, requires this from the +spectator who would feel all his pathos, as we realized in sitting down +and looking a little upward at him. + +In his room and in the succession of the rooms filled with his immortal +bronze and marble companions I was as if with ghosts of people I had +known in some anterior life. They were so familiar that I felt no need +to go about asking their names, even if the archaeologists had in +several cases given them new names. I should have known certain of them +by traits which remain in the memory long after names have dropped out +of it. Julius Caesar, with his long Celtic upper-lip, still looked like +the finer sort of Irish-American politician; Tiberius again surprised me +with the sort of racial sanity and beauty surviving in his atrocious +personality from his mother's blood; but the too Ne_-_ronian head of +Nero, which seems to have been studied from the wild young miscreant +when trying to look the part, had an unremembered effect of chubby +idiocy. A thing that freshly struck me in the busts of those +imperialities, which of course must have been done in their lifetimes, +was not merely that the subjects were mostly so ugly and evil but that +the artists were apparently safe in showing them so. The men might not +have minded that, but how had the sculptors managed to portray the women +as they did and live? Perhaps they did not live, or live long; they are +a forgotten tribe, and no one can say what became of any given artist +after executing the bust of an empress; his own execution may have +immediately followed. But what is certain is that those ladies are no +lovelier in their looks than they were in their lives; to be sure, in +their rank they had not so great need of personal charm as women of the +lower class. The most touching face as well as the most dignified and +beautiful face among them is that of the seated figure which used to be +known as that of Agrippina but which, known now as that of a Roman +matron, does not relieve the imperial average of plainness. The rest +could rival the average American society woman only in the prevailing +modernity of their expression; imperial Rome was very modern, as we all +know, and nothing in our own time could be more up to date than the +lives and looks of its smart people. + +The general impression of the other marbles of the Capitoline Museum +remains a composite of standing, sitting, stooping, and leaning figures, +of urns and vases, of sarcophaguses and bas-reliefs. If you can be +definite about some such delightful presence as that old River dozing +over his fountain in the little cold court you see first and last as you +come and go, it is more than your reader, if he is as wise as you wish +him, can ask of you. I have been wondering whether he could profitably +ask of me some record of my experiences in the official and scientific +company with which I was honored that day at the Campidoglio; but I +should have to offer him again a sort of composite psychograph of +objects printed one upon another and hardly separable in their +succession. There would be the figure of Marcus Aurelius, commanding us +with outstretched arm from the back of the bronze charger which would +not obey Michelangelo when he bade it "Go," not because it was not +lifelike, but because it was too fat to move. Against the afternoon +sky, looking down into the piazza with dreamy unconcern from their +vantage would be the statues on the balustrated roof of the museum. +There would be the sense, rather than the vision, of the white shoulders +of Castor and Pollux beside their steeds above the dark-green garden +spaces on either hand; there would be the front of the Church of Ara +Coeli visible beyond the insignificance of Rienzi's monument; and +filling in the other end of the piazza which Michelangelo imagined, and +not the Romans knew, there would be the palace of the senator, to which +the mayor and the common council of modern Rome now mount by a double +stairway, and presumably meet at the top in proceeding to their +municipal labors. Facing the museum would be the palace of the +Conservatori, where in the noblest of its splendid halls the present +company would find itself in the carved and gilded arm-chairs of the +conservators, seated at an afternoon tea-table and restoring itself from +the fatigues of more and more antique art in the galleries about. After +this there would be the gardened court of the palace, with a thin lawn, +and a soft little fountain musing in the midst of it, and the sunset +light lifting on the wall where the fragments of Sep-timius Severus's +marble map of Rome order themselves in such coherence as archaeology can +suggest for them. + +In the palace of the Senator (who was not, as I dare say the reader +ignorantly supposes, a residuum of the old Roman senate, but was the +dictator whom the mediaeval republic summoned from within or with-otit +to be its head and its safeguard from the aristocracy) there would be, +beyond the chamber where the actual city council of Rome meets under the +presidency of the mayor, the great public rooms bannered and memorialled +around with heroic and historic blazons; and last there would be the +private room where the syndic devotes himself to civic affairs when he +can turn from the sight of the Roman Forum, with a peripatetic +archaeologist lecturing a group of earnest Americans, while long, +velvety shadows of imperial purple stretch from the sunset on the softly +rounded and hollowed ruins of the Palatine. + +But, if each of these bare facts could be parted from the others and +intelligently presented, what would it avail with the reader who has +never seen the originals of my psychograph? It is from some such +question, and not from want of a hospitable will, that I hesitate to ask +him to go with me on a golden morning of March and spend it in the Villa +Medici on the Pincian Hill. If I could I should like to pour its +yellowness and mellowness round him, perfumed with a potpourri of +associations from the time of Lucullus down through every mediaeval and +modern time to that very day, when I knew Carolus Duran to be living +somewhere in these beauteous bounds as the head of the French Academy +which has its home in them. The academic garden-paths, with a few happy +people wandering between their correctly balanced passages of box; the +blond facade of the casino looking down with its statues and reliefs on +these parterres; a young girl vanishing up an aisle of the grove beside +the garden into whatever dream awaited her youth in the leafy dusk; an +old American pair gazing after her from the terrace, with the void of +the vanished years aching in their hearts for the Rome that was once +young with them: does this represent to the reader an appreciable +morning in the Villa Medici? He may be grateful to me if he does, and if +he likes. I cannot do more for him without doing less, and yet I know it +is a palette rather than a picture I am giving him. + +All the while I was there, the guest of the French nation by the payment +of fifty centimes gate-money, I was obscurely resenting its retention of +a place which Bonaparte bestowed upon the First Eepublic with so much +other loot from Italy. But now I have lately heard that the magnanimous +Third Republic is going to restore it to the people rightfully its +owners, and the remembrance of my morning in the Villa Medici will +remain a pure joy. So few joys in this world, even in the very capital +of it, are without some touch of abatement. I could not so much as visit +the Catacombs of Domatilla without suffering a frustration which, though +incidental merely, left a lasting pang of unrequited interest. As we +drew toward the place, I saw in a field the beginning of one of those +domestic dramas which are not attributable to Italy alone. Three +peasants, a man and two women, were engaged in controversy which, on his +side, the man supported with both hands flapping wildly at the heads of +the women, who alertly dodged and circled around him in the endeavor to +close in upon him. It was instantly conjecturable, if not apparent, that +they were his wife and daughter, and that he was the worse for the +vintage of their home acre, and would be the better for being got into +the house and into bed. The conjecture enlisted the worthier instincts +of the witness on the side of the mother and daughter; but he was in no +hurry to have the animated action brought to a close, and was about to +tell his cabman to drive very, very slowly, when suddenly the cab +descended into a valley, and when the eager spectator rose to his former +level again the stone wall had risen with him, and he never knew the end +of that passage of real life, + +It was impossible to bid the cabman drive back for the close of the +scene; the abrupt conclusion must be accepted as final; but it is proof +of the charm I found in the gentle guide who presently began to marshal +us among the paths of the subterranean sanctuary and cemetery that for +the moment my bitter sense of loss was assuaged, and it only returns now +at long intervals. Such as the woman actors in this brief scene were +some early Christians might have been, and it must have been the +stubborn old pagan spirit I saw surviving in the husband and father. He +was probably such a vessel of wrath as, being filled with Bacchus, would +have lent itself to the persecuting rage of Domitian and helped drive +the emperor's gentle cousin Domatilla into the exile whence she returned +to found a Christian cemetery in her villa. One understands, of course, +under the villa; for the catacombs in some places reach as many as five +levels below the surface. I will not follow the reader with that kind +guide who will cheer his wanderings through those sunless corridors of +death, where many of the sleepers still lie sealed within their tombs on +either hand, and show him by the smoky taper's light the frescos which +adorn the cramped chapels. I prefer to stand at the top of the entrance +and ask him if he noticed how the artist sometimes seemed not to know +whether he was pagan or Christian, and did not mind, for instance, +putting a Mercury at the heads of the horses in an Ascent of Elijah. +Perhaps the artist was really a pagan and thought a Greek god as good as +a Hebrew prophet any day; art was probably one of the last things to be +converted, having a presentiment of the dark and bloody themes the new +religion would give it to deal with. + +The earthy scent of the catacomb will cling to the reader's clothes, and +he will have two minds about keeping for a souvenir the taper which he +carried, and which the guide wraps in a bit of newspaper for him; he may +prefer the flower which he is allowed to gather from the tiny garden at +the entrance to the catacombs. Yet these Catacombs of Domatilla are +among the cheer-fulest of all the catacombs, and a sense of something +sweet and appealing invests them from the memory of the gentle lady +whose piety consecrated them as the last home of the refugees and +martyrs. They are of the more recent Roman excavations, but I do not +know whether later or earlier than those which have revealed the house +of the two Christian gentlemen, John and Paul, of unknown surname, where +they suffered death for their faith, under the Passionist church named +for them. Twenty-four rooms on the two stories have been opened, and +there are others yet to be opened; when all are laid bare they will +perfectly show what a Roman city dwelling of the better sort was like in +the mid-imperial time. The plan differs from that of the average +Pompeian house as much as the plan of a cross-town New York dwelling +would differ from that of the average Newport cottage. The rooms are +incomparably smaller than those of the mediaeval palaces of the Roman +nobles, and the decoration is sometimes crudely mixed of pagan and +Christian themes and motives; the artists, like the painters of the +Domatilla catacombs, were probably lingering in the old Greek tradition. + +The young Passionist father who showed us through the church and the +house under it made us wait half an hour while he finished his lunch, +but he was worth waiting for. He was a charming enthusiast for both, +radiantly yet reverently exulting in their respective treasures, and +justly but not haughtily proud of the newly introduced electricity which +lighted the darkness of the underground rooms and corridors. He told us +he had been twenty years a missionary in Rumania, where he had possibly +acquired the delightful English he spoke. When he would have us follow +him he said, "All persons come this way," and he politely spoke of the +wicked emperor whose bust was somehow there as Mr. Commodus. With all +his gentleness, however, that good father had a certain smiling severity +before which the spirit bowed. He had made us wait half an hour before +he came to let us into the church, and during the hour we were with him +there he kept the door locked against an unlucky lady who arrived just +too late to enter with us. Not only this, but he utterly refused to go +back with her singly and show her the things we had seen. Perhaps it +would not have been decorous; they do not let ladies, either singly or +plurally, into the garden of the convent, which is memorable among many +other facts as being the retreat of Mr. Commodus when he suffered from +sleeplessness, and where he once carelessly left his list of victims +lying about, so that his friend Marcia found it and, reading her name in +it, joined with other friends in his assassination. The sex has indeed +had much restraint to bear from the Church, but in some respects it has +been rendered fearless in the assertion of its rights. With poor women +one of these is the indefeasible right to ask alms, and I admired the +courage, almost the ferocity, of the aged crone whom I had promised +charity in coming to the place and who rose up as I was being driven +past her, in going away, and stayed my cabman with a clamor which he +dared not ignore. Her reproaches continued through the ensuing +transaction, and followed him away with stings which instinct and +experience taught her how to implant in his tenderest sensibilities. + +A chapter much longer than any I have written here might well be devoted +to the study of the clerical or secular guides in the minor churches of +Rome. They are of every manner and degree of kindliness, mixed with a +fair measure of intelligence and a very fitting faith in the legends of +their churches. You soon get on terms of impersonal intimacy with them, +and you cannot come away without sharing their professional zeal, and +distinguishing for the moment in favor of their respective churches +above every other. It did not matter whether it was that newest church +in the Quartiere dei Prati, or that most venerable among the oldest +churches, the Church of San Gregorio: I found a reason for agreeing with +the sacristan upon its singular claims. These were especially enforced +by the good dame, the only woman sacristan I remember, who would not +spare us a single object of interest in San Gregorio's, which is indeed +for the visitor of Anglo-Saxon race supremely rich in its associations +with the conversions of his ancestors from heathenism. + +Being myself of Cymric blood, and of a Christianity several hundred +years older than that of the ordinary Anglo-Saxon traveller, I am afraid +that it was from a rather patronizing piety that I visited the church +where the great St. Gregory dismissed to their mission in England St. +Augustine and his fellow-apostles on one of the greatest days of the +sixth century. I might have stayed to imagine them kneeling among the +people who then thronged the genially irregular piazza, but as we came +up some ecclesiastical students were playing ball there, their robes +tucked into their girdles for their greater convenience, and we made our +way at once into the church. It forms one of a consecrated group of +edifices enshrining the memory of the best of the popes, who was also +the greatest; and here or in the adjacent convents a score of miracles +were wrought through the heavenly beauty of his life. Of these miracles, +of whose inspiration you must feel the poetry even if you cannot feel +their verity, the loveliest has its substantial witness in one of the +little chapels next the church. There you may see with your eyes and +touch with your hands the table at which St. Gregory fed every morning +twelve poor men, till one morning a thirteenth appeared in the figure of +Christ the Lord, as if to own them His disciples. The chapel which +enshrines the table is one of three, quaint in form and rich in art, +standing in the garden called St. Silvia's, after the mother of St. +Gregory. As we came out through it the westering sun poured the narrow +court before the chapel full of golden light and threw the black shadow +of a cypress across the way that a file of Comaldolese monks were taking +to the adjoining convent. They were talking cheerily together, and swung +unheeding by in their white robes so near that I could almost feel the +waft of them across the centuries that parted their faith and mine. + +We had come to St. Gregory's from the Baths of Caracalla, which we had +set out to see on the first of our Roman holidays, and, after turning +aside for the Coloseum, had now visited on next to the last of them. The +stupendous ruin could scarcely have been growing in the ten or twelve +weeks that had passed, but a bewildering notion of something like this +obsessed me as I saw it bulking aloof in overhanging cliffs and +precipices, through the cool and bright April air, against a sky of +absolute blue. As if it had been cast up out of the earth in some +convulsive throe of nature, it floundered over its vast area in +shapeless masses which seemed to have capriciously received the effect +of human design in the coping of the inaccessible steeps, in the arches +flinging themselves across the spaces between the beetling crags, in the +monstrous spring and sweep of the vaults, in the gloom of the cavernous +apertures of its Titanic walls. For the moment its immensity dwarfed the +image of all the other fragments of the Roman world and set definite +bounds to their hugeness in the mind. It seemed to have been not so much +a single edifice as a whole city, the dwelling instead of the resort of +the multitudes that once thronged it. The traces of the ornamentation +which had enriched it everywhere and which it had taken ages of ravage +to strip from it, accented its savage majesty, and again the sentiment +of spring in the fresh afternoon breeze and sunshine, and the innocent +beauty of the blooming peach and cherry in the orchards around, imparted +to it a pathos in which one's mere brute wonder was lost. But it was a +purely adventitious pathos, and it must be owned here, at the end, that +none of the relics of ancient Rome stir a soft emotion in the beholder, +and, as for beauty, there is more of it in some ivy-netted fragment of +some English abbey which Henry's Cromwell "hammered down" than in the +ruin of all the palaces and temples and theatres and circuses and baths +of that imperial Rome which the world is so well rid of. + + + + +VII + +A WEEK AT LEGHORN + + +We left Rome with such a nostalgic pang in our hearts that we tried to +find relief in a name for it, and we called ourselves Romesick. +Afterward, when we practised the name with such friends as we could get +to listen, they thought we said homesick. Being better instructed, they +stared or simpered, and said, "Oh!" That was not all we could have +asked, but Rome herself would understand, and, while we were seeking +this outlet for our grief, she followed us as far as she could on her +poor, broken aqueducts. At places they gave way under her, and she fell +down, but scrambled up again on the next stretch of arches, like some +fond cripple pursuing a friend on crutches; when at last our train +outran them, and there was no longer an arch to halt upon, she gave up +the vain chase and turned back within her walls, where we saw her domes +and bell-towers fading into the heaven to which they pointed. + +It was a heaven of better than absolute blue, for there were soft, white +clouds in it, and the air that our Sunday breathed under it was, at the +beginning of April, as bland as that of an American May-end. The orchard +trees were in bloom--peach and plum, cherry and pear--whenever you chose +to look at them, and all nature seemed to rejoice in the cessation of +the two days' strike which had now enabled us to drive to the station +instead of walking and carrying our bags and bundles. There were so many +of these that we had taken two cabs, and at the station our drivers +attempted to rejoice with nature in an overcharge that would have +recouped them for the loss suffered in their recent leisure. But as we +were then leaving Koine, and were not yet melted with the grief of +absence, I had the courage to resist their demand. Long before we +reached Leghorn I was so Romesick that I would have paid them anything +they asked. + +When we emerged from the suburbs upon the open Campagna, we passed +through many fields of wheat, more than we had yet seen on the grassy +waste, but there were also many flocks of sheep feeding with the cattle +in pastures. Now and then we passed a wretched hut which seemed to be +the dwelling of the shepherds we saw tending the flocks, and here and +there we came upon a group of farm buildings, all of straw, whether for +man or beast, set within a sort of squalid court, with a frowzy +suggestion of old women and children about the doors of the cottages. We +saw no men, though there must have been men off at work in the fields +with the younger women. + +As we drew near Civita Vecchia the sea widened on our view, wild with a +wind that seemed to have been blowing ever since the stormy evening in +1865 when, after looking at the tossing ships in the harbor, we decided +to take the diligence for Leghorn, rather than the little steamer we had +meant to take. From our pleasant train we now patronized Civita Vecchia +with a recognition of its picturesqueness, unvexed by the choice that +then insisted on itself, though the harbor was as full of shipping as of +old. There was time to run out for a cup of coffee at the station +buffet, where there had been neither station nor buffet in our young +time: but doubtless then as now there had been the lonely graveyard +outside the town, with its sea-beaten, seaward wall. We buried there the +last of our Roman holidays under a sky that had changed from blue to +gray since our journey began, and mournfully set out faces northward in +the malarial Maremma. + +If the Maremma is as malarial as it is famed, it does not look it. There +were stretches of hopeless morass, with wide acreages under water, but +mostly, I should say, it was rather a hilly country. Now and then we ran +by a stony old town on a distant summit like the outcropping of granite +or marble, and there were frequent breadths of woodland, oak and pine +and, I dare say, walnut and chestnut. Evidently there had been efforts +to reclaim the Maremma from its evil air and make it safely habitable, +and the farther we penetrated it the more frequent the evidences were. +There were many new buildings of a good sort, and of wood as well as +stone; when we came to Grosetto, where we had spent a memorable night +after being overturned in the Ombrone, in the attempt of our diligence +to pass its flood, we were aware, in the evening light, of a prosperity +which, if not excessive for the twoscore years that had passed, was +still very noticeable. I should not quite say that the brick wall of the +city had been scraped and scrubbed, but it looked very neat and new, +and there was a pleasant suburb under it where the moat might have been, +and people were coming and going who had almost the effect of commuters; +at least, they seemed to have come out to their homes by trolley. We +resisted an impulse to dismount and go up to the inn in the heart of the +town where we had spent that "night of memory and of sighs." + +But we searched the horizon round for the point on the highway where our +diligence had failed of the track between the telegraph-poles and softly +rolled with us in the muddy waters, like an elephant taking a bath, but, +so far from finding it, we could not even find the highway. We began to +have our doubts of what we had always believed had happened, and +remained as snugly as we could in our compartment, where, to tell the +truth, we were not very snug. In too fond a reliance on the almanac, the +Italian government had cut off the steam which ought to have heated it, +and the cold from the hills, on which we saw snow, pierced our rugs and +cushions; but, if we had known what we were coming to in Leghorn, we +should have thought ourselves very enviable. + +I do not know exactly how far it is from the station in Leghorn to the +hotel where we had providently engaged rooms with a fire in at least one +of them, but I should say at a rough calculation it was a hundred miles +as we covered the distance in a one-horse omnibus, through long, +straight streets, after ten o'clock at night. The streets and houses +were mostly dark, as houses of good habits should be at that hour, but, +after passing through a wide, lonely piazza, we struck into a street +longer and straighter than the others, and drew up at our hotel door +opposite an hilarious cafe, where there seemed a general rejoicing of +some sort. We were unable to make out just what sort, or to join in it +without knowing, though it lasted well toward morning, and we were up +often during the night to see that the fire did not die out of our one +porcelain stove and leave us to perish of cold. + +In Leghorn the good Baedeker says that all the hotels are good, and this +sweeping verdict may be true if taken in the sense that one is as good +as another, but they are of the old Italian type which our winter in +Rome had taught us to think obsolete; now we found that it was only +obsolescent. We had written to bespeak a room with fire in it, and this +was well, for the hotel was otherwise heated only by the bodies of its +frequenters, who, when filled with Chianti, might emit a sensible +warmth; though it was very modern in being lighted with electricity, and +having a lift, in which, after a tepid supper, we were carried to our +apartment. We had our landlord's company at supper, and had learned from +him that the most eminent of American financiers, who shall not +otherwise be identified here, was in the habit, when coming to Leghorn, +of letting him know that he was bringing a party of friends, and +commanding of him a banquet such as he alone knew how to furnish a +millionaire of that princely quality. After that we were not so much +surprised as grieved to find that our elderly chambermaid had profited +by our absence to gather all the coals out of our one stove into two +_scaldini,_ which were bristling before her where she knelt when we +opened the door upon her. She apologized, but still she carried away the +coals, and we were left to rekindle the zeal of our stove as best we +could. It was not a large stove, and it seemed to feel its inadequacy to +the office of taking the chill off that vast, dim room, where it +cowered, dark and low upon the floor, with a yearning, upward stretch of +its pipe lost in space before it reached the lowermost goddess in the +allegory frescoed on the ceiling. If it had been a white porcelain +stove, that might have helped, but it was of a gloomy earthen color that +imparted no more cheer than warmth. + +We rebuilt our fire, after many repeated demands for kindling, which had +apparently to be sawed and split in a distant wood-yard before we could +get it, and then the long, arctic night set in, unrelieved by the noisy +gayeties of the cafe across the way. These burst from time to time the +thin film of sleep which formed like a coating of ice over the +consciousness, and then one could only get up and put more wood into the +despairing stove and more clothes on the beds. Well for us that we had +thought to bring all our travelling rugs with us in straps, instead of +abandoning them with our other baggage in the station till next day! +But, even with these heaping the hotel blankets and com-forters, we +shivered, and a superannuated odor that had lurked in the recesses of +those rooms, to which the sun or wind had never pierced, grew with the +growing cold, and haunted the night like something palpable as well as +sensible--the materialization of smells dead and buried there long ago. +It was wonderful how little way the electric bulb shed its beams in that +naughty air; it would not even light the page which at one time was +opened in the vain hope that the author would help the benumbing cold to +bring torpor if not slumber to the weary brain. + +It is really impossible to say where or how we breakfasted, but it was +somehow managed, and then search was made by the swiftest conveyance for +the hotel which we had heard of outside the city, as helping make +Leghorn the watering-place it is for Italians in the summer, and in the +winter as being steam-heated and appointed with every modern comfort for +the passing or sojourning stranger. It was all that and more, and only +for the fear that I should seem to join it in advertising its merits I +should like to celebrate it by name. But perhaps it is as well not; if I +did, all my readers would swarm upon that hotel, and there would be no +room for me, who hope some day to go back there and spend an old age of +luxurious leisure. There was not only steam-heat in the public rooms of +the ground floor, but there was furnace heat in all the corridors, and +there were fireplaces in certain chambers, which also looked out on the +sea, to Corsica and Elba and other isles of it, and would be full of sun +as soon as the cold rain closed a fortnight's activity. That which +diffused a blander atmosphere than steam or radiator, register and +hearth, however, was the kind will, the benevolent intelligence, which +imagined us, and which would not then let us go. We had become not only +agnostic as respected the possibility of warmth in Leghorn, we were open +sceptics, aggressive infidels. But the landlord himself followed us from +one room to another, lighting fires here and there on the hearth, making +us feel the warm air rising from the furnace, calling us to witness by +palpation the heat of the radiators, soothing our fears, and coaxing our +unfaith. His wife joined him in Italian and his son in English, and, if +I do not say that these amiable people were worthy all the prosperity +which was not then apparent in their establishment, may I never be +comfortably lodged or fed again. Our daily return for what we got was a +poor twelve francs each; but fancy a haughty American landlord caressing +us with such sweet and reassuring civility for any sum of money! Those +gentle people made themselves our friends; there was nothing they would +not do, or try to do, for us, in the vast, pink palace where we were +never twenty guests together, and mostly eight or ten, with the run of a +reading-room where there were the latest papers and periodicals from +London and Paris, and with a kitchen whence we were served the best +luncheons and dinners we ate in Europe. + +The place had the true out-of-season charm. There were two stately +dining-rooms besides the one where we dined, and there were pleasant +spaces where we had afternoon tea or after-dinner coffee, and from which +a magnificent stairway ascended to the upper halls, and a quiet lift +waited our orders, with the landlord or his son to take us up; and so +lonely and quiet and gentle, with porters and chambermaids speaking +beautiful Tuscan, and watchful attendants everywhere prophesying and +fulfilling our wants. It was a keeping to make the worst believe in +their merit, and we were not the worst. Outside, the environment +flattered or rewarded us with a garden of laurel and other evergreens, +and with flower-beds where the annuals were beginning to show the +gardener's designs in their sprouting seeds. Beyond these ample villa +bounds a tram-car murmured to and from the well-removed city, and beyond +its track lay a line of open-air theatres and variety shows and bathing +establishments, as at our own Atlantic City, but here in enduring +masonry instead of the provisional wood of our summer architecture. + +This festive preparation intimated the watering-place supremacy which +Leghorn enjoys in Italy, and which must make our quiet hotel in the +season glisten and twitter and flutter with the vivid national life. The +preparation includes a delightful drive by the seashore, with groves and +gardens, to the city gate and indefinitely beyond it, which we one day +followed as far as an old fort, where a little hotel had nestled with +every promise of simple comfort. There was a neighboring village of no +very exciting interest, and I do not know that the Italian Naval +Academy, which we passed on the way, was very exciting, though with its +villa grounds it had a pleasing rural effect. Hard by our hotel, in a +piazza that seemed to have nothing to do but surround it, was the +colossal bust of an Italian admiral, or the like, which had not the +impressivenesa of a colossal full-length figure, but which rendered the +original with the faithful realism of the Genoese Campo Santo sculpture. +In compensation there was, toward the city, near the ship-yards where +the great Italian battle-ships are built, the statue of their builder--a +man who looked it--standing at large ease, with one hand in his +pantaloons pocket, and not apparently conscious of the passer's gaze. +Beyond the ship-yard, in which a battle-ship was then receiving the last +touches, was a statue for which I could not claim an equal +unconsciousness. In fact, it challenged the public attention and even +homage as it extended the baton of command and triumphed over the four +Moorish or Algerine corsairs who, in their splendid nudity, were chained +to the several corners of the monument and owned themselves +galley-slaves. The Medicean grand-duke who lords it over them, and who +erected this monument in honor of himself for the victories his admirals +had gained in sweeping the pirates from the seas, is a very proud +presence, and is certainly worthy of the admiration which his bronze +requires from the spectator. I instantly suspected this monument of +being the chief sculpture of Leghorn, and I did not wonder that a +_valet de place_ was lying in wait for me there to make me observe that +from a certain point I could get all four of the galley-slaves' noses in +perspective at once. Upon experiment I did not find that I could do +this, but I imputed my failure to want of merit in myself and not the +monument, and I willingly paid half a franc for the suggestion; if all +one's failures cost so little, one could save money. I was going then to +view at close quarters the port of Leghorn, which is famous for its mole +and lighthouse and quarantine, the first of their kind in their time. +The old port, with the fortifications, was the work of a natural son of +Queen Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester, whose noble origin was so +constantly recognized by the Tuscan grand-dukes that he came at last to +be accepted as Lord Dudley by the English. From his day, if not from his +work, the prosperity of Leghorn began, and the English have always had a +great part in it. Early in the nineteenth century there were a score of +great British merchants settled there, and, though afterward they +declined in number, the trade with England did not decline, and the +trade with America has always been such that American merchants and +captains have fully shared in the commerce directly or indirectly. Both +the old and the new port were a scene of pleasant activity the pleasant +afternoon when I visited them, and were full of varied sail as well as +many steamers, loading or unloading for or from the Mediterranean ports, +east and west, and the Hanse-atic cities and the far coasts of Norway. + +Any seaport is charming and full of romantic interest, but an Italian +port has always a prime pictur-esqueness. Its sailors are the most +ancient mariners, and they look full of history, and capable, each of +them, of discovering a continent. I cannot say that I saw any nascent +Columbus in the tanned and tarry company I met, but I do not deny that +there was one. Leghorn is still in her lusty youth, being not much older +than our Boston in the prosperity which has not failed her since the +Medici divined her importance toward the close of the sixteenth century, +and fortified her harbor till she was one of the strongest places on the +Mediterranean. With a hazy general consciousness of her modernity in +mind, I had imagined her yet more modern, and I was somewhat surprised +to read, in a rather airy and ironical but very capable local guidebook +called _Su e Giu per Livorno_ (or _Up and Down Leghorn),_ that the place +was settled twenty-six hundred and fifty-six years before Christ. The +author records this with a smile, and then, by a leap over some forty +centuries, he finds firm footing in the fact that the great Countess +Matilde, then much bothering about in the affairs of her Tuscan +neighbors everywhere, gave the Livornese coasts to Pisa in 1103. This +seems to have been the signal for the Genoese, eleven years later, to +ravage and destroy the Pisan settlements; but later the Pisans, +confirmed in their possession by the Emperor of Germany, rebuilt and +embellished the port. A century after, Charles of Anjou demolished it, +and then the Pisans fortified it some more. Then, in the last years of +the thirteenth century, the Florentines, Lucchese, and Genoese +devastated the whole territory of Pisa, and left Leghorn only one poor +little church. Well throughout the fourteenth century there were wars +between these republics, and Leghorn suffered the consequences, being, +as our author says, "according to custom, assailed, taken, wasted, and +destroyed." But before that century was out she seems to have flourished +up again, and to have received with all honor Gregory XL, returning from +Avignon to Rome and bringing the papacy back from its long exile to the +Eternal City. + +The Genoese now sold Leghorn to Milan, and in 1407 she was sold to +France for twenty-six thousand florins, which seems low for a whole +city. But in less than ten years we find the Genoese back again, and +strengthening and adorning her at the greatest rate. It was quite time +now that she should be visited by a virulent pestilence, and that, +having passed to Florence in the meanwhile, she should have been ceded +without a blow to Charles VIII. of France. But in a year she was once +more in the hold of Florence and helping that republic fight her enemies +the Pisans, and her other enemies under the Emperor Maximilian of +Germany. + +More fortifying, embellishing, and pestilence followed, and in 1429 +Michelangelo came to inspect the new fortifications which the Florentine +republic had built at Leghorn to repair the damages she had suffered. +The next year the republic fell, and Alessandro de' Medici, who came in +master at Florence, took Leghorn into the favor which his family +continued to show her to the end. The first Cosimo greatly improved her +harbor, dug canals, and built forts, but he let the Spaniards, for a +pleasure to Charles V., place garrisons in Florence, Pisa, and Leghorn, +and the Spaniards remained six years at Leghorn. In the last year of the +sixteenth century Ferdinand erected to himself the superb monument with +the four captive corsairs at the corners, whose noses I had failed to +get in range, and in the meanwhile many great public works had been +constructed and the city desolated by another plague. It was now time +for the English to appear in those waters, and in 1652 they were +defeated by the Dutch off Leghorn. About seventy-five years later the +grippe paid Leghorn a first visit, and not long after a violent +earthquake shook down many buildings and killed many women and children; +but the authorities did what they could to secure the city in future by +declaring the day a perpetual fast, and forbidding masking and dancing +on it. + +No disaster worth recording befell the city till Bonaparte came with the +Rights of Man in 1796 and left a French garrison, which evacuated the +place the next year, after having levied a fine of two million francs. +The year after that Nelson occupied it with eight thousand English +troops, and the following year the French reoccupied it and sacked the +churches and imposed another fine nearly as great as the first. After +the Napoleonic victories in the Italian wars, they seem to have come +back again and fined the city two million francs more. They now remained +five years, and in the mean time a Livornese, Giovanni Antonio Giaschi, +invented a submarine-boat for attacking and destroying war-vessels, and +a Spanish ship brought the yellow-fever. In 1808 Napoleon gave all +Tuscany, and Leghorn with it, to his sister Elisa, but when in 1814 he +was deposed, Leghorn was restored to the Tuscan grand-dukes and +garrisoned for them by German troops, an earthquake having profited by +the general disorder meantime to pay it another visit. The grand-duke +now being driven out of Florence by Murat, he took refuge at Leghorn, +which fell a prey to an epidemic of typhus. The first steam-vessel +appared there in 1818, and in 1835 the Asiatic cholera; in 1847 a +telegraphic line to Pisa was opened. + +In 1848 the revolutions prevalent throughout Europe had their effect at +Leghorn. The citizens shared in the uprising against the grand-duke, and +elected among its representatives F. D. Guerrazzi, once famous as the +first of Italian novelists and a man of generous mind and heart, who +duly suffered arrest and imprisonment when the grand-duke was restored +by the Austrians. He was sentenced to fifteen years' prison with hard +labor, but later his sentence was commuted to exile. He lived to return +and take part in the Italian unification in 1860, and in 1866 he led the +movement against making peace with Austria unless all her +Italian-speaking provinces were ceded to Italy. He died in 1873, and is +remembered in Leghorn by a monument very ineffective as a whole, but +singularly interesting in certain details. + +I have omitted from this catalogue of events many of peaceful interest, +such as visits from popes, princes, and poets, and I am not sure I have +got in all the plagues and earthquakes. Perhaps I have the more +willingly suppressed a few war-like facts, in the interest of the +superstition I had cherished that Leghorn was without a history, or that +it had no more history than, most American cities of equal date with its +commercial importance, which began with the wise hospitality of the +Medici to merchants of all races and nations, religions and races, +settled there, and especially to the Spanish Jews who came in great +numbers to the city that it was a common saying that you had as well +strike the duke as strike a Jew in Leghorn. Greeks, Turks, Armenians +were protected equally with English and Dutch, and infidel and heretic +were alike free in their worship. It was the great prison of the +galley-slaves, who were chiefly the pirates and corsairs taken on the +high seas by the duke's ships. These captives not only served as models +for the Moors at the base of his monument, but they must have been very +useful in the different public works which he and his successors carried +out. Now they and their like are gone, and though the Greeks, the +Armenians, the English, and the Scotch still have their churches, I do +not suppose there is a mosque in all Leghorn. + +I do not speak very confidently, because my researches in that sort were +not exhaustive. I indeed visited the cathedral, not wholly because Inigo +Jones had something to do in planning it, but because I had formed the +habit of visiting churches in Rome, and I mechanically went into one +wherever I saw it. Generally speaking, I think that they were rather +bare in painting or sculpture, but they were such churches as in America +one would go a long way to see and think one's self well rewarded by +their objects of interest. I do not know what defence to offer for not +having visited the galleries of the Museo Civico, where by actual count +in the guide-book I missed one hundred and sixty-nine works of art, +though just how many masterpieces I am not able to say: probably one out +of every ten was a masterpiece. But, if I did not much resort to the +churches and galleries in Leghorn, I roamed gladly through its pleasant +streets and squares, and by the shores of the canals which once gave it +the name of New Venice, and which still invite the smaller shipping up +among its houses in right Venetian fashion. The streets of Leghorn are +not so straight as they are long, but many are very straight, and the +others are curved rather than crooked. The longest and straight-est were +streets of low dwelling-houses, uncommon in Italian towns, where each +family lived under its own roof with a little garden behind, and a +respective entrance, as people still mostly do in our towns. From the +force of the mid-April sun in these streets I realized what they might +be in summer, and, if I lived in Leghorn, I would rather live on the +sea-front, in one of the comfortable, square, stone villas which border +it. But everywhere Leghorn seemed a pleasant place to live, and +convenient, with lively shops and cafes and trams and open spaces, and +statues and monuments in them. The city, I understood, is of somewhat +radical politics, tending from clericalism to socialism; and, like every +other Italian city, it is full of patriotic monuments. There is a Victor +Emmanuel on horseback, plump and squat, but heroic as always, and a +Garibaldi struggling in vain for beauty in his poncho and his round, +flat cap; there is a Mazzini, there is a Cavour, and, above all, there +is a Guerrazzi, no great thing as to the seated figure, but most +interesting, most touching in two of the bas-reliefs below. One +represents him proclaiming the provisional government at Florence in +1849, after the expulsion of the grand-duke, where the fact is studied, +with the wonderful realism of the Italians, in all its incidents and the +costumes of the thronging spectators. The sculptor has hesitated at no +top-hat or open umbrella; there are barefooted boys and bareheaded young +girls, as well as bearded elders; if my memory serves, the scene is not +without a dog or two. But it is the other relief which is so simply and +so deeply affecting--the interior of a narrow cell, with one chair and a +rude table, at which the patriot novelist wrote his greatest work, _The +Siege of Florence,_ and with him standing a little way from it. In spite +of the small space and the almost vacant stage, the scene is full of +most moving drama, and records a whole Italian epoch, now happily past +forever. + +These are modern sculptures, and they scarcely contest the palm with the +monument of the four galley-slaves and the Medicean grand-duke. In +another piazza two princes of the Lorrainese family, if I remember +rightly, face each other over its oblong--classic motives, with the +figures much undraped, and one of them singularly impressive from the +mutton-chop whiskers which modernized him. There are several theatres, +and among them a Goldoni theatre, as there should be in a city where the +sweet old playwright sojourned for a time and has placed the action of +his famous comedy, "La Locandiera." But I was told that the local +theatres were not so much frequented by polite people, especially for +opera, as the theatre in Pisa, which, if poorer, is prouder in its +society than its old-time vassal by the sea, and attracts the fashion of +Leghorn during the season. + +As Pisa has ceased to be the colony of literary English it once was, in +the time of Byron and Hunt and Shelley, to name no others, so Leghorn +has ceased to be the mercantile colony of former days. It has still a +great deal of commerce with England, but this is no longer carried on by +resident merchants, though here and there an English name lingers in the +style of a business house; and the distinctive qualities of both +colonies are united in the author of a charming book who fills the post +of British consul at Leghorn. His _Tuscan Towns_ must not be confused +with another book called _Tuscan Cities,_ though, if the traveller +chooses to carry both with him about Tuscany, I will not say that he +could do better. In _Tuscan Cities_ there is nothing about Leghorn, I +believe, but in _Tuscan Towns_ there is a specially delightful chapter +about the place, its people, language, and customs which I can commend +to the reader as the best corrective of the errors I must have been +constantly falling into here. + +It was in company no less enviable than this author's that I revisited +the port on a gray Sunday afternoon of my stay, and then for the first +time visited the ancient fortifications which began to be in the time of +the Countess Matilde and intermittently increased under the rule of the +Pisan, Genoese, and Florentine republics, until the Medicean grand-dukes +amplified them in almost the proportions I saw. The brutal first duke of +their line, Alessandro de' Medici, who some say was no Medici, but the +bastard of a negro and a washerwoman, stamped his creed in the +inscription below his adoptive arms, "Under one Faith and one Law, one +Lord," and it was in the palace here, the story goes, that the wicked +Cosimo I. killed his son Don Garzia before the eyes of the boy's mother. +Anything is imaginable of an early Medicean grand-duke, but in a manner +the father's murderous fury was provoked by the fact, if it was a fact, +that Don Garzia had just mortally wounded his brother Giovanni. I should +like to pretend that the tragedy had wrought in my unconsciousness to +the effect of the pensive gloom which the old fortress cast over me, but +perhaps I had better not. There are some gray Sunday afternoons of a +depressing effect on the spirit which requires no positive or palpable +reason. + +In any case it was a relief to go from the shadow of the past there +through the pleasant city streets to the gentle quiet of the British +cemetery, where so many of our race and some even of our own nation are +taking their long rest. No one is now buried there, and the place, in +the gradual diminution of the English colony at Leghorn, has fallen into +a lovely and appealing neglect if not oblivion. Oblivion quite covers +its origin, but it is almost as old as Protestantism itself, and, if the +ground for it was the gift of the grand-duke who tolerated heretics as +well as Jews in the impulse he gave to the city's growth, it would not +be strange. The beautiful porch of the English church, for once Greek +and not Gothic, fronts upon it, but the dwindling congregation has no +care of it, and there is no fund to keep it so much as free from weeds +and brambles and the insidious ivy rending its monuments asunder. The +afternoon of our visit it was in the sole charge of a large, gray cat, +which, after feasting upon the favorite herb, lay stretched in sleep on +a sunny bed of catnip under the walls of a mansion near, at whose +windows some young girls looked down in a Sunday listlessness, as we +wandered about among the "tall cypresses, myrtles, pines, +eucalyptus-trees, oleanders, cactuses, huge bushes of monthly roses, a +jungle of periwinkles, sarsaparilla, wild irises, violets, and other +loveliest of wild flowers." On the forgotten tombs were the touching +epitaphs of those who had died in exile, and whose monuments are +sometimes here while their ashes lie in Florence or Rome, or wherever +else they chanced to meet their end. Among them were the inscriptions on +the graves of "William Magee Seton, merchant of New York," who died at +Pisa in 1803, and "Henry De Butts, a citizen of Baltimore, N. America," +who died at Sarzana; with "James M. Knight, Esq., Captain of Marines, +Citizen of the United States of America," who died at Leghorn in 1802; +and "Thomas Gamble, Late Captain in the Navy of the United States of +America," who died at Pisa in 1818; and doubtless there were other +Americans whose tombs I did not see. The memorials of the English were +likewise here, whether they died at Leghorn or not; but most of them +seem to have ended their lives in that place, where there were once so +many English residents, whether for their health or their profit. The +youth of some testified to the fact that they had failed to find the air +specific for their maladies, and doubtless this would account also for +the disproportionate number of noble ladies who rest here, with their +hatchments and their coronets and robes of state carven on the stones +above them. Among others one reads the titles of "Lady Catharine Burgess +born Beauclerk; Jane Isabella, widow of the Earl of Lanesborough and +daughter of the Earl of Molesworth; and Catharine Murray, only child of +James Murray, . . . and the Right Honorable Lady Catharine Stewart his +Spouse," with knights, admirals, generals, and other military and naval +officers a many. Most important of all is the tomb of that strenuous +spirit, more potent for good and ill in the English fiction of his time +than any other novelist of his time, and second only to Richardson in +the wide influence of his literary method, Tobias Smollett, namely, who +here ended his long fight with consumption and the indifference of his +country to his claims upon her official recognition. After many years of +narrow circumstance in the Southern climates where he spent his later +life, he tried in vain for that meek hope of literary ambition, a +consulate, perhaps the very post that my companion, a hundred and fifty +years later, was worthily holding. The truest monument to his stay in +Italy is the book of Italian travel that he wrote, and the best effect +is that sort of peripatetic novel which he may be said to have invented +in _Humphrey Clinker,_ and which has survived the epistolary form into +our own time. It is a very simple shaft that rises over his grave, with +the brief record, "Memoriae Tobiae Smollett, qui Liburni animam +efflavit, 16 Sept., 1773," but it is imaginable with what wrath he would +have disputed the record, if it is true, according to all the other +authorities, that he exhaled his spirit two years earlier, and how he +would have had it out with those "friends and fellow-countrymen" who had +the error perpetuated above his helpless dust. + +It was not easy to quit the sweetly solemn place or to resist the wish +which I have here indulged, that some kinsman or kinswoman of those whom +the blossoms and leaves are hiding would come to their rescue from +nature now cleiming an undue part in them, and obliterating their very +memories. One would not have a great deal done, but only enough to save +their names from entire oblivion, and with the hope of this I have named +some of their names. It might not be too much even for the United +Kingdom and the United States, though both very poor nations, to join in +contributing the sum necessary for the work. Or some millionaire English +duke, or some millionaire American manufacturer, might make the outlay +alone; I cannot expect any millionaire author to provide a special fund +for the care of the tomb of Smollett. + + + + +VIII + +OVER AT PISA + + +If the half-hour between Leghorn and Pisa had been spent in any less +lovely transit, I should still be grieving for the loss of the thirty +minutes which might so much better have been given to either place. But +with the constant line of mountains enclosing the landscape on the +right, in all its variety of tillage, pasture-land, vineyard, and +orchard, and the unchanging level which had once been the bed of the +sea, we were gainers in sort beyond the gift of those cities. We had the +company, great part of the way, of more stone-pines than we had seen +even between Naples and Rome, here gathering into thick woods, with the +light beautiful beneath the spread of their horizontal boughs, there +grouped in classic groves, and yonder straying off in twos and threes. +We had the canal that of old time made Pisa a port of the Mediterranean, +with Leghorn for her servant on the shore (or, if it was not this canal, +it was another as straight and long), with a peasant walking beside it, +under a light-green umbrella, in the showers which threatened our start +but spared our arrival. We had then the city, with its domes and towers, +grown full height out of the plain through which the Arno curves in the +stateliest crescent of all its course. + +The day had turned finer than any other day I can now think of in my +whole life, and I was once more in Pisa without the care for its history +or art or even novelty which had corroded my mind in former visits. I +had been there twice before--once in 1864, when I had done its wonders +with all the wonder they merited, and again in 1883, when I had lived +its memories on the scene of its manifold and mighty experiences. No +distinct light from that learning vexed my present vision, but an +agreeable mist of association, nothing certain, nothing tangible +remaining, but only a gentle vague involving everything, in which I +could possess my soul in peace. In this glimmer I recognized a certain +cabman as having been waiting there from the dawn of time, with his +dark-eyed little son, to make me his willing captive at something above +the tariff rates, but destined by the same fate to serve me well, and to +part with me friends at the close of the day for a franc more than the +excess agreed upon. It costs so small a sum to corrupt the common +carrier in Italy that I hold it wrong to fail of any chance, and this +driver had not only a horse of uncommon qualities, but he spoke a +beautiful Tuscan, and he had his Pisa at his fingers' ends. + +We were of one mind about driving without delay to the famous group +which is without rival on the earth, though there may be associated +edifices in the red planet Mars that surpass the Cathedral, the Leaning +Tower, the Baptistery, and the Campo Santo at Pisa. What genius it was +imagined placing them in the pleasant meadow where they sit, just beyond +the city streets, I do not know, but it was inspiration beyond any +effect of mere taste, and it commanded my worship as much the last as +the first time. The meadow still swims round them and breaks in a foam +of daisies at their feet; for I take it that it is always mid-April +there, and that the grass is as green and the sun as yellow on it as the +afternoon we saw it. The sacred edifices are as golden as the light on +them, and there is such a joyous lift in the air that it is a wonder +they do not swing loose from their foundations and soar away into the +celestial blue. For travellers in our willing mood there was, of course, +the predestined cicerone waiting for us at the door of the cathedral, +who would fix no price for the pleasure he was born to do us, yet still +consented to take more than twice that he ought to have had at parting. +But he was worth the money; he was worth quite two francs, and, though +he was not without the fault of his calling and would have cumbered us +with instruction, I will not blame him, for after a moment I perceived +that his intelligence was such that I might safely put my hands in my +pocket on my shut guide-book and follow him from point to point without +fear of missing anything worth noting. Among the things worthiest +noting, I saw, as if I had never seen them before, the unforgettable, +forgotten Andrea del Sartos, especially the St. Agnes, in whose face you +recognize the well-known features of the painter's wife, but with a +gentler look than they usually wore in his Madonnas, perhaps because he +happened to study these from that difficult lady when she was in her +least celestial moods. Besides the masterpieces of other masters, there +is a most noble So-doma, which the great Napoleon carried away to Paris +and which the greater French people afterward restored. At every step in +the beautiful temple you may well pause, for it abounds in pictures and +sculptures, the least of which would enrich St. Peter's at Rome beyond +the proudest effect of its poverty-stricken grandeur. Ghirlandajo, +Michelangelo, Gaddo Gaddi, John of Bologna--the names came back to me +out of a past of my own almost as remote as theirs, while our guide +repeated them, in their relation to the sculptures or pictures or +architecture, with those of lesser lights of art, and that school of +Giotto, of all whose frescos once covering its walls the fire of three +hundred years ago has left a few figures clinging to one of the pillars, +faint and uncertain as the memories of my own former visits to the +church. I did, indeed, remember me of an old bronze lamp, by Vincenzo +Possenti, hanging from the roof, which I now revered the third time, at +intervals of twenty years; from its oscillation Galileo is said to have +got the notion of the pendulum; but it is now tied back with a wire, +being no longer needed for such an inspiration. Mostly in this last +visit I took Pisa as lightly as at the first, when, as I have noted from +the printed witness, I was gayly indifferent to the claims of her +objects of interest. If they came in my way, I looked at them, but I did +not put myself much about for them. I rested mostly in the twilight of +old associations, trusting to the guidance of our cicerone, whom, in +some form or under some name, the reader will find waiting for him at +the cathedral door as we did. But I have since recurred to the record of +my second visit in 1883, with amazement at the exact knowledge of events +shown there, which became, in 1908, all a blur of dim conjecture. It +appears that I was then acquainted with much more Pisan history than any +other author I have found own to. I had also surprising adventures of +different kinds, such as my poorer experience of the present cannot +parallel. I find, for instance, that in 1883 I gave a needy crone in the +cathedral a franc instead of the piece of five centimes which I meant +for her, and that the lamp of Galileo did nothing to light the gloom +into which this error plunged my spirit. + +It appears to have jaundiced my view of the whole cathedral, which I did +not find at all comparable to that of Siena, whereas in 1908 I thought +it all beautiful. This may have been because I was so newly from the +ugliness of the Eoman churches; though I felt, as I had felt before, +that the whole group of sacred edifices at Pisa was too suggestive of +decorative pastry and confectionery. No more than at the second view of +it did I now attempt the ascent of the Leaning Tower; I had discharged +this duty for life when I first saw it; with my seventy-one years upon +me, I was not willing to climb its winding stairs, and I doubted if I +could keep it from falling, as I then did, by inclining myself the other +way. I resolved that I would leave this to the new-comer; but I gladly +followed our cicerone across the daisied green from the cathedral to the +baptistery, where I found the famous echo waiting to welcome me back, +and greet me with its angelic sweetness, when the custodian who has it +in charge appealed to it; though its voice seemed to have been weakened +and coarsened in its forced replies to some rude Americans there, who +shouted out to it and mocked at it. One wished to ask them if they did +not know that this echo was sacred, and that their challenges of it were +a species of sacrilege. But doubtless that would not have availed to +silence them. By-and-by they went away, and then we were aware of an +interesting group of people by the font near the lovely Lombardic pulpit +of Nicola Pisano. They were peasants, by their dress--a young father and +mother and a little girl or two, and then a gentle, elderly woman, with +a baby in her arms, at which she looked proudly down. They were in their +simple best, and they had good Tuscan faces, full of kindness. I +ventured some propitiatory coppers with the children, and, when the old +woman made them thank me, I thought I could not be mistaken and I +ventured further: "You are the grandmother?" + +"Yes, signer," she answered; and then we had some talk about the age and +the beauty of the baby, which I declared wonderful for both, in praises +loud enough for the father and mother to hear. After that they seemed to +hold a family council, from which I thought it respectful to stand apart +until the grandmother spoke to me again. + +I did not understand, and I appealed to our guide for help. + +"She wishes you to be godfather to the child." + +I had never yet been a godfather, but I had the belief that it brought +grave responsibilities, which in the very casual and impermanent +circumstances I did not see how I was to meet. Yet how to refuse without +wounding these kind people who had so honored me I did not know until a +sudden inspiration came to my rescue. + +"Tell them," I said, "and be careful to make them understand, that I am +very grateful and very sorry, but that I am a Protestant, and that I +suppose I cannot, for that reason, be godfather to their child." + +He explained, and they received my thanks and regrets with smiling +acquiescence; and just then a very stout little old priest (who has +baptized nearly all the babies in Pisa for fifty years) came in, and the +baptism proceeded without my intervention. But I remained, somehow, +disappointed; it would have been pleasant to leave a godchild behind me +there in the neighborhood of Pisa; to have sent him from time to time +some little remembrance of this remote America, and, perhaps, when he +grew up and came to Pisa, and learned the art of the statuary, to have +had from him a Leaning Tower which he had cut in alabaster for me. I was +taking it for granted he was a boy, but he may not have been; there is +always that chance. + +If I had been alone, I suppose I should still have gone into the Campo +Santo, from mere force of habit; I always go, in Pisa, but I had now +with me clearer eyes for art than mine are, and I wished to have their +light on the great allegories and histories frescoed round the +cloisters, and test with them the objects of my tacit and explicit +reserves and misgivings. I needed such eyes, and even some such powerful +glasses as would have pierced through the faded and wasted pictures and +shown them at least as I had first seen them. They were then in such +reasonable disrepair as one might expect after three or four centuries, +but in the last thirty years a ruinous waste has set in before which not +only the colors have faded, but the surfaces have crumbled under the +colors; and as yet no man knows how to stop the ravage. I think I have +read that it is caused by a germ; but, if not, the loss is the same, and +until a parasite for the germ is found the loss must go on, and the work +of Giotto, of Be-nozzo Gozzoli, of Memmi, must perish with that of the +Orgagnas, which may indeed go, for all me. Bible stories, miracles, +allegories--they are all hasting to decay, and it can be but a few years +until they shall vanish like the splendors of the dawn which they typify +in art. + +In some things the ruin is not altogether to be regretted. It has +softened certain loathsome details of the charnel facts portrayed, and +in other pictures the torment and anguish of the lost souls are no +longer so painful as the old painters ascertained them. Hell in the +Campo Santo is not now the hell of other days, just as the hell of +Christian doctrine is not the hell it used to be. Death and the world +are indeed immitigable; the corpses in their coffins are as terrifying +to the gay lords and ladies who come suddenly upon them as ever they +were, though doubtless of no more lasting effect with such sinners than +they would be nowadays. But what one must chiefly lament is the waste of +the whole quaint and charming series of Scripture incidents by Benozzo +Gozzoli. This is indeed most lamentable, and after realizing the loss +one is only a little heartened by the gayety of certain grieving widows, +sitting in marble for monuments to their husbands at several points +under the arcades. What cheer they might have brought us was impaired by +the sight of the sarcophaguses and the other antiques against the walls, +which inflicted an inappeasable ache for the city where such things +abound, and brought our refluent Romesickness back full tide upon us. +More than once Pisa elsewhere did us the like involuntary unkindness; +she, too, is yellow and mellow like Rome, and she had moments of the +Piazza Navona and the Piazza di Spagna which were poignant. But she had +moments of her own when Rome could not rival her--such, for instance, as +that when she invited us from the perishing frescos of her Campo Santo +to turn our eyes on the flower-strewn field of death which the cloisters +surrounded, and where in the hallowed earth which her galleys brought +from Jerusalem her children, in their several turns, used to sleep so +sweetly and safely. + +The afternoon sunlight was prolonging the day there as well as it could, +and we should have liked to linger with it as late as it would, but +there were other places in Pisa calling us, and we must go. We found our +driver, and his black-eyed boy beside him on the box, waiting for us at +the cathedral door, and we seem to have left it pretty much to them +where we should go. They decided us, if we really left it to them, +mainly for the outside of things, so that we might see as much of Pisa +as possible; but it appears to have been their notion that we ought to +visit, at least, the inside of the Church of the Knights of St. +Stephen. I do not know whether I protested or not that I had abundantly +seen this already, but, at any rate, I am now glad that they took us +there. As every traveller will pretend to remember, the main business of +the knights was to fight the Barbary pirates, and the main business of +their church is now to serve as a repository of the prows of the galleys +and the flags which they took in their battles with the infidels. There +are other monuments of their valor, but by all odds the flags will be +the most interesting to the American visitor, because of the start that +many of them will give him by their resemblance to our own banner, with +their red-and-white stripes, which the eye follows in vivid expectation +of finding the blue field of stars in the upper left-hand corner. It +never does find this, and that is the sufficient reason for holding to +the theory that our flag was copied from the armorial bearings of the +Washington family, and not taken from the standard of those paynim +corsairs; but there is poignant instant when one trembles. + +We viewed, of course, the exterior of the edifice standing on the site +of the Tower of Famine, where the cruel archbishop starved the Count +Ugolino and his grandchildren to death; and we drove by the buildings of +Pisa's famous university, which we afterward fancied rather pervaded the +city with the young and ardent life of its students. It is no great +architectural presence, but there are churches and palaces to make up +for that. Everywhere you chance on them in the narrow streets and the +ample piazzas, but the palaces follow mostly the stately curve of the +Arno, where some of them have condescended to the office of hotels, and +where, I believe, one might live in economy and comfort; or, at any +rate, I should like to try. It would get rather warm there in May, and +July and August are not to be thought of, but all the other year it +would be divine, with such a prospect as can hardly be matched anywhere +else. Pisa used once to be the resort of many seeking health or warmth, +and for mere climate it ought again to come into favor. Probably there +is reasonably accessible society there, and, as the Livornese believe, +there is at least excellent opera. The time might grow long, but ought +not to be very heavy, and there is a cafe, at the very finest point of +the curve, where you can get an excellent cup of tea. Whether this +attests the resort or sojourn of many English, or the growth of the +tea-habit among the Pisans, I cannot say, but that cafe is very +charming, with students standing about in it and admiring the ladies who +come in to buy pastry, and who do not suppose there is any one there to +look at them. I am sure that the handsome mother with the pretty +daughter who lingered so long over their choice of little cakes could +not have imagined any one was looking, or she would at once have taken +macaroons and hurried away: at that cafe they have macaroons almost +three inches across, and delicious. + +The whole keeping was so pleasant that we hated to leave it to the +lengthening shadows from the other shore, but we were to drive down the +Arno into the promenade that follows it, I do not know how far; with the +foolish greed of travel, we wanted to get in all of Pisa that we could, +even if we tore ourselves from its most tempting morsel. But it was all +joy, and I should like, at this moment, to be starting on that +enchanting drive again. I leave the reader to imagine the lovely scenery +for himself; almost any of my many backgrounds will serve; but I will +supply him with a piece of statistics such as does not fall in +everybody's way. We noted the great number of anglers who lined the +opposite bank, with no appearance of catching anything, and I asked our +driver if they never happened to get a bite. "Not in the daytime," he +explained, compassionately, "but as soon as the evening comes they get +all the fish they want." + +I could pour out on the reader many other Pisan statistics, but they +would be at second-hand. After long vicissitude, the city is again +almost as prosperous as she was in the heyday of her national greatness, +when she had commerce with every Levantine and Oriental port. We +ourselves saw a silk factory pouring forth a tide of pretty girls from +their work at the end of the day; there was no ruin or disrepair +noticeable anywhere, and the whole city was as clean as Rome, with +streets paved with broad, smooth flagstones where you never missed the +rubber tires which your carriage failed of. But Pisa had a great air of +resting, of taking life easily after a tumultuous existence in the long +past which she had put behind her. Throughout the Middle Ages she was +always fighting foreign foes without her walls or domestic factions +within, now the Saracens wherever she could find them or they could find +her, now the Normans in Naples, now the Cor-sicans and Sardinians, now +Lucca, now Genoa, now Florence, and now all three. Her wars with these +republics were really incessant; they were not so much wars as battles +in one long war, with a peace occasionally made during the five or ten +or fifteen years, which was no better than a truce. When she fell under +the Medici, together with her enemy Florence, she shared the death-quiet +the tyrants brought that prepotent republic, and it was the Medicean +strength probably which saved her from Lucca and Genoa, though it left +them to continue republics down to the nineteenth century. She was at +one time an oligarchy, and at another a democracy, and at another the +liege of this prince or that priest, but she was never out of trouble as +long as she possessed independence or the shadow of it. In the safe hold +of united Italy she now sits by her Arno and draws long, deep breaths, +which you may almost hear as you pass; and I hope the prospect of +increasing prosperity will not tempt her to work too hard. It does not +look as if it would. + +We were getting a little anxious, but not very anxious, for that one +cannot be in Pisa, about our train back to Leghorn; though we did not +wish to go, we did not wish to be left; but our driver reassured us, and +would not let us shirk the duty of seeing the house where Galileo was +born. We found it in a long street on the thither side of the river, and +in such a poor quarter that our driver could himself afford to live only +a few doors from it. As if they had expected him to pass about this +time, his wife and his five children were sitting at his door and +playing before it. He proudly pointed them out with his whip, and one of +the little ones followed on foot far enough to levy tribute. They were +sufficiently comely children, but blond, whereas the boy on the box was +both black-eyed and black-haired. When we required an explanation of the +mystery, the father easily solved it; this boy was the child of his +first wife. If there were other details, I have forgotten them, but we +made our romance to the effect that the boy, to whose beautiful eyes we +now imputed a lurking sadness, was not happy with his step-mother, and +that he took refuge from her on the box with his father. They seemed +very good comrades; the boy had shared with his father the small cakes +we had given him at the cafe. At the station, in recognition of his +hapless lot, I gave him half a franc. By that time his father was +radiant from the small extortion I had suffered him to practice with me, +and he bade the boy thank me, which he did so charmingly that I almost, +but not quite, gave him another half-franc. Now I am sorry I did not. +Pisa was worth it. + + + + +IX + +BACK AT GENOA + + +There is an old saying, probably as old as Genoa's first loot of her +step-sister republic, "If you want to see Pisa, you must go to Genoa," +which may have obscurely governed us in our purpose of stopping there on +our way up out of Italy. We could not have too much of Pisa, as +apparently the Genoese could not; but before our journey ended I decided +that they would have thought twice before plundering Pisa if they had +been forced to make their forays by means of the present railroad +connection between the two cities. At least there would have been but +one of the many wars of murder and rapine between the republics, and +that would have been the first. After a single experience of the eighty +tunnels on that line, with the perpetually recurring necessity of +putting down and putting up the car-window, no army would have repeated +the invasion; and, though we might now be without that satirical old +saying, mankind would, on the whole, have been the gainer. As it was, +the enemies could luxuriously go and come in their galleys and enjoy the +fresh sea-breezes both ways, instead of stifling in the dark and gasping +for breath as they came into the light, while their train ran in and out +under the serried peaks that form the Mediterranean shore. I myself +wished to take a galley from Leghorn, or even a small steamer, but I was +overruled by less hardy but more obdurate spirits, and so we took the +Florentine express at Pisa, where we changed cars. + +The Italian government had providently arranged that the car we changed +into should be standing beyond the station in the dash of an unexpected +shower, and that it should be provided with steps so high and steep, +with Italian ladies standing all over them and sticking their umbrellas +into the faces of American citizens trying to get in after them, that it +was a feat of something like mountain-climbing to reach the corridor, +and then of daring-do to secure a compartment. Though a collectivist, +with a firm belief in the government ownership of railroads everywhere, +I might have been tempted at times in Italy to abjure my creed if I had +not always reflected that the state there had just come into possession +of the roads, with all their capitalistic faults of management and +outwear of equipment which it would doubtless soon reform and repair. I +venture to suggest now, however, that its prime duty is to have +platforms level with the car-doors, as they are in England, and not to +let Italian ladies stand in the doorways with their umbrellas. I do not +insist that it shall impose silence and sobriety upon a party of young +French people in the next compartment, but I do think it should remove +those mountains back from the sea so that the trains carrying cultivated +Americans can run along the open shore the whole way to Genoa. Pending +this, it should provide strong and watchful employees to lower and raise +the windows at the mouth of each of the eighty tunnels in every car. I +do not demand that it shall change the site of the station in Genoa so +that it shall not always be the city's whole length away from the hotel +you have chosen, but I think this would be a desirable improvement, +especially if it is after dark when you arrive and raining a peculiarly +cold, disagreeable rain. + +That rain was very disappointing; for, in the intervals between tunnels, +we had fancied, from the few brief glimpses we caught of the landscape, +that the April so backward elsewhere in Italy was forwarder in the +blossomed trees along the eastern Riviera; and we learned at our hotel +that the steam-heat had just been taken off because the day had been so +hot and dry, though the evening was now so cold and wet. It was fitfully +put on and off during the chilly week that ensued, though in our +fifth-story garden, to which we sometimes resorted, there was a mildness +in the air that was absent in-doors. The hotel itself was disappointing; +any hotel would be after our hotel in Leghorn; and, though there was the +good-will of former days, there was not the former effect. The corridors +crashed and clattered all day long and well into the night with the +gayety of some cheap incursion of German tourists, who seemed, indeed, +to fill the whole city with their clamor. They were given a long table +to themselves, and when they were set at it and began to ply their +knives and tongues the din was deafening. That would not have been so +bad if they had not been so plain, or if, when they happened, in a young +girl or two, to be pretty, they had not guttled and guzzled so like the +plainest of their number. One such pretty girl was really beautiful, +with a bloom perhaps already too rich, which, as she abandoned herself +to her meat and drink, reddened downward over her lily neck and upward +to her golden hair, past the brows under which her blue, blue eyes +protruded painfully, all in a frightful prophecy of what she would be +when the bud of her spring should be the full-blown cabbage-rose of her +summer. + +I dare say those people were not typical of their civilization. Probably +modern enterprise makes travel easy to sorts and conditions of Germans +who once would not have dreamed of leaving home, and now tempts these +rude Teutonic hordes over or under the Alps and pours them out on the +Peninsula, far out-deluging the once-prevalent Anglo-Saxons. The first +night there was an Englishman at dinner, but he vanished after +breakfast; the next day an Italian officer was at lunch, but he came no +more; we were the only Americans, and now we had the sole society of +those German tourists. Perhaps it was national vanity, but I could not +at the moment think of an equal number of our fellow-citizens of any +condition who would not have been less molestively happy. One forgot +what one was eating, and left the table bruised as if physically beaten +upon by those sound-waves and sight-waves. But our companions must have +made themselves acceptable to the city they had come to visit; Genoa is +very noisy, and they could not be heard above the trams and omnibuses, +and in the streets they could not be seen at table; when I ventured to +note to a sacristan, here and there, that there seemed to be a great +many Germans in town, the fact apparently roused nothing of the old-time +Italian antipathy for the Tedeschi. Severally they may have been +cultivated and interesting people; and that blooming maiden may really +have been the Blue Flower of Romance that she looked before she began to +dine. + +We were entering upon our third view of Genoa with the zest of our +first, and I was glad to find there were so many things I had left +unseen or had forgotten. First of all the Campo Santo allured me, and I +went at once to verify the impressions of former years in a tram +following the bed of a torrential river which was now dry except in the +pools where the laundresses were at work, picturesquely as always in +Italy. But here they were not alone the worthy theme of art; their +husbands and fathers, and perhaps even their _fiances,_ were at work +with them, not, indeed, washing the linen, but spreading to dry it in +snowy spaces over the clean gravel. On either bank of the stream newly +finished or partly finished apartment-houses testified to the prosperity +of the city, which seemed to be growing everywhere, and it would not be +too bold to imagine this a favorite quarter because of its convenience +to the Cam-po Santo. Already in the early forenoon our train was +carrying people to that popular resort, who seemed to be intending to +spend the day there. Some had wreaths and flowers, and were clearly +sorrowing friends of the dead; others, with their guide-books, were as +plainly mere sight-seers, and these were Italians as well as strangers, +gratifying what seems the universal passion for cemeteries. In our own +villages the graveyards are the favorite Sunday haunt of the young +people and the scene of their love-making; and it has been the complaint +of English visitors to our cities that the first thing their hosts took +them to see was the cemetery. They did not realize that this was often +the thing best worth showing them, for our feeble aesthetic instincts +found their first expression in the attempt to dignify or beautify the +homes of the dead. Each mourner grieved in marble as fitly as he knew +how, and, if there was sometimes a rivalry in vaults and shafts, the +effect was of a collective interest which all could feel. Sometimes it +was touching, sometimes it was revolting; and in Italy it is not +otherwise. The Campo Santo of San Miniato at Florence, the Campo Santo +at Bologna, the Campo Santo wherever else you find it, you find of one +quality with the Campo Santo at Genoa. It makes you the helpless +confidant of family pride, of bruised and lacerated love, of fond +aspiration, of religious longing, of striving faith, of foolish vanity +and vulgar pretence, but, if the traveller would read the local +civilization aright, he cannot do better than go to study it there. + +My third experience of the Genoese Campo Santo was different only in +quantity from the first and second. There seemed more of the things, +better and worse, but the increasing witness was of the art which +rendered the fact with unsparing realism, sometimes alloyed with +allegory and sometimes not, but always outright, literal, strong, rank. +The hundreds of groups, reliefs, statues, busts; the long aisles where +the dead are sealed in the tableted shelves of the wall, like the dead +in the catacombs, the ample space of open ground enclosed by the +cloisters and set thick with white crosses, are all dominated by a +colossal Christ which, in my fancy, remains of very significant effect. +It is as if no presence less mighty and impressive could centre in +itself the multitudinous passions, wills, and hopes expressed in those +incongruous monuments and reduce them to that unity of meaning which one +cannot deny them. + +The Campo Santo of Genoa is a mortuary gloss of Genoese history: of the +long succession of civic strifes and foreign wars common to all the +Italian republics, now pacified at last by a spirit of unity, of +brotherhood. At Genoa, more than anywhere else in Italy except Milan, +you are aware of the North--its strenu-ousness, its enterprise, its +restless outstretching for worlds beyond itself. Columbus came with the +gift of a New World in his hand, and, in the fulness of time, Mazzini +came with the gift of a Newer World in his hand: the realization of +Christ in the ideal of duties without which the old ideal of rights is +heathen and helpless. Against the rude force of Genoa, the aristocratic +beauty of such a place as Pisa was nothing; only Florence and Venice +might vie with her. But she had not the inspiration of Florence, her +art, her literature; the dialect in which she uttered herself is harsh +and crabbed, and no poet known beyond it has breathed his soul into it; +her architecture was first the Gothic from over the Alps, and then of +the Renaissance which built the palaces of her merchants in a giant bulk +and of a brutal grandeur. She had not the political genius of Venice, +the oligarchic instinct of self-preservation from popular misgovernment +and princely aggression. Her story is the usual Italian story of a +people jealous of each other, and, in their fear of a native tyrant, +impatiently calling in one foreign tyrant after another and then +furiously expelling him. When she would govern herself, she first made +her elective chief magistrate Doge for life, and then for two years; +under both forms she submitted and rebelled at will from 1359 till 1802, +when, after having accepted the French notion of freedom from Bonaparte, +she enjoyed a lion's share of his vicissitudes. For a hundred years +before that the warring powers had fought over her in their various +quarrels about successions, and she ought to have been well inured to +suffering when, in 1800, the English and the Austrians besieged her +French garrison, and twenty thousand of her people starved in a cause +not their own. The English restored the Doges, and the Republic of Genoa +fell at last nineteen years after the Republic of Venice and three +hundred years after the Republic of Florence. She was given to Piedmont +in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, and she has formed part of Italy ever +since the unification. I believe that now she is of rather radical +opinions in politics, though the bookseller who found on his shelves a +last copy of the interesting sketch of Genoese history which I have +profited by so little, said that the Genoese had been disappointed in +the Socialists, lately in power, and were now voting Clerical by a large +majority. + +The fact may have been colored by the book-seller's feelings. If the +Clericals are in superior force, the clerics are not: nowhere in Italy +did I see so few priests. All other orders of people throng the narrow, +noisy, lofty streets, where the crash of feet and hoofs and wheels beats +to the topmost stories of the palaces towering overhead in their stony +grandiosity. Everywhere in the structures dating after the Gothic period +there is want of sensibility; the art of the Renaissance was not moulded +here in the moods of a refined and effeminate patriciate, such as in +Venice tempered it to beauty; but it renders in marble the prepotence of +a commercialized nobility, and makes good in that form the right of the +city to be called Genoa the Proud. Perhaps she would not wish to be +called proud because of these palaces alone. It is imaginable that she +would like the stranger to remember the magnificence with which she +rewarded the patriotism of her greatest citizen after Columbus and +Mazzini: that mighty admiral, Andrea Doria, who freed this country first +from the rule of Charles V. and then from the rule of Francis I.; who +swept the Barbary corsairs from the seas; who beat the Turks in battles +on ship and on shore; who took Corsica from the French when he was +eighty-eight years old; who suffered from civil faction; who outlived +exile as he had outlived war, and who died at the age of ninety-four, +after he had refused the sovereignty of the country he had served so +long; who was the Washington of his day, and was equally statesman and +soldier, and, above all, patriot. It is his portrait that you see in +that old palace (called the Palace of the Prince because Charles V. had +called him Prince) overlooking the port, where he sits an old, old man, +very weary, in the sole society of his sarcastic cat, as I have noted +before. The cat seems to have just passed some ironical reflection on +the vanity of human things and to be studying him for the effect. Both +appear indifferent to the spectator, but perhaps they are not, and you +must not for all that fail of a visit to the Church of San Matteo, set +round with the palaces of the Doria family--the palace which his +grateful country gave the Admiral after he refused to be her master, and +the palaces of his kindred neighboring it round. + +I do not remember any equal space in all Europe which, through a very +little knowledge, so takes the heart as the gentle little church founded +by an earlier Doria, and, after four hundred years, restored by a later, +and then environed with the stately homes of the race, where they could +be domesticated in the honor and reverence of their countrymen because +of the goodness and greatness of the loftiest of their line. It is such +a place as one may revere and yet possess one's soul in self-respect, +very much as one may revere Mount Vernon. The church, as well as the +piazza, is full of Dorian memories, and the cloister must be visited not +only for its rather damp beauty, but for the full meaning of the irony +which Doria's cat in the portrait wished to convey: against the wall +here are gathered the fragments of the statue of Doria which, when the +French Revolution came to Genoa, the patriots threw out of the ducal +palace and broke in the street below. + +We were some time in finding our way into the magnificent hall of the +Great Council where this statue once stood, with the statues of many +other Genoese heroes and statesmen, and I am not sure that it was worth +all our trouble. Magnificent it certainly was, but coarsely magnificent, +like so much elsewhere in Genoa; but, if we had been at ten times the +trouble we were in seeing the Palace of the Municipality, I should not +think it too much. There in the great hall are the monuments of those +Genoese notables whose munificence their country wished to remember in +the order of their generosity. I do not remember just what the maximum +was, but the Doge or other leading citizen who gave, say, twenty-five +thousand ducats to the state had a statue erected to him; one who gave +fifteen, a bust; and one who gave five, an honorary tablet. The +surprising thing is that nearly all the statues and busts, whether good +likenesses or not, are delightful art: it is as if the noble acts of the +benefactors of their country had inspired the sculptors to reproduce +them not only in true character, but in due dignity. To the American who +views them and remembers that we have now so much money that some of us +do not know what to do with it, they will suggest that our millionaires +have an unrivalled opportunity of immortality in the same sort. There is +hardly a town of ten thousand inhabitants in the country where there are +not men who could easily afford to give a hundred thousand dollars, or +fifty, or twenty to their native or adoptive place and so enter upon a +new life in bronze or marble. This would enrich us beyond the dreams of +avarice in a high-grade portrait statuary; it would give work to +hundreds of sculptors who now have little or nothing to do, and would +revive or create the supplementary industries of casting in metal or +carving in stone. + +The time was in Genoa, it seems, as the time is now with us, when a +great many people did not know what to do with their money. There were +sumptuary laws which forbade their spending it, either they or their +wives or daughters, in dress; apparently they could not even wear Genoa +velvet, which had to be sold abroad for the corruption of the outside +world; and this is said to be the reason why there were so many palaces +built in Genoa in the days of the republic. People who did not wish to +figure in that hall of fame put their surplus into the immense and often +ugly edifices which we still see ministering to their pride in the wide +and narrow streets of the city. Now and then a devout family built or +rebuilt a church and gave it to the public; but by far the greater +number put up palaces, where, after the house-warming, they dwelt in a +cold and economical seclusion. Some of their palaces are now devoted to +public uses; they are galleries of pictures and statues most worthy to +be seen, or they are municipal offices, or museums, or schools of art or +science; but part are still in the keeping of the families that +contributed them to the splendor of their city. The streets in which +they stand are loud with transit and traffic, but the palaces hold aloof +from the turmoil and lift their lofty heads to the level of the gardens +behind them. Huge, heavy they are, according to the local ideal, and +always wanting the delicacy of Venetian architecture, where something in +the native genius tempered to gentleness the cold severity of Palladio, +and where Sansovino knew how to bridge the gulf between the Gothic and +the Renascent art that would have been Greek but halted at being Roman. + +The grandeur of those streets of palaces in Genoa cannot be denied, but +perhaps, if the visitor quite consulted his preference or indulged his +humor, he would wander rather through the arcades of the busy port, up +the chasmal alleys of little shops into the tiny piazzas, no bigger than +a good-sized room, opening before some ancient church and packed with +busy, noisy people. The perspective there is often like the perspective +in old Naples, but the uproar in Genoa does not break in music as it +does in Naples, and the chill lingering in the sunless depths of those +chasms is the cold of a winter that begins earlier and a spring that +loiters later than the genial seasons of the South. + + + + +X + +EDEN AFTER THE FALL + + +A few years ago an Englishman who had lived our neighbor in the same +villa at San Remo, came and said that he was going away because it was +so dull at San Remo. He was going with his wife to Monte Carlo, because +you could find amusement every day in the week at the tables of the +different games of chance, and Sundays there was a very nice little +English church. He did not seem to think there was anything out of the +way in his grouping of these advantages, but he did not strongly urge +them upon us, and we restricted ourselves in turn to our tacit +reflections on the indifference of the English to a point of morals on +which the American conscience is apt to suffer more or less anguish if +it offends. So far as I know they do not think it wrong to take money +won at any game; but possibly their depravity in this matter rather +comforted us than offended. At any rate, I am sure of the superiority of +our own morals in visiting Monte Carlo after we left Genoa. If we did +not look forward with our Englishman's complacency to the nice little +church there, we certainly did not mean to risk our money at the tables +of Roulette, nor yet at the tables of Trente et Quarante, in the Casino. +What we really wished to do was to look on in the spiritual security of +saints while the sinners of both sexes lost and gained to the equal hurt +of their souls. We perhaps expected to hear the report of a pistol in +the gardens of the Casino, if we did not actually see the ruined gambler +falling among the flowers, or if not so much as this, we thought we +might witness his dramatic despair as the croupier drew in the last +remnant of his fortune and mechanically invited the other Messieurs and +Mesdames to make their game; secretly, we might even have been willing +to see something hysterical on the part of the Mesdames if fate frowned +upon them, or something scandalously exuberant if it smiled. If our +motives were not the worst, they were, at any rate, not the best; I +suppose they were the usual human motives, and I am afraid they were +mixed. + +We found it rather long from Genoa to Monte Carlo, but this was not so +much because of the distance as because of the delays of our train, +which, having started late, grew reckless on the way, and before we +reached the Italian frontier at Ventimiglia, had lost all shame and +failed to connect there with the French train for the rest of our +journey. So, instead of having barely time to affirm our innocence of +tobacco, spirits, or perfumes to the customs officers, and to wash down +a sandwich with a cup of coffee at the restaurant, we had an hour and +forty minutes at Ventimiglia, which I partly spent in vain attempts to +buy the poverty of the inspector so far as to prevail with him not to +delay the examination of our baggage, but to proceed to it at once, in +order that we might have it all off our minds, and devote our long +leisure to the inquiry by what steps the ancient Li-gurian tribe of the +Intemelii lost their name in its actual corruption of Ventimiglia. It is +a charming old town, far more charming than the stranger who never has +time to walk into it from the station can imagine, and there is a +palm-bordered avenue leading from the railway to the sea, with the shops +and cafes of Italy on one side and the shops and cafes of France on the +other. So late as six o'clock in the evening those cafes and shops +preserved a reciprocal integrity which I could not praise too highly, +but after dark there must be a ghostly interchange of forbidden +commodities among them which no force of customs officers could wholly +suppress. At any rate, I should have liked to see them try it, though I +should not have liked to be kept in Ventimiglia overnight for any less +reason; it seemed a lonesome place, though mighty picturesque, with old +walls, and a magnificent old fort toward the sea, and a fine bridge +spanning, though for the moment superfluously spanning, the perfectly +dry bed of a river. + +I wished to ask what the name of the river was, but out of all the files +of people coming and going I chose an aged man who could not tell me; he +excused himself with real regret on the ground that he was a stranger in +those parts. Then there was nothing for me to do but go back to the +station and renew my attempt on the inspector, who still remained proof +against me. What added to the hardship of the situation was that it was +Italy at one end of the station and France at the other, and in one +extremity it was an hour earlier than it was at the other, by the time +of Central Europe at the east and by the time of Paris at the west, so +that I do not know but we were two hours and forty minutes at +Ventimiglia instead of one hour and forty minutes. Of this period little +could be employed at tea, and we were not otherwise hungry; we could +give something of our interminable leisure to counting our baggage and +suffering unfounded alarms at failing to make it come out right, but we +could not give much. + +The weather had turned chilly, the long station was full of draughts, +and the invalid of the party, without whom no American party is +perfectly national, was rapidly taking cold. We were quite incredulous +when the examination actually began, but at last it really did, and it +began with our pieces, with such a show of favoring us on the +inspector's part, that when it was over, in about two minutes, one trunk +serving as a type of the innocence of all, I furtively held up a piece +of five francs in recognition of his kindness. But he slowly shook his +head, whether in regret or whether in stern refusal I shall never know. +He was an Italian, but in the employment of the French republic, and I +have not been able since to credit with certainty his incorruptibility +to his native or his adoptive country; I might easily be mistaken in +deciding either way. + +What I am certain of, and certainly sorry for, is the superiority of the +French company's railway carriage, from Ventimiglia on, to the Italian +carriage which had brought us so far, and it is still with unwillingness +that I own the corporation's greater care for our comfort. If we had +been in the paternal care of the administration of the gambling-house. +at Monte Carlo, we could not have been more tenderly or cleanly +cushioned about, or borne away on softer springs; and very possibly a +measure of wickedness in the means is a condition of comfort in the end +to which we are so tempted to abandon ourselves in a world which is not +yet so sternly collectivist as I could wish. It was not quite dark when +we arrived at Monte Carlo and began to experience, in the beautiful +keeping of the place, how admirably a gambling-house can manage the +affairs of a principality when it pays all the taxes. There were many +two-horse landaus waiting our pleasure outside the station, and the +horses were all so robust and handsome that we were not put to our usual +painful endeavor in seeking the best and getting the worst. All those +stately equipages were good, and the one that fell to us mounted the +hill to our hotel by a grade so insinuating that the balkiest horse in +Frascati could hardly have suspected it. + +In our easy ascent we were aware of the gray-and-blond houses behind +their walls among their groves and gardens, among flowers and blossoms; +of the varying inclines and levels from which some lovely difference of +prospect appeared at every step; of the admirably tended roadways, and +the walks that followed them up hill and down, and crossed to little +parks, or led to streets brilliant with shops and hotels, clustering +about the great gambling-house, the centre of the common prosperity and +animation. The air had softened with the setting sun, and the weather +which had at Leghorn and Genoa delayed through two weeks of rain and +cold, seemed to confess the control of the Casino administration, as +everything else does at Monte Carlo, and promised an amiability to which +we eargerly trusted. + +It was of course warmer out-doors than in-doors, and while the fire was +kindling on our hearth we gave the quarter hour before dinner to looking +over our garden-wall into the comely town in the valley below, and to +the palace and capital of the Prince of Monaco on the heights beyond. +Nothing by day or by night could be more exquisite than the little +harbor, a perfect horseshoe in shape, and now, at our first sight of it, +set round with electric lights, like diamonds in the scarf-pin of some +sporty Titan, or perhaps of Hercules Mon-oecus himself, who is said to +have founded Monaco. In the morning we saw that the waters arranged +themselves in the rainbow colors of such a scarf round the shores, and +that there were only pleasure-craft moored in them: the yacht of the +Prince of Monaco and the yacht of some American Prince, whose title I +did not ascertain, but whose flag was unmistakable. There must have been +other yachts, but I do not remember them, and possibly there were some +workaday craft, of which I do not now recall the impression; but I am +certain of the festive air of disoccupation pervading the port from the +adjacent towns, both Monte Carlo and Monaco, which its wicked suburb has +cleansed in corrupting, and rendered attractive by the example of its +elegant leisure. There remains from both places, and from Condamine in +the plain between them the sense of a perpetual round of holidays. There +seemed to be no more creative business in one place than another, but I +do not say there is none; there is certainly a polite distillery of +perfumes and liqueurs in Condamine, but what one sees is the commerce of +the shops, and the building up of more and more villas and hotels, on +every shelf and ledge, to harden and whiten in the sun, and let their +gardens hang over the verges of the cliffs. On the northeast, the +mountains rise into magnificent steeps whose names would say nothing to +the reader, except that of Turbia, which he will recall as the classic +Tropaea of Augustus, who marked there the bounds between Italy and Gaul. +But we were as yet in no mood to climb this height, even with the help +of a funicular railway, and I made my explorations at such convenient +elevations as I could reach on foot, or by the help of one of those +luxurious landaus peculiar to Monte Carlo. + +One such point was undoubtedly the headland of Monaco, where the Greeks +of Marseilles, long enough before Augustus, built a temple to Hercules +Monoecus. The Grimaldi family which gave Genoa many doges, came early +into the sovereignty of Monaco, by the hook or crook those days, but +whether it was they who fostered its piracy in the fourteenth century, +does not distinctly appear, though it seems certain that one of the +Grimaldi princes served against the English under Philip of Valois, and +was wounded at Crecy. In 1524 a successor went over to the empire under +Charles V. Still later the principality returned to the sovereignty of +France, and in 1793 the French republicans frankly annexed it, but it +was given back to the Grimaldi in 1814. + +The Grimaldi on the whole were a baddish line of potentates, and only +lacked largeness of scene to have left the memory of world-tragedies. +They murdered one another, at least in two cases; in another, the people +killed their ruler by publicly drowning him in the sea for insulting +their women; the princes were the protectors of piracy, and in the very +late times following their restoration by the Congress of Vienna, the +reigning prince confiscated the property of the churches for his own +behoof, and took into his hands the whole trade of the principality. He +alone bought and ground the grain, and baked the bread, which he sold to +his people at an extortionate price; he bought damaged flour in Genoa +and fed it to his subjects at the same rate as good. When they murmured +and threatened rebellion, he threatened in turn that he would rule them +with a rod of iron, as if their actual conditions were not bad enough. +Some of his oppressions were of a fantasticality bordering on comic +opera: travellers had to give up their provisions at the frontier and +eat the official bread of Monaco; ships entering the port were +confiscated if they had brought more loaves than sufficed them for their +voyage thither; no man might cut his own wood without leave of the +police, or prune his trees, or till his land, or irrigate it; the birth +and death of every animal must be publicly registered, with the payment +of a given tax, and nobody could go out after ten at night without +carrying a taxed lantern. When Nice was annexed to France in 1860 Monaco +passed under French protection again, and now it is subject to +conscription like the rest of France. Ten years after the beginning of +this new order of things the great M. Blanc was expelled from Hombourg, +and the Prince of Monaco rented to him the-gambling privilege of Monte +Carlo. + +Then the modern splendor of the place began. The entire population of +the three towns, Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Condamine, is not above +fifteen thousand, and apparently the greater part of the inhabitants +depend upon the gay industry of the Casino for their livelihood. I +should say that the most of the houses in Monte Carlo were hotels, or +pensions, or furnished villas, or furnished apartments, and if one could +be content to live in the atmosphere of the Casino, which is not +meteorologically lurid, I do not know where one could live in greater +comfort. It is said that everything is rather dearer than in Nice, for +instance, but such things as I wanted to buy I did not find very dear. +The rates at the most expensive hotels did not seem exhorbitant when +reduced to dollars, and if you went a little way from the Casino the +hotels were very reasonable, so that you could spend a great deal of +money at the tables which in America you would spend in board and +lodging. I fancy that a villa could be got there very reasonably, and as +the morals of all the inhabitants are scrupulously cared for by the +administration of the Casino, and no one living in the principality is +allowed to frequent the gaming-tables, it is probable that domestic +service is good and cheap. If I may speak from our experience at our +very simple little hotel, it is admirable, one waiter sufficing for ten +or twelve guests, with leisure for much friendly conversation in the +office, between the breakfasts served in our rooms and the excellent +dinners at the small tables in the salon. If you liked, he would speak +French or Italian, though he spoke English as well as any one, and he +was of that excellent Piedmontese race which has been the saving salt of +the whole peninsula. As for the food, it was far beyond that of our +cold-storage, and it must have been cheap, since it was provided for us +at the rate we paid. + +The cost of dress varies, according to the taste of and the purse, +everywhere. White serge seemed the favorite wear of most of the ladies +one saw in the street at Monte Carlo, especially in the region of the +Casino. This may have expressed an inner condition, or it may have been +a sympathetic response to the advances of the flowers in the pretty beds +and parterres so fancifully designed by the gardeners of the +administration, or it may have been a token of the helpless submission +to which the windows of the milliners and modistes reduced all comers of +the dressful sex. Many of the men with the women, or without them, were +also in white serge, but they seemed more variably attired; there was a +prevailing suggestion of yachting or automobiling in their dress, +though doubtless most of them had not sailed or motored to the spot. +Some few, say four or five, may have motored away from it, for in the +centre of the charming square before the Casino there was an automobile +of some newest type being raffled for in the interest of that chiefest +of the Christian virtues which makes its most successful appeals in the +vicinity of games of chance. Some one must have won the machine and +carried a party of his friends away, and triumphantly turned turtle with +it over the first of the precipices which abound at Monte Carlo. More +than the tables within this opportunity of fortune tempted me, and it +was only by the repeated recurrence to my principles that I was able to +get away alive. In spite of myself, I did not get away without, however +guiltlessly, having yielded to the spirit of the place. It was at the +Administrational Art Exhibition, where there were really some good +pictures, and where, on my entering, I was given a small brass disk. On +going out I attempted to restore this to the door-keeper, but he went +back with me to a certain piece of mechanism, where he instructed me to +put the disk into a slot. Then the disk ran its course, and a small +brass ball came out at the bottom. The door-keeper opened this, and +showed me that it was empty; but he gave me to understand that it might +have been full of diamonds, or rubies, or seed-pearls, which might have +implanted in me a lust of gambling I should never have overcome. Monte +Carlo was in every way tempting. A vast oblong, brilliant with flowers +in artistic patterns, stretched upward from the Casino, and there was an +agreeable park where one might sit. On every other side there were +costly hotels and costly restaurants, including that of the unexampled, +the insurpassable Giro, where one saw people eating and drinking at the +windows whenever one passed, by day or night. Beyond the Casino seaward +were the beautiful terraces, planted with palms and other tropic +growths, where people might come out and kill themselves when they had +nothing left to lose but their lives; and against the dark green of +their fronds the temple of fortune lifted a frosted-cake-like front of +long extent. I do not know just what type of architecture it is of, but +it distinctly suggests the art of the pastry cook when he has triumphed +in some edifice crowning the centre of the table at a great public +dinner. What mars the pleasing effect most is a detail which enforces +this suggestion, for the region of the Casino is thickly frequented by a +species of black doves, and when these gather in close lines of black +dots along the eaves, they have exactly the effect of flies clustering +on the sugary surfaces of the cake. At intervals are bronze statues of +what seem a sort of adolescent cherubs, but which have, I do not know +why, a peculiarly devilish appearance. No doubt they are harmless +enough; but certainly they do nothing to keep the flies off the cake. + +In fine, as an edifice the Casino disappoints, and if one is not +pressingly curious about the interior, one rather lingers on the terrace +overlooking the sea, and the lines of the railroad following the shore, +and the panorama of the several towns. It is charming to sit there, and +if it is in the afternoon, you may see an artist there painting +water-colors of the scenery. Even if he were not painting, you could not +help knowing him for an artist, because he wears a black velvet jacket +and knickerbockers, and a soft slouch hat, and has a curled black +mustache and pointed beard; there is no mistaking him; and at a given +moment, after he has been working long enough, he puts above his sketch +the sign, "For Sale," as artists always do, and then, if you want a +masterpiece, you go down a few steps from where you are sitting and buy +it. But I never did that any more than I took tickets for the charity +automobile, though there is no telling what I might not have done if I +had broken the bank when at last I went into the Casino. + +It seems to open about eleven o'clock in the morning, for gamblers are +hard-working, impatient people, and do not want to lose time. A broad +stretch of red carpet is laid down the steps from the portal and they +begin to go in at once, and people keep going in until I know not what +hour at night. But I think mid-afternoon is the best hour to see them, +and it is then that I will invite the reader to accompany me, +instructing him to turn to the left on entering, and get his gratis +billet of admission to the rooms from the polite officials there in +charge, who will ask for his card, and inquire his country and city, but +will not insist upon his street and his number in it. This form is +apparently to make sure that you are not a resident of the principality, +and that if you suffer in your morals from your visit to the Casino you +shall not be a source of local corruption thereafter. They bow you away, +first audibly pronouncing your name with polyglottic accuracy, and then +you are free to wander where you like. But probably you will want to go +at once from the large, nobly colonnaded reception-hall or atrium, into +that series of salons where wickeder visitors than yourself are already +closely seated at the oblong tables, and standing one or two deep round +them. The salons of the series are four, and the tables in each are from +two to five, according to the demands of the season; some are Trente et +Quarante-tables, and some, by far the greater number, are +Roulette-tables. Roulette seems the simpler game, and the more popular; +I formed the notion that there was a sort of aristocratic quality in +Trente et Quarante, and that the players of that game were of higher +rank and longer purse, but I can allege no reason justifying my notion. +All that I can say is that the tables devoted to it commanded the +seaward views, and the tops of the gardens where the players withdrew +when they wished to commit suicide. The rooms are decorated by several +French painters of note, and the whole interior is designed by the +famous architect Gamier, to as little effect of beauty as could well be. +It is as if these French artists had worked in the German taste, rather +than their own, and in any case they have achieved in their several +allegories and impersonations something uniformly heavy and dull. One +might fancy that the mood of the players at the tables had imparted +itself to the figures in the panels, but very likely this is not so, for +the players had apparently parted with none of their unpleasing dulness. +They were in about equal number men and women, and they partook equally +of a look of hard repression. The repression may not have been wholly +from within; a little away from each table hovered, with an air of +detachment, certain plain and quiet men, who, for all their apparent +inattention, may have been agents of the Administration vigilant to +subdue the slightest show of drama in the players. I myself saw no +drama, unless I may call so the attitude of a certain tall, handsome +young man, who stood at the corner of one of the tables, and, with +nervously working jaws, staked his money at each invitation of the +croupiers. I did not know whether he won or lost, and I could not decide +from their faces which of the other men or women were winning or losing. +I had supposed that I might see distinguished faces, distinguished +figures, but I saw none. The players were of the average of the +spectators in dress and carriage, but in the heavy atmosphere of the +rooms, which was very hot and very bad, they all alike looked dull. At a +psychological moment it suddenly came to me in their presence, that if +there was such a place as hell, it must be very dull, like that, and +that the finest misery of perdition must be the stupid dulness of it. +For some unascertained reason, but probably from a mistaken purpose of +ornament, there hung over the centre of each table, almost down to the +level of the players' heads, lengths of large-linked chains, and it was +imaginable, though not very probable, that if any of the lost souls rose +violently up, or made an unseemly outcry, or other rebellious +demonstration, those plain, quiet men, the agents of the Administration, +would fling themselves upon him or her, and bind them with those chains, +and cast them into such outer darkness as could be symbolized by the +shade of the terrace trees. The thing was improbable, as I say, but not +impossible, if there is truth in Swedenborg's relation that the hells +are vigilantly policed, and from time to time put in order by angels +detailed for that office. To be sure the plain, quiet men did not look +like angels, and the Administration of which they were agents, could +not, except in its love of order, be likened to any celestial authority. + +Commonly in the afternoon there is music in the great atrium from which +the gambling-rooms open, and then there is a pleasant movement of people +up and down. They are kept in motion perhaps by their preference, +somewhat, but also largely by the want of seats. If you can secure one +of these you may amuse yourself very well by looking on at the fashion +and beauty of those who have not secured any. Here you will see much +more distinction than in the gambling-rooms; the air is better, and if +you choose to fancy this the limbo of that inferno, it will not be by a +violent strain. In the crowd will be many pretty young girls, in proper +chaperonage, and dressed in the latest effects of Paris; if they happen +to be wearing the mob-cap hats of the moment it is your greater gain; +they could not be so charming in anything else, or look more innocent, +or more consciously innocent. You could only hope, however, such were +the malign associations of the place, that their chaperons would not +neglect them for the gaming-tables beyond, but you could not be sure, if +the chaperons were all like that old English lady one evening at the +opera in the Casino, who came in charge of her niece, or possibly some +friend's daughter. She remained dutifully enough beside the girl through +the first act of the stupid musical comedy, and even through the ensuing +ballet, and when a flaunting female, in a hat of cart-wheel +circumference, came in and shut out the whole stage from the hapless +stranger behind, this good old lady authorized her charge to ask him to +take the seat next them where he could see something of the action if he +wished. But at the end of the ballet, she rose, and bidding the girl +wait her return, she vanished in the direction of the gaming-rooms. She +may merely have gone to look on at a spectacle which, dulness for +dulness, was no worse than that of the musical comedy, and I have no +proof that she risked her money there. The girl sat through the next +act, and then in a sudden fine alarm, like that of a bird which, from no +visible cause, starts from its perch, she took flight, and I hope she +found her aunt, or her mother's friend, quietly sleeping on one of those +seats in the atrium. It was one of those tacit, eventless dramas which +in travel are always offering themselves to your witness. They begin in +silence, and go quietly on to their unfinish, and leave you steeped in +an interest which is life-long, whereas a story whose end you know soon +perishes from your mind. Art has not yet learned the supreme lesson of +life, which is never a tale that is told within the knowledge of the +living. + +Nowhere, I think, is the "sweet security of streets" felt more than in +Monte Carlo. Whether the control of that good Administration of the +Casino reaches to the policing of the place in other respects or not, I +cannot say, but one walks home at night from the theatre of the Casino +with the same sense of safety that one enjoys under that paternal roof. +At eleven o'clock all Monte Carlo sleeps the sleep of the innocent and +the just in the dwellings of the citizens and permanent residents; +though it cannot be denied that there appear to be late suppers in the +hotels and restaurants surrounding the Casino, which the iniquitous may +be giving to the guilty. Away from the flare of their bold lights the +town reposes in a demi-dark, and presents to the more strenuous fancy +the effect of a mezzotint study of itself; by day it is a group of +wash-drawings near to, and farther off, of water-colors, very richly and +broadly treated. I could not insist too much upon this notion with the +reader who has never been there, or has not received picture +postal-cards from sojourning correspondents. These would afford him a +portrait of the chief features and characteristics of the place not too +highly flattered, for in fact it would be impossible for even a picture +postal-card to exaggerate its beauty. They will besides convey one of +the few convincing proofs that in spite of the Blanc Casino and the +French Republic the Prince of Monaco is still a reigning sovereign, for +the postage-stamps bear the tastefully printed head of that potentate. +If the visitor requires other proofs he may take a landau at the station +in Monaco, and drive up over the heights of the capital into the piazza +before the prince's palace. When the prince is not at home he can +readily get leave to visit the palace for twenty minutes, but on my +unlucky day the prince was doubly at home, for he was sick as well as in +residence. I satisfied myself as well as I could, and I am very easy to +satisfy, with my drive through the pleasant town, which is entirely +Italian in effect, with its people standing about or looking out of +their windows in their Sunday leisure, and quite Roman in the +cleanliness of its streets. I took due pleasure in the unfinished +exterior of the Oceanographic Museum and the newly finished interior of +the Monaco Cathedral. The cathedral, which is so new as to make one +rejoice that most other cathedrals are old, is of a glaring freshness, +but is very handsome; somehow in spite of its newness it contains the +tombs of the reigning family, and perhaps it has only been newly done +over. The museum which is ultimately to be the greatest of its kind in +the world, already contains somewhere in its raw inaccessible recesses +the collections made by Prince Albert in his many cruises, and is of a +palatiality worthy of a sovereign with a tenant so generous and prompt +in its rent as the Administration of the Casino of Monte Carlo. + +This fact, namely, that the princely grandeur and splendor of Monaco all +came out of the gaming-tables, was something that the driver of my +landau made me observe, when our intimacy had mounted with our road, and +we paused for the magnificent view of the sea from the headland near the +museum. He was otherwise a shrewd and conversible Piedmontese who did +not make me pay much above the tariff, and who had pity on my poor +French after awhile, and consented to speak Italian with me. In the sort +of French glare over the whole local civilization of the principality, +everybody will wish to seem Erench, but after you break through the +surface, the natives will be as comfortably and endearingly Italian as +anybody in the peninsula. Among themselves they speak a Ligurian patois, +but with the stranger they will use an Italian easily much better than +his, and also much better than their own French. I think they prefer you +in their racial parlance after you have shown some knowledge of it, and +two kind women of whom I asked my way in Monte Carlo, one day when I was +trying for the station of the funicular to Turbia, grew more volubly +kind when I asked it in such Tuscan as I could command. That station is +really not hard to find when once you know where it is, and at three +o'clock in the afternoon I was mounting the precipitous incline of the +alp on whose summit Augustus divided Italy from Gaul, and left the +stupendous trophy which one sees there in ruins to-day. + +I should like to render the sense of my upward progress dramatic by +pretending that we mounted from a zone of flowers at Monte Carlo into +regions where only the hardiest blossoms greeted us, but what I really +noticed was that by-and-by the little patches of vineyard seemed to grow +less and the olive-trees scraggier. Perhaps even this was partly fancy; +as for the flowers, I cannot bring myself to partake of their deceit; +for they are the most shameless fakers, as regards climate, in nature. +It is, for instance, perfectly true that they are in bloom along the +Riviera all winter long, but this does not prove that the winter of the +Riviera is always warm. It merely proves that flowers can stand a degree +of cold that nips the nose bent to hale their perfume, and brings tears +into the eyes dwelling in rapture on their loveliness. They are like +women; they look so fragile and delicate that you think they cannot +stand anything, but they can stand pretty much everything, or at least +everything they wish to. Throughout that week at Monte Carlo, while we +cowered round our fires or went out into a frigid sunshine, the flowers +smiled from every garden-ground in a gayety emulous of that of their +sisters passing in white serge. So probably I gave less attention to the +details of the scenery through which my funicular was passing than to +the stupendous prospects of sea and shore which it varyingly commanded. +If words could paint these I should not spare the words, but when I +recall them, my richest treasure of adjectives seems a beggarly array of +color tubes, flattened and twisted past all col-lapsibility. Nothing +less than an old-fashioned panoramic show would impart any notion of it, +and even that must fail where it should most abound, namely, in the +delicacy of that ineffable majesty. + +We climbed and climbed, with many a muted hope and many a muted fear of +the mechanism which carried us so safely, and then we ran across a +stretch of comparative level and reached the last station, under the +cliff on which the local hotel stood, with the mighty ruin behind it. +Our passengers flocked up to the terrace of the hotel, much shoved and +shouldered by automobiles bearing the company which seems proper to +those vehicles, and dispersed themselves at the many little tables set +about for tea, and the glory of the matchless outlook. While one could +yet have the ruin mostly to one's self, it seemed the most favorable +moment to visit the crumbling walls and broken tower, whose fragments +strewed the slopes around. The tower was of Augustus, and the fortress +into which it was turned in the Middle Ages was of unknown authority, +but the ruin was the work of Marshal Villars, who blew up both trophy +and stronghold sometime in the French king's wars with the imperialists +in the first half of the eighteenth century. The destruction was +incomplete, though probably sufficient for the purpose, but as a ruin, +nothing could be more admirable. There seems to be at present something +like a restoration going on; it has not gone very far, however; it has +developed some fragments of majestic pillars, and some breadths of Roman +brick-work; a few spaces about the base of the tower are cleared; but +the rehabilitation will probably never proceed to such an extreme that +you may not sit down on some carven remnant of the past, and closing +your eyes to the surrounding glory of alp and sea find yourself again on +the Palatine or amid the memorials of the Forum. + +THE END + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. 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