Monna Vittoria dwelt in the pleasantest part of the country outside the
city, in a quarter where there were many gardens and much thickness of
trees and greenness of grass and coloring of bright flowers--all
pleasing things, that made an agreeable background to her beauty when
she went abroad in her litter. For, indeed, she was a comely creature,
and one that painters would pause to look at and to praise, as well as
others that eyed her more carnally minded. Now I myself had but a slight
acquaintance, albeit a pleasant one, with Vittoria. This was partly
because my purse was but leanly provided, and partly because I had ever
in mind with regard to such creatures the wise saying of the Athenian
concerning the girl Lais, that it was not worth while to spend a fortune
to gain a regret. Moreover, I was too much occupied with my own very
agreeable love-affairs, that were blended with poetry and dreams and
such like sweetnesses, as well as with reality, to make me feel any wish
for more extravagant alliances. But I had it in my mind now that it
might be a good thing for me, in the interests of my poem in praise of
fair Florentines, to pay this lady a visit, and I hoped, being a poet,
though I trust not over puffed up with my own pride of importance, and
knowing that she was always fain to be regarded as a patroness of the
arts, that I might, without much difficulty, gain access to her.
So I spent a careless morning on a hillside beyond the city in the
excellent company of a flask of wine and a handful of bread and cheese,
and there I sprawled upon my back among the daisies and munched and
sipped, and listened to the bees, and looked upon the brown roofs of
beautiful Florence, and was very well content. And when I had stayed my
stomach and flung the crumbs to the birds, and had emptied the better
part of my flagon, I stretched myself under a tree like a man in a doze.
I was not dozing, however, for the flowers and the verdure about me, and
the birds that piped overhead, and the booming bees, and the strong
sunlight on the grass, and the glimpses of blue sky through the
branches, were all busying themselves for me in weaving the web of the
poem I wanted to carry home with me.
As I shot the bright verses this way and that way, and caught with a
childish pleasure at the shining rhymes as a child will catch at some
glittering toy, I had perforce to smile as I reflected on what a
different business mine was to that of the unknown singer of those
days. For those poems of his that he had sent to Guido and to others
were exceeding beautiful, and full of a very noble and golden
exaltation. I think if the angels in heaven were ever to make love to
one another they would choose for their purpose some such perfection of
speech as Dante--for I knew the singer to be Dante a little later--found
for his sonnets and canzone. For myself, I frankly admit, being an
honest man, that I could not write such sonnets even if I had my Dante's
command of speech, to which Heaven forbid that I should ever pretend.
Those rhymes of his, for all their loveliness--and when I say that they
were lovely enough to be worthy of the lady to whom they were addressed,
I give them the highest praise and the praise that Dante would most have
cared to accept--were too ethereal for my work-a-day humors. I liked
better to write verses to the laughing, facile lasses with whom my way
of life was cast--jolly girls who would kiss to-day and sigh to-morrow,
and forget all about you the third day if needs were, and whom it was as
easy for their lover to forget, so far as any sense of pain lay in the
recollection of their graces. And I would even rather have the jolly job
I was engaged on at that moment of some ripe, rich-colored verses for
Vittoria, for I could, in writing them, be as human as I pleased and
frankly of the earth earthly, and I needed to approach my quarry with
no tributes pilfered from the armory of heaven. I could praise her
beauty with the tongue of men, and leave the tongue of angels out of the
question; and if my muse were pleased here and there to take a wanton
flutter, I knew I could give decorum the go-by with a light heart.
So I wallowed at my ease in the grasses and tossed verses as a juggler
tosses his balls, and watched them glitter and wink as they rose and
fell, and at last I shaped to my own satisfaction what I believed to be
an exceedingly pleasant set of verses that needed no more than to be
engrossed on a fair piece of sheepskin and tied with a bright ribbon and
sent to the exquisite frailty. And all these things I did in due course,
after the proper period of polishing and amending and straightening out,
until, as I think, there never was a set of rhymes more carefully
fathered and mothered into the world. And here is the sonnet:
"There is a lady living in this place
That wears the radiant name of Victory;
And we that love would bid her wingless be,
Like the Athenian image, lest her grace,
Lifting a siren's-tinted pinions, trace
Its glittering course across the Tyrrhene sea
To some more favored Cyprian sanctuary,
Leaving us lonely, longing for her face.
O daughter of the gods, though lovelier lands,
If such there be, entreat you, do not hear
Their whispering voices, heed their beckoning hands;
Have only eye for Florence, only ear
For Florentine adorers, while their cheer
Between your fingers spills its golden sands."
Now this sonnet may be divided into four parts. In the first part, I
make my statement that there is a lady dwelling in Florence whose name
is Vittoria. In the second part, I allow my fancy to play lightly with
the suggestions this name arouses in me, and I make allusion very
felicitously to the famous statue of the Wingless Victory, which the
Athenians honored in Athens so very specially in that, being wingless,
it could not fly away from the city. In the third part, I express my
alarm lest her loveliness should spread its vans in flight and leave us
lonely. In the fourth, I entreat her to pay no heed to the solicitations
of others, but to remain always loyal to her Florentine lovers so long
as they can give her gifts. The second part begins here: "And we that
love." The third begins, "Lest her grace." The fourth part begins, "O
daughter of the gods."
That simile of the Wingless Victory tickled me so mightily that I was in
a very good conceit with myself, and if I read over my precious sonnet
once, I suppose I read it over a score of times; and even now, at this
distance of days, I am inclined to pat myself upon the back and to call
myself ear-pleasing names for the sake of my handiwork. Of course I am
ready to admit quite frankly that most, if not all, of Dante's sonnets
are better, taking them all round, than my modest enterprises. But there
is room, as I hope, for many kinds of music-makers in the fields about
Parnassus. I know Messer Guido spoke very pleasantly of my sonnets, and
so I make no doubt would Dante have, but somehow or other I never showed
them to him.
Now, when I had scrolled my rhymes precisely, I had them dispatched to
Monna Vittoria by a sure hand, and, as is my way, having done what I had
to do, thought no more about the matter for the time being. It was ever
a habit of mine not merely to let the dead day bury its dead, but to let
the dead hour, and, if possible, the dead minute and dead second bury
their dead, and to think no more upon any matter than is essential. I
think the sum of all wise living is to be merry as often as one can, and
sad as seldom as one can, and never to fret over what is unavoidable, or
to be pensive over what is past, but to be wise for the time. So I
remember that days not a few drifted by after I had sent my rhymes and
my request to Monna Vittoria, and I was very busy just then paying my
court to three of the prettiest girls I had ever known, and I almost
forgot my poem and Monna Vittoria altogether.
But I recall a grayish morning along Arno and a meeting with Messer
Guido, and his taking me on one side and standing under an archway while
he read me a sonnet that the unknown poet had composed in illustration
of his passion for his nameless lady, and had sent to Messer Guido. It
was a very beautiful sonnet, as I remember, and I recall very keenly
wishing for an instant that I could write such words and, above all,
that I could think such thoughts. I think I have already set it down
that love has always been a very practical business with me. If one girl
is not at hand, another will serve, and the moon-flower, sunflower
manner of worship was never my way. But if one must love like that,
making love rather a candle on God's altar than a torch in Venus her
temple, there is no man ever since the world began, nor will, I think,
ever be till the world shall end, to do so better than Messer Dante.
When I had done reading the sonnet, and had parted from friend Guido, I
found myself in the mood that this then unknown poet's verses always
swung me into, of wonder and trouble, as of one who, having drunk
over-much of a heady and insidious wine, finds himself thinking
unfamiliar thoughts and seeing familiar things unfamiliarly. While I was
thus mazed and arguing with myself as to whether I were right and this
poet wrong or this poet right and I wrong in our view of love and women.
I was accosted in the plain highway by a dapper little brat of a page
that wore a very flamboyant livery, and that carried a letter in his
hand. And the page questioned me with a grin and asked me if I were
Messer Lappo Lappi, and I, being so bewildered with the burden of my
warring thoughts, was half of a mind to answer that I was no such man,
but luckily recalled myself and walked the sober earth again soberly. I
assured him that I was none other than poor Lappo Lappi, and I pinched a
silver coin from my pocket and gave it to him, and he handed me the
missive and grinned again, and whistled and slipped away from me along
the street, a diminished imp of twinkling gilt. And I opened the letter
then and there, and read in it that Monna Vittoria very gracefully gave
me her duty, and in all humility thanked me for my verses--Lord, as if
that ample baggage could ever be humble!--and would be flattered beyond
praise if my dignity would honor her with my presence on such a day at
such an hour. And I was very well pleased with this missive, and was
very careful to obey its commands.
The house where Monna Vittoria dwelt was a marvel of beauty, like its
mistress--a fair frame for a fair portrait. It seemed to have laid all
the kingdoms of earth under tribute, for, indeed, the lady's friends
were mainly men of wealth, cardinals and princes and great captains,
that were ever ready to give her the best they had to give for the
honor of her acquaintance. Her rooms were rich with statues of marble
and statues of bronze, and figures in ivory and figures in silver, and
with gold vessels, and cabinets of ebony and other costly woods; and
pictures by Byzantine painters hung upon her walls, and her rooms were
rich with all manner of costly stuffs and furs. He that was favored to
have audience with Monna Vittoria went to her as through a dream of
loveliness, marvelling at the many splendid things that surrounded her:
at the fountain in her court-yard, where the goldfish gambolled, and
where a Triton that came from an old Roman villa spouted; at her
corridors, lined with delicately tinted majolica that seemed cool and
clean as ice in those summer heats; at her antechambers, that glowed
with color and swooned with sweet odors; and, finally, at her own
apartments, where she that was lady of all this beauty seemed so much
more beautiful than it all.
Madonna Vittoria would have looked queenly in a cottage; in the midst of
her gorgeous surroundings she showed more than imperial, and she knew
the value of such trappings and made the most of them to dazzle her
admirers, for her admirers, as I have said, were all great lords that
were used to handsome dwellings and sumptuous appointments and costly
adornings, but there was never one of them that seemed to dwell so
splendidly as Monna Vittoria.
Now I, that came to her with nothing save such credit as I might hope to
have for the sake of my verses, could look at all this magnificence with
an indifferent eye. Yet I will confess that as I moved through so much
sumptuousness, and breathed such strangely scented air, I was stirred
all of a sudden with strange and base envy of those great personages for
whom this brave show was spread, and found myself wishing unwittingly
that I were some great prince of the Church or adventurous
free-companion who might not, indeed, command--for there were none who
could do that--but hope for the lady's kindness. Although I assured
myself lustily that a poet was as good as a prince, in my heart, and in
the presence of all this luxury, I knew very dismally that it was not
so, and that Monna Vittoria would never be persuaded to think so. As I
have already said, I had no great yearning for these magnificent
mercenaries of the hosts of Love, for these bejewelled amazons that
seemed made merely to prove to man that he is no better than an
unutterable ass. My pulses never thrilled tumultuously after her kind,
and in the free air of the fields I would not have changed one of my
pretty sweethearts against Monna Vittoria. But somehow in that fantastic
palace of hers, with its enchanted atmosphere and its opulent
surroundings, my cool reason of the meadows and the open air seemed at a
loss, and I found myself ready, as it were, to surrender to Circe like
any hog pig of them all.
If this were the time and the place, I should like to try to find out,
by the light of a dry logic, and with the aid of a cold process of
analysis, why these Timandras and Phrynes have so much power over men.
Perhaps, as I am speaking of Monna Vittoria, I should add the Aspasias
to my short catalogue of she-gallants, for Vittoria was a woman well
accomplished in the arts, well-lettered, speaking several tongues with
ease, well-read, too, and one that could talk to her lovers, when they
had the time or the inclination for talking, of the ancient authors of
Rome, and of Greece, too, for that matter--did I not say her mother was
a Greek?--and could say you or sing you the stanzas of mellifluous
poets, most ravishingly to the ear. She knew all the verses of Guido
Guinicelli by root of heart, and to hear her repeat that poem of his
beginning,
"Love ever dwells within the gentle heart,"
what time she touched a lute to soft notes of complaining and praise and
patience and desire, was to make, for the moment, even the most obdurate
understand her charm. But if I at all seem to disfavor her, it may be
because she was too costly a toy for such as I, save, indeed, when she
condescended to do a grace, for kindness' sake, to one whose revenues
were of small estate. It is plain that such ladies have their
fascination, and in a measure I admit it, but, day in and day out, I
prefer my jolly dollimops. This has ever been my opinion and always will
be, and I think those are the likelier to go happy that think like me.