country town, which was renowned among the ancients not so much for
the greatness of its history, as for the beauty of its monuments
and the art of its brass-workers, but which was destroyed in the
name of Christ in the year 1014, nearly nine centuries ago! It is a
strange story. How the Viterbesi, arrogant and always on the watch
to increase their power as a commune, razed the little episcopal
city of Ferento to the ground, because it persisted in the heresy
of representing Christ upon the cross with His eyes open (after the
manner of the Byzantines) instead of closed!
From that day there has been no human habitation in Ferento except
the hut of the shepherd-guide. But the half-vanished city of three
civilisations is filled with an inexpressible charm, not desolate
because the sun and wind have peopled it with flowers, and not
deserted by the fleeing footsteps of the Gods. For surely they were
with us in the magic beauty of that soft October morning when the
little breeze across the valley fanned our hair like an invisible
plume, and Earth, the wise mother of mankind, was offering incense
to the heavens--the fragrance of crushed herbs, the soft hymn of
insects, the silver voice of the Acqua Rossa. Even the blue threads
of smoke which still ascended from the ilex groves of the dark
Ciminian Mount seemed part of the mysterious sacrament.
ROME
It was in Foligno, seeing that fair white road which threads the
rich valley of Spoleto, now skirting the Hill of Trevi, now leading
through the olive gardens of Le Vene to the crystal springs of
Clitumnus, that we first began to think of Rome. Up to that time
we had not raised our eyes to the horizon. The beauty of the road
itself had led us on, but now, though she was still far off, we
felt once more the magnetism of the great Mother of Cities. Truly
in Italy every road must lead to Rome. Many times we had been
greeted with the words,'_E Roma? Andate ancora a Roma?_'--in little
Passignano that gazes like Narcissus into the mirroring waters
of Thrasymene, rapt in the contemplation of her own beauty; in
far-off Gubbio, wistful and forlorn in the shadow of her great
hills; in San Marino, the eagle nest where Liberty has taken refuge
upon a mountain top. And when we told our simple questioners that
we knew the city well, they pressed to hear what she was like,
this _città bella e magnifica_, whose light shining upon their
horizons they perhaps might never see. We had not dreamed that she
was so beloved. But at the oft-reiterated question some flame of
enthusiasm, which we had thought quenched, began to burn again, and
Rome became the secret goal of our pilgrimage, until we thrilled
to see that white road leading through the plain from the walls of
Foligno, because it had become the symbol and expression, as it
were, of our desires.
We crossed the Campagna in a thunderstorm, when earth and sky were
united in a mighty storm-song. Above the roar of the train we could
hear the booming of the thunder and the shriek of the wind, the
sibilant cry of the rain-lashed trees, and the exultant shout of
rivers, which the demon of the tempest had changed from languid
veins of water to brown and foaming torrents.
As we drew near the Eternal City across the many-bosomed desert
of the Campagna we saw St. Peter's dome hanging like a mirage
on the grey thunder-clouds, more like a mountain than a church,
dwarfing Monte Mario. And we thrilled at the thought of nearing
Rome, feeling the contentment that human beings feel towards each
other when they meet a dear friend after long years of absence,
knowing that, the strangeness of the first moment over, they will
find themselves settled down with few words into the old dear
comradeship of yesterday.
[Illustration: ROME: ST. PETER'S SEEN FROM THE ARCO OSCURO.]
But perhaps it was because we came so lately from Umbria,
sweet-scented, golden Umbria, where the only shadows are the heavy
veils of night or the shifting reflections of sunlit clouds, that
our hearts sank in Rome. We had bid our loves good-bye so lightly,
looked our last upon their beauties, and shut their little voices
up by miles of empty plain. Perhaps too we had caught something of
the spirit of the simple country folk who clasped their hands and
sighed over the splendid city of their imagination.
I will own that I felt very heartsick in those first few days,
notwithstanding my old love for Rome. The golden peace of Umbria,
which we had garnered and stored in our hearts through the long
summer months, seemed lost in the urgent business of Rome. Memory
had clothed her with antique grace, had peopled her with Emperors
and Popes, had filled her winding streets with mediaeval palaces,
her piazzas with the gay Renaissance. But coming from Umbria,
where the Middle Ages still linger, and that older, simpler life
of the Beginning of the World is pictured in her vineyards and
olive gardens, we found Rome little more than a modern city, full
of unrest and noise. Everywhere there was scaffolding and masonry,
and we feared to look for our familiar landmarks lest the great
god of change should have swallowed them up. It was impossible
to enjoy walking in the streets; all we could do was to pick our
way along the narrow pavements, one behind the other, thinking
ourselves fortunate if a screaming demon of a tram did not come
upon us unawares. We crossed the roads in a meaningless sea of
shouting taximen and winecarts and motor-cars and jostling people.
To make matters worse our beloved Via Tritone was being enlarged,
and was still undergoing the process of having tramway-lines laid
down it to the Corso. And the Piazza Barberini, our own piazza,
where the Triton singing in his fountain had dwelt in our memories
and dreams, was the workshop of the tramway people, full of stones
and unconnected lines, which seemed to fall automatically upon each
other with a hideous noise all through the day.
[Illustration: THE ALTAR OF THE UNKNOWN GOD ON THE PALATINE.]
Can you wonder then that our Goddess, Imperial and lovely Rome,
seemed to have stepped down among ordinary mortals?
Another thing. We had left a great city in search of joy. And
we had found it. Up there in Umbria we had culled it from the
roadside as you cull flowers. We had drunk of Lethe and gathered
forgetfulness beside its waters. The burden of the world had
slipped from off our shoulders. Little by little our feet had
grown lighter upon the hillside. Our mountainous doubts, our
despairs, our days of little faith, became mere memories. All the
old fears of a city 'with houses both sides of the street,' were
forgotten. We no longer bruised our feet on paving stones, but
felt the soft warm earth beneath our soles and smelt the fragrance
of pine-needles in the woods. Life became a beautiful and simple
thing. Holy too.
But here in Rome old doubts came back upon us, taking us unawares.
'The poor in great cities are not like the poor in Umbria,' said
the Philosopher; 'here they suffer so.' We heard more tales of pain
in those first days in Rome than we had heard in all the sunny
months we had been dreaming away in Umbria. And on our first night
in the city a courtesan screaming hopelessly below our windows as
she was dragged to prison made our new-found joys shiver away to
death. We felt like the Israelites when they looked upon their
manna the second day and found it full of worms, and we knew that
we had gathered the food of angels in the sunlit spaces of the
Umbrian plain.
I am no Utopian who seeks to bring the country to the town. I know
too well how soon its incorruptible beauty would be corrupted.
It is only in the hills that we may find it and the open spaces.
There, it seems, we must go to learn our lesson, and when we have
learnt it, this A B C of beauty, we can come back to the towns and
learn more difficult things, the reverence for beliefs which are
no longer beliefs, as Emerson taught, the beauty of a city, and
of a poor man's smile. But just as the Israelites, when the need
for manna was past, returned to ordinary food and found it good,
so we too drifted back to our old content and began reluctantly to
worship our old gods again.
And it would be childish to deny that the great Exhibition for
which Rome was preparing marked her splendid prosperity under the
rule of the House of Savoy; or that the magnificent memorial to
Victor Emmanuel on the brow of the Capitol is the most imposing
monument in the whole city; or that the Palatine has gained in
picturesqueness now that the débris has been cleared away from its
lower slopes.
[Illustration: ROME: A FOUNTAIN IN THE BORGHESE GARDENS.]
But it was not to see these things that we came to Rome, and we
found their ancient charm untouched in those shrines of beauty to
which we paid a special pilgrimage. For all the pictures which
had given us delight upon our journeys, from the faded frescoes
of Cimabue in San Francesco d'Assisi to the strange fancies of
Luca Signorelli in the Cathedral of Orvieto, were only stepping
stones to the vault of the Sixtine Chapel and the revelations of
Michelangelo. Not any of the fountains in Viterbo or in Siena or
Perugia had such a gracious setting as the moss-grown basins of the
Villa Borghese, whose crystal jets, like Arachne of old, challenge
Athena to spin a lovelier web below the ilexes and autumn-gilded
maples. And when we came to worship at the shrine of the Unknown
God on the sunny slopes of Rome's sacred hill, where the reapers
were scything the fennel and thistles and tall rank weeds, which
had grown higher than a man, we found the altar of the Genius of
Rome fragrant with the last red roses of summer. Above it fluttered
a butterfly like a soul that fain would speak, and a careless
lizard was sunning himself upon the ancient inscriptions which
mottled lichens seek vainly to erase.
Out on the Appian Way the roadside was still full of flowers,
white, purple and gold. The dry fennel and yellow thistles and
tall weedy mulleins were waist-high among the tombs. Butterflies
fluttered their last dances before they yielded their little bodies
to the enchantment of winter sleep; birds were fluting overhead,
lizards sunned themselves upon the old grey stones.
For the rest we found the Ancient Way deserted, a home of sunshine
and peace. If there was dust, was it not dust of the dead? Is
not all the dust in the world dust of the dead? And were not
the flowers, those gay brave pennons of spring and summer, the
quintessence of this Roman dust?
To our right Tivoli was hidden in mist, but Rocca del Papa and the
Alban Mount rose like shadows to the south. The aqueducts marched
across the plain, or stumbled into ruin among the flowers with
which the merciful earth covered their fall. Lonely farms, towers,
nameless tombs, grew out of the folds of the plain. And the early
setting October sun, dipping into a haze, empurpled the fields and
wove a golden halo round the sheep who bleated homewards in the
melancholy of the dying sky. The little trees, like mourners, bent
down towards the tombs, or seemed to shrink back to the earth. Only
the stone pines with their heads to heaven were unconscious of the
death around their roots.
[Illustration: THE VIA APPIA.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dante, _Inferno_, Canto xxii.
[2] Dante, _Paradiso_, xi. 41.
[3] The Flagellant Brotherhood originated in Perugia in 1259, and
spread like wildfire through Tuscany and Umbria to Rome.
[4] 'Their Highnesses the Baglioni had the livery which Count
Jacomo, son of Niccolò Piccinino, gave them, ... and for their arms
they bore a shield azure traversed in the middle by a bar of gold,
and above for crest a griffin's head, and behind this hung down a
serpent's tail.'--Matarazzo, _The Chronicles of Perugia_.
[5] The mediaeval Italian apparently believed that he averted the
visit of Death by blocking up the door by which the dead body was
carried out, since Death was supposed to enter a house by the door
through which he had already passed. But Mr. Markino gave me an
interesting variant of the superstition. In Japan Doors for the
Dead were used because the human body was considered not clean in
comparison with the Gods; and especially after death, when the
human body is only dust, it could not be allowed to pass where the
Gods might come--through the chief doors of a house.
[6] I adhere to the Greek names because this is a digression into
Arcadia.
[7] Mr. W. Heywood tells us in his admirable book, _Palio and
Ponte_, that 'from the beginning of the seventeenth century the
Feast of Our Lady of Provenzano became well-nigh the principal
holiday of the Sienese year. It was celebrated on the 2nd of
July, the day of the visitation of the Blessed Virgin.' The Palio
was not actually presented to the victorious _contrada_, but the
silver basin which accompanied it, or its equivalent in money. 'Not
unfrequently they petitioned the Governor to permit the race to be
run anew, by the other _contrade_, on the day after the Festival
of our Lady of August, offering as a prize the silver basin which
they had themselves won.... By degrees this practice grew to be so
common that before the end of the eighteenth century the Palio of
the 16th August had become as regular an event as that of July.'
[8] The Alfieri are pages in the mediaeval sense. Siena is the only
town in Italy which still makes a study of the mediaeval sport of
banner-tossing.
[9] Some of the horses which took part in the race were sorry nags,
but the _contrada_ of the Porcupine had a really good animal.
[10] Dante, _Inferno_, Canto xxix. 17.
[11] This Annunciation is claimed to be by Sebastiano Mainardi,
the friend and pupil of Ghirlandaio, with whom he worked while he
was engaged on the Chapel of the Holy Fina. Mainardi, who later
married Ghirlandaio's sister, and Vincenzo di B. Tamagni, a pupil
of Raphael, were the only artists born in San Gimignano.
[12] But I do not doubt the wisdom of the Government, for our two
soldier coachmen only voiced the general opinion when they told us
that the peasants of the neighbourhood had been impoverished under
the rule of the monks, but that they make an ample livelihood under
the rule of the state.
[13] J. A. Symonds.
[14] Dante, _Paradise_, xvi. 73.
[15] 'It is by some pretended that these subterranean passages
form part of the labyrinth of Porsena, but this opinion has no
foundation. They are much more probably connected with the system
of sewerage, and the subterranean chambers may have been either
cellars to houses or _favissae_ to temples.'--Dennis, _Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria_, vol. ii.
[16] Livy, Book xxi.
[17] Dante, _Purgatory_, xi. 93.
[18] Laura M'Cracken, _Gubbio Past and Present_.
[19]
'Their origin has been variously assigned to the twelfth and the
fourteenth century. If, as seems probable, they were designed by
Gattapone, they may be placed in the middle of the fourteenth
century about the time of the erection of the two municipal
palaces.'
Laura M'Cracken, _Gubbio Past and Present_.
[20] Dante, _Inferno_, v. 118.
[21] Gregorovius, _Rome in the Middle Ages_.
[22] Their identity is disputed.
[23] Dante, _Purgatory_, xxviii. 40.
[24] Dante, _Inferno_, iv. 6.
[25] 'The energetic Lambert had made a genuine peace with Rome,
where he had gloriously restored the Imperial power. The Pope,
though compelled by necessity, had with equal sincerity striven to
secure Lambert in the Imperium. Freed from all foreign influence,
it seemed now for the first time possible to form an independent
kingdom within the Italian frontier.'--GREGOROVIUS, _Rome in the
Middle Ages_.
[26] 'This waterfall is in its present form wholly artificial. It
was first formed by M'. Curius Dentatus, who opened an artificial
channel for the waters of the Velinus, and thus carried off a
considerable portion of the Lacus Velinus, which previously
occupied a great part of the valley below Reate.'--_Dictionary of
Greek and Roman Geography_.
[27] _Purgatory_, Canto xxiii., Cary's Translation.
[28] J. A. Symonds, _Italian Studies_.
[29] Gregorovius, _Rome in the Middle Ages_.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Errors in printing and punctuation were corrected.