THE DIARY OF A MAN OF FIFTY
by Henry James
Florence, _April 5th_, 1874.--They told me I should find Italy greatly
changed; and in seven-and-twenty years there is room for changes. But to
me everything is so perfectly the same that I seem to be living my youth
over again; all the forgotten impressions of that enchanting time come
back to me. At the moment they were powerful enough; but they afterwards
faded away. What in the world became of them? Whatever becomes of such
things, in the long intervals of consciousness? Where do they hide
themselves away? in what unvisited cupboards and crannies of our being do
they preserve themselves? They are like the lines of a letter written in
sympathetic ink; hold the letter to the fire for a while and the grateful
warmth brings out the invisible words. It is the warmth of this yellow
sun of Florence that has been restoring the text of my own young romance;
the thing has been lying before me today as a clear, fresh page. There
have been moments during the last ten years when I have felt so
portentously old, so fagged and finished, that I should have taken as a
very bad joke any intimation that this present sense of juvenility was
still in store for me. It won't last, at any rate; so I had better make
the best of it. But I confess it surprises me. I have led too serious a
life; but that perhaps, after all, preserves one's youth. At all events,
I have travelled too far, I have worked too hard, I have lived in brutal
climates and associated with tiresome people. When a man has reached his
fifty-second year without being, materially, the worse for wear--when he
has fair health, a fair fortune, a tidy conscience and a complete
exemption from embarrassing relatives--I suppose he is bound, in
delicacy, to write himself happy. But I confess I shirk this obligation.
I have not been miserable; I won't go so far as to say that--or at least
as to write it. But happiness--positive happiness--would have been
something different. I don't know that it would have been better, by all
measurements--that it would have left me better off at the present time.
But it certainly would have made this difference--that I should not have
been reduced, in pursuit of pleasant images, to disinter a buried episode
of more than a quarter of a century ago. I should have found
entertainment more--what shall I call it?--more contemporaneous. I
should have had a wife and children, and I should not be in the way of
making, as the French say, infidelities to the present. Of course it's a
great gain to have had an escape, not to have committed an act of
thumping folly; and I suppose that, whatever serious step one might have
taken at twenty-five, after a struggle, and with a violent effort, and
however one's conduct might appear to be justified by events, there would
always remain a certain element of regret; a certain sense of loss
lurking in the sense of gain; a tendency to wonder, rather wishfully,
what _might_ have been. What might have been, in this case, would,
without doubt, have been very sad, and what has been has been very
cheerful and comfortable; but there are nevertheless two or three
questions I might ask myself. Why, for instance, have I never
married--why have I never been able to care for any woman as I cared for
that one? Ah, why are the mountains blue and why is the sunshine warm?
Happiness mitigated by impertinent conjectures--that's about my ticket.
6th.--I knew it wouldn't last; it's already passing away. But I have
spent a delightful day; I have been strolling all over the place.
Everything reminds me of something else, and yet of itself at the same
time; my imagination makes a great circuit and comes back to the starting-
point. There is that well-remembered odour of spring in the air, and the
flowers, as they used to be, are gathered into great sheaves and stacks,
all along the rugged base of the Strozzi Palace. I wandered for an hour
in the Boboli Gardens; we went there several times together. I remember
all those days individually; they seem to me as yesterday. I found the
corner where she always chose to sit--the bench of sun-warmed marble, in
front of the screen of ilex, with that exuberant statue of Pomona just
beside it. The place is exactly the same, except that poor Pomona has
lost one of her tapering fingers. I sat there for half an hour, and it
was strange how near to me she seemed. The place was perfectly
empty--that is, it was filled with _her_. I closed my eyes and listened;
I could almost hear the rustle of her dress on the gravel. Why do we
make such an ado about death? What is it, after all, but a sort of
refinement of life? She died ten years ago, and yet, as I sat there in
the sunny stillness, she was a palpable, audible presence. I went
afterwards into the gallery of the palace, and wandered for an hour from
room to room. The same great pictures hung in the same places, and the
same dark frescoes arched above them. Twice, of old, I went there with
her; she had a great understanding of art. She understood all sorts of
things. Before the Madonna of the Chair I stood a long time. The face
is not a particle like hers, and yet it reminded me of her. But
everything does that. We stood and looked at it together once for half
an hour; I remember perfectly what she said.
8th.--Yesterday I felt blue--blue and bored; and when I got up this
morning I had half a mind to leave Florence. But I went out into the
street, beside the Arno, and looked up and down--looked at the yellow
river and the violet hills, and then decided to remain--or rather, I
decided nothing. I simply stood gazing at the beauty of Florence, and
before I had gazed my fill I was in good-humour again, and it was too
late to start for Rome. I strolled along the quay, where something
presently happened that rewarded me for staying. I stopped in front of a
little jeweller's shop, where a great many objects in mosaic were exposed
in the window; I stood there for some minutes--I don't know why, for I
have no taste for mosaic. In a moment a little girl came and stood
beside me--a little girl with a frowsy Italian head, carrying a basket. I
turned away, but, as I turned, my eyes happened to fall on her basket. It
was covered with a napkin, and on the napkin was pinned a piece of paper,
inscribed with an address. This address caught my glance--there was a
name on it I knew. It was very legibly written--evidently by a scribe
who had made up in zeal what was lacking in skill. _Contessa
Salvi-Scarabelli, Via Ghibellina_--so ran the superscription; I looked at
it for some moments; it caused me a sudden emotion. Presently the little
girl, becoming aware of my attention, glanced up at me, wondering, with a
pair of timid brown eyes.
"Are you carrying your basket to the Countess Salvi?" I asked.
The child stared at me. "To the Countess Scarabelli."
"Do you know the Countess?"
"Know her?" murmured the child, with an air of small dismay.
"I mean, have you seen her?"
"Yes, I have seen her." And then, in a moment, with a sudden soft
smile--"_E bella_!" said the little girl. She was beautiful herself as
she said it.
"Precisely; and is she fair or dark?"
The child kept gazing at me. "_Bionda--bionda_," she answered, looking
about into the golden sunshine for a comparison.
"And is she young?"
"She is not young--like me. But she is not old like--like--"
"Like me, eh? And is she married?"
The little girl began to look wise. "I have never seen the Signor
Conte."
"And she lives in Via Ghibellina?"
"_Sicuro_. In a beautiful palace."
I had one more question to ask, and I pointed it with certain copper
coins. "Tell me a little--is she good?"
The child inspected a moment the contents of her little brown fist. "It's
you who are good," she answered.
"Ah, but the Countess?" I repeated.
My informant lowered her big brown eyes, with an air of conscientious
meditation that was inexpressibly quaint. "To me she appears so," she
said at last, looking up.
"Ah, then, she must be so," I said, "because, for your age, you are very
intelligent." And having delivered myself of this compliment I walked
away and left the little girl counting her _soldi_.
I walked back to the hotel, wondering how I could learn something about
the Contessa Salvi-Scarabelli. In the doorway I found the innkeeper, and
near him stood a young man whom I immediately perceived to be a
compatriot, and with whom, apparently, he had been in conversation.
"I wonder whether you can give me a piece of information," I said to the
landlord. "Do you know anything about the Count Salvi-Scarabelli?"
The landlord looked down at his boots, then slowly raised his shoulders,
with a melancholy smile. "I have many regrets, dear sir--"
"You don't know the name?"
"I know the name, assuredly. But I don't know the gentleman."
I saw that my question had attracted the attention of the young
Englishman, who looked at me with a good deal of earnestness. He was
apparently satisfied with what he saw, for he presently decided to speak.
"The Count Scarabelli is dead," he said, very gravely.
I looked at him a moment; he was a pleasing young fellow. "And his widow
lives," I observed, "in Via Ghibellina?"
"I daresay that is the name of the street." He was a handsome young
Englishman, but he was also an awkward one; he wondered who I was and
what I wanted, and he did me the honour to perceive that, as regards
these points, my appearance was reassuring. But he hesitated, very
properly, to talk with a perfect stranger about a lady whom he knew, and
he had not the art to conceal his hesitation. I instantly felt it to be
singular that though he regarded me as a perfect stranger, I had not the
same feeling about him. Whether it was that I had seen him before, or
simply that I was struck with his agreeable young face--at any rate, I
felt myself, as they say here, in sympathy with him. If I have seen him
before I don't remember the occasion, and neither, apparently, does he; I
suppose it's only a part of the feeling I have had the last three days
about everything. It was this feeling that made me suddenly act as if I
had known him a long time.
"Do you know the Countess Salvi?" I asked.
He looked at me a little, and then, without resenting the freedom of my
question--"The Countess Scarabelli, you mean," he said.
"Yes," I answered; "she's the daughter."
"The daughter is a little girl."
"She must be grown up now. She must be--let me see--close upon thirty."