Filomena sings lustily from early morning till late at night, and her
name suits her. The Greek Philomela has acquired this popular form, and
in use is often shortened to Filomé.
The other day I made her a present of a bag of English biscuits. Her
face beamed as I have never besides seen anything beam but the face of
my _cafetière_--he is a boy of twelve--when now and again he gets a few
_soldi_ for bringing me my coffee or tea. Anyone who has only seen the
lighting up of Northern faces has no conception,--as even painters
admit,--of such transfiguration. Yes, indeed! Filomena's tall figure
and fresh mountain blood would freshen up the Goldschmidtian human race
to such an extent that they would become better men and women in his
next books.
I have seen a little of the Carnival. This morning Filomena came to my
room, to fetch a large Italian flag which belongs there. "I am going to
wave it on Thursday," she said, and added, with blushing cheeks, "then
I shall have a mask on." But this evening she could not restrain
herself. For the first time during the five months I have lived here,
and for the first time during the month I have been ill, she came in
without my having called or rung for her. She had a red silk cap on,
with a gold border. "What do you say to that, sir!" she said, and her
clear laughter rang through the room. It revived my sick self to gaze
at ease at so much youth, strength and happiness; then I said a few
kind words to her, and encouraged by them she burst into a stream of
eloquence about all the enjoyment she was promising herself. This would
be the first carnival she had seen; she came from the mountains and was
going back there this Spring. She was in the seventh heaven over her
cap. She always reminds me, with her powerful frame, of the young
giantess in the fairy tale who takes up a peasant and his plough in the
hollow of her hand.
Filomena is as tall as a moderately tall man, slenderly built, but with
broad shoulders. She impresses one as enjoying life thoroughly. She has
herself made all she wears--a poor little grey woollen skirt with an
edging of the Italian colours, which has been lengthened some nine
inches at the top by letting in a piece of shirting. A thin
red-and-black-striped jacket that she wears, a kind of loose Garibaldi,
is supposed to hide this addition, which it only very imperfectly does.
Her head is small and piquant; her hair heavy, blue-black; her eyes
light brown, of exquisite shape, smiling and kind. She has small, red
lips, and the most beautiful teeth that I remember seeing. Her
complexion is brown, unless she blushes; then it grows darker brown.
Her figure is unusually beautiful, but her movements are heavy, so that
one sees at once she is quite uneducated. Still, she has a shrug of the
shoulders, ways of turning and twisting her pretty head about, that are
absolutely charming.
I have sent Filomena into the town to buy a pound of figs for me and
one for herself. While she is away, I reflect that I cannot
sufficiently congratulate myself on my excellent landlady, and the
others. As a rule, these Roman lodging-house keepers are, judging by
what one hears, perfect bandits. When F., the Norwegian sculptor, lay
dangerously ill, the woman in whose house he was did not even speak to
him; she went out and left him alone in the house. When the Danish
dilettante S. was at death's door, his landlady did not enter his room
once a day, or give him a drink of water, and he was obliged to keep a
servant. V.'s landlady stole an opera-glass, a frock-coat, and a great
deal of money from him. Most foreigners are swindled in a hundred
different ways; if they make a stain on the carpet, they must pay for a
new one. Maria looks after me like a mother. Every morning she rubs me
with the ointment the doctor has prescribed. When I have to have a
bath, she takes me in her arms, without any false shame, and puts me in
the water; then takes me up and puts me to bed again; after my sojourn
in the hospital, I am not very heavy. What I am most astonished at is
the indulgent delicacy of these people. For instance, Maria has
forbidden her good-natured husband, whom, like Filomena, I like to call
_Zio_ (uncle), to eat garlic (the favourite food of the Romans) while I
am ill, that I may not be annoyed in my room by the smell. I have only
to say a word, and she and her niece run all my errands for me. Indeed,
the other day, Maria exclaimed, quite indignantly: "Sir, do not say
'_when_ you go into the town, will you buy me this or that?' Are we
robbers, are we scoundrels? Only say, 'go,' and I will go." I never say
to her: "Will you do me a favour?" without her replying: "Two, sir."
Yes, and she heaps presents upon me; she and Filomena bring me, now a
bundle of firewood, now a glass of good wine, now macaroni, etc. All
the Danes who come here are astonished, and say: "You have got deucedly
good people to look after you."
Maria's greatest pleasure is talking. She has no time for it in the
day. In the evening, however, she tidies my room slowly, entertaining
me all the time. When she has quite finished, at the time of day when
others are drowsy or go to bed, she still likes to have just a little
more conversation, and she knows that when I see she has put the last
thing into its place, her task for the day is ended, and I shall
dismiss her with a gracious _Buona sera, bon riposo!_ To put off this
moment as long as possible, she will continue to hold some object in
her hand, and, standing in the favourite position of the Romans, with
her arms akimbo, and some toilet article under her arm, will hold a
long discourse. She sometimes looks so indescribably comic that I
almost choke with suppressed laughter as we talk.
To-day is the first day of the Carnival. So even Filomena has been out
this evening in tri-coloured trousers.
... I am interrupted by the inmates of all the floors returning from
the Carnival, all talking at once, and coming straight in to me to show
me their dress. Amongst them from the Carnival, all talking at once,
and coming straight in to me to show me their dress. Amongst them are
guests from the mountains, tall, dark men, in exceedingly fantastic
garb. They tell me how much they have enjoyed themselves. Filomena has
naïvely made me a present of a few burnt almonds with sugar upon them,
that she has had in her trouser pockets, and informs me with impetuous
volubility how she has talked to all the people she met, "who do not
know her and whom she does not know." She has had one of my white
shirts on, which she had embroidered all over with ribbons till it
looked like a real costume. She is beaming with happiness. The
tambourine tinkles all the evening in the street; they are dancing the
tarantella to it down below, and it is difficult to go to sleep. Maria
stays behind, when the others have gone, to finish her day's work. It
is a sight for the gods to see her doing it with a gold brocade cap on
her head, and in red, white and green trousers!
None of them guess what a torment it is to me to lie and hear about the
Carnival, which is going on a few streets from where I am lying, but
which I cannot see. When shall I spend a Winter in Rome again? And no
other Carnival will be to compare with this one after the Romans for
ten years have held altogether aloof from it, and one hardly even on
_Moccoli Eve_ saw more than two carriages full of silly Americans
pelting one another with confetti, while the porters and the French
soldiers flung jibes and dirt at each other. Now Rome is free,
jubilation breaks out at all the pores of the town, and I, although I
am in Rome, must be content to see the reflection of the festival in a
few ingenuous faces.
It is morning. I have slept well and am enjoying the fresh air through
the open windows. Heavens! what a lovely girl is standing on the
balcony nearly opposite, in a chemise and skirt! I have never seen her
there before. Olive complexion, blue-black hair, the most beautiful
creature; I cannot see her features distinctly. Now they are throwing
something across to her from the house next door to us, on a piece of
twine; I think they are red flowers. They almost touch her, and yet she
cannot catch them, and laughing stretches out both hands a second, a
third and fourth time, equally unsuccessfully. Why, it is our Filomena,
visiting the model the other side the street. She gives up the attempt
with a little grimace, and goes in.
Loud voices are singing the Bersagliere hymn as a duet under my window.
Verily, things are alive in _Purificazione_ to-day. The contagion of
example affects a choir of little boys who are always lying outside the
street door, and they begin to sing the Garibaldi march for all they
are worth. Our singers at the theatre at home would be glad of such
voices. The whole street is ringing now; all are singing one of Verdi's
melodies.
I am sitting up in bed. At the side of my bed, Filomena, with her
black, heavy hair well dressed, and herself in a kind of transitional
toilette; her under-garment fine, the skirt that of a festival gown, on
account of the preparations for the Carnival; her top garment the usual
red jacket. She is standing with her hand on her hip, but this does not
make her look martial or alarming.
_I_--You ate _magro_ to-day? (It was a fast day.)
_She_--Good gracious! _Magro_ every day just now!
_I_--Do you know, Filomena, that I eat _grasso_?
_She_--Yes, and it is your duty to do so.
_I_--Why?
_She_--Because you are ill, and you must eat meat; the Pope himself ate
meat when he was ill. Religion does not mean that we are to injure our
health.
_I_--How do you know, Filomena, what Religion means?
_She_--From my Confessor. I had a little headache the other day, and he
ordered me at once to eat meat.
_I_--The worst of it is that I have no Confessor and do not go to
church. Shall I be damned for that?
_She_--Oh! no, sir, that does not follow! Do you think I am so stupid
as not to see that you others are far better Christians than we? You
are good; the friends who come to see you are good. The Romans, on the
other hand, who go to church one day, kill people the next, and will
not let go about the streets in peace.
I am quite sorry that she is to go home at Easter; I shall miss her
face about the house. But I have missed more.
Late evening. They have come back from the Carnival. Filomena came in
and presented me with an object the use of which is an enigma to me. A
roll of silver paper. Now I see what it is, a Carnival cap. My Danish
friend R. declares she has got it into her head that when I am better I
shall marry her, or rather that Maria has put it into her head. I
thought I would see how matters stood. I began talking to Maria about
marriages with foreigners. Maria mentioned how many girls from Rome and
Capri had married foreigners, but added afterwards, not without
significance, addressing me: "It is not, as you believe, and as you
said once before, that a girl born in a warm country would complain of
being taken to a cold one. If she did, she would be stupid. But a Roman
girl will not do for a foreign gentleman. The Roman girls learn too
little."
Much, the lower classes certainly do not learn. Before I came, Filomena
did not know what ink was. Now I have discovered that she does not know
what a watch is. She reckons time by the dinner and the Ave Maria. Not
long ago her uncle spent a week in trying to teach this great child to
make and read figures, but without success. Not long ago she had to
write to her mother in the mountains, so went to a public writer, and
had it done for her. She came in to me very innocently afterwards to
know whether the right name and address were upon it. I told her that
she could very well have let me write the letter. Since then, all the
people in the house come to me when there is anything they want
written, and ask me to do it for them.
The news of my skill has spread. Apropos of letters, I have just read
the four letters that I received to-day. Filomena is perpetually
complaining of my sweetheart's uncontrollable passion as revealed in
this writing madness. She imagines that all the letters I receive from
Denmark are from one person, and that person, of course, a woman. She
herself hardly receives one letter a year.
I have (after careful consideration) committed a great imprudence, and
escaped without hurt. I had myself carried down the stairs, drove to
the Corso, saw the Carnival, and am back home again. I had thought
first of driving up and down the Corso in a carriage, but did not care
to be wholly smothered with confetti, especially as I had not the
strength to pelt back. Nor could I afford to have the horses and
carriage decorated. So I had a good seat in a first-floor balcony
engaged for me, first row. At 3 o'clock I got up, dressed, and was
carried down. I was much struck by the mild Summer air out of doors
(about the same as our late May), and I enjoyed meeting the masked
people in the streets we passed through. The few but rather steep
stairs up to the balcony were a difficulty. But at last I was seated,
and in spite of sickness and weakness, enjoyed the Carnival in Rome on
its most brilliant day. I was sitting nearly opposite to the high box
of Princess Margharita, from which there was not nearly so good a view
as from my seat. This was what I saw: All the balconies bedecked with
flags; red, white and green predominating. In the long, straight
street, the crowd moving in a tight mass. In between them, an up and a
down stream of carriages, drawn at a walking pace by two horses, and
forced at every moment to stop. The streets re-echoed with the jingle
of the horses' bells, and with shouts of glee at a magnificently
decorated carriage, then at some unusually beautiful women, then at a
brisk confetti fight between two carriages, or a carriage and a
balcony. And this air, re-echoing with the ring of bells, with
shouting, and with laughter, was no empty space. Anyone reaching the
Corso, as I had done, after the play had only been going on for an hour
and a half, found themselves in the midst of a positive bombardment of
tiny little aniseed balls, or of larger plaster balls, thrown by hand,
from little tin cornets, or half-bushel measures, and against which it
is necessary to protect one's self by a steel wire mask before the
face. For whilst some gentle young ladies almost pour the confetti down
from their carriages, so that it falls like a soft shower of rain, many
of the Romans fling it with such force that without a mask the eyes
might suffer considerably. The brim of one's hat, and every fold in
one's clothes, however, are full of little balls. Most people go about
with a huge, full bag by their side, others on the balconies have
immense baskets standing, which are hardly empty before they are
re-filled by eager sellers. All the ladies standing in the windows, who
were disguised as Turkish ladies, or workwomen from the port, had a
deep wooden trough, quite full, brought outside their windows, and into
this supply dipped continually--in the street, which had been covered
with soil for the sake of the horse-racing, was a crowd of people in
fancy dress, many of them having great fun, and being very amusing. One
old woman in a chemise was amongst the best. A young fellow, dressed
entirely in scarlet, more particularly amused himself by putting the
officers of the National Guard, who were walking about to keep order,
out of countenance. When they were looking especially stern, he would
go up to them and tickle them on the cheeks, and talk baby talk to
them, and they had to put the best face they could on it. The street
life and the pedestrians, however, did not attract much attention. All
the interest was centred on the carriages, and the games between them
and the windows and balconies. The people in carriages were all in
fancy dress. Amongst them one noticed charming groups of Roman ladies
in light cloaks of red silk with a red steel wire mask before their
faces, through which one could catch a glimpse of their features; there
was a swarm of delightful figures, certainly half of them in men's
clothes, armed young sailors, for instance. Fine, happy faces! And the
young men, how handsome! Not flashing eyes, as people affectedly say,
but happy eyes; a good, healthy physique, an expression which seemed to
say that they had breathed in sunshine and happiness and all the
beatitude of laziness, all the mild and good-humoured comfort of
leisure, all their lives long. One party had a colossal cart with
outriders and postilions, and hung in the yards and stood on the
thwarts of a large cutter poised upon it, in becoming naval officers'
dress, flinging magnificent bouquets to all the beautiful ladies who
drove past. The bouquets would have cost several lire each, and they
flung them by the hundred, so they must have been young fellows of
means. The throwing of confetti is merely bellicose and ordinary.
Infinitely more interesting is the coquettish, ingratiating, genuinely
Italian flinging backwards and forwards of bouquets. The grace and
charm of the manner in which they are flung and caught, nothing can
surpass; there may be real passion in the way in which six or seven
bouquets in succession are flung at one and the same lady, who never
omits to repay in similar coin. One carriage was especially beautiful;
it had a huge square erection upon it, entirely covered with artificial
roses and greenery, which reached almost to the second storey of the
houses, and upon it, in two rows, facing both sides of the streets,
stood the loveliest Roman girls imaginable, flinging bouquets
unceasingly. Most of the carriages have tall poles sticking up with a
crossway bar at the top, and there are bouquets on every bar, so there
is a constant supply to draw from. Beautiful Princess Margharita was,
of course, the object of much homage, although her balcony was on the
second floor. One form this took was very graceful. A few young
gentlemen in blue and white drove slowly past; one of them had a large
flat basket filled with lovely white roses; he stuck a long halberd
through the handle and hoisted the basket up to the Princess, being
richly rewarded with bouquets. One wag hit upon an idea that was a
brilliant success. At five o'clock he sent a bladder, in the shape of a
huge turkey, up in the flickering sunlight. It was so fixed up as to
move its head about, with an expression of exceedingly ridiculous
sentimentality, now to the right, now caressingly to the left, as it
ascended. The whole Corso rang again with laughter and clapping. The
horse-racing at the end was not of much account. The horses start
excited by the rocket let off at their tails, and by all the sharp
pellets hanging around about them, to say nothing of the howling of the
crowd. At six o'clock I was at home and in bed.
K.B. has been here to see me; Filomena hates and despises him from the
bottom of her heart since the day that he got drunk on my wine. When he
was gone she said: "_Brutta bestia_, I forgot to look whether he was
clean to-day." She and Maria declare that he is the only one of all my
acquaintances who does not wear clean linen. This point of cleanliness
is a mild obsession of Filomena's just now. She prides herself greatly
on her cleanliness, and asks me every day whether she is clean or not.
She is a new convert to cleanliness, and renegades or newly initiated
people are in all religions the most violent. When I came to the house,
her face was black and she washed her hands about once a day. R--- then
remarked about her--which was a slight exaggeration--that if one were
to set her up against the wall, she would stick fast. She noticed with
unfeigned astonishment how many times I washed myself, and asked for
fresh water, how often I had clean shirts, etc. This made a profound
impression on her young mind, and after I came back from the hospital
she began in earnest to rub her face with a sponge and to wash herself
five or six times a day, likewise to wash the handkerchiefs she wears
round her neck. Maria looks on at all this with surprise. She says,
like the old woman in Tonietta, by Henrik Hertz: "A great, strong girl
like that does not need to wash and splash herself all over like an
Englishwoman." The lectures she has given me every time I have wanted
to wash myself, on the harm water does an invalid, are many and
precious. Whenever I ask for water I might be wanting to commit
suicide; it is only after repeated requests that she brings it, and
then with a quiet, resigned expression, as if to say: "I have done my
best to prevent this imprudence: I wash my hands of all
responsibility." Filomena, in her new phase of development, is quite
different. She looks at my shirt with the eyes of a connoisseur, and
says: "It will do for to-morrow; a clean one the day after to-morrow!"
or, "Did you see what beautiful cuffs the tall, dark man (M. the
painter) had on yesterday?" or, "Excuse my skirt being so marked now, I
am going to have a clean one later in the day," or, "Is my cheek dirty?
I don't think so, for I have washed myself twice to-day; you must
remember that I am very dark-complexioned, almost like a Moor." Or else
there will be a triumphal entry into my room, with a full water-can in
her hand, one of the very large ones that are used here. "What is that,
Filomena? What am I to do with that?" "Look, sir, it is full." "Well,
what of that?" "It is the waiter's water-can; it has been standing
there full for ten days (scornfully): he is afraid of water; he only
uses it for his coffee." She has forgotten how few months it is since
she herself was afraid of water.
She came in while I was eating my supper, and remarked: "You always
read at your meals; how can you eat and read at the same time? I do not
know what reading is like, but I thought it was more difficult than
that. It is a great misfortune for me that I can neither read nor
write. Supposing I were to be ill like you, how should I pass away the
time! There was no school at Camarino, where I was born, and I lived in
the country till I was eighteen, and learnt nothing at all. We were
nine brothers and sisters; there was seldom any food in the house;
sometimes we worked; sometimes we lay on the ground. It is unfortunate
that I cannot read, for I am not at all beautiful; if I could only do
something, I should be able to get a husband."
"Don't you know any of the letters, Filomena?"
"No, sir." "Don't trouble about that. You are happier than I, who know
a great deal more than you. You laugh and sing all day long; I neither
laugh nor sing." "Dear sir, you will laugh, and sing as well, when you
get home. Then your little girl (_ragazza_) who is so _appassionato_
that she writes four letters a day, will make _fête_ for you, and I
think that when you go to the _osteria_ with your friends you laugh. It
is enough now for you to be patient." As she had spoken about getting a
husband, I asked: "Are your sisters married?" "They are all older than
I, and married." (Saving her pride in the first part of her reply.)
After a few minutes' reflection she went on: "I, for my part, will not
have a husband under thirty; the young ones all beat their wives."
Shortly afterwards, I put an end to the audience. We had had a few
short discussions, and I had been vanquished, apparently by her logic,
but chiefly by reason of her better mastery of the language, and
because I defended all sorts of things in joke. At last I said: "Have
you noticed, Filomena, that when we argue it is always you who silence
me? So you can see, in spite of all my reading, that you have better
brains than I." This compliment pleased her; she blushed and smiled,
without being able to find a reply.
She realises the Northern ideal of the young woman not spoilt by
novel-reading. Nor does she lack intelligence, although she literally
does not know what North and South mean; she is modest, refined in her
way, and happy over very little. For the moment she is engaged in
making the little dog bark like mad by aggravatingly imitating the
mewing of a cat.
Later. The boy from the café brings me my supper. What has become of
Filomena? I wonder if she is out? I cannot hear her having her evening
fight with the boy in the passage. She likes to hit him once a day for
exercise.
Maria comes in. "Do you hear the cannon, sir? What do you think it is?"
I reply calmly: "It is war; the Zouaves (papal troops) are coming."
Maria goes out and declares the reply of the oracle in the next room.
Some cannon salutes really were being fired. Maria hurries down into
the street to hear about it and Filomena comes in to me. "I am afraid,"
she says. "Do you mean it?" She was laughing and trembling at the same
time. I saw that the fear was quite real. "Is it possible that you can
be so afraid? There is not really any war or any Zouaves, it was only a
joke." That pacified her. "I was afraid, if you like," said she, "when
the Italians (the Romans never call themselves Italians) marched into
Rome. One shell came after another; one burst on the roof of the house
opposite." "Who are you for, the Pope or Vittorio?" "For neither. I am
a stupid girl; I am for the one that will feed and clothe me. But I
have often laughed at the Zouaves. One of them was standing here one
day, taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and he said to me: 'The
Italians will never enter Rome.' I replied: 'Not if they take snuff,
but they will if they storm the town.'" "Do you think that the Pope
will win?" "No, I think his cause is lost. Perhaps there will even come
a time when no one goes to churches here." _She_: "Who goes to church!
The girls to meet their lovers; the young men to see a pretty
shop-girl. We laugh at the priests." "Why?" "Because they are
ridiculous: if it thunders, they say at once that it is a sign from
God. The sky happens to be flaming red, like it was last October. That
was because the Italians entered Rome in September. Everything is a
sign from God, a sign of his anger, his exasperation. He is not angry,
that is clear enough. If he had not wanted the Italians to come in,
they would not have come, but would all have died at once." She said
this last with great earnestness and pathos, with an upward movement of
her hand, and bowed her head, like one who fears an unknown power.
Maria returned, saying people thought the shots meant that Garibaldi
had come. Said I: "There, he is a brave man. Try to be like him,
Filomena. It is not right for a big strong girl to tremble." _She_: "I
am not strong, but still, I am stronger than you, who have been
weakened so much by your illness,--and yet, who knows, you have been
much better the last few days. Shall we try?" I placed my right hand in
hers, first tested her strength a little, and then found to my surprise
that her arm was not much stronger than that of an ordinary lady; then
I bent my fingers a little, and laid her very neatly on the floor. I
was sitting in bed; she was on her knees in front of the bed, but I let
her spring up. It was a pretty sight; the blue-black hair, the laughing
mouth with the fine, white teeth, the brown, smiling eyes. As she got
up, she said: "You are well now; I am not sorry to have been conquered."
* * * * *
Have taken my second flight. I have been at the Moccoli fête, had
myself carried and driven there and back, like last time. Saredo had
taken a room on the Corso; I saw everything from there, and now I have
the delightful impressions of it all left. What exuberant happiness!
What jubilation! What childlike gaiety! It is like going into a nursery
and watching the children play, hearing them shout and enjoy themselves
like mad, as one can shout and enjoy things one's self no longer.
I arrived late and only saw the end of the processions; far more
carriages, wilder shouting, more madness,--bacchantic, stormy,--than
last time. The whole length of the Corso was one shriek of laughter.
And how many lovely faces at the windows, on the balconies and
verandas! Large closed carriages with hidden music inside and graceful
ladies on the top. As _i preti_ (the Catholic papers) had said that all
who took part in the Carnival were paid by the government, a number of
men and women, in the handsomest carriages--according to the _Nuova
Roma_ for to-day, more than 20,000--had the word _pagato_ (paid)
fastened to their caps, which evoked much amusement. Then the lancers
cleared the street at full galop for the horse races (_barberi_), and
at once an immense procession of Polichinelli and ridiculous
equestrians in Don Quixote armour organised itself and rode down the
Corso at a trot in parody. Then came the mad, snorting horses. Then a
few minutes,--and night fell over the seven heights of Rome, and the
Corso itself lay in darkness. Then the first points of light began to
make their appearance. Here below, one little shimmer of light, and up
there another, and two there, and six here, and ten down there to the
left, and hundreds on the right, and then thousands, and many, many
thousands. From one end of the great long street to the other, from the
first floor to the roof of every house and every palace, there is one
steady twinkling of tiny flames, of torches, of large and small lights;
the effect is surprising and peculiar. As soon as the first light
appeared, young men and girls ran and tried to blow each other's
candles out. Even the children took part in the game; I could see into
several houses, where it was going on briskly. Then, from every
side-street decorated carriages began to drive on to the Corso again,
but this time every person held a candle in his hand. Yes, and that was
not all! at least every other of the large waggons--they were like
immense boxes of flowers--had, on poles, or made fast, Bengal fire of
various colours, which lighted up every house they went past, now with
a red, now with a green flare. And then the thousands of small candles,
from every one in the throng, from carriages, balconies, verandas,
sparkled in the great flame, fighting victoriously with the last
glimmer of daylight. People ran like mad down the Corso and fanned out
the lights in the carriages. But many a Roman beauty found a better way
of lighting up her features without exposing herself to the risk of
having her light put out. Opposite me, for instance, on the second
floor, a lovely girl was standing in a window. In the shutter by her
side she had fixed one of those violent red flares so that she stood in
a bright light, like sunlight seen through red glass, and it was
impossible not to notice her. Meanwhile, the people on the balconies
held long poles in their hands, with which they unexpectedly put out
the small candles in the carriages. You heard incessantly, through the
confusion, the shouts of individuals one to another, and their
jubilation when a long-attempted and cleverly foiled extinguishing was
at length successful, and the clapping and shouts of _bravo!_ at an
unusually brightly lighted and decorated carriage. The pickpockets
meanwhile did splendid business; many of the Danes lost their money.
At eight o'clock I was in bed again, and shortly afterwards the people
of the house came home for a moment. Filomena looked splendid, and was
very talkative. "_Lei é ingrassato_," she called in through the door.
It is her great pleasure that the hollows in my cheeks are gradually
disappearing. She was now ascribing a special efficacy in this
direction to Moccoli Eve.
* * * * *
At half-past ten in the morning, there is a curious spectacle in the
street here. At that time Domenico comes and the lottery begins.
Lotteries are forbidden in Rome, but Domenico earns his ten lire a day
by them. He goes about this and the neighbouring streets bawling and
shouting until he has disposed of his ninety tickets.
Girls and women lean out through the windows and call out the numbers
they wish to have--in this respect they are boundlessly credulous. They
do not believe in the Pope; but they believe that there are numbers
which they must become possessed of that day, even at the highest
price, which is two soldi. The soldi are thrown out through the window,
and each one remembers her own number. Then Domenico goes through all
the numbers in a loud voice, that there may be no cheating. A child
draws a number out of the bag, and Domenico shouts: "Listen, all
Purificazione, No. 34 has won, listen, Purificazione, 34 ... 34." The
disappointed faces disappear into the houses. All those who have had
33, 35 and 36 rail against unjust Fate, in strong terms.
At the first rattle of the lottery bag, Filomena rushes in here, opens
the window, and calls for a certain number. If anyone else wants it,
she must manage to find two soldi in her pocket. If I fling a few soldi
from my bed towards the window, this facilitates the search. However,
we never win. Filomena declares that I have indescribable ill-luck in
gambling, and suggests a reason.
* * * * *
She was again singing outside. I called her, wanting to know what it
was she kept singing all the time. "They are songs from the mountains,"
she replied, "all _canzone d'amore_." "Say them slowly, Filomena. I
will write them down." I began, but was so delighted at the way she
repeated the verses, her excellent declamatory and rhythmic sense, that
I was almost unable to write. And to my surprise, I discovered that
they were all what we call ritornellos. But written down, they are dull
larvae, compared with what they are with the proper pronunciation and
expression. What is it Byron says?:
I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin.
I shall really feel a void when Filomena goes away. The unfortunate
part of it is that her dialect pronunciation is so difficult to make
out, and that she swallows so many syllables in order to make the metre
right, as there are generally too many feet, and it is only the
delicacy of her declamation that makes up for the incorrectness of the
rhymes and the verses. For instance, she constantly says _lo_ instead
of _il_ (_lo soldato_), and she can never tell me how many words there
are in a line, since neither she nor Maria knows what a single word, as
opposed to several, is, and because it is no use spelling the word to
her and asking: "Is that right?" since she cannot spell, and does not
recognise the letters. Saredo tells me that a driver who once drove him
and his wife about for five days in Tuscany sang all day long like
Filomena, and improvised all the time. This is what she, too, does
continually; she inserts different words which have about the same
meaning, and says: "It is all the same" (_c'è la stessa cosa_). On the
other hand, she always keeps to the metre, and that with the most
graceful intonation; never a faulty verse:
Fior di giacinto!
La donna che per l'uomo piange tanto--
Il pianto delle donne è pianto finto.
Amore mio!
Non prendite le fiori di nessuno,
Se vuoi un garofletto, lo do io.
Fior di limone!
Limone è agra, e le fronde son' amare,
Ma son' più' amare le pene d'amor'.
Lo mi' amore che si chiama Peppe,
Lo primo giuocatore delle carte
Prende 'sto cuore e giuoca a tre-sette.
[Footnote:
Flower of the hyacinth!
The woman who weeps so much for the man's sake--
Yet, the complaint of women is a feigned one.
My love!
Do not accept flowers from anyone.
If thou wilt have a wall-flower, I will give it thee.
Flower of the lemon!
The lemon is sharp, and its leaves are bitter;
But more bitter are the torments of love.
My beloved, whose name is Peppe,
He is the first to play cards,
He has taken this heart and is playing a game of Three to Seven with
it.]
In this way I wrote out some scores.
* * * * *
Spent an hour teaching Filomena her large letters up to N, and making
her say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them into
three portions--ABCD--EFG--ILMN. She manages all right, except that she
always jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day,
Filomena?" "No, I have nothing to confess." "Did you go to church last
Sunday?" "No, I have not been for six weeks now. I have committed no
sin. What wrong do I do? I have no love affair, nothing." "What used
you to confess?" "A few bad words, which had slipped out. Now I do
nothing wrong." "But one can go wrong, without committing any sin, when
one is high-minded, for instance." "I am not high-minded. If you, on
the other hand, were to imagine yourself better than the friends who
come to visit you, that would be quite natural; for you are better."
* * * * *
The day has been long. This evening the girl had errands to do for me.
She came in here after her Sunday walk in the Campagna. I said: "Shall
we read?" (Just then a band of young people passed along the street
with a harmonica and a lot of castanets, and commenced a song in honour
of Garibaldi. With all its simplicity, it sounded unspeakably
affecting; I was quite softened.) She replied: "With pleasure." I
thought to myself: "Now to see whether she remembers a word of what I
said to her yesterday." But she went on at once: "Signore, I have been
industrious." She had bought herself an ABC and had taught herself
alone not only all the large letters, but also all the little ones, and
had learnt them all off by heart as well. I was so astonished that I
almost fell back in the bed. "But what is this, Filomena? Have you
learnt to read from someone else?" "No, only from you yesterday. But
for five years my only wish has been to learn to read, and I am so glad
to be able to." I wanted to teach her to spell. "I almost think I can a
little." And she was already so far that--without spelling first--she
read a whole page of two-letter spellings, almost without a mistake.
She certainly very often said: "Da--ad," or read _fo_ for _of_, but her
progress was amazing. When she spells, she takes the words as a living
reality, not merely as words, and adds something to them, for instance,
_s--a, sa; l--i, li; r--e, re; salire alle scale_, (jump down the
stairs.) "Filomena, I could teach you to read in three weeks." _She_:
"I have always thought it the greatest shame for a man or woman not to
be able to read." I told her something about the progress of the human
race, that the first men and women had been like animals, not at all
like Adam and Eve. "Do you think I believe that Eve ate an apple and
that the serpent could speak? _Non credo mente_. Such things are like
_mal'occhi_ (belief in the evil eye)." And without any transition, she
begins, _sempre allegra_, as she calls herself--to sing a gay song.
Just now she is exceedingly delighted with a certain large red shawl.
There came a pedlar to the door; she sighed deeply at the sight of the
brilliant red; so I gave it her.
She is a great lover and a connoisseur of wine, like myself. We taste
and drink together every dinner-time. As she always waits upon me, I
often give her a little cake and wine while I am eating. Now we have
begun a new wine, white Roman muscat. But I change my wine almost every
other day. Filomena had taken the one large bottle and stacked up
newspapers round it on the table, so that if K.B. came he should not
see it. It so happened that he came to-day, whilst I was dining and she
eating with me. There was a ring; she wanted to go. "Stay; perhaps it
is not for me at all; and in any case, I do not ask anyone's permission
for you to be here." He came in, and said in Danish, as he put his hat
down: "Oh, so you let the girl of the house dine with you; I should not
care for that." Filomena, who noticed his glance in her direction, and
his gesture, said, with as spiteful a look, and in as cutting a voice
as she could muster: "_Il signore prende il suo pranzo con chi lui pare
e piace._" (The gentleman eats with whomsoever he pleases.) "Does she
understand Danish?" he asked, in astonishment. "It looks like it," I
replied. When he had gone, her _furia_ broke loose. I saw her
exasperated for the first time, and it sat very comically upon her.
"Did you ask him whom _he_ eats with? Did he say I was ugly? Did you
ask him whether his _ragazza_ was prettier?" (She meant a Danish lady,
a married woman, with whom she had frequently met K.B. in the street.)
She said to me yesterday: "There is one thing I can do, sir, that you
cannot. I can carry 200 pounds' weight on my head. I can carry two
_conchas_, or, if you like to try me, all that wood lying there." She
has the proud bearing of the Romans.
Read with Filomena for an hour and a half. She can now spell words with
three letters fairly well. This language has such a sweet ring that her
spelling is like music. And to see the innocent reverence with which
she says _g-r-a, gra_,--it is what a poet might envy me. And then the
earnest, enquiring glance she gives me at the end of every line. It is
marvellous to see this complete absorption of a grown-up person in the
study of _a-b, ab_, and yet at the same time there is something almost
great in this ravenous thirst for knowledge, combined with incredulity
of all tradition. It is a model such as this that the poets should have
had for their naïve characters. In Goethe's _Roman Elegies_, the Roman
woman's figure is very inconspicuous; she is not drawn as a genuine
woman of the people, she is not naïve. He knew a Faustina, but one
feels that he afterwards slipped a German model into her place.
Filomena has the uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness of an
unspoilt soul. Her glance is not exactly pure, but free--how shall I
describe it? Full, grand, simple. With a _concha_ on her head, she
would look like a caryatid. If I compare her mentally with a feminine
character of another poet, Lamartine's Graziella, an Italian girl of
the lower classes, like herself, I cannot but think Graziella thin and
poetised, down to her name. The narrator, if I remember rightly,
teaches her to read, too; but Graziella herself does not desire it; it
is he who educates her. Filomena, on the contrary, with her anxiety to
learn, is an example and a symbol of a great historic movement, the
poor, oppressed Roman people's craving for light and knowledge. Of
Italy's population of twenty-six millions, according to the latest,
most recent statistics, seventeen millions can neither read nor write.
She said to me to-day: "What do you really think, sir, do you not
believe that the Holy Ghost is _una virtù_ and cannot be father of the
child?" "You are right, Filomena." "That is why I never pray." "Some
day, when you are very unhappy, perhaps you will pray." "I have been
very unhappy; when I was a child I used to suffer horribly from hunger.
I had to get up at five o'clock in the morning to work and got eight
_soldi_ for standing all day long in a vineyard in the sun and digging
with a spade, and as corn was dear and meat dear, we seven children
seldom had a proper meal. Last year, too, I was hungry often, for it
was as the proverb says: 'If I eat, I cannot dress myself, and if I
dress myself I cannot eat.' (What a sad and illuminating proverb!) Sir,
if there were any Paradise, you would go there, for what you do for me.
If I can only read and write, I can earn twice as much as I otherwise
could. Then I can be a _cameriera_, and bring my mistress a written
account of expenditure every week."
Filomena knows that Saredo is a professor at the University. But she
does not know what a professor or a University is. She puts her
question like this: "Probably my idea of what a university is, may not
be quite correct?"
No one comes now. An invalid is very interesting at first, and arouses
sympathy. If he continue ill too long, people unconsciously think it
impossible for him to get well, and stay away. So the only resource
left me all day is to chat with Filomena, to whom Maria has entrusted
the nursing of me. Every evening I read with her; yesterday she had her
fourth lesson, and could almost read straight off. Her complexion and
the lower part of her face are like a child's; her undeveloped mental
state reveals itself, thus far, in her appearance. I told her
yesterday, as an experiment, that there were five continents and in
each of them many countries, but she cannot understand yet what I mean,
as she has no conception of what the earth looks like. She does not
even know in what direction from Rome her native village, Camerino,
lies. I will try to get hold of a map, or a globe. Yesterday, we read
the word _inferno_. She said: "There is no hell; things are bad enough
on earth; if we are to burn afterwards, there would be two hells."
"Good gracious! Filomena, is life so bad? Why, you sing all day long."
"I sing because I am well; that is perfectly natural, but how can I be
content?" "What do you wish for then?" "So much money (_denari_) that I
should be sure of never being hungry again. You do not know how it
hurts. Then there is one other thing I should like, but it is
impossible. I should like not to die; I am so horribly afraid of death.
I should certainly wish there were a Paradise. But who can tell! Still,
my grandmother lived to be a hundred all but three years, and she was
never ill for a day; when she was only three years from being a hundred
she still went to the fields like the rest of us and worked, and was
like a young woman (_giovanotta_). Mother is forty-two, but although
she is two years older than my aunt, she looks quite young. _Chi lo
sa!_ Perhaps I may live to be a hundred too, never be ill--I never have
been yet, one single day,--and then go in and lie down on the bed like
she did and be dead at once."
"She really is sweet!" said R. this evening. The word does not fit. Her
laugh, her little grimaces, her witticisms, quaint conceits and
gestures are certainly very attractive, but her mode of expression,
when she is talking freely, is very unreserved, and if I were to repeat
some of her remarks to a stranger, he would perhaps think her coarse or
loose. "We shall see what sort of a girl you bring home to us when you
are well again, and whether you have as good taste as our Frenchman. Or
perhaps you would rather visit her? I know how a fine gentleman
behaves, when he visits his friend. She is often a lady, and rich. He
comes, knocks softly at the door, sits down, and talks about difficult
and learned things. Then he begs for a kiss, she flings her arms round
his neck; _allora, il letto rifatto, va via."_ She neither blushes nor
feels the slightest embarrassment when she talks like this. "How do you
know such things, when you have no experience?" "People have told me; I
know it from hearsay. I myself have never been in love, but I believe
that it is possible to love one person one's whole life long, and never
grow tired of him, and never love another. You said the other day (for
a joke?) that people ought to marry for a year or six months; but I
believe that one can love the same person always."
In such chat my days pass by. I feel as though I had dropped down
somewhere in the Sabine Mountains, been well received in a house--Maria
is from Camarino, too,--and were living there hidden from the world
among these big children.
Yesterday, Uncle had his National Guard uniform on for the first time.
He came in to show himself. I told him that it suited him very well,
which delighted him. Filomena exhibited him with admiration. When Maria
came home later on, she asked the others at once: "Has the _signore_
seen him? What did he say? Does not he want to see him again?"
Written down a score of ritornellos; I have chosen the best of them.
Many of them are rather, or very, indecent. But, as Filomena says: "You
do not go to Hell for singing _canzone_; you cannot help what they are
like." The indecent ones she will only say at a terrific rate, and not
a second time. But if one pay attention, they are easy to understand.
They are a mixture of audacity and simple vulgarity. They all begin
with flowers. She is too undeveloped to share the educated girl's
abhorrence of things that are in bad taste; everything natural, she
thinks, can be said, and she speaks out, quite unperturbed. Still, now
she understands that there are certain things--impossible things--that
I do not like to hear her say.
I was sitting cutting a wafer (to take powders with) into oblates.
_She_: "You must not cut into consecrated things, not even put the
teeth into it. The priest says: 'Thou shalt not bite Christ.'"
Unfortunately, she has not any real impression of religion, either of
its beauty or its underlying truth. None of them have any idea of what
the New Testament is or contains; they do not know its best-known
quotations and stories. Religion, to them, is four or five rigmaroles,
which are printed in our _Abecedario_, the Creed, the Ave Maria, the
various Sacraments, etc., which they know by heart. These they reject,
but they have not the slightest conception of what Christianity is. If
I quote a text from the New Testament, they have never heard it.
But they can run the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven other
virtues, off by rote. One of these last, that of instructing the
ignorant, is a virtue which the priesthood (partly for good reasons)
have not practised to any remarkable extent in this country.
Yesterday Maria came home in a state of great delight, from a
_trattoria_, where a gentleman had spoken _tanto bene, tanto bene_
against religion and the Pope and the priests; there were a few
_Caccialepri_ present (a derogatory expression for adherents of the
priests), who had just had to come down a peg or two. When she had
finished, to my astonishment, she said to me, _exactly this_: "It is
Nature that is God, is it not so?"
An expression almost symbolical of the ignorance and credulity of the
Romans is their constant axiom, _Chi lo sa?_ (Who knows?) I said to
Maria the other day, after she had said it for the fourth time in a
quarter of an hour: "My good Maria! The beginning of wisdom is not to
fear God, but to say _Perche_? (why?), instead of _Chi lo sa_?"
Yesterday, while I was eating my dinner, I heard Filomena's story. She
came to Rome last December: "You think I came because Maria wanted to
help mother. I came to Rome because there was a man who wanted to marry
me." "What was his name?" "His name was Peppe." _"Lo mi' amore, che si
chiama Peppe."_... "Ah, I do not love him at all. No, the thing is that
at Camerino all the men beat their wives. My sister, for instance, has
always a black eye, and red stripes on her back. My friend Marietta
always gets beaten by her husband, and the more he beats her, the more
she loves him: sometimes she goes away from him for a few days to her
sister, but she always goes back again." "What has that to do with our
friend Peppe?" "Well, you see, mother knew that Peppe's brother beat
his wife all day and all night; so she would not give me to him." "Yes,
it was bad, if it were a family failing." "So one evening father said
to me: 'Your aunt has written to us from Rome, to ask whether you will
pay her a visit of a few days.' And he showed me a false letter. Aunt
cannot write and knew nothing about any letter. I did not want to,
much, said I would not, but came here all the same, and found that I
was to stay here, and that mother did not want me to have Peppe. So I
began to cry, and for five whole days I cried all the time and would
neither eat nor drink. Then I thought to myself: It is all over between
Peppe and me. Shall I cry myself to death for a man? So I left off
crying, and very soon forgot all about him. And after a week's time I
did not care anything about the whole matter, and sang and was happy,
and now I want to stay in Rome always."
Last night I got up for a little, read with Filomena, and determined to
go in and have supper with the family in their little room. Filomena
opened the door wide, and called out along the corridor: _"Eccolo!"_
and then such a welcome as there was for the invalid, now that he had
at last got up! and I was obliged to drink two large beer-glasses of
the home-grown wine. First Maria told how it was that I had always had
everything so punctually whilst I was ill. It was because Filomena had
made the little boy from the _café_ believe that I was going to give
him my watch when I got well, if he never let anything get cold. So the
boy ran as though possessed, and once fell down the stairs and broke
everything to atoms. "He is delirious," said Filomena one day, "and
talks of nothing but of giving you his watch." "How can he be so ill,"
said the boy suspiciously, "when he eats and drinks?" "Do you want the
watch or not?" said Filomena, and off the lad ran. I let the others
entertain me. Maria said: "You told Filomena something yesterday about
savages; I know something about them, too. Savage people live in China,
and the worst of all are called Mandarins. Do you know what one of them
did to an Italian lady? She was with her family over there; suddenly
there came a Mandarin, carried her off, and shut her up in his house.
They never found her again. Then he had three children by her; but one
day he went out and forgot to shut the door; she ran quickly out of the
house, down to the water, and saw a ship far away. Do you know what the
mandarin did, sir, when he came home and found that his wife was gone?
He took the three children, tore them through the middle, and threw the
pieces out into the street." It reminded one of Lucidarius, and other
mediaeval legends. Then our good _zio_, the honest uncle, began, and
told Maria and Filomena the history of Napoleon I., fairly correctly.
He had heard it from his master Leonardo, who taught him his trade; the
man had taken part in five of the campaigns. The only egregious mistake
he made was that he thought the Austrians had gradually poisoned the
Duke of Reichstadt, because he threatened to become even more
formidable than his father. But that the old grenadier might easily
have believed. The thing that astonished me was that the narrative did
not make the slightest impression upon either Maria or Filomena. I
asked Filomena if she did not think it was very remarkable. But she
clearly had a suspicion that it was all lies, besides, what has
happened in the world before her day is of as little importance to her
as what goes on in another planet; finally, she abominates war. _Zio_
concluded his story with childlike self-satisfaction: "When I learnt
about all this, I was only an apprentice; now I am _mastro Nino_."
These last few days that I have been able to stumble about the room a
little, I have had a feeling of delight and happiness such as I have
hardly experienced before. The very air is a fête. The little
black-haired youngsters, running about this picturesquely steep street,
are my delight, whenever I look out of the window. All that is in front
of me: the splendours of Rome, the Summer, the art of Italy, Naples in
the South, Venice in the North, makes my heart beat fast and my head
swim. I only need to turn round from the window and see Filomena
standing behind me, knitting, posed like a living picture by Küchler to
feel, with jubilation: I am in Rome. Saredo came to-day at twelve
o'clock, and saw me dressed for the first time. I had put on my nicest
clothes. I called Filomena, had three dinners fetched, and seated
between him and her, I had my banquet. I had just said: "I will not eat
any soup to-day, unless it should happen to be _Zuppa d'herba_."
Filomena took the lid off and cried: _"A punto."_ This is how all my
wishes are fulfilled now. I had a fine, light red wine. It tasted so
good that if the gods had known it they would have poured their nectar
into the washtub. Filomena poured it out, singing:
L'acqua fa mare,
Il vino fa cantare;
Il sugo della gresta
Fa gira' la testa.
(Water is bad for one;
Wine makes one sing;
The juice of the grape
Makes the head swim.)
To-morrow I may go out. After Sunday, I shall leave off dining at home.
On Sunday Filomena goes to Camerino.