Which once had clasped Excalibur.
At any rate, that is rather how I felt, as, standing at noon in the
dense crowd in the nave of the Duomo, I saw the procession pass within
a few feet of me, on their way from the great entrance up to the high
altar, which was ablaze already with many tall candles. Although within
a few feet, the intervening crowd was so thick that I could only see the
heads and shoulders of the taller choristers and priests as they passed;
but I saw plainly enough, though the wearer was low of stature, the tall
mitre--it looked like gold--which the Archbishop wore as he walked in
the procession. Our bishops, I am told, are wearing or going to wear
them (Heaven save the mark!), which made me curious. They threaded their
way slowly up to the high altar; and presently we heard in the distance
intoning and chants; and then, after brief pause, the dove (so called)
started from the crucifix, I think, at any rate from a high point on the
altar, for the open door. But in order to be clear as to what the dove
carries and is supposed to do, we must go back to the Second Crusade.
I give the story as I make it out by comparing the accounts in various
guide-books with those of residents interested in such matters. These
differ much in detail, but not as to the main facts. These are, that
in 1147 A.D. a Florentine noble of the Pazzi family, Raniero by name,
joined, some say led, the 2500 Tuscans who went on the Crusade. In any
case, he greatly distinguished himself by his courage, and is said to
have planted the first standard of the Cross on the walls of Jerusalem.
For this he was allowed to take a light from the sacred fire on the Holy
Sepulchre, which he desired to carry back to his much-loved F’orence. An
absurd part of the legend now comes in. Finding the wind troublesome as
he rode with the light, he turned round, with his face to his horse’s
tail (as if the wind always blew in Crusaders’ faces), and so at last
brought it safely home, where his ungrateful fellow-citizens, when they
saw him come riding in this fashion, called out, “Pazzo!” “Pazzo!” or
“Mad!” which his family forthwith wisely adopted as their patronymic.
The sacred fire was housed in a shrine in St. Biagio, built by Raniero,
and has never been allowed to go out since that day--so it is said--and
from it yearly are relighted all the candles used in Florentine churches
at the Easter festival. It is a striking custom. Gradually, during the
Good Friday services, the lights are extinguished in the Duomo, and all
the churches, till at midnight they are in darkness, and are only relit
next day by fire brought even yet by a Pazzi, a descendant of Raniero,
from St. Biagio. This is, however, doubtful, some authorities asserting
that the family is extinct, others that it not only exists, but still
spends 2000 lire a year in preserving the sacred fire. A stranger has
no means that I know of, of sifting out the fact. Anyhow, I can testify
that somehow the fire is in the Duomo before noon, as any number of
candles were alight on the high altar when I got there at 11.30, half an
hour before the procession. Anything more orderly than the great crowd I
have never seen. It was of all nations, languages, and ranks, though
the great majority were Tuscan peasants with their families from all the
surrounding country, waiting in eager expectation for the flight of
the dove from the high altar, through the doors to the great car which
stands waiting outside at the bottom of the broad steps in front of the
Duomo. If the dove makes a successful flight, and lights the fireworks
which are hung round the car, there will be a good harvest and abundance
of wine and oil, and of oranges and lemons. This year the faces of the
peasants and their wives and children--and most attractive brown faces
they were--were anxious, for it had been raining hard in the morning,
and still drops were falling. However, all went well. At about 12.10
the chanting ceased, and the dove--a small firework of the rocket
genus--rushed down the nave, some ten feet over our heads, along a
thin wire which I had not noticed before, and set light promptly to
the fireworks on the car, which began to turn and explode, not without
considerable fizzing and spluttering, but on the whole successfully.
Then the dove turned and came back, still alight, and leaving a trail of
sparks as it sped along, to the high altar. How it was received there,
and what became of it, I cannot say, as I was swept along in the rush to
the doors which immediately followed, and had enough to do to pilot my
companion, a lady, to the new centre of interest. This was the car to
which the sacred fire had now been transferred, and which was about to
start on its round to the other churches. It is chocolate-coloured, and
spangled with stars, some twenty feet high, surmounted by a large crown
and Catherine-wheel. As our crowd swept out of the Duomo and down the
steps, to mingle with the still larger crowd outside, men were rehanging
the car with fresh fireworks, and putting-to four mighty white oxen,
gaily garlanded. I remarked that the conductor, a tall, six-foot man,
could not look over the shoulder of one of these shaft-oxen as he was
harnessing him in the shafts!
There could be no question as to the very best place for spectators.
It was the centre of the top step leading up to the Duomo façade; and,
finding ourselves there, we stopped and let the crowd surge past us.
Almost at once I became aware that this favoured spot was occupied
by the English-speaking race almost exclusively, the accent of cousin
Jonathan, I think, on the whole predominating. Two Italian boys looked
up at us with large, lustrous brown eyes; otherwise the natives were
absent. It seems like a sort of law of social gravitation, that in these
latter days the speakers of our language should get into all the world’s
best places, and having got there should stop. One cannot much wonder
that the speakers in other tongues should feel now and then as if they
were being rather crowded out. We did not pursue the car as it
lumbered away under the glorious campanile, surrounded by the rejoicing
multitude, for the sun had now got the upper hand, and the whole city
and plain right away to the lower hills, and the snow-capped Apennines
in the background, were aglow with the sort of subdued purple or
amethyst light which seems to me to differentiate Tuscany from all other
countries known to me. Now, gradually to put out all the lights in the
churches on Good Friday, and to relight them from fire from the Holy
Sepulchre next day, seems to me a worthy and pathetic custom; but this
mixing it up with the firework business, and having the Bishop and all
the strength of the Cathedral out to help in this dove trick, spoils the
whole thing, and makes one wish one had not gone to see it, recalling
too forcibly, as it does to an Englishman, the Crystal Palace on a
fireworks’ night, and the similar “dove” which travels from the Royal
Gallery, where too-well-fed citizens and others sit smoking, to light
the great “concerted piece” in the grounds below. It was like inserting
“Abracadabra!” in the middle of the “Miserere.” P.S.--Since writing
the ‘above, we have had an arrival in Florence which will interest your
readers,--to wit, fifty young persons of both sexes from Toynbee Hall,
with Mr. Bolton King as conductor; and the English community are doing
all they can to make their stay pleasant. On the morrow of their arrival
Lady Hobart entertained them at her villa of Montauto, the one in which
Hawthorne wrote _Transformation_. It is a thirteenth-century house,
or, I should rather say, that the villa, with its large, airy suite of
rooms, with vaulted ceilings, has grown round a machicolated tower*
of that date, the highest building on the Bellosquardo Hill, to the
south-west of the city. From the top of it, reached by rather rickety
and casual old stairs, there is, I should think, as glorious a view
as the world can show,--a perfect panorama, with Florence lying
right below, and beyond, Fiesole and Vallombrosa, and the village of
stone-cutters on the slope of the Apennines, which reared the greatest
of stonecutters, Michael Angelo, and beyond, the highest Apennines,
still snow-covered; and to the north, the rich plain of vineyards, and
olive-groves, and orange and lemon gardens, thickly sprinkled with
the bright white houses of the peasant cultivators and the graceful
campaniles of village churches, beyond which one could see clearly on
this “white-stone” day the snow-clad peaks of the Carrara Mountains in
the far north. I can hardly say whether the Toynbee visitors, or those
who were gathered to welcome them by the hospitable hostess, enjoyed
the unrivalled view most; but this we soon discovered, that the visitors
were about as well acquainted with the story of each point of interest,
as it was pointed out to them, as the oldest resident. Surely the
schoolmaster is at last abroad with us in England in many ways of which
we have good right to feel proud, and for which we may well be thankful.
A Scamper at Easter, 8th April 1893.
No one can dislike more than I the habit which has become so common of
late years amongst us--thanks, or rather no thanks, to Mr. Gladstone--of
running down our own English ways of dealing with all creation, from
Irishmen to black-beetles. I believe, on the contrary, that on the whole
there is not, nor ever was, a nation that kept a more active conscience,
or tried more honestly to do the right thing all round according to its
lights. Nevertheless, I am bound to admit that our methods don’t always
succeed, as, for instance, with our treatment of our “submerged tenth,”
if that is the accepted name for the section of our people which Mr. G.
Booth, in his excellent _Life and Labour in London_, places in his A and
B classes (and which, by the way, are only 8.2, and not 10 per cent),
or with our seagulls. Some years ago I called your readers’ attention to
the rapid demoralisation of these beautiful birds at one of our northern
watering-places; how they just floated past the pier-heads hour after
hour, waiting for the doles which the holiday folk and their children
brought down for them in paper-bags. Our sea-going gulls, I regret
to note, are now similarly affected. At any rate, some forty of them
diligently followed the steamer in which I sailed for my Easter holiday,
from the Liverpool docks till we dropped our pilot and, turned due south
off Holyhead. By that time our last meal had been eaten and the remains
cast into the sea. The gulls seemed to be quite aware of this; and
we left them squabbling over the last scraps of fish and potatoes, or
loafing slowly back to Liverpool. Thirty-six hours later we entered
the Garonne, and steamed sixty miles up it to Bordeaux. For all that
distance there were plenty of French gulls on the water or in the air,
but, so far from following us, not one of them seemed to take the least
notice of us, but all went on quietly with their fishing or courting;
and yet our cook’s mate must have thrown out as much broken victuals
after breakfast in the Garonne as he did after luncheon or dinner on the
Welsh coast. It cannot be because the French gulls are Republicans,
for the Republic has, if anything, increased the national appetite for
unearned loaves and fishes. It is certainly very odd; but, anyhow, I
hope our gulls will not take to more self-respecting ways of life, for
it is a real treat to watch them in the ship’s wake, without effort,
often without perceptible motion of the wings, keeping up the fourteen
knots an hour. The Captain and I fraternised over the gulls, whom he
loves, and will not allow to be shot at from his ship. “I’ll shoot
whether you like it or not,” insisted a sporting gent on a recent
voyage. “If you do, I’ll put you in irons,” retorted the Captain;
whereupon the sporting gent collapsed--a pity, I think, for an
action for false imprisonment would have been interesting under the
circumstances. I fancy the Captain is right, but must look up the law
after Easter.
I am surprised that this route is not more popular with the increasing
numbers of our people who like a short run to the south of France in our
hard spring weather. You can get by this way to Bordeaux quicker than
you can by Dover or Folkestone from any place north of Trent, unless you
travel day and night, and sleep on the trains, and for about half
the money. The packets are cargo-boats, but with excellent cabins and
sleeping accommodation for twelve or fourteen passengers, including as
good a bath as on a Cunard or White Star liner. And yet I was the only
passenger last week. There can scarcely be a more interesting short
voyage for any one who is a decent sailor; but I suppose the fourteen
or sixteen hours “in the Bay of Biscay, oh!” scares people. As far as my
experience goes, the Atlantic roars like a sucking-dove in the Channel
and the Bay at Easter-time. There was not wind enough to dimple the
ocean surface, and until we passed Milford Haven, no perceptible motion
on the ship. Then, as we crossed the opening of the Bristol Channel,
she began to roll--quite unaccountably, as it seemed at first; but
on watching carefully, one became aware that, though the surface was
motionless, the great deep beneath was heaving with long pulsations
from the west, which lifted us in regular cadence every thirty or forty
seconds. I have often crossed the Atlantic, but never seen the like, as
always before there has been a ripple on the calmest day, which gave the
effect, at any rate, of surface motion. The best idea I can give of it
is, if on a long stretch of our South Downs the successive turf slopes
took to rising and falling perpendicularly every minute. The Captain
said there must have been wild weather out west, and these were the
rollers. It was a grand sight to watch the great heave pass on till
it reached the Land’s End, and ran up the cliffs there. We passed near
enough to see the mining works, close to the level of high-tide, and the
villages on the cliff-tops above, or clinging on to the slopes wherever
these were not too precipitous. One can realise what manner of men and
sailors this Ear West has bred of old, and, I hope, still breeds. I pity
the Englishman whose pulse does not quicken as he sails by the Land’s
End, and can see with a glass some of the small harbours out of which
Drake and Frobisher and Hawkins sailed, and drew the crews that followed
and fought the Armada right away to the Straits of Dover.
As the Land’s End light receded, we became aware of another light away
some twenty miles to the south-west. It is on a rock not fifty yards
across, the Captain says, at high tide, and often unapproachable
for weeks together--“The Hawk,” by name, on which are kept four
lighthouse-men, who spend there alternate months, weather permitting.
I was glad to hear that there are four at a time, as the sight of “The
Hawk” brought vividly to my mind the gruesome story of fifty years back,
when there were only two men, who were known not to be good friends. One
died, and his companion had to wait with the dead body for weeks before
his relief came.
I noticed, before we were two hours out, that there was something
unusually smart about the crew, quite what one would look for on the
_Umbria_ or _Germanic_, but scarcely on a 700-tons cargo-boat plying to
Bordeaux. Several of the young hands were fine British tars, with the
splendid throats and great muscular hands and wrists which stand out so
well from the blue woollen jerseys; but the one who struck me most was
the ship’s carpenter, a gray, weather-beaten old salt, who was going
round quietly, but all the time with his broad-headed hammer, setting
little things straight, helping to straighten the tarpaulins over the
hatches and deck-cargo, and sounding the well. I caught him now and then
for a few words, as he passed my deck-chair, and got the clue. Most of
the crew were Naval Reserve men, and followed the Captain, a lieutenant
in the R.N.R., who could fly the blue ensign in foreign ports, which
they liked. Besides, he was a skipper who cared for his men, looked
after their mess and berths, and never wanted to make anything out of
them; charged them only a shilling a pound for their baccy, the price at
which he could get it out of bond, while most skippers charged 2s. 6d.,
the shop price. He had come to this boat while his big ship was laid
up in dock, to oblige the owners, so they had followed him. Besides,
he never put them to any work he wouldn’t bear a hand in; had stood for
hours up to his waist last year in the hold when they were bringing
five hundred cattle and seven hundred hogs from Canada, running before a
heavy gale. The water they shipped was putting out the engine fires,
and the pumps wouldn’t work till they had bailed for ten hours. However,
they got in all right, and never lost a beast. Of course I was keen to
hear the Captain on this subject, and so broached it at his table.
Yes, it was quite true; they had run before a heavy gale from off
Newfoundland, and the pumps gave out off the Irish coast. They got the
sludge bailed out enough for all the fires to get to work just about in
time, or would have drifted on the rocks and gone all to pieces in a few
minutes. Yes, it was about the nastiest piece of work he had ever had to
do; the sludge, for it was only half water, was above his waist, and had
quite spoiled his uniform. The deck engineer--a light-haired man, all
big bones and muscle, whom he pointed out to me--was in the deepest
part of the hold up to his arm-pits, and had worked there for ten hours
without coming up! He was a R.N.R. man, like the old carpenter and
most of the rest. The old fellow was one of the staunchest and best
followers, probably because he was tired of going aground. He had been
aground seventeen times! for the Captain in his last ship had a way
of charging shoals, merely saying, “Oh, she’ll jump it!” which she
generally declined to do. The Captain is a strong Churchman, but shares
the prejudice against carrying ministers. “The devil always has a show”
when you’re carrying a minister. The first time he tried it, he was
taking out his own brother, and they were twenty-two days late at
Montreal. It was an awful crossing, a gale in their teeth all the way;
most of the ships that started with them had to put back. I suggested
that if he hadn’t had his brother on board, he mightn’t have got over
at all; but he wouldn’t see it. Next time, a man fell from the mast-head
and was killed; and the next, a man jumped overboard. He would never
carry a minister again if he could help it.
One pilot took us out to Holyhead, but it took three French ones to
take us up to Bordeaux. The Garonne banks are only picturesque here and
there; but the flat banks have their own interest, for do we not see
the choicest vineyards of the claret country as we run up? There was
the Chateau Lafitte and the Chateau Margaux. I suppose one ought within
one’s heart, or rather, within one’s palate perhaps, “to have felt a
stir”--