FLORENCE.
Some time before I left London, while indulging in the pernicious habit
of reading in bed, I was much amused and instructed by the narrative of
travel of a distinguished _confrère_ who had set out in search of
sunshine. The writer’s name is a household word in England, and in Italy
it is also a ‘household word’ in the most literal manner possible, for
you find a ‘Sala’ in nearly every house. I don’t remember whether the
‘Prince of Specials’ found all the sunshine he wanted, but if he did not
he had better come out to Florence at once with the biggest bag he can
get into the train.
I am writing at the present moment in a room looking on to the Lung’
Arno, and the sunshine is overpowering. In order to write with a slight
amount of cool-headedness I have to sit in a bath and to work with an
umbrella over me, which is damped at short intervals. For the past week
it has been the same--a fierce, blazing, beautiful sunshine, in which
you could cook a mutton-chop by holding it out of the window on the end
of your walking-stick for ten minutes.
Most of the Italian cities boast of special distinctions. Just as we say
‘Genoa la Superba,’ so Florence has been dubbed ‘Firenze la Gentile,’
‘Florence the Refined.’
Florence is beautiful to the tourist in search of art, but it is apt to
grow monotonous to staid and sober citizens who do not care to risk
rheumatics for life in order to see an altar-piece, or to take a certain
chill as the price of gazing at the real original Venus de Medici in the
icy passages known as the Uffizi. True, that the streets are full of
grand and solemn old palaces that carry the mind back through the
centuries; true, that every hole and corner is rich with art, but on the
Philistine all this palls after a time. I can understand how classical
and cultured minds can spend day after day lost in admiration before
virgins and martyrs who bear the closest resemblance to each other, and
I quite appreciate the rapture with which they gaze at statues which,
when all is said and done, are but men and women imitated and undraped.
I can worship with the best of them, say, six pictures and six statues
per diem, but galleries I cannot endure, and I fear I never shall. As
one jam-tart is pleasant to the tooth, and twenty produce nausea, so is
one good picture pleasant to the eye, and two hundred are apt to give
one headache.
Now, if you flee from galleries and churches, there is little left you
in Florence town but the side of the Arno. This is the one place where
all day long the sun shines out in splendour, and you can saunter and
dream, and ask yourself with the Misses Leamar, ‘Why is the world so gay
to-day?’ You turn away from the Arno at your peril. To enter any side
street is, to an Englishman, dangerous in the extreme. The long, narrow
streets shut out all sun and all light, and you pass into them from the
Lung’ Arno as from the kitchen fire to the ice well. I am tired of the
Lung’ Arno. I have worn the brim of my hat threadbare bowing to the
thousand Florentine princes, dukes, marquises, and counts, who smile at
me in the Cascine--the Hyde Park of Florence--and I am going to walk
right away from the palaces, the churches, and the galleries, right away
over the Arno to the high hills I can see shining in the sunlight far
away. Of Art I am tired; a little Nature will do me good. I tell the
people in my hotel I want a good ten-mile spin--where had I better go?
The Porter crosses himself, and the Director murmurs the name of his
patron saint. Ho! but here is a mad Englishman, who, having loose lire
in his pocket, wants to walk ten miles. They point me out a way,
however, begging me to provide myself with cognac, in case I fall by the
road, and I go. I am sure the Director is debating whether he shall have
a hot bath, a doctor, and some leeches ready for my return.
Once outside the hotel, the torture of my life in Florence begins. There
is a carriage-stand opposite the door, and the moment I show my nose
every man wildly whips his horse up, and drives full gallop at me. They
are all sure that I want a _carrozza_. I endeavour to evade them, but
they drive round and round me in a circle until I look like the
ring-master at Astley’s directing the performance of ‘the flying
charioteers.’ At last I make a wild dash between two vehicles and rush
up the street. But the enemy is not so easily defeated. The drivers dash
after me up the Lung’ Arno, and follow me over the bridge. The pride of
the Florentine flymen is stung to the quick. An Inglese has escaped
them. The watchword passes, and at every rank we come to the flymen
there lash their horses and join in the pursuit. Before I have gone a
quarter of a mile there are nearly one hundred flys pursuing me. Panting
and breathless, I still urge on my wild career. The honour of England is
at stake. In this unequal conflict I must conquer or die, for, as a
patriot, the reputation of my countrymen for obstinacy is dear to me.
Heedless of my course, I dash down narrow streets, through ancient
gateways, and round old squares, and at last I reach the city walls. The
Porta Romana is passed, and I am out in the suburbs. The flymen waver.
It is all uphill now, and their horses--poor beasts!--are blown and
leg-weary. One by one they turn round, and drive slowly back to the
city. For one day, at least, I am safe from the flymen of Florence.
I walk my miles on ever-rising ground till all the fertile valley lies
at my feet. I wind round and round till I reach the great height whereon
stands Galileo’s observatory and the villa in which, under the cruel
eyes of the Inquisition, he spent his last years. From this spot the
view is worth a pilgrimage that should have lasted a lifetime instead of
two hours. All the city of Florence, the distant Apennines (their crests
all crowned with snow), the blue waters of the Arno lie before me. I
breathe the pure, bracing air, I feel the warm sunshine on my face, and
the weight of my years is lifted from me. Give me a green hill, a blue
sky, and a square mile of God’s sunshine, and you may have all the
pictures and all the statues in all the whole wide world.
I seem to have a speciality for coming upon horrors. In Florence the
first night I go out, in a quiet, dark, back street, a gentleman walking
ahead of me suddenly reels and falls dead from an apoplectic stroke. I
should not allude to the circumstance but that it brought before me a
quaint and solemn phase of Italian religious life. The poor man was
carried into a confectioner’s shop and a messenger despatched to the
Misericordia--the establishment of the Brothers of the Misericordia, a
curious order, which renders the last offices to the dead. Presently
there arrived a man with a torch, and, following him, half a dozen of
the brothers, clothed from head to foot in a black garb and a hood and
mask. Nothing is visible of them but their eyes, their features being
completely concealed by the masks and hoods which cover the head and
face. Weird and solemn beyond description the brothers look in the
moonlight in this strange garb, and when presently they came out,
bearing the dead in an open bier, and formed in procession, headed by
the torch, and slowly moved away into the shadows of the dark, narrow,
winding streets, I shuddered, and fancied myself back in the Middle
Ages.
The history of the order is curious and interesting. It was formed
during the great plague, when people died faster than professional
undertakers could bury them. A body of gentlemen then undertook the
task, concealing their features while plying their solemn labour, in
order that they might not be recognised and shunned by the Italians, who
have a great horror of death and all that appertains to it. To this day
the order remains a secret one, and the outside world does not know who
the masked men are who tend the dying and the dead. The greatest and the
smallest belong to it, and the prince and the artisan rub shoulders in
it. It is often a refuge for wealthy men who have met with great
disappointments, and of talented men whose careers have been blighted,
and who want something to do to keep them from nursing their grief and
their wrongs.
While in Florence I saw most of the minor theatres. ‘Stenterello,’ the
Florentine Punch, has the big part in all the pieces at the people’s
theatre, and is a unique specimen of theatrical art. In order to
appreciate him thoroughly, I have sat out several evenings’ amusement
under rather distressing circumstances. When you pay sixpence to go into
a theatre, and sixpence more for a _posto distinto_ or reserved seat,
you must not grumble if your neighbours are not of the _haute noblesse_.
But the _manteaux noirs_ in which the Italian common people wrap
themselves during the winter are, when worn with Florentine thrift for,
say, thirty years, apt to get unpleasant, and the wearers have besides
unpleasant little ways, and are curiously afflicted, and---- But I will
not go into details. I have endured much by passing my evenings in the
popular parts of popular theatres--I mean the theatres patronized by the
masses--but I have gained an experience which ought to be valuable. I
shrink at nothing where my favourite study--the people--is concerned.
How shocking--isn’t it?--to waste one’s time studying the people of
to-day--living, breathing flesh and blood: tragedy, comedy, and farce
all packed together under a ridiculous modern costume--while there lies
all around one a whole population of stone and marble and painted ladies
and gentlemen, all classically draped or equally classically undraped,
and not one of them less than a thousand years old at least! I cannot
help preferring the living flesh to the dead marble, the country to the
canvas, and all that is wicked and philistine in me rises in rebellion
as I peruse the guide-books and catalogues and find nothing but
galleries and churches considered worthy of a tourist’s observation. I
am not blind to the beautiful in art, I hope. A modern picture gives me
often the greatest of pleasure, and so, for the matter of that, does an
old one if it has a story to tell, and tells it well; if out of the
painted eyes there looks forth a human soul, if in the grouped figures
there is some suggestion of human feeling. But the things which are as a
red rag to a bull to me are the Virgins and Children, the Holy Families,
the saints, the martyrs, the portraits of painters’ mistresses,
labelled now a heathen goddess and now a Catholic saint. For tourists to
spend as they do day after day contemplating these things, worrying away
at a note-book with a pencil, and then chevying off to spend more hours
staring at churches and cathedrals and listening to the droned-out lies
of the cicerone, while a people as interesting in their manners and
customs as any in the wide world live and move around them, under their
very eyes, despised, unstudied, and unnoticed, is to me
incomprehensible.
At all the theatres, save those where grand opera is given,
everything--tragedy, comedy, and farce--is ‘con Stenterello.’ Punch is
dressed always the same, no matter what the period of the play may be.
He is the low comedy man, and has all the funny lines, but at times he
utters noble sentiments, and becomes pathetic over the sorrows of the
heroine, who is habitually protected by him.
No matter how tragic or pathetic the situation, Stenterello, with his
queer costume and painted face, has a share in it. The bereaved wife
wails out to Punch her sorrow for the dear departed, the betrayed maiden
reveals to him the name of the villain at whose hands she claims
retribution. The Medicis of old cannot plot and plan without
Stenterello, the masher of to-day has Stenterello as his companion when
he goes a-wooing, and after a round of the Florentine playhouses I was
considerably astonished to find that ‘Othello’ was played at the Teatro
Tommaso Salvini without a Stenterello. I quite expected to see him turn
up as the devoted friend of Desdemona, or as the virtuous foiler of the
wicked schemes of Iago.
Stenterello is literally worshipped by the Florentines. In every play he
talks in the Florentine dialect--that is to say, in the _patois_ of the
people.
The late King Victor Emmanuel used to come in the good old days to the
little theatres, and roar as loudly as anyone at Punch’s wheezes, and
one evening expressed his delight at the performance by making a knight
there and then of the Stenterello who had given him so much amusement.
The history of these Punches would make a long magazine article. They
are classical in Italy. Stenterello is indigenous to Tuscany. Other
provinces have their Punch, who appears in nearly all the plays, but in
a different garb. In Naples it is Pulcinella who is the omnipresent
comic man. Pulcinella is dressed in a loose white costume, and wears a
black domino, with a beak to it--a property which deprives the actor
most effectually of the aid of facial expression. But Italian actors and
pantomimists do not need their faces to tell a story. They use their
hands most marvellously, and will tell a whole five-act drama with
gesture alone. In one little theatre the other evening I saw a _mime_
hold an audience spell-bound for fully ten minutes while she described a
tragedy, and showed how it was to be revenged, without uttering a single
word.
At the bulk of the Italian theatres you can enter by simply paying fifty
centimes or a franc for the _ingresso_. This entitles you to stand in
the large vacant space at the back of the stalls, which takes the place
of our pit. If you want a numbered seat or a box, of course you pay
extra for it. Once having paid your _ingresso_, you can go to all parts
of the house where there is room to stand and see. If you have friends
in a box, you walk in and sit with them, as each box is sold as a whole,
and is never split up into seats. The Italian theatre consists entirely
of stalls and private boxes and ‘standing room.’
At many of the theatres smoking is allowed all over the house during
the performance. Even the musicians smoke their cigars during the
_entr’acte_, and lay the half-finished ends on their music-stands when
the conductor waves his bâton.
To see the reckless manner in which matches are struck and flung about
would strike terror to the panic-monger’s heart were it not for the fact
that the houses, being built mostly of stone and marble, are not very
inflammable. The audience is always a wonderful study. The Italians
fling their hearts into the scene. The drama or farce is to them no
play, but a reality. They hoot the villain, they encourage the hero with
reassuring words, they cap Stenterello’s jokes with original ones of
their own, and they keep up a running fire of comment on the story as it
develops. They are as loud in their disapproval as they are in their
commendation. They will hoot a bad actor or singer off the stage
mercilessly, and if the moral of a play or its dénouement does not
interest them they will howl with rage till the curtain falls.
One remarkable feature of the popular playhouses is the prompter. This
gentleman sits in the centre of the stage, covered over with a green
wooden hood. I had a box one night on the stage, and I heard the
prompter deliberately read the whole play to the company a line in
advance of each actor, who repeated it like a schoolboy. The turn of
each actor to take up the text was indicated to him by the prompter’s
finger pointing at him. This continuous prompting is, of course, only
necessary in minor theatres, where the bill is changed almost nightly,
and the actors have little time for study.
I was seriously thinking of buying a title while I was in Florence.
Without a coronet one is so insignificant in Italy. I counted one
hundred and twenty houses in a straight line in Florence, and only
eight gates were without a coronet. Go over to the ‘Surrey side’ of the
Arno, and it is the same thing. Every ‘slum’ has a dozen palaces, and
every palace has a coronet. Prying about, after the manner of my
species, in out-of-the-way holes and corners, I became acquainted with
the fact that the nobility nearly all sell their own oil and wine. Near
the gateway of the palaces there is generally a little hole just large
enough to pass a bottle through. Over this is written, in small letters,
‘Cantina,’ and just by the side is hung a board with a tariff of the
price of ‘our wine.’
Dukes, marquises, and earls, they all retain the produce of their
vineyards and farms. You can buy a bottle of the ordinary for a franc,
and my lord’s servant will hand it you with a smile, and take your coin
with a condescending ‘Grazie.’ It is very quaint to see a workman come
along, stop at a palace about three times the size of Newgate, and
suddenly bob his head in--apparently through the stone wall--and
presently bob back again with a bottle in his hand.
I was determined to study this phase of noble life myself; so I knocked
at the hole in the wall of one of the most magnificent palaces of
Florence, and when the little slide was opened I bobbed in my head and
asked for a bottle of gingerbeer. ‘Gingebre?’ said the man inside. ‘I do
not think that is a wine of our vineyard.’ ‘Oh yes, it is,’ I said. ‘I
met an English Duke at the Palazzo Corsini yesterday, and he told me I
should get a bottle of gingerbeer here.’ ‘Ah!’ said the ancient
servitor, ‘then I will ask the Marquis, my master.’ He was absent for a
few minutes, and presently returned with the Marquis, an exquisitely
polite old gentleman of the good old school. ‘I fear, illustrious
stranger, you have made a mistake. I know not the name of “gingerbeer”
as a wine of the country. Certainly I grow it not myself.’ I apologized
profusely, and withdrew my head from the aperture just in time to allow
an old lady who was waiting, to bob hers in, and ask for two soldis’
worth of the Marquis’s best olive-oil, which she would take in the
coffee-cup she held in her hand. And she took it.