had heard him speak of “picnics in the Campagna” with the Brownings--the
throb of the thought was almost painful to me as she said it. But how
delightful, she pursued, to know that I was a “Browning-lover” like
herself; and she dropped the subject of the picnics in order to quote,
to declaim some lines from “Rabbi ben Ezra” in a strangulated sing-song,
quite unlike her ordinary voice, which expressed the power of her
devotion to the poet. “Grow old along with me--” she intoned the lines
in a hoarse and quavering wail; and I broke out on her with a passionate
cry, though it remained unheard, over the depth of her misunderstanding.
If a wish could have struck her in the face she would have reeled on the
spot; but though I had struck her I couldn’t have made her understand
how completely she mistook my feeling. “It’s not _that_,” I might have
burst out, “not in the least like _that_!”--and how should she have
understood that my sudden interest in Mr. Vickery was larger and rarer
and stranger than that of a “Browning-lover,” even of one who could
intone the chant of the Rabbi from end to end. I could any day have
repeated the poems of Browning against Miss Gadge, though not on the
pitch of her wail; but I was high above _them_, I felt, when I started
at the sight of Mr. Vickery--at the gleam of the eagle-feather. I was
with the Brownings in the Campagna, suddenly _with_ them, stopping to
speak to them: don’t you understand?--I wasn’t repeating their poems,
which I have known by heart for years. It was useless to try explaining
this to Miss Gadge, and I let her quaver on while I gazed my fill at the
wonder. It was a strange excitement; and I don’t pretend to make light
of it as I now look back, or to smile distantly at the thought of the
thrill, the wild sweet breeze that ran through the imagination of the
youthful onlooker. A man who had known the Brownings--there he stood!
The company thinned at length, and I was able to approach him, though I
knew full well that the demon of shyness would prevent my questioning
him, as I longed to question, on the subject of the picnics. But first I
was held awhile longer by Miss Gadge, who on discovering that I was a
less worthy worshipper of the poet than she had imagined went on with
her study of type; and this brought her to a shabby and crumpled little
old woman who was slipping furtively about the room with a purposeful
air, talking to nobody. Miss Gadge named her, and the name was indeed a
surprise--Mrs. Vickery; she was actually the wife of our resplendent
host, but Miss Gadge threw a world of meaning into her headshake and her
delicate grimace as she referred to her. Poor Mr. Vickery, all through
his long and sumptuous career that dowdy impediment had hung to him;
and Miss Gadge, like all his admirers, was impressed by his
fidelity--though indeed you might equally call it his wife’s tenacity.
But to do her justice she kept to the background when his brilliance was
turned to the world; I could see this for myself, as she slunk among his
visitors without attempting to pretend they were hers. Look, however--at
that moment Mrs. Vickery did venture to accost one of them, a queer
untidy bundle of a woman not unlike herself, though much more colourful
and bold-eyed. “Ah yes, of course,” said Miss Gadge, nodding shrewdly,
“she talks to the reporter”; for the bold bundle, it seemed, was a
common type, a haunter of studios and public places and _some_
drawing-rooms even, where she picked up what she could for the
exceedingly vulgar and brazen newspaper that you know so well. Mrs.
Vickery fastened upon her with decision and drew her apart; and they
stood together by one of the easels--not indeed looking at the picture,
but evidently speaking of it, for Mrs. Vickery jerked her thumb at the
bandit and proceeded to explain something very minutely to the
journalist, emphasizing her points with a finger tapped on her palm. I
caught a snatch of her explanation as I passed up the room. “He _never_
asks less,” Mrs. Vickery was saying earnestly--“and he feels it should
be _known_.”
The artist was now at work again; he was mounted on his step-ladder,
that is to say, with brush poised and palette displayed, and at
intervals he gave a masterly stroke to the Alban hills. He wanted to get
“a little more nerve, more _race_, into the folds”: such was his odd
expression. The crowd had cleared, but there was a small knot of people
still clustered about him, and the braver occasionally sent a
compliment or a question bawling up at him. “Don’t talk to me of
‘movements,’” he genially cried back; “the only movement a painter
should think of is _this_”--and he twirled his brush in a narrowing
spiral till it lighted on tiptoe in a fold of the hills. “The only
movement I attend to is my own,” he exclaimed, swinging round, flashing
on us superbly; “it extends from my house to my studio and back again.
‘Don’t talk about art--show me your work--here’s mine’: that’s what I
say to the youngsters. My trade is paint, and I stick to it. An honest
tradesman before the world--that’s what an artist should make and keep
himself. Before the world, mark you!--his dreams are his own affair. Ah,
his dreams--!” Mr. Vickery paused, dropping his brush, and he smote his
hand to his eyes and held it there in a long silence. “My God, his
dreams!” he murmured. The little group of us stood in a row below him,
hushed and intent. The grand old figure of the painter towered against
the monument of his toil, and the light of a spacious age seemed to beat
on him in the hush. An old master-craftsman of the Renaissance, in his
flat velvet cap, his loose blue working-garb--a tradesman he called
himself, sturdy in his pride, but we had a glimpse of what he hid from
the world. More than a glimpse indeed; for it was a long minute, I
should think, before he turned and caught up his brush and set
boisterously to work again. As he did so I was sharply prodded from
behind--by the lady-reporter, I discovered. “What was that about
dreams?” she asked; “did he mean _art_-dreams?” She wanted to have it
clear, but Mrs. Vickery stole swiftly forward and nudged her for another
point. “You quite understand,” Mrs. Vickery distinctly whispered, “that
it mustn’t appear to come from _him_--what I told you.”
Before long the painter stepped down from his ladder, inspected the
nerve of the hills from the proper distance and declared himself
satisfied. He stretched his arms with a long happy sigh. “Well, well,
well, it’s a great game--thank the gods for it! Where should I have been
without it these fifty years? Can you imagine me without my poor old
toys, Marchesa? Colour-box and canvas--give me them and take the rest!
‘He was born, he painted, he died’--my biography; when you write it
don’t add another word.” The Marchesa looked at him with kind timid eyes
(she was a very tall and angular Englishwoman) and answered vaguely; she
spoke vaguely because it was impossible for her to reach Mr. Vickery’s
hearing with her gentle huskiness, so that it didn’t matter what she
said. The artist motioned her to a big divan and threw himself beside
her among the cushions. He talked on. “Ah, there has been some work done
in this old room for fifty years! What’s been happening all that time in
the world, Marchesa? You great ones of the earth have had your hour and
your power, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. A poor painter wishes well to
the world, always, for so long as the world is happy and busy it will
forget the poor painter--he counts on that.” Mr. Vickery’s glance roved
for a moment, taking in the circle of his listeners; his wife was still
engaged with the reporter at a distance, but she looked hastily round on
the pause and gave the reporter a little push, directing her towards the
divan. This lady hurried across and took a vacant chair by my side. Mr.
Vickery had turned again to address the Marchesa, and he proceeded to
speak with emotion of the long lonely laborious service to which a
painter is dedicated; and insensibly he lifted the veil, musing to
himself, and the light fell upon the hope, the faith, the ambition that
an artist so jealously hugs and hides. “He hugs them like a secret,”
said Mr. Vickery, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, “a secret that
he daren’t profane.” Once more there was a silence. My neighbour bent to
me anxiously: “Did he say ‘profane’?” she enquired; “why profane, do you
think?--do ask him.”
I don’t know in what form the “Roman studio-chat” appeared in the brazen
journal, but if the good lady had as much difficulty in sorting her
impressions as I had over mine she can’t have got them ready for the
following Saturday. The Marble Faun, the Brownings, the goatherd and the
bandit, and then the resplendence of Mr. Vickery--in all this there was
far too much for an easy cosy column with plenty of “cross-headings,”
even if one left out the array of the types. Mrs. Vickery by herself
might be the substance of a leisurely chat; she didn’t attend the
session of the divan--she was very busy at a writing-table in a far
corner, where she seemed to be sorting papers, making entries in books,
stowing things into drawers and locking them up with jingling keys. She
at least was forgotten by the world and obviously knew she could count
on it; but if one happened to notice her she appeared as the one small
sign of lonely concentration in the decorative staging of an artist’s
life. I watched her examining a slip of paper, biting her pen; and
presently she left her place, edged round the wall to the divan, and
unobtrusively offered the paper and the pen to one of our party, a
well-fed middle-aged man with side-whiskers. “You’ve forgotten to fill
in the date,” I heard her say softly. He filled it in, apologizing, and
as she moved away she added that it would be sent without fail to his
hotel next morning. Mrs. Vickery was attending to business, assured that
the world was happy without her; she locked up the slip of paper and
returned to the entries in her note-book. Yes, I think she would have
made the best subject of all for one of the “jottings in Rome”; but the
jotter missed it--she was preparing to ask Mr. Vickery about the
profanity that she had also inadvertently missed.
He gave her no opportunity, however, so I suppose she had to supply it
herself in the chat. I too had had my own question for Mr. Vickery, if I
could have found the courage to bawl it--or rather if I could have
framed it in any words. But I no longer desired to ask him about the
Brownings, and indeed the air of the studio wasn’t favourable to
questions, with its comfort so easy and public and its pictures so
candid and explicit. If you want the answer to any question, look round
you!--the room tells you all there is to be told. There was certainly
nothing mysterious about the pictures; with one voice they declared
themselves, repeating their frank formula with the glibness of fifty
voluble years. There was nothing questionable about the luxurious
installation of their maker--nothing, at any rate, if one noticed the
obscure corner of industry that attracted so little attention. And least
of all did the painter himself provoke any doubts that he didn’t plainly
satisfy, with his picturesque frontage turned so full to the light; the
fumbling reporter was the only person who had missed a syllable of
anything he intended to convey. And the upshot of it all was that Mr.
Vickery had endured from a blander age, bringing a waft of its goodly
confidence and ease, trailing a train of its illustrious memories--only
_not_ bringing, as it happened, the forgotten secret on which its glory
and its confidence reposed. The blander world of romantic Rome didn’t
greatly trouble itself with questions, didn’t object to a florid style,
wasn’t afraid of the telling effect of a handsome old head against the
bluest hills of Italy; but there _had_ been something else, and Mr.
Vickery didn’t chance to have brought it with him--it remained with the
Brownings, they kept it. Let me ask Miss Gadge what it was. She thinks
it must have been their _depth_, and she is ready to intone the whole of
“Abt Vogler” to bear out her opinion.
Mr. Vickery, then, survived in our thin and acid air, to meet the
assault of carping doubts from which his prime was protected; and he
hadn’t the depth (if that is Miss Gadge’s word) to keep the faith of the
romantic age as impressively as it was kept in his youth. I was glad
that he had escaped the eye of Deering, to whom I should never betray
him; Mr. Vickery, taken as he stood, too freely gave away the honour of
Roman romance to be revealed to Deering. With me it was safe; but that
sardonic observer, I am sure, wouldn’t consent to view the old survivor
as I did, as I still can, when he placed himself before the dark
tapestry with the golden light streaming full upon his patriarchal
nobility. For me he was the man who remembered the great days, who had
roamed in the Campagna with poets, and the man in whose studio the
shadows of genius were still to be seen and talked with if one loved
them. I loved them myself so dearly that I could easily give Mr. Vickery
the benefit of their presence; and in their presence one didn’t take him
as he stood, far from it, but with the lustre of his association upon
him, strange and new. Deering wouldn’t have had this fond understanding;
indeed he would have steeled himself against it with his modern doctrine
that one mustn’t read books, at any rate in Rome. “Come out of your
books,” he had exhorted me, and it wasn’t likely that he would relapse
with me into Browning at this hour--into Browning, whose influence had
been strong on him during a period of manly piety through which he had
passed in the nursery. So I kept Mr. Vickery to myself, hugging him in
secret, and I was content to ask no questions about those
eagle-feathered picnics of the past. It is much for us if we can catch
but a reflection of the light of the great days; it is enough, even
though their depth is screened from us by fifty commoner years. Mr.
Vickery shall not be exposed to the daunting chill of Deering’s irony if
I can help it.
Such was my feeling; for it seemed clear to me that Mr. Vickery had
lived on incautiously till he faced a critical age, knowing nothing of
its deadly arts, needing protection. And thereupon I noticed that he was
now conducting the Marchesa and the well-fed man on a tour round the
studio, pausing at one after another of the pictures; and I began to
perceive, following and listening, how much he required my kindly care
while he was flanked by the great ones of the earth. The well-fed man
was Lord Veneering (or something to that effect), and he explained to
the Marchesa that he was “forming a gallery” at a little place he had
bought in the country, and that Mr. Vickery had very obligingly “aided
him with expert advice”; and the Marchesa said pleasantly that one
couldn’t do better than follow Mr. Vickery’s taste, because he
possessed, what is nowadays so rare, the spirit of the great masters.
“This,” said Mr. Vickery, indicating one of the canvases, “is a little
smudge of paint that pleases me as well as anything I ever did--which
may seem odd to a layman, for it’s purely a painter’s picture. Very bad
policy, in these days, to spend time over work like that; but we paint
for each other, we of the trade--we understand.” The velvet breeches and
the sheepskin seemed to me to occupy their usual places in this picture,
but his lordship was particularly struck by their “high relief.” Mr.
Vickery didn’t hear, he was lost for a moment in contemplation. “Yes,”
he said, “a painter would understand what I’ve tried to say there.” Our
carping age, represented by the Marchesa and Lord Veneering, reverently
gazed. Mrs. Vickery, still over her papers at the table, glanced up at
her husband with a look that understood more, I incline to think, than
many painters. Certainly he was well muffled against our chilling and
doubting day; but I wonder how he would have shielded his complacency if
his wife had spoken her mind. However she was much too deep in her
entries and reckonings for a wild idea like that.
XV. VIA DELLE BOTTEGHE OSCURE
I don’t pledge myself to the actual street, twisting into the dark heart
of Rome, that led me to the great solemn palace of the Marchesa; but it
might have been the street of the Dark Shops, and I am apt to think it
may. It rambled vaguely into the gloom of all the ages and brought me to
a stand before an immense _portone_, the doorway of a family whose
classic name was inscribed in monumental lettering upon the lintel. What
a name!--it strode away across the long centuries, it wore the purple
and the tiara, it raised its shout in the bloody brawls of its faction,
it disappeared into the barbaric night; and again it emerged, plain to
see, clear in the classic day, the pride and the renown of the young
republic. It seems, as you read it over the doorway, to speak casually
of Scipio, of Cincinnatus, friends of yesterday, vanished so lately that
there has barely been time to miss them; and there may be a touch of
parade in this, but who shall prove it?--and anyhow it is a great and
glorious name, nobly time-worn from its immemorial journey, and it is
written over the dark archway of the palace for its only and sufficient
decoration. You enter accordingly under the sign of all the Roman
history that you ever read, you cross the cloistered court and mount the
broad sweep of the staircase; and you find yourself in the presence of a
shy kind elderly Englishwoman, who appears to be still wondering a
little, after many years, how she came there.
The great old family, though it still held up its head with high
dignity, seemed to have outlived its fortune in the world. The Marchesa
sat in the midst of tattered and shredded relics of splendour, mildly
boiling her kettle over a spirit-lamp; and I don’t know how she came
there, but in many years she had never succeeded in wearing her faded
state with confidence, and she looked forlorn and patient, quietly
accepting as a duty a condition of things that she didn’t understand.
She was too lady-like in her gentle manners for the worldly pride of her
majestic drawing-room; and whereas its majesty held aloof more proudly
than ever in impoverishment, she herself was too humble to reject the
little comfort and kindness of a hissing kettle and a few sociable
friends to tea. She tried to keep one hand upon their homely support
without losing touch at the same time with the palatial scorn that
watched her; and yet there was a disconnexion somehow, and she hadn’t
the power, the impudence, the adaptability, whatever it might be, to
make herself the link between the two. It may have been easier in the
Marchese’s lifetime (he was long departed); but now she had to carry her
prodigious name by herself, and the weight of the responsibility, and
her earnest sense of her duty, and her simple unassuming
inefficiency--what with it all there was much to make her look anxious
and bewildered while we sat, she and I, waiting for the kettle to boil.
She was conscious of having too much history on her hands; and yet she
couldn’t in loyalty disown it and settle comfortably down upon the style
and culture of a plain quiet Englishwoman.
The good Marchesa, she had somehow been left all alone in her august
establishment by deaths, accidents, dispositions that are obscure to me;
but the result of them was that she sat by herself in a corner of her
mighty palace, watched and terrorized from a distance by a crowd of her
kindred, offshoots in many degrees of her husband’s race--a needy Roman
throng possessing complicated claims on her, rights to bully her,
chances to torment her with conscientious scruples; and no doubt she had
found that her integrity and her perfect manners were a very poor match
for the guile of twenty centuries of Rome. “I’m expecting two English
nephews of mine this afternoon,” she said--“such dear boys”; and again,
“My sister writes to me from Devonshire to ask me if I can introduce
them to a few nice friends”: that was the tone of the Marchesa, and it
wouldn’t seem that she could offer much resistance to a band of hungry
wily Romans. It was more, however, than might be thought, for her back
was straight and firm in her duty at any cost to herself; only it all
made a puzzling task, and there was no one and nothing around to support
her, to stand by her side with encouragement and explanation, unless it
was the companionable English tea-cup in a corner of her huge old
drawing-room. It will presently appear how it is that I can read such a
tale in her shy plainness, but much of it would be legible even without
what I afterwards learned. She was an exceedingly simple soul.
The Principessa was simple too in her way, but it was not the same way.
“Why, Gertrude,” she cried, rustling down the long room from the
doorway, “don’t you look lovely to-day!” (It was the voice of New York.)
“But that’s nothing new--I don’t tell you what you don’t _very_ well
know--only it strikes me fresh every time I see you!” And indeed the
slight flush and smile that began to spread upon the Marchesa’s brownish
pallor did become her, as she rose to greet her guest. “Every time I see
you,” repeated the Principessa, brightly glancing. “There’s something
about you that’s perfection, and I shall _never_ know just what it is.
Don’t you want to tell me what it is? You needn’t be afraid--I shan’t
ever be able to copy it. I watch my little girl every day to see if she
won’t catch a look of it somehow. ‘My blessed child,’ I say to her, ‘for
mercy’s sake try to look _real_--like the Marchesa.’ But she doesn’t,
she looks like her father--and you know the sort of old Greek
plaster-cast that _he_ is, and all his family. I tell them they can’t
impose on _me_ with their grand pretences; I’ve seen the real thing. I
never meant to marry Filippo, I meant to marry a man out of an English
novel--yes, the same novel that _you_ come out of, Gertrude, whichever
it is; if I happen to find it I shall throw over Filippo and bolt--he’s
well aware of it. Don’t you want to tell me his name, Gertrude--the name
of the hero in your novel? Maltravers, Sir John Mauleverer, something
like that; you know I come here in the hope of meeting him. Some day
he’ll turn up and I shall fly into his arms; he’ll quite understand.”
The Principessa was perfect too in her way, but it was not the way of
the Marchesa. They sat side by side on a broad couch; and if the most
eloquent aspect of their contrast was on their lips and in their speech,
there was another almost as vivid that was plainly displayed at this
moment on the floor. The Marchesa’s long flat foot, with its well-worn
shoe and the hole in her grey stocking, rested on the floor beside the
Principessa’s smart little arch, with its dolphin-like plunge from heel
to toe and its exquisite casing of down-soft leather and filigree silk;
it was a lucid contrast, the two of them side by side. The Principessa
was altogether small, compact, and neater than I should have thought it
possible for any one to be neat on our rolling globe; but small and trim
as she was she managed to rustle (to rustle!--I revive the forgotten
word in an age that no longer knows the liquefaction of her clothes
whenas she goes!)--she rustled in a manner that the Marchesa, though
with so much more height to sweep from, had never dreamed of emulating.
Rustling, it may be, depended more on depth of purse than height of
person; and indeed you couldn’t notice the tip of the Principessa’s
little finger, let alone the brilliant arch of her foot, without
observing that it cost more at every breath she drew than the whole
angular person of the Marchesa through the long quiet day. The
Principessa was consummately expensive--though with a finely pointed
extremity of taste that again the Marchesa had never caught a glimpse
of; from the tilt of her big hat the little Principessa was the spirit
of expense to the click of her neat heel. And yet, yet--what is it that
she sees in the good incompetent Marchesa, sees and admires and owns to
be beyond imitation? Let me ask--why yes, most appropriately, let me ask
Miss Gilpin.