MARGARET'S FIRST DAYS IN ROME.--ANTIQUITIES.--VISITS TO STUDIOS AND
GALLERIES.--HER OPINIONS CONCERNING THE OLD MASTERS.--HER SYMPATHY WITH
THE PEOPLE.--POPE PIUS.--CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF
ROME.--PERUGIA.--BOLOGNA.--RAVENNA.--VENICE.--A STATE BALL ON THE GRAND
CANAL.--MILAN.--MANZONI.--THE ITALIAN LAKES.--PARMA.--SECOND VISIT TO
FLORENCE.--GRAND FESTIVAL.
In this first visit to Rome, Margaret could not avoid some touch of the
disenchantment which usually comes with the experience of what has been
long and fondly anticipated. She had soon seen all that is preserved of
"the fragments of the great time," and says: "They are many and
precious; yet is there not so much of high excellence as I looked for.
They will not float the heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the
starry night on our Western prairies." She confesses herself more
interested at this moment in the condition and prospects of the Italian
people than in works of art, ancient or modern. In spite of this, she
seems to have been diligent in visiting the galleries and studios of
Rome. Among the latter she mentions those of the sculptors Macdonald,
Wolff, Tenerani, and Gott, whose groups of young people and animals were
to her "very refreshing after the grander attempts of the present time."
She found our own Crawford just completing a bust of his beautiful wife,
which is to-day a household treasure among her relatives. Margaret
preferred his designs to those of Gibson, who was then considered the
first of English sculptors. Among American painters she found Terry,
Cranch, and Hicks at work. She saw the German Overbeck surrounded by his
pictures, looking "as if he had just stepped out of one of them,--a lay
monk, with a pious eye, and habitual morality of thought which limits
every gesture."
Among the old masters, Domenichino and Titian were those whom she
learned to appreciate only by the actual sight of their paintings. Other
artists, she thinks, may be well understood through copies and
engravings, but not these. She enjoyed the frescos of Caracci with "the
purest pleasure," tired soon of Guercino, who had been one of her
favorites, and could not like Leonardo da Vinci at all. His pictures,
she confesses, "show a wonderful deal of study and thought. I hate to
see the marks of them. I want a simple and direct expression of soul."
For the explanation of these remarks we must refer the reader back to
what Mr. Emerson has said of Margaret's idiosyncratic mode of judgment.
Raphael and Michael Angelo were already so well known to her through
engravings, that their paintings and frescos made no new impression upon
her. Not so was it with Michael's sculptures. Of his Moses she says: "It
is the only thing in Europe so far which has entirely outgone my hopes."
But the time was not one in which an enthusiast like Margaret could be
content to withdraw from living issues into the calm impersonality of
art. The popular life around her was throbbing with hopes and
excitements to which it had long been unaccustomed. Visions of a living
Italy flashed through the crevices of a stony despair which had lasted
for ages. The prospect of representative government was held out to the
Roman people, and the promise was welcomed by a torchlight procession
which streamed through the Corso like a river of fire, and surging up to
the Quirinal, where Pius then dwelt, "made it a mound of light." The
noble Greek figures were illuminated, and their calm aspect contrasted
strongly with the animated faces of the Italians. "The Pope appeared on
his balcony; the crowd shouted their _vivas_. He extended his arms; the
crowd fell on their knees and received his benediction." Margaret says
that she had never seen anything finer.
In this new enthusiasm the people agreed to celebrate the birthday of
Rome.
"A great dinner was given at the Baths of Titus, in the open air. The
company was on the grass in the area, the music at one end; boxes filled
with the handsome Roman women occupied the other sides. It was a new
thing here, this popular dinner, and the Romans greeted it in an
intoxication of hope and pleasure." Many political exiles, amnestied by
the Pope, were present. The Marquis d'Azeglio, painter, novelist, and
diplomatist, was the most noted of the speakers. From this renewed,
regenerated Rome Margaret went on to visit the northern cities of Italy,
passing through Perugia on her way to Florence. In this neighborhood she
explored the churches of Assisi, and the Etruscan tombs, then newly
discovered. She was enchanted with the beauty of Perugia, its noble
situation, and its treasures of early art. Florence interested her less
than "cities more purely Italian. The natural character is ironed out
here, and done up in a French pattern; yet there is no French vivacity,
nor Italian either." The Grand Duke was at the time in an impossible
position between his allegiance to the liberalizing Pope and his fealty
to despotic Austria. Tuscany accordingly was "glum as death" on the
outside, but glowing with dangerous fire within.
Margaret, before leaving Florence, wrote: "Florence is not like Rome. At
first I could not bear the change; yet, for the study of the fine arts,
it is a still richer place. Worlds of thought have risen in my mind;
some time you will have light from all."
Here she visited the studios of her countrymen, Horatio Greenough and
Hiram Powers, and, after a month's stay, went on to Bologna, where she
greatly appreciated the truly Italian physiognomy of the city, and
rejoiced in the record of its women artists and professors, nobly
recognized and upheld by their fellow-citizens.
Thence she went to Ravenna, prized for its curious remains, its Byronic
memories, and its famous Pineta, dear to students of Dante. After this
came a fortnight in Venice, which, like Angelo's Moses, surpassed her
utmost expectations: "There only I began to feel in its fulness Venetian
art. It can only be seen in its own atmosphere. Never had I the least
idea of what is to be seen at Venice."
The city was, in those days, a place of refuge for throneless royalty.
The Duchesse de Berri and her son had each a palace on the Grand Canal.
A queen of another sort, Taglioni, here consoled herself for the quiet
of her retirement from the stage. Margaret had the pleasure of an
outside view of the _fête_ given by the royal Duchess in commemoration
of her son's birthday. The aged Duchesse d'Angoulème came from Vienna to
be present on the occasion.
"'Twas a scene of fairy-land, the palace full of light, so that from
the canal could be seen even the pictures on the walls. Landing from the
gondolas, the elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen seemed to rise from
the water. We also saw them glide up the great stair, rustling their
plumes, and in the reception-room make and receive the customary
grimaces." A fine band of music completed the attractions of the scene.
Margaret, listening and looking hard by, "thought of the Stuarts,
Bourbons, and Bonapartes in Italy, and offered up a prayer that other
names might be added to the list, and other princes, more rich in blood
than in brain, might come to enjoy a perpetual _villeggiatura_ in
Italy."
From Venice Margaret journeyed on to Milan, stopping on the way at
Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Lago di Garda, and Brescia. These ten days of
travel opened to her long vistas of historic study, delightful to
contemplate, even if hopeless to explore fully. No ten days of her
previous life, she is sure, ever brought her so far in this direction.
In approaching Milan her thoughts reverted to the "Promessi Sposi."
Nearly asleep for a moment, she heard the sound of waters, and started
up to ask, "Is that the Adda?" She had guessed rightly. The authorship
of this classic work seemed to her to secure to its writer, Manzoni, the
right of eminent domain in and around Milan. Writing to Mr. Emerson from
this city, she says:--
"To-day, for the first time, I have seen Manzoni. Manzoni has spiritual
efficacy in his looks; his eyes still glow with delicate tenderness. His
manners are very engaging, frank, expansive; every word betokens the
habitual elevation of his thoughts, and (what _you_ care for so much) he
says distinct, good things. He lives in the house of his fathers, in the
simplest manner."
Manzoni had, at the time, somewhat displeased his neighbors by a second
marriage, scarcely considered suitable for him. Margaret, however, liked
the new wife very well, "and saw why he married her."
She found less to see in Milan than in other Italian cities, and was
glad to have there some days of quiet after the fatigues of her journey,
which had been augmented at Brescia by a brief attack of fever. She
mentions with interest the bust of the celebrated mathematician, Maria
Gaetana Agnesi, preserved in the Ambrosian Library. Among her new
acquaintances here were some young Italian radicals, "interested in
ideas."
The Italian Lakes and Switzerland came next in the order of her travels.
Her Swiss tour she calls "a little romance by itself," promising to
give, at a later date, a description of it, which we fail to find
anywhere. Returning from it, she passed a fortnight at Como, and saw
something of the Italian nobility, who pass their summers on its shores.
Here she enjoyed the society of the accomplished Marchesa Arconati
Visconti, whom she had already met in Florence, and who became to her a
constant and valued friend.
Margaret found no exaggeration in the enthusiasm expressed by poets and
artists for the scenery of this lake region. The descriptions of it
given by Goethe, Richter, and Taylor had not prepared her for what she
saw. Even Turner's pictures had fallen short of the real beauty. At
Lugano she met Lady Franklin, the widow of the Arctic explorer. She
returned to Milan by the 8th of September, in time for the great feast
of the Madonna, and finally left the city "with great regret, and hope
to return." In a letter to her brother Richard she speaks of her
radical friends there as "a circle of aspiring youth, such as I have not
known in any other city." Conspicuous among these was the young Marquis
Guerrieri Gonzaga, commended to her by "a noble soul, the quietest
sensibility, and a brilliant and ardent, though not a great, mind." This
gentleman has to-day a recognized position in Italy as a thoroughly
enlightened and intelligent liberal.
Margaret found among the Milanese, as she must have anticipated, a great
hatred of the Austrian rule, aggravated, at the time of her second
visit, by acts of foolish and useless repression. On the occasion of the
festivals attending the entry of a new archbishop, some youths (among
them possibly Margaret's radical friends) determined to sing the hymn
composed at Rome in honor of Pius IX. The consequence of this was a
charge of the armed Austrian police upon the defenceless crowd of people
present, who, giving way, were stabbed by them in the back. Margaret's
grief and indignation at this state of things made her feel keenly the
general indifference of her own travelling country-people to the
condition and fate of Italy.
"Persons who call themselves Americans,--miserable, thoughtless Esaus,
unworthy their high birthright ... absorbed at home by the lust of gain,
the love of show, abroad, they see only the equipages, the fine
clothes, the food. They have no heart for the idea, for the destiny of
our own great nation: how can they feel the spirit that is struggling in
this?"
The condition of Italy has been greatly altered for the better since
Margaret wrote these words, thirty-six years ago; but the American
traveller of this type is to-day, to all intents and purposes, what he
was then.
Margaret left Milan before the end of this September, to return to Rome.
She explored with delight the great Certosa of Pavia, and in Parma saw
the Correggio pictures, of which she says: "A wonderful beauty it is
that informs them,--not that which is the chosen food of my soul, yet a
noble beauty, and which did its message to me also." Parma and Modena
appear to her "obliged to hold their breath while their poor, ignorant
sovereigns skulk in corners, hoping to hide from the coming storm."
Before reaching Rome, Margaret made a second visit to Florence. The
liberty of the press had been recently established in Tuscany, under
happy auspices. This freedom took effect in the establishment of two
liberal papers, "Alba" ("The Dawn"), and "Patria," needless to
translate. The aim of these was to educate the youth and the working
classes, by promoting fearlessness in thought and temperance in action.
The creation of the National Guard had given confidence to the people.
Shortly before Margaret's arrival this event had been celebrated by a
grand public festival, preceded by a general reconciliation of public
and private differences, and culminating in a general embracing, and
exchanging of banners. She speaks of this as a "new great covenant of
brotherly love," in which "all was done in that beautiful poetic manner
peculiar to this artist-people." In this feast of reconciliation
resident Americans bore their part, Horatio Greenough taking the lead
among them. Margaret's ears were refreshed by continually hearing in the
streets the singing of the Roman hymn composed in honor of Pope Pius.
Wishing that her own country might send some substantial token of
sympathy to the land of its great discoverers, she suggests that a
cannon, named for one of these, would be the most fitting gift.[C] The
first letter from Rome after these days is dated Oct. 18, 1847.