ITALIAN DAYS: I
My first frequent companionship with my father began in Italy, when I
was seven years old. We entered Rome after a long, wet, cold carriage
journey that would have disillusionized a Dore. As we jolted along,
my mother held me in her arms, while I slept as much as I could; and
when I could not, I blessed the patient, weary bosom upon which I lay
exhausted. It was a solemn-faced load of Americans which shook and
shivered into the city of memories that night. In "Monte Beni," as he
preferred to call "The Marble Faun," my father speaks of Rome with
mingled contempt for its discomforts and delighted heartiness for its
outshining fascinations. "The desolation of her ruin" does not prevent
her from being "more intimately our home than even the spot where we
were born." A ruin or a picture could not satisfy his heart, which
accepted no yoke less strong than spiritual power. Rome supplies the
most telling evidence of human failure, because she is the theatre of
the greatest human effort, both in the ranks of Satan and of God; and
she visibly mourns her sins of mistake at the feet of spiritual
victory, Saints Peter and Paul. (As a Catholic, I could hardly win the
respect of the gentle reader if I were so un-American as to fear to
stand by my belief.) And while the observer in Rome may well feel sad
in the midst of reminders of the enormous sins of the past, there is
an uplifting, for the soul eager to perceive the truth, in all her
assurances of that mercy which is the cause of religion. If the Holy
See was established in Rome because it was the city where the worst
wickedness upon earth, because the most intelligent, was to be found,
we may conclude that the old emperors, stormy and grotesque, are
responsible for its melancholy "atmosphere of sin," to which Hilda
alludes as a condition of the whole planet; and not the popes who have
prayed in Rome, nor the people who believe there. In printed remarks
about Italy both my parents say that she most reminds them of what is
highest.
But, whether chilly or warm, the Eternal City did not at once make a
conquest of my father's allegiance, though before he bade it farewell,
it had painted itself upon his mind as sometimes the sunniest and most
splendid habitation for a populace, that he knew. In the spring my
sister wrote:--
"We are having perfectly splendid weather now,--unclouded Italian
skies, blazing sun, everything warm and glorious. But the sky is too
blue, the sun is too blazing, everything is too vivid. Often I long
for the more cloudy skies and peace of that dear, beautiful England.
Rome makes us all languid. We have to pay a fearful price for the
supreme enjoyment there is in standing on the very spots made
interesting by poetry or by prose, imagination, or (which is still
more absorbing) truth. Sometimes I wish there had never been anything
done or written in the world! My father and I seem to feel in this way
more than the rest. We agree about Rome as we did about England."
In the course of the winter my mother had written of our chilly
reception thus:--
NO. 37 VIA PORTA PINCIANA, 2D PLANO,
PALAZZO LAIIAZANI, ROME.
MY DEAR ELIZABETH,--I could not have believed I could be in Rome a day
without announcing it to you in words and expressions which would have
the effect at least of the bell of St. Peter's or the cannon of St.
Angelo. . . . But my soul has been iced over, as well as the hitherto
flowing fountains of the Piazza, di San Pietro. I have not been able
to expand like corn and melons under a summer sun. Nipped have been
all my blossoming hopes and enthusiasms, and my hands have been too
numb to hold a pen. Added to this, Mr. Hawthorne has had the severest
cold he ever had, because bright, keen cold he cannot bear so well as
damp; and .Rosebud has not been well since she entered the city. It is
colder than for twenty years before. We find it enormously expensive
to live in Rome; our apartment is twelve hundred a year.
But I am in Rome, Rome, Rome! I have stood in the Forum and beneath
the Arch of Titus, at the end of the Sacra Via. I have wandered about
the Coliseum, the stupendous grandeur of which equals my dream and
hope. I have seen the sun kindling the open courts of the Temple of
Peace, where Sarah Clarke said, years ago, that my children would some
time play. (It is now called Constantine's Basilica.) I have climbed
the Capitoline and stood before the Capitol, by the side of the
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius,--the finest in the world [my
father calls it "the most majestic representation of kingly character
that ever the world has seen "],--once in front' of the Arch of
Septimius Severus. I have been into the Pantheon, whose sublime
portico quietly rises out of the region of criticism into its own
sphere,--a fit entrance to the temple of all the gods. How wise was
the wise and tact-gifted Augustus to reject the homage of Agrippa, who
built it for his apotheosis, and to dedicate it to the immortal gods!
It is now dedicated to the Immortal God.
And I have been to St. Peter's! There alone in Rome is perpetual
summer. You have heard of the wonderful atmosphere of this world of a
basilica. It would seem to be warmed by the ardent soul of Peter, or
by the breath of prayer from innumerable saints. One drops the
hermetical seal of a curtain behind, upon entering, and behold, with
the world is also shut out the bitter cold, and one is folded, as it
were, in a soft mantle of down, as if angels wrapped their wings about
us. I expanded at once under the invisible sun. There have been
moments when I have felt the spell of Rome, but every one says here
that it dawns gradually upon the mind. It would not have been so with
me, I am convinced, if I had been warm. Who ever heard of an icicle
glowing with emotion? What is Rome to a frozen clod? . . .
We were not able to seize upon the choicest luxuries of living, as our
accommodations, even such as they were, proved to be expensive enough
to hamper us. We had all expected to be blissful in Italy, and so the
inartistic and inhuman accessories of life were harder to bear there
than elsewhere. I remember a perpetual rice pudding (sent in the tin
ten-story edifices which caterers supply laden with food), of which
the almost daily sight maddened us, and threw us into a Burton's
melancholy of silence, for nothing could prevent it from appearing. We
all know what such simple despairs can do, and, by concerted movement,
they can make Rome tame. If we had sustained ourselves on milk, like
Romulus and Remus, and dressed in Russian furs, we might have had
fewer vicissitudes in the midst of the classic wonders on all sides.
But spring was faithful, and at its return we began to enjoy the
scenes of most note within and beyond the walls: the gleaming ruins,
and fresh, uncontaminated daisies that trustfully throve beside some
of them; the little fountains, with their one-legged or flat-nosed
statues strutting ineffectually above them,--fountains either dry as
dead revelers or tinkling a pathetic sob into a stone trough; the open
views where the colors of sunlit marble and the motions of dancing
light surrounded the peasants who sprang up from the ground like
belated actors in a drama we only keep with us out of childish
delight.
My father had never looked so serious as he did now, and he was more
slim than in England. He impressed me as permeated by an atmosphere of
perception. A magnetic current of sympathy with the city rendered him
contemplative and absorbent as a cloud. He was everywhere, but only
looked in silence, so far as I was aware. "The Marble Faun" shows what
he thought in sentences that reveal, like mineral specimens, strata of
ideas stretching far beyond the confines of the novel. While he
observed Rome, as he frequently mentions, he felt the sadness of the
problems of the race which there were brought to a focus. Yet it is a
singular fact that, notwithstanding this regret for her human pathos,
perhaps the best book he ever wrote was created among the suggestive
qualities of this haven of faith,--the book which inculcates the most
sterling hope of any of his works. I saw in my walks with him how much
he enjoyed the salable treasures and humble diversions of the
thoroughfare, as his readers have always perceived. Ingenuous
simplicity, freedom from self-consciousness and whitewash, frank
selfishness on a plane so humble that it can do little harm,--all this
is amusing and restful after long hours with transcendental folk. In
regard to the tenets of these, my mother writes to her sister:--
"I am just on the point of declaring that I hate transcendentalism,
because it is full of immoderate dicta which would disorganize
society, and should never be uttered, in my opinion, except behind the
veil, among priests. As to displaying before the great, innocent eyes
of a girl like Una all the horror of a slave-auction--a convent is
better than such untimely revelations. Now, you must not think I am a
Catholic. I know the Lord withholds the pure from seeing what they
should not--blessed be the Lord!--but I will not be the one to put
what should not be seen before the eyes of the pure."
My father looked in good spirits as we moved along. When he trafficked
with an Italian fruit-vender, and put a few big hot chestnuts into his
pocket, with a smile for me, I (who found his smile the greatest joy
in the world) was persuaded that really fine things were being done.
The slender copper piece which was all-sufficient for the transaction
not only thrilled the huckster with delight, but became precious to me
as my father's supple, broad fingers held it, dark, thin, small, in a
respectful manner. He caressed it for a moment with his large
thumb,--he who was liberal as nature in June,--and when the
fruit-vender was wrought up to the proper point of ecstasy he was
allowed to receive the money, which he did with a smile of Italian
gracefulness and sparkle, while my father looked conscious of the
mirthfulness of the situation with as lofty a manner as you please. As
for the peasant women we met, under their little light-stands of
head-drapery, they were easily comprehensible, and expressed without a
shadow of reserve their vanity and tiger blood by an openly proud
smile and a swing of the brilliantly striped skirt. The handsomest men
and women possible, elaborately dressed, shone beside tiers of the
sweetest bunches of pale violets, or a solitary boy, so beautiful that
his human splendor scintillated, small as he was, sat in the pose and
apparel that the world knows through pictures, and which pigment can
never well render any more than it can catch the power of a sunset or
an American autumn. The marble-shops were very pleasant places. A
whirring sound lulled the senses into dreamy receptiveness, as the
stone wheel heavily turned with soft swiftness, giving the impression
that here hard matter was controlled to a nicety by airy forces; and a
fragrance floated from the wet marble lather, while the polishing of
our newly picked up mementos from the ruins went on, which was as
subtle as that of flowers. A man or two, hoary with marble-dust and
ennobled by the "bloom" of it, stood tall and sad about the wheel, and
we handed to these refined creatures our treasures of giallo-antico
and porphyry and other marbles picked up "for remembrance" (and no
doubt once pressed by a Caesar's foot or met by a Caesar's glance), in
order to observe the fresh color leap to the surface,--yellow, red,
black, or green.
Far more were we thrilled at finding scraps of iridescent glass
lachrymals, containing all the glories of Persian magnificence, while
pathetically hinting of the tears of a Roman woman (precious only to
herself, whatever her flatterers might aver) two thousand years ago.
The heart of Rome was acknowledged to be St. Peter's, and its pulse
the Pope. The most striking effect the Holy Father produced upon me,
standing at gaze before him with my parents, was when he appeared, in
Holy Week, high up in the balcony before the mountainous dome, looking
off over the great multitude of people gathered to receive his
blessing. Those eyes of his carried expression a long way, and he
looked most kingly, though unlike other kings. He was clothed in white
not whiter than his wonderful pallor. My father implies in a remark
that Pio Nono impressed him by a becoming sincerity of countenance,
and this was so entirely my infantile opinion that I became eloquent
about the Pope, and was rewarded by a gift from my mother of a little
medallion of him and a gold scudo with an excellent likeness thereon,
both always tenderly reverenced by me.
Going to the Pincian Hill on Sunday afternoons, when my father quite
regularly made me his companion, was the event of my week which
entertained me best of all. To play a simple game of stones on one of
the gray benches in the late afternoon sunshine, with him for
courteous opponent, was to feel my eyes, lips, hands, all my being,
glow with the fullest human happiness. When he threw down a pebble
upon one of the squares which he had marked with chalk, I was
enchanted. When one game was finished, I trembled lest he would not go
on with another. He was never fatigued or annoyed--outwardly. He had
as much control over the man we saw in him as a sentinel on duty.
Therefore he proceeded with the tossing of pebbles, genially though
quietly, not exhibiting the least reluctance, and uttering a few
amused sounds, like mellow wood-notes. Between the buxom groups of
luxuriant foliage the great stream of fashion rolled by in carriages,
the music of the well-trained band pealing forth upon the breeze; and
in the tinted distance, beyond the wall of the high-perched garden
which surrounded us, the sunset shook out its pennons. Through the
glinting bustle of the crowd and the richness of nature my father
peacefully breathed, in half-withdrawn brooding, either pursuing our
pebble warfare with kindest stateliness, or strolling beside lovely
plots of shadowed grass, fragrant from lofty trees of box. An element
by no means slight in the rejoicing of my mind, when I was with him of
a Sunday afternoon, was his cigar, which he puffed at very
deliberately, as if smoking were a rite. The aroma was wonderful. The
classicism which followed my parents about in everything of course
connected itself with my father's chief luxury, in the form of a
bronze match-box, given him in Rome by my sister, upon which an autumn
scene of harvest figures was modeled with Greek elegance, and to this
we turned our eyes admiringly during the lighting of the cigar. There
was a hunter returning to a home draped with the grape, bringing still
more of that fruit, and a rabbit and bird, hung upon a pole, while his
wife and child were ever so comfortably disposed upon the threshold,
and the hunting-dog affectionately lapped the young matron's hand. An
autumn was also depicted on the reverse, presumably a year earlier
than the one just described, where two lovers stood among sheaves of
wheat, their sickles in hand, and the youth held up a bunch of grapes
which the maiden, down-looking, gently raised her arm to receive. At
last it would grow too late to play another game, and my father's
darkly clothed form would be drawn up, and his strongly beautiful face
lifted ominously. Before leaving the hill we went to look over the
parapet to the west, where stood, according to "Monte Beni," "the
grandest edifice ever built by man, painted against God's loveliest
sky." Quoit-players were no doubt rolling their disks upon the road
below us; and on the very first glance it almost always happened that
a springing, vaporous-looking quoit would appear without one's seeing
the man whose hand had sent it on its way. It was a refined pastime,
immortalized by the Discobolus, which, however, cannot give the charm
of the whirling quoit.
The entries in my mother's diary so abound in names and persons met
day by day, names both unknown to the world and familiar to it, that
it is hard to understand how there was time for sightseeing or
illness, or the reading which was kept up. The wife of a
distinguished sculptor in Rorffe afterwards said in a letter that this
year of 1859 was remarkably for its crowd of tourists, and added that
1860 proved very quiet. It does not sound quiet to hear that she had
just enjoyed a horseback ride with Mr. Browning; but Americans and
English certainly did have rich enjoyment in Italy in those days, and
grew exacting. The jottings of the diary stir the imagination quite
pleasantly, beginning January 16, 1859: "Mr. Browning called to visit
us. Delightful visit. I read Charlotte Bronte for the second
time.--Mrs. Story sent a note to my husband to invite him to tea [my
mother being housed with my sick sister] with Mr. Browning.--Mr.
Horatio Bridge spent the evening.--Read 'Frederick the Great.'--Mr.
Motley called, and brought 'Paradise Lost' for Una.--I went to the
sunny Corso with my husband, who is far from well. Mrs. Story asks us
to dine with Mr. de Vere, Lady William Russell, Mr. Alison, Mr.
Browning, and other interesting people.--Lovely turquoise day. I
prepared Julian's Carnival dress. Went to the Hoars' balcony, and the
Conservatori passed in gorgeous array. The George Joneses took Una to
drive in the Corso, and the Prince of Wales threw her a bouquet from
his balcony. I read the 'Howadji in Syria' as I sat at the Hoars'
window.--I had a delightful visit from E. Hoar. She saw the Pope
yesterday, and he blessed her. Mrs. Story looked very pretty in a
carriage at the Carnival, with a hat trimmed with a wreath of violets.
--Mr. and Mrs. Story called for us to go to the Doria Villa. We had a
glorious excursion, finding rainbow anemones and seeing wonderful
views. Mr. Christopher Cranch joined us.--I went to the Vatican for
the first time this year, with E. Hoar. We met there Mr. Hawthorne
escorting Mrs. Pierce and Miss Vandervoort. We went through all the
miles of sculpture.--Una and I called on Mrs. Pierce, Mrs. Browning,
Mrs. Pickman, Mrs. Hoar, and met Mrs. Motley. In the afternoon I went
with E. Hoar to Mr. Story's studio. Mrs. Pickman called on me.--Mr.
Hawthorne and I and Julian went to call on Miss Cushman, and to Mr.
Page's studio. Mr. Motley had made a long call early in the day, and
teased Mr. Hawthorne to dine with him, to meet Lord Spencer's
son.--Mrs. Story brought Una the first lilies-of-the-valley that have
bloomed in Rome this year. I went with Rose to Trinita dei Monti to
hear the nuns sing vespers. Coming out, I met' Miss Harriet
Hosmer.--Superb day. I went with my husband to call at Miss Hosmer's
studio, and met the Hon. Mr. Cowper, who stopped to talk. Mr. Browning
darted upon us across the Piazza., glowing with cordiality. Miss
Hosmer could not admit us, because she was modeling Lady Mordaunt's
nose.--Governor Seymour called.--I took Rose to a window in the
Carnival. It was a mad, merry time. A gentleman tossed me a beautiful
bouquet and a bonbon.--Julian and I went to the Albani Villa with
Mrs. Ward and Mr. Charles Sumner. A charming time.--In the twilight
I went with Mr. Hawthorne to the Coliseum and the Forum. It grew to
lovely moonlight.--After dinner I went to the Pincian gardens with
Mr. Hawthorne and Julian. It was moonlight.--Mr. Sumner made a long
call."
Among the friends much with us was the astronomer, Miss Maria
Mitchell, whom we had long known intimately. She smiled blissfully in
Rome, as if really visiting a constellation; flashing her eyes with
silent laughter, and curling her soft, full, splendid lips with
fascinating expressions of satisfaction. I loved her for this, but
principally because, while with us in Paris, it was she who had with
delicious comradeship introduced me to that perfection of all
infantile taste--French gingerbread, warm (on an outdoor counter) with
the sunshine of the skies! She had the long list of churches and ruins
and pictures catalogued upon her efficient tongue, and she and my
mother ran together like sisters to see the sights of beauty and
reminiscence; neither of them ever tired, and never disappointed. Her
voice was richly mellow, like my father's, and her wit was the merry
spray of deep waves of thought. The sculptor, Miss Harriet Hosmer, it
was easy to note, charmed the romancer. She was cheerfulness itself,
touched off with a jaunty cap. Her smile I remember as one of those
very precious gleams that make us forget everything but the present
moment. She could be wittily gay; but there was plenty of brain power
behind the clever mot, as immensities are at the source of the
sun-ray. There was a blessing in the presence of Miss Elizabeth Hoar,
once engaged to that beloved brother of Mr. Emerson whom death had
taken. She seemed to me (I plead guilty to fancifulness) like a tall,
speaking monument, composed of diamonds and pearls. She talked a
great deal, gently, with a penetrating sweetness of voice, and looking
somewhat down, as those do who have just received the news of a bitter
sorrow. She knew everything that was fine in history and poetry and
art; and to be near her, and to catch at moments the clear unfaltering
challenge of her sad but brave eyes, was to live a little nobler one's
self.
I will give here two letters from this friend, showing her strength of
sympathy and tenderness:--
FLORENCE, May.
DEAR SOPHIA,--We are here after a journey entirely prosperous in every
respect, driving through a country as lovely as it could be. Such
wreaths of hawthorn, such hanging tassels of laburnum, such masses of
delicate purple flowers draping the rocks and carpeting every broken
ground,--golden broom on every hillside, scarlet poppies illuminating
every field of grain, and the richest crimson clover, like endless
fields of strawberries,--I never saw before. We have had just clouds
enough to make beautiful shadows on the mountains. How I wish you and
Una could be floated on a cloud over the charming region. I thought of
the dear child at every new flower, but not without a pang; for my
only disappointment in leaving Rome (no, the other was that I had not
seen Mr. Browning) was that I could not send Una some flowers the
morning of our departure. I had set my heart upon it, but could not
find any pretty enough. Every fresh spray of hawthorn on our journey
renewed the prick of my disappointment. We should have liked to take
Julian along with us as our traveling artist, to lay up the flowers
for us in imperishable colors [he already painted flowers remarkably];
we were reminded of him very often. I saw dear little Rose's patron,
St. Rosa, in the Staffa Gallery at Perugia,--very beautiful. I have
much to thank you for, dear Sophia, in all sorts of aid and sympathy.
Very charming is the recollection of every meeting with you, from the
first lovely Sunday at the Villa Doria; and then the day when we
visited the willful Queen of Egypt as she sat waiting to be made again
immortal in marble [in Story's studio]. Those days in Rome were made
brighter to me by the sunshine of kindness and a hearty sympathy,
beginning with the day which will be an exhilarating thought to me as
long as I live, when you showed me St. Peter's Piazza under the blue
sky; and then we passed the wall of the Capitol, and looked down upon
ancient Rome. It was a wonderful day, Sophia, and I shall never forget
that you received me in that city. I hope you will have many joyous
days before you leave Europe, so that you may all forget the many
anxieties of the last three months. I wish to send my love to Mrs.
Story. I enjoy the thought of her, and Mr. Story, very much. I have
always loved them for their thorough kindness to Margaret [Fuller
d'Ossoli], and now I have seen them I love them for themselves. Love
and constant remembrance to Una and dear little Rose. You don't know
how hard it is not to know about you, day by day. [Later.] I had your
other letter in Genoa, and was rejoiced to get it. I had driven with
Lizzie and Mr. May the very day before from Villeneuve to Montreux to
call upon you, the people at Hotel Byron assuring us you were to spend
a month at Montreux. However, the news from Una was precious, for it
was the first intelligence we had had since we left the dear child in
bed in Rome, with that trickish fever playing about her. I did not
receive the note from Mr. Hawthorne. I am almost glad you are not
going to take her back into the low ground at Concord this autumn. . . .
Many friends were in Rome, both as residents and as tourists, and in
all my after-life our two winters there were the richest of memories,
in regard both to personalities and exquisite objects, and to scenes
of artistic charm. Yet, as I have said elsewhere, if the tall, slender
figure of my father were not at hand, even my mother's constantly
cheering presence and a talkative group of people could not warm the
imagination quite enough. He says, in speaking of the Carnival, "For
my part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could
have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and riotously as any
urchin there." These few words explain his magnetism. The decorous
pretense of his observant calm could not make us forget the bursts of
mirth and vigorous abandon which now and then revealed the flame of
unstinted life in his heart. And I, watching constantly as I did, saw
a riotous throw of the confetti, a mirthful smile of Carnival spirits,
when my father was radiant for a few moments with a youth's, a faun's
merriment.
Having quoted a letter of my sister's which expresses his opinion and
her own of the irksomeness of sight-seeing, however heroic the spot, I
will add this little paragraph from the next winter's correspondence,
when, though only fifteen, she wrote very well of Europe and America,
concluding: "It shows you have not lived in Europe, dear aunt, and do
not know what it is to breathe day after day the atmosphere of art,
that you can think of our being satisfied. We have seen
satisfactorily, but the longer we stay, the higher and deeper is our
enjoyment, and the more are our minds fitted to understand and admire,
and the nearer do our souls approach in thought and imagination to
that fount of glory and beauty, from which the old artists drew so
freely."
In art, Catholicity was utterly bowed down to by my relatives and
their friends, because without it this great art would not have been.
For, as scientists and dreamers have proved that gold cannot be made
until we know as much as the earth, so uninspired artists have proved
that religious art can only grow under conditions known solely to the
heart that is Catholic. Every religious school of art which has
departed from imitation of the Old Masters has forfeited holiness in
depicting the Holy Family.
My mother's letters describing my sister's illness with Roman fever
recall the many persons of interest whom we saw. She writes:
"Carriages were constantly driving to the door with inquiries. People
were always coming. Even dear Mrs. Browning, who almost never goes
upstairs, came the moment she heard. She was like an angel. I saw her
but a moment, but the clasp of her hand was electric, and her voice
penetrated my heart. Mrs. Ward, also usually unable to go upstairs,
came every day for five days. One day there seemed a cloud of good
spirits in the drawing-room, Mrs. Ward, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Story,
and so on, all standing and waiting. Magnificent flowers were always
coming, baskets and bouquets, which were presented with tearful eyes.
The American minister constantly called. Mr. Aubrey de Vere came.
Every one who had seen Una in society or anywhere came to ask. Mrs.
Story came three times in one day to talk about a consultation. The
doctor wished all the food prepared exactly after his prescription,
and would accept no one's dishes. 'Whose broth is this?' 'This is
Mrs. Browning's.' 'Then tell Mrs. Browning to write her poesies, and
not to meddle with my broths for my patient!' 'Whose jelly is this?'
'Mrs. Story's.' 'I wish Mrs. Story would help her husband to model his
statues, and not try to feed Miss Una!' General Pierce came three
times a day. I think I owe to him, almost, my husband's life. He was
divinely tender, sweet, sympathizing, and helpful." She adds: "No one
shared my nursing, because Una wanted my touch and voice; and she was
not obliged to tell me what she wanted. For days, she only opened her
eyes long enough to see if I were there. For thirty days and nights I
did not go to bed; or sleep, except in the morning in a chair, while
Miss Shepard watched for an hour or so. Una had intervals of
brightness and perfect consciousness. In one of these, she tied up a
bouquet of flowers with hands that almost shook the flowers to pieces
with their trembling, to send them to a friend who was ill. She raised
herself upon her elbow, and wrote with a pencil a graceful note,
quoting her father's 'Wonder-Book' in reference to the bouquet."
I went with my father and mother to several painters' and sculptors'
studios (besides innumerable visits to churches and galleries), all
filling my mind with unfailing riches of memory. I hope I shall be
pardoned for giving the general effect of this companionship and
sight-seeing upon many years of reflection in a strain that is
autobiographical. The studio which I best remember was Mr.
Thompson's, he who had painted the portrait of my father used in the
editions of "Twice-Told Tales." The room was very large, but not very
high, and it had a great deal of shadow in it. I did not think he
painted as well as Raphael; but I delighted in the smell of his
pigments, which were intensely fragrant. I thought his still moist
canvas upon the easel, of a little Peter and a well-groomed angel,
infinitely amusing. It was history scrubbed, and rather reduced in
size. I was half appalled, half fascinated, by my temerity in having
such frivolous private opinions of a picture that my mother and father
felt the excellence of with reverence and praise. A minute portrait of
me was painted by Mr. Thompson; one for which I did not find it at all
amusing to sit, as I had to occupy a stiff chair (I think it was even
a high stool) without any of the family to keep me in heart, although
I had almost never been left with friends in that way, and although I
was by that time a perfect recluse in disposition. So I was under the
impression that I was being punished by the invisible powers, which I
was conscious of eminently deserving. The small painting shows this
idea of Purgatorial arrest by a clever touch here and there, without
depicting a frown or positive gloom. The patronizing demeanor of an
artist at work upon a portrait, which we all know so well,--the
inevitable effect of his faith in himself, the very breath of artistic
endeavor, without which he would lounge through life asking, "Of what
use is it to attempt?"--made me furious, in my naughty, secret mind. I
was not accustomed to being patronized; my mother herself had never
given me a command. Besides, I was out of temper to think that my
quietly observant father had stood in admiration before that picture
of the liberating of St. Peter, of which I wearied, liking it so
cordially that he had uttered his conclusive, deeply sympathetic
"Yes," when my mother gave voice to her praise; whereas I had not had
the grace to glow, but voted all the pictures bores in a lump. Mr.
Thompson, below the average size, and harmlessly handsome, always wore
the prevailing gleam of a smile that showed chiefly at the eyes,
offset by a nimbus of gray and black hair.
I wondered, even at seven years of age, how sculptors in the flesh
could come and carve original conceptions among the unspeakably
successful attempts of those who were already thinnest dust, yet whose
names have so much personality in them that a sovereign presence fills
the place where they are spoken,--sculptors whose statues step as it
were unexpectedly (themselves surprised) into sight, with none of the
avoirdupois of later stone-work; that heaviness which, in some of the
finest of these modern figures, causes them to pause involuntarily, as
if snowed upon. The high degree of smoothness of the old statues, as
well as their mellowed whiteness, may give life; added to that
wonderful deep cutting in all crevices and detail of nature, such as
gives, in literature, the life to Balzac's endlessly studied facts of
situation. The sugary porousness of much of the inferior marble of
to-day arrests the eye, and troubles it. Story's Cleopatra is smooth,
close-fibred as glass, and the snowstorm has not been allowed to drift
upon the folds of her robe, the interstices of her modeling. She, with
a few others of still later date, comes near to the old art, which has
as much possibility for our imaginative survey as the plot of "The
Marble Faun," so marvelously, so intricately, so unslavishly finished.
In looking at the Dying Gladiator, we wonder whether he has already
passed on from mastering the thought of his approaching death to the
remembrance of his wife and children; or whether upon the agony of the
physical pang and the insult to courage, which his wound has brought
him to endure, is yet to break the pathos of a hero's regret for the
relinquished sweetness of love and home.
The Marble Faun suggests the problem as to whether he has for an
instant stopped laughing, or will not immediately laugh; and what has
a little while ago, or will suddenly cause, the animal fury of
gladness to turn this jocund athlete into a dancing, bewilderingly
enticing companion, chiming with guffaws and songs. Cleopatra's
watchful melancholy partook also of classic momentariness, and I hoped
she would spring to her feet. I liked very much to go to Mr. Story's
studio, and I thought that for so slight a figure he was remarkably
fearless.
The arches of triumph, which my mother studied reverently, seemed to
me too premeditated and unnecessary; although an architect could no
doubt have explained why, even to the present day, the little door for
the little cat should supplement the big door of all space, which one
would at first take to be a hero's best environment. Not thus
unnecessary appeared the Coliseum; haunted by wild beasts, especially
lions, leaping (I imagined) in hobgoblin array from the cavernous
entrances which were pointed out to me as connected in the days of
triumphant tyranny with their donjons. Many tender thoughts filled my
reflections as I saw pilgrims visiting, and kneeling before, the black
cross in the centre, and the altars around the walls. I delighted to
muse within the circular ruin, upon whose upper rim, jagged but
sunlit, delicate vegetation found a repentant welcome. The circular
form of the ruin is full of eloquence, as one approaches from the
Forum. What would be grace in a smaller structure is tragedy in so
immense a sweep, which melts into vagueness, or comes mountainously
upon you, or swirls before you in a retreating curve that figures the
never-changing change of eternity.
The tomb of Cecilia Metella, and other successive tombs of the Appian
Way beyond the walls, gave me my first impression of death that really
was death. There could be, I reflected, looking at the sepulchres of
these old Romans, no pretty story about the poor folk having gone to
heaven comfortably from their apparent bodies. Here were the ashes of
them, after a thousand years, in contemptible little urns; and they
were expected to enjoy, in that much impaired state, sundry rusty
bric-a-brac, dolls, and tear-vials of spookish iridescence, until, in
the vast lapse of time, even a ghost must have got tired. Unaided by
the right comment, I was dragged down considerably by those pagan
tombs; and as an antidote, the unexplained catacombs were not
sufficiently elevating. I did not read the signs of the subterranean
churches aright, any more than the uncultivated Yankee reads aright an
Egyptian portraiture. Monkish skulls and other unburied bones, seen by
the light of moccoletti, were to me nothing but forms of folly. The
abounding life of Catholicity was hardly understood by our party,
which for some reason seemed inclined to impute the most death to the
faith which has the most form. We did not gather how this abounding
life can afford, though making more of our little fleshly sojourn than
any other patron, to compare a skull with the life of the spirit, and
relegate it to ornamentation and symbol.
Through the streets of Rome trotted in brown garb and great
unloveliness a frequent monk, brave and true; and each of these, I was
led by the feminine members of the family, to regard as a probable
demon, eager for my intellectual blood. A fairer sight were the
Penitents, in neat buff clothes of monastic outline, their faces
covered with their hoods, whose points rose overhead like church
steeples, two holes permitting the eyes to peep with beetle
glistenings upon you. They went hurryingly along, called from their
worldly affairs; and my mother imparted to me her belief that they
were somewhat free of superstition because undoubtedly clean.
Sometimes processions of them, chanting, came slowly through the city,
bearing the dead to burial. I did not know, then, that the chanting
was the voicing of good, honest, Bible-derived prayers; I thought it
was child's play, useless and fascinating. In the churches the
chanting monks and boys impressed me differently. Who does not feel,
without a word to reveal the fact, the wondrous virtue of Catholic
religious observance in the churches? The holiness of these regions
sent through me waves of peace. I stepped softly past the old men and
women who knelt upon the pavements, and gazed longingly upon their
simpler spiritual plane; I drew back reluctantly from the only garden
where the Cross is planted in visible, reverential substance. For the
year ensuing this life in Rome, I entertained the family with dramatic
imitations of religious chants, grumbling out at sundown the low,
ominous echoings of the priests, answered by the treble, rapid and
trustful, of the little choristers, gladly picturing to myself as I
did so the winding processions in St. Peter's.
In the square beneath our windows, during Lent, booths were set, and
countless flat pancake-looking pieces of dough were caught up by a
white-capped and aproned cook, with a long-handled spoon, and fried in
olive oil placed in a caldron at the booth's door, to be served to
passers in the twinkling of an eye. I watched this process until I
grew to regard Lent as a tiresome custom. Having tested the cakes, I
found them to be indistinct in taste, for all their pretty buff tint,
and the dexterous twist of the cook's wrist as he dumped them and
picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should have been sharply
interested in the idea of becoming a Catholic, but their entire
absence of relish convinced me that the Italians lacked mental grasp
and salvation at a single swoop: and this in spite of the fact that
one of my mother's most valued friends, Mrs. Ward, had lately joined
the Church. It was her husband who said of her, "Whatever church has
Anna, has St. Anna!" Perhaps the most exquisite speech ever uttered by
a husband.
Before this serious season of pancakes, which was all Lent was to me
at the time of which I speak, the Carnival had rushed upon my sight,
carrying all our friends through its whirlpool. Every gay cloth,
shawl, and mat that could be brought into service I had rejoiced to
see displayed upon the balconies. A narrow, winding street the Corso
seemed, being so full, and the houses so high; and a merry blue strip
of heaven far away overhead, glancing along the housetops, assured us
space still existed. Sudden descents of flowers upon one's shoulders
and lap in the carriage, from a window or a passer, or a kindly
feeling stranger in another carriage, made one start in mirthful
response. Sudden meetings with dear friends, or friends who seemed
almost dear in the cheerful hurly-burly, became part of the funny
scrimmage. At each side-street sat on a stony standing horse a
beautifully proportioned and equipped guard, in gleaming helmet and
calm demeanor.
To stand or sit at the windows beside the show was an experience full
of pleasure; and if the window was on a level with the heads of the
huddling passers, one could be in all the merriment yet not jostled;
one could easily pick out a pretty woman or a handsome man to whom to
throw a bouquet; and one could see energetic revelers, already well
supplied with flowers, reaching high windows with bouquets by means of
those wooden contrivances which can be extended or contracted at will,
and look like impracticable ladders. The fair recipient at the lattice
never failed to respond with an ecstatic smile if this Jacob's ladder
had been sufficiently long to reach her welcoming hand. Meantime,
many bunches of flowers, some large and elegant, some small and merely
gay of color, were being thrown aloft or flung downward, making
fountains and cataracts of flowers. Sometimes these bouquets fell into
the street dejectedly, upon whose pavement little ragamuffins were
always ready to pounce for them, and sell them again as fast as
possible to passers who had exhausted their supply, had become mad
with the Carnival, and caught sight, in that very moment, of some
cherished comrade to whom they wished to throw a greeting. There was
an intoxicating enjoyment in being singled out as the recipient of
fragrant flowers, sent with a laugh of the eyes; or of a handful of
sugared almonds, tossed with a gay shout of compliment. If the passer
who thus honored us was a complete stranger, meeting us for this one
moment in racial kindness, we felt the untrammeled bonhomie which, God
knows, we were expected to feel as a matter of course not for a moment
only, but for life.
Upon all these things I delighted to think and afterwards to ponder,
because I realized that they were of vital interest to the
intelligence which was to me greatest and dearest.