In those days--_temporibus illis_, as the historians of long-forgotten
centuries say--there used to be a very general exodus of the English
colony at Florence to the baths of Lucca during the summer months.
Almost all Italians, who can in anywise afford to do so, leave the
great cities nowadays for the seaside, even as those do who have
preceded them in the path of modern luxurious living. But at the time
of which I am writing the Florentines who did so were few, and almost
confined to that inner circle of the fashionable world which partly
lived with foreigners, and had adopted in many respects their modes
and habits. Those Italians, however, who did leave their Florence
homes in the summer, went almost all of them to Leghorn. The baths of
Lucca were an especially and almost exclusively English resort.
It was possible to induce the _vetturini_ who supplied carriages and
horses for the purpose, to do the journey to the baths in one day, but
it was a very long day, and it was necessary to get fresh horses
at Lucca. There was no good sleeping-place between Florence and
Lucca--nor indeed is there such now--and the journey from the capital
of Tuscany to that of the little Duchy of Lucca, now done by rail in
less than two hours, was quite enough for a _vetturino's_ pair of
horses. And when Lucca was reached there were still fourteen miles,
nearly all collar work, between that and the baths, so that the plan
more generally preferred was to sleep at Lucca.
The baths (well known to the ancient Romans, of course, as what warm
springs throughout Europe were not?) consisted of three settlements,
or groups of houses--as they do still, for I revisited the
well-remembered place two or three years ago. There was the "Ponte," a
considerable village gathered round the lower bridge over the Lima, at
which travellers from Florence first arrived. Here were the
assembly rooms, the reading room, the principal baths, _and_ the
gaming-tables--for in those pleasant wicked days the remote little
Lucca baths were little better than Baden subsequently and Monte Carlo
now. Only we never, to the best of my memory, suicided ourselves,
though it might happen occasionally, that some innkeeper lost the
money which ought to have gone to him, because "the bank" had got hold
of it first.
Then secondly there was the "Villa," about a mile higher up the lovely
little valley of the Lima, so called because the Duke's villa was
situated there. The Villa had more the pretension--a very little
more--of looking something like a little bit of town. At least it had
its one street paved. The ducal villa was among the woods immediately
above it.
The third little group of buildings and lodging-houses was called the
"Bagni Caldi." The hotter, and, I fancy, the original springs were
there, and it was altogether more retired and countrified, nestling
closely among the chesnut woods. The whole surrounding country indeed
is one great chesnut forest, and the various little villages, most of
them picturesque in the highest degree, which crown the summits of the
surrounding hills, are all of them closely hedged in by the chesnut
woods, which clothe the slopes to the top. These villages burrow in
what they live on like mice in a cheese, for many of the inhabitants
never taste any other than chesnut flour bread from year's end to
year's end.
The inhabitants of these hills, and indeed those of the duchy
generally, have throughout Italy the reputation of being morally about
the best population in the peninsula. Servants from the Lucchese, and
especially from the district I am here speaking of, were, and are
still, I believe, much prized. Lucca, as many readers will remember,
enjoys among all the descriptive epithets popularly given to the
different cities of Italy, that of _Lucca la industriosa_.
To us migratory English those singularly picturesque villages which
capped all the hills, and were reached by curiously ancient paved mule
paths zig-sagging up among the chesnut woods, seemed to have been
created solely for artistic and picnic purposes. The Saturnian nature
of the life lived in them may be conceived from the information once
given me by the inhabitants of one of these mountain settlements in
reply to some inquiry about the time of day, that it was always noon
there when the priest was ready for his dinner.
Such were the summer quarters of the English Florentine colony,
_temporibus illis_. There used to be, I remember, a somewhat amusingly
distinctive character attributed, of course in a general way subject
to exceptions, to the different groups of the English rusticating
world, according to the selection of their quarters in either of the
above three little settlements. The "gay" world preferred the "Ponte,"
where the gaming-tables and ballrooms were. The more strictly "proper"
people went to live at the "Villa," where the English Church service
was performed. The invalid portion of the society, or those who wished
quiet, and especially economy, sought the "Bagni Caldi."
In a general way we all desired economy, and found it. The price at
the many hotels was nine pauls a day for board and lodging, including
Tuscan wine, and was as much a fixed and invariable matter as a penny
for a penny bun. Those who wanted other wine generally brought it with
them, by virtue of a ducal ordinance which specially exempted from
duty all wine brought by English visitors to the Baths.
I dare say, if I were to pass a summer there now, I should find the
atmosphere damp, or the wine sour, or the bread heavy, or the society
heavier, or indulge in some such unreasonable and unseasonable
grumbles as the near neighbourhood of four-score years is apt to
inspire one with; but I used to find it amazingly pleasant once upon
a time. It is a singular fact, which the remembrance of those days
suggests to me, and which I recommend to the attention of Mr. Galton
and his co-investigators, that the girls were prettier then than they
are in these days, or that there were more of them! The stupid
people, who are always discovering subjective reasons for objective
observations, are as impertinent as stupid!
The Duke of Lucca used to do his utmost to make the baths attractive
and agreeable. There is no Duke of Lucca now, as all the world knows.
The Congress of Vienna put an end to him by ordaining that, when the
ducal throne of Parma should become vacant, the reigning Duke of Lucca
should succeed to it, while his duchy of Lucca should be united to
Florence. This change took place while I was still a Florentine.
The Duke of Lucca would none of the new dukedom proposed to him. He
abdicated, and his son became Duke of Parma. This son was, in truth, a
great ne'er-do-well, and very shortly got murdered in the streets of
his new capital by an offended husband.
The change was most unwelcome to Lucca, and especially to the baths,
which had thriven and prospered under the fostering care of the old
Duke. He used to pass every summer there, and give constant very
pleasant, but very little royal, balls at his villa. The Tuscan
satirist Giusti, in the celebrated little poem in which he
characterises the different reigning sovereigns in the peninsula,
calls him the Protestant Don Giovanni, and says that in the roll of
tyrants he is neither fish nor flesh.
Of the first two epithets I take it he deserved the second more than
the first. His Protestantising tendencies might, I think, have been
more accurately described as non-Catholicising. But people are
very apt to judge in this matter after the fashion of the would-be
dramatist, who, on being assured that he had no genius for tragedy,
concluded that he must therefore have one for comedy. The Duke's
Protestantism, I suspect, limited itself to, and showed itself in, his
dislike and resistance to being bothered by the rulers of neighbouring
states into bothering anybody else about their religious opinions. As
for his place in the "roll of tyrants," he was always accused of (or
praised for) liberalising ideas and tendencies, which would in those
days have very soon put an end to him and his tiny duchy, if he had
attempted to govern it in accordance with them. As matters were, his
"policy," I take it, was pretty well confined to the endeavour to make
his sovereignty as little troublesome to himself or anybody else as
possible. His subjects were _very_ lightly taxed, for his private
property rendered him perfectly independent of them as regarded his
own personal expenditure.
The "gayer" part of our little world at the baths used, as I have
said, more especially to congregate at the "Ponte," and the more
"proper" portion at the "Villa," for, as I have also said, the English
Church service was performed there, in a hired room, as I remember,
when I first went there. But a church was already in process of being
built, mainly by the exertions of a lady, who assuredly cannot be
forgotten by any one who ever knew the Baths in those days, or for
many years afterwards--Mrs. Stisted. Unlike the rest of the world she
lived neither at the "Ponte," nor at the "Villa," nor at the "Bagni
Caldi," but at "The Cottage," a little habitation on the bank of the
stream about half-way between the "Ponte" and the "Villa." Also unlike
all the rest of the world she lived there permanently, for the place
was her own, or rather the property of her husband, Colonel Stisted.
He was a long, lean, grey, faded, exceedingly mild, and perfectly
gentlemanlike old man; but she was one of the queerest people my
roving life has ever made me acquainted with.
She was the Queen of the Baths. On one occasion at the ducal villa,
his Highness, who spoke English perfectly, said as she entered the
room, "Here comes the Queen of the Baths!" "He calls me his Queen,"
said she, turning to the surrounding circle with a magnificent wave of
the hand and delightedly complacent smile. It was not exactly _that_
that the Duke had said, but he was immensely amused, as were we all,
for some days afterwards.
She was a stout old lady, with large rubicund face and big blue eyes,
surrounded by very abundant grey curls. She used to play, or profess
to play, the harp, and adopted, as she explained, a costume for the
purpose. This consisted of a loose, flowing garment, much like a
muslin surplice, which fell back and allowed the arm to be seen when
raised for performance on her favourite instrument. The arm probably
was, or had once been, a handsome one. The large grey head, and
the large blue eyes, and the drooping curls, were also raised
simultaneously, and the player looked singularly like the picture of
King David similarly employed, which I have seen as a frontispiece in
an old-fashioned prayer-book. But the specialty of the performance was
that, as all present always said, no sound whatever was heard to issue
from the instrument! "Attitude is everything," as we have heard in
connection with other matters; but with dear old Mrs. Stisted at her
harp it was absolutely and literally so to the exclusion of all else!
She and the good old colonel--he _was_ a truly good and benevolent
man, and, indeed, I believe she was a good and charitable woman,
despite her manifold absurdities and eccentricities--used to drive out
in the evening among her subjects--_her_ subjects, for neither I
nor anybody else ever heard him called King of the Baths!--in an
old-fashioned, very shabby and very high-hung phaeton, sometimes with
her niece Charlotte--an excellent creature and universal favourite--by
her side, and the colonel on the seat behind, ready to offer the
hospitality of the place by his side to any mortal so favoured by the
queen as to have received such an invitation.
The poor dear old colonel used to play the violoncello, and did at
least draw some more or less exquisite sounds from it. But one winter
they paid a visit to Rome, and the old man died there. She wished, in
accordance doubtless with his desire, to bring back his body to be
buried in the place they had inhabited for so many years, and with
which their names were so indissolubly entwined in the memory of all
who knew them--which means all the generations of nomad frequenters of
the Baths for many, many years. The Protestant burial-ground also was
recognised as _quasi_ hers, for it is attached to the church which she
was mainly instrumental in building. The colonel's body therefore was
to be brought back from Rome to be buried at Lucca Baths.
But such an enterprise was not the simplest or easiest thing in the
world. There were official difficulties in the way, ecclesiastical
difficulties and custom-house difficulties of all sorts. Where there
is a will, however, there is a way. But the way which the determined
will of the Queen of the Baths discovered for itself upon this
occasion was one which would probably have occurred to few people in
the world save herself. She hired a _vetturino_, and told him that he
was to convey a servant of hers to the baths of Lucca, who would be
in charge of goods which would occupy the entire interior of the
carriage. She then obtained, what was often accorded without much
difficulty in those days, from both the Pontifical and the Tuscan
Governments, a _lascia passare_ for the contents of the carriage as
_bonâ fide roba usata_--"used up, or second-hand goods." And under
this denomination the poor old colonel, packed in the carriage
together with his beloved violoncello, passed the gates of Rome and
the Tuscan frontier, and arrived safely at the place of his latest
destination. The servant who was employed to conduct this singular
operation did not above half like the job entrusted to him, and used
to tell afterwards how he was frightened out of his wits, and the
driver exceedingly astonished, by a sudden _pom-m-m_ from the interior
of the carriage, caused by the breaking, in consequence of some
atmospheric change, of one of the strings of the violoncello.
Malicious people used to say that the Queen of the Baths was innocent
of all deception as regarded the custom-house officials; for that
if any article was ever honestly described as _roba usata_, the old
colonel might be so designated.
The queen herself shortly followed (by another conveyance), and was
present at the interment, on which occasion she much impressed the
population by causing a superb crimson chair to be placed at the head
of the grave, in order that she might be present without standing
during the service. The chair was well known, because the queen, both
at the Baths and at Florence, was in the habit of sending it about
to the houses at which she visited, since she preferred doing so to
incurring the risk of the less satisfactory accommodation her friends
might offer her!
If space and the reader's patience would allow of it, I might gossip
on of many more reminiscences of the baths of Lucca, all pleasant or
laughable. But I must conclude by the story of a tragedy, which I will
tell, because it is, in many respects, curiously characteristic of the
time and place.
The Duke, who, as I have said, spoke English perfectly well, was
fond of surrounding himself with foreign, and specially English,
dependents. He had at the time of which I am speaking, two English--or
rather, one English and one Irish--chamberlains, and a third, who,
though a German, was, from having married an Englishwoman, and
habitually speaking English, and living with Englishmen, much the
same, at least to the Duke, as an Englishman. The Englishman was a
young man; the German an older man, and the father of a family. And
both were good, upright, and honourable men; both long since gone over
to the majority.
The Irishman, also a young man, was a bad fellow; but he was an
especial favourite with the Duke, who was strongly attached to him. It
is not necessary to print his name. He has gone to his account. But it
might nevertheless happen that the printing of my story with his name
in these pages might still give pain to somebody.
There was also that year an extremely handsome and attractive lady, a
widow, at the Baths. I will not give her name either. For though there
was no sort of blame or discredit of any kind attached or attachable
to her from any part of my story, as she is, I believe, still living,
and as the memory of that time cannot but be a painful one to her, it
is as well to suppress it. The lady, as I have said, was handsome and
young, and of course all the young fellows who got a chance flirted
with her--_en tout bien tout honneur_. But the Irish chamberlain
attached himself to her, not with any but perfectly avowable
intentions, but more seriously than the other youngsters, and with an
altogether serious eye to her very comfortable dower.
Now during that same summer there was at the Baths Mr. Plowden, the
banker from Rome. He was then a young man; he has recently died an
old one in the Eternal City. His name I mention in telling my story
because much blame was cast upon him at the time by people in Rome, in
Florence, and at the Baths, who did not know the facts as entirely and
accurately as I knew them; and I am able here to declare publicly what
I have often declared privately, that he behaved well and blamelessly
in the whole matter.
And probably, though I have no distinct recollection that it was so,
Plowden may have also been smitten by the lady. Now, whether the
Irishman imagined that the young banker was his most formidable rival,
or whether there may have been some previous cause of ill-will between
the two men, I cannot say, but so it was that the chamberlain sent
a challenge to the banker. The latter declined to accept it on the
ground that he _was_ a banker and not a fighting man, and that his
business position would have been materially injured by his fighting a
duel. The Irishman might have made the most of this triumph, such as
it was. But he was not content with doing so, and lost none of the
opportunities, which the social habits of such a place daily afforded
him, for insulting and outraging his enemy. And he was continually
boasting to his friends that before the end of the season he would
compel him to come out and be shot at.
And before the end of the season came, his persistent efforts were
crowned with success. Plowden finding his life altogether intolerable
under the harrow of the bully's insolence, at length one day
challenged _him_. Then arose the question of the locality where the
duel was to take place. The laws of the duchy were very strict against
duelling, and the Duke himself was personally strongly opposed to it.
In the case of his own favourite chamberlain, too, his displeasure
was likely to be extreme. But in the neighbourhood of the Baths the
frontier line which divides the Duchy of Modena from that of Lucca is
a very irregular and intricate one. A little below the "Ponte" at the
Baths, the Lima falls into the Serchio, and the upper valley of the
latter river is of a very romantic and beautiful character. Now we
all knew that hereabouts there were portions of Modenese territory
interpenetrating that of the Duchy of Lucca, but none of us knew the
exact line of the boundary. And the favourite chamberlain, with true
Irish impudence, undertook to obtain exact information from the Duke
himself.
There was a ball that night, at which the whole of the society were
present, and, strange as It may seem, I do not think there was a man
there who did not know that the duel was to be fought on the morrow,
except the Duke himself. Many of the women even knew it perfectly
well. The chamberlain getting the Duke into conversation on the
subject of the frontier, learned from him that a certain highly
romantic gorge, opening out from the valley of the Serchio, and called
Turrite Cava, which he pretended to take an interest in as a place
fitted for a picnic, was within the Modenese frontier.
All was arranged, therefore, for the meeting with pistols on the
following morning; and the combatants proceeded to the spot fixed on,
some five or six miles, I think, from the Baths. Plowden, who, as a
sedate business man was less intimate with the generality of the young
men at the Baths, was accompanied only by his second; his adversary
was attended by a whole cohort of acquaintances--really far more after
the fashion of a party going to a picnic, or some other party of
pleasure, than in the usual guise of men bent on such an errand.
Plowden had never fired a pistol in his life, and knew about as much
of the management of one as an archbishop. The other was an old
duellist, and a practised performer with the weapon. All this was
perfectly well known, and the young men around the Irishman were
earnest with him during their drive to the ground not to take his
adversary's life, beseeching him to remember how heavy a load on his
mind would such a deed be during the whole future of his own. Not a
soul of the whole society of the Baths, who by this time knew what
was going on to a man, and almost to a woman (my mother, it may be
observed, had not been at the ball, and knew nothing about it),
doubted that Plowden was going out to be shot as certainly as a
bullock goes into the slaughter house to be killed.
The Irishman, in reply to all the exhortations of his companions,
jauntily told them not to distress themselves; he had no intention of
killing the fellow, but would content himself with "winging" him. He
would have his right arm off as surely as he now had it on!
In the midst of all this the men were put up. At the first shot the
Irishman's well-directed bullet whistled close to Plowden's head, but
the random shot of the latter struck his adversary full in the groin!
He was hastily carried to a little _osteria_, which stood (and still
stands) by the side of the road which runs up the valley of the
Serchio, at no great distance from the mouth of the Turrite Cava
gorge. There was a young medical man among those gathered there, who
shook his head over the victim, but did not, I thought, seem very well
up to dealing with the case.
One of my mother's earliest and most intimate friends at Florence
was a Lady Sevestre, who was then at the Baths with her husband, Sir
Thomas Sevestre, an old Indian army surgeon. He was a very old man,
and was not much known to the younger society of the place. But it
struck me that _he_ was the man for the occasion. So I rushed off to
the Baths in one of the _bagherini_ (as the little light gigs of the
country are called) which had conveyed the parties to the ground, and
knocked up Sir Thomas. Of course all the story came new to him, and
he was very much inclined to wash his hands of it. But on my
representations that a life was at stake, his old professional habits
prevailed, and he agreed to go back with me to Turrite Cava.
But no persuasions could induce him to trust himself to a _bagherino_.
And truly it would have shaken the old man well-nigh to pieces. There
was no other carriage to be had in a hurry. And at last he allowed me
to get an arm-chair rigged with a couple of poles for bearers, and
placed himself in it--not before he had taken the precaution of
slinging a bottle of pale ale to either pole of his equipage. He wore
a very wide-brimmed straw hat, a suit of professional black, and
carried a large white sunshade. And thus accoutred, and accompanied
by four stalwart bearers, he started, while I ran by the side of the
chair, as queer-looking a party as can well be imagined. I can see it
all now; and should have been highly amused at the time had I not very
strongly suspected that I was taking him to the bedside of a dying
man.
And when he reached his patient, a very few minutes sufficed for the
old surgeon to pronounce the case an absolutely hopeless one. After a
few hours of agony, the bully, who had insisted on bringing this fate
on himself, died that same afternoon.
Then came the question who was to tell the Duke. Who it was that
undertook that disagreeable but necessary task, I forget. But the
Duke came out to the little _osteria_ immediately on hearing of the
catastrophe; also the English clergyman officiating at the Baths came
out. And the scene in that large, nearly bare, upper chamber of the
little inn was a strange one. The clergyman began praying by the dying
man's bedside, while the numerous assemblage in the room all kneeled,
and the Duke kneeled with them, interrupting the prayers with his sobs
after the uncontrolled fashion of the Italians.
He was very, very angry. But in unblushing defiance of all equity and
reason, his anger turned wholly against Plowden, who, of course, had
placed himself out of the small potentate's reach within a very
few minutes after the catastrophe. But the Duke strove by personal
application to induce the Grand Duke of Tuscany to banish Plowden
from his dominions, which, to the young banker, one branch of whose
business was at Florence and one at Rome, would have been a very
serious matter. But this, poor old _ciuco_, more just and reasonable
in this case than his brother potentate, the Protestant Don Giovanni
of Lucca, refused to do.
So our pleasant time at the Baths, for that season at least, ended
tragically enough; and whenever I have since visited that singularly
romantic glen of Turrite Cava, its deep rock-sheltered shadows have
been peopled for me by the actors in that day's bloody work.