The Italians, I believe, were "thinking" at a considerably earlier
period than that which in the second letter transcribed in the
preceding chapter Mrs. Browning seems to have considered as the
beginning of their "cogitating" existence, and thinking on the
subjects to which she is there adverting. They were "thinking,"
perhaps, less in Tuscany than in any other part of the peninsula, for
they were eating more and better there. They were very lightly taxed.
The _mezzeria_ system of agriculture, which, if not absolutely the
same, is extremely similar to that which is known as "conacre,"
rendered the lot of the peasant population very far better and more
prosperous than that of the tillers of the earth in any of the other
provinces. And upon the whole the people were contented. The Tuscan
public was certainly not a "pensive public." They ate their bread not
without due condiment of _compagnatico_,[1] or even their chesnuts in
the more remote and primitive mountain districts, drank their sound
Tuscan wine from the generous big-bellied Tuscan flasks holding three
good bottles, and sang their _stornelli_ in cheerfulness of heart, and
had no craving whatsoever for those few special liberties which were
denied them.
[Footnote 1: Anything to make the bread "go down," as our people
say--a morsel of bacon or sausage, a handful of figs or grapes, or a
bit of cheese.]
_Epicuri de grege porci!_ No progress! Yes, I know all that, and
am not saying what should have been, but what was. There _was_ no
progress! The _contadini_ on the little farm which I came to possess
before I left Tuscany cultivated it precisely after the fashion of
their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and strenuously resisted
any suggestion that it could, should, or might be cultivated in any
other way. But my _contadino_ inhabited a large and roomy _casa
colonica_; he and his buxom wife, had six stalwart sons, and was the
richer man in consequence of having them. No, in my early Florentine
days the _cogito, ergo sum_ could not have been predicated of the
Tuscans.
But the condition of things in the other states of the peninsula, in
Venice and Lombardy under the Austrians, in Naples under the Bourbon
kings, in Romagna under the Pope, and very specially in Modena under
its dukes of the House of Este, was much otherwise. In those regions
the Italians were "thinking" a great deal, and had been thinking for
some time past. And somewhere about 1849, those troublesome members
of the body social who are not contented with eating, drinking, and
singing--cantankerous reading and writing people living in towns, who
wanted most unreasonably to say, as the phrase goes, that "their souls
were their own" (as if such fee-simple rights ever fall to the lot
of any man!)--began in Tuscany to give signs that they also were
"thinking."
I remember well that Albèri, the highly accomplished and learned
editor of the _Reports of the Venetian Ambassadors_, and of the great
edition of Galileo's works, was the first man who opened my altogether
innocent eyes to the fact, that the revolutionary leaven was working
in Tuscany, and that there were social breakers ahead! This must
have been as early as 1845, or possibly 1844. Albèri himself was a
Throne-and-Altar man, who thought for his part, that the amount of
proprietorship over his own soul which the existing _régime_ allowed
him was enough for his purposes. But, as he confided to me, a very
strong current of opinion was beginning to run the other way in
Florence, in Leghorn, in Lucca, and many smaller cities--not in Siena,
which always was, and is still, a nest of conservative feeling.
Nevertheless there never was, at least in Florence, the strength and
bitterness of revolutionary feeling that existed almost everywhere
else throughout Italy. I remember a scene which furnished a very
remarkable proof of this, and which was at the same time very
curiously and significantly characteristic of the Florentine
character, at least as it then existed.
It was during the time of the Austrian occupation of Florence. On the
whole the Austrian troops behaved well; and their doings, and the
spirit in which the job they had in hand was carried out, were
very favourably contrasted with the tyranny, the insults, and the
aggressive arrogance, with which the French army of occupation
afflicted the Romans. The Austrians accordingly were never hated in
Florence with the bitter intensity of hate which the French earned in
the Eternal City. Nevertheless, there were now and then occasions
when the Florentine populace gratified their love of a holiday and
testified to the purity of their Italian patriotism by turning out
into the streets and kicking up a row.
It was on an occasion of this sort, that the narrow street called Por'
Santa Maria, which runs up from the Ponte Vecchio to the Piazza, was
thickly crowded with people. A young lieutenant had been sent to that
part of the town with a small detachment of cavalry to clear the
streets. Judging from the aspect of the people, as his men, coming
down the Lung' Arno, turned into the narrow street, he did not
half like the job before him. He thought there certainly would be
bloodshed. And just as his men were turning the corner and beginning
to push their horses into the crowd, one of them slipped sideways on
the flagstones, with which, most distressingly to horses not used to
them, the streets of Florence are paved, and came down with his rider
partly under him.
The officer thought, "Now for trouble! That man will be killed to
a certainty!" The crowd--who were filling the air with shouts of
"_Morte!" "Abbasso l'Austria!" "Morte agli Austriaci_!"[1]--crowded
round the fallen trooper, while the officer tried to push forward
towards the spot. But when he got within earshot, and could see also
what was taking place, he saw the people immediately round the fallen
man busily disengaging him from his horse! "_O poverino! Ti sei fatto
male? Orsu! Non sara niente! Su! A cavallo, eh?_"[2] And having helped
the man to remount, they returned to their amusement of roaring
"_Morte agli Austriaci!_" The young officer perceived that he had a
very different sort of populace to deal with from an angry crowd
on the other side of the Alps, or indeed on the other side of the
Apennines.
[Footnote 1: "Death! Down with Austria! Death to the Austrians!"]
[Footnote 2: "Oh! Poor fellow! Have you hurt yourself? Up with you! It
will be nothing! Up again on your horse, eh?"]
I remember another circumstance which occurred a few years
previously to that just mentioned, and which was in its way equally
characteristic. In one of the principal _cafés_ of Florence, situated
on the Piazza del Duomo--the cathedral yard--a murder was committed.
The deed was done in full daylight, when the _café_ was full of
people. Such crimes, and indeed violent crimes of any sort, were
exceedingly rare in Florence. That in question was committed by
stabbing, and the motive of the criminal who had come to Florence for
the express purpose of killing his enemy was vengeance for a great
wrong. Having accomplished his purpose he quietly walked out of the
_café_ and went away. I happened to be on the spot shortly afterwards,
and inquired, with some surprise at the escape of the murderer, why he
had not been arrested red-handed. "He had a sword in his hand!" said
the person to whom I had addressed myself, in a tone which implied
that that quite settled the matter--that of course it was absolutely
out of the question to attempt to interfere with a man who had a sword
in his hand!
It is a very singular thing, and one for which it is difficult to
offer any satisfactory explanation, that the change in Florence in
respect to the prevalence of crime has been of late years very great
indeed I have mentioned more than once, I think, the very remarkable
absence of all crimes of violence which characterised Florence in
the earlier time of my residence there. It was not due to rigorous
repression or vigilance of the police, as may be partly judged by the
above anecdote. There was, in fact, _no_ police that merited the name.
But anything in the nature of burglary was unheard of. The streets
were so absolutely safe that any lady might have traversed them alone
at any hour of the day or night. And I might add to the term "crimes
of violence" the further statement that pocket-picking was equally
unheard of.
_Now_ there is perhaps more crime of a heinous character in Florence,
in proportion to the population, than in any city in the peninsula. I
think that about the first indication that all that glittered in the
mansuetude of _Firenze la Gentile_ was not gold, showed itself on
the occasion of an attempt to naturalise at Florence the traditional
sportiveness of the Roman Carnival. There and then, as all the world
knows, it has been the immemorial habit for the population, high and
low, to pelt the folks in the carriages during their Corso procession
with _bonbons, bouquets_, and the like. Gradually at Rome this
exquisite fooling has degenerated under the influence of modern
notions, till the _bouquets_ having become cabbage stalks, very
effective as offensive missiles, and the _bonbons_ plaster of Paris
pellets, with an accompanying substitution of a spiteful desire to
inflict injury for the old horse-play, it has become necessary to
limit the duration of the Saturnalia to the briefest span, with the
sure prospect of its being very shortly altogether prohibited. But at
Florence on the first occasion, now several years ago, of an attempt
to imitate the Roman practice, the conduct of the populace was such as
to demand imperatively the immediate suppression of it. The carriages
and the occupants of them were attacked by such volleys of stones and
mud, and the animus of the people was so evidently malevolent and
dangerous, that they were at once driven from the scene, and any
repetition of the practice was forbidden.
It is so remarkable as to be, at all events, worth noting, that
contemporaneously with this singular deterioration in respect to
crime, another social change has taken place in Florence. _La
Gentile Firenze_ has of late years become very markedly the home of
clericalism of a high and aggressive type. This is an entirely new
feature in the Florentine social world. In the old time clerical views
were sufficiently supported by the Government to give rise to the
famous Madiai incident, which has been before alluded to. But
clericalism in its more aggressive aspects was not in the ascendant
either bureaucratically or socially. The spirit which had informed
the policy and government of the famous Leopoldine laws was still
sufficiently alive in the mental habitudes of both governors and
governed to render Tuscany a rather suspected and disliked region
in the mind of the Vatican and of the secular governments which
sympathised with the Vatican's views and sentiments. The change that
has taken place is therefore a very notable one. I have no such
sufficiently intimate knowledge of the subject as would justify me in
linking together the two changes I have noticed in the connection of
cause and effect. I only note the synchronism.
On the other hand there are not wanting sociologists who maintain
that the cause of the outburst of lawlessness and crime which has
undeniably characterised Florence of late years is to be sought for
exactly in that old-time, easy-going tolerance in religious matters,
which they say is now producing a tardy but sure crop from seeds
that, however long in disclosing the true nature of the harvest to
be expected from them, ought never to have been expected by wise
legislators to produce any other.
_Non nostrum est tantas componere lites!_ But Florence is certainly no
longer _Firenze la Gentile_ as she so eminently was in the days when I
knew her so well.
Whether any of the other cities of Italy have in any degree ceased to
merit the traditional epithets which so many successive generations
assigned to them--how far Genoa is still _la Superba_, Bologna _la
Grassa_, Padua _la Dotta_, Lucca _la Industriosa_--I cannot say.
Venezia is unquestionably still _la Bella_. And as for old Rome, she
vindicates more than ever her title to the epithet _Eterna_, by her
similitude to those nursery toys which, throw them about as you will,
still with infallible certitude come down heads uppermost.
As for the Florence of my old recollections, there were in the early
days of them many little old-world sights and sounds which are to be
seen and heard no longer, and which differentiated the place from
other social centres.
I remember a striking incident of this sort which happened to my
mother and myself "in the days before the flood," therefore very
shortly after our arrival there.
It was the practice in those days to carry the bodies of the dead on
open biers, with uncovered faces, to their burial. It had doubtless
been customary in old times so to carry all the dead; but the custom
was retained at the time of which I am writing only in the case
of distinguished persons, and very generally of the priesthood. I
remember, for instance, a poor little humpbacked Grand Duchess being
so carried through the street magnificently bedecked as if she were
going to a ball, and with painted cheeks. She had been a beneficent
little body, and the people, as far as they knew anything about
her, revered her, and looked on her last presentation to them with
sympathetic feelings. But it was a sorry sight to see the poor little
body, looking much like a bedizened monkey, so paraded.
Well, my mother and I were, aimlessly but much admiringly, wandering
about the vast spaces of the cathedral when we became aware of a
_funzione_ of some sort--a service as we should say--being conducted
in a far part of the building. There was no great crowd, but a score
or two of spectators, mainly belonging to the _gamin_ category, were
standing around the officiating priests and curiously looking on. We
went towards the spot, and found that the burial service was being
performed over the body of a young priest. The body lay on its back on
the open bier, clad in full canonicals and with the long tasselled cap
of the secular clergy on his head. We stood and gazed with the others,
when suddenly I saw the dead man's head slightly move! A shiver, I
confess, ran through me. A moment's reflection, however, reminded me
of the recognised deceitfulness of the eyes in such matters, and I did
not doubt that I had been mistaken. But the next minute I again saw
the dead priest slightly shake his head, and this time I was sure that
I was not mistaken. I clutched my mother's arm and pointed, and again
saw the awful phenomenon, which sent a cold wave through both of us
from head to foot. But nobody save ourselves seemed to have seen
anything unusual. The service was proceeding in its wonted order.
Doubting whether it might possibly be one of those horrible cases of
suspended animation and mistaken death, I was thinking whether it were
not my duty to call attention to the startling thing we had seen,
and had with outstretched neck and peering eyes advanced a step for
further observation, and with the half-formed purpose of declaring
aloud that the man was not dead, when I spied crouched beneath the
bier a little monkey, some nine or ten years old, who had taken in his
hand the tassel of the cap, which hung down between the wooden bars
which formed the bier, and was amusing himself with slowly swaying it
forwards and backwards, and had thus communicated the motion to the
dead man's head! It was almost impossible to believe that the little
urchin had been able to reach the position he occupied without having
been observed by any of the clerical attendants, of whom several were
present, and still more difficult to suppose that no one of them had
seen what we saw, standing immediately in front of the corpse while
one of them performed the rite of lustration with holy water, the
vessel containing which was held by another. But no one interfered,
and none but those who know the Florentines as well as I know them can
feel how curiously and intensely characteristic of them was the fact
that no one did so. The awful reverence for death which would
have impelled an Englishman of almost any social position to feel
indignation and instantly put a stop to what he would consider a
profanation, was absolutely unknown to all those engaged in that
perfunctory rite. A certain amount of trouble and disturbance would
have been caused by dislodging the culprit, and each man there felt
only this; that it didn't matter a straw, and that there was no reason
for _him_ to take the trouble of noticing it. As far as I could
observe, the amusement the little wretch derived from his performance
was entirely unsocial, and confined to his own breast; for I could not
see that any of the _gamin_ fraternity noticed it, or cared about it,
any more than their seniors.
I remember another somewhat analogous adventure of mine, equally
illustrative of the Florentine habits of those days. I saw a man
suddenly stagger and fall in the street. It was in the afternoon, and
there were many persons in the street, some of them nearer to the
fallen man than I was, but nobody, attempted to help him. I stepped
forward to do so, and was about to take hold of him and try to raise
him, when one of the by-standers eagerly caught me by the arm, saying,
"He is dying, he is dying!" "Let us try to raise him," said I, still
pressing forward. "You mustn't, you mustn't! It is not permitted," he
added, as he perceived that he was speaking to a foreigner, and then
went on to explain to me that what must be done was to call the
Misericordia, for which purpose one must run and ring a certain bell
attached to the chapel of that brotherhood in the Piazza del Duomo.
Among the many things that have been written of the Florentine
Misericordia, I do not think that I have met with the statement that
it used to be universally believed in Florence that the law gave the
black brethren the privilege and the monopoly of picking up any dying
or dead person in the streets, and that it was forbidden to any one
else to do so. Whether any such _law_ really existed I much doubt, but
the custom of acting in accordance with it, and the belief that such
practice was imperative, undoubtedly did. And I have no doubt that
many a life has been sacrificed to it. The half hour or twenty minutes
which necessarily elapsed before the Misericordia could be called and
answer the call, must often have been supremely important, and in many
cases ought to have been employed in the judicious use of the lancet.
The sight of the black robed and black cowled brethren, as they went
about the streets on their errands of mercy, was common enough in
Florence. But the holiday visitor had very little opportunity of
hearing anything of the internal management and rules of that peculiar
mediaeval society or of the nature of the work it did.
The Florentine Misericordia was founded in the days when pestilence
was ravaging the city so fiercely that the dead lay uncared for in the
streets, because there was no man sufficiently courageous to bury or
to touch them. The members of the association, which was formed
for the performance of this charitable and arduous duty, chose for
themselves a costume, the object of which was the absolute concealment
of the individual performing it. A loose black linen gown drapes the
figure from the neck to the heels, and a black cowl, with two holes
cut for the eyes, covers and effectually conceals the head and face.
For more than five hundred years, up to the present day, the dress
remains the same, and no human being, either of those to whom their
services are rendered, or of the thousands who see them going about
in the performance of their self-imposed duty, can know whether the
mysterious weird-looking figure he sees be prince or peasant. He knows
that he may be either, for the members of the brotherhood are drawn
from all classes of society.
It used to be whispered, and I have good reasons for believing the
whisper to have been true, that the late Grand Duke was a member, and
took his turn of duty with his brethren. Some indiscreet personal
attendant blabbed the secret, for assuredly the Duke himself was never
untrue to the oath which binds the members to secrecy.
The whole society is divided into a number of companies, one of which
is by turns on duty. There is a large, most melancholy and ominously
sounding bell in the chapel of the brotherhood (not that already
mentioned by which anybody can call the attention of the brother in
permanent attendance, but a much larger one), which is heard all over
the city. This summons the immediate attendance of every member of the
company on duty, and the mysterious black figures may any day be seen
hurrying to the rendezvous. There they learn the nature of the call,
and the place at which their presence is required.
I remember the case of an English girl who was fearfully burned at
a villa at some little distance from the city. The injuries were so
severe that, while it was extremely desirable that she should be
removed to a hospital, there was much doubt as to the possibility of
moving her. In this difficulty the Misericordia were summoned. They
came, five or six of them, bringing with them their too well-known
black covered litter, and transported the patient to the hospital,
lifting her from her bed and placing her in the litter with an
exquisitely delicate and skilled gentleness of handling which spared
her suffering to the utmost, and excited the surprise and admiration
of the English medical man who witnessed the operation. Every part of
the work, every movement, was executed in absolute silence and with
combined obedience to signalled orders from the leader of the company.
Another case which was brought under my notice was that of a woman
suffering from dropsy, which made the necessary removal of her a very
arduous and difficult operation. It would probably have been deemed
impossible save by the assistance of the Misericordia, who managed so
featly and deftly that those who saw it marvelled at the skill and
accurately co-operating force, which nothing but long practice could
have made possible.
It is a law of the brotherhood, never broken, that they are to accept
nothing, not so much as a glass of water, in any house to which
they are called. The Florentines well know how much they owe as a
community, and how much each man may some day come to owe personally
to the Misericordia; and when the doleful clang of their well-known
bell is heard booming over the city, women may be seen to cross
themselves with a muttered prayer, while men, ashamed of their
religiosity, but moved by feeling as well as habit, will furtively do
the same.
There is an association at Rome copied from that at Florence, and
vowed to the performance of very similar duties. I once had an
opportunity of seeing the registers of this Roman Misericordia, and
was much impressed by the frequently recurring entry of excursions
into the Campagna to bring in the corpses of men murdered and left
there!