The house in the Piazza dell' Independenza, which was known in the
city as "Villino Trollope," and of which I have spoken at the close of
the last chapter, was my property, and I had lived in it nearly the
whole of my married life. During that time four deaths had occurred
among its inmates.
The first to happen was that of the old and highly valued servant
of whom I had occasion to speak when upon the subject of Mr. Hume's
spiritualistic experiences at my house. She had been for many years
a much trusted and beloved servant in the family of Mr. Garrow at
Torquay, and had accompanied them abroad. Her name was Elizabeth
Shinner. Her death was felt by all of us as that of a member of our
family, and she lies in the Protestant cemetery at Florence by the
side of her former master, and of the young mistress whom she had
loved as a child of her own.
The next to go was Mr. Garrow. His death was a very sudden and
unexpected one. He was a robust and apparently perfectly healthy man.
I was absent from home when he died. I had gone with a Cornishman, a
Mr. Trewhella, who was desirous of visiting Mr. Sloane's copper mine,
in the neighbourhood of Volterra, of which I have before spoken. We
had accomplished our visit, and were returning over the Apennine about
six o'clock in the morning in a little _bagherino_, as the country
cart-gigs are called, when we were hailed by a man in a similar
carriage meeting us, whom I recognised as the foreman of a carpenter
we employed. He had been sent to find me, and bring me home with all
speed, in consequence of the sudden illness of Mr. Garrow. As far as
I could learn from him there was little probability of finding my
father-in-law alive. I made the best of my way to Florence. But he had
been dead several hours when I arrived. He had waked with a paralytic
attack on him, which deprived him of the power of moving on the left
side, and drawing his face awry, made speech almost impossible to him.
He assured his servant--who was almost immediately with him--speaking
with much difficulty, that it was nothing of any importance, and that
he should soon get over it. But these were the last words he ever
spoke, and in two or three hours afterwards he breathed his last.
Then in a few years more the _crescendo_ wave of trouble took my
mother from me at the age of eighty-three. For the last two or three
years she had entirely lost her memory, and for the last few months
the use of her mental faculties. And she did not suffer much. The last
words she uttered were "Poor Cecilia!"--her mind reverting in her
latest moments to the child whose loss had been the most recent. She
had for years entertained a great horror and dread of the possibility
of being buried alive, in consequence of the very short time allowed
by the law for a body to remain unburied after death; and she had
exacted from me a promise that I would in any case cause a vein to be
opened in her arm after death. In her case there could be no possible
room for the shadow of doubt as to the certainty of death; but I was
bound by my promise, and found some difficulty in the performance of
it. The medical man in attendance, declaring the absolute absurdity of
any doubt on the subject, refused to perform an operation which, he
said, was wholly uncalled for, and argued that my promise could only
be understood to apply to a case of possible doubt. I had none; but
was none the less determined to be faithful to my promise. But it
was not till I declared that I would myself sever a vein, in however
butcher-like a manner, that I induced him to accompany me to the
death-chamber and perform under my eyes the necessary operation.
My mother, the inseparable companion of so many wanderings in so many
lands, the indefatigable labourer of so many years, found her rest
near to the two who had gone from my house before, in the beautiful
little cemetery on which the Apennine looks down.
But it was not long before this sorrow was followed by a very much
sorer one--by the worst of all that could have happened to me! After
what I have written in the last chapter it is needless to say anything
of the blank despair that fell upon me when my wife died, on the 13th
of April, 1865. She also lies near the others.
My house was indeed left unto me desolate, and I thought that life and
all its sweetness was over for me!
I immediately took measures for disposing of the house in the Piazza
dell' Independenza, and before long found a purchaser for it. I had
bought it when the speculator, who had become the owner of the ground
at the corner of the space which was beginning to assume the semblance
of a "square" or "piazza," had put in the foundations but had not
proceeded much further with his work. I completed it, improving
largely, as I thought, on his plan; adapted it for a single residence,
instead of its division into sundry dwellings; obtained possession of
additional ground between the house and the city wall, sufficient for
a large garden; built around it, looking to the south, the largest and
handsomest "stanzone"[1] for orange and lemon plants in Florence, and
gathered together a collection of very fine trees, the profits from
which (much smaller in my hands than would have been the case in those
of a Florentine to the manner born) nevertheless abundantly sufficed
to defray the expenses of the garden and gardeners. In a word, I made
the place a very complete and comfortable residence. Nearly the whole
of my first married life was spent in it. And much of the literary
work of my life has been done in it.
[Footnote 1: "Stanzone" is the term used in Tuscany to signify the
buildings destined to shelter the "Agrumi," as the orange and lemon
plants are called generically, in the winter; which in Florence is too
severe to permit of their being left in the open air.]
I used in those days, and for very many years afterwards, to do all
my writing standing; and I strongly recommend the practice to brother
quill-drivers. Pauses, often considerable intervals, occur for thought
while the pen is in the hand. And if one is seated at a table, one
remains sitting during these intervals. But if one is standing, it
becomes natural to one, during even a small pause, to take a turn up
and down the room, or even, as I often used to do, in the garden. And
such change and movement I consider eminently salutary both for mind
and body.
I had specially contrived a little window immediately above the desk
at which I stood, fixed to the wall. The room looking on the "loggia,"
which was the scene of the little poem transcribed in the preceding
chapter, was abundantly lighted, but I liked some extra light close to
my desk.
In that room my Bice was born. For it was subsequently to her birth
that the destination of it was changed from a bedroom to a study.
Few men have passed years of more unchequered happiness than I did in
that house. And I was very fond of it.
But, as may be readily imagined, it became all the more odious and
intolerable to me when the "angel in the house" had been taken from
me.