"I pray God pardon me,
That I no more, without a pang,
His choicest works can see."
It was long before Livingstone's health recovered the check to its
improvement given by that interview. However, as the spring advanced he
began to regain strength rapidly, and toward the end of May he and I
started in the _Petrel_, which he had just bought, for a cruise in the
Mediterranean.
It would seem hard that any one, coasting for the first time along the
shores of Italy, and penetrating ever and anon far into the interior,
should not feel and display some interest in the succession of pictures,
of living Nature and dead Art, that meet you at every step. I can not
say that I ever detected the faintest symptom of such in my companion.
He strayed with me through the old Forum, and through Adrian's Villa,
and lingered by the Alban Lake; but it was more to keep me in
countenance than any thing else. I liked them better this second time of
seeing them than I did the first; I doubt if they left an impression on
his mind equal to the dimmest photograph that ever was the pride of an
amateur and the puzzle of his friends. The brilliant landscapes made up
of bold headlands, hanging woods, and sunny bays fared no better. Guy
did not come on deck for two hours after we cast anchor off Mola di
Gaeta.
Our _ciceroni_ were much pained and scandalized at an indifference
which exceeded all they had yet encountered in the matter-of-fact
_Signori Inglesi_. I saw one of them look quite relieved when, after
quitting us, he had to listen to an excitable young Jewess endeavoring
to express her raptures in the most execrable Italian. The physical
effort it cost her was awful to witness, especially as she was wintering
in Italy for her lungs. O, long-suffering stones of the Coliseum! which
returned the most barbarous echo--the growls from the cells when their
tenants scented the Christian; the jargon of the Goth and the Hun; or
the _lingua Anglo-Romana in bocca Bloomsburiana_? The two first-named
classes, at all events, confined themselves to their own dialect, and
spoke it, doubtless, with perfect propriety. However, in the present
instance, the _custode_ took the sentimental ebullition of the Maid of
Judah for an _amende honorable_, and rubbed his key complacently.
I do not believe that our travels brought to Guy a single distraction to
the great sorrow that all the while held him fast.
A German philosopher under similar circumstances would have written
reams and spoken volumes (eating and drinking all the while
Pantagruelically), theorizing and abstracting his emotions till they
vanished into cloud and vapor. A true disciple of Rousseau or Lamartine
would have analyzed his grief, dividing it into as many channels as
Alexander did the Oxus, till the main stream was lost, and each
individual rivulet might be crossed dry-shod. Both would have shed tears
perpetual and profuse. I read the other day of a Frenchman who, in the
midst of a mixed assembly, remembering that on that day ten years he had
lost a dear friend, instantly went out and wept bitterly. He was so
charmed with the happiness of the thought that, as he says, "I took the
resolution henceforth to weep for all whom I have loved, each on the
anniversary of their death."
Can you conceive any thing more touching than the picture of the
Bereaved One consulting his almanac and then "going at it with a will?"
It _was_ an athletic performance certainly; but remember what condition
he must have been in from the constant training.
From the episode of Niobe down to the best song in the "Princess," how
many beautiful lines have been devoted to those outward and visible
signs of sorrow?
Sadder elegiacs, more pathetic threnodies might have been written on the
tears that were stifled at their source, either from pride or from
physical inability to let them flow. Great regrets, like great schemes,
are generally matured in the shade. If I had to choose the tombs where
most hopes and affections are buried, I should turn, I think, not to
those with the long inscriptions of questionable poetry or blameless
Latinity, but to where just the initials and a cross are cut on the
single stone.
The philosophical and poetical mourners hardly suffered much more than
Guy did during those months, and for long after too, though he was
always quite silent on the subject, and would speak cheerfully on others
now and then, and though, from the day that he parted with Constance to
that of his own death, his eyes were as dry as the skies over the Delta.
He used to lie for hours in that state of utter listlessness which
gives a reality to the sad old Eastern proverb, "Man is better sitting
than standing, lying down than sitting, dead than lying down."
With all this, however, his health improved every day. After the wild
life he had led lately, the perfect rest and the clear pure air
refreshed him marvelously. It had the effect of coming out of a room
heated and laden with smoke into the cool summer morning. His strength,
too, had returned almost completely. I found this out at Baiæ.
The guardian of the _Cento Camerelle_, a big _lazzarone_, became
inordinately abusive. My impression is that he had received about
fifteen times his due; but, seeing our yacht in the offing, he conceived
the idea that we were princes in our own country, and ought to be robbed
in his proportionally. Guy's eyes began to gleam at last, and he made a
step toward the offender. I thought he was going to be heavily visited;
but Livingstone only lifted him by the throat and held him suspended
against the wall, as you may see the children in those parts pin the
lizards in a forked stick. Then he let him drop, unhurt, but green with
terror. A year ago, a straightforward blow from the shoulder would have
settled the business in a shorter time, and worked a strange alteration
in good Giuseppe's handsome sunburnt face. But the old hardness of heart
was wearing away. I had another proof of this some days later.
We were dropping down out of the Bay of Naples. Though we weighed anchor
in early morning, it was past noon before we cleared the Bocca di Capri,
for there was hardly wind enough to give the _Petrel_ steerage-way. The
smoke from our long Turkish pipes mounted almost straight upward, and
lingered over our heads in thin blue curls; yet the sullen, discontented
heave and roll in the water were growing heavier every hour. The black
tufa cliffs crested with shattered masonry--the foundations of the sty
where the Boar of Capreæ wallowed--were just on our starboard quarter,
when Riddell, the master, came up to Livingstone. "I think we'd better
make all snug, sir," he said. "There's dirty weather to windward, and we
haven't too much sea-room." He was an old man-of-war's boatswain, and
had had a tussle, in his time, on every sea and ocean in the known
world, with every wind that blows. He had rather a contempt for the
Mediterranean, esteeming it just one degree above the Cowes Roads, and
attaching about as much importance to its vagaries as one might do to
the fractiousness of a spoiled child. If he had been caught in the most
terrible tempest that ever desolated the shores of the Great Lake, I
don't believe he would have called it any thing but "dirty weather." He
was too good a sailor, though, not to take all precautions, even if he
had been sailing on a piece of ornamental water; and he went quickly
forward to give the necessary orders, after getting a nod of assent from
Guy.
The latter raised himself lazily on his arm, so as to see all round over
the low bulwarks. There was a blue-black bank of cloud rolling up from
the southwest. Puffs of wind, with no coolness in them, but dry and
uncertain as if stirred by some capricious artificial means, struck the
sails without filling them, and drove the _Petrel_ through the water by
fits and starts.
"I really believe we are going to have a white squall," Guy remarked,
indifferently. "Well, we shall see how the boat behaves. Riddell only
spoke just in time."
Suddenly his tone changed, and he said, quickly and decidedly, "Hold on
every thing!"
The master turned his weatherwise eye toward the quarter where the
danger lay, and frowned. "We're none too soon with it, Mr. Livingstone.
If there's a yard too much canvas spread when _that_ reaches us, I won't
answer for the spars."
Deeper and deeper the blackness came rushing down upon us, an angry
ridge of foam before it--the white squall showing its teeth.
Guy took the old man by the arm, and pointed to an object to leeward
that none on board had remarked yet. It was a small _barca_ with four
men in it. They were Capriotes, as we found afterward, the boldest
boatmen in the Bay. Had they been pure-bred Neapolitans, they would have
been down on their faces long ago, screaming out prayers to a long
muster-roll of saints. As it was, they stood manfully to their oars,
straining every muscle to reach us; there was no other safety for them
then. "They will never get alongside in time, unless we bear down to
meet them," Livingstone said, "and what chance will they have in ten
minutes hence?"
Riddell was only half satisfied. His creed evidently was that a sailor's
first duty is to his own ship; but neither he nor any one else ever
argued with Guy. "As you like, sir," he grumbled, somewhat
discontentedly. "Keep her full, Saunders; we shall fetch them so."
If a stitch of sail had been taken off our vessel she could never have
reached the _barca_, though her crew strove hard to meet us. She forged
down slowly enough as it was, but we were just in time to take them on
board.
"Reef every thing now!" Riddell shouted, leaping himself first into the
rigging like a wild-cat. "Cheerily, men--with a will!" All his ill-humor
was gone when the peril became imminent.
We were strong-handed, and the four Capriotes did us seaman's service;
but it was "touch and go." The last man had scarcely reached the deck
when the line of foam was within half-cable's length. Then there came a
sound unlike any I had ever heard before in the elements, beginning with
a whistling sort of scream and deepening into a roar as of many angry
voices, bestial and human, striving for the mastery; and then the
_Petrel_ staggered and reeled over almost on her beam-ends, in the midst
of a white boiling caldron of mad water. She recovered herself, however,
quickly, quivering and trembling as a live creature might do after
severe punishment; and we drove on, the strong arms at the wheel keeping
her well before the blast. In a very few minutes, I suppose (though it
seemed very long), I heard old Riddell say, "Sharp while it lasted, Mr.
Livingstone; but they're right to call it a squall. They've nothing down
here-away like a good right down hard gale."
I looked up, clearing my eyes, blinded with the hissing spray, just as
Guy answered, coolly as ever. He had run his arm through a becket, and
did not seem to have moved otherwise, whereas I disgraced myself by
falling at full length as the squall struck us.
"Ah! you've got difficult to please; it's always so when one sees so
much of life. Never mind, Riddell, the Mediterranean does its best, and
perhaps we'll go and try your tornadoes some day. Where's the _barca_
now?"
Where? The eyes that could have told you that must have looked a hundred
fathoms deep. There was not the faintest vestige of such a thing to be
seen--not even a shivered plank. The poor Capriotes' "bread-winner" had
gone the way of Antonio's argosies--another whet to the all-devouring
appetite, for which nothing that swims is too large or too small.
It was almost calm again when we landed the rescued men at Salerno; we
were glad to get rid of them, for their gratitude was overpowering,
especially as all the salt water that had soaked them could not disguise
the savor of their favorite herb.
You may break, you may ruin the clay if you will, but the scent of the
garlic will cling to it still.
Guy gave them enough to buy two such boats as they had lost--about as
much as one wins or loses in an evening's whist, with fair luck and
half-crown points.
This incident showed the change that was coming over my companion. His
principle had always been that a man who could not help himself was not
worth helping. He never asked for aid himself, and never gave it to his
own sex, as a rule. I believe his rescuing me at B---- was a solitary
case, and I took it as a great compliment. You will say this one was
only an act of common humanity. If you had known the man, you would have
thought, as I did, that the words of her, who was an angel then, were
bearing fruit already.
Nothing happened of the slightest interest as we ran down through the
Straits of Messina, and up the eastern coast of Calabria. We did not
stay to see Sicily then, for we had settled to be in Venice by a certain
day, to meet the Forresters.
If I were to be seduced into "word-painting," the Queen of the Adriatic
would tempt me. I know no other scene so provocative of enthusiasm as
the square acre round St. Mark's. All things considered, the author of
the "Stones of Venice" seems very sufficiently rational and
cold-blooded.
We can not all be romantic about landscapes. Nature has worshipers
enough not to grudge a few to Art. For myself, admiring both when in
perfection, I prefer hewn stones to rough rocks--the Canalazzo to _any_
cascade. The glory of old days that clings round the Palace of the Doges
stands comparison, in my mind's eye, with the Iris of Terni.
But why trench on a field already amply cultivated? I will never
describe any place till I find a virgin spot untouched by Murray, and
then I will send it to him, with my initials. Does such exist in Europe?
"Faith, very hardly, sir." _Nil intentatum reliquit._ What obligations
do we not owe to the accomplished compilers? Rarely rising into poetry
(I except "Spain"--the field, and bar one), never jocose, they move on,
severe in simplicity, straight to their solemn end of enlightening the
British tourist. Upright as Rhadamanthus, they hold the scales that
weigh the merits of cathedrals, hotels, ruins, guides, pictures, and
mountain passes, telling us what to eat, drink, and avoid. Let us repose
on them in blind but contented reliance.
I heard of one man, clever but eccentric, who became so exasperated at
seeing the volumes in every body's hand, and hearing them in every
body's mouth, that he conceived a sort of personal enmity to them,
impiously dissenting from their conclusions and questioning their
premises. The well-known red cover at last had the same effect on him as
the scarlet cloak on the bull in the _corrida_, making him stamp and
roar hideously. The angry gods had demented him. _Væ misero!_ How could
such sacrilege end but badly? Braving and deriding the solemn warning of
the prophet, he attempted a certain pass in the Tyrol alone, and, losing
his way, caught a pleurisy which proved fatal. He died game, but, I am
sorry to say, impenitent, speaking blasphemy against the book with his
last breath. _Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere--_
Such heresy, be it far from me! If I had my will, I protest I would
found a "Murray's Traveling Fellowship" in one or both of the
Universities. If I had the poetic vein, I would indite a pendant to
Byron's iambics to that enlightened bibliopole. He published "Childe
Harold," and the Hand-book to Every Where. Could one man in one century
do more for the Ideal and the Real?