The streets of a great city, whether swept by the tumultuous tide of
life by day, or echoing only to the dull and solitary tread of the
patrol by night, are never devoid of material for interesting remark
or rumination to such as are so disposed. He must, indeed, be a man
of sluggish sensibilities and slender fancy who could traverse any of
our great thoroughfares without finding them occasionally touched by
some of the thousand little tales of anxiety or satisfaction, mourning
or merriment, legible in brief upon the faces of the motley and
many-featured throng around him, or at least, by the supplemental aid of
a little imagination, plausibly constructed from the elements thereby
supplied. There is perhaps no period so well fitted for these studies of
life, as it is in its private and more important aspect, as the close
of one of our short and busy winter days, when the pressure of diurnal
toil is removed from men’s minds, whether its effect has been to sway
them from the contemplation of joy or wretchedness, and unbiassed they
are left to imprint their character on the countenance of each. When
does cheerfulness appear so undiluted as when a long winter evening’s
recreation spreads out before it, whether spent within the mellowed glow
of a happy domestic hearth, with all its easy, pure, and unsuspicious
pleasures, or in the social reunion with its friendly, careless, and
unclouded gaiety? and when does wretchedness feel so blank and dismal
as when a weary length of dim and rayless hours gives space for all its
melancholy broodings, undiverted by occupation, unmitigated by that
spirit of hope which more or less mingles with the temperament of all by
day, as if a constituent of the glad light of heaven in which we then
live and move? A cursory reading of the countenance of each passer by
will at this hour give the poorest physiognomist no inaccurate notion of
the complexion of his domestic lot; and, selecting an individual from the
homeward-wending crowd, I often form my speculation as to the scene that
awaits him, follow him in the freedom of all-privileged and all-pervading
thought across the threshold of his abode, conjure up the circumstances
of his reception, glance through the perspective of his evening
arrangements, and, as I find them agreeable or the reverse, extend or
curtail my domiciliary inspection.
During a recent winter, on one of its most cheerless evenings, I was
thus exercising my discernment and my fancy in a long homeward walk
through the centre of the city, and mentally apportioning to each that
attracted my eye the share of satisfaction or discomfort that lay
before him--my own mind subject to the lights and shadows, the glow and
chill, which in various degrees were suggested as the lot of each. It
was precisely the evening to lend the keenest zest to the happiness of
the light-hearted, and a more poignant bitterness to the misery of the
unfortunate. A cold icy wind whistled shrilly through every narrow street
and entry as I passed it, and swept more boldly down the wider spaces,
bearing, occasionally, slanting showers of sleet, which a glance at the
dun and overcharged canopy of snow-clouds and of smoke above showed to
be but premonitory intimations of a heavy and continuous fall. For the
most part, all below was impatient motion and occupied expectation,
because almost all had a goal in view to which they hastened, the fierce
inclemency of the weather impelling alike the mirthful and the melancholy
onward. The well-fed, well-defended passenger, with muffled neck and
arms thrust to the elbow in the pockets of his dreadnought, rubbed
shoulders with the half-paralyzed and shivering wretch that shuffled amid
the hurrying throng, often apparently without other object than that
of joining in the stream of fellow-creatures, whom he could resemble
in no other way. Carriage after carriage rolled past, the children of
affluence for their tenants, interchanging careless comments, or looking
with languid and heedless gaze upon the squalid, the impoverished, the
abandoned, the degraded, that, alas! met the eye so often as to account
for, and almost justify, the indifference displayed.
“What a collocation, not merely of the extremes of human condition, but
of almost every interposed gradation!” thought I, as, sated with the
multiform instances presented in the concourse, and half bewildered
with the medley of sights and sounds--the glittering ostentation of the
glaring shops, the hum and tramp of the jostling crowd, the din and
rattle of ceaseless vehicles, from the lumbering dray to the elastic
carriage, the oft-mingled appeal of importunate mendicants, and, not
least confounding, the sleet-laden and staggering blasts that met me
with wild caprice at almost every corner--I gladly turned aside into
a more sheltered and less frequented street, to pursue a route of
greater ease, though at the expense of a greater circuit. But misery
in the aggregate can generally be encountered with less disturbance
than when submitted to in the case of solitary sufferers; and before I
had proceeded half the length of a private and comparatively deserted
street, I had more effective calls upon my charity--there was at that
time no legal provision for the necessitous--than when passing among the
abounding instances of destitution I had just witnessed. My stock of
small change, and I must add, co-equally therewith, that of my patience
too, was nearly exhausted, when my eye fell upon the figure of a young
lad, who stood indifferently sheltered from the wind under the projected
doorway of an uninhabited house. I had made up my mind to the customary
solicitation: but he seemed so abstracted as not to notice my approach,
and, pitying the forlorn looking youth, and wondering at his forbearance,
I walked slowly past, to give him an opportunity. I found him to be
an organ-player, for the instrument, unslung from his shoulders,
rested upon the flag at his feet, and a brief notice of his collapsed
but characteristic features showed him to be an Italian. A shivering
marmoset, partly covered by his jacket, was lodged on the hollow of one
arm, while the other, resting on his raised knee, supported his head, as,
unconscious of my proximity and observation, he gazed fixedly upon the
ground. The sight of mute personal privation and friendless loneliness
would at such a crisis have been influential enough to stir up whatever
humanity one had, but when witnessed in a stranger from a far land,
in one, too, nurtured under the sapphire skies and blissful clime of
Italy, and withering now by a dismal change beneath such dense and murky
clouds, and such a pitiless and scourging breeze, the demand on one’s
kindly offices was irresistible, and, drawing near to the desolate lad,
I accompanied a small gift with a few words in his own most musical and
thrilling tongue. He started from his musing posture as the electric
syllables struck upon his ear, and, as he gazed with keen enthusiasm
upon me, the blood mantled vividly upon his chilled and weather-wrinkled
cheek, while with grateful but melancholy earnestness he poured out his
thanks. There was something to me unusually touching in the aspect of
the friendless young foreigner, as well as in the circumstances in which
I found him. He had a cast of thought and maturity in his face which
hardship, isolation, and self-dependence, seemed to have anticipated
years in producing; for his slender and stripling figure, and the
unshaven down upon his lip, bespoke him still in an early stage of
youth. After a word or two of compassion, I passed on. But his dashed
and disappointed look at separation followed me: my conscience chid me
for resting in a cold gratuity to one so dejected, yet so sensitive to
relief--a spring of gladness for whom my acquaintance with his native
language, it appeared, could so easily unseal.
He was a stranger, weary, friendless, cheerless, and
necessitous--unsusceptible of those mitigations of suffering which even
the poorest experience among their own people and their own kindred. I
was hastening to my unshared, ’tis true, but far, therefore, from joyless
lodgings, an abundant board, a radiant fire, a storm and snow proof
apartment, furnished with all the appliances of comfort which winter
covets; and would they be diminished by the admission of this homeless,
and, from his countenance, I dare certify, guileless wanderer, to share
for a time their influence? No. I have it in my power to interpose one
bright spot in his life of hardship and privation, to suspend for a
while the yearnings with which doubtless, at this hour of dreariness and
suffering, he turns in thought to the scenes of his but recent childhood
in his own lovely land, to the sunny azure skies the joyous vine-clad
hills, the playmates that even now, perhaps, at the close of a bright
and genial day, are clustering in merry meeting for the evening song
and dance, his father’s cottage, his mother’s caress. “Yes, I will turn
back,” exclaimed I, “and enable him, if ever he rejoin the social circle
in his own ardent home, to tell his eager listeners a trait of kindness
and sympathy shared in the far off frigid country of the north.” As I
concluded, I again stood before him, as with a shiver and a sigh the poor
lad was about raising his organ upon his shoulder again; and, telling
him that I had been in and loved the land from which he came, that I was
fond of its people, and of their music too, and wished to talk with and
hear him play at leisure and in comfort by my own fireside, asked him to
accompany me to it. A smile of gladness lighted up his pale expressive
face as he gratefully declared his readiness; and a car passing at the
moment, I hailed it, and in a few seconds, young Carlo Girardi--for that
he told me was his name--his chattering and half perished marmoset, his
muffled music mill, and my enlivened and approving self, were rattling
rapidly to my lodgings. I found him a fine, intelligent, unhacknied lad,
to whose fervid heart my partial knowledge of his native tongue secured
me ready access; and, after cold and hunger had given way to fire and
food, I experienced no difficulty in drawing from him an ingenuous and
vivid narration of his personal story--one so singular and romantic in
its character, and so illustrative of the purest impulses of the human
heart, as to merit a repetition better than many a more highly wrought
and complex tale. Cleared of the circumlocution caused by his indifferent
stock of English, and converted into a dialect more uniform and familiar
to our ears, it ran substantially thus:--
“I come from the neighbourhood of the little village of Montanio, at
the foot of the great Appennines. My father was, and I pray is still,
a small vine-grower and gardener, supplying the market of Telese, and
other towns within reach, with fruits, flowers, and vegetables. We were
a family of five--my father, my dear mother, my elder and only brother
Ludovico, my beautiful and gentle sister Bianca, and myself;” and his
tone grew touchingly tremulous, as, in connection with his cottage home,
he went over the old, familiar, household names. “Oh, that I was ever
called upon to leave them to wander, unfriended and unknown, among rough
and careless strangers, to forsake all pleasant things, the gay and
glad green fields, the sunny hills, the sparkling mountain streams, the
flowered and fruited gardens, and the ever bright and beautiful sky which
stretched its unclouded azure overhead, for this cold and shivering, this
dim and misty land! But yet I would do as much again, if such a call
again were made upon me--dark shame upon me if I hesitated!--and when I
return to them once more--and oh, may heaven grant that now I shortly
may!--I will look with the greater rapture upon all I left, upon beauties
and on blessings I then too little, far too little, cared for. My father
was ever kind to us when we were in the way of obedience to his wishes
and ideas of duty, but rigid and severe to resent every error we might
commit. I have heard the elder neighbours say that in his own young days
he had been wild and perverse, and entangled thereby in many troubles,
and that, therefore, in affection and providence for us, he was the more
exact in our care and education. I was too young to be much in the way of
following my own bent, and so had little opportunity of offending him;
but my brother Ludovico, who was hot, daring, and adventurous, was often
led to look for wild and irregular excitement with the roving hunters
and rude shepherds from the mountains above, and his mingling in their
lawless society always raised my father’s resentment, and, despite my
mother’s exerted influence, often brought disquiet and disunion among
us. But though reckless and unsettled, Ludovico was ever frank, winsome,
and honest-hearted, which, however, could not save him from sharing in
the evil fame of his companions; and though his handsome figure, open
temper, and ready offices for all who sought them, made him a favourite
with the young, yet the elder looked grave and severe upon him, as one
already committed in the road to ruin. Our sister Bianca, who, not in our
eyes only, was the sweetest and prettiest maiden within the circle of a
league, drew to herself, as she grew up, the admiring looks of all; and
at our gay village festivals, at the sowing, vintage, and noted holidays,
he was a happy and envied youth who could oftenest engage her hand for
the tarantula, or follow her voice upon the mandoline. But the one who
paid his court with most success was Francesco, the only son of Marcolini
the wealthy miller, who was by far the richest man in our community.
But when his son’s courtship became known to him, he forthwith fell into
a rage at the notion of so imprudent a match, for he was a purse-proud
man, who valued his gold above most other things, above the beauty and
innocence of our Bianca, and the pledged affection of Francesco, for whom
he looked far above us humble people for a more equally dowered bride.
Resolute to extinguish his folly as he called it, at once, he solemnly
vowed to cut him off with a carlino, if he pursued his thriftless
project; and, not assured that even this would deter him, he determined
to engage, likewise, the authority of my father, whose strict and
unswerving character was well known to him, and accordingly besought him
to lay his prohibition upon Bianca. My father, who would have scorned to
force a thus forbidden union, hurried to comply with his wishes; and in
Bianca’s obedience there was found a surer safeguard than in Francesco’s
fear of poverty, as, even in defiance of his father’s menace, he
vehemently urged my sister to become his, and trust to the labour of his
hands for their maintenance. But my father’s injunctions were habitually
paramount; and poor Francesco, finding her hesitation not to be overcome,
soon fell into despair and declining health. He became melancholy,
faint-hearted, and neglectful of all his old occupations; and his strange
and moody habits, quenched spirits, and fast failing strength, so wrought
upon his father’s fear and affection, that he began to think it better
to make some compromise, and forego a little of his ambition rather than
endanger Francesco’s life. In consequence, he intimated to my father
that on reflection he was disposed to forward the marriage, provided a
certain sum, which he named, was settled upon Bianca, as it was scarcely
to be expected, he urged, that he would give his son and the heir of all
his money to a portionless bride. My father acknowledged his request to
be but natural, but professed at once the insufficiency of his means to
satisfy it without impoverishing the rest of his family; an act which,
however devoted to the happiness of his daughter, conscience would not
allow him to commit.
Old Martolini, finding him intractable upon the point, proposed then,
that as Bianca and Francesco were still very young, their marriage should
be postponed for at least three years, at the end of which time, if he
were prepared to give her a certain portion--making a large abatement
from his first demand--it might with his consent take place. But,
exasperated at his disappointment and forced concession, he added a
passionate oath, that on no other terms would he hear of the connection,
even though his son Francesco were such a fool as to pine till it brought
him to his death-bed. My father, balanced between his anxiety to close
an arrangement so beneficial to Bianca, and his sense of the hardships
and extreme frugality it would necessarily impose upon us all during the
interval, desired a short time to make his decision. The same evening
he called all of us, except my sister, to him--declared the proposal of
Francesco’s father--asked our opinion separately upon it--and when with
one voice we all professed our readiness, our eagerness, to undergo any
and every additional labour and privation that might take a tear from our
gentle Bianca’s eye, or add a blush or a smile to her now pallid cheek
and lips, he answered, “It is just spoken as I would have you speak, my
dear wife and children: but saying is easy, doing difficult. Three years
will give you many opportunities of proving this, for there must be
much denial, frugality, and toil, brief nights and long and busy days,
to enable us to accumulate within the time a sum so ill proportioned
to our means.” Bianca was then informed of the arrangement, and smiles
of rekindled hope and rapture mingled with tears of grateful love and
sensibility; and her rapidly returning bloom and gaiety gilded every
thing around with its own gladness, and rendered our ruder and scantier
fare and more lengthened labour pleasanter at times than the merry
meeting and the music, which we could now of course but rarely join.
The impulse of affection for dear Bianca was strong in every heart, and
this, with the prospect of a happy completion of our undertaking, almost
changed every sacrifice into a delight. But, young though I be, I have
now lived long enough to know, that as the brightest morning sky is
often overcast before the close of day, so are our most shining hopes
subject to many a cloud and chill before, if ever, they attain to their
fulfilment.” (Here poor Carlo paused for a moment in his narrative;
and with your leave, gentle reader, I too shall rest, till I have the
pleasure of meeting you again in next week’s Journal.)