Our unpalatial palace--"Cephas Giovanni"--She and George
Combe turned out to be right--A rousing temper--Bright
Titian hair--"All that's left of him"--The pyramidal man of
destiny--The thoughts of a boy are long, long thoughts--
Clausilia Bubigunia--Jabez Hogg and the microscope--A
stupendous surprise--A lifetime in fourteen months--My
father's jeremiades--"Thank Heaven, there is such a thing as
whitewash!"--"Terrible lack of variety in the old masters"--
"The brazen trollop that she is!"--Several distinct phases
of feeling--Springs of creative imagination roused--The
Roman fever--A sad book--Effects of the death-blow--The rest
is silence.
We arrived in Rome on the 17th of January, 1858, at eleven o'clock at
night. After a day or two at Spillman's Hotel, we moved into lodgings in
the Via Porta Pinciana, the Palazzo Larazani. The street extended just
below the ridge of the Pincian Hill, and was not far from the broad
flight of steps mounting upward from the Piazza d' Espagna, on the left
as you go up. In spite of its resounding name, our new dwelling had
not a palatial aspect. It was of no commanding height or architectural
pretensions; a stuccoed edifice, attached on both sides to other
edifices. The street, like other Roman streets, was narrow; it was dirty
like them, and, like them, was paved with cobble-stones. The place
had been secured for us by (I think) our friends the Thompsons; Mr.
Thompson--the same man who had painted my father's portrait in 1853--had
a studio hard by. The Thompsons had been living in Rome for five years
or more, and knew the Roman ropes. They were very comfortable people
to know; indeed, Rome to me would have been a very different and less
delightful place without them, as will hereafter appear. The family
consisted of Cephas Giovanni Thompson, the father and artist; his wife
and his two sons and one daughter. "Cephas Giovanni," being
interpreted, means plain Peter John; and it was said (though, I believe,
unjustifiably) that Peter John had been the names originally given to
Thompson by his parents at the baptismal-font, but that his wife, who
was a notable little woman, a sister of Anna Cora Mowatt, the actress,
well known in America and England seventy years ago, had persuaded
him to translate them into Greek and Italian, as more suitable to the
romantic career of an artist of the beautiful. I fancy the story arose
from the fact that Mrs. Thompson was a woman who, it was felt, might
imaginably conceive so ambitious a project. She was small, active,
entertaining, clever, and "spunky," as the New-Englanders would have
said; indeed, she had a rousing temper, on occasion. Her husband, on
the other hand, had the mildest, wisely smiling, philosophic air, with a
low, slow voice, and a beard of patriarchal fashion and size, though as
yet it was a rich brown, with scarcely a thread of silver in it. Brown
and abundant, also, was his hair; he had steady, bright, brown eyes, and
was rather under the average height of Anglo-Saxon man. But for all this
mild-shining aspect of his, his dark eyebrows were sharply arched, or
gabled rather; and my mother, who had absorbed from her former friend,
George Combe, a faith in the betrayals of phrenology, expressed her
private persuasion that good Mr. Thompson had a temper, too. She and
George Combe turned out to be right in this instance, though I am not
going to tell the tale of how we happened to be made acquainted with the
fact. Little thunder-storms once in a while occur in human skies as well
as in the meteorological ones; and the atmosphere is afterwards all the
sweeter and softer. No people could be more good, honest, and kind than
the Thompsons.
There was no other artist in Rome who could paint as well as Mr.
Thompson. That portrait of my father, to which reference has been made,
which now hangs in my house, looks even better, as a painting, to-day
than it did when it was fresh from his easel. Rubens could not have laid
on the colors with more solidity and with truer feeling for the hues of
life. But the trouble with Thompson was that he had never learned how to
draw correctly; and this defect appeared to some extent in his portraits
as well as in his figures. The latter were graceful, significant, full
of feeling and character; but they betrayed a weakness of anatomical
knowledge and of perspective. They had not the conventional
incorrectness of the old masters preceding Raphael, but an incorrectness
belonging personally to Thompson; it was not excessive or conspicuous to
any one, and certainly not to Thompson himself. But his color redeemed
all and made his pictures permanently valuable. He was at this time
painting a picture of Saint Peter being visited by an angel, which
was rich and beautiful; and he had some sketches of a series based on
Shakespeare's Tempest; and standing on one side in the studio was a
glowing figure of a woman in Oriental costume, an odalisque, or
some such matter, which showed that his sympathy with life was not
a restricted one. Later in our acquaintance he fell in love with the
bright Titian hair of my sister Rose, and made a little portrait of her,
which was one of his best likenesses, apart from its admirable color; it
even showed the tears in the child's eyes, gathering there by reason of
her antipathy to posing.
Cora Thompson, the daughter, was the most good-natured and
sunny-tempered of girls; she may have been fifteen at this time; she
inherited neither the handsomeness of her father nor the sharp-edged
cleverness of her mother; but she was lovable. Of the two boys, the
younger was named Hubert; he was about ten years old, small of his age,
and not robust in make or constitution. He was, however, a smart, rather
witty youth, a little precocious, perhaps, and able to take care of
himself. Some five and twenty years after the date of which I am now
writing I was at a large political dinner in New York and was there
introduced to a Mr. Thompson, who was the commissioner of public works,
and a party boss of no small caliber and power. He was an immense
personage, physically likewise, weighing fully three hundred pounds,
and, though not apparently advanced in years, a thorough man of the
world and of municipal politics. After we had conversed for a few
minutes, I was struck by a certain expression about my interlocutor's
eyebrows that recalled long-forgotten days and things. I remembered that
his name was Thompson, and had an impression that his initials were
H. O. "Are you little Hubert Thompson?" I suddenly demanded. "Why, of
course I am--all that's left of him!" he replied, with a laugh. So this
was the boy whom, a quarter of a century before, I could have held out
at arm's-length. We talked over the old days when we played together
about the Roman streets and ruins. Nothing more reveals the essential
strangeness of human life than this meeting after many years with
persons we have formerly known intimately, who are now so much changed
in outward guise. We feel the changes to be unreal, and yet, there they
are! Grover Cleveland was being groomed for his first Presidential term
then; Hubert was one of his supporters in New York, and he presented me
to the pyramidal man of destiny. Poor Hubert died, lamentably, not
long after. He was a good and affectionate son. He was perhaps too
kind-hearted and loyal for the political role which he enacted.
The elder Thompson boy was called Edmund, or, in my vernacular, Eddy.
There were in his nature a gravity, depth, and sweetness which won my
heart and respect, and we became friends in that intimate and complete
way that seems possible only to boys in their early teens. For that
matter, neither of us was yet over twelve; I think Eddy was part of
a year my junior. But you must search the annals of antiquity to find
anything so solid and unalterable as was our friendship. He was the most
absolutely good boy I ever knew, but by no means goody-goody; he had
high principles, noble ambitions, strong affections, the sweetest of
tempers; his seriousness formed a healthy foil to my own more impetuous
and hazardous character. "The thoughts of a boy are long, long
thoughts"; and not in many long lifetimes could a tithe of the splendid
projects we resolved upon have been carried out. We were together from
morning till night, month after month; we walked interminably about Rome
and frequented its ruins, and wandered far out over the Campagna and
along the shores of famous Tiber. We picked up precious antique marbles,
coins, and ancient curiosities of all sorts; we hunted for shells and
butterflies and lizards; our hearts were uplifted by the martial music
of the French army bands, which were continually resounding throughout
Rome; and we admired the gleaming swords of the officers and the sharp,
punctual drill and marching of the red-legged rank and file. We haunted
the lovely Villa Borghese, the Pincian Hill, the Villa Pamphili Doria;
we knew every nook and cranny of the Palace of the Csesars, the Baths
of Caracalla, the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, the Egerian Grove; we were
familiar with every gate that entered Rome; we drank at every fountain;
we lingered through the galleries of the Vatican and of the Capitol;
we made St. Peter's Church our refuge in inclement weather; we
threaded every street and by-way of the city; we were on friendly and
confidential terms with the custode of every treasure. And all the time
we talked about what we thought, what we felt, what we would do; there
is no looking backward in boys' confidences; they live in the instant
present and in the infinite future. Eddy and I arranged to spend one
lifetime in Central Africa, in emulation of the exploits of David
Livingstone; there, freed from all civilized burdens, we would live, and
we would run, catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl our lances in
the sun. At another epoch of our endless lives we would enter the army
and distinguish ourselves in heroic war; we would have swords like
sunbeams and ride steeds like Bucephalus. Then, and interleaved with all
this, as it were, there was an immense life of natural history; we would
have a private museum to rival the famous ones of nations. Eddy was
especially drawn towards insects, while my own predilection was still
for conchology; and both of us spent hours every week in classifying
and arranging our respective collections, not to speak of the time we
devoted to hunting for specimens. Eddy had a green net at the end of
a stick, and became very skilful in making his captures; and how we
triumphed over a "swallow-tail," so difficult to catch, or an unfamiliar
species! Eddy had his pins and his strips of cork, and paper boxes;
and his collections certainly were fairer to look upon, to the ordinary
view, than mine; moreover, his was the more scientific mind and the
nicer sense of order. For the display of my snail-shells I used bits of
card-board and plenty of gum-arabic; and I was affluent in "duplicates,"
my plan being to get a large card and then cover it with specimens of
the shell, in serried ranks. I also called literature to my aid, and
produced several little books containing labored descriptions of my
collection, couched, so far as possible, in the stilted and formal
phraseology of the conchological works to which I had access, but with
occasional outbursts after a style of my own. Here is a chapter from one
of them; a pen-and-ink portrait of the shell is prefixed to the original
essay:
"CLAUSILIA BUBIGUNIA
"This handsome and elegant little shell is found in mossy places, or
in old ruins, such as the Coliseum--where it is found in immense
numbers--or the Palace of the Caesars. But in Italy it is common in any
mossy ruin, in the small, moss-covered holes, where it is seen at the
farthest extremity. After a rain they always crawl out of their places
of concealment in such numbers that one would think it had been raining
clausilias. The shell, in large and fine specimens, is five-eighths of
an inch in length. The young are very small and look like the top part
of the spire of the adults. This shell is also largest in the middle,
shaped something like a grain of wheat. It has nine whorls, marked by
small white lines, which look like fine white threads of sewing-cotton;
and just below them are marks which look like very fine and very small
stitches of white cotton. The color of the shell, down to next to
the last whorl, is a brown color, but the very last whorl is a little
lighter. The shell is covered all over with fine lines, but they need
to be looked at through a magnifying-glass, they are so fine. The lip
is turning out, and very thin; inside there are three ridges, two on the
top part of the mouth, and the other, which is very small, is below. The
shell, when the animal is out of it, is semi-transparent, and the little
colomella, or pillar, can be indistinctly seen through."
There follows a detailed and loving description of the animal inhabiting
the shell, which I must reserve for a future edition. Of another species
of snail, Helix strigata, our learned author observes that "This shell
is, when dead, one of those which is found on the banks of the Tiber. It
is a strange circumstance that, although it is a land shell, it should
be found more on the banks of a river than anywhere else, and also only
on the banks of the Tiber, for it is not found on the banks of any other
river. Any one would think that dead shells were gifted with the power
of walking about, for certainly it is an inexplicable wonder how they
got there." Of Helix muralis we are informed that "The Romans eat these
snails, not the whole of them, but only their feet. In ancient times the
most wealthy people used to eat snails, and perhaps they ate the very
ones which the poorest people eat nowadays. It is most probable, for
there are a great many different kinds of snails round Rome, and the
Romans would probably select the best." I may perhaps be permitted
to remark that the correct orthography of this writer fills me with
astonishment, inasmuch as in later life I have reason to know that
he often went astray in this respect. Of the uniform maturity of the
literary style, I have no need to speak.
Eddy's father was in the habit of giving him an income of two or three
pauls a week, dependent on his good behavior and punctual preparation of
his lessons; and since Eddy was always well behaved and faithful in his
studies, the income came in pretty regularly. Eddy saved up this revenue
with a view to buying himself a microscope, for the better prosecution
of his zoological labors; being, also, stimulated thereto by the fact
that I already possessed one of these instruments, given me by my father
a year or two before. Mine cost ten shillings, but Eddy meant to get one
even more expensive. I had, too, a large volume of six hundred pages on
The Microscope, Its History, Construction, and Uses, by Jabez Hogg, the
contents of which I had long since learned by heart, and which I gladly
communicated to my friend. At length Eddy's economies had proceeded so
far that he was able to calculate that on his twelfth birthday he would
possess a fortune of five scudi, and he decided that he would buy a
microscope at that figure; it is needless to add that the microscope
had long since been selected in the shop, and was decidedly superior
to mine. We could hardly contain our impatience to enter upon the
marvellous world whereof this instrument was the key; that twelfth
birthday seemed long in coming, but at last it came.
I was to go with my friend to the shop to see him make the purchase;
and I was at his house betimes in the morning. But what a stupendous
surprise awaited me! Eddy was too much excited to say anything; with a
face beaming with emotion, he led me into the sitting-room, and there,
upon the table, was a microscope. But such a microscope! It was of such
unheard-of magnificence and elaborateness that it took my breath away,
and we both stood gazing at it in voiceless rapture. It was tall and
elegant, shining with its polished brass and mirrors, and its magnifying
powers were such as to disclose to us the very heart of nature's
mystery. It was quiet Mr. Thompson's birthday present to his son. That
gentleman sat smiling in his armchair by the window, and presently he
said, with a delightful archness, "Well, Eddy, I suppose you are ready
to give me back all that money you've been collecting?" Eddy grinned
radiantly. He spent his savings for microscope-slides and other
appurtenances, and for weeks thereafter he could hardly take his
eye away from the object-lens. He was luminous with happiness, and I
reflected his splendor from my sympathetic heart. Dear old Eddy! In
after years he entered West Point and became a soldier, and he died
early; I never saw him after parting from him in Italy in 1859. But he
is still my first friend, and there has been no other more dear.
I am not aware that Rome has ever been described from the point of
view of a twelve-year-old boy, and it might be worth doing; but I have
delayed attempting it somewhat too long; the moving pictures in my
mind have become too faded and confused. And yet I am surprised at the
minuteness of some of my recollections; they have, no doubt, been kept
alive by the numerous photographs of Rome which one carries about,
and also by the occasional perusal of The Marble Faun and other Roman
literature. But much is also due to the wonderful separateness which
Rome retains in the mind. It is like nothing else, and the spirit of it
is immortal. It seems as if I must have lived a lifetime there; and yet
I cannot make out that our total residence in the city extended over
fourteen months. Certainly no other passage of my boyhood time looms so
large or is rooted so deep.
But the passion for Rome (unless one be a Byron) is not a plant of
sudden growth, and I dare say that, during those first frigid weeks,
I may have shared my father's whimsical aversion to the city. He has
described, in his journals, how all things seemed to be what they should
not; and he was terribly disgusted with the filth that defiled the ruins
and the street corners. He was impressed by the ruins, but deplored
their nakedness. "The marble of them grows black or brown, it is true,"
says he, "and shows its age in that way; but it remains hard and
sharp, and does not become again a part of nature, as stone walls do in
England; some dry and dusty grass sprouts along the ledges of a ruin,
as in the Coliseum; but there is no green mantle of ivy spreading itself
over the gray dilapidation." We stumbled upon the Fountain of Trevi
in one of our early rambles, not knowing what it was. "One of these
fountains," writes my father, referring to it, "occupies the whole side
of a great edifice, and represents Neptune and his steeds, who seem to
be sliding down with a cataract that tumbles over a ledge of rocks
into a marble-bordered lake, the whole--except the fall of water
itself--making up an exceedingly cumbrous and ridiculous affair." He
goes to St. Peter's, and "it disappointed me terribly by its want of
effect, and the little justice it does to its real magnitude externally;
as to the interior, I am not sure that it would not be even more grand
and majestic if it were less magnificent, though I should be sorry to
see the experiment tried. I had expected something dim and vast, like
the great English cathedrals, only more vast and dim and gray; but there
is as much difference as between noonday and twilight." The pictures,
too, were apt in these first days to go against the grain with him.
Contemplating a fresco representing scenes in purgatory, he broke forth:
"I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation, but, at all
events, it was purgatory to look at this poor, faded rubbish. Thank
Heaven, there is such a thing as whitewash; and I shall always be glad
to hear of its application to old frescoes, even at the sacrifice of
remnants of real excellence!" Such growlings torture the soul of the
connoisseur; but the unregenerate man, hearing them, leaps up and shouts
for joy. He found the old masters, in their sacred subjects, lacking
in originality and initiative; and when they would represent mythology,
they engendered an apotheosis of nakedness. His conclusion was that
"there is something forced, if not feigned, in our taste for pictures
of the old Italian school." Of the profane subjects, he instances the
Fornarina, "with a deep bright glow on her face, naked below the waist,
and well pleased to be so, for the sake of your admiration--ready for
any extent of nudity, for love or money--the brazen trollop that she is!
Raphael must have been capable of great sensuality to have painted this
picture of his own accord, and lovingly." These are the iconoclasms
of the Goth and Vandal at their first advent to Rome. They remained to
alter their mood, and extol what they had before assaulted; and so did
my father, as we shall see presently. But at first he was sick and cold
and uncomfortable; and he consoled himself by hitting out at everything,
in the secret privacy of his diary, since opened to the world. With
warmer weather came equanimity and kinder judgments; but there is
a refreshing touch of truth and justice even in these mutterings of
exasperation.
It was not so much, I suppose, that Rome was cold as that my father had
expected it to be otherwise. When one is in a place where tradition and
association invite the soul forth to be warmed and soothed and rejoiced,
and the body, venturing out, finds nothing but chill winds and
frigid temperature and discomfort, the shock is much greater and
more disagreeable than if one had been in some northern Canada or
Spitzbergen, where such conditions are normal. Ice in the arctic circle
is all right and exhilarating, but in the Piazza of St. Peter's it is an
outrage, and affects the mind and heart even more than the flesh.
Circumstances caused my father to pass through several distinct phases
of feeling while he was in Rome. First, his own indisposition and the
inclement weather depressed and exasperated him.
Time, in due course, brought relief in these respects, and he began
to enjoy himself and his surroundings. Anon, the springs of creative
imagination, long dormant in him, were roused to activity by thoughts
connected with the Faun of Praxiteles in the Capitol. He now became
happy in the way of his genius and immediately took a new interest
in all things, looking at them from the point of view of possible
backgrounds or incidents for the romance which had begun to take form
in his mind. He describes what he saw con amore, and all manner of
harmonious ideas bloom through his thoughts, like anemones and other
flowers in the Villa Pamphili and the Borghese. This desirable mood
continued until, after our return to Rome from the Florentine visit, my
sister caught the Roman fever. She lay for weeks in danger of death; and
her father's anxiety about her not only destroyed in him all thoughts of
literary production and care for it, but made even keeping his journal
no longer possible for him. That strain, so long continued, broke
him down, and he never recovered from it so as to be what he had been
before. Nevertheless, when she became convalescent, the reaction from
his dark misgivings made him, for a time, as light-hearted as a boy;
and, the carnival happening to be coincident with her recovery, he
entered into the fun of it with a zest and enjoyment that surprised
himself. But, again, it presently became evident that her recovery was
not complete, and probably never would be so; the injury to her health
was permanent, and she was liable to recurrences of disease. His spirits
sank again, not so low as before, but, on the other hand, they never
again rose to their normal level. It was in this saddened mood that he
once more took up the Roman romance and finished it; it is a sad book,
and when there is a ray of sunshine across the page, it has a melancholy
gleam. After we returned to Concord, his apprehensions concerning Una's
unsound condition were confirmed; and, in addition, the bitter cleavage
between North and South inspired in him the gloomiest forebodings. A
wasting away of his whole physical substance ensued; and he died, almost
suddenly, while in years he might be considered hardly past the prime
of his life. A sensitive eye can trace the effects of the death-blow
all through The Marble Faun, and still more in Septimius and Grimshawe,
published after his death. In The Dolliver Romance fragment, which was
the last thing he wrote, there is visible once more some reminiscence
of the old sunshine of humor that was so often apparent in his time of
youth and vigor; but it, too, has a sad touch in it, such as belongs
to the last rays of the star of day before it sinks below the horizon
forever. Night follows, and the rest is silence.