Drilled in Roman history--Lovely figures made of light and
morning--What superb figures!--The breath and strength of
immeasurable antiquity--Treasures coming direct from dead
hands into mine--A pleasant sound of coolness and
refreshment--Receptacles of death now dedicated to life--The
Borghese is a forest of Ardennes--Profound and important
communings--A smiling deceiver--Of an early-rising habit--
Hauling in on my slack--A miniature cabinet magically made
Titanic--"If I had a murder on my conscience"--None can tell
the secret origin of his thoughts--A singularly beautiful
young woman--She actually ripped the man open--No leagues of
chivalry needed in Rome--A resident army--Five foot six--
Corsets and padding--She was wounded in the house of her
friends.
We children had been drilled in Roman history, from Romulus to Caesar,
and we could, and frequently did, repeat by heart the Lays of Ancient
Rome by Macaulay, which were at that period better known, perhaps, than
they are now. Consequently, everything in Rome had a certain degree
of meaning for us, and gave us a pleasure in addition to the intrinsic
beauty or charm that belonged thereto. Our imagination thronged the
Capitol with senators; saw in the Roman Forum the contentions of the
tribunes and the patricians; heard the populus Romanus roar in the
Coliseum; beheld the splendid processions of victory wind cityward
through the Arch of Titus; saw Caesar lie bleeding at the base of
Pompey's statue; pondered over the fatal precipice of the Tarpeian
Rock; luxuriated in the hollow spaces of the Baths of Caracalla; lost
ourselves in gorgeous reveries in the palace of the Caesars, and haunted
the yellow stream of Tiber, beneath which lay hidden precious treasures
and forgotten secrets. And we were no less captivated by the galleries
and churches, which contained the preserved relics of the great old
times, and were in themselves so beautiful. My taste for blackened old
pictures and faded frescoes was, indeed, even more undeveloped than
my father's; but I liked the brilliant reproductions in mosaic at St.
Peter's and certain individual works in various places. I formed a
romantic attachment for the alleged Beatrice Cenci of Guido, or of some
other artist, and was very sorry that she should be so unhappy, though,
of course, I was ignorant of the occasion of her low spirits. But I
liked much better Guide's large design of Aurora, partly because I had
long been familiar with it on the head-board of my mother's bedstead.
Before her marriage she had bought a set of bedroom furniture, and had
painted it a dull gold color, and on this surface she had drawn in fine
black lines the outlines of several classical subjects, most of them
from Flaxman; but in the space mentioned she had executed an outline
of this glorious work of the Italian artist. I knew every line of
the composition thoroughly; and, by-the-way, I doubt if a truer, more
inspired copy of the picture was ever produced by anybody. But the color
had to be supplied by the observer's imagination; now, for the first
time, I saw the hues as laid on by the original painter. In spite of
time, they were pure and exquisite beyond description; these lovely
figures seemed made of light and morning. Another favorite picture of
mine was the same artist's "Michael Overcoming the Evil One," and I
even had the sense to like the painting better than the mosaic copy.
Raphael's "Transfiguration" I also knew well from the old engraving of
it that used to hang on our parlor wall from my earliest recollections;
it still hangs yonder. But I never cared for this picture; it was too
complicated and ingenious--it needed too much co-operation from
the observer's mind. Besides, I had never seen a boy with anything
approaching the muscular development of the epileptic youth in the
centre. The thing in the picture that I most approved of was the end of
the log in the little pool, in the foreground; it looked true to life.
But my delight in the statues was endless. It seems to me that I knew
personally every statue and group in the Vatican and in the Capitol.
Again and again, either with my parents, or with Eddy, or even alone,
I would pass the warders at the doors and enter those interminable
galleries, and look and look at those quiet, stained-marble effigies.
My early studies of Flaxman had, in a measure, educated me towards
appreciation of them. I never tired of them, as I did of the Cleopatras
and the Greek Slaves. What superb figures! What power and grace and
fleetness and athletic loins! The divine, severe Minerva, musing under
the shadow of her awful helmet; the athlete with the strigil, resting
so lightly on his tireless feet; the royal Apollo, disdaining his own
victory; the Venus, half shrinking from the exquisiteness of her own
beauty; the swaying poise of the Discobulus, caught forever as he drew
his breath for the throw; the smooth-limbed, brooding Antinous; the
terrible Laocoon, which fascinated me, though it always repelled me,
too; the austere simplicity of the Dying Gladiator's stoop to death--the
most human of all the great statues; the heads of heroic Miltiades,
of Antony, of solitary Caesar, of indifferent Augustus; the tranquil
indolence of mighty Nile, clambered over by his many children--these,
and a hundred others, spoke to me out of their immortal silence. I can
conceive of no finer discipline for a boy; I emulated while I adored
them. Power, repose, beauty, nobility, were in their message: "Do you,
too, possess limbs and shoulders like ours!" they said to me; "such a
bearing, such a spirit within!" I cannot overestimate even the physical
good they did me; it was from them that I gained the inspiration for
bodily development and for all athletic exercise which has, since then,
helped me over many a rough passage in the path of life. But they also
awoke higher ambitions and conferred finer benefits.
From these excursions into the ideal I would return to out-of-doors with
another inexhaustible zest. That ardent, blue Roman sky and penetrating,
soft sunshine filled me with life and joy. The breath and strength of
immeasurable antiquity emanated from those massive ruins, which time
could deface but never conquer. Emerald lizards basked on the hot walls;
flowers grew in the old crevices; butterflies floated round them; they
were haunted by spirits of heroes. There is nothing else to be compared
with the private, intimate, human, yet sublimated affection which
these antique monuments wrought in me. They were my mighty brothers,
condescending to my boyish thoughts and fancies, smiling upon me,
welcoming me, conscious of my love for them. Each ruin had its separate
individuality for me, so that to-day I must play with the Coliseum,
to-morrow with the Forum, or the far-ranging arches of the Aqueduct, or
the Temple of Vesta. Always, too, my eyes were alert for treasures in
the old Roman soil, coming, as it seemed, direct from the dead hands of
the vanished people into mine. I valued the scraps that I picked up thus
more than anything to be bought in shops or seen in museums. These
bits of tinted marble had felt the touch of real Romans; their feet had
trodden on them, on them their arms had rested, their hands had grasped
them. Two thousand years had dulled the polish of their surfaces; I took
them to the stone-workers, who made them glow and bloom again--yellow,
red, black, green, white. They were good-natured but careless men, those
marble-polishers, and would sometimes lose my precious relics, and when
I called for them would say, every day, "Domane--domane," or try to put
me off with some substitute--as if a boy could be deceived in such
a matter! I once found in the neighborhood of a recent excavation a
semi-transparent tourmaline of a cool green hue when held to the light;
it had once been set in the ring of some Roman beauty. It had, from long
abiding in the earth, that wonderful iridescent surface which ancient
glass acquires. Rose, my sister, picked up out of a rubbish heap a
little bronze statuette, hardly three inches high, but, as experts said,
of the best artistic period. Such things made our Roman history books
seem like a tale of yesterday, or they transported us back across the
centuries, so that we trod in the footsteps of those who had been but a
moment before us.
In those warm days, after our walks and explorations, Eddy and I, and
little Hubert, who sometimes was permitted to accompany us, though we
deemed him hardly in our class, would greatly solace ourselves with the
clear and gurgling fountains which everywhere in Rome flow forth into
their marble and moss-grown basins with a pleasant sound of coolness and
refreshment. Rome without her fountains would not be Rome; every memory
of her includes them. In the streets, in the piazzas, in the wide
pleasaunces and gardens, the fountains allure us onward, and comfort us
for our weariness. In the Piazza d' Espagna, at the foot of the famous
steps, was that great, boat-shaped fountain whose affluent waters cool
the air which broods over the wide, white stairway; and not far away
is the mighty Trevi, with its turmoil of obstreperous figures swarming
round bragging Neptune, and its cataract of innumerable rills welling
forth and plunging downward by devious ways to meet at last in the great
basin, forever agitated with baby waves lapping against the margins.
These, and many similar elaborate structures, are for the delight of
the eye; but there are scores of modest fountains, at the corners of
the ways, in shady or in sunny places, formed of an ancient sarcophagus
receiving the everlasting tribute of two open-mouthed lion-heads, or
other devices, whose arching outgush splashes into the receptacle made
to hold death, but now immortally dedicated to the refreshment of life.
It was at these minor fountains that we quenched our boyish thirst,
each drinking at the mouth of a spout; and when we discovered that by
stopping up one spout with our thumb the other would discharge with
double force, we played roguish tricks on each other, deluging each
other at unawares with unmanageable gushes of water, till we were forced
to declare a mutual truce of honor. But what delicious draughts did we
suck in from those lion-mouths into our own; never elsewhere did
water seem so sweet and revivifying. And then we would peer into the
transparent depths of the old sarcophagus, with its fringes of green,
silky moss waving slightly with the movement of the water, and fish out
tiny-spired water-shells; or dip in them the bits of ancient marbles
we had collected on our walk, to see the hues revive to their former
splendor. Many-fountained Rome ought to be a cure for wine-bibbers; yet
I never saw an Italian drink at these springs; they would rather quaff
the thin red and white wines that are sold for a few baiocchi at the
inns.
The Pincian Hill and the adjoining grounds of the Borghese Palace came
at length to be our favorite haunts. The Borghese is a delectable spot,
as my father remarks in one of those passages in his diary which
was afterwards expanded into the art-picture of his romance. "Broad
carriageways," he says, "and wood-paths wander beneath long vistas of
sheltering boughs; there are ilex-trees, ancient and sombre, which, in
the long peace of their lifetime, have assumed attitudes of indolent
repose; and stone-pines that look like green islands in the air, so high
above earth are they, and connected with it by such a slender length of
stem; and cypresses, resembling dark flames of huge, funereal candles.
These wooded lawns are more beautiful than English park scenery; all the
more beautiful for the air of neglect about them, as if not much care of
men were bestowed upon them, though enough to keep wildness from growing
into deformity, and to make the whole scene like nature idealized--the
woodland scenes the poet dreamed of--a forest of Ardennes, for instance.
These lawns and gentle valleys are beautiful, moreover, with fountains
flashing into marble basins, or gushing like natural cascades from rough
rocks; with bits of architecture, as pillared porticos, arches, columns,
of marble or granite, with a touch of artful ruin on them; and, indeed,
the pillars and fragments seem to be remnants of antiquity, though put
together anew, hundreds of years old, perhaps, even in their present
form, for weeds and flowers grow out of the chinks and cluster on the
tops of arches and porticos. There are altars, too, with old Roman
inscriptions on them. Statues stand here and there among the trees, in
solitude, or in a long range, lifted high on pedestals, moss-grown, some
of them shattered, all grown gray with the corrosion of the atmosphere.
In the midst of these sunny and shadowy tracts rises the stately front
of the villa, adorned with statues in niches, with busts, and ornamented
architecture blossoming in stone-work. Take away the malaria, and it
might be a very happy place."
[IMAGE: PENCIL SKETCHES IN ITALY, BY MRS. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE]
Here was a playground for boys of imaginative but not too destructive
proclivities, such as the world hardly furnishes elsewhere. But much of
my enjoyment of it I ascribe to my friend Eddy. My conversation with
no person since then has rivalled the profundity and importance of my
communings with his sympathetic soul. We not only discussed our future
destinies and philosophical convictions, but we located in these
delicious retreats the various worlds which we purposed to explore and
inhabit during the next few hundred years. Here we passed through by
anticipation all our future experiences. Sometimes we were accompanied
by other boys; but then our visits lost their distinction; we merely
had good times in the ordinary way of boys; we were robber barons,
intrenched in our strongholds, and attacked by other robbers; or we ran
races, or held other trials of strength and activity, or we set snares
for the bright-colored fishes which lurked in some of the fountains. The
grounds were occasionally invaded by gangs of Italian boys, between whom
and ourselves existed an irreconcilable feud. We could easily thrash
them in the Anglo-Saxon manner, with nature's weapons; but they would
ambush us and assail us with stones; and once one of them struck at
me with a knife, which was prevented from entering my side only by the
stout leather belt which I chanced to wear. We denounced these assassins
to the smiling custode of the grounds, and he promised, smilingly, to
bar the entrance to them thenceforth; but he was a smiling deceiver;
our enemies came just the same. After all, we would have regretted their
absence; they added the touch of peril to our chronic romance which
made it perfect. It is forty-four years since then. Are there any other
Borghese Gardens to come for me in the future, I wonder? There was a
rough pathway along the banks of the Tiber, extending up the stream for
two or three miles, as far as the Ponte Molle, where the corktrees grew,
and farther, for aught I know. This was a favorite walk of mine, because
of the fragments of antique marbles to be found there, and also the
shells which so mysteriously abounded along the margin, as shown by the
learned conchological author hereinbefore cited. And, being of an early
rising habit, it was my wont to get up long before breakfast and tramp
up and down along the river for an hour or two, thinking, I suppose,
as I gazed upon the turbulent flood, of brave Horatius disdainfully
escaping from the serried hosts of Lars Porsena and false Sextus, or
of Caesar and Cassius buffeting the torrent on a "dare," and with lusty
sinews flinging it aside. There were also lovely effects of dawn upon
the dome of St. Peter's, and the redoubtable mass of St. Angelo, with
its sword-sheathing angel. Moreover, sunrise, at twelve years of age, is
an exhilarating and congenial phenomenon. And I painted my experiences
in colors so attractive that our Ada Shepard was inflamed with the idea
of accompanying me on my rambles. She was a child in heart, though so
mature in intellect, and her spirit was valiant, though her flesh was
comparatively infirm. It was my custom to set out about five o'clock
in the morning, and Miss Shepard promised to be ready at that hour.
But after keeping awake most of the night in order not to fail of the
appointment, she fell asleep and dreamed only of getting up; and, after
waiting for her for near an hour, I went without her. She was
much mortified at her failure, and suggested a plan to insure her
punctuality, in which I readily agreed to collaborate. When she went to
bed she attached a piece of string to one of her toes, the other end of
the filament being carried underneath doors and along passages to my own
room. I was instructed to haul in on my slack at the proper hour; and
this I accordingly did, with good-will, and was at once made conscious
that I had caught something, not only by the resistance which my
efforts encountered, but by the sound of cries of feminine distress and
supplication, heard in the distance. However, my companion appeared in
due season, and we took our walk, which, she declared, fulfilled all the
anticipations which my reports had led her to form.
Nevertheless, I cannot remember that we ever again made the expedition
together; it is a mistake to try to repeat a perfect joy.
It seems to me that I must have been a pretty constant visitor at St.
Peter's. The stiff, heavy, leathern curtain which protects the entrance
having been strenuously pushed aside (always with remembrance of
Corinne's impossible act of grace and courtesy in holding it aside
with one hand for Lord Neville), the glorious interior expanded, mildly
radiant, before me. As has been the case with so many other observers,
the real magnitude of the spectacle did not at first affect me; the
character of the decoration and detail prevented the impression of
greatness; it was only after many times traversing that illimitable
pavement, and after frequent comparisons with ordinary human
measurements of the aerial heights of those arches and that dome, that
one conies to understand, by a sort of logical compulsion, how immense
it all is. It is a miniature cabinet magically made titanic; but the
magic which could transform inches into roods could not correspondingly
enlarge the innate character of the ornament; so that, instead of making
the miniature appear truly vast, it only makes us seem unnaturally
small. Still, after all criticisms, St. Peter's remains one of the most
delightful places in the world; its sweet sumptuousness and imperial
harmonies seem somehow to enter into us and make us harmonious, rich,
and sweet. The air that we inhale is just touched with the spirit of
incense, and mellowed as with the still memories of the summers of
five hundred years ago. The glistening surfaces of the colored marbles,
dimmed with faint, fragrant mists, and glorified with long slants of
brooding sunshine, soothe the eye like materialized music; and the soft
twinkle of the candles on the altars, seen in daylight, has a jewel-like
charm. As I look back upon it, however, and contrast it with the
cathedrals of England, the total influence upon the mind of St. Peter's
seems to me voluptuous rather than religious. It is a human palace of
art more than a shrine of the Almighty. A prince might make love to a
princess there without feeling guilty of profanation. St. Peter himself,
sitting there in his chair, with his highly polished toe advanced, is
a doll for us to play with. On one occasion I was in the church with
my father, and the great nave was thronged with people and lined with
soldiers, and down the midst went slowly a gorgeous procession, with
Pope Pio Nono borne aloft, swayingly, the triple crown upon his head. He
blessed the crowd, as he passed along, with outstretched hand. One can
never forget such a spectacle; but I was not nearly so much impressed in
a religious sense as when, forty years later, I stood in the portals of
a Mohammedan mosque in Central India and saw a thousand turbaned Moslems
prostrate themselves with their foreheads in the dust before a voice
which proclaimed the presence of the awful, unseen God.
My father enjoyed the church more after each visit to it. But it was the
confessionals and their significance that most interested him. "What an
institution the confessional is! Man needs it so, that it seems as if
God must have ordained it." And he dwells upon the idea with remarkable
elaboration and persistence. Those who have followed the painful
wanderings of heart-oppressed Hilda to the carven confessional in the
great church, where she found peace, will recognize the amply unfolded
flower of this seed. What I supposed to be my notion of St. Peter's
looking like the enlargement of some liliputian edifice is also there,
though I had forgotten it till I myself reread the pages. In this book
of my memories, which is also the book of my forgettings, I must walk to
and fro freely, if I am to walk at all. None can tell the secret origin
of his thoughts.
Besides the monumental and artistic features of Rome, the human side
of it appealed to me. There was something congenial in the Romans, and,
indeed, in the Italians generally, so that I seemed to be renewing my
acquaintance with people whom I had partly forgotten. I picked up the
conversational language with unusual ease, perhaps owing to the drilling
in Latin which my father had given me; and I liked the easy, objectless
ways of the people, and the smiles which so readily took the place of
the sallow gravity which their faces wore in repose. But it was the
Transteverini women who chiefly attracted me; they wore an antique
costume familiar enough in paintings, and they claimed to be descendants
of the ancient race; they had the noble features and bearing which one
would have looked for in such descendants, at all events. Looking in
their dark, haughty eyes, one seemed to pass back through the terrible
picturesqueness of mediaeval Italy, with its Borgias and Bella Donnas,
its Lorenzos and Fornarinas, to the Rome of Nero, Augustus, Scipio, and
Tarquin. Eddy and I would sometimes make excursions across the river to
Transtevere, and stroll up and down those narrow streets, imagining
all manner of suitable adventures and histories for the inhabitants,
stalking there in their black and scarlet and yellow habiliments,
and glancing imperially from under the black brows of their dark
countenances. One afternoon during the carnival I was in a dense crowd
in the piazza, towards the lower end of the Corso, and found myself
pushed into the neighborhood of a singularly beautiful young woman of
this class, dressed in the height of her fashion, who was slowly making
her way in my direction through the press. All at once a man, smartly
clad in the garb of recent civilization, stepped in front of her and
said something to her; what it was I knew not. She drew herself back,
as from something poisonous or revolting, and the expression of her face
became terrible. At the same time her right hand went swiftly to the
masses of her sable hair, and as swiftly back again, armed with the
small, narrow dagger which these women wear by way of hair-pin. Before
the unhappy creature who had accosted her knew what was happening,
she thrust the dagger, with a powerful movement--while her white teeth
showed, set edge to edge, through her drawn lips--deep into his body.
As he collapsed forward she drew the weapon upward, putting the whole
strength of her body into the effort, and actually ripped the man open.
Down he fell at her feet. There was a score or more of Roman citizens
within arm's-reach of her at the moment; no one spoke, still less
attempted to restrain her. On the contrary, as she turned they
respectfully opened a way for her through the midst of them, and none
made an offer to assist the dying wretch who lay writhing and faintly
coughing on the cobble-stone pavement of the piazza. I was soon elbowed
quietly away from the spot where he lay; I caught a glimpse of the
crimson head-dress of his slayer passing away afar amid the crowd;
presently the cocked hat of a gendarme appeared from another direction,
advancing slowly against manifest obstructions; everybody seemed to
get in his way, without appearing to intend it. Such was the attitude
towards assassination of the Roman people in those days. I have often
thought over the incident since then. Their sympathy is with private
vengeance, never with ordained statute law. They love to use the poniard
and to see it used, and will do their best to shield the users. Pity for
the victim they have none; they assume that he has his deserts. For
that matter, my own sympathies, filled though I was with horror at the
spectacle of actual murder done before my eyes, were wholly with the
savage beauty, and not with the fatuous creature who had probably
insulted her. It is needless to say that the women of Transtevere were
not so often called upon to resent insults as are the ladies of New
York and other American cities. They did not wait for policemen or for
"leagues of chivalry" to avenge them.
Towards the French soldiers I was cordially disposed. Their dark-blue
tunics and baggy, red peg-tops were never out of sight, and though I
had seen troops in England, and had once observed the march of a British
regiment in Liverpool going to embark for the Crimea (whence, I believe,
very few of this particular regiment returned), yet the conception of a
resident army first came to me in Rome. About the French army of those
days still hovered the lustre bestowed upon it by the deeds of the great
Napoleon, which their recent exploits in the Crimea had not diminished.
There were among them regiments of fierce and romantic looking zouaves,
with Oriental complexions and semi-barbaric attire, marching with a long
swing, and appearing savage and impetuous enough to annihilate anything;
and there was also a brigade, the special designation of which I have
forgotten, every man of which was a trained athlete, and whose drill
was something marvellous to witness. But the average French soldier was
simply a first-class soldier, good-natured, light-hearted, active, trim,
and efficient; in height averaging not more than five foot six; carrying
muskets which seemed out of proportion large, though they handled them
lightly enough, and wearing at their sides a short sword, like the sword
of ancient Rome, which was also used as a bayonet. There was always a
drill or a march in progress somewhere, and sentinels paced up and down
before the palaces. The officers were immensely impressive; the young
ones had wasp waists, surpassing those of the most remorseless belles
of fashion; and the old ones were, en revanche, immensely stout in that
region, as if outraged nature were resolved to assert herself at last.
But, young or old, their swords were sun-bright and lovely to behold--I
used to polish my own little weapon in vain in the attempt to emulate
them. Hopelessly envious was I, too, of the heroic chests of these
warriors (not knowing them to be padded, as the waists were corseted),
and I would swell out my own little pectoral region to its utmost extent
as I walked along the streets, thereby, though I knew it not, greatly
benefiting my physical organism. Of course I had no personal commerce
with the officers, but the rank and file fraternized with me and my
companions readily; there was always a number of them strolling about
Rome and its environs on leave, in pairs or groups, and they were just
as much boys as we were. They would let me heft their short, strong
swords, and when they understood that I was gathering shells they would
climb lightly about the ruins, and bring me specimens displayed in their
broad, open palms. Our conversation was restricted to few words and many
grunts and gestures, but we understood one another and were on terms of
gay camaraderie. A dozen years afterwards, when there was war between
France and Germany, my sympathies were ardently with the former, and
great were my astonishment and regret at the issue of the conflict. Man
for man, and rightly led and managed, I still believe that Gaul could
wipe up the ground with the Teuton, without half trying. But there were
other forces than those of Moltke and Bismarck fighting against poor
France in that fatal campaign. She was wounded in the house of her
friends.