FLORENCE--BOLOGNA--COMO.
Sunday, May 23d, being at Florence, we went to the Duomo. Advancing
from the door to the center of that magnificent cathedral, we noticed
a crowd of persons standing there, and heard a musical voice sounding
above their heads. The edifice is so vast that the thousand or more
people who composed the throng occupied comparatively only a small
space on the floor. The voice, the source of which we could not trace
at first in the dim light of the place, proved to come from a pulpit
in mid-air. The speaker was a fine-looking man about fifty years old.
His face was highly intellectual, and at moments intensely spiritual in
its expression. He spoke Italian with a sweetness and a rhythmic swing
delightful to the ear. One might not know a word of what he said--as
at the Italian opera--and still enjoy hearing him. But it was not
necessary to understand more than a few words--here and there--of the
beautiful language that rolled so fluently from his lips in order to
catch the full purport of his remarks. His theme was the consolations
of religion in earthly sorrows. He spoke without manuscript or notes.
The man’s heart was full of his message, and he delivered it with an
eloquence that held his audience spell-bound. Officers and privates
of the army, gray-headed civilians, rich men and beggars, women and
children, all stood there with parted lips gazing upon his face and
drinking in his words of faith and cheer. His gestures were few and
natural. They seemed freighted with meaning. At times he would point up
to the glorious dome, as if apostrophizing the angels and saints who
make that great concave seem a glimpse of heaven. Then he would press
his hand fervently upon his heart, as if to testify a sincerity for
which no such gesture was needed, as truth and zeal shone before all
men in every line of his face. Suddenly, while the attention of his
hearers was rapt and almost painful in its intensity, he stopped, gave
the congregation his blessing with a quick motion of his right hand
(a sign of the cross), and abruptly left the pulpit. A moment later I
saw him glide rapidly through the throng with a thick cloak wrapped
about him, and a shawl tied around his neck. His impassioned sermon
had heated him up, and he was very wisely taking care of himself. His
name is unknown to me, and I may never see him again. But his eloquent
discourse, which would have interpreted itself had it been spoken in
Chinese, will ever remain one of my pleasantest recollections of the
grand old Cathedral of Florence.
On the way back to my hotel I passed the Palazzo Vecchio. As I stopped
to inspect its venerable front, a small boy handed me a printed slip
of paper. Looking at it, I found it to be a recommendation of somebody
with a long name for the office of delegate in the National Assembly.
It was signed by numerous citizens of Florence, all highly respectable,
probably, but strangers to me. Just before me I observed one man
button-holing another, and whispering something in his ear. Groups of
people were conferring mysteriously on every side. Then, for the first
time, I noticed that the Palazzo Vecchio itself was plastered over
with enormous placards of assorted colors--red, green, blue, white,
and yellow. Letters a foot long proclaimed all these show-bills to be
election posters, quite in the American style. They were all dated the
night before the eventful day--namely, Sunday--which had been assigned
for the great struggle between the friends and foes of the present
Italian ministry. Politicians are the same in all countries. The
cunning fellows in Italy understand as well as their American kind the
art of issuing “last cards” and “final appeals” at an hour too late for
refutation by their opponents.
Desiring to compare the Italian with the American process of balloting,
I climbed to a large upper room in the palace where voting was then in
progress. Admission was impossible without a _permesso_, which it was
not worth while to procure, as I saw at a glance through the doorway
how the business was done. A number of officials sat at a long table;
upon it were glass globes for the ballots, and books for identifying
and checking off the voters. The formalities were in substance the
same as those which so effectually deter very busy men from voting in
New York except in presidential years. With a population of 150,000,
Florence is entitled to cast about 15,000 votes; and out of these the
proportion of stay-at-homes is as large as in our own city. Very little
interest was actually taken in the election, although the political
journals had been trying for a week to “get up steam” with pictorial
caricatures and big head-lines. The contest was evidently one between
the ins and the outs, and the great majority of voters had no real
concern in the issue. But the lesson was no less instructive to an
American. All that I saw on that election Sunday in Florence convinced
me that political tricks and “dodges” are by no means confined to our
beloved country.
The tourist’s purse should be well stuffed if he wants to buy
Florentine mosaics at the shops of the most famous manufacturers. The
prices of some of their products would be called high even in New York.
Extra fine pieces are ticketed at five thousand francs and upward. Some
of the makers of mosaics have grown rich on American patronage. It is
not at their shops that you get bargains. There is no shade of color,
I believe, which the artist can not find among the stones, shells, or
corals with which he produces his wonderful effects. As all great works
of art require a master for their accomplishment, it stands to reason
that the finest original landscapes, portraits, and flower and fruit
pieces can never be very cheap, as most people estimate cheapness. But
it is possible to pick up fairly good mosaics in Florence at reasonable
rates, though these are not the rates asked by the seller. He does not
expect you to give more than a half or two thirds his nominal price.
I have visited a number of factories of fancy goods in Italy, and
observed that nearly, all the labor is performed by mere children. They
toil many hours in the day, and are poorly paid. Under the pretense
that they are being educated to a trade, they continue for years to
do a journeyman’s work, and it is to their cunning hands that we owe
some of the most marvelous imitations of masterpieces in wood-carving,
filigree, and mosaic. When, therefore, the manufacturer takes off a
half or a third of his asking price, he is still making a large profit
on his goods. No American need think that he can ever get the better of
an art-dealer in Europe. That is impossible.
One of the most interesting sights in the environs of Florence is the
Carthusian Monastery. I had the pleasure of visiting it with a party
of American ladies. The monastery is an immense structure, covering
acres of land, and contains ten or a dozen chapels of different
sizes. This is enough to give each monk a chapel all to himself--the
inmates not exceeding that number. For reasons best known to the
Italian Government, it has been decided to wind up certain spiritual
retreats, and this Carthusian Monastery among them. But the work is
done gradually, and the buildings and grounds will not revert to
the Government until the last of the few remaining monks is dead.
They do not seem likely to die in a hurry. Some of them would take
the prizes in any human exhibition for fatness and sleekness. Their
loose and flowing robes of some cream-colored stuff, perhaps, impart
an unreal fullness to their figures. One wonders if their lives are
quite as austere as represented. The monk who piloted our party about
is magnificent in physique. He stands about six feet two inches, as
straight as an arrow, weighs fully two hundred pounds, has a winning,
slightly sunburned Italian face, and is in manner a perfect gentleman.
To the ladies he is at once dignified and courteous. Somewhere in some
other days he must have mingled with refined society, and I catch
myself in a state of keen surprise when I contrast his presumably
monastic life here with the gay times that he may have had elsewhere.
He is very fluent in Italian and French, as if he were making up (poor
fellow!) for the enforced silence of his vows. For we are told that
this ready talker is allowed to converse with his brethren no more
than one hour in a week. We are shown his suite of small, miserable,
cheerless rooms where he receives and eats his frugal meals, which
are shoved to him through a hole in the wall by a hand attached to an
unseen person. We see the wretched straw pallet on which he stretches
his giant frame, and the bare table where he makes his solitary
repast. Then we look again at his healthy face, and still wonder
by what alchemy he can transmute his solitude and privation into
apparent contentment and even happiness. The ladies all think that
our handsome guide must “have a history.” They imagine that somewhere
among his antecedents is the inevitable “woman.” They speculate fondly
on the probabilities of some love-affair which drove our friend from a
luxurious court to this penitential abode. They unanimously agree that
it is “too bad” to keep such a fine-looking gentleman confined in a
monastery, when society outside is pining for precisely that kind of
material. But our monk makes no revelation of his own thoughts. After
he has patiently taken us all over the monastery, and picked flowers
for the ladies as mementos of their visit, he bids them good-by with
the one unchanging expression of contentment on his face. May his ample
shadow never be less, nor his beard of raven blackness be shorn of its
luxuriant proportions!
Entering the ancient and famous city of Bologna May 24th, I could
think only of the sausage that bears her name. The ideas of Bologna
and sausage were one and inseparable. Could anything be more
ridiculous? There was a large, rich, enterprising city, with her fine
picture-galleries, churches, and important university, two remarkable
leaning towers, and many branches of industry in which she excels. And
yet I found myself looking out of the carriage-windows, right and
left, for nothing but sausages! Not a single specimen of them could
be seen between the station and the hotel. You may believe I was much
disappointed. But at dinner, among a great variety of French dishes,
the waiters bore around plates covered with the thinnest possible
slices of the celebrated sausage. For a moment I hovered over it
with a fork, and then gave myself the benefit of the doubt. All the
Italians present scrambled for it, but the English people and at least
two Americans at table let it alone. Such is prejudice. After dinner,
walking about the shops near our hotel, I saw plenty of sausages.
Indeed, these were the most beautiful ornaments of the shop-windows.
Some were a foot in diameter, and their finely-cut surfaces looked like
Roman mosaic. Aside from her sausages, Bologna is well worth a visit,
and even those persons who are squeamish about eating them can not help
admiring their decorative effect when exposed for sale in the busy
parts of the city. Their artistic combinations of tint lighten up the
shop-fronts like so many chromos or colored photographs.
Next day we examined the two leaning towers. One of them is
particularly interesting, because it is claimed by some authorities to
be the only tower in all Italy which leans “on purpose.” The taller
of the pair deflects only about three and a half feet in a height of
two hundred and seventy-two feet; while the other, with a height of
only one hundred and thirty-eight feet, is eight and a half feet out
of plumb. According to tradition, if not history, this obliquity is
the work of design. One may suppose that the original intention was
to carry the short tower to the same height as the tall one, and that
the architect and the workmen became frightened as they proceeded. One
feels like “standing from under” as he looks up and sees that massive
chimney-like pile apparently on the point of toppling over with its
own weight. I can understand, too, that the masons may have struck for
higher wages or fewer hours as the tower began to lean more and more.
It should have needed no trade-union or Knights of Labor to impel them
to make a demand on their employers. To them as to us it must have
seemed very absurd to build a tower at enormous expense for the express
object of showing how much it could be made to lean without falling.
After one has looked at these eccentric structures a short time he
becomes the prey of a singular optical illusion. Every other campanile
or steeple or chimney appears to be leaning more or less. The fronts of
tall buildings do not seem to be exactly up and down. The spectator
insensibly compares one upright object with another, and discovers, as
he imagines, a variance of a yard, or a foot, or an inch, from the true
perpendicular. He becomes painfully skeptical about the stability of
all things, and does not get rid of this disagreeable impression until
he leaves Bologna, and ceases to see the pair of leaning towers looming
always above the horizon.
Taking one’s lunch on the upper deck of a Rhine steamer is very
pleasant. The same operation is highly agreeable on a Danube boat. The
picturesque scenery of both rivers is enjoyed all the more while the
inner man is duly refreshed. But a lunch eaten in full air on the smart
little craft that plies on the most beautiful of Italian lakes between
Como and Bellagio is an experience no less delightful. The food and the
wine are good, to begin with. If one comes up from Milan on a hot and
dusty day, he revels in the coolness as he sits under an awning and is
fanned by breezes that have swept over yonder snow-fields of the Alps.
The hotter he has found Rome and Florence--and the more wearisome the
great valley or prairie of the Po has seemed to him as he traversed
it--the more he feasts on the prospect of mountains now all around him,
and the promise of lower temperature which they do not hold out in
vain. The hills which form the immediate frame of this exquisite lake
are clothed to their tops in green--not barren on the summit like those
of Southern Italy. This green is reflected in the clear, deep water,
and perhaps of itself explains the fine aquamarine tint for which Como
is as famous as Lake Leman for its matchless blue.
Perhaps no person who ever heard or read Claude Melnotte’s description
of Como, as poured by him into the too credulous ear of the Lady of
Lyons, can look on this lake without recalling some or all of that
delicious bit of poetry. This is unfortunate. Because the shores of
lovely Como do not abound in orange-groves as he has been led to
expect. Neither does he see anywhere fountains gushing forth in the
midst of roses. Besides, the environments of the lake are far from soft
and sensuous. The entire effect partakes of the grand and rugged. It is
only of the water itself and the villas on the banks that the epithet
beautiful is spontaneously used. But we know that Claude Melnotte was
only romancing when he painted Como to the love-lorn Pauline. Bulwer
must not be held responsible if travelers do not find here exactly
those charms which they had been prepared for. But none the less is the
Lake of Como peerless in Italy. If it has a rival anywhere it is in
America. Those who have seen Lake George may with some show of justice
assert its equality with Como in the chief elements of beauty. I have
heard the comparison made more than once by Americans here--to the
disparagement of Como. But why compare them at all? They are different
in certain respects; and I should say that in those variations, and
those only, each is more charming than the other.
In a world’s competition of roses the Lake of Como would stand a good
chance of carrying off the highest honors, for the profusion, size,
variety, and fragrance of those flowers. The villas here recall Byron’s
flowing line about “the gardens of Gul in their bloom.” And then the
nightingales! They are singing all night long in the forest on the
hill-side. There is an accompaniment of sweet woodland music to odors
almost oppressive in their richness. The old fable of the nightingale
loving the rose seems to be possible in this Eden of Como.