Our pension was all that could be desired. Mr. and Mrs. Winchell were
here from America, from Connecticut. She was about twenty-seven; he was
nearly sixty. They were on their way around the world, stopping in Rome
for some months. She was studying painting under an artist who also
taught etching. In this way I came under the instruction of Luca, who
had a studio not far from the Piazza di Spagna, and also into daily
association with Mrs. Winchell.
First little Reverdy had to be placed in school and given a tutor.
Before doing this I took him around the city, and we saw together some
of the churches: S. Maria del Popolo, S. Giovanna dei Laterano, S.
Angelo, S. Paolo. I took him to the Pantheon, the Coliseum, to St.
Peter's, into the Vatican. Thus I gained my first impressions; and on
these rounds I found the courier Serafino Maletesta, who became a source
of so much interest and delight to me.
My mornings were spent in Luca's studio; my afternoons in sightseeing
with Serafino, in which Mr. and Mrs. Winchell joined, though
infrequently by him. He was ageing and not well. And often from the
beginning Mrs. Winchell and I set off together with Serafino to explore
museums, visit the Palatine, drive to the edge of the city where the
Alban hills were plainer across the Campagna, as level as a prairie
around Jacksonville.
I was struggling with Italian, carrying on such conversation as I could
with Serafino, and with Mrs. Winchell, who was growing proficient in the
language.
Serafino was something past sixty. He had been with the Carbonari of
1820, and in the Italian revolution of 1830-31. He saw this suppressed.
Then when the republican movements of 1848 shook Europe, he had
participated in the third Italian revolution of that year; and again he
had seen Italy put down, this time by the intervention of the French,
whose Louis Napoleon sought by this action to win the friendship of the
Catholic clergy in France. The hated Austrians now ruled Lombardy and
Venice. In Rome, now that the Pope again had temporal, power, the
political affairs of the city were in the hands of Cardinal Antonelli,
who suppressed political agitation with great severity. It was not only
an American audience before North Market Hall in Clark Street, Chicago,
that denied the freedom of speech. Cardinals were up to the same thing,
as well as mobs.
Serafino told me calmly, with occasional profanity, of the arrest of
large numbers of Italians who belonged to the Unita Italiana at Naples,
whose condemnation was speedily followed by hideous dungeons and
atrocious cruelties. There was slavery in Italy too!
Italy was under the heel of Austria. Religious bigotry, more subtle and
more powerful than the slavocracy of America, was crushing hope from the
lives of the Italians, while Mazzini and Cavour battled like Titans
against the powerful hierarchy of monarchy and Catholicism. There was
little of the history of Italy, of ancient Rome, that was seemingly
unknown to Serafino. He had read all his life; and he had been in the
actual conflicts of awakening Italy. Now his head shook a little when
his face reddened from suppressed wrath. He cursed quietly, but with a
terrible energy. He was poor; but there was a refinement in his personal
appearance. His worn shoes were always polished, his coat and trousers
of many years service were always brushed. He would appear at the
appointed hour, bright of eye, cleanly shaven, and always with wonderful
suggestions for sightseeing for the afternoon. He lived somewhere near
the Forum. Having never married he was continuing a friendship formed
long ago with a woman who kept house for him and lived with him. As he
was no longer fitted for a battle or strife he was now an adviser to
younger men. He was no doubt suspected but he seemed to have no fear. As
we went about among priests and soldiers he smiled and spoke to them.
He knew them of old and a certain security seemed to be his. His two
interests were politics and art, but art had won him almost completely.
What he knew of history and of art, his life-long residence in Rome made
him the most interesting of couriers.
Our conversations widened and deepened day by day. Had he heard of
Douglas? No. He had read _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. What did I know of Mrs.
Stowe? I ran over the list of our notables. They meant nothing to him.
State sovereignty, popular sovereignty, the Missouri Compromise, the
Compromises of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska act were words without
significance. But there was negro slavery. "How can that be in your
country?" he asked, and laughed ironically. "If all men are created free
and equal how about the negro?" he asked.
I went on to tell Serafino, that Thomas Jefferson, when drafting the
Declaration of Independence, had condemned George III who had forbidden
the American Colonies "to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce";
but that the clause was stricken out by South Carolina and Georgia.
Therefore that the Declaration did not mean negroes when it said "all
men." Serafino looked at me with quiet, comprehending eyes which said:
"It's the same struggle of money and power everywhere." He added aloud:
"Italy will never eat free bread and have enough of it until the
Austrian is driven off our back. They make us work and take away our
labor in taxes. We are negroes too."
He wanted to know something of Garrison, of whom he had heard. What was
thought of Washington in America? But in the midst of these subjects he
would stop to point to a broken column, a ruined temple; or he would
turn suddenly into an old church to show me some beloved picture. After
all, the old life of street brawls, debates, and dungeons had faded out
of him with the dying of the rebellious fires of youth. There were only
echoes of these thunderous events in his soul. His eye only brightened
fully before a picture or a statue. His reverence arose only to some
perfection of color or of form.
Once he took me by a quick turn, as if by impulse, into an old church.
"There is a lovely Madonna here," he said. "Who painted it?" "Some pupil
of Raphael's perhaps." Serafino removed his hat and stood reverently
before this beautiful face, so human, so tender. "I have heard you say
so much against the Church, the Papacy--I thought you were not in the
Church," I said. "No, I am an atheist," replied Serafino. "But what has
that to do with this? Look at those eyes, those lips. In '48, when my
soul was torn, I used to come in here every day just for the consolation
of that face. And now I come for the memory and the peace it brings me."
Slow tears were on the lower lids of his eyes. With a rough hand he
brushed them away, then asked me: "What do you think?" "I love that
face," I replied. "I understand how you feel."
A friendship grew up between Serafino and me. He was not a perfunctory
guide. He never grew tired. When five o'clock would come and the day was
really ended I would say: "Well I must be back now. Little Reverdy is
coming over for an early dinner." "Ah, but just this one picture," he
would say, "it will only take a few minutes. I want you to see this. It
is a great work and something may happen. I may forget to bring you
again." Then we would walk in and out of the cold and gloom of the
church after having stared the picture into vividness.
During my morning work my friendship with Mrs. Winchell ripened rapidly.
We had an excellent start in the circumstance that we were Americans. We
knew of cities, of some people in common. Abigail had come from
Connecticut and that, in a sense, laid a foundation for our
conversations. We were working together, she with painting, I with
drawing and etching. We criticized and suggested concerning each other's
work. Or we put down our brushes and pencils and talked of life. In this
way at last she knew of my going to America as a youth of eighteen, of
the farm, of Zoe, of my marriage, my life in Chicago, my long friendship
with Douglas, and lastly of Dorothy's death at sea. Her eyes would look
intently into mine. And when I told her that I considered my life
practically wasted she said: "Do you know every one's life is wasted;
nearly every one. Few find their work and pursue it. Most of us are
drawn aside, or tripped, or blinded. Your friend Douglas seems to me to
have had a wasted life. As you tell me all this I see you as a man of
tremendous will drawn into an accidental path, not his real path. You
are an artist at heart. I don't mean that you will ever be a great
etcher, though one cannot tell; I mean that all this turbulence,
sordidness, American hurry, waste, vulgarity, agitation, politics, did
not belong to you. But what right have I to talk? My life is a waste
too."
Little by little I learned from her what her life had been, what its
central impulse was. She was a poor girl who hungered for opportunity.
She had looked with critical eyes upon marriageable men. I wondered if
she had been attractive to many men, if many had had the discernment to
see what she was. If a young woman marries an elderly man of wealth it
is probable that no young man of wealth has come to her at the favorable
hour; and probable, too, that no man of merely compelling magnetism has
been interested in her. Mr. Winchell was kindly, a noble nature; he gave
her a tender, but only a paternal love. But through him she had
traveled; she had had the beauty of life for which her heart was
insatiable. There were no children; there never would be children, and
what lavish, ecstatic affection she bestowed upon my Reverdy! So day by
day I learned that she was a teacher in Connecticut when Mr. Winchell
came along, willing to give her everything if she would marry him. He
had been rather a heavy drinker up to this time, now five years before;
when he left off drink for awhile. Then he had begun again, but rarely
indulged to excess. It may be that drink had emasculated him before he
married her; but now if because of this he tippled occasionally, he was
justified in medicine which dulled feelings that he could not be a
husband to this radiant woman, who treated him always with such
tenderness and devotion, always honored him with such scrupulous
attention.
She wanted a child above all things. All of us remember some woman whom
we knew in youth who kept canaries, or raised flowers or had some queer
little fad. We learn to know why women do this. In her case she
expressed her mother's passion in studies, in art, in travel, in
friendship, in kindness to every one; above all in devotion to her
husband. She mothered him in the most tender and beautiful way. In a
little while I knew all her story, as she did mine.
Serafino came for me one morning at the studio. There was an old café
beyond the walls near the Campagna where the food was wholly Italian and
of the best. It was a wonderful place for the rest of the noonday meal,
for a view of the Alban hills. The sun was warm, the sky was clear. The
intoxication of an Italian day was in the air. I wished so much to share
the delight with someone. Mrs. Winchell was sitting near absorbed in her
work. But she had looked up and bowed to Serafino, whom she had seen
with me so frequently. I turned to her and asked: "Would you and Mr.
Winchell like to join me?" "Let us go and ask him," she replied. So we
set off to the pension to invite Uncle Tom. That was the name she called
him, and I had begun to use it myself.
Uncle Tom had made the acquaintance of some men of his own age from New
York. They had begun to patronize a café located beyond the American
Embassy, where broiled chicken and fresh vegetables were a specialty and
where the red wine was of the best. He had an engagement with these
cronies and was preparing to leave as we came in. He listened to
Isabel's exclamations about the place to which Serafino wished to take
us. If she had been his daughter and I had been his son he could not
have sent us off together with a heartier laugh, a more undisturbed
heart. "You two go," he said. "You get along about pictures and scenery.
I am going to Canape's, and play checkers this afternoon. I am too fat
to run around like you young folks do. Go on and have a good time."
And we ran down, following Serafino who had preceded us to engage a
carriage. Off we drove, the wheels rattling over the stones, past the
Forum, past the Coliseum, in view of St. Peter's. Soon we entered a
dusty road. The houses were small now, broken and old. At last we drew
up into an open space surrounded by little buildings: a blacksmith's
shop where the anvil was ringing, little bakeries, markets where
vegetables and bologna were vended. Ragged Italian children, gay and
soiled with healthy dirt, were playing in the dust, turning somersaults,
chasing each other, laughing. Beyond us was the Campagna, the Alban
hills. We climbed a rickety stairway to a platform or roof of stone. An
eager and obliging waiter brought us a table, spread it, put before us
red wine. And Serafino, seeing these things done, disappeared, leaving
Isabel and me to dine together under this clear sky with the green of
the lovely plain spread out before us to the purples of the hills.
How could I help but make comparisons between Isabel and Dorothy? I had
never known any women but Dorothy and Abigail, Sarah, Mother Clayton. I
had never come into romantic contact with any woman but Dorothy. Now I
was advancing to this relationship with Isabel. I began to wonder if I
had given Dorothy love. I had given her perfect loyalty. Was there a
form of treason to Dorothy's memory in the fast beating of my heart here
in the presence of Isabel, under this sky, in this charming place?
Perhaps I had been starved too. Yet because of her personality, the
radiant flame which was herself, the laughing and girlish genius which
was in her, but above all the spiritual integrity which was hers, I
stood in awe of her. But that awe was sufficiently explained by her
devotion to her husband. I saw in her eyes honor and truth, and the
peace of mind that sometimes comes with them, all the while that I felt
the blood surge around my heart and pulsate in my hands. There seemed to
be nothing now of which we could not speak. Her interest in children
betrayed itself in exclamations over the ragged little Italians playing
in the court. I wondered if my heart had ever been profoundly stirred. I
had married Dorothy. But suppose Zoe had not been in my life to have
offended and alienated Dorothy's interest for a time, and thus to have
energized this English will which was mine for conquest of the farm, for
the killing of Lamborn--for the continued pursuit of Dorothy? In such
case had I married Dorothy? What would life have been to me if I had met
Isabel when I first knew Dorothy? This woman of white flame talking of
art, of travel, of Rome, of religion, of beauty; giving way to girlish
chuckles and laughter. Was she not closer to me, as temperate genius of
the North, than Dorothy, out of the languor and the romanticism of the
South? Was not Douglas closer to the North, which Isabel seemed to me
now to symbolize, than to that South with which his fate had now so long
been entangled?
A step is heard. The old stair creaks, and Serafino's head appears above
the railing. We look up, aroused from our enchantment. The afternoon
lights are slanting across the Campagna. It is time to go. I have
overpaid the waiter. He honestly offers to rectify it. Isabel laughs,
seeing that I am oblivious of such worldly things. That breaks the
spell. And we drive back to Rome and our pension.