DEAR MOTHER,--I am here in Rome, staying with my friends the Haseltines,
who have a beautiful apartment that they have arranged in the most
sumptuous and artistic manner in the Palazzo Altieri. Mr. Haseltine has
two enormous rooms for his studio and has filled them with his faultless
pictures, which are immensely admired and appreciated. His water-colors
are perfection.
I have met many of your friends whom you will be glad to hear about; to
begin with, the Richard Greenoughs, our cousins. We had much to talk
about, as we had not seen each other since Paris, when he made that bust
of me. They are the most delightful people, so talented in their different
ways, and are full of interest in everything which concerns me. She has
just published a book called _Mary Magdalene_, which I think is perfectly
wonderful.
I have made the acquaintance of William Story (the sculptor). He spoke of
you and Aunt Maria as his oldest and dearest friends, and therefore
claimed the right to call me Lillie.
I have not only seen him, but I have been Mrs. Story, Miss Story, and the
third story in the Palazzo Barberini, where they live, and I have already
counted many times the tiresome one hundred and twenty-two steps which
lead to their apartment, and have dined frequently with them in their
chilly Roman dining-room. This room is only warmed by the little apparatus
which in Rome passes for a stove. It has a thin leg that sticks out of a
hole in the side of the house and could warm a flea at a pinch.
The hay on the stone floor made the thin carpet warmer to my cold toes,
which, in their evening shoes, were away down below zero, but my cold and
bare shoulders shivered in this Greenland icy-mountain temperature which
belongs to Roman palaces. This was before I was an _habituée_; but after I
had become one I wore, like the other jewel-bedecked dames, woolen
stockings and fur-lined overshoes. The contrast must be funny, if one
could see above board and under board at the same time.
The Storys generally have a lion for dinner and for their evening
entertainments. My invitations to their dinners always read thus: "Dear
Mrs. Moulton,--We are going to have (mentioning the lion) to dinner. Will
you not join us, and if you would kindly bring a little music it would be
such a," etc. No beating about the bush there! The other evening Miss
Hosmer--female rival of Mr. Story in the sculpturing line--was the lion of
the occasion, and was three-quarters of an hour late, her excuse being
that she was studying the problem of perpetual motion. Mr. Story, who is a
wit, said he wished the motion had been perpetuated in a _botta_ (which is
Italian for cab).
_February 1st._
Last Thursday, at nine o'clock in the morning, a card was brought to my
bedroom. Imagine my astonishment when I read the name of Baroness de
C----, the wife of the French Ambassador to the Vatican. What could she
want at that early hour? I had heard many stories of her absent-
mindedness. I thought that nothing less than being very absent-minded, or
else the wish to secure my help for some charity concert, could account
for this matutinal visit, especially as I knew her so slightly.
To my great surprise she had only come to invite me to dinner, and never
mentioned the word charity concert or music. I thought this very strange;
but as she is so _distraite_ she probably did not know what time of day it
was, and imagined she was making an afternoon visit.
One of the stories about her is that once she went to pay a formal call on
one of her colleagues, and stayed on and on until the poor hostess was in
despair, as it was getting late. Suddenly the ambassadress got up and
said, "Pardon, dear Madame, I am very much engaged, and if you have
nothing further to say to me I should be very grateful if you would leave
me." The Baroness had been under the impression that she was in her own
salon. They say that, one day, when she was walking in the Vatican gardens
with the Pope, and they were talking politics, she said to him, "Oh, all
this will be arranged as soon as the Pope dies!"
Well, we went to the dinner, which was quite a large one, and among the
guests was Signor Tosti, which would seem to denote that there _was_,
after all, "music in the air"; and sure enough, shortly after dinner the
ambassadress begged me to sing some _petite chose_, and asked Tosti to
accompany me. Neither of us refused, and I sang some of his songs which
I happened to know, and some of my own, which I could play for myself.
However, I felt myself recompensed, for when she thanked me she asked if I
had ever been present at any of the Pope's receptions.