It is not at all astonishing that a god who was born to the tune of
Jove's thunderbolts, should have escaped scot-free from the thunders of
the Vatican, and should prove at the present time one of the strongest
opponents to the latter kind of fire-works. We read, in the work of that
learned Jesuit, Galtruchius, that--
'Bacchus was usually painted with a mitre upon his head, an
ornament proper to Women. He never had other Priests but Satyrs
and Women; because the latter had followed him in great Companies
in his Journeys, crying, singing, and dancing continually. Titus
Livius relates a strange story of the Festivals of Bacchus in
Rome. Three times in a year, the Women of all qualities met in a
Grove called Simila, and there acted all sorts of Villainies;
those that appeared most reserved were sacrificed to Bacchus; and
that the cries of the ravished Creatures might not be heard, they
did howl, sing, and run up and down with lighted Torches.'
The May and October Festivals in Rome, at present, are substituted for
the Bacchanalian orgies, and are, of course, not so objectionable, in
many particulars, as the ancient ceremonies; still, no stranger in Rome,
at these times, should neglect to attend them. Caper entered Rome at
night, during the October festival, and the carriage-loads of Roman
women, waving torches and singing tipsily, forcibly reminded him that
the Bacchante still lived, and only needed a very little encouragement
to revive their ancient rites in full.
Sentimental travelers tell you that the Romans are a temperate
people--they have never seen the people. They have never seen the
delight that reigns in the heart of the _plebs_, when they learn that
the vintage has been good, and that good wine will be sold in Rome for
three or four cents _la foglietta_, (about a pint, American measure.)
They have never visited the _spacii di vini_, the wine-shops; they have
never heard of the murders committed when the wine was in and the wit
out. None of these things ever appear in the _Giornale di Roma_ or in
the _Vero Amico del_ _Popolo_, the only newspapers published in Rome.
'Roman newspapers,' said an intelligent Roman to Caper, 'were invented
to conceal the news.'
The first thing that a foreigner does on entering Rome is to originate a
derogatory name for the juice of the grape native to the soil, the _vino
nostrale_. He calls it, if red wine, red ink, pink cider, red tea; if
white wine, balm of gooseberries, blood of turnips, apple-juice,
alum-water, and slops for babes; finally ... if not killed off with a
fever, from drinking the adulterated foreign wines, spirits, and
liqueurs sold in the city, he takes kindly to the Roman wines, and does
not worry his great soul about them.
The truth is, that while other nations have done every thing to improve
wine-making, Italy follows the same careless way she has done for
centuries. Far more attention was bestowed on the grape, too, in ancient
times than now; and we read that vineyards were so much cultivated, to
the neglect of agriculture, that, under Domitian, an edict forbade the
planting of any new vineyards in Italy.
One brilliant morning, in October, Caper, who was then living in a town
perched atop of a conical mountain, descended five or six miles on foot,
and passed a day in a vineyard, in order to see the vintage. The vines
were trained on trees or on sticks of cane, and the peasant-girls and
women were busy picking the great bunches of white or purple grapes,
which were thrown into copper _conche_ or jars; these _conche_, when
filled, were carried on the head to a central spot where they were
emptied on fern leaves, placed on the ground to receive them. And from
these piles, the wooden barrels of the mules returning from the town
were filled with the grapes which were carried up there to be pressed.
The grape-crop had been so affected by the _malattia_ or blight, that
the yield being small, the fruit to an extent was not pressed in the
vineyards, and the juice only brought up to the town in goat-skins as
usual; but the fruit itself was carried up, by those having the proper
places, and was pressed in tubs in the _cantine_ or rooms on the
ground-floor, where the wine is kept. Across the huge saddles of the
mules, they swung a couple of truncated cone-shaped barrels, and filled
them with grapes; these were tumbled into tubs, ranged in the _cantina_,
good, bad and indifferent fruit all together; and when enough were
poured in, in jumped the _pistatore d'uve_ or grape-presser, with bare
legs and feet, and began pressing and stamping, until the juice ran out
in a tolerable stream. This juice was then poured into a headless
hogshead, and when more than half-full, they piled on the grapeskins and
stones and stems that had undergone the pressure, until the hogshead was
full to the top. A weight was then placed over all. In twenty days,
fermentation having taken place, they drew from the hogshead the new
wine, which was afterward clarified with whites of eggs.
In this rough-and-ready way, the common wine is made. Without selection,
all grapes, ripe, unripe, and rotten, sweet and sour, are mashed up
together, hurriedly and imperfectly pressed, and the wine is sent to
market, to sell for what it will bring. Having thus seen it made, let us
see it disposed of.
Of all the monuments to Bacchus, in Rome, the one near the pyramid of
Caius Cestius, and still nearer the Protestant burying-ground, is by far
the most noticeable. Jealous of the lofty manner in which it lifts its
head above the surrounding fields and walls of the city, the church has
seen fit to crown its head with a cross, which it seems inclined to
shake off. This small mountain of a monument is conical in shape, and is
composed entirely of broken crockery; hence its name, _Testaccio_. In
its crockery sides, they have found a certain coolness and evenness of
temperature exactly suited to the storage of wine, and to maturing it;
hence, all around the mountain are deep vaults, filled with red and
white wines, working themselves up for a fit state to enter into the joy
and the gullets of the Roman _minenti_.
If the reader of this sketch is at all of a philosophical frame of mind,
and should ever visit Rome, it is the writer's advice that, in the first
place, having learned Italian enough, and in the second place, having
his purse fairly filled--silver will do--he should, during the month of
October, on a holyday, go out to Monte Testaccio alone, or at least in
company with some one who knows enough to let him he alone when he wants
to be with somebody else, and then and there fraternizing for a few
hours with the Roman _plebs_, let him at his ease see what he shall see.
Then shall he sit him down at the door of the _Antica Osteria di
Cappanone_, at the rough wood table, on a rougher wooden bench; talk
right and left, with tailors, shoemakers, artists, soldiers, and God
knows what, drinking the cool, amber-colored wine of Monte Rotonda,
gleaming brightly in the sunlight that dashes through his glass, and so
cheerfully winning the good-will of them all--and of some of the young
women who are with them--that he shall find himself at some future time
either the sheath for a Roman knife, or the recipient of a great deal of
affection, and the purchaser of indefinite _bottiglie_ of _vino
nostrale_.
In his ardent pursuit of natural art, Caper believed it his duty to hunt
up the picturesque wherever it could be found, and it was while pursuing
this duty, in company with Rocjean, that he found himself at Monte
Testaccio, one October day, and there made his _débût_. After a luncheon
of raw ham, bread, cheese, sausage, and a _bottiglia_ of wine, they
ascended the mountain, and sitting down at the foot of the cross, they
quietly smoked and communed with nature unreservedly.
Crumbling old walls of Rome that lay below them; wild, uncultivated
Campagna; purple range of mountains, snow-tipped; thousand-legged,
ruined aqueducts; distant sea, but faintly revealed through the vail of
haze-bounded horizon; yellow Tiber, flowing along crumbling banks; dome
of St. Peter's, rising above the hill that shuts the Vatican from sight;
pyramid of Caius Cestius; Protestant burying-ground, with the wind
sighing through the trees a lullaby over the graves of Shelley and
Keats; distant view of Rome, slumbering artistically, and not
manufacturingly, in the sunlight of that morning--ye taught one man of
the two wild hopes for Rome of the future.
At the foot of the mountain, and adjoining the Protestant
burying-ground, there is a powder-magazine. Here a French soldier,
acting as sentry, paced his weary round. It was not long before a couple
of Roman women passed him. They saluted him; he saluted them. They
passed behind the magazine. The sentry, with the courtesy which
distinguishes Frenchmen, evidently desired to make his compliments and
pay his addresses to the _dames_. How could this be done? Before long,
two of his compatriots, evidently out for a holiday, passed him. He
beckoned to one of them, who at once took his gun and turned sentry,
while the relieved guard flew to display to the _dames_ his national
courtesy. Before Caper had time to smoke a second cigar, the soldier
returned to duty, and the one who had relieved him sprung to pay his
addresses. During the two hours that Caper and Rocjean studied the
scenery, guard was relieved four times.
'Ah!' said Rocjean, 'we are a gallant nation. Let us therefore descend
and mingle with what the high-minded John Bulls call 'the lower
orders.''
Down they went, and at the first table they came to, they found their
shoemaker, the Signore Eugenio Calzolajo, artist in leather, seated with
three Roman women. They all resembled each other like three pins. The
eldest one held a baby, the _caro bambino_, in her arms; she was
probably twenty years old. The next one was not over eighteen; while
the youngest had evidently not passed her sixteenth year.
The artist in leather saluted Caper and Rocjean with the title of
_Illustrissimi_, (they both paid their bills punctually,) and, as he saw
that the other tables were full, he at once made room for them,
introducing them to his wife and her two sisters. Caper, who saw that
the party had just arrived, and had not as yet had time to order any
thing from the waiters, told them that the day being his birthday, it
was customary among the North-American Indians always to celebrate it
with a feast of roast dogs and bottled porter; but, as neither of these
articles were to be found at Monte Testaccio, he should command what
they had; and arresting a waiter, he ordered such a supply of food and
wine, that the eyes of the three Roman girls opened wide as owls'. Their
tongues were all unloosened at once, as if by magic, and Caper had the
satisfaction of seeing that for what a bottle of Hotel Champaigne costs
in the United States, he had provided joy unadulterated, and happy
memories for many days, for several descendants of the Caesars.
While the wine circulated freely, the eldest, of the unmarried girls,
named Eliza, began joking Caper about his being a heretic and 'a little
devil,' and asked him to take off his hat, to see if he had horns. Caper
told her he was as yet unmarried, ... and that among the Indians,
bachelors were never allowed to take their hats off before maidens.
'But,' said he, 'what makes you think I am a heretic? Wasn't I at Saint
Peter's yesterday, and at the confessionals?'
'Yes, you were at them like an old German gentleman I once knew,' said
Eliza. 'Some of his friends saw him one morning at the German
confessional-box, and knowing that he was a heretic, asked him what he
was doing there? '_Diavolo!_' said he, 'can't a man have a comfortable
mouthful of German, without changing religions?''
'For my part,' said Rita, the youngest sister, 'I only go to
confessional, because I _have_ to, and I only confess what I want to.'
'Bravo!' exclaimed Rocjean, 'I must _paint your portrait_.'
'_Benissimo!_ and who will paint mine?' asked Eliza.
'I will,' said Caper, 'but on condition that you let me keep a copy of
it.'....
Arrangements completed, Rocjean ordered more wine; and then the artist
in leather ordered more; then Caper's turn came. After this, the
party--which had been gradually growing jolly and jollier, would have
danced, had they not all had a holy horror of the prison of San Angelo.
The married sister, Dominica, was a full-blooded _Trasteverina_, in her
gala dress, and had one of those beautiful-shaped heads that Caper could
only compare to a quail's; her jet-black hair, smoothed close to her
head, was gathered in a large roll that fell low on her neck behind, and
held by a silver _spadina_ or pin, that, if occasion demanded, would
make a serviceable stiletto; her full face was brown, while the red
blood shone through her cheeks, and her lips were full and ripe. Her
eyes of deep gray, shaded with long black lashes, sparkled with light
when she was aroused. Her sisters resembled her strikingly, except Rita,
the youngest, whose face was of that singularly delicate hue of white,
the color of the magnolia-flower, as one of our American writers has it;
or like the white of a boiled egg next to the yolk, as Caper expressed
it. Be this as it may, there was something very attractive in this
pallor, since it was accompanied by an _embonpoint_ indicating any thing
but romantic meagerness of constitution.
Dominica had, without exaggeration, the value of a dozen or two pairs of
patent-leather boots hung on her neck, arms, fingers, ears, and bosom,
in the shape of furious-sized pieces of gold jewelry; and it was solid
gold. The Roman women, from the earliest days--from the time when
Etruscan artists made those ponderous chains and bracelets down to this
present date--have had the most unbridled love for jewelry. Do we not
know[D] that--
Sabina's garters were worth,... $200,000
Faustina's finger-ring,... 200,000
Domitia'a ring,... 300,000
Cæesonia's bracelet,... 400,000
Poppæa's earrings,... 600,000
Calpurina's (Cæsar's wife) earrings,
'above suspicion,'... 1,200,000
Sabina's diadem,... 1,200,000
And after this, is it at all astonishing that the desire remains for it,
even if the substance has been plundered and carried off by those
_forestieri_, the Huns, Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, Norsemen, and other
heretics who have visited Rome?
While they were all busily drinking and talking, Caper had noticed that
the wine was beginning to have its effects on the large crowd who had
assembled at the Osterias and Trattorias around the foot of the Bacchic
mountain. Laughing and talking, shouting and singing, began to be in the
ascendant, and gravity was voted indecent.
'Ha!' said Rocjean, 'for one hour of the good old classic days!'
'What!' answered Caper, 'with those seventy thousand old Jews you were
preaching about the other day?'
'Never!--with the Bacchante. But here our friends are off: let us help
them into the carriage.'
As the sun went down, the _minenti_ began to crowd toward Rome. More
than one _spadina_ flashed in the hands of the slightly-tight maidens
who were on foot. Those of the men who had carriages, foreseeing the
inflammable spirit aroused, packed the women in by themselves, gave them
lighted torches, and cut them adrift, to float down the Corso; they
following in separate carriages.
* * * * *
'Ah! really, and pray, Mrs. Jobson, don't you think that it's--ah! a
beautiful sight; they tell me--ah! it's the peasants returning from
visiting the shrine of the--ah! Madonna--ah?'
'And I think it is _most_ charming, Mister Lushington; and I remember me
now that Lady Fanny Errol, poor thing, said it would be a _charming_
sight. And the poor creatures seem _much_ happier than our own lower
orders; they do, to be sure.'
* * * * *
'O Lord!' groaned Caper, as he overheard the above dialogue, 'allow me
to retire.'