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LAMIA’S WINTER-QUARTERS
[Illustration:]
* * * * *
IN THE SAME SERIES
THE GARDEN
THAT I LOVE
BY
ALFRED AUSTIN
WITH 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
BY
GEORGE S. ELGOOD, R.I.
ORDINARY EDITION, PRICE =7/6= NET
EDITION DE LUXE, PRICE =21s.= NET
“The illustrations are worthy of the book, which
is one of the most charming books about a garden
in the language.”—_Daily Chronicle._
“This sumptuous edition will enhance the
appreciation even of this much-appreciated book.”—_Aberdeen
Free Press._
PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK, LONDON
AGENTS
AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. 27 RICHMOND STREET WEST,
TORONTO
INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD. MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY 309 BOW
BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
* * * * *
[Illustration: ‘AND OUT OF A VALLEY OF GRAPE AND GRAIN THERE
BLOSSOMS A CITY OF DOMES AND TOWERS’]
LAMIA’S WINTER-QUARTERS
by
ALFRED AUSTIN
Author of ‘The Garden That I Love,’ ‘In Veronica’S Garden,‘ ’Haunts of
Ancient Peace,’ and ‘The Poet’S Diary’
[Illustration: Colophon]
London
Adam and Charles Black
1907
This Edition is issued with the kind consent of
Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
[Illustration]
Introduction
TO
THE EDITION ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE S. ELGOOD, R.I.
‘I observe,’ said Lamia, ‘that another of those somewhat numerous prose
performances of yours, that are more or less remotely connected with
Gardens, and which you were pleased, without any previous consultation
with me, to entitle _Lamia’s Winter-Quarters_, is, like the first
of the series, _The Garden That I Love_, to be issued in an equally
luxurious form, and to be illustrated by the attractive talent of Mr.
Elgood. But since this project, to which my attention was called by
that now universal source of information, advertisements, has been
alluded to, do you mind telling me why you called our delightful
sojourn in a Tuscan villa overlooking Florence my winter-quarters
rather than the Poet’s winter-quarters, or Veronica’s, or, for that
matter, even yours?‘
Somewhat embarrassed, I replied:
‘To have called the book my winter-quarters would have savoured of
egotism, and would, moreover, I fear, have failed in attractiveness.’
‘But against Veronica’s name, or the Poet’s, no such objection would
lie?‘
‘Perhaps not,’ I said. ‘But possibly from living with them, to say
nothing of you, I have acquired a habit of respect for the fact; and it
was more consonant with truth to call the winter-quarters yours.’
‘How is that?’ she asked.
‘Well, you see, Veronica does what the Poet wishes, and the Poet does
what you wish, and so——’
‘I beg to say,’ she interrupted, ‘_that_ is not the fact. _I_ do what
the _Poet_ wishes.’
‘Is not that much the same thing?’ I replied. ‘You always seem to have
the same wish about everything. So I suppose you felt precisely as he
did when he wrote those adulatory lines which I saw in the public
prints, a few days ago, under the heading, “A Poetical Impromptu.”‘
‘Really! He wrote no such, nor indeed any, lines, never having seen nor
heard of the lady in question, in his life.’
‘Is it possible?‘ ‘Everything of that kind is possible in these days.’
‘But did he not contradict it?‘ ‘Did he contradict! Like a good many
other men, he would have to keep a Secretary for no other purpose than
to contradict what is reported in the papers, and most of which they
probably never see. I should think he turned the opportunity to better
account by recalling a couplet of Pope—
‘Let Dennis charge all Grub Street on my quill,
I wished the man a dinner, and sate still.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘are not such inventions calculated to injure the
influence of the prints that resort to them?’
‘I should think so,’ she said, honouring me for once by talking
seriously. ‘But whose, and what, influence is not being injured
just now by their own misdoings? The House of Commons, for instance,
though more written and talked about than ever, has long been losing
influence, and the Press is now following suit; and it is the silent,
or comparatively silent, persons and forces that are acquiring or
increasing influence; the Monarchy, the House of Lords, and——’
‘The House of Lords!’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought it was going to be
abolished, or to have its very moderate claims yet further curtailed.’
‘Did you?’ she answered. ‘Then your thoughts are not of much value. I
daresay it would be difficult to persuade Politicians that Shakespeare
was wiser than all the sons of the Mother of Parliaments put together;
and what does he say?
‘Take but degree away, untune that string,
And mark what discord follows.
And so long as the British nation continues on the whole to be sane, it
will never consent to take “degree” away, in order to fasten on itself
a dead level and a tyrannical uniformity.‘
I was so flattered by Lamia having, in a short space of time,
condescended to talk seriously with me, that I thought a favourable
opportunity had arisen for preferring any request that I wanted her to
grant. Encouraged by this feeling, I ventured to say:
‘A great adornment and advantage to the forthcoming volume would be
a portrait of the person whose name is associated with it; in other
words, a portrait of Lamia.’
‘So it has come to that!’ she replied. ‘Not satisfied with having
travestied me in—let me see—yes, one, two, three, four, five successive
volumes, _The Garden That I Love_, _In Veronica’s Garden_, _Lamia’s
Winter-Quarters_, _Haunts of Ancient Peace_, and _The Poet’s Diary_,
you now propose to vulgarise my ideal loveliness and magnetic
personality in order to gratify the curiosity of a number of persons
who have never seen me, and never will. Let me never hear of such a
proposal again. As the little boy said, “Myself is my own”; and, if it
please you, part of
‘...the gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream.‘
‘Your wish is my law,’ I hastened to say, and was about to snatch at
the first subject I could think of to ward off further reproof, when
she held out a little posy of Penzance sweet-briar roses she had been
wearing, saying in her sweetest manner, as though afraid she might
have wounded me, ‘Are they not lovely? No, keep them, if you care to
do so. They remind me of something I saw the other day, when, on my way
to London for a few hours, the train halted between Waterloo Station
and Charing Cross at a point overlooking a number of back plots and
alleys of the humblest description; and the one immediately below me
arrested my gaze. There were two short rows of the purest white linen,
lately out of the wash-tub, hanging out to dry; and under them, a
hammock, with a chubby baby in it, fast asleep. A few feet behind was a
red-brick wall, and along its foot three rows of pelargoniums in full
flower, and evidently most carefully hoed and watered. A comely looking
woman, with her sleeves tucked up as far as they would go, came out
of the house, peeped into the hammock, kissed, or rather hugged the
baby, and then turned it round to screen it a little from the direct
rays of the sun that were shining on this little paradise. Then the
train moved on; and I thought to myself, with a feeling of quiet joy,
that neither the garden that we love, nor the Tuscan garden that was
our winter-quarters, nor all the gardens and palaces in the world,
contain more happiness than those few yards of ground in one of the
humblest parts of London, tenanted by linen hung out to dry, three rows
of pelargoniums, a hammock with a sleeping child in it, and a loving
mother.’
‘I wish I had seen it,’ I said.
‘I described it to the Poet,’ Lamia replied; ‘and he then did indulge
in an Impromptu, which—let me think a moment—yes—ran somewhat like this:
‘How blest are they who hunger not
For riches or renown,
And keep, within a narrow plot,
A country heart in town;
‘Who envy not, though lowly born,
Luxurious lives above,
But blend with toil, renewed each morn,
The bliss of blameless Love.’
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
List of Illustrations
BY GEORGE S. ELGOOD, R.I.
1. ‘And out of a valley of grape and grain there
blossoms a City of domes and towers’ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. ‘Peach-trees ablow’ 10
3. Baveno and Isola Pescatori, Lago Maggiore 18
4. Orange Grove, Mentone 22
5. Pear-blossom, Maritime Alps 40
6. ‘Between the mountains and the sea’ 52
7. Florence 60
8. A Tuscan Villa 64
9. A Noble Fountain 80
10. Peach, Plum, and Pear-blossom 84
11. Florence 88
12. Roses and Iris 100
13. ‘Everywhere are roses, roses’ 118
14. Our Tuscan Garden 138
15. Through the Olives, Florence 150
16. Larkspurs 160
_The head and tailpieces throughout the volume are from pen and ink
drawings by William Scott._
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INVOCATION
I
Where Apennine slopes unto Tuscan plain,
And breaks into dimples, and laughs to flowers,
To see where the terrors of Winter wane,
And out of a valley of grape and grain
There blossoms a City of domes and towers.
II
Teuton, Lombard, and grasping Gaul,
Prince and Pontiff, have forced their way,
Have forded the river, and scaled the wall,
And made in its palaces stye and stall,
Where spears might glisten and war-steeds neigh.
III
But ever since Florence was fair and young,
And the sun upon turret and belfry shone,
Were her windows bannered and joy-bells rung,
When back to his saddle the Stranger sprung,
And lances were lifted and pikemen gone.
IV
Yes, ever and ever till you, my Queen,
Came over the sea that is all your own,
When the tear on the tip of the vine is seen,
And the fig-tree cressets have flamed to green,
And windflower wakened, and tulip blown.
V
Then roses were showered before your feet,
And her lily-crowned gonfalons waved above,
And children chanted in square and street,
‘All hail to the Monarch may free men greet,
Whose sceptre is Peace, and whose Throne is Love.’
VI
And now that each snow-torrent foams and falls,
And the oreoles sing and the skylarks soar,
And the lithe swallow circles her rose-white walls,
Through the clefts of the Apennine Florence calls,
‘More welcome than Spring,’ come back once more!
VII
‘Come back, for the cuckoo is on its way,
And the mountains, smiling, await your smile;
And still in my olive-groves bask and stray,
Till the warm-winged waters and winds of May
Shall waft you back to your own loved Isle.’
I CEDRI,
PIAN DI RIPOLI, FLORENCE,
_Lady-Day, 1898_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LAMIA’S WINTER-QUARTERS
‘Where is Lamia?’
The inquiry is one not infrequently made; for, while most of us can
vanish without being missed, some favoured individuals there are whose
disappearance at once excites a sense of loss; and Lamia is one of
these. The question, I need scarcely say, was put by Veronica; since
the Poet maintains a fine irresponsible attitude respecting others as
well as about himself, and, however anxious I may be to keep sight of
Lamia, I am hardly so simple as to betray my desire. But, responding
with sincere alacrity to Veronica’s question, I protested I had not the
faintest notion where she was, but would at once go in search of her.
Veronica’s solicitude was, I suspect, prompted by that deep-seated
regard for decorous behaviour, which, far from leaving it at home,
she had carefully brought abroad as peculiarly applicable to foreign
parts and Continental manners. She is well aware that, in the matter
of social observances, Lamia is capable of almost any enormity;
and her absence from the morning-room of the hotel in the southern
seaport where we were making our first halt, inspired her with natural
misgiving.
The search, as it turned out, was not a long one. Lamia I found seated
under a tall white-flowering magnolia in a leafy garden hard by, where
oleanders already well set for bloom, though still far from their
flowering season, and trees that for some unknown reason English people
call mimosas, but which they should learn to speak of as acacias, and
various evergreen shrubs of stately stature, concerning which I should
not at present like to be too closely cross-questioned, offered a
sufficient protection against the burning December morning sun, while
permitting occasional glimpses of deep-blue sky. Ostensibly, she was
having a further polish put on her brown leather shoes by a black-eyed,
black-haired, tawny-skinned urchin, who entered into her humour with
true Southern adaptability, and who would have gone on performing his
quite unnecessary office as long as ever the young lady desired. For
the moment, I think, she had forgotten all about him, for she had three
oranges in her lap,—‘One for each of you,’ she said,—and was delicately
dividing the other for her own delectation. A large spray of Parma
violets, fastened to her attractive person, I need scarcely say exactly
where they should be, completed her recent purchases.
‘Do you mind asking Veronica to come and see me?’ she said, ‘for I
never was so happy in my life.’
I bethought me of the somewhat stern interrogatory, ‘Where is Lamia?’
and merely observed that Veronica was superintending the final
operations of the maid in the matter of repacking, and probably would
wish not to be disturbed.
‘How strange!’ said Lamia, ‘and how tastes differ! The smell of canvas
covers and leather straps is particularly disagreeable to me; whereas
the island of Zante itself could not be more fragrant than the scent
of these violets and oranges, to say nothing of the magnolia flowers
overhead, and that delightful son of the sunshine at my feet. And to
think that, say thirty-six hours ago, I roused you and the Poet from
your slumbers to look upon a snow-white world! I daresay you will think
me very capricious, but _this_ is the garden that I love.’
‘_Les absens ont toujours tort_,’ said the Poet, emerging from a shady
avenue behind her. At the sound of his voice she rose somewhat hastily,
as though a performance quite good enough for me was scarcely consonant
with the half-courtly veneration she entertains for him; gave the
oranges in her lap and a franc-piece to the smiling young urchin, who
thought her more fascinating than ever, and said reproachfully, ‘Then
why do _you_ absent yourself?’
‘That was hardly what I meaned,’ he replied. ‘I was referring rather
to the position of inferiority you assign to the garden that we love,
because it is now far away from us. But you are quite right, and are
going to Italy in the proper spirit. Whatever you see there, admire
consumedly, and you cannot be far wrong.’
‘Are we not in Italy already?‘ ‘Almost. Its vestibule is Provence.’
* * * * *
I suppose it is because we are very simple folk, and lead at home a
rather primitive life, that we find everything new which most other
people find familiar, and so many things attractive that the bulk
of the world treat as undeserving of attention. Along that magical
coast, where we turned our gaze first to the sea-fringe, then to the
hill declivities, then back again to the white-laced bays, and never
being able to determine which were the more beautiful, I observe that
persons who have travelled many hundreds of miles in order to enjoy
the sunshine and glamour of the South, are well content to make this
entrancing journey in a railway carriage, pulling down the blinds if
the sun be a trifle too hot, and conning their newspaper or turning
over the leaves of some conventional novel, in any case. That was not
our way of travelling, which was a good deal more leisurely and more
old-fashioned. We should have liked to find ourselves behind Veronica’s
ponies, but our hired vehicle did well enough; and, while we never
asked our cheerfully communicative driver to quicken his pace, we
frequently begged him to slacken it, and over and over again bade him
halt altogether. Although, save to Lamia, the road was no new one, we
all alike had fresh unsophisticated eyes for it, and all of us found
it a veritable wonder-world. Indeed, I could not help reflecting that
we behaved very much as we behave at home in the garden that we love,
declaring that the last blue creek, or the last secular olive-grove,
was the most wonderful we had yet seen, for no better reason than that
it _was_ the last.
‘And they told me,’ said Lamia, ‘that the scenery is so monotonous, and
that bay follows bay, and mountain repeats mountain, with provoking
uniformity. Why, there are not any two alike. I only wish human beings
were as diverse.’
‘It all depends,’ said the Poet, ‘whether you look lovingly or
unlovingly, passionately or dispassionately. One must be intoxicated by
scenery, in order to appreciate it. Tranquil survey is not enough, and
scrutinising curiosity is fatal.’
‘I am sure,’ said Lamia, ‘Veronica is not intoxicated. She is
tranquillity itself.’
‘Veronica, you mean,’ was his reply, ‘does not effervesce. But her
silence is, perhaps, the measure of her emotion.’
‘O stop! stop! I _must_ have some of those anemones.‘ How often a
kindred need of this kind arose on the part of Lamia, it would be
hard to say; but, by degrees, every part of the carriage that was not
occupied by ourselves was filled with tulips, windflowers, roses, and
long branches of early-flowering golden acacia.
‘You baby!’ said Veronica, ‘what are you going to do with them all?’
‘You shall see, when luncheon-hour has arrived.‘ ‘Which I think it now
has,’ I ventured to suggest.
Thereupon we came to a standstill; the driver took bit and bridle off
his willing little nags, and replaced them with well-filled nose-bags,
while we unloaded our hampers, that were as commodiously as they were
generously stocked. The unpacking of them went on under the skilful
direction of Veronica, who would no more have dreamed of allowing us
to lunch _al fresco_ without spotless table-cloth, neat napkins, and
all the apparatus of civilisation, than in her parlour at home. But
she allowed Lamia to select the spot; and the choice, though made
from romantic rather than from practical impulse, proved to be not
wanting in comfort. Under a carob-tree, the first Lamia had ever seen,
the cloth was spread; and then she scattered rather than arranged her
lately gathered flowers, with infinite taste. A short distance away, as
we looked under the olive-trees across the ruddy clods and accidental
wild-flowers, were the innumerable dimples of the amiable sea; and,
did we turn our heads, slopes of terraced fertility mounted gradually
toward deciduous clusters of woodland, and peaks of more accentuated
pine.
‘Will it be very unromantic,’ asked Lamia, ‘to seem hungry? Because if
it would, as I should not like to hurt any one’s feelings, I can sate
the edge of appetite with bare imagination of a feast, or, at most,
with the unsubstantial pageant of a mandarin orange.‘ Veronica’s reply
was to cut some solid slices of galantine of fowl, and to tell me to
do the same to one of those long rolls of crisp crust which contrast
so favourably with the semi-barbarous baker’s bread of our own beloved
island. The Poet, as of right, withdrew the tow from the withy-bound
flask of ruby wine, saying to me, and to me only, as he did so,
‘_Siccis omnia nam dura deus proposuit_.’ It was our first open-air
meal under the southern sky; and even Veronica, who, as we all know, is
rather on the side of indoor festivity at home, could not protest that,
in the shelter Lamia had chosen for us, it was a touch too cold for the
pleasant and perfectly safe satisfaction of our appetite.
‘Is it always like this?’ asked Lamia.
‘Far from it,’ I was going to reply; but the Poet anticipated me.
‘Yes, always, Lamia! always, always, always! No one deserves to travel
who anticipates anything less agreeable than what he is enjoying at the
moment. Should it ever be different, let us hope we shall know how to
meet it. Meanwhile, let us think as little as possible of to-morrow.’
‘We can all see,’ said Lamia, ‘that such was the spirit in which you
travelled in your youth. In your rhythmical record of the journey
which you took—not with Veronica, I believe,—along this meandering
coast-line, there is never a stanza, a line, even a word, to indicate
that the myrtle ever ceases to bloom, or that the sun ever forgets to
shine.’
‘You forget there is a terrific storm,’ said Veronica, whose
acquaintance with the Poet’s verse, though less frequently exhibited,
is, I must confess, a good deal more intimate than Lamia’s.
‘Yes,’ said Lamia, quite undisconcerted, ‘only to disappear with the
return of dawn, and never to be heard of again; and thenceforth we are
told of nothing but genial airs, temperate sunshine, almond-trees and
peach-trees ablow, and oleanders reddening into bloom.’
‘You must remember,’ said the Poet, ‘that the journey was made in
the very flush and heyday of the Spring; and, if I have in any way
exaggerated what I then beheld, was it not the proper exaggeration of
rapture? It is the instinctive function of Art to reject, to select,
and rightly to magnify what remains. Looking back, I seem to have
omitted much, but to have exaggerated nothing. Have you not observed
that the first impression we receive of scenery, as, indeed, of people
likewise, is the one that abides with us? Many times since, I have
beheld this tract betwixt mountain and main veiled in mist, dimmed by
dust, even powdered with snow. But I always think of it as I saw it
first.’
[Illustration: ‘PEACH-TREES ABLOW’]
‘Do you often think of Olympia?’ Lamia took courage to ask, seeing the
Poet so effusive. ‘Was she very lovely?’
‘She was lovely beyond words,’ he answered, readily responding to her
humour. ‘In fact, my recollection of her is that she was as perfect as
the scenery in which she moved and had her being.’
‘How nice! I wish I had been Olympia, except that she seems to have
had rather a scanty allowance of luggage for a longish journey, and
no appetite to speak of, seeing that, if I remember rightly, she was
quite satisfied with a missal and some dried figs. I fear, after all, I
should have been but ill equipped for the character.‘ Veronica, to show
her displeasure at Lamia’s levity with things deemed sacred, had risen
from the olive bole on which she was sitting, and moved towards the
sea. Lamia, quick to take a hint, went on, but with an altered voice:
‘Tell me, dear Poet, what took you first to Italy.’
‘An irrepressible longing. It was first aroused in me, I think, by
reading, in tender years, Arnold’s _History of Rome_, whereby I
believed as firmly in the Palatine she-wolf, the leap into the Curtian
Gulf, the Rape of the Sabine Women, and the nocturnal interviews of
Numa and Egeria, as in any of the immediate facts of one’s schoolboy
existence; nor did the iconoclastic criticism, with which one perforce
made acquaintance later on, in any degree shake that cherished
credulity. What romantic prose originated, was consummated by yet more
wizard verse. To no mediæval scholar was Virgil more of a magician than
to me, and not even Dante would say of him with more truth—
_Tu se’ lo mio maestro e il mio autore._
I kept repeating, long before I could translate them into action, the
words addressed by Æneas to his immortal Mother, when she appeared to
him in the guise of a huntress in the Carthaginian forest, _Italiam
quaero patriam_; for already it seemed to be a second fatherland. And
when, at length, the moment arrived that the longing could be indulged,
the only words I could find to express my joy were—
_Tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt._
‘Stop, stop,’ said Lamia, ‘I wish I understood Latin, but you know I
don’t.‘
‘Then,’ he replied, ‘do as I did before I first went to Italy, being
then much of the age that you are now. I bought the best Italian
grammar I could find, and worked at it as a schoolboy is made to work
at the elementary rules of a dead language. I studied the dictionary
in like manner; so that, when I went to the new land, I might not long
feel quite a stranger there.’
‘The very thing I have been doing, until my brain seems a repository
for the various inflections of the subjunctive mood; and, as Veronica
corrects my pronunciation, I hope, by the time we reach Latium, to
be more or less understanded of the people. But please do not let us
concern ourselves with either my shortcomings or my accomplishments;
but rather tell me, while I make you some coffee in this windless
atmosphere, how you first went to Italy, and when.‘ ‘It is a long story
and will occupy some little time.’
‘And so will the making of coffee, if it is to be made properly,’ said
Veronica, who had now returned to us, and to whose superior powers
Lamia only too willingly surrendered that delicate task.
‘One likes to think,’ he began, ‘that Heaven interests itself in one’s
training; and so I used self-flatteringly to conceive that a special
care arranged the conditions under which one first beheld the shore
of Liguria. I had taken boat at Marseilles direct for Leghorn; and, in
ordinary circumstances, we should have passed some thirty-six hours on
the open sea, far from sight or surmise of land. It was, therefore,
through no intelligent design of one’s own, but through the sheer
bounty of the gods, that the engine broke down a few hours after we
had left Marseilles, but not so completely but that we could continue
our journey. The result was that we had to hug the shore nearly the
whole way. It was the September equinox, and the moon was full; so
night and day we gazed on that bewitching coast; bay after bay, town
after town, village after village, mountain-range after mountain-range,
unfolding themselves to my untravelled gaze. In the course of our
present journey, we shall pass ever and again through gloomy arcades
and narrow ways whose unseemly aspect will probably shock Veronica
and perhaps please none of us. But distance, the enchanter, presented
them to me then as consisting mainly of granite palaces and marble
belfries; and in every fold of every hill nestled villages that seemed
built of porphyry, and wherefrom soared, intermediaries between earth
and heaven, many-storied _campanili_, whose chimes, as they pealed
for _Angelus_ or _Ave Maria_, we could sometimes faintly hear. There
was no cloud in the sky, scarce a ripple on the water, nothing but
sunlight or moonlight in the air. Sleep would have been a desecration
of so ethereal a scene; and I well remember watching the rounded moon
wax paler and paler as the morning sun reddened up over the wave, and
then sink, as in despair of rivalry, behind the hills.‘ ‘O, I say, it’s
boiling!’ said Lamia.
I hope everybody knows that, in making coffee, that is exactly what
it should not be allowed to do; and I fear Lamia had a malicious
pleasure in finding Veronica for once at fault. I cannot but suppose
that Veronica had heard the foregoing story many times before, but she
catches fire so readily from any one’s enthusiasm for Italy, that she
had almost allowed the coffee to do the same. But she so deftly rescued
it from hurt, that, unheeding of Lamia’s exclamation, he went on:
‘I saw, what we shall not see, many a form of half-mysterious
loveliness flit by me under flowing veil down the steps of narrow
streets in the Ligurian Capital,—for we touched for a few hours
at Genoa,—and heard, what we shall not hear, jovial-looking monks
vociferating Vespers in the Baptistery at Pisa; and then, Lamia, then!
I was borne, I scarce know how, along _Val d’ Arno_ through unending
vineyard-avenues that seemed to have dyed the leaves with the colour
of their purple fruit, and amongst which sun-bronzed youths, who
appeared to disport rather than to toil, were singing love-songs to
gaily-kirtled maidens. The fawn-coloured _bovi_ oscillated homeward to
the wine-vat, dragging after them the grape-piled _carri_ with their
wooden wheels; children and lizards, seemingly of kindred race, twisted
in and out among the workers; and, stately of stature and sober of
mien, dark-haired matrons stood outside their spacious but unluxurious
homes, plaiting straw with rhythmically-moving fingers that never
seemed to tire. Then came hills more rounded, softer declivities,
a gradual narrowing of the plain, a forest of domes, belfries, and
towers, and I was in Florence.‘
‘Why was your visit so brief?’
‘You ask why. Can one give a reason for anything one does in one’s
youth? Only I remember, as I reluctantly quitted it, I vowed to return
to it ere long.‘
‘And you kept your vow,’ said Veronica.
‘I remember,’ said Lamia.
‘You remember what?’ I asked. ‘You must have been in your cradle.’
‘Then I suppose,’ she replied, ‘I was extraordinarily precocious.
‘The sickle hath performed its work,
The storm-gusts sweep the aspens bare,
Careering clouds and shadows mirk
Cow the disheartened air.
‘No swallow circles round the roof,
No chirp redeems the dripping shed;
The very gables frown reproof,
“Why not already fled?”‘
‘Lamia is very unmerciful,’ said the Poet, ‘and does not allow one to
forget the sins of one’s youth. But it is quite true that, before the
leaves had fallen, one was again on one’s way to Italy; not along this
sybaritic coast, but through the austere gorges, now green, now gray,
of the Simplon. When, having left the summit behind us, we zigzagged
downward, the mountains began to wear a gentler aspect, the vegetation
seemed more ample and more unrestrained, the air more soft, the sky
farther off and more ethereal; and suddenly I caught sight of a huge
granite cross, on the outstretched arms of which was deeply cut the
word _Italia_! I trembled with delight; and, from that hour to this,
the word “Italy” has never lost its magic. On we deviously descended,
past slopes of intermittent chestnut groves whose leaves, fantastically
faded, had not yet fallen, till my driver exclaimed, “Eccolo! Signore!”
and there basked Baveno by the edge of the lake in the setting sun, and
the Borromean Islands seemed rather floating in the air than resting on
the water. It was a true Saint Luke’s summer, where all things seemed
stationary in a season of arrested change before the winter winds
should arise and everything pass away. I have never again seen Nature
in a mood of such absolute abstraction and self-contemplation; and
she communicated to one’s spirit her own autumnal detachment from the
seasons that are feverish with growth, and the seasons that are shaken
by decay.‘
The description of suspended animation in the natural world seemed to
infect us with a kindred tranquillity, and for awhile there followed it
a sympathetic silence.
‘I know,’ said Lamia at length, ‘your aversion to the curiosity of
the interviewer. But is it permissible to ask if it might not be worth
while to record some such reminiscences as you have just recited; in a
word,—do not be angry with me,— to do what so many other people have
done, and to write an autobiography?’
[Illustration: BAVENO AND ISOLA PESCATORI, LAGO MAGGIORE]
‘I have written it,’ he said.
‘And when shall you publish it?’
‘Dear Lamia, it is published already.‘ ‘I do not understand,’ she said,
‘for certainly it is unknown to me.’
‘I fancy not,’ he replied. ‘Indeed, I gather that you have paid me the
compliment of reading much of it more than once.’
As Lamia still seemed puzzled, Veronica broke in with a slight touch of
impatience:
‘You are scarcely as intelligent as usual, Lamia. Surely what he means
you to understand is that a man’s works are his autobiography.‘
‘Exactly. But enough surely—perhaps somewhat too much—of that subject;
and our little horses are ringing a carillon with their bells, as if to
remind us it is time we were again on our way.’
‘One moment,’ said Lamia, raising her hand deprecatingly. ‘Before we
quit this first fair spot of rest in Southern air, grace must be said
for our _al fresco_ repast. You know what form we like that grace to
take. Be it as brief as you will, but it must be in verse.’
‘We are not in Sicily,’ he said, ‘nor am I Theocritus. But Veronica
asked me the other day if I could give her some idea of the short
pastoral idylls written two thousand years ago, which not all of us can
read, but of which all of us have heard. I am not so presumptuous as
to suppose I have succeeded in responding adequately to her wish; but
perhaps our almost Sicilian surroundings, and the indulgent temper of
the hour, may confer on the attempt something of the appropriateness it
would otherwise lack.
‘Shepherd swains that feed your flocks
‘Mong the grassy-rooted rocks,
While I still see sun and moon,
Grant to me this simple boon:
As I sit on craggy seat,
And your kids and young lambs bleat,
Let who on the pierced pipe blows
Play the sweetest air he knows.
And, when I no more shall hear
Grasshopper or chanticleer,
Strew green bay and yellow broom
On the silence of my tomb;
And, still giving as you gave,
Milk a she-goat at my grave.
For, though life and joy be fled,
Dear are love-gifts to the dead.’[1]
[1] The Poet has since told me that these lines are a free paraphrase
of an idyll by Leonidas of Tarentum, who lived in the time of Pyrrhus.
Then up we got, and onward we went, past rocks, and waves, and
arbutus, and white heath,—not the white heath of home, but towering
and flowering fifteen or even twenty feet into the air,—and _Cineraria
maritima_, and Bacchic ivy, groups of eucalyptus and acacia, and
glimpses of hill and sky, with here and there a hurrying zigzag
torrent. What seaweed there was, was golden, and the surging and
swirling of the silvery water over and among it and the red rocks
was strangely beautiful. The liliputian waves kept coming on and
breaking, as in any other sea, but never advancing. As Lamia said,
what motion there was seemed purposeless motion, resembling the sport
of children rather than the work of grown-up people. But her greatest
delight was yet to come; for, late that afternoon, she beheld the
first orange-grove glittering and glistening on the sunny outskirts of
a gray-roofed little town, whose bright green _jalousies_ more than
relieved what would otherwise have seemed its somewhat sombre aspect.
Thoughtful Veronica made her take the seat in the carriage where she
might command them best, and her spoken raptures were what we all,
though more travelled than she, silently felt.
‘O, the Garden that you love is nothing, nothing, nothing, compared
with this, which is not a garden at all, but a fairy grove of light and
lustre. Do let us stop and pluck some of the golden fruit!’
‘Better not,’ said Veronica, ‘for doing so might dissipate your dream.
They are lovely to look at, but indifferent to the taste. Neither is
it their best season. Wait to gather oranges till, if ever, you are at
Sorrento in the heart of May.’
‘Yes,’ said the Poet, ‘these are well enough; but they are a feeble
imitation of their fellows in the real South, the true Ausonia.’
Lamia was as ready to believe everything she was told as to admire
everything she saw; and her only lament was that, even though moving at
a leisurely pace, beautiful scene after beautiful scene was withdrawn
from her gaze along that winding road, almost before she could really
behold it.
[Illustration: ORANGE GROVE, MENTONE]
There came a stage in our journey which, as you may suppose, was not
by any means one of a single day, when I felt certain a question would
arise likely to lead to some difference of opinion, and I was curious
to see how it would arrange itself. But, like Lamia herself, who was
the person mainly interested, I carefully avoided all allusion to
it. She, with infinitely more tact, as becomes a woman, kept gradually
and dexterously leading up to it, while seeming to be quite unconscious
of it, and indeed as if moving in quite an opposite direction.
‘Now,’ said Veronica, with that perfect freedom from afterthought or
unspoken inner thought so characteristic of her, ‘now we turn inland
and ascend. Say good-bye to the coast-line, which you will not see
again till we reach the summit.’
‘And say good-bye likewise,’ added the Poet, ‘to the Provençal tongue,
that seems to bear much about the same relation to French that the
Venetian dialect bears to Italian, and to have retained the indefinable
charm of flowers, perfume, and poetry that hovered round the cradle of
modern verse, and has been handed down to us from the lips of lovely
ladies and obeisant troubadours.’
Lamia showed no appreciation of these observations, as I could well
perceive, and went on inwardly concerting a well-calculated strategy of
her own.
‘How long will it take us,’ she asked, with apparent unconcern, ‘to
reach the summit?’
‘Perhaps a couple of hours.‘ ‘And to descend?’
‘To descend where?’ asked Veronica, who, I think, began to suspect what
was fermenting in Lamia’s mind.
‘Anywhere,’ answered Lamia. ‘I mean where we reach, as you said, the
coast-line again.’
‘An hour perhaps,’ I said.
Then followed a short interval of silence or truce, broken by Lamia,
who, far too strategic to attack the question in front, was now
evidently meditating a flank movement which interested me greatly.
‘Do you remember my once saying that I wished I were a poet?’
‘Dear Lamia, I can only say to you, as one so often has to write to
unknown correspondents who send one verse, the intention of which is
better than its execution,—
‘To have the great poetic heart
Is more than all poetic fame.‘
‘But, when one has neither,’ she replied, bringing her forces rapidly
into action, and resolved at all costs to turn Veronica’s position,
‘it is so nice and so advantageous to be taken about by one who has
both.’
To the Poet himself, I am sure, this seemed rather wide of the mark;
but it was just one of those complimentary exaggerations which Lamia
invariably employs when she wants to propitiate Veronica.
‘By one who has both,’ she went on, ‘and accordingly is everywhere
vouchsafed a welcome not only for himself, but for all who travel in
his train. It was not _very_ comfortable last night at that picturesque
_locanda_; and I confess I am looking forward to the prosaic domestic
comforts that are promised us this evening.’
I confess I did not follow the workings of her mind, and almost
began to suspect that I had imputed to her a design of which she was
innocent. But I was quickly confirmed again in my original surmise.
‘Was this country very different when you saw it first from what it is
now?’
‘Well, yes, and no,’ replied the Poet, falling into the trap.
‘Different where Pleasure and Fashion have invaded it: not different
where Nature maintains her native dominion. Along the road, then the
only one, we are now ascending, nothing seems to be altered. What
change _has_ taken place you will perceive very shortly, when we arrive
at the summit. Then one looked down only on the austere towers and
jutting promontory of a rock-bound sea-moated Principality. Now,—but
never mind!’
‘But I _do_ mind. I am greatly interested in these changes.’ Then
suddenly, ‘Veronica! Has it not struck you that we shall arrive at our
journey’s end to-day in the middle of the afternoon, when you know you
never like guests to present themselves? Do you not think it would be
better if we got there towards tea-time?‘
‘Yes, I think it would; and we can easily loiter along the road.’
‘Dear Veronica!’ said Lamia in her most impulsive accents and her most
irresistible manner, ‘_do_ let us loiter _there_ then, if only for an
hour!’
‘Where?’ said Veronica.
‘O, you know what I mean. _There!_’
‘But we should have to retrace our steps.‘ ‘A couple of miles only,’ I
said, seizing the opportunity to curry favour with Lamia.
‘It is odious,’ said Veronica.
‘It certainly is,’ added the Poet; ‘the most offensive place I know.’
‘It was not _Spiaggiascura_, was it!’ exclaimed Lamia in a tone of
pathetic tenderness I never heard equalled, laying her hand gently on
the Poet’s arm. ‘If it was, of course, I will not ask it.’
‘No, it was not Spiaggiascura,’ he replied. ‘Better to think of that as
a name that has no local habitation.’
Lamia had conquered. That last inimitable touch of pathos, which
was moreover, I am sure, entirely sincere, had disarmed Veronica’s
scruples and the Poet’s fastidiousness. By the time three more hours
had gone by, we had seen it all, and were sitting under a brown awning,
partaking of iced coffee to the strains of a Hungarian band.
‘I am afraid I rather like it,’ said Lamia.
‘Why should you not?’ said the Poet.
‘Not the gambling, surely?’ asked Veronica.
‘Not the gambling, dear Veronica, so long as I have you at my side to
buttress my somewhat shaky virtue.’ Then turning to me, ‘You know, of
old, that I have low tastes.’
‘Well,’ observed the Poet, ‘I confess that an earnest desire to be
indulgent to whatever is human has never succeeded in eradicating the
feeling that gambling is the lowest of all human diversions; and,
though here you need neither share nor even see it unless you wish, it
seems to me to cast its ignoble shadow over the entire place, and to
dethrone it from the majestic position with which Nature originally
invested it. It has infected the architecture, vulgarised the
sea-front, corrupted the very air, and exercised a malefic influence on
manners.’
‘And it has certainly spoilt the looks of the men and women,’ said
Lamia. ‘I never saw so many ugly people as round those fascinating
tables.’
‘Gambling would make any one ugly,’ said Veronica.
‘Then I will never gamble,’ said Lamia.
‘Let us leave this,’ I ventured to suggest, ‘and sit among the
flower-beds, somewhat too artificial though I allow they are.’
‘They look combed and curled,’ said Lamia. ‘I am sure I am quite as
natural as they are.’
‘Dante had so exhaustive an imagination,’ observed the Poet, when we
had shifted our position, ‘that it is not easy to suggest any form
of repugnant penalty not to be met with in the _Divine Comedy_. But
I think what is colloquially called a Hell might be added to his
repulsive Circles. What Lamia said just now is strikingly true.
The place has a malign effect on people’s appearance. Look at those
respectable persons—for I am sure they are such—trying to appear almost
the reverse. Great-granddaughters of the Pilgrim Fathers are collected
here, just as cold no doubt as their grandmothers, but striving to seem
otherwise. Looking back to those years when I first wandered along
this lovely region, when this place had neither existence nor name, I
cannot but regret the simplicity that has passed away. Nor can I think
it is well for the idlers of material civilisation to parade their
opulent _ennui_ before a primitive people whom they will probably end
by infecting with their restlessness and their discontent.‘
‘I can see,’ said Lamia, ‘this is my first and last visit to this
vicious Circle.’
‘Come, then,’ he answered, rising, and we all did the same, ‘and see
how unnecessarily intolerant one can be, and how narrow is the slip
of territory that modern pleasures have filched from peasant life and
rustic toil. In a few minutes we shall be among the olive woods. Are we
not there already? See! bare-headed women are washing the clothes of
their husbands and children in the Grima. Look there, beyond! The goats
are clambering up the precipitous slopes, and browsing on the myrtle.
What now do we behold through sunny openings in dense dark foliage?
Meditating mountains and laughing sea. Let us recant all we have said.
There is room enough in this large world for everybody, and manifestly
quite enough for us. Man has wrung from Nature a slight concession
along the coast, but here, as everywhere, the Hinterland belongs to
Heaven.’
There was little exaggeration in the words. An ascent as easy as it
was brief carried us beyond the sights and sounds of what Veronica
had, with just alliteration, stigmatised as ‘cosmopolitan canaille,’
and shortly we were sitting on myrtle-cushioned boulders, and gazing
out, through gaps in the silvery foliage of the olive-trees, at a sea
unchanged since the days when Hercules is reputed to have traversed it.
‘Yes,’ said Lamia penitently; ‘I own this is better than the chink of
five-franc pieces, the lavishly gilded ceilings, and the hungry faces
fastened on the gyrations of a whirligig. Yet, the rooms are crowded,
and we have the woods to ourselves. The perversity that governs the
lives of so many of us is, I have often felt, a strong argument
against Free Will; and never seemed it more so than here where, in
the most enchanting spot I have as yet beheld, men and women are most
artificial, and most intent on the ugliest of pursuits.’
Thereupon—for have you not remarked that the oldest subjects of
discourse are precisely those which best preserve their freshness?—the
conversation, in this mountain solitude, began to travel, if somewhat
discursively, over trite ground, in the course of which Lamia rather
ingeniously suggested that, as with every other human faculty, our will
is partly free, in part under the sway of necessity. The discussion, if
discussion it can be called, was confined to three of us; for the Poet
remained a silent listener.
‘Have you nothing,’ said Veronica at length, ‘to contribute to our
deliberations? Can you not give us any help in our perplexity?’
‘I almost think I can,’ he said, ‘but not by any formal dialectic.
Yet is not a universal conviction, of which it is impossible for
human beings to divest themselves, as convincing as the most logical
demonstration? Once after listening, by no means for the first time,
to the arguments you have yet again been urging, there came to me the
following reflections:—
FREE WILL AND FATE
I
‘You ask me why I envy not
The Monarch on his throne.
It is that I myself have got
A Kingdom of my own:
Kingdom by Free Will divine
Made inalienably mine,
Where over motions blind and brute
I live and reign supreme, a Sovereign absolute.
II
‘Ebbing and flowing as the seas,
And surging but to drown,
Think you that I will pass to these
My Sceptre and my Crown?
Unto rebel passions give
Empire and prerogative?
They are attendants in my train,
To come when I command, and crouch as I ordain.
III
‘If Will by long succession be
Not arbiter of Fate,
Assail its majesty, and see
If it doth abdicate.
Chains that do the body bind
Cannot manacle the mind.
What fetters may the heart control,
Nor doth the Tyrant live that can enslave the soul.
IV
‘In Spring, when linnets lift their voice
To praise the Lord and bless,
They are thus punctual of free choice,
Detesting waywardness.
Throughout earth, and sky, and sea,
Law is loving liberty,
That could, but will not, go astray,
And, free though to rebel, delighteth to obey.
V
‘And Spirit, though encased in clay,
To sense’s grovelling mood
Accepteth not, befall what may,
Ignoble servitude.
In the faggot thrust the torch,
Till the flame-tongues search and scorch.
Calmly the martyr mounts the pyre,
And smiles amid the smoke, and prays above the fire.
VI
‘Nor is it Fate directs the waves,
Or dominates the wind:
They are God’s servants, not His slaves,
And they surmise His mind.
If the planets walk aright
Though the dim and trackless night,
Nor their true pathway ever miss,
Know ye it is because their Will is one with His!‘
An hour or so later, just as mountain and main began to exchange the
resplendent garments of sundown for twilight’s more sober mantle,
Veronica leaned forward, and, pointing to a motionless figure that
with dark flowing plumes and glittering bayonet stood out silhouetted
against the sky, exclaimed:
‘See, Lamia! You are in Italy.’
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LAMIA’S WINTER-QUARTERS
‘I wonder,’ said Lamia, ‘who invented the phrase, “the sunny South”?‘
‘A poet, no doubt,’ I answered, with perhaps a slight touch of malice;
‘one who, in Bacon’s phrase, accommodates the shows of things to the
affections of the mind.‘
‘That is all very well when you are not in immediate contact with the
things themselves. But here we have been for forty-eight hours, and we
have not seen the sun yet. Tuscany could hardly have behaved worse.’