phrases only approximately true; but even to-morrow perhaps you will
have to own that this southward-sloping coast is not undeserving of its
fame.’
He proved to be right. The following sunrise rebuked Lamia’s lament;
and, when we assembled at breakfast in our English fashion, she
declared she could have dressed before the open window, had Veronica
but permitted it.
Still let it be confessed that ‘the sunny South’ is a phrase that
partakes of some exaggeration. The South is sunnier, much sunnier, than
the North; but it, too, can have its days of gloom, and even its weeks
of capricious temper. Moreover, there is South, and South; and, despite
Lamia’s somewhat hazardous assertion that Tuscany could hardly have
been more inclement than it had been in our new quarters for the first
two days after our arrival, there is, as the rest of us well knew, a
vast difference between its winter climate and that of the favoured
region where, for Lamia’s sake, we awhile were halting.
‘Veronica, you grow more wonderful every day,’ she exclaimed, under the
influence of all-glorifying sunlight. ‘You have discovered a paradise,
by sheer intuition.’
It is not the first time allusion has been made to Veronica’s
executive talents. They are so much greater than the rest of us
possess, that, when anything serviceable has to be done, she reduces
us all to insignificance. Without counsel or assistance from any one,
and entirely by correspondence, she had procured for us, for three
months, a home that we all, with enthusiastic sincerity, declared to
be enchanting. If you think that an easy matter, I can only say, ‘Try
for yourselves.’ It is this special difficulty that drives so many
people who spend the winter months in the South of Europe to pass them
in hotels. One and all we had avowed that we would sooner a thousand
times remain at home than resort to that depressing expedient. Yet
pretentious, trim, and conventional villas, with their cut-and-combed
lawns, their formal palm-trees and dracænas, and their beds of
dubious-coloured cinerarias, are the alternative that, for the most
part, remains; and I imagine you know that would have consorted but
little better with our tastes.
‘I knew what you all wanted,’ said Veronica; ‘but let us,’ she added
modestly, ‘give thanks to Fortune, who has had far more to do with it
than I.’
I verily believe that something, moreover, should be ascribed to
the comparative slenderness of our purse and to the simplicity of
our tastes; nor do I pretend that what Lamia flatteringly called a
paradise regained would have been much short of a purgatory to many
splendidly-fastidious people. Our new abode had neither architectural
design nor internal pretension; but the taste of man, in partnership
with time, had given it charm without and refinement within. Do you
remember how, in that search which finally planted us in the Garden
that we Love, we kept recalling the words of Tacitus as applied to
the race whose preferences run so strongly in our own blood: _Suam
quisque domum spatio circumdat_? I hope we have nothing to conceal,
but is not a sense of seclusion necessary to felicity? Unlike folk of
Northern blood, the Latin race, and the Italian race more especially,
have little taste for privacy, and none for solitude. To lean out of
the open window onto the street or highway below, to sit on door-steps
whence they can see and accost chance passers-by, to talk, to sing, to
dance, this is their idea of such happiness as life permits. But the
very spaciousness of their hills, their plains, their valleys, affords
to the more meditative children of the mist even larger facilities than
our own land for gratifying the passion for that ‘life removed’ which
the Duke in _Measure for Measure_, probably expressing Shakespeare’s
own personal taste, says he had ‘ever loved.’ Veronica had found it for
us here. The spurs of the Maritime Alps, as they decline and dwindle
towards the sea, enclose a series of gorges and ravines of various
forms and dimensions. Some are narrow, gloomy, and precipitous, others
gradual, well open to the sun, not too deep-bosomed, and gladdened by
streams that have their source in remoter mountain-sheds. It was in one
of the latter we had discovered the shelter and seclusion we desired.
No wind could visit us roughly; for, if it blew from the north, we
were curtained by the hills, and, should it rage from the sea, we were
just sufficiently away from the shore, and protected enough in that
direction by olive-slopes and orange-groves to be apprised of its
displeasure only by an unusual rustling of leaves.
‘But what do you propose to do in this ravine of rest?’ Lamia inquired
of me somewhat mockingly. ‘Veronica is never without occupation; and
here she will be abundantly employed in scouring the neighbouring
hamlets for fowls that have not become all bone and sinew by constant
mountaineering, in checking the washing-book, and in raising the moral
tone of the young people along the entire countryside. As for me, a
determination to master the Tuscan tongue will give me rest from the
fatigue of too much idleness; and my new tutor, the young ecclesiastic,
whom Veronica has enticed from the Sacristy for my benefit, is quite
charming, and makes me willing, as he also seems to be, to prolong
indefinitely the time nominally allotted to the most fascinating of
studies. But you? You cannot “garden” here, for the ground seems to do
that of itself; nor, in any case, will you have time to pique yourself
on the result of your labours, which, I have observed, is the main
motive power of those persons who are supposed to love flowers for
themselves.‘
Wishing to divert her playful arrows from myself, I replied that I was
indeed rather gravelled for lack of employment, and so intended to try
if sitting in the sun and doing nothing would supply the deficiency;
and I then added that she had forgotten to include the Poet in the
catalogue of the unemployed.
[Illustration: PEAR-BLOSSOM, MARITIME ALPS]
‘O, the Poet?’ she replied. ‘That is _un altro paio di
maniche_,—you see my devoted subdeacon is teaching me the proverbs of
his lovely language,—for he abides in a lofty ether whither I fear
my shafts would never reach him. For anything I can tell, he may be
writing an adorable sonnet when he is tapping the top of an egg-shell
at the breakfast table; and I often suspect he is, in reality, in a
fine frenzy, when he appears to be listening deferentially to one of my
shallowest disquisitions.’
‘Would you marry a poet?’ I asked. I should have half liked to make the
inquiry more definite; but for that I had not the courage.
‘Marry a poet!’ she exclaimed, ‘I should think not indeed. Poor
Veronica! She manages tolerably well with hers, thanks to her good
sense and infinite patience; and perhaps she is not as sorely tried
as she deserves to be for the irreparable experiment to which she has
committed herself. For us women marriage is necessarily the chief
mercantile transaction of our lives; and, if one marries a peer, one
becomes a peeress; if one weds a millionaire, one may hope to be a
million-heiress. But the wife of a poet does not become a poetess.
She cannot share with him his only valuable asset; and the supposed
romantic nature of his disposition, which is usually a sheer fiction,
not unoften diverts from her the curiosity to which every woman is
entitled, and which every woman who marries reasonably invariably gets.’
‘But if you happen to love a poet?’ I persisted.
She quickly made me repent my question. ‘You are unteachable. Love
is a terminable annuity, that ends long before death, leaving one’s
declining days to abject poverty.‘
At this juncture I saw Veronica and the Poet coming along the rose
_pergola_, for January roses were pretty abundant with us, and I
inwardly wished they had come sooner, for Lamia would not have dared
to say such things in their presence; reserving, as she seems to do,
her most outrageous utterances for my private benefit. But then, it is
true, I should not in that case have put my useless interrogatories.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I am going to burn some incense before the Poet.’
‘You know he loathes it,’ I observed.
‘Do you think I should proffer it so liberally if he liked it? We were
talking,’ she said, addressing him, as he joined us, ‘of how we are
to occupy ourselves in the quiet and unexciting quarters Veronica has
provided for us. You, of course, can write a long poem, and I should
think this is just the place for doing so, though I observe that people
nowadays deprecate the writing of long poems as being out of date.’
‘I trust,’ he replied, ‘that will have no influence on their being
written or not being written. Novel reading, I fear, has proved
somewhat injurious to the more serious side of the imagination, and
prose fiction has created a distaste for sustained works in verse. If
Milton lived to-day, _L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ would perhaps still
be more or less appreciated; but _Paradise Lost_ would of a certainty
be condemned as tedious. Even in his own day it had only fit audience
but few, and few are always enough, if fit.‘
‘I hope,’ said Lamia, ‘that we who are here would answer to that
description; yet you never read what you are writing either to Veronica
or to me. I have often wondered what is the reason.’
‘The reason is very simple,’ he replied. ‘Veronica is rather difficult,
you are somewhat easy, to please; and, while she might make me too
distrustful, you, dear Lamia, would, I fear, render me too enamoured
of my work. It is best, I think, oneself to be its critic, and as
searching and severe a one as possible; and then to leave it with all
its imperfections on its head, which are sure to be very numerous, but
are at least one’s own.‘
‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘how poetry is written.’
‘If I could tell you that,’ he answered, ‘you might conceivably take
advantage of the information to become a formidable rival. But, as
far as I can help you, I should say poetry is a natural and indeed
inevitable form of expression, as I suppose music also is, in a certain
mood or state.’
‘And how is the state brought about?’ she asked.
A smile came over his face as he replied: ‘I wish I knew. Perhaps by
consorting with Lamias, when they are not too inquisitive.’
Veronica remained seated beside us, while he resumed his walk under the
roses. When he had passed out of hearing, Veronica turned to Lamia a
little austerely, and said:
‘There are some persons—usually you are not one of them—who are
perpetually trying to invade the sanctuary of one’s soul, with the
result that one double-locks the doors. Only those who come to worship,
not to scrutinise, are admitted. Have we not already been told,—
‘What is it rules thy singing season?
Instinct, that diviner Reason,
To which the wish to know seemeth a sort of treason.’
‘And again,—
‘Why dost thou ever cease to sing?
Singing is such sweet comfort, who,
If he could sing the whole year through,
Would barter it for anything?’
‘Would you like him to sing the whole year through?’ asked Lamia.
Veronica made no reply; for, though the question was put with an air of
perfect seriousness, it might have been interpreted otherwise. So Lamia
went on:
‘I suppose I do not understand, because I am not married, and still
less have the felicity to be married to a poet. But, if I were, I fear
I should be exacting enough to wish to be even sweeter comfort to
him than his singing. He paid you a great compliment, Veronica, the
other day, when you were not present; for at the end of an interesting
discussion,—interesting, at least, to me,—he said: “The sum of the
matter is, bad wives are as rare as good husbands.” Yet I confess it
seems to me the worst husband in the world would be one who could find
consolation in perpetual carolling. I would rather he beat me.‘ I need
scarcely say that I heartily sympathised, though without having the
courage to say so, with these sentiments of Lamia, albeit it is not
easy to decide if they were really hers or not. She has a fine Socratic
talent for eliciting information; and she was as successful on this
occasion as usual, for, much to my surprise, Veronica, after a brief
silence, rendered necessary perhaps by the violence of Lamia’s closing
observation, said very quietly:
‘I should like, if I may, to recite some lines he wrote the other day,
which seem to bear on your misgivings, if but indirectly, and may
perhaps help to diminish them.’ Thereupon she recited, much better, I
thought, than the Poet himself, the following apology:—
I
The lark confinèd in his cage,
And captive in his wing,
Though fluttering with imprisoned rage,
Forbeareth not to sing.
II
But still the strain, though loud and long,
Is but the mock of mirth,
Not that dawn-dewy nuptial song
That weddeth Heaven with Earth.
III
Voice that in freedom seems so soft,
Fettered, sounds harsh and rough.
Listen! He shrilleth far too oft,
Nor faltereth half enough.
IV
And I, still feebler if not free,
Do hourly more and more
Grow silent in captivity,
And, if I sing, must soar.
V
And as the lark’s free carol floats
High on a sea of sound,
So let me fling my random notes
To ripple round and round.
VI
Hark! now he shakes the towering skies,
A carillon of light,
Then dwindleth to a faint surmise,
Still singing out of sight.
VII
And, though in clearest light arrayed
The Poet’s song should shine,
Sometimes his far-off voice will fade
Into the dim divine.
VIII
Then we with following ear and heart
Should listen to the end,
Though we descry may but in part,
And dimly apprehend.
IX
Lo! soon he quits his heavenly quest,
Slow-carolling into sight,
Then, quavering downward, strikes his nest,
Earthward aerolite.
X
So doubt not, dear, that if I soar
Where none longwhile may dwell,
Though Heaven at times may be my home,
Home is my Heaven as well.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding Lamia’s anxiety lest we should find ourselves short
of agreeable occupation, our familiarity with a quiet and unexciting
existence enabled us to pass many delightful days, while none were
without their incidents and their pleasures. If I attempted to
describe these, they might possibly appear monotonous to you; but
they were not monotonous to us. Excursions to ruined castles, to
picturesquely-perched villages, to slopes and summits famous for their
wild-flowers, are enchanting to those who make them; but one is hardly
justified in demanding sustained attention for them from others. In
life, as in Art, Nature is an excellent background to the actions and
passions of human beings; and our almost daily quest of natural beauty
was not unattended by experiences that aroused a feeling of pathos,
unsealed the sources of pity, or awakened the always welcome sense of
humour. The young ecclesiastic who was engaged in the agreeable task
of reading Italian with Lamia was good enough to wish that we should
pay him a visit, though he warned us, with much well-bred dignity, that
his home was very humble, and that his reception of us would be equally
so. He lived in an up-and-down hamlet among the hills; and we made the
excursion, Veronica and Lamia on mules, the Poet and I on foot, with
much willingness. Lamia spoke of him as her subdeacon; but I believe
he was as yet only in minor orders. He already wore, however, the
ecclesiastical garb, and he had all the grave demeanour of his destined
calling. He made no secret of the modesty of his origin, and confessed,
with perfect simplicity, that he had chosen the sacerdotal state
because, while having lettered tastes, he could so best support his
mother, who was a widow, and his two young sisters. He had contrived
to pick up several volumes of the classics, which evidently were much
dearer to him than the theological tomes that kept them company; and
he frankly declared that, while deeply attached to his Creed, he
would gladly divest himself of the cassock, if we would only take him
to England, and put him in the way of earning a livelihood by such
agreeable labours as he was engaged on with Lamia. Before we left, he
asked if he might read us one of the many Sonnets he had composed in
his abundant leisure; and it was impossible to listen to it without
feeling that he was animated by that desire to extend the horizon of
his existence, which makes the lives of so many students in Italy, both
ecclesiastic and lay, so deeply pathetic. As we descended the hill,
after visiting with him the unpretending chapel where he would one
day minister, we lapsed into a compassionate silence, which I finally
broke, knowing that we were all thinking the same thing, by repeating,
though rather absently, the lovely if hackneyed Virgilian line:—
‘_Sunt lachrymae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_’
I could not be sorry that I had done so; for instantly the Poet,
translating the line, said: ‘Yes.
‘These are the things that cause the tears to start,
And human sorrows touch the human heart.’
‘Did you notice the artificial flowers on the altar?’ said Lamia; ‘and
does it not seem strange the peasants should proffer these, when their
hills furnish them with natural ones, in such abundance, of exquisite
beauty and fragrance?’
‘It offends our taste,’ said Veronica; ‘but I suppose the artificial
flowers cost them something, however little, while natural flowers
would cost them nothing save the gathering. They want to give Heaven of
their dearest and their best; and their dearest and best, poor things,
are their small earnings and scant savings.’
‘Yes, that explains it,’ I said; ‘just as, when we get to Florence,
you will see the most fashionable of its churches, the _Santissima
Annunziata_, bedizened all over with gold; gold being the dearest and
best thing with the fashionable. Thus, both poor and rich alike are
devout in their separate and distinctive ways.’
Do what we would, and divert ourselves in our simple, unpretending way
as we might, we could not help thinking withal of Florence, referring
to Florence, and continually anticipating what Tuscany had in store for
us. Lamia was the most impatient of us all, partly perhaps because she
knew that concern for her alone still kept us from our bourne.
‘Please do not think,’ she said, one day, ‘that I have not greatly
enjoyed myself here. But what is it—for there is something—that renders
life on this lovely strip of coast between the mountains and the sea,
after a brief sojourn, not quite satisfactory?’
[Illustration: ‘BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEA’]
‘Surely,’ said the Poet, ‘it is the insufficient presence of the
Past. Every spot in Europe, as a matter of course, has had a Past of
considerable duration; and this lovely tract of country must have had a
chequered, and at times a very exciting one. But its visible relics are
few. The Roman came and made his roads; the Saracen came and ravaged;
feudal bandit harried feudal bandit; and the great bandit of our own
century, Bonaparte, dispatched and sometimes accompanied his armies
along it. But almost the sole vestiges of its vanished vigour and
virility are trivial ruins devoid of architectural beauty; its villages
are situated most picturesquely, but they are as devoid of plastic
beauty as an eagle’s eyrie; their churches are touching in their devout
simplicity, but, alike within and without, lack the impress of the
artist’s mind, the artist’s hand. He has not been here; or, if he has,
the _condottiere_ has destroyed all traces of his work. Look at the
sea. Byron most happily called it ‘the image of Eternity,’ for its
Present is exactly like its Past, and its Future will be only like its
Present. Man can make no impression on it, nor leave on it any trace of
his presence. Therefore, despite its sublimity, most of us at last tire
of gazing on it. It lacks human interest. When it smiles, it enchants.
When it frowns, it overawes. But we cannot take it to our heart; and
something of the heartlessness of the sea attaches to a land where
neither poet, architect, nor painter has bequeathed monuments to remind
us that here man has aspired and striven, here woman consoled and
suffered. But be patient, Lamia. Florence is reserving for you ample
compensation.‘
‘And yet you, or Veronica, at least,’ said Lamia, ‘would not let
us take up our quarters at or even near,—but perhaps I had better
not mention the place. Only all you have said seems to justify those
wicked people, who find lemon-gardens and olive-groves insufficient for
happiness, and so have enlivened this lovely but unlively coast with
casinos, roulette-tables, and pigeon-shoots.’
‘And even the lemon-gardens and olive-groves,‘I said, ‘are fast
disappearing. As we have observed only too frequently, they are being
ruthlessly cut down, in order that, in their place, _Safrano_ and
_Marie van Houtte_ roses may be grown for Vienna, London, and Saint
Petersburg.’
‘And then,’ said Lamia, ‘there will be nothing left but the mountains
and the sea.’
‘That will be a considerable residuum,’ said the Poet. ‘I happened to
overhear a dialogue between them the other day, which, if you are so
minded, I shall have much pleasure in repeating to you.’
‘By all means,’ said Veronica. ‘Here, we are in the presence of both;
so they will be able to judge if you report their colloquy correctly.’
THE MOUNTAINS
What ails you, Ocean, that nor near nor far,
Find you a bourne to ease your burdened breast,
But throughout time inexorable are
Never at rest?
With foaming mouth and fluttering crest you leap
Impatiently towards never-shifting beach,
Then wheel, and hurry to some distant deep
Beyond your reach.
Nor golden sands nor sheltering combes can slake
Your fretful longing for some shore unknown,
And through your shrineless pilgrimage you make
Unending moan.
THE SEA
Nimbused by sunlight or enwreathed in snow,
Lonely you stand, and loftily you soar,
While I immeasurably ebb and flow
From shore to shore.
I see the palm-dates mellowing in the sun,
I hear the snow-fed torrents bound and brawl,
And if, where’er I range, content with none,
I know them all.
Inward the ice-floes where the walrus whet
Their pendent tusks, I sweep and swirl my way,
Or dally where ‘neath dome and minaret
The dolphins play.
Beneath or bountiful or bitter sky
If I myself can never be at rest,
I lullaby the winds until they lie
Husht on my breast.
THE MOUNTAINS
Till they awake, and from your feeble lap
Whirl through the air, and in their rage rejoice:
Then you with levin-bolt and thunderclap
Mingle your voice.
But I their vain insanity survey,
And on my silent brow I let them beat.
What is there it is worth my while to say
To storm or sleet?
I hear the thunder rumbling through the rain,
I feel the lightning flicker round my head;
The blizzards buffet me, but I remain
Dumb as the dead!
Urged by the goad of stern taskmaster Time,
The Seasons come and go, the years roll round.
I watch them from my solitude sublime,
Uttering no sound.
For hate and love I have nor love nor hate;
To be alone is not to be forlorn:
The only armour against pitiless Fate
Is pitying scorn.
THE SEA
Yet do I sometimes seem to hear afar
A tumult in your dark ravines as though
You weary of your loneliness, and are
Wrestling with woe.
THE MOUNTAINS
When the white wolves of Winter to their lair
Throng, and yet deep and deeper sleeps the snow,
I loose the avalanche, to shake and scare
The vale below.
And, when its sprouting hopes and brimming glee
Are bound and buried in a death-white shroud,
Then at the thought that I entombed can be,
I laugh aloud.
THE SEA
I grieve with grief, at anguish I repine,
I dirge the keel the hurricane destroys:
For all the sorrows of the world are mine,
And all its joys.
And when there is no space ‘twixt surf and sky,
And all the universe seems cloud and wave,
It is the immitigable wind, not I,
That scoops men’s grave.
I wonder how the blast can hear them moan
For pity, yet keep deaf unto their prayers.
I have too many sorrows of my own,
Not to feel theirs.
And when the season of sweet joy comes round,
My bosom to their rapture heaves and swells;
And closer still I creep to catch the sound
Of wedding bells.
I see the children digging in the sand,
I hear the sinewy mariners carouse,
And lovers in the moonlight, hand-in-hand,
Whispering their vows.
You in your lofty loneliness disdain
Suffering below and comfort from above.
The sweetest thing in all the world is pain
Consoled by Love.