allowed that, as a race, Italians have not that tender attachment to
flowers which is universal among ourselves, and that being, contrary
to general belief, far less sentimental and more practical than we
are, they do not care to devote much attention to the growing of
anything that cannot be taken to market and turned into _quattrini_,
or ready cash. Hence, they will willingly grow carnations, freesias,
arum-lilies, lilies of the valley, ranunculuses, and such like flowers
that find a quick sale on the ledges of the _Palazzo Strozzi_, or under
the shadow of the _Municipio_ in the _Piazza della Trinità_. But even
these are so reared that the purchaser alone gets any delectation out
of them, and the spot where they are produced is but little more of
a garden in consequence of their temporary presence. The difficulty
is to induce an Italian gardener to believe that you care for flowers
for their own sake, that you regard the sale of them as a sort of
desecration, that you feel they ought to be love-gifts, tokens of
present or mementoes of absent affection, and, in any case, cherished
companions of one’s private thoughts, one’s habitual pursuits, and
one’s transitory emotions. He cannot understand that you want to
consort with them, to tend them in sickness and health, to cultivate
them for better or for worse, to let them twine and garland themselves
about your inner and your outer life, to make them, in fact, flesh of
your flesh, and spirit of your spirit, till death do you part, when,
with a sweet form of suttee, they will come and immolate themselves
upon your grave.
This conflict of ideals between the Poet and myself on the one side,
and Ippolito, the gardener, on the other,—for the humblest folk in
Tuscany have classical names, which they imagine to be Christian, and
indeed frequently are so, thanks to some primitive martyr in the Church
Calendar,—began at once, and never wholly ceased. We put our veto on
the sale in Florence of flower or leaf grown on the premises; and as
Veronica, with all her marvellous foresight, had not extended our
contract to these, we had to arrange with him what was to be paid by
us for what would otherwise have been profitable produce. Ippolito’s
calculations were of the most elaborate character; but their complexity
arose solely from his scrupulous desire to do justice as between man
and man. Personally, he had no money interest in the matter; for,
but for what he regarded as our unaccountable tastes, he would have
carried all the saleable flowers twice a week to that charming little
market-place which every visitor to the fair city knows so well, made
the best bargain he could with the purchasing public, and credited
his _padrone_ with the amount received. Selling the flowers, he could
know, to a _centesimo_, what they were worth. Not selling them, in
deference to these odd _forestieri_, and therefore having to surmise
what they would probably have fetched could they have been sold, and
anxious neither to defraud his master nor to rob us, he lived, during
our sojourn, a life of continual arithmetical anxiety. In vain were
the Poet’s magnificent endeavours to make him understand that we were
not, as modern language has it, so mighty particular as to what we paid
for rescuing the flowers from what he regarded as an ignoble doom.
We could excite no sentimental emotion on the subject in Ippolito.
To him it was simply a matter of addition in decimals, the sum total
of which should represent the practical results of abstract justice.
It must not be supposed, however, that this quite satisfied him, or
entirely quieted his conscience. To the last he let us perceive that
he considered our arbitrary conduct to have a certain moral obliquity
about it, since it caused and consecrated so much absolute waste;
waste of time, waste of material, waste of money. Once, when we were
not present, he appealed to Veronica, and asked if we were really in
earnest in forbidding him to sell any portion of the flowers. The
violets flowered by tens of thousands, the carnations were rotting on
their stalks, and it was not possible more freesias could be wanted for
indoors; and, with his _Ma, Signora mia_, and _Senta, Sua Signoria_, he
did his best to convert her. But she told him we were inexorable; and,
though she fully shared our sentiments on the subject, she laughed at
us for a couple of _zucconi_, or dunderheads, for allowing ourselves to
pay twice what the flowers were worth: a form of judgment which, as we
have seen, was not quite equitable, but which nevertheless represented,
with tolerable accuracy, the low estimate she entertained of either the
Poet’s or my capacity for a bargain.
[Illustration: A NOBLE FOUNTAIN]
Once Ippolito was thoroughly convinced of our obduracy concerning his
mercenary traditions, he showed an amiable readiness to please us, by
bringing pot after pot of well-grown plants from frame and shelf and
sheltering nook, and placing them where we would, and mostly round the
noble fountain that flashed quietly but unceasingly in the centre of
the garden enclosure; though he well knew that, even in the genial
weather with which we were being favoured, the length of their days
would thereby be somewhat curtailed; white arum-lilies, freesias,
lilies of the valley, and early carnations, thus making a most lively
show.
‘Do not suppose, though,’ I said to Lamia, ‘that Italy has not its
true garden season, even in the English sense; and I trust you will,
in due course, be able to judge of it for yourself. But it is brief
in its marvellous beauty. Like the people themselves of this lovely
land, the year ages soon, when compared with the lagging Spring, the
lingering Summer, and the slowly-ripening Autumn of Northern climes.
But when the roses come they will come in battalions, the wistaria will
run riot over wall and pergola, the _Spiræa Van Houtte_ will whitely
decorate itself with a lavishness unknown to chillier latitudes, and
Madonna lilies will astound you by their height, and irises by their
profusion. For a month, in a favourable season for six weeks, one will
be embowered in bloom; then suddenly to find, if one gardens in English
fashion, you have no garden at all.’
‘A short life and a merry one,’ said Lamia: ‘an ideal existence.’
‘But do not let us forget,’ I observed, ‘that when this brief exuberant
blending of Spring and Summer has passed away from the garden, the
purple and opal bunches of the festooned and trellised vine come timely
to take its place.’
‘Nor,’ added the Poet, ‘should we omit that bewitching preliminary to
the profuse period you speak of, when, as now, in whichever direction
you look or ramble in that astonishing valley, almond and peach,
plum-blossom, pear-blossom, and apple-bloom, fleck with their rich
rival tints, from purest white to rosiest pink, the silvery spray of
the ubiquitous olives.’
‘Silvery till ruffled by the wind,’ he went on, ‘as Lorenzo so
admirably describes it in his poem on the _Ambra_.
‘L’uliva, in qualche dolce piaggia aprica,
Secondo il vento par, or verde, or bianca.‘
‘What an incautious quotation!’ said Lamia; ‘and, were I a critic, I
should at once fasten on you a charge of gross plagiarism. I remember,
if you do not:—
‘The smiling slopes with olive groves bedecked,
Now darkly green, now, as the breeze did stir,
Spectral and white, as though the air were flecked
With elfin branches laced with gossamer;
And then so faint, the eye could scarce detect
Which the gray hillside, which the foliage fair;
Until once more it dense and sombre grew,
To shift again just as the zephyr blew.
‘Have I not established my case?’
‘Completely, my dear Lamia; and I am glad to find myself in such
excellent company as that of Lorenzo, more especially now that we have
taken possession of a villa where he must often have been a guest, with
Politian for host, and Poggio and Pico della Mirandola for companions.‘
‘I fear,’ said Lamia modestly, ‘I should have found them too learned to
be congenial society.’
[Illustration: PEACH, PLUM, AND PEAR-BLOSSOM]
‘Not when Lorenzo was with them; for he assimilated their learning to
life, and contrived to make gaiety out of their scholarship. With more
even than the statesmanship of his grandfather, and of whom it may
equally be said that he ruled without arms and without a title, endowed
with no inconsiderable portion of the culture of the students he so
generously abetted, Lorenzo was a thorough man-of-the-world, and more
than a respectable man-of-letters. I recommend to you his description,
in the _Selve d’ Amore_, of the shepherd leading his flock from the
wintry fold to the Spring pasture, and carrying in his arms a
newly-dropped lamb, his sonnet on the origin of the violet, and, still
more perhaps, the one in praise of rural sights, sounds, and solitude.
Permit me to cite at least a portion of it:—
‘Cerchi, chi vuol, le pompe, e gli alti onori,
Le piazze, e tempi, e gli edifizi magni,
Le delicie, il tesor, qual accompagni
Mille duri pensier, mille dolori.
Un verde praticel pien di bei fiori,
Un rivolo che l’erba intorno bagni,
Un augelletto che d’amor si lagni,
Acqueta molto meglio i nostri ardori.‘
‘I fear,’ said Lamia, ‘I have not yet made sufficient progress in
my studies to follow your recitation completely. Will you kindly
translate?’
‘Let a spontaneous paraphrase suffice, which will reproduce the
original with, if with less literary perhaps with more spiritual,
accuracy.
‘Covet who will the patronage of Kings,
And pompous titles Emperors bestow,
Splendour, and revelry, and all that brings
A thousand bitter thoughts, a world of woe:
A meadow glistening in an April shower,
A green-banked rivulet, and, near his nest,
A blackbird carolling in guelder bower,
‘Tis these that soothe and satisfy the breast.‘
‘Surely it is strange,’ I said, ‘that a man so occupied with affairs
of State as Lorenzo, conspiring and conspired against from morning to
night, a landowner not indifferent to the prosperity of his estate, a
banker attentive to the profitable employment of his capital, a father
most anxious for the wise bringing up of his sons, a collector of
manuscripts, gems and intaglios, a founder of libraries, an owner of
alum mines, a prince, a statesman, and a diplomatist, should not only
have experienced such a sentiment as you have cited, but should have
found leisure to give expression to it.’
‘And in so short a space of time,’ said Lamia, more indulgent than
usual to my observations. ‘Was he not only forty-one when he died?’
‘He was,’ I said, ‘but he seems to have lived every hour of his life,
and to have acted on the principle he lays down in his contribution
to the _Disputationes Camaldulenses_, that life should consist in
equal parts of action and contemplation; thereby being rather at issue
with Plato, whom he loved so well. But even in his most contemplative
moods he never seems to be divorced from the themes that interest
mankind. There is a passage in a poem of his expository of the
Platonic Philosophy which some critics have thought gave Michelangelo
the suggestion for his famous marble _Sonno_, which you will shortly
see in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo; while, in his _Simposio_ there
is a description of a toping friar which is worthy of Chaucer, and
in the _Canzoni a Ballo_ and the _Canti Carnascialeschi_, which I
cannot recommend you to read save in what you will scarcely find, an
expurgated edition, he expresses the very thoughts, feelings, and
ideals of the populace of Florence.’
‘Veronica shall be my Bowdler,’ said Lamia, ‘and meanwhile I thank you
for your erudition! But, as it happens to be my birthday, do you think
you could forget the Medici for a few moments, if only to wish me, in
the most conventional manner, “many happy returns”?‘
I had not forgotten the circumstance, and indeed had armed myself with
a propitiatory gift which I intended to offer later in the day. But,
before I could stammer out my excuses, she put her hand in that of the
Poet, and said:
‘Perhaps you have forgotten that, not very long ago, you rebuked me
most gently for one of my numerous foibles, and that I asked you to
tell me what I ought to do, and to be, in order to merit your approval.
Will you, for a birthday present, tell me now?’
We had come, in our saunterings, to the long low wall, leaning over
which we gazed down direct on Florence.
‘With pleasure,’ he said, ‘and I must only hope you will not think me
too severe.
A BIRTHDAY PRESENT
I
‘“Say what, to please you, you would have me be.”
Then listen, dear!
I fain would have you very fair to see,
And sweet to hear.
II
‘You should have Aphrodite’s form and face,
With Dian’s tread;
And something of Minerva’s lofty grace
Should crown your head.
III
‘Summer should wander in your voice, and Spring
Gleam in your gaze,
And pure thoughts ripen in your heart that bring
Calm Autumn days.
IV
‘Yours should be winning ways that make Love live,
And ne’er grow old,
With ever something yet more sweet to give,
Which you withhold.
V
‘You should have generous hopes that can beguile
Life’s doubts and fears,
And, ever waiting on your April smile,
The gift of tears.
VI
You should be close to us as earth and sea,
And yet as far
As Heaven itself. In sooth, I’d have you be
Just what you are.‘
O these poets! I need scarcely say that, after this insidious effusion,
I stowed away the present I had intended for Lamia in a secret drawer,
reserving it for some more propitious occasion. I hope I am not
prejudiced when I say that the verses were scarcely among the Poet’s
happier compositions. But diamonds would have lacked lustre, after such
metrical adulation.
* * * * *
But did you go all that way, it will perhaps be asked, and introduce
Lamia to the acknowledged fascinations of Tuscany, only to wander
in search of wild-flowers, to climb rural hill-sides, to rave about
scenery and sunshine, to listen reverentially to the Poet’s rhymes,
and to discuss things in general, and Lamia’s favourite themes in
particular? Surely, you may be disposed to add, all those things could
have been done just as well at home. Had Florence itself, its churches,
its palaces, its galleries, its storied thoroughfares, no attraction
for you all?
[Illustration: FLORENCE]
Indeed they had. But these have been written about with such minuteness
by the learned, and with such fervour by the enthusiastic, that you
would hardly thank so homely a pen as mine for describing them afresh.
Moreover, let it be confessed that we had a way of our own, which is
hardly the common way, of impressing Lamia’s sensitive mind with the
artistic marvels of the City of Flowers. To the rest of us, Florence
was already as familiar even as the Garden that we love, and the
Poet had a theory, in which I entirely concurred, as to how Lamia’s
familiarity should grow to be like ours, with a reserved freshness
of its own. ‘There are two ways,’ he said, ‘of approaching a place
like Florence. You can try to take possession of it, or you can allow
it to take possession of you. The first is the more usual, but the
second is, I would suggest, the more excellent way. Once when I was
travelling hitherward, I remember an American tourist who was the only
other occupant of the railway compartment, asking me if I knew Pisa;
and, on my replying that I did, he said he should be much obliged if
I would point it out to him. Shortly we approached it, and the train
slackened pace in order to make the customary halt of some seven or
eight minutes. “This is Pisa,” I said, and he at once leaned out of the
window, and there he remained intently gazing till its Duomo, Leaning
Tower, and Baptistery, could be seen no more. Then he turned to me,
and said, “I thank you, sir, for showing me Pisa. I should not have
liked to return to the States without having seen Pisa.” I beg of you
not to take my fellow-traveller as a national type, for Americans are
as various, and differ from each other as much, as the people of other
countries. But I cannot think he had seen Pisa. Yet numbers of people
resemble him in their tacit assumption that a hasty visual impression
or snapshot, so to speak, deserves to be described as seeing, though,
assuredly, where great works of art are concerned, it is not to see
with the mind’s eye, to say nothing of the spirit’s.‘
‘I am easily taken possession of, as you know,’ said Lamia, for a
moment pointedly turning to me, who certainly know nothing of the
kind, and indeed know very much the reverse, and then redirecting her
attention to the Poet. ‘But, if one is to be taken possession of by all
the lovely places and things in this world, would not one have to live
to a rather venerable age?’
‘There is an alternative,’ I said, ‘is there not? which is to be taken
possession of by only some of them, but to be taken possession of by
these thoroughly.’
‘How conjugal and domestic that sounds. But it makes no allowance for
feminine curiosity. I should be sorry, when we leave Florence, to
think there was anything in it worth seeing I had not seen.‘ ‘Neither
shall there be, I hope,’ said the Poet, ‘but, if one is really to see
what is worth seeing, I think one must bridle one’s curiosity a little
about much that is not worth seeing. The specialist, no doubt, must
be boundlessly curious concerning his particular pursuit, and the
professional student of Art is a specialist. We are, at best, only
dilettanti, and seek solely to expand our minds through sympathetic and
discriminating enjoyment.‘
‘In fact,’ said Lamia, ‘it is with Art as with Life. If one is to
enjoy it, one must not know too much about it. In that case, I can
promise myself, during the next few weeks, no end of pleasure.’
We none of us, unless it be Veronica sometimes, resent Lamia’s
seemingly irrelevant way of diverting a discussion, and the Poet has
less reason than any of us to do so, since she not only accepts his
utterances as words of absolute wisdom, but invariably strives to shape
herself according to his canons of life and conduct. Accordingly, when
we descended into Florence, which was pretty often, she manifested
neither impatience nor curiosity, but suffered herself to fall into the
fortuitous fashion of wandering about it that he recommended. We had
neither guide nor guide-book; and, if any of us showed a disposition
to enter here or to linger there, we entered or lingered as a matter
of course. Lamia was left to her own impulses in giving much or little
attention to tomb, fresco, statue, altar-piece, pulpit, or doorway;
nor was she distracted by any information concerning them till she
asked for it. Then, indeed, it was given most willingly, and it was
rarely that one or other of us could not answer her inquiries. The Poet
and I were sometimes at fault, but Veronica never. If you think that
by such a method as this much must have been overlooked that is well
deserving of notice, you must remember there was nothing to prevent
us from returning to the same chapel or sacristy, the same monument
or bas-relief, again and again; and, so varying is the human mood in
general, and Lamia’s mood in particular, that what she would pass by on
one occasion would wholly engross her attention in another. Thus there
was a certain method underlying our apparent purposelessness, and I
fancy she ended by knowing fully as much about Florence as those who
order their visits to its innumerable treasures, while I am sure she
enjoyed herself infinitely more. Moreover, this unsystematic system of
artistic vagrancy issued sometimes in welcome surprises that extended
the experience of all of us. One evening, for instance, just as we were
on the point of quitting the city and driving homeward, Lamia said:
‘Let us go into the Duomo for a few minutes.’
‘But it is so dark,’ I suggested, ‘you will see nothing!’
We entered, nevertheless. It was the eve of Good Friday, when,
according to the Roman Catholic Ritual, the Host, instead of being
enshrined as usual on the High Altar, is, in commemoration of the
sacred tragedy of Calvary, borne to a dimly-lighted Sepulchre, where,
all night long, the faithful come to watch and pray. The Office of
_Tenebræ_ was just over, and the worshippers had all passed out of
the Cathedral. There remained in the doubtful light only a Verger and
ourselves, till, from either side of the Choir, there emerged a figure
robed in black, and bearing a lighted torch. Slowly, solemnly, and
parallel to each other, they skirted the inner walls of the building,
till they met at the main doorway, and then, at the same grave pace,
they walked up the long empty nave. I had a surmise of what was
signified by this slow and lonely procession, but in order to be quite
sure I said to the Verger:
‘_Cosa fanno?_’ (What are they doing?)
‘_Cercano Il Signore, e non lo trovano_,’ he replied. (They are looking
for Our Lord, and cannot find Him.)
We all had heard the reply. Then we quitted the Duomo, and drove home
in silence.
Surely it is true, is it not, that accidental experiences have a
sharper savour and leave behind them a more enduring reminiscence than
projected ones? What one expects but rarely comes up to expectation,
and has generally cost some thought or trouble to procure. What happens
unexpectedly, if it be of the welcome kind, finds one disarmed and
indisposed to criticise, and the emotion it excites is all sheer gain,
no price of admission, to so speak, having been paid for it. Just as
wandering along a river is more agreeable than walking along a canal,
so people who canalise their lives and prearrange their enjoyments
lose much of the enchantment which attends the guiding beneficence of
chance. In Florence, you can scarcely halt anywhere, but story sacred
or profane, saint or scholar, painter or patriot, poet, martyr, or
enthusiast, has left some indelible trace to mark and glorify the
spot, and to make you lift your head and then your heart. The very
lapidary inscriptions let into the walls where architect or sculptor,
jurist or astronomer once abode, are a continual invitation to the
wayfarer to pause, to read, to ponder. Nor is it perhaps the most
famous or the best known that are the most interesting and suggestive.
The Poet seemed to have a special faculty for arresting our footsteps
by those most worthy of contemplation. ‘Is not this one,’ he said,
‘peculiarly consolatory in a period like the present, when most people,
and the Italians especially, seem to think that originality consists
in artificial novelty and even grotesqueness—for that is where such
novelty too often leads—of manner and expression.’
Thereupon he read: ‘_Qui visse e morì Benedetto da Majano, chi nelle
opere sue confrontò con venustà di stile e di forme le grandi idee del
genio creatore._’ (Here lived and died Benedetto da Maiano, who in his
works conferred charm of style and beauty of form on the lofty ideas of
creative genius.)
‘To do that,’ he said, ‘is to overcome the main difficulty and solve
the essential problem of Art, whether in marble or in language. In our
day, too many persons shirk the difficulty and ignore the problem, and
seek to conceal the poverty of their ideas under the extravagance of
their manner.’
‘Some of these are very successful,’ I ventured to observe.
‘Not,’ said Veronica, ‘if in the notion of success be included that
of succession. Congratulated to-day, will they not be consigned to
oblivion to-morrow, when right taste has resumed its authority, or when
some one yet more extravagant creates an impression, equally sudden and
equally transitory, of a somewhat similar character?’
‘I think so,’ said the Poet, ‘and I am sufficiently enamoured of
_venustà di stile_ to hope so. As great a master of style as this
century has produced says somewhere, “_On peut tout dire dans le style
simple et correct des bons auteurs. Les expressions violentes viennent
toujours ou d’une prétention, ou de l’ignorance de nos richesses
réelles._” Do you mind, Lamia, committing that sentence to memory, for
I see you sometimes deeply immersed in works of much pretension, but
consisting for the most part of _expressions violentes_, though I never
observe you admiring in marble or on canvas the violence or the profuse
colouring you occasionally tolerate in language?‘
‘Is it not,’ said Veronica, ‘that in architecture, painting, and
sculpture, the manner in which a thing is done is so much more
conspicuous, so to speak, than what is done, that failure, whether it
arise from feebleness or from violence, strikes us at once; whereas, in
language, what is said, if interesting in itself, makes us indulgent
to, and indeed forgetful of, the manner of saying it?’
‘I suppose that is so,’ he answered; ‘and perhaps it is one of the
incidental drawbacks to literature. Fortunately, however, what you say
is more true of prose than of verse; defect of style in poetry being
at least as obvious to fastidious readers as in marble. And yet,’
he added, ‘in our time, a grotesque, violent, and what seems to me
lamentable way of saying things has been more than tolerated in verse,
for the sake of the things said. For my part, I should be sorry to be
original, either in prose or verse, at the expense of truth or beauty.’
[Illustration: ROSES AND IRIS]