the place that received his ashes, while his unworthier successors have
a sumptuous monument designed by Michelangelo, whom in the budding days
of his genius Lorenzo used to place, out of respect for his talent,
above his own sons at table?’
‘I suppose,’ said Veronica, ‘he was paid for the monument he executed,
and could not execute the one the cost of which there was no one to
defray. But do not let us forget that what he felt concerning the
contrast between the earlier and the later Medici is for ever embodied
in his famous quatrain. Repeat it to us, Lamia.’
‘With pleasure, if I can.‘
‘Grato m’ è il sonno, e più l’ esser di sasso,
Mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura.
Non veder, non sentir, m’ è gran ventura:
Però, non mi destar. Deh! parla basso.‘
‘How would one translate it?’
‘Translation is a difficult craft,’ said the Poet; ‘but, after visiting
San Lorenzo again the other day, I could not resist trying to render
those noble lines into our own tongue.
‘Nay, let me sleep, or, best, be stone or steel,
While still endures this infamy of woe.
My one sole bliss is nor to see nor feel:
So, wake me not; and, lest you should, speak low.’
‘How utterly out of place,’ said Lamia, ‘a character like Michelangelo
seems in Florentine history! whereas Lorenzo is its very type and
representative.’
‘Do you not forget,’ said Veronica, ‘that perhaps the three most
austere human figures known to us were Florentines, either by birth or
by adoption: Michelangelo, Dante, and Savonarola.’
‘That only makes it all the more strange,’ I said.
‘But why?’ said the Poet. ‘Have we not, in these days, succumbed too
readily to the notion that we are the creatures of our surroundings,
and what is called our _habitat_? And is not that theory a mere
_ex-post-facto_ explanation that explains nothing? Who would ever have
thought of predicting that any of the three great Puritans you have
named would be associated with Florence, and the greatest of the three
be born and bred in the very heart of her? Must we not look elsewhere
for the explanation?’
‘Know, Nature, like the cuckoo, laughs at law,
Placing her eggs in whatso nest she will;
And when, at callow-time, you think to find
The sparrow’s stationary chirp, lo! bursts
Voyaging voice to glorify the Spring.‘
‘In the same way characters, austere or the reverse, make their
appearance in the most unlikely places. We hear too much, I think, of
the Spirit of the Age. Shall we not rather believe that the Age is what
great Spirits make it?’
‘There,’ said Veronica, ‘do you not press your own theory too far?
Without for one moment denying that the sudden appearance of great
characters, or the place where they appear, is not to be foretold, one
can hardly help feeling that Dante, Savonarola, and Michelangelo, in
consequence of something adverse in the Florentine character, did not
succeed in making Florence what they would fain have made her.’
‘Truly great characters,’ said Lamia, ‘always fail. Only second-rate
people succeed. For my part I am very glad of it, for nothing is so
disappointing as failure,—except success.’
‘There is a good deal in what you say,’ I was rather surprised to hear
the Poet reply. ‘But perhaps we have all, and myself most of all,
drifted into a vein of exaggeration. I was betrayed into it by the
excessive claim which it seems to me many nowadays advance for Science,
as compared with other sources of instruction and helps to life. Our
debt to Science is great. At the same time, it has its limits, and I
cannot think it is the greatest of our obligations. Do you remember
that profound saying of Pascal, “_La science des choses extérieures ne
me consolera pas de l’ignorance de la morale au temps d’affliction,
mais la science des mœurs me consolera toujours de l’ignorance
des sciences extérieures_”? Such a line, for instance, as that of
Shakespeare,
“In Nature there’s no blemish but the mind,”
is more deeply and enduringly helpful than steam-engines, electric
lights, or anæsthetics. One can, in case of necessity, dispense with
tramways and telephones; but we cannot dispense with right thinking and
right feeling. The material discoveries of the Age do it much honour;
but man’s triumph over matter is most nobly displayed when he triumphs
over the matter of which he is himself composed; when he ignores
physical pain, and tramples on his non-spiritual passions. Science is
the language of the Intellect, Literature of the Soul; and Poetry, the
highest expression of Literature, does for language, and sometimes for
life, what the Soul does for the body, and what this glorious Italian
sun does for mountain and plain: it spiritualises matter. Let me add,
lest I should seem too partial to the particular art I practise so
imperfectly, that this is true of all imaginative Art; and, far from
fearing lest Science should sap and supersede it, I trust and believe
that Art will ever remain its complement, and, where necessary, its
corrective.‘
‘Do you consider Italians,’ asked Lamia, ‘artistic or scientific,
material or spiritual?’
‘They are both, surely,’ he replied. ‘But, if we took the modern
Florentine as the Italian type, I fear we would have to reply they
are rather too prone to worship material science. The artistic
faculty in them seems almost extinct, save for purposes of imitation;
and, even when they imitate the art of the past, they do so without
any discrimination between the good and the bad. But in railways,
telegraphs, telephones, tramways, they take inexhaustible delight.
They have disfigured much of Florence, and most of Rome, in their
determination not to lag behind in the general march of what is termed
material progress.’
‘Is it not,’ suggested Veronica, ‘that they are essentially a
practical race? When the world first took to commerce, the Florentines
became great merchants and great bankers. When Popes and Princes posed
as patrons of architecture, sculpture and painting, they produced
palaces, statues, and pictures.’
‘Just so,’ said Lamia; ‘and now that the whole world has taken to
travelling, Representative Institutions, and Music Halls, they have
Circular Tours and a popular Parliament, both of which they work
exceedingly badly, and a _Caffè Savonarola Spettacolo Diverso_, a piece
of profanation for which I confess I should like to smack them.’
‘There is a good deal of vulgarity,’ I ventured to plead, ‘in modern
life, and in compliance with the theory you have all been pressing,
they are vulgar accordingly. But would it not be more indulgent, and
equally true, to say that Italy is the one country, and the Italians
are the one race, whose vitality is inexhaustible? They have been well
before the world, if you will pardon that expression, for more than
two thousand five hundred years; and, during all that period, they
have never altogether dropped out of sight. Neither do they now appear
in the least disposed to retire into private life, or to preserve
their ruins, however much some of us would like them to do so, for the
satisfaction of our romantic feelings. Who would have believed, asked
Saint Jerome fifteen hundred years ago, that Rome would ever be sunk
so low that, at the very seat of its Empire, it would be reduced to
fight, not for glory, but for self-preservation. Yet what do we see
to-day? Rome, not only safe against foreign assault, but, with the aid
of railways and Maxim guns, meditating new triumphs and new glories.’
‘That,’ said the Poet, and I felt much flattered by his approval, ‘is
the more generous, and therefore the more just way of putting it. The
Italians have a great Past, which they refuse to forget. It still
continues to animate their ambition, and forbids them to rest satisfied
with that _dolce far niente_ with which they once were reproached.
When the period of the Renaissance came to an end, Italy might have
seemed to say, in the words of Nero, _Qualis artifex pereo_, and to
perish most artistically. But Italy was _not_ dead, as she has shown
so clearly during the last thirty years. One’s only regret is that the
existing type of national greatness is so costly, that Italians have to
pay a desperately heavy price for refusing to exist without it.‘
‘People,’ said Lamia, ‘frequently complain of the excessive loads
Italian carters expect their horses and their mules to draw. But the
whole of Italy seems to me to be suffering from the same infliction.’
‘I fear,’ observed Veronica, ‘there is much truth in what you say. Only
yesterday I remonstrated with the driver of the carriage I had hired to
bring me back to the Villa, because his horse seemed in a shockingly
poor condition. His answer was, “_Campa come me_,—he fares as I do.
When I have plenty, he has plenty. When I have little, there is little
for him also. When there are more _forestieri_, he will have more
oats.”‘
‘Let us have a carriage apiece every afternoon,’ said Lamia, ‘and do
what we all shall hate, drive round and round the _Cascine_ from five
to seven. Only, in that case, I _must_ have that new gown.’
* * * * *
‘A firefly! A firefly!’
It was Veronica, invariably the most observant of us, whose voice
called to us to welcome the fairy visitor, whose arrival is as
delightful and momentous an event in Italy as the wing of the first
swallow, the call of the first cuckoo, or the note of the first
nightingale, in England. We were all on the alert in a moment, calling
in return:
‘Where? Where?’
It was a single, solitary firefly, for one may say of fireflies as of
primroses:
First you come by ones and ones,
Lastly in battalions,
and it moved and twinkled in the deepening twilight, among the
olive-trees, a miniature and terrestrial planet, having no fixed
orbit. I need scarcely say that this was some days before _Pasqua
delle Rose_, though Whitsuntide happened to be an early one; and, the
following night, we saw three, and, the night after, seven. Then,
for May can be capricious in Tuscany as elsewhere, the weather was
not propitious for them. But, by the time the moon was nearly at
full, they were plenteous as stars in the Milky Way; and while they
flitted and glistened among the darkening leaves, the nightingales
rejoiced and enlivened each other with the song that an ancient story
and inherited association have transformed for us into a strain of
imaginary sadness. Life offers no more enchanting combination of
sensations than fall to one’s lot on a warm Italian night in May, when
moonlight, fireflies, and nightingales weave their concerted charm;
and, night after night, we repaired to the same antique marble seat,
where we liked to think Lorenzo and his associates had often sat,
in front of the same dark silent cypresses, and drank in the same
sweet, grave, harmonious delights. Perhaps you think us a company of
selfish Hedonists, wholly given up to pleasurable sensations, poor
weak copies of our Pagan Renaissance predecessors on the self-same
spot? Whether that be true or not of some of us, I will not undertake
to say. But certainly it is not true of Veronica, nor yet, I think,
of Lamia. Indeed, speaking generally, I think one ought to entertain
one’s friends with a record of one’s happiness rather than with a
recital of one’s woes; but it does not follow, does it, that there is
no pathetic minor in one’s life because one is not always sounding
it? Indeed, amid all the enchantments of that Italian season when
Spring and Summer are indistinguishable, we had been conscious of the
shadow of pain which is cast by the surely approaching extinction of
a young life in one’s own immediate precincts; and the shadow was all
the darker because the season was so bright. Ilaria, the youngest and
comeliest of the daughters of our _contadini_, whose acquaintance you
perhaps remember our first making, had, we were assured, till within a
twelvemonth ago, more than justified her pretty name by the joyousness
of her ways. But there was a canker in the bud, which thus was destined
never to open fully to the meridian of life; and, shortly after our
arrival, her figure was no longer seen among the olives, or her voice
heard among the vines. Veronica was much troubled by the utter lack
of creature comforts in the spacious _casa colonica_, or farmhouse,
where Ilaria was patiently awaiting the end, though in reality their
absence was only part of that rudimentary simplicity of existence which
is universal among a people untainted by Northern ideas of luxury. She
and Lamia were unremitting in their visits, their nursing, and their
solicitude. But these proved unavailing; and _Pasqua delle Rose_ had to
spare some of its luxuriant blooms for the grave of poor Ilaria. In the
simple rustic household where she had left a vacant place, we liked to
think that, in the daytime at least, the continual demands of Nature,
in her busiest and most growing season, on the energy and co-operation
of Man, diverted their thoughts somewhat from the missing figure;
but, when we met and wished them good-day in the _podere_, tying the
vines, training the _pomi-d’oro_, or cutting the sweet green fodder,
that smile of which I once spoke as invariably accompanying their
salutations for awhile vanished from their faces, and at nightfall
we knew they were brought into undistracted consciousness of their
bereavement. We grieved for them, and felt, moreover, a separate grief
of our own; and neither the luminous May moon, nor the fairy-flitting
fireflies, nor the silvery fluting of the nightingale, could wean us
from the gravity of our thoughts. Even the purest and most generous
sympathy borrows something of its tenderness, I suppose, from the
knowledge that we are one and all subject to the dispensation of grief,
and that those who console to-day may themselves need to be consoled
to-morrow; and this is peculiarly so with the advent of the shadow of
death, from which not even the strongest nor the most sanguine can hope
to escape. Thus, without saying it, we were all, I suspect, musing on
our common mortality, and thinking how the continuance of the deepest
and dearest of our joys depends on the favour and forbearance of Heaven.
But the Poet has a theory, which we have all more or less adopted, and
which he generally expresses by the words, ‘Cheerfulness is the most
serviceable form of human charity’; and he never, if he can prevent it,
permits us to linger over-long in the fruitless gloom of sentimental
sorrow. I think that was why, on the fourth evening after we had strewn
the roses on Ilaria’s grave, he recited to us, uninvited,—an unusual
thing with him,—the following consolatory lines:—
WHEN I AM GONE
When I am gone, I pray you shed
No tears upon the grassy bed
Where that which you have loved is laid
Under the wind-warped yew-tree’s shade.
And let no sombre pomp prepare
My unreturning journey there,
Nor wailing words nor dirges deep
Disturb the quiet of my sleep;
But tender maidens, robed in white,
Who have not yet forgotten quite
The love I sought, the love I gave,
Be the sole mourners round my grave.
And neither then, nor after, raise
The bust of pride, the slab of praise,
To him who, having sinned and striven,
Now only asks to be forgiven,
That he is gone.
When I am gone, you must not deem
That I am severed, as I seem,
From all that still enchains you here,
Throughout the long revolving year.
When, as to Winter’s barren shore
The tides of Spring return once more,
And, wakened by their flashing showers,
The woodland foams afresh with flowers,
You sally forth and ramble wide,
I shall walk silent at your side,
Shall watch your mirth, shall catch your smile,
Shall wander with you all the while,
And, as in many a bygone Spring,
Hear cuckoo call and ousel sing.
And, when you homeward wend, along
A land all blithe with bleat and song,
Where lambs that skip and larks that soar
Make this old world seem young once more,
And with the wildwood flowers that fill
Your April laps deck shelf and sill,
I shall be there to guide your hand,
And you will surely understand
I am not gone.
When Summer leans on Autumn’s arm,
And warm round grange and red-roofed farm
Is piled the wain and thatched the stack,
And swallows troop and fieldfares pack;
When round rough trunk and knotted root
Lies thick the freshly-fallen fruit,
And ‘mong the orchard aisles you muse
On what we gain, on what we lose,
Now vernal cares no more annoy,
And wisdom takes the place of joy,
I shall be there, as in past years,
To share your steps, to dry your tears,
To note how Autumn days have brought
Feelings mature and mellow thought,
The fruitful grief for others’ smart,
The ripeness of a human heart.
And, when the winds wax rude and loud,
And Winter weaves the stark year’s shroud,
As round the flickering household blaze
You sit and talk of vanished days,
Of parent, friend, no longer nigh,
And loves that in the churchyard lie,
And lips grow weak, and lids grow wet,
Then, then, I shall be with you yet,
Though I seem gone.
* * * * *
As the time drew nearer and nearer for leaving the Tuscan home where
we had been so happy, Veronica began to manifest a certain solicitude,
in consequence of our leisurely and unsystematic ways, lest we
should have omitted to make Lamia acquainted with some cloister or
bas-relief, some bit of quaint street architecture, or some hillside
sanctuary, ignorance whereof might expose her to the reproach of a
want of intelligent curiosity. But we found the omissions were few
and unimportant, and this left us all the more free, during the now
brief and regretful remainder of our sojourn, to pay farewell visits
to the frescoes and altar-pieces, the monuments and statues, that had
most engaged her affections. Where Giotto worked, where Savonarola
preached, where Fra Angelico painted and prayed, where Michelangelo
fought, where Dante sate, where Donatello slept, in death as in life
not severed from his beloved Medicean patron, these and kindred spots
had to be seen just once more. When one quits a place where one has
been residing for some little time, one says good-bye to one’s friends;
and these were, one and all, very dear friends to us, and we could not
but take of them affectionate farewell. The _Luca della Robbia_ in the
_Ospedale degli Innocenti_, the Perugino in the _Maddalena dei Pazzi_,
the Fountain by Verrocchio in the cortile of the _Palazzo Vecchio_, the
recumbent Bishop in _San Miniato_, the Mino da Fiesole in the _Badia_,
the bronze David in the _Bargello_;—but, unless I have a care, I shall
fall into the fault I have been trying to avoid, of troubling you with
a catalogue of familiar names. There were favourite spots, too, to
drive to once again, happily too numerous to cite, and too lovely for
any one to be so foolish as to attempt to describe. Exception, however,
shall be made of one of these, for I fancy it is but little known, and
therefore has not become hackneyed. Accident made us acquainted with
it, and design had often and often taken us there again. It was in a
_podere_ some two miles or so outside the Porta San Niccolò, whence,
over a wall lined with irises, one looks down the river immediately
in front of one straight away to Florence, but sees nothing there
save, through the feathery foliage of distant poplars, the cupola of
the Duomo, Giotto’s campanile, and the Tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.
Beyond, far beyond, are visible, on propitious days, the majestic peaks
of the Carrara Mountains, and, a little farther towards the north,
the snowy summits of the Apennines above Pistoia. It was a place that
fascinated us, and we returned to it again and again. One evening, when
the light was even exceptionally beautiful, but the air a little chill,
and we had therefore, for Lamia’s sake, to curtail our enjoyment of it,
I remember her exclaiming:
‘O, do let us stay. Even if it were deadly, it would be worth dying
for. It may never be so beautiful again.’
That expresses a feeling which, I think, one often has in Italy. It is
the intense beauty of certain moments, certain views, certain sunsets,
that makes one declare one never before has seen anything so lovely,
and dread lest on such loveliness one never more may gaze. A
foolish fear; for to-morrow renews the radiance and raptures of to-day.
[Illustration: OUR TUSCAN GARDEN]
But the closing hours of the now lengthening days were always spent in
the _loggia_, the garden, or the _podere_ of our Villa; and Veronica,
who, so English at home, was here the most Italian of us all, would,
whenever the weather permitted, arrange for us to have our evening
meal _al fresco_, in the society of the roses and the nightingales.
Lamia had, as you may suppose, picked up many a Tuscan _stornello_
and _canzone_, and would sing them to us, to the accompaniment of her
guitar; and, between song and song, discourse would run on all the
beauty and the wonders we had seen that day.
‘What is it,’ said Lamia, ‘that, more than anything else, constitutes
the charm of Italy?’
‘Ancientness,’ said the Poet, ‘and an ancientness that never grows old.
For Italy, notwithstanding its centuries of history, art, warfare,
misfortune, remains perennially young. More than once, the rash have
said, “Italy is dead.” Italy never dies. She has the gift of perpetual
life; but, with all her indestructible freshness, she carries about
her the dignity of bygone times and the majesty of tradition. The
new is always more or less vulgar. Refinement is the work of time.
You remember Aristotle’s definition of Aristocracy, Ancient riches.
Italy has ancient riches, the riches of law, religion, poetry, and the
arts, long established, and she has therefore what is most precious
in aristocracy. She has ancient speech and ancient manners. Her
mountains are necessarily ancient, the Soracte of Horace, the Alps
of Hannibal. But her plains and valleys are equally so, for she has
an ancient agriculture. We are sitting at this moment surrounded by
a rural cultivation that is described with absolute accuracy in the
_Georgics_, and again by Politian in his _Rusticus_, written on this
very spot, and that has not changed since the days of Cincinnatus.
Listen to that fellow singing among the olives. Virgil has described
him,—_Canit fundator ad auras_,—and might be his contemporary. It is
this far-backness, if I may coin a word to express my meaning, that
sheds a glamour over everything in Italy, a far-backness, however, that
endures and persists, that is with us and around us, and compels us to
bend with reverence before it, as we must ever do before the parent
Past we still have with us. In proportion as Italy parts with its Past,
Italy will lose its charm. The temptation to do so in this age is
great, and I fear it is not being sufficiently resisted.
‘Dear Poet,’ said Lamia, ‘will you forgive me if I object that I have
sometimes been told, though I am sure most inaccurately, that I, for
instance, am charming; and yet I am not ancient.’