obligation to ancestors you never saw, and probably never heard of;
and I hope you will be yet more charming for your visit to this old
and captivating land. For my part, I always seem to miss something
in people who have not fallen under its spell. You have succumbed
to it entirely. I shall never weary, and I hope I shall never weary
you, in extolling the power of the Past. Would the descant of those
nightingales have the same charm for us, if they had not been singing
thus for myriads of Mays? Spring is so irresistibly charming because
it recalls and renews the Aprils that are gone. Time consecrates and
confirms. The deeper our roots, the loftier our thoughts, and the
sounder our hearts. I remember a great poet of this age saying to
me that he could not see that, as some one had affirmed, he in his
writings so much resembled Keats. “You are Keats’s own child,” I
replied, “and are of noble parentage.” But indeed every great poet
is the lineal descendant of every other great poet. At any given
moment, what exercises most influence is, not the present, but the
Past. I ventured, the other day, to observe that there are only two
sorts of people, the noble and the ignoble. Dear Lamia, let us try to
belong to the noble, since every one may be a member of that untitled
aristocracy; so that, when we ourselves are, as some of us are
gradually becoming, portions of the Past, we may influence beneficently
an unborn Future.‘
‘There never was anything more untrue,’ said Lamia, who was quick to
surmise the more personal meaning that underlay those closing words,
‘than the saying “_On n’est jeune qu’une fois_.” I have been old
several times; but I always get young again.‘ ‘And you will do so very
often, I dare say, for many years to come. Moreover, I like to think
there is the youth of one’s youth, the youth of one’s manhood, and,
finally, the youth of one’s old age. But, when one has reached this
last, man’s capacity for rejuvenescence is exhausted.‘
Lamia rose from her seat, placed herself close beside him, and taking
his hand, replied:
‘Dear Poet, even in my youngest moments, compared with you I am in my
dotage.’ And I would at that moment have been any age you will, to be
treated thus tenderly.
We made many expeditions of which I have not told you, just as we
visited, again and again, churches, palaces, and dismantled monasteries
I have not named. But Lamia particularly wished to see a Convent,—a
Convent, that is to say, in the Italian signification, of monks, not
disestablished, but allowed still to survive, with a certain number
of its inmates, as a national monument. She had heard me speak of the
attractive hospitality I had enjoyed in them in days gone by; and we
selected for our monastic excursion a Convent in the Apennines not too
remote from Florence, and the drive to which would take us through
Gavinana, a spot none of us had ever visited. Does the word Gavinana
suggest anything to you? Probably not; yet it was there that the
liberties of Florence received their final extinction. Indeed I fancy
that, of the thousands of people who nowadays visit the Tuscan Capital,
many are unaware that, in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, it
underwent a Siege whose incidents strongly resemble many that occurred
during the siege of another Capital nearly thirty years ago. Only
Florence is much more beautiful than Paris, and less suggestive of the
horrors of war. Yet the Siege of Florence lasted ten months, or more
than twice as long as that of Paris; its inhabitants underwent far
greater hardships, and displayed much greater heroism. We might have
been a little sceptical on those points had Florentine historians been
our only authority for them. But the copious and impartial Reports of
the Venetian Ambassadors who were in the Fair City at the time render
doubt impossible, and establish the courage, pertinacity, and patience
of the besieged against Emperor and Pope. All the villas within a
certain radius of Florence were rased to the ground, lest they should
furnish help and corn to the besiegers; and all its silver plate, both
sacred and profane, was melted down to replenish the coffers of the
Republic. It is the noblest, perhaps it is the one perfectly noble,
incident in the story of Florence; and I sometimes have thought, and
the Poet agrees with me, that Francesco Ferruccio, whose statue is
among that series of famous Florentines outside the Uffizi, is its
most heroic and effective figure. He would in all probability have
saved Florence, had the timidity of some of his fellow-countrymen, and
the treachery of others, allowed him; for he proposed to create a
diversion by marching on Rome, and menacing it with another sack such
as had recently taken place under the Constable Bourbon. His project
was overruled, and he died fighting in the piazza at Gavinana; his only
consolation, in his last moments, being that the Leader of the Imperial
Army, the Prince of Orange, was also slain. ‘The ill-omened spot,’
says the historian of the Commonwealth of Florence, ‘lies within sight
of the traveller as he passes, about a mile to the right of it, on
his way from Pistoia to Modena. And not a peasant of those mountains,
though ignorant as his yoke of dove-coloured oxen of all the history
of his country from that day to this, not a goat-herd tending his
flock by the roadside, not a grimy muleteer bringing down his string
of charcoal-laden beasts from the forests of the Upper Apennine, will
be unable to point out to the stranger the field on which, nearly four
hundred years ago, Tuscan liberty was fought for and lost.’
Drinking our coffee, for which we paid an incredibly small sum, under
the plane trees of the square where Ferruccio and Florence fell, we
again discoursed on the arbitrary hazards of Time that made the City
justly called Fair, and to which one is often disposed to apply what
Ovid represents Helen as saying to her Grecian paramour:—
‘Apta magis Veneri quam sunt tua corpora Marti:
Bella gerant alii; tu, Paris, semper ama,’
a place of arms, a city woeful and intrepid, the champion of freedom
against Sceptre and Tiara.
‘Surely,’ said Lamia, ‘Dante would have forgiven Florence could he
have lived to see that day. The times were grim, and the deeds austere
enough even for one “who had seen Hell.” Would you not rather,‘ she
continued, turning to the Poet, ‘have it said of you that you had seen
Heaven?’
‘Remember,’ said Veronica, ‘Dante saw both.’
The twilight was deepening into dusk before we reached the Convent
whither we were bound, for our driver had taken a wrong turning during
the last few miles of our journey; and Lamia was quick to note, as
characteristic of Italy, that, when inquiry put us on the right one,
the directions given were, not as in England, according to signposts,
but to little tabernacles or shrines at the parting of the ways:
now of the Annunciation, now of Saint Agatha or Saint Barbara, now
of Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata. I am afraid her
curiosity was more piqued than satisfied when we reached our bourne;
for, though we were most piously welcomed, Veronica and she were not
allowed to violate that portion of the Convent which is defended from
female gaze by the word _Clausura_; and she not unnaturally, though
quite inaccurately, imagined that she was not shown what was most
worth seeing. The Poet and I were allotted sleeping-cells within
the Monastery, but our companions, of course, had to pass the night
in the _Foresteria_, or strangers’ quarter, outside, in charge of a
lay-brother, and it was there we all had our truly ascetic supper. But
the guests of Sallust never enjoyed one more; for our host, the Prior,
was an ideal monk, majestic yet saintly of aspect, with long flowing
beard, silky and snowy, measured manners, and paternally caressing
voice. The Rules of his Order forbid any instrumental accompaniment
either at Mass or the other Sacred Offices of the twenty-four hours;
but he had always loved music for its own sake, and he had made for
himself a primitive sort of spinette, on which he said he would play to
us, for our further entertainment, when the lay-brother who was waiting
on us had retired, and all the Confraternity were in their first deep
sleep. The performance, like the instrument, was touching in its
simplicity; and Veronica, wishing to make him some return, said that
Lamia, too, was fond of music, and would, she was quite sure, sing to
him if he cared to hear her. Even in the _Foresteria_, I fear, there
was a touch of the profane in the suggestion; but he evidently could
not resist the temptation thus presented to him, and begged Lamia to
sing, but with not too loud and penetrating a voice. She at once broke
into the wild and melancholy chant the Italian recruits used to sing in
the days of Napoleon, when they were dragged from their homes to face
the snows of Russia:—
‘Partir, partir bisogna,
Dove commanderà il mio Sovrano.’
But Lamia got no further than those two lines; for our venerable host
suddenly exclaimed, the colour mounting to his face, and the tears
brimming in his eyes:
‘Stop! stop! _Mi monta la fantasia._’ And he went on to tell us how he
had not heard that strain for five-and-forty years, and that it used to
be sung by one whose caprice had caused him to abandon the world and
assume the habit of Saint Bruno.
On our journey homeward, the following morning, Lamia asked:
‘How would you translate the words the dear old Prior used last night,
_Mi monta la fantasia_?’
‘They are not easily rendered into another tongue,’ said Veronica,
‘for they mean so much in the original. But when he said, “the fantasy
mounts and seizes hold of me,” he doubtless meant that your voice
suddenly made him feel all he had felt five-and-forty years ago.‘
‘O, how delightful!’ said Lamia. ‘Then I forced the _Clausura_, after
all.’
‘It is a pity,’ said Veronica, whose sane nature and active temperament
render her a little intolerant of monasticism in any form, ‘that you
could not break it down altogether, and so make an end of it.’
‘And yet,’ said the Poet, who has rather more indulgence for the
weaknesses of human nature, perhaps because he shares them more, ‘I
doubt if we have done with the motives, many and various, that once
engendered and still foster monasticism. The strong, the valiant, the
sensible, require no shelter from the rough usage of the world. But,
as in the days of savage militarism, so in these of an almost equally
pitiless industrialism, terror, timidity, indolence, mysticism, love
of meditation, longing for silence, and a certain passive piety, make
men fly the market-place for the cloister. When Dante, exiled from
Florence, appeared at the Convent in the Apennines, and was asked by
the monks who he might be, did he not answer, “One who is in quest of
peace”? There is no second Dante, but there are many exiles in this
modern world, and I fear their number every day increases. As the
struggle for existence waxes fiercer and fiercer, I think I hear them,
too, exclaiming, _Dona nobis pacem_.‘
‘Listening first to Veronica,’ said Lamia, ‘and then to you, I am
forced to the conclusion that many things are intolerable which we
cannot do without. Yet I confess a Convent of Nuns seems more natural
than a Confraternity of Monks.’
‘More natural, perhaps,’ said the Poet, ‘but hardly so necessary. For,
even in the very heart of the world, every good woman is more or less
nunlike, by virtue of her purity, her reserve——’
‘And, I suppose,’ interrupted Lamia, ‘her obedience?’
Nothing disconcerted, he re-echoed the words: ‘And her obedience.’
[Illustration: THROUGH THE OLIVES, FLORENCE]
‘Have you not, dear,’ asked Veronica, ‘confuted yourself by
anticipation? It was a man, not a woman, was it not, that took leave of
the Prior, who would fain have detained him, with the words—
‘Father, farewell! Be not distressed,
And take my vow, ere I depart,
To found a Convent in my breast,
And keep a cloister in my heart.’
‘One is constantly confuting oneself,’ he replied.
‘How should it be otherwise?’ said Lamia. ‘Verse being the expression,
not of the convictions, but of the emotions, poets cannot be taxed with
inconsistency, though they contradict themselves a thousand times.’
‘Thank you, dear Lamia,’ he said. ‘You are the most ingenious of
apologists. If ever I have to defend myself, you shall be my Portia.’
* * * * *
But the last day, the last night, and then the very morning of
departure at length arrived, when Florence, with its gorgeous towers
and cloud-capped palaces, was, for a time at least, to dissolve like
the baseless fabric of a vision. Perfetta was in tears; Ippolito had
a _mazzetto_ of carnations for us all; the _contadini_ desisted from
their work to cluster in the garden in order to see us off with
many gracious words and expressions of hope that next year we should
return; and the entire household manifested by melancholy smiles their
sorrow at our going. Pasquale, the _cameriere_, had come into my room
early that morning with a doleful face, and, in reply to a renewed
inquiry whether we could not help him to find another place, assured
me that he would not care to serve anybody else; and he launched into
touching eulogies of Veronica’s considerateness and universal capacity,
of Lamia’s irresistible charm, of the genius of the Poet,—_Il Gran
Poeta_, he called him, though utterly ignorant, I need scarcely say,
of the very language in which that retiring person writes,—and of the
thousand-and-one virtues which, finally, he ascribed to myself. If you
think that he was insincere, because he in some degree exaggerated, I
can assure you that you are mistaken. He believed it all.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘_Ringrazio tanto la sua signoria_, but I could not
serve any one else. _Riprenderò il mio antico mestiere_’ (I will return
to my old calling).
‘And what may that be?’ I asked.
‘Do you not know?’ he said. ‘_Io son comico_’ (I am an actor).
The dear people we were leaving are all of them so much more or less
histrionic, that Pasquale’s occasionally fine gestures had never struck
me as singular or exceptional.
‘_Sì, Signore, son comico io_,’ he went on, ‘I am an actor, and have
played at Lucca, at Fiesole, at Pisa, yes and at Siena. Once I was in
the same cast with the stupendous tragedian, Salvini.’
‘Yes, a great actor, indeed,’ I said. ‘I once saw him in an Italian
version of our English drama _Othello_.’
He was in his early morning dress, wearing no coat nor jacket, and
having in his turned-up white apron my boot-trees, which he was just
about to pack. But he drew himself up with much dignity, and, with the
one disengaged hand suiting the action to the word, he said:
‘I, too, have played the part of Otello.’ And, without more ado, he
recited, in his sonorous language, the lines:
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars;
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
And the earnestness with which he recited that pathetic passage
completely submerged the sense of humour that was beginning to rise in
me.
As we entered Florence, so did we quit it, leisurely, and without
the disenchanting scenes of a modern railway station. We were to
drive across the Apennines to Bologna, and, as we reached the last
flower-stall near the Gate that looks thitherward, Lamia expressed a
wish for one more flower. It was a lovely rose, the only one on a plant
that occupied among the others the place of honour.
‘It is a pity to spoil the plant,’ said the woman, who was well known
to us, for we had often halted to make purchases from her. ‘Will not
another serve equally well?’
You will easily surmise Lamia’s reply. No rose in the world but that
one would have satisfied her desire.
‘_Come vuole_, said the woman (‘be it as you wish’), and she severed
the fair flower from its stalk.
‘How much is it?’ I asked, eagerly availing myself of the opportunity
to make dear Lamia a parting gift from the City of Flowers.
‘Don’t trouble about it,‘ said the woman, ‘you can pay some other time.’
‘But there will be no other time,’ said Lamia, ‘for we are going away
for good and all.’
‘_Dunque, non si paga. Addio, e buon viaggio!_‘was the reply. (‘In
that case, you must not pay at all. Happy be your journey! Good-bye!’)
* * * * *
If people love their home, there is no wrong time for coming back
to it; and, were it not for the delight of returning, I doubt if it
would be wise, save under compulsion, ever to leave it. Tacitus asks,
Who would quit Italy for Germany, were it not that Germany is his own
country? Over English folk, at all worthy of their great descent, the
name of England exercises a more enthralling spell even than that of
Italy; and the Garden that I love is all the dearer to me because it
is thoroughly English. But the moment for returning to it fell out
most felicitously; and, gazing on the scene that awaited us, we were
instantly weaned from all regret even for the sky and sunshine of
Tuscany. Under the broad-trunked, wide-spreading Oak,—Veronica has
christened this particular plot of ground the Oak Parlour,—Five O’Clock
Tea was waiting for us, and once more we looked on one of those Urns
which, I am told, have made the owner’s name a household word in many
kindly hearts. I need not say again how happy we had been in our Tuscan
villa, and I verily believe that Veronica would contrive to make us
comfortable in the desert of Sahara. But it is idle to pretend that
all we mean by the word ‘Home’ is to be had save in this, our own
island; and there is all the difference in the world between Perfetta
and the tearful _cameriere_ who, I suppose, has now returned to his
_antico mestiere_, and is smothering Desdemona before some provincial
Tuscan audience, and the Northern handmaidens who, moulded by the
genius of Veronica, perform with noiseless celerity every office that
can minister to the grace of existence. Do not think me material if
I say that that first Five O’Clock Tea in the Oak Parlour after our
return was an event in our life; for its charm was compounded of many
elements, into which entered the abiding influence of unluxurious
domestic refinement. The green antiquity of the oak, the smooth verdure
of the lawn, unattainable, I fear, by the services of a shepherd lass
and her flock of nibbling sheep, the luxuriance and variety of the
flowers, the view, under the oaken branches, of the Manor-House, white
with roses from ground to gable, the snowy face of the tablecloth,
the glow of the burnished urn, the brightness, the spotlessness, the
seemliness of everything, all contributed to the welcome that attended
us, and to the pleasure we received from it.
But something more awaited us than the renewal of old delights. Shortly
before we started for our six months’ absence, we had decided, after
much deliberation, to add, in a modest way, to the home that we had
a thousand times declared, in our optimistic fashion, to be already
ample for our needs; and the result was now before us. You may easily
imagine our anxiety to discern if the decision had been wise or the
reverse; for, though we had gone into the plan with a most competent
architect to the utmost detail, and though Veronica had brought her
practical and tasteful mind to bear upon window and overmantel, hinge
and door-plate, moulding and lining-paper, there is always a danger
lest instructions should have been misunderstood or imperfectly carried
out, or that the instructions themselves were wholly or in part a
mistake. We were prepared to be pleased, but also to criticise; but
for fault-finding there was, in truth, no possible room. Animated by
reverence for what already existed, we had bound architect and builder
to certain well-defined lines and curves, prohibiting externally all
originality save what is perhaps the best kind of it in these days,
pious and humble reproduction of what is already recognised as
beautiful. A room, which was originally spoken of as a billiard-room,
and which for a brief while retained that designation, though all idea
of having a billiard-table in it had been promptly abandoned, and which
now is known as the Morning Room, because, as Lamia says, we nearly
always sit there of an evening, a new boudoir for Veronica, who has at
last a refuge of her own worthy of her beneficent labours, three new
sleeping-chambers, and another staircase, composed the new quarter. And
will you believe it?—it was already furnished; Veronica having made due
preparations and given minute instructions for this end partly before
our departure, and partly during our absence. Now, did she triumph over
us in the matter of those various purchases in Florence that used to
move our ignorant mirth; for everything she had acquired had been sent
home in time to be unpacked and placed in the room and the position
allotted to it. Thus, at every turn, we were reminded of the Fair City
and the bewitching land we had so lately left, and of which, not to be
ungrateful, we still talked affectionately even in the hours of our
home-coming.
But Veronica had no monopoly of success in the swift adornment of our
new wing. I, too, had a little triumph of my own, but, I need scarcely
say, out-of-doors. I do not often sing my own praises, do I, preferring
to extol the Poet and Veronica, who are more deserving of eulogy. But,
on this occasion, I think I really did deserve the congratulations that
were lavished on me. For, with a truly foreseeing mind, I had been
growing on, to use a gardener’s phrase, a certain number of climbing
roses, clematis, jessamine, and other creepers, and had given the
strictest injunctions that they were to be planted against the new
building the very instant the masons had finished it, and were to be
fostered and trained with constant and unremitting attention; and, as
they were then already robust in growth and vigorous at the root, they
were well on their way up the new wing on our arrival. A legend has
since grown up that I did not leave England at all, but remained on the
spot with barrow, trug, and trowel, and that, fast as the work-people
laid a course of stone or brick, I planted a creeper. But, as a fact,
it happened as I have said.
As for the garden, the garden that the too kindly sympathy of others
permits one to say we all love, I can only say I wish the whole of
Italy could have seen it. The Tea Roses, more numerous and more
beautiful than ever, seemed smilingly to say, ‘Has Tuscany roses to
show more fair?’ Larkspurs, of every imaginable shade of blue, from
azure to cerulean; lupines, white, purple, and yellow; foxgloves,
snowy-white and without a freckle; seemed to challenge each other as to
which would tower highest in the summer air. The Pæony Poppies, some
purposely some accidentally sown, were a garden in themselves, fair
but fugitive, yet making up by their number and infinite variety for
the briefness of their existence. They were everywhere in the beds and
borders, and, as it seemed, where they had chosen to be; there, by the
right of supreme loveliness, and the Swan-neck Poppies, the Caucasian,
and the Victoria Cross, rocked more humbly beside them. No other
plant of such supreme beauty has so solid a stem and such imposing
foliage for so fragile a flower; and this it is, I think, which mainly
constitutes its fresh charm. Every one now loves flowers, and I have no
need to weary you with a catalogue of those in the Garden that I Love.
But I doubt if there be any perennial plant of real beauty and value
that will grow in our latitude which is not to be found there; and I
can say with truth, of every bed and border, that you could not see the
ground for flowers. As for the winding turf walk, which perhaps
you remember as the South Enclosure, it is not I who will say what it
looked like when we returned. For one who has justly acquired honour,
not only by the beauty of her own home, but by her charming pages
concerning all that appertains to a garden, and who had visited it
the day before our arrival, left a little line for Veronica, in which
she generously said it was the loveliest she had ever seen. I should
hesitate to repeat so flattering an opinion, were it not for some
injustice to myself that followed. ‘As for the winding turf walk and
its glow of bloom and colour on either side,’ said the kindly writer,
‘nowhere, I am sure, is there anything like it; and only the Poet could
have conceived it.’ As if it was the Poet who had conceived it! It was
I who,—but so it is in this unfair world, where everybody bows down
before prestige. Lamia herself could not have been more partial or more
unjust.
[Illustration: LARKSPURS]
I made some observation of the kind to Veronica, imagining we were
alone, and got for reply,—
‘My dear, you will never understand women.’
‘How is it possible,’ I asked, a little nettled by the implied rebuke,
‘when no two women are alike?’
‘No _one_ woman is alike,’ said Lamia, suddenly emerging from a
luxuriance of leaf and flower that had concealed her from view; and,
though Veronica was there to disprove the universal application of
her aphorism, I think she spoke from the very depths of her own inner
consciousness.