SARACINESCA
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF 'MR. ISAACS,' 'DR. CLAUDIUS,' 'A ROMAN SINGER,' 'ZOROASTER,'
'A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH,' ETC.
1887
NOTE
It was at first feared that the name Saracinesca, as it is now
printed, might be attached to an unused title in the possession of a
Roman house. The name was therefore printed with an additional
consonant--Sarracinesca--in the pages of 'Blackwood's Magazine.'
After careful inquiry, the original spelling is now restored.
SARACINESCA.
CHAPTER I.
In the year 1865 Rome was still in a great measure its old self. It had
not then acquired that modern air which is now beginning to pervade it.
The Corso had not been widened and whitewashed; the Villa Aldobrandini
had not been cut through to make the Via Nazionale; the south wing of the
Palazzo Colonna still looked upon a narrow lane through which men
hesitated to pass after dark; the Tiber's course had not then been
corrected below the Farnesina; the Farnesina itself was but just under
repair; the iron bridge at the Ripetta was not dreamed of; and the Prati
di Castello were still, as their name implies, a series of waste meadows.
At the southern extremity of the city, the space between the fountain of
Moses and the newly erected railway station, running past the Baths of
Diocletian, was still an exercising-ground for the French cavalry. Even
the people in the streets then presented an appearance very different
from that which is now observed by the visitors and foreigners who come
to Rome in the winter. French dragoons and hussars, French infantry and
French officers, were everywhere to be seen in great numbers, mingled
with a goodly sprinkling of the Papal Zouaves, whose grey Turco uniforms
with bright red facings, red sashes, and short yellow gaiters, gave
colour to any crowd. A fine corps of men they were, too; counting
hundreds of gentlemen in their ranks, and officered by some of the best
blood in France and Austria. In those days also were to be seen the great
coaches of the cardinals, with their gorgeous footmen and magnificent
black horses, the huge red umbrellas lying upon the top, while from the
open windows the stately princes of the Church from time to time returned
the salutations of the pedestrians in the street. And often in the
afternoon there was heard the tramp of horse as a detachment of the noble
guards trotted down the Corso on their great chargers, escorting the holy
Father himself, while all who met him dropped upon one knee and uncovered
their heads to receive the benediction of the mild-eyed old man with the
beautiful features, the head of Church and State. Many a time, too,
Pius IX. would descend from his coach and walk upon the Pincio, all
clothed in white, stopping sometimes to talk with those who accompanied
him, or to lay his gentle hand on the fair curls of some little English
child that paused from its play in awe and admiration as the Pope went
by. For he loved children well, and most of all, children with golden
hair--angels, not Angles, as Gregory said.
As for the fashions of those days, it is probable that most of us would
suffer severe penalties rather than return to them, beautiful as they
then appeared to us by contrast with the exaggerated crinoline and
flower-garden bonnet, which had given way to the somewhat milder form of
hoop-skirt madness, but had not yet flown to the opposite extreme in the
invention of the close-fitting _princesse_ garments of 1868. But, to each
other, people looked then as they look now. Fashion in dress, concerning
which nine-tenths of society gives itself so much trouble, appears to
exercise less influence upon men and women in their relations towards
each other than does any other product of human ingenuity. Provided every
one is in the fashion, everything goes on in the age of high heels and
gowns tied back precisely as it did five-and-twenty years ago, when
people wore flat shoes, and when gloves with three buttons had not been
dreamed of--when a woman of most moderate dimensions occupied three or
four square yards of space upon a ball-room floor, and men wore peg-top
trousers. Human beings since the days of Adam seem to have retired like
caterpillars into cocoons of dress, expecting constantly the wondrous
hour when they shall emerge from their self-woven prison in the garb of
the angelic butterfly, having entered into the chrysalis state as mere
human grubs. But though they both toil and spin at their garments, and
vie with Solomon in his glory to outshine the lily of the field, the
humanity of the grub shows no signs of developing either in character or
appearance in the direction of anything particularly angelic.
It was not the dress of the period which gave to the streets of Rome
their distinctive feature. It would be hard to say, now that so much is
changed, wherein the peculiar charm of the old-time city consisted; but
it was there, nevertheless, and made itself felt so distinctly beyond the
charm of any other place, that the very fascination of Rome was
proverbial. Perhaps no spot in Europe has ever possessed such an
attractive individuality. In those days there were many foreigners, too,
as there are to-day, both residents and visitors; but they seemed to
belong to a different class of humanity. They seemed less inharmonious to
their surroundings then than now, less offensive to the general air of
antiquity. Probably they were more in earnest; they came to Rome with the
intention of liking the place, rather than of abusing the cookery in the
hotels. They came with a certain knowledge of the history, the
literature, and the manners of the ancients, derived from an education
which in those days taught more through the classics and less through
handy text-books and shallow treatises concerning the Renaissance; they
came with preconceived notions which were often strongly dashed with
old-fashioned prejudice, but which did not lack originality: they come
now in the smattering mood, imbued with no genuine beliefs, but covered
with exceeding thick varnish. Old gentlemen then visited the sights in
the morning, and quoted Horace to each other, and in the evening
endeavoured by associating with Romans to understand something of Rome;
young gentlemen now spend one or two mornings in finding fault with the
architecture of Bramante, and "in the evening," like David's enemies,
"they grin like a dog and run about the city:" young women were content
to find much beauty in the galleries and in the museums, and were simple
enough to admire what they liked; young ladies of the present day can
find nothing to admire except their own perspicacity in detecting faults
in Raphael's drawing or Michael Angelo's colouring. This is the age of
incompetent criticism in matters artistic, and no one is too ignorant to
volunteer an opinion. It is sufficient to have visited half-a-dozen
Italian towns, and to have read a few pages of fashionable aesthetic
literature--no other education is needed to fit the intelligent young
critic for his easy task. The art of paradox can be learned in five
minutes, and practised by any child; it consists chiefly in taking two
expressions of opinion from different authors, halving them, and uniting
the first half of the one with the second half of the other. The result
is invariably startling, and generally incomprehensible. When a young
society critic knows how to be startling and incomprehensible, his
reputation is soon made, for people readily believe that what they cannot
understand is profound, and anything which astonishes is agreeable to a
taste deadened by a surfeit of spices. But in 1865 the taste of Europe
was in a very different state. The Second Empire was in its glory.
M. Emile Zola had not written his 'Assommoir.' Count Bismarck had only
just brought to a successful termination the first part of his trimachy;
Sadowa and Sedan were yet unfought. Garibaldi had won Naples, and Cavour
had said, "If we did for ourselves what we are doing for Italy, we should
be great scoundrels;" but Garibaldi had not yet failed at Mentana, nor
had Austria ceded Venice. Cardinal Antonelli had yet ten years of life
before him in which to maintain his gallant struggle for the remnant of
the temporal power; Pius IX. was to live thirteen years longer, just long
enough to outlive by one month the "honest king," Victor Emmanuel.
Antonelli's influence pervaded Rome, and to a great extent all the
Catholic Courts of Europe; yet he was far from popular with the Romans.
The Jesuits, however, were even less popular than he, and certainly
received a much larger share of abuse. For the Romans love faction more
than party, and understand it better; so that popular opinion is too
frequently represented by a transitory frenzy, violent and pestilent
while it lasts, utterly insignificant when it has spent its fury.
But Rome in those days was peopled solely by Romans, whereas now a large
proportion of the population consists of Italians from the north and
south, who have been attracted to the capital by many interests--races as
different from its former citizens as Germans or Spaniards, and
unfortunately not disposed to show overmuch good-fellowship or
loving-kindness to the original inhabitants. The Roman is a grumbler by
nature, but he is also a "peace-at-any-price" man. Politicians and
revolutionary agents have more than once been deceived by these traits,
supposing that because the Roman grumbled he really desired change, but
realising too late, when the change has been begun, that that same Roman
is but a lukewarm partisan. The Papal Government repressed grumbling as a
nuisance, and the people consequently took a delight in annoying the
authorities by grumbling in secret places and calling themselves
conspirators. The harmless whispering of petty discontent was mistaken by
the Italian party for the low thunder of a smothered volcano; but, the
change being brought about, the Italians find to their disgust that the
Roman meant nothing by his murmurings, and that he now not only still
grumbles at everything, but takes the trouble to fight the Government at
every point which concerns the internal management of the city. In the
days before the change, a paternal Government directed the affairs of the
little State, and thought it best to remove all possibility of strife by
giving the grumblers no voice in public or economic matters. The
grumblers made a grievance of tins; and then, as soon as the grievance
had been redressed, they redoubled their complaints and retrenched
themselves within the infallibility of inaction, on the principle that
men who persist in doing nothing cannot possibly do wrong.
Those were the days, too, of the old school of artists--men who, if their
powers of creation were not always proportioned to their ambition for
excellence, were as superior to their more recent successors in their
pure conceptions of what art should be as Apelles was to the Pompeian
wall-painters, and as the Pompeians were to modern house-decorators. The
age of Overbeck and the last religious painters was almost past, but the
age of fashionable artistic debauchery had hardly begun. Water-colour
was in its infancy; wood-engraving was hardly yet a great profession;
but the "Dirty Boy" had not yet taken a prize at Paris, nor had indecency
become a fine art. The French school had not demonstrated the startling
distinction between the nude and the naked, nor had the English school
dreamed nightmares of anatomical distortion.
Darwin's theories had been propagated, but had not yet been passed into
law, and very few Romans had heard of them; still less had any one been
found to assert that the real truth of these theories would be soon
demonstrated retrogressively by the rapid degeneration of men into apes,
while apes would hereafter have cause to congratulate themselves upon not
having developed into men. Many theories also were then enjoying vast
popularity which have since fallen low in the popular estimation. Prussia
was still, in theory, a Power of the second class, and the empire of
Louis Napoleon was supposed to possess elements of stability. The great
civil war in the United States had just been fought, and people still
doubted whether the republic would hold together. It is hard to recall
the common beliefs of those times. A great part of the political creed of
twenty years ago seems now a mass of idiotic superstition, in no wise
preferable, as Macaulay would have said, to the Egyptian worship of cats
and onions. Nevertheless, then, as now, men met together secretly in
cellars and dens, as well as in drawing-rooms and clubs, and whispered
together, and said their theories were worth something, and ought to be
tried. The word republic possessed then, as now, a delicious attraction
for people who had grievances; and although, after the conquest of
Naples, Garibaldi had made a sort of public abjuration of republican
principles, so far as Italy was concerned, the plotters of all classes
persisted in coupling his name with the idea of a commonwealth erected on
the plan of "sois mon frère ou je te tue." Profound silence on the part
of Governments, and a still more guarded secrecy on the part of
conspiring bodies, were practised as the very first principle of all
political operations. No copyist, at half-a-crown an hour, had yet
betrayed the English Foreign Office; and it had not dawned upon the
clouded intellects of European statesmen that deliberate national
perjury, accompanied by public meetings of sovereigns, and much blare of
many trumpets, could be practised with such triumphant success as events
have since shown. In the beginning of the year 1865 people crossed the
Alps in carriages; the Suez Canal had not been opened; the first Atlantic
cable was not laid; German unity had not been invented; Pius IX. reigned
in the Pontifical States; Louis Napoleon was the idol of the French;
President Lincoln had not been murdered,--is anything needed to widen the
gulf which separates those times from these? The difference between the
States of the world in 1865 and in 1885 is nearly as great as that which
divided the Europe of 1789 from the Europe of 1814.
But my business is with Rome, and not with Europe at large. I intend to
tell the story of certain persons, of their good and bad fortune, their
adventures, and the complications in which they found themselves placed
during a period of about twenty years. The people of whom I tell this
story are chiefly patricians; and in the first part of their history they
have very little to do with any but their own class--a class peculiar and
almost unique in the world.
Speaking broadly, there is no one at once so thoroughly Roman and so
thoroughly non-Roman as the Roman noble. This is no paradox, no play on
words. Roman nobles are Roman by education and tradition; by blood they
are almost cosmopolitans. The practice of intermarrying with the great
families of the rest of Europe is so general as to be almost a rule. One
Roman prince is an English peer; most of the Roman princes are grandees
of Spain; many of them have married daughters of great French houses, of
reigning German princes, of ex-kings and ex-queens. In one princely house
alone are found the following combinations: There are three brothers: the
eldest married first the daughter of a great English peer, and secondly
the daughter of an even greater peer of France; the second brother
married first a German "serene highness," and secondly the daughter of a
great Hungarian noble; the third brother married the daughter of a French
house of royal Stuart descent. This is no solitary instance. A score of
families might be cited who, by constant foreign marriages, have almost
eliminated from their blood the original Italian element; and this great
intermixture of races may account for the strangely un-Italian types that
are found among them, for the undying vitality which seems to animate
races already a thousand years old, and above all, for a very remarkable
cosmopolitanism which pervades Roman society. A set of people whose near
relations are socially prominent in every capital of Europe, could hardly
be expected to have anything provincial about them in appearance or
manners; still less can they be considered to be types of their own
nation. And yet such is the force of tradition, of the patriarchal family
life, of the early surroundings in which are placed these children of a
mixed race, that they acquire from their earliest years the unmistakable
outward manner of Romans, the broad Roman speech, and a sort of clannish
and federative spirit which has not its like in the same class anywhere
in Europe. They grow up together, go to school together, go together into
the world, and together discuss all the social affairs of their native
city. Not a house is bought or sold, not a hundred francs won at écarté,
not a marriage contract made, without being duly considered and commented
upon by the whole of society. And yet, though there is much gossip, there
is little scandal; there was even less twenty years ago than there is
now--not, perhaps, because the increment of people attracted to the new
capital have had any bad influence, but simply because the city has grown
much larger, and in some respects has outgrown a certain simplicity of
manners it once possessed, and which was its chief safeguard. For, in
spite of a vast number of writers of all nations who have attempted to
describe Italian life, and who, from an imperfect acquaintance with the
people, have fallen into the error of supposing them to live perpetually
in a highly complicated state of mind, the foundation of the Italian
character is simple--far more so than that of his hereditary antagonist,
the northern European. It is enough to notice that the Italian habitually
expresses what he feels, while it is the chief pride of Northern men that
whatever they may feel they express nothing. The chief object of most
Italians is to make life agreeable; the chief object of the Teutonic
races is to make it profitable. Hence the Italian excels in the art of
pleasing, and in pleasing by means of the arts; whereas the Northern man
is pre-eminent in the faculty of producing wealth under any
circumstances, and when he has amassed enough possessions to think of
enjoying his leisure, has generally been under the necessity of employing
Southern art as a means to that end. But Southern simplicity carried to
its ultimate expression leads not uncommonly to startling results; for it
is not generally a satisfaction to an Italian to be paid a sum of money
as damages for an injury done. When his enemy has harmed him, he desires
the simple retribution afforded by putting his enemy to death, and he
frequently exacts it by any means that he finds ready to his hand. Being
simple, he reflects little, and often acts with violence. The Northern
mind, capable of vast intricacy of thought, seeks to combine revenge of
injury with personal profit, and in a spirit of cold, far-sighted
calculation, reckons up the advantages to be got by sacrificing an innate
desire for blood to a civilised greed of money.
Dr. Johnson would have liked the Romans--for in general they are good
lovers and good haters, whatever faults they may have. The patriarchal
system, which was all but universal twenty years ago, and is only now
beginning to yield to more modern institutions of life, tends to foster
the passions of love and hate. Where father and mother sit at the head
and foot of the table, their sons with their wives and their children
each in his or her place, often to the number of twenty souls--all living
under one roof, one name, and one bond of family unity--there is likely
to be a great similarity of feeling upon all questions of family pride,
especially among people who discuss everything with vehemence, from
European politics to the family cook. They may bicker and squabble among
themselves,--and they frequently do,--but in their outward relations with
the world they act as one individual, and the enemy of one is the enemy
of all; for the pride of race and name is very great. There is a family
in Rome who, since the memory of man, have not failed to dine together
twice every week, and there are now more than thirty persons who take
their places at the patriarchal board. No excuse can be pleaded for
absence, and no one would think of violating the rule. Whether such a
mode of life is good or not is a matter of opinion; it is, at all events,
a fact, and one not generally understood or even known by persons who
make studies of Italian character. Free and constant discussion of all
manner of topics should certainly tend to widen the intelligence; but, on
the other hand, where the dialecticians are all of one race, and name,
and blood, the practice may often merely lead to an undue development of
prejudice. In Rome, particularly, where so many families take a distinct
character from the influence of a foreign mother, the opinions of a house
are associated with its mere name. Casa Borghese thinks so and so, Casa
Colonna has diametrically opposite views, while Casa Altieri may differ
wholly from both; and in connection with most subjects the mere names
Borghese, Altieri, Colonna, are associated in the minds of Romans of all
classes with distinct sets of principles and ideas, with distinct types
of character, and with distinctly different outward and visible signs of
race. Some of these conditions exist among the nobility of other
countries, but not, I believe, to the same extent. In Germany, the
aristocratic body takes a certain uniform hue, so to speak, from the
army, in which it plays so important a part, and the patriarchal system
is broken up by the long absences from the ancestral home of the
soldier-sons. In France, the main divisions of republicans, monarchists,
and imperialists have absorbed and unified the ideas and principles of
large bodies of families into bodies politic. In England, the practice of
allowing younger sons to shift for themselves, and the division of the
whole aristocracy into two main political parties, destroy the
patriarchal spirit; while it must also be remembered, that at a period
when in Italy the hand of every house was against its neighbour, and the
struggles of Guelph and Ghibelline were but an excuse for the prosecution
of private feuds, England was engaged in great wars which enlisted vast
bodies of men under a common standard for a common principle. Whether
the principle involved chanced to be that of English domination in
France, or whether men flocked to the standards of the White Rose of York
or the Red Rose of Lancaster, was of little importance; the result was
the same,--the tendency of powerful families to maintain internecine
traditional feuds was stamped out, or rather was absorbed in the
maintenance of the perpetual feud between the great principles of Tory
and Whig--of the party for the absolute monarch, and the party for the
freedom of the people.
Be the causes what they may, the Roman nobility has many characteristics
peculiar to it and to no other aristocracy. It is cosmopolitan by its
foreign marriages, renewed in every generation; it is patriarchal and
feudal by its own unbroken traditions of family life; and it is only
essentially Roman by its speech and social customs. It has undergone
great vicissitudes during twenty years; but most of these features remain
in spite of new and larger parties, new and bitter political hatreds, new
ideas of domestic life, and new fashions in dress and cookery.
In considering an account of the life of Giovanni Saracinesca from the
time when, in 1865, he was thirty years of age, down to the present day,
it is therefore just that he should be judged with a knowledge of some of
these peculiarities of his class. He is not a Roman of the people like
Giovanni Cardegna, the great tenor, and few of his ideas have any
connection with those of the singer; but he has, in common with him, that
singular simplicity of character which he derives from his Roman descent
upon the male side, and in which will be found the key to many of his
actions both good and bad--a simplicity which loves peace, but cannot
always refrain from sudden violence, which loves and hates strongly and
to some purpose.