such as they were, who stood between the nobles and the poor people,
imitated the nobles as much as they could, and strengthened their houses
by every means. For their dwellings were their warehouses, and in times
of disturbance the first instinct of the people was to rob the
merchants, unless they chanced to be strong enough to rob the nobles, as
sometimes happened. But in Rome the merchants were few, and were very
generally retainers or dependants of the great houses. It is frequent in
the chronicles to find a man mentioned as the 'merchant' of the Colonna
family, or of the Orsini, or of one of the independent Italian princes,
like the Duke of Urbino. Such a man acted as agent to sell the produce
of a great estate; part of his business was to lend money to the owner,
and he also imported from abroad the scanty merchandise which could be
imported at all. About half of it usually fell into the hands of
highwaymen before it reached the city, and the price of luxuries was
proportionately high. Such men, of course, lived well, though there was
a wide difference between their mode of life and that of the nobles, not
so much in matters of abundance and luxury, as in principle. The chief
rule was that the wives and daughters of the middle class did a certain
amount of housekeeping work, whereas the wives and daughters of the
nobles did not. The burgher's wife kept house herself, overlooked the
cooking, and sometimes cooked a choice dish with her own hands, and
taught her daughters to do so. A merchant might have a considerable
retinue of men, for his service and protection, and they carried staves
when they accompanied their master abroad, and lanterns at night. But
the baron's men were men-at-arms,--practically soldiers,--who wore his
colours, and carried swords and pikes, and lit the way for their lord at
night with torches, always the privilege of the nobles. As a matter of
fact, they were generally the most dangerous cutthroats whom the
nobleman was able to engage, highwaymen, brigands and outlaws, whom he
protected against the semblance of the law; whereas the merchant's
train consisted of honest men who worked for him in his warehouse, or
they were countrymen from his farms, if he had any.
It is not easy to give any adequate idea of those great mediaeval
establishments, except by their analogy with the later ones that came
after them. They were enormous in extent, and singularly uncomfortable
in their internal arrangement.
A curious book, published in 1543, and therefore at the first
culmination of the Renascence, has lately been reprinted. It is entitled
'Concerning the management of a Roman Nobleman's Court,' and was
dedicated to 'The magnificent and Honourable Messer Cola da Benevento,'
forty years after the death of the Borgia Pope and during the reign of
Paul the Third, Farnese, who granted the writer a copyright for ten
years. The little volume is full of interesting details, and the
attendant gentlemen and servants enumerated give some idea of what
according to the author was not considered extravagant for a nobleman of
the sixteenth century. There were to be two chief chamberlains, a
general controller of the estates, a chief steward, four chaplains, a
master of the horse, a private secretary and an assistant secretary, an
auditor, a lawyer and four literary personages, 'Letterati,' who, among
them, must know 'the four principal languages of the world, namely,
Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Italian.' The omission of every other living
language but the latter, when Francis the First, Charles the Fifth and
Henry the Eighth were reigning, is pristinely Roman in its contempt of
'barbarians.' There were also to be six gentlemen of the chambers, a
private master of the table, a chief carver and ten waiting men, a
butler of the pantry with an assistant, a butler of the wines, six head
grooms, a marketer with an assistant, a storekeeper, a cellarer, a
carver for the serving gentlemen, a chief cook, an under cook and
assistant, a chief scullery man, a water carrier, a sweeper,--and last
in the list, a physician, whom the author puts at the end of the list,
'not because a doctor is not worthy of honour, but in order not to seem
to expect any infirmity for his lordship or his household.'
This was considered a 'sufficient household' for a nobleman, but by no
means an extravagant one, and many of the officials enumerated were
provided with one or more servants, while no mention is made of any
ladies in the establishment nor of the numerous retinue they required.
But one remembers the six thousand servants of Augustus, all honourably
buried in one place, and the six hundred who waited on Livia alone; and
the modest one hundred and seven which were reckoned 'sufficient' for
the Lord Cola of Benevento sink into comparative insignificance. For
Livia, besides endless keepers of her robes and folders of her
clothes--a special office--and hairdressers, perfumers, jewellers and
shoe keepers, had a special adorner of her ears, a keeper of her chair
and a governess for her favourite lap-dog.
The little book contains the most complete details concerning daily
expenditure for food and drink for the head of the house and his
numerous gentlemen, which amounted in a year to the really not
extravagant sum of four thousand scudi, or dollars, over fourteen
hundred being spent on wine alone. The allowance was a jug--rather more
than a quart--of pure wine daily to each of the 'gentlemen,' and the
same measure diluted with one-third of water to all the rest. Sixteen
ounces of beef, mutton, or veal were reckoned for every person, and each
received twenty ounces of bread of more or less fine quality, according
to his station; and an average of twenty scudi was allowed daily as
given away in charity,--which was not ungenerous, either, for such a
household. The olive oil used for the table and for lamps was the same,
and was measured together, and the household received each a pound of
cheese, monthly, besides a multitude of other eatables, all of which are
carefully enumerated and valued. Among other items of a different nature
are 'four or five large wax candles daily, for his lordship,' and wax
for torches 'to accompany the dishes brought to his table, and to
accompany his lordship and the gentlemen out of doors at night,' and
'candles for the altar,' and tallow candles for use about the house. As
for salaries and wages, the controller and chief steward received ten
scudi, each month, whereas the chaplain only got two, and the 'literary
men,' who were expected to know Hebrew, Greek and Latin, were each paid
one hundred scudi yearly. The physician was required to be not only
'learned, faithful, diligent and affectionate,' but also 'fortunate' in
his profession. Considering the medical practices of those days, a
doctor could certainly not hope to heal his patients without the element
of luck.
The old-fashioned Roman character is careful, if not avaricious, with
occasional flashes of astonishing extravagance, and its idea of riches
is so closely associated with that of power as to make the display of a
numerous retinue its first and most congenial means of exhibiting great
wealth; so that to this day a Roman in reduced fortune will live very
poorly before he will consent to exist without the two or three
superfluous footmen who loiter all day in his hall, or the handsome
equipage in which his wife and daughters are accustomed to take the
daily drive, called from ancient times the 'trottata,' or 'trot,' in the
Villa Borghese, or the Corso, or on the Pincio, and gravely provided for
in the terms of the marriage contract. At a period when servants were
necessary, not only for show but also for personal protection, it is not
surprising that the nobles should have kept an extravagant number of
them.
[Illustration: PALAZZO DI MONTE CITORIO
From a print of the last century]
Then also, to account for the size of Roman palaces, there was the
patriarchal system of life, now rapidly falling into disuse. The
so-called 'noble floor' of every mansion is supposed to be reserved
exclusively for the father and mother of the family, and the order of
arranging the rooms is as much a matter of rigid rule as in the houses
of the ancient Romans, where the vestibule preceded the atrium, the
atrium the peristyle, and the latter the last rooms which looked upon
the garden. So in the later palace, the door from the first landing of
the grand staircase opens upon an outer hall, uncarpeted, but crossed by
a strip of matting, and furnished only with a huge table and
old-fashioned chests, made with high backs, on which are painted or
carved the arms of the family. Here, at least two or three footmen are
supposed to be in perpetual readiness to answer the door, the lineally
descended representatives of the armed footmen who lounged there four
hundred years ago. Next to the hall comes the antechamber, sometimes
followed by a second, and here is erected the 'baldacchino,' the
coloured canopy which marks the privilege of the sixty 'conscript
families' of Rome, who rank as princes. It recalls the times when,
having powers of justice, and of life and death, the lords sat in state
under the overhanging silks, embroidered with their coats of arms, to
administer the law. Beyond the antechamber comes the long succession of
state apartments, lofty, ponderously decorated, heavily furnished with
old-fashioned gilt or carved chairs that stand symmetrically against the
walls, and on the latter are hung pictures, priceless works of old
masters beside crude portraits of the last century, often arranged much
more with regard to the frames than to the paintings. Stiff-legged
pier-tables of marble and alabaster face the windows or are placed
between them; thick curtains that can be drawn quite back cover the
doors; strips of hemp carpet lead straight from one door to another; the
light is dim and cold, half shut out by the window curtains, and gets a
peculiar quality of sadness and chilliness, which is essentially
characteristic of every old Roman house, where the reception rooms are
only intended to be used at night, and the sunny side is exclusively
appropriated to the more intimate life of the owners. There may be
three, four, six, ten of those big drawing-rooms in succession, each
covering about as much space as a small house in New York or London,
before one comes to the closed door that gives access to the princess'
boudoir, beyond which, generally returning in a direction parallel with
the reception rooms, is her bedroom, and the prince's, and the latter's
study, and then the private dining-room, the state dining-room, the
great ballroom, with clear-story windows, and as many more rooms as the
size of the apartment will admit. In the great palaces, the picture
gallery takes a whole wing and sometimes two, the library being
generally situated on a higher story.
The patriarchal system required that all the married sons, with their
wives and children and servants, should be lodged in the same building
with their parents. The eldest invariably lived on the second floor, the
second son on the third, which is the highest, though there is generally
a low rambling attic, occupied by servants, and sometimes by the
chaplain, the librarian and the steward, in better rooms. When there
were more than two married sons, which hardly ever happened under the
old system of primogeniture, they divided the apartments between them as
best they could. The unmarried younger children had to put up with what
was left. Moreover, in the greatest houses, where there was usually a
cardinal of the name, one wing of the first floor was entirely given up
to him; and instead of the canopy in the antechamber, flanked by the
hereditary coloured umbrellas carried on state occasions by two lackeys
behind the family coach, the prince of the Church was entitled to a
throne room, as all cardinals are. The eldest son's apartment was
generally more or less a repetition of the state one below, but the
rooms were lower, the decorations less elaborate, though seldom less
stiff in character, and a large part of the available space was given up
to the children.
It is clear from all this that even in modern times a large family might
take up a great deal of room. Looking back across two or three
centuries, therefore, to the days when every princely household was a
court, and was called a court, it is easier to understand the existence
of such phenomenally vast mansions as the Doria palace, or those of the
Borghese, the Altieri, the Barberini and others, who lived in almost
royal state, and lodged hundreds upon hundreds of retainers in their
homes.
And not only did all the members of the family live under one roof, as a
few of them still live, but the custom of dining together at one huge
table was universal. A daily dinner of twenty persons--grandparents,
parents and children, down to the youngest that is old enough to sit up
to its plate in a high chair, would be a serious matter to most European
households. But in Rome it was looked upon as a matter of course, and
was managed through the steward by a contract with the cook, who was
bound to provide a certain number of dishes daily for the fixed meals,
but nothing else--not so much as an egg or a slice of toast beyond
that. This system still prevails in many households, and as it is to be
expected that meals at unusual hours may sometimes be required, an
elaborate system of accounts is kept by the steward and his clerks, and
the smallest things ordered by any of the sons or daughters are charged
against an allowance usually made them, while separate reckonings are
kept for the daughters-in-law, for whom certain regular pin-money is
provided out of their own dowries at the marriage settlement, all of
which goes through the steward's hands. The same settlement, even in
recent years, stipulated for a fixed number of dishes of meat daily,
generally only two, I believe, for a certain number of new gowns and
other clothes, and for a great variety of details, besides the use of a
carriage every day, to be harnessed not more than twice, that is, either
in the morning and afternoon, or once in the daytime and once at night.
Everything,--a cup of tea, a glass of lemonade,--if not mentioned in the
marriage settlement, had to be paid for separately. The justice of such
an arrangement--for it is just--is only equalled by its inconvenience,
for it requires the machinery of a hotel, combined with an honesty not
usual in hotels. Undoubtedly, the whole system is directly descended
from the practice of the ancients, which made every father of a family
the absolute despot of his household, and made it impossible for a son
to hold property or have any individual independence during his
father's life, and it has not been perceptibly much modified since the
Middle Age, until the last few years. Its existence shows in the
strongest light the main difference between the Latin and the
Anglo-Saxon races, in the marked tendency of the one to submit to
despotic government, and of the other to govern itself; of the one to
stay at home under paternal authority, and of the other to leave the
father's house and plunder the world for itself; of the sons of the one
to accept wives given them, and of the other's children to marry as they
please.
Roman family life, from Romulus to the year 1870, was centred in the
head of the house, whose position was altogether unassailable, whose
requirements were necessities, and whose word was law. Next to him in
place came the heir, who was brought up with a view to his exercising
the same powers in his turn. After him, but far behind him in
importance, if he promised to be strong, came the other sons, who, if
they took wives at all, were expected to marry heiresses, and one of
whom, almost as a matter of course, was brought up to be a churchman.
The rest, if there were any, generally followed the career of arms, and
remained unmarried; for heiresses of noble birth were few, and their
guardians married them to eldest sons of great houses whenever possible,
while the strength of caste prejudice made alliances of nobles with the
daughters of rich plebeians extremely unusual.
It is possible to trace the daily life of a Roman family in the Middle
Age from its regular routine of today, as out of what anyone may see in
Italy the habits of the ancients can be reconstructed with more than
approximate exactness. And yet it is out of the question to fix the
period of the general transformation which ultimately turned the Rome of
the Barons into the Rome of Napoleon's time, and converted the
high-handed men of Sciarra Colonna's age into the effeminate fops of
1800, when a gentleman of noble lineage, having received a box on the
ear from another at high noon in the Corso, willingly followed the
advice of his confessor, who counselled him to bear the affront with
Christian meekness and present his other cheek to the smiter. Customs
have remained, fashions have altogether changed; the outward forms of
early living have survived, the spirit of life is quite another; and
though some families still follow the patriarchal mode of existence, the
patriarchs are gone, the law no longer lends itself to support household
tyranny, and the subdivision of estates under the Napoleonic code is
guiding an already existing democracy to the untried issue of a
problematic socialism. Without attempting to establish a comparison upon
the basis of a single cause, where so many are at work, it is
permissible to note that while in England and Germany a more or less
voluntary system of primogeniture is admitted and largely followed from
choice, and while in the United States men are almost everywhere
entirely free to dispose of their property as they please, and while the
population and wealth of those countries are rapidly increasing, France,
enforcing the division of estates among children, though she is
accumulating riches, is faced by the terrible fact of a steadily
diminishing census; and Italy, under the same laws, is not only rapidly
approaching national bankruptcy, but is in parts already depopulated by
an emigration so extensive that it can only be compared with the
westward migration of the Aryan tribes. The forced subdivision of
property from generation to generation is undeniably a socialistic
measure, since it must, in the end, destroy both aristocracy and
plutocracy; and it is surely a notable point that the two great European
nations which have adopted it as a fundamental principle of good
government should both be on the road to certain destruction, while
those powers that have wholly and entirely rejected any such measure are
filling the world with themselves and absorbing its wealth at an
enormous and alarming rate.
[Illustration: VILLA BORGHESE]
The art of the Renascence has left us splendid pictures of mediaeval
public life, which are naturally accepted as equally faithful
representations of the life of every day. Princes and knights, in
gorgeous robes and highly polished armour, ride on faultlessly
caparisoned milk-white steeds; wondrous ladies wear not less wonderful
gowns, fitted with a perfection which women seek in vain today, and
embroidered with pearls and precious stones that might ransom a rajah;
young pages, with glorious golden hair, stand ready at the elbows of
their lords and ladies, or kneel in graceful attitude to deliver a
letter, or stoop to bear a silken train, clad in garments which the
modern costumer strives in vain to copy. After three or four centuries,
the colours of those painted silks and satins are still richer than
anything the loom can weave. In the great fresco, each individual of the
multitude that fills a public place, or defiles in open procession under
the noonday light, is not only a masterpiece of fashion, but a model of
neatness; linen, delicate as woven gossamer, falls into folds as finely
exact as an engraver's point could draw; velvet shoes tread without
speck or spot upon the well-scoured pavement of a public street;
men-at-arms grasp weapons and hold bridles with hands as carefully
tended as any idle fine gentleman's, and there is neither fleck nor
breath of dimness on the mirror-like steel of their armour; the very
flowers, the roses and lilies that strew the way, are the perfection of
fresh-cut hothouse blossoms; and when birds and beasts chance to be
necessary to the composition of the picture, they are represented with
no less care for a more than possible neatness, their coats are combed
and curled, their attitudes are studied and graceful, they wear
carefully made collars, ornamented with chased silver and gold.
Centuries have dimmed the wall-painting, sunshine has faded it, mould
has mottled the broad surfaces of red and blue and green, and a later
age has done away with the dresses represented; yet, when the frescos in
the library of the Cathedral at Siena, for instance, were newly
finished, they were the fashion-plates of the year and month, executed
by a great artist, it is true, grouped with matchless skill and drawn
with supreme mastery of art, but as far from representing the ordinary
scenes of daily life as those terrible coloured prints published
nowadays for tailors, in which a number of beautiful young gentlemen, in
perfectly new clothes, lounge in stage attitudes on the one side, and an
equal number of equally beautiful young butlers, coachmen, grooms and
pages, in equally perfect liveries, appear to be discussing the
aesthetics of an ideal and highly salaried service, at the other end of
the same room. In the comparison there is all the brutal profanity of
truth that shocks the reverence of romance; but in the respective
relations of the great artist's masterpiece and of the poor modern
lithograph to the realities of each period, there is the clue to the
daily life of the Middle Age.
Living was outwardly rough as compared with the representations of it,
though it was far more refined than in any other part of Europe, and
Italy long set the fashion to the world in habits and manners. People
kept their fine clothes for great occasions, there was a keeper of robes
in every large household, and there were rooms set apart for the
purpose. In every-day life, the Barons wore patched hose and leathern
jerkins, stained and rusted by the joints of the armour that was so
often buckled over them, or they went about their dwellings in long
dressing-gowns which hid many shortcomings. When gowns, and hose, and
jerkins were well worn, they were cut down for the boys of the family,
and the fine dresses, only put on for great days, were preserved as
heirlooms from generation to generation, whether they fitted the
successive wearers or not. The beautiful tight-fitting hose which, in
the paintings of the time, seem to fit like theatrical tights, were
neither woven nor knitted, but were made of stout cloth, and must often
have been baggy at the knees in spite of the most skilful cutting; and
the party-coloured hose, having one leg of one piece of stuff and one of
another, and sometimes each leg of two or more colours, were very likely
first invented from motives of economy, to use up cuttings and leavings.
Clothes were looked upon as permanent and very desirable property, and
kings did not despise a gift of fine scarlet cloth, in the piece, to
make them a gown or a cloak. As for linen, as late as the sixteenth
century, the English thought the French nobles very extravagant because
they put on a clean shirt once a fortnight and changed their ruffles
once a week.
[Illustration: PALAZZO DI VENEZIA]