My last communication was from Rome. It was piquant, on the day of
departure thence from Naples, to dine at Terracina with a Prussian
family, who had been stopped and robbed by brigands, at eight o'clock
the previous morning, at a spot between Velletri and Cisterna. There was
however no _Fra Diavolo_ in the case. The respectable _pere de famille_,
who with his sons and daughters had been laid under contribution,
informed us that the fellows were evidently peasants unused to the
trade; that they presented guns, in exacting their demand for money; but
that they were nervous in their brief operation, and that they did not
ransack the trunks, nor even carry off the watches and rings of the
party. The chief sufferer was the vetturino, whom fright and the loss of
thirty-six dollars had thrown into a fever, causing the detention which
brought us into contact with the narrators. We passed on our way,
without adventure; the safest period, there as elsewhere, being that
which immediately follows one. I incline to think that extreme
destitution induced this recourse to a practice almost obsolete, as it
probably gave rise to the personal robberies, unattended with violence,
which have been recently rife in Rome itself.
And in connection with this point, I may swell the laments of late
travellers as to the chronic prevalence, throughout Southern Italy, of
those other unceasing robberies of extortion and mendicancy, which are
so much more difficult of toleration. I declare that of all the mythical
personages of classic lore brought back to one's memory by local
association, whether in the Elysian Fields or on the borders of Lake
Avernus, the Harpies are those who alone survive, and who obtrude
themselves always and everywhere, in season and out of season. The foul
brood have assumed human semblance, and haunt you in all varieties. The
unbidden cicerone, or the sturdy beggar--it is hard to say which is the
worse.
How I anathematized them both at Sorrento, where there are certain
souvenirs of Tasso, not so direct and tangible as those preserved in the
Convent of San Onofrio at Rome, but which are worth the tracing. You
will remember that the hapless poet found a resting place here in the
house of his sister, after he escaped from his seven years' imprisonment
at Ferrara. To be adjured, for charity, in the name of the Virgin and
every Saint in the calendar--to have a jackass and a guide, or a jackass
of a guide, thrust upon you, _nolens volens_ for an excursion that you
have no mind to take, or to be importuned to "put out, put out, put out
to sea," when you know that March winds and waves make the azure grotto
of Capri totally inaccessible--these diversions, I say, do not assist
one in gathering up one's reminiscences of Tasso, however much they may
chasten and so improve the temper.
And here I may observe also upon a peculiarity that marks the research
of certain travellers, somewhat akin perhaps to the taste which induces
certain readers to trace history through personal memoirs, in place of
studying broader narrations. If truth were told, there are a hundred who
commune with Pepys and Horace Walpole, to ten who find delight in Hume.
So is it--though by no means in the same proportion--with sight-seers on
ground that is rich in historical associations. All their sympathies, or
the larger portion of them at least, are with individuals, as though
there were no grappling with a race, a nation, an age that is past.
Stories, wholly or in part fictitious, are their hand-books. To them the
Capitol of Rome is the scene of Rienzi's rise and fall, as interpreted
by Bulwer Lytton. At Pompeii their chief care is to find out the abode
of Glaucus and Ione. Nor can it be denied that there is an additional
charm in this mode of viewing localities that are new to us, if it be
not the most philosophical. In my own case, without needless parading of
the degree in which I share this gentle weakness or disapprove it, I
must own that its exercise gives at times an unexpected zest to a
ramble. Whilst in Rome, for instance, I do not think that one's serious
views of history or art are in any manner jarred upon, because here and
there one stumbles upon relics that savour of individuality. At any rate
I should not like to have missed the old mansion of the Anviti family,
near the bridge of St. Angelo, mentioned by that old gossip, Benvenuto
Cellini, as the frequent rendezvous of Michael Angelo, Raffaele,
Cardinal Bembo, and other choice spirits of his day. I should have been
sorry to have omitted a visit to the boudoir of Lucrezia Borgia, in the
Convent close beside the church of St. Pietro in Vincolo, once the
residence of Pope Alexander VI., and now mainly converted into a barrack
for the troops of "the elder son of the Church." The part however in
which is placed this small apartment, decorated with frescoes of the
period, is still applied to conventual purposes. There is no legend
about the matter, at least so far as regards the possession of the
Borgia family; and the room being small in size, and unique in situation
and style of ornament within and without, it is not difficult to believe
that it was the chosen resort of a young lady in days when there was
less gadding about than now. Still, to be candid, I must own that in
musing here, as in looking at the lock of the same amiable woman's hair
preserved in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, one is apt to have one's
recollections of mediaeval depravity not slightly tinctured by visions of
Giulia Grisi in the prime of her voice and beauty, to say nothing of
Victor Hugo's grand drama, and old Mademoiselle Georges' unrivalled
performance therein.
Again, and lastly--lest the reader imagine that when once I get back to
Rome, I am spell-bound and cannot leave it--what traveller has not cast
a pleased eye upwards towards the window whence the baker's daughter, A.
D. 1515, or thereabouts, ogled the young prince of painters as he passed
by on his way to, or from his work, at the Farnesina Palace? You know
the precise spot, O Viator, in a small piazza very near the Ponte Sisto?
The house is white-washed or yellow-washed now; but there is the old
Ionic pilaster, yet embedded in the wall, and the ornamental
architectural mouldings yet shut in the Fornarina's window. And here it
occurs to me to make one more digression, for the purpose of suggesting
a theory of my own touching one of the many portraits of La Fornarina
that have come down to us, and that vary so much in expression though
all evidently intended for the same person. Between the fine one in the
Tribune at Florence, and the filthy one in the Sciarra Palace at Rome,
there is the widest possible difference. The former is evidently enough
a woman unrefined, though beautiful; but there is neither coarseness nor
indelicacy in the portraiture. The latter has both these
characteristics, pushed to an extreme that is repulsive. It is said to
be a copy from Raffaele by Giulio Romano. Now my belief is, that it was
painted as a quiz upon his master's grace and delicacy, by the
scapegrace pupil who ran counter to those special attributes.
Meretricious, ugly, and vulgar, this wretched creature bears emblasoned
in large letters on the bracelet upon her arm the name of Raffaele
Sanzio d'Urbino. This piece of impudence seems to me the crowning touch.
I can't credit that such a Fornarina ever came from Raffaele's easel. I
do think that a coarse-minded and coarse-handed young artist may have
made fun of his superior in oil--as modern literary wags have sometimes
done in ink--and that Raffaele therefore is in no way answerable for
that caricature in the Sciarra, which affects to be a reproduction from
himself.