FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME
As we approached Rome in the darkness I was on the qui vive for my
first glimpse of it; and impatient with wonder as to what the morning
would reveal. I was bound for the Hotel Continental--the abode, for the
winter at least, of Barfleur’s mother, the widow of an Oxford don. I
expected to encounter a severe and conservative lady of great erudition
who would eye the foibles of Paris and Monte Carlo with severity.
“My mother,” Barfleur said, “is a very conservative person. She is
greatly concerned about me. When you see her, try to cheer her up, and
give her a good report of me. I don’t doubt you will find her very
interesting; and it is just possible that she will take a fancy to you.
She is subject to violent likes and dislikes.”
I fancied Mrs. Barfleur as a rather large woman with a smooth placid
countenance, a severe intellectual eye that would see through all my
shams and make-believes on the instant.
It was midnight before the train arrived. It was raining; and as I
pressed my nose to the window-pane viewing the beginning lamps, I saw
streets and houses come into view--apartment houses, if you please,
and street cars and electric arc-lights, and asphalt-paved streets,
and a general atmosphere of modernity. We might have been entering
Cleveland for any particular variation it presented. But just when I
was commenting to myself on the strangeness of entering ancient Rome
in a modern compartment car and of seeing box cars and engines, coal
cars and flat cars loaded with heavy material, gathered on a score of
parallel tracks, a touch of the ancient Rome came into view for an
instant and was gone again in the dark and rain. It was an immense,
desolate tomb, its arches flung heavenward in great curves, its rounded
dome rent and jagged by time. Nothing but ancient Rome could have
produced so imposing a ruin and it came over me in an instant, fresh
and clear like an electric shock, like a dash of cold water, that this
was truly all that was left of the might and glory of an older day.
I recall now with delight the richness of that sensation. Rome that
could build the walls and the baths in far Manchester and London,
Rome that could occupy the Ile-St.-Louis in Paris as an outpost, that
could erect the immense column to Augustus on the heights above Monte
Carlo, Rome that could reach to the uppermost waters of the Nile and
the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates and rule, was around me. Here it
was--the city to which St. Paul had been brought, where St. Peter had
sat as the first father of the Church, where the first Latins had set
up their shrine to Romulus and Remus, and worshiped the she-wolf that
had nourished them. Yes, this was Rome, truly enough, in spite of the
apartment houses and the street cars and the electric lights. I came
into the great station at five minutes after twelve amid a clamor of
Italian porters and a crowd of disembarking passengers. I made my way
to the baggage-room, looking for a Cook’s guide to inquire my way to
the Continental, when I was seized upon by one.
“Are you Mr. Dreiser?” he said.
I replied that I was.
“Mrs. Barfleur told me to say that she was waiting for you and that you
should come right over and inquire for her.”
I hurried away, followed by a laboring porter, and found her waiting
for me in the hotel lobby,--not the large, severe person I had
imagined, but a small, enthusiastic, gracious little lady. She told me
that my room was all ready and that the bath that I had demanded was
connected with it, and that she had ordered some coffee sent up, but
that I could have anything else that I chose. She began with a flood of
questions--how was her poor dear son, and her daughter in London? And
had we lost much money at Monte Carlo? And had we been very nice and
quiet in Paris? And had I had a pleasant trip? And was it very cold in
Paris? And would I like to go with her here and there for a few days,
particularly until I was acclimated and able to find my own way about?
I answered her freely and rapidly, for I took a real liking to her and
decided at once that I was going to have a very nice time--she was so
motherly and friendly. It struck me as delightful that she should wait
up for me, and see that I was welcomed and comfortably housed; I can
see her now with a loving memory in her charming gray silk dress and
black lace shawl.
The first morning I arose in Rome it was raining; but to my joy, in
an hour or two the sun came out and I saw a very peculiar city. Rome
has about the climate of Monte Carlo, except that it is a little more
changeable, and in the mornings and evenings quite chill. Around noon
every day it was very warm--almost invariably bright, deliciously
bright; but dark and cool where the buildings or the trees cast a
shadow. I was awakened by huzzaing which I learned afterwards was for
some officer who had lately returned from Morocco.
Like the English, the Italians are not yet intimately acquainted with
the bathroom, and this particular hotel reminded me of the one in
Manchester with its bath chambers as large as ordinary living-rooms. My
room looked out into an inner court, which was superimposed upon the
lobby of the hotel, and was set with palms and flowers which flourished
mightily. I looked out through an opening in this court to some brown
buildings over the way--brown as only the Italians know how to paint
them, and bustling with Italian life.
Mrs. Barfleur had kindly volunteered to show me about this first day,
and I was to meet her promptly at ten in the lobby. She wanted me
to take a street car to begin with, because there was one that went
direct to St. Peter’s along the Via Nazionale, and because there were
so many things she could show me that way. We went out into the public
square which adjoined the hotel and there it was that she pointed out
the Museo delle Terme, located in the ancient baths of Diocletian,
and assured me that the fragments of wall that I saw jutting out from
between buildings in one or two places dated from the Roman Empire. The
fragment of the wall of Servius Tullius which we encountered in the Via
Nazionale dates from 578 B. C., and the baths of Diocletian, so close
to the hotel, from 303 A. D. The large ruin that I had seen the night
before on entering the city was a temple to Minerva Medica, dating from
about 250 A. D. I shall never forget my sensation on seeing modern
stores--drug stores, tobacco stores, book stores, all with bright clean
windows, adjoining these very ancient ruins. It was something for the
first time to see a fresh, well-dressed modern throng going about its
morning’s business amid these rude suggestions of a very ancient life.
Nearly all the traces of ancient Rome, however, were apparently
obliterated, and you saw only busy, up-to-date thoroughfares, with
street cars, shops, and a gay metropolitan life generally. I have to
smile when I think that I mistook a section of the old wall of Servius
Tullius for the remnants of a warehouse which had recently been
removed. All the time in Rome I kept suffering this impression--that
I was looking at something which had only recently been torn down,
when as a matter of fact I was looking at the earlier or later walls
of the ancient city or the remnants of famous temples and baths. This
particular street car line on which we were riding was a revelation
in its way, for it was full of black-frocked priests in shovel hats,
monks in brown cowls and sandals, and Americans and English old maids
in spectacles who carried their Baedekers with severe primness and who
were, like ourselves, bound for the Vatican. The conductors, it struck
me, were a trifle more civil than the American brand, but not much; and
the native passengers were a better type of Italian than we usually see
in America. I sighted the Italian policeman at different points along
the way--not unlike the Parisian gendarme in his high cap and short
cape. The most striking characteristic, however, was the great number
of priests and soldiers who were much more numerous than policemen
and taxi drivers in New York. It seemed to me that on this very first
morning I saw bands of priests going to and fro in all directions, but,
for the rest of it, Rome was not unlike Monte Carlo and Paris combined,
only that its streets were comparatively narrow and its colors high.
Mrs. Barfleur was most kindly and industrious in her explanations. She
told me that in riding down this Via Nazionale we were passing between
those ancient hills, the Quirinale and the Viminale, by the Forum of
Trajan, the Gallery of Modern Art, the palaces of the Aldobrandini and
Rospigliosi, and a score of other things which I have forgotten. When
we reached the open square which faces St. Peter’s, I expected to be
vastly impressed by my first glimpse of the first Roman Church of the
world; but in a way I was very much disappointed. To me it was not
in the least beautiful, as Canterbury was beautiful, as Amiens was
beautiful, and as Pisa was beautiful. I was not at all enthusiastic
over the semicircular arcade in front with its immense columns. I knew
that I ought to think it was wonderful, but I could not. I think in a
way that the location and arrangement of the building does not do it
justice, and it has neither the somber gray of Amiens nor the delicate
creamy hue of the buildings of Pisa. It is brownish and gray by turns.
As I drove nearer I realized that it was very large--astonishingly
large--and that by some hocus-pocus of perspective and arrangement this
was not easily realizable. I was eager to see its interior, however,
and waived all exterior consideration until later.
As we were first going up the steps of St. Peter’s and across the
immense stone platform that leads to the door, a small Italian
wedding-party arrived, without any design of being married there,
however; merely to visit the various shrines and altars. The gentleman
was somewhat self-conscious in a long black frock coat and high hat--a
little, brown, mustached, dapper man whose patent leather shoes
sparkled in the sun. The lady was a rosy Italian girl, very much
belaced and besilked, with a pert, practical air; a little velvet-clad
page carried her train. There were a number of friends--the parents on
both sides, I took it--and some immediate relatives who fell solemnly
in behind, two by two; and together this little ant-like band crossed
the immense threshold. Mrs. Barfleur and I followed eagerly after--or
at least I did, for I fancied they were to be married here and I wanted
to see how it was to be done at St. Peter’s. I was disappointed,
however; for they merely went from altar to altar and shrine to shrine,
genuflecting, and finally entered the sacred crypt, below which the
bones of St. Peter are supposed to be buried. It was a fine religious
beginning to what I trust has proved a happy union.
St. Peter’s, if I may be permitted to continue a little on that curious
theme, is certainly the most amazing church in the world. It is not
beautiful--I am satisfied that no true artist would grant that; but
after you have been all over Europe and have seen the various edifices
of importance, it still sticks in your mind as astounding, perhaps the
most astounding of all. While I was in Rome I learned by consulting
guide-books, attending lectures and visiting the place myself, that
it is nothing more than a hodge-podge of the vagaries and enthusiasms
of a long line of able pontiffs. To me the Catholic Church has such a
long and messy history of intrigue and chicanery that I for one cannot
contemplate its central religious pretensions with any peace of mind.
I am not going into the history of the papacy, nor the internecine
and fratricidal struggles of medieval Italy; but what veriest tyro
does not grasp the significance of what I mean? Julius II, flanking
a Greek-cross basilica with a hexastyle portico to replace the
Constantinian basilica, which itself had replaced the oratory of St.
Anacletus on this spot, and that largely to make room for his famous
tomb which was to be the finest thing in it; Urban VIII melting down
the copper roof of the Panthéon portico in order to erect the showy
baldachino! I do not now recall what ancient temples were looted for
marble nor what popes did the looting, but that it was plentifully
done I am satisfied and Van Ranke will bear me out. It was Julius II
and Leo X who resorted to the sale of indulgences, which aided in
bringing about the Reformation, for the purpose of paying the enormous
expenses connected with the building of this lavish structure. Think
of how the plans of Bramante and Michelangelo and Raphael and Carlo
Maderna were tossed about between the Latin cross and the Greek cross
and between a portico of one form and a portico of another form!
Wars, heartaches, struggles, contentions--these are they of which St.
Peter’s is a memorial. As I looked at the amazing length--six hundred
and fifteen feet--and the height of the nave--one hundred and fifty-two
feet--and the height of the dome from the pavement in the interior to
the roof--four hundred and five feet--and saw that the church actually
contained forty-six immense altars and read that it contained seven
hundred and forty-eight columns of marble, stone or bronze, three
hundred and eighty-six statues and two hundred and ninety windows, I
began to realize how astounding the whole thing was. It was really so
large, and so tangled historically, and so complicated in the history
of its architectural development, that it was useless for me to attempt
to synchronize its significance in my mind. I merely stared, staggered
by the great beauty and value of the immense windows, the showy and
astounding altars. I came back again and again; but I got nothing save
an unutterable impression of overwhelming grandeur. It is far too rich
in its composition for mortal conception. No one, I am satisfied, truly
completely realizes how _grand_ it is. It answers to that word exactly.
Browning’s poem, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s,” gives a
faint suggestion of what any least bit of it is like. Any single tomb
of any single pope--of which it seemed to me there were no end--might
have had this poem written about it. Each one appears to have desired
a finer tomb than the other; and I can understand the eager enthusiasm
of Sixtus V (1588), who kept eight hundred men working night and day on
the dome in order to see how it was going to look. And well he might.
Murray tells the story of how on one occasion, being in want of another
receptacle for water, the masons tossed the body of Urban VI out of
his sarcophagus, put aside his bones in a corner, and gave the ring
on his finger to the architect. The pope’s remains were out of their
receptacle for fifteen years or more before they were finally restored.
The Vatican sculptural and art museums were equally astonishing. I had
always heard of its eleven hundred rooms and its priceless collections;
but it was thrilling and delightful to see them face to face, all the
long line of Greek and Roman and medieval perfections, chiseled or
painted, transported from ruins or dug from the earth--such wonders as
the porphyry vase and Laocoon, taken from the silent underground rooms
of Nero’s house, where they had stood for centuries, unheeded, in all
their perfection; and the river god, representative of the Tiber. I
was especially interested to see the vast number of portrait busts of
Roman personalities--known and unknown--which gave me a face-to-face
understanding of that astounding people. They came back now or arose
vital before me--Claudius, Nerva, Hadrian, Faustina the elder, wife of
Antoninus Pius, Pertinax, whose birthplace was near Monte Carlo, Julius
Cæsar, Cicero, Antoninus Pius, Tiberius, Mark Antony, Aurelius Lepidus,
and a score of others. It was amazing to me to see how like the modern
English and Americans they were, and how practical and present-day-like
they appeared. It swept away the space of two thousand years as having
no significance whatever, and left you face to face with the far older
problem of humanity. I could not help thinking that the duplicates
of these men are on our streets to-day in New York and Chicago and
London--urgent, calculating, thinking figures--and that they are doing
to-day much as these forerunners did two thousand years before. I
cannot see the slightest difference between an emperor like Hadrian
and a banker like Morgan. And the head of a man like Lord Salisbury is
to be found duplicated in a score of sculptures in various museums
throughout the Holy City. I realized, too, that any one of hundreds of
these splendid marbles, if separated from their populous surroundings
and given to a separate city, meager in artistic possessions, would
prove a great public attraction. To him that hath shall be given,
however; and to those that have not shall be taken away even the
little that they have. And so it is that Rome fairly suffocates with
its endless variety of artistic perfection--one glory almost dimming
the other--while the rest of the world yearns for a crust of artistic
beauty and has nothing. It is like the Milky Way for jewels as
contrasted with those vast starless spaces that give no evidence of
sidereal life.
I wandered in this region of wonders attended by my motherly friend
until it was late in the afternoon, and then we went for lunch. Being
new to Rome, I was not satisfied with what I had seen, but struck
forth again--coming next into the region of Santa Maria Maggiore
and up an old stairway that had formed a part of a Medici palace
now dismantled--only to find myself shortly thereafter and quite by
accident in the vicinity of the Colosseum. I really had not known that
I was coming to it, for I was not looking for it. I was following idly
the lines of an old wall that lay in the vicinity of San Pietro in
Vincoli when suddenly it appeared, lying in a hollow at the foot of a
hill--the Esquiline. I was rejoicing in having discovered an old well
that I knew must be of very ancient date, and a group of cypresses
that showed over an ancient wall, when I looked--and there it was. It
was exactly as the pictures have represented it--oval, many-arched,
a thoroughly ponderous ruin. I really did not gain a suggestion of
the astonishing size of it until I came down the hill, past tin cans
that were lying on the grass--a sign of the modernity that possesses
Rome--and entered through one of the many arches. Then it came on
me--the amazing thickness of the walls, the imposing size and weight
of the fragments, the vast dignity of the uprising flights of seats,
and the great space now properly cleared, devoted to the arena. All
that I ever knew or heard of it came back as I sat on the cool stones
and looked about me while other tourists walked leisurely about, their
Baedekers in their hands. It was a splendid afternoon. The sun was
shining down in here; and it was as warm as though it were May in
Indiana. Small patches of grass and moss were detectable everywhere,
growing soft and green between the stones. The five thousand wild
beasts slaughtered in the arena at its dedication, which remained as
a thought from my high-school days, were all with me. I read up as
much as I could, watching several workmen lowering themselves by ropes
from the top of the walls, the while they picked out little tufts
of grass and weeds beginning to flourish in the earthy niches. Its
amazing transformations from being a quarry for greedy popes by whom
most of its magnificent marbles were removed, to its narrow escape
from becoming a woolen-mill operated by Sixtus V, were all brooded
over here. It was impossible not to be impressed by the thought of
the emperors sitting on their especial balcony; the thousands upon
thousands of Romans intent upon some gladiatorial feat; the guards
outside the endless doors, the numbers of which can still be seen,
giving entrance to separate sections and tiers of seats; and the vast
array of civic life which must have surged about. I wondered whether
there were venders who sold sweets or food and what their cries were
in Latin. One could think of the endless procession that wound its way
here on gala days. Time works melancholy changes.
I left as the sun was going down, tremendously impressed with the
wonder of a life that is utterly gone. It was like finding the
glistening shell of an extinct beetle or the suggestion in rocks of
a prehistoric world. As I returned to my hotel along the thoroughly
modern streets with their five- and six-story tenement and apartment
buildings, their street cars and customary vehicles, their newspaper,
flower and cigar stands, I tried to restore and keep in my mind a
suggestion of the magnificence that Gibbon makes so significant. It
was hard; for be one’s imagination what it will, it is difficult to
live outside of one’s own day and hour. The lights already beginning to
flourish in the smart shops, distracted my mood.