The most pleasurable recollection of this period was a day spent at
Nervi, ten miles from Genoa on the _Riviera Levante_.
The lovely bay of Nervi, on a sunny day, is enriched with every colour:
the steep shores of black, veined with white, a magnesian limestone,
worn by the waves into waves; the blue waters breaking over projecting
rocks, curdling into white, while pools of foamy green fill the basins.
It was here that I collected my colours and ideas for “The Painter”
in “New Symbols,” which I wrote on returning to Genoa, a place not so
attractive as some Italian cities, though the Palazzo Rosso, with its art
collection, is never to be forgotten.
There is no sea coast worth visiting at Genoa, scarcely a bathing place;
all occupied and spoilt by fortifications. Nevertheless we wandered among
the vineyards and villas, our eyes doing honour to the one that had
belonged to Paganini.
On a descending road we walked along a festooned vineyard, regarding
the ripe fruit with longing eyes, for it was sultry weather, and our
great contribution to it was thirst. At the bottom of the hill was a
fruiterer’s shop, where a barrowful of grapes had just arrived, and we
gained permission to eat. Our thirst was slaked and we asked what we
owed in payment; it was a few coppers, and we took from our pockets at
random, a good half-dozen times the amount demanded. For such small pay,
we witnessed a rapture such as no stage exhibits.
On reaching the streets of the city we encountered a crowd, in the midst
of which two men, a large and a small one, were wrestling in an agony of
rage. The big man suddenly wrested a knife from the hand of the little
one, and flung it far from him, pointing at it in triumphant scorn.
The little man, all over in a fury that actor never attained to, rushed
to his house close by, imploring his wife, who was at the door, to give
him another knife; but she refused, so the fight was over.
We have not forgotten the Via Nuova, that narrow street of palaces of
which our Pall Mall is a resemblance; and we have not forgotten the
statue of Columbus,—it was nearly opposite our hotel.
More of Genoa I do not care to note, except that the villas of various
colours, red, blue, green, and yellow, surrounding it, look suited to the
climate; that of Novello more picturesque than the shop in London where
he gathered together all his money.
Henry toiled up the hill to inspect the cemetery.
It is a saying, rife at Genoa, that it takes three Jews to cheat one
Genoese. The inhabitants are, certainly, a very business-like people.
The remembrance comes up in my mind that the cactus grows wild here on
the old crumbling walls; as the houseleek does on our tiles.
We crossed the mountain that separates Genoa and Spezia—a picturesque
journey, with frequent sea-views. The only conveyance was by Diligence,
and there is danger; the driving becoming furious as soon as the descent
into Spezia begins; nevertheless, we entered the town in safety.
Spezia has its charm; the old streets at the back, the new ones in front
near the sea, the temple of Venus on the hill to the right of the shore,
Lerici on the left, where Shelley died. But those marble hills that
surround the place! As the sun sets, they and the sea become of one pink
colour; as the sun sinks deeper, the brilliance quits the water, except
where the little waves rise and just dip their crests into it once more.
We took the train to Florence, Henry getting out at Pisa to join me again.
I had returned to Florence after over forty years. Not a soul that I
formerly knew was there; all had vanished, lost in the crowd of the
absent or dead.
I felt like the last man! But I met with new friends there; the truest
of all, Madame Mazzini, was almost the first of these. During my forty
years’ absence she had been born, had married, and become a mother, and
then a widow, afterwards to become the wife of an illustrious Italian,
Signor Villari, senator, and now, in ’91, a member of the Government, as
Minister of Education.
She, like her husband, a distinguished author, has been my sincere friend
for twenty years.
There was nothing to take me to Florence, nothing but a longing that
time could not extinguish, a longing to see again its palaces, its
churches, its Palazzo Vecchio in its over-powering might of grandeur
embossing architecture on the sky; the Palazzo Strozzi, so defiant of
all that is plebeian; the Casa Ricarsoli, so graceful as almost to say a
house may be of the fairer sex! The Duomo, the Campanile, not yet under
a glass case, as Michael Angelo said playfully, it was worthy to be; and
the Sacristy at its side. These and more I longed to see again, with a
passion that impels the wanderer to return to his native land. And those
delicious walks to Fiesole and Bellosguardo, whence, from summits, one
gazes on Florence as on an enchanted city!
Then the Tuscans, with their bright intellects and fine faces, from
prince to peasant; their gentleness towards the stranger; their
melodious, grammatical enunciation of the one sweet language perfected in
the course of ages out of the beautiful words handed down from Greece and
Rome.
I had thus reached Florence by Mont Cenis, Turin, Alexandria, and Pisa.
At Genoa I inquired of a peasant my way; he took me to the place I
wanted, a steep ascent. I offered him a gratuity, which he refused,
saying, “The signor is a stranger!” Forty years before, one dark night, I
asked a Prince Corsini, not knowing whom he was, to direct me to the Via
Maggio where I lived. He turned out of his path and escorted me home.