One evening at vespers in Genoa, attracted by a burst of music from
the swinging curtain of the doorway, I entered a little church much
frequented by the common people. An unexpected and exceedingly pretty
sight rewarded me.
It was All Souls' Day. In Italy almost every day is set apart for some
festival, or belongs to some saint or another, and I suppose that when
leap year brings around the extra day, there is a saint ready to claim
the 29th of February. Whatever the day was to the elders, the evening
was devoted to the children. The first thing I noticed was, that the
quaint old church was lighted up with innumerable wax tapers,--an
uncommon sight, for the darkness of a Catholic church in the evening
is usually relieved only by a candle here and there, and by a blazing
pyramid of them on the high altar. The use of gas is held to be a
vulgar thing all over Europe, and especially unfit for a church or an
aristocratic palace.
Then I saw that each taper belonged to a little boy or girl, and the
groups of children were scattered all about the church. There was a
group by every side altar and chapel, all the benches were occupied
by knots of them, and there were so many circles of them seated on the
pavement that I could with difficulty make my way among them. There
were hundreds of children in the church, all dressed in their holiday
apparel, and all intent upon the illumination, which seemed to be a
private affair to each one of them.
And not much effect had their tapers upon the darkness of the vast
vaults above them. The tapers were little spiral coils of wax, which the
children unrolled as fast as they burned, and when they were tired of
holding them, they rested them on the ground and watched the burning. I
stood some time by a group of a dozen seated in a corner of the church.
They had massed all the tapers in the center and formed a ring about the
spectacle, sitting with their legs straight out before them and their
toes turned up. The light shone full in their happy faces, and made the
group, enveloped otherwise in darkness, like one of Correggio's pictures
of children or angels. Correggio was a famous Italian artist of the
sixteenth century, who painted cherubs like children who were just going
to heaven, and children like cherubs who had just come out of it. But
then, he had the Italian children for models, and they get the knack of
being lovely very young. An Italian child finds it as easy to be pretty
as an American child to be good.
One could not but be struck with the patience these little people
exhibited in their occupation, and the enjoyment they got out of it.
There was no noise; all conversed in subdued whispers and behaved in the
most gentle manner to each other, especially to the smallest, and there
were many of them so small that they could only toddle about by the most
judicious exercise of their equilibrium. I do not say this by way of
reproof to any other kind of children.
These little groups, as I have said, were scattered all about the
church; and they made with their tapers little spots of light, which
looked in the distance very much like Correggio's picture which is at
Dresden,--the Holy Family at Night, and the light from the Divine Child
blazing in the faces of all the attendants. Some of the children were
infants in the nurses' arms, but no one was too small to have a taper,
and to run the risk of burning its fingers.
There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and the
church has understood this longing in human nature, and found means to
gratify it by this festival of tapers.
The groups do not all remain long in place, you may imagine; there is a
good deal of shifting about, and I see little stragglers wandering over
the church, like fairies lighted by fireflies. Occasionally they form
a little procession and march from one altar to another, their lights
twinkling as they go.
But all this time there is music pouring out of the organ-loft at the
end of the church, and flooding all its spaces with its volume. In front
of the organ is a choir of boys, led by a round-faced and jolly monk,
who rolls about as he sings, and lets the deep bass noise rumble about a
long time in his stomach before he pours it out of his mouth. I can see
the faces of all of them quite well, for each singer has a candle to
light his music-book.
And next to the monk stands the boy,--the handsomest boy in the whole
world probably at this moment. I can see now his great, liquid, dark
eyes, and his exquisite face, and the way he tossed back his long
waving hair when he struck into his part. He resembled the portraits of
Raphael, when that artist was a boy; only I think he looked better than
Raphael, and without trying, for he seemed to be a spontaneous sort of
boy. And how that boy did sing! He was the soprano of the choir, and he
had a voice of heavenly sweetness. When he opened his mouth and tossed
back his head, he filled the church with exquisite melody.
He sang like a lark, or like an angel. As we never heard an angel
sing, that comparison is not worth much. I have seen pictures of angels
singing, there is one by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck in the gallery at
Berlin,--and they open their mouths like this boy, but I can't say as
much for their singing. The lark, which you very likely never heard
either, for larks are as scarce in America as angels,--is a bird that
springs up from the meadow and begins to sing as he rises in a spiral
flight, and the higher he mounts, the sweeter he sings, until you think
the notes are dropping out of heaven itself, and you hear him when he
is gone from sight, and you think you hear him long after all sound has
ceased.
And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes and
a greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his voice in
the same gleesome abundance.
I am sorry that I cannot add that this ravishingly beautiful boy was a
good boy. He was probably one of the most mischievous boys that was ever
in an organ-loft. All the time that he was singing the vespers he was
skylarking like an imp. While he was pouring out the most divine melody,
he would take the opportunity of kicking the shins of the boy next to
him, and while he was waiting for his part, he would kick out behind at
any one who was incautious enough to approach him. There never was
such a vicious boy; he kept the whole loft in a ferment. When the monk
rumbled his bass in his stomach, the boy cut up monkey-shines that set
every other boy into a laugh, or he stirred up a row that set them all
at fisticuffs.
And yet this boy was a great favorite. The jolly monk loved him best
of all and bore with his wildest pranks. When he was wanted to sing his
part and was skylarking in the rear, the fat monk took him by the ear
and brought him forward; and when he gave the boy's ear a twist, the boy
opened his lovely mouth and poured forth such a flood of melody as you
never heard. And he didn't mind his notes; he seemed to know his notes
by heart, and could sing and look off like a nightingale on a bough. He
knew his power, that boy; and he stepped forward to his stand when he
pleased, certain that he would be forgiven as soon as he began to sing.
And such spirit and life as he threw into the performance, rollicking
through the Vespers with a perfect abandon of carriage, as if he could
sing himself out of his skin if he liked.
While the little angels down below were pattering about with their wax
tapers, keeping the holy fire burning, suddenly the organ stopped, the
monk shut his book with a bang, the boys blew out the candles, and I
heard them all tumbling down-stairs in a gale of noise and laughter. The
beautiful boy I saw no more.
About him plays the light of tender memory; but were he twice as lovely,
I could never think of him as having either the simple manliness or the
good fortune of the New England boy.