pleasant custom of celebrating this particular festival,
Ascension-day, in the open air; breakfasting, dining, and dancing
under the superb trees of the Cascine. This is, by the way, quite the
loveliest public pleasure-ground I ever saw--a wood of three miles in
circumference, lying on the banks of the Arno, just below the town;
not, like most European promenades, a bare field of clay or ground,
set out with stunted trees, and cut into rectangular walks, or
without a secluded spot or an untrodden blade of grass; but full of
sward-paths, green and embowered, the underbrush growing wild and
luxuriant between; ivy and vines of all descriptions hanging from the
limbs, and winding about every trunk; and here and there a splendid
opening of velvet grass for half a mile, with an ornamental temple in
the centre, and beautiful contrivances of perspective in every
direction. I have been not a little surprised with the enchantment of
so public a place. You step into the woods from the very pavement of
one of the most populous streets in Florence; from dust and noise and
a crowd of busy people to scenes where Boccacio might have fitly laid
his "hundred tales of love." The river skirts the Cascine on one side,
and the extensive grounds of a young Russian nobleman's villa on the
other; and here at sunset come all the world to walk and drive, and on
festas like this, to encamp, and keep holy-day under the trees. The
whole place is more like a half-redeemed wild-wood in America, than a
public promenade in Europe.
It is the custom, I am told, for the Grand Duke and the nobles of
Tuscany to join in this festival, and breakfast in the open air with
the people. The late death of the young and beautiful Grand-Duchess
has prevented it this year, and the merry-makings are diminished of
one half their interest. I should not have imagined it, however,
without the information. I took a long stroll among the tents this
morning, with two ladies from Albany, old friends, whom I have
encountered accidentally in Florence. The scenes were peculiar and
perfectly Italian. Everything was done fantastically and tastefully.
The tables were set about the knolls, the bonnets and shawls hung upon
the trees, and the dark-eyed men and girls, with their expressive
faces full of enjoyment, leaned around upon the grass, with the
children playing among them, in innumerable little parties, dispersed
as if it had been managed by a painter. At every few steps a long
embowered alley stretched off to the right or left, with strolling
groups scattered as far as the eye could see under the trees, the red
ribands and bright colored costumes contrasting gayly with the foliage
of every tint, from the dusky leaf of the olive to the bright soft
green of the acacia. Wherever there was a circular opening there were
tents just in the edges of the wood, the white festoons of the cloth
hung from the limbs, and tables spread under them, with their
antique-looking Tuscan pitchers wreathed with vines, and tables spread
with broad green leaves, making the prettiest cool covering that could
be conceived. I have not come up to the reality in this description,
and yet, on reading it, it sounds half a fiction. One must be here to
feel how little language can convey an idea of this "garden of the
world."
The evening was the fashionable hour, and, with the addition of Mr.
Greenough, the sculptor, to our party, we drove to the Cascine about
an hour before sunset to see the equipages, and enjoy the close of the
festival. The drives intersect these beautiful grounds irregularly in
every direction, and the spectacle was even more brilliant than in the
morning. The nobility and the gay world of Florence flew past us, in
their showy carriages of every description, the distinguished
occupants differing in but one respect from well-bred people of other
countries--_they looked happy_. If I had been lying on the grass, an
Italian peasant, with my kinsmen and friends, I should not have felt
that among the hundreds who were rolling past me, richer and better
born, there was one face that looked on me contemptuously or
condescendingly. I was very much struck with the universal air of
enjoyment and natural exhilaration. One scarce felt like a stranger in
such a happy-looking crowd.
Near the centre of the grounds is an open space, where it is the
custom for people to stop in driving to exchange courtesies with their
friends. It is a kind of fashionable open air _soiree_. Every evening
you may see from fifty to a hundred carriages at a time, moving about
in this little square in the midst of the woods, and drawing up side
by side, one after another, for conversation. Gentlemen come
ordinarily on horseback, and pass round from carriage to carriage,
with their hats off, talking gayly with the ladies within. There could
not be a more brilliant scene, and there never was a more delightful
custom. It keeps alive the intercourse in the summer months, when
there are no parties, and it gives a stranger an opportunity of seeing
the lovely and the distinguished without the difficulty and restraint
of an introduction to society. I wish some of these better habits of
Europe were imitated in our country as readily as worse ones.
After threading the embowered roads of the Cascine for an hour, and
gazing with constant delight at the thousand pictures of beauty and
happiness that met us at every turn, we came back and mingled in the
gay throng of carriages at the centre. The _valet_ of our lady-friends
knew everybody, and, taking a convenient stand, we amused ourselves
for an hour, gazing at them as they were named in passing. Among
others, several of the Bonaparte family went by in a splendid
barouche; and a heavy carriage, with a showy, tasselled hammer-cloth,
and servants in dashy liveries, stopped just at our side, containing
Madame Catalani, the celebrated singer. She has a fine face yet, with
large expressive features, and dark, handsome eyes. Her daughter was
with her, but she has none of her mother's pretensions to good looks.
LETTER XXVIII.
THE PITTI PALACE--TITIAN'S BELLA--AN IMPROVISATRICE--VIEW FROM
A WINDOW--ANNUAL EXPENSE OF RESIDENCE AT FLORENCE.
I have got into the "back-stairs interest," as the politicians say,
and to-day I wound up the staircase of the _Pitti Palace_, and spent
an hour or two in its glorious halls with the younger Greenough,
without the insufferable and usually inevitable annoyance of a
_cicerone_. You will not of course, expect a regular description of
such a vast labyrinth of splendor. I could not give it to you even if
I had been there the hundred times that I intend to go, if I live long
enough in Florence. In other galleries you see merely the Arts, here
you are dazzled with the renewed and costly magnificence of a royal
palace. The floors and ceilings and furniture, each particular part of
which it must have cost the education of a life to accomplish,
bewilder you out of yourself, quite; and, till you can tread on a
matchless pavement or imitated mosaic, and lay your hat on a table of
inlaid gems, and sit on a sofa wrought with you know not what
delicate and curious workmanship, without nervousness or compunction,
you are not in a state to appreciate the pictures upon the walls with
judgment or pleasure.
I saw but one thing well--Titian's BELLA, as the Florentines call it.
There are two famous Venuses by the same master, as you know, in the
other gallery, hanging over the Venus de Medicis--full-length figures
reclining upon couches, one of them usually called Titian's mistress.
The _Bella_ in the Pitti gallery, is a half-length portrait, dressed
to the shoulders, and a different kind of picture altogether. The
others are voluptuous, full-grown women. This represents a young girl
of perhaps seventeen; and if the frame in which it hangs were a
window, and the loveliest creature that ever trod the floors of a
palace stood looking out upon you, in the open air, she could not seem
more real, or give you a stronger feeling of the presence of
exquisite, breathing, human beauty. The face has no particular
character. It is the look with which a girl would walk to the casement
in a mood of listless happiness, and gaze out, she scarce knew why.
You feel that it is the habitual expression. Yet, with all its subdued
quiet and sweetness, it is a countenance beneath which evidently
sleeps warm and measureless passion, capacities for loving and
enduring and resenting everything that makes up a character to revere
and adore. I do not know how a picture can express so much--but it
does express all this, and eloquently too.
In a fresco on the ceiling of one of the private chambers, is a
portrait of the late lamented Grand-duchess. On the mantelpiece in the
Duke's cabinet also is a beautiful marble bust of her. It is a face
and head corresponding perfectly to the character given her by common
report, full of nobleness and kindness. The Duke, who loved her with
a devotion rarely found in marriages of state, is inconsolable since
her death, and has shut himself from all society. He hardly slept
during her illness, watching by her bedside constantly. She was a
religious enthusiast, and her health is said to have been first
impaired by too rigid an adherence to the fasts of the church, and
self-inflicted penance. The Florentines talk of her still, and she
appears to have been unusually loved and honored.
* * * * *
I have just returned from hearing an _improvisatrice_. At a party last
night I met an Italian gentleman, who talked very enthusiastically of
a lady of Florence, celebrated for her talent of improvisation. She
was to give a private exhibition to her friends the next day at
twelve, and he offered politely to introduce me. He called this
morning, and we went together.
Some thirty or forty people were assembled in a handsome room,
darkened tastefully by heavy curtains. They were sitting in perfect
silence when we entered, all gazing intently on the improvisatrice, a
lady of some forty or fifty years, of a fine countenance, and dressed
in deep mourning. She rose to receive us; and my friend introducing
me, to my infinite dismay, as an _improvisatore Americano_, she gave
me a seat on the sofa at her right hand, an honor I had not Italian
enough to decline. I regretted it the less that it gave me an
opportunity of observing the effects of the "fine phrensy," a pleasure
I should otherwise certainly have lost through the darkness of the
room.
We were sitting in profound silence, the head of the improvisatrice
bent down upon her breast, and her hands clasped over her lap, when
she suddenly raised herself, and with both hands extended, commenced
in a thrilling voice, "_Patria!_" Some particular passage of
Florentine history had been given her by one of the company, and we
had interrupted her in the midst of her conception. She went on with
astonishing fluency, in smooth harmonious rhyme, without the
hesitation of a breath, for half an hour. My knowledge of the language
was too imperfect to judge of the finish of the style, but the
Italians present were quite carried away with their enthusiasm. There
was an improvisatore in company, said to be the second in Italy; a
young man, of perhaps twenty-five, with a face that struck me as the
very _beau ideal_ of genius. His large expressive eyes kindled as the
poetess went on, and the changes of his countenance soon attracted the
attention of the company. She closed and sunk back upon her seat,
quite exhausted; and the poet, looking round for sympathy, loaded her
with praises in the peculiarly beautiful epithets of the Italian
language. I regarded her more closely as she sat by me. Her profile
was beautiful; and her mouth, which at the first glance had exhibited
marks of age, was curled by her excitement into a firm, animated
curve, which restored twenty years at least by its expression.
After a few minutes one of the company went out of the room, and wrote
upon a sheet of paper the last words of every line for a sonnet; and a
gentleman who had remained within, gave a subject to fill it up. She
took the paper, and looking at it a moment or two, repeated the sonnet
as fluently as if it had been written out before her. Several other
subjects were then given her, and she filled the same sonnet with the
same terminations. It was wonderful. I could not conceive of such
facility. After she had satisfied them with this, she turned to me and
said, that in compliment to the American improvisatore she would give
an ode upon America. To disclaim the character and the honor would
have been both difficult and embarrassing even for one who knew the
language better than I, so I bowed and submitted. She began with the
discovery of Columbus, claimed him as her countryman; and with some
poetical fancies about the wild woods and the Indians, mingled up
Montezuma and Washington rather promiscuously, and closed with a
really beautiful apostrophe to liberty. My acknowledgments were
fortunately lost in the general murmur.
A tragedy succeeded, in which she sustained four characters. This, by
the working of her forehead and the agitation of her breast, gave her
more trouble, but her fluency was unimpeded; and when she closed, the
company was in raptures. Her gestures were more passionate in this
performance, but, even with my imperfect knowledge of the language,
they always seemed called for and in taste. Her friends rose as she
sunk back on the sofa, gathered round her, and took her hands,
overwhelming her with praises. It was a very exciting scene
altogether, and I went away with new ideas of poetical power and
enthusiasm.
* * * * *
One lodges like a prince in Florence, and pays like a beggar. For the
information of artists and scholars desirous to come abroad, to whom
exact knowledge on the subject is important, I will give you the
inventory and cost of my whereabout.
I sit at this moment in a window of what was formerly the archbishop's
palace--a noble old edifice, with vast staircases and resounding
arches, and a hall in which you might put a dozen of the modern brick
houses of our country. My chamber is as large as a ball-room, on the
second story, looking out upon the garden belonging to the house,
which extends to the eastern wall of the city. Beyond this lies one of
the sweetest views in the world--the ascending amphitheatre of hills,
in whose lap lies Florence, with the tall eminence of _Fiesole_ in the
centre, crowned with the monastery in which Milton passed six weeks,
while gathering scenery for his Paradise. I can almost count the panes
of glass in the windows of the bard's room; and, between the fine old
building and my eye, on the slope of the hill, lie thirty or forty
splendid villas, half-buried in trees (Madame Catalani's among them),
piled one above another on the steep ascent, with their columns and
porticoes, as if they were mock temples in a vast terraced garden. I
do not think there is a window in Italy that commands more points of
beauty. Cole, the American landscape painter, who occupied the room
before me, took a sketch from it. For neighbors, the Neapolitan
ambassador lives on the same floor, the two Greenoughs in the
ground-rooms below, and the palace of one of the wealthiest nobles of
Florence overlooks the garden, with a front of eighty-five windows,
from which you are at liberty to select any two or three, and imagine
the most celebrated beauty of Tuscany behind the crimson curtains--the
daughter of this same noble bearing that reputation. She was pointed
out to me at the Opera a night or two since, and I have seen as famous
women with less pretensions.
For the interior, my furniture is not quite upon the same scale, but I
have a clean snow-white bed, a calico-covered sofa, chairs and tables
enough, and pictures three deep from the wall to the floor.
For all this, and the liberty of the episcopal garden, I pay _three
dollars a month_! A dollar more is charged for lamps, boots, and
service, and a dark-eyed landlady of thirty-five mends my gloves, and
pays me two visits a day--items not mentioned in the bill. Then for
the feeding, an excellent breakfast of coffee and toast is brought me
for six cents; and, without wine, one may dine heartily at a
fashionable restaurant for twelve cents, and with wine, quite
magnificently for twenty-five. Exclusive of postage and pleasures,
this is all one is called upon to spend in Florence. Three hundred
dollars a year would fairly and largely cover the expenses of a man
living at this rate; and a man who would not be willing to live half
as well for the sake of his art, does not deserve to see Italy. I have
stated these unsentimental particulars, because it is a kind of
information I believe much wanted. I should have come to Italy years
ago if I had known as much, and I am sure there are young men in our
country, dreaming of this paradise of art in half despair, who will
thank me for it, and take up at once "the pilgrim's sandal-shoon and
scollop-shell."
LETTER XXIX.
EXCURSION TO VENICE--AMERICAN ARTISTS--VALLEY OF FLORENCE--
MOUNTAINS OF CARRARA--TRAVELLING COMPANIONS--HIGHLAND
TAVERN--MIST AND SUNSHINE--ITALIAN VALLEYS--VIEW OF THE
ADRIATIC--BORDER OF ROMAGNA--SUBJECTS FOR THE PENCIL--HIGHLAND
ITALIANS--ROMANTIC SCENERY--A PAINFUL OCCURRENCE--AN ITALIAN
HUSBAND--A DUTCHMAN, HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN--BOLOGNE--THE
PILGRIM--MODEL FOR A MAGDALEN.
I started for Venice yesterday, in company with Mr. Alexander and Mr.
Cranch, two American artists. We had taken the vetturino for Bologna,
and at daylight we were winding up the side of the amphitheatre of
Appenines that bends over Florence, leaving Fiesole rising sharply on
our right. The mist was creeping up the mountain just in advance of
us, retreating with a scarcely perceptible motion to the summits, like
the lift of a heavy curtain; Florence, and its long, heavenly valley,
full of white palaces sparkling in the sun, lay below us, more like a
vision of a better world than a scene of human passion; away in the
horizon the abrupt heads of the mountains of Carrara rose into the
sky; and with the cool, fresh breeze of the hills, and the excitement
of the pleasant excursion before us, we were three of as happy
travellers probably as were to be met on any highway in this garden of
the world.
We had six companions, and a motley crew they were--a little
effeminate Venetian, probably a tailor, with a large, noble-looking,
handsome contadina for a wife; a sputtering Dutch merchant, a fine,
little, coarse, good-natured fellow, with _his_ wife, and two very
small and very disagreeable children; an Austrian corporal in full
uniform; and a fellow in a straw hat, speaking some unknown language,
and a nondescript in every respect. The women and children, and my
friends, the artists, were my companions inside, the double dicky in
front accommodating the others. Conversation commenced with the
journey. The Dutch spoke their dissonant language to each other, and
French to us, the contadina's soft Venetian dialect broke in like a
flute in a chorus of harsh instruments, and our own hissing English
added to a mixture already sufficiently various.
We were all day ascending mountains, and slept coolly under three or
four blankets at a highland tavern, on a very wild Appenine. Our
supper was gaily eaten, and our mirth served to entertain five or six
English families, whose chambers were only separated from the rough
raftered dining hall by double curtains. It was pleasant to hear the
children and nurses speaking English unseen. The contrast made us
realize forcibly the eminently foreign scene about us. The next
morning, after travelling two or three hours in a thick, drizzling
mist, we descended a sharp hill, and emerged at its foot into a
sunshine so sudden and clear, that it seemed almost as if the night
had burst into mid-day in a moment. We had come out of a black cloud.
The mountain behind us was capped with it to the summit. Beneath us
lay a map of a hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded
light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the eye could span,
lay a long sparkling line of water, like a silver frame around the
landscape. It was our first view of the _Adriatic_. We looked at it
with the singular and indefinable emotion with which one always sees a
celebrated _water_ for the first time--a sensation, it seems to me,
which is like that of no other addition to our knowledge. The
Mediterranean at Marseilles, the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris,
affected me in the same way. Explain it who will, or can!
An hour after, we reached the border of _Romagna_, the dominions of
the Pope running up thus far into the Appenines. Here our trunks were
taken off and searched more minutely. The little village was full of
the dark-skinned, romantic-looking Romagnese, and my two friends,
seated on a wall, with a dozen curious gazers about them, sketched the
heads looking from the old stone windows, beggars, buildings, and
scenery, in a mood of professional contentment. Dress apart, these
highland Italians are like North American Indians--the same copper
complexions, high cheek bones, thin lips, and dead, black hair. The
old women particularly, would pass in any of our towns for
full-blooded squaws.
The scenery, after this, grew of the kind "which savage Rosa
dashed"--the only landscape I ever saw _exactly_ of the tints so
peculiar to Salvator's pictures. Our painters were in ecstasies with
it, and truly, the dark foliage, and blanched rocks, the wild glens,
and wind-distorted trees, gave the country the air of a home for all
the tempests and floods of a continent. The Kaatskills are tame to
it.
The forenoon came on, hot and sultry, and our little republic began to
display its character. The tailor's wife was taken sick; and fatigue,
and heat, and the rough motion of the vetturino in descending the
mountains, brought on a degree of suffering which it was painful to
witness. She was a woman of really extraordinary beauty, and dignified
and modest as few women are in any country. Her suppressed groans, her
white, tremulous lips, the tears of agony pressing thickly through her
shut eyelids, and the clenching of her sculpture-like hands, would
have moved anything but an Italian husband. The little effeminate
villain treated her as if she had been a dog. She bore everything from
him till he took her hand, which she raised faintly to intimate that
she could not rise when the carriage stopped, and threw it back into
her face with a curse. She roused, and looked at him with a natural
majesty and calmness that made my blood thrill. "_Aspetta?_" was her
only answer, as she sunk back and fainted.
The Dutchman's wife was a plain, honest, affectionate creature,
bearing the humors of two heated and ill-tempered children, with a
patience we were compelled to admire. Her husband smoked and laughed,
and talked villainous French and worse Italian, but was glad to escape
to the cabriolet in the hottest of the day, leaving his wife to her
cares. The baby screamed, and the child blubbered and fretted, and for
hours the mother was a miracle of kindness. The "drop too much," came
in the shape of a new crying fit from both children, and the poor
little Dutchwoman, quite wearied out, burst into a flood of tears, and
hiccupped her complaints in her own language, weeping unrestrainedly
for a quarter of an hour. After this she felt better, took a gulp of
wine from the black bottle, and settled herself once more quietly and
resignedly to her duties. We had certainly opened one or two very
fresh veins of human character, when we stopped at the gates.
There is but one hotel for American travellers in Bologna, of course.
Those who have read Rogers's Italy, will remember his mention of "The
Pilgrim," the house where the poet met Lord Byron by appointment, and
passed the evening with him which he describes so exquisitely. We took
leave of our motley friends at the door, and our artists who had
greatly admired the lovely Venetian, parted from her with the regret
of old acquaintances. She certainly was, as they said, a splendid
model for a Magdalen, "majestical and sad," and, always in attitudes
for a picture: sleeping or waking, she afforded a succession of
studies of which they took the most enthusiastic advantage.
LETTER XXX.
EXCURSION TO VENICE CONTINUED--BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF BOLOGNA--
GALLERY OF THE FINE ARTS--RAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA--PICTURES OF
CARRACCI--DOMENICHINOS' MADONNA DEL ROSARIO--GUIDO'S MASSACRE
OF THE INNOCENTS--THE CATHEDRAL AND THE DUOMO--EFFECTS OF
THESE PLACES OF WORSHIP, AND THE CEREMONIES, UPON THE MIND--
RESORT OF THE ITALIAN PEASANTRY--OPEN CHURCHES--
SUBTERRANEAN-CONFESSION CHAPEL--THE FESTA--GRAND PROCESSIONS--
ILLUMINATIONS--AUSTRIAN BANDS OF MUSIC--DEPORTMENT OF THE PEOPLE
TO A STRANGER.