dark halls where the Titanic forms of the frescoed figures loom upon us
through the gloom, to the garden where the brilliant sunshine is
lighting up long grass walks between clipped hedges, adding to the
splendour of the flame-coloured marigolds upon the old walls, and even
gilding the edges of the dark spires of the cypresses which were planted
three hundred years ago? From the upper terraces we enter an ancient
wood, carpeted with flowers--yellow orchis, iris, lilies, saxifrage,
cyclamen, and Solomon’s seal. And then we pause, for at the end of the
avenue we meet with a huge figure of Silence, with his finger on his
lips.
[Illustration: CAPRAROLA.][57]
[Illustration: PAPAL PALACE, VITERBO.]
* * * * *
“Here an artificial cascade tumbles sparkling down the middle of the
hillside path, through a succession of stone basins, and between a
number of stone animals, who are sprinkled with its spray, and so we
reach an upper garden before the fairy-like casino which was also built
by Vignola. Here the turfy solitudes are encircled with a concourse of
stone figures in every variety of attitude, a perfect population. Some
are standing quietly gazing down upon us, others are playing upon
different musical instruments, others are listening. Two Dryads are
whispering important secrets to one another in a corner; one impertinent
Faun is blowing his horn so loudly into his companion’s ears that he
stops them with both his hands. A nymph is about to step down from her
pedestal, and will probably take a bath as soon as we are gone, though
certainly she need not be shy about it, as drapery is not much the
fashion in these sylvan gardens. Above, behind the Casino, is yet
another water-sparkling staircase guarded by a vast number of huge lions
and griffins, and beyond this all is tangled wood and rocky
mountain-side. How we pity the poor King and Queen of Naples, the actual
possessors, but who can never come here now. The whole place is like a
dream which you wish may never end, and as one gazes through the stony
crowd across the green glades to the rosy-hued mountains, one dreads the
return to a world where Fauns and Dryads are still supposed to be
mythical, and which has never known Caprarola.”
[Illustration: FROM THE WALLS OF ORVIETO.]
* * * * *
We spent several days at Viterbo--“the city of beautiful
fountains”--which has never been half appreciated by travellers, and
made many curious excursions into Etruria, which are all described in my
book; and then proceeded to Orvieto--all-glorious Orvieto. Once more I
will quote “Days near Rome.”
* * * * *
“Long before reaching Orvieto, one comes in sight of it. It occupies an
Etruscan site. On turning the crest of the hills which shelter Bolsena,
one looks down into a wide valley filled with the richest
vegetation,--peach-trees and almonds and figs, with vines leaping from
tree to tree and chaining them together, and beneath, an unequalled
luxuriance of corn and peas and melons, every tiniest space occupied.
Mountains of the most graceful forms girdle in this paradise, and, from
the height whence we first gaze upon it, endless distances are seen,
blue and roseate and snowy, melting into infinity of space; while, from
the valley itself, rises, island-like, a mass of orange-coloured rock,
crowned with old walls and houses and churches, from the centre of which
is uplifted a vast cathedral, with delicate spray-like pinnacles, and a
golden and jewelled front,--and this is Orvieto.
“The first impression is one which is never forgotten,--a picture which
remains; and the quiet grandeurs of the place, as time and acquaintance
bring it home to one, only paint in the details of that first picture
more carefully.
“We descend into the plain by the winding road, where wains of great
oxen are always employed for the country-work of the hillside, and we
ascend the hill on which the city stands and enter it by a gate in rocky
walls. The town is remarkably clean, but one has always the feeling of
being in a fortress. Unlike Viterbo, gaiety and brightness seem to have
deserted its narrow streets of dark houses, interspersed with huge tall
square towers of the Middle Ages, and themselves, in the less frequented
parts, built of rich brown stone, with sculptured cornices to their
massive doors and windows, and resting on huge buttresses. From one of
the narrowest and darkest of these streets we come suddenly upon the
cathedral, a blaze of light and colour, the most aërial gothic structure
in the world, every line a line of beauty. There is something in the
feeling that no artists worked at this glorious temple but the greatest
architects, the greatest sculptors of their time, that no material was
used but that which was most precious, most costly, and which would
produce the most glorious effect, which carries one far away from all
comparisons with other earthly buildings--to the description in the
Revelation of the New Jerusalem. The very platform on which the
cathedral stands is of purple Apennine marble; the loveliest jaspers and
_pietre dure_ are worked into its pinnacles and buttresses; the main
foundation of its pictured front is gold. A hundred and fifty-two
sculptors, of whom Arnolfo and Giovanni da Pisa are the greatest names
handed down to us, worked upon the ornamentation near the base:
sixty-eight painters and ninety workers in mosaic gave life to the
glorious pictures of its upper stories. All the surroundings are
harmonious--solemn old houses, with black and white marble seats running
along their basement, on which one may sit and gaze: a tower surmounted
by a gigantic bronze warrior, who strikes the hours with the clash of
his sword upon a great bell: an ancient oblong palace with gothic arches
and flat windows, where thirty-four popes have sought a refuge or held
a court at different times--all serving as a dark setting to make more
resplendent the glittering radiancy of the golden front of the temple in
their midst.
“No passing traveller, no stayer for one night, can realise Orvieto.
Hours must be passed on those old stone benches, hours in reading the
wondrous lessons of art, of truth, of beauty and of holiness which this
temple of temples can unfold. For Orvieto is not merely a vast
sculpture-gallery and a noble building, but its every stone has a story
to tell or a mystery to explain. What depths of thought are hidden in
those tremendous marble pictures between the doors! First the whole
story of Genesis, then the Old Testament story which followed Genesis,
leading on to the birth of Christ; then the story of our Saviour’s life
upon earth; and lastly, the lesson of His redemption wrought for us, in
the resurrection of the dead to the second life. Even the minor figures
which surround these greater subjects, how much they have to tell us!
Take the wondrous angels which surround the story of Christ; the
Awe-stricken Angel of the Salutation, the Welcoming Angel of the Flight
into Egypt, the Praying Angel of the Temptation, the Suffering Angel of
the Betrayal, the Agonised Angel (and, oh, what a sublime figure, with
its face covered with its hands!) of the Crucifixion, the Angel, rapt in
entire unutterable beatitude, of the Resurrection. Or let us look at the
groups of prophets, who, standing beneath the life of Christ, foresee
and foretell its events,--their eager invocation, their meditation,
their inspiration, their proclamation of that which was to be.”
* * * * *
My companions returned to Rome from Orvieto and I went on to Florence,
where I found two old friends of my childhood--Ann-Emilia and Kate
Malcolm, the latter of whom has always been one of the most agreeable
and charming women I have ever known.[58] I remember her telling me, on
this occasion, of a friend of hers who was one day sitting at the end of
her terrace at a retired watering-place, and heard a bride and
bridegroom talking together beneath. “My dear,” said the bridegroom, “I
think it would not be unpleasant if a friend were to turn up this
evening.”--“My dear,” retorted the bride, “I should be thankful to see
even _an enemy_.” She had also a story of an old Scotch minister, who,
being summoned to marry some couples, thus addressed them:--“Ma freends,
to many, marriage is a great curse: ma freends, to some marriage is a
great blessing: ma freends, to all marriage is a great uncertainty: wull
ye risk it?” and they all said “Yes.” With the Malcolms I saw much of
Sir James Lacaita. He was very full of convents and their abuses. He
told me that he had personally known a nun who was forced into a convent
to prevent her from marrying the man she loved; but he made a silken
ladder, and, by bribing the gardener, got it fixed to her window. The
nun escaped, but was in such a hurry to descend, that she slid down the
cords, cut open both her hands, and bore the marks all her life. Her
lover was rich, had relays of horses, and they escaped to Sicily, were
married at once, and had eleven children. Lacaita also told me:--
[Illustration: PORCH OF CREMONA.][59]
* * * * *
“A beautiful girl of good family was left £6000 by her father, on
condition that she did not enter a convent. To prevent her doing so, he
ordained that the money should revert to her brother in case of her
becoming a nun.
[Illustration: PIAZZA MAGGIORE, BERGAMO.][60]
* * * * *
“The girl hated the very idea of a convent, but the brother made a
compact with an abbess to give her a third of the girl’s fortune if they
could force her to take the veil. She resisted vigorously, though the
brother’s wife ill-treated her in every possible way, and she had no
other home. She possessed a lover, who professed great devotion, but
never would come to the point. At last the time came when the brother
had arranged for her to go to the convent. Her treatment was such that
she had no other course. Her lover came and pitied her. She implored
him: she knelt at his feet: she stretched out her hands: she said, ‘You
know you can save me;’ but he feared the priests, the Church, and her
brother too much. As she knelt there, her sister-in-law opened the door.
Then her horror at her position was so great, she at once declared that
she would take the veil: she only wished the event hurried on.
“At last the day of the sacrifice arrived. Lacaita was present. The
bride came in, in her wedding splendour, _fière_, darting defiance at
them all; but Lacaita said he never should forget the shriek she gave
when all was over and the grille closed upon her.
“The remorse of the lover began at once: he never spoke to a woman for
twenty years: then he---- married!”
* * * * *
Lacaita also told me a most interesting story concerning persons whom he
had known, of which I forget the details, but the substance was that--
* * * * *
A beautiful girl in Sicily, of very noble family, was engaged by her
parents to make a magnificent marriage with an Italian prince of the
highest rank, who had never seen her, and had only heard the report of
her beauty. As she loved another, she made great friends with the
gardener’s daughter, and persuaded her--for she was very lovely also--to
personate her, which the peasant girl, pleased at the notion of being a
princess, was very willing to do. Meantime the young Countess, supposed
to have gone to her nuptials, eloped with the lover she preferred. The
peasant bride was married, but her prince soon began to think she was
wonderfully little educated, for he had heard of her great learning as
well as her beauty, and especially of her wonderful artistic powers, and
two years after he obtained a divorce on the plea that she was married
under a false name.
* * * * *
From Florence I went to Cremona and Bergamo, lingering at them and
seeing them thoroughly in glorious weather, which made one observe that,
though the Southern Italian skies are the opal ones, the Northern are
the blue.
* * * * *
I spent June (1873) in London. At luncheon at Lady Marion Alford’s I met
Mr. Carlyle, who was full of the “Memorials.” He said, “I do not often
cry and am not much given to weeping, but your book is most profoundly
touching, and when the dear Augustus was making the hay I felt a lesson
deep down in my heart.” He talked of Lady Ashburton--“Ah! yes, Lady
Ashburton is just a bonnie Highland lassie, a free-spoken and
open-hearted creature as ever was; and Hattie Hosmer, she is a fanciful
kind of a being, who does not know yet that art is dead.” Finally he
went off into one of his characteristic speeches. “That which the warld
torments me in most is the awful confusion of noise. It is the devil’s
own infernal din all the blessed day long, confounding God’s warks and
His creatures--a truly awfu’ hell-like combination, and the warst of a’
is a railway whistle, like the screech of ten thousand cats, and ivery
cat of them all as big as a cathédral.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.--_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_London, June 14, 1873._--I have seen and heard much that is
interesting. Yesterday I met Lord Aberdeen at luncheon, and liked him
very much. Then I went to old Lady Wensleydale’s afternoon reception,
intending to stay ten minutes, and did stay two hours and a half, it was
so agreeable, and I saw so many old friends. Mrs. W. Lowther is always
pleasant, the rooms are delightful, and the charming garden full of
flowers.”
* * * * *
“_June 19._--Dined with Lord Ravensworth--a very pleasant party, to meet
poor Lord Durham, whom I had not seen since his great sorrow. He looks
as if he had cried night and day ever since, and _did_ cry in a corner
when a touching song was sung about a young wife. I was very glad to
meet him again. He is quite devoted to his thirteen children, and the
eldest girl, of thirteen, manages everything.”
* * * * *
“_July 3._--The most extraordinary thing the Shah has done has been
offering to buy Lady Margaret Beaumont (to carry off to Persia) for
£500,000!”
* * * * *
“_July 24, 1873._--I went to luncheon with Lady Barrington, and found
her still in tears for the Bishop of Winchester’s[61] death. He had
dined with her a few days before, and she had spoken of the pleasure it
would be to him to go to Farnham. ‘Oh, I shall _never_ go to Farnham,’
he said; ‘the old Bishop of Winchester will long survive me;’ and so it
was. ‘Oh, what a joyful surprise for him!’ said Carlyle when he heard of
the Bishop’s sudden death. ‘He is our _show_ man for the Church of
England,’ Hugh Pearson used to say.
“Dined at Lord Salisbury’s, and sat between Miss Alderson and Lady Cork.
I had always heard of Lady Cork as one of the best talkers in London,
but was not prepared for such a display of summer lightning as it was.
Here is a trifling specimen.
“_Lord Salisbury._--‘I am so glad he speaks English. I find it such an
extra fatigue to have to struggle with a foreign tongue, and to think of
the words as well as the ideas.’
“_Lady Cork._--‘Well, I am afraid when I talk, I think neither of the
one nor the other.’
“_Lord S._--‘Yes, but then you come of a race’ ...
“_Lady C._--‘Wha-a-at, or I had better use that most expressive French
expression ‘Plait-il?’ ... We have only one English sentence which would
do as well--‘I beg your parding’--with a _g_.’”
* * * * *
“_July 26._--I reached Chevening about 6 P.M. It is a dull square white
house with wings, but was once red, and was designed by Inigo Jones,
from whom it retains the old plan, not only of the building, but of the
straight avenue, the lake, and the fountain with water-lilies before the
door. Between the house and the lake is the loveliest of flower-gardens,
a wilderness of old-fashioned flowers, most perfectly charming. Here
Lady Stanhope was sitting out with Lord and Lady Carnarvon and Lord and
Lady Mahon. Lord Carnarvon is agreeable and his wife most lovely and
piquant. Lady Mahon, very prettily dressed _en bergère_, looked like a
flower herself as she moved in her bright blue dress through the living
labyrinth of colour.
“Lady Carnarvon gave an amusing account of her visit to Dulwich College,
of which her husband is a governor, and how she had produced a great
effect by remarking that they used a new pronunciation of Latin; ‘and my
little girl behaved very well too, and, though she was most awfully
bored, smiled and bowed at all the right moments.... We came away before
the speeches, which were all quite horrid, I believe, except
Carnarvon’s, and that I am quite sure was very nice indeed.”
“Lord Stanhope talked of chess--a Persian game: in Germany they retain
the old names: checkmate is _Shahmate_. He said when the Shah of Persia
was in London it was quite impossible to make him understand how the
telegraph worked, until some one had the presence of mind to say, ‘If
your Majesty will imagine an immense dog, so big that his tail is in
London while his head is in Teheran, your Majesty will see that if some
one treads upon his tail in London, he will bark in Teheran.’
“Lord Stanhope spoke of the total absence of commissariat management in
England, so that, if there was an invasion, the salvation of the country
would positively have to be abandoned to Messrs. Spiers & Pond.
“Lord Carnarvon asked why Oxford was like an old Roman arsenal ‘Because
the honours are _classes_, the men are _puppes_, and the women are
_nautes_.’”
* * * * *
“_Sunday, July 28._--We had a dull missionary sermon at church, in which
the clergyman spoke of the poor Bishop of Winchester’s death as if it
was a judgment for his crimes. After service Lady Airlie talked of the
‘Memorials,’ which she discussed as we walked round the lake. She spoke
much of prevailing religious opinions, and said that it would be as
difficult to believe in complete inspiration now as to believe in
witchcraft. I startled her by telling her I did believe in witchcraft,
and told something of Madame de Trafford. In the afternoon we drove with
Lord Stanhope to Knockholt Beeches and back by the steep park drive. The
country was quite lovely. Lord Stanhope entertained us constantly with
that essence of courtesy and good-breeding which almost makes you feel
as if you were the entertainer and the obliging, instead of the
entertained and the obliged--indeed such perfection of courteous
kindness I have never seen elsewhere in any one. I walked with Lady
Airlie up to the beeches, and she talked of Lady Waterford, whom, she
said, she worshipped afar off, as I did nearer.”
* * * * *
“_July 29._--A long talk about art and drawing and Italy with old Mr.
Cheney, who said, speaking of the best buildings, ‘They are much too
good for this generation: it will destroy them because they are so
beautiful.’ He is so pleasant that I could understand a bit of a
dialogue I overheard between him and Lady Airlie.
“_Lady A._--‘I am so sorry Englishwomen are not like French: they have
not always _le désir de plaire_.’
“_Mr. C._--Well I confess I always like Englishwomen best, and even
their manners seem to me far more charming.’
“_Lady A._--‘Oh, yes; I can quite understand that _all_ must have _le
désir de plaire_ when they are near _you_.’
“I walked with Mahon in the gardens and up the hill, crushing the wild
thyme and sweet marjory, and then drove with Lord Stanhope, a long
charming drive up the Brasted hill, by poor Vine’s Gate and Chartwell,
both of many associations. He stopped the carriage to have some
foxgloves gathered, and said how the name pleased him, for the plant was
the fairies’ own special flower, and the name came from folks’ love. He
would only have one great stem of each foxglove gathered, the rest must
be left for the fairies. Lord Stanhope told me that when he took
Macaulay up that hill he looked long at the view and then said, ‘How
evident it is that there has never been, can never have been, an
invasion here: no other country could supply this view.”
“Lord Stanhope talked much of the poet Claudian, so superior to
Statius--his descriptions so picturesque, especially that of an old man
who had never been outside the walls of his native city, and how they
took him out in his extreme old age, and of all that he said, &c.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 10, 1873._--I enjoy your detailed letters. In them a
breeze from the outer world sweeps in upon my solitude. Not that it is
quite solitude either, for Charlotte Leycester is still here, and Fanny
Tatton is at Hastings, and often coming up to luncheon, and Miss Cole
has been here for ten days, and her sister Louisa for three. Both these
old friends are most pleasant and charming, and I was very glad to
receive here again those whom the dear Mother was so fond of seeing in
her little home. And we talked much of her, they so truly feeling all
that she was, that it is as if a fragrance out of her beautiful past was
hallowing their lives.
“The little Hospice has been full all summer. The present inmates are
most romantic in title as well as dress--‘Sister Georgina Mary, Sister
Mildred, and Sister Lilian.’ They come from St. Alban’s, Holborn, so
you may imagine that Charlotte Leycester has already had some passages
at arms with them. But they are truly excellent as well as pleasant
guests, and I console Charlotte by telling her that if she likes to
supply me with any suffering Methodists when they are gone, I shall be
equally glad to see them. Certainly, the only real pleasure in having
any money is the opportunities it gives.
[Illustration: THE HOSPICE, HOLMHURST.]
“Admirable, holy, saint-like, as I think dear Charlotte Leycester, her
Sabbatarianism is a sore small trial to me when she lives with me for
months. I love her most dearly, but I often long to say to her something
like the words of Bussy-Rabutin, ‘Souvent on arrive à la même fin par
différentes voies: pour moi, je ne condamne pas vos manières, chacun se
sauve à sa guise; mais je n’irai point à la béatitude par le chemin que
vous suivez.’”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 19, 1873._--Yesterday I took Hugh Pearson[62] to
Hurstmonceaux. The walk through the wild ferny park and its decaying
beeches was most delightful, with the softest lights and shadows
glinting over the delicate distances of the Levels. What a place of
memories it is! every tree, every pathlet with the reminiscences of so
many generations.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Sept. 30._--I came to Binstead Wyck[63] from Thornhill. It is a
charming family home on the edge of a deep declivity, with wide views
into the purple hollows between the beech-trees. From the windows we
could see Blackmoor, whither we went the next day--the great modern
mediæval house of the Lord Chancellor Selborne, set down, as it were,
anywhere in an utterly inexpressive part of his large low-lying
property, but with pleasant Scotchified views of heath and fir
plantations. The Chancellor, pleasant and beaming, was kind, Lady
Selborne very nice, and the four daughters charming. The next day we
went to ‘White’s Selborne,’ through bowery lanes, where the hedges are
all bound together by clematis. It is a beautiful village, just under a
wooded hill called ‘the Hanger.’ The old house of Gilbert White is now
inhabited by a striking old man, Mr. Bell, a retired dentist, the
beneficence, the ‘Bon Dieu,’ of the neighbourhood. He showed us his
lovely sunny lawn, with curious trees and shrubs, sloping up to the rich
wooded hillside, and, in the house, the stick, barometer, and spectacles
of Gilbert White.
“The adjoining property belonged to Sir Charles Taylor. His father was a
fine old man, and some of his jokes are still quoted.
“‘How are you, sir? I hope you are quite well,’ said a young man who
came on a visit.
“‘_Well_, sir! I am suffering from a mortal disease.’
“‘A mortal disease! and pray what may that be?’ said the young man,
aghast.
“‘Why, I am suffering, sir, from--Anno Domini.’
“Close to Selborne we saw the source of the Wey--a pretty spring
tumbling over a rock near the road.”
* * * * *