acquaintance--friends, I hope--with Felix Cobbold, a most attractive
fellow, with a delightful house, and a garden close above the sea, which
truly makes ‘the desert smile’ in that most hideous of all sea-places.
Then I was a night at the Palace at Norwich, full of childish
reminiscence to me, and most stately and beautiful it all looked--the
smooth lawns and bright flowers, the grand grey cathedral and soaring
spire, the old chapel and ruin; only the palace itself has had all the
picturesqueness washed out of it. Its geography is entirely altered, but
it was delightful to recognise old nooks and corners, and I almost
seemed to see my Mother sitting by the old-fashioned chimney-piece in
the Abbey-room. I spent a delightful evening with the Bishop (Pelham),
who poured out a rich store of anecdote and recollection for hours. He
spoke much of Manning, whom he had known most intimately--how his
characteristic had always been his ambition. He wanted in early life to
have gone into Parliament; then, when that failed, he wished to have
entered diplomacy; then his father’s bank broke, and he was obliged to
go into the Church. ‘Your uncle Julius and he,’ said the Bishop, ‘were
once with my brother (Lord Chichester), and Manning had been holding
forth upon the celibacy of the clergy. “At least you will agree with
me,” he said, turning to my brother, “that celibacy is the holier
state.” “Then of course you think,” said my brother, “that matrimony is
a _less_ holy state than celibacy.” And he started, with a reminiscence
of his own happy married life, and said, “Oh no!”’
“The Bishop talked much of Jenny Lind’s visit to Norwich when he was
here with the Stanleys; how the Duke of Cambridge had spoken to her of
the wonderful enjoyment her noble gift of voice must be, and how she had
answered, ‘I do enjoy it, and I thank God for giving it to me, and I
feel that in return I ought to use it first for His glory, and then for
the raising of my profession.’ When her great concert took place, Mr.
Thompson, a Norwich doctor, who had the management of the town
charities, ventured to put the best of the workhouse school-girls under
the orchestra, where no one could see them, whilst they could hear
everything. But Jenny was sometimes greatly overcome at the end of one
of her own songs, and it was so then, and when her song was over, she
retired to her own room; but, to reach it, she had to pass under the
orchestra, and there she saw a number of girls in tears, and asked who
they were. Mr. Thompson came to explain with some diffidence, for he did
not know how she would take it; but she was much interested, and asked,
‘Is there any one of your charities especially to which I could be of
any use?’ And he thought a minute and said, ‘What we really want is a
children’s hospital; there has never been one in Norwich.’--‘Then that
is just what I will give a concert for,’ said Jenny Lind; and of course
every one was delighted, and so the hospital was started. Afterwards she
sent down some one incognito to see how it was managed, and the report
was so favourable that she said she would give another concert, and that
set it up altogether. It is now the ‘Jenny Lind Hospital.’
“Talking of the late event at York led to the Bishop’s saying, ‘I heard
a fine thing of Archbishop Musgrave. I was not meant to hear it,
though. I was at Bishopthorpe to preach a consecration sermon for the
Bishop of Ripon. It was before I was a bishop myself, and I knew nothing
about precedence, and did not take my proper place in the procession as
was intended, though I was all ready, and I let them all pass out before
me. Only the Archbishop and Mrs. Musgrave remained. The Archbishop had
had a stroke of apoplexy then, from which he was only just recovering,
and it was his first appearance since, and they were all very anxious
about him. Just as they were leaving the house, the Archbishop said to
his wife, “My dear, take this key: it will unlock that box, in which you
will find a commission ready signed and sealed for the three bishops
present to take my place if anything _happens_ to me during the service:
whatever happens to me, the service must not be stopped.” And they went
on quietly to the church. I did not know which to admire most, the
Archbishop for making the speech, or Mrs. Musgrave’s perfect calmness in
hearing it and in taking the key. I spoke of it to Mrs. Bickersteth (the
Bishop of Ripon’s wife) afterwards, and she said, “That explains what
the Archbishop said to me last night--‘I am afraid you may be anxious
about the service to-morrow: set yourself quite at rest: everything is
quite settled, so that, whatever happens to me, the ceremony of
to-morrow will be carried out.’”
“The Lowthers joined me at Norwich, and we went together to
Woodbastwick, and for a delightful visit to the Locker-Lampsons at
Cromer. What an enchanting place it is! All the society meets on the
beach. Two bathing-machines were drawn up side by side, and their
inmates were in the sea. ‘I hope you will kindly consider this as a
visit,’ said one of them to his neighbour, with his head just above the
water. ‘Oh, certainly,’ said the neighbour, ‘and I hope you will kindly
consider this as a visit returned.’
“Mr. Locker is delightful. He says, ‘I suppose what makes a bore is a
man’s perpetually harping upon one subject, not knowing what details to
leave out, and insisting upon making his voice heard at unsuitable
times. But certainly a bore is a bore in accordance with what he is
talking about: if, for instance, a man went on talking for hours of my
“Lyra Elegantiarum,” I should never think him a bore.’ ‘My dear,’ he
says to Mrs. Locker-Lampson, ‘are you not sometimes of rather _too_
rigid a disposition? You know, at railway stations you often point out
to me a man as eternally damned because he wears trousers with rather a
broad check, and has an unusually large cigar in his mouth.’
“In Lady Buxton’s pretty house are a whole gallery of Richmond
portraits--a stately full-length of (her aunt) Mrs. Fry, most speaking
likenesses of her benignant father, her beautiful mother, of Sarah and
Anna Gurney, the ‘Cottage Ladies’--of her father-in-law, Sir Fowell of
the Slave Trade--of her sons and brothers-in-law. Yellow tulips, like
those at Florence, grow wild in her fields in abundance, and the cows
eat them.”
* * * * *
_To the_ COUNTESS OF DARNLEY.
“_Hotel d’Italie, Rome, March 30, 1892._--I think you will have wondered
what has become of me, and that you will like to know.
“I have been abroad since November 16, beginning by a week at Paris with
George Jolliffe, who was very ill then, and a month spent at Cannes in
visits to the De Wesselows, old friends of my Hurstmonceaux childhood;
and to my old schoolfellow Fred Walker and his nice wife, one of the few
people I know who have seen two separate and undoubted ghosts with their
own eyes. How civilised and be-villa’d Cannes is now, almost the least
pretentious house remaining in it being the little Villa Nevada, where
the Duke of Albany died, which was close to us, and which was so often
visited by ‘Madame d’Angleterre,’ as the people of Cannes call our
Queen. My ever-kindest of hosts were more people-seeking than
place-seeing. We had one delightful picnic, however, at the old deserted
villa of Castellaras, looking upon the blue gorge of the Saut de Loup. A
little suspicion of earthquake remained in the air from the alarm of the
last shock, when my friends’ native housemaid had refused to leave the
window, saying, ‘Puisque le dernier jour est arrivé, je veux avoir les
yeux partout, pour voir ce que se passe!’ Here at Rome there was a smart
shock this spring. Our old friend Miss Garden asked _her_ ‘donna’ if she
was frightened. ‘Oh yes,’ she said; ‘I felt the two walls of my little
room press in upon my bed. I knew what it was. But I could not remember
which was the right saint to pray to in an earthquake. So I just prayed
to my own grandmother, for she was the best person I ever knew, and
immediately I heard the voice of my grandmother, who said, “Don’t be
frightened; it will all pass; no harm will come to you.” So then I was
quite calm and satisfied.’ Might not this incident account for many
stories of Catholic saints?
[Illustration: SASSO.]
“I spent a week at Bordighera. Such varied points for walks! villages
like Sasso, which are just bright bits of umber colour amongst the
tender grey olives; little painted towns amongst the orange-gardens,
like Dolceacqua, with its pointed bridge and blue river and great
deserted palace of the Dorias. George Macdonald, a most grand old
patriarch to look upon, is king of the place. He writes constantly, and
never leaves the house, except to see a neighbour in need of help or
comfort. One after another of his delicate daughters has faded away,
but his sons seem strong and well, and there are several adopted
children in the house, half in and half out of the family, but all
calling Mrs. Macdonald ‘Mama.’ It is a very unusual household, but ruled
in a spirit of love which is most beautiful. I dined with them, the
dining-table placed across one end of the vast common sitting-room. On
Sunday evenings he gives a sort of Bible lecture, which all the
sojourners in Bordighera may attend.
[Illustration: AT BORDIGHERA.][498]
[Illustration: AT REBEKAH’S WELL, NEAR S. REMO.]
“Then I was a month in a palatial hotel at S. Remo, and greatly enjoyed
bright winter days of quiet drawing in its ravines with their
high-striding bridges, by its torrents full of Titanic boulders, or on
its pathlets winding through vine and fig gardens or along precipitous
crags; most of all in a delicious palm-shaded cove by the sea, where I
spent whole days alone with the great chrysoprase waves breaking over
the rocks in showers of crystal spray. With a charming Mrs. Rycroft and
her pleasant Eton boys, I made longer excursions to Ceriano and
Badalucco, very curious places surrounded by high mountains, with deep
gorges, old bridges, and waterfalls.
[Illustration: AT S. REMO.]
“But it is in changed, spoilt Rome that I have spent the last two
months. All picturesqueness is now washed out of the place, so that
people who have any interest about them now usually give it only a
glance and pass on. It has been delightful for me, however, that Miss
Hosmer is settled in this hotel, and that we dine together daily at a
little round table, where she is a constant coruscation of wit and
wisdom. All day she is shut up in her studio, which is closed to all the
world, but she cannot have a dull time, by the stories she has to tell
of the workmen and models who are her only companions. Here are a few
of them, only they sound nothing without her twinkling eyes and capital
manner of telling:--
[Illustration: GLEN AT S. REMO.]
“‘Minicuccia was an excellent model, but very jealous. “Have you seen
Rosa? What fine arms she has!” I said to her one day. “I have seen
_Rosaccia_” she replied, “and I should have thought, Signorina, that a
lady of your taste would have known better than to admire her arms. What
are they in comparison with really fine arms--with mine, for instance?”
“‘One day Minicuccia was at a café, and some one admired the legs of
another model. Forthwith she gathered up her petticoats, and danced with
her legs perfectly bare all about the place. She was not a bad woman; on
the contrary, she was a very moral one, and there was never a word
against her, but she wanted to show what fine legs were. The police,
however, heard of that escapade, and she was put in prison for a month
afterwards for such an offence against the _decenza pubblica_. Poor
Minicuccia!
“‘Then there was Nana, whom Lady Marian (Alford) painted so often, and
whom she was so fond of. She was a magnificent woman. Dear Lady Marian
used to say, “I would give anything to be able to come into a room with
the grace and dignity of Nana.” Her dignity was natural to her. Another
model once said to me, “I met that Nanaccia; she was walking down the
Via Sistina as if it all belonged to her.”
“‘There was a very nice boy-model I had, Fortunato he was called. He is
dead now--died of consumption, for he was always delicate. One day he
said to me, “Last Sunday, Signorina, I went to the garden of the
Cappuccini, and it is _such_ a garden!--quite full of fruit, the most
beautiful fruit. And the Fathers are so kind; they said I might eat as
much as ever I liked; only think of that, Signorina!”--“Well, that was
kind indeed; but what sort of fruit was it?”--“O, cipolle and
lettuge,[499] Signorina--most delicious fruit.”
“‘Marietta was another model who came to me, a large handsome woman. One
day I said to her, “Now, Marietta, I want you to look sad--_tutta
dolorosa_.”--“What! _lagrime_, Signorina?”--“No,” I said, “only _look_
sad; but if I wanted _lagrime_, could I have them too?”--“Sì, Signora:
basta pensare a quel calzolajo chi m’a fatto pagare sette lire in vece
di cinque, et piango subito.”[500]
“‘Marietta had a brother who managed her little business for her. I
asked her if it would not be very easy for him to misappropriate a
_scudo_ now and then. “Facile sì,” she said, “_essendo fratello_.”
“‘Mariuccia lived to be old, and many is the dinner and _paolo_ I have
given her; but when she was fifteen or so, she was the model for Mr.
Gibson’s ‘Psyche borne by the Zephyrs.’ She was always a wonderful
model: no one could act or stand as she did.
“‘Then there was that woman who had the drunken husband, who used to
beat her. One night he came in late and fell down dead drunk across the
bed. She took her needle and thread, and sewed him up in the sheets so
that he could not move, and then she took a stick, and beat him so that
he died of it: she was imprisoned for some years for that, though.
“‘I asked one of the workmen what he did when every one was away. “Why,
Signorina, I have the studio to clean out.”--“Well, I suppose that takes
you half-an-hour; and what do you do then?”--“Ma, Signorina, sto a
sedere.”--“And after your dinner, what do you do then?”--“Sto ancora a
sedere, Signorina.”--“Well, and in the evening?”--“Ma, Signorina,
continuo di stare a sedere.”
“‘My man Gigi came to me the other day and said, “I went to the Acqua
Acetosa[501] last Sunday, Signorina, and I liked the water so much, I
drank no less than twenty _fiaschi_ of it.”--“Well,” I said, “Gigi, that
was a good deal; I’ll get twenty _fiaschi_ of it, and put twenty _scudi_
down by them, and then, if you can drink them all off, you shall have
the _scudi_.”--“Well, Signorina, perhaps I did exaggerate a little: now
I come to think it over, perhaps it was ten _fiaschi_ I drank.”--“Well,
do it again before me, and you shall have ten _scudi_.” “Now, Signorina,
you know I like to be precise, perhaps it was six _fiaschi_ I
drank.”--“Well, do it again and you shall have six _scudi_.”--“Well, I
suppose it really was two _fiaschi_.”--“Oh, I could drink that myself!”’
“You may imagine how entertaining stories like these--traits from the
life around one--make our little dinners, and afterwards we often go
into the Storys’ apartment close by, where the easy intellectual
pleasant talk and fun are always reviving. Besides, it amuses Mrs.
Story, who is most sadly ailing now, though her cheerfulness is an
example. She says she comforts her sleepless nights by the old distich--
‘For all the ills beneath the sun
There is a cure, or there is none:
If there is one, try to find it;
If there is none, never mind it.’
“Nothing can describe the charm of Mr. Story’s natural bubble of fun and
wit, or the merry twinkle which often comes into his eye, even now, at
moments when his wife’s illness does not make him too anxious.[502] He
and Miss Hosmer are capital together. It is difficult to say what are
their ‘projecting peculiarities,’ as Dr. Chalmers would have called
them, they have so many; but they are all of a perfectly delightful
kind.
“‘Well, what’s the news, Harriet?’ he said as we went in to-night. ‘Why,
that I am going to be married.’--‘What! to the Pope?’--‘Yes, only I
didn’t want it to get out till he announced it himself.’
“‘An American was looking at my statue of Canidia the other day,’ said
Mr. Story, and exclaimed--“Ah! Dante, I suppose, or is it--Savonarola?”
Another man who came to my studio said, “Mr. Story, have you baptized
your statue?”--“Why, yes,” I said; “generally we think of the name
first, and then we set to work in accordance with it.”--“Well,” he said,
“there’s some as doos, and there’s some as doosn’t.”’
“Mrs Story was very amusing about an Italian who wanted a portrait of
his father very much, and came to an artist she knew and asked him to
paint it. The artist asked, ‘But when can I see your father?’--‘Oh, you
can’t see him: he’s dead.’--‘But how can I paint him, then?’--‘Well, I
can describe him, and he was very like me: I think you can paint him
very well.’ So the artist painted away, according to the description,
as well as he could. When he had finished the portrait he sent for the
son, anxious to see if he would find any likeness. The son rushed up to
the picture, knelt down by it, was bathed in tears, and sobbed out, ‘O
padre mio, quanto avete sofferto, o quanto siete cambiato: O non l’aveva
mai riconosciuto.’
[Illustration: CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT.][503]
“Mr. Story says that when _Othello_ was performed at Rome, he saw it
with an Italian friend, who said afterwards, ‘Convengo che ci sono
qualche belle concette in questa dramma, ma fare tanto disturbo per un
fazzoletto non mi conviene.’
“Miss Hosmer told of a countryman who was asked what he thought of a
train, for he had just seen one for the first time--seen it as it was
entering a tunnel. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was just a black monster with a
goggle eye, and when it saw me, it gave a horrible shriek and ran into
its hole.’
“I should like you to have heard Miss Hosmer’s recollections of Kestner,
whose name was so familiar to me in old Bunsen days. He died soon after
she first came to Rome, but she recollects him as always wearing his old
red studio cap. He knew he was dying, and when it was very near the end,
he said to those who were with him, ‘Now, my dear friends, it is a very
sad experience to see a person die: I must beg you to leave me: it is my
great wish to be alone, and you may come back in two hours.’ They came
back in two hours, and found him lying peacefully dead. That is a
beautiful story, I think. It was Kestner who, priding himself very much
on his good English, said to Lord Houghton, ‘Allow me to present to you
my knee-pot (_nipote_).’
“Outside the charmed circle of Palazzo Barberini there is little now at
Rome but the most inferior American society. ‘We must stop at Milan, you
know, going back; there is a picture there by a man called Leonard
Vinchey we must be sure to see,’ said a neighbour at the hotel luncheon.
And, ‘Mr. Brown, sir, how’s Mrs. Brown’?--‘Well, she’s slim but round’
(meaning weak but about): this is the sort of thing one hears.
“In this hotel is the intelligent Indian Princess Tanjore, with whom I
have spent several evenings very pleasantly. Her ‘lady’ is Miss Blyth,
sister of the Bishop of Jerusalem, and authoress of that capital novel
‘Antoinette.’
“Dear old Miss Garden, whom you will remember hearing of as the kindest
and most original of Scottish ladies, still lives at 64 Via Sistina.
‘How did you manage to boil the eggs so well, Maria, when you can’t
tell the clock?’ said Miss Garden to her old donna, ‘for the eggs are
just perfect.’--‘Why, I’ll tell you how it is,’ said Maria: ‘a lady I
lived with showed me how to do it. I just put them into the water, and
then I say thirty-three _Credos_, and then I know that they’re done.’
“With Miss Garden and Mrs. Ramsay I went one day to the curious little
early christian cemetery of S. Generosa, a lovely spot, where marble
slabs covering the graves of martyrs under Diocletian are still seen in
a little hollow surrounded by wild roses and fenochii.
“My room in this hotel looks out on the Barberini gardens, and the
splash of its fountain is an enjoyment. Its being lighted by electricity
for the King’s visit the other day was a type of the times, rather a
contrast to twenty years ago, when there were torches on every step of
the great staircase to welcome even a cardinal, and when not only the
staircase, but the whole street as far as S. Teresa, was hung with
tapestries for the Prince’s funeral.
“On Ash-Wednesday I went, as I have always done here, to the ‘stations’
on the Aventine. It is still a thoroughly Roman scene. Before one
reaches S. Sabina, one is assailed by the chorus of old lady beggars
seated in a double avenue of armchairs leading up to the door, with
‘Datemi qualche cosa, signore, per l’amore della Madonna, datemi
qual’co;’ and behind them kneel the old men--‘Poveri, poveretti cieci,
signore,’ in brown gowns and with arms stretched out _alla maniera di S.
Francesco_. Spread with box is the church itself, with its doors wide
open to the cloistered porch and the sacred orange-tree[504] seen in the
sunny garden beyond. The Abbot is standing there, and has his hand
kissed by all the monks who arrive for the stations, till a cardinal
appears, after which he takes the lower place and is quite deserted.
Then we all hurry on to S. Alessio and its crypt, and then to the
Priorato garden, where, by old custom, we look through the keyhole of
the door, and see St. Peter’s down a beautiful avenue of bays.
“The passage of the Pope to the Sistine on his coronation anniversary
was a very fine sight. Borne along in his golden chair, with the white
peacock fans waving in front of him, and wearing his triple crown, Leo
XIII. looked dying, but gave his benediction with the most serene
majesty, sinking back between each effort upon his cushions, as if the
end had indeed come. Only his eyes lived, and lived only in his office;
otherwise his perfectly spiritualised countenance seemed utterly
unconscious of the thundering _evvivas_ with which he was greeted, and
which rose into a perfect roar as he was carried into the Sala Regia.
The potency of ‘Orders’ here is so great, that my Swedish decoration not
only gave me the best place, but I took in two young men as my chaplain
and equerry! After the Pope had entered the Sistine, we sat in great
comfort in the Sala Regia till he returned, and then, as there was no
one between us and the procession, we saw all the individual faces of
the old cardinals--how few of them the same now as those I remember in
the processions of Pius IX.
“There are no _evvivas_ now for the comparatively young king with the
white hair and the ever-tragic countenance: the taxes are too great. I
believe that he can read, if no one else can, the handwriting on the
wall which foretells the doom of his southern kingdom. And yet
personally no one could be braver or more royal, and, where they detest
the king, the people honour the man. ‘Your king is at that house which
has fallen down, helping with his own hands to dig out that old man who
is buried: he won’t leave till the old man is safe,’ said Mrs. Story to
her Italian maid Margherita. ‘Si, Signora, casa di Savoia manca qualche
volta di testa, mai di cuore;’ and it is quite true. All one hears of
the King’s self-abnegation is so fine. He used to be quite devoted to
smoking, but he was ill, and one day his physician told him that it was
extremely deleterious to him. He instantly took his cigar out of his
mouth, threw it into the back of the fire, and has never smoked again.
“The Pope’s secretary has just died of the influenza. Leo XIII. was much
attached to him, and is greatly distressed by his death. There is
something touching in the newspaper account of the Pope’s having refused
to eat, and his attendants having had to use _qualche dolce violenze_ to
make him do it.
“We have had two months of rain, only four fine days last week, in which
I went to the Crimera, to Fidenae, to Ostia, and to a touching and
beautiful Mass in the heart of the Catacomb of S. Praetextatus, where
the martyrs’ hymn was sung by a full choir upon their graves, its
cadences swelling through the subterranean church and dying away down
the endless rude passages, so long their refuge, and at last their place
of death.
“And now I must stop. I am just come up from luncheon. ‘Wal, I guess I’m
stuffed, but I’m not appeased,’ said my neighbour as we came out; and
she was _con rispetto parlando_, as they say here--a lady.”
* * * * *
_To_ HUGH BRYANS.
“_Rome, April 26, 1892._--How I wish you were here: how you would enjoy
it, though there is little to admire now in this much-changed Rome
beyond the extreme loveliness of the spring, with its Judas and May
flowers, and the golden broom of the Campagna. I have just been, with my
old friends Mrs. Ramsay and Miss Garden, to the Villa Doria to pick
anemones. There were thousands of them, and the ladies gathered them in
like a harvest. Their servant was told off to look after the violets.
Their late man, Francesco, said his was usually a very light place--‘ma
nella primavera, al tempo dei violette, e duro veramente.’