THE SUBURBAN VILLA
Donatello, while it was still a doubtful question betwixt afternoon and
morning, set forth to keep the appointment which Miriam had carelessly
tendered him in the grounds of the Villa Borghese. The entrance to these
grounds (as all my readers know, for everybody nowadays has been in
Rome) is just outside of the Porta del Popolo. Passing beneath that not
very impressive specimen of Michael Angelo’s architecture, a minute’s
walk will transport the visitor from the small, uneasy, lava stones
of the Roman pavement into broad, gravelled carriage-drives, whence
a little farther stroll brings him to the soft turf of a beautiful
seclusion. A seclusion, but seldom a solitude; for priest, noble, and
populace, stranger and native, all who breathe Roman air, find free
admission, and come hither to taste the languid enjoyment of the
day-dream that they call life.
But Donatello’s enjoyment was of a livelier kind. He soon began to draw
long and delightful breaths among those shadowy walks. Judging by the
pleasure which the sylvan character of the scene excited in him, it
might be no merely fanciful theory to set him down as the kinsman, not
far remote, of that wild, sweet, playful, rustic creature, to whose
marble image he bore so striking a resemblance. How mirthful a discovery
would it be (and yet with a touch of pathos in it), if the breeze which
sported fondly with his clustering locks were to waft them suddenly
aside, and show a pair of leaf-shaped, furry ears! What an honest strain
of wildness would it indicate! and into what regions of rich mystery
would it extend Donatello’s sympathies, to be thus linked (and by no
monstrous chain) with what we call the inferior trioes of being, whose
simplicity, mingled with his human intelligence, might partly restore
what man has lost of the divine!
The scenery amid which the youth now strayed was such as arrays itself
in the imagination when we read the beautiful old myths, and fancy a
brighter sky, a softer turf, a more picturesque arrangement of venerable
trees, than we find in the rude and untrained landscapes of the Western
world. The ilex-trees, so ancient and time-honored were they, seemed to
have lived for ages undisturbed, and to feel no dread of profanation by
the axe any more than overthrow by the thunder-stroke. It had already
passed out of their dreamy old memories that only a few years ago they
were grievously imperilled by the Gaul’s last assault upon the walls of
Rome. As if confident in the long peace of their lifetime, they assumed
attitudes of indolent repose. They leaned over the green turf in
ponderous grace, throwing abroad their great branches without danger
of interfering with other trees, though other majestic trees grew near
enough for dignified society, but too distant for constraint. Never
was there a more venerable quietude than that which slept among their
sheltering boughs; never a sweeter sunshine than that now gladdening
the gentle gloom which these leafy patriarchs strove to diffuse over the
swelling and subsiding lawns.
In other portions of the grounds the stone-pines lifted their dense
clump of branches upon a slender length of stem, so high that they
looked like green islands in the air, flinging down a shadow upon the
turf so far off that you hardly knew which tree had made it. Again,
there were avenues of cypress, resembling dark flames of huge funeral
candles, which spread dusk and twilight round about them instead of
cheerful radiance. The more open spots were all abloom, even so early in
the season, with anemones of wondrous size, both white and rose-colored,
and violets that betrayed themselves by their rich fragrance, even if
their blue eyes failed to meet your own. Daisies, too, were abundant,
but larger than the modest little English flower, and therefore of small
account.
These wooded and flowery lawns are more beautiful than the finest
of English park scenery, more touching, more impressive, through the
neglect that leaves Nature so much to her own ways and methods. Since
man seldom interferes with her, she sets to work in her quiet way
and makes herself at home. There is enough of human care, it is true,
bestowed, long ago and still bestowed, to prevent wildness from growing
into deformity; and the result is an ideal landscape, a woodland scene
that seems to have been projected out of the poet’s mind. If the ancient
Faun were other than a mere creation of old poetry, and could have
reappeared anywhere, it must have been in such a scene as this.
In the openings of the wood there are fountains plashing into marble
basins, the depths of which are shaggy with water-weeds; or they tumble
like natural cascades from rock to rock, sending their murmur afar, to
make the quiet and silence more appreciable. Scattered here and there
with careless artifice, stand old altars bearing Roman inscriptions.
Statues, gray with the long corrosion of even that soft atmosphere, half
hide and half reveal themselves, high on pedestals, or perhaps fallen
and broken on the turf. Terminal figures, columns of marble or granite
porticos, arches, are seen in the vistas of the wood-paths, either
veritable relics of antiquity, or with so exquisite a touch of artful
ruin on them that they are better than if really antique. At all events,
grass grows on the tops of the shattered pillars, and weeds and flowers
root themselves in the chinks of the massive arches and fronts of
temples, and clamber at large over their pediments, as if this were the
thousandth summer since their winged seeds alighted there.
What a strange idea--what a needless labor--to construct artificial
ruins in Rome, the native soil of ruin! But even these sportive
imitations, wrought by man in emulation of what time has done to temples
and palaces, are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning as illusions,
have grown to be venerable in sober earnest. The result of all is a
scene, pensive, lovely, dreamlike, enjoyable and sad, such as is to
be found nowhere save in these princely villa-residences in the
neighborhood of Rome; a scene that must have required generations and
ages, during which growth, decay, and man’s intelligence wrought kindly
together, to render it so gently wild as we behold it now.
The final charm is bestowed by the malaria. There is a piercing,
thrilling, delicious kind of regret in the idea of so much beauty thrown
away, or only enjoyable at its half-development, in winter and early
spring, and never to be dwelt amongst, as the home scenery of any human
being. For if you come hither in summer, and stray through these glades
in the golden sunset, fever walks arm in arm with you, and death awaits
you at the end of the dim vista. Thus the scene is like Eden in its
loveliness; like Eden, too, in the fatal spell that removes it beyond
the scope of man’s actual possessions. But Donatello felt nothing of
this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot. As he passed among the
sunny shadows, his spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker
of the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain’s gush, the dance of the
leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness,
the old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in those long
breaths which he drew.
The ancient dust, the mouldiness of Rome, the dead atmosphere in which
he had wasted so many months, the hard pavements, the smell of ruin and
decaying generations, the chill palaces, the convent bells, the heavy
incense of altars, the life that he had led in those dark, narrow
streets, among priests, soldiers, nobles, artists, and women,--all the
sense of these things rose from the young man’s consciousness like a
cloud which had darkened over him without his knowing how densely.
He drank in the natural influences of the scene, and was intoxicated as
by an exhilarating wine. He ran races with himself along the gleam and
shadow of the wood-paths. He leapt up to catch the overhanging bough of
an ilex, and swinging himself by it alighted far onward, as if he had
flown thither through the air. In a sudden rapture he embraced the
trunk of a sturdy tree, and seemed to imagine it a creature worthy of
affection and capable of a tender response; he clasped it closely in his
arms, as a Faun might have clasped the warm feminine grace of the nymph,
whom antiquity supposed to dwell within that rough, encircling rind.
Then, in order to bring himself closer to the genial earth, with which
his kindred instincts linked him so strongly, he threw himself at full
length on the turf, and pressed down his lips, kissing the violets and
daisies, which kissed him back again, though shyly, in their maiden
fashion.
While he lay there, it was pleasant to see how the green and blue
lizards, who had beta basking on some rock or on a fallen pillar that
absorbed the warmth of the sun, scrupled not to scramble over him with
their small feet; and how the birds alighted on the nearest twigs and
sang their little roundelays unbroken by any chirrup of alarm; they
recognized him, it may be, as something akin to themselves, or else they
fancied that he was rooted and grew there; for these wild pets of nature
dreaded him no more in his buoyant life than if a mound of soil and
grass and flowers had long since covered his dead body, converting it
back to the sympathies from which human existence had estranged it.
All of us, after a long abode in cities, have felt the blood gush more
joyously through our veins with the first breath of rural air; few could
feel it so much as Donatello, a creature of simple elements, bred in
the sweet sylvan life of Tuscany, and for months back dwelling amid the
mouldy gloom and dim splendor of old Rome. Nature has been shut out for
numberless centuries from those stony-hearted streets, to which he had
latterly grown accustomed; there is no trace of her, except for what
blades of grass spring out of the pavements of the less trodden piazzas,
or what weeds cluster and tuft themselves on the cornices of ruins.
Therefore his joy was like that of a child that had gone astray from
home, and finds him suddenly in his mother’s arms again.
At last, deeming it full time for Miriam to keep her tryst, he climbed
to the tiptop of the tallest tree, and thence looked about him, swaying
to and fro in the gentle breeze, which was like the respiration of that
great leafy, living thing. Donatello saw beneath him the whole circuit
of the enchanted ground; the statues and columns pointing upward from
among the shrubbery, the fountains flashing in the sunlight, the paths
winding hither and thither, and continually finding out some nook of new
and ancient pleasantness. He saw the villa, too, with its marble front
incrusted all over with basreliefs, and statues in its many niches. It
was as beautiful as a fairy palace, and seemed an abode in which the
lord and lady of this fair domain might fitly dwell, and come forth each
morning to enjoy as sweet a life as their happiest dreams of the past
night could have depicted. All this he saw, but his first glance had
taken in too wide a sweep, and it was not till his eyes fell almost
directly beneath him, that Donatello beheld Miriam just turning into the
path that led across the roots of his very tree.
He descended among the foliage, waiting for her to come close to the
trunk, and then suddenly dropped from an impending bough, and alighted
at her side. It was as if the swaying of the branches had let a ray
of sunlight through. The same ray likewise glimmered among the gloomy
meditations that encompassed Miriam, and lit up the pale, dark beauty of
her face, while it responded pleasantly to Donatello’s glance.
“I hardly know,” said she, smiling, “whether you have sprouted out of
the earth, or fallen from the clouds. In either case you are welcome.”
And they walked onward together.