musician, a delightful composer, and the most enchanting person. Of
course you know his compositions; the Boston Orchestra lately gave his
symphony. Some time ago he was on the point of leaving Rome for London,
where they were on their knees for him to come: the musical people and
critics were waiting with open arms to receive him. He went to the
station, weighed his luggage, bought his ticket, was just about to get
on the train, when he realized that he was leaving Rome! That was more
than he had bargained for! It was one thing to go to London, another to
leave Rome! He calmly returned to his quiet house and his piano in the
Via della Croce, and has remained there ever since, the friend of the
Queen, of all true artists, of every starving musical genius brought to
his notice. That such a man should endure the drudgery of giving music
lessons is a fearful waste of fine material; the musical world should
make him independent, as it made Wagner.
If you only stay long enough in Rome you meet everybody you ever heard
of: all the world comes here sooner or later. The best thing about the
social life is its cosmopolitan quality. Among the people we see most
are a Greek woman (I had almost written goddess), a Dutchman, a Swede, a
Dane, a Turk, an Irish priest, and a French Protestant pastor. American
Protestant houses are no-man’s-land, neutral ground: we have visitors of
every faith and of all parties. One Sunday afternoon Mrs. Agassiz, the
President of Radcliffe College, Mr. Peabody, the Master of Croton
School, and Mgr. O’Connell, the Director of the American College for
young priests in Rome, chanced to meet at tea in my _salon_. There are a
dozen different cliques, all more or less linked together--artistic,
musical, political, sporting. The people who form “smart” society seem
to me more cultivated than is usual with that class.
We have lately returned from an old-furniture hunt at Viterbo. We found
no furniture, but the most picturesque Roman Gothic town I have seen.
When I first knew Italy Viterbo had a bad name for brigands. The
railroad has been open only four years; I hear no more of brigands,
though I suspect several of my Viterbo acquaintances once belonged to
the band. The place is not yet tourist stricken. We slept in a grim
caravansary and went to a villanous _trattoria_ for our meals, where we
were poisoned by the food. A twenty-four-hour fast brought us again into
condition. Viterbo is a gray fourteenth-century town with massive stone
walls and turrets. It has many handsome buildings, some fair pictures,
good Etruscan and Roman antiquities, but the most admirable thing about
it is its wonderful completeness. Everything hangs together
architecturally, the parts are subservient to the whole, the
result--grace, harmony, repose! Shall we ever learn the trick?
From Viterbo we drove to the estate of the Duke of Lante, one of the
most famous Italian villas. The present duke has an American mother and
wife. We had a letter of introduction from a mutual friend. All the
grown-up people of the family were absent. We were received by two tiny
fairies in pink calico, who took us each by a hand and led us through
the garden to see the oaks, the famous bronze fountain, and the
interesting house. I never have had so lovely an escort or a kinder
welcome than the little ladies of the Villa Lante gave us.
February 26, 1898.
You will like to hear about a day of pure delight. I left home, duty,
and family, and went off with Donna Primavera for an outing at Ostia. We
started at ten in the morning, returned at six at night. I had been
there before on my bicycle--it is a capital road--but on that occasion I
saw nothing except the view. Ostia is an ancient Roman commercial town
founded by Ancus Martius, the fourth of the Roman kings; that takes it
back to the sixth century B.C. The ruins of Ostia are on the banks of
the Tiber. From here the fleets of merchant galleys sailed away to
Greece and Africa. I felt that I was penetrating into the business life
of the Romans as never before. Of course, I knew vaguely that there was
a great commerce underlying the whole vast scheme, supporting the army
and the art, but I was not prepared for the illumination I received in
wandering through the old warehouses, where we found rows of vast
amphoræ (earthenware jars) which had contained wine, oil, and grain.
Trade was as important in the time of Augustus as in the days of
McKinley. The fleets that sailed into the harbor of Ostia brought
nothing more precious than the marbles from Paros and Africa. It is said
of Augustus that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of
marble. The threshold of the temple at Ostia is a single slab of
_africano_ sixteen feet long, delicious in color--rose, gray, and black
blended in the most adorable mottlings. Signor Lanciani tells me they
have lately discovered a large cargo of precious marbles at or near
Ostia which has been lying waiting perhaps two thousand years for the
hand of the builder. I should like to have a piece of it. In Rome one
learns to appreciate marbles. I point out the different varieties to all
the friends from home whom I pilot about the city (there are plenty of
them), and it is a rare thing to find one who knows the difference
between _cipollino_ and _serpentino_. Tell that to the Kindergartnerins!
April 16, 1898.
Waked up at dawn this morning by the rattling of cabs and carriages and
the footsteps of sixty thousand people going to St. Peter’s to
celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of the Pope’s coronation. I had
not meant to go,--these functions are such an old story to me,--but I
could not resist the magnetism of the crowd. The Borgo and the Piazza
were black with people. Before the obelisk a double cordon of troops
stretched across the whole Piazza--government troops, you understand;
the government keeps order when the Pope goes to St. Peter’s and is
responsible for his safety. The Borgo is perhaps the safest place to
live in that exists; I have never heard of any other so carefully
guarded. Inside the Vatican the Papal troops keep order. At a certain
point behind the church two sentinels pace their beat, the spot where
they meet marking the line of the exterritorial limits of the Vatican.
One sentinel wears the King’s uniform, the other wears the Pope’s; they
appear to be on friendly terms.
My ticket admitted me to the bronze door. The crush going up the steps
was terrific; once inside the church, all was well. I never have known a
panic or a stampede in all the many crowds I have seen gather in the
great church across the way. In the days of the Cæsars the Romans
learned how to behave at a great pageant; they have never forgotten the
lesson. The Roman crowd is the best behaved and most good-natured in the
world. Of course, there are always people who feel the effects of being
in such a crush; I saw three women faint and one man “tumble in a fit”
to-day. They were immediately carried to one of the hospitals fitted up
in various parts of the building on all such occasions. It happened once
that a child was born in St. Peter’s while a great function was going
on--I think it was a beatification.
An aisle was kept open, by means of movable benches, leading from the
Chapel of the Sacrament, which communicates with the Vatican, to the
papal throne, placed to-day for the first time since 1870 under the
chair of St. Peter at the end of the basilica. The walls were hung with
miles of crimson velvet and brocade. I like the church better plain, but
it made a “soomptuous melée” of color. I saw the Crown Princess of
Sweden and the Countess of Trani, sister of the Empress of Austria, in
the tribune reserved for royal guests. The costumes of the papal court
are simply enchanting. The red and yellow uniform of the Swiss Guard
never palls; it was designed by Michael Angelo, who had some taste. The
chamberlains, some of whom we know, looked so handsome in black velvet
doublets and knee breeches, with stiff white ruffs and thick gold chains
of office that it was hard to recognize them. The ambassadors wore their
best togs, the noble ladies (they are obliged to go in black) all their
jewels. The plebs in their way were quite as decorative as the
patricians,--peasants with goatskin trousers and _cioce_, monks and nuns
of every order, flocks of students from the theological seminaries in
the dress Dante wore. The German students in vermilion habits--the
scarlet tanagers of the Roman landscape--are the finest. The Pope was
due at ten; at a quarter before eleven the cardinals began to arrive.
Their dress is admirable; it never looks so well as when they are
marching down the aisle at St. Peter’s. At eleven the Pope appeared in
the gestatorial chair carried by eight lackeys in crimson brocade:
Michael Angelo, they say, designed this livery too. The tall white
feather fans carried in the procession reminded me of a bas-relief on
the walls of the ruins at Karnak in Egypt representing the Pharaoh going
in triumph to the temple. Pharaoh’s chair was not unlike the _sedia
gestatoria_, the feather fans seem identical, the triple crown of the
Pope is very like the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt worn by Rameses. In
the midst of all this swirl of color imagine Leo’s alabaster face with
the eyes of brown fire. When he rose feebly to give the benediction his
hands looked transparent. There was even more shouting “_Viva il papa
ré!_” than usual. The Pope is as exquisitely _soigné_ as a young belle;
his valet, Pio Centra,--one of whose duties is to taste everything his
master eats or drinks,--certainly knows his business. Centra is a great
personage and is kowtowed to by the people about the Vatican.
The Pope safely on his throne, I did not care to wait for the service
and watched my chance of getting out. I edged my way to the vicinity of
one of the exits and waited. I soon saw a gigantic German student--he
must have been six feet six inches tall--who was evidently of the same
mind about going. I managed to slip in behind him and follow in his
wake. When we were close to the door the press was so great that I
really was frightened; in another moment I should have been separated
from my giant. In desperation I seized the streamers of red broadcloth
that hung from his shoulders. He looked behind him, saw a woman,
fancied the de’il was after him, and fled for his life, cleaving the
solid wall of people with his mighty elbows. The faster he ran the
tighter I held on, till at last he brought us both through that awful
pressure--I thought it would break my ribs--down the steps and out into
the piazza, where I let him go. I am not sure which of us was the most
frightened!
One of the _Guardia Nobile_ (the Pope’s Noble Guard) told me that in the
year 1889 he was on duty in the Pope’s antechamber the night after the
dedication of the statue of Giordano Bruno--a renegade Dominican or a
great reformer, according to your politics--on the very spot where in
1600 Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy. The Pope was much
offended, he felt that the Church had been insulted; there was even talk
of removing the seat of the papacy from Rome. That plan, if it ever was
seriously considered, was soon given up. The whole matter had agitated
the Pope tremendously, and the people about him felt anxious about his
health. When the usual hour passed for his light to be put out they grew
more and more nervous. Eleven, twelve, one o’clock, still that thin
line of light under the door. Finally they knocked. No answer. They
gently opened the door and saw the old man kneeling weeping at his
_priedieu_. Our friend, a man of the world, had been deeply moved by
that glimpse through the open door. As for me, “’t is as if I’d seen it
all.”
Like Pius the Ninth, Leo began by trying for a liberal policy. The power
behind the throne--the faction of _intransigentes_--was too strong for
him. When he was elected Pope he wished to give his benediction to the
vast throng of people in the Piazza from the window over the door of St.
Peter’s, as his predecessors had done. This was opposed, but a rumor
spread through the city that the new Pope stood firmly to his intention.
The Piazza was crammed with waiting people; at the Quirinal the royal
carriage stood ready to bring the Queen to the Piazza to receive the
blessing. After a long delay those who watched with glasses saw a small
white figure hurrying down the passage which leads to the window. The
Pope was coming! Suddenly the white figure hesitated, paused, turned
back, retreated. The way had been barricaded with benches!
Sovereign Pontiff, indeed! This was forcible coercion!
When you stop to think about it, nobody is quite free. The freest man I
know is Scipione, the travelling knife-grinder. He carries his tools on
his back, the open street is his shop, the people he meets his
customers. As I sat at work this morning I heard the welcome sound of
his cracked bell. My knife being duller than even I can endure, I hailed
him from the window. He came slowly up the long stair to the landing
outside the old green door, and bade me a civil good morning.
“We have not seen you for a long time, I was afraid I should have to buy
a new knife,” I said.
Scipione let a few drops of water trickle from the tap of the small can
fixed above his wheel, ran his finger along the edge of my penknife,
held the blade to the emery wheel, and began to work the treadle with
his foot.
“It is quite true, I have not passed this way lately. You did well,
however, to wait for me. Another might have ruined this really desirable
knife, whose beauty and value the first comer might not realize.” Under
my admiring eyes, the sparks began to fly from the wheel--who does not
work better when watched by admiring eyes?
“That is a good trade of yours, is it not, Scipione?” I said.
“_E un arte civile, Signora. Non c’è ‘boss’; quando si vuole lavorare,
si lavora, quando si vuole reposare, si riposa_ (It is a civil art;
there is no ‘boss’; when one feels like working, one works, when one
wishes to rest, one rests).”
“You have not told me what kept you so long away.”
“My grandmother has been ill, _Poverella_, there is nobody but myself to
look after her.”
Scipione is not so free as I had supposed!
“Where does the _nonna_ live?”
“At Carpineto, the _paese_ of _Il Gran Ciociaro_ over there,” he nodded
towards the Vatican. “_Nonna_ remembers his Holiness when he was a lad.
She was among those pilgrims from his native town to whom he gave an
audience the other day. What do you think he said to her? He asked her
about the big chestnut tree under whose shade he used to walk when he
was studying his lessons. Do you suppose that pleased her? There is no
tree in the world that receives such attention as the old chestnut tree
of _Il Gran Ciociaro_ at Carpineto.”
V
IN THE ABRUZZI MOUNTAINS
ROCCARASO, September 8, 1898.
We left Rome, the heat already somewhat abating, on the 2d of September.
Though we had been so anxious to get away, it took an effort of will at
the last. Action of any kind was abhorrent, the _dolce far niente_ had
us in thrall. We finally got off at nine o’clock one morning, and
arrived here at seven the same evening, having changed cars at Solmona,
the home of Ovid, where we had an hour and a half to see the sights.
Solmona is a good-sized town with paved streets, interesting churches,
several inns,--at any of which one might risk putting up,--and a
market-place, Piazza Ovidio, where we bought a basket of pears and a
flask of wine: one or the other made us very ill; it is much safer to
bring along provisions for such a journey. The train next passed through
a wide valley, one vast orchard, red with apples “ripe and ready to
drop”; then the engine began to tug, tug, up into the mountains. The
road is a strategical railway, built not to meet any demand of traffic
or travel, but for the transportation of troops.
“Roccaraso is the highest railroad station in Europe,” said the proud
person in uniform who took our tickets. Government owns and operates all
railroads; the employés are gold-laced, red-tape government officials;
this one controls telegraph, mail, express--all intercourse with the
outer world. We therefore forbore to mention Brenner, the station in the
Alps between the Austrian Tyrol and Italy, which I believed to be even
higher.
The town of Roccaraso is above the station, a _castello_ perched aloft
on a spur of one of the upper Abruzzi. Below us is a wide, flat valley,
all around us are crowding blue mountains, head rising above head, like
inquisitive giants peeping over one another’s shoulders. The air is like
rarefied electricity; the water has been tested and guaranteed
absolutely pure--you know bad water is the danger of these remote,
primitive villages. Our friend, the Marchesa di V., asked the engineer
who laid out the railroad (it has been open only a few months) to find
her a healthy place for the summer. He recommended this
[Illustration: _Roccaraso_
From a pencil drawing]
[Illustration]
unknown mountain fastness. Here she retired with her _bambini_ early in
June. Having made herself comfortable, she prepared to make us so: hired
a pleasant apartment for us,--it belongs to the widow of the ex-mayor,
lately defunct,--ordered the landlady to give it three coats of
whitewash, engaged Elena, a stout wench, to scrub, do the heavy work,
and fetch water from the village fountain, and bade us “come on.” We
came, bringing our guardian angel Vittoria, the tall seamstress, to cook
and take care of us. Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, must have looked
like our Vittoria--calm, gentle, with rare sweetness and remarkable
beauty. We sent up from Rome oil, wine, vinegar, and groceries enough to
last out our stay. The Marchesa has a loaf of bread come by mail every
day from Rome for the babes; she is a woman of resource, she does the
impossible, the only thing worth doing! Elena’s mother makes bread for
us; it is coarse and rather hard, but it suits us well enough. This is
the most primitive Italy we have yet seen. Neither butter, meat, nor
Parmesan cheese (quite as important) can be had here. The wine is
detestable, _vino cotto_ (cooked wine), brought up in goatskins from the
valley below on muleback. We are above the grape and olive belt; our
meat comes twice a week from Castel di Sangro, four miles off; our
butter, every other day, from Pesco Costanzi, two miles away, via the
girls express established by the Marchesa.
Our apartment (it costs fifteen dollars a month) is over the village
school; it has its own separate entrance, through a grim paved
court-yard, where Vittoria keeps the turkey or chicken she is fattening
for us. You ring a bell; whoever is within pulls a string which lifts
the latch. You go up two flights of massive stone stairs to reach the
living part, where we have a decent bedroom, a fair, formal salon,
dining-room, and a kitchen--such a kitchen! The ex-mayor’s family must
have lived in this room, except on high days and holidays, when they
perhaps sat upon the deceitful parlor chairs and sofas--which had all
been pasted together for our benefit and broke down at the first trial.
The kitchen is an immense, smoke-browned room, with a big fireplace at
one end, where all the cooking is done. Copper pots and kettles hang
from the iron crane, a spit stands on the hearth, strings of red peppers
swing from the rafters. There are no bellows; to coax the blaze, Elena,
the vestal, kneels and blows through a long iron tube, her breath coming
out through the mouth of the snake’s head at the end. It is cold
to-night; the kitchen is the only warm place; I am writing close to
Elena’s rousing brushwood fire. Outside there is a howling wind, inside
a leg of mutton revolves slowly on the spit. Every moment I expect to
see the King of the Golden River blow down the chimney and beg for a
slice of that savory roast.
ROCCARASO, September 16, 1898.
We are living in the pastoral age! Each family in Roccaraso supplies its
own needs, asks little of its neighbors and of the outside
world--nothing but salt, wine, and oil. Life is set to the tune of “The
Poor Little Swallow.” We wake in the early morning to “_povera
rondinella, O povera rondinella!_” sung by the women and girls trudging
up from the valley with bundles of fagots on their heads for the winter
woodpiles. They are busy preparing for the long, cold season, which
falls early hereabouts. Acorns for the pigs, fodder for the cows, goats,
and sheep, dried peas, beans, and corn for the humans must all be
carefully stored away. For several days we have watched the women
winnowing the chaff from the wheat. At sunrise yesterday half a dozen
girls started, each with a heavy sack of grain on her head, to walk to
the nearest grist-mill, seven miles away. At sunset they came back
carrying the precious flour, which must be preserved with extreme care.
Good or bad, it is their mainstay through the severe winter; if it
should mildew, they would eat it all the same, with the fear of the
dreadful _pellagra_ in their hearts.
The government doctor, who goes periodically about the country to visit
the sick and is an intelligent man,--standing rather too much on his
dignity for comfortable intercourse, but a perfect mine of
information,--says that _pellagra_, endemic in some parts of Italy,
comes from the poor food the people eat, chiefly from the mildewed
flour. It is a skin disease, which produces a painful red eruption, and
all sorts of nervous and other horrors. From the autumn when the few
green vegetables they raise are consumed till they are again ripe the
following summer, the people live on _polenta_, made of cornmeal,
macaroni, potatoes, dried peas, and sheep’s-milk cheese. In case of
illness a little meat to make broth is procured, otherwise the diet is
vegetarian, except on Christmas and Easter, when several families club
together to make a feast, and one peasant kills a sheep or a goat,
having agreed with his neighbors which part of the animal shall be
allotted to each.
We have made friends with our opposite neighbor the belle of Roccaraso,
a modern Penelope. We found her at her loom as usual, in a tiny stone
cottage, the floor plain, trodden earth, the walls roughly plastered
inside. She is even prettier seen close at hand than through the window;
she wears the Roccaraso dress--you know each village has its own special
costume. This is plainer than many of them, but good and appropriate.
Over her head she wears a square of linen edged with lace, folded to
cover the neck and lower part of the face (older women are particular to
hide the mouth), a full skirt of dark homespun, a black apron, and a
bright jacket, showing a colored kerchief and a full white shirt.
“Will the gentry do me the favor of entering?” she gently invited us.
“We would not interrupt your work.”
“Enter, enter!”
“If you will go on with your weaving.”
She sat down at her loom before a web of rough linsey-woolsey and shot
the shuttle threaded with red linen across the woof of black wool. We
ordered a dress pattern of the same stuff as that she was weaving, and
some heavy white flannel striped with corn-flower blue, delicious in
color and fabric.
“The signori are North Americans, yes? They come from Pittsbourgo?”
Penelope began.
“North Americans, yes, not from Pittsburg.” She was disappointed, but a
visiting-card partly consoled her.
“How do you call yourself?” J. asked.
“Mariuccia, _per servirla_.”
“This yarn you weave with, Mariuccia, tell us where it came from?” She
seemed astonished at the question, took a distaff from a nail, and
showed us how she used it.
“_’Gnor_, I made the yarn with this rocca; so, how else?”
“And the wool, where did you get that?”
“_’Gnor_, from my own sheep.”
“Can you spin flax also, and weave linen?”
“_Altro!_ “She lifted the cover of an old marriage-chest--it smelt of
lavender.
“Behold my _corredo_.” The chest held the linen she had woven for her
marriage,--towels, sheets, table-cloths, and napkins, enough to last her
lifetime.
“See what Andrea sent me “for _Natale_” (Christmas). She took out of the
_cassone_ a pair of high-heeled, pointed-toed boots--they would have
crippled her in a week--and a pair of American storm rubbers.
“The accursed ones of the Dogana forced me to pay three francs duty upon
these original shoes; in confidence between us two, I cannot wear them.”
“The _cioce_ are better for you. Where did these come from?”
“My husband, he sent them to me.”
“From Pittsbourgo?”
“_’Gnor, si_, he is a cutter of stone at that place.”
“Why are you not with him?”
“’_Gnor_, the great fear of the sea. Besides, Andrea is a good husband,
he sends me money every month from Pittsbourgo.”