was the only snob variety of the genus codger in Rome; they are rare
anywhere, the codger’s social aspect being generally mild and mildewed.
I once asked him what had brought him to Rome (he came here twenty-five
years ago with two marriageable daughters).
“The fact that it is respectable to be idle here, and that one finds the
best society.” He said “the best society” in the sort of voice with
which raw and crude converts mention the Madonna or one of what the
Romans call _i soliti santi_ (the same old saints). His daughter--she
married Prince Q----, is a particularly nice woman; the comfort the old
gentleman took in his grandchildren’s titles was pleasing to behold. At
fifty he sat solidly down to enjoy the pleasures of “good society,” and
the occupation of collecting engraved gems. That old law of
compensation, you know, which makes some men after an idle youth leap
with fiery ardor to embrace hard work, was reversed for him. Having
grubbed all his youth he had the luck (it is rare) to find out how much
fun there may be in play, after all!
I went to see the Princess Q---- soon after the old gentleman’s death.
She told me something of his last days. “The night before my father died
he made me promise for the twentieth time that I would send his body
home. I asked him why he was so set on the idea. He rose right up in bed
and said in a loud voice, ‘I can’t bear to think that on the last day I
might rise from the dead along with these damned Italians!’”
Wasn’t that a death-bed revelation for you? The old man had been a New
York newsboy, had gone West, made his pile in rum; then sunk the shop
for good and all. He never talked about his early life, or where he came
from; he bragged of his daughter’s fine acquaintances, of his
son-in-law’s manners--but when his hour was come, he wished to lie in
the consecrated ground of his native land!
Never shall I forget the only visit I ever received from the prince of
solitaries, poor old Galli, the mad painter. He came in with his
dauntless, threadbare air, made a sweeping bow, and paid me an elaborate
compliment. His business, however, was plainly not with me.
“I have come, Signorino Jacca, to ask the favor of a few old clothes.”
He said it in such a spirited fashion that we felt the favor was
conferred rather than asked. I wish I could make you see Galli! He has
the hall mark of genius stamped upon him. Eyes like live coals,
hair--when J. first remembers him blue-gray, now a rich silver--worn
long, growing in masses with big waves, like the head of Zeus at the
Vatican. He tries in every way to keep up the pace of his youth; instead
of walking he shambles along at a funny bear’s trot; “having less time
than I once had,” he said to J., “I cannot afford to walk slowly like
some people of my age, so I am obliged to run.”
Galli is a Milanese, a descendant of those blond barbarians from the
North, the Lunghe Barbe. There is something ardent and free about him,
a starriness of the eyes, a breezy, untrammelled quality of mind which
suggests some far-off Teutonic ancestor. Among the dead level of the
people one meets, Galli stands out a marked man. As to the madness--was
Ludwig of Bavaria really mad, or a poet born in the wrong place? Mad or
sane, Galli is interesting: once you recognize that a man cannot be both
ordinary and extraordinary, cannot possess common sense and uncommon
sense, the vagaries of genius cease to annoy!
Whenever I hear the artists talking of Galli, I listen and try to
remember what they say: some day his history must be written; the
material will be found in the memories of people who knew him, not “in
the files”; he is not one the journalists delight to honor.
No one seems to know Galli’s age. He might have been born in 1819--so
many remarkable people were born that year that I often wonder if there
is not something in astrology, after all. When he was young, Galli went
to England with good letters of introduction. He was soon spoken of as a
painter “with the right stuff in him--imagination, ideality, the
artistic temperament,” all the rest of it. As he was a well-bred man,
he had a social as well as an artistic success, and became a fashionable
portrait painter. He played his little part in the fascinating drama of
the London life of his day. It must have been a wonderful time, when all
that was best in the English race came to the surface. Sympathy for
Italy was at its height, the great scheme for the unification was
growing silently and strongly. England, the mighty ally, was helping
Italy prepare for the struggle. Looking back at the England of that day,
one seems to see a whole army of Raleighs spreading their cloaks before
the feet of the young Queen Victoria. All England seems to have shared
in the youth, the hope, the courage of the Queen. With Galli, the
romantic Italian, the universal enthusiasm became personal; he fell in
love, not with the sovereign, but with the woman, which makes all the
difference.
He began to neglect his work, to spend all his time and money in hansom
cabs, pursuing her whenever she went abroad. The police investigated his
case, found him to be harmless and respectable, were content to keep an
eye upon him, until that day when he tried to drive up to the private
entrance of Buckingham Palace where the Queen was living. That was going
too far even for the patience of Scotland Yard. Galli was arrested and
given twenty-four hours to get out of England or into Bedlam. He left
for the continent the same day, came to Rome, hired for his studio an
old building, once the orange house of the Palazzo Borghese. It is built
under a cliff, from the top of which ivy and _madre selva_ (mother of
the wood--we call it clematis) hang over in trailing masses. One day a
large snail from the ivy crawled through a broken pane of the window to
the studio wall, down the wall, and up again, leaving a damp, slimy
track which formed something like the letter V. A friend coming in
surprised Galli standing staring at the wall with open mouth and eyes.
“Why, man, what are you looking at?”
“At the letter.”
“What letter?”
“The royal letter V.”
“What an odd chance!”
“You call it chance”--he smiled mysteriously.
“What do you call it?”
“It is the sign.”
“_Che pazzia_ (What madness)! what do you believe that little animal to
be?”
“I believe what I believe, _amico mio_. The eyes of affection see what
other eyes cannot see. It is a miracle, if you will, not more wonderful
than others. The spirit of my august lady, the sovereign of England, has
taken the shape of _quella lumaca benedetta_ (that blessed snail)!”
Galli tamed the royal snail, kept it in cotton wool and rose-leaves, fed
it on tender green leaves till it died,--when he forgot the whole
matter.
Soon after J. came to Rome as an art student. Galli was “discovered” by
some of the Spanish artists, then the most powerful group of painters in
Rome. For the moment Galli’s only home was a large tree outside the
Porta Salaria. Some boards laid between the branches made his bed; he
shared the tree with a flock of friendly turkeys. He had been fairly
comfortable through the summer and autumn; with December came the fierce
_tramontana_, blowing away the leafy walls of his house. The
artists--they are the most charitable people in the world--clubbed
together, hired a room for Galli in the Via Flaminia--fancy the real old
Flaminian way--and fitted it up nicely as a bedroom and studio. One
bitter winter evening J. and Villegas--they also had studios in the Via
Flaminia--on their way home chanced to look up at his window. Outside on
an iron balcony stood Galli, with nothing on but a thin cotton
nightshirt.
“In the name of Bacchus, what are you doing?” roared the great Villegas,
who had borne a large share of the expense of rescuing Galli from the
turkey roost. Galli nodded, and smiled down upon them.
“_Ombre vivo_,” cried the fiery Spaniard, “go in, or you will take your
death.” Galli only smiled the more and shook his head. The two below
rushed upstairs and dragged him indoors.
“Don’t disturb yourselves, _amici miei_,” Galli explained, “my room, as
you perceive, is cold, my bed has no blankets; I find if I stand out on
the balcony in my shirt for a few moments, my room seems warm afterwards
by comparison.”
Not long after this, Galli came up to J.’s table one night at the Café
Greco (the haunt of artists). “Caro Signorino Jacca, you see many
Americani; they are all immensely rich, as is known to you. For
charity’s sake, sell a picture of mine to one of them.”
The hint was taken, a charming picture of Galli’s was unearthed (a small
Madonna); the purchaser, an American girl, found. The day after the sale
J. went to the Café Greco, where he knew he should find Galli, and with
the inexperience of youth handed him the price of the picture, one
hundred and fifty francs. If ever a poor painter-man needed one hundred
and fifty francs, J. says that it was Galli at that moment. His boots
were so broken that as he walked his toes came in view between the
uppers and the lowers with every step; his trousers were deeply fringed
about the ankle; his shirt was without a collar, he wore his inevitable
long overcoat--buttoned up to conceal what was _not_ under it--and a
shabby silk hat; whatever his fortunes he was never seen in any but a
top hat; J. thinks it was the last trace of the coxcombry of his London
youth.
“_Ecco il denaro_ (Here is the money)!” said J. Galli took it with a
gay, swaggering air:
“_Grazie tante sai? Ci vedremo, caro Jacca_ (So many thanks, till we
meet again).” With that he plunged across the street to the shop of the
King’s hatter opposite in the Corso, where he bought a silk hat of the
latest English model. He next trotted up to the Piazza di Spagna, got
into the first cab on the stand, and engaged all the other cabbies to
follow him: “Drive to the _tomba di Nerone_; you others, do me the favor
to follow.”
The _tomba di Nerone_ is a ruin outside the walls of Rome which the
archæologists say has nothing to do with Nero and never was a tomb.
After they had gone a short distance Galli cried, “Halt.” The procession
stopped short, Galli got out.
“What has happened, _padrone mio_?” asked the cabman.
“Nothing at all; you may now take your place at the end of the cue!” He
dismissed the man with a wave of the hand and got into the second cab.
Riding in this progressive fashion, by the time they reached the _tomba
di Nerone_, Galli had ridden by turn in all the carriages.
“With your help, my friends,” he said to the cabbies, “I will climb to
the top of the tomb;” two of them boosted him up. “If you will listen, I
will tell you some things about the great Nero you never heard before.
He was, after all, an artist; the historians have been too hard upon
him, as we artists ought not to forget.”
Perhaps Galli’s long speech glorifying Nero set the present fashion for
the whitewashing of Cæsars generally! The cabmen squatted round on their
hunkers, smoked their pipes and listened, for the enlightenment of
future _forestieri_--till Galli scrambled down from the rostrum, and
jumped into the first cab, crying,--
“_Andiamo!_ to the Piazza di Spagna, as we came!”
At the Café Greco that evening Galli, penniless but proud of his
adventure, borrowed of Signorino Jacca twenty centesimi (four cents) to
buy a piece of bread and a few pickled gherkins, which he brought back
in a piece of paper and munched contentedly for his supper.
Remembering Galli’s talent for likenesses, J. once persuaded a pretty
young American girl to sit to him for her portrait. When they arrived at
the studio for the first sitting, the room was so littered with rubbish
that there was hardly space to turn round; tiers of vile-smelling old
petroleum cases were piled against the wall. “What on earth have you got
in those boxes, Galli?” J. demanded.
“They contain my invention,” said Galli.
“May one ask its nature?”
“_Altro!_ it is the model of a bridge to cross the Atlantic from Italy
to the United States.”
It was a cold day; to warm the room for his sitter, Galli had picked up
a few bits of charcoal, which smouldered in a frying-pan without a
handle (his only stove) in the middle of the studio. While Galli was
finding a chair for the lady, J. discovered seven rat traps, each
inhabited by a large family of mice.
“They disturbed me so much, scrabbling about and gnawing things,” Galli
explained, “that I was obliged to catch them.”
“If the mice disturb you, why do you keep them? You have not the heart
to kill them? Tell the janitor to put the traps in a pail of water; it
will be over in a minute,” said the practical American girl.
“Drown them--my only companions? See--their beautiful little ears are
veined like the petal of a flower, look at their bright eyes, their dear
little feet.” He held the cage up to the light. “They know me, they
depend upon me for their food!”
He took half a roll--J. says it was half of Galli’s own breakfast--from
his pocket and began crumbling it into one of the traps.
“Show us what you have been painting lately, Signor Galli,” said the
young lady. The old man moved his easel into the light.
“This is my latest picture.”
J. says that American girl showed real breeding; she neither laughed nor
cried at the thing Galli uncovered. If it was not a picture it was the
work of a man of rare imagination. The divine spark had kindled at a
moment when no tools were at hand. His credit on that almost
inexhaustible fund, the generosity of his brother artists, had long been
overdrawn. His friends were tired of supplying canvas, paints, brushes.
Galli lacking everything, possessed only of the idea, could not rest
till it was expressed. He had cut off the tail of his gray flannel
shirt, stretched it for a canvas, found a piece of old blue cardboard,
pasted it on for the sky; he had dried lettuce leaves and applied them
for the middle distance, and used for the detail of the foreground bits
of dried water-melon rind and other such rubbish. The “picture” was a
thing to draw tears from a stone!
The rumor of the invention in the petroleum boxes suggested to some of
the younger artists a plan by which fresh interest might be aroused for
Galli’s benefit. They asked him to prepare a lecture explaining the
theory of his bridge. Tickets were sold and quite a large audience
gathered at the Artists’ Club to hear him. When he appeared some of the
more boisterous spirits began to guy him; this nettled the old fellow:
“You perhaps think this invention of mine an impossibility,” he began.
“To show you how simple it is to get to America without going on one of
those abominable steamers, I will explain to you how to get to the moon.
You all know that the moon is _una femina_ (a female)? Well, all females
are devoured by curiosity. Only let all the people upon the earth
assemble together in one place, and the moon will observe that something
out of the common is going on down here: she will approach nearer and
nearer to see what it is all about, until she gets so near that all we
shall have to do is to jump over on her and then she will not be able to
get away.”
* * * * *
[Galli’s last commission was to decorate one of the cheap Roman cafés.
Villegas says that it was a wonderful piece of work, full of power and
originality. Not long after it was finished some smug swine of a painter
(one of those poor craftsmen who have cheapened the name of Italian art)
persuaded the proprietor to let him paint out Galli’s work and
redecorate the café with his own vulgar trash. This broke the old man’s
heart; soon after he was found dead in his studio lying between two
chairs. It was inevitable that he should come to some such end, and a
thousand times better for him to drop in harness than to wear out the
years in idleness. Unlike my friend, the newsboy-rumseller-grandfather
of princes, _his_ only joy was in labor, in striving to express to
others the beauty that possessed his soul. Is it not by this sign that
the elect are known?]
IX
BLACK MAGIC AND WHITE--WITCH’S NIGHT
PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, March 16, 1899.
Letters from Maine and New Hampshire give accounts of dreadful freshets
and blizzards. We read them with some surprise, and then go up to the
terrace and pick our pansies and violets. We have some fine spirea and
lilacs coming on fast! The wall flowers are already in bloom, and the
roses make occasional little gifts, but it is far too early for these
dear ones to give their perfect blossoms. Rose week--rose madness--in
Rome comes at the end of April.
The strangest thing about life in Rome is that you not only do as the
Romans do, but end by thinking as the Romans think, feeling as the
Romans feel! Take, for example, the feeling most of the foreign
residents have about the evil eye, the _malocchio_ or _jettatura_, as it
is indifferently called. I never knew an Italian who did not hold to
this superstition more or less. Americans who have lived long in Rome
either reluctantly admit that “there does seem to be something in it,”
or if they are Roman born, quietly accept it as one of those things in
heaven and earth that philosophy fails to take account of. In some
things the Italian is free from superstition compared with the Celt or
the Scot: for instance, the fear of ghosts or spirits is so rare that I
have never met with it; on the other hand, the belief in the value of
dreams as guides to action is deep rooted and widespread. The dreambook
in some families is hardly second in importance to the book of prayer.
The Italian’s eminently practical nature makes him utilize his dreams in
“playing the _lotto_,” as the buying of lottery tickets is called. To
dream of certain things indicates that you will be lucky and should
play. The choice of the number is the chief preoccupation of the
hardened lottery player. It is decided by the oddest chance,--the number
on a banknote which one has lost and found again, the number of a cab
which has brought one home from some delightful festivity. The number
must always be associated with something lucky. I remember in Venice
once calling on a friend who lives in a noble old palace on the Canale
Grande. The _pali_, the dark posts rising out of the green water for
the mooring of gondolas, bear the heraldic colors of the owner of the
palace, and the doge’s cap, showing that the family gave a doge to
Venice. Stepping from my gondola to the water-worn marble stair, I was
helped by one of the servants, an old man with the suave, sympathetic
manners that make the Italians the best servants in the world. I put him
down as a majordomo of the old school whom my friends probably had taken
over with the palace, the library, and the historic murder that goes
with them. I had brought some flowers, which he insisted upon carrying.
He led the way across a square courtyard to an outer stairway with a
wonderful carved marble balustrade, lions rampant at the top and bottom.
Suddenly he stopped and whispered to me:
“Signora,--a thousand excuses for the liberty,--but will you have the
inexpressible gentility to tell me your age?”
The question was so startling that he got the right answer before my
inevitable counter-question, “Why do you wish to know?” which he
pretended not to hear, drowned in a flood of gratitude.
“You have conferred an immense benefit on me. The signora is expecting
you.”
He had my wrap off and the drawing-room door open in a twinkling. That
was not fair play; he had his answer: I would have mine. I put my
question to his mistress. She laughed indulgently.
“Beppino is up to his old tricks. I told him this morning I was
expecting a lady he did not know; he was on the lookout for you. When a
stranger comes to the house for the first time it is the greatest
possible luck to play in the _lotto_ the figures which make up his age.”
Our servants all play regularly, sometimes winning small sums, always
imagining that they will win the _quaterno_. The lottery and the _Monte
di pietà_--somehow one associates them together--are now under
government control, as they were formerly under the control of the
Church. It is assumed as a foregone conclusion that men will gamble,
that men will pawn their goods; therefore it is expedient that these
inevitable concomitants of city life should be administered by the
government, in order that the accruing profits should return to the
people by helping to pay the expenses of their government. The lottery
always appears to me like a tax offered to the citizens in the form of a
gilded pill.
The _Monte di pietà_ seems to be a really beneficent institution; it is
well administered, the percentage charged on the money loaned being as
low as is practicable. Poor old Nena’s coral earrings and gold beads
live there chronically, only appearing upon her small person
periodically on “feast” days. Several times webs of fine linen,
silverware, and other household furnishings have been offered me at so
low a price by one of our clients (we use the old Roman term for the
army of hangers-on which has grown up about us) that I feared to buy
them lest I should be purchasing stolen goods. On investigation I found
the woman’s business was to buy unredeemed pledges at the regular sales
of the Monte, and to hawk them about to private customers. After that I
had not the heart to buy anything she offered, it seemed like building
our house of the driftwood of despair. The Monte is a huge gray palace
occupying a whole square behind the Palazzo Santacroce. Over the main
entrance hangs a life-sized crucifix. The institution was founded in the
year 1539 and has been in operation ever since.
The evolution of Christian out of pagan Rome is not more interesting
than the evolution still going on of Rome the modern capital out of that
picturesque, mediæval Rome of the “forties,” which my mother has
described to me so vividly that it is as if I myself had seen it.
Since we have been here, the old meek horse-cars have been taken off,
and horrible “electrics” whiz by our door and stop at the corner of the
Piazza of St. Peter’s. And--even worse, I am almost afraid to write it
to you--we have a telephone!
A telephone in the Eternal City! In the beginning I was as much shocked
by the idea as you can be. The first conversation over the wire consoled
me. Ice-chests, electric cars, and telephones only bring home more
strongly the feeling that life in Rome is modern, mediæval, and pagan,
all at the same time; it is all here in strata, like the rubbish Signor
Boni is excavating from the Roman Forum. When you first come here you
assume that you must burrow about in ruins and prowl in museums to get
back to the days of Numa Pompilius or Mark Antony. It is not necessary;
you only have to live, and the common happenings of daily life--yes,
even the trolley car and your bicycle--carry you back in turn to the
Dark Ages, to the early Christians, even to prehistoric Rome!
The day our telephone was installed I was called by the ding-a-ling of
the bell, and “_centrale_” put me in communication, not only with our
friend, Mrs. Z----, but with the Rome of Horace and the witch Canidia as
well.
“Can you come to dinner next Monday?” Mrs. Z---- began.
“We will come with leaps and shrieks of joy.”
“Wait; do not accept till you hear who else is coming. We are giving the
dinner in honor of M. de Gooch.”
“So much the better. We like to meet distinguished Frenchmen.”
“You are sure you do not mind meeting this particular Frenchman?”
“Why in the name of common sense should we mind?”
“Well, you know what they say about him?”
“Yes.”
“And you are not afraid? I am positively grateful to you. We are having
the hardest time to fill the eight places at the table.”
“What particular variety of heathen are you inviting?”
“American.”
That afternoon we had a visit from an American gentleman, a friend of
ours and of the Z----’s.
“Shall we meet next Monday at the Z----’s dinner?” I asked in the
course of conversation.
“No, they were good enough to invite me, but I got out of it.”
I stared at him--he is one of the Z----’s greatest friends.
“Yes, the fact is I will not go where I have to meet that man.”
“You? _you_ believe that M. de Gooch has the evil eye?”
“It is all very well for you to look scornful! Just wait a little. I
used to take your point of view, but so many uncomfortable things
happened that I now avoid the man like the plague.”
“What sort of uncomfortable things?”