Dearest: We were to have gone down with the rest into Florence
yesterday: but soft miles of Italy gleamed too invitingly away on our
right, and I saw Arthur's eyes hungry with the same far-away wish. So I
said "Prato," and he ran up to the fattore's and secured a wondrous
shandry-dan with just space enough between its horns to toss the two of
us in the direction where we would go. Its gaunt framework was painted
of a bright red, and our feet had only netting to rest on: so
constructed, the creature was most vital and light of limb, taking every
rut on the road with flea-like agility. Oh, but it was worth it!
We had a drive of fourteen miles through hills and villages, and
castellated villas with gardens shut in by formidably high walls--always,
a charm: a garden should always have something of the jealous seclusion of
a harem. I am getting Italian landscape into my system, and enjoy it more
and more.
Prato is a little cathedral town, very like the narrow and tumble-down
parts of Florence, only more so. The streets were a seething caldron of
cattle-market when we entered, which made us feel like a tea-cup in a
bull-ring (or is it thunderstorm?) as we drove through needle's-eye ways
bristling with agitated horns.
The cathedral is little and good: damaged, of course, wherever the last
three centuries have laid hands on it. At the corner of the west front
is an out-door pulpit beautifully put on with a mushroom hood over its
head. The main lines of the interior are finely severe, either quite
round or quite flat, and proportions good always. An upholstered priest
coming out to say mass is generally a sickening sight, so wicked and
ugly in look and costume. The best-behaved people are the low-down
beggars, who are most decoratively devotional.
We tried to model our exit on a brigand-beggar who came in to ask
permission to murder one of his enemies. He got his request granted at
one of the side-altars (some strictly local Madonna, I imagine), and his
gratitude as he departed was quite touching. Having studiously copied
his exit, we want to know whom we shall murder to pay ourselves for our
trouble.
It amuses me to have my share of driving over these free and easy and
very narrow highroads. But A. has to do the collision-shouting and the
cries of "Via!"--the horse only smiles when he hears me do it.
Also did I tell you that on Saturday we two walked from here over to
Fiesole--six miles there, and ten back: for why?--because we chose to go
what Arthur calls "a bee-line across country," having thought we had
sighted a route from the top of Fiesole. But in the valley we lost it,
and after breaking our necks over precipices and our hearts down
cul-de-sacs that led nowhere, and losing all the ways that were pointed
out to us, for lack of a knowledge of the language, we came out again
into view of Florence about half a mile nearer than when we started and
proportionately far away from home. When he had got me thoroughly
foot-sore, Arthur remarked complacently, "The right way to see a country
is to lose yourself in it!" I didn't feel the truth of it then: but
applied to other things I perceive its wisdom. Dear heart, where I have
lost myself, what in all the world do I know so well as you?
Your most lost and loving.