The pianoforte virtuoso, Richard Burmeister, and one of Liszt's genuine
"pet" pupils, advised me to look at Liszt's hotel in the Vicolo Alibert,
Rome. It is still there, an old-fashioned place, Hotel Alibert, up an
alley-like street off the Via Babuino, near the Piazza del Popolo. But
it is shorn of its interest for melomaniacs, as the view commanding the
Pincio no longer exists. One night sufficed me, though the manager
smilingly assured me that he could show the room wherein Liszt slept and
studied. A big warehouse blocks the outlook on the Pincio; indeed the
part of the hotel Liszt inhabited no longer stands. But at Tivoli, at
the Villa d'Este, with its glorious vistas of the Campagna and Rome,
there surely would be memories of the master. The Sunday I took the
steam-tramway was a threatening one; before Bagni was reached a solid
sheet of water poured from an implacable leaden sky. It was not a
cheerful prospect for a Liszt-hunter. Arrived at Tivoli, I waited in the
Caffe d'Italia hoping for better weather. An old grand pianoforte, the
veriest rattletrap stood in the eating salle; but upon its keys had
rested many times the magic-breeding fingers of Liszt. Often, with a
band of students or with guests he would walk down from the villa and
while waiting for their carriages he would jestingly sweep the
keyboard. At the Villa d'Este itself the cypresses, cascades, terraces,
and mysterious avenues of green were enveloped in a hopeless fog. It was
the mistiest spot I ever visited. Heaven and earth, seemingly, met in
fluid embrace to give me a watery welcome. Where was Liszt's abode is a
Marianite convent. I was not permitted to visit his old room which is
now the superior's. It was at the top of the old building, for wherever
Liszt lived he enjoyed a vast landscape. I could discover but one person
who remembered the Abbate; the concierge. And his memories were scanty.
I wandered disconsolately through the rain, my mood splenetic. So much
for fame. I bitterly reflected in the melancholy, weedy, moss-infested
walks of the garden.
As I attempted to point out to our little party the particular window
from which Liszt saw the miraculous Italian world, I stepped on a slimy
green rock and stretched my length in the humid mud. There was a deep, a
respectful silence as I was helped to my feet--the gravity of the
surroundings, the solemnity of our recollections choked all levity;
though I saw signs of impending apoplexy on several faces. To relieve
the strain I sternly bade our guide retire to an adjacent bosky retreat
and there roar to his heart's content. He did. So did we all. The spell
broken we returned to the "Sirene" opposite the entrance to the famous
Tivoli water-falls and there with Chianti and spaghetti tried to forget
the morning's disappointments. But even there sadness was invoked by the
sight of a plaster bust of Liszt lying forlorn in the wet grass. The
head waiter tried to sell it for twenty liri; but it was too big to
carry; besides its nose was missing. He said that the original was
somewhere in Tivoli.
Sgambati in Rome keeps green the memory of the master in his annual
recitals; but of the churchly compositions no one I encountered had ever
heard. At Santa Francesca Romana, adjoining the Forum, Liszt once took
up his abode; there I saw in the cloister an aged grand pianoforte upon
which he had played in a concert given at the Church of Santa Maria
Maggiore many years ago. About an hour from Rome is the Oratory of the
Madonna del Rosario on Monte Mario. There Liszt lived and composed in
1863. But his sacred music is never sung in any of the churches; the
noble Graner Mass is still unheard in Rome. Even the Holy Father refers
to the dead Hungarian genius as, "il compositore Tedesco!" It was
different in the days of Pius IX, when Liszt's music was favoured at the
Vatican. Is it not related that Pio Nono bestowed upon the great pianist
the honour of hearing his confession at the time he became an abbe? And
did he not after four or five hours of worldly reminiscences, cry out
despairingly to his celebrated penitent:
"Basta, Caro Liszt! Your memory is marvellous. Now go play the remainder
of your sins upon the pianoforte." They say that Liszt's playing on
that occasion was simply enchanting--and he did not cease until far into
the night.
Liszt's various stopping-places in and around Rome were: Vicolo de Greci
(No. 43), Hotel Alibert, Vicolo Alibert, opposite Via del Babuino; Villa
d'Este with Cardinal Hohenlohe, also at the Vatican; in 1866 at Monte
Mario, Kloster Madonna del Rosario, Kloster Santa Francesca Romana, the
Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein first resided in the Via del Babuino, later
(1881) at the Hotel Malaro. Monsignor Kennedy of the American College
shows the grand piano upon which Liszt once played there.
Perhaps Rome, at a superficial glance, still affects the American as it
did Taine a half century ago, as a provincial city, sprawled to
unnecessary lengths over its seven hills, and, despite the smartness of
its new quarters, far from suggesting a Weltstadt, as does, for example,
bustling, shining Berlin or mundane Paris. But not for her superb and
imperial indifference are the seductive spells of operatic Venice or the
romantic glamour of Florence. She can proudly say "La ville c'est moi!"
She is not a city, but the city of cities, and it needs but twenty-four
hours' submergence in her atmosphere to make one a slave at her eternal
chariot wheels. The New York cockney, devoted to his cult of the
modern--hotels, baths, cafes and luxurious theatres--soon wearies of
Rome. He prefers Paris or Naples. Hasn't some one said, "See Naples and
die--of its smells?" As an inexperienced traveller I know of no city on
the globe where you formulate an expression of like or dislike so
quickly. You are Rome's foe or friend within five minutes after you
leave its dingy railway station. And it is hardly necessary to add that
its newer quarters, pretentious, cold, hard and showy, are quite
negligible. One does not go to Rome to seek the glazed comforts of
Brooklyn.
The usual manner of approaching the Holy Father is to go around to the
American Embassy and harry the good-tempered secretary into a promise of
an invitation card, that is, if you are not acquainted in clerical
circles. I was not long in Rome before I discovered that both Mgr.
Kennedy and Mgr. Merry del Val were at Frascati enjoying a hard-earned
vacation. So I dismissed the ghost of the idea and pursued my pagan
worship at the Museo Vaticano. Then the heavy hoofs of three hundred
pilgrims invaded the peace of the quiet Hotel Fischer up in the Via
Sallustiana. They had come from Cologne and the vicinity of the Upper
Rhine, bearing Peter's pence, wearing queer clothes and good-natured
smiles. They tramped the streets and churches of Rome, did these
commonplace, pious folk. They burrowed in the Catacombs and ate their
meals, men and women alike, with such a hearty gnashing of teeth, such a
rude appetite, that one envied their vitality, their faith, their
wholesale air of having accomplished the conquest of Rome.
Their schedule, evidently prepared with great forethought and one that
went absolutely to pieces when put to the test of practical operation,
was wrangled over at each meal, where the Teutonic clans foregathered in
full force. The third day I heard of a projected audience at the
Vatican. These people had come to Rome to see the Pope. Big-boned and
giantlike Monsignor Pick visited the hotel daily, and once after I
saw him in conference with Signor Fischer I asked him if it were
possible----
"Of course," responded the wily Fischer, "anything is possible in Rome."
Wear evening dress? Nonsense! That was in the more exacting days of Leo
XIII. The present Pope is a democrat. He hates vain show. Perhaps he has
absorbed some of the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to seeing evening dress on a
male during daylight. But the ladies wear veils. All the morning of
October 5 the hotel was full of eager Italians selling veils to the
German ladies.
Carriages blocked the streets and almost stretched four square around
the Palazzo Margherita. There was noise. There were explosive sounds
when bargains were driven. Then, after the vendors of saints' pictures,
crosses, rosary beads--chiefly gentlemen of Oriental persuasion, comical
as it may seem--we drove off in high feather nearly four hundred strong.
I had secured from Monsignor Pick through the offices of my amiable host
a parti-hued badge with a cross and the motto, "Coeln--Rom., 1905,"
which, interpreted, meant "Cologne--Rome." I felt like singing "Nach
Rom," after the fashion of the Wagnerians in act II of Tannhaeuser, but
contented myself with abusing my coachman for his slow driving. It was
all as exciting as a first night at the opera.
The rendezvous was the Campo Santo dei Tedeschi, which, with its
adjoining church of Santa Maria della Pieta, was donated to the Germans
by Pius VI as a burying-ground. There I met my companions of the
dining-room, and after a stern-looking German priest with the bearing of
an officer interrogated me I was permitted to join the pilgrims. What at
first had been a thing of no value was now become a matter of life and
death.
After standing above the dust and buried bones of illustrious and
forgotten Germans we went into the church and were cooled by an address
in German from a worthy cleric whose name I cannot recall. I remember
that he told us that we were to meet the Vicar of Christ, a man like
ourselves. He emphasised strangely, so it appeared to me, the humanity
of the great prelate before whom we were bidden that gloomy autumnal
afternoon. And then, after intoning a Te Deum, we filed out in pairs,
first the women, then the men, along the naked stones until we reached
the end of the Via delle Fundamenta. The pilgrims wore their everyday
clothes. One even saw the short cloak and the green jaegerhut. We left
our umbrellas at a garderobe; its business that day was a thriving one.
We mounted innumerable staircases. We entered the Sala Regia, our
destination--I had hoped for the more noble and spacious Sala Ducale.
Three o'clock was the hour set for the audience; but His Holiness was
closeted with a French ecclesiastical eminence and there was a delay of
nearly an hour. We spent it in staring at the sacred and profane
frescoes of Daniele da Volterra, Vasari, Salviati and Zucchari staring
at each other. The women, despite their Italian veils, looked hopelessly
Teutonic, the men clumsy and ill at ease. There were uncouth and
guttural noises. Conversation proceeded amain. Some boasted of being
heavily laden with rosaries and crucifixes, for all desired the blessing
of the Holy Father. One man, a young German-American priest from the
Middle West, almost staggered beneath a load of pious emblems. The
guilty feelings which had assailed me as I passed the watchful gaze of
the Swiss Guards began to wear off. The Sala Regia bore an unfamiliar
aspect, though I had been haunting it and the adjacent Sistine Chapel
daily for the previous month. An aura, coming I knew not whence,
surrounded us. The awkward pilgrims, with their daily manners, almost
faded away, and when at last a murmur went up, "The Holy Father! the
Holy Father! He approaches!" a vast sigh of relief was exhaled. The
tension had become unpleasant.
We were ranged on either side, the women to the right, the men to the
left of the throne, which was an ordinary looking tribune. It must be
confessed that later the fair sex were vigorously elbowed to the rear.
In America the women would have been well to the front, but the dear old
Fatherland indulges in no such new fangled ideas of sex equality. So the
polite male pilgrims by superior strength usurped all the good places. A
tall, handsome man in evening clothes--solitary in this respect,
with the exception of the Pope's body suite--patrolled the floor,
obsequiously followed by the Suiss in their hideous garb--a murrain on
Michelangelo's taste if he designed such hideous uniforms! I fancied
that he was no less than a prince of the royal blood, so masterly was
his bearing. When I discovered that he was the Roman correspondent of a
well-known North German gazette my respect for the newspaper man abroad
was vastly increased. The power of the press----!
"His Holiness comes!" was announced, and this time it was not a false
alarm. From a gallery facing the Sistine Chapel entered the inevitable
Swiss Guards; followed the officers of the Papal household, grave and
reverend seigniors; a knot of ecclesiastics, all wearing purple;
Monsignor Pick, the Papal prothonotary and a man of might in business
affairs; then a few stragglers--anonymous persons, stout, bald,
officials--and finally Pope Pius X.
He was attired in pure white, even to the sash that compassed his plump
little figure. A cross depended from his neck. He immediately and in
the most matter of fact fashion held out his hand to be kissed. I noted
the whiteness of the nervous hand tendered me, bearing the ring of
Peter, a large, square emerald surrounded by diamonds. Though seventy,
the Pope looks ten years younger. He is slightly under medium height.
His hair is white, his complexion dark red, veined, and not very
healthy. He seems to need fresh air and exercise; the great gardens of
the Vatican are no compensation for this man of sorrows, homesick for
the sultry lagoons and stretches of gleaming waters in his old diocese
of Venice. If the human in him could call out it would voice Venice,
not the Vatican. The flesh of his face is what the painters call
"ecclesiastical flesh," large in grain. His nose broad, unaristocratic,
his brows strong and harmonious. His eyes may be brown, but they seemed
black and brilliant and piercing. He moved with silent alertness. An
active, well-preserved man, though he achieved the Biblical three-score
and ten in June, 1905. I noted, too, with satisfaction, the shapely
ears, artistic ears, musical ears, their lobes freely detached. A
certain resemblance to Pius IX there is; he is not so amiable as was
that good-tempered Pope who was nicknamed by his intimate friend, the
Abbe Liszt, _Pia Nina_, because of his musical proclivities. Altogether,
I found another than the Pope I had expected. This, then, was that
exile--an exile, yet in his native land; a prisoner in sight of the city
of which he is the spiritual ruler; a prince over all principalities
and dominions, yet withal a feeble old man, whose life might be
imperilled if he ventured into the streets of Rome.
The Pope had now finished his circle of pilgrims and stood at the other
end of the Sala. With him stood his chamberlains and ecclesiastics.
Suddenly a voice from the balcony, which I saw for the first time, bade
us come nearer. I was thunder-struck. This was back to the prose of life
with a vengeance. We obeyed instructions. A narrow aisle was made, with
the Pope in the middle perspective. Then the voice, which I discovered
by this time issued from the mouth of a bearded person behind a huge,
glittering camera, cried out in peremptory and true photographer
style:----
"One, two, three! Thank your Holiness."
And so we were photographed. In the Vatican and photographed! Old Rome
has her surprises for the patronising visitors from the New World. It
was too business-like for me, and I would have gone away, but I
couldn't, as the audience had only begun. The Pope went to his throne
and received the heads of the pilgrims. A certain presumptuous American
told him that the church musical revolution was not much appreciated in
America. He also asked, rash person that he was, why an example was not
set at St. Peter's itself, where the previous Sunday he had heard, and
to his horror, a florid mass by Milozzi, as florid and operatic as any
he had been forced to endure in New York before the new order of
things. A discreet poke in the ribs enlightened him to the fact that at
a general audience such questions are not in good taste.
The Pope spoke a few words in a ringing barytone voice. He said that he
loved Germany, loved its Emperor; that every morning his second prayer
was for Germany--his first, was it for the hundredth wandering sheep of
the flock, France? That he did not explain. He blessed us, and his
singing voice proved singularly rich, resonant and pure in intonation
for an old man. Decidedly Pius X is musical; he plays the pianoforte it
is said, with taste. The pilgrims thundered the Te Deum a second time,
with such pious fervour that the venerable walls of the Sala Regia shook
with their lung vibrations. Then the Papal suite followed the sacred
figure out of the chamber and the buzzing began. The women wanted to
know--and indignant were their inflections--why a certain lady attired
in scarlet, hat and all, was permitted within the sacred precincts. The
men hurried, jostling each other, for their precious umbrellas. The
umbrella in Germany is the symbol of the mediaeval sword. We broke ranks
and tumbled into the now sunny daylight, many going on the wings of
thirst to the Piazza Santi Apostoli, which, notwithstanding its
venerable name, has amber medicine for parched German gullets.
Pius X is a democratic man. He may be seen by the faithful at any time.
He has organised a number of athletic clubs for young Romans, taking a
keen interest in their doings. He is an impulsive man and has many
enemies in his own household. He has expressed his intention of ridding
Rome of its superfluous monks, those unattached ones who make life a
burden by their importunings and beggaries in Rome.
His personal energy was expressed while I was in Rome by his very
spirited rebuke to some members of the athletic clubs at an audience in
the Vatican. There was some disorder while the Pontiff spoke. He fixed a
noisy group with an angry glance:--"Those who do not wish to hear
me--well, there is the open door!"
Another incident, and one I neglected to relate in its proper place;--As
Pius proceeded along the line of kneeling figures during the German
audience he encountered a little, jolly-looking priest, evidently known
to him. A smile, benign, witty, delicately humourous, appeared on his
lips. For a moment he seemed more Celt than Latin. There was no hint of
the sardonic smile which is said to have crossed the faces of Roman
augurs. It was merely a friendly recognition tempered by humility, as if
he meant to ask:--"Why do you need my blessing, friend?" And it was the
most human smile that I would imagine worn by a Pope. It told me more of
his character than even did his meek and resigned pose when the official
photographer of the Vatican called out his sonorous "Una, due, tre!"