About the same hour of the same evening which we have just chronicled, a
group of persons sat under some spreading chestnut-trees beside a
brawling little rivulet at the Bagni de Lucca. They were travellers,
chance acquaintances thrown together by the accidents of the road, and
entertained for each other those varied sentiments of like and dislike,
those mingled distrusts, suspicions, and beliefs, which, however
unconsciously to ourselves, are part of the education travelling
impresses, and which, when long persevered in, make up that acute but
not always amiable individual we call “an old traveller.”
We are not about to present them all to our reader, and will only beg to
introduce to his notice a few of the notabilities then present. _Place
aux dames!_ then; and, first of all, we beg attention to the dark-eyed,
dark-haired, and very delicately featured woman, who, in half-mourning,
and with a pretty but fantastically costumed girl beside her, is working
at an embroidery-frame close to the river. She is a Mrs. Penthony
Morris, the wife or the widow--both opinions prevail--of a Captain
Penthony Morris, killed in a duel, or in India, or alive in the
Marshalsea, or at Baden-Baden, as may be. She is striking-looking,
admirably dressed, has a most beautiful foot, as you may see where it
rests upon the rail of the chair placed in front of her, and is,
altogether, what that very smartly dressed, much-beringed, and essenced
young gentleman near her has already pronounced her, “a stunning fine
woman.” He is a Mr. Mosely, one of those unhappy young Londoners whose
family fame is ever destined to eclipse their own gentility, for he is
immediately recognized, and drawlingly do men inquire some twenty times
a day, “Ain't he a son of Trip and Mosely's, those fellows in Bond
Street?” Unhappy Trip and Mosely! why have you rendered yourselves so
great and illustrious? why have your tasteful devices in gauze, your
“sacrifices” in challis, your “last new things in grenadine,” made such
celebrity around you, that Tom Mosely, “out for his travels,” can no
more escape the shop than if he were languishing at a customer over a
“sweet article in white tarlatan”? In the two comfortable armchairs side
by side sit two indubitable specimens, male and female, of the Anglo-
Saxon family,--Mr. Morgan, that florid man, wiping his polished bald
head, and that fat lady fanning with all her might. Are they not
English? They are “out,” and, judging from their recorded experiences,
only dying to be “in” again. “Such a set of cheating, lying, lazy set of
rascals are these Italians! Independence, sir; don't talk to me of that
humbug! What they want is English travellers to fleece and English women
to marry.” Near to these, at full length, on two chairs, one of which
reclines against a tree at an angle of about forty degrees, sits our
Yankee acquaintance, whom we may as well present by his name, Leonidas
Shaver Quackinboss; he is smoking a “Virginian” about the size of a
marshal's bâton, and occasionally sipping at a “cobbler,” which with
much pains he has compounded for his own drinking. Various others of
different ranks and countries are scattered about, and in the centre of
all, at a small table with a lamp, sits a short, burly figure, with a
strange mixture of superciliousness and drollery in his face, as though
there were a perpetual contest in his nature whether he would be
impertinent or amusing. This was Mr. Gorman O'Shea, Member of Parliament
for Inchabogue, and for three weeks a Lord of the Treasury when
O'Connell was king.
Mr. O'Shea is fond of public speaking. He has a taste for proposing, or
seconding, or returning thanks that verges on a passion, so that even in
a private dinner with a friend he has been known to arise and address
his own companion in a set speech, adorned with all the graces and
flowers of post-prandial eloquence. Upon the present occasion he has
been, to his great delight, deputed to read aloud to the company from
that magic volume by which the Continent is expounded to Englishmen, and
in whose pages they are instructed in everything, from passports to
pictures, and drilled in all the mysteries of money, posting, police
regulations, domes, dinners, and Divine service by a Clergyman of the
Established Church. In a word, he is reciting John Murray.
To understand the drift of the present meeting, we ought to mention
that, in the course of a conversation started that day at the _table
d'hote_ it was suggested that such of the company as felt disposed might
make an excursion to Marlia to visit a celebrated villa there, whose
gardens alone were amongst the great sights of Northern Italy. All had
heard of this charming residence; views of it had been seen in every
print-shop. It had its historical associations from a very early period.
There were chambers where murders had been committed, conspiracies held,
confederates poisoned. King and Kaiser had passed the night there; all
of which were duly and faithfully chronicled in “John,” and impressively
recited by Mr. Gorman O'Shea in the richest accents of his native Doric.
“There you have it now,” said he, as he closed the volume; “and I will
say, it has n't its equal anywhere for galleries, terraces, carved
architraves, stuccoed ceilings, and frescos, and all the other
balderdash peculiar to these places.”
“Oh, Mr. O'Shea, what profanation!” interposed Mrs. Morris; “walls
immortalized by Giotto and Cimabue!”
“Have n't they got stunning names of their own?” broke in Quackinboss.
“That's one of the smallest dodges to secure fame. You must be something
out of the common. There was a fellow up at Syracuse townland, Measles,
North Carolina, and his name was Flay Harris; they called him Flea--”
“That ceiling of the great hall was a work of Guido's, you said?”
inquired Mrs. Morris.
“A pupil of Guido's, a certain Simone Affretti, who afterwards made the
designs for the Twelve Apostles in the window of the chapter-room at
Sienna,” read out Mr. O'Shea.
“Who can vouch for one word of all that, sir?” burst in Mr. Morgan, with
a choleric warmth. “Who is to tell me, sir, that you did n't write that,
or Peter Noakes, or John Murray himself, if there be such a man.”
“I can vouch for the last,” said a pale, gentle-looking young fellow,
who was arranging the flies in a fishing-book under a tree at a little
distance. “If it will relieve you from any embarrassments on the score
of belief, I can assist you so far.”
If there was a faint irony in this speech, the mild look of the speaker
and his softened accents made it seem of the very faintest, and so even
the bluff Mr. Morgan himself appeared to acknowledge.
“As you say so, Mr. Layton, I will consent to suppose there is such a
man; not that the fact, in the slightest degree, touches my original
proposition.”
“Certainly not, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan, in a thick voice, like one
drowning.
“But if you doubt Guido, you may doubt Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo,”
burst in Mrs. Morris, with a holy terror in her voice.
“Well, ma'am, I'm capable of all that--and worse.”
What that “worse” was there is no saying, though possibly Mr. Mosely was
trying to guess at it in the whisper he ventured to Mrs. Morris, and
which made that lady smile incredulously.
“I now, sir, rise to put the original motion,” said O'Shea, assuming
that parliamentary tone which scandal pretended he displayed everywhere
but in the House; “is it the opinion of this committee that we should
all go and visit the Villa Caprini?”
“Are we quite sure it is to be seen?” interposed Mr. Layton; “it may be
occupied, and by persons who have no fancy to receive strangers.”
“The observation strikes me as singularly narrow and illiberal, sir,”
burst in Morgan, with warmth. “Are we of the nineteenth century to be
told that any man--I don't care how he calls himself--has a vested right
in the sight or inspection of objects devised and designed and completed
centuries before he was born?”
“Well put, Tom,--remarkably well put,” smothered out Mrs. Morgan.
“Will you say, sir,” assumed he, thus cheered on to victory,--“will you
say, sir, that if these objects--frescos, bas-reliefs, or whatever other
name you give them--have the humanizing influence you assume for them,--
which, by the way, I am quite ready to dispute at another opportunity
with you or that other young gentleman yonder, whose simpering sneer
would seem to disparage my sentiment--”
“If you mean me, sir,” took up Mr. Mosely, “I was n't so much as
attending to one word you said.”
“No, Tom, certainly not,” burst in Mrs. Morgan, answering with energy
some sudden ejaculated purpose of her wrathy spouse.
“I simply meant to say,” interposed Layton, mildly, “that such a visit
as we propose might be objected to, or conceded in a way little
agreeable to ourselves.”
“A well-written note, a gracefully worded request, which nobody could do
better than Mr. Alfred Layton--” began Mrs. Morris, when a dissenting
gesture from that gentleman stopped her. “Or, perhaps,” continued she,
“Mr. Gorman O'Shea would so far assist our project?”
“My motion is to appear at the bar of the house,--I mean at the gate-
lodge,--sending in our names, with a polite inquiry to know if we may
see the place,” said Mr. O'Shea.
“Well, stranger, I stand upon your platform,” chimed in Quackinboss; “I
'm in no manner of ways 'posted' up in your Old World doings, but I 'd
say that you 've fixed the question all straight.”
“Show-places are show-places; the people who take them know it,” blurted
out Mr. Morgan. “Ay, and what's more, they're proud of it.”
“They are, Tom,” said his wife, authoritatively.
“If you 'd give me one of them a present, for the living in it, I 'd not
take it No, sir, I 'd not,” reiterated Morgan, with a fierce energy.
“What is a man in such a case, sir, but a sort of appraiser, a kind of
agent to show off his own furniture, telling you to remark that cornice,
and not to forget that malachite chimney-piece?”
“Very civil of him, certainly,” said Layton, in his low, quiet voice,
which at the same time seemed to quiver with a faint irony.
“No, sir, not civil, only boastful; mere purse-pride, nothing more.”
“Nothing, Tom,--absolutely nothing.”
“What's before the house this evening,--the debate looks animated?” said
a fine bright-eyed boy of about fourteen, who lounged carelessly on
Layton's shoulder as he came up.
“It was a little scheme to visit the Villa Caprini, my Lord,” said
Mosely, not sorry to have the opportunity of addressing himself to a
person of title.
“How jolly, eh, Alfred? What say you to the plan?” said the boy,
merrily.
Layton answered something, but in a tone too low to be overheard.
“Oh, as to that,” replied the boy, quickly, “if he be an Englishman who
lives there, surely some of us must know him.”
“The very remark I was about to make, my Lord,” smiled in Mrs. Morris.
“Well, then, we agree to go there; that 's the main thing,” said O'Shea.
“Two carriages, I suppose, will hold us; and, as to the time, shall we
say to-morrow?”
To-morrow was unanimously voted by the company, who now set themselves
to plot the details of the expedition, amidst which not the least knotty
was, who were to be the fellow-travellers with Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, a
post of danger assuredly not sought for with any heroic intrepidity,
while an equally eager intrigue was on foot about securing the presence
of the young Marquis of Agincourt and his tutor, Mr. Layton. The ballot,
however, routed all previous machinations, deciding that the young peer
was to travel with the Morgans and Colonel Quackinboss, an announcement
which no deference to the parties themselves could prevent being
received with a blank disappointment, except by Mr. Layton, who simply
said,--
“We shall take care to be in time, Mrs. Morgan.” And then, drawing his
pupil's arm within his own, strolled negligently away.