ARTIST LIFE IN ROME
1894
When we arrived in Italy some of our English and American friends said,
“You will find Rome dreadfully changed!”
Having known it in the seventies, I welcomed the changes that had
brought comfort and health to the modern capital. The old Rome was all
there, if you only knew how to look for it!
King Umberto, whom I had seen take the oath of office sixteen years
before, reigned at the Quirinal with Queen Margherita, and Leo the
Thirteenth at the Vatican. Francesco Crispi, the last of the great
figures of the _Risorgimento_, was prime minister and ruled Italy with a
firm hand, while Cardinal Rampolla, strong and astute, was the Pope’s
Secretary of State.
Mr. Wayne MacVeagh was American ambassador and Larz Anderson first
secretary of embassy. The British Embassy in the old Villa Torlonia
close by the Porta Pia was a far more attractive meeting place than the
American. We had pleasant relations with both American and English
diplomats; of the latter I remember most distinctly Lord Currie, who
came to Rome from Constantinople. I had known Lady Currie in London when
she was Mrs. Singleton, writing under the pseudonym of Violet Fane.
I first met her at a dinner given for my mother by Edmund Yates at the
Star and Garter at Richmond. She was gay and handsome then, and I
remember her keeping up a brilliant running fire of talk with Louis
Jennings and W. H. Mallock. She was graver now, but kept the charm that
had made her one of the most sought after women in London.
She still wrote occasionally and was always an omnivorous reader. She
often read books for her busy husband. _A propos_ of this, she told me a
story of their Constantinople days. Lord Currie had given her a life of
the Sultan, recently published in England. Was it interesting? he asked
her one day. “Yes,” she said, “but”--and got no further, “people of
importance” interrupting. They dined that night with the Sultan; during
the dinner the conversation flagging, Lord Currie had a happy
inspiration. “Sire,” he said, “an interesting book has just appeared
about yourself!” Lady Currie made a frantic effort to reach his foot
under the table.
“Ah!” said the Sultan. “I should like to see that book!”
“You shall have my copy!” exclaimed the Ambassador.
The Sultan’s parting words were, “I will send for the book in the
morning.” When they were in the carriage Lady Currie said to her
husband:
“The book you recommended to the Sultan opens with this sentence, ‘A
more loathsome toad than the Sultan Abdul Hamid I never saw!’”
When the Sultan’s servant called next day, the volume was not to be
found. It was sent for more than once, and the next time the Ambassador
had an audience, the Sultan reproached him with duplicity.
Rome in the last decade of the nineteenth century was as fascinating to
me as it had been to my mother in 1843, when she came here on her
wedding journey. My aunt still held her little court at Palazzo
Odescalchi where I met many of the elder artists. Mr. Richard Greenough,
the sculptor, rarely failed to appear on her reception days; he was an
exquisite man with the old fashioned “hair-trigger breeding” of a Boston
gentleman of the early Victorian age. Mr. William Story was at work upon
his last statue, the “Genius of Grief”, a kneeling figure of an angel,
for his wife’s grave in the Protestant cemetery, of which Shelley wrote,
“It might make one in love with death to think one should be buried in
so sweet a place.”
Marion Crawford was living at Sorrento with his wife and four children.
He had become famous and, for a writer, rich. I would rather have found
him poor and obscure; the price he had paid for fame and fortune was too
high. He had an iron constitution and phenomenal powers of work. I have
known him to write a book in six weeks and doubt if he ever took more
than three months over any novel. He worked under great pressure, with a
full head of steam on, day in day out. The pace he had set was beginning
to tell on him, but it seemed he could not alter it. He had little sense
of self-preservation and was full of whimsies about his diet. We owed
our first Roman home to him, for he lent us his apartment in the
historic Palazzo Santa Croce, where tradition says Beatrice Cenci lived
at one time. During the first part of our stay here I was harried by a
recurrent nightmare. Night after night I found myself in a room that my
waking eye had never seen, a blind room, without windows or doors, in
the center of which stood a funeral catafalque draped in black. This
vision obsessed me: even by day I could not wholly escape it.
After a time it happened that certain repairs were needed on the
foundations of the palace. In making them, the workmen came upon a small
closed cellar filled with human bones. Further search was made, and over
the cellar was found an oubliette whose entrance, walled up for
centuries, was directly below my room. Two nights after this, as the
bells of the Pietà del Monte rang midnight, a funeral car drew up before
the palace, the bones were carried away, and buried with whatever
ceremony the church allowed. After that I slept in peace.
The tower room where Crawford had worked became J.’s studio. On the
walls hung casts from the faces of the great men described in Crawford’s
“With the Immortals”, Napoleon, Beethoven, and best of all the famous
death mask of Dante. This last so much impressed J. that he made a
drawing of it in colored pastels. Dissatisfied with the work, he
crumpled up the drawing and threw it in the waste basket. I rescued it,
smoothed out the tumbled paper and “unbeknownst” took it to the
framer’s. When the drawing came home I hung it up in the salon.
“See how nicely your Dante looks now!” I exclaimed.
“Not nice at all! Don’t let anybody see it!” was the answer.
Crestfallen I took the drawing to my bedroom. One day when I was ill my
Uncle Terry came to see me and caught sight of the Dante.
“What a good drawing!” he exclaimed.
Uncle Terry was an excellent draftsman and J. had great respect for his
opinion. The Dante came back to the salon. On my next reception day Mrs.
David Kimball, a Boston collector, saw it and bought it on the spot.
Later Curtis and Cameron reproduced it as a Copley Print; it has gone
all over the world, taken prizes in Australia and Japan and is, I
believe, the most popular modern portrait of the great Italian poet. I
tell this story for the benefit of other artists’ wives, for it has been
my experience that artists are often the worst judges of their own work.
They seem to value most the work that has cost them the greatest labor,
whereas it sometimes happens that things struck off at white heat,
quickly and easily, have more of the artist’s personality, which of
course is what gives every work of art its value.
Before leaving America, I had arranged to write a syndicate newspaper
letter for the _Boston Transcript_, the _Kansas City Star_, the _New
Orleans Times Democrat_, a Chicago, and a New York paper. Gathering
materials for this correspondence added much to the interest of my life
in Rome. I had the sense of being eyes and ears for thousands of readers
in different parts of the world. My letters to my family, however, give
more intimate glimpses of Rome at this time.
[To my Mother.]
Rome. February, 1894. I see many fine functions at St. Peter’s. I
never tire of it all, the arrogant scarlet cardinals, the
ermine-tippeted canons, the great feather fans carried before Pope
Leo, his extraordinary waxen face where only the eyes seem alive,
as he passes through the throng carried high above the people,
giving the papal benediction with three fingers of the right hand.
The uniforms of the Swiss Guard and the Guardia Nobile, the papal
chamberlains, the vested choir, the voices of the Pope’s “angels”,
the rich smell of incense are all just as you knew them before I
was born. Did you remember that some of the splendid costumes were
designed by Michael Angelo?
“St. Peter’s is the theater of the Church,” Monsignor (now
Cardinal) O’Connell once said to me. He is right. A function there
moves me just like any other great pageant. I hadn’t been here a
week when I saw the King, the Queen and the Pope. She is like a
queen in a fairy story, tall, beautiful, with golden hair. The King
seems better loved by the Romans, the Queen by the diplomats and
foreigners. She is very _dévote_, doubtless a fortunate thing for
the dynasty. I find matters political very difficult to understand.
Mr. Stillman, who is the _London Times_ correspondent and hardly
less important a personage than the British Ambassador, tells me
that Crispi is a giant and the only man able to hold Italy in hand.
He is seventy-four years old and after him “the deluge” is feared.
Yesterday Colonel and Mrs. John Hay gave a pleasant reception at
their hotel, where I met the Bishop Potters, Mrs. Edward ditto and
Stillman’s tall wife and daughters. Mrs. S. (Marie Spartali)
interests me more than any person I have met so far. A superb
romantic creature, a hard worker, a good painter, one of the last
of the Pre-Raphaelites. I remember your telling me of her when she
was the rage of London, the idol of that group. They all painted
her,--Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones. The last portrait is by Du
Maurier. We are convinced she is the original of the Duchess in
“Peter Ibbetson.” She has a thousand little tricks he describes,
the likeness is too strong to be mistaken.--Cold to-day,
_tramontana_ blows and I hug my open fire. I wonder the Romans were
ever Christianized; the sun is so all-important for health,
happiness, life itself, that it seems strange they could have
turned from the altars of Apollo.
* * * * *
Rome, March 5, 1894. At two o’clock to-day Mrs. Potter Palmer and I
drove into the courtyard of the Quirinal Palace and got out at the
glass doors under the clock. The porter, an immense scarlet-coated
person with cocked hat and a long cane of office, received us with
ceremonious bows and scrapes.
“Have their Excellencies been summoned for an audience with her
Majesty the Queen?”
We “allowed” that we had, whereupon with even deeper salaams he
ushered us up a winding stairway with the tiniest steps I ever saw,
to the _piano nobile_. Here we passed through several magnificent
apartments filled with flunkies in scarlet liveries and silk
stockings to an anteroom. The walls and furniture were covered with
blue satin brocade, there were many flowering plants, superb
hangings and a few good old portraits. Here we found the Marchesa
Villamarina, lady in waiting to the Queen _in perpetua_, and the
lady in waiting for the month, both of whom wore on the left
shoulder a diamond M (the Queen’s initial) on a blue ribbon like an
order. As we entered, a little old lady very plainly dressed passed
into the inner room.
“That is Mme. ----, the widow of a distinguished general,” the
Marchesa said, “your turn is next.”
When the old lady came out we were announced and ushered into the
reception room. We courtesied at the entrance, halfway across the
room, and again as we stood before the Queen, who received us
standing. She was dressed in black velvet embroidered with jet, and
wore one string of gigantic pearls. Her earrings, immense,
perfectly round solitaire pearls, were in shape and size the twins
of Mrs. Palmer’s; Mrs. P.’s were the best I thought.
The room was large and luxuriously furnished with windows looking
out on the Quirinal garden. The Queen seated herself and motioned
us to sit. She had beside her a little table with silver smelling
bottle and writing materials. She opened the conversation by
telling Mrs. Palmer that she had seen her mother-in-law some years
ago. Mrs. Palmer thinks she meant Mrs. Bryan, who came to Rome to
arrange for the loan of the Queen’s collection of laces for the
Chicago World’s Fair. The Queen then turned to me and asked if I
had written the book about the Woman’s Department of the Fair,
presented to her by our Ambassador, Mr. MacVeagh. When I pleaded
guilty, she said, with the prettiest accent:
“Thank you for the book. It is very interesting. I hear the Fair
was a great success; many Italians went to Chicago and I have
heard much about it. They tell me that the Woman’s Building was
beautiful and the Italian exhibit well arranged and much admired.”
When we had threshed out the subject of the Fair, there was a
pause. In the presence of royalty you must not speak till you are
spoken to; this leaves the choice of the topic of conversation to
the royal personage. After a moment’s silence the Queen turned to
me and asked:
“Are you fond of music?” adding, “It is my greatest pleasure. I had
a Steinway piano that I bought in Germany. When Mr. Steinway heard
of this he asked me to send it to him and sent me in exchange a
piano he thought better. The tone is admirable. The Chickering
pianos are also good.” She was evidently aware of the rivalry of
the two famous firms.
The Queen had obviously been prepared for our visit, for she spoke
to me chiefly on matters of art.
“Your artists in America are doing very good work,” she said, “and
what excellent architects you have. I know that from the pictures
of your fine houses I see in the illustrated magazines. I enjoy
reading them, the literature is so fresh. We see a great many
American ladies here, but few gentlemen. Your men, I hear, are too
busy to travel. Two of my ladies in waiting are Americans, so I
learn many things about your country.”
She rose, shook hands, “hoped to see us again,” and the audience
was over. Taking pains not to turn our backs (it wasn’t easy) we
courtesied out of the room with three genuflections as on entering.
When she was young, the Queen was a great beauty; she is still
handsome, graceful, charming, and took as much pains to be
agreeable as if the whole business of holding audiences with
strangers was a pleasure and not the unmitigated grind it must be;
still she doubtless calls it part of the day’s work and likes to do
it well.
* * * * *
June, 1894. We have taken an apartment close to J.’s studio in an
old palace built by Sixtus the Fifth. It looks out upon the Square
of St. Peter’s and it has a divine terrace. What a view! The whole
of Rome and the Alban Hills, St. Peter’s and the fountains, the
Vatican and the windows of the Pope’s private apartments just
opposite! At the studio J.’s happy family, a pair of pigeons and a
falcon, has an addition in the shape of two pretty kittens.
Queen Margherita is a brave woman. She drives about the town
constantly, passing this house twice a day with only a lady in
waiting beside her. The scarlet liveries of her coachman and
footman make the landau a fine target for the anarchist’s knife or
pistol, but the Queen is quite fearless. Crispi laughs at the
attempts to kill him, and they have begun to say he has a charmed
life. The King looks as if he would like to be in anybody’s boots
but his own. Some of Crispi’s acts would have brought about a
revolution in any other country; the King alone has prevented this,
and the unconscious triumph of his simple, honest character is most
impressive. He is not a brilliant man, but he loves his people and
Italy better than his own dynasty, which he has not scrupled to
jeopardize. Crispi is perfectly sincere in the belief that for the
country’s sake his government must continue. Whether he is right is
another question. No matter what happens, have no fear for us. The
Romans are the peaceablest people in the world. At Milan, Naples,
Turin, Florence, there may be some excitement, but the Romans do
not interest themselves in what is happening in the world to-day
and won’t do so for another generation. You can’t make people free
in twenty-five years; it takes at least fifty.
On Friday, the day of Santa Lucia, we were bidden to the _festa_ of
Signora Villegas. Here they celebrate your saint’s day instead of
your birthday. At dinner I sat between Villegas and Adolfo
Apolloni, the sculptor. The Signora is Italian, but Villegas is an
Andalusian from Seville. There were Spanish guests, Spanish wine
and viands, much talk and merriment.
Our home between 1894 and 1900 was the old Palazzo Accoramboni, or, as
we called it, the Palazzo Rusticucci. The agent who let us our apartment
was an ignorant man, and when we asked the name of the palace he told
us it was the Rusticucci. It was only after we had had the name engraved
upon our note paper and visiting cards, and had lived there two years,
that Crawford told us of our mistake. It seemed too late to correct it,
so we kept the name, and now it is a source of satisfaction to me to
remember that we are the only people who ever lived in Palazzo
Rusticucci! The quarter, properly called the Leonine City, is more
familiarly spoken of as the Borgo, and is inhabited chiefly by people
connected with the Vatican. Our apartment was both picturesque and
comfortable. Our terrace, transformed by J. into a sort of hanging
garden of Babylon, where we cut roses every month of the year, became
one of the sights of Rome, and strangers often rang our doorbell and
asked to see it.
Rome is the most hospitable place I have ever known. From the time of
the Empire the chief business of the city has been to entertain
strangers; it never had any other business and it has never lost the
habit of making strangers feel at home. The society is most amusing, for
one only has to “sit tight” and sooner or later every important
personage in the world passes your way!
[To my Mother.]
July 5, 1894. Yesterday the Ambassador gave a Fourth of July
reception with lots of champagne, American flags and a band playing
the Star Spangled Banner. There were one hundred and ten Americans
present, so you see we are not the only ones left in Rome. I am
brisk and well. If one has to be in any city in summer, Rome is the
best. Tuesday night Mariano Benlliure came to dine. He is called
the first living Spanish sculptor. He has a strong dash of the
Moor, as his genius and his name show; all the Bens are of Moorish
descent. We also had Mrs. Taylor, a clever newspaper woman,
correspondent of the _London Standard_, sister of Mrs. Augustus
Trollope, and Joe Hunt. He has grown a beard and is not quite so
cherubic.
I have had two bright letters from William Henry Hurlburt, who is
at Cadennabbia on the Lake of Como. He wrote for homeopathic
medicines which I sent him. The poor old fellow isn’t long for this
world. He has an insight into spiritual truths as keen and as fine
as when he was an associate of the Transcendentalists at Cambridge;
one hears he has another side, but I have never seen it.
You ask me how I pass my days. Up at five and out for a spin on my
bicycle. The other day I rode to Ostia and back before lunch. After
my ride I get out stores and linen and settle accounts; everything
is under lock and key and every _centesimo_ accounted for. Out
again for errands and at my writing by half-past ten or eleven. In
the morning I write and read the papers in the _salotto_. The Paris
edition of the _New York Herald_ has much home news. Lunch at one.
After lunch to bed for a siesta.
I make a rule to be indoors by eleven in the morning and not to go
out again till five in the afternoon. After the siesta, I go up to
my workroom on the terrace where there is a thorough draft and no
sun, and work there till six, when I go over to the studio to see
how J.’s painting goes on. For a little stroll, and then dinner on
the terrace at eight. We sit there till bedtime--so nice and cool,
the stars very homelike and pleasant, the same constellations that
you see, and just now many falling stars.
During the years of our life in Rome we spent most of the summers there.
As the heat increased, one by one the English and American friends and
the more well-to-do Roman friends departed, until our circle narrowed
down to a few artists, two or three of the younger diplomats left in
charge of the embassies, and certain friendly priests, who found our
house a convenient stopping place on the way to the Vatican. I learned
more of Rome in these lonely summer months than during the gay season.
One August I heard of the death of an elderly American woman whom I had
never seen. As I knew her niece, I felt impelled to drive out to the
Protestant cemetery to the funeral, for I did not know of any other
American in Rome who could be there. The Ambassador, the Consul, the
clergymen of both the English and American churches were out of town.
When I reached the little chapel, I found a strange clergyman getting
into his surplice. The coffin was already there, and a carriage had just
stopped containing the niece and the doctor who had attended the dead
woman.
“I am a stranger. I only arrived this morning,” said the clergyman. “I
do not speak the language, I do not know for whom I am to read the
service.”
“I too am a stranger,” I began. The solitary mourner was entering the
chapel.
“At least you can tell me,” in an agonized whisper, “whether I am to
read the service for a man or a woman.”
“Oh, for a woman!” I gasped.
I think the memory of that lonely funeral had much to do with our coming
home to America for the “last heat” of life. Much as I adored Rome, I
did not want to grow old and die there!
January 21, 1895. Uncle Terry still goes to teas and flirts
desperately with the girls who make much of the dear old fellow.
Mrs. John L. Gardner is here with wonderful costumes from Paris and
such furs--sables and chinchillas. My syndicate goes better always.
I have seven subscribers now. I am very glad of the new ones,
_Louisville Courier Journal_ and _St. Paul Despatch_.
February 23. Rome is full of Americans, who keep me very busy.
To-day I wrote the first stint of my newspaper carnival letter,
then arranged the flowers and put my house in order for a luncheon
party for Mrs. Potter Palmer. In the afternoon drove out with Mrs.
Gardner to Villegas’ studio where she “acquired” some of his
gorgeous stuffs, old Genoese velvet and the like. To tea at Mrs.
MacVeagh’s, where I had a good talk with the Ambassador; he looks
like his brother Franklin whom we liked so much in Chicago.
To-night to a ball at the Artists’ Club. You must read Paul
Sabatier’s “St. Francis of Assisi”; it is delicious. I have just
suffered Zola’s “Debacle.” One doesn’t read that book, one suffers
it.
April 1. Sunday was my reception day; there are only two more of
them. They are voted a success. Helen (Gardner) makes the tea. The
Price Colliers came. She is a pearl. They are an interesting
couple. To-day to lunch with Auntie and Uncle Terry. They have
bloomed out with the warm weather and look like a pair of roses.
Dear old Mr. Hooker was a sad loss to them; his death has darkened
their whole winter. Mr. Story is ill, but his daughter Edith
Peruzzi is hopeful. Mr. Hurlbert told me that the reason Mr. Story
didn’t recover was that he did not want to. His interest in life
died with his wife. It seems that she had taken care of all the
material side, his money, wardrobe, every practical detail! Losing
her, he finds himself helpless, “perplexed”, as Hurlbert said, “at
buying a shoe string.”
Saw Salvini in Alfieri’s “Saul” last night; a great joy. He is
unchanged, showed not a trace of having “gone off!” I had hardly
hoped for this happiness, as he almost never acts now, having
retired after his last tour in the United States, with a handsome
fortune. Mme. Modjeska in a stage box, looking lovely but older,
the sad “older” that dresses like twenty-five and has the face and
expression of fifty. But, bless you, if you want my news, buy the
weekly _Transcript_; my letters are pretty apt to turn up in Rome,
as many traveling Bostonians subscribe to it. The Barrett Wendell
children confronted me with one of my own letters the other day
and demanded to be taken to the tapestry factory I had described;
fortunately it exists.
May 10. Two weeks ago I went to Sorrento to visit the Crawfords,
then to Venice for a week with Mrs. Gardner. The celebration of the
three hundredth anniversary of Torquato Tasso’s death took me to
Sorrento. Crawford made the chief address, prefacing it with an
apology for his Italian. The Bishop of Sorrento told me this was
rather a jest, as Marion’s Italian was more elegant and correct
than that of any other speaker.
In Venice the attraction was the opening of an exhibition of modern
pictures. I found time for my old loves, Titian and Veronese, and
took on two new ones, Tintoretto and Carpaccio. I was very
comfortable at Marion’s, where he and Bessie were kind as kind.
Mrs. Gardner has the Daniel Curtis apartment on the Grand Canal.
John Sargent had been staying there and he had recommended Mancini
to paint a portrait of Mr. Gardner. Mancini’s method of painting is
to put a network of squares about two inches large in front of the
canvas and to paint the picture through these squares. You
sometimes see traces of these threads in Mancini’s work. J. thinks
with Sargent that Mancini is a man of genius--he knows him well and
I have been to his studio in Rome.
Mr. Curtis’s last _mot_. In the dining room of the Grand Hotel some
one asks the name of a lady extremely décolletée.
“The Princess Chemisoff, _née_ Alloff!” Curtis snapped out.
I am sending you for your birthday two bits of old lace; one is
Mechlin, the other Palestrina. I bought them in Venice. Old lace is
now almost priceless; there has been a tremendous run on it.
Jesurum, the famous lace dealer in Venice, told me that most of the
good old lace has gone to America. I got a deal of tutoring about
lace from him and now understand something of it. It makes me faint
to remember how carelessly I have worn some of your rare old
pieces. You must get them together and let me bring them back to
be repaired. I have a wonderful lace woman; she wears the most
powerful glasses I ever saw. It’s an awful trade, lace making or
mending, too often ending in blindness.
April 13. Busy this week with the Lenten services. The _tenebrae_
and _miserere_ very fine, the ceremony of washing the altar and
displaying St. Veronica’s handkerchief and other relics impressive
and beautiful. Somehow it is all arranging itself in my mind. At
first I felt only dismay and bewilderment, now I begin to see the
_raison d’être_. It’s not particularly Christian, but the symbolism
is aesthetic and spiritual, a turning from mere material toil and
contemplating the unseen and unknown. It’s a sort of theism that
seems well suited to the Latins. Hardly a day passes without my
going into St. Peter’s or to the Vatican. I take refuge there when
too many “oxen come about me, fat bulls of Bashan compass me on
every side”!