VI
A POET'S CORNER
Via Sistina, Rome, March 22d.
Your letter in answer to mine written from San Remo reached me to-day. It really seems a year since I wrote you that letter, instead of one month. So many impressions have come crowding one upon another since then that I cannot quite recall what I said of a personal nature. The meeting with Genevra brought back the old familiar associations so vividly that we sometimes forgot all that had happened since we had parted, and lived over our early, happy days. If you read into my letter more than was meant, it is because some of the glamour of that time caused will-o'-the-wisps to mislead you. No, "gang your ain gait, Allan," as your mother's old Scotch maid used to say. You have a great future before you in your profession, and I—it seems to me sometimes that I have only a past, and a present which I live day by day, with no plans for the years to come. It is so difficult to readjust one's life to new standards, and those who stake much lose heavily. We both loved Headley too well to say one harsh word about him. I could not talk to you thus freely were it not so; indeed, I never could speak to you at all about Headley—writing is easier, across the great expanse of waters. Now that I have broken the silence, let me say to you, best of friends, that I have in this sunny land and among these changing scenes found content, which may in time reach the measure of happiness. Do not disturb this peace, I beg of you, but be satisfied with our good old friendship, which is so safe and sane.
I shall really be afraid to tell you of any of our contretemps, you take them so seriously, and yet you wish to know of all our wanderings and of just how certain things impress us. I had forgotten about that absurd homesickness in Genoa, until you spoke of it. It was an acute attack, I assure you, and, like the proverbial grief of the widower, violent while it lasted, but soon well over and done with. Now we wonder how any one could possibly be homesick in this Italy which we love so much, above all in Rome, which seems each day more and more the mother of us all. Zelphine and Angela will tell you that Margaret is the gayest of the party. You know that I never would be a kill-joy, and here there is so much to interest one on all sides.
So you are glad that there is one good English name in the party, and are pleased to like the sound of my homespun baptismal? Angela is of the same mind; she says that my sensible "Margaret" strikes a happy balance between Zelphine's romantic name, which she feels it her duty to live up to, and her own, equally fanciful, which she takes pleasure in defying. By way of adapting herself gracefully to the situation, Angela has fallen into the habit of calling Zelphine "Z." This is all very well, but I am thankful that she does not insist upon being called "A.," as the constant turning from A. to Z. would be unpleasantly suggestive of algebraic formulæ, which were the bane of my school-days.
We laugh at Zelphine and chaff her continually about her flights of fancy; but no person could travel with her without realizing what a pleasure it is to be with a woman whose mind is so stored with the poetry and history of these old cities, one who enters so heart and soul into every interesting association. I said something of this to Angela one morning as we turned from the Via Condotti into the Corso, feeling that she might not appreciate all her privileges.
"Zelphine is," I said, "steeped in the lore of the past."
"Yes, up to the neck!" replied Angela, with emphasis. "I feel that I am now enjoying that liberal education that I have heard about all my life."
"The education is not liberal in including your expressions," I said, with an attempt at severity.
"Don't you understand, Margaret? Must I always explain?" said Angela, lifting her innocent blue eyes to mine. "I mean that Z. swims in learning, and one must be in up to one's neck to swim comfortably!"
Angela is quite hopeless, and by way of punishing her I stopped to buy her some of the delicious red roses that make me think of June days at home, especially of the roses in your mother's garden, which were always the reddest. Zelphine having stepped on in advance of us to attend to a commission at the cleaner's, where they "gar auld claes look amaist as weel's the new," we sauntered on along what one of your favorite writers describes so enthusiastically as "that world-famous avenue, the Corso."
"Do look at her!" exclaimed Angela, as we passed the Via Convertite and saw Zelphine standing at the corner of the Via San Claudio, gazing spellbound at the windows of a house on the other side of the street. "She's quite happy; time and place are nothing to her—she has discovered the Shelley tablet on that house. I saw it several days ago, but I thought I'd let Z. find it for herself. She'll never rest content till she sees the room in which Shelley wrote 'The Cenci' and 'Prometheus Unbound.' It is probably not worth seeing when you get into it, and may not be the room at all; but see it Z. will, or die in the attempt. I don't believe in all these wonderful tales that we hear. You only half believe in them yourself, Margaret, so I dare to talk to you; Z. swallows them whole, and so does Ludovico, and that is what makes them such good friends."
"And is it your incredulity, my dear, that makes you and Ludovico such bitter enemies?"
Angela laughed her light, musical laugh.
"We do quarrel, you know; we had quite a battle last evening over the Catacombs. Ludovico says that I must see them; that it would be positively disgraceful for me to leave Rome without seeing the Catacombs of Calixtus, at least. You know that I don't care for such dismal places. Rome is so gay and bright on top, why should we burrow underneath after tombs and Christian martyrs, while the sun is shining upon the Pincio and there are no end of things to be seen above ground? There she goes, after the concierge!"
There was nothing for us to do but to follow Zelphine into the somewhat shabby house and upstairs into the poet's room. It was worth much to stand in the room where Shelley had once written, and to look from the windows from which he could see the varied, moving panorama of the busy Corso and the ancient Church of San Silvestro in Capite, in whose adjoining convent the beautiful Vittoria Colonna took refuge in her widowhood, and wrote her sonnets in memory of a beloved husband.
A curious commentary upon the power of the world over the Church is to be found in the fact that Pope Clement VII. forbade the abbess and nuns, "under pain of the greater excommunication," to permit this noble lady the usual solace of afflicted womanhood, the cloister and the veil. This picturesque old convent with its lovely cloisters is now used as a post office.
From Shelley's house we retraced our steps along the Corso and turned into the Piazza San Lorenzo, where is the little Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, in which Browning's Pompilia was baptized and married, her "own particular place," where she wondered, as we did,
"what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man."
Standing before the wonderful altar-piece of Guido Reni's Crucifixion, painted against a wild and stormy sky, we realized how the suffering face of the compassionate Christ must have risen again and again before the despairing eyes of the persecuted child-wife:
"the piece
Of Master Guido Reni, Christ on Cross,
Second to nought observable in Rome."
Other and more impressive associations with Shelley's life in Rome than the little room on the Corso we found this afternoon when we drove out to the Baths of Caracalla, which even now cover so large a space that they have been well named a city of pleasure. We climbed over the mountainous ruin and up the winding stairs, trying to find just such a perch as Shelley described in the preface to his "Prometheus Unbound."
Bald and naked are these walls to-day, but not unsightly, as they stand out against the blue of the Roman sky and the fresh green of the Campagna. They are denuded of the vines and flowers that adorned them when, as Shelley says, he wrote his poem "among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees which are extended, in ever-winding labyrinths, upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air."
Now as then Rome lies on one side, with her many domes and towers; on the other are the mountains, blue in the distance, and white beyond the blue, where the snow lingers late upon their peaks. Like another mountain stands out the dome of St. Peter's, which Ampère says is "the only one of the works of man that possesses something of the grandeur of the works of God."
Being in the mood for poetic associations, we drove around by the Porta San Paolo, just outside of which, enclosed by high walls and overshadowed by the great pyramidal Tomb of Caius Cestius, is the old Protestant Cemetery. An ideal Campo Santo is this lovely spot, of which Shelley wrote that "it might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." We wandered over the grass and looked up at the sky through the trees, while Zelphine quoted the lines that fit the scene so well:
"Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread."
And so passing from grave to grave we came to the one we sought, and standing before a simple stone slab, read those sad words which poor Keats, in bitterness of spirit, wished to have written above his grave: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was comforting to turn from this to a marble tablet on the wall near by, where there is a head of Keats in low relief, and under it a beautiful inscription saying that he is among the immortals. The young poet's devoted friend Joseph Severn lies near him.
Across the road is the newer cemetery, whose gate was opened for us by a girl with a huge key fastened to her girdle, whom Zelphine and I likened to "the damsel named Discretion." Angela, being a modern girl and unfamiliar with "Pilgrim's Progress," did not understand the allusion, and said:
"Small thanks to her if she is discreet, when she is not able to say a word to us, good or bad!"
Zelphine always looks at me hopelessly on such occasions, lamenting over what she calls the lack of background in the outlook of the girl of to-day, whom I always defend loyally although I believe Zelphine is more than half right.
We found the grave of Shelley, who so soon followed his Adonais. It seemed as if that lonely "Cor Cordium" should have been buried near the friendly shades of Keats and Severn. Yet Mrs. Shelley, in writing of the burial of the ashes of her husband, makes no mention of their being placed within the newer cemetery. She simply says he selected the hallowed place himself, where is the
"sepulchre,
O, not of him, but of our joy!"
VII
ANTIQUITIES AND ORANGE-BLOSSOMS
Via Sistina, Rome, March 23d.
It is so delightful to have some one with us who knows and loves Rome as Ludovico does. He shows us about con amore and with the greatest enthusiasm, not in the perfunctory guide-book fashion. He and Angela are already good friends, and chatter away like two magpies about everything upon the earth and beneath it as well, which is quite natural, as many of our proposed excursions are subterranean, and we never know what wonder of the world may be sprung upon us at the next corner.
Ludovico was much pleased to learn that we had not yet found our way to the Capitol, as he wished to personally conduct us thither, advising us to drive to the Piazza del Campidoglio in order to save the climb up the long flight of steps leading to it from the street. We thus missed the first view from below of the noble statue of Marcus Aurelius, which was once gilded over, like some of our modern statues, and stood near the Lateran. Those old sculptors knew how a ruler should look! You must see this statue of your grand old heathen emperor some day; there is majesty and dominance in every line.
In the museum we passed beautiful bas-reliefs representing classic scenes, the colossal statue of the Emperor Hadrian in armor, and sarcophagi strangely decorated with bacchanalian representations, until we suddenly found ourselves in the Room of the Dying Gladiator, with that wonderful marble figure before us of which Byron wrote:
"He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother—he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
We lingered long beside this impressive marble, and then turned to the Resting Satyr of Praxiteles, made familiar to us all by Hawthorne's description. You remember that Donatello so strongly resembled the statue that Miriam begged him to shake aside his thick curls and allow her to see whether he had the Faun's leaf-shaped pointed ears. This he declined to do, saying, as he danced around the statue of the Dying Gladiator, "I shall be like a wolf of the Apennines if you touch my ears ever so softly. None of my race could endure it."
If, as Hawthorne says, "only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic skill—in a word, a sculptor and a poet too—could have first dreamed of a faun in this guise, and then have succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble," surely none but a novelist and a poet too could have presented on the page of romance this creature of the woods and hills, half man, half animal, the sensitive, emotional, whimsical, and altogether fascinating Donatello.
The statues of the Faun, the Dying Gladiator, and the beautiful youth Antinous are all among the treasures of which Hadrian's Villa was despoiled, as was also the exquisite mosaic of doves on a fountain basin, called Pliny's Doves, because, in speaking of the perfection to which the mosaic art had attained, Pliny described a wonderful mosaic in which one dove is drinking and casting her shadow in the water while others are pluming themselves on the edge of the vase. While in the room of the Doves we paid our respects to the Capitoline Venus, which, although considered a perfect type of feminine grace, failed to appeal to us as did the Venus della Coscia in the Naples Museum, and is, of course, not to be mentioned in the same breath with the lovely armless lady of the Louvre.
After spending two hours in the museum, Zelphine said that she had seen enough for one day, and that her mind refused to grasp anything more. We usually find that this is quite time enough to spend in any picture-gallery or museum, and I am inclined to think that people who stay longer wear themselves out to no purpose.
Angela suggested that as we were so near the Church of Ara Cœli, it would be well to go to see the wonderful Bambino. Ludovico prepared us for some disappointment by telling us that the most interesting time to visit this church is during the Epiphany, when the Bambino lies in a manger and little children come here and recite poems in its honor. But as a Christmas visit was only a remote possibility, we concluded to climb up to this church, hung like an eagle's nest upon the precipitous rock, and well named the "Altar of Heaven." Zelphine quite forgot her fatigue when she read in her guide-book that it was in this church that Edward Gibbon first conceived the idea of writing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," while Ludovico, by way of giving us something cheerful to think of, told us that at the foot of the steps Tiberius Gracchus and Cola di Rienzi were both slain by their nobles. There is a statue of Rienzi in the piazza below, and above is that wonderful group of the horse-taming Dioscuri, your copies of which have always interested me so much. A curious and most unromantic association with these steps is that here the monks of the Ara Cœli, who were famous dentists, used to perform their hideous but useful operations, out in the open, before the eyes of the passer-by. It appears that the Romans of this time were denied the alleviating circumstance of enduring their miseries in private. Zelphine, who has a pleasant habit of counting her blessings, finds just here another reason for offering up thanks that she lives in this year of grace 1904 rather than in that ancient and less comfortable period.
As the steps are many and the sun was hot we were warm and out of breath when we reached the top, and were glad of the coolness and peace that we found inside. I gave Angela an admonitory look before the Bambino was displayed, fearing that she might do or say something to hurt Ludovico's feelings. As it happened, however, he seemed to care even less about it than we did, although he told us, with his usual simplicity and directness, that "il Santissimo Bambino," as he calls it, is carefully guarded, not on account of its rich clothing and jewels, but because a woman once formed the design of appropriating to herself the baby image and its benefits. "She had another bambino prepared, of the same size and general appearance as this," said Ludovico, looking at the fresh-colored, richly dressed doll. "She pretended to be ill, and so got possession of the Santissimo. She dressed the false image in the garments of the true Bambino, and sent it back to Ara Cœli. That night the most remarkable thing happened: the monks were awakened by a wild ringing of bells at the west door of the church, and what should they find there but the little, shivering, naked figure of the Santissimo Bambino, in the wind and rain! Of course, the false bambino was sent back to its owner, and now the Santissimo is never taken away from the church unattended. This is easy enough, as the Bambino has its own carriage, coachman, and footman, and makes its visits to the sick in great state."
I glanced at Angela. Amusement and incredulity were all too plainly visible on that fair young face, so I hastened to suggest that we look at some of the beautiful tombs. There are several by Donatello and the Cosmati so exquisitely sculptured that they alone repay a visit to the church. From the terrace outside we looked down on the Forum below us, where to-day a great mass of blue iris flowers were waving and dancing in the breeze under the very shadow of the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.
Ludovico suggested our going to the Tarpeian Rock, which is part of this precipitous hill, if we were not too tired. No, we were not too tired; the many steps of the Ara Cœli seemed to have brought positive refreshment to Zelphine, who announced herself ready for a new start, and so, through delightful winding ways known only to the initiated, Ludovico led us to the garden from which we looked down upon the Tarpeian Rock.
Do you remember the picture in our school histories of Marcus Curtius plunging into the abyss? I could see him, in my mind's eye, boldly riding his white horse over the cliff into the depths of the chasm below, until Zelphine reminded me that it was not from this rock that Curtius made his fatal plunge, but over on the Forum, where the chasm closed at once upon horse and rider. I cannot even find mention of our old friend Marcus Curtius; he is now known as Mettius Curtius. Now the edge of the precipice is so guarded by an iron railing that it would be quite impossible in these days for any one to leap from the rock, or for Donatello to push the monk over into the street below, as in Hawthorne's tale. Mr. Julian Hawthorne says that it was to a moonlight visit to the Tarpeian Rock in the good company of Miss Bremer that we owe this scene in "The Marble Faun," the "most visibly tragic of my father's writings." A pleasant-faced young woman who unlocked the gate of the garden for us was evidently bewitched by Angela's charms, as she did not take her eyes off her face from the moment that she saw her. When we turned to leave the enclosure she broke from one of the trees an exquisite branch of orange-blossoms, and gave it to Angela with a charming grace, at the same time glancing over at Ludovico in a manner that brought the color to his face. He laughed, evidently pleased, and said a few words to her in Italian, after which she bestowed a smaller cluster of the fragrant flowers upon him. Angela, all unconscious, walked on, revelling in the rich perfume of these loveliest of blossoms.
I went to sleep last night wondering what the sweet-faced custodian of the grim rock had said to Ludovico, and what his reply had been, and so fell to dreaming of a wedding; but Zelphine was the bride, not Angela, despite her orange-blossoms, and the groom was a certain widower who pays intermittent attention to Zelphine—intermittent because she will not allow him to be a "regular steady," as one of our maids used to say in speaking of her own suitor.
You have surely heard of Walter Leonard's devotion to Zelphine, which is so much of an open secret among her friends that when subjects for conversation fail, they fall back with ever fresh interest upon speculations as to whether or not she will eventually accept him and his family of small children. Angela and I have an idea that she left home in order to avoid a crisis in her affairs, and when she looks sad or tired, Angela says that remorse is preying upon her because of the motherless condition of those hapless children. I did not tell Zelphine about my dream, because it is bad luck to dream about a marriage. You scorn all such fancies, I know, but she is really superstitious, and I might injure Mr. Leonard's chances if I should talk just now. Angela and I have our own fun out of the situation. She predicts that he will appear in Venice, which surely would be an appropriate place for a lover to make his entrance, and romantic enough to please Zelphine. This is only idle talk, however, as she has never spoken of the possibility of Walter Leonard's coming over; and pray do forget my gossip. It is too late, and I am quite too tired to rewrite this part of my letter. I know you of old, and so am sure that you will tell no tales.
Sunday, March 27th.
This is a gloriously beautiful day. The Spanish Steps are brilliant in the sunshine, with more flowers than usual on the stalls at the base. As Sunday is a fête-day, the vendors do a thriving business. And how cheap the flowers are! One may have all the roses one can carry, for a franc or two! Yet, with the idea that there is no fixed price in Italy, travellers are always to be seen at the stalls outdoing the Romans themselves in their efforts to cheapen the flowers, while the merchant volubly protests that his house will be desolated and his children in rags if he sells his roses for a soldo less than the asking price. A few artists' models are still to be found sunning themselves on the marble steps or around the fountain of the Piazza di Spagna, but in less brilliant array than one would desire, peasant dress being as little worn in Rome as in Paris.
To go to St. Peter's seemed the thing of all others to do to-day, and we found an accommodating tram waiting for us in the Piazza di Spagna.
They tell us that no one ever realizes the vastness of St. Peter's upon a first visit. However this may be, it seemed immense to us, outside and in. One notices first Bernini's great colonnades on each side of the basilica, which, with its façade, form a hemicycle with the Egyptian obelisk in the centre. Behind the church is the monotonous mass of the Vatican buildings, while in the foreground the twin fountains send up their spires of feathery spray. Small wonder that the practical and thrifty German Emperor advised them to turn off the water. "Turn them off now," he said, after admiring the beauty of the fountains. "It's a pity to waste so much water!" But these fountains of Maderno's have played untiringly, in sunlight and shade, by moonlight and starlight, for nearly three hundred years. Everywhere in Rome one hears the sound of flowing water from the many fountains. In the Borghese Gardens up on the Pincio, in the Piazza di Spagna, down in the Piazza Poli where the great Fountain of Trevi dashes continually, throwing its jets d'eau into the great basin beneath, over in the Piazza delle Terme, near the railroad station—on all sides one hears the refreshing sound of splashing, leaping water.
We wandered about the great basilica as if in a strange city, avoiding, of course, the several chapels in which services were being held, and stopping long before the Chapel of the Pietà, in which Michael Angelo's beautiful marble of the Sorrowing Mother with the dead Christ upon her knees is enshrined. From the gorgeous mosaics in Michael Angelo's dome and from the rich and elaborate tombs of many popes we turned almost with relief to the strong and simple Rezzonico monument, upon which Canova has placed two great lions at the feet of Pope Clement XIII., while in sharp contrast is a graceful, youthful figure, the Genius of Death, holding a torch reversed. Zelphine and I think this the most beautiful example of Canova's work that we have seen anywhere. Another of the monuments that interested us is that erected by George IV. to the memory of the unfortunate princes of the house of Stuart, James III., Charles Edward, and Henry, Cardinal of York.
Zelphine, who adores the Stuarts, almost wept over this tomb, although she could not help smiling a bit at the high-sounding titles engraved upon the monument to Maria Clementina Sobieski, the wife of the second Pretender, whose name is here inscribed as "Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland."
We both enjoyed Stendhal's trenchant comment upon the post-mortem honors paid by the Hanoverian king to the Stuart princes: "George IV., fidèle à sa réputation du gentleman le plus accompli des trois royaumes, a voulu honorer la cendre des princes malheureuses que de leur vivant il eût envoyés à l'échafaud s'ils fussent tombés en son pouvoir."
The temporary tomb of the late Pope is in this part of St. Peter's, near the monument of Innocent III. The permanent resting-place of Leo XIII. is to be in St. John Lateran; for this tomb Tadolini is preparing a magnificent monument.
We drove from St. Peter's, by the Tiber, passing the Castle of St. Angelo, where Ludovico took us yesterday to show us the pitiful little cell in which poor Beatrice Cenci was imprisoned. We had already seen her lovely, sad picture at the Barberini Palace. The exquisite, haunting beauty of the Cenci portrait is quite indescribable. As Charles Dickens says, "Through the transcendent sweetness and beauty of her face there is something shining out that haunts me. I see it now as I see this paper or my pen."
This afternoon we drove for an hour or more in the Borghese Gardens, after which we went to the evening service at the American Church in the Via Nazionale, which naturally looked somewhat cold and plain after the gorgeous color and decoration of St. Peter's. It was, however, restful and homelike to sit there and listen to the beautiful service of our own church.
Zelphine says that Catholic visitors in Rome are especially fortunate, as for them the path of duty and the path of pleasure lie side by side, leading them always into the most beautiful churches and giving them the satisfying combination of art and religion. I entirely agree with her, having often felt that in a service in Westminster Abbey an element of adventure was added to the act of devotion. I think it was you who told me of a Scotchwoman who considered a service in the abbey "among the images" too much of a diversion for a Sabbath day. I should think that good Catholic travellers might have somewhat the same feeling about a great ceremonial at St. Peter's.
In the Borghese Gardens, the shadows under the ilex-trees were most lovely this afternoon, the sunshine filtering through the branches here and there, flecking the green sward with spots of light, and bringing out the color of the anemones which grow here in such profusion. We could readily fancy Miriam and Donatello dancing in this sylvan shade, although no vagrant musicians were waking the echoes among the leafy coverts, no herdsman in goatskin breeches, no peasants from the Campagna, or pretty contadine appeared, to add a touch of local color to the natural beauties of the scene.