Chapter VIII: Foreign Life (2)

When the Emperor Nicholas came to Rome, he went to pay his respects to the Pope, who received him very coldly. "You are a great king," said Pius IX. "You are one of the mightiest monarchs in the world, and I am a feeble old man, the servant of servants; but I cite you to meet me again, to meet me before the throne of the Judge of the world, and to answer _there_ for your treatment of the nuns at Minsk."

But of the gathering up of reminiscences of Roman life there is no end, and, after all, my normal life was a quiet one with my mother, driving with her, sketching with her, sitting with her in the studio of the venerable Canevari,[126] who was doing her portrait, spending afternoons with her in the Medici gardens, in the beautiful Villa Wolkonski, or in the quiet valley near the grove and grotto of Egeria.

In the mornings we generally walked on the Pincio, and there often noticed a family of father, mother, and daughter working on the terrace, as the custom then was, at rope-making. One day a carriage passed and re-passed with a solitary gentleman in it, who at last, as if he could no longer restrain himself, jumped out and rushed towards the group exclaiming, "C'est elle! c'est elle!" Then he became embarrassed, retired, and eventually sent his servant to beg that the mother would bring some of her cord to his house the next morning. She obeyed, and on entering his apartment was struck at once by a portrait on the wall. "That is the picture of my daughter," she said. "No," he replied, "that is the portrait of my dead wife." He then proceeded to say that he must from that time consider himself affianced to her daughter, for that in her he seemed to see again his lost wife, and he insisted on establishing the old woman and her daughter in comfortable lodgings, and hiring all kinds of masters for the latter, saying that he would go away and leave her to her studies, and that in a year he should come back to marry her, which he did. In England this would be a very extraordinary story, but it was not thought much of at Rome.

]

I have always found that the interests of Rome have a more adhesive power than those of any other place, and that it is more difficult to detach oneself from them; and even in this first winter, which was the least pleasant I have spent there--the conflicting requirements of my two mothers causing no small difficulty--I was greatly distressed when my mother, in her terror of Madame Davidoff and Co., decided that we must leave for Naples on the twenty-third of February. What an unpleasant companion I was as we drove out of the Porta S. Giovanni in the large carriage of the _vetturino_ Constantino, with--after the custom of that time--a black Spitz sitting on the luggage behind to guard it, which he did most efficaciously. I remember with a mental shiver how piteously the wind howled over the parched Campagna, and how the ruins looked almost frightful in the drab light of a sunless winter morning. But though the cold was most intense, for the season really was too early for such a journey, our spirits were revived by the extreme picturesqueness of the old towns we passed through. In Valmontone, where the huge Doria palace is, we met a ghastly funeral, an old woman carried by the Frati della Misericordia on an open bier, her withered head nodding to and fro with the motion, and priests--as Lea said--"gibbering before her." Here, from the broad deserted terrace in front of the palace, we looked over the mountains, with mists drifting across them in the wind; all was the essence of picturesqueness, raggedness, ignorance, and filth. By Frosinone and Ceprano--then the dreary scene of the Neapolitan custom-house--we reached San Germano, where the inn was in those days most wretched. In our rooms we were not only exposed to every wind that blew, but to the invasions of little Marianina, Joannina, and Nicolina, who darted in every minute to look at us, and to the hens, who walked about and laid their eggs under the bed and table. Most intensely, however, did we delight in the beauties of the glorious ascent to Monte Cassino and in all that we saw there.

How well I remember the extreme wretchedness of our mid-day halting-places in the after journey to Capua, and wonder how the pampered Italian travellers of the present day would put up with them; but in those days we did not mind, and till it was time to go on again, we drew the line of old crones sitting miserably against the inn-wall, rocking themselves to and fro in their coloured hoods, and cursing us in a chorus of--

"Ah, vi pigli un accidente
Voi che non date niente,"

if we did not give them anything.

]

While we were at Naples, every one was full of the terrible earthquake which in December had been devastating the Basilicata. Whole towns were destroyed. It was as after a deep snow in England, which covers fields and hedges alike; you could not tell in the mass of débris whether you were walking over houses or streets. The inhabitants who escaped were utterly paralysed, and sat like Indian Brahmins with their elbows on their knees, staring in vacant despair. Hundreds were buried alive, who might have been extricated if sufficient energy had been left in the survivors. Others, buried to the middle, had the upper part of their bodies burnt off by the fire which spread from the ruined houses, and from which they were unable to escape. Thousands died afterwards from the hunger and exposure.

Whilst we were at Naples my mother lost her gold watch. We believed it to have been stolen as we were entering the Museo Borbonico, and gave notice to the police. They said they could do nothing unless we went to the King of the Thieves, who could easily get it back for us: it would be necessary to make terms with him. So a _ragazaccio_[129] was sent to guide us through one of the labyrinthian alleys on the hill of St. Elmo to a house where we were presented to the King of Thieves. He mentioned his terms, which we agreed to, and he then said, "If the watch has been stolen anywhere within twelve miles round Naples, you shall have it in twenty-four hours." Meanwhile the watch was found by one of the custodes of the Museo at the bottom of that bronze vase in which you are supposed to hear the roaring of the sea; my mother had been stooping down to listen, and the watch had fallen in. But the story is worth mentioning, as the subserviency of the police to the King of the Thieves was characteristic of public justice under Ferdinand II.

_To_ MY SISTER.

"_Sorrento, March 7, 1858._--Some people say Sorrento is the most
beautiful place in the world, and I believe that even my
town-loving sister, if she could gaze over the golden woods in the
sunset of this evening, and see the crimson smoke float over dark
Vesuvius and then drift far over the blue sea, would allow it to be
more inspiring than the Piazza S. Claudio! Then to-day the mother
and her three companions have been riding on donkeys to the lovely
Vigna Sersale through a fringe of coronilla and myrtle, anemones
and violets.... It is a comfort here to be free from the begging
atmosphere of Naples, for in Sorrento people do not beg; they only
propose 'mangiare maccaroni alla sua salute.'"

"_April 4._--We have had a charming cruise in the 'Centaur'--the
sea like glass, the view clear. Captain Clifford sent his boat to
fetch us, and we sat on deck in arm-chairs, as if on land. In tiny
fishing-boats, lying flat on our backs, we entered the Grotta
Azurra (of Capri), like a magical cavern peopled with phantoms,
each face looking livid as the boats floated over the deep blue
water. Then we scrambled up to the fortress-palace of Tiberius, our
ascent being enlivened by a tremendous battle between the
midshipmen and the donkey-women, who finally drew their stilettos!

"Amalfi is most romantic and lovely. We were there ten days, and
spent the mornings in drawing amongst the purple rocks and sandy
bays, and the afternoons in riding up the mountain staircases to
the Saracenic rock-built castles and desolate towns.

"The mother thinks I have grown dreadfully worldly under your
influence, and that my love for wild-flowers is the only hopeful
sign remaining!"

]

]

From Salerno we made a glorious expedition to Pæstum, but on our return found our servant, John Gidman, alarmingly ill in consequence of a sunstroke while fallen asleep on the balcony at Amalfi. His sufferings were dreadful, and he remained between life and death for a long time, and I believe was only eventually saved by the violent bleedings (so often inveighed against) of an Italian doctor. This delayed us long at the dull Salerno, and afterwards at La Cava, where I comforted myself by much drawing at Salvator Rosa's grotto in the valley below the old Benedictine convent.

In May our companions returned to England, and having no one but ourselves to consider, we planned to make our own northern _vetturino_ journey as interesting as possible. I think it was a description in "Dennis" which made us take the route by Viterbo and Orvieto, but we went there and saw it with enthusiasm, as afterwards Perugia--to which we zigzagged back across the Apennines, and Cortona, where the hill was redolent with great wild yellow roses, and where I drew the tomb of S. Margherita in the monastery, to the great delight of the monks, who regaled us with snuff and wine.

Whilst we were at Florence, living in the Casa Iandelli, I made a delightful excursion to Vallombrosa, driving in a little carriage to Pelago, and thence riding on a cart-horse up the forest-clothed mountain by the rough track which emerges on a bright green lawn, then covered with masses of lilies and columbine, and other spring flowers of every description. All around the dark forests swept down from the mountains towards the convent, where the hospitable monks entertained me with a most excellent dinner, and the abbot showed the manuscripts.

On my return, I found my mother so convulsed with laughter that it was long before she was able to explain the cause of it. At last she showed me a letter in her hand, which was a violent declaration of love and proposal of marriage from one Giorgio Rovert--"bello--possidente--avocato"--who was even then waiting at Siena to know if his "fiamme d'amore" was responded to, and if he might hasten to Florence to throw himself at the feet of the object of his adoration. For some time we were utterly bewildered, but at length recollected that at Rome a young man had constantly followed the cousin who was with us, had lifted the heavy curtains for her at the entrance of the churches, found her places in a mass-book, &c., and we concluded that he must have tracked her to the Palazzo Lovati, inquired of the porter who lived there, and hearing it was "Mrs. Hare," had followed _us_ to Florence. Lady Anne S. Giorgio coming in soon after to see us, undertook to answer the letter, and did so most capitally; but Giorgio Rovert did not break his heart, and within three weeks we heard of him as proposing to old Lady Dillon!

The Lady Anne S. Giorgio I have mentioned began at this time to fill a great part in our life. She was a Roman Catholic, and used to say that she had become so (at sixteen) on account of the poor apology which she found made for Protestantism in Robertson's "Charles V.," which she had been reading. After she was a widow, she became a member of a Tertiary Order which binds its votaries to forsake the vanities of the world, to wear a cross, and be dressed in black. She used to be very anxious for my conversion, and have special prayers to that intent on St. Augustine's Day. She read through Madame de Sévigné every year, and her library of books excited the astonishment of her poorer neighbours, who said, "O la Contessa e tanto buona; legge sempre; prega sempre; e tanto buona," for they cannot understand any one reading anything but religious books.

Lady Anne was one of the daughters of that beautiful Lady Oxford whose offspring were named "the Harleian Miscellany." Lady Oxford lived at Genoa with her daughters, leaving Lord Oxford in England, and during her Italian life had many strange adventures, and one of a most terrible kind, the story of which was related to me by Dr. Wellesley, who was present at the time, but I will omit it. Of the weird stories of the other sisters I will say nothing, but Lady Anne in her youth was engaged to a young Italian, who, with the ugly name of Boggi, was yet of a very good family. However, before they could be married, Boggi died, and the Harleys returned to England. While there, Lady Anne wished to marry her music-master, but her family would not hear of it, and by the harshness of their opposition made her life miserable. Having striven vainly for some years to win the consent of her family, Lady Anne wrote to Madame Boggi, the mother of her late betrothed, with whom she had always kept up a communication, to say that she was in wretched health and spirits, that she required change terribly, and that she was very unhappy because her family violently opposed her marriage with a very excellent young Italian--but she did not say who he was. Madame Boggi replied by saying that nothing could give her greater happiness than having her dearest Annie with her, and imploring her to come out to her at once. The Harley family consented, thinking that the change might cure Lady Anne's heartache, and she went out to Madame Boggi, who had always said that she looked upon her as a daughter because she was once engaged to her dead son.

While Lady Anne was with Madame Boggi, she heard that her Italian lover had returned to Italy to join his friends, but that he had been stopped by illness at some place in the north of Italy, and was lying in a very critical condition. I cannot say how Lady Anne persuaded Madame Boggi, but she did persuade her to consent to her going off to nurse her lover, and, unmarried girl as she was, she nursed him through all his illness. He died, but his brother, who came to him when he was dying, was so touched by Lady Anne's devotion, that he afterwards proposed to her, and she married him.

The husband of Lady Anne was only a "cavaliere." They were dreadfully poor, and lived at a little farm somewhere in the hills above Spezia, where two boys and a girl were born. But Lady Anne did not mind poverty; she fattened her chickens and pigs for market, she studied botany and all the ologies by herself, and she taught her children. After she became a widow, she heard one day that her father, Lord Oxford, from whom she had been separated from childhood, was passing through Italy, and she threw herself in his way upon the staircase in the inn at Sarzana. When he found who she was, he was delighted both with her and her children. He said, "I have done nothing for you hitherto, and I can do nothing for you after my death, for my affairs are arranged and they cannot be altered; but whatever you ask me to do _now_ shall be granted." "Then," said Lady Anne, "you have always looked down upon me and despised me, because my husband was a simple 'cavaliere.' You are going to Rome: get me created a Countess in my own right, and then you will despise me no more." And Lord Oxford went to Rome, and, by his personal influence with the Pope, to whom he had great opportunities of being useful, his daughter Anne was created a Countess in her own right, and her sons became titular Counts and her daughter a Countess.

It was in this summer of 1858, while we were at Florence, that Lady Anne came to "Italima" (for she had known my father intimately in her palmy days) and said, "You know how I have lived like a hermit in my '_tenuto_,' and meanwhile here is Carolina grown up, and Carolina must marry somebody, and that somebody you must find, for you are almost the only person I know." And, to her surprise, Italima was able to answer, "It is really very odd, but Mrs. de Selby, the cousin of the Princesses Doria and Borghese, was here this morning, and she said, 'Here is Roberto, and I want to find somebody for him to marry. I do not want a fortune, we have plenty of money, but it must be a girl of good family, and if she is partly English so much the better.'"

We went to the betrothal dinner of Robert Selby and Carolina di S. Giorgio, and afterwards we ran about the Torrigiani gardens in the still summer evening, and made round our straw hats wreaths of the fireflies, which, when they are once fixed, seldom fly away. Carolina was afterwards a great friend of ours, and most entertaining and clever. She could imitate an old priest scolding and taking snuff so exactly, that if you shut your eyes you thought one must be in the room; and she used to create for herself little dramas and tragedies, in which she was as pathetic as she was at other times comic. As a mother she was most unfortunate. Several of her children were poisoned by eating "fungi" at a trattoria outside the Porta del Popolo, and she herself nearly died from the same cause. After Robert Selby's death she married again, and went to live at Leghorn.

I was very sorry afterwards that during this visit we never saw Mrs. Browning, who died in 1861, before we were at Florence again. We used to hear much of her--of her peculiar appearance, with her long curls, and (from illness) her head always on one side; of the infinite charm of her conversation; of her interest in spiritualism; how she would endeavour to assert her belief in it in her little feeble voice, upon which Browning would descend in his loud tones; but they were perfectly devoted to each other.

Another person whom we often saw at Florence was the foolish wife of our dear old Landor, who never ceased to describe with fury his passionate altercations with her, chiefly caused apparently by jealousy. Landor was still living at Bath at this time.

In the Cascine at Florence we found the same old flower-woman who had been there when I was a baby in the Prato, where I was taught to walk. She used to drive to the Cascine with her flowers in a smart carriage with a pair of horses, and would smile and kiss her hands to us as we passed. It was contrary to good Florentine manners not to accept the flowers which she offered to every one she saw when she arrived where the carriages were waiting, but they were never paid for at the time; only a present was sent occasionally, or given by foreigners when they left Florence, and she came to the station to see them off and present a farewell bouquet. I merely mention these customs because they are probably dying out, perhaps are already extinct.

My cousin Lady Normanby was at this time resident in her beautiful Florentine villa, with its lovely garden of roses and view over Florence, and she was very kind to us.

We were at Florence this year during the festival of Corpus Domini, and saw that curious procession, chiefly consisting of little boys in white dominos, and brown monks and brothers of the Misericordia; but, following the Archbishop under his canopy, came the Grand Duke on foot, with all the male members of the Corsini and Guicciardini families, and the young Archdukes in white satin trains.

We saw also the Foundling Hospital, where all the children were brought up and nursed by goats, and where, when the children cried, the goats ran and gave them suck.

About the 10th of June we settled at Lucca baths, in the pleasant little Casa Bertini, a primitive house more like a farm-house than a villa, on the steep hillside above the Grand Duke's palace, possessing a charming little garden of oleanders and apple-trees at the back, with views down into the gorge of the river, and up into the hilly cornfields, which were always open to us. Very delightful were the early mornings, when the mother, with book and camp-stool, wandered up the hill-path, fringed with flowers, to the Bagni Caldi. Charming too the evenings, when, after "_merenda_" at four o'clock in the garden, we used to go forth, with all the little society, in carriages or on horseback, till the heavy dews fell, and drove us in by the light of the fireflies. A most pleasant circle surrounded us. Close by, in a large cool villa with a fountain, was the gentle invalid Mrs. Greville (_née_ Locke), singing and composing music, with her pleasant companion Miss Rowland. Just below, in the hotel of the villa, "Auntie" was living with the George Cavendishes, and in the street by the river the pretty widow, Mrs. Francis Colegrave, with her children, Howard and Florence, and her sister Miss Chichester.

An amusing member of the society at the Bagni, living in a cottage full of curiosities, was Mrs. Stisted, the original of Mrs. Ricketts in "The Daltons." She had set her heart upon converting the Duke of Parma to Protestantism, and he often condescended to controversy with her. One day she thought she had really succeeded, but driving into Lucca town next day, to her horror she met him walking bare-headed in a procession with a lighted candle in his hand. Then and there she stopped her carriage and began to upbraid him. When he returned to the Bagni, he went to see her and to reprove her. "There cannot," he said, "be two sovereigns at Lucca; either I must be Duke or you must be Queen," and ever after she was called the Queen of the Bagni. Colonel Stisted had a number of curious autographs, the most interesting being the MS. of the "Lines to an Indian air"--"I rise from dreams of thee"--found in the pocket of Shelley after he was drowned.

Living beneath us all this summer were the Grand Ducal family, and we saw them constantly. They were greatly beloved, but the Grand Duchess-Dowager, who was a Sardinian princess, was more popular than the reigning Grand Duchess, who was a Neapolitan Bourbon, and ultimately brought about the ruin of the family by her influence. The Grand Duchess-Dowager was the step-mother of the Grand Duke, and also his sister-in-law, having been sister-in-law of his first wife. The Hereditary Grand Duke was married to her niece, a lovely Saxon princess, who died soon afterwards: it was said that he treated her very ill, and that his younger brother protected her. We were at a very pretty ball which was given on the festa of S. Anna, her patroness. The Grand Ducal family generally went out at the same hour as ourselves. In the middle of the day nothing stirred except the scorpions, which were a constant terror. One was found in my bath in the morning, and all that day we were in fearful expectation, as the creatures never go about singly; but in the evening we met the companion coming upstairs. There were also quantities of serpents, which in the evening used frequently to be seen crossing the road in a body going down to the river to drink.

[132]

From a portrait by Canevari.]

Every Friday afternoon we had a reception in our hill-set garden, and our maid Quintilia set out tea and fruit, &c., in the summer-house. At the gate a basket was held, into which every one dropped a story as they entered, and they were all read aloud after tea. One day, one of these stories, a squib on Ultra-Protestants written by the younger Miss Cavendish, led to a great fracas with the George Cavendishes, Admiral and Mrs. Cavendish being perfectly furious with my gentle mother, who of all people was the most innocent, as she could not have an idea of what was in the stories till they were read aloud. Well do I remember coming round the corner of the villa, and finding the Admiral storming at her as she sat upon her donkey, with "My daughters shall never enter your house again--they shall never enter it again!" and her sweet smile as she replied, "Then, Admiral Cavendish, I have only to thank you so very much for having so often allowed them to come to me hitherto,"--and the Admiral's subdued look afterwards.

There was a little school established by the Grand Duchess just below us, whither my mother sometimes went in the mornings. The children were taught Scripture dialogues. One little girl would say to another, "Oh, cara mia, cara amica mia, I have such a wonderful thing to tell you," and then would narrate how a babe was born in Bethlehem, &c., upon which the hearer would exclaim, "O Gran Dio" in her amazement, and on one occasion, with a cry of "O cielo!" pretended to faint away with astonishment in the most natural way imaginable.

A long excursion from Lucca was that to Galicano, where a hermit with a reputation of great sanctity was living under an overhanging cliff in the mountains. He hid himself on our approach, but our large party hunted him, and eventually unearthed him--an old dirty man in a brown gown, with a chain of huge beads at his girdle. We wanted to see the miraculous image of which he was guardian, but he would not show it unless we were Catholics, and was much puzzled by my protesting that we were, and my mother that we were not. However, at last he consented to exhibit it, on condition that we all knelt, and that the ladies took off their bonnets. We returned home much later than was expected, and so, as we found afterwards, escaped seven bandits, who had been lying in wait for us, and at last gave us up. The whole of the road from Lucca to Galicano had then black crosses at intervals, commemorating the murders committed there.

This summer at Lucca was altogether the greatest halt in my life I have ever known. We seemed so removed from the world, and I was more free from family snubbings than I had ever been before. But, all through the time we were there, I had been far from well, and the doctor who was consulted declared that I could not survive the severities of an English winter. In spite of this, my mother never flinched in her determination to return, for having once taken the impression (without the remotest reason) that I had a tendency to Roman Catholicism, she had a far greater terror of what she considered as danger to my soul than of any danger to my body.

When we left the Bagni di Lucca on the 2nd of August, I left it in despair. Behind us was a quiet, peaceful, and a far from useless life, encircled by troops of friends, and supplying the literary and artistic occupations in which I began to feel that I might possibly in time be able to distinguish myself. Before me was the weary monotony of Hurstmonceaux, only broken by visits from or to relations, by most of whom I was disliked and slighted, if not positively ill-treated. I also felt sure that all the influence of my aunts would be used with my easily guided mother to force upon me the most uncongenial of employments, which she was only too certain to allow them to advocate as "especially desirable for Augustus, because they _were_ uncongenial!" I was at this time also in more than usual disgrace, because disgust at the sham Christians, sham Evangelicals, sham Protestants, with whom for years I had been thrown, had induced me to avow my horror of Ordination. In every way I felt myself unfitted for it. I wrote at this time--"'Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no depth of earth: and when the sun was up, they were scorched; and, because they had no root, they withered away.' If you want to know about my past religious 'impressions,' that is just my story." Still the declaration of my determination not to take Orders, dreaded and put off for years, cost me acutest suffering from the pain and disappointment which I knew it inflicted upon my mother.

When we left Casa Bertini and descended the steep hill to our carriages, we found that the whole society had been amusing themselves by dressing in mourning, and were waiting to sing "a dirge" of their own composition, as we drove away. But we had one or two more happy days. On the morning after our arrival at Lucca town, we were astonished by sounds of loud singing in the passage, and going out, found all those we had so recently parted from at the Bagni singing in chorus some more verses which they had composed as "a serenade," and bringing for us a picture of the Ponte alla Maddalena, painted on a stone out of the river. We quickly determined to spend the day in going with them to Pisa, and making an excursion to the Gombo, where the Pisan pines end in the sands by the seashore--and we did not return till midnight. It was the custom at Lucca for those who drew to make little sketches in the travellers' book at the hotel, and I had amused myself by doing one the day before, and inscribing it "View from the Walls of Lucca," though it was a wretched performance. When we came back, we found a most lovely drawing opposite, inscribed--"View from the Walls of Lucca as it really is." The Grand Duke's artist had been at the hotel in the interval.

]

We travelled then with delicious slowness, only rolling onwards through the most glorious scenery in the cool mornings and evenings, and resting in the heat of mid-day, while, as at this time we only took our carriage from place to place, we had no scruple in halting for days at Pietra Santa, with its glorious views over the mountains, and old convents embosomed in olives and cypresses; in making excursions to Serravezza and to dismal Carrara; in lingering at La Spezia, where the avenue of oleanders was in full blaze of bloom, and driving thence to Porto Venere with its marble church and wonderful views along the cliffs--blue, green, yellow, and coral-red, descending abruptly into the sea.

_To_ MY AUNT ELEANOR PAUL.

"_Lucca, August 3, 1858._--Once upon a time there was a lady
advanced in years, who had an only child. They were sick and
sorrowful, and the tempests of the world beat upon them. Driven
from home, they wandered hither and thither, seeking rest and
finding none, till at length one day they arrived, wearied and
wayworn, at the entrance of a mountain valley. 'Alas!' they
whispered, 'what place is this?'--'Take courage,' answered the
trees and fountains; 'rejoice,' shouted the flowers, 'for this is
the Happy Valley, where those who enter rest from all sickness and
trouble: this is the place where people may have a halt in life,
and where care and anxiety do not exist.' And when they heard these
words, the countenances of the weary lady and her son were glad,
and the flowers and the trees and the fountains laughed and shouted
for joy in the ceaseless golden sunshine. For two months the
strangers rested in the Happy Valley, and then once more the
tempest howled to receive them, and the voices of the unseen
sternly bade them depart; and slowly and sadly they arose, and went
out again into the wilderness, where every solitary flower, every
mountain and stream, seemed only an echo from a lost and beautiful
past.

"Oh, my auntie, do you know who the mother and son were, and what
was the Happy Valley to which they looked back with so much loving
regret?"

"_La Spezia, August_ 8.--We have been to Carrara. Do you know, my
auntie, that once upon a time there lived in the mountains of
Carrara a race of funny little people called Fanticelle? They were
the hobgoblins of the marble rocks, and were very merry, very
useful, and highly respected by every one. Each marble had its own
Fante; one was dressed in red, another in yellow, and others in
stripes of various colours; but the Fante of the white marble wore
only a simple dress as white as snow, and was greatly despised in
consequence by her companions, who were so fashionably attired.
Daily the poor white Fante was snubbed and insulted, and at last,
when the ancient Romans came to make quarries, and cut and hacked
her to pieces, and carried her remains away in carts, all the other
Fanti smiled in their cold satire and said, 'It only served the
vulgar creature right, for she did not even know how to dress
herself, and sitting upon the mountain with nothing on but her
night-dress was really quite indecorous.'

"But when some years had passed, the great guardian spirit came to
the mountains, and, stretching forth his wings, he gathered all the
Fanti beneath them, and said, 'Now, my children, you shall go forth
to see the world, and, when you return, you shall each say what is
most highly esteemed by the lovers of art, and what it is that the
children of men consider most beautiful and best.'

"Thus the Fanti of Carrara flew forth to see the world! They
alighted first in the square at Genoa. All around were huge and
stately palaces, and in the centre the statue of a hero, with the
world lying captive at his feet. But what the Fanti remarked most
was that in the most magnificent chambers of every palace, and
even upon the statue of the great Columbus himself, sat the
semblance of their despised sister the white Fante, as if enshrined
and honoured. 'Alas!' exclaimed the Fanti, 'what degraded notions
have these Genoese; let us examine places better worth our notice.'
So they came to Spain, and visited the Alhambra, but in every
court, and even on the Fountain of Lions itself, they found the
image of the white Fante seated before them. Thence they passed on
to London, to Paris, to Berlin, to Vienna, but it was ever the
same. In every gallery of statues, over the hearth of every palace,
upon the altar of every church, it seemed as if the white Fante was
reigning. 'Ah,' they exclaimed, 'can _all_ men be thus degraded?
can _all_ good taste be banished from the earth? Let us see one
more city nearer home, and from that let us form our judgment, for
the inhabitants of these northern cities are not worthy to be
ranked with mankind.'

"So the Fanti came to Milan, and beneath the wings of the great
guardian spirit, rejoicing in their approaching triumph, they
entered its vast square. And behold the spirit drew back his wings,
and they beheld a mighty and an awful vision! Before them stood
their sister, the Fante of the milk-white rocks, but no longer
humble, no longer to be restrained even within the bounds of the
greatest palace upon earth. Majestic in beauty, invincible in
power, she raised her mighty wings to heaven in the aisles of a
vast cathedral, and mounted higher and higher as by an aërial
staircase, till, far above all human things, she flung her
snow-white tresses into the azure sky!

"Then the Fanti of the coloured robes bowed their heads and
trembled, and acknowledged in penitence and humility--'Truly the
Fante of the white rocks is the most beautiful thing in the world!'

"Who can go to Carrara, my auntie, and not feel this?"

We were for a few days at Turin. The society there was then, as it is still, the very climax of stagnation. One of its most admired ornaments was a beautiful young Contessa la Marmora. She did nothing all day, absolutely nothing, but sit looking pretty, with her chin leaning on her hand. Her mother-in-law was rather more energetic than herself, and hoping to rouse her, left a new "Journal des Modes" upon her table. Some days after, she asked what she thought of it. "Alas!" said the young Countess, with her beautiful head still leaning upon her hand, "I have been so much occupied, that I never have found time to look into it." In all my acquaintance since with Italian ladies, I have always found the same, that they are all intensely occupied, but that it is in doing--nothing!

Since the dreadful epidemic at court, which swept away at once the Queen, the Queen-Dowager, and the Duke of Genoa, the King had never received, and as his eldest daughter, Madame Clotilde, was not old enough to do so, there were no court parties. At the opera all the young ladies sat facing the stage, and the old ladies away from it; but when the ballet began there was a general change; the old ladies moved to the front, and the young ones went behind.

]

A great contrast to the Italians at Turin was Mr. Ruskin, whom we saw constantly. He was sitting all day upon a scaffold in the gallery, copying bits of the great picture by Paul Veronese. My mother was very proud of my drawings at this time, and gave them to him to look at. He examined them all very carefully and said nothing for some time. At last he pointed out one of the cathedral at Perugia as "the least bad of a very poor collection." One day in the gallery, I asked him to give me some advice. He said, "Watch me." He then looked at the flounce in the dress of a maid of honour of the Queen of Sheba for five minutes, and then he painted one thread: he looked for another five minutes, and then he painted another thread.[135] At the rate at which he was working he might hope to paint the whole dress in ten years: but it was a lesson as to examining what one drew well before drawing it. I said to him, "Do you admire all Paul Veronese's works as you do this?" He answered, "I merely think that Paul Veronese was ordained by Almighty God to be an archangel, neither more nor less; for it was not only that he knew how to cover yards of canvas with noble figures and exquisite colouring, it was that it was all _right_. If you look at other pictures in this gallery, or any gallery, you will find mistakes, corrected perhaps, but mistakes of every form and kind; but Paul Veronese had such perfect knowledge, he _never_ made mistakes."

The Charles Bunsens were at Turin, and we dined with them. With Mrs. C. Bunsen was her brother, whom we thought a very dull, heavy young man. Long afterwards he became very well known as the French Ambassador, Waddington.

We saw Mr. Ruskin again several times in the Vaudois, whither we went from Turin, and stayed for several days at La Tour, riding on donkeys to the wild scene of the Waldensian battle in the valley of Angrogna, and jolting in a carriage to the beautiful villages of Villar and Bobbio--"une vraie penitence," as our driver expressed it, though the scenery is lovely. My mother was charmed to find an old woman at La Tour who had known Oberlin very well and had lived in his parish.

]

Amongst the endless little out-of-the-way excursions which my mother, Lea, and I have made together in little _chars-à-banc_, one of those I remember with greatest pleasure is that from Vergogna up the Val Anzasca. The scenery was magnificent: such a deep gorge, with purple rocks breaking through the rich woods, and range upon range of distant mountains, with the snows of Monte Rosa closing them in. We stayed at a charming little mountain inn at Ponte Grande, where everything was extraordinarily cheap, and wandered in the meadows filled with globe-ranunculus and over-shadowed by huge chestnut-trees. In the evening the charcoal-burners came down from the mountains, where we had watched the smoke of the fires all day amongst the woods, and serenaded us under our windows, singing in parts, with magnificent voices, most effective in the still night. We were afterwards at Domo d'Ossola for a Sunday for the extraordinary fête of the imaginary Santa Filomena--kept all day with frantic enthusiasm, cannons firing, bells ringing, and processions of girls in white, chaunting as they walked, pouring in from all the country parishes in the neighbourhood.

_To_ MRS. HARE (ITALIMA).

"_Lausanne, Sept. 3, 1858._--At Martigny we found _Galignani_,
which we had not seen for some days, and you will imagine my
distress at the sad news about Mr. Landor with which they were
filled.[137] Dear Mr. Landor! I had always hoped and intended to be
near him and watch over the last years of this old, old friend. I
feel certain that there is much, which the world does not know, to
be said on his side. I have known Mrs. Y. for years ... and always
prophesied that she would be the ruin of Mr. Landor some day. For
the poems, no excuse can be offered except that he was so imbued
with the spirit of the classical authors, that when he wished to
write against Mrs. Y., he thought, 'How would Horace have written
this?' and wrote accordingly, only that Horace would have said
things a great deal worse.

'Some thought far worse of him, and judged him wrong;
But verse was what he had been wedded to,
And his own mind did like a tempest strong
Come to him thus, and drove the weary wight along.'[138]

Whatever his faults are, I am sure you will feel that we who have
known him well must draw a veil for ourselves over the failings of
his old age, and remember only the many kind words of the dear old
man, so tender in heart and so fastidious in taste, the many good
and generous acts of his long life, and how many they are.

"How much we have been struck with the _pale_ blue of the Swiss
lakes compared with the deep blue of those of Italy."

_To_ MY AUNT, ELEANOR PAUL.

"_Dijon, Sept. 12, 1858._--We found Fribourg quite up to our
expectations, quite worth coming all the way round by Switzerland
to visit. And the organ, how magnificent it is! We went in the
evening to hear it, when all the beautiful gothic church was
wrapped in darkness, except the solitary gleam of light in the
organ-loft, and we all sat long in breathless expectation. When the
music came, it was like a story. One seemed to be sitting far up
the nave of some great cathedral, and to hear from the distant
choir the choristers chaunting a litany, answering one another,
and then swelling and joining in a universal chorus. Then, while
they were singing, it was as if a great storm arose, the hail
rattled and the rain splashed against the windows, the thunder
crashed overhead, and the wind howled around. And then a mighty
earthquake convulsed and shook the church to its very foundations.
But always, in the pauses of the storm, the sweet silvery voices of
the choristers were heard above the roaring of the elements, and
when the storm subsided, they joined in thanksgiving, which died
away in the faint echoes of the surrounding hills. And all this was
the organ!

"We came by Morat to Neuchâtel. It is a pretty, though not a
striking place; but the view of the vast mass of Mont Blanc and of
all the Oberland Alps in the rose-coloured glow is magnificent. The
mother made inquiries after many old acquaintances,[139] to find
most of them dead, and those who were still living old, old ladies
of ninety and of one hundred.

"Did you ever hear of Doubs? We came through it yesterday, and it
certainly seemed to us the most melancholy, ill-fated village we
had ever seen. Some time ago there lived there a boy, whose
stepmother was very cruel to him--so cruel that his whole aim and
object in life was to obtain money enough to set up for himself and
escape from her tyranny. At last he succeeded, and leaving his
father's house with his heart full of bitterness, he invested his
savings in a partnership with the owner of the village café, where
he kept the accounts. One day his partner accused him of not
giving him a fair share of the profits. This made him perfectly
frantic--so furious that he determined to avenge himself by nothing
less than the total destruction of his native place! He began by
setting fire to his café, but the alarm was scarcely given when it
was discovered that almost every other house was in flames. The
inhabitants hurried from their beds, and were barely able to save
themselves, their houses, cattle, and goods perishing at one blow.
Only a few houses and the church escaped, in which the fugitives
took refuge, and were beginning to collect their energies, when,
after ten days, the fire broke out again in the night, and the rest
of the village was consumed with all it contained, including a
child of four years old. Between the two fires cholera had broken
out, so that numbers perished from pestilence as well as exposure.
The author of all the misery was taken and transported, but the
town is only now beginning to rise again from its ruins, and the
people to raise their spirits."

On reaching Paris, we found Italima and my sister at the Hôtel d'Oxford et Cambridge. Greatly to my relief, my mother decided that, as she was in perfect health and well supplied with visitors, it was an admirable opportunity for my remaining abroad to learn French: this I was only too thankful for, as it put off the evil day of my return to England, and encountering the family wrath about my refusal to take Orders. With my sister I spent an amusing day at Versailles on a visit to the Marquis and Marquise du Prât, the latter a daughter of the Duc de Grammont, and a very pretty, lively person. They lived in an ideal house of the _ancienne régime_, where the chairs, picture-frames, carpets, even the antimacassars, were carved or worked with the shields, crests, and mottoes of the family.

After my sister left, the intrigues of Madame Davidoff, whom, in compliance with my mother's wishes, I had refused to visit, brought about my acquaintance with the Vicomte de Costa le Cerda, a Franco-Spaniard and ardent Catholic, who constituted himself my cicerone, and amongst other places took me to _séances_ of the Académie de France, of which he was a member; and I should have been much interested in seeing all the celebrated philosophers, politicians, physicians, geologists, &c., if I had not been so ignorant of French literature that I had scarcely heard of any one of them before. The Marquis de Gabriac[140] (I forget how his office entitled him to do so) sent me a medal which enabled me to visit all profane, and the Archbishop of Paris a permission to enter all religious, institutions. Using the latter, I went with De Costa to the Benedictines, Ursulines, Carmelites, Petites Sœurs des Pauvres, and the Œuvre de la Compassion for bringing up little homeless boys. On Sundays I heard Père Félix, the philosophic Bourdaloue of the nineteenth century, preach with his musical voice to vast enthralled audiences in Nôtre Dame.[141]

]

Capital were the French lessons I received from the excellent M. Nyon, to whom I have always felt indebted. After Italima left Paris, I lodged with a Madame Barraud, who rented a small apartment at the back of a court in the Rue des Saints-Pères. Here my wretched little room looked out upon a blank wall, and was as thoroughly uncomfortable as it was possible to be. The weather soon became bitterly cold, and, to prevent being starved, I had to sit almost all day in the one poor uncarpeted sitting-room with old Madame Barraud herself, who was a most extraordinary character. Without the slightest apparent reason, a sudden suspicion would seize her, and she would rush off to the kitchen. In another minute she would return, wringing her hands, and would fling herself down in a chair with--"Oh, que je suis malheureuse! Oh, que je suis malheureuse! C'est une fille abominable cette Marie--cette tortue! elle ne sait pas le service du tout," and then, before she had time to take breath, she would run off to investigate the causes of a fresh noise in the kitchen. You were never safe from her. Every moment that old woman would dart in like a whirlwind, just to wipe off one speck of dust she had discovered on the mirror, or to smooth some crease she suspected in the tablecloth; and almost before you could look up she was vanishing with her eternal refrain of "que je suis misérable! que je suis malheureuse!"

The one subject of discussion till twelve o'clock was the déjeûner, from twelve to six the dinner, and after that the déjeûner of the next morning. Matters, however, were rather improved when Mademoiselle Barraud was at home--a thoroughly sensible, sterling person, who was generally absent on professional duties, being one of the first music-mistresses of the day. Sometimes Madame and Mademoiselle had friends in the evening, when it was amusing to see specimens of the better sort of third-class Parisians.

I made very few friends at Paris, but the persons I saw oftenest were the Marquise du Pregnier and her old mother, who remembered the Reign of Terror and had lost both her parents by the guillotine. Occasionally I went in the evening to the salon of Madame Mohl, wife of Julius Mohl, the great Orientalist, but herself an Englishwoman, who had in early life been intimate with Chateaubriand and present at his touching last hours, when his friend Madame Recamier, beautiful to the end, sat watching him with her blind eyes. Madame Mohl was a most extraordinary-looking person, like a poodle, with frizzled hair hanging down over her face and very short skirts. Her salon, at 120 Rue de Bac, especially on Friday evenings, was at that time quite one of the social features of Paris. One savant used to drop in after the other and sit round her talking in a circle, and with a _finesse d'esprit_ all her own, she would address each in turn in her quick sharp voice, always saying something pungent or clever. Politics were the chief topic, and though I remember Madame Mohl once saying that "political society was not what could be called a _nourishing_ occupation," there were no refreshments, however late the company stayed, but tea and biscuits. She had always had a sort of salon, even when, as Miss Clarke, she lived with her old mother in a very small apartment in the Abbaye-aux-Bois. Ticknor speaks of her there as keeping a little _bureau d'esprit_ all her own, _à la française_.

One night when I was shown into her salon, I found, to my horror, that I was not only the first to arrive, but that the old lady was so engrossed in administering a violent scolding to her husband, that she was promenading the drawing-room half undressed, with her strange locks still in curl-papers. It was a most ridiculous scene, and my premature appearance not a little embarrassing to them both. I retreated into the passage till Madame Mohl was "done up," though that operation was not accomplished till many other guests had arrived.

M. Julius Mohl was the greatest contrast to his quicksilver wife. He used to be called "_le bourru bienfaisant_," from his rough exterior and genuine kindness of heart. He was really ten years younger than his wife, though she considered sixty-eight the right age for a woman to attain to, and never to her last day allowed that she had passed that limit.

Madame Mohl was fond of describing how, when she was at Paris in her childhood, her elder sister, Mrs. Frewen, was taken by their mother and grandmother to the chapel royal at the Tuileries, where Marie Antoinette was then living in a kind of half-captivity. She was a very little girl, and a gendarme thought she would be crushed, and lifted her upon his shoulders, on which she was just opposite the King and Queen. She remembered, as in a picture, how on one side of them were first Madame Royale, then Madame Elizabeth, then the little Dauphin.