From sketch-book and diary Part 6

"On Whitsun-eve we had a most enchanting expedition to Stellenbosch and the Paarl, which I will describe here. W., I, the children, and the B.'s, formed the party. We left home just at sunrise, the heavy dew warning us of a very hot winter's day, though it was then cold enough.

We took the train to Stellenbosch, and I was in ecstasies over the perfect loveliness of the scenes we pa.s.sed through as the train climbed the incline towards those deeply serrated mountains which we were to pierce by and by. Looking back as we rose I could more fully appreciate the majestic proportions of Table Mountain, at whose base we live, and, when a long way off it stood above the plain in solitude, disclosed in its entirety, pale amethyst in the white morning light, I was more than ever filled with a sense of the majesty of this land which this dominating mountain seemed to gather up into itself and typify.

"Quite different in outline are the fantastic mountains we pa.s.sed athwart to-day, and nowhere have I seen such intense unmixed ultramarine shadows as those that palpitate in their deep kloofs in contrast with the rosy warmth of their sunlit b.u.t.tresses and jagged peaks. And as to the foregrounds here, when you get into the primeval wilderness, what words can I find to give an idea of their colouring, and of the profusion of the wild shrubs, all so spiky and aromatic, and some so weird, so strange, that cover the sandy plains? Here are some notes. In distance, blue mountains; middle distance, pine woods, dark; in foreground, gold-coloured shrubs, islanded in ma.s.ses of bronze foliage full of immense thistle-shaped pink and white flowers; bright green rushes standing eight feet high, with brown heads waving; black cattle knee-deep in the rich herbage and a silver-grey stork slowly floating across the blue of the still sky.

"But this most paintable and decorative vegetation is not friendly to the intruder. These exquisitely toned shrubs with wild strong forms are full of repellent spikes which, like bayonets, they seem to level at you if, lured by the gentle perfume of their blossoms, you approach eye and nose too near. Depend upon it, this country was intended for thick-skinned blacks.

"As you get farther from town influences there appear much better human forms in the landscape, and to-day I was greatly struck with the appearance of an ox-waggon drawn by twelve big-horned beasts, and upon its piled-up load stood picturesque male and female Malays in white and gay colours--quite a triumphal car. A negro with immense whip walked by the side, and behind rose a long avenue of old stone-pines, and at the end of the vista the blue sky. These stone-pine avenues that border the red-earthed highways are among the most delightful of the many local beauties of the Cape, and such stone-pines! Old giants bigger than any I have seen on the Riviera. There are dense forests of them here, lovely things to look down on, with their soft, velvety ma.s.ses of round tops of a rich dark green, looking like one solid ma.s.s. The wise Dutch who planted them had a law whereby any one felling one of these pines was bound to plant two saplings in its stead. We are doing a great deal of the felling without the planting.

"At Stellenbosch we got out, and, to my pleasure, I saw a long sort of char-a-banc driven at a hand gallop into the station yard, drawn by three mules and three horses--the vehicle ordered by W. to convey us to the 'Paarl.' And why 'Paarl'? Deep among the mountains rises a double peak, bearing imbedded in each summit an immense smooth rock rounded like a black t.i.tanic 'Pearl' that glistens in the sun as it beats on its polished surface. Thither we blithely sped, one driver holding the mult.i.tudinous reins of our mixed team, the other manuvering with both hands his immensely long whip, the gyrations of the thong being an interesting thing to watch as he touched up now this beast and now that.

They have a way in this country of keeping up a uniform trot uphill, downhill, and on the level, but stopping frequently to breathe the team." (Ah! give me road travel with horses--it is more _human_ than the motor!) "After an enchanting stage through wild mountain gorges we came to an oak fixed upon by W. beforehand as marking our halting place, and there the six beasts were 'out-spanned.' The simple harness was just slipped off and laid along on the road where the animals stood, and then they were allowed to stray into the wild, tumbling bush as they liked and have a roll, if so minded. Then we lit a fire and spread our repast under the shade of the oak at the edge of a wood that sloped down to a mountain stream. All round the solemn mountains, all about us fragrant aromatic flowers and the call of wild African birds! I can well understand the pa.s.sionate love an Africander-born must feel for his country. I know none that has such strong, saturating local sentiment.

The horses and mules, whose feet I had espied several times waving in spurts of rolling above the undergrowth, being collected and 'in-spanned,' we set off for the Paarl Station and descended back into the Plain by rail at sunset; and as we left the mountains behind us they were flus.h.i.+ng in the glory from the West, their shadows remaining of the same astonis.h.i.+ng ultramarine they had kept all day. In any other country the blue would have changed somewhat, but here I don't expect anything to follow any known rules--I accept the phenomena of things around me as time goes on, and have ceased to wonder. Oh! vision of loveliness, strange and unique, which this day has given me, never to be forgotten."

My great regret is that I had so little time to ply my paints and try at least to make studies which would now be very precious to me. How little I knew the shortness of my sojourn! The two little Cape ponies (with much of the Arab in them) were in almost daily requisition along those great pine-bordered, red-earthed roads, to take me for my return calls, or a portion of them. I fear I left many unreturned towards the end.

There were the Dutch as well as the English, a large circle. I had sketching expeditions projected which never came off, with a clever Dutch lady, who did charming water-colours of beautiful Constantia and the striking country above Simon's Bay, and the true "Cape of Good Hope" beyond. She had battled with snakes in the pursuit of her art, and in the woods had sustained the stone-throwing of the baboons, who made a target of her as she sat at work. I was willing for the baboon bombardment, and even would chance the snakes, as one chances everything, to wrest but a poor little water-colour from nature.

Two events which, in that tremendous year '99, were of more than usual importance loom large in my memory of the Cape--that is, the Queen's Birthday Review in May, and the opening of Parliament on the 14th July.

The Birthday Review on the Plain at Green Point was the ditto of others I had seen on the sands of Egypt, on the green sward of Laffan's Plain at Aldershot, on the Dover Esplanade, and wherever W. had been in command; but this time, as he rode up on his big grey to give the Governor the Royal Salute before leading the "Three Cheers for Her Majesty the Queen!" a prophet might have seen the War Spectre moving through the ranks of red-coats behind the General.

At the opening of Parliament we ladies almost filled the centre of the "House," and I was able to study the scene from very close. The Dutch Members, on being presented to the Speaker, took the oath by raising the right hand, whereas the English, of course, kissed the Book. The proceedings were all on the lines followed at Westminster, the Governor keeping his hat on as representing the Sovereign. The opening words of "the Speech from the Throne" sounded hollow. They proclaimed amongst other things _urbi et orbi_, that we were at peace with the South African Republics.

"And now," says the diary, "Good-bye, South Africa, for ever! I am glad that in you I have had experience of one of the most enchanting portions of this earth!"

As you know that experience only lasted five months after all. We left on the 23rd August '99 on a day of blinding rain, which, as the s.h.i.+p moved off, drew like a curtain across that country which I felt we were leaving to a fast-approaching trouble. The war cloud was descending. It burst in blood and fire a few weeks later and deepened the sense of melancholy with which I shall ever think of that far-away land.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAPE "FLATS"]

IV

ITALY

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRINGING IN THE GRAPES]

CHAPTER I

VINTAGE-TIME IN TUSCANY

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A descent from the Apennine on a September evening into Tuscany, with the moon nearly full--that moon which in a few days will be s.h.i.+ning in all its power upon the delights of the vintage week--this I want to recall to you who have shared the pleasure of such an experience with me.

A descent into the Garden of Italy, spread out wide in a haze of warm air--can custom stale the feeling which that brings to heart and mind?

Railway travel has its poetry, its sudden and emotional contrasts and surprises. But a few hours ago we were in the foggy drizzle of an autumn morning at Charing Cross, and, ere we have time to be f.a.gged by a too-long journey, our eyes and brain receive the image of the Tuscan plain!

The train slows down for a moment on emerging from the last tunnel at the top of the mountain barrier; the grinding brakes are still, and for a precious instant we listen at the window for the old summer night sounds we remember and love. Yes! there they are; there _he_ is, the dear old chirping, drumming, droning night-beetle in myriads at his old penetrating song, persistent as the sicala's through the dog days, local in its suggestiveness as the corncrake's endless saw among the meadow-sweet all through the Irish summer night.

But, _avanti!_ Down the winding track with flying sparks from the locked wheels, every metre to the good; down to the red domes of Pistoja; forward, then, on the level, to Florence and all it holds.

How we English do love Italy! Somewhere in our colder nature flows a warm Gulf Stream of love for what is sunny and clear-skied and genial, and I think I may say, though my compatriots little realize it, that the evidences of a living faith which are inseparable from Italian landscape greatly add to the charm that attracts us to this land. What would her hills be if decapitated of the convents on their summits, with each its cypress-lined _Via Crucis_ winding up the hillside? The time of the after-glow would be voiceless if deprived of the ringing of the Angelus.

Dimly we perceive these things, or hardly recognise them as facts--nay, many of us still protest, _but they draw us to Italy_.

And now the arrival at Florence. The pleasure of dwelling on that arrival, when on the platform our friends await us with the sun of Italy in their looks! Then away we go with them in carriages drawn by those fast-trotting Tuscan ponies that are my wonder and admiration, with crack of whip and jingle of bells along the white moon-lit road to the great villa at Signa, where the vintage is about to begin.

To recall the happy labour of those precious three days of grape-picking in the mellow heat on the hillside, and then the all-pervading fumes of fermenting wine of the succeeding period in the courtyard of the _Fattoria_; the dull red hue of the crushed grapes that dyes all things, animate and inanimate, within the sphere of work, is one of the most grateful efforts of my memory. I see again the handsome laughing peasants, the white oxen, the flights of pigeons across the blue of the sky. The mental relaxation amidst all this activity of wholesome and natural labour, the complete change of scene, afford a blessed rest to one who has worked hard through a London winter and got very tired of a London season. It is a patriarchal life here, and the atmosphere of good humour between landlord and tenant seems to show the land laws and customs of Tuscany to be in need of no reformer, the master and the man appearing to be nearer contentment than is the case anywhere else that I know of. You and I saw a very cheery specimen of the land system at grand old Caravaggio.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SON OF THE SOIL, RIVIERA DI LEVANTE]

Then the evenings! I know it is trite to talk of guitars and tenor voices under the moonlight, but Italy woos you back to many things we call "used up" elsewhere, and there is positive refreshment in hearing those light tenor voices, expressive of the light heart, singing the ever-charming _stornellos_ of the country as we sit under the pergola after dinner each evening. The neighbours drop in and the guitar goes round with the coffee. Everybody sings who can, and, truth to say, some who can't. Many warm thanks to our kind friends, English and Italian (some are gone!), who gave you and me such unforgettable hospitality in '75, '76.

But lest all these guitarings and airy nothings of the gentle social life here should become oversweet, we can slip away from the rose-garden and climb up into the vineyards of the rustic _podere_ that speak of wholesome peasant labour, of tillage--the first principle of man's existence on earth--and, among the practical pole-vines that bear the true wine-making grapes (not the dessert fruit of the garden _pergola_), have a quiet talk.

The starry sky is disclosed almost round the entire circle of the horizon, with "_Firenze la gentile_" in the distance on our right, the Apennine in front, and the sleeping plain trending away to the left to be lost in mystery. I want to talk to you of our experience of Italy the Beloved, from our earliest childhood until to-day.

What a happy chance it was that our parents should have been so taken with the _Riviera di Levante_ as to return there winter after winter, alternately with the summers spent in gentle Kent or Surrey, during our childhood; not the French Riviera which has since become so sophisticated, but that purely Italian stretch of coast to the east of Genoa, ending in Porto Fino, that promontory which you and I will always hold as a sacred bit of the world. Why? There are as lovely promontories jutting out into the Mediterranean elsewhere? The child's love for the scenes of its early friends.h.i.+ps with nature is a jealous love.

Our relations by marriage with the B. family admitted us into the centre of a very typical Italian home of the old order. I suppose that life was very like the life of eighteenth-century England--the domestic habits were curiously alike, and I cannot say I regret that their vogue is pa.s.sing. We are thought to be so ridiculously fastidious, _noi altri inglesi_, and our parents were certainly not exceptional in this respect, and suffered accordingly.

The master of the house, the autocratic _padrone_, had been in the Italian Legion in Napoleon's Russian campaign, as you may remember, and the retreat from Moscow had apparently left certain indelible cicatrices on the old gentleman's temper. I can hear his stentorian voice even now calling to the servant (I think there was only one "living in," though there were about a dozen hangers-on) in the rambling old Palazzo without bells. "O--O--O, Mariuccia!" "Padrone!" you heard in a feminine treble from the remote regions of the kitchen upstairs, somewhere. Mariuccia would generally get a bit of the Italian legionary's mind when she came tumbling down the marble stairs. Madame la Generale appeared in the morning with a red handkerchief on her head and remained in corsetless _deshabille_ till the afternoon. Genoese was the home language, French was for society. No one spoke real Italian.

They had not yet begun to "Toscaneggiare," as it grew to be the fas.h.i.+on to do when Italy became united. Don't you dislike to hear them?

What recollections our parents carried away from those visits to the Nervi household! How we used to love to hear mamma's accounts, for instance, of the night Lord Minto came to tea. Madame Gioconda had put the whole pound of choice green tea which she had bought at the English shop in Genoa into a large tea-pot requisitioned for this rare English occasion. Poor mamma had the pouring of it out, and no deluges of hot water, brought by the astonished Mariuccia, could tame that ferocious beverage. I am sure the brave General never got more completely "bothered" by the Russian cannon than he did by the "gun-powder" that evening. Nowadays such a mistake could not happen when _il the_ is quite the fas.h.i.+on.

Italians still think it the right thing to visit England in November and go to Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham for their informing little tour. In those remote days it was the only way in which the few that ever ventured so far saw our lovely land. Mamma was constantly sent into a state of suppressed indignation by the stereotyped question, "Are there any flowers in England?" But I have not done with the old General.

I remember we were so frightened of that Tartar that Papa used to have to propel us into the Presence, when, in the evenings, every one, big and little, sat down to dominoes or "tombola." Syrup and water and little cakes made of chestnut flour refreshed the company. The General's snuff was in the syrup, I firmly believed. We looked like two little martyrs as we went up to salute those shaking yellow cheeks on being sent to bed. Why are children put to these ordeals?

The living was frugal, the real "simple life" which some of us in England are pretending to lead to-day. But on certain occasions, such as Shrove Tuesday, for instance, ah! no effects of oriental feasting could surpa.s.s the repletion with which each guest left the festive board.

Mariuccia had help for three days previous to such regalings, during which one heard the tapping of the chopper in the kitchen, preparing the force-meat for the national dish, the succulent _ravioli_, as one pa.s.sed within earshot of that remote vaulted hall.

And do you remember (you are a year my junior, and a year makes a great difference in the child's mind) a certain night when there was a ball at our villa on the Albaro sh.o.r.e, and the shutters of the great "_sala_"

were thrown open to let in the moonlight at midnight? A small barque lay in the offing, surrounded by little boats, and a cheer came over the sea in answer to what the people over there, seeing the sudden illumination from the chandeliers, took for our flas.h.i.+ng signal of "G.o.d-speed!" They were a detachment of Garibaldi's Reds.h.i.+rts on their way to liberate Southern Italy. The grown-ups on our side went down to supper, and our little cropped heads remained looking at the barque in the moon's broad reflection long after we were supposed to be asleep. I had seen the Liberator himself talking to the gardener at the ----'s villa, where he was staying, at Quarto, the day before he sailed for Messina.

We were certainly an unconventional family, and we were so happy in our rovings through the land of sun. But if you and I are inclined to bemoan too much modernism in that Italy we so jealously love, oh! do not let us forget the gloom of some of those old palaces which we had a mind to inhabit a _l'Italienne_, on bad winter nights--the old three-beaked oil lamps in the bedrooms serving, as our dear father used to say, only to "make darkness visible"--the wind during the great storms setting some loose shutter flapping in uninhabited upper regions of the house; the dark places which Charles d.i.c.kens in his _Pictures from Italy_ says he noticed in all the Italian houses he slept in on his tour, which were not wholly innocent of scorpions. The marble floors and the paucity of fireplaces did not give comfort for the short winters; but how glorious those old houses became as soon as the cold was gone; shabby, ramshackle, and splendid, we loved them "for all in all."