What I Remember Part 11

The Dall' Ongaro here spoken of was an old friend of ours--of my wife's, if I remember right--before our marriage. He was a Venetian, or rather to speak accurately, I believe, a Dalmatian by birth, but all his culture and sympathies were Venetian. He had in his early youth been destined for the priesthood, but like many another had been driven by the feelings and sympathies engendered by Italy's political struggles to abandon the tonsure for the sake of joining the "patriot"

cause. His muse was of the drawing-room school and calibre. But he wrote very many charming little poems breathing the warmest aspirations of the somewhat extreme _gauche_ of that day, especially some _stornelli_ after the Tuscan fas.h.i.+on, which met with a very wide and warm acceptance. I remember one extremely happy, the _refrain_ of which still runs in my head. It is written on the newly-adopted Italian tricolour flag. After characterising each colour separately in a couplet, he ends:--

"_E il rosso, il bianco, e il verde, e un terno che si giuoca, e non si perde_."

The phrase is borrowed from the language of the lottery. "And the red, and the white, and the green, are a threefold combination" [I am obliged to be horribly prosaic in order to make the allusion intelligible to non-Italian ears!] "on which we may play and be sure not to lose!"

I am tempted to give here another of Mrs. Browning's letters to my first wife, partly by the persuasion that any letter of hers must be a matter of interest to a very large portion of English readers, and partly for the sake of the generously appreciative criticism of one of my brother's books, which I also always considered to be one of his best. I must add that Mrs. Browning's one bit of censure coincides as perfectly with my own judgment. The letter as usual is dateless, but must have been written very shortly after the publication of my brother's novel called _The Three Clerks_.

"My dear Mrs. Trollope,--I return _The Three Clerks_ with our true thanks and appreciation. We both quite agree with you in considering it the best of the three clever novels before the public. My husband, who can seldom get a novel to hold him, has been held by all three, and by this the strongest. Also it has qualities which the others gave no sign of. For instance, I was wrung to tears by the third volume.

What a thoroughly _man's_ book it is! I much admire it, only wis.h.i.+ng away, with a vehemence which proves the veracity of my general admiration, the contributions to the _Daily Delight_--may I dare to say it?

"I do hope you are better. For myself, I have not suffered more than was absolutely necessary in the late unusual weather.

"I heard with concern that Mrs. Trollope" [my mother] "has been less well than usual. But who can wonder, with such cold?

"Most truly yours,

"Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

"_Casa Guidi, Wednesday._"

Here is also one other little memorial, written not by "Elizabeth Barrett Browning," but by "Elizabeth Barrett." It is interesting on more than one account. It bears no date, save "Beacon Terrace [Torquay], Thursday," But it evidently marks the beginning of acquaintances.h.i.+p between the two exceptionally, though not equally gifted girls--Elizabeth Barrett and Theodosia Garrow. It is written on a sheet of the very small duodecimo note paper which she was wont to use many years subsequently, but in far more delicate and elegant characters than she used, when much pen-work had produced its usual deteriorating effect on her caligraphy.

"I cannot return the _Book of Beauty_" [Lady Blessington's annual] "to Miss Garrow without thanking her for allowing me to read in it sooner than I should otherwise have done, those contributions of her own which help to justify its t.i.tle, and which are indeed sweet and touching verses.

"It is among the vexations brought upon me by my illness, that I still remain personally unacquainted with Miss Garrow, though seeming to myself to know her through those who actually do so. And I should venture to hope that it might be a vexation the first to leave me, if a visit to an invalid condemned to the _peine forte et dure_ of being very silent, notwithstanding her womanhood, were a less gloomy thing.

At any rate I am encouraged to thank Miss Fisher and Miss Garrow for their visits of repeated inquiry, and their other very kind attentions, by these written words, rather than by a message. For I am sure that wherever kindness _can_ come thankfulness _may_, and that whatever intrusion my note can be guilty of, it is excusable by the fact of my being Miss Garrow's

"Sincerely obliged,

"E. BARRETT."

Could anything be more charmingly girlish, or more prettily worded!

The diminutive little note seems to have been preserved, an almost solitary survival of the memorials of the days to which it belongs.

It must doubtless have been followed by sundry others, but was, I suppose, specially treasured as having been the first step towards a friends.h.i.+p which was already highly valued.

Of course, in the recollections of an Englishman living during those years in Florence, Robert Browning must necessarily stand out in high relief, and in the foremost line. But very obviously this is neither the time nor the place, nor is my dose of presumption sufficient for any attempt at a delineation of the man. To speak of the poet, since I write for Englishmen, would be very superfluous. It may be readily imagined that the "tag-rag and bobtail" of the men who mainly const.i.tuted that very pleasant but not very intellectual society, were not likely to be such as Mr. Browning would readily make intimates of. And I think I see in memory's magic gla.s.s that the men used to be rather afraid of him. Not that I ever saw him rough or uncourteous with the most exasperating fool that ever rubbed a man's nervous system the wrong way; but there was a quiet, lurking smile which, supported by very few words, used to seem to have the singular property of making the utterers of plat.i.tudes and the mistakers of _non-sequiturs_ for _sequiturs_, uncomfortably aware of the nature of their words within a very few minutes after they had uttered them. I may say, however, that I believe that in any dispute on any sort of subject between any two men in the place, if it had been proposed to submit the matter in dispute for adjudication to Mr. Browning, the proposal would have been jumped at with a greater readiness of _consensus_ than in the case of any other man there.

CHAPTER XI

The Italians, I believe, were "thinking" at a considerably earlier period than that which in the second letter transcribed in the preceding chapter Mrs. Browning seems to have considered as the beginning of their "cogitating" existence, and thinking on the subjects to which she is there adverting. They were "thinking,"

perhaps, less in Tuscany than in any other part of the peninsula, for they were eating more and better there. They were very lightly taxed.

The _mezzeria_ system of agriculture, which, if not absolutely the same, is extremely similar to that which is known as "conacre,"

rendered the lot of the peasant population very far better and more prosperous than that of the tillers of the earth in any of the other provinces. And upon the whole the people were contented. The Tuscan public was certainly not a "pensive public." They ate their bread not without due condiment of _compagnatico_,[1] or even their chesnuts in the more remote and primitive mountain districts, drank their sound Tuscan wine from the generous big-bellied Tuscan flasks holding three good bottles, and sang their _stornelli_ in cheerfulness of heart, and had no craving whatsoever for those few special liberties which were denied them.

[Footnote 1: Anything to make the bread "go down," as our people say--a morsel of bacon or sausage, a handful of figs or grapes, or a bit of cheese.]

_Epicuri de grege porci!_ No progress! Yes, I know all that, and am not saying what should have been, but what was. There _was_ no progress! The _contadini_ on the little farm which I came to possess before I left Tuscany cultivated it precisely after the fas.h.i.+on of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and strenuously resisted any suggestion that it could, should, or might be cultivated in any other way. But my _contadino_ inhabited a large and roomy _casa colonica_; he and his buxom wife, had six stalwart sons, and was the richer man in consequence of having them. No, in my early Florentine days the _cogito, ergo sum_ could not have been predicated of the Tuscans.

But the condition of things in the other states of the peninsula, in Venice and Lombardy under the Austrians, in Naples under the Bourbon kings, in Romagna under the Pope, and very specially in Modena under its dukes of the House of Este, was much otherwise. In those regions the Italians were "thinking" a great deal, and had been thinking for some time past. And somewhere about 1849, those troublesome members of the body social who are not contented with eating, drinking, and singing--cantankerous reading and writing people living in towns, who wanted most unreasonably to say, as the phrase goes, that "their souls were their own" (as if such fee-simple rights ever fall to the lot of any man!)--began in Tuscany to give signs that they also were "thinking."

I remember well that Alberi, the highly accomplished and learned editor of the _Reports of the Venetian Amba.s.sadors_, and of the great edition of Galileo's works, was the first man who opened my altogether innocent eyes to the fact, that the revolutionary leaven was working in Tuscany, and that there were social breakers ahead! This must have been as early as 1845, or possibly 1844. Alberi himself was a Throne-and-Altar man, who thought for his part, that the amount of proprietors.h.i.+p over his own soul which the existing _regime_ allowed him was enough for his purposes. But, as he confided to me, a very strong current of opinion was beginning to run the other way in Florence, in Leghorn, in Lucca, and many smaller cities--not in Siena, which always was, and is still, a nest of conservative feeling.

Nevertheless there never was, at least in Florence, the strength and bitterness of revolutionary feeling that existed almost everywhere else throughout Italy. I remember a scene which furnished a very remarkable proof of this, and which was at the same time very curiously and significantly characteristic of the Florentine character, at least as it then existed.

It was during the time of the Austrian occupation of Florence. On the whole the Austrian troops behaved well; and their doings, and the spirit in which the job they had in hand was carried out, were very favourably contrasted with the tyranny, the insults, and the aggressive arrogance, with which the French army of occupation afflicted the Romans. The Austrians accordingly were never hated in Florence with the bitter intensity of hate which the French earned in the Eternal City. Nevertheless, there were now and then occasions when the Florentine populace gratified their love of a holiday and testified to the purity of their Italian patriotism by turning out into the streets and kicking up a row.

It was on an occasion of this sort, that the narrow street called Por'

Santa Maria, which runs up from the Ponte Vecchio to the Piazza, was thickly crowded with people. A young lieutenant had been sent to that part of the town with a small detachment of cavalry to clear the streets. Judging from the aspect of the people, as his men, coming down the Lung' Arno, turned into the narrow street, he did not half like the job before him. He thought there certainly would be bloodshed. And just as his men were turning the corner and beginning to push their horses into the crowd, one of them slipped sideways on the flagstones, with which, most distressingly to horses not used to them, the streets of Florence are paved, and came down with his rider partly under him.

The officer thought, "Now for trouble! That man will be killed to a certainty!" The crowd--who were filling the air with shouts of "_Morte!" "Abba.s.so l'Austria!" "Morte agli Austriaci_!"[1]--crowded round the fallen trooper, while the officer tried to push forward towards the spot. But when he got within earshot, and could see also what was taking place, he saw the people immediately round the fallen man busily disengaging him from his horse! "_O poverino! Ti sei fatto male? Orsu! Non sara niente! Su! A cavallo, eh?_"[2] And having helped the man to remount, they returned to their amus.e.m.e.nt of roaring "_Morte agli Austriaci!_" The young officer perceived that he had a very different sort of populace to deal with from an angry crowd on the other side of the Alps, or indeed on the other side of the Apennines.

[Footnote 1: "Death! Down with Austria! Death to the Austrians!"]

[Footnote 2: "Oh! Poor fellow! Have you hurt yourself? Up with you! It will be nothing! Up again on your horse, eh?"]

I remember another circ.u.mstance which occurred a few years previously to that just mentioned, and which was in its way equally characteristic. In one of the princ.i.p.al _cafes_ of Florence, situated on the Piazza del Duomo--the cathedral yard--a murder was committed.

The deed was done in full daylight, when the _cafe_ was full of people. Such crimes, and indeed violent crimes of any sort, were exceedingly rare in Florence. That in question was committed by stabbing, and the motive of the criminal who had come to Florence for the express purpose of killing his enemy was vengeance for a great wrong. Having accomplished his purpose he quietly walked out of the _cafe_ and went away. I happened to be on the spot shortly afterwards, and inquired, with some surprise at the escape of the murderer, why he had not been arrested red-handed. "He had a sword in his hand!" said the person to whom I had addressed myself, in a tone which implied that that quite settled the matter--that of course it was absolutely out of the question to attempt to interfere with a man who had a sword in his hand!

It is a very singular thing, and one for which it is difficult to offer any satisfactory explanation, that the change in Florence in respect to the prevalence of crime has been of late years very great indeed I have mentioned more than once, I think, the very remarkable absence of all crimes of violence which characterised Florence in the earlier time of my residence there. It was not due to rigorous repression or vigilance of the police, as may be partly judged by the above anecdote. There was, in fact, _no_ police that merited the name.

But anything in the nature of burglary was unheard of. The streets were so absolutely safe that any lady might have traversed them alone at any hour of the day or night. And I might add to the term "crimes of violence" the further statement that pocket-picking was equally unheard of.

_Now_ there is perhaps more crime of a heinous character in Florence, in proportion to the population, than in any city in the peninsula. I think that about the first indication that all that glittered in the mansuetude of _Firenze la Gentile_ was not gold, showed itself on the occasion of an attempt to naturalise at Florence the traditional sportiveness of the Roman Carnival. There and then, as all the world knows, it has been the immemorial habit for the population, high and low, to pelt the folks in the carriages during their Corso procession with _bonbons, bouquets_, and the like. Gradually at Rome this exquisite fooling has degenerated under the influence of modern notions, till the _bouquets_ having become cabbage stalks, very effective as offensive missiles, and the _bonbons_ plaster of Paris pellets, with an accompanying subst.i.tution of a spiteful desire to inflict injury for the old horse-play, it has become necessary to limit the duration of the Saturnalia to the briefest span, with the sure prospect of its being very shortly altogether prohibited. But at Florence on the first occasion, now several years ago, of an attempt to imitate the Roman practice, the conduct of the populace was such as to demand imperatively the immediate suppression of it. The carriages and the occupants of them were attacked by such volleys of stones and mud, and the animus of the people was so evidently malevolent and dangerous, that they were at once driven from the scene, and any repet.i.tion of the practice was forbidden.

It is so remarkable as to be, at all events, worth noting, that contemporaneously with this singular deterioration in respect to crime, another social change has taken place in Florence. _La Gentile Firenze_ has of late years become very markedly the home of clericalism of a high and aggressive type. This is an entirely new feature in the Florentine social world. In the old time clerical views were sufficiently supported by the Government to give rise to the famous Madiai incident, which has been before alluded to. But clericalism in its more aggressive aspects was not in the ascendant either bureaucratically or socially. The spirit which had informed the policy and government of the famous Leopoldine laws was still sufficiently alive in the mental habitudes of both governors and governed to render Tuscany a rather suspected and disliked region in the mind of the Vatican and of the secular governments which sympathised with the Vatican's views and sentiments. The change that has taken place is therefore a very notable one. I have no such sufficiently intimate knowledge of the subject as would justify me in linking together the two changes I have noticed in the connection of cause and effect. I only note the synchronism.

On the other hand there are not wanting sociologists who maintain that the cause of the outburst of lawlessness and crime which has undeniably characterised Florence of late years is to be sought for exactly in that old-time, easy-going tolerance in religious matters, which they say is now producing a tardy but sure crop from seeds that, however long in disclosing the true nature of the harvest to be expected from them, ought never to have been expected by wise legislators to produce any other.

_Non nostrum est tantas componere lites!_ But Florence is certainly no longer _Firenze la Gentile_ as she so eminently was in the days when I knew her so well.

Whether any of the other cities of Italy have in any degree ceased to merit the traditional epithets which so many successive generations a.s.signed to them--how far Genoa is still _la Superba_, Bologna _la Gra.s.sa_, Padua _la Dotta_, Lucca _la Industriosa_--I cannot say.

Venezia is unquestionably still _la Bella_. And as for old Rome, she vindicates more than ever her t.i.tle to the epithet _Eterna_, by her similitude to those nursery toys which, throw them about as you will, still with infallible cert.i.tude come down heads uppermost.

As for the Florence of my old recollections, there were in the early days of them many little old-world sights and sounds which are to be seen and heard no longer, and which differentiated the place from other social centres.

I remember a striking incident of this sort which happened to my mother and myself "in the days before the flood," therefore very shortly after our arrival there.

It was the practice in those days to carry the bodies of the dead on open biers, with uncovered faces, to their burial. It had doubtless been customary in old times so to carry all the dead; but the custom was retained at the time of which I am writing only in the case of distinguished persons, and very generally of the priesthood. I remember, for instance, a poor little humpbacked Grand d.u.c.h.ess being so carried through the street magnificently bedecked as if she were going to a ball, and with painted cheeks. She had been a beneficent little body, and the people, as far as they knew anything about her, revered her, and looked on her last presentation to them with sympathetic feelings. But it was a sorry sight to see the poor little body, looking much like a bedizened monkey, so paraded.

Well, my mother and I were, aimlessly but much admiringly, wandering about the vast s.p.a.ces of the cathedral when we became aware of a _funzione_ of some sort--a service as we should say--being conducted in a far part of the building. There was no great crowd, but a score or two of spectators, mainly belonging to the _gamin_ category, were standing around the officiating priests and curiously looking on. We went towards the spot, and found that the burial service was being performed over the body of a young priest. The body lay on its back on the open bier, clad in full canonicals and with the long ta.s.selled cap of the secular clergy on his head. We stood and gazed with the others, when suddenly I saw the dead man's head slightly move! A s.h.i.+ver, I confess, ran through me. A moment's reflection, however, reminded me of the recognised deceitfulness of the eyes in such matters, and I did not doubt that I had been mistaken. But the next minute I again saw the dead priest slightly shake his head, and this time I was sure that I was not mistaken. I clutched my mother's arm and pointed, and again saw the awful phenomenon, which sent a cold wave through both of us from head to foot. But n.o.body save ourselves seemed to have seen anything unusual. The service was proceeding in its wonted order.

Doubting whether it might possibly be one of those horrible cases of suspended animation and mistaken death, I was thinking whether it were not my duty to call attention to the startling thing we had seen, and had with outstretched neck and peering eyes advanced a step for further observation, and with the half-formed purpose of declaring aloud that the man was not dead, when I spied crouched beneath the bier a little monkey, some nine or ten years old, who had taken in his hand the ta.s.sel of the cap, which hung down between the wooden bars which formed the bier, and was amusing himself with slowly swaying it forwards and backwards, and had thus communicated the motion to the dead man's head! It was almost impossible to believe that the little urchin had been able to reach the position he occupied without having been observed by any of the clerical attendants, of whom several were present, and still more difficult to suppose that no one of them had seen what we saw, standing immediately in front of the corpse while one of them performed the rite of l.u.s.tration with holy water, the vessel containing which was held by another. But no one interfered, and none but those who know the Florentines as well as I know them can feel how curiously and intensely characteristic of them was the fact that no one did so. The awful reverence for death which would have impelled an Englishman of almost any social position to feel indignation and instantly put a stop to what he would consider a profanation, was absolutely unknown to all those engaged in that perfunctory rite. A certain amount of trouble and disturbance would have been caused by dislodging the culprit, and each man there felt only this; that it didn't matter a straw, and that there was no reason for _him_ to take the trouble of noticing it. As far as I could observe, the amus.e.m.e.nt the little wretch derived from his performance was entirely unsocial, and confined to his own breast; for I could not see that any of the _gamin_ fraternity noticed it, or cared about it, any more than their seniors.