Books: Pictures from Italy
C >>
Charles Dickens >> Pictures from Italy
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17
Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, been brought
from London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen hundred years ago,
the Roman legions under Claudius, protested against being led into
Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country, urging that it lay beyond the limits
of the world.
Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of Rome, there was
one that amused me mightily. It is always to be found there; and
its den is on the great flight of steps that lead from the Piazza
di Spagna, to the church of Trinita del Monte. In plainer words,
these steps are the great place of resort for the artists'
'Models,' and there they are constantly waiting to be hired. The
first time I went up there, I could not conceive why the faces
seemed familiar to me; why they appeared to have beset me, for
years, in every possible variety of action and costume; and how it
came to pass that they started up before me, in Rome, in the broad
day, like so many saddled and bridled nightmares. I soon found
that we had made acquaintance, and improved it, for several years,
on the walls of various Exhibition Galleries. There is one old
gentleman, with long white hair and an immense beard, who, to my
knowledge, has gone half through the catalogue of the Royal
Academy. This is the venerable, or patriarchal model. He carries
a long staff; and every knot and twist in that staff I have seen,
faithfully delineated, innumerable times. There is another man in
a blue cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the sun (when
there is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide awake,
and very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This is the
dolce far' niente model. There is another man in a brown cloak,
who leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and
looks out of the corners of his eyes: which are just visible
beneath his broad slouched hat. This is the assassin model. There
is another man, who constantly looks over his own shoulder, and is
always going away, but never does. This is the haughty, or
scornful model. As to Domestic Happiness, and Holy Families, they
should come very cheap, for there are lumps of them, all up the
steps; and the cream of the thing is, that they are all the falsest
vagabonds in the world, especially made up for the purpose, and
having no counterparts in Rome or any other part of the habitable
globe.
My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its being said to
be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it closes), for the
gaieties and merry-makings before Lent; and this again reminds me
of the real funerals and mourning processions of Rome, which, like
those in most other parts of Italy, are rendered chiefly remarkable
to a Foreigner, by the indifference with which the mere clay is
universally regarded, after life has left it. And this is not from
the survivors having had time to dissociate the memory of the dead
from their well-remembered appearance and form on earth; for the
interment follows too speedily after death, for that: almost
always taking place within four-and-twenty hours, and, sometimes,
within twelve.
At Rome, there is the same arrangement of Pits in a great, bleak,
open, dreary space, that I have already described as existing in
Genoa. When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of
plain deal: uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made,
that the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed it in:
carelessly tumbled down, all on one side, on the door of one of the
pits--and there left, by itself, in the wind and sunshine. 'How
does it come to be left here?' I asked the man who showed me the
place. 'It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore,' he said.
I remembered to have met the procession, on its return: straggling
away at a good round pace. 'When will it be put in the pit?' I
asked him. 'When the cart comes, and it is opened to-night,' he
said. 'How much does it cost to be brought here in this way,
instead of coming in the cart?' I asked him. 'Ten scudi,' he said
(about two pounds, two-and-sixpence, English). 'The other bodies,
for whom nothing is paid, are taken to the church of the Santa
Maria della Consolazione,' he continued, 'and brought here
altogether, in the cart at night.' I stood, a moment, looking at
the coffin, which had two initial letters scrawled upon the top;
and turned away, with an expression in my face, I suppose, of not
much liking its exposure in that manner: for he said, shrugging
his shoulders with great vivacity, and giving a pleasant smile,
'But he's dead, Signore, he's dead. Why not?'
Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must select for
separate mention. It is the church of the Ara Coeli, supposed to
be built on the site of the old Temple of Jupiter Feretrius; and
approached, on one side, by a long steep flight of steps, which
seem incomplete without some group of bearded soothsayers on the
top. It is remarkable for the possession of a miraculous Bambino,
or wooden doll, representing the Infant Saviour; and I first saw
this miraculous Bambino, in legal phrase, in manner following, that
is to say:
We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were looking
down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these ancient
churches built upon the ruins of old temples, are dark and sad),
when the Brave came running in, with a grin upon his face that
stretched it from ear to ear, and implored us to follow him,
without a moment's delay, as they were going to show the Bambino to
a select party. We accordingly hurried off to a sort of chapel, or
sacristy, hard by the chief altar, but not in the church itself,
where the select party, consisting of two or three Catholic
gentlemen and ladies (not Italians), were already assembled: and
where one hollow-cheeked young monk was lighting up divers candles,
while another was putting on some clerical robes over his coarse
brown habit. The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it
were two delectable figures, such as you would see at any English
fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, as I suppose,
bending in devotion over a wooden box, or coffer; which was shut.
The hollow-cheeked monk, number One, having finished lighting the
candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, before this set-
piece; and the monk number Two, having put on a pair of highly
ornamented and gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer,
with great reverence, and set it on the altar. Then, with many
genuflexions, and muttering certain prayers, he opened it, and let
down the front, and took off sundry coverings of satin and lace
from the inside. The ladies had been on their knees from the
commencement; and the gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he
exposed to view a little wooden doll, in face very like General Tom
Thumb, the American Dwarf: gorgeously dressed in satin and gold
lace, and actually blazing with rich jewels. There was scarcely a
spot upon its little breast, or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling
with the costly offerings of the Faithful. Presently, he lifted it
out of the box, and carrying it round among the kneelers, set its
face against the forehead of every one, and tendered its clumsy
foot to them to kiss--a ceremony which they all performed down to a
dirty little ragamuffin of a boy who had walked in from the street.
When this was done, he laid it in the box again: and the company,
rising, drew near, and commended the jewels in whispers. In good
time, he replaced the coverings, shut up the box, put it back in
its place, locked up the whole concern (Holy Family and all) behind
a pair of folding-doors; took off his priestly vestments; and
received the customary 'small charge,' while his companion, by
means of an extinguisher fastened to the end of a long stick, put
out the lights, one after another. The candles being all
extinguished, and the money all collected, they retired, and so did
the spectators.
I met this same Bambino, in the street a short time afterwards,
going, in great state, to the house of some sick person. It is
taken to all parts of Rome for this purpose, constantly; but, I
understand that it is not always as successful as could be wished;
for, making its appearance at the bedside of weak and nervous
people in extremity, accompanied by a numerous escort, it not
unfrequently frightens them to death. It is most popular in cases
of child-birth, where it has done such wonders, that if a lady be
longer than usual in getting through her difficulties, a messenger
is despatched, with all speed, to solicit the immediate attendance
of the Bambino. It is a very valuable property, and much confided
in--especially by the religious body to whom it belongs.
I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate, by some
who are good Catholics, and who are behind the scenes, from what
was told me by the near relation of a Priest, himself a Catholic,
and a gentleman of learning and intelligence. This Priest made my
informant promise that he would, on no account, allow the Bambino
to be borne into the bedroom of a sick lady, in whom they were both
interested. 'For,' said he, 'if they (the monks) trouble her with
it, and intrude themselves into her room, it will certainly kill
her.' My informant accordingly looked out of the window when it
came; and, with many thanks, declined to open the door. He
endeavoured, in another case of which he had no other knowledge
than such as he gained as a passer-by at the moment, to prevent its
being carried into a small unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl
was dying. But, he strove against it unsuccessfully, and she
expired while the crowd were pressing round her bed.
Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their leisure, to
kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are certain
schools and seminaries, priestly and otherwise, that come in,
twenty or thirty strong. These boys always kneel down in single
file, one behind the other, with a tall grim master in a black
gown, bringing up the rear: like a pack of cards arranged to be
tumbled down at a touch, with a disproportionately large Knave of
clubs at the end. When they have had a minute or so at the chief
altar, they scramble up, and filing off to the chapel of the
Madonna, or the sacrament, flop down again in the same order; so
that if anybody did stumble against the master, a general and
sudden overthrow of the whole line must inevitably ensue.
The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible. The same
monotonous, heartless, drowsy chaunting, always going on; the same
dark building, darker from the brightness of the street without;
the same lamps dimly burning; the selfsame people kneeling here and
there; turned towards you, from one altar or other, the same
priest's back, with the same large cross embroidered on it; however
different in size, in shape, in wealth, in architecture, this
church is from that, it is the same thing still. There are the
same dirty beggars stopping in their muttered prayers to beg; the
same miserable cripples exhibiting their deformity at the doors;
the same blind men, rattling little pots like kitchen pepper-
castors: their depositories for alms; the same preposterous crowns
of silver stuck upon the painted heads of single saints and Virgins
in crowded pictures, so that a little figure on a mountain has a
head-dress bigger than the temple in the foreground, or adjacent
miles of landscape; the same favourite shrine or figure, smothered
with little silver hearts and crosses, and the like: the staple
trade and show of all the jewellers; the same odd mixture of
respect and indecorum, faith and phlegm: kneeling on the stones,
and spitting on them, loudly; getting up from prayers to beg a
little, or to pursue some other worldly matter: and then kneeling
down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the point where
it was interrupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her
prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music;
and in another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff,
arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling at
another dog: and whose yelps and howls resounded through the
church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train of
meditation--keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time,
nevertheless.
Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contributions of
the Faithful, in some form or other. Sometimes, it is a money-box,
set up between the worshipper, and the wooden life-size figure of
the Redeemer; sometimes, it is a little chest for the maintenance
of the Virgin; sometimes, an appeal on behalf of a popular Bambino;
sometimes, a bag at the end of a long stick, thrust among the
people here and there, and vigilantly jingled by an active
Sacristan; but there it always is, and, very often, in many shapes
in the same church, and doing pretty well in all. Nor, is it
wanting in the open air--the streets and roads--for, often as you
are walking along, thinking about anything rather than a tin
canister, that object pounces out upon you from a little house by
the wayside; and on its top is painted, 'For the Souls in
Purgatory;' an appeal which the bearer repeats a great many times,
as he rattles it before you, much as Punch rattles the cracked bell
which his sanguine disposition makes an organ of.
And this reminds me that some Roman altars of peculiar sanctity,
bear the inscription, 'Every Mass performed at this altar frees a
soul from Purgatory.' I have never been able to find out the
charge for one of these services, but they should needs be
expensive. There are several Crosses in Rome too, the kissing of
which, confers indulgences for varying terms. That in the centre
of the Coliseum, is worth a hundred days; and people may be seen
kissing it from morning to night. It is curious that some of these
crosses seem to acquire an arbitrary popularity: this very one
among them. In another part of the Coliseum there is a cross upon
a marble slab, with the inscription, 'Who kisses this cross shall
be entitled to Two hundred and forty days' indulgence.' But I saw
no one person kiss it, though, day after day, I sat in the arena,
and saw scores upon scores of peasants pass it, on their way to
kiss the other.
To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, would
be the wildest occupation in the world. But St. Stefano Rotondo, a
damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome,
will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous
paintings with which its walls are covered. These represent the
martyrdoms of saints and early Christians; and such a panorama of
horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he
were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being
boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts,
worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up
small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron
pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws
broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the
stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are among the
mildest subjects. So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that
every sufferer gives you the same occasion for wonder as poor old
Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so
much blood in him.
There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over what is
said to have been--and very possibly may have been--the dungeon of
St. Peter. This chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated
to that saint; and it lives, as a distinct and separate place, in
my recollection, too. It is very small and low-roofed; and the
dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdurate old prison are on it, as
if they had come up in a dark mist through the floor. Hanging on
the walls, among the clustered votive offerings, are objects, at
once strangely in keeping, and strangely at variance, with the
place--rusty daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers instruments of
violence and murder, brought here, fresh from use, and hung up to
propitiate offended Heaven: as if the blood upon them would drain
off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry with. It is all
so silent and so close, and tomb-like; and the dungeons below are
so black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked; that this little
dark spot becomes a dream within a dream: and in the vision of
great churches which come rolling past me like a sea, it is a small
wave by itself, that melts into no other wave, and does not flow on
with the rest.
It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are
entered from some Roman churches, and undermine the city. Many
churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which,
in the ancient time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples,
and what not: but I do not speak of them. Beneath the church of
St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, there are the jaws of a terrific range
of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and said to have another outlet
underneath the Coliseum--tremendous darknesses of vast extent,
half-buried in the earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches,
flashed by the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant
vaults branching to the right and left, like streets in a city of
the dead; and show the cold damp stealing down the walls, drip-
drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water that lie here and
there, and never saw, or never will see, one ray of the sun. Some
accounts make these the prisons of the wild beasts destined for the
amphitheatre; some the prisons of the condemned gladiators; some,
both. But the legend most appalling to the fancy is, that in the
upper range (for there are two stories of these caves) the Early
Christians destined to be eaten at the Coliseum Shows, heard the
wild beasts, hungry for them, roaring down below; until, upon the
night and solitude of their captivity, there burst the sudden noon
and life of the vast theatre crowded to the parapet, and of these,
their dreaded neighbours, bounding in!
Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the gate of
San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to the catacombs
of Rome--quarries in the old time, but afterwards the hiding-places
of the Christians. These ghastly passages have been explored for
twenty miles; and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in
circumference.
A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only
guide, down into this profound and dreadful place. The narrow ways
and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy
air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track
by which we had come: and I could not help thinking 'Good Heaven,
if, in a sudden fit of madness, he should dash the torches out, or
if he should be seized with a fit, what would become of us!' On we
wandered, among martyrs' graves: passing great subterranean
vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with
heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge
there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than that which
lives between it and the sun. Graves, graves, graves; Graves of
men, of women, of their little children, who ran crying to the
persecutors, 'We are Christians! We are Christians!' that they
might be murdered with their parents; Graves with the palm of
martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, and little
niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood; Graves of some
who lived down here, for years together, ministering to the rest,
and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars,
that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour; more roomy
graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being surprised,
were hemmed in and walled up: buried before Death, and killed by
slow starvation.
'The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our splendid
churches,' said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to
rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us
on every side. 'They are here! Among the Martyrs' Graves!' He
was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I
thought how Christian men have dealt with one another; how,
perverting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and
tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed
each other; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this
Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and
how these great and constant hearts would have been shaken--how
they would have quailed and drooped--if a foreknowledge of the
deeds that professing Christians would commit in the Great Name for
which they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable
anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful
fire.
Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches, that remain
apart, and keep their separate identity. I have a fainter
recollection, sometimes of the relics; of the fragments of the
pillar of the Temple that was rent in twain; of the portion of the
table that was spread for the Last Supper; of the well at which the
woman of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour; of two columns from the
house of Pontius Pilate; of the stone to which the Sacred hands
were bound, when the scourging was performed; of the grid-iron of
Saint Lawrence, and the stone below it, marked with the frying of
his fat and blood; these set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as
an old story, or a fable might, and stop them for an instant, as
they flit before me. The rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated
buildings of all shapes and fancies, blending one with another; of
battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and
forced, like giant captives, to support the roofs of Christian
churches; of pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and
ridiculous; of kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells,
and sometimes (but not often) of a swelling organ: of Madonne,
with their breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle
like a modern fan; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously
attired in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets trimmed with gold:
their withered crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or with
chaplets of crushed flowers; sometimes of people gathered round the
pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and
preaching fiercely: the sun just streaming down through some high
window on the sail-cloth stretched above him and across the church,
to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost among the echoes of
the roof. Then my tired memory comes out upon a flight of steps,
where knots of people are asleep, or basking in the light; and
strolls away, among the rags, and smells, and palaces, and hovels,
of an old Italian street.
On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a man was beheaded
here. Nine or ten months before, he had waylaid a Bavarian
countess, travelling as a pilgrim to Rome--alone and on foot, of
course--and performing, it is said, that act of piety for the
fourth time. He saw her change a piece of gold at Viterbo, where
he lived; followed her; bore her company on her journey for some
forty miles or more, on the treacherous pretext of protecting her;
attacked her, in the fulfilment of his unrelenting purpose, on the
Campagna, within a very short distance of Rome, near to what is
called (but what is not) the Tomb of Nero; robbed her; and beat her
to death with her own pilgrim's staff. He was newly married, and
gave some of her apparel to his wife: saying that he had bought it
at a fair. She, however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing
through their town, recognised some trifle as having belonged to
her. Her husband then told her what he had done. She, in
confession, told a priest; and the man was taken, within four days
after the commission of the murder.
There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or its
execution, in this unaccountable country; and he had been in prison
ever since. On the Friday, as he was dining with the other
prisoners, they came and told him he was to be beheaded next
morning, and took him away. It is very unusual to execute in Lent;
but his crime being a very bad one, it was deemed advisable to make
an example of him at that time, when great numbers of pilgrims were
coming towards Rome, from all parts, for the Holy Week. I heard of
this on the Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the churches,
calling on the people to pray for the criminal's soul. So, I
determined to go, and see him executed.
The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half o'clock, Roman
time: or a quarter before nine in the forenoon. I had two friends
with me; and as we did not know but that the crowd might be very
great, we were on the spot by half-past seven. The place of
execution was near the church of San Giovanni decollato (a doubtful
compliment to Saint John the Baptist) in one of the impassable back
streets without any footway, of which a great part of Rome is
composed--a street of rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to
anybody, and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and certainly
were never built on any plan, or for any particular purpose, and
have no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted breweries,
and might be warehouses but for having nothing in them. Opposite
to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built. An untidy,
unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course: some seven feet
high, perhaps: with a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising above it,
in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all
ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning sun,
whenever it looked out, now and then, from behind a cloud.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17