Books: Hawthorne and His Circle

J >> Julian Hawthorne >> Hawthorne and His Circle

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It was in Rome, too, that I first came in contact with death. It
aroused my liveliest curiosity, but, as I remember, no alarm; partly,
I suspect, because I was unable to believe that there was anything
real in the spectacle. The scene has been woven into the texture of
the Italian romance; it is there described almost as it actually
presented itself to the author's observation. A dead monk of the
Capuchin order lay on a bier in the nave of their church, and while we
looked at him a stream of blood flowed from his nostrils. We went down
afterwards, I recollect, into the vaults, and saw the fine, Oriental
loam in which the body was to lie; and it seems to me there were
arches and other architectural features composed of skulls and bones
of long-dead brothers of the order. He must have been a fantastic and
saturnine genius who first suggested this idea.

Another subterranean expedition of ours was to the Catacombs, the
midnight passages of which seemed to be made of bones, and niches
containing the dust of unknown mortality, which were duskily revealed
in the glimmer of our moccoli as we passed along in single file.
Sometimes we came to chambers, one of which had in it a bier covered
with glass, in which was a body which still preserved some semblance
of the human form. There were occasional openings in the vaulted roof
of the corridors, but for the most part the darkness was Egyptian, and
for a few moments a thrill of anxiety was caused by the disappearance
either of my sister Una or of Ada Shepard; I forget which. They were
soon found, but the guide read us a homily upon the awful peril of
lifelong entombment which encompassed us. But the air was dry and
cool, and the whole adventure, from my point of view, enjoyable.

Again, we went down a long flight of steps somewhere near the Forum,
till we reached a pitch-black place, where we waited till a guide came
up from still lower depths, down into which we followed him--each with
a moccolo--till we felt level earth or stone beneath our feet, and
stood in what I suppose is as lightless a hole as can exist in nature.
It was wet, too, and the smell of it was deadly and dismal. This,
however, was the prison in which the old Romans used to confine
important prisoners, such as Jugurtha and the Apostle Peter; and here
they were strangled to death or left to starve. It was the Mamertine
Prison. I did not like it. I also recall the opening of an oubliette
in the castle of San Angelo, which affected me like a nightmare.
Before leaving Concord, in 1853, I had once tumbled through a rotten
board into a well, dug by the side of the road ages before, and had
barely saved myself from dropping to the bottom, sixty feet below, by
grabbing the weeds which grew on the margin of the hole. I was not
much scared at the moment; but the next day, taking my father to the
scene of the accident, he remarked that had I fallen in I never could
have got out again; upon which I conceived a horror of the well which
haunts me in my dreams even to this day. Only a tuft of grass between
me and such a fate! I was, therefore, far from comfortable beside the
oubliette, and was glad to emerge again into the Roman sunshine.

One night we climbed the Pincian Hill, and saw, far out across Rome,
the outlines of St. Peter's dome in silver light. While we were
thinking that nothing could be more beautiful, all of a sudden the
delicate silver bloomed out into a golden glory, which made everybody
say, "Oh!" Was it more beautiful or not? Theoretically, I prefer the
silver illumination; but, as a matter of fact, I must confess that I
liked the golden illumination better. We were told that the wonder was
performed by convicts, who lay along the dome and applied their
matches to the lamps at the word of command, and that, inasmuch as the
service was apt to prove fatal to the operators, these convicts were
allowed certain alleviations of their condition for doing it. I
suppose it is done by electricity now, and the convicts neither are
killed nor obtain any concessions. Such are the helps and hindrances
of civilization!

Shortly after this, on a cool and cloudy night, I was down in the
Piazza, del Popolo and saw the fireworks, the only other pyrotechnic
exhibition I had witnessed having been a private one in Rock Park,
which, I think, I have described. This Roman one was very different,
and I do not believe I have ever since seen another so fine. The whole
front of the Pincian was covered with fiery designs, and in the air
overhead wonderful fiery serpents and other devices skimmed, arched,
wriggled, shot aloft, and detonated. A boy accepts appearances as
realities; and these fireworks doubtless enlarged my conceptions of
the possibilities of nature, and substantiated the fables of the
enchanters.

[IMAGE: THE MARBLE FAUN]

The Faun of Praxiteles, as the world knows, attracted my father,
though he could not have visited it often; for both in his notes and
in his romance he makes the same mistake as to the pose of the figure:
"He has a pipe," he says in the former, "or some such instrument of
music in the hand which rests upon the tree, and the other, I think,
hangs carelessly by his side." Of course, the left arm, the one
referred to, is held akimbo on his left hip. That my father's eyes
were, however, already awake to the literary and moral possibilities
of the Faun is shown by his further observations, which are much the
same as those which appear in the book. "The whole person," he says,
"conveys the idea of an amiable and sensual nature, easy, mirthful,
apt for jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. The
Faun has no principle, nor could comprehend it, yet is true and honest
by virtue of his simplicity; very capable, too, of affection. He might
be refined through his feelings, so that the coarser, animal part of
his nature would be thrown into the background, though liable to
assert itself at any time. Praxiteles has only expressed the animal
part of the nature by one (or, rather, two) definite signs--the two
ears, which go up in a little peak, not likely to be discovered on
slight inspection, and, I suppose, they are covered with downy fur. A
tail is probably hidden under the garment. Only a sculptor of the
finest imagination, most delicate taste, and sweetest feeling would
have dreamed of representing a faun under this guise; and, if you
brood over it long enough, all the pleasantness of sylvan life, and
all the genial and happy characteristics of the brute creation, seem
to be mixed in him with humanity--trees, grass, flowers, cattle, deer,
and unsophisticated man." This passage shows how much my father was
wont to trust to first impressions, and even more on the moral than on
the material side. He recognized a truth in the first touch--the first
thought--which he was wary of meddling with afterwards, contenting
himself with slightly developing it now and then, and smoothing a
little the form and manner of its presentation. The finest art is
nearest to the most veritable nature--to such as have the eye to see
the latter aright. Rome, like other ancient cities which have fallen
from the positive activity of their original estate, has one great
advantage over other places which one wishes to see (like London, for
instance), that the whole business of whoever goes there, who has any
business whatever, is to see it; and when the duty-sights have been
duly done, the sight-seer then first begins to live his true life in
independence and happiness, going where he lists, staying no longer
than he pleases, and never knowing, when he sallies forth in the
morning, what, or how many, or how few things he will have
accomplished by nightfall.

The duty to see is indeed the death of real vision; the official
cicerone leads you anywhere but to the place or thing that you are in
the mood to behold or understand. But with his disappearance the fun
and the pageant begin; one's eyes are at last opened, and beauty and
significance flow in through every pore of the senses. It is in this
better phase of his Roman sojourn that I picture my father; he trudges
tranquilly and happily to and fro, with no programme and no
obligations, absorbing all things with that quiet, omnivorous glance
of his; pausing whenever he takes the fancy, and contemplating for
moments or minutes whatever strikes his fancy; often turning aside
from egregious spectacles and giving his attention to apparent
trifles, to the mere passing show; pondering on the tuft of flowers in
a cranny of the Coliseum wall, on the azure silhouette of the Alban
Mountains, on the moss collected on the pavement beneath the aperture
in the roof of the Pantheon, on the picturesque deformity of old,
begging Beppo on the steps of the Piazza, d' Espagna. I am trudging
joyously beside him, hanging on to his left hand (the other being
occupied with his hook-headed cane), asking him innumerable questions,
to which he comfortably, or abstractedly, or with humorous impatience,
replies; or I run on before him, or lag behind, busy with my endless
occupation of picking up things to me curious and valuable, and
filling with them my much-enduring pockets; in this way drinking in
Rome in my own way, also, and to my boyish advantage. He tells me
tales of old Rome, always apposite to the occasion; draws from me,
sometimes, my private views as to persons, places, and scenes, and
criticises those views in his own terse, arch, pregnant way, the force
and pertinency whereof are revealed to me only in my later meditations
upon them. It is only after one has begun to deal in this way with
Rome that its magic and spell begin to work upon one; and they are
never to be shaken off. Anxiety and pain may be mingled with them, as
was the case with my father before we said our final farewell to the
mighty city; but it is thereby only the more endeared to one. Rome is
one of the few central facts of the world, because it is so much more
than a fact. Byron is right--it is the city of the soul.

On one of the last evenings of our first season we went to the
Thompsons', and were there shown, among other things, a portfolio of
sketches. There is in The Marble Faun a chapter called "Miriam's
Studio," in which occurs a reference to a portfolio of sketches by
Miriam herself; the hint for it may have been taken from the portfolio
of Mr. Thompson, though the sketches themselves were of a very
different quality and character. The latter collection pleased me,
because I was just beginning to fill an album of my own with such
lopsided attempts to represent real objects, and yet more preposterous
imaginative sallies as my age and nature suggested. My father was
interested in them on account of the spiritual vigor which belongs to
the artist's first vision of his subject. In their case, as well as in
his own, he felt that it was impossible, as Browning put it, to
"recapture that first, fine, careless rapture." But the man of letters
has an advantage over the man of paint and canvas in the matter of
being able to preserve the original spirit in the later, finished
design.

Towards the close of this first season in Rome the Bryants came to
town, and the old poet, old in aspect even then, called on us; but he
was not a childly man, and we youngsters stood aloof and contemplated
with awe his white, Merlin beard and tranquil but chilly eyes. Near
the end of May William Story invited us to breakfast with him; the
Bryants and Miss Hosmer and some English people were there; and I
understood nothing of what passed except the breakfast, which was
good, until, at the end of the session, my father and Story began to
talk about the superstition as to Friday, and they agreed that, of
course, it was nonsense, but that, nevertheless, it did have an
influence on both of them. It probably has an influence on everybody
who has ever heard of it. Many of us protest indignantly that we don't
believe in it, but the protest itself implies something not unlike
believing.

Finally, on the 24th of May, we left our Pincian palace, and got into
and on the huge _vettura_ which was to carry us to Florence, a week's
journey. It was to be one of the most delightful and blessed of our
foreign experiences; my father often said that he had enjoyed nothing
else so much, the vetturino (who happened to be one of the honestest
and sweetest-tempered old fellows in Italy) taking upon himself the
entire management of everything, down to ordering the meals and paying
the tolls, thus leaving us wholly unembarrassed and free from
responsibility while traversing a route always historically and
generally scenically charming. But we were destined, on the threshold
of the adventure, to undergo one of those evil quarters of an hour
which often usher in a period of special sunshine; for we were forced
into a desperate conflict with our servant-girl, Lalla, and her mother
over a question of wages. The girl had done chores for us during our
residence at the Palazzo Larazani, and had seemed to be a very amiable
little personage; she was small, slim, and smiling, and, though dirty
and inefficient, was no worse, so far as we could discover, than any
other Roman servant-girl. When we had fixed on the date of our
departure, Lalla had been asked how much warning she wanted; she
replied, a fortnight; which, accordingly, was given her, with a few
days thrown in for good measure. But when the day arrived she claimed
a week's more pay, and her old mother had a bill of her own for
fetching water. According to my observation, travelling Americans
have little or no conscience; to avoid trouble they will submit to
imposition, not to mention their habit of spoiling tradesmen, waiters,
and other foreign attendants by excessive tips and payments. But my
father and mother, though apt enough to make liberal bargains, were
absolutely incorruptible and immovable when anything like barefaced
robbery was attempted upon them; and they refused to present Lalla and
her mother with a single baioccho more than was their due. Moreover,
the patrone, or proprietor, of the Palazzo had mulcted them some six
scudi for Lalla's profuse breakages of glass and crockery during our
stay.

It was early morning when we set out, and only the faithful Thompsons
were there to bid us farewell. Lalla and her tribe, however, were on
hand, and violently demanded the satisfaction of their iniquitous
claims. "No!" said my father, and "No!" said my mother, like the
judges of the Medes and Persians. Thereupon the whole House of Lalla,
but Lalla and her mother especially, gave us an example of what an
Italian can do in the way of cursing an enemy. Ancient forms of
malediction, which had been current in the days of the early Roman
kings, were mingled with every damning invention that had been devised
during the Middle Ages, and ever since then; and they were all hurled
at us in shrill, screaming tones, accompanied by fell and ominous
gestures and inarticulate yells of superheated frenzy. Nothing could
surpass the volubility of this cursing, unless it were the animosity
which prompted it; no crime that anybody, since Cain slew Abel, had or
could have committed deserved a tenth part of the calamities and evil
haps which this preposterous family called down upon our heads, who
had committed no crime at all, but quite the contrary. When, in
after-years, I heard Booth, as Richelieu, threaten "the curse of Rome"
upon his opponents, I shuddered, wondering whether he had any notion
what the threat meant. Through it all my mother's ordinarily lovely
and peaceful countenance expressed a sad but unalterable
determination; and my father kept smiling in a certain dangerous way
that he sometimes had in moments of great peril or stress, but said
nothing; while Mr. Thompson indignantly called upon the cursers to
cease and to beware, and my dear friend Eddy looked distressed to the
verge of tears. He squeezed my hand as I got into the _vettura_, and
told me not to mind--the Lalla people were wicked, and their
ill-wishes would return upon their own heads. A handful of ten-cent
pieces, or their Roman equivalent, would have stopped the whole outcry
and changed it into blessings; but I think my father would not have
yielded had the salvation of Rome and of all Italy depended upon it.
His eyes gleamed, as I have seen them do on one or two other occasions
only, as we drove away, with the screams pursuing us, and that smile
still hovered about his mouth. But we drove on; Gaetano cracked his
long whip, our four steeds picked up their feet and rattled our
vehicle over the Roman cobble-stones; we passed the Porta del Popolo,
and were stretching along, under the summer sunshine, upon the white
road that led to Florence. It was a divine morning; the turmoil and
the strife were soon forgotten, and for a week thenceforward there was
only unalloyed felicity before us. Poor, evil-invoking Lalla had
passed forever out of our sphere.

XVIII

In Othello's predicament--Gaetano--Crystals and snail-shells--Broad,
flagstone pavements--Fishing-rods and blow-pipes--Ghostly
yarns--Conservative effects of genius--An ideal bust and a living
one--The enigma of spiritualism--A difficult combination to
overthrow--The dream-child and the Philistine--Dashing and plunging
this way and that--Teresa screamed for mercy--Grapes and figs and
ghostly voices--My father would have settled there--Kirkup the
necromancer--A miraculous birth--A four-year-old medium--The
mysterious touch--An indescribable horror--Not even a bone of her was
left--Providence takes very long views.

The railroad which now unites Rome with Florence defrauds travellers
of some of the most agreeable scenery in Italy, and one of the most
time-honored experiences; and as for the beggars who infested the
route, they must long since have perished of inanition--not that they
needed what travellers gave them in the way of alms, but that, like
Othello, their occupation being gone, they must cease to exist. Never
again could they look forward to pestering a tourist; never exhibit a
withered arm or an artistic ulcer; never mutter anathemas against the
obdurate, or call down blessings upon the profuse. What was left them
in life? And what has become of the wayside inns, and what of the
vetturinos? A man like Gaetano, by himself, was enough to modify
radically one's conception of the possibilities of the Italian
character. In appearance he was a strong-bodied Yankee farmer, with
the sun-burned, homely, kindly, shrewd visage, the blue jumper, the
slow, canny ways, the silent perception and enjoyment of humorous
things, the infrequent but timely speech. It was astonishing to hear
him speaking Italian out of a mouth which seemed formed only to emit a
Down-East drawl and to chew tobacco. In disposition and character
this son of old Rome was, so far as we, during our week of constant
and intimate association with him, could judge, absolutely without
fault; he was mild, incorruptible, and placid, as careful of us as a
father of his children, and he grew as fond of us as we were of him,
so that the final parting, after the journey was done, was really a
moving scene. I have found the tribe of cabbies, in all countries, to
be, as a rule, somewhat cantankerous and sinister; but Gaetano
compensated for all his horse-driving brethren. To be sure, _vettura_
driving is not like cabbing, and Gaetano was in the habit of getting
out often and walking up the hills, thus exercising his liver. But he
must have been born with a strong predisposition to goodness, which he
never outgrew.

Save for a few showers, it was fine weather all the way, and a good
part of the way was covered on foot by my father and me; for the hills
were many, and the winding ascents long, and we would alight and leave
the slow-moving vehicle, with its ponderous freight, behind us, to be
overtaken perhaps an hour or two later on the levels or declivities.
Gaetano was a consummate whip, and he carried his team down the
descents and round the exciting turns at a thrilling pace, while the
yards of whiplash cracked and detonated overhead like a liliputian
thunder-storm. On the mountain-tops were romantic villages,
surrounding rock-built castles which had been robber strongholds
centuries before, and we traversed peaceful plains which had been the
scenes of famous Roman battles, and whose brooks had run red with
blood before England's history began. We paused a day in Perugia, and
received the Bronze Pontiff's benediction; the silent voices of
history were everywhere speaking to the spiritual ear. Meanwhile I
regarded the trip as being, primarily, an opportunity to collect
unusual snail-shells; and we passed through a region full of natural
crystals, some of them of such size as to prompt my father to forbid
their being added to our luggage. I could not understand his
insensibility. Could I have had my way, I would have loaded a wain
with them. I liked the villages and castles, too, and the good dinners
at the inns, and the sound sleeps in mediaeval beds at night; but the
crystals and the snail-shells were the true aim and sustenance of my
life. My mother and sister sketched continually, and Miss Shepard was
always ready to tell us the story of the historical features which we
encountered; it astounded me to note how much she knew about things
which she had never before seen. One afternoon we drove down from
surrounding heights to Florence, which lay in a golden haze
characteristic of Italian Junes in this latitude. Powers, the
sculptor, had promised to engage lodgings for us, but he had not
expected us so soon, and meanwhile we put up at a hotel near by, and
walked out a little in the long evening, admiring the broad, flagstone
pavements and all the minor features which made Florence so unlike
Rome. The next day began our acquaintance with the Powers family, who,
with the Brownings, constituted most of the social element of our
sojourn. Powers had an agreeable wife, two lovely daughters, and a
tall son, a few years older than I, and a pleasant companion, though
he could not take the place of Eddy Thompson in my heart. He was
clever with his hands, and soon began to make fishing-rods for me,
having learned of my predilection for the sport. There were no
opportunities to fish in Florence; but the rods which Bob Powers
produced were works of art, straight and tapering, and made in
lengths, which fitted into one another--a refinement which was new to
me, who had hitherto imagined nothing better than a bamboo pole. Bob
finally confided to me that he straightened his rods by softening the
wood in steam; but I found that they did not long retain their
straightness; and, there being no use for them, except the delight of
the eye, I presently lost interest in them. Then Bob showed me how to
make blow-pipes by pushing out the pith from the stems of some species
of bushy shrub that grew outside the walls. He made pellets of clay
from his father's studio; and I was deeply affected by the long range
and accuracy of these weapons. We used to ensconce ourselves behind
the blinds of the front windows of Powers's house, and practise
through the slats at the passers-by in the street. They would feel a
smart hit and look here and there, indignant; but, after a while,
seeing nothing but the innocent fronts of sleepy houses, would resume
their way. Bob inherited his handiness from his father, who seemed a
master of all crafts, a true Yankee genius. He might have made his
fortune as an inventor had he not happened to turn the main stream of
his energy in the direction of sculpture. I believe that the literary
art was the only one in which he did not claim proficiency, and that
was a pity, because Powers's autobiography would have been a book of
books. He was a Swedenborgian by faith, but he also dabbled somewhat
in spiritualism, which was having a vogue at that time, owing partly
to the exploits of the American medium Home. Marvellous, indeed, were
the ghostly yarns Powers used to spin, and they lost nothing by the
physical appearance of the narrator, with his tall figure, square
brow, great, black eyes, and impressive gestures; his voice, too, was
deep and flexible, and could sink into the most blood-curdling tones.
My recollection is that Powers was always clad in a long, linen
pinafore, reaching from his chin to his feet, and daubed with clay,
and on his head a cap made either of paper, like a baker's, or, for
dress occasions, of black velvet. His homely ways and speech, which
smacked of the Vermont farm as strongly as if he had just come thence,
whereas in truth he had lived in Florence, at this time, about twenty
years, and had won high fame as a sculptor, tempted one to suspect him
of affectation--of a pose; and there is no doubt that Powers was aware
of the contrast between his physical presentment and his artistic
reputation, and felt a sort of dramatic pleasure in it. Nevertheless,
it would be unjust to call him affected; he was a big man, in all
senses of the term, and his instinct of independence led him to
repudiate all external polish and ear-marks of social culture, and to
say, as it were, "You see, a plain Vermont countryman can live half a
lifetime in the centre of artificial refinement and rival by the works
of his native genius the foremost living artists, and yet remain the
same simple, honest old sixpence that he was at home!" It was
certainly a more manly and wholesome attitude than that of the
ordinary American foreign resident, who makes a point of forgetting
his native ways and point of view, and aping the habits and traits of
his alien associates. And, besides, Powers had such an immense
temperament and individuality that very likely he could not have
modified them successfully even had he been disposed to do so.

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