Books: Memories of Hawthorne

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In the square beneath our windows, during Lent, booths were set, and
countless flat pancake-looking pieces of dough were caught up by a
white-capped and aproned cook, with a long-handled spoon, and fried in
olive oil placed in a caldron at the booth's door, to be served to
passers in the twinkling of an eye. I watched this process until I
grew to regard Lent as a tiresome custom. Having tested the cakes, I
found them to be indistinct in taste, for all their pretty buff tint,
and the dexterous twist of the cook's wrist as he dumped them and
picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should have been sharply
interested in the idea of becoming a Catholic, but their entire
absence of relish convinced me that the Italians lacked mental grasp
and salvation at a single swoop: and this in spite of the fact that
one of my mother's most valued friends, Mrs. Ward, had lately joined
the Church. It was her husband who said of her, "Whatever church has
Anna, has St. Anna!" Perhaps the most exquisite speech ever uttered by
a husband.

Before this serious season of pancakes, which was all Lent was to me
at the time of which I speak, the Carnival had rushed upon my sight,
carrying all our friends through its whirlpool. Every gay cloth,
shawl, and mat that could be brought into service I had rejoiced to
see displayed upon the balconies. A narrow, winding street the Corso
seemed, being so full, and the houses so high; and a merry blue strip
of heaven far away overhead, glancing along the housetops, assured us
space still existed. Sudden descents of flowers upon one's shoulders
and lap in the carriage, from a window or a passer, or a kindly
feeling stranger in another carriage, made one start in mirthful
response. Sudden meetings with dear friends, or friends who seemed
almost dear in the cheerful hurly-burly, became part of the funny
scrimmage. At each side-street sat on a stony standing horse a
beautifully proportioned and equipped guard, in gleaming helmet and
calm demeanor.

To stand or sit at the windows beside the show was an experience full
of pleasure; and if the window was on a level with the heads of the
huddling passers, one could be in all the merriment yet not jostled;
one could easily pick out a pretty woman or a handsome man to whom to
throw a bouquet; and one could see energetic revelers, already well
supplied with flowers, reaching high windows with bouquets by means of
those wooden contrivances which can be extended or contracted at will,
and look like impracticable ladders. The fair recipient at the lattice
never failed to respond with an ecstatic smile if this Jacob's ladder
had been sufficiently long to reach her welcoming hand. Meantime,
many bunches of flowers, some large and elegant, some small and merely
gay of color, were being thrown aloft or flung downward, making
fountains and cataracts of flowers. Sometimes these bouquets fell into
the street dejectedly, upon whose pavement little ragamuffins were
always ready to pounce for them, and sell them again as fast as
possible to passers who had exhausted their supply, had become mad
with the Carnival, and caught sight, in that very moment, of some
cherished comrade to whom they wished to throw a greeting. There was
an intoxicating enjoyment in being singled out as the recipient of
fragrant flowers, sent with a laugh of the eyes; or of a handful of
sugared almonds, tossed with a gay shout of compliment. If the passer
who thus honored us was a complete stranger, meeting us for this one
moment in racial kindness, we felt the untrammeled bonhomie which, God
knows, we were expected to feel as a matter of course not for a moment
only, but for life.

Upon all these things I delighted to think and afterwards to ponder,
because I realized that they were of vital interest to the
intelligence which was to me greatest and dearest.

CHAPTER XIII

ITALIAN DAYS: II

Between our two winters in Rome we spent the summer in Florence, to
which we journeyed by carriage over a road that was hung like a rare
gallery with landscapes of the most picturesque description, and
bordered close at hand by many a blue or crimson or yellow Italian
anemone with its black centre. This experience was all sunshine, all
pastime. On the way, stopping at Lake Thrasymene, my mother wrote:--

May 29, 1858.

MY DEAR ELIZABETH,--I have just been watching the moon rise over the
lake, exactly opposite the window of our parlor. We thought to go out
and see the moonlight this evening, when I saw on the horizon what
seemed a mighty conflagration, which I immediately supposed must be
the moon, though I had never seen it look so red. The clouds were of
a fiery splendor, and then the flaming rim of the moon appeared above
the mountains, like the shield of some warrior of the great battle
between Flaminius and Hannibal on this spot, rising with its ghostly
invisible hero to see how it was now on the former field of blood.
The "peace supreme" that reigns here this evening distances all
thought of war and terror. We left Perugia this afternoon at three
o'clock, with the finest weather. Our drive was enchanting all the
way, along rich valleys and up mountains. And when climbing mountains
we have two milk-white steers which majestically draw us along. Their
eyes are deep wells of dark, peaceful light, that seem to express
broad levels of rich waving grain, pure lapsing streams, olives and
vines, and every other sign of plenty and quiet husbandry, with no end
of dawns, twilights, and cool thickets. The golden age of rural life
slumbers in their great orbs. Byron calls them "the purest gods of
gentle waters."

June 7. Here we are, then, in enchanting Florence! I shall try to send
you a journal by the Bryants, who are here now. The Brownings are
close by, and we are going to see them soon. The language has yet to
be made in which to describe beautiful, beautiful Florence, with its
air of nectar and sherbet and soft odors, its palaces, Arno, and
smooth streets, arched bridges, and all its other charms and
splendors. . . .

We were hot in the city of Florence. My only consolation was to eat
unnumbered cherries and apricots, for I did not as yet like the figs.
My brother and I sometimes had a lurid delight in cracking the cherry
and apricot stones and devouring the bitter contents, with the
dreadful expectation of soon dying from the effects. Altogether I
considered our sojourn in the town house, Casa del Bello, a morose
experience; but it was, fortunately, short. My mother had a different
feeling: she wrote home to America, "It is a delightful residence."
Without doubt it contained much engaging finery. Three parlors, giving
upon a garden, were absorbed into the "study" for my father alone; and
my mother was greatly pleased to find that fifteen easy-chairs were
within reach of any whim for momentary rest between the campaigns of
sight-seeing. To add to my own arbitrary shadow and regret of that
time, the garden at the rear of the house was to me clamp; full of
green things and gracefully drooping trees, doubtless, but never
embracing a ray of sunshine. Yet it was hot; all was relaxing; summer
prevailed in one of its ill-humored moods. To make matters worse, my
brother had caught in this Dantesque garden a brown bird, whether
because sick or lame I know not. But an imprisoned bird it certainly
was; and its prison consisted of a small, cell-like room, bare of
anything but the heart-broken glances of its occupant. My father
objected to the capture and caging of birds, and looked with cold
disapproval upon the hospitable endeavor of my brother to lengthen
the existence of a little creature that was really safer in the hands
of Dame Nature. Presently the bird from the sad garden died, and then
indeed Florence became intolerable to me! I wandered through the long,
darkish hall that penetrated our edifice from front to back, and I
sometimes emerged into the garden's bosky sullenness in my unsmiling
misery. Again my mother's testimony proves my mind to have been
strangely influenced by what to her was a garden full of roses,
jessamine, orange and lemon trees, and a large willow-tree drooping
over a fountain in its midst, with a row of marble busts along a
terrace: altogether a place that should have filled me with kittenish
glee. The "Note-Books," to be sure, suggest that it harbored malaria.
I looked with painful disappointment upon the unceasing dishes of
fresh purple figs, which everybody else seemed to enjoy. I saw pale
golden wine poured from poetic bottles braided with strands of straw,
like pretty girls' heads of flaxen hair; and I was surprised that my
father had the joyousness to smile, though sipping what he was later
to call "Monte Beni Sunshine."

That nothing of misery might be excluded from my dismal round of woe,
the only people whom I could go to see were the Powers family, living
opposite to us. Mr. Powers petrified me by the sang-froid with which
he turned out, and pointed out, his statues. Great artists are apt to
be like reflections from a greater light,--they know more about that
light, than about themselves; but Mr. Powers seemed to me to defy art
to lord it over his splendid mechanical genius, the self he managed so
well. To prove beyond a doubt that material could not resist him, he
would step from the studio into an adjoining apartment, and strike off
button-like bits of metal from an iron apparatus which he had
invented. It was either buttons or Venuses with him, indifferently, as
I supposed.

Gray to me, though "bright" to my mother, were the galleries and
narrow halls of marble busts, where started back into this life old
Medicean barbarians, of imperial power and worm-like ugliness;
presided over, as I looked upon them in memory during my girlhood, by
that knightly form of Michel Angelo's seated Lorenzo de' Medici, whose
attitude and shadowed eyes seem to express a lofty disapproval of such
a world.

A morning dawned when the interest in living again became vigorous. A
delicate-looking, essentially dignified young gentleman, the Count da
Montauto, seeming considerably starved, but fascinatingly
blue-blooded, appeared in our tiresome house. I heard that we were to
remove to a villa at Bellosguardo, a hill distant fifteen minutes'
drive from the city, where the summer was reasonable; and as the count
owned this haunt of refreshment, I became enthusiastically tender in
my respect for him. For years afterwards my sensibilities were
exercised over the question as to where the count was put while we
enjoyed the space and loveliness of Montauto; I did not know that he
had a palace in town. His sad, sweetly resentful glance had conveyed
to me the idea, "Must I still live, if I live beneath my rank, and as
a leaser of villas?"

One day, happy day, we toiled by carriage, between light-colored
walls, sometimes too high for any view,--that once caused my mother a
three hours' walk, because of a misturn,--over little hot, dusty
roads, out and up to the villa. My father and brother had already
walked thither; and my brother's spirits, as he stood beside the high
iron gateway, in front of the gray tower which was the theme, or chief
outline, of the old country-seat, were pleasant to witness, and
illustrated my own pent-up feelings. He shouted and danced before the
iron bars of the gate like a humanized note of music, uncertain where
it belonged, and glad of it. Our very first knowledge of Montauto was
rich and varied, with the relief from pretentiousness which all
ancient things enjoy, and with the appealing sweetness of time-worn
shabbiness. The walls of the hall and staircase were of gray stone, as
were the steps which led echoingly up to the second story of the
house. My sister exclaims in delight concerning the whole scene: "This
villa,--you have no idea how delightful it is! I think there must be
pretty nearly a hundred rooms in it, of all shapes, sizes, and
heights. The walls are never less than five feet thick, and sometimes
more, so that it is perfectly cool. I should feel very happy to live
here always. I am sitting in the loggia, which is delightful in the
morning freshness. Oh, how I love every inch of that beautiful
landscape!" The tower and the adjacent loggia were the features that
preeminently sated our thirst for suggestive charm, and they became
our proud boast and the chief precincts of our daily life and social
intercourse. The ragged gray giant looked over the road-walls at its
foot, and beyond and below them over the Arno valley, rimmed atop with
azure distance, and touched with the delicate dark of trees.
Internally, the tower (crowned, like a rough old king of the days of
the Round Table, with a machicolated summit) was dusty, broken, and
somewhat dangerous of ascent. Owls that knew every wrinkle of despair
and hoot-toot of pessimism clung to narrow crevices in the deserted
rooms, where the skeleton-like prison frameworks at the unglazed
windows were in keeping with the dreadful spirits of these
unregenerate anchorites. The forlorn apartments were piled one above
the other until the historic cylinder of stone opened to the sky. In
contrast to the barrenness of the gray inclosures, through the squares
of the windows throbbed the blue and gold, green and lilac, of Italian
heavens and countryside.

At the dangers of the stairway my father laughed, with flashing
glances. He always laughed (it was a sound peculiarly passionate and
low, full, yet unobtrusive) at dangers in which he could share
himself, although so grave when, in the moral turmoil, he was obliged
to stand and watch uneven battle; not the less sorry for human nature
because weakness comes from our ignoring the weapons we might have
used. But on those trembling stairs he approved of the risk we ran,
while cautioning me not to drop through one of the holes, and then
stumbled within an inch of breaking his own neck, and laughed again.
"While gropingly descending these crazy steps one dusky evening, I
gratified Julian exceedingly by hitting my nose against the wall," he
admits in the "Note-Books." Who would not enjoy seeing a monarch come
to so humble a contact with the bulwarks of his tower? Especially if
he were royal enough not to take offense at one's mirth, as this one
never did. Reaching the topmost heights of the stone pile, shaggy with
yellow moss, we eagerly pressed to the battlements and drank in the
view, finding all Florence spread out before us, far down from the
breeze and light and prospect of our perch,--understanding the joy of
falcons that are long hooded, and then finally look.

On one side of the tower was the lawn, hemmed round by a somewhat high
semicircular stone wall. In front of it was Florence, pinnacled and
roof-crowded, across the gentle valley. Not far away rose Galileo's
rival tower, and the habitations of one or two friends. On another
side of the keep the valley clipped more decidedly; and in the
foreground clustered a collection of trees upon a grassy slope,
divided from the villa lawn by a low wall, over which my father and
mother sometimes bought grapes, figs, pomegranates, and peaches grown
upon the place, which were smilingly offered by the count's contadini.
These from their numbers were unrecognizable, while their prices for
the exquisite fruit were so small that it was a pleasure to be
cheated. Behind the tower stretched lengthily the house, its large
arched doorway looking upon all comers with a frown of shadow. Still
further behind basked a bevy of fruit gardens and olive-tree dotted
hill-sides with their vines of the grape. We used to sit on the lawn
in the evenings, and sometimes received guests there; looking at the
sky, moon, comet, and stars ("flowers of light," my mother called
them) as if they were new. Any mortal might have been forgiven for so
regarding them, in the sapphire glory of an Italian night. My mother's
untiring voice of melodious enthusiasm echoed about the group in
ejaculations of praise.

In connection with the comet my elders spoke of war and misery, of
which it was accused of being the messenger. My child's heart already
knew the iron truth, and was not astonished at the intrusion of such a
thought, that beauty and peace must always entertain the herald of the
other country--the dark one. There was a sadness about Italy, although
it lay under "the smile of God," as my father calls its sunshine. He
and my mother often mention this shadow, as before remarked, in their
records. At times the cause seems to them to come from the "incubus"
of the Catholic religion, although they both believed it capable of
being wholly perfect. Glorious scenes were constantly soothing this
sense of human sorrow, scenes such as cannot be found in regions
outside the Church. In the Basilica of San Spirito my mother came
upon several visible lovelinesses of elaborate devotion, which with
her limpid purity of justice she enthusiastically notes down. She
entered the church one day for coolness and rest, and, recognizing its
"noble" beauties, she described, in her journal already printed, "a
function going on before one of the side-chapels--the burial service
of a child. The coffin was covered with a white satin pall,
embroidered with purple and gold. The officiating priests were in
robes of white satin and gold, and the altar was alight with candles,
besides those borne by young boys in white tunics. This scene in the
aisle was a splendid picture in the soft gloom of the church; and when
the organ burst forth in a kind of tender rapture, rolling pearly
waves of harmony along the large spaces, and filling the dome with the
foam and spray of interlacing measures, it seemed as if angels were
welcoming the young child to heaven." The pettiness of a brief burial
service in a private parlor or in a meagre meeting-house would not
have touched her heart so profoundly, because it would not have
recalled heaven so impressively in all its grandeur and tenderness.
She evidently perceived here the sweet and even cheering veracity of a
devotion that is glad to remember all the possibilities of reverent
observance, each motion and aspect of which have a reference to God
and to religious history. Again San Spirito gave her an insight into
the dignity of painstaking worship. "While we were walking about, the
priests and monks of the Order of St. Augustine, who have a convent
attached, came in a procession from the sacristy, and knelt down in
their sweeping black robes upon the marble pavement, in two lines, one
behind the other, and chanted aloud their Ave Maria. It was a
wonderful picture." She still clung to the Puritanical idea that in
religion itself, "What looks so wondrous, wondrous fair, His
providence has taught us to fear. . . . Angels only are fit to live as
monks pretend to live." But she contradicts this theory. No one was
more adapted than she to perceive the godliness of the monastic
sacrifice, when she realized the object of it. Among her dearest
friends and verified ideals were Mr. George Bradford, who always
reminded me of a priest of the true type; and Miss Hoar, whose vestal
soul, celebrating constant rites over the memory of her dead
betrothed, made her the image of a nun. This welcome delicacy and
loftiness of self-consecration my mother also observed in the ranks of
the sometimes harshly criticised friars. At Fiesole, "A young monk
unveiled the picture for us. He was very courteous, and had an air of
unusual goodness and sincerity. He is one of those who 'bear
witness.' As a matter of course I offered him a fee for his trouble,
but he made a sad and decided gesture of refusal, that was very
surprising and remarkable; for it was impossible to gainsay him, and I
felt embarrassed that I had thought of the gold that perishes in the
presence of the heavenly picture and the holy youth. I wish I knew his
history." I also wish she had known it, for it would have unveiled for
her the most beautiful facts about other holy youths of our own day,
as well as similar facts of earlier days,--truths whose purity would
have rapt her thought even more deeply than Fra Angelico's purity in
art, uncurtained by brave and humble hands for her sight. It is to be
observed that her views and tacit beliefs and my father's are
identical. They did not really believe that Italy was under an
"incubus;" they felt the physical weight of Catholicity, or the Cross,
and half guessed its spiritual spring.

Some of the rooms at Montauto I studiously avoided. The forlorn cavern
of a parlor, or ball-room, I remember to have seen only once. There
was a painful vacuum where good spirits ought to have been. Along the
walls were fixed seats, like those in the apse of some morally fallen
cathedral, and they were covered with blue threadbare magnificence
that told the secrets of vanity. Heavy tables crowded down the centre
of the room. I came, saw, and fled. The oratory was the most thrilling
place of all. It opened out of my sister's room, which was a large,
sombre apartment. It was said to attract a frequently seen ghost by
the force of its profound twilight and historic sorrows; and my
sister, who was courageous enough to startle a ghost, highly approved
of this corner of her domain. But she suddenly lost her buoyant taste
for disembodied spirits, and a rumor floated mistily about that Una
had seen the wretched woman who could not forget her woes in death.
In "Monte Beni" this oratory is minutely pictured, where "beneath the
crucifix . . . lay a human skull . . . carved in gray alabaster, most
skillfully done . . . with accurate imitation of the teeth, the
sutures, the empty eye-caverns." Everywhere the intense
picturesqueness gave material, at Montauto, for my father's romance.
Stella, whom he invited into the story without changing her name, was
a sympathetic object in my now somewhat alarmed and lonely days. I
call her an "object," because I could not understand a word she said,
and she soon gave up opening her lips when we were together. She
looked kind, in spite of her rocky hardness of Italian feature, and
she fed me on dried melon-seeds when I was at the lowest tide of
depression. Sometimes she was to be found at the well, close to the
entrance-arch. There the faithful servant let down a bucket by its
heavy chain with a doomsday clank. The sunlight revealed the smallness
and brilliancy and number of her black braids and the infinite
multitude of her wrinkles, as well as the yellowness of her dangling
gold earrings and the texture of her parchment-like arms, which were
the color of glossy brown leaves. Sometimes she would awaken me from
soporific melancholy by allowing herself to be found upon her knees in
her bedroom, a bare and colorless abode, her great black crucifix
hanging in majestic solitude upon the wall above her handsome old
head. I thought her temporarily insane to pray so much, and at all to
an audience; but I recognized the gentleness of the attacks, and I
somehow loved her for them. Even to the ignorance of error truth can
be beautiful. An extremely attractive little Italian maid, of sixteen
or less, used also to be found on her knees before the crucifix.

Stella was obliged to drive this dark-eyed butterfly to her devotions.
If I discovered her, I had no reverence, and tried unmercifully to
interrupt her soft whispers. Stella's loving revenge for my wickedness
was to give me a tiny wax sleeping Bambino, surrounded by flowers
under a convex glass, whose minute face had a heaven of smiling
forgiveness in it. Often I surreptitiously studied the smile on the
sleeping face. I felt that He loved us even during His sleep; and I
cherished the gaze of shining gladness with which Stella herself had
placed this treasure in my hand, which could so simply quicken
sluggish thought.

To give a clearer glimpse of the villa, which with our life there
became one of the most precious of our memories, and a glimpse also of
one or two people and events, I will insert this letter from my
mother:--

August 14, 1858.

MY DEAR ELIZABETH,--Una and Rose were getting pale for the first time
in their lives, and Mr. Hawthorne was languid and weary of the city
life, and an English lady, a friend of the Brownings, told us of this
villa, which the Count da Montauto wished to let this summer, though
never before, and so we tried for it and got it. It is a most
enchanting situation, and the villa is immensely large and very nice.
We have an old mediaeval tower at the oldest end, in which Savonarola
was confined, and from its summit we have a view which one might dream
of, but seldom see. We are so high, however, that from the first
floor we have a sweeping view, and look down on the most sumptuous
valley of the Arno from our western windows,--a level plain,
cultivated every inch with grapes and olives and other fruits; and all
round rise up soft hills, and the Apennines afar off where the sun
sets. We see the noble white steers slowly moving in the valley, among
the trees, ploughing as in the days of Cincinnatus. An infinite peace
and quiet reign. We hear birds, and in the evening the cue owl utters
his melodious, melancholy one note. The world does not disturb us. The
air is as pure and fresh as air can possibly be, blowing from the
sweet, carefully tended plain, and sweeping down from the mountains.
Near us is the villa and tower of Aurora Leigh, just at the end of our
estate, and farther off is Galileo's tower, where he studied the
heavens. Northeast from us lies the beautiful Florence, burning in
the bottom of the cup of hills, with all its domes and campaniles,
palaces and churches. Fiesole, the cradle of Florence, is visible
among the heights at the east, and San Miniato, with its grove of
cypresses, is farther off to the south. There is no end of beauty and
interest, and the view becomes ideal and poetic the moment the sun
begins its decline; for then the rose and purple mists drape the
hills, and mountains--the common earth--turn to amethysts, topazes,
and sapphires, and words can never convey an idea of the opaline
heavens, which seem to have illimitable abysses of a penetrable
substance, made up of the light of pearls.

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