Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 30

Luini's exquisite painting, _Vanity and Modesty_, in the Galleria Sciarra, impressed me profoundly. It represented two women, one nun- like, the other magnificently dressed. The latter is Leonardo's well- known type, as a magically fascinating personality. Its essential feature is a profoundly serious melancholy, but the beauty of the figure is seductive. She is by no means smiling, and yet she looks as though a very slight alteration would produce a smile, and as though the heavens themselves would open, if smile she did. The powerful glance of the dark blue eyes is in harmony with the light-brown hair and the lovely hands.

"It would be terrible to meet in real life a woman who looked like that," I wrote; "for a man would grow desperate at his inability to win her and desperate because the years must destroy such a marvel. That is why the gracious G.o.ds have willed it otherwise; that is why she does not exist. That is why she is only a vision, a revelation, a painting, and that is why she was conceived in the brain of Leonardo, the place on earth most favoured by the G.o.ds, and executed by Luini, that all generations might gaze at her without jealousy, and without dread of the molestations of Time."

One day, at the Museo Kircheriano, where I was looking at the admirable antiquities, I made acquaintance with a Jesuit priest, who turned out to be exceedingly pleasant and refined, a very decent fellow, in fact. He spoke Latin to me, and showed me round; at an enquiry of mine, he fetched from his quarters in the Collegio Romano a book with reproductions from the pagan section of the Lateran Museum, and explained to me some bas-reliefs which I had not understood. His obligingness touched me, his whole att.i.tude made me think. Hitherto I had only spoken to one solitary embryo Jesuit,--a young Englishman who was going to Rome to place himself at the service of the Pope, and who was actuated by the purest enthusiasm; I was struck by the fact that this second Jesuit, too, seemed to be a worthy man. It taught me how independent individual worth is of the nature of one's convictions.

Most of the Italians I had so far been acquainted with were simple people, my landlord and his family, and those who visited them, and I sometimes heard fragments of conversation which revealed the common people's mode of thought to me. In one house that I visited, the mistress discovered that her maid was not married to her so-called husband, a matter in which, for that matter, she was very blameless, since her parents had refused their consent, and she had afterwards allowed herself to be abducted. Her mistress reproached her for the illegal relations existing. She replied, "If G.o.d wishes to plunge anyone into misery, that person is excused."--"We must not put the blame of everything upon G.o.d," said the mistress.--"Yes, yes," replied the girl unabashed; "then if the Devil wishes to plunge a person into misery, the person is excused."--"Nor may we put the blame of our wrongdoing on the Devil," said the mistress.--"Good gracious," said the girl, "it must be the fault of one or other of them, everybody knows that. If it is not the one, it is the other."

At the house of the Blanchettis, who had come to Rome, I met many Turin and Roman gentlemen. They were all very much taken up by an old Sicilian chemist of the name of Muratori, who claimed that he had discovered a material which looked like linen, but was impervious to bullets, sword- cuts, bayonet-thrusts, etc. Blanchetti himself had fired his revolver at him at two paces, and the ball had fallen flat to the ground. There could be no question of juggling; Muratori was an honourable old Garibaldist who had been wounded in his youth, and now went about on crutches, but, since we have never heard of its being made practical use of, it would seem that there was nothing in it.

I did not care to look up all the Italians to whom I had introductions from Villari. But I tried my luck with a few of them. The first was Dr.

Pantaleoni, who had formerly been banished from the Papal States and who left the country as a radical politician, but now held almost conservative views. He had just come back, and complained bitterly of all the licentiousness. "Alas!" he said, "we have freedom enough now, but order, order!" Pantaleoni was a little, eager, animated man of fifty, very much occupied, a politician and doctor, and he promised to introduce me to all the scholars whose interests I shared. As I felt scruples at taking up these gentlemen's time, he exclaimed wittily: "My dear fellow, take up their time! To take his time is the greatest service you can render to a Roman; he never knows what to do to kill it!"

The next man I went to was Prince Odescalchi, one of the men who had then recently risen to the surface, officially termed the hero of the Young Liberals. Pantaleoni had dubbed him a blockhead, and he had not lied. He turned out to be a very conceited and frothy young man with a parting all over his head, fair to whiteness, of strikingly Northern type, with exactly the same expressionless type of face as certain of the milksops closely connected with the Court in Denmark.

XLIV.

There were a great many Scandinavians in Rome; they foregathered at the various eating-houses and on a Sat.u.r.day evening at the Scandinavian Club. Some of them were painters, sculptors and architects, with their ladies, there were some literary and scientific men and every description of tourists on longer or shorter visits to the Eternal City.

I held myself aloof from them. Most of them had their good qualities, but they could not stand the test of any a.s.sociation which brought them into too close contact with one another, as life in a small town does.

They were divided up into camps or hives, and in every hive ruled a lady who detested the queen bee of the next one. So it came about that the Scandinavians lived in perpetual squabbles, could not bear one another, slandered one another, intrigued against one another. When men got drunk on the good Roman wine at the _osterie_, they abused one another and very nearly came to blows. Moreover, they frequently got drunk, for most of them lost their self-control after a few gla.s.ses. Strangely enough, in the grand surroundings, too much of the Northern pettiness came to the surface in them. One was continually tempted to call out to the ladies, in Holberg's words: "Hold your peace, you good women!" and to the men: "Go away, you rapscallions, and make up your quarrels!"

There were splendid young fellows among the artists, but the painters, who were in the majority, readily admitted that technically they could learn nothing at all in Rome, where they never saw a modern painting; they said themselves that they ought to be in Paris, but the authorities in Christiania and Copenhagen were afraid of Paris: thence all bad and dangerous influences proceeded, and so the painters still journey to Rome, as their fathers did before them.

XLV.

Towards the middle of November the Pope opened the Vatican. But in face of the enormous conflux of people, it was not easy to get a _permesso_ from the consul, and that could not be dispensed with. I had just made use of one for the Vatican sculpture collection, one day, when I felt very unwell. I ascribed my sensations at first to the insufferable weather of that month, alternately sirocco and cold sleet, or both at once; then I was seized with a dread of the climate, of Rome, of all these strange surroundings, and I made up my mind to go home as quickly as possible. The illness that was upon me was, without my knowing it, the cause of my fear. The next day I was carried downstairs by two vile-smelling labourers and taken by Vilhelm Rosenstand the painter, who was one of the few who had made friends with me and shown me kindness, to the Prussian hospital on the Tarpeian Rock, near the Capitol.

Here a bad attack of typhoid fever held me prisoner in my bed for some few months, after a compatriot, who had no connection whatever with me, had been so inconsiderate as to inform my parents by telegraph how ill I was, and that there was little hope for me.

The first month I was not fully conscious; I suffered from a delusion of coercion. Thus it seemed to me that the left side of my bed did not belong to me, but to another man, who sometimes took the place; and that I myself was divided into several persons, of which one, for instance, asked my legs to turn a little to the one side or the other. One of these persons was Imperialist, and for that reason disliked by the others, who were Republicans; nevertheless, he performed great kindnesses for them, making them more comfortable, when it was in his power. Another strangely fantastic idea that held sway for a long time was that on my head, the hair of which had been shorn by the hospital attendant rather less artistically than one cuts a dog's, there was a clasp of pearls and precious stones, which I felt but could not see.

Afterwards, all my delusions centred on food.

I was very much neglected at the hospital. The attendance was wretched.

The highly respected German doctor, who was appointed to the place, had himself an immense practice, and moreover was absolutely taken up by the Franco-Prussian war. Consequently, he hardly ever came, sometimes stayed away as long as thirteen days at a stretch, during all which time a patient who might happen to be suffering, say, from constipation, must lie there without any means of relief. My bed was as hard as a stone, and I was waked in the night by pains in my body and limbs; the pillow was so hard that the skin of my right ear was rubbed off from the pressure. There were no nurses. There was only one custodian for the whole hospital, a Russian fellow who spoke German, and who sometimes had as many as fourteen patients at a time to look after, but frequently went out to buy stores, or visit his sweetheart, and then all the patients could ring at once without any one coming. After I had pa.s.sed the crisis of my illness, and consequently began to suffer terribly from hunger, I was ordered an egg for my breakfast; I sometimes had to lie for an hour and a half, pining for this egg. Once, for three days in succession, there were no fresh eggs to be had. So he would bring for my breakfast nothing but a small piece of dry bread. One day that I was positively ill with hunger, I begged repeatedly for another piece of bread, but he refused it me. It was not malice on his part, but pure stupidity, for he was absolutely incapable of understanding how I felt.

And to save fuel, he let me suffer from cold, as well as from hunger; would never put more than one wretched little stick at a time into the stove. Everything was pinched to an incredible extent. Thus it was impossible for me to get a candle in the evening before it was absolutely dark, and then never more than one, although it made my eyes water to try to read. Candles and firing, it appears, were not put down in the bill. And yet this hospital is kept up on subscriptions from all the great Powers, so there must be someone into whose pockets the money goes. Most of us survived it; a few died who possibly might have been kept alive; one was preserved for whom the Danish newspapers have beautiful obituaries ready.

Over my head, in the same building, there lived a well-known German archaeologist, who was married to a Russian princess of such colossal physical proportions that Roman popular wits a.s.serted that when she wished to go for a drive she had to divide herself between two cabs.

This lady had a great talent for music. I never saw her, but I became aware of her in more ways than one: whenever she crossed the floor on the third story, the ceiling shook, and the boards creaked, in a manner unbearable to an invalid. And just when I had settled myself off, and badly wanted to sleep, towards eleven o'clock at night, the heavy lady above would sit down at her grand piano, and make music that would have filled a concert hall resound through the place.

After a month had pa.s.sed, the doctor declared that I had "turned the corner," and might begin to take a little food besides the broth that up till then had been my only nourishment. A little later, I was allowed to try to get up. I was so weak that I had to begin to learn to walk again; I could not support myself on my legs, but dragged myself, with the help of the custodian, the four or five steps from the bed to a sofa.

Just at this time I received two letters from Copenhagen, containing literary enquiries and offers. The first was from the editor of the _Ill.u.s.trated Times_, and enquired whether on my return home I would resume the theatrical criticisms in the paper; in that case they would keep the position open for me. I gave a negative reply, as I was tired of giving my opinion on a Danish drama. The second letter, which surprised me more, was from the editor of the, at that time, powerful _Daily Paper_, Steen Bille, offering me the entire management of the paper after the retirement of Molbech, except so far as politics were concerned, the editor naturally himself retaining the latter. As Danish things go, it was a very important offer to a young man. It promised both influence and income, and it was only my profound and ever-increasing determination not to give myself up to journalism that made me without hesitation dictate a polite refusal. I was still to weak to write. My motive was simply and solely that I wished to devote my life to knowledge. But Bille, who knew what power in a little country like Denmark his offer would have placed in my hands, hardly understood it in this way, and was exceedingly annoyed at my refusal. It gave the first impulse to his altered feeling toward me. I have sometimes wondered since whether my fate in Denmark might not have been different had I accepted the charge. It is true that the divergence between what the paper and I, in the course of the great year 1871, came to represent, would soon have brought about a split. The Commune in Paris caused a complete _volte face_ of the liberal bourgeoisie in Denmark, as elsewhere.

XLVI.

While I was still too weak to write, I received a letter from Henrik Ibsen (dated December 20, 1870), which impressed me greatly. Henrik Ibsen and I had been on friendly terms with one another since April, 1866, but it was only about this time that our intimacy began to emit sparks, an intimacy which was destined to have a very widening influence upon me, and which is perhaps not without traces on the stages of his poetical progress.

Ibsen thought I had already recovered, and wrote to me as to a convalescent. He complained bitterly of the conquest of Rome by the Italians: Rome was now taken from "us men" and given over to the "politicians"; it had been a spot sacred to peace, and was so no longer.--This a.s.sertion was at variance with my religion. It seemed to me unpermissible to desire, for aesthetic reasons, to see the restoration of an ecclesiastical regime, with its remorseless system of oppression. Human happiness and intellectual progress were worth more than the retention of the idylls of naivete. I replied to him by declaring my faith in freedom and soon he outdid me in this, as in other domains.

But there was one other part of the letter that went to my heart and rejoiced me. It was where Ibsen wrote that what was wanted was a revolt in the human mind, and in that I ought to be one of the leaders. These words, which were in exact agreement with my own secret hope, fired my imagination, ill though I was. It seemed to me that after having felt myself isolated so long, I had at last met with the mind that understood me and felt as I did, a real fellow-fighter. As soon as I was once more fit to use my pen, I wrote a flaming reply in verse (headed, The Hospital in Rome, the night of January 9, 1871). In it I described how solitary I had been, in my intellectual fight and endeavour, and expressed my contentment at having found a brother in him.

XLVII.

Among the Danes, and there were not many of them, who frequently came to see me at the hospital, I must mention the kind and tactful musician Niels Ravnkilde, whom I had known when I was a child. He had been living in Rome now for some twenty years. He was gentle and quiet, good- looking, short of stature, modest and unpretending, too weak of character not to be friends with everyone, but equipped with a natural dignity. When a young music master in Copenhagen, he had fallen in love with a young, wealthy girl, whose affections he succeeded in winning in return, but he was turned out of the house by her harsh, purse-proud father, and in desperation had left Denmark to settle down in Rome. As his lady-love married soon after and became a contented wife and mother, he remained where he was. He succeeded in making his way.

He gradually became a favourite teacher of music among the ladies of the Roman aristocracy, who sometimes invited him to their country-houses in the Summer. He was on a good footing with the native maestros most in request, who quickly understood that the modest Dane was no dangerous rival. Graceful as Ravnkilde was in his person, so he was in his art; there was nothing grand about him. But he was clever, and had a natural, unaffected wit. His difficult position as a master had taught him prudence and reserve. He was obligingness personified to travelling Scandinavians, and was proud of having, as he thought, made the acquaintance in Rome of the flower of the good society of the Northern countries. Even long after he had come to the front, he continued to live in the fourth storey apartment of the Via Ripetta, where he had taken up his abode on his arrival in Rome, waited upon by the same simple couple. His circ.u.mstances could not improve, if only for the reason that he sent what he had to spare to relatives of his in Copenhagen, who had a son who was turning out badly, and lived by wasting poor Ravnkilde's savings. After having been the providence of all Danish travellers to Rome for thirty years, certain individuals who had influence with the government succeeded in obtaining a distinction for him. The government then gave him, not even the poor little decoration that he ought to have had twenty years before, but--brilliant idea!--awarded him the t.i.tle of _Professor_, which in Italian, of course, he had always been, and which was a much more insignificant t.i.tle than _Maestro_, by which he was regularly called.

Ravnkilde wrote my letters at the hospital for me, and the day I came out we drove away together to the French restaurant to celebrate the occasion by a dinner.

I went from there up to Monte Pincio in a glorious suns.h.i.+ne, rejoiced to see the trees again, and the people in their Sunday finery, and the lovely women's faces, as well as at being able to talk to people once more. It was all like new life in a new world. I met a good many Scandinavians, who congratulated me, and a young savant, Giuseppe Saredo, who, as professor of law, had been removed from Siena to Rome, and with whom, at the house of dall'Ongaro at Florence, I had had some delightful talks. We decided that we would keep in touch with one another.

XLVIII.

It was only this one day, however, that happiness and the sun shone upon me. On the morrow pains in my right leg, in which there was a vein swollen, made me feel very unwell. So ignorant was the doctor that he declared this to be of no importance, and gave me a little ointment with which to rub my leg. But I grew worse from day to day, and after a very short time my leg was like a lump of lead. I was stretched once more for some months on a sick-bed, and this weakened me the more since very heroic measures were used in the treatment of the complaint, a violent attack of phlebitis. The leg was rubbed every day from the sole of the foot to the hip with mercury ointment, which could not be without its effect on my general health.

Still, I kept up my spirits finely. Among the Scandinavians who showed me kindness at this time I gratefully remember the Danish painters Rosenstand and Mackeprang, who visited me regularly and patiently, and my friend Walter Runeberg, the Finnish sculptor, whose cheerfulness did me good.

Other Scandinavians with whom I was less well acquainted came to see me now and again, but they had one very annoying habit. It was customary at that time for all letters to be addressed, for greater security, to the Danish consulate, which served the purpose of a general Scandinavian consulate. Anyone who thought of coming to see me would fetch what letters had arrived for me that day and put them in his pocket to bring me. The letters I ought to have had at ten o'clock in the morning I generally received at seven in the evening. But these gentlemen often forgot to pay their visit at all, or did not get time, and then it would happen that after having gone about with the letters in their pockets for a few days, they took them back to the consulate, whence they were sent to me, once, three days late. As my whole life on my sick-bed was one constant, painful longing for letters from home, the more so as my mother, all the time I was in bed, was lying dangerously ill, I felt vexed at the thoughtless behaviour of my compatriots.

However, I had not travelled so far to meet Northmen, and I learnt far more from the one Italian who sat by my bedside day after day, Giuseppe Saredo. It was amusing to note the difference between his ways and the Northmen's. He did not come in; he exploded. At six o'clock in the evening, he would rush in without knocking at the door, shouting at one and the same time Italian to the people of the house, and French to me.

He talked at a furious rate, and so loudly that people who did not know might have fancied we were quarrelling, and he changed his seat once a minute, jumped up from the easy chair and seated himself half in the window, began a sentence there and finished it sitting on my bed. And every second or third day he either himself brought books to entertain me or sent large parcels by a messenger.

He had risen to be professor at the University of the the capital, without ever having been either student or graduate. His family were too poor for him to study. For many years, when a lad, he had never eaten dinner. His occupation, when at last he began to get on, was that of proof-reader in a printing establishment, but he tried to add to his income by writing melodramas for the boulevard theatres in Turin.

He thought he had written over fifty. He told me: "The manager generally came to me on a Sunday, when we were at liberty, and said: 'We must have a new play for next Sunday.' On Monday the first act was finished, on Tuesday the second, etc.; and every act was delivered as it was written, and the parts allotted. Sometimes the last act was only finished on Sat.u.r.day morning, which, however, would not prevent the piece being played on Sunday evening." In a number of the _Revue des deux Mondes_ for 1857 we found Saredo mentioned among the melodramatists of Italy. This must have been ferreted out privately, since he always wrote these melodramas anonymously, he having determined, with nave conceit, "not to stain his future reputation." When he was twenty-one, he tried to raise himself from this rank to that of a journalist, and succeeded; he sent all sorts of articles to three newspapers. From his twenty-first to his twenty-fourth year he wrote for the daily papers, and wrote gay accounts of the volatile lives of young Italian journalists with the ladies of the theatres. Then he fell in love with the lady who later became his wife (known as a novelist under the pseudonym of Ludovico de Rosa), and from that time forth never looked at another woman. All his life he cherished a great admiration for his wife and grat.i.tude towards her.

When he had commenced his legal work, he strained every nerve to the utmost, and obtained his professors.h.i.+ps in the various towns through compet.i.tion, without having followed the usual University path. "I have always had the most unshaken faith in my star," he said one day, "even when, from hunger or despair, thoughts of suicide occurred to me. When I broke my black bread, I said to myself: 'The day will come when I shall eat white.'"

Like all Italians at that time, Saredo detested and despised modern France. As far as reconquered Rome was concerned, he regarded her with sorrowful eyes. "There are only n.o.bility, ecclesiastics, and workmen here," he said; "no middle cla.s.ses, no industry and no trade. Absurd tariff laws have up till now shut off the Papal States from the surrounding world. And what a government! A doctor, who after his second visit did not make his patient confess to a priest, lost his official post, if he happened to hold one, and was in any case sent to prison for five months. A doctor who did not go to Ma.s.s a certain number of times during the week was prohibited practising. The huge number of tied-up estates made buying and selling very difficult. The new government has struck the n.o.bility a fatal blow by abolis.h.i.+ng entailed property and lands. The calling in of the ecclesiastical property by the State is giving the towns a chance to breathe."

Whenever I revisited Italy, I saw Saredo. His heroism during the inquiries into the irregularities in Naples in 1900-1901 made his name beloved and himself admired in his native country. He died in 1902, the highest life official in Italy; since 1897 he had been President of the Council.

XLIX.

I came under an even greater debt of grat.i.tude than to Saredo, to the good-natured people in whose house I lay ill. I was as splendidly looked after as if I had made it a specified condition that I should be nursed in case of illness.

My landlady, Maria, especially, was the most careful nurse, and the best creature in the world, although she had the physiognomy of a regular Italian criminal, when her face was in repose. The moment she spoke, however, her features beamed with maternal benevolence. After the hospital, it was a decided change for the better. I was under no one's tyranny and did not feel as though I were in prison; I could complain if my food was bad, and change _trattoria_, when I myself chose.

Everything was good.

As long as I was well, I had taken hardly any notice of the people in the house, hardly exchanged a word with them; I was out all day, and either hastily asked them to do my room, or to put a little on the fire.

It was only when I fell ill that I made their acquaintance.

Let me quote from my notes at the time: