Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 33

"She really is sweet!" said R. this evening. The word does not fit. Her laugh, her little grimaces, her witticisms, quaint conceits and gestures are certainly very attractive, but her mode of expression, when she is talking freely, is very unreserved, and if I were to repeat some of her remarks to a stranger, he would perhaps think her coa.r.s.e or loose. "We shall see what sort of a girl you bring home to us when you are well again, and whether you have as good taste as our Frenchman. Or perhaps you would rather visit her? I know how a fine gentleman behaves, when he visits his friend. She is often a lady, and rich. He comes, knocks softly at the door, sits down, and talks about difficult and learned things. Then he begs for a kiss, she flings her arms round his neck; _allora, il letto rifatto, va via."_ She neither blushes nor feels the slightest embarra.s.sment when she talks like this. "How do you know such things, when you have no experience?" "People have told me; I know it from hearsay. I myself have never been in love, but I believe that it is possible to love one person one's whole life long, and never grow tired of him, and never love another. You said the other day (for a joke?) that people ought to marry for a year or six months; but I believe that one can love the same person always."

In such chat my days pa.s.s by. I feel as though I had dropped down somewhere in the Sabine Mountains, been well received in a house--Maria is from Camarino, too,--and were living there hidden from the world among these big children.

Yesterday, Uncle had his National Guard uniform on for the first time.

He came in to show himself. I told him that it suited him very well, which delighted him. Filomena exhibited him with admiration. When Maria came home later on, she asked the others at once: "Has the _signore_ seen him? What did he say? Does not he want to see him again?"

Written down a score of ritornellos; I have chosen the best of them.

Many of them are rather, or very, indecent. But, as Filomena says: "You do not go to h.e.l.l for singing _canzone_; you cannot help what they are like." The indecent ones she will only say at a terrific rate, and not a second time. But if one pay attention, they are easy to understand. They are a mixture of audacity and simple vulgarity. They all begin with flowers. She is too undeveloped to share the educated girl's abhorrence of things that are in bad taste; everything natural, she thinks, can be said, and she speaks out, quite unperturbed. Still, now she understands that there are certain things--impossible things-- that I do not like to hear her say.

I was sitting cutting a wafer (to take powders with) into oblates.

_She_: "You must not cut into consecrated things, not even put the teeth into it. The priest says: 'Thou shalt not bite Christ.'"

Unfortunately, she has not any real impression of religion, either of its beauty or its underlying truth. None of them have any idea of what the New Testament is or contains; they do not know its best-known quotations and stories. Religion, to them, is four or five rigmaroles, which are printed in our _Abecedario_, the Creed, the Ave Maria, the various Sacraments, etc., which they know by heart. These they reject, but they have not the slightest conception of what Christianity is. If I quote a text from the New Testament, they have never heard it.

But they can run the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven other virtues, off by rote. One of these last, that of instructing the ignorant, is a virtue which the priesthood (partly for good reasons) have not practised to any remarkable extent in this country.

Yesterday Maria came home in a state of great delight, from a _trattoria_, where a gentleman had spoken _tanto bene, tanto bene_ against religion and the Pope and the priests; there were a few _Caccialepri_ present (a derogatory expression for adherents of the priests), who had just had to come down a peg or two. When she had finished, to my astonishment, she said to me, _exactly this_: "It is Nature that is G.o.d, is it not so?"

An expression almost symbolical of the ignorance and credulity of the Romans is their constant axiom, _Chi lo sa?_ (Who knows?) I said to Maria the other day, after she had said it for the fourth time in a quarter of an hour: "My good Maria! The beginning of wisdom is not to fear G.o.d, but to say _Perche_? (why?), instead of _Chi lo sa_?"

Yesterday, while I was eating my dinner, I heard Filomena's story. She came to Rome last December: "You think I came because Maria wanted to help mother. I came to Rome because there was a man who wanted to marry me." "What was his name?" "His name was Peppe." _"Lo mi' amore, che si chiama Peppe."_... "Ah, I do not love him at all. No, the thing is that at Camerino all the men beat their wives. My sister, for instance, has always a black eye, and red stripes on her back. My friend Marietta always gets beaten by her husband, and the more he beats her, the more she loves him: sometimes she goes away from him for a few days to her sister, but she always goes back again." "What has that to do with our friend Peppe?" "Well, you see, mother knew that Peppe's brother beat his wife all day and all night; so she would not give me to him." "Yes, it was bad, if it were a family failing." "So one evening father said to me: 'Your aunt has written to us from Rome, to ask whether you will pay her a visit of a few days.' And he showed me a false letter. Aunt cannot write and knew nothing about any letter. I did not want to, much, said I would not, but came here all the same, and found that I was to stay here, and that mother did not want me to have Peppe. So I began to cry, and for five whole days I cried all the time and would neither eat nor drink. Then I thought to myself: It is all over between Peppe and me.

Shall I cry myself to death for a man? So I left off crying, and very soon forgot all about him. And after a week's time I did not care anything about the whole matter, and sang and was happy, and now I want to stay in Rome always."

Last night I got up for a little, read with Filomena, and determined to go in and have supper with the family in their little room. Filomena opened the door wide, and called out along the corridor: _"Eccolo!"_ and then such a welcome as there was for the invalid, now that he had at last got up! and I was obliged to drink two large beer-gla.s.ses of the home-grown wine. First Maria told how it was that I had always had everything so punctually whilst I was ill. It was because Filomena had made the little boy from the _cafe_ believe that I was going to give him my watch when I got well, if he never let anything get cold. So the boy ran as though possessed, and once fell down the stairs and broke everything to atoms. "He is delirious," said Filomena one day, "and talks of nothing but of giving you his watch." "How can he be so ill," said the boy suspiciously, "when he eats and drinks?" "Do you want the watch or not?" said Filomena, and off the lad ran. I let the others entertain me. Maria said: "You told Filomena something yesterday about savages; I know something about them, too. Savage people live in China, and the worst of all are called Mandarins. Do you know what one of them did to an Italian lady? She was with her family over there; suddenly there came a Mandarin, carried her off, and shut her up in his house.

They never found her again. Then he had three children by her; but one day he went out and forgot to shut the door; she ran quickly out of the house, down to the water, and saw a s.h.i.+p far away. Do you know what the mandarin did, sir, when he came home and found that his wife was gone?

He took the three children, tore them through the middle, and threw the pieces out into the street." It reminded one of Lucidarius, and other mediaeval legends. Then our good _zio_, the honest uncle, began, and told Maria and Filomena the history of Napoleon I., fairly correctly. He had heard it from his master Leonardo, who taught him his trade; the man had taken part in five of the campaigns. The only egregious mistake he made was that he thought the Austrians had gradually poisoned the Duke of Reichstadt, because he threatened to become even more formidable than his father. But that the old grenadier might easily have believed. The thing that astonished me was that the narrative did not make the slightest impression upon either Maria or Filomena. I asked Filomena if she did not think it was very remarkable.

But she clearly had a suspicion that it was all lies, besides, what has happened in the world before her day is of as little importance to her as what goes on in another planet; finally, she abominates war.

_Zio_ concluded his story with childlike self-satisfaction: "When I learnt about all this, I was only an apprentice; now I am _mastro Nino_."

These last few days that I have been able to stumble about the room a little, I have had a feeling of delight and happiness such as I have hardly experienced before. The very air is a fete. The little black- haired youngsters, running about this picturesquely steep street, are my delight, whenever I look out of the window. All that is in front of me: the splendours of Rome, the Summer, the art of Italy, Naples in the South, Venice in the North, makes my heart beat fast and my head swim. I only need to turn round from the window and see Filomena standing behind me, knitting, posed like a living picture by Kuchler to feel, with jubilation: I am in Rome. Saredo came to-day at twelve o'clock, and saw me dressed for the first time. I had put on my nicest clothes. I called Filomena, had three dinners fetched, and seated between him and her, I had my banquet. I had just said: "I will not eat any soup to-day, unless it should happen to be _Zuppa d'herba_." Filomena took the lid off and cried: _"A punto."_ This is how all my wishes are fulfilled now. I had a fine, light red wine. It tasted so good that if the G.o.ds had known it they would have poured their nectar into the washtub.

Filomena poured it out, singing:

L'acqua fa mare, Il vino fa cantare; Il sugo della gresta Fa gira' la testa.

(Water is bad for one; Wine makes one sing; The juice of the grape Makes the head swim.)

To-morrow I may go out. After Sunday, I shall leave off dining at home.

On Sunday Filomena goes to Camerino.

SECOND LONGER STAY ABROAD

(_Continued_)

Reflections on the Future of Denmark--Conversations with Giuseppe Saredo--Frascati--Native Beauty--New Susceptibilities--Georges Noufflard's Influence--The Sistine Chapel and Michael Angelo--Raphael's Loggias--A Radiant Spring.

I

Saredo said to me one day: "I am not going to flatter you--I have no interest in doing so; but I am going to give you a piece of advice, which you ought to think over. Stay in Italy, settle down here, and you will reach a far higher position than you can possibly attain in your own country. The intellectual education you possess is exceedingly rare in Italy; what I can say, without exaggeration, is that in this country it is so extraordinary that it might be termed an active force. Within two years you would be a power in Italy, at home, you will never be more than a professor at a University. Stay here! Villari and I will help you over your first difficulties. Write in French, or Italian, which you like, and as you are master of the entire range of Germanic culture, which scarcely any man in Italy is, you will acquire an influence of which you have not the least conception. A prophet is never honoured in his own country. We, on the other hand, need you. So stay here! Take Max Muller as an example. It is with individuals as with nations; it is only when they change their soil that they attain their full development and realise their own strength."

I replied: "I am deaf to that sort of thing. I love the Danish language too well ever to forsake it. Only in the event of my settlement in Denmark meeting with opposition, and being rendered impossible, shall I strap on my knapsack, gird up my loins, and hie me to France or Italy; I am glad to hear that the world is not so closed to me as I had formerly believed."

My thoughts were much engaged on my sick-bed by reflections upon the future of Denmark. The following entry is dated March 8, 1871:

What do we mean by _our national future_, which we talk so much about? We do not purpose to extend our borders, to make conquests, or play any part in politics. For that, as is well comprehensible, we know we are too weak. I will leave alone the question as to whether it is possible to live without, in one way or another, growing, and ask: What do we want? _To continue to exist_. How exist? We want to get Slesvig back again, for as it is we are not _existing_; we are sickening, or else we are living like those lower animals who even when they are cut in pieces, are quite nimble; but it is a miserable life. We are in a false position with regard to Germany. The centripetal force that draws the individual members of one nationality together, and which we in Denmark call Danishness, that which, further, draws nationalities of the same family together, and which in Denmark is called _Scandinavianism_, must logically lead to a sympathy for the merging of the entire race, a kind of _Gothogermanism_. If we seek support from France, we shall be behaving like the Poles, turning for help to a foreign race against a nation of our own. I accuse us, not of acting imprudently, but of fighting against a natural force that is stronger than we. We can only r.e.t.a.r.d, we cannot annihilate, the attraction exerted by the greater ma.s.ses on the lesser. We can only hope that we may not live to feel the agony.

Holland and Denmark are both threatened by Germany, for in this geography is the mighty ally of Germany. The most enlightened Dane can only cherish the hope that Denmark, conquered, or not conquered, will brave it out long enough for universal civilisation, by virtue of the level it has reached, to bring our independence with it. As far as the hope which the majority of Danes cherish is concerned (including the n.o.ble professors of philosophy), of a time when Nemesis (reminiscence of theology!), shall descend on Prussia, this hope is only an outcome of foolishness. And even a Nemesis upon Prussia will never hurt Germany, and thus will not help us.

But the main question is this: If we--either through a peaceable restoration of Slesvig, or after fresh wars, or through the dawning of an era of peace and civilisation--regain our integrity and independence, shall we exist then? Not at all. Then we shall sicken again. A country like Denmark, even including Slesvig, is nowadays no country at all. A tradesman whose whole capital consists of ten rigsdaler is no tradesman.

The large capitals swallow up the small. The small must seek their salvation in a.s.sociations, partners.h.i.+ps, joint-stock companies, etc.

Our misfortune lies in the fact that there is no other country with which we can enter into partners.h.i.+p except Sweden and Norway, a little, unimportant state. By means of this a.s.sociation, which for the time being, is our sheet-anchor, and which, by dint of deploying enormous energy, might be of some importance, we can at best r.e.t.a.r.d our destruction by a year or two. But the future! Has Denmark any future?

It was France who, to her own unspeakable injury, discovered, or rather, first proclaimed, the principle of nationality, a principle which at most could only give her Belgium and French Switzerland, two neutral countries, guaranteed by Europe, but which gave Italy to Piedmont, Germany to Prussia, and which one day will give Russia supremacy over all the Slavs.

Even before the war, France was, as it were, squeezed between bucklers; she had no possible chance of gaining anything through her own precious principle, and did not even dare to apply it to the two above-mentioned points. While she fearfully allowed herself to be awarded Savoy and Nice, Prussia grew from nineteen million inhabitants to fifty millions; and probably in a few years the Germans of Austria will fall to Germany as well. Then came the war, and its outcome was in every particular what Prevost-Paradol, with his keen foresight, had predicted: "Afterwards,"

he wrote, "France, with Paris, will take up in Europe the same position as h.e.l.las with Athens a.s.sumed in the old Roman empire; it will become the city of taste and the n.o.ble delights; but it will never be able to regain its power." It has, in fact, been killed by this very theory of nationality; for the only cognate races, Spain and Italy, are two countries of which the one is rotten, the other just entered upon the convalescent stage. Thus it is clear that Germany will, for a time, exercise the supreme sway in Europe. But the future belongs neither to her nor to Russia, but, if not to England herself, at any rate to the Anglo-Saxon race, which has revealed a power of expansion in comparison with which that of other nations is too small to count. Germans who go to North America, in the next generation speak English. The English have a unique capacity for spreading themselves and introducing their language, and the power which the Anglo-Saxon race will acquire cannot be broken in course of time like that of ancient Rome; for there are no barbarians left, and their power is based, not on conquest, but on a.s.similation, and the race is being rejuvenated in North America.

How characteristic it is of our poor little country that we always hear and read of it as "one of the oldest kingdoms in the world." That is just the pity of it. If we were only a young country! There is only one way by which we can rejuvenate ourselves. First, to merge ourselves into a Scandinavia; then, when this is well done and well secured, to approach the Anglo-Saxon race to which we are akin. Moral: Become an Anglo-Saxon and study John Stuart Mill!

And I studied Mill with persevering attention, where he was difficult, but instructive, to follow, as in the _Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy_, which renews Berkeley's teachings, and I read him with delight where, accessible and comprehensible, he proclaims with freshness and vigour the gospel of a new age, as in the book _On Liberty_ and the one akin to it, _Representative Government_.

II

During the months of February and March, my conversations with Giuseppe Saredo had been all I lived for. We discussed all the questions which one or both of us had at heart, from the causes of the expansion of Christianity, to the method of proportionate representation which Saredo knew, and correctly traced back to Andrae. When I complained that, by reason of our different nationality, we could hardly have any recollections in common, and by reason of our different languages, could never cite a familiar adage from childhood, or quote a common saying from a play, that the one could not thoroughly enjoy the harmony of verses in the language of the other, Saredo replied: "You are no more a Dane than I am an Italian; we are compatriots in the great fatherland of the mind, that of Shakespeare and Goethe, John Stuart Mill, Andrae, and Cavour. This land is the land of humanity. Nationality is milk, humanity is cream. What is there in all the world that we have not in common? It is true that we cannot enjoy together the harmony of some Northern verses, but we can a.s.similate together all the great ideas, and we have for each other the attraction of the relatively unknown, which fellow- countrymen have not."

He very acutely characterised his Italian compatriots: "Our intelligence amounts to prudence and common sense. At a distance we may appear self- luminous; in reality we are only pa.s.sivity and reflected light.

Solferino gave us Lombardy, Sadowa gave us Venice, Sedan gave us Rome.

We were just active enough to take advantage of fortunate circ.u.mstances, and pa.s.sively clever enough not to wreck our advantage by stupidity. In foreign novels we are scoundrels of the deepest dye, concocters of poisons and wholesale swindlers. In reality we are indifferent and indolent. _Dolce far niente_, these words, which, to our shame, are repeated in every country in Italian, are our watchword. But things shall be different, if it means that the few amongst us who have a little share of head and heart have to work themselves to death--things shall be different. Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio said: 'Now we have created an Italy; there remains to create Italians.' That was a true saying. Now we are creating the new people, and what a future there is before us! Now it is we who are taking the leaders.h.i.+p of the Latin race, and who are giving back to our history its brilliance of the sixteenth century. At present our Art is poor because we have no popular type; but wait! In a few years Italy will show a profile no less full of character than in the days of Michael Angelo, and Benvenuto Cellini."

III

Then the moment arrived when all abstract reflections were thrust aside once more by convalescence. I was well again, after having been shut up for over four months. I still felt the traces of the mercury poisoning, but I was no longer tied to my bed, and weak though I was, I could walk.

And on the very first day,--it was March 25th--armed with a borrowed stick (I possessed none, having never used a stick before), and equipped with a little camp-stool, I took the train to Frascati, where there was a Madonna Fete.

It was life opening out before me again. All that I saw, witnessed to its splendour. First, the scenery on the way, the Campagna with its proud ruins, and the snow-covered Sabine Mountains, the whole illuminated by a powerful Summer sun; the villas of old Romans, with fortress-like thick walls, and small windows; then the fertile lava soil, every inch of which was under vineyard cultivation. At last the mountains in the neighborhood of Frascati. A convent crowned the highest point; there, in olden days, the first Italian temple to Jupiter had stood, and there Hannibal had camped. Underneath, in a hollow, like an eagle's nest, lay Rocca di Papa. By the roadside, fruit-trees with violet cl.u.s.ters of blossoms against a background of stone-pines, cypresses, and olive-groves.

I reached Frascati station. There was no carriage to be had up to the town, so I was obliged to ascend the hill slowly on foot, a test which my leg stood most creditably. In the pretty market-place of Frascati, with its large fountain which, like Acqua Paola, was divided into three and flung out a tremendous quant.i.ty of water, I went into an _osteria_ and asked for roast goat with salad and Frascati wine, then sat down outside, as it was too close within. Hundreds of people in gay costumes, with artificial flowers and silver feathers in their headgear, filled the square in front of me, crowded the s.p.a.ce behind me, laughed and shouted.

The people seemed to be of a grander type, more lively, animated and exuberant, than at the fair at Fiesole. The women were like Junos or Venuses, the men, even when clad in abominable rags, looked like Vulcans, blackened in their forges; they were all of larger proportions than Northern men and women. A Roman beau, with a riding-whip under his arm, was making sheep's eyes at a young local beauty, his courts.h.i.+p accompanied by the whines of the surrounding beggars. A _signora_ from Albano was lecturing the waiter with the dignity of a queen for having brought her meat that was beneath all criticism, yes, she even let the word _porcheria_ escape her. A brown-bearded fellow came out of the inn with a large bottle of the heavenly Frascati wine, which the landlords here, even on festival occasions, never mix with water, and gave a whole family, sitting on donkeys, to drink out of one gla.s.s; then he went to two little ones, who were holding each other round the waist, sitting on the same donkey; to two youths who were riding another; to a man and wife, who sat on a third, and all drank, like the hors.e.m.e.n in Wouwerman's pictures, without dismounting.

I got into an old, local omnibus, pulled by three horses, to drive the two miles to Grotta Ferrata, where the fair was. But the vehicle was hardly about to start up-hill when, with rare unanimity, the horses reared, behaved like mad, and whirled it round four or five times. The driver, a fellow with one eye and a grey cap with a double red camelia in it, being drunk, thrashed the horses and shouted, while an old American lady with ringlets shrieked inside the omnibus, and bawled out that she had paid a franc beforehand, and now wanted to get out. The road was thronged with people walking, and there was just as many riding donkeys, all of them, even the children, already heated with wine, singing, laughing, and accosting everybody. Many a worthy woman supported her half-drunk husband with her powerful arm. Many a substantial _signora_ from Rocca di Papa sat astride her mule, showing without the least bashfulness her majestic calves.