XV
AN EARTHLY PARADISE
Hotel Croce di Savoia,Vallombrosa, May 10th.
The day has been spent in driving, walking, and climbing hills, yet we seem to feel no fatigue, so invigorating is this air, "mountain air, sheathed in Italian sunshine," as Mrs. Browning aptly described it. Vallombrosa is three thousand feet above Florence—small wonder that we have been ascending skyward since we drove away from Pelago this morning!
Zelphine's pet project was to stop over night at the hermitage of Il Paradisino, which is on a rock more than two hundred feet above the old monastery of Vallombrosa; but here again Katharine's common sense stood us in good stead. The inn at Il Paradisino is, she says, wretchedly kept, so we have adopted her plan and are spending the night here in comfort. We climbed up to the hermitage and chapel this evening for the sunset view of the valley of the Arno, in which Florence lies. In the far distance we could see the strangely indented line of the mountains of Carrara, with Mount Cimone, and other remote peaks of the Apennines.
Zelphine found a copy of Mrs. Browning's letters chez Vieusseux, that good friend of all English-speaking travellers. We have brought the first volume with us, and are thus enjoying, in Mrs. Browning's good company, the charms of this region which she described so vividly.
Although we did not set out from Pelago at four in the morning, nor journey in a sledge drawn by white oxen, but in a carriage, even in this less picturesque conveyance we felt that we were ascending the heights of Paradise, and were awed into silence by the rugged grandeur of the scenery, the hills with their heads among the clouds, the dense pine forests and the beech and chestnut woods hanging from the mountain sides. We were at times reminded of Switzerland, although some of our fellow-travellers found a stronger likeness to Norway in the black ravines, gurgling waters, and mountain torrents; but alas and alas! as we drew near the summit, instead of Milton's
"Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view,"
we found that most of the fine trees which once adorned the ascent had been ruthlessly destroyed. They tell us that a public-spirited and beauty-loving Englishman offered to pay a fair price for some of the goodliest trees if they might only be left standing in their places; but the offer was refused, and the vandalism continues. How you will mourn these noble trees when you come here!—feeling, as you do, that the wanton destruction of trees is a crime near to that of homicide in the category of sins. Yet, in the midst of this wholesale destruction, a school has been established for the training of foresters. It is to be hoped that this Foresteria, which occupies the old monastery buildings, may disseminate so much light that in the future trees may be preserved as well as planted. We were told that thousands of trees had been planted within a short time.
With the suppression of the monastery many of the characteristic features of Vallombrosa have disappeared, and so we may not see the place as the Brownings saw it when they came here in the summer of 1847. Do you remember how they were ingloriously expelled from the monastery at the end of five days, as Mrs. Browning says, "by a little holy abbot with a red face, who was given to sanctity and had set his face against women"? We could well understand what it would have been to those lovers of nature to spend two months, as they had planned, in the midst of the majestic beauty of this mountain paradise. We long inexpressibly to stay a week here and then take a couple of days for La Verna, where again one comes upon footprints of St. Francis and his brothers, but we all learned from our school copybooks that "time and tide wait for no man," and we have promised to be in Florence to-morrow night to meet Bertha and Mrs. Robins, who are to join us in a trip to the Certosa on the following day. Zelphine and I make solemn vows, as we have done in many other entrancing spots, that we will return to Vallombrosa some day and stay as long as we wish. These resolves comfort us, and yet—and yet—do we ever have "the time and the place and the loved one all together," especially the time? To-morrow we shall be up betimes to enjoy the early morning view from Il Paradisino, with the clouds rolling away beneath our feet to show us once again the dome of our beloved Santa Maria del Fiore above the shoulder of a hill, a sight which it is worth while climbing mountains to see, and if the day is fine, and here days usually are fine, we may even catch a glimpse of the glistening sea beyond Florence and its hills.
Pension C., Florence, May 12th.
We found Ludovico's cards on our return from Vallombrosa. He had come quite unexpectedly on military business, so he says, for of course he returned later in the evening and we had a long talk with him. He proposes to act as our guide here, as in the old Roman days, and is planning a number of delightful excursions for us. As the sun is very hot now we are glad to spend our mornings in the galleries and churches, which are delightfully cool.
This morning, to our surprise, and also, I think, to Ludovico's, the Marquis de B. appeared. He also has come upon military business, being in the army, like most young Italians of good family. Indeed, as Ludovico ingenuously remarked, the other day, "There is nothing else for us to do, unless we go into the Church or marry an American heiress; and neither of these," with perfect sang-froid and not a trace of embarrassment, "is to my taste."
Although there is nothing in the least alarming in the appearance of these sons of Mars, I must confess that their arrival has filled me with misgivings. Ludovico still bears himself with the air of frank camaraderie that charmed us when we first met him. The Marquis is formality itself, his manners simply perfection as such; what lies beyond and beneath an exterior so impressive I have never been clever enough to discover. Both of these young men address much of their conversation to Zelphine and me, after the polite Continental fashion, yet neither one misses a glance or a movement of Angela's, and they both furtively watch each other. It is interesting and exciting, and would be amusing were I not the chaperon and temporary guardian of this apparently unconscious charmer.
It is not easy for such good Americans as we are to adapt our tongues to foreign titles, and for some inexplicable reason "marquis" is much more difficult for us "to handle," as Angela says, than "count," and the Italian "marchese" is quite impossible. Ludovico has relieved our embarrassment by telling us that it is quite immaterial whether we call his friend "marquis" or "count," as they have both titles in his family, and several others beside.
This morning we spent in the Church of San Lorenzo, where the first Cosimo de' Medici is buried. In one of the chapels are some statuettes by Donatello and in the other the world-famous Medici tombs, the thoughtful Lorenzo, the most expressive of all marbles, and beneath him, the Dawn and Twilight, the former the finest of the four statues, the effort of waking from sleep being plainly revealed in every line. The narrow niches in which these masterpieces are placed are so out of all proportion to their size and grandeur that, as Ludovico pointed out to us, they seem to be slipping off the pitiable pedestals which support them. Do you remember what Ruskin said of these impressive figures? To him they spoke "not of morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the souls of men." Zelphine and I think that those few lines give the motif of the statues better than any of the elaborate descriptions that have been written about them.
May 13th.
Ludovico and Count B. accompanied us to-day on our morning stroll through the galleries. Ludovico has the excellent taste in art that seems born in these Latins, and draws our attention to the best pictures in each gallery without recourse to guide or catalogue. Count B. doubtless has good taste also, but it is not in the line of antiques at present, as he seldom withdraws his eyes from Angela's face, except when she expresses admiration or asks him some question, when he reveals his knowledge of Florentine history and tradition by long, erudite, and somewhat tiresome explanations. This morning when I expressed my preference for the Raphael Madonnas over and above all others, the Count delivered himself quite sententiously of Vasari's opinion of Andrea del Sarto's work, especially of the Madonna del Sacco, which we saw again yesterday at the Annunziata, that "for drawing, grace, and beauty of color, for liveliness and relief, no artist had ever done the like," after which he repeated Vasari's story of Michael Angelo writing to Raphael that there was "a certain sorry little scrub of a painter going about the streets of Florence who would bring the sweat to his [Raphael's] brow, if he had his chance." You know the tale; Browning refers to it in his "Andrea del Sarto." The Count told this story with a glint of humor in his handsome eyes that I have never seen there before. Zelphine says that I am not quite just to Count B. I am willing to admit that he is taller and handsomer than Ludovico and has more the air of a grand seigneur; but then I like Ludovico far better, and no matter what the Count says or whom he quotes to support his arguments in favor of the Del Sarto Madonnas, for tenderness and motherliness we must always come back to the Raphaels. Our two companions found us this morning lingering before the lovely Madonna with the Cardinal-bird, which in its sweetness and domesticity is, I think, only equalled by the Belle Jardinière of the Louvre. Zelphine agrees with the Count in his estimate of Del Sarto, but Angela and Ludovico are quite in sympathy with me in their loyalty to Raphael. When the work of both these great masters is so supremely beautiful, it seems absurd to be discussing their comparative merits so hotly. Which side would you take, I wonder?
We crossed the Arno by the picture-gallery of the Ponte Vecchio, a passageway lined with portraits of dead-and-gone kings and queens, dukes and princesses, many of these latter proud Spanish ladies with whom the crafty lords of Tuscany allied themselves. How luxurious and beauty-loving were those Medici princes! Not content with a noble gallery of paintings on each side of the river, Cosimo spanned the distance between them with a third, having already turned the Florentine butchers out of the lower part of the Ponte Vecchio and given their stalls to goldsmiths, whose successors still display their wares here. Half-way across we stopped before the large windows cut in the sides of the bridge, which frame in a fine view of the heights of San Miniato upon one side and on the other of the windings of the Arno and the Cascine with its trees and shrubbery. From the bridge, by many stairs, we reached the vast salons of the Pitti Palace, which contain priceless treasures of art with which photographs and engravings have made us all familiar. We passed from one glorious Raphael to another, pausing before a superb Del Sarto or Murillo in a state of rapturous delight, until, as we stood before Fra Bartolommeo's Marriage of St. Catherine of Siena, beautiful in composition, drawing, and relief, a pleasant English voice at our side said, "Rather nice, is it not?"
We turned to see a fresh-faced girl, who addressed this remark to the typical John Bull en voyage. We waited, like her, for the reply which came slowly, in a gruff voice.
"Yes, rather. A pastel?"—and in just such a tone as one might have spoken of a chromo. An Englishwoman standing near, from the London cockney district but evidently with an appreciation of art, looked at the girl compassionately, and ejaculated, "Poor lidy!" Whether the pitying tone was in consequence of the girl's art-limitations or because the pretty creature was the bride of the dull, red-faced giant, with whom she walked away, hand in hand, we shall never know, for just at this moment we heard a clock striking one. How the morning had sped away!
"It will be quite impossible to get back to the pension in time for luncheon," said Angela. Upon which Count B., with elaborate courtesy, begged us to honor him by breakfasting with him in a little garden-café near the entrance to the Boboli Gardens. The luncheon had all been ordered in advance, this being, as we afterwards discovered, a cleverly arranged plan of the Count's and Ludovico's, and there was nothing to do but accept the invitation as graciously as it was given.
The little garden had been converted into a bower of roses, and the table was a dream of beauty, covered with exquisite flowers, sparkling glass and silver, and, not less important to hungry sight-seers, the menu was delicious. It was all like a fairy feast to which we had been bidden by Prince Charming himself. Zelphine said she would not be surprised to see a white cat or a genie appear at any moment.
"Priest and book are what we are in more danger of than white cat or genie," I whispered, as I bent over the table to admire some rare lilies that adorned its centre.
I feel as if a spell of enchantment were being spread around Angela's path, and yet she talks and laughs and is as free as air, never by word or look revealing which of her suitors she prefers, or whether she has a penchant for either. The modern girl is a study, as you well know, and Angela is not the least interesting one that I have met.
After luncheon the Count proposed that we should stroll over to the Boboli Gardens. Here in one of the marvellous pergolas, where, by the careful clipping and training of the ilexes, a refreshing twilight shade is to be found at high noon, we sought refuge from the scorching heat of the sun. Again it appeared that our host's thoughtful care had preceded us, as camp-chairs awaited us in this green bower, and here coffee and ices were served to us as if by magic, which we enjoyed in the coolness of our pergola, from which we looked forth upon the terraces beneath us, where the horse-chestnuts are covered with pink feathery bloom, and upon the old amphitheatre, the fountain, and the "cyclopean massiveness" of the walls of the great Palazzo Pitti.
The amphitheatre was filled with children at play and nurses with babies, as it always is on the free days at the Boboli.
"Why are the boys catching so many crickets and putting them in cages?" asked Angela of Ludovico.
For several days we have noticed the children in the Cascine busily engaged in catching crickets, on the grass and among the bushes. Some of the boys go off with dozens of them, sometimes in large cages, but more frequently in a number of pretty little cages of wire or wood, all strung on a stick, a single cricket in each one.
"Yes," added Zelphine, "what is the meaning of all this catching of crickets?"
"For Grilli Day, of course," said Ludovico, laughing heartily at the idea of our not knowing anything so well known. "On the feast of the Ascension, to-morrow, you will see what the boys do with the grilli, and you will be buying grilli like the rest."
"And why should I buy crickets," asked Angela, "especially as I don't like them at all?"
"For luck, of course, signorina; everybody buys the grilli for luck." And then Ludovico sang, in his light, gay Italian fashion but in a voice in which a minor chord seemed to dominate the gay notes:
"'Grillo, mio grillo!
Si tu vo' moglie dillo!'"
To our surprise, the Count joined in Ludovico's song, in a rich bass voice that resounded through the little pergola and brought a crowd of urchins to our retreat with their hands full of grilli in cages. The Count laughed good-humoredly, and presented each one of us with a caged grillo, saying, "For luck, ladies; if the grilli live, the luck will be good; if not," with a shrug, "it may be good all the same."
He then insisted that Angela should buy him a grillo in a cage, which she did laughingly, but which he received quite seriously, looking as if he intended to guard it with his life.
Zelphine, her thirst for knowledge still unsatisfied, asked for information as to the origin of this curious custom.
"It is a custom of great antiquity," replied Ludovico, which, as we have learned by experience, is his method of silencing troublesome American questions that he is unable to answer. The Count, who appeared to be in an especially genial mood, then told us many stories and legends about the grilli, in which fairies and princesses figured quite prominently and goodness was rewarded and wickedness punished after the charmingly judicial fashion of fairyland. One of the prettiest of these tales we found afterwards in Mr. Leland's "Legends of Florence," in the form of a poem called "The King of the Crickets."
About four o'clock a delightful breeze sprang up, and Ludovico proposed that we drive to San Miniato. The suggestion was made apparently on the spur of the moment, and yet when we descended from our airy height to the street below, carriages were awaiting us, not ordinary cabs but fairy coaches fit for princesses.
The drive through the Porta Romana and along the hillside road of Le Colle was enchanting. The church which Michael Angelo called "La Bella Villanella" is beautiful in its simplicity. After we had admired some of the frescoes on the walls—not all of them—and the exquisitely wrought marble screen and pulpit, and explored the crypt with its twenty-eight columns, we were glad to go out upon the marble steps and enjoy from thence the view of Florence in the distance, and the intervening hills covered with olive-groves and vineyards. Count B., who had lingered with Angela in the lovely cypress avenue that leads to the church, joined us on the terrace and took us back into the nave to show us the chapel tomb of young Cardinal Jacopo of the royal house of Portugal, with its beautiful low reliefs by Luca della Robbia. Descanting eloquently upon the virtues and charity of the Portuguese cardinal, who died at an early age, Count B. led us down the steps of the church and out upon the Piazza Michelangelo, where the David stands, as best becomes him, en plein air. You know that the original marble, of which this is an admirable copy in bronze, was sculptured for the Piazza della Signoria. It is now carefully guarded from the elements in the Belle Arti. This noble figure is the embodiment of glorious, inextinguishable youth and strength, and is to me the most inspiring of Michael Angelo's statues.
Zelphine and I walked around the piazza to view the statue from all sides, while Count B. and Ludovico took turns in trying to keep the sun off Angela, whose complexion seems to require unusual care in these days!
"Is there any other American girl who could resist all this devotion and a title to crown it?" asked Zelphine.
"You seem to have decided this important question for Angela," said I. "What makes you think that she will turn a deaf ear to Prince Charming's suit?"
"I cannot say just why. Angela is charmingly polite and appreciative, and yet–"
At this moment, having suddenly recalled the fact that we existed, Ludovico came over to point out to us the beauty of the Duomo from this hill-top, Giotto's pink tower glowing to rose in the warm sunset light.
Ludovico looks rather sad and distrait, to my thinking; his views may differ from Zelphine's, whose "and yet—" may be variously construed by the three onlookers who anxiously await developments.
Ascension Day, otherwise Grilli Day.
Zelphine and Angela, with the two cavaliers of the party, started off early this morning in a great stage-coach to breakfast al fresco in some pretty garden after the Florentine fashion. The idea of a festival here seems to be to breakfast or to dine anywhere in space except at home; consequently all Florence seems to be breakfasting abroad. The little dairies in and about the Cascine are surrounded by so many tables filled with family parties and gaily dressed folk that they look like huge bouquets of many-colored flowers. It is delightful to see people take their pleasure after so natural and simple a fashion as they do in these Latin countries. To be out of doors, with ever so simple a menu before them, seems to make a festa for these light-hearted people.
Although I admire the Florentine custom, I was glad to stay at home to-day to write letters and to sit in the Cascine, as I am doing this minute, where the great trees spread "their webs of full greenery" above me and the children are playing all around on the grass.
I was rejoicing in the beauty and restfulness of this lovely spot, having up to this time escaped the vendors of grilli, when several boys approached me with their crickets in especially pretty cages. "Quanto?" I asked, pointing to a dainty wire cage. "Una lira," was the reply. This was too much by half, and having managed to reduce the price to the proper sum, I handed the boy a lira, and waited for the change with the cage in my hand. The small salesman seemed to have considerable difficulty in finding the desired change, turned out his pockets, questioned his companions, and finally rubbed his eyes hard and began to weep piteously. At this moment a policeman appeared, and asked the boy what troubled him, when he, accomplished actor that he was, pointed to the cage in my hand, and explained that I had taken his wares and not paid him the half lira demanded. To prove this he pointed to his empty pockets. What he had done with my lira, whether he had swallowed it or deposited it with a confederate, I know not. The policeman, looking very stern, asked me for an explanation, which I gave in the best Italian that I could muster, feeling quite sure that had Zelphine been there, her ready tongue and eloquent gestures would have convinced that distrustful policeman of my innocence. An Englishwoman who had witnessed the transaction approached, and gave in her testimony in much better Italian than mine, all to no purpose.
By this time quite a crowd had gathered around us, all deeply interested. The boy, encouraged by a sympathetic audience, wept copiously and repeated his tale of woe; the big policeman looked at me threateningly. My English ally repeated her explanation, and seeing that it made no impression, and the lira not being in the boy's hands, she whispered to me, "You had better pay him again for the cage; the policeman is evidently on the boy's side, and between them they may make a disagreeable scene for you." "Never," I replied, resolutely, "but he shall have his cage again," handing it to the little gamin, saying, "I have paid for it twice already, but you may have it."
The scene was already sufficiently disagreeable, and, supported by my English friend, I made my way to another part of the Cascine, with visions of a Florentine court and jail floating through my mind.
"That is one of the stock tricks of these gamins," she explained. "It would have been all right if you had given him the half lira at once, but with the whole lira in his hand there came the temptation to keep it all. These people see so little money, a lira is quite a fortune to them."
The grilli had certainly brought me no luck, and I now carefully avoid looking at a cage, although I do want one of the pretty little wire ones to take home with me. Perhaps Ludovico will get me one. When he joined me later and heard of my experience, he was so indignant that if he could have laid hands on that small actor it is doubtful whether his histrionic powers would have been allowed to develop to maturity. The humor of the situation did not appeal to him, as it did to Angela and Zelphine.
May 16th.
As Ludovico and Count B. do not speak of leaving Florence soon, we conclude that the military affairs that keep them here must be of a rather protracted nature. They do not, however, complain of the delay, nor do we. To be escorted by two devoted cavaliers through palaces and villas and gardens of delight is an experience that one might wish to prolong indefinitely. Halcyon days are these, truly, and if storms and rain come, it is only at night, as we awake each morning to find the sun shining upon the rose-garden beneath our windows and a new day of pleasure beckoning us on.
We have had some charming afternoons in the villas near Florence. Yesterday we went to Sesto in a tram that starts from the Piazza del Duomo, and from Sesto a short walk brought us to Castello. This royal villa, which once belonged to the Medici, is full of family portraits, and some of its beautiful rooms look really home-like—"as if one could live in them," Angela said, which remark seemed greatly to amuse Count B., who has, I fancy, spent all his days in such cold, formal apartments as are to be found in most of these palaces. It was in the gardens, however, that we were tempted to linger. Those of Castello are elaborately laid out and adorned with fountains and statues, and now with the orange and lemon trees in blossom are filled with delicious fragrance. We stopped so long on the terrace under the great ilexes and beeches that the twilight had begun to fall and the nightingales to sing before we started homeward. Usignuoli Ludovico calls these birds of the night. He and the Count were so pleased with Zelphine's delight over Castello and its nightingales that they insisted upon taking us this afternoon to Petraja, an even more elaborate villa on the heights above Castello. In this villa, which is on the southern slope of the Apennines, Scipione Ammirato wrote his celebrated history of Florence. In the last century Petraja was elaborately fitted up by Victor Emmanuel II. for Madame Mirafiore, for which reason, probably, it has not been a favorite residence of the royal family of Italy, and its lovely gardens and terraces are enjoyed only by tourists and occasional visitors.