XIV
THE CITY OF FLOWERS
Lung' Arno delle Grazie,Florence, May 6th.
Do you realize that your letter in answer to mine of March 18th from Rome was not quite within the pact? I found it awaiting me at Siena, with a number of others. I thought my explanation quite clear and eminently sane, but you seem to have strangely perverted my meaning; then you revert to an earlier letter from La Cava, and are pleased to imagine that we are taking risks all the time and leading a reckless life generally. I shall really hesitate to tell you again of any of our adventures such as that drive home from Pæstum, which I merely related as an amusing incident. There is no danger of brigands in these days and we did not "need a protector," especially as kind Providence looked after us. That drunken driver would not have surrendered his reins to you or to any one except the padrone; and then "all's well that ends well," and we returned from our excursion with nothing worse than a grievance.
I was so vexed with you for two whole days that I wrote you not one line from Siena or Pisa. Now your indiscretion is partially atoned for by a letter which has just reached me here, and I am trying to forgive you and "be friends again," as we used to say when we were children. But the charms of Siena are already so eclipsed by those of Florence that it is quite impossible for me to give you an atmospheric description of its streets and churches, above all of the shining cathedral, rich from dome to pavement with colored marbles, frescoes, and mosaics. This may be no loss to you, who are doubtless well tired of my Italian rhapsodies; but your respite is only temporary, as I quite missed writing you that letter. I wanted to tell you that the campanile at Pisa leans quite as much as the little Parian model on your desk, and about the famous Campo Santo with its interesting paintings, and many other things. The habit of relieving my mind of the burden of surplus impressions, or of what I might call my "oversoul," has become second nature. Do you remember, Allan, the man in Frank Stockton's story who, on his return from abroad, found his friends and acquaintances so much interested in their own affairs that he engaged a young man at twenty-five cents an hour to listen to his traveller's tales? You seem to be all unwittingly playing the rôle of that youth, less the twenty-five cents, and I, alas! shall never know whether you prove yourself more worthy than that faithless one, who fell asleep in the midst of the most thrilling adventures.
I must explain to you for your benefit, when you travel this way, that we did what is discouraged by Baedeker and most of the guide-books; we changed cars at Empoli and took a train to Pisa, where we spent a night and day. The usual plan is to go directly from Siena to Florence, and make a separate day-trip to the city of the Leaning Tower. One of Zelphine's pet economies is to save the retracing of steps or railway journeys by doing all that we can en route. In this case I think her plan was a good one, as we shall never be willing to spend one whole beautiful day in any other city, no matter how long we may tarry in Florence. I overheard Zelphine, this morning, telling Katharine Clarke that she intended to stay here indefinitely and stifle the promptings of conscience with regard to Venice and all the rest of Italy, adding, in her earnest way, "After all, Katharine, the true pleasure of travelling is to settle down in one place and let its charms sink into your mind."
Katharine was so much amused at Zelphine's novel definition of the joys of travel that she repeated it to an English acquaintance, who exclaimed, "Really!" with a delicious rising inflection, "would not that be rather unpractical?" Refreshingly English, was it not? The truth is, we are all well tired of short journeys, and look forward with pleasure to a whole month of Zelphine's kind of travelling, living in Florence and making half-day trips to Fiesole, La Certosa, and some of the lovely villas on the hillsides near by.
We reached Florence last night so late that the long twilight had quite faded, and darkness veiled the charms of this most beautiful city. As we drove along the Lung' Arno, its lights revealed glimpses here and there of the shining river and picturesque bridges, with a line of dark mountains rising beyond and above them. There is something fascinating and stimulating to the imagination in such a first view of a strange city, especially when, as in this instance, she discovers fresh beauties when she lifts her veil to the morning light.
We were not able to get into the delightful pension that Katharine Clarke told us of. Madame had not received my note from Assisi advising her that we would be two days later than our appointment, and had promptly rented our rooms, believing, like all Italian landladies, in the proverbial "bird in the hand." "Never mind," said Zelphine, as we turned sadly away, "what is any pension, even the Pension Riccoli, whose feasts are said to rival those of Lucullus, compared with that incomparable last day in Assisi with St. Francis or that other red-letter day in the cathedral at Siena?"
"And then," said Angela, "the Pension Riccoli is a paradise reached by many purgatorial stairs."
Being both tired and hungry by this time, we consulted our note-books, and directed our vetturino to the nearest pension. An indifferent hostel it proved to be, with the one charm of being directly on the Arno. Our windows opened on the river, and we were lulled to sleep by the music of its rushing waters. These rivers, fed by springs from neighboring hills, are widely different from the sluggish streams of the plain; the spirits of Undine and her kind seem to inhabit them and sing their lullabies in storm and calm. Zelphine evidently had the same thought, as she told me that she had been dreaming all night of Undine and Sir Huldebrand, and that it would not have surprised her to have the lovely sprite appear at her window and dash water in her face. Instead she awoke to find Angela standing by our window, in the freshest of pink and white morning-gowns, the warm sun lighting up every thread of her blonde hair to pure gold. She begged us to come to the window and look out. The Florence of the left side of the Arno, the Florence of "Romola" and Mrs. Browning, lay before us, with its churches and palaces, connected with the Lung' Arno delle Grazie by the oldest bridge in the city, the Ponte alle Grazie. Off to the south are the heights of San Miniato, and still further the commanding Fortezza di Belvedere, and beyond, hill upon hill of blue velvet spanned to-day by a sapphire sky. Behind us are the Duomo, Santa Croce, San Marco, and a whole world of architectural wonder and entrancing interest, the old streets through which Dante, Michael Angelo, and Raphael walked and the churches that resounded to the voice of Savonarola.
Pension C., Via Solferino,Saturday Evening.
Among surroundings of so much interest it seemed almost a desecration to devote an hour to a search for a pension, and yet even this practical business was illuminated by glimpses of beauty by the way. We passed through the Loggia dei Lanzi, with its many statues, where Cosimo's German lancers were once quartered, across the Piazza della Signoria and by the Strozzi Palace. This middle-age castle, with its rough-hewn stone walls unbroken by windows except on the upper floors, must have proved an impregnable fortress in days when war was the chief occupation of the Florentines and a man's house was primarily and emphatically his stronghold. Although the Palazzo Strozzi was built by a merchant, its exterior is decorated by the handsome iron fanali which were used only by the most distinguished citizens, and here are the rings to which the party standards were once attached. We passed the Palazzo Strozzi on our wandering way to Thomas Cook's office, which is on the same street, the Via Tornabuoni, with its alluring cafés, confectioners', modistes', and bric-à-brac shops. The massive walls and huge bulk of the old palace form a picturesque background for the bright, varied modern life and tourists' life of the Florence of to-day.
Katharine told us of an excellent pension on the Via Solferino near the Cascine, which she feared would be full, like every other place that we had looked at, as all America seems to have come up here from the Eastertide in Rome to spend May in Florence. We meet more acquaintances on the Via Tornabuoni and under the arcades of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele than on Fifth Avenue, and almost as many as on Rittenhouse Square. Zelphine says that it would be pleasant to meet some Florentines once in a while, "or even some Romans," suggested Angela.
"Romans never travel," replied Zelphine, in her most encyclopædic tone; "like Parisians, their own surroundings satisfy them entirely."
"Never travel! How strange, how dull!" exclaimed Angela, shaking her head, incredulously. Was she thinking of Ludovico or of the Marquis de B., I wondered, this apparently frank but absolutely inscrutable Angela? She had a letter handed her at Cook's office this morning, with a Roman postmark, which she put in her pocket without a word or a sign of interest. It was not in Ludovico's handwriting, I know; whose then? Do I seem to be watching straws to find out which way the wind blows? You must remember, Allan, that I am the appointed chaperon of this party, and that Angela's father, like the "Father of his Country," has a great objection to entangling foreign alliances. Indeed, my task is no light one, as there are times when Zelphine needs a chaperon quite as much as Angela; her beaux yeux draw many admiring glances in our direction. But pray do not whisper this above your breath, as Zelphine is absolutely unconscious of the admiration that she excites, and would accuse me of gross exaggeration, and then a certain widower of our acquaintance might become alarmed and feel it his duty to join us "as a protector," which would certainly interfere with Angela's pleasure and mine, however it might affect Zelphine's happiness.
To return to our quest, we found the Pension C. crowded, as Katharine had feared, but Madame assured us that she would have rooms for us in a few days, if we would only be content with lodgings in the dépendance for the present. The rooms shown us were altogether captivating, with their long windows and balconies overlooking a garden full of roses. When Zelphine learned that in addition to their other attractions these rooms were presided over by a maid named Assunta, wild horses, buffaloes, or even the more probable menace of mice would not have drawn her from the Pension C. "Think of it, Margaret!" she exclaimed, "to sit on a balcony overhanging a rose-garden, and have our coffee and rolls brought to us by Assunta! And then," added Zelphine, in her most persuasive tone, "she seems to understand my French, although she speaks nothing but Italian!" Although Katharine laughed heartily at Zelphine's argument, and said that it reminded her of a sign in one of the shops on the Via Tornabuoni, "French spoken and English understood," I felt this to be an important consideration and one that would affect our comfort even more materially than the balcony, the rose-garden, or the pleasing name of our femme de chambre, and after some conversation with Madame we concluded to await her pleasure. We are now lodged in the dépendance, a dismal apartment-house on the Via Montebello, connected with the pension by a tunnel-like gallery. Here we and our belongings hang between heaven and earth until our promised rooms in the main house are vacant—to-morrow, or the next day, or the next; nothing is quite certain here, and dates do not seem to be reckoned with or upon.
After our first dinner at the Pension C. Angela showed her satisfaction with her new surroundings by exclaiming, "I am glad that you two romantic creatures have decided upon a place where the food is so good, as we cannot be expected to live on antiquities for many days." Angela is quite right: we are fed upon strawberries, sugar, and cream, while succulent asparagus, and peas as sweet as those from your garden at Woodford, have replaced the artichokes and fennel, of which we had grown a bit tired. I saw Angela tremble this evening when the dish of green peas was offered to her right-hand neighbor first, according to the undeviating blindfold justice of table d'hôte rules; for although Madame provides most liberally for her guests, this woman would create famine in a land of plenty. Our youngest made a grimace over the small portion left for her on the platter, and then with resolute cheerfulness essayed to open a conversation with her neighbor, remarking that we had spent a delightful morning at the Annunziata, to which the lady, whose thoughts evidently never rise above her plate, asked, naïvely, "Why, what's going on there?"
In view of all that has "gone on" at the Annunziata, especially in art, the masterpieces of Andrea del Sarto and Ghirlandajo and the lovely Della Robbias, we were all reduced to silence.
Although there are some charming people at the pension, we are not particularly well placed at the table d'hôte. Zelphine is not more fortunate in conversation than Angela, as her neighbor is an Italian gentleman who, although charmingly polite, is deaf and dumb in every language save his own. Angela and I have concluded that this Signor A. is preternaturally dull, as Zelphine can say enough with her eyes to make most men understand; beside which her adroitly pronounced and cleverly emphasized French usually appeals to the intelligent Italian imagination. Occasionally she touches the roses on the table, and says "Bella," when there follows a rapid flow of conversation on the part of Signor A., through which Zelphine smiles sweetly. She scored quite a point this evening when Madame made her appearance, after an indisposition of a couple of days, and Zelphine bowed in recognition of the return of our presiding genius, and, turning to her neighbor, said "Benia." "Benia" may not be the very best Italian equivalent for "better," but it evidently conveyed Zelphine's idea to Signor A., who nodded his head in approval and beamed upon her like a sunburst. He has been her devoted slave ever since, passing everything at his end of the table to her, evidently quite incapable of helping himself first, and urging wine upon her until I tremble for her sobriety. Zelphine is of a yielding nature up to a certain point, of course, beyond which she is a rock of steadfastness, as Angela and I have learned in the course of our travels together. We trust that she may discover the rocky side of her character if Signor A. fills up her glass too often, or makes her an offer of his heart, his hand, and his fortune. This latter we are disposed to think is inconsiderable, as one of his chief sources of revenue is, as we have incidentally gathered, the keeping of Madame's books.
Angela looks discontentedly at her own insatiable neighbor and then at Zelphine, so tenderly cared for by hers, and remarks in the crude slang of the day that "Zelphine has a soft thing of it, all right!"
A blooming widow opposite, with a daughter of twelve at her side, wastes the sweetness of her smiles upon the unrequiting feminine company of the pension. The only available man, available, I mean, for excursions and strolls in the Cascine, left this morning for Venice, wearing a bright red necktie which the lady has been knitting for days while he sat by her side in the rose-garden. Angela thought it very unbecoming, because it did not match his hair exactly, scarlet not being the color one would choose for a red-haired man, but then our youngest is overcritical in the matter of color.
Further down the table d'hôte are several widows with daughters, one, two, or three. Zelphine and I have been wondering when the great mortality among American men occurred, as most of the women whom we meet are too young to be relicts of the Civil War. The widow en voyage with grown daughters is the rule. Some few wives are here who have husbands at home; the exception is when paterfamilias accompanies the party, and when he does, I must frankly admit that he looks excessively bored, especially in picture-galleries.
Sunday, May 9th.
Katharine came in this morning, bright and early, with her hands full of roses and her head full of plans. She had been modelling steadily for ten days, and, having reached a convenient stopping-place, announced her intention of taking a vacation of three days, which she would be glad to devote to us and our sight-seeing. Would it please us to go to Fiesole for the day or to Vallombrosa? Zelphine says that we must see Vallombrosa if we would know something of the beauties of Paradise in advance. Milton is said to have drawn his description of the Garden of Eden from the lovely slopes of the Pratomagno. You, ardent lover of the English classics, may recall a passage in the first book of "Paradise Lost," in which Milton speaks of Fiesole and Valdarno, and of
"Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High overarch'd embower."
As Katharine is a delightful cicerone, intelligent and appreciative, her enthusiasm well balanced by common sense, we were charmed by the prospect of three days in her good company, and when she asked us what we would do to-day, I was about to say, properly and politely, that we would go wherever it would please her to take us; but Zelphine interposed, and solemnly protested that it would be quite impossible for her to spend another day in Florence without visiting the grave of Mrs. Browning. Being of a cheerful temper and not given to haunting graveyards, Katharine seemed to have a rather vague idea of the location of the Protestant Cemetery, but she readily consented to Zelphine's request, and by dint of considerable questioning we found it. Not an ideal Campo Santo is this, like that at Rome, where tall cypresses shut it in from the outside world, and where the vast pyramidal Tomb of Caius Cestius overshadows it grandly. Just outside the Porta Pinti is this Protestant burial-ground of Florence. The old walls that once framed it in have been removed, and it now stands in the midst of dusty highways where noisy trams pass to and fro with their freight of eager-eyed tourists. Once inside the enclosure, we found trees and shrubbery, and roses blooming everywhere. Katharine and Angela stood under a tree to rest beneath its grateful shade, while Zelphine walked on and on as if drawn by a magnet, I following her, until we stood before a square marble sarcophagus, simple and dignified, with the initials E. B. B. on one side and the date June 29, 1861. A cedar-tree stands guard by the poet's grave, one branch leaning over it protectingly, roses climb all about it, and as we stood there, silent and reverent, a bird sang from one of the branches overhead, and, like Browning's "wise thrush," he sang his song
"twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!"
Standing by the grave of the English poetess in the beauty of a May day, with the blue sky above it, the air filled with the fragrance of flowers and the songs of birds, it seemed to us that they were wise who decided that Elizabeth Browning's tomb should be here, in this Italy that she loved, and among the Florentines who adored her, rather than in the vast gloom of the abbey where her husband lies and where she is by right entitled to rest among the great of England.
Two other English poets sleep in this cemetery, Arthur Hugh Clough and Walter Savage Landor. Landor died in Florence in a house on the Via Nunziatina, in 1864. As we stood by his grave, Zelphine softly murmured Swinburne's lovely lines to his brother poet:
"So shall thy lovers, come from far,
Mix with thy name,
As morning-star with evening-star,
His faultless fame."
This afternoon, returning from Katharine's studio, which is beyond the Porta Romana, as we passed the vast monotonous façade of Palazzo Pitti and entered the Via Maggio, we were attracted by a tall gray house with a white tablet above its first-floor windows. "The Casa Guidi!" exclaimed Zelphine, reading the words in which the Florentines recorded their love and gratitude to the woman poet who had by her golden ring of verse linked Italy to England. The well-known lines by the poet Tommaseo are inscribed in letters of gold upon the marble tablet, in Italian of course, but I am quite sure that Zelphine could read an inscription to the Brownings in Hindustani. After lingering long before the windows of the primo piano, which will always be associated with the Brownings, we walked around the corner to the Piazza Santa Felicità and looked up at the terrace where Mrs. Browning spent so many days, and up and down which she described her husband as walking with the third Browning in his arms.
I must frankly confess that we were disappointed in the terrace, as we had expected to see one of the charming garden terraces, adorned with blooming plants and even trees, in which the Italians delight to find rest and seclusion above the noise and dirt of the street; instead we saw only a balcony overhanging the piazza, with a few straggling plants in pots. So small is this balcony that Mr. Browning's goodly proportions must have filled all the available space, even if it was quite large enough for the fairy-like lady who sat there through long summer days. Do you remember that she wrote to Miss Mitford that she was so happy despite the intense heat that she could quite comprehend the possibility of St. Lawrence's ecstasies on a gridiron? In another letter Mrs. Browning wrote, "Here we can step out of the window on a sort of balcony terrace which is quite private, and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as we live upon watermelons, iced water, and figs, and all manner of fruit, we bear the heat with angelic patience and felicity which are really edifying."
It is not strange that, with new happiness and renewed health, everything in Florence was glorified to Mrs. Browning, and that the Casa Guidi apartment, with its windows looking out upon the Pitti Palace on one side and on the other "toward the gray wall of a church, called San Felice, for good omen," seemed a bit of Paradise.
Near the Casa Guidi are several classic spots. On the right of the Via Maggio at the corner of the Via Marsili is the house where Bernardo Buontalenti lived when the great Tasso came from Ferrara to embrace him and thank him for the beautiful scenery painted by him which had contributed so much to the success of his "Aminta." The story runs, as told by Baldinucci, that after thanking Buontalenti and kissing him on the neck and forehead Tasso mounted his horse and rode away, leaving the painter as amazed as if he had beheld a vision from the world of spirits.
A little way beyond on the same street is the house of Bianca Capello, from whose windows her delicate, fascinating face looked forth for men's undoing. Whether or not Bianca looked out from these windows "to see the Duke go by," as Mrs. Browning says, it was from her balcony here that she attracted the admiration of her first husband, Pietro Bonaventuri, with whom she eloped, and near this house he was murdered to give place to a princely suitor. The story of Bianca's marriage with the Grand Duke Francesco, of which we found accounts in several books at the all-embracing Vieusseux's, reads like a chapter of the "Arabian Nights." Never, surely, were wrong-doing and shame so gilded and glorified!—gilded literally, as the bodies of men and women were painted with gold that they might represent the deities of Olympus in the nuptial procession of Bianca, whose own car was drawn by real lions, while to other chariots were harnessed horses and buffaloes dressed in the skins of wild animals to represent griffins, unicorns, and elephants.
At the corner of the Via Toscanella an old wall marks the site of "the darksome, sad, and silent house" where Boccaccio lived and wrote.
As we regained the Piazza Pitti and turned for one more look at the Casa Guidi windows, Angela was indiscreet enough to say what I had been thinking all the time: "After all, it does not look much like a palace, although Mrs. Browning dated some of her letters from the Palazzo Guidi. It's just like an ordinary apartment-house." Zelphine vouchsafed no word in reply to this irreverent criticism, but with a withering glance at Angela strode before us along the Via Guicciardini and across the Ponte Vecchio, her head in the air and her thoughts doubtless "commencing with the skies," which were of Italy's bluest this evening. The emotions of the day had evidently been quite too much for Zelphine. She left us abruptly after dinner, and shut herself up in her own room, "to think great thoughts," Angela said, while we more practical travellers turned to our Hare and our Baedeker to plan out a campaign for to-morrow.
I forgot to tell you that we went across the river this afternoon to the little American Church on the Piazza del Carmine, where there was a short service, after which we had quite enough daylight to study Masaccio's interesting frescoes in the Cappella Brancacci of the Church of the Carmine near by. There is something intensely realistic and hopelessly sad in Masaccio's Expulsion from Paradise. Here despair and anguish are portrayed in every feature and line; our first parents really suffer, as Masaccio represents them being driven by an avenging angel from the Paradise in which, according to Filippino Lippi's panel near by, they seem to have lived in a placid and rather dull content before the Fall.
Angela reminds me of the lateness of the hour and of our early start for Vallombrosa to-morrow, whither we have elected to spend two of Katharine's holidays, thus breaking through our resolve at the very start, you see, and leaving Florence for two whole days; but as you are already familiar with my sentiments on the subject of changes of plans, I offer no apology, especially as Katharine says that one really cannot do justice to Vallombrosa in a hurried day's journey.