After passing through the agricultural school we crossed the courtyard, and entered the great doorway of beautiful carved stone-work, and so found ourselves in the basilica, which, with its flat, elaborately decorated ceiling, its high altar adorned with lapis lazuli, agate, and other colored stones, and its many columns of granite and marble, is wonderfully rich in depth and harmony of color. Around the sides of the church are a number of large paintings by Vassilacchi, two by Guido Reni, and some charming little paintings by Sassoferrato. But the crowning glory of the basilica, the great Perugino of the Assumption, has been carried off to France, although the five saints that once surrounded it still hover above the altar.
The exquisitely carved choir-stalls of San Pietro, attributed to Raphael, are the most beautiful that we have seen anywhere. The lovely traceries, the infinite variety of faces and figures, the quaint masks interspersed with carvings of beasts, birds, and flowers, could only have been designed by an artist of delicate fancy and marvellous genius.
The verger opened the great doors at the back of the church, thus disclosing a noble panorama of distant hills and fertile valleys.
On the opposite side of the road is the Giardino del Frontone, and beyond, the Porta San Costanzo, inside of which is a church of the same name, dedicated to the patron saint of all Perugian lovers. Here many happy couples are to be seen wending their way along the hillside park, to gain the blessing of the unlovely Byzantine Madonna who presides over the marble doorway of San Costanzo. Beyond the garden and the church lies the wide-spread Umbrian plain, girt about by the ample belt of the Apennines. Off to the north and west are Cortona and Siena, with Lago Trasimeno between, quite near, although shut off from us by a screen of green hills. To the south, following the windings of the Tiber, lies Rome, where our hearts still linger, and to the east, so near that we can see the twinkling of their lights at night, are Foligno and Spello and Assisi, which last, we are told, we shall end by loving more than any other spot in Italy.
XIII
A SUNDAY IN ASSISI
Assisi, Saturday Evening, May 1st.
As we first beheld Assisi from the railroad station at sunset, the delicate mauve pink of her towers and walls glowed with a more rosy hue and it seemed as if the old town for a brief moment must have worn something of the grace of her long-vanished youth.
On one side of the station is the little village of the plain, Santa Maria degli Angeli, with the church from which it takes its name, so christened by St. Francis in memory of the angelic visions here granted him. On the other side of the road, across a sweep of green meadows, is the town, built upon terraces half-way up the hill, Mount Subasio towering beyond it to a height of over three thousand feet above the sea-level. The crowning glory of Assisi is the great basilica of San Francesco, with its remarkable substructure—a vast colonnaded monastery standing guard over the happy valley beneath.
Our approach was by winding roads bordered by hedges, with fields beyond green as England and bright as Italy alone, all abloom to-day with poppies and buttercups. Up and up the shining way climbed the shabby vettura with its lean horse, until we seemed to be getting near the blue of the sky, so close does the arch of heaven lean to these hill towns of Italy.
We all felt that we had left the world of to-day far behind us when we drove through the ancient Porta San Francesco, so entirely does Assisi belong to the past. Here where everything is ancient one ceases to make comparisons, and it seemed no more remarkable to find a Temple of Minerva standing beside twelfth-century buildings, than that we three twentieth-century Americans should be driving about these old streets, hearing the vetturino talk about St. Francis as if he had lived but yesterday.
You really must not expect an ordinary letter of to-day from this place, where we are so absolutely dominated by the twelfth century. Zelphine, who is in a state of rapture and quite lifted above the ordinary affairs of life, is probably writing a poem at this moment, having been incited thereto by the history of Assisi's celebrated poet, Propertius, which she has just read to us from a charming little book which she found in Perugia. The story runs thus: Propertius, who was a contemporary of Virgil and Horace, relinquished the congenial atmosphere of Rome and the friendly companionship of the author of the "Metamorphoses" for the love of his Umbrian birthplace, where the Muse had first visited him. Recognized in his own day as the leader of a new school of poetry, Propertius appreciated his own powers sufficiently to write of himself in connection with his native town: "Ancient Umbria gave thee birth, from a noted household. Do I mistake, or do I touch rightly the region of your home, where misty Mevania stands among the dews of the hill-girt plain, and the waters of the Umbrian lake grow warm the summer through, and where on the summit of mounting Asis rise the walls to which genius has added glory?" His own genius! And yet, to prove to us that he was not wanting in modesty, Propertius has placed this charming compliment in the mouth of a soothsayer. If this is all familiar to you, O most learned, it is so fresh to me that you must allow me to repeat it, because it reveals once more the truth of the Scriptures—that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country. Propertius would not have been forced to sing his own praises if his contemporaries had sung them in the right key.
The little inn at which we are stopping, with its bare, stone floors and whitewashed walls, is quite primitive enough to have suited St. Francis and his brothers. We are told that there is another and larger hotel, which is more modern in its appointments.
"The idea of caring for a modern hotel or anything modern in Assisi!" exclaimed Zelphine, walking with me toward the window of one of the rooms offered us.
A single glance out of that window decided us to stay. The Albergo Giotto is built on a cliff, and literally overhangs the valley. From our windows we look out upon green slopes billowing beneath us until they break away into the long reaches of the plain, where the dome of St. Mary of the Angels stands out against the sky.
Hotel Giotto, Assisi, Sunday, May 2d.
A May-day in Assisi!—could anything be more delightful?
Last night, after dinner, or supper, or whatever the nondescript meal is called which was served to us in the chilly salle à manger, a little lady, unmistakably American and evidently fresh from a study of the hotel register, joined us, and asked Zelphine if she were Miss Vernon, and did she happen to know Dr. Vernon of New York? Zelphine, who adores her brother, Dr. Vernon, and is immensely proud of him, was quite ready to fall upon the little lady's neck when she found that she was one of his admiring patients, and we all adopted her at once, she, Miss Horner by name, being alone and glad to be adopted, as lonely women usually are in remote places.
I spoke to a bright-faced girl who sat on my right at table, and after some conversation learned that she had come from an old Pennsylvania town in which we have many friends and acquaintances. Miss Morris is also alone, and we have adopted her. Angela says that our party is growing too rapidly, and that we really must stop attaching waifs and strays, even if their precious lives have been saved by our brothers, and their social status established by the most irreproachable visiting-lists. Angela may be right; but after all we found it so cheering to gather around the table in the reading-room and talk over friends at home that we quite forgot that we had intended to spend this evening in storing our minds with the history and traditions of Assisi.
As I was drifting away into dreamland to the sound of some sweet, distant bells (the bells are always ringing in Assisi), Zelphine called in to me from her room, "Do you think there is a spot on the habitable globe where one would not be likely to meet some person who had known some one who had met a friend of our friends?" With this puzzle floating through my mind, rather hazily I confess, I fell asleep, soothed by a pleasant sense of the smallness of the world and the friendliness of the inhabitants thereof.
This morning we banished from our minds all irrelevant present-century associations, and have spent our Sunday in the goodly company of the early Franciscans. An enthusiastic party of five, for even Angela has succumbed to the influences of Assisi, we made our way to the Church of San Francesco, which we approached across a wide piazza framed on both sides by long arcades. Through the great Gothic portal, with its rich carvings, we passed into the twilight beauty of the lower church, for even on a bright May morning the light in this vast basilica is "dim and religious." The arches of the nave and chapel are richly decorated, as you will see from the pictures that I send you; but it was not until we reached the south end of the eastern transept that we realized the full beauty of these decorations, whose color glowed like jewels in the light that reached them from three windows in the far apse. Over the vaulting above the high altar are the wonderful frescoes of Giotto. In one of the most beautiful of these paintings the artist has represented the marriage of Francis with Lady Poverty. The cold, pale bride, her white robe torn by the acacia thorns around her, draws away from her lover as if to warn him of the trials and hardships that are in store for him who links his life with hers. She, who, as Dante says,
"slighted and obscure,
Thousand and hundred years and more remain'd
Without a single suitor, till he came,"
is now crowned with love and honor by the adoring Francis. Dante's face appears among the many representative and mythological spectators who are gathered around the altar, where Christ himself gives the hand of the saint to the Lady Poverty, while the angels above rejoice over the holy marriage. A wonderful conception is this, rich in color and in devotional feeling, worthy of the hand and mind of the realistic and imaginative Giotto.
After studying the four symbolic compositions above the high altar we turned to Cimabue's work in the western transept, of which in many places only the lovely lines remain, as much of the color has faded out. If only something could be done to save the noble, sincere work of those who are now recognized as early masters and regenerators of art! The colors are fading so fast from the walls of San Francesco that very soon these valuable frescoes will be lost to the world.
As we turned to enter the sacristy, from which a stairway leads to the upper church, Miss Morris called our attention to a very interesting fresco of the Madonna and Child near the door of the sacristy. In this charming little painting the Madonna, instead of gazing upon the Child with adoring love or placid content, as in so many pictures, looks into his uplifted face with a wondering, questioning look in her eyes. Miss Morris, who is not only an artist of some merit but an investigator of no mean order, stood before the painting and looked her questions, upon which our guide explained, partly in English and more in Italian, that in this picture, by Lorenzetti, the Bambino is represented as speaking for the first time. The figures are a bit stiff and wooden, but the face of St. Francis, on the left, is full of devotional feeling, and there is something indescribably touching in the attitude of the Child as he turns lovingly and confidingly toward his mother, with words upon his baby lips that all Christendom would gladly hear. We missed Miss Morris an hour later, when we were crossing the piazza, and found that she had returned to the little fresco, drawn to it by an irresistible fascination.
From a narrow winding stairway we stepped into the lofty, spacious upper church, lighted by large, three-storied Gothic windows which flood the interior with sunshine. Here in twenty-eight great frescoes, executed by the pupils of Giotto, more or less faded and in some places badly restored, we followed the life of St. Francis from the early days when he is represented as giving his cloak to a beggar to his final parting with his brothers.
When we at last emerged from the upper church and made our way down the outside stairway to the piazza, the scene which met our eyes seemed strangely modern and bizarre to us whose minds were filled with thoughts of St. Francis and his holy life. All along the side of the piazza were long tables filled with relics, rosaries, and the ubiquitous postal-card, which represents everything, real or imaginable, that has been seen or could be seen in Assisi. Old women and little girls were spreading out their wares under the very shadow of the sanctuary, and we, noticing the pinched, careworn faces of the women and the poor, scanty clothing of the pretty little girls who helped them, could not grudge them the limited revenue that comes to them from their Sunday sales. The little money that reaches these Assisian peasants is chiefly from tourists, and from a lace-making industry that has recently been established here. Miss Morris says that these old women were intoxicated with delight over the brilliancy of their financial prospects when they were told that they could make ten cents a day by lacework, if they plied their needles and shuttles industriously. Does not everything in life depend upon the point of view?
When we finally turned from the piazza, we accepted the eagerly offered guidance of a lad of fourteen or fifteen, who led us through steep, narrow streets and under heavy stone arches to the Chiesa Nuova. Within the walls of this so-called new church is the house of the once prosperous cloth-merchant Pietro Bernardone, the home in which St. Francis spent his early years. A peasant woman unlocked a heavy wooden door and showed us with reverent pride the stable in which St. Francis was born, and our young guide spelled out with care the inscription upon one side of the church wall which records that here the Madonna Pica, the mother of Francis, had a vision of the future greatness of her long-desired son. The sacristan opened the door of a cell in the wall where Francis was confined by his father in the hope of disenchanting his son with his chosen bride, the Lady Poverty, and perhaps, as Angela suggested, to punish him for having taken good cloth from the paternal storehouse and given it to the Church. Zelphine was shocked at the idea of any one thinking that St. Francis could ever have done anything wrong; but as the gift of cloth figures quite prominently in the narrative and involves a nice question in ethics, we discussed the question, with some warmth, on our way to the Church of Santa Chiara, which is at the eastern end of the town.
This church, handsome as it is, with its pink and white stone, vast flying buttresses, and beautiful rose-window, interested us far less than Santa Chiara's convent, the San Damiano, which we visited later in the morning. We all regretted that we had gone down into the crypt at Santa Chiara to see the tomb of the founder of the Poor Clares and the friend of St. Francis. We would so much rather think of the gentle abbess at San Damiano than lying under a glass case in the dark crypt, the once beautiful face, which is quite clearly outlined against her veil, darkened by time and no longer beautiful. We turned hastily from the crypt, and were glad to be again in the open air and under the blue sky wending our way to Clare's hillside convent, which is only second in interest to the basilica of San Francesco.
It was after Clare, the daughter of Count Favorino Scifi, had listened to the preaching of St. Francis, and decided to devote her life to works of love and mercy, that he prepared the San Damiano as a retreat for her and other noble ladies who desired to accompany her. From the hour when the high-born maiden, Clare Scifi, yielded to the burning eloquence of Francis Bernardone, to the day of her death, her story is surrounded by all the charm of mediæval romance. The door of the Palazzo Scifi is still shown through which Clare escaped at night and made her way to the Portiuncula, where, in the presence of her aunt Bianca Guelfucci and several companions, she took upon herself the vows of poverty and obedience. The picture of the beautiful girl kneeling before the altar in the dim light of the Portiuncula, while the golden glory of her fair hair is shorn from her head, is one that has captivated the artist as it does the traveller. Every part of the Convent of San Damiano is associated with the lovely young abbess. Standing in the tiny terrace garden, with its few straggling wallflowers, we imagined Clare taking the air in the bloom of the lilies, surrounded by her nuns. Here is the cell where she lay ill, when tidings reached the quiet convent that a detachment of Saracen troops was advancing toward Assisi. The sisters gathered around the abbess like so many frightened doves; the bold invaders were already scaling the walls, when Clare, who was endowed with the high courage of her race, appeared at an upper window, holding aloft the chalice containing the Blessed Sacrament, which she was allowed to keep in a little chapel near her cell. At the sight of the holy and beautiful vision, so runs the legend, the soldiers upon the walls dropped to the ground and fled across the plain. As we saw the little convent, peaceful and bathed in the bright sunshine of May, it was difficult to imagine the confusion and terror that reigned there seven hundred years ago.
Still under the spell of Francis and Clare, whose story seems to be on the lips of all Assisi, young and old, we spent the long spring afternoon in the basilica of St. Mary of the Angels. The brother who showed us about the church, a namesake of Assisi's saint, spoke fairly good English, of which he was as proud as a Franciscan could venture to be, and took pleasure in relating to us some quaint and homely tales of the early days of the order. More especially did the good brother delight in speaking of the love of his Father Francis for the wild creatures of the wood, which instinctively turned to him for protection. One day a leveret hid itself in the folds of his gown, and upon another a timid hare sought shelter in his breast, still returning into the father's bosom, he said, "as if it had some hidden sense of the pitifulness of his heart."
When Angela spoke of the story that we had just been reading of Brother Juniper and the chickens, the brother laughed heartily, and said: "Chickens is goot; but Brother Juniper spoiled his by cooking the two weeks' portion of chickens in one day, and with the feathers on, to save much time for prayer; but it was not goot, and the brothers was angry."
Do you remember the story, Allan?—how Brother Juniper set the stew upon the table, "crying up his wares to find a customer for his unsavory dish, when," as the chronicler quaintly added, "there was not a pig in all the land of Rome so famished as to have eaten it."
"But he was goot," said our guide, "Brother Juniper was goot, and the guardian forgive him, and he was goot when he cut off the pig's foot and cooked it for to make the sick man well, and the herdsman forgive him this time and brought the maimed pig all killed and roasted for the brothers at St. Mary of the Little Portion to eat of it."
"This must have been the occasion," said Miss Morris, "when St. Francis exclaimed, 'Would to God, my brothers, that I had a whole forest of such Junipers!'"
"Yes, yes," said the brother, "roast pig is goot," leading us, as he talked, from the modern pictures that adorn the many chapels of this large church to the most interesting object within its walls, the Portiuncula. Here, surrounded by much that is too modern to be in harmony with the old, is the simple little Portiuncula, within whose walls many pilgrims, Protestant and Catholic, kneel feeling that this is a holy spot, for here were born the high purposes and noble aspirations that led to a great movement for purer religion in the Christian world. Near the Portiuncula, under the same roof, is the rude hut in which St. Francis spent his last days, and here, opening out from the cloisters, is the little rose-garden which witnessed his earlier struggles with the powers of darkness. The rose-bushes are still free from thorns, a miracle, the good brother tells us, and spotted with blood. The green leaves are covered with brown spots, the stems are thornless. We look at them as we listen to the earnest words of our guide; the spell is still upon us, we offer no word of dissent; for whether the thornless rose-tree is natural or miraculous, whether the spots on the leaves are from blood or rust, the truth remains that this little garden witnessed the struggle of a human soul, and from its soil there arose something more wonderful than the greatest miracle over material forces ever recorded—a soul born from clouds and darkness into life and light eternal.
An overwhelming sense of Italy, of what it means to be in this old hill town, with its remains of Etruscan occupation and pagan Roman and Christian Roman life, has possessed my mind to-day. You will never quite understand what Mr. Emerson means by the oversoul until you stroll through Italian highways and by-ways, knowing that what you tread upon is only common earth and stone, well worn by many feet, and yet among the many feet there were some whose footsteps seem to have turned the common earth ways into paths that lead to the stars. But why should I try to explain that which is unexplainable, and to you, who have read more books about Italy than I shall ever read, and yet, here I triumph over you, no books, no, nor even letters of mine, can make you understand the compelling charm of this
"Woman-country, wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male lands."
Some day you must come here, Allan, and see and feel it all, while I, off in some prosaic spot, will envy you the penetrating joy of first impressions, the grace of a day that can never quite come back again.
The long twilight had deepened, the shadows of the hills had lengthened upon the wide-spread plain, when we turned from the church and the little town to retrace our steps along the hillside road. Upon the stillness of the evening air, seldom disturbed except by the ringing of church-bells, there broke forth a sound like a fog-horn, and a large red object suddenly appeared upon the crest of the hill. There followed a whizz and a whirr, a rush through the air, and a flutter of blue and white veils, as a great automobile sped past us along the white windings of the road.
"Is there any spot too sacred for the intrusion of an automobile?" asked Zelphine.
"No," exclaimed Miss Horner, "not even the tomb of St. Francis!"
"And yet," said Angela, her eyes wistfully following the brilliant auto car and its gay company, "I should like to be in it, this moment, speeding along these perfect roads."
"Of course," said Miss Morris, "everything depends upon the point of view, and the only one from which an automobile is entirely unobjectionable is when you are in it, with all its machinery in perfect order."
Hotel Giotto, Assisi, May 4th.
You will be surprised to learn that we are still in Assisi. Yesterday afternoon, on our way to the station with our adopted companions, we spent an hour at St. Mary of the Angels to take a last look at the Portiuncula, the rose-garden, and Della Robbia's fine terra-cotta, and then repaired to a little tea-house near by for a parting love-feast, as we were all about to start for different places. Miss Morris was on her way to Perugia, Miss Horner was bound for Florence, and we three for Siena. In the midst of an exchange of cards, addresses, and quite sincere hopes of meeting again, Bertha Linn and Mrs. Robins surprised us by walking in, having driven over from Perugia.
You will laugh at me, I am sure, when I tell you that those two women persuaded us, three in number, with our luggage at the station, to go back with them to Assisi and stay over another day. In justice to our steadfastness of purpose I must tell you that we only yielded when we learned, what the padrone had not been clever enough to tell us, that on the following day the feast of the Holy Cross was to be celebrated, and the great basilica lighted with scores of wax candles.
We are truly glad that we yielded to Bertha's persuasions. Consistency in adhering to a schedule is not always a jewel in one's crown, especially when one is rewarded by such a view of the frescoes in San Francesco as can only be had by the light of many long candles and tapers.
It is just such incidents by the way, such turning back and retracing of steps at one's pleasure, that make for the happiness of the freeborn American traveller who carries her luggage with her and is not dominated by trunks—I say her instead of him, because most of the travellers we meet are women; and, as if to give weight to my reasoning, Bertha adds, "In a land where one reckons time by hundreds of years, what difference does one day more or less make?"
"Especially," said Angela, "if you are not hampered by a hard and fast schedule, or a conscience about disappointing our landlady at the Pension Riccoli in Florence."
"She will not be disappointed," said Mrs. Robins, oracularly, and Mrs. Robins, having travelled much, knows the ways of Italian landladies.