An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 9

Beloved: You know of the method for making a cat settle down in a strange place by b.u.t.tering her all over: the theory being that by the time she has polished off the b.u.t.ter she feels herself at home? My morning's work has been the b.u.t.tering of the Mother-Aunt with such things as will Lucerne her the most. When her instincts are appeased I am the more free to indulge my own.

So after breakfast we went round the cloisters, very thick set with tablets and family vaults, and crowded graves inclosed. It proved quite "the best b.u.t.ter." To me the penance turned out interesting after a period of natural repulsion. A most unpleasant addition to sepulchral sentiment is here the fashion: photographs of the departed set into the stone. You see an elegant and genteel marble cross: there on the pedestal above the name is the photo:--a smug man with bourgeois whiskers,--a militiaman with waxed mustaches well turned up,--a woman well attired and conscious of it: you cannot think how indecent looked the pretension of such types to the dignity of death and immortality.

But just one or two faces stood the test, and were justified: a young man oppressed with the burden of youth; a sweet, toothless grandmother in a bonnet, wearing old age like a flower; a woman not beautiful but for her neck which carried indignation; her face had a thwarted look.

"Dead and rotten" one did not say of these in disgust and involuntarily as one did of the others. And yet I don't suppose the eye picks out the faces that kindled most kindness round them when living, or that one can see well at all where one sees without sympathy. I think the Mother-Aunt's face would not look dear to most people as it does to me,--yet my sight of her is the truer: only I would not put it up on a tombstone in order that it might look nothing to those that pa.s.s by.

I wrote this much, and then, leaving the M.-A. to glory in her innumerable correspondence, Arthur and I went off to the lake, where we have been for about seven hours. On it, I found it become infinitely more beautiful, for everything was mystified by a lovely bloomy haze, out of which the white peaks floated like dreams: and the mountains change and change, and seem not all the same as going when returning.

Don't ask me to write landscape to you: one breathes it in, and it is there ever after, but remains unset to words.

The T----s whittle themselves out of our company just to the right amount: come back at the right time (which is more than Arthur and I are likely to do when our legs get on the spin), and are duly welcome with a diversity of doings to talk about. Their tastes are more the M.-A.'s, and their activities about halfway between hers and ours, so we make rather a fortunate quintette. The M---- trio join us the day after to-morrow, when the majority of us will head away at once to Florence.

Arthur growls and threatens he means to be left behind for a week: and it suits the funny little jealousy of the M.-A. well enough to see us parted for a time, quite apart from the fact that I shall then be more dependent on her company. She will then glory in overworking herself,--say it is me; and I shall feel a fiend. No letter at all, dearest, this; merely talky-talky.--Yours without words.

LETTER x.x.x.

Dearest: I cannot say I have seen Pisa, for the majority had their way, and we simply skipped into it, got ourselves b.u.mped down at the Duomo and Campo Santo for two hours, fell exhausted to bed, and skipped out again by the first train next morning. Over the walls of the Campo Santo are some divine crumbs of Benozzo Gozzoli (don't expect me ever to spell the names of dead painters correctly: it is a politeness one owes to the living, but the famous dead are exalted by being spelt phonetically as the heart dictates, and become all the better company for that greatest of unspelled and spread-about names--Shakspere, Shakspeare, Shakespeare--his mark, not himself). Such a long parenthesis requires stepping-stones to carry you over it: "crumbs" was the last (wasn't a whole loaf of bread a stepping-stone in one of Andersen's fairy-tales?): but, indeed, I hadn't time to digest them properly. Let me come back to them before I die, and bury me in that inclosure if you love me as much then as I think you do now.

The Baptistry has a roof of echoes that is wonderful,--a mirror of sound hung over the head of an official who opens his mouth for centimes to drop there. You sing notes up into it (or rather you don't, for that is his perquisite), and they fly circling, and flock, and become a single chord stretching two octaves: till you feel that you are living inside what in the days of our youth would have been called "the sound of a grand Amen."

The cathedral has fine points, or more than points--aspects: but the Italian version of Gothic, with its bands of flat marbles instead of moldings, was a shock to me at first. I only begin to understand it now that I have seen the outside of the Duomo at Florence. Curiously enough, it doesn't strike me as in the least Christian, only civic and splendid, reminding me of what Ruskin says about church architecture being really a dependant on the feudal or domestic. The Strozzi Palace is a beautiful piece of street-architecture; its effect is of an iron hand which gives you a buffet in the face when you look up and wonder--how shall I climb in? I will tell you more about insides when I write next.

I fear my last letter to you from Lucerne may either have strayed, or not even have begun straying: for in the hurry of coming away I left it, addressed, I _think_, but unstamped; and I am not sure that that particular hotel will be Christian enough to spare the postage out of the bill, which had a galaxy of small extras running into centimes, and suggesting a red-tape rect.i.tude that would not show blind twenty-five-centime grat.i.tude to the backs of departed guests. So be patient and forgiving if I seem to have written little. I found two of yours waiting for me, and cannot choose between them which I find most dear. I will say, for a fancy, the shorter, that you may ever be encouraged to write your shortest rather than none at all. One word from you gives me almost as much pleasure as twenty, for it contains all your sincerity and truth; and what more do I want? Yon bless me quite. How many perfectly happy days I owe to you, and seldom dare dream that I have made any beginning of a return! If I could take one unhappy day out of your life, dearest, the secret would be mine, and no such thing should be left in it. Be happy, beloved! oh, happy, happy,--with me for a partial reason--that is what I wish!

LETTER x.x.xI.

Dearest: The Italian paper-money paralyzes my brain: I cannot calculate in it; and were I left to myself an unscrupulous shopman could empty me of pounds without my becoming conscious of it till I beheld vacuum. But the T----s have been wonderful caretakers to me: and to-morrow Arthur rejoins us, so that I shall be able to resume my full activities under his safe-conduct.

The ways of the Italian cabbies and porters fill me with terror for the time when I may have to fall alive and una.s.sisted into their hands: they have neither conscience nor grat.i.tude, and regard thievish demands when satisfied merely as stepping-stones to higher things.

Many of the outsides of Florence I seemed to know by heart--the Palazzo Vecchio for instance. But close by it Cellini's two statues, the Judith and the Perseus, brought my heart up to my mouth unexpectedly. The Perseus is so out of proportion as to be ludicrous from one point of view: but another is magnificent enough to make me forgive the scamp his autobiography from now to the day of judgment (when we shall all begin forgiving each other in great haste, I suppose, for fear of the devil taking the hindmost!), and I registered a vow on the spot to that effect:--so no more of him here, henceforth, but good!

There is not so much color about as I had expected: and austerity rather than richness is the note of most of the exteriors.

I have not been allowed into the Uffizi yet, so to-day consoled myself with the Pitti. t.i.tian's "Duke of Norfolk" is there, and I loved him, seeing a certain likeness there to somebody whom I--like. A photo of him will be coming to you. Also there is a very fine Lely-Vandyck of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, a quite moral painting, making a triumphant a.s.sertion of that martyr's bad character. I imagine he got into heaven through having his head cut off and cast from him: otherwise all of him would have perished along with his mouth.

Somewhere too high up was hanging a ravishing Botticelli--a Madonna and Child bending over like a wind-blown tree to be kissed by St. John:--a composition that takes you up in its arms and rocks you as you look at it. Andrea del Sarto is to me only a big mediocrity: there is nothing here to touch his chortling child-Christ in our National Gallery.

At Pisa I slept in a mosquito-net, and felt like a bride at the altar under a tulle veil which was too large for her. Here, for lack of that luxury, being a.s.sured that there were no mosquitoes to be had, I have been sadly ravaged. The creatures pick out all foreigners, I think, and only when they have exhausted the supply do they pa.s.s on to the natives.

Mrs. T---- left one foot unveiled when in Pisa, and only this morning did the irritation in the part bitten begin to come out.

I can now ask for a bath in Italian, and order the necessary things for myself in the hotel: also say "come in" and "thank you." But just the few days of that very German _table d'hote_ at Lucerne, where I talked gladly to polish myself up, have given my tongue a hybrid way of talking without thinking: and I say "_ja, ja_," and "_nein_," and "_der, die, das_," as often as not before such Italian nouns as I have yet captured.

To fall upon a chambermaid who knows French is like coming upon my native tongue suddenly.

Give me good news of your foot and all that is above it: I am so doubtful of its being really strong yet; and its willing spirits will overcome it some day and do it an injury, and hurt my feelings dreadfully at the same time.

Walk only on one leg whenever you think of me! I tell you truly I am wonderfully little lonely: and yet my thoughts are constantly away with you, wishing, wishing,--what no word on paper can ever carry to you. It shall be at our next meeting!--All yours.

LETTER x.x.xII.

My Dearest: Florence is still eating up all my time and energies: I promised you there should be austerity and self-denial in the matter of letter-writing: and I know you are unselfish enough to expect even less than I send you.

Girls in the street address compliments to Arthur's complexion:-- "beautiful brown boy" they call him: and he simmers over with vanity, and wishes he could show them his boating arms, brown up to the shoulder, as well. Have you noticed that combination in some of the dearest specimens of young English manhood,--great physical vanity and great mental modesty?

and each as transparently sincere as the other.

The Bargello is an ideal museum for the storage of the best things out of the Middle Ages. It opens out of splendid courtyards and staircases, and ranges through rooms which have quite a feudal gloom about them; most of these are hung with bad late tapestries (too late at least for my taste), so that the gloom is welcome and charming, making even "Gobelins" quite bearable. I find quite a new man here to admire--Pollaiolo, both painter and sculptor, one of the school of "pa.s.sionate anatomists," as I call them, about the time of Botticelli, I fancy. He has one bust of a young Florentine which equals Verocchio on the same ground, and charms me even more. Some of his subjects are done twice over, in paint and bronze: but he is more really a sculptor, I think, and merely paints his piece into a picture from its best point of view.

Verocchio's idea of David is charming: he is a saucy fellow who has gone in for it for the fun of the thing--knew he could bring down a hawk with his catapult, and therefore why not a Goliath also? If he failed, he need but cut and run, and everybody would laugh and call him plucky for doing even that much. So he does it, brings down his big game by good luck, and stands posing with a sort of irresistible stateliness to suit the result. He has a laugh something like "little d.i.c.k's," only more full of bubbles, and is saying to himself, "What a hero they all think me!" He is the merriest of sly-dog hypocrites, and has thin, wiry arms and a craney neck. He is a bit like Tom Sawyer in character, more ornate and dramatic than Huckleberry Finn, but quite as much a liar, given a good cause.

Another thing that has seized me, more for its idea than actual carrying out, is an unnamed terra-cotta Madonna and Child. He is crushing himself up against her neck, open-mouthed and terrified, and she spreading long fingers all over his head and face. My notion of it is that it is the G.o.dhead taking his first look at life from the human point of view; and he realizes himself "caught in his own trap," discovering it to be ever so much worse than it had seemed from an outside view. It is a fine modern _zeit-geist_ piece of declamation to come out of the rather over-sweet della Robbia period of art.

There seems to have been a rage at one period for commissioning statues of David: so Donatello and others just turned to and did what they liked most in the way of budding youth, stuck a Goliath's head at its feet, and called it "David." Verocchio is the exception.

We are going to get outside Florence for a week or ten days; it is too hot to be borne at night after a day of tiring activity. So we go to the D----s' villa, which they offered us in their absence; it lies about four miles out, and is on much higher ground: address only your very immediately next letter there, or it may miss me.

There are hills out there with vineyards among them which draw me into wishing to be away from towns altogether. Much as I love what is to be found in this one, I think Heaven meant me to be "truly rural"; which all falls in, dearest, with what _I_ mean to be! Beloved, how little I sometimes can say to you! Sometimes my heart can put only silence into the end of a letter; and with that I let this one go.--Yours, and so lovingly.

LETTER x.x.xIII.

Beloved: I had your last letter on Friday: all your letters have come in their right numbers. I have lost count of mine; but I think seven and two postcards is the total, which is the same as the numbers of clean and unclean beasts proportionately represented in the ark.

Up here we are out of the deadliness of the heat, and are thankful for it.

Vineyards and olives brush the eyes between the hard, upright bars of the cypresses: and Florence below is like a hot bath which we dip into and come out again. At the Riccardi chapel I found Benozzo Gozzoli, not in crumbs, but perfectly preserved: a procession of early Florentine youths, turning into angels when they get to the bay of the window where the altar once stood. The more I see of them, the greater these early men seem to me: I shall be afraid to go to Venice soon; t.i.tian will only half satisfy me, and Tintoretto, I know, will be actively annoying: I shall stay in my gondola, as your American lady did on her donkey after riding twenty miles to visit the ruins, of--Carnac, was it not? It is well to have the courage of one's likings and dislikings, that is the only true culture (the state obtained by use of a "coulter" or cutter)--I cut many things severely which, no doubt, are good for other people.

Botticelli I was shy of, because of the craze about him among people who know nothing: he is far more wonderful than I had hoped, both at the Uffizi and the Academia: but he is quite pagan. I don't know why I say "but"; he is quite typical of the world's art-training: Christianity may get hold of the names and dictate the subjects, but the artist-breed carries a fairly level head through it all, and, like Pater's Mona Lisa, draws Christianity and Paganism into one: at least, wherever it reaches perfect expression it has done so. Some of the distinctly primitives are different; their works inclose a charm which is not artistic. Fra Angelico, after being a great disappointment to me in some of his large set pictures in the Academia and elsewhere, shows himself lovely in fresco (though I think the "crumb" element helps him). His great Crucifixion is big altogether, and has so permanent a force in its aloofness from mere drama and mere life. In San Marco, the cells of the monks are quite charming, a row of little square bandboxes under a broad raftered corridor, and in every cell is a beautiful little fresco for the monks to live up to. But they no longer live there now: all that part of San Marco has become a peep-show.

I liked being in Savonarola's room, and was more susceptible to the remains of his presence than I have been to Michel Angelo or anyone else's. Michel Angelo I feel most when he has left a thing unfinished; then one can put one's finger into the print of the chisel, and believe anything of the beauty that might have come out of the great stone chrysalis lying cased and rough, waiting to be raised up to life.

Yesterday Arthur and I walked from here to Fiesole, which we had neglected while in Florence--six miles going, and more like twelve coming back, all because of Arthur's absurd cross-country instinct, which, after hours of river-bends, bare mountain tracks, and tottering precipices, brought us out again half a mile nearer Florence than when we started.

At Fiesole is the only church about here whose interior architecture I have greatly admired, austere but at the same time gracious--like a Madonna of the best period of painting. We also went to look at the Roman baths and theater: the theater is charming enough, because it is still there: but for the baths--oblongs of stone don't interest me just because they are old. All stone is old: and these didn't even hold water to give one the real look of the thing. Too tired, and even more too lazy, to write other things, except love, most dear Beloved.