As Seen By Me Part 23

These bambinos hooked against the wall look down upon curious scenes.

Their mothers bring their wash-tubs into the street, wash the clothes in plain view of everybody, hang them on clothes-lines strung between two chairs, while a diminutive charcoal-stove, with half a dozen irons leaning against its sides, stands in the doorway ready to perform its part in the little scene. I saw a boy cooking two tiny smelts over a tailor's goose. The handle was taken off, and the fish were frying so merrily over the glowing coals, and they looked so good, and the odor which steamed from them was so ravishing, that I wanted to ask him if I might not join him and help him cook two more.

In point of fact, Naples seems like a holiday town, with everybody merely playing at work, or resting from even that pretence. The Neapolitans are so essentially an out-of-door people and a leisurely people that it seems a crime to hurry. The very goats wandering aimlessly through the streets, nibbling around open doorways, add an element of imbecile helplessness to a childish people.

Did you ever examine a goat's expression of face? For utter asininity a donkey cannot approach him. Nothing can, except, perhaps, an Irish farce-comedian.

Beautiful cows are driven through the streets, often attended by the owner's family. The mother milks for the pa.s.sing customers, the father fetches it all lovely and foaming and warm to your cab, and the pretty, big-eyed children caper around you, begging for a "macaroni"

instead of a "pourboire."

Then, instead of dining at your smart hotel, it is so much more adorable to drop in at some charming restaurant with tables set in the open air, and to hear the band play, and to eat all sorts of delicious unknowable dishes, and to drink a beautiful golden wine called "Lachrima Christi" (the tears of Christ), and to watch the people--the people--the people!

XIV

ROME

On Easter Sunday I had my first view of Rome, my first view of St.

Peter's. The day was as soft and mild as one of our own spring days, and there was even that little sharp tang in the air which one feels in the early spring in America. The wind was sweet and balmy, yet now and then it had a sharp edge to it as it cut around a curve, as if to remind one that the frost was not yet all out of the ground, and that the sun was still only the heir-apparent to the throne and had not yet been crowned king. It was the sort of day that one has at home a little later, when one still likes the feel of the fur around the neck, while the trees are still bare, when the eager spring wind brings a tingle to the blood and the smell of rich, black earth and early green springing things to the nostrils; when the eye is ravished with the sight of purple hyacinths thrusting their royal chalices up through the reluctant soil; when the sun-colored jonquil and the star-eyed narcissus lift their scented heads above the sombre ground, as if unconscious of the patches of snow here and there, forming one of the contradictions of life, but a contradiction always welcome, because it is in itself a promise of better things to come.

Not in the full fruition of a rose-laden June or in the golden days of Indian summer or the ruddy autumn or the white holiness of Christmas-tide--not in the beauties of the whole year is there anything so exhilarating, so thrilling, so intoxicating as these first days of spring, which always come with a delicious shock of surprise, before one suspects their approach or has time to grow weary with waiting. Nothing, nothing in the world smells like a spring wind! It is full of youth and promise and inspiration. One forgets all the falseness of its promises last year, all the disappointment of the past summer, and, charged with its bewildering electricity, one builds a thousand air-castles as to what _this_ year will bring forth, based on no surer a foundation than the smell of melting snow and fresh black earth and yellow and purple spring flowers which are blown across one's ever-hopeful soul by a breath of eager, tingling spring wind.

I shall never forget that first drive in Rome on such a day as this, which brought my own beloved country so forcibly to my mind. There were rumors of war in the air, and my heart was heavy for my country, but I forgot all my forebodings as we drew up before the majestic steps of St. Peter's, for I felt that something would happen to avert disaster from our sh.o.r.es and keep my country safe and victorious.

St. Peter's had a curious effect upon me. It was too big and too secular and too boastful for a church, too poor in art treasures for a successful museum, the music too inadequate to suit me with the echoes of the Tzar's choir still ringing in my ears, and the lack of pomp compared to the Greek churches left me with a longing to hunt up more gold lace and purple velvet. There was nothing like the devoutness of the Russians in the worshippers I saw in Rome. I stood a long time by the statue of the Pope. His toe was nearly kissed off, but every one carefully wiped off the last kiss before placing his or her own, thereby convincing me of the universal belief in the microbe theory.

The whole att.i.tude of the Roman mind is different. Here it is a religious duty. In Russia it is a sacrament.

There were thousands of people in St. Peter's, many of whom--the best-dressed and the worst-behaved--were Americans. It seemed very homelike and intimate to hear my own language spoken again, even if it were sometimes sadly mutilated. But I remember St. Peter's that Easter Sunday chiefly because I had with me a sympathetic companion; one who knew that St. Peter's was not a place to talk; one who knew enough to absorb in silence; one, in fact, who understood! Such comprehensive silence was to my ragged spirit balm and healing.

Beware, oh, beware with whom you travel! One uncongenial person in the party--one man who sneers at sentiment, one woman whose point of view is material--can ruin the loveliest journey and dampen one's heavenliest enthusiasm.

In order to travel properly, one ought to be in vein. It is as bad to begin a journey with a companion who gets on one's nerves as it is to sit down to a banquet and quarrel through the courses. The effect is the same. One can digest neither. People seem to select travelling companions as recklessly as they marry. They generally manage to start with the wrong one. I often shudder to hear two women at a luncheon say, "Why not arrange to go to Europe together next year?" And yet I solace myself with the thought, "Why not? If you considered! your list of friends for a month, and selected the most desirable, you would probably make even a worse mistake, for travelling develops hatred more than any other one thing I know of; so, in addition to spoiling your journey, you would also lose your friend--or wish you _could_ lose her!"

George Eliot has said that there was no greater strain on friendship than a dissimilarity of taste in jests. But I am inclined to believe George Eliot never travelled extensively, else, without disturbing that statement, she would have added, "or a dissimilarity in point of view with one's travelling companion."

It makes no difference which one's view is the loftier. It is the dissimilarity which rasps and grates. Doubtless the material is as much irritated by the spiritual as the poetic is fretted by the prosaic. It is worse than to be at a Wagner matinee with a woman who cares only for Verdi. One wishes to nudge her arm and feel a sympathetic pressure which means, "Yes, yes, so do I!" It is awful not to be able to nudge! Speech is seldom imperative, but understanding signals is as necessary to one's soul-happiness as air to the lungs.

So Greece with one who has but a Baedeker knowledge of art, or Rome to one who remembers her history vaguely as something that she "took" at school, is simply maddening to one who forgets the technicalities of dates and formulas, and rapturously breathes it in, scarcely knowing whence came the love or knowledge of it, but realizing that one has at last come into one's kingdom.

I was singularly fortunate from time to time in discovering these kindred, sympathetic spirits. I met one party of three in Egypt, and found them again in Greece, and crossed to Italy with them. It was a mother and son and a lovely girl. They will never know, unless they happen across this page, how much they were to me on the Adriatic, and what a void they filled in Athens.

I found another such at Capri and Pompeii, and those beautiful days stand out in my mind more for the company I was in than even the wonders we went to see. That statement is strong but true. Yet my various other fellow-travellers who were lacking in the one essential of soul would never believe it, inasmuch as a person without a soul cannot miss what she never had, and will not believe what she cannot comprehend. I met one ill-a.s.sorted couple of that kind once. They were two young women--sisters. One had imagination, soul, fire, poetry, and all that goes to make up genius; but lacking as she did executive ability and perseverance, her genius was inarticulate. The impersonal world would never know her beauties, but her friends were rich in her acquaintance. Her sister was a walking Baedeker--red cover, gold letters, and all. She was "doing Europe." She read her guide-book, she saw nothing beyond, and the only time that she really blossomed was when dressing for _table d'hote_ dinners. I found them at the Grand Hotel at Rome--one of the most beautiful and well-kept hotels, and one admirably adapted to display the tourist who tours on principle.

This gorgeous hotel on Easter week is a sight for G.o.ds and men. We engaged our rooms here while we were on the Nile, two months before, and reminded them once a week all during that time that we were coming; otherwise, on account of its extreme popularity in the fashionable world, they might not have been able to hold them for us.

We reached there late on the Sat.u.r.day evening before Easter, and dined in our own apartments. But the next day, and indeed until war broke out and we fled from Rome, the Grand Hotel was as delightful as it was possible to make a gorgeous, luxurious, and fashionable hotel. The palm-room, where the band plays for afternoon tea, and where one always comes for one's coffee, is between the entrance and the grand dining-room, so that on entering the hotel one comes upon a most beautiful vista of a series of huge gla.s.s doors and lovely green waving palms, with nothing but a gla.s.s roof between one and the blue Italian sky.

Most of the smart Americans go there, and a very beautiful front they presented. I had not seen any American clothes for a year, but on Easter Sunday at luncheon I saw the most bewitching array of smart street-gowns worn by the inimitable American woman, who is as far beyond the women of every other race on earth in her selection of clothes and the way she holds up her head and her shoulders back and walks off in them as grand opera is above a hand-organ. Even the French woman does not combine the good sense with good taste as the American does. And there I found these sisters, each lovely in her own way--the pretty one listening to the raptures of the poetic one with a palpable sneer which said plainly: "I not only have no part in these vain imaginings, but I do not think that you yourself believe them.

You are posing for the world, and I am the only one who knows it. Have I not been with you everywhere, and have I, with my two eyes, which certainly are as good as yours--have I seen these things you describe?" It was pathetic, for the muse of the poet soon felt the mire in which it daily trod. The fire faded from the girl's eye, her radiance disappeared, her n.o.ble enthusiasms paled, her fantastic and brilliant imagination dulled, and soon she sat listlessly in our midst, a tired, patient smile upon her delicate face, while her sister discoursed volubly upon clothes. Alas, the old fable of the iron pot and the porcelain kettle drifting down the stream together! At the end of the journey the iron pot had not even a scratch upon its thick sides, but the porcelain was broken to pieces. How I longed to take that wounded imagination, that whimsical wit, under my wing and explore Rome with her! But circ.u.mstances held the two together, and I took instead my guide, Seraphino Malespina. Seraphino deserves a chapter by himself. His observations upon human nature were of much more value to me than his knowledge of Rome, accurate and worthy as that was. He was the best guide I ever had. I had heard of him, so when we arrived I simply wrote to him and engaged him by the week. He took us everywhere, never wasted our money (which is a wonder in a guide), and, while I may forget some of his dates and statistics, I shall never forget his shrewdness in understanding human nature. His disquisitions on the ordinary tourist, and his acute a.n.a.lysis of the two sisters I have described, were so accurate that I determined then and there that Seraphino was a philosopher. The interest I took in his narratives pleased him to such an extent that he was unwearied in searching out interesting material. I taught him to use the camera, and he photographed us in the Colosseum and in front of the Arch of Constantine.

He persuaded me to coax the poet away from her sister one day and to take her with me instead of my companion. I did so, and to this day I thank my guide for his wisdom, for once out from under the sister's depressing influence, that whimsical genius, worthy of being cla.s.sed with the most famous of wits, blossomed under my appreciative laughter like a rose in the sunlight.

We saw, too, the magnificent statue of Garibaldi--a superb thing, which overlooks the whole city of Rome. We tossed pennies into the fountain of the Trevi, and drank some of the water, which is a sure sign, if you wish it at the time you drink, that you will return to Rome.

It was on the day that we went to Tivoli that I heard the first war news from America which I regarded final. We were on the Nile when the _Maine_ was blown up, and all through Egypt and Greece news was slow to travel. When we got to Italy we were dependent upon London for despatches. I waited until I received my own papers before I knew the truth. Finally, on our departure for Tivoli, my American mail was handed to me, and I found what preparations were being made--that my brother was going! I remember Tivoli as in a haze of war-clouds.

America arming herself for war once more! Some of my family--my very own--preparing to go! How much do you think I cared for the Emperor Hadrian and his villa, which was a whole town in itself, and his waterfalls and his wonderful objects of art?

At any other time how I would have revelled in the idea of his two theatres, his schools, his libraries, his statues pillaged from my beautiful Greece, his philosopher's wall--a huge wall built only for shade, so that his friends who came to discourse philosophy with him could walk in its west shadow mornings, and in its east shadow afternoons; all these things would have driven me wild with enthusiasm. But on that day I saw instead the Flying Squadron in Hampton Roads, painted black. I saw the President and his secretaries, with anxious faces, consulting with their generals; I saw how awful must be the sacrifice to the country in every way--money, commerce, health, the very lives of the dear soldiers of _our_ army, who fight from choice, and not because law compels their enlistment. My companion ridiculed my anxiety and rallied me on my inattention to Hadrian. Hadrian! What was Hadrian to me when I thought of the volunteers in America?

Not two days later war was formally declared, and although Rome was yet practically unexplored, although we had been there only three weeks, we rushed post-haste to Paris, spent one day gathering up our trunks from Munroe's, and left that same night for London.

Once in London, however, we found ourselves blocked. The American Line steamships had been requisitioned by the government, and were no longer at our disposal. With changed names they were turned into war vessels, and few, indeed, were the women who would go aboard them in the near future. The North German Lloyd promised us the new _Kaiser Friedrich_, and every place was taken. We went to the Cecil Hotel and waited. Day after day pa.s.sed, and the sailing-day was postponed once, then twice. I was frantic with impatience. The truth was the _Kaiser Friedrich_ was not quite finished. Evidently it is the same with a ship as with dress-makers. They promise to finish your gown and send it home for Thanksgiving, whereas you are in luck if you get it by Christmas.

The only thing that consoled me was being at the Cecil. To be sure, it was filled with Americans, but I was not avoiding them then. I had finished my journeyings. I had got my point of view. I was going HOME!

How I wished for poor Bee! What an awful time she had with me at "The Insular"! (which, of course, is not its real name; but I dare not tell it, because it is so smart, and I would shock its worshippers). How she hated our lodgings! Now she will not believe me when I tell her that the Cecil is as good as an American hotel; that its elevators (lifts) really move; that its cuisine is as delicious as Paris; that its service is excellent. Bee is polite but incredulous. To be sure, I tell her that the hotel is as ugly as _only_ an English architect could make it; that the blue tiles in the dining-room would make of it a fine natatorium, if they would only shut the doors and turn in the water--nothing convinces her that English hotels are not jellied nightmares. But as for me, I recall the Cecil with feelings of the liveliest appreciation. I was comfortable there, for the first time in England. If it had not been for the war I would have been happy.

The hotels in London which the English consider the best I consider the worst. If an American wishes to be comfortable let him eschew all other G.o.ds and cleave to the Cecil. The Cecil! I wish my cab was turning in at the entrance this very minute!

Finally the _Kaiser Friedrich_ burst something important in her interior, and they gave her up and put on the _Trave_. Instantly there was a maddened rush for the Liverpool steamer. The Cunard office was besieged. Within two hours after the North German Lloyd bulletined the _Trave_ every berth was taken on the _Etruria_. I arrived too late, so, in company with the most of the _Kaiser Friedrich's_ pa.s.sengers, I resigned myself to the _Trave_.

We were eight days at sea, and some of those I remained in my berth. I was happier there, and yet in spite of private woes I still think of that delightful captain and that darling stewardess with affection.

The steamship company literally outdid themselves in their efforts to console their disappointed pa.s.sengers. They put the town of Southampton at our disposal, and the _Trave's_ steady and spinster-like behavior did the rest.

I held receptions in my state-room every day. The captain called every morning, and so did the charming wife of the returning German Amba.s.sador, Mr. Uhl. The girls came down and sat on my steamer-trunk, and told me of the flirtations going on on deck. And every night that dear stewardess would come and tuck me in, and turn out the light, and say, "Good-night, fraulein; I hope you feel to-morrow better."

When the pilot reached us we were at luncheon, and every man in the dining-room bolted. American newspapers after eight days of suspense!

One man stood up and read the news aloud. Dewey and the battle of Manila Bay! We did not applaud. It was too far off and too unreal. But we women wept.

As we drove through the streets of New York I said to the people who came to meet me, "For Heaven's sake, what are all these flags out for?

Is it Washington's birthday? I have lost count of time!"

My cousin looked at me pityingly.

"My poor child," she said, "I am glad you have come back to G.o.d's country, where you can learn something. We have a war on!"

I gave a gasp. That shows how unreal the war seemed to me over there.

I never saw so many flags as I saw in Jersey City and New York. I was horrified to find Chicago, nay, even my own house, lacking in that respect.

But I am proud to relate that two hours after my return--directly I had done kissing Billy, in fact--the largest flag on the whole street was floating from my study window.

THE END