Story of My Life Part 71

"_H?tel de Londres, Pisa, Dec. 7._--From Verona we went to Vicenza, where we stayed nearly a week in the old-fashioned palazzo which is now turned into the H?tel de la Ville. We found some old Roman acquaintances there--Mrs. Kuper and her daughter, great Italian travellers, famous linguists, and excessively amusing companions.

With them I went many delightful walks in the lovely country near Vicenza, which is quite the ideal Italy one reads so much of and so seldom sees--splendid mountain background with snowy peaks; nearer hills golden with decaying chestnuts and crimson with falling vine-leaves; old shrines and churches half hidden in clematis and vine, and a most interesting town with a fine picture-gallery--Montagna (not Mantegna) being the great master. I took to the plan of trying to make ever so slight sketches from pictures, and find them, bad as they are, far more interesting than photographs. We had permission to walk in the lovely gardens of the old Marchese Salvi, close to the hotel, a great pleasure to the Mother.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VICENZA.[402]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VICENZA FROM MONTE BERICO.[403]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PRATO DELLA VALLE, PADUA.[404]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIENA.[405]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. GEMIGNANO.[406]]

"The Kupers preceded us to Padua and engaged comfortable rooms for us there, to which we followed. Here was another kind of interest in the quaint churches; the Prato della Valle with its stone population; the University, where we went to hear a lecture and saw the 3000 students a.s.sembled; and the society of some pleasant young Paduans--M. Fava and Count Battistino Medine, introduced by the Kupers. But alas! Mother became very unwell indeed during the latter part of our stay at Padua, and I was made very unhappy by her constant cough and inability to take food. So I was thankful when we were able to come on to this comfortable hotel, where Flora and the faithful Victoire are incessant in their attentions. I am still anxious about my sweet Mother, who is very ailing and unable to go out; otherwise I always like staying at Pisa, with its clean quiet streets and the interest of the Campo Santo, so full of beautiful relics and memories. Many delightful hours have I spent there, and what a school of art and history it is! And then the Spina is always so graceful and striking against the crimson sunset which turns the muddy Arno into a river of fire.[407] Then, only think, I have made a new friend, and, strange to say, an American, with the uninteresting name of Robert Peabody. I do not know when, if ever, I have seen any one I like so much--so clever, so natural, so unworldly, so large-minded, so good-looking. The Mother thinks my sudden friendships most fantastic, but I have no doubt about this one; and as Mother was much better last week, I went away with him for four days to Siena and S. Gemignano, and we were entirely happy together, though it poured cats and dogs the whole time, and thundered and lightened as if the skies were coming down. I do not think you have ever been half excited enough about Siena: it seems to me such a sublime place--the way it rises out of that desolate earthquake-riven country, the cathedral so grandly solemn, and such a world of interest circling around all the scenes in S.

Catherine's life. I tried to draw the famous Sodoma, and longed to stay months, but we only did stay two days, and then away we went in a _baroccino_ over the hills to S. Gemignano. You must never come to Italy again without going there: I am beginning now to fancy that no one has seen Italy who has missed S. Gemignano. It is a perfect sanctuary of art, the smallest town ever seen, but with thirteen tall medi?val towers in fullest preservation, crowning the top of the little hill like a huge group of ninepins, and with churches covered with frescoes by Filippo and Simone Memmi, Beccafumi, Ghirlandajo, and all that wonderful school. The great saint of the place is Santa Fina--a poor girl, who had a spine complaint, lay for years on a backboard, bore her intense sufferings with great patience, and finally died a most peaceful and holy death--perhaps the _one_ Roman Catholic saint whose story is unspoilt by miracles. I first heard about her from Lady Waterford, and had always longed to see her native place. The Ghirlandajo fresco of her death is most touching and real, portraying the bare cottage room, the hard-featured Tuscan nurse, the sick girl on her backboard--all like a scene in a Tuscan cottage now; and, above, the angels floating away with their newly-gained sister. But the people of S. Gemignano forgot the picture when they quaintly told us that 'all the little flowers and shrubs were so enchanted with her exemplary patience, that they began to sprout around her bed, and by her twenty-eighth year (when she died) she was lying in quite a garden of beautiful flowers.'"

In recollection I feel grateful for this short absence from my Mother with Robert Peabody, as it procured for me my last tiny letter from her--cheerful and tender as all her letters were now. But after the beginning of December I seldom left her, and the next six weeks were spent entirely in her room, in watching and cheering her through a time of great suffering, whilst the rain never ceased to fall in torrents. I was often able to amuse her with stories of my companions at the _table-d'h?te_.

JOURNAL.

"_Pisa, Nov. 27._--The chief interest here has been from travellers in the hotel--a Mr. and Mrs. D., kind, vulgar people, who have seldom been out of London, except to Paris, and who do not speak a word of any foreign language; at least Mr. D. does speak certain words, and uses them all together to all the foreigners he meets, without any regard to their meaning--'Lait pain th? bongjour toodyswee;'--a haughty pretty Polish girl and her governess, and a clever pretty Polish Comtesse de M. with her young husband. The last lady keeps the whole table alive with her stories, told with the utmost na?vet?, and in the prettiest manner.

"'I will tell you about my going to Ferrara. When I arrived I was gasping with hunger. We drove up to the hotel. "Could we have any dinner?"--"J'en suis d?sol?, Madame, but the cook is out." We drove to another. "Could we have any dinner?"--"J'en suis au d?sespoir, Madame, mais il n'y a pas de feu." We drove on. Another hotel. We ordered our dinner, and when it was put on the table, it was so dreadful, I gave one look and ran out of the room. And then the sights of Ferrara! We went to the castle. It was horrible--a ghastly dungeon with bare walls and chains and one glimmering ray of light. "_This_," said the guide, "was the dungeon of Ugo and Parisina; here they suffered and here they died." Oh, mon Dieu, quel horreur! I wished to go somewhere else. They took me to a convent--again a ghastly room, a fearful prison. "_This_, Madame, was the prison of Ta.s.so"--encore des horreurs! Oh, then I would have a carriage. I asked the driver where he would take me. "Ma, Signora, allo Campo Santo." Ah! quelle triste ville la ville de Ferrare! But when we got to Bologna, and I asked where we should go, c'?tait toujours la m?me chose--toujours au Campo Santo, and at Pisa here, it is encore au Campo Santo!

"'At Ferrara, in the prison of Ta.s.so, they show on the wall an ode written by Lord Byron. The rest of the wall is white, but the place where the ode is written is brown. "Why," I asked, "is that part of the wall brown?"--"Ah!" said the custode, "that is the sweat of the English. All the English will touch the writing of their compatriot, and then they perspire from their hot fingers, and thus it is brown." In the same room is a great hole; the wall has crumbled away: it is gone: the room will fall. "And what is that?"

I asked. "Ah! that is made by the English, who all insist upon taking away a morsel of the prison of Ta.s.so." And thus it was at Verona; when I saw Juliet's tomb, they told me it was only an imitation; for as for the real one, the English ladies had chopped it all up and were wearing it in bracelets. Oh, comme c'est ennuyant de voyager, il faut tourner la t?te pour regarder les tableaux, et on ca.s.se le cou par ici: il faut regarder par la f?netre pour voir la vue, et on ca.s.se le cou par l?: il faut regarder au plafond pour voir les fresques, et on ca.s.se le cou de tous les c?t?s ? la fois. And then the journey to Switzerland!

Mais aller en Suisse, jamais! What do you want to see mountains for? to admire their height? Ah! then how stupid to go up! Why, of course they become shorter every step you go. No, you should go into the depths to see the mountains. Les plaines pour moi!...

Jusqu'? mon mariage je ne suis jamais sortie ? pied, mais depuis mon mariage je suis devenue ... raisonable.'

"I asked the Polish ladies if the language they spoke was Russian.

It was like throwing a bomb into the camp. They detest the Russians, and would not speak to a pleasant Countess Boranoff, _n?e_ Wasilikoff, who has been staying here.... But of all my Pisan acquaintance there is none like Robert Peabody! He has been at an atelier in Paris for two years studying as an architect, and had a charming life there with his fellow-students, making walking tours in France, &c. When he first went to Paris, he did not know a word of French, and made out his washing bills by drawing little pictures, socks, shirts, drawers, &c., and the washerwoman put the prices opposite them."

On December 10 occurred the terrible floods of the Arno.

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

"_Pisa, Dec. 11, 1869._--How little you will be able to imagine all we have been going through in the last twenty-four hours! We have had a number of adventures in our different travels, but this is by far the worst that has ever befallen us. Now I must tell you our story consecutively.

"For the last three days the Mother has been very ill. On Thursday she had an attack of fainting, and seemed likely to fall into one of her long many days' sleep.... The rain continued day and night in torrents. Yesterday made it three weeks since we arrived, and in that time there had been only two days in which the rain had not been ceaseless. The Arno was much swollen: I saw it on Thursday, very curious, up to the top of the arches of the bridges.

"Yesterday, Friday, Madame Victoire came to dine with Lea.

Afterwards she came up to see us as usual, and then Flora's children came to be shown pictures. I think it must have been half-past three when they took leave of us. Lea went with them down the pa.s.sage. Soon she came back saying that little Anna said there was 'such an odd water coming down the street, would I come and see,' and from the pa.s.sage window I saw a volume of muddy water slowly pouring down the street, not from the Arno, but from towards the railway station, the part of the street towards Lung' Arno (our street ends at the Spina Chapel) remaining quite dry. The children were delighted and clapped their hands. I meant to go and see the water nearer, but before I could reach the main entrance, in half a minute the great heavy waves of the yellow flood were pouring into the courtyard and stealing into the entrance hall.[408]

"It was as suddenly as that it came upon us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE H?TEL DE LONDRES DURING THE FLOOD.]

"The scene for the next half-hour baffles all description. Flora and her mother stood on the princ.i.p.al staircase crying and wringing their hands: the servants rushed about in distraction: Lea, pale as ashes, thought and cried that our last moment was come; and all the time the heavy yellow waters rose and rose, covering first the wheels of the omnibus, the vases, the statues in the garden, then up high into the trees. Inside, the carpets were rising and swaying on the water, and in five minutes the large pieces of furniture were beginning to crash against each other. I had rushed at the first alarm to the _garde meuble_, and (how I did it I cannot imagine) dragged our great box to the stairs: it was the only piece of luggage saved from the ground-floor. Then I rushed to the _salle-?-manger_, and shouting to Flora to save the money in her bureau, swept all the silver laid out for dinner into a tablecloth, and got it safe off. From that moment it was a _sauve qui peut_. I handed down rows of teapots, jugs, sugar-basins, &c., to the maids, who carried them away in lapfuls: in this way also we saved all the gla.s.s, but before we could begin upon the china, the water was up to our waists and we were obliged to retreat, carrying off the tea-urns as a last spoil. The whole family, with Amabile and all the old servants, were now down in the water, but a great deal of time was wasted in the belief that a poor half-witted Russian lady was locked into her room and drowning, and in breaking open the door; but when at last a panel of the door was dashed in, the room was found full of water and all its contents swimming about, but the lady was ... gone out for a walk!

"As I was coming in from the lower rooms to the staircase with a load of looking-gla.s.ses, a boat crashed in at the princ.i.p.al entrance, bringing home the poor lady and two other English, who had been caught by the flood at the end of the street, and had been for some time in the greatest peril: the boatmen having declined to bring them the few necessary steps until they had been paid twenty francs, and then having refused altogether to bring a poor Italian who had no money to give them. At this moment Madame Victoire insisted on taking the opportunity of the boat to return to her own house. It was a dreadful scene, all the women in the house crying and imploring her to stay, but she insisted on embarking.

She did not arrive without hairbreadth escapes. When she reached her own house, the current was so strong, and the boat was dashed so violently against the walls, that it was impossible for her to be landed; but the flood was less violent beneath her larger house which is let to the Marchese Guadagna, from which sheets were let down from the upper windows, and she was fastened to them and raised: but when she reached the grille of the first-floor windows, and was hanging half-way, the current carried away the boat, and at the same moment the great wall opposite S. Antonio fell with an awful crash. However, the Guadagna family held tight to the sheets, and Madame Victoire was landed at last, though she fell insensible on the floor when she entered the window.

"The walls were now falling in every direction with a dull roar into the yellow waters. The noise was dreadful--the cries of the drowning animals, the shrieks of the women, especially of a mother whose children were in the country, wringing her hands at the window of an opposite house. The water in our house was rising so rapidly that it was impossible to remain longer on the side towards the princ.i.p.al staircase, and we fled to the other end, where Pilotte, a poor boy in the service, lay dangerously ill, but was obliged to get up from his bed, and, though quite blind from ophthalmia, was far more useful than any one else. Since her mother left, Flora had been far too distracted to think of anything; still we saved an immense number of things, and I was able to cut down pictures, &c., floating on a sofa as if it were a boat. The great difficulty in reaching the things was always from the carpet rising, and making it almost impossible to get out of the room again. The last thing I carried off was the 'Travellers' Book!' It was about half-past 5 P.M. when we were obliged to come out of the water, which was then terribly cold and above the waist.

"Meantime the scene in the street was terrible. The missing children of the woman opposite were brought back in a boat and drawn up in sheets; and the street, now a deep river, was crowded with boats, torches flashing on the water, and lights gleaming in every window. All the thirty poor hens in the hen-house at the end of the balcony were making a terrible noise as they were slowly drowned, the ducks and pigeons were drowned too, I suppose, being too frightened to escape, and many floated dead past the window.

The garden was covered with cushions, chairs, tables, and ladies'

dresses, which had been washed out of the lower windows. There was great fear that the omnibus horse and driver were drowned, and the Limosins were crying dreadfully about it; but the man was drawn up late at night from a boat, whose crew had discovered him on the top of a wall, and at present the horse exists also, having taken refuge on the terrace you will remember at the end of the garden, where it is partially above water. The street was covered with furniture, great carved wardrobes being whirled down to the Arno like straws. The cries of the drowning animals were quite human.

"All this time my poor sweet Mother had been lying perfectly still and patient, but about 6 P.M., as the water had reached the highest step of the lower staircase and was still mounting, we had our luggage carried up to the attics, secured a few valuables in case of sudden flight (as no boat would have taken luggage), and began to get Mother dressed. There was no immediate danger, but if another embankment broke, there might be at any moment, and it was well to be prepared. Night closed in terribly--pouring rain again, a perfectly black sky, and waters swelling round the house: every now and then the dull thud of some falling building, and, from beneath, the perpetual crash of the furniture and floors breaking up in the lower rooms. Mother lay down dressed, most of the visitors and I walked the pa.s.sages and watched the danger-marks made above water on the staircase, and tried to comfort the unhappy family, in what, I fear, is their total ruin. It seemed as if daylight would never come, but at 6 A.M. the water was certainly an inch lower.

"It was strange to return to daylight in our besieged fortress.

There had been no time to save food, but there was one loaf and a little cheese, which were dealt out in equal rations, and we captured the drowned hens as the aviary broke up, and are going to boil one of them down in a tiny saucepan, the only cooking utensil saved. Every one has to economise the water in their jugs (no chance of any other), and most of all their candles.... How we are ever to be delivered I cannot imagine. The railways to Leghorn, Spezia, and Florence must all be under water."

"_Dec. 14._--It seems so long now since the inundation began and we were cut off from every one: it is impossible to think of it as only three days.

"Nothing can be more dreadful than the utter neglect of the new Government and of the munic.i.p.ality here. They were fully warned as to what would result if Pisa was not protected from the Arno, but they took no heed, and ever since the dikes broke they have given no help, never even consenting to have the main drains opened, which keeps us still flooded, refusing to publish lists of the drowned, and giving the large sums sent for distribution in charity into the hands of the students, who follow one another, giving indiscriminately to the same persons, whilst others are starving.

On Sat.u.r.day night there ceased to be any immediate alarm: the fear was that the Arno might break through at the Spina, which still stands, and which, being so much nearer, would be far more serious to us. The old bridge is destroyed. All through that night the Vicomte de Vauriol and the men of the house were obliged to watch on the balconies with loaded pistols, to defend their property floating in the garden from the large bands of robbers who came in boats to plunder, looking sufficiently alarming by the light of their great torches. The whole trousseau of the Vicomtesse is lost, and her maid has 4000 francs in her box, which can still be seen floating _open_.... But the waters are slowly going down. Many bodies have been found, but there are still many more beneath the mud. In the lower rooms of this house the mud is a yard deep, and most horrid in quality, and the smell of course dreadful. I spend much of my time at the window in hooking up various objects with a long iron bed-rod--bits of silver, teacups, even books--in a state of pulp."

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. ANTONIO, PISA, DURING THE FLOOD.]

"_Dec. 19._--My bulletin is rather a melancholy one, for my poor Mother has been constantly in bed since the inundation, and cannot now turn or move her left side at all.... I have also been very ill myself, with no sleep for many days, and agonies of neuralgia from long exposure in the water.... However, I get on tolerably, and have plenty to take off my thoughts from my own pain in attending to Mother and doing what I can for the poor Limosins.... In the quarter near this seventy bodies have been found in the mud, and as the Government suppresses the number and buries them all immediately, there are probably many more. Our friends at Rome have been greatly alarmed about us."

"_Dec. 27._--Mother has been up in a chair for a few hours daily, but cannot yet be dressed. The weather is horrible, torrents of rain night and day--quite ceaseless, and mingled with snow, thunder, and lightning. It is so dark even at midday, that Mother can see to do nothing, and I very little. The mud and smell would prevent our going out if it were otherwise possible. It has indeed been a dismal three months, which we have all three pa.s.sed entirely in the sick-room, except the four days I was away.... Still the dear Mother says 'we shall have time to recount our miseries in heaven when they are over; let us only recount our mercies now.'"

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

"_33 Via Gregoriana, Rome, Jan. 19, 1870._--You will have heard from others of our misfortunes at Pisa, of Mother's terrible illness, and my wearing pains, and in the midst of all this our awful floods, the Arno bursting its banks and overwhelming the unhappy town with its mud-laden waves. I cannot describe to you the utter horror of those three days and nights--the rushing water (waves like the sea) lifting the carpets and dashing the large pieces of furniture into bits like so many chips,--the anxious night-watchings of the water stealthily advancing up step after step of the staircase,--the view from the upper corridor windows of the street with its rushing _tourbillon_ of waters, carrying drowning animals, beds, cabinets, gates, &c., along in a hideous confusion;--from our windows of the garden one maze of waters afloat with chairs, tables, open boxes, china, and drowned creatures;--the sound of the falling walls heavily gliding into the water, and the cries of the drowning and their relations. And then, in the hotel, the life was so strange, the limited rations of food and of water from the washing jugs, and the necessity for rousing oneself to constant action, and far more than mere cheerfulness, in order to prevent the poor people of the hotel from sinking into absolute despair.

"When the real danger to life once subsided and the poor drowned people had been carried away to their graves, and the water had changed into mud, it was a strange existence, and we had still six weeks in the chilled house with its wet walls, and an impossibility of going out or having change. However, there is a bright side to everything, and the utter isolation was not unpleasant to me. I got through no end of writing work, having plenty also to do in attending on my poor Mother; and you know how I can never sufficiently drink in the blessedness of her sweet companionship, and how entirely the very fact of her existence makes sunshine in my life, wherever it is.

"All the time of our incarceration I have employed in writing from the notes of our many Roman winters, which were saved in our luggage, and which have been our only material of employment. It seems as if 'Walks in Rome' would some day grow into a book. Mother thinks it presumptuous, but I a.s.sure her that though of course it will be full of faults, no book would ever be printed if perfection were waited for. And I really do know much more about the subject than most people, though of course not half as much as I ought to know.

"One day I was away at Florence, where I saw Lady Anne S. Giorgio and many other friends in a very short time. How bright and busy it looked after Pisa.

"Last week Pisa devoted itself, or rather its priests, to intense Madonna-worship, because, owing to her image, carved by St. Luke, the flood was no worse. Her seven petticoats, unremoved for years, were taken off one by one and exchanged for new, and this delicious event was celebrated by firing of cannon, processions, and illuminations all over the town. In the midst, the Arno displayed its disapproval by rising again violently and suddenly; the utmost consternation ensued; the population sat up, doors were walled up, the doll-worshippers were driven out of the cathedral (which lies very low) at the point of the bayonet by the Bersaglieri under General Bixio. To _us_, the great result of the fresh fright was, that the Mother suddenly rose from her bed, and declaring that she could not stay to endure another inundation, dressed, and we all set off last Wednesday morning, and arrived at midnight after a prosperous journey, though the floods were certainly frightful up to the very walls of Rome.

"Oh, how glad we were to get here--to feel that after all the troubles of the last few months we were safe in the beloved, the home-like city. It is now only that I realise what a time of tension our stay at Pisa has been. We breathe quietly. Even the calm placid Mother feels the relief of not having to start up at every sound and wonder whether 'L'Arno ? sbordato.'

"I always feel as if a special Providence watched over us in respect of lodgings. It has certainly been so this time, as we could never have hoped, arriving so late, to obtain this charming apartment, with full sun, glorious view, and all else we can wish.

You can fancy us, with all our own pictures and books, the mother in her chair, the son at his drawing-table, and Lea coming in and out.

"But on Friday we had a terrible catastrophe. In the evening at the hotel the poor Mother fell violently upon her head on the hard stone floor and was dreadfully hurt. You will imagine my terror, having gone out at 8 P.M., to find every one in confusion on my return, that Dr. Winslow had been sent for, and that I had been searched for everywhere. For some hours the Mother was quite unconscious, and she can still see nothing, and I am afraid it will be some days before any sight is restored; but all is going on well, and I am most thankful to have been able to move her to her own house.