The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 Part 13

The next and last evening of the festivities was a gala opera, where there was a great deal of clapping and enthusiasm which accompanied a rather poor performance of "Aida." They said that Verdi was in the audience, but he did not appear, nor was there any demonstration made for him.

ROME, _January, 1884_.

My dear ----,--There are a few changes in the Emba.s.sies. Sir Saville Lumley has succeeded Sir August Paget at the English Emba.s.sy. Sir Saville's own paintings now cover Lady Paget's chocolate cherubs--only those above the door and their bulrushes are left to tell the tale.

Monsieur Decrais, the new French Amba.s.sador and his wife, who replace the De Noailles in the Farnese Palace, are already established. The iciness of Siberia continues to pervade the palace in spite of all efforts to warm those vast _salons_, enormous in their proportions--I do not know how many _metres_ they are to the ceiling. The Carracci gallery separates the bedrooms from the _salons_. Madame Decrais says that they are obliged to dress like Eskimos when they cross it, as they do twenty times a day.

How the Roman climate must have changed since the time when the Romans went about in togas and sandals and lay on slabs of marble after their bath!

We are delighted to have our dear friend M. de Schlozer here. He is Minister to the Vatican, and is (or ought to be) as black as ink, while we Quirinalers are as white as the driven snow; but he has no prejudice as to color, nor have we, so we see one another very often and dine together whenever we can. As soon as his silver was unpacked we were invited straightway to dinner. His rooms in the Palazzo Capranica (belonging to the family of Madame Ristori's husband) are as bare as those he occupied in Washington--barer, even, for here there are no _portieres_. In the _salon_ he had his beloved Steinway grand, one stiff sofa, four enormous _fauteuils_, destined for his cardinals, a few small gilt _chaises volantes_ (as he calls little chairs that are easy to move about), one table on which reposes the last piece of marble picked up while strolling in the Forum, and, as a supreme ba.n.a.lity, his niece's Christmas present, a _lamp-mat_, on which stands the lamp in solitary glory.

Schlozer's dinners are of the best, and are most amusing. He superintends everything himself and gives himself no end of trouble.

Each course as it is served receives an introductory speech: "_Ce pate, mon cher, est la gloire de ma cuisiniere_" etc.

He says that all _volaille_ ought to be carved at the table, therefore he carves the birds and the chickens himself, brandishing the knife with gusto while sharpening it.

And as for the wines! Dear me! After filling his gla.s.s he holds it against the light, tastes the wine, smacks his lips, and says: "_Ce vin de Bordeaux est du '64. Il faut le boire avec recueillement. Je l'ai debouche moi-meme_."

He has a great liking for Lenbach (the famous painter), although they are utterly different in character and ways. Lenbach is not musical, and is rather rough and gruff in his manners. Even his best friends acknowledge that he does not possess the thing called manners. He is clever and witty in his way, but his way is sarcastic and peevish.

Sometimes when he is talking to you he beams and scowls alternately behind his spectacles. You think that he is listening to you, but not at all! He is only thinking out his own thoughts, in which he seems always to be wrapped.

Lenbach occupies the same apartment in the Palazzo Borghese that Pauline Bonaparte lived in. Probably the very couch is still there on which she reclined for her famous statue. You remember what a modest lady friend said to her, "_Cela m'etonne que vous ayez pu poser comme cela_!"--meaning, without clothes; to which the Princess replied: "But why do you wonder? Canova had a fire in the room."

Lenbach asked permission to paint Nina. We did not refuse, and expected great things. He photographed her twenty times in different poses, turning her head (physically, not morally) every which way, and painted thirteen pictures of her, but there was only one (a very pretty profile in crayon with a pink ear and a little dash of yellow on the hair) which he thought good enough to give us.

Do not ask me what we have done or whom we have seen. We are out morning, noon, and night. Every day there is a regular "precession of the equinoxes"--luncheons, dinners, and _soirees_ galore.

I sing twice a week with the Queen--red-letter days for me. I look forward with joy to pa.s.sing that hour with her. I never knew any one so full of interest, humor, and intelligence. It is delightful to see her when she is amused. She can laugh so heartily, and no one, when there is occasion for sympathy, is more ready to give it. Her kind eyes can fill with tears as quickly as they can see the fun in a situation.

Nina and I go out every morning from ten to twelve. Johan is then busy with his despatches and shut up in the chancellery. It is the fashion during those hours to drive in a cab in the _Corso_. It is not considered _chic_ to go out in one's own carriage until the afternoon.

I am glad of the excuse of buying even a paper of pins in order to be out in the sunshine.

Another queer fashion is that on Sundays gentlemen (the highest of the high) who have their own fine equipages, of which on week-days they are so proud, drive to the fashionable places, like Villa Borghese and Villa Doria, in _cabs_. Sometimes you will see the beaux most in vogue squeezed (three or four of them) in a little _botte_ (the Italian name for cab), looking very uncomfortable. But as it is the thing to do, they are proud and happy to do it. But on other days!--horrible!

Nevertheless, it is on Sundays (_especially_ on Sundays) that Principe Ma.s.simo causes people to stop and stare because he drives abroad on that day in his high-seated phaeton, his long side-whiskers floating in the wind, his servants in their conspicuous dark-red liveries covered with armorial braid, pale-blue cuffs and collars, sitting behind him.

Then it is that the Romans say to themselves, Our aristocracy is not yet dead.

Our colleagues, the de W.'s, had a _loge_ in the Argentina Theater and invited us the other evening to go with them to see the great Salvini in "Hamlet." The theater was filled to the uppermost galleries; you could not have wedged in another person. The people in the audience, when not applauding, were as silent as so many mice; this is unlike the usual theater-going Italian, who reads and rustles his evening paper all through the performance, looking up occasionally to hiss.

Salvini surpa.s.sed himself, perhaps on account of the presence of her Majesty, whose eyes never wandered from the stage, except in the _entr'actes_, when she responded to the ovation the public always makes wherever she appears. She rose and bowed with her sweet smile, the smile which wins all hearts.

There was only one hitch during the performance, and that was when Hamlet and Polonius fought the duel; the latter, unfortunately, missed his aim and speared Hamlet's wig with his sword, on which it stuck in spite of the most desperate efforts to shake it off. Salvini, all unconscious, continued fencing until he caught sight of his wig dangling in the air and, realizing his un-Hamlet-like bald head, backed out into the side-wing, leaving Polonius to get off the stage as best he could.

In the _entr'acte_ Monsieur de W. and I talked over the play, and, unfortunately, I said, "Did Hamlet ever exist?" A bomb exploding under our noses could not have been more disastrous! He burst out in indignant tones, and we almost came to literary blows in our violent discussion. M. de W. insists upon it that Shakespeare knew all about Hamlet and where he lived, the medieval clothes he wore, and that he was the sepulchral Prince with whom we are so familiar; that Ophelia was a very misused and unhappy young lady, who drowned herself in a water-lily pond; and that Hamlet's papa used to come nights and scare the life out of the courtiers.

"Wait a little," I said. "I flatter myself that I know the story of Hamlet thoroughly. I spent all last summer studying the old Danish chronicle, which was written in Latin in 1200 by a monk called Saxo Grammaticus, then translated into old-fashioned Danish, which I translated, to amuse myself, into English. If what Saxo says is true Hamlet lived about two or three hundred years before Christ."

"Impossible!" almost screamed my friend.

I went on, regardless of M. de W.'s dangerous att.i.tude: "Denmark at that time was divided into several kingdoms, and Hamlet's father was king in a part of Jutland, which, let us say, was as small as Rhode Island--"

"What nonsense!" interrupted M. de W., indignantly.

"He probably went about in fur-covered legs and a sheepskin over his shoulders, as was then the fashion. He was called Amleth; Shakespeare simply transposed the h. He was a naughty little boy, vicious and revengeful. He despised his mother and hated his uncle, who was his stepfather."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO YOUNG QUEENS From a photograph, taken in 1878, of the two daughters of the King of Denmark. They were then the Princess of Wales and the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Dagmar. They are now the widows of two European sovereigns, Dowager Queen Alexandra of England and the Dowager Empress of Russia. They spend their summers together in a small cottage near Copenhagen.

Alexandra is on the right of the picture.]

"Why?" asked, in a milder tone, M. de W.

"Because his mother and the uncle, wishing to marry and mount the throne, killed Hamlet's father. Hamlet pa.s.sed his youth haunted by thoughts of revenge and how he could punish the two sinners."

"It was clever of Shakespeare to let the father do the haunting and leave to Hamlet the _role_ of a guileless and sentimental youth; the authorities do not agree as to whether Hamlet was really a fool or only pretended to be one."

"Fool he certainly was not," I replied. "He was clever enough to play the part of one, and he played it so well that no one, even at that time, could make out what he really was."

"Then," declared M. de W., "Shakespeare got that part of it right--perhaps you will concede that much. How about Hamlet's grave?

Surely there is no humbug about that? I have seen it myself. Has it been there since two hundred years B.C.?"

"Hamlet's grave at Helsingor is an interesting bit of imagination. A unique instance of inaccuracy on the part of the Danes! Hamlet lived to be king in his little land and was buried where he died--if he ever lived--as an Irishman would say."

"How confusing you are," said my opponent. "You destroy my dearest illusions--I, who adore Shakespeare's Hamlet."

"I adore Shakespeare's Hamlet, too, but I do not adore Saxo's. Hamlet's love for his father was the only redeeming point about him. Did you know that he married the daughter of the King of England?"

"Shakespeare only mentions Ophelia, and we are led to believe that Hamlet died unmarried."

"Well," I answered, "if Saxo is right, he was married, had lots of children, and continued the dynasty till _dato_."

"Go on! You interest me."

"He made himself very disagreeable at home with his silly talk and his hatred of the King and the Queen. In a conversation he had with his mother he flung away all disguise and also hurled some unpleasant and extremely unvarnished truths full in the maternal face."

"That does not speak well for him," said Mr. de W.

"To get rid of him," I continued, warming to my subject, "the Danish court sent him to the English court with a nice letter of introduction, and at the same time sent a letter to the King of England, begging him to have Hamlet killed somehow or other, but clever Hamlet stole and read the letter and killed the messenger himself."

"That shows he was no fool," acknowledged M. de W.

"The King of England gave him a fine dinner, and I think the English court must have opened its eyes when Hamlet pushed away the food, saying it was '_too bad to eat_.' He told them that the bread tasted of dead men's bones and the wine of blood, and, worst of all, that the Queen was not a born lady. When the court asked with one voice how he dared breathe such an insult he answered that there were three things that proved that what he said was true."

"It would amuse me to know what the three things were," said M. de W.

"One was," I said, "that the Queen held up her dress while walking; another, that she threw a shawl over her head; and the last, that she picked her teeth and chewed the contents! I actually blush for the Danes when I read the account of that dinner."

"I confess," laughed de W., "that that _was_ pretty bad. Tell me some more."

"The courtiers hurried to examine into affairs and found that everything that Hamlet said was true. The poor Queen was horribly mortified, for they discovered that her papa had been a peasant."

"I suppose," said M. de W., "that the court forbade the banns after that."