Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Volume 1.

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Volume 1.

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We had a very pleasant breakfast, and certainly a breakfast is much
preferable to a dinner, not merely in the enjoyment, while it is passing,
but afterwards. I made a good suggestion to Miss Hosmer for the design
of a fountain,--a lady bursting into tears, water gushing from a thousand
pores, in literal translation of the phrase; and to call the statue
"Niobe, all Tears." I doubt whether she adopts the idea; but Bernini
would have been delighted with it. I should think the gush of water
might be so arranged as to form a beautiful drapery about the figure,
swaying and fluttering with every breath of wind, and rearranging itself
in the calm; in which case, the lady might be said to have "a habit of
weeping." . . . . Apart, with William Story, he and I talked of the
unluckiness of Friday, etc. I like him particularly well. . . .

We have been plagued to-day with our preparations for leaving Rome
to-morrow, and especially with verifying the inventory of furniture,
before giving up the house to our landlord. He and his daughter have
been examining every separate article, down even to the kitchen skewers,
I believe, and charging us to the amount of several scudi for cracks and
breakages, which very probably existed when we came into possession. It
is very uncomfortable to have dealings with such a mean people (though
our landlord is German),--mean in their business transactions; mean even
in their beggary; for the beggars seldom ask for more than a mezzo
baioccho, though they sometimes grumble when you suit your gratuity
exactly to their petition. It is pleasant to record that the Italians
have great faith in the honor of the English and Americans, and never
hesitate to trust entire strangers, to any reasonable extent, on the
strength of their being of the honest Anglo-Saxon race.

This evening, U---- and I took a farewell walk in the Pincian Gardens to
see the sunset; and found them crowded with people, promenading and
listening to the music of the French baud. It was the feast of
Whitsunday, which probably brought a greater throng than usual abroad.

When the sun went down, we descended into the Piazza del Popolo, and
thence into the Via Ripetta, and emerged through a gate to the shore of
the Tiber, along which there is a pleasant walk beneath a grove of trees.
We traversed it once and back again, looking at the rapid river, which
still kept its mud-puddly aspect even in the clear twilight, and beneath
the brightening moon. The great bell of St. Peter's tolled with a deep
boom, a grand and solemn sound; the moon gleamed through the branches of
the trees above us; and U---- spoke with somewhat alarming fervor of her
love for Rome, and regret at leaving it. We shall have done the child no
good office in bringing her here, if the rest of her life is to be a
dream of this "city of the soul," and an unsatisfied yearning to come
back to it. On the other hand, nothing elevating and refining can be
really injurious, and so I hope she will always be the better for Rome,
even if her life should be spent where there are no pictures, no statues,
nothing but the dryness and meagreness of a New England village.

JOURNEY TO FLORENCE.

Civita Castellana, May 24th.--We left Rome this morning, after troubles
of various kinds, and a dispute in the first place with Lalla, our female
servant, and her mother. . . . Mother and daughter exploded into a
livid rage, and cursed us plentifully,--wishing that we might never come
to our journey's end, and that we might all break our necks or die of
apoplexy,--the most awful curse that an Italian knows how to invoke upon
his enemies, because it precludes the possibility of extreme unction.
However, as we are heretics, and certain of damnation therefore, anyhow,
it does not much matter to us; and also the anathemas may have been blown
back upon those who invoked them, like the curses that were flung out
from the balcony of St Peter's during Holy Week and wafted by heaven's
breezes right into the faces of some priests who stood near the pope.
Next we had a disagreement, with two men who brought down our luggage,
and put it on the vettura; . . . . and, lastly, we were infested with
beggars, who hung round the carriages with doleful petitions, till we
began to move away; but the previous warfare had put me into too stern a
mood for almsgiving, so that they also were doubtless inclined to curse
more than to bless, and I am persuaded that we drove off under a perfect
shower of anathemas.

We passed through the Porta del Popolo at about eight o'clock; and after
a moment's delay, while the passport was examined, began our journey
along the Flaminian Way, between two such high and inhospitable walls of
brick or stone as seem to shut in all the avenues to Rome. We had not
gone far before we heard military music in advance of us, and saw the
road blocked up with people, and then the glitter of muskets, and soon
appeared the drummers, fifers, and trumpeters, and then the first
battalion of a French regiment, marching into the city, with two mounted
officers at their head; then appeared a second and then a third
battalion, the whole seeming to make almost an army, though the number on
their caps showed them all to belong to one regiment,--the 1st; then came
a battery of artillery, then a detachment of horse,--these last, by the
crossed keys on their helmets, being apparently papal troops. All were
young, fresh, good-looking men, in excellent trim as to uniform and
equipments, and marched rather as if they were setting out on a campaign
than returning from it; the fact being, I believe, that they have been
encamped or in barracks within a few miles of the city. Nevertheless, it
reminded me of the military processions of various kinds which so often,
two thousand years ago and more, entered Rome over the Flaminian Way, and
over all the roads that led to the famous city,--triumphs oftenest, but
sometimes the downcast train of a defeated army, like those who retreated
before Hannibal. On the whole, I was not sorry to see the Gauls still
pouring into Rome; but yet I begin to find that I have a strange
affection for it, and so did we all,--the rest of the family in a greater
degree than myself even. It is very singular, the sad embrace with which
Rome takes possession of the soul. Though we intend to return in a few
months, and for a longer residence than this has been, yet we felt the
city pulling at our heartstrings far more than London did, where we shall
probably never spend much time again. It may be because the intellect
finds a home there more than in any other spot in the world, and wins the
heart to stay with it, in spite of a good many things strewn all about to
disgust us.

The road in the earlier part of the way was not particularly
picturesque,--the country undulated, but scarcely rose into hills, and
was destitute of trees; there were a few shapeless ruins, too indistinct
for us to make out whether they were Roman or mediaeval. Nothing struck
one so much, in the forenoon, as the spectacle of a peasant-woman riding
on horseback as if she were a man. The houses were few, and those of a
dreary aspect, built of gray stone, and looking bare and desolate, with
not the slightest promise of comfort within doors. We passed two or
three locandas or inns, and finally came to the village (if village it
were, for I remember no houses except our osteria) of Castel Nuovo di
Porta, where we were to take a dejeuner a la fourchette, which was put
upon the table between twelve and one. On this journey, according to the
custom of travellers in Italy, we pay the vetturino a certain sum, and
live at his expense; and this meal was the first specimen of his catering
on our behalf. It consisted of a beefsteak, rather dry and hard, but not
unpalatable, and a large omelette; and for beverage, two quart bottles of
red wine, which, being tasted, had an agreeable acid flavor. . . . The
locanda was built of stone, and had what looked like an old Roman altar
in the basement-hall, and a shrine, with a lamp before it, on the
staircase; and the large public saloon in which we ate had a brick floor,
a ceiling with cross-beams, meagrely painted in fresco, and a scanty
supply of chairs and settees.

After lunch, we wandered out into a valley or ravine near the house,
where we gathered some flowers, and J----- found a nest with the young
birds in it, which, however, he put back into the bush whence he took it.

Our afternoon drive was more picturesque and noteworthy. Soracte rose
before us, bulging up quite abruptly out of the plain, and keeping itself
entirely distinct from a whole horizon of hills. Byron well compares it
to a wave just on the bend, and about to break over towards the
spectator. As we approached it nearer and nearer, it looked like the
barrenest great rock that ever protruded out of the substance of the
earth, with scarcely a strip or a spot of verdure upon its steep and gray
declivities. The road kept trending towards the mountain, following the
line of the old Flaminian Way, which we could see, at frequent intervals,
close beside the modern track. It is paved with large flag-stones, laid
so accurately together, that it is still, in some places, as smooth and
even as the floor of a church; and everywhere the tufts of grass find it
difficult to root themselves into the interstices. Its course is
straighter than that of the road of to-day, which often turns aside to
avoid obstacles which the ancient one surmounted. Much of it, probably,
is covered with the soil and overgrowth deposited in later years; and,
now and then, we could see its flag-stones partly protruding from the
bank through which our road has been cut, and thus showing that the
thickness of this massive pavement was more than a foot of solid stone.
We lost it over and over again; but still it reappeared, now on one side
of us, now on the other; perhaps from beneath the roots of old trees, or
the pasture-land of a thousand years old, and leading on towards the base
of Soracte. I forget where we finally lost it. Passing through a town
called Rignano, we found it dressed out in festivity, with festoons of
foliage along both sides of the street, which ran beneath a triumphal
arch, bearing an inscription in honor of a ducal personage of the Massimi
family. I know no occasion for the feast, except that it is Whitsuntide.
The town was thronged with peasants, in their best attire, and we met
others on their way thither, particularly women and girls, with heads
bare in the sunshine; but there was no tiptoe jollity, nor, indeed,
any more show of festivity than I have seen in my own country at a
cattle-show or muster. Really, I think, not half so much.

The road still grew more and more picturesque, and now lay along ridges,
at the bases of which were deep ravines and hollow valleys. Woods were
not wanting; wilder forests than I have seen since leaving America, of
oak-trees chiefly; and, among the green foliage, grew golden tufts of
broom, making a gay and lovely combination of hues. I must not forget to
mention the poppies, which burned like live coals along the wayside, and
lit up the landscape, even a single one of them, with wonderful effect.
At other points, we saw olive-trees, hiding their eccentricity of boughs
under thick masses of foliage of a livid tint, which is caused, I
believe, by their turning their reverse sides to the light and to the
spectator. Vines were abundant, but were of little account in the scene.
By and by we came in sight, of the high, flat table-land, on which stands
Civita Castellana, and beheld, straight downward, between us and the
town, a deep level valley with a river winding through it; it was the
valley of the Treja. A precipice, hundreds of feet in height, falls
perpendicularly upon the valley, from the site of Civita Castellana;
there is an equally abrupt one, probably, on the side from which we saw
it; and a modern road, skilfully constructed, goes winding down to the
stream, crosses it by a narrow stone bridge, and winds upward into the
town. After passing over the bridge, I alighted, with J----- and R-----,
. . . . and made the ascent on foot, along walls of natural rock, in
which old Etruscan tombs were hollowed out. There are likewise antique
remains of masonry, whether Roman or of what earlier period, I cannot
tell. At the summit of the acclivity, which brought us close to the
town, our vetturino took us into the carriage again and quickly brought
us to what appears to be really a good hotel, where all of us are
accommodated with sleeping-chambers in a range, beneath an arcade,
entirely secluded from the rest of the population of the hotel. After a
splendid dinner (that is, splendid, considering that it was ordered by
our hospitable vetturino), U----, Miss Shepard, J-----, and I walked out
of the little town, in the opposite direction from our entrance, and
crossed a bridge at the height of the table-land, instead of at its base.
On either side, we had a view down into a profound gulf, with sides of
precipitous rock, and heaps of foliage in its lap, through which ran the
snowy track of a stream; here snowy, there dark; here hidden among the
foliage, there quite revealed in the broad depths of the gulf. This was
wonderfully fine. Walking on a little farther, Soracte came fully into
view, starting with bold abruptness out of the middle of the country; and
before we got back, the bright Italian moon was throwing a shower of
silver over the scene, and making it so beautiful that it seemed
miserable not to know how to put it into words; a foolish thought,
however, for such scenes are an expression in themselves, and need not be
translated into any feebler language. On our walk we met parties of
laborers, both men and women, returning from the fields, with rakes and
wooden forks over their shoulders, singing in chorus. It is very
customary for women to be laboring in the fields.

TO TERNI.--BORGHETTO.

May 25th.--We were aroused at four o'clock this morning; had some eggs
and coffee, and were ready to start between five and six; being thus
matutinary, in order to get to Terni in time to see the falls. The road
was very striking and picturesque; but I remember nothing particularly,
till we came to Borghetto, which stands on a bluff, with a broad valley
sweeping round it, through the midst of which flows the Tiber. There is
an old castle on a projecting point; and we saw other battlemented
fortresses, of mediaeval date, along our way, forming more beautiful
ruins than any of the Roman remains to which we have become accustomed.
This is partly, I suppose, owing to the fact that they have been
neglected, and allowed to mantle their decay with ivy, instead of being
cleaned, propped up, and restored. The antiquarian is apt to spoil the
objects that interest him.

Sometimes we passed through wildernesses of various trees, each
contributing a different hue of verdure to the scene; the vine, also,
marrying itself to the fig-tree, so that a man might sit in the shadow of
both at once, and temper the luscious sweetness of the one fruit with the
fresh flavor of the other. The wayside incidents were such as meeting a
man and woman borne along as prisoners, handcuffed and in a cart; two men
reclining across one another, asleep, and lazily lifting their heads to
gaze at us as we passed by; a woman spinning with a distaff as she walked
along the road. An old tomb or tower stood in a lonely field, and
several caves were hollowed in the rocks, which might have been either
sepulchres or habitations. Soracte kept us company, sometimes a little
on one side, sometimes behind, looming up again and again, when we
thought that we had done with it, and so becoming rather tedious at last,
like a person who presents himself for another and another leave-taking
after the one which ought to have been final. Honeysuckles sweetened the
hedges along the road.

After leaving Borghetto, we crossed the broad valley of the Tiber, and
skirted along one of the ridges that border it, looking back upon the
road that we had passed, lying white behind us. We saw a field covered
with buttercups, or some other yellow flower, and poppies burned along
the roadside, as they did yesterday, and there were flowers of a
delicious blue, as if the blue Italian sky had been broken into little
bits, and scattered down upon the green earth. Otricoli by and by
appeared, situated on a bold promontory above the valley, a village of a
few gray houses and huts, with one edifice gaudily painted in white and
pink. It looked more important at a distance than we found it on our
nearer approach. As the road kept ascending, and as the hills grew to be
mountains, we had taken two additional horses, making six in all, with a
man and boy running beside them, to keep them in motion. The boy had two
club feet, so inconveniently disposed that it seemed almost inevitable
for him to stumble over them at every step; besides which, he seemed to
tread upon his ankles, and moved with a disjointed gait, as if each of
his legs and thighs had been twisted round together with his feet.
Nevertheless, he had a bright, cheerful, intelligent face, and was
exceedingly active, keeping up with the horses at their trot, and
inciting them to better speed when they lagged. I conceived a great
respect for this poor boy, who had what most Italian peasants would
consider an enviable birthright in those two club feet, as giving him a
sufficient excuse to live on charity, but yet took no advantage of them;
on the contrary, putting his poor misshapen hoofs to such good use as
might have shamed many a better provided biped. When he quitted us, he
asked no alms of the travellers, but merely applied to Gaetano for some
slight recompense for his well-performed service. This behavior
contrasted most favorably with that of some other boys and girls, who ran
begging beside the carriage door, keeping up a low, miserable murmur,
like that of a kennel-stream, for a long, long way. Beggars, indeed,
started up at every point, when we stopped for a moment, and whenever a
hill imposed a slower pace upon us; each village had its deformity or its
infirmity, offering his wretched petition at the step of the carriage;
and even a venerable, white-haired patriarch, the grandfather of all the
beggars, seemed to grow up by the roadside, but was left behind from
inability to join in the race with his light-footed juniors. No shame is
attached to begging in Italy. In fact, I rather imagine it to be held an
honorable profession, inheriting some of the odor of sanctity that used
to be attached to a mendicant and idle life in the days of early
Christianity, when every saint lived upon Providence, and deemed it
meritorious to do nothing for his support.

Murray's guide-book is exceedingly vague and unsatisfactory along this
route; and whenever we asked Gaetano the name of a village or a castle,
he gave some one which we had never heard before, and could find nothing
of in the book. We made out the river Nar, however, or what I supposed
to be such, though he called it Nera. It flows through a most stupendous
mountain-gorge; winding its narrow passage between high hills, the broad
sides of which descend steeply upon it, covered with trees and shrubbery,
that mantle a host of rocky roughnesses, and make all look smooth. Here
and there a precipice juts sternly forth. We saw an old castle on a
hillside, frowning down into the gorge; and farther on, the gray tower of
Narni stands upon a height, imminent over the depths below, and with its
battlemented castle above now converted into a prison, and therefore kept
in excellent repair. A long winding street passes through Narni,
broadening at one point into a market-place, where an old cathedral
showed its venerable front, and the great dial of its clock, the figures
on which were numbered in two semicircles of twelve points each; one, I
suppose, for noon, and the other for midnight. The town has, so far as
its principal street is concerned, a city-like aspect, with large, fair
edifices, and shops as good as most of those at Rome, the smartness of
which contrasts strikingly with the rude and lonely scenery of mountain
and stream, through which we had come to reach it. We drove through
Narni without stopping, and came out from it on the other side, where a
broad, level valley opened before us, most unlike the wild, precipitous
gorge which had brought us to the town. The road went winding down into
the peaceful vale, through the midst of which flowed the same stream that
cuts its way between the impending hills, as already described. We
passed a monk and a soldier,--the two curses of Italy, each in his way,--
walking sociably side by side; and from Narni to Terni I remember nothing
that need be recorded.

Terni, like so many other towns in the neighborhood, stands in a high and
commanding position, chosen doubtless for its facilities of defence, in
days long before the mediaeval warfares of Italy made such sites
desirable. I suppose that, like Narni and Otricoli, it was a city of the
Umbrians. We reached it between eleven and twelve o'clock, intending to
employ the afternoon on a visit to the famous falls of Terni; but, after
lowering all day, it has begun to rain, and we shall probably have to
give them up.

Half past eight o'clock.--It has rained in torrents during the afternoon,
and we have not seen the cascade of Terni; considerably to my regret, for
I think I felt the more interest in seeing it, on account of its being
artificial. Methinks nothing was more characteristic of the energy and
determination of the old Romans, than thus to take a river, which they
wished to be rid of, and fling it over a giddy precipice, breaking it
into ten million pieces by the fall. . . . We are in the Hotel delle
tre Colonne, and find it reasonably good, though not, so far as we are
concerned, justifying the rapturous commendations of previous tourists,
who probably travelled at their own charges. However, there is nothing
really to be complained of, either in our accommodations or table, and
the only wonder is how Gaetano contrives to get any profit out of our
contract, since the hotel bills would alone cost us more than we pay him
for the journey and all. It is worth while to record as history of
vetturino commissary customs, that for breakfast this morning we had
coffee, eggs, and bread and butter; for lunch an omelette, some stewed
veal, and a dessert of figs and grapes, besides two decanters of a
light-colored acid wine, tasting very like indifferent cider; for dinner,
an excellent vermicelli soup, two young fowls, fricasseed, and a hind
quarter of roast lamb, with fritters, oranges, and figs, and two more
decanters of the wine aforesaid.

This hotel is an edifice with a gloomy front upon a narrow street, and
enterable through an arch, which admits you into an enclosed court;
around the court, on each story, run the galleries, with which the
parlors and sleeping-apartments communicate. The whole house is dingy,
probably old, and seems not very clean; but yet bears traces of former
magnificence; for instance, in our bedroom, the door of which is
ornamented with gilding, and the cornices with frescos, some of which
appear to represent the cascade of Terni, the roof is crossed with carved
beams, and is painted in the interstices; the floor has a carpet, but
rough tiles underneath it, which show themselves at the margin. The
windows admit the wind; the door shuts so loosely as to leave great
cracks; and, during the rain to-day, there was a heavy shower through our
ceiling, which made a flood upon the carpet. We see no chambermaids;
nothing of the comfort and neatness of an English hotel, nor of the smart
splendors of an American one; but still this dilapidated palace affords
us a better shelter than I expected to find in the decayed country towns
of Italy. In the album of the hotel I find the names of more English
travellers than of any other nation except the Americans, who, I think,
even exceed the former; and, the route being the favorite one for
tourists between Rome and Florence, whatever merit the inns have is
probably owing to the demands of the Anglo-Saxons. I doubt not, if we
chose to pay for it, this hotel would supply us with any luxury we might
ask for; and perhaps even a gorgeous saloon and state bedchamber.

After dinner, J----- and I walked out in the dusk to see what we could of
Terni. We found it compact and gloomy (but the latter characteristic
might well enough be attributed to the dismal sky), with narrow streets,
paved from wall to wall of the houses, like those of all the towns in
Italy; the blocks of paving-stone larger than the little square torments
of Rome. The houses are covered with dingy stucco, and mostly low,
compared with those of Rome, and inhospitable as regards their dismal
aspects and uninviting doorways. The streets are intricate, as well as
narrow; insomuch that we quickly lost our way, and could not find it
again, though the town is of so small dimensions, that we passed through
it in two directions, in the course of our brief wanderings. There are
no lamp-posts in Terni; and as it was growing dark, and beginning to rain
again, we at last inquired of a person in the principal piazza, and found
our hotel, as I expected, within two minutes' walk of where we stood.

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