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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FOLIGNO.

May 26th.--At six o'clock this morning, we packed ourselves into our
vettura, my wife and I occupying the coupe, and drove out of the city
gate of Terni. There are some old towers near it, ruins of I know not
what, and care as little, in the plethora of antiquities and other
interesting objects. Through the arched gateway, as we approached, we
had a view of one of the great hills that surround the town, looking
partly bright in the early sunshine, and partly catching the shadows of
the clouds that floated about the sky. Our way was now through the Vale
of Terni, as I believe it is called, where we saw somewhat of the
fertility of Italy: vines trained on poles, or twining round mulberry and
other trees, ranged regularly like orchards; groves of olives and fields
of grain. There are interminable shrines in all sorts of situations;
some under arched niches, or little penthouses, with a brick-tiled roof,
just large enough to cover them; or perhaps in some bit of old Roman
masonry, on the wall of a wayside inn, or in a shallow cavity of the
natural rock, or high upward in the deep cuts of the road; everywhere, in
short, so that nobody need be at a loss when he feels the religious
sentiment stir within him. Our way soon began to wind among the hills,
which rose steep and lofty from the scanty, level space that lay between;
they continually thrust themselves across the passage, and appeared as if
determined to shut us completely in. A great hill would put its foot
right before us; but, at the last moment, would grudgingly withdraw it,
and allow us just room enough to creep by. Adown their sides we
discerned the dry beds of mountain torrents, which had lived too fierce a
life to let it be a long one. On here and there a hillside or promontory
we saw a ruined castle or a convent, looking from its commanding height
upon the road, which very likely some robber-knight had formerly infested
with his banditti, retreating with his booty to the security of such
strongholds. We came, once in a while, to wretched villages, where there
was no token of prosperity or comfort; but perhaps there may have been
more than we could appreciate, for the Italians do not seem to have any
of that sort of pride which we find in New England villages, where every
man, according to his taste and means, endeavors to make his homestead an
ornament to the place. We miss nothing in Italy more than the neat
doorsteps and pleasant porches and thresholds and delightful lawns or
grass-plots, which hospitably invite the imagination into a sweet
domestic interior. Everything, however sunny and luxuriant may be the
scene around, is especially dreary and disheartening in the immediate
vicinity of an Italian home.

At Strettura (which, as the name indicates, is a very narrow part of the
valley) we added two oxen to our horses, and began to ascend the Monte
Somma, which, according to Murray, is nearly four thousand feet high
where we crossed it. When we came to the steepest part of the ascent,
Gaetano, who exercises a pretty decided control over his passengers,
allowed us to walk; and we all, with one exception, alighted, and began
to climb the mountain on foot. I walked on briskly, and soon left the
rest of the party behind, reaching the top of the pass in such a short
time that I could not believe it, and kept onward, expecting still
another height to climb. But the road began to descend, winding among
the depths of the hills as heretofore; now beside the dry, gravelly bed
of a departed stream, now crossing it by a bridge, and perhaps passing
through some other gorge, that yet gave no decided promise of an outlet
into the world beyond. A glimpse might occasionally be caught, through a
gap between the hill-tops, of a company of distant mountain-peaks,
pyramidal, as these hills are apt to be, and resembling the camp of an
army of giants. The landscape was not altogether savage; sometimes a
hillside was covered with a rich field of grain, or an orchard of
olive-trees, looking not unlike puffs of smoke, from the peculiar line of
their foliage; but oftener there was a vast mantle of trees and shrubbery
from top to bottom, the golden tufts of the broom shining out amid the
verdure, and gladdening the whole. Nothing was dismal except the houses;
those were always so, whether the compact, gray lines of village hovels,
with a narrow street between, or the lonely farm-house, standing far
apart from the road, built of stone, with window-gaps high in the wall,
empty of glass; or the half-castle, half-dwelling, of which I saw a
specimen or two, with what looked like a defensive rampart, drawn around
its court. I saw no look of comfort anywhere; and continually, in this
wild and solitary region, I met beggars, just as if I were still in the
streets of Rome. Boys and girls kept beside me, till they delivered me
into the hands of others like themselves; hoary grandsires and
grandmothers caught a glimpse of my approach, and tottered as fast as
they could to intercept me; women came out of the cottages, with rotten
cherries on a plate, entreating me to buy them for a mezzo baioccho; a
man, at work on the road, left his toil to beg, and was grateful for the
value of a cent; in short, I was never safe from importunity, as long as
there was a house or a human being in sight.

We arrived at Spoleto before noon, and while our dejeuner was being
prepared, looked down from the window of the inn into the narrow street
beneath, which, from the throng of people in it, I judged to be the
principal one: priests, papal soldiers, women with no bonnets on their
heads; peasants in breeches and mushroom hats; maids and matrons, drawing
water at a fountain; idlers, smoking on a bench under the window; a talk,
a bustle, but no genuine activity. After lunch we walked out to see the
lions of Spoleto, and found our way up a steep and narrow street that led
us to the city gate, at which, it is traditionally said, Hannibal sought
to force an entrance, after the battle of Thrasymene, and was repulsed.
The gateway has a double arch, on the inner one of which is a tablet,
recording the above tradition as an unquestioned historical fact. From
the gateway we went in search of the Duomo, or cathedral, and were kindly
directed thither by an officer, who was descending into the town from the
citadel, which is an old castle, now converted into a prison. The
cathedral seemed small, and did not much interest us, either by the
Gothic front or its modernized interior. We saw nothing else in Spoleto,
but went back to the inn and resumed our journey, emerging from the city
into the classic valley of the Clitumnus, which we did not view under the
best of auspices, because it was overcast, and the wind as chill as if it
had the cast in it. The valley, though fertile, and smilingly
picturesque, perhaps, is not such as I should wish to celebrate, either
in prose or poetry. It is of such breadth and extent, that its frame of
mountains and ridgy hills hardly serve to shut it in sufficiently, and
the spectator thinks of a boundless plain, rather than of a secluded
vale. After passing Le Vene, we came to the little temple which Byron
describes, and which has been supposed to be the one immortalized by
Pliny. It is very small, and stands on a declivity that falls
immediately from the road, right upon which rises the pediment of the
temple, while the columns of the other front find sufficient height to
develop themselves in the lower ground. A little farther down than the
base of the edifice we saw the Clitumnus, so recently from its source in
the marble rock, that it was still as pure as a child's heart, and as
transparent as truth itself. It looked airier than nothing, because it
had not substance enough to brighten, and it was clearer than the
atmosphere. I remember nothing else of the valley of Clitumnus, except
that the beggars in this region of proverbial fertility are wellnigh
profane in the urgency of their petitions; they absolutely fall down on
their knees as you approach, in the same attitude as if they were praying
to their Maker, and beseech you for alms with a fervency which I am
afraid they seldom use before an altar or shrine. Being denied, they ran
hastily beside the carriage, but got nothing, and finally gave over.

I am so very tired and sleepy that I mean to mention nothing else
to-night, except the city of Trevi, which, on the approach from Spoleto,
seems completely to cover a high, peaked hill, from its pyramidal tip to
its base. It was the strangest situation in which to build a town,
where, I should suppose, no horse can climb, and whence no inhabitant
would think of descending into the world, after the approach of age
should begin to stiffen his joints. On looking back on this most
picturesque of towns (which the road, of course, did not enter, as
evidently no road could), I saw that the highest part of the hill was
quite covered with a crown of edifices, terminating in a church-tower;
while a part of the northern side was apparently too steep for building;
and a cataract of houses flowed down the western and southern slopes.
There seemed to be palaces, churches, everything that a city should have;
but my eyes are heavy, and I can write no more about them, only that I
suppose the summit of the hill was artificially tenured, so as to prevent
its crumbling down, and enable it to support the platform of edifices
which crowns it.

May 27th.--We reached Foligno in good season yesterday afternoon. Our
inn seemed ancient; and, under the same roof, on one side of the
entrance, was the stable, and on the other the coach-house. The house is
built round a narrow court, with a well of water at bottom, and an
opening in the roof at top, whence the staircases are lighted that wind
round the sides of the court, up to the highest story. Our dining-room
and bedrooms were in the latter region, and were all paved with brick,
and without carpets; and the characteristic of the whole was all
exceeding plainness and antique clumsiness of fitting up. We found
ourselves sufficiently comfortable, however; and, as has been the case
throughout our journey, had a very fair and well-cooked dinner. It
shows, as perhaps I have already remarked, that it is still possible to
live well in Italy, at no great expense, and that the high prices charged
to the forestieri at Rome and elsewhere are artificial, and ought to be
abated. . . .

The day had darkened since morning, and was now ominous of rain; but as
soon as we were established, we sallied out to see whatever was worth
looking at. A beggar-boy, with one leg, followed us, without asking for
anything, apparently only for the pleasure of our company, though he kept
at too great a distance for conversation, and indeed did not attempt to
speak.

We went first to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, and a
modernized interior, stuccoed and whitewashed, looking as neat as a New
England meeting-house, and very mean, after our familiarity with the
gorgeous churches in other cities. There were some pictures in the
chapels, but, I believe, all modern, and I do not remember a single one
of them. Next we went, without any guide, to a church attached to a
convent of Dominican monks, with a Gothic exterior, and two hideous
pictures of Death,--the skeleton leaning on his scythe, one on each side
of the door. This church, likewise, was whitewashed, but we understood
that it had been originally frescoed all over, and by famous hands; but
these pictures, having become much injured, they were all obliterated, as
we saw,--all, that is to say, except a few specimens of the best
preserved, which were spared to show the world what the whole had been.
I thanked my stars that the obliteration of the rest had taken place
before our visit; for if anything is dreary and calculated to make the
beholder utterly miserable, it is a faded fresco, with spots of the white
plaster dotted over it.

Our one-legged boy had followed us into the church and stood near the
door till he saw us ready to come out, when he hurried on before us, and
waited a little way off to see whither we should go. We still went on at
random, taking the first turn that offered itself, and soon came to
another old church,--that of St. Mary within the Walls,--into which we
entered, and found it whitewashed, like the other two. This was
especially fortunate, for the doorkeeper informed us that, two years ago,
the whole church (except, I suppose, the roof, which is of timber) had
been covered with frescos by Pinturicchio, all of which had been
ruthlessly obliterated, except a very few fragments. These he proceeded
to show us; poor, dim ghosts of what may once have been beautiful,--now
so far gone towards nothingness that I was hardly sure whether I saw a
glimmering of the design or not. By the by, it was not Pinturicchio, as
I have written above, but Giotto, assisted, I believe, by Cimabue, who
painted these frescos. Our one-legged attendant had followed us also
into this church, and again hastened out of it before us; and still we
heard the dot of his crutch upon the pavement, as we passed from street
to street. By and by a sickly looking man met us, and begged for
"qualche cosa"; but the boy shouted to him, "Niente!" whether intimating
that we would give him nothing, or that he himself had a prior claim to
all our charity, I cannot tell. However, the beggar-man turned round,
and likewise followed our devious course. Once or twice we missed him;
but it was only because he could not walk so fast as we; for he appeared
again as we emerged from the door of another church. Our one-legged
friend we never missed for a moment; he kept pretty near us,--near enough
to be amused by our indecision whither to go; and he seemed much
delighted when it began to rain, and he saw us at a loss how to find our
way back to the hotel. Nevertheless, he did not offer to guide us; but
stumped on behind with a faster or slower dot of his crutch, according to
our pace. I began to think that he must have been engaged as a spy upon
our movements by the police who had taken away my passport at the city
gate. In this way he attended us to the door of the hotel, where the
beggar had already arrived. The latter again put in his doleful
petition; the one-legged boy said not a word, nor seemed to expect
anything, and both had to go away without so much as a mezzo baioccho out
of our pockets. The multitude of beggars in Italy makes the heart as
obdurate as a paving-stone.

We left Foligno this morning, and, all ready for us at the door of the
hotel, as we got into the carriage, were our friends, the beggar-man and
the one-legged boy; the latter holding out his ragged hat, and smiling
with as confident an air as if he had done us some very particular
service, and were certain of being paid for it, as from contract. It was
so very funny, so impudent, so utterly absurd, that I could not help
giving him a trifle; but the man got nothing,--a fact that gives me a
twinge or two, for he looked sickly and miserable. But where everybody
begs, everybody, as a general rule, must be denied; and, besides, they
act their misery so well that you are never sure of the genuine article.

PERUGIA.

May 25th.--As I said last night, we left Foligno betimes in the morning,
which was bleak, chill, and very threatening, there being very little
blue sky anywhere, and the clouds lying heavily on some of the
mountain-ridges. The wind blew sharply right in U----'s face and mine,
as we occupied the coupe, so that there must have been a great deal of
the north in it. We drove through a wide plain--the Umbrian valley, I
suppose--and soon passed the old town of Spello, just touching its
skirts, and wondering how people, who had this rich and convenient plain
from which to choose a site, could think of covering a huge island of
rock with their dwellings,--for Spello tumbled its crooked and narrow
streets down a steep descent, and cannot well have a yard of even space
within its walls. It is said to contain some rare treasures of ancient
pictorial art.

I do not remember much that we saw on our route. The plains and the
lower hillsides seemed fruitful of everything that belongs to Italy,
especially the olive and the vine. As usual, there were a great many
shrines, and frequently a cross by the wayside. Hitherto it had been
merely a plain wooden cross; but now almost every cross was hung with
various instruments, represented in wood, apparently symbols of the
crucifixion of our Saviour,--the spear, the sponge, the crown of thorns,
the hammer, a pair of pincers, and always St. Peter's cock, made a
prominent figure, generally perched on the summit of the cross.

From our first start this morning we had seen mists in various quarters,
betokening that there was rain in those spots, and now it began to
spatter in our own faces, although within the wide extent of our prospect
we could see the sunshine falling on portions of the valley. A rainbow,
too, shone out, and remained so long visible that it appeared to have
made a permanent stain in the sky.

By and by we reached Assisi, which is magnificently situated for
pictorial purposes, with a gray castle above it, and a gray wall around
it, itself on a mountain, and looking over the great plain which we had
been traversing, and through which lay our onward way. We drove through
the Piazza Grande to an ancient house a little beyond, where a hospitable
old lady receives travellers for a consideration, without exactly keeping
an inn.

In the piazza we saw the beautiful front of a temple of Minerva,
consisting of several marble pillars, fluted, and with rich capitals
supporting a pediment. It was as fine as anything I had seen at Rome,
and is now, of course, converted into a Catholic church.

I ought to have said that, instead of driving straight to the old lady's,
we alighted at the door of a church near the city gate, and went in to
inspect some melancholy frescos, and thence clambered up a narrow street
to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, old enough, but not very
impressive. I really remember not a single object that we saw within,
but am pretty certain that the interior had been stuccoed and
whitewashed. The ecclesiastics of old time did an excellent thing in
covering the interiors of their churches with brilliant frescos, thus
filling the holy places with saints and angels, and almost with the
presence of the Divinity. The modern ecclesiastics do the next best
thing in obliterating the wretched remnants of what has had its day and
done its office. These frescos might be looked upon as the symbol of the
living spirit that made Catholicism a true religion, and glorified it as
long as it did live; now the glory and beauty have departed from one and
the other.

My wife, U----, and Miss Shepard now set out with a cicerone to visit the
great Franciscan convent, in the church of which are preserved some
miraculous specimens, in fresco and in oils, of early Italian art; but as
I had no mind to suffer any further in this way, I stayed behind with
J----- and R-----, who we're equally weary of these things.

After they were gone we took a ramble through the city, but were almost
swept away by the violence of the wind, which struggled with me for my
hat, and whirled R----- before it like a feather. The people in the
public square seemed much diverted at our predicament, being, I suppose,
accustomed to these rude blasts in their mountain-home. However, the
wind blew in momentary gusts, and then became more placable till another
fit of fury came, and passed as suddenly as before. We walked out of the
same gate through which we had entered,--an ancient gate, but recently
stuccoed and whitewashed, in wretched contrast to the gray, venerable
wall through which it affords ingress,--and I stood gazing at the
magnificent prospect of the wide valley beneath. It was so vast that
there appeared to be all varieties of weather in it at the same instant;
fields of sunshine, tracts of storm,--here the coming tempest, there the
departing one. It was a picture of the world on a vast canvas, for there
was rural life and city life within the great expanse, and the whole set
in a frame of mountains,--the nearest bold and dust-net, with the rocky
ledges showing through their sides, the distant ones blue and dim,--so
far stretched this broad valley.

When I had looked long enough,--no, not long enough, for it would take a
great while to read that page,--we returned within the gate, and we
clambered up, past the cathedral and into the narrow streets above it.
The aspect of everything was immeasurably old; a thousand years would be
but a middle age for one of those houses, built so massively with huge
stones and solid arches, that I do not see how they are ever to tumble
down, or to be less fit for human habitation than they are now. The
streets crept between them, and beneath arched passages, and up and down
steps of stone or ancient brick, for it would be altogether impossible
for a carriage to ascend above the Grand Piazza, though possibly a donkey
or a chairman's mule might find foothold. The city seems like a stony
growth out of the hillside, or a fossilized city,--so old and singular it
is, without enough life and juiciness in it to be susceptible of decay.
An earthquake is the only chance of its ever being ruined, beyond its
present ruin. Nothing is more strange than to think that this now dead
city--dead, as regards the purposes for which men live nowadays--was,
centuries ago, the seat and birthplace almost of art, the only art in
which the beautiful part of the human mind then developed itself. How
came that flower to grow among these wild mountains? I do not conceive,
however, that the people of Assisi were ever much more enlightened or
cultivated on the side of art than they are at present. The
ecclesiastics were then the only patrons; and the flower grew here
because there was a great ecclesiastical garden in which it was sheltered
and fostered. But it is very curious to think of Assisi, a school of art
within, and mountain and wilderness without.

My wife and the rest of the party returned from the convent before noon,
delighted with what they had seen, as I was delighted not to have seen
it. We ate our dejeuner, and resumed our journey, passing beneath the
great convent, after emerging from the gate opposite to that of our
entrance. The edifice made a very good spectacle, being of great extent,
and standing on a double row of high and narrow arches, on which it is
built up from the declivity of the hill.

We soon reached the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, which is a modern
structure, and very spacious, built in place of one destroyed by an
earthquake. It is a fine church, opening out a magnificent space in its
nave and aisles; and beneath the great dome stands the small old chapel,
with its rude stone walls, in which St. Francis founded his order. This
chapel and the dome appear to have been the only portions of the ancient
church that were not destroyed by the earthquake. The dwelling of St.
Francis is said to be also preserved within the church; but we did not
see it, unless it were a little dark closet into which we squeezed to see
some frescos by La Spagna. It had an old wooden door, of which U----
picked off a little bit of a chip, to serve as a relic. There is a
fresco in the church, on the pediment of the chapel, by Overbeck,
representing the Assumption of the Virgin. It did not strike me as
wonderfully fine. The other pictures, of which there were many, were
modern, and of no great merit.

We pursued our way, and came, by and by, to the foot of the high hill on
which stands Perugia, and which is so long and steep that Gaetano took a
yoke of oxen to aid his horses in the ascent. We all, except my wife,
walked a part of the way up, and I myself, with J----- for my companion,
kept on even to the city gate,--a distance, I should think, of two or
three miles, at least. The lower part of the road was on the edge of the
hill, with a narrow valley on our left; and as the sun had now broken
out, its verdure and fertility, its foliage and cultivation, shone forth
in miraculous beauty, as green as England, as bright as only Italy.
Perugia appeared above us, crowning a mighty hill, the most picturesque
of cities; and the higher we ascended, the more the view opened before
us, as we looked back on the course that we had traversed, and saw the
wide valley, sweeping down and spreading out, bounded afar by mountains,
and sleeping in sun and shadow. No language nor any art of the pencil
can give an idea of the scene. When God expressed himself in the
landscape to mankind, he did not intend that it should be translated into
any tongue save his own immediate one. J----- meanwhile, whose heart is
now wholly in snail-shells, was rummaging for them among the stones and
hedges by the roadside; yet, doubtless, enjoyed the prospect more than he
knew. The coach lagged far behind us, and when it came up, we entered
the gate, where a soldier appeared, and demanded my passport. We drove
to the Grand Hotel de France, which is near the gate, and two fine little
boys ran beside the carriage, well dressed and well looking enough to
have been a gentleman's sons, but claiming Gaetano for their father. He
is an inhabitant of Perugia, and has therefore reached his own home,
though we are still little more than midway to our journey's end.

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