In a letter of the 19th November, 1840, the writer describes at great length the recent opening of the Chamber by the King. She enlarges on the intensity of the anxiety felt for the tenor of the King's speech, which was supposed to be the announcement of war or peace; and describes the deep emotion, with which Louis Philippe, declaring his hope that peace might yet be preserved, called upon the nation to assist him in the effort to maintain it; and expresses the scorn and loathing with which she overheard one republican deputy say to another as the King spoke, "Voyez donc ce Robert Macaire, comme il fait semblant d'avoir du coeur!"
A letter of the 14th March, 1842, is written in better spirits and a lighter tone. Speaking of the prevalent hostile feeling towards England the writer wishes that her countrymen would remember Lamartine's observation that "ce patriotisme coûte peu! Il suffit d'ignorer, d'injurier et de hair." She tells her correspondent that "if Lord Cowley has much to do to establish the exact line between Lord Aberdeen'sobservationsandobjections, Lady Cowley has no less difficulty in keeping a nice balance between dignity and popularity," as "the Embassy is besieged by all sets and all parties; the tag and rag, because pushing is a part of their nature; thejuste milieu[how the very phrase recalls a whole forgotten world!] because they consider the English Embassy as their property; the noble Faubourg because they are tired of sulking, and would not object to treating Lady Cowley as they treated Colonel Thorn,[1] viz., establishing their quarters at the 'Cowley Arms,' as they did at the 'Thorn's Head,' and inviting their friends on the recognised principle, 'C'est moi qui invite, et Monsieur qui paie'"
[Footnote 1: Colonel Thorn was an American of fabulous wealth, who was for a season or two very notorious in Paris. He was the hero of the often-told story of the two drives to Longchamps the same day; first with one gorgeous equipment ofliveries, and a second time with other and more resplendently clothed retainers.]
Then follows an account of a fancybal monstreat the Tuileries, which might have turned out, says the writer, to deserve that title in another sense. It was believed that a plot had been formed for the assassination of the King, at the moment, when, according to his invariable custom, he took his stand at the door of the supper-room to receive the ladies there. Four thousand five hundred tickets had been issued and a certain number of these, still blank, had disappeared. That was certain. And it was also certain that the King did not go to the door of the supper-room as usual. But the writer remarks that the tickets may have been stolen by, or for, people who could not obtain them legitimately. But the instantly conceived suspicion of a plot is illustrative of the conditions of feeling and opinions in Paris at the time.
"For my part," continues Mademoiselle D'Henin, "I never enjoyed a ball so much; perhaps because I did not expect to be amused; perhaps because all the royal family, the Jockey Club, and the fastidious Frenchwomen congratulated me upon my toilet, and voted it one of the handsomest there. Theysaidthe most becoming (but that wasde l'eau bénite de Cour); perhaps it was because the Dukes of Orleans, Nemours, and Aumale, who never dance, and did so very little that evening, all three honoured me with a quadrille. You see I expose to you all the very linings of my heart I dissect it and exhibit all the vanity it contains. But you will excuse me when I tell you of a compliment that might have turned a wiser head than mine. The fame of my huntress's costume (Mademoiselle D'Henin was in those days the verybeau-idéalof a Diana!) was such that it reached the ears of the wife of our butcher, who sent to beg that I would lend it to her to copy, as she was going to a fancy ball!"
A letter of the 8th of August, 1842, written from Fulham Palace, contains some interesting notices of the grief and desolation caused by the sad death of the Duke of Orleans.
"Was there ever a more afflicting calamity!" she writes. "When last I wrote his name in a letter to you, it was to describe him as the admired of all beholders, the hero of theféte, the pride and honour of France, and now what remains of him is in his grave! The affliction of his family baffles all description. I receive the most touching accounts from Paris. Some ladies about the Court write to me that nothing can equal their grief. As long as the coffin remained in the chapel at Neuilly, the members of the family were incessantly kneeling by the side of it, praying and weeping. The King so far mastered his feelings, that whenever he had official duties to perform, he was sufficiently composed to performson métier de Roi. But when the painful task was done he would rush to the chapel, and weep over the dead body of his son, till the whole palace rang with his cries and lamentations. When the body was removed from Neuilly to Notre Dame, the scene at Neuilly was truly heartrending. My father has seen the King and the Princes several times since the catastrophe, and he says it has done the work of years on their personal appearance, The Due de Nemours has neither eaten nor slept since his brother died, and looks as if walking out of his grave. Mamma wrote him a few lines of condolence, which he answered by a most affecting note. Papa was summoned to attend the King to the House, asGrand Officier, and says he never witnessed such a scene. Even the opposition shed their crocodile tears. Placed immediately near the King on the steps of the throne, he saw the struggle between kingly decorum and fatherly affliction. Nature had the victory. Three times the King attempted to speak, three times he was obliged to stop, and at last burst into a flood of tears. The contagion gained all around him. And it was only interrupted by sobs that he could proceed. And it is in the face of this despair, when the body of the prince is scarcely cold, that that horrid Thiers and his associates begin afresh their infernal manoeuvres!"
A letter of the 3rd April, 1842, contains among a quantity of the gossip of the day an odd story, which, the writer says, "is putting Rome in a ferment, and the clergy in raptures." I think I remember that it made a considerable stir in ecclesiastic circles at the time. A certain M. Ratisbonne, a Jew, it seems entered a church in Rome (the writer does not say so, but if I remember rightly, it was the "Gesu"), with a friend, a M. de Bussières, who had some business to transact in the sacristy. The Jew, who professed complete infidelity, meantime was looking at the pictures. But M. de Bussières, when his business was done, found him prostrate on the pavement in front of a picture of the Madonna. The Jew on coming to himself declared that the Virgin had stepped from her frame, and addressed him, with the result, as he said, that having fallen to the ground an infidel, he rose a convinced Christian! Mademoiselle D'Henin writes in a tone which indicates small belief in the miracle, but seems to accept as certain the further facts, that the convert gave all he possessed to the Church and became a monk.
I have recently—even while transcribing these extracts from her letters—heard of the death, within the last few years, of the writer of them. She died in England, I am told, and unmarried. Her sympathies and affections were always strongly turned to her mother's country, as indeed may be in some degree inferred from even those passages of her letters which have been given. And I can well conceive that the events which, each more disastrous than its predecessor, followed in France shortly after the date of the last of them, may have rendered, especially after the death of her parents, a life in France distasteful to her. But I, and, I think, my mother also, had entirely lost sight of her for very many years. Had I imagined that she was living in England, I should undoubtedly have endeavoured to see her.
I have known many women, denizens ofle grand monde, who have adorned it with equally brilliant talents, equally captivating beauty, equally sparkling wit and vivacity of intelligence. And I have known many, denizens of the studious and the book world, gifted with larger powers of intellect, and more richly dowered with the results of thought and study But I do not think that I ever met with one who possessed in so large a degree the choice product resulting from conversance with both these worlds. She was in truth a very brilliant creature.
Madame D'Henin I remember made us laugh heartily one evening by telling us the following anecdote. At one of those remarkableomnium-gatherumreceptions at the Tuileries, of which I have spoken in a former chapter, she heard an American lady, to whom Louis Philippe was talking of his American recollections and of various persons he had known there, say to him, "Oh, sire, they all retain the most lively recollections of your majesty's sojourn among them,and wish nothing more than that you should return among them again!" The Duke of Orleans, who was standing behind the King, fairly burst into a guffaw.
There was a story current in Rome, in the days of Pius the Ninth, which may be coupled with this as a goodpendant. His Holiness, when he had occupied the papal throne for a period considerably exceeding the legendary twenty-five years of St. Peter, was one day very affably asking an Englishman, who had been presented to him, whether he had seen everything in Rome most calculated to interest a stranger, and was answered; "Yes indeed, your Holiness, I think almost everything, except one which I confess I have been particularly anxious to witness—a conclave!"
Here are a few jottings at random from my diary, which may still have some little interest.
"Madame Le Roi, a daughter of General Hoche, told me (22nd January, 1840), that as she was driving on the boulevard a day or two ago, a sou piece was thrown with great violence at the window of her carriage, smashing it to pieces. This, she said, was because her family arms were emblazoned on the panel. Most of the carriages in Paris, she said, had no arms on them for fear of similar attacks."
Then we were active frequenters of the theatres. We go, I find, to the Français, to see Mars, then sixty years old, inLes Dehors Trompeursand in theFausses Confidences; to the opera to hearRobert le DiableandLucia di Lammermuir, with Persiani, Tamburini, and Rubini; and the following night to the Français again, to see Rachel inCinna.
I thought her personally, I observe, very attractive. But that, and sundry other subsequent experiences, left me with the impression that she was truly very powerful in the representation of scorn, indignation, hatred, and all the sterner and less amiable passions of the soul, but failed painfully when herrôlerequired the exhibition of tenderness or any of the gentler emotions. These were my impressions when she was young and I was comparatively so. But when, many years afterwards, I saw her repeatedly in Italy, they were not, I think, much modified.
The frequent occasions on which subsequently I saw Ristori produced an impression on me very much the reverse. I remember thinking Ristori's "Mirra" too good, so terribly true as to be almost too painful for the theatre. I thought Rachel's "Marie Stuart" upon the whole her finest performance, though "Adrienne" ran it hard.
Persiani, I note, supported by Lablache and Rubini, had a most triumphant reception inInez de Castro, while Albertazzi was very coldly received inBlanche de Castille. Grisi inNormawas "superb." "Persiani and P. Garcia sang a duet fromTancredi; it was divine! I think I like Garcia's voice better than any of them. Nor could I think her ugly, as it is the fashion to call her, though it must be admitted that her mouth and teeth are alarming."
Then there were brilliant receptions at the English Embassy (Lord Granville) and at the Austrian Embassy (Comte d'Appony). My diary remarks that stars and gold lace and ribbons of all the Orders in Christendom were more abundant at the latter, but female beauty at the former. I remember much admiring that of Lady Honoria Cadogan, and that of a very remarkably lovely Visconti girl, a younger sister of the Princess Belgiojoso. But despite this perfect beauty, my diary notes, that it was "curious to observe the unmistakable superiority as a human being of the young English patrician." I remember that the "sit-down" suppers at the Austrian Embassy—a separate little table for every two, three, or four guests—were remarked on as a novelty (and applauded) by the Parisians.
Then at Miss Clarke's (afterwards Madame Mohl) I find Fauriel, "the first Provençal scholar in Europe," delightful, and am disgusted with Merimée, because he manifested self-sufficiency, as it seemed to my youthful criticism, by pooh-poohing the probability of the temple at Lanleff in Brittany having been aught else than a church of the Templars.
Then Arago reads anElogeon "old Ampère," of which I only remark that it lasted two hours and a half. Then there was a dinner at Dr. Gilchrist's whose widow our old friend Pepe, who for many years had always called her "Madame Ghee-cree," subsequently married. My notes, written the same evening, remind me that "I did not much like the radical old Doctor (his wife was an old acquaintance, but I had never seen him before); he is eighty, and ought to know better. Old Nymzevitch (I am not sure of the spelling), the ex-Chancellor of Poland, dined with us. He is eighty-four. When he said that he had conversed with the Duc de Richelieu, I started as if he had announced himself as the Wandering Jew. But, in fact, he had had, when a young man, an interview with the Duc, then ninety. He was, Nymzevitch told me, dreadfully emaciated, but dressed very splendidly in a purple coat all bedizened with silver lace. He received me, said the old ex-Chancellor, with much affable dignity."'
Then comes a breakfast with Pepe, at which I met the President Thibeaudeau, "a grey old man who makes a point of saying rude, coarse, and disagreeable things, which his friends call dry humour. He found fault with everything at the breakfast table."
Then a visit to the Chamber (where I heard Soult, Dupin, and Teste speak, and thought it "a terrible bear-garden)" is followed by attendance at a sermon by Athanase Coquerel, the Protestant preacher whose reputation in the Parisianbeau mondewas great in those days. He was, says my diary, "exceedingly eloquent, but I did not like his sermon;" for which dislike my notes proceed to give the reasons, which I spare the, I hope grateful, reader. Then I went to hear Bishop Luscombe at the Ambassador's chapel, and listened to "a very stupid sermon." I seem, somewhat to my surprise as I read the records of it, to have had a pronounced taste for sermons in those days, which I fear I have somehow outgrown. But then I have been very deaf during my later decades.
Bishop Luscombe may perhaps however be made more amusing to the reader than he was to me in the Embassy chapel by the following fragment of his experience. The Bishop arrived one day at Paddington, and could not find his luggage. He called a porter to find it for him, telling him the name to be read on the articles. The man, very busy with other people, answered hurriedly, "You must go to hell for your luggage." Now, Luscombe, who was a somewhat pompous and verybishopyman, was dreadfully shocked, and felt, as he said, as if the porter had struck him in the face. In extreme indignation he demanded where he could speak with any of the authorities, and was told that "the Board" was then sitting up stairs. So to the boardroom the Bishop went straightway, and announcing himself, made his complaint. The chairman, professing his regret that such offence should have been given, said he feared the man must have been drunk, but that he should be immediately summoned to give an account of his conduct. So the porter in great trepidation appeared in a few minutes before the august tribunal of "the Board."
"Well, sir," said he in reply to the chairman's indignant questioning, "what could I do? I was werry busy at the time. So when the gentleman says as his name was Luscombe, I could do no better than tell him to go to h'ell for his luggage, and he'd have found it there all right!"
"Oh! I see," said the chairman, "it is a case of misplaced aspirate! We have spaces on the wall marked with the letters of the alphabet, and you would have found your luggage at the letter L. You will see that the man meant no offence. I am sorry you should have been so scandalised, but though we succeed, I hope, in making our porters civil to our customers, it would be hopeless, I fear, to attempt to make them say L correctly."Solvuntur risu tabulae.
I find chronicled a long talk with Mohl one evening at Madame Récamier's. The room was very full of notable people of all sorts, and the tide of chattering was running very strong. "How can anything last long in France?" said he, in reply to my having said (in answer to his assertion that Cousin's philosophy had gone by) that it had been somewhat short-lived. "Reputations are made and pass away. It is impossible that they should endure. It is in such places as this that they are destroyed. The friction is prodigious!"
We then began to talk of the state of religion in France. He said that among a large set, religion was nowà la mode. But he did not suppose that many of the fine folks whopatronisedit had much belief in it. The clergy of France were, he said, almost invariably very illiterate. Guizot, I remembered, calls them in hisHistory of Civilisation doctes et crudits, but I abstained from quoting him. Mohl went on to tell me a story of a newspaper that had been about to be established, calledLe Democrat. The shareholders met, when it appeared that one party wished to make it a Roman Catholic, and the other an atheist organ. Whereupon the existence of God was put to the vote and carried by a majority of one, at which the atheist party were so disgusted that they seceded in a body.
I got to like Mohl much, and had more conversation, I think, with him than with any other of the numerous men of note with whom I became more or less acquainted. On another occasion, when I found him in his cabinet, walled up as usual among his books, our talk fell on his great work, the edition of the oriental MSS. in theBibliothèque Royale, which was to be completed in ten folio volumes, the first of which, just out, he was showing me. He complained of the extreme slowness of the Government presses in getting on with the work. This he attributed to the absurd costliness, as he considered it, of the style in which the work was brought out. The cost of producing that first volume he told me had been over 1,600_l_. sterling. It was to be sold at a little less than a hundred francs. Something was said (by me, I think) of the possibility of obtaining assistance from the King, who was generally supposed to be immensely wealthy. Mohl said that he did not believe Louis Philippe to be nearly so rich a man as he was supposed to be. He had spent, he said, enormous sums on the châteaux he had restored, and was affirmed by those who had the means of knowing the fact, to be at that time twelve millions of francs in debt.
My liking for Mohl seems to have been fully justified by the estimation he was generally held in. I find in a recently published volume by Kathleen O'Meara on the life of my old friend, Miss Clarke, who afterwards became his wife, the following passage quoted from Sainte-Beuve, who describes him as "a man who was the very embodiment of learning and of inquiry, an orientalsavant—more than asavant—a sage, with a mind clear, loyal, and vast; a German mind passed through an English filter, a cloudless, unruffled mirror, open and limpid; of pure and frank morality; early disenchanted with all things; with a grain of irony devoid of all bitterness, the laugh of a child under a bald head; a Goethe-like intelligence, but free from all prejudice." "A charming andspirituelleFrenchwoman," Miss O'Meara goes on to say, "said of Julius Mohl that Nature in forming his character had skimmed the cream of the three nationalities to which he belonged by birth, by adoption and by marriage, making him deep as a German,spirituelas a Frenchman, and loyal as an Englishman."
I may insert here the following short note from Madame Mohl, because the manner of it is very characteristic of her. It is, as was usual with her, undated.
* * * * *
"MY DEAR MR. TROLLOPE,—By accident I have just learned that you are in London. If I could see you and talk over my dear old friend (Madame Récamier) I should be so much obliged and so glad. I live 68 Oxford Terrace, Hyde Park. If you would write me a note to say when I should be at home for the purpose. But if you can't, I am generally, not always, found after four. But if you could come on the 10th or 12th after nine we have a party. I am living at Mrs. Schwabe's just now till 16th this month. Pray write me a note, even If you can't come.
"Yours ever,
* * * * *
All the capital letters in the above transcript, except those in her name are mine, she uses none. The note is written in headlong hurry.
Mignet, whom I met at the house of Thiers, I liked too, but Mohl was my favourite.
It was all very amusing, with as much excitement and interest of all kinds crammed into a few weeks as might have lasted one for a twelvemonth. And I liked it better than teaching Latin to the youth of Birmingham. But it would seem that there was something that I liked better still. For on March 30th, leaving my mother in the full swing of the Parisian gaieties, I bade adieu to them all and once again "took to the road," bound on an excursion through Central France.
My journey through central France took me by Chartres, Orleans, down the Loire to Nantes, then through La Vendée to Fontenay, Niort, Poitiers, Saintes, Rochefort, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Angouleme, Limoges, and thence back to Paris. On looking at the book for the first time since I read the proof-sheets I find it amusing. The fault of it, as an account of the district traversed, is, that it treats of the localities described on a scale that would have needed twenty volumes, instead of two, to complete the story of my tour in the same proportion. I do not remember that any of my critics noted this fault. Perhaps they feared that on the first suggestion of such an idea I should have set about mending the difficulty by the production of a score of other volumes on the subject! I could easily have done so. I was in no danger of incurring the anathema launched by Sterne—I think it was Sterne—against the man who went from Dan to Beersheba and found all barren. I found matter of interest everywhere, and could have gone on doing so, as it seemed to me in those days, for ever.
The part of France I visited is not much betravelled by Englishmen, and the general idea is that it is not an interesting section of the country. I thought, and still think, otherwise. My notion is, that if a line were drawn through France from Calais to the centre of the Pyrenean chain, by far the greater part of the prettiest country and most interesting populations, as well as places, would be found to the westward of it. I do not think that my bill of fare excited any great interest in the reading world. But I suppose that I contrived to interest a portion of it; for the book was fairly successful.
I wrote a book in many respects of the same kind many years subsequently, giving an account of a journey through certain little-visited districts of central Italy, under the title of aLenten Journey. It is not, I think, so good a book as my French journeys furnished, mainly to my mind because it was in one small volume instead of two big ones, and both for want of space and want of time was done hurriedly and too compendiously. The true motto for the writer of such a book isnihil a me alienum puto, whetherhumanumor otherwise. My own opinion is, to make a perfectly clean breast of it, that I could now write a fairly amusing book on a journey from Tyburn turnpike to Stoke Pogis. But then such books should be addressed to readers who are not in such a tearing hurry as the unhappy world is in these latter days.
It would seem that I found my two octavo volumes did not afford me nearly enough space to say my say respecting the country traversed, for they are brought to an end somewhat abruptly by a hurried return from Limoges to Paris; whereas my ramble was much more extended, including both the upper and lower provinces of Auvergne and the whole of the Bourbonnais. My voluminous notes of the whole of these wanderings are now before me. But I will let my readers off easy, recording only that I walked from Murat to St. Flour, a distance of fifteen miles, in five minutes under three hours. Not bad! My diary notes that it was frequently very difficult to find my way in walking about Auvergne, from the paucity of people I could find who could speak French, thelangue du paysbeing as unintelligible as Choctaw. This would hardly be the case now.
I don't know whether a knot of leading tradesmen at Bordeaux could now be found to talk, as did such a party with whom I got into conversation in that year, 1840. It was explained to me that England, as was well known, had liberated her slaves in the West Indies perfectly well knowing that the colonies would be absolutely ruined by the measure, but expecting to be amply compensated by the ruin of the French colonies, which would result from the example, and the consequent extension of trade with the East Indies, from which France would be compelled to purchase all the articles her own colonies now supplied her with. One of these individuals told me and the rest of his audience, that he had the means ofknowingthat the interest of the English national debt was paid every year by fresh borrowing, and that bankruptcy and absolute smash must occur within a few years. "Ah!" said a much older, grey-headed man, who had been listening sitting with his hands reposing on his walking-stick before him, and who spoke with a sort of patient, long-expecting hope and a deep sigh, "ah! we have been looking for that many a year; but I am beginning to doubt whether I shall live to see it." My assurances that matters were not altogether so bad as they supposed in England of course met with little credence. Still, they listened to me, and did not show angry signs of a consciousness that I was audaciously befooling them, till the talk having veered to London, I ventured to assure them that London was not surrounded by anyoctroiboundary, and that no impost of that nature was levied there.[1] Then in truth I might as well have assured them that London streets were literally paved with gold.
[Footnote 1: It may possibly be necessary to tell untravelled Englishmen that theoctroi, universal on the Continent, is an impost levied on all articles of consumption at the gates of a town.]
On the 30th of May, 1840, I returned with my mother from Paris to her house in York Street. Life had been very pleasant there to her I believe, and certainly to me during those periods of it which my inborn love of rambling allowed me to pass there. But in the following June it was determined that the house in York Street should be given up. Probably thecausa causansof this determination was the fact of my sister's removal to far Penrith. But I think too, that there was a certain unavowed feeling, that we had eaten up London, and should enjoy a move to new pastures.
I remember well a certain morning in York Street when we—my mother and I—held a solemn audit of accounts. It was found that during her residence in York Street she had spent a good deal more than she had supposed. She had entertained a good deal, giving frequent "little dinners." But dinners, however little, are apt in London to leave tradesmen's bills not altogether small in proportion to their littleness. "The fact is," said my mother, "that potatoes have been quite exceptionally dear." For a very long series of years she never heard the last of those exceptional potatoes. But despite the alarming deficit caused by those unfortunate vegetables, I do not think the abandonment of the establishment in York Street was caused by financial considerations. She was earning in those years large sums of money—quite as large as any she had been spending—and might have continued in London had she been so minded.
No doubt I had much to do with the determination we came to. But for my part, if it had at that time been proposed to me, that our establishment should be reduced to a couple of trunks, and all our worldly possessions to the contents of them, with an opening vista of carriages, diligences, and shipsad libitumin prospect, I should have jumped at the idea. A caravan, which in addition to shirts and stockings could have carried about one's books and writing tackle would have seemed thesummum bonumof human felicity.
So we turned our backs on London without a thought of regret and once again "took the road;" but this time separately, my mother going to my sister at Penrith and I to pass the summer months in wanderings in Picardy, Lorraine, and French Flanders, and the ensuing winter in Paris.
I hardly know which was the pleasanter time. By this time I was no stranger to Paris, and had many friends there. It was my first experiment of living there as a bachelor, as I was going to say, but I mean "on my own hook," and left altogether to my own devices. I found of course that my then experiences differed considerably from those acquired when livingen famille. But I am disposed to think that the tolerably intimate knowledge I flatter myself I possessed of the Paris and Parisians of Louis Philippe's time was mainly the result of this second residence. I remember among a host of things indicating the extent of the difference between those days and these, that I lived in a very good apartment,au troisième, in one of the streets immediately behind the best part of the Rue de Rivoli for one hundred francs a month! This price included all service (save of course a tip to the porter), and the preparation of my coffee for breakfast if I needed it. For dinner, or any other meal, I had to go out.
"Society" lived in Paris in those days—not unreasonably as the result soon showed—in perpetual fear of being knocked all to pieces by an outbreak of revolution, though of course nobody said so. But I lived mainly (though not entirely) among thebien pensantspeople, who looked on all anti-governmental manifestations with horror. Perhaps the restless discontent which destroyed Louis Philippe's government is the most disheartening circumstance in the whole course of recent French history. That the rule of Charles Dix should have occasioned revolt may be regrettable, but is not a matter for surprise. But that of Louis Philippe was not a stagnant or retrogressiverégime. "La carrière" was very undeniably open to talent and merit of every description. Material well-being was on the increase. And the door was not shut against any political change which even very advanced Liberalism, of the kind consistent with order, might have aspired to. But the Liberalism which moved France was not of that kind.
One of my most charming friends of those days, Rosa Stewart, who afterwards became and was well known to literature as Madame Blaze de Bury, was both too clever and too shrewd an observer, as well as, to me at least, too frank to pretend any of the assurance which was thende mode. She saw what was coming, and was fully persuaded that it must come. I hope that her eye may rest on this testimony to her perspicacity, though I know not whether she still graces this planet with her very pleasing presence. For as, alas! in so many scores of other instances, our lives have drifted apart, and it is many years since I have heard of her.
One excursion I specially remember in connection with that autumn was partly, I think, a pedestrian one, to Amiens and Beauvais, made in company with the W—— A——, of whom my brother speaks in his autobiography; which I mention chiefly for the sake of recording my testimony to the exactitude of his description of that very singular individual. If it had not been for the continual carefulness necessitated by the difficulty of avoiding all cause of quarrel, I should say that he was about the pleasantest travelling companion I have ever known.
In the beginning of April, 1841, after a little episode of spring wandering in the Tyrol and Bavaria (in the course of which I met my mother at the château of her very old friend the Baroness de Zandt, who has been mentioned before, and was now living somewhat solitarily in her huge house in its huge park near Bamberg), my mother and I started for Italy. Neither of us had at that time conceived the idea of making a home there. The object of the journey, which had been long contemplated by my mother, was the writing of a book on Italy, as she had already done on Paris and on Vienna.
Our journey was a prosperous one in all respects, and our flying visit to Italy was very pleasant. My mother's book was duly written, and published by Mr. Bentley in 1842. But theVisit to Italy, as the work was entitled (with justly less pretence than the titles of either of its predecessors had put forward), was in truth all too short. And I find that almost all of the huge mass of varied recollections which are connected in my mind with Italy and Italian people and things belong to my second "visit" of nearly half a century's duration!
We made, however, several pleasant acquaintances and some fast friends, principally at Florence, and thus paved the way, although little intending it at the time, for our return thither.
Our visit was rendered shorter than it would probably otherwise have been by my mother's strong desire to be with my sister, who was expecting the birth of her first child at Penrith. And for this purpose we left Rome in February, 1842, in very severe weather. We crossed the Mont Cenis in sledges—which to me was a very acceptable experience, but to my mother was one, which nothing could have induced her to face, save the determination not to fail her child at her need.
How well I remember hearing as I sat in thebanquetteof the diligence which was just leaving Susa for its climb up the mountain amid the snow, then rapidly falling, the driver of the descending diligence, which had accomplished its work and was just about entering the haven of Susa, sing out to our driver—"Vous allez vous amuser joliment là haut, croyez moi!"
We did not, however, change the diligence for the sledges till we came to the descent on the northern side. But as we made our slow way to the top our vehicle was supported from time to time on either side by twelve strapping fellows, who put their shoulders to it.
I appreciated during that journey, though I was glad to see the mountain in its winter dress, the recommendation not to let your flight be in the winter.
I accompanied my mother to Penrith, and forthwith devoted myself heart and body to the preparation of our new house, and the beautifying of the very pretty paddock in which it was situated. I put in some hundreds of trees and shrubs with my own hands, which prospered marvellously, and have become, I have been told, most luxuriant shrubberies. I was bent on building a cloistered walk along the entire top of the field, which would have afforded a charming ambulatory sheltered from the north winds and from the rain, and would have commanded the most lovely views, while the pillars supporting the roof would have presented admirable places for a world of flowering climbing plants. And doubtless I should have achieved it, had we remained there. But it would have run into too much money to be undertaken immediately,—fortunately; for, inasmuch as there was nothing of the sort in all that country side, no human being would have given a stiver more for the house when it came to be sold, and the next owner would probably have pulled it down. There was no authority for such a thing. Had it been suffered to remain it would probably have been called "Trollope's folly!"
Subsequently, but not immediately after we left it, the place—oddly enough I forget the name we gave it—became the property and the residence of my brother-in-law.
Of my life at Penrith I need add nothing to the jottings I have already placed before the reader on the occasion of my first visit to that place.
My brother, already a very different man from what he had been in London, came from his Irish district to visit us there; and I returned with him to Ireland, to his head-quarters at Banagher on the Shannon. Neither of this journey need I say much. For to all who know anything of Ireland at the present day—and who does not? worse luck!—anything I might write would seem asnihil ad rem, as if I were writing of an island in the Pacific. I remember a very vivid impression that occurred to me on first landing at Kingstown, and accompanied me during the whole of my stay in the island, to the effect, that the striking differences in everything that fell under my observation from what I had left behind me at Holyhead, were fully as great as any that had excited my interest when first landing in France.
One of my first visits was to my brother's chief. He was a master of foxhounds and hunted the country. And I well remember my astonishment, when the door of this gentleman's residence was opened to me by an extremely dirty and slatternly bare-footed and bare-legged girl. I found him to be a very friendly and hospitable good fellow, and his wife and her sister very pleasant women. I found too that my brother stood high in his good graces by virtue of simply having taken the whole work and affairs of the postal district on his own shoulders. The rejected of St. Martin's-le-Grand was already a very valuable and capable officer.
My brother gave me the choice of a run to the Killeries, or to Killarney. We could not manage both. I chose the former, and a most enjoyable trip we had. He could not leave his work to go with me, but was to join me subsequently, I forget where, in the west. Meantime he gave me a letter to a bachelor friend of his at Clifden. This gentleman immediately asked me to dinner, and he and I dinedtête-à-tête.Nevertheless, he thought it necessary to apologise for the appearance of a very fine John Dory on the table, saying, that he had been himself to the market to get a turbot for me, but that he had been asked half-a-crown for a not very large one, and really he could not give such absurd prices as that!
Anthony duly joined me as proposed, and we had a grand walk over the mountains above the Killeries. I don't forget and never shall forget—nor did Anthony ever forget; alas! that we shall never more talk over that day again—the truly grand spectacular changes from dark thick enveloping cloud to brilliant sunshine, suddenly revealing all the mountains and the wonderful colouring of the intertwining sea beneath them, and then back to cloud and mist and drifting sleet again. It was a glorious walk. We returned wet to the skin to "Joyce's Inn," and dined on roast goose and whisky punch, wrapped in our blankets like Roman senators!
One other scene I must recall. The reader will hardly believe that it occurred in Ireland. There was an election of a member for I forget what county or borough, and my brother and I went to the hustings—the only time I ever was at an election in Her Majesty's dominions. What were the party feelings, or the party colours, I utterly forget. It was merely for the fun of the thing that we went there. The fun indeed was fast and furious. The whole scene on the hustings, as well as around them, seemed to me one seething mass of senseless but good-humoured hustling and confusion. Suddenly in the midst of the uproar an ominous cracking was heard, and in the next minute the hustings swayed and came down with a crash, heaping together in a confused mass all the two or three hundreds of human beings who were on the huge platform. Some few were badly hurt. But my brother and I being young and active, and tolerably stout fellows, soon extricated ourselves, regained our legs, and found that we were none the worse. Then we began to look to our neighbours. And the first who came to hand was a priest, a little man, who was lying with two or three fellows on the top of him, horribly frightened and roaring piteously for help. So Anthony took hold of one of his arms and I of the other, and by main force dragged him from under the superincumbent mass of humanity. When we got him on his legs his gratitude was unbounded. "Tell me your names," he shouted, "that I'll pray for ye!" We told him laughingly that we were afraid it was no use, for we were heretics. "Tell me your names," he shouted again, "that I'll pray for ye all the more!"
I wonder whether he ever did! He certainly was very much in earnest while the fright was on him.
Not very long after my return from this Irish trip, we finally left Penrith on the 3rd of April, 1843; and I trust that the nymph of the holy well, whose spring we had disturbed, was appeased.
My mother and I had now "the world before us where to choose." She had work in hand, and more in perspective. I also had some in hand and very much more in perspective, but it was work of a nature that might be done in one place as well as another. So when "Carlton Hill" (all of a sudden the name comes back to my memory!) was sold, we literally stood with noimpedimentaof any sort save our trunks, and absolutely free to turn our faces in whatsoever direction we pleased.
What we did in the first instance was to turn them to the house of our old and well-beloved cousin, Fanny Bent, at Exeter. There after a few days we persuaded her to accompany us to Ilfracombe, where we spent some very enjoyable summer weeks. What I remember chiefly in connection with that pleasant time, was idling rambles over the rocks and the Capstone Hill, in company with Mrs. Coker and her sister Miss Aubrey, the daughters of that Major A. who needs to the whist-playing world no further commemoration. The former of them was the wife and mother of Wykehamists (founder's kin), and both were very charming women. Ilfracombe was in those days an unpretending sort of fishing village. There was no huge "Ilfracombe Hotel," and the Capstone Hill was not strewed with whitey-brown biscuit bags and the fragments of bottles, nor continually vocal with nigger minstrels and ranting preachers. The "Royal Clarence" did exist in the little town, whether under that name or not, I forget. But I can testify from experience, acquired some forty years afterwards, that Mr. and Mrs. Clemow now keep there one of the best inns of its class, that I, no incompetent expert in such matters, know in all England.
Then, when the autumn days began to draw in, we returned to Exeter, and many a long consultation was held by my mother and I, sallying forth from Fanny Bent's hospitable house for atête-à-têtestroll on Northernhay, on the question of "What next?"
It turned out to be a more momentous question than we either of us imagined it to be at the time; for the decision of it involved the shape and form of the entire future life of one of us, and still more important modification of the future life of the other. Dresden was talked of. Rome was considered. Paris was thought of. Venice was discussed. No one of them was proposed as a future permanent home. Finally Florence came on thetapis. We had liked it much, and had formed some much valued friendships there. It was supposed to be economical as a place to live in, which was one main point. For our plan was to make for ourselves for two or three years a home and way of living sufficiently cheap to admit of combining with it large plans of summer travel. And eventually Florence was fixed on.
As for my mother, it turned out that she was then selecting her last and final home—though the end was not, thank God, for many a long year yet. As for me, the decision arrived at during those walks on Exeter Northernhay, was more momentous still. For I was choosing the road that led not only to my home for the next half century nearly, but to two marriages, both of them so happy in all respects as rarely to have fallen to the lot of one and the same man!
How little we either of us, my mother and I, saw into the future—beyond a few immediate inches before our noses! Trulyprudens futuri temporis exitum caliginosâ nocte premit Deus!And when I hear talk of "conduct making fate," I often think—humbly and gratefully, I trust; marvelling, certainly,—how far it could haveà prioriseemed probable, that the conduct of a man who, without eitheroes in presenti, or any very visible prospect ofoes in futuro, turns aside from all the beaten paths of professional industry should have led him to a long life of happiness and content, hardly to be surpassed, and, I should fear, rarely equalled.Deus nobis haec otia fecit!—Deus, by the intromission of one rarely good mother, and two rarely good, and I may add rarely gifted, wives!
Not that I would have the reader translate "otia" by idleness. I have written enough to show that my life hitherto had been a full and active one. And it continued in Italy to be an industrious one. Translate the word rather into "independence." For I worked at work that I liked, and did no taskwork. Nevertheless, I would not wish to be an evil exemplar,vitiis imitabile, and I don't recommend you, dear boys, to do as I did. I have been quite abnormally fortunate.
Well, we thought that we were casting the die of fate on a very subordinate matter, while, lo! it was cast for us by the Supernal Powers after a more far-reaching and over-ruling fashion.
So on the 2nd of September, 1843, we turned our faces southwards and left London for Florence.
We became immediately on arriving in Firenze la gentile (after a little tour in Savoy, introduced as an interlude after our locomotive rambling fashion) the guests of Lady Bulwer, who then inhabited in the Palazzo Passerini an apartment far larger than she needed, till we could find a lodging for ourselves.
We had become acquainted with Lady Bulwer in Paris, and a considerable intimacy arose between her and my mother, whose nature was especially calculated to sympathise with the good qualities which Lady Bulwer unquestionably possessed in a high degree. She was brilliant, witty, generous, kind, joyous, good-natured, and very handsome. But she was wholly governed by impulse and unreasoning prejudice; though good-natured, was not always good-humoured; was totally devoid of prudence or judgment, and absolutely incapable of estimating men aright. She used to think me, for instance, little short of an admirable Crichton!
Of course all the above rehearsed good qualities were, or were calculated to be, immediately perceived and appreciated, while the less pleasant specialties which accompanied them were of a kind to become more perceptible only in close intimacy. And while no intimacy ever lessened that regard of my mother and myself that had been won by the first, it was not long before we were both, my mother especially, vexed by exhibitions of the second.
As, for instance:—Lady Bulwer had for some days been complaining of feeling unwell, and was evidently suffering. My mother urged her to have some medical advice, whereupon she turned on her very angrily, while the tears started to her beautiful eyes, and said, "Howcanyou tell me to do any such thing, when you know that I have not a guinea for the purpose?" (She was frequently wont to complain of her poverty.) But she had hardly got the words out of her mouth when the servant entered the room saying that the silversmith was at the door asking that the account which he laid on the table might be paid. The account (which Lady Bulwer made no attempt to conceal, for concealment of anything was not at all in her line) was for a pair of small silver spurs and an ornamented silver collar which she had ordered a week or two previously for theceremonial knighting of her little dog Taffy!
On another occasion a large party of us were to visit the Boboli Gardens. It was a very hot day, and we had to climb the hill to the upper part of the gardens, from whence the view over Florence and the Val d'Arno is a charming one. But the hill, as those who have been at Florence will not have forgotten, is not only an extremely steep, but a shadeless one. The broad path runs between two wide margins of turf, which are enclosed on either side by thick but not very high shrubberies. The party sorted themselves into couples, and the men addressed themselves to facilitating as best they might the not slightly fatiguing work before the ladies. It fell to my lot to give Lady Bulwer my arm. Before long we were the last and most lagging couple on the path. It was hard work, but I did my best, and flattered myself that my companion, despite the radical moisture which she was copiously losing, was in high good humour, as indeed she seemed to be, when suddenly, without a word of warning, she dashed from the path, threw herself prone among the bushes, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of sobs and weeping. I was horrified with amazement. What had I done, or what left undone? It was long before I could get a word out of her. At last she articulated amidst her sobs, "It is TOO hot! It is cruel to bring one here!" Yes, it wastoohot; but that was all. Fortunately I was not the cruel bringer. I consoled her to the best of my power, and induced her to wipe her eyes. I dabbled a handkerchief in a neighbouring fountain for her to wash her streaked face, and eventually I got her to the top of the hill, where all the others had long since arrived.
The incident was entirely characteristic of her. She was furiously angry with all things in heaven above and on the earth below because she was at the moment inconvenienced.
Here is the beginning of a letter from her of a date some months anterior to the Boboli adventure:
"Illustrissimo Signor Tommaso" (that was the usual style of her address to me), "as your book is just out you must feel quiteen trainfor puffs of any description. Therefore I send you the best I have seen for a long while,La Physiologie du Fumeur. But even if you don't like it,don'tput it in your pipe and smoke it.VideJoseph Fume."
A little subsequently she writes: "Signor Tommaso, the only revenge I shall take for your lecture" (probably on the matter of some outrageous extravagance) "is not to call youillustrissimoand not to send you an illuminated postillion" (a previous letter having been ornamented with such a decoration at the top of the sheet), "but let you find your way to Venice in the dark as you can, and then and there, 'On the Rialto I will rate you,' and, being a man, you know there is no chance of myover-ratingyou."
The following passage from the same letter refers to some negotiations with which she had entrusted me relative to some illustrations she was bent on having in a forthcoming book she was about to publish:—"As for the immortal Cruikshank, tell him that I am sure the mighty genius which conceived Lord Bateman could not refuse to give any lady thewerry best, and if he does I shall pass the rest of my life registering a similarwowto that of the fair Sophia, and exclaiming, 'I vish, George Cruikshank, as you vas mine.'"
The rest of the long, closely-written four-paged letter is an indiscriminate and bitter, though joking attack, upon the race of publishers. She calls Mr. Colburn an "embodied shiver," which will bring a smile to the lips of those—few, I fear—who remember the little man.
Here are some extracts from a still longer letter written to my mother much about the same time: "I hear Lady S—— has committed another novel, calledThe Three Peers, no doubtl'un pire que l'autre!… I have a great many kind messages to you from that very charming person Madame Récamier, who fully intends meeting you at Venice with Chateaubriand in October, for so she told me on Sunday. I met her at Miss Clarke's some time ago, and as I am a badpusherI am happy to say she asked to be introduced to me, and was, thanks to you, my kind friend! She pressed me to go and see her, which I have done two or three times, and am going to do again at her amiable request on Thursday. I think that her fault is that she flatters a little too much. And flattery to one whose ears have so long been excoriated by abuse does not sound safe. However, all is right when she speaks of you. And the point she most eulogised in you is that which I have heard many a servile coward who could never go and do likewise" [no indication is to be found either in this letter or elsewhere to whom she alludes], "select for the same purpose, namely, your straightforward, unflinching, courageous integrity…. Balzac is furious at having his new play suppressed by Thiers, in which Arnauld acted Louis Philippe, wig and all, to the life; but, as I said to M. Dupin, 'Cest tout naturel que M. Thiers ne permetterait à personne de jouer Louis Philippe que lui-même.' … There is a wonderful pointer here that has been advertised for sale for twelve hundred francs. A friend of mine went to see him, and after mounting up to a little garret about the size of a chessboard,au vingt-septième, he interrogated the owner as to the dog's education and acquirements, to which the man replied, 'Pour ca, monsieur, c'est un chien parfait. Je lui ai tout appris moi-même dans ma chambre'[1] After this my friend did not sing 'Together let us range the fields!' … Last week I met Colonel Potter M'Queen, who was warm in his praises of you, and the great good yourMichael Armstrong" (the factory story) "had done…. Last Thursday despatches arrived and Lord Granville had to start for London at a moment's notice. I was in hopes this beastly ministry were out! But no such luck! For they are a compound of glue, sticking-plaister, wax, and vice—the most adhesive of all known mixtures."
[Footnote 1: "As for that, sir, the dog is perfect. I have myself taught him everythingin my own room!"]
Before concluding my recollections of Rosina, Lady Lytton Bulwer, I think it right to say that I consider myself to have perfectly sufficient grounds for feeling certain that the whispers which were circulated in a cowardly and malignant fashion against the correctness of her conduct as a woman were wholly unfounded. Her failings and tendency to failings lay in a quite different direction. I knew perfectly well the person whose name was mentioned scandalously in connection with hers, and knew the whole history of the relationship that existed between them. The gentleman in question was for years Lady Bulwer's constant and steadfast friend. It is quite true that he would fain have been something more, but true also that his friendship survived the absolute rejection of all warmer sentiments by the object of it. It was almost a matter of course that such a woman as Lady Bulwer, living unprotected in the midst of such a society as that of Florence in those days, should be so slandered. And were it not that there were very few if any persons at the time, and I think certainly not one still left, able to speak upon the subject with suchconnaissance de causeas I can, I should not have alluded to it.
She was an admirably charming companion before the footlights of the world's stage—not so uniformly charming behind its scenes, for her unreasonableness always and her occasional violence were very difficult to deal with. But she was, as Dickens's poor Jo says inBleak House, "werry good to me!"
After some little time and trouble we found an apartment in the Palazzo Berti, in the ominously named Via dei Malcontenti. It was so called because it was at one time the road to the Florentine Tyburn. Our house was the one next to the east end of the church of Santa Croce. Our rooms looked on to a large garden, and were pleasant enough. We witnessed from our windows the building of the new steeple of Santa Croce, which was completed before we left the house.
It was built in great measure by an Englishman, a Mr. Sloane, a fervent Catholic, who was at that time one of the best-known figures in the English colony at Florence.
He was a large contributor to the recently completed façade of the Duomo in Florence, and to many other benevolent and pietistic good works. He had been tutor in the Russian Boutourlin family, and when acting in that capacity had been taken, by reason of his geological acquirements, to see some copper mines in the Volterra district, which the Grand Duke had conceded to a company under whose administration they were going utterly to the bad. Sloane came, saw, and eventually conquered. In conjunction with Horace Hall, the then well known and popular partner in the bank of Signor Emanuele Fenzi (one of whose sons married an English wife, and is still my very good and forty years old friend), he obtained a new concession of the mines from the Grand Duke on very favourable terms, and by the time I made his acquaintance had become a wealthy man. I fancy the Halls, Horace and his much esteemed brother Alfred (who survived him many years, and was the father of a family, one of the most respected and popular of the English colony during the whole of my Florence life), subsequently considered themselves to have been shouldered out of the enterprise by a certain unhandsome treatment on the part of the fortunate tutor. What may have been the exact history of the matter I do not know. But I do know that Sloane always remained on very intimate terms with the Grand Duke, and was a power in the inmost circles of the ecclesiastic world.
He used to give great dinners on Friday, the principal object of which seemed to be to show how magnificent a feast could be given without infringing by a hair's breadth the rule of the Church. And admirably he succeeded in showing how entirely the spirit and intention of the Church in prescribing a fast could be made of none effect by a skilfully-managed observance of the letter of its law.
The only opportunity I ever had of conversing with Cardinal Wiseman was in Casa Sloane. And what I chiefly remember of His Eminence was his evident annoyance at the ultra-demonstrative zeal of the female portion of the mixed Catholic and Protestant assembly, whowouldkneel and kiss his hand. A schoolmaster meeting boys in society, who, instantly on his appearance should begin unbuttoning their brace buttons behind, would hardly appreciate the recognition more gratefully.
Within a very few weeks of our establishment in Casa Berti my mother's home became, as usual, a centre of attraction and pleasant intercourse, and her weekly Friday receptions were always crowded. If I were to tell everything of what I remember in connection with those days, I should produce such a book asnon dî, non homines, non concessere columnae—a book such as neither publishers, nor readers, nor thecolumnsof the critical journals would tolerate, and should fill my pages with names, which, however interesting they may still be for me, would hardly have any interest for the public, however gentle or pensive.
One specialty, and that not a pleasant one, of a life so protracted as mine has been in the midst of such a society as that of Florence in those days, is the enormous quantity of the names which turn the tablets of memory into palimpsests, not twice, but fifty times written over!—unpleasant, not from the thronginginof the motley company, but from the inevitable passingoutof them from the field of vision. One's recollections come to resemble those of the spectator of a phantasmagoric show. Processions of heterogeneous figures, almost all of them connected in some way or other with more or less pleasant memories, troop across the magic circle of light, only, alack! to vanish into uttermost night when they pass beyond its limit. Of course all this is inevitable from the migratory nature of such a society as that which was gathered together on the banks of the Arno.
Some fixtures—comparatively fixtures—of course there were, who gave to our moving quicksand-like society some degree of cohesion.
Chief among these was of course the British minister—at the time of our arrival in Florence, and many years afterwards—Lord Holland. A happier instance of the right man in the right place could hardly be met with. At his greatomnium-gatherumdinners and receptions—his hospitality was of the most catholic and generous sort—both he and Lady Holland (how pretty she then was there is her very clever portrait by Watts to testify) never failed to win golden opinions from all sorts and conditions of men and women. And in the smaller circle, which assembled in their rooms yet more frequently, they showed to yet greater advantage, for Lord Holland was one of the most amusing talkers I ever knew.
Of course many of those who ought to have been grateful for their admission to the minister's large receptions were discontented at not being invited to the smaller ones. And it was by some of these malcontents with more wit than reason, that Lady Holland was accused of receiving in two very distinct fashions—en ménageanden ménagerie. Themotwas a successful one, and nobody was more amused by it than thespirituellelady of whom it was said. It was too happy amotnot to have been stolen by divers pilferers of such articles, and adapted to other persons and other occasions. But it was originally spoken of the time, place, and person here stated to have been the object of it.
Generally, in such societies in foreign capitals, a fruitful source of jealousy and discord is found in the necessary selection of those to be presented at the court of the reigning sovereign. But this, as far as I remember, was avoided in those halcyon days by the simple expedient of presenting all who desired it. And that Lord Hollandwasthe right man in the right place as regards this matter the following anecdote will show.
When Mr. Hamilton became British minister at Florence, it was announced that his intention was, for the avoiding of all trouble and jealousy on the subject, to adhere strictly to the proper and recognised rule. He would present everybody and anybody who had been presented at home, and nobody who had not been so presented. And he commenced his administration on these lines, and the Grand Duke's receptions at the Pitti became notably weeded. But this had not gone, on for more than two or three weeks before it was whispered in the minister's ear that the Grand Duke would be pleased if he were less strict in the matter of his presentations. "Oh!" said Hamilton, "that's what he wants!A la bonne heure!He shall have them all, rag, tag, and bobtail." And so we returned to theSaturnia regnaof "the good old times," and the Duke was credibly reported to have said that he "kept the worst drawing-room in Europe." But, of course, His Highness was thinking of the pockets of his liege Florentine letters of apartments and tradesmen, and was anxious only to make his city a favourite place of resort for the gold-bringing foreigners from that distant and barbarous western isle. The Pope, you see, had the pull in the matter of gorgeous Church ceremonies, but he couldn't have the fertilising barbarians dancing in the Vatican once a week!
One more anecdote I must find room for, because it is curiously illustrative in several ways of thosetempi passati, che non tornano piu. Florence was full of refugees from the political rigours of the papal government, who had for some time past found there an unmolested refuge. But the aspect of the times was becoming more and more alarming to Austria, and theDuchini, as we called the Sovereigns of Modena and Parma; and pressure was put on the Duke by the pontifical government insisting on the demand that these refugees should be given up by Tuscany. Easy-going Tuscany, not yet in anywise alarmed for herself, fought off the demand for a while, but was at last driven to notify her intention of acceding to it. It was in these circumstances that Massino d'Azeglio came to me one morning, in the garden of our house in the Via del Giglio—the same in which the poet Milton lodged when he was in Florence—to which we had by that time moved, and told me that he wanted me to do something for him. Of course I professed all readiness, and he went on to tell me of the critical and dangerous position in which the refugees of whom I have spoken were placed, and said that I must go to Lord Holland and ask him to give them British passports. He urged that nothing could be easier, that no objection could possibly be taken to it; that the Tuscan government was by no means desirous of giving up these men, and would only be too glad to get out of it; that England both at Malta and in the Ionian Islands had plenty of Italian subjects—and in short, I undertook the mission, I confess with very small hopes of success. Lord Holland laughed aloud when I told my tale, and said he thought it was about the most audacious request that had ever been made to a British minister. But he ended by granting it. Doubtless he knew very well the truth of what d'Azeglio had stated—that the Tuscan government would be much too well pleased to ask any questions; and the passports were given.
It was not long after our establishment in the Via dei Malcontenti that a great disaster came upon Florence and its inhabitants and guests. Arno was not in the habit of following the evil example of the Tiber by treating Florence as the latter so frequently did Rome. But in the winter of the year 1844 a terrible and unprecedented flood came. The rain fell in such torrents all one night that it was feared that the Arno, already much swollen, would not be able to carry off the waters with sufficient rapidity. I went out early in the morning before breakfast, in company with a younger brother of the Dr. Nicholson of Penrith whom I have mentioned, who happened to be visiting us. We climbed to the top of Giotto's tower, and saw at once the terrible extent and very serious character of the misfortune. One-third, at least, of Florence, was under water, and the flood was rapidly rising. Coming down from our lofty observatory, we made our way to the "Lung' Arno," as the river quays are called. And there the sight was truly a terrible and a magnificent one. The river, extending in one turbid, yellow, swirling mass from the walls of the houses on the quay on one side, to those of the houses opposite, was bringing down with it fragments of timber, carcases of animals, large quantities of hay and straw;—and amid the wreck we saw a cradle with a child in it, safely navigating the tumbling waters! It was drawn to the window of a house by throwing a line over it, and the infant navigator was none the worse.
But very great fears were entertained for the very ancient Ponte Vecchio, with its load of silversmiths' and jewellers' shops, turning it from a bridge into a street—the only remaining example in Europe, I believe, of a fashion of construction once common. The water continued to rise as we stood watching it. Less than a foot of space yet remained between the surface of the flood and the keystone of the highest arch; and it was thought that if the water rose sufficiently to beat against the solid superstructure of the bridge, it must have been swept away. But at last came the cry from those who were watching it close at hand, that for the last five minutes the surface had been stationary; and in another half hour it was followed by the announcement that the flood had begun to decrease. Then there was an immense sensation, of relief; for the Florentines love their old bridge; and the crowd began to disperse.
All this time I had had not a mouthful of breakfast, and we betook ourselves to Doney'sbottegato get a cup of coffee before going home. But when we attempted this we found that it was more easily said than done. The Via dei Malcontenti as well as the whole of the Piazza di Santa Croce was some five feet under water! We succeeded, however, in getting aboard a large boat, which was already engaged in carrying bread to the people in the most deeply flooded parts of the town. But all difficulty was not over. Of course the street door of the Palazzo Berti was shut, and no earthly power could open it. Our apartment was on the second floor. Our landlord's family occupied theprimo. Of course I could get in at their windows and then go up stairs. And we had a ladder in the boat; but the mounting to the first floor by this ladder, placed on the little deck of the boat, as she was rocked by the torrent, was no easy matter, especially for me, who went first. Eventually, however, Nicholson and I both entered the window, hospitably opened to receive us, in safety.
But it was one or two days before the flood subsided sufficiently for us to be provisioned in any other manner than by the boat; and for long years afterwards social events were dated in Florence as having happened "before or after the flood." In those days, and for many days subsequently to them, Florence did indeed—as I have observed when speaking of the motives which induced us to settle there—join to its other attractions that of being an economical place of residence. Our money consisted of piastres, pauls, and crazie. Eight of the latter were equal to a paul, ten of which were equivalent to a piastre. The value of the paul was, as nearly as possible, equal to fivepence-halfpenny English. The lira—the original representative of the leading denomination of our ownl.s.d.—no longer existed in—the flesh I was going to say, but rather in—the metal. And it is rather curious, that just as the guinea remained, and indeed remains, a constantly-used term of speech after it has ceased to exist as current coin, so the scudo remained, in Tuscany, no longer visible or current, but retained as an integer in accounts of the larger sort. If you bought or sold house or land, for instance, you talked of scudi. In more every-day matters piastre or "francesconi" were the integers used, the latter being only a synonym for the former. And the proportion in value of the scudo and the piastre was exactly the same as that of the guinea and the sovereign, the former being worth ten and a half pauls, and the latter ten. The handsomest and best preserved coin ordinarily current was the florin, worth two pauls and a half. Gold we rarely saw, but golden sequins (zecchini) were in existence, and were traditionally used, as it was said, for I have no experience in the matter, in the payment by the government of prizes won in the lottery.
Now, after this statement the reader will be in a position to appreciate the further information that a flask of excellent Chianti, of a quality rarely met with nowadays, was ordinarily sold for one paul. The flask contained (legal measure) seven troy pounds weight of liquid, or about three bottles. The same sum purchased a good fowl in the market. The subscription (abbuonamento) to the Pergola, the principal theatre, came to exactly two crazie and a half for each night of performance. This price admitted you only to the pit, but as you were perfectly free to enter any box in which there were persons of your acquaintance, the admission in the case of a bachelor, permanently or temporarily such, was all that was necessary to him. And the price of the boxes was small in proportion.
These boxes were indeed the drawing-rooms in which very much of the social intercourse of thebeau mondewas carried on. The performances were not very frequently changed (two operas frequently running through an entire season), and people went four or five times a week to hear, or rather to be present at, the same representation. And except on first nights or some other such occasion, or during the singing of the well-known tit-bits of any opera, there was an amount of chattering in the house which would have made the hair of afanatico per la musicastand on end. There was also an exceedingly comfortable but very parsimoniously-lighted large room, which was a grand flirting place, where people sat very patiently during the somewhat long operation of having their names called aloud, as their carriages arrived, by an official, who knew the names and addresses of us all. We also knewhismode of adapting the names of foreigners to his Italian organs. "Hasa" (Florentine forcasa) "Tro-lo-pé," with a long-drawn-out accent on the last vowel, was the absolutely fatal signal for the sudden breaking up of many a pleasant chat.
Florence was also, in those days, an especially economical place for those to whom it was pleasant to enjoy during the whole of the gay season as many balls, concerts, and other entertainments as they could possibly desire, without the necessity, or indeed the possibility, of putting themselves to the expense of giving anything in return. There was a weekly ball at the Pitti Palace, and another at the Casino dei Nobili, which latter was supported entirely by the Florentine aristocracy. There were two or three balls at the houses of the foreign ministers, and generally one or two given by two or three wealthy Florentine nobles—there were a few, but very few such.
Perhaps the pleasantest of all these were the balls at the Pitti. They were so entirelysans gêne. No court dress was required save on the first day of the year, when it wasde rigueur. But absence on that occasion in no way excluded the absentee from the other balls. Indeed, save to a new comer, no invitations to foreigners were issued, it being understood that all who had been there once were welcome ever after. The Pitti balls were not by any means concluded by, but rather divided into two, by a very handsome and abundant supper, at which, to tell tales out of school (but then the offenders have no doubt mostly gone over to the majority), the guests used to behave abominably. The English would seize the plates ofbonbonsand empty the contents bodily into their coat pockets. The ladies would do the same with their pocket-handkerchiefs. But the Duke's liege subjects carried on their depredations on a far bolder scale. I have seen large portions of fish, sauce and all, packed up in a newspaper, and deposited in a pocket. I have seen fowls and ham share the same fate, without any newspaper at all. I have seen jelly carefully wrapped in an Italian countess's lacedmouchoir! I think the servants must have had orders not to allow entire bottles of wine to be carried away, for I never saw that attempted, and can imagine no other reason why. I remember that those who affected to be knowing old hands used to recommend one to specially pay attention to the Grand Ducal Rhine wine, and remember, too, conceiving a suspicion that certain of these connoisseurs based their judgment in this matter wholly on their knowledge that the Duke possessed estates in Bohemia!