The English were exceedingly numerous in Florence at that time, and they were reinforced by a continually increasing American contingent, though our cousins had not yet begun to come in numbers rivalling our own, as has been the case recently. By the bye, it occurs to me, that I never saw an American pillaging the supper table; though, I may add, that American ladies would accept any amount ofbonbonsfrom English blockade runners.
And the mention of American ladies at the Pitti reminds me of a really very funny story, which may be told without offence to any one now living. I have a notion that I have seen this story of mine told somewhere, with a change of names and circumstances that spoil it, after the fashion of the people "who steal other folks' stories and disfigure them, as gipsies do stolen children to escape detection."
I had one evening at the Pitti, some years however after my first appearance there, a very pretty and naively charming American lady on my arm, whom I was endeavouring to amuse by pointing out to her all the personages whom I thought might interest her, as we walked through the rooms. Dear old Dymock, the champion, was in Florence that winter, and was at the Pitti that night.—I dare say that there may be many now who do not know without being told, that Dymock, the last champion, as I am almost afraid I must call him—though doubtless Scrivelsby must still be held by the ancient tenure—was a very small old man, a clergyman, and not at all the sort of individual to answer to the popular idea of a champion. He was sitting in a nook all by himself, and not looking very heroic or very happy as we passed, and nudging my companion's arm, I whispered, "That is the champion." The interest I excited was greater than I had calculated on, for the lady made a dead stop, and facing round to gaze at the old gentleman, said "Why, you don't tell me so! I should never have thought that that could be the fellow who licked Heenan!But he looks a plucky little chap!"
Perhaps the reader may have forgotten, or even never known, that the championship of the pugilistic world had then recently been won by Sayers—I think that was the name—in a fight with an antagonist of the name of Heenan. In fact it was I, and not my fair companion, who was a muff, for having imagined that a young American woman, nearly fresh from the other side of the Atlantic, was likely to know or ever have heard anything about the Champion of England.
There happened to be several Lincolnshire men that year in Florence, and there was a dinner at which I, as one of the "web-footed," by descent if not birth, was present, and I told them the story of my Pitti catastrophe. The lady's concluding words produced an effect which may be imagined more easily than described.
The Grand Duke at these Pitti balls used to show himself, and take part in them as little as might be. The Grand Duchess used to walk through the rooms sometimes. The Grand Duchess, a Neapolitan princess, was not beloved by the Tuscans; and I am disposed to believe that she did not deserve their affection. But there was at that time another lady at the Pitti, the Dowager Grand Duchess, the widow of the late Grand Duke. She had been a Saxon princess, and was very favourably contrasted with the reigning Duchess in graciousness of manner, in appearance—for though a considerably older, she was still an elegant-looking woman—and, according to the popular estimate, in character. She also would occasionally walk through the rooms; but her object, and indeed that of the Duke, seemed to be to attract as little attention as possible.
Only on the first night of the year, when we were all ingran gala,i.e.in court suits or uniform, did any personal communication with the Grand Duke take place. His manner, when anybody was presented to him on these or other occasions, was about as bad and imprincely as can well be conceived. His clothes never fitted him. He used to support himself on one foot, hanging his head towards that side, and occasionally changing the posture of both foot and head, always simultaneously. And he always appeared to be struggling painfully with the consciousness that he had nothing to say. It was on one of these occasions that an American new arrival was presented to him by Mr. Maquay, the banker, who always did that office for Americans, the United States having then no representative at the Grand Ducal court. Maquay, thinking to help the Duke, whispered in his ear that the gentleman was connected by descent with the great Washington, upon which the Duke, changing his foot, said, "Ah! le grand Vash!" His manner was that of a lethargic and not wide-awake man. When strangers would sometimes venture some word of compliment on the prosperity and contentment of the Tuscans, his reply invariably was, "Sono tranquilli"—they are quiet. But in truth much more might have been said; for assuredly Tuscany was a Land of Goshen in the midst of the peninsula. There was neither want nor discontent (save among a very small knot of politicians, who might almost have been counted on the hand), nor crime. There was at Florence next to no police of any kind, but the streets were perfectly safe by night or by day.
There was a story, much about that time, which made some noise in Europe, and was very disingenuously made use of, as such stories are, of a certain Florentine and his wife, named Madiai, who had been, it was asserted, persecuted for reading the Bible. It was not so. They were "persecuted" for,i.e.restrained from, preaching to others that they ought to read it, which is, though doubtless a bad, yet a very different thing.
I believe the Grand Duke (gran ciuco—great ass—as his irreverent Tuscans nicknamed him) was a good and kindly man, and under the circumstances, and to the extent of his abilities, not a bad ruler. The phrase, which Giusti applied to him, and which the inimitable talent of the satirist has made more durable than any other memorial of the poorgran ciucois likely to be, "asciuga tasche e maremme"—he dries up pockets and marshes—is as unjust as suchmotsof satirists are wont to be. The draining of the great marshes of the Chiana, between Arezzo and Chiusi, was a well-considered and most beneficent work on a magnificent scale, which, so far from "drying pockets," added enormously to the wealth of the country, and is now adding very appreciably to the prosperity of Italy. Nor was Giusti's reproach in any way merited by the Grand Ducal government. The Grand Duke personally was a very wealthy man, as well as, in respect to his own habits, a most simple liver. The necessary expenses of the little state were small; and taxation was so light that a comparison between that of the Saturnian days in question and that under which the Tuscans of the present day not unreasonably groan, might afford a text for some very far-reaching speculations. The Tuscans of the present day may preach any theological doctrines they please to any who will listen to them, or indeed to those who won't, but it would be curious to know how many individuals among them consider that, or any other recently-acquired liberty, well bought at the price they pay for it.
The Grand Duke was certainly not a great or a wise man. He was one of those men of whom their friends habitually say that they are "no fools," or "not such fools as they look," which generally may be understood to mean that the individual spoken of cannot with physiological accuracy be considered acrétin. Nevertheless, in his case the expression was doubtless accurately true. He was not such a fool as he looked, for his appearance was certainly not that of a wise, or even an intelligent man.
One story is told of him, which I have reason to believe perfectly true, and which is so characteristic of the man, and of the time, that I must not deprive the reader of it.
It was the custom that on St. John's Day the Duke should visit and inspect the small body of troops who were lodged in the Fortezza di San Giovanni, or Fortezza da Basso, as it was popularly called, in contradistinction from another fort on the high ground above the Boboli Gardens. And it was expected that on these occasions the sovereign should address a few words to his soldiers. So the Duke, resting his person first on one leg and then on the other, after his fashion, stood in front of the two or three score of men drawn up in line before him, and after telling them that obedience to their officers and attachment to duty were the especial virtues of a soldier, he continued, "Above all, my men, I desire that you should remember the duties and observances of our holy religion, and—and—" (here, having said all he had to say, His Highness was at a loss for a conclusion to his harangue. But looking down on the ground as he strove to find a fitting peroration, he observed that the army's shoes were sadly in want of the blacking brush, so he concluded with more of animation and significance than he had before evinced) "and keep your shoes clean!"
I may find room further on to say a few words of what I remember of the revolution which dethroned poorgran ciuco. But I may as well conclude here what I have to say of him by relating the manner of his final exit from the soil of Tuscany, of which the malicious among the few who knew the circumstances were wont to say—very unjustly—that nothing in his reign became him like the leaving of it. I saw him pass out from the Porta San Gallo on his way to Bologna among a crowd of his late subjects, who all lifted their hats, though not without some satirical cries of "Addio, sai" "Buon viaggio!" But a few, a very few, friends accompanied his carriage to the papal frontier, an invisible line on the bleak Apennines, unmarked by any habitation. There he descended from his carriage to receive their last adieus, and there was much lowly bowing as they stood on the highway. The Duke, not unmoved, bowed lowly in return, but unfortunately backing as he did so, tripped himself up with characteristic awkwardness, and tumbled backwards on a heap of broken stones prepared for the road, with his heels in the air, and exhibiting to his unfaithful Tuscans and ungrateful Duchy, as a last remembrance of him, a full view of a part of his person rarely put forward on such occasions.
And soexeuntfrom the sight of men and from history a Grand Duke and a Grand Duchy.
It was not long after the flood in Florence—it seems to me, as I write, that I might almost leave out the two last words!—that I saw Dickens for the first time. One morning in Casa Berti my mother was most agreeably surprised by a card brought in to her with "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens" on it. We had been among his heartiest admirers from the early days ofPickwick. I don't think we had happened to see theSketches by Boz. But my uncle Milton used to come to Hadley full of "the lastPickwick," and swearing that each number out-Pickwicked Pickwick. And it was with the greatest curiosity and interest that we saw the creator of all this enjoyment enter in the flesh.
We were at first disappointed, and disposed to imagine there must be some mistake! No!thatis not the man who wrotePickwick! What we saw was a dandified, pretty-boy-looking sort of figure, singularly young looking, I thought, with a slight flavour of the whipper-snapper genus of humanity.
Here is Carlyle's description of his appearance at about that period of his life, quoted from Froude'sHistory of Carlyle's Life in London:
"He is a fine little fellow—Boz—I think. Clear blue, intelligent eyes, eyebrows that he arches amazingly, large, protrusive, rather loose mouth, a face of most extreme mobility, which he shuttles about—eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all—in a very singular manner when speaking. Surmount this with a loose coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small compact figure, very small, and dressedà laD'Orsay rather than well—this is Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems to guess pretty well what he is and what others are."
One may perhaps venture to suppose that had the second of these guesses been less accurate, the description might have been a less kindly one.
But there are two errors to be noted in this sketch, graphic as it is. Firstly, Dickens's eyes were not blue, but of a very distinct and brilliant hazel—the colour traditionally assigned to Shakspeare's eyes. Secondly, Dickens, although truly of a slight, compact figure, wasnot a verysmall man. I do not think he was below the average middle height. I speak from my remembrance of him at a later day, when I had become intimate with him; but curiously enough, I find on looking back into my memory, that if I had been asked to describe him, as I first saw him, I too should have said that he was very small. Carlyle's words refer to Dickens's youth soon after he had publishedPickwick; and no doubt at this period he had a look of delicacy, almost of effeminacy, if one may accept Maclise's well-known portrait as a truthful record, which might give those who saw him the impression of his being smaller and more fragile in build than was the fact. In later life he lost this D'Orsay look completely, and was bronzed and reddened by wind and weather like a seaman.
In fact, when I saw him subsequently in London, I think I should have passed him in the street without recognising him. I never saw a man so changed.
Any attempt to draw a complete pen-and-ink portrait of Dickens has been rendered for evermore superfluous, if it were not presumptuous, by the masterly and exhaustive life of him by John Forster. But one may be allowed to record one's own impressions, and any small incident or anecdote which memory holds, on the grounds set forth by the great writer himself, who says in the introduction to theAmerican Notes(first printed in the biography)—"Very many works having just the same scope and range have been already published. But I think that these two volumes stand in need of no apology on that account. The interest of such productions, if they have any, lies in the varying impressions made by the same novel things on different minds, and not in new discoveries or extraordinary adventures."
At Florence Dickens made a pilgrimage to Landor's villa, the owner being then absent in England, and gathered a leaf of ivy from Fiesole to carry back to the veteran poet, as narrated by Mr. Forster. Dickens is as accurate as a topographer in his description of the villa, as looked down on from Fiesole. How often—ah,howoften!—have I looked down from that same dwarf wall over the matchless view where Florence shows the wealth of villas that Ariosto declares made it equivalent to two Romes!
Dickens was only thirty-three when I first saw him, being just two years my junior. I have said what he appeared to me then. As I knew him afterwards, and to the end of his days, he was a strikingly manly man, not only in appearance but in bearing. The lustrous brilliancy of his eyes was very striking. And I do not think that I have ever seen it noticed, that those wonderful eyes which saw so much and so keenly, were appreciably, though to a very slight degree, near-sighted eyes. Very few persons, even among those who knew him well, were aware of this, for Dickens never used a glass. But he continually exercised his vision by looking at distant objects, and making them out as well as he could without any artificial assistance. It was an instance of that force of will in him, which compelled a naturally somewhat delicate frame to comport itself like that of an athlete. Mr. Forster somewhere says of him, "Dickens's habits were robust, but his health was not." This is entirely true as far as my observation extends.
Of the general charm of his manner I despair of giving any idea to those who have not seen or known him. This was a charm by no means dependent on his genius. He might have been the great writer he was and yet not have warmed the social atmosphere wherever he appeared with that summer glow which seemed to attend him. His laugh was brimful of enjoyment. There was a peculiar humorous protest in it when recounting or hearing anything specially absurd, as who should say "'Pon my soul this istooridiculous! This passes all bounds!" and bursting out afresh as though the sense of the ridiculous overwhelmed him like a tide, which carried all hearers away with it, and which I well remember. His enthusiasm was boundless. It entered into everything he said or did. It belonged doubtless to that amazing fertility and wealth of ideas and feeling that distinguished his genius.
No one having any knowledge of the profession of literature can read Dickens's private letters and not stand amazed at the unbounded affluence of imagery, sentiment, humour, and keen observation which he poured out in them. There was no stint, no reservation for trade purposes. So with his conversation—every thought, every fancy, every feeling was expressed with the utmost vivacity and intensity, but a vivacity and intensity compatible with the most singular delicacy and nicety of touch when delicacy and nicety of touch were needed.
What were called the exaggerations of his writing were due, I have no doubt, to the extraordinary luminosity of his imagination. He saw and rendered such an individuality as Mr. Pecksniff's or Mrs. Nickleby's for instance, something after the same fashion as a solar microscope renders any object observed through it. The world in general beholds its Pecksniffs and its Mrs. Nicklebys through a different medium. And at any rate Dickens got at the quintessence of his creatures, and enables us all, in our various measures, to perceive it too. The proof of this is that we are constantly not only quoting the sayings and doings of his immortal characters, but are recognising other sayings and doings as whattheywould have said or done.
But it is impossible for one who knew him as I did to confine what he remembers of him either to traits of outward appearance or to appreciations of his genius. I must say a few, a very few words of what Dickens appeared to me as a man. I think that an epithet, which, much and senselessly as it has been misapplied and degraded, is yet, when rightly used, perhaps the grandest that can be applied to a human being, was especially applicable to him. He was aheartyman, a large-hearted man that is to say. He was perhaps the largest-hearted man I ever knew. I think he made a nearer approach to obeying the divine precept, "Love thy neighbour as thyself," than one man in a hundred thousand. His benevolence, his active, energising desire for good to all God's creatures, and restless anxiety to be in some way active for the achieving of it, were unceasing and busy in his heart ever and always.
But he had a sufficient capacity for a virtue, which, I think, seems to be moribund among us—the virtue of moral indignation. Men and their actions were not all much of a muchness to him. There was none of the indifferentism of that pseudo-philosophic moderation, which, when a scoundrel or a scoundrelly action is on thetapis, hints that there is much to be said on both sides. Dickens hated a mean action or a mean sentiment as one hates something that is physically loathsome to the sight and touch. And he could be angry, as those with whom he had been angry did not very readily forget.
And there was one other aspect of his moral nature, of which I am reminded by an observation which Mr. Forster records as having been made by Mrs. Carlyle. "Light and motion flashed from every part of it [his face]. It was as if made of steel." The first part of the phrase is true and graphic enough, but the image offered by the last words appears to me a singularly infelicitous one. There was nothing of the hardness or of the (moral) sharpness of steel about the expression of Dickens's face and features. Kindling mirth and genial fun were the expressions which those who casually met him in society were habituated to find there, but those who knew him well knew also well that a tenderness, gentle and sympathetic as that of a woman, was a mood that his surely never "steely" face could express exquisitely, and did express frequently.
I used to see him very frequently in his latter years. I generally came to London in the summer, and one of the first things on my list was a visit to 20, Wellington Street. Then would follow sundry other visits and meetings—to Tavistock House, to Gadshill, at Verey's in Regent Street, a place he much patronised, &c., &c. I remember one day meeting Chauncy Hare Townsend at Tavistock House and thinking him a very singular and not particularly agreeable man. Edwin Landseer I remember dined there the same day. But he had been a friend of my mother's, and was my acquaintance of long long years before.
Of course we had much and frequent talk about Italy, and I may say that our ideas and opinions, and especially feelings on that subject, were always, I think, in unison. Our agreement respecting English social and political matters was less perfect. But I think that it would have become more nearly so had his life been prolonged as mine has been. And the approximation would, if I am not much mistaken, have been brought about by a movement of mind on his part, which already I think those who knew him best will agree with me in thinking had commenced. We differed on many points of politics. But there is one department of English social life—one with which I am probably more intimately acquainted than with any other, and which has always been to me one of much interest—our public school system, respecting which our agreement was complete. And I cannot refrain from quoting. The opinion which he expresses is as true as if he had, like me, an eight years' experience of the system he is speaking of. And the passage, which I am about to give, is very remarkable as an instance of the singular acumen, insight, and power of sympathy which enabled him to form so accurately correct an opinion on a matter of which he might be supposed to know nothing.
"In July," says Mr. Forster, writing of the year 1858-9, "he took earnest part in the opening efforts on behalf of the Royal Dramatic College, which he supplemented later by a speech for the establishment of schools for actors' children, in which he took occasion to declare his belief that there were no institutions in England so socially liberal as its public schools, and that there was nowhere in the country so complete an absence of servility to mere rank, position, and riches. 'A boy there'" (Mr. Forster here quotes Dickens's own words) "'is always what his abilities and personal qualities make him. We may differ about the curriculum and other matters, but of the frank, free, manly, independent spirit preserved in our public schools I apprehend there can be no kind of question.'"
I have in my possession a great number of letters from Dickens, some of which might probably have been published in the valuable collection of his letters published by his sister-in-law and eldest daughter had they been get-at-able at the time when they might have been available for that publication.[1] But I was at Rome, and the letters were safely stowed away in England in such sort that it would have needed a journey to London to get at them.
[Footnote 1: Some of the letters in question—such as I had with me—were sent to London for that purpose. I do not remember now which were and which were not. But if it should be the case that any of those printed here have been printed before, I do not think any reader will object to having them again brought under his eye.]
I was for several years a frequent contributor toHousehold Words, my contributions for the most part consisting of what I considered tit-bits from the byways of Italian history, which the persevering plough of my reading turned up from time to time.
In one case I remember the article was sent "to order," I was dining with him after I had just had all the remaining hairs on my head made to stand on end by the perusal of the officially publishedManual for Confessors, as approved by superior authority for the dioceses of Tuscany. I was full of the subject, and made, I fancy, the hairs of some who sat at table with me stand on end also. Dickens said, with nailing forefinger levelled at me, "Give us that forHousehold Words. Give it us just as you have now been telling it to us"—which I accordingly did. Whether the publication of that article was in anywise connected with the fact that when I wished to purchase a second copy of that most extraordinary work I was told that it was out of print, and not to be had, I do not know. Of course it was kept as continually in print as theLatin Grammar, for the constant use of the class for whom it was provided, and who most assuredly could not have found their way safely through the wonderful intricacies of the Confessional without it. And equally, of course, the publishers of so largely-circulated a work did not succeed in preventing me from obtaining a second copy of it.
Many of the letters addressed to me by Dickens concerned more or less my contributions to his periodical, and many more are not of a nature to interest the public even though they came from him. But I may give a few extracts from three or four of them.[1]
[Footnote 1: I wish it to be observed that any letters, or parts of letters, from Dickens here printed are published with the permission and authorisation of his sister-in-law, Miss Georgina Hogarth.]
Here is a passage from a letter dated 3rd December, 1861, which my vanity will not let me suppress.
"Yes; the Christmas numberwasintended as a conveyance of all friendly greetings in season and out of season. As to its lesson, you need it almost as little as any man I know; for all your study and seclusion conduce to the general good, and disseminate truths that men cannot too earnestly take to heart. Yes, a capital story that of 'The Two Seaborn Babbies,' and wonderfully droll, I think. I may say so without blushing, for it is not by me. It was done by Wilkie Collins."
Here is another short note, not a little gratifying to me personally, but not without interest of a larger kind to the reader:—
* * * * *
"Tuesday, 15th November, 1859.
"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—I write this hasty word, just as the post leaves, to ask you this question, which this moment occurs to me.
"Montalembert, in his suppressed treatise, asks, 'What wrong has PopePius the Ninth done?' Don't you think you can very pointedly answerthat question in these pages? If you cannot, nobody in Europe can.Very faithfully yours always,
* * * * *
Some, some few, may remember the interest excited by the treatise to which the above letter refers. No doubt I could, and doubtless did, though I forget all about it, answer the question propounded by the celebrated French writer. But there was little hope of my doing it as "pointedly" as my correspondent would have done it himself. The answer, which might well have consisted of a succinct statement of all the difficulties of the position with which Italy was then struggling, had to confine itself to the limits of an article inAll The Year Round, and needed in truth to be pointed. I have observed that, in all our many conversations on Italian matters, Dickens's views and opinions coincided with my own, without, I think, any point of divergence. Very specially was this the case as regards all that concerned the Vatican and the doings of the Curia. How well I remember his arched eyebrows and laughing eyes when I told him of Garibaldi's proposal that all priests should be summarily executed! I think it modified his ideas of the possible utility of Garibaldi as a politician.
Then comes an invitation to "my Falstaff house at Gadshill."
Here is a letter of the 17th February, 1866, which I will givein extenso, bribed again by the very flattering words in which the writer speaks of our friendship:—
* * * * *
"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—I am heartily glad to hear from you. It was such a disagreeable surprise to find that you had left London" [I had been called away at an hour's notice] "on the occasion of your last visit without my having seen you, that I have never since got it out of my mind. I felt as if it were my fault (though I don't know how that can have been), and as if I had somehow been traitorous to the earnest and affectionate regard with which you have inspired me.
"The lady's verses are accepted by the editorial potentate, and shall presently appear." [I am ashamed to say that I totally forget who the lady was.]
"I am not quite well, and am being touched up (or down) by the doctors. Whether the irritation of mind I had to endure pending the discussions of a preposterous clerical body called a Convocation, and whether the weakened hopefulness of mankind which such a dash of the middle ages in the colour and pattern of 1866 engenders, may have anything to do with it, I don't know.
"What a happy man you must be in having a new house to work at. When it is quite complete, and the roc's egg hung up, I suppose you will get rid of it bodily and turn to at another." [Absit omen!At this very moment, while I transcribe this letter, Iamturning to at another.]
"Daily Newscorrespondent" [as I then for a short time was], "Novel, and Hospitality! Enough to do indeed! Perhaps the daymightbe advantageously made longer for such work—or say life." [Ah! if the small matters rehearsed had been all, I could more contentedly have put up with the allowance of four-and-twenty hours.] "And yet I don't know. Like enough we should all do less if we had time to do more in.
"Layard was with us for a couple of days a little while ago, and brought the last report of you, and of your daughter, who seems to have made a great impression on him. I wish he had had the keepership of the National Gallery, for I don't think his Government will hold together through many weeks.
"I wonder whether you thought as highly of Gibson's art as the lady did who wrote the verses. I must say that I didnot, and that I thought it of a mechanical sort, with no great amount of imagination in it. It seemed to me as if he 'didn't find me' in that, as the servants say, but only provided me with carved marble, and expected me to furnish myself with as much idea as I could afford.
"Very faithfully yours,
* * * * *
I do not remember the verses, though I feel confident that the lady who sent them through me must have been a very charming person. As to Gibson, no criticism could be sounder. I had a considerable liking for Gibson as a man, and admiration for his character, but as regards his ideal productions I think Dickens hits the right nail on the head.
In another letter of the same year, 25th July, after a page of remarks on editorial matters, he writes:—
* * * * *
"If Italy could but achieve some brilliant success in arms! That she does not, causes, I think, some disappointment here, and makes her sluggish friends more sluggish, and her open enemies more powerful. I fear too that the Italian ministry have lost an excellent opportunity of repairing the national credit in London city, and have borrowed money in France for the poor consideration of lower interest, which"[sic, but I suspectwhichmust be a slip of the pen forthan] "they could have got in England, greatly to the re-establishment of a reputation for public good faith. As to Louis Napoleon, his position in the whole matter is to me like his position in Europe at all times, simply disheartening and astounding. Between Prussia and Austria there is, in my mind (but for Italy), not a pin to choose. If each could smash the other I should be, as to those two Powers, perfectly satisfied. But I feel for Italy almost as if I were an Italian born. So here you have in brief my confession of faith.
"Mr. Home" [as he by that time called himself,—when he was staying in my house his name was Hume], "after trying to come out as an actor, first at Fechter's (where I had the honour of stopping him short), and then at the St. James's Theatre under Miss Herbert (where he was twice announced, and each time very mysteriously disappeared from the bills), was announced at the little theatre in Dean Street, Soho, as a 'great attraction for one night only,' to play last Monday. An appropriately dirty little rag of a bill, fluttering in the window of an obscure dairy behind the Strand, gave me this intelligence last Saturday. It is like enough that even that striking business did not come off, for I believe the public to have found out the scoundrel; in which lively and sustaining hope this leaves me at present.
"Ever faithfully yours,
* * * * *
Here is a letter which, as may be easily imagined, I value much. It was written on the 2nd of November, 1866, and reached me at Brest. It was written to congratulate me on my second marriage, and among the great number which I received on that occasion is one of the most warm-hearted:—
* * * * *
"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—I should have written immediately to congratulate you on your then approaching marriage, and to assure you of my most cordial and affectionate interest in all that nearly concerns you, had I known how best to address you.
"No friend that you have can be more truly attached to you than I am. I congratulate you with all my heart, and believe that your marriage will stand high upon the list of happy ones. As to your wife's winning a high reputation out of your house—if you care for that; it is not much as an addition to the delights of love and peace and a suitable companion for life—I have not the least doubt of her power to make herself famous.
"I little thought what an important master of the ceremonies I was when I first gave your present wife an introduction to your mother. Bear me in your mind then as the unconscious instrument of your having given your best affection to a worthy object, and I shall be the best paid master of the ceremonies since Nash drove his coach and six through the streets of Bath.
"Faithfully yours,
* * * * *
Among a heap of others I find a note of invitation written on the 9th of July, 1867, in which he says: "My 'readings' secretary, whom I am despatching to America at the end of this week, will dine with me at Verey's in Regent Street at six exact to be wished God-speed. There will only be besides, Wills, Wilkie Collins, and Mr. Arthur Chappell. Will you come? No dress. Evening left quite free."
I went, and the God-speed party was a very pleasant one. But I liked best to have him, as I frequently had, all to myself. I suppose I am not, as Johnson said, a "clubbable" man. At all events I highly appreciate what the Irishman called a tatur-tatur dinner, whether the gender in the case be masculine or feminine; and I incline to give my adherence to the philosophy of the axiom that declares "two to be company, and three none." But then I am very deaf, and that has doubtless much to do with it.
On the 10th of September, 1868, Dickens writes:—
* * * * *
"The madness and general political bestiality of the General Elections will come off in the appropriate Guy Fawkes days. It was proposed to me, under very flattering circumstances indeed, to come in as the third member for Birmingham; I replied in what is now my stereotyped phrase, 'that no consideration on earth would induce me to become a candidate for the representation of any place in the House of Commons.' Indeed it is a dismal sight, is that arena altogether. Its irrationality and dishonesty are quite shocking." [What would he have said now!] "How disheartening it is, that in affairs spiritual or temporal mankind will not begin at the beginning, butwillbegin with assumptions. Could one believe without actual experience of the fact, that it would be assumed by hundreds of thousands of pestilent boobies, pandered to by politicians, that the Established Church in Ireland has stood between the kingdom and Popery, when as a crying grievance it has been Popery's trump-card!
"I have now growled out my growl, and feel better.
"With kind regards, my dear Trollope,
"Faithfully yours,
* * * * *
In the December of that year came another growl, as follows:—
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"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—I am reading here, and had your letter forwarded to me this morning. The MS. accompanying it was stopped atAll The Year Roundoffice (in compliance with general instructions referring to any MS. from you) and was sent straight to the printer.
"Oh dear no! Nobody supposes for a moment that the English Church will follow the Irish Establishment. In the whole great universe of shammery and flummery there is no such idea floating. Everybody knows that the Church of England as an endowed establishment is doomed, and would be, even if its hand were not perpetually hacking at its own throat; but as was observed of an old lady in gloves in one of my Christmas books, 'Let us be polite or die!'
"Anthony's ambition" [in becoming a candidate for Beverley] "is inscrutable to me. Still, it is the ambition of many men; and the honester the man who entertains it, the better for the rest of us, I suppose.
"Ever, my dear Trollope,
"Most cordially yours,
* * * * *
Here is another "growl," provoked by a species of charlatan, which he, to whom all charlatans were odious, especially abominated—the pietistic charlatan:—
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"Oh, we have such a specimen here! a man who discourses extemporaneously, positively without the power of constructing one grammatical sentence; but who is (ungrammatically) deep in Heaven's confidence on the abstrusest points, and discloses some of his private information with an idiotic complacency insupportable to behold.
"We are going to have a bad winter in England too probably. What with Ireland, and what with the last new Government device of getting in the taxes before they are due, and what with vagrants, and what with fever, the prospect is gloomy."
The last letter I ever received from him is dated the 10th of November, 1869. It is a long letter, but I will give only one passage from it, which has, alas! a peculiarly sad and touching significance when read with the remembrance of the catastrophe then hurrying on, which was to put an end to all projects and purposes. I had been suggesting a walking excursion across the Alps. He writes:—
"Walk across the Alps? Lord bless you, I am 'going' to take up my alpenstock and cross all the passes. And, I am 'going' to Italy. I am also 'going' up the Nile to the second cataract; and I am 'going' to Jerusalem, and to India, and likewise to Australia. My only dimness of perception in this wise is, that I don't knowwhen. If I did but know when, I should be so wonderfully clear about it all! At present I can't see even so much as the Simplon in consequence of certain farewell readings and a certain new book (just begun) interposing their dwarfish shadow. But whenever (if ever) I change 'going' into 'coming,' I shall come to see you.
"With kind regards, ever, my dear Trollope,
"Your affectionate friend,
* * * * *
And those were the last words I ever had from him!
In those days—temporibus illis, as the historians of long-forgotten centuries say—there used to be a very general exodus of the English colony at Florence to the baths of Lucca during the summer months. Almost all Italians, who can in anywise afford to do so, leave the great cities nowadays for the seaside, even as those do who have preceded them in the path of modern luxurious living. But at the time of which I am writing the Florentines who did so were few, and almost confined to that inner circle of the fashionable world which partly lived with foreigners, and had adopted in many respects their modes and habits. Those Italians, however, who did leave their Florence homes in the summer, went almost all of them to Leghorn. The baths of Lucca were an especially and almost exclusively English resort.
It was possible to induce thevetturiniwho supplied carriages and horses for the purpose, to do the journey to the baths in one day, but it was a very long day, and it was necessary to get fresh horses at Lucca. There was no good sleeping-place between Florence and Lucca—nor indeed is there such now—and the journey from the capital of Tuscany to that of the little Duchy of Lucca, now done by rail in less than two hours, was quite enough for avetturino'spair of horses. And when Lucca was reached there were still fourteen miles, nearly all collar work, between that and the baths, so that the plan more generally preferred was to sleep at Lucca.
The baths (well known to the ancient Romans, of course, as what warm springs throughout Europe were not?) consisted of three settlements, or groups of houses—as they do still, for I revisited the well-remembered place two or three years ago. There was the "Ponte," a considerable village gathered round the lower bridge over the Lima, at which travellers from Florence first arrived. Here were the assembly rooms, the reading room, the principal baths,andthe gaming-tables—for in those pleasant wicked days the remote little Lucca baths were little better than Baden subsequently and Monte Carlo now. Only we never, to the best of my memory, suicided ourselves, though it might happen occasionally, that some innkeeper lost the money which ought to have gone to him, because "the bank" had got hold of it first.
Then secondly there was the "Villa," about a mile higher up the lovely little valley of the Lima, so called because the Duke's villa was situated there. The Villa had more the pretension—a very little more—of looking something like a little bit of town. At least it had its one street paved. The ducal villa was among the woods immediately above it.
The third little group of buildings and lodging-houses was called the "Bagni Caldi." The hotter, and, I fancy, the original springs were there, and it was altogether more retired and countrified, nestling closely among the chesnut woods. The whole surrounding country indeed is one great chesnut forest, and the various little villages, most of them picturesque in the highest degree, which crown the summits of the surrounding hills, are all of them closely hedged in by the chesnut woods, which clothe the slopes to the top. These villages burrow in what they live on like mice in a cheese, for many of the inhabitants never taste any other than chesnut flour bread from year's end to year's end.
The inhabitants of these hills, and indeed those of the duchy generally, have throughout Italy the reputation of being morally about the best population in the peninsula. Servants from the Lucchese, and especially from the district I am here speaking of, were, and are still, I believe, much prized. Lucca, as many readers will remember, enjoys among all the descriptive epithets popularly given to the different cities of Italy, that ofLucca la industriosa.
To us migratory English those singularly picturesque villages which capped all the hills, and were reached by curiously ancient paved mule paths zig-sagging up among the chesnut woods, seemed to have been created solely for artistic and picnic purposes. The Saturnian nature of the life lived in them may be conceived from the information once given me by the inhabitants of one of these mountain settlements in reply to some inquiry about the time of day, that it was always noon there when the priest was ready for his dinner.
Such were the summer quarters of the English Florentine colony,temporibus illis. There used to be, I remember, a somewhat amusingly distinctive character attributed, of course in a general way subject to exceptions, to the different groups of the English rusticating world, according to the selection of their quarters in either of the above three little settlements. The "gay" world preferred the "Ponte," where the gaming-tables and ballrooms were. The more strictly "proper" people went to live at the "Villa," where the English Church service was performed. The invalid portion of the society, or those who wished quiet, and especially economy, sought the "Bagni Caldi."
In a general way we all desired economy, and found it. The price at the many hotels was nine pauls a day for board and lodging, including Tuscan wine, and was as much a fixed and invariable matter as a penny for a penny bun. Those who wanted other wine generally brought it with them, by virtue of a ducal ordinance which specially exempted from duty all wine brought by English visitors to the Baths.
I dare say, if I were to pass a summer there now, I should find the atmosphere damp, or the wine sour, or the bread heavy, or the society heavier, or indulge in some such unreasonable and unseasonable grumbles as the near neighbourhood of four-score years is apt to inspire one with; but I used to find it amazingly pleasant once upon a time. It is a singular fact, which the remembrance of those days suggests to me, and which I recommend to the attention of Mr. Galton and his co-investigators, that the girls were prettier then than they are in these days, or that there were more of them! The stupid people, who are always discovering subjective reasons for objective observations, are as impertinent as stupid!
The Duke of Lucca used to do his utmost to make the baths attractive and agreeable. There is no Duke of Lucca now, as all the world knows. The Congress of Vienna put an end to him by ordaining that, when the ducal throne of Parma should become vacant, the reigning Duke of Lucca should succeed to it, while his duchy of Lucca should be united to Florence. This change took place while I was still a Florentine. The Duke of Lucca would none of the new dukedom proposed to him. He abdicated, and his son became Duke of Parma. This son was, in truth, a great ne'er-do-well, and very shortly got murdered in the streets of his new capital by an offended husband.
The change was most unwelcome to Lucca, and especially to the baths, which had thriven and prospered under the fostering care of the old Duke. He used to pass every summer there, and give constant very pleasant, but very little royal, balls at his villa. The Tuscan satirist Giusti, in the celebrated little poem in which he characterises the different reigning sovereigns in the peninsula, calls him the Protestant Don Giovanni, and says that in the roll of tyrants he is neither fish nor flesh.
Of the first two epithets I take it he deserved the second more than the first. His Protestantising tendencies might, I think, have been more accurately described as non-Catholicising. But people are very apt to judge in this matter after the fashion of the would-be dramatist, who, on being assured that he had no genius for tragedy, concluded that he must therefore have one for comedy. The Duke's Protestantism, I suspect, limited itself to, and showed itself in, his dislike and resistance to being bothered by the rulers of neighbouring states into bothering anybody else about their religious opinions. As for his place in the "roll of tyrants," he was always accused of (or praised for) liberalising ideas and tendencies, which would in those days have very soon put an end to him and his tiny duchy, if he had attempted to govern it in accordance with them. As matters were, his "policy," I take it, was pretty well confined to the endeavour to make his sovereignty as little troublesome to himself or anybody else as possible. His subjects wereverylightly taxed, for his private property rendered him perfectly independent of them as regarded his own personal expenditure.
The "gayer" part of our little world at the baths used, as I have said, more especially to congregate at the "Ponte," and the more "proper" portion at the "Villa," for, as I have also said, the English Church service was performed there, in a hired room, as I remember, when I first went there. But a church was already in process of being built, mainly by the exertions of a lady, who assuredly cannot be forgotten by any one who ever knew the Baths in those days, or for many years afterwards—Mrs. Stisted. Unlike the rest of the world she lived neither at the "Ponte," nor at the "Villa," nor at the "Bagni Caldi," but at "The Cottage," a little habitation on the bank of the stream about half-way between the "Ponte" and the "Villa." Also unlike all the rest of the world she lived there permanently, for the place was her own, or rather the property of her husband, Colonel Stisted. He was a long, lean, grey, faded, exceedingly mild, and perfectly gentlemanlike old man; but she was one of the queerest people my roving life has ever made me acquainted with.
She was the Queen of the Baths. On one occasion at the ducal villa, his Highness, who spoke English perfectly, said as she entered the room, "Here comes the Queen of the Baths!" "He calls me his Queen," said she, turning to the surrounding circle with a magnificent wave of the hand and delightedly complacent smile. It was not exactlythatthat the Duke had said, but he was immensely amused, as were we all, for some days afterwards.
She was a stout old lady, with large rubicund face and big blue eyes, surrounded by very abundant grey curls. She used to play, or profess to play, the harp, and adopted, as she explained, a costume for the purpose. This consisted of a loose, flowing garment, much like a muslin surplice, which fell back and allowed the arm to be seen when raised for performance on her favourite instrument. The arm probably was, or had once been, a handsome one. The large grey head, and the large blue eyes, and the drooping curls, were also raised simultaneously, and the player looked singularly like the picture of King David similarly employed, which I have seen as a frontispiece in an old-fashioned prayer-book. But the specialty of the performance was that, as all present always said, no sound whatever was heard to issue from the instrument! "Attitude is everything," as we have heard in connection with other matters; but with dear old Mrs. Stisted at her harp it was absolutely and literally so to the exclusion of all else!
She and the good old colonel—hewasa truly good and benevolent man, and, indeed, I believe she was a good and charitable woman, despite her manifold absurdities and eccentricities—used to drive out in the evening among her subjects—hersubjects, for neither I nor anybody else ever heard him called King of the Baths!—in an old-fashioned, very shabby and very high-hung phaeton, sometimes with her niece Charlotte—an excellent creature and universal favourite—by her side, and the colonel on the seat behind, ready to offer the hospitality of the place by his side to any mortal so favoured by the queen as to have received such an invitation.
The poor dear old colonel used to play the violoncello, and did at least draw some more or less exquisite sounds from it. But one winter they paid a visit to Rome, and the old man died there. She wished, in accordance doubtless with his desire, to bring back his body to be buried in the place they had inhabited for so many years, and with which their names were so indissolubly entwined in the memory of all who knew them—which means all the generations of nomad frequenters of the Baths for many, many years. The Protestant burial-ground also was recognised asquasihers, for it is attached to the church which she was mainly instrumental in building. The colonel's body therefore was to be brought back from Rome to be buried at Lucca Baths.
But such an enterprise was not the simplest or easiest thing in the world. There were official difficulties in the way, ecclesiastical difficulties and custom-house difficulties of all sorts. Where there is a will, however, there is a way. But the way which the determined will of the Queen of the Baths discovered for itself upon this occasion was one which would probably have occurred to few people in the world save herself. She hired avetturino, and told him that he was to convey a servant of hers to the baths of Lucca, who would be in charge of goods which would occupy the entire interior of the carriage. She then obtained, what was often accorded without much difficulty in those days, from both the Pontifical and the Tuscan Governments, alascia passarefor the contents of the carriage asbonâ fide roba usata—"used up, or second-hand goods." And under this denomination the poor old colonel, packed in the carriage together with his beloved violoncello, passed the gates of Rome and the Tuscan frontier, and arrived safely at the place of his latest destination. The servant who was employed to conduct this singular operation did not above half like the job entrusted to him, and used to tell afterwards how he was frightened out of his wits, and the driver exceedingly astonished, by a suddenpom-m-mfrom the interior of the carriage, caused by the breaking, in consequence of some atmospheric change, of one of the strings of the violoncello.
Malicious people used to say that the Queen of the Baths was innocent of all deception as regarded the custom-house officials; for that if any article was ever honestly described asroba usata, the old colonel might be so designated.
The queen herself shortly followed (by another conveyance), and was present at the interment, on which occasion she much impressed the population by causing a superb crimson chair to be placed at the head of the grave, in order that she might be present without standing during the service. The chair was well known, because the queen, both at the Baths and at Florence, was in the habit of sending it about to the houses at which she visited, since she preferred doing so to incurring the risk of the less satisfactory accommodation her friends might offer her!
If space and the reader's patience would allow of it, I might gossip on of many more reminiscences of the baths of Lucca, all pleasant or laughable. But I must conclude by the story of a tragedy, which I will tell, because it is, in many respects, curiously characteristic of the time and place.
The Duke, who, as I have said, spoke English perfectly well, was fond of surrounding himself with foreign, and specially English, dependents. He had at the time of which I am speaking, two English—or rather, one English and one Irish—chamberlains, and a third, who, though a German, was, from having married an Englishwoman, and habitually speaking English, and living with Englishmen, much the same, at least to the Duke, as an Englishman. The Englishman was a young man; the German an older man, and the father of a family. And both were good, upright, and honourable men; both long since gone over to the majority.
The Irishman, also a young man, was a bad fellow; but he was an especial favourite with the Duke, who was strongly attached to him. It is not necessary to print his name. He has gone to his account. But it might nevertheless happen that the printing of my story with his name in these pages might still give pain to somebody.
There was also that year an extremely handsome and attractive lady, a widow, at the Baths. I will not give her name either. For though there was no sort of blame or discredit of any kind attached or attachable to her from any part of my story, as she is, I believe, still living, and as the memory of that time cannot but be a painful one to her, it is as well to suppress it. The lady, as I have said, was handsome and young, and of course all the young fellows who got a chance flirted with her—en tout bien tout honneur. But the Irish chamberlain attached himself to her, not with any but perfectly avowable intentions, but more seriously than the other youngsters, and with an altogether serious eye to her very comfortable dower.
Now during that same summer there was at the Baths Mr. Plowden, the banker from Rome. He was then a young man; he has recently died an old one in the Eternal City. His name I mention in telling my story because much blame was cast upon him at the time by people in Rome, in Florence, and at the Baths, who did not know the facts as entirely and accurately as I knew them; and I am able here to declare publicly what I have often declared privately, that he behaved well and blamelessly in the whole matter.
And probably, though I have no distinct recollection that it was so, Plowden may have also been smitten by the lady. Now, whether the Irishman imagined that the young banker was his most formidable rival, or whether there may have been some previous cause of ill-will between the two men, I cannot say, but so it was that the chamberlain sent a challenge to the banker. The latter declined to accept it on the ground that hewasa banker and not a fighting man, and that his business position would have been materially injured by his fighting a duel. The Irishman might have made the most of this triumph, such as it was. But he was not content with doing so, and lost none of the opportunities, which the social habits of such a place daily afforded him, for insulting and outraging his enemy. And he was continually boasting to his friends that before the end of the season he would compel him to come out and be shot at.
And before the end of the season came, his persistent efforts were crowned with success. Plowden finding his life altogether intolerable under the harrow of the bully's insolence, at length one day challengedhim. Then arose the question of the locality where the duel was to take place. The laws of the duchy were very strict against duelling, and the Duke himself was personally strongly opposed to it. In the case of his own favourite chamberlain, too, his displeasure was likely to be extreme. But in the neighbourhood of the Baths the frontier line which divides the Duchy of Modena from that of Lucca is a very irregular and intricate one. A little below the "Ponte" at the Baths, the Lima falls into the Serchio, and the upper valley of the latter river is of a very romantic and beautiful character. Now we all knew that hereabouts there were portions of Modenese territory interpenetrating that of the Duchy of Lucca, but none of us knew the exact line of the boundary. And the favourite chamberlain, with true Irish impudence, undertook to obtain exact information from the Duke himself.
There was a ball that night, at which the whole of the society were present, and, strange as It may seem, I do not think there was a man there who did not know that the duel was to be fought on the morrow, except the Duke himself. Many of the women even knew it perfectly well. The chamberlain getting the Duke into conversation on the subject of the frontier, learned from him that a certain highly romantic gorge, opening out from the valley of the Serchio, and called Turrite Cava, which he pretended to take an interest in as a place fitted for a picnic, was within the Modenese frontier.
All was arranged, therefore, for the meeting with pistols on the following morning; and the combatants proceeded to the spot fixed on, some five or six miles, I think, from the Baths. Plowden, who, as a sedate business man was less intimate with the generality of the young men at the Baths, was accompanied only by his second; his adversary was attended by a whole cohort of acquaintances—really far more after the fashion of a party going to a picnic, or some other party of pleasure, than in the usual guise of men bent on such an errand.
Plowden had never fired a pistol in his life, and knew about as much of the management of one as an archbishop. The other was an old duellist, and a practised performer with the weapon. All this was perfectly well known, and the young men around the Irishman were earnest with him during their drive to the ground not to take his adversary's life, beseeching him to remember how heavy a load on his mind would such a deed be during the whole future of his own. Not a soul of the whole society of the Baths, who by this time knew what was going on to a man, and almost to a woman (my mother, it may be observed, had not been at the ball, and knew nothing about it), doubted that Plowden was going out to be shot as certainly as a bullock goes into the slaughter house to be killed.
The Irishman, in reply to all the exhortations of his companions, jauntily told them not to distress themselves; he had no intention of killing the fellow, but would content himself with "winging" him. He would have his right arm off as surely as he now had it on!
In the midst of all this the men were put up. At the first shot the Irishman's well-directed bullet whistled close to Plowden's head, but the random shot of the latter struck his adversary full in the groin!
He was hastily carried to a littleosteria, which stood (and still stands) by the side of the road which runs up the valley of the Serchio, at no great distance from the mouth of the Turrite Cava gorge. There was a young medical man among those gathered there, who shook his head over the victim, but did not, I thought, seem very well up to dealing with the case.
One of my mother's earliest and most intimate friends at Florence was a Lady Sevestre, who was then at the Baths with her husband, Sir Thomas Sevestre, an old Indian army surgeon. He was a very old man, and was not much known to the younger society of the place. But it struck me thathewas the man for the occasion. So I rushed off to the Baths in one of thebagherini(as the little light gigs of the country are called) which had conveyed the parties to the ground, and knocked up Sir Thomas. Of course all the story came new to him, and he was very much inclined to wash his hands of it. But on my representations that a life was at stake, his old professional habits prevailed, and he agreed to go back with me to Turrite Cava.
But no persuasions could induce him to trust himself to abagherino. And truly it would have shaken the old man well-nigh to pieces. There was no other carriage to be had in a hurry. And at last he allowed me to get an arm-chair rigged with a couple of poles for bearers, and placed himself in it—not before he had taken the precaution of slinging a bottle of pale ale to either pole of his equipage. He wore a very wide-brimmed straw hat, a suit of professional black, and carried a large white sunshade. And thus accoutred, and accompanied by four stalwart bearers, he started, while I ran by the side of the chair, as queer-looking a party as can well be imagined. I can see it all now; and should have been highly amused at the time had I not very strongly suspected that I was taking him to the bedside of a dying man.
And when he reached his patient, a very few minutes sufficed for the old surgeon to pronounce the case an absolutely hopeless one. After a few hours of agony, the bully, who had insisted on bringing this fate on himself, died that same afternoon.
Then came the question who was to tell the Duke. Who it was that undertook that disagreeable but necessary task, I forget. But the Duke came out to the littleosteriaimmediately on hearing of the catastrophe; also the English clergyman officiating at the Baths came out. And the scene in that large, nearly bare, upper chamber of the little inn was a strange one. The clergyman began praying by the dying man's bedside, while the numerous assemblage in the room all kneeled, and the Duke kneeled with them, interrupting the prayers with his sobs after the uncontrolled fashion of the Italians.
He was very, very angry. But in unblushing defiance of all equity and reason, his anger turned wholly against Plowden, who, of course, had placed himself out of the small potentate's reach within a very few minutes after the catastrophe. But the Duke strove by personal application to induce the Grand Duke of Tuscany to banish Plowden from his dominions, which, to the young banker, one branch of whose business was at Florence and one at Rome, would have been a very serious matter. But this, poor oldciuco, more just and reasonable in this case than his brother potentate, the Protestant Don Giovanni of Lucca, refused to do.
So our pleasant time at the Baths, for that season at least, ended tragically enough; and whenever I have since visited that singularly romantic glen of Turrite Cava, its deep rock-sheltered shadows have been peopled for me by the actors in that day's bloody work.