As a postscript, do not let us forget the races of the riderless horses that took place at the end of Carnival. Those scenes are before me now, quite fresh, revived by the little old diary. I am glad I have still my sketch-books that give me the outlines of these and other scenes that are gone for ever from the world.
There is the wide round Piazza del Popolo, like an amphitheatre; the sun, near its setting, is tinging the upper portion of the great Egyptian obelisk, which is the starting-post for the occasion, with crimson, the base remaining in cool grey shade. Much stamping of hoofs and champing of bits in the ranks of the Dragoons, who are preparing to clear the Corso; French infantry forming up on either side of the starting-place; the crowds in the stands expectant, many units in carnival costume, and masked. Away go the Dragoons, splitting the crowd that blocks the entrance to the darkening, narrow Corso. They return at a gallop, having ridden to the end and back, and divide to take up their positions. Then the barbs, painted in spots and stripes, are brought on gingerly. The least jerk and it’s no use trying to form a line; they must be let go; the spiked balls, now unfastened and dangling, are beginning to prick in spite of all the care. One after the other the maddened creatures plunge and tug at the restraining grip of the convicts who act as grooms on this occasion, and who literally hold their lives in their hands,—it all passes in a quarter of a minute; down goes the rope, a gun is fired, shouts and clapping of hands ring through the chilly air, and the eleven furious horses plunge into the dark street, the squibs and tin-foil on their backs explode and crackle, the spiked balls bang against their sides. Spurts of sparks fly from their iron heels brightly in the twilight. One horse, perhaps, slips on the cobblestones, rolls over, picks himself up, and follows the others, straining every nerve. They are gone—engulfed in the dark passage, some to be recovered only after several days, wandering in the Campagna, having burst through the sheet spread to stop them at the finish.
THE START FOR THE HORSE RACE, ROME
I often wondered which ordeal a horse would prefer, if he were given the choice—this one, for a mile, or that of a great English race, with a jockey on his back with thousands of pounds to win or lose, armed with a steel whip and a pair of severe spurs! I never wholly enjoy a horse-race in any shape because of these goads in various forms.
Anyhow, I am glad these Roman races have been abolished.
I felt greatly elated when setting up work on my own account, which I did very soon after my arrival from Florence and Bellucci. He had told me at parting that I could “walk by myself” now, and I very soon walked up the steps of the Trinità to choose my first model. You remember how those costumed loafers used to sun themselves on the steps at that time? I had a half-frightened, half-delighted thrill when choosing my first Ciociaro. It was the Judgment of Paris transposed. Three of them, in peaked hats and goatskins, stood grinning and posing before the English signorina while the Papal zouave sentry and the whole lot of male and female models looked on and listened. When I gave the apple to Antonio on account of his good brown face and read waistcoat, and engaged him for the morrow, I felt I had started.
What trouble mamma and I had had in trying to find a studio. A young lady working by herself! A thing unknown—no one would let me a studio, so we ended with the makeshift you remember in our apartment. “That comes of being a woman at starting,” exclaimed mamma.
I can never pass No. 56 Via Babuino without pausing and looking up at one of the top windows where my head hung out one morning, watching my model in the street below for half an hour and wondering how long he meant to saunter up and down with his eye on the Church clock opposite instead of coming up. I had engaged him for eight o’clock for an eight-hour day (giornata finita), and there he was, strolling away a franc’s worth of sitting on purpose. “But, Signorina, one cannot always arrive to the very instant,” was the villain’s excuse on coming in. I said nothing of what I had seen out of the window. Dear old Francesco, he was much prized for his laugh, which he could keep up for twenty minutes at a time. I had already seen it in a picture in London. Of course I had a try, too, and it brought me luck, for the picture where it appears was the first Oil I sold.
Let me remind you of the Pope’s International Exhibition of Ecclesiastical Art held that winter, for which I painted “The Visitation.” The Fine Art section was shown in the Cloisters of Sa. Maria degli Angeli in the Baths of Diocletian. I laugh even now when I recall the way in which my poor picture was launched into the world. After its acceptance by the committee, I had to get a pass for its admission into the exhibition building from the Minister of Commerce, the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Cardinal B. Mamma and I had to wait an age in his ante-room, conscious of being objects of extraordinary curiosity to the crowd of men artists who were there on the same errand as myself. Evidently artists of our sex were rarities in Italy. At last our turn came to go in, and, after many formalities and much polite bowing from l’Eminentissimo and riverendissimo, I signed the several papers, and proudly followed my mamma back through the waiting artists, holding my roll of papers before me. We were informed that, being women, we could not take the picture ourselves into the Cloisters, as no order had been given to admit ladies into the monastic precincts before the opening. So our dear father sallied forth on foot with my pass to Sa. Maria, mamma and I following in a little hired Victoria, holding the big picture before us (no mean handful) to keep it from tumbling out, while hidden, ourselves, from the public eye by the carriage hood. We arrived at the entrance to the forbidden cloisters too soon, as papa had not arrived, and the gendarmes stopped us and told us to drive out of the court again. We pulled up, therefore, on the threshold, with our faces turned in the contrary direction, when the horrible hood flew back and revealed us, holding on to the picture with straining arms and knitted brows, to the grinning soldiers gathered about the place. Our dear father and Mr. Severn (Keats’ friend in youth) soon came to the rescue, and, with the aid of two facchini, they took my magnum opus and disappeared with it into the gloom of the Thermæ.
Dear, kind old Mr. Severn, he seemed so pleased to help me in my initial struggles in Rome! When I next visited Keats’ grave there, long years afterwards with W., I found another tombstone alongside of the Poet’s. There was a palette sculptured on it in place of the other one’s lyre, and one little box hedge held the two friends within its embrace. What made Oliver Wendell Holmes (if it was he) say the scent of box was the scent of Eternity? I do not know the context of the passage, but I think the idea might strike a sensitive perception in some Italian cemetery, where that most touching perfume is always on the air, and Eternity plays about our minds on the scent of the box.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From the Diary
Feb. 1906.—“And now Good-bye, Rome! I hope not a final farewell. I have been up to the Villa Medici to see across the city, on this my last evening, that dome which no one can ever look at unmoved, just at the hour which at this time of year brings the setting sun behind it, so that the crimson central ray seems to spring from the cross on the summit. Shutting out with my hand all intervening objects I seemed to see that purple dome floating in mid-air, a link between earth and heaven; a living token of the intercourse between the two, poised far above the dead ruins of the Pagan Past that lay low, in shadow, to the eastward. Good-bye.”
INDEX
The titles of pictures are printed in italics.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, Œ, P, R, S, T, U, V, W.
Abassieh, 42
Abu Simbel, 75
Achill Island, 17
Alexandria, 77
Amalfi, 159
Ancona, 79
Assisi, 151
Assouan, 62
Atfeh, 81
Athlone, 22
Atlantic, South, 102
Belcaro, 146
Bello Sguardo, 153
Bersaglieri, 155
Brindisi, 79
Cairo, 32
Camels, 42
Cape Colony, 107
Cape, the: “Cape Flats,” 120
A corner of our Garden at Rosebank, 104
“In the hollow of His Hand,” 97
The Inverted Crescent, 113
Capri, 159
Capuchins, 135
Caravaggio, 126
Carran Thual, 5
Clare, 21
Clew Bay, 16
Clonmacnoise, 24
Colosseum, 163
Comombos, 67
Conscription, 57
Constantia, 118
Croagh Patrick, 16
Cromwell, 25
Delta, 77
Western, 80
Dervishes, 40
Dickens, Charles, 132
Dormer, Sir James, 41
Edfoo, 64
Edwards, Miss Amelia, 76
Egypt: Abu Simbel at Sunrise, 76
A “lament” in the Desert, 70
At Philæ, 67
In a Cairo Bazaar, 33
Madame’s “At Home” Day, 81
Registering Fellaheen for the Conscription, 56
Syndioor, on the Lower Nile, 97
The Camel Corps, 40
The English General’s Syce, 49
The Hour of Prayer (Frontispiece)
The Nile: The “Fostât” becalmed, 62
The Nile: “No Mooring To-night,” 59
Esneh, 64
Etruria, 143
False Bay, 110
Fiesole, 137
Florence, 125, 151
Fort St. Julien, 83
Funchal, 92
Gaelic, 8
Garibaldi, 131
Genoa, 151, 156
Ginniss, 32, 61
Glenaragh, 3
Gordon, 32, 72
Miss Duff, 150
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 173
Ireland: “A Chapel-of-Ease,” Co. Kerry, 8
A Little Irish River, 24
Clew Bay, Co. Mayo, 20
Croagh Patrick, 17
Our Escort into Glenaragh, 1
Irish Guards, 14
Karnac, 56
Keats, 172
Kerry, 6
Kensington, South, 138
Khartoum, 32
Killaloe, 22
Korosko, 72
Leprechaun, 8
Lough Acoose, 5
Derg, 22
Leane, 4
Lung’ Arno, 153
Luxor, 32, 55
Madeira, 92
Mahmoudieh, 81
Canal, 86
Malays, 115
Mayo, 15
Milky Way, 106
Mulranny, 16
Native Camel Corps, 42
Nervi, 129
Nile, 32
Lower, 77
Nubia, 71
Œcumenical Council, 165
Paarl, 113
Padua, 151
Palestine, 86
Papal Benediction, 166
Payne, Mr., 93
Perugia, 150
The Bersaglieri at the Fountain, 152
Philæ, 68
Piazza del Popolo, 167
Pio Nono, 163
Pius X., 134
Pole Star, 101
Pompeii, 159
Pyramids, 47
Riviera di Levante: A Son of the Soil, 126
Rome, 133, 160
A Lenten Sermon in the Colosseum, 164
A Meeting on the Pincian, 161
The Start for the Horse Race, 168
Rosetta, 80
Stone, 84
Ruffo, 85
Sakkara, 47
Sarras, 83
Schreiner, Olive, 113
Servants, 99
Severn, Mr., 172
Shannon, 22
Bridge, 23
Sienna, 143
Signa, 65, 125, 136
Silsileh, 67
Simon’s Town, 110
Soudan, 83
Southern Cross, 107
Sphinx, 47
Stellenbosch, 113
Stone-pines, 115
Syces, 44
Syndioor, 84
Table Mountain, 104
Thebes, 80
Tivoli, 46
Tomb of Ti, 48
Tombs of the Mameluks, 42
Tropics, 101
Tuscany, 123, 143
Bringing in the Grapes, 123
Ploughing in, 145
Umbrian Hills, 153
Venice, 47, 78
Verona, 151
Vesuvius, 156
Wady Halfa, 72
Sabooah, 74
Sabooah, 74
THE END
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.
This typographical error has been corrected by the etext transcriber:
hear noctural frogs=>
hear nocturnal frogs {pg 108}