Gleanings in Europe

The season soon became sufficiently advanced to give us a sight of an Italian spring. The birds of passage had flown, some north and some south, but all in quest of pleasure. The members of parliament had run up to London to take their seats, the peers excepted, for they can do their duty by proxy. As for the Russians and French, they had chiefly gone to Naples, or taken refuge in the mountains. The poor political exiles, of whom Florence has a large number, are still seen walking on the shady sides of the streets, but filled with lassitude and ennui. The town is as hot as Philadelphia.

We left our Palazzo within the walls, and went to a villa, called St. Illario, just without them.—All the eminences around Florence are dotted with these retreats, many of which are large and princely. That we occupy is on a smaller scale; but it has numerous rooms, is near the town, and has many conveniences. Among other recommendations, it has two covered belvederes, where one can sit in the breeze and overlook the groves of olive-trees, with all the crowded objects of an Italian landscape.

But, to give you some idea of the region in which we dwell: The valley of the Arno, though sufficiently wide, and cultivated chiefly with the spade, is broken by many abrupt and irregular heights, the advanced spurs of the ranges of the Apennines that bound it. On nearly all of these eminences, stands a stone edifice topped by a belvedere; sometimes with and sometimes without terraces; here and there a tree, and with olive-groves beneath. The whole country is intersected by narrow roads leading up the heights; and these lanes usually run between high walls. They are commonly paved to prevent the wash of the rains, and nothing can be less attractive than the objects they present; though we find the shade of the walls beginning to be necessary as the season advances. To obtain a view, one is obliged to ascend to some one of the look-outs on the hills, of which there are a good many; though the rides and walks on the level land, that lies above and behind us, occasionally furnish us glorious glimpses. We are much in the habit of going to one of these places, which is rightly enough called Bellosguardo, for a better bird’s-eye view of a town is not often had than this affords of Florence. In addition, we get the panorama of the valley and mountains, and the delicate lights and shades of the misty Apennines. Some of the latter I rank among the best things in their way that I have seen. These mountains are generally to be distinguished from the lower ranges of the Alps, or those whose elevation comes nearest to their own, by a softer and more sunny hue, which is often rendered dreamy and indolent by the sleepy haziness of the atmosphere. Indeed, everything in these regions appears to invite to contemplation and repose at this particular season. There is an admixture of the savage and the refined in the ragged ravines of the hills, the villas, the polished town, the cultivated plain, the distant and chestnut-covered peaks, the costumes, the songs of the peasants, the Oriental olive, the monasteries and churches, that keeps the mind constantly attuned to poetry.

The songs of Tuscany are often remarkable. There is one air in particular that is heard on every key, used to all sorts of words, and is in the mouth of all the lower classes of both sexes. The soldier sings of war to it, the sailor of storms and seas, the gallant of his adventures, and the young girl of her love. The air is full of melody, a requisite of all popular music, while it has the science and finish of a high school, and is altogether superior to anything of the kind which you might fancy in use by the same classes of society at home. It is withal a little wild; and has a la ral lal la to it, that just suits the idea of heartiness, which is perhaps nesessary, for the simplicity of such a thing may be hurt by too much sophistication.

I first heard this air in the town, at a particular hour every evening. On inquiry, I found it was a baker’s boy singing it in the streets, as he dispensed his cakes. I often hear it, as I sit in my belvedere, rising from among the vines or olives, on different heights: sometimes it is sung in falsetto, sometimes in deep bass, and now and then in a rich contr’alto. Walking to Bellosguardo, the other day, I heard it in a vineyard in the latter key, and getting on a stone that overlooked the wall, I found it came from a beautiful young contadina, who was singing of love as she trimmed her vines: disturbed by my motions, she turned, blushed, laughed, hid her face, and ran among the leaves.

This is not the only music I get gratis. One of the narrow lanes separates my end of the house from the church of St. Illario and the dwelling of the priest. From the belvedere, which communicates with my own room, we have frequent passages of civility across the lane with the good old curato, who discusses the weather and the state of the crops with unction. The old man has some excellent figs, and our cook having discovered it, lays his trees under contribution. And here I will record what I conceive to be the very perfection of epicurism, or rather of taste, in the matter of eating. A single fresh fig, as a corrective after the soup, I hold to be one of those sublime touches of art, that are oftener discovered by accident, than by the investigations of knowledge. I do not mean that I have even the equivocal merit of this accidental discovery, for I was told the secret, and I believed French ingenuity had got pretty near it already, in the way of the melons. But no melon is like a fig; nor will a French fig, certainly not a Paris fig, answer the purpose at all. It must be such a fig as one gets in Italy. At Paris you are always offered a glass of Madeira after the soup, the only one taken at table; but it is a pitiful substitute for the fig. After communicating this improvement on human happiness, let me add that it is almost destructive of the pleasure derived from the first, to take a second. One small, greencoated, fresh fig, is the precise point of gastronomic felicity in this respect.

But the good curato, besides his figs, has a pair of uneasy bells in his church tower, which are exactly forty-three feet from my ears, and which invariably ring in pairs six or eight times daily. There are matins, noon-tide, angelus, vespers, and heaven knows what, regularly; to say nothing of extra-masses, christenings, funerals and weddings. The effect of the bells is often delightful when, heard in the distance, for they are ringing all over the valley and on the heights, morning, noon, and night; but these are too near. Still, I get, now and then, rare touches of the picturesque from this proximity to the church. The contadini assemble in their costumes beneath my belvedere, and I have an excellent opportunity of overlooking, and overhearing them too.

The Lingua Toscana applies rather to the people of the towns than to the rural population, I fancy; for these worthy peasants speak a harsh patois. Walking in sight of the duomo, lately, with a gentleman of Florence, I desired him to put a question to a group of peasants; and I found that, while he was perfectly understood, he had great difficulty in understanding them. The aspirated words of Florence itself are well known to all who have been in Italy. We had a droll proof of this just before we left the town; for desiring my man to give our address to a shopkeeper, he gave, “Il Signor ——, Hasa Rihasole, via del Hohomero.”[3]

One of the most picturesque of our relations with the church arises from the funerals. Lounging in the clerical belvedere lately, we saw torches gleaming in a distant lane. Presently the sounds of the funeral song reached us; and these gradually deepened, until we had the imposing and solemn chant for the dead echoing between our own walls, as if in the nave of a church. It is necessary to witness such a scene to appreciate its beauty, on a still and dark night, beneath an Italian sky.

In one of the dreamy walks that I take in company with a Florentine, I strolled near a league along the road to Rome. The country is broken; the road winding among naked and abrupt hills, that constantly remind me of the scenery that one usually finds attached to subjects painted from Holy Writ. On a small bit of table-land, that rises in one of the valleys, is a Carthusian convent; and finding ourselves beneath its walls, my companion proposed entering.

The ascent was easy, and the outer gate open. We saw no one, but, following a carriage way that resembled the approach to an ancient castle, we soon reached the door that communicates with the cloister. Here we accidentally met with a lay brother, who amused himself with cooking for the worthy fathers, and our application for admission was favourably, but silently received. The place was the image of solitude and silence; not a soul besides the lay brother was visible, and even he soon disappeared.

You may imagine the effect of strolling through vast, tenantless, echoing, monastic cloisters, corridors and halls, on a sleepy Italian day, grateful for the shade and coolness, but wondering for whom these vast edifices were constructed. We positively entered, remained an hour, and left this structure without seeing a soul but the lay brother. The gates were open, apparently, for all who chose to enter; the chapel, sacristy, and cloisters were all accessible, not a door or a gate requiring the hand, and yet no one was visible. We departed as we had come; and the only evidence we had that there was a fraternity within, was to be found in a list of the fathers who were to perform certain masses, which was suspended in the chapel, and on which the priests were all designated by the Latin abbreviation Dom. or Dominus. As we returned along the highway, however, a Carthusian, dressed in his white robe, was seen mending a pen at a window of his small tenement: for each father has a tiny house to himself, with a garden and yard; the rules requiring that they shall live separately, and deny themselves, as much as may be, the comforts and solace of speech. These habitations form a court all opening on the cloisters, of which they compose, in fact, the several sides. A covered gallery makes the usual means of intercourse within, while the distinct character of the structures is only apparent from without. The gardens lie between the small houses, or apartments.