Cara Roma

Front matter

CARA ROMA. BY MISS GRANT, AUTHOR OF "THE SUN-MAID," " PBINCE HUGO," "ARTISTE," " MT HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS/' ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. vol. ir. " La Simpatia & un ponte d' oro." LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited. 1885. [All rights reserved.} LONDON : PRINTED BT GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED, st. John's square. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. Cok Cordium . . . . . 1 II. "Days that are never long" . . 50 III. A delicate Shaft, but sure . 86 IV. Gloom of Night and Dawn of Morning 121 V. Beauty — not always Joy . . .154 VI. Many Streams 164 VII. Cortile di Belvedere . . 233 VIII. Love and Hieroglyphics . 283 IX. In Quite a New Light . . 298 X. Among the Olives — by the Sunny Sea CAttA EOMA.

Chapter I. Cor Cordium

Me. Calthorpe had not the quick perceptive faculty, for points of personal interest or sentiment, which had been evinced the evening before by his wife, — whose imagi nation, indeed, was not entirely engrossed by the classic or antique bearing of every sort of thing. Mr. Calthorpe's was engrossed, and Adrian had all the trouble in the world to beguile him, without any evidently sufficient motive, to take their walk — that long ramble in which he loved daily to indulge himself — to the pyramid of Caius Cestius this afternoon. vol. II. B " Oh, that pyramid," he said, " it is not really interesting, not from our point of view, you know." " Surely yes, from mine," pleaded Adrian. " Not a bit, not in the very least, I assure you ; nothing genuinely Egyptian about it, except the imitated shape — time of Augustus, you know — a modern thing, put up by Pon tius Mela and his freedman, Pothus, to the Prætor Cestius, no doubt of it.

He was one of the seven Epulones who prepared the ban quet of the gods at the great solemnities just about then — the same whom Cicero wrote of in his letter to Atticus, from Ephesus, and whom he named again in his oration for Flaccus. Eh, yes, that was the man ; it is a matter of yesterday, from your Egyptologian point of view — nothing really Egyptian about it at all. "Why, my good fellow, it is built of travertine and tufa, and I should like to know what your brick-making, slave-driving Egyptians knew about that, eh ? " And in another moment, standing unde cided on the slopes of the Via di S. Sebastiano, at the door of the Albergo Parigi, while the precious afternoon flowed on, he would have been " off" upon the material of the Egyptian pyramids, as compared with the later sub stance used in Greece, and on the huge amphoræ blocks found at Pompeii — of which there are alsotraees in the deposit which form the Testaccio Hill; on all this in analytical comparison with the lapis-albanus and the tufa used in the building of the Rome of the kings, and the peperino of the repub lic, and on all the other diversified materials employed successively in the building of the Eternal City, he had much to say ; for this was a subject which, indeed, engaged him most particularly.

"But," Adrian said, "I think I should really like to see the pyramid, no matter what it is made of," he added. " Not worth the seeing, I tell you. Though, if you do go, mind you go inside and see the arabesques. Ottavio Falconieri discovered those, you know, and annexed a dissertation upon them to the work of Nardini. These B are curious ; but you would not think them old, however. They are four females, with vases and candelabras that were thought a great deal about before the paintings at Pompeii came to light." " Let us go and have a look at them, then." " Oh, hardly — would you really ? You would like to go ? To tell the truth, I had the arch of Titus in my head to-day. I want to look at that bas-relief again, of the procession with the candlesticks, and those other trophies of the Jews.

It does seem to me so odd that the base of the legs of the table should be in Doric work, the same as they put on their couches, you know, while the upper half is square. I cannot conceive where the Jews got that Doric pattern; I was thinking about it in Greece the other day. Would you not like to go to the arch — which is real, as far as it goes — quite as well as to an imitation pyramid, eh?" " But, you know, Mrs. Calthorpe and the rest of the party are to meet us there." "What— at the pyramid? Oh, they'll never come. They are going to the duchessa's ; they will stop there, I can assure you, the whole afternoon." "All the same—" " The only thing we might do, however," Mr. Calthorpe went on, " a thing I want really to go to — and you would like that, too — is the Monte Testaccio ; it lies out there, where they manufactured pottery for cen turies, and where the broken amphoræ, as I was saying just now, was thrown.

Very well, then ; yes, let us go there." " And once so far," said Adrian, " modern though the thought may be — " ' The spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green ascent.' ': " Oh, the cemetery — Keats, Shelley, the. Cor Cordium, and the * name writ in water,' and all that. Well, it is modern enough, certainly; but the thing is nearly worn out, all the same. Tourists driven to distraction." " Like the Cenci," Adrian put in. " Like the Cenci, like the Colosseum, like the Pope, like anything that is within the tourist grasp. That is why I think it is so good to get, as we do, as far back as we can ; quite behind backs, in fact, where few people comparatively want to go. Eh, don't you think so ? " " Yes," said Adrian doubtfully ; and then the memory came to him of that comparison which some one had made, and of which the words ever kept returning to him, of the difference between " living flowers and dead stones," and he felt, he almost hated Egypto logy and all things antique or classical in his impatience to get Mr. Calthorpe under way.

" Do let us be off," he said. " Like a pair of tourists to the shrine of Shelley. Well, where is our guide-book and our Hyperion, eh, and our camp-stool, and our umbrella ? By the gods, for sun or dew, don't let us leave that behind, or otherwise seem to forget that such ' a thing of beauty is a joy for ever,' as we proceed to Endymion's tomb ; I must fetch my umbrella— for, pleasantry apart — I promised Adela I would really not go without it again. I get headaches, and the sun still grills." Armed with this "thing of beauty," and a work on the amphoræ of Pompeii, from which he proposed to make comparisons at Monte Testaccio, hastily caught up, as he fetched the forgotten umbrella, and carried under his arm, — Mr. Calthorpe looked no despicable representative of the tourist ex cursion class when Adrian got him under way.

Even then he had difficulties, for, once started on a definite course, actually going to the shrine of the later-day poets grouped near Caius Cestius, he started at the same time on a line of fresh mental exercise, and divulged a fount of information and anec dotage on the subject of the poets and their Roman circle and times, that greatly impeded their progress at the outset, though very interesting and to the point. He had been at Rome so often, so long, and at first so young, that he had known everybody in the days, when, at Rome, there lingered many personal recollections of both Keats and Shelley, and of that other— their dark-eyed friend, whose song of Italy mounted on wings stronger than theirs, if not more beautiful, and who sang of both as one had already sung of the other. For scarce the pen was dry with which Adonais' praise had been written, and Adonais' loss deplored, when Childe Harold was alone and desolate at Rome, laying that " heart of hearts," which had wept for Keats, beneath the wall of Aurelius, and placing there enshrined, all that was left by sea and fire of the mortal frame of Shelley.

Mr. Calthorpe had heard much of all these from personal description in his young Roman days, and not one step beyond the house at the corner of the Piazza di Spagna could Adrian convey him, until he had been told, there, standing on the pavement, and looking up, how often Philip Calthorpe had passed that house with Mr. Severn, and heard him describe again and again the bitter day when John Keats, in weariness and want and anger, had flung his dinner from that very casement into the Piazza below, because it was a plat which, for a climax of badness, could not be eaten or endured. " If that trattore could have known," added Mr. Calthorpe, " that in starving that poet-frame he was chasing from amongst us so hastily a poet-soul, would he have done differently ? Who can tell ? Chattertons and Haydons are so many, clamouring at the door of every adventurous trattore in this nursery of struggling art, that one cannot blame the trattori entirely, because they too must live.

However — " And then Adrian got him a little further on. But pen would fail to tell of their many interruptions and the many objects which irresistibly arrested them as they went down by the Via Ripetta and along by the Tiber bank; the many points which poor Mr. Cal thorpe, all unconscious of the absolute de terioration which had befallen his friend's mind on all things of interest in the " antique," thought it behoved him to indicate, and on which he paused to descant ; until, after they had paused long opposite the Ponte Cestius, which, to Mr. Calthorpe's mind, was much more interesting and genuine than the pyramid of the same name, and had lingered a very long time by the little circular temple of Vesta, and again before the old, tottering corner of Agrippa's ruin, Adrian discovered it was very nearly four o'clock, and he promptly and peremptorily arrested a little one-horse vettura which was passing by, inveigled Mr. Calthorpe into it before he quite fully realized his purpose, and conveyed him forcibly and without more delay towards the Porta di San Paolo, never allowing him, spite of all protest and remonstrance, for one moment to stop again until they pulled up sud denly just at the corner where the Via San Maria leads up to the Aventine Hill.

Close by was the Monte Testaccio, and to their right was the entrance, to the shrines alike, of the poets of yesterday, the Epulones of long ago, and of many other wayfarers and sojourners from foreign climes as well. There stood the Daring carriage, arrived five minutes before their little vettura pulled up, and there was Lady Daring, impatient, as usual, and derisive, of course, for the hour of tryst was past, the place was there, and Adrian's had been a tardy arrival. " If you only knew," he said with a deep sigh, as he forbore entirely from all answer to her sallies of derision, and only looked with much serious deprecation into her laugh ing face. He had come round to her side of the carriage, and put his hand upon the door. " You will get out ? " he said. " May I open the door ? " Lady Daring glanced across at Car, and then round at Mrs. Calthorpe by her side.

" Oh, yes, of course we shall," exclaimed Car. " Must we really ? " said Mrs. Calthorpe in a doubtful tone. " One has been here so often," continued Lady Daring, who did not happen to be that afternoon in the very least in a sentimental mood. She had enjoyed the duchessa's " at home," and she was in the humour for society, and not for poetic suggestions of any kind, and still less for any melancholy topics at all. " One has been here so often ; and, really, we can see it all very well from here." " We do — perfectly," said Mrs. Calthorpe; and she sat up and looked round from under her parasol at the surrounding scene, weird, pathetic, and most picturesque as it was. The pyramid, so scorned by her husband as too modern, spite its 1900 years, cut the sky with its sharp point and smooth, sloping sides, away beneath the pine-trees beyond the daisy-gemmed field where Adonais lay; and they could see distinctly enough from the carriage the stone medallion, with its inscription, which they had certainly often read.

And to the right, they could discern also among the green, feathering foliage of the cypress and of the darker ilex shade, the rugged outline of the Aurelian wall, with the old, ruined towers and Porto, above the other shrine. To the left was the Monte Testaccio, to which Mr. Calthorpe's attention already wandered as he turned over the leaves of the work on the amphoræ of Pompeii. " No, we need not certainly get out, not you nor I, Adela, my dear; this youthful enthusiast is unrestrainable, I can well see, so she must be allowed to read the Cor Cordium and the ' writ in water ' once more ; though I have often declared, my dear little girl, have I not, and I maintain it, that Hyperion was not so weak a soul as to be slain by a review. No, poor boy ! on the contrary, he had an eagle heart ; and if the sad commonplace foes of want and weary sickness had spared him, his song would have risen on eagle wings, spite of all the reviews.

Ah ! but there, I am off upon the thing, as usual. Can one help it, with any amount of cold philosophy, if one comes here ? I declare it is worse than the Colosseum and Frederick's Gladiator. Do you want, Adela, to pursue further investigations to day?" " I want," said her friend, " most pro saically I want, to leave a card for the Prin cipessa Palavini, who was so kind to us when we were last here — you remember, Philip ? — and who, I have just heard from the Duchessa Pantuoli, is at her villa, about a mile out beyond the end of the Via di Porta San Paolo. Could we drive there, do you think, when we have concluded our inspection (from here) of the poets' shrines ? " "Of course we can," said Lady Daring; " still better, why should not you and I drive out there, while the other three inspect the pyramid and the shrines ?

No, I will not be cruel, Car, you shall not be carried away, my little dear; you shall go and have twenty minutes of happy melancholy in the acre of violets and winter daisies there, and you can take Adrian up to the Cor Cordium stone as well. I dare say Mr. Calthorpe even, does not know that pretty side-path by the cypresses we discovered last time you and I were here." And so it was settled, amazingly to the satisfaction of many people concerned, and away whirled Lady Daring, smiling and nod ding to the trio she left behind, and calling brightly, as the carriage moved away, — " Mind, just twenty minutes, now ! — not a moment longer ; and be sure, Car, to be down here again when we come back." Amused at the grave enthusiasm of her dreamy girl, she laughed still as she drove away and turned to Mrs. Calthorpe to say,— " The place is interesting certainly to an intense degree, but it saddens me.

The last time I came here was in the early winter, to see poor old Trelawny's stone — and I had such a long talk with the custodian while that poetry-struck child of mine wandered about at her own sweet will. I talked with the man, he was quite young, so I at first expected he could tell me nothing ; but, after all, it was curious, it was certainly interesting, to hear all he could say. He had been at this place all his life, and his father was hero before him, and had been always here, and died last spring at a great age. So of course he, the father, could remember the day, sixty years ago, when Childe Harold came, and Mr. Trelawny with him, whom I in my young girl-days knew well in my father's London home. He could tell, that old man, the old custodian, of the two coming — just think of them, two young, eager-hearted men — and of the Cor Cordium laid by them there, and of the aspect and different con duct of both.

And just before his death he told, how one of those young men had bought for himself the patch of ground next the slirine of the poet's heart, and had gone away and returned never, and had not written even again. Think of Trelawny — and his sixty years of active life between then and now. He never asked in any way, any thing at all, about his patch of Roman soil. And the old custodian died, having said this, and adding that ' those two friends must be gone, perhaps long since, or must be very old, if living still ; but that that patch belonged to one of them for all time and for all future history, even if unclaimed.' A fortnight after the old custodian's death there came a letter to the corner here, by Shelley's shrine. It was written in the frail and failing hand of age ; it was addressed to the custodian ; it spoke of the end of a long, eventful life approaching; it claimed for the writer the spot which in youth he had selected for the rest unchanging of an impetuous heart — a heart which turned then, with its last feeble pulse of longing, towards the friend he had so loved in youth.

The letter was from old Trelawny, — and it claimed the piece of curious property, which, in his name, for sixty years, had stood attested in the records of the custodian as his. Six months afterwards, as we all know, his heart was laid there — by the shrine of his friend. I like this story, the links are so curious ; I wish I had overtaken that old custodian, and made him tell me of that first day in his boyhood when those two friends had come. But here we are ; is not this the Principessa's VOL. II. c villa ? I shall be so glad to leave my own cards, too." The trio left standing in the glow of the afternoon sunset, which was beginning now to deepen over pyramid and pine, over grass and ilex and ruins, and the snow-white poets' stone — the trio were very pleased with the arrangement. Mr. Calthorpe, because, immediately and without fear of interruption, he could return to the references upon amphoræ, and to con templation of the Testaccio Mount ; Car, because a wave of sudden joy rose up in her heart, and seemed to rush over her whole sensitive being.

A feeling of intense gladness took posses sion of her, she could scarcely have said why, as she looked round at the green field starred with violets and daisies, at the red stemmed pine-trees, dark against the lapis blue sky, at the cypress-grove, towards Shelley's shrine, at the rapidly receding carriage, at Mr. Calthorpe immersed in his notes on amphoræ, and, last of all, at Adrian, from whom all this time she had instinctively looked away, — as he stood by her side with a deep glow of intense gladness on his countenance also. He, too, was evidently very pleased; his eyes were full of the softest expression of pleasure, indeed, and a smile just touched, his lips — a smile of sweetness ineffable, and of satisfaction that rose almost to amusement, at an arrangement so unexpected and so completely charming to him.

She smiled, too, in answer to him now, a reflex of the gleam of perfect contentment which illumined his face ; and then, without one word, they turned and moved slowly away together, taking no sort of notice of Mr. Calthorpe, — which just suited him ! He adjusted his eyeglass and looked up, his gaze followed them for a moment as they re treated slowly from beside the carriage way, and then he looked down at his book again, then round, then up towards the Testaccian Mount, with the cross upon its summit, above the c debris of much pottery and so many smashed amphoræ blocks ; then he looked once at the pyramid, and shrugged his shoulders with distaste ; and finally, Chacun a son gout, he murmured, and he turned and proceeded slowly towards the Testaccio mount — after all, in his generation, a wise man.

The two, after strolling a little way, sat down, as a first stage, upon the low wall round the green field of Keats, where is the pyramid and the stone pine, with its red stem glowing deep and fiery in the sunset, beneath the heavy verdure of its crown ; with the violets and daisies and sweet small nar cissus and pale crocus of Rome starring the grass, and with that silent presence always — of the poet-boy at rest. The air was so clear ; the sky, as the day crept on, so deep a lapis-blue ; the light was so glowing ; the whole atmosphere so full of lustre, that all seemed to gleam and shine around them with a light that was in itself a wonder, and seemed to thrill upon the fibres of the heart. It made them glad with a strange vibrating excitement, that often takes possession of the being in that wondrous clime.

It made them silent for a little, while at the same time it thrilled their nerves, with that force of joy, from the sense of all the glory of interest, and beauty, and intensity of association around them, and from the un defined sweet sense that they were in the midst of it all — and alone. They were silent at first, then spoke mur muringly and low. They were pensive, while yet aglow with that feeling of ineffable joy ; pensive because their souls went out to meet each other with a sympathy so intense and strong, and because it was so marvel lously sweet to both of them to sit there together, and to steep the whole force of their sensibilities in the beauty and the deep, thrilling pathos of the scene. They talked a little presently in low tones of the beauty all around them, of the brightness of the air, of the sweetness of the flowers, of the glow of the atmosphere — and a little of the young poet-life, broken like a column whose summit had towered to heaven, crushed like a lily before the rough, sweeping storm of an adverse fate.

They forgot the pyramid, with its arabesque within, the four females with vases and candelabra, whom Mr. Calthorpe had enjoined upon Adrian Dillon to see, and Mr. Calthorpe him self they forgot also, entirely, as they sat there — in the sweet ineffable bliss of their perfect sympathy and understanding. Alter a little time they rose ; and, she conducting him and drawing him slowly on, they went up through the newer enclosure, through the cypresses, and across the grass, and up the slope to the old Porta of the Aurelian wall, where Byron and Trelawny had come together, and where the " heart of hearts " was enshrined. And there they lingered awhile, conning the lines from the song of Ariel, and looking out over the view beyond the Monte Tes taccio and up to the rugged battlements of the old Aurelian gateway, that overshadowed the poet's corner here — that old, brown, crumbling ruin that hangs about the rest of the passionate heart ; the grim old ruin that endureth, while that group of young poet beings, so wondrous in their strength of spirit and their genius, have fretted out their feverish lives, and are long since gone.

" I realized that I should see this," said Adrian softly, " for the first time, as the train swept round the bay above Lerici the other night. It was glorious, the moon shining on the sea and on Spezzia as we passed along at top speed, and for a moment just sighted it lying in the hollow of the circling hills be low ; we could see the lights twinkling in the windows, and the glow from the great arsenals reflected on the water. It was a sensation as the Mediterranean wave rose and rocked and rushed with a whirl of white foam upon the shore, a sensation to realize that it was Shelley's Bay of Spezzia, and that Lerici and the Casa Magni lay just beyond." " Ah, you came that way ? " " Yes; and I had been travelling day and night with nothing much in my head but the Rosetta Stone, and those new ideas I had got about the obelisks that I wanted to verify here, and I had passed through that very gray thing, a gray day on the Riviera, as I came along to Genoa from Cannes and Nice.

It was not until we had reached Spezzia that the sky cleared, and the moon and the stars of Italy shone out upon the wide sapphire stretch of her great sea ; and I was tired and dull and bored with it all until that moment, when somehow my soul awoke, and I realized that — it was Italy — I was dashing Rome wards, and that — was Shelley's Bay. She looked up at him with a bright sweet glance of understanding and sympathy. For she did understand him so well : the lonosad ness and the heart-slumber which had huno over him so long ; and the awakening at the touch of all the art and the beauty, as she thought, of this lovely sunlit land ; and, be neath the power of association too — telling of many things, and arousing recollections of poetic and ethereal thoughts, he used to love. She thought she understood it all, and she thought she liked him, just for this power of renewing youth within him, and for the sim plicity and almost boyish eagerness with which he greeted, this second bright dawning of his spirit-life.

She looked up, and her eyes met his with a sweetness that thrilled his heart. They turned a little way together from the foot of the poet's shrine, and she led him along a cypress-shaded path which fringes the en closure along the higher side of the slope. The cypress shade was grateful here, for the setting sun was strong and ruby-red this afternoon, and was sending now a bright fiery ray slanting across roofs and domes and pinnacles, and bearing straight upon the poet's corner from behind the Testaccio Mount. They walked slowly along the green path way. It was quiet, and sweet, and shady, and still. They walked onwards together, Car with her gaze lowered now, and with her head bent a little forwards as she went, the lace edging of her creamy -hued skirt brushing softly the short turf, and Adrian pacing beside her, his head raised and thrown back, with a bright flush from the sun-glow warming his cheek, and with a gleam of soft excitement in his steel-blue eyes.

And she listened as he went on, for as it had been her mood to talk and to "tell him things " as they had lingered together in the Piazza that morning; so now his heart seemed full, his mind alert and eager, ebbing over with memories and suggestions of many things he would tell to her, as the scene stirred him deeply, and her sweet sympathetic presence unsealed his very innermost self. " I cannot tell you," he said, " what it is to me to be here with you. I often wanted to come here, and I was deterred because I must have come alone." " I like to be here with you," she an swered, " because you like it as I do, and because you have the same feeling about them all as I have. I always fancy that they must have walked just along here together often, the three friends ; not poor young Keats, for he was gone before they came, but the others, when they came down together, as they have all described it, from Mr. Severn's house.

They walked here, and watched the sunset, as we are doing now, and then they remembered the place, when the two alone came from Lerici, and so chose the spot just at the end of the green walk there." " Yes," he answered, " and if I had come here any time, when I have thought of coming within the last twenty years, I should not have walked with their memory only with me, the soft memory of a poetic associa tion of which the pathos has no pain — I should have come alone, in company with bitter memories of my own broken hopes and crushed ambition, and of the friend with whom I had worked, with whom I had studied all things of beauty through those years of eager youth — when at college, and on moor and river, poetry and art had a glory un utterable for us ; and Shelley and Keats, and all the splendid old giants who had taught them, were the fountains from which we drew the limpid waters of our spirit-life.