Diary of an idle woman in Italy

Avant-propos

When I call these volumes “ The Diary of an Idle Woman f I do so because I went to Italy with a pe7'fedly disengaged mind , with no special objects of inquiry , no definite call or profession , no preconceived theories . I was idle in that I went where fancy or accident led rne; otherwise I hope my readers will not consider me “an idle woman!

It may be well to mention that some of these chapters (now almost entirely re-written) have appeared from time to time in some of the leading periodicals .

Preface

The wiiter avails herself of the occasion given her by a new edition of the Idle Woman in Italy, to reply to some criticisms on her work.

Some critics who did her the favour to review her book, expressed strong opinions on her supposed inaccuracy, in having stated that at the gladiatorial games in the circus, the raising of the thumb was the signal of life.

Now this is in fact a vexed question, discussed in many learned tomes, and never yet finally settled. The writer having re-examined the classic authorities, considered, and does still consider, her statement to be correct. Those curious in the matter can consult Juvenal and Pliny, and also can enjoy the benefit of the whole discussion by examining the Treatise on Chironomania, by Gilbert Austen.

It is a significant fact, and confirmatory of the author’s view, that the tradition, handed down

IO

PREFACE.

direct from the Romans, in their gladiatorial games in Spain still existing in the bull-fights (the modern substitute for the exhibitions of the circus), makes the thumb turned up the signal of life to the bull; the thumb turned down , death.

Contents

OF VOLUME I.

Chapter I. — II

— III.

— IV.

— V.

— VI.

— VII.

— VIII.

— IX.

A Mediaeval City — The Sienese— The Piazza—

The Palio

From Siena to Or vie to— Cathedral— Chiusi —

Etruscan Tombs

The Journey— Monte Oliveto— Razzi The Old Cardinals Retreat ....

Start from Siena; Monte Varchi; Mr. B.— Brigands ; Arezzo -Cortona ; Lake of Thra-

symene; Perugia

Perugia — Churches — Tomb — Santa Maria degli Angeli — St. Francis — Assisi— Foligno The Forum by Day — The Coliseum — Golden House of Nero and the Games of the Amphitheatre

The Forum and the Capitol by Night — “In Memoriam” — Villa Borghese — Making a Saint— Museum— San Paolo Fuori le Mura The Portrait of the Cenci— The Ruins of the Palace of the Caesars, and Sermon at the Coliseum— Rospigliosi Palace— Churches of the Trastevere and Corsini Palace— Solemn Benediction at San Gregorio— Colonna Pa-

Page

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CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

lace , Gardens , and Ruins — The Conservatories Rooms at the Capitol — Church of Ara

Cceli — Villa Lodovisi

CHAPTER X. Audience of the Pope— Villa Doria Pamfili . — XI. Italian Interiors— Churches : San Lorenzo in Damaso ; San Marco— Baths of Caracalla —

The Opera

— XII. The Cupola of St. Peter’s and Sistine Chapel—

The Museum at the Lateran — San Pietro in Vincolo and the “ Moses ” •

— XIII. Baths of Titus at the Coliseum , at San Mar-

tino di Monti , and at the Sette Sale — Cardinal Antonelli

— XIV. A Roman Jumble, or Sketch of a Day .

DIARY OF

AN IDLE WOMAN IN ITALY.

CHAPTER I.

A Mediaeval City — The Sienese —The Piazza — The Palio.

I am at Siena, on my way to Rome, enjoying those idle days when one learns so much. I arrived by the railway from Florence, which, as if ashamed, folds itself up in a deep valley, and is almost invisible. How it ever got to Siena at all I hardly know. It is the one single mark the present century has been permitted to make there, and that only by way of visiting-card, well outside the gates — otherwise we are entirely in the middle ages; our last news, what dress Bianca Capelio wore at the Florence ball, how insolent she was, and how angry the Grand Duchess Johanna looked; or the probable marriage of Marie de Medici with Henri Quatre, if the Pope will allow the divorce from Queen Margot. Indeed, it seems but a few years ago since Charles V, presented a fine portrait of himself by Holbein, as a legacy to the Sienese citizens. Caesar Borgia, too, in his slashed velvet suit and fine Mechlin ruffles, how he swaggered about the Piazza, and in and out of the Palazzo Pubblico, ogling every pretty woman he saw — only he saw but few; for the Sienese all shut themselves up while he stayed, being alarmed by the fate of poor Ginevra, who was assassinated because she would not give up her lover, Ettore Fieramosca, to please him. Low enough now he lies, as well as his shameless old father — both gone to give account to the Archangel Gabriel of the poisons they concocted and the Romans they killed!

There stands the stout old city which I know so well, unchanged since I first beheld it more years ago than I choose to own — unchanged since the days of the Triumvirate — crowning a precipitous hill, or rather, many hills; the grand old walls, baked golden yellow by the suns of many centuries, running obstinately up hill and down dale, broken here and there by a cypress wood, or a huge church jutting out on a high promontory, or a castle with quaint towers, mullions, buttresses, and battlements along the sky-line. Always in the middle ages, we ignore the existence of gunpowder as a gross affront to our understandings, and deem these walls impregnable.

Darkening the walls at intervals by deep shadows, rise lofty machicolated gates flanked by turrets, giant Cerberuses keeping watch, hostile and grim outwardly, but lit up within by richest frescoes of virgins and saints and angels, so that all who leave the city can see them hovering aloft, and say their passing Avey and return thanks for having been preserved from falling headlong down those steep and dreadful sdruccioli (slides), which descend from the main streets into the bowels of the city with a precipitousness perfectly astounding to the constructive sense.

You may enter Siena if you please by the Camollia Gate, where quite the other day the sons of Remus came riding up in an easy way from Rome, on finding that their uncle Romulus, though ostensibly remarkably civil, was planning for them an immediate descent into the Tartarean fields to join their father.

The very conversation which roused the suspicions of these ingenuous youths is related in an old chronicle, together with all other particulars of their arrival at Siena; also telling how this same gate came to be called Camollia from their tutor Camillus, and how they lived and died here, setting up the wolf of the Capitol as their badge at the corners of the street, as may be seen still to this day.

Once past the gates, be the time day or night, hottest midday or wildest tramontana wind, the lofty cavernous streets engulf you. Every second building is a grim Gothic palace, with great shelving roof, solid rustic basement, much rich tracing and delicate handling about the arched windows and cornices, and wearing withal a certain noli me tangere look that even now keeps the citizen in his place, and teaches him how God, at the beginning, created noble and vile, and divided the ark accordingly.

Nearly all the historic families of Rome, including the fugitive sons of Remus, trace the family cradle to Siena; and as each great family is “blessed” as the word is, by one or more popes, who enriched his kindred from the pennies of St. Peter, we have here splendid palaces of the Borghese, Chigi, Farnese, Orsini, and Piccolomini. The churches, with the cathedral (that noble extravagance in marble) at the head of the list, would fill a volume; not forgetting the great fountains sung by Dante, and the pictures representing the most mystic of the mediaeval schools. But enough: we will descend into the Piazza, the throbbing heart of the living city.

Here we are in the midst of the republic of the middle ages. “Here,” says Dante, “is the great field where men live gloriously free, Siena’s Square,” scorning alike Guelph or Ghibelline, Pope or Kaiser; indignantly rejecting the Countess Matilda, her money and her troops; brutal to the Emperor Charles IV., who, coming here as the protector or tyrant of the Medici type, was torn by the outraged citizens bodily out of his palace, dragged into this square, placed in the centre, and (every aperture, door, and street being carefully blockaded by troops) left there alone until hunger and cold brought down his imperial stomach, and he was fain to run from group to group entreating to be let out — entreating, however, in vain, until he promised to leave the city. Sure never was anointed emperor so treated!

Neither did the Sienese long suffer the Spaniards under Charles V. Things were made so uncomfortable to this emperor that he could not stay. Against Caesar Borgia, too, they set up their backs. But times changed at last, when that traitor Pandolfo Petruccio, born of their own blood, sternly bridled them and broke their spirit, so that when the Marquis Marignano came with his great army,

An Idle Woman in Italy. /.

sent by the Medici Grand Dukes, they were beaten and forced to bend their necks to the Florentine yoke.

This Piazza, shaped like a bow one thousand feet round, is a perfect picture of a republican forum, where forty thousand men can stand at ease, and every man be seen and heard. On the short side of the bow is the public palace, an architectural episode of the thirteenth century, once red, now mellowed to a tawny grey, with stone cornice, quaint turrets, and fantastic gargoyles; while in the midst rises that lovely tower ( della Mangio), tall and taper, crowned with a circlet of whitest stone. In and out, flocks of grey pigeons circle round and round, finding a home in those rich carvings, or beneath the old clock that looks out like an eye in the centre.

Round the Piazza stretches a fringe of feudal palaces; while overhead, above the roofs, rise the cathedral dome and graceful campanile in stripes of black and white marble, those stripes being the arms of the city along with the wolf and cubs.

In these days now passing, the Piazza has assumed the appearance of a Roman circus, and is lined with raised benches up to the first floors of the palaces, save on one side where the ground descends and mattresses cover the walls. It is the race of the Palio — games held annually, and identified from the earliest times with Siena.

During the Spanish rule they saw fit to alter the old fashion of the chariot-race, and inaugurated bull-fights; then the bull-fights lapsed into buffalofights, and finally settled down to what we are now about to see — horse-races.

The city, from the earliest days, has been divided into contrade , or parishes. Each contrada has its special church, generally of great antiquity, and each contrada is named after some animal or natural object, these names being symbolical of certain trades or customs.

There is the wolf, giraffe, owl, snail, tower, wave, goose, tortoise — in all seventeen. Each has its colours, heralds, pages, music, flags, all the mediaeval paraphernalia of republican subdivision.

Moreover, each of these contrade is capable of committing forgery, murder, parricide, or any other atrocity, for the honour of its name and members. The close streets are really dangerous to traverse at this time. Each party pulls out its dagger, drinks, swaggers, swears, and fights on its own ground, and is ready to murder any one of an opposite faction with all the ferocity of belligerent states. To be the citizens of a common city is nothing unless you belong to the same con - trada. French and English in the good old days were not more savagely opposed. Perhaps no city in Europe has preserved so unchanged these mediaeval feuds and customs.

An offence was lately given by “the Wave” to “the Tower.” The Tower swore to have their blood, and a band of giovanotti came up out of a dark sdrucciolo (slide) descending from the Palazzo Pubblico, in order to hang about in ambush at the mouth of another dark and filthy alley; ready, should a “Wave” surge up on the common shore of the Piazza, to strike it down then and there.

Poor Count Tolomei, the sindaco (mayor), a courtly noble, gentle to a fault, presents at these seasons the appearance of an ill-used man, who has neither slept nor eaten from excess of care. He shrugs his shoulders and casts up his eyes in pantomimic horror of the life he leads by reason of the murderous scum, who are so vicious that no police or military cares to follow them into their holes and dens, where they would rather prefer, on the whole, to cut a man’s throat.

Each contrada runs a horse at the Palio, ridden by a fantino wearing the colours of the parish; and this horse and this fantino are the incarnation of the honour and glory, evil and good passions, of its contrada. The enthusiasm is frantic, and the betting desperate.

This is Wednesday, the 16th August, and we are glad it is come, for there have been rehearsals for four days, twice every day, and the din has been deafening. According to custom, flags have been tossed each day as high as the upper windows, in a kind of quaint dance or triumph, very gracefully executed by the pages of the contrade . Then, too, are drums beaten and trumpets sounded within each palace cor tile, to remind the noble marquis or my lord count — each of whom is “protector” of some contrade — that the Palio is at hand, and to intimate that a little ready cash will be joyfully received for the purchase of a swift and likely horse (an intimation the noble in question is very careful to comply with, if he desires to live peaceably at Siena).

We are awakened to-day by the great bell of the Mangia tower and a complication of military music, approaching as nearly as possible to the confusion of Babel. Later come huge bouquets, borne by four pages in full mediaeval costume of rich satin, wearing plumed hats, and accompanied by drums. These bouquets are sent as acknowledgments to those nobles who have contributed to the Palio. The more popular the man, the larger and choicer the bouquet, which is always accepted with much ceremony.

At six o’clock, when the broiling August sun had somewhat worn itself out, a large company assembled on the great stone balcony of the Chigi Palace, every window on the immense fajade being decorated with magnificent red and yellow damask. All round the Piazza these gay trappings marked the lines of the windows, where in each feudal palace stood the living representatives of many historic names.

An enormous crowd, some thirty thousand in number, gradually fills the Piazza, chattering, quarrelling, laughing, screaming. Every seat in the raised amphitheatre is soon taken; and the palace walls are lined as it were with humanity half-way up.

Opposite, there are the noble youths of the Siena College — the Italian Oxford — in full evening dress; and the seminciristes (baby- priests), in blue and red sottane. In the centre of the Piazza there is a perfect field of Leghorn hats as big as carriage- wheels, and crops of common fans; for fans are carried by every single female down to mites of two years old, who successfully perform all accepted gyrations, and create a flutter as of ebbing waters. Bands of music break in from time to time with soul-stirring tunes, such as ‘‘Garibaldi's Hymn" and “Out of Italy the Stranger." The rumbling of the drums in the different contrade sounds in the alleys and side streets, calling together the riders and the procession. The gendarmes are mounted on fat old horses, which, being greatly tormented by the flies, kick and plunge viciously, and send their hoofs into the very faces of the staring populace. Gently and very slowly, with that courtesy natural to Tuscans, these gendarmes “clear the course;" the people gathering, like a flock of sheep, thicker and thicker into the centre. “Clear the course!" — do you understand this, gentle reader? Do you understand that the stones of the Piazza, the granite lastri , are “the course ?” Oh, ye grassy slopes of Ascot and of Derby, green with short clovery turf, cool fragrant carpets embroidered with the early daisy and fragrant violet, and many a gay buttercup and flaunting dandelion, figure to yourselves, in your luxuriant spring mantle, the hard smooth stones of this iron pavement! Why, look! there are two corners at the bend of the bow with lamp-posts, sharp as any dagger in the lowest contrada. There is another beyond just where they are to start, under the Delci Palace; past this, a slippery level; then another corner, and a rapid descent. Sure, never was such a murderous course! Sure none but mediaeval blockheads, going on the father- to-son principle, would risk their necks on such a suicidal venture — to say nothing of the poor little horses, dragged from the oozy soil of the forestcovered Maremma to break their slight legs on such a carrousel!

Great excitement! The gendarmes, whose courtesy has been abused by some ill-educated roughs, sternly insist, with steadily-serried advance of six deep, on clearing the fatal course. Sienese notables at the club, rank and fashion in the palace balconies, are putting up opera-glasses and lorgnettes, and condescending to be amused. The little priests and the noble undergraduates, quite forgetting themselves, are evidently reprimanded sharply. Bells ring incessantly — the great Mangia bell, the audibly beating heart of the city, in long single strokes. The thirty thousand people become impatient; and the hoary palace and the big clock, its nether eye well turned on, keep ward over all. A cannon sounds, and from the Via Casato slowly emerges the procession — the first act in this new-old racing-card. The “Wave” contrada comes first — four flag-bearers and four pages in middle-age costume, red and white, the flag-bearers performing as they advance the gioco (game) of the flags; quaint and graceful movements, such as you may see figured in Monstrelet; the fantino, or jockey, on an unsaddled horse; the racer, on which he is to ride by-and-by following, led by a page; in all ten different attendants for each contrada . The fantino always wears a striped surcoat, of the two colours of his contrada , with its symbolic image embroidered on his back in gold. Last of all comes the carrocciolo, embodying the visible republic, that formerly accompanied the troops to battle, and which, if taken or damaged, caused a terrible reproach and shame, such as the death of a great sovereign would now occasion. It is to our cynical eyes but a lumbering old cart, square and awkward, on which are grouped the flags of all the contrade in a fraternal union that never exists elsewhere.

Military bands and soldiers follow, exciting the populace to madness, who frantically clap their hands. All these dramatis persona , including the carrocciolo, group themselves on an estrade in front of the public palace, and dispose themselves leisurely for enjoyment.

If darkness can be felt, surely silence may, and we all felt the pause when every man and every woman drew their breath. Again the cannon thunders, and gaily trotting out from under the dark palace gateway, fifteen little horses with fifteen party-coloured riders appear, and place themselves before a rope stretched across the course — a very necessary precaution, I assure you, for last year the horses pressed against and broke the cord with their chests (and a strong cord too), and floored five men and three horses dead in a heap on the stones.

Now they are marshalled at the rope by a middle-aged gentleman in full evening dress — a queer contrast to the mediaeval jockeys. He shows extraordinary courage in placing the horses and dragooning the riders. He gives the signal like children — uno, due , /r<?, e via! — drops his official staff, and jumps aside with what speed he can for the dear life. They are off like the wind, round the first corner, on to the murderous lamp-post, down the descent — whish! See, that horse has hugged the corner, rushed down the hill, and is safe. But here, look! this second rider is hurled off against the mattresses lining the house-walls at the fatal corner, or his brains would have been infallibly dashed out on the pavement. He falls, but thanks to this protection, is up again, bewildered, but still holding the reins, and so jumps into the saddle, and rides away. Two others just

DIARY OF AN IDLE WOMAN IN ITALY.

escape; and two provoking horses won’t run. Many are thrown; one horse bolts up a street. Three times they rush round the Piazza, at a risk and with a speed horrible to behold; and each time the ranks are thinner. They ride well, but against all rule, for they belabour each other’s heads as much as their horses’ sides — very uneducated and mediaeval jockeys! Down hill — up again — helter-skelter — horses without riders racing also for the fun! The drum sounds, and it is all over, and the Oca (the goose) has won; and every one knew the Oca would win, because it was the best horse; and a howl, a shriek of exultation, comes up from the crowd, which separates and opens like the bursting of a dammed-up river.

Then the Oca horse is seized by, at the very least, thirty men and boys, and the fantino by as many more, who lift him from his unsaddled horse; and he and the horse are kissed, and hugged, and patted, and rejoiced over, and led, then and there, to the chapel at the bottom of the Mangia tower, where the Madonna stands on the altar, in a forest of flowers, uncovered in honour of the day. And so, surging up and down among the crowd, man and horse disappear down an alley, to reappear at the church of their own contrada, where the priest receives and blesses them both, man and beast, and will hang up the palio (or banner) in the sacristy, with the date in gold letters, as a cosa di devozione.

For many nights, for many weeks, will all the “ Goose ” tribe eat, drink, and be merry, defying those who betted against them in very awful oaths, down in low narrow slums in the worst part of Siena, among the tanners, under San Dominic’s Church, near the Fontebranda sung by Dante. Close by here stands the house of Santa Caterina, whose father was a tanner, and lived beside the fountain to moisten his hides. And Santa Caterina, all angelic as she was, would have rejoiced too at this victory of her contrada , for the glory of the Palio is dear to the heart of every Sienese.

Chapter II

From Siena to Orvieto — Cathedral — Chiusi — Etruscan Tombs.

We leave Siena for two days by the incongruous rail, and plunge into the clay hills lying southward — magnified ant-hills massed one upon the other, without shrub or herb to break the monotony of the grey earth, which is here wrinkled and tormented by countless water-courses. Nature in the South seldom exhibits herself in such repulsive forms.

This hilly desert belting Siena forms the border-land between idyllic Tuscany and Central Italy — Tuscany, with its laughing campagnas, rich with fat mulberries and trellised vines heavy with purple clusters, where bright home-like villas and evergreen groves, well-to-do poderi (farms), churches, and convents crown each dimpling hill, and dot the sides of distant Apennines in all the confidence of perfect security — Central Italy, with its high, abrupt mountains, stern and repellent, scored with basaltic chasms, and traversed by vast

30 DIARY OF AN JDLE WOMAN IN ITALY.

forests of living oak — sad lonely woods, home of the wild boar or savage swine. Here treeless, dried-up river-beds divide the valleys, and disappear into reedy lakes, without a vestige of human habitation, so marking the presence of malaria. Every town and city stands high up on rock or mountain — natural fortresses, where no straggling dwellings dare to linger outside the lofty walls. A land of grand, yet awful beauty, suggestive of all that is abrupt, sudden, wonderful; here an Etruscan city; there a cathedral glittering like a gem; yonder a lake mirroring itself in the fierce sunshine, deep buried in silent woods.

All this time our train has been moving. Here is Asinalunga, where Garibaldi was arrested after Mentana. At Siena no one dared to touch him — he was worshipped; but in this lonely town, tracked by Government spies, he was taken by order of that king to whom he had given Naples. Nothing succeeds like success. Garibaldi failed, and the greatest of modern heroes is banished.

There is necessarily a certain monotony common to railroads; but after passing Torrita the scenery through the valley of the Chiana becomes too grandly savage to be suppressed.

The towns named as the respective stations

DIARY OF AN IDLE WOMAN IN ITALY.

are miles distant, each crowning its own familiar height. Mountain masses on mountain. To the left there is a mountain- chain that on its further side borders the Lake of Thrasymene; yonder lie the mountains of Viterbo; to our right are rugged isolated peaks, each bearing a ruined castle, convent, or village, dignified by historic names and lofty position — all majestic, but repulsive.

There, aloft, is Monte Pulciano, on whose sloping terraces grow those grapes {manna, as they are called) producing the “king of all wines.” Below lies the fair lake, called the Mirror of Monte Pulciano ; its desolate flag-bordered shores the home of countless wild fowl, which, aroused by the railway- whistle, circle terrified over its surface.

Here is the Chiusi station, whither we shall by-and-by return. Opposite is Citta della Pieve, a cheerful little town, raising itself out of the unhealthy vapours on an oak-covered hill, the birthplace of Perugino. And now we stop by a bridge far too large for the shrunken river Arbia, which runs beneath. The doors are opened and the guard shouts “Orvieto!”

A huge station, a precipitous mountain, and an omnibus — such is the terminus of Orvieto.

The line is to be eventually carried on to Rome by Rieti, if Italy escapes bankruptcy.

In many weary zigzags the road ascends a perpendicular rock, and we come to understand why the popes of the middle ages fled to Orvieto when pressed by enemies. That poor beaten Medici, Clement VII., for instance, was glad enough to hide his head behind the strong walls we were approaching, after the sack of Rome by that awful sinner the Constable Bourbon.

On a high plateau surrounded by steep precipices, and protected by walls so solid they might be Etruscan, Pelasgic, and Roman all in one — flanked by a ruined fortress within which a band was playing “ Giulia gentil ” to some saltim - banques who had set up their nomad tents there, and were riding bare-backed horses and jumping hoops before a ragged crowd — stands Orvieto. Sad groves of olives wave over its walls, and ruins cumber lonely paths along the margin of its rocks.

. A dirtier, uglier, more ill-conditioned place than this once Papal city of refuge it would be hard to find. A squalid, insolent population lounge about the narrow streets; here and there a grim old palace tells a tale of former grandeur,

DIARY OP AN IDLE WOMAN IN ITALY. 33

as does the small piazza bearing a certain architectural prestige of the cinque-cento.

The inn “of the fine arts” (of course a broken-down palazzo) presents the worst specimen of osteria — vast, gloomy, cavernous; a great well in the middle of the cloistered court, dismal stairs, dirty waiters, rooms without doors, yet smelling as if always shut up, discomfort and squalor everywhere.

But is there not the cathedral, like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear, only one street off, and shall we despond?

On the highest part of the city is a square, from which all other buildings reverently recede. If it be not irreverent to liken a cathedral to a fairy palace, I would dare to do it. Of form so wonderful, of size so vast, of proportions so exquisite, in colour so indescribably brilliant, as the sun plays a thousand antics with its fantastic sculptures and glowing mosaics, until they glitter like a kaleidoscope — who can describe it?

Is it not fitter for Titania, or Undine, or Armida, for Kobold, or genius, or enchanter, than for a shrine? Is it an enchanted palace? or a marvellously-wrought casket for some spiritualised Glumdalclitch? or a casket for Cyclopean gems, worked in marble and alabaster, and adorned

An Idle lVojnan in Italy. /, 3 with golden mosaics, a glory of sunshine all around? That wheel window in the centre, above those exquisite sculptures, is surely of finest lace, a thing altogether wrought by fairies, and set there to make earthly artists despair. Books may describe as Italian-Gothic (much more Italian than Gothic) the exquisite facade, broken by three vast portals, delicately wrought in finest alabaster, the spiral columns, the rich profusion of cornice, buttress, points, pinnacles, gargoyles, statues — but I persist in looking upon the whole as a sublime enchantment, a thing made out of the sunbeams, that may disappear in a moment at a wave of the magician’s wand.