A Tuscan childhood

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

i The Notes 3

ii Our English 17

II II

MY mother was a woman with theories, and one of her theories was that English women make the best nurses in the world. In order to have us well-washed, well-fed, and otherwise well-groomed, she established an English nursery.

From the hands of our Italian wet-nurse we passed into those of the English. Of our Italian nurse I shall speak again later.

The English language was, therefore, practically our first tongue. We learned to read in English, and the Mother Goose rhymes were as familiar to us as they could be to any child born in the British Islands. Even our Italian names were Anglicized.

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We liked the English influence thoroughly, while later we strenuously objected to our German governesses and tutors.

Our food was English. We had rare roast beef every single day, and a fondness for rare roast beef even now marks one distinct class of Italians.

Our clothes were English. We had to wear sunbonnets, and our little dresses left our necks and arms bare. Even our socks and our low shoes were distinctly English. All these things in those days were uncommon, but now they have been generally adopted by Italian parents.

As soon as we were old enough we had to take English long walks. Two hours every day we tramped along, one, by turn the victim, walking with the governess, while the others walked, paired off, in front. If the governess took five of us out walking, one of us would walk with her,

CIS]

while the other four, the envied ones, could walk ahead two by two, talking to each other about anything they liked — though the governess was German, when out walking we were always allowed to speak English. My mother never allowed us to speak Italian on the street. I may add that the English long walks had to be kept up by the German governesses.

The English influence has been a lasting one in our lives. Though it came early, and in number of years was not as long as that of our German instructors, it contributed far more to the molding of our characters, to a certain attitude of life, and to our likes and dislikes of a good many things.

The English language passed through us corrupted to the Italian maids. There were some words absolutely peculiar to our household. One was a mixture of the word Bismarck, which the popular mind evidently connected with the German governess, and the expression bad mark, which was introduced by the English nurse. Anyway, the Italian maids would, if we were naughty, give us a kind warning: "Look out, look out! Or they '11 give you a bismacche" ; bismacche in their minds standing for a reprimand and a whipping. By a curious coincidence, four of us had the same wet-nurse. She was a woman of remarkable character, and no English nurse, however excellent, could have done better by us than she did. She certainly cooperated bravely in teaching us to speak the truth, and not to be afraid of a whipping once we had brought it upon us. Yet, though to all appearances she submitted to the strictness of our foreign education, she suffered much to see it enforced. I have no doubt she would willingly have taken all whippings to herself if such a thing had been permissible. [20]

I must say, however, that I remember no friction between Italian and English in the household, while there always was trouble between the Italians and the Germans.

Our own English, though I suppose very correct for foreigners, was occasionally picturesque, and the picturesqueness was due to our Italian origin. I remember that Baby, when he was a little older, one day rushed up to my mother, exclaiming: "Mama, Mama! The fire has run away," meaning that it had gone out.

I do not remember any confusion of languages, though certain double meanings in English troubled me. One word, which it took me a long time to understand, was the word pale. I had a pail and a spade to play with in the sand on the seashore, and I distinctly remember my amazement at hearing my mother asking a friend of hers: "Don't you think the child looks pale to-day?"

It was a well-enforced rule with us that we should ask no questions, and I never asked what I had to do with the pail.

When I was still a very young child, and I had my first German governess, I confused certain words that sounded alike in both languages. My mother having once promised to take us to a catacomb at Leghorn, where some bones, said to have belonged to early Christians, had just been discovered, I rushed up to my governess saying in German that Mama was going to take us to see die Bohnen der Todten. The poor woman was puzzled to know what we were going to do with the beans of the dead. She had not been in Italy long, and was evidently still much perplexed at Italian manners and customs.

Another time the same governess asked me to get her ein Besen. I rushed out of the room, and soon returned with the nurse bringing not a broom, but a basin.

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A favorite story of our nursery days we used to illustrate dramatically: "An Englishman made a German a present. The German expressed his thanks by saying 'Danke sehr! The Englishman, who understood it to mean Donkey, sir, and felt duly offended, challenged the German to a duel, and killed him." Ritchie and I acted this out many times, though sometimes we had to give up playing this game, because neither of us would consent to be the German. Our sympathies were always with the English.

It is remarkable, however, that learning several languages, for we spoke four before we were seven, we should never confuse them. The examples I give above are exceptions to the rule. I remember very, very few cases in which there was any confusion of languages at all, though I do remember learning the full meaning of single words in my own language, Italian, [23]

long after I had heard these words used. If we had been allowed to freely ask questions, even this difficulty would have been avoided.

It is very interesting, too, that when children are taught English and another foreign language, like German, besides, they invariably prefer the English language to any other. This is hard to explain. It is not hard to explain, however, that they should like their English nurses. I myself have the kindest recollections of, and the kindest esteem for, those I can remember.

I also look upon this English influence in our childhood as a most desirable one. My first book was Mrs. Edgeworth's "Frank," and I believe that it would be worse for me if I had not begun life on "When Frank was five years old his mother gave him a book."

I have always kept a fondness and an C24]

understanding for Maria Edgeworth, which, to my regret, most English-speaking people nowadays do not share. Even to-day I can read her children's stories and her novels with keen pleasure, and feel like valiantly breaking a lance in her defense when any one compares her disparagingly to Jane Austen.

My admiration for Wordsworth proved less lasting. One of the first poems I remember learning is "We are Seven." I delighted in that, and insisted upon learning—

The dew was falling fast, The stars began to blink, I heard a voice that said Drink, pretty creature, drink.

My fondness for Wordsworth exhausted

itself with those two poems. I never have

succeeded in reading him with pleasure

since, though the Lord knows that I have tried hard enough to develop a due appreciation.

Italian children nowadays are generally taught German instead of English, because good English nurses and good English governesses are so hard to get. I think it fortunate for us that the English care came first, for the Germans instruct, but the English educate.

Ill

HOW THE CHILDREN HALLOWED A CEMETERY

Ill

HOW THE CHILDREN HALLOWED A CEMETERY

OUR fondness for our living pets was great, but it was equaled by the interest we took in giving our special favorites honorable burial. The sparrow Ritchie stepped on and killed received special funeral honors, not because particularly worthy of it, but because I had to be comforted in my unrestrained sorrow. I drenched half a dozen handkerchiefs with my tears.

We were spending the winter at the Villa of Pisa. Imagine a pretty villa built on the banks of the Arno and facing the south. Before it were two magnolia trees, as tall as the house itself, that in summer were full of large white blossoms, yet even in winter looked fresh and strong, with shining dark green leaves; then, several tea-rose trees, from nine to twelve feet high, that all winter long were laden with blossoms.

The garden ran along the famous public drive, the Piagge, and was inclosed by iron railings that allowed any passer-by to look in. Foreigners particularly would stop to admire the wonderful bloom of these trees. Frequently we were allowed to give total strangers, if they were English or German, large bunches of roses, handing them through the railing.

Out of the chinks on the sidewalk before the house grew big bunches of mignonette, while the beds of violets all along the railing scented the air.

This was our front garden, where we had to stay most of the time, because it was sunny, but we had to be careful, and this was, I suppose, the prime reason why none of us cared for the Villa of Pisa, C30]

while we all adored the Villa of Leghorn, where only a small section of the garden was not ours to do as we liked.

The back garden, to the north side of the house, was chilly and gloomy. Its principal charm was a row of beautiful camellia trees, but we only cared for a large cypress tree, under which we had been allowed to make a cemetery.

Here cats, dogs and birds were buried, and small marble slabs gave their name and the date of their death. Pisa is near Carrara, and marble is no great luxury. I must also conscientiously state that the epitaphs were put on in paint or ink, and that they generally lasted only a short while. When the rain had washed the marble clean, it was often used over again. The cemetery, moreover, was not more than two or three square yards. This so that nobody may receive an erroneous impression of magnificence.

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The tragedy of the sparrow was a simple one. I was sitting on the door-step watching my little sparrow hop around. Ritchie, a chubby little fellow, came running along, and stepped upon my sparrow. He killed it. I howled inconsolably, until "the children," who were just through their lessons, volunteered not only a magnificent funeral, but a slab which should tell of Ritchie's crime forever.

I do not know who composed the epitaph, but I remember it distinctly, and shall remember it, I think, till my dying day. It said:

Englished: "Little Ritchie, assassin, killed the little bird."

I cannot remember if Ritchie took the matter to heart.

The death of the sparrow led to somewhat unusual complications; at least, I have never heard of any other children getting into trouble in the same way.

That Pisa is well-known for its antiquities, it would be superfluous to mention, but the indirect influence of these antiquities on our school-room could scarcely be understood without a full explanation.

I have mentioned that my mother was a woman with theories, and that she thought English nurses were the best fitted to keep children well-washed, well-fed, and generally well-groomed. But when it came to the intellectual development of the child mind, she, being a German herself, thought that German training stood first, and our governesses and tutors were, with few exceptions, always German. She insisted upon their having excellent diplomas, and, indeed, engaged no tutor who did not have a university degree. C33]

Now, Italy, for many and various reasons, has always been the land that Germans dream of. Some long for it as the ideal place for a wedding-trip, others long for its climate, others for its art treasures, and others long for it for special reasons, as to study old Latin epitaphs, or to work out some particular point in architecture.

Our tutors were usually young men who profited of a chance to come to Italy in order to pursue their own studies side by side with their teaching. My mother engaged a young man who had brilliantly finished his university career, and who wished to come to us principally because we spent the most severe part of the winter at Pisa, where he could work out some point in connection with the sarcophagi, which still can be seen in Pisa's old cemetery. But this was discovered later.

He ruled the school-room with a rod of iron ; in fact, he was dismissed for break-

[34;]

ing a heavy ruler on my brother's shoulder. It was he, by the way, who, not being allowed to whip my sister, used to whip one of the boys every time she did something wrong. She was expected to pay them one cent for it, but, with patrician contempt for money, the boys stood the whipping, and refused to be paid.

Instead of taking the children for the customary English two-hour walk through the beautiful country around our villa, the German student-instructor took them every single day to the old cemetery.

You remember it, no doubt — a large square filled with holy earth, brought at the time of the Crusades from Jerusalem, and all around it the beautiful arcade, decorated with the wonderful frescos, which people from all over the world come to see. Baedeker marks the Camposanto with three stars.

The children tried to amuse themselves C35]

as best they could. They played hideand-seek behind the sarcophagi, those which the student did not happen to be studying, of course. They examined the frescos in detail, and described them graphically to us little ones when they got home. Particularly did they dwell on the fat, naked monk, almost rent apart by the angel and the devil struggling to gain possession of him.

But the frescos and tombstones very soon lost all charm, and after a while they were hard up for something to do.

You will ask: "How could they be kept two hours every day in a cemetery? Did the man have no sense? And what did your father and mother say about it?"

I can reply: "Alas! German educators have often plenty of uncommon, and just as often very little common, sense. As for my father and mother — the rules were just as strict concerning our asking ques- £361 tions as they were concerning complaints about anything our instructors pleased to do. My father and mother had no idea that the children spent their afternoons at the church-yard."

It happened now that the funeral services for my sparrow, combined with the long hours spent at the Camposanto, fostered a curious idea in the children's mind.

They began to think that after all our own little cemetery did not amount to much, and that something ought to be done to make it more sacred. Finally they devised a way.

In the square of the Camposanto that I have mentioned as filled with holy ground, thousands of men had been buried. In one corner behind a large Roman urn was a heap of human bones that demanded reburial.

The startling idea of the children was this: If the holy earth from Jerusalem had made the Camposanto particularly holy, why should it not make our own little cemetery holy, too? If, moreover, they added a generous supply of the Crusaders' bones, surely nothing would be left to be desired. So for several days the two boys and my sister filled their pockets with earth from Jerusalem and human bones, that were carefully deposited in our playcemetery.

Unfortunately one day the tutor brought them home somewhat late, and the bones and earth had to be left in their pockets. They were found by the nurse who attended to their clothes.

Her horror was indescribable. Almost howling she rushed to my mother, asking : "What does the German tutor want the signorini to do with the bones of the dead? Of course, he is a heretic, but shall he train the signorini to commit such sacrilege?"

The tutor had to explain, and I do not think he passed a pleasant quarter of an hour. He had to admit that for many weary weeks the children had spent their walking time in the Camposanto; that he had given no thought to what they were doing. After that the English daily walks were conscientiously resumed.

The bones, to the smallest bit, were carefully collected, and reverently taken back to the corner of the Camposanto, where, no doubt, they lie to this day.

IV IV

HAVING my place in the family between two boys, I preferred their amusements to my own, and, on the whole, my interest in dolls was not great. I did not care to play with them unless my brothers joined me, and this I could not often induce them to do.

Alick was fertile in luminous ideas, and he had one inspiration which furnished our elders endless merriment. It amused even my father when he heard about it.

The documentary evidence is in my possession to-day — a priceless treasure. It is a sheet of heavy drawing paper, to which passing years have imparted a yellowish tinge which makes it look like parchment. On this sheet, Alick, in his childish handwriting, has written in Italian, that he had drawn up a contract between Ritchie and me. According to the contract, I selected Ritchie as the father of my three daughters. There are two clauses: First, it is distinctly understood that the father may not touch the daughters without the permission of their mother; if he ever does, the contract shall be considered at an end; second, if the father gives his daughters any presents and does not state distinctly beforehand that he may, at pleasure, take them back, it shall not be permissible for him to take back such presents; but the mother may at her pleasure, confiscate them and appropriate them to her own use. At the bottom of this document are three signatures :

Signature of the mother — Lisi; Signature of the father — RiccL Witness — Alick.

There has been only one period in my life when I played with dolls a good deal, and this was when I was nine years old and had to lie in bed ill most of the time for a whole winter. I had eleven small china dolls then, and these I organized into a dramatic troupe. The object of my dramatic performances was a revengeful one, and this requires some explanation:

We had a governess, a German of course, whom I particularly disliked. She must have been a good teacher, judging by some of our exercise books that still exist, but she lacked tact, truthfulness, and justice. The incident which first roused in me an active dislike that never ceased was characteristic.

One day in the history lesson Fraeulein asked for a book. We were all in the school-room, seated at the large walnut study-table, we on stools, and Fraeulein on a comfortable chair with a back to it. [45]

When Fraeulein asked for the book I at once jumped up with the intention of getting it out of the book-case. I had scarcely reached the middle of the room when Fraeulein shouted:

"Sit down!"

"Immediately," I answered, starting back for the table.

"Not immediately — instantly!" was the fierce, angry order.

I sat down on the floor.

This was one time my mother refused to punish me when I was reported to her for insolent behavior.

Fraeulein succeeded in drawing out the worst in me. Never before and never since do I remember showing such bitterness and such contempt for any one.

Another time, when we were spending

the summer months at Leghorn, my

mother went to Germany and left Alick,

Ritchie, and me alone with Fraeulein.

Every evening we were allowed to go to The Baths, where we met other children with whom we could play.

Class distinctions are marked in Italy, yet there is a certain democratic sentiment which draws all people together on an equal footing on the mere basis of culture and education. Besides, whatever the faults of Italians may be, they are not snobs. The least snobbishness, the least expressed consciousness of superiority because of a difference in rank or position, would have appeared unpardonable to us. But we had an instinct that told us whether people were nice or not.

Fraeulein lacked this instinct entirely, and she became acquainted with several Jewish women who, however respectable they may have been, were decidedly vulgar. Now, while the Jews at Leghorn are very numerous, and some of them no doubt have many of the less desirable characteristics of the Jewish race, there are, however, Livornese Jews who are highly educated, and who are treated as equals by the most cultured people in Italy. In fact, the prejudice against Jews in Italy is not as strong as it is in America.

Fraeulein's friends lavished fulsome flattery upon me. The climax was reached when one of them, after extolling my beauty, my clothes, my intelligence, asked if she might kiss me.

"No," I answered. "Mama never would allow it in the world."

Fraeulein was horrified, took me away and punished me. Then she asked me:

"Why would you not let that nice lady kiss you?"

"I don't like her," I said. "Besides, she is a Jew."

"But," Fraeulein remonstrated, "don't you know that even our Lord Jesus was a Jew?"

£483

"I know it," was the prompt reply. "Jesus was good. I know he came on earth poor and humble, when he might have been a king, and he probably chose to be a Jew so as to be as low and despicable as possible."

This sparring was not conducive to an amiable understanding between Fraeulein and me, and in the winter, when we had left Leghorn, the breach grew wider and wider. At that time — after a courtship which my mother did not know about till long after I had discovered it, and which had aroused my contempt — Fraeulein became engaged to my brother's Latin tutor.

She was as sentimental as a German can possibly be, and that means beyond description. Until she met this young man her Schwaermerei had been divided between Goethe and Unser Fritz. In fact, she had the pictures of the three — [49:

the greatest German poet, the Imperial Crown Prince, and the Latin tutor — on her bureau. In the evening before going to bed she kissed them all, the last one twice. The common-sense instilled by our English nurses made me look upon this performance as idiotic.

The dolls served me now to pay Fraeulein back for all the unreasonable, unjust punishments I had ever received. I organized them into a dramatic company, those four and five inches long representing adults, those two and three inches long representing children. I composed only one cycle of plays, all centering about Fraeulein and her love affairs. The principal personages were, Fraeulein (who being called Helena, Italian Elena, was given the fictitious name of Balena, the Italian for whale) ; her lover; Goethe; Unser Fritz; and tradesmen, a butcher, a baker, etc. The plot of my plays varied. £50]

We made our actors speak in German, Italian, and English. Sometimes the scene would be as follows: —

The governess and the tutor were presumed to have been married. The butcher came with a bill :

She.

I need money to pay the butcher's bill.

He.

I have none, I never had any, and I 'm never going to have any.

She.

But we must pay the bill, or we shall not have anything to eat.

He.

Why don't you get somebody to give it to you?

She.

I shall try with Goethe.

(Exit He. Enter Goethe. The doll being china could not be made to bend her knees, and as she assumed a deferential position, generally had to lie on her face.)

She.

Dear Goethe, I have loved you all my life. I have kissed your picture every evening before

C5U going to bed. Don't you think you ought to pay my butcher's bill?

Goethe.

I am writing poetry. I cannot pay butcher's bills.

(Exit Goethe. Enter He).

He.

Has Goethe paid the butcher's bill?

She.

No, he has not. The butcher will not give us any more meat, and we shall have nothing to eat for dinner.

He.

Why don't you ask Unser Fritz to pay the butcher's bill?

She.

I shall do so.

(Exit He. Enter Unser Fritz.) Unser Fritz.

"What do you wish?

She.

I have loved you all my life. I have always said you were the handsomest man in the world. I have kissed your picture every evening before going to bed. Don't you think you ought to pay my butcher's bill?

Unser Fritz.

Of course I shall, gladly and at once. Here is money, take it!

She.

Thank you, thank you, Unser Fritz. Henceforth every night I shall kiss your picture twice and Goethe's on'y once.

(Exit Unser Fritz. Enter He.)

She.

Unser Fritz paid the butcher's bill.

(The two dolls join hands, and are made to dance around the improvised stage, crying: "Happy Gee Gee!")

There were numerous variations to this scene, and other highly sensational plots, conjugal quarrels particularly, in which He invariably threw at Her a fork, which was said to stick in her cheek. The spectators had to use their imagination because, being a china doll, a realistic carrying out of the scene was out of the question.

These performances often used to be [53]

given when I was lying in my little bed alone most of the day. The stage was an invalid's table that could be put right before me. Only at the play-hour, after dinner, were my two little brothers, Alick and Ritchie, allowed to come in and keep me company. Then the real performance was given. The dramatic work done when I was alone might be considered as rehearsals.

Once or twice Fraeulein was an unwilling witness. She burst into tears, calling me names. When my mother finally found out about it, even this German governess went her way.

But she had scarcely had all she deserved. To save herself trouble, she had done intellectually with me what some wretched women in poverty-stricken factory districts do materially with their babies. They poison their babies with brandy in order to keep them asleep and quiet — Fraeulein risked poisoning my mind with the most sentimental, sensational German novels in order to spare herself trouble and keep me satisfied during a winter of illness.

Volume after volume of the German periodicals, Die Gartenlaube and Ueber Land und Meer, did I swallow — swallow is the only suitable word. The triangle situation — husband, wife, and the objectionable third — was familiar to me, and, in fact, my idea of the trouble about household bills did not come from home experiences, but from the trite parental speeches against love in a cottage found in the novels I had read.

Most of Auerbach's novels I had at my disposal, and The Villa on the Rhine, in which a German tutor comes to the United States and joins the Northerners during the War of the Rebellion, inspired me with deep-felt sympathy for the South, which has lived on to this day, though, C55]

with my long experience in the North, I have taken a very different view of the Yankees. But my first impressions were — the North for German tutors, the South for people who had no use for them, ergo my sympathies were all with the South.

My gratitude for my early English education is particularly strong, because I think that without it this period of novel reading (I was still little more than a baby) might have been pernicious. As it was, it only developed an almost unreasonable and unjust scorn for Germans, whom I judged entirely by my governesses and the heroes and heroines of the periodicals I had read. Only much later did I learn to value the German people for the sincerity of their feeling, their earnestness and their scholarship. But, curiously enough, it has been in America that I have grown nearer to this land of my fathers, for I must not forget that I am part German myself. [56]

V

MY MOTHER AND HER DOLL

V

MY MOTHER AND HER DOLL

THE best doll story in the familyis about my mother and her doll. This becomes a reminiscence of my own childhood, because of all the stories I then heard, it was my favorite one.

Having mentioned the fact that I was considered an uninteresting child, it will surprise no reader if the best stories are not about myself.

My mother was born at Leghorn. Leghorn is the ugly duckling among the hundred cities of beautiful Italy that our poets write about. We consider Leghorn a new place, because its existence as a real city dates back only four or five hundred years, and we ascribe its lack of ar- C59]

tistic interest to its newness. Old age, like everything else, is relative.

Before the days of United Italy, Leghorn was a free port, and was far more important and prosperous than it is now. In those days it gave its name to Leghorn chickens and Leghorn hats. Moreover, travelers by land and sea used to stop there on their way to Southern Italy, and many English personages mention Leghorn in the account of their travels.