Part 65 (1/2)
”_Friday evening, March 6._--All day there has been a rally, and she has now power to cough again. Grilli had given the case up, so at noon to-day I had no scruple in sending for Dr. Topham, writing full explanation of the strange case. He says it is the most extraordinary he has ever seen and a most interesting study--'Before such a miracle of nature, science can only sit still.' Life still hangs on a thread, but there is certainly an improvement. She knows none but me.”
”_Sat.u.r.day evening, March 7._--What a quiet day of respite we have had after all the long tension and anxiety. My darling's face has resumed a natural expression, and she now lies quite quiet, sleeping, and only rousing herself to take nourishment.”
I have copied these fragments from my journal of two terrible weeks, written upon my knees by my mother's side, when we felt every hour _must_ be the last, and that her words, so difficult to recall afterwards, would be almost our only consolation when the great desolation had really fallen. But no description can give an idea of the illness--of the strange luminousness of the sunken features, such as one reads of in lives of Catholic saints--of the marvellous beauty of her expression--of the thrilling accents in which many words were spoken, from which her sensitive retiring nature would have shrunk in health.
Had there been physically any reason for hopefulness, which there was not--had the doctors given any hope of recovery, which they did not, her appearance, her words, her almost transfiguration would have a.s.sured us that she was on the threshold of another world. I feel that those who read must--like those who saw--almost experience a sort of shock at her being given back to us again. Yet I believe that G.o.d heard my prayer in St. Peter's for the two years more. During that time, and that time only, she was spared to bless us, and to prepare me better for the final separation when it really came. She was also spared to be my support in another great trial of my life, to which we then never looked forward.
But I will return to my journal, with which ordinary events now again entwine themselves.
”_March 10, 1868._--My darling is gradually but slowly regaining strength, the doctor saying he can give no medicine, but that he can only stand still in awe before the marvels of nature, whilst we, the watchers, are gradually rallying from the great strain and tension of the last week.
”Yesterday was Santa Francesca Romana's day. I went to her house, the old Ponziani Palace, now the Ezercizii Pii, hung outside for the day with battered tapestry and strewn within with box. The rooms inside are the same as when the Saint lived in them, with raftered ceilings, and many of them turned into chapels. Downstairs is the large room which she turned into a hospital, and there is a bright open courtyard planted with orange-trees, though certainly nothing of the 'magnificent Ponziani Palace' described by Lady Georgiana Fullerton in her book.
”Thence to the Tor de' Specchi, where a cardinal, a number of Roman ladies, and a crowd of others were pa.s.sing through the bright old rooms covered with frescoes and tapestry, and looking into the pleasant courtyards of the convent with their fountains and orange-trees. Upstairs is a fine chapel, where the skeleton of the Saint lies under the altar, dressed as an Oblate (with the face exposed), but in a white veil and white gloves! The living Oblates flitting about were very interesting picturesque-looking women, mostly rather old. Several relics of Santa Francesca are preserved.
On a table near the entrance was the large flat vase in which she made ointment for the poor, filled with flowers.
”On Sunday, when many ladies went to the Pope, he made them a little sermon about their guardian angels and Sta. Francesca Romana.”
”_March 15._--My sweet Mother is in almost exactly the same state--a sort of dormouse existence, and so weak that she can scarcely hold up her head; yet she has been twice wheeled into the sitting-room.
”I have been with the Fitzmaurices to the Castle of S. Angelo, very curious, and the prisons of Beatrice Cenci and her stepmother, most ghastly and horrid. There are between seven and eight hundred men there now, and many prisoners. Over the prison doors pa.s.sers-by had made notes in chalk: one was 'O voi che entrate qui, lasciate ogni speranza;' another, 'On sait quand on entre, on ne sait pas quand on sort;' another, 'H?tel des Martyrs.'
[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTLE OF ESTE.[370]]
”On Friday evening I rushed with all the world to the receptions of the new cardinals--first to the Spanish Emba.s.sy, then to the Colonna to see Cardinal Bonaparte,[371] who has a most humble manner and a beautiful refined face like Manning at his best; and then to the Inquisition, where Cardinal de Monaco was waiting to receive in rooms which were almost empty.”
”_March 30._--The dear Mother makes daily progress. She has the sofa in her bedroom, and lies there a great deal in the sunny window.
”I went to Mrs. Lockwood's theatricals, to which, as she said, 'all the people above the rank of a d.u.c.h.ess were asked down to the letter M.' The play, _L'A?eule_, was wonderfully well done by Princess Radziwill, Princess Pallavicini, Princess Scilla, Duca del Gallo, and others, a most beautiful electric light being let in when the grandmother steals in to give the poison to the sleeping girl.”
”_May 8._--We leave Rome to-morrow--leave it in a flush of summer glory, in a wealth unspeakable of foliage and flowers, orange blossoms scenting our staircase, the sky deep blue.
”All the last fortnight poor Emma Simpkinson[372] has been terribly ill--a great anxiety to us as to what was best to be done for her, but we hope now that she may be moved to England, and I must go with my restored Mother, who is expanding like a flower in the suns.h.i.+ne.
”This afternoon, at the crowded time, the young Countess Crivelli, the new Austrian Amba.s.sadress, drove down the Corso. At the Porta del Popolo she met her husband's horse without a rider. Much alarmed, she drove on, and a little farther on she found her husband's dead body lying in the road. She picked it up, and drove back down the Corso with the dead man by her side.”
Amongst the many English who spent this spring in Rome, I do not find any note, in my diaries, of Lord Houghton, yet his dinners for six in the Via S. Basilio were delightful. His children were real children then, and his son, Robin,[373] a boy of wonderful promise. Lord Houghton was never satisfied with talking well and delightfully himself; his great charm was his evident desire to draw out all the good there was in other people.
JOURNAL.
”_Venice, May 10, 1868._--We had a terribly hot journey by Spoleto and Ancona, and came on to Este. It is a long drive up from the station to the primitive little town close under the Euganean Hills, with the ruined castle where the first Guelph was born. The inn (La Speranza) is an old palace, and our sittingroom was thirty-four feet long. The country is luxuriance itself, covered with corn and flax, separated by rows of peach and fig trees, with vines leaping from tree to tree. I drove to Arqua, a most picturesque village in a hollow of the hills. In the little court of the church is Petrarch's tomb, of red Verona marble, and on the high ridge his house, almost unaltered, with old frescoes of his life, his chair, his chest, and his stuffed cat, shrunk almost to a weasel.”
”_Augsburg, May 24._--From Venice we saw Torcello--the Mother, Lea, and I in a _barca_ gliding over those shallow mysterious waters to the distant island and its decaying church, where we sat to draw near Attila's marble chair half buried in the rank growth of the mallows.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PETRARCH'S TOMB, ARQUA.[374]]
”We came away by an early train to Verona, and drove in the afternoon to San Zenone, and then to the beautiful Giusti gardens for the sunset. Mother was able to climb up to the summer-house on the height, and the gardener gave us pinks and roses.