Part 3 (1/2)
WORKS OF ART.
Enough of shows. Galleries and studios are better. Rome is rich in both, and with a sort of studious contentment, one embraces one's Murray, picks out the palace that unfolds its art treasures to-day, and travels up the stairs, and along the marble corridors, to wonderful suites of apartments, in which the pasteboard programmes lie about waiting for you, while the still drama of the pictures acts itself upon the thronged wall, yourself their small public, and they giving their color-eloquence, whether any one gives heed or not.
They are precious, the Colonna, Doria, Sciarra, Borghese, and we have seen them. We have picked out our old favorites, and have carried the neophytes before them, saying, ”I saw this, dear, before you were born.”
But this past, whose reflex fold inwraps us, does not exist for the neophytes, who look at it as out of a moment's puzzle, and then conclude to begin their own business on their own responsibility, without any reference to these outstanding credits of ours.
Of the pictures it is little useful to speak. Your description enables no one to see them, and the narration of the feelings they excite in you is as likely to be tedious as interesting to those who cultivate feelings of their own. Copies and engravings have done here what you cannot do, and the best subjects are familiar to art students and lovers in all countries. A little sigh of pleasure may be allowed you at this, your third sight of the Francias, the Raphaels, t.i.tian's Bella, Claude's landscapes, and the scientific Leonardo's heavily-labored heads and groups. But do not therefore put the trumpet to your lips, and blow that sigh across the ocean, to claim the attention of ears that invite the lesson for the day. The lesson for this day is not written on canvas, and though it may be read everywhere in the world, you will scarcely find its clearest type in Rome.
And here, perhaps, I may as well carry further the philosophizing which I began a week ago with regard to the objects and resources of Roman life, and their compatibility with the thoughts and pursuits most dear and valuable to Americans.
Art is, of course, the only solid object which an American can bring forward to justify a prolonged residence in Rome. Art, health, and official duty, are among the valid reasons which bring our countrymen abroad. Two of these admit of no argument. The sick have a right, other things permitting, to go where they can be bettered; a duty perhaps, to go where the sum of their waning years and wasting activities admits of multiplication. Those who live abroad as ministers and consuls have a twofold opportunity of benefiting their country. If honest and able, they may benefit her by their presence in foreign lands; if unworthy and incompetent, by their absence from home. But our artists are those whose expatriation gives us most to think about. They take leave of us either in the first bloom or in the full maturity of their powers. The ease of living in Southern Europe, the abundance of models and of works of art, the picturesque charms of nature and of scenery, detain them forever from us, and, save for an abstract sentiment, which itself weakens with every year, the sacred tie of country is severed. Its sensibilities play no part in these lives devoted to painting and modelling.
Now, an eminent gift for art is an exceptional circ.u.mstance. He who has it weds his profession, leaves father and mother, and goes where his slowly-unfolding destiny seems to call him. Against such a course we have no word to say. It presents itself as a necessary conclusion to earnest and n.o.ble men, who love not their native country less, but their votive country more. Of the first and its customs they would still say,--
”I cannot but remember such things were That were most precious to me.”
Yet of this career, so often coveted by those to whom its attainment does not open, I cannot speak in terms of supreme recognition. The office of art is always as precious as its true ministers are rare. But the relative importance of sculptural and pictorial art is not to-day what it was in days of less thought, of smaller culture. Every one who likes the Bible to-day, likes it best without ill.u.s.trations. Were Christ here to speak anew, he would speak without parables. In ruder times, heavenly fancies could only be ill.u.s.trated on the one hand, received on the other, through the mediation of a personal embodiment. Only through human sympathy was the a.s.sent to divine truth obtained. The necessity which added a feminine personality to the wors.h.i.+p of Christ, and completed the divided G.o.dhead by making it female as well as male, was a philosophical one, but not recognized as such. The device of the Virgin was its practical result, counterbalancing the partiality of the one-sided personal _culte_ of the Savior. Modern religious thought gets far beyond this, makes in spiritual things no distinction of male and female, and does not apply s.e.x to the Divine, save in the most vague and poetic sense. The inner convictions of heart and conscience may now be spoken in plain prose, or sung in ringing verse. The _vates_, prophet or reformer, may proclaim his system and publish his belief; and his audience will best apprehend it in its simplest and most direct form.
The wide s.p.a.ces of the new continent allow room for the most precious practical experimentation; and speculative and theoretical liberty keep pace with liberty of action. The only absolute restraint, the best one, is a moral one. ”Thou shalt not” applies only to what is intrinsically inhuman and profane. And now, there is no need to puzzle simple souls with a marble gospel. Faith needs not to digest whole side-walls of saints and madonnas, who once stood for something, no one now knows what. The Italian school was to art what the Greek school was to literature--an original creation and beginning. But life has surpa.s.sed Plato and Aristotle. We are forced to piece their short experiences, and to say to both, ”You are matchless, but insufficient.” And so, though Raphael's art remains immortal and unsurpa.s.sed, we are forced to say of his thought, ”It is too small.” No one can settle, govern, or moralize a country by it. It will not even suffice to reform Italy. The golden transfigurations hang quiet on the walls, and let pope and cardinal do their worst. We want a world peopled with faithful and intelligent men and women. The Prometheus of the present day is needed rather to animate statues than to make them.
PIAZZA NAVONA--THE TOMBOLA.
When, O, when does the bee make his honey? Not while he is sipping from flower to flower, levying his dainty tribute as lightly as love--enriching the world with what the flower does not miss, and cannot.
This question suggests itself in the course of these busy days in Rome, where pleasures are offered oftener than sensibilities can ripen, and the edge of appet.i.te is blunted with sweets, instead of rusting with disuse. In these scarce three weeks how much have we seen, how little recorded and described! So sweet has been the fable, that the intended moral has pa.s.sed like an act in a dream--a thing of illusion and intention, not of fact. Impotent am I, indeed, to describe the riches of this Roman world,--its treasures, its pleasures, its flatteries, its lessons. Of so much that one receives, one can give again but the smallest shred,--a leaf of each flower, a sc.r.a.p of each garment, a proverb for a sermon, a stave for a song. So be it; so, perhaps, is it best.
Last Sunday I attended a Tombola at Piazza Navona--not a state lottery, but a private enterprise brought to issue in the most public manner. I know the Piazza of old. Sixteen years since I made many a pilgrimage thither, in search of Roman trash. I was not then past the poor amus.e.m.e.nt of spending money for the sake of spending it. The foolish things I brought home moved the laughter of my little Roman public. I appeared in public with some forlorn brooch or dilapidated earring; the giddy laughed outright, and the polite gazed quietly. My rooms were the refuge of all broken-down vases and halting candelabra. I lived on the third floor of a modest lodging, and all the wrecks of art that neither first, second, nor fourth would buy, found their way into my parlor, and staid there at my expense. I recall some of these adornments to-day. Two heroes, in painted wood, stood in my dark little entry. A gouty Cupid in bas-relief enc.u.mbered my mantel-piece. Two forlorn figures in black and white gla.s.s recalled the auction whose unlucky prize they had been. And Horace Wallace, coming to talk of art and poetry, on my red sofa, sometimes saluted me with a paroxysm of merriment, provoked by the sight of my last purchase. Those days are not now. Of their acc.u.mulations I retain but a fragment or two. Of their delights remain a tender memory, a childish wonder at my own childishness. To-day, in heathen Rome, I can find better amus.e.m.e.nts than those shards and rags were ever able to represent.
Going now to Piazza Navona with a sober and reasonable companion, I scarcely recognize it. At the Braschi Palace, which borders it, we pause, and enter to observe the square hall and the fine staircase of polished marble. This palace is now offered in a lottery, at five francs the ticket; and all orders in Rome, no doubt, partic.i.p.ate in the venture it presents. The immense piazza is so filled and thronged with people that its distinctive features are quite lost. Its numerous balconies are crowded with that doubtful community comprehended in the t.i.tle of the ”better cla.s.s.” From many of its windows hang the red cotton draperies, edged with gilt lace, which supply so much of the color in Roman _festas_. Soldiers are everywhere mingled with the crowd, so skilfully as to present no contrast with them, but so effectually that any popular disorder would be instantly suppressed. The dragoons, mounted and bearing sabres, are seen here and there in the streets leading to the piazza. These const.i.tute the police of Rome; and where with us a civil man with a badge interposes himself and says, ”No entrance here, sir,”
in Rome an arbitrary, ignorant beast, mounted upon a lesser brute, waves his sabre at you, shrieks unintelligible threats and orders, and has the pleasure of bringing your common sense to a fault, and of making all understanding of what is or is not to be done impossible. Their greatest glory, however, culminates on public _festas_, when there are foreigners as well as Romans to be intimidated. At the Tombola they are only an _en cas_.
Well, the office of the Tombola is solemnized upon a raised stage, whereon stand divers officials, two seedy trumpeters, and a small boy in fancy costume, whose duty soon becomes apparent. Before him rests a rotatory machine, composed of two disks of gla.s.s, bound together by a band of bra.s.s: this urn of fate revolves upon a pivot, and is provided with an opening, through which the papers bearing the numbers are put in, to be drawn out, one by one, after certain revolutions of the machine. Not quite so fast, however, with your drawing. The numbers are not all in yet. A grave man, in a black coat, holds up each number to the public view, calls it in his loudest tones, and then hands it to another, who folds and slips it into the receptacle. When all of the numbers have been verified and deposited, the opening is closed up, the trumpeters sound a bar or two, the wheel revolves, the fancy boy paws the air with his right hand, puts the hand into the opening, and draws forth a number, which the second black coat presents to the first, who unfolds it, and announces it to the mult.i.tude. At the same moment, a huge card, some two feet square in dimensions, is placed in a frame, and upon this we read the number just drawn out. The number is also shown upon several large wooden frames in other parts of the square. Upon these it remains, so that the whole count of the drawing may be apparent to the eager public. This course of action is repeated until a stir in one part of the piazza announces a candidate for one of the smaller prizes. A white flag, repeated at all the counting frames, arrests the public attention. The candidate brings forward his ticket and is examined. Finally, a _quaterna_ is announced, formed by the agreement of four numbers on a ticket with four in the order of the drawing. The crowd applaud, the trumpets sound again, and the drawing proceeds.
Unhappily, at one moment the persons on duty forget to close the valve through which the numbers are taken out. The omission is not perceived until several rotations have shaken out many of the precious papers. A roar of indignation is heard from the populace; the wheel is arrested, the numbers eagerly sought, counted, and replaced, under the jealous scrutiny of the public eye. Meanwhile, one of two copious bra.s.s bands, provided with five ophicleides each, and cornets, etc., to match, discoursed tarantellas and polkas. And we see the _quinquina_ (formed by five numbers) drawn, and then the first Tombola, and the second. And lo!
there are four tombolas: but we await them not. But in all this crowd, busy with emotion and reeking with tobacco and Roman filth in all its varieties, who shall interest us like the _limonaro_ with his basket of fruit, his bottles of water, his lemon squeezer, and his eager thrifty countenance? A father of family, surely, he loves no plays as thou dost, Anthony. Pale, in s.h.i.+rt sleeves, he keeps the sharpest lookout for a customer, and in voice whose measure is not to be given, hammers out his endless sentence, ”_Chi vuol bere? Ecco, il limonaro._” To the most doubtful order he responds, carrying his gla.s.ses into the thickest of the throng, and thundering, ”_Chi ha comandato questo limone?_” For half a _bajoco_ he gives a quarter of a lemon, wrung out in a gla.s.s of tepid water, which his customers absorb with relish. Sometimes he varies this procedure by the sale of an _orzata_, produced by pouring a few drops of a milky fluid into a gla.s.s of water. On our way from the piazza we encounter other _limonari_,--dark, sleepy, Italian, not trenchant nor incisive in their offers. But our man, a blond, yet remains a picture to us, with his business zeal and economy of time. A thread of good blood he possibly has. We adopt and pity him as a misplaced Yankee.
SUNDAYS IN ROME.
Our first Sunday in Rome was Easter, in St. Peter's, of which we have elsewhere given a sufficient description. Our second was divided between the Tombola just described, in the afternoon, and the quiet of the American Chapel in the morning. We found this an upper chamber, quietly and appropriately furnished, with a pleasant and well-dressed attendance of friends and fellow country-people. The prayers of the Episcopal service were simply read, with no extra formality or aping of more traditional forms. It was pleasant to find ourselves called upon once more to pray for the President of the United States, although in our own country he is considered as past praying for. Still, we remembered the old adage, ”while there is life there is hope,” and were able, with a good conscience, to beseech that he might be plenteously endowed with heavenly grace, although the reception of such a gift might seriously compromise him with his own party. The sermon, like others we have heard of late, shows a certain progress and liberalization even in the holding of the absolute tenets which const.i.tute what has been hitherto held as orthodoxy. In our youth, the Episcopal church, like the orthodox dissenters, preached atonement, atonement, atonement, wrath of G.o.d, birth in sin,--position of sentimental reprobation towards the one fact, of unavailing repentance concerning the other. The doctrine of atonement in those days was as literal in the Protestant church as in the Catholic, while the possibility of profiting by it was hedged about and enc.u.mbered by frightful perils and intangible difficulties. But to-day, while these doctrines are not repudiated by the denominations which then held them, they are comparatively set out of sight. The charity and diligence of Paul are preached, and even the sublime theistic simplicity of Jesus is not altogether contraband; though he, alas! is as little understood in doctrine as followed in example. For he has. .h.i.therto been like a beautiful figure set to point out a certain way, and people at large have been so entranced with wors.h.i.+pping the figure, that they have neglected to follow the direction it indicates.
Well, our American sermon was dry, but sensible and conscientious. It did not congratulate those who had accepted the mysterious atonement, nor threaten those who had neglected to do so. But it exhorted all men towards a reasonable, religious, and diligent life, and thus afforded the commonplace man a basis for effort, and a possible gradual amelioration of his moral condition. One little old-fas.h.i.+oned phrase, however, the preacher let slip. He cast a slight slur upon the moral, as distinguished from the religious man. Now, modern ethics do not recognize this distinction. For it, true morals are religion. He who exemplifies the standard does it more honor than he who praises, and pursues it not. And he who prays and plunders is less a saint than he who does neither. We pa.s.sed this, however, and went away in peace.
Our third Sunday morning was pa.s.sed in _S. Andrea delta Valle_, a large and sumptuous church, where we had been promised a fine _messa-cantata_, i.e., a ma.s.s performed princ.i.p.ally in music. Mustafa, of the pope's choir, was there, with some ten other vocalists, who put into their _Kyrie_, _Miserere_, and so on, as much operatic emphasis and cadence as the bars could hold. The organ was harsh, loud, and overpowering, the music utterly uninteresting. Mustafa's renowned voice, which has suffered by time and use, has something nasal and _criard_ in it, with all its power. He still takes and holds A and B with firmness and persistence, but his middle notes are unequal and husky. Although the sopranos of to-day are merely falsetto tenors, and their uns.e.xed voices a fiction, they yet acquire in process of time a tone of old-woman quality, which contrasts strangely with their usually robust appearance.