"I could not realize that I had actually touched those sh.o.r.es to which I had looked forward all my life, where it seemed that the heart would expand, and the whole nature be turned to delight. Seen by a cutting wind, the marble palaces, the gardens, the magnificent water-view, failed to charm." Both here and in Leghorn Margaret visited Italians at their houses, and found them very attractive, "charming women, refined and eloquent men." The Mediterranean voyage was extended as far as Naples, which she characterizes as "priest-ridden, misgoverned, full of dirty, degraded men and women, yet still most lovely." And here, after a week which appeared to be "an exact copy of the miseries of a New-England spring," with a wind "villanous, horrible, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston," Margaret found at last her own Italy, and found it "beautiful, worthy to be loved and embraced, not talked about.... Baiae had still a hid divinity for me, Vesuvius a fresh baptism of fire, and Sorrento--oh! Sorrento was beyond picture, beyond poesy."
After Naples came Margaret"s first view of Rome, where she probably arrived early in May, and where she remained until late in the month of June. We do not find among her letters of this period any record of her first impressions of the Eternal City, the approach to which, before the days of railroads in Italy, was unspeakably impressive and solemn.
Seated in the midst of her seven hills, with the desolate Campagna about her, one could hardly say whether her stony countenance invited the spirit of the age, or defied it. Her mediaeval armor was complete at all points. Her heathen heart had kept Christianity far from it by using as exorcisms the very forms which, at the birth of that religion, had mediated between its spirit and the dull sense of the Pagan world. It was the nineteenth century in America, the eighteenth in England, the seventeenth in France, and the fifteenth in Rome. The aged hands of the grandam still held fast the key of her treasures. Her haughty front still said to Ruin and Desolation,--
"Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it."
So the writer first saw Rome in the winter of 1843. Her walls seemed those of a mighty sepulchre, in which even the new-born babe was born into death. The stagnation of thought, the prohibition of question, the denial of progress! Her ministers had a sweet Lethean draught with which to lull the first clamors of awakening life, to quiet the first promptings of individual thought. It was the draught of Circe, fragrant but fatal. And those who fed upon it became pathetic caricatures of humanity.
Not so did Margaret find Rome in 1847. The intervening years had wrought a change. Within the defiant fortress of superst.i.tion a divine accident had happened. A man had been brought to the chair of St. Peter who felt his own human power too strongly to consent to the impotence of the traditional _non possumus_. To the timid questioning of Freedom from without he gave the bold answer of Freedom from within. The Papal crown had sometimes covered the brows of honest, heroic men. Such an one would he prove himself, and his first message was to that effect. Fortunate, fatal error! The thrones of the earth trembled at it. Crowned heads shook with the palsy of fear. The enslaved mult.i.tudes and their despised champions sent up a ringing shout to heaven, for the apocalyptic hour had come. The sixth seal was broken, and the cannon of St. Angelo, which saluted the crowning of the new Pontiff, really saluted the installation of the new era.
Alas! many woes had to intervene before this new order could establish itself upon any permanent foundation. The Pope forsook his lofty ground.
France, republican for a day only, became the ally of absolutism, and sent an army to subdue those who had believed the papal promise and her own. After a frightful interval of suffering and resistance, this was effected, and Pius was brought back, shorn of his splendors, a Jove whose thunderbolt had been stolen, a man without an idea. Then came the confusion of endless doubt and question. What had been the secret of the Pope"s early liberalism? What that of his _volte-face_? Was it true, as was afterwards maintained, that he had been, from the first, a puppet, moved by forces quite outside his own understanding, and that the moving hands, not the puppet, had changed? Or had he gone to war with mighty Precedent, without counting the cost of the struggle, and so failed? Or had he undergone a poisoning which broke his spirit and touched his brain?
These were the questions of that time, not ours to answer, brought to mind here only because they belong to the history of Margaret"s years in Italy, years in which she learned to love that country as her own, and to regard it as the land of her spiritual belonging.
CHAPTER XII.
MARGARET"S FIRST DAYS IN ROME.--ANTIQUITIES.--VISITS TO STUDIOS AND GALLERIES.--HER OPINIONS CONCERNING THE OLD MASTERS.--HER SYMPATHY WITH THE PEOPLE.--POPE PIUS.--CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF ROME.--PERUGIA.--BOLOGNA.--RAVENNA.--VENICE.--A STATE BALL ON THE GRAND Ca.n.a.l.--MILAN.--MANZONI.--THE ITALIAN LAKES.--PARMA.--SECOND VISIT TO FLORENCE.--GRAND FESTIVAL.
In this first visit to Rome, Margaret could not avoid some touch of the disenchantment which usually comes with the experience of what has been long and fondly antic.i.p.ated. She had soon seen all that is preserved of "the fragments of the great time," and says: "They are many and precious; yet is there not so much of high excellence as I looked for.
They will not float the heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the starry night on our Western prairies." She confesses herself more interested at this moment in the condition and prospects of the Italian people than in works of art, ancient or modern. In spite of this, she seems to have been diligent in visiting the galleries and studios of Rome. Among the latter she mentions those of the sculptors Macdonald, Wolff, Tenerani, and Gott, whose groups of young people and animals were to her "very refreshing after the grander attempts of the present time."
She found our own Crawford just completing a bust of his beautiful wife, which is to-day a household treasure among her relatives. Margaret preferred his designs to those of Gibson, who was then considered the first of English sculptors. Among American painters she found Terry, Cranch, and Hicks at work. She saw the German Overbeck surrounded by his pictures, looking "as if he had just stepped out of one of them,--a lay monk, with a pious eye, and habitual morality of thought which limits every gesture."
Among the old masters, Domenichino and t.i.tian were those whom she learned to appreciate only by the actual sight of their paintings. Other artists, she thinks, may be well understood through copies and engravings, but not these. She enjoyed the frescos of Caracci with "the purest pleasure," tired soon of Guercino, who had been one of her favorites, and could not like Leonardo da Vinci at all. His pictures, she confesses, "show a wonderful deal of study and thought. I hate to see the marks of them. I want a simple and direct expression of soul."
For the explanation of these remarks we must refer the reader back to what Mr. Emerson has said of Margaret"s idiosyncratic mode of judgment.
Raphael and Michael Angelo were already so well known to her through engravings, that their paintings and frescos made no new impression upon her. Not so was it with Michael"s sculptures. Of his Moses she says: "It is the only thing in Europe so far which has entirely outgone my hopes."
But the time was not one in which an enthusiast like Margaret could be content to withdraw from living issues into the calm impersonality of art. The popular life around her was throbbing with hopes and excitements to which it had long been unaccustomed. Visions of a living Italy flashed through the crevices of a stony despair which had lasted for ages. The prospect of representative government was held out to the Roman people, and the promise was welcomed by a torchlight procession which streamed through the Corso like a river of fire, and surging up to the Quirinal, where Pius then dwelt, "made it a mound of light." The n.o.ble Greek figures were illuminated, and their calm aspect contrasted strongly with the animated faces of the Italians. "The Pope appeared on his balcony; the crowd shouted their _vivas_. He extended his arms; the crowd fell on their knees and received his benediction." Margaret says that she had never seen anything finer.
In this new enthusiasm the people agreed to celebrate the birthday of Rome.
"A great dinner was given at the Baths of t.i.tus, in the open air. The company was on the gra.s.s in the area, the music at one end; boxes filled with the handsome Roman women occupied the other sides. It was a new thing here, this popular dinner, and the Romans greeted it in an intoxication of hope and pleasure." Many political exiles, amnestied by the Pope, were present. The Marquis d"Azeglio, painter, novelist, and diplomatist, was the most noted of the speakers. From this renewed, regenerated Rome Margaret went on to visit the northern cities of Italy, pa.s.sing through Perugia on her way to Florence. In this neighborhood she explored the churches of a.s.sisi, and the Etruscan tombs, then newly discovered. She was enchanted with the beauty of Perugia, its n.o.ble situation, and its treasures of early art. Florence interested her less than "cities more purely Italian. The natural character is ironed out here, and done up in a French pattern; yet there is no French vivacity, nor Italian either." The Grand Duke was at the time in an impossible position between his allegiance to the liberalizing Pope and his fealty to despotic Austria. Tuscany accordingly was "glum as death" on the outside, but glowing with dangerous fire within.
Margaret, before leaving Florence, wrote: "Florence is not like Rome. At first I could not bear the change; yet, for the study of the fine arts, it is a still richer place. Worlds of thought have risen in my mind; some time you will have light from all."
Here she visited the studios of her countrymen, Horatio Greenough and Hiram Powers, and, after a month"s stay, went on to Bologna, where she greatly appreciated the truly Italian physiognomy of the city, and rejoiced in the record of its women artists and professors, n.o.bly recognized and upheld by their fellow-citizens.
Thence she went to Ravenna, prized for its curious remains, its Byronic memories, and its famous Pineta, dear to students of Dante. After this came a fortnight in Venice, which, like Angelo"s Moses, surpa.s.sed her utmost expectations: "There only I began to feel in its fulness Venetian art. It can only be seen in its own atmosphere. Never had I the least idea of what is to be seen at Venice."
The city was, in those days, a place of refuge for throneless royalty.
The d.u.c.h.esse de Berri and her son had each a palace on the Grand Ca.n.a.l.
A queen of another sort, Taglioni, here consoled herself for the quiet of her retirement from the stage. Margaret had the pleasure of an outside view of the _fete_ given by the royal d.u.c.h.ess in commemoration of her son"s birthday. The aged d.u.c.h.esse d"Angouleme came from Vienna to be present on the occasion.
""Twas a scene of fairy-land, the palace full of light, so that from the ca.n.a.l could be seen even the pictures on the walls. Landing from the gondolas, the elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen seemed to rise from the water. We also saw them glide up the great stair, rustling their plumes, and in the reception-room make and receive the customary grimaces." A fine band of music completed the attractions of the scene.
Margaret, listening and looking hard by, "thought of the Stuarts, Bourbons, and Bonapartes in Italy, and offered up a prayer that other names might be added to the list, and other princes, more rich in blood than in brain, might come to enjoy a perpetual _villeggiatura_ in Italy."
From Venice Margaret journeyed on to Milan, stopping on the way at Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Lago di Garda, and Brescia. These ten days of travel opened to her long vistas of historic study, delightful to contemplate, even if hopeless to explore fully. No ten days of her previous life, she is sure, ever brought her so far in this direction.
In approaching Milan her thoughts reverted to the "Promessi Sposi."
Nearly asleep for a moment, she heard the sound of waters, and started up to ask, "Is that the Adda?" She had guessed rightly. The authorship of this cla.s.sic work seemed to her to secure to its writer, Manzoni, the right of eminent domain in and around Milan. Writing to Mr. Emerson from this city, she says:--
"To-day, for the first time, I have seen Manzoni. Manzoni has spiritual efficacy in his looks; his eyes still glow with delicate tenderness. His manners are very engaging, frank, expansive; every word betokens the habitual elevation of his thoughts, and (what _you_ care for so much) he says distinct, good things. He lives in the house of his fathers, in the simplest manner."
Manzoni had, at the time, somewhat displeased his neighbors by a second marriage, scarcely considered suitable for him. Margaret, however, liked the new wife very well, "and saw why he married her."
She found less to see in Milan than in other Italian cities, and was glad to have there some days of quiet after the fatigues of her journey, which had been augmented at Brescia by a brief attack of fever. She mentions with interest the bust of the celebrated mathematician, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, preserved in the Ambrosian Library. Among her new acquaintances here were some young Italian radicals, "interested in ideas."
The Italian Lakes and Switzerland came next in the order of her travels.
Her Swiss tour she calls "a little romance by itself," promising to give, at a later date, a description of it, which we fail to find anywhere. Returning from it, she pa.s.sed a fortnight at Como, and saw something of the Italian n.o.bility, who pa.s.s their summers on its sh.o.r.es.
Here she enjoyed the society of the accomplished Marchesa Arconati Visconti, whom she had already met in Florence, and who became to her a constant and valued friend.
Margaret found no exaggeration in the enthusiasm expressed by poets and artists for the scenery of this lake region. The descriptions of it given by Goethe, Richter, and Taylor had not prepared her for what she saw. Even Turner"s pictures had fallen short of the real beauty. At Lugano she met Lady Franklin, the widow of the Arctic explorer. She returned to Milan by the 8th of September, in time for the great feast of the Madonna, and finally left the city "with great regret, and hope to return." In a letter to her brother Richard she speaks of her radical friends there as "a circle of aspiring youth, such as I have not known in any other city." Conspicuous among these was the young Marquis Guerrieri Gonzaga, commended to her by "a n.o.ble soul, the quietest sensibility, and a brilliant and ardent, though not a great, mind." This gentleman has to-day a recognized position in Italy as a thoroughly enlightened and intelligent liberal.
Margaret found among the Milanese, as she must have antic.i.p.ated, a great hatred of the Austrian rule, aggravated, at the time of her second visit, by acts of foolish and useless repression. On the occasion of the festivals attending the entry of a new archbishop, some youths (among them possibly Margaret"s radical friends) determined to sing the hymn composed at Rome in honor of Pius IX. The consequence of this was a charge of the armed Austrian police upon the defenceless crowd of people present, who, giving way, were stabbed by them in the back. Margaret"s grief and indignation at this state of things made her feel keenly the general indifference of her own travelling country-people to the condition and fate of Italy.
"Persons who call themselves Americans,--miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their high birthright ... absorbed at home by the l.u.s.t of gain, the love of show, abroad, they see only the equipages, the fine clothes, the food. They have no heart for the idea, for the destiny of our own great nation: how can they feel the spirit that is struggling in this?"
The condition of Italy has been greatly altered for the better since Margaret wrote these words, thirty-six years ago; but the American traveller of this type is to-day, to all intents and purposes, what he was then.
Margaret left Milan before the end of this September, to return to Rome.
She explored with delight the great Certosa of Pavia, and in Parma saw the Correggio pictures, of which she says: "A wonderful beauty it is that informs them,--not that which is the chosen food of my soul, yet a n.o.ble beauty, and which did its message to me also." Parma and Modena appear to her "obliged to hold their breath while their poor, ignorant sovereigns skulk in corners, hoping to hide from the coming storm."
Before reaching Rome, Margaret made a second visit to Florence. The liberty of the press had been recently established in Tuscany, under happy auspices. This freedom took effect in the establishment of two liberal papers, "Alba" ("The Dawn"), and "Patria," needless to translate. The aim of these was to educate the youth and the working cla.s.ses, by promoting fearlessness in thought and temperance in action.
The creation of the National Guard had given confidence to the people.
Shortly before Margaret"s arrival this event had been celebrated by a grand public festival, preceded by a general reconciliation of public and private differences, and culminating in a general embracing, and exchanging of banners. She speaks of this as a "new great covenant of brotherly love," in which "all was done in that beautiful poetic manner peculiar to this artist-people." In this feast of reconciliation resident Americans bore their part, Horatio Greenough taking the lead among them. Margaret"s ears were refreshed by continually hearing in the streets the singing of the Roman hymn composed in honor of Pope Pius.
Wishing that her own country might send some substantial token of sympathy to the land of its great discoverers, she suggests that a cannon, named for one of these, would be the most fitting gift.[C] The first letter from Rome after these days is dated Oct. 18, 1847.
CHAPTER XIII.
PERIOD OF AGITATION IN ROME.--MARGARET"S ZEAL FOR ITALIAN FREEDOM.--HER RETURN TO ROME.--REVIEW OF THE CIVIC GUARD.--CHURCH FASTS AND FEASTS.--POPE PIUS.--THE RAINY SEASON.--PROMISE OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IN ROME.--CELEBRATION OF THIS EVENT.--MAZZINI"S LETTER TO THE POPE.--BEAUTY OF THE SPRING.--ITALY IN REVOLUTION.--POPULAR EXCITEMENTS IN ROME.--POPE PIUS DESERTS THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM.--MARGARET LEAVES ROME FOR AQUILA.
The period in which Margaret now found herself, and its circ.u.mstances, may best be described by the adjective "billowy." Up and down, up and down, went the hearts and hopes of the liberal party. Hither and thither ran the tides of popular affection, suspicion, and resentment. The Pope was the idol of the moment. Whoever might do wrong, he could not. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, described by Margaret as dull but well meaning, yielded to pressure wherever it became most severe. The Austrian occupation was cowardly and cruel, as ever. The minor princes, who had been from their birth incapable of an idea, tried as well as they could to put on some semblance of concession without really yielding anything.
The King of Sardinia was spoken of among the liberals as a worthless man, without heart or honor, only likely to be kept on the right side by the stress of circ.u.mstance. This judgment of him was reversed in after years, when, behind Casa Guidi windows, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, with steadfast hand, "Yea, verily. Charles Albert has died well."
The royalty of Naples tried to quiet its tremors with blood, and trembled still. And in the midst of all this turmoil, down comes Louis Philippe from his throne, and France is shaken to her very centre.
To follow Margaret through all the fluctuations and excitements consequent upon these events would be no easy task. She was obviously in close relations with leading Italian liberals, and probably trusted their statements and shared their hopes, fears, and resentments.
Constant always in her faith in human nature, and in her zeal for the emanc.i.p.ation of Italy, the dissolving view before her could leave her no other fixed belief. Her favorites, her beloved Italian people, even her adored Rome, appeared to her at different times in very various lights.