Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida Part 44

Was the bell tower yonder set in a ducal garden or in a public place?

Was Cimabue's masterpiece veiled in a palace or borne aloft through the throngs of the streets?

A man, be he bramble or vine, likes to grow in the open air in his own fas.h.i.+on; but a woman, be she flower or weed, always thinks she would be better under gla.s.s. When she gets the gla.s.s she breaks it--generally; but till she gets it she pines.

When they grew up in Italy, all that joyous band,--Arlecchino in Bergamo, Stenterello in Florence, Pulcinello in Naples, Pantaleone in Venice, Dulcamara in Bologna, Beltramo in Milan, Brigh.e.l.la in Brescia--masked their mirthful visages and ran together and jumped on that travelling stage before the world, what a force they were for the world, those impudent mimes!

"Only Pantomimi?" When they joined hands with one another and rolled their wandering house before St. Mark's they were only players indeed; but their laughter blew out the fires of the Inquisition, their fools'

caps made the papal tiara look but paper toy, their wooden swords struck to earth the steel of the n.o.bles, their arrows of epigram, feathered from goose and from falcon, slew, flying, the many-winged dragon of Superst.i.tion.

They were old as the old Latin land, indeed.

They had mouldered for ages in Etruscan cities, with the dust of uncounted centuries upon them, and been only led out in Carnival times, pale, voiceless, frail ghosts of dead powers, whose very meaning the people had long forgotten. But the trumpet-call of the Renaissance woke them from their Rip Van Winkle sleep.

They got up, young again, and keen for every frolic--Barbarossas of sock and buskin, whose helmets were caps and bells, breaking the magic spell of their slumber to burst upon men afresh; buoyant incarnations of the new-born scorn for tradition, of the nascent revolts of democracy, with which the air was rife.

"Only Pantomimi?" Oh, altro!

The world when it reckons its saviours should rate high all it owed to the Pantomimi,--the privileged Pantomimi--who first dared take license to say in their quips and cranks, in their capers and jests, what had sent all speakers before them to the rack and the f.a.ggots.

Who think of that when they hear the shrill squeak of Pulcinello in the dark bye-streets of northern towns, or see lean Pantaleone slip and tumble through the transformation-scene of some gorgeous theatre?

Not one in a million.

Yet it is true for all that. Free speech was first due to the Pantomimi.

A proud boast that. They hymn Tell and chant Savonarola and glorify the Gracchi, but I doubt if any of the G.o.ds in the world's Pantheon or the other world's Valhalla did so much for freedom as those merry mimes that the children scamper after upon every holiday.

We are straws on the wind of the hour, too frail and too brittle to float into the future. Our little day of greatness is a mere child's puff-ball, inflated by men's laughter, floated by women's tears; what breeze so changeful as the one, what waters so shallow as the other?--the bladder dances a little while; then sinks, and who remembers?

Do you know the delicate delights of a summer morning in Italy? morning I mean between four and five of the clock, and not the full hot mid-day that means morning to the languid a.s.sociations of this weary century.

The nights, perfect as they are, have scarcely more loveliness than the birth of light, the first rippling laughter of the early day.

The air is cool, almost cold, and clear as gla.s.s. There is an endless murmur from birds' throats and wings, and from far away there will ring from village or city the chimes of the first ma.s.s. The deep broad shadows lie so fresh, so grave, so calm, that by them the very dust is stilled and spiritualised.

Softly the sun comes, striking first the loftier trees and then the blossoming magnolias, and lastly the green lowliness of the gentle vines; until all above is in a glow of new-born radiance, whilst all beneath the leaves still is dreamily dusk and cool.

The sky is of a soft sea-blue; great vapours will float here and there, iris-coloured and snow-white. The stone parapets of bridge and tower s.h.i.+ne against the purple of the mountains, which are low in tone, and look like hovering storm-clouds. Across the fields dun oxen pa.s.s to their labour; through the shadows peasants go their way to ma.s.s; down the river a raft drifts slowly, with the pearly water swaying against the canes; all is clear, tranquil, fresh as roses washed with rain.

To the art of the stage, as to every other art, there are two sides: the truth of it, which comes by inspiration--that is, by instincts subtler, deeper, and stronger than those of most minds; and the artifice of it, in which it must clothe itself to get understood by the people.

It is this latter which must be learnt; it is the leathern harness in which the horses of the sun must run when they come down to race upon earth.

For in Italy life is all contrast, and there is no laugh and love-song without a sigh beside them; there is no velvet mask of mirth and pa.s.sion without the marble mask of art and death near to it. For everywhere the wild tulip burns red upon a ruined altar, and everywhere the blue borage rolls its azure waves through the silent temples of forgotten G.o.ds.

To enter Bologna at midnight is to plunge into the depths of the middle ages.

Those desolate sombre streets, those immense dark arches, dark as Tartarus, those endless arcades where scarce a footfall breaks the stillness, that labyrinth of marble, of stone, of antiquity; the past alone broods over them all.

As you go it seems to you that you see the gleam of a snowy plume and the s.h.i.+ne of a straight rapier striking home through cuira.s.s and doublet, whilst on the stones the dead body falls, and high above over the lamp-iron, where the torch is flaring, a cas.e.m.e.nt uncloses, and a woman's voice murmurs, with a cruel little laugh, "Cosa fatta capo ha!"

There is nothing to break the spell of that old-world enchantment.

Nothing to recall to you that the ages of Bentivoglio and of Visconti have fled for ever.

The mighty Academy of Luvena Juris is so old, so old, so old!--the folly and frippery of modern life cannot dwell in it a moment; it is as that enchanted throne which turned into stone like itself whosoever dared to seat himself upon its majestic heights.

For fifteen centuries Bologna has grimly watched and seen the mad life of the world go by; it sits amidst the plains as the Sphynx amidst her deserts.

It is women's way. They always love colour better than form, rhetoric better than logic, priestcraft better than philosophy, and flourishes better than fugues. It has been said scores of times before I said it.

Nay, he pursued, thinking he had pained me, you have a bright wit enough, and a beautiful voice, though you sing without knowing very well what you do sing. But genius you have not, look you; say your thanksgiving to the Madonna at the next shrine we come to; genius you have not.

What is it?

Well, it is hard to tell; but this is certain, that it puts peas unboiled into the shoes of every pilgrim who really gets up to its Olivet.

Genius has all manner of dead dreams and sorrowful lost loves for its scallop-sh.e.l.ls; and the palm that it carries is the bundle of rods wherewith fools have beaten it for calling them blind.

Genius has eyes so clear that it sees straight down into the hearts of others through all their veils of sophistry and simulation; but its own heart is pierced often to the quick for shame of what it reads there.

It has such long and faithful remembrance of other worlds and other lives which most minds have forgotten, that beside the beauty of those memories all things of earth seem poor and valueless.

Men call this imagination or idealism; the name does not matter much; whether it be desire or remembrance, it comes to the same issue; so that genius, going ever beyond the thing it sees in infinite longing for some higher greatness which it has either lost or otherwise cannot reach, finds the art, and the humanity, and the creations, and the affections which seem to others so exquisite most imperfect and scarcely to be endured.

The heaven of Phaedrus is the world which haunts Genius--where there shall not be women but Woman, not friends but Friends.h.i.+p, not poems but Poetry; everything in its uttermost wholeness and perfection; so that there shall be no possibility of regret nor any place for desire.

For in this present world there is only one thing which can content it, and that thing is music; because music has nothing to do with earth, but sighs always for the lands beyond the sun.

And yet all this while genius, though sick at heart, and alone, and finding little in man or in woman, in human art or in human nature, that can equal what it remembers--or, as men choose to say, it imagines--is half a child too, always: for something of the eternal light which streams from the throne of G.o.d is always shed about it, though sadly dimmed and broken by the clouds and vapours that men call their atmosphere.

Half a child always, taking a delight in the frolic of the kids, the dancing of the daffodils, the playtime of the children, the romp of the winds with the waters, the loves of the birds in the blossoms. Half a child always, but always with tears lying close to its laughter, and always with desires that are death in its dreams.

No; you have not genius, cara mia. Say your grazie at the next shrine we pa.s.s.