An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 10

LETTER x.x.xIV.

Dearest: We were to have gone down with the rest into Florence yesterday: but soft miles of Italy gleamed too invitingly away on our right, and I saw Arthur's eyes hungry with the same far-away wish. So I said "Prato," and he ran up to the fattore's and secured a wondrous shandry-dan with just s.p.a.ce enough between its horns to toss the two of us in the direction where we would go. Its gaunt framework was painted of a bright red, and our feet had only netting to rest on: so constructed, the creature was most vital and light of limb, taking every rut on the road with flea-like agility. Oh, but it was worth it!

We had a drive of fourteen miles through hills and villages, and castellated villas with gardens shut in by formidably high walls--always, a charm: a garden should always have something of the jealous seclusion of a harem. I am getting Italian landscape into my system, and enjoy it more and more.

Prato is a little cathedral town, very like the narrow and tumble-down parts of Florence, only more so. The streets were a seething caldron of cattle-market when we entered, which made us feel like a tea-cup in a bull-ring (or is it thunderstorm?) as we drove through needle's-eye ways bristling with agitated horns.

The cathedral is little and good: damaged, of course, wherever the last three centuries have laid hands on it. At the corner of the west front is an out-door pulpit beautifully put on with a mushroom hood over its head. The main lines of the interior are finely severe, either quite round or quite flat, and proportions good always. An upholstered priest coming out to say ma.s.s is generally a sickening sight, so wicked and ugly in look and costume. The best-behaved people are the low-down beggars, who are most decoratively devotional.

We tried to model our exit on a brigand-beggar who came in to ask permission to murder one of his enemies. He got his request granted at one of the side-altars (some strictly local Madonna, I imagine), and his grat.i.tude as he departed was quite touching. Having studiously copied his exit, we want to know whom we shall murder to pay ourselves for our trouble.

It amuses me to have my share of driving over these free and easy and very narrow highroads. But A. has to do the collision-shouting and the cries of "Via!"--the horse only smiles when he hears me do it.

Also did I tell you that on Sat.u.r.day we two walked from here over to Fiesole--six miles there, and ten back: for why?--because we chose to go what Arthur calls "a bee-line across country," having thought we had sighted a route from the top of Fiesole. But in the valley we lost it, and after breaking our necks over precipices and our hearts down cul-de-sacs that led nowhere, and losing all the ways that were pointed out to us, for lack of a knowledge of the language, we came out again into view of Florence about half a mile nearer than when we started and proportionately far away from home. When he had got me thoroughly foot-sore, Arthur remarked complacently, "The right way to see a country is to lose yourself in it!" I didn't feel the truth of it then: but applied to other things I perceive its wisdom. Dear heart, where I have lost myself, what in all the world do I know so well as you?

Your most lost and loving.

LETTER x.x.xV.

Beloved: Rain swooped down on us from on high during the night, and the country is cut into islands: the river from a rocky wriggling stream has risen into a tawny, opaque torrent that roars with a voice a mile long and is become quite unfordable. The little mill-stream just below has broken its banks and poured itself away over the lower vineyards into the river; a lot of the vines look sadly upset, generally unhinged and unstrung, yet I am told the damage is really small. I hope so, for I enjoyed a real lash-out of weather, after the changelessness of the long heat.

I have been down in Florence beginning to make my farewells to the many things I have seen too little of. We start away for Venice about the end of the week. At the Uffizi I seem to have found out all my future favorites the first day, and very little new has come to me; but most of them go on growing. The Raphael lady is quite wonderful; I think she was in love with him, and her soul went into the painting though he himself did not care for her; and she looks at you and says, "See a miracle: he was able to paint this, and never knew that I loved him!" It is wonderful that; but I suppose it can be done,--a soul pa.s.s into a work and haunt it without its creator knowing anything about how it came there. Always when I come across anything like that which has something inner and rather mysterious, I tremble and want to get back to you. You are the touchstone by which I must test everything that is a little new and unfamiliar.

From now onwards, dearest, you must expect only cards for a time: it is not settled yet whether we stop at Padua on our way in or our way out. I am clamoring for Verona also; but that will be off our route, so Arthur and I may go there alone for a couple of greedy days, which I fear will only leave me dissatisfied and wis.h.i.+ng I had had patience to depend on coming again--perhaps with you!

Uncle N. has written of your numerous visits to him, and I understand you have been very good in his direction. He does not speak of loneliness; and with Anna and her brood next week or now, he will be as happy as his temperament allows him to be when he has nothing to worry over.

I am proud to say I have gone brown without freckles. And are you really as cheerful as you write yourself to be? Dearest and best, when is your holiday to begin; and is it to be with me? Does anywhere on earth hold that happiness for us both in the near future? I kiss you well, Beloved.

LETTER x.x.xVI.

Dearest: Venice is round me as I write! Well, I will not waste my Baedeker knowledge on you,--you too can get a copy; and it is not the panoramic view of things you will be wanting from me: it is my own particular Venice I am to find out and send you. So first of all from the heart of it I send you mine: when I have kissed you I will go on. My eyes have been seeing so much that is new, I shall want a fresh vocabulary for it all. But mainly I want to say, let us be here again together quickly, before we lose any more of our youth or our two-handed hold on life. I get short of breath thinking of it!

So let it be here, Beloved, that some of our soon-to-be happiness opens and shuts its eyes: for truly Venice is a sleepy place. I am wanting, and taking, nine hours' sleep after all I do!

Outside coming over the flats from Padua, she looked something like a manufacturing town at its ablutions,--a smoky chimney well to the fore: but get near to her and you find her standing on turquoise, her feet set about with jaspers, and with one of her eyes she ravishes you: and all her campanile are like the "thin flames" of "souls mounting up to G.o.d."

That is from without: within she becomes too sensuous and civic in her splendor to let me think much of souls. "Rest and be indolent" is the motto for the life she teaches. The architecture is the song of the lotos-eater built into stone--were I in a more florid mood I would have said "swan-song," for the whole stands finished with nothing more to be added: it has sung itself out: and if there is a moral to it all, no doubt it is in Ruskin, and I don't wont to read it just now.

What I want is you close at hand looking up at all this beauty, and smiling when I smile, which is your way, as if you had no opinions of your own about anything in which you are not a professor. So you will write and agree that I am to have the pleasure of this return to look forward to? If I know that, I shall be so much more reconciled to all the joy of the things I am seeing now for the first time: and shall see so much better the second, Beloved, when your eyes are here helping me.

Here is love, dearest! help yourself to just as much as you wish for; though all that I send is good for you! No letter from you since Florence, but I am neither sad nor anxious: only all the more your loving.

LETTER x.x.xVII.

Beloved: The weather is as gray as England to-day, and much rainier. To feel it on my cheeks and be back north with that and warmer things, I would go out in it in the face of protests, and had to go alone--not Arthur even being in the mood just then for a patriotic quest of the uncomfortable. I had myself oared into the lagoons across a racing current and a driving head-wind which made my gondolier bend like a distressed poplar over his oar; patience on a monument smiling at backsheesh--"all comes to him who knows."

Of course, for comfort and pleasure, and everything but economy, we have picked up a gondolier to pet: we making much of him, and he much out of us. He takes Arthur to a place where he can bathe--to use his own expression--"cleanly," that is to say, unconventionally; and this appropriately enough is on the borders of a land called "the Garden of Eden" (being named so after its owners). He--"Charon," I call him--is large and of ruddy countenance, and talks English in blinkers--that is to say, gondola English--out of which he could not find words to summon me a cab even if it were not opposed to his interests. Still there are no cabs to be called in Venice, and he is teaching us that the shortest way is always by water. If Arthur is not punctually in his gondola by 7 A.M., I hear a call for the "Signore Inglese" go up to his window; and it is hungry Charon waiting to ferry him.

Yesterday your friend Mr. C---- called and took me over to Murano in a beautiful pair-oared boat that simply flew. There I saw a wonderful apse filled with mosaic of dull gold, wherein is set a blue-black figure of the Madonna, ten heads high and ten centuries old, which almost made me become a Mariolatrist on the spot. She stands leaning up the bend with two pale hands lifted in ghostly blessing. Underfoot the floor is all mosaic, mountainous with age and earthquakes; the architecture cla.s.sic in the grip of Byzantine Christianity, which is like the spirit of G.o.d moving on the face of the waters, or Ezekiel prophesying to the dry bones.

The Colleoni is quite as much more beautiful in fact and seen full-size as I had hoped from all smaller reproductions. A fine equestrian figure always strikes one as enthroned, and not merely riding; if I can't get that, I consider a centaur the n.o.bler creature with its human body set down into the socket of the brute, and all fire--a candle burning at both ends: which, in a way, is what the centaur means, I imagine?

Bellini goes on being wonderful, and for me beats Raphael's Blenheim Madonna period on its own ground. I hear now that the Raphael lady I raved over in Florence is no Raphael at all,--which accounts for it being so beautiful and interesting--to _me_, I hasten to add. Raphael's studied calmness, his soul of "invisible soap and imperceptible water,"

may charm some; me it only chills or leaves unmoved.

Is this more about art than you care to hear? I have nothing to say about myself, except that I am as happy as a cut-in-half thing can be.

Is it any use sending kind messages to your mother? If so, my heart is full of them. Bless you, dearest, and good-night.

LETTER x.x.xVIII.

Dearest: St. Mark's inside is entirely different from anything I had imagined. I had expected a grove of pillars instead of these wonderful breadths of wall; and the marble overlay I had not understood at all till I saw it. My admiration mounts every time I enter: it has a different gloom from any I have ever been in, more joyous and satisfying, not in the least moody as our own Gothic seems sometimes to be; and saints instead of devils look at you solemn-eyed from every corner of shade.

A heavy rain turns the Piazza into a lake: this morning Arthur had to carry me across. Other foolish Englishwomen were shocked at such means, and paddled their own leaky canoes, or stood on the brink and looked miserable. The effect of rain-pool reflections on the inside of St.

Mark's is noticeable, causing it to bloom unexpectedly into fresh subtleties and glories. The gold takes so sympathetically to any least tint of color that is in the air, and counts up the altar candles even unto its furthest recesses and cupolas.

I think before I leave Venice I shall find about ten Tintorettos which I really like. Best of all is that Bacchus and Ariadne in the Ducal Palace, of which you gave me the engraving. His "Marriage of St. Catherine," which is there also, has all Veronese's charm of color and what I call his "breeding"; and in the ceiling of the Council Chamber is one splendid figure of a sea-youth striding a dolphin.

Last evening we climbed the San Giorgio campanile for a sunset view of Venice; it is a much better point of view than the St. Mark's one, and we were lucky in our sunset. Venice again looked like a beautified factory town, blue and blue with smoke and evening mists. Down below in the church I met a delightful Capuchin priest who could talk French, and a poor, very young lay-brother who had the holy custody of the eyes heavily upon his conscience when I spoke to him. I was so sorry for him!

The Mother-Aunt is ill in bed; but as she is at the present moment receiving three visitors, you will understand about how ill. The fact is, she is worn to death with sight-seeing. I can't stop her; while she is on her legs it is her duty, and she will. The consequence is I get rushed through things I want to let soak into me, and have to go again.

My only way of getting her to rest has been by deserting her; and then I come back and receive reproaches with a meek countenance.

Mr. C---- has been good to us and cordial, and brings his gondola often to our service. A gondola and pair has quite a different motion from a one-oared gondola; it is like riding a seahorse instead of a sea-camel-- almost exciting, only it is so soft in its prancings.

He took A. and myself into the procession which welcomed the crowned heads last Wednesday; the hurly-burly of it was splendid. We tore down the Grand Ca.n.a.l from end to end, almost cheek by jowl with the royalties; the M.-A.

was quite jubilant when she heard we had had such "good places." Hundreds of gondolas swarmed round; many of them in the old Carpaccio rig-outs, very gorgeous though a little tawdry when taken out of the canvas. Hut the rush and the collisions, and the sound of many waters walloping under the bellies of the gondolas, and the blows of fighting oars--regular underwater wrestling matches--made it as vivid and amusing as a prolonged Oxford and Cambridge boat-race in fancy costume. Our gondoliers streamed with the exertion, and looked like men fighting a real battle, and yet enjoyed it thoroughly. Violent altercations with police-boats don't ruffle them at all; at one moment it looks daggers drawn; at the next it is shrugs and smiles. Often, from not knowing enough of Italian and Italian ways, I get hot all over when an ordinary discussion is going on, thinking that blows are about to be exchanged. The Mother-Aunt had hung a wonderful satin skirt out of window for decoration; and when she leaned over it in a bodice of the same color, it looked as if she were sitting with her legs out as well! I suppose it was this peculiar effect that, when the King and Queen came by earlier in the morning, won for her a special bow and smile.

I must hurry or I shall miss the post that I wish to catch. There seems little chance now of my getting you in Venice; but elsewhere perhaps you will drop to me out of the clouds.

Your own and most loving.