Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  XXXII

  I DO not know that the festas are noticeably fewer than they used to be in Italy. There are still enough of them to account for the delay in doing almost anything that has beén promised to be done. The carnival came on scatteringly and reluctantly. A large sum of money which had been raised for its celebration was properly” diverted to the relief of the sufferers by the inundations in Lombardy and Venetia, and the Florentines patiently set about being merry each on his own personal account. Not many were visibly merry, except in the way of business. The gentlemen of the operatic choruses clad themselves in stage-armour, and went about under the hotel windows, playing and singing, and levying contributions on the inmates; here and there a white clown or a red devil figured through the streets; two or three carriages feebly attempted a corso, and there was an exciting rumour that confetti had been thrown from one of them: I did not see the confetti. There was for a long time doubt whether there was to be any veglione or ball on the last night of the carnival; but finally there were two of them: one of low degree at the Teatro Umberto, and one of more pretension at the Pergola Theatre. The latter presented an agreeable image of the carnival ball which has taken place in so many romances: the boxes filled with brilliantly dressed spectators, drinking champagne; the floor covered with maskers, gibbering in falsetto, dancing, capering, coquetting till daylight. This, more than any other aspect of the carnival, seemed to give one the worth of his money in tradition and association. Not but that towards the end the masks increased in the streets, and the shops where they sold costumes were very gay; but the thing is dying out, as at least one Italian, in whose veins the new wine of Progress had wrought, rejoiced to tell me. I do not know whether I rejoiced so much to hear it; but I will own that I did not regret it a great deal. Italy is now so much the sojourn of barbarians that any such gaiety must be brutalized by them, till the Italians turn from it in disgust. Then it must be remembered that the carnival was fostered by their tyrants to corrupt and enervate them; and I cannot wonder that their love of Italy is wounded by it. They are trying to be men, and the carnival is childish. I fancy that is the way my friend felt about it.

  XXXIII

  AFTER the churches, the Italians are most at home in their theatres, and I went as often as I could to see them there, preferably where they were giving the Stenterello plays. Stenterello is the Florentine mask or type who survives the older Italian comedy which Goldoni destroyed; and during carnival he appeared in a great variety of characters at three different theatres. He is always painted with wide purplish circles round his eyes, with an effect of goggles, and a hare-lip; and his hair, caught into a queue behind, curls up into a pigtail on his neck. With this face and this wig he assumes any character the farce requires, and becomes delicious in proportion to his grotesque unfitness for it. The best Stenterello was an old man, since dead, who was very famous in the part. He was of such a sympathetic and lovely humour that your heart warmed to him the moment he came upon the stage, and when he opened his mouth, it scarcely mattered what he said: those Tuscan gutturals and abounding vowels as he uttered them were enough; but certainly to see him in “Stenterello and his own Corpse,” or “Stenterello Umbrella-mender,” or “Stenterello Quack Doctor,” was one of the great and simple pleasures. He was an actor who united the quaintness of Jefferson to the sweetness of Warren; in his wildest burlesque he was so true to nature in every touch and accent, that I wanted to sit there and spend my life in the innocent folly of enjoying him. Apparently, the rest of the audience desired the same. Nowhere, even in Italy, was the sense of rest from all the hurrying, great weary world outside so full as in certain moments of this Stenterello’s absurdity at the Teatro Rossini, which was not otherwise a comfortable place. It was more like a section of a tunnel than like a theatre, being a rounded oblong, with the usual tiers of boxes, and the pit where there were seats in front, and two-thirds of the space left free for standing behind. Every day there was a new bill, and I remember “Stenterello White Slave in America” and “Stenterello as Hamlet” among the attractions offered. In fact, he runs through an indefinite number of dramas, as Brighella, Arlecchino, Pantalone, Florindo, Rosaura, and the rest, appear and reappear in the comedies of Goldoni while he is temporizing with the old commedia d’arte, where he is at his best.

  At what I may call the non-Stenterello theatres in Florence, they were apt to give versions of the more heart-breaking, vow-broken, French melodramas, though occasionally there was a piece of Italian origin, generally Giacosa’s. But it seemed to me that there were now fewer Italian plays given than there were twenty years ago; and the opera season was almost as short and inclement as in Boston.

  XXXIV

  I VISITED many places of amusements more popular than the theatre, but I do not know that I can fitly offer them all to the more polite and formal acquaintance of my readers, whom I like always to figure as extremely well-behaved and well-dressed persons. Which of these refined and fastidious ladies and gentlemen shall I ask, for example, to go with me to see a dying Zouave in wax in a booth at the Mercato Vecchio, where there were other pathetic and monstrous figures! At the door was a peasant-like personage who extolled himself from time to time as the inventor of a musical instrument within, which he said he had exemplarily spent his time in perfecting, instead of playing cards and mora. I followed him inside with the crowd, chiefly soldiers, who were in such overwhelming force that I was a little puzzled to make out which corps and regiment I belonged to; but I shared the common edification of the performance, when our musical genius mounted a platform before a most intricate instrument, which combined in itself, as he boasted, the qualities of all other kinds of instruments. He shuffled off his shoes and played its pedals with his bare feet, while he sounded its pipes with his mouth, pounding a drum-attachment with one hand and scraping a violin-attachment with the other. I do not think the instrument will ever come into general use, and I have my doubts whether the inventor might not have better spared a moment or two of his time to mora. I enjoyed more a little vocal and acrobatic entertainment, where again I found myself in the midst of my brothers in arms. Civilians paid three cents to come in, but we military only two; and we had the best seats and smoked throughout the performance. This consisted of the feats of two nice, innocent-looking boys, who came out and tumbled, and of two sisters who sang a very long duet together, screeching the dialogue with which it was interspersed in the ear-piercingest voices; it represented a lover’s quarrel, and sounded very like some which I have heard on the roof and the back fences. But what I admired about this and other popular shows was the perfect propriety. At the circus in the Via Nazionale they had even a clown in a dress coat.

  Of course, the two iron tanks full of young crocodiles which I saw in a booth in our piazza classed themselves with great moral shows, because of their instructiveness. The water in which they lay soaking was warmed for them, and the chill was taken off the air by a sheet-iron stove, so that, upon the whole, these saurians had the most comfortable quarters in the whole shivering city. Although they had up a sign, “Animal pericolosi — non si toccano,” nothing Was apparently further from their thoughts than biting; they lay blinking in supreme content, and allowed a captain of horse to poke them with his finger throughout my stay, and were no more to be feared than that younger brother of theirs whom the showman went about with in his hand, lecturing on him; he was half-hatched from his native egg, and had been arrested and neatly varnished in the act for the astonishment of mankind.

  XXXV

  WE had the luck to be in Florence on the 25th of March, when one of the few surviving ecclesiastical shows peculiar to the city takes place. On that day a great multitude, chiefly of peasants from the surrounding country, assemble in front of the Duomo to see the explosion of the Car of the Pazzi. This car somehow celebrates the exploit of a crusading Pazzi, who broke off a piece of the Holy Sepulchre and brought it back to Florence with him; I could not learn just how or why, from the very scoffing and ironica
l little pamphlet which was sold in the crowd; but it is certain the car is covered with large fire-crackers, and if these explode successfully, the harvest for that year will be something remarkable. The car is stationed midway between the Duomo and the Baptistery, and the fire to set off the crackers is brought from the high altar by a pyrotechnic dove, which flies along a wire stretched for that purpose. If a mother with a sick child passes under the dove in its flight, the child is as good as cured.

  The crowd was vast, packing the piazza outside around the car and the cathedral to its walls with all sorts and conditions of people, and every age and sex. An alley between the living walls was kept open under the wire, to let the archbishop, heading a procession of priests, go out to bless the car. When this was done, and he had returned within, we heard a faint pop at the high altar, and then a loud fizzing as the fiery dove came flying along the wire, showering sparks on every side; it rushed out to the car, and then fled back to the altar, amidst a most satisfactory banging of the fire-crackers. “It was not a very awful spectacle, and I suspect that my sarcastic pamphleteer’s description was in the mood of most of the Florentines looking on, whatever the peasant thought. “‘Now, Nina,’ says the priest to the dove, ‘we ‘re almost ready, and look out how you come back, as well as go out. That’s a dear! It’s for the good of all, and don’t play me a trick — you understand? Ready! Are you ready? Well, then, — Gloria in excelsis Deo, — go, go, dear, and look out for your feathers! Shhhhh! pum, pum! Hurrah, little one! Now for the return! Here you come! Shhhhh! pum, pum, pum! And I don’t care a fig for the rest!’ And he goes on with his mass, while the crowd outside console themselves with the cracking and popping. Then those inside the church join those without, and follow the car up to the corner of the Pazzi palace, where the unexploded remnants are fired in honour of the family.

  XXXVI

  THE civil rite now constitutes the only legal marriage in Italy, the blessing of the church going for nothing without it before the law; and I had had a curiosity to see the ceremony which one may see any day in the office of the syndic. The names of those intending matrimony are posted for a certain time on the base of the Public Palace, which gives everybody the opportunity of dedicating sonnets to them. The pay of a sonnet is one franc, so that the poorest couple can afford one; and I suppose the happy pair whom I saw waiting in the syndic’s anteroom had provided themselves with one of these simple luxuries. They were sufficiently commonish, kindly faced young people, and they and their friends wore, with their best clothes, an air of natural excitement. A bell sounded, and we followed the group into a large handsome saloon hung with red silk and old tapestries, where the bride and groom sat down in chairs placed for them at the rail before the syndic’s desk, with their two witnesses at their left A clerk recorded the names and residences of all four; and then the usher summoned the syndic, who entered, a large, stout old gentleman, with a tricolor sash accenting his fat middle — waist he had none. Everybody rose, and he asked the bride and groom severally if they would help each other through life and be kind and faithful; then in a long, mechanical formula, which I could not hear, he dismissed them. They signed a register, and the affair was all over for us, and just begun for them, poor things. The bride seemed a little moved when we returned to the anteroom; she borrowed her husband’s handkerchief, lightly blew her nose with it, and tucked it back in his breast-pocket.

  XXXVII

  In pursuance of an intention of studying Florence more seriously than anything here represents, I assisted one morning at a session of the police court, which I was willing to compare with the like tribunal at home. I found myself in much the same sort of crowd as frequents the police court here; but upon the whole the Florentine audience, though shabby, was not so truculent-looking nor so dirty as the Boston one; and my respectability was consoled when I found myself shoulder to shoulder with an abbate in it. The thing that chiefly struck me in the court itself was the abundance of form and “presence,” as compared with ours. Instead of our clerk standing up in his sack-coat, the court was opened by a crier in a black gown with a white shoulder-knot, and order was kept by others as ceremoniously apparelled, instead of two fat, cravatless officers in blue flannel jackets and Japanese fans. The judges, who were three, sat on a dais under a bust of King Umberto, before desks equipped with inkstands and sand-boxes exactly like those in the theatre. Like the ushers, they wore black gowns and white shoulder-knots, and had on visorless caps bound with silver braid; the lawyers also were in gowns. The business with which the court opened seemed to be some civil question, and I waited for no other. The judges examined the witnesses, and were very keen and quick with them, but not severe; and what I admired in all was the good manner — self-respectful, unabashed; nobody seemed browbeaten or afraid. One of the witnesses was one whom people near me called a gobbino (hunchbackling), and whose deformity was so grotesque that I am afraid a crowd of our people would have laughed at him, but no one smiled there. He bore himself with dignity, answering to the beautiful Florentine name of Vanuccio Vanucci; the judges first addressed him as voi (you), but slipped insensibly into the more respectful lei (lordship) before they were done with him. I was too far off from them to make out what it was all about.

  XXXVIII

  I BELIEVE there are not many crimes of violence in Florence; the people are not brutal, except to the dumb brutes, and there is probably more cutting and stabbing in Boston; as for shooting, it is almost unheard of. A society for the prevention of cruelty to animals has been established by some humane English ladies, which directs its efforts wisely to awakening sympathy for them in the children. They are taught kindness to cats and dogs, and it is hoped that when they grow up they will even be kind to horses. These poor creatures, which have been shut out of the pale of human sympathy in Italy by their failure to embrace the Christian doctrine (“Non sono Cristiani!”), are very harshly treated by the Florentines, I was told; though I am bound to say that I never saw an Italian beating a horse. The horses look wretchedly underfed and overworked, and doubtless they suffer from the hard, smooth pavements of the city, which are so delightful to drive on; but as for the savage scourgings, the kicking with heavy boots, the striking over the head with the butts of whips, I take leave to doubt if it is at all worse with the Italians than with us, though it is so bad with us that the sooner the Italians can be reformed the better.

  If they are not very good to animals, I saw how kind they could be to the helpless and hapless of our own species, in a visit which I paid one morning to the Pia Casa di Ricovero in Florence. This refuge for pauperism was established by the first Napoleon, and is formed of two old convents, which he suppressed and joined together for the purpose. It has now nearly eight hundred inmates, men, women, and children; and any one found begging in the streets is sent there. The whole is under police government, and an officer was detailed to show me about the airy wards and sunny courts, and the clean, wholesome dormitories. The cleanliness of the place, in fact, is its most striking characteristic, and is promoted in the persons of the inmates by baths, perfunctory or voluntary, every week. The kitchen, with its shining coppers, was deliciously fragrant with the lunch preparing, as I passed through it: a mush of Indian meal boiled in a substantial meat-broth. This was served with an abundance of bread and half a gill of wine in pleasant refectories; some very old incapables and incurables were eating it in bed. The aged leisure gregariously gossiping in the wards, or blinking vacantly in the sunshine of the courts, was an enviable spectacle; and I should have liked to know what these old fellows had to complain of; for, of course, they were discontented.

  The younger inmates were all at work; there was an admirably appointed shop where they were artistically instructed in wood-carving and fine cabinet-work; and there were whole rooms full of little girls knitting, and of big girls weaving: all the clothes worn there are woven there. I do not know why the sight of a very old tailor in spectacles, cutting out a dozen suits of clothes at a time, from as man
y thicknesses of cloth, should have been so fascinating. Perhaps in his presence I was hovering upon the secret of the conjectured grief of that aged leisure: its clothes were all cut of one size and pattern!

  XXXIX

  I HAVE spoken already of the excellent public schools of Florence, which I heard extolled again and again as the best in Italy; and I was very glad of the kindness of certain friends, which enabled me to visit them nearly all. The first which I saw was in that famous old Via de’ Bardi where Romola lived, and which was inspired by a charity as large-minded as her own. It is for the education of young girls in book-keeping and those departments of commerce in which they can be useful to themselves and others, and has a subsidy from the state of two-fifths of its expenses; the girls pay each ten francs a year for their tuition, and the rest comes from private sources. The person who had done most to establish it was the lady in whose charge I found it, and who was giving her time to it for nothing; she was the wife of a professor in the School of Superior Studies (as the University of Florence modestly calls itself), and I hope I may be forgiven, for the sake of the completer idea of the fact which I wish to present, if I trench so far as to add that she found her devotion to it consistent with all her domestic duties and social pleasures: she had thoroughly philosophized it, and enjoyed it practically as well as aesthetically. The school occupies three rooms on the ground floor of an old palace, whose rear windows look upon the Arno; and in these rooms are taught successively writing and mathematics, the principles of book-keeping, and practical book-keeping, with English and French throughout the three years’ course. The teacher of penmanship was a professor in the Academy of Fine Arts, and taught it in its principles; in this case, as in most others, the instruction is without text-books, and seemed to me more direct and sympathetic than ours: the pupil felt the personal quality of the teacher. There are fifty girls in the school, mostly from shopkeeping families, and of all ages from twelve to seventeen, and although it had been established only a short time, several of them had already found places. They were prettily and tidily dressed, and looked interested and happy. They rose when we entered a room, and remained standing till we left it; and it was easy to see that their mental training was based upon a habit of selfrespectful subordination, which would be quite as useful hereafter. Some little infractions of discipline — I have forgotten what — were promptly rebuked by Signora G — , and her rebuke was received in the best spirit.