Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  The Sienese were at the height of their work on the great cathedral when the great pestilence smote them, and broke them for ever, leaving them a feeble phantom of their past glory and prosperity. “The infection,” says Buonsignore, “spread not only from the sick, but from everything they touched, and the terror was such that selfish frenzy mounted to the wildest excess; not only did neighbour abandon neighbour, friend forsake friend, but the wife her husband, parents their children. In the general fear, all noble and endearing feelings were hushed.... Such was the helplessness into which the inhabitants lapsed that the stench exhaling from the wretched huts of the poor was the sole signal of death within. The dead were buried by a few generous persons whom an angelic pity moved to the duty: their appeal was, ‘Help to carry this body to the grave, that when we die others may bear us thither! ‘ The proportion of the dead to the sick was frightful; out of every five seized by the plague scarcely one survived. Angelo di Tura tells us that at Siena, in the months of May, June, July, and August of the year 1348, the pest carried off eighty thousand persons...

  A hundred noble families were extinguished.” Through out Italy, “three-fourths of the population perished The cities, lately flourishing, busy, industrious, full of life, had become squalid, deserted, bereft of the activity which promotes grandeur. In Siena the region of Fonte ‘ Branda was largely saved from the infection by the odour of its tanneries. Other quarters, empty and forsaken, were set on fire after the plague ceased, and the waste areas where they stood became the fields and gardens we now see within the walls.... The work on the cathedral, which had gone forward for ten years, was suspended.... and when resumed, it was upon a scale adjusted to the diminished wealth of the city, and the plan was restricted to the dimensions which we now behold.... And if the fancy contemplates the grandeur of the original project, divining it from the vestiges of the walls and the columns remaining imperfect, but still preserved in good condition, it must be owned that the republic disposed of resources of which we can form no conception; and we must rest astounded that a little state, embroiled in perpetual wars with its neighbours, and in the midst of incessant party strife, should undertake the completion of a work worthy of the greatest and most powerful nations.”

  “When a man,” says Mr Addison, writing from Siena in the spirit of the genteel age which he was an ornament of, “sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us had they only been instructed in the right way; for when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than it is at present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was so much money consumed on these Gothic cathedrals as would have finished a greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before or since that time.” And describing this wonderful cathedral of Siena in detail, he says that “nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those who prefer false beauties and affected ornaments to a noble and majestic simplicity.”

  The time will no doubt come again when we shall prefer “noble and majestic simplicity,” as Mr Addison did; and I for one shall not make myself the mock of it by confessing how much better I now like “false beauties and affected ornaments.” In fact, I am willing to make a little interest with it by admitting that the Tuscan fashion of alternate courses of black and white marble in architecture robs the interior of the cathedral of all repose, and that nowhere else does the godless joke which nicknamed a New York temple “the Church of the Holy Zebra” insist upon itself so much. But if my business were iconoclasm, I should much rather smash the rococo apostolic statues which Mr Addison doubtless admired, perching on their brackets at the base of the variegated pillars; and I suspect they are greatly to blame for the distraction which the visitor feels before he loses himself in the inexhaustibly beautiful and delightful detail. Shall I attempt to describe this? Not I! Get photographs, get prints, dear reader, or go see for yourself! Otherwise, trust me that if we had a tithe of that lavish loveliness in one structure in America, the richness of that one would impoverish the effect of all the other buildings on the continent. I say this, not with the hope of imparting an idea of the beauty, which words cannot, but to give some notion of the wealth poured out upon this mere fragment of what was meant to be the cathedral of Siena, and to help the reader conceive not only of the piety of the age, but of the love of art then universally, spread among the Italians.

  The day was abominably cold, of course, — it had been showing that morning, — when we first visited the church, and I was lurking about with my skull-cap on, my teeth chattering, and my hands benumbing in my pockets, when the little valet de place who had helped us not find a lodging espied us and leaped joyously upon us, and ran us hither and thither so proudly and loudly that one of the priests had to come and snub him back to quiet and decorum. I do not know whether this was really in the interest of decency, or of the succession of sacristans who, when the valet had been retired to the front door, took possession of us, and lifted the planking which preserves the famous engraved pavement, and showed us the wonderful pulpit and the rich chapels, and finally the library all frescoed by Pinturicchio with scenes from the lives of the two Sienese Piccolomini who were Popes Pius II. and III.

  This multiplicity of sacristans suffered us to omit nothing, and one of them hastened to point out the two flag-poles fastened to the two pillars nearest the high altar, which are said to be those of the great War Car of the Florentines, captured by the Sienese at Montaperto in 1260. “ How,” says my “New Guide,”

  “how on earth, the stranger will ask, do we find here in the house of God, who shed His blood for all mankind, here in the temple consecrated to Mary, mother of every sweet affection, these two records of a terrible carnage between brothers, sons of the same country? Does it not seem as if these relics from the field of battle stand here to render Divinity accomplice of the rage and hate and vengeance of men? We know not how to answer this question; we must even add that the crucifix not far from the poles, in the chapel on the left of the transept, was borne by the Sienese, trusting for victory in the favour of God, upon the field of Montaperto.”

  I make haste to say that I was not a stranger disposed to perplex my “New Guide” with any such question, and that nothing I saw in the cathedral gave me so much satisfaction as these flag-poles. Ghibelline and Sienese as I had become as soon as I turned my back on Guelphic Florence, I exulted in these trophies of Montaperto with a joy which nothing matched except the pleasure I had in viewing the fur-lined canopy of the War Car, which is preserved in the Opera del Duomo, and from which the custodian bestowed upon my devotion certain small tufts of the fur. I have no question but this canopy and the flag-poles are equally genuine, and I counsel the reader by all means to see them.

  There are many other objects to be seen in the curious museum of antique and mediaeval art called the Opera del Duomo, especially the original sculptures of the Fonte Gaia; but the place is chiefly interesting as the outline, the colossal sketch in sculptured marble, of the cathedral as it was projected. The present structure rises amid the halting fragments of the mediaeval edifice, which it has included in itself, without exceeding their extent; and from the roof there is an ineffable prospect of the city and the country, from which one turns again in still greater wonder to the church itself.

  I had an even deeper sense of its vastness, — the least marvellous of its facts, — and a renewed sense of the domestication of the Italian churches, when I went one morning to hear a Florentine monk, famed for his eloquence, preach in the cathedral. An oblong canopy of coarse gray canvas had been stretched overhead in part of the great nave, to keep his voice from losing itself in the space around and above. The monk, from a pulpit built against one of the pillars, faced a dais, across the nave, where the archbishop sat in his chair to listen, and the planked floor between them was thronged with people sitting and standing, who came and went, a
s if at home, with a continued clapping of feet and banging of doors. All the time service was going on at several side-altars, where squads of worshippers were kneeling, indifferent alike to one another and to the sermon of the monk. Some of his listeners, however, wore a look of intense interest, and I myself was not without concern in his discourse, for I perceived that it was all in honour and compassion of the captive of the Vatican, and full of innuendo for the national government. It gave me some notion of the difficulties with which that government has to contend, and impressed me anew with its admirable patience and forbearance. Italy is unified, but many interests, prejudices, and ambitions are still at war within her unity.

  XV

  ONE night we of the Pension T. made a sentimental pilgrimage to the cathedral, to see it by moonlight. The moon was not so prompt as we, and at first we only had it on the baptistery and the campanile — a campanile to make one almost forget the Tower of Giotto. But before we came away one corner of the façade had caught the light, and hung richly bathed, tenderly etherealized in it. What was gold, what was marble before, seemed transmuted to the luminous substance of the moonlight itself, and rested there like some translucent cloud that “stooped from heaven and took the shape” of clustered arch and finial.

  On the way home we passed the open portal of a palace, and made ourselves the guests of its noble court, now poured full of the moon, and dimly lighted by an exquisite lantern of beaten iron, which hung near a massive pillar at the foot of the staircase. The pillar divided the staircase, and lost its branchy top in the vault overhead; and there was something so consciously noble and dignified in the whole architectural presence that I should have been surprised to find that we had not stumbled upon an historic edifice. It proved to be the ancient palace of the Captain of the People — and I will thank the reader to imagine me a finer name than Capitano del Popolo for the head of such a democracy as Siena, whose earliest government, according to Alessandro Sozzino, was popular, after the Swiss fashion. Now the palace is the residence and property of the Grattanelli family, who have restored it and preserved it in the mediaeval spirit, so that I suppose it is, upon the whole, the best realization of a phase of the past which one can see. The present Count Grattanelli — who may be rather a marquis or a prince, but who is certainly a gentleman of enlightened taste, and of a due sense of his Siena — keeps an apartment of the palace open to the public, with certain of the rooms in the original state, and store of armour and weapons in which the consequence of the old Captains of the People fitly masquerades. One must notice the beautiful doors of inlaid wood in this apartment, which are of the count’s or marquis’s or prince’s own design; and not fail of two or three ceilings frescoed in dark colours, in dense, close designs and small panels, after what seems a fashion peculiar to Siena.

  Now that I am in Boston, where there are so few private palaces open to the public, I wonder that I did not visit more of them in Siena; but I find no record of any such visits but this one in my note-books. It was not for want of inscriptional provocation to penetrate interiors that I failed to do so. They are tableted in Siena beyond almost anything I have seen. The villa outside the gate where the poet Manzoni once visited his daughter records the fact for the passing stranger; on the way to the station a house boasts that within it the dramatist Pietro Cossa, being there “the guest of his adored mother,” wrote his Cecilia and the second act of his Sylla; in a palace near that of Socinus you are notified that Alfieri wrote several of his tragedies; and another proclaims that he frequented it “holding dear the friendship” of the lady of the house! In spite of all this, I can remember only having got so far as the vestibule and staircase — lovely and grand they were, too — of one of those noble Gothic palaces in Via Cavour: I was deterred from going farther by learning it was not the day when uninvited guests were received. I always kept in mind, moreover, the Palazzo Tolomei for the sake of that dear and fair lady who besought the traveller through purgatory —

  “Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;

  Siena mi fè, disfecemi Maremma,” —

  and who was of the ancient name still surviving in Siena. Some say that her husband carried her to die of malaria in the marshes of the Maremma; some, that he killed her with his dagger; others, that he made his servants throw her from the window of his castle; and none are certain whether or no he had reason to murder her — they used to think there could be a reason for murdering wives in his day; even the good Gigli, of the Diario Senese, speaks of that “giusto motivo” Messer Nello may possibly have had. What is certain is that Pia was the most beautiful woman in Italy; and what is still more certain is that she was not a Tolomei at all, but only the widow of a Tolomei. Perhaps it was prescience of this fact that kept me from visiting the Tolomei palace for her sake. At any rate, I did not visit it, though I often stopped in the street before it, and dedicated a mistaken sigh to the poor lady who was only a Tolomie by marriage.

  There were several other ladies of Siena, in past ages, who interested me. Such an one was the exemplary Onorata de’ Principi Orsini, one of the four hundred Sienese noblewomen who went out to meet the Emperor Frederick III. in 1341, when he came to Siena to espouse Leonora, Infanta of Portugal; a column near Porta Camollia still commemorates the exact spot where the Infanta stood to receive him. On this occasion the fair Onorata was, to the thinking of some of the other ladies, too simply dressed; but she defended herself against their censure, affirming that the “Sienese gentlewomen should make a pomp of nothing but their modesty, since in other displays and feminine adornments the matrons of other and richer cities could easily surpass them.” And at a ball that night, being asked who was the handsomest gentleman present, she answered that she saw no one but her husband there. Is the estimable Onorata a trifle too sage for the reader’s sympathy? Let him turn then to the Lady Battista Berti, wife of Achille Petrucci, who, at another ball in honour of the Emperor, spoke Latin with him so elegantly and with such spirit that he embraced her, and created her countess, and begged her to ask some grace of him; upon which this learned creature, instead of requesting the Emperor to found a free public library, besought him to have her exempted from the existing law which prohibited the wearing of jewels and brocade dresses in Siena. The careful Gigli would have us think that by this reply Lady Battista lost all the credit which her Latinity had won her; but it appears to me that both of these ladies knew very well what they were about, and each in her way perceived that the Emperor could appreciate a delicate stroke of humour as well as another. If there were time, and not so many questions of our own day pressing, I should like to inquire into all the imaginable facts of these cases; and I commend them to the reader, whose fancy cannot be so hard worked as mine.

  The great siege of Siena by the Florentines and Imperialists in 1554-55 called forth high civic virtues in the Sienese women, who not only shared all the hardships and privations of the men, but often their labours, their dangers, and their battles. “Never, Sienese ladies,” gallantly exclaimed the brave Blaise de Montluc, Marshal of France, who commanded the forces of the Most Christian King in defence of the city, and who treats of the siege in his Commentaries, “never shall I fail to immortalise your name so long as the book of Montluc shall live; for in truth you are worthy of immortal praise, if ever women were so. As soon as the people took the noble resolution of defending their liberty, the ladies of the city of Siena divided themselves into three companies: the first was led by Lady Forteguerra, who was dressed in violet, and all those who followed her likewise, having her accoutrement in the fashion of a nymph, short, and showing the buskin; the second by Lady Piccolomini, dressed in rose-coloured satin, and her troops in the same livery; the third by Lady Livia Fausta, dressed in white, as was also her following, and bearing a white ensign. On their flags they had some pretty devices. I would give a good deal if I could remember them. These three squadrons were composed of three thousand ladies — gentlewomen or citizenesses. Their arms were pickaxes, shovels, baskets, and fas
cines; and thus equipped, they mustered and set to work on the fortifications. Monsieur de Termes, who has frequently told me about it (for I had not then arrived), has assured me that he never saw in his life anything so pretty as that. I saw the flags afterwards. They had made a song in honour of France, and they sang it in going to the fortifications. I would give the best horse I have if I could have been there. And since I am upon the honour of these ladies, I wish those who come after us to admire the courage of a young Sienese girl, who, although she was of poor condition, still deserves to be placed in the first rank. I had issued an order when I was chosen Dictator that nobody, on pain of being punished, should fail to go on guard in his turn. This girl, seeing her brother, whose turn it was, unable to go, takes his morion, which she puts on her head, his shoes, his buffalo-gorget; and with his halberd on her shoulders, goes off with the corps de garde in this guise, passing, when the roll is called, under the name of her brother, and stands sentinel in his place, without being known till morning. She was brought home in triumph. That afternoon Signor Cornelio showed her to me.”

  I am sorry that concerning the present ladies of Siena I know nothing except by the scantiest hearsay. My chief knowledge of them, indeed, centres in the story of one of the Borghesi there, who hold themselves so very much higher than the Borghesi of Rome. She stopped fanning herself a moment while some one spoke of them. “Oh, yes; I have heard that a branch of our family went to Rome. But I know nothing about them.”

  What glimpse we caught of Sienese society was at the theatre — the lovely little theatre of the Academia dei Rozzi. This is one of the famous literary academies of Italy; it was founded in the time of Leo X., and was then composed entirely of working-men, who confessed their unpolished origin in their title; afterwards the Academies of the Wrapped-up, the Twisted, and the Insipid (such was the fantastic humour of the prevailing nomenclature) united with these Rude Men, and their academy finally became the most polite in Siena. Their theatre still enjoys a national fame, none but the best companies being admitted to its stage. We saw there the Rossi company of Turin — the best players by all odds, after the great Florentine Stenterello, whom I saw in Italy. Commendatore Rossi’s is an exquisite comic talent — the most delicately amusing, the most subtly refined. In a comedy of Goldoni’s (“A Curious Accident”) which he gave, he was able to set the house in an uproar by simply letting a series of feelings pass over his face, in expression of the conceited, wilful old comedy-father’s progress from facetious satisfaction in the elopement of his neighbour’s daughter to a realisation of the fact that it was his own daughter who bad run away.