by Mark Twain
The trivial maliciousness that this soured outcast can invent! My agent here, a solicitor, paid twenty-five hundred francs—the rent of the first quarter—before we sailed from America, and this secured possession for the first day of November. On that date he tried to put our servants in the house, and the Countess drove him and them away, and he stood it like a little man! She said no one would be allowed to enter until the inventory had been made out and signed. She put that detail off a week, and this gave her an opportunity to rob the house. She removed from it all the furniture she could stow and use in her apartment of twelve rooms over the stable and cattle stalls. We arrived on the 7th, stayed in town two days, to rest my invalid wife from the racking railway journey from Genoa; the Countess’s head servant and the solicitor reported the house in good order, and we made the long drive on the 9th and entered into occupation, to find that no fires had been lighted in the furnaces or elsewhere and that the place was in condition for no office but the preservation of products requiring cold storage.
Jean and our old Katy had preceded us by half an hour to make sure that everything was in right shape. They found the Countess on hand and lording it over the house which had been taken and paid for; no bed had been prepared for the invalid, the Countess refused to give up the keys to the bedding closets, and said she would not allow a bed to be made for any one until the inventory should have been gone over and signed. She wouldn’t tell where in the vast building our trunks were concealed; otherwise bedding could have been taken from these. When we arrived we soon found out where our trunks were and we set the servants to work to prepare a bed. We selected for Mrs. Clemens the sacred room with the silken tapestry; the Countess forbade the presence in that room of any sick person and appealed to the lease and to my lawyer, who was present, in support of this prohibition. She was correct in her position. The lease showed that this reptile with the filthy soul had protected her house and her body against physical contamination by inserting in the lease a clause prohibiting the lessee from introducing into that particular bedroom any person suffering from an illness of any kind whether contagious or otherwise, and whether the illness might be “large or small” to use the words of the translation of the lease; and to these rigors she had added a clause breaking the lease in case I should bring a contagious disease into the house. All these sillinesses my salaried ass had conceded.
During the fifteen months that Mrs. Clemens had been a helpless invalid she had constantly received the gentle courtesies and kindly attentions which human beings of whatsoever rank or nationality always and everywhere accord to helplessness. This American Countess was the first of the race to deny these graces and to inflict physical pain and damage instead.
Considering the known character of the woman the lease was not a curiosity, for it left many loopholes for the gratification of her whims and caprices and malices, but left no holes for our escape or defence. Her rights were set forth in detail in writing, in every instance, whereas some of our most important ones had no protection other than her oral promises. These promises were ignored and repudiated from the start, and quite frankly. By oral promise we could occupy as much of the stable as we pleased, but the written lease confined us to the stable under Mrs. Clemens’s room. By oral agreement she was to leave the estate as soon as we moved in—a most important detail, and by all means should have been in writing, for no one acquainted with the Countess would endure the stench of her presence within a mile of his dwelling if it could be helped. By oral promise we were to have command of the reservoir which furnished water to the house—which was another exceedingly important detail; but as it was not in writing she was able to keep that command herself and she continues to keep it, and now and then to use it against our convenience and our health. The lease gave us not a single privilege outside the building except exit and entrance through the grounds; we were not consulted as to what hours the great gates should be open, it pleased her to close them for the night at six o’clock wherefore we were not only prisoners from that time until the next morning, but we were disastrously unaware of it because she gave us no notice. I say disastrously for the reason that upon one occasion our expensive Florentine specialist, Professor Grocco, with his assistant physician arrived at the outer gate four hundred yards from the villa at six o’clock in the evening and found the gate locked. There being no bell there was no way to give us notice. The assistant, Dr. Nesti, went scouting and found a gate open which led into the podere; through this they drove unimpeded to the villa. The pretext for closing the great gates out at the main road and those contiguous to our house was to protect the podere from thieves, whereas that podere gate was often left open all night.
The Countess invented various other ways to inconvenience us, and I supposed that the motive was merely and solely malice, but it turns out that that was not the whole of it. She was trying to force us to throw pecuniary advantages in the way of her temporary husband, her chief manservant. She had expected that we would buy all supplies through him and thus extend to him the same opportunities to rob us which he was enjoying in robbing her. She was curiously communicative in this matter. She told me I had made a mistake in not buying the winter’s fuel through that man; and in not buying the winter supply of wine and oil through him; and in not furnishing a cart and horse to our cook wherewith to drive into Florence daily for the perishable foods for the table; and in not getting him to have our washing done for us; and in not making it worth his while to be friendly with us as regards the water; since he could shut it off whenever he pleased, and could also waste it and make it necessary for us to buy water outside and have it hauled to us—a thing which he did once for a week or two.
The lease forbade me to add an improvement or a convenience anywhere about the house without first getting her consent in writing. Our physicians were three or four miles away in Florence; several times Mrs. Clemens had desperate need of them, and each time it cost us more than an hour and a half of precious time to send in and get them. A telephone was necessary, and I asked the Countess to allow me to put one in. She said I might, but that she must be sent for when the telephone people should arrive to put in the instrument, so that she might determine for herself whereabouts in the house she would allow it to be located. It did not occur to me to ask her to put the permission in writing, for I was not yet able to realize that I was not dealing with a human being but with a reptile. Through Mr. Cecchi, the manager of the bank, the contract was at once made with the Telephone Company; there were twenty-seven orders ahead of me, but by courtesy of the Company and in consideration of the desperate need I had of the telephone, I was placed at the head of the list; my instrument was promptly put in, and in the last days of January it began its work in perfect order. It maintained this perfect order an hour and then died. During a whole month thereafter Mr. Cecchi did his best to find out what the trouble was. The Company furnished all sorts of excuses except rational ones, and still the telephone remained dumb. Close upon the end of January I heard from a trustworthy source that the Countess had said to a friend of hers, the only one she has in Italy apparently, that if I had put the telephone matter into the hands of her paramour there would never have been any trouble about it. I went to town and Mr. Cecchi telephoned the Company and asked them to state once for all when they proposed to blow the breath of life into my telephone. They answered that the Countess was threatening them with a suit for eighteen francs damage which they had caused by erecting a telephone pole in her podere, the actual damage being, if anything, not above five francs. Also that they had just received an order from the Countess, accompanied by a threat from her lawyer, requiring them to take my telephone out on or before the fourth day of February at noon. I asked Mr. Cecchi to say to the Company that if I found myself unable to communicate with my house by telephone before sunset I should bring suit for twenty-five thousand francs damages for failure to fulfill their contract with me. Communication with my house was perfected within the hour, and has never since
been interrupted. The Countess’s excuse for forbidding a telephone whose special and particular office was to speedily call physicians to save a neighbor’s threatened life, was that I had no permission from her in writing and had not notified her to come and say where the instrument might be placed. I was losing my belief in hell until I got acquainted with the Countess Massiglia.
We have lived in a Florentine villa before. This was twelve years ago. This was the Villa Viviani, and was pleasantly and commandingly situated on a hill in the suburb of Settignano, overlooking Florence and the great valley. It was secured for us and put in comfortable order by a good friend, Mrs. Ross, whose stately castle was a twelve minutes’ walk away. She still lives there, and has been a help to us more than once since we got into the fangs of the titled animal who owns the Villa di Quarto. The year spent in the Villa Viviani was something of a contrast to the five months which we have now spent in this ducal barrack. Among my old manuscripts and random and spasmodic diaries I find some account of that pleasantly remembered year, and will make some extracts from the same and introduce them here.
When we were passing through Florence in the spring of ’92 on our way to Germany, the diseased world’s bath-house, we began negotiations for a villa, and friends of ours completed them after we were gone. When we got back three or four months later, everything was ready, even to the servants and the dinner. It takes but a sentence to state that, but it makes an indolent person tired to think of the planning and work and trouble that lie concealed in it. For it is less trouble and more satisfaction to bury two families than to select and equip a home for one.
The situation of the villa was perfect. It was three miles from Florence, on the side of a hill. The flowery terrace on which it stood looked down upon sloping olive groves and vineyards; to the right, beyond some hill-spurs, was Fiesole, perched upon its steep terraces; in the immediate foreground was the imposing mass of the Ross castle, its walls and turrets rich with the mellow weather-stains of forgotten centuries; in the distant plain lay Florence, pink and gray and brown, with the rusty huge dome of the cathedral dominating its centre like a captive balloon, and flanked on the right by the smaller bulb of the Medici chapel and on the left by the airy tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; all around the horizon was a billowy rim of lofty blue hills, snowed white with innumerable villas. After nine months of familiarity with this panorama, I still think, as I thought in the beginning, that this is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and the spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.
Sept. 26. ’92. Arrived in Florence. Got my head shaved. This was a mistake. Moved to the villa in the afternoon. Some of the trunks brought up in the evening by the contadino—if that is his title. He is the man who lives on the farm and takes care of it for the owner, the Marquis. The contadino is middle-aged and like the rest of the peasants—that is to say, brown, handsome, good-natured, courteous, and entirely independent without making any offensive show of it. He charged too much for the trunks, I was told. My informant explained that this was customary.
Sept. 27. The rest of the trunks brought up this morning. He charged too much again, but I was told that this also was customary. It is all right, then. I do not wish to violate the customs. Hired landau, horses and coachman. Terms, four hundred and eighty francs a month and a pourboire to the coachman, I to furnish lodging for the man and the horses, but nothing else. The landau has seen better days and weighs thirty tons. The horses are feeble, and object to the landau; they stop and turn around every now and then and examine it with surprise and suspicion. This causes delay. But it entertains the people along the road. They came out and stood around with their hands in their pockets and discussed the matter with each other. I was told they said that a forty-ton landau was not the thing for horses like those—what they needed was a wheelbarrow.
I will insert in this place some notes made in October concerning the villa:
This is a two-story house. It is not an old house—from an Italian standpoint, I mean. No doubt there has always been a nice dwelling on this eligible spot since a thousand years B.C.; but this present one is said to be only two hundred years old. Outside, it is a plain square building like a box, and is painted a light yellow and has green window-shutters. It stands in a commanding position on an artificial terrace of liberal dimensions which is walled around with strong masonry. From the walls the vineyards and olive orchards of the estate slant away toward the valley; the garden about the house is stocked with flowers and a convention of lemon bushes in great crockery tubs; there are several tall trees—stately stone pines—also fig trees and trees of breeds not familiar to me; roses overflow the retaining-walls and the battered and mossy stone urns on the gate-posts in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the drop-curtains of theatres; there are gravel walks shut in by tall laurel hedges. A back corner of the terrace is occupied by a dense grove of old ilex trees. There is a stone table in there, with stone benches around it. No shaft of sunlight can penetrate that grove. It is always deep twilight in there, even when all outside is flooded with the intense sun-glare common to this region. The carriage road leads from the inner gate eight hundred feet to the public road, through the vineyard, and there one may take the horse-car for the city, and will find it a swifter and handier convenience than a sixty-ton landau. On the east (or maybe it is the south) front of the house is the Viviani coat of arms in plaster, and near it a sun dial which keeps very good time.
The house is a very fortress for strength. The main walls—of brick covered with plaster—are about three feet thick; the partitions of the rooms, also of brick, are nearly the same thickness. The ceilings of the rooms on the ground floor are more than twenty feet high, those of the upper floors are also higher than necessary. I have several times tried to count the rooms in the house, but the irregularities baffle me. There seem to be twenty-eight.
The ceilings are frescoed, the walls are papered. All the floors are of red brick covered with a coating of polished and shining cement which is as hard as stone and looks like it; for the surfaces have been painted in patterns, first in solid colors and then snowed over with varicolored freckles of paint to imitate granite and other stones. Sometimes the body of the floor is an imitation of gray granite with a huge star or other ornamental pattern of imitation fancy marbles in the centre; with a two-foot band of imitation red granite all around the room whose outer edge is bordered with a six-inch stripe of imitation lapis-lazuli; sometimes the body of the floor is red granite, then the gray is used as a bordering stripe. There are plenty of windows, and worlds of sun and light; these floors are slick and shiny and full of reflections, for each is a mirror in its way, softly imaging all objects after the subdued fashion of forest lakes.
There is a tiny family chapel on the main floor, with benches for ten or twelve persons, and over the little altar is an ancient oil painting which seems to me to be as beautiful and as rich in tone as any of those Old-Master performances down yonder in the galleries of the Pitti and the Uffizi. Botticelli, for instance; I wish I had time to make a few remarks about Botticelli—whose real name was probably Smith.
The curious feature of the house is the salon. This is a spacious and lofty vacuum which occupies the centre of the house; all the rest of the house is built around it; it extends up through both stories and its roof projects some feet above the rest of the building. That vacuum is very impressive. The sense of its vastness strikes you the moment you step into it and cast your eyes around it and aloft. I tried many names for it: the Skating Rink, the Mammoth Cave, the Great Sahara, and so on, but none exactly answered. There are five divans distributed along its walls; they make little or no show, though their aggregate length is fifty-seven feet.
A piano in it is a lost object. We have tried to reduce the sense of desert space and emptiness with tables and things, but they have a defeated look and do not do any good. Whatever stands or moves under that soaring painted vault is belittled.
Over the six doors are huge plaster medallions which are supported by great naked and handsome plaster boys, and in these medallions are plaster portraits in high relief of some grave and beautiful men in stately official costumes of a long past day—Florentine senators and judges, ancient dwellers here and owners of this estate. The date of one of them is 1305—middle-aged, then, and a judge—he could have known, as a youth, the very creators of Italian art, and he could have walked and talked with Dante, and probably did. The date of another is 1343—he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons yonder in Fiesole gazing down on plague-reeking Florence and listening to that man’s improper tales, and he probably did. The date of another is 1463—he could have met Columbus, and he knew the Magnificent Lorenzo, of course. These are all Cerretanis—or Cerretani-Twains, as I may say, for I have adopted myself into their family on account of its antiquity, my origin having been heretofore too recent to suit me.
But I am forgetting to state what it is about that Rink that is so curious—which is, that it is not really vast, but only seems so. It is an odd deception, and unaccountable; but a deception it is. Measured by the eye it is sixty feet square and sixty high; but I have been applying the tape-line, and find it to be but forty feet square and forty high. These are the correct figures; and what is interestingly strange is, that the place continues to look as big now as it did before I measured it.
