Dead letters

by Maurice Baring

HERR MÜLLER

Letter from Sir Richard C—— to his Cousin

Rome, January 4, 1787.

I have been here a fortnight and have been able more or less to look round. I wrote a long letter to Horace yesterday in which I described at great length the journey from Venice, so I will not repeat to you what I have already written to him.

Rome is a great deal altered since I was here last, ten years ago. It is being spoilt, and such damage as the Goths and Vandals left undone is now being accomplished by the modern architects. I am afraid that by the time the next generation is grown up the beautiful Rome that we have known and loved will have entirely disappeared, and that when our sons and daughters make the pilgrimage which we looked upon as the reward of our studies and the greatest privilege of our youth, they will find a new city, elegant no doubt, and not without grandeur, but devoid of that special charm, that rare and solemn dignity, which clothed the city as we knew it. Of course, certain of the monuments and works of art will always remain, and nothing can prevent Nature from performing her careless miracles. No defacing hand will be allowed to touch the trees that grow in the Coliseum, or to desecrate the verdure and the luxuriant vegetation which is allowed to run riot in the baths of Caracalla. Again, no modern artist will be allowed to lay hands on the grassy Forum, or to intrude upon the Gardens of the Borghese Palace which remind one of the fabled meadows and parterres of Elysium. But it is in the body of the city that the barbarians of the present day are allowed to commit their impious sacrilege, and it is not only a melancholy and bitter task to trace the remains of antiquity in the Rome of to-day, but it is even difficult to recognize in what now exists the city as she was when we were last here together.

The weather has so far not been very favourable. The sirocco is blowing, and daily brings with it a quantity of rain, but it is warm, warmer than it ever is in London. Rome is, I need scarcely tell you, very full of visitors at this moment, and it is especially crowded with our dear countrymen, whom I sedulously try to avoid, for I have not come to Rome, as do so many of our friends, for the purpose of continuing London life, and of hearing and helping to increase the scandal and the tittle-tattle with which we are only too familiar. It is for this reason that I have thus far shunned society, and the only people I have seen are artists and students, of whom there are many. Most of them are Germans, and several of these have received me with great civility and kindness, and afforded me much useful assistance in visiting the museums and conducting my trifling researches.

So far I have not seen much. The new museum is a very fine institution, and possesses many treasures. I have visited the ruins of the palace of the Caesars, the Coliseum, which impressed me more than ever by its size and solemnity, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s, on to the roof of which I climbed in order to enjoy the view.

The theatres are opened once more, and a few nights ago I went to the opera. Anfossi is here, and they gave “Alessandro nel Indie” (which is tedious) followed by a ballet representing the Siege and Fall of Troy, which I greatly enjoyed. I have also seen, since I have been here, Goldoni’s “Locandiera.” As you know, all parts here are played by men; and all the dancers in the ballet are men also. They act with ease and naturalness, and their facial play is especially remarkable.

From the moment I arrived in Rome until yesterday I was oppressed and somewhat saddened by the feeling—whether this was the result of the sirocco or of the shock of seeing so many unexpected changes I do not know—that I was not in any way in touch with Rome. I never seemed to say to myself “This is Rome indeed!” nor to experience that peculiar charm which I remember feeling so acutely when I was here last. It was in vain that I brooded over the ruins, admired the monuments of antiquity, and the masterpieces of the Italian painters; it was in vain that I lingered on the Palatine in the twilight, or roamed in the Baths of Diocletian. I admired with my reason, but I did not feel with my heart as before. Something was wanting. But yesterday the magic returned.

I went for a walk by myself along the Appian Way to the tomb of Metella. It was a gray day; it had been raining nearly all the morning, but by the time I started the rain had ceased, though a layer of high, piled-up clouds remained; the air was mild and almost sultry.

I walked along the Appian Way, and the desolation of the Campagna, with its fragments of broken arches, its ruined aqueducts and the distant hills, which on a day like this seem curiously near and distinct, came over me. In the distance, above Rome itself, the clouds had slightly lifted, and St. Peter’s was lit up by a watery gleam of light. I cannot describe to you the beauty and the melancholy of the scene.

All at once, while I was standing by the grassy plain and looking towards Rome, I became aware of a plaintive sound: a Roman shepherd boy dressed in sheepskins was tootling one or two monotonous notes on a wooden pipe. His music seemed to complete the landscape, and to express the very spirit of the Campagna, which brings home to me the Rome of ancient days more poignantly and more nearly than all monuments and museums.

The veil which had hung over me during all these days was abruptly lifted. The old spell and the old charm returned, and I could say to myself: “This is Rome! I have at last found what I was seeking.”

I had remained for some time musing, when I suddenly noticed that a man was sitting not far from me, seated on a stool and making a sketch in water-colour of a broken archway. He had been there the whole time, but I had not noticed him. I do not know why, but I felt a desire to speak to some one, and I approached him and asked in French if he could tell me the time. He answered me civilly, and by his accent I perceived that he was a German, one of the artists no doubt who are here so numerous, although I did not remember having seen him before. He was extremely handsome—I should say between thirty and forty—and though his face was young, his eyes had a penetrating sadness about them, an almost tragic expression, as though they had sounded bitter depths of experience.

We fell into conversation, and he told me that he was a German, that his name was Müller, and that he was spending some months in Rome. I said that I presumed he was an artist; he replied that he was only now learning the rudiments of the art of drawing, but that he had begun too late, and that he would never be anything but a dilettante.

As he spoke he folded up his sketching-book, for it was already too dark to draw, and we walked towards the city together. He said he had never been to Rome before, but that he had been steeped ever since his youth in the culture of antiquity, and the monuments and the pictures which he had seen since his arrival were to him like old friends with whom he had frequently corresponded, but whom he had never seen in the flesh. But all previous study, he said, as far as Rome was concerned, struck him as being ineffectual as soon as he arrived in the city, because he was sure that it is only in Rome itself that one can prepare oneself to study Rome. He had not been here many weeks, but so far, the three things which had impressed him most were the Rotunda, which he considered the thing most spiritually great he had seen, St. Peter’s, and the Apollo Belvidere, which he thought, as a work of genius, was the greatest of all; for although he had seen innumerable casts of this work, and indeed possessed one himself, it was as though he had never seen the statue before.

I told him that he was to be congratulated on never having seen Rome before, since his impressions would not be marred by the memories of a Rome more unspoiled and more charming. He said that he was only too keenly aware of the havoc which the modern architects had wrought, and that he feared that in twenty years’ time Rome would be unrecognizable.

“But perhaps,” he added, “we are mistaken. Rome has an assimilative power so great that it is able to suffer any amount of alteration, vandalism, superstructure, and addition, without losing anything of its eternal character and divinity. In Rome there is a continuity with which nothing can interfere.” And he added that he thought there was something in the atmosphere, the vegetation, the very grass and the weeds of the place which acted like a spell and softened what was ugly and modern, reconciled all differences, and reduced all discords into an eternal harmony which was the genius of the city.

We talked of other matters also, and I found that he was well versed in ancient and modern literature, and had an intimate knowledge of English. He admired the plays of Shakespeare; with Dryden he was less well acquainted, but he possessed a knowledge very striking in a foreigner of the untrodden byways of our literature. For instance, he told me that he had read the plays of Marlowe with great interest, especially the tragical history of Dr. Faustus. This, he told me, was a favourite theme for German writers; in the last few years there had been almost a hundred plays written on the subject.

I asked him if he wrote himself. He said he had done so, and had begun many books, but that he found it difficult to finish them.

“I have dabbled,” he said, “in art, in science, and in literature; they all interest me equally. But I am affected by the malady of our age, which is dilettantism, and I fear I shall be nothing but a dilettante all my life.”

I asked him if he was engaged on any literary labour at present. He said he was thinking of writing a poem on the subject of Dr. Faustus, and that he had indeed already written fragments of it. I expressed my surprise that he should choose a subject which he had himself told me had already been used by a multitude of writers. He then smiled, and said:

“Everything has been thought and everything has been said already. What we have to do is to think it and to say it again. The Greeks,” he went on, “never bothered themselves to search for new subjects. They wrote new plays on old themes. Likewise many generations of painters found sufficient subject-matter in the Madonna and Child. I mean,” he said, “to follow their example. Dr. Faustus shall be for me what the Madonna and Child were to them.”

We separated at the gate, after a most pleasant conversation. Herr Müller expressed a wish to see me again, and he told me that he was staying with an artist called Tishbein.

January 6.

I received this morning your letter dated December 18. I shall stay here until the Carnival, and then to Naples, where, they say, Vesuvius is in eruption. The German artist whom I met the other day turns out to be a celebrity. His real name is Goethe, and he is the author of “The Sorrows of Werther,” a book which you have probably not read, but of which you must certainly have heard, for it created a considerable stir about (I think) twelve years ago.