LETTER XLVIII.
VALLOMBROSA—ITALIAN OXEN—CONVENT—SERVICE IN THE CHAPEL—HOUSE OCCUPIED BY MILTON.
I left Florence for Vallombrosa at daylight on a warm summer's morning, in company with four ladies. We drove along the northern bank of the Arno for four or five miles, passing several beautiful villas, belonging to the Florentine nobles; and, crossing the river by a picturesque bridge, took the road to the village of Pelago, which lies at the foot of the mountain, and is the farthest point to which a carriage can mount. It is about fourteen miles from Florence, and the ascent thence to the convent is nearly three.
We alighted in the centre of the village, in the midst of a ragged troop of women and children, among whom were two idiot beggars; and, while the preparations were making for our ascent, we took chairs in the open square around a basket of cherries, and made a delicious luncheon of fruit and bread, very much to the astonishment of some two hundred spectators.
Our conveyances appeared in the course of half an hour, consisting of two large baskets, each drawn by a pair of oxen and containing two persons, and a small Sardinian pony. The ladies seated themselves with some hesitation in their singular sledges; I mounted the pony, and we made a dusty exit from Pelago, attended to the gate by our gaping friends, who bowed, and wished us the bon viaggio with more gratitude than three Tuscan crazie would buy, I am sure, in any other part of the world.
The gray oxen of Italy are quite a different race from ours, much lighter and quicker, and in a small vehicle they will trot off five or six miles in the hour as freely as a horse. They are exceedingly beautiful. The hide is very fine, of a soft squirrel gray, and as sleek and polished often as that of a well-groomed courser. With their large, bright, intelligent eyes, high-lifted heads, and open nostrils, they are among the finest-looking animals in the world in motion. We soon came to the steep path, and the facility with which our singular equipages mounted was surprising. I followed, as well as I could, on my diminutive pony, my feet touching the ground, and my balance constantly endangered by the contact of stumps and stones—the hard-mouthed little creature taking his own way, in spite of every effort of mine to the contrary.
We stopped to breathe in a deep, cool glen, which lay across our path, the descent into which was very difficult. The road through the bottom of it ran just above the bank of a brook, into which poured a pretty fall of eight or ten feet, and with the spray-wet grass beneath, and the full-leaved chestnuts above, it was as delicious a spot for a rest in a summer noontide as I ever saw. The ladies took out their pencils and sketched it, making a group themselves the while, which added all the picture wanted.
The path wound continually about in the deep woods, with which the mountain is covered, and occasionally from an opening we obtained a view back upon the valley of the Arno, which was exceedingly fine. We came in sight of the convent in about two hours, emerging from the shade of the thick chestnuts into a cultivated lawn, fenced and mown with the nicety of the grass-plot before a cottage, and entering upon a smooth, well-swept pavement, approached the gate of the venerable-looking pile, as anxious for the refreshment of its far-famed hospitality as ever pilgrims were.
An old cheerful-looking monk came out to meet us, and shaking hands with the ladies very cordially, assisted in extracting them from their cramped conveyances. He then led the way to a small stone cottage, a little removed from the convent, quoting gravely by the way the law of the order against the entrance of females over the monastic threshold. We were ushered into a small, neat parlor, with two bedrooms communicating, and two of the servants of the monastery followed, with water and snow-white napkins, the padre degli forestieri, as they called the old monk, who received us, talking most volubly all the while.
The cook appeared presently with a low reverence, and asked what we would like for dinner. He ran over the contents of the larder before we had time to answer his question, enumerating half a dozen kinds of game, and a variety altogether that rather surprised our ideas of monastical severity. His own rosy gills bore testimony that it was not the kitchen of Dennis Bulgruddery.
While dinner was preparing, Father Gasparo proposed a walk. An avenue of the most majestic trees opened immediately away from the little lawn before the cottage door. We followed it perhaps half a mile round the mountain, threading a thick pine forest, till we emerged on the edge of a shelf of greensward, running just under the summit of the hill. From this spot the view was limited only by the power of the eye. The silver line of the Mediterranean off Leghorn is seen hence on a clear day, between which and the mountain lie sixty or seventy miles, wound into the loveliest undulations by the course of the Arno. The vale of this beautiful river, in which Florence stands, was just distinguishable as a mere dell in the prospect. It was one of the sultriest days of August, but the air was vividly fresh, and the sun, with all the strength of the climate of Italy, was unoppressive. We seated ourselves on the small fine grass of the hillside, and with the good old monk narrating passages of his life, enjoyed the glorious scene till the cook's messenger summoned us back to dinner.
We were waited upon at table by two young servitors of the convent, with shaven crowns and long black cassocks, under the direction of Father Gasparo, who sat at a little distance, entertaining us with his inexhaustible stories till the bell rung for the convent supper. The dinner would have graced the table of an emperor. Soup, beef, cutlets, ducks, woodcocks, followed each other, cooked in the most approved manner, with all the accompaniments established by taste and usage; and better wine, white and red, never was pressed from the Tuscan grape. The dessert was various and plentiful; and while we were sitting, after the good father's departure, wondering at the luxuries we had found on a mountain-top, strong coffee and liqueurs were set before us, both of the finest flavor.
I was to sleep myself in the convent. Father Gasparo joined us upon the wooden bench in the avenue, where we were enjoying a brilliant sunset, and informed me that the gates shut at eight. The vesper-bell soon rung, echoing round from the rocks, and I bade my four companions good night, and followed the monk to the cloisters. As we entered the postern, he asked me whether I would go directly to the cell, or attend first the service in the chapel, assisting my decision at the same time by gently slipping his arm through mine and drawing me toward the cloth door, from which a strong peal of the organ was issuing.
We lifted the suspended curtain, and entered a chapel so dimly lit, that I could only judge of its extent from the reverberations of the music. The lamps were all in the choir, behind the altar, and the shuffling footsteps of the gathering monks approached it from every quarter. Father Gasparo led me to the base of a pillar, and telling me to kneel, left me and entered the choir, where he was lost in the depth of one of the old richly-carved seats for a few minutes, appearing again with thirty or forty others, who rose and joined in the chorus of the chant, making the hollow roof ring with the deep unmingled base of their voices.
I stood till I was chilled, listening to the service, and looking at the long line of monks rising and sitting, with their monotonous changes of books and positions, and not knowing which way to go for warmth or retirement. I wandered up and down the dim church during the remaining hour, an unwilling, but not altogether an unamused spectator of the scene. The performers of the service, with the exception of Father Gasparo, were young men from sixteen to twenty; but during my slow turns to and fro on the pavement of the church, fifteen or twenty old monks entered, and, with a bend of the knee before the altar went off into the obscure corners, and knelt motionless at prayer, for almost an hour. I could just distinguish the dark outline of their figures when my eye became accustomed to the imperfect light, and I never saw a finer spectacle of religious devotion.
The convent clock struck ten, and shutting up their "clasped missals," the young monks took their cloaks about them, bent their knees in passing the altar, and disappeared by different doors. Father Gasparo was the last to depart, and our footsteps echoed as we passed through the long cloisters to the cell appropriated for me. We opened one of some twenty small doors, and I was agreeably surprised to find a supper of cold game upon the table, with a bottle of wine, and two plates—the monk intending to give me his company at supper. The cell was hung round with bad engravings of the Virgin, the death of martyrs, crosses, &c., and a small oaken desk stood against the wall beneath a large crucifix, with a prayer-book upon it. The bed was high, ample, and spotlessly white, and relieved the otherwise comfortless look of a stone floor and white-washed walls. I felt the change from summer heat to the keen mountain air, and as I shivered and buttoned my coat, my gay guest threw over me his heavy black cowl of cloth—a dress that, with its closeness and numerous folds, would keep one warm in Siberia. Adding to it his little black scull-cap, he told me, with a hearty laugh, that but for a certain absence of sanctity in the expression of my face, and the uncanonical length of my hair, I looked the monk complete. We had a merry supper. The wine was of a choicer vintage than that we had drank at dinner, and the father answered, upon my discovery of its merits, that he never wasted it upon women.
In the course of the conversation, I found out that my entertainer was a kind of butler, or head-servitor of the convent, and that the great body of the monks were of noble lineage. The feeling of pride still remains among them from the days when the Certosa of Vallombrosa was a residence for princes, before its splendid pictures were pillaged by a foreign army, its wealth scattered, and its numbers diminished. "In those days," said the monk, "we received nothing for our hospitality but the pleasure it gave us"—relieving my mind, by the remark, of what I looked forward to at parting as a delicate point.
My host left me at midnight, and I went to bed, and slept under a thick covering in an Italian August. "The blanched linen, white and lavendered," seemed to have a peculiar charm, for though I had promised to meet my excluded companions at sunrise, on the top of the mountain, I slept soundly till nine, and was obliged to breakfast alone in the refectory of the convent.
We were to dine at three, and start for Florence at four the next day, and we spent our morning in traversing the mountain paths, and getting views on every side. Fifty or a hundred feet above the convent, perched on a rock like an eyry, stands a small building in which Milton is supposed to have lived, during his six weeks sojourn at the convent. It is now fitted up as a nest of small chapels—every one of its six or eight little chambers having an altar. The ladies were not permitted to enter it. I selected the room I presumed the poet must have chosen—the only one commanding the immense view to the west, and, looking from the window, could easily feel the truth of his simile, "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." It is a mountain of foliage.
Another sumptuous dinner was served, Father Gasparo sitting by, even more voluble than before, the baskets and the pony were brought to the door, and we bade farewell to the old monk with more regret than a day's acquaintance often produces. We reached our carriage in an hour, and were in Florence at eight—having passed, by unanimous opinion, the two brightest days in our calendar of travel.