LETTER XXIX.
EXCURSION TO VENICE—AMERICAN ARTISTS—VALLEY OF FLORENCE—MOUNTAINS OF CARRARA—TRAVELLING COMPANIONS—HIGHLAND TAVERN—MIST AND SUNSHINE—ITALIAN VALLEYS—VIEW OF THE ADRIATIC—BORDER OF ROMAGNA—SUBJECTS FOR THE PENCIL—HIGHLAND ITALIANS—ROMANTIC SCENERY—A PAINFUL OCCURRENCE—AN ITALIAN HUSBAND—A DUTCHMAN, HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN—BOLOGNE—THE PILGRIM—MODEL FOR A MAGDALEN.
I started for Venice yesterday, in company with Mr. Alexander and Mr. Cranch, two American artists. We had taken the vetturino for Bologna, and at daylight we were winding up the side of the amphitheatre of Appenines that bends over Florence, leaving Fiesolé rising sharply on our right. The mist was creeping up the mountain just in advance of us, retreating with a scarcely perceptible motion to the summits, like the lift of a heavy curtain; Florence, and its long, heavenly valley, full of white palaces sparkling in the sun, lay below us, more like a vision of a better world than a scene of human passion; away in the horizon the abrupt heads of the mountains of Carrara rose into the sky; and with the cool, fresh breeze of the hills, and the excitement of the pleasant excursion before us, we were three of as happy travellers probably as were to be met on any highway in this garden of the world.
We had six companions, and a motley crew they were—a little effeminate Venetian, probably a tailor, with a large, noble-looking, handsome contadina for a wife; a sputtering Dutch merchant, a fine, little, coarse, good-natured fellow, with his wife, and two very small and very disagreeable children; an Austrian corporal in full uniform; and a fellow in a straw hat, speaking some unknown language, and a nondescript in every respect. The women and children, and my friends, the artists, were my companions inside, the double dicky in front accommodating the others. Conversation commenced with the journey. The Dutch spoke their dissonant language to each other, and French to us, the contadina's soft Venetian dialect broke in like a flute in a chorus of harsh instruments, and our own hissing English added to a mixture already sufficiently various.
We were all day ascending mountains, and slept coolly under three or four blankets at a highland tavern, on a very wild Appenine. Our supper was gaily eaten, and our mirth served to entertain five or six English families, whose chambers were only separated from the rough raftered dining hall by double curtains. It was pleasant to hear the children and nurses speaking English unseen. The contrast made us realize forcibly the eminently foreign scene about us. The next morning, after travelling two or three hours in a thick, drizzling mist, we descended a sharp hill, and emerged at its foot into a sunshine so sudden and clear, that it seemed almost as if the night had burst into mid-day in a moment. We had come out of a black cloud. The mountain behind us was capped with it to the summit. Beneath us lay a map of a hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the eye could span, lay a long sparkling line of water, like a silver frame around the landscape. It was our first view of the Adriatic. We looked at it with the singular and indefinable emotion with which one always sees a celebrated water for the first time—a sensation, it seems to me, which is like that of no other addition to our knowledge. The Mediterranean at Marseilles, the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris, affected me in the same way. Explain it who will, or can!
An hour after, we reached the border of Romagna, the dominions of the Pope running up thus far into the Appenines. Here our trunks were taken off and searched more minutely. The little village was full of the dark-skinned, romantic-looking Romagnese, and my two friends, seated on a wall, with a dozen curious gazers about them, sketched the heads looking from the old stone windows, beggars, buildings, and scenery, in a mood of professional contentment. Dress apart, these highland Italians are like North American Indians—the same copper complexions, high cheek bones, thin lips, and dead, black hair. The old women particularly, would pass in any of our towns for full-blooded squaws.
The scenery, after this, grew of the kind "which savage Rosa dashed"—the only landscape I ever saw exactly of the tints so peculiar to Salvator's pictures. Our painters were in ecstasies with it, and truly, the dark foliage, and blanched rocks, the wild glens, and wind-distorted trees, gave the country the air of a home for all the tempests and floods of a continent. The Kaatskills are tame to it.
The forenoon came on, hot and sultry, and our little republic began to display its character. The tailor's wife was taken sick; and fatigue, and heat, and the rough motion of the vetturino in descending the mountains, brought on a degree of suffering which it was painful to witness. She was a woman of really extraordinary beauty, and dignified and modest as few women are in any country. Her suppressed groans, her white, tremulous lips, the tears of agony pressing thickly through her shut eyelids, and the clenching of her sculpture-like hands, would have moved anything but an Italian husband. The little effeminate villain treated her as if she had been a dog. She bore everything from him till he took her hand, which she raised faintly to intimate that she could not rise when the carriage stopped, and threw it back into her face with a curse. She roused, and looked at him with a natural majesty and calmness that made my blood thrill. "Aspetta?" was her only answer, as she sunk back and fainted.
The Dutchman's wife was a plain, honest, affectionate creature, bearing the humors of two heated and ill-tempered children, with a patience we were compelled to admire. Her husband smoked and laughed, and talked villainous French and worse Italian, but was glad to escape to the cabriolet in the hottest of the day, leaving his wife to her cares. The baby screamed, and the child blubbered and fretted, and for hours the mother was a miracle of kindness. The "drop too much," came in the shape of a new crying fit from both children, and the poor little Dutchwoman, quite wearied out, burst into a flood of tears, and hiccupped her complaints in her own language, weeping unrestrainedly for a quarter of an hour. After this she felt better, took a gulp of wine from the black bottle, and settled herself once more quietly and resignedly to her duties. We had certainly opened one or two very fresh veins of human character, when we stopped at the gates.
There is but one hotel for American travellers in Bologna, of course. Those who have read Rogers's Italy, will remember his mention of "The Pilgrim," the house where the poet met Lord Byron by appointment, and passed the evening with him which he describes so exquisitely. We took leave of our motley friends at the door, and our artists who had greatly admired the lovely Venetian, parted from her with the regret of old acquaintances. She certainly was, as they said, a splendid model for a Magdalen, "majestical and sad," and, always in attitudes for a picture: sleeping or waking, she afforded a succession of studies of which they took the most enthusiastic advantage.