‘If they thought that of you, Lamia,’ I said, more struck by the exaggeration than by the humility of her remark, ‘they certainly contrived to conceal their impression. Still, speaking generally, rural Tuscany is a school of manners.’
The noble simplicity referred to as the distinguishing mark of villa architecture in Tuscany, is as dominant in the interior as on the exterior of its buildings; ample space being their chief feature and adornment. Unless they have been invaded by modern hands, they depend for effect on bold outlines rather than on decorative detail; and they are furnished in harmony with the same severe taste. When Veronica admonished us that we were to lead a life of strict simplicity, she referred to this circumstance among others.
‘I hope,’ she said, ‘you have left your sybaritic tastes at home. You will find many shapely but no comfortable chairs, no superfluity of cushions, nowhere a footstool, and, if you choose to lie on what looks like a sofa, you will soon find you are not reposing on rose-leaves. You must not come to me and complain that there is not a bell in your room, or, if there is, that it apparently has no communication with the outer world. If Lamia wishes to make a mess indoors with her flowers and branches of blossom, she shall not be denied; but you must not look for those more permanent graces of life to which you are all so attached.’
‘Don’t mind me,‘ said Lamia. ‘I am quite prepared to empty my own bath, brush my own skirts, answer the bell instead of ringing it, and live on fagioli and dried funghi. Indeed, it was chiefly to indulge in those unusual luxuries that I came to Italy.’
Considering who it is that has created, cherished, and fostered in us those sybaritic tastes, and that attachment to the graces and elegancies of life of which Veronica spoke, and with which she told us we were now to dispense, we may be pardoned, I think, if, at the first opportunity, we indulged in some private humour at her expense. If we are demoralised by domestic luxury, who is it but Veronica that has corrupted us? I protest that most men, in the matter of material comfort, are absolute Spartans, and, as for the Poet, his native austerity was once not to be surpassed, and he still indulges from time to time in his ideal, at any rate in conversation. But he too has, for the most part, succumbed to Veronica’s unequalled capacity for making life at once graceful and commodious; and I am not sure that now he would not, if at home, feel almost wronged if, should he happen to want a paper-cutter, he had to rise from his chair in order to go in search of one.
‘Just you wait!’ said Lamia, ‘and see what becomes of the simple life to which we are to dedicate ourselves. The first time Veronica goes to Florence, she will return, I will engage to say, laden with manifold conveniences of existence, and by degrees she will introduce a world of things into this splendid vacuum; and if, some fine morning, you meet a plumber or bell-hanger on the stairs, you need not regard him as an interloper. Nor would I mind wagering my next quarter’s dress-money that, before long, you will see me sitting in the easiest of easy-chairs, and gracefully reposing on the softest of ottomans.‘
‘I doubt it,’ said the Poet, ‘for Veronica has a fine sense of the fitness of things, and her tastes are sufficiently flexible for her to distinguish between Northern and Southern needs, Northern and Southern traditions. When Francesco Cibo, the nephew of Innocent VIII., married Lorenzo’s daughter, and came to Florence with a large and splendid retinue, he was entertained during the period of the nuptials with the utmost magnificence. But, at the end of that time, he observed that all the silver vessels and ornaments, of which there had been such a profusion, disappeared from the table, and were replaced by others of brass; and, moreover, that every meal was now served with the utmost plainness and frugality. Anxious lest his Roman attendants should carry back to the Eternal City the impression that he had contracted a union with either a very poor or a very parsimonious family, he sought to discover how they were faring, and found they were still being entertained in the most sumptuous manner. The enigma was explained when Lorenzo said to him, “You are now one of ourselves, and as one of ourselves I treat you. My grandsire Cosimo used to say to his sons, ‘Remember you are only citizens of Florence, and must reserve what splendours you can command for the glorification of the City.’ As his descendant, I obey his injunction.”‘
‘Hark!’ I said. ‘Already there are sounds of modern civilisation. The grass-plot is being mown.’
Lamia and the Poet listened, though I think the latter at once guessed my meaning.
‘What is it?’ said Lamia. ‘A mowing-machine? I cannot hear it. I hear only the bleating of sheep.’