We passed afresh into the garden, and there was a flock of ewes and lambs nibbling the sweet short clover, attended by a picturesque shepherd girl, who carefully kept them off the shrubs, but went on industriously knitting all the while.
‘Is not that a simple enough mowing-machine for you?’ I asked. ‘It attains to even Veronica’s ideal of primitive expedients.‘
‘It is as simple and primitive,’ said Lamia, ‘as much of the garden itself. What a comfort it is to find oneself in a country where’—I imagine this was intended as a shaft against myself—‘there does not rage a fidgety mania for perfection. Flowers here are reduced to their proper subordination in the universe.’
Whether Lamia was right or wrong in this conclusion, it must be allowed that, as a race, Italians have not that tender attachment to flowers which is universal among ourselves, and that being, contrary to general belief, far less sentimental and more practical than we are, they do not care to devote much attention to the growing of anything that cannot be taken to market and turned into quattrini, or ready cash. Hence, they will willingly grow carnations, freesias, arum-lilies, lilies of the valley, ranunculuses, and such like flowers that find a quick sale on the ledges of the Palazzo Strozzi, or under the shadow of the Municipio in the Piazza della Trinità. But even these are so reared that the purchaser alone gets any delectation out of them, and the spot where they are produced is but little more of a garden in consequence of their temporary presence. The difficulty is to induce an Italian gardener to believe that you care for flowers for their own sake, that you regard the sale of them as a sort of desecration, that you feel they ought to be love-gifts, tokens of present or mementoes of absent affection, and, in any case, cherished companions of one’s private thoughts, one’s habitual pursuits, and one’s transitory emotions. He cannot understand that you want to consort with them, to tend them in sickness and health, to cultivate them for better or for worse, to let them twine and garland themselves about your inner and your outer life, to make them, in fact, flesh of your flesh, and spirit of your spirit, till death do you part, when, with a sweet form of suttee, they will come and immolate themselves upon your grave.
This conflict of ideals between the Poet and myself on the one side, and Ippolito, the gardener, on the other,—for the humblest folk in Tuscany have classical names, which they imagine to be Christian, and indeed frequently are so, thanks to some primitive martyr in the Church Calendar,—began at once, and never wholly ceased. We put our veto on the sale in Florence of flower or leaf grown on the premises; and as Veronica, with all her marvellous foresight, had not extended our contract to these, we had to arrange with him what was to be paid by us for what would otherwise have been profitable produce. Ippolito’s calculations were of the most elaborate character; but their complexity arose solely from his scrupulous desire to do justice as between man and man. Personally, he had no money interest in the matter; for, but for what he regarded as our unaccountable tastes, he would have carried all the saleable flowers twice a week to that charming little market-place which every visitor to the fair city knows so well, made the best bargain he could with the purchasing public, and credited his padrone with the amount received. Selling the flowers, he could know, to a centesimo, what they were worth. Not selling them, in deference to these odd forestieri, and therefore having to surmise what they would probably have fetched could they have been sold, and anxious neither to defraud his master nor to rob us, he lived, during our sojourn, a life of continual arithmetical anxiety. In vain were the Poet’s magnificent endeavours to make him understand that we were not, as modern language has it, so mighty particular as to what we paid for rescuing the flowers from what he regarded as an ignoble doom. We could excite no sentimental emotion on the subject in Ippolito. To him it was simply a matter of addition in decimals, the sum total of which should represent the practical results of abstract justice. It must not be supposed, however, that this quite satisfied him, or entirely quieted his conscience. To the last he let us perceive that he considered our arbitrary conduct to have a certain moral obliquity about it, since it caused and consecrated so much absolute waste; waste of time, waste of material, waste of money. Once, when we were not present, he appealed to Veronica, and asked if we were really in earnest in forbidding him to sell any portion of the flowers. The violets flowered by tens of thousands, the carnations were rotting on their stalks, and it was not possible more freesias could be wanted for indoors; and, with his Ma, Signora mia, and Senta, Sua Signoria, he did his best to convert her. But she told him we were inexorable; and, though she fully shared our sentiments on the subject, she laughed at us for a couple of zucconi, or dunderheads, for allowing ourselves to pay twice what the flowers were worth: a form of judgment which, as we have seen, was not quite equitable, but which nevertheless represented, with tolerable accuracy, the low estimate she entertained of either the Poet’s or my capacity for a bargain.
A NOBLE FOUNTAIN
Once Ippolito was thoroughly convinced of our obduracy concerning his mercenary traditions, he showed an amiable readiness to please us, by bringing pot after pot of well-grown plants from frame and shelf and sheltering nook, and placing them where we would, and mostly round the noble fountain that flashed quietly but unceasingly in the centre of the garden enclosure; though he well knew that, even in the genial weather with which we were being favoured, the length of their days would thereby be somewhat curtailed; white arum-lilies, freesias, lilies of the valley, and early carnations, thus making a most lively show.
‘Do not suppose, though,’ I said to Lamia, ‘that Italy has not its true garden season, even in the English sense; and I trust you will, in due course, be able to judge of it for yourself. But it is brief in its marvellous beauty. Like the people themselves of this lovely land, the year ages soon, when compared with the lagging Spring, the lingering Summer, and the slowly-ripening Autumn of Northern climes. But when the roses come they will come in battalions, the wistaria will run riot over wall and pergola, the Spiræa Van Houtte will whitely decorate itself with a lavishness unknown to chillier latitudes, and Madonna lilies will astound you by their height, and irises by their profusion. For a month, in a favourable season for six weeks, one will be embowered in bloom; then suddenly to find, if one gardens in English fashion, you have no garden at all.’