“Tell him I’ll pay him to help me get this thing down,” he said: “I believe what I want is at the back of it.”
Then my altercation began.
We were mad English, and one couldn’t behave in a Church as if it were a shop.
But “mad English” or not we were also “rich English” (in the custodian’s eyes), and a very little English gold won the day: we saw the picture we wanted.
These were only a few instances of the “tonic of a young man’s conceit and obstinacy”—to use Joe’s own chaff of himself—in that never-to-be-forgotten journey through the highways and by-ways of Northern Italy. Everything was grist that came to his mill in this as in each separate field of his activities; but Florence was the real goal of all his desires, and this first visit to it, close on the study which had made him long to see for himself the Masters whom he loved and the fairest of towns which was their home, had a glamour which was never quite reached in later visits. I can see again the poor Trattorìa della Luna where we lodged and the handsome waiter whom we, in the wild enthusiasm of the hour, persuaded to follow us to England. That he ever arrived at all was the marvel. He might well have spent the journey-money given him on pastimes suggested by his reproach to me in London afterwards as to engaging a cook who remembered the birth of Christ: that he arrived weeping in a November fog and bitterly resenting having been left to come “by sea when we had come by land,” was not wonderful. Joe was patient with him for my sake and many a funny tale did he forge out of the Italian’s vagaries.
But when this unkempt Adonis had demoralized our maid, smashed our pretty wedding gifts in fits of gloom, during which he would shake his fist at the fog and say: “Goo’ nigh’,” and finally taunted us with not providing sufficient wine at a humble entertainment to excuse one of the guests for having left his hat behind, we felt it best he should return to his native land—though not before he had inadvertently half poisoned us with dried mushrooms sent by his relatives.
Well, badly as Mario behaved subsequently in Great Russell Street he was one of the features of our happy Florence holiday and directed our steps towards many out-of-the-way places which Joe thirsted to explore in search of Art treasures unknown to guide-books.
My husband’s knowledge culled from many old books was of great value to him, and with his bump of locality, joined to my knowledge of the speech of the people, we penetrated into many lovely corners and met with as many amusing adventures.
Strange food did we eat too on that weird trip, for here, as elsewhere, Joe insisted on exploring.
“Tell him I’m a judge of the cuisine,” he would say, “and only want the best.” And—with an instinct that the rewarding tip would not be wanting—as it never was—cooks hastened to concoct the spiciest of their national dishes for his criticism.