"Italima" liked my coming and going, and was very angry if I did not come, though she never professed any maternal affection for me. I often found myself in difficulties between my two mothers. My adopted mother would sometimes take an alarm that I was going too often to Italima, and would demand my presence just on the particular occasion when "Italima" had counted upon it; in which case I always gave way to her. And indeed, as a rule, I always spent all my time with my mother, except about two evenings in the week, when I went to Italima and the Palazzo Parisani. On rare occasions, also, I went out "into the world" with Italima and my sister, to balls at the Palazzo Borghese, and at the Palazzo di Spagna, where old Queen Christina of Spain was then living, an interesting historic figure to me as the sister of the Duchesse de Berri and great-niece of Marie Antoinette. She was very hospitable, and her parties, approached through an avenue of silver candelabra representing palm-trees—spoils from the Spanish convents—were exceedingly magnificent. At her suppers on Fridays, one side of the room was laid for "maigre," the other for "gras," and when the doors were opened, there was a general scrimmage to reach the delicious viands on the "maigre" table. After each of her receptions, it was the rule that five cards should be left by each guest—for herself, for her husband the Duc de Rianzares (who had been a common soldier), for her master of the household, for her equerry, and for her lady-in-waiting. The principal balls were those given by Princess Borghese, at which many cardinals were present, but would sit down to whist in a room apart from the dancers. A great feature of the Borghese parties at this time was the Princess-mother, who always sat in a conspicuous place in the anteroom, and to whom all the guests were expected to pay their court. By birth she was Adèle de la Rochefoucauld, and she was the mother of three princes—Marc-Antonio Borghese, Aldobrandini, and Salviati. She was "sage, souple, et avide des biens," as Voltaire says of Mazarin, and it was she who—probably most unjustly—had then the reputation of having poisoned the beautiful Princess Guendolina, first wife of Marc-Antonio, with all her sons, in order that her own son might marry her niece, Thérèse[124] de la Rochefoucauld, which he afterwards did. A conspicuous figure was the beautiful young Princess del Drago, one of the daughters of Queen Christina's second marriage, whose husband had a most fiendish face. I often saw the blind Duke of Sermoneta, celebrated for his knowledge of Dante, and his witty canonical brother, Don Filippo Caiëtani, generally known as "Don Pippo." The then Duchess of Sermoneta was "Margherita," née Miss Knight, a most ghastly and solemn woman to outsiders, but much beloved by those who knew her intimately.
The Prince of Piombino, who lived in exile or seclusion after the change of government in Rome, was then flourishing in his immense palace in the Corso, and his children, then young married people, were the life of all the parties. Of these, Rudolfo, Duke of Sora, had married the saint-like Agnese, only surviving child of Donna Guendolina Borghese, who was supposed only by absence to have escaped the fate of her mother and brothers. Of his sisters, Donna Carolina was the clever, brilliant Princess Pallavicini, and Donna Giulia had married the Duke of Fiano, who lived in the neighbouring palace, and by marrying her had broken the heart of Mademoiselle Judith Falconnet.[125]
One of the Romans whom I saw most frequently was the Princess Santa Croce, living in the old historical palace which has the reputation of being the only haunted house in Rome, where two statues of cardinals come down from their pedestals and rattle their marble trains up and down the long galleries. The Princess was one of the daughters of Mr. Scully in Ireland. He had three, of whom two were beautiful, clever, and brilliant, but the third was uninteresting. The two elder Miss Scullys went out into the world, and were greatly admired and much made of; but the youngest stayed at home like Cinderella, and was never known at all except as "the Miss Scullys' younger sister." Many people wished to marry the elder Miss Scullys; but they said "No, for we have a presentiment that we are to marry dukes, and therefore we will wait." But no dukes came forward, and at length old Mr. Scully died, leaving his daughters three great fortunes; and being Roman Catholics, without any particular call or claim, they determined to visit Rome before they settled in life. They took many introductions with them, and on their arrival the good looks, cleverness, and wealth of the elder sisters created quite a sensation; but people asked them, Roman-fashion, "what was their vocation," for in Rome all Catholic ladies are expected to have decided this. Then they said they had never thought of it, and they went to spend a week in the convent of the Trinità de' Monti to consider it. When the day came on which the three Miss Scullys were to declare their vocation, all Rome was interested, and the "great world" thronged the parlours of the Trinità de' Monti to hear it; but the expectants were petrified when the two elder Miss Scullys came out, for they had found their vocation, and it was a convent! No doubt whatever was felt about the youngest—"of course she would follow her sisters." But no; she had found her vocation, and it was marriage! and the youngest Miss Scully, additionally enriched by half the fortunes of her two elder sisters, went out into the world, and in three weeks she had accepted the great Roman Prince of Santa Croce, who claims descent from Valerius Publicola. I often used to watch with interest the Princess Santa Croce, who went to confess and pray at the convent of the Villa Lante (which Roman princesses are wont to frequent), for the two portresses who opened the doors were her two elder sisters, the proud Miss Scullys: it was the story of Cinderella in real life. I was at Rome years afterwards (1864) when the Princess Santa Croce died. All the princesses lie in state after death, but by old custom, the higher their rank, the lower they must lie, and the Princess Santa Croce was of such excessively high rank, that she lay upon the bare boards.
I think that it was towards the middle of our stay in Rome that I received a summons to a private audience of Pius IX. Italima and my sister went with me. We went in evening dress to the Vatican in the middle of the day, and were shown into a gallery where a number of Monsignori were standing. Amongst them was Monsignore Talbot, who asked me if I did not feel very much agitated. I said "No," and he answered, "But every one must be agitated when they are about to stand in the presence of the Vicar of Christ"—and at that moment he drew aside a portière, and we found ourselves at one end of a long hall, at the other end of which a sturdy figure with a beneficent face, in what looked like a white dressing-gown, was standing leaning his hand upon a table: it was Pius IX. We had been told beforehand that, as we had asked for a private audience, we must perform all the genuflections, three at the doorway, three in the middle of the room, and three at the feet of the Pope, and the same in returning; and Italima had declared that the thought of this made her so nervous that we must do all the talking. But Italima had often been to the Pope before, and she was so active and agile, that by the time my sister and I got up from the third genuflection in the doorway, she was already curvetting in the centre of the hall, and we heard the beautiful voice of the Pope, like a silver bell, say, "E come sta la figlia mia—e come sta la cara figlia mia," and by the time we were in the middle of the apartment she was already at the feet of the Pope. Eventually my sister and I arrived, and flung ourselves down, one on each side of Italima, at the feet of the Pope, who gave us his ring to kiss, and his foot, or rather a great raised gold cross upon his white slipper. "E questa la figlia?" he said, pointing to my sister. "Si, Sua Santità," said Italima. "Ed e questo il figlio?" he said, turning to me. "Si, Sua Santità," said Italima. Then my sister, who thought it was a golden opportunity which she would never have again, and which was not to be lost, broke through all the rules of etiquette, and called out from the other side of the daïs, clasping her hands, "Ma, Sua Santità, il mio fratello e stato Protestant."
Then the Pope turned to me and spoke of the great privilege and blessing of being a Catholic, but said that from what he had heard of me he felt that I did not deserve that privilege, and that therefore he could not wish that I should enjoy its blessings. He said much more, and then that, before I left, I should make him a "piccolo piccolino promessino" (the least little bit of a promise in the world), and that I should remember all my life that I had made it at the feet of Pius IX. I said that I should wish to do whatever Sua Santità desired, but that before I engaged to make a promise I should like to know what the promise was to be about. "Oh," said the Pope, smiling, "it is nothing so very difficult; it is only something which a priest in your own Church might ask: it is that you will say the Lord's Prayer every morning and evening." "Yes," I replied, "I shall be delighted to make Sua Santità the promise; but perhaps Sua Santità is not aware that the practice is not unusual in the Church of England." Then, almost severely for one so gentle, the Pope said, "You seem to think the promise a light one; I think it a very serious one; in fact, I think it so serious, that I will only ask you to promise to use one petition—'Fiat voluntas tua, O Deus, in terris ut in cœlo,' and remember that you have promised that at the feet of Pius IX." Then he blended his farewell very touchingly into a beautiful prayer and blessing; he blessed the things—rosaries, &c.—which my sister had brought with her; he again gave us his ring and the cross on his foot to kiss, and while he rang the little bell at his side, we found our way out backwards—quite a geometrical problem with nine genuflections to be made on the way.
I was often in the convent of the Trinità when I was at Rome in 1857, for visitors are allowed there at certain hours, and a great friend of my sister's, Adèle, Madame Davidoff, was then in the convent, having been sent to Rome on an especial mission to the Pope on matters connected with the French convents of the Sacré Cœur. Madame Davidoff ("Madame" only "in religion," as "a spouse of Christ") was daughter of the Maréchale Sebastiani, the stepmother of the murdered Duchesse de Praslin, and was grand-daughter of the Duchesse de Grammont, who founded the Sacré Cœur. Her own life had been very romantic. One winter there was a very handsome young Count Schouvaloff in Rome, whom my sister knew very well. She had been one day in the convent, and Madame Davidoff had accompanied her to the outer door, and was standing engrossed with last words, leaning against the green baize door leading into the church. Suddenly a man appeared, coming through the inner door of the convent, evidently from visiting the Abbess. "Mais c'est le Comte Schouvaloff!" said Madame Davidoff to my sister, and pushing the baize door behind her, suddenly disappeared into the church, while Schouvaloff, seeing her suddenly vanish, rushed forward to my sister exclaiming, "Oh, c'est elle—c'est elle! Oh, mon Adèle, mon Adèle!" He had been on the eve of marriage with her, when she had thought herself suddenly seized by a conventual vocation, had taken the veil, and he had never seen her since. The next day Count Schouvaloff left Rome. He went into retreat for some time at the Certosa of Pavia, where total silence is the rule of daily life. He took orders, and in a few years, having a wonderful gift for preaching, was sent on a mission to Paris; but the shock of returning to the scenes of his old life was too much for him, and in a few days after reaching Paris he died.
When I knew Madame Davidoff, she still possessed an extraordinary charm of conversation and manner, and the most exuberant eloquence of any person I have ever seen. Her one object was conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, and into that she threw all her energies, all her charm and wit, and even her affections. Her memory was as prodigious as that of Macaulay, and she knew all the controversial portions of the great Catholic writers by heart. What was more extraordinary still was, that having many "cases" going on at the same time (for people used to go to visit her and sit round her anteroom like patients at a fashionable dentist's), she never confounded one with another in her mind, never lost time, and always went on exactly where she left off. But her love of ruling made Madame Davidoff less popular within the walls of her convent than with the outside world; and after her return to Paris, the means which she often took to attain the ends to which she devoted her life brought such trouble to the convent of the Sacré Cœur, that the nuns refused to keep her amongst them, and she afterwards lived in the world, giving frequent anxiety to her sister, the Marquise de Gabriac, and to Lord Tankerville and Lady Malmesbury, her cousins. During my first visit at Rome, I saw Madame Davidoff often, and, after a courteous expression of regret that I was sure to be eternally damned, she would do her best to convert me. I believe my dear mother underwent great qualms on my visits to her. But her religious unscrupulousness soon alienated me, and I had a final rupture with her upon her urging me to become a Roman Catholic secretly, and to conceal it from my adopted mother as long as she lived. Other Roman Catholics who made a vehement effort for my perversion were Monsignor Talbot and Monsignor Howard, the latter of whom I had known as a very handsome dashing young guardsman a few years before, but who afterwards became a Cardinal. There was a most ridiculous scene when they came to the Palazzo Lovati, where Monsignor Howard made so violent a harangue against Protestantism that Monsignor Talbot was obliged to apologise for him. Roman Catholics with whom we were intimate from circumstances were the ex-Jew Mr. Goldsmid and his wife. Mr. Goldsmid had been converted by the Père Ratisbon, whose own conversion was attributed partially to the image of the Virgin in the Church of Andrea delle Fratte, and partly to the prayers of M. de la Ferronays, which are believed to have endowed the image with speech.
A really excellent Roman Catholic priest of whom I saw much was Monsignor Pellerin, Bishop in Cochin-China. His conversation was liberal and beautiful, and he had the simplicity of a mediæval saint. He was at that time about to return to China, with a great probability of martyrdom. On his last day in Rome he celebrated mass in the Catacombs in the Chapel of Santa Cecilia, a most touching sight even to those who were not of his faith. On taking leave, he gave me a small silver crucifix, which I treasured for a long time, then it disappeared: I always thought that Lea made away with it, in the fear that it might make me a Roman Catholic. I heard of the close of Monsignor Pellerin's self-sacrificing life in China several years later.
Amongst the English we had many pleasant friends, especially the George Cavendishes and the Greene Wilkinsons, who had a great fortune left to them for opening a pew-door to an old gentleman: it used to be said that they ought to take "Pro Pudor" as their motto.
But no notice of our familiar society at Rome can be complete which does not speak of "Auntie"—Miss Paul—the sister of "Italima," who lived her own life apart in two rooms in a corner of the Parisani Palace, where she saw and observed everything, and was very ready to make her quaint original remarks upon what she had observed when she joined the rest of the family, which was only in the evenings. I never saw "Auntie" otherwise than desperately busy, sometimes with immense rolls of embroidery, sometimes with charcoal-drawing, often with extraordinary and most incomprehensible schemes for recovering the very large fortune she had once possessed, and which she had lost in "the Paul Bankruptcy." Italima was not at all kind to her, but this did not affect her in the least: she went her own way, and when she was most soundly abused, it only seemed to amuse her. My sister she absolutely adored, and then and afterwards used to think it perfect happiness to sit and watch her for hours, not being able to hear a word she said on account of her deafness. I was exceedingly fond of "Auntie," and used to delight to escape from the ungenial atmosphere of Italima's great drawing-room to the busy little den in the corner of the palace, where I was always a welcome visitor, and always found something amusing going on.