"Nov. 7, 1863.—We left Bologna at 5 A.M. In the journey to Vergato the colouring was beautiful, the amber and ruby tints of autumn melting into a sapphire distance. At Vergato we engaged the coupé of the diligence, and had a pleasant passage over the Apennines, sometimes with four, sometimes with seven horses in the ascent. The richness of the autumnal glory was beyond description—a tossing torrent, rocky moss-grown forests of old oaks and chestnuts, their leaves golden in death: here and there thickets of holly and box: an old castle on a rock: a lonely old town (La Porretta) in a misty hollow: and then a grand view from the top of the pass over purple billowy mountains. The scenery becomes suddenly Italian—perfectly Italian—in the descent, cypresses and stone-pines, villas and towers, cutting the sky and relieved upon the delicate distance: and in the depth Pistoia, lying like a map, with dome and towers like a miniature Florence."
At the station of Ficulle near Orvieto, where the railway to the south came to an end altogether at that time, the floods were out all over the country, and there were no carriages—everything being quite disorganised. We arrived at a miserable little station, scarcely better than a small open shed, in torrents of rain, at twelve o'clock in the day, and had to wait till the same hour of the day following, when carriages would arrive from Orvieto. After some time my mother was conveyed to a wretched little inn, but it was necessary for some one to remain to guard the luggage, and knowing what a fearful hardship it would be considered by our cross-grained man-servant, John Gidman, I remained sitting upon it, without any food except a few biscuits, in pitch darkness at night, and with the swelching rain beating upon my miserable shed, for twenty-four hours. It was a very unpleasant experience.
When at length we got away, we had to take the road by Montefiascone and Viterbo, which was then almost untravelled, and the postboys took advantage of the utter loneliness of the road and disturbed state of the country to be most insolent in their demands for money. Sometimes they would stop altogether in a desolate valley and refuse to let their horses go an inch farther unless we paid a sort of ransom. On such occasions we always took out our books and employed ourselves till they went on from sheer weariness. We were never conquered, but it made the journey very anxious and fatiguing.
It was with real thankfulness that we reached Rome on November 12, and engaged the upper apartment of 31 Piazza di Spagna, our landlady being the pleasant daughter of Knebel the artist, who lived in some little rooms above us, with her brother Tito and her nurse Samuccia.
The first days at Rome this winter were absolute Elysium—the sitting for hours in the depth of the Forum, then picturesque, flowery, and "unrestored," watching the sunlight first kiss the edge of the columns and then bathe them with gold: the wanderings with different friends over the old mysterious churches on the Aventine and Cœlian, and the finding out and analysing all their histories from different books at home in the evenings: the very drives between the high walls, watching the different effects of light on the broken tufa stones, and the pellitory and maiden-hair growing between them.
We were also especially fortunate this winter in our friends. At first I much enjoyed very long walks with a Mr.[232] and Mrs. Kershaw, who lived beneath us. Taking little carriages to the gates, we wandered forth to the Aqueducts and Roma Vecchia, where we spent the day in drawing and picking up marbles, not returning till the cold night-dews were creeping up from the valleys, and the peasants, as we reached the crowded street near the Theatre of Marcellus, were eating their fritture and chestnuts by lamplight, amid a jargon of harsh tongues and gathering of strange costumes.
We saw much of the handsome young Marchese Annibale Paolucci di Calboli, in the Guardia Nobile, whose wife was an old friend of early Hurstmonceaux days, and whose children, especially the second son, Raniero, have always remained friends of mine. This is the family mentioned by Dante in "Purgatorio," xiv.—
"Questo è il Rinier; quest' è il pregio e l'onore
Della casa da Calboli."