“Good old Dr. Gason has died lately (the man of whom Pius IX. said—‘un certo pagano, chi si chiama Jasone’), the leader of the Evangelical party here—one of a class who seemed to me ‘every one’ when I was a boy, and when the dreary desert of Sunday was only enlivened by Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ and ‘Josephus,’ and almost everything pleasant was a ‘carnal indulgence.’ How few there are who think like that now—no one who has a real part in my life since dear Charlotte Leycester passed away. Certainly, there is no one now to think one—well, much worse than a pagan for taking one’s sketch-book on Sundays to the Palace of the Caesars, where I have spent many quiet hours meditating on my past and its past. I am often oppressed, however, by my great loneliness, by the want of any relation who has a real interest in me, by the constant feeling—however kind people are—of signifying nothing to anybody. And those who remember our old life—the old life with the mother and Lea which was so different from this—are becoming very, very few. I can only try to say—
‘Call me, silent voices,
Forward to the starry track
Glimmering in the heights beyond me,
On, and always on.’[547]
“The ruin of the great families here is depressing. There has been a sale at the old historic Orsini palace, at which a marble statue holding a baton behind the auctioneer seemed to repeat his action and to preside coldly over the ruin of his house and dispersion of its treasures. And on the floor of the hall, appropriately surrounded by overthrown marble pedestals, lay the great bust of the Orsini Pope, with a look of unutterable disgust upon his face at having been just sold for £6. I bought a little Madonna, which will adorn Holmhurst, if I can get it out of the country.
“There is a new line to Viterbo now, which brings many places, formerly difficult of access, within easy reach. With the Gordons from Salisbury I went to Anguillara, splendid in colour from the orange roofs of its quaint houses rising high above the broad, still lake in which Bracciano and other towns on the farther shore were reflected. We wandered afterwards in the beautiful gardens of an old ‘Ser Vincenzo,’ with woods—real trees—of camelias in fullest bloom, and larks singing, and carpets of violets. Then another day, a large party of us went to Segni in the purple recesses of the Volscian mountains, and saw that wonderful arch whose origin is lost in pre-historic mystery. We took our luncheon with us, and ate it on the down above the huge stones of the wall. But generally we have something odd at the village inns. ‘How I like topographical gastronomy!’ said old Mrs. Blackburn of Moidart on one of these tourettes.
“Few interesting visitors have been at Rome this year, but having Lady Airlie and Lady Kenmare here has been very pleasant, and dear old Miss Garden—even in her great feebleness, which, alas! is constant now—always ripples with wit and wisdom. At Mrs. Terry’s I met Miss Paterson, the martyr-bishop’s sister, who told me how her old father, when he first learnt his son’s determination to go out, began to say, ‘Oh, I cannot let him go,’ and then broke in with, ‘But oh! I cannot deny him to God.’ He parted with him knowing they could never meet again, but, after a time, in his letters found interest and consolation. To-day—a desperately wet day—has been enlivened by a summons to luncheon with the Crown Princess of Sweden, whom I think one of the most charming, natural, and attractive of human beings; and oh! how simple, how utterly without affectation is that sort of person who can have nothing to pretend to. It is that, I suppose, which makes such people so much the easiest to talk to, which makes one feel so far more at rest with them than with persons of another, even of one’s own class. The Princess’s health obliges her to winter in Italy, away from her husband and her little sons, but she will hurry back to them with the warm weather. There was no one else at luncheon but the lady and gentleman in waiting, and the conversation was chiefly about ghost stories, the Princess declaring that ‘every hair of her head had curled up’ from one I had told her at Eastbourne.
“There is a sort of homely amusement in seeing—I cannot help sometimes counting them!—the great number of people who go about here with the familiar little red and black volumes of ‘Walks in Rome.’ Sometimes also I am touched by a kind note from an unknown hand saying that one of my other books has been helpful to them. I am so glad when this happens. As to any other feeling about my books, I think I gradually get to realise how ... ‘there is one glory of the terrestrial, another glory of the celestial,’ and how one has to keep that in one’s heart.”
To Miss Garden at Rome.
“Viterbo, May 1, 1896.—Yesterday I went to Toscanella. The landlord of the hotel was to engage a little carriage for me, which I found at the door when I went down, but with a horse which was an absolute skeleton. Still they declared it could go, and it could. How it rushed, and tore, and swung us down the rose-fringed descent to the great Etruscan plain, where the faint dome of Montefiascone rose in the blue haze against the heavens, beyond the aërial distances of burnt grass, broken here and there by Etruscan caves and ruins. Then how the skeleton horse still galloped into the uplands, till great towers appeared grouped like ninepins, or rather like S. Gemignano. It is yet a long circuit to the town, a descent into a rocky gorge, then a steep ascent winding round the hill outside the walls, a sort of Calvary to this Jerusalem, where the great churches stand, S. Pietro like the most magnificent cathedral, girdled by huge walls and towers, with a ruined episcopal palace beside it, and a triumphal arch, like those of Brittany, in front of the east end. The church was locked and the key was away, but a little girl snatched a sick bambino from its cradle, and carried it, and guided me to S. Maria in the depth below—even far lovelier and more refined in the delicate sculpture of its roseate stone than the great church above. All its great western doors were open to the brilliant sunshine, yet it was terribly damp, the font and all the lower part of the pillars green as the grass outside. But the exquisite pulpit and bishop’s throne were unhurt, and the lovely frescoes—even more beautiful in effect than detail—with which the walls were covered. Having secured the key, we returned to S. Pietro, entering it by the crypt—l’incolonnata—a perfect maze of little columns like the mosque at Cordova in extreme miniature. Most grand is the upper church in its orange-grey desolation; mass there only once a year. But our bambino was worse for the damp, so we did not stay long, and indeed it was cheering to emerge on the breezy uplands, where the whole air was embalmed with sweet-basil, as one trod it down.
“The city of Toscanella scrambles, a mass of brown towers, golden roofs, and grey houses, along the opposite hill, and has a thousand corners which are enough to drive an artist frantic—such gothic windows; such dark entries; such arcaded streets, with glints of brilliant foliage and flowers breaking in upon their solemn shadows. At a little inn I had luncheon—a dish of poached eggs, excellent bread, cheese, and wine, and all for forty centimes, so living is not dear in Toscanella.
“Then oh! how the skeleton horse galloped home under the serene loveliness of the pellucid sky, over the plain where all the little grasses and flowers were quivering and shimmering in golden sunset ecstasy.