A holiday in Rome, the Eternally Old, the Eternally Young. A long, sun-dried street that flanks the Tiber is gay with fruit venders who push along their carts of gold oranges, strings of dates, and amber lemons. Italians of the wealthy class mingle in friendly fashion with the native-costumed peasants. Someone starts a snatch of song; a dozen passersby take up the strain. Where the chariots of the Cæsars rattled by in yesterday’s centuries, there rises a stately row of stucco apartment mansions with terraced gardens where pink roses and purple heliotrope run riot over the hedges and silver-toned fountains sing, all day long, their tinkling tunes.
Leaving the gay, bright street, you ring the electric bell at number 5 Principessa Clotilde.
“Is the Dottoressa at home, or is she keeping holiday, too?” you ask of the porter. He laughs, motioning you to an almost human elevator that lifts itself and will stop at whichever floor you ask it.
“Yes, La Dottoressa Montessori is in—in fact, she is nearly always in because of the many people, mainly Americans, who come to see her. And the children come daily to see her as well.” The porter shrugs his shoulders, uncomprehendingly, as you enter the elevator and stop at the fourth floor. The popularity of this tenant of his is a matter of wonder to the porter.
As a low-voiced maid opens a great carved door and you find yourself in Dr. Montessori’s apartment, you hold your breath at the modernism of it. Plain white woodwork, fine old rugs covering the stone floors, the soft tan walls covered with a few beautiful tapestries; French furniture and electric lights. The reception room in which you wait might be that of an American home, but a glance out of the open window unfolds to you the heart of the tenant. While her home is in one of the most beautiful and cultured centers of Rome, Dr. Montessori sees daily a tiny, narrow Roman alleyway where the “people” live like bees in a hive and the doorsills throng with little children and their voices rise to her every hour of the day.
But you hear a step. You turn. You are face to face with Maria Montessori.
At first you have no words. You have seen her picture in America, but it gave you no conception of the fine, chiseled beauty of the woman who stands before you dressed in severe black that accentuates the marble of the classic features, the depth of the far-seeing, dark eyes. Poise, grace, self-control, sympathy, love of humanity are written on the face. It is as if all the Madonnas of the imagination of the old Italian painters had come to life in La Dottoressa. Overpowering the first glance of courteous welcome, though, that accompanied her outstretched hand is a look of stern query.
Why have you come? Are you another of the curious visitors who have besieged her from almost every nation the past year to try and grasp in a day her method of teaching that she gained only through twenty years of patient, tireless scientific study of the child mind, she seems to ask. But your words come like a torrent now. You assure her that you have made this pilgrimage to Rome, not as an individual, but as the voice of thousands of mothers who have children to be educated. They ask Dr. Montessori, through you, for her message to the American people. As you linger over the words, madre, mother, and bambino, baby, Dr. Montessori smiles. You have set her doubts at rest. She talks fast, eloquently, in her musical Italian, and you listen, thrilled, fascinated. Often you are interrupted, but always by children. Lovely, dark-eyed, courteous little Roman boys and girls they are. They come from you know not where, are admitted to Dr. Montessori’s apartment quite as if they were adult visitors, and after they have greeted her in their graceful, polite fashion, they quietly run about the room or sit in groups talking together as if the apartment were the popular meeting place for all the children of the neighborhood. You find their interruption and their presence a help instead of a hindrance to your interview. They illustrate by their loving friendship for La Dottoressa and each other, and by their complete self-control, the message that Dr. Montessori gives you to carry back to the American people.