Twenty Years of My Life

by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen

Simultaneously I was engaged on finishing my own book on Carthage and Tunis. In this book I had to rely almost entirely on French materials, because the two main sources of information are the official publications of the French authorities, and commercial firms interested in the exploitation of Tunis, and the publications of the White Fathers out at Carthage, about its site and its remains.

I was also finishing a book upon which I had been at work for some years—The Secrets of the Vatican, in which I enjoyed the assistance of his Eminence the Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster, in the chapter which dealt with the Church crisis in France.

When I went to ask him to help me, he asked me what I was going to call my book. I replied, The Secrets of the Vatican. He said, “Doesn’t it sound rather——”—instead of giving me the word, he gave a sniff. I shall never forget that sniff—it expressed the whole situation. I hastened to explain that the Secrets were all archæological secrets, and he handed me the materials for my chapter.

Some time before this, he had asked our mutual friend, Cortesi, Reuter’s agent at Rome, to tell me a story of the Pope, in connection with my Sicily, the New Winter Resort. Cardinal Bourne had taken a tour in Sicily, using my Sicily as his guide. When he got back to Rome, he showed an anecdote in the book to the Pope. The anecdote was about Cardinal Newman, who had told me an extraordinary experience he had had in Sicily. It was at Castrogiovanni, where he lay for some weeks between life and death, suffering from a fever, which was the result of his being totally robbed of sleep by fleas when he was making a tour round Etna. The greatest affliction with which he had to contend was the incessant ringing of church bells—Castrogiovanni, the Enna of Ceres and Proserpine, has more churches for its size than any city in Sicily. Poor Newman’s only chance of sleep, which meant life to him, was to keep his head under the bedclothes in that semi-tropical climate. The inhabitants went about aghast, saying that he had a devil. The Pope thought the idea of the future Prince of the Church (Protestant though he was then) having a devil, was ludicrously funny, and laughed till his sides ached, like an ordinary man. When Newman did recover from the fever, and was on his way from Sicily to Sardinia in a fruit boat, he wrote his famous hymn, “Lead, kindly light.”

The Secrets of the Vatican formed one half of a book which I began as a commission from Eveleigh Nash some years before. The numerous changes in non-papal Rome, and the important excavations of its pagan monuments, which were announced, but postponed and postponed, made me despair of ever getting the book finished, and finally I decided to publish the part which related to the Vatican in a volume by itself. This, after going through three editions, has been, for further publication, divided into two parts. The personal matter about the present Pope, and the information about the ceremonies which relate to the election, coronation, death and burial of a Pope, and about the composition of his court, are still published by Hurst & Blackett, with certain additional information on the subject, under the title of The Pope at Home, while the part which relates to the history, architecture and collections of the Vatican, is now published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., under the title of How to See the Vatican.

The Secrets of the Vatican was published in 1907, a few months before we began our memorable expedition to Egypt, which has played such an important part in my writings ever since.

Having to study economy in our travels, we determined to break the journey to Egypt in Italy, and with that idea went to Lake Como in the last days of July 1907.

Anything more beautiful than Lago di Como in August it is difficult to conceive. All the way up its west side the lake is fringed with crimson oleanders in full blossom. Though the days are cloudless, and the nights encrusted with stars, by perfect summer weather, there are no mosquitoes. It is a land of peaches, and of old villas with gardens, which look as if they had come down from the ancient Romans, with their vases and pavilions and terraces and broad flights of steps leading down into the clear water of the lake—this is the lake from Arconati to Cadenabbia.

Here we spent a month under the acacia and tulip trees, revelling in fruit and flowers, before we went south to Como City; and east to Sermione, in the reedy shallows of Lago di Garda, dominated by the castle of the Scaligers, which loses not one ray of sunshine from sunrise to sunset; to storied Mantua in its marches; to Verona, half ancient Roman, half Gothic, and wholly romantic, and to Venice the matchless.

Venice is a stone city conjured up from the sea. In the city proper there is no more earth than you might have in roof-gardens. There are no horses, no motors. You seem to be living on the roof of the sea. The palaces, which rise from the water in such unending succession, were mostly built in the Middle Ages, when Venice had the sea-trade of the world. The finest of them line the Grand Canal from side to side for a mile from its mouth, and at its mouth are the most beautiful buildings in Europe, which have been standing there three and four and five hundred years at the head of the stately flight of steps where the world once came to the feet of Venice—St. Mark’s, the Doge’s Palace, and the Library, surrounding that Piazetta of smooth white flagstones. You feel that they are too beautiful to be true, that they must be the airy fabric of a vision, which will presently pass away, and leave not a wrack behind.