To attend it the Hon. Alexander Nelson Hood came from the “Nelson property” of Bronte where he was wintering with his father, Viscount Bridport, Duke of Bronte, who for forty years had been personal Lord in Waiting to the Queen. To the son we were introduced by Mr. Stopford; and a day or two later we started on our first visit to that strange beautiful Duchy on Ætna, that was to mean so much to us.
Greatly we enjoyed the experience—the journey in the little Circum-Ætnean train along the great shoulder of Etna, with its picturesque little towns and its great stretches of devastating lava; the first sight of the Castle of Maniace—in its shallow tree-clad valley of the Simeto flanked by great solemn hills—as we turned down the winding hill-road from the great lava plateau where the station of Maletto stands; the time-worn quadrangular convent-castle with its Norman chapel, and its great Iona cross carved in lava erected in the court-yard to the memory of Nelson; the many interesting relics of Nelson within the castle, such as his Will signed Nelson and Bronte on each page, medals, many fine line engravings of the battles in which he, and also Admiral Hood, took part; the beautiful Italian garden, and wild glen gardens beyond. No less charming was the kindly welcome given to us by the fine, hale old Courtier who—when his son one afternoon had taken my husband for a drive to see the hill-town of Bronte, and the magnificent views of and from Ætna, with its crowning cover of snow—told me, as we sat in the comfortable central hall before a blazing log fire, many reminiscences of the beloved Queen he had served so long.
In the spring we returned to England, through Italy; and from Florence, where we took rooms for a month, F. M. wrote to an unknown correspondent:
18th March, 1901.
My dear unknown friend,
You must forgive a tardy reply to your welcome letter, but I have been ill, and am not yet strong. Your writing to me has made me happy. One gets many letters: some leave one indifferent; some interest; a few are like dear and familiar voices speaking in a new way, or as from an obscure shore. Yours is of the last. I am glad to know that something in what I have written has coloured anew your own thought, or deepened the subtle music that you yourself hear—for no one finds the colour of life and the music of the spirit unless he or she already perceive the one and love the other. Somewhere in one of my books—I think in the latest, The Divine Adventure, but at the moment cannot remember—I say that I no longer ask of a book, is it clever, or striking, or is it well done, or even is it beautiful, but—out of how deep a life does it come. That is the most searching test. And that is why I am grateful when one like yourself writes to tell me that intimate thought and emotion deeply felt have reached some other and kindred spirit....
I am writing to you from Florence. You know it, perhaps? The pale green Arno, the cream-white, irregular, green-blinded, time-stained houses opposite, the tall cypresses of the Palatine garden beyond, the dove-grey sky, all seem to breathe one sigh ... La Pace! L’Oblio!
But then—life has made those words “Peace,” “Forgetfulness,” very sweet for me. Perhaps for you this vague breath of another Florence than that which Baedeker described might have some more joyous interpretation. I hope so....
You are right in what you say, about the gulf between kindred natures being less wide than it seems. But do not speak of the spiritual life as “another life”: there is no ‘other’ life: what we mean by that is with us now. The great misconception of Death is that it is the only door to another world.
Your friend,