Ah! those days I spent in the cloisters of the SS. Annuziata, making pencil copies of Andrea’s figures in the series of frescoes illustrating the life of St Philip. It was summer-time, and the tourists only came bothering me towards the end. That hot summer, when I used to march into Florence, accompanied by little Majolina, in the still-early mornings, when the sicala was not yet in full chirp for the day! Four days a week to my master’s studio under the shadow of the Medici Chapel, and two to my dear cloisters; the Sunday at our villa under Fiesole. Happy girl!
I see in my diary this brilliant adaptation of Coleridge’s lines—
“’Tis sweet to him who all the week
Through city crowds must push his way, etc.”
’Tis sweet to her who all the week
With brush and paint must work her way
To stroll thro’ florence vineyards cool
And hallow thus the Sabbath Day.
I have much to thank my master Guiseppe Bellucci for, who drilled me so severely, carrying on the instruction I had the advantage to receive from thorough-going Richard Burchett the head-master at South Kensington—never-to-be-forgotten South Kensington.
It seems a shame to be saying so much about Florence and not to pause a few minutes to give the other a little hand-shake in passing. There I began my art-student life, than which no part of an artist’s career can be more free from care or more buoyed up with aspirations for the future. Dear early days spent with those bright and generous comrades, my fellow-students, so full of enthusiasm over what they called my “promise”—I have all those days chronicled in the old diaries. There I recall the day I was promoted to the “Life Class” from the “Antique”—a joyful epoch; and the Sketching Club where “old D——,” the second master, used to give “Best” nearly every time to Kate Greenaway and “Second Best” to me. What joy when I got a “Best” one fine day. She and I raced neck and neck with those sketches after that. The “Life Class” was absorbingly interesting. But how nervous and excited I felt at grappling with my first living model. He was a fine old man (but with a bibulous eye) costumed to represent “Cranmer walking to the Tower.” I see in the diary, “Cranmer walked rather unsteadily to the Tower to-day, and we all did badly in consequence.” Then came one of Cromwell’s Ironsides whose morion gave him a perpetual headache, followed by my first full-length, a costume model in tights and slashed doublet whom we spitefully called “Spindle-Shanks” and greatly disliked. What was my surprise, long years afterwards, to stumble upon my “Spindle-Shanks” as “‘Christopher Columbus,’ by the celebrated painter of etc. etc.” I then remembered I had made a present of him, when finished, to our “char,” much to her embarrassment, I should think. However, she seems to have got rid of the “white elephant” with profit to herself in course of time. But I must not let myself loose on those glorious student days, so full of work and of play, otherwise I would wander too far away from my subject. It was tempting to linger over that hand-shake.
I don’t think I ever felt such heat as in Florence. As the July sun was sending every one out of the baking city, shutting up the House of Deputies, and generally taking the pith out of things, I remember Bellucci coming into the studio one day with his hair in wisps, and hinting that it would be as well for me to give myself un mesetto di riposo. I did take that “little month of rest” at our villa, and sketched the people and the oxen, and mixed a great deal in peasant society, benefitting thereby in the loss of my Genoese twang under the influence of their most grammatical Tuscan. The peasant is the most honourable, religious, and philosophical of mankind. I feel always safe with peasants and like their conversation and ways. They lead the natural life. Before daylight, in midsummer, one heard them directing their oxen at the plough, and after the mid-day siesta they were back at their work till the Ave Maria. It was a large family that inhabited the peasant quarters of our villa and worked the landlord’s vineyards. How they delighted in my sketches, in giving me sittings in the intervals of work, in seeing me doing amateur harvesting with a sickle and helping (?) them to bind the wheat sheaves and sift the grain. I must often have been in the way, now I think of it, but never a hint did these ladies and gentlemen of the horny hand allow to escape to my confusion. Carlotta, the eldest girl, read me some of the “Jerusalem Delivered” one full-moon night, to show me how easily one could read small print by the Italian moonlight. Her mother invited me to dine with the family one day as they were having a rare repast. Cencio had found two hedgehogs in a hollow olive-tree, and the ragout that ensued must be tasted by the signorina. Through the door of the kitchen where we dined on that occasion the two white oxen were seen reposing in the next apartment after their morning’s work. After tasting the spinoso stew, I begged to be allowed to take a stool in the corner and sketch the whole family at table, and with the perfect grace of those people I was welcomed to do so, and I got them all in as they sucked their hedgehog bones in concert. You were reading Keats in one of the arbours, meanwhile, I remember.
I loved those days at Florence where I felt I was making the most of my time and getting on towards the day when I should paint my first “real” picture. When next I visited Florence with you for those memorable vintages at Caravaggio in ‘75, ‘76, which I recalled just now to your remembrance, I had painted my first “real” picture and received in London more welcome than I deserved or hoped for.
Twice I have revisited the outside of my Florentine studio in recent years, not daring to go in. Bellucci is long dead and I don’t know who is there now. Standing under that tall window I have reviewed my career since the days I worked there. I rejoice to know that my best works are nearly all in public galleries or in the keeping of my Sovereign. To the artist, the idea of his works changing hands is never a restful one.
