“C’est ce qui m’occupe le moins. Pourvu que cela soit fait avec du bon goût! D’ailleurs on ne parle sérieusement que de deux ou trois. Le Prince de S., par exemple. Encore est il mort celui-là!”
It was during one of my visits to Florence that I saw King Victor Emanuel’s public entry into the city, which had just elected him King. This is how I described the scene to Harriet St. Leger:—
“Happily we had a fine day for the king’s entry on Monday last. It was a glorious sight! The beautiful old city blossomed out in flowers, flags, garlands, hangings and gonfalons beyond all English imagination. In every street there was a triumphal arch, while boulevards of artificial trees loaded with camelias, ran from the railway to the gate and down the via Calzaiuoli. Even the mean little sdrucciolo de’ Pitti was made into one long arbour by twenty green arches sustaining hanging baskets of flowers. The Pitti itself had its rugged old face decked with wreaths. I had the good fortune to stand on a balcony commanding a view of the whole procession. Victor Emanuel, riding his charger of Solferino, looked—coarse and fat as he is,—a man and a soldier, and more sympathetic than Kings in general. Cavour has a Luther-like face, which wore a gleam of natural pleasure at his reception. The people were quite mad with joy. They did not cheer as we do, but uttered a sort of deep roar of ecstacy, flinging clouds of flowers under the King’s horse’s feet, and seeming as if they would fling themselves also from their balconies. Our hostess, an Italian lady, went directly into hysterics, and all the party, men and women cried and kissed and laughed in the wildest way. At night there was a marvellous illumination, extending as far as the eye could reach, in every palazzo and cottage down the Val d’ Arno and up the slopes of the Apennines, where bonfires blazed on all the heights.”
In Florence my friends had been principally literary men and women. In Rome they were chiefly artists. Harriet Hosmer, to whom I had letters, was the first I knew. She was in those days the most bewitching sprite the world ever saw. Never have I laughed so helplessly as at the infinite fun of this bright Yankee girl. Even in later years when we perforce grew a little graver, she needed only to begin one of her descriptive stories to make us all young again. I have not seen her now for many years since she has returned to America, nor yet any one in the least like her; and it is vain to hope to convey to any reader the contagion of her merriment. O! what a gift,—beyond rubies, are such spirits! And what fools, what cruel fools, are those who damp them down in children possessed of them!
Of Miss Hosmer’s sculpture I hoped, and every one hoped, great things. Her Zenobia, her Puck, her Sleeping Faun were beautiful creations in a very pure style of art. But she was lured away from sculpture by some invention of her own of a mechanical kind, over which many years of her life have been lost. Now I believe she has achieved a fine statue of Isabella of Spain, which has been erected in San Francisco.
Jealous rivals in Rome spread abroad at one time a slanderous story that Harriet Hosmer did not make her own statues. I have in my possession an autograph by her master, Gibson, which he wrote at the time to rebut this falsehood, and which bears all the marks of his quaint style of English composition.
“Finding that my pupil Miss Hosmer’s progress in her art begins to agitate some rivals of the male sex, as proved by the following malicious words printed in the Art journal;—
“‘Zenobia—said to be by Miss Hosmer, but really executed by an Italian workman at Rome’;—
“I feel it is but justice on my part to state that Miss Hosmer became my pupil on her arrival at Rome from America. I soon found that she had uncommon talent. She studied under my own eyes for seven years, modelling from the antique and her own original works from the living models.
“The first report of her Zenobia was that it was the work of Mr. Gibson. Afterwards that it is by a Roman workman. So far it is true that it was built up by my man from her own original small model, according to the practice of our profession; the long study and finishing is by herself, like every other sculptor.