It was just before leaving Rome that Hawthorne conceived the idea of a romance in which the “Faun” of Praxiteles should come to life, and play a characteristic part in the modern world; the catastrophe naturally resulting from his coming into conflict with a social organization for which he was unfitted. This portion of Hawthorne’s diary is intensely interesting to those who have walked on classic ground.
On May 24 Hawthorne commenced his journey to Florence with a vetturino by easy stages, and one can cordially envy him this portion of his Italian sojourn; with his devoted wife and three happy children; travelling through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world,—nearly if not quite equal to the Rhineland—without even the smallest cloud of care and anxiety upon his sky, his mind stored with mighty memories, and looking forward with equal expectations to the prospect before him,—bella Firenze, the treasure-house of Italian cities; through sunny valleys, with their streams and hill-sides winding seaward; up the precipitous spurs of the Apennines, with their old baronial castles perched like vultures’ nests on inaccessible crags; passing through gloomy, tortuous defiles, guarded by Roman strongholds; and then drawn up by white bullocks over Monte Somma, and to the mountain cities of Assisi and Perugia, older than Rome itself; by Lake Trasimenus, still ominous of the name of Hannibal; over hill-sides silver-gray with olive orchards; always a fresh view and a new panorama, bounded by the purple peaks on the horizon; and over all, the tender blue of the Italian sky. Hawthorne may have felt that his whole previous life, all he had struggled, lived and suffered for, was but a preparation for this one week of perfectly harmonious existence. Such vacations from earthly troubles come but rarely in the most fortunate lives, and are never of long duration.
When they reached Florence, they found it, as Rose Hawthorne says, very hot—much too hot to enjoy the city as it should be enjoyed. Her reminiscences of their life at Florence, and especially of the Villa Manteüto, have a charming freshness and virginal simplicity, although written in a somewhat high-flown manner. She succeeds, in spite of her peculiar style, in giving a distinct impression of the old chateau, its surroundings, the life her family led there, and of the wonderful view from Bellosguardo. One feels that beneath the disguise of a fashionable dress there is an innocent, sympathetic, and pure-spirited nature.
The Hawthornes arrived in Florence on the afternoon of June 3, and spent the first night at the Albergo della Fontano, and the next day obtained apartments in the Casa del Bello, opposite Hiram Powers’ studio, and just outside of the Porta Romana. Hawthorne made Mr. Powers’ acquaintance even before he entered the city, and Powers soon became to him what Story had been in Rome. The Brownings were already at Casa Guidi,—still noted in the annals of English poesy,—and called upon the Hawthornes at the first notice of their arrival. Alacrity or readiness would seem to have been one of Robert Browning’s prominent characteristics. Elizabeth Browning’s mind was as much occupied with spiritism as when Hawthorne met her two years previously at Monckton Milnes’s breakfast; an unfortunate proclivity for a person of frail physique and delicate nerves. Neither did she live very long after this. Her husband and Hawthorne both cordially disapproved of these mesmeric practices; but Mrs. Browning could not be prevented from talking on the subject, and this evidently produced an ecstatic and febrile condition of mind in her, very wearing to a poetic temperament. Hawthorne heartily liked Browning himself, and always speaks well of him; but there must also have been an undercurrent of disagreement between him and so ardent an admirer of Louis Napoleon, and he recalls little or nothing of what Browning said to him. This continued till the last of June, when Robert and Elizabeth left Florence for cooler regions.
Meanwhile Hawthorne occupied himself seriously with seeing Florence and studying art, like a man who intends to get at the root of the matter. Florence afforded better advantages than Rome for the study of art, not only from the superiority of its collections, but because there the development of mediaeval art can be traced to its fountain-source. He had no textbooks to guide him,—at least he does not refer to any,—and his investigations were consequently of rather an irregular kind, but it was evidently the subject which interested him most deeply at this time. His Note-book is full of it, and also of discussions on sculpture with Hiram Powers, in which Hawthorne has frequently the best of the argument.
In fact Powers looked upon his art from much too literal a stand-point. He agreed with Hawthorne as to the fine expression of the face of Michel Angelo’s “Giuliano dé Medici,” {Footnote: As Hawthorne did not prepare his diary for publication, it would not be fair to hold him responsible for the many instances of bad Italian in the Note-book, which ought to have been edited by some one who knew the language.} but affirmed that it was owing to a trick of overshadowing the face by the projecting visor of Giuliano’s helmet. Hawthorne did not see why such a device did not come within the range of legitimate art, the truth of the matter being that Michel Angelo left the face unfinished; but the expression of the statue is not in its face, but in the inclination of the head, the position of the arms, the heavy droop of the armor, and in fact in the whole figure. Powers’ “Greek Slave,” on the contrary, though finely modelled and sufficiently modern in type, has no definite expression whatever.
Hawthorne found an exceptional interest in the “Venus dé Medici,” now supposed to have been the work of one of the sons of Praxiteles, and its wonderful symmetry gives it a radiance like that of the sun behind a summer cloud; but Powers cooled down his enthusiasm by objecting to the position of the ears, the vacancy of the face, the misrepresentation of the inner surface of the lips, and by condemning particularly the structure of the eyes, which he declared were such as no human being could see with. {Footnote: Italian Note-book, June 13, 1858.} Hawthorne was somewhat puzzled by these subtleties of criticism, which he did not know very well how to answer, but he still held fast to the opinion that he was fundamentally right, and retaliated by criticising Powers’ own statues in his diary.
The Greeks, in the best period of their favorite art, never attempted a literal reproduction of the human figure. Certain features, like the nostrils, were merely indicated; others, like the eyelashes, often so expressive in woman, were omitted altogether; hair and drapery were treated in a schematic manner. In order to give an expression to the eyes, various devices were resorted to. The eyelids of the bust of Pericles on the Acropolis had bevelled edges, and the eyeballs of the “Apollo Belvedere” are exceptionally convex, to produce the effect of looking to a distance, although the human eye when gazing afar off becomes slightly contracted. The head of the “Venus dé Medici” is finely shaped, but small, and her features are pretty, rather than beautiful; but her eyes are exceptional among all feminine statues for their tenderness of expression—swimming, as it were, with love; and it is the manner in which this effect is produced that Powers mistook for bad sculpture. Hiram Powers’ most exceptional proposition was to the effect that the busts of the Roman emperors were not characteristic portraits. Hawthorne strongly dissented from this; and he was in the right, for if the character of a man can be read from marble, it is from those old blocks. Hawthorne has some admirable remarks on this point.
Such was Hawthorne’s internal life during his first month at Florence. He was full of admiration for the cathedral, the equestrian statue of Cosmo dé Medici, the “David” of Michel Angelo, the Loggia dé Lanzi, Raphael’s portrait of Julius II., the “Fates” of Michel Angelo, and many others; yet he confesses that the Dutch, French, and English paintings gave him a more simple, natural pleasure,—probably because their subjects came closer to his own experience.
A strange figure of an old man, with “a Palmer-like beard,” continually crossed Hawthorne’s path, both in Rome and in Florence, where he dines with him at the Brownings’. His name is withheld, but Hawthorne informs us that he is an American editor, a poet; that he voted for Buchanan, and was rejoicing in the defeat of the Free-soilers,—“a man to whom the world lacks substance because he has not sufficiently cultivated his emotional nature;” and “his personal intercourse, though kindly, does not stir one’s blood in the least.” Yet Hawthorne finds him to be good-hearted, intelligent, and sensible. This can be no other than William Cullen Bryant. {Footnote: Italian Note-book, ii. 15.}