What we shall do with the pictures I don’t know. Many of them are quite as undraped as the statues, and several are absolutely indecent if we are to take the figures as modern ladies and gentlemen, living under the police regulations of the nineteenth century. One might just as well paint petticoats on to the females of Rubens as give zinc bathing-drawers to the chefs d'œuvre of Michael Angelo and Canova.
There is one picture which was very objectionable to an elderly English lady in the Uffizzi. It is a charmingly-executed figure of Venus performing a kindly office for Cupid with a smalltooth-comb. I suppose by-and-by the comb will be painted out, and Venus will be supplied with a piece of flannel and some soft soap.
I am sorry to say that I have had to leave Rome without the honour of an audience of the Pope. I have seen the King and the Queen and the Prince of Naples, for they all three drive about daily without the slightest escort, and we—that is, I and the Romans—just bow and smile and murmur ‘How d’ye do?’ and pass on. We mix so freely with the Royal Family—I and the Romans—that we get quite friendly, and find ourselves saying ‘Fine day, isn’t it?’ to the King as we pass him in the Corso; and the King, taken off his guard, says, ‘Very; but I don’t think it will last.’ But with the Pope it is different. He is the prisoner of the Vatican, and comes no more forth. Privileged persons, however, now and again he receives, and I had every reason to expect an invitation to attend at the Vatican, when I was compelled to leave Rome and go further north. I had, however, every opportunity afforded me of seeing all that the Vatican contains, and cannot let this opportunity pass of expressing my gratitude to his Holiness’s Private Chamberlain, the Cavaliere Cassell, who procured me every privilege.
I know how interested ladies are in all that concerns housekeeping, for many are the charming letters which reach me on the troubles and torments of the modern domestic interior. For their private perusal, therefore, let me make a note of a custom which prevails largely in Italy, and which, I think, would do away with a great trouble and annoyance from which all unfortunate individuals who do not live in hotels or dine at clubs continuously suffer. In some parts of Italy, when you engage your cook or chef, you simply say to him: ‘There are ten of us in family. For breakfast we like so and so; for dinner so and so. How much?’ Thereupon the cook thinks it over, and he reckons it up, and presently he says: ‘Sir’ (or madam), ‘I will keep your family for so many francs a month.’
The bargain is struck, and you have no further housekeeping worries at all. The chef buys everything; he has contracted to cook for you, and to supply all you require.
If his dinners are not good enough, or if you think his contract is too high for what he is giving you, you send for him, and you say: ‘I cannot afford to pay so much; you must keep my family for less.’ If you are overpaying, the cook will accept a reduction. If you are not, he will say: ‘Very well, madam, then I must leave, as any reduction would leave me no margin of profit.’ Then you know that your nourriture is being supplied at a reasonable rate, and you allow the contract to stand or not as you think fit.
Now, just think what a lot of trouble this will do away with. No more bother with butchers and bakers and grocers, no more journeyings to and fro to co-operative stores. The good housewife has nothing to do but play with her children and read the latest of Mr. Mudie’s three-volume frivolities. All the cares of housekeeping are gone. I intend to try the plan directly I return. Only, as I am not rich enough to afford a chef, and shall have to rely upon a female, I shall watch her very closely when she goes out on Sunday. If, after she has contracted for me for three months, I find her going out with six ostrich feathers in her hat and a diamond ring outside her gloves, and hailing a hansom at the corner to drive her to the Café Royal where she is going to entertain a few Lifeguardsmen and some lady friends at dinner, I shall begin to think that the contract will bear reconsideration and a little reduction.
‘Comfort’ does not enter very largely into consideration, except at the great national theatres to which foreigners as well as natives flock. In Rome it is usual to give two representations, one at half-past five, and the second at half-past nine. I went one evening to the ‘Metastasio.’ At a quarter to ten I had the house to myself. I groped my way up a dark passage, and found a woman asleep on a bench. I showed her my ticket, and she shouted, ‘Hercules! Hercules!’ Presently a little lame dwarf answered to the name if not to the description, and unlocked the box. It was a dingy hole, with a bare brick floor, and contained two rush-bottomed chairs. ‘Hercules’ handed me a cushion to put on the chair, and for this I paid ‘by the tariff’ half a franc. Presently the house filled. In the box next me a Roman lady administered its natural sustenance to her baby. All around the men smoked the local cigar. The performance was fairly good. The costumes in one act were suggestively indecent, and the scenery ridiculously wretched. The stage footman walked about all through the acting, and cleared the stage frequently for the next scene while the hero and heroine were in possession of the boards. There was a real rain scene, which so delighted the audience that they had it all over again, and, as usual, the prompter steadily read the play aloud from end to end.
CHAPTER XV.
NAPLES.
Naples! What marvellous scenes that one word conjures up! Everybody knows Naples. Those who have not seen it have read about it, and its thousand marvels are familiar as household words. Vesuvius is known to every street arab who sells matches in the street. The story of Pompeii is as the story of Noah’s Ark. And Naples itself! Are not Neapolitan ices sold from barrows at a halfpenny each wherever the English language is spoken—from Hampstead Heath to Donnybrook Fair? The Neapolitan fisherman, in his red cap, who sings choruses from ‘Masaniello'; the little Neapolitan girl who sings ‘Santa Lucia'; the lazzaroni, the Bay, the Chiaja, the house of Emma Lady Hamilton, the grottoes, the blood of St. Gennarius, the storytellers on the Port, the puppets, the poor horses with open wounds—all these things are now as A B C to Englishmen; and there is not a boy or girl in the fourth standard who couldn’t tell you that ‘Vedi Napoli e poi mori’ means ‘See Naples and then die.’