Two Pilgrims' Progress; from fair Florence, to the eternal city of Rome

by Joseph Pennell; Elizabeth Robins Pennell

"Here they were within sight of the city they were going to, also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof ... and drawing near the city they had yet a more perfect view thereof."

Early as we were, the whole town was stirring when we came downstairs. But who ever knew the hour when the people of an Italian town were not up and abroad? No sooner did J. bring the tricycle from the stable, where it had been kept all night, to the Albergo, than the piazza was again crowded. On they all came with us, men, women, and children, hooting and shouting, jumping and dancing through the vilely paved streets, and finally sprawling over the walls and on the rocks beyond the gate.

There they stayed until we had gone down the hill over the bridge, crossing the stream at its foot, and up the hill on the opposite side, passing from their sight around the first curve. Soon we were on an upland and now really at the beginning of the Campagna. The morning was cold. For many miles we rode through a champaign gleaming white with frost. But as the sun rose higher in the heavens, and the yellow light, which at first was spread over the sky, faded and left a clear blue expanse above, the air grew warmer and the frost disappeared. The road wound on and on between oak woods and wide cultivated fields, and green grassy plains which gradually changed into great sweeps of rolling treeless country, like the moors. By the roadside were thick bushes of low green sage and tangled blackberries, and in places the broad flagstones of the old Flaminian Way, with weeds and dandelions and pretty purple flowers growing from the crevices. Sometimes a paving of smaller stones stretched all across the road, so that for a minute or two we were badly shaken, or else, coming on them suddenly at the foot of a hill, all but upset. Truly, as has been said, it could have been no joke for the old Romans to ride.

To our left rose the great height of Soracte, not snow-covered as Horace saw it, but bare and brown save where purple shadows lay. At first we met numbers of peasants all astride of donkeys, going towards Cività Castellana, families riding together and eating as they went. Later, however, no one passed but an occasional lonely rider (who in his long cloak and high-pointed hat looked a genuine Fra Diavolo), or else sportsmen and their dogs. It was strange that though we saw many of the latter, we never once heard the singing or chirping of birds. There were hillsides and fields full of large black cattle, or herds of horses, or flocks of sheep and goats. There were shepherds, too, sleeping in the shade or by the roadside, leaning on their staffs or ruling their flock with rod and rustic word, as in the days when Poliziano sung. And if there was no bird's song to break the silence of the Campagna, there was instead a loud baaing of sheep, led by the shrill piercing notes of the lambs. If it was to such an accompaniment that Corydon and Thyrsis sang in rivalry, their song could have been poetical only in Virgil's verse.

How hard we worked now that our pilgrimage was almost ended! We scarcely looked at the little village through which we wheeled, and where a White Brother was going from door to door, nor at the ruins which rose here and there in the hollows and on the slopes of the hills; and when at last we saw on the horizon the dome coming up out of the broad undulating plain, we gave it but a short greeting, and then hurried on faster than ever. We would not even go to Castel Nuovo, which lies a quarter of a mile or so from the road, but eat our hasty lunch in a trattoria by the wayside, while a man—an engineer he said he was—showed us drawings he had made on his travels, and asked about our ride. How brave it was of the Signora to work! he exclaimed, and how brave of the Signore to sketch from his velocipede!

And after this "the hills their heights began to lower," and with feet up we went like the wind, and every time we looked at the dome it seemed larger and more clearly defined against the sky. But about six miles from Rome our feet were on the pedals again and we were working with all our might. Sand and loose stones covered the road, which grew worse until, in front of the staring pink quarantine building, the stones were so many that in steering out of the way of one we ran over another, and the jar it gave us loosened the screw of the luggage-carrier. We were so near Rome we let it go. This was a mistake. But a little farther, and the whole thing gave way, and bags and knapsack rolled in the dust. It took some fifteen minutes to set it to rights again; and all the time we stood in the shadeless road, under a burning sun, for the heat in the lower plains of the Campagna was as great as if it were still summer. As the luggage-carrier was slightly broken, we were afraid to put too great a strain upon it, and for the rest of the journey the knapsack went like a small boy swinging on behind.

From Via Flaminia, near Ponte Molle. Page 170.

Like those other pilgrims, we were much discouraged because of the way. But at last, wheeling by pink and white trattorie, whose walls were covered with illustrated bills of fare, and coming to an open place where street-cars were coming and going, the Ponte Molle, over a now yellow Tiber, lay before us, and we were under the shadow of the dome we from afar had watched for many hours. Over the bridge we went with cars and carts, between houses and gardens and wine-shops, where there was a discord of many hurdy-gurdies, to the Porta del Popolo, and so into Rome.