From the Oak to the Olive: A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey

by Julia Ward Howe

Abject poverty and rudeness characterize the lower class (basso ceto), bad taste and want of education the middle, utter arrogance and superficiality the upper class. The distinctions between one set of human beings and another are held to be absolute, and the inferiority of opportunity, carefully preserved and exaggerated, is regarded as intrinsic, not accidental. Vain is it to plead the democratic allowances of the Catholic church. The equality of man before God is here purely abstract and disembodied. The name of God, on the contrary, is invoked to authorize the most flagrant inequalization that ignorance can prepare and institutions uphold. The finest churches, the fairest galleries, you will say, are open to the poorest as to the richest. This is true. But the man's mind is the castle and edifice of his life. Look at these rough and ragged people, unwashed, uncombed, untaught. See how little sensible they are of the decencies and amenities of life. Search their faces for an intelligent smile, a glance that recognizes beauty or fitness in any of the stately circumstances that surround them. They are kept like human cattle, and have been so kept for centuries. And their dominants suppose themselves to be of one sort, and these of another. But give us absolutism, and take away education, even in rich and roomy America, and what shall we have? The cruel and arrogant slaveholder, the vulgar and miserable poor white, the wronged and degraded negro. The three classes of men exist in all constituted society. Absolutism allows them to exist only in this false form.

This race is not a poor, but a robust and kindly one. Inclining more to artistic illustration than to abstract thought, its gifts, in the hierarchy of the nations, are eminent and precious. Like the modern Greek, the modern Celt, and the modern negro, the Italian peasant asks a century or two of education towards modern ideas. And all that can be said of his want of comprehension only makes it the more evident that the sooner we begin, the better.

It should not need, to Americans or Englishmen, to set out any formal argument against absolutism. Among them it has long since been tried and judged. Enough of its advocacy only remains to present that opposition which is the necessary basis of action. And yet a word to my countrymen and countrywomen, who, lingering on the edge of the vase, are lured by its sweets, and fall into its imprisonment. It is a false, false superiority to which you are striving to join yourself. A prince of puppets is not a prince, but a puppet; a superfluous duke is no dux; a titular count does not count. Dresses, jewels, and equipages of tasteless extravagance; the sickly smile of disdain for simple people; the clinging together, by turns eager and haughty, of a clique that becomes daily smaller in intention, and whose true decline consists in its numerical increase,—do not dream that these lift you in any time way—in any true sense. For Italians to believe that it does, is natural; for Englishmen to believe it, is discreditable; for Americans, disgraceful.

Leaving philosophy for the moment, I must renew my sketchy pictures of the scenes I pass through, lest treacherous memory should relinquish their best traits unpreserved. Arrived in Rome, at a very prosaic and commonplace station, I had some difficulty in recognizing the front of Villa Negroni, an old papal residence belonging to the Massimi family, in whose wide walls the relatives I now visit had formerly built their nest. A cosy and pleasant one it was, with the view of the distant hills, a large entourage of gardens, a fine orange grove, and the neighborhood of some interesting ruins and churches. With all the cordiality of the old time these relatives now met me. My labors of baggage and conveyance were ended. One leads me to the carriage, where another waits to receive me. Time has been indulgent, we think, to both of us, for each finds the other little changed.

And now we begin in earnest to tread the fairy land of dreams. Here are the Quattro Fontane, there is the Quirinal, yonder the dome of domes. We thread the streets in which I used to hunt for small jewelry and pictures at a bargain, enacting the part of the prodigal son, and providing a dinner of husks for the sake of a feast of gewgaws. A certain salutary tingling of shame visits my cheeks at the remembrance of the same. I find the personage of those days poor and trivial. But here is the Forum of Trajan, and soon we drive within a palatial doorway, and our guides lead us up a stately marble staircase—a long ascent; but we pause finally, and a great door opens, and they say, Welcome! We are now at home.

Through a long hall we go, and through a sweep of apartments unmatchable in Fifth Avenue, at least in architectural dignity, seconded by rich and measured taste—green parlor, crimson parlor, drab parlor, the lady's room, the signore's room, the children's room. And in the guest-chamber I confronted my small and dusty self in the glass—small, not especially in my human proportions. But the whole of my modest house in B. Place would easily, as to solid contents, lodge in the largest of those lofty rooms. The Place itself would equally lodge in the palace. I regard my re-found friends with wonder, and expect to see them execute some large and stately manœuvre, indicating their possession of all this space.

And now, dinner served in irreproachable style, and waited on by two young men whose air and deportment would amply justify their appearance at Papanti's Hall on any state occasion. We soon grow used to their polite services; but at first Mario and Giuseppe somewhat intimidate us.

And after dinner, talk of old times and old friends, question of this region and the other, the cold limbo as to weather, whence we come. Long and familiar is our interchange of facts, and sleep comes too soon, yet is welcome.

ST. PETER'S.

The first day in Rome sees us pursuing the phantom of the St. Peter ceremonies, for all of which, tickets have been secured for us. Solid fact as the performance of the functions remains, for us it assumes a forcible unreality, through the impeding intervention of black dresses and veils, with what should be women under them. But as these creatures push like battering-rams, and caper like he-goats, we shall prefer to adjourn the question of their humanity, and to give it the benefit of a doubt. We must except, however, our countrywomen from dear Boston, who were not seen otherwise than decently and in order. Into the well-remembered palco we now drag the trembling neophyte, dished up in black in a manner altogether astonishing to herself. And we push her youthful head this way and that. "See, there are the cardinals; there is the pope; there, in white-capped row, sit the pilgrims. Now, the pope's mitre being removed, he proceeds with great state to wash the pilgrims' feet." But she, like sister Anne in the Blue Beard controversy, might reply, "I see only a flock of black dresses, heaped helter-skelter, the one above the other." Some bits of the picture she does get, certainly, which may thus be catalogued: "Pope's nose, black dress, ditto skull-cap, black dress, a touch of cardinal's back, black dress—and now? Bla—ck dre—ss, for the rest of the time. But what is this commotion?" For now the he-goats begin to jump in the most extraordinary way, racing out of the tribune as eagerly as they had pressed into it. Their haste is to see the tavola, or pilgrims' table, up stairs, where the pope and cardinals are to wait upon the twelve elect, whose foot-washing we have just tried to see. Silence, decency, decorum—all are forgotten. One in diamonds calls to a friend in the crowd outside, "Hollo, Hollo! Come along with us!" and at the top of her voice. If "the devil take the hindmost" be the moving cause of this gymnastic, I would humbly suggest that, on these occasions, the devil certainly seems to be in the foremost. With a little suppressed grumbling, we tumble out of the tribune, and descend to the body of the church, where the double line of Swiss guards detains us so long as to render our tickets for the cupola, where the pilgrims' feast takes place, nearly useless. This detention seems to be entirely arbitrary; for when, after endless entreaty, we are allowed to reach the door, an easy ingress is allowed us. And here, bit by bit, the neophyte puzzles out the significance of the scene before her—a table set with massive golden ornaments (silver gilt at best), the twelve white caps behind; the great church dignitaries handing plates of fish, vegetables, and fruit towards the table; the pope hidden behind some black dress or other, and a chanting of prayers or texts, we know not what. The whole is much like the stage banquet in Macbeth, the part of Banquo's ghost being played by the spirit of the Christian religion.