Soon after four o’clock the sea-breeze comes up and life begins again. By five I am ready for tea on the terrace. Sometimes we go instead to Ronzi and Singer’s for granite, a sort of sherbet made of snow from the mountains flavored with coffee or lemon, very delicious and cooling to the blood. By this time the streets are filled with people. The Roman girls look charming in their pretty light summer dresses; pink muslin seems to be the fashion this season. Dinner gets pushed back later and later; we really must reform. Last night we did not sit down till quarter to nine. The nights are divinely cool; we go to the terrace from the dinner-table, and sit there till bedtime under the friendly stars.
To-day I have been driving in the Villa Pamfili Doria; for proof accept this pink petal from the Egyptian lotus in the lake. I never saw them growing before. They are wonderful; the pads immense, with a green velvety surface on which the water rolls up into crystal balls; the flower, when it is closed, large and pointed like a classic flame, does not lie on the water, as I supposed, but stands erect, some eight or ten inches above it. My uncle and a few other privileged people are allowed to drive here even when the villa is closed to the public. We always meet a modest-looking old couple in a coupé; he is blind and has a long white beard; she wears a bonnet like a bat and carries a green fan with which she screens her eyes. Cardinal A., his secretary walking beside him, two attendants following, is always there, and several other priests; except for these, an occasional gardener, and the peacocks, we have the glorious old place all to ourselves. There are deer and Jersey cows and the lake and the pretty formal garden in front of the house; it has the feeling of being private property—a gentleman’s place. The name “Mary,” clipped in box on the hillside in memory of a beloved wife, an English Princess Doria, gives me the same sort of satisfaction as the Taj Mahal and the tomb of Cæcilia Metella.
Your last letter clamors for details of our housekeeping. In certain respects it is idyllic. For comfort I have never known its equal. We have two women, Filomena, the Umbrian housemaid and waitress, and Pompilia, my black-browed Tuscan cook (Romans do not make good servants). These two do the work easily with the help of old Nena, the fifth wheel to our coach. Helen calls her the footman; she does all our errands, carries my notes, and when I am hard pressed for time leaves our cards. Pompilia brings me her accounts every morning, so much for beef, bread, butter, spaghetti, wine, oil, and salt. I buy my fruit and groceries myself. So much custom allows. It is more signorile, however, to leave all buying to your servants, but a certain latitude, of which I have availed myself, is allowed to artists. Store-rooms and ice-chests are unknown; we live from hand to mouth, buying each day’s provisions “fresh and fresh.” The butchers shut up shop at eleven in the morning and do not open again till six in the evening. Business begins at the shriek of dawn; the first sound I hear in the early gray is the sharpening of the butcher’s knife in the shop opposite. They keep the meat in cool “grottos” underground. How they manage without ice is a mystery!
The Borgo, our quarter,—Leonine City is its best name,—is not fashionable, and the street-cries are still in full force here. The earliest is the Acetosa water, “Fiasche fresche aqua ’Cetosa!” I hear it in my dreams, plaintive, melodious. “Flasks of fresh Acetosa water!” Then comes the rumbling of the cart, the hee-hawing of the donkey, and the remarks of the man to the donkey. This is what he said to-day: “I call all the apostles to observe this infamous beast of a donkey: may he die squashed, this son of a hangman!” I do assure you he is the dearest donkey, pretty and willing, but rather restive about stopping. The Acetosa Spring is a mile and a half from the city, out Viale Parioli way. It has been in use since the days of the Cæsars, perhaps since the days of the Tarquins. The Romans take a course of Aqua ’Cetosa every summer; six weeks is the orthodox time; it is “cooling to the blood.” It costs two cents a flask.
Signor Augusto Rotoli has written out for me the notes of several of the cries. In the Acetosa score he has indicated the blows of the driver, the kicks of the donkey, and finally the patter-patter of the poor little beastie’s hoofs over the rough paving-stones of the Borgo Nuovo:
VENDITORE DELL’ AQUA ACETOSA.
Nel silenzio del mattino, all’ alba, in distanza, e poi piu presso alla residenza—questo è un effetto molto caratteristico. [1]
At seven o’clock a herd of twenty goats is driven into the piazza by two dark satyrs with shaggy thighs and flashing eyes, peasants in goat-skin trousers they are from the Campagna. The children crowding round them in the piazza, and I looking down from my terrace, watch them as they milk their yellow-eyed beasts. Goats’ milk, Pompilia says, is good for consumptives and delicate babies; I have not yet learned whether she considers it heating or cooling to the blood. We are not allowed to have broccoli, carrots, or mutton at this season because they are heating, and are obliged to have more rennet than we like because it is cooling!