Before leaving America, I had arranged to write a syndicate newspaper letter for the Boston Transcript, the Kansas City Star, the New Orleans Times Democrat, a Chicago, and a New York paper. Gathering materials for this correspondence added much to the interest of my life in Rome. I had the sense of being eyes and ears for thousands of readers in different parts of the world. My letters to my family, however, give more intimate glimpses of Rome at this time.
[To my Mother.]
Rome. February, 1894. I see many fine functions at St. Peter’s. I never tire of it all, the arrogant scarlet cardinals, the ermine-tippeted canons, the great feather fans carried before Pope Leo, his extraordinary waxen face where only the eyes seem alive, as he passes through the throng carried high above the people, giving the papal benediction with three fingers of the right hand. The uniforms of the Swiss Guard and the Guardia Nobile, the papal chamberlains, the vested choir, the voices of the Pope’s “angels”, the rich smell of incense are all just as you knew them before I was born. Did you remember that some of the splendid costumes were designed by Michael Angelo?
“St. Peter’s is the theater of the Church,” Monsignor (now Cardinal) O’Connell once said to me. He is right. A function there moves me just like any other great pageant. I hadn’t been here a week when I saw the King, the Queen and the Pope. She is like a queen in a fairy story, tall, beautiful, with golden hair. The King seems better loved by the Romans, the Queen by the diplomats and foreigners. She is very dévote, doubtless a fortunate thing for the dynasty. I find matters political very difficult to understand. Mr. Stillman, who is the London Times correspondent and hardly less important a personage than the British Ambassador, tells me that Crispi is a giant and the only man able to hold Italy in hand. He is seventy-four years old and after him “the deluge” is feared.
Yesterday Colonel and Mrs. John Hay gave a pleasant reception at their hotel, where I met the Bishop Potters, Mrs. Edward ditto and Stillman’s tall wife and daughters. Mrs. S. (Marie Spartali) interests me more than any person I have met so far. A superb romantic creature, a hard worker, a good painter, one of the last of the Pre-Raphaelites. I remember your telling me of her when she was the rage of London, the idol of that group. They all painted her,—Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones. The last portrait is by Du Maurier. We are convinced she is the original of the Duchess in “Peter Ibbetson.” She has a thousand little tricks he describes, the likeness is too strong to be mistaken.—Cold to-day, tramontana blows and I hug my open fire. I wonder the Romans were ever Christianized; the sun is so all-important for health, happiness, life itself, that it seems strange they could have turned from the altars of Apollo.
Rome, March 5, 1894. At two o’clock to-day Mrs. Potter Palmer and I drove into the courtyard of the Quirinal Palace and got out at the glass doors under the clock. The porter, an immense scarlet-coated person with cocked hat and a long cane of office, received us with ceremonious bows and scrapes.
“Have their Excellencies been summoned for an audience with her Majesty the Queen?”
We “allowed” that we had, whereupon with even deeper salaams he ushered us up a winding stairway with the tiniest steps I ever saw, to the piano nobile. Here we passed through several magnificent apartments filled with flunkies in scarlet liveries and silk stockings to an anteroom. The walls and furniture were covered with blue satin brocade, there were many flowering plants, superb hangings and a few good old portraits. Here we found the Marchesa Villamarina, lady in waiting to the Queen in perpetua, and the lady in waiting for the month, both of whom wore on the left shoulder a diamond M (the Queen’s initial) on a blue ribbon like an order. As we entered, a little old lady very plainly dressed passed into the inner room.
“That is Mme. ——, the widow of a distinguished general,” the Marchesa said, “your turn is next.”
When the old lady came out we were announced and ushered into the reception room. We courtesied at the entrance, halfway across the room, and again as we stood before the Queen, who received us standing. She was dressed in black velvet embroidered with jet, and wore one string of gigantic pearls. Her earrings, immense, perfectly round solitaire pearls, were in shape and size the twins of Mrs. Palmer’s; Mrs. P.’s were the best I thought.