To dwellers in Rome the “honied core” of all the year comes with the first days of spring. Looking back on Roman winters, indeed, from my later experiences of the season in arctic climates, they were, with few exceptions, one carol of brightness and sunshine; we spoke of winter for the sake of putting on our furs and lighting a few fires, but the violets never ceased to bloom in the open, the shady avenues of the many villas were not too cool for dalliance, and it was only when the “tramontana,” blowing over the mountains in the north, turned the air from balm to crystal, that we had a touch of real winter at all. Nevertheless, the spring, its opening day marked by the arrival of the first swallows, was intoxicatingly welcome. The first day of Lent had put a period to most of the social functions and—such is the levity of youth—had given us girls time to think of a spring frock or so. Then, on some March morning, the cry would go through the house, “The swallows have come!” and thenceforward we lived very much in the open air. From the time when I was very small it had always been the same, and even now, at my “far world’s end,” and with five decades between the “now” and the “then,” the memory of those spring days goes to my head a little. In a snow-bound land of pale suns and wintry wastes I can shut my eyes and feel again the bath of sunshine, smell the bitter-sweet of Campagna thyme and daisy, almost hear the larks at their singing, the soft bleating of the Campagna lambs, the baying of the white sheep dogs, the faint piping of the solitary shepherd boy sitting on the low stone fence while his flock nibbled audibly at the newly sprung grass. That last is one of the prettiest of outdoor sounds, I think. The world has to be very still to let one hear it at all, and then the delicate “crsh-crsh” is like the music of a fairy March accentuated by the regular moving of the light little hoofs over the turf.
One such morning comes back to me very vividly. I think it was that of my tenth birthday, and we had all been taken out to “Egeria’s Grotto” to mark the festa. I wonder if parents know what a real birthday festivity means to an imaginative child? Mine came in the outburst of the Roman April, and, as long as we lived in the old Villa Negroni, was a perfect carnival of flowers. From the time I awoke in the morning, an air of joyous mystery pervaded the house. Every servant came to kiss my hand and bring me a fat posy, sent for to the country, of the strong farmhouse flowers that did not grow in our garden, marigolds and marguerites, jessamine and “gagia”—the yellow powdery blossoms that keep their perfume for fifty years, the whole tied up in a setting of sweet basil and “madre-cara”—I do not know its name in English—a feast of clean fragrance—“Cento di questi giorni!” (a hundred of these days) said every one I met on my way to my mother’s room, for the first thing to do was to rush into her arms and have her tell me how old I was. Then, with a handkerchief tied over my eyes, I was solemnly taken into the big red drawing-room where the rest of the household was already assembled and led to the place where my portrait hung on the wall. There was a breathless second of expectation, then the handkerchief was whisked off, and I saw a bower of white spirea from which my own picture smiled down at me, above a little table covered with a white cloth and smothered in spirea, too. Under the foam of the flowers were all my presents, done up in my dear mother’s favourite parma violet tissue-paper and satin ribbons. The next hour was an intoxication. It always seemed as if all the things I had been longing for for months were collected there. When everybody had been thanked, I was left alone for a while to examine and exult in my new possessions; then I had to be dressed in my best clothes for the real crown of the day, a walk alone with my adored mother, with my pockets stuffed with pennies so that I could give something to every beggar we met! In the afternoon there would be a drive out to some point on the Campagna, with a box of bon-bons to help us enjoy the view, and in the evening the beloved godfather, Mr. Hooker, always came to dine and help me cut my birthday cake, a splendid edifice with my name and the date in pink and white frosting, wreathed in spirea and surrounded by lighted candles to the number of the years I had attained.
As I grew a little older I preferred to spend the whole day in the country, and then the place to make for was the so-called Grotto of Egeria. There was surely solitude, where it seemed as if no one ever came but ourselves; the outer world was left a thousand miles behind; the velvet undulations of the lonely valley were all a carpet of short thyme over which we rolled like the little kids of the goats that scampered away at our approach. And, best of all, there was the deep grotto with the broken statue and the shadowy crystal of its mysterious spring, its sides and vault one mantle of diamond—sprent maidenhair fern, its moist air and soft green light—a reflection from sun and grass outside—making it a place where the most light-hearted child could not but feel the solemnity of something very ancient and very spiritual. I used to linger there to dream of Egeria, the more than mortal, less than spirit maid who revealed the lore of Heaven to the Sabine Sage. I could picture her pale beauty, as she would sit by the spring and let Numa tell her of all the perplexities and difficulties of his rule, and very earnestly did I beg her to appear to me too, but she never came; how could she, when that had never really been her home? Then I would leap back to earth with a bound and join my brother and sisters and the little playmates who always came with us, in a breathless game which began with a mystic incantation I have never heard except in those days and in my own family. I should be glad if any one could enlighten me as to its origin, though I fancy it may have been an inheritance from some witch ancestress. Thus it ran:
“Intery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn,
Apple Seed and Apple Thorn,
Wire, Brier, Limber, Lock,
Seven Geese in a Flock.
Sit and Sing,
By a Spring!
O, U, T—Out!”