Please remember me most kindly to your wife, and generally to all friends.
When tracing the ever-swaying ebb and flow in the tides of joy and sorrow in a life, we come to times which seem to accumulate in their days the whole strength of feeling and vitality of which a nature is capable; prominent summits that rise triumphant out of the troublous waves, up to which the past existence has seemed to climb, and the memory of which retains a dominating influence in the descent of the future.
"I—h'm—must I say it?—am just as happy as the day is long." So wrote Leighton to his mother when at the age of twenty-three he was spending his days in and about Rome—that wonderful Rome with her world of ghosts, her solemn eventful past skimmed over and made faint by her actual sunlit present. To Leighton that sunlit present became vividly, excitingly alive. Fountains of joy were springing up in the artist-nature, catching as they sprang golden rays from all that is most beautiful in youth's dominions. Leighton writes to Steinle (July 25, 1853): "The remembrance of the beautiful time spent there (Rome) will be riches to me throughout my life; whatever may later befall me, however darkly the sky may cloud over me, there will remain on the horizon of the past the beautiful golden stripe, glowing, indelible; it will smile on me like the soft blush of even."
When, in the late autumn of 1852, he first arrived in Rome, he had just stepped from the position of being one in a family to that of being an independent unit; and, though accompanied by his brother artist, Count Gamba, he felt greatly the loss of what he had left behind—the inspiring companionship of Steinle, compared to which nothing in Rome was worthy to count as an art influence. Obliged to work in a small, inconvenient studio, the only one obtainable—expected friends, whose society he valued, failing him—he felt the want of so much that he could hardly enjoy what he had. In those first days (as we gather from his letters) the Eternal City cast no fresh glamour over his spirit.
Spring came, and the tune changed with the entrancement of Persephone's release in the balmy warmth of the South. The spring air twinkles with sunshine, and the fruit-trees are again alive with gay blossom, of fluttering petal, frail as the soft moth wing; the villa gardens are again bedecked with grand, more solid petalled flowers—brilliant-hued camellias—and later,—the noble magnolia's ivory white goblets; while the ground is carpeted with violets and varied-hued anemones. All over the wild spaces of the Campagna spring up grasses and lovely unchequered growth, spreading a green and golden fur, bristling in the bright light for miles and miles under a cloudless sky away to the faint blue line of mountains on the horizon. On one summit—golden in the sunlight—the old town of Subiaco is poised; on nearer slopes—summer haunts of the ancient Roman world, Tivoli, Frascati, Albano: the wastes of budding herbage between checked only here and there by some spectre of old days, some skeleton of a broken archway, some remnant of a ruined wall.
It was on these strange wilds of the Roman Campagna that the life-long friends, Giovanni Costa and Leighton, first met. Here is the description of the delightful scene of their meeting, and of Leighton's previous introduction to Costa's work at the famous Café Greco, written by Costa after his friend's death:—
"In the year 1853, the Café Greco at Rome was a world-renowned centre of art, a rendezvous for artists of all nationalities, who had flocked to Rome to study the history of art as well as the beauties of nature surrounding the sacred walls of the Eternal City.
"At the Café Greco[31] there was a certain waiter, Rafaello, a favourite with all, who had collected an album of sketches and water-colours by the most distinguished artists, such as Cornelius, Overbeck, Français, Bénonville, Brouloff, Böcklin, and others, and I felt much flattered when I too was asked to contribute, with the result that I gave him the only water-colour I have ever done in my life. Leighton was also begged by Rafaello to do something for the album, and having it in his hands, he saw my work, and asked whose it was. On being told, he advised Rafaello to keep it safely, saying that one day it would be very valuable. When I came later to the Café, Rafaello told me how a most accomplished young Englishman, who spoke every language, had seen my water-colour, and all he had said about it. I was very proud of his criticism, and it gave me courage for the rest of my life.
"That same year, in the month of May, the usual artists' picnic took place at Cervara, a farm in the Roman Campagna. There used to be donkey races, and the winner of these was always the hero of the day. We had halted at Tor dé Schiavi, three miles out of Rome, and half the distance to Cervara,[32] for breakfast. Every one had dismounted and tied his beast to a paling, and all were eating merrily.
"Suddenly one of the donkeys kicked over a beehive, and out flew the bees to revenge themselves on the donkeys. There were about a hundred of the poor beasts, but they all unloosed themselves and took to flight, kicking up their heels in the air—all but one little donkey, who was unable to free himself, and so the whole swarm fell upon him.