Views and Opinions

by Ouida

That a people can be en masse so utterly dead to memory, to greatness, to beauty, and to sense, makes any serious thinker despair of its future. There are waste grounds (grounds already deliberately laid waste) yawning by scores already, in the town and around it, on which any new buildings which may be deemed necessary might be raised. There is not one thread or shadow of excuse for the abominable action now contemplated by the Florence Municipality, and certain to be consummated unless some opposition, strong and resolute, arise. Even were the Orti Oricellari a mere ordinary park, without tradition, without heritage, without association, it would be imbecility to cover the site with bricks and mortar, for Maxime du Camp has justly written that whoever fells a tree in a city commits a crime. ‘Chaque fois qu’un arbre tombe dans une ville trop peuplée cela équivaut à un meurtre et parfois à une épidémie. On a beau multiplier les squares, ils ne remplaceront jamais la ceinture de forêt qui devrait entourer toute capitale et lui verser l’oxygène, la force, et la santé.‘ These are words salutary and true, which would be well inscribed in letters of gold above the council chamber of every municipality. When towns are desperately pinched for space, hemmed in on every side, and at their wits’ end for lodging-room, there may be some kind of credible excuse for the always mistaken destruction of gardens, trees and groves. But in all the cities of Italy there is no such excuse; there are vast unoccupied lands all around them; and in their midst more, many more, houses than are occupied. In Rome and Florence the latter may be counted by many thousands. There is not the feeblest, flimsiest pretext for such execrable destruction as has already overtaken so many noble gardens in the former city, and now menaces the Orti Oricellari in the latter.

Nor is this Selva, although the most famous, the only garden which is being destroyed in Florence, whilst many beautiful glades and lawns have been, in the last ten years, ruthlessly ruined and effaced that the wretched and trumpery structures of the jerry-builders may arise in their stead. The Riccardi garden in Valfonda was once like that of the Oricellari, a marvel of loveliness; and its lawns, its avenues, its marbles, its deep, impenetrable shades, its sunlit orange-walks and perfumed pergolate, surrounded a house which was a temple of art and contained many choice statues of ancient and contemporary masters. Talleyrand once said that no one who had not lived before the great revolution could ever know how perfect life could be. I would say that none can know how perfect it can be who did not live in the Italy of the Renaissance. Take the life of this one man, Riccardo, Marchese Riccardi, who spent most of his existence in this exquisite pleasure-place, which he inherited from its creator, the great scholar and dilettante, Romolo Riccardi, and where he resided nearly all the year round. In the contemporary works of Cinelli on the Bellezze di Firenze, his house and gardens are described; they are alluded to by Redi,—

‘Nel bel giardino

Nei bassi di gualfondo inabissato

Dove tieni il Riccardi alto domino.’

They are spoken of in admiration by Baldinucci, and, in the description of the festival of Maria de’ Medici’s marriage by proxy to Henri Quatre, they are enthusiastically praised by the younger Buonarotti. The court of the Casino was filled with ancient marbles, busts, statues and inscriptions, Latin and Greek; the exterior was decorated in fresco and tempera, with many rare sculptures and paintings and objects of art, whilst, without, a number of avenues led in all directions from the house to the gardens and the woods, where, in shade of ilex and cypress, marble seats and marble statues gave a sense of refreshing coolness in the hottest noon. Here this elegant scholar and accomplished noble passed almost all his time, receiving all that was most learned and illustrious in the society of his epoch; and occasionally giving magnificent entertainments like that with which he bade farewell to Maria de’ Medici. Of this delicious retreat a few trees alone remain now; a few trees, which raise their sorrowful heads amongst the bricks and mortar, the theatres and photographic studios, around them, are all that are left of the once beautiful and poetic retreat of the scholars and courtiers, the ambassadors and illuminati, of the family of the Riccardi. Why has not such a place as this once was been religiously preserved through all time, for the joy, health and beauty of the city?

It would be scarcely possible for so beautiful and precious a life as this of the Riccardi to be led in our times, because it is scarcely possible, lock our gates as we may, to escape from the detestable atmosphere of excitation and worry which is everywhere around. The mania of senseless movement is now in the human race, as the saltatory delirium seized on the Neapolitan peasants and hurried them in crowds into the sea.

Riccardo Riccardi living now would be ashamed to dwell the whole year round in his retreat of Valfonda; would waste his time over morning newspapers, cigars and ephemeral telegraphic despatches; would probably spend his money on horse-racing; would send his blackletter folios, his first copies, and his before-letter prints to the hammer, and would make over his classic marbles to the Louvre, the Hermitage, or to his own government. He and his contemporaries had the loveliness of leisure and the wisdom of meditation; they knew that true culture is to be gained in the library, not in the rush of a pérégrinomanie; and being great, noble and rich, judged aright that the best gifts given by high position and large fortune are the liberty which they allow for repose, and the power which such repose confers to enjoy reflection and possession. In modern life this faculty is almost wholly lost, and the wit and the fool are shaken together in the vibration of railway trains, and jostled together in the eating-houses of the world, till, if the fool thus obtain a varnish of sharpness, the wit has lost all individuality and grace.

Not long since, I said to an Englishman who has filled high posts and attained high honours, whilst public life is always repugnant to his tastes and temperament, that he would have been wiser to have led his own life in his own way, under his own ancestral roof-tree in England; and he answered, ‘I would willingly have done so, but they would have said that I had nothing in me!’ Characteristic nineteenth century reply! Romolo and Riccardo Riccardi did not trouble themselves in their different generations what their contemporaries thought of them. They led their own lives in their own leafy solitude, and only called their world about them when they were themselves disposed to entertain it.

The gardens of the Gaddi were equally and still earlier renowned, and in them the descendants of Taddeo Gaddi had a pleasure-house wondrous and lovely to behold, while the rich gallery of pictures annexed to it was situated next to the Valfonda, and covered what is now the new Piazza di S. M. Novello. These descendants had become great people and eminent in the church, many cardinals and monsignori amongst them, and also celebrated letterati, of whom Niccolo, son of Senibaldo, was the most illustrious. He, as well as a scholar and patron of letters and arts, was, like the Riccardi, a botanist, and, as may be seen in the pages of Scipione Ammirato, was foremost for his culture of sweet herbs and of lemons and citrons. Whilst he filled worthily the post of ambassador and of collector of works of art for the Medici, he never forgot his garden and his herb-garden, and was the first to make general in Tuscany the Judas-tree, the gooseberry, the strawberry, the Spanish myrtle, the northern fir and other then rare fruits and shrubs. So fragrant and so fair were his grounds, that the populace always called them, and the vicinity perfumed by them, Il Paradiso dei Gaddi. This beautiful retreat has for centuries been entirely destroyed and forgotten; and all which is left of the rich collections of the Gaddi are those thousand manuscript folios which Francis I. of Austria purchased and gave to the libraries of Florence, where to this day they remain and can be read.