Roman pictures

by Percy Lubbock

So Cooksey was really the first person I had ever come across who had a foothold, as it struck me, square and firm upon the soil of Rome, in spite of his loud orange boots and his globe-trotting check suit. If I had a doubt at all upon the subject it was due to something else—to his absurd little passage with Amerigo, wherein I felt sure that Amerigo had been humouring and playing down to him, with the dexterity of much practice. Cooksey, no, was not in a position to meet the chinless master of the Goose on equal terms; he had much to learn, like the rest of us, before he could presume to treat the guileful Roman as a plaything. But in the shelter of the Vatican he was securely entrenched, at any rate on the backstairs. I didn’t clearly understand his position there, I judge it was a modest one; but at least he had a real job of work to be done, which “kept him in Rome,” as he said, and which gave him a hold upon the city of enchantment. “Yes, I know Rome well enough,” said Cooksey, as we prepared to depart at the end of our meal; “I can say I know something of Rome, and of the Romans too.” He bowed gallantly to the lady at the desk, and she looked down on him with her brilliant eyes like a good shrewd aunt upon a rather uproarious school-boy.

IV. ST. PETER’S

COOKSEY was helpful, even more helpful than I desired; he carried me on a round of church-visiting, the very next afternoon, and showed me a number of delicious old nooks and corners which I had already discovered for myself. In peregrinations of that kind he could teach me little; I could moon and roam and quote my red handbook with the best. I was still considerably annoyed with him and not much inclined to accept him as my guide, so long as he only guided me back again to my familiar haunts. I had some difficulty in allowing him to believe that he was befriending me with his superior knowledge; but indeed he scarcely waited for my consent—he instructed me, as we made our round, without noticing the tact of my compliance. No matter for that afternoon, however, which brought me no new picture of Roman life; it was on an early morning a day or two later that Cooksey presented me with an impression for which I was grateful, at least I hope so.

I ought to have been grateful; for without the help of Cooksey I shouldn’t have had occasion to set forth from my lodging, very early in the day, clad as though for a dinner-party at eight in the morning. Rakish and raffish it seemed to be stepping across the Piazza di Spagna, in that April freshness, wearing a swallowtail coat and a polished shirt-front, like a belated reveller of last evening; I shrank from observation, my clothes of state looked jaded and green in the sweet air. But in Rome this morning appearance of a strayed roysterer is not misunderstood; the cabman whom I hailed knew whither I was bound, and he rattled me off through the empty streets in the direction of the Tiber and the Bridge of St. Angelo. We crossed the river, and presently we were cantering over the vast open space of the Square of St. Peter, between the showering fountains. Hundreds and hundreds of people were scattered over the square, converging upon the slope which ascends to the steps of the church; and there I joined the throng and pushed forward in its company beneath the leather curtain of the portal—a pilgrim, one of I don’t know how many thousands, gathered from the ends of the earth and now assembling in the morning to receive an august benediction.

The great floor of the church was open to all the world; the crowd spread over it and was gradually packed to density under the dome, a mass that steadily grew as the stream of concourse poured and poured through the doorways and along the nave. It was a crowd of many languages and of all conditions, and an immense hum of excitement surged from it, breaking readily into applause and acclamation—though there were hours to wait before the climax should be reached and expectation crowned. It was a grand event, I suppose, but not of the grandest; it was a reception of some few thousands of votaries, for whom the basilica was this morning the chamber of audience. How many thousands will the chamber hold? It had filled to over-flowing before the morning had passed, and the hum as it deepened grew fervid and passionate with the loyalty of a strangely mingled army. These people had been drawn to Rome from afar like the rest of us, like myself, like Deering and Cooksey; but the voice of their enthusiasm had a profounder note than ours. I picked my way among the assembling tribes, listening to snatches of their talk and trying to identify the outlandish forms of their gabble. My place, however, was not in their midst; for by the kindness of Cooksey I had admission to some special enclosure or tribune, lifted above the heads of the mob; and that is why I was dressed for a party at this untimely hour—it is the rule.

I found my place of honour on a kind of scaffold, raised in the choir at a point that commanded the splendid scene. The pilgrims thronged and thickened just beneath us; but they seemed far away in their murmurous confusion when I had taken my seat on the scaffold, among the black-arrayed group already established there aloft. We were a dozen or so, men and women; we looked not at all like pilgrims, and instead of joining in the jubilant roar that soon began to sway to and fro in the thousands of throats beneath us—instead of crying aloud in our homage before the shrine of Rome—what could we do but look on as at a spectacle, a display which we had luckily chanced upon and overtaken in time? We had nothing to do with it, no share in that rising passion of fidelity;—or perhaps indeed I should speak for myself alone, for my neighbour on the scaffold had presently attracted my attention by a sudden movement, springing to her feet (she was a middle-aged woman), throwing up her hands and cheering—cheering with a strange uncertain bird-like note that shockingly embarrassed the rest of us. She had been carried away by a sympathetic enthusiasm and she wanted to join in the full-throated roar; but she was detached from it, isolated in a little ring of decorous silence; so that her queer hoo-hoo-hoo fell upon her own ears too with disconcerting effect, and she faltered rather lamentably in the middle of her outcry. Discreet ladies, black-veiled as they all were, sitting around her on the scaffold, looked rigidly in front of them; and the poor enthusiast subsided as best she could, blushing and effacing herself. That was our only demonstration; the company of the scaffold sat otherwise unmoved to the end of the great affair, talking unobtrusively under that vast dome-full of human sound.

There was a long while to wait before the august and magnificent entry which we were expecting. Cooksey appeared very soon, and with him was a neat and slender and priestly figure to which I instantly gave the name of Father Holt. You remember the figure, of course, in Thackeray’s gallery—the polished and enigmatic gentleman of the world, who wrought so vividly upon the boyhood of Esmond. If Cooksey’s friend had chanced to take me in hand when I was a boy, he would indeed have found me easy moulding. He was dark, he was very handsome in the clear-eyed and hard-lipped manner; he had the ghost of a smile and a most musical voice. Cooksey came bustling to the front of the platform, where I was, and Father Holt dropped behind. One of the black-veiled ladies put out a hand to him and he dealt with it urbanely; but he disengaged himself, he held himself aloof in the background; and indeed we were not a party of much distinction, and I didn’t wonder that Father Holt found us a little plebeian. Cooksey breathed heavily in my ear to the effect that the female just behind me was the old wretch of whom he had spoken the other evening, the pet votaress of Father Jenkins—“and I know I shall put my foot in it again,” he said, “because I always make a fool of myself on these solemn occasions.” He chuckled wickedly, and he added that “these old cats” took it all so seriously, one had to be desperately careful.

The elderly gentlewoman in question was taking it very seriously indeed, though she didn’t commit herself to the point of standing up and cheering. She had forgiven Cooksey his assault upon her in church, and she now drew him into a conversation that I followed with interest. I can’t reproduce it, for it was highly technical, full of odd phrases and allusions that were strange to me; Cooksey and Lady Mullinger (that was her name) conversed in the language of a secret society from which I was excluded. It struck me as very picturesque, and it exhaled a cloud of suggestion—“puff on puff,” not exactly of “grated orris-root,” but of a pleasant and pungent effluence that reminded me of many things. This vein of Roman talk never seems to me to have any of the associations of an ancient history, of a long-seasoned tradition, of a bygone grace denied to those who are not of the society. Oh no, it is intensely modern and angular; it reminds me of raw new buildings, filled with chalk-blue and shrimp-pink imagery; it reminds me of deal praying-chairs and paper roses and inscriptions in ugly French lettering. When Cooksey and Lady Mullinger talk together they appear to delight in emphasizing their detachment, their disconnexion from all the sun-mellowed time-hallowed sweetness of antiquity; but of course it is exactly this odd modernity of their tone which makes their talk so picturesque in the hearing of an outsider. I was a complete outsider; and the manner in which these two spoke of the rites and forms and festivals of their society was a manner quite fresh to me, and I enjoyed it.

Lady Mullinger was elderly and plain. Catching sight of Father Holt, she made him signals so urgent that he had to come forward; she beset him with smiles and gestures and enquiries under which he stood patient and courteous, a picture of well-bred disdain. Lady Mullinger had no misgiving, and she rallied him archly, she appealed to him, she bunched her untidy amplitude together to make room for him at her side. He looked at her sidelong with his bright eyes, and he took no notice of her advances beyond answering her large sloppy questions with a neatly worded phrase. She made the foolish mistake of coupling Father Holt and Cooksey together in her broadly beaming patronage; Cooksey was well aware that it was a mistake, and his assurance failed him. Father Holt (I can’t call him anything else) glanced from one to the other with a single flit of his cool observation, and it was enough. Cooksey was ill at ease; he had been gossiping quite comfortably with her ladyship, but with Father Holt’s quiet glance on him he tried to disown her. He saw that she was stout and ordinary, and that he himself looked terribly like her; he edged away and did his best to range himself on Father Holt’s side of the colloquy. But Father Holt kept them serenely at a distance, the pair of them; it was easy to see that it was not for Cooksey to stand by his side uninvited.

“No, Lady Mullinger,” said Father Holt, “I can’t, I fear, make you a definite promise in that matter.” He spoke with a charming vibrating bell-tone; it was like the striking of a rod of polished silver in the midst of the sawing of strings out of tune. Lady Mullinger, unsuspecting and unabashed, flung herself the more vehemently into her demand; she wanted him to do this and that, but mainly she wanted him to come to tea with her on Thursday and to have a little talk with “poor Charlotte”; she pressed it as an opportunity for poor Charlotte which he mustn’t deny her. Poor Charlotte was in a sad way; nothing seemed to ease her, nobody had proved able to open “the door of her spirit.” So Lady Mullinger said, and she was positive that Father Holt would open the door, he alone, and she would arrange that nobody should disturb them, her salottino would be free (they would have tea in the big room), and he and poor Charlotte could then have a “nice little talk.” Lady Mullinger had set her heart on it—“just a nice little talk, quite informal”; she shouldn’t tell poor Charlotte that he was expected, and he could just draw her aside, after tea, and help the poor thing to “find her way.” The convenience of the salottino was urged once more, and the tact with which Lady Mullinger would keep her other guests out of it; and the ghost of the smile was upon the lips of Father Holt as he repeated, very distinctly, his refusal to make her a promise. Poor Charlotte would evidently have to find the way for herself, and Lady Mullinger abounded in despair.