I replied that I was.
“Mrs. Barfleur told me to say that she was waiting for you and that you should come right over and inquire for her.”
I hurried away, followed by a laboring porter, and found her waiting for me in the hotel lobby,—not the large, severe person I had imagined, but a small, enthusiastic, gracious little lady. She told me that my room was all ready and that the bath that I had demanded was connected with it, and that she had ordered some coffee sent up, but that I could have anything else that I chose. She began with a flood of questions—how was her poor dear son, and her daughter in London? And had we lost much money at Monte Carlo? And had we been very nice and quiet in Paris? And had I had a pleasant trip? And was it very cold in Paris? And would I like to go with her here and there for a few days, particularly until I was acclimated and able to find my own way about? I answered her freely and rapidly, for I took a real liking to her and decided at once that I was going to have a very nice time—she was so motherly and friendly. It struck me as delightful that she should wait up for me, and see that I was welcomed and comfortably housed; I can see her now with a loving memory in her charming gray silk dress and black lace shawl.
The first morning I arose in Rome it was raining; but to my joy, in an hour or two the sun came out and I saw a very peculiar city. Rome has about the climate of Monte Carlo, except that it is a little more changeable, and in the mornings and evenings quite chill. Around noon every day it was very warm—almost invariably bright, deliciously bright; but dark and cool where the buildings or the trees cast a shadow. I was awakened by huzzaing which I learned afterwards was for some officer who had lately returned from Morocco.
Like the English, the Italians are not yet intimately acquainted with the bathroom, and this particular hotel reminded me of the one in Manchester with its bath chambers as large as ordinary living-rooms. My room looked out into an inner court, which was superimposed upon the lobby of the hotel, and was set with palms and flowers which flourished mightily. I looked out through an opening in this court to some brown buildings over the way—brown as only the Italians know how to paint them, and bustling with Italian life.
Mrs. Barfleur had kindly volunteered to show me about this first day, and I was to meet her promptly at ten in the lobby. She wanted me to take a street car to begin with, because there was one that went direct to St. Peter’s along the Via Nazionale, and because there were so many things she could show me that way. We went out into the public square which adjoined the hotel and there it was that she pointed out the Museo delle Terme, located in the ancient baths of Diocletian, and assured me that the fragments of wall that I saw jutting out from between buildings in one or two places dated from the Roman Empire. The fragment of the wall of Servius Tullius which we encountered in the Via Nazionale dates from 578 B. C., and the baths of Diocletian, so close to the hotel, from 303 A. D. The large ruin that I had seen the night before on entering the city was a temple to Minerva Medica, dating from about 250 A. D. I shall never forget my sensation on seeing modern stores—drug stores, tobacco stores, book stores, all with bright clean windows, adjoining these very ancient ruins. It was something for the first time to see a fresh, well-dressed modern throng going about its morning’s business amid these rude suggestions of a very ancient life.
Nearly all the traces of ancient Rome, however, were apparently obliterated, and you saw only busy, up-to-date thoroughfares, with street cars, shops, and a gay metropolitan life generally. I have to smile when I think that I mistook a section of the old wall of Servius Tullius for the remnants of a warehouse which had recently been removed. All the time in Rome I kept suffering this impression—that I was looking at something which had only recently been torn down, when as a matter of fact I was looking at the earlier or later walls of the ancient city or the remnants of famous temples and baths. This particular street car line on which we were riding was a revelation in its way, for it was full of black-frocked priests in shovel hats, monks in brown cowls and sandals, and Americans and English old maids in spectacles who carried their Baedekers with severe primness and who were, like ourselves, bound for the Vatican. The conductors, it struck me, were a trifle more civil than the American brand, but not much; and the native passengers were a better type of Italian than we usually see in America. I sighted the Italian policeman at different points along the way—not unlike the Parisian gendarme in his high cap and short cape. The most striking characteristic, however, was the great number of priests and soldiers who were much more numerous than policemen and taxi drivers in New York. It seemed to me that on this very first morning I saw bands of priests going to and fro in all directions, but, for the rest of it, Rome was not unlike Monte Carlo and Paris combined, only that its streets were comparatively narrow and its colors high.
Mrs. Barfleur was most kindly and industrious in her explanations. She told me that in riding down this Via Nazionale we were passing between those ancient hills, the Quirinale and the Viminale, by the Forum of Trajan, the Gallery of Modern Art, the palaces of the Aldobrandini and Rospigliosi, and a score of other things which I have forgotten. When we reached the open square which faces St. Peter’s, I expected to be vastly impressed by my first glimpse of the first Roman Church of the world; but in a way I was very much disappointed. To me it was not in the least beautiful, as Canterbury was beautiful, as Amiens was beautiful, and as Pisa was beautiful. I was not at all enthusiastic over the semicircular arcade in front with its immense columns. I knew that I ought to think it was wonderful, but I could not. I think in a way that the location and arrangement of the building does not do it justice, and it has neither the somber gray of Amiens nor the delicate creamy hue of the buildings of Pisa. It is brownish and gray by turns. As I drove nearer I realized that it was very large—astonishingly large—and that by some hocus-pocus of perspective and arrangement this was not easily realizable. I was eager to see its interior, however, and waived all exterior consideration until later.
As we were first going up the steps of St. Peter’s and across the immense stone platform that leads to the door, a small Italian wedding-party arrived, without any design of being married there, however; merely to visit the various shrines and altars. The gentleman was somewhat self-conscious in a long black frock coat and high hat—a little, brown, mustached, dapper man whose patent leather shoes sparkled in the sun. The lady was a rosy Italian girl, very much belaced and besilked, with a pert, practical air; a little velvet-clad page carried her train. There were a number of friends—the parents on both sides, I took it—and some immediate relatives who fell solemnly in behind, two by two; and together this little ant-like band crossed the immense threshold. Mrs. Barfleur and I followed eagerly after—or at least I did, for I fancied they were to be married here and I wanted to see how it was to be done at St. Peter’s. I was disappointed, however; for they merely went from altar to altar and shrine to shrine, genuflecting, and finally entered the sacred crypt, below which the bones of St. Peter are supposed to be buried. It was a fine religious beginning to what I trust has proved a happy union.
St. Peter’s, if I may be permitted to continue a little on that curious theme, is certainly the most amazing church in the world. It is not beautiful—I am satisfied that no true artist would grant that; but after you have been all over Europe and have seen the various edifices of importance, it still sticks in your mind as astounding, perhaps the most astounding of all. While I was in Rome I learned by consulting guide-books, attending lectures and visiting the place myself, that it is nothing more than a hodge-podge of the vagaries and enthusiasms of a long line of able pontiffs. To me the Catholic Church has such a long and messy history of intrigue and chicanery that I for one cannot contemplate its central religious pretensions with any peace of mind. I am not going into the history of the papacy, nor the internecine and fratricidal struggles of medieval Italy; but what veriest tyro does not grasp the significance of what I mean? Julius II, flanking a Greek-cross basilica with a hexastyle portico to replace the Constantinian basilica, which itself had replaced the oratory of St. Anacletus on this spot, and that largely to make room for his famous tomb which was to be the finest thing in it; Urban VIII melting down the copper roof of the Panthéon portico in order to erect the showy baldachino! I do not now recall what ancient temples were looted for marble nor what popes did the looting, but that it was plentifully done I am satisfied and Van Ranke will bear me out. It was Julius II and Leo X who resorted to the sale of indulgences, which aided in bringing about the Reformation, for the purpose of paying the enormous expenses connected with the building of this lavish structure. Think of how the plans of Bramante and Michelangelo and Raphael and Carlo Maderna were tossed about between the Latin cross and the Greek cross and between a portico of one form and a portico of another form! Wars, heartaches, struggles, contentions—these are they of which St. Peter’s is a memorial. As I looked at the amazing length—six hundred and fifteen feet—and the height of the nave—one hundred and fifty-two feet—and the height of the dome from the pavement in the interior to the roof—four hundred and five feet—and saw that the church actually contained forty-six immense altars and read that it contained seven hundred and forty-eight columns of marble, stone or bronze, three hundred and eighty-six statues and two hundred and ninety windows, I began to realize how astounding the whole thing was. It was really so large, and so tangled historically, and so complicated in the history of its architectural development, that it was useless for me to attempt to synchronize its significance in my mind. I merely stared, staggered by the great beauty and value of the immense windows, the showy and astounding altars. I came back again and again; but I got nothing save an unutterable impression of overwhelming grandeur. It is far too rich in its composition for mortal conception. No one, I am satisfied, truly completely realizes how grand it is. It answers to that word exactly. Browning’s poem, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s,” gives a faint suggestion of what any least bit of it is like. Any single tomb of any single pope—of which it seemed to me there were no end—might have had this poem written about it. Each one appears to have desired a finer tomb than the other; and I can understand the eager enthusiasm of Sixtus V (1588), who kept eight hundred men working night and day on the dome in order to see how it was going to look. And well he might. Murray tells the story of how on one occasion, being in want of another receptacle for water, the masons tossed the body of Urban VI out of his sarcophagus, put aside his bones in a corner, and gave the ring on his finger to the architect. The pope’s remains were out of their receptacle for fifteen years or more before they were finally restored.