A Traveler at Forty

by Theodore Dreiser

The remainder of my days in Rome were only three or four. I had seen much of it that has been in no way indicated here. True to my promise I had looked up at his hotel my traveling acquaintance, the able and distinguished Mr. H., and had walked about some of the older sections of the city hearing him translate Greek and Latin inscriptions of ancient date with the ease with which I put my ordinary thought into English. Together we visited the Farnese Palace, the Mamertine Prison, the Temple of Vesta, Santa Maria in Cosmedin and other churches too numerous and too pointless to mention. It was interesting to me to note the facility of his learning and the depth of his philosophy. In spite of the fact that life, in the light of his truly immense knowledge of history and his examination of human motives, seemed a hodge-podge of contrarieties and of ethical contradictions, nevertheless he believed that through all the false witness and pretense and subtlety of the ages, through the dominating and apparently guiding impulses of lust and appetite and vanity, seemingly untrammeled by mercy, tenderness or any human consideration, there still runs a constructive, amplifying, art-enlarging, life-developing tendency which is comforting, dignifying, and purifying, making for larger and happier days for each and all. It did not matter to him that the spectacle as we read it historically is always one of the strong dominating the weak, of the strong battling with the strong, of greed, hypocrisy and lying. Even so, the world was moving on—to what he could not say,—we were coming into an ethical understanding of things. The mass was becoming more intelligent and better treated. Opportunity, of all sorts, was being more widely diffused, even if grudgingly so. We would never again have a Nero or a Caligula he thought—not on this planet. He called my attention to that very interesting agreement between leading families of the Achæan League in lower Greece in which it was stipulated that the “ruling class should be honored like gods” and that the subject class should be “held in subservience like beasts.” He wanted to know if even a suspicion of such an attitude to-day would not cause turmoil. I tried out his philosophy by denying it, but he was firm. Life was better to him, not merely different as some might take it to be.

I gave a dinner at my hotel one evening in order to pay my respects to those who had been so courteous to me and put it in charge of Mrs. Barfleur, who was desirous of nothing better. She was fond of managing. Mrs. Q. sat at my left and Mrs. H. at my right and we made a gay hour out of history, philosophy, Rome, current character and travel. The literary executor of Oscar Wilde was present, Mr. Oscar Browning, and my Greek traveler and merchant, Mr. Bouris. An American publisher and his wife, then in Rome, had come, and we were as gay as philosophers and historians and antiquaries can be. Mr. H. drew a laugh by announcing that he never read a book under 1500 years of age any more, and the literary executor of Oscar Wilde told a story of the latter to the effect that the more he contemplated his own achievements, the more he came to admire himself, and the less use he had for other people’s writings. One of the most delightful stories I have heard in years was told by H. who stated that an Italian thief, being accused of stealing three rings from the hands of a statue of the Virgin that was constantly working miracles, had declared that, as he was kneeling before her in solemn prayer, the Virgin had suddenly removed the rings from her finger and handed them to him. But the priests who were accusing him (servitors of the Church) and the judge who was trying him, all firm believers, would not accept this latest development of the miraculous tendencies of the image and he was sent to jail. Alas! that true wit should be so poorly rewarded.

One of the last things I did in Rome was to see the Pope. When I came there, Lent was approaching, and I was told that at this time the matter was rather difficult. None of my friends seemed to have the necessary influence, and I had about decided to give it up, when one day I met the English representative of several London dailies who told me that sometimes, under favorable conditions, he introduced his friends, but that recently he had overworked his privilege and could not be sure. On the Friday before leaving, however, I had a telephone message from his wife, saying that she was taking her cousin and would I come. I raced into my evening clothes though it was early morning and was off to her apartment in the Via Angelo Brunetti, from which we were to start.

Presentation to the Pope is one of those dull formalities made interesting by the enthusiasm of the faithful and the curiosity of the influential who are frequently non-catholic, but magnetized by the amazing history of the Papacy and the scope and influence of the Church. All the while that I was in Rome I could not help feeling the power and scope of this organization—much as I condemn its intellectual stagnation and pharisaism. Personally I was raised in the Catholic Church, but outgrew it at an early age. My father died a rapt believer in it and I often smile when I think how impossible it would have been to force upon him the true history of the Papacy and the Catholic hierarchy. His subjugation to priestly influence was truly a case of the blind leading the blind. To him the Pope was truly infallible. There could be no wrong in any Catholic priest, and so on and so forth. The lives of Alexander VI and Boniface VIII would have taught him nothing.

In a way, blind adherence to principles is justifiable, for we have not as yet solved the riddle of the universe and one may well agree with St. Augustine that the vileness of the human agent does not invalidate the curative or corrective power of a great principle. An evil doctor cannot destroy the value of medicine; a corrupt lawyer or judge cannot invalidate pure law. Pure religion and undefiled continues, whether there are evil priests or no, and the rise and fall of the Roman Catholic hierarchy has nothing to do with what is true in the teachings of Christ.

It was interesting to me as I walked about Rome to see the indications or suggestions of the wide-spread influence of the Catholic Church—priests from England, Ireland, Spain, Egypt and monks from Palestine, the Philippines, Arabia, and Africa. I was standing in the fair in the Campo dei Fiori, where every morning a vegetable-market is held and every Wednesday a fair where antiquities and curiosities of various lands are for sale, when an English priest, seeing my difficulties in connection with a piece of jewelry, offered to translate for me and a little later a French priest inquired in French whether I spoke his language. In the Colosseum I fell in with a German priest from Baldwinsville, Kentucky, who invited me to come and see a certain group of Catacombs on a morning when he intended to say mass there, which interested me but I was prevented by another engagement; and at the Continental there were stopping two priests from Buenos Ayres; and so it went. The car lines which led down the Via Nazionale to St. Peter’s and the Vatican was always heavily patronized by priests, monks, and nuns; and I never went anywhere that I did not encounter groups of student-priests coming to and from their studies.

This morning that we drove to the papal palace at eleven was as usual bright and warm. My English correspondent and his wife, both extremely intelligent, had been telling of the steady changes in Rome, its rapid modernization, the influence of the then Jewish mayor in its civic improvement and the waning influence of the Catholics in the matter of local affairs. “All Rome is probably Catholic,” he said, “or nearly so; but it isn’t the kind of Catholicism that cares for papal influence in political affairs. Why, here not long ago, in a public speech the mayor charged that the papacy was the cause of Rome’s being delayed at least a hundred years in its progress and there was lots of applause. The national parliament which meets here is full of Catholics but it is not interested in papal influence. It’s all the other way about. They seem to be willing to let the Pope have his say in spiritual matters but he can’t leave the Vatican and priests can’t mix in political affairs very much.”

I thought, what a change from the days of Gregory VII and even the popes of the eighteenth century!

The rooms of the Vatican devoted to the Pope—at least those to which the public is admitted at times of audience seemed to me merely large and gaudy without being impressive. One of the greatest follies of architecture, it seems to me, is the persistent thought that mere size without great beauty of form has any charm whatever. The Houses of Parliament in England are large but they are also shapely. As much might be said for the Palais Royal in Paris though not for the Louvre and almost not for Versailles. The Vatican is another great splurge of nothing—mere size without a vestige of charm as to detail.

All I remember of my visit was that arriving at the palace entrance we were permitted by papal guards to ascend immense flights of steps, that we went through one large red room after another where great chandeliers swung from the center and occasional decorations or over-elaborate objects of art appeared on tables or pedestals. There were crowds of people in each room, all in evening dress, the ladies with black lace shawls over their heads, the men in conventional evening clothes. Over-elaborately uniformed guards stood about, and prelates of various degrees of influence moved to and fro. We took our station in a room adjoining the Pope’s private chambers where we waited patiently while various personages of influence and importance were privately presented.