I had many years previously lost a brother—the same whom I have already had occasion to mention in the earlier part of this letter. Now, at an early stage of the series of sittings that took place at my house it was intimated that the spirit of this brother was present and wishful or willing to communicate with me. He did, as was proposed, communicate very freely upon subjects of all sorts by means of raps under the table and the letters of the alphabet spread upon it—on all subjects save one. To the often-repeated question, where we had last met in life, I could get no reply. It was constantly promised to me that I should be answered this question at the next sitting. Now, it so happened that my wife had conceived, reasonably or unreasonably, doubts as to the medium's honesty in the matter, and she determined to try him in the matter of this unanswered question. Talking one day with him in tête-à-tête, she turned the subject of maladies of the chest, of which they had been speaking, to the special case of her late brother-in-law, discussing the powerful influence of climate, and remarking that she feared Ostend had been a very bad place for him. And there she left the matter without any further remark, and without eliciting any answer from him. This occurred very shortly before the time when Mr. Hume left my house to accept the hospitality of Mr. Powers. The sittings continued with great frequency in the house of the latter, and my mother and myself were very frequently present at them. As before, the soi-disant spirit of my brother Henry announced his presence, and, as before, I repeated my often-asked question as to the place on earth where he and I had last met. On this occasion the answer rapped out consisted of the word "Ostend." I smilingly replied, "Spirit, you know nothing about what you are talking of: you are wrong." Mr. Hume became immediately very angry, and reproached me vehemently for "interrupting the spirit"—for not waiting for what he was probably going to say. It was likely enough, he added, that the spirit was about to say that Ostend was not the place. I said "Pshaw! In that way he might go through the whole Gazetteer." Thereupon Mr. Hume declared that I was evidently not in a fit frame of mind to be a sitter at such meetings; that my presence would be likely to mar any results to be expected from them; and, in short, if only for the sake of those who wished to continue their experiences, it was necessary that I should withdraw from them. That was the last occasion on which I took part in a séance under Mr. Hume's mediumship. My mother continued her sittings at the house of Mr. Powers, and it is fair to record that she there witnessed material phenomena—some of them closely allied to phenomena only explainable on Spiritualistic theories—of even a more extraordinary nature than any which had occurred at my house; in which neither she, nor Mr. Powers or any of his family, nor any of the others of the party, were able to detect any imposture. And I believe I may add that Mr. Powers fully believed in the genuineness of the phenomena witnessed. It is also perhaps fair to state that had the answer to my question been "On board the steamboat going from London to Ostend," the reply would have been correct. How far it is possible to suppose that the word "Ostend" may have been the first word of an answer about to be completed in that sense if it had not been interrupted, I leave to the judgment of the reader.
For some time after this Powers used to recount to me the marvels which were witnessed at his house. He was not pleased with the medium as an inmate in other respects: he did not form a favorable opinion of his moral character. I am speaking of matters now many years old, and I might not have considered it necessary to record these impressions of a very specially upright and honest man with regard to one who is still before the public were it not that they go to increase the value of Mr. Powers's testimony to the genuineness of the phenomena which he witnessed, by showing that his judgment upon the subject was at least in no degree warped by any prejudice in favor of the miracle-worker.
Meantime, the sculptor, still in the modest tenement which he occupied for so many years in the Via Romana, was growing in fame and reputation from day to day. A visit to the Studio Powers—or Pousse, as the ciceroni and valets-de-place called it—was an obligatory part of the tourist's regular work in "doing" Florence. A large family was, during those prosperous and laborious years, growing up around him—sons and daughters, most of whom he lived to see settled in life and to be justly proud of. Death did not altogether pass his threshold by, but he knocked there but once or twice in all that length of years. At last the time came when the successful artist felt that his position enabled and justified him in moving from his old quarters to more commodious and luxurious ones. He had been but a tenant in the Via Romana: he was now to inhabit a house of his own.
It was the time when Florence was for a few short years enjoying the fallacious and fatal honor of being the capital of Italy. There were some who from the first were fully convinced that that honor would be a transitory one. The greater number thought that the will of France and of her emperor, and the difficulties attending the simultaneous residence of the king of Italy and the pope within the walls of the same city, would avail to make Florence the capital of the new kingdom for at least as many years as human prudence could look forward to. The earthquake-like events which shook down the bases of all such calculations, and enabled Italy to realize her longing desire to see Rome the capital of the nation, are too well known to need even referring to. Florence suddenly ceased to be the metropolis of Italy, and the amount of financial ruin in the case of those who had invested money in building to supply the wants of the capital was very widespread indeed. And there can be no doubt that the houses built by Powers are at the present day worth much less than they were at the time he built them, and still less than they would have been worth had Florence remained the capital. Nevertheless, I do not think that he would have abstained from building from any considerations of this kind. He built solely with a view to residence, and in that respect he could hardly have done better than he did.
He did not move very far. His old lodging and studio were, as has been said, a little way within the Porta Romana, and the villa residence which he built is but two or three minutes' walk on the outside of it. Immediately outside this Porta Romana, sloping off a little to the left from the road to Rome, is a magnificent avenue of ilex and cypress conducting to a grand-ducal villa called the "Poggio Imperiale." To the left again of this avenue, which is perhaps a mile or somewhat more in length, and between it and the city wall, which in that part of its course encloses the Boboli Gardens attached to the Palazzo Pitti, is a large extent of hillside, rapidly rising to the heights crowned by the ancient and storied church of San Miniato, and by the suburban villages of Arcetri and Pian Guillari. This space was, and had been for time out of mind, occupied by fields and market-gardens. But when the new fortunes of the City of Flowers fallaciously seemed to be in the ascendant, it was at once seen that of all the spaces immediately around Florence which were available for that increase of the city which was expected to be urgently required, none was more desirable or more favorably circumstanced than this hillside. A really magnificent carriage-road, ornamented with gardens on either side of it, was led in well-arranged curves up to San Miniato, and down on the other side of the hill till it reaches the Arno at the village of Ricorboli. The entire course of this road commands a series of varied views of the city and the Vale of Arno than which nothing can be conceived more charming. It is in truth the finest city promenade and drive that I know in Europe. Rome has nothing comparable to it. The Bois de Boulogne and Hyde Park are, as far as natural beauty goes, tame and flat in comparison to it. The planning and the execution of it have been alike excellent. The whole of the space up which the road serpentines has been turned into ornamental gardens, and on either side of it, and among its lawns and shrubberies, a large number of villa-sites were reserved to be disposed of to purchasers. Of this singular opportunity Powers was one of the first to avail himself. He selected with admirable judgment three sites in the immediate neighborhood of each other—one for a residence for himself, one for that of his eldest son, a married man, established and doing well as a photographer, and one for that of his eldest daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Ibbetson. The friends of the sculptor thus patriarchally establishing himself said laughingly that the region ought to be called Powerstown. The three houses, each in its own grounds, were built, and excellently good and comfortable residences they are. Powers was almost as much in his own element in superintending them as in his studio with mallet and chisel in hand, as might be surmised. The new studio formed no part of the dwelling-house, but occupied a separate erection in the grounds. Nor did the artist's love for his art fail to show itself in the amplitude and excellent adaptation of the building to all the needs of a studio, properly so called—of work-rooms and exhibition-rooms for the reception of visitors. A more complete sculptor's residence and establishment it would be difficult to imagine. Alas for the shortness of the few years that were allowed to him for the enjoyment of it! Long after the house and the studio were completed, and the marbles all moved thither, Powers was still indulging in the delight of improving his garden; and his plans for such improvement gave striking evidence of that genius and passion for mechanical cleverness and achievements of which I have frequently spoken. He had planned and begun—I think only begun—to execute an artesian well by means of certain newly-invented systems of boring, the details of which, in the absence of all workmen who possessed any knowledge whatever on the subject, had to be wholly superintended, arranged and adapted by himself. He had satisfied himself by observations of his own that water was to be found at a given depth, and had, I believe, prosecuted the work sufficiently to be assured that his judgment in this respect was well founded. In connection with this scheme of the artesian well was a fountain in the garden, which was, I believe, also ultimately brought to perfection.
In conformity with the convenient continental fashion of ladies naming one day in the week for the reception of visitors—a plan which enables them to escape from the interruption to their domestic pursuits on all other days, and which is very generally adopted by those who have large circles of acquaintance—Mrs. Powers used to open the drawing-rooms of her new house on every Saturday, and a considerable crowd was sure to be found there from two to six. But such recent arrivals on the banks of the Arno as paid their respects to Mrs. Powers in the hope and expectation of seeing the famous sculptor were almost, if not quite, invariably disappointed. None of the Florentine colony expected to find Powers in the drawing-room on such occasions. They knew better where to look for him—in his workshop. There he might be found by those who had brought letters of introduction to him, in his usual workman's garb. Powers never made the slightest concession to the necessities of receiving "company" on such occasions. There he was, with his working cap on head, probably in a long light gray coat, not innocent of marble dust, but often in blouse and apron.
In the latter days, when, though we little thought it, the end was approaching, when the night of that long day of continuous activity and labor was at hand, he might as frequently have been found sauntering under the magnificent trees of the Poggio Imperiale avenue in the immediate vicinity of his own house. Upright in figure and in carriage as ever, and with his eye as bright as ever, it was difficult to suppose that the venerable and stalwart figure of the old sculptor was not destined still for years of life and activity. His malady was connected with the respiratory organs; and a specially painful circumstance of it for his friends was, that the loss of voice, which made the effort of talking injurious to him, rendered it a selfish and inconsiderate thing to visit him; for the activity of his mind was still such that in the contact with another mind he could not abstain from the old familiar intercourse which he had loved so well. Like the old camel of the Arabian tale, that, having been all its life accustomed to lead the caravan, died in the effort to keep his old place to the last, Powers, who had been always wont to have rather the lion's share of conversation, could not resign himself to hear another talk, in silence. He would talk, and suffered for it afterward. The result was that his friends felt that they were showing the best consideration for him by staying away.
To look at him, I say, as he would stand in the sunshine at his own gate, it was difficult to imagine that aught of a very serious nature ailed him. But in the case of a man so habitually active his sauntering there was a bad sign. He was emphatically one of those men with whom life and work are the same thing—one whose sun was at the setting when he could work no more, and who would probably have cared little to survive his capacity for working.
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.