Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 by Various
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Various >> Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862
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They hired a one-horse vetturo in the piazza di Spagna, and packing in
their sketching materials and a basket well filled with luncheon and
bottles of red wine, started off, soon reaching the Saint Sebastian
gate. Further on, they passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and saw
streaming over the Campagna the Roman hunt-hounds, twenty couples,
making straight tails after a red fox, while a score of well-mounted
horsemen--here and there a red coat and white breeches--came riding
furiously after. Along the road-side were handsome open carriages,
filled with wit and beauty, talent and petticoats; and bright were the
blue eyes, and red the healthy cheeks of the English girls, as they saw
how well their countrymen and lovers led off the chase. Englishmen
_have_ good legs.
Continuing along the Appian way, either side of which was bordered by
tombs crumbling to decay; some of them covered with nature's lace, the
graceful ivy, others with only a pile of turf above them, others with
shattered column and mutilated statue at their base--the occupants of
the vetturo were silent. They saw before them the wide plain, shut in on
the horizon by high mountains, with snow-covered peaks and sides, while
they were living in the warmth of an American June morning; the breeze
that swept over them was gentle and exhilarating; in the long grass
waving by the way-side, they heard the shrill cries of the cicadas;
while the clouds, driven along the wide reach of heaven, assuming
fantastic forms, and in changing light and shadow mantling the distant
mountains, gave our trio a rare chance to study cloud-effects to great
advantage.
'I say, driver, what's your name?' asked Rocjean of the _vetturino_.
'Caesar, _padrone mio_,' answered the man.
'Are you descended from the celebrated Julius?' asked Caper, laughing.
'Yes, sir, my grandfather's name was Julius.'
''That every like is not the same, O Caesar!
The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon,''
soliloquized Caper; and as by this time they had reached a place where
both he and Rocjean thought a fine view of the ruined aqueduct might be
taken, they ordered the driver to stop, and taking out their sketching
materials, sent him back to Rome, telling him to come out for them about
four o'clock, when they would be ready to return.
While they were yet in the road, there came along a very large
countryman, mounted on a very small jackass; he was sitting side-saddle
fashion, one leg crossed over the other, the lower leg nearly touching
the ground; one hand held a pipe to his mouth, while the other held an
olive branch, by no means an emblem of peace to the jackass, who
twitched one long ear and then the other, in expectation of a momentary
visit from it on either side of his head. Following, at a dutiful
distance behind, came a splendid specimen of a Roman peasant-woman, a
true _contadina_: poised on her head was a very large round basket, from
over the edge of which sundry chickens' heads and cocks' feathers arose,
and while Caper was looking at the basket, he saw two tiny little arms
stuck up suddenly above the chickens, and then heard a faint squall--it
was her baby. An instantaneous desire seized Caper to make a rough
sketch of the family group, and hailing the man, he asked him for a
light to his cigar. The jackass was stopped by pulling his left ear--the
ears answering for reins--and after giving a light, the man was going
on, when Caper, taking a _scudo_ from his pocket, told him that if he
would let him make a sketch of himself, wife, and jackass, he would give
it to him, telling him also that he would not detain them over an hour.
'If you'll give me a _buona mano_ besides the _scudo_, I'll do it,' he
answered.
The _buona mano_ is the ignis fatuus that leads on three fourths of the
Italians; it is the bright spark that wakes them up to exertion. No
matter what the fixed price for doing any thing may be, there must
always be a something undefined ahead of it, to crown the work when
accomplished. It makes labor a lottery; it makes even sawing wood a
species of gambling. Caper promised a _buona mano_.
The man told his wife that the Signore was to make a _ritratto_, a
picture of them all, including the jackass, at which she laughed
heartily, showing a splendid set of brilliantly white teeth. A finer
type of woman it would be hard to find, for she was tall, straight, with
magnificent bust and broad hips. Her hair, thick and black, was drawn
back from her forehead like a Chinese, and was confined behind her head
with two long silver pins, the heads representing flowers; heavy,
crescent-shaped, gold earrings hung from her ears; around her full
throat circled two strings of red coral beads. Her boddice of crimson
cloth was met by the well-filled out-folds of her white linen shirt,
the sleeves of which fell from her shoulders below her elbows, in full,
graceful folds; her skirt was of heavy white woolen stuff, while her
blue apron, of the same material, had three broad stripes of golden
yellow, one near the top and the other two near each other at the
bottom; the folds of the apron were few, and fell in heavy, regular
lines. A full, liquid-brown pair of eyes gazed calmly on the painter, as
she stood beside her husband, easily, gracefully; without a sign from
the artist, taking a position that the most studied care could not have
improved.
'_Benissimo_!' cried Caper, 'the position couldn't be better;' and
seizing his sketch-book and pencils, unfolding his umbrella and planting
its spiked end in the ground, and arranging his sketching-stool, he was
in five minutes hard at work. As soon as he could draw the basket, he
told the woman she might take it from her head and put it on the ground,
for he believed the weight must incommode her. This done, she resumed
her position, and Caper, working with all his might, had his sketch
sufficiently finished before the hour was over to tell his group that it
was finished, at the same time handing the man a _scudo_ and a handsome
_buona mano_.
Rocjean and Von Bluhmen, who had assiduously looked on, now and then
joking with the _contadino_ and his wife, proposed, after the sketch was
finished, that Caper should ask his friends to help them finish their
luncheon; this was joyously agreed to, and the party, having left the
road and found a pleasant spot, under a group of ilex-trees, were soon
busy finishing the eatables. It was refreshing to see how the handsome
_contadina_ emptied glass after glass of red wine. The husband did his
share of drinking; but his wife eclipsed him. Having learned from Caper
that his first name was Giacomo, she shouted forth a rondinella, making
up the words as she went along, and in it gave a ludicrous account of
Giacomo, the artist, who took a jackass's portrait, herself and husband
holding him, and the baby squalling in harmony. This met with an
embarrassment of success, and amid the applause of Rocjean, Caper, and
Von Bluhmen, the _contadino_, wife, and baggage departed. She, however,
told Caper where she lived in the Campagna, and that she had a beautiful
little sister, whose _ritratta_ he should take, if he would come to see
her.
[It is needless to inform the reader that _he went_.]
Lighting cigars, Rocjean and Caper declared they must have a siesta,
even if they had to doze on their stools, for neither of them ever could
accustom himself to the Roman fashion of throwing one's self on the
ground, and sleeping with their faces to the earth. Von Bluhmen, a fiery
amateur of sketching, walked off to take a 'near view' of the aqueduct,
and the two artists were left to repose.
'I say, Caper, does it ever come into your head to people all this broad
Campagna with old Romans?' asked Rocjean.
'Yes, all the time. Do you know that when I am out here, and stumble
over the door-way of an old Roman tomb, or find one of those thousand
caves in the tufa rock, I often have a curious feeling that from out
that tomb or cave will stalk forth in broad daylight some old Roman
centurion or senator, in flowing robe.'
'Do you ever think,' asked Rocjean, 'of those seventy thousand poor
devils of Jews who helped build the Coliseum and the Arch of Titus? Do
you ever reflect over the millions of _slaves_ who worked for these same
poetical, flowing-robed, old senators and centurions? _Ma foi_! for a
Republic, you men of the United States have a finished education for any
thing but republicans. The great world-long struggle of a few to crush
and destroy the many, you learn profoundly; you know in all its
glittering cruelty and horror the entire history, and you weave from it
no god-like moral. Nothing astonished me more, during my residence in
the United States, than this same lack of drawing from the experience of
ages the deduction that you were the only really blessed and happy
nation in the world. Your educated men know less of the history of their
own country, and feel less its sublime teachings, than any other race of
men in the world. The instruction your young men receive at school and
college, in what way does it prepare them to become men fit for a
republic?'
'You are preaching a sermon,' said Caper.
'I am reciting the text; the sermon will be preached by the god of
battles to the roar of cannons and the crack of rifles, and I hope
you'll profit by it after you hear it.'
'Well,' interrupted Caper, 'what do you think of the English?'
'For a practical people, they are the greatest fools on the earth.
Thoroughly convinced at heart that they have no _esprit_, they rush in
to show the world that they have a superabundance of it.... It
interferes with their principles, no matter; it touches their pockets,
behold it is gone, and the cold, flat, dead reality stares you in the
face.'
'You are a Frenchman, Rocjean, and you do them injustice. Had Shakspeare
no _esprit_?' asked Caper.
'Shakspeare was a Frenchman,' replied Rocjean.
'We--ll!'
'Prove to me that he was not?'
'Prove to me that he was!'
'Certainly. The family of Jacques Pierre was as certainly French as
Raimond de Rocjean's. Jacques Pierre became Shakspeare at once, on
emigrating to England, and the 'Immortal Williams,' recognizing the
advantages to a poor man of living in a country where only the guineas
dance, took up his abode there and made the music for the money to jump
into his pockets.'
'Very ingenious. But in relation to Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson,
and--as we are in Italy--Rogers?'
'_Mon ami_, if you seriously prefer ice-cream and trifle to venison and
_dindon aux truffes_, choose. If either one of the four poets--I do not
include Rogers among poets--ever conceived in his mind, and then
produced on paper, a work, composed from his memory, of things terrible
in nature, more sublime than Dante's _Inferno_, I will grant you that he
had _esprit_ and imagination; otherwise, not. It is of the English as a
nation, however, that I make my broad and sweeping assertion, one that
was fixed in my mind yesterday, when I saw a well-dressed and
well-_educated_ Englishman deliberately pick up a stone, knock off the
head of a figure carved on a sarcophagus, found in one of those
newly-discovered tombs on the Via Latina, and put the broken head in his
pocket.... What man, with one grain of _esprit_ or imagination in his
head, would mutilate a work of ancient art, solely that he might possess
a piece of stone, when memory had already placed the entire work forever
in his mind. _Basta_! enough. Look at the effect of the sunlight on the
Albanian mountains. How proudly Mount Gennaro towers over the desolate
Campagna! Hallo! Von Bluhmen down there is in trouble. Come along.'
Throwing down his umbrella, under which he had been sitting in the
shade, Rocjean grasped the iron-pointed shaft, into which the handle of
the umbrella fitted, and, accompanied by Caper, rushed to the rescue of
the German. It was none too soon. While sketching, a shepherd, with a
very large flock of sheep, had gradually approached nearer and nearer
the spot where the artist was sitting at his task; his dogs, eight or
ten in number, fierce, shaggy, white and black beasts, with slouching
gait and pointed ears and noses, followed near him. As Von Bluhmen paid
no attention to them, the shepherd had wandered off; but one or two of
his dogs hung back, and the artist, dropping a pencil, suddenly stooped
to pick it up, when one of the savage creatures, thinking or
'instincting' that a stone was coming at him, rushed in, with loud
barking, to make mince-meat of the German noble. He seized his
camp-stool, and kept the dog at bay; but in a moment the whole pack were
down on him. Just at this instant, in rushed Rocjean, staff in hand,
beating the beasts right and left, and shouting to the shepherd, who was
but a short distance off, to call off his dogs. But the _pecorajo_,
evidently a cross-grained fellow, only blackguarded the artists, until
Rocjean, whose blood was up, swore if he did not call them off, he would
shoot them, pulling a revolver from his pocket and aiming at the most
savage dog as he spoke. The shepherd only blackguarded him the more,
and, just as the dog grabbed him by the pantaloons, Rocjean pulled the
trigger, and with foaming jaws and blood pouring from his mouth, the dog
fell dead at his feet. The shot scared the other dogs, who fled, tails
under. The shepherd ran for the entrance of a cave, and came out in a
minute with a single-barreled gun: coming down to within twenty feet of
Rocjean, he cocked it, and taking aim, screamed out: 'Give me ten
_scudi_ for that dog, or I fire.'
'Do you see that pistol?' said Rocjean to the shepherd, while he held up
his revolver, 'I have five loads in it yet.' And then advancing straight
toward him, with death in his eyes, he told him to throw down his gun,
or he was a dead man.... Down fell the gun. Rocjean picked it up.
'To-morrow,' said he, 'inquire of the chief of police in Rome for this
gun and for the ten _scudi_!'
They were never called for.
'You see,' said Caper, as, shortly after this little excitement, the
one-horse vetturo, bearing Caesar and his fortunes, hove in sight, and
they entered and returned to Rome; 'you see how charming it is to sketch
on the Campagna.'
'Very,' replied Von Bluhmen; 'but, my dear Rocjean, how long were you in
America?'
'Twelve years.'
'_Main Gott!_ they were not wasted.'
BACCHUS IN ROME.
It is not at all astonishing that a god who was born to the tune of
Jove's thunderbolts, should have escaped scot-free from the thunders of
the Vatican, and should prove at the present time one of the strongest
opponents to the latter kind of fire-works. We read, in the work of that
learned Jesuit, Galtruchius, that--
'Bacchus was usually painted with a mitre upon his head, an
ornament proper to Women. He never had other Priests but Satyrs
and Women; because the latter had followed him in great Companies
in his Journeys, crying, singing, and dancing continually. Titus
Livius relates a strange story of the Festivals of Bacchus in
Rome. Three times in a year, the Women of all qualities met in a
Grove called Simila, and there acted all sorts of Villainies;
those that appeared most reserved were sacrificed to Bacchus; and
that the cries of the ravished Creatures might not be heard, they
did howl, sing, and run up and down with lighted Torches.'
The May and October Festivals in Rome, at present, are substituted for
the Bacchanalian orgies, and are, of course, not so objectionable, in
many particulars, as the ancient ceremonies; still, no stranger in Rome,
at these times, should neglect to attend them. Caper entered Rome at
night, during the October festival, and the carriage-loads of Roman
women, waving torches and singing tipsily, forcibly reminded him that
the Bacchante still lived, and only needed a very little encouragement
to revive their ancient rites in full.
Sentimental travelers tell you that the Romans are a temperate
people--they have never seen the people. They have never seen the
delight that reigns in the heart of the _plebs_, when they learn that
the vintage has been good, and that good wine will be sold in Rome for
three or four cents _la foglietta_, (about a pint, American measure.)
They have never visited the _spacii di vini_, the wine-shops; they have
never heard of the murders committed when the wine was in and the wit
out. None of these things ever appear in the _Giornale di Roma_ or in
the _Vero Amico del_ _Popolo_, the only newspapers published in Rome.
'Roman newspapers,' said an intelligent Roman to Caper, 'were invented
to conceal the news.'
The first thing that a foreigner does on entering Rome is to originate a
derogatory name for the juice of the grape native to the soil, the _vino
nostrale_. He calls it, if red wine, red ink, pink cider, red tea; if
white wine, balm of gooseberries, blood of turnips, apple-juice,
alum-water, and slops for babes; finally ... if not killed off with a
fever, from drinking the adulterated foreign wines, spirits, and
liqueurs sold in the city, he takes kindly to the Roman wines, and does
not worry his great soul about them.
The truth is, that while other nations have done every thing to improve
wine-making, Italy follows the same careless way she has done for
centuries. Far more attention was bestowed on the grape, too, in ancient
times than now; and we read that vineyards were so much cultivated, to
the neglect of agriculture, that, under Domitian, an edict forbade the
planting of any new vineyards in Italy.
One brilliant morning, in October, Caper, who was then living in a town
perched atop of a conical mountain, descended five or six miles on foot,
and passed a day in a vineyard, in order to see the vintage. The vines
were trained on trees or on sticks of cane, and the peasant-girls and
women were busy picking the great bunches of white or purple grapes,
which were thrown into copper _conche_ or jars; these _conche_, when
filled, were carried on the head to a central spot where they were
emptied on fern leaves, placed on the ground to receive them. And from
these piles, the wooden barrels of the mules returning from the town
were filled with the grapes which were carried up there to be pressed.
The grape-crop had been so affected by the _malattia_ or blight, that
the yield being small, the fruit to an extent was not pressed in the
vineyards, and the juice only brought up to the town in goat-skins as
usual; but the fruit itself was carried up, by those having the proper
places, and was pressed in tubs in the _cantine_ or rooms on the
ground-floor, where the wine is kept. Across the huge saddles of the
mules, they swung a couple of truncated cone-shaped barrels, and filled
them with grapes; these were tumbled into tubs, ranged in the _cantina_,
good, bad and indifferent fruit all together; and when enough were
poured in, in jumped the _pistatore d'uve_ or grape-presser, with bare
legs and feet, and began pressing and stamping, until the juice ran out
in a tolerable stream. This juice was then poured into a headless
hogshead, and when more than half-full, they piled on the grapeskins and
stones and stems that had undergone the pressure, until the hogshead was
full to the top. A weight was then placed over all. In twenty days,
fermentation having taken place, they drew from the hogshead the new
wine, which was afterward clarified with whites of eggs.
In this rough-and-ready way, the common wine is made. Without selection,
all grapes, ripe, unripe, and rotten, sweet and sour, are mashed up
together, hurriedly and imperfectly pressed, and the wine is sent to
market, to sell for what it will bring. Having thus seen it made, let us
see it disposed of.
Of all the monuments to Bacchus, in Rome, the one near the pyramid of
Caius Cestius, and still nearer the Protestant burying-ground, is by far
the most noticeable. Jealous of the lofty manner in which it lifts its
head above the surrounding fields and walls of the city, the church has
seen fit to crown its head with a cross, which it seems inclined to
shake off. This small mountain of a monument is conical in shape, and is
composed entirely of broken crockery; hence its name, _Testaccio_. In
its crockery sides, they have found a certain coolness and evenness of
temperature exactly suited to the storage of wine, and to maturing it;
hence, all around the mountain are deep vaults, filled with red and
white wines, working themselves up for a fit state to enter into the joy
and the gullets of the Roman _minenti_.
If the reader of this sketch is at all of a philosophical frame of mind,
and should ever visit Rome, it is the writer's advice that, in the first
place, having learned Italian enough, and in the second place, having
his purse fairly filled--silver will do--he should, during the month of
October, on a holyday, go out to Monte Testaccio alone, or at least in
company with some one who knows enough to let him he alone when he wants
to be with somebody else, and then and there fraternizing for a few
hours with the Roman _plebs_, let him at his ease see what he shall see.
Then shall he sit him down at the door of the _Antica Osteria di
Cappanone_, at the rough wood table, on a rougher wooden bench; talk
right and left, with tailors, shoemakers, artists, soldiers, and God
knows what, drinking the cool, amber-colored wine of Monte Rotonda,
gleaming brightly in the sunlight that dashes through his glass, and so
cheerfully winning the good-will of them all--and of some of the young
women who are with them--that he shall find himself at some future time
either the sheath for a Roman knife, or the recipient of a great deal of
affection, and the purchaser of indefinite _bottiglie_ of _vino
nostrale_.
In his ardent pursuit of natural art, Caper believed it his duty to hunt
up the picturesque wherever it could be found, and it was while pursuing
this duty, in company with Rocjean, that he found himself at Monte
Testaccio, one October day, and there made his _debut_. After a luncheon
of raw ham, bread, cheese, sausage, and a _bottiglia_ of wine, they
ascended the mountain, and sitting down at the foot of the cross, they
quietly smoked and communed with nature unreservedly.
Crumbling old walls of Rome that lay below them; wild, uncultivated
Campagna; purple range of mountains, snow-tipped; thousand-legged,
ruined aqueducts; distant sea, but faintly revealed through the vail of
haze-bounded horizon; yellow Tiber, flowing along crumbling banks; dome
of St. Peter's, rising above the hill that shuts the Vatican from sight;
pyramid of Caius Cestius; Protestant burying-ground, with the wind
sighing through the trees a lullaby over the graves of Shelley and
Keats; distant view of Rome, slumbering artistically, and not
manufacturingly, in the sunlight of that morning--ye taught one man of
the two wild hopes for Rome of the future.
At the foot of the mountain, and adjoining the Protestant
burying-ground, there is a powder-magazine. Here a French soldier,
acting as sentry, paced his weary round. It was not long before a couple
of Roman women passed him. They saluted him; he saluted them. They
passed behind the magazine. The sentry, with the courtesy which
distinguishes Frenchmen, evidently desired to make his compliments and
pay his addresses to the _dames_. How could this be done? Before long,
two of his compatriots, evidently out for a holiday, passed him. He
beckoned to one of them, who at once took his gun and turned sentry,
while the relieved guard flew to display to the _dames_ his national
courtesy. Before Caper had time to smoke a second cigar, the soldier
returned to duty, and the one who had relieved him sprung to pay his
addresses. During the two hours that Caper and Rocjean studied the
scenery, guard was relieved four times.
'Ah!' said Rocjean, 'we are a gallant nation. Let us therefore descend
and mingle with what the high-minded John Bulls call 'the lower
orders.''
Down they went, and at the first table they came to, they found their
shoemaker, the Signore Eugenio Calzolajo, artist in leather, seated with
three Roman women. They all resembled each other like three pins. The
eldest one held a baby, the _caro bambino_, in her arms; she was
probably twenty years old. The next one was not over eighteen; while
the youngest had evidently not passed her sixteenth year.
The artist in leather saluted Caper and Rocjean with the title of
_Illustrissimi_, (they both paid their bills punctually,) and, as he saw
that the other tables were full, he at once made room for them,
introducing them to his wife and her two sisters. Caper, who saw that
the party had just arrived, and had not as yet had time to order any
thing from the waiters, told them that the day being his birthday, it
was customary among the North-American Indians always to celebrate it
with a feast of roast dogs and bottled porter; but, as neither of these
articles were to be found at Monte Testaccio, he should command what
they had; and arresting a waiter, he ordered such a supply of food and
wine, that the eyes of the three Roman girls opened wide as owls'. Their
tongues were all unloosened at once, as if by magic, and Caper had the
satisfaction of seeing that for what a bottle of Hotel Champaigne costs
in the United States, he had provided joy unadulterated, and happy
memories for many days, for several descendants of the Caesars.
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