Palazzo Rusticucci, November 28, 1898.

To-day being the last Saturday in the month, Fra Antonio, the begging friar, called for his obolo. I surprised him in the act of offering a shabby horn snuff-box to Filomena. She had taken a pinch daintily between a finger and thumb, and was folding it in a sheet of my best Irish linen note paper.

“Una presa di tabaco per Sora Nena (A pinch of snuff for Mrs. Nena),” she explained. Poor Nena, little withered old woman, the servants’ drudge, it doesn’t matter about her habits! Filomena, eighteen, rosy as Aurora,—so pretty that young men make excuses to call at our old green door to see her open it,—feared the shadow of suspicion that the snuff was for her own use! Snuff is still taken in Italy by the old and the old fashioned: it has the sanction of the clergy. In Rome, it is thought hardly seemly for a priest to smoke, they nearly all use snuff; indeed I have seen a priest take a sly pinch while officiating at the altar. Snuff is the only luxury our monk Antonio knows. Do you blame J. for sometimes keeping back a little of the money which we ought to give the frate for the general fund of the brotherhood, and investing it in a packet of snuff for the old fellow’s particular comfort? I do not.

“Frate,” I said, “why did you become a monk?”

“Signora, the Madonna herself bade me take the vows.”

“You lead a happy life at the monastery?”

“Like others I have my troubles, mainly rheumatism.” (His poor old veined feet looked cold in their sandals.)

“About those vows, now, how many are there?”

“They are three,” he counted them off on the knots of his rope girdle, “poverty, obedience, chastity. Circumstances might conceivably release me from the first and the second, but believe me, Signora,” he fixed an earnest, rheumy eye upon me as he said it, “not even the Holy Father himself could absolve me from the third vow.”

“S’intende (One understands),” Filomena assented.

J. says we women folk all make a great fuss over the frate; during the time old Santi (formerly the valet of Crawford pÈre, ever since more or less dependent on the family) was with us the frate was rather snubbed. Santi, for many years the majordomo of a rich monsignore, scorned our dear Fra Antonio. He always forgot to serve the modest gift the old monk brought us every month, a head of barba di cappucini (capuchin’s beard) a sort of curly lettuce the monks raise in their garden. Santi was a character for you: he had an unctuous ecclesiastical manner suggestive of sacerdotal ceremonial. When he passed a plate of steaming fettuccie fatt’ in casa (ribbons made in the house, home-made macaroni) one was reminded of an acolyte handling a smoking censer. He was not with us long; though he was as handsome as a king, with the most distinguished manners, we were relieved to be rid of him; he who had served cardinals and princes of the Church seemed out of place waiting on our small table. I have recognized Santi’s sacerdotal manner in Cardinal Rampolla’s servants and in the attendants of other churchmen we have visited.

Cardinal Rampolla lives over there at the Vatican. The day we called on him we merely had to walk across the Square of St. Peter and knock at his door, as it were! We were astonished at being taken up to his apartment in an elevator—an elevator at the Vatican seems an anachronism! Living not a stone’s throw from the Vatican we are strangely aware of the mighty heart of the Catholic Church, and have grown sensitive to its pulsations, whether stirred by events at the Philippines or in the New York elections! Cardinal Rampolla is in constant attendance upon the Pope. A friend of ours once invited him to his villa outside Rome.

“It would rest your Eminence to get away for a few hours!” he urged.

“AimÈ, magari potessi (If I only could)!” sighed the cardinal. Our friend says the sigh and look showed a depth of weariness he had never suspected in the dark energetic man at the helm. They say the cardinal has only slept outside the Vatican once since the day the Pope appointed him secretary of state years ago! That was on the night of his mother’s death; the next day he came back to the cold palace with its hundreds of rooms inhabited by four thousand men and not one woman or child. I often wonder about the dusting of those endless halls, chapels, and suites of apartments!

Do you suppose that vast hive of celibates is the magnet that draws to Rome its hoards of codgers and solitaries? I assure you their habits may be studied better here than anywhere in the world. Though many of the Roman codgers are more or less connected with the Vatican, there are scores who have no relations with it, Protestants, Greek Orthodox, Hebrews, and the like.

Rome must have been more picturesque when the Pope took his airing on the Pincio, instead of walking and driving inside the walls of the Vatican garden, as he does now. In those days the whole populace went down on their knees whenever he appeared. Then the cardinals wore their splendid vermilion robes every day: they must have made a joyful note of color in the landscape! Now they wear sad black gowns, save at a festa or some special function. Driving out into the Campagna on a fine afternoon, one is almost sure to pass a sober, closed carriage drawn by a pair of fat black horses, waiting by the roadside; a little farther on, one meets some cardinal walking with his secretary. It is not etiquette for a cardinal to walk in the streets of Rome while their head remains the Prisoner of the Vatican; they must drive about to do their errands, and get their airing outside the walls. Isn’t that fascinating? But in society the cardinals often wear their pretty bright robes.

At the Haywoods’ the other day, a cardinal came to tea; our host and hostess met him at the entrance, each carrying a lighted waxen torch. All the guests (except heretics like ourselves) courtesied, kotowed, and kissed his ring. It is not etiquette for a lady to be decolletÉe when a churchman is to be of the party. It is just these endless traditions—“links with the past”—which make Roman society to us shadowless-moneyed-above-board republicans so absorbingly interesting! Social life here is rich in shadows and lights, full of color and imagination; no wonder the novelists never tire of using it for a background.

Cardinal Hohenlohe, a true prince of the Church, keeps high state in the historic Villa d’Este, among his wonderful cypresses, fountains, terraces, and frescoed casinos. He surrounds himself with artists and musicians, pays little heed to any gentle hint from the Vatican, and is one of the most interesting persons one can see: his independence—he is said to be a Rosminian—is due to his position as well as to his character; he is of the Prussian royal family, cousin to the Emperor William, and is possessed of a free and liberal spirit not easy to control. The Hohenlohes are older than the Hohenzollerns, and a friend of the cardinal’s once said to a friend of mine, that his Eminence in a moment of wrath, for some reason or other, cried out: “Ugh! Hohenzollern! They once were considered highly honored with the post of holding the stirrup for the head of my house.” Was not that nice and spiteful?

The cardinal’s banishment from Tivoli was extremely diverting. Two English noblewomen of high rank, in Rome for the winter, wished to meet all the distinguished personages possible. A dinner was arranged for them by Baron Blanc, to which Cardinal Hohenlohe was invited. After all the other guests had assembled, the company was thrown into a flutter by the arrival of Crispi. Instead of Hohenlohe’s withdrawing (the usual etiquette when exalted Black and White personages meet by chance in society) they all went merrily in to dinner together. There were no end of toasts, Prince and Patriot pledged each other in Baron Blanc’s best wine. Mr. Stillman, who was of the company, remarked that it was pleasant to see Eminences and “Eccellenzas” drinking each other’s health. A neighbor at table whispered to the dauntless Stillman, “How imprudent you are!” (As if he was ever anything else!)

Other people were proved to have been imprudent. The next day the great prince cardinal was summoned to an interview with the Pope. What passed between them gossip does not say, but the cardinal packed his bag and left that afternoon for Perugia, where he passed three months in exile. Another imprudence of the cardinal’s was his lending the Villa d’Este for a political meeting in the campaign of Guido Baccelli (son of the famous physician) who was at that time running for parliament. The story of the poisoned figs used by Zola in his novel “Rome” was founded on a sad incident at the Villa d’Este. Some poisoned food meant for the cardinal was eaten by his steward, who died, I have been told, before his very eyes.[3]

Codgers, both clerical and lay, are usually shy; you must not let them know they are under observation if you hope to learn anything of their habits. In spite of this, they are distinctly social and gregarious, while the solitary lives and often dies alone. I asked one old gentleman codger—an American—who often drops in on his way to his browsing ground, the Vatican Library—what road first led him to Rome.

“The via vegetaria,” he said; “Rome has the finest vegetable market in the world.” He may be right, I certainly know no city where vegetables are so cheap, various, and good, but it seemed an odd reason for settling here.

“Artichokes,” he went on, “are no dearer than potatoes; as to finocchio, it is cheaper than bread.”

“Why could we not raise finocchio at home?” I asked.

“Wait till we grow poor and thrifty,” he said, “till we drink sheep’s milk, eat capretto (kid) and miscellaneous fungi; then we shall find the way to turn wild American fennel into domestic Italian finocchi.”

Finocchi is a root something like celery; it has the same crisp crunchiness, though it tastes rather like aniseed; the Romans eat it raw, we prefer it braised and served with black butter. Why not try to raise it in your garden? If you succeed in introducing a new vegetable, you will acquire merit in the eyes of every dinner-ordering wretch in the land. Fennel and kid. Two new dishes! There is a chance for you to reach every heart between Maine and Alaska!

Poor old Mr. X—— died the other day; I shall miss him dreadfully. He was the only snob variety of the genus codger in Rome; they are rare anywhere, the codger’s social aspect being generally mild and mildewed. I once asked him what had brought him to Rome (he came here twenty-five years ago with two marriageable daughters).

“The fact that it is respectable to be idle here, and that one finds the best society.” He said “the best society” in the sort of voice with which raw and crude converts mention the Madonna or one of what the Romans call i soliti santi (the same old saints). His daughter—she married Prince Q——, is a particularly nice woman; the comfort the old gentleman took in his grandchildren’s titles was pleasing to behold. At fifty he sat solidly down to enjoy the pleasures of “good society,” and the occupation of collecting engraved gems. That old law of compensation, you know, which makes some men after an idle youth leap with fiery ardor to embrace hard work, was reversed for him. Having grubbed all his youth he had the luck (it is rare) to find out how much fun there may be in play, after all!

I went to see the Princess Q—— soon after the old gentleman’s death. She told me something of his last days. “The night before my father died he made me promise for the twentieth time that I would send his body home. I asked him why he was so set on the idea. He rose right up in bed and said in a loud voice, ‘I can’t bear to think that on the last day I might rise from the dead along with these damned Italians!’”

Wasn’t that a death-bed revelation for you? The old man had been a New York newsboy, had gone West, made his pile in rum; then sunk the shop for good and all. He never talked about his early life, or where he came from; he bragged of his daughter’s fine acquaintances, of his son-in-law’s manners—but when his hour was come, he wished to lie in the consecrated ground of his native land!

Never shall I forget the only visit I ever received from the prince of solitaries, poor old Galli, the mad painter. He came in with his dauntless, threadbare air, made a sweeping bow, and paid me an elaborate compliment. His business, however, was plainly not with me.

“I have come, Signorino Jacca, to ask the favor of a few old clothes.”

He said it in such a spirited fashion that we felt the favor was conferred rather than asked. I wish I could make you see Galli! He has the hall mark of genius stamped upon him. Eyes like live coals, hair—when J. first remembers him blue-gray, now a rich silver—worn long, growing in masses with big waves, like the head of Zeus at the Vatican. He tries in every way to keep up the pace of his youth; instead of walking he shambles along at a funny bear’s trot; “having less time than I once had,” he said to J., “I cannot afford to walk slowly like some people of my age, so I am obliged to run.”

Galli is a Milanese, a descendant of those blond barbarians from the North, the Lunghe Barbe. There is something ardent and free about him, a starriness of the eyes, a breezy, untrammelled quality of mind which suggests some far-off Teutonic ancestor. Among the dead level of the people one meets, Galli stands out a marked man. As to the madness—was Ludwig of Bavaria really mad, or a poet born in the wrong place? Mad or sane, Galli is interesting: once you recognize that a man cannot be both ordinary and extraordinary, cannot possess common sense and uncommon sense, the vagaries of genius cease to annoy!

Whenever I hear the artists talking of Galli, I listen and try to remember what they say: some day his history must be written; the material will be found in the memories of people who knew him, not “in the files”; he is not one the journalists delight to honor.

No one seems to know Galli’s age. He might have been born in 1819—so many remarkable people were born that year that I often wonder if there is not something in astrology, after all. When he was young, Galli went to England with good letters of introduction. He was soon spoken of as a painter “with the right stuff in him—imagination, ideality, the artistic temperament,” all the rest of it. As he was a well-bred man, he had a social as well as an artistic success, and became a fashionable portrait painter. He played his little part in the fascinating drama of the London life of his day. It must have been a wonderful time, when all that was best in the English race came to the surface. Sympathy for Italy was at its height, the great scheme for the unification was growing silently and strongly. England, the mighty ally, was helping Italy prepare for the struggle. Looking back at the England of that day, one seems to see a whole army of Raleighs spreading their cloaks before the feet of the young Queen Victoria. All England seems to have shared in the youth, the hope, the courage of the Queen. With Galli, the romantic Italian, the universal enthusiasm became personal; he fell in love, not with the sovereign, but with the woman, which makes all the difference.

He began to neglect his work, to spend all his time and money in hansom cabs, pursuing her whenever she went abroad. The police investigated his case, found him to be harmless and respectable, were content to keep an eye upon him, until that day when he tried to drive up to the private entrance of Buckingham Palace where the Queen was living. That was going too far even for the patience of Scotland Yard. Galli was arrested and given twenty-four hours to get out of England or into Bedlam. He left for the continent the same day, came to Rome, hired for his studio an old building, once the orange house of the Palazzo Borghese. It is built under a cliff, from the top of which ivy and madre selva (mother of the wood—we call it clematis) hang over in trailing masses. One day a large snail from the ivy crawled through a broken pane of the window to the studio wall, down the wall, and up again, leaving a damp, slimy track which formed something like the letter V. A friend coming in surprised Galli standing staring at the wall with open mouth and eyes.

“Why, man, what are you looking at?”

“At the letter.”

“What letter?”

“The royal letter V.”

“What an odd chance!”

“You call it chance”—he smiled mysteriously.

“What do you call it?”

“It is the sign.”

“Che pazzia (What madness)! what do you believe that little animal to be?”

“I believe what I believe, amico mio. The eyes of affection see what other eyes cannot see. It is a miracle, if you will, not more wonderful than others. The spirit of my august lady, the sovereign of England, has taken the shape of quella lumaca benedetta (that blessed snail)!”

Galli tamed the royal snail, kept it in cotton wool and rose-leaves, fed it on tender green leaves till it died,—when he forgot the whole matter.

Soon after J. came to Rome as an art student. Galli was “discovered” by some of the Spanish artists, then the most powerful group of painters in Rome. For the moment Galli’s only home was a large tree outside the Porta Salaria. Some boards laid between the branches made his bed; he shared the tree with a flock of friendly turkeys. He had been fairly comfortable through the summer and autumn; with December came the fierce tramontana, blowing away the leafy walls of his house. The artists—they are the most charitable people in the world—clubbed together, hired a room for Galli in the Via Flaminia—fancy the real old Flaminian way—and fitted it up nicely as a bedroom and studio. One bitter winter evening J. and Villegas—they also had studios in the Via Flaminia—on their way home chanced to look up at his window. Outside on an iron balcony stood Galli, with nothing on but a thin cotton nightshirt.

“In the name of Bacchus, what are you doing?” roared the great Villegas, who had borne a large share of the expense of rescuing Galli from the turkey roost. Galli nodded, and smiled down upon them.

“Ombre vivo,” cried the fiery Spaniard, “go in, or you will take your death.” Galli only smiled the more and shook his head. The two below rushed upstairs and dragged him indoors.

“Don’t disturb yourselves, amici miei,” Galli explained, “my room, as you perceive, is cold, my bed has no blankets; I find if I stand out on the balcony in my shirt for a few moments, my room seems warm afterwards by comparison.”

Not long after this, Galli came up to J.’s table one night at the CafÉ Greco (the haunt of artists). “Caro Signorino Jacca, you see many Americani; they are all immensely rich, as is known to you. For charity’s sake, sell a picture of mine to one of them.”

The hint was taken, a charming picture of Galli’s was unearthed (a small Madonna); the purchaser, an American girl, found. The day after the sale J. went to the CafÉ Greco, where he knew he should find Galli, and with the inexperience of youth handed him the price of the picture, one hundred and fifty francs. If ever a poor painter-man needed one hundred and fifty francs, J. says that it was Galli at that moment. His boots were so broken that as he walked his toes came in view between the uppers and the lowers with every step; his trousers were deeply fringed about the ankle; his shirt was without a collar, he wore his inevitable long overcoat—buttoned up to conceal what was not under it—and a shabby silk hat; whatever his fortunes he was never seen in any but a top hat; J. thinks it was the last trace of the coxcombry of his London youth.

“Ecco il denaro (Here is the money)!” said J. Galli took it with a gay, swaggering air:

“Grazie tante sai? Ci vedremo, caro Jacca (So many thanks, till we meet again).” With that he plunged across the street to the shop of the King’s hatter opposite in the Corso, where he bought a silk hat of the latest English model. He next trotted up to the Piazza di Spagna, got into the first cab on the stand, and engaged all the other cabbies to follow him: “Drive to the tomba di Nerone; you others, do me the favor to follow.”

The tomba di Nerone is a ruin outside the walls of Rome which the archÆologists say has nothing to do with Nero and never was a tomb. After they had gone a short distance Galli cried, “Halt.” The procession stopped short, Galli got out.

“What has happened, padrone mio?” asked the cabman.

“Nothing at all; you may now take your place at the end of the cue!” He dismissed the man with a wave of the hand and got into the second cab. Riding in this progressive fashion, by the time they reached the tomba di Nerone, Galli had ridden by turn in all the carriages.

“With your help, my friends,” he said to the cabbies, “I will climb to the top of the tomb;” two of them boosted him up. “If you will listen, I will tell you some things about the great Nero you never heard before. He was, after all, an artist; the historians have been too hard upon him, as we artists ought not to forget.”

Perhaps Galli’s long speech glorifying Nero set the present fashion for the whitewashing of CÆsars generally! The cabmen squatted round on their hunkers, smoked their pipes and listened, for the enlightenment of future forestieri—till Galli scrambled down from the rostrum, and jumped into the first cab, crying,—

“Andiamo! to the Piazza di Spagna, as we came!”

At the CafÉ Greco that evening Galli, penniless but proud of his adventure, borrowed of Signorino Jacca twenty centesimi (four cents) to buy a piece of bread and a few pickled gherkins, which he brought back in a piece of paper and munched contentedly for his supper.

Remembering Galli’s talent for likenesses, J. once persuaded a pretty young American girl to sit to him for her portrait. When they arrived at the studio for the first sitting, the room was so littered with rubbish that there was hardly space to turn round; tiers of vile-smelling old petroleum cases were piled against the wall. “What on earth have you got in those boxes, Galli?” J. demanded.

“They contain my invention,” said Galli.

“May one ask its nature?”

“Altro! it is the model of a bridge to cross the Atlantic from Italy to the United States.”

It was a cold day; to warm the room for his sitter, Galli had picked up a few bits of charcoal, which smouldered in a frying-pan without a handle (his only stove) in the middle of the studio. While Galli was finding a chair for the lady, J. discovered seven rat traps, each inhabited by a large family of mice.

“They disturbed me so much, scrabbling about and gnawing things,” Galli explained, “that I was obliged to catch them.”

“If the mice disturb you, why do you keep them? You have not the heart to kill them? Tell the janitor to put the traps in a pail of water; it will be over in a minute,” said the practical American girl.

“Drown them—my only companions? See—their beautiful little ears are veined like the petal of a flower, look at their bright eyes, their dear little feet.” He held the cage up to the light. “They know me, they depend upon me for their food!”

He took half a roll—J. says it was half of Galli’s own breakfast—from his pocket and began crumbling it into one of the traps.

“Show us what you have been painting lately, Signor Galli,” said the young lady. The old man moved his easel into the light.

“This is my latest picture.”

J. says that American girl showed real breeding; she neither laughed nor cried at the thing Galli uncovered. If it was not a picture it was the work of a man of rare imagination. The divine spark had kindled at a moment when no tools were at hand. His credit on that almost inexhaustible fund, the generosity of his brother artists, had long been overdrawn. His friends were tired of supplying canvas, paints, brushes. Galli lacking everything, possessed only of the idea, could not rest till it was expressed. He had cut off the tail of his gray flannel shirt, stretched it for a canvas, found a piece of old blue cardboard, pasted it on for the sky; he had dried lettuce leaves and applied them for the middle distance, and used for the detail of the foreground bits of dried water-melon rind and other such rubbish. The “picture” was a thing to draw tears from a stone!

The rumor of the invention in the petroleum boxes suggested to some of the younger artists a plan by which fresh interest might be aroused for Galli’s benefit. They asked him to prepare a lecture explaining the theory of his bridge. Tickets were sold and quite a large audience gathered at the Artists’ Club to hear him. When he appeared some of the more boisterous spirits began to guy him; this nettled the old fellow:

“You perhaps think this invention of mine an impossibility,” he began. “To show you how simple it is to get to America without going on one of those abominable steamers, I will explain to you how to get to the moon. You all know that the moon is una femina (a female)? Well, all females are devoured by curiosity. Only let all the people upon the earth assemble together in one place, and the moon will observe that something out of the common is going on down here: she will approach nearer and nearer to see what it is all about, until she gets so near that all we shall have to do is to jump over on her and then she will not be able to get away.”

[Galli’s last commission was to decorate one of the cheap Roman cafÉs. Villegas says that it was a wonderful piece of work, full of power and originality. Not long after it was finished some smug swine of a painter (one of those poor craftsmen who have cheapened the name of Italian art) persuaded the proprietor to let him paint out Galli’s work and redecorate the cafÉ with his own vulgar trash. This broke the old man’s heart; soon after he was found dead in his studio lying between two chairs. It was inevitable that he should come to some such end, and a thousand times better for him to drop in harness than to wear out the years in idleness. Unlike my friend, the newsboy-rumseller-grandfather of princes, his only joy was in labor, in striving to express to others the beauty that possessed his soul. Is it not by this sign that the elect are known?]