Mrs. G. Gretton

Comfortless bed-room—National fear of water—Waste of time—Occupations of the different members of the family—Volunnia's sitting-room—Her acquirements.

When the marchesa was gone, I proceeded to take a survey of my apartment, which, had I not resolutely set aside all comparison with England and English customs, would have been mentally noted down as exceedingly uncomfortable. There was no fireplace or stove, no carpet on the stone floor, no curtains to the bed, at the head of which was placed a bÉnitier for holy water, a palm that had been blessed at Easter, and a little print of some saint. The rest of the furniture consisted of an old-fashioned inlaid chest of drawers, surmounted by a small looking-glass; four walnut-wood chairs, with cane seats; and a washing-stand, or rather tripod, just holding the basin, and beneath it a very small jug. But what redeemed the otherwise meagre aspect of the room was the profusion of oil-paintings, in massive gilt frames, with which the walls were closely covered. Of many, the colours were too darkened by time, or they were hung too high, to enable me to make out their subjects; but, judging from those I could more easily distinguish, I concluded the collection related either to the martyrdoms of saints, in their most varied form of suffering—one picture especially quite disturbed me, St Apollonia kneeling, a tray full of bleeding teeth in one outstretched hand, while she clasps the instrument employed in their extraction to her breast with the other—or to scenes from mythology, singularly inappropriate—all evidently belonging to the school of Bologna, which, diffused by the numerous pupils of the Caracci, is the predominant one in the Marche.

The meagreness of the lavatory arrangements, I confess, however, no pictorial embellishments could redeem; and I made interest with the good-humoured girl who speedily came to offer her services, to bring me that British desideratum, a tub, which for the period of my stay should be considered exclusively as mine. She was much puzzled at first at this request.

“Is the signorina ill?—has she taken cold, that she wishes, con rispetto parlando, to have a foot-bath?”

It is a curious but authentic fact, that in the middle and south of Italy feet or foot gear are never spoken of without a prefatory apologetic expression, such as, “saving your presence,” “with all respect,” and so forth. The most inadmissible topics, to our way of thinking, are unblushingly discussed, but an Italian will pause in a story to ask your pardon for mentioning his boots.

“No, I am not ill,” I said, laughing; “but it is the custom of the English to be very fond of washing.”

“Madonna mia! signorina! Be careful. Too much may disagree with you. Shall I bring you a little white wine to mix with the water? The Marchesa Silvia always does so when the children require to be washed. The baby is sometimes bathed in broth.”

I was so amused I could scarcely decline with becoming gravity.

“At least for your face, signorina: with that fine complexion”—remember, reader, her mission as a waiting-maid was to flatter—“you surely do not risk spoiling it with water. A little brodo lungo (weak broth) of lean veal, every particle of fat carefully skimmed off—that is what many ladies in Macerata use; it softens, and yet nourishes the skin. Others have a custom of spreading a handkerchief out at night to imbibe the early dew, and then gently rub their faces with it, soaked as it is with the cooling moisture; but that can only be done in summer. Then there is milk just warm from the cow—some prefer it to anything else. Would the signorina at least try that?”

But as I was deaf to all her persuasions, the abigail at last left me to repose, having first inquired whether she was to bring me a cup of caffÈ nero at seven in the morning, according to the custom of some members of the family; or whether I would prefer not being disturbed, or at least not breaking my fast until ten, when caffÈ e latte would be served to me in my room, as it was to all the padroni: which latter alternative I willingly acquiesced in.

It is difficult to give an account of the occupations of people who are never occupied, or, at best, have so slender an amount of employment, so few interesting pursuits, that what they contrive to expand into an entire day's avocations, would not engage two hours with a person to whom the economy of time was a precious consideration. The healthful excitement of a day divided between intellectual employment and active bodily exercise—the eagerness with which every spare moment is husbanded, as if time were wanting for what it is thought needful should be done; all this is comparatively unknown amongst a class which has found, by bitter experience, that energy of mind and pre-eminence in learning are dangerous gifts, tormenting, or even fatal to their possessor.

Italians are not great sleepers in general, and several members of the family, after the early cup of black coffee, would be dawdling about their rooms in dressing-gown and slippers, though not visible till after the second refection of cafÉ au lait which was served to me, with a little round plateful of cakes, on a waiter of silver, richly chased, but rarely cleaned. Amongst the early ones were papÀ, who rose with the lark to pursue, barnacles on nose, his legal researches; the marchesa, who carried on a tolerable amount of letter-writing with political malcontents—the manoeuvres and harmless intrigues attending which were an indispensable stimulus to her existence—though, for the sake of Alessandro, as well as to avoid the unpleasantness of banishment or sequestration, she took care to eschew directly compromising herself or any of her correspondents; and Silvia, engaged from morning to night with the children, who were bribed with sweetmeats to be quiet, deluded by promises of visionary rewards into submission when rebellious, and taught to wreak their vengeance on the chairs and tables whenever they gave themselves a knock. Besides the two small individuals I had seen at supper to claim their mother's care, there was a most important personage wholly dependent on her—an uninteresting infant of eight months old, just released from his swaddling-clothes, and already attired in high frocks, long sleeves, and trowsers; the light costume peculiar to English babies, technically termed “short coats,” being looked upon, it may interest British mothers to know, as exceedingly incorrect.

As to the others, they appeared at different hours, Oliverotto the latest: he never showed himself till noon, when, dressed in a very elaborate morning costume, he sauntered out to the caffÈ to hear the news, play a game at billiards, and get an appetite for dinner. The good Alessandro always went to far due passi, and have a little conversazione before three o'clock also, but then he had been busy for two or three hours in his scrittojo with the fattore or bailiff, who was his prime-minister in the complicated family concerns. The revenues of landed proprietors in this country, as I have already explained in detail, being derived from the division of the produce of their farms with the peasants by whom they are cultivated, much vigilance is required in looking after the different contadini, and ascertaining that each one sends in the padrone's moiety of wine, oil, wheat, and Indian corn, without more peculation than is inevitable; which done, there is the care of disposing of the stores of grain and other articles of consumption, which, after retaining what is necessary for the household, the possidente sells to traders, either for home supply or foreign exportation.

According to her promise, Volunnia came to fetch me, that I might be introduced in form to her own apartments, which were on the second floor. On our way to them, we passed through the two saloons and large entrance-hall appropriated to the marchesa, which had evidently been the state-rooms of the palazzo in its palmy days, and in their general arrangements resembled others of the same description with which I had become familiar in Ancona: gilded sofas and arm-chairs, covered with faded damask, stationed immovably along the walls, a profusion of pictures and carved consoles, embellished by tall mirrors. In the one, where she told me her sister-in-law habitually received, there were a few modern additions, some light chairs, a round table, strewn with such newspapers as she could contrive to get together, and a number of little squares of carpet placed in array before the grim, high-backed seats, that seemed to look frowningly on these tokens of that modern degeneracy which shrank from contact with the marble floor whereon, in their day, the feet of the best and fairest had contentedly reposed.

Volunnia's sitting-room contained tokens of her tastes and attainments, which, to do her justice, were of no common order, especially when it is borne in mind how much difficulty she must have overcome in acquiring the accomplishments of which a piano, or rather spinet, a harp, and a number of paintings on ivory, gave the indication—to say nothing of the severer studies that a score or two of Latin and old French and English authors, on a dusty book-shelf, revealed to my gaze.

After she had played a sonata from Paesiello, and taken down some of her paintings, framed in those circles of ebony familiar to our childhood as containing effigies of old gentlemen in bag-wigs and white frills, for my approving inspection; after reading aloud a page of English to show me her proficiency, and obtaining a promise that I would give her a lesson every day while I remained there; after permitting me to turn over her books in the vain hope of finding anything more modern than Young's Night Thoughts and the Spectator in the English department, or Pascal and Madame de SÉvignÉ in the French, while she proffered, as some light reading in Italian, Alfieri's translation of Sallust's Conspiracy of Catiline—after, I say, all these preliminaries, Volunnia laid aside her homage to the Sacred Nine, and, betaking herself to a minute inspection of my toilet, seemed more intent upon a sacrifice to the graces, than the singular nÉgligÉ of her attire had at first led me to anticipate.

Having made her very happy by the assurance that she might have whatever she liked in my wardrobe copied for her own wear, she took me into her bed-room to see an elaborate bonnet that had just come from Rome, which she intended to appear in at Easter. As she tried it on complacently, the droll effect of the smart coiffure over the dingy wrapper and coarse woollen shawl pinned round her throat to conceal all sorts of deficiencies, irresistibly reminded me of Miss Charity Pecksniff in the wedding-bonnet and dimity bed-gown. The one in question was a bright yellow, and Volunnia asked me, as she adjusted it before the glass, whether it did not become her complexion, which, she had been told, was quite Spanish in its tints.

Of course I did not disturb the harmless conceit, and we went down-stairs to turn over my stock of finery as lovingly as possible.