Mrs. G. Gretton

On the study of music in the Marche—Neglect of painting—The young artist—His hopeless love—His jealousy—His subsequent struggles and constancy.

I must now devote a little space to speak of the cultivation of the fine arts in the Marche; which, judging by the limited patronage and still scantier remuneration accorded to their professors, would seem to be considered by many as dangerous as reading to a maiden's peace of mind. Of late years, however, music enters much more frequently into the Italian programme of female education. Though not yet introduced into the native convents, it is taught at the SacrÉ Coeur at Loretto, and in many private families, happily as yet with more discrimination than in England—the absence of voice or ear being considered insurmountable disqualifications. The art, especially in its vocal department, can boast, even in so remote a corner of Italy, of instructors superior to any procurable in England, except at those rates which some parents complacently mention as if to set a higher value on their daughters' acquirements. Blessings on the Italians in this respect, for they have no purse-pride! If you admire a lady's singing—and it is no rarity to hear streams of melody poured from those full rounded throats, such as would electrify a London drawing-room—some member of her family will not immediately inform you that she learned from the first masters at two guineas a lesson; that no expense was spared, and so forth. They do not understand John Bull's delight at framing all he does in rich gilding, and can enjoy the fine singing of their country-women, notwithstanding that, in Ancona at least, instruction from no mean professor was attainable at two pauls (ten-pence) a lesson.

The music-master who taught my cousins was director of the opera, composed and understood music thoroughly, and devoted himself, heart and soul, to his profession: to these recommendations he added a very handsome exterior, great attention to his dress, gentlemanly and respectful bearing, and, nevertheless, gave twelve lessons, of an hour each, for a sum equivalent to ten shillings, and thought himself lucky too to get pupils at that rate!

Painting, the twin-sister of Music, does not enjoy the same amount of popularity. In a country, of which the churches and palaces teem with evidences of the estimation in which it was held scarcely two centuries ago, I saw only one instance, that of Volunnia's miniatures, where, even in its humblest branches, it was studied by one of the higher ranks. It is cast as a reproach upon the modern Italians that they can no longer furnish good painters; but the censure is more applicable to those who do not care to foster the talent so often doomed to languish in the ungenial atmosphere of poverty and neglect. The young artist, whose only pupils in Ancona were those furnished by my uncle's family, had studied several years in Rome, Florence, and Venice, had distinguished himself in his academical career, was full of enthusiasm and feeling, and yet so little encouragement did he receive in his native city, that it was difficult for him to earn his bread. It is almost superfluous to add that he was as poor as any painter need be. He had one coat for all seasons; never ate but once a day, besides a cup of coffee at six in the morning, which he procured at a caffÈ, no fire being lighted so early at his mother's, where he lived; and had a starved, hungry look, like a lean grey-hound, with large hollow eyes, and an attempt at an artistic beard. Poor fellow! his story presents so perfect an illustration of a new phase of Italian life, that I must not be considered too discursive if I fill this chapter with an account of it.

He had known my uncle's family for years, and considered himself under obligations to them, so that a little of the old Roman patron and client system was kept up in their intercourse; a respectful affection on his side, and a kindly interest in his welfare on theirs. His knowledge of art was really wonderful. As a boy, he had drawn his first inspirations from Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican, and worshipped him almost as a divinity; then ascending a step higher in purista principles, he devoted himself to the study of that branch of the Florentine school of which “Il Beato Angelico da Fiesole” is the chief; and to hear him descant on his purity of outline and grace of composition, was in itself a lecture on design. A timely removal to Venice luckily saved him from the exaggerations into which all votaries of any peculiar style, however excellent in itself, must inevitably fall; on which, in fact, he was fast verging, as two or three pictures he had in his possession, painted while the impressions of Florence were still predominant, of ashy-hued saints, with marble-like draperies, abundantly testified: and leaving his legitimate admiration for the Beato Angelico unsubdued, yet sent him back, at the conclusion of his studies, glowing with rapture for Titian and Paolo Veronese. From the great works of the former, he had made a number of sketches and spirited copies; while he thought—as what young artist does not think?—that he had discovered his peculiar secret of colouring, detailed to us as he held forth triumphantly upon his flesh-tints and impasto. In addition to all these artistic disquisitions, he used, while we were taking our lessons, to give us all the political news, or rather the whispers which were stealthily in circulation, and often repeated that ours was the only house in which it was safe to express an opinion.

Then he would tell us a great deal about the crying evils of his country, much to the purport of what I have already stated; the ignorance of the women, the idleness of the nobles, the extortion and injustice of the Government, and the insolence of the Austrians who supported it—all being related in beautiful and poetic Italian; for he spoke his own language with great refinement, although he did not spell it correctly.

And yet, notwithstanding these constant discussions and conversations, never was he known to pass the limits of difference tacitly laid down, never once to venture on the verge of familiarity: years of intercourse, resumed at intervals since his boyhood, made no difference. He never came to the house but as a teacher; and at the end of each lesson, he always bowed with the same ceremonious respect, and backed out of the room with the same “servo umilissimo” as if he had been a mere stranger.

I wish I could detail some of the stories we heard from him—little romances in themselves, and, admirably illustrative of the quick feelings and exaggerated sensibility of the Italian temperament, allowed more room for the development in the mezzo cetto than in the strict etiquette of the nobility. How a young cousin, becoming desperately in love with a young man she had only seen from an opposite window, pined rapidly away; and on hearing he was already affianced, insisted on taking the veil in a convent of a very strict order: how his own sister, a very beautiful girl, nearly broke her heart from the cruelty exercised by her mother-in-law, who tried to sow discord between her and her husband, opened all the letters she received from her parents, took away all her best clothes, and distributed them among her own daughters—in fact, behaved like a suocera in all the acceptation of the term. But nothing interested us so much as his own history, in which he at last made us the recipients of the misery and uncertainty that were destined to be inseparable from his existence.

We had observed that for some weeks he looked more than ordinarily woe-begone, scarcely spoke, and his unbrushed hair stood erect with an air of distraction it was pitiable to witness. The usual inquiries about England, the lectures upon art, the pÆans to Raphael, were all at an end, and our lessons were becoming very stupid, common-place affairs, when, one day, as he was cutting a crayon, he suddenly laid it down, and said, falteringly: “Signorine, will you excuse my temerity, if, knowing all your benevolent interest in me, I tell you what makes me so ill. I have fallen in love.”

“Indeed!” we exclaimed; “tell us all about it. Where is the lady?—how long has it been going on?—when will the sposalizio take place?”

“Alas!” he replied, “what can I say? I have never spoken to her; it is two months since I first saw her; it was one evening outside the gates: she was with her mother. I beheld that modest ingenuous face, and my fate was decided. Miserable was I born, miserable have I always been, but never so miserable as now.”

“Wherefore?” I inquired, with a perplexed expression.

“Because I have no means of maintaining her—not even a few hundred dollars of my own: therefore it is of no use attempting to make the acquaintance of her family, or presenting myself as a suitor. O signorine! I have suffered so long, my secret was wearing me to the grave.”

“But you have an avvenire—a future, at least,” said my cousin Lucy, who, under all her sedateness, was rather of an enthusiastic turn.

“Ah!” answered he, shaking his head, “that is easy to say for you English: we poor Italians have no future; we never can rise; we are but fools to dream of it.”

“Then do you not mean even to try to improve your fortunes, so as one day to be able to marry?”

“Heaven knows whether I do not try,” was the rueful response; “but the days for art in Italy are gone by. You are witness, ladies, to the patronage accorded to me here. What have I to look back upon since I established myself in Ancona? One or two commissions from convents for the apotheosis of some new saint—a few portraits—at such rare intervals, and on such hard terms, that I verily believe, if I were a house-painter, I should succeed better than with my aspirations to be an historical one.”

“Yet, why despair?” I persisted; “why not obtain an introduction to the family of the fair incognita, explain your views, and if they hold out any hopes of your ultimately being accepted, you will work away with redoubled energy. You might go and paint signs in California.” (That was all the rage just then.)

“The signorina is laughing at me, I see; but it would not be right according to our ideas. She had better know nothing of me; her peace of mind might be disturbed. Those friends whom I have consulted, tell me I ought even to avoid passing her when she is out walking, or going to look at her at mass. Her character is evidently so full of sensibility that it would be easy to destroy her happiness.”

“How can you be so sure of all this, if you have never spoken to her?”

“I see it all perfectly in her face,” he answered, with a determined belief in his own powers of observation, which no ridicule or reasoning could shake. His romantic passion amused us all excessively, and as he evidently liked to talk of it, the disclosure having been once made, we were in future kept fully informed of all his tortures, fears, and despondency; but fancied that an attachment, hopeless and baseless as this, could not be of long duration. Contrary, however, to what we anticipated, he became more and more in love; he looked every day thinner, his hair more wiry, his eyes unnaturally brilliant and deeper sunk.

One morning—a real wintry morning, one of the few we ever saw—he came in, livid and trembling, with a wildness in his appearance that was startling. He did not leave his hat in the hall, as was his custom, but entered with it in his hand, and making a few steps forward, paused abruptly, and said in a hoarse voice:

“The signorine will excuse me if I pray them to dispense me from my attendance for a few days. I am going into the country—yes, into the country!”

When an Italian goes into the country at such a season of the year, he must be in a desperate plight, and we anxiously demanded the reason of this rash step.

“Signorine, I am mad—I am jealous! Yesterday I was looking up furtively at her window; another man was standing in the street near me; I fancied I had seen him there before: still a suspicion never crossed my brain when the window opened, and she looked out. Never had she deigned to do this for me. As I live, her eyes rested upon him! All the furies seized me; I rushed to the house of my friend, my best friend, the Avvocato D——. I raved, I tore my hair, I imprecated curses upon her. He took me by the arm. 'To-morrow, you must go into the country,' he said; 'I will accompany you.' Yes, signorine, with twelve inches of snow upon the ground, I go into the country!”

And into the country he went, and from the country he returned in two or three weeks' time, unrecovered; although convinced that his jealousy was groundless, the national specific had failed in this case. Then I fear we did him harm, for on the “nothing venture, nothing have” principle we counselled him to embody his hopes, prospects, and honest determinations in a letter to be submitted to the young lady's family, belonging, like his own, to the middle classes, though more affluent in their circumstances.

Taking an injudicious mezzo termine, he humbly presented this epistle to the fair Dulcinea herself, as she was coming one day out of church under the care of some aunt or elderly female relation.

Haughtily flinging it on the ground, the damsel indignantly said, “I do not know how to read letters of this description,” and passed on. Her virtue and discretion increased his admiration, while the repulse almost broke his heart. He never made any further attempt to press his suit, but moped and pined away perceptibly; in fact, he was dying of mortification and grief—so common an occurrence in this part of Italy, that they have a distinct name for the affection, and call it passione.

At this juncture, some friends of his, who had emigrated to Tunis in the recent troubles of Italy, wrote to recommend his joining them there; and urged on by the representations of all who were interested in his welfare—his desperate condition sanctioning so desperate a step as foreign travel was usually looked upon—encouraged especially by ourselves, with our restless, enterprising British notions, he embarked in a small trading-vessel, almost reduced to a skeleton.

Months, nay, years have passed since then, and it seemed as if all clue to the poor young painter were completely lost, when, by a strange coincidence, I received a letter from him at the very moment when the ink was still wet upon the page where I had been relating his ill-starred attachment. I wish I could transcribe the whole of this letter—I wish it could be laid tangibly before my readers—so clumsily, squarely folded, with its coarse red seal, stamped with some copper coin very probably, its stiff handwriting and deficient orthography; and its contents, so simple, so poetical, so unassuming, of which a few extracts, to give the continuation of his vicissitudes, can furnish but a very imperfect idea.

After relating the failure of the hopes with which he had landed at Tunis, he says that, resolved to leave no path that might lead to independence unexplored, he even set his beloved art comparatively aside, and had betaken himself to whatever honest employment he might find. Entering the service of the Pacha of Tripoli, he had been sent as a mineralogist—“for amongst the Turks,” he naÏvely remarks, “one may do anything—far into the interior, amongst men and manners completely different from our own, to explore a mine reported to be of silver, but which, with my usual ill-luck, turned out of very inferior iron.” Then, encouraged by the Pacha's promises, he accompanied him to Constantinople, where, finding to his cost that he must put no faith in princes, he turned to his painting again. But the city was swarming with Italian refugees, artists among the rest, all contending for the bare means of subsistence; so, after a few months of painful struggles, he went back to Africa, and entered into some trading speculations. Neither in this new career was he successful. Perhaps he worked with a sinking heart, for the tidings reached him that the young girl so faithfully loved was about to be married; and “what imbittered this announcement, was learning that the character of her future husband offered but slender prospects for her happiness.” His little ventures failed; his resources were exhausted; and he was under the necessity of returning to his native country. There he found strange reverses had suddenly befallen her whom he had schooled himself to look upon as irrevocably lost. Her parents were both dead; the marriage had been broken off; and from comparative affluence she was so reduced as, jointly with a widowed sister, to have opened a day-school for little girls.

“I saw her then,” he goes on, “under the pressure of sorrow. I found her, in the words of Petrarch, piÙ bella, ma meno altera; and yet, even at that moment, my cruel destiny prevented me from saying, 'I am here to comfort and sustain you!'”

Once more he went forth, hoping against hope, with the aim of establishing himself as a portrait-painter and drawing-master at ——, on the shores of the Mediterranean, whither many English families annually resort; and the object of his letter was modestly and unaffectedly to request that if I knew any of my country-people intending to winter there, I would recommend him to their notice.

I felt very sad to perceive how he overrated the signorina forestiera's influence, and the extent of her acquaintance; or else in his simplicity imagining that to be English is synonymous with belonging to a vast brotherhood, giving and demanding the hand of fellowship on every side. I wish it were thus in this instance at least, for the first use I should make of this blissful state of fraternity, would be to claim patronage and encouragement for the poor artist, whose history then could soon be pleasantly wound up like orthodox story-books, in these words, “and so they were married, and lived very happily all the rest of their days.”