“You would be amused with the economy of my servants Ambrogio and Maria. They think it most extravagant if I have both vegetables and a pudding, and quite sinful to have soup the same day; and the first day, after I had seen the kitchen fire blazing away all afternoon, and ‘Il Signorino è servito’ was announced very magnificently, behold the dinner was—three larks! But what a pleasure it is to hear again from servants—‘Felicissima notte,’—that sweetest bidding of repose, as Palgrave calls it.”
“March 1.—I know, as usual, far too many people here for comfort, nearly three hundred. But I have enjoyed constant drives with Lady Castletown and her most sweet and charming daughter, Mrs. Lewis Wingfield. The Miss Seymours also are here, and very agreeable, with their very handsome sister, married to the Austrian Count von Lutzow. The Duchesse S. Arpino and her mother and engaging little daughter make their house as pleasant as ever. Mr. Adolphus Trollope has a pretty little daughter who sings most enchantingly.[75] I also like Lady Paget, the Minister’s wife, who is a clever artist in her own way.
“The spoliation of Rome continues every day. Its picturesque beauty is gone. Nothing can exceed the tastelessness of all that is being done—the Coliseum, Baths of Caracalla, and the temples are scraped quite clean, and look like sham ruins built yesterday: all the pretty trees are cut down: the outsides of the mediæval churches (Prassede, Pudentiana, &c.) are washed yellow or painted over: the old fountains are stripped of their ferns and polished: the Via Crucis and other processions are forbidden: and the Government has even sent out the ‘pompieri’ to cut down all the ivy from the aqueducts. I have, however, got back one thing—the Lion of the Apostoli! I went round to a number of people living in that neighbourhood, and engaged them to go in the morning to the Senators in the Capitol and demand its restoration: and a message was sent that the lion should be restored at once. So the little hideous beast goes back this week to his little vacant sofa, where he has sat for more than six hundred years.
“The cardinals have been dying off a good deal lately, and a curious relic of old times was the lying in state of Cardinal Bernabo in the Propaganda Fide—the chapel hung with black, the catafalque with cloth of gold, a chain of old abbots and cardinals standing and kneeling round with tapers, and all the students singing. Pius IX. is well, and Antonelli has never been the least ill, except in the Times, in which he has received the last sacraments.”
“Tivoli, March 22.—I have been greatly enjoying a little mountain tour with Lady Castletown and Mrs. Lewis Wingfield. On Wednesday we spent the day in the villas Aldobrandini and Mondragone at Frascati, and the next morning had the most charming drive by Monte Porzio and Monte Compatri, chiefly through the desolate chestnut forests, to Palestrina. It was the fair of Genazzano, and the whole road was most animated, such crowds of peasants in their gayest costumes and prettiest ornaments. At beautiful Olevano we had just time to go to the little inn and visit my friend of last year, Peppina Baldi. It was a tiring journey thence to Subiaco after such a long day, and we only passed the worst precipices by daylight, so it was quite dark when we reached Subiaco, where we found rooms with difficulty, as, quite unwittingly, we had arrived on the eve of the great festa of S. Benedetto. Most delighted we were, however, of course, and most picturesque and beautiful was the early pilgrimage, with bands of music and singing, up the stony mountain paths. Lady Castletown travels with a second carriage for her maids, so prices naturally rise at first sight of so grand a princess. … On the way here we diverged to the farm of Horace in the Licenza valley, all marvellously unaltered—the brook, the meadows, the vines, the surrounding hills and villages, still just as he described them eighteen hundred years ago. It is a wonderful country, one lives so entirely in the past.”
I have seldom enjoyed Tivoli more than in this spring of 1874. It was then that, sitting in the scene I describe, I wrote the paragraph of “Days near Rome” which I insert here.
“Nothing can exceed the loveliness of the views from the road which leads from Tivoli by the chapel of S. Antonio to the Madonna di Quintiliolo. On the opposite height rises the town with its temples, its old houses and churches clinging to the edge of the cliffs, which are overhung with such a wealth of luxuriant vegetation as is almost indescribable; and beyond, beneath the huge pile of building known as the Villa of Maecenas, the thousand noisy cataracts of the Cascatelle leap forth beneath the old masonry, and sparkle and dance and foam through the green—and all this is only the foreground to vast distances of dreamy campagna, seen through the gnarled hoary stems of grand old olive-trees—rainbow-hued with every delicate tint of emerald and amethyst, and melting into sapphire, where the solitary dome of St. Peter’s rises, invincible by distance, over the level line of the horizon.
“And the beauty is not confined to the views alone. Each turn of the winding road is a picture; deep ravines of solemn dark-green olives which waken into silver light as the wind shakes their leaves—old convents and chapels buried in shady nooks on the mountain-side—thickets of laurustinus, roses, genista, and jessamine—banks of lilies and hyacinths, anemones and violets—grand masses of grey rock, up which white-bearded goats are scrambling to nibble the myrtle and rosemary, and knocking down showers of the red tufa on their way;—and a road, with stone seats and parapets, twisting along the edge of the hill through a constant diorama of loveliness, and peopled by groups of peasants in their gay dresses returning from their work, singing in parts wild canzonetti which echo amid the silent hills, or by women washing at the wayside fountains, or returning with brazen conche poised upon their heads, like stately statues of water-goddesses wakened into life.”
Great was the difficulty of securing any companion for the desolate excursion to the Abruzzi, but at length I found a clever artist, Mr. Donne, who agreed to go with me.