The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862

A few nights after Caper was domiciled in the Via Babuino, Rocjean called on him, and as he entered his room, carefully extinguished a taper, and was putting it in his pocket, when Caper asked him what that was for?

'That! it's a cerina. Have you been two weeks in Rome, and not found out that? Why, how did you get up-stairs at night?'

'There was a lamp in the entry.'

'None there to-night, so I had to light this. It's only a long piece of wick, dipped in wax; you see you can roll it up in a ball, and carry it in your pocket, so! Without this and a box of matches, you can never hope to be a good Roman. You must have seen that where the houses have any front-doors, three quarters of them are open all night long; for, as on every floor of a house, there live different families, they find it saves trouble—trouble is money in Rome—to leave the door unclosed. These dark entries, for they are seldom lighted, offer a grand chance for intrigues, and when you have lived here as long as I have, you will find out that they—improve the chances. A cerina, in addition to keeping you from breaking your neck, by tumbling down stone stairs, gives light to avoid the stray dogs that sleep around loose, and to see if there is any enemy around who wants to give you a few inches of cold steel. You may laugh at robbers here; but you may cry for mercy in vain to a Roman who seeks vendetta—revenge, you know. Bad way to use foreign words; but we all do it here. Speak an Italianized English after a time, the effect of had examples. But come, if you want to see Rome by moonlight, it's time we were off.'

As they reached the street, Caper asked Rocjean where he could buy the cerina.

'At any dragheria' said the latter.

'Good, there is a druggist's store up the street—Borioni's.'

'A dragheria means a grocery-store in Rome. If you want molasses, however, you must go to the farmacia for it, [that is the Roman for druggist's shop,] and you will buy it by the ounce.'

'Live and learn,' said Caper, as they entered the grocery and bought the cerina-price, one baioccho a yard.

'And now let us walk out to Saint Peter's, and see the church by moonlight.'

'The want of sidewalks in this city,' remarked Rocjean, 'compelling the Romans to walk over cobble-stones, undoubtedly is the cause of the large feet of the women, added to their dislike of being in pain from tight shoes or boots. For genuine martyrdom from tight shoes, French, Spanish, and Americans—but chiefly Cubans—next to Chinese women, are ahead of the world.'

'But apart from the fact that they do walk on the narrow sidewalks in the Corso, I have noticed that in the side-streets, even where there is a foot-walk, nobody takes advantage of it at night.'

'For a good reason, as we shall probably see,' said Rocjean,' before we reach the bridge of San Angelo. But keep close to me in the middle of the street.'

The moonlight shone brightly down the narrow street they were then walking through, which, but for this, the occasional dim light of an oil-lamp hung in front of a shrine, the light from a wine or grocery shop, and the ruddy blaze of a charcoal-fire, where chestnuts were roasting for sale, would have been dark indeed. The ground-floor of very few Roman houses is ever occupied as a dwelling-place; it is given up to shops, stables, etc., the families residing, according to their wealth, on the lowest up to the highest stories; the light purses going up and the heavy ones sinking. They had walked nearly to the end of this street, when, happening to look up at the fourth story of a house, he saw something white being reversed in the moonlight, and the next instant a long stream of water, reminding him of the horse-tail fall in Switzerland, came splashing down where a sidewalk should have been.

'What do you think of the middle of the street now?' asked Rocjean.

'Let's stick to it, even if we stick in it. I'm going to buy an umbrella, and spread it too, when I go out of nights, after this.'

They reached the bridge of San Angelo, and studied for a short time the fine effect of the moonlight shining on the turbid, slow-flowing Tiber, and lighting up the heavy pile of the castle of San Angelo. Then they reached the Piazza of Saint Peter's, and here the scene was imperial. Out and in through the semi-circular arcade of massive pillars the moonlight stole to sleep upon the soft-toned, gray old pavement, or was thrown in dancing, sparkling light from the two noble jets of water tossed in the clear night-air by the splashing fountains. In all its gigantic proportions rose up, up into the clear blue of the spangled sky, the grand thought of Michael Angelo—the dome of Saint Peter's.

Returning from Saint Peter's, Rocjean proposed to walk through the Trastevere, the other side of the Tiber, and to cross over the river by the ponte Rótto or broken bridge. They found the street along the river very quiet; here and there a light showed, as on the other side, a wine-shop or coffee-room; but the houses had few lights in them, and spite of the moonlight, the streets looked gloomy and desolate.

'They seem to keep dark this side of the river,' said Caper.

'Yes,' answered Rocjean, 'and live light. They go to bed for the most part early, and rise early; they economize fifty-one weeks in a year, in order to live like lords for the fifty-second—that is Carnival-week. Then you shall see these queenly Trasteverine in all their bravery, thronging the Corso. But here is a clean-looking wine-shop, let us go in and have a foglietta.'

They found the shop full of thirsty Romans—it is safe to say that—although the number of small flasks showed they could not indulge their taste so deeply as they wished to. The centre of the listening group of Romans, was a bright-eyed, black, curly-haired man, who was reciting, with loud emphasis:

THE LIFE AND DEATHOF THE PERFIDIOUS ASSASSIN,ARRIGO GARBETINGO OF TRENTO,Who slew nine hundred and sixty-four grown persons and six children

He had already got through his birth and wicked childhood, and had arrived at that impressive part where he commences his career of brigand at large, accompanied by a 'bool-dog':

'He had a bull-dog of the English breed, oh!More savage than all others that we've seen, oh!Close at his side it always walked, indeed, oh!And never barked! but then his bite was keen, oh!When on some poor man straight he sprung, take heed, oh!His soul from body quickly fled, I ween, oh!Because with cruel, gnashing teeth he tore, oh!Him all to pieces, in a manner sore, oh!'

The reciter here stopped to drink another tumbler of wine, upon which Caper and Rocjean, having finished their pint, paid their scot and departed.

'Was that an improvisatore?' asked Caper.

'He might pass for such with a stranger of inflammable imagination, who didn't know the language,' answered Rocjean. 'He is, in fact, a reciter, and you can buy the poh, poh-em he was reciting at any of the country fairs, of the man who sells rosaries and crucifixes. It is one of the cent-songs of the Papal States, published con licenza, with license; and a more cruel, disgusting, filthy, and demoralizing tendency than it must have on the people can not well be imagined; and there are hundreds of worse.'

While Rocjean was talking they had crossed the ponte Rótto, and as he finished his sentence they stood in front of the ruined house of—Cola di Rienzil, 'Redeemer of dark centuries of shame—the hope of Italy, Rienzi, last of Romans!'

'Well,' said Rocjean, as he halted in front of the ruined house, and looked carefully at the ornamented stones still left, 'when Saint Peter's church shall be a circus, this house shall be a shrine.'

'That being the state of the case,' spoke Caper, 'let us walk up to the Trevi fountain and see the effect by moonlight of its flashing waters, and inhale the flavor of fried fish from the adjacent stands.'

They stood in front of the wild waters dashing, sparkling over the grand mass of tumbled rocks reared behind the wall of a large palace. Neptune, car, horses, tritons, all, stone as they were, seemed leaping into life in the glittering rays of the moonlight, and the rush and splash of the waters in the great basin below the street, contrasted with the silence of the city, left a deep impression of largeness and force on the minds of the two artists.

'Let us go down and drink the water, for he who drinks of it shall return again to Rome!'

'With all my heart,' said Caper; 'for if the legend has one word of truth in it, Garibaldi will be back again some bello giorno——'

'Bello giorno means fine day; giorno di bello means a day for war: I drink to both!' spoke Rocjean, dipping water up in his hand.

They returned to the street, and were walking toward the Piazza di Spagna, when they overtook two well-dressed men evidently none the better for too much wine. As they passed them, one of the men said to the other:

'J-im! I don't see but what we-we-'ll have to r-r-roost out-tall night. I don't know 'ny 'talian, you don't know 'ny 'talian, we-we-'re nonpl'sh'd, I'm th-think'ng.'

'Ary borry boutére spikinglish?' said the other one to the two artists, as they were walking on.

'Yes,' said Caper, 'four of 'em. If you've lost your way we'll set you right. Where's your hotel?'

''Tel? Why, 'Tel Europe p'aza Spanya. Are you English?'

'No, sir! I'm an American born, bred and—buttered,' said Caper.

'B-bullyf'ryou! We'resame spishies—allrite—d-driv'on!'

'Look here,' said the one of the two men who was least tipsy, 'if this tother g-gen'leman and I could stick our heads into c-cold water we'd come out tall right.'

'It's only a block or two back to the Trevi fountain,' answered Caper, 'and if your friend will go with you, you'll find water enough there.'

They went back to the fountain, and descending the steps with some difficulty, the two men soon had their heads pretty well cooled off, and came up with cleared intellects and improved pronunciation. In the course of conversation it appeared that the two travelers, for such they were, after rather too much wine at dinner in their hotel, had been invited to the German Club, where Rhine wine, etc., had finished them off: attempting to return to their hotel alone, they had lost their way. As the four walked along, it came out that one of them owned a painting by Rocjean, and when he discovered that one of his guides was no other than that Americanized Frenchman, the whole party at once fraternized, and disregarding any more moonlight effects, walked at once to Caper's rooms, where over cigars and a bottle of Copalti's wine they signed, sealed, and delivered a compact to have a good time generally for the week the two travelers intended devoting to Rome. The moral of which is … that you make more friends than meet enemies—walking round Rome by night.

THE MYSTERIOUS IN ART

They were in the presence of a man with flowing hair, flowing beard, and flowing language, in a studio, all light from which was excluded by heavy curtains, except enough to display an easel on which was placed a painting, a background of dark blue where were many apparently spider and crow-tracks.

'Those who in the profundity of their darkness incline to the belief that the vitality of art, butterfly-like, has fled from this sunny world, have made the biggest kind of a mistake,' said Mr. Artaxerxes Phlamm, the Mystic Artist, to Caper. The hit was evidently intended for Rocjean, but that descendant of the Gauls, for some reason, did not smite back again; he contented himself with the remark:

'Art is long.'

'Yes, sir,' continued Mr. Phlamm, 'not only it has length, but breadth, breadth, broadness—it extends from—yes—from—pole to pole.'

'Like a clothes-line,' said Caper.

'Ah!' continued Phlamm, with a pickled smile, 'Fancy, ever Fancy, but it is Imagination that, as it were, brings man to a level with his destiny and elevates him to the Olympium hights of the True, and all that rises much above the meedyochre. But I must not forget that this is your first visit to me studeeyoh. The painting on the easel is a view of Venice on the Grand Canal.'

'But,' said Rocjean, 'I do not see the canal.'

'When you are gazing at the stars do you see your boots?' asked Phlamm.

'I always do,' spoke Caper quickly, 'always gaze at 'em at night—smoke a cigar—put my feet higher than my head—sit in a chair—stars reflected in boots—big thing!'

'You are full of life and spirits, Caper,' continued Phlamm, 'full of 'em; but Rocjean is more serious, more imbued with his nobil calling. My illustration, as he understands, would convey the idea that such a thing as foreground in a painting is false; it's a sham, it's a delusion, and all that. It may do for pre-Raffleites, but for a man who looks Naychure in the face, he sees her operating diversely, and he works according. I repeat it again, when I was on the Grand Canal in Venice, I didn't see the Grand Canal.'

'Neither did I,' spoke Caper, 'we're just alike; I kept my head all the time out of the gondola-window looking for pretty girls—and I saw them!'

'May I ask why you dead-color your canvas blue, and then make your drawing in black outline?' asked Rocjean.

'What is the color of the sky? Is it not blue? Is not blue a cold color; is it not the negative to the warmth, the balance to the scales, the one thing needed on which to rear the glorious fabric that Naychure reveals to the undimmed vision of man? I know your answer, and I refute it. I have studied Art from its roots, and now I'm in the branches, and I grasp the fruit. My manner is peculiar—I have no patent for it—I ask for none. The illimitable passes the legitimate, and the sw-word is carried by the hero—for me the bruzh, the paint-bruzh. You see that painting before you—it is my child—I lavish on it my intentions—I am going to work three years on that picture!'

'I bet you a new hat you sell it, and a dozen more, and send 'em off before six months. You're all the rage now since you sold old Goldburg a picture,' quoth Caper.

'I don't bet, I am opposed to betting. But look that picture of mine in the face, in the face! Here is a finished painting, The Lake of Zurich; see those clouds floating mistily away into the far distance—there's atmosphere for you—there's air! You can't cut those clouds into slices of cheese as you can them of that humbug of a Cloud Lowrain. Cloud Lowrain! he's a purty painter! Naychure is my teacher. I go out mornings and hear the jackdaws chatter, and see trees and all that; sometimes I walk around in a garden for ten minutes and commune with Naychure—that's the way to do it. Look at clouds before you paint 'em—I know it's hard when the sun's in your eyes, but do it—I've spent a week at a time out-doors, like Wordsworth and the great, the grand, the colossial Ruzking.'

'I like that water,' said Rocjean, alluding to that of the painting.

'Water is my peculiar study; I am now engaged experimenting on it—see there!' Here Phlamm pointed to a basin.

'Been washing your hands?' asked Caper.

'Scientifically experimenting, not manually. Water is soup-or-fish-all—earth is not soup-or-fish-all.'

'Our dinners are, during Lent,' quoth Caper, 'unless we're heretics.'

'I don't understand your frivolity—what do you mean?'

'Didn't you say, 'Soup or all fish?''

'Pshaw! You will never make an artist—never, never—you are too, too superficiall, too much of the earth, dirty.'

'Oh! now I understand,' answered Caper; 'give it to me, I deserve it.'

'I was studying water, its shadows and its superficiality, in that basin,' continued Phlamm, 'and I study the ocean there, and have devolved great principles from it. What makes my pictures sought for by the high and the low, wealthy? What? It's the Truth in 'em, the Mystery, the Naychure. The old masters were humbugs, they weren't mysterious, they had no inner sight into the workings of Naychure. Who'd buy one of their pictures when he might have a Turner for the same price? Nobody.'

'Wouldn't he?' asked Caper. 'Try him with a Raphael, just a small one.'

'Raphael? You mean Raffaele. Ah! he was a painter, he wasn't one of the old masters, however, he was a middle-age master. What sweetness, what a kind of—sweetness generally; what a blending of the prayerful infant with the enthusiastic beauty; the—the polished chastity of his Mad-donas; the folds of his drapery, and—the drapery of his folds. Truly enchanting, and so very uncommonly gentlemanly in his colors.'

'The Chesterfield of oil-colors?' suggested Rocjean. 'But à propos of Nature, you never paint a picture directly from her, do you?'

'Never! Does a great historical painter use the model? No, sir; he draws on his imagination for his figures. He scorns to copy from a model. I convey the impression of mystery that Naychure gives me; I am no servile copyist. And I claim to leave an impression on the minds of the beholders of my works. Why, even Caper, I believe, can see what I wish to tell, and read my poems on canvas. Tell me, Caper, what idea does even that rough sketch of Venice awake in your imaginative faculties, and all that?'

Caper's face wore a deeply thoughtful look, as he answered: 'I do see it; I do claim to read the lesson you would teach–'

'Speak it out,' interrupted Phlamm, 'I knew you would feel the deep, mysterious sentiment as is in it.'

'Spider-tracks and crows' feet on the blue mud of a big marsh,' spoke Caper resolutely.

'Pshaw!' exclaimed Phlamm impetuously; 'you have no Faith, and without that, all Art is a sealed thing. Goldburg, to whom I lately sold a painting, had faith; he saw the grand idea which I explained to him in that picture; he knew that the Earl of Bigbarns had purchased a work of mine, and he said to me: 'The opinion of such a man is an opinion as should be a valuable opinion to a business man, and govern the sentiments of those who worship Art.' Other artists see Naychure, but how do they see her? I answer, blindly! They don't feel her here!' (Phlamm struck his waistcoat in fearful proximity to a pocket in it, and altogether too low for his heart.)

'Nay-chure,' said Caper to Rocjean, as they left this studio of the mysterious one, 'ruined a good Barnum to make a poor Phlamm, when she made him.'

A BATH-HUNT

It is a mournful sight to see a city of one hundred and eighty thousand five hundred and thirty-nine inhabitants, including one thousand three hundred and thirty-one priests, two thousand four hundred and four monks, and eight hundred and fifty-four Jews, Turks, and heretics, as the census had it, attacked with hydrophobia. But it is so. A preternatural dread of water rages among all the inhabitants of Rome, from the untitled down to the titled.

'Madame,' said Rocjean to a distinguished female model, 'I assure you that, in the sixth century, [or as Sir Gardiner Wilkinson has it, in the five hundred,] there were nine thousand and twenty-five baths in this city.'

'Those must have been good times,' replied she, 'for the washerwomen, seguro! There are a good many clothes of the forestieri [strangers] washed here now; but not so many different places to wash them in.'

'I mean places to bathe one's self all over in.'

'Mai! Never, never!' exclaimed the woman with horror; 'never! 'twould give them the fever, kill them dead!'

Mr. Van Brick, of New-York, arriving in Rome early in the morning, demanded of the porter at the hotel where he could find a bagno, or place where he could get a bath. He was directed to go down the Babuino, and at such a number he would find the establishment. Forgetting the number before he was three steps from the hotel, he inquired of a man who was driving a she-jackass to be milked, where the bath was. As he spoke very little Italian, he had to make up by signs what he wanted in words. The man, probably believing he wanted a church, and that his motions signified being sprinkled with water, pointed to the Greek church, and Van Brick, thinking it was a solemn-looking old bagno, strode in, to his astonishment finding out as soon as he entered that he was by no means in the right place. As he turned to go out, he saw an amiable-looking young man, with a black cocked hat in his hand, and a black serge shirt on that came down to his heels, and had a waist-band drawing it in over his hips. He asked the young man, as well as he could in Italian, where there was a bagno.

'The signore is English?' asked the youth in the black shirt.

'I want a bath,' said Van Brick, 'which way?'

'Have patience, signore. There are a great many English in Rome.'

'Farewell!' quoth Van Brick, turning on his heel, reflecting: 'That youth talks too much; he does it to conceal his ignorance; he don't know what a bath is.' Coming out of the church, he met a good-natured looking Roman girl, without any bonnet, as usual, going along with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread.

'Can you tell me where the bath is?'

'Chi lo sa, signore.'

This CHI LO SA, or, 'who knows?' of the Romans, is a shaft that would kill Paul Pry. It nearly throws an inquisitive man into convulsions. He meets it at every turn. The simplest question is knocked to pieces by it. So common is it for a Roman of the true plebs breed to give you this for an answer to almost every question, that Rocjean once won a hat from Caper in this wise: they stood one evening in front of a grocer's store, down by the Pantheon; it was brilliantly illuminated with hundreds of candles, displaying piles of hams, cheese, butter, eggs, etc., etc. Chandeliers constructed of egg-shells, where candles shone brightly, particularly struck Caper.

'You see,' said Rocjean, 'as anyone else can see, that those chandeliers are made of egg-shells. Now, I will bet you a hat that I will ask four men, one after another, who may come to look in this window, what those chandeliers are made of, and three at least, if not all four of them, will answer, 'Who knows?' (Chi lo sa.)

'Done!' said Caper.

Rocjean asked four men, one after another. All four answered; 'Who knows?'

But to continue the bath-hunt: Van Brick was thrown over by the girl's answer, and next asked an old woman, who was standing at the door of a house, buying broccoli from a man with a hand-cart.

'Can you tell me where the bath is?'

'The bath?'

'Yes, the bath.'

'Is it where they boil water for the English?'

'That must be the shop,' quoth Brick.

'That's the place,' pointing with her finger to a house on the opposite side of the way.

Van Brick crossed over, and after five minutes' hunt over the whole house, was coming down disheartened, when he saw a pretty girl, about eighteen years old, standing by the doorway.

'Can you tell me where the bath is?'

'Seguro! I attend to them. You can't have a warm bath for two or three hours yet, for there is no fire; but you can have a cold one.'

'Well, let me have it as quickly as possible.'

'Yes, sir. We have no soap for sale, but you can get it two doors off.'

Van Brick went out, and after a time returned with a cake of soap.

'Signore,' said the girl, when he went back, 'the water is all running out of the hole in the bottom of the tub, and I can't stop it.'

'H'm! Show me the tub; I am a splendid mechanic.'

The hole being stopped, the tub was rapidly filling with water. Van Brick, in anticipation, was enjoying his bath; when in rushed the attendant.

'Signore, you will have to wait a few minutes—until I wash some towels.'

Van Brick was in extremis. Taking a gold scudo, one of those dear little one-dollar pieces the Romans call far-fálle (butterflies) from his pocket, he thus addressed her:

'Maiden, rush round the corner and buy me a yard of any thing that will dry me; I don't care what it is, except salt fish.'

'Oh! but these English are bursting with money,' thought the girl, and thus thinking, she made great haste, only stopping to tell three or four friends about the crazy man that was round at her place, who didn't want salt fish to make him dry.

'Behold me back again!' said the girl, 'I flew.'

'Yes,' said Van Brick, 'and so did time; and he got ahead of you about half an hour. Give me the towels.'

'Si, signore, behold them! See how fine they are! What an elegant fringe on them; and only twenty-five baiocchi a piece, fringe and all included.'